Joe Rogan Experience #1918 - John from The Boneyard Alaska
Narrator, Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), John Reeves (guest), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Narrator, Joe Rogan Experience #1918 - John from The Boneyard Alaska explores alaskan Miner Unearths Unprecedented Ice Age Graveyard, Guards Its Secrets Former collegiate swimmer and gold miner John Reeves recounts his wild path from Florida to Alaska, where he eventually became the largest private landowner in the state and stumbled onto an extraordinary Ice Age bone bed he calls The Boneyard. On just five acres of permafrost, his family has uncovered hundreds of thousands of Pleistocene fossils—mammoths, steppe bison, dire wolves, short‑faced bears, American lions, rare horses, and more—many species experts claimed never lived in that region. Reeves explains how hydraulic mining techniques expose the bones, why scientists are stunned by the density and diversity, and why he has largely refused academic access, instead stockpiling the collection himself. He also reveals that tens of thousands of similar Alaska bones sent to New York’s American Museum of Natural History were later dumped into the East River, and publicly pinpoints the alleged location, openly inviting a modern-day “bone rush.”
Alaskan Miner Unearths Unprecedented Ice Age Graveyard, Guards Its Secrets
Former collegiate swimmer and gold miner John Reeves recounts his wild path from Florida to Alaska, where he eventually became the largest private landowner in the state and stumbled onto an extraordinary Ice Age bone bed he calls The Boneyard. On just five acres of permafrost, his family has uncovered hundreds of thousands of Pleistocene fossils—mammoths, steppe bison, dire wolves, short‑faced bears, American lions, rare horses, and more—many species experts claimed never lived in that region. Reeves explains how hydraulic mining techniques expose the bones, why scientists are stunned by the density and diversity, and why he has largely refused academic access, instead stockpiling the collection himself. He also reveals that tens of thousands of similar Alaska bones sent to New York’s American Museum of Natural History were later dumped into the East River, and publicly pinpoints the alleged location, openly inviting a modern-day “bone rush.”
Key Takeaways
One small Alaskan valley holds a uniquely dense Ice Age bone deposit.
On roughly five acres, Reeves’ family has pulled out a quarter million fossils and thousands of mammoth tusks and skulls, making it likely the most concentrated late-Pleistocene vertebrate site of its kind, with another nearby creek showing similar promise.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
The Boneyard is reshaping assumptions about which species lived in interior Alaska.
Finds include dire wolves, American lions, short‑faced bears, Harrington (stilt‑legged) horses, elk, badgers, and steppe bison—animals many experts had asserted did not inhabit that region during the Ice Age, forcing revisions of paleontological maps and timelines.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Most of the collection remains unsorted and undated, representing massive unrealized scientific potential.
Only a handful of specimens have been carbon-dated (roughly 3,000–22,000 years old); fully dating and cataloging the hundreds of thousands of bones could cost tens of millions, so Reeves continues to collect but leaves systematic analysis for future researchers.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Ownership and control of fossils can create deep friction between private landowners and institutions.
Reeves’ company legally owns fossils on its patented land, but past experiences with the American Museum of Natural History—where ~500,000 of his company’s historic bones were shipped, underreported, and some allegedly dumped—have made him wary of sending anything out of Alaska.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Hydraulic mining methods inadvertently enable high-volume fossil recovery from permafrost.
By using powerful water cannons to wash 60 feet of frozen silt (muck) off gold-bearing gravels, Reeves exposes the muck–gravel interface where most bones lie, then hand-recovers them as they thaw and slump, turning a gold operation into a parallel paleontological harvest.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Evidence at the site aligns intriguingly with rapid climate-change and impact-extinction theories.
Reeves reports burnt bedrock and charred gravels buried under thick overburden, plus fossils spanning before and after the ~12,800–11,600-year Younger Dryas interval—details consistent with hypotheses of catastrophic impacts, megafloods, wildfires, and rapid sea-level rise contributing to megafaunal extinctions.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Ice Age ivory and bone have become both scientific resources and luxury materials.
Reeves’ family and collaborators carve broken mammoth tusks and teeth into jewelry, guitar picks, and pipes, arguing this prehistoric ivory market reduces demand for modern elephant ivory, though it also raises ethical questions about commodifying a finite ancient resource.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Notable Quotes
“A lot of those animals, they say, never lived up there during the Ice Age. I just say, ‘Well, they sure as fuck died here.’”
— John Reeves
“If I was to sample my entire collection today, it’d cost $100 million. We have close to a quarter million fossils now.”
— John Reeves
“I’m not a scientist. All I can do is tell you where they’re at. If you wanna go find them, go find them.”
— John Reeves
“You’ve got this five-acre patch of land that’s yielded dire wolves, short-faced bears… one of the greatest historical sites in all of paleontology.”
— Joe Rogan
“Those bones that they dumped in the East River, as far as I’m concerned, they’re no longer mine. They’re finders keepers.”
— John Reeves
Questions Answered in This Episode
If you could partner with any single scientific team under your conditions, what would the ideal research project at The Boneyard look like?
Former collegiate swimmer and gold miner John Reeves recounts his wild path from Florida to Alaska, where he eventually became the largest private landowner in the state and stumbled onto an extraordinary Ice Age bone bed he calls The Boneyard. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Do you worry that commercializing mammoth ivory and tusks could ultimately limit future scientific study, or do you see it as a net positive?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What specific evidence or pattern at the site, if any, most strongly suggests a catastrophic single event versus gradual accumulation of remains?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How would you handle it if a definitive human skeleton or intact habitation layer was uncovered in the middle of your mining operations?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Given your distrust of institutions after the AMNH experience, what protections or legal framework would you need in place before opening the collection to large-scale academic study?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays)
Welcome aboard, Jon.
Thank you, sir.
(clears throat) Very nice to meet you, man. I've been, uh, admiring your Instagram page and all the social media stuff forever and it's crazy and perplexing, and so I couldn't wait to get you in here and see how the hell did you acquire this magical spot that you have in Alaska?
I'd have to give you some context.
Okay.
And, um, I grew up on an Indian mound in North Florida, to give you an idea of-
An Indian mound?
Yeah, my parents moved this family down from Ohio and bought nine acres on the St. Johns River in 1962. That's where I grew up, and it was on top of an Indian mound. We didn't know it at the time, so I was always out digging in the mound, looking for pottery and was always captivated by looking for treasure, and I did that as a kid and then, uh, did a lot of surfing and stuff like that, as you might think, in Florida and got to be pretty good at swimming. Ended up in high school, uh, setting the American record in the 50-yard freestyle, and there was a fellow, an assistant coach at the University of Florida named Eddie Reese. You might recognize his name. He's the head coach at the University of Texas right here. Three-time Olympic coach, widely regarded now as the greatest swim coach of all time. I gave him a call before we came over here and just to say hello. We were in and out quick, but he, uh, rec- recruited me to Florida and I got recruited at a couple other colleges because I was a pretty quick swimmer. University of Alabama, I met, uh, Bear Bryant. The swim coach took me by the f- practice field and introduced me to him and he said, uh, "Can you catch a football? You should be a football player. You're too big to be a swimmer." And by the back... That was a couple of hundred pounds ago, by the way, I should mention.
(laughs)
(laughs) And, uh, he says, "Can you catch a football?" I said, "Yeah, I think so." He said, "Hey Joe, Joe, come over here. Throw this guy a pass." It was Joe Namath.
Wow.
He says, "Go long." I said... I start running down the field. Threw me a ball and I said, "You gotta catch this, you gotta catch this." And I caught it. He says, "Throw it back," and I did. And then, uh, went to the swimming pool and met all the swimmers and all that kinda stuff and then I got recruited by Florida, uh, Coach Eddie Reese and, uh, decided I wanna go to Florida. That was... Seemed like a lot more fun. I went to Florida and the, uh, first year I was there, I was, uh, All-American Swimmer and we... I got seventh place at West Point in the NCAAs. The next year, my coach... The NCAAs were in Aus- we were in, uh, Knoxville, Tennessee. He says, um, Coach says, "You don't win this, you're, I'm gonna send you to Alaska." "Alaska? What's that?" Never even thought about Alaska. I got second place, so, "Okay, I'm going to Alaska."
Install uListen to search the full transcript and get AI-powered insights
Get Full TranscriptGet more from every podcast
AI summaries, searchable transcripts, and fact-checking. Free forever.
Add to Chrome