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Joe Rogan Experience #2368 - Michael Button

Michael Button is a YouTuber whose videos investigate mysteries in ancient history. https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelButton1 Unlock yourself at https://join.WHOOP.com/jre for one month free Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. https://ubereats.com

Joe RoganhostMichael ButtonguestGuestguest
Aug 20, 20252h 54mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:05

    Meet Michael Button: rapid rise as an ancient-history YouTuber

    1. NA

      (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What's happening?

    3. MB

      How are you, Joe?

    4. JR

      Good to see you, man. Nice to meet you.

    5. MB

      You too, man. Pleasure.

    6. JR

      I love your channel, man. It's really great.

    7. MB

      Thank you.

    8. JR

      You, you're really doing some really interesting videos. When did you get started?

    9. MB

      (clicks tongue) Thanks. Well, I only started the YouTube less than a year ago. So-

    10. JR

      That's crazy.

    11. MB

      (laughs) Yeah, it's been a bit of a wild ride.

    12. JR

      I don't even know how I found it. It was like one of them YouTube recommends things. It just popped up and I, uh, I don't remember which one it was. It was something on ancient history.

    13. MB

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      And I was like, "Oh."

    15. MB

      (laughs)

    16. JR

      "All right."

    17. MB

      Yeah, it was cool. I mean, uh, yeah, I started just under a year ago, but no one started watching until like March, and then I think you started seeing me just after that point and it's been a bit of a big, you know, journey since then, upwards and ... (clicks tongue) But it's been very exciting and very happy to be here today, very excited to be in Austin and, uh, yeah, looking forward to talk about some ancient history.

  2. 1:05 – 2:11

    From university ancient history to questioning the “macro” timeline

    1. JR

      (clicks tongue) So did you start off on y- a traditional academic journey and then sorta get sidetracked into a YouTube career? Like how did this work?

    2. MB

      Yeah, basically. So I studied ancient history at university for four years, um, and I've always been interested in history. I've done history all the way through. Like I was fascinated by that history as a kid, and got to the stage of my life where it was, you know, thinking about going to university, so I thought, "I'll do ancient history at university," and studied there for four years. Graduated, all of that kinda stuff, but (clicks tongue) there came a point during my degree where I was kind of, you know, a little bit ... I w- I didn't quite agree with their kind of high-level ideas regarding the timeline of history and what we're taught about our ancient past. And it wasn't that I disputed anything that I'd been taught, and I have like great respect for the people that I met at university and my professors, and I don't dispute anything that we were taught actually on the course, but it was more the kinda high-level macro perspective of history that I found myself having more and more questions about, and (clicks tongue) yeah, so once it-

    3. JR

      What, what bothered you? Like what were the questions?

  3. 2:11 – 4:00

    Jebel Irhoud discovery: Homo sapiens far older than previously thought

    1. MB

      It was kind of the big questions regarding the origins of civilization and how deep civilization goes and how complex human behavior, you know, I thought went way back further into history than what we were being taught, and I wasn't too ... I, I just didn't buy this idea that nothing happened for like vast stretch of time. 'Cause it was during my course that they found the modern humans. They made this discovery in Morocco in 2017 or 2018 I think, and that was when I was at university.

    2. JR

      Was that Denisovans?

    3. MB

      No, no. Homo sapiens.

    4. JR

      Which ones are?

    5. MB

      So I can't remember the s- it's called like the Jebel Irhoud site or something like that, but they were modern homo sapien remains. They thought they were Neanderthal initially 'cause they were so old.

    6. JR

      How old were they?

    7. MB

      They're 315,000 years old. Uh, that's kind of like the estimate. It goes up to-

    8. JR

      Oh.

    9. MB

      ... potentially 360,000 years old, so they're super old and, yeah, they thought they were initially Neanderthal 'cause of this age, but then they discovered a few more and they were ... they classified them as homo sapien, and when I saw that, I was like, "How is this not kicking up more of a fuss?" Because before them, the oldest homo sapien remains we had were around 200,000 years old, and that had been the case for like a decade or something, and before that it was like 100,000 years old. So this discovery pushed back the age of our species by another third, like 100,000 years. So I s- saw that and I was thinking like, "How are we still basing our kind of idea of history around the fact that nothing happened for, you know, 310,000 years and then everything happened in like the last, you know, 10,000 years, since the Neolithic revolution?" I just thought that was odd because, you know, we've been in this anatomically modern form for so long, and yet we were being taught that nothing was ha- nothing had happened until, (clicks tongue) you know, the last 10,000 years, and I ju- that just didn't make sense to me. So that's kind of where, uh, where I started thinking about it, and then we did this module at university, I remember, called, uh, (smacks lips) it was called something like Cataclysms

  4. 4:00 – 7:16

    Cataclysms as history-makers: Late Bronze Age Collapse and bigger prehistory shocks

    1. MB

      or something, and it was all about how in recorded history, natural disaster had a big impact on human societies and stuff like that, and how it s- small, like tiny changes in climate could massively disrupt human civilization and b- bring them all crashing, crashing down and the case study they used was something called the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Have you ever heard of the Late Bronze Age Collapse?

    2. JR

      Yes.

    3. MB

      Yeah. It's when all these like powerful, influential civilizations at the kind of peak of human progress around 1000 BC all simultaneously came crashing down and no one was quite sure why it was, but the best theory we have is that it's, um, like a kinda combination of climate factors which led to trade disruption which led to societal unrest, and then all these empires, like the Hittite Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the palaces of Mycenaean Greece, uh, the Egyptian New Kingdom, all within a 20 to 30, 40 year period all came crashing down the exact same time. And I remember being hooked by that. I was like, "That's so crazy." Like we don't even know why this happened, but it was like a half degree change in climate. And so I remember starting to research how, you know, bad a climate had been during history and how bad it had been, like these big climatic episodes had been during pre-history and I started thinking like, "Wow, if that had caused, uh, all these civilizations to collapse, just a tiny half degree change in climate which caused drought which led to those civilizations collapsing, some of the stuff that had been happening during pre-history was so much worse than that." And that got me thinking like, "How do we know that sophisticated human culture hadn't flourished, you know, 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago and collapsed due to climate change or a natural disaster? Volcanoes, comet impacts, anything like that?" And that's kinda what set me on the journey. That along with the, uh, you know, the discovery of the remains in Morocco and that really got me thinking about the story we've told regarding our past and how I wasn't quite sure and, yeah, that's kind of what made me initially kinda break away from the traditional timeline that we were being taught.

    4. JR

      The term pre-history is weird, isn't it? 'Cause it's like w- according to what? What we find?

    5. MB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    6. JR

      You know? I mean, how do we know what historical ... If there was a great cataclysm, like if the Younger Dryas impact theory is correct, what ... uh, you know, how much history would be written down? What would be left? How would you find it? What would you know?

    7. MB

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      You know, we, we're, we're...That's one of the things that disturbs me the most, is the arrogance that some academics have to having a definitive understanding of the exact timeline of agriculture, civilization, and then modern humans.

    9. MB

      Yeah, it annoys me. I f- feel like academics, as opposed to... The alternative historians are kind of more saying, "We don't know, but here's a potential hypothetical scenario that could be possible." Whereas, I feel like more mainstream, for want of a better word, I don't really like using that because I don't think there's such thing as a, a mainstream. It's not like there's a group of people that all collectively decide, but some, uh, particularly vocal mainstream kind of historians and scientists seem to claim to know absolute truth about the past, and that's just stupid. Like, how can anyone know about what happened 100,000 years ago or 200,000 years ago? And it kind of gets, gets me, uh, a little bit riled up, because at the end of the day, none of us know what happened back then. So I think a lot more possibilities are, you know, possible than, than what many people appreciate. And, yeah...

  5. 7:16 – 13:23

    “Pre-history” and the Göbekli Tepe problem: redefining ‘civilization’

    1. JR

      Did you ever see... There was a, a video documentary back in the day, something about the mysteries of the Sphinx. And, um, there was this archeologist that was mocking, uh, Graham Hancock's ideas and Dr. Robert Schoch's ideas about the timeline, saying, you know, talking about things that existed pre-10,000 years. And he was saying, "What ev-" He was, like, laughing.

    2. MB

      (laughs) Yeah.

    3. JR

      Like, "What evidence is there of any civilization from 10,000 years ago?" This was literally, I think, around the same time that they discovered, uh, Gobekli Tepe.

    4. MB

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      Like, the, the, this guy was mocking it, I think slightly thereafter, they discovered Gobekli Tepe, which threw everything into a tizzy, because now you've got something that was absolutely covered, I bel- they believe intentionally, somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000 years ago.

    6. MB

      Yeah, I think Gobekli Tepe is the biggest kind of smoking gun for, uh, at least for the idea that civilization is older and more complex than the traditional model suggests, because obviously as you say, it's like 12,000 years old and it's massive megalithic pillars. Like, I mean, you know about Gobekli Tepe. Uh, probably most people listening th- to this will know about Gobekli Tepe, but it's such a clear sign that sophisticated human culture was present way earlier than the conventional timeline suggests. And I think that at least should throw a monkey wrench into a lot of these people's ideas regarding human civilization and when it began, because clearly the toolkit for civilization existed 12,000 years ago. So how, why couldn't it have existed a little bit earlier than that? And why, if it existed then, did it then take another 6,000 years for it to emerge in ancient Sumer, which is the kind of traditional thought to be the earliest civilization. So, Gobekli Tepe is fascinating. I love it. It's a really interesting site. Um, I think it will one day be classed as civilization. I'm almost certain that when enough time passes, we'll kind of look at that... A- and th- because it's a whole culture, the whole Taş Töpeli culture. There's like 14 sites at least, and they all have this kind of megalithic architecture. They all have shared symbolism. They all clearly connected, like, it's crazy how it's not defined as anything other than hunter-gatherers. And if, even if you think that hunter-gatherers built Gobekli Tepe, then you need to massively update the definition of what a hunter-gatherer is, because clearly they had surplus. They weren't just building these sites in their spare time. And yeah, it's, it's a truly paradigm-shifting site. But I mean... I mean, everyone kind of knows about Gobekli Tepe now, but...

    7. JR

      Not everyone. But, uh, but also as spectacular as what they've discovered so far is, they have only unearthed 5% of it, which is even more bizarre.

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      'Cause you've got so much stuff that's underground. You have no idea what's on those pillars. You know, there's speculation that one of the pillars from Gob- Gobekli Tepe that is on Earth is some sort of a calendar of events, and they believe that it depicts some sort of a disaster. Like that these, uh, whatever, how they, m- they're making these images to, uh, be associated with either an impact or something. But there's a timeline that's inscribed in these pillars.

    10. MB

      Yeah. They, there's like a, a study that was written or a paper that was written, and they think it's the, what? Pillar 43, I think it is, is kind of like a cosmic calendar, and it's like a, almost a prediction model of, uh, an impact that could happen or already has happened. And th- it's like a warning for the future. That... I mean, that is still disputed, but I mean there's been good research that's done into that, that suggests that's what it is. And it's certainly a site that has cosmic alignments and kind of, uh, has been built with the, the stars in mind, which is something that we can say about so many ancient sites around the world, which is another thing that isn't really considered by, you know, quote unquote, "mainstream archeology," perhaps as much as it should be. Um, so yeah, it's a fascinating site, and I really think it displays a lot about how human ingenuity and civilization from... I mean, people get a bit stuck with the word civilization, because we have this... a very narrow definition of what civilization is. And it's-

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. MB

      ... basically based on the old model of Mesopotamia, which is ancient Sumerian, 'cause that was the earliest known civilization for so long. We kind of constructed this whole idea about what a civilization is purely based on Mesopotamia. But I don't see why that has to be what civilization is, because that was just one civilization. And just because that was the earliest one we'd found for a long time and still is thought of as such doesn't mean that that's the only way that humanity can flourish. Because humans are so adaptable. We do so many different things, and we're clever in different ways, and we, you know, change to different environments. And I think that definition has really kept a lot of people kind of boxed in when thinking about how sophisticated human culture could flourish in different places, in different environments, and with different pressures. And I think that's kind of sp-... force people to not consider what other possibilities are, um, are out there.

    13. JR

      I think it's even more fascinating if you consider the fact that ancient Sumer and, you know, that, that part of the world from about 6,000 years ago is where they're sort of hanging their hat, saying that this is the birthplace of civilization. But if you do have this evidence of Göbekli Tepe, and then we are talking about some sort of an ancient civilization that lived 12,000 years ago, like, what happened? What happened? Like, what was the gap between that and then it took 6,000 years before they started civilization back up again, sort of a reimagining of civilization, which makes you really, at l- at least it makes me really consider the possibility of a cataclysm. Because if y- the people that survived, whatever they would be, you know, I mean, they would probably li- be living off the land. They'd probably be barely getting by, and barbaric for a long, long time. And if it really took 6,000 years to kind of, like, settle down again, that is fascinating to me.

  6. 13:23 – 15:53

    Agriculture appearing “everywhere at once” and the warm-period counterargument

    1. MB

      Yeah. And it, it all ties into this idea that we've had that agriculture leads to civilization. But there's that bizarre thing that, you know, agriculture appears in multiple different places at pretty much the exact same time all over the world. And that's never made sense to me, because if agriculture was such a, uh, kind of vital invention for civilization to flourish, then why did no one invent it for, you know, 310,000 years?

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. MB

      And, and then in South America, in Mesopotamia, in ancient China, and you could argue there's other different places that... So say there's, like, South America and there's Central America. I mean, you could argue that's potentially connected, but a lot of people say it isn't. So how can agriculture, if it's such an incredible invention, be invented by multiple people at the same time and then, but no one else thought of it before? I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me.

    4. JR

      It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense they wouldn't figure out seeds.

    5. MB

      Mm-hmm. (laughs)

    6. JR

      Like, how, how do you not know eventually that these seeds are dropping and then you see seedlings that are coming out of the ground? Just that seems pretty logical and, uh, an easy connection. And then you'd say, "Oh, well, if we gather these seeds and go plant them over there, you know, maybe we can get some fruit trees over here."

    7. MB

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      "Oh, look at that, it worked." Like, that doesn't... That seems like you'd figure that out in one lifetime.

    9. MB

      I know, it's odd. But I think, I think the idea is, the idea always has been that it's because of the climate, right?

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MB

      So because of the Holocene, which is, which began around 12,000 years ago, as we came out of that and we had kind of stable climate conditions that we still live e- live in today, that's what enabled the invention of agriculture, right? But then the question I always ask is, well, what about all the other warm periods that have come in the past? If, as the idea is that, you know, stable climate led to agriculture, then why couldn't such a thing have happened in the Eemian period 120,000 years ago? Or there's been four distinct warm periods that have lasted for like over 10,000 years while modern humans have been around, at least. And obviously, these Morocco remains of Homo sapiens, it's unlikely they're the earliest Homo sapiens that ever lived. They're just the earliest we found. So-

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. MB

      ... we could be even older than that. So considering we've been through four distinct warm periods before the Holocene, and if the argument is that the Holocene was what led to the invention of agriculture due to the stable climate, then why couldn't it have happened in the earlier warm periods? That's like, that's a question I've always asked myself and been fascinated by, but...

    14. JR

      And the real problem is there would be n- very little evidence, if any.

  7. 15:53 – 19:57

    The preservation problem: why 100,000+ years can erase almost everything

    1. MB

      Yeah, so this is the preservation problem, and this is something I talk about in my videos. So I kind of always ask the question, like, what if a human culture had flourished in the Eemian, for example, which was from 130 to 115,000 years ago, what realistically would survive? Because it's, it's such a vast, vast length of time that it's really unlikely, at least as far as I can tell, and obviously I'm not a scientist. I'm not like a, you know, a materials... I'm not any kind of, I'm just a guy. I'm not even a historian technically. But as far as I can tell, it's extremely hard for these, for any materials, but even our modern materials in our huge civilization that, you know, eight billion people, industrial society, sending rockets to space, you know, all the crazy stuff that we're doing. Even us, if we disappear tomorrow, I think it would be extremely unlikely that pretty much anything would survive when you get up to these huge timescales of like 100,000 years. And so I've been doing quite a lot of, you know, research into this, um, because I don't... I obviously don't wanna, you know, get things wrong and put falsehoods out there and mislead people. Like, I don't wanna look like a, a dickhead in front of like-

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. MB

      ... in front of like millions of people or whatever. So I've been trying to, like, you know, debunk myself or play devil's advocate to myself on this point because, you know, that's the best way to make your argument airtight and no one's really out there debunking me. Um, I don't know if that's because I'm right (laughs) or because, like, no one knows me. Maybe that will change after a show like this. But I've been really looking into the kind of degradation of modern materials as much as I can and trying to work out how much would survive from a civilization like ours if we disappeared tomorrow in 100,000 years time. So if you-

    4. JR

      Right, like some place like London or Manhattan, like-

    5. MB

      Yeah, yeah.

    6. JR

      ... what, what would be left in 100,000 years?

    7. MB

      Yeah, of like an actual modern city. And the scary truth is it's, it's almost nothing. Like there are-

    8. JR

      Really?

    9. MB

      As far as I can tell. And also submit-

    10. JR

      Cement buildings, they would just deteriorate?

    11. MB

      They would g- they would go, like... Concrete would crack and you'd get CO2 in there and freeze-thaw weathering. And over these huge timescales of like 5,000 years, 10,000 years, they would just crumble down into dust and be absolutely imperceptible.

    12. JR

      Just 10,000 years?

    13. MB

      I think so. Obviously these, I mean, I'm just doing this off the top of my head. I haven't got any notes in front of me or anything. But as far as I can tell from my research, it's gonna be a few like 10,000 years, 20,000 years max. It's not gonna get up to these timescales of 100,000 years.

    14. JR

      So if you do add in... If you, you think about what Manhattan would look like in 100,000 years, it's almost nothing.

    15. MB

      I would say it was nothing.... to be honest.

    16. JR

      Nothing. It would just get overrun by trees again.

    17. MB

      Yeah, because there's just, there's, it's just such an incredible amount of time that all these materials that we build with are just gonna corrode, and they're gonna, they're gonna rust away. If they're metals, they're gonna oxidize, they're gonna flake until they're just tiny little fragments that just disperse in the sedimentary record, and they're just invisible to see. And same with concrete, same with even things like glass. I've heard a lot of people say that glass would potentially survive because glass is a, you know, it's a very durable material, and glass would survive a long time. But glass in the form of a human-made recognizable artifact isn't gonna survive in that form. It's gonna get crushed. It's gonna break away into tiny little nano fragments, into silica grains that are just invisible in the kind of archeological record when you get up to these huge levels of time. And yeah, I mean, there's... Well, I would say almost nothing would survive that long. And again, with the caveat that I'm just some random dude who's investigated this on the internet and researched this myself, not a scientist. If anyone out there is a material scientist, I encourage them to reach out to me. But as far as I can tell, there are very few things that could possibly survive that long. Um, I mean, we're pretty crazy fucking apes, like we do crazy shit, so things like nuclear weapons, like we test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. You could argue if we knew when to look and what to look for, we could see traces of plutonium in the atmosphere from our nuclear weapons testing, or you could see our nuclear waste deposits. Or things like carved stone, because stone obviously survives a very long time. Human-carved stone, you'd be able to find that. But we do

  8. 19:57 – 23:29

    Nine sites older than 100,000 years: the thin evidence base for sweeping claims

    1. MB

      find that. We find, you know, stone tools. But just because ancient humans used stone tools doesn't mean they didn't use anything else. It's just stone is the most likely thing to survive. And the crazy thing is, like do you, Joe, do you know how many sites we have, Homo sapien sites from more than 100,000 years ago?

    2. JR

      How many?

    3. MB

      Nine. We have nine sites, nine glimpses, nine snapshots into over 200,000 years of history, nine moments in time, and we use that to extrapolate out what every single human was doing for-

    4. JR

      Nine globally.

    5. MB

      Nine globally, yeah.

    6. JR

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    7. MB

      Africa.

    8. JR

      And so what do they find? Like, what is the evidence?

    9. MB

      It's usually caves, and it's usually just, you know, remains of fire pits and stone tools. And that's kind of it. And so we see that and we think, "Okay, they just lived in caves and used stone tools." (laughs)

    10. JR

      Right. But-

    11. MB

      But it's nine sites, nine moments in time for 200,000 years.

    12. JR

      Well, the problem is there's people that essentially live like that right now in some parts of the world, which is really weird, right? Because we always want to think about technology and advancement of civilization being sort of universal, but it's really not. You know, there's people that are living a subsistence lifestyle right now. There's people that are uncontacted right now.

    13. MB

      At the same time as Elon Musk sending-

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. MB

      ... rockets to Mars and shit, yeah.

    16. JR

      Right.

    17. MB

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      I mean, th- that's the weirdest ones is when you see them get invaded in the Amazon, when you see them contact these people and they're pointing bows and arrows at helicopters.

    19. MB

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      And, you know, they're naked.

    21. MB

      Yeah, exactly. We're so adaptable. Humans can do so many different things.

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. MB

      And as you say, right now, we're sending rockets to space and people are living in very traditional ways of life. And that, just because we find traditional ways of life in, I repeat, nine sites to cover-

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. MB

      ... 200,000 years, in my view, that's just what we can see. That's just the on- that kind of points to my point of regarding what would possibly survive.

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. MB

      Because if you think of all the human lives, stories, cultures that have potentially existed for our whole species' existence, if we only have nine little glimpses from... And to be fair, that nine is, you could say it's up to 15 because some sites are debated, but either way, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of human, you know, signs of human life. Just because in tho- in that fragment, in that snapshot, in that sliver, all we see is some humans with stone tools in caves doesn't mean that nothing else was happening, so.

  9. 23:29 – 30:10

    Egypt as an anomaly: pyramids, underground scans, and ‘tomb’ assumptions

    1. JR

      Well, a good piece of evidence to that, that would point in that direction is Egypt because Egypt, even if you accept the conventional timeline of Egypt, which is 2500 BC for the Great Pyramid, go look at the rest of the world at 2500 BC, you don't see anything like that. Nothing even close.

    2. MB

      Yeah, they were clearly, even if you kind of look at the conventional model of history, the ancient Egyptians were wildly ahead of everyone else.

    3. JR

      Everyone.

    4. MB

      It's just so weird. It's like-

    5. JR

      So weird.

    6. MB

      And that's, that's if you... And the conventional model doesn't really give us any explanations of how they were doing what they were doing.

    7. JR

      And they arrogantly dismiss any other explanations, which is really weird when you're talking about these immense structures that are baffling.

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Absolutely baffling to anybody who's being honest.

    10. MB

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      What is your take on these Italian researchers that are looking at the tomography, and they're looking at these things that they believe are underneath the Great Pyramid and some other structures in Egypt?

    12. MB

      Yeah, the kind, uh, the ... What's it called? Like, Sarz Topla, like ... I mean, I don't know. I'm, I'm always a little bit suspicious when you make sensationalist claims with new technology. And that doesn't mean it's wrong, I just, that just creates my-

    13. JR

      Yeah, you have to be suspicious-

    14. MB

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... 'cause it's bonkers.

    16. MB

      It is crazy. (laughs)

    17. JR

      I mean, if what they're saying is two kilometers deep underneath the Great Pyramid-

    18. MB

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      ... there's structures. And there's, uh, hundreds of meters of these pylons, these pillars, that are in uniform positions with some sort of a coil wrapped under, around them.

    20. MB

      (laughs) Yeah.

    21. JR

      Like, what, what is that? What ... Is that real? And they, they reproduce it in multiple different scans, but I don't know what they're seeing. I don't understand the technology, understand where the errors could be. Like, what, what could possibly cause it to glitch like that?

    22. MB

      Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Um, I would love it to be true, obviously, because you know- (laughs)

    23. JR

      I would love it.

    24. MB

      Can you imagine? It w-

    25. JR

      That's the problem. The problem is the same problem that I have with UFOs and everything else-

    26. MB

      You want it to be true.

    27. JR

      ... is that I ... 100%.

    28. MB

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      So, it really clouds my judgment. And then, I have to get my, you know, analytical mind to say, "Shut up-"

    30. MB

      Yeah.

  10. 30:10 – 38:13

    Green Sahara hypothesis: a missing cradle of civilization before dynastic Egypt

    1. MB

      Yeah. So, my theory is that things were happening in the Sahara Desert when it was green, in the Green Sahara, for those 9,000 years. And then, because it was really quick, that's what I don't think people realize, is that when the Sahara Desert turned from, you know, green lush paradise, whatever you wanna call it, to a desert-... it was like a few centuries. It's called rapid desertification, and it, it flipped ... well, not overnight, obviously, but in a few centuries compared to 9,000 years is a rapid change. And for any kind of culture that was living there, you wouldn't have noticed it straight away, but in 50 years you'd be like, "Fuck, it's getting a bit hot here." (laughs) You know what I mean?

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. MB

      Like, shit is going on.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. MB

      And then some ... I think maybe people migrated to the last stretch of green that was still available to them, which was the Nile River, and then the kind of survivors or the migratory populations developed around the Nile River, and using the kind of experience and knowledge that they had from their lives and the kind of history of their cultures in the Green Sahara period, that is what led to ancient Egypt. I mean, that's just a-

    6. JR

      Well, it's also-

    7. MB

      ... theory, but-

    8. JR

      ... just an assumption that ancient Egypt didn't exist alongside that or-

    9. MB

      That's true. Yeah.

    10. JR

      ... or even previous to that-

    11. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JR

      ... which is also possible. E- especially when you consider what Robert Schoch thinks about the erosion, the water erosion and the temple of the Sphinx.

    13. MB

      Yeah, the kind of explanation away of that also never made sense to me, that it's wind and sand, because when you see pictures of the Sphinx even from when they kind of found it in Napoleonic times, it's buried in sand.

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. MB

      And there's records from the Egyptians themselves who, uh, you know, took, uh, excavated it effectively 'cause it was covered in sand. So, if it quickly gets covered in sand, how could it be eroded by wind and sand if it doesn't take very long for it to, you know, kind of get filled up with sand? Then how does wind and sand erosion even count? I've never seen anyone kind of explain that away.

    16. JR

      Well, though, it's the walls that are the most fascinating to me, because the, the deep fissures that clearly look like rainfall. It looks like something that water does over thousands of years.

    17. MB

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      You know? And when you-

    19. GU

      There's those whales that were ... the whale ... uh, the Valley of the Whales?

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. GU

      It's just about, I don't know how many miles south, but it's south of Cairo.

    22. JR

      That's bonkers, too. (laughs)

    23. GU

      There's this arch-

    24. JR

      That's crazy. They find whales-

    25. GU

      ... these hundreds of whales.

    26. JR

      Hundreds of whales in the desert. That's so cra- look at that image. That's so nuts. That is so nuts.

    27. GU

      Th- some of them had teeth and toes.

    28. MB

      (laughs)

    29. JR

      So crazy. So crazy. And then it s- it makes you wonder, like, how did those bones survive? Like, why, why are they there? Like, how quickly did they die? How quickly did they get covered up by sediment that they could find them all these years later? Because that's the, the weird thing about fossils and bones in general, is that most of them you're never going to find because they get eaten, they, they deteriorate, they, they're gone. Like, it's very difficult to make a fossil. You know, when you, you think about our, you know, quote-unquote fossil record, it's really weird because it's hard to make a fossil.

    30. MB

      Yeah.

  11. 38:13 – 50:26

    Kalambo Structure (476,000 years): permanent building and early intelligence

    1. JR

      What is that evidence that they found of wood construction from far longer than they thought?

    2. MB

      Yeah, this is the Kalambo Structure.

    3. JR

      Yes.

    4. MB

      And this is something I talk about a lot in my videos, because I think it's a crazy find, and I don't understand why it's not kicking up more of a fuss. Like, if I'm the guy that has to kick up the fuss about it, then I'll be that guy, because s- basically, th- we've, the idea has always been that humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers that move with the seasons and lived in caves or just kind of walked around for all of our history, until the Neolithic Revolution, the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago. And no earlier than that did we ever settle down and live in permanent settlements. But the Kalambo Structure was something they found a few years ago in modern-day Zambia. And what it is, is this, these pieces of wood. And I'll (laughs) get to the point about why this wood has survived, uh, in a minute, because obviously, you know, wood surviving this long is crazy, but there you go. Yeah, so the Kalambo Structure is these pieces of wood that have been joined together deliberately, cut in notches, and connected together, tapered and secured at right angles. And they think it was either a kinda raised walkway, uh, like a kind of raised platform, or a house, a dwelling, a hut, some kind of structure. And why this is so paradigm-shifting is because not only does this kind of scream that humans potentially lived in permanent settlement... So, sorry, I haven't even said, this, this is 476,000 years old. So this predates homo sapiens, so-

    5. JR

      Allegedly.

    6. MB

      Allegedly. As in, what do you mean allegedly? Oh, 'cause-

    7. JR

      Because we-

    8. MB

      Yeah, yeah, exactly.

    9. JR

      ... we recently found out that they lived 300,000 years ago.

    10. MB

      I guess, yeah, it could've been us. But what they, they attribute it to is homo heidelbergensis, who's our last common ancestor with, uh, Neanderthals. So they're kind of the human species that came before homo sapiens. So, I guess you're right. It could've been homo sapiens, and we're just not sure how old we are. But it's, um-

    11. JR

      Wow, look at that.

    12. MB

      It's kinda attributed to homo heidelbergensis. And the only reason this structure survived at all is because pretty soon after its construction, it must've fallen into a bog. And then that bog kind of got solidified over by the sun. And then it was preserved in waterlogged sediment, which protected it th- from decay for almost half a million years, until it was discovered, by us recently, and-

    13. JR

      How recent?

    14. MB

      I think about five years ago, maybe? Was it 2019 or something? I'm not-

    15. JR

      Wow.

    16. MB

      ... 100% sure. But you know, it's crazy that it lasted so long.

    17. JR

      So another monkey wrench.

    18. MB

      Yeah, m- I would say it's a massive monkey wrench. Because not only does it kind of really dispute this idea that we didn't settle down until, you know, 12,000 years ago with the Neolithic Revolution.

    19. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MB

      'Cause I mean, it's a, it's a structure. I mean, and it's just because it's so unlikely, it's so unbelievable that this would have survived. But that kind of suggests that it's, it's not the only one.

    21. JR

      Right.

    22. MB

      There could've been loads of these.

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. MB

      Like structures everywhere. And-

    25. JR

      But as you said, Man- Manhattan-

    26. MB

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... wouldn't live, wouldn't exist in 100,000 years. So this is 476,000 years.

    28. MB

      Yeah, it's ridiculous.

    29. JR

      And it's just wood, which is less durable-

    30. MB

      Yeah.

  12. 50:26 – 56:56

    Gatekeeping vs discovery: internet-era debate, Clovis First, and academic incentives

    1. MB

      Yeah, well I think the advent of the internet, um, and you know, sh- shows like this, or the medium of podcasting has really kind of democratized the access to information and allowed people with theories that potentially wouldn't have been able to get out there in the, the pre-internet age where they were kind of ... You had to go through a kinda academic institution to get a theory heard or debated. Now anyone can say anything for better or worse, and that can, you know, reach millions of people. And then if it's a, an idea that's popular, then it can kind of be in the public eye, and then it can be debated properly, and I think that's only a good thing. Obviously there are negative aspects to that, but I think that will increase, you know, ideas, uh, regarding pre-history, for example. I think it will increase the rate in which these things will get accepted because once the evidence is out there, and once you start, you know, talking about the Kalambo structure, for example, and how it completely flies in the face of both these paradigms regarding permanent living and human intelligence, it's out there now. People can look it up and people can see that this is completely kind of opposed to what we've always been taught regarding pre-history.

    2. JR

      And isn't it kind of arrogant to assume that they know who built it too?

    3. MB

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      That's weird too, because they're d- basing it on this assumption that human beings didn't exist back then, at least homo sapiens didn't exist back then, which is also being challenged-

    5. MB

      That's true.

    6. JR

      ... over and over and over again.

    7. MB

      Yeah, the, the fact they base it on Haderbergensis is literally just because we found some Haderbergensis remains, like, 200 kilometers away, and they're like, "Okay, well it's Haderbergensis." I mean, it could've been, to be fair, but ...

    8. JR

      It could've been, but I mean, right now there's people that are living in Africa and 200 kilometers away from them are apes.

    9. MB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    10. JR

      So if one day they found structures, you know, in the future and said, "Oh, these are b- made by chimpanzees."

    11. MB

      Yeah.

    12. JR

      That's kind of crazy.

    13. MB

      Yeah, it is kinda cray- I mean, that's the thing about history is it's all based on massive assumptions. It's not like a hard science. It's interpreting evidence. And that's fine, like that's how we do it, but-

    14. JR

      Sure.

    15. MB

      That's why I don't get-

    16. JR

      Well it's the only way to do it right now.

    17. MB

      Exactly.

    18. JR

      So-

    19. MB

      It's the only way to do it.

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. MB

      So that's why I don't get why people make these definitive conclusions and then don't allow anybody to kind of speculate or hypothesize about anything else.

    22. JR

      It's gatekeeping.

    23. MB

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      It's gatekeeping. It's academic gatekeeping. It's also this, these people that have been teaching this one thing forever being threatened by the fact they were wrong. The last thing an academic wants e- wants to hear is like, "You wrote this book."

    25. MB

      (laughs) Yeah.

    26. JR

      "This stupid book, this book misled people for decades. You were so wrong." Like, they will fight it with every ounce of their being because it's essentially their identity. Their identity is being the gatekeeper of their understanding of human history. And-

    27. MB

      Yeah, and they, they've built a whole career around it and they've, you know ... As you say, it's their identity. They've been the knowledge, the keeper of knowledge on a particular subject and then-

    28. JR

      But it's gross-

    29. MB

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      ... because it's ours. It's the whole planet.

  13. 56:56 – 1:43:01

    From UFO musings to the Silurian hypothesis: how weird could deep history get?

    1. JR

      What, what, one do you dive into in your own head the most?

    2. MB

      Um, I sometimes combine th- the UFO one with the ancient civilization one.

    3. JR

      I do, too.

    4. MB

      (laughs) And I think, what happens if, you know, a civilization from a million years ago got so advanced that we can't see them? And then that's what the UFO thing is, is just someone from this Earth that doesn't really need the space anymore, and they're just watching us.

    5. JR

      Yeah.

    6. MB

      Sometimes I think about that. But obviously, I don't talk about it on my videos, 'cause I don't need to give anyone any more ammunition to send for me.

    7. JR

      Well, there's also the genetic engineering one.

    8. MB

      Oh, you mean like the a- ... Yeah.

    9. JR

      Yeah, like why humans are so different than everything else in the first place. Like, that's weird.

    10. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      The doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years is really weird. It's-

    12. MB

      What does that refer to? Is that from habilis to erectus? What, w- is that, is that f-

    13. JR

      I don't know. Let's, uh, let's Google it.

    14. MB

      'Cause I've heard people say that, and I've always thought, "I guess that must be from Homo habilis to Homo erectus, from just over a million years ago."

    15. JR

      It's a, just an immense leap that is, uh ... Like Terrence McKenna used to say, it would be bizarre if it was a liver of an otter-

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm, yeah.

    17. JR

      ... that doubled over a period of that amount of time. But the fact that it is the very organ that allows us to contemplate and to understand human existence in the first place, and that that organ doubled over a period of two million years? Like, what happened?

    18. MB

      Yeah. Un- yeah, it, uh-

    19. JR

      He's got the wackiest theory, 'cause he thinks it's psilocybin mushrooms.

    20. MB

      I think there could be something to that. I mean, because, you know, ancient cultures have always used psychedelic substances, and basically all the way up until Western civi- uh, society kind of took hold, it's always been an integral part of human culture-

    21. JR

      Sure.

    22. MB

      ... and human society. And then us, in our modern world, have decided to outlaw that, and yeah, I think that's a tragic mistake, to be honest with you, um ...

    23. JR

      It is. And I think history will reveal that-

    24. MB

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      ... one day. And I think that is one of the als- a- also one of the good things about discussions that are happening on the internet that are kind of unchecked and untethered by academia, so you could talk about these things.

    26. GU

      So ...

    27. JR

      Bigger blain- brains.

    28. GU

      Smithsonian website says it's actually tripled over the time we've tracked it.

    29. JR

      Wow.

    30. GU

      Slow increase from six to two million, but a larger increase 800 to 200,000 years ago.

Episode duration: 2:54:08

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