EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,198 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Yeehaw, and we're up. How are you, Dan? Great to see you.
- NANarrator
Great to see you, too, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, listen, man. I know I've talked to you since, uh, I read Coyote America, but Goddamn, that's a good book. It's such a good book, so I'm very excited about this. I'm sure this is gonna be awesome too, Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. I've told so many people about coyotes because of you, and I seem so smart.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- NANarrator
Well, I appreciate that, then.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's such a crazy animal. You know, one of the things that's interesting about coyotes in, uh, our area is they don't howl. I think they've learned.
- NANarrator
Oh, yeah. That's, uh, that, that's happening in LA too. They've learned not to howl.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- NANarrator
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- NANarrator
Yeah. Attracts attention to them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I used to hear it a lot where I lived. I lived in Ventura County, and we had real problems with them. Like, they killed all my chickens. It was like, they were everywhere.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But also, fucking cool.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? I, uh, it's such a conflicted thing 'cause I hated-
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... them 'cause they killed my chickens. And, um, I, but, and they also honey-potted my dog into killing my chickens. Did I tell you that story?
- NANarrator
No, you didn't tell me that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, boy. Listen to this. This is how smart these motherfuckers are. I had this dog, I- i- rest in peace. His name was Johnny Cash. He was the best dog. I'll get sad. (sniffs) (exhales) But, uh, let me catch my breath here 'cause I really loved that dog.
- NANarrator
No, I understand this. I just lost a dog last May.
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales) Uh, this dog was just, he was just such a sweetheart, but he was a big dog. He was a Mastiff, a Regency Mastiff. His father was actually on Fear Factor, and his father was this, we, we put people in these big bite suits and they had to run, and we did it with Belgian Malinois. And the problem was, for like, really super athletic l- guys, like, we had some, like, uh, real high-end athletes on the show. Uh, occasionally. We'd got, like, amateur football players. Guys who were just stacked and strong as hell. And a Malinois, no matter what, it's still only 60, 70 pounds. And so, we brought in these Regency Mastiffs 'cause they wanted to figure out a dog that could do bite work, but was way stronger. And this dog was like, a buck 60 and built like a brick shithouse.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
His dad, my dog's dad, was actually in the movie, The Hulk. If you ever saw the movie, The Hulk, with Eric Bana.
- NANarrator
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
When they turned the dogs into Hulk dogs. That was actually-
- NANarrator
That was actually- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... that dog. So my friend, Joe, shout out to Joe, who raised these dogs. He raised them for intelligence and temperament, and he wouldn't let any dog breed that had any aggression towards other dogs or any aggression towards people. So, they were the best dogs. And so this dog was hanging out with all these other dogs that were doing bite work and everything, and he was just so chill. Just hanging out. I'd go, "How is this dog so chill and just like..." He goes, "He's just fucking smart." He's smart, and he's well-raised and well-trained and loved. So anyway, I had his son. (sniffs) And, uh, he was the fucking best. But he was in the yard during the day, w- um, and a coyote would come by the fence. And the fence was six feet high, like a wrought iron fence. He couldn't get over this fence. He didn't even try to get over the fence. It was a nice big yard. But the coyotes could get over that fence like it didn't even exist. It was wild to watch. I watched one with a chicken in his mouth jump and put his feet at the top of that fence and over like, like-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Mm-hmm. …
- DFDan Flores
that have been taken out by trapping or poisoning or whatever, it's possible to get more of the pups up to adulthood because there are more food resources. So it's kind of a loop that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DFDan Flores
... functions like that. The coyotes are certainly playing a role, uh, in it, uh, but of course, our attempts to take them out are producing this feedback that often causes them to have larger litters, to be more successful in raising their, their pups, and they will respond by rising to the level of the carrying capacity of the landscape in any case.
- JRJoe Rogan
ju- it's just amazing, and it's amazing how well they adapt to Los Angeles.
- DFDan Flores
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They're everywhere.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I remember the first time I saw one, it was 1994, and I was, uh... They had these, uh, pre-furnished apartments that I... I got one of those when I first moved to LA. It's the Oakwood Apartments, and, uh, it was in Burbank. I mean, you're in the middle of everything, sort of The Tonight Show films. I'm driving down the street, and I see these two little wolves.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I was like, "What the fuck is that?"
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I'm like, "Oh my God, it's coyotes."
- DFDan Flores
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause I had heard, but I was like, "What?"
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You see coyotes, like, how often? You know, how often?
- DFDan Flores
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, right there, right away.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, I mean, you know, Walt Disney, uh, was doing films about coyotes in the Hollywood Hills in the early 1960s.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- DFDan Flores
But coyotes had been there all along. I mean, that was, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
That was the territory.
- DFDan Flores
... they were there when LA was founded-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DFDan Flores
... and they basically never left. I mean, there are records back in the '20s and '30s of, you know, the local authorities sending people out to, uh, to try to take out coyotes way back 100 years ago. So they've always been there.
- JRJoe Rogan
When I would, uh, have talks with friends, you know, that lived there that, that were upset about coyotes, I'd say, "But you know what's great? When was the last time you saw a rat?"
- DFDan Flores
(laughs) That's right. No kidding.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, like, LA, the Hills, like where I used to live in Ventura County, should be littered with rats. They should be everywhere. There's garbage cans everywhere. Where's all the rats?
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're all getting jacked by coyotes and owls.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Raven will probably start…
- DFDan Flores
it. Some birds are not so fast on the uptake.
- JRJoe Rogan
Raven will probably start shitting on it.
- DFDan Flores
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
On purpose. (laughs)
- DFDan Flores
Yeah. I actually have a, a kind of a, a wild pet raven at the moment. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- DFDan Flores
Yeah. And have had since I, since I lost my dog, and I've just gotten a new dog. I just got a new puppy here recently. Uh, but...I, uh, had lost my dog. He was sort of my constant companion, uh, and, um ... And I realized that, I mean, I spend a lot of time. I've, uh, raised with animals from a little, being a little kid. Um, in fact, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you a story in a minute, sort of how this Wild and the World book came to be. It has r- uh, came out of the first animal companion I ever, ever had and what happened to it. But, um, th- this particular raven started a- hanging around where, I mean, I ... In New Mexico in the Southwest, we have a lot of rats and mice. Uh, and they'll, of course, what rats and mice do, which is the reason the East Coast cities have such a problem with rats, is that they're drawn to human inhabitations because we produce excess stuff for them to get into, food in particular. So, commonly I'll have a, uh, a rat zapper or two out, and every two or three days, I'll catch a mouse or a, or a rat. And so, I had this particular spot where I was taking these rats and mice out and, and dropping them, and I noticed that a raven started flying up on a nearby tree and waiting for me to do this. And so, after this happened four or five times, and I began to look at this raven, and I thought, "The way that raven is lighting on the same spot, this is the same raven. Keeps coming back to this exact branch." So, I started experimenting with what happens if I drop the rat out and just back up 10 feet. The raven would wait a minute or so and then fly down and pick up the rat. So, then I started closing the distance into five feet, and then three feet. This raven, over time, came to realize I was no threat, I was providing a free meal. And so, since that time, that started happening about six months ago. Since that time, I've got this raven that basically, when my new puppy and I go out for walks in the canyon below the house, uh, outside Santa Fe, this raven actually flies along with us, lighting from one tree to another-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
... waiting for me, hoping that I'm going to provide him with some sort of free meal. And what I've taken to doing when the dog is not paying attention or asleep and I don't have a mouse to give him, is I'll pull four or five kibbles of dog food out, and I can put those things anywhere, and that raven will fly down and pick 'em up-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
... and walk around and talk to me and make these, these sounds that I actually haven't quite figured out. I haven't understood. I'm not as smart as wolves were about human language. I haven't figured out raven language yet. But this raven talks to me. And so we have conversations. Uh, I have no idea what he's saying, but he's very vocal and he's very expressive.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, that was ... That's amazing story. And, uh, th- that was one of John Lilly's things that he was working on with dolphins. And he was trying to use LSD to better communicate with dolphins, and he used sensory deprivation tanks and, you know, it's ... His idea was there's gotta be some way to crack that code and to at least intuitively understand what these things are saying. And they even tried to get dolphins to speak human language.
- DFDan Flores
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause they could apparently understand what we were saying-
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but we couldn't understand what they were saying.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, they were trying to get dolphin, but they just don't have lips. They don't have a tongue like ours. Just, like, they can't make the same noises. Their noises are so different, but ...
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
All those people that are studying orcas and dolphins, they've determined that there's dialects, that they sound different in different areas, but they have no idea what they're saying. No idea, which is amazing.
- DFDan Flores
No, but they, they are, uh, communicating with one another.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DFDan Flores
They can't communicate with us. And the conclusion we draw from that, of course, is that other animals, other creatures in the world are not as intelligent as we are. But the truth is, uh, all the recent science about animal culture and about animal consciousness is indicating something that I think we sort of, uh, as early humans living amongst wild animals in Africa and Europe and Asia and ultimately in the Americas understood, is that these are creatures that share with us all the traits that we tend to think make us distinctively human. We think that the ability to talk, the ability to transmit culture is what makes us exceptional among all other creatures. And yet, what we're discovering almost day by day, uh, from the scientific literature that's been focused on these things, is that animals, just like us, have culture. As Charles Darwin said, "It's just a matter of degree, not kind." They have all the same attributes and all the same abilities. They just don't have things like eight billion other members of their species to be thinking up ideas and transmit to one another around the world-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DFDan Flores
... through things like the internet or, or Twitter or, 5,000 years ago, written languages. I mean, what we've done is we've been able to amplify all those abilities by how many of us there are and our ability to communicate with one another. But so many other creatures ... I mean, there was a, a declaration on consciousness issued by a, a bunch of, uh, of, uh, biologists, uh, in Europe in 2012 that argued that the higher species in particular, some of the ones that we've been talking about here, share the same level of cultural, uh, transmissibility, of the ability to communicate with one another, uh, the ability to...... plot out strategies for new problems that they confront, just like the, the ravens we were talking about, or about the rat who used a tool to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- DFDan Flores
... to set off that trap. So all these kinds of things that we've thought for so long make us exceptional in the world, and this comes out of a long Western European tradition of thinking that we're exceptional, that we're the only creatures made in the image of God, the only ones with souls and all that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- DFDan Flores
What we're discovering, of course, is that ancient people understood (laughs) that humans were part of the mix. Charles Darwin gave us scientific evidence that this was true, and the more we study other creatures, the more we realize that all these animals that we've set aside as just things that we regard as expendable, as useful as commodities, domesticated possibilities, they actually have many of the same capabilities we do.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so ... I, I mean, it makes sense if you think about ravens. If y- it makes sense if you think about their ability to use tools and their ability to displace water. They're obviously thinking, and so if they can make noises, of course they would, uh, associate those noises with different things.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
in the elk hunting world, has developed these amazing elk calls to mimic them, and he, he knows how to, like, get them upset. He knows how to challenge them. Like, it's really interesting when you see a, a master caller at work 'cause the, the elk hunting that I've done, most of it has been ambush, like sneak up on them.
- DFDan Flores
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, I, I like that. I like this, you know, the stalking and, you know, and trying to, uh, trying to get close and playing the wind. But there's a lot of guys that... they're so good at getting the elk pissed off that the elk would, against their better judgment, will come, "What the fuck is going on over there?" And whack.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they get hit.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, well, uh, they, they're issuing a challenge, you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DFDan Flores
And, uh, and, uh, at the time when elk are bugling, I mean, what they're bugling for are cows.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DFDan Flores
And so, yeah, it's, uh, i- if they sensed there's a challenge from another bull, then they're coming to, to vie for access to the females, and that's how they get lured in.
- JRJoe Rogan
They also learn, too. So when there's heavy pressure areas, they learn that a lot of these calls are bullshit, and so they learn to shut up. And so in a heavily pressured elk area, sometimes there's-
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... elk around you, you don't even know where they are because you don't hear anything. One of the best ways to locate elk, in the morning, you, you listen and you hear bugles.
- DFDan Flores
Well, I, I have not hunted elk. Uh, and I mean, I, you know, I grew up in Louisiana, uh, rural kid growing up in a, in the South. Um, and, uh, went to high school... In fact, I went to high school with the Duck Dynasty guys.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DFDan Flores
I, I played football with the Duck Dynasty guys.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's awesome.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, the, the, uh, older guy, uh, Phil, uh, was the, uh, quarterback of the high school football team, and, uh, there was one guy in between us, a guy named Johnny Prudhomme was the next quarterback after Phil, but I succeeded Johnny Prudhomme as the quarterback of the high school team. So... And I even wore Phil's number, number 10, in high school.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
And I played the, the younger, uh, Robertson, Si. Uh, he and I played when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. We played in the backfield. Uh, or I was a sophomore, he was a junior. We played in the backfield football team. So I went to high school with those kind of guys and grew up in that kind of world and, you know, and hunted and fished. And I mean, but our paths, I guess, kind of separated, uh, at one point. They stayed in Louisiana. Uh, Si went off to Vietnam and returned, and, and, uh, what I did was I went off to college, uh, and other places and ended up, uh, you know, getting a PhD and getting university jobs and going to live in places like Montana. So our worlds kind of diverged over time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you still keep in touch with those guys?
- DFDan Flores
No, I don't... I haven't kept in touch with them. Uh, and I don't know if they're... You know, I'm certainly aware of them 'cause I've watched their, their show some, but, uh, I don't know if they're, uh, aware of anything that I've done. I haven't tried to get in touch with them or anything, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
I loved the success of that show because I knew that there was people... 'Cause, you know, I did standup comedy.... for, you know, 30 years, so I was always on the road. I was always traveling to the South, I was traveling to the North. We tri- I traveled all over the country telling jokes. And you get a way better sense of what the country's actually like than if you only live in these cultural elite cities like Los Angeles. And in Los Angeles, the idea that a show about a bunch of fucking duck hunters who have a dynasty on, from duck calls-
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... how is that gonna be popular?
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then it was huge.
- DFDan Flores
It was huge.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was gigantic, and people loved it.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Wow. …
- DFDan Flores
spreads from the Pacific to the Atlantic as a, as a consistent culture of people, uh, and I title this particular chapter in the book Clovisia the Beautiful, because they establish a world that lasts longer than the United States has lasted so far. They're America the Beautiful, uh, Clovisia the Beautiful lasts well over 300 years.And they're probably using spears, but they have come up with a great, uh, uh, new technology which is the fluted point. They figured out a way, and fluted points aren't found in earlier times, even in Siberia, so this was a purely American invention. They figured out a way to take flint points and flute the base on either side so that you can solidly, uh, and very securely attach a spear to them, and they'll remain in place without flipping off or breaking off. So the fluted point is one of their, their great, uh, technological inventions. But the other thing that they bring to the game, Joe, is (laughs) they come out of a tradition of at least 40,000 generations of hunting big animals. I mean, they know how to do this at literally a professional level. They are extremely good at it. I mean, one of the stories I tell in, in, uh, this early chapter, Clovisia The Beautiful, which is the second chapter of the book, is of an episode that takes place in southern Arizona, what's now southern Arizona, about 13,000 years ago when a group of Clovis hunters surround, um, a herd of mammoths. And in this herd is a bull, a herd bull, a herd cow, and 13 calves and adolescents. There are three archaeological sites associated with this particular episode. In one site, the most westerly, all 13 calves and adolescents, archaeologists found dead in one spot, each with a single Clovis point in its body.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
East of there in two different locations, the herd bull was found. He had run about three or four miles. He had two Clovis points in him, and he finally bled out and died. But they found the cow about eight miles away. She had eight Clovis points in her before she died, indicating to the archaeologists who've studied these sites that the cow, in classic elephant fashion, had fought to defend those calves and those adolescents.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DFDan Flores
She had put up a huge fight to try to defend them, and ultimately, she hadn't been successful. They had all been killed. She runs away and finally dies with eight Clovis points in her.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
But that's, uh, one episode out of, I mean, we have no idea how many. There are something like 78 Clovis sites, uh, around North America. Um, I mean, we don't actually know when the transition, to get to your question, happened to at-adults, but when the Clovis period is over, it's basically when the mammoths are done. I mean, these people seem to have been fairly specialized as, as big game hunters. I mean, they killed other animals, but they really went after mammoths a lot. But they were succeeded by a group known as the Folsom people, and the Folsom people used at-adults. I mean, I open the book with the discovery of the f- the first Folsom site. It's in Folsom, New Mexico, discovered, uh, in the year 1908.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can we pause this for a second 'cause I have to pee, and this is too-
- DFDan Flores
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... fascinating for me to hold this in.
- DFDan Flores
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
1908, Folsom people.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, we'll come back.
- JRJoe Rogan
We'll be right back.
- DFDan Flores
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
And we're back. So in 1908, they discover Folsom sites?
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, the first Folsom site, and I mean, so, you know, and I don't want to spend too much time on this because this is all of the, basically just the first couple chapters of the, of Wild New World. Uh, the rest of it is about subsequent history down to the present, but, but, the Folsom discovery is really kind of important in, uh, the whole American history story because up until this point, you know, and this is the kind of thing that, you know, the Europeans are really good at, of course. They, uh, they sort of cast dispersions on America because their argument was, you know, America is really marginal to world history. I mean, you guys, we've had, we know that we had people, uh, interacting with cave bears and mammoths and, you know, and we have an ancient history going back to Greece and Rome. And, and you Americans, you kind of just, you know, you don't have much going on at all. And so what the Folsom site did was to give America an ancient history, a history that made us a major part of this world story that I was kind of alluding to when I was describing people finally discovering the Americas as the last grand continents on earth. And what that, what happened with the Folsom story is that there was a, um, there was a flash flood on a river called the Dry Cimarron River in August of 1908, and in the aftermath of that flash flood, this African American cowboy, uh, named Charles McJunkin is out riding fence for one of the local ranchers seeing what he's gonna have to repair, and as he's riding along, his horse suddenly pitches up and its hooves slide in the mud right to the edge of this freshly cut about 30-foot chasm in the slope that he's riding. And when he leans out of his saddle and looks down into this, this cut, what he sees are bones of a gigantic size that he's never seen before. I mean, this is a guy who m-He had been on the buffalo-hunting plains back in the 1870s, so he had seen buffalo butchered. He knew what bones from big animals looked like. But these were giant bones. And so, this guy, McJunkin, started trying to call attention to this site. He never was able to do so and get any archaeologists out, or paleontologists out to look at it. Uh, he dies in 1922, but about four years after his death, uh, this museum curator from Denver, a guy named Jesse Figgins, comes down and brings a crew down. And, and what Figgins is interested in, he's sort of an amateur guy himself, he's just interested in some fancy, big bones for his museum up in Denver. But his crew starts digging into this site and they began uncovering these giant bison. What they're finding is a site of bison antiquus, these giant bison that became extinct about 10,000 years ago, the ones that the Folsom people had particularly specialized in hunting. And as they're excavating this site, in the first summer, they come across, just sort of lying in the debris, a couple of points like they've never seen before, which are three or four inches long and have these thin flutes on either side at the base.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's one right there.
- DFDan Flores
There's, yeah, there's one right there. The Folsom point. So, what Figgins' guys realize is that the hurdle for convincing the world, the scientific hurdle for convincing the world that humans had been present in America, at the time, everybody thought Indians had only been in America for maybe a couple of thousand years before Europeans got here. But the hurdle was finding an extinct animal out of the Pleistocene indicating that it had been killed by human technology while the animal was still alive. And the next summer, I mean, it happened to be a summer when the Smithsonian had just published (laughs) an article by some fancy archaeologist saying, uh, you know, uh, "North America has no antiquity in its history. Indians have only been here for, at most, 2000 years, probably less than that." And within about two months of that article coming out, this crew finds the scapula of one of these bison they're excavating with one of these Clovis points embedded three quarters of the way into the bone. And at that point, they stop digging. They call on all the famous archaeologists in the United States. Uh, a guy named Alfred Kidder was the most famous archaeologist in America at the time, and he comes, takes a look, and proclaims this one of the greatest discoveries in American history. So they don't have radiocarbon dating yet, and nobody knows how old this is. All they know is that that particular bison species has been extinct for quite a while. Figgins says, "This site is 400,000 years old." But when we finally do get radiocarbon dating about two decades later, it looks as if a band of Folsom hunters using atadals, using spear throwers, had killed 32 bison antiquus in what had once been a box canyon on the southern plains 12,450 years ago. And so suddenly, that discovery in the early 20th century, in the 1920s, gives America a kind of an antiquity that it had never had before. And within a decade, we discover the Clovis site, which is out on the Texas-New Mexico border. And the Clovis site is of these elephant hunters who are actually even older than the Folsom people. And this pushes, when they're finally radiocarbon dated, that site pushes, uh, the dates back to the 13,000-year range. So, what these discoveries in the '20s and '30s are finally indicating that contrary to what most Americans of the 20th century think, America's a brand new place, history dates to the time Europeans got here in the 1600s. Uh, you know, Indian people have only been here a couple thousand years. Suddenly, we realize America is this really vastly old place, and that sets up the subsequent story that, I mean, I try to... What I try to do, I mean, I was an English major as an undergraduate, so I'm kind of drawn to narrative storytelling. Uh, telling a lot of stories, and when you write a book with about 66 million years of history, obviously, had a lot of opportunity to tell stories 'cause there are a lot of stories in a span of time like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, when you say that the Clovis points and the Folsom points with the, the fluted, uh, part of it where, so you could attach a stick to it-
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... there's no people in Europe that figured this out?
- DFDan Flores
No, this was a, an American invention. Uh, there-
- JRJoe Rogan
What did they use in Europe?
- DFDan Flores
They were just using, uh, blade points, sometimes with, uh, with the ears at the bottom, so that-
- JRJoe Rogan
The ears?
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, the ears. So you have a, a triangular point and it has two ears coming out, and you attach, you use the ears as a place to attach the rawhide.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so this was metal?
- DFDan Flores
No, not metal.
- JRJoe Rogan
What were they using?
- 1:15:00 – 1:29:24
Wow. …
- DFDan Flores
It's almost as if their tools were their art, and it was their tools kind of represented, uh, this ultimate technology, th- this sublime technology that they would actually create in some form in blades that they never really used to hunt, just to have as ceremonial objects.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
So it's a, I mean, it's a really fascinating story. I mean, we've known about the Clovis people obviously for a long time. We've been trying to figure out, of course, other explanations for what happened to the animals of the Pleistocene because we lost a lot of them during the Pleistocene, and people have proposed all sorts of other theories. But one of the strange things about this story, I mean, I tried to do a book that's based on all the latest science I could find and all the best, uh, people who are doing archaeology and paleontology and genomic science. I mean, that's one of the possibilities these days is we have genomic science that's able to tell us things now that we've never known even over the last 15 or 20 years. And one of the fascinating things about it is that it's almost like climate change. We've tried to come up with every other possible explanation to let ourselves off the hook for climate change, but it almost looks like this is an old attribute of, of human self-interest and human nature. We tend to not want to blame ourselves for very much at all. We tend to look for other excuses for things, and none of the other suggestions about what might have happened, uh, other than humans probably entered a continent with animals that were completely naive about us, and in the time that it took them to smarten up and confront us, we were able to scatter them enough that what we kind of think now is that we may have gotten like populations of mammoths so separated from one another that they couldn't exchange their genes, and they may have succumbed to, I don't know if you've probably heard of what happened to the mammoths on Wrangel Island. There was a group of mammoths out on an island, um, In the, uh, uh, the sea, uh, off the coast of Alaska, that were caught by rising waters in the Bering Sea, and were isolated and survived down to about 4,000 years ago. But even though humans never found them, even though the climate changed, the animals were fine until they finally reached a point where they had a small enough genetic diversity that as they interbred with one another over and over again, mistakes began to build into their genome to the point where they finally became unable to reproduce.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DFDan Flores
And 4,000 years ago, without any other effect being present, they died out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do we have biological remains or skeletal remains of Clovis people and people from that, that time period?
- DFDan Flores
Yeah, we do. There's a, there's a, uh, actually a Clovis burial site in Montana.... of, uh, of two, uh, infants, a young child and an infant. And they were buried with ceremonial Clovis points several inches long, covered in sacred, what we think was sacred red ochre, um, and that particular site in 2014, uh, the local native people in Montana, it's near Bozeman, uh, and the local native people and, uh, and archeologists, um, went out to the Shields River, the nearby Shields River, and after studying, uh, these, these, uh, young skeletons, um, they reburied them in the Shields River. So they returned them to the earth in 2014.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they reburied them in the same site where they found them?
- DFDan Flores
Near the same site. Yeah, they were found-
- JRJoe Rogan
Near the same site.
- DFDan Flores
... yeah, they were found on the banks of the Shields River, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Why now? That's interesting that they chose to do that.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause I can understand why they would think to respect the bodies and bury them, but I could also understand, like, for science, like, what an incredible discovery.
- DFDan Flores
Yeah. Well, they, they did do, uh, science on them, but, um, I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Was there genetic material? Was there-
- DFDan Flores
There was not.
- JRJoe Rogan
No physical tissue?
- DFDan Flores
No genetic material. No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No marrow or anything that they could-
- DFDan Flores
Not that I'm aware. You know, and I could be wrong about that, but I don't think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do, do they have, uh, an understanding of where these people might have come from originally?
- DFDan Flores
They seem to have come, yeah, and again, uh, because of, we do have some, uh, some sites, uh, s- I mean, the Clovis people ended up all the way down into South America and we do have genomic evidence from some of the sites that have preserved enough DNA to make educated, uh, guesses about this. That their origin was probably the Lake Baikal region in Siberia.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DFDan Flores
Uh, and that they probably, when the ice sheets opened, they probably came down in two different migrations. Uh, a kind of a northern Native American and a Southern Native American migration, they're often called, even though both groups ended up with, uh, genetic markers as far south as Colombia and Brazil and places like that. But yeah, so we've got enough genetic material that we are able to do that kind of thing. Uh, I don't think that burial site in, in Montana yielded any, but, uh, there were other sites that did.
- JRJoe Rogan
When did archery make its way to North America?
- DFDan Flores
Well, that was the next great, obviously the next great innovation. And the reason these innovations were important, by the way, uh, and to answer your question, it was about 2,000 years ago, and it seemed to come from the late arrival of Inuit people, the ancestors of, you know, folks who we, or sometimes called Eskimo. The Inuit people seem to either adapt or bring archery with them when they got to North America. And the idea for that then diffused, spread through, uh, all of North America within about five or 600 years.
- JRJoe Rogan
So we know that archery absolutely existed 2,000 years ago in Africa-
- DFDan Flores
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and some other places. Where, when did archery first, when, when did they believe archery was first invented? Let's find that out. That's interesting.
Episode duration: 2:31:21
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