Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the october Fest band. We are in the
Speaker 1: thick of it around the world. Of course, if you're
Speaker 1: in Munich, you are celebrating big time in the big
Speaker 1: beer tents and they are drinking leaders of beer. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I haven't had a chance to go to
Speaker 1: Munich when I'm in Europe. I always miss it. I'd
Speaker 1: love to go there. I had. I had friends go
Speaker 1: last year and everybody had their leader hosand and derndrols
Speaker 1: on and they reported back that, you know, the Germans
Speaker 1: will drink a leader or up to three within an hour.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a lot of beer, and I just can't imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, a leader of beer in a huge glass tine.
Speaker 1: But I love my beer. And here in California there
Speaker 1: is a lot of immigrants. According to I celebrate my
Speaker 1: one quarter German. My grandfather immigrated from Dusser Dwarf in
Speaker 1: nineteen o four and came to California and settled and
Speaker 1: had a practice. He was a doctor in Central California.
Speaker 1: But I know he's always upheld the tradition and we
Speaker 1: would celebrate the seasons, and october Fest was something that
Speaker 1: we talked about and I have kind of continued it.
Speaker 1: I actually do wear the lit hosen and I have
Speaker 1: a great time. I don't know what it is about Octoberfest.
Speaker 1: I really have fun. I enjoy it. And you know,
Speaker 1: we here in northern California are surrounded by micro breweries,
Speaker 1: and so everybody's trying to put out a Marsin or
Speaker 1: an october Fest beer, which is a holiday dark beer.
Speaker 1: And there's I live in close to Oakland, and there's
Speaker 1: an Oktoberfest Oaktoberfest, and all the breweries come out and
Speaker 1: there's like two hundred beers that you can sample. No
Speaker 1: one that's gonna drink all of them. But I'm always
Speaker 1: pleasantly surprised at some of these newer breweries who are
Speaker 1: able to really tune into the mars In flavor. And
Speaker 1: it's wonderful with the food. You know, the Europeans don't
Speaker 1: just typically drink beer by itself. They will drink and
Speaker 1: have a meal. And that's what makes you know, sipping
Speaker 1: a beer with your food, with your sausage or whatever
Speaker 1: much more pleasant because it goes really well with food.
Speaker 1: And you know, you don't walk around with a stein
Speaker 1: of beer and you're not, you know, have any food
Speaker 1: you got to have the food. So so anyhow, it's
Speaker 1: october Fest time and I'll be wearing my leader hosand
Speaker 1: with a girlfriend and some other friends and I'll have
Speaker 1: a photograph. If you want to see my leader hosand
Speaker 1: and outfit, you can go to Earth Ancients excuse me,
Speaker 1: you can go to Facebook, go to Cliff Dunning and
Speaker 1: you'll see me all dredged, all dressed up celebrating this season.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what it is. There's something about Leader,
Speaker 1: something about october Fest that is just real fun and
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's an adult party and I really
Speaker 1: really enjoy it. I'm going to get the Munich one
Speaker 1: of these days and figure out a way to really
Speaker 1: see it the authentic traditional way which I have had,
Speaker 1: like I said, a number of friends. So october Fest
Speaker 1: and the Lida Josen any I'll help. You're doing well today? Hey,
Speaker 1: Today we have the return of doctor Edwin Barnhardt. He
Speaker 1: is going to be speaking to us about the ruins
Speaker 1: on Easter Island, otherwise known as Rappahannui. And we have
Speaker 1: had other people speaking about the Polynesian islands. But what
Speaker 1: I didn't realize until very recently was that Ed had
Speaker 1: done back I think I was twenty eighteen. He did
Speaker 1: a survey of the island and was working with the
Speaker 1: government at the time to understand some of the early dwellings,
Speaker 1: and he made some we'll learn about this today. He
Speaker 1: made some interesting discoveries of buildings that hadn't been known
Speaker 1: about before. And he didn't use light ar he used
Speaker 1: another kind of imaging system to actually do this. And
Speaker 1: he was talking to me before we started our interview
Speaker 1: today that he's we're going to be going there in March,
Speaker 1: March fifteenth to the twenty third, by the way, if
Speaker 1: you want to join us. And he was working with
Speaker 1: the local government and he only, like I said, he
Speaker 1: only did a third of the survey and he's going
Speaker 1: back hopefully to finish his work. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: funny because I talk to people who visit Repahanui or
Speaker 1: Easter Island, and they say they get strange vibes depending
Speaker 1: on what part of the island you're at. Apparently there's
Speaker 1: some hot spots that have been talked about in the
Speaker 1: same manner that we see magnetic anomalies in Saint Guatemala
Speaker 1: or when we were in Chiao late last year, we
Speaker 1: noticed that some of the stela, the standing markers, and
Speaker 1: even some of the round sculptures of depicting humans had
Speaker 1: magnetic anomalies. What that's all about, we don't know now.
Speaker 1: When it gets to the point where it is affecting physiology,
Speaker 1: that's meant to that's meant as a tool, And we
Speaker 1: still don't understand how it was used. But some people
Speaker 1: that are sensitive believe that shaman perhaps or people who
Speaker 1: were trained in subtle energy work, could tune in to
Speaker 1: those markers, to those energetics and perhaps by locate, perhaps communicate,
Speaker 1: perhaps develop some form of sacred wisdom. We don't know
Speaker 1: how it was worked, but what we do know is
Speaker 1: that again the Maya were were masters using subtle energy
Speaker 1: and gain a great deal of their knowledge on earth
Speaker 1: centric energetics as well as healing, mathematics and sacred geometry.
Speaker 1: What sacred geometry this is placing buildings in correct alignment
Speaker 1: along with lay lines and also global centric navigation. So
Speaker 1: that means that the alignment of certain pyramids and temples
Speaker 1: were such that you could stand and look at corner
Speaker 1: and align it to the sunset, to certain constellations. And
Speaker 1: of course the Maya were master cosmologists and could actually
Speaker 1: track various planetary movements and things like that, but the
Speaker 1: Rapahanui people aren't considered to be that sophisticated. Although, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this today, there is a writing system
Speaker 1: that has been found, but it has not been deciphered.
Speaker 1: And this is a real curiosity because right now orthodoxy
Speaker 1: considers the earliest period of Easter Island to be roughly
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago. And you know, people that are seers,
Speaker 1: that are psychic, that are sensitive as well as many
Speaker 1: other of us, believe that the Easter Island may have
Speaker 1: been part of MoU or the great continent of Limoria.
Speaker 1: And there are no other parts of the Polynesian culture
Speaker 1: that have these moai sculptures, these multi ton megalists or monoliths,
Speaker 1: huge carved statuary anyplace else. And so why were they carved?
Speaker 1: Why were they lined up looking out towards the west?
Speaker 1: What is the hieroglyphics that is carved in many of
Speaker 1: their backs, and why are they positioned where they're standing
Speaker 1: looking up with their hands around their waist, Almost a
Speaker 1: certain posture that perhaps elicits energy or seeking or sightseeing
Speaker 1: or heaven watching or something looking at the sky looking
Speaker 1: at the changes we don't know, and because we don't
Speaker 1: have a definitive answer, again, it's most of its guesswork.
Speaker 1: Now it's a real pleasure to have Ed on the
Speaker 1: program today because again he will be leading a tour
Speaker 1: an Earth Ancient's Tour March fifteenth through the twenty third.
Speaker 1: For all the information, you can go to earth Ancients
Speaker 1: dot com forward slash tours and see the itinerary. We're
Speaker 1: almost full, and if you want to join us, do that,
Speaker 1: or if you have any questions whatsoever about this tour,
Speaker 1: send me an email at Earth Ancients to number four
Speaker 1: of the letter you at gmail dot Earth Ancients for
Speaker 1: you at gmail dot com. So today's program is the
Speaker 1: ancient culture of Rapa Nui and my guest is doctor
Speaker 1: ed Barnhard. It's always great to speak with doctor Edwin Barnhart.
Speaker 1: We haven't had you don't had Edd on the show
Speaker 1: for a few months, and I had to say it
Speaker 1: was a pleasure being with him in uh Mexico and
Speaker 1: our recent tour. We studied and we were discussing the
Speaker 1: Omec and their ruins, which are fascinating. But today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Easter island otherwise known as Rappahannui
Speaker 1: because Ed's actually been there, and he hasn't been there
Speaker 1: just as a tourist. He's been there and he has
Speaker 1: surveyed that part of the world, which makes it even
Speaker 1: more interesting. So Ed, welcome back to Earth Ancient. It's
Speaker 1: great to see you.
Speaker 2: Hey, clip, thanks for inviting me back.
Speaker 1: All right, we gotta open with your participation in Graham
Speaker 1: Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse. We got a preview all through the YouTube,
Speaker 1: and I'm just curious how did that come about? How
Speaker 1: did that evolve?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was surprised to see myself on that preview.
Speaker 3: I was there all of two seconds, but I made cut.
Speaker 2: That was fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, friends of friends, I guess recommended me
Speaker 3: to Graham and his crew specifically about Polank and you know,
Speaker 3: you know me, I'm I'm I'm open to however I
Speaker 3: can communicate with the public about things they're interested in.
Speaker 3: And so I right after my Olmec trip, I flew
Speaker 3: instead of home from Mexico City to Polenk.
Speaker 2: It happened kind of that.
Speaker 1: Quickly after ours a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: You mean, I don't know an ole Mec trip.
Speaker 3: I had run in March this year, and then it
Speaker 3: is just kind of one thing led to another, and
Speaker 3: uh then I was just all of a sudden standing
Speaker 3: in the Temple of the Foliated Cross with Graham Hancock.
Speaker 1: Amazing. That's fantastic. Now, I mean, Graham is very outspoken
Speaker 1: as as you know, and he's not an academic book.
Speaker 1: How did you feel how you treated, I would say
Speaker 1: in that interaction with him.
Speaker 3: Oh, very nicely, very nicely. We had, you know, both
Speaker 3: professional and personal rapport. You know, he seemed to be
Speaker 3: surprised that I had actually read his books, but you know,
Speaker 3: he started off with the respect that he had read
Speaker 3: my stuff. So we had a nice conversation right off
Speaker 3: the bat about actually having read each other stuff instead
Speaker 3: of just have opinions about it. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 3: it kind of went from there. I enjoyed the experience.
Speaker 1: Now, your expertise is in planky obviously, because you surveyed it.
Speaker 1: Was that the main focus of that episode that you
Speaker 1: shot with him? Or did you go to other sites?
Speaker 1: We didn't go to other sites, but we did talk
Speaker 1: off site on a number of topics. He was really
Speaker 1: you know, very I appreciated the opportunity he let me
Speaker 1: speak in my own words about my calendars, my astronomy.
Speaker 1: He actually even asked me directly to.
Speaker 3: Give him my opinion about whether Bacall's sarcophagus carving as
Speaker 3: an alien spaceship, which you know, spoiler alert, I did
Speaker 3: not believe that. Yeah, he gave me a lot of
Speaker 3: opportunity to speak to his audience in my own way
Speaker 3: and in my own voice, and I appreciated it good.
Speaker 1: So he was talking about the Maya, and did he
Speaker 1: ask you one of my questions, mine of white questions
Speaker 1: with you all. And we've talked about this before, the
Speaker 1: descendants of the Maya, the earliest part, and I talk
Speaker 1: about this, and I've mentioned this to you with my
Speaker 1: interactions with Rich Hanson out in Guatemala at Ladonte. He
Speaker 1: Hanson thinks that these pyramids were all for the gods.
Speaker 1: And my belief is that the people that we know
Speaker 1: as the Maya were just one phase. Is an earlier
Speaker 1: face that we're having trouble understanding because we haven't really
Speaker 1: deciphered their language yet, so we really don't know the
Speaker 1: earliest periods. According to Hanson, Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Like the proto my script, we really don't the earliest
Speaker 1: text we have we have a problem reading. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we don't know how old the Maya are, right, I
Speaker 1: mean we think they're three or four thousand years old,
Speaker 1: But is there a possibility that And I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: Hanson Hanson excuse me, Graham Hancock was touching on this
Speaker 1: that the Maya seemed to be extremely sophisticated, you know, astronomy, mathematics, medicines, culture,
Speaker 1: so forth, and so on, and they kind of just
Speaker 1: show up very sophisticated.
Speaker 3: No, Graham and I didn't really talk on that. He
Speaker 3: didn't ask me any questions on that vein. But you have,
Speaker 3: so we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: From my perspective in archaeology, I do see a fairly
Speaker 3: understand progression of you know, technology, community building, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: just tradition society that start. I feel like the archaeology
Speaker 3: record certainly has gaps, but there's a logical narrative sequence
Speaker 3: of people that begin, you know, from the archaic period,
Speaker 3: slowly building up communities and interacting, sharing ideas back and forth.
Speaker 3: My uh, I just finished doing this deep dive on
Speaker 3: olmec H for Great Courses, and I I talk a
Speaker 3: lot about how the the Olmec and the Maya at
Speaker 3: that early early dates, and I'm talking you know, ballpark
Speaker 3: two thousand BCE, they're really uh, bouncing ideas and traditions
Speaker 3: off each other to create something new. There's a real
Speaker 3: co evolution there. But both of them start from a
Speaker 3: very rudimentary place and help each other up in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways. They're certainly you know that we don't
Speaker 3: have all the answers about their technology and things, but
Speaker 3: in terms of I don't think either one of them
Speaker 3: really show up on the scene with a whole kit
Speaker 3: of skills and cultural ways that we can't explain. I
Speaker 3: do see an evolution, and if you'd like to hear
Speaker 3: my long explanation, I've got you know, six hours of
Speaker 3: talk that come out on great courses about it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about pyramids, because I consider the Maya pyramid culture.
Speaker 1: Is there an area in Mexico that is thought of
Speaker 1: as to be kind of an evolution or the early
Speaker 1: initiation of pyramid building. A class of pyramids are like that,
Speaker 1: you guys go, hey, this is of this. They're crude,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily as engineered as well, so forth, and
Speaker 1: so on. And that is what we consider as archaeologists
Speaker 1: of my or you as a minus would say this
Speaker 1: is the starting point.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's you know, it's a bit of a tricky one,
Speaker 3: you know that it starts off with how do we
Speaker 3: define pyramid? You know, is a is a hill of
Speaker 3: dirt that's five meters taller pyramid? Or does it have
Speaker 3: to get to like twenty before we call it a pyramid?
Speaker 3: So we start with the beginnings of people making structures
Speaker 3: that are you know, above natural ground. Well, heck, then
Speaker 3: we you know, go back to like two thousand BCE.
Speaker 3: But the first ones that we call pyramids are actually
Speaker 3: there's two of them that are in the Maya area
Speaker 3: and in the Elemec area, and they show up they're
Speaker 3: so close to each other. The archaeologies Carbon fourteen dates
Speaker 3: can't really definitively say which one came first. One of
Speaker 3: them is the pyramid at Leventa, right, and it's about
Speaker 3: twenty five meters tall, huge, but it's all earthen And
Speaker 3: the other one that is also all earth in is gosh,
Speaker 3: it's it's in Guatemala and the silka Nusco and I'm
Speaker 3: I'm blanking, I'll shot gun approach it. It's either at
Speaker 3: the site of Paseo de Paso de la Mata or
Speaker 3: La Blanca. But it's one of those two. I'm blanking
Speaker 3: on which one has a pyramid about the same size,
Speaker 3: And both of them are somewhere built between like five
Speaker 3: hundred and six hundred BCE, says the Carbon fourteen dates.
Speaker 1: But those are our two, and the Maya one is
Speaker 1: earth a mile for more to pop up and the
Speaker 1: earth and the one that the Maya built is that
Speaker 1: earthen as well as that stone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one down in Silka Nusco is earthen as well. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's fascinating the first ones that we get built of stone,
Speaker 3: are you know. There's there's a place also down there
Speaker 3: in Guatemala called Takalika Ba that has a reasonable size one.
Speaker 3: There's across the border into Chiapas. Chiapa de Corzo has
Speaker 3: a fairly old one. But both of those are kind
Speaker 3: of Maya with a healthy dose of Olmec influence. Then,
Speaker 3: of course, where Richard Hansen is in the ten, that's
Speaker 3: when they start driving making these mega pyramids out of stone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I haven't talked to Richard in over a year,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what his status is. I would
Speaker 1: typically hope to hear from him and his newest finds
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, but he's kind of gone silent.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a good thing. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Richard's been surrounded in Hornet's nests of late, so maybe
Speaker 3: he has just taken a break. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 3: should Before we just get off the topic of pyramids,
Speaker 3: let me not discredit the the Zapatacs who were all
Speaker 3: so hard at it. By five hundred BC, they've built
Speaker 3: the city of Monte alban and they're building stone built
Speaker 3: pyramids there too, in the tradition of a place not
Speaker 3: far from them called San Jose Magote, who's building the
Speaker 3: first stone platforms of Wahaka. So there really is a
Speaker 3: I mean there there's a race, race of who's building
Speaker 3: what first, and who's building up and who's influencing who.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a complicated picture sometimes, you know, archaeology,
Speaker 3: we get more information, it just confuses the situation rather
Speaker 3: than clarifies it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wahaka has got uh Tula too, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Tula's way up in northern Mexico. Uh kind of northwest
Speaker 3: of Mexico.
Speaker 1: City, trying to think, what's the site that Marco Vigato's
Speaker 1: uh scanning right now with the archaeo.
Speaker 3: That's that's Meetla Meatless. It's the Low Bop project in
Speaker 3: the Wahaka Valley. Yeah, that's a that's a very's got
Speaker 3: no pyramids though, just excellently built kind of priestly compounds.
Speaker 1: And underground some underground rooms that are very suspicious.
Speaker 3: Well that's the that's the story that has been told
Speaker 3: since the sixteen hundreds, and I would be thrilled if
Speaker 3: Marco found it. Yet he's just he's just in a
Speaker 3: long line of people that are talking about it.
Speaker 2: Let's see the holes. Marco.
Speaker 1: Hey, before before we leave the Maya, you were on
Speaker 1: Lex Freeman's program too, and he has a huge audience.
Speaker 1: Add in a couple of the friends.
Speaker 3: They're telling me my emails just like even as we're going,
Speaker 3: it's going bing bing bing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was that all about? Was he kind of
Speaker 1: following up on the announcement that you were on ancient
Speaker 1: apocalypse or what? What was that? No?
Speaker 3: No, he found me independently. Two weeks before me. He
Speaker 3: had an even more popular professor from Great Courses already.
Speaker 2: Is his name? Did great.
Speaker 3: He's like at two million views right now. But apparently
Speaker 3: Lex is uh you know, a broad intellectual and as
Speaker 3: he takes his runs around the lake in Austin, he
Speaker 3: listens to great courses and he listened to mine and said,
Speaker 3: I like this guy, and he called me up.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. So where was his Where was the interview? It
Speaker 1: was in his studio somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's that's so funny. Everyone's in Austin. Now, you
Speaker 1: were there.
Speaker 2: I was Joe's neighbor.
Speaker 3: It's said, it'll be ironic if Joe invites me on
Speaker 3: his show and I just moved.
Speaker 2: I could have just walked down the street.
Speaker 1: Oh you were that close. That's right. You always told
Speaker 1: me that. That's interesting.
Speaker 3: Uh So anyhow, you just to clarify, though Joe's in
Speaker 3: the cool part of the neighborhood, I was in the
Speaker 3: kind of jankie part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should say as now in Colorado, he's not
Speaker 1: a Texas resident anymore. All right, Well, hey, that's great.
Speaker 1: Onward for you and you'll be the Maya darling, the
Speaker 1: Mayanist of the media, is what we'll expect in the
Speaker 1: future from you.
Speaker 2: Well, here we go tiger by the tail.
Speaker 1: Great, all right, today we're talking about Easter Island Rapanui,
Speaker 1: and let's talk about how you got involved in your
Speaker 1: interest in that, and then we want to get into
Speaker 1: some specifics. But you actually have done some surveying there.
Speaker 1: What was that all about? Yeah, you know, I used
Speaker 1: to not talk.
Speaker 3: About it at all because I was working for the
Speaker 3: very first ever Rapanui administration, who, for the first time
Speaker 3: in one hundred and seventeen years, actually had control over
Speaker 3: their own ancestral sites.
Speaker 2: So I talked to them and.
Speaker 3: Said, hey, you know, I know that Chili has a
Speaker 3: map that they don't really share with you, and I
Speaker 3: would like to come in and make you a map.
Speaker 2: That's all yours.
Speaker 3: So I did one third of that, and I promised
Speaker 3: them I would not talk about it or publish anything
Speaker 3: before U before they had a chance to and to
Speaker 3: approve anything I would say. But COVID exploded the whole thing,
Speaker 3: and now there's a brand new administration of this Malhanua
Speaker 3: operation who uh does not know who I am, does
Speaker 3: not like the old administration and the and and the
Speaker 3: old administration took every computer out of the office, so
Speaker 3: there's really no even evidence that I made that map
Speaker 3: for them. I'm looking forward to when when you and
Speaker 3: I go back to Easter Island on my off time,
Speaker 3: I'm going to walk over to that office and redeliver
Speaker 3: all that and see whether I can make a new
Speaker 3: friend at the Malhanu office and finish what I started.
Speaker 1: Did you reveal any of the survey material to the
Speaker 1: administration when you were there?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were. We worked in conjunct with them. They
Speaker 3: gave us these cool little vests that said Malhanua. We
Speaker 3: were part of their team, and we delivered everything we
Speaker 3: had on the spot and our developed maps, and there's there.
Speaker 3: It's a funny place. There's only like eight thousand people
Speaker 3: probably less after COVID that live on the island, so
Speaker 3: everybody knows everybody. I know where the guy that has
Speaker 3: the information is. He's helping his grandparents rebuild their house
Speaker 3: somewhere on one edge of the island. It's it's there,
Speaker 3: But I'll bring it back and hopefully I'm gonna work
Speaker 3: on making a new friend and finish what I started there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we want to hear in a bit exactly
Speaker 1: what you discovered in your survey. When does Repanui come
Speaker 1: on the scene historically, when do we begin hearing about it.
Speaker 3: Well, at the risk of disappointing your audience, I mean
Speaker 3: the archaeology, the carbon fourteen dates that are actually published
Speaker 3: and collected properly. They really don't push the dates any
Speaker 3: farther back than say, nine hundred CE. It was, as
Speaker 3: far as we know, one of the last of the
Speaker 3: Polynesian or Oceania islands to be inhabited. And it's pretty
Speaker 3: far away. I mean, it does make sense. I mean
Speaker 3: the closest island is Piccaren Island and it's thirteen hundred
Speaker 3: miles away.
Speaker 1: Wow. You know it's funny because they have the sculptures
Speaker 1: of Moi there and I don't know, unless you can
Speaker 1: suggest that they appear anywhere else in any other.
Speaker 2: No, they really don't.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that they are kind of they
Speaker 3: might be like mega versions of those Tiki statues, you know,
Speaker 3: something a person standing up with their arms on their
Speaker 3: sides and a funny hat. That's you know, that's kind
Speaker 3: of what tikis look like. But Tiki's minor compare. Nobody
Speaker 3: made Moi like Easter Island.
Speaker 1: The Spanish talk about them, and of course cook the
Speaker 1: seafaring captain shows up there. He's not apparently not well.
Speaker 1: But uh is it? Is it chronicled? And I think
Speaker 1: they also try to christianize it at some point as well,
Speaker 1: don't they.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, or revenue.
Speaker 3: He just got it, just got it from all sides,
Speaker 3: from from missionaries to slavers to you know, even even
Speaker 3: sheep herders took us wipe at him at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the population has taken a beating. I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: You know, we just mentioned that, you just mentioned that
Speaker 3: the the sculptures are only part of that island. Is
Speaker 3: there any thinking that this could have been a sacred grounds,
Speaker 3: a ceremonial kind of like a church setting, uh for
Speaker 3: the polem?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Uh, I've never heard any such thing.
Speaker 3: And again, especially back in the days of its you know,
Speaker 3: of its height, it was quite a feat of sailing
Speaker 3: to get there. I mean it was a long ways
Speaker 3: away when people are you know, on elaborate catamarans. Boy,
Speaker 3: I mean, this was not the kind of journey you
Speaker 3: casually took. We do know that people from Oceania did
Speaker 3: occasionally reach Repnui, but I don't think in any kind
Speaker 3: of annual pilgrimage since.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that would just mean that there were just
Speaker 1: the local the people that actually lived on it.
Speaker 2: Do they have when Cook showed up his his folks
Speaker 2: or was it Cook?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was Cook. No, no, no, hold on,
Speaker 3: I've it's after Cook. It's the HMS Blossom that spends
Speaker 3: some time there, and they tell us that there was
Speaker 3: a group people on the island that were kind of
Speaker 3: like not locals, and the locals gave them like a
Speaker 3: corner of the island, but grudgingly. They called them the
Speaker 3: long Ears, and they had like longer ear lobes where
Speaker 3: they put different kinds of.
Speaker 2: Ear rings in.
Speaker 3: But the rest of the clans really didn't even like
Speaker 3: them there, and it give them kind of a crappy
Speaker 3: corner of the island. So there were at the time
Speaker 3: of the HMS Blossom, which was eighteen twenty five, there
Speaker 3: was actually at least one Polynesian immigrant community on the island.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 1: our sponsors to identify themselves, and we'll return shortly with
Speaker 1: my guest today, doctor Edwin Barnhardt, discussing Easter Island. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. So what Calami all day?
Speaker 3: All day.
Speaker 1: My guest today is doctor Edwin Barnhardt, who has done
Speaker 1: some surveying of the island known as Easter Island Rappahannui
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Ocean, and we're learning a little bit
Speaker 1: about what he discovered, as well as some new evidence
Speaker 1: for this the people who lived in that part of
Speaker 1: the world, you know. And this is funny because I
Speaker 1: was just reading a little bit about out the history
Speaker 1: of the island. The local lore is that the elites
Speaker 1: could write, perhaps read, but the regular people couldn't. And
Speaker 1: there is a writing system that they have discovered that's
Speaker 1: made up of a system of glyphs, right yep.
Speaker 2: So what do we know called wrongo wrongo?
Speaker 1: Wrongo wrongo, And we.
Speaker 3: Don't have a lot of examples of it unless you
Speaker 3: include the petroglyphs too. There's a lot of the people
Speaker 3: that are trying to break the code of it point
Speaker 3: out that there's like a thousand petroglyphs sites on the island.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We'll go and see a couple of them. But they
Speaker 3: have at least in places symbols that are similar to
Speaker 3: the wrongo wrong goo tablets. Wrongo wrongo tablets are only
Speaker 3: on pieces of wood. They're like polished pieces of wood
Speaker 3: that the text gets inscribed into.
Speaker 2: I've seen a couple of them.
Speaker 3: The typical ones are like, you know, a foot or
Speaker 3: two wide and and about the size of like a floorboard.
Speaker 3: And they have elaborate and very tightly clustered glyphs that
Speaker 3: do look like they have a reading order. They're like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, horizontal rows of glyphs that go across we
Speaker 3: The people that are really making headway and have from
Speaker 3: the beginning are actually Russian scholars, beginning with of all people,
Speaker 3: you Yori corner Rosov, who was instrumental in breaking the
Speaker 3: code of the Maya script. He took a crack at it,
Speaker 3: and his generations of students afterwards. Uh, they they've been
Speaker 3: they've been looking at it too, and made some interesting headway.
Speaker 3: I I have a paper on my desktop right now
Speaker 3: that I have not read yet from a colleague, Uh
Speaker 3: Mayani is named Mark Zender shared it with me. There's
Speaker 3: a new Russian scholar is making, in his opinion, more
Speaker 3: headway than we ever have.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: There's there's some hope that maybe we break this language.
Speaker 3: His this newest thing was pointing out that a lot
Speaker 3: of the a lot of the glyphs are in duplicate,
Speaker 3: and he's making an argument that sent so many Polynesian
Speaker 3: languages have lots of words that are our word word duplicate,
Speaker 3: like a pool a pool, and that that that that
Speaker 3: the structure may be indicating a Polynesian language. That's always
Speaker 3: the trick with these things. Is it just an elaborate
Speaker 3: symbol set or is it actually reflecting a human speech?
Speaker 1: Okay, And there's no mythology or traditions that talk about
Speaker 1: the people who may have invented this glyph system of writing.
Speaker 2: You know, the the revenue.
Speaker 3: We actually we have a lot of information to impart
Speaker 3: on this, just nobody listens to them.
Speaker 2: They fairly.
Speaker 3: Uniformly say that wrongo wrongo tablets were primarily for recounting lineages,
Speaker 3: and we do see a lot of things that look
Speaker 3: like the Russians again have come up with things that
Speaker 3: look like father and son of and repeated sequences. There
Speaker 3: was also there was a funny thing. I was just
Speaker 3: looking this up, you know, to speak intelligently on your podcast,
Speaker 3: and there was a bishop in Tahiti who took a
Speaker 3: particular interest in them. Someone gifted him the very first
Speaker 3: one we know of in eighteen sixty eight it came
Speaker 3: to Tahiti wrapped in human hair, which is a little gross.
Speaker 3: But once he got it, he was like, well, I
Speaker 3: want more of these things. This is interesting, and he
Speaker 3: sent people back to Repnui. Then in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 3: who showed up with another like five or six. And
Speaker 3: then he got a guy from Raphanui that he said,
Speaker 3: this guy says he knows what it is, and he
Speaker 3: that person said it was it was a written form
Speaker 3: of a chant that was done in religious ceremonies. And
Speaker 3: he ran out and he said the chant and it
Speaker 3: was recorded. But the Russian scholars have taken a hard
Speaker 3: look at that and said, no, this is nonsense. This
Speaker 3: does not at least this does not correlate to the board.
Speaker 3: He was allegedly reading the chant.
Speaker 1: From interesting And there's no other Polynesian history that coincides
Speaker 1: with this Raphinui writing. There's no parallels, there's no reference.
Speaker 3: There's no other no evidence of Wrongo wrongo or any
Speaker 3: pseudo writing system from anywhere else in Oceania.
Speaker 1: It's a it's amazing. Are we gonna have a chance
Speaker 1: to see a museum on the island that has some
Speaker 1: of that writing, by.
Speaker 3: The way, we will go to a museum and I'm
Speaker 3: I'm blanking on whether what I saw there was a
Speaker 3: photo of a Wrongo wrong Goo tablet or an actual
Speaker 3: wrong Goo wrong Goo tablet, if memory serves wed, they
Speaker 3: are they're actually I know that that I've read that
Speaker 3: the Wrongo wrong Goo tablets at least, you know, six
Speaker 3: to ten of them are still on the island, whether
Speaker 3: they're at the museum or not or held away. I'm
Speaker 3: I'm unsure, but there's so few of friends on the island.
Speaker 3: If they're one there, yeah, I'll figure out how to
Speaker 3: see it. Let's see at least one.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. The mo I. This is a huge
Speaker 1: curiosity of mine, and you know it's funny because we
Speaker 1: talked about it last time we were on the show.
Speaker 1: There's over a thousand of these things, which is just amazing.
Speaker 1: Do we have an evolution of those where we see
Speaker 1: very crude early examples of them, to say the modern
Speaker 1: or modern one thousand plus years ago the more.
Speaker 3: Recent versions, you know, I don't think we have the
Speaker 3: capacity to analyze them on that level. I think they
Speaker 3: kind of just peppered their way out into the different
Speaker 3: clan villages over a period. You know, we estimate that
Speaker 3: the tradition of them went hard between like one thousand
Speaker 3: and fourteen hundred AD, and over that time they would
Speaker 3: at least the revenue.
Speaker 2: We say that.
Speaker 3: The initiating of making one was kind of like an order.
Speaker 3: The chief of that village would say, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'd like to commit a moai in honor of my uncle,
Speaker 3: a previous chief, and then so they they'd make it
Speaker 3: in the quarry and they'd bring it out. And then
Speaker 3: I think that those lines of moi we see were
Speaker 3: assembled over you know, generations, so it's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to tell, and especially they're all stone, right, and we
Speaker 3: don't have any way of dating them. So I don't
Speaker 3: think we have even even an avenue to try to
Speaker 3: estimate who's old, which one's old, and which one's new.
Speaker 1: Okay, because we can't.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that there's a There was like a
Speaker 3: funny fashion uh. It was like a fashion statement that
Speaker 3: happened near the end of the moai building period where
Speaker 3: there's another quarry that has a type of stone called
Speaker 3: red scoria, and they start fashioning these big thick hats
Speaker 3: that kind of look like top hats. And they would
Speaker 3: they started putting these top hats on the moai, and
Speaker 3: so there's some idea that the ones with the red
Speaker 3: hats are the latest ones, but they could have also
Speaker 3: just been putting hats on old guys.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: So we don't know if they have evolved because I've
Speaker 1: seen them dig out. There's a couple of classic photographs
Speaker 1: of digging out of Moi and you know, it has
Speaker 1: the classic arms with the fingers resting on the lower
Speaker 1: belly and on the back of this specific sculpture there
Speaker 1: is some hieroglyphs and some symbology and has a big head,
Speaker 1: large nose, big eyes, and then there's this body and
Speaker 1: they all seem to be like that. But I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if there's if that's the typical moai sculpture, or if
Speaker 1: there's different small all our sculptures that might be a
Speaker 1: little different design.
Speaker 2: That was an exciting find that was done in the nineties.
Speaker 2: The Earth.
Speaker 3: It always turns up on the Internet again and again,
Speaker 3: like I love that photo. It happened a long time ago,
Speaker 3: but it did show us that there was carving on
Speaker 3: this buried Moi. Who was you know, his carving was
Speaker 3: protected under the ground. And then when you go back
Speaker 3: to the moai, when we're standing there, we can walk
Speaker 3: across Tongaiki and look at him. You can see that
Speaker 3: some of them weathered better than others. And you can
Speaker 3: see the hints of the hands and the symbols, and
Speaker 3: they are different. There's not like a standard symbol for them.
Speaker 3: I do think the symbols had something to do with
Speaker 3: the ancestor represented. Okay, gotcha, what are they weigh? And
Speaker 3: there are a couple of like ugly, smaller ones, which
Speaker 3: you know. There's a funny one on one edge of
Speaker 3: the island that stands all alone, and he's called the
Speaker 3: White and he's really he's like, you know, about my height,
Speaker 3: and he's not. He's made of a different kind of
Speaker 3: stone and he's not very nicely carved. But ok they're
Speaker 3: just sitting alone. Poor little white guy exiled to the
Speaker 3: other side of the volcano.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's up with him, but he's I
Speaker 3: don't normally take people there because it's a bit of
Speaker 3: an arduous journey to see one small, crappy MOI.
Speaker 1: What is what's the stone there? Man? It's local volcanic rock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's local volcanic rock. It's coming out.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 3: There's the Runouaku crater and uh, you know now that
Speaker 3: you mention it, I don't want to misspeak. I mean,
Speaker 3: the beds are pretty soft, so it may well be
Speaker 3: volcanic tuft, but I could be wrong about that.
Speaker 2: It could be the salt.
Speaker 3: But I think saw volcanic tufted because they I mean,
Speaker 3: the size of them are still huge and impressive, but
Speaker 3: the actual bed that they're cutting them out of is
Speaker 3: relatively soft. I mean, they did a lot of that
Speaker 3: with the digging sticks.
Speaker 1: Wow. And I've seen the quarry. Is there more than
Speaker 1: one quarry or just one or one big one, one
Speaker 1: small quarry.
Speaker 3: There's one big quarry and then there's a second quarry
Speaker 3: where they're just korey and hats. There's no moi that
Speaker 3: came out of that second quarry, and it was found,
Speaker 3: you know, in modern history, but that's all red scoria
Speaker 3: and it's just hats. So all the actual moi, at
Speaker 3: least everyone that I've ever talked to, says that they
Speaker 3: all came from the runo Iraku crater and there was
Speaker 3: a specific clan who owned that territory, and they were
Speaker 3: the carvers, not like another clan wasn't free to go
Speaker 3: over to the crater and cut out their own moi.
Speaker 3: They had to special order it from Runo Iraku's clan,
Speaker 3: who would then deliver it.
Speaker 1: And what are the using to cut the stone? Is
Speaker 1: it stone on stone or what?
Speaker 3: I think that a lot of it is just like
Speaker 3: sanding once they get to the fine points, but the
Speaker 3: chopping it out is like hardened digging sticks for the
Speaker 3: most part. They do have obsidian on the island, but
Speaker 3: that breaks. You really can't use obsidian. Corey rocket just
Speaker 3: smashes on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean one of the questions I've always had,
Speaker 1: and we're beginning to see this with different demonstrations, is
Speaker 1: they're quarrying this huge sculpture. It's cut out, and then
Speaker 1: somehow they get it to stand up, and then do
Speaker 1: they drag it or how do they move these things?
Speaker 1: Because they must weigh what four or five tons?
Speaker 2: Oh, some of them are like, you know, thirty tons.
Speaker 2: I think, wow.
Speaker 3: I mean they're they're huge. Yeah, they're gigantic ones. But
Speaker 3: there's a number of theories on how they moved them.
Speaker 3: You know, there's practical simple engineering that could explain it.
Speaker 3: But if you ask the moa, if you ask the rapanui,
Speaker 3: they always say that they walked there, that they walked
Speaker 3: themselves there. So there's this neat theory that's been multiple
Speaker 3: replication studies have done it over the time. There was
Speaker 3: a Thorhire doll had a guy named Pavel Pobble who
Speaker 3: did it first in the nineteen sixties, and then Terry
Speaker 3: Lippo or Terry Hunt and Carl Lippo recreated it on
Speaker 3: in Hawaii moved a moai. But basically it's a it's
Speaker 3: strapping a series of ropes around its body and then
Speaker 3: on a prepared kind of road surface, they just kind
Speaker 3: of wobbled him back and forth.
Speaker 1: I saw that bill.
Speaker 2: It wobbled like an egg down the road.
Speaker 1: It must have been very well cut so it's balanced.
Speaker 1: So they can do that though, because if it was
Speaker 1: top heavy or bottom heavy, it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: It's now been replicated multiple times in modern history, so
Speaker 3: the idea that it could be done that set it
Speaker 3: has been done by modern people. Whether that's the way
Speaker 3: they did it, I don't know. I mean I tend
Speaker 3: to I feel bad if I if the revenue. We
Speaker 3: tell us how they did it, and then we're like, nah,
Speaker 3: that seems rude.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: A weird thing about them, though, is the section that
Speaker 3: we mapped already. We found some of the roads that
Speaker 3: led from the quarry to the various clan villages, and
Speaker 3: along those roads out in just like the bushes in
Speaker 3: the middle of nowhere, we would find moi. We would
Speaker 3: find moi that were just fallen along side of the road,
Speaker 3: and we just that was a real head scratcher, Like,
Speaker 3: I mean, okay, he fell while they were bringing him.
Speaker 3: I mean, why not just pick him up continue the journey?
Speaker 3: Is that it you trip on an ancestor trips once
Speaker 3: and he has to hang out by the side of
Speaker 3: the road for eternity.
Speaker 2: That's that's weird.
Speaker 1: Was he damaged? Maybe that's why they left.
Speaker 3: No, No, there were a couple of them that were
Speaker 3: just fine, Oh wow, and they're just laying there on
Speaker 3: the side of the road. I mean we we actually
Speaker 3: joked with each other, like made fun of each other, like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, Jeff, you find any moi out here. You're
Speaker 3: standing right in front of one. What's your problem? You
Speaker 3: can't even see a giant moai? In the but it
Speaker 3: surprised us. They were just sitting in the bushes weird.
Speaker 3: Along these roads. We have yet to find any that
Speaker 3: are just randomly scattered. It was there was like a
Speaker 3: little breadcrumb trail of a couple of them that had
Speaker 3: fallen on at least one major road.
Speaker 1: Weird. I found that there was the there's supposed to
Speaker 1: be the founder of the Rapanui, a guy named Hutotua Matua.
Speaker 1: And not a hell of a lot about the guy,
Speaker 1: I guess. But what do we know about his uh.
Speaker 3: Found We are also polite. They're like, you know, according
Speaker 3: to our oral tradition, but they have a lot to
Speaker 3: say about him.
Speaker 2: I mean, we call it.
Speaker 3: We turn around and say, okay, so this is a legend. Okay,
Speaker 3: let's go. They tell us, tell us your story. But
Speaker 3: they say that Hotu Matua was living on another island
Speaker 3: far away. He was the king of that island, and
Speaker 3: he had a vision that that this place that they
Speaker 3: call Tepito, the center of the world, was out there,
Speaker 3: and so through this vision he sends his best sailors
Speaker 3: and priests out in the direction he believes it is,
Speaker 3: and they return saying, yes, it's there.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 3: So he's the one who loads up the first like
Speaker 3: catamaran armada, and they go from his his island, which
Speaker 3: we're unsure exactly which one that is, and they land
Speaker 3: specifically at a place called Anaca the beach, which is
Speaker 3: actually a pretty nice beach if you don't mind cold water.
Speaker 3: Will go jump in there, so it's there, and then
Speaker 3: from there he over his the rest of his lifetime.
Speaker 3: He establishes Tepito in their words, Rapanui, and he has
Speaker 3: nine sons who become the leaders of the nine clans,
Speaker 3: and so that the entire island, which is all of
Speaker 3: seven by fifteen miles in total area, gets divided among
Speaker 3: these nine sons. And then the king Hotu Matua is
Speaker 3: the leader of the Miru klan, and the Miru clan
Speaker 3: had the most territory and the sweetest beach, Anakena beach
Speaker 3: is really the only beach of any pleasantness. The rest
Speaker 3: of it's just rocky, So that's how they set it up.
Speaker 1: Interesting, has there been any underwater surveying or archaeology to
Speaker 1: determine if the seawater rose to a certain level may
Speaker 1: have covered up earlier portions of the island.
Speaker 3: I know that that thor hire Doll did some searching
Speaker 3: of the water around and found at least one moi
Speaker 3: out there that was just kind of knocked over, and
Speaker 3: we accidentally we we accidentally captured it in our photogrammetry.
Speaker 2: We saw it too.
Speaker 3: It was a nice clear day and we were like,
Speaker 3: what's that in the water. Oh, that must be what
Speaker 3: thor Hier Doll was talking about. So we saw one moi,
Speaker 3: but nothing in terms of like, uh, the major architecture
Speaker 3: of the island are these platforms called ahu and to
Speaker 3: my knowledge, we haven't found any platforms that are h.
Speaker 3: We found a couple of docks that were built of stone,
Speaker 3: and that makes perfect sense. But as far as major
Speaker 3: settlement off the island itself, well, I mean, my experience
Speaker 3: surveying the island showed me how ephemeral a lot of
Speaker 3: their architecture really was. The moi are incredible. It's kind
Speaker 3: of it's a weird thing that they spent so much
Speaker 3: time making these huge moi that towered over there overly
Speaker 3: simple homes.
Speaker 1: Talk about a little bit about your survey now. When
Speaker 1: we talked a few months ago, one of the things
Speaker 1: you found was, I think you said, foundations that were
Speaker 1: not known, or maybe building outcrops.
Speaker 3: Well, I have no idea whether the things I some
Speaker 3: of the things I found, we were never seen before.
Speaker 2: The revenue.
Speaker 3: We kind of have an attitude that they know where
Speaker 3: everything is, and they have all these stories about all
Speaker 3: of them and different pieces of land have You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that ancestors such and such lived over there, and he
Speaker 3: had an argue with this guy over here, and they thought,
Speaker 3: But what I did find, what I documented, And this
Speaker 3: is what I told Malhanu. I said, you guys all
Speaker 3: know where everything is, but you have no map of
Speaker 3: where everything is.
Speaker 2: And if you.
Speaker 3: Get the right to spread out all over the island
Speaker 3: right now, the only place you're allowed to live is
Speaker 3: a little town called Hangaroa. Everything else is in National Park.
Speaker 3: But if they get to go out there, and they're
Speaker 3: already squatting out there all over the place, said you
Speaker 3: need to know where the houses of your ancestors are
Speaker 3: because I know they're just as important to you as
Speaker 3: the moai. And I'll make you a map so you
Speaker 3: can responsibly develop and not destroy the places of your ancestors.
Speaker 3: So what I did was, you know, kind of boring. Really,
Speaker 3: I mean, what I mostly did was map out where
Speaker 3: all of their farmsteads are. They each one of the
Speaker 3: villages have a a plaza with a big group of
Speaker 3: steela or I mean Moai and Ahu, and then they
Speaker 3: have some nice houses around there that are built elliptical form.
Speaker 3: They have stone bases. But out as you get farther inland,
Speaker 3: the evidence right now that you can see on the
Speaker 3: surface is chicken coops and MANAVIAI manav are these stone
Speaker 3: lined garden areas where they grow taro. The wind gives
Speaker 3: there terribly and so if you don't have a stone
Speaker 3: enclosure around your gardens, the wind just blows your stuff out.
Speaker 3: So there's tons of these circle man ofvies and then
Speaker 3: these square stone built chicken coops. Those are called harry Moa.
Speaker 3: And then there's the man of Ii. And the houses
Speaker 3: are the ones that really confused me. They're called harry Panenga.
Speaker 3: And the ones near the plazas are easy to see
Speaker 3: and easy to find. But out in the hinter lands
Speaker 3: where I see activity, I didn't find any houses on
Speaker 3: the photogrammetry. I've since done a deep dive into every
Speaker 3: archaeologist that's ever dug a shovel in there, and I
Speaker 3: think I figured out what I'm looking for. These things
Speaker 3: were built of perishable materials, but they still had stone
Speaker 3: lined patios. I think survey for where Easter Island's airport
Speaker 3: is now found this repeated pattern of stone patios in
Speaker 3: front of what were once perishable buildings. So next time
Speaker 3: I go back with permission to go poke around in
Speaker 3: the woods or in the bushes, I'm going to try
Speaker 3: to find those, and then I'll go back to my
Speaker 3: photogrammetry and see whether I can see them. And I
Speaker 3: just didn't know what I was looking for.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 1: our sponsors to identify themsel else, and we will return
Speaker 1: shortly with my guest today, doctor ed Barnhart, discussing Rappahannui,
Speaker 1: otherwise known as Easter Island. My guest today is doctor
Speaker 1: Edwin Barnhardt, who will be leading an Earth Ancients Easter
Speaker 1: Island tour March fifteenth to the twenty third. This is
Speaker 1: a chance to see these huge MOI sculptures up close
Speaker 1: and personal, and also visit places that most tours do
Speaker 1: not get a chance to see, simply because we get
Speaker 1: special access. For more information on this tour, go to Earthacients,
Speaker 1: dot Com forward slash tours. Do they have any kind
Speaker 1: of a water delivery system that travels between these dwellings. No.
Speaker 3: I never saw any detection of any kind of like
Speaker 3: pipes or water management.
Speaker 2: I know that.
Speaker 3: Most of their natural fresh water comes from the craters
Speaker 3: of the three volcanoes. Okay, so there's one nearest the town.
Speaker 3: There's the town, and then there's the airport, and then
Speaker 3: there's this hill that is the third crater, and a
Speaker 3: wrong goes right there, and then that crater is full
Speaker 3: of water and to tour reeds.
Speaker 1: So how are they getting water to the dwellings? Are
Speaker 1: they having to trick it in by foot?
Speaker 3: I honestly don't know we have an answer to that.
Speaker 3: I mean I didn't take a pretty deep dive into things.
Speaker 3: That guy that was that I was just talking about
Speaker 3: that found the houses, I mean he was he was smart.
Speaker 3: If he and he was right at the base of
Speaker 3: that most water filled crater. If he didn't find any
Speaker 3: evidence of aqueduct systems, heck I don't. I don't think
Speaker 3: they exist. So then that would leave us with bucket
Speaker 3: loads or something. You know, it rains there fairly regularly,
Speaker 3: it's not you know, a desert at all, so there'd
Speaker 3: also be you know, at the population of the island,
Speaker 3: it would be within their capacity to create you know,
Speaker 3: water catchments where rain water would supply at least most
Speaker 3: of what they needed. They really weren't big farmers, so
Speaker 3: they didn't need water for farming. Nor were they big builders,
Speaker 3: so they really didn't need water for building.
Speaker 1: So what was the guest guests on their food? Was
Speaker 1: it fish? Sea life?
Speaker 3: Definitely, marine resources were the primary thing, but they also
Speaker 3: grew tarot, which is all over Oceany. That's what was
Speaker 3: in those manavies. And then at some point the sweet
Speaker 3: potatoes introduced, which was one of the things that all
Speaker 3: the way back from thor hyer Doll he's been saying,
Speaker 3: these people have contact with people in South America, How
Speaker 3: in the heck else did they get a sweet potato?
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting some of the last boats to
Speaker 3: visit European intrusions point out that they have these these
Speaker 3: crops that at that point and they're probably influenced at
Speaker 3: that point. It's like, you know, we're into a century
Speaker 3: of occasional contact at that point, but they're taught. They
Speaker 3: talk about farm plots they'd have that had kind of
Speaker 3: a radial pattern that there would be a building in
Speaker 3: the middle. And instead of like we always think of
Speaker 3: crops as this kind of like you know, checkerboard thing,
Speaker 3: theirs were kind of a radial pattern out of a
Speaker 3: center point. But they that account said that they were
Speaker 3: farming multiple things by the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, I've had a couple of people mentioned to
Speaker 1: me that there are various hot spots on Rapanui, and
Speaker 1: these hot spots are close to the Moi and the
Speaker 1: and they're talking about tolluric energy or gravitational anomalies where
Speaker 1: the compass would go a little crazy. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with any of that kind of discovery, almost like we
Speaker 1: see in the OMEC sites with some of these sculptures
Speaker 1: could be carved from meteorites or somehow they're they're charging.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, the compass tricks that I've experienced personally usually
Speaker 3: have something to do with an iron source nearby, and
Speaker 3: I don't think there's any iron on the island, but
Speaker 3: I could be wrong about that. It's such a tiny place,
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's the reason it exists at all
Speaker 3: is that it's the tippy top of a six thousand
Speaker 3: foot volcano coming from the bottom.
Speaker 2: Of the ocean.
Speaker 3: So I mean it's it's geology is very limited. It's
Speaker 3: the tippy top of a volcanic mountain. So I don't
Speaker 3: know much about that. But I have not read that
Speaker 3: there was any kind of weird anomalies there. But if
Speaker 3: you know, if you've got the equipment, why don't we
Speaker 3: go stand in front of a couple of.
Speaker 2: Mo i and find out.
Speaker 1: I'll bring a little meter with me.
Speaker 2: How big is that? How big are those meters?
Speaker 1: Can you handheld? Now it's a handheld version.
Speaker 3: Sweet, Let's go stand in front of some mom finding
Speaker 3: out for ourselves.
Speaker 1: As you study the Oh before we move on to this. Uh,
Speaker 1: you surveyed a third of it. What part of the
Speaker 1: island were you at? Were you you said you? Are
Speaker 1: you close to the airport that third.
Speaker 2: Or were you yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like from about where the airport is
Speaker 3: out to Tonga, Riki and Rono Iraku. So I got
Speaker 3: the crater where all of them are built. I got
Speaker 3: a bunch of the hinterland next to it and to
Speaker 3: the west of it. I didn't get anything of the town.
Speaker 3: I didn't get anything of the biggest of the three volcanoes.
Speaker 3: I didn't get anything in a Wrongo. It was a
Speaker 3: bit of a weird uh negotiation. The chief archaeologist was
Speaker 3: both friendly and intimidating at the same time, and he
Speaker 3: he during our time there, he'd say like, well, listen,
Speaker 3: I want you to survey mostly in this area because
Speaker 3: I want to know whether people are spatting in their area.
Speaker 2: And I need, you know, up to date.
Speaker 3: Aerial photography to try to catch people that are living
Speaker 3: out there in the national park.
Speaker 2: And I really wanted to.
Speaker 3: Map the other side of the largest of the three
Speaker 3: volcanoes because I think that's where the head clan lived
Speaker 3: and nobody ever goes out there, because it's a pain
Speaker 3: in the ass. That's why I'm walking us out there.
Speaker 3: You might have seen it in our itinerary. I hated
Speaker 3: writing it myself, like a six mile walk there in
Speaker 3: vow that Jesus Christy, I want to see that. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't have to come, you could just lounge with it.
Speaker 3: I definitely want to go. I just had to have
Speaker 3: but I want to walk out there. But I didn't
Speaker 3: get to go where I was most interested in because
Speaker 3: I did have a boss that week.
Speaker 1: So they haven't done light art scan of the island right.
Speaker 3: Oh, there have been bits and chunks, but not a
Speaker 3: not a complete light ar scan. In fact, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm a big fan of light ar two and
Speaker 3: the professional surveyors that brought the equipment to come with me,
Speaker 3: they were like, look, I know everybody loves light ar,
Speaker 3: but this is not a case that needs light ar.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, there's no trees. Photogramma tree does
Speaker 3: just as good a job. I'm still like, when we
Speaker 3: go back, can we do light ar this time, Jeff.
Speaker 3: It's much cheaper now though, isn't it. I mean it
Speaker 3: used to be. The technology has changed since you know,
Speaker 3: our stuff was in twenty nineteen, so even in this
Speaker 3: just five year period. I actually was just with Jeff
Speaker 3: in Peru and he was like, yeah, yeah, and I'll
Speaker 3: bring the light our stuff this time. Oh wow, okay,
Speaker 3: so that'll be fantastic. Well, I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 3: a bit of the cart for the horse. First thing
Speaker 3: I need to do is go over there personally and
Speaker 3: make a friend in the time where they're on the
Speaker 3: island of whoever the chief archaeologist is. I have a
Speaker 3: task of becoming his friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to see a scan just the subtleties
Speaker 1: of whatever foundations are there, or.
Speaker 3: I mean, our light ar thing is great, and I'm
Speaker 3: app hundreds and hundreds of features that have never been recorded,
Speaker 3: or at least properly recorded. That Chilean map has this
Speaker 3: weird thing where it's like it's in all it was
Speaker 3: made in like the seventies or something, so it's a
Speaker 3: black and white thing with you know, there are squares
Speaker 3: and there are triangles, and there are circles, and you know,
Speaker 3: squares that are larger mean one to five sites, and
Speaker 3: ones that are small mean one site. And I don't
Speaker 3: know whether he's talking about an obsidian thing or a building.
Speaker 3: Now I've made one that actually shows both in color
Speaker 3: and shape, which buildings are which. And I didn't I
Speaker 3: didn't put a shovel in the ground, so I'm not
Speaker 3: talking about stone thing stone artifacts. I'm just talking about buildings,
Speaker 3: and I I've made the first ever map that actually
Speaker 3: shows us where the stuff in the hinterland is. I'm
Speaker 3: just slightly embarrassed that I didn't find the houses. I
Speaker 3: had to go back there and look, Carter.
Speaker 1: But you didn't publish that survey, did you.
Speaker 3: I never did because I promised Malhanua that I would
Speaker 3: not do anything okay without their permission. And then life
Speaker 3: went on and all those guys are are gone. Now
Speaker 3: I've got it. Now I've got promises to institution that
Speaker 3: I've never met. It's a it's a weird situation that
Speaker 3: I'm I'm working on tour now.
Speaker 1: I want to mention that Ed's going to be leading
Speaker 1: the Earth Ancients tour. It's going to be March fifteenth
Speaker 1: to the twenty third. We're just about full. Ed and
Speaker 1: his programs are maximum about twenty people, and I think
Speaker 1: we're just about I think we're sixteen or seventeen, I
Speaker 1: can't remember. If you're interested in joining us, go to
Speaker 1: Earth Ancients dot com ord slash Tours. The entire itinerary
Speaker 1: is there. We meet in Santiago, Chili and then have
Speaker 1: a dinner, we kind of talk a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then we all get on one plane and we fly
Speaker 1: to Rape Easter Island for a one week tour. So
Speaker 1: I'm actually looking forward to it, and.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you are too, well, I hope, so,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I mean, it's an amazing place. You know
Speaker 3: what will surprise you. There's so many things surprising, but
Speaker 3: one thing is that the Rapanui. It's a Chilean influence,
Speaker 3: but they're super foodies. All of their restaurants are excellent,
Speaker 3: even places that look like a greasy spoon just to
Speaker 3: serve you these beautiful looking plates. And they really take
Speaker 3: great care in their food. I used to try to
Speaker 3: ask them to make us like a picnic box lunch
Speaker 3: so we could spend more time out with the moi,
Speaker 3: and they'd be like, no, that is uncivilized.
Speaker 2: You will come back and have a reasonable meal.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Okay did they grow their own produce
Speaker 1: or do they bring it in from Chili?
Speaker 3: You know, the COVID made them all of a sudden
Speaker 3: learn how to farm in a big hurry. And since
Speaker 3: the time of COVID, they've gotten these magnificent farms that
Speaker 3: they used to never have. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: local I mean literally farmed table places of all places
Speaker 3: Easter Island.
Speaker 1: Wow. So I guess they have their animal husbandry too.
Speaker 1: They have their cows and their chickens and their pork
Speaker 1: for the meals as well.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep they do.
Speaker 3: And I don't think I've seen many cows. Those may
Speaker 3: be imported. That's probably Chili's famous for their beef. But
Speaker 3: the other thing funny thing they have is like I
Speaker 3: think it's like two thousand wild horses. During the time
Speaker 3: when it was a sheep farm for seventy eight years,
Speaker 3: the horses just escaped and now they're these like like
Speaker 3: herds of wild horses just running across the bases of
Speaker 3: the volcano. It's surreal, wow, amazing. As we can include
Speaker 3: our interview at.
Speaker 1: What would you say the hope is for discovery on Repnui?
Speaker 1: Is there any connection with any other Polynesian islands? Is
Speaker 1: there anything? I mean we're talking. We've talked about the
Speaker 1: writing that would be great to break the code, great
Speaker 1: break the uh, the hieroglyphs, the glyphs that they have
Speaker 1: composed and figured out what they were trying to say.
Speaker 1: But is there anything that you would like to understand
Speaker 1: a little better about the island that is a complete ministry?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Where the hell are the houses?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Other than that, which is my current mystery, like that,
Speaker 3: that's that was not on my list before I showed
Speaker 3: up there. You know, they are in a continuum of
Speaker 3: people from Polynesia. They're not you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 3: not a mystery in that regard the the ahou that
Speaker 3: the moai are on those particular platforms do have a
Speaker 3: strong correlation to platforms that are called marae in other islands,
Speaker 3: and and they have much the same function too. They
Speaker 3: are places where the ancestors are honored. So that's that's
Speaker 3: certainly something we understand. Let's see, you know one that's
Speaker 3: that that really tickles me. Maybe I'm morbid in that
Speaker 3: is uh, you know what exactly is the nature of
Speaker 3: their cannibalism what they were cannibals, and they're actually the
Speaker 3: the the revenue we today are kind of proud of it.
Speaker 3: They they don't deny it at all. They say, yeah,
Speaker 3: we ate each other when things went crazy. We ate
Speaker 3: each other all the time. And sometimes we just capture
Speaker 3: somebody and need him just to disrespect him and his ancestors.
Speaker 3: They've got a funny sense of humor. One of them
Speaker 3: that I became friends with on the island said, we're
Speaker 3: looking forward to coming you coming back. You should bring
Speaker 3: your family and we'll have a barbecue. We like, we
Speaker 3: had a moment that was like, you know, uncomfortable, and
Speaker 3: then he was like, Aha, no, I won't teach you children.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: By the way, have you found or are there any
Speaker 1: cemeteries or tombs where we get a sense of some
Speaker 1: of the burials.
Speaker 2: No, that's a that's an interesting one too.
Speaker 3: The traditional way of burying in Polynesia is to bring
Speaker 3: the body out to sea. But there was a time
Speaker 3: period where they they went to war on each other
Speaker 3: and they hid in these little crevices and caves, and
Speaker 3: then we do find bodies in those after the after
Speaker 3: the island was disnuted of all of its trees and
Speaker 3: this war broke out there are they were kind of
Speaker 3: forced to have a tradition of I guess burial, though
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody got buried. I think they got
Speaker 3: stashed in the back of caves.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say they did cremation,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't sound like something they were into at all.
Speaker 3: Well, you know that that would have been logical to me.
Speaker 3: There was a terrible moment where the epidemic diseases were
Speaker 3: hitting them so bad where one report said the bodies
Speaker 3: were just piling up and people just couldn't deal with them.
Speaker 3: There was nothing they didn't really have a tradition or
Speaker 3: methodology how to deal with that much death that quickly,
Speaker 3: so they just kind of just piled them up in
Speaker 3: their clan villages.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's funny. I would think that there
Speaker 1: would be at least the tomb of a king or
Speaker 1: a queen or somebody important in the early phases, But
Speaker 1: I guess not right, not so far.
Speaker 3: In fact, there's no, there's nothing in terms of I mean,
Speaker 3: they talk about the Ahu's being depth the place where
Speaker 3: the chiefs and the major people's bodies were interred, and
Speaker 3: there are definitely some crypts there. Inside those we don't
Speaker 3: get to see any of those. We might see like
Speaker 3: recreations of them in the museum if they've done that,
Speaker 3: But even those are contested, Like are those the bones
Speaker 3: of people that were that were being honored as chiefs
Speaker 3: or was it something else. I had one old hand
Speaker 3: archaeologist on the site on the island say, look the
Speaker 3: actual evidence that this one we dug up has a
Speaker 3: bunch of burning and there's banana leaves in there. This
Speaker 3: was not an honored burial. This was a barbecue.
Speaker 1: God knows if they were cooking.
Speaker 2: That was from the mouth of a guy who's spent
Speaker 2: his whole life on the island.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's amazing. Ed is always a pleasure
Speaker 1: having you on the program. Give us a heads up,
Speaker 1: give us your website and what you're up to.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you very much for the opportunity. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a fellow podcaster. I love pointing people to my
Speaker 3: hard to pronounce when you read it out name Rchao Ed,
Speaker 3: so it's like the front of the word archaeology and
Speaker 3: then just Ed. I'm having a lot of fun making
Speaker 3: that podcast. I'm the director of Maya Exploration Center and
Speaker 3: we have tours all over the world. You and Iyes
Speaker 3: might be the coolest one we do in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: but you know, we've got other things we'd love to
Speaker 3: have people come and see for themselves. You know, there's
Speaker 3: so many mysteries we talk about on your show, but
Speaker 3: you know there's no substitute for seeing it with your
Speaker 3: own eyes.
Speaker 1: Yes, give us the website for the for the Maya
Speaker 1: Exploration Group.
Speaker 3: Maya Exploration dot org. Okay RG at the end, we're
Speaker 3: a nonprofit right Yeah, And I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: Ed does some amazing tours. He's in Mexico quite a bit.
Speaker 1: He's actually been in Cambodia and seeing some of the
Speaker 1: ancient sites there. So if you're interested in world travel,
Speaker 1: I can tell you right off the bat he's a
Speaker 1: great one for leading tours.
Speaker 2: So thanks.
Speaker 3: I Actually I have my you know, my protege. Now,
Speaker 3: Luke Caverns is going to go lead a trip for
Speaker 3: me to Cambodia. April sixteenth, I think is the date,
Speaker 3: because no, it's twenty sixth, because that's the time of
Speaker 3: the other Zenith that I have never recorded. I'm getting
Speaker 3: Luke involved in my studies, so he's I have conscripted
Speaker 3: him to be an archaeo astronomer in Cambodia and he's
Speaker 3: going to big bring a big group to see it
Speaker 3: with him for the first time.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you're not going to that You're not going
Speaker 1: to that one.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not going to that one.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I've been running like a like a rat on wheel
Speaker 3: around the world for thirty years.
Speaker 2: I'm in chill. I'm taking a few trips.
Speaker 3: You get you get one of my only trips I'm
Speaker 3: doing leading personally in twenty twenty five. But you know,
Speaker 3: I'm of the age where am I going to be
Speaker 3: a one off or am I going to create a
Speaker 3: team that continues this sort of thing for the next generation.
Speaker 2: And so you know right now that.
Speaker 3: My team leads are Luke Caverns and Zach Zach Lindsay,
Speaker 3: who's in Yucatan. You're going to get to meet him.
Speaker 3: He's gonna do uh your group next month?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Excellent?
Speaker 1: Excellent?
Speaker 2: I got I gotta build a team or I'm just
Speaker 2: a flash in the pan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Here, that's a lot of travel to It puts a
Speaker 1: lot of strain on your bod. So, hey, fantastic, ed,
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure and continue success. We're gonna love seeing
Speaker 1: you in this Ancient Apocalypse series, and I think that'll
Speaker 1: be the beginning of even a greater opportunity. So and
Speaker 1: those of you listening, I'm twisting as armed to write
Speaker 1: a book or two, so we'll see if he can
Speaker 1: spit something out.
Speaker 2: I truly appreciate your support and inspiration. Cliff.
Speaker 1: All right, cheers, buddy, Thanks badios. Always good to have
Speaker 1: on the program. He's a wealth of knowledge and he's
Speaker 1: always like doing new research on the places he likes.
Speaker 1: I didn't mention this, but we are down to just
Speaker 1: a handful of spaces left for this Repainnui Easter Island
Speaker 1: tour next March twenty twenty five. If you're really interested
Speaker 1: in going, I wouldn't wait, thinking that you could probably
Speaker 1: pull together to join us, at least register with the
Speaker 1: deposit that you can get back. I mean, I can
Speaker 1: count on one hand the spaces we have left, and
Speaker 1: I would say probably by the time the week's over
Speaker 1: will be full. So if you have any questions, email
Speaker 1: me at Earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com
Speaker 1: and I'll get back to you pretty quick. But as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, this was highlighted on a couple of different tours,
Speaker 1: and I didn't suspect that it would be reacted to
Speaker 1: in the manner it was with quick sign ups. But
Speaker 1: I think honestly, we've only got a few spaces left,
Speaker 1: and we keep our tours very small, no more than
Speaker 1: twenty people, and that's because we want great access. We
Speaker 1: want an intimate group that we can shuttle around and
Speaker 1: also keep in one location so we have the best
Speaker 1: access to the local authorities, the local archaeologists, and I
Speaker 1: like to role like that. I wasn't sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had grouped up to about forty five, almost fifty
Speaker 1: people and it works out. But for some reason twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, Max is very fluid and it works great
Speaker 1: and people to connect and it's a family. We become
Speaker 1: a family. So again it's going to be Easter Island
Speaker 1: March fifteenth to the twenty third, and we all meet
Speaker 1: in Santiago, Chile. We have a nice dinner, we kind
Speaker 1: of connect, and then we get on a plane and
Speaker 1: we fly. I think it's four hours to Easter Island.
Speaker 1: So come out and join us if you're interested. We
Speaker 1: have a few spots left on our Sacred Temples of Mexico.
Speaker 1: That's going to be November eighth through the seventeenth. If
Speaker 1: you have any interest in that. That's a one week
Speaker 1: or two that is really archaeology. Those are archaeological parks.
Speaker 1: If you haven't been to a park, these are areas
Speaker 1: that have been courting off just for the general public.
Speaker 1: And a couple of places will go beyond some of
Speaker 1: the court and off areas because we know, or I know,
Speaker 1: and so does my team know, that there's other sites
Speaker 1: to see. So this is a great tour. I've been
Speaker 1: doing it for twenty years and we're going to have
Speaker 1: an archaeologist discuss some of the excavations that have been happening.
Speaker 1: And it's fun, it's relaxing, and it's quite spectacular when
Speaker 1: you see this archaeology, these buildings and pyramids. I'm close
Speaker 1: and personal. For more information on that tour again, it's
Speaker 1: the November eight through the seventeenth. Go to Earthancients dot com,
Speaker 1: forward slash Tours t O U R s and check
Speaker 1: it out. And I want to mention we are beginning
Speaker 1: to formulate our twenty twenty five schedule. We will not
Speaker 1: be visiting Egypt, but we will be visiting Turkey in
Speaker 1: the late spring early summer and then so we can
Speaker 1: do Easter Island. We do Turkey around June July, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to be doing a Day of the
Speaker 1: Dead in Guatemala at Tkal, one of the largest Mayan
Speaker 1: cities in the world, and we will be there and
Speaker 1: have a chance to sit on top of this one
Speaker 1: very very old pyramid that I suspect is probably around
Speaker 1: ten thousand years or older, that is generating energy that
Speaker 1: is tactile. You can actually feel it, you can we
Speaker 1: can sit up there as the morning sun rises and
Speaker 1: connect with our ancestors, our dearly departed relatives, friends and
Speaker 1: loved ones in a Day of the Dead tour that's
Speaker 1: gonna be in October twenty twenty five. So we're only
Speaker 1: gonna do three and we're not gonna we're gonna leave
Speaker 1: Egypt out just because they're We're just gonna skip a year.
Speaker 1: So again, for more information on all of our tours,
Speaker 1: Earth Ancients dot com, forward slash tours, questions, concerns, send
Speaker 1: me an email, Send it to Earth Ancients for you
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. All right, that's it for this program.
Speaker 1: I want I think my guest today at Barnhard coming
Speaker 1: to is from Colorado in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: As always, the team of Gail Tour, Mark Foster in London,
Speaker 1: and everyone who makes this thing happen. Thank you. All right,
Speaker 1: take care and be well and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you next time.