Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: th-cam.com/video/AzzE7GOvYz8/w-d-xo.html Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: lexfridman.com/sponsors/cv8018-sa See below for guest bio, links, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *GUEST BIO:* Ed Barnhart is an archaeologist and explorer specializing in ancient civilizations of the Americas. He is the Director of the Maya Exploration Center, host of the ArchaeoEd Podcast, and lecturer on the ancient history of North, Central, and South America. Ed is in part known for his groundbreaking work on ancient astronomy, mathematics, and calendar systems. *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: lexfridman.com/survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: lexfridman.com/ama *Hiring* - join our team: lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: lexfridman.com/contact *EPISODE LINKS:* Ed's TH-cam: youtube.com/@archaeoedpodcast Ed's Website: archaeoed.com/ Maya Exploration Center: mayaexploration.org Ed's Lectures on The Great Courses: thegreatcoursesplus.com/edwin-barnhart Ed's Lectures on Audible: adbl.co/4dBavTZ 2025 Mayan Calendar: mayan-calendar.com/ *SPONSORS:* To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: *MasterClass:* Online classes from world-class experts. Go to lexfridman.com/s/masterclass-cv8018-sa *Shopify:* Sell stuff online. Go to lexfridman.com/s/shopify-cv8018-sa *NetSuite:* Business management software. Go to lexfridman.com/s/netsuite-cv8018-sa *AG1:* All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to lexfridman.com/s/ag1-cv8018-sa *Notion:* Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to lexfridman.com/s/notion-cv8018-sa *PODCAST LINKS:* - Podcast Website: lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: th-cam.com/play/PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4.html - Clips Channel: th-cam.com/users/lexclips *SOCIAL LINKS:* - X: x.com/lexfridman - Instagram: instagram.com/lexfridman - TikTok: tiktok.com/@lexfridman - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: facebook.com/lexfridman - Patreon: patreon.com/lexfridman - Telegram: t.me/lexfridman - Reddit: reddit.com/r/lexfridman
With all due respect. This is false there's no such thing as the Mayan civilization or the so-called Aztec civilization. Anahuac is a denied civilization that's why they call it angent Mexico or mezoamerica. Please give it some recognition.
Archaeologist here from the US Southwest. What’s cooler is the prehistoric people of AZ and NM were trading and adopting religious belief systems with Mesoamerican people. They were trading copper bells, pyrite mirrors, chocolate, macaws and more with cultures to the south.
@@ricmars8980Uto-Aztecan language family. Also share words with Athabasca language group (Alaskan and Navajo). Awesome that the languages are related from modern Mexico to Alaska
Living in a part of Atlanta with a sizeable population of Guatemalans it is an inevitability to meet Mayans. I have been friends with a Mayan family for about 15 years now. They speak Quiche among each other and Spanish in public. As Mr. Barnhart said they are small people. Pound for pound they are the physically strongest people I have ever known. When I was younger I worked with some Mayans and was often bewildered at how strong they were. At 19 I was 6' tall and weighed 238 lbs. I could bearhug a 10 gallon can of railroad spikes and walk with it. I once struggled to set up a 40 steel ladder and took a break to drink some water only to come back and find the ladder missing. I looked around and found one of the guys I worked with, a 4'10" man named Jose walking with the ladder like it was a bag of cotton balls, holding it upright and carrying it with one arm. It is sort of a meme among Guatemalans and Mexicans that the Mayan people are so strong. When you ask them about it they will tell you the same thing today that Jose told me all those years ago: "It's the corn". They believe that corn carries a sort of imbued strength within it and that consumption of it has a sort of sympathetic magic. Many of them will tell you that their "Mayaness" so to speak stems from the consumption of corn. When you then look at their mythology and see the importance of corn and their continuum of culture it is enough to give you chills.
@@andrewprindiville119 😁Maybe that's the problem, people went from organic corn to high fructose corn syrup. It's definitely a sort of meme, in Honduras we substitute corn with beans, although our native roots didn't hold as strong as Guatemalans and Mexicans.
@@carlosromero-sn9nm In my first career after college I did a bit of work with pathologists and I had a favorite, a doctor from Honduras. He had been the director of pathology for the doctors who served the Honduran Armed Forces during the Presidency of Arellano at one point before coming to the U.S. His wife, who remains one of the most lovely women I have ever met, would bring him lunch some days or a late breakfast if we worked early. The idea of beans being substituted for corn doesn't surprise me. I was lucky enough to have homemade baleadas and coffee with him a couple of times a week and I can attest that they are sublime.
This whole podcast (full thing, not just clips) was so interesting. Particularly as a guy in the U.S. who's been down to that region a handful of times learning about the history there at a surface/museum level.
Mayans had an expert level difficulty starting point. Middle of the freaking jungle making it difficult to gather stone and other resources, little to no animals to domesticate, no beast of burden/horses available and they managed to create an interesting civilization
I watched 2 of this man’s courses on the Great Courses. Ancient cultures of North America and Ancient Cultures of South America, also much of the Mesoamerican culture course…… ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!! Would definitely recommend all of them. Many, many hours of excellent content!!
@mikedrones537 I could not agree more. All three of those Great Courses are well worth watching. He also did a travel course that I have not watched yet.
....so to answer what was initially asked: The Naga from the Hindustan/Sri Lankan region coming to what is now Mexico to build are the 1st Maya/Mokaya. It's said that not all of them left when building was over. They did, as the guest stated, 1st come into the west coast of that Mokaya area, then went to the Yucatan.
I’d love to hear more about the Zapotec culture and its connection to the Olmec as they were pre Mayan civilization. They may have been peers to the Olmec…
I’m proud of my mesoamerican ancestors that domesticated corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkin and many many more! One of only 5 or so separate independently developed writing systems.
As someone who has viewed actual teosinte up close I can say that the development of maize as we know it from such a simple grass is nothing short of a miracle. To think they were able to do so without so much as a Punnett Square staggers the imagination. Also, not to be an ass but I think potatoes are generally understood to be from South America.
We are only in the infancy of truly understanding the civilizations of Meso America, Central America, and the Amazon. The next 20 years of archeological discovery has me excited.
Lex my youngest was born when I came back from the same place that Paul is over in the Amazon. So I had a Amazon Native Xingu high class girl name him. Later when my Maya friends heard that, it turned out very similar almost the same name in Mayan. That just shows there is definitely some connection between the folks.. Even the simple fact that I got to know folks from those nations shows that it's not difficult to have ties.
The thing that impresses me about how old the cultures in South America must be is the incredible Mayan calendar. I haven't Googled the dates for this post, but I think they had a calendar accurate to the day for a few thousand years which was carved into stone thousands of years ago. That didn't spring out of nowhere.
Anything is a possibility in terms of Pre-Columbian contact and cultural diffusion. I grew up on a farm in S.E. Alabama. Anytime we tilled or there was a substantial rain we found artifacts. When I was ten we had a pond dug and had about 20 massive piles of sand. Sifting in them I found seemingly out of place artifacts. My father and I took them to archaeologists at an event in a nearby state park where they invited the public to bring historic relics. One artifact was an obsidian spear point from the Southwest. The other was an ornately carved Inuit cribbage board. Supposedly the Osage language from what is now Missouri and Kansas has multiple similarities to Nahuatl including multisyllabic words of identical meaning. Again, anything is possible.
That’s very interesting. Possibly showing long distance movement of people to a single region over time. Have you got photos of these artefacts? Would be interesting to see them
@@irw8367 I wish did have photos. I was telling my wife sometime back the sheer volume of artifacts we had when I was a kid. At one point we kept them in plastic 5 gallon paint buckets with lids. A bucket of large points, a bucket of birdpoints, a bucket of pottery shards, a bucket of stone axeheads, a bucket of grindstones, etc. Some of the good stuff was donated such as the cribbage board and large shards of complex curvilinear stamped pottery. My parents divorced and I don't think either of them knew what became of any of it. My father was a specialist in historic restoration who did a lot of work in St. Augustine and was friend of Mel Fisher so I guess he had other interesting finds.
There's recent linguistic research showing linguistic connections between languages of the northern Amazon and pre-Columbian languages spoken on the Gulf Coast of North America.
It has been persuasively argued that Timucua, a now-extinct language which has never been classified and was spoken in what is now north Florida, was a mixture of three different Amazonian languages and arose as a result of regular trade between North America and different Amazonian groups.
Lex Your question are so interesting and key to have a clear Picture of our past, civilizations and timelines, please consider inviting some of our great researchers from México, the data would be amazing.
Lex, youve gotta watch the "Mysterious cities of Gold" cartoon series from the 80's, it's got all this stuff in it, olmecs, spanish scoundrels, jade masks, maps and gold, its a great story. I was obsessed with this as a child👍👌🇦🇺
The top left on that map is the Sonoran Desert. There were more people there during this time period than anywhere in the Ancestral Puebloan land scape. This is called the Hohokam Culture. I wish he would have mentioned this.
Yea the Purepecha never lost a battle but they lost plenty of skirmishes when the Mexica send a Tlaxcalan general to fight them. Also, purepecha were originally part of the Aztec nation but were abandoned. Most Purepecha are ignorant of that fact which is super sad. And Purepecha were conquered easily by the Spanish. They pretty much had no resistance because they trusted them and their governors all got assassinated in one coordinated attempt. Basically karma for not helping the Mexica.
Smaller people in the forest theory does not hold any water at all, look at Europe where on average the forested north is on average taller than the Mediterranean South.
More height = longer vision for those one the plains. Especially in the high grasslands. Those shorter wouldn’t be able to detect predators or find prey as easy
Recently archeology discovery in Dominican republic of humans dating 5000 years ago can relate the population of america from the Caribbean to aztecs and mayans. Per the archeologist involved they stated they are now able to link all this cultures.
The Navajo believe the Anasazi were actually violent tribes from the south that came into the pueblo regions and invaded the original tribes already there. May have been the imperialistic warrior tribes from the Mexico area that came north. Chaco canyon may have actually been a site where they did sacrifices. This Navajo elder has a great video on it....th-cam.com/video/rbrCn9kHWWg/w-d-xo.html
"These places are horrible" Wow real professional there. That's really what you want to hear from an archaeologist/anthropologist about what they're studying
Before Mayan and Mexica (Aztec) there were the Olmecs and the Mexica (Aztec) said they csme from the Olmecs and Olmecs came from Aztlan a city that is described just as Atlántida
There is no way people migrated down from the north that quick. The southern peoples got there some other way. They are also distinctively different DNA-wise.
Book of Mormon stories that my teacher tells to me are about the (olmecs|maya) in ancient history. Long ago their fathers came from far across the sea, given this land if they live righteously.
I wouldn’t believe ANYTHING that comes from that source…the religions creator made up and added verses to the book of genesis talking of a prophecy of his coming lol. A completely made up rhetoric, common of a conman (which he was known as). Also the huge amounts of racism in Mormonism and their attempt to whitewash ancient america, no wonder they teach the maya came from the sea… were they from Europe by any chance, according to the book?
Yeah it's filled with stories of giants that we have no evidence for, semitic tribes in America, and black people being cursed. Lots of garbage stories in there
In my opinion I believe that the people that settled Central America and Peru came from Polynesian sea fairer. The sweet Potato! Also an indication that this people interacted. Why would you leave the Plains of America with excellent weather and buffalo to cross a giant desert and the settle in an inhospitable jungle. I think civilization came from the pacific not the Bearing strait cross
They left it because it was a fairly different (and more dangerous world) when they arrived. The ice age still gripped the north, so much of that region was hard to survive in and the huge number of predatory species roaming North America as compared to today, like American and cave lions, several bear species. Also it’s the fact humans do tend to naturally migrate, even if an area seems ‘nice’, they move and once they reach somewhere else, they don’t just decide to go back thousands of miles because they thought it’s better (plus this happens over generations rather than a single journey). Also, genetic evidence shows the south and Central Americans are from the same heritage and Polynesian’s couldn’t have seeded them, however it’s very reasonable to assume they had contact and some sort of exchange. Even the Amazonian people are very similar to the Andean/Inca.
Maybe those islands where apart of South America one time and mammals where on there before it broke off. (Not saying South Americans are Polynesian . Saying at one point millions of years ago those islands were maybe apart of the Americans.)
What is jungle today was once cities with millions of people. Toltec were before the Olmec then the Mayan. On the pacific coast all the way to Easter island was the land of Mu.
If you want to see great distances but cannot improve the length of sight your eye can see a height advantage is a suitable advantage and if you do not want to be seen by animals especially big cats that live in a forest having a short stature is of stealth advantage. Cats are a big problem for humans and may by a real reason these traits are so obvious.
I'm not so sure they were "distinct" cultures, I mean I view meso American culture and proximity similar to the tribes of the Italian peninsula before the rise of Rome.
Not really. In fact, dna has proven that ancient Incas cluster with Mesoamericans than they do with other nearby indigenous populations. Also there were mesoamerican migration to South America. Caribbean indigenous populations were a mix between Mesoamericans and South Americans. It's obvious to say that Mesoamericans explored all regions of the Americas and maybe beyond to Polynesia
All people(s) of the Americas descended from "pre-history" clans of the Hopi Nation (clans). All of these separate cultures had pre-historical backgrounds in technology which was quite extensive, therefore allowing each of the cultures a good "head start" from their respective cultural evolutions. The histories of all Pre-Columbian peoples is far more vast than what is known. The Hopi literally migrated ACROSS the Pacific into modern-day Arizona. They do not have Athabascan ancestry (migration from the deep north), as what is commonly assumed.
Here is a fact North Central and South are all the same race/ ethnic makeup 😮 Yes same race but different ethnicities some taller, shorter, facial features, varied skin tones etc.
Its more like the Olmec were like all Europeans, who split up into different cultural/ethnic groups. Western Europe was once all Gaelic, and then it split after cultural genocide occurred in wars from foreign invaders. The Maya were and are like the Irish, and the Aztec were and are more like the British. The British and Irish- once both were Gall's, but when colonizers/conquerors came the British sold out and joined the colonizers, became their Nordic and Saxon oppressors, and got a superiority complex and attacked their Irish relatives and genocided them. They think they're better and hunted down their own relatives, conquered, subjugated, and ethnically cleansed their identity in themselves and their relatives, to form a new 'superior' identity. Aztec are like Brits, Maya are like the Irish.. Mexico, Latino, and Hispanic are all new European terms for what used to be indigenous people.. the British and the Azdiks are racist and oppress their relatives to this very day.
@@TheOregonOak...sharp...the so called "conquest" of the Aztecs was basically due to the surrounding peoples that hated the stronger Aztecs and they allied in great numbers with the primitive spanish and help them, plus the sickness that the europeans brought with them that mostly did the job...
@@guillermotowers8625 plus Malinche. She was the linchpin in the entire operation. Without her Cortez would have never been able to communicate, despite having the help of the Spanish sailor who had shipwrecked 20 years before in Veracruz and learned the language.
I am of the same thinking as Ed Barnhart, Olmec, maya and zapotec cultures evolutioned at the same time and interchanged advancements like calendar, numbers and others
It is disingenuous to say the Olmec had religion. They brought knowledge, not necessarily practices. The Maya acculturated it the same way all the cultures did. Everyone got the 20 days and 36 deccans, the 2 best cycles to know to understand our reality. It is hard science. Don Alejandro in 2008 told me that they received the 20 days from the Olmecs 6,000 years ago. Batz is the first day. Pretty simple message.
Don Juan in the Castaneda books...he claimed that the Nagual coven he belonged to traced their lineage as a group back to the Olmec, if I'm not mistaken. Or maybe it was Toltec. Been 30 years since I read the books and I was enjoying some rare plants back then.
@@drstevej2527 The I-Ching first 20 hexagrams are the 20 days, 21 - 56 are the deccans. The hindu images were published in Das Indische Horoskop Marlene Kruger, Egypt has the Dendera Calendar, most tribes in North America also have the 20 days. Japan has Hokusai's 36 views of Mt Fuji and that is the best set of deccans that have color.. The additional ten views by Hokusai are the 20 days in pairs. My source for the Maya 20 days are Quiche and Kaqchikel. Other than that, if you know the 20 days, they are easily tracked and discernible to an average person.
@@drstevej2527 and lest I forget, Genesis follows the deccans in order by chapter, and simultaneously follows the trecenas in order by chapter also, Exodus follows the 20 days in perfect order by chapter ttwice round, and numbers though horribly butchered, follows the 36 deccans in order for 36 chapters, but they do not teach you that in doctor skool.
One of these days, y’all will recognize North America in the Ohio Mississippi Valley, as home to all civilizations when our land was once known as Hue Hue Tlapalan
Nicaragua and Costa Rica ARE mesoamerican, just not their entire territory, a good part of Nicaragua is and most of the Guanacaste province in Costa Rica, and the rest is not a "no mans land", the "neither" it's called the intermediate area which had and has specific cultures that belong to it.
The pattern of large vs small body size in humans is related to food, not some form of Darwinism. People in jungles eat small game, birds, and forage. People on the plains eat large game animals rich in protein and use sunlight to grow crops. Duh.
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*GUEST BIO:*
Ed Barnhart is an archaeologist and explorer specializing in ancient civilizations of the Americas. He is the Director of the Maya Exploration Center, host of the ArchaeoEd Podcast, and lecturer on the ancient history of North, Central, and South America. Ed is in part known for his groundbreaking work on ancient astronomy, mathematics, and calendar systems.
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It's BC, ED.
You should have asked about the Danish wolf dogs found in the graves in Peru
With all due respect. This is false there's no such thing as the Mayan civilization or the so-called Aztec civilization. Anahuac is a denied civilization that's why they call it angent Mexico or mezoamerica. Please give it some recognition.
Archaeologist here from the US Southwest. What’s cooler is the prehistoric people of AZ and NM were trading and adopting religious belief systems with Mesoamerican people. They were trading copper bells, pyrite mirrors, chocolate, macaws and more with cultures to the south.
That's trully amazing
Their languages all derive from Nahuatl!
@@ricmars8980Uto-Aztecan language family. Also share words with Athabasca language group (Alaskan and Navajo). Awesome that the languages are related from modern Mexico to Alaska
@@theofficialken1755 yeah the Navajo and Apaches are related to the Canadian natives
Live macaws?
Living in a part of Atlanta with a sizeable population of Guatemalans it is an inevitability to meet Mayans. I have been friends with a Mayan family for about 15 years now. They speak Quiche among each other and Spanish in public.
As Mr. Barnhart said they are small people. Pound for pound they are the physically strongest people I have ever known. When I was younger I worked with some Mayans and was often bewildered at how strong they were. At 19 I was 6' tall and weighed 238 lbs. I could bearhug a 10 gallon can of railroad spikes and walk with it. I once struggled to set up a 40 steel ladder and took a break to drink some water only to come back and find the ladder missing. I looked around and found one of the guys I worked with, a 4'10" man named Jose walking with the ladder like it was a bag of cotton balls, holding it upright and carrying it with one arm.
It is sort of a meme among Guatemalans and Mexicans that the Mayan people are so strong. When you ask them about it they will tell you the same thing today that Jose told me all those years ago: "It's the corn". They believe that corn carries a sort of imbued strength within it and that consumption of it has a sort of sympathetic magic. Many of them will tell you that their "Mayaness" so to speak stems from the consumption of corn. When you then look at their mythology and see the importance of corn and their continuum of culture it is enough to give you chills.
I SHALL DRINK HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP STRAIGHT FROM A BOTTLE TO GAIN THE POWER OF THE MAYA
@@andrewprindiville119 😁Maybe that's the problem, people went from organic corn to high fructose corn syrup. It's definitely a sort of meme, in Honduras we substitute corn with beans, although our native roots didn't hold as strong as Guatemalans and Mexicans.
amazing anecdote you shared. Thank you
@@carlosromero-sn9nm In my first career after college I did a bit of work with pathologists and I had a favorite, a doctor from Honduras. He had been the director of pathology for the doctors who served the Honduran Armed Forces during the Presidency of Arellano at one point before coming to the U.S. His wife, who remains one of the most lovely women I have ever met, would bring him lunch some days or a late breakfast if we worked early. The idea of beans being substituted for corn doesn't surprise me. I was lucky enough to have homemade baleadas and coffee with him a couple of times a week and I can attest that they are sublime.
@@andrewprindiville119 If "power of the Maya" is the same as "insulin shock" then you shall indeed gain it.
This guy is fascinating..One of the best on this show ever, very solid scientist but open to unorthodox ideas. Hope Lex brings him back
Ed Barnhart's lectures on The Great Courses are highly recommended for anyone who is interested in ancient American civilizations,
This whole podcast (full thing, not just clips) was so interesting. Particularly as a guy in the U.S. who's been down to that region a handful of times learning about the history there at a surface/museum level.
This was an excellent podcast. Lex asked questions that I actually thought about
the Petén area that Ed references is pretty amazing. I've been to the Mirador Maya site. It's a 2 day walk. Highlight of my life. Highly recommend it
I'm from Peten. Have been to a bunch of lesser known sites in the jungle but never to El Mirador. Might try it out soon
Mayans had an expert level difficulty starting point. Middle of the freaking jungle making it difficult to gather stone and other resources, little to no animals to domesticate, no beast of burden/horses available and they managed to create an interesting civilization
Interesenting is an understatement.
@@v3rde776All of that is very interesting 😂
@@602pker 😂😂
The jungle has more biodiversity and water than most other biomes , resources are plentiful
They were uncivilized savages 😂
I watched 2 of this man’s courses on the Great Courses. Ancient cultures of North America and Ancient Cultures of South America, also much of the Mesoamerican culture course…… ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!! Would definitely recommend all of them.
Many, many hours of excellent content!!
@mikedrones537
I could not agree more. All three of those Great Courses are well worth watching. He also did a travel course that I have not watched yet.
Need more archeologists and historians!!! Can’t stop listening
....so to answer what was initially asked: The Naga from the Hindustan/Sri Lankan region coming to what is now Mexico to build are the 1st Maya/Mokaya. It's said that not all of them left when building was over. They did, as the guest stated, 1st come into the west coast of that Mokaya area, then went to the Yucatan.
I’d love to hear more about the Zapotec culture and its connection to the Olmec as they were pre Mayan civilization. They may have been peers to the Olmec…
A big shout out to lex for being interested in la raza
La Raza is mexican. Maya is all of Latin America u clown.
Órale Huey 🎉
I’m proud of my mesoamerican ancestors that domesticated corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkin and many many more! One of only 5 or so separate independently developed writing systems.
As someone who has viewed actual teosinte up close I can say that the development of maize as we know it from such a simple grass is nothing short of a miracle. To think they were able to do so without so much as a Punnett Square staggers the imagination.
Also, not to be an ass but I think potatoes are generally understood to be from South America.
Im from Manta in Ecuador and here we are taught that the Manteño-Huancavilca traded with the Mixtec peoples in the west coast of what now is Mexico
Cap our own people have no clue what happened 1000s of years ago especially after the Portuguese and Spanish came
@@torreslol9171bs
@@torreslol9171I trust more what our own people say about us we have passed down oral history that is more accurate than any Eurocentric speculation
We are only in the infancy of truly understanding the civilizations of Meso America, Central America, and the Amazon. The next 20 years of archeological discovery has me excited.
There were people living almost at the tip of South America 30,000 years ago and we don’t know how they got there.
Nonsense
@@terrylong8894
Wrong
There's some hand print cave paintings thereabout, Patagonia, read said very old.
@@dsharpness
Which no one has any firm dating for. Certainly nothing that the scholarly community supports.
Fascinating conversation! Lex bringing on great guest after great guest
Lex my youngest was born when I came back from the same place that Paul is over in the Amazon. So I had a Amazon Native Xingu high class girl name him. Later when my Maya friends heard that, it turned out very similar almost the same name in Mayan. That just shows there is definitely some connection between the folks.. Even the simple fact that I got to know folks from those nations shows that it's not difficult to have ties.
Thx Lex & Guest
Lex, really enjoying your guests/subject matter at the moment!
The thing that impresses me about how old the cultures in South America must be is the incredible Mayan calendar. I haven't Googled the dates for this post, but I think they had a calendar accurate to the day for a few thousand years which was carved into stone thousands of years ago. That didn't spring out of nowhere.
No not really.
The maya are from North America
@@briansanchez6699
What does that even mean? North and South America are a recent construct.
@@drstevej2527but by modern terms you know what he meant.
@@rileyontheroad
No I don’t as North America is a very large place. Is he referring to Mexico or somewhere in Northern Canada?
This guy is great Lex. Get him on again.
Anything is a possibility in terms of Pre-Columbian contact and cultural diffusion. I grew up on a farm in S.E. Alabama. Anytime we tilled or there was a substantial rain we found artifacts. When I was ten we had a pond dug and had about 20 massive piles of sand. Sifting in them I found seemingly out of place artifacts. My father and I took them to archaeologists at an event in a nearby state park where they invited the public to bring historic relics. One artifact was an obsidian spear point from the Southwest. The other was an ornately carved Inuit cribbage board.
Supposedly the Osage language from what is now Missouri and Kansas has multiple similarities to Nahuatl including multisyllabic words of identical meaning. Again, anything is possible.
That’s very interesting. Possibly showing long distance movement of people to a single region over time. Have you got photos of these artefacts? Would be interesting to see them
@@irw8367 I wish did have photos. I was telling my wife sometime back the sheer volume of artifacts we had when I was a kid. At one point we kept them in plastic 5 gallon paint buckets with lids. A bucket of large points, a bucket of birdpoints, a bucket of pottery shards, a bucket of stone axeheads, a bucket of grindstones, etc. Some of the good stuff was donated such as the cribbage board and large shards of complex curvilinear stamped pottery. My parents divorced and I don't think either of them knew what became of any of it. My father was a specialist in historic restoration who did a lot of work in St. Augustine and was friend of Mel Fisher so I guess he had other interesting finds.
Ahh somone with actual knowledge good stuff
There's recent linguistic research showing linguistic connections between languages of the northern Amazon and pre-Columbian languages spoken on the Gulf Coast of North America.
It has been persuasively argued that Timucua, a now-extinct language which has never been classified and was spoken in what is now north Florida, was a mixture of three different Amazonian languages and arose as a result of regular trade between North America and different Amazonian groups.
My fave episode ever! ❤️❤️ as a mexican i didn’t know a few things about the mayan and the people of peru 🇵🇪! Thank you sooo much
Lex Your question are so interesting and key to have a clear Picture of our past, civilizations and timelines, please consider inviting some of our great researchers from México, the data would be amazing.
Lex, youve gotta watch the "Mysterious cities of Gold" cartoon series from the 80's, it's got all this stuff in it, olmecs, spanish scoundrels, jade masks, maps and gold, its a great story. I was obsessed with this as a child👍👌🇦🇺
Oh wow.. Now I'm thinking about the theme song too.
This was a great podcast, this dude is pretty cool
The top left on that map is the Sonoran Desert. There were more people there during this time period than anywhere in the Ancestral Puebloan land scape. This is called the Hohokam Culture. I wish he would have mentioned this.
He’s telling the truth, I was there 👍
No one talks about the 30 year Mayan genocide.
wht about it ?
@@plentyBenny That no one talks about it ...
Agree it was a holocaust 10x worse
Is crazy how they forget about the Purépechas. Purépechas never lost a battle to the Aztecs and was never conquered.
neither were Zapotecs from Oaxaca!
A lot of natives weren't conquered by them though
@@ricmars8980 The Zapotecs lost a war against the Mexica under the King Ahuitzotl.
Yea the Purepecha never lost a battle but they lost plenty of skirmishes when the Mexica send a Tlaxcalan general to fight them. Also, purepecha were originally part of the Aztec nation but were abandoned. Most Purepecha are ignorant of that fact which is super sad. And Purepecha were conquered easily by the Spanish. They pretty much had no resistance because they trusted them and their governors all got assassinated in one coordinated attempt. Basically karma for not helping the Mexica.
Crazy how much the yt mans knows more about this culture than they do. But it’s gotta go back way further
mayans did have a religion, or best said: cosmogony, but it wasnt stablished until after their interactions with the olmecs
Smaller people in the forest theory does not hold any water at all, look at Europe where on average the forested north is on average taller than the Mediterranean South.
There are plenty of indigenous Maya living in Mexico now. For some reason these experts never mention asking them about their own history. 😐
Pretty stupid assumption. Keep going
@@brandonmeyers-ortiz1776 what? Answer, where is the native people in USA and Canada? 🙂
That explains why Aztecs were taller than all mesoamericans. They came from north and eventually settled in what is now known as Mexico City.
I like this guy. I call this common sense archiology
More height = longer vision for those one the plains. Especially in the high grasslands. Those shorter wouldn’t be able to detect predators or find prey as easy
South America is a massive continent as opposed to the relatively small mass of central america.
What about the huichol ,purépecha and tarascó ? Did they interacted with the Toltec or Olmec
...thank you...Fantastic talk...
Recently archeology discovery in Dominican republic of humans dating 5000 years ago can relate the population of america from the Caribbean to aztecs and mayans. Per the archeologist involved they stated they are now able to link all this cultures.
I wish he would have mentioned the city of el mirador…recently discovered and apparently has one of the biggest pyramids in the world.
The Navajo believe the Anasazi were actually violent tribes from the south that came into the pueblo regions and invaded the original tribes already there. May have been the imperialistic warrior tribes from the Mexico area that came north. Chaco canyon may have actually been a site where they did sacrifices. This Navajo elder has a great video on it....th-cam.com/video/rbrCn9kHWWg/w-d-xo.html
big fan of your work. try wearing a balaclava for some of these 😊
"These places are horrible"
Wow real professional there. That's really what you want to hear from an archaeologist/anthropologist about what they're studying
He’s been honest. The jungle is a rough place, mayans would agree.
Why not bring someone of Mayan descent that knows their own history own the podcast?
Lemme know if you've got one in mind that speaks English
Why is it so hard to hire a translator?
@@johnndamascenethere are a lot…
Name one
@@GOONIETONY Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Before Mayan and Mexica (Aztec) there were the Olmecs and the Mexica (Aztec) said they csme from the Olmecs and Olmecs came from Aztlan a city that is described just as Atlántida
ty
Blew my mind that my guy didn't know Mexico's boundaries...
Ed is awesome. I listen to his podcast.
He didn’t even mention the people of El Salvador that lived there!
sounds like my uncle who just discovered TH-cam, trying to teach me about hes theories!
He 10:15 lies the fang diety is in MESO America
There is no way people migrated down from the north that quick. The southern peoples got there some other way. They are also distinctively different DNA-wise.
My question is are all these tribes down in south America have any connections to the north american native American tribes and did they ever clash
fascinating
Book of Mormon stories that my teacher tells to me are about the (olmecs|maya) in ancient history. Long ago their fathers came from far across the sea, given this land if they live righteously.
I wouldn’t believe ANYTHING that comes from that source…the religions creator made up and added verses to the book of genesis talking of a prophecy of his coming lol. A completely made up rhetoric, common of a conman (which he was known as). Also the huge amounts of racism in Mormonism and their attempt to whitewash ancient america, no wonder they teach the maya came from the sea… were they from Europe by any chance, according to the book?
Yeah it's filled with stories of giants that we have no evidence for, semitic tribes in America, and black people being cursed. Lots of garbage stories in there
Mormon teachings are garbage don’t get brainwashed man
In my opinion I believe that the people that settled Central America and Peru came from Polynesian sea fairer. The sweet Potato! Also an indication that this people interacted. Why would you leave the Plains of America with excellent weather and buffalo to cross a giant desert and the settle in an inhospitable jungle. I think civilization came from the pacific not the Bearing strait cross
They left it because it was a fairly different (and more dangerous world) when they arrived. The ice age still gripped the north, so much of that region was hard to survive in and the huge number of predatory species roaming North America as compared to today, like American and cave lions, several bear species. Also it’s the fact humans do tend to naturally migrate, even if an area seems ‘nice’, they move and once they reach somewhere else, they don’t just decide to go back thousands of miles because they thought it’s better (plus this happens over generations rather than a single journey). Also, genetic evidence shows the south and Central Americans are from the same heritage and Polynesian’s couldn’t have seeded them, however it’s very reasonable to assume they had contact and some sort of exchange. Even the Amazonian people are very similar to the Andean/Inca.
DNA doesn't match. but contact is not impossible
Maybe those islands where apart of South America one time and mammals where on there before it broke off.
(Not saying South Americans are Polynesian . Saying at one point millions of years ago those islands were maybe apart of the Americans.)
Two different peoples, no connection.
No connection, zero.
All of Central America was once a part of the Mexican empire. Heck many Mexican tribes settled in places like El Salvador and Guatemala.
😂
What is jungle today was once cities with millions of people. Toltec were before the Olmec then the Mayan. On the pacific coast all the way to Easter island was the land of Mu.
I liked this lad, too he said ‘BCE.’
Antarctica used to be tropical? Maybe people moved from there to South America? Do not @ me, it’s just random thoughts
No major cities along the northen NA coasts? But in the godless heat of the Yuki tan?
Maya Mexica 🇲🇽
@@Tepaneca Whatever happened to those guys?
The Mayans did have a religion but all the codes were burned by Diego de Landa, a Spanish archbishop.
I’m picturing a couple of kids 10,000 years ago tagging the walls of a cave with some charcoal 😂
If you want to see great distances but cannot improve the length of sight your eye can see a height advantage is a suitable advantage and if you do not want to be seen by animals especially big cats that live in a forest having a short stature is of stealth advantage. Cats are a big problem for humans and may by a real reason these traits are so obvious.
I'm not so sure they were "distinct" cultures, I mean I view meso American culture and proximity similar to the tribes of the Italian peninsula before the rise of Rome.
:44 enter Paul Rosalie
How does he not realize people in the forests don’t have access to big game, so they’re smaller due to lack of nutrients and energy to grow.
🥩🥩🥩
The olmecs and mayas are different and there is an abysmall time gap between then
The fang diety is KRISHNA 10:08
7:24 not Ed explaining why Central Americans are short 😂
I think he intended it as humor, not as some sort of Lamarckian theory.
Shout out Luke Caverns!!
Lex shape up pissed me up
Purhepecha from Michoacan Mexico might have a connection to Inca Quechua in Peru..
Not really. In fact, dna has proven that ancient Incas cluster with Mesoamericans than they do with other nearby indigenous populations. Also there were mesoamerican migration to South America. Caribbean indigenous populations were a mix between Mesoamericans and South Americans. It's obvious to say that Mesoamericans explored all regions of the Americas and maybe beyond to Polynesia
There still plenty of mayan people in Guatemala..
The mayas and aztecs reached peak height of 5'2-5'6
What is jungle today was once cities with millions of people.
All people(s) of the Americas descended from "pre-history" clans of the Hopi Nation (clans). All of these separate cultures had pre-historical backgrounds in technology which was quite extensive, therefore allowing each of the cultures a good "head start" from their respective cultural evolutions. The histories of all Pre-Columbian peoples is far more vast than what is known. The Hopi literally migrated ACROSS the Pacific into modern-day Arizona. They do not have Athabascan ancestry (migration from the deep north), as what is commonly assumed.
Mexico the cradle of great civilizations of the America’s!
Have an archaeologist and explorer on.
lex: where exactly is mexico?
Most amazonians have similar haplogoup Q DNA which is Maya , other Brazilian tribes are different.
Here is a fact North Central and South are all the same race/ ethnic makeup 😮 Yes same race but different ethnicities some taller, shorter, facial features, varied skin tones etc.
Interview an expert on Sanskrit, Hinduism, and it's influence on other cultures
Think of the Olmec as Germans and Maya as British. Both mesoamerican, but diffferent people
Its more like the Olmec were like all Europeans, who split up into different cultural/ethnic groups. Western Europe was once all Gaelic, and then it split after cultural genocide occurred in wars from foreign invaders. The Maya were and are like the Irish, and the Aztec were and are more like the British. The British and Irish- once both were Gall's, but when colonizers/conquerors came the British sold out and joined the colonizers, became their Nordic and Saxon oppressors, and got a superiority complex and attacked their Irish relatives and genocided them. They think they're better and hunted down their own relatives, conquered, subjugated, and ethnically cleansed their identity in themselves and their relatives, to form a new 'superior' identity. Aztec are like Brits, Maya are like the Irish.. Mexico, Latino, and Hispanic are all new European terms for what used to be indigenous people.. the British and the Azdiks are racist and oppress their relatives to this very day.
@@TheOregonOak aho
@@TheOregonOak...sharp...the so called "conquest" of the Aztecs was basically due to the surrounding peoples that hated the stronger Aztecs and they allied in great numbers with the primitive spanish and help them, plus the sickness that the europeans brought with them that mostly did the job...
@@guillermotowers8625 plus Malinche. She was the linchpin in the entire operation. Without her Cortez would have never been able to communicate, despite having the help of the Spanish sailor who had shipwrecked 20 years before in Veracruz and learned the language.
I am of the same thinking as Ed Barnhart, Olmec, maya and zapotec cultures evolutioned at the same time and interchanged advancements like calendar, numbers and others
Olmecs existed way before the Mayans. The Olmecs were all but gone before the Mayan came about.
Ed is real
They were just humans overtaking the tempels from our ancestors
The guest sounds like Vlad
It is disingenuous to say the Olmec had religion. They brought knowledge, not necessarily practices. The Maya acculturated it the same way all the cultures did.
Everyone got the 20 days and 36 deccans, the 2 best cycles to know to understand our reality. It is hard science. Don Alejandro in 2008 told me that they received the 20 days from the Olmecs 6,000 years ago. Batz is the first day. Pretty simple message.
Meaning you have no source.
Don Juan in the Castaneda books...he claimed that the Nagual coven he belonged to traced their lineage as a group back to the Olmec, if I'm not mistaken. Or maybe it was Toltec. Been 30 years since I read the books and I was enjoying some rare plants back then.
@@drstevej2527 The I-Ching first 20 hexagrams are the 20 days, 21 - 56 are the deccans. The hindu images were published in Das Indische Horoskop Marlene Kruger, Egypt has the Dendera Calendar, most tribes in North America also have the 20 days. Japan has Hokusai's 36 views of Mt Fuji and that is the best set of deccans that have color.. The additional ten views by Hokusai are the 20 days in pairs. My source for the Maya 20 days are Quiche and Kaqchikel. Other than that, if you know the 20 days, they are easily tracked and discernible to an average person.
@@drstevej2527 and lest I forget, Genesis follows the deccans in order by chapter, and simultaneously follows the trecenas in order by chapter also, Exodus follows the 20 days in perfect order by chapter ttwice round, and numbers though horribly butchered, follows the 36 deccans in order for 36 chapters, but they do not teach you that in doctor skool.
@@artstrology
That’s fine but for the fact that it’s mythology not history.
One of these days, y’all will recognize North America in the Ohio Mississippi Valley, as home to all civilizations when our land was once known as Hue Hue Tlapalan
😂 good one
*Olmec, Maggie Olmec*
Nicaragua and Costa Rica ARE mesoamerican, just not their entire territory, a good part of Nicaragua is and most of the Guanacaste province in Costa Rica, and the rest is not a "no mans land", the "neither" it's called the intermediate area which had and has specific cultures that belong to it.
Only small folks in forests?
How bout the Germanic tribesmen that towered over most Roman’s
I cant think of a time I ever saw you cover your face like this.
The pattern of large vs small body size in humans is related to food, not some form of Darwinism. People in jungles eat small game, birds, and forage. People on the plains eat large game animals rich in protein and use sunlight to grow crops. Duh.
🤔