Speaker 1: We got a good one for you this week.
Speaker 2: It's in my sweet spot, which is meso America, Middle America, Mexico,
Speaker 2: Central America. And we're talking Omech with my friend doctor
Speaker 2: Edwin Barnhardt. And it's a good subject because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of mystery.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna put it that way. It's mystery, it
Speaker 3: is intrigued and what's beginning to come out. And you know,
Speaker 3: we spent a lot of time in Egypt. Egypt's been
Speaker 3: studied for decades, over one hundred and fifty years, maybe
Speaker 3: even longer, since seventeen hundreds, since Napoleon got in. The
Speaker 3: Egyptian the basically pillaged the whole country and brought back
Speaker 3: whole temples.
Speaker 4: I mentioned this before.
Speaker 3: If you go to the mouve in Paris, there's an
Speaker 3: entire temple that they reconstructed there, plus just countless artifacts
Speaker 3: that the Egyptians went back. But this week we're going
Speaker 3: to talk about not just the Olmec, but the Maya.
Speaker 4: And I have been.
Speaker 3: Fascinated since I started going down in the late nineteen
Speaker 3: nineties to Mexico at the invitation of elders, most notably
Speaker 3: Humbat's men, who had written a number of books, and
Speaker 3: he wanted to show the Western culture that there was
Speaker 3: more to the Mayan people than the bloodthirsty, heart ripping
Speaker 3: savages that are portrayed by National Gea, the Smithsonian and
Speaker 3: places like that. And this is what I'm bringing forth
Speaker 3: in this book on writing the Maya Contraver. I've talked
Speaker 3: enough about We've got to get the thing going anyhow,
Speaker 3: Today we are talking about a lot of strangeness that's
Speaker 3: been coming up with the Maya and also with the Omec.
Speaker 3: The Omec used to be considered the mother culture.
Speaker 4: Of the Maya.
Speaker 3: And we've had a number of people on the program
Speaker 3: saying that no, they were contemporaries. They they probably battled
Speaker 3: each other. And I am in the middle of right
Speaker 3: reading a book by a really well known minus a
Speaker 3: guy named David Stewart who has written this really well
Speaker 3: put together book called The Four Heavens, and I gotta say,
Speaker 3: if you do decide you want to get this book,
Speaker 3: and by the way, it's the latest and the greatest
Speaker 3: about the Maya. He is an epigrapher, which is an
Speaker 3: expert in translating mostly Stoneworks because we don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of very few Cotises very few written books only,
Speaker 3: and those don't get into kings and very little pottery.
Speaker 3: Most of what he interprets in this book are stories
Speaker 3: of kings and their domain and what they are up
Speaker 3: to it and the battles. But I'll tell you this,
Speaker 3: if you decide to get it, don't I mean buy
Speaker 3: the book. Just look look at the great images. But
Speaker 3: by the audible version, it's much easier to consume. If
Speaker 3: you decide to read it, you're gonna have to be
Speaker 3: very very patient because it takes a long time to
Speaker 3: get to the point. And I mean it's I shouldn't.
Speaker 3: I'm not a great reader. I have to be honest
Speaker 3: with you, so I'm not one to common. If you
Speaker 3: love to read, get the book thefore heavens. If you
Speaker 3: don't like to read, and you're like me, you don't
Speaker 3: have a lot of time, get the audible because it's
Speaker 3: really the latest good data, academically researched and presented in
Speaker 3: a very palatable manner. Unfortunately it borders on academic. But
Speaker 3: if you listen to it, it's much easier to consume.
Speaker 3: But it's good. It's good material. Here is the great
Speaker 3: problem we're dealing with right now, and This is what
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get out through my writing. There's two phases.
Speaker 3: There's the pre Classic, early Middle, and Late, and there's
Speaker 3: the Classic, early Middle and Late. What archaeologists don't tell
Speaker 3: us is that these two are separate periods, separated by
Speaker 3: a few thousand years. The earliest Maya, the pre Maya.
Speaker 3: These guys, very oddly, were very much like the pre
Speaker 3: Dynastic or early Egyptians. They had a king's list. They
Speaker 3: built magnificent megalithic, huge temples and pyramids, the largest in
Speaker 3: the Americans. And I talk about this all the time.
Speaker 3: Why is this unique? The Egyptians follow the same pattern
Speaker 3: their earliest works. If you consider the pyramids pre Dynastic
Speaker 3: or Old Kingdom, which some people believe that's true, I
Speaker 3: think they're much earlier. The Egyptians are very similar to
Speaker 3: the Maya. The Maya are very similar to the Summers Sumerians.
Speaker 4: And so they all have kings lives. This is all
Speaker 4: real new stuff.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: What's mind bending in What is fun about this interview
Speaker 3: today is that I'm asking it. I say, ed, now,
Speaker 3: the Egyptians have a kings list of noted kings, noted pharaohs,
Speaker 3: but it goes into deep antiquity, thousands and thousands, ten
Speaker 3: thousands of years or more of prehistory, and Egyptologists do
Speaker 3: not can sitter pharaohs or kings prior to a certain
Speaker 3: time factor.
Speaker 4: Why is that?
Speaker 3: Because they can't bend around the idea of any sophisticated
Speaker 3: civilization before four thousand years or five thousand years. This
Speaker 3: is what we're seeing in with this new book The
Speaker 3: Four Heavens by David Stewart. We're seeing ancient cities like Elmador,
Speaker 3: which has the largest pyramids in the America's listing kings
Speaker 3: that go back ten thousand years actually earlier than that.
Speaker 3: And how do these guys and this drives me nuts.
Speaker 3: Why don't they think about the possibilities of early people,
Speaker 3: of early migrants who make up and eventually become the Maya.
Speaker 3: They can't go there. So what happens is as far
Speaker 3: as they can go is known kings. Because they can
Speaker 3: correlate kings between different posts, different steela. Which of these
Speaker 3: standing markers that talk about the kings, the ones they
Speaker 3: know about, they admit, But when they start going further back,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, it's mythology. Why is it mythology? Because
Speaker 3: it's too far in the distant paths for them to
Speaker 3: consider a true pharaoh, a true king.
Speaker 4: This is just.
Speaker 3: Getting out of hand. And the beauty of someone who
Speaker 3: is highly educated in a minus himself. And if you
Speaker 3: don't know who Ed Barnhart is, check him out. He's
Speaker 3: going to Ed Barnhart dot com. Go to his YouTube channel,
Speaker 3: which is growing steadily. He's got quite a fan base.
Speaker 3: He has actually done excavations. He's a serious field archaeologist,
Speaker 3: and he is of the belief that, you know, we
Speaker 3: need to be a little more flexible. And remember, and
Speaker 3: if you haven't heard it before, you're going to hear
Speaker 3: it now. We have about one percent of the knowledge
Speaker 3: of the of the Maya. Now in Egypt it's a
Speaker 3: little more, maybe five percent. There's so much that's buried.
Speaker 3: And remember, the technology is exposing a great deal of information.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. Eight nine years ago, universities
Speaker 3: and the Guatemalan government, our universities got together and paid
Speaker 3: for sophisticated light art scans of the biasphere of Guatemala.
Speaker 3: When did they turn up? They turned up sixty thousand
Speaker 3: unknown pyramids, temples, buildings, cities. Listen to what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It's not a few hundred. Oh there's a few scattered hundred. No,
Speaker 3: they plotted and calculated that there were sixty thousand unknown
Speaker 3: ruins in the Guatemala jungle.
Speaker 4: Well, what the hell?
Speaker 3: What does that say? Well, that says that we have
Speaker 3: just scratched the surface. So this goes on and on
Speaker 3: and on, and we make the best sense of it
Speaker 3: that we can. Today's program is more focused on the Omecs,
Speaker 3: some of the new discoveries that have been made, some
Speaker 3: of the new interpretations that have been made, and one
Speaker 3: of them is that the Omech were very likely megalithic
Speaker 3: builders as well, and we'll learn just why. So today's
Speaker 3: program is the Omeic Enigma, Unearthing meso America's Lost Empire.
Speaker 3: And my guess is, Doctor Edwin Barnhardt.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be an Omech program.
Speaker 3: We have Doctor Edwin Bonhart back with us, and it's
Speaker 3: always fun to talk with Ed. I have had the
Speaker 3: privilege of going and joining him on a number of tours,
Speaker 3: including one that was focused on the Olmech. And not
Speaker 3: only is ed a I would call a bible of information.
Speaker 3: He loves his work and it shows and so we're
Speaker 3: talking about the OLMEC today and a number of topics
Speaker 3: that have been coming up, just not only through Ed's work,
Speaker 3: but through other scientists and research investigators that I wanted
Speaker 3: to touch base with. So Ed, good to see you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining me and the house life in Colorado.
Speaker 3: You're now a pure I shouldn't say pure. Were you
Speaker 3: moved from Texas to Colorado. The temperature should be a
Speaker 3: lot nicer where you're at right. Oh, it's a beautiful
Speaker 3: day out there. I've got the sun shining in behind
Speaker 3: the computer right now. Nice to see a cliff. Thanks
Speaker 3: for inviting me back. Thank you. Yeah, good to see you.
Speaker 3: I had a number of questions regarding just the Olemech
Speaker 3: as a whole. One of the things that I think
Speaker 3: we brought up last time, and it's been I think
Speaker 3: four or five years since we last talked about the
Speaker 3: Olemech is this is one of these cultures that almost
Speaker 3: shows up complete, and I was wondering, do we have
Speaker 3: a record of them in a developmental stage where they're
Speaker 3: building early mud huts and pyramids and developing a cosmology
Speaker 3: that eventually blooms into a much more sophisticated cosmolgy.
Speaker 4: Well, We do have some evidence of a gradual development,
Speaker 4: not as much as I would like. You know, a
Speaker 4: lot of it comes from a site called Almanatee that's
Speaker 4: close to San Lorenzo, and then San Lorenzo itself, which
Speaker 4: is the first big Olmech city, has evidence of early
Speaker 4: occupation that was more simple and then developing into building
Speaker 4: that gigantic range building. They made this platform that's a
Speaker 4: kilometer wide, it's narrow, it's a big rectangle. But we
Speaker 4: do have some Oftentimes, you know, that sort of information
Speaker 4: is hard to come by without serious deep excavations because
Speaker 4: you know, the newer stuff buries the older stuff, right
Speaker 4: it is, you know, I the Onmic are certainly the
Speaker 4: first major civilization to come up with art and religion
Speaker 4: and the roots of writing, and that makes them fascinating
Speaker 4: and unique in meso America. But I do think we
Speaker 4: have enough information to say they didn't just like PLoP
Speaker 4: down complete. We see them growing. There are years where
Speaker 4: they're there but not creating those big basalt monuments. Yet
Speaker 4: we see a sequence of building on the big platform there.
Speaker 4: We see the population going from a small amount of
Speaker 4: people very close to that platform to spreading out all
Speaker 4: over the place there's ant Cipher's did a really great
Speaker 4: job of documenting the expansion of San Lorenzo's population, so
Speaker 4: we have data out there, but that's really I mean,
Speaker 4: most of that that I can cling to is in
Speaker 4: San Lorenzo. I'd love to see us go to more
Speaker 4: of the Olmec cities and do that kind of extensive
Speaker 4: study so we can see just how quickly they developed.
Speaker 3: Who what university or organization would you say are the
Speaker 3: most active in excavating omech sites, because you know, I
Speaker 3: used to think it was it was in Texas, you know,
Speaker 3: but that seems to be more Maya focus. University where
Speaker 3: you came from, school, you graduated from, and I think
Speaker 3: that's where isn't that where David Stewart is residents right now,
Speaker 3: the one of the better known Mayanish.
Speaker 4: That's where I was from U T. Austin, and that's
Speaker 4: where David's from. But actually, not much has been done
Speaker 4: in ut on the in the Olemec world that I'm
Speaker 4: aware of in decades. I mean Kent Riley's work when
Speaker 4: he was a student there was a big deal, and
Speaker 4: that was mostly art historical, not excavations. The truth is
Speaker 4: there are very very few excavations going on in the
Speaker 4: Olemec world. You know, I can count the guys that
Speaker 4: are active olemech archaeologist that I know. You know, on
Speaker 4: one hand, the biggest project that I'm excited about is
Speaker 4: once again going on in San Lorenzo. But Vicky Arietta
Speaker 4: is leading a team every summer, I guess now or
Speaker 4: every yeah, once a year, she's leading team there and excavating,
Speaker 4: continuing the work of her mentor and Cipher's. But they're
Speaker 4: from Halapa in Vera Cruz. I think they're from the
Speaker 4: University of Vera Cruz, So that's a Mexican it's a
Speaker 4: Mexican project. And I was following them when they were
Speaker 4: in this season this year and it looked like they had,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe forty people working, students, professors and locals.
Speaker 4: So I'm excited to see what they come up with.
Speaker 4: She is probably gonna find another head. She knows where
Speaker 4: to look, she's well trained. Her mentor found the last one.
Speaker 4: She's gonna find another one.
Speaker 3: You know, that's funny you mentioned that, because I've always
Speaker 3: wondered how in the hell did Sterling find Didn't he
Speaker 3: find like five or six heads in like one four
Speaker 3: or five year period. I mean it's like either I think.
Speaker 4: He found I think he found yeah, in like a
Speaker 4: one year period.
Speaker 3: Is it because the farmers were like, we found this
Speaker 3: half exposed or did he have like his radar up
Speaker 3: just to find all make heads? No, they were exposed
Speaker 3: on the surface. The ones they were moved from their
Speaker 3: original locations tumbled down the hill, but they were exposed
Speaker 3: to the surface. And yeah, the farmers showed them all
Speaker 3: of them. Every every head that Sterling found, he was
Speaker 3: led there by a farmer. Some of the ones that
Speaker 3: were found during the Yale project where they used a magnetometer,
Speaker 3: they found a couple of totally buried heads, but most
Speaker 3: of them that Stirling found, like most archaeologists' great discoveries,
Speaker 3: were you know, toddling behind a farmer magnetometer. How does
Speaker 3: does that work? Is that some way of picking up
Speaker 3: stone or crystalline frequencies in the stone or how does
Speaker 3: that work?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I don't know the exact science of it, but
Speaker 4: I do know that it was capable of detecting basalt
Speaker 4: under the ground. And since San Lorenzo has no natural
Speaker 4: beds of basalt, all that was dragged in there. The
Speaker 4: I guess it's the resistance of the soil versus other
Speaker 4: stone types. In this particular case, that worked like a charm,
Speaker 4: because any piece of basalt, no matter how small, had
Speaker 4: to be hauled from seventy kilometers away. They fifty. Is
Speaker 4: the feeling.
Speaker 3: That these huge basalt heads are kings of unknown history
Speaker 3: and there's a possibility that there's more of these huge
Speaker 3: heads that are still buried or what's the feeling on that.
Speaker 3: Is there any research or any study that has been
Speaker 3: done on them?
Speaker 4: Well, I think you're exactly right. The predominant opinion is
Speaker 4: that they're kings and that they were placed on these
Speaker 4: big linear platforms, and there's no reason to believe there's
Speaker 4: not more. You know, San Lorenzo began that tradition of
Speaker 4: making heads, you know, two hundred years before they gave
Speaker 4: up the ghosts, So we should have two hundred years
Speaker 4: of kings and we've got ten heads. But of course
Speaker 4: that's theoretical. We could be totally wrong about who these
Speaker 4: heads are. It makes sense in their position and that
Speaker 4: their unique faces and headdresses, which I bet you somehow
Speaker 4: allude to what their name is, the fact that each
Speaker 4: one has a different headdress I bet you. Encoded in
Speaker 4: that headdress is some sort of marker that says this
Speaker 4: is King X, just like the Maya did so much
Speaker 4: more clearly afterwards. You know, there are certain Maya kings
Speaker 4: who have their whole name spelled out in their head dress.
Speaker 3: It's funny, though, because we don't see helmets in Mayan
Speaker 3: sculptures that I know of. It seems like the omic
Speaker 3: It's almost like they're a warring class. But what is
Speaker 3: your interpretation of these these helmets, what makes.
Speaker 4: These well, you know, helmets is a loaded term. Why
Speaker 4: helmets implies they are warriors fighting someone, or perhaps sports players.
Speaker 4: But those are both very Western ideas, and we really
Speaker 4: have no weapons that any of these Olmec figures are
Speaker 4: ever shown with, So I think that the idea that
Speaker 4: they are you know, war related, is probably off beat.
Speaker 4: They probably are some sort of headdress, some you know,
Speaker 4: some symbol of their authority. Could be ballplayers, but that's again,
Speaker 4: you know, that's us Western thinking that a football player
Speaker 4: wears a helmet, When we actually see the Maya playing
Speaker 4: ball games in their art, nobody's wearing a helmet. They're
Speaker 4: wearing pads on their body. So the big heavy solid
Speaker 4: ball doesn't explode their organs. But there they don't really
Speaker 4: wear helmets to play the game. So I lean headdress,
Speaker 4: and you're right there. Unique there's the headdresses got bigger
Speaker 4: and bigger and bigger after the Omes, and the Olmec
Speaker 4: wore some pretty big addresses too. Wow. So there must
Speaker 4: be some significance to that unique form. But we have not.
Speaker 4: We'll probably never truly figured that out, but few have
Speaker 4: even you know, made an argument why they're different.
Speaker 3: You on tour with you and when we were in Leventa,
Speaker 3: made an interesting statement. We have the bones of various
Speaker 3: Maya rulers and people, but we don't have anything from
Speaker 3: the Olmec. And your reasoning was that the soil is
Speaker 3: so acidic that it eats up the bones and remains.
Speaker 3: Do we have any remains at all, any like burial
Speaker 3: goods that would give us the kind of a sense
Speaker 3: of who these people were?
Speaker 4: You know? We do? Uh. And when I told you
Speaker 4: that statement a few years back, you know, and still
Speaker 4: to this day, that is the prevailing wisdom that the
Speaker 4: reason we have so few all skeletons are the acidic
Speaker 4: nature of the soil. Totally makes sense, but here's the
Speaker 4: weird thing, Cliff that I've now traveled a lot of
Speaker 4: the Olemec world. I went and really did a deep
Speaker 4: dive before I made this twelve lecture series Olmec Thing
Speaker 4: for the Teaching Company, which came out last year. But
Speaker 4: everywhere I went I saw bones. In the tre Sipotees
Speaker 4: museum at that site, there are bones. There's a skeleton
Speaker 4: sitting right there in a little display case. And I
Speaker 4: talked to the guards and they said there are more
Speaker 4: in the lab. And I went to the museum in
Speaker 4: San Andreas Toushla that has a lot of the stuff
Speaker 4: from those mountains and some from Trecapotees. There were skeletons
Speaker 4: in cases there. There were baby skeletons. I talked to
Speaker 4: the people at San Lorenzo. They said that they dug
Speaker 4: up skeletons with Anne Cipher. She actually did analyze two
Speaker 4: of them. But the people there that were workers told
Speaker 4: me they had more. And so it's funny. I mean,
Speaker 4: I've always heard this, there are no l next skeletons,
Speaker 4: but geez, they're sitting in museums just you know, weird.
Speaker 4: I am not a chemist guy, I can't go in there.
Speaker 4: You know, some people misunderstand, you know, I don't have
Speaker 4: some authority because I'm an archaeologist or a PhD. I
Speaker 4: can't just walk into a museum and go, well, you
Speaker 4: better get some chemists in here and do that, because
Speaker 4: that's an authority over this. You know, you guys better,
Speaker 4: you know, just get on the ball. It's Mexico's business.
Speaker 4: But there are there are old Mech skeletons that are
Speaker 4: on display, and probably many more in labs, and I
Speaker 4: would love to see somebody actually give us some data
Speaker 4: off of Those'd be nice.
Speaker 3: To know, you know, at least a carbon date, if
Speaker 3: not an analysis to find out what kind of lifestyle
Speaker 3: they led.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's low hanging fruit and you know, and
Speaker 4: are in display cases in public museums. It's not like
Speaker 4: it's some kind of like the Smithsonians are hiding giants
Speaker 4: in the basement kind of conspiracy. You know, they're just
Speaker 4: there for anybody to see. That's funny.
Speaker 3: Now ed in a recent video, you highlighted the fact,
Speaker 3: in your opinion, that the Omech shaved their heads.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I want to hear about this because in this
Speaker 3: I didn't see the whole thing. But you have them
Speaker 3: bald under their helmets.
Speaker 4: What's that all about?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: You know, that was kind of like the hook at
Speaker 4: the front that my convinced me to do that. I
Speaker 4: still I do think they're bald under the helmet. I
Speaker 4: think the purposely, I think they're shaving their heads. I
Speaker 4: think it's a I think it's a religious practice, similar
Speaker 4: to religious practices we see all over the world, you know,
Speaker 4: the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Friars with their funny li
Speaker 4: little hole on the top of their head. That's yeah.
Speaker 4: Those kind of head shavings are called tonsure, and they
Speaker 4: are invariably connected to religious practices, and they're an outward
Speaker 4: show of your piety and devotion. And I think that
Speaker 4: the Olmech are doing the same sort of thing. I
Speaker 4: think this baldness can't be natural. They don't even show
Speaker 4: themselves with peach fuzz. They're really, you know, adhering to
Speaker 4: this shaving their heads. And I think it had something
Speaker 4: to do with religion. And we've kind of you know,
Speaker 4: there's so many things that you can glean if you
Speaker 4: just have the right perspective approaching the art, and this
Speaker 4: is one of the things. When I did my deep
Speaker 4: dive for the lecture series that I noted again and again,
Speaker 4: like where is a single I got obsessed with it,
Speaker 4: like I gotta find one guy with hair. I couldn't
Speaker 4: could not find a single guy with hair. And then
Speaker 4: I find women. I found like five different examples of
Speaker 4: women with mohawks, but they've got breasts and they've got skirts,
Speaker 4: so they're different. They're women, but they they have hair,
Speaker 4: but men don't. And so you know, I had a
Speaker 4: ton of neat suggestions from people when I put that
Speaker 4: video out. One of them was continually, Uh, well, they
Speaker 4: shaved their head because of lice. But you know, even
Speaker 4: if that was true, it is that means that the
Speaker 4: women were allowed to have lice but the men weren't.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a weird thing. There was. There's also
Speaker 4: I got a thousand comments about the braids there. You know,
Speaker 4: probably people here listening are of the camp that believe
Speaker 4: that the Olmec were African. Yeah, and and they're they're
Speaker 4: a fiery group. Boy, they will not be told otherwise.
Speaker 4: But they bring up these braids. But they're only on
Speaker 4: one helmet, and they come from the top of the
Speaker 4: helmet and down, and they are more likely kets all
Speaker 4: feathers than braids. The way they have a little not
Speaker 4: jewel at the bottom that kind of tucked them and
Speaker 4: hold them down is just like out of some Maya
Speaker 4: head dresses. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think there's any
Speaker 4: hair there. There's no hair coming out from under the helmets.
Speaker 4: I've walked around all seventeen heads now and been like,
Speaker 4: you got her hair? You know.
Speaker 3: That brings up another topic and we have discussed it
Speaker 3: before and the prevailing wisdom which is now changing. Have
Speaker 3: you read any works from Paulette Steve's the Archaeologists from
Speaker 3: Canada that's redating North American sites.
Speaker 4: She's a native.
Speaker 3: I'd like to Yeah, I've had her on a couple
Speaker 3: of different times. She is redating a number of sites
Speaker 3: in the United States to over one hundred thousand years each,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of blowing the idea of the bearing
Speaker 3: straight out a little bit. And this comes to another
Speaker 3: question is these Olmec has look African centric, and there's
Speaker 3: other Olmec that look Asian centric, and there's others that
Speaker 3: look Caucasian. And at the turn of the century there
Speaker 3: was a couple of people that actually wrote books that
Speaker 3: believe there was a migration that wasn't necessarily from the
Speaker 3: bearing straight. They were more nautical or oceanic transatlantic oceanic migrations.
Speaker 3: Why is it so hard to even consider that?
Speaker 4: Wow, I'll consider it right now, Yeah, right, I mean
Speaker 4: it's yeah, uh, it's because there's a lack of care
Speaker 4: operating evidence. It's difficult to go just on art to
Speaker 4: make the argument stick. I totally agree. I've never denied
Speaker 4: that the heads do look negroid and the chubby babies
Speaker 4: look very Asian. Easier to explain the Asian part, or
Speaker 4: explain it away, I should say by noting that all
Speaker 4: Native Americans are from Asiatic stock, and that the Maya
Speaker 4: even have the Mongolian spot on the base of their
Speaker 4: baby's spine. They're they're strongly Asian already. So the you
Speaker 4: know that especially the babies. You know, if you really
Speaker 4: look at the examples that look Asian, car predominantly the
Speaker 4: baby sculptures, and you could explain it away through just
Speaker 4: some kind of depiction of how babies look at the
Speaker 4: squinty eyes and you know, let's not say any thing
Speaker 4: else racist, but but but you can see that the
Speaker 4: black ones are harder to come around the negroid features.
Speaker 4: But here's the thing. I mean, we have to have
Speaker 4: more than just art to make an argument that genetic
Speaker 4: populations moved into the area. We should have, you know,
Speaker 4: the initial artifacts from those parts of the world showing
Speaker 4: up at some sort of initial contact place. And like
Speaker 4: we were just saying, we actually do have a lot
Speaker 4: of Olemech skeletons from the Olemech world. You know, seventy
Speaker 4: five years ago when the first real debates about their origin,
Speaker 4: be it you know, African or Asian, came up. Nobody
Speaker 4: even dreamed we could do DNA studies. But now you know,
Speaker 4: we could really do them on the existing Olmec stuff.
Speaker 4: And given this controversy and this open question of whether
Speaker 4: it's possible that they were immigrants from another continent, it's
Speaker 4: within our grasp. Like, you know, let's make every Olemech
Speaker 4: project number one priority finding skeletons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 3: our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly
Speaker 3: with my guest today, Ed Barnhard, discussing the Ohmic enigma.
Speaker 3: Will be right back with you. My guest today is
Speaker 3: field archaeologist and mayanist Ed Barnhardt coming to us from Colorado.
Speaker 3: We're discussing the all mechanigma, the new discoveries that have
Speaker 3: been found in Mexico and Central America, and the all
Speaker 3: next place in our understanding of history.
Speaker 4: With the Maya. What do you say we have one
Speaker 4: percent excavation of the Maya, and what do you feel
Speaker 4: about the Omec similar percentage or maybe more five percent
Speaker 4: because we've been able to dig up a little Oh gosh,
Speaker 4: you know, I am. I am flippant with that one percent,
Speaker 4: and I would be equally flippant in the in the
Speaker 4: ole Nec area, especially considering Enomata's light. Our study just
Speaker 4: showed us we have over two hundred big ole Nec
Speaker 4: platforms that we haven't gotten to. You know, that's since
Speaker 4: we currently have you know, eight and now there's another
Speaker 4: two hundred. What's what's that? You know? And all the
Speaker 4: spaces in between that didn't show up on light are
Speaker 4: I'd say, you know, practically speaking, when we're talking about
Speaker 4: excavating or even just exploring and mapping, we've got these
Speaker 4: tiny little postage stamps. Even t Kal is a postage
Speaker 4: stamp sitting in an ocean of p ten rainforest. All
Speaker 4: the space in between it is full of things. You know,
Speaker 4: we've found most of the major Maya cities most not all,
Speaker 4: but the places in between, gosh, we don't know anything.
Speaker 4: You know. Estrada Bellies lightar front that he did for
Speaker 4: National Geographic they came up with, you know, sixty thousand
Speaker 4: buildings in a relatively against small area. When you zoom
Speaker 4: out and look at the area they covered, you're like,
Speaker 4: that's a fraction of this area. When they say sixty.
Speaker 3: Are they are they presuming thousands or are they actually
Speaker 3: counting sixty thousands?
Speaker 4: I wish I knew the answer to that question. And
Speaker 4: I've been a huge riber Francisco and say like, do
Speaker 4: you actually have a map with sixty thousand or did
Speaker 4: you take a few squares and extrapolate, you know, well,
Speaker 4: which is how like like t Call's population estimate. Now
Speaker 4: we can probably readdress it with the light ar that
Speaker 4: we have. But the truth is when the initial numbers
Speaker 4: came out anywhere from seventy to one hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 4: The reason they wiggle is because the surveys did you know,
Speaker 4: straight north south east west lines that they cut and
Speaker 4: mapped anything there, and then they went about you know,
Speaker 4: fifty meters on either side of those lines and mapped,
Speaker 4: but there were big blocks that they never actually mapped,
Speaker 4: and they extrapolated. Okay, if there's this much in the
Speaker 4: areas we have mapped, the little blank squares that we
Speaker 4: didn't get to would total this. So actually there's not
Speaker 4: a one survey of call. There's there's grid lines with
Speaker 4: big holes in each grid.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I mean, I would think a few
Speaker 3: hundred would be comfortable. But to say sixty thousand unexcavated buildings, pyramids, temples,
Speaker 3: whatever else, that's a huge number. That's a whole civilization.
Speaker 4: And from my perspective, Jesus, it would take a long
Speaker 4: time to draw that map.
Speaker 3: Well, you're contemporary. Richard Hansen says it would take two
Speaker 3: hundred years.
Speaker 4: To excavate that many sites.
Speaker 3: I think he's low balling it. Actually, it'd probably take
Speaker 3: longer than two one hundred years, you know, I mean.
Speaker 4: I think it would. You know, you also got to
Speaker 4: put us in our historical perspective. Yes, with our current techniques,
Speaker 4: it would take hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years,
Speaker 4: with shovels and digging these things out. I dream of
Speaker 4: a day where we can remotely sense a lot of
Speaker 4: this and leave these sites alone. You know, our chaeology
Speaker 4: is destructive. Every time we dig these things up, we
Speaker 4: ruin them for the future generations. I think that our
Speaker 4: ability to remotely sense inside buildings and from above and
Speaker 4: more resolute things are going to each step we take
Speaker 4: is going to give us the ability not to dig
Speaker 4: up and destroy these buildings, and the work will be
Speaker 4: done instead of in three months, in three days and
Speaker 4: it'll stay there, you know, I do. I'm sensitive to
Speaker 4: the fact that, you know, these kings buried in these tombs,
Speaker 4: they were like, you know, the sacred heart of their
Speaker 4: ancestral worship oriented religion. And it just kind of sucks
Speaker 4: on a level that you know, a thousand years later
Speaker 4: a team of white guys come and dig this guy out.
Speaker 4: Uh would have been a museum. I would prefer to
Speaker 4: see these guys stay where they are. There's a point
Speaker 4: in which, you know, I think we have an abundance
Speaker 4: of information about Maya kings. Let's start asking some more
Speaker 4: interesting questions, like that live outside there?
Speaker 3: Is that a thought that archaeologists have, especially those who
Speaker 3: have gotten permission to excavate a site. Is there kind
Speaker 3: of like this area's hands off, this area will excavate
Speaker 3: or do they just kind of go through the whole
Speaker 3: site and go, Okay, we'll see what we can get.
Speaker 4: Oh, well, that's a case by case basis, and there
Speaker 4: is a general I don't know if it's a codified
Speaker 4: written rule or not, but we're really not supposed to
Speaker 4: be digging up tombs anymore. We're supposed to be answering
Speaker 4: questions about architecture and lifestyle, but we're not supposed to be,
Speaker 4: you know, honing in on tombs. Yeah, find some accidentally,
Speaker 4: there's a lot. There's a lot of them that are
Speaker 4: accidentally found. But it's really not it's it's becoming less
Speaker 4: and less politically correct to just go into one of
Speaker 4: these sites and say, where are your kings at? Where
Speaker 4: your king's at? Do they have gold on them? Do
Speaker 4: they have jade? Where we try to ask more sober
Speaker 4: scientific questions about like construction sequence and boring stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is the responsibility of an archaeologist? Now ed,
Speaker 3: when you get out of school and you got your
Speaker 3: anthropology degree and you spend time and you do your
Speaker 3: field work to become an archaeologist, is there kind of
Speaker 3: a national database of sites that are being looked at
Speaker 3: and money's being funneled to or is it a random
Speaker 3: kind of piece by piece. Each university has their own
Speaker 3: set of goals and they're not looking at some kind
Speaker 3: of through some kind of a database that says, Okay,
Speaker 3: we all agree we are going to work here and
Speaker 3: then continue on. I mean, I was just curious. I've
Speaker 3: never even thought about that until you brought that up.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a complex question. There is no like
Speaker 3: global database that I'm aware of of archaeological sites or
Speaker 3: definitely not any kind of agreed upon goals of what
Speaker 3: we should do next. That's that's by university and things.
Speaker 3: There is a each country.
Speaker 4: Has a government branch of archaeology that's responsible for recording
Speaker 4: all known sites and what the data is and who
Speaker 4: did the dig and they give the permissions or deny
Speaker 4: the permissions to come and do this work. So proposals
Speaker 4: are presented to you know, the nations, you know, for
Speaker 4: talking about Guatemala, it's it's the Archaeology Department of Guatemala.
Speaker 4: They are they're they're actually the culture and sports. I
Speaker 4: don't know why the heck archaeologies in that, but it is.
Speaker 4: But they they decide who would do projects, and they
Speaker 4: you know, they're the ones who require the reports and
Speaker 4: the responsible behavior. So there's there's that, But when it
Speaker 4: comes from like people in the universities in the United
Speaker 4: States graduating and then doing a project down there, it's
Speaker 4: it's very uh, piecemeal, it's you know, they there's there's
Speaker 4: a bunch of different organizations. They could ask for money.
Speaker 4: They they of course need to interact with the country
Speaker 4: that they're going to. But you know, if you're new,
Speaker 4: you could say, well, I'll go to Guatemala because I
Speaker 4: have friends there. I'll go to Mexico, or I won't
Speaker 4: go to Belize, or you can choose those sort of things. Okay,
Speaker 4: if that's what you're getting at, I mean you were
Speaker 4: asking more like an ethics question.
Speaker 3: Well, no, when i'mand we do Egypt every year as
Speaker 3: a tour, and there's parts of Egypt that are being
Speaker 3: excavated by German universities and the Germans, like Elephantine Island
Speaker 3: is now they've the Germans have been there over fifty years,
Speaker 3: continually excavating that site. They're paying for it. They're paying
Speaker 3: millions of dollars for the for the privilege of it.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if they are going through the
Speaker 3: Antiquities department and saying we want to stay here because
Speaker 3: we have a we've discovered something, or we want to
Speaker 3: continue here and we want the permission to do that.
Speaker 4: Is that the same thing in Mexico or uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's I'm glad to hear it's the same thing in Egypt.
Speaker 4: I'm a little or you said it kind of like
Speaker 4: a question, not a fact, But I wonder.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't have a clue what they do
Speaker 3: in Mexico, because you know, the Omecs are we have
Speaker 3: this Emoto's work in uh in olemech areas finding these platforms.
Speaker 3: We have Hansen down in El Miodoor in Guatemala, I mean,
Speaker 3: taking on that huge, huge city, and it seems like
Speaker 3: it's individually fun, not funded by a body of archaeological
Speaker 3: community or whatever. I'm just the funding comes from various sources.
Speaker 4: I'm going to turn my phone off here. The funding
Speaker 4: comes from various sources. You're right about that, But the
Speaker 4: permission comes from the countries so like, and each one
Speaker 4: of them are a little different in their approach. Mexico,
Speaker 4: for example, has Ina Inina is a huge institution, and
Speaker 4: they have in house archaeologists. They're trained in Mexican universities
Speaker 4: and then hired into Ina and they do the vast
Speaker 4: majority of excavations. So if a foreign group wants to
Speaker 4: go into Mexico, they've got to have their credentials in line.
Speaker 4: They've got to have their money. They got to present
Speaker 4: a plan of work, and each and every season they
Speaker 4: have to produce the report of what they've done, and
Speaker 4: then they get permission to continue. If it's a one
Speaker 4: year project, it's a one and done, but if it's
Speaker 4: a multi year project, each at the conclusion of each
Speaker 4: season they're required to hand in a report to Ena,
Speaker 4: who looks at it, sees the value or lack thereof,
Speaker 4: and says, okay, you may proceed, or you guys are bozos,
Speaker 4: you're out. Guatemala does much more of that because they
Speaker 4: have less of a home grown team of archaeologists. They're
Speaker 4: working on it every year. Our generation, i should say,
Speaker 4: Guatemala has now a great team of Guatemalan archaeologists, so
Speaker 4: they're doing more and more of that work. Like Edwin
Speaker 4: Romaine is just knocking it out of the park. Things
Speaker 4: that used to be only universities in the United States
Speaker 4: would be doing them now, t call and that whole
Speaker 4: area of the ten is mostly being excavated by nationals.
Speaker 4: But they do reply. They do rely on or allow
Speaker 4: foreigners to come in and do other work that they
Speaker 4: are not getting to themselves. But do they have to do.
Speaker 3: The foreigners have to pay in a certain fee to
Speaker 3: first of all, get permission to excavate a site and
Speaker 3: secondly identify the artifacts that they.
Speaker 4: Discover. They're obligated to do the to pay for the
Speaker 4: kind of analysis and protection that's needed after you excavate something.
Speaker 4: But they do. You know, in the case of Mexico
Speaker 4: and Ina, Ina charges a flat fee of the money
Speaker 4: that a project has at their disposal, so you know,
Speaker 4: it's something like ten or twenty percent. So if you had,
Speaker 4: you know, two hundred thousand dollars for your project, Ena says,
Speaker 4: you can do it, but you're going to owe us
Speaker 4: twenty thousand off the top and then you can proceed.
Speaker 4: So that's you kind of kind of build your budget
Speaker 4: knowing that nail will take a bite, which is not
Speaker 4: you know, it's not some kind of scam or rip
Speaker 4: off it. You know, that goes into the inena budget
Speaker 4: and that you know, you and I have discussed this before,
Speaker 4: and you know this, but you know, the archaeology is
Speaker 4: just the first volley. Once we unearth something, then it's
Speaker 4: up to us to protect it into perpetuity. And that's
Speaker 4: either burying it again or having a budget to preserve
Speaker 4: and protect it. And in the case of Mexico, they've
Speaker 4: got so many wonderful ruins. You know, you and I
Speaker 4: have spent our lives enjoying ruins and seeing a new
Speaker 4: one all the time, and Mexico's on the hook to
Speaker 4: protect all that shit. So you know, if they charge
Speaker 4: a foreign project twenty percent overhead so they can come
Speaker 4: in and support the rest of the places, I think
Speaker 4: that's a reasonable deal.
Speaker 3: I bring this up real quickly, and we've both talked
Speaker 3: about it. We were in Ushmol and we were having
Speaker 3: lunch a place and down the street we could see
Speaker 3: the ruins of a two hundred It looked like a
Speaker 3: two hundred foot pyramid that hadn't been touched, and I
Speaker 3: think I asked you, why haven't they started working? I mean,
Speaker 3: it was frustrated as hell for me. It's like I
Speaker 3: want to see everything, which as an archaeologist. You can't,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like you have to pick and choose.
Speaker 3: But I think the reason was that they just couldn't
Speaker 3: afford number one to excavate it. And then I think
Speaker 3: what your point was that once it's excavated, it has
Speaker 3: to be protected, and it has to be surveyed, it
Speaker 3: has to be identified, and I think at some point
Speaker 3: you just because there's so many of these amazing ruins,
Speaker 3: you have to kind of just leave it alone for
Speaker 3: another period of time or something has to happen.
Speaker 4: But god, I mean, I mean, that dovetails right into
Speaker 4: my less than one percent of the Maya world comment.
Speaker 4: I mean, even things that we can see while we're
Speaker 4: eating launch art excavated yet, and it is it is
Speaker 4: a question of money and responsibility, you know, it's it's
Speaker 4: irresponsible to just you know, dig into that one to
Speaker 4: see whether it's got a king inside maybe, you know,
Speaker 4: and then and then just leave it to the to
Speaker 4: the stray dogs. We gotta, you know, if we're gonna
Speaker 4: if we're gonna unearth this global patrimony, we gotta have
Speaker 4: a good, responsible plan to protect it once it's on earth.
Speaker 4: And that that's expensive.
Speaker 3: You haven't done field work since Polanky, but maybe after that.
Speaker 3: But I mean when you look at a light OAR
Speaker 3: survey and this is I think one of the problems
Speaker 3: with light oar is is exposing these huge megalopolis, massive cities,
Speaker 3: and it's like, let's go to work.
Speaker 4: This exposed it. Well, the truth of.
Speaker 3: The matter is it's tens of millions of dollars a
Speaker 3: commitment of resources, and it's just not possible, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's always a question
Speaker 4: of priorities. You know, this falls under the category of
Speaker 4: whether we're gonna you know, fund art as an essential
Speaker 4: part of K through twelve education. You know, where are
Speaker 4: our priorities? We we got the money, say, you know,
Speaker 4: we've been spending a billion dollars a day over there
Speaker 4: and Iran lately. Hell boy, that would have done a
Speaker 4: lot of archaeology. I'll tell you a billion dollars. Oh
Speaker 4: my god, I wish that was that was about history
Speaker 4: instead of this terrible crap tells.
Speaker 3: You where our priorities are. Hey, let's jump over to
Speaker 3: uh Mexico. I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: these platforms that have been discovered. This one platform at
Speaker 3: Agua Felix uh is so big and so unusual, And
Speaker 3: what this archaeologist found is that this platform was designed
Speaker 3: to bear weight. There's there's different strata of some and stone.
Speaker 4: What the hell is that for? I love Aguada Phoenix,
Speaker 4: and I love that there's so much work being done there.
Speaker 4: That's uh gosh, I hope I don't. I'm not forgetting
Speaker 4: Takeshi and Amada. I think is doing the work there, Amada.
Speaker 4: And my main bitch is that that's an Olmec site.
Speaker 4: He keeps calling it a pre classic Maya site. It's
Speaker 4: you know, and it's ceramics do show a big Maya connection,
Speaker 4: But the building is exactly like the building at San
Speaker 4: Lorenzo and many other of these raised up linear platforms.
Speaker 4: It's it's Olmec, it's ages Olmec. It's on the edge
Speaker 4: of the Olmec world. I mean, the only thing that's
Speaker 4: really holding us back from calling it Olmec is our
Speaker 4: arbitrary border that archaeology has built about where the now
Speaker 4: Olmec stuff stops and where the known Maya stuff stops.
Speaker 4: There's a there's a real overlap right there, and he,
Speaker 4: for some reason, is just calling it a Maya site.
Speaker 4: I wish you'd at least call it a hybrid.
Speaker 3: We're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our
Speaker 3: sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with
Speaker 3: my guest today, doctor Ed Barnhard, discussing the Olmaic Enigma.
Speaker 3: Will be right back with you. The Omic Enigma will
Speaker 3: feature a gallery on our Facebook page. Go to Facebook,
Speaker 3: go to Earth Ancients. We'll have photographs of this huge
Speaker 3: platform and Agua Felix that's been excavated, very strange, and
Speaker 3: we'll also have some of the buildings attributed to the Omec,
Speaker 3: including this cosmogram, which is a very strange and very
Speaker 3: recent discovery. I actually started excavating it late last year. Well,
Speaker 3: do we have examples of the Maya and the Omec
Speaker 3: working together to build uh structures, pyramids, buildings, temples?
Speaker 4: I think Aguada Phoenix is that. You know, it's frustrating
Speaker 4: because there's no basalt monuments over there, which is so
Speaker 4: signature Olmec heartland. But you know, the closest source of
Speaker 4: basalt is you know, from there? I guess it's it's
Speaker 4: probably one hundred and fifty kilometers away. Yeah, they drug
Speaker 4: it to San Lorenza or Levento, which was about seventy
Speaker 4: kilometers away. But maybe it was just impractical to haul
Speaker 4: those kinds of monuments in there. I don't know that
Speaker 4: that's a big you know x in calling it Olmec,
Speaker 4: that it doesn't have the signature Olmec basalt monuments or
Speaker 4: those huge things, but the city layout is one hundred
Speaker 4: percent Olmec. In fact, you know, you can't find another
Speaker 4: Maya city that looks like that when you just look
Speaker 4: at it, you know, the light our image from above,
Speaker 4: Yes it's Olmec. It's not Maya. The Maya have these
Speaker 4: courtyards with pyramids around them they had since the times
Speaker 4: of El Mirador. Who might be the people talking to them?
Speaker 3: Any thing about it, though, ed is when you look
Speaker 3: at this beautiful rendering of the platform in light, are
Speaker 3: the ancient alien folks come up and go, that's a
Speaker 3: that's a landing fill. That's the same length as a
Speaker 3: as a landing fill the runway, you know, And when
Speaker 3: you look at it, it's like there's nothing on it.
Speaker 3: It's flat. They spit.
Speaker 4: I was told there'd be no aliens in this podcast. No,
Speaker 4: I'm kidding, you know, sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not going to get in trouble if
Speaker 3: I mentioned ancient I'm not a I'm not a supporter
Speaker 3: of it, but I'll be damned.
Speaker 4: You know how many times I've been on ancient aliens.
Speaker 4: I'm not that's right, I'm just kidding around. I'm not
Speaker 4: a I'm not at church at my job. We can
Speaker 4: talk about.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're not university supported, is what you're trying
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean, let's let's just break that one
Speaker 4: down for a minute. The you know, the the long range,
Speaker 4: the linear raised platform feelings us like the runway. Yes,
Speaker 4: that is again us being just myopically stuck in our
Speaker 4: own time and technology. Yes, we are envisioning that, you know,
Speaker 4: or do the aliens who flew that craft in the
Speaker 4: zero gravity of space need a kilometers runway to uh
Speaker 4: to slow down and get speed. You know, that's that's
Speaker 4: us using our understanding of technology saying planes need a runway.
Speaker 4: You know, there's there's no reason to believe that if
Speaker 4: there is alien contact, they're going to come down in
Speaker 4: a freaking airplane. I mean local likely it would hover.
Speaker 4: You know then you exactly, big long thing. It's just
Speaker 4: it's us getting stuck in our own cultural biases and
Speaker 4: preconceived notions of how such a thing would happen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird looking though, because when you look at
Speaker 3: it and go what was this all about? And of
Speaker 3: course the excavated under the surface of the platform and
Speaker 3: they found weight bearings layers like it was either an
Speaker 3: amphitheater for a gathering or something. But god, what a
Speaker 3: lot of work for a big platform.
Speaker 4: That's such a huge site too. En Amada is doing
Speaker 4: just you know, a huge amount of work to try
Speaker 4: to understand such a huge place. I mean yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean just a picture yourself standing there with the shovel
Speaker 4: and then the other end of the excavation is a
Speaker 4: kilometer away. You can't even see that, Like, just it
Speaker 4: boggles the mind how we would approach that with our
Speaker 4: current techniques. And it's so funny. He kind of just
Speaker 4: tripped over these light oar skins that were done years earlier,
Speaker 4: and he adopted him, which is kind of Oh hell,
Speaker 4: we all knew that site was out there, really we did.
Speaker 4: And in fact I could kick myself because I remember
Speaker 4: me and Alfonso Morales were driving from Polenque up to Merida.
Speaker 4: We were he was driving, we were driving along the
Speaker 4: highway where close to where Aguada Phoenix is and I
Speaker 4: was like, hey, uh lot fun. So look at those
Speaker 4: mounds over there. You know what that is. He was like,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, yeah, those those are you know that that's
Speaker 4: a sight, But nobody wants to dig it because it's
Speaker 4: all earthen mounds. He said, uh, John, somebody from uh
Speaker 4: from b Yu. I'm blanket on his name, but he's
Speaker 4: the big He's the big archaeologist from Byu. John's his name.
Speaker 4: He said, yeah, John. John said that he thinks it's
Speaker 4: Olmec and he'd like to go out there and dig
Speaker 4: it someday, but I'm not going to touch it because
Speaker 4: it's all just mud. There's no art over there. It's
Speaker 4: just uh oh. And that was our conversation as we
Speaker 4: drove by, and and it was that was the attitude
Speaker 4: back then, like well, we've got all this beautiful carved
Speaker 4: limestone in the in the Maya world, Why the heck
Speaker 4: would any of us spend our budget and time digging
Speaker 4: up those earthen mounds. And it turns out that the
Speaker 4: earthen mounds was a big part of why you know that.
Speaker 4: That meant that they were super old and even me
Speaker 4: and me and Alfonso talking like that. He already said
Speaker 4: that that somebody had suggested, well, they're earthen because they're
Speaker 4: all mec, which is kind of cool. And that was shit.
Speaker 4: When was that? That was like nineteen ninety nine, when
Speaker 4: we were having that conversation.
Speaker 3: Well, this stuff doesn't age, you know, it just gets older.
Speaker 4: It's again back to that one percent thing. I mean, crap,
Speaker 4: there have been you know, my entire career, I've been
Speaker 4: driving by things like that and having that kind of
Speaker 4: oh well conversation about major places. I'm glad and Amada
Speaker 4: has finally done something.
Speaker 3: Well, let me bring up one more thing about a
Speaker 3: recent discovery that he made, and I want you to
Speaker 3: describe it if you can. He covered what he calls
Speaker 3: a cosmogram. Yeah, an undersurface feature that he explains that
Speaker 3: was used to chart the heavens now. I cannot find
Speaker 3: a good explanation for a cosmogram other than it is
Speaker 3: a rudimentary form of a mirror of the of the cosmos. Right,
Speaker 3: this thing is huge, ed you.
Speaker 4: I think he's i'll say, over using the term cosmogram.
Speaker 4: I mean basically what it is is, you know, across
Speaker 4: that he finds within encoded into the architecture, and I
Speaker 4: would like it a lot more. I would. I would.
Speaker 4: There's certainly there's rectilineal architecture, but the problem with calling
Speaker 4: it a cosmogram, and the way he describes it in
Speaker 4: his paper is that it should be on cardinal directions
Speaker 4: then you know, east west, north south, but the building
Speaker 4: is not aligned that way. It's a few degrees off
Speaker 4: of that. I forget in the case of a Guada Phoenix,
Speaker 4: but it drives me nuts. I wish that those long
Speaker 4: ole neck platforms, which i'll include Aguada Phoenix in were
Speaker 4: It would be so easy if they were north south,
Speaker 4: but they are not. Not only are they not oriented
Speaker 4: ever to cardinal directions, but there is a wide variety
Speaker 4: of orientations. Now they hover around ten degrees off either
Speaker 4: you know, to the to the west, or to the east.
Speaker 4: But there's no no pattern. In Amata's paper where he
Speaker 4: found those two hundred other platforms, he does a nice
Speaker 4: job of doing a statistical analysis up the variation of
Speaker 4: those orientations. But without his you know, cross being actually
Speaker 4: oriented to east west, north south, I find it hard
Speaker 4: to figure out how it would be practically used to
Speaker 4: chart the sky. Okay, And so.
Speaker 3: Using his logic, how are the Omeic using the cosmogram
Speaker 3: to is it a ceremonial center. Maybe maybe they're doing.
Speaker 4: A ceremonial center. And he's suggesting that they are observing
Speaker 4: the heavens off of this, that this is a symbolically
Speaker 4: embedded piece of the architecture that says, hey, we're using
Speaker 4: this big platform to observe the solstice, the equinox, the
Speaker 4: passage of the moon, and the planets and perhaps the stars.
Speaker 4: But it's but since the platform is oriented where the
Speaker 4: the viewing position would not have east as its center,
Speaker 4: it makes it hard to make an argument how the
Speaker 4: whole building charts those things.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm proud of you to not get on
Speaker 3: your fellow archaeologists too heavy. But I think you're you're
Speaker 3: saying that Momoto is maybe stretching it a bit with
Speaker 3: his cosmogram. I am, unless they unless they filled it
Speaker 3: with water, ed unless they filled it with water and
Speaker 3: they were able to see the reflection of the moon
Speaker 3: or something, and that's how they.
Speaker 4: That's that's worse. I'm trying to help you guys out, Okay,
Speaker 4: you know, and I don't you know, archaeo astronomy is
Speaker 4: my specialty. So maybe I am a bit of a
Speaker 4: snob about what evidence I accept and what I don't
Speaker 4: And like, you know, hey and Amata, you already got
Speaker 4: a fantastic sight. Stay out of the archaeo astronomy lane.
Speaker 4: You're sucking up the oxygen pal Oh my god, No,
Speaker 4: I'm not like that, but I do you know that
Speaker 4: if he ever listens to this, I apologize, give me
Speaker 4: a call, we'll discuss it. But I don't really buy that.
Speaker 3: I've been trying to get him on the show for
Speaker 3: years and he's like, I'm just too busy. I can't
Speaker 3: take an hour. I'm like, come on, man, I want
Speaker 3: to hear what you're up to. So maybe he doesn't
Speaker 3: want to have this conversation that we're having.
Speaker 4: Perhaps not. And you know, I'm a free bird that
Speaker 4: I'm not part of any university. No, no president can
Speaker 4: call me after this airs and go ed. You have
Speaker 4: represented our community poorly.
Speaker 3: Hey, let's talk about these stone cube mysteries. You you
Speaker 3: you did a.
Speaker 4: Video on them?
Speaker 3: What are they and are they ceremonial or what's the
Speaker 3: story on them?
Speaker 4: God, I you know that my whole video was about
Speaker 4: what the heck are these? I don't I don't even
Speaker 4: know where to start, but there are lots of them.
Speaker 4: You know, they're in every part of the world. We
Speaker 4: have artifacts that we don't really were, like, what the
Speaker 4: heck is this thing? But usually they're one offs, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a weird thing that's kind of an enigma to
Speaker 4: the entire collection. But in the case of these cubes,
Speaker 4: they're about you know, they're like a little bit bigger
Speaker 4: than a dice, and they're not always square. Sometimes they're
Speaker 4: more rectangles. They're not trying to be perfect cubes. But
Speaker 4: there are hundreds of thousands of them in the Olmec world.
Speaker 4: It is a big artifact type. It's not some weird
Speaker 4: one off that we found once and couldn't explain. Sitting
Speaker 4: in a pit right next to the Red Palace, on
Speaker 4: top of the platform at San Lorenzo, our first big site,
Speaker 4: the Yale Project, found six metric tons of these little cubes,
Speaker 4: and they are of a weird material. But there's six
Speaker 4: metric tons sitting in a pile there, which was way
Speaker 4: over one hundred thousand of them just in this pile,
Speaker 4: buried on top of the platform next to the elite palace,
Speaker 4: so they're just their location alone makes them important. But
Speaker 4: then when you look at what they are, they're weirder
Speaker 4: because they're each cube is drilled on three sides. It's
Speaker 4: kind of like a drill hole all the way through
Speaker 4: one side and then from a top to connect to
Speaker 4: the drill hole. So they feel like beads. That makes
Speaker 4: it feel like, okay, you carved a hole through so
Speaker 4: you could run thread through. But the material is weird. Again,
Speaker 4: San Lorenzo has no good material stone type. They're mostly sandstone. There.
Speaker 4: These are a weird material called ill menite, huh. And
Speaker 4: it's a metallic oxide that has weekly magnetic properties. So
Speaker 4: it's not like they don't stick together, but they're weekly magnetic.
Speaker 4: And a source for this stuff was found maybe one
Speaker 4: hundred kilometers away from San Lorenzo at a site called Plumahio. Oh,
Speaker 4: there's actually a quarry. There's a quarry where the are
Speaker 4: archaeologists found chunks of it, half carved chunks of it,
Speaker 4: cubes with no holes, and cubes with holes. So like,
Speaker 4: the entire manufacture process was found at this source of ilmenite,
Speaker 4: which is nowhere near San Lorenzo. But that one cash
Speaker 4: is not the only cash. Little individual ones have been
Speaker 4: found all over the Maya War or all over the
Speaker 4: Olmec world. A couple here, a couple there, sometimes you know,
Speaker 4: associated with a grave or in some dirt in fill.
Speaker 4: But there's another pile of them that's like tens of
Speaker 4: thousands that was found in the hinterland of San Lorenzo
Speaker 4: as well. So between those two and the sporadic caches,
Speaker 4: they're all over the place, but we have no explanation
Speaker 4: for what they are. Well, there are lots of theories.
Speaker 4: That head that we were talking about earlier, the last
Speaker 4: head that was found and cipher's head dress on that
Speaker 4: one is unique like all seventeen r but that one
Speaker 4: really does look like it's little uh oh tubes with
Speaker 4: a hole in the middle, you know. They And Anne
Speaker 4: is the first one to say maybe that maybe that
Speaker 4: helmet was made out of these weird cubes, because during
Speaker 4: the excavation that she did of the head, which had
Speaker 4: fallen from its original location in the matrix, she noted
Speaker 4: that she found three or four of those little cubes,
Speaker 4: and that's what like connected it in her mind. Hold on,
Speaker 4: here's these weird cubes. Boy, they kind of look like
Speaker 4: the helmet he's wearing, so that's a theory though they're
Speaker 4: here's the weird thing about them too. They are again,
Speaker 4: just like the rest of the oll neck world, just
Speaker 4: sitting in open, plain site in the museum at San Lorenzo.
Speaker 4: It's this little cement building, and the guys who run
Speaker 4: the museum or whoever designed it used them as just
Speaker 4: kind of like uh, a layer at the bottom of
Speaker 4: this one display case. The display case is showing Olmec
Speaker 4: ceramic or Olmec small sculptures, and they've placed the small
Speaker 4: sculptures in a pile of those alumnite cubes illmenite cubes.
Speaker 4: As like the footing, they don't even the display doesn't
Speaker 4: even mention those cubes and where they were from. But
Speaker 4: I knew what they were because I had studied them.
Speaker 4: And I was like, holy shit, is that a bucket
Speaker 4: of these cubes and I and I picked one up
Speaker 4: and I tried to like connect them together. No, they're
Speaker 4: not very magnetic, but they're heavy, so if somebody made
Speaker 4: a helmet of them, that would like hurt your neck.
Speaker 3: Is it a slip to say they're magnetic or has
Speaker 3: somebody tested them? And a certain number of them have
Speaker 3: a magnetic property.
Speaker 4: Good question. I don't think I know the answer to that.
Speaker 4: I think that ilmenite, wherever it's found around the world,
Speaker 4: is a weekly magnetic metal oxide. Okay, the biggest cash
Speaker 4: is in uh Russia, and today we mine ill menite
Speaker 4: to process it into titanium. Now there you go. You
Speaker 4: put your titanium foil hat on for that one. But
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, you know, I like this. I think
Speaker 4: it is an interesting intersection for those who want to
Speaker 4: think outside the box aliens, you know, magnetic flotation theory, whatever.
Speaker 4: But I will say that, you know, I was disappointed.
Speaker 4: I had read of that, and so when I finally
Speaker 4: saw ones and just you know, I could pick two
Speaker 4: up and put them together, I was really hoping they'd
Speaker 4: stick together. But they didn't. So it must be very
Speaker 4: weekly magnetic. But perhaps you know, in an aggregate they
Speaker 4: would be something that individual ones aren't. And whatever the
Speaker 4: hell the OLMEC we're doing with them, they needed a
Speaker 4: lot of them. I mean mean, you know, one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand six tons worth in one pit, so that was
Speaker 4: not a one off thing.
Speaker 3: As a monetary exchange some form of money though, right,
Speaker 3: I mean it wouldn't.
Speaker 4: That's been a theory, though, I don't think that really
Speaker 4: holds water, because if you know, if we look at
Speaker 4: any civilization around the planet that develops the concept of
Speaker 4: a currency, they run with it. It would be weird for
Speaker 4: the Olmec to come up with the concept of currency,
Speaker 4: and then the whole concept just got scrapped by every
Speaker 4: culture that came after them, because there's no currency beyond
Speaker 4: perhaps cacal beans in Mesoamerica. Ever, so, the fact that
Speaker 4: that currency as a concept does not evolve past the
Speaker 4: Olmec makes me reticent to accept that as a as
Speaker 4: what these weird things are. That would also be like,
Speaker 4: I guess that would be just like today if if
Speaker 4: the billionaires on top of the platforms had every scrap
Speaker 4: of money and everybody else had like a cub or two.
Speaker 4: That would be like our billionaire conundrum right now, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Hey, as we close our time together, what's interesting for
Speaker 3: you right now that's being excavated. Is there anything that's
Speaker 3: going on? I mean, I cause I've been to POLANKI
Speaker 3: I always kind of keep an eye on that doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like much going on there. It might be individual
Speaker 3: a little sites. But is there any big excavations going
Speaker 3: on that you're particularly interested in olmec are just in general,
Speaker 3: just in Mesoamerica. Well, I think the hottest project right
Speaker 3: now is Edwin Romayne's work in t Call. He's now
Speaker 3: found this entire new complex of like a taote wacom
Speaker 3: compound right neck right inside the city center, and hundreds
Speaker 3: of years older than we had ever even realized there
Speaker 3: was contact between the Maya and Tootia kan. So his I'm,
Speaker 3: you know, sitting at the edge of my chair waiting
Speaker 3: for his next field report, which should come in July.
Speaker 3: It's like by the necropolis area, like a pyramid or
Speaker 3: a structure.
Speaker 4: Four. Let me see you've been there a couple times,
Speaker 4: h if you were standing on the Mundo Perdido. Okay,
Speaker 4: it is like directly east. You go off the platform
Speaker 4: and go east down into a lower part maybe two
Speaker 4: hundred meters into the jungle, not very far at all.
Speaker 4: I could be overestimating two hundred meters. It's right there,
Speaker 4: so like like you could you could maybe hit it
Speaker 4: with a rock from the top of the Mundo Perdido.
Speaker 3: So was this a light oar discovery or was it
Speaker 3: something that was known that someone decided to dig a.
Speaker 4: Little deeper in. That's a good question because if it's
Speaker 4: as sophisticated as you're saying, is.
Speaker 3: It older than you know the earliest buildings or is
Speaker 3: it who knows where?
Speaker 4: It's like the early stages of the Mundo Perdido old.
Speaker 4: So yes, it is one of the oldest parts of
Speaker 4: the site, significantly older than you know the two the
Speaker 4: five huge pyramids that are so signature, those are centuries
Speaker 4: after this. This is centuries earlier. But I don't know.
Speaker 4: It may well have light arm might have inspired Edwin's choice,
Speaker 4: a kind of a theme for what we've been talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Stall has all of these wonderful pyramids and complexes excavated,
Speaker 4: but there are equally large ones sitting right next to
Speaker 4: them that are covered in the jungle. I mean, just
Speaker 4: within the city center itself, there must be a dozen
Speaker 4: huge complexes. And so did Edwin see something in the
Speaker 4: light ar that made him choose that one? You know,
Speaker 4: slowly but surely archaeologists are going to get to those
Speaker 4: other twelve. And did Edwin just get super lucky and
Speaker 4: pick the one that was Taotuba Khan? Or there's something
Speaker 4: in the light ar that made him think that looks older.
Speaker 4: What specifically, though, edw, what specifically is exciting about what
Speaker 4: he's digging up. Did he find Well, he didn't find
Speaker 4: a codis because we didn't know about that in a
Speaker 4: blink of an eye. But did he find some writing, pottery,
Speaker 4: stella a body. He did find a lot of Teo
Speaker 4: Tibcon pottery. He found a big building in the center
Speaker 4: of it. It's kind of a square area, big building
Speaker 4: in the center of it that was built in tallude tablero.
Speaker 4: Like not just there's a There were already two other
Speaker 4: buildings in Polenk in t Call that had tulude tablero,
Speaker 4: but relatively small. Now he's found a big one that's
Speaker 4: the signature Tayo Tuba Khan art style. The pottery, he's
Speaker 4: found a ton of those tripod vessels. Even the outer
Speaker 4: sections he's saying, look more like the Siawadella section of
Speaker 4: Teotibo Khan. The architecture there is also talud tablero and
Speaker 4: it has the it has the architectural style of a
Speaker 4: more Tao Tuba Khan court.
Speaker 3: And this is what's very interesting, and we don't have
Speaker 3: time to go into this new book by David Stewart,
Speaker 3: The for Heavens. But in his book there's a tremendous
Speaker 3: amount of evidence of collaboration between TiO Tucan and Tikal,
Speaker 3: which is makes you think where the Mayas in Central Mexico. Well,
Speaker 3: obviously they were, weren't they.
Speaker 4: I think there was an interchange and trade network between
Speaker 4: the two for sure. But then Tao Tiba Khan showed
Speaker 4: up in mass I mean, I have not read Dave's
Speaker 4: book all the way through. What's over there on my shelf.
Speaker 3: It's a huge book.
Speaker 4: Hold on there.
Speaker 3: You gotta get the audible version, buddy, because long it's
Speaker 3: a long dissertation.
Speaker 4: Wonderful, right. I don't think he overturned because I think
Speaker 4: he was one of the ones who first found it
Speaker 4: the evidence that a prince from Tao Tula Coon was
Speaker 4: crowned king of t Call. They an actual prince from
Speaker 4: Tao Tubacan. Tao Tulacon got to the point where they
Speaker 4: completely took over the lineage of t Call, which I
Speaker 4: think started the Maya civil Wars. But that's for another
Speaker 4: podcast ed Barnhart. Always a pleasure, give us your contact.
Speaker 3: You're on actively on YouTube under is it ed Barnhart
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 4: It's an archaeologist Ed Barnhart. And then you had archaeo Ed,
Speaker 4: which is your podcast, which is excellent. So make sure
Speaker 4: you that out Where else can we find you? Well,
Speaker 4: you know, my day job is the director of my
Speaker 4: Exploration Center, where we do research and tours throughout the year.
Speaker 4: I've got a new shiny team of young archaeologists leading tours.
Speaker 4: We're more dynamic than we've ever been. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: if people, you know, it's one thing to read about
Speaker 4: these things in books, but if you really want to
Speaker 4: get into it, you got to just go there. That's
Speaker 4: kind of what mech is designed to help people do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you guys, you do you must do at
Speaker 3: least five tours a year around the Americas. But are
Speaker 3: you you crossing the water anymore and going to the
Speaker 3: Middle East or Europe? This year?
Speaker 4: We did one to Anchor last year. Oh right, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're doing so, you know, we're doing South America, Mexico,
Speaker 4: Central America this year. Not too much over on the
Speaker 4: other side. At the moment, I'm trying to convince Luke
Speaker 4: Caverns that he should lead a trip to Greece. I
Speaker 4: don't know why it's a hard sell. He loves that place.
Speaker 4: But I'm working on that. I you know, I.
Speaker 3: I was definitely expecting you to go to Easter Island again,
Speaker 3: but maybe that's just you have so many personal projects.
Speaker 4: I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm I'm
Speaker 4: in contact right now. I'm just hoping I get my
Speaker 4: project back and then I can have you know, I
Speaker 4: can combine those efforts to bring people there while I'm
Speaker 4: setting up to do the project. But yeah, not so far.
Speaker 4: And in fact, you know, this year, I'm just kind
Speaker 4: of enjoying staying home. I've got to I've got to write,
Speaker 4: i got to create. You know, my YouTube channel is
Speaker 4: taking off now because I've finally given it time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, excellent, Hey, well continue success ed and hey, pleasure
Speaker 3: has always been with you.
Speaker 4: Good to be with you too, Cliff. Take care.
Speaker 3: I'm currently have on the drawing board a tour of
Speaker 3: pre classic sites, and Ed had it, I think it
Speaker 3: was this year earlier this year where he actually went
Speaker 3: to half classic half pre classic sites, and I want
Speaker 3: to go for my own exploration, but i'd be fun
Speaker 3: to take a couple, you know, twenty people or more
Speaker 3: with me look for that coming up. Probably we would
Speaker 3: stop and our base would be Mareta, so we could
Speaker 3: see some of the sites there. It'd be a pyramid tour.
Speaker 3: And if you haven't been to Campeche to see ed Zina,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Esna is this beautiful Mayan city. It's
Speaker 3: about ten miles from the city from the city of Campeche.
Speaker 3: Campeche's right on in the water. It's a coastal town,
Speaker 3: just amazing beautiful. Well, so we'd stay there for a
Speaker 3: couple of days and then travel south again to the
Speaker 3: border of Guatemala and Mexico and see some of the
Speaker 3: sites there. And I think it would be too long
Speaker 3: to get into Guatemala, so we could do that. I
Speaker 3: think all in all for ten days we would see
Speaker 3: maybe maybe seven or eight days. We'd see between eleven
Speaker 3: and twelve maybe additional sites that have pyramids. And I
Speaker 3: have a couple of archaeologist friends that would be great
Speaker 3: to travel with. The other thing that we want to
Speaker 3: add is a shaman's ceremony. And if you haven't been
Speaker 3: involved in a shamanistic ceremony prior to entering a site,
Speaker 3: you got you gotta do it, because your eyes are
Speaker 3: opened they shift, they shift your energy so that you're
Speaker 3: able to pick up on these things. And then when
Speaker 3: you do see these temples and these pair is in
Speaker 3: these ruins, you're kind of going, Wow, it's a fantastic opportunity.
Speaker 3: The reason we want to do that is, for the
Speaker 3: most part, the public sites in Mexico like Chichinitsa and
Speaker 3: Ushmo Tuloom, even Coba, you're not allowed to do ceremony.
Speaker 3: They have bad shamanistic ceremony. It's crazy. So we want
Speaker 3: to do that and we will do it with Michael
Speaker 3: Angel and he is a shaman that's in Mareda, so
Speaker 3: we'll do that. So look for that and let me
Speaker 3: know if you're interested in coming along to me an email.
Speaker 4: Sent it to.
Speaker 3: Earth Ancients the number four of the letter you at
Speaker 3: gmail dot com, and I'll put you on a list.
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to do it in the fall.
Speaker 3: If I don't, I'll do it in the spring of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seven. So check that out.
Speaker 4: And that reminds me.
Speaker 3: If you're enjoying Earth Ancients, Destiny and Earth Ancients Special Edition,
Speaker 3: please consider becoming a subscriber For as little as five
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Speaker 4: Podcast.
Speaker 3: We got a lot of thank you gifts in the
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Speaker 4: Okay, that's it for this program.
Speaker 3: I want to tak my guest today, doctor Ed Barnhardt
Speaker 3: discussing the Maya as always, the team of Gail tour,
Speaker 3: Mark Foster and Feya Pavar. You guys all right, take
Speaker 3: care of you well, and we will talk to you
Speaker 3: next time.
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