I'm from El Salvador and corn is still an extremely important crop for us. It was the only thing we grew on our land and everything else was bought. Growing up my mom would always make sure that I ate my tortillas and would get angry with me if I didn't. It was always annoying for me but I eventually learned that when she was growing up, corn tortillas were the only thing they could truly rely on. She tells me stories of how there were certain days when all there was to eat was tortillas with salt to add a little bit of flavor. That's why when she always wanted us to fill up with tortillas, since the tortillas were the meal and everything else was only there to add flavor. Now that I'm an adult I have learned to appreciate the importance of corn in our culture as something that had been with us for thousands of years. Religion may have been taken out of corn after the conversion to Christianity but people are still religious about it. Loved the video!
I just wish he went a little more into the ahistoricalness of the sacrifices. We only have 2-3 sources regarding them and they are very, very suspect at least, probably mostly lies at worse. One says that they sacrificed 45k in a single day, but that would be impossible because that would have required a tremendous amount of wood because they burned the dead afterwards so it could continue the cycle. What we can gather from the sources is that it was a huge event, much like a Roman Triumph, but probably very little ACTUAL human sacrifice.
@@loonloon9365 I don't know what you mean, there are many many many examples that have been shown to be human sacrifice across mesoamerica, studied at great length. The tzompantli in Mexica, for example, often contained hundreds to thousands of skulls. What specifically are you referencing when you claim that they barely sacrificed anyone at all? www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital
@@loonloon9365 I'm Mexican, and always every few years we hear in the news that new archaeological discoveries have been made, they almost always include skeletons of people that were sacrificed, the museum of archaeology in the city of mexico is full of skulls and skeletons and the evidence of not only human sacrifice but also cannibalism is pretty strong, that's just how they were, and they had a very complete different view than an European or someone from the old world, because of complete isolation from other cultures and ideas, it was a whole civilization on its own
@@RareEarthSeries Didn't you get the memo? _"We Choose (our) Truth, _*_Over FACTS!"_* ....👴💤 and if you don't go along with our woke revisionist ID politics _You ain't Black!_ ....👴💤 ¯\_( ツ )_/¯
Honestly one of the channels that I truly value on this platform, because when I see it, I know it will be worth my time. Thank you for making these, while I cant afford to be a patron, I will definitely be watching these until the end, as this is probably the only channel I can say I am truly a fan of.
The very end had me thinking about my uncle. He farms about 1000 acres if corn in Illinois. He certainly doesn't pierce holes in himself to get a good harvest but it's still brutally hard work requiring lots of sacrifice
@@krono5el every civilization adds to to the collective knowledge of humanity. The maya learned from those that came before them, as we have earned from those who are before us.
I hope he's taking much better care of his soil and the countless ecosystems under his care than the Mayans did. Else we're all doomed to the same fate as the Mayans were when they ruined their environment.
Today is a good day, I loved this and it's good to have you back! I binged all of your videos in 2018 when I was recovering from cancer and it really helped cheer me up
Mexican who grew up in the U.S- far removed from our country; my family still grows corn in our garden. This year, on thanksgiving, I used the product of our soil to make turkey tamales for the thanksgiving dinner. I spent my childhood in Mexico, most fundamental years of my live were fueled by tortillas made from scratch. Now, I sadly only get to enjoy them whenever I travel to Mexico. The best I've had where in Oaxaca. My grandmother's (from Chihuahua) are a close second. My dad says before industrialization reached his corner of the country the women of the ranch would get up at 5am to use the town's corn mill. By the time their husbands were up they'd have a stack of fresh, warm, tortillas to get them through their day in the fields- growing that same corn. The Aztec's said men was made from corn. For us Mexicans, that point still stands. We're far removed from our old cultures (in my case, removed from Mexican culture as well) and corn is becoming less and less common in the modernized household. Mexico imports most of it's corn from the U.S; since it's cheaper than the national product. Our heirloom varieties are in danger of going extinct. But, it's undeniable that it got us to where we are. Had it not been for corn- the civilizations of Mexico would have faced the same near-extermination that the tribes in the U.S and Canada did. Thanks to the plant, we had empires. And, the traces of them are very much present in the modern nation. We owe our culture to corn, our ancestors owed their lives to it, by extension- so do we.
I saw this video when it came out on Nebula. I just want to say-- thank you for all you do with Rare Earth. Your videos have impacted me and my worldview so much over the years. The wait has been worth it. Welcome back.
That really is amazing that boiling limestone with corn makes it more nutritious. I always thought it was just selective breeding that changed maize into the corn that we know today. Literally built an empire off that lucky discovery, and if they had ceramic they may have never figured that out.
It's a chemical reaction, the outer shell is eaten off from the acid made when the limestone was put into water. Now the nutrients are bio-available for human uptake. There's a disease from vitamin B deficiency. People in Europe found out the hard way after maize was brought into the country and consumed as the main calories without being nixtamalized. Today we use food grade lime or hard wood ashes in rainwater.
@@mandy7684 Limestone makes water basic not acidic. Acidic kernel destruction wouldn't have lead to the vitamin B deficiency you talk about as our stomachs contain 0.1 molar hydrochloric acid, ph 1, which would readily eat the corn kernel away. Today we use at least three starter molecules for nixtamalization, the two you describe and lye (potassium hydroxide).
Hey Evan, first time I write, but have been following Rare Earth since the beginning. I see you are in Tikal , just a stone throw away from my country, Mexico. Have been waiting for ever for you to come... maybe it is not in your plans but I sure do hope so. My country won’t disappoint.
It’s amazing how many stories there are around the world to shed light on, and I really hope that you’re able to travel to lots of new places this year to do just that.
I do writeups and work with history/archeology channels with videos on Mesoamerica: I think you did a pretty good job trying to represent the overall ideology and practices and worldview (If making it a bit Maize centric, but hey, that's what the video is on!), but I thought I'd give some small corrections: I realize this video is focusing on the Maya, but my understanding (I'm more informed on later periods) is that Maize domestication probably originated in the Southwestern Mexico, rather then the Maya areas in the Southeast, so a lot of the specific milestones you mention early on would have taken place not in the jungles, but in arid and temperate hills and valleys (though i'm not sure if we know where Nixtamalization first happened) Next , By 0AD, civilization would have already been well established across most of Mesoamerica, it's not when it';s first sprouting up: the first site widely acknowledged to display urbanization and stratified socity would be the Olmec center of San Lorenzo, which developed into a large town or a city by 1400BC. It used to be thought that the Olmec were a singular mother culture which all other Mesoamerican civilizations originated from, and with the Olmec having wide cultural influence, and/or political, economic, or military control over other parts of Mesoamerica, but now it's more the consensus that a lot of the "Olmec Style" goods we see at sites like Tlatilco in Central Mexico or contemporary sites in Oaxaca was more the result of that style of art being in-vogue across the upper classes across Mesoamerica at the time and that civilization was being developed simultaneously in multiple areas at the time.... ....That is to say, urbanization, monumental architecture, class systems, etc was arising in both the Gulf Coast area, Central Mexico, the Maya area, Oaxaca, etc during this time (West Mexico too, but it doesn't really catch on in West Mexico till much later) from 1400 to say 500BC; with the first writing showing up buy 900BC and the Zapotec city of Monte Alban having the first complex bureaucracies by 500BC (As defined by a 4 tier administrative hierarchy, earlier sites may have too). By 0AD, you're almost at the transition from the Preclassic/Formative period to the Classic period, when civilization wasn't rising up, but was already widespread, almost ubiquitous in Mesoamerica (again, aside from West Mexico, and obviously there were some hamlets and villages around the bigger cities) Next, i'm not aware of captives being drugged and forced to play in ball games, but maybe that's a Maya specific practice i'm aware of, Central Mexico is admittedly more my thing... What I AM sure of is that there's not evidence that players were sacrificed. Yes, we see iconography of beheadings around ball courts, but there are many myths around ball games and beheadings across Mesoamerican mythologies, so while it could represent a real practice, it could also be symbolism. As far as i'm aware there's no smoking gun evidence of ball players being sacrificed in or around ball courts. The closest thing we have is Sahagun stating there was an Aztec ceremony to Coyolxauhqui that took place at ball courts which involved beheadings, but even if Sahagun isn't hyperbolizing (he is, in fairness, one of the better Spanish sources), it isn't specified that the players would be the victims. Considering how important the game was on both a recreational and political level, with players being forbidden to marry to focus on the game in some cultures, cities and even schools having their own teams sort of like the modern NFL and Varisety leagues, etc, I think it's unlikely they'd be killing off the players. By 1200AD, the Classic Maya collapse would have already occurred centuries ago. The Collapse is pretty debated so I don't think it's fair for me to nitpick the way you presented what caused it (what ytou say is definetely one of the things researchers believe could have played into it), but you're off time wise, like with the 0AD example. The collapse was more from 800-1000AD, roughly (Even 1000AD is arguably after it). It's also really worth noting here that some researchers dispute that there was a big collapse at all: It was really mostly the large cities in the Central and Southern Yucatan Peninsula that declined (and even then, not all of them); with medium sized towns and villages being unaffected, and large cities in the Northern Maya area not just continuing, but even growing in the following centuries: They were at their peak around 1200AD, actually, and then slowly declining untill the Spanish arrived. Even then, though, there were some large Maya cities in the Northern and Western Yucatan Peninsula. So it's less a civilization wide collapse, and more just a shift in demographics and political power centers... and, of course, there are still millions of Maya people around today, many of which are seen in your video. Lastly, this couldn't be shown due to the format of the video being film based, so artistic depictions would have been out of place, but I think it's always worth noting that what we see today in ruins is not at all how Mesoamerican cities would have looked like. The few structures you do see show bare masonry and mortar like cobblestone, but in their heyday these would be covered by more precise brickwork, and then smooth stucco, rich painted murals and frescos, and then engraved reliefs, sculptural facades and accents. And then, of course, there would have been dozens to hundreds of other palaces, temples, plazas, etc that in sites today are destroyed or still buried; and then landscaped suburbs of commoner housing interspersed with agricultural land radiating out from the city center of those fancy structures, for dozens or even hundreds of square kilometers for larger cities. Huge amounts of what's now jungle around ruins like Tikal, Cakakmul, Copan, Uxmal, etc would have been active infrastructure at the time.
Have you seen Lindybeige's video on TIKAL? th-cam.com/video/HDPNxz3WXTk/w-d-xo.html Lots of insights on TIKAL and I wonder if Lloyd's getting things correct?
@@skybluskyblueify Ah, that's a good thing I should have addressed too! In short, no, but the Maya script DOES have a complete syllabary (IE a character to represent each spoken sound in the language), which is basically the equivalent to an Alphabet in a syllabic script (as I understand it, i'm not a linguist) A lot of people think the Maya script was like Egyptian hieroglyphs, and in fairness it does have hieroglyph-esque logograms (IE symbols to represent entire words or concepts) too, but it's also got characters that represent syllables which combine to form compound glyphs spelling out the word. So you can write a logogram for "Jaguar' that looks like a Jaguar, or you can write out the 3 characters for "ba", "la" and "m(a)", which makes the word Jaguar in Maya. Or do both at once. There's even cases of dates being written out via drawing gods associated with specific numbers and personfications of day day signs together, which is almost more like pictographic symbolism. But the point is that the Maya script is a true written language even in the strictest definition, but it's a syllabic rather then a phonemic(?) one, so it has a syllabrary. In contrast, the Aztec and Mixtec scripts are pictographic (IE less writing, and more drawings/iconography with set conventions that still conveys a message), though Aztec still has some verbal puns that rely on the spoken language with stuff like rebuses (IE the words for "tooth" and "place" in Nahuatl, the Aztec language sound similar, so sometimes cities are shown as the city's prefix depicted visually over a tooth. So a city named "place of snakes", would be a snake over a tooth) and I think a recent book proposed that it had even more complexity then that and COULD write out complete sentences and words much like the Maya script, but there's no evidence thsat it was ever actually used that way. Teotihuacano is still pretty undeciphered and I don't quite know the specifics, but some believe it was more logogram based; while the. Zapotec and Epi-Olmec scripts were also logogram based, but , with the former still having some pictographic and phonetic elements, and lacks articles and propositions and conjugation; with the latter uses subglyphs representing sounds to form word glyphs like the Maya script which suggests a similar heavy spoken-language competent.
As a humble yokel that's been stuck on the east coast all my life, this channel really puts life into perspective and makes me wish I could travel the world.
Wow, glad to see you've gone to Guatemala!! I've visited this beautiful country twice, and still count it as my favourite destination. The people are amazing, the scenery second-to-none, and the old Spanish architecture is just incredible. But most importantly, Guatemala usually has 2 or 3 volcanoes erupting at any given time (as my username might suggest, I LOVE erupting volcanoes). I was fortunate enough to see lava flows from Mt. Pacaya up close on both of my trips; I also climbed Volcan Acatenango and got within about 100 vertical metres of the summit of the adjacent volcano, Volcan Fuego, before I chickened out and descended (it erupts every couple of hours, and I wanted to be nowhere near it when that happened...moreover, a few years after my last visit, it killed hundreds of people in what is still the deadliest eruption of the 21st century, so in hindsight, my decision to try and climb it seems a bit foolish*). And I camped for two nights on the lava dome immediately next to the erupting dome at Santiaguito (the erupting part of the older Santa Maria volcano), close enough for volcanic ash to fall on my tent more than once. From that site, I could watch the volcano erupt without TOO much risk (although considering this volcano produced the largest - and 3rd-deadliest - eruption of the 20th century, back in 1902, that's not saying much). Anyway, if anyone wants to take a post-Covid celebratory volcano trip, Guatemala's a really great choice. And if you're REALLY lucky, you might get to experience an earthquake as well [towards the end of my second trip, a M5.6 earthquake woke me up one morning...the epicenter was about 170 km away, close to the border with Mexico, but the shaking was still quite vigorous, and lasted more than 10 seconds in Antigua (where I was at the time), indicating a modified Mercalli intensity of around IV]! *Note that I have studied volcanoes extensively, having been taught by extremely competent volcanologists (both in an academic context, and on-the-ground at active/erupting volcanoes in Hawai'i, Iceland, Tanzania and Ecuador), I employ knowledgable local guides, and I take all of the proper safety precautions...in other words, I minimize the risk of what is still a pretty dangerous hobby (and I acknowledge that it's dangerous, but still worth doing).
It was a little strange reading this comment as a guatemalan lol, the recent Fuego eruption moved the whole country and at the time my school was gathering resourses for the survivors and some people went there to do voluntary work, some photos looked straight out of Silent Hill with the extreme ashfall and lots of streets in the nearby villages had gotten some volcanic stuff on them. I went to Pacaya once, I hope you got to see this uphill point where you can completely gaze on the huge landmass that is the volcano itself with the sea of black crystalized stuff below. Your fascination with earthquakes felt even more strange, old people sometimes speak about their encounter with the 1974 earthquake and how it took some time in the capital city to get food on the markets again because of how broken the streets were, my philosophy prof. once mentioned having a stock of canned food because the experience when he was an adolescent. The 1917 one gave the writer Miguel Angel Asturias a whole change of mindset that made him saw how broken this place was/is and with that inspiration eventually wrote his most famous work El Señor Presidente as a critique on dictatorships. Guatemala is indeed a very good choice for doing stuff in these times, curfews stopped a long time ago and all we do is keep the masks and wash our hands regularly, COVID kinda helped me with the constant hygene if taking into account how much I tend to get sick every year. Your comment was stimulating, have a great day.
This popped up in my feed with a "Is this a good recommendation for you?" survey and I have never clicked the maximum score so fast before. Welcome back, Evan.
@@RareEarthSeries I also showed it to my best friend after the title got her intrigued (followed by the Extra Credits video on pellagra, for extra context on the importance of niacin). We got so into corn history that her infant daughter started yelling for attention. (She was fine, just outraged that the dog had licked her foot.) So thank you for being absorbing, and the dog thanks you for the free lick!
The narration and story telling are second to none. In a world completely devoid of substance....I thank you immensely. Michael Wood is smiling down on this series.
I forgot how much i was waiting for this channel to return. But definitely one of the best on TH-cam. It's bs that no network has picked this up and made this your living
To be honest, as much as I like the visual side of the old stuff, I'm here mostly for Your take on things and all those small and big stories. You're a good storyteller. Keep them coming please.
Its incredible how impactful corn still is to our society. Still one of the world's staple crops and one of the most planted in the world. Its crazy the journey it took to get there, through domestication, ancient trade and empires, and colonization. Might be fun to get the stories behind some of humanity's other agricultural staples - after all, farming is the base of civilization and there's gotta be so many unique stories behind each one.
Thank you for bringing the series back, and thank you for bringing in the politics, the food and the basic chemistry that usually gets left out of the story. Someone should use this episode to propose a 30 minute version on Food Network or the BBC. Does Canada have PBS?
I’m so glad you’re back! I discovered the channel in 2020, mid lockdown, and your videos helped me through some tougher times. Seeing a new upload from you makes me very happy :).
Absolutely love these videos. I show them to family and friends all the time. Glad to see that you're (for now) back. Let's hope the pandemic ends sooner rather than later.
I am from Honduras, and I have to admit with guilt that I have only been once in Guatemala despite we are neighbours. Actually, I am quite embarrassed about not knowing as much about my country as I should, a thing I came to realize now that I am studying abroad in Europe, where I crave to rediscover what I have left behind. Corn is hugely important for us, not only for tortillas, but for many other dishes as "tamales", "fritas", "atol", etc. In my grandparents house we would usually help them to prepare the harvested corn, remove the leaves, pluck out the grains, go to the mill and bring back the grounded flour. Thank you for bringing back to me this piece of our shared mesoamerican history in such a detailed and mesmerizing way!
Could you please share some literature on the subject of Maya worldview, corn, human sacrifice, and blood? I am Mexican and I'm extremely interested in understanding how prehispanic worldviews influenced the syncretic Catholic culture after the colonization. Thanks!
Somehow you have managed to tell an incredibly compelling parable about climate change without mentioning it once. Bravo. Corn actually depletes the nitrogen content of the soil and will not grow more than a couple of seasons in the same field without replenishing the nitrogen. Today, many farmers spray nitrates rather than rotate with soybeans, which replenish the soil naturally. Neither option would have been available to pre-modern farmers. Ash and organic waste are also great sources of nitrogen though. Slash and burn agriculture is a real thing and it works very well, for a time. It's easy to imagine that people would latch onto the very real power of sacrifice in the way you describe, expecting more valuable blood to be that much more potent somehow. In reality, the more rainforest is converted to farmland, the worse the local climate gets, regardless of how expensive the sacrifice was. Drought gets worse due to complex forces that society isn't willing to accept, even if somebody is smart enough to discover the real connection. It seems easy to then lean into the religious explanation, even for those that know better, because as you say the prosperity itself is the problem, and nobody wants to see an end to prosperity.
I got to Chichen Itza and Tulum back in 2001 when you could still climb the pyramids. I was only 12 years old but boy did that place stick with me! When you entered the city you could just feel the energy... It was stunning. I bought a beautiful handmade blanket from an old woman that was missing her arm.. still have it. Best damn blanket ever made!
Rare Earth is perhaps the only channel I missed over the last months/year of the pandemic. I often found myself thinking about the series and checking on TH-cam if I had missed a new episode. I was afraid it would not come back... What a relief!
Welcome back Evan. Your videos are always great and I’ve been waiting for one to appear again. I know things aren’t always easy, but I am glad to see you back. As an aside, have you ever given any thought to the “twin” of this video? While the west has corn as the lifeblood, when you go to the east, they started with rice. Rice allowed the east to grow at a much faster rate but still did involve sacrifice. Thanks again, and welcome back.
YAAAAY! My favorite YT series is back! And in my own country! I guess I'm just spoiled. I hope The Return of the King lasts and that your stay here was/is awesome!
Someone once told me corn has little to no nutritional value, which might make sense if you're eating the full pieces and not digesting it. Except for this whole video lmao. Its sad that this information isn't taught in school. Alot of health freaks could add corn back to their diets if they only knew this stuff 😂
Well American grown corn is of especially low nutritional value due to mass industrialized cultivation practices. Small farms using natural primitive fertilizers and "heirloom" crops are probably much better, of course getting even better with the lime preparation
@@Ratkill that is just pure wrong. There is no way we can feed the world using organic growth methods, we would have to cultivate every available acre of land, like the Amazon, good bye to that. We need modern crops to grow the amount of food we need. Period.
I think they might have held this fashionable view that discounts calories as "not nutritional" and only counts the vitamins, minerals, and so on. This is an overreaction to old views that undervalued these additional elements. It's true that you can't survive on "empty" calories forever, and will get sick and die, however without caloric intake you'd starve long before any other nutritional deficiencies kick in. Why is it that popular opinion so often reacts to a mistakenly narrow view by just adopting the opposite, but equally narrow view? It's almost as if people can't hold more than two concepts in their head at once, one of which needs to be good and the other one needs to be bad.
@@sokonek1 there's alot of truth in that. They made a rice plant that's capable of surviving almost anywhere, and people were concerned with what kind of adverse health effects a GMO plant can have. But even if it caused cancer, it's better to have a 1% increase chance of cancer, possibly than to starve to death in the street. Not to mention those fears generally are not founded on science or reality but mearly fear and superstition. Almost every fruit and veg in a grocery store has been genetically modified. Strawberries used to be little tiny things until humans changed them. Broccoli, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, and regular lettuce all came from the same plant until it was modified and bred to be different.
@@steve1978ger yes I think it's important to weigh the pros and cons as well. As u said if you'll die from lack of food before those deficiencies happen its better to live long enough to find, or hunt the things they do need. And we should be using the limestone trick for corn, especially vegans they should write that shit down lol. One thing I don't understand is he made it seem like the limestone trick changed the corn and made it possible to make tortillas from it. Is that how they make corn flour than? Cuz it's fairly simple I thought to make tortillas at home but don't know if I've seen some one go from corn to tortilla lol.
Remembered you like two days ago and thought whether you will ever come back to TH-cam. My first instinct was to think that no, you've gone on to other more lucrative endeavours, and then I remembered your ideas, your philosophy, your person, and chuckled to myself, sure that you will come back eventually. Delighted to see how timely my remembrance of you was. Cheersios, to many more and without interruption.
Glad to have you back! I love your way with words. Your ability to transfer the depth, implications and meaning of what you say is just amazing. If you ever write a book I’ll definitely buy it :)
Evan I have missed your informative and thought provoking videos. I looked almost every day for a video. To my surprise and joy you're back on youtube. Thank You! I hope you and yours have gotten through this crazy Covid time. All the best to you and Yours!
I just stumbled upon this channel and this is an unbelievable video. I'm fascinated by Mesoamerican culture and this is one of the first perspectives I have seen that has made the "sacrifice of nature versus sacrifice of Man" duality make sense. BRAVO
Thank you Evan! You are great. Wellcome to Guatemala. I hope you had a great experience here, because I know for sure that you have some good stories to share with us. I love your channel, I'm exciting for the next videos.
Came across this on reddit, really liked it. There's something enjoyable about the pace of your voice, informative with a touch of dry humour and well shot interesting visuals to stop me getting bored. Nice, thanks
I don't know why you don't have your own national geographic channel. I think you are amazing in how you give the honest truth about the "rare earth". Glad I started watching your videos years ago. Lots of knowledge and understanding of some of the history. Thanks and happy new year.
I am SO excited you are back! And Guatemala is one of the most underrated designations in the world! The video structure reminds me a bit of a James Michener novel, checking in on a society every couple of hundred or thousand years. Love it! You were missed.
Really appreciated the way that you didn't frame the sacrifice culture as savage or barbaric and instead sought to understand why it came about and give that understanding to the audience as well. So often it's just depicted as sadistic pointless killing for the amusement of those on the top
Every single person who stayed with the Patreon during the hiatus will be sainted. You are my rock.
www.patreon.com/rareearth
HE LIVES!
I will enjoy this new series, Thank you and welcome back!
Welcome back!
Happy New year, stay healthy and experience everything you hope for!
Welcome back! The King of storytelling is back! I'm glad the algorithm showed this in my subscriptions feed ☺️
It's really good to see you back. Hope you've been well!
The return we've all been waiting for
I'm from El Salvador and corn is still an extremely important crop for us. It was the only thing we grew on our land and everything else was bought. Growing up my mom would always make sure that I ate my tortillas and would get angry with me if I didn't. It was always annoying for me but I eventually learned that when she was growing up, corn tortillas were the only thing they could truly rely on. She tells me stories of how there were certain days when all there was to eat was tortillas with salt to add a little bit of flavor. That's why when she always wanted us to fill up with tortillas, since the tortillas were the meal and everything else was only there to add flavor. Now that I'm an adult I have learned to appreciate the importance of corn in our culture as something that had been with us for thousands of years. Religion may have been taken out of corn after the conversion to Christianity but people are still religious about it.
Loved the video!
I just wish he went a little more into the ahistoricalness of the sacrifices. We only have 2-3 sources regarding them and they are very, very suspect at least, probably mostly lies at worse. One says that they sacrificed 45k in a single day, but that would be impossible because that would have required a tremendous amount of wood because they burned the dead afterwards so it could continue the cycle.
What we can gather from the sources is that it was a huge event, much like a Roman Triumph, but probably very little ACTUAL human sacrifice.
@@loonloon9365 I don't know what you mean, there are many many many examples that have been shown to be human sacrifice across mesoamerica, studied at great length. The tzompantli in Mexica, for example, often contained hundreds to thousands of skulls.
What specifically are you referencing when you claim that they barely sacrificed anyone at all?
www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital
@@loonloon9365 I'm Mexican, and always every few years we hear in the news that new archaeological discoveries have been made, they almost always include skeletons of people that were sacrificed, the museum of archaeology in the city of mexico is full of skulls and skeletons and the evidence of not only human sacrifice but also cannibalism is pretty strong, that's just how they were, and they had a very complete different view than an European or someone from the old world, because of complete isolation from other cultures and ideas, it was a whole civilization on its own
@@RareEarthSeries
Didn't you get the memo?
_"We Choose (our) Truth, _*_Over FACTS!"_* ....👴💤
and if you don't go along with our woke revisionist ID politics
_You ain't Black!_ ....👴💤
¯\_( ツ )_/¯
@@ShaferHart Yes, tool marks for example. Read the linked article from Science magazine.
This platform was longing for another Evan to upload regularly, glad it chose you
That's just my stage name my real name is MattColbo
@@RareEarthSeries ah damn, well the platform could use much less of those so maybe go back to what you were at
@@RareEarthSeries my stage name is Willum Scott but a have no stage🤯
good taste
I'm sorry but we only need one of you to fill TH-cam's Canadian quota. One of you has to be let go.
THE RETURN OF THE LEGEND
Honestly one of the channels that I truly value on this platform, because when I see it, I know it will be worth my time. Thank you for making these, while I cant afford to be a patron, I will definitely be watching these until the end, as this is probably the only channel I can say I am truly a fan of.
Check out Tom Scott too!
The very end had me thinking about my uncle. He farms about 1000 acres if corn in Illinois. He certainly doesn't pierce holes in himself to get a good harvest but it's still brutally hard work requiring lots of sacrifice
he owes his whole livelihood to the Maya and the original Americans
@@krono5el every civilization adds to to the collective knowledge of humanity. The maya learned from those that came before them, as we have earned from those who are before us.
@@michaelhellwinkle9999 maybe the first 5
@@krono5el the first 5 what?
I hope he's taking much better care of his soil and the countless ecosystems under his care than the Mayans did. Else we're all doomed to the same fate as the Mayans were when they ruined their environment.
Today is a good day, I loved this and it's good to have you back! I binged all of your videos in 2018 when I was recovering from cancer and it really helped cheer me up
Mexican who grew up in the U.S- far removed from our country; my family still grows corn in our garden. This year, on thanksgiving, I used the product of our soil to make turkey tamales for the thanksgiving dinner. I spent my childhood in Mexico, most fundamental years of my live were fueled by tortillas made from scratch. Now, I sadly only get to enjoy them whenever I travel to Mexico. The best I've had where in Oaxaca. My grandmother's (from Chihuahua) are a close second. My dad says before industrialization reached his corner of the country the women of the ranch would get up at 5am to use the town's corn mill. By the time their husbands were up they'd have a stack of fresh, warm, tortillas to get them through their day in the fields- growing that same corn. The Aztec's said men was made from corn. For us Mexicans, that point still stands. We're far removed from our old cultures (in my case, removed from Mexican culture as well) and corn is becoming less and less common in the modernized household. Mexico imports most of it's corn from the U.S; since it's cheaper than the national product. Our heirloom varieties are in danger of going extinct. But, it's undeniable that it got us to where we are. Had it not been for corn- the civilizations of Mexico would have faced the same near-extermination that the tribes in the U.S and Canada did. Thanks to the plant, we had empires. And, the traces of them are very much present in the modern nation. We owe our culture to corn, our ancestors owed their lives to it, by extension- so do we.
So good to see you back watching your short films is always a pleasure !
I saw this video when it came out on Nebula. I just want to say-- thank you for all you do with Rare Earth. Your videos have impacted me and my worldview so much over the years. The wait has been worth it. Welcome back.
Then you've got a new one over there today!
@@RareEarthSeries N I C E
Glad to see this series back!
yep we all are 👍
That really is amazing that boiling limestone with corn makes it more nutritious. I always thought it was just selective breeding that changed maize into the corn that we know today. Literally built an empire off that lucky discovery, and if they had ceramic they may have never figured that out.
Selective breeding certainly has its part, a strong part, but liming it was also crucial, like the discovery of fire.
I'd estimate boiling your limestone with just about anything would make it more nutritious. 😉
It's a chemical reaction, the outer shell is eaten off from the acid made when the limestone was put into water. Now the nutrients are bio-available for human uptake.
There's a disease from vitamin B deficiency. People in Europe found out the hard way after maize was brought into the country and consumed as the main calories without being nixtamalized. Today we use food grade lime or hard wood ashes in rainwater.
It is always the lucky discovery but luck only comes out of the hard work preceding it. SHE proved just that.
@@mandy7684 Limestone makes water basic not acidic. Acidic kernel destruction wouldn't have lead to the vitamin B deficiency you talk about as our stomachs contain 0.1 molar hydrochloric acid, ph 1, which would readily eat the corn kernel away.
Today we use at least three starter molecules for nixtamalization, the two you describe and lye (potassium hydroxide).
As someone with celiac disease I too am sustained by corn, but instead of heads and testicles I just sacrifice a lot of money to it
Same !!!!
I am really glad to see you producing awesome, thoughtful and thought provoking videos. Welcome back and I for one, Thank you.
I'm glad to see someone is traveling
Hey Evan, first time I write, but have been following Rare Earth since the beginning. I see you are in Tikal , just a stone throw away from my country, Mexico. Have been waiting for ever for you to come... maybe it is not in your plans but I sure do hope so. My country won’t disappoint.
I love rare earth and I'm so happy to see it's back!!! For real man your videos make my day!
This is exactly what I needed to see returning after a shit day, love you guys
It’s amazing how many stories there are around the world to shed light on, and I really hope that you’re able to travel to lots of new places this year to do just that.
What can I say Khorne just demands blood, it's the way of live.
So happy to see you back at it. I'll be honest, your videos inspired me to take time off after I finish my degree and see the world.
I do writeups and work with history/archeology channels with videos on Mesoamerica: I think you did a pretty good job trying to represent the overall ideology and practices and worldview (If making it a bit Maize centric, but hey, that's what the video is on!), but I thought I'd give some small corrections: I realize this video is focusing on the Maya, but my understanding (I'm more informed on later periods) is that Maize domestication probably originated in the Southwestern Mexico, rather then the Maya areas in the Southeast, so a lot of the specific milestones you mention early on would have taken place not in the jungles, but in arid and temperate hills and valleys (though i'm not sure if we know where Nixtamalization first happened) Next , By 0AD, civilization would have already been well established across most of Mesoamerica, it's not when it';s first sprouting up: the first site widely acknowledged to display urbanization and stratified socity would be the Olmec center of San Lorenzo, which developed into a large town or a city by 1400BC. It used to be thought that the Olmec were a singular mother culture which all other Mesoamerican civilizations originated from, and with the Olmec having wide cultural influence, and/or political, economic, or military control over other parts of Mesoamerica, but now it's more the consensus that a lot of the "Olmec Style" goods we see at sites like Tlatilco in Central Mexico or contemporary sites in Oaxaca was more the result of that style of art being in-vogue across the upper classes across Mesoamerica at the time and that civilization was being developed simultaneously in multiple areas at the time....
....That is to say, urbanization, monumental architecture, class systems, etc was arising in both the Gulf Coast area, Central Mexico, the Maya area, Oaxaca, etc during this time (West Mexico too, but it doesn't really catch on in West Mexico till much later) from 1400 to say 500BC; with the first writing showing up buy 900BC and the Zapotec city of Monte Alban having the first complex bureaucracies by 500BC (As defined by a 4 tier administrative hierarchy, earlier sites may have too). By 0AD, you're almost at the transition from the Preclassic/Formative period to the Classic period, when civilization wasn't rising up, but was already widespread, almost ubiquitous in Mesoamerica (again, aside from West Mexico, and obviously there were some hamlets and villages around the bigger cities)
Next, i'm not aware of captives being drugged and forced to play in ball games, but maybe that's a Maya specific practice i'm aware of, Central Mexico is admittedly more my thing... What I AM sure of is that there's not evidence that players were sacrificed. Yes, we see iconography of beheadings around ball courts, but there are many myths around ball games and beheadings across Mesoamerican mythologies, so while it could represent a real practice, it could also be symbolism. As far as i'm aware there's no smoking gun evidence of ball players being sacrificed in or around ball courts. The closest thing we have is Sahagun stating there was an Aztec ceremony to Coyolxauhqui that took place at ball courts which involved beheadings, but even if Sahagun isn't hyperbolizing (he is, in fairness, one of the better Spanish sources), it isn't specified that the players would be the victims. Considering how important the game was on both a recreational and political level, with players being forbidden to marry to focus on the game in some cultures, cities and even schools having their own teams sort of like the modern NFL and Varisety leagues, etc, I think it's unlikely they'd be killing off the players.
By 1200AD, the Classic Maya collapse would have already occurred centuries ago. The Collapse is pretty debated so I don't think it's fair for me to nitpick the way you presented what caused it (what ytou say is definetely one of the things researchers believe could have played into it), but you're off time wise, like with the 0AD example. The collapse was more from 800-1000AD, roughly (Even 1000AD is arguably after it). It's also really worth noting here that some researchers dispute that there was a big collapse at all: It was really mostly the large cities in the Central and Southern Yucatan Peninsula that declined (and even then, not all of them); with medium sized towns and villages being unaffected, and large cities in the Northern Maya area not just continuing, but even growing in the following centuries: They were at their peak around 1200AD, actually, and then slowly declining untill the Spanish arrived. Even then, though, there were some large Maya cities in the Northern and Western Yucatan Peninsula. So it's less a civilization wide collapse, and more just a shift in demographics and political power centers... and, of course, there are still millions of Maya people around today, many of which are seen in your video.
Lastly, this couldn't be shown due to the format of the video being film based, so artistic depictions would have been out of place, but I think it's always worth noting that what we see today in ruins is not at all how Mesoamerican cities would have looked like. The few structures you do see show bare masonry and mortar like cobblestone, but in their heyday these would be covered by more precise brickwork, and then smooth stucco, rich painted murals and frescos, and then engraved reliefs, sculptural facades and accents. And then, of course, there would have been dozens to hundreds of other palaces, temples, plazas, etc that in sites today are destroyed or still buried; and then landscaped suburbs of commoner housing interspersed with agricultural land radiating out from the city center of those fancy structures, for dozens or even hundreds of square kilometers for larger cities. Huge amounts of what's now jungle around ruins like Tikal, Cakakmul, Copan, Uxmal, etc would have been active infrastructure at the time.
The host mentioned an alphabet [ ~5:12 ]but did any pre-Columbian American culture have a real alphabet?
Have you seen Lindybeige's video on TIKAL? th-cam.com/video/HDPNxz3WXTk/w-d-xo.html
Lots of insights on TIKAL and I wonder if Lloyd's getting things correct?
@@skybluskyblueify Ah, that's a good thing I should have addressed too! In short, no, but the Maya script DOES have a complete syllabary (IE a character to represent each spoken sound in the language), which is basically the equivalent to an Alphabet in a syllabic script (as I understand it, i'm not a linguist) A lot of people think the Maya script was like Egyptian hieroglyphs, and in fairness it does have hieroglyph-esque logograms (IE symbols to represent entire words or concepts) too, but it's also got characters that represent syllables which combine to form compound glyphs spelling out the word. So you can write a logogram for "Jaguar' that looks like a Jaguar, or you can write out the 3 characters for "ba", "la" and "m(a)", which makes the word Jaguar in Maya. Or do both at once. There's even cases of dates being written out via drawing gods associated with specific numbers and personfications of day day signs together, which is almost more like pictographic symbolism. But the point is that the Maya script is a true written language even in the strictest definition, but it's a syllabic rather then a phonemic(?) one, so it has a syllabrary.
In contrast, the Aztec and Mixtec scripts are pictographic (IE less writing, and more drawings/iconography with set conventions that still conveys a message), though Aztec still has some verbal puns that rely on the spoken language with stuff like rebuses (IE the words for "tooth" and "place" in Nahuatl, the Aztec language sound similar, so sometimes cities are shown as the city's prefix depicted visually over a tooth. So a city named "place of snakes", would be a snake over a tooth) and I think a recent book proposed that it had even more complexity then that and COULD write out complete sentences and words much like the Maya script, but there's no evidence thsat it was ever actually used that way. Teotihuacano is still pretty undeciphered and I don't quite know the specifics, but some believe it was more logogram based; while the. Zapotec and Epi-Olmec scripts were also logogram based, but , with the former still having some pictographic and phonetic elements, and lacks articles and propositions and conjugation; with the latter uses subglyphs representing sounds to form word glyphs like the Maya script which suggests a similar heavy spoken-language competent.
@@LadyAnuB Yep, I lefgt a comment there with additional info too!
@@MajoraZ I'll have to catch your comment there once I'm done with Lloyd's video.
When the world needed him most, he returned
As a humble yokel that's been stuck on the east coast all my life, this channel really puts life into perspective and makes me wish I could travel the world.
Ah god, I can't even tell you how much I missed those endcards. Glad you're back and hope you're doing well!
Wow, glad to see you've gone to Guatemala!! I've visited this beautiful country twice, and still count it as my favourite destination. The people are amazing, the scenery second-to-none, and the old Spanish architecture is just incredible. But most importantly, Guatemala usually has 2 or 3 volcanoes erupting at any given time (as my username might suggest, I LOVE erupting volcanoes). I was fortunate enough to see lava flows from Mt. Pacaya up close on both of my trips; I also climbed Volcan Acatenango and got within about 100 vertical metres of the summit of the adjacent volcano, Volcan Fuego, before I chickened out and descended (it erupts every couple of hours, and I wanted to be nowhere near it when that happened...moreover, a few years after my last visit, it killed hundreds of people in what is still the deadliest eruption of the 21st century, so in hindsight, my decision to try and climb it seems a bit foolish*). And I camped for two nights on the lava dome immediately next to the erupting dome at Santiaguito (the erupting part of the older Santa Maria volcano), close enough for volcanic ash to fall on my tent more than once. From that site, I could watch the volcano erupt without TOO much risk (although considering this volcano produced the largest - and 3rd-deadliest - eruption of the 20th century, back in 1902, that's not saying much). Anyway, if anyone wants to take a post-Covid celebratory volcano trip, Guatemala's a really great choice. And if you're REALLY lucky, you might get to experience an earthquake as well [towards the end of my second trip, a M5.6 earthquake woke me up one morning...the epicenter was about 170 km away, close to the border with Mexico, but the shaking was still quite vigorous, and lasted more than 10 seconds in Antigua (where I was at the time), indicating a modified Mercalli intensity of around IV]!
*Note that I have studied volcanoes extensively, having been taught by extremely competent volcanologists (both in an academic context, and on-the-ground at active/erupting volcanoes in Hawai'i, Iceland, Tanzania and Ecuador), I employ knowledgable local guides, and I take all of the proper safety precautions...in other words, I minimize the risk of what is still a pretty dangerous hobby (and I acknowledge that it's dangerous, but still worth doing).
It was a little strange reading this comment as a guatemalan lol, the recent Fuego eruption moved the whole country and at the time my school was gathering resourses for the survivors and some people went there to do voluntary work, some photos looked straight out of Silent Hill with the extreme ashfall and lots of streets in the nearby villages had gotten some volcanic stuff on them. I went to Pacaya once, I hope you got to see this uphill point where you can completely gaze on the huge landmass that is the volcano itself with the sea of black crystalized stuff below.
Your fascination with earthquakes felt even more strange, old people sometimes speak about their encounter with the 1974 earthquake and how it took some time in the capital city to get food on the markets again because of how broken the streets were, my philosophy prof. once mentioned having a stock of canned food because the experience when he was an adolescent. The 1917 one gave the writer Miguel Angel Asturias a whole change of mindset that made him saw how broken this place was/is and with that inspiration eventually wrote his most famous work El Señor Presidente as a critique on dictatorships.
Guatemala is indeed a very good choice for doing stuff in these times, curfews stopped a long time ago and all we do is keep the masks and wash our hands regularly, COVID kinda helped me with the constant hygene if taking into account how much I tend to get sick every year.
Your comment was stimulating, have a great day.
You're channel is such a underrated gem on TH-cam. Been watching you for years and every video always enlightens me.
This popped up in my feed with a "Is this a good recommendation for you?" survey and I have never clicked the maximum score so fast before. Welcome back, Evan.
Probably our slowest video start ever so I appreciate the support :)
@@RareEarthSeries I also showed it to my best friend after the title got her intrigued (followed by the Extra Credits video on pellagra, for extra context on the importance of niacin). We got so into corn history that her infant daughter started yelling for attention. (She was fine, just outraged that the dog had licked her foot.) So thank you for being absorbing, and the dog thanks you for the free lick!
I didn't realize how much I really missed you. These videos are inspiring and so incredibly poetic.
The narration and story telling are second to none. In a world completely devoid of substance....I thank you immensely. Michael Wood is smiling down on this series.
As always a very interesting and well shot video, thank you so much for coming back and making more of them.
I forgot how much i was waiting for this channel to return. But definitely one of the best on TH-cam. It's bs that no network has picked this up and made this your living
So excited to see and hear Evan's stories again. Maybe the start of a return back to sanity.
"food is more than just some product, its the destruction of life itself" this sentence will stick with me
Congrats on getting a new video made, I always looked forward to these and was wondering if you would make more.
To be honest, as much as I like the visual side of the old stuff, I'm here mostly for Your take on things and all those small and big stories. You're a good storyteller. Keep them coming please.
Its incredible how impactful corn still is to our society. Still one of the world's staple crops and one of the most planted in the world. Its crazy the journey it took to get there, through domestication, ancient trade and empires, and colonization. Might be fun to get the stories behind some of humanity's other agricultural staples - after all, farming is the base of civilization and there's gotta be so many unique stories behind each one.
Bubbling gourd as a womb. Very well done. High point for your writing. More, please.
Thank you for bringing the series back, and thank you for bringing in the politics, the food and the basic chemistry that usually gets left out of the story. Someone should use this episode to propose a 30 minute version on Food Network or the BBC. Does Canada have PBS?
They have CBC instead of BBC
I’m so glad you’re back! I discovered the channel in 2020, mid lockdown, and your videos helped me through some tougher times. Seeing a new upload from you makes me very happy :).
We missed you Rare Earth!
Love this series and im glad that its back
Rare Earth! Great to see you back.
Wow! You’re an absolute rarely good storyteller- these videos gives me goosebumps!
Was wondering where y'all went. Glad to have you back.
Absolutely love these videos. I show them to family and friends all the time. Glad to see that you're (for now) back. Let's hope the pandemic ends sooner rather than later.
Only 1 Khorne needs blood.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
YEA!!! They're back! I thought about this channel yesterday as I rewatched one of the videos from Uruguay. I must had a prescient vision.
Blood for the Blood Gods!
Skulls for the Skull Throne!
Corn for the Khorn Flakes!
I am from Honduras, and I have to admit with guilt that I have only been once in Guatemala despite we are neighbours. Actually, I am quite embarrassed about not knowing as much about my country as I should, a thing I came to realize now that I am studying abroad in Europe, where I crave to rediscover what I have left behind. Corn is hugely important for us, not only for tortillas, but for many other dishes as "tamales", "fritas", "atol", etc. In my grandparents house we would usually help them to prepare the harvested corn, remove the leaves, pluck out the grains, go to the mill and bring back the grounded flour.
Thank you for bringing back to me this piece of our shared mesoamerican history in such a detailed and mesmerizing way!
The harvest will be spectacular my friends
-The priest after ripping out some guy's heart and see it's still beating
Could you please share some literature on the subject of Maya worldview, corn, human sacrifice, and blood? I am Mexican and I'm extremely interested in understanding how prehispanic worldviews influenced the syncretic Catholic culture after the colonization. Thanks!
Somehow you have managed to tell an incredibly compelling parable about climate change without mentioning it once. Bravo.
Corn actually depletes the nitrogen content of the soil and will not grow more than a couple of seasons in the same field without replenishing the nitrogen. Today, many farmers spray nitrates rather than rotate with soybeans, which replenish the soil naturally. Neither option would have been available to pre-modern farmers. Ash and organic waste are also great sources of nitrogen though. Slash and burn agriculture is a real thing and it works very well, for a time. It's easy to imagine that people would latch onto the very real power of sacrifice in the way you describe, expecting more valuable blood to be that much more potent somehow. In reality, the more rainforest is converted to farmland, the worse the local climate gets, regardless of how expensive the sacrifice was. Drought gets worse due to complex forces that society isn't willing to accept, even if somebody is smart enough to discover the real connection. It seems easy to then lean into the religious explanation, even for those that know better, because as you say the prosperity itself is the problem, and nobody wants to see an end to prosperity.
Rotating crops with legumes other than soy beans can also return nitrogen to the soil.
These would have been available to pre-modern farmers.
I got to Chichen Itza
and Tulum back in 2001 when you could still climb the pyramids. I was only 12 years old but boy did that place stick with me! When you entered the city you could just feel the energy... It was stunning. I bought a beautiful handmade blanket from an old woman that was missing her arm.. still have it. Best damn blanket ever made!
The return of some of the best storytelling on the internet. Good to have you back.
Rare Earth is perhaps the only channel I missed over the last months/year of the pandemic. I often found myself thinking about the series and checking on TH-cam if I had missed a new episode. I was afraid it would not come back... What a relief!
Would have been awesome if a speech like this was featured in "children of the corn"
Thanks be to all that's good and holy... the greatest channel on TH-cam has returned!!! It has been dark here without you my friend.
Welcome back Evan. Your videos are always great and I’ve been waiting for one to appear again. I know things aren’t always easy, but I am glad to see you back.
As an aside, have you ever given any thought to the “twin” of this video? While the west has corn as the lifeblood, when you go to the east, they started with rice. Rice allowed the east to grow at a much faster rate but still did involve sacrifice.
Thanks again, and welcome back.
Yes, I'll eventually do rice as well. I think it's a very fascinating story too.
YAAAAY! My favorite YT series is back! And in my own country! I guess I'm just spoiled.
I hope The Return of the King lasts and that your stay here was/is awesome!
Oh yes, restarting with a strong episode. ❤
every video you put out is magical. thank you
We missed you man
I am so beyond elated that you are posting again. Your stories are what I have been missing.
Blood for the Corn God!
So happy to see your content again! These stories are so amazing
Someone once told me corn has little to no nutritional value, which might make sense if you're eating the full pieces and not digesting it. Except for this whole video lmao. Its sad that this information isn't taught in school. Alot of health freaks could add corn back to their diets if they only knew this stuff 😂
Well American grown corn is of especially low nutritional value due to mass industrialized cultivation practices. Small farms using natural primitive fertilizers and "heirloom" crops are probably much better, of course getting even better with the lime preparation
@@Ratkill that is just pure wrong. There is no way we can feed the world using organic growth methods, we would have to cultivate every available acre of land, like the Amazon, good bye to that. We need modern crops to grow the amount of food we need. Period.
I think they might have held this fashionable view that discounts calories as "not nutritional" and only counts the vitamins, minerals, and so on. This is an overreaction to old views that undervalued these additional elements. It's true that you can't survive on "empty" calories forever, and will get sick and die, however without caloric intake you'd starve long before any other nutritional deficiencies kick in. Why is it that popular opinion so often reacts to a mistakenly narrow view by just adopting the opposite, but equally narrow view? It's almost as if people can't hold more than two concepts in their head at once, one of which needs to be good and the other one needs to be bad.
@@sokonek1 there's alot of truth in that. They made a rice plant that's capable of surviving almost anywhere, and people were concerned with what kind of adverse health effects a GMO plant can have. But even if it caused cancer, it's better to have a 1% increase chance of cancer, possibly than to starve to death in the street. Not to mention those fears generally are not founded on science or reality but mearly fear and superstition. Almost every fruit and veg in a grocery store has been genetically modified. Strawberries used to be little tiny things until humans changed them. Broccoli, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, and regular lettuce all came from the same plant until it was modified and bred to be different.
@@steve1978ger yes I think it's important to weigh the pros and cons as well. As u said if you'll die from lack of food before those deficiencies happen its better to live long enough to find, or hunt the things they do need. And we should be using the limestone trick for corn, especially vegans they should write that shit down lol. One thing I don't understand is he made it seem like the limestone trick changed the corn and made it possible to make tortillas from it. Is that how they make corn flour than? Cuz it's fairly simple I thought to make tortillas at home but don't know if I've seen some one go from corn to tortilla lol.
Very happy to see Rare Earth back. I love your storytelling.
Welcome back!
YES!!!! i am so happy this channel isn't actually dead. i came to terms with the loss of this channel what seems like a year ago. glad you're back!
I am glad you're back, you are the most eloquent youtuber that I know of, keep at it. Well told and educational as usual.
Remembered you like two days ago and thought whether you will ever come back to TH-cam. My first instinct was to think that no, you've gone on to other more lucrative endeavours, and then I remembered your ideas, your philosophy, your person, and chuckled to myself, sure that you will come back eventually. Delighted to see how timely my remembrance of you was. Cheersios, to many more and without interruption.
Hell yeah! Just what I needed! It's great to see you back at it! I look forward to the new videos!
Glad to have you back! I love your way with words. Your ability to transfer the depth, implications and meaning of what you say is just amazing. If you ever write a book I’ll definitely buy it :)
Fantastic - a new level of excellence in writing and montage. And the credits are funny, as always! Glad you are safe.
Yay been waiting for ages. Thank you for the new video! Rewatching your old ones have been a blast
So glad to see another episode from this channel
Evan I have missed your informative and thought provoking videos. I looked almost every day for a video. To my surprise and joy you're back on youtube. Thank You! I hope you and yours have gotten through this crazy Covid time. All the best to you and Yours!
I’m so glad you’re back!! I love this series.
I just stumbled upon this channel and this is an unbelievable video. I'm fascinated by Mesoamerican culture and this is one of the first perspectives I have seen that has made the "sacrifice of nature versus sacrifice of Man" duality make sense. BRAVO
Welcome back! I'm so happy to see another video from you!!!
Checking his subscribers after two years completely shocked
Great going brother @rareearth
Glad to hear you are well. Thanks for the excellent work you do.
Thank you Evan! You are great. Wellcome to Guatemala. I hope you had a great experience here, because I know for sure that you have some good stories to share with us. I love your channel, I'm exciting for the next videos.
genuinely loved Guatemala
@@RareEarthSeries for your next visit, you have a house here!
Came across this on reddit, really liked it. There's something enjoyable about the pace of your voice, informative with a touch of dry humour and well shot interesting visuals to stop me getting bored. Nice, thanks
Welcome back .. you kept us all waiting
this is really great narration
Glad to see you are back. You are very enlightening
I don't know why you don't have your own national geographic channel. I think you are amazing in how you give the honest truth about the "rare earth". Glad I started watching your videos years ago. Lots of knowledge and understanding of some of the history. Thanks and happy new year.
So glad to see you're creating videos again. Back with a strong start too!
So happy to see you back. My favourite channel on youtube
Whoa just in time, I was binge rewatching this channel for past few days.
Didn't realize how much I missed your videos until now! Welcome back :)
Been ages, good to see you back! Great work as always.
I am SO excited you are back! And Guatemala is one of the most underrated designations in the world! The video structure reminds me a bit of a James Michener novel, checking in on a society every couple of hundred or thousand years. Love it! You were missed.
Really appreciated the way that you didn't frame the sacrifice culture as savage or barbaric and instead sought to understand why it came about and give that understanding to the audience as well. So often it's just depicted as sadistic pointless killing for the amusement of those on the top
Those aren't mutually exclusive views: understanding why someone did something doesn't mean what they did wasn't monstrous.
I’m so glad you are back!!!! This is amazing!
Wonderful video as always, happy to have you back, will be expecting more!!
What a comeback! So glad to see you again. Fantastic work.
You are the man.
You got me thinking about food like I never did. Thank you for the great work