Joe Rogan Experience #2449 - Raul Bilecky

1. SPSpeaker0:02

   Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. [upbeat music]

2. JRJoe Rogan0:12

   Raul.

3. RBRaul Bilecky0:13

   Joe. [laughs]

4. JRJoe Rogan0:13

   Very nice to meet you, brother.

5. RBRaul Bilecky0:14

   It's so good to be here.

6. JRJoe Rogan0:15

   I have enjoyed your content tremendously online, and, uh, I really got into a video this morning that I was watching, where you found this megalithic site that was undocumented in Peru. It's incredible that they still have these ancient sites that, for whatever reason, it seems like the, um, the money that they get, gets stolen. Like, the money that is supposed to be allocated towards documenting these things and registering these things, people just say, "Fuck it, I'm gonna pocket it," and-

7. RBRaul Bilecky0:49

   It happens a lot more than you would- you think.

8. JRJoe Rogan0:51

   Ah, just hard to believe, man. Uh, some of the stuff that you document is very heartbreaking. Like, uh, one of them was when you flew a drone over these ancient ruins, and you showed the amount of places that have been looted.

9. RBRaul Bilecky1:08

   Oh, yeah.

10. JRJoe Rogan1:08

    And it's just all of it. It's just po- you see these holes, and when I first saw that, I'm like, "What is, what is he showing me?" And then you're like, "These are all spots where someone has dug in and looted," and most of it has been done in this area of Peru over the last 20 years.

11. RBRaul Bilecky1:27

    Over the last 20 years.

12. JRJoe Rogan1:28

    So from 2006 to 2026, more-

13. RBRaul Bilecky1:31

    I, I, I would add, the biggest amount of looting happened... It's actually died down some, uh, but the end of the 20- so 1980s to 2010s, I would say-

14. JRJoe Rogan1:42

    That's when it really-

15. RBRaul Bilecky1:43

    ... that's when, like, when it really took off.

16. JRJoe Rogan1:46

    [exhales]

17. RBRaul Bilecky1:47

    And you can tell from the trash that's left there, like cigarettes that were only produced in the '80s-

18. JRJoe Rogan1:52

    Oh

19. RBRaul Bilecky1:52

    ... you know, soda bottles that were only produced in the '90s, things like that.

20. JRJoe Rogan1:55

    How nice of them to steal the artifacts and leave trash. [chuckles]

21. RBRaul Bilecky1:59

    Dude, it- they've become landfills of, of human remains. It's, uh... Th- this place you're talking about is, I mean, it's eight full kilometers of just... It looks like the moon. Every single location has been looted, and I was like, "I gotta go up, up there and see what this looks like." And, and so-

22. JRJoe Rogan2:20

    Pull up to the microphone a little bit more there. So looting, what are they... At, at that point in time, I mean, these are hundreds, thousands of years old, these sites, so what are they finding?

23. RBRaul Bilecky2:32

    Well, a lot of the mummies that I've-- 'cause I've, I've found mummies that have been torn, torn apart, literally. Like, they're, the cotton that they're wrapped in, the textiles that they're wrapped in, I mean, it's just, they've been scavenged.

24. JRJoe Rogan2:45

    Are they looking for jewels?

25. RBRaul Bilecky2:46

    Or for some sort of metallurgy-

26. JRJoe Rogan2:48

    Mm-hmm

27. RBRaul Bilecky2:48

    ... like, on, on the person themselves. Um, the unfortunate thing is, I mean, all, all you'll see is, you'll just see these, these bones littered across the landscape with broken pieces of pottery and-

28. JRJoe Rogan2:59

    That was also disturbing, how much bones you see everywhere. So this is, uh-

29. RBRaul Bilecky3:04

    Oh, that's-

30. JRJoe Rogan3:04

    Look, you see a bone right there. These are all human bones that you just find scattered.

Episode duration: 2:31:09