Yeah, that's the october Fest band. We are in the thick of it around the world. Of course, if you're in Munich, you are celebrating big time in the big beer tents and they are drinking leaders of beer. You know, it's funny. I haven't had a chance to go to Munich when I'm in Europe. I always miss it. I'd
love to go there. I had. I had friends go last year and everybody had their leader hosand and derndrols on and they reported back that, you know, the Germans will drink a leader or up to three within an hour. Sometimes it's a lot of beer, and I just can't imagine, you know, a leader of beer in a huge glass tine. But I love my beer. And here in California there is a lot of immigrants. According to I celebrate my
one quarter German. My grandfather immigrated from Dusser Dwarf in nineteen o four and came to California and settled and had a practice. He was a doctor in Central California. But I know he's always upheld the tradition and we would celebrate the seasons, and october Fest was something that we talked about and I have kind of continued it. I actually do wear the lit hosen and I have a great time. I don't know what it is about Octoberfest.
I really have fun. I enjoy it. And you know, we here in northern California are surrounded by micro breweries, and so everybody's trying to put out a Marsin or an october Fest beer, which is a holiday dark beer. And there's I live in close to Oakland, and there's an Oktoberfest Oaktoberfest, and all the breweries come out and there's like two hundred beers that you can sample. No one that's gonna drink all of them. But I'm always pleasantly surprised at some of these newer breweries who are
able to really tune into the mars In flavor. And it's wonderful with the food. You know, the Europeans don't just typically drink beer by itself. They will drink and have a meal. And that's what makes you know, sipping a beer with your food, with your sausage or whatever much more pleasant because it goes really well with food. And you know, you don't walk around with a stein of beer and you're not, you know, have any food
you got to have the food. So so anyhow, it's october Fest time and I'll be wearing my leader hosand with a girlfriend and some other friends and I'll have a photograph. If you want to see my leader hosand and outfit, you can go to Earth Ancients excuse me, you can go to Facebook, go to Cliff Dunning and you'll see me all dredged, all dressed up celebrating this season.
And I don't know what it is. There's something about Leader, something about october Fest that is just real fun and I mean it's it's an adult party and I really really enjoy it. I'm going to get the Munich one of these days and figure out a way to really see it the authentic traditional way which I have had, like I said, a number of friends. So october Fest and the Lida Josen any I'll help. You're doing well today? Hey,
Today we have the return of doctor Edwin Barnhardt. He is going to be speaking to us about the ruins on Easter Island, otherwise known as Rappahannui. And we have had other people speaking about the Polynesian islands. But what I didn't realize until very recently was that Ed had done back I think I was twenty eighteen. He did a survey of the island and was working with the government at the time to understand some of the early dwellings,
and he made some we'll learn about this today. He made some interesting discoveries of buildings that hadn't been known about before. And he didn't use light ar he used another kind of imaging system to actually do this. And he was talking to me before we started our interview today that he's we're going to be going there in March, March fifteenth to the twenty third, by the way, if
you want to join us. And he was working with the local government and he only, like I said, he only did a third of the survey and he's going back hopefully to finish his work. But you know, it's funny because I talk to people who visit Repahanui or Easter Island, and they say they get strange vibes depending
on what part of the island you're at. Apparently there's some hot spots that have been talked about in the same manner that we see magnetic anomalies in Saint Guatemala or when we were in Chiao late last year, we noticed that some of the stela, the standing markers, and even some of the round sculptures of depicting humans had magnetic anomalies. What that's all about, we don't know now. When it gets to the point where it is affecting physiology, that's meant to that's meant as a tool, And we
still don't understand how it was used. But some people that are sensitive believe that shaman perhaps or people who were trained in subtle energy work, could tune in to those markers, to those energetics and perhaps by locate, perhaps communicate,
perhaps develop some form of sacred wisdom. We don't know how it was worked, but what we do know is that again the Maya were were masters using subtle energy and gain a great deal of their knowledge on earth centric energetics as well as healing, mathematics and sacred geometry. What sacred geometry this is placing buildings in correct alignment
along with lay lines and also global centric navigation. So that means that the alignment of certain pyramids and temples were such that you could stand and look at corner and align it to the sunset, to certain constellations. And of course the Maya were master cosmologists and could actually track various planetary movements and things like that, but the
Rapahanui people aren't considered to be that sophisticated. Although, and we'll talk about this today, there is a writing system that has been found, but it has not been deciphered. And this is a real curiosity because right now orthodoxy considers the earliest period of Easter Island to be roughly
a thousand years ago. And you know, people that are seers, that are psychic, that are sensitive as well as many other of us, believe that the Easter Island may have been part of MoU or the great continent of Limoria. And there are no other parts of the Polynesian culture that have these moai sculptures, these multi ton megalists or monoliths, huge carved statuary anyplace else. And so why were they carved? Why were they lined up looking out towards the west?
What is the hieroglyphics that is carved in many of their backs, and why are they positioned where they're standing looking up with their hands around their waist, Almost a certain posture that perhaps elicits energy or seeking or sightseeing or heaven watching or something looking at the sky looking at the changes we don't know, and because we don't have a definitive answer, again, it's most of its guesswork.
Now it's a real pleasure to have Ed on the program today because again he will be leading a tour an Earth Ancient's Tour March fifteenth through the twenty third. For all the information, you can go to earth Ancients dot com forward slash tours and see the itinerary. We're almost full, and if you want to join us, do that, or if you have any questions whatsoever about this tour, send me an email at Earth Ancients to number four of the letter you at gmail dot Earth Ancients for
you at gmail dot com. So today's program is the ancient culture of Rapa Nui and my guest is doctor ed Barnhard. It's always great to speak with doctor Edwin Barnhart. We haven't had you don't had Edd on the show for a few months, and I had to say it was a pleasure being with him in uh Mexico and our recent tour. We studied and we were discussing the
Omec and their ruins, which are fascinating. But today we're going to talk about Easter island otherwise known as Rappahannui because Ed's actually been there, and he hasn't been there just as a tourist. He's been there and he has surveyed that part of the world, which makes it even more interesting. So Ed, welcome back to Earth Ancient. It's great to see you.
Hey, clip, thanks for inviting me back.
All right, we gotta open with your participation in Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse. We got a preview all through the YouTube, and I'm just curious how did that come about? How did that evolve?
Yeah, I was surprised to see myself on that preview. I was there all of two seconds, but I made cut.
That was fun.
Yeah, you know, friends of friends, I guess recommended me to Graham and his crew specifically about Polank and you know, you know me, I'm I'm I'm open to however I can communicate with the public about things they're interested in. And so I right after my Olmec trip, I flew instead of home from Mexico City to Polenk.
It happened kind of that.
Quickly after ours a couple of years ago.
You mean, I don't know an ole Mec trip.
I had run in March this year, and then it is just kind of one thing led to another, and uh then I was just all of a sudden standing in the Temple of the Foliated Cross with Graham Hancock.
Amazing. That's fantastic. Now, I mean, Graham is very outspoken as as you know, and he's not an academic book. How did you feel how you treated, I would say in that interaction with him.
Oh, very nicely, very nicely. We had, you know, both professional and personal rapport. You know, he seemed to be surprised that I had actually read his books, but you know, he started off with the respect that he had read my stuff. So we had a nice conversation right off the bat about actually having read each other stuff instead of just have opinions about it. Yeah, and you know it kind of went from there. I enjoyed the experience.
Now, your expertise is in planky obviously, because you surveyed it. Was that the main focus of that episode that you shot with him? Or did you go to other sites? We didn't go to other sites, but we did talk off site on a number of topics. He was really you know, very I appreciated the opportunity he let me speak in my own words about my calendars, my astronomy. He actually even asked me directly to.
Give him my opinion about whether Bacall's sarcophagus carving as an alien spaceship, which you know, spoiler alert, I did not believe that. Yeah, he gave me a lot of opportunity to speak to his audience in my own way and in my own voice, and I appreciated it good.
So he was talking about the Maya, and did he ask you one of my questions, mine of white questions with you all. And we've talked about this before, the descendants of the Maya, the earliest part, and I talk about this, and I've mentioned this to you with my interactions with Rich Hanson out in Guatemala at Ladonte. He Hanson thinks that these pyramids were all for the gods. And my belief is that the people that we know
as the Maya were just one phase. Is an earlier face that we're having trouble understanding because we haven't really deciphered their language yet, so we really don't know the earliest periods. According to Hanson, Oh, I see what you're saying. Like the proto my script, we really don't the earliest
text we have we have a problem reading. Yeah, so we don't know how old the Maya are, right, I mean we think they're three or four thousand years old, But is there a possibility that And I'm wondering if Hanson Hanson excuse me, Graham Hancock was touching on this that the Maya seemed to be extremely sophisticated, you know, astronomy, mathematics, medicines, culture, so forth, and so on, and they kind of just show up very sophisticated.
No, Graham and I didn't really talk on that. He didn't ask me any questions on that vein. But you have, so we'll talk about it.
I don't know.
From my perspective in archaeology, I do see a fairly understand progression of you know, technology, community building, uh, you know, just tradition society that start. I feel like the archaeology record certainly has gaps, but there's a logical narrative sequence of people that begin, you know, from the archaic period, slowly building up communities and interacting, sharing ideas back and forth.
My uh, I just finished doing this deep dive on olmec H for Great Courses, and I I talk a lot about how the the Olmec and the Maya at that early early dates, and I'm talking you know, ballpark two thousand BCE, they're really uh, bouncing ideas and traditions off each other to create something new. There's a real co evolution there. But both of them start from a very rudimentary place and help each other up in a
lot of ways. They're certainly you know that we don't have all the answers about their technology and things, but in terms of I don't think either one of them really show up on the scene with a whole kit of skills and cultural ways that we can't explain. I do see an evolution, and if you'd like to hear my long explanation, I've got you know, six hours of talk that come out on great courses about it.
Let's talk about pyramids, because I consider the Maya pyramid culture. Is there an area in Mexico that is thought of as to be kind of an evolution or the early initiation of pyramid building. A class of pyramids are like that, you guys go, hey, this is of this. They're crude, they're not necessarily as engineered as well, so forth, and so on. And that is what we consider as archaeologists of my or you as a minus would say this is the starting point.
Oh, that's you know, it's a bit of a tricky one, you know that it starts off with how do we define pyramid? You know, is a is a hill of dirt that's five meters taller pyramid? Or does it have to get to like twenty before we call it a pyramid? So we start with the beginnings of people making structures that are you know, above natural ground. Well, heck, then we you know, go back to like two thousand BCE.
But the first ones that we call pyramids are actually there's two of them that are in the Maya area and in the Elemec area, and they show up they're so close to each other. The archaeologies Carbon fourteen dates can't really definitively say which one came first. One of them is the pyramid at Leventa, right, and it's about twenty five meters tall, huge, but it's all earthen And the other one that is also all earth in is gosh, it's it's in Guatemala and the silka Nusco and I'm
I'm blanking, I'll shot gun approach it. It's either at the site of Paseo de Paso de la Mata or La Blanca. But it's one of those two. I'm blanking on which one has a pyramid about the same size, And both of them are somewhere built between like five hundred and six hundred BCE, says the Carbon fourteen dates.
But those are our two, and the Maya one is earth a mile for more to pop up and the earth and the one that the Maya built is that earthen as well as that stone.
Yeah, the one down in Silka Nusco is earthen as well. Okay, that's fascinating the first ones that we get built of stone, are you know. There's there's a place also down there in Guatemala called Takalika Ba that has a reasonable size one. There's across the border into Chiapas. Chiapa de Corzo has a fairly old one. But both of those are kind
of Maya with a healthy dose of Olmec influence. Then, of course, where Richard Hansen is in the ten, that's when they start driving making these mega pyramids out of stone.
Yeah. I haven't talked to Richard in over a year, so I don't know what his status is. I would typically hope to hear from him and his newest finds on a regular basis, but he's kind of gone silent. Maybe that's a good thing. Well, I don't know.
Richard's been surrounded in Hornet's nests of late, so maybe he has just taken a break. Yeah, you know, I should Before we just get off the topic of pyramids, let me not discredit the the Zapatacs who were all so hard at it. By five hundred BC, they've built the city of Monte alban and they're building stone built pyramids there too, in the tradition of a place not far from them called San Jose Magote, who's building the
first stone platforms of Wahaka. So there really is a I mean there there's a race, race of who's building what first, and who's building up and who's influencing who. It's a it's a complicated picture sometimes, you know, archaeology, we get more information, it just confuses the situation rather than clarifies it.
Yeah, Wahaka has got uh Tula too, doesn't it.
Tula's way up in northern Mexico. Uh kind of northwest of Mexico.
City, trying to think, what's the site that Marco Vigato's uh scanning right now with the archaeo.
That's that's Meetla Meatless. It's the Low Bop project in the Wahaka Valley. Yeah, that's a that's a very's got no pyramids though, just excellently built kind of priestly compounds.
And underground some underground rooms that are very suspicious.
Well that's the that's the story that has been told since the sixteen hundreds, and I would be thrilled if Marco found it. Yet he's just he's just in a long line of people that are talking about it.
Let's see the holes. Marco.
Hey, before before we leave the Maya, you were on Lex Freeman's program too, and he has a huge audience. Add in a couple of the friends.
They're telling me my emails just like even as we're going, it's going bing bing bing.
Yeah, what was that all about? Was he kind of following up on the announcement that you were on ancient apocalypse or what? What was that? No?
No, he found me independently. Two weeks before me. He had an even more popular professor from Great Courses already.
Is his name? Did great.
He's like at two million views right now. But apparently Lex is uh you know, a broad intellectual and as he takes his runs around the lake in Austin, he listens to great courses and he listened to mine and said, I like this guy, and he called me up.
Wonderful. So where was his Where was the interview? It was in his studio somewhere.
Yeah, Austin, Texas.
Oh, he's that's so funny. Everyone's in Austin. Now, you were there.
I was Joe's neighbor.
It's said, it'll be ironic if Joe invites me on his show and I just moved.
I could have just walked down the street.
Oh you were that close. That's right. You always told me that. That's interesting.
Uh So anyhow, you just to clarify, though Joe's in the cool part of the neighborhood, I was in the kind of jankie part.
Yeah, we should say as now in Colorado, he's not a Texas resident anymore. All right, Well, hey, that's great. Onward for you and you'll be the Maya darling, the Mayanist of the media, is what we'll expect in the future from you.
Well, here we go tiger by the tail.
Great, all right, today we're talking about Easter Island Rapanui, and let's talk about how you got involved in your interest in that, and then we want to get into some specifics. But you actually have done some surveying there. What was that all about? Yeah, you know, I used to not talk.
About it at all because I was working for the very first ever Rapanui administration, who, for the first time in one hundred and seventeen years, actually had control over their own ancestral sites.
So I talked to them and.
Said, hey, you know, I know that Chili has a map that they don't really share with you, and I would like to come in and make you a map.
That's all yours.
So I did one third of that, and I promised them I would not talk about it or publish anything before U before they had a chance to and to approve anything I would say. But COVID exploded the whole thing, and now there's a brand new administration of this Malhanua operation who uh does not know who I am, does not like the old administration and the and and the old administration took every computer out of the office, so there's really no even evidence that I made that map
for them. I'm looking forward to when when you and I go back to Easter Island on my off time, I'm going to walk over to that office and redeliver all that and see whether I can make a new friend at the Malhanu office and finish what I started.
Did you reveal any of the survey material to the administration when you were there?
Oh?
Yeah, they were. We worked in conjunct with them. They gave us these cool little vests that said Malhanua. We were part of their team, and we delivered everything we had on the spot and our developed maps, and there's there. It's a funny place. There's only like eight thousand people probably less after COVID that live on the island, so everybody knows everybody. I know where the guy that has the information is. He's helping his grandparents rebuild their house
somewhere on one edge of the island. It's it's there, But I'll bring it back and hopefully I'm gonna work on making a new friend and finish what I started there.
Yeah. Well, we want to hear in a bit exactly what you discovered in your survey. When does Repanui come on the scene historically, when do we begin hearing about it.
Well, at the risk of disappointing your audience, I mean the archaeology, the carbon fourteen dates that are actually published and collected properly. They really don't push the dates any farther back than say, nine hundred CE. It was, as far as we know, one of the last of the Polynesian or Oceania islands to be inhabited. And it's pretty far away. I mean, it does make sense. I mean the closest island is Piccaren Island and it's thirteen hundred miles away.
Wow. You know it's funny because they have the sculptures of Moi there and I don't know, unless you can suggest that they appear anywhere else in any other.
No, they really don't.
I mean I think that they are kind of they might be like mega versions of those Tiki statues, you know, something a person standing up with their arms on their sides and a funny hat. That's you know, that's kind of what tikis look like. But Tiki's minor compare. Nobody made Moi like Easter Island.
The Spanish talk about them, and of course cook the seafaring captain shows up there. He's not apparently not well. But uh is it? Is it chronicled? And I think they also try to christianize it at some point as well, don't they.
Oh yeah, or revenue.
He just got it, just got it from all sides, from from missionaries to slavers to you know, even even sheep herders took us wipe at him at some point. Yeah, so the population has taken a beating. I'm just curious. You know, we just mentioned that, you just mentioned that the the sculptures are only part of that island. Is there any thinking that this could have been a sacred grounds, a ceremonial kind of like a church setting, uh for the polem?
Yeah?
Uh, I've never heard any such thing.
And again, especially back in the days of its you know, of its height, it was quite a feat of sailing to get there. I mean it was a long ways away when people are you know, on elaborate catamarans. Boy, I mean, this was not the kind of journey you casually took. We do know that people from Oceania did occasionally reach Repnui, but I don't think in any kind of annual pilgrimage since.
Okay, So that would just mean that there were just the local the people that actually lived on it.
Do they have when Cook showed up his his folks or was it Cook?
Yeah, I think it was Cook. No, no, no, hold on, I've it's after Cook. It's the HMS Blossom that spends some time there, and they tell us that there was a group people on the island that were kind of like not locals, and the locals gave them like a corner of the island, but grudgingly. They called them the long Ears, and they had like longer ear lobes where they put different kinds of.
Ear rings in.
But the rest of the clans really didn't even like them there, and it give them kind of a crappy corner of the island. So there were at the time of the HMS Blossom, which was eighteen twenty five, there was actually at least one Polynesian immigrant community on the island.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we'll return shortly with my guest today, doctor Edwin Barnhardt, discussing Easter Island. We'll be right back. So what Calami all day?
All day.
My guest today is doctor Edwin Barnhardt, who has done some surveying of the island known as Easter Island Rappahannui in the Pacific Ocean, and we're learning a little bit about what he discovered, as well as some new evidence for this the people who lived in that part of the world, you know. And this is funny because I was just reading a little bit about out the history of the island. The local lore is that the elites
could write, perhaps read, but the regular people couldn't. And there is a writing system that they have discovered that's made up of a system of glyphs, right yep.
So what do we know called wrongo wrongo?
Wrongo wrongo, And we.
Don't have a lot of examples of it unless you include the petroglyphs too. There's a lot of the people that are trying to break the code of it point out that there's like a thousand petroglyphs sites on the island.
You know.
We'll go and see a couple of them. But they have at least in places symbols that are similar to the wrongo wrong goo tablets. Wrongo wrongo tablets are only on pieces of wood. They're like polished pieces of wood that the text gets inscribed into.
I've seen a couple of them.
The typical ones are like, you know, a foot or two wide and and about the size of like a floorboard. And they have elaborate and very tightly clustered glyphs that do look like they have a reading order. They're like, uh, you know, horizontal rows of glyphs that go across we The people that are really making headway and have from the beginning are actually Russian scholars, beginning with of all people, you Yori corner Rosov, who was instrumental in breaking the
code of the Maya script. He took a crack at it, and his generations of students afterwards. Uh, they they've been they've been looking at it too, and made some interesting headway. I I have a paper on my desktop right now that I have not read yet from a colleague, Uh Mayani is named Mark Zender shared it with me. There's a new Russian scholar is making, in his opinion, more headway than we ever have.
Uh.
There's there's some hope that maybe we break this language. His this newest thing was pointing out that a lot of the a lot of the glyphs are in duplicate, and he's making an argument that sent so many Polynesian languages have lots of words that are our word word duplicate, like a pool a pool, and that that that that the structure may be indicating a Polynesian language. That's always the trick with these things. Is it just an elaborate symbol set or is it actually reflecting a human speech?
Okay, And there's no mythology or traditions that talk about the people who may have invented this glyph system of writing.
You know, the the revenue.
We actually we have a lot of information to impart on this, just nobody listens to them.
They fairly.
Uniformly say that wrongo wrongo tablets were primarily for recounting lineages, and we do see a lot of things that look like the Russians again have come up with things that look like father and son of and repeated sequences. There was also there was a funny thing. I was just looking this up, you know, to speak intelligently on your podcast, and there was a bishop in Tahiti who took a
particular interest in them. Someone gifted him the very first one we know of in eighteen sixty eight it came to Tahiti wrapped in human hair, which is a little gross. But once he got it, he was like, well, I want more of these things. This is interesting, and he sent people back to Repnui. Then in the eighteen hundreds
who showed up with another like five or six. And then he got a guy from Raphanui that he said, this guy says he knows what it is, and he that person said it was it was a written form of a chant that was done in religious ceremonies. And he ran out and he said the chant and it was recorded. But the Russian scholars have taken a hard look at that and said, no, this is nonsense. This does not at least this does not correlate to the board. He was allegedly reading the chant.
From interesting And there's no other Polynesian history that coincides with this Raphinui writing. There's no parallels, there's no reference.
There's no other no evidence of Wrongo wrongo or any pseudo writing system from anywhere else in Oceania.
It's a it's amazing. Are we gonna have a chance to see a museum on the island that has some of that writing, by.
The way, we will go to a museum and I'm I'm blanking on whether what I saw there was a photo of a Wrongo wrong Goo tablet or an actual wrong Goo wrong Goo tablet, if memory serves wed, they are they're actually I know that that I've read that the Wrongo wrong Goo tablets at least, you know, six to ten of them are still on the island, whether they're at the museum or not or held away. I'm I'm unsure, but there's so few of friends on the island. If they're one there, yeah, I'll figure out how to
see it. Let's see at least one.
That'd be great. The mo I. This is a huge curiosity of mine, and you know it's funny because we talked about it last time we were on the show. There's over a thousand of these things, which is just amazing. Do we have an evolution of those where we see very crude early examples of them, to say the modern or modern one thousand plus years ago the more.
Recent versions, you know, I don't think we have the capacity to analyze them on that level. I think they kind of just peppered their way out into the different clan villages over a period. You know, we estimate that the tradition of them went hard between like one thousand and fourteen hundred AD, and over that time they would at least the revenue.
We say that.
The initiating of making one was kind of like an order. The chief of that village would say, you know what, I'd like to commit a moai in honor of my uncle, a previous chief, and then so they they'd make it in the quarry and they'd bring it out. And then I think that those lines of moi we see were assembled over you know, generations, so it's kind of hard to tell, and especially they're all stone, right, and we
don't have any way of dating them. So I don't think we have even even an avenue to try to estimate who's old, which one's old, and which one's new.
Okay, because we can't.
I didn't know that there's a There was like a funny fashion uh. It was like a fashion statement that happened near the end of the moai building period where there's another quarry that has a type of stone called red scoria, and they start fashioning these big thick hats
that kind of look like top hats. And they would they started putting these top hats on the moai, and so there's some idea that the ones with the red hats are the latest ones, but they could have also just been putting hats on old guys.
So I don't know.
So we don't know if they have evolved because I've seen them dig out. There's a couple of classic photographs of digging out of Moi and you know, it has the classic arms with the fingers resting on the lower belly and on the back of this specific sculpture there is some hieroglyphs and some symbology and has a big head, large nose, big eyes, and then there's this body and
they all seem to be like that. But I'm wondering if there's if that's the typical moai sculpture, or if there's different small all our sculptures that might be a little different design.
That was an exciting find that was done in the nineties. The Earth.
It always turns up on the Internet again and again, like I love that photo. It happened a long time ago, but it did show us that there was carving on this buried Moi. Who was you know, his carving was protected under the ground. And then when you go back to the moai, when we're standing there, we can walk across Tongaiki and look at him. You can see that some of them weathered better than others. And you can see the hints of the hands and the symbols, and
they are different. There's not like a standard symbol for them. I do think the symbols had something to do with the ancestor represented. Okay, gotcha, what are they weigh? And there are a couple of like ugly, smaller ones, which you know. There's a funny one on one edge of the island that stands all alone, and he's called the White and he's really he's like, you know, about my height, and he's not. He's made of a different kind of stone and he's not very nicely carved. But ok they're
just sitting alone. Poor little white guy exiled to the other side of the volcano.
I don't know.
I don't know what's up with him, but he's I don't normally take people there because it's a bit of an arduous journey to see one small, crappy MOI.
What is what's the stone there? Man? It's local volcanic rock.
Yeah, it's local volcanic rock. It's coming out.
You know what.
There's the Runouaku crater and uh, you know now that you mention it, I don't want to misspeak. I mean, the beds are pretty soft, so it may well be volcanic tuft, but I could be wrong about that.
It could be the salt.
But I think saw volcanic tufted because they I mean, the size of them are still huge and impressive, but the actual bed that they're cutting them out of is relatively soft. I mean, they did a lot of that with the digging sticks.
Wow. And I've seen the quarry. Is there more than one quarry or just one or one big one, one small quarry.
There's one big quarry and then there's a second quarry where they're just korey and hats. There's no moi that came out of that second quarry, and it was found, you know, in modern history, but that's all red scoria
and it's just hats. So all the actual moi, at least everyone that I've ever talked to, says that they all came from the runo Iraku crater and there was a specific clan who owned that territory, and they were the carvers, not like another clan wasn't free to go over to the crater and cut out their own moi. They had to special order it from Runo Iraku's clan, who would then deliver it.
And what are the using to cut the stone? Is it stone on stone or what?
I think that a lot of it is just like sanding once they get to the fine points, but the chopping it out is like hardened digging sticks for the most part. They do have obsidian on the island, but that breaks. You really can't use obsidian. Corey rocket just smashes on it.
Yeah. I mean one of the questions I've always had, and we're beginning to see this with different demonstrations, is they're quarrying this huge sculpture. It's cut out, and then somehow they get it to stand up, and then do they drag it or how do they move these things? Because they must weigh what four or five tons?
Oh, some of them are like, you know, thirty tons. I think, wow.
I mean they're they're huge. Yeah, they're gigantic ones. But there's a number of theories on how they moved them. You know, there's practical simple engineering that could explain it. But if you ask the moa, if you ask the rapanui, they always say that they walked there, that they walked themselves there. So there's this neat theory that's been multiple
replication studies have done it over the time. There was a Thorhire doll had a guy named Pavel Pobble who did it first in the nineteen sixties, and then Terry Lippo or Terry Hunt and Carl Lippo recreated it on in Hawaii moved a moai. But basically it's a it's strapping a series of ropes around its body and then on a prepared kind of road surface, they just kind of wobbled him back and forth.
I saw that bill.
It wobbled like an egg down the road.
It must have been very well cut so it's balanced. So they can do that though, because if it was top heavy or bottom heavy, it's not going anywhere.
Well.
It's now been replicated multiple times in modern history, so the idea that it could be done that set it has been done by modern people. Whether that's the way they did it, I don't know. I mean I tend to I feel bad if I if the revenue. We tell us how they did it, and then we're like, nah, that seems rude.
You know.
A weird thing about them, though, is the section that we mapped already. We found some of the roads that led from the quarry to the various clan villages, and along those roads out in just like the bushes in the middle of nowhere, we would find moi. We would find moi that were just fallen along side of the road, and we just that was a real head scratcher, Like, I mean, okay, he fell while they were bringing him. I mean, why not just pick him up continue the journey?
Is that it you trip on an ancestor trips once and he has to hang out by the side of the road for eternity.
That's that's weird.
Was he damaged? Maybe that's why they left.
No, No, there were a couple of them that were just fine, Oh wow, and they're just laying there on the side of the road. I mean we we actually joked with each other, like made fun of each other, like, hey, you know, Jeff, you find any moi out here. You're standing right in front of one. What's your problem? You can't even see a giant moai? In the but it surprised us. They were just sitting in the bushes weird. Along these roads. We have yet to find any that
are just randomly scattered. It was there was like a little breadcrumb trail of a couple of them that had fallen on at least one major road.
Weird. I found that there was the there's supposed to be the founder of the Rapanui, a guy named Hutotua Matua. And not a hell of a lot about the guy, I guess. But what do we know about his uh.
Found We are also polite. They're like, you know, according to our oral tradition, but they have a lot to say about him.
I mean, we call it.
We turn around and say, okay, so this is a legend. Okay, let's go. They tell us, tell us your story. But they say that Hotu Matua was living on another island far away. He was the king of that island, and he had a vision that that this place that they call Tepito, the center of the world, was out there, and so through this vision he sends his best sailors and priests out in the direction he believes it is, and they return saying, yes, it's there.
You're right.
So he's the one who loads up the first like catamaran armada, and they go from his his island, which we're unsure exactly which one that is, and they land specifically at a place called Anaca the beach, which is actually a pretty nice beach if you don't mind cold water. Will go jump in there, so it's there, and then from there he over his the rest of his lifetime.
He establishes Tepito in their words, Rapanui, and he has nine sons who become the leaders of the nine clans, and so that the entire island, which is all of seven by fifteen miles in total area, gets divided among these nine sons. And then the king Hotu Matua is the leader of the Miru klan, and the Miru clan had the most territory and the sweetest beach, Anakena beach is really the only beach of any pleasantness. The rest of it's just rocky, So that's how they set it up.
Interesting, has there been any underwater surveying or archaeology to determine if the seawater rose to a certain level may have covered up earlier portions of the island.
I know that that thor hire Doll did some searching of the water around and found at least one moi out there that was just kind of knocked over, and we accidentally we we accidentally captured it in our photogrammetry.
We saw it too.
It was a nice clear day and we were like, what's that in the water. Oh, that must be what thor Hier Doll was talking about. So we saw one moi, but nothing in terms of like, uh, the major architecture of the island are these platforms called ahu and to my knowledge, we haven't found any platforms that are h. We found a couple of docks that were built of stone,
and that makes perfect sense. But as far as major settlement off the island itself, well, I mean, my experience surveying the island showed me how ephemeral a lot of their architecture really was. The moi are incredible. It's kind of it's a weird thing that they spent so much time making these huge moi that towered over there overly simple homes.
Talk about a little bit about your survey now. When we talked a few months ago, one of the things you found was, I think you said, foundations that were not known, or maybe building outcrops.
Well, I have no idea whether the things I some of the things I found, we were never seen before.
The revenue.
We kind of have an attitude that they know where everything is, and they have all these stories about all of them and different pieces of land have You're like, oh, that ancestors such and such lived over there, and he had an argue with this guy over here, and they thought, But what I did find, what I documented, And this is what I told Malhanu. I said, you guys all know where everything is, but you have no map of where everything is.
And if you.
Get the right to spread out all over the island right now, the only place you're allowed to live is a little town called Hangaroa. Everything else is in National Park. But if they get to go out there, and they're already squatting out there all over the place, said you need to know where the houses of your ancestors are because I know they're just as important to you as the moai. And I'll make you a map so you can responsibly develop and not destroy the places of your ancestors.
So what I did was, you know, kind of boring. Really, I mean, what I mostly did was map out where all of their farmsteads are. They each one of the villages have a a plaza with a big group of steela or I mean Moai and Ahu, and then they have some nice houses around there that are built elliptical form. They have stone bases. But out as you get farther inland, the evidence right now that you can see on the surface is chicken coops and MANAVIAI manav are these stone
lined garden areas where they grow taro. The wind gives there terribly and so if you don't have a stone enclosure around your gardens, the wind just blows your stuff out. So there's tons of these circle man ofvies and then these square stone built chicken coops. Those are called harry Moa. And then there's the man of Ii. And the houses are the ones that really confused me. They're called harry Panenga. And the ones near the plazas are easy to see
and easy to find. But out in the hinter lands where I see activity, I didn't find any houses on the photogrammetry. I've since done a deep dive into every archaeologist that's ever dug a shovel in there, and I think I figured out what I'm looking for. These things were built of perishable materials, but they still had stone lined patios. I think survey for where Easter Island's airport is now found this repeated pattern of stone patios in
front of what were once perishable buildings. So next time I go back with permission to go poke around in the woods or in the bushes, I'm going to try to find those, and then I'll go back to my photogrammetry and see whether I can see them. And I just didn't know what I was looking for.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themsel else, and we will return shortly with my guest today, doctor ed Barnhart, discussing Rappahannui, otherwise known as Easter Island. My guest today is doctor Edwin Barnhardt, who will be leading an Earth Ancients Easter
Island tour March fifteenth to the twenty third. This is a chance to see these huge MOI sculptures up close and personal, and also visit places that most tours do not get a chance to see, simply because we get special access. For more information on this tour, go to Earthacients, dot Com forward slash tours. Do they have any kind of a water delivery system that travels between these dwellings. No.
I never saw any detection of any kind of like pipes or water management.
I know that.
Most of their natural fresh water comes from the craters of the three volcanoes. Okay, so there's one nearest the town. There's the town, and then there's the airport, and then there's this hill that is the third crater, and a wrong goes right there, and then that crater is full of water and to tour reeds.
So how are they getting water to the dwellings? Are they having to trick it in by foot?
I honestly don't know we have an answer to that. I mean I didn't take a pretty deep dive into things. That guy that was that I was just talking about that found the houses, I mean he was he was smart. If he and he was right at the base of that most water filled crater. If he didn't find any evidence of aqueduct systems, heck I don't. I don't think they exist. So then that would leave us with bucket
loads or something. You know, it rains there fairly regularly, it's not you know, a desert at all, so there'd also be you know, at the population of the island, it would be within their capacity to create you know, water catchments where rain water would supply at least most of what they needed. They really weren't big farmers, so they didn't need water for farming. Nor were they big builders, so they really didn't need water for building.
So what was the guest guests on their food? Was it fish? Sea life?
Definitely, marine resources were the primary thing, but they also grew tarot, which is all over Oceany. That's what was in those manavies. And then at some point the sweet potatoes introduced, which was one of the things that all the way back from thor hyer Doll he's been saying, these people have contact with people in South America, How in the heck else did they get a sweet potato?
You know, it's interesting some of the last boats to visit European intrusions point out that they have these these crops that at that point and they're probably influenced at that point. It's like, you know, we're into a century of occasional contact at that point, but they're taught. They talk about farm plots they'd have that had kind of a radial pattern that there would be a building in
the middle. And instead of like we always think of crops as this kind of like you know, checkerboard thing, theirs were kind of a radial pattern out of a center point. But they that account said that they were farming multiple things by the eighteen hundreds.
Okay, Now, I've had a couple of people mentioned to me that there are various hot spots on Rapanui, and these hot spots are close to the Moi and the and they're talking about tolluric energy or gravitational anomalies where the compass would go a little crazy. Are you familiar with any of that kind of discovery, almost like we see in the OMEC sites with some of these sculptures could be carved from meteorites or somehow they're they're charging.
Right, Well, I don't know.
I mean, the compass tricks that I've experienced personally usually have something to do with an iron source nearby, and I don't think there's any iron on the island, but I could be wrong about that. It's such a tiny place, it's you know, it's the reason it exists at all is that it's the tippy top of a six thousand foot volcano coming from the bottom.
Of the ocean.
So I mean it's it's geology is very limited. It's the tippy top of a volcanic mountain. So I don't know much about that. But I have not read that there was any kind of weird anomalies there. But if you know, if you've got the equipment, why don't we go stand in front of a couple of.
Mo i and find out.
I'll bring a little meter with me.
How big is that? How big are those meters?
Can you handheld? Now it's a handheld version.
Sweet, Let's go stand in front of some mom finding out for ourselves.
As you study the Oh before we move on to this. Uh, you surveyed a third of it. What part of the island were you at? Were you you said you? Are you close to the airport that third.
Or were you yeah?
Yeah, I was like from about where the airport is out to Tonga, Riki and Rono Iraku. So I got the crater where all of them are built. I got a bunch of the hinterland next to it and to the west of it. I didn't get anything of the town. I didn't get anything of the biggest of the three volcanoes. I didn't get anything in a Wrongo. It was a
bit of a weird uh negotiation. The chief archaeologist was both friendly and intimidating at the same time, and he he during our time there, he'd say like, well, listen, I want you to survey mostly in this area because I want to know whether people are spatting in their area.
And I need, you know, up to date.
Aerial photography to try to catch people that are living out there in the national park.
And I really wanted to.
Map the other side of the largest of the three volcanoes because I think that's where the head clan lived and nobody ever goes out there, because it's a pain in the ass. That's why I'm walking us out there. You might have seen it in our itinerary. I hated writing it myself, like a six mile walk there in vow that Jesus Christy, I want to see that. You know, you don't have to come, you could just lounge with it. I definitely want to go. I just had to have
but I want to walk out there. But I didn't get to go where I was most interested in because I did have a boss that week.
So they haven't done light art scan of the island right.
Oh, there have been bits and chunks, but not a not a complete light ar scan. In fact, you know, I'm I'm a big fan of light ar two and the professional surveyors that brought the equipment to come with me, they were like, look, I know everybody loves light ar, but this is not a case that needs light ar. I mean, you know, there's no trees. Photogramma tree does just as good a job. I'm still like, when we go back, can we do light ar this time, Jeff. It's much cheaper now though, isn't it. I mean it
used to be. The technology has changed since you know, our stuff was in twenty nineteen, so even in this just five year period. I actually was just with Jeff in Peru and he was like, yeah, yeah, and I'll bring the light our stuff this time. Oh wow, okay, so that'll be fantastic. Well, I mean, you know, that's a bit of the cart for the horse. First thing I need to do is go over there personally and make a friend in the time where they're on the
island of whoever the chief archaeologist is. I have a task of becoming his friend.
Yeah, I'd love to see a scan just the subtleties of whatever foundations are there, or.
I mean, our light ar thing is great, and I'm app hundreds and hundreds of features that have never been recorded, or at least properly recorded. That Chilean map has this weird thing where it's like it's in all it was made in like the seventies or something, so it's a black and white thing with you know, there are squares and there are triangles, and there are circles, and you know, squares that are larger mean one to five sites, and
ones that are small mean one site. And I don't know whether he's talking about an obsidian thing or a building. Now I've made one that actually shows both in color and shape, which buildings are which. And I didn't I didn't put a shovel in the ground, so I'm not talking about stone thing stone artifacts. I'm just talking about buildings, and I I've made the first ever map that actually shows us where the stuff in the hinterland is. I'm
just slightly embarrassed that I didn't find the houses. I had to go back there and look, Carter.
But you didn't publish that survey, did you.
I never did because I promised Malhanua that I would not do anything okay without their permission. And then life went on and all those guys are are gone. Now I've got it. Now I've got promises to institution that I've never met. It's a it's a weird situation that I'm I'm working on tour now.
I want to mention that Ed's going to be leading the Earth Ancients tour. It's going to be March fifteenth to the twenty third. We're just about full. Ed and his programs are maximum about twenty people, and I think we're just about I think we're sixteen or seventeen, I can't remember. If you're interested in joining us, go to Earth Ancients dot com ord slash Tours. The entire itinerary
is there. We meet in Santiago, Chili and then have a dinner, we kind of talk a little bit, and then we all get on one plane and we fly to Rape Easter Island for a one week tour. So I'm actually looking forward to it, and.
It sounds like you are too, well, I hope, so, oh yeah, I mean, it's an amazing place. You know what will surprise you. There's so many things surprising, but one thing is that the Rapanui. It's a Chilean influence, but they're super foodies. All of their restaurants are excellent, even places that look like a greasy spoon just to serve you these beautiful looking plates. And they really take
great care in their food. I used to try to ask them to make us like a picnic box lunch so we could spend more time out with the moi, and they'd be like, no, that is uncivilized.
You will come back and have a reasonable meal.
Oh my god. Okay did they grow their own produce or do they bring it in from Chili?
You know, the COVID made them all of a sudden learn how to farm in a big hurry. And since the time of COVID, they've gotten these magnificent farms that they used to never have. So there's a lot of local I mean literally farmed table places of all places Easter Island.
Wow. So I guess they have their animal husbandry too. They have their cows and their chickens and their pork for the meals as well.
Yep, yep they do.
And I don't think I've seen many cows. Those may be imported. That's probably Chili's famous for their beef. But the other thing funny thing they have is like I think it's like two thousand wild horses. During the time when it was a sheep farm for seventy eight years, the horses just escaped and now they're these like like herds of wild horses just running across the bases of the volcano. It's surreal, wow, amazing. As we can include our interview at.
What would you say the hope is for discovery on Repnui? Is there any connection with any other Polynesian islands? Is there anything? I mean we're talking. We've talked about the writing that would be great to break the code, great break the uh, the hieroglyphs, the glyphs that they have composed and figured out what they were trying to say. But is there anything that you would like to understand a little better about the island that is a complete ministry?
Yeah? Where the hell are the houses?
Okay?
Other than that, which is my current mystery, like that, that's that was not on my list before I showed up there. You know, they are in a continuum of people from Polynesia. They're not you know, they're they're they're not a mystery in that regard the the ahou that the moai are on those particular platforms do have a strong correlation to platforms that are called marae in other islands, and and they have much the same function too. They
are places where the ancestors are honored. So that's that's certainly something we understand. Let's see, you know one that's that that really tickles me. Maybe I'm morbid in that is uh, you know what exactly is the nature of their cannibalism what they were cannibals, and they're actually the the the revenue we today are kind of proud of it. They they don't deny it at all. They say, yeah, we ate each other when things went crazy. We ate
each other all the time. And sometimes we just capture somebody and need him just to disrespect him and his ancestors. They've got a funny sense of humor. One of them that I became friends with on the island said, we're looking forward to coming you coming back. You should bring your family and we'll have a barbecue. We like, we had a moment that was like, you know, uncomfortable, and then he was like, Aha, no, I won't teach you children.
It's fine.
By the way, have you found or are there any cemeteries or tombs where we get a sense of some of the burials.
No, that's a that's an interesting one too.
The traditional way of burying in Polynesia is to bring the body out to sea. But there was a time period where they they went to war on each other and they hid in these little crevices and caves, and then we do find bodies in those after the after the island was disnuted of all of its trees and this war broke out there are they were kind of forced to have a tradition of I guess burial, though I don't think anybody got buried. I think they got stashed in the back of caves.
I thought you were going to say they did cremation, but that doesn't sound like something they were into at all.
Well, you know that that would have been logical to me. There was a terrible moment where the epidemic diseases were hitting them so bad where one report said the bodies were just piling up and people just couldn't deal with them. There was nothing they didn't really have a tradition or methodology how to deal with that much death that quickly, so they just kind of just piled them up in their clan villages.
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I would think that there would be at least the tomb of a king or a queen or somebody important in the early phases, But I guess not right, not so far.
In fact, there's no, there's nothing in terms of I mean, they talk about the Ahu's being depth the place where the chiefs and the major people's bodies were interred, and there are definitely some crypts there. Inside those we don't get to see any of those. We might see like recreations of them in the museum if they've done that, But even those are contested, Like are those the bones of people that were that were being honored as chiefs
or was it something else. I had one old hand archaeologist on the site on the island say, look the actual evidence that this one we dug up has a bunch of burning and there's banana leaves in there. This was not an honored burial. This was a barbecue.
God knows if they were cooking.
That was from the mouth of a guy who's spent his whole life on the island.
Oh my god, it's amazing. Ed is always a pleasure having you on the program. Give us a heads up, give us your website and what you're up to.
Oh, thank you very much for the opportunity. Well, you know, I'm a fellow podcaster. I love pointing people to my hard to pronounce when you read it out name Rchao Ed, so it's like the front of the word archaeology and then just Ed. I'm having a lot of fun making that podcast. I'm the director of Maya Exploration Center and we have tours all over the world. You and Iyes might be the coolest one we do in twenty twenty five, but you know, we've got other things we'd love to
have people come and see for themselves. You know, there's so many mysteries we talk about on your show, but you know there's no substitute for seeing it with your own eyes.
Yes, give us the website for the for the Maya Exploration Group.
Maya Exploration dot org. Okay RG at the end, we're a nonprofit right Yeah, And I'll tell you.
Ed does some amazing tours. He's in Mexico quite a bit. He's actually been in Cambodia and seeing some of the ancient sites there. So if you're interested in world travel, I can tell you right off the bat he's a great one for leading tours.
So thanks.
I Actually I have my you know, my protege. Now, Luke Caverns is going to go lead a trip for me to Cambodia. April sixteenth, I think is the date, because no, it's twenty sixth, because that's the time of the other Zenith that I have never recorded. I'm getting Luke involved in my studies, so he's I have conscripted him to be an archaeo astronomer in Cambodia and he's going to big bring a big group to see it with him for the first time.
Wow, So you're not going to that You're not going to that one.
Now, I'm not going to that one.
You know.
I've been running like a like a rat on wheel around the world for thirty years.
I'm in chill. I'm taking a few trips.
You get you get one of my only trips I'm doing leading personally in twenty twenty five. But you know, I'm of the age where am I going to be a one off or am I going to create a team that continues this sort of thing for the next generation.
And so you know right now that.
My team leads are Luke Caverns and Zach Zach Lindsay, who's in Yucatan. You're going to get to meet him. He's gonna do uh your group next month?
Right?
Excellent?
Excellent?
I got I gotta build a team or I'm just a flash in the pan. Yeah.
Here, that's a lot of travel to It puts a lot of strain on your bod. So, hey, fantastic, ed, Always a pleasure and continue success. We're gonna love seeing you in this Ancient Apocalypse series, and I think that'll be the beginning of even a greater opportunity. So and those of you listening, I'm twisting as armed to write a book or two, so we'll see if he can spit something out.
I truly appreciate your support and inspiration. Cliff.
All right, cheers, buddy, Thanks badios. Always good to have on the program. He's a wealth of knowledge and he's always like doing new research on the places he likes. I didn't mention this, but we are down to just a handful of spaces left for this Repainnui Easter Island tour next March twenty twenty five. If you're really interested in going, I wouldn't wait, thinking that you could probably pull together to join us, at least register with the
deposit that you can get back. I mean, I can count on one hand the spaces we have left, and I would say probably by the time the week's over will be full. So if you have any questions, email me at Earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com and I'll get back to you pretty quick. But as I mentioned, this was highlighted on a couple of different tours, and I didn't suspect that it would be reacted to
in the manner it was with quick sign ups. But I think honestly, we've only got a few spaces left, and we keep our tours very small, no more than twenty people, and that's because we want great access. We want an intimate group that we can shuttle around and also keep in one location so we have the best access to the local authorities, the local archaeologists, and I like to role like that. I wasn't sure. I mean, I've had grouped up to about forty five, almost fifty
people and it works out. But for some reason twenty twenty five, Max is very fluid and it works great and people to connect and it's a family. We become a family. So again it's going to be Easter Island March fifteenth to the twenty third, and we all meet in Santiago, Chile. We have a nice dinner, we kind of connect, and then we get on a plane and we fly. I think it's four hours to Easter Island.
So come out and join us if you're interested. We have a few spots left on our Sacred Temples of Mexico. That's going to be November eighth through the seventeenth. If you have any interest in that. That's a one week or two that is really archaeology. Those are archaeological parks. If you haven't been to a park, these are areas that have been courting off just for the general public.
And a couple of places will go beyond some of the court and off areas because we know, or I know, and so does my team know, that there's other sites to see. So this is a great tour. I've been doing it for twenty years and we're going to have an archaeologist discuss some of the excavations that have been happening. And it's fun, it's relaxing, and it's quite spectacular when you see this archaeology, these buildings and pyramids. I'm close
and personal. For more information on that tour again, it's the November eight through the seventeenth. Go to Earthancients dot com, forward slash Tours t O U R s and check it out. And I want to mention we are beginning to formulate our twenty twenty five schedule. We will not be visiting Egypt, but we will be visiting Turkey in the late spring early summer and then so we can
do Easter Island. We do Turkey around June July, and then we're going to be doing a Day of the Dead in Guatemala at Tkal, one of the largest Mayan cities in the world, and we will be there and have a chance to sit on top of this one very very old pyramid that I suspect is probably around ten thousand years or older, that is generating energy that
is tactile. You can actually feel it, you can we can sit up there as the morning sun rises and connect with our ancestors, our dearly departed relatives, friends and loved ones in a Day of the Dead tour that's gonna be in October twenty twenty five. So we're only gonna do three and we're not gonna we're gonna leave Egypt out just because they're We're just gonna skip a year.
So again, for more information on all of our tours, Earth Ancients dot com, forward slash tours, questions, concerns, send me an email, Send it to Earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com. All right, that's it for this program. I want I think my guest today at Barnhard coming to is from Colorado in the United States of America. As always, the team of Gail Tour, Mark Foster in London,
and everyone who makes this thing happen. Thank you. All right, take care and be well and we will talk to you next time.