Doomed to Fail - Re-Release: Destroying Cultures isn't Cool - Friar Diego De Landa & the Mayans

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Speaking of religious history - here's a re-release of our episode on Friar Diego De Landa & the Mayans. There are many Maya people still living in Central / Meso America. They have a rich culture, but they did have tons of written history burned away by Spanish Friars - because Jesus would want you to do that? It's heartbreaking, and Taylor will always be mad about that. If you are tempted for a moment to say 'but it stopped human sacrifices' I'll stop you there & ask you to please see our episode 145 about Witch Hunts. #bless  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Happy birthday. Yay. It's hard as much. Yes, I'm 39. Congratulations. 39 years young. I look 25, though, according to most people. Uh, mm-hmm. Very, very young, fresh-faced, bunny-tailed.

That's what I hear about you all. Hey, is that far as guy even old enough to have a job? There you go. He's so young-looking. They literally ID me when I try to rent cars. That's how young I look. So just follow more, follow Doom to Fail for more advice on how to look young forever, like me.

Which leads us into the Doom to Fail part before I ask how you're doing, Taylor. Welcome to Doom to Fail. the podcast, we cover a historic and or true crime situation once, twice a week, that it's going to fail. Did I, did I? You did it? I somehow muddled my way through it. I might be listening because I'm trying to find a background for this Zoom call. That one. Continue. Taylor, what's going on with you? I want to look at a party. Yeah, look at that. Woohoo. No one can see this and it looks terrible. Oh my God. Okay. Um,

Forget that. So it is, what did you ask me? I'm doing great. Oh my God. This is my problem. Here we go. I hadn't checked to touch up my appearance block on Zoom. Now I did that.

Now I feel better. Anyway, I'm good. I've been awake for a very long time, which is very rare in this household. But yesterday we went to, oh, my God, Sacchar game started at freaking 8 in the morning, and I was mad. I was like, this sucks. It was hot. Heat rash. I was like, this is terrible.

And then we went to a birthday party at a trampoline park indoor place that was hot as balls. It was in Palm Desert. It was like 112 outside. It was not much cooler inside the place. Everyone was like soaking away. I didn't even jump. I was just like hot for being there. So we got home.

And anyway, we all went to bed at like 8.30. Like with the lights on. When do you wake up? 6.30. It's weird. So the kids have been up. And then I was like, I set my alarm for 6.30 anyway because I hadn't written anything for today yet. So I was like, I have to write it.

So I spent a couple hours this morning writing. Nice. Yes. I was in your state. I was in LA last week. And I have to say that the hurricane was probably the most overblown thing. It was incredible.

It was the best time to be in LA. It was absolutely stunning. So everything's fine. Although the earthquake probably did suck a little bit, but the hurricane itself probably freshened up the air quite a bit. So. Yeah, you know, I think.

that that is a good point because i was in l a week before and you can see the fucking smog cloud from like 50 miles away you know like you see it descending on l a it's covered in smog and then also one thing that i really i remember from when i moved from new york to l.a being like in new york yes people pee on the street but it rains all the time in l. people pee on the street and it never fucking rains it's this disgusting you know so it needs a shower i i actually because for context i used to being taylor used to live in l.a i used to live in downtown l.a for a brief period of time which is where all the urine smell is and so while it was in this conference i was just talking about how great it was that the storm showed up the hurricane

whatever you want to call it because they washed away all the piss in downtown and everybody was looking me like you realize that you're like a professional work conference right and i was like oh yeah i guess i shouldn't be talking about piss stains and piss odor um at a work conference but that is 100 true it washed away and it's all fantastic if you um want to move to downtown la give me a call i will talk you out of it because i'm always right when i talk people out of it that is true that is true when people do it and they're like i shouldn't have done it and i was like oh remember when i told you not to do it i mean i did it out of desperation i really had nowhere to go And I knew someone who I worked with at that time when you lived in that building.

And she was always like, I live in downtown LA in the coolest neighborhood. It was so cool and so fun. And I found out she lived in your building. And I was like, I follow Fars on that citizen app. And there is a murder underneath Fars's apartment like every other day. I was like, you do not live in the nice neighborhood. What's wrong with you? Every morning there was like several people with heroin needles stuck out of their arms,

passed out in the front of the building. It was definitely not a nice neighborhood. That 7-Eleven was always getting robbed. That someone was always getting wrong. And also it actually like, so that friend was trying to be fancier than the truth because that was technically Westfield. It was not actually. I know. I was like, girl, you're a liar.

You're, I can't, I don't even understand. Yeah. Yeah. You're flexing on the wrong thing. This is not something. Exactly. Exactly. But she moved and hopefully she's just happy where she lives now and safer because it's not safe there.

And hopefully it gets better like everything. Like everything. So Taylor, what are we, today you go first, I believe, right? I do. So tell me what you're drinking, what you're drinking, my friend. I'm drinking a protein shake. I'm doing a protein check because. That's so dumb.

It is your birthday. No, because I'm going. So, okay, so the new Mrs. Fars picked a, I asked for a place that has like really good espresso martinis. And so she picked a really good espresso martini place because she's actually like kind of local here. And so, um, so we're going to that in like an hour and a half to, hours. And so I did my yoga in the morning. And now I'm having this because that's how I say

looking young. All right, old man. Thank you. It's fine. You know it was funny, Taylor. I was I had a, I had breakfast with our former CEO in LA last week. And somehow we ended up on our age and everything else. And you know how she's generally very, very sweet and nice. person. And we're talking about our age. And I go, yeah, I mean, do I look like a much turn 30 and actually? Yeah, I can see it. I was like, shit. Now that 39 is young. Nothing's wrong with it. 39 is the new, I don't know. Eve, don't want, who wants to be in the 20s again? I literally have my, I literally have the health exam results of my life insurance policy on this other window right now. So yeah, 309 is great. You own your house. I mean, the, the bank

the bank technically owns the house but yeah i know i explained the mortgage to my kids and they're like worried i'm like no we own it don't worry stop it's fine it's like yeah watch what happens when you actually own it and you don't pay your property taxes then you you really somebody always somebody else can always own it down the line yeah exactly uh so yeah i'm drinking a protein shake that's it great you look youthful thank you yeah um okay well i am drinking Mexican hot chocolate not really in my theme, because I try to do a theme. Have you had Mexican hot chocolate? No, but it sounds really good.

I don't know why, because I assume it has some like cayenne or something. It has something spicy in it, right? Yeah, okay. Oh, my God, exactly that. So I actually just remember this hilarious family story that has nothing to do with my story. But I had Mexican hot chocolate or like spicy hot chocolate, exactly that. In Colonial Williamsburg for some reason, because they had it there as well. And obviously, they got chocolate from the Yucatan in Mexico.

but I was with my husband's family many, many years ago in, in Colonial Williamsburg, and they gave us a spicy chocolate. And they said, what are the ingredients? And they were like, oh, it has like cayenne pepper, like you said, and chimeric and a couple other spices in it. And we all lost our mind laughing because we have this family story. And we do this in a Puerto Rican accent that I will not be doing because Juan has a Puerto Rican family.

But his cousin, his cousin made a cake that was full. of pot like super high cake and her mom ate a piece of it and she was like this cake is delicious and she was like what is in this cake and one's cousin was like cayenne pepper and tamaric so we were like laughing so hard and said that that was the ingredients on the hot chocolate because we always say like this is delicious was in it and we're like oh it's cayenne pepper and turmeric but like obviously her mom was just super high and it was so funny I mean laugh about it all the time was she trying to get her mom high no it was like accident she accidentally made some of the cake there you go she was like oh shit my mom made some of this weed cake anyway so fun so fun so anyway that's what i'm drinking imagine i'm drinking

that but not in colonial lamesburg in the yucatan so i chocolate and hot chocolate as you may know is actually an ancient drink that was popular with the mayan people we're going to talk a little bit about the Maya people in their history, but specifically, I'm going to talk about one specific motherfucker, Friar Diego de Landa, a Franciscan priest who burned most of the Mayan books and hundreds of their idols because of God. And this guy is a piece of shit. So, let me drink some coffee before I do this. I have a lot to rant about. Does he have the friar tuck haircut? His name is friar. A little bit. He's not great. Okay.

So, you know, Fars, my two official stances on religion. One is, hey, this is America. Do whatever you want. Just don't hurt people pointing at you, people who are hurting people. Stance two is, fuck you, God is fake. Grow up. Are you fucking serious? So I waffled between the two, depending on who I'm talking to.

Specifically with the Catholic Church, does the Catholic Church have any redeeming qualities. Oh my god, yes. Like what? They gave us Satanism. They gave us like the most morbid Jesus Christ is a six-pack. Like it is the most like sexual religion there is. No, that's not a redeeming fucking quality for all this shit that they don't. That is awesome. Well, okay, take away the pedophilia and and no, nothing. So yesterday, my friend was telling me when we're at this trampoline park that she left her dog alone for a few hours and her dog threw up and pooped all over her house. And for me, I'm like, that's not enough of redeeming quality for me to ever have a dog. And I know you love your dog, but like, that's fucking gross. But she was like,

but he's a good boy. So for her, his like goodness makes it okay that she had to like spend three hours cleaning up puke, which is disgusting. And so for her, that's the redeeming quality that she wants to have a dog, even though it's shit and threep all over everything. So I'm imagining the Catholic Church, shitting and throwing up all over the whole fucking world, and they have no redeeming qualities. They've killed so many people. They've ruined so many lives, so many cultures, assaulted so many children for so long. The only thing I could possibly think of is the architecture, because it's beautiful and, like, maybe the Sistine Chapel, because it's also beautiful. And also, I know that Cheney O'Connor recently passed, and I remember when she tore up

the picture of the Pope. I thought that was like an Irish thing because like Ireland's always Catholic Protestant met each other. But it was actually specifically about the pedophilia and the Catholic Church. And I just want to say recently in the news, the Archdiocese is of San Francisco is going to declare back bankruptcy because they've spent all of their money defending 500 molestation allegations. So like more than zero. Little old ladies are giving their money to the Catholic Church for the Catholic Church to defend pedophiles. Yeah, that's kind of nuts. Okay, so it's bananas, plus all of their non-tax real estate and all that shit.

So that's the worst and that's kind of my overarching thought during this. But back to the Mayans and how I got here. I was on Instagram, like I am all the time. And I saw a book that was like in an ad, real that someone had done by an author named Marcos Antonio Hernandez. It's about Friar Diego, but he was like, this is about the monk that burned all of the Mayan history. it's called where they burn books they also burn people i have it right here it's great so i have it here i read the whole thing um holding it up for you damn that is awesome got a dope off cover

that is a dope cover yeah so i usually spend like one week you know this like researching something that someone spends their whole life learning about so that's what i have been doing this week this book i've been reading for about a month i took it on vacation with me um and then this week i started doing more about the Maya in general. But when I got this book, I was like, a little disappointed because it's a fiction book. And I was like, oh, I thought it was going to be like his history. But it's so good. It's actually two books that he read, he wrote.

One of them is about Friar Diego specifically. And then one of them is about like a man nowadays, like a fiction story. And he leaves them together. It's really, really good. And I loved it so much that next week I'm going to be interviewing Marcos Antonio Hernandez and recording it for the podcast. Wait, seriously? How do you? I emailed him and told him my love his book.

What? Yeah, I'm super excited. I've told him I'm like, my podcast is coming on Monday. It's about your book. It's about Friar Diego. I'd love to talk to you more about it. He writes a ton about Latin American history. And so I'm stoked.

So I'm going to record next week with him and I'll post that for you all. That's incredible, Taylor. And I'm stoked. Yeah, this book is great. Highly recommend. I'll post the link and all that. You're so creative, Taylor. You came up with the series concept with the volcano thing.

You're you're doing interviews now. Like, man, I'm so, like, behind. Thank you. Well, I'm very, very excited. And I think one of the things that is a very loose theme from this book, very clear, is burning books is always bad. Always, always, always. Another, so, you know, I started reading this and I started reading a lot about the Mayans.

I actually had read a book last year about them because I was like, why don't I know anything about them? And I read it again this week to, because now I have more context of like reading this book. I also in a non-academic turn watched the 2009 movie 2012 with John Cusack. Have you watched that? Oh, like 80 times. Okay, it's great. I did not know how good it was going to be. I was like, I might not watch it again because I had a panic attack the entire time.

Wait, this is the first time you saw 2012? Yes. I think I thought I couldn't emotionally handle it. before because it was like it's like LA like it's totally destroyed the White House gets destroyed by a tsunami it was so good it's awesome I really liked it it was ridiculous but I loved it I said I wrote 10 out of 10 just great and that's because the Mayans had a calendar that essentially ended on December 21st 2012 but spoiler alert the world to not end so we're still here unless it's a different calendar I know well who knows we're gonna I mean we'll see what

happens. So I have a lot of sources besides these things. So I listen to a podcast on history hit about Maya warfare and sacrifice. I, what else? I listened to a fall of civilizations podcast about the Mayan collapse. I read the book, The Maya by Michael D. Co. There's a article I read about the village of Surin that I'll talk to you about later. And then I also read the introduction to Friar Diego's History of the Yucatan by William Gates. And that kind of gives you a history of like what we're talking about here, but I'll tell you about it in a second. I also happened to be at two museums recently, both the Natural History Museum in New York and in L.A. where there were a bunch of Mayan like pottery and artifacts, and I knew I was going to do this, so I took a ton of

pictures. So I'm also going to post those later too. So before I tell you exactly what Friar Diego did, I'm going to tell you a non-comprehensive, a non-academic list of things that I learned about the Mayan people just this week by listening to books really fast. Cool. So the Mayan people lived in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mesoamerica. So right now that's like Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, like that area. Today, there are about 9 million Mayan people living in these areas. So there's still people who identify as Mayan, like indigenous to the land. It's also like a blanket term for a lot of the people that the Europeans encountered. There's obviously nuances. Like every culture there were like little kingdoms and like different cities and different rulers and different types of people,

but like the Maya is like a term that kind of encapsulates the whole thing. Okay, makes sense. They lived in this area for thousands of years. So there's evidence of different eras. There's a classical era, like a neoclassical era, where there were huge kingdoms and huge cities. Some cities in this area could have held up to 90,000 people. Wait, Taylor. like Mexican people look like they look like Mexican people are those is that like the Mayan gene that makes them a lot of it is a lot of it is like the indigenous people who still live there and a lot of it is not all of it

okay but like a lot of it is there's a lot of mine people like the most are in Guatemala at the right now but there are a lot of people who have like Mayan ancestry in those places sweet okay thank you So by the time the Spanish got there in the 1500s, things were not in a golden age. There was a lot of kingdoms and a lot of things that had actually collapsed. And the Mayan civilization, a lot of it had already had its heyday. And it was onto like a different, you know, whole different rulers, whole different things. Because this area is not great for huge populations. It has periods of intense rain with periods of intense drought. So it's hard to have big cities here.

I mean, now it's easier because of technology. But like ancient times, it was hard to live there. The land does not lend to farming and agriculture. You can slash and burn maybe three times before the land is ruined and you have to move. It's on like a limestone bedrock. So it's hard to farm there. The primary food of the Mayan people was maize, which is like corn. You would eat it like in an oatmeal or a tamale.

You would not have a tortilla yet until. later. It's like the ancient mines didn't have tortillas. Also something that I think is super fascinating is this area doesn't have any natural salt and you need salt to live. So obviously like in America our fucking toothpaste has sodium. I don't know if that's true, but I'm guessing like sodiums and everything like we're not going to die from not having any salt, you know, but you need salt to live. And ancient people all over the world figured this out, which I think is just like unbelievable. They figured it out that, I mean, it's not only in the Yucatan and in South America, it's like, you know, all over the world. There's actually a book that I read that I'm remembering now, maybe like 15 years ago, called salt about how cultures had to go out and find ways to add salt to their food to be able to survive because they knew they couldn't live without it.

And somehow they figured that out. So in the Yucatan, they would boil seawater or let it air dry. That's brilliant. Isn't that crazy? And there was a huge business of delivering salt all over. the yucatan via canoes and via canals which is so cool i will say i don't think it's that impressive that they figured out their body needed salt because you've been in a situation before where you're like you know your body needs something sometimes and you don't even know why

you know that like there are times when you like how do you know that it salts because you've been in the ocean you're like some of it got in your mouth and you felt better and you took your board shorts and you just like scraped off the salts into Oh, okay. Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you for solving that ancient mystery for me. I appreciate it. I'll read that self-book. Wise 39-year-old. Totally. Anyway, I think that's super cool. We also know that they drank and ate chocolate. So, like, you know, that was something that they started cultivating very early. I actually went to the Cadbury's Museum in England, and it was all fun in games until you get to the part where they show the Conquistadors invading, and you're like, it's like these like mannequins of Conquistadors.

like stealing chocolate from the natives and it's pretty shitty we got chocolate from the Mayans yeah whoa okay that's a big get yeah that's a huge get yeah we didn't have it before got it from them took it to to europe everyone loves it obviously because it's delicious um i also wrote that my trip to the cadbury museum wasn't fun because i was very cold and that was being a super fish about being cold it was the the funny family story now that it's over um also Hershey's committee has actually funded some expeditions and science things to look into ancient pots they found to find like reference to chocolate being have being in them like using carbon dating or whatever so that's a good thing the least they could do is help fund some mine excavations yeah well so basically Easter and Halloween two of America's favorite holidays wouldn't exist but for the Mayans I mean, you can have those holidays without chocolate, but it helps. I guess peeps.

Yeah, I guess peeps. I guess you need peeps. It's a great discovery. Good job. Yes. Yes. Also in this area, fresh water is very hard to find. It gathers in a thing called the Sonote.

Do you know what a sonote is? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a freshwater sinkhole that goes into underground caves. and that's where the water would stay. There is an octanauts episode for parents who might watch the octanauts. It's these animals. They're under sea explorers.

It's great. But there's a whole longer episode called the Cave of Sakatoon where they go to the Yucatan. And one of them gets lost in the Sonote. When they go to the Sonota, there's these like Mayan carvings and there's two iguanas that are like on the side. And the iguanas go, not everyone who goes into the Sanote comes out of the Sonota. It's very fun. And it's a great, great show. So several things about Sonotes is they find human bones in the bottom of Sanotes all the time. It could have been sacrificed, which we'll talk about later, but also people could have just fallen into it and drowned. And then also I just wanted to make another blanket statement to never go in an underwater cave because. Oh, God, yeah. That's my favorite. My favorite pastime when I want to scare the show out of myself is I watch YouTube videos of underwater cave diving. It is it is. It's the scariest thing I can possibly, like, I would, it's incredible, how horrible way of it is to die.

Oh my God, there's like four people in the world who are qualified and you're not one of them, everyone listening. Yes. It's terrifying. So that's how they got their water and these like big scary sinkholes full of water. There are a lot of pyramids and cities that we see in that area. And the way we see them now, they're like abandoned and there's like trees going through them. Like, you can picture it, everyone. But actually, a lot of the trees would have been cut down when they were being used.

So you could have technically, like, stood on the top of one of those pyramids and you would have seen a city. You would have seen houses and people and markets and, like, tons of things happening and the trees would have been cut down for a while. But now, obviously, they're back. And like I said before, I think with going back to Pompeii, going back to the Battle of Hastings, where all we have is that one, that one, that one, to tell us what had happened, that tapestry, there's so much that we're missing the fabric and we're missing the wood, and we're missing the sounds, and we're missing the smells, and we're missing the color. So there's so much life in history that we don't get to see because only the stone is what survives. So it's just crazy. And I just wish we had,

I wish we could just like turn it on for a second and like see what it was like, you know, and then like turn it off because it'd be scary. And then turn it back on again. He can see, be like, what am I doing? Oh, yeah. And then turn it off. I think that'd be so fun. And we also, Fars, you and I have talked about ancient aliens, and I'm not going to pretend that I didn't love it when it first came out because it's such a fun idea. I love mysteries.

I love that you're like, what is this stone relief trying to tell us? Because most of what we have is just stone relief carving. What does it mean? It would be so fun if it was aliens. But obviously what we know now is a problem with ancient aliens is that what they're saying is that these people couldn't have done it. It must have been aliens. So like brown people couldn't have done it.

maybe it was aliens maybe it was like the catholics thought maybe they're one of the lost tribes of israel that's like a story i don't know but white people just saying like brown people couldn't have built these things um but they did don't be an asshole i did even know those were a thing until someone told me or you yeah yeah whatever linds brought it up yeah so it's about that's a bummer because ancient aliens was fun but um but no the mayans built them themselves and they're probably about a thousand pyramids in the yucatine on at different periods of time. And the reason that it's so freaking amazing is they didn't have the wheel or steel.

So they did it all like with Flint, like carving out limestone, which they said in one of the things like, that's easy to do. I'm like, that sounds hard to me. Just like cutting a big block out of limestone with another rock. And they made concrete out of the dust and they mine jade and precious things. So they did all this stuff with pretty. stone age materials like they didn't see steel until the spanish got there whenever i picture ancient aliens and the mayans i picture the entire anthology of predator raising aliens to hunt and that humans

were the caretakers or no they were the slaves of the predators and they cared for the alien babies no no they no no it was it was the aliens needed human prey and so they used the Mayans as a sacrifice to feed to the baby so they could grow up and become aliens who could be hunted by predators we definitely watched all the predator movies recently because that new one came out yeah like the girl um i should watch them all again i don't remember but i believe you that's what I think of ancient aliens and Mayans. That's where my head goes. That is so fun.

Those movies are great. A delight. So we also know that during, this is like, oh my God, during thousands of years of time, there's tons of wars, obviously, between different factions and different sections and there's gruesome battles like there is over the whole fucking world for all of time. So the history hit podcast I listened to with Dr. Elizabeth Graham was really interesting. And she has spent a lot of time in the Yucatan, like, picking things up and like being an archaeologist and being dope.

And she makes a point that I didn't really read anywhere else, but I thought it was really interesting that she thinks that the human sacrifice aspect that you think of when you think of the Mayans is not true. She calls it fake news because she's a delight. And she also called it the Mel Gibsonization of history because like his movie apocalyptic, it makes them look very, very brutal because he's, well, it's a story, but also he's racist. So, you know, it might not, it may not have been that way.

We also don't know. But she has some good points. So when I brought, when I brought this book, where they burn books, they also burn people on vacation, some of my cousins were like, one guy was like, well, aren't the minds the ones that, that sacrifice people? And I was like, well, we don't know. We don't know the details. Don't you want to know the details?

Don't you wish we had the details? And he was like, yeah, I guess. I was like, it's not like we would discount their history because we thought they had this brutality. then you discount all history. There's fucking brutality everywhere. So where did it originate that they sacrificed people? So here's what Dr. Graham said that I thought was really interesting.

She said there's also things that could be lost in translation because there's a lot we have not translated. The word sacrifice means to make holy. So it could have been like an anointing of someone or, you know, they're very religious. There's a lot of different gods. So it could have been like anointing people for different gods. It could have been just animals. And, you know, we saw that over, over again in Rome and Greece and, you know, all over the world where people sacrifice animals to gods for a good harvest, for rain, for whatever, you know.

But why is it even bad to assume that they would have sacrificed a human? It's not bad. It's just like it might not be true. Thank you. Okay. That assumption might not be true, which is interesting because that assumption is like one of the first things that you think of, you know? Yeah. Okay.

And it could have been, she says, like, just in war. Like it could have been cutting people's heads off after war, which they did in France until like 1970s. You know, they're literally doing that. The cartels and ISIS are literally doing that today. Exactly. So if that's all you have of this culture, that's what you'll think they did all the time. You know, like lots of heads and spikes, lots of, you know, warnings like in Europe. They did that all the time. So she talks about like the rules of engagement of war. So when, like when a marine sniper comes back from war, we don't put him in jail for killing 100 people, you know, even though technically he murdered 100 people. So it's like, you know, we hear what we want to hear about this. So we see those stories and we see maybe like a carving of like someone holding a head and we think like that's what they did all the time. That might not be true. And it's something that we might never ever know, really. But just think about if all you knew about us was like the Bible.

and the movie Oppenheimer, you could be like, what the fuck? I mean, in the anthology, it's actually the predators who are sacrificing the humans. So the sacrifice, human sacrifice did happen, but it was just a different being that did it. Who was hunting the humans, the predators or the aliens? No, the predators were hunting the aliens, but they needed the aliens to be raised to grow up and become big and healthy so they could have like a fair fight. got it yes and that's why in the movie the second the last one the predator makes friends with the humans because they were like we got to kill these things because they're like rabbit dogs like they're uncontroll they're like they got out of control they're like it's like it's like

it's like it's on it yes and then and then the t-rex shows up except the t-rex you know what this is not working anymore let's keep going no i like it i like we're going with that i think we should We should have a movie night where we watch all eight of those or whatever. The original ones also, I feel like the, like, making things invisible and stuff, it's not bad. Like, for being like a 20-year-old movie, you know? Predator holds up way better than the original alien and then aliens. I know that it's a James Cameron thing. Everybody loves it, but you watch it again, you're like, this is so stupid looking.

You can, like, see the person, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Whereas Predator holds up a lot better, I think. Yeah, I definitely watched Alien and I was like, oh, that's a dude and an alien costume. So obviously a dude and alien costume. But it has the best scene in the world where they're eating. Oh, yeah, that's true. That's true.

That's like one of the best scenes in all cinema. Chest busters. Yep. Okay, great. So anyway, the point is the Spanish wanted and needed them to be brutal. So who knows? But I just wanted to bring up that other idea that Dr. Graham had. we also know that the Mayan people knew a lot about science and math they calculated venus's orbit they were specifically focused on Venus to like point to like they thought it was like 400 and it's actually like 399.98 or whatever like whatever the calculation is they were like very close they also had complicated calendar which we know about and that ended in 2012 maybe and they had a ton of books for thousands of years but also because of the

climate. A lot of the books didn't make it because they would get like moldy and like right away. So there's also that. But they had they were, you know, had science. They had math. They also had obviously very complex religion, many gods for different things. They had a couple of general creation myths where other people were made and they were made of clay and didn't work. And then they were made a brick and it didn't work. And then there was a great flood and then they made our people. So the great flood myth is really fun because there's also probably controversial show called Ancient Apocalypse that I really like. And that's the one that we were watching.

We were like, this is so fun. Every culture has a flood myth. Like, what happened? And then Joe Rogan was on it. And we were like, oh, I think I told you that before. Joe Rogan is not a bad person. Like, this is like this crazy. No, it's, it's, okay, whatever.

I'm not going. We're not talking about it. But I was like, oh, this show loses, it's credible. It is always people who've literally never listened to him who are like, he's a right, Republican crazy person. It's like, no, he's not. Nobody who's listening to him thinks that. Right. That's the point. Okay. Anyway, so also the ending of 2012 the movie was very much like the flood and they went back to Africa. It was quite delightful. So we know that they had royal courts. There was also royal etiquette, which I didn't think about until recently that etiquette is

made to make poor people feel bad about themselves because you couldn't like sneak into court because you wouldn't know how to follow the rules. So they, like, made it clear that only certain people could do certain things. That was something that they did to keep the pores out. And some of the things, so those are some of the things that we know. There's a lot more to that. There's thousands of books that you can read now about it, of people who devote their lives to the Mayan culture.

But here's one really fucking cool thing. Some of the ways we know about, about Mayan culture, is one, in 1864, a Dutch engineer named S-A, the letters, Van Brom, found a carving called the Lighten Plaque that has a calendar and some helpful things in it that helped translate some things. And that was really, really helpful to like start the understanding more about them. And then the really cool thing in El Salvador, there is a city called Saren. And as luck would have it, in 595, guess what destroyed the city of Saren?

A flood. A volcano. Now, it is the North American Pompeii that you have never heard of. On your series is going to be another, it's going to be eight now, isn't it? Oh, my God. On an August night, the Loma Caldera volcano erupted. Five meters of ash covered the area. From excavations, it was buried until a bulldozer found it in 1978.

So buried and forgotten, just like Pompey and Herculaneum were, they found dinner on the table in people's houses. It's a small village. They found four households so far. One sweat bath, a civic building, a sanctuary, and fields. They can tell that people had kitchen gardens. So they came out in their backyard, they had gardens that had beans, squash, cotton, agave, avocados, guava, cacao, all sorts of things, like growing right outside their house. In one of the houses, there's four buildings. There's a garden. there's evidence of a thatched roof columns there's storage jars one had fibers and seeds with a spindle by it so they would have used it to like make fabric in there one of the kitchens has shelves

and has beans and other foods like in containers they can tell that chili peppers hung from the rafters so super cool that little bit of a little bit of a look into it obviously people died but it's still really cool the volcanoes have given us these glimpses into the you know into it super cool okay now do you feel like you have a really good overview of the mind culture i think i have appropriate context okay perfect so we know a lot of those basics for various reasons we found some things we've translated some things we've you know we have some some ruins the rest of what we know is both is because of friar diego delanda in the William Gates, who wrote

the introduction to Diego's Friar Diego's book, Yucatan, before and after the conquest, said, 99% of what we know is because of Friar Diego, and 99% of what we lost is also because of him. So,

this motherfucker, I feel like that I don't say that enough, but I really feel it in this instance, was born. Diego Delanda Caldron, on November 12th, 1524, in Guadalaj, Spain. In 1541, he became a Franciscan friar. And in 1549, he arrived in the Yucatan. He mostly lived in Ismael, which is now in Mexico. So he arrived specifically to convert

the native people to Catholicism. Okay, I'm with you. I'm with you. So the first, so just a smidge about the Spanish conquest, the first asshole to show up was, of course, Christopher Columbus on his fourth trip. So he should, showed up. They brought disease. Some villages were destroyed by disease before the Spanish even got there because it like spread so fast. You know, people would just like of their normal trade routes, the normal communication, like it spreads so fast. So many people died. They also brought weapons and the natives have never seen. They brought steel. They hadn't seen swords. They hadn't seen steel-tip arrows. They hadn't seen these things that could like destroy someone in such a

quick way. They also just killed and destroyed because they're trying to find gold, which is like a gross oversimplification of what happened but I thought it was a fountain of youth that's in there but like mostly gold okay yeah which it doesn't even really have it's not there are no streets of gold yeah anywhere um so some of the Spanish were there to get rich and those who did they enslaved

the natives obviously um they also brought slaves from Africa like it was you know bad and they used the natives to help with their mining and farming and whatever and then some of the Spanish were there to convert the natives and this was mostly the Franciscan friars. The friars would go on foot all over the Yucatan. So these fuckers would like yell the Bible

at people and like think that it's working. It reminds me of that guy in the boat that tried to go to that island member that we talked about before who was like holding up his Bible and then like they yeah yeah and they like shot him because like you I don't a lot of it that does not

compute in my brain but just like yelling at someone in Spanish and holding the Bible who has no idea what you're talking about, like, what do you think is going to happen? I hope they were mostly shot. And a lot of it is people were like, so I wrote, it boils my blood. It's actually so mad. Like, what do you think is happening? You're coming to people's houses being like, here.

And you're like, what? I don't understand you. What is this? It is a uniquely awful trait of Christianity. Because like, if you think about it, like, other religions, well, I don't know. I guess Islam does try to convert. but like Judaism is probably the best version of it's like no we're not trying to convert anybody like if you think that you this is your faith and you can come to us but nobody's nobody's out there trying to get you it's so weird it's so weird and I do I mean I try to be like I'm trying to think maybe if if I truly believed in my heart that someone was going to live an internal hellfire for all of eternity if they didn't do what I told them to do then like maybe I try to save people like I but I don't have that I that is bananas to me I would

never believe that so I can't I can't miss me that missed me entirely yeah so I don't know but it sounds like so a lot of the natives did eventually go to church you know they built big monasteries and they would teach them Spanish and like read from the Bible often in Latin of course so like even more confusing but you know tell one one thing that like it just kind of means like you also got to look from the perspective like the people who are like receiving that message here you have these folks who show up who dress in this finery well-developed clothes and they have books which are probably a new technology and new concept of them they have weaponry that looks out of this world how much different would it be if like aliens showed up to us and we're

like hey like guys this is how you're not going to burn forever like you don't anything like you don't most of the time i look at this from perspective like fuck those people for doing that to those people because we can see objectively the bullshit of it all but if you look at it sometimes from the perspective like them it's like you can see why they're like oh we're not like being this is not like a punishment to us this is a blessing like these guys are giving us something that we would never have on our own i don't know just this different perspective i guess no i know but they also like um took advantage of that you know that they were they had more stuff from the fire like didn't have all the gold but they had the like ideas and a lot of the native people were

like cool another god whatever you know they were like oh i have a soul great i didn't know i had a soul that's awesome i'll pray to your god for my soul but i'm going to pray to this guy for rain and this guy for corn like i have been doing for millennium you know right right and you're like great they're like this is no big deal um but the catholics hated that because there's only one god you know So they were like, you can't do that. So Friar Diego would walk for days and days, finding people to convert, bringing them back to the monastery. He said that he saw human sacrifices, and he once stopped a sacrifice of a boy. And I don't really, I don't know if I believe him.

Like, I don't know. He needed that to happen. You know, I have a random blowpoint that's also he smelled terrible. How do we know that? Because he was wearing like a Franciscan. frock in the middle of Mexico. Yeah, it's not going to watch out easy. So he also is not just a normal priest, Catholic priest.

He was also someone who believed that Christ was coming back in the year 1600. So he needed to convert as many people as possible to be ready for that. For a whole new age where the Catholic church would dismantle and it would be a new age And he needed to be at like the top of the, whatever, of the poll for that. And the way he would do that is converting the most Maya people and the native people as possible. Spoiler alert, Christ is never coming back. He never left. It's not real.

He didn't come back, 1600. He's not coming back now. So, but he was doing this for this idea, this other extra crazy idea that he had. So they would do things like burn villages to get them to move closer to the, to the, to the, to the, monastery like trying to save people as possible but in that way like tons of people died they didn't have enough food you know they didn't have enough water they you can't just people live in places so because they can survive there you know they were just like forcefully move them so tons of people died and he was so like he has so much religious fervor that they did like you said

they did trust him they did say like this guy must have something like this guy's crazy about this god he must maybe he knows something you know know so they would some of like the Mayan priests and religious people showed him their books and showed him their idols and showed him the histories of their people they had written down and prior Diego was like oh obviously these are written by the devil and this is all the devil like the devil has time like he has time to make up a whole religion let me break i wish i had like an ounce of the confidence fucking idiots have all the time all the time i just got i got a magnet um and i put it in the fridge that says carry yourself

with the confidence of a mediocre white man is my motto what's that what's up with kowski saying it was my favorite saying it was like it was like um the problem of the world is that the stupid people the confident people are too quiet the stupid people are too loud or i forgot what it was it was like no it was very very good but it's that concept like just like man you are so confident you have to be right but it's like it's always a dumb one just never the right i know i know i know uh so anything that isn't god god is the devil so the devil made all these other gods the devil made all these idols and idols means like little like wooden stone clay statues of their other gods that they've had for you know thousands of years so he starts to hear that people are still praying

to their old gods and just added god god god to their like prayer book and he loses his fucking mind. And so Friar Diego has an inquisition where he ties people up by their arms and has weights put on their on their waist and on their feet. And so their arms come out of the socket, their legs come out of the socket until they confess that they have idols of their homes. So like, yes, I have a book. Yes, I have a couple statues that I pray to. And then they would have to like, you know, like any fucking torture, just say whatever he wanted until he let them go. And then afterwards he was like, no one was really hurt. like, fuck you, they were. They were absolutely hurt from this. And so he made everybody go home

and go to their family cave where they have everything that their family's had for hundreds of years and go to their, you know, go to their villages, go to these ancient temples, go to these places, and bring everything to him. Every book they could find, because there were books, every idol they could find and put him in a pile. And on July 12, 1562, he held a ceremony where he burned, he said 27 books, but they think it might have been thousands of books and at least 5,000 idols. So he learned all of the history of the Mayan people, not just their religion, but their history. How did he have the authority for this? He just said he was the, good question, he was like one of the highest ranking people in,

in like the friariness, like they had like leaders and stuff. No, I mean, like, did Mayans feel strongly about their own belief structure and want to like, could they have challenged him or i think they were afraid they didn't they were afraid yeah you know like he had these weapons and he was like and they were also like confused about god you know like right it's he just went in he like scared the shit out of them and then he hurt them and then he stole their stuff and then he burned it um he said quote we found a large number of books in these characters meaning the vying characters and and as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen a superstition and lies of the devil we burned them all which they the Maya regretted to an amazing

degree and which caused them much affliction and I wrote fuck you yeah fuck you oh my god so he also believe that this would bring Christ back faster I wrote fuck you twice because so awful and he did get sent back to Spain to justify what he did because people were like that was a little intense you know like you maybe shouldn't have done that and while he was in spain he wrote the history of the Mayans and his book is the only book we have that has the history of the Mayan written down from his perspective from what he heard before he burned everything an account of the things of Yucatan god he looks annoying he's the worst so he actually spoke their language and knew their writing enough. He wrote an alphabet

of the minds. It's a mix of hieroglyphics and sounds. It wasn't totally correct and we actually didn't get really cracked until a Soviet code guy did it in the 1950s, which is cool. So, Friar Diego's dumb memory is the best thing

we have, so we're lucky that he wrote it down in the same way that it's his fault that he had to write it down. Makes sense. I get that. And it's all through his fucked up lens of being like this must be the devil. So he was sent back to Spain by the bishop of the Yucatan to go on trial for his illegal inquisition. And the council of the Indies, whatever that means, was like, they condemned

it. But in 1569, they absolved him of his crimes. The bishop of the Yucatan died and he went back and became the second bishop of the Yucatan, where he continued to be in charge of the friars and be in charge of the Catholic conversion. And he died there. when did he die he died in the yucatan on he died in 1579 in 1579 back in the land that he helped to destroy no interesting guy he did a lot he accomplished a lot but yeah it's the worst okay well um that's unfortunate you know i um I brought this up to you in an episode forever ago. I don't even remember which it was,

but I was going through this phase where I would like watch these like narco stuff, like these cartel videos and like real life stuff, not like the show of like what they would do to each other and all that kind of stuff. And I think I like phrased you. I was like, dude, it's crazy. It's like these people are like from like Mayan ancestry. They're like warriors and like they're doing cutting each other's heads up over like five dollars. and swag weed and like that is the downstream impact of like colonization when you take

because like somebody says something interesting me once which is like um well like how like there really isn't like an identifiable american culture how like being raised american there's like swaths of it like there's different variations of it and so having some sort of like a root rooted a foundational grasp of a culture is like a thing that humans generally need to feel part of something and when you take that away through things like Christianity and like it's just it's just the most perverse thing like yeah it's like you're taking away like someone's ability to identify with their mom dad grandparents their land they're like so perverse yeah it's pretty awful and it's just i and you know my biggest crisis is like we don't know what

happened in most of history and then like the fact that it was like at our fingertips and then destroyed i think is so crazy and like here's okay like like when oh my god what was it when it was when it was when isis was rolling through syria destroying all those statues and the live burning the library it's like humans never changed like we are uniformed regardless of like where we are in the world or cultural religion uniformly this is what we do see someone and think oh we got to change them it's like no people can just be different that's okay too that's okay that's cool i don't know well i like it Taylor thank you for sharing um it sounds I'm excited to not worry about this anymore just been so worried about it all week

I'm excited for your interview yeah I can't wait that's so cool like you're being so creative with this stuff we are going to start heavily pushing things on the podcast front even more taylor was kind enough to order a bunch of um stickers that we're gonna i'm gonna i guess i should have my next weekend and so next weekend if you're in austin you're on lookout because if you're at a coffee shop i'm gonna be giving you a sticker and ask you to download the podcast so every copy shop in austin when i was at my conference last week i was at the bar and i got two or three different people to download the podcast yes so there's Um, yeah, my, my listener mail this week is, is coming from me. I'm going to just, I have my contact list and I was like, how do I, I like kind of cleaned it up. Like I have a list of everyone I've ever met. And then I, like, exported from my Gmail. And then I deleted some of the ones that I know aren't real or like, I don't know them really. And then I have like 600 people left that I like might, might remember me. So I'm going to start emailing them in batches and have them sign up for substack. Because I feel like no one's looking at my social media.

It's not true. They just hate me and they don't care. I don't know. No. Everybody loves you, Taylor. Is our Insta following growing? A little bit. We're working on it.

We are working on it. I also, Maggie, our friend Maggie, sent me a post from someone who is posting about history, how history is just gossip for nerds and he already covered in the quick little clips. like Eleanor and Oscar Wilde. So I DMed him and we're laughing about history together as well. So I'm hoping to like make friends who have bigger followings and talk about the same things because we're talking about the same things.

And they're really fun. I would love to make friends with anybody that is in this line of topics that we're going to. Yeah. Cool. We'll tell her we will go ahead and cut this off. And yeah, no, thank you. And I will join you back here momentarily.

Thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. Hi.