Speaker 1: Welcome to this evening's classic episode of Folks. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been to a bog? Matt and Noll, Have you, guys,
Speaker 1: ever been to a bog? A bog standard bog, not
Speaker 1: the bathroom, No, no, the bio Ah. Yes, of course no,
Speaker 1: I have not, but I am quite fond of bog men.
Speaker 2: I found myself in a bog a couple of times.
Speaker 1: That don't make no nevermind to me man. Shout out
Speaker 1: to our buddy West Gibvens. In nineteen eighty two Titusville, Georgia,
Speaker 1: our story takes place a guy named Steve finds this
Speaker 1: skull amid the debris of a job site, and it
Speaker 1: turns out that he just may have discovered one of
Speaker 1: the oldest grave sites in all of the United States.
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Reduction
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radios, How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel
Speaker 2: is on an adventure.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer team, our good buddy Mission Control is
Speaker 1: on an adventure as well. Perhaps you will tell us
Speaker 1: about it if you return safe. In the meantime, we're
Speaker 1: joined again with our friends Maya and Seth, both of whom,
Speaker 1: by the way, spent their respective first days at work
Speaker 1: listening to one of our shows and decided to stay on.
Speaker 1: So thanks for staying.
Speaker 2: I mean, they kind of have to write. This is
Speaker 2: part of the job. But still we're glad you're here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you guys doing all right? Thumbs up, thumbs down,
Speaker 1: All right, got some enthusiastic thumbs up. What about you, Matt,
Speaker 1: how are you? What's going on? Oh?
Speaker 2: Thumbs decidedly sideways. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's great.
Speaker 2: We just launched Insomniac, the Monster Presents Insomniac show that we'
Speaker 2: been working on for a long time. So I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about that, and I wanted to ask you, by
Speaker 2: the way, we haven't talked about it at length. So
Speaker 2: you just got back from La on your own adventure.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true, that's true. First, i'd like to shout
Speaker 1: out to Insomniac. I'd like to emphasize that is hosted
Speaker 1: by my longtime friend, your longtime friend, as well as collaborator,
Speaker 1: my writer dies Scott Benjamin, who will be appearing on
Speaker 1: this show very soon, hopefully if we can get him
Speaker 1: to work us into his busy schedule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might even happen before this episode comes out.
Speaker 2: Who knows who knows?
Speaker 1: Time? Time is a wonky controversial thing. So if we
Speaker 1: assume that time still works the way it did when
Speaker 1: we recorded this podcast. Yes, I was previously in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I was there for a thing called Alien Con and
Speaker 1: I was asked to go there through some friends of ours,
Speaker 1: fellow podcasters here in our network, Brent and John who
Speaker 1: hosts Hysteria fifty one. Longtime listeners will remember them from
Speaker 1: their previous appearances on this very show. Stuff. They don't
Speaker 1: want you to know.
Speaker 2: I heard you ran into some of the big names
Speaker 2: in the extraterrestrial world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was weird, man, I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 1: It was a It was a trip that became a trip.
Speaker 1: English is strange, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Giorgio Suculos was there, the guy who is responsible
Speaker 1: for the fire in the sky story was there. There
Speaker 1: were some other There were some other big names, some
Speaker 1: of whom maybe most familiar to people who are already
Speaker 1: very into the ufology or UFO citing community. Eric Eric Vondanakan, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: Jariots of the Gods.
Speaker 1: That is probably one of the biggest ones for me.
Speaker 1: William Shatner was there. I'm not sure if he was
Speaker 1: aware that he was there or knew where he was,
Speaker 1: but he was definitely there. This is a convention that
Speaker 1: seems to take place in numerous cities throughout the year.
Speaker 1: There's another one coming up soon in Dallas, but we
Speaker 1: went to check it out to represent our show, to
Speaker 1: do a panel in UFOs and podcasting, and then through
Speaker 1: a series of strange circumstances, I ended up hosting the
Speaker 1: costume contest, which was a lot of fun and there
Speaker 1: were some great costumes, but probably one of the best
Speaker 1: things there was the ability to meet some of our
Speaker 1: fellow podcasters. So I'd like to recommend one podcast I
Speaker 1: listened to by a guy named Chris Cogswell. It's called
Speaker 1: The Mad Scientist Podcast. Chris Cogwell is a longtime vet
Speaker 1: of the UFO community. He's got his stripes, but not
Speaker 1: just in the world of ufology. He also has his
Speaker 1: stripes in the Akad demic towers, the Ivory one's you
Speaker 1: remember those, Matt, I do. He has a PhD and
Speaker 1: material science, and so he spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: looking at the hard science and data behind reports of
Speaker 1: anomalous things in the sky or your favorite things in
Speaker 1: the water, UFOs and usos alike. Maybe we'll have him
Speaker 1: on the show one day. But if you are interested
Speaker 1: in looking more into the hard science rather than the
Speaker 1: anecdotes that are so ubiquitous in the world of UFO reporting,
Speaker 1: then we would highly recommend the Mad Scientist podcast.
Speaker 2: Dude. Chris Cogswell has a PhD in chemical engineering with
Speaker 2: a focus on nano materials for absorption and separations.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what I know? Whoosh right? And here's the thing, Matt,
Speaker 1: he's the nicest guy and he's incredibly knowledgeable. So I'd
Speaker 1: love to get him on the show to talk about
Speaker 1: the case pieces that he feels have the most sand,
Speaker 1: the cases that he feels are the most compelling. But yep,
Speaker 1: that was Los Angeles. Almost wish I had stayed because
Speaker 1: it is here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we record the podcast.
Speaker 1: It is the weather is best described as tepid soup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, running into what do we call it,
Speaker 2: a soaking wet blanket that is one hundred degrees and
Speaker 2: you're just walking into the blanket at all times when
Speaker 2: you're moving forward.
Speaker 1: And it clings to your skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everywhere, then the mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: And then the mosquitoes arrive. Yes, yes, right on Q.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this and you are in
Speaker 1: the southeast of the United States, good luck. And as
Speaker 1: they say on Mitchell and Webb, remain.
Speaker 2: Indoors, Remain calm and indoors.
Speaker 1: Yes, very good. Tell us about your adventures. How has
Speaker 1: the weather changed over time, maybe over the year or
Speaker 1: since you were a we tyke of your own. You
Speaker 1: don't have to wait for the whole podcast and forget.
Speaker 1: You can pause and you can call us now to
Speaker 1: let us know what you think.
Speaker 2: Yes, but make sure you pull over before you do
Speaker 2: so if you're driving.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is not a This is not a
Speaker 1: yolo moment now it is now.
Speaker 2: It is yep, right now is a yolo moment. Now
Speaker 2: it's gone so too bad. I hope you caught a
Speaker 2: hold of that while it occurred.
Speaker 1: Now you're a cursed to live many times.
Speaker 2: That's correct. So what do you say, Ben, Let's let's
Speaker 2: give them the phone number. We are one eight three
Speaker 2: three s std WYTK. Seriously leave a message. We will
Speaker 2: see it. Somebody I'm not gonna name names. Jennifer left
Speaker 2: eight messages last night, eight consecutive messages starting around eleven
Speaker 2: o'clock in PM.
Speaker 1: That's great. So it sounds like we have another call
Speaker 1: in show in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole episode of just Jennifer, like addressing
Speaker 2: Jennifer's concerns.
Speaker 1: Should we call it just Jennifer?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Jennifer. I hope that you are okay with those messages
Speaker 1: being mentioned on air. If not, this is your time
Speaker 1: to let us know at the number of Matt and
Speaker 1: I already repeated. So we're talking a little bit about
Speaker 1: the future. But today's episode is largely centered on the past.
Speaker 1: William Faulkner, the author, not just some guy. William Faulkner
Speaker 1: was fond of saying the past isn't dead, it isn't
Speaker 1: even past. And that's something that's come up on this
Speaker 1: show before. Because while it might sound like one of
Speaker 1: those clever, glib quips that people say on a late
Speaker 1: night talk show, there is serious grit to this notion.
Speaker 1: The discipline that we call history is not some pursuit
Speaker 1: of static, set in stone events. It's an attempted understanding.
Speaker 1: The discipline instead is, at its best, a conversation between
Speaker 1: the present and the past, between the living and the dead.
Speaker 1: Is alive, and like all living things, history appears to
Speaker 1: change over time simply because of our understanding of it.
Speaker 1: And I know this sounds abstract, but the effects are concrete,
Speaker 1: and they are very real. Research has proven things that
Speaker 1: were once considered myths or legends were indeed real people, places,
Speaker 1: and events. This is not one hundred percent consistent, but
Speaker 1: this happens frequently enough that we can as a species
Speaker 1: surmise that we have no real we have no real
Speaker 1: standing upon which to base our confidence in the story
Speaker 1: of humanity or the story of the planet. In a
Speaker 1: lot of ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, besides the best efforts of archaeologists and historians who
Speaker 2: are attempting to track all that stuff down. Again, it's
Speaker 2: just the best version that we know at this moment.
Speaker 1: Right right, which is how all science should work. So
Speaker 1: examples that are going to be very familiar to a
Speaker 1: lot to a lot of us longtime listeners out there,
Speaker 1: the cilicanth that's living history, that was for a long time,
Speaker 1: considered extinct. For a long time, considered a cryptid, very
Speaker 1: well known to the people who had lived in the
Speaker 1: area for thousands of thousands of years. But then Western
Speaker 1: people found it and said, oh, we rediscovered this once
Speaker 1: extinct creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again to the knowledge of the people who keep
Speaker 2: the records, it was gone.
Speaker 1: Right, That's very important distinction. And then the other famous
Speaker 1: example we often cite would be the city of Troy,
Speaker 1: which is the perfect example. Until fairly recently, you know,
Speaker 1: in the past few hundred years, Troy was considered a myth,
Speaker 1: an entirely made up thing. There were people who were
Speaker 1: creating huge academic research initiatives on Troy as a metaphor
Speaker 1: for something, yeah, or what was Troy a code name
Speaker 1: for or whatever. It turns out there was a real
Speaker 1: city of Troy. This guy is not a professional archaeologist,
Speaker 1: found it. People didn't believe them for a while, because
Speaker 1: of course we'd all decided Troy was made up.
Speaker 2: That's right. And as we're going to find out a
Speaker 2: little later today in this episode, another find that was
Speaker 2: not initially discovered by any kind of archaeologist or someone
Speaker 2: going out to study it. It was just stumbled upon. And similarly,
Speaker 2: we just found a story coming out of the Kurdistan
Speaker 2: region of Iraq where there was a brand new palace
Speaker 2: that was discovered because of drought there was occurring in
Speaker 2: a reservoir.
Speaker 1: There, yeah, the Musil Dam reservoir on the banks of
Speaker 1: the Tigris River. As we were coming into record today,
Speaker 1: we learned about this. Maya seth. Did you guys hear
Speaker 1: about this? Okay, So there's a palace. It's almost three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred years old. We never would have found it
Speaker 1: except for the drought that dramatically lowered water levels. It
Speaker 1: appears to be a palace from the Matani Empire, which
Speaker 1: is one of the least researched empires of the ancient
Speaker 1: Near East. We had no idea it existed. No, we're
Speaker 1: not sure we as a species not us recording. We're
Speaker 1: not sure when it went to ruin, how it ended
Speaker 1: up underwater in this dam, and we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what we will learn about this. This is where this
Speaker 1: is interesting because this is where archaeology and folklore may
Speaker 1: may come to collaborate, kind of have an avengers assemble
Speaker 1: thing you know, happening just like in a Marvel movie,
Speaker 1: because this is where some folklorist and anthropologist may be
Speaker 1: able to glean some knowledge or leads from oral history,
Speaker 1: which I think it's downplayed a lot, but it leads
Speaker 1: us to some important things, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely, And not to get away from that too much,
Speaker 2: but one of the cool things that was found there
Speaker 2: were these ten clay tablets that actually had Cuneiform written
Speaker 2: on them. They were still preserved after being underwater for
Speaker 2: that long, which was somewhat surprising to me. But again,
Speaker 2: as we're going to learn in this episode, water and
Speaker 2: certain types of water have a way of preserving like
Speaker 2: the pH balance of the water, what else is like
Speaker 2: inside that water as far as plant life and material go,
Speaker 2: can preserve the heck out of things.
Speaker 1: We also learned some very gross things about Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just climate wise, not a statement about the state nor
Speaker 1: the people living there. And if you're listening, thanks for
Speaker 1: tuning in. This may be news to you. In today's episode,
Speaker 1: you see, we are going to explore a bizarre example
Speaker 1: of hidden history, one not in the Middle East. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's going to be in the comparatively speaking, the backyard
Speaker 1: of the West. Right our tail begins on an ordinary
Speaker 1: Florida day near the intersection of Interstate ninety five and
Speaker 1: State Road fifty. This is fairly close to the Cape
Speaker 1: Canaveral Air Force Station in the nineteen eighties. This intersection
Speaker 1: is this sort of place you drive by without a
Speaker 1: second look, especially if you're in the sweltering days of summer,
Speaker 1: because we have to remember the air turns to soup
Speaker 1: and Florida too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's a huge interstate and a state road. Okay, great, right,
Speaker 2: maybe there's a gas station.
Speaker 1: Not really a photo opportunity. If you drove by on
Speaker 1: the right day in nineteen eighty two, you might note
Speaker 1: the construction occurring as crews work to clear the nearby
Speaker 1: land and build what would later become the Windover Farm's subdivision.
Speaker 1: You might even if you're slow enough, your eyes are
Speaker 1: sharp and you're on the lookout for some reason. If
Speaker 1: you're a very alert driver, you might even see a
Speaker 1: backo operator named Steve Vanderjockt who was working to clear
Speaker 1: out an area around a nearby pond.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was just on his back hoe doing everything
Speaker 2: he was supposed to be doing, uh, clearing out part
Speaker 2: of the Again, it's kind of a bog This pond
Speaker 2: that we're talking about is it's swamps, marshy, swampy. It's
Speaker 2: just that kind of Florida. It reminds me of the
Speaker 2: Everglades a little bit, but it's it's a little different.
Speaker 2: So anyway, he's just going, he's using his back hoe
Speaker 2: and oh, you know what this would be. This would
Speaker 2: be a perfect Florida man story.
Speaker 1: This would be a perfect Florida man man's story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get.
Speaker 2: It a try. Okay, Florida man's back ho stumbles upon
Speaker 2: ancient skull.
Speaker 1: There we go. I also like attributing the action to
Speaker 1: the backo because it sounds as if he just left
Speaker 1: it running.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, something exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's true. In nineteen eighty two, Steve found what
Speaker 1: while he was cleaning stuff out, he saw what he
Speaker 1: thought was maybe around brown rock, and a rock would
Speaker 1: be unusual in this terrain. So he stops working and
Speaker 1: he starts digging through through the muck and the mud
Speaker 1: and the swampy stuff that you're mentioning. Matt the mucky muck,
Speaker 1: the mucky muck. That's the technical term and he picks
Speaker 1: up this object. He makes it way over and he
Speaker 1: picks it up, wipes off some of the stuff. You
Speaker 1: can't see it, folks, but I'm miming his actions here.
Speaker 1: And then he turns around this object, this smooth, round rock,
Speaker 1: to find too equally round empty eye sockets staring back
Speaker 1: at him. And that's when Steve realizes this is not
Speaker 1: a rock. This is a skull. And he's not an expert,
Speaker 1: but it looks pretty old.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, it looks a little old, but again, who
Speaker 2: knows how old it is. So imagine you're Steve and
Speaker 2: you find a skull while you're working. You have to
Speaker 2: call the police and report finding a skull because there's
Speaker 2: a possibility that this may be, you know, a homicide
Speaker 2: or a missing person or something to that effect. So
Speaker 2: that was exactly what he did. Then they continued looking
Speaker 2: because they're still working in this area. It's not like
Speaker 2: you just immediately stop all the construction there because of
Speaker 2: a skull. Now, yeah, you definitely pause for a moment again,
Speaker 2: call the police, and then maybe keep going. But they
Speaker 2: started finding a lot more skulls, a lot more bones.
Speaker 2: Again inside the bucket of the baco where he was.
Speaker 1: Working, right. The site supervisor is the first person that
Speaker 1: Steve contacts and they say, okay, is this a murder?
Speaker 1: We have to call the police. And then they look
Speaker 1: in the bucket of Steve's bacco and they find more skulls.
Speaker 1: So he had apparently been digging up some remains before
Speaker 1: he was aware of it, right, And when they realized
Speaker 1: they were looking at multiple bodies, they immediately knew something
Speaker 1: was up. Now, this is where two things could have happened,
Speaker 1: and it all depends on a fellow named Jim Swan.
Speaker 1: Jim Swan was the developer of the subdivision, and he
Speaker 1: could he could do one of two things. He could,
Speaker 1: like many unscrewed list developers, just pay off the crew,
Speaker 1: suppress the news of the find, and carry over with
Speaker 1: the construction of Windover Farms. And that is you know,
Speaker 1: like that's a plot point in the horror film Poultergeist, right, well,
Speaker 1: debatably the horror themed family film Poultergeist.
Speaker 2: There you go, yes, building on top of an ancient
Speaker 2: burial ground of sorts.
Speaker 1: Right, And that only enters fiction because that has really
Speaker 1: happened in multiple instances, not just here in the US,
Speaker 1: but many places abroad. Jim, for one reason or another,
Speaker 1: hopefully because he's a decent human being. Maybe because he's
Speaker 1: afraid of legal action, we don't know. Jim decides to
Speaker 1: halt all the work, just like you were talking about, Matt.
Speaker 1: He says, Okay, this is not a pause. We're stopping everything.
Speaker 1: Shut it down. We have to contact the experts. We
Speaker 1: have to determine the provenance of these bones. More importantly,
Speaker 1: I have to figure out what we do next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got millions sunk in the subdivision. Probably at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, I was hoping that I could, you know,
Speaker 1: construct it and not go bankrupt.
Speaker 2: But maybe there's another way here, There's something else to do.
Speaker 2: So he immediately reaches out to Florida State University to
Speaker 2: see if there's anyone on staff there that can come
Speaker 2: over and help assist identifying these bones. And they speak
Speaker 2: to doctor Glenn Dran d O R A N. And
Speaker 2: again he's his staff member of the Florida State University,
Speaker 2: an archaeologist. He shows up on the scene and initially
Speaker 2: he's looking at these bones and he's thinking, oh, wow,
Speaker 2: these are preserved pretty well.
Speaker 1: They are old.
Speaker 2: I can tell they're old. And one of The first
Speaker 2: things he sees are the teeth, and he notices that
Speaker 2: they've been ground down, naturally ground down, just through wear
Speaker 2: and tear, not the way you know, if someone was
Speaker 2: going to physically injure you and hurt your teeth or
Speaker 2: something or yeah, it was just natural wear and tear
Speaker 2: on the teeth. But to the point where he he
Speaker 2: realized that from an art cheologists standpoint, these must be
Speaker 2: thousands of years old, or at least that's what he.
Speaker 1: Believes, right. He surmised initially from his own just on
Speaker 1: the scene assessment, that these bones were from a Native
Speaker 1: American population, according to him, due primarily to the dentation
Speaker 1: and due to what he thought that told him about
Speaker 1: the age, So he said, these are perhaps a thousand
Speaker 1: years old. He arranged for carbon dating tests. This was
Speaker 1: financed by Swan and Swan's company EKS Corporation, and they
Speaker 1: were shocked by the results. What were those results? Will
Speaker 1: tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, when we left you, we were talking about
Speaker 2: duran and the carbon dating tests that we're going to
Speaker 2: be done on the bones and the teeth and everything
Speaker 2: that were found there at the Windover site. And there's
Speaker 2: the company Eks Corporation. They are doing this, this carbondating,
Speaker 2: and they were shocked when they realized the bones were
Speaker 2: indeed more than a thousand years old. In fact, the
Speaker 2: human remains uncovered at this site were somewhere between seven
Speaker 2: thousand and eight thousand years old. That makes them thirty
Speaker 2: two hundred years older than King Tuton Common and two
Speaker 2: thousand years older than the Great Pyramids of Giza themselves
Speaker 2: in Egypt. It's incredible to imagine in Florida bones of
Speaker 2: this age were found and then carbondated to show that yes,
Speaker 2: in fact, they are that old.
Speaker 1: And these were also modern human beings. This was not
Speaker 1: one of the early mixtapes of humanity like Neanderthal or
Speaker 1: something like that. Directus right right right, exactly seven thousand
Speaker 1: and eight thousand years old. This is on the east
Speaker 1: coast of Florida. Everything that is commonly accepted about the
Speaker 1: spread of the human species argues that the human species
Speaker 1: by and large arrived at North and South America what
Speaker 1: we call those two continents today, by crossing the baring
Speaker 1: Land Bridge over what is now the Bearing Strait, and
Speaker 1: that in case anyone's not familiar, that is, in the
Speaker 1: most opposite corner of the continent that one could imagine.
Speaker 1: It is in the far far far northwest and Cape Canaveral,
Speaker 1: far far southeast. So what's going on. They spent two
Speaker 1: years trying to dig this up. Overall, there were three
Speaker 1: archaeological digs conducted there between nineteen eighty four and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. They ended up finding more than two hundred
Speaker 1: distinct intact burials. And you'll hear you'll hear a couple
Speaker 1: of different numbers thrown around. One will be they found
Speaker 1: more than two hundred burials. One will be like, they
Speaker 1: found more than one hundred and sixty eight bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and part of that is because of the extreme length
Speaker 1: of time that these folks were literally poor choice of
Speaker 1: words on my part, bogged down, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Things shift, the bones may get jumbled. But the weird
Speaker 1: thing is that despite being in there for almost ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, the better part of ten thousand years, the
Speaker 1: bodies have been ritualistically buried, and with maybe a few exceptions,
Speaker 1: they were all placed in the same position. They were
Speaker 1: in a fetal position, lying on their left side, their
Speaker 1: heads were pointed west and their faces up to the north.
Speaker 1: In some cases the necks were broken to get this. Yeah, God,
Speaker 1: we don't know why. We can speculate it best that
Speaker 1: this shows us some sort of belief in the afterlife
Speaker 1: and ritualistic burial. The deceased were also wrapped in what
Speaker 1: archaeologists believe is the oldest existing woven fabric in the world,
Speaker 1: which is you know, when you think of the oldest
Speaker 1: thing in the world, you think of something in Africa
Speaker 1: and in the fertile somewhere near the right or maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe a Middle East, right, think of something on
Speaker 1: that continent or in the Middle East. You don't really
Speaker 1: think and it's not a ding again on Florida, but
Speaker 1: you don't think, Oh, yeah, Florida, that's where it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the oldest fabric ever in Florida. In my mind,
Speaker 2: it would just be in an old beach towel, the
Speaker 2: first one that was ever used, you know, created in
Speaker 2: like Myrtle Beach or Daytona beach or something.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be amazing if it also had an ancient
Speaker 1: drawing of a cartoon mouse. Oh, or it's hurdle or
Speaker 1: a turtle. Better, No, no, let's find let's find both of them.
Speaker 1: Let's just write this let's just write this story.
Speaker 2: It just says salt life on it.
Speaker 1: It just says salt life. Will write this story, will
Speaker 1: bury it somewhere. Yeah, and thousands of years from now.
Speaker 2: A Florida man will discover with his backo boom full circle.
Speaker 1: So well, that's our show, folks, thanks for turning. I
Speaker 1: think we did some meaningful work today. Yet we did
Speaker 1: find that there were grave goods though, that's what they're called.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not even the most odd thing that
Speaker 2: was found here, the oldest fabric, because it's the way
Speaker 2: that this stuff was used, and it's puzzling to me.
Speaker 2: Help me understand this a little better, Ben, because my
Speaker 2: understanding is that the bodies were actually submerged into the
Speaker 2: water on purpose using some piece of technology, essentially like
Speaker 2: a tool of some sort.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they were buried in this fetal position with
Speaker 1: certain body parts corresponding to certain directions, and then branches
Speaker 1: would be lashed together over them to create a tripod
Speaker 1: which kept the bodies in that feel position from floating
Speaker 1: up and to prevent them from floating to the top
Speaker 1: of that tripod. They had this this woven fabric is
Speaker 1: essentially functioning as a funeral shroud, and a wooden steak
Speaker 1: would be hammered in or somehow thrust through the fabric
Speaker 1: of the shroud which I'm just calling it a shroud,
Speaker 1: into the bed of the pond so that they would
Speaker 1: they being the bodies would not float up to the
Speaker 1: top of the wooden formation that was keeping them submerged.
Speaker 1: And the reason they had to do this is because
Speaker 1: when the body would decompose, it would begin to float
Speaker 1: because it would begin to fill with gas and air.
Speaker 1: The practical step here is that it ultimately protects the
Speaker 1: bodies from the many many scavengers in the area, mostly animals,
Speaker 1: but there would probably be some grave robbers understandably as well,
Speaker 1: and it kept them in that intended again, very purposeful position.
Speaker 2: Yea, seems like a ritualistic, perhaps religious position. Man. That
Speaker 2: to me is fascinating, just the concept that that long
Speaker 2: ago you would again, maybe this is that thing we
Speaker 2: always talk about when we discuss European settlers going to
Speaker 2: parts of Africa and discovering these ancient ruins and they think, oh,
Speaker 2: there's no way that they could have an understanding about
Speaker 2: the certain geometry here or this or that, like terrible
Speaker 2: belief the institutionalized racism that has occurred over all those years.
Speaker 2: I worry that I'm having a little bit of that
Speaker 2: when I'm trying to imagine, you know, people eight thousand
Speaker 2: years ago creating an underwater burial almost to preserve the bodies.
Speaker 2: Maybe perhaps they had no understanding that they were actually
Speaker 2: preserving the bodies by doing this, but that's in fact
Speaker 2: what they were doing using all of these tools and mechanisms.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's baffling, and it's also really really.
Speaker 1: Cool, right Yeah. The institutionalized racism that has to a
Speaker 1: great degree stifled scientific progress for centuries, exactly, it's still
Speaker 1: alive and well at a lot of places, and sometimes unintentional.
Speaker 1: I would argue, I saw a little bit of that
Speaker 1: at Alien con to be candid with you, but you're
Speaker 1: right here. Generally speaking, when people inter or get rid
Speaker 1: of the bodies of their dead and their loved ones
Speaker 1: or even their hated ones, the thing is that you
Speaker 1: don't want to see them forever, Especially if you love
Speaker 1: someone or if they're meaningful to your life, you want
Speaker 1: to help them into the afterlife. That's the way it's
Speaker 1: usually phrased, and that will be like by burial maybe
Speaker 1: in some parts of the world there will be a
Speaker 1: you'll be consumed by carnivorous birds, which I think is
Speaker 1: sky Burial is probably the coolest cremation, right, things like that.
Speaker 1: The idea is that you don't want them to come back.
Speaker 1: You don't want to see if their software is gone,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be haunted by their hardware, which
Speaker 1: is why it's such a such an ancient psyop to
Speaker 1: take the bodies of dead enemies and display them where
Speaker 1: they're living can see them.
Speaker 2: But then others want to preserve the body as much
Speaker 2: as they can because the belief is that that body
Speaker 2: will have to come back.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's it, and to certain rules. Right, So
Speaker 1: that's why we have the preservation of organs in some societies.
Speaker 1: That's and also when when we go into a secular world,
Speaker 1: a lot of times there's this interpretation, or I would say,
Speaker 1: this assumption that burial rituals are all religiously based, which
Speaker 1: is not the case. I mean, think about all the
Speaker 1: time spent embalming Linen. You know, in the days of
Speaker 1: the USSR. It was not really a religion, but it
Speaker 1: took the place of a religion because it was a symbol.
Speaker 2: You know, linin, not linen. In my head, I heard linen.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, sorry, else and perhaps my Tennessee accent, and
Speaker 1: not John Lennon. It was Linen and linen in Linen, Yes,
Speaker 1: in Leningrad. That's right. Yeah, all right, we solved the case.
Speaker 1: But we're saying all this to give maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit more anthropological perspective. One of the most important points
Speaker 1: you made, Matt, that we shouldn't skip over is whether
Speaker 1: or not the people who were entering folks this way
Speaker 1: knew it. What they ended up doing was preserving the
Speaker 1: bodies of their loved ones for thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: years because the peat bog is an anaerobic environment, which
Speaker 1: means that a lot of the rules of decomposition, which
Speaker 1: are air and oxygen dependent will will not play out
Speaker 1: the same way. Also, the fact that pete bog means
Speaker 1: that there's a pH balance that's tremendously conducive to preserving things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's not a lot you know, if it's
Speaker 2: in the ocean or something or somewhere that has occurrent,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of physical movement occurring there. And
Speaker 2: the biggest variable is the rising and lowering of the
Speaker 2: water essentially in these places depending on drought or the
Speaker 2: amount of rain, and that pH balance too. Man ah go,
Speaker 2: it's so cool to me, Okay, So.
Speaker 1: It feels purposeful, right, it's done something with all those factors, Like.
Speaker 2: We've been doing this for so long. We know that
Speaker 2: this is the place to bury people, and this is
Speaker 2: how we will do it. And though it's been ten,
Speaker 2: twelve thousand, fifteen thousand years.
Speaker 1: At least, the practice right and the site itself, as
Speaker 1: will come to find, was active for a very very
Speaker 1: long time before it was forgotten and almost became the
Speaker 1: non consensual foundation of a suburb. We know that the
Speaker 1: environment of Florida was very challenging. It remains very challenging
Speaker 1: for preservation. We can explore that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right now, let's talk about the life of the people
Speaker 1: who lived in this prehistoric time. About half of the
Speaker 1: remains found at Windover again, that's anywhere from one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight to two hundred something people were children,
Speaker 1: not all. The oldest people found in the site were
Speaker 1: around sixty years old, unlike the human remains found in
Speaker 1: European bogs. You know, you might think of something like
Speaker 1: Ireland or Scotland or something. Unlike those remains. The bodies
Speaker 1: in Florida were only skeletons. There's no flesh on the bones.
Speaker 1: And again a lot of that has to do with
Speaker 1: the climate of Florida.
Speaker 2: You're gonna say, Yeah, the temperature is going to make
Speaker 2: a big difference there.
Speaker 1: And as you get closer to the equator, you'll see
Speaker 1: you know, increasingly in hospitable environments for preservation. But also
Speaker 1: you know, think of think of how rare these places are.
Speaker 1: But if you go back a few centuries when there
Speaker 1: was much more forest land and jungle land in the world,
Speaker 1: those ecosystems, those biomes are hungry, they eat things. There's
Speaker 1: still eating cities. I think a lot of us would
Speaker 1: be surprised at how much maintenance goes on into just
Speaker 1: keeping even what you think of as a metropolis alive
Speaker 1: from one year to the next. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine in Atlanta if we didn't have a
Speaker 2: kudzoo team going out there every day working their tails off.
Speaker 1: I love the Kudzuo man. I think about it a lot,
Speaker 1: and how how quickly it would grow. Yeah, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's an official Atlanta Kudzoo team. Maybe
Speaker 2: there is. If you work for the official Atlanta Kudzoo
Speaker 2: what do we call it.
Speaker 1: Kudzuo task Force? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let us know the cats out of everyone.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, they're definitely they're definitely ongoing wars. Kudzu
Speaker 1: is an excellent example their ongoing efforts to prevent the
Speaker 1: spread of cuts, which is technically an invasive species, right,
Speaker 1: but adapted amazingly well. So we know a little bit
Speaker 1: about what these people's lives were like. But the same
Speaker 1: environment in Florida, which makes it so difficult to preserve
Speaker 1: bodies or buildings, let alone books and so on, also
Speaker 1: teaches us about how they were buried because despite the
Speaker 1: fact that there was no flesh on the bones, about
Speaker 1: half of the skulls ninety ninety one or so contained
Speaker 1: brain matter. It's pretty gruesome, but it also means that
Speaker 1: they were buried within at the very most, at the
Speaker 1: very upper limit, they were in the pond, interred within
Speaker 1: forty eight hours of expiring, because if they were out
Speaker 1: in the fl Florida environment anytime after that, their brain
Speaker 1: would have liquefied. Wow, because that's what Florida does to
Speaker 1: dead people.
Speaker 2: Mmm.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: Well, we also got to look at their stomach contents.
Speaker 1: Right, and that's tricky because you're saying, well, there's no flesh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're approximating because it looked like it was digested. We
Speaker 1: learned that for one one corpse, they have been eating
Speaker 1: primarily fish and berries, and the ground down teeth that
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, Matt show us similar to It's the
Speaker 1: thing Egyptologists have found before as well. In places where
Speaker 1: people live around a lot of sand, the sand gets
Speaker 1: into your food and it naturally grits down your teeth. Wow,
Speaker 1: they didn't have cavities.
Speaker 2: They didn't have cavities. Well well, and you have to
Speaker 2: imagine it's only over a span of sixty years and
Speaker 2: there's absolutely you know, no dental work being done. There's nothing,
Speaker 2: there's no way to help clean or fix your teeth
Speaker 2: when things are going wrong in that sand just takes
Speaker 2: it out quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We also know that even though their lives were
Speaker 1: very difficult, they were also very caring with their community.
Speaker 1: And this is this is a big thing that maybe
Speaker 1: doesn't occur to a lot of people when we think
Speaker 1: of ancient societies, but one of the huge, huge, leaping
Speaker 1: points or one of the one of the huge breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: a watershed moment in evolution was the idea of caring
Speaker 1: for the injured and the dead, which is something higher
Speaker 1: cognition entities do so not not necessarily just mammals, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. There's some birds that will care
Speaker 1: for the injured, and of course there's cetaceans are still mammals,
Speaker 1: but who knows, maybe there's an octopus hospital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe, But I see exactly what you're saying. In
Speaker 2: an organized humanoid society, a human society, taking care of
Speaker 2: someone who's incapacitated, who cannot contribute to, you know, the
Speaker 2: the wealth essentially the health and wealth of your tribe,
Speaker 2: your group, then you know, for a certain time, there's
Speaker 2: no reason to have that person besides to you know,
Speaker 2: keep them around because you love them, right, or you
Speaker 2: care about.
Speaker 1: Them, or because you're a decent.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but if you think about it from the
Speaker 2: most basic needs of a human, like a singular human
Speaker 2: as well as a group of humans, that's a choice
Speaker 2: that what you're saying is it only comes along with
Speaker 2: the higher cognition, the really thinking about essentially good like
Speaker 2: doing good.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say also this is going to sound
Speaker 1: very cold. Biologically speaking, an individual human has zero value
Speaker 1: unless something can reproduce a sexually. An individual of any
Speaker 1: species has zero value in terms of the big picture.
Speaker 1: So a group things that can care for one another
Speaker 1: in groups may lose a couple checkers games, but they
Speaker 1: will win the chess game all you go, right, So
Speaker 1: we do know that they were playing this chess game, right.
Speaker 1: We found several examples of people who would have died
Speaker 1: quite quickly and probably quite painfully had they not have
Speaker 1: folks caring for them, and this again is a huge
Speaker 1: hallmark of what we would call modern humanity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an older woman and she was perhaps around
Speaker 2: fifty years old. It's kind of an estimation there, but
Speaker 2: she showed signs of having broken bones, like several of them,
Speaker 2: to the point where this person is not going to
Speaker 2: survive if it's eight thousand years ago. But she did
Speaker 2: for a while at least while she's being taken care of.
Speaker 2: The fractures occurred several years before she died, So that's
Speaker 2: how you know somebody was doing a lot for this person.
Speaker 2: And it really means that there are other villagers, other
Speaker 2: humans around her that helped her even when she could
Speaker 2: no longer contribute, and that's really what we're saying. There
Speaker 2: was another body of a fifteen year old boy, at
Speaker 2: least again an estimated fifteen year old boy, that showed
Speaker 2: he was a victim of spina bifida, which is something
Speaker 2: intense to encounter in modern day With modern day medicine,
Speaker 2: you can only imagine what it was like.
Speaker 1: Then, right. Spina bifida is a birth defect that occurs
Speaker 1: when the cord of your spine and your actual spine
Speaker 1: don't form properly. It used to be considered a pediatric illness,
Speaker 1: even relatively recently, meaning that if you survive into adulthood,
Speaker 1: you would just still continue to see your pediatric doctor.
Speaker 1: This kid made it to fifteen, so he was well
Speaker 1: on his way to becoming an adult. They also saw
Speaker 1: various different tools. Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking things
Speaker 1: is that every single child that was buried there was
Speaker 1: buried with a couple of toys. Wow, how much more
Speaker 1: human can you get? We have to ask ourselves, Okay,
Speaker 1: these are people, but who were these people? Where did
Speaker 1: they come from, and how did they get there? How,
Speaker 1: perhaps even more importantly, did they become lost to time?
Speaker 1: For more than seven thousand years, it's a questionable answer.
Speaker 1: After a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: First, this was not a mass grave, just a place
Speaker 2: where bodies were thrown just because someone had died and
Speaker 2: it was done. We've already established that these bodies are
Speaker 2: placed there on purpose and in a way that it
Speaker 2: is meaningful.
Speaker 1: It's not a massacre, it's not an all die. At
Speaker 1: the same time, and.
Speaker 2: We also know that this is likely not a matter
Speaker 2: of some kind of sacrifice, some kind of ritual that
Speaker 2: was done to put these people out of their misery,
Speaker 2: or for worship of some other you know, deity or
Speaker 2: being or something like that.
Speaker 1: And we know this because of the way in which
Speaker 1: they were interred and because of the the nature of
Speaker 1: ritualistic human sacrifice usually indicates, or usually is predicated upon
Speaker 1: a similar method of death to someone is you know,
Speaker 1: ritualistically strangled by the thugy cult, or someone has is
Speaker 1: vivisected right somewhere in mes America or something this or
Speaker 1: in the case of bogs in Europe, someone has their
Speaker 1: throat cut and then they're tossed in a bog. Right,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem to be the case here. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons, one of the biggest. Here's where it gets
Speaker 1: crazy moments in this wind Over investigation, which has again
Speaker 1: been going on since the early nineteen eighties, not eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties as far as we know, hinges on the concept
Speaker 1: of DNA, and this goes back a little bit to
Speaker 1: what you were talking about, Matt. You'll hear some folks,
Speaker 1: including members of academia here in twenty nineteen, arguing that
Speaker 1: the DNA tests conducted on the remains indicated that these
Speaker 1: people were descended from Europeans rather than the Far Eastern
Speaker 1: you know, the Far Eastern groups that migrated out of
Speaker 1: Siberia right or through Siberia. This would be a huge discovery,
Speaker 1: but the question is is it true. First we have
Speaker 1: to remember the only way they could find anything close
Speaker 1: enough to try to analyze would be that brain matter
Speaker 1: the marrow is probably long gone, and the DNA's rate
Speaker 1: of decay makes it a lot like forget trying to
Speaker 1: find a needle in a haystack. Trying to find a
Speaker 1: lottery ticket in a haystack and hoping that it wins.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and you have to find multiple lottery tickets
Speaker 2: because you can't just test one subject and say, oh,
Speaker 2: this whole group of people, they're definitely European.
Speaker 1: Right, And in the past people have been way too
Speaker 1: quick to do that. There's a geneticist named Joseph Lorenz
Speaker 1: from the Quarriel Institute for Medical Research. He was searching
Speaker 1: for DNA markers that he thought were typical of Native Americans,
Speaker 1: and the DNA samples taken from the bones of five
Speaker 1: different people in Windover. So they did let me correct
Speaker 1: myself there. They did find at least something in the
Speaker 1: bones they could use. He didn't find what he was
Speaker 1: looking for. He did not find those common markers he
Speaker 1: thought would be extant, and so he compared the wind
Speaker 1: Over DNA results. He had to present European populations, and
Speaker 1: this is what he said.
Speaker 2: I went back to the screen and looked at the
Speaker 2: sequences again. The first person's DNA it looked European. When
Speaker 2: I looked at the second one, it looked European. When
Speaker 2: I looked at the third, the fourth, and the fifth
Speaker 2: it was slightly different from the first two, but they
Speaker 2: looked European.
Speaker 1: So there are three common presumptions that are inherent. They're
Speaker 1: intrinsic in every interpretation of the wind over DNA. The
Speaker 1: first is the assumption that one combination of DNA haplogroups
Speaker 1: typifies all Native American populations. It's demonstrably untrue. There's been
Speaker 1: well documented Polynesian DNA material found in skeletons in northwest
Speaker 1: Mexico as well as southern California. There are early populations
Speaker 1: of South America that also don't necessarily fit that assumption. Also,
Speaker 1: there are no DNA text markers for a lot of
Speaker 1: indigenous people in southeastern US. The research wasn't quite there
Speaker 1: at the time. And then there's the Yuchi group, which
Speaker 1: has consistently stated, again in folklore and the importance of
Speaker 1: world storytelling, that their ancestors crossed the Atlantic to the
Speaker 1: Savannah River. These are you'll hear them called the oldest
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples in the Southeast. Their migration legend states that
Speaker 1: they found evidence of an earlier people who had lived
Speaker 1: in the Savannah River basin before them. I think it's
Speaker 1: clutching at straws because that's anecdotal, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean there's not a grain of truth
Speaker 1: to it. And this whole DNA exploration is where things
Speaker 1: get so sticky because for some more conspiratorially minded people,
Speaker 1: this was seen as a gold mine. It was proof
Speaker 1: that there could be some previously unidentified migration patterns in
Speaker 1: ancient human history. It's true there are. We're going to
Speaker 1: find more as we learn more about the expansion of
Speaker 1: the species. But I don't know. There's a thing that
Speaker 1: used a lot of Weasley words language that we found
Speaker 1: describing this.
Speaker 2: And we've got a quote here, Yes, this comes from
Speaker 2: about archaeology. Although scientists believed they had retrieved DNA from
Speaker 2: the fairly intact brain matter recovered from some of the
Speaker 2: human burials, subsequent research has shown that the mt DNA
Speaker 2: lineages reported are absent in all other prehistoric and contemporary
Speaker 2: Native American populations studied to date. Further attempts to retrieve
Speaker 2: more DNA have failed, and an amplification study has shown
Speaker 2: that there is no analyzable DNA left at the Windover burials.
Speaker 1: So let's unpack this quickly. What this shows is that
Speaker 1: scientists did at one point get some DNA material from
Speaker 1: one or more of the brains, definitely more, one would hope,
Speaker 1: and they found that the mitochondrial DNA lineage reported didn't
Speaker 1: match what we knew about other Native American populations, right,
Speaker 1: So then they said, we've tried or other people have
Speaker 1: tried to grab more DNA material and they can't get it,
Speaker 1: and we think there's no more left. So we shot
Speaker 1: our shot. Basically shot our shot, and we got more
Speaker 1: questions than answers.
Speaker 2: However, this thing we just read from about archaeology, well
Speaker 2: several people take exception to this, including someone a researcher
Speaker 2: named Gary Carson, and we have a quote from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he unpacks this stuff and he says, I've
Speaker 1: read this particular passage two or three times and it's
Speaker 1: a masterpiece of hand waving and misdirection. He's a little
Speaker 1: steamed about it. Yeah, that last part was me. The
Speaker 1: article makes it sound like DNA wasn't discovered after all,
Speaker 1: but it goes on to say THEA DNA lineages were
Speaker 1: discovered that's mitochondrial DNA and subsequently analyzed, but then dismisses
Speaker 1: the analysis because it doesn't match the expected results, specifically
Speaker 1: because it didn't connect the wind Over Bog people with
Speaker 1: other prehistoric and contemperary Native American populations. In other words,
Speaker 1: according to Gary, the DNA results couldn't be accurate because
Speaker 1: they didn't show that the bog people were Native Americans.
Speaker 1: So he's he's not necessarily arguing some secret migration from
Speaker 1: some hitherto unmentioned land, but he is saying that these
Speaker 1: people may be committing one of the one of the
Speaker 1: big sins of critical thinking, which is throwing out stuff
Speaker 1: that doesn't fit a preconceived notion. There's a facial reconstruction
Speaker 1: project that you can you can see google wind over
Speaker 1: a woman online and they don't they don't appear European.
Speaker 1: But a lot of facial reconstruction like that is interpretive, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't know dinosaurs had feathers.
Speaker 2: We did for ever, but we figured it out because
Speaker 2: somebody just decided one day that they had feathers. That's honestly.
Speaker 1: What happened is that. What happened is like, dude, these
Speaker 1: guys got feathers. Was you?
Speaker 2: It was me?
Speaker 1: I should have been on that call.
Speaker 2: When I grew up, dinosaurs were just all green or
Speaker 2: brown or gray, no stripes. Yeah, eighties kids, dinosaurs are green, brown, gray,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe a little tan light brown. But now they're
Speaker 2: just multicolored. They got feathers. I don't believe it. I'm
Speaker 2: just kidding. I think it's wonderful what we're learning. Paleontologists
Speaker 2: teaching you against some things. No, I love it.
Speaker 1: You think there should be a bright line between pokemon
Speaker 1: and dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: No, no, I choose you pach so great.
Speaker 1: So there are there are other opinions here, one that
Speaker 1: argues one that bases its argument on the timeline. So
Speaker 1: time estimates for the arrival of certain genomes or genetic
Speaker 1: material are twelve thou thirty six thousand years ago, depending
Speaker 1: on the number of assumed founders, And this supports the
Speaker 1: conclusion that people harboring this haplo group, this this weird
Speaker 1: one that sticks out right, we're among the original founders
Speaker 1: of Native American populations. To date, applogroup X, as this
Speaker 1: guy William Holsworth is calling it has not been unambiguously
Speaker 1: identified in Asia, which would have been the origin point,
Speaker 1: and to this author raises the possibility that some of
Speaker 1: these Native American founding populations had ancestors somewhere else so
Speaker 1: ultimately came to what we recognize as Florida today through
Speaker 1: some other migration pattern. As the Internet likes to say,
Speaker 1: big if true, Big if true, Big if true, But
Speaker 1: is it true. At this point, it seems experts are
Speaker 1: still debating the origin of the ancient windover population and occasionally,
Speaker 1: if you read closely, accusing one another of having an agenda,
Speaker 1: which is not at all unusual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's pretty darn common when it comes
Speaker 2: to things like.
Speaker 1: This, and it's an important debate. It's one we should
Speaker 1: treat with extreme seriousness, primarily because of the point you raised, Matt,
Speaker 1: which is a fundamental point that is all too often
Speaker 1: skipped over. The human species has a long, long, incredibly
Speaker 1: unfortunate history of institutionalized racism, attempting to shoehorn insert favorite
Speaker 1: group here into so many things, from pyramids to the
Speaker 1: ruins of empires to the creation of civilization. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And this is not just This is
Speaker 1: not just a practice of one sect of people from
Speaker 1: one part of the world, nor is it the practice
Speaker 1: of one discipline.
Speaker 2: And just to take it back to alien con we
Speaker 2: see it perpetuated there where. If Europeans or some sort
Speaker 2: didn't have anything to do with this, well then it
Speaker 2: must be aliens making all of these ancient sites.
Speaker 1: And in the defense of people who will make those arguments,
Speaker 1: typically nowadays they're not just arguing something based on that.
Speaker 1: They'll also say a stonehenge, how could ancient people have
Speaker 1: made that? Those? Look at those the big that's the
Speaker 1: biggest rock I ever saw.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: I'm not quoting, I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 2: But true. It is just something we cannot stress enough.
Speaker 2: That is, it's highly important and remember it when you
Speaker 2: read things.
Speaker 1: And at least it leads us almost full circle here,
Speaker 1: mat because what we're talking about is underestimating ancient people,
Speaker 1: which we should never do. These are modern human beings.
Speaker 1: Human humanity is slowly evolving. But people thousands of years
Speaker 1: ago were as smart and as capable of invention and
Speaker 1: ingenuity as people are today. So this is where it
Speaker 1: gets us to a weird spot and maybe where we
Speaker 1: end today's conversation to hear from to hear from you folks.
Speaker 1: If you know, if we accept that is absolutely true
Speaker 1: that ancient peoples could, through their own ingenuity and their
Speaker 1: own maguverness, build things like stone hinge, like pyramids like
Speaker 1: Catalahyop and so on, doesn't that mean we also need
Speaker 1: to be open to the idea that that same ingenuity
Speaker 1: could be applied to migration and travel.
Speaker 2: Absolutely especially over water, especially over water.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. You can reach to the handle Conspiracy
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