#2546 - Michael Button

The Joe Rogan Experience

Michael Button, a YouTuber dedicated to exploring ancient mysteries and lost history, discusses groundbreaking archaeological discoveries that challenge mainstream understanding of

Key takeaways

• New archaeological discoveries have undermined traditional timelines and theories about the origins of civilization.
• Civilizations appeared simultaneously across diverse regions despite vast time spans of human existence, suggesting a deeper, unexplained pattern.

Main topics

• Ancient mysteries
• Lost history

Notable quotes

"The rug has been pulled out from underneath our understanding of human history."

Conclusion

Michael Button underscores that despite rapid advancements in discovery and technology, fundamental

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. Speaker 1 (0:03) The Joe Rogan Experience. Train Speaker 3 (0:06) by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Speaker 7 (0:12) Good to see you, brother. What's going on? Good, man. It's been a wild year for me. I Speaker 5 (0:18) bet it has been. Speaker 7 (0:19) Since I was last here, I mean, I've seen my YouTube growth in numbers I couldn't have imagined before. I've met so many cool people. I've managed to get to a point where it's now my job to research and investigate ancient history and the vast mysteries of our past. Yeah, I mean, that's something I was doing for free before. So the fact that I'm now able to do that full time is just an immense privilege. And I'm so grateful to everyone that's helped me get there, including you. Well, Speaker 5 (0:48) you're putting out fantastic content. Thank you. And it's such an interesting subject. And the giant blind spot that the... Speaker 5 (0:59) mainstream archaeologists have left has allowed all these people to go through and get a much larger audience even than them. And it's really important when someone like you does it because you're so thorough and you're so objective and you're so... You're so measured in the way you describe these things and talk about these things. There's no fantastic claims, no hyperbole. It's all very well laid out. And even when you go to like extreme possibilities of these things, it's very measured. So I really appreciate that. Speaker 7 (1:29) Well, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. And yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm always trying to make it as good as I possibly can. And I try and listen to what people say and try and improve. And I don't think I've reached like. the peak of where I could possibly be, but, you know, I'm trying my hardest. But it's not just that. I mean, as you say, I think there are so many people out there. And now that I'm in this position, I've seen it firsthand. There are like millions and millions of people around the world that are deeply fascinated by these questions, by the vast mysteries of our past. Speaker 5 (1:57) As well they should be. And they also know that we're getting a very narrow version of it from mainstream academics. And they're so... determined to cling to their timelines and cling to this notion that anything new that's discovered by people outside of their little circle can't be accurate. And I think that's so silly. Speaker 7 (2:19) Yeah. I mean, I think someone like me has the kind of advantage of the fact that because I, you know, didn't continue my career in academia or I wasn't in academia, but. That was the pathway that I was on. Because I've gone independent now, I kind of have the freedom, if you like, to talk about these ideas in a much more open way than maybe I would have been able to if I was. I wouldn't have been able to if I was still in academia because, you know, I'm not restricted by funding or I'm not restricted by even the pressures of, you know, people working in academia. I mean, I get a lot of hate anyway, but I mean, I think I have that freedom to almost come at things from a completely open minded perspective and speak about these ideas without any restrictions. And I think that is the advantage that I have that academics perhaps don't. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm in a great place. Speaker 5 (3:12) Yeah, so let's get into it. So in the last year, a lot of wild stuff has been discovered, which is really exciting. Yeah, it's so interesting how quick this stuff is moving. Yeah, Speaker 7 (3:24) it's wild. I mean, there's been I think two papers in particular that have come out in the year since I was last here on the show that I think have huge ramifications for how we view history. So I mean, I don't know where to start. I mean, I think we should start like this. I think as things currently stand, there are three huge questions that archaeology cannot answer. And it's interesting because these three questions we used to think we had an answer to. But in light of new discoveries, in light of new evidence coming up, we no longer have the answer to these questions. And I think that's fascinating because it's almost like. the rug has been pulled out from underneath our understanding of human history. But on the surface, it's kind of like business as usual. Do Speaker 5 (4:11) you Speaker 7 (4:11) know what I mean? So what are these questions? So, I mean, and this is just coming from me, right? So the caveat on the whole conversation, I'm not an academic, I'm not a professional archaeologist. I'm just, I mean, I have a degree in ancient history, but I think my main qualification is that I'm a super nerd for all this stuff. And I spent my whole life researching it. So that's the caveat on everything. So don't take what I say as gospel. And I always encourage people to go and... Look at the actual archaeology, go and read the journals, read the papers and go investigate for yourself. Listen to what I say, but don't take what I say as gospel because at the end of the day, I'm just a YouTuber. So Speaker 1 (4:43) that's Speaker 7 (4:44) the caveat I want to put on it. But from my mind, these are the three questions that I think archaeology can no longer answer, but used to think it had an answer for. So the first question is, and we spoke about this a little bit last time, is the fascinating question of why... After hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years of human beings like us being on this planet, why did it take so long for civilization to emerge? And then why, when it did, did it emerge in all these different unconnected locations all over the globe? pretty much the exact same time. So we see civilization flourishing in Mesoamerica. We see civilization flourishing in South America, in Egypt, in the Indus Valley, in Mesopotamia, in ancient India, in ancient China, all around about the same time, give or take a thousand or so years. But compared to the time span of human beings on this planet, you know, 300,000 years plus for modern humans. And I would argue some of these papers are showing that it could be a lot longer than that. Why, after so long, did civilization suddenly crop up all over the place? And we no longer can answer that question in light of new discoveries. That's question one. Why does civilization emerge everywhere all at once after so long of not doing so? Question two is. Speaker 7 (6:05) How old is human intelligence? How long have humans been intelligent? How long has a mind like ours really inhabited this planet? And I think two papers in particular that have come out in the 12 months since I was here have huge ramifications for that question. And also combining to that is the question of other human species. How intelligent were other human species? Because we used to think that we were the smart ones. I mean, our name. Homo sapiens literally translates to wise man, which is an incredibly humble thing for us to say about ourselves. But yeah, so that's question two, how old is human intelligence? And again, I think the answer is we don't have the answer anymore. So that's really fascinating. And then question three is when did humans first reach the more isolated landmasses? So that's the Americas where we are right now and also Australia, which is perhaps less important. Still interesting. And again, we don't have the answer for that anymore. And I think whatever the answer is to these three questions, why does civilization appear everywhere all at once? How old is human intelligence? And when did humans first reach the more isolated parts of the world? The answer to those questions, whatever it is, I think is fundamentally important because whatever the answer is, is the reason we're all here, right? It's the reason we all live in this civilization. It's the reason we all... enjoy the fruits of everything that we exist in today. And yet we don't know the answer anymore. But as I said, on the surface, everyone's kind of carrying on like it's business as usual, but we no longer know the answer to the most fundamental questions of how we got here. So, yeah. Speaker 5 (7:49) So for question number one, why did all of these civilizations emerge roughly the same time? What do you think? Do you think that this is incorrect and that these civilizations probably existed far earlier than that, but there's no evidence of them because of time and just erosion and natural catastrophes and fill in the blank, all the factors. And or we have not discovered some of these yet, like some of the weirdness of the Amazon, you know, as they find these. What would appear to be the grids of ancient cities that are hidden in the jungle that they're discovering with lidar and these other technologies that were unavailable until fairly recently. So we know that not only was the Amazon filled with people, but it was filled with millions of people. And that's crazy. That is a crazy shift in the way we used to look at the Amazon just a few decades ago. And we don't know who these people were. We don't know. Like if you go really far back, like the Olmecs is just a word. We gave them that word. We don't know what the fuck they were doing. We have no idea what they looked like. We know some of the heads look roughly either Polynesian or perhaps even African. It's very strange. Very strange. Big giant heads that are left behind. And that's like the cornerstone of what we understand about the civilization. Speaker 7 (9:19) Okay. What? Speaker 5 (9:20) How long? 6,000 years we think. Who knows? It's just a rough guess. Like, there's really nothing to go on. Do you think that this is just, like, as far back as we can find stuff? Or do you think, what do you think? Speaker 7 (9:37) Well, Speaker 5 (9:38) I Speaker 7 (9:39) think. Speaker 1 (9:44) The Speaker 6 (9:44) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 2 (9:55) The new Speaker 6 (9:59) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 7 (10:08) Well, in terms of the civilization question, I think it's just, I think it's an old idea that we kind of drew this line. And the line is the invention of writing, right? So it's around 3000, 4000 BC was the invention of writing or supposedly was the invention of writing. And that in the 20th century was kind of given as the marker of civilization. We were finding all these civilizations in the 20th century, like ancient Sumer. And so that was kind of given as the start of civilization. But I think in terms of like more recent stuff, so. 3000 BC back to like 12,000 BC. I think the answer is that clearly civilization is older. I mean, considering we see things like Tash Tapella, Quebec-Litepe, 12,000 years ago. I think that is a civilization. I think over time that will come to be accepted as a civilization. And I think whatever you want to define civilization as, I think we can now clearly say that it did exist 12,000 years ago rather than 6,000 years ago. So that's a kind of doubling of the timeline. In terms of going back much further than that, I think then you get into purely hypothetical scenarios, like is it possible? And that's when I think things like the history of human intelligence start to come into play because it was incredibly recently that we thought humans were only got intelligent. We thought humans were young, like only 100,000 years old, only a few decades ago. And now we know we're much older than that. And so this is what I mean about everything kind of being back on the table again, because we now have an incredibly increased... time span of human intelligence that I would argue, and I'll come to this later, stretches over a million years. And yet the old idea, which is still sort of in place, but I think is breaking, I think most archaeologists would accept that it's breaking, but the old idea was that humans only became intelligent around 50,000 years ago. And so because... that idea kind of was in hold. It almost made sense, right? So humans only existed from 100,000 years ago, then got smart 50,000 years ago. Then the climate got good around 14,000 years ago. We see the agricultural revolution and the emergence of the first civilizations. Like it was very neat, do you know what I mean? But now in light of new evidence and in light of new discoveries, suddenly everything's back on the table. Suddenly the whole time span of prehistory or not the whole of prehistory, but I would argue, and I'll get onto why I think this later, I would argue that the time span of human intelligence has increased by 20 times from 50,000 to over a million years. And I'll explain why in a minute. But I think that puts everything back on the table. I think that the possibilities of prehistory are so vast now because our understanding has shifted so dramatically in the last few decades. And I don't think anyone's really talking about it. And that's kind of why I do what I do, because I really want to bang this drum, if you like. Speaker 7 (12:51) Everything's back on the table as I say and so yeah, I don't know I kind of got a bit sidetracked there from the original question Well, Speaker 5 (12:56) that's a no you it's Speaker 7 (12:57) a Speaker 5 (12:57) great start Jesse Michaels was here yesterday, and he had a really fascinating theory I don't know if it's that his theory or is it someone else's theory the the ergot theory his theory was that Speaker 5 (13:12) He believes that agriculture and that as they started agriculture wasn't just significant in that you could like stay in one place and you would have food and you always had a reliable diet. You didn't have to worry about starving to death. And then you because you had that sort of relaxation that came with that, you could start inventing things and building things and civilization would advance. He thinks it's also because ergot grows. on these different wheats and barleys and grains, and that these people, whether knowingly or unknowingly, were probably ingesting this psychedelic substance, which is akin to LSD, and that this was a key part of what Brian Murarrescu talked about in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in his great book, The Immortality Key, and that this was probably what led to a lot of invention, a lot of innovation, a lot of alternative thought. a lot of creativity and a lot of like, you know, what are the, whatever the wild Speaker 7 (14:15) advancements of the time were. Did you see that? They just, um, not proved it, but they just, they just did a study on the, at least Indian mysteries where they kind of showed that they, they were doing, uh, they did have a, cause when Brian wrote that book, they hadn't proved that, but something just came out. Did Speaker 5 (14:31) you see the, um, it was a Puma bone pipe. that they found that tested positive for DMT? In Elisis? I do not know. I think it was, I don't, it might have been in the American, no. Where was that? Peru. Yes. Really? Yes. How old is that, Jamie? Speaker 5 (14:52) See if you can put that in a perplexity if it knows what this is all about because it's a fascinating subject because not only does it not as it Implied that they were willingly taking psychedelic drugs that somehow or another they knew how to make DMT Speaker 7 (15:06) Like Speaker 5 (15:07) okay what? Because that's a complicated process when you have to separate the molecule from whatever plant it's in, and then you have to figure out that you need to freebase it or smoke it. Speaker 4 (15:20) Like, what? This is actually in northwestern Argentina. Aha. So it's still the Andes, but... The Speaker 5 (15:27) Inca Cueva, a high-altitude cave site in Jujuy, northwestern Argentina. The tubular smoking pipes were made from the long bones of a puma. They were found alongside anadenanthra seeds, including the plant commonly associated with Vilca Sibyl snuff traditions. Residue testing detected tryptamine alkaloids in the pipes. So they were figuring out how to take these seeds and smoke them. The material has been dated to roughly 2130 BCE, over 4,000 years ago. That makes the find amongst the oldest direct archaeological evidence for intentional use of psychoactive anadenanthera. Sorry, scientists in the southern Andes. That's fucking crazy. The careful answer is DMT was detected in pipe residues. But anadanthera colubrina is not simply a DMT plant. Its psychoactive chemistry can include bufatinin DMT and 5-MeO DMT in varying quantities. Depending on plant material and preparation, the archaeological interpretation is that the pipes were used in a ritual context involving, one more time, anadanthera. rather than proof that people were using modern purified DMT. Either way, they're smoking whatever the fuck that stuff is. They're getting DMT from it. So they had figured out somehow or another that ingesting it through smoke. Now, one of the reasons why this is particularly significant is there's scholars out of, I think it's the University of Jerusalem, that believe that the burning bush that Moses encountered. Some kind of psychedelic. That's exactly what they think. They think the translation was, they believe it was possibly the acacia tree, which is apparently rich in DMT, so that Moses has Moses trips balls and gets some really good solid rules to live by and comes back with them and said, hey, this is what God said. Yeah, Speaker 7 (17:56) I Speaker 5 (17:56) mean, Speaker 7 (17:56) I think it's clearly the case that ancient cultures, not just in South America, but across the world, were using psychedelic substances. And yeah, that's interesting. I mean, the theory of whether that caused agriculture, whether that led to civilization or anything like that, I mean, I don't know. But it's certainly interesting that human beings seem to have been experimenting with psychoactive substances for a long, long, long, long, long time. And yeah, that's fascinating. Speaker 5 (18:25) Yeah. And much like in our culture today, and, you know, especially what happened in 1970. where all that stuff was demonized and put on schedule one. Back then during the Eleusinian Mysteries, the reason why those mysteries stopped is because the powers that be were like, hey, these guys are a fucking problem. These trippy dudes with their weird ideas who invented democracy, they're going to fuck this whole thing up. We're not going to be able to run it and tell everybody what to do and force them into going to war. Speaker 7 (18:54) Yeah, I know. The powers that be always want to restrict any kind of thought that's outside of the... What they want people to think they don't want people to think as freely as as they can and anything Speaker 5 (19:04) that limits their control Yeah, you know cuz control everybody wants control and there's always new groups that say you don't know what the fuck you're doing Let me take the realm and That's always been the case Which is probably good for people, you know, it probably is what leads to I mean not the more part of it, but Probably these new ideas is what leads to an advancement of civilization rather than stagnation that we find in some places in the world where they haven't had a chance to do that. Speaker 7 (19:34) Yeah. You Speaker 5 (19:34) know, like my friends that have been to Afghanistan, they had to serve over there. They're essentially saying that like this, they're living like people lived thousands of years ago. There's warlords and they control regions and that's how they've always done it. And they live this weird nomadic lifestyle in the mountains. And it's not much different than the way it was thousands and thousands of years ago. Speaker 7 (19:59) Very clan-like. Yeah. And Speaker 5 (20:01) if you don't have, if that guy and these groups just stay in control forever, it's like there's no motivation for them to change and evolve and grow. There's no innovation. Yeah. Nothing's happening. Also, they're stuck in the mountains. It's like you're just trying to live. You know, when we think of these places, these very fertile places on Earth where like particularly Turkey, Turkey is fascinating, you know, and many people are now speculating that that if there is a singular place, but that might have been one of the birthplaces of true civilization. This episode is brought to you by Blue Chew. Man, let's talk about Blue Chew. They're already the number one brand for better sex. But what they're doing with Blue Chew Gold is completely next level. Gold is a four-in-one formula designed to make your bedroom noisy again. Obviously, it gets you hard, like you're back in your 20s, and everything is handled 100 % online. But gold boosts your arousal, getting you ready for sex physically and mentally. Plus, it dissolves under your tongue. for faster absorption, so you get that spontaneous energy back. Look at the stats. Gold is three times stronger, five times faster, and eight times longer lasting than old school methods. Blue Chew Gold is the real deal. Right now, buy two months of Blue Chew Gold and get the third free with my code ROGAN. You will also receive free overnight shipping. Head over to bluechew.com for details and important safety information. Check it out. This ad and the products being advertised are intended for a United States audience. Speaker 7 (21:44) I mean, I think it undoubtedly is. I think Tash Tepela, which is in modern-day Turkey, is the earliest evidence, in my view, of something akin to civilization. And now archaeologists will say it's not civilization because it doesn't quite tick off every part of the checklist. I think that's neither here nor there. I think it's clearly a very sophisticated culture. I mean, you have like 14 sites there that are now clearly shown to be interlinked, shared symbolism, shared religious tradition, same architectural styles, very impressive architecture, clearly organized labor, stratified society, because how do you achieve that without someone at the top and someone below? And these are all things that we used to think were civilization, right? And yet... People aren't happy with us calling Tashdapela a civilization, but I think it will get there. But don't Speaker 5 (22:29) you Speaker 7 (22:29) think Speaker 5 (22:30) that's just because of them trying to protect their timeline that they've been teaching? Speaker 7 (22:34) Yeah, and I think it will change. I think it will change. I don't Speaker 5 (22:37) think there's any other explanation other than that. I mean, it fits, as you said, all the criteria for a civilization that we used to apply. And the fact that they were moving the goalposts just because they didn't know it existed. Speaker 7 (22:48) And they're finding residential buildings at Gobekli Tepe now. And that was always one that used to say, look, people didn't live there. They must have migrated there. But now they're finding that people did live there, like, I guess, permanently or at least semi-permanently. Yeah, there's all the sites and quite a vast area all connected. And so the only ones they haven't got now is writing. And there's an interesting... discovery regarding writing at Gobekli Tepe and agriculture. Yeah, we talked Speaker 5 (23:10) about that yesterday. The Irving Finkel thing. Yeah, really interesting. So are those, where you see those pillars, are those sites where you have like those concentric circles? Speaker 7 (23:21) I assume so. Those are the famous ones anyway. Kalahan Tepe, Gobekli Tepe, Sefer Tepe. Those are the biggest ones. Speaker 5 (23:28) And only 5 % of Gobekli Tepe currently has even been excavated, right? Which is... pretty crazy when you think like, well, okay, how many of them are also still underground? Like how many do we know only exist because of ground penetrating radar and all the other techniques? Speaker 7 (23:47) Yeah. I mean, it's wild. Like Gobekli Tepe, if all of it was excavated as something like 50 times larger than Stonehenge and Stonehenge is obviously an incredibly famous site. And yet it's so much bigger. And like, like to be clear, it is standard archeological practice to not excavate. too much of a site, but... Speaker 5 (24:05) What Speaker 7 (24:05) are we looking at here? That's Quebec-Litepé. And Speaker 5 (24:07) what are we looking at in terms of these grids? Speaker 7 (24:11) I think maybe that's the kind of archaeological... Right. I think. I'm not 100 % sure. It seems Speaker 5 (24:16) like it, right? Because it seems like the grids go on top of these circles, which doesn't make any sense. So... Obviously they have to go very slowly the the risk of destroying some Incredible find some beautiful ancient thing because you're using tractors or something like this is valid is valid But Speaker 7 (24:35) I would argue and I've said this before is the gobekli tepe is a site that has such important ramifications for our understanding of civilization and the origins of civilization that it should receive special treatment, right? Because it is the oldest site that looks like civilization. So I always think that maybe we should... Not obviously you want to be careful when you go in and you want to follow correct archaeological procedure But at the same time what if a relic like equivalent to the Rosetta stone the the one stone that we found that completely Translated Egyptian hieroglyphs and opened up ancient Egypt to our understanding What if some kind of equivalent artifact is hiding in the unexcavated? 95 % of Quebec a tap a that could be waiting for that for us to find and talked about this Speaker 4 (25:19) bore before Joe. Speaker 7 (25:21) Yeah, I Speaker 4 (25:22) don't remember ever seeing it but It's not new but it was also found at gobekli tepe it was painted. Oh I think like some of the mouth was painted red. It's crazy looking. It's life-size. I'm pretty close to life-size Speaker 5 (25:37) The whole thing is really fascinating because it's also, I think it's the first evidence of 3D carving in Speaker 4 (25:44) stone too. Yeah, raised relief I think is good. Or not a statue. What Speaker 5 (25:49) we're saying about that is like these boars and snakes and all these different animals that are on these incredible pillars, they're not carved into it. The stone is carved around it, which is advanced. It takes... sophisticated use of tools and an understanding of how to work stone to be able to do something like that. And Speaker 7 (26:09) crucially, specialization, right? That's someone's job. They're not out there gathering food. That's their job. That's how they spend their time. Speaker 5 (26:17) And it's also, hey, how'd you move those? Those stones are huge. The biggest ones are like, Speaker 7 (26:24) how many? I think most of them are like 10 tons, but I think they found one that hadn't been moved by the quarry that was something like 50 tons. And obviously they would have... assumed that they would have had a method to move that was they wouldn't have carved out yeah Speaker 5 (26:36) 50 tons is high and stubby little peckers Speaker 4 (26:40) Clutching Speaker 5 (26:42) their peckers. Yeah Okay. Speaker 4 (26:47) Whatever Speaker 5 (26:47) you're into, bro. Must have been a weird world back then. And then the real question is, is this the oldest civilization? Or is this the oldest reboot of civilization that was destroyed by the Great Flood? And by the Younger Giants impact? And whatever the fuck could have happened to whatever civilization previously existed? That's Speaker 7 (27:09) where Speaker 5 (27:09) things get real squirrely. Speaker 7 (27:10) Yeah, well, exactly. Because if... If that is a civilization, which I think it's becoming clear that it is, and it doesn't really matter how you define civilization. It's clearly incredibly sophisticated. Like, it's a very sophisticated culture. Yeah, Speaker 5 (27:20) that Speaker 7 (27:20) word is a problem. Yeah, exactly. Just, like, who cares? It's clearly a very sophisticated culture. It's Speaker 5 (27:24) like Speaker 7 (27:24) when Fauci was talking about gain of function. Like, Speaker 5 (27:27) hey, fucker. You know Speaker 7 (27:28) what we're talking about. Speaker 5 (27:29) Exactly, exactly. But, Speaker 7 (27:31) yeah, that means that, you know, the timeline of civilization, whatever you want to call it, has... doubled from 6,000 years to 12,000 years. So then the question becomes, how much further back does it go? Because clearly, Tashtapella, Gobekli Tepe, not the first thing these people built. They weren't starting from scratch. They weren't just hunter-gatherers that thought, let's try something new and build this. There's clearly a long procedure up to that point. So how far back does that go? Speaker 5 (27:56) And for people that don't know, we should probably explain that one of the reasons why they're able to accurately carbon test Gobekli Tepe is because... And this is where it gets really weird. The dirt is uniform in that it was intentionally covered. So these sites weren't covered, you know, just over time, like maybe the Sphinx was in Egypt. They were covered intentionally and they were covered 11,600-ish years ago. So how old were they before they were covered? Speaker 7 (28:28) Yeah, of course. I mean, that's only the earliest date we have, but that doesn't mean it's the date that they were constructed. And why were they Speaker 4 (28:34) covered? Speaker 7 (28:34) Yeah. I mean, there is debate over that, but that's what Klaus Schmidt thought. What is the debate? Well, some people say it wasn't intentionally covered and it was just kind of like a landslide. Like a Speaker 5 (28:43) crazy landslide that'll happen at once? Because, Speaker 7 (28:45) I mean, it's really hard to prove. What an Speaker 5 (28:46) amazing landslide that covers everything. Speaker 7 (28:48) Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I would still lean towards the original interpretation from... the original archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt. And why did he think they covered it? Speaker 5 (28:58) I don't Speaker 7 (28:58) know. Speaker 5 (28:59) Like a conquering civilization where like, fuck these people and their beautiful pillars? No, Speaker 7 (29:03) I think he thought the people that built it covered it. Interesting. Well, I guess you can't tell, can you? And that's the thing with so much of this stuff is that no one knows. And especially the further back you get in time, anyone that talks with any confidence around the past, and this is one of my main bugbears with archaeology, like... I love archaeology and I have a huge respect for archaeologists and I think they do amazing work. But one of my main bugbears is the confidence in which people talk about the past and ruling out other possibilities. Because at the end of the day, none of us know what happened in the deep, deep past, especially when you start getting back to these crazy timescales. It's all speculation. And it doesn't matter if you're a YouTuber like me or if you're a professor. We're all just speculating based on the very limited evidence that we have. And so I don't like it when people say... definitive things. I always try and say, maybe this is the case, or maybe that's the case. We don't know. And I think everyone should approach history with that mindset. And that's kind of... If I can get any message across to people, that is the message. Like, we don't know. And here's a possibility and here's a possibility. And here's the evidence that we think is true. But, you know, it's really hard to tell. But Speaker 5 (30:09) it also does stand to reason that biology and archaeology, as they expand the timeline, as biology has expanded the timeline, archaeology should probably tag along. Yeah, Speaker 7 (30:20) that's what Speaker 5 (30:20) I Speaker 7 (30:21) mean about Speaker 5 (30:21) the fact that the rug's kind of been pulled out from underneath us. What on purpose means here? There's good reason to think humans intentionally deposited at least some of the fill. Speaker 5 (30:32) Enclosure D alone contained roughly 500 cubic meters of rubble and cultural debris, and particular items, including broken anthropomorphic sculpture heads, appear to have been deliberately placed near pillars during refilling. But archaeologists do not have definitive evidence for the often-repeated popular claim that its builders intentionally buried the entire site at once to hide it, preserve it, or mark a single ritual closure. The mound is... Man-made in the sense that it consists of accumulated archaeological deposits, but its formation involved both human actions and natural sediment movement, ending around 8,000 BCE. Yo. Speaker 4 (31:14) That's a long fucking time ago. I Speaker 5 (31:16) don't think people even really can wrap their head around how long we're talking. You know, especially, that's the other thing about one of the things that... I loved about your whole video series was the one where you were talking about what would be left if there was a human civilization 100,000 or more years ago. And that's not unreasonable if this biology assessment is correct, is that there have been humans far longer than we used to think. So that's the case. Because if we used to think it was 50,000 years, I think when I was in high school, they were saying the Homo sapiens were like 50,000 years old or maybe 100, right? And now the conventional estimate Speaker 7 (32:02) is like, what, three? So the oldest fossils we have of anatomically modern humans are 315 to 360,000 years old. I mean, it's the same fossil set from Jebel Aroud in Morocco. But this obviously is really hard to date. accurately, but it's between 300 and 350,000. And Speaker 5 (32:19) then I think it's really important to note that the fossil record is incredibly incomplete because most people don't leave a fossil. It's so hard to like, it's so unlikely that you'd fossilize. It's something like one in a million. So it's such a crazy metric to like try to figure out what. the past is from these tiny scraps it's like trying to read a book by a single shard of a piece of paper with a half a sentence in it and you're like what do you think this book was about like exactly there's not much evidence that's the problem but the evidence that they do find is pushing the timeline way back way back and um that alone you would think archaeology would go well hey guys In light of this new evidence, maybe we should consider the possibility that civilization is quite a bit older than we think. If they are the same exact animal, what would take them 300,000 years to develop complex civilization and agriculture and all these different things? Like why would it take so long? And is it possible that given the – I mean, the incredible possibilities in terms of like what kind of natural disasters took place, just asteroid impacts that we know. We find them all over the earth, all over the earth. And some of them are 20,000 years old, 50,000 years old. We find them everywhere. And like what kind of an impact would that have had? What would be left of those civilizations? And all those questions, again, guys like you are the ones proposing them and putting them out there. It's a really good question. It's especially in light of, you know, what we understand about humans biologically. Like, wouldn't doesn't it make sense that these people, these just as anatomically completely like us? Like, why would it take them hundreds of thousands of years to figure out a roof? Speaker 7 (34:18) Yeah, exactly. But I think it's it's I think we have clear evidence now that. What we call modern intelligence, behavioral modernity, goes back so, so, so much further than we think. Like I would argue back over a million years in light of a couple of papers that have come out in the last 12 months. And what are these papers? So, I mean, there's been two really significant papers, I think, since we last spoke. One of them, I think, has really big ramifications for human intelligence. And that's a paper that came out. regarding the island of Sulawesi, which is in Indonesia. And this is in relation to human seafaring. So seafaring was always thought to be an exclusively sapien strait, exclusively modern human strait, because it's a really hard thing to do, right? You need to be quite clever to build a boat, to build something that's sophisticated enough to be seaworthy, to get across ocean boundaries and to reach isolated landmasses. And we always thought that was only sapiens until very recently. A paper came out in August last year. You actually sent it to me. Yeah, I don't think you sent me a post that was about stone tools that was found. And I was like, that's interesting. I clicked on the paper. And then I was like, oh, wow, look where these stone tools were found. And it was really, really interesting because they were found on Sulawesi. And Sulawesi is an island that crucially sits east of something called the Wallace Line, which is a biogeographic boundary, which means that it has been an island and separated from the mainland. for tens of millions of years and separated by deep ocean channels that are between, depending on the fluctuating sea levels at the time, between 50 and 100 kilometers across. So it's always been an island. And yet, in August 2025, archaeologists at a site called Callio found stone tools on Sulawesi. And that means that some type of human, probably not sapiens, but I guess you never know, some type of human managed to cross that ocean boundary and reach Sulawesi. And that's fascinating. But it's worth saying that it's not the only piece of evidence in the region. There's also a decade or so ago, we found stone tools on Flores, which is just below Sulawesi. It's another island and crucially, again, east of the Wallace Line. So again, you have to cross an ocean boundary to get to Flores. And they found stone tools there that are 1.02 million years old. And I didn't even say the Sulawesi tools are 1.04 to 1.4 million years ago. years old. So over a million years ago, some type of human was crossing ocean boundaries to get to these islands. And there's also Luzon, which is just above Sulawesi, same region. And they found stone tools there, which are 700,000 years old. Now, the theory always was that this was an accident. When we just had Flores, the theory was that it was accidental drift. So a couple of humans were swept out to sea and somehow survived the... stormy ocean and the tropical sun cling to some driftwood and made it to Flores and somehow survived and colonized the island. But now that we've got Flores, Luzon and Sulawesi, three islands all in the same region, all separated by this ocean boundary, I think it's starting to point less towards accident and more towards behavior, right? More towards a deliberate sea crossing because So to colonize that I was I was doing some research because of these discoveries and there's actually been a few papers from NASA on how many humans you need to colonize an isolated landmass because NASA were doing it for like if you're going to Mars or something and you need a certain amount of humans or breeding age to not have like genetic problems in the population to so you need a certain amount of humans of a breeding age to to ensure viability, right? Because otherwise you're going to inbreed and you're all going to die out because of genetic issues. And they said it was something like, you need 160 people at least, and that is with strict breeding controls and genetic testing. We can probably assume they weren't doing genetic testing on themselves. And so then the number is somewhere near 500. So what are the chances that 500 individuals were all swept out to sea at the same time, all survived the crossing and all landed on an island? and colonized it that's a huge amount of humans for an accident do you know what i mean and then three times in three separate islands all in the same region at what point does accident start looking like behavior do you know what i mean because that is how what are the chances of 500 individuals all being swept out to sea all surviving all reaching these islands and all colonizing in three separate occasions all around about a million years ago Not good. It's not a high chance, is it? And I think if we apply Occam's razor to it, which is the simplest explanation wins, I think the simplest explanation is that these humans were intelligent enough to build boats, right? Right. And that is a controversial opinion. That's not accepted. It's accepted that the humans reached these islands. That's not controversial. Humans were on these islands a million years ago, 700K. It's just Speaker 5 (39:24) not accepted that it was intentional. Speaker 7 (39:26) Yeah, it's not accepted that they built boats. That seems silly. But I think it's... It doesn't make Speaker 5 (39:29) any sense if it's not 500 of them make it over by floating and surviving. Yeah. What? Exactly. All Speaker 1 (39:36) at Speaker 5 (39:36) the same time? Speaker 1 (39:41) The Speaker 6 (39:42) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 2 (39:53) The new Speaker 6 (39:57) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 4 (40:05) Exactly. Speaker 7 (40:06) And this is what I mean about taking data points from different kind of science. So because I'm looking into what NASA is saying about humans colonizing somewhere and I'm saying, well, look, 500 people or more than 500