Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing. They've down in a forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away. Man, nobody see nobody else. You see you
Speaker 2: don't need no man's like you followed him another story and.
Speaker 1: You got back to flect that that's the way.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Don't blackly d on.
Speaker 2: The Panama Man.
Speaker 1: Now you don't no matter man anyway.
Speaker 2: One of the most darkly ironic features of the progressive
Speaker 2: is despite the fact that they claim to value openness
Speaker 2: and diversity, what they actually do is the polar opposite.
Speaker 2: That term global homo is both a gay double on
Speaker 2: tundra and also term for global homogenization. Everything being made
Speaker 2: the saint, the same shops, the same attitudes, the same
Speaker 2: culture the world over, just with minor differences in mass
Speaker 2: produced clothing and skin tone. Not a true diversity, not
Speaker 2: a true interest. And this idea of the death of history,
Speaker 2: the global homogenization of human culture and governance, that everyone
Speaker 2: will move to the same system because that is what's worked.
Speaker 2: We found out how to solve for the equation that
Speaker 2: is politics. It's kind of depressing if you think about it.
Speaker 2: We're all exactly the same, and there is a positive
Speaker 2: element to that sort of claim about human worth and
Speaker 2: fair enough discussion for another day. But on the other end,
Speaker 2: do you want to live in a world where everyone
Speaker 2: is the same? Where everyone is simply a gear and
Speaker 2: a massive machine, completely and totally interchangeable, with nothing about
Speaker 2: them that makes them special or unique or different. This
Speaker 2: is what I enjoy about pulp right, the kind of
Speaker 2: mass market fiction of roughly one hundred years ago, the
Speaker 2: stuff that Indiana Jones was based on the serial lives
Speaker 2: adventure novels. In my own case, I mentioned this later
Speaker 2: in the episode. I learned how to read on the
Speaker 2: old Tintin comics published in France in the early part
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. They were adventure novels, adventure comic books.
Speaker 2: I guess for young boys. They're well done. The art's
Speaker 2: very good, incredibly well researched. He really cared a lot
Speaker 2: about guns and planes and the costumes people were in
Speaker 2: a country sidebar. Get it for your kid. You can
Speaker 2: still find them on Amazon. The point is, what's exciting
Speaker 2: about that, what's exciting about Rudyard Kipling, what's excited about
Speaker 2: ga Hendy?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: It's the difference. It's the idea that there are still
Speaker 2: parts of the world that are undiscovered, there are still
Speaker 2: things that aren't the same. Everything isn't just one giant
Speaker 2: shopping It's a vibrant world of a multitude of different
Speaker 2: cultures and ways of being. And sure, you know, if
Speaker 2: you act herds or you know any of the other authors,
Speaker 2: what they thought about those other people. They might be
Speaker 2: a little disparaging. They might call them savages, right, they
Speaker 2: might use the language that's no longer appropriate. But nonetheless
Speaker 2: there is a recognition of difference, a recognition that all
Speaker 2: cultures are not the same, and this is impacted, to
Speaker 2: be honest, history and archaeology. I mentioned earlier in my
Speaker 2: discussion with memory medieval or the monologue before it, the
Speaker 2: narrative of guilt, right, the idea that because your ancestors
Speaker 2: did something wrong, that well, your dispossession is to be
Speaker 2: deserved to payback. It's historical karma, if you will, And
Speaker 2: certainly the crusades are a part of that. The other
Speaker 2: I guess kind of more prominent, depending on what country
Speaker 2: you find yourself, is that of colonization, that of conquering
Speaker 2: other lands and building civilizations. Like yours, and it's always
Speaker 2: referred to as a uniquely white Western form of evil.
Speaker 2: But the problem is, this is just what people do.
Speaker 2: You or I could argue if colonization is right or
Speaker 2: wrong in any specific instance, but it's sort of like
Speaker 2: arguing that cheating on your wife is bad. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: it is. You shouldn't do it, but people still will
Speaker 2: do it. It's a part of human nature. It's something
Speaker 2: that comes up. It doesn't morally excuse it, per se.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make it good, doesn't make it okay. But
Speaker 2: the idea that that is unique, that certain cultures are
Speaker 2: uniquely guilty for what seems to be a general human activity,
Speaker 2: is faulty. And sure there are cultures where that is
Speaker 2: more common. Look at France or seemingly that the scandal
Speaker 2: is that. Never mind, won't take aim at the French,
Speaker 2: but where you know, things like extramarital and fidelity are
Speaker 2: very normalized, and there are certainly societies as well where
Speaker 2: conqrest and war are much more normalized. I mean, just
Speaker 2: look at Genghis Khan, right, Cortez has nothing on him.
Speaker 2: But nonetheless, this is pulled back into a deliberate attack.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is that many of these people sought
Speaker 2: to combine these two trends. I'm talking about both the
Speaker 2: narrative of guilt and also the idea that everything is
Speaker 2: the same, that we found everything there is, and wherever
Speaker 2: we look, you are uniquely bad. There is no one
Speaker 2: like you, unique in your evil. Yet. One of the
Speaker 2: sort of hopeful things that the Internet did, and that's
Speaker 2: a vanishingly small list, I'll be the first one to admit,
Speaker 2: is that it sort of broke the stranglehold that academia
Speaker 2: had on certain forms of knowledge. I mean. One of
Speaker 2: the first early popular podcasts, although he's sort of beclowned
Speaker 2: himself in recent years, is Dan Carlin, the hardcore History Guy.
Speaker 2: The first podcast I ever listened to when I was
Speaker 2: a teenager, and he did compelling pop history, bringing together
Speaker 2: multiple primary sources. You know a few of the most
Speaker 2: popular books written on a subject in dramatizing them right,
Speaker 2: telling them in a way that was accessible. And sure,
Speaker 2: that's relatively light. But if you look at my guests today,
Speaker 2: my guest from a few days ago, you understand that, well,
Speaker 2: there are real experts out there, There are people who
Speaker 2: deeply know their subject matter, and you don't need to
Speaker 2: be honest, go and get a college degree in it. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: there's things you can't communicate over the internet. You can
Speaker 2: through a classroom, although depending on when you've gone to school,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't have gotten to make that choice anyway. But
Speaker 2: also this has opened the gate for people to support
Speaker 2: themselves without being in veterate shit lips, to be perfectly
Speaker 2: blunted about that your politics are no longer contingent or
Speaker 2: are a contingent factor. And if you get a paycheck,
Speaker 2: you can be in a political or you can be
Speaker 2: a right wing historian. And sure, you may never get
Speaker 2: a job at Indiana State University, you may never get
Speaker 2: a position at Cambridge, but you can still support yourself.
Speaker 2: There is a way to do that work. And the
Speaker 2: interesting thing is that sort of dim, dreary, dismal view
Speaker 2: that everything has been found, that everything is slowly being
Speaker 2: brought into the gray sludge, right, the villain from the
Speaker 2: never ending story of the Darkness, Right, that everything will
Speaker 2: ultimately fall to entropy and become part of this perfectly
Speaker 2: optimized technical managerial system. Well, once you've broken that, and
Speaker 2: just a little bit, once you've pulled back the curtain
Speaker 2: and say no there's still adventure out there, there are
Speaker 2: still things undiscovered, these cultures that we know only a
Speaker 2: little bit about. They're both incredibly human and incredibly alien
Speaker 2: all at once. Well, that old lie that history is over,
Speaker 2: we've done everything, well, it crumbles completely and totally. And
Speaker 2: this very much ties into sort of the negative version
Speaker 2: of the conversation about the Crusaders, and much the same
Speaker 2: way that there's a deliberate narrative that men were never heroic,
Speaker 2: that men never died for things they believed, and only
Speaker 2: for material causes on the confluence the way that the
Speaker 2: enemies of Europe, and when I say that, I don't
Speaker 2: mean like existential or civilization, but just anyone we got
Speaker 2: got in a fight with, are in some way more virtuous,
Speaker 2: more than human. Sort of demi gods is the alternative position.
Speaker 2: And much like the nation of Islam, Well, how can
Speaker 2: these dastardly, cowardly villains have defeated these brave, noble demi gods?
Speaker 2: Well through trickery, through treachery, through guns, Germans and steel,
Speaker 2: right as the line goes. And look, certainly there was
Speaker 2: a technological advantage in certain instances, although not nearly to
Speaker 2: the degree that you would have. Maybe you've been led
Speaker 2: to believe. But look, as I say later in this episode,
Speaker 2: I have the controversial opinion that these people were human
Speaker 2: for good and ill. They may well have done great things,
Speaker 2: but also they went to war, they conquered, they killed,
Speaker 2: and they stole in pretty much the same way that
Speaker 2: everyone else did. Human history is one of conflict. Again,
Speaker 2: it's what we do, and defining a society is absent
Speaker 2: of these sort of human traits is almost bizarre. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like if someone makes a claim that their religious
Speaker 2: group is absent from some sort of sin, right, some
Speaker 2: sort of thing that people do. I don't believe you
Speaker 2: sure greater or lesser rates. Right. I understand some cultures
Speaker 2: are better at some things than others, but that I
Speaker 2: simply do not believe that there is some group of
Speaker 2: people that exists like the Star children. Right, absent from
Speaker 2: the curse simply doesn't add up. And that's another area
Speaker 2: where that sort of bizarre article of faith is falling apart.
Speaker 2: No one believes it anymore, at least no one who cares.
Speaker 2: Because the information was always tightly controlled. It required an
Speaker 2: iron clad grip to maintain the fact that you were
Speaker 2: evil and anyone who ever disagreed with your parents, your
Speaker 2: great grandparents, onto the generations was actually the good guys, right,
Speaker 2: the sort of independent, fundamentalist Baptist view of history. Everyone
Speaker 2: who lost was great and they were us. Everyone who
Speaker 2: won was evil, dastardly and horrible, much like the classics.
Speaker 2: As I've said before, really these people are done. They're cooked.
Speaker 2: As the kids would say. They have institutional backing, sure,
Speaker 2: but they're preaching something that no one cares about. No
Speaker 2: one believes the ostensible populations they're arguing on behalf of
Speaker 2: indigenous or whatever. They don't really care. I mean, just
Speaker 2: look at the flock of people claiming that every new
Speaker 2: infrastructure project encroaches on native lands and so they need
Speaker 2: to be paid money. Right, That's where it comes down to.
Speaker 2: You know, look at the people claiming that certain rocks
Speaker 2: in Australia are sacred and need to be reburied, like
Speaker 2: I don't believe you, you don't care, you drink gasoline.
Speaker 2: And the actual progressive themselves are dying out because again
Speaker 2: you see the same dynamic where if you care about
Speaker 2: history for its own sake, you're not a progressive anymore.
Speaker 2: That series of lies that you were uniquely guilty, that
Speaker 2: historical rivals are uniquely good. That doesn't bear up under examination,
Speaker 2: That doesn't bear up to the truth. It is a lie.
Speaker 2: And if you actually care, that's not where you come down.
Speaker 2: If you're actually interested in discovering the lost pyramids of
Speaker 2: the Amazon Jungle, you're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: kowtow to this sort of retarded state and civic religion.
Speaker 2: They're mutually incompatible goals. It has become like Mouldbugs Cat magazine.
Speaker 2: It is no longer about its initial subject matter. It
Speaker 2: is about the German cat, right, the spirit of the
Speaker 2: German race expressed in a feline form. Or it is
Speaker 2: entirely about progressive politics. It's eaten it right. It's sort
Speaker 2: of like the blob or anything else. Everything must be
Speaker 2: pulled into that homogenizing whirlpool, right, the toilet bowl of modernity.
Speaker 2: We want to be a little less elegant about it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's another advantage of ours. Live in
Speaker 2: a world of adventure. We live in a world from
Speaker 2: a certain perspective of enchantment, a world in which people
Speaker 2: and cultures are different, where the world is not simply
Speaker 2: made up of different countries, that don't know that they're
Speaker 2: American yet, And if we could just bomb them a
Speaker 2: little bit, export some some more hrt in condoms, that
Speaker 2: they would be just like us. No, the world is different,
Speaker 2: The world is unexplored. There are things out there that
Speaker 2: you don't understand, that don't necessarily comport with what you
Speaker 2: were taught in your high school geography class. And sure
Speaker 2: I get it right, there are satellites with cameras on them.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say there's an undiscovered continent, although
Speaker 2: who knows, maybe one day we'll get past the ice
Speaker 2: wall and find the second see beyond it. But nonetheless,
Speaker 2: this idea that we know everything, that we have arrived
Speaker 2: at the end, everything that can be known is is
Speaker 2: completely and totally false, And to be honest, I think
Speaker 2: we're all the better for it. It's a world worth living, right,
Speaker 2: A world where there's nothing else to be done, where
Speaker 2: you've reached the summit and any other change simply makes
Speaker 2: it worse. Well, that's that's a nursing home, right, That's
Speaker 2: a world where any sort of striving, any sort of
Speaker 2: differentiation isn't what can't be done. You've achieved a perfect system,
Speaker 2: and they don't actually think this at least in all situations,
Speaker 2: they have that drive to continue optimizing. But the idea
Speaker 2: that the only thing is sort of modern liberal democracy,
Speaker 2: that we've got it, and the only way we can
Speaker 2: make it better is by making it more modern, more liberal,
Speaker 2: or more democratic, it's like, well, that's It's kind of
Speaker 2: depressing now, isn't it. You know, the idea that the
Speaker 2: great equation, the question has been solved, and I don't.
Speaker 2: Obviously that's not true, but I think it's exciting, right,
Speaker 2: the idea that no, there is still work to be done,
Speaker 2: There are still things to be found out, discovered, Our
Speaker 2: understanding could change, and not just in the way where
Speaker 2: changing understandings means being more gay right, innovating new forms
Speaker 2: of advanced, political, social, and literal homosexuality right, But there's
Speaker 2: actually something there's an adventure.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that that's something that's sorely needed, especially when
Speaker 2: so many aspects of society have been bubble wrapped. Where
Speaker 2: the idea is that there, in order to make a
Speaker 2: game winnable for the vast number of people, you need
Speaker 2: to well decrease the possibility of failure, decrease the option
Speaker 2: to drop out at the bottom, but also the option
Speaker 2: to transcend, the option to become great, the opportunity to
Speaker 2: do something which has never been done before. And so
Speaker 2: I think many of us have grown up in a
Speaker 2: context where you feel as if you've played the entire
Speaker 2: game with the gutter guards up, where realists you never
Speaker 2: really had agency, where it felt as if you were
Speaker 2: simply discovering or exploring I guess, a pre built adventure,
Speaker 2: you know, going down the mind cart, as it were.
Speaker 2: And that's why I think that idea of adventure, that
Speaker 2: idea that there is still something out there that we
Speaker 2: have not achieved, this sort of I guess you could say,
Speaker 2: kind of maximal point of human progress, if that's even
Speaker 2: an idea we believe in, which at least in my case,
Speaker 2: it's really not. It is so intoxicated. And I think
Speaker 2: if we can add an addendum onto that great phrase
Speaker 2: from Dave Green, the one that says, you know, we
Speaker 2: have a monopoly on men who care, I think a
Speaker 2: secondary point as well, we've got a monopoly on adventure.
Speaker 2: Look that things are grant from a certain perspective, right,
Speaker 2: things aren't going well. I've said this a number of times,
Speaker 2: but what's better to either say well, this is as
Speaker 2: good as it's ever going to get. You simply have
Speaker 2: to write it out, get to sixty two so you
Speaker 2: can you know your wife around on a Disney cruise
Speaker 2: once you retire, or to say, well, guess what the
Speaker 2: world is scary, evil is real, so gird up your loins,
Speaker 2: as they would have said back in the day.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's a compelling pitch. I's just sort of
Speaker 2: one that I fell for, if we can use that term.
Speaker 2: But it is exciting. It is a chance to reclaim agency,
Speaker 2: and I don't like that term agency is very business y.
Speaker 2: Really reclaim courage, right to do something, to have a
Speaker 2: chance for greatness and also a chance to fail. I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's a hell a lot better than nothing
Speaker 2: that said. Let me introduce Thomas Wayne Riley, a friend
Speaker 2: of mine, guy I have known for a while, great
Speaker 2: history podcaster. Talk all about Indians, the undiscovered wilds of
Speaker 2: North and South America, and cannibalism. But before I start that,
Speaker 2: I think everyone should head over to my sponsor, Fox
Speaker 2: and Son's Coffee at their coffee this morning. I just
Speaker 2: had a little more of their coffee before I started this.
Speaker 2: As you can probably tell I'm a little hyped out,
Speaker 2: and that's in large part due to whatever the salvadoran.
Speaker 2: I think that's the correct form. That verb verb is
Speaker 2: not the correct part of the speech. Coffee from Alsalador
Speaker 2: is good. You should try it. Alternately, you can throw
Speaker 2: me money directly. Just give me a few bucks on
Speaker 2: any of the platforms you get the episodes early in
Speaker 2: ed free. I appreciate it. Without further ado, Thomas Wayne Riley.
Speaker 2: All Right, Thomas Wayne Riley, welcome back to the Jay
Speaker 2: Burdon Show. How you doing man?
Speaker 1: Great?
Speaker 2: How are you doing doing great? Glad to have you
Speaker 2: back on. I know I say this all the time,
Speaker 2: but I can't believe how long it's been since last
Speaker 2: time you appeared. So I'll give you a chance to
Speaker 2: reintroduce yourself to my audience. Hopefully they haven't forgotten about you.
Speaker 2: But it has been what almost two years now since
Speaker 2: you and I spoke. So, Thomas, well, who are you
Speaker 2: and what do you do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm Thomas Wayne Riley. I live in New Mexico and
Speaker 1: I have a history show called The American Southwest, where
Speaker 1: I talk about everything from the Spanish to the Indians
Speaker 1: to the Civil War, and now I'm doing a huge
Speaker 1: series on the Mexican War. I'm also on American Spirits
Speaker 1: on Monday. For now, Yeah, I'm running for county commissioner.
Speaker 1: So if you live in my district, vote for me,
Speaker 1: which hopefully someone out there is that's.
Speaker 2: About to say, I mean, I hope so too. But
Speaker 2: knowing my demos, this might be some of your worst campaigning,
Speaker 2: at least as far as how long it takes you
Speaker 2: to reach voters. But in all seriousness, right, you do
Speaker 2: a lot of great work on American history and American
Speaker 2: Western history, which I'll be the first to admit I
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about. And when you and I
Speaker 2: were going back and forth talking about what we were
Speaker 2: going to discuss, the general conception of sort of westward expansion, right,
Speaker 2: this kind of cultural idea that it was, you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of criminals, thieves and liars up against peace
Speaker 2: loving you know, hippies with feathers in their hair, just
Speaker 2: stomping them into the dirt. And obviously that's a cultural weapon, right,
Speaker 2: That isn't a neutral view of history. But you particularly
Speaker 2: mentioned the idea of mancorn, which I'll let you explain.
Speaker 2: So what does that term mean Thomas.
Speaker 1: So there's a great archaeologist named Christy Turner who in
Speaker 1: the nineties wrote a book called Mancorn. He borrowed it
Speaker 1: from Nehuattle. So he borrowed the term from Mexico and
Speaker 1: it means cannibalism. These people their main diet was corn,
Speaker 1: beans and squash, corn being the biggest, and so mancorn
Speaker 1: was kind of used to describe the rather prolific examples
Speaker 1: of people being eaten in the American Southwest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's one of those things that I mean,
Speaker 2: of course I had heard stories about that, right, there
Speaker 2: were always stories about that, and even as someone who's
Speaker 2: not a history and you hear them, but it's definitely
Speaker 2: not something that's emphasized at show. We say public school
Speaker 2: American history. Right, it's not really what you get to.
Speaker 2: So let's just dive in, right, how common was this practice?
Speaker 2: So found?
Speaker 1: I tried to find the percentage before we went live.
Speaker 1: I couldn't, so if that's on me, I think it's
Speaker 1: something like eight to twelve percent of all bodies recovered
Speaker 1: from the Four Corners area show signs of cannibalism. It
Speaker 1: is a ridiculously high number because it should be about zero.
Speaker 1: And these were not people who were eaten because somebody
Speaker 1: else was hungry. They were eaten as a message. And
Speaker 1: sometimes they were eaten and then you know, pooped out
Speaker 1: into the hearth the center of their homes, and then
Speaker 1: they would burn the house down. That's how we have
Speaker 1: fossilized copper lights of people that were eaten by other people,
Speaker 1: normally sent by the central government, if you can call
Speaker 1: it that. A Chaco canyon, there was a giant empire
Speaker 1: we called the Anasazi. You can call it ancestral Puebloans.
Speaker 1: That's the correct term. But I don't I find that lacking.
Speaker 1: And so the Anasazi ancient enemy are ones who aren't
Speaker 1: like us in Navajo because they are not related most
Speaker 1: for the most part to the people who built these
Speaker 1: all the ruins that you would go to and visit
Speaker 1: in New Mexico and Arizona, Colorado, Utah. These people were
Speaker 1: ruled by a rotating king almost so the families would
Speaker 1: share in ruling this massive empire of the Anasazi. And
Speaker 1: they got there about six hundred eighty and then they
Speaker 1: left abruptly about twelve eighty eighty. First they went to
Speaker 1: Arizona and then they went down in New Mexico, and
Speaker 1: then they kind of disappeared. They probably probably became the Tarahumara.
Speaker 1: They continued eating people even down south in Mexico, but
Speaker 1: the people here it seemed like they had enough. And
Speaker 1: in the beginning there was a lot of cannibalism, and
Speaker 1: then it kind of died down for hundreds of years
Speaker 1: because I guess think you know, crops were growing, corners,
Speaker 1: growing things weren't that bad. But when it got a
Speaker 1: little rough, maybe somebody didn't pay taxes in corn or
Speaker 1: somebody was practicing the wrong religion, the state most likely
Speaker 1: sent out a little army or a group of thugs
Speaker 1: to go eat every one of them. Not everyone in
Speaker 1: the Southwest, but whoever was committing a wrong. Well, the
Speaker 1: god sent a message no one would ever live in
Speaker 1: those houses again, and it there are a surprising amount
Speaker 1: of sites.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are a couple of things you mentioned
Speaker 2: that this was ritualized. It wasn't done necessarily for sustenance.
Speaker 2: And even if you know you or I might have
Speaker 2: moral qualms with eating someone in a time of famine,
Speaker 2: you can I mean, you gotta do the math. You know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't anyone's first choice, but it does happen, and
Speaker 2: this is something completely different. Right, you mentioned this sort
Speaker 2: of intimidation tactic, and I'll be honest, if someone you
Speaker 2: know ate me, passed me and then burned my house down,
Speaker 2: it does send a message a strong it's you know,
Speaker 2: a little more than a strongly worded letter. I'll put
Speaker 2: it that way. That you were you know, you're not
Speaker 2: in favor with power. So, uh, what is other than
Speaker 2: the obvious? All right? The ritual significance of this? Was
Speaker 2: there a religious element as well? Or was it simply yeah,
Speaker 2: we killed them and ate it like we're scary bad guys.
Speaker 1: I wish I knew if there was a like a
Speaker 1: religious element, if there was, and it wasn't all the time,
Speaker 1: because there were hundreds of years where it was very
Speaker 1: very rare. I mean, there's long stretches in the archaeological
Speaker 1: record where it never happened. So it's kind of assumed
Speaker 1: when stuff started. There used to there were like about
Speaker 1: one hundred years of every ten years there'd be a
Speaker 1: couple of year droft, and that started in about twelve
Speaker 1: hundred and so it got tougher and tougher over that
Speaker 1: those few or that century to rely on the crops
Speaker 1: because the rain didn't come or it came too late.
Speaker 1: In the Southwest, it's very delicate. If you plant your
Speaker 1: corn a week too early, that dies. If you plant
Speaker 1: in a week too late, it doesn't get enough rain.
Speaker 1: So the rain has got to come like clockwork during
Speaker 1: the monsoons, and that wasn't happening during the twelve hundreds,
Speaker 1: and so it looks like maybe some people got upset
Speaker 1: that they had to continue to pay taxes. And this
Speaker 1: is just assuming, but and they didn't want to, so
Speaker 1: they didn't send their bushel of corn to Chocolate Cannon
Speaker 1: and they were taught a lesson. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's ritual, but it definitely was to be a
Speaker 1: sending message.
Speaker 2: So this sort of desecration of corpses is when I say,
Speaker 2: not normal in European wars. I realized there are exceptions,
Speaker 2: but as a general rule, it's not so something done now, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, you can go back to the Romans crucifying people.
Speaker 2: It's not to say that, you know, European wars are
Speaker 2: particularly pleasant, but there's a taboo around it. And I realized,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about the colonization of a con continent.
Speaker 2: That's a whole lot of different people. But was this
Speaker 2: something that, you know, the white Westerners were prepared for,
Speaker 2: or was this something that they uh, to put it mildly,
Speaker 2: reacted negatively to.
Speaker 1: So when the Spanish got to New Mexico, they tried
Speaker 1: to convert as many of the Puebloans and other tribes
Speaker 1: as they could, and they did a good job sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, roughly, but in eighteen hundred, I think it
Speaker 1: was eighteen oh six maybe, or seventeen oh six, don matter,
Speaker 1: seventeen oh six, it was seventeen oh six. The Hopie
Speaker 1: Puebloans they are in Arizona, and they had four maces
Speaker 1: that they lived on. They only live on three now,
Speaker 1: but they had four they lived on, and one of
Speaker 1: them was the one that was closest to the Spaniards.
Speaker 1: Because the Spanners didn't go over to the Hope because
Speaker 1: the Hopi or the Anasazi when they they had whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they left. When they left, they first went to Arizona.
Speaker 1: They left some of them in there in Arizona, that
Speaker 1: would be the Hopie, and the rest of them went
Speaker 1: down to Mexico and the Hope. So they are still
Speaker 1: related to the Anasazi and the Spanish found this out.
Speaker 1: They during the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen eighty, the Puebloans
Speaker 1: kicked out all of the Spanners. They had to go
Speaker 1: all the way back down to El Paso or the
Speaker 1: other one, Juarez, but it used to be called something different.
Speaker 1: And so they all were sitting on the other side
Speaker 1: of the Rio Grand waiting to come back. And when
Speaker 1: they did, they you know, took they reconquered New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of Publoans fled to the Hope maces.
Speaker 1: Now these people historically didn't like each other, but by now,
Speaker 1: after over one hundred years of Spanish rule, they were
Speaker 1: like a lot of people would flee the pueblos and
Speaker 1: go with the Hopie and this one mesa, the furthest
Speaker 1: eastern mesa, was the only mesa that had a Catholic
Speaker 1: church on it, and they had priests and a lot
Speaker 1: of these Hopie were Catholic. Well, the other Hope he
Speaker 1: didn't like that. So one morning the three Masas teamed up,
Speaker 1: went to the fourth mesa and killed everyone on it,
Speaker 1: pushed a bunch of people off the side of the mesa,
Speaker 1: mostly women. Then they walked down the side of the
Speaker 1: mesa went down to where these women fell and ate them.
Speaker 1: And the Spanish found out and they kind of put
Speaker 1: almost like we don't go to hope Masas anymore. That's
Speaker 1: just too much. And the Hopies explain why they did this,
Speaker 1: and it was because that mesa was practicing witchcraft Catholicism,
Speaker 1: and so that was their way of dealing with it,
Speaker 1: slaughtering the entire mesa and eating a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And that when that was found, that was pretty disturbing
Speaker 1: because they were like, why are all these bottoms or
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, why are all these bodies at the bottom
Speaker 1: of his wash at the below this mesa. And when
Speaker 1: they started looking, the bones had evidence of cannibalism, which
Speaker 1: you can see from the cup marks on the bones,
Speaker 1: and a big giveaway is pop polishing. So you just
Speaker 1: they disarticulated every bone. It's gross. They took out I
Speaker 1: mean they literally just tore every bone off and then
Speaker 1: put threw it in a pot to boil the meat.
Speaker 1: And when the meat is boiling, the bone scrapes against
Speaker 1: the side and it polishes the bone. That is one
Speaker 1: major way to know if cannibalism happened, and.
Speaker 2: It's a grim story. Slight aside. If you ever read
Speaker 2: Death Comes for the Archbishop, that's Willa Cather. It's a
Speaker 2: great novel written in the mid twenties, all about an
Speaker 2: archbishop headed out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, right is
Speaker 2: making his way across America. Great book, not at all
Speaker 2: related to cannibalism, just an aside if you're interested in
Speaker 2: that era of history. It takes place later obviously, but
Speaker 2: worth your time.
Speaker 1: I've quoted from that, although I have not read it.
Speaker 2: It's good. It's it's not even that long. And one
Speaker 2: of the cool things if you're the kind of person
Speaker 2: that likes collecting books, is that really nice hardcover first
Speaker 2: editions are really cheap for that book. So if you
Speaker 2: go to like Books a Million, or you know any
Speaker 2: of like a books the online sellers, oftentimes if you
Speaker 2: buy a used copy, it's a first edition hardcover for
Speaker 2: like six bucks, so it's almost worth it for that.
Speaker 2: It's also a good novel, again not related past the
Speaker 2: broad connection of a Catholic bishop going to New Mexico.
Speaker 2: But one of the I guess kind of dramatic, dramatic
Speaker 2: things about that story, right is the explicitly religious element right,
Speaker 2: that there was an antipathy on that kind of like
Speaker 2: faith level. And in pop culture when we talk about
Speaker 2: kind of indigenous American religion, it's basically like a synthesis
Speaker 2: of fern Gully and Avatar. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: this like very vague concept of you know, animism or
Speaker 2: this kind of world spirit, the kind of things you
Speaker 2: can imagine being turned into like a like a felt
Speaker 2: painting of you know, a guy with a headdress and
Speaker 2: a wolf in the back. So again I realized we're
Speaker 2: talking about a very disparate group of people. But what
Speaker 2: were what was the religion of the Hope, right? What
Speaker 2: was the religion that they practiced?
Speaker 1: So they practiced kind of an animistic I mean, the
Speaker 1: spirits are everywhere. They had a particular God. No, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say God in a particular spirit. That is going
Speaker 1: to escape me. So that's frustrating. But he basically covered
Speaker 1: himself with the blood of animals or enemies, and he
Speaker 1: would then sit by a fire and bake his head,
Speaker 1: and so his head just perpetually gets bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger. So if you've ever seen a pictograph or
Speaker 1: a petroglyph of like a round circle with just two
Speaker 1: holes and maybe a mouth. That is normally it was
Speaker 1: right there. I forgot it again, but that's normally this guy.
Speaker 1: And so I would imagine, because we can see the
Speaker 1: petroglyphs that the Onasazi made and the hope you are
Speaker 1: related to the Onasazi, that they probably practice something very similar.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of a lot of snakes in petroglyphs.
Speaker 1: The Zuni also have a snake ritual where they would
Speaker 1: gather up all the snakes, and I don't remember if
Speaker 1: it's the same one, but they also had to take
Speaker 1: a scalp and stick and roll it up the hill,
Speaker 1: and the kids normally did that, and even into the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties there were still scalps in jars at Zuni.
Speaker 1: But so the Hopie, I mean, it's hard to tell
Speaker 1: because we didn't leave any written record, but their religion
Speaker 1: most certainly came from the south, or it came from
Speaker 1: the southwest and then went down south, influenced the southerners
Speaker 1: there as in what we would call like the Mexican Indians,
Speaker 1: and then it came back up That's probably actually what happened.
Speaker 1: But so they were very influenced with South meso American
Speaker 1: religions and their religions were focused on obviously water, bringing water,
Speaker 1: because water is all important in the Southwest. Without it
Speaker 1: can't grow, you can't live, and so it was water.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen this is kind of a
Speaker 1: quick aside here, but you ever seen the picture, sorry,
Speaker 1: petroglyphs of like the spirit looking guys where the their
Speaker 1: bottoms like taper off and they're always like maybe they're
Speaker 1: holding snakes. That is to signify that they have power
Speaker 1: over life. If they're holding snakes. Sometimes it's cornstalks that
Speaker 1: they are. But it's not sure why they're painted like
Speaker 1: that or chipped into the wall like that with the
Speaker 1: with the bottoms kind of looking all spooky, ghostly. But
Speaker 1: I really like I read that maybe it is if
Speaker 1: you've ever been to the desert and you can see
Speaker 1: a long distance and there's like maybe a storm and
Speaker 1: the rain is falling, and you can see the columns
Speaker 1: of rain. Sometimes if it's really hot, the rain never
Speaker 1: even touches the ground. It's called virga. And so I
Speaker 1: like to think that those like spooky spirit guys are
Speaker 1: obviously they're they're holding life in their hands with the
Speaker 1: snakes or the corn, and it's water coming down, and
Speaker 1: so we're not too sure. But the Weblowins may or
Speaker 1: may not still practice some form of their older religion,
Speaker 1: but they keep that very close to the vest. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't let foreigners come, outsiders come. So that is
Speaker 1: you can get books about it. But it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's they sit in a room and they hope that
Speaker 1: the rain comes.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned the practice of scalping, which is rendered
Speaker 2: in loving detail in both one of my favorite books,
Speaker 2: Blood Meridian, and then another book which I think is
Speaker 2: one of my favorite books, although I would never really
Speaker 2: recommend it, Scalp Dance right, which I gave to the tenant,
Speaker 2: the guy who rents the other half of my house,
Speaker 2: and I think his exact comments were, forgive me, Jesus
Speaker 2: christ Man, why would you give this to me without
Speaker 2: a warning. It is a bunch of primary sources collected
Speaker 2: into one talking about the Plains War. It's a great book.
Speaker 2: Highly recommend it, but let's talk about that, because I
Speaker 2: think it's something that is other than a few kind
Speaker 2: of cultural touchstones like those that I've mentioned, not particularly
Speaker 2: well understood. I mean, okay, the mechanics of it are
Speaker 2: relatively simple, right, you know, there's once you've had it described,
Speaker 2: you pretty mu you get it. But can you explain
Speaker 2: this practice? Right? How widely spread is it? Did it
Speaker 2: serve some kind of social significance? Was there a kind
Speaker 2: of ritualistic or trophy element to it? And uh where
Speaker 2: do we see it? Right? Particularly I guess as you'd imagine,
Speaker 2: right in interactions with Westerns, right, our people right Obviously
Speaker 2: again I feel I'm saying this. No one wants to
Speaker 2: get scalp, that's an obvious one. But uh yeah, so
Speaker 2: how common practice? How common a practice was this?
Speaker 1: Well, if you ask the Indians, they didn't do it.
Speaker 1: It was introduced by the white man, and that is
Speaker 1: just patently false. Scalping was from the northeast all the
Speaker 1: way to California, particularly the Apache, although they will deny it,
Speaker 1: but there's there's countless firsthand sources of the Apache scalping
Speaker 1: Westerners and other Indians and the Zuni had the scalp
Speaker 1: dance I think, or the snake I don't remember, stink
Speaker 1: ceremony or the scalp ceremony. And they kept them in jars.
Speaker 1: So and who knows how long they've been doing that.
Speaker 1: But the Apache were they would scalp, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: keep it. So they would scalp and maybe carried around
Speaker 1: for a day or two, put it on their horse,
Speaker 1: but it was bad luck to keep it for too
Speaker 1: long as a trophy forever. It's just kind of a
Speaker 1: look what I just got kind of thing. Don't mess
Speaker 1: with me. They would tie it to their the mains
Speaker 1: of their horses, but they wouldn't keep them. They would
Speaker 1: just toss them out because the Zuni, I'm sorry, the
Speaker 1: Apache believe like however you die is how you wander
Speaker 1: the afterlife forever. So it's kind of like an fu
Speaker 1: you're going to be scalpless for eternity. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if the Pueblowins did it really actually I should know that.
Speaker 1: But of course the Plains Indian is the commanche. The
Speaker 1: Apache and the Apache were from Texas to i mean
Speaker 1: the Colorado River bordering California and Colorado in Utah, so
Speaker 1: they had and obviously way down in Mexico too, So
Speaker 1: they had this vast empire that they took from the
Speaker 1: Anasazi and then the commands she took it from them.
Speaker 1: But scalping was something that I think the white man
Speaker 1: witnessed and it was shocking, and so they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is what we're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: to our enemies because they do that to us. It's
Speaker 1: about I need to get my hands on this book. That.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I highly recommend it. Weirdly enough, I think I
Speaker 2: got recommended it indirectly, of course, by Dan Carlin like
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago, which is funny because he probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: have mentioned it now, you know, given how that is
Speaker 2: a shaken out. But you know, I'll give him credit.
Speaker 2: There was a point in time where he was unbothered
Speaker 2: by a terminal case of PDS. But point is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a fascinating book and it primarily concerns. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a narrow of eysed collection of first hand accounts.
Speaker 2: So you know, you have a lot of uh cavalry scouts,
Speaker 2: you know, getting separated, and then you know three guys
Speaker 2: vainly trying to make it back to camp and then
Speaker 2: you know, getting butchered in view of their friends. It's
Speaker 2: it's grim. Believe me. My buddy's reaction is uh, I
Speaker 2: would say typical for most people reading that. Probably that
Speaker 2: should be your reaction. It is, you know, extraordinarily grim.
Speaker 2: But if you've read Blood Meridian, a lot of people
Speaker 2: have a lot of those stories and primary sources are referenced.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily know if it was direct, but they're
Speaker 2: pulling from the same material, right, So if you're interested
Speaker 2: in the actual history behind it, I recommend it. Uh
Speaker 2: one of the And it's funny you you bring up
Speaker 2: the Spanish because one of the kind of constant canards
Speaker 2: is oh, well, of course the Europeans won. They had guns,
Speaker 2: they had all this technology, and so it wasn't even
Speaker 2: a fair fight, right, it was just endlessly kind of
Speaker 2: punching down. And look, certainly there is a technological difference.
Speaker 2: But what I thought was interesting I did a little
Speaker 2: bit of research. And this is not your area of expertise.
Speaker 2: You don't feel like you have to, like, you know,
Speaker 2: have a bunch prepared on this, but is in the
Speaker 2: Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish conquest of Mexico, I radically
Speaker 2: overestimated how many firearms were present. It effectively was swords
Speaker 2: and shields, which you know, you do the math on
Speaker 2: when it happened. You're like, okay, that makes sense, But again,
Speaker 2: not the image portrayed. So in these battles, right, these
Speaker 2: kind of conflicts, what was typical, right was it? You know,
Speaker 2: kind of an immense technological advantage to what degree? And
Speaker 2: you know, when these conflicts are happening, like how do
Speaker 2: these people fight? Right? How did this shake out? And
Speaker 2: again we're talking about a lot of people over a
Speaker 2: lot of time. You know, I realized we're talking even
Speaker 2: just in the Southwest about you know, half a dozen
Speaker 2: different cultures and ethnic groups. But what did that shake out?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Right, what was the disparity? How did these two groups
Speaker 2: you know, actually fight it out?
Speaker 1: So the Spanish had the atomic bomb of the horse,
Speaker 1: and there was just very little an armored man can do,
Speaker 1: or very little a native could do against an armored
Speaker 1: man on a horse with a lance, because you don't
Speaker 1: they didn't shoot from the horse. They would take lances
Speaker 1: and you know, pike you or slash you. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times when the Spanish had to put down
Speaker 1: a rebellion or had to go fight some Puebloans, the
Speaker 1: pub Blowans would leave their pueblo and they always had
Speaker 1: a secondary pueblow or a secondary area where they had
Speaker 1: stored river rocks. Essentially or some arrows, and they would
Speaker 1: run up to this high spot and just rain down
Speaker 1: rocks and arrows and push over boulders on the Spanish
Speaker 1: who had to come climb up and go get them.
Speaker 1: And so that happened pretty much almost every time, and
Speaker 1: when the Spanish finally would get to the top, they
Speaker 1: almost always won and they punished those who were pushing
Speaker 1: boulders down on them. The puebloins themselves, they got attacked
Speaker 1: a lot by the Apache, and the Apache would sneak
Speaker 1: in and they would pretty much just bash them or
Speaker 1: ax them, normally in Lack in the night or when
Speaker 1: they were sleeping. They were just coming to the pueblo
Speaker 1: and just carnage. A lot of times they would gather
Speaker 1: people up into the kivas, which was like a bedroom
Speaker 1: or I guess like a ceremonial center, and they would
Speaker 1: just light it on fire and just burn everyone. And
Speaker 1: that happened. That actually happened like the moment the Apache
Speaker 1: got here in the late thirteen hundreds, So that was
Speaker 1: one of the firs that did is gather up everyone
Speaker 1: who was fighting them, put them in a building and
Speaker 1: light the building on fire. That happened. So the Puebloans
Speaker 1: also did that. The Anasazians did that up in Mesa Verde.
Speaker 1: You know the very famous cliff dwelling in southern Colorado
Speaker 1: that was built for defensive purposes. So that's the only
Speaker 1: I mean, and those are all over the Southwest, and
Speaker 1: they were mostly built after things started to deteriorate a
Speaker 1: little bit. Not may Severia necessarily, but it did expand
Speaker 1: a lot. And I mean they would build there'd be
Speaker 1: one pathway up to this sandstone cave, and they would
Speaker 1: put walls and they were always there, and they would
Speaker 1: have holes to shoot arrows from or throw rocks from,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of the fights here were I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, there are some petroglyphs of two
Speaker 1: sides like throwing stuff at each other, like spears at
Speaker 1: each other, and we know that they had shields because
Speaker 1: they're depicted everywhere. So I imagine a lot of the warring
Speaker 1: before Monit, maybe before the Spanish got here, was kind
Speaker 1: of lining up throwing spears. I mean, we've seen the
Speaker 1: videos of this, you know, and like pop on New Guinea,
Speaker 1: they kind of just throw the stuff at each other
Speaker 1: until someone gets hurting and they run away and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's go get them now, or maybe all right, we
Speaker 1: won and so, but a lot of the warring and
Speaker 1: the fighting I think was just sneaky sneaking into the
Speaker 1: pueblo at night and killing everyone. A lot of times
Speaker 1: they could cover, they could plug the whole of the kiva,
Speaker 1: and so they got a fire in there, everyone's sleeping,
Speaker 1: they plug it, then they don't wake up. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a couple instances of that in the archaeological record,
Speaker 1: and so I don't think it was like full scale
Speaker 1: fighting until the Spanish got there, and so they had
Speaker 1: to they had to get together with other pueblos, go
Speaker 1: to a high point and defend as long as they could,
Speaker 1: which sometimes it was a couple of days, sometimes not
Speaker 1: very long.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting thing that because it's sort of this
Speaker 2: like mix of Stone Age and medieval warfare, right like,
Speaker 2: on one hand, the tools are quite primitive, but also
Speaker 2: we've sort of just re engineered sieges, you know, from
Speaker 2: kind of first principles. As the joke runs, it's an
Speaker 2: interesting thing. And you know, you mention the the petroglyphs
Speaker 2: and the absence of a written language, so I imagine you
Speaker 2: are sort of forced to reconstruct things from images. Right,
Speaker 2: There isn't necessarily a text you can point to. So
Speaker 2: what is the history of studying these people look like?
Speaker 2: Because seemingly if you're working off of a sort of
Speaker 2: a number of petroglyphs, right, that doesn't leave you with
Speaker 2: a ton of information, right, So how has this like
Speaker 2: study progressed? Right? How have people been able to dig
Speaker 2: into this? Are they leaning on accounts from this Spanish?
Speaker 2: I'm just curious. So nobody cared until about the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Spanish didn't care. There were there's a very famous exploration
Speaker 2: by the Spanish to Franciscan Friars, Dominghes and Escalante. They
Speaker 2: didn't even right in their journals except one time about
Speaker 2: the many ruins they saw.
Speaker 1: They just didn't care. I think they camped in one
Speaker 1: as the only time that they even mentioned them. Nobody
Speaker 1: cared until about the eighteen eighties. The first real American
Speaker 1: was a guy named weather Hill. Weather Hill Mesa is
Speaker 1: named after him at Mesa Verde. So, of course petroglyph's help,
Speaker 1: But it's the it's the desert, so anything buried in
Speaker 1: the desert it's mummified. It's like perfectly preserved. We have
Speaker 1: found cloaks. I say, well, I'm not an archaeologist, I
Speaker 1: just got my degree in it. But archaeologists have found
Speaker 1: cloaks with turkey feathers, and the turkey feathers are still
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. It's eight hundred years old. Just because it
Speaker 1: was sitting in a cave. They found mummies, mumm of
Speaker 1: five people, wrapped them up and then put them in
Speaker 1: the cave to you know, I guess stay there forever.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they pretty much did. So. A lot of
Speaker 1: it that we know of about the people that were
Speaker 1: here is from archaeology, digging into the the pits, digging
Speaker 1: into their trash, digging into the actual ruins, deconstructing the ruins,
Speaker 1: and also the Puiblowins have oral history, so it's not written,
Speaker 1: but it's oral. One of my favorite archaeologists said, I
Speaker 1: think it was actually Christy Turner, the Mancin guy. He said,
Speaker 1: oral history isn't worth the paper it's written on, which
Speaker 1: is funny because it's not written down, but there is.
Speaker 1: You can't ignore it all. There is definitely some kernels
Speaker 1: of truth and some knowledge to be gained and gleaned
Speaker 1: from oral history, but a lot of it's oral history.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is physical stuff we've found in
Speaker 1: the ground and we've recreated, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: is looking at nearby people like the Mississippians and the Mexicans,
Speaker 1: the various Mexicans, the toll Techs, the Zappo Tech, the Maya,
Speaker 1: the Inca Lator which not Inca, sorry, the Aztec and
Speaker 1: the az Tech. This is this is I am going
Speaker 1: to say. It is not in anywhere any record, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of starting to be thought of.
Speaker 2: Maybe.
Speaker 1: But when the Anasazi fled, they went to Arizona, southern Arizona,
Speaker 1: southern New Mexico, and then they crossed the Rio grand
Speaker 1: and went into Mexico at a place called Casas Grandes
Speaker 1: or Peccime, and then something happened. The whole place burned down,
Speaker 1: and nobody ever for a long time, nobody went back
Speaker 1: and lived there. So the people that lived there definitely
Speaker 1: became the Tara Humara, you know, the amazing runners that
Speaker 1: can run for a week in high altitude barefoot, and
Speaker 1: some of them probably went down south to the Valley
Speaker 1: of Mexico and started a new civilization there, the Aztec.
Speaker 1: Now that is I could be wrong, but I believe
Speaker 1: that they spoke a similar language Udo Aztec, and and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of similarities, including the man corn. They
Speaker 1: found a tech poddle is a heart carving knife, and
Speaker 1: they found one up here, and that was the Aztec ceremonial.
Speaker 1: Put you on top of the pyramid, carve your heart out,
Speaker 1: cut your head off, throw you down, and then add
Speaker 1: the head to the pyramid of heads. That we've gotten
Speaker 1: the center of town, which was denied that Corte has
Speaker 1: made that up. But now they found in Mexico City
Speaker 1: doing some like construction on a subway, they found the
Speaker 1: side of the of the temple head pyramid temple thing,
Speaker 1: and in Chaco Canyon it was assumed they were just
Speaker 1: peblo like style. Enormous, I mean it was the large
Speaker 1: Peblo Benito was the largest structure in the America's until
Speaker 1: like the eighteen hundreds. It is enormous. But they said
Speaker 1: that is unrelated because there's no pyramids. Well now we
Speaker 1: found pyramids. Archaeologists have found pyramids in Choco Canyon, two
Speaker 1: of them at least, and they're finding more at various
Speaker 1: places in the desert around the four corners. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of getting tough to say. Actually, I think it's
Speaker 1: impossible to use the Tortilla Curtain, which is the US
Speaker 1: Mexico border, and say that they had the same border.
Speaker 1: I think that the Mississippians and the Puebloans and the
Speaker 1: people down south in Mexico were all in communication, probably
Speaker 1: all modeled after the same government, probably had very very
Speaker 1: similar religions, like the horned serpent, serpent ketzel coadal. They
Speaker 1: have found there's a Ketsa Couadal carved into sandstone half
Speaker 1: an hour from my house, and it was very cool
Speaker 1: to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's an interesting, interesting thing because absent the
Speaker 2: kind of you mentioned, the torque occurred in right, absent
Speaker 2: that idea that one aweight, it's made up. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: it's true. Never mind, it's only those guys absent that
Speaker 2: kind of social pressure to come to the conclusion. You
Speaker 2: know that you mentioned that there's this sort of eternal
Speaker 2: US Mexico border. It makes logical sense, right, seemingly you
Speaker 2: know that that culture would sort of radiate else outward,
Speaker 2: and we see that. You know, other places in the world, right,
Speaker 2: you have dominant cultures, and okay, I realize Chinese and
Speaker 2: Korean culture aren't the same, but they're heavily influenced, right,
Speaker 2: you can see things that carry over one to another.
Speaker 2: I was going to apologize to my Korean viewers, but
Speaker 2: I don't think I have any So if that does
Speaker 2: offend you, okay, deal with it. But in all seriousness, right,
Speaker 2: that is it. It's a logical examination of it. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that I've become aware of living
Speaker 2: in the American South is that often times it becomes
Speaker 2: very difficult to have an honest conversation about history. Anyone
Speaker 2: who's been to Monticello can tell you this is the
Speaker 2: fact the political consideration sort of overwhelmed the actual scholarship. Right,
Speaker 2: It isn't a real discussion anymore. And so I'm curious,
Speaker 2: as someone who's passionate about this topic, as someone who
Speaker 2: was interested in it, have you noticed something similar? Have
Speaker 2: you noticed that there is a desire to sweep certain
Speaker 2: things under the rug, or to emphasize or deemphasize certain things,
Speaker 2: to sort of, you know, promote a narrative. And if so,
Speaker 2: what is if?
Speaker 1: What is it? It's everything everything. Christy Turner, who wrote Mancorn,
Speaker 1: he was almost kicked out of academia in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight because of it. I mean, it was just wildly
Speaker 1: outland as he made it all up. Well, fast forward
Speaker 1: thirty years and it's now just no, it's just his fact.
Speaker 1: What he wrote is true, and maybe he got some
Speaker 1: stuff wrong. He says, the toll text of Mexico came
Speaker 1: up and influenced the Southwest. It doesn't matter who it was.
Speaker 1: It was just somebody from the south came up and
Speaker 1: built these civilizations. That used to be a no go.
Speaker 1: The fact that another civilization helped these people build this,
Speaker 1: because that takes away from the Pueblowen's history of doing
Speaker 1: it themselves. I don't know how we're all influenced by
Speaker 1: another culture somehow, And so even that, the fact that
Speaker 1: someone would suggest another culture came up and either ruled
Speaker 1: them or helped them build it or co ruled with it.
Speaker 1: That used to be verbotan the Mancorn used to be
Speaker 1: talking about. Nowadays it's talking about their religious practices at all.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be talking about that because it's not our religion.
Speaker 1: I see that all the time. I used to go
Speaker 1: to conferences. There's a major one in Santa Fe, and
Speaker 1: I used to go The hell Hold talks every Monday,
Speaker 1: and I would go to see my favorite archaeologists. But
Speaker 1: after about a year and a half of doing that,
Speaker 1: I kind of there's new stuff all the time, and
Speaker 1: just kind of look it up now. But of course
Speaker 1: every time before every meeting you had to have a
Speaker 1: land acknowledgment and then an apology and this isn't our culture,
Speaker 1: but you know, we're just trying to share it with them.
Speaker 1: It's also silly the violence that used to be. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, the Engines were just peace loving people, you know,
Speaker 1: kumba Ya sitting r on fire, mining their own business.
Speaker 1: Now it was complete and constant warfare. If not with
Speaker 1: your neighbor, then with the other tribe. If not with that,
Speaker 1: then another nation that's maybe one hundred miles away. You
Speaker 1: would rate them every now and then. And so even
Speaker 1: the violence is now a known fact. People don't like
Speaker 1: to admit it. But just about everything that is exciting
Speaker 1: and fun and new is immediately now it's wrong. There's
Speaker 1: another big one. The Clovist people, the first people in
Speaker 1: the Americas. They came over from the West when Peninsula
Speaker 1: or the whatever, well, I don't even know the thing
Speaker 1: in the last what was it, the land bridge yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Landbridge. I just forgot was called because I don't
Speaker 1: I don't quite. I mean, I know for a fact
Speaker 1: some people crossed over the landbridge. The Apaches and Navajo's
Speaker 1: ancestors were one of the last ones to get to
Speaker 1: the New World before it melted, so they're probably the
Speaker 1: newest people here and they it took over pretty well
Speaker 1: as soon as they did. But that used to be.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: They came over the land bridge the bearing straight no
Speaker 1: but deadtminter. They came over the landbridge and they filled
Speaker 1: in the Americas. Well, that is even being completely looked
Speaker 1: at again now because there's very good evidence that they
Speaker 1: also came from Europe down into the Americas that way,
Speaker 1: And there's also very strong evidence that they would build
Speaker 1: little boats kind of like a turtle shell and have
Speaker 1: just a little little hood on it, and they would
Speaker 1: cast off and then go for a little bit and
Speaker 1: they needed to eat or to drink water or something
Speaker 1: when they ran out of supplies, and they would just
Speaker 1: paddle back to shore, and they just hopped the entire
Speaker 1: Pacific and probably the Atlantic coast like that. So this
Speaker 1: would have been two separate people's possibly because it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: So there's multipleys. I mean, there are sites in South
Speaker 1: America that are almost as old as the oldest sites
Speaker 1: in North America. So to me, it's they got on
Speaker 1: a boat and they just kept going all the way
Speaker 1: until they got to Icy Mountains again after going the
Speaker 1: entire coast down and get into like Peru over there,
Speaker 1: And so even how people got here is being reimagined,
Speaker 1: and for a long time to even study that was
Speaker 1: a no now and now the big debate now is
Speaker 1: I guess if you talk to some march I'll just
Speaker 1: say it's not a debate. We've already decided that this
Speaker 1: is true. But there are still books being published saying no,
Speaker 1: it's not all boring you know stuff, but that the
Speaker 1: Clovis people were not they were here. There were people
Speaker 1: here before them, which is very interesting because there are
Speaker 1: extremely old sites in the US and in South America,
Speaker 1: which is just strange. But say suggesting that they've been
Speaker 1: here for a lot longer than the Clovis, which is
Speaker 1: about fifteen thousand, so they probably probably have been here
Speaker 1: for over twenty thousand. And they just uncovered footprints at
Speaker 1: White Sands National Park down in southern New Mexico, in
Speaker 1: the in the big valley there, I forget to the
Speaker 1: Rosa basin and underneath this footprint. So it was real
Speaker 1: wet and muddy back then because all the glaciers were melting,
Speaker 1: So just the whole continent was wet. Hundreds of lakes
Speaker 1: that are no longer here, like the Bonneville and all
Speaker 1: of If you've ever been to California, you've driven from
Speaker 1: eastern California to the coast, you're just constantly going in
Speaker 1: basin and range. Well, every one of those basins were
Speaker 1: lakes at one point. There's millions or billions of birds, mammoths, groundsloths,
Speaker 1: just all the really cool creatures that we should bring
Speaker 1: back probably, And so White Sands was like that. It
Speaker 1: was just a real marshy area. And these people walking
Speaker 1: they're following a giant groundsloth because when they stepped on it,
Speaker 1: it hardened and then stuff sentiment went on top of it,
Speaker 1: and I guess it was softer. And so now we're
Speaker 1: just finding footprints that are like twenty thousand years old,
Speaker 1: and one of them we found that out I keep
Speaker 1: saying we, but archaeologists discovered that because under one of
Speaker 1: the footprints was a seed and so you can't measure
Speaker 1: the age of a footprint, but you can look at
Speaker 1: when that seed, how old that seed is, and they've
Speaker 1: just discovered it's like twenty thousand years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting thing. There a couple things there,
Speaker 2: which is one I hold to the very controversial opinion
Speaker 2: that people other than Europeans are in fact people right
Speaker 2: for good or for ill. And you know, you sort
Speaker 2: of see this idea of the noble sat right, the
Speaker 2: idea that man outside of society quote unquote is living
Speaker 2: in this sort of natural paradise. And I have major
Speaker 2: objections with both half of that, right, the idea of
Speaker 2: a man outside of society. It's like, we'll find me one, right, Like, okay,
Speaker 2: sure it may not have been as developed and hierarchical
Speaker 2: as you know, you'rope er China at you know, a
Speaker 2: contemporary time, but there was a civilization there. There was structure,
Speaker 2: there was order to it. But also people do bad things,
Speaker 2: you know, they go to war with each other. It's
Speaker 2: sort of you know, part of the deal. And you
Speaker 2: see that of course, you know everywhere there is human
Speaker 2: civilization or humans at all. I didn't know actually about
Speaker 2: that that twenty thousand year old set of footprints. But
Speaker 2: having seen things like it, it is sort of eerie,
Speaker 2: right to literally see the footprints of someone twenty thousand
Speaker 2: years dead, you know it sort of SAIDs a shiver
Speaker 2: down your spine. I'd. One of the things that I
Speaker 2: notice is not at all an archaeology, just as someone
Speaker 2: interested in this, has been the proliferation of light ar technology, right,
Speaker 2: this kind of satellite imaging which has enabled us to find,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of previously undiscovered sites. So again,
Speaker 2: I didn't ask you to prepare for this. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know anything about this. I'm just interested
Speaker 2: in it, Thomas. But have we seen any major developments
Speaker 2: from that, right, the ability to find previously hidden sites?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? So the famous ones, well, I think the two
Speaker 1: pyramids that they found in Chocolate Canyon were found by
Speaker 1: lad Or if I am correct, I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a lie to our expert. But I
Speaker 1: also really enjoy looking at the images and kind of
Speaker 1: reading what people are discovering. So the big ones are
Speaker 1: to go to the jungles of Central and now South
Speaker 1: America and kind of poining the laser down and seeing
Speaker 1: if those are hills or if those are man made structures,
Speaker 1: and almost always it's a man made structure, and there
Speaker 1: are multiple ones around it. I think I did my
Speaker 1: archaeological dig in Belize back in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun. I got malaria. Other
Speaker 1: than that, it was a lot of fun. And it's
Speaker 1: very flat, like surprisingly flat, and it's all limestone, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times that limestones will cave in. And
Speaker 1: then you've got a sinote like a circle, really cool,
Speaker 1: very deep pond without a bank. It's just like you're
Speaker 1: just looking down into the depths of the water. But
Speaker 1: it's very flat, and maybe it's rolling sometimes. So if
Speaker 1: there's like a hill in front of you, that's where
Speaker 1: archaeologists went there. I got to take a shovel and
Speaker 1: you just start digging until you hit rock and then
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. That's how it used to be. Dumb.
Speaker 1: And now you can focus these lasers. I guess they're
Speaker 1: in space. I actually don't even know. I guess you
Speaker 1: can put them on actually you know, you can put
Speaker 1: them on drones. So you got these lasers and you
Speaker 1: just shoot them down and just just every day they're
Speaker 1: finding more and more structures, more and more cities that
Speaker 1: are lost in the was On. That was a big
Speaker 1: news a couple of years ago, when they just were like, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's check and see if there's anything over here
Speaker 1: in the Amazon, and of course there were like thousands
Speaker 1: of structures. So I think they're going to send out
Speaker 1: archaeologists to go hopefully look at that. And now they're
Speaker 1: using it to great effect. In the East, they're not jungles,
Speaker 1: but you live in the East. I grew up in
Speaker 1: northern Georgia. It's almost like a jungle sometimes. And so
Speaker 1: through these in these forested areas in the East now
Speaker 1: and even in the south they are like the south
Speaker 1: and southeast and Louisiana area, and they're pointing these lasers
Speaker 1: down over there and finding there are way more mounds
Speaker 1: than we have mapped right now, walls, effigy mounds like
Speaker 1: snakes or birds and stone and then they would cover
Speaker 1: it up. Well maybe they didn't, but over time it
Speaker 1: got covered up and now it's just a mound, a hill,
Speaker 1: a little thing in the which you step on and over,
Speaker 1: and now we're finding out, oh that's a that's a bird.
Speaker 1: But they laid stones on the ground to look like
Speaker 1: or a snake, or here's a wall that we didn't
Speaker 1: know or are we just assuming it was natural or
Speaker 1: who knew it was even there? And so that's a
Speaker 1: I think linear is extremely fascinating. I would love to
Speaker 1: get my hands on some and just go out here.
Speaker 1: There's a peblo, there's an eight hundred year old pueblo
Speaker 1: at the base of my mountain. I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: no water. I don't know what they were doing, but so,
Speaker 1: I mean there's got to be stuff up here too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the stuff in the jungle is honestly really fascinating
Speaker 2: to me. There's I can't remember the exact title. It's
Speaker 2: an early seventies movie, Werner Hertzog. I think it's something
Speaker 2: the Wrath of God.
Speaker 1: Right point was that crazy guy with the long hairs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've seen images from it, and it's sort of chronicling.
Speaker 2: Of course, this doomed Spanish expedition through the jungle weird conceptual.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone, but the visuals are striking.
Speaker 2: But point is right. That's what I think has been
Speaker 2: really interesting about a lot of developments in recent history
Speaker 2: is that we're and honestly, the you know, the mancorn examples.
Speaker 2: Another great one is that we have now reached a
Speaker 2: certain technological level to confirm a lot of the cool
Speaker 2: old stories that were dismissed as wives tales, you know,
Speaker 2: massive cities in the jungle or your cannibalism, your pyramids
Speaker 2: in the desert. For a while, it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: all that cool stuff, it's fake, you know, the real
Speaker 2: science is just everything's boring and gay. And it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: now we have space lasers and it turns out it's
Speaker 2: all true. And I realize I'm massively oversimplifying it. But
Speaker 2: it is a much more exciting world to live in, right.
Speaker 2: It's a sense of adventure, you know, instead of just
Speaker 2: the kind of like cold drismy, cold dismal science of
Speaker 2: previously presented. I don't know. I think it makes the
Speaker 2: world more fun to be in.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I could not agree more. It's almost like once
Speaker 1: we I guess, once some people decided that history is
Speaker 1: not over and we have not found everything, and some
Speaker 1: sort of excitement and adventure got into them, and so
Speaker 1: they started asking questions that used to be don't bother
Speaker 1: asking it, because you're not gonna get funding. Nobody cares
Speaker 1: about the answer, we all know it's not real. Recently,
Speaker 1: it seems like, especially with people who aren't in the field,
Speaker 1: like I can do whatever I want and say whatever
Speaker 1: I want because I'm not going to be punished academically,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lose a job. And I think
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But also maybe the mindset is changing,
Speaker 1: like there is stuff out there left to be discovered
Speaker 1: and explored, and I don't know, maybe we can find
Speaker 1: new curses, new treasures. I don't new. Yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: exciting and I don't think it's going to slow down
Speaker 1: anytime soon. I think it's just going to pick up
Speaker 1: with more and more that we're uncovering and finding and
Speaker 1: it's just gonna make again, it's gonna make life more exciting.
Speaker 1: I should start writing dime novels, honestly, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean genuinely, the uh and I think it. I was
Speaker 2: just talking about this with a friend of mine, because
Speaker 2: you know, we were I went to my mom's place,
Speaker 2: got a lot of the books that I had as
Speaker 2: a kid, you know, that been boxed up, and you know,
Speaker 2: I learned to read off the old you know, nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties serialized ten tin comics, right, and it very much
Speaker 2: exists in that world of nineteen thirties pulp, you know,
Speaker 2: where the different countries are very different. You go across
Speaker 2: the world and you see men, you know, wearing their costumes.
Speaker 2: You know, it feels as if you're going to a
Speaker 2: different culture and it's incredibly exciting. And to that point
Speaker 2: about discovering that spirit of adventure, I think there's a
Speaker 2: part in every man's brain. It's like, you know, what
Speaker 2: if I get crushed by a boulder in a tomb
Speaker 2: in the middle of the South American jungle, not a
Speaker 2: bad way to go, right, there's parfew that just that
Speaker 2: wants to do it. And I think another element, if
Speaker 2: you can forgive some chin scratching here, is that, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the real advantages to the Internet is it
Speaker 2: has allowed people to monetize being interesting. And so if
Speaker 2: you're able to make history interesting, the pinnacle of your
Speaker 2: career isn't you know, lecturing at a regional state school anymore.
Speaker 2: You can just go out and be entertaining. You know,
Speaker 2: you can actually push forward right knowledge, it's fun, it's
Speaker 2: it's genuinely a very interesting space to look at it.
Speaker 2: And I am not a historian. I don't pretend to
Speaker 2: know very much about history, but there are half a
Speaker 2: dozen people, yourself included, that provide very very high quality
Speaker 2: historical content to normal people right who don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: the time or inclination to dig through you know, mountains
Speaker 2: of research. And speaking of that, Thomas, where can people
Speaker 2: find you?
Speaker 1: The Americansouthwest dot com and everyway.
Speaker 2: In addition to your you know, to your historical content,
Speaker 2: there's also a section on that website for recipes, and
Speaker 2: I want to know, Thomas, I've been using your margarita
Speaker 2: recipe since the last time we talked, the only one
Speaker 2: you were going to do it, but it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: So if you're looking for a halfway decent margarita recipe,
Speaker 2: I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it some
Speaker 2: historical content. Be sure to check out Thomas's stuff. I'll
Speaker 2: have all his links down in the description. Thank you,
Speaker 2: this have you, Thomas, and everyone knows, keep your head up.
Speaker 2: Good night,