EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,028 words- 0:00 – 3:52
Luke Caverns’ family treasure-hunting roots and early fascination with history
- NANarrator
(drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays)
- JRJoe Rogan
We're up.
- LCLuke Caverns
Awesome.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's up? How are you, man?
- LCLuke Caverns
How are you, man? How are you? It's great to meet you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pleasure to meet you.
- LCLuke Caverns
It's a pleasure to meet you as well.
- JRJoe Rogan
I really enjoyed you on the Jesse Michaels podcast, so, uh, I had to have you on.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yes. Yeah, well, thank you so much, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
I love it when young people know so much about ancient history. Like, how did you get started in this?
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, well, it's, it's quite literally in my blood. Um, back in the late, well, I should say the 1890s, um, my family, they were cattle rustlers, uh, right here in the Hill Country, uh, actually, maybe a little bit further... Well, quite a, quite a bit further west of San Antonio.
- JRJoe Rogan
Damn, you come from a lot of criminals?
- LCLuke Caverns
Probably.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of dark history in, in here.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) .
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, and, uh, so, (laughs) uh, they are... They're cattle rustlers that are out in Dryden, Texas, in Sanderson, Texas. And, uh, I mean, right on the Rio Grande. And they were, uh, that's how they made their money. They were fascinated, kind of like everybody, with, uh, with finding gold, with finding lost Spanish treasure, and, and, uh, you know, Native American artifacts. So, they're living in this area called the Reagan Canyon, and, uh, I, I've seen it all over the place, um. If you look on, I think, like, the Smithsonian did something on the top 10 forgotten places in the United States, it's like the most remote areas o- of our country, and somewhere in there is Reagan Canyon. And, uh, so out there, they developed this fascination for looking for lost Spanish gold. And, you know, there were bandits that would hide up in the hills and they would sack Spanish caravans and drag the gold up into the hills to not get caught, to hopefully come back for it later, and the, the Spanish are out there mining for gold and everything. Uh, so my family gets caught up in one of the biggest mysteries of Texas history. Like, if you were to look up... If you were to go to some bookstore, there's, there's a popular one called The Sons of Coronado, and it's like this legacy of people looking for Spanish gold.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
And somewhere in there, my family will, will be in there. And so, this started in the 1890s, and, um, there's this... It's this long saga of, of, uh, the gold being... The treasure being dragged to San Antonio and all these people get killed, and only one of these four Reagan brothers makes it out. He gets involved in, uh, in, um, uh, oil drilling out in East Texas. And then so, my family moved out to East Texas, and then his son was born, which is my grandfather. And then he continues this legacy of, um, of continuing his father's oil company, but then he also begins gold mining in New Mexico. And while he's out in New Mexico, he hears these legends of these seven lost Spanish gold mines. And, uh, because this local... There was a local police officer who was like a treasure hunter, and he knew who my grandfather was and the story behind our family. He sought him out and they went off looking together. A- and I don't know how long it took them to find it, but he found the seven lost Spanish gold mines of New Mexico.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
And, uh, and he opened up this, uh, company called Three Bells Mining and Milling Company. And that was open for about eight years, and they opened up these, they opened up these mines that go back to probably about the 1530s. I mean, th- so the Spaniards were up all the way in New Mexico in the 1530s, and they were opening up Native American gold mines and expanding them. And so he found these gold mines that go hundreds of feet into the ground as this huge, expansive, uh, gold mining operation. Well, somebody dies after a smelter explodes, and the company goes under. They lose everything. My family falls into poverty. My dad's born during that time, and my dad didn't really get to experience like all of that excitement. He had to spend his life climbing out of poverty. And, uh, but he had this love for history. He had this, uh, he had this love for, for American history, really, and he instilled in me the importance of history growing up. And that fascination of, of exploration an- and, uh, and kind
- 3:52 – 5:05
From marketing student to anthropology: choosing a life built around exploration
- LCLuke Caverns
of ancient American history, hearing those stories carried over into me during my childhood. And, uh, and so I've just... I have always been fascinated by this. And, um, I guess getting to where I am now, I, I was halfway through my marketing degree in college, and I'm, uh, (laughs) I'm sitting on my bed in my dorm room with my girlfriend at the time, who I'm married to now, and we watched the movie The Lost City of Z about Percy Fawcett.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
And something about that guy's journey reminded me so much of my family, kind of reminded me of my dad, reminded me of my grandpa, and it changed something in me. Like that day, I could not ignore... I was probably 20 at the time. I could not ignore this love that I always had for ancient history. But, you know, archeologists are poor. You know, their, their... It's a extremely hard life, and it's really hard on, on your family too. Um, and I just knew I had to, I had to create a life for myself where I could do what I loved because I had like a 1.7 GPA in college, and I was not going to, to make it through my classes. And so, I changed, I got a degree in cultural anthropology. Uh, I wrote... Like we had a mock thesis statement, and I wrote it on the Amazon, and, and the lost, uh, the lost civilizations and, you know, how they were wiped out from, uh, from, uh, Spanish influenza. And, um, yeah, so that's where I'm at today.
- 5:05 – 11:10
Why ancient history debates get hostile: gatekeepers, ego, and shifting evidence
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. I, I think, I think everybody, when you start looking at the history of the human race, and you start looking at the history of civilizations, everyone gets fascinated, because we kind of like woke up i- in this life. You know, we didn't choose to be born during this timeline, we woke up in this timeline, and we're like, "Uh, how did collectively we get here?" And then you have this narrative of how collectively go- we got here.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But then you see there's holes in this narrative.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's real weird.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then you find out about asteroid impacts and super volcanoes, and then there's people like Zahi Hawass who are in charge of telling you what they know.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is the only answer, and you're like, "Well, that guy's not right."
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then you start like looking at guys like Graham Hancock, go, "Why is everybody calling him a Nazi? Like what the fuck?"
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then you start getting deep into the weeds in this stuff, and you're like, wow, there's a lot of resentment from the gatekeepers. There's a lot of people that have been, um-... they've been teaching a narrative and teaching them in school, and they don't want anyone else teaching this stuff.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
They want to be the only people that can tell people-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... what the history of the human race is. And unfortunately for them, there's too much other evidence. It's too weird.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the whole picture is not settled. It's too strange, and they keep finding new things all the time that throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the timeline of civilization.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so then, you know, you, you find out about Egypt, and once I ... I mean, that was the big one for me. Once I found out about Egypt ... Or not found out about it, but you like really started exploring it, you know, post-
- LCLuke Caverns
When you discovered every grain of sand in Egypt. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I discovered the dull. I was there. I dug the hole, um, when I, uh ... (laughs)
- LCLuke Caverns
That went about as well as I thought it would when you told me, that we knew I was hoping it was gonna go a little better, honestly. It was- Well, he had a great opportunity to, like, win over the popular-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- LCLuke Caverns
... audience and come in and make a really good impression.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
And he did exactly the opposite of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think there was a bunch of problems there, ego being one of them, but another one being a language barrier, and then-
- LCLuke Caverns
I th- Yeah, I think so.
- 11:10 – 15:38
Who gets to dig? Permits, looting, and why excavation is tightly controlled
- JRJoe Rogan
Can you legally dig things up in certain countries if you get permission? Or is it-
- LCLuke Caverns
Oh, well, I mean, yeah. If, if I got, if I got permission, but, I mean, you would be ... It would be next to impossible for me, for somebody like me to do that, probably.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, why would that be? What would be the hurdles?
- LCLuke Caverns
Oh, well, you would have the local universities there who also have their own, you know, high-credentialed people who are gonna ... You know, if I don't come in with a PhD, I'm never gonna go get a PhD. Uh, but if I don't come in with something like that, then I don't have the experience. I don't have, uh, you know, the authority to be able to do something like this, and they would never trust me to carry out, like, a good excavation.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, not damage anything.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah. So, they would never-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
They would never trust that.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's some reasonable re- some reasonable explanations for why.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah. Yeah, uh, kind of.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because people have looted. I mean-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... who knows how much of Ancient E- Egypt is just gone. I mean, who knows-
- LCLuke Caverns
Oh, man, well-
- JRJoe Rogan
So many wealthy people actually ate mummies.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, we don't know about that. They, they actually ... Like, for people listening, I did, y- you didn't mishear me. They ate mummies.
- LCLuke Caverns
Uh-huh.
- JRJoe Rogan
They would bring them to these ... E- European aristocrats, would bring them to parties.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And people would consume the mummies.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yes. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is just, like, what were you guys drinking? (laughs) What-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's gnarly, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
What kind of titty party were you guys having over there-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... where that was the idea?
- LCLuke Caverns
It's, it's gnarly, man. Um, yeah, so much of Egypt is, is gone. And this is why I don't think that, uh ... You know, I, like, I love, I love the, the mystery of the ancient world and why I'm so baffled when people want to immediately shut anything down.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, because of the amount of history that is lost to us is completely baffling. You know, Egypt has been getting looted, we know, for the last, uh, let's say, 3,000 years at least. Countries, uh, uh, foreign nations have been coming in and raiding Egypt and taking the artifacts out. And so, you know, so much of the artifact, uh, so much of the artifact record is lost. And I think that the real problem is the confidence with which somebody like Zahi speaks.
- 15:38 – 22:38
The Library of Alexandria: ‘library wars,’ repeated burnings, and total loss of landmarks
- LCLuke Caverns
Well, you know, so the, the first time-
- JRJoe Rogan
... how much of that shit is in the Vatican.
- LCLuke Caverns
... uh, Caesar is chasing his rival, Pompey, across the Mediterranean, and Pompey flees to Alexandria. And, um, Alexandria was kind of in the basket of Rome. Uh, they, the, the Ptolemies, who were the, the Greek pharaohs in, in Egypt. So the Greeks are controlling Egypt after Alexander comes in 332 BC. So Alexander dies, his best friend Ptolemy becomes pharaoh. So, um, but the Ptolemies were very weak, not very good rulers, and so Rome kind of does, like, what the US does, where they get pulled into conflicts, and then once they're there and they conquer everything, they seize all the power, you know. And so Rome had done this to, uh, had done this to Egypt, and so they controlled Egypt, and they were pulling all of their, um ... They were keeping the Ptolemies in power, uh, the Roman soldiers were, and they were pulling all that grain into Egypt. And so Caesar follows Pompey, uh, chases him to, to Alexandria, and so that Caesar can't f- or so that Pompey can't flee, Caesar says, "We'll burn the docks." Well, when you landed in Alexandria, uh, you would land at this dock that went to, uh, a road called Soma Road. So you had Soma Road and Canopic Way, and it was, like, this street corner. It must have been amazing to see in real life. Like, think about this, you have the Library of Alexandria, you ... All, all ... This is all on one block. You have the Library of Alexandria, you have the Museion, which is right next to it, so both together they make the world's first university. And, I mean, you can just imagine, like, walking through those halls. Across the street from that is, uh, Alexander's mausoleum. So, uh, his mausoleum, we think Ha- the Emperor Hadrian, if you've heard of Hadrian before-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
... um, that he modeled his mausoleum on Alexander's. So we kinda have an idea of, like, what the mausoleum may have looked like. It would have a marble statue of Alexander on top. So people are walking by every day in the middle of this town, and then across the street from that is the palatial district where all the rich people lived, and then off by the bay you would have had Cleopatra's palace. And so it was this beautiful place, but when the boats come into the dock you had to give up all the scrolls that you had, 'cause the Ptolemies are obsessed with obtaining the world's knowledge, and they want the originals, they don't want a copy. So what they would tell people is, "You give us your writings, we'll write down a copy, and we'll give you back your original." But what they would do is give back the copy and keep the original, and this is something called the Library Wars.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- LCLuke Caverns
This is a whole thing. So, um, but this wa- it was connected to the docks, and so most of the buildings in Alexandria are made out of stone to prevent fires, um, but the interior of Alexandria's library would have had all these wooden shelves that would cross where you'd stack all the scrolls in. So everything just ... Maybe the actual structure of the building doesn't burn down, but the entire interior of it burns up. And so when, uh, when Caesar sets fire to the docks to burn all of Pompey's ships, it crawls up the docks and burns the library down. Well, uh, um, Augustus did the same thing w-... what? A dec- a decade and a half later, Augustus came and he seized Alexandria. And this is where, this is when Cleopatra and Mark Antony die. He seizes it. And then there are rebellions because the Alexandrians are very rebellious. They don't want to be ruled by, uh, by the Romans. And, um, so there's, uh, I think it's, I think it's Caracalla that, uh, he was being made fun of by the Alexandrians. There was a theater in town. It's actually the place where standup comedy was invented, uh, in Alexandria. Yeah, so, so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- LCLuke Caverns
... and, and the butt of all the jokes was always the Roman emperor.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Caverns
So, so you'd have people, like, (laughs) talking shit about the Roman emperor standing up, you know, in the, in the middle of Alexandria's, uh, theater. And so the Roman emperor was always the butt of the joke. Well, Caracalla, I believe it's Caracalla, he's, uh, one of the brothers in Gladiator 2, the, uh, the new Gladiator, if you've seen it.
- JRJoe Rogan
I haven't seen it.
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, he's, he's one of the brothers, but the movie doesn't really depict the, the actual emperors very accurately. Um, but he gets tired of it, so he just comes down to Alexandria on, like, a royal visit and executes 25,000 people in the city of Alexandria and burns down parts of it. So he burned down the library for the third time. And then there was another emperor named Aurelian, uh, when a local Alexandrian declared himself the new Egyptian pharaoh. I think he was a real Egyptian. Uh, he Egy- he, he declared himself, like, the newest pharaoh, and he l- he r- r- created this revolt. And then Aurelian had to come and put the revolt down, and he burned down the library again. So this is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
We're getting close to, like, 300 AD at this point. Now, in 365 AD, there was a, um, there was a, a huge earthquake, uh, that was off of the coast of Crete, I think, which is the most southern, uh, Greek isle. Uh, it's where the Minoans lived. I, I believe it's there. Or it's off the coast of Cyprus. And so that earthquake, like, like, just, uh, reverberates down to Egypt and this massive tsunami destroys the entire city of Alexandria. And it's said it was so catastrophic that, um, I think it's Pliny the Elder or Pliny the Younger comes down on a rescue mission from, from Italy, and he comes to Alexandria, and he records that 50,000 people in the city are missing because of, you know, the, the wave-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
... that gets pushed in and that all of the giant boats, these are giant, giant, gigantic boats in Alexandria's harbor, are sitting on top of all the rooftops in the city. And it's after this point that the location of Alexander's body and the location of Alexandria's library just completely go missing. So, so they're both-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
... utterly destroyed, and most likely, all of the giant stones that were used to build the city were repurposed for, you know, other things. But, uh, in one fatal swoop, uh, Alexandria's library, the Museion, and Alexander's mausoleum completely disappear from the historical record.
- JRJoe Rogan
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- NANarrator
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- 22:38 – 24:29
Fragile knowledge in the digital era: how fast civilization can forget
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. It just shows you how vulnerable knowledge is.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I really think about that today because, um, w- uh, obviously we have a lot of books and most things that are, like, most physics work, most work on archeology, most work on history is, is available in book form, but how much of what we have is on hard drives?
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And if there was a power outage, just a global, worldwide powder- power outage that lasted six months-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... we're fucked. Like-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... we, we don't know anything anymore.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It, it's a small amount of time for a, an enormous cataclysmic disaster to completely erase tens of thousands of years-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of understanding of everything.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everything. We, we, we would have no knowledge. One generation removed from electronics would have no knowledge of how to recreate it, what steps need to be taken, what, what... You have to build a chip plant?
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Where, where are they right now? They're in Taiwan?
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wha- what the fuck are you talking about?
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How are we gonna do this? Hard drives?
- LCLuke Caverns
That's a precarious place for them to be.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Starting from scratch, starting from scratch today, w- would be very similar, I think, to probably what starting from scratch was post the great flood.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Post the great comet impacts, all the-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Younger Dryas impacts theory stuff. Civilization, if that stuff is correct, if, if there is, uh, if Graham's p- positioned and Randall Carlson's position is that there was probably a much more advanced civilization than just hunter-gatherers that lived-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 10,000-plus years ago, how many thousands of years would it take before we started calming down again? Well, it seems like it took about 5, 4,000 or 5,000 years before civilization emerges.
- LCLuke Caverns
A really long time.
- 24:29 – 35:19
Percy Fawcett, lost cities, and LiDAR: the Amazon’s hidden urban scale
- LCLuke Caverns
And I, I think about that with, like-... foraging, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
I was reading, uh, yesterday, I was reading, uh, uh, Exploration Fawcett. Have you ever read this before-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- LCLuke Caverns
... or listened to the audio book? It, it's hi- it's Percy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Percy Fawcett's-
- LCLuke Caverns
... Percy Fawcett's personal diary. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
So you have, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
You can-
- LCLuke Caverns
... you have, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's an audio book of that?
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
It's on Audible, yeah. Uh, it, dude, you'll get wrapped up in it. You won't be able to stop listening to it. Um, you know, he just has these amazing experiences and, ah, man, he would be like your best, like your all-time guest-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Caverns
... you know, if you could have him on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, but I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Probably had a great accent too. (laughs)
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah for sure. And, uh, and so you listen to his audio book and, uh, the way he talks about meeting the indigenous people that live deep in the Amazon, you know, it would take him weeks to get to these little villages. And while he was out there, he would see, like, the systematic, mathematical structure with which they would set up these giant villages and how they would build these huge, like, thatch wood, uh, homes with foundations that are stones. And these people were, he said that they had, like, beautiful skin, they spoke elegantly, they sang songs. And he was like, he's like, he's like, "This isn't..." He's like, "These people in the Amazon are not primitive savages like my colleagues at the, the, uh, Royal Geographic Society in London believe that they are. These are people who are the fallen, or, or, or the descendants of a fallen great civilization." He was like, he's like, "The way they interact with each other is so sophisticated and the way they speak with each other."
- JRJoe Rogan
Why does he think it would, they were the descendants of a fallen civilization and not the, the people that were currently, uh, uh, living-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in, uh, the most modern version of the civilization?
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, uh, I, I don't quite know. You know, there's some things that are, that are left out. Like, he has, he has some... Before he started writing this, I think he always had these ideas in the back of his mind.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- LCLuke Caverns
And so you don't really get the origin of why he initially started thinking this. But, you know, while he's, uh, exploring South America, he's hearing all these stories of, of, you know, semi-contacted people. Like, you have natives who still live the, the native life, but they can speak Spanish and he could speak a little bit of Spanish and communicate with these people. So he would hear about, oh yeah, you know, there's this, there's this huge city of gold off of, you know, off in the jungle, uh, months travel that way. And it's the same kinda legend that all these Spaniards had heard. So it's this idea of there's, well, there was this civilization that used to be out there. And so Percy thought that maybe it has something to do with Atlantis. And so that was part of his journey looking for it. And then he, um, it's actually his wife, Nina Fawcett, I believe, when she's in a library in England, she finds a Portuguese document, I think it's manuscript 512. Have you ever heard of this?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- LCLuke Caverns
Um, I could have the name of it wrong, but I think it's manuscript 512, and in that, it's these guys who are kind of like semi-professional ex- uh, Portuguese explorers in the mid-1700s that are going around Brazil. And they find this huge stone city with statues that they thought looked like Greek gods in the middle of the Amazon.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 35:19 – 42:45
Atlantis hypotheses and ‘where to look’: Sahara, Amazon, and the Nile concentration effect
- LCLuke Caverns
Uh, all of the Amazon will be mapped with LiDAR bef- by the end of the century. All of the Sahara is going to be mapped with LiDAR by the end of the century.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Sahara's a big one, right?
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah. Well, those are my two, those are my two big things. Like, when we talk about Atlantis and we talk about lost civilizations, um, I mean, my thing is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
... the Sahara and, uh, the Sahara and the Amazon, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
Both of these things existed pre-Ice Age, especially if we're talking about pre-Ice Age civilization. The Sahara is a, is an oasis, you know, uh, uh, 10,000 plus years ago. It, it's an oasis. You have, what, two or three of the world's largest, uh, lake systems on there. You have rivers everywhere. Uh, you know, it would've been, like, a, a beautiful place to live and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Abundant resources so there's no worry about food-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and shelter.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have plenty of time to figure things out, which is-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the thing that has always made sense to me if you know the history of the Nile Valley and where Egypt was, like, that was a wonderful place-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to live to try to figure things out, right? Because you have so much food.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And once you have so much food and you're kinda separated from everybody, it's really tough to get to you, so, like-They lived un- unchallenged-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in that civilization for thousands of years.
- LCLuke Caverns
Well, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's amazing. And you know, whenever I, um... You know, so, so growing up, I mean, gosh, I read Fingerprints of the Gods when I was 16. I remember, like, sitting on the couch after school and reading it. And my dad's, like, comes up to me. He's like, "That's a big book." And I go, "I know." It's like I'm reading a textbook for fun, you know? And, and it was, uh, it was, it was dense reading for me a- as a 16-year-old. And so, you know, I, I would... So inspired by, by Graham, and then I went off and, like, got traditionally educated. And, um, so I kinda have both of these perspectives. And I'm of- I'm often shocked and disappointed at how other professional archaeologists and anthropologists explain popular mysteries, you know? Um, like, uh, there was an Egyptologist on, on another pop- popular podcast. And, and, uh... And the podcast host asked him to, uh, properly explain, like, w- you know, the mystery around the pyramid. And it was just so subpar, I was shocked. And I was like, "I'm not even an Egyptologist and I know how to explain these things." And I felt the same way about Zahi. Maybe there's some kind of language barrier there, but it was also like he didn't want to explain these things-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- LCLuke Caverns
... on a basic level. But one of the things that I never see talked about is the concentration of energy along the, the, the Nile Valley. Like, okay, so, you know, i- if I had to, if I did put a, drop a pin anywhere on the Earth where I think Atlantis would be, um, I would probably put it, like, in the Sahara somewhere, you know, along one of these major lakes where there's a lot of people living at one time. And then later on, as the Sahara dries up, you know, let's say beginning around, like, 800, or I'm sorry, 8000 BC, it starts rapidly drying up. It's probably a little bit before that. And then by about 4000 BC, it's completely dry. So, your Saharans only have a few places that they can go. They can go to the Mediterranean Coast, they can go to the Atlantic Coast, they can go down, kind of, into the Congo and in the, in the savannas, or they can go to this fertile valley oasis, where it's, like, 500 yards on each side, where it's just completely lush, tropical oasis. And so some people went there. And so you have this hyperconcentration of energy and all these people living somewhere together for what we know is the first time in history. Like, w- we can verify it, I guess, if that makes sense. And, um... And so rather than being able to have these huge pieces of property where they can all live separated from each other, kind of like in the Sahara, you have all this space and it's so luxurious, now you have to live on top of each other. And you have to build up these cities. Uh, you know, you're, you're like building cities. And so all that energy compacted into one place w- in this fertile oasis is either destined to completely crumble and fall apart or it's New York City. It's this-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- LCLuke Caverns
... thin strip of highly concentrated, genius, hardworking people f- figuring out how to extrapolate the most out of their natural world and create some of the greatest things the world has ever seen. Just like New York City. We did it. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
And, um, I've never seen any Egyptologist explain things that way. Like, I think that's a, I think that's a good explanation, at least. And I'm open to things in Egypt being much older, like the Sphinx is definitely older than the pyramids. Um, but, uh, I- I'm just always disappointed at, like, the very low level with which, um, archaeologists and anthropologists will come in and try to explain things to a popular audience. And it's kinda like you were asking, "Okay, but how do you know that?" Like, explain that to me-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- LCLuke Caverns
... in a way that I can understand. How do you know this? And there's never a proper explanation. And I- I don't know what that is. It's like, it's like they strongly dislike the fact that there's mystery out there, and that there are other people who are attempting to answer the mystery that are not part of the good boys club.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 42:45 – 51:11
Independent archaeology in the ‘Wild West’: Jimmy Corsetti, public trust, and institutional pushback
- LCLuke Caverns
Well, there's, uh, there's two things that I'll say there. Um, you know, kinda like, I guess, a running theme of this is, is we're about to enter into, like, archeological Wild West in a way. You know, um, I think that, you know, uh, Jimmy getting involved with, uh, with Gobekli Tepe and the, and the trees that were there-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
... having the trees, the orchards planted over the sites, I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're removing 'em now.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, and, and it, it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because of him.
- LCLuke Caverns
... it's just, it's just proof that a guy... Like, I, I started watching Jimmy 2018? I mean, gosh, was I? I had just graduated from high school and, um, and so he was kind of, uh, like inspired me to be, like... You know, he was this young charismatic guy that could go online and, and research topics and, and enthusiastically present these topics and, and, uh, and he was effective at doing it and it, it inspired me for a long time. And, uh, and, you know, lo and behold, I guess, what? Six, seven years later he's still at it and he's actually not just inspired people to be interested in the ancient world, but, but had an actual effect on something on the opposite side of the planet. Like, when all this happened, I was like, I was like, I was like, "Yeah, I mean, I get the concern, but I don't think the Turkish government cares what any of us over here in the US think." Sure enough, they removed the trees. And then there's kinda like the backpedaling of, of, "Oh, well it was always in the plan to remove the trees." But I, I think it's... I think, you know, people might disagree with Jimmy's approach, whatever-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Caverns
... but, um, but it's... You can't deny the fact that he himself, an independent guy, uh, was able to make so much noise that he affected a government on the opposite side of the planet.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
You know? And it, uh... And, and in a way it's like, uh, it shows me, like, "Oh, you know, these expeditions that, that I'm planning and things that I'm gonna go out and survey and document for myself, like, these can make, these can make real changes and these are things I have planned in Florida, here in the, here in the Southeast, in the States, um, in Central America and in the Amazon." And it's, like, encouraging. Like, wow. I mean, we're really approaching a time when independent people are gonna start making real noticeable differences and not just in the digital space that, where people are interested in.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but in the physical archeology world.
- LCLuke Caverns
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Jimmy's so meticulous too.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, he's such a good representative because he's really intelligent, really p- thought-provoking, but also really honest about what he knows and what he doesn't know and he has counterarguments to his own points. He'll tell you s- tell you something and then, "But also it could be this."
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"And this is what we know." And because he's been really careful in the way he expresses himself, he's established this community that understands what he does and they trust him.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they go, "No, no, no. He's gonna tell you the truth. He's gonna tell you what we know and why we know it. He's not gonna make any weird ideological leaps. He's not gonna make any weird judgments. He's just gonna lay out what is fascinating about these things." And because of that, w- whether he has a degree or not a degree, that guy's having a massive impact.
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, I don't know how many-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, nobody can deny that.
- JRJoe Rogan
What does Bright, what does Bright Insights YouTube channel have for subscribers? And it... By the way, if you haven't watched any of his videos, can't recommend them enough. Love the guy, love the stuff.
- NANarrator
1.7.
- JRJoe Rogan
1.7. By the way, he's been called a Nazi (laughs) .
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is, that's just, that's what they use. That's, the, these are the terms. You know, he's been called all, all sorts of terrible things. None of them are true. He's a wonderful guy and he's just a, a man who's deeply fascinated with these mysteries. And when he's pointing out the things that we cannot... Whether it's Baalbeck in Lebanon-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the, the trillion... What do they call it? The trillion stones?
- 51:11 – 1:02:06
Olmec mysteries: ‘El Negro,’ the Traveler monument, and Old World contact arguments
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- LCLuke Caverns
And so, you know, there's, um, uh, you know, Graham, in, uh, in Fingerprints of the Gods, he talks about how the, the, um, the Olmecs, he thought that they may have like, like, uh, like African features.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
And, of course, that was 1995. And so, uh, I don't know, 2015 you guys are talking and, and he's like, he's like, "Well, you know, I published that then, but DNA research has come out that says that, you know, these people don't have African DNA in them, and that maybe this is Polynesian, maybe this is Australasian people intermixing and that's why they have this unique look," whatever. But in the Olmec world, there's this monument that is actually called El Negro, and you look at it and it's not an Olmec. It is an African man. And, um, and so I post about this on my, on my X account and I just kind of, like, list everything I've seen in the Olmec world, and I'm li- I'm like, "You know, this is really fascinating." Maybe this is evidence of Africans who were in, um, who were in the Olmec world. And I hadn't seen this monument before I saw it in person. 'Cause you go in the Olmec ... I- in the Olmec realm in, uh, or the region in Mexico, and you go to these museums and you look at the, the, the log or the ledger that people have been on, and nobody, nobody has visited this museum in the last four months. And before that it was s- you know, six months before that. And these monuments just kinda sit underneath these, uh, metal roofs, uh, you know, to protect 'em from the rain, and it's like this, just l- this completely lost civilization.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is there an image of this that's available online?
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Y- Um.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can we see it?
- LCLuke Caverns
There we go. There we go. So if you pull up an Olmec head, you'll see that these guys are very different looking. And especially if you can get... Yeah, yeah, there we go. Um, look at, uh ... Okay, so that's, uh, yeah, n- Okay, so that's a regular Olmec head. So you can see that these are two different races of people. Um, you know, the, the Olmecs have very soft features, round faces, big eyes, big lips, kinda big noses. They have very soft features. And this El Negro monument has these high cheekbones, this defined jawline, uh, this intense kind of-
- JRJoe Rogan
But isn't there a lot of variety just in, like, let's just say Italians?
- LCLuke Caverns
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a lot of variety.
- LCLuke Caverns
Absolutely, absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
So couldn't this just be someone who's on a, a spectrum of features that ... I mean, I don't think it's that much different than the Olmecs.
- LCLuke Caverns
You don't think so? Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
No, when I'm looking at it, I could ... I mean, I could imagine. Like, there's, like I said, uh, just, you know, my nationality-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Italians. So you hear-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... there's Italians with very thin faces and there's, uh, these big thick ones.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, like-
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... people vary quite a bit.
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's, uh, enough similarities that I could say, "Oh, those could be the same people."
- LCLuke Caverns
Well, the, the only counter I give to that is when you, when you visit the Olmec realm, you see a lot more than just the heads. You see a lot of Olmec faces, dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Maybe well over 100. And when you've seen them all and you kinda get a gist of, like, the way they generally look, this guy will really stand out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- LCLuke Caverns
Like, I, I took a, a, like, a group of students there, and, and we all ... As soon as we all came in and saw it, based on everything we'd been seeing for the past week, it immediately stood out to us.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, certainly the thick brow-
- LCLuke Caverns
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- 1:02:06 – 1:24:59
How did the Olmecs move 6–52 ton heads? Unknown language, unknown name, missing basics
- LCLuke Caverns
handbag. Everywhere I go, I'm always looking for a handbag. I was in Cambodia a couple weeks ago. I'm going around the temples of Angkor Wat, and there's hieroglyphs and- and, uh, and, uh, carvings all over the walls. I'm looking for a handbag, I can't find one. But when I was in, um, when I was in Central Mexico, I was at a site called Cacaxtla, and I found another handbag person. I've never m- uh, like, officially published it. It's on my X, if you'd wanna look it up.
- NANarrator
What is the timeline for that one?
- LCLuke Caverns
They don't really know. Uh, when you look at the monument, it says, uh, it says anywhere from 1400 BC to 400 BC. That's just what they think. I mean, the Olmec-
- NANarrator
Just a guess.
- LCLuke Caverns
The Olmec realm is so uncertain and, um, and we don't have hard dates for almost- for almost anything. They appear on the historical li- on this historical timeline as a fully-fledged civilization capable of creating what you're seeing from the (snaps fingers) very beginning, just like so many civilizations. It's like as soon as they arrive on, you know, as soon as they arrive in the world, they're doing everything to the fullest capacity and, uh, we don't have any evidence in the Olmec realm of them working their way towards being able to do things like this. It's just from the very beginning, they're able to make monuments like this, move these 50-ton Olmec heads. Uh, the largest head is, uh... This- you'll find this interesting. Um, so there was a nautical engineer that, uh, MEK, which is an organization I'm- I'm with. It's the Maya Exploration Center. It's- it's run by Dr. Ed Barnhart, and I'm- I'm a- a member of it. And, um, and one of the guys that worked with us, uh, traveled into the Olmec realm, and he- he's a nautical engineer and he's fascinated with, um... He's fascinated with how were the Olmecs moving these huge heads up and down these rivers. So they live in, like, the rivers, swamps, they have to cross some mountain ranges. How are you getting these heads 90 miles away, uh, from the Sierra de Tuxtla volcanic belt? That's where they're pulling the basalt from, 'cause we found unfinished heads, like, at the base of these big basalt quarries, and they're transporting them 90 kilometers away through, you know, like I was saying, rivers and valleys.
- NANarrator
90 miles or kilometers?
- LCLuke Caverns
I think it's kilometers.
- NANarrator
Okay.
- LCLuke Caverns
It's kilometers as the crow flies-
- NANarrator
Oh, okay. Okay.
- LCLuke Caverns
... I'm- I'm pretty sure. And, uh... So much further when you're actually dealing-
- NANarrator
Right.
- LCLuke Caverns
... with the complications of the terrain. And, um, and so, um, he was fascinated, like, okay, how do they get them to the river? And- and- and then when... How do they get them on the boat? And when it's on the boat, how does- how exactly does this work if they're transporting it by boat? And kind of the same mystery in Egypt too, right? Like, how- how do the nuances of these things work? So he devised this algorithm or whatever where you could put in the hypothetical size of your Olmec raft and put in the hypothetical size of an Olmec head into this, uh, database or whatever, and when you made a raft that was too big to go down the narrow stretches of the Coatzcalcos River, which is like the Olmecs' Nile River, when the raft was too big and too wide to actually go down the river and you put a five-ton Olmec head on it, it would sink that raft. But the smallest Olmec head is six tons and the largest one is 52 tons. So how are they... how are they doing it? And this is something that, like, all archeologists have quietly known, this idea of they're just being transported on these simple balsa rafts must be wrong. It's, you know, it's- it's unexplained. How- how are these things being done? And I- I just find this realm really fascinating.
- NANarrator
Wow. It is f- And then when... Do they even know what language they spoke, the Olmecs?
- LCLuke Caverns
No, we- we don't know what language they spoke. We don't even know what they called themselves. The only reason we call them the Olmecs is because Cortes, 1519 to 1521, he's moving through Mexico to conquer Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. Uh, during this time, you have these, uh, Spanish chroniclers that are taking in information, you know, uh, taking in information, but not at the rate that everything's being destroyed. You know, all these people are dying from this, uh, disease and influenza. And there's a record of what the people who lived in the Olmec region are called at that time in 15, uh, 1520, let's say, and the Aztecs called them the Olmecs in their language, Nahuatl, and those Olmec pe- the- the- the name means the rubber people or the people of the land of rubber. They produced rubber, and that's how the Olmecs were so rich so early on in time. But these were not... The people living in 1519 are not the Olmecs. There has already... The Olmecs have fallen and there are other cu- cultures that have risen and fallen in this same region as well. The Olmecs are far, far, far, far into the distant past. Uh, the Aztecs maybe didn't even know who the Olmecs were.
- NANarrator
Whoa.
- LCLuke Caverns
You know- you know, uh, so are you familiar with Teotihuacan?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- LCLuke Caverns
The, you know, the- the ma- the three massive... Well, you have the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Moon, and then the Temple of, uh, Quetzalcoatl, and they form this kind of, like, uh, Orion's Belt alignment similar to Giza. Well, you know, when the Aztecs arrived in Mexico, Teotihuacan had been abandoned for almost a th- a thousand years, uh, we think. So when they arrived, Teotihuacan was already gone. We don't even know the name of Teotihuacan. We don't know the name of the people.
- NANarrator
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
We don't know the name of the city. Um-... no, we know their relationship with other people around them, like the Maya were at war with Teotihuacan, but the civilization had already fallen. So, when the Aztecs arrived, the Olmecs had been gone for almost 2,000 years, at least.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Caverns
The Olmecs had already been gone. Teotihuacan had been gone for a thousand years. Uh, the Maya had already collapsed. The, the, the Maya collapsed long before the Spanish got there. Um, and so, you know, it's just, again, like, like, the, the Americas are just so mysterious and there's so much to know there. And so, kind of getting back to what I was saying is when I, um, when I talk about the mysteries of the Americas, I immediately get accosted by other of my "colleagues." I don't have any colleagues in the academic realm, but, uh, you know, other academics who will, like, immediately jump in my comment section on X or whatever, and they'll reprimand me. And they'll be like, "Oh, so back to the pseudoarchaeology, is it?" And I'm like, "So, so I can't talk about anything that's fascinating. I need to talk about things that are boring so you don't get upset with me." And now, it's just like, uh, the, the, the popular audience has completely had enough of it, and I'll have, like, 15 people jump in and de- (laughs) -
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I've seen that.
- LCLuke Caverns
... you know, defend me. And, and be like-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fun to watch. (laughs)
- LCLuke Caverns
Yeah, and they'll be like, and they'll be like, be like, they'll be like, you know, "Okay, this is a perfect representation of what you guys do." I step just slightly out of this line of what you think is appropriate for me, and I'm talking about things that are interesting, that inspire people to be interested in the ancient world, to go see these sites. Like, these people, they don't like you, they don't like the people that you have on, but how many people do you think you've sent to Egypt? You know, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, quite a few.
- LCLuke Caverns
You had a significant impact. This show had a significant impact on me being interested in the ancient world, and I have traveled all over the world, you know, uh, because largely, you know, some of this show inspired me to do that. And, um, and, uh, I'm probably one of the few people that found you because of Graham Hancock. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) That's awesome.
Episode duration: 2:57:20
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Transcript of episode m28yl1TZee4
