Joe Rogan Experience #2368 - Michael Button

Narrator 0:00 (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What's happening?

Michael Button 0:12 How are you, Joe?

Joe Rogan 0:13 Good to see you, man. Nice to meet you.

Michael Button 0:14 You too, man. Pleasure.

Joe Rogan 0:16 I love your channel, man. It's really great.

Michael Button 0:18 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:19 You, you're really doing some really interesting videos. When did you get started?

Michael Button 0:23 (clicks tongue) Thanks. Well, I only started the YouTube less than a year ago. So-

Joe Rogan 0:28 That's crazy.

Michael Button 0:28 (laughs) Yeah, it's been a bit of a wild ride.

Joe Rogan 0:30 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.

Michael Button 0:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:41 And I was like, "Oh."

Michael Button 0:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:43 "All right."

Michael Button 0:44 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.

Joe Rogan 1:05 (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?

Michael Button 1:13 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-

Joe Rogan 2:08 What, what bothered you? Like what were the questions?

Michael Button 2:11 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.

Joe Rogan 2:41 Was that Denisovans?

Michael Button 2:43 No, no. Homo sapiens.

Joe Rogan 2:44 Which ones are?

Michael Button 2:44 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.

Joe Rogan 2:54 How old were they?

Michael Button 2:55 They're 315,000 years old. Uh, that's kind of like the estimate. It goes up to-

Joe Rogan 2:59 Oh.

Michael Button 2:59 ... 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

Michael Button 4:00 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?

Joe Rogan 4:19 Yes.

Michael Button 4:19 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.

Joe Rogan 5:55 The term pre-history is weird, isn't it? 'Cause it's like w- according to what? What we find?

Michael Button 6:01 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:01 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?

Michael Button 6:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:15 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.

Michael Button 6:32 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...

Joe Rogan 7:16 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.

Michael Button 7:44 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:45 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.

Michael Button 7:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:58 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.

Michael Button 8:16 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...

Joe Rogan 9:51 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.

Michael Button 10:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:02 '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.

Michael Button 10:34 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-

Joe Rogan 11:28 Right.

Michael Button 11:29 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 12:23 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.

Michael Button 13:23 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?

Joe Rogan 13:50 Right.

Michael Button 13:51 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.

Joe Rogan 14:15 It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense they wouldn't figure out seeds.

Michael Button 14:18 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:18 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."

Michael Button 14:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:38 "Oh, look at that, it worked." Like, that doesn't... That seems like you'd figure that out in one lifetime.

Michael Button 14:43 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?

Joe Rogan 14:48 Mm-hmm.

Michael Button 14:48 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-

Joe Rogan 15:29 Right.

Michael Button 15:30 ... 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...

Joe Rogan 15:49 And the real problem is there would be n- very little evidence, if any.

Michael Button 15:53 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-

Joe Rogan 16:59 Right.

Michael Button 16:59 ... 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-

Joe Rogan 17:31 Right, like some place like London or Manhattan, like-

Michael Button 17:33 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:34 ... what, what would be left in 100,000 years?

Michael Button 17:36 Yeah, of like an actual modern city. And the scary truth is it's, it's almost nothing. Like there are-

Joe Rogan 17:42 Really?

Michael Button 17:43 As far as I can tell. And also submit-

Joe Rogan 17:44 Cement buildings, they would just deteriorate?

Michael Button 17:46 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.

Joe Rogan 17:59 Just 10,000 years?

Michael Button 18:01 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.

Joe Rogan 18:15 So if you do add in... If you, you think about what Manhattan would look like in 100,000 years, it's almost nothing.

Michael Button 18:21 I would say it was nothing.... to be honest.

Joe Rogan 18:23 Nothing. It would just get overrun by trees again.

Michael Button 18:27 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

Michael Button 19:57 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?

Joe Rogan 20:15 How many?

Michael Button 20:16 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-

Joe Rogan 20:30 Nine globally.

Michael Button 20:32 Nine globally, yeah.

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Michael Button 21:38 Africa.

Joe Rogan 21:39 And so what do they find? Like, what is the evidence?

Michael Button 21:42 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)

Joe Rogan 21:52 Right. But-

Michael Button 21:53 But it's nine sites, nine moments in time for 200,000 years.

Joe Rogan 21:56 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.

Michael Button 22:19 At the same time as Elon Musk sending-

Joe Rogan 22:20 Yeah.

Michael Button 22:20 ... rockets to Mars and shit, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:22 Right.

Michael Button 22:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:23 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.

Michael Button 22:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:32 And, you know, they're naked.

Michael Button 22:34 Yeah, exactly. We're so adaptable. Humans can do so many different things.

Joe Rogan 22:36 Yeah.

Michael Button 22:36 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-

Joe Rogan 22:48 Right.

Michael Button 22:48 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 22:56 Right.

Michael Button 22:56 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.

Joe Rogan 23:29 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.

Michael Button 23:48 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.

Joe Rogan 23:54 Everyone.

Michael Button 23:55 It's just so weird. It's like-

Joe Rogan 23:56 So weird.

Michael Button 23:57 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.

Joe Rogan 24:02 And they arrogantly dismiss any other explanations, which is really weird when you're talking about these immense structures that are baffling.

Michael Button 24:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:10 Absolutely baffling to anybody who's being honest.

Michael Button 24:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:14 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?

Michael Button 24:25 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-

Joe Rogan 24:37 Yeah, you have to be suspicious-

Michael Button 24:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:38 ... 'cause it's bonkers.

Michael Button 24:39 It is crazy. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:39 I mean, if what they're saying is two kilometers deep underneath the Great Pyramid-

Michael Button 24:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:43 ... 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.

Michael Button 24:55 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:55 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?

Michael Button 25:10 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Um, I would love it to be true, obviously, because you know- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:15 I would love it.

Michael Button 25:15 Can you imagine? It w-

Joe Rogan 25:16 That's the problem. The problem is the same problem that I have with UFOs and everything else-

Michael Button 25:20 You want it to be true.

Joe Rogan 25:21 ... is that I ... 100%.

Michael Button 25:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:22 So, it really clouds my judgment. And then, I have to get my, you know, analytical mind to say, "Shut up-"

Michael Button 25:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:29 "... let's look at this honestly."

Michael Button 25:31 But I mean, I think that, I mean, there's definitely something below the Giza Plateau. Like, th- that's always been written about in ancient sources.

Joe Rogan 25:38 Yes.

Michael Button 25:38 And these, these, kind of scans, and then people gonna ... You have stories of people going down into labyrinths that aren't, you know, accepted by Egyptology. And there's definitely massive mysteries surrounding Giza and the construction of the pyramids, and what could potentially be below the pyramids. And this, kinda, new, uh, pyramid scan project has the potential, I think, to, you know, make big progress in understanding what is below Giza. But I don't know. Until there's better data out there, I, I'm not gonna, you know, jump to any conclusions and declare that this is, like, evidence of, you know, a lost advanced technology, civilization, or anything like that.

Joe Rogan 26:16 No, you can't. But I am so excited about just the possibility that they're right. 'Cause if they are right, that throw ... That's the greatest monkey wrench into-

Michael Button 26:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:26 ... history that's ever existed. 'Cause explain away that-

Michael Button 26:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:30 ... with ancient people with stone tools, and, or copper. Like, explain that away.

Michael Button 26:34 They'd probably try, mate. Because it already doesn't make sense, th- how their, their explanation for the construction of the pyramids being wooden sledges and, and stone chisels, or, or whatever they say. It already doesn't make sense. It's already so ridiculous that I wouldn't even be surprised if they tried to explain away these massive columns, but-

Joe Rogan 26:49 Well, the ... It'll discredit them. Because the problem is, if it does indicate that the pyramid is something other than a tomb, you know-

Michael Button 26:57 There's not ... I don't even see any evidence that the Great Pyramid at Giza ... I mean, what's the evidence that that was a tomb? I mean, d- they, I don't think they've ever found a body in there.

Joe Rogan 27:07 No.

Michael Button 27:07 It's just a chamber which they've called The King's Chamber.

Joe Rogan 27:10 Right.

Michael Button 27:10 I mean, I'm not an expert on Ancient Egypt by any respect, but, uh, it's always baffled me that they're so determined that the pyramids are tombs just because some later pyramids have had, you know, uh, mummies and pharaohs and sarcophagi found inside them. But ...

Joe Rogan 27:24 That doesn't mean anything. And that, that doesn't mean that they built it. That also could mean that the pharaoh decided that it was his and wanted to be buried inside of it.

Michael Button 27:32 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:32 And that it had existed for thousands of years before they ever even got there.

Michael Button 27:35 And you can f- ... You find bodies in, like, you know, buildings today. And that doesn't mean the purpose of that building was to be a tomb.

Joe Rogan 27:41 Right, exactly.

Michael Button 27:42 It's just, someone's buried there. So if someone ... Yeah, as you say, thought it was-

Joe Rogan 27:44 It's a weird assumption. It's a very weird assumption. And did you ever read any Christopher, uh ...

Michael Button 27:51 Christopher Dunn, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:52 Christopher Dunn's work?

Michael Button 27:53 I know a bit. I haven't read his book, but I know a bit about it. And it's interesting. I mean, he's like, a serious guy, isn't he? He's like a-

Joe Rogan 27:58 He's an engineer.

Michael Button 27:58 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 27:59 Yeah.

Michael Button 27:59 And he has quite serious theories that ...

Joe Rogan 28:01 He thinks it's a power plant.

Michael Button 28:02 Yeah, which would be crazy, wouldn't it? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:06 (laughs) Especially if you, you add into that the Graham Hancock's ideas and some of these other peoples' ideas, that perhaps some of these structures are far older. The-

Michael Button 28:15 Well, the kind of Orion correlation and the Sphinx-

Joe Rogan 28:18 Yeah.

Michael Button 28:18 ... uh, wondering-

Joe Rogan 28:19 Also, the fact that the, the deeper you go into the sand, the more sophisticated the building techniques are.

Michael Button 28:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:25 That gets weird. Like, larger stones. Like, what happened? Like- (laughs)

Michael Button 28:30 The whole of, like, Ancient Egypt and the Sahara Desert in general just doesn't make sense to me. Because when you look at the Sahara Desert and the fact that it was green for 9,000 years, and then it stopped being green at precisely the time that we're told Ancient Egypt emerged, well, that doesn't make sense. That defies how civilization works. Why would a civilization only emerge after the climate got worse? Like-

Joe Rogan 28:53 Right.

Michael Button 28:54 That doesn't make sense at all. Like ...

Joe Rogan 28:55 And so little research done in Subsaharan Africa where they've actually gone into the ground and-

Michael Button 29:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:01 ... done, like, large-scale research of these immense areas.

Michael Button 29:05 Nothing, nothing. The Sahara Desert is vast and obviously covered in sand and extremely hot, extremely difficult to survey, politically unstable, and there's basically been no archeological work done across the whole ... And the Sahara Desert is massive. It's like the whole of North Africa right down to, like-

Joe Rogan 29:20 Right.

Michael Button 29:20 I mean, it's massive. And-

Joe Rogan 29:22 You could fit the United States in there.

Michael Button 29:23 You could fit anything in there, like a whole, like, preceding civilization for 9,000 years leading up to Ancient Egypt. Like, it's the perfect place. It's right by Mesopotamia, it's right by Egypt. And yet, we have this blank spot for the 9,000 years before the development of civilization, which is kind of also the gap between ... I mean, it's a little bit less than this, but the gap between Göbekli Tepe and the birth of civilization. We have this huge area which would've been perfect for civilization, full of rivers, lakes, grasslands, perfect climate. And it's just missing.

Joe Rogan 29:55 Also abundant resources where they could establish a stable civilization 'cause they had so much food and, and they weren't being attacked, so they could kinda set up shop and figure some things out-

Michael Button 30:07 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:07 ... over a long period of time.

Michael Button 30:10 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?

Joe Rogan 30:44 (laughs)

Michael Button 30:44 Like, shit is going on.

Joe Rogan 30:45 Yeah.

Michael Button 30:45 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-

Joe Rogan 31:08 Well, it's also-

Michael Button 31:09 ... theory, but-

Joe Rogan 31:09 ... just an assumption that ancient Egypt didn't exist alongside that or-

Michael Button 31:12 That's true. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:12 ... or even previous to that-

Michael Button 31:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:14 ... 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.

Michael Button 31:23 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.

Joe Rogan 31:34 Right.

Michael Button 31:34 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.

Joe Rogan 31:55 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.

Michael Button 32:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:06 You know? And when you-

Guest 32:07 There's those whales that were ... the whale ... uh, the Valley of the Whales?

Joe Rogan 32:11 Yeah.

Guest 32:11 It's just about, I don't know how many miles south, but it's south of Cairo.

Joe Rogan 32:15 That's bonkers, too. (laughs)

Guest 32:16 There's this arch-

Joe Rogan 32:16 That's crazy. They find whales-

Guest 32:18 ... these hundreds of whales.

Joe Rogan 32:19 Hundreds of whales in the desert. That's so cra- look at that image. That's so nuts. That is so nuts.

Guest 32:27 Th- some of them had teeth and toes.

Michael Button 32:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:30 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.

Michael Button 33:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:07 So, we're dealing with a v- very small amount of beings that get turned into a fossil, and that is what we're using as our understanding of, like, life.

Michael Button 33:20 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:21 It's weird.

Michael Button 33:22 It is weird. It is weird.

Joe Rogan 33:22 'Cause it's so limited.

Michael Button 33:23 I'm not sure, when was the ... do you know when the Sahara was covered in water? I'm not even sure when that was. I mean, some people say that it was, like, a mass flood during that kind of Younger Dryas period, which I think is-

Joe Rogan 33:32 I think they're talking about millions-

Michael Button 33:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:34 ... of years ago-

Michael Button 33:34 Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:34 ... for these bones.

Michael Button 33:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:36 How old are these, um-

Narrator 33:37 Oh.

Joe Rogan 33:38 ... whale bones supposed to be? But I think millions of years ago-

Michael Button 33:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:43 ... it's assumed that it was completely under water, right? So, are we talking, like, Pangaea times? Like, what are we talking about then?

Michael Button 33:49 (laughs) It's so nutty. But even, um, not too long ago, like, you know, kind of 12,000 years ago, whatever, they had these massive, uh, river systems, like the Tamanduaset River System.

Joe Rogan 33:58 Here it is.

Guest 33:58 They are 40 million years old.

Michael Button 34:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:01 40 million years old?

Guest 34:02 But I don't know about the whales.

Joe Rogan 34:03 Oh my God.

Guest 34:05 Primitive whales.

Joe Rogan 34:06 Primitive whales documenting ... how do you say that word? Ceta- cetacean? How do you say that word? Cetacean transition? Is that how you say it?

Guest 34:14 I don't know. Sorry.

Michael Button 34:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:15 Cetacean transition to marine life, uh, sirenians and reptiles as well as shark teeth from the, uh, Ghanahm Formation 40 to 41 million years ago. The strata in ... I don't say that either.

Guest 34:29 Oh, yeah, that's hard, eh?

Joe Rogan 34:30 Wad al-Hitan, uh, belongs to middle Eocene epoch, and it contains extensive vertebrae fossils within a 200-kilometer area. Fossils are present in high numbers and often show excellent quality of preservation. The most conspicuous fossils are skeletons and bones of whales and sea cows.

Michael Button 34:50 What's a f- what's a sea cow?

Joe Rogan 34:51 I don't know, man. (laughs)

Guest 34:52 Uh, well, it's a manatee?

Joe Rogan 34:54 You ever see the, the precursor to whales, like where whales came from?

Michael Button 34:58 No, where do they come from?

Joe Rogan 34:59 It was an ancient animal that was like a, a l- almost like a, a hoofed wolf.

Michael Button 35:04 What, a sea-

Joe Rogan 35:05 Well-

Michael Button 35:05 ... a sea animal?

Joe Rogan 35:06 No.

Michael Button 35:06 Oh, you mean ... oh, so they were-

Joe Rogan 35:07 It was a land animal. That's why they breathe air.

Michael Button 35:09 Oh, of course, they're mammals, aren't they?

Joe Rogan 35:11 Yeah.

Michael Button 35:11 That's weird. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:12 It's super weird. It's super weird. It was some animal that supposedly lived on land, and that was real freaky-looking, almost kind of, like, dog-like.

Michael Button 35:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:23 And that thing eventually said-

Michael Button 35:25 Became a whale. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:26 ... "I just like swimming." (laughs)

Michael Button 35:28 "I'm gonna go back into the sea."

Joe Rogan 35:29 And then one day it said, "I'm never going back to the land. It's filled with assholes."

Michael Button 35:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:33 "I'm just gonna live out here in the ocean, where y- all you have to contend with is sharks."

Guest 35:36 This article calls it the God of Death whale.

Joe Rogan 35:39 Wow. That's what it looked like. That's what it looked like.

Michael Button 35:42 That's pretty terrifying.

Joe Rogan 35:43 But there's some images of it on land, um, some depictions. Yeah, that's what it looked like. That freaky thing was wh- what whales came from. That thing walked around on the ground and then eventually said, "Eh."

Guest 35:56 If it's 40 million years ago, is that what those skeletons are then? Maybe?

Joe Rogan 36:00 Hmm. Interesting. Some of them, maybe, right? 'Cause they do know that the thing ... it was when whales walked in Egypt. Wow. I was watching, um, I think ... I don't remember whose podcast it was. I wish I could remember. But they were, they were talking to some guy that found definitive evidence of dinosaurs in Egypt. So, if you go back far enough there were dinosaurs living in that part of the world as well. What's that one image you just saw, right there, with the, the mouth open? Yeah. That one. That's crazy looking.... prehistoric whale ancestor. Look at that thing. Whoa. That's crazy.

Michael Button 36:36 And this, here's the sea cows.

Joe Rogan 36:39 What? (laughs)

Michael Button 36:40 So this image says, "A prehistoric sea cow was killed by a prehistoric croc."

Joe Rogan 36:44 Wow.

Michael Button 36:45 And eaten by a tiger shark. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 36:48 Boy. Life is hard when there's no doors.

Michael Button 36:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:51 That's the problem with the ocean. There's no doors. There's nowhere to hide. So it's just-

Michael Button 36:56 You can get fucked up.

Joe Rogan 36:56 ... constant chaos. It is just constant things eating things in this 3D space, where they can go up and down and side to side, and-

Michael Button 37:05 That's just nature, isn't it?

Joe Rogan 37:06 It is.

Michael Button 37:06 May as well just killing everything else, and-

Joe Rogan 37:09 Yes. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Summer is here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get chicken Parmesan delivered. A day in the sun? No. A bottle of rum? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that for almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

Michael Button 37:45 We made it.

Joe Rogan 37:45 But we figured out doors.

Michael Button 37:47 We did.

Joe Rogan 37:47 We figured out walls and doors, and that changed the game.

Michael Button 37:50 But when did we do that, Joey? That's the question.

Joe Rogan 37:51 That is the question.

Michael Button 37:52 Because a lot of people would claim to think, and the kinda consensus always is that we didn't do that until 12,000 years ago. We didn't settle down and form permanent communities until the Neolithic Revolution. And, uh, I think that's one of the major paradigms, if you like, that we have regarding our past that simply doesn't make sense in light of new evidence. And I just-

Joe Rogan 38:13 What is that evidence that they found of wood construction from far longer than they thought?

Michael Button 38:20 Yeah, this is the Kalambo Structure.

Joe Rogan 38:21 Yes.

Michael Button 38:22 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-

Joe Rogan 39:44 Allegedly.

Michael Button 39:45 Allegedly. As in, what do you mean allegedly? Oh, 'cause-

Joe Rogan 39:47 Because we-

Michael Button 39:47 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 39:48 ... we recently found out that they lived 300,000 years ago.

Michael Button 39:51 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-

Joe Rogan 40:07 Wow, look at that.

Michael Button 40:08 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-

Joe Rogan 40:29 How recent?

Michael Button 40:30 I think about five years ago, maybe? Was it 2019 or something? I'm not-

Joe Rogan 40:34 Wow.

Michael Button 40:34 ... 100% sure. But you know, it's crazy that it lasted so long.

Joe Rogan 40:37 So another monkey wrench.

Michael Button 40:38 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.

Joe Rogan 40:49 Mm-hmm.

Michael Button 40:49 '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.

Joe Rogan 41:00 Right.

Michael Button 41:00 There could've been loads of these.

Joe Rogan 41:02 Right.

Michael Button 41:02 Like structures everywhere. And-

Joe Rogan 41:04 But as you said, Man- Manhattan-

Michael Button 41:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:07 ... wouldn't live, wouldn't exist in 100,000 years. So this is 476,000 years.

Michael Button 41:13 Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Joe Rogan 41:13 And it's just wood, which is less durable-

Michael Button 41:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:16 ... than all the other things that we were talking about.

Michael Button 41:18 Yeah. And obviously, people may be saying, "Well, look, clearly things survived." But this is an extreme edge case scenario, where it's, it's like so unbelievably unlikely that this wooden structure would kind of sink into a bog, and then that bog be, you know, solidified over, and then it would stay in that preserved, like it's a, it's a-

Joe Rogan 41:33 And then that they would find it.

Michael Button 41:34 And then they, they would find it, exactly. Because, you know, what are the chances?

Joe Rogan 41:36 You have to go 476,000 years into the sediment.

Michael Button 41:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:40 Yeah.

Michael Button 41:40 Exactly. Because we don't dig that far and look for anything sophisticated, because we think, you know, nothing happened back then. And then-

Joe Rogan 41:46 Right.

Michael Button 41:46 ... you find this. And it really suggests that humans were living in much more complex societies. And they, I mean, they, the fact that they had the cognitive capacity to plan, structurally engineer, and build a structure completely flies in the face of what we've always thought about ancient humans. Because we've always had this idea that, th- there's a, there's been this very popular idea in, in kind of mainstream historical thought that humans only got smart around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. And that's just homo sapiens. We've always thought that other human species never got smart, never achieved what we call behavioral modernity. And this has always been the kind of idea that we went through this cognitive revolution around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. And the, the most obvious proponent of how entrenched this is in kind of academic thought is...Have you ever read the book Sapiens?

Joe Rogan 42:36 Yes.

Michael Button 42:37 Yeah, yeah, by Yuval N- N- Harari. It's an extremely popular book. It sold something like 60 million copies worldwide. By far the most popular book about pre-history and, you know, the story of Homo sapiens ever written. And Sapiens didn't kinda do anything new. It didn't, um ... I think Harari himself would admit this. It, it didn't, um, it didn't ... It, it kind of just collected the consensus of academia and presented it in a nice digestible way to the kind of layman audience. But he took this idea that's always been present in academia regarding human intelligence, which is that while we've been around for quite a long time, we didn't achieve behavioral modernity until 50 to 60,000 years ago, and that's when we started apparently displaying complex cognitive traits like abstract thinking, and, uh, planning, and burying our dead, and-

Joe Rogan 43:27 Art.

Michael Button 43:28 Art, yeah, exactly, and complex language, and things like that. And ... But this just completely flies in the face of that, because if we had the capability to plan, construct, and engineer a structure 476,000 years ago, that means th- you know, mainstream anthropology was off by over 400,000 years regarding the advent of intelligence and the advent of permanent living. And that's, I mean, that's quite the error. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:54 Yeah, it's a big deal.

Michael Button 43:54 400,000 years, exactly. So that kind of suggests there could be off by similar margins about other developmental claims, because, I don't know, it's a big, big error.

Joe Rogan 44:03 Well, it's also, when you think about the history of the Earth, there are times that we know that there was, like there's great bottlenecks that occurred because of some sort of a massive natural catastrophe, like the Toba volcano.

Michael Button 44:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:15 Right? The Toba volcano, which was 70, 70,000 years ago? Is that what it was?

Michael Button 44:21 Something like that, yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:22 Um, brought people down to a few thousand survivors-

Michael Button 44:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:26 ... on Earth.

Michael Button 44:27 Yeah, and there's loads of these bottlenecks-

Joe Rogan 44:29 Yes.

Michael Button 44:29 ... when you look at kind of genetic history, and I mean, does ... That suggests that something happened.

Joe Rogan 44:35 Right. Well, well, you're thinking about what evidence there is, and then you think about, well, there's no one left except a few thousand people 70,000 years ago, so it's possible that there's been this rise of some sort of a civilization, and then massive catastrophe and a rebuilding. Just like if we're talking about the Younger Dryas, which is in this time period we're talking about, you know, when you're dealing with 476,000 years ago. Fairly recent, right?

Michael Button 45:02 Very recent.

Joe Rogan 45:02 Younger. Right.

Michael Button 45:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:03 And think about the 6,000 years it took for civilization to reemerge from that. Now you think of Toba, and you knock down the entire population of the planet to ... What did they think it was? See if you can find out what the number was. I think it was very low. I think it was below 3,000 people on Earth.

Michael Button 45:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:22 On Earth.

Michael Button 45:23 Yeah, just from one natural disaster.

Joe Rogan 45:24 Three thousand people. One massive super volcano, which is, by the way, just like Yellowstone.

Michael Button 45:30 (laughs) Yeah. There's lots. I- it could all happen again.

Joe Rogan 45:32 That motherfucker is bubbling, too. Um, here it is. Uh, "Potentially almost all of humanity leaving around 3,000 to 10,000 humans left on the planet."

Michael Button 45:44 That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 45:44 Wow.

Michael Button 45:46 And a super volcano isn't the only thing. There's so many others. I mean-

Joe Rogan 45:49 What time period is this, Jeremy? This is 74,000 years ago.

Michael Button 45:52 So that's quite recent.

Joe Rogan 45:53 Yeah.

Michael Button 45:54 In terms of our story.

Joe Rogan 45:55 Well, in terms of your theory that I thought was one of the most interesting ones that you brought up, um, that ... In your videos, you were talking about how anatomical humans, just based on what we've agreed to, ba- based on what we found, 300,000 years. Like, what are the possibilities that there have been civilizations that emerged and were destroyed and then there's no evidence of them?

Michael Button 46:19 Yeah. Because I mean, aside from the preservation problem, which we kind of already ta- talked about when you get up to these massive time scales, you know, very little's gonna survive. Especially when you think about what early humans were likely building with.

Joe Rogan 46:31 Yes.

Michael Button 46:31 Like, it's probably the things they could find in their environment-

Joe Rogan 46:34 Right.

Michael Button 46:34 ... like wood-

Joe Rogan 46:35 Right.

Michael Button 46:35 ... hide, plant remains, reeds.

Joe Rogan 46:36 You'd have nothing left.

Michael Button 46:37 Nothing.

Joe Rogan 46:37 Just look at what we know about the Amazon now.

Michael Button 46:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:40 Because of LiDAR and because of, you know ... What is his name? Percy ...

Narrator 46:46 Fawcett.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Percy Fawcett. Because these people that made these journeys down there looking for these complex civilizations that at one point in time now we know did exist there.

Michael Button 46:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:55 And just 100 years later, they called those people liars 'cause they went back to the same place and there was nothing left.

Michael Button 47:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:01 That-

Michael Button 47:01 And so that's always been, you know, thought of as, as myth or, or pseudoscience that, that it's kind of the most popular idea of lost civilizations were civilizations of the Amazon, and it was always dismissed, but ...

Joe Rogan 47:11 Well, here's what's really crazy. Have you seen Detroit? Have you seen the evidence of Detroit-

Michael Button 47:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:15 ... where trees are b- going through houses?

Michael Button 47:17 And that's like 50 years, less.

Joe Rogan 47:18 Yes, less.

Michael Button 47:19 Or if you look at, uh, Chernobyl, the, the kind of exclusion zone where no one lives. It's already, like, trees everywhere and, like, nature is already taking root after less than half a century.

Joe Rogan 47:30 Yeah. Bizarre.

Michael Button 47:31 And then you ... 100,000 years.

Joe Rogan 47:32 Right.

Michael Button 47:33 Seriously what's gonna be left?

Joe Rogan 47:34 Th- Very, very little. And then if you go 200,000 years. I mean, if, if anatomically modern humans, if the, we've discovered them at 300,000 years, what if somebody digs one up that's two million years old?

Michael Button 47:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:46 Then what do you do? Then, then you gotta go, "Oh, boy. Oh, boy."

Michael Button 47:51 Then you can guess-

Joe Rogan 47:51 And then there's also th- this thought that Neanderthals were stupid. They're kind of abandoning that now, too. They're thinking they had language, they had tools, they had society.

Michael Button 48:00 They definitely did. There's so much evidence ... And this kind of puts into the cognitive revolution argument, which is, you know, that we were the only smart species. Like, our name that we gave ourselves, Homo sapiens, literally means smart man. It's always been the idea that we're the smartest humans, and that's why we won. And to be fair, we did win. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:17 We did win.

Michael Button 48:18 Win, whatever you want to put it.

Joe Rogan 48:18 We might just be the most evil. (laughs)

Michael Button 48:20 Yeah, we might be the most evil or we just might be the luckiest ones, you know?

Joe Rogan 48:22 Well, we're the weakest, so we probably had to be evil.

Michael Button 48:25 It's true.

Joe Rogan 48:25 We had to figure out weapons that were, would be able to defeat the Neanderthals, who had, by the way, larger brain capacities than Homo sapiens.

Michael Button 48:32 I think they were just as intelligent as us, to be honest.

Joe Rogan 48:34 That's nuts.

Michael Button 48:35 (laughs) Well, I- I mean, that's a, that's, that's a claim that probably some people would dispute, but I think there's lots of evidence that they were very smart and ...

Joe Rogan 48:42 Well, necessity is the mother of invention, right? And if you're physically weaker than these other things that are as intelligent as you and far stronger-

Michael Button 48:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:52 ... like, you gotta ...... you gotta get devious, you gotta figure some stuff out.

Michael Button 48:56 But like did we even ... I mean, either ... I mean, maybe they got wiped out by something like disease, or did they even get wiped out? Because if you even look at the DNA of non-African humans, it's something like 20% in some populations is Neanderthal. So-

Joe Rogan 49:10 Yes.

Michael Button 49:10 Th- they're kinda still here.

Joe Rogan 49:12 Well, they just sorta interbred.

Michael Button 49:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:13 Yeah. Which is also weird, because most species can't breed with other species.

Michael Button 49:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:19 Just, you know-

Michael Button 49:20 But we are very ... I mean, we're very closely related to Neanderthals.

Joe Rogan 49:24 Yeah. It's weird. The, the whole history of humans is weird. And f- for academics to deny this possibility, to me, seems so shortsighted.

Michael Button 49:34 I know. It will change.

Joe Rogan 49:35 And silly.

Michael Button 49:36 I think we're on the brink of quite a massive shift in our perspective regarding pre-history.

Joe Rogan 49:40 I think so too, and I think it has to happen where ... I don't mean to say this to be cruel, but they, the old people have to die.

Michael Button 49:46 (laughs) It's that quote, isn't it? Um, science advances one funeral at a time.

Joe Rogan 49:50 (laughs) Yeah, it's ...

Michael Button 49:51 I hope it doesn't take that long though, to be honest, Joe.

Joe Rogan 49:53 (laughs)

Michael Button 49:53 I hope it, I hope it's just in the next few years.

Joe Rogan 49:55 Well, the good thing is a lot of scientists don't take care of themselves, so ... (laughs)

Michael Button 49:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:58 Which is also weird.

Michael Button 49:59 That's true.

Joe Rogan 50:00 When you see super intelligent people that are obese and eat terrible food, like-

Michael Button 50:03 Or health experts that are, are such.

Joe Rogan 50:06 Yes.

Michael Button 50:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:06 Air quote, "health experts," not real ones. But it is, um, to me a, a, a great disservice, and one of the things that I find, uh, very promising is that a lot of young academics are embracing a lot of alternative ideas, whether quietly, or whether they're doing it publicly.

Michael Button 50:26 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.

Joe Rogan 51:31 And isn't it kind of arrogant to assume that they know who built it too?

Michael Button 51:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:35 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-

Michael Button 51:44 That's true.

Joe Rogan 51:44 ... over and over and over again.

Michael Button 51:46 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 ...

Joe Rogan 51:56 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.

Michael Button 52:03 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:03 So if one day they found structures, you know, in the future and said, "Oh, these are b- made by chimpanzees."

Michael Button 52:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:09 That's kind of crazy.

Michael Button 52:10 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-

Joe Rogan 52:19 Sure.

Michael Button 52:20 That's why I don't get-

Joe Rogan 52:21 Well it's the only way to do it right now.

Michael Button 52:22 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 52:22 So-

Michael Button 52:22 It's the only way to do it.

Joe Rogan 52:23 Yeah.

Michael Button 52:23 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.

Joe Rogan 52:30 It's gatekeeping.

Michael Button 52:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:32 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."

Michael Button 52:44 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:44 "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-

Michael Button 52:57 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-

Joe Rogan 53:05 But it's gross-

Michael Button 53:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:06 ... because it's ours. It's the whole planet.

Michael Button 53:09 It's everyone's, yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:09 It's all the human beings. It's like f- do you have a few nerds who you wouldn't wanna hang out with in real life, and these are the guys that are telling us we, we can't explore these things? And those are the people that are attacking Graham Hancock with every possible insult? Calling it the most dangerous show on television.

Michael Button 53:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:27 Like this ... But it's also, it's, it's so revealing because it's so obvious that if you watch the show you're like, "Wait, this is the most dangerous show on TV?"

Michael Button 53:36 (laughs) Yeah, Ancient Apocalypse. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:37 Yeah.

Michael Button 53:37 It's ridiculous.

Joe Rogan 53:37 Like, how is that dangerous? He's like just talking about these bizarre structures that exist that seem to defy our modern understanding of how things are built.

Michael Button 53:48 Yeah. And when I ... I mean, I don't agree with absolutely everything Graham Hancock says, but when I look at, you know, these ideas of, you know, human intelligence potentially stretching back 500,000 years as displayed by the Kalambo structure, or permanent living, and I would argue that it could go back a lot further than that. So when you look at, when you kind of take into account that these abilities could've stretched back half a million years, when I then look at someone like Graham's work, it seems so plausible. I don't see why it's seen as so outrageous that ... 'Cause 12,000 years ago, which is kinda when he proposes there could've been a, you know, a sophisticated civilization that was potentially wiped out by a cataclysm, when you look at that from the perspective of, oh yeah, we've been intelligent for half a million years, it doesn't seem very ... It doesn't s- it seems very plausible to me. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:35 Not only that, it's 450,000 years after the first structure now.

Michael Button 54:41 Yeah. (laughs) But no one's even ... No one's talking about this.

Joe Rogan 54:44 That's what's weird is that no one's talking about that, is that-

Michael Button 54:47 It's just me (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:48 (laughs) Exactly-

Michael Button 54:49 As far as I can tell.

Joe Rogan 54:50 You can't even blame just you. It's like those academics as well that found it.

Michael Button 54:52 To be fair, the, the guy that found it, the archeologist that found it said that he never could've imagined the pre-homo sapien, and again we might not be pre-homo sapien, it could be homo sapien, but he said it's completely paradigm-shifting that they had the capacity to plan and build something like this. But again ...... there's no, there's no fuss about it. It's just, a paper was written and it was put out there, and then it's ... that's it.

Joe Rogan 55:15 Well, these things take time.

Michael Button 55:16 I guess so.

Joe Rogan 55:17 Yeah. I mean, more of these conversations and more people have to understand that these things are being discovered, and that we are kind of confused about so many things about human history. And we're being told that, no, there's people at the universities that have all the answers, and that it's literally not possible that they're telling the truth. It's not possible. And that's why I get so excited about the structures under the pyramid, 'cause it's a gigantic "Fuck you-"

Michael Button 55:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:43 ... to all those people.

Michael Button 55:44 It would be, it would be, yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:44 It would be the most gigantic "fuck you" of all time if they found out those, that those scans are accurate, and there's these pillars that are wrapped in coils that go down, like, hundreds of meters, and then below them, there's additional structures, and the whole, the whole-

Michael Button 55:59 And they think it's all connected, as well.

Joe Rogan 56:00 Yes.

Michael Button 56:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:01 Which is like, if Christopher Dunn is correct about it being some sort of a power plant, and that reveals, like, how the thing worked and functioned-

Michael Button 56:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:10 ... that's way more advanced than us. Like, what is that?

Michael Button 56:13 In some ways, they already are. I mean, we can't explain how they did it, even-

Joe Rogan 56:16 Right.

Michael Button 56:16 ... based on the kind of conventional model of history.

Joe Rogan 56:18 I know, and we lie.

Michael Button 56:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:20 I've talked to so many people, like when I had Zawie Hawas here, and he was explaining to me-

Michael Button 56:24 National project.

Joe Rogan 56:25 It was the national project.

Michael Button 56:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:26 They're like, "Oh, that'll fix it. We should make our national project to breathe under water and fly through the air. Like, we should make that our national project, to go to the o-

Michael Button 56:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:35 ... go to other planets and live there in case Earth gets blown up." What are you talking about, man?

Michael Button 56:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:40 What the fuck are you talking about?

Michael Button 56:41 Yeah, they just don't want to ... And it all, it does kind of make me worry. Like, I don't really delve into the kind of conspiracy side of things, 'cause, I mean, I just, I try to stay kind of based in-

Joe Rogan 56:50 Not me.

Michael Button 56:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:51 I go right in.

Michael Button 56:52 I mean, I do.

Joe Rogan 56:52 Face first.

Michael Button 56:53 I do in my own time and stuff. I mean, in my own head and stuff. But in terms of, like, my videos-

Joe Rogan 56:56 What, what, one do you dive into in your own head the most?

Michael Button 56:59 Um, I sometimes combine th- the UFO one with the ancient civilization one.

Joe Rogan 57:03 I do, too.

Michael Button 57:05 (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.

Joe Rogan 57:17 Yeah.

Michael Button 57:18 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.

Joe Rogan 57:23 Well, there's also the genetic engineering one.

Michael Button 57:26 Oh, you mean like the a- ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:27 Yeah, like why humans are so different than everything else in the first place. Like, that's weird.

Michael Button 57:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:33 The doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years is really weird. It's-

Michael Button 57:38 What does that refer to? Is that from habilis to erectus? What, w- is that, is that f-

Joe Rogan 57:44 I don't know. Let's, uh, let's Google it.

Michael Button 57:46 '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."

Joe Rogan 57:53 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-

Michael Button 58:03 Mm-hmm, yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:03 ... 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?

Michael Button 58:19 Yeah. Un- yeah, it, uh-

Joe Rogan 58:21 He's got the wackiest theory, 'cause he thinks it's psilocybin mushrooms.

Michael Button 58:24 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-

Joe Rogan 58:40 Sure.

Michael Button 58:40 ... 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 ...

Joe Rogan 58:48 It is. And I think history will reveal that-

Michael Button 58:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:51 ... 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.

Guest 59:04 So ...

Joe Rogan 59:04 Bigger blain- brains.

Guest 59:05 Smithsonian website says it's actually tripled over the time we've tracked it.

Joe Rogan 59:11 Wow.

Guest 59:11 Slow increase from six to two million, but a larger increase 800 to 200,000 years ago.

Joe Rogan 59:18 Wow.

Guest 59:19 And then the article goes

Narrator 59:20 ... into discussions-

Joe Rogan 59:20 That's when the aliens landed.

Michael Button 59:22 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:23 (laughs)

Michael Button 59:23 See, I don't even buy that, though, because Haderbergensis have the same cranial capacity as us, us and they go back 900,000 years, so ...

Guest 59:31 Another thing I saw before I ...

Michael Button 59:32 But maybe that's erectus they're talking about.

Joe Rogan 59:34 (laughs)

Guest 59:34 Uh, brains don't fossilize.

Joe Rogan 59:36 Ah.

Guest 59:37 They deteriorate, leaving a cavity ...

Joe Rogan 59:39 Inside the brain case.

Guest 59:40 ... which is part of how they know some of this info.

Joe Rogan 59:42 "Sometimes sediments fill the cavity and harm me. A natural endocast. Scientists also make artificial endocasts to study, like the ones above." Fascinating. Fascinating.

Michael Button 59:54 Yeah. We're a weird creature, human beings.

Joe Rogan 59:56 Well, d- did you say it was 2017 that they discovered modern humans 300,000 years ago?

Michael Button 1:00:01 I think so, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:01 And where was that?

Michael Button 1:00:02 It's in Morocco.

Joe Rogan 1:00:03 And so that's Morocco, right. You said that. So, uh, imagine if they found something similar in China.

Michael Button 1:00:09 Well, that would fuck everything up, because-

Joe Rogan 1:00:10 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:00:11 ... the Out of Africa thing and-

Joe Rogan 1:00:12 Uh-huh.

Michael Button 1:00:12 ... that would really, that would really fuck everything up. But, um, it could, I mean, it could happen.

Joe Rogan 1:00:16 Well, it wouldn't really even fuck it up, it would just push it back.

Michael Button 1:00:19 I guess so, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:19 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:00:20 But we're, I mean, we're not even supposed to have left Africa until this time of the cognitive revolution, and that's always been the, one of the points. Like, "Oh, look, we got smart, we left Africa 60,000 years ago."

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 Mm-hmm.

Michael Button 1:00:30 But that's never made sense to me either, because Homo erectus managed to migrate out of Africa and colonize loads of Asia and parts of Europe over a million years ago. And if they're supposedly, you know, s- uh, inferior to us, then how can they make this massive leap, and Haderbergensis did it 600,000 years ago? And if they're supposedly inferior to us, how come they did this? And ...... so, I mean, I don't know. I try not to delve into the Out of Africa thing because it's, uh, f- I don't know, it gets a little bit controversial sometimes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 It does. Well, it gets controversial when you bring in aliens too-

Michael Button 1:00:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 ... because aliens become racist.

Michael Button 1:01:01 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 It becomes racist 'cause now you're not accrediting the Africans to building the pyramids.

Michael Button 1:01:05 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:06 You know, which is really fascinating.

Michael Button 1:01:06 That's never made sense to me, that, because it clearly wasn't white people that built the pyramids.

Joe Rogan 1:01:09 Well, I watched this very bizarre discussion between some guy that was trying to claim that it wasn't Africans that built the pyramid, that it was white people that built the pyramids. So, there are people that have this sort of racist idea of the construction of the pyramids, but you can't attach that to everyone who's speculating about the construction-

Michael Button 1:01:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 ... because it's too, uh, the things are too weird. It's too weird. And let's assume that it was Africans that built the pyramids, but if we are assuming that, like, how were they so much smarter than everyone alive today?

Michael Button 1:01:44 (laughs) yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:44 How were they so much smarter, let's say it's 4,500 years ago, how were they so much smarter? What was going on? Like, what happened? Did they get visited by (laughs) aliens?

Michael Button 1:01:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:53 Did they discover something that allowed their understanding of physics to be just so much greater than everybody else who's ever lived? Like, what did they discover? Like, what were they encountering? What were they consuming? What were they doing? What, wha- what was, uh, what were they teaching each other? What, uh, you know, we lost so much in the burning of the Library of Alexandria, right?

Michael Button 1:02:14 Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, that's, that is quite sad, really, isn't it? To be honest. Like, there would've been a lot in there. I'm not sure 100% what happened with that. I'm not sure if it was one burning or-

Joe Rogan 1:02:23 There's several burnings, yeah.

Michael Button 1:02:24 Yeah, but clearly a lot was lost.

Joe Rogan 1:02:26 But then, then the question is, like, what did they even know? Like, what if it's older than that? Like, what if all that stuff, what if, you know, this is one of the things that Zawahiri was, uh, very reluctant to... He's like, "What is this?"

Michael Button 1:02:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:38 Like, I was talking about the King's List-

Michael Button 1:02:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:40 ... that goes back 30,000 years.

Michael Button 1:02:42 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 Like, what if that's accurate?

Michael Button 1:02:44 Yeah, it's the Sumerian one, those two.

Joe Rogan 1:02:45 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:02:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:46 It gets real-

Michael Button 1:02:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:47 ... squirrely when you only wanna accept some parts of history.

Michael Button 1:02:52 And that ties into the Green Sahara thing that I was talking about, like-

Joe Rogan 1:02:55 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:02:55 I mean, uh, they have king lists that go back this far and, yeah, we say that some of them are myth, and to be fair, they have kings that reigned for, like, a thousand years, which is a bit weird, that's-

Joe Rogan 1:03:04 Is a bit weird, but-

Michael Button 1:03:05 Probably not, I mean, unless you're talking some kind of alien thing, then that probably wasn't human. But that might just be 'cause it would've been a long time ago for them, too, when they were writing these king lists.

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 Sure.

Michael Button 1:03:14 But it doesn't mean that their civilization only started with the first dynasty. What we've decided is the line between myth and fact, 'cause that's a modern interpretation after the fact. They never made such distinction.

Joe Rogan 1:03:25 Yeah, and this idea that they lived a thousand years, well, have you ever read the, the, uh, North Korea depictions of Kim Jong Un's first day playing golf?

Michael Button 1:03:33 Yeah, his propaganda, is that-

Joe Rogan 1:03:34 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:03:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 I mean, he made, like, nine holes in one.

Michael Button 1:03:36 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:37 He's the greatest golfer of all time.

Michael Button 1:03:38 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:03:39 You know what I'm saying? So it's like, you're writing about kings, "He lived a thousand years. Fire came from his dick."

Michael Button 1:03:44 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 You know, like, like what are we talking about? We're, we don't know. We don't, we don't know what they were writing. We don't know who wrote it. We don't know how fantastical it was, how much hyperbole was involved, but we do know that we accept the King's List when it gets to around 2500 BC. We start accepting it.

Michael Button 1:04:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:02 But you don't accept this possibility that it might actually go far, far, far earlier than that.

Michael Button 1:04:08 And the whole, the pyramids thing kind of, uh, plays into the fact that stone is one of the only thing that survives, and pyramids are these massive stone constructions. Like, ironically, they would be one of the only things from our, not that they really count as our civilization, but from the modern world, the pyramids would be one of the only things that could survive in 100,000 years. So, it makes you think, like, "How long have they been there?" And I think the Egyptians definitely undertook some, some kind of construction project around the time of 2500 BC.

Joe Rogan 1:04:38 Oh, for sure.

Michael Button 1:04:39 'Cause there's records of them saying they did stuff, but that doesn't mean, 'cause they, they have all these records, but there's no records of how they built it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Well, they also, the build- the buildings that they made that were after 2500 BC are dog shit. (laughs)

Michael Button 1:04:53 So much worse. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:54 They're terrible.

Michael Button 1:04:54 They just immediately forgot how to do it again, straightaway.

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 They were trying to copy, and they just couldn't do it.

Michael Button 1:04:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:59 They didn't have the math, they didn't have the engineering, the, the stones are smaller, it's-

Michael Button 1:05:05 And no one's claimed, they, they don't claim credit for the pyramids, which is weird.

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 Yeah, it's-

Michael Button 1:05:09 Why would you not claim it? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 Yeah. It's all weird. It's all weird. It's, uh, it's the weirdest, right? So, it's the one thing that if you're a logical person and you think you know the timeline of history, you think you understand human civilization, you think you understand, like, how intelligence evolved and how technology and innovation evolved, and you see that, you're like, "Oh, I don't know shit. I don't know shit." Like, how do, how is that statue so big and perfectly symmetrical?

Michael Button 1:05:37 They are crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:05:38 How are these, just these vases that they don't understand?

Michael Button 1:05:41 Oh, is that a replica of-

Joe Rogan 1:05:42 This is, this is a 3D...

Michael Button 1:05:43 Oh, I didn't see that.

Joe Rogan 1:05:44 And this is a 3D model of an actual vase from Egypt that-

Michael Button 1:05:48 Yeah. They're doing some good work on this, aren't they? People like, uh, Uncharted X and-

Joe Rogan 1:05:51 Who gave this to us? Did Christopher Dunn give this to us? I think he did.

Michael Button 1:05:57 It's probably him, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:57 Um, but, you know, Ben from Uncharted X-

Michael Button 1:06:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:01 ... uh, he's done a lot of work on these things. Like th- those, just those vases are very bizarre.

Michael Button 1:06:06 Mm-hmm, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:07 Very bizarre, the precision-

Michael Button 1:06:08 And they appear right at the start-

Joe Rogan 1:06:09 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:06:09 ... of the Egyptian dynasties.

Joe Rogan 1:06:11 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:06:11 Then they forget how to do that as well.

Joe Rogan 1:06:12 We have no idea how they made them. We don't know what tools they used. Anybody that says that they do, you're lying. You really don't know. You can't know, the- these things are perfectly symmetrical, they weren't turned on a lathe because they have handles, the, the, the way they measure them, when you look at, like, the deviation from round and, like, how it's, it's, it's, like, a thousandth of a human hair.

Michael Button 1:06:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:37 It's crazy and it's made from incredibly hard granite, right?

Michael Button 1:06:41 Yeah, it's, like, the hardest stone to, to do that with, and-

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 So, what are we talking about? Like, who, who were these people?

Michael Button 1:06:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:47 This is kind of crazy.

Michael Button 1:06:48 And then you have the statues that are perfectly symmetrical.

Joe Rogan 1:06:50 Perfectly symmetrical.

Michael Button 1:06:51 And the faces are just incredible like-

Joe Rogan 1:06:52 And massive.

Michael Button 1:06:53 Yeah. And, uh, huge.

Joe Rogan 1:06:55 Right.

Michael Button 1:06:55 Unbelievably huge.

Joe Rogan 1:06:56 So they moved them there, and then they carved them perfectly symmetrically. It looks like they're 3D printed.

Michael Button 1:07:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:02 It's so strange. It just screams at a lost technology. It-

Michael Button 1:07:07 At least. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:08 It screams that these people had some sort of information and some sort of education that is, uh, like on a different path of our ... We went the, the way of the internal combustion engine and transistors and electronics, and they ... It seems like they went a totally different way, but maybe even further.

Michael Button 1:07:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 But we're, we're scrambled in, like, our pathway to advancement is the only one-

Michael Button 1:07:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:37 ... that the human mind in all its infinite creativity can con- conceive of.

Michael Button 1:07:41 And this is another point regarding, like, you know, culture that could have flourished back in 100,000 years ago or whatever. We're always looking for ourselves in the past.

Joe Rogan 1:07:50 Yes.

Michael Button 1:07:50 And ... But there's so many different ways that we could have gone, because why did it have to be mass farming, mass population growth, and then, as you say, kind of industrial progress? It could have been so many different forms of human development and human lives and how-

Joe Rogan 1:08:07 Well, it could have been, if they had enough animals, they mostly ate animals.

Michael Button 1:08:11 Yeah. Or fish or something.

Joe Rogan 1:08:11 Yeah. Mostly ate animals and fish, which is probably healthier for you anyway. You know, really what grain is, is survival food.

Michael Button 1:08:20 Yeah. And we all got, like, shorter and less healthy when that-

Joe Rogan 1:08:22 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:08:22 ... happened.

Joe Rogan 1:08:23 Yeah. Because we didn't get the right amount of protein.

Michael Button 1:08:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:26 And our jaws, like, shrunk 'cause people were eating gruel.

Michael Button 1:08:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:29 Like, if you look at part of the world where people were eating a lot of, like, porridge and shit, their jaws get really small.

Michael Button 1:08:35 Yeah. It's not s-

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 That's what it's from.

Michael Button 1:08:36 Not good for us.

Joe Rogan 1:08:37 No, it's fucking terrible for ... We're devolving because of our diets, which is really strange. But if you think about this time, and especially that part of the world where there was so much abundant natural resources that animal agriculture seems super simple.

Michael Button 1:08:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:53 You just corral a bunch of animals, you build a fence, and then you eat them.

Michael Button 1:08:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:57 And you don't really have to grow rice.

Michael Button 1:09:01 So many different ways that culture could have flourished.

Joe Rogan 1:09:03 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:09:03 And, yeah, we're always looking for it, and we just don't know where to look as well in the record. Like, one point people always make in, like, my comments and stuff to try and debunk me is like, oh, we would see pollution. We would see kind of lead signals in the atmosphere or whatever if there was like a, a big civilization 100,000 years ago. But that's only the case if it was someone on the scale of us now, because-

Joe Rogan 1:09:26 Or if what they were doing it the way we're doing it.

Michael Button 1:09:29 Well, yeah. That as well, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:29 That's the thing. We're, we're talking about a c- completely different pathway. Clearly, there's some technology that they had that we don't understand. Wh- when you talk about the drill holes that they find or the way they had carved out these enormous, um, massive chunks of stone and were apparently gonna move them. We don't understand.

Michael Button 1:09:51 Like the unfinished obelisk, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:09:52 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:09:52 ... yeah. It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:09:53 The unfinished obelisk, tha- that's bananas. Uh, so many of these things that they, they cut out of the ground and absolutely moved are bananas.

Michael Button 1:10:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 So it's like, what, what kind of technology? Why are we assuming that it's gonna be some internal combustion engine that sprays out terrible pollution? What if they had figured something out?

Michael Button 1:10:13 I would say it's entirely possible.

Joe Rogan 1:10:14 It's entirely possible because we're going to eventually. If you give us another thousand years, you will not be able to recognize any of this nonsense that we use for technology today, especially when AI gets involved. Espe- like, did you see that thing where quantum, a quantum computer supposedly went one second back in time?

Guest 1:10:35 I did. I was reading that line.

Joe Rogan 1:10:36 Is that bullshit?

Guest 1:10:36 No, it's ... It ha- they discovered it six years ago, though. It's not new.

Michael Button 1:10:41 Wait, what? (laughs)

Guest 1:10:42 It was six years ago. They ... Well, still. There was some ... Oh yeah, that story is from 2019.

Joe Rogan 1:10:45 It's still ... It's 2019.

Guest 1:10:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:45 But still.

Michael Button 1:10:46 It went back in time?

Guest 1:10:47 Yeah. By, by one second, and-

Michael Button 1:10:49 (laughs)

Guest 1:10:49 ... in some way in quantum fields.

Michael Button 1:10:51 What does that even mean?

Joe Rogan 1:10:52 Exactly.

Guest 1:10:53 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:10:53 Exactly.

Michael Button 1:10:54 That's mad.

Joe Rogan 1:10:55 But that's us. Now, imagine that technology that was science fiction 20 years ago.

Michael Button 1:11:01 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:11:01 Right? Well, well, go back to, like, the movie Alien and look at their stupid computers that they had, that this is what they thought people were gonna have when they were starfaring people.

Michael Button 1:11:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:10 Now, think of this quantum computer experiment where it goes back in time one second, and then go forward a thousand years-

Michael Button 1:11:18 It could be interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:11:18 ... which is nothing.

Michael Button 1:11:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:20 When we're, we're talking about 4,500 years ago, we might be off by a thousand. So go to 5,500 years ago, 6,000 f- ... If you're listening to, uh, John Anthony West, he thinks it's 34,000 years.

Michael Button 1:11:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 That's what he thinks.

Michael Button 1:11:35 And that's, and that sounds so crazy, but then you look at the kind of length of time we've been around and it's still quite recent.

Joe Rogan 1:11:41 Yeah. It's still quite recent.

Michael Button 1:11:42 And that lines up with the Sphinx, doesn't it? With the kind of, uh, that's the processional cycle.

Joe Rogan 1:11:48 How much evidence of a quantum computer from 34,000-

Michael Button 1:11:52 Nothing.

Joe Rogan 1:11:52 ... years ago would be left? Right.

Michael Button 1:11:53 Nothing.

Joe Rogan 1:11:53 So if we did get pelted by comets, which we know happened.

Michael Button 1:11:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:11:59 That's a fact.

Michael Button 1:12:00 There's ... I, there ... I saw an estimate, I think it was from NASA, but I'm not 100% sure, but it was from a, a kind of scientific, uh, journal that Earth is hit by what they define as a cataclysmic impact every 100,000 years. So that's an impact that's capable of wiping out a third of today's population every 100,000 years. And 100,000 years sounds like a long time, but again, we've been around for 300,000 years. So theoretically, we've been hit by a cataclysmic impact three times already during our story, and that both has the potential to completely wipe out anyone that was doing anything sophisticated, but also to wipe the record clean.

Joe Rogan 1:12:35 Yeah.

Michael Button 1:12:36 And that's not the only thing. You've got, you know, super volcanoes as we talked about. You've got pole shifts, you've got solar flares, you've got glaciers just scraping across the landscape and just completely erasing the record. You've got-Sea level rise. Sea level rise is a massive one, because I mean, where have we always lived? By the coasts. And if you look at the kind of fluctuation of sea level rise over the last 100,000 years, 200,000 years, 300,000 years, the sea level's going in and out by hundreds of kilometers at a time. And nothing is gonna be left.

Joe Rogan 1:13:06 Right. Wild stuff.

Michael Button 1:13:08 I know, it's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:13:09 It is wild stuff. But again, if someone is a historian and they got into this ... Someone's an archeologist and they got into this because they have this fascination for it, for them to become professors and then start teaching and writing books about this stuff and s- and not still be fascinated by the new stuff-

Michael Button 1:13:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:31 ... is, to me, so weird.

Michael Button 1:13:34 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:13:34 It's like you miss the whole reason why you got into this in the first place. You got into this in the first place is 'cause you're trying to figure out w- what happened, how did we get to this point. And if there's evidence that shows that w- we don't have the full picture and you're ignoring that or dismissing that or ...

Michael Button 1:13:53 But the thing is, when you go through these kinda systems, and I'm, I've sort of got experience of this. Obviously, I was never a professional academic or anything like that. But, you know, I, I did history for four years. I was kinda inside and I got to the point where it was almost, you know, it was do this as a career, become a professional academic or not. It's very hard to kinda even think this way, because everyone around you is thinking within these boxes that we've created for ourselves. And so it's very hard to kinda open your mind, and you kinda have to do it in private as well, because