Megalithic Marvels - Mysteries of Mesoamerica & the Mayan King Pakal / Luke Caverns

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Who were the mysterious Olmecs and how did they move their massive 50 ton stone heads? Did the Olmecs possess ancient technology that allowed them to precision craft jade mirrors and jewelry? What were the events that led to the discovery of the great Mayan King Pakal's tomb? Why are there so many mysteries surrounding this ruler? Was he considered a "giant" in his day? And why are the photos of his strange tomb door and his skull so hard to come by? I discuss these topics and many more with researcher, explorer and anthropologist Luke Caverns in the episode. Show Notes Luke's Mexico Tour

Well, I am excited to be joined by Luke Caverns, the researcher, explorer, anthropologist, content creator, putting out some really epic videos and reels regarding ancient history. Luke, thank you so much for joining me on Megalithic Marvels. Yes, yes, thank you. Yeah, I came up watching everybody in this community. And I had always been into ancient history from the time I was a little kid, my grandpa got me into ancient. history and then probably sometime during high school i saw randall carlson and graham hancock on joe rogan's podcast and then kind of followed the rabbit hole into this community came across megalithic marvels it's a memorable name so i always remembered it and i had been following your page um since years before i

at least two years before i ever started making videos and um so to now be you know asked to come on your show getting to now meet you and me to meet so many other people. It's awesome to now kind of be a part of this community. I started to see you pop up here and there and saw some videos and thought, man, that is, that was great. And then yeah, we really connected, I think, through Instagram. And then you sent me this message, tell people about the message. One day I was at, I was visiting my family in North Carolina. And I was at, I was at the airport. And so when you're verified on Instagram, other verification notifications are the first ones that pop up.

And so it said Gerard Butler followed you. And I just, my brain exploded. And so this kind of ties into getting to meet so many people just from making little videos in my office. And so, man, I followed him back immediately. I fanned out for a couple days talking to my family. I was like, what do I need to say to this guy? I have to say something to him.

So I sent him a message and I just said, I said, I basically just told him I'd always been a fan of him. My dad and I bonded over watching his movies growing up. And I was just honored that he was in ancient history and likes my videos. He responded and told me he likes these concepts. He's really interested in ancient history. I'm assuming from filming 300. Now, I'm sure he had to do a lot of studying during that time to learn more about the Sparta and everything.

And so I went to his followers. And I saw that I think he had one, there was one mutual follower there. and it was you. And so I messaged you and I said something along the lines of like, hey man, just letting you know Gerard Butler follows both of us. And so that was the first time you and I ever spoke. Yeah, I remember getting that message and I was like,

Gerard Butler, no way, like huge fan as well. For some reason, I never really realized that he was in Phantom of the Opera. You remember that movie? Way back. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't know he was in it. He was like, the phantom and it's crazy because this macho guy and all these action modern day movies right he's like singing and in this in this place so that dude's got skills yeah i have to go back and watch that well that's

why that's why those guys get famous like we but i think a lot of us don't realize is a lot of these famous actors who never sing they can sing that's why they get these roles because you have to do it all you have to be able to sing dance and act to get any roles at all and so these guys are in stupidly talented. Yeah, insane. So, yeah, it's been awesome connecting with you through Instagram and social media. Again, really enjoying some of your videos you've been putting out. So tell us a little bit about your journey how you became interested in, because you're

an anthropologist, right? I'm an anthropologist. That's pretty epic. So tell us a little bit how you got into that. And then how that segueed into your interest in lost ancient civilizations and all that fun. stuff. Right. So, man, there's so many, looking back, especially over the last year that people have been kind of, that I've had to explain or that I've had the honor to be able to explain, you know, where all this started. There are so many places that it did start. So I guess the most

impactful was my mom's father, so my maternal grandfather. Both of my grandfathers had a big impact on this. But the one I was closest with that I knew, I never knew my paternal grandfather, but he plays a big role in this as well. But my grandfather on my mom's side, I had a really close relationship with him. He was a pastor, but he liked ancient history, and he liked the history of the Bible. And he had all these old books. He has a book that I have right here on my bookshelf that was printed the month that I was born, August 97th. And it's called, Lost Cities. And that's it. It's like a coffee table book. And so lots of big pictures, big book and everything. And so about the time that Troy came out in 2004, Brad Pitt, the Brad Pitt movie,

I was hooked on ancient history. And so I was flipping through his old ancient history books or this Lost Cities book. And I couldn't really read that well, I guess by the time I was six or seven. But I could read Troy. And so I saw that. I stole that book from him. And I never gave it back. I still have it till today. And so I'd flip through, you know, I'd flip through the pages and look at these, all these lost cities. And I would just be just fascinated by it. I don't know. It like called to me, you know, even as a little kid. And so I guess I was six at the time. And it just called to me. And I'd flip through the pages and look at the books and not have any sense of where these places were in the world. But now flipping through the book, I recognize every site. I know a lot about

these sites. I know all the names. And, you know, I look at photos of like Teot-T will and the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon and the Temple of Ketzelkoat, you know, and I just think like, man, as a kid, I would have never thought I would actually know all this. So that's on my, that's on my mom's side. On my dad's side, he has a very interesting story, and I only heard these stories through my dad. He was born in 1911, a long time ago. I never knew him. He had passed away probably 15 years before I was born.

and but he was a, I believe he was born into some oil money and like a mining, mining, gold mining money. And so he expanded on that. And he was chasing, he was, he was a miner as his full-time job, or he ran gold mines as his full-time job.

But his part-time job was he was a treasure hunter. He followed Spanish gold. That was his obsession. And so he followed it all the way out into the deserts of New Mexico and near Lordsburg, New Mexico. And so he went out there and he rediscovered this like there was a legend of these seven lost Spanish gold mines. He found them. And he opened up a new gold mining operation there called the Three Bells Mining Company. And he ran, he was digging gold out of there for eight years, super successful.

And then one day in, I think 62, a smelter exploded. Somebody died. There was a whole big fallout. His partner ran off with all the money and he lost literally everything. And my dad was born out of that. My dad was born out of the fallout of that. And he was born into like the poverty that came after that. And I just heard all these legends and these stories.

And his grandfather or his great uncle. is, they were Spanish treasure hunters in Dryden, Texas. And so they were chasing down Spanish gold out near Big Ben, Texas. If you look at Bill Kelly mine in West Texas, it's one of the, it's one of the greatest mysteries of Texas where this kid named Bill Kelly, he was a half slave, half Mexican boy that came upon my great, great grandfather's land. And they had found Spanish gold and Spanish mines out in the middle of the West Texas desert. And they were finally, finding them and they were finding a whole bunch of them, but the location of the biggest cash that was there has never been found even until today. And you can follow the history

and it leads to here in San Antonio. And so, you know, I grew up hearing all these stories. And so inevitably, I ended up sort of following those footsteps. So that's kind of the origins of where everything came from. And I did a whole bunch of other stuff until I was in my early 20s, and I just couldn't get away from what I was actually deeply interested in. So I figured I'm going to figure out some type of way to be able to do what I want in the realm of ancient history. And so that starts out making videos. But my end goal is I want to, I want to be an anthropological journalist, be successful in making videos, kind of like you, maybe having a podcast someday as well, and talking about what I'm interested in, and then using

the revenue of that to fund expeditions in the jungles of Central America, Southern Mexico, and maybe South America someday. And so, yeah, that's where I'm at now. That is incredible to hear about kind of your journey and the role your grandfather's had on you. And I mean, your grandfather was actually, I mean, this stuff's in your blood, this exploration. And have you, I got to ask, have you been out to the site, I assume, where your grandfather had his mind? Yeah, I've never actually talked about this. I'm trying to think like what the actual word is like the orifice of the opening of the mines. He caved in most of them because the gold was just exposed, like these big gold mines.

It was called never fail mine because it never failed. No matter what vein they followed, there was a giant gold vein there, right? So when he lost all the money, he thought that maybe one day he could get back out there. he collapsed in all of the openings. I want to say there's 35 to 40 different mines that were out there, and he collapsed all of them other than a few. I only know that because I found the site. He had a map drawn, but it had absolutely no GPS coordinates.

It was a topographic map, no names of anything other than never fail. And so I spent probably nine months, you know, maybe for like a few hours on the weekend, following that topographic map on Google Earth in proximity to the city that I knew he was in. And I was following Google Earth trying to figure out, well, where exactly is this? And I found it. And that took a long time. So my buddy and I, this was in September of 2022.

And so my buddy and I, we went out there in his truck and we kind of had to explore to find our way there. And we found it. And it was so big that in the two days that we had, we saw probably 30% of it and couldn't really go down into any of the minds because we didn't realize how deep they would go. And there were some shafts where it was probably, I don't know, 12 feet by 12 feet wide, straight down into the ground. And I would peer over as far as I could and I could never see the bottom of them. and but there were old buildings there, the old, the bones of like cars, you know, 1950s and 60s cars that were there. I would guess 50s cars and trucks that were there, all kinds of concrete foundations that were

there, bottles. I have stuff like right here on the floor that I brought home with me. And so, yeah, we found it and explored all of it. And so we have plans to go back. But the tough part is I need. some better equipment to get out there. Like, I need a, I need a Jeep or probably a Jeep. And that's tough to just rent, you know, especially to do something like that.

So I don't know. Maybe if the YouTube money starts coming in, I'll buy a Jeep and then I'll go. So, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's, I guess it's in, I guess it's in my blood, you know, it's, I'm deeply inspired by what they did. And I, it really motivated me to, to, to, to, you know, it's, I guess it's, I'm, I'm, I'm, choose this kind of life path, you know? It's fascinating. Yeah, if somebody watching or listening wants to donate a Jeep to Luke,

just follow the information that gives you the end of this video and send it to him. But I love it, man. It's like you're picturing the scene out of painting a picture out of the scene of Indiana Jones in the last crusade, you know, at the beginning where they're in that cavern looking for what is it, Spanish treasure. So maybe that'll be a future video you're going to do where you're actually in one of these caverns, loot caverns, finding treasure. I have talked to my dad about buying that land one day

because I bet it's so far, okay, so it's about 15 miles as the crow flies into the desert. I mean, it's way out there. You know, it took us an hour and 45 minutes just driving together. get there on roads that nobody has driven on since my grandpa was there. You know, so it was way out there. Yeah, pretty amazing.

I want to film something out there someday, but I've got to get out there and see if there's any good stuff there before I start filming it, you know. Oh, yeah, get the treasure before the coordinates are leaked out, right? Yeah, before I docks the site. I have to, you know, so. That's great, man. Well, that's so cool to get to know some of your history. it seems like a lot of your research and expeditions and the content you're creating is in regards to cultures like the Maya, the Olmex.

I know you've been down there on a lot of these sites. So kind of tell us now what fascinates you most about ancient Mesoamerica and how you gravitated towards that. Yeah. So I never had the interest in Spanish gold or anything that. my, that my grandfather or my great-grandfather and great-uncles had, those guys I was talking about in West Texas, they were four brothers. And so I guess that would be my great, great-grandfather and all my great-uncles. I never had the interest in Spanish gold that they had. And I know that was a very like 1800s, early 1900s thing. For me, it started with, I liked, my interest started off in

ancient Troy, and then it went to Greece, and then it went to Egypt. And Egypt took a hold of my interest from 2015 all the way until maybe three years ago or so. And during that whole time, I was always studying and reading about other places in the world, but Egypt was my bread and butter. And so, you know, when I see, you know, your videos talking about ancient Egypt, or I watch Ben from Uncharted or anything. I know everything that they're talking about. I'm very familiar with Egypt. But then Egypt, but then I was like, you know, I don't really like to be an armchair guy. I want to actually go there. And Egypt is tough when you don't have any money, you know. And so I started looking into Central America and kind of just out of pure curiosity.

and slowly over time it started eating away at me as to how interesting it was. And now it's like my complete interest. I don't even, man, if I pick up a book and read about Egypt, it's like once in a blue moon now. I'm so familiar with it. I know there's still more I could learn. But as far as the old kingdom, pre-dynastic Egypt, the Nacada cultures, I mean, I'm well read on everything there and the theories about where these sites could come from,

et cetera, et cetera. So then I started wanting to travel more. This is several years ago. And so I started studying, I was, you know, when you approach like studying Mesoamerica, people don't realize this because it's just not as popular, is so much harder to understand than Egypt. Egypt is mostly a straight shot, like from beginning to end, even if you include, you know, what could be Zeptepe and Atlantean cultures. It's a straight shot.

You know, it's a straight line of kings and royalties and everything. But in Mesoamerica, it's dozens, literally dozens of cultures all living amongst each other with their own lineages in each one. And you have to understand all that. And I still, you know, it'll take me, it'll take me a decade to fully understand it all. So it's like, you know, when I was reading these, when I was reading Graham Hancock's fingerprints of the gods, like that was one of the first books that I read when I was getting into ancient mysteries. I always love ancient history, but to getting into the more theoretical stuff, fingerprints was the one that I read. And I think that's most people's, that's the first one that they read. And when you're first reading about it, and you see Tijuanaaku and Bolivia and Soxay-Waman and Machu Picchu and Teotihuacan, and you see all, you're reading about all these sites.

It's so overwhelming. You're like, how could somebody even understand all this? Well, then you get to a point on the other side of that where I read Graham Hancock, and I'm like, I'm like, okay, yeah, I understand exactly what he's talking about. But Mezzo America is like a Graham Hancock book around every single corner. It is completely packed with information and it takes so much time to study it, to dive into it, to fully understand what's going on. There was more going on in Meadow America than was ever going on in the old world, like how complicated it is and how these cultures interact with each other and civilizations interact with. each other, there's way more going on there than there ever was in the old world, as far as

how complex the relationships and civilizations interact with each other and how many there were. And so it's just this can of worms that I've opened and I'm just obsessed with it now. So that's kind of how that all started. Yeah, in Mesoamerica, you've got, I mean, like you said, all these cultures, the Omex, Mayans, Aztecs, Toltex, what is it, the Zapotex? what is it the zapotex all of these guys zapotex the taraskins uh you've got the eats of people i mean i could just go on there there's more than there's more than two dozen yeah and you start getting into the weeds but the weeds is what i really find interesting as well well i definitely want to get into the

weeds a bit let's start with you did a great video recently about a newer discovery and i think it's Pueblo, Mexico, where you talk about this possible Olmec pyramid structure. Tell people about this and the most interesting parts. Okay, so this new site is in Pueblo, Mexico, and I guess they've been getting, this is unbeknownst to me other than just a couple days ago, but I guess they've been getting torrential rains, and so sometimes that reveals and destroys ancient sites. So like in Palanke, I'm good friends with Dr. Edwin Barnhart. He mapped Palenke.

The almost, you know, probably 95% of the city is mapped and there's still 5% that's not. You know, he talks about how storms and stuff can reveal sites and also destroy sites. So in this case, it revealed four Mesoamerican ball courts. So the Maya ball game goes all the way back to the Olmex. And the Olmex are about 300 to 1600 BC. So they are, they're often credited as being the mother culture for Mesoamerican civil like the idea of divine kingship and numerology and their astronomical knowledge is often credited as being the mother culture for the rest of Mesoamerica. And that's a large, that is debatable,

but it's probably true, you know, in a great sense it's probably true. The Maya may have been semi more independent than most other cultures when it comes to the Olmex, because that's a whole other thing. But Olmex sites are important because you're looking at the beginning of what we can see archaeologically in Mesoamerica. So they found four Mesoamerican ball courts. They found a couple of ceremonial sites. But I couldn't find the details as to what they meant by ceremonial sites. They found a mound, which the Olmex are credited for, they had pyramids, but they're more like mounds that you would see in more northern North America. I don't always consider Mesoamerica as being North America because it's easier to differentiate if you speak in those terms.

So when I say North America, I mean north of Mexico. They worked in a lot of earthen structures. And so the reason that that kind of sucks for archaeology is because through the Maya, we can study the alignment of their temples and how they align to the stars and constellations and, you know, the solstices and eclipse and everything. and so we assume that a lot of their astronomical knowledge may have come from the Olex or had been created alongside the Olmex. And so when it comes to Olmec mounds, you cannot find alignments because the angles are not preserved well enough, right? Well, this is the first time that a potential pyramid, now it's probably collapsed

in a terrible state. I don't think enough details have come out yet for us to be able to know. but if they determine that it's a pyramid and it's a stone pyramid, it would be the very first Olmec pyramid ever discovered. And not only that, it would be the oldest stone pyramid ever discovered in Mesoamerica. And so it would probably land somewhere between 300 and 1600 BC. So that's far predating when the Maya were making their stone pyramids. I think their earliest ones, maybe 200 BC,

in the Patin in Guatemala, but more realistically, like 200 AD in the Patin in Guatemala. So you're talking about a very, very, very old pyramid, one of the oldest ever discovered in Mesoamerica, probably the oldest one ever discovered, and we might be able to see if it has alignments. And if it has alignments, then we learn a lot more about what the Olmec were aware of. So it could end up being a huge discovery. Yeah, the Olmex fascinate me. I mean, they've got these massive giant stone heads. And then they've got all of these incredible, what do you call them?

I guess we call them monuments in archaeological terms. So tell listeners, viewers, a little bit about some of these, the strangest things that you've discovered about the Omex, whether it's the heads you want to talk about or these monuments. I think you had a video about monument, what's called Monument 13. which shows what might be a traveler. That was fascinating. Share a little bit about that.

Okay. So I've seen this site in person. I went to Leventa Park and I saw Monument 13 in person. So the most interesting things I think about the Olmec, before I get to Monument 13. Gosh. Okay. So starting off, something I'm just now getting into, just now diving into recently. I post on my Instagram story today that I read a lot of,

I read a lot of vintage archaeology books. And those are some of the best ways to, those are some of the best ways to learn about ancient sites that you may, that you maybe have never seen before. And so it's also the best way to learn different mysteries that you wouldn't have known about. Because nowadays, everything that gets published through universities is so filtered and it's so cotton candy and watered down.

You don't get a lot of these like raw. This guy who's, you know, maybe if the book is published in the 40s, maybe his idea of what he's looking at, say if it's Franz Blom and he's looking at in the 1920s and he's visiting an Olmec site. He may not realize this is not

a civilization that is connected to the Maya. I actually don't know what Franz Blom thought of the Olmex. I just haven't studied that. He may not be right, but some of the observations he makes might be really interesting and it might be a rabbit hole to go down. So one thing I found in this old archaeology book that I've never seen mentioned in a newer book is the quality of Olmec Jade and Olmec mirrors.

So they had jade jewelry and they found mirrors like personal mirrors that are polished so finely that it goes beyond the ability of the technology that they or anybody in the ancient world from the old world to the new world to the Americas. Nobody should have had the technology to make mirrors that are that polished and to be able to polish jade that well. It's never been explained and it's literally never spoken about. And this is something that I became privy to maybe three weeks ago. And so it kind of reminds me of have you seen Ben from Uncharted X how he's talking more about the precision of some of the vases that are found at at josier's pyramid and sakkara at least i think this is the one he talked about it at cosmic summit which by the way if anybody wants to go to the

next cosmic summit there's going to be another one in 20224 and uh i'd love to see any of you guys there i love to see you there um but anyways so he talked about it uh he was talking about it at the cosmic summit um about the there were sacred geometrical shapes that are created into these jars. And so, and the polishing is beyond anything that they had at the time. And I was mind blown to see that the Olmex had the same thing but with mirrors. And it was perfect reflection just as good, if not better than mirrors that we have today. And the jade polishing is better than what we, anything we could do today by hand.

It's, it's, so the next thing is obviously, there's a mystery about the heads. And so you have the smallest one weighing about five to six tons, and you have the largest one weighing about 40 to 42 tons. And they made out of basalt. Now, the problem is, I think that it was just, I think they found the quarry that they came from. And they're in the Tushla Mountains in Mexico, which is, it's, I want to say more than 50 miles away from where the heads ended up. And it's been a little bit so I've looked at that number, but I want to say it's more than 50 miles. And it goes through these massive rivers, mountain ranges, and swamps. And so they found no evidence of how they transported these heads.

But most likely they didn't carve them in place. They probably just move the giant boulder to the place that they carved it. The problem is how do they move it? Nobody's ever, there's never been an answer given to this. And even Dr. Ed Barnhart says on his podcast, Archaeo, He has an episode dedicated just to the Olemex, and it's a great episode. Anybody should check it out if they'd like to. Even he, who is not somebody that entertains the ancient Atlantis, you know, ancient

Atlantis, you know, ancient apocalypse. He's not one of those guys. He's an academic through and through. Even he says that archaeologists have quietly known that the explanation of how they moved these Olmec heads is just wrong. And so he's had a, I want to say, nautical engineer traveled down to to Basco and Veracruz with him to look at these

old mech heads. And this nautical engineer developed an algorithm to be able maybe it's not an algorithm, but it's like a system where you could create a raft that was made out of tree trunks and you could make it as big and as long as you want to and add as many tree trunks on it as you want. And it could put different old mech heads on it. And this is all

done on a computer, right? Well, what was interesting is no matter how big and how wide and how many tree trunks you added to the raft it couldn't hold the smallest olmec head it it was never big enough to hold the smallest one which is like five and a half tons so how they ever move the one that's 40 tons is not it just can't be explained i think i think the only explanation that the guy made which I think even he said, it'd be tough to even prove this, is that the only thing that you could do is that you could take tree trunks and stand them straight up and wrap them around the head. And maybe that would be enough buoyancy to float it. But that's kind of the same thing as when they try to explain how they move the granite from the Aswan quarry all the way to Giza.

And they're like, oh, what's just so simple? they just balanced it on these river rafts and, you know, that's how they got it up there. And, you know, I just think the Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt, there's nothing better that they could do other than recreate that. Like, that would be everybody in the world would watch. Everybody's interested in ancient history would watch it to see how well that would turn out. So in the same way, the Egyptians and the Olmex, they have a lot of similar mysteries. They have these giant monuments and they had to be moved up river through pretty bad terrain. and is even you know sand doesn't seem like it's like it would be that hard of a train to move through

but it is and um so that's a whole mystery in itself and then as far as the travelers go as far as the monument 13 goes so i visited that in person and dr barnhart put me on to this mystery and i had also read it in fingerprints of the gods and i've seen it in a few other places as i've studied the olmex and even dr barnhart he thinks it's a he thinks it's a very strange little mystery. And he doesn't have a, he doesn't have like a shoe away explanation for it. I mean, I can see him kind of,

like I said, he's an academic through and through, but he kind of entertains this idea that, you know, that there might be something to this. And he was basically explaining, Native Americans are notorious for not being able to grow facial hair.

They probably, some probably did. The vast majority did not. It just wasn't in their genetics, right? And so you go and look at Monument 13, which the Omex, there's a hieroglyph on it, and a hieroglyph says, the traveler. And so this guy is, he's holding a flag. He's got a real pointy chin. He's got a little beard on the end.

He's got a mustache that's kind of like mine that's, you know, I don't know, like very, I don't know. He looks like somebody from Pirates of the Caribbean that came from the Mediterranean Sea, right? Yeah, he does. He's got a big turban on, and he's wearing pointy shoes. And so he's coming with a flag like this, and the old mex just call him the traveler. That monument is most likely built, was most likely built around 900 BC. They know that from carbon dating, relative dating, et cetera. At the same time around 900 BC, the Phoenicians were launching their expeditions from the Mediterranean Sea around 900 BC.

Those numbers could be fudge. Like, I could be like 200 years off, but the point would still be the same, right? So they're launching their expeditions out of the Mediterranean Sea through, was it the gates of Hercules? And so down through Africa. And so the Phoenicians were trying to launch their expeditions sailing around Africa. The problem is there's a current that will take you straight out of the Mediterranean Sea all the way into the Gulf of Mexico, basically straight to Veracruz, Tabasco area. and a ship will just float all the way down there on its own. So one of the popular theories is that this may in fact be depicting a lost Phoenician vessel of which they're recorded.

There were plenty of Phoenician vessels. There were plenty of vessels on every single ancient expedition that left and never came back. They had to send out multiple of these boats to actually get this expedition done. It wasn't just done on one boat or one fleet at one time. And so there were boats that went missing. and so it's theorized this could be this could be exalting or you know creating a monument of some distant traveler that showed up wearing a turban had a mustache and a beard with pointy shoes all of which just and he had a flag on a pole or on a pole and all of which are just features that you just don't see in mesoamerica now the same figure is also depicted on another stila and it's even more obvious that this guy has a mustache, a beard, a turban, a flag in pointy shoes. And he's depicted alongside somebody who looks more traditionally Olmec. And I'm trying to think of the, I can't remember the name of this

monument, but it's one of the biggest steela that's at the Leventa, that's at Leventa Park in Vieira, most of Mexico. I saw this in person as well. And so it is theorized that the Olmex made contact with a Phoenician tribe or with a Phoenician vestibes. that landed in Mexico. What happened to these guys has never been proven. There isn't, I don't think there's enough Phoenician DNA in ancient Olmec DNA or even in modern olmec or modern Mesoamerican DNA to be able to definitively prove that this happened. But it's just a little interesting thing. And as they continue to excavate more in the Olmec world, there might end up being more evidence for people from the old world making it to the new world.

But there's tons of documented cases of people who arrive before Columbus. And there's tons of Spanish explorers, European explorers that went missing in the states, whose, that artifacts of these people have been found. And it just doesn't really make headlines. And people don't ever really hear about it. Even in North Carolina in the United States, they're finding ancient Spanish deep into North Carolina, more than 200 miles inland. So it's a whole big can of worms, but it's super interesting. And so there's a lot of stuff to sink your teeth into around the OMX.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the OMX. Again, most people know about these massive stone heads. And I love the point you bring up about how in the world did they move these. Right. And you're right. It's exactly like the enigma of how did they move the granite from Azon Quarry to the Great Pyramids. So you've got the massive stoneheads. You've got all of these interesting steaming.

Stela's with these depictions, whether it's the traveler. You've got the other one with the figurine that's sitting in, what is it, a serpentine like almost spaceship. I can't remember which monument that is. That's one of my favorites. And it's like 3D, it's like a 3D relief. Yeah. And then they did that as well.

And then there's the one where it's almost like this ape light creature that's ascending out of a portal of some sort. And you can see photos of people sitting Indian style kind of like the figurine is. So, and then you've got just the features, the facial features of these supposed OMACs doesn't really look like what we think of people who live in that region of the world in Mexico, right? And then you've got, I've seen all of these photos of like small OMIC figurines. with massive, well, it looks like massive or I should say large elongated skulls.

So all these enigmas, I've got to ask you, what do you think about? I had Cliff Dunning on Earth Ancients podcast. He considers himself a Mayanist. And like you know, is just so much about Mesoamerica. And he's in his Facebook group featured a collage of photos of all these figurines. I think most of them are considered Mayan. but it's like they're wearing bona fide spacesuits. Have you seen those?

Any thoughts on any of that? I have seen, so I'm familiar with Cliff. He and Dr. Barnhart probably don't see much eye to eye, but they're close with each other. They're actually leading a tour together to Palenke later this year. And so, yeah, I have like a little bit of a vicarious connection to Cliff, I guess. I don't know about the monuments that are wearing space suits, but I have seen, or the statues figurines wearing spacesuits, but I have seen where people theorize that in Copon, I think Temple 16 at Copon,

there's a relief there where it looks like a guy's wearing a respirator. I don't have an explanation for that, although I've seen some, I've seen some of these reliefs where people theorize it's a respirator, but really it's a, well, I guess archaeologist's degree, that it is a person that's like a were, like kind of like a werewolf, but it's like a wear jaguar. And he's got the mouth of a jaguar. And he's like becoming,

he's becoming like a mythological creature. And so he's got the mouth of a jaguar. But it looks like to somebody living in the 2000s, looks like a respirator of some kind. But I'm not, I will say I'm not, an ancient aliens person, I'm like an all-human person. However, I've never actually said this. However, I think there's a spiritual realm. I think that there's, you know, I think that, I think that people in the ancient world did so much to exalt their gods and to please their gods,

that to complete, I think that for people living in the modern day, who, are obviously cut off from spirituality, evidently. I mean, they outright deny it. They don't want to believe in spirituality. I think for us to completely deny that that could have existed or does exist and that they were aware of it and connected to it would be really naive and foolish. And I think that there was probably maybe like, I know people are starting to get more into this lately and I'm starting to entertain this idea more lately, I definitely think that there's a possibility that ancient people through maybe psychedelics or whatever kind of practices that they were doing had a connection to the spiritual realm and that they were everything that they did was trying

to connect more to it or to please beings that they were meeting. So in a way, if that's ancient aliens, then in some ways I buy into it. But I don't know specifically about the figurines that you're talking about. There's just so many that are out there. It's impossible to know it all, you know. You brought up, um, Palankan, I think this is, uh, when it comes to Mesoamerican sites, uh, this has got to be my favorite one. There's just so much mystery and intrigue surrounding it. And I, I enjoyed, you did a series, uh, of reels on this about the discovery of, um, pyramid of inscriptions and Lord Pekal's tomb. in 1952, I believe.

So take some time and just kind of break down the discovery in 1952 with the archaeologist, what he uncovered and why it's one of the really the biggest discoveries of modern times, right? Yeah, I mean, definitely there's never been anything like that that has been found in Mezzo America. they've never found another pyramid tomb. Anywhere else in Mesoamerica, as far as a stone pyramid, I mean, they have found mounds that you could call a pyramid with a body in it. But as far as a stone, you know, giant, megalithic structure with a body inside of it,

it's one of a kind in Mesoamerica. So basically, I had been calling him a real estate. ruse in those videos, but I got violently corrected that it's actually Ruiz, even though it's spelled RUZ. So his name is Alberto Ruiz, and he was an archaeologist working at Palenca. And he's up at the top of the Temple of Inscriptions. And so the Temple of Inscriptions is right next to the palace that's at Palinca. And it might be the largest pyramid at Palinca. and so they call it the temple of inscriptions because at the top, there are inscriptions that tell the story of a great king

and of the city of Palenka itself and some of the mythology around it and so on. And so he's up there at the top and I think he gets like an inkling that there's something more to this pyramid. And he's analyzing the inscriptions and he's looking down at the bottom of the walls. And as he's reading the inscriptions and he notices that the wall goes past the floor. So the wall doesn't stop like most of the other pyramids do. So most of them, the walls are sitting on the floor, right? Like the floor goes underneath the walls.

In this case, the wall went past the floor. And he's like, that's really weird. And so he starts analyzing the floors and he's realizing all the walls go past the floors, even the pillars that are sitting in between the doorways at the top of the inscriptions or at the top of the temple of inscriptions. And so he looks down at the floor. And he realizes that there's these little, I'm trying to think it's like the common name for it. But there's like these little punch holes, like holes where you can reach under and pull something, pull something off.

Like you see in modern day cardboard boxes where you can reach inside of it and lift it up. And so he notices that. And I think he shines one of those old 1950s flashlights into it. And he sees that it is hollow on the underside of it. So he gets a team at some point. Maybe it was right then or maybe it was later on. Maybe he had to get permission or something. I don't know if that the reports really specify that.

But he lifts it up and realizes that, sure enough, there's a chamber underneath the floor at the Temple of Inscriptions. And so they lift that up and this chamber is completely covered in rubble. Gosh, maybe that's 1949 at this time. So the next season in 50, 1950, they get a group of archaeologists and, just, you know, mules, like regular workers to come in, and they start getting the rubble out. And it's like backbreaking work. You know, I mean, they've got a team bringing the rubble out and then down the steps because you can't just toss it off the side, right? And so they're bringing all the rubble down. And so they're thinking like he's already thinking at this point

that he's going to find the tomb of the king of this place. He already knew from the very beginning. He had, he had an idea that that's what this was. He had seen this guy, um, pictured all around Palenke, who was going to, who was this big ruler. And obviously, to, you know, somebody very powerful had to build the city, right? So, but at this time, I think it was 73 when the Maya code was broken. So he couldn't read the inscriptions at the time. And the language hadn't been understood, but he could tell, because you can see they were very particular about, it's the same way in Egypt. When they make these reliefs of people, that is a portrait of that person. It's not a figurative. That is the literal person. So the Maya did the same thing. And if you look at two people,

the art style is exactly the same. And at first glance, they look exactly the same. But you study the differences. You'll tell that you'll be able to identify one guy on different murals. And so he's seeing this one king over and over and over again. And so they're doing this backbreaking work. So in 1951, I think they move like, I don't know, 10 feet, right? And so they get 10 feet down. And they're like, okay we're going to come back next season we've got to be close so they come back next season they go they go much further this time but they make it like halfway and so um they hit this one it's like an anti chamber so it goes down and they didn't realize it was going to go down back the other way so they they get they find this chamber and i think they find the remnants of uh of incense and possibly like torches for

light. I want to say that they find five to ten skeletons of young boys that were buried inside the buried inside the tomb shaft stairway as well. And so they're encouraged, but they're also discouraged because they're like, man, this has been two and a half years. How much longer are we going to have to keep going down this thing? So they come back the next year. And I think they come back a little bit earlier. And so they're digging down, digging down, digging down, digging down. finally they hit this triangular stone wall and I want to say I want to say the doorway is made out of limestone but maybe it's basalt and so the doorway itself is like a big triangle I've never seen anything like it and it's really hard to find it somebody anybody who's watching this try to Google uh pical tomb

triangular door there's not there's hardly any photos of it but it's bizarre and and I'd love to do a study of like, why would they do that? And how did they even build this door? So this is now in 1953, I believe. And he found it in 49. So we're three or four years later now. And so finally, his team, they are about to enter this tomb door. And he tells everybody, he's like, turn your flashlights off.

Everybody be quiet. And so they get the tomb door opened up. Nobody's looked inside of it yet. And he tells everybody, turn your. your flashlights off, everybody be quiet. We're going to sit here and like acknowledge this moment and take it in. And so, you know, he sits there and everybody's quiet and he's, you know, it says that they sat there for, you know, a long period of time.

And he was taking in like the ancient world. Like he was letting the ancients speak to him through the tomb walls. And he was thinking about the last time somebody stood here was probably more than a thousand years ago, you know, significantly more than a thousand years ago. He was thinking about what he was about to see. He knew he had accomplished something that nobody else had ever and has ever done since then. It's the first tomb like this that's ever been found. I mean, really, that's ever been found.

And so he turns on his flashlight and he goes in by himself. And I don't know how to explain the science behind this, but the room had crystallized. So as just try to imagine, he's shining his. It's probably, the tomb's probably a little bit bigger than my office. So my office is like, yeah, it's definitely bigger than this. This is like 12 by 15. So the two, that's like the size of, that's like the size of the sarcophagus. So yeah, the sarcophagus is the size of my room.

So the tomb was a little bit bigger than that. And so he sees this, I'm talking about a, like a room size sarcophagus. That's seven feet tall, like 11 feet wide. and 12 or 15 feet long, it's something ridiculous. And it had crystallized. So you know how, like, or it calcified. And so it looked like it was crystals. And so he shines his old, big, long 1950s flashlight into the room.

And on the room are murals of all of the Maya gods that he worshipped. And so these are 3D murals. They're not carved into the. the rock. The rock is carved away to reveal the hieroglyphs and the murals, right? I mean, that's like what we see at, Gobeckley-Tepi and other sites. But the Maya is more intricate. It's by far the by far the most intricate style of art in the entire ancient world. Like that's Bacall's sarcophagus right there behind me. And so it's like, I bought that at Palenke when I was there. And by far the most interesting art style carved into the rock to reveal it away. It's all, it all

crystallized and he's shining his light on the most magnificent, perfectly preserved chamber in all of the Maya world. And so much so that some of the paint was still on there. So the walls had been fully painted with like beautiful reds, yellows and blues. And he was seeing all of this. And so he got everybody in there. They all looked at it. The, the, I stood next to a cast of the sarcophagus and it was taller than me. And I want to say it's seven feet tall. And so they get everybody in there and they start examining the entire room. And underneath the sarcophagus, have you ever seen this stucco head of pachal?

Have you ever seen what it looks like? It's like if they made like a cast of his head, that was for some reason underneath his tomb. But what's interesting, or it was underneath his sarcophagus. And so his sarcophagus was sitting up on these big stone pillars. these two stone pillars, and underneath it all the way in the middle, was a stucco head of him and the red queen, which the red queen was his wife. And so what was interesting was when Stevens and Catherwood, actually, this is a good topic. So Stevens and Catherwood are the most prolific Maya explorers. So, you know, you have a whole list, a whole list of people who have explored

the Maya world because there's so much left to see, still so much left to see. So Stevens and Catherwood, they wrote incidents of travel in the Yucatan. They wrote a three-part series on their travels from Honduras to Guatemala, Chiapas, Tabasco, Kempayche, and the Yucatan. And so they visited all these different sites. Well, they visited and stayed at Palanke. And when they were at Palinca, they were in the palace, this big palace at Palinca.

And so at Palinke, they have these murals, and I think they're made out of half stone and stucco. And so the murals, are like coming out of the way Dr. Barnhart explained it, I believe, is they are coming out of Shabalba, like the Maya underworld. They're coming out of it. And, but what Stevens and Catherwood noticed in 1832 was that all the rulers had their heads chopped off. So they had a, like, how we have Greek and Roman statues where, you know, they're in some kind of pose or something. Well, they, you know, and a lot of these guys are preserved. Well, all the Maya rulers had their heads chopped off. And

they were like, you know, it's weird, but I guess that's, you know, I guess somebody came in and chopped all their heads off. They found what should have been Pekal's head underneath his sarcophagus, which means that the Maya were removing their own heads. And so that's like a, you know, people, people's perception, like, why would they do that? And so there's been other things that have, that have shown us that when rulers would die, the Maya were, you know, they're self-sacrificial, and we can't really completely understand it, which is why the Maya is a whole can of worms that I'm obsessed with, because it's like all the mystery that could be in an Atlantean civilization,

there's just as much of it in the Maya world. I mean, just as much left to know. And a lot of times it's anyone's best guess, you know. So now we're at this place where we're trying to figure out, where he's like, okay, so all these heads that Stevens and Catharwood and all these other Maya explorers that have documented, all these heads on these murals that are cut off. Now the Maya are cutting their,

we realize they're doing it themselves. That's really weird. So that's a whole rabbit hole you can go down as to why they're cutting off their own rulers heads after they die. So, but Alberto Ruiz, just like you or me or anybody else who's obsessed with this,

he's like, no, no, we're not coming back tomorrow. We're opening up this damn sarcophagus right now. And so he gets everybody down there and they get a bunch of levers and they lift up.

And the sarcophagus, head ends up being, or the sarcophagus lid ends up being, is it six, six tons, five tons, something like that, giant, you know, like 15 feet by 11 feet, something crazy like that. And so they get it lifted up on all these, on all these wedges and everything. And it's just enough space for Ruiz to be able to fit his head underneath it. And he's like, he's like, I'm going to look inside of it. And so, you know, he got this big wobbly five-ton lid sitting up on top of these wedges. And he's looking, he's climbing.

He's like crawling in underneath it. And so there's a carving on the inside of the top of the lid. So it's not like it opened up. The sarcophagus itself was solid with just the space for a human body that was cut out of it. So you're talking about a solid block. You know, it's not just a hollow box. It was solid. And so he crawls in.

and he realizes that that little, where he knew that body was going to be, it had another lid underneath it with the two pinholes that were, it was the same kind of pinholes that he found on the roof to be able to lift up, to be able to lift up the access to the chamber. That was over the body as well. So he can't get that out, but he pushes his fingers through the little holes and clears it. And he takes his flashlight and he looks down inside of it.

And Pekal was looking him straight in the eyes. and he was on the other side of it. And Bacall's wearing his ceremonial jade burial mask, and they're looking at each other eye to eye. And so that ended up being, you know, that's the greatest discovery ever made in the Maya world. So yeah, it's a really, really, really cool story. I love how you shared how this archaeologist is Ruiz,

how he, before he just, instead of just running in, guns blazing and opening everything up, I love how you shared how he just told the whole team. Just everybody take a chill pill. Yeah. We're just going to enjoy this moment. I mean, that's something I would do, I feel like. Like this is going to be so epic.

Let's just take this in and just savor this moment for a couple of minutes or maybe it was longer, it sounds like. But yeah. Yeah. That must have been the most incredible experience. And I love the photo I've seen at him. I think you shared it where he's peeking his head in. to that tomb. Yeah, man.

It's, I think about, I've noticed that I'm starting to really get into, I notice that I'm starting to really get into the history of explorers of ancient sites. Because I think that that relationship and what you're able to acknowledge, like now we're so far along that we can now study this guy who explored these sites in his time. We can study his history. history in relationship to the people he was, you know, that he was studying as well. So that Stevens Catherwood or even maybe if you're familiar with Percy Fawcett and the Lost

City of Z. Have you ever seen that movie? I'm finding that I'm really interested in that because there's just, I don't know, I think it's in general it's fascinating, but it's inspiring to me because I want to be like those guys someday. And I think about, you know, yeah, he paused and he took it in because he was about. to do the greatest thing that he ever would do. You know what I mean? Like he was about to reach the very top of the mountain and everything on the other side of that would be downhill, right?

But he was about to cement his name in archaeology forever and he knew it. And he had been working in this shaft for four years. And I just think that's really cool. You know, I mean, like, man, how many people just, they don't commit themselves to doing something extraordinary in life. And a lot of these explorers, man, I mean, they give up everything. And you don't really hear about it. Even Dr. Barnhart, I mean, he gave up a lot to be able to map Polenke. He mapped the whole thing. And I think it took him three years and he was there for six years. And there was a lot of personal sacrifice that he made just to be able to, one, experience

that world for himself, but contribute a lot to archaeology in the world of science and exploration and wonder of the ancient world in general. And I find myself really fascinated reading about what these guys went through and how much they suffered and how much their family suffered just to further our understanding of these lost worlds. There were tons of guys that were on the Lewis and Clark expedition across the United States who killed themselves afterwards because they were never going to see anything or experienced anything as magnificent as the camaralienable.

that they felt with their buddies, you know, out in the wilderness by themselves. And that sense of true human wonder of pushing yourself to the edge and doing something truly worthwhile and amazing with the little bit of life that you get on this planet. And so studying these guys who are all extraordinary. Yeah, I think it's just generally fascinating. I think people really like that. And we're at a cool place where you can study two points of history at one time and then connect them each other. And we can observe as a third party, you know. So I'm starting to really kind of find myself not only studying ancient history, but studying the people who were studying it before we were, you know? So that's pretty interesting to me. I interviewed Hugh Newman, who's been there

several times, and he pointed out in one of his videos, what looks like larger megalithic blocks that appear to almost predate a lot of the pyramids there that you can see. And then again, back to the pyramid of inscriptions Pekyll's tomb like you mentioned the sarcophagus, the lid it almost looks superior than the pyramid itself It's incredible

And we can't end this without talking About just some of the enigmas concerning him Because you got the lid Which there's whole theories out there That this is portraying Some form of lost tech, right? It almost looks like Pekal is sitting in some kind of craft. So I want to get your take on what you think is going on with the lid.

And then it seems like there's a lot of mystery like, I think you said yourself, you can't even see the exact tomb or sarcophagus today, only replicas. And then there's all of this mystery surrounding Pekul himself. A lot of rumors that he could have been seven foot, nine foot tall. he seems to have had maybe extra digits. I think there's depictions of him or something I've seen where he's got six fingers. Yeah, that's possibly.

Yeah, Khan Balam. That's his son, actually. Okay. Yeah. It looks like he's got some kind of elongated skull, whether that was cradle headboarding or genetic. I don't know. And then the biggest mystery of all is like, when you Google Pekal,

it's almost impossible to see a picture of his actual skull. It's like it's almost been whitewashed from the internet. Why is that? Do you have any information for me on that? I didn't know that about his skull. Really? Yeah. You know, I've never thought about that?

That you can't see his, it's hard to see his skull. Right. And again, I go to, we've got the Jade Mask, right? And like you've said, this is one of the greatest modern discoveries. Why wouldn't they want us to see the guy's skull? That's very interesting. Now, I will say, is his, okay, now I'm thinking about it, I have two pieces of conflicting information that I have accepted in my mind.

So now I have to just, now I have to sort it out. Are his bones not on display in the Museum of Mexican History in Mexico City? Or is it his bones plus the jade mask minus the skull? Do you happen to know? I can't tell you for sure. All I know is you cannot find his skull. You almost can't find it anywhere. Okay, yeah, that's something interesting that we should look into.

because I did hear while I was in Palenke, we were talking about, we were talking about the, what's ethical, because they removed his body from his tomb, right? Which is a little, I don't know, that's messed up.

I just think, like, all of his, his jade mask and his, in his bracelets and, and what he was holding in his hands, which is interesting, because it could tie into sacred geometry because he's holding a sphere and a cube in his hands, right, and all of his rings and jewelry,

whatever, buried with, take it all. You know, all of his riches, take it all. He's dead. But like, leave the guy's bones in the tomb that he had built for himself. But what's interesting is, for whatever reason, I thought it was on display at the cultural or museum of Mexican culture, whatever, in Mexico City. But I also heard that his bones are kept in a box.

Maybe it's that they're kept in a box underneath that. museum and they never see the light of day today. They're literally thrown in like a cardboard metal or glass box or whatever and it's shoved away in a basement somewhere. I heard that in January when I was at Palenke. So that's really interesting that you say that you can't, it's really hard to find a photo of his skull. So does it look like his skull was elongated? And it kind of looks like it in the stucco that they made. Like he had a long face and maybe Yeah, yeah, he appears to have these genetic anomalies. Like, obviously, there's some research regarding his height, so he's extra tall.

He's got an elongated skull. And then, again, you can't find his body anywhere. And when you try to Google and find his skeleton, the head's always blotted out in the discovery pictures. Wow. It's like blacked out. So I'll look into that. And, again, so there's theories that was this some type? of, you know, people would say hybrid.

Some people would say Nephilim hybrid. Some people would say, was this some kind of, you know, demigod that was ruling the population in the city? I don't know, but it's intriguing to think about. So I love how you're into researching some of these earlier explorers accounts. You did a great reel on, I think it was someone named Borgowa's writings about the chambers under METLA. So tell us about that, or if there's something else like that that you can think about that you want to share, go for it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, real quick, I was just going to plug. If anybody's interested in visiting some of the most famous and some lesser known sites that are in the Yucatan, I'm leading a tour with N-Exte. I'm going along with him. We're going to say at one of the most famous hotels. that's one of the most famous hotels in the Maya land, or in the world of the Maya, not the Maya Land Hotel.

But it's a hotel that a whole lot of explorers had stayed at, I believe Franz Belom, maybe even Stevens-Catharwood, stayed there or stayed nearby. We're going to be visiting Chichinich, Ushmall, Schichmuk, Ekbalam, a whole bunch of other sites, the L'Ltoon Cave. If you guys would like to join us, there's more information on my social media. It's just Luke Caverns everywhere. So anyways, so you're asking about Bergoa, Francisco Bergoa, 1674 in Mitla, Mexico when he's looking at the Zapotech tunnels. So what's interesting is, so I do my, I do my social media one of two ways.

I have my own stuff that I'm currently researching. And then like once or twice a week, I just give people an update as to what's going on in Mesoamerican archaeology. And I didn't intend for my page to become Mesoamerican, but it's just gone that way because it's just where my interest is at. Like I have a bunch of stuff about ancient Egypt and Persia and Rome and Greece, but it's almost become Mesoamerica at this point. And I might really lean into that as time goes on because it seems to be what people want to know about. But somehow I struck a chord with people on that video. People, I didn't realize that either the Zapotech were so culturally popular that people found it interesting or that the, that Francisco Bergoa was a popular figure and that the tunnels at Mitla were something that people were interested in. I'm not sure if it was just a video itself or if I happened to strike a chord with the, with the audience there.

And that's kind of an interest that I didn't know that people had. But yeah, basically, so he was there in the late 1600s, mid-late 1600s, and he tried, he discovered these tunnels that I believe were underneath churches that may have already been there or the Spanish then built churches on top of these sites. Because a lot of times what happened is, you know, the Spanish wanted to extinguish any remnants of Mesoamerican culture, right? They just wanted to put it all out to destroy the will of Mesoamerican native people, destroy their culture, destroy their history. And so a lot of these churches that are in Mesoamerica, people don't realize it because it's been so well hidden for the last 300 years that even the people working at the churches don't realize. You know what I mean? These are secrets that just died with people. And so they would build like the pyramid of Chulula, right? I mean, there's a giant church on top of that.

And so, which I hate. I hate that. I'm a Christian, but I hate it's just tacky to me. I don't know. I just don't like that. But they found in Mitla, Mexico, they found these Zapotech tunnels that are underneath, that are underneath this church. And so Francisco Bergoa, they ended up, I'm not sure if they were like, if they heard his account and were trying to find the tunnels or how they found it. And then it just lined up with the writings of Bergoa. But he tried to go down into the tunnels and it was so inhospitable.

and I think he said that the smell was horrific and there was like a draft that was in there and he said that he could feel like evil spirits down in this hell is what he kind of referred to it as. Well, the Zapotex, it's very likely that they saw it as their Shabalba or underworld. They probably wouldn't have called it Shabalba, but it would have been their underworld. And it was so formidable trying to explore these tunnels. It was so dangerous and people couldn't breathe. and they were starting to cough and get sick and they had to get out. And he basically thought that it was demonic.

So they crashed the entrances to it and they built a church on top of it and basically hit it forever. And so Mexican archaeologists found these tunnels just here recently. And I want to say that the archaeologist that's in charge of it, did you speak to him recently? Okay, yeah, that was Marker then. Yeah, yeah. You spoke to him. He was on ancient apocalypse, right?

Yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. So he's a good guy. I like him. So I'm interested in seeing what more comes out of this. I'm not an expert in much that's Zapotech. I just happen to make a video on it and people really like it. And I realized I struck a chord with people in some way.

So, yeah, that's kind of my extent of knowledge about Mitla. But yeah. What would you say are you mentioned you love reading some of these old books by vintage books from archaeologists of the past. Just throw out a couple of books that people could search for to read. Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, I can get right here. So if you want something with Mesoamerica,

Mysteries of the Pyramids by Peter Tompkins. And so this is covering, or mysteries of the Mexican pyramids. So this covers all of the, this covers all of the explorers of, of, I guess, the early explorers of Mexico from the 1500s through the, through Stevens and Catherwood. And this gives you an impression. So like, it shows all of the, all of the old art. And it gives you a very transparent look at the initial ideas that these people had of what

they were looking at. Now, a lot of them are probably wrong. But some of the ideas and some of the things that. that they notice and acknowledgments that they make can spark something else that that leads you down a rabbit hole that people in Mesoamerican archaeologists just don't entertain. I mean, this is wide open. Like, it's the Wild West right now. Even still right now, there's just no rules. So, oh, there's, that's Teotibokon before it was ever excavated. So, I mean, it's just forest, right? And it talks about how the Aztecs rediscovered it and everything. And nobody knows who built Teotibokon. There's a look at, I believe that's the Temple of Inscriptions.

So it talks about the early explorers of the Temple of Inscriptions. So it's just a really interesting book. That's a great one. So I don't know when this was published. Let me see. So this is 1976. But even in the world of Mesoamerica, 1976 is old.

I mean, that's already dated. If you want Old World, check out this book. ancient times a history of the early world this is great um so this goes through uh this is by breasted and so it's like a you know it's an academic kind of textbook but um it has a lot of visual like i can't read an archaeological book if there's not a lot of illustrations and visuals because it's archaeology is visual you know you need to be able to see what you're looking at so this covers all the way from the Stone Age in Africa, all the way to Rome fighting the barbers or barbarians

and the fall of Rome in like, what, 476 AD or something like that. And it's just, even though it's published by an academic source, the author, this is back during a time, so it's, or maybe it's Charles Breasted. But the author, he's very candid in everything that he says. And it's not overly filtered by a university. And you can tell a lot of his personality bleeds through in his writing. And I really like that because when I read something, I want to know what the guy thought.

I don't want it to be like 50 people in a room who agree on, well, I don't agree with that. So let's kind of take this little bit out. And then you get nothing, right? It's just like white bread on white bread and you bite into it. There's nothing there. So this book is a great look from the Stone Age all the way to the fall of Rome. And some of the dates are wrong as far as this was written before carbon dating became a thing. So, you know, it'll be talking about the Sakara Necropolis.

And it'll be marginally wrong. So it'll say the Sakara Necropolis was that Jojur and Emotep lived in 2,800 BC, which they didn't. They lived in like... 2650 BC, right? So they're off by 150 years. But through relative dating at the time, it's still pretty close. So some things you take with a grand of salt, but you'll learn so much more in this book that'll lead you to so many more interesting conclusions than you will in modern day books, which are like, I don't know, they're just watered down. They're just not interesting reads, you know. Well, thanks for those recommendations. Yeah. And Luke, how can people follow you?

stay up to date with all of your projects, research, just give us anything, a social media channels, email lists. Yeah, so you can find me anywhere just at Luke Caverns, L-U-K-E, space, C-A-V-E-R-N-S, and just my name,

anywhere you can find me. I guess I'm most popular on social media. I'm still trying to build out my YouTube and see what people think is interesting, whether they want long, in-depth studies, which I'm kind of getting the sense that's what people want from me. And I'm just trying to kind of master YouTube.

And that's kind of my, once I get YouTube done, I can kind of focus on this full time. Because I still have a day job that I had to rush. I had to get off work a little bit early to be here on time. So just loot caverns anywhere. And I guess the only way to support would be just watch my, you know, if you want to watch my videos and you think they're interesting, that's really all you can do. Or if they want to, I don't know, they could reach out to join some of my excursions or whether they want to do a guided tour or if they want to do a, like the one I'm doing in Yucatan, you can find that anywhere on my social medias or if they want to join me on an expedition and kind of help fund that. Man, I'd love that.

But that's kind of like a one-on-one thing. That's all private. So if they want to reach out about that, that'd be cool. Yeah, so find Luke on all social media, follow him, like his stuff, share his stuff, subscribe, go on his Yucatan tour. I love the marketing you guys did for that. It looks really cool. Thank you.

And go see this stuff yourself, put your hands on it, get to know Luke. And if anybody has a Jeep out there, DMM and send him a jeeps for his travels out to the minds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was talking to, I was talking to one of my buddies and I was like, one of my buddies was like, you should just put on your, you should just put on your Instagram story. If anybody has a Jeep, they'd be willing to give me for free. I would appreciate it. And I was thinking like, you know, I bet you people who have a following actually do things like that. Like if Joe Rogan posted, hey, I need a Jeep. I need a free Jeep. How many jeeps do you think you could get for free?

You know, oh man, right. I would never do that. But if somebody wants to, you know, right. I'll bring you along with me and I'll give the Jeep back afterwards. There you go, yeah. Give them the Jeep and earn a free trip on the expedition. Well, Luke, thanks again so much for your time, man. And really looking forward to getting this out, this info out to everybody. And hopefully we'll do it again in the future. Yes, thank you.

This flew by. We have so many other things to talk about. So much. All right, man, have a good day. Yes, sir. You too. Thank you.