We got a good one for you this week.
It's in my sweet spot, which is meso America, Middle America, Mexico, Central America. And we're talking Omech with my friend doctor Edwin Barnhardt. And it's a good subject because there's a lot of mystery.
I'm just gonna put it that way. It's mystery, it is intrigued and what's beginning to come out. And you know, we spent a lot of time in Egypt. Egypt's been studied for decades, over one hundred and fifty years, maybe even longer, since seventeen hundreds, since Napoleon got in. The Egyptian the basically pillaged the whole country and brought back whole temples.
I mentioned this before.
If you go to the mouve in Paris, there's an entire temple that they reconstructed there, plus just countless artifacts that the Egyptians went back. But this week we're going to talk about not just the Olmec, but the Maya.
And I have been.
Fascinated since I started going down in the late nineteen nineties to Mexico at the invitation of elders, most notably Humbat's men, who had written a number of books, and he wanted to show the Western culture that there was more to the Mayan people than the bloodthirsty, heart ripping savages that are portrayed by National Gea, the Smithsonian and places like that. And this is what I'm bringing forth
in this book on writing the Maya Contraver. I've talked enough about We've got to get the thing going anyhow, Today we are talking about a lot of strangeness that's been coming up with the Maya and also with the Omec. The Omec used to be considered the mother culture.
Of the Maya.
And we've had a number of people on the program saying that no, they were contemporaries. They they probably battled each other. And I am in the middle of right reading a book by a really well known minus a guy named David Stewart who has written this really well put together book called The Four Heavens, and I gotta say, if you do decide you want to get this book, and by the way, it's the latest and the greatest
about the Maya. He is an epigrapher, which is an expert in translating mostly Stoneworks because we don't have a lot of very few Cotises very few written books only, and those don't get into kings and very little pottery. Most of what he interprets in this book are stories of kings and their domain and what they are up to it and the battles. But I'll tell you this, if you decide to get it, don't I mean buy the book. Just look look at the great images. But
by the audible version, it's much easier to consume. If you decide to read it, you're gonna have to be very very patient because it takes a long time to get to the point. And I mean it's I shouldn't. I'm not a great reader. I have to be honest with you, so I'm not one to common. If you
love to read, get the book thefore heavens. If you don't like to read, and you're like me, you don't have a lot of time, get the audible because it's really the latest good data, academically researched and presented in a very palatable manner. Unfortunately it borders on academic. But if you listen to it, it's much easier to consume. But it's good. It's good material. Here is the great problem we're dealing with right now, and This is what
I'm trying to get out through my writing. There's two phases. There's the pre Classic, early Middle, and Late, and there's the Classic, early Middle and Late. What archaeologists don't tell us is that these two are separate periods, separated by a few thousand years. The earliest Maya, the pre Maya. These guys, very oddly, were very much like the pre Dynastic or early Egyptians. They had a king's list. They built magnificent megalithic, huge temples and pyramids, the largest in
the Americans. And I talk about this all the time. Why is this unique? The Egyptians follow the same pattern their earliest works. If you consider the pyramids pre Dynastic or Old Kingdom, which some people believe that's true, I think they're much earlier. The Egyptians are very similar to the Maya. The Maya are very similar to the Summers Sumerians.
And so they all have kings lives. This is all real new stuff.
Now.
What's mind bending in What is fun about this interview today is that I'm asking it. I say, ed, now, the Egyptians have a kings list of noted kings, noted pharaohs, but it goes into deep antiquity, thousands and thousands, ten thousands of years or more of prehistory, and Egyptologists do not can sitter pharaohs or kings prior to a certain time factor.
Why is that?
Because they can't bend around the idea of any sophisticated civilization before four thousand years or five thousand years. This is what we're seeing in with this new book The Four Heavens by David Stewart. We're seeing ancient cities like Elmador, which has the largest pyramids in the America's listing kings that go back ten thousand years actually earlier than that. And how do these guys and this drives me nuts.
Why don't they think about the possibilities of early people, of early migrants who make up and eventually become the Maya. They can't go there. So what happens is as far as they can go is known kings. Because they can correlate kings between different posts, different steela. Which of these standing markers that talk about the kings, the ones they know about, they admit, But when they start going further back,
it's like, oh, it's mythology. Why is it mythology? Because it's too far in the distant paths for them to consider a true pharaoh, a true king.
This is just.
Getting out of hand. And the beauty of someone who is highly educated in a minus himself. And if you don't know who Ed Barnhart is, check him out. He's going to Ed Barnhart dot com. Go to his YouTube channel, which is growing steadily. He's got quite a fan base. He has actually done excavations. He's a serious field archaeologist, and he is of the belief that, you know, we need to be a little more flexible. And remember, and if you haven't heard it before, you're going to hear
it now. We have about one percent of the knowledge of the of the Maya. Now in Egypt it's a little more, maybe five percent. There's so much that's buried. And remember, the technology is exposing a great deal of information. We've talked about this before. Eight nine years ago, universities and the Guatemalan government, our universities got together and paid for sophisticated light art scans of the biasphere of Guatemala. When did they turn up? They turned up sixty thousand
unknown pyramids, temples, buildings, cities. Listen to what I'm saying. It's not a few hundred. Oh there's a few scattered hundred. No, they plotted and calculated that there were sixty thousand unknown ruins in the Guatemala jungle.
Well, what the hell?
What does that say? Well, that says that we have just scratched the surface. So this goes on and on and on, and we make the best sense of it that we can. Today's program is more focused on the Omecs, some of the new discoveries that have been made, some of the new interpretations that have been made, and one of them is that the Omech were very likely megalithic builders as well, and we'll learn just why. So today's program is the Omeic Enigma, Unearthing meso America's Lost Empire.
And my guess is, Doctor Edwin Barnhardt.
This is gonna be an Omech program.
We have Doctor Edwin Bonhart back with us, and it's always fun to talk with Ed. I have had the privilege of going and joining him on a number of tours, including one that was focused on the Olmech. And not only is ed a I would call a bible of information. He loves his work and it shows and so we're talking about the OLMEC today and a number of topics that have been coming up, just not only through Ed's work, but through other scientists and research investigators that I wanted
to touch base with. So Ed, good to see you. Thanks for joining me and the house life in Colorado. You're now a pure I shouldn't say pure. Were you moved from Texas to Colorado. The temperature should be a lot nicer where you're at right. Oh, it's a beautiful day out there. I've got the sun shining in behind the computer right now. Nice to see a cliff. Thanks for inviting me back. Thank you. Yeah, good to see you. I had a number of questions regarding just the Olemech
as a whole. One of the things that I think we brought up last time, and it's been I think four or five years since we last talked about the Olemech is this is one of these cultures that almost shows up complete, and I was wondering, do we have a record of them in a developmental stage where they're building early mud huts and pyramids and developing a cosmology that eventually blooms into a much more sophisticated cosmolgy.
Well, We do have some evidence of a gradual development, not as much as I would like. You know, a lot of it comes from a site called Almanatee that's close to San Lorenzo, and then San Lorenzo itself, which is the first big Olmech city, has evidence of early occupation that was more simple and then developing into building that gigantic range building. They made this platform that's a
kilometer wide, it's narrow, it's a big rectangle. But we do have some Oftentimes, you know, that sort of information is hard to come by without serious deep excavations because you know, the newer stuff buries the older stuff, right it is, you know, I the Onmic are certainly the first major civilization to come up with art and religion and the roots of writing, and that makes them fascinating and unique in meso America. But I do think we have enough information to say they didn't just like PLoP
down complete. We see them growing. There are years where they're there but not creating those big basalt monuments. Yet we see a sequence of building on the big platform there. We see the population going from a small amount of people very close to that platform to spreading out all over the place there's ant Cipher's did a really great job of documenting the expansion of San Lorenzo's population, so we have data out there, but that's really I mean, most of that that I can cling to is in
San Lorenzo. I'd love to see us go to more of the Olmec cities and do that kind of extensive study so we can see just how quickly they developed.
Who what university or organization would you say are the most active in excavating omech sites, because you know, I used to think it was it was in Texas, you know, but that seems to be more Maya focus. University where you came from, school, you graduated from, and I think that's where isn't that where David Stewart is residents right now, the one of the better known Mayanish.
That's where I was from U T. Austin, and that's where David's from. But actually, not much has been done in ut on the in the Olemec world that I'm aware of in decades. I mean Kent Riley's work when he was a student there was a big deal, and that was mostly art historical, not excavations. The truth is there are very very few excavations going on in the Olemec world. You know, I can count the guys that
are active olemech archaeologist that I know. You know, on one hand, the biggest project that I'm excited about is once again going on in San Lorenzo. But Vicky Arietta is leading a team every summer, I guess now or every yeah, once a year, she's leading team there and excavating, continuing the work of her mentor and Cipher's. But they're from Halapa in Vera Cruz. I think they're from the University of Vera Cruz, So that's a Mexican it's a
Mexican project. And I was following them when they were in this season this year and it looked like they had, you know, maybe forty people working, students, professors and locals. So I'm excited to see what they come up with. She is probably gonna find another head. She knows where to look, she's well trained. Her mentor found the last one. She's gonna find another one.
You know, that's funny you mentioned that, because I've always wondered how in the hell did Sterling find Didn't he find like five or six heads in like one four or five year period. I mean it's like either I think.
He found I think he found yeah, in like a one year period.
Is it because the farmers were like, we found this half exposed or did he have like his radar up just to find all make heads? No, they were exposed on the surface. The ones they were moved from their original locations tumbled down the hill, but they were exposed to the surface. And yeah, the farmers showed them all of them. Every every head that Sterling found, he was
led there by a farmer. Some of the ones that were found during the Yale project where they used a magnetometer, they found a couple of totally buried heads, but most of them that Stirling found, like most archaeologists' great discoveries, were you know, toddling behind a farmer magnetometer. How does does that work? Is that some way of picking up stone or crystalline frequencies in the stone or how does that work?
Yeah? I don't know the exact science of it, but I do know that it was capable of detecting basalt under the ground. And since San Lorenzo has no natural beds of basalt, all that was dragged in there. The I guess it's the resistance of the soil versus other stone types. In this particular case, that worked like a charm, because any piece of basalt, no matter how small, had to be hauled from seventy kilometers away. They fifty. Is the feeling.
That these huge basalt heads are kings of unknown history and there's a possibility that there's more of these huge heads that are still buried or what's the feeling on that. Is there any research or any study that has been done on them?
Well, I think you're exactly right. The predominant opinion is that they're kings and that they were placed on these big linear platforms, and there's no reason to believe there's not more. You know, San Lorenzo began that tradition of making heads, you know, two hundred years before they gave up the ghosts, So we should have two hundred years of kings and we've got ten heads. But of course that's theoretical. We could be totally wrong about who these
heads are. It makes sense in their position and that their unique faces and headdresses, which I bet you somehow allude to what their name is, the fact that each one has a different headdress I bet you. Encoded in that headdress is some sort of marker that says this is King X, just like the Maya did so much more clearly afterwards. You know, there are certain Maya kings who have their whole name spelled out in their head dress.
It's funny, though, because we don't see helmets in Mayan sculptures that I know of. It seems like the omic It's almost like they're a warring class. But what is your interpretation of these these helmets, what makes.
These well, you know, helmets is a loaded term. Why helmets implies they are warriors fighting someone, or perhaps sports players. But those are both very Western ideas, and we really have no weapons that any of these Olmec figures are ever shown with, So I think that the idea that they are you know, war related, is probably off beat. They probably are some sort of headdress, some you know,
some symbol of their authority. Could be ballplayers, but that's again, you know, that's us Western thinking that a football player wears a helmet, When we actually see the Maya playing ball games in their art, nobody's wearing a helmet. They're wearing pads on their body. So the big heavy solid ball doesn't explode their organs. But there they don't really wear helmets to play the game. So I lean headdress,
and you're right there. Unique there's the headdresses got bigger and bigger and bigger after the Omes, and the Olmec wore some pretty big addresses too. Wow. So there must be some significance to that unique form. But we have not. We'll probably never truly figured that out, but few have even you know, made an argument why they're different.
You on tour with you and when we were in Leventa, made an interesting statement. We have the bones of various Maya rulers and people, but we don't have anything from the Olmec. And your reasoning was that the soil is so acidic that it eats up the bones and remains. Do we have any remains at all, any like burial goods that would give us the kind of a sense of who these people were?
You know? We do? Uh. And when I told you that statement a few years back, you know, and still to this day, that is the prevailing wisdom that the reason we have so few all skeletons are the acidic nature of the soil. Totally makes sense, but here's the weird thing, Cliff that I've now traveled a lot of the Olemec world. I went and really did a deep dive before I made this twelve lecture series Olmec Thing for the Teaching Company, which came out last year. But
everywhere I went I saw bones. In the tre Sipotees museum at that site, there are bones. There's a skeleton sitting right there in a little display case. And I talked to the guards and they said there are more in the lab. And I went to the museum in San Andreas Toushla that has a lot of the stuff from those mountains and some from Trecapotees. There were skeletons in cases there. There were baby skeletons. I talked to the people at San Lorenzo. They said that they dug
up skeletons with Anne Cipher. She actually did analyze two of them. But the people there that were workers told me they had more. And so it's funny. I mean, I've always heard this, there are no l next skeletons, but geez, they're sitting in museums just you know, weird. I am not a chemist guy, I can't go in there.
You know, some people misunderstand, you know, I don't have some authority because I'm an archaeologist or a PhD. I can't just walk into a museum and go, well, you better get some chemists in here and do that, because that's an authority over this. You know, you guys better, you know, just get on the ball. It's Mexico's business.
But there are there are old Mech skeletons that are on display, and probably many more in labs, and I would love to see somebody actually give us some data off of Those'd be nice.
To know, you know, at least a carbon date, if not an analysis to find out what kind of lifestyle they led.
I mean, it's low hanging fruit and you know, and are in display cases in public museums. It's not like it's some kind of like the Smithsonians are hiding giants in the basement kind of conspiracy. You know, they're just there for anybody to see. That's funny.
Now ed in a recent video, you highlighted the fact, in your opinion, that the Omech shaved their heads.
Yeah.
No, I want to hear about this because in this I didn't see the whole thing. But you have them bald under their helmets.
What's that all about?
Oh?
You know, that was kind of like the hook at the front that my convinced me to do that. I still I do think they're bald under the helmet. I think the purposely, I think they're shaving their heads. I think it's a I think it's a religious practice, similar to religious practices we see all over the world, you know, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Friars with their funny li little hole on the top of their head. That's yeah.
Those kind of head shavings are called tonsure, and they are invariably connected to religious practices, and they're an outward show of your piety and devotion. And I think that the Olmech are doing the same sort of thing. I think this baldness can't be natural. They don't even show themselves with peach fuzz. They're really, you know, adhering to this shaving their heads. And I think it had something
to do with religion. And we've kind of you know, there's so many things that you can glean if you just have the right perspective approaching the art, and this is one of the things. When I did my deep dive for the lecture series that I noted again and again, like where is a single I got obsessed with it, like I gotta find one guy with hair. I couldn't could not find a single guy with hair. And then
I find women. I found like five different examples of women with mohawks, but they've got breasts and they've got skirts, so they're different. They're women, but they they have hair, but men don't. And so you know, I had a ton of neat suggestions from people when I put that video out. One of them was continually, Uh, well, they shaved their head because of lice. But you know, even if that was true, it is that means that the women were allowed to have lice but the men weren't.
I mean, that's a weird thing. There was. There's also I got a thousand comments about the braids there. You know, probably people here listening are of the camp that believe that the Olmec were African. Yeah, and and they're they're a fiery group. Boy, they will not be told otherwise. But they bring up these braids. But they're only on one helmet, and they come from the top of the helmet and down, and they are more likely kets all
feathers than braids. The way they have a little not jewel at the bottom that kind of tucked them and hold them down is just like out of some Maya head dresses. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think there's any hair there. There's no hair coming out from under the helmets. I've walked around all seventeen heads now and been like, you got her hair? You know.
That brings up another topic and we have discussed it before and the prevailing wisdom which is now changing. Have you read any works from Paulette Steve's the Archaeologists from Canada that's redating North American sites.
She's a native.
I'd like to Yeah, I've had her on a couple of different times. She is redating a number of sites in the United States to over one hundred thousand years each, and it's kind of blowing the idea of the bearing straight out a little bit. And this comes to another question is these Olmec has look African centric, and there's other Olmec that look Asian centric, and there's others that
look Caucasian. And at the turn of the century there was a couple of people that actually wrote books that believe there was a migration that wasn't necessarily from the bearing straight. They were more nautical or oceanic transatlantic oceanic migrations. Why is it so hard to even consider that?
Wow, I'll consider it right now, Yeah, right, I mean it's yeah, uh, it's because there's a lack of care operating evidence. It's difficult to go just on art to make the argument stick. I totally agree. I've never denied that the heads do look negroid and the chubby babies look very Asian. Easier to explain the Asian part, or explain it away, I should say by noting that all Native Americans are from Asiatic stock, and that the Maya even have the Mongolian spot on the base of their
baby's spine. They're they're strongly Asian already. So the you know that especially the babies. You know, if you really look at the examples that look Asian, car predominantly the baby sculptures, and you could explain it away through just some kind of depiction of how babies look at the squinty eyes and you know, let's not say any thing else racist, but but but you can see that the black ones are harder to come around the negroid features.
But here's the thing. I mean, we have to have more than just art to make an argument that genetic populations moved into the area. We should have, you know, the initial artifacts from those parts of the world showing up at some sort of initial contact place. And like we were just saying, we actually do have a lot of Olemech skeletons from the Olemech world. You know, seventy five years ago when the first real debates about their origin, be it you know, African or Asian, came up. Nobody
even dreamed we could do DNA studies. But now you know, we could really do them on the existing Olmec stuff. And given this controversy and this open question of whether it's possible that they were immigrants from another continent, it's within our grasp. Like, you know, let's make every Olemech project number one priority finding skeletons.
Yeah, we're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guest today, Ed Barnhard, discussing the Ohmic enigma. Will be right back with you. My guest today is field archaeologist and mayanist Ed Barnhardt coming to us from Colorado. We're discussing the all mechanigma, the new discoveries that have been found in Mexico and Central America, and the all next place in our understanding of history.
With the Maya. What do you say we have one percent excavation of the Maya, and what do you feel about the Omec similar percentage or maybe more five percent because we've been able to dig up a little Oh gosh, you know, I am. I am flippant with that one percent, and I would be equally flippant in the in the ole Nec area, especially considering Enomata's light. Our study just showed us we have over two hundred big ole Nec
platforms that we haven't gotten to. You know, that's since we currently have you know, eight and now there's another two hundred. What's what's that? You know? And all the spaces in between that didn't show up on light are I'd say, you know, practically speaking, when we're talking about excavating or even just exploring and mapping, we've got these tiny little postage stamps. Even t Kal is a postage stamp sitting in an ocean of p ten rainforest. All
the space in between it is full of things. You know, we've found most of the major Maya cities most not all, but the places in between, gosh, we don't know anything. You know. Estrada Bellies lightar front that he did for National Geographic they came up with, you know, sixty thousand buildings in a relatively against small area. When you zoom out and look at the area they covered, you're like, that's a fraction of this area. When they say sixty.
Are they are they presuming thousands or are they actually counting sixty thousands?
I wish I knew the answer to that question. And I've been a huge riber Francisco and say like, do you actually have a map with sixty thousand or did you take a few squares and extrapolate, you know, well, which is how like like t Call's population estimate. Now we can probably readdress it with the light ar that we have. But the truth is when the initial numbers came out anywhere from seventy to one hundred and fifty thousand.
The reason they wiggle is because the surveys did you know, straight north south east west lines that they cut and mapped anything there, and then they went about you know, fifty meters on either side of those lines and mapped, but there were big blocks that they never actually mapped, and they extrapolated. Okay, if there's this much in the areas we have mapped, the little blank squares that we didn't get to would total this. So actually there's not
a one survey of call. There's there's grid lines with big holes in each grid.
It's funny because I mean, I would think a few hundred would be comfortable. But to say sixty thousand unexcavated buildings, pyramids, temples, whatever else, that's a huge number. That's a whole civilization.
And from my perspective, Jesus, it would take a long time to draw that map.
Well, you're contemporary. Richard Hansen says it would take two hundred years.
To excavate that many sites.
I think he's low balling it. Actually, it'd probably take longer than two one hundred years, you know, I mean.
I think it would. You know, you also got to put us in our historical perspective. Yes, with our current techniques, it would take hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, with shovels and digging these things out. I dream of a day where we can remotely sense a lot of this and leave these sites alone. You know, our chaeology is destructive. Every time we dig these things up, we
ruin them for the future generations. I think that our ability to remotely sense inside buildings and from above and more resolute things are going to each step we take is going to give us the ability not to dig up and destroy these buildings, and the work will be done instead of in three months, in three days and it'll stay there, you know, I do. I'm sensitive to the fact that, you know, these kings buried in these tombs, they were like, you know, the sacred heart of their
ancestral worship oriented religion. And it just kind of sucks on a level that you know, a thousand years later a team of white guys come and dig this guy out. Uh would have been a museum. I would prefer to see these guys stay where they are. There's a point in which, you know, I think we have an abundance of information about Maya kings. Let's start asking some more interesting questions, like that live outside there?
Is that a thought that archaeologists have, especially those who have gotten permission to excavate a site. Is there kind of like this area's hands off, this area will excavate or do they just kind of go through the whole site and go, Okay, we'll see what we can get.
Oh, well, that's a case by case basis, and there is a general I don't know if it's a codified written rule or not, but we're really not supposed to be digging up tombs anymore. We're supposed to be answering questions about architecture and lifestyle, but we're not supposed to be, you know, honing in on tombs. Yeah, find some accidentally, there's a lot. There's a lot of them that are
accidentally found. But it's really not it's it's becoming less and less politically correct to just go into one of these sites and say, where are your kings at? Where your king's at? Do they have gold on them? Do they have jade? Where we try to ask more sober scientific questions about like construction sequence and boring stuff.
Yeah, what is the responsibility of an archaeologist? Now ed, when you get out of school and you got your anthropology degree and you spend time and you do your field work to become an archaeologist, is there kind of a national database of sites that are being looked at and money's being funneled to or is it a random
kind of piece by piece. Each university has their own set of goals and they're not looking at some kind of through some kind of a database that says, Okay, we all agree we are going to work here and then continue on. I mean, I was just curious. I've never even thought about that until you brought that up. That's a that's a complex question. There is no like global database that I'm aware of of archaeological sites or definitely not any kind of agreed upon goals of what
we should do next. That's that's by university and things. There is a each country.
Has a government branch of archaeology that's responsible for recording all known sites and what the data is and who did the dig and they give the permissions or deny the permissions to come and do this work. So proposals are presented to you know, the nations, you know, for talking about Guatemala, it's it's the Archaeology Department of Guatemala. They are they're they're actually the culture and sports. I don't know why the heck archaeologies in that, but it is.
But they they decide who would do projects, and they you know, they're the ones who require the reports and the responsible behavior. So there's there's that, But when it comes from like people in the universities in the United States graduating and then doing a project down there, it's it's very uh, piecemeal, it's you know, they there's there's a bunch of different organizations. They could ask for money. They they of course need to interact with the country
that they're going to. But you know, if you're new, you could say, well, I'll go to Guatemala because I have friends there. I'll go to Mexico, or I won't go to Belize, or you can choose those sort of things. Okay, if that's what you're getting at, I mean you were asking more like an ethics question.
Well, no, when i'mand we do Egypt every year as a tour, and there's parts of Egypt that are being excavated by German universities and the Germans, like Elephantine Island is now they've the Germans have been there over fifty years, continually excavating that site. They're paying for it. They're paying millions of dollars for the for the privilege of it.
But I don't know if they are going through the Antiquities department and saying we want to stay here because we have a we've discovered something, or we want to continue here and we want the permission to do that.
Is that the same thing in Mexico or uh yeah, yeah, that's I'm glad to hear it's the same thing in Egypt. I'm a little or you said it kind of like a question, not a fact, But I wonder.
I mean, I don't have a clue what they do in Mexico, because you know, the Omecs are we have this Emoto's work in uh in olemech areas finding these platforms. We have Hansen down in El Miodoor in Guatemala, I mean, taking on that huge, huge city, and it seems like it's individually fun, not funded by a body of archaeological community or whatever. I'm just the funding comes from various sources.
I'm going to turn my phone off here. The funding comes from various sources. You're right about that, But the permission comes from the countries so like, and each one of them are a little different in their approach. Mexico, for example, has Ina Inina is a huge institution, and they have in house archaeologists. They're trained in Mexican universities and then hired into Ina and they do the vast
majority of excavations. So if a foreign group wants to go into Mexico, they've got to have their credentials in line. They've got to have their money. They got to present a plan of work, and each and every season they have to produce the report of what they've done, and
then they get permission to continue. If it's a one year project, it's a one and done, but if it's a multi year project, each at the conclusion of each season they're required to hand in a report to Ena, who looks at it, sees the value or lack thereof, and says, okay, you may proceed, or you guys are bozos, you're out. Guatemala does much more of that because they have less of a home grown team of archaeologists. They're
working on it every year. Our generation, i should say, Guatemala has now a great team of Guatemalan archaeologists, so they're doing more and more of that work. Like Edwin Romaine is just knocking it out of the park. Things that used to be only universities in the United States would be doing them now, t call and that whole area of the ten is mostly being excavated by nationals. But they do reply. They do rely on or allow foreigners to come in and do other work that they
are not getting to themselves. But do they have to do.
The foreigners have to pay in a certain fee to first of all, get permission to excavate a site and secondly identify the artifacts that they.
Discover. They're obligated to do the to pay for the kind of analysis and protection that's needed after you excavate something. But they do. You know, in the case of Mexico and Ina, Ina charges a flat fee of the money that a project has at their disposal, so you know, it's something like ten or twenty percent. So if you had, you know, two hundred thousand dollars for your project, Ena says, you can do it, but you're going to owe us twenty thousand off the top and then you can proceed.
So that's you kind of kind of build your budget knowing that nail will take a bite, which is not you know, it's not some kind of scam or rip off it. You know, that goes into the inena budget and that you know, you and I have discussed this before, and you know this, but you know, the archaeology is just the first volley. Once we unearth something, then it's up to us to protect it into perpetuity. And that's either burying it again or having a budget to preserve
and protect it. And in the case of Mexico, they've got so many wonderful ruins. You know, you and I have spent our lives enjoying ruins and seeing a new one all the time, and Mexico's on the hook to protect all that shit. So you know, if they charge a foreign project twenty percent overhead so they can come in and support the rest of the places, I think that's a reasonable deal.
I bring this up real quickly, and we've both talked about it. We were in Ushmol and we were having lunch a place and down the street we could see the ruins of a two hundred It looked like a two hundred foot pyramid that hadn't been touched, and I think I asked you, why haven't they started working? I mean, it was frustrated as hell for me. It's like I want to see everything, which as an archaeologist. You can't, you know, it's like you have to pick and choose.
But I think the reason was that they just couldn't afford number one to excavate it. And then I think what your point was that once it's excavated, it has to be protected, and it has to be surveyed, it has to be identified, and I think at some point you just because there's so many of these amazing ruins, you have to kind of just leave it alone for another period of time or something has to happen.
But god, I mean, I mean, that dovetails right into my less than one percent of the Maya world comment. I mean, even things that we can see while we're eating launch art excavated yet, and it is it is a question of money and responsibility, you know, it's it's irresponsible to just you know, dig into that one to see whether it's got a king inside maybe, you know, and then and then just leave it to the to
the stray dogs. We gotta, you know, if we're gonna if we're gonna unearth this global patrimony, we gotta have a good, responsible plan to protect it once it's on earth. And that that's expensive.
You haven't done field work since Polanky, but maybe after that. But I mean when you look at a light OAR survey and this is I think one of the problems with light oar is is exposing these huge megalopolis, massive cities, and it's like, let's go to work.
This exposed it. Well, the truth of.
The matter is it's tens of millions of dollars a commitment of resources, and it's just not possible, right.
Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's always a question of priorities. You know, this falls under the category of whether we're gonna you know, fund art as an essential part of K through twelve education. You know, where are our priorities? We we got the money, say, you know, we've been spending a billion dollars a day over there and Iran lately. Hell boy, that would have done a
lot of archaeology. I'll tell you a billion dollars. Oh my god, I wish that was that was about history instead of this terrible crap tells.
You where our priorities are. Hey, let's jump over to uh Mexico. I want to talk a little bit about these platforms that have been discovered. This one platform at Agua Felix uh is so big and so unusual, And what this archaeologist found is that this platform was designed to bear weight. There's there's different strata of some and stone.
What the hell is that for? I love Aguada Phoenix, and I love that there's so much work being done there. That's uh gosh, I hope I don't. I'm not forgetting Takeshi and Amada. I think is doing the work there, Amada. And my main bitch is that that's an Olmec site. He keeps calling it a pre classic Maya site. It's you know, and it's ceramics do show a big Maya connection, But the building is exactly like the building at San Lorenzo and many other of these raised up linear platforms.
It's it's Olmec, it's ages Olmec. It's on the edge of the Olmec world. I mean, the only thing that's really holding us back from calling it Olmec is our arbitrary border that archaeology has built about where the now Olmec stuff stops and where the known Maya stuff stops. There's a there's a real overlap right there, and he, for some reason, is just calling it a Maya site. I wish you'd at least call it a hybrid.
We're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guest today, doctor Ed Barnhard, discussing the Olmaic Enigma. Will be right back with you. The Omic Enigma will feature a gallery on our Facebook page. Go to Facebook,
go to Earth Ancients. We'll have photographs of this huge platform and Agua Felix that's been excavated, very strange, and we'll also have some of the buildings attributed to the Omec, including this cosmogram, which is a very strange and very recent discovery. I actually started excavating it late last year. Well, do we have examples of the Maya and the Omec working together to build uh structures, pyramids, buildings, temples?
I think Aguada Phoenix is that. You know, it's frustrating because there's no basalt monuments over there, which is so signature Olmec heartland. But you know, the closest source of basalt is you know, from there? I guess it's it's probably one hundred and fifty kilometers away. Yeah, they drug it to San Lorenza or Levento, which was about seventy kilometers away. But maybe it was just impractical to haul
those kinds of monuments in there. I don't know that that's a big you know x in calling it Olmec, that it doesn't have the signature Olmec basalt monuments or those huge things, but the city layout is one hundred percent Olmec. In fact, you know, you can't find another Maya city that looks like that when you just look at it, you know, the light our image from above, Yes it's Olmec. It's not Maya. The Maya have these courtyards with pyramids around them they had since the times
of El Mirador. Who might be the people talking to them?
Any thing about it, though, ed is when you look at this beautiful rendering of the platform in light, are the ancient alien folks come up and go, that's a that's a landing fill. That's the same length as a as a landing fill the runway, you know, And when you look at it, it's like there's nothing on it. It's flat. They spit.
I was told there'd be no aliens in this podcast. No, I'm kidding, you know, sure.
I mean, I'm not going to get in trouble if I mentioned ancient I'm not a I'm not a supporter of it, but I'll be damned.
You know how many times I've been on ancient aliens. I'm not that's right, I'm just kidding around. I'm not a I'm not at church at my job. We can talk about.
I mean, you're not university supported, is what you're trying to say.
You know, I mean, let's let's just break that one down for a minute. The you know, the the long range, the linear raised platform feelings us like the runway. Yes, that is again us being just myopically stuck in our own time and technology. Yes, we are envisioning that, you know, or do the aliens who flew that craft in the zero gravity of space need a kilometers runway to uh to slow down and get speed. You know, that's that's us using our understanding of technology saying planes need a runway.
You know, there's there's no reason to believe that if there is alien contact, they're going to come down in a freaking airplane. I mean local likely it would hover. You know then you exactly, big long thing. It's just it's us getting stuck in our own cultural biases and preconceived notions of how such a thing would happen. Yeah.
Yeah, it's weird looking though, because when you look at it and go what was this all about? And of course the excavated under the surface of the platform and they found weight bearings layers like it was either an amphitheater for a gathering or something. But god, what a lot of work for a big platform.
That's such a huge site too. En Amada is doing just you know, a huge amount of work to try to understand such a huge place. I mean yeah, I mean just a picture yourself standing there with the shovel and then the other end of the excavation is a kilometer away. You can't even see that, Like, just it boggles the mind how we would approach that with our
current techniques. And it's so funny. He kind of just tripped over these light oar skins that were done years earlier, and he adopted him, which is kind of Oh hell, we all knew that site was out there, really we did. And in fact I could kick myself because I remember me and Alfonso Morales were driving from Polenque up to Merida. We were he was driving, we were driving along the highway where close to where Aguada Phoenix is and I was like, hey, uh lot fun. So look at those
mounds over there. You know what that is. He was like, oh yeah, yeah, those those are you know that that's a sight, But nobody wants to dig it because it's all earthen mounds. He said, uh, John, somebody from uh from b Yu. I'm blanket on his name, but he's the big He's the big archaeologist from Byu. John's his name. He said, yeah, John. John said that he thinks it's Olmec and he'd like to go out there and dig it someday, but I'm not going to touch it because
it's all just mud. There's no art over there. It's just uh oh. And that was our conversation as we drove by, and and it was that was the attitude back then, like well, we've got all this beautiful carved limestone in the in the Maya world, Why the heck would any of us spend our budget and time digging up those earthen mounds. And it turns out that the earthen mounds was a big part of why you know that. That meant that they were super old and even me
and me and Alfonso talking like that. He already said that that somebody had suggested, well, they're earthen because they're all mec, which is kind of cool. And that was shit. When was that? That was like nineteen ninety nine, when we were having that conversation.
Well, this stuff doesn't age, you know, it just gets older.
It's again back to that one percent thing. I mean, crap, there have been you know, my entire career, I've been driving by things like that and having that kind of oh well conversation about major places. I'm glad and Amada has finally done something.
Well, let me bring up one more thing about a recent discovery that he made, and I want you to describe it if you can. He covered what he calls a cosmogram. Yeah, an undersurface feature that he explains that was used to chart the heavens now. I cannot find a good explanation for a cosmogram other than it is a rudimentary form of a mirror of the of the cosmos. Right, this thing is huge, ed you.
I think he's i'll say, over using the term cosmogram. I mean basically what it is is, you know, across that he finds within encoded into the architecture, and I would like it a lot more. I would. I would. There's certainly there's rectilineal architecture, but the problem with calling it a cosmogram, and the way he describes it in his paper is that it should be on cardinal directions then you know, east west, north south, but the building is not aligned that way. It's a few degrees off
of that. I forget in the case of a Guada Phoenix, but it drives me nuts. I wish that those long ole neck platforms, which i'll include Aguada Phoenix in were It would be so easy if they were north south, but they are not. Not only are they not oriented ever to cardinal directions, but there is a wide variety of orientations. Now they hover around ten degrees off either you know, to the to the west, or to the east.
But there's no no pattern. In Amata's paper where he found those two hundred other platforms, he does a nice job of doing a statistical analysis up the variation of those orientations. But without his you know, cross being actually oriented to east west, north south, I find it hard to figure out how it would be practically used to chart the sky. Okay, And so.
Using his logic, how are the Omeic using the cosmogram to is it a ceremonial center. Maybe maybe they're doing.
A ceremonial center. And he's suggesting that they are observing the heavens off of this, that this is a symbolically embedded piece of the architecture that says, hey, we're using this big platform to observe the solstice, the equinox, the passage of the moon, and the planets and perhaps the stars. But it's but since the platform is oriented where the the viewing position would not have east as its center, it makes it hard to make an argument how the whole building charts those things.
You know, I'm proud of you to not get on your fellow archaeologists too heavy. But I think you're you're saying that Momoto is maybe stretching it a bit with his cosmogram. I am, unless they unless they filled it with water, ed unless they filled it with water and they were able to see the reflection of the moon or something, and that's how they.
That's that's worse. I'm trying to help you guys out, Okay, you know, and I don't you know, archaeo astronomy is my specialty. So maybe I am a bit of a snob about what evidence I accept and what I don't And like, you know, hey and Amata, you already got a fantastic sight. Stay out of the archaeo astronomy lane. You're sucking up the oxygen pal Oh my god, No, I'm not like that, but I do you know that if he ever listens to this, I apologize, give me
a call, we'll discuss it. But I don't really buy that.
I've been trying to get him on the show for years and he's like, I'm just too busy. I can't take an hour. I'm like, come on, man, I want to hear what you're up to. So maybe he doesn't want to have this conversation that we're having.
Perhaps not. And you know, I'm a free bird that I'm not part of any university. No, no president can call me after this airs and go ed. You have represented our community poorly.
Hey, let's talk about these stone cube mysteries. You you you did a.
Video on them?
What are they and are they ceremonial or what's the story on them?
God, I you know that my whole video was about what the heck are these? I don't I don't even know where to start, but there are lots of them. You know, they're in every part of the world. We have artifacts that we don't really were, like, what the heck is this thing? But usually they're one offs, you know, it's a weird thing that's kind of an enigma to the entire collection. But in the case of these cubes, they're about you know, they're like a little bit bigger
than a dice, and they're not always square. Sometimes they're more rectangles. They're not trying to be perfect cubes. But there are hundreds of thousands of them in the Olmec world. It is a big artifact type. It's not some weird one off that we found once and couldn't explain. Sitting in a pit right next to the Red Palace, on top of the platform at San Lorenzo, our first big site, the Yale Project, found six metric tons of these little cubes,
and they are of a weird material. But there's six metric tons sitting in a pile there, which was way over one hundred thousand of them just in this pile, buried on top of the platform next to the elite palace, so they're just their location alone makes them important. But then when you look at what they are, they're weirder because they're each cube is drilled on three sides. It's kind of like a drill hole all the way through one side and then from a top to connect to
the drill hole. So they feel like beads. That makes it feel like, okay, you carved a hole through so you could run thread through. But the material is weird. Again, San Lorenzo has no good material stone type. They're mostly sandstone. There. These are a weird material called ill menite, huh. And it's a metallic oxide that has weekly magnetic properties. So it's not like they don't stick together, but they're weekly magnetic. And a source for this stuff was found maybe one
hundred kilometers away from San Lorenzo at a site called Plumahio. Oh, there's actually a quarry. There's a quarry where the are archaeologists found chunks of it, half carved chunks of it, cubes with no holes, and cubes with holes. So like, the entire manufacture process was found at this source of ilmenite, which is nowhere near San Lorenzo. But that one cash is not the only cash. Little individual ones have been found all over the Maya War or all over the
Olmec world. A couple here, a couple there, sometimes you know, associated with a grave or in some dirt in fill. But there's another pile of them that's like tens of thousands that was found in the hinterland of San Lorenzo as well. So between those two and the sporadic caches, they're all over the place, but we have no explanation for what they are. Well, there are lots of theories.
That head that we were talking about earlier, the last head that was found and cipher's head dress on that one is unique like all seventeen r but that one really does look like it's little uh oh tubes with
a hole in the middle, you know. They And Anne is the first one to say maybe that maybe that helmet was made out of these weird cubes, because during the excavation that she did of the head, which had fallen from its original location in the matrix, she noted that she found three or four of those little cubes, and that's what like connected it in her mind. Hold on, here's these weird cubes. Boy, they kind of look like the helmet he's wearing, so that's a theory though they're
here's the weird thing about them too. They are again, just like the rest of the oll neck world, just sitting in open, plain site in the museum at San Lorenzo. It's this little cement building, and the guys who run the museum or whoever designed it used them as just kind of like uh, a layer at the bottom of this one display case. The display case is showing Olmec ceramic or Olmec small sculptures, and they've placed the small sculptures in a pile of those alumnite cubes illmenite cubes.
As like the footing, they don't even the display doesn't even mention those cubes and where they were from. But I knew what they were because I had studied them. And I was like, holy shit, is that a bucket of these cubes and I and I picked one up and I tried to like connect them together. No, they're not very magnetic, but they're heavy, so if somebody made a helmet of them, that would like hurt your neck.
Is it a slip to say they're magnetic or has somebody tested them? And a certain number of them have a magnetic property.
Good question. I don't think I know the answer to that. I think that ilmenite, wherever it's found around the world, is a weekly magnetic metal oxide. Okay, the biggest cash is in uh Russia, and today we mine ill menite to process it into titanium. Now there you go. You put your titanium foil hat on for that one. But I'm just saying, you know, I like this. I think it is an interesting intersection for those who want to think outside the box aliens, you know, magnetic flotation theory, whatever.
But I will say that, you know, I was disappointed. I had read of that, and so when I finally saw ones and just you know, I could pick two up and put them together, I was really hoping they'd stick together. But they didn't. So it must be very weekly magnetic. But perhaps you know, in an aggregate they would be something that individual ones aren't. And whatever the hell the OLMEC we're doing with them, they needed a
lot of them. I mean mean, you know, one hundred thousand six tons worth in one pit, so that was not a one off thing.
As a monetary exchange some form of money though, right, I mean it wouldn't.
That's been a theory, though, I don't think that really holds water, because if you know, if we look at any civilization around the planet that develops the concept of a currency, they run with it. It would be weird for the Olmec to come up with the concept of currency, and then the whole concept just got scrapped by every culture that came after them, because there's no currency beyond
perhaps cacal beans in Mesoamerica. Ever, so, the fact that that currency as a concept does not evolve past the Olmec makes me reticent to accept that as a as what these weird things are. That would also be like, I guess that would be just like today if if the billionaires on top of the platforms had every scrap of money and everybody else had like a cub or two. That would be like our billionaire conundrum right now, exactly exactly.
Hey, as we close our time together, what's interesting for you right now that's being excavated. Is there anything that's going on? I mean, I cause I've been to POLANKI I always kind of keep an eye on that doesn't seem like much going on there. It might be individual a little sites. But is there any big excavations going on that you're particularly interested in olmec are just in general, just in Mesoamerica. Well, I think the hottest project right
now is Edwin Romayne's work in t Call. He's now found this entire new complex of like a taote wacom compound right neck right inside the city center, and hundreds of years older than we had ever even realized there was contact between the Maya and Tootia kan. So his I'm, you know, sitting at the edge of my chair waiting for his next field report, which should come in July. It's like by the necropolis area, like a pyramid or a structure.
Four. Let me see you've been there a couple times, h if you were standing on the Mundo Perdido. Okay, it is like directly east. You go off the platform and go east down into a lower part maybe two hundred meters into the jungle, not very far at all. I could be overestimating two hundred meters. It's right there, so like like you could you could maybe hit it with a rock from the top of the Mundo Perdido.
So was this a light oar discovery or was it something that was known that someone decided to dig a.
Little deeper in. That's a good question because if it's as sophisticated as you're saying, is.
It older than you know the earliest buildings or is it who knows where?
It's like the early stages of the Mundo Perdido old. So yes, it is one of the oldest parts of the site, significantly older than you know the two the five huge pyramids that are so signature, those are centuries after this. This is centuries earlier. But I don't know. It may well have light arm might have inspired Edwin's choice,
a kind of a theme for what we've been talking about. Yeah, Stall has all of these wonderful pyramids and complexes excavated, but there are equally large ones sitting right next to them that are covered in the jungle. I mean, just within the city center itself, there must be a dozen huge complexes. And so did Edwin see something in the light ar that made him choose that one? You know, slowly but surely archaeologists are going to get to those other twelve. And did Edwin just get super lucky and
pick the one that was Taotuba Khan? Or there's something in the light ar that made him think that looks older. What specifically, though, edw, what specifically is exciting about what he's digging up. Did he find Well, he didn't find a codis because we didn't know about that in a blink of an eye. But did he find some writing, pottery, stella a body. He did find a lot of Teo Tibcon pottery. He found a big building in the center
of it. It's kind of a square area, big building in the center of it that was built in tallude tablero. Like not just there's a There were already two other buildings in Polenk in t Call that had tulude tablero, but relatively small. Now he's found a big one that's the signature Tayo Tuba Khan art style. The pottery, he's found a ton of those tripod vessels. Even the outer sections he's saying, look more like the Siawadella section of
Teotibo Khan. The architecture there is also talud tablero and it has the it has the architectural style of a more Tao Tuba Khan court.
And this is what's very interesting, and we don't have time to go into this new book by David Stewart, The for Heavens. But in his book there's a tremendous amount of evidence of collaboration between TiO Tucan and Tikal, which is makes you think where the Mayas in Central Mexico. Well, obviously they were, weren't they.
I think there was an interchange and trade network between the two for sure. But then Tao Tiba Khan showed up in mass I mean, I have not read Dave's book all the way through. What's over there on my shelf.
It's a huge book.
Hold on there.
You gotta get the audible version, buddy, because long it's a long dissertation.
Wonderful, right. I don't think he overturned because I think he was one of the ones who first found it the evidence that a prince from Tao Tula Coon was crowned king of t Call. They an actual prince from Tao Tubacan. Tao Tulacon got to the point where they completely took over the lineage of t Call, which I think started the Maya civil Wars. But that's for another podcast ed Barnhart. Always a pleasure, give us your contact.
You're on actively on YouTube under is it ed Barnhart dot com.
It's an archaeologist Ed Barnhart. And then you had archaeo Ed, which is your podcast, which is excellent. So make sure you that out Where else can we find you? Well, you know, my day job is the director of my Exploration Center, where we do research and tours throughout the year. I've got a new shiny team of young archaeologists leading tours.
We're more dynamic than we've ever been. And so, you know, if people, you know, it's one thing to read about these things in books, but if you really want to get into it, you got to just go there. That's kind of what mech is designed to help people do.
Yeah, and you guys, you do you must do at least five tours a year around the Americas. But are you you crossing the water anymore and going to the Middle East or Europe? This year?
We did one to Anchor last year. Oh right, yeah, we're doing so, you know, we're doing South America, Mexico, Central America this year. Not too much over on the other side. At the moment, I'm trying to convince Luke Caverns that he should lead a trip to Greece. I don't know why it's a hard sell. He loves that place. But I'm working on that. I you know, I.
I was definitely expecting you to go to Easter Island again, but maybe that's just you have so many personal projects.
I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm I'm in contact right now. I'm just hoping I get my project back and then I can have you know, I can combine those efforts to bring people there while I'm setting up to do the project. But yeah, not so far. And in fact, you know, this year, I'm just kind of enjoying staying home. I've got to I've got to write, i got to create. You know, my YouTube channel is taking off now because I've finally given it time.
Yeah, excellent, Hey, well continue success ed and hey, pleasure has always been with you.
Good to be with you too, Cliff. Take care.
I'm currently have on the drawing board a tour of pre classic sites, and Ed had it, I think it was this year earlier this year where he actually went to half classic half pre classic sites, and I want to go for my own exploration, but i'd be fun to take a couple, you know, twenty people or more with me look for that coming up. Probably we would stop and our base would be Mareta, so we could see some of the sites there. It'd be a pyramid tour. And if you haven't been to Campeche to see ed Zina,
Oh my god, Esna is this beautiful Mayan city. It's about ten miles from the city from the city of Campeche. Campeche's right on in the water. It's a coastal town, just amazing beautiful. Well, so we'd stay there for a couple of days and then travel south again to the border of Guatemala and Mexico and see some of the sites there. And I think it would be too long to get into Guatemala, so we could do that. I think all in all for ten days we would see
maybe maybe seven or eight days. We'd see between eleven and twelve maybe additional sites that have pyramids. And I have a couple of archaeologist friends that would be great to travel with. The other thing that we want to add is a shaman's ceremony. And if you haven't been involved in a shamanistic ceremony prior to entering a site, you got you gotta do it, because your eyes are opened they shift, they shift your energy so that you're
able to pick up on these things. And then when you do see these temples and these pair is in these ruins, you're kind of going, Wow, it's a fantastic opportunity. The reason we want to do that is, for the most part, the public sites in Mexico like Chichinitsa and Ushmo Tuloom, even Coba, you're not allowed to do ceremony. They have bad shamanistic ceremony. It's crazy. So we want to do that and we will do it with Michael Angel and he is a shaman that's in Mareda, so
we'll do that. So look for that and let me know if you're interested in coming along to me an email.
Sent it to.
Earth Ancients the number four of the letter you at gmail dot com, and I'll put you on a list. I'm going to try to do it in the fall. If I don't, I'll do it in the spring of twenty twenty seven. So check that out.
And that reminds me.
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Okay, that's it for this program.
I want to tak my guest today, doctor Ed Barnhardt discussing the Maya as always, the team of Gail tour, Mark Foster and Feya Pavar. You guys all right, take care of you well, and we will talk to you next time.
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