Transcript
A (0:00)
I mean, I found pyramids and unfortunately mummies that have been torn apart, elongated skulls that are sitting there in the desert, artifacts upon artifacts upon artifacts. And the majority of sites I went to, they were all kind of looted somewhere at the site. There's been more looting in the last two decades of the 20th century than the prior 500 years since Spanish conquest.
B (0:21)
This is Raul Bilecki. You might know him from his YouTube channel, Pillars of the Past. He's an adventurer and an archaeologist that goes around the world uncovering lost civilizations. And to today he's in the tent to tell us about his recent travels to Peru, where he discovered sites that have never been found by any archaeologists in history. These are sites that he found with his own methods, using Google Maps, actually going to them by himself with the help of local fixers and discovering artifacts and mummies that have never been seen by people in the modern age. He also tells us about the role that cartels and organized crime play in stopping people from going to these sites and how the cartels actually siphon ancient artifacts and sell them for their own monetary gain. Even describes how giant corporations are using their money and influence to buy up pieces of land and destroy some of these ancient sites that have so much rich history. Raul is just a great guy, a phenomenal archaeologist, and just an amazing storyteller. And being half Peruvian himself, he feels a deep connection to the country and all the civilizations that were there before. And his channel is an attempt to preserve the history, the stories and the culture of these civilizations that may have never been found without the help of adventurous and hobby archaeologists like himself. So if you're a fan of ancient archaeology or lost civilizations, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Camp Raul. How are you, dude?
A (1:52)
I'm doing well, Mark, thank you so.
B (1:54)
Much for joining me in my beautiful tent deep in the woods. Not in Brooklyn, New York at all, but far, far off in a. In an unknown land. I'm really excited to talk to you. I your channel, Pillars of the Past, is fascinating and you've become a, I mean, should I say a rising star in the, in the, specifically the YouTube archaeology space. You do really, really fascinating archaeological sort of adventure work. I mean, I feel like an adventure is kind of the best word to describe you because effectively what you've done in the past year is you will travel to the far reaches of specifically Peru, go into uncharted terrain, go to places that you need to pay a guide to take you, and they don't even understand where they're going or you just go completely al in a car, you're traversing mountain ranges alone to get to sites that you've identified, basically using freely available satellite technology via Google Earth to uncover ancient ruins that have potentially never been visited by modern humans, have almost certainly never been documented by modern media. And you're finding stuff that is just like remarkable. I mean, fields of human remains and bones and pottery and remnants of ancient civilizations that are basically lost to time. And our conversation lines up really interestingly because I spoke to Luke Caverns and who's just amazing and just a tremendous adventurer sort of in the same realm, specifically looking at the Americas. And at the very end of our episode, he made a comment to me where he said, I asked him about El Dorado. I was like, do you think there is a city of gold? And he says, no, there are dozens of cities of gold that are just uncovered that are just sitting deep in the Amazon around Peru, who knows where. Dozens, hundreds of them, potentially thousands of them that are completely untouched, that have never been seen by modern media, researchers, archeologists. And you were doing the work that is often thankless of going deep into these terrains to uncover things. So that is a brief synopsis on the work that you've done. So if you don't mind, take us to some of the more recent discoveries you made, some of the things that you've uncovered, and kind of just un fold the whole story for us.