Ed Barnhart: Maya, Aztec, Inca, and Lost Civilizations of South America | Lex Fridman Podcast #446

1. 0:00 – 1:39

   Introduction

   1. EBEd Barnhart0:00

      ... for the vast majority of human existence, we've been nomadic and we've done these kind of wider or tighter nomadic circles depending on the geographic region. But they'd move, so once humans figured out how to stay in a place, that's the initial trigger to what would become civilization.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:20

      I think you said beauty and blood went hand-in-hand for the Aztec.

   3. EBEd Barnhart0:24

      What I meant by that is, they were absolutely comfortable with human sacrifice and, you know, ripping people's hearts out.

   4. LFLex Fridman0:32

      Yeah.

   5. EBEd Barnhart0:32

      This, they had this, this just, you know, grotesque violent bent. But in the same way, they also absolutely loved flower gardens, and poetry, and music, and dance. The same Aztec king who would order the hearts of a thousand people extracted also would stand up at dinner parties to recite his own poetry. But they were really just surgical about it. They'd use a thick obsidian knife where they could just break th- the ribs right along the sternum and then push the sternum down, pull up, and just ouch.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:11

      While the person was alive?

   7. EBEd Barnhart1:13

      Yep. While the person was alive.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:17

      The following is a conversation with Ed Barnhart, an archeologist specializing in ancient civilizations of South America, Mesoamerica, and North America. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Ed Barnhart.

2. 1:39 – 8:43

   Lost civilizations

   1. LFLex Fridman1:39

      Do you think there are lost civilizations in the history of humans on Earth which we don't know anything about?

   2. EBEd Barnhart1:47

      Yes, I do. And in fact, you know, we, we have found some civilizations that we had no idea about just in my lifetime. I mean, we've got Gobekli Tepe, and we've got the stuff that's going on in the Amazon. And there's some other less startling things that we had no idea existed and push our dates back and give us whole new civilizations we had no idea about. So, yeah, it's happened, and I think it'll happen again.

   3. LFLex Fridman2:17

      Do you think there's a lost civilization in the Amazon that, uh, the Amazon jungle has eaten up or is hiding the evidence of?

   4. EBEd Barnhart2:27

      Yes, I do. And I, uh, we're, we're beginning to find it. There are these huge what we call geoglyphs, these mound groups that are in geometric patterns. I think that the average Joe when they hear the word "civilization," they think of something that looks like Rome. And I don't think we're ever gonna find anything that looks like Rome in the Amazon. I think a lot of things there... I mean, wherever you are on the planet, you use your natural resources. And in the Amazon, there's not a whole lot of stone. What stone is there is deep, deep, deep. So, a lot of their things were built out of dirt and trees and feathers and textiles.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:10

      But is it possible that all that land that's not covered by trees is actually hiding stone, for example, some architecture, some things that are just very difficult to find for archeologists?

   6. EBEd Barnhart3:22

      I think at the base of the Andes where the Amazon connects to the Andes, there's a lot of potential there 'cause that's where the stone actually starts poking up. When you get down into the basin, stone is meters and meters under the ground except for a, a stray cliff here and there where the river run dug deep, and even then only in the dry season 'cause that river rises, like, over 100 feet-

   7. LFLex Fridman3:50

      Mm-hmm.

   8. EBEd Barnhart3:50

      ... every year.

   9. LFLex Fridman3:51

      Well, that's one of the things having visited that area, uh, just interacting with waterfalls and seeing the water, I was, uh, humbled by the power of water to shape landscapes, and probably erase history in the context that we're talking about of civilizations as w- water can just make everything disappear over a period of centuries and millennia. And so if the something existed a very long time ago, thousands of years ago, it, it's, it's very possible it was just eaten up by nature.

   10. EBEd Barnhart4:24

       Absolutely. In fact, in my opinion, that's almost a certainty in a lot of places.

   11. LFLex Fridman4:28

       Yeah.

   12. EBEd Barnhart4:29

       Uh, you know, uh, the Grand Canyon was dug by water. There's this wimpy little river in it right now, and you can't possibly imagine that it dug that, but it did. The power of nature and geology is really kinda magical. And when it comes to, you know, ancient civilizations that could be from a long time ago, there's probably a lot that are just under the ocean and just the wave action have destroyed them and what they haven't destroyed buried deep.

   13. LFLex Fridman4:58

       Under the ocean? So you think Atlantis ever existed?

   14. EBEd Barnhart5:03

       I don't think that Atlantis existed. I do think it was one of Plato's many parables talking about, you know, putting it in an interesting story as a teaching device in his school. If one did exist or a shadow of it, my money would be on Akrotiri. Akrotiri is what's left of a big city that was on the island of Santorini. And when their volcano blew up, it blew up most of the city and shot chunks of it so fast that 70 miles away in Crete, there are chunks of Santorini in their cliff. So it blasted what was ever there, but what's left on the side of the crater, Akrotiri, is strangely advanced for its age. And so if there's anything that's a model for Atlantis as Plato explained it, it's Akrotiri.

   15. LFLex Fridman6:00

       So, Akrotiri, the ancient Greek city... So it says the settlement was destroyed in the Theran eruption sometime in the 16th century BCE and buried in volcanic ash, which preserved the remains of the frescoes and many objects and artworks. So we don't know how advanced that civilization was.

   16. EBEd Barnhart6:19

       No, but we can walk around the ruins and see that it's got streets, it's got plumbing, it's got little sconces for, uh, for torches at night. It was a vibrant city with, uh, with a lot of... especially in terms of hydraulic engineering, it's, it's very advanced for being 3,500 years old.

   17. LFLex Fridman6:42

       So if you check out, here's an image of the, uh, excavation. What a project.

   18. EBEd Barnhart6:47

       It's an amazing place. And you can tell that it's just part of it, eh, because it, it's pretty close to where the crater begins. So the city itself was probably much larger.

   19. LFLex Fridman6:58

       So in this case, there's a lot of evidence, but like we said, there could be a l- there could be civilizations that there is no... there is very little evidence of because of the natural environment that destroys all the evidence.

   20. EBEd Barnhart7:09

       Right. And I think Akrotiri's actually a great example of that, because here we have the side that did preserve that looks amazing, but we know there was more of the city that was completely obliterated. It was shot... Chunks of that city are probably in the walls of Crete 70 miles away.

   21. LFLex Fridman7:27

       (laughs)

   22. EBEd Barnhart7:28

       And, uh, you know, Plato says that it, it sunk. It was on an island and it sunk. Well, that's exactly what happened to Akrotiri.

   23. LFLex Fridman7:35

       You think this is what Plato was referring to?

   24. EBEd Barnhart7:38

       If it does exist, at least the model of it, I think this is probably what he was talking about.

   25. LFLex Fridman7:44

       And there could be other civilizations of which Plato has never written. (laughs) Right?

   26. EBEd Barnhart7:48

       Absolutely.

   27. LFLex Fridman7:48

       That we have no record of. And, um, it's humbling to think that entire civilizations with all the dreams, the hope, the technological innovation, the, the wars, the conflicts, the, the political tensions, all of that, uh, the social interactions, the hierarchies, all of that... The art can be just destroyed like that and forgotten, completely lost to ancient history.

   28. EBEd Barnhart8:13

       I reflect upon that often as an archeologist. I think about the, this great country that I live in and love, and all the things we've achieved. But, you know, we're, we're a baby historically speaking. We've been around 200 years. Heck, a lot of the cities I study in, uh, Central and South America, they had a run of, you know, 800, a thousand years, and now they're ruins. But we're, we're barely getting started in terms of historical civilizations.

3. 8:43 – 12:16

   Hunter-gatherers

   1. LFLex Fridman8:43

      (inhales) So humans, homo sapiens evolved, uh, but they didn't start civilizations right away. There was a long period of time when they did not form these complex societies. So how do we... let's say 300,000 years ago in Africa, actually go from there to creating civilizations?

   2. EBEd Barnhart9:04

      I think that a lot of human, uh, evolution had to do with, uh, the, the pressures that their environment put upon them. And, uh, you know, a lot of things start changing right around 12,000 years ago. And that's when, you know, our last Ice Age really ended. And I think there was a whole lot of things that just pressured them into especially finding new ways of subsistence. Here in the Americas, a huge thing that happened was all the megafauna went away. When the climate changed enough, the, the mammoths died out and the bison died out, and there was just, uh... they had to come up with different ways of doing things. We were hunters and gatherers, and we had things we got from hunting and we got things we got from gathering. And in the Americas, when the things that they were used to hunting went away and they had to make do with rabbits, their, you know, the, the gathering started to be a much more important thing. And I think that led to figuring out, "Hey, we could actually grow certain things." And gardens turned into crops, turned into intensive crops, and then people were allowed to gather in bigger groups and survive in a single area. They didn't have to roam around anymore. And that's where we get, uh, the first sedentary communities, which means they, they stayed in the same place all year long. For the vast majority of human existence, we've been nomadic and we've done these kind of wider or tighter nomadic circles depending on the geographic region where they'd know, "Okay, you know, in the mountains... well, in the... we'll be in the summer in the mountains, 'cause there's berries and things. And then in the winter, we'll be down here and we'll hunt." But they'd move. So once humans figured out how to stay in a place, I think there, that's the initial trigger to what would become civilization.

   3. LFLex Fridman11:07

      What do you think is, uh... there's some, a lot of questions I wanna ask here. (laughs) What, what do you think is the motivation for societies? Is it the, the carrot or the stick? So you said like, is it... well, like, when resources run out, when the old way of life is no longer feeding everybody, then you have to figure stuff out? Or is it more the carrot of like, there's always this kinda human spirit that wants to explore, that wants to, um, maybe impress the rest of the village or something like this with, uh, the new discovery they made and venturing out and coming out with, with different ideas, or technological innovation, let's call it?

   4. EBEd Barnhart11:42

      Well, you know, I, I have an explorer's heart, so I'm kind of, uh, you know, bi- I'm biased.

   5. LFLex Fridman11:48

      Right.

   6. EBEd Barnhart11:48

      You know, I, I do think that, that we have an innate desire to see what's on the horizon-

   7. LFLex Fridman11:55

      Yeah.

   8. EBEd Barnhart11:55

      ... and to impress other people with our achievements, things like that. Uh, we're, we're social beings.

   9. LFLex Fridman12:01

      Mm-hmm.

   10. EBEd Barnhart12:02

       Um, that's, that, that's really the edge that humans have, is our ability to work together. So I, I think that it's much more the carrot than the stick. When things get ugly, the stick comes out, but usually the carrot does the job.

4. 12:16 – 22:07

   First humans in the Americas

   1. LFLex Fridman12:16

      ... the really interesting story is how the first people came to the Americas. I mean, to me, that's pretty gangster to go from Asia all the way, potentially during the Ice Age or maybe at the end of the Ice Age or during that whole period, not knowing what the world looks like, going into the unknown. Can you talk through that process? How did the first people come to the Americas?

   2. EBEd Barnhart12:39

      Well, first off, I agree with you, that was pretty gangster.

   3. LFLex Fridman12:42

      (laughs)

   4. EBEd Barnhart12:42

      I mean, that's- that's- th- that's a hard place to live. I- I listened to some of your podcasts with that guy, uh, Jordan Jonas-

   5. LFLex Fridman12:49

      Yeah, yeah.

   6. EBEd Barnhart12:50

      ... who Cut the Mustard, but I- I wouldn't have made it crossing there (laughs) .

   7. LFLex Fridman12:53

      (laughs) Well, there you go, like, the- the fact that those guys exist, that somebody like Jordan Jonas exists, people that, uh, survive and thrive in these harsh conditions, that- that- that's an indication that it's possible. But, yeah. So when- when do you think and how did the first people come?

   8. EBEd Barnhart13:11

      The traditional theories are still somewhat valid or at least, you know, on the table, that when that land bridge occurred, that nomadic hunters just followed the game like they always had and the game went across there 'cause there was no barrier and they followed them across. The thing that has changed is how early that happened. DNA has been a total game changer for archeology. You know, we've- we get all these, uh, evolutionary tracks that we could never see before. When I was a young archeologist, I had- I would have never dreamed we'd have the information we have now. And that information, a lot of it's coming out of, uh, Texas A&M. We see the traditional, like, 12,500 years ago that there was a migration, but now we're seeing one that's almost certainly happening closer to 30,000 years ago. And now, the thing that seems like madness but might be true is that it could have been as early as 60. A lot of the DNA things are suggesting that the very first migration could have come across as early as 60. And when I was a younger archeologist, n- it was heresy to go beyond this 12,500. You were a wacko if you said that. But now, it's really very clear that they came over at least by 30,000. And the bridge opened and closed and opened and closed.

   9. LFLex Fridman14:41

      That's during the Ice Age?

   10. EBEd Barnhart14:42

       Right.

   11. LFLex Fridman14:44

       (laughs) I mean, that's crazy, right? That's- that is crazy.

   12. EBEd Barnhart14:49

       Yeah. I mean, th- you know, they didn't roll in and immediately make New York, but there were people. And there were definitely not people here before that, which is fascinating. The, uh, the- when the- when the bridge closed, DNA mutated. And so we have specific kinds of haplogroups that are here in the Americas that don't exist otherwise. And that same haplogroup game has been showing us more and more that people came across Siberia. They- it's not Africa, it's not Western Europe. Those are still, you know, they've become kind of fringe theories, but they're not totally eradicated. I have... DNA is a developing science as well, and I think we all need to keep that in mind, that it's not like they just cracked the code and now we know all the answers. And sometimes, like in any science, a breakthrough puts us two- two steps backwards, not forwards. So I think, you know, we don't need to have too much faith (laughs) in the models that are now being created through DNA, but they are pointing in the direction of everybody came across from Siberia, that all Native American people are of Asiatic descent.

   13. LFLex Fridman16:06

       Do you think it was a gradual process? If it's like 30 to 60,000 years ago, was it just a gradual movement of these nomadic tribes as they follow the animals? Or was it, like, one explorer that pushed the- the tribe to just go, go, go, go, and go across- maybe across 100 years, travel all the way, uh, across maybe into North America, into North North America where Canada is now? And then sort of, like, big leaps in movement versus gradual movement.

   14. EBEd Barnhart16:44

       I think it was big leaps. And now this is just, you know, a mostly guess, I'll- I'll admit. But I think that, uh, i- much in the way that a lot of our evolutionary models talk about punctuated equilibrium, that there are big moments of change, and then it settles out into a more, uh, slow and steady pattern, and then something big will happen again, I do think that, uh, the early people went as far as they could go, and there were certain colonies that just got isolated for thousands of years. One of the fascinating things that DNA is showing us, which actually blood types were showing us way before that, is that the oldest people in the Americas are in South America. The ones that are- uh, that got separated early and didn't mix their DNA, like the people in the Amazon, most of those guys have, uh, O blood type and they're haplogroup D, which is the oldest one that entered the- the US. And what are they doing down there if, uh... I do believe they came across the Bering Strait. I don't think it's very... We have no real evidence to say they- they came en masse across, uh, Oceania. So they made it probably by boat along the coast-

   15. LFLex Fridman18:09

       Along the coast.

   16. EBEd Barnhart18:09

       ... all the way to South America.

   17. LFLex Fridman18:11

       So there's some kind of cultural engine that drove them to explore. So if you had to bet all your money it happened, like-... tens of thousands of years ago, but at a very rapid pace. There's these explorers that went all the way to South America and there established their, kind of, more stable existence. And from there, South America, Mesoamerica, North America was kind of gradually expanded into that area.

   18. EBEd Barnhart18:40

       I think the next waves came down and did North America and Central America.

   19. LFLex Fridman18:45

       Ah.

   20. EBEd Barnhart18:45

       And the very first wave made it all the way down to South America and got isolated there.

   21. LFLex Fridman18:51

       Isolated.

   22. EBEd Barnhart18:51

       And then mixed in with the next groups that came.

   23. LFLex Fridman18:55

       That's fascinating.

   24. EBEd Barnhart18:56

       Kind of like, there's a, there's an interesting correlate in, uh, in Europe where today everybody feels like, uh, Celtic people are from Ireland. (laughs) But actually, Celtic people started in Eastern Europe and it was the entire area. And when Rome kind of swept everything and, and Rome was now the, the ruler of the day, it was only that far edge of the Celtic world, Ireland, that they were like, "Ugh, we're, we're not gonna mess with those guys on that island. We'll leave them be." So now it looks like that's the heart of Celtic tradition, but actually it's the fringe.

   25. LFLex Fridman19:38

       So if it, if it is 60,000 years ago, these are really early humans.

   26. EBEd Barnhart19:43

       Yeah. And there were consistent things that have been coming out for decades about, uh, very old carbon-14 dates in the Amazon and in the Andes area that everybody just dismissed as, "No, you, you didn't get a date of 40,000 years." But I think we're gonna come back around to start readdressing some of these based on new evidence at hand.

   27. LFLex Fridman20:08

       And that's the interesting thing is, you know, the early humans spread throughout the world and then, like you said, perhaps have gotten isolated, and then civilizations sprung from there. And they all have similar elements, even though they were isolated. That's really interesting. That's really interesting, that there's multiple cradles of civilization, not just one. Like one good idea. Th- those ideas naturally come up. Those structures naturally come up.

   28. EBEd Barnhart20:38

       And I, I wonder whether, you know, the similarities that all those cradles have, it could be, uh, you know, a shared much deeper past that they all have. Or it could be a more kind of Star Trek thing where, uh, you know, Captain Kirk was always talking about the, uh, the theory of parallel human development, that humans across the universe go through certain stages of development and that that could be the answer to it.

   29. LFLex Fridman21:09

       Which, which one do you lean on? Which, which one do you lean towards?

   30. EBEd Barnhart21:12

       I think it's a case by case thing. I think if we look globally, I'd lean much more towards the human parallel development. But if I look just to the Americas and we have a shorter time period where, you know, the, the things that become major civilizations now ... Now I'll say, you know, up to 30,000 years ago, which is still a blip in the time of, of humans. Um, I think that there were shared things that those people came over with from Asia and that as they got separated that they had core values that then turned into things like religion and, uh, cultural customs that we can see. I, I'm a big proponent that there are, uh, commonalities in all the cultures of the Americas that lead back to and point to a, a single distant origin.

5. 22:07 – 27:36

   South America

   1. EBEd Barnhart22:07

   2. LFLex Fridman22:08

      You've spoken about the lost cradle of civilization in South America. So, uh, South America is not often talked about as one of the cradles of civilization. S- South America, Mesoamerica. Can you explain?

   3. EBEd Barnhart22:21

      Well, we have very early stuff in South America, you're right. I mean, you know, especially as, uh, uh, as an American, our country's so big and, you know, the, uh, we are so far removed from these places, we don't even think about it. But more and more we're seeing things that, that pre-date the earliest stuff that we like to talk about, like Egypt and Mesopotamia. Um, there are things ... It, it's all on the Peruvian coast-

   4. LFLex Fridman22:50

      Mm-hmm.

   5. EBEd Barnhart22:50

      ... that we have these cradles of civilization. Someday we might start talking about the Amazon more and more. But right now what we've got are things that date back into the 3000s BCE along the coast of Peru. And there are big stone built pyramids and temples, and they're, uh, they're, they're amazingly isolated, even now that we've found them. Uh, some of them, like Caral is one of the most famous ones, just north of Lima. We've known about it for a couple decades now how old it is, but every time I visit there it's like I visited the moon.

   6. LFLex Fridman23:29

      Mm-hmm.

   7. EBEd Barnhart23:29

      There's absolutely nobody there, not for miles. I, it's, uh, amazing how such an, uh, such a discovery was made and yet still nobody goes to see it. It's not easy to get to.

   8. LFLex Fridman23:43

      So you think there's a bunch of locations like that. Some might not have been discovered in the Peru area.

   9. EBEd Barnhart23:48

      Oh, there're so many. Peru has tons. That desert gets really ugly quick and it buries things completely. There are so many pyramids out there that are still completely untouched. You know, when people hear the name pyramids, they think of Egypt immediately. But Egypt has got about 140 pyramids and we have pretty much found them all.

   10. LFLex Fridman24:11

       Mm-hmm.

   11. EBEd Barnhart24:11

       Peru has thousands, thousands of pyramids. And now they weren't built of, uh, a lot ... Not all of them were built of stone. Some of them were adobe bricks, which have weathered terribly, so now they don't look ... They're, they're not exciting places to visit today.

   12. LFLex Fridman24:27

       Mm-hmm.

   13. EBEd Barnhart24:28

       You know what's funny too? You- you know, we started off talking about, you know, whether I think there's a lost civilization out there. Uh, there are definitely things that are still to be discovered, but there are some things that were discovered 100 years ago, and archaeologists, or back then they- they called themselves antiquarians, just kind of passed over. Caral was one of these sites, because the- the coast of Peru has some of those pyramids that were made by the Moche, are full of- of gold and beautiful ceramics, and, uh, you know, things that you can sell for big money. But Caral was found a long time ago, but the archaeologist was like, "Ah, no gold, no ceramics. Forget about it. This place is no good. We can't sell anything here." And then about the 1970s or '80s, somebody said, "Hey, no ceramics? Is that older than the invention of ceramics? Shit, we better go take another look at that place."

   14. LFLex Fridman25:30

       So what's the dating on Caral?

   15. EBEd Barnhart25:32

       Caral, I think, starts at about 3200 BCE, and it lasts as a major civilization with a lot of other cities around it, uh, until about 1800 BCE.

   16. LFLex Fridman25:47

       So what's the story behind, like looking at some of these images, what's the story about constructions like that? What was the idea?

   17. EBEd Barnhart25:54

       That thing, isn't that amazing?

   18. LFLex Fridman25:56

       Yeah.

   19. EBEd Barnhart25:56

       Oh that, gosh, I mean, it should be some sort of, you know, I'll be a flaky archaeologist like Leo, but this is a- this is a place where- where rituals took place.

   20. LFLex Fridman26:07

       (laughs)

   21. EBEd Barnhart26:07

       That's-

   22. LFLex Fridman26:07

       This can mean a million things.

   23. EBEd Barnhart26:08

       So- so many things we say are so just painfully vague, and that's about, you know, what we got. And it... A place like this, I know the one we're looking at here, I've been here a couple of times. In the pyramid behind it, uh, the rubble's built in a way where the building won't rock apart. This is a very, uh, earthquake prone place, but the buildings haven't fallen because they make these, uh, net baskets of rocks inside that all kind of wiggle around and don't allow the building to fall down! And inside these we've also found a couple of things that were, uh, babies, that were human babies that were buried in there. And I don't think... There's a lot of people that see that and go, "Oh, look at that, they were sacrificing babies, these monsters." I think a lot of the things that are interpreted as baby sacrifices, Caral's evidence being one of them, I think it's more about the- the tragic nature of infant mortality. In the past it was a lot more common, i- there were cultures that didn't even really properly name their kid until they got to five, because chances were they were gonna die. And so I think a lot of these babies that we find in these ceremonial contexts that are interpreted as sacrifices, I think they're putting them in special places because they- they mourn the death of their kids, and it just happened a lot more frequently then.

6. 27:36 – 34:40

   Pyramids

   1. EBEd Barnhart27:36

   2. LFLex Fridman27:36

      One of the things you said that really surprised me is that pyramids were built in Peru possibly hundreds of years before they were built in Egypt. That true?

   3. EBEd Barnhart27:47

      Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact there's-

   4. LFLex Fridman27:49

      That's crazy.

   5. EBEd Barnhart27:50

      There's one that's now pushing, uh, 6,000 BCE. Like that's thousands of years before the stuff in Egypt, and that one's called Huaca Prieta. And it was not a- it was not an Egyptian pyramid, it w- but it was a pyramid and it was thousands of years before.

   6. LFLex Fridman28:13

      What do you think is the motivation to build a pyramid? The fact that it can, uh, withstand the elements, uh, structurally, that kind of thing? Is- is it, uh... Yeah, why- why do humans build pyramids and why do they build it in all kinds of different locations in the world?

   7. EBEd Barnhart28:31

      Well, you know my- my rude answer is- is- is pretty boring really. (laughs) Uh, a lot of people ask me, "Why are there pyramids all over the planet?" How is that- is that a coincidence? I mean, who...

   8. LFLex Fridman28:43

      Yeah.

   9. EBEd Barnhart28:43

      I think that, uh, when people wanted to build a big building without rebar or cement, you end up building something with a fat base that goes up to a skinny top and that turns into a pyramid. Uh, you know, any kid who's playing with blocks on the floor builds a couple towers and his brother knocks them down, and if he wants one that's gonna stay and be tall, he ends up making something with a fat base and a- and a tiny top. And I think that, uh, you know, building something big and tall together is one of those- those human things, like we built that, that will be here after we're gone. People will remember who we were. We are all... If there's any human commonality it's- it's fear of our own deaths and that we were nothing and no one will ever remember us. I think that the first big monuments like that were probably, uh, a group of people saying, "We're gonna do something that people will remember forever." Now that being said, you remember we were just talking about Huaca Prieta and this one that's almost 6,000 BC now is the first one. That one's a funny case. Uh, we just talked about all these lofty goals, but actually I'm pretty sure that Huaca Prieta's first pyramid was about capping a smelly pile of trash. I think everybody piled up their trash in the middle of town-

   10. LFLex Fridman30:10

       Yeah.

   11. EBEd Barnhart30:10

       ... and it stunk. It's- it's on the coast, it stunk like fish. And somebody said, "If we just bury this thing with dirt, it won't smell anymore." And then it was a big mound where people could get up and talk to everybody and then said, "Well, it's squishy, you know, if we- if we cap it with clay, then it will really not smell."... I really think that the very first pyramids in Peru were about trash management.

   12. LFLex Fridman30:35

       (laughs)

   13. EBEd Barnhart30:36

       Talk about deflating, huh?

   14. LFLex Fridman30:38

       Yeah.

   15. EBEd Barnhart30:38

       (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman30:38

       But then they probably saw it and they were impressed and humbled by the, sort of the enormity of the construction. And then they're like, "Oh, we should..." Maybe the next guy thought maybe we should keep building these kinds of things.

   17. EBEd Barnhart30:49

       Yeah. Yeah, and, uh, not, not to jump ahead, but in North America, you know, where they also made pyramids, there's this interesting evolution where there were these piles of shells along rivers and along the coastlines. People ate a lot of shells. That was an easy thing to collect and eat. So these piles of shells would be near communities, and they probably became landmarks, but eventually they started burying their dead inside those, too. Probably, again, you know, about stink and about (laughs) you know, "Well, we don't want the dogs to eat them. Well, maybe we'll put them in the middle of a shell pile." But then that all of a sudden became this, like, "That's where my grandfather's body is," "That's where great-grandfather's body is." And all of a sudden people started being attached to place not just for the resources, but for the shared memories of their ancestors. So when the very first pyramid was built in, uh, Ohio area by the Adena people, it was built out of dirt, but it's full of bodies. And I think it's an echo of a old thing where they used to be putting bodies in shell mounds.

   18. LFLex Fridman32:01

       So where and who were the first civilizations in South America, Mesoamerica?

   19. EBEd Barnhart32:09

       Well, you know, I think we're still piecing that together, uh, coming back to the first things we talked about. I think we're still missing a lot of stuff, uh, especially in South America. It just keeps getting older and older. Part of the reason it's hard to answer that question is, you know, at what point do we consider people a civilization or a culture? We have in the Americas this long period of time that we call the, the, the Paleoindian time, where they were hunting megafauna. And then when those went away, we get into this even longer period of time called the Archaic-

   20. LFLex Fridman32:46

       Mm-hmm.

   21. EBEd Barnhart32:46

       ... where they're just hunters and gatherers. Sometimes somebody's coming up with a cool different kind of arrowhead. They go back and forth with different hunting tools, but really nothing changes for thousands of years. And then finally they start developing into these larger groups, which for the most part has to do with agriculture. They... It used to be archaeology, that was just the end all, be all. Civilization starts with the invention of agriculture, and we can't have sedentary communities until people learn how to farm. But that's been discounted. Peru was a big part of that. That area of Caral, it's connected to another city on the coast called Aspero. And Aspero starts about the same time, but they're all about fishing. They have no farming. And Caral, who's upriver from them, is farming, but funny enough, they're not really farming food. They're farming cotton and they're making nets, and they're trading the nets with the people on the coast for the fish. Um, so it's not as simple as it's just agriculture anymore, uh, but it is, I think, still rooted in, "How can we feed more people than just our family? How can we together create a food abundance so we're no longer, uh, scared about running out of food?"

   22. LFLex Fridman34:09

       So is it possible, which is something you've argued, that civilization started in the Amazon, in the jungle-

   23. EBEd Barnhart34:17

       I do think so.

   24. LFLex Fridman34:19

       ... versus the coast?

   25. EBEd Barnhart34:19

       I think religion in South America began in the Amazon. I think there were people there, very old. There's actually, uh, the earliest pottery in all of the Americas, of all these places that we have civilizations that grew up, you know where the oldest pottery is? The middle of the Amazon.

7. 34:40 – 47:44

   Religion

   1. EBEd Barnhart34:40

   2. LFLex Fridman34:40

      So there was interesting cultures developing in the Amazon. So religion, you would say, preceded civilization?

   3. EBEd Barnhart34:47

      In South America, the, uh, the, the Caral and Aspero that I was just talking about, it's weird what a dearth of art and any evidence of religion we have. We have those pyramids and things that we call temples, but we don't really know what went on in there. And there's no hints of, uh, religious iconography, uh, ceremonies, nothing like that. The first stuff that we get is right when that culture ends, about 1800 BCE, this culture called, uh, Chavín starts up, and they... Their main temple is up in the Andes in this place of, uh, least... path of re- least resistance between the Amazon and the coast. It's about three days' walk either way from this, this place where this temple is. That's where we start seeing the very first religious iconography, and it's all over the temples. There are things that are definitely from the coast, but the iconography are all jaguars and snakes and crocodiles. And those don't come from the coast. All of those things are coming out of the Amazon.

   4. LFLex Fridman35:59

      I mean, religion is a really powerful idea. Religions are one of the most powerful ideas that are the strongest myths that tie people together. And to you, it's possible that this powerful, uh, idea in South America started in the Amazon.

   5. EBEd Barnhart36:16

      I do. I do think it did. Um... And you're right. Uh, you know, ideas are more powerful than weapons, but archaeology can't see them at all.

   6. LFLex Fridman36:27

      Yeah.

   7. EBEd Barnhart36:27

      We can see... Sometimes we can see ideas manifesting in the things they, they create and lead to, but there's an interpretation problem. Are we right about what idea created this? That... Those are things that archaeology just can't get at.

   8. LFLex Fridman36:43

      Uh, that's one of the challenges of archeology and looking into ancient history, is you're trying to not just understand what they were doing in terms of architecture, but understanding what was going on inside their mind.

   9. EBEd Barnhart36:55

      That's really what, what I'm in it for. Uh, trying to understand these people, and it's real detective work. And we know we're dealing with a, a totally flawed record. We only have what could preserve the test of time. You know, if we look around this room here, if, uh, if 2,000 years of weathering happened in this room, what would be left?

   10. LFLex Fridman37:17

       (laughs)

   11. EBEd Barnhart37:17

       And what would we think happened here? (laughs)

   12. LFLex Fridman37:21

       Right. Right. Right. But there's, uh, not in this room, but if you look at thousands of rooms like it, maybe you can start to piece things together about the different ideologies that ruled the world, uh, the religions, the different ideas. Uh, tell me about this fanged deity. One of your more controversial ideas is that you believe that the reli- uh, the religions, there's a thread that connects the different civilizations, the societies of the Andean region (sighs) and the religion that practice is more monotheistic than is currently believed in the mainstream.

   13. EBEd Barnhart38:04

       That is exactly what I think. And it's, I think it's all about this fanged deity who somewhere thousands of years ago, crawled his way out of the Amazon, up into the Andes, and a religion took hold. There could have been kind of, uh, a combination of ideas from the coast and the Amazon, but he is the one creator deity, in my opinion, through all of these cultures. And the people in the Amazon still talk about him. There his name is Vihomase in some groups. But they say that his, uh, his emissaries on earth are the jaguars and that he is the creator deity.

   14. LFLex Fridman38:41

       Why is the current mainstream belief is that a lot of the religions are not monotheistic?

   15. EBEd Barnhart38:46

       Well, there are bonafide, uh, pantheons. Uh, you know, Greece had one, Egypt had one, Mesopotamia had one. Lots of the early religions of the old world were pantheons. And I think that was part of the problem. The earliest archeologists walked in there with a preconceived notion that ancient cultures have pantheons. And so they went to the art looking for them. And they came up with things like the shark god and the moon goddess and, uh, the sun god and all these things. But when I look at the art, and I was trained by a person right here in Austin, Texas as an art historian, you follow certain, uh, diagnostic traits through art to see the development over time. And when I look at it and use that methodology, there's a single face with goggle eyes and fangs and claws on his hands and feet and snakes coming off of his head and off of his belt. He's, he's got really identifiable traits. He also likes to sever people's heads off and carry them around.

   16. LFLex Fridman39:54

       (laughs)

   17. EBEd Barnhart39:54

       But he's the fanged deity and he's there, he shows up in Chavin de Huantar, the capital of that Chavin culture. And he keeps showing up through every culture, even thousands of miles away, throughout the next two millennium, right up to the Inca. The Inca have a creator deity they call Viracocha. But Viracocha is the fanged deity. He is, when, uh, when we do see him, by the time you get to Inca, they do this kind of like almost, uh, Islamic thing where they say, "You, you can't understand the face of Viracocha." So when they do put him in a cosmogram, they'll make him just a blob, like he's just unknowable, but he's at the very top. I think we're misunderstanding a lot of things that we used to say were deities as just supernatural beings. If we flip the mirror on Christianity and take a look at it, which of course Christianity is monotheistic, right? It would be heresy to say otherwise. But who are all these other characters? Who are all these angels and demons and, you know, Jesus Christ and... I, I mean, I don't even know who the Holy Spirit is, but he's some sort of supernatural being. But it's that monotheistic system has lots of things that have supernatural powers that are not God. That's where I think the crux of us misunderstanding ancient Andean art is.

   18. LFLex Fridman41:29

       So what, what is the process of analyzing art through time to try to figure out what the important entities are for that culture? Do you just see what shows up over and over and over and over?

   19. EBEd Barnhart41:41

       Well, certainly without the, uh, advent of writing, uh, depictions in art have all sorts of meanings encoded in them. And there are certain, you know, what we call diagnostic elements. Like w- uh, we can, we can pull apart the same sort of thing in, uh, like in the Greek pantheon, you know. You know by their dress and what they're holding what the different gods are. You can tell Hades from, from Zeus by the different things they're holding. You know, lightning bolts or tridents or whatever it is. So they all have these diagnostic elements to them. So that's how art history goes about analyzing art over time. Once w- once we can put it in a chronological sequence, then we can say, "Okay, here's, here's a deity here in Chavin culture. Now we move forward 500 years, now we're in Moche and Nazca culture." You know, who are, who, where are the deities here?... and what I see is that same guy with not just one or two traits, but a whole package of them, that shows up again and again and again for thousands of years in each one of these cultures. He's got circular eyes, he's got a fanged mouth, he's got claws on his hands and feet. He's a, he's a humanoid-

   20. LFLex Fridman43:07

       Mm-hmm.

   21. EBEd Barnhart43:07

       ... but he also has, uh, snakes coming off of his head like hair and snakes coming off of his belt.

   22. LFLex Fridman43:13

       Mm-hmm.

   23. EBEd Barnhart43:14

       And then, not so much in Chavín, but as it goes forward, he starts carting around, uh, severed heads, human severed heads. So they're, like in the, eh, old literature, uh, the Moche will call him the decapitator deity.

   24. LFLex Fridman43:32

       (laughs)

   25. EBEd Barnhart43:32

       But then they have these other like, "Oh, here's the crab deity and here's the fox deity?" But if you look at them, like the crab deity is just that guy's face coming off of a crab, and the fox deity is that guy's face coming off of a fox. So-

   26. LFLex Fridman43:47

       I see.

   27. EBEd Barnhart43:48

       ... I think in, in, on that particular instance I explain it similar to what Zeus did. You know how Zeus was able to like, you know, turn into whatever animal he wanted to get with the woman he wanted? And he showed up in all sorts of forms? But he was always Zeus. I think that the, uh, the Fang Deity manifests himself through people and animals throughout the art, and that there are missing stories of mythology that we don't have anymore.

   28. LFLex Fridman44:16

       And across hundreds of years, thousands of years, from Chavín to Moche to Inca, as you're saying?

   29. EBEd Barnhart44:21

       Right. Wari has them too, Tiahuanaco. That's the, that famous place, Puma Punku. He's all over there.

   30. LFLex Fridman44:29

       I wonder how those ideas spread and morph, of this Fang Deity?
8. 47:44 – 49:41

   Shamanism

   1. EBEd Barnhart47:44

      adores.

   2. LFLex Fridman47:44

      This actually, this is-

   3. EBEd Barnhart47:45

      (laughs)

   4. LFLex Fridman47:45

      ... awesomely makes sense now-

   5. EBEd Barnhart47:47

      Uh-huh.

   6. LFLex Fridman47:47

      ... 'cause I, I saw the opening of a paper you wrote 30 years ago on shamanism and the Moche civilization. It reads, "The Moche are the major focus of this paper. Sex, puppies, and headhunting will be shown to be (laughs) related to ancient Moche shamanism." Uh-

   7. EBEd Barnhart48:04

      (laughs)

   8. LFLex Fridman48:04

      So now I understand.

   9. EBEd Barnhart48:06

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman48:06

       I was like, "Well, the puppies?"

   11. EBEd Barnhart48:07

       Puppies, yeah, it's true.

   12. LFLex Fridman48:08

       Uh, uh, and the headhunting, that's the decapitator aspect.

   13. EBEd Barnhart48:11

       And I've added rock and roll to that list since actually.

   14. LFLex Fridman48:14

       Which-

   15. EBEd Barnhart48:14

       Because rock and roll or, you know, music is also a big part of it. They, they, they-

   16. LFLex Fridman48:19

       Oh, interesting.

   17. EBEd Barnhart48:20

       They call spirits down. There's this whole spirit world.

   18. LFLex Fridman48:23

       Mm-hmm.

   19. EBEd Barnhart48:23

       There's the ancestors. And the, the people that drink San Pedro cactus juice kind of, they don't talk about the Fang Deity anymore, I think Christianity in 500 years has somewhat put him in the back, you know? It was unpopular to have a pagan deity, so (laughs) they don't talk about him much anymore, though he's still around. There in like around Trujillo they call him Aya-aiapec.

   20. LFLex Fridman48:48

       Mm-hmm.

   21. EBEd Barnhart48:49

       But, um...... music playing, in the Amazon, they play flutes, sometimes a chorus of women sing, and that's supposed to bring the spirits down into the ceremony. There's a spirit that's hurting the person that's sick, and then the, the priest or the shaman or the curandero, whatever you wanna call him, has his own posse of spirits that are gonna help him figure out what's going on. So when the music starts, that's bringing those spirits in. And people don't see them unless they've imbibed the San Pedro cactus juice, which is this hallucinogen. Which is, in the Amazon side, it was ayahuasca. On the Amaz- on the coast, it was San Pedro cactus.

   22. LFLex Fridman49:36

       Mm-hmm.

   23. EBEd Barnhart49:37

       But that's what allows you to actually see that other world.

9. 49:41 – 55:54

   Ayahuasca

   1. EBEd Barnhart49:41

   2. LFLex Fridman49:41

      Yeah. I, (laughs) I went to the Amazon recently, did ayahuasca, a very high dose of it.

   3. EBEd Barnhart49:48

      Bold move.

   4. LFLex Fridman49:49

      (laughs) Um, when in Rome. How far back does that go?

   5. EBEd Barnhart49:56

      Oh, I, I think longer than anybody can remember. But I mean, it's a natural plant that's been there forever. I think that it's thousands and thousands of years. That's another thing, uh, Chavin de Huántaro was talking about, where I think the things came, the religion came from the Amazon. There's this wall on the back side that faces the Amazon side. So if you're entering the city from the Amazon path, you see this wall first. And it's a bunch of faces that some of them are human, some of them are total jaguar, and some of them are trans... forming in between. But there's a group of them that are midway through transformation and they show their nostrils leaking out this snot that's coming, like, down their face. San Pedro doesn't do that to you, but ayahuasca does. Ayahuasca, traditionally, they'd take a blow gun and just shoot it up your nose or up your ass. But it would... a lot of times up your nose, and when it shoots up your nose, the first thing that happens is just this gush of snot comes out of you.

   6. LFLex Fridman51:01

      Mm.

   7. EBEd Barnhart51:02

      And there are stone, uh, depictions of people uncontrollably snotting on the back side of this temple from, you know, 3,000 years ago.

   8. LFLex Fridman51:12

      So that, you think, could have been a big component of the development of religion and shamanism?

   9. EBEd Barnhart51:19

      I think that hallucinogens opened the mind then like they open the mind now.

   10. LFLex Fridman51:25

       Do you think that, you know, the stone ape theory, uh, do you think that actually could have been an actual catalyst for the formation of, uh, civilization?

   11. EBEd Barnhart51:36

       In the Americas, yes, I do.

   12. LFLex Fridman51:39

       Mm-hmm.

   13. EBEd Barnhart51:39

       Though, you know, hallucinogens are not part of every, uh, ancient tradition in the world. In fact, strangely, the majority of plants that, that are actually psychotropic, not just mood-altering, are from here in the Americas. There, there are very few, uh, drugs that will make you hallucinate outside of the Americas. Of course, now they're global and, you know, they're, they can be grown all over the place. But originally speaking, very, very few were outside of the Americas. So they were part of the experience here in a way that they just couldn't be in other places.

   14. LFLex Fridman52:17

       I wonder to what degree they were just part of a ritual and the creative force behind sort of art versus, like, literally the method by which you come up with ideas that define a civilization. So, like, the degree to which they had a role in the formation of civilizations. It's kind of fun to think about psychedelics being, like, a critical role in the formation of civilizations.

   15. EBEd Barnhart52:46

       I think in terms of South America, they probably-

   16. LFLex Fridman52:48

       It's possible.

   17. EBEd Barnhart52:49

       ... really were. Um, in North America where we're in a more northern clime here and there are less of them, not so much, at least in terms of psychedelics. Things like, uh, tobacco was always a big part of it. But a lot of the, you know, there's, there's more than one way to mea- to reach a hallucinatory state.

   18. LFLex Fridman53:08

       Mm-hmm.

   19. EBEd Barnhart53:08

       The hard way is starvation, uh, sleep deprivation, and for the... The Maya, for example, would go sleep deprivation, starvation, and then they'd cut themselves very badly, and that loss of blood, we believe, triggered hallucinations and visions. Nothing to do with drugs.

   20. LFLex Fridman53:30

       Oh, so it's-

   21. EBEd Barnhart53:30

       I much prefer the drugs route.

   22. LFLex Fridman53:31

       It's the res- (laughs)

   23. EBEd Barnhart53:32

       (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman53:32

       It's the result, not the... Uh, the, the tools aren't the thing that creates insight, it's the, the result, so you-

   25. EBEd Barnhart53:40

       It's that getting to... You know, it, it's...

   26. LFLex Fridman53:42

       (laughs)

   27. EBEd Barnhart53:42

       Hallucinogens are poisoning us. They're killing us. That's, you know, it's a, it's a near-death state. And people of the Americas believed sleeping was entering that other world, at death you entered this other world, and that when you took this mighty dose of poison, it was helping you enter that other world for a period of time.

   28. LFLex Fridman54:04

       Yeah, as Tom Waits said in that one song, "I like my town with a little drop of poison." So maybe that poison is a good, uh, catalyst for invention. So who were the early first sort of mother cultures, mother civilizations in South America, and, like, what, what is... If, if we look chronologically, is there a label we can put on the first peoples that emerged?

   29. EBEd Barnhart54:33

       That picture is evolving. I mean, forever, it was just the Chavin people that we've been talking about, the ones with all the first depictions of religious art, were the mother culture. And they certainly did transmit a lot of stuff. But then all of a sudden we find Caral. The next one that we've barely even begun looking at, but it's probably older than Caral is Sechin culture. I was just poking around there last year and...... just, just from the bus, on the highway, I could see, like, that's a pyramid out there. (laughs) Well, oh, there's another one. And I know how old the stuff we have studied there is. It's again, 3000 BCE. You know, we're, we're just barely beginning to understand them. Caral frustrates me to no end, the lack of art there, that's ... We've got, you know, stones and bones, and not even ceramics to go on. And they didn't have the courtesy to leave me a bunch of art I can interpret. So, I don't know what those people believed.

   30. LFLex Fridman55:34

       Right, so o- one of the ways to understand what people believe is looking at the art, the stories told through the art, and then hopefully, uh, deciphering if they were doing any kind of writing.
10. 55:54 – 1:00:48

    Lost City of Z

    1. LFLex Fridman55:54

       the Amazon, you've mentioned that it's possible that there's a lost civilization that existed in the Amazon, so it's carried a lot of names, the Lost City of Z or El Dorado. Do you think it's possible it existed?

    2. EBEd Barnhart56:07

       Well, City of Z and El Dorado are in pretty different places. The one-

    3. LFLex Fridman56:11

       Yes.

    4. EBEd Barnhart56:11

       ... El Dorado, the, the ideas of where it is kind of center around towards Columbia.

    5. LFLex Fridman56:17

       Okay.

    6. EBEd Barnhart56:18

       And the City of Z is named after a region of Brazil called the Xingu.

    7. LFLex Fridman56:23

       Mm-hmm.

    8. EBEd Barnhart56:24

       And so th- those are, uh, a, an America worth of distance apart.

    9. LFLex Fridman56:30

       Mm-hmm.

    10. EBEd Barnhart56:31

        You know, the entire ... People don't really think about it on the map, but, uh, the entire United States would fit inside the Amazon. That's how big that place is.

    11. LFLex Fridman56:39

        Yeah.

    12. EBEd Barnhart56:40

        And these two are on either end, but both of them have evidence of civilizations. These big ... You know, it's, it's, it's lowland and it floods all the time. So, what they did is they'd make these big mounds and then they'd make huge caud w- causeways between mounds so they could walk through their cities while they were seasonally inundated.

    13. LFLex Fridman57:01

        Mm-hmm.

    14. EBEd Barnhart57:01

        And the bunch of that stuff has been found in the Xingu area, like huge areas that would support tens of thousands of people. Again, you know, it's not stone built and it's been under the forest forever, so it's very torn up, but it's there. Now, you know, Brazil is big on, uh, cattle farming more than ever now, and a, a thing that I think is completed now is Brazil and Bolivia partnered together and built a highway-

    15. LFLex Fridman57:32

        Mm.

    16. EBEd Barnhart57:32

        ... all the way across and opened up a whole bunch more land, which has found a, more of these, what we call like, uh, geometric earthworks. So, there's more and more evidence of these civilizations. It's not a, it's not a could be there. It's there, for sure.

    17. LFLex Fridman57:50

        By the way, the people who are trying to protect the rainforest really hate the highway. One of the things that I learned is if you build a road, uh, loggers will come. (laughs)

    18. EBEd Barnhart58:00

        Yep.

    19. LFLex Fridman58:01

        And they will start cutting stuff down. Now, from an archeology perspective, if you cut down trees, you get to discover things. But from a sort of protective, very precious rainforest perspective, it's obviously the opposite way. But it, it is interesting. I've seen where loggers cut through the forest and then they, uh ... And when they leave, the forest heals itself very quickly.

    20. EBEd Barnhart58:27

        So quick-, so quickly.

    21. LFLex Fridman58:28

        And, you know, you just think that across decades, y- y- you expand that to centuries, and it's like you could see how a civilization could be completely swallowed up by the rainforest.

    22. EBEd Barnhart58:41

        And it happened for sure in the Amazon.

    23. LFLex Fridman58:44

        Yeah.

    24. EBEd Barnhart58:44

        You know, they're ... One of the ways that we're trying to push the frontier of where people were in the Amazon, 'cause yes, the, uh, the trees and just the biomass have eaten so much evidence, but they're finding more and more of these places that they call, uh, Terra Preta, which is black earth, and they're huge swaths of it. So, uh, I guess the anthropology term is anthropogenic landscapes.

    25. LFLex Fridman59:14

        Mm-hmm.

    26. EBEd Barnhart59:15

        And what they're saying is that that really dark earth couldn't have just got that way through natural forest processes, that sometime in the distant past, that forest wasn't there and there was major farming and human activity to the point where they totally turned the soil black and it's much more enriched. And, uh, when I, uh, when I took a trip into the Amazon, I took ... I went from Manaus up the river, the Black River a couple of days, and went and met some different communities, and I asked them about this black earth. And they were like, "Yeah, that's why we're here. Sometimes we move our village, but when we move, we look for the Terra Preta, and that's where we're gonna put our village, because that's a place that all of our gardens work. The other places, they don't."

    27. LFLex Fridman1:00:04

        One of the things you talked about, literally just ask, you have to ask the right question. And, uh, the stories, all the, all the secrets are carried by the people, and they will tell you.

    28. EBEd Barnhart1:00:15

        Yeah. Uh, so many of them. You know, the, the thing that excites the world about archeology right now is Gobekli Tepe.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:00:22

        Mm.

    30. EBEd Barnhart1:00:22

        And this, you know, 10,000 now, Karan Tepe is 11,000, the whole area's called the Tostheplar. We only found it a couple of decades ago, but it was just a, you know, a archeologist rowing through the area and ask a sheep herder, "Hey, you know, you guys know where anything ancient is?" "Oh, yeah. Let me, let me show you this." And then all of a sudden, we've got a lost civilization and the, and the shepherds always knew where it was, just nobody

11. 1:00:48 – 1:07:51

    Graham Hancock

    1. EBEd Barnhart1:00:48

       asked them.

    2. LFLex Fridman1:00:49

       So, speaking of Gobekli Tepe, uh, what do you think about the work of Graham Hancock, who also believes that, uh, there's a lost civilization in the Amazon?

    3. EBEd Barnhart1:00:59

       Well, uh, I've met Graham, and personally, I like him.... he's a nice guy, got a nice sense of humor, and I think he's smart. Um, and, and I also think he is a, uh, very good researcher. He and I are working on the same set of facts. The differences are interpretations. I do not believe Graham's, uh, idea that a single, now lost ancient civilization seeded the rest of them. I just don't see that on a number of levels, artifact wise, technology wise, art historical analysis. So I think his research is great. Um, I think that he's, he's very well read. In fact, better read than a lot of my colleagues. But, uh, his conclusions I disagree with, and he and I have talked about this and, uh, had a very civil and normal conversation about it, and agreed to disagree without spitting any venom at any point in the conversation.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:02:00

       That would be a fun, uh, argument to be a fly on the wall for. Uh, so he, he believes... He's proposed that it's possible that the Amazon jungle is, um, sort of a (laughs) a manmade garden. So it was planted there by advanced ancient civilization. Is there any degree to which that could be possible?

    5. EBEd Barnhart1:02:21

       Frankly, I agree with him. I mean, it's just like what I was just talking about. That the- It's the conclusion part that we differ from.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:02:28

       Sure.

    7. EBEd Barnhart1:02:28

       But the facts that he's basing that on are that Terra Preta, are the huge geometric earthworks, are the ever increasing evidence of them. They are now from, you know, the bottom of Bolivia to, uh, Guyana.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:02:44

       Mm-hmm.

    9. EBEd Barnhart1:02:44

       They're everywhere. Every time we open up the jungle, we find these big works. So yes, there was a vast civilization that was there. How advanced they were is, uh, is a question, and also, you know, a perspective thing. Graham really focuses in on what we don't know and what could be.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:03:09

        What's the... Just to educate me, what's, what's the key idea that he's proposing that you disagree with? Is it was the level of advancement the civilization was or how large and centralized it was?

    11. EBEd Barnhart1:03:20

        Uh, my main point of disagreement is that his... And his ideas evolve like everybody's, you know? Uh, that no, no scientist or researcher in anything has an idea at the beginning of their career and holds it till the day they die. His ideas are evolving, but his ideas remain, a core of them are that there was a very advanced single ancient civilization that was utterly destroyed by climactic conditions, and, uh, the Younger Drier, uh, Dry Ass Har- Hypothesis is part of that most recently. He used to not say that. Now he's into this meteor thing.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:04:00

        Mm-hmm.

    13. EBEd Barnhart1:04:01

        But he believes that that civilization was destroyed, but that, uh, members of it escaped this cataclysm and then spread out all over the world to seed all of the world's civilizations-

    14. LFLex Fridman1:04:17

        Mm-hmm.

    15. EBEd Barnhart1:04:17

        ... for the next revival. There's where I disagree with him. I think these were independent civilizations that grew up, uh, in their own ways. That they were not seeded by some more advanced civilization from the past, and that they all hold things in common because they have this common ancestry of a... You know, in his early books, he suggested it's the, it's Atlantis. I don't think he suggests that anymore, but he still hangs onto the single advanced, now completely lost civilization. And, you know, archeology is... So we, we don't have... You know, we're... All of our ideas are theories.

    16. LFLex Fridman1:05:00

        Yeah.

    17. EBEd Barnhart1:05:00

        Very few of them are facts. And we're not... You know, we could have the story wrong, but one thing we're real good at is finding stuff. I mean, we find fish scales. So I find it just too big a pill to swallow that there was a civilization that ha- was that technologically advanced and that large that we can't even find a pot shard from.

    18. LFLex Fridman1:05:22

        Yeah. It... And of course, it is a compelling story that there's a single civilization from which all of this came from, because the alternative is, you know, the idea that we came across the Bering Strait from Asia, went all the way down to South America and got isolated and created all these marvelous, sophisticated civilizations and ideas, including religious ideas that look similar to other... You know, the, everybody has a flood myth.

    19. EBEd Barnhart1:05:58

        Right.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:05:58

        Right? So like, there's a lot of similarities. Everybody building pyramids. (laughs)

    21. EBEd Barnhart1:06:02

        Yeah.

    22. LFLex Fridman1:06:06

        Uh, but there could be a lot of other explanations. And for, uh, even if it's a simple, compelling explanation, there has to be evidence for it, right? And what would that evidence look like?

    23. EBEd Barnhart1:06:16

        Well, that's the bottom line.

    24. LFLex Fridman1:06:17

        That's tough.

    25. EBEd Barnhart1:06:17

        I mean, everything's theories. We're, we're... And, and as responsible scientists, we're trying to disprove our theories. We are not supposed to be trying to prove our f- theories. That's, that's one more foot out of the science box that archeology often steps, where we're supposed to be disproving what we think is happening, not proving it.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:06:38

        Yeah, you don't wanna lean into the mystery too much. I mean, most of... It's, it's such a, it's such a weird discipline, 'cause you're operating in a... It's like really in a dark room. You're feeling around a dark room, so it's mostly mystery. I would say a lot of sciences operate, "We're in a mostly well-lit room." (laughs) There's like a dark corner (laughs) and you're kind of l- uh, figuring out a way to light it. But in, yeah, in archeology, it's-... most of it is a mystery, right?

    27. EBEd Barnhart1:07:08

        Yes. It's job security. I like that part.

    28. LFLex Fridman1:07:11

        (laughs)

    29. EBEd Barnhart1:07:11

        You know, but I- I do also try to always remind myself that every paradigm shifting idea that humans has- have ever had began as heresy and lunacy. You know? "That guy was crazy up to the second he was brilliant."

    30. LFLex Fridman1:07:27

        Mm-hmm.
12. 1:07:51 – 1:13:51

    Uncontacted tribes

    1. LFLex Fridman1:07:51

       Um, one of the fascinating things about just the Amazon to me is th- that there's still a large number of uncontacted tribes. And s- to rewind back into ancient history, you can imagine all of these tribes that existed in the Amazon that were, uh, isolated, very sort of distinct from each other. Can you speak to this, your understanding of these, uh, tribes and their history that are still here today?

    2. EBEd Barnhart1:08:20

       Well, a- a lot of them are. These, you know ... By "uncontacted," we mean we don't know anything about these guys. We know roughly where they are, but places like Ecuador have very responsible policies where no one's allowed to go contact them.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:08:36

       Mm-hmm.

    4. EBEd Barnhart1:08:36

       So we have a dearth of information. If they walk out of the jungle and talk to us, that's one thing. But we don't go out there looking for 'em. But they do seem, you know, frozen in time, and I don't think any of us have a good estimation of how long they've been like that. But, you know, we were saying earlier that, you know, humans change based on pressures of their environment.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:09:00

       Mm-hmm.

    6. EBEd Barnhart1:09:00

       You know? It's, uh, Mother Necessity is oftentimes how we invent things or why we change. It's pressure. And one thing the Amazon is, once you, you know, figure out how not to die in it, it's a paradise of food. Food's falling from the sky all the time there. And if- once you learn to adapt to that environment, you've got very little need. There's no pressure to make anything else. Things are working.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:09:28

       So for the modern humans that come across these uncontacted tribes, one of the things they document and notice is the propensity of these tribes for violence. So they get very aggressive in- in attacking whoever they come across.

    8. EBEd Barnhart1:09:42

       And not just foreigners. They attack each other. The Yanomamo are famous for just having never-ending feuds with each other.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:09:51

       What do you think is the philosophy behind that?

    10. EBEd Barnhart1:09:55

        I don't, you know ... I- I'm a relatively peaceful person, but I've got, you know ... I've got the monster in me, like everybody does.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:10:04

        (laughs)

    12. EBEd Barnhart1:10:04

        And, uh, I- I think that these ... You know, it's cultural norms that become institutionalized. Uh, for the Yanomamo, they really ... Part of the pa- the rite of passage to be a man is to go kill or maim somebody from an outer village.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:10:23

        Mm-hmm.

    14. EBEd Barnhart1:10:23

        And they go in there. They- they oftentimes, uh, the- the way they don't let, uh, inbreeding set in and ruin everybody, not that they think of it scientifically, but they- they typically go and steal women from far off communities.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:10:37

        Mm-hmm.

    16. EBEd Barnhart1:10:38

        And that starts a big fight. Uh, another thing that starts fights that when nobody even fought is illness. Illness in the Amazon and all of the ancient Americas wasn't seen as a biological thing. It was a spiritual thing. So if somebody in your village gets sick, the question is asked, "Well, what spirit is menacing him, and who called it out on him?" And then the rumor starts.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:11:06

        Right.

    18. EBEd Barnhart1:11:06

        "Well, I bet you it was Joe over there in that other community. He's still pissed off at that time when we stole his daughter."

    19. LFLex Fridman1:11:11

        Yeah.

    20. EBEd Barnhart1:11:11

        "And we ought to go over there and kill Joe-"

    21. LFLex Fridman1:11:13

        Yeah.

    22. EBEd Barnhart1:11:13

        "... and then he'll get better."

    23. LFLex Fridman1:11:15

        (laughs)

    24. EBEd Barnhart1:11:16

        And so this- this, uh, this round of never-ending violence, uh, like Hatfields & McCoys had that thing, and the, uh, the people of, uh, New Guinea also do th- that. So it's not ... You know, there are certain areas, uh, mostly wooded areas, now that I think about it, where people just hide out, and they attack each other as a cultural, uh, institution.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:11:42

        It's such a tricky thing to do, to study an uncontacted tribe without obviously contacting them, to figure out their language, their philosophy of mind, how they communicate, the hierarchy they operate under.

    26. EBEd Barnhart1:11:55

        And, yeah. You know, there was a fascinating story in Peru. I guess it was probably, like, eight years ago or something. But there was a- a ranger from one of the biology stations who, just in the by and by of, uh, protecting his area, met one of these uncontacted tribes and befriended someone. Not the whole tribe, but he made some friends who would meet him in the woods, not in their community. And he started to learn their language over a couple years, and so he was this n- kind of important guy who actually could be the first translator to talk to these people.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:12:28

        Mm-hmm.

    28. EBEd Barnhart1:12:29

        And one day, a couple of 'em just came out of the woods and just plugged him with arrows-

    29. LFLex Fridman1:12:34

        Yeah.

    30. EBEd Barnhart1:12:34

        ... and just killed him, and then they went back in the woods. Like-
13. 1:13:51 – 1:29:40

    Maya civilization

    1. LFLex Fridman1:13:52

       at which point did, uh, what we now call the Maya civilization arise?

    2. EBEd Barnhart1:14:00

       Ah, that's a, that's another complicated one. Another group living mostly in a jungle that we have barely begun to explore. You know, the truth is, a lot of the questions in the Amazon and- and what we're talking about now is the Peten and the mountains there. Those aren't places archeologists want to live. They're horrible. I mean, I've been there. I don't want to live in a tent and eat rations. I want to live in a nice town. So a lot of the places where the answers are, we still really haven't gotten there, 'cause it takes a special person to be educated enough to know what they're looking at and tough enough to want to be there. I've done my tour of duty. I'm now in a nice little podcast studio.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:14:42

       (laughs)

    4. EBEd Barnhart1:14:43

       Um, but seriously, the- the Maya, the first hint that we see people who are culturally Maya, very close to where the time period for that Chavin culture is, about 1800 BCE, there's a culture that some call the Mokaya, not Maya. But, uh, they're on the Pacific Coast, uh, where Guatemala and Mexico connect. It's called the Soconusco. And those are the first people that are really gonna be culturally Maya, and they're interacting with the culture that has traditionally been seen as Mexico's mother culture, which is the Olmec. They're kind of the same thing as we were talking about in South America, where the- the Maya, the original Maya are not... There's not a whole lot to indicate that they have a religion. Um, but the Olmec have this religion they develop and they start exporting it, and you see the Maya become more and more involved in- in the religion that's being created by the Olmec, who are to the north of them in the swamps of what we call the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:15:49

       I have a lot of questions to ask here, Bob, just natural stupid confusion I have. So first, uh, did the Maya or the Olmec come first? And are they distinct groups? Like, how do you maintain a distinct civilization when you're so close together?

    6. EBEd Barnhart1:16:10

       I- I just finished filming a whole thing on the Olmecs and their interaction with the Maya for The Great Courses. I'm thrilled-

    7. LFLex Fridman1:16:16

       Nice.

    8. EBEd Barnhart1:16:16

       ... for it to come out next spring.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:16:18

       Nice.

    10. EBEd Barnhart1:16:19

        Um, I think they co-evolved. Archeology in this regard is the worst enemy of this.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:16:25

        (laughs) Yeah.

    12. EBEd Barnhart1:16:25

        We- we put these names on cultures, we- we talk about how they evolve from one to another, we draw these lines where there aren't any, we make these time periods that a culture magically transforms into somebody with another name, where I'm pretty sure they didn't care about any of those names. But the- the Maya and the Olmec are two parts of a larger interaction sphere that's happening in Mesoamerica. A very dynamic time. The Olmec are really bringing the religion part, but the other areas are bringing technology. Ceramic technology, uh, making hematite mirrors, making, uh, tools out of obsidian and other, uh, other stone types. So you've got the Olmec in the middle where- where Mexico gets skinny and it gets swampy down there. That's called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. That's where the Olmec are. Then you've got the Maya to the east of them, then you have the Valley of Oaxaca where the people called the Zapotecs, they're rising up, and then you have the Valley of Mexico, which will eventually become the Aztecs, but not for millennia. All those areas are interacting with each other.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:17:40

        Can we j- just also draw some more lines? (laughs)

    14. EBEd Barnhart1:17:44

        Yeah, sure.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:17:45

        So what is Mesoamerica and what is South America? Uh, and w- you just said the Olmecs and the- the Maya, like, can we just linger on the geography that we're talking about here in the, what is this, like, 1000 BC?

    16. EBEd Barnhart1:17:59

        Um, yeah, the time period we're talking about where the- the Olmec are there, 1000 BC is a great, uh, midpoint of it. I'd say it starts about 1800 BCE and by 500 BCE, the Olmec are gone and a whole new wave of civilization and population increase happen. In terms of Mesoamerica, looking at your map here, I'd say about halfway through the Chihuahua Desert up there in the top left-

    17. LFLex Fridman1:18:30

        Mm-hmm.

    18. EBEd Barnhart1:18:31

        ... that's- that's about the boundary of, uh, Mesoamerica. There's this big desert where almost nobody lives, and once you get north enough, you get into the ancestral Pueblo people of what's now America. The- the Four Corners area. They're not Mesoamerican. They have-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:18:50

        So w-

    20. EBEd Barnhart1:18:50

        ... different lives.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:18:50

        ... where does modern Mexico end?

    22. EBEd Barnhart1:18:53

        Modern Mexico ends right, you know, you see the name Maya there with the white line around it?

    23. LFLex Fridman1:18:57

        Yeah.

    24. EBEd Barnhart1:18:57

        That's Guatemala.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:18:58

        Mm-hmm.

    26. EBEd Barnhart1:18:58

        So Guatemala cuts off most of Mexico from Central America.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:19:02

        Got it.

    28. EBEd Barnhart1:19:03

        But Mesoamerica only goes about halfway through Honduras, and then it's really kind of a no man's land. Uh, uh, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, they really, uh, they're neither. They're not Mesoamerica, they're not South America.... they're more South America 'cause they've got some gold there. But then basically, you get on the other side of Panama and you're, you're fully in South America, with two distinct groups too. You've got the guys that are on the Andes on the west coast, and then you have the Amazon.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:19:39

        So the, the, the west, the Andes is, and the Amazon are very distinct?

    30. EBEd Barnhart1:19:42

        Yeah.
14. 1:29:40 – 1:44:57

    Mayan calendar

    1. LFLex Fridman1:29:40

       here. Can you speak to the- all the sophisticated aspects of the Mayan calendar, uh, that they've developed?

    2. EBEd Barnhart1:29:47

       I don't know. You got another five hours?

    3. LFLex Fridman1:29:49

       Let's go.

    4. EBEd Barnhart1:29:49

       (laughs) .

    5. LFLex Fridman1:29:50

       I should, uh, I should s-

    6. EBEd Barnhart1:29:51

       No, I'm kidding.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:29:52

       I should say that you also gave me, uh, the 2024 Mayan calendar.

    8. EBEd Barnhart1:29:58

       Yeah, I do this just to, you know, show the world that that calendar system is evergreen. It can go into the future or the past for billions of years in the system they made, just like our system is.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:30:11

       So can you speak to the three components here as I'm reading? The Tzolk'in, the Haab, and the Long Count? What are these fascinating components of the calendar?

    10. EBEd Barnhart1:30:21

        It's- it's, uh, neat how obsessed they-... They were really math nerds. They- it wasn't good enough for them to just make one cycle to describe time.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:30:29

        Yeah.

    12. EBEd Barnhart1:30:30

        They had all these cycles that- that interlocked into each other like- like cogs in a machine, though they never thought of it like that.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:30:38

        Mm-hmm.

    14. EBEd Barnhart1:30:38

        But, uh, the Tzolk'in's their oldest one and the one that still endures today. There are millions of Maya people that are living their lives based on a 260-day count. No weeks, no months, it's just 13 numbers combined with 20 day names for a total of 260 days, and then it goes again.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:31:01

        Mm-hmm.

    16. EBEd Barnhart1:31:01

        Everybody in the highlands knows what their birthday is in that calendar, knows what it means about their personality and the kind of jobs that they're supposed to do. Each one of those days has their own spirit and what's supposed to happen in those days. The Maya collectively call them the Mom, the grandmother, grandfather spirits, and- and- and they talk to each one of those days and they pray to them. They have... There's now an association of some 8,000 people that are called Aki that are day keepers, who are keeping the days, and there are also, like-... community, uh, psychologists almost. People come to them and say, you know, "My life is mixed up. What's wrong here?" "Well, uh, let's ask the mom." Like, "Okay, well, it looks like you're not doing this or that," or, "You know what? You're an accountant? You're not supposed to be an accountant. You're supposed to be a, you know, a, a midwife. What are you doing? You're, you're living your life wrong. You're a, you're a, you're a kib. You need to start being a kib first."

    17. LFLex Fridman1:32:02

        So, they take extremely seriously the day on which you were born, what the means, like, the, the spirit that embodies that day.

    18. EBEd Barnhart1:32:08

        Right. Like, "I'm, I'm kib. I'm 13 kib." And it says... M- It's funny how accurate a lot of them are. Mine is basically is, uh, "I'm, uh, I'm an irresponsible husband and parent, but people like me, so my family still prospers." Like, oh, God-

Episode duration: 3:28:50