Forgotten Mayan Prophecy and Lost History Unveiled with Ed Barnhart

Summary

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Next Level Soul Podcast with Alex Ferrari

Episode: Forgotten Mayan Prophecy and Lost History Unveiled with Ed Barnhart
Date: August 10, 2026
Guest: Dr. Ed Barnhart (Archaeologist & Maya Civilization Expert)

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Episode Overview

In this riveting episode, Alex Ferrari dives deep with Dr. Ed Barnhart—archaeologist and leading authority on the ancient Maya—to explore the mysteries, achievements, and lost history of the Maya civilization. Together, they uncover misunderstood prophecies (including the 2012 calendar), discuss parallels between world civilizations, and address the lingering enigmas around Mayan collapse, engineering, spirituality, and cosmic knowledge.

Barnhart, with over 30 years of field experience, brings grounded, expert insight that balances wonder and scholarly rigor. The conversation moves from ancient engineering marvels and esoteric mathematics to the impact of colonialism and the ongoing revelation of lost cities via modern technology.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins & Longevity of Mayan Civilization

• Maya civilization stretches back almost 5,000 years, paralleling ancient Egypt and predating many classic civilizations (04:16).
• Early stone and earth structures in Guatemala and Chiapas date to ~3000 BC. The Maya refined their urban design and engineering knowledge over millennia (08:15).
• Olmecs preceded the Maya, often called the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, known for colossal heads and early monumental architecture (09:36).

2. The Pyramid Phenomenon & Advanced Engineering

• The similarity of pyramid-building across world cultures likely arose from "trial and error" in structural engineering, not direct contact (05:05).
• Chichen Itza's grandeur is underappreciated—it was a sprawling metropolis, not just a tourist site (06:31).
• Sophisticated acoustic and astronomical engineering (the famous "bird chirp" on the steps, Equinox shadow snake) reflect extraordinary mathematical and observational precision (24:03, 28:40).

"If you give a kid a set of blocks … you're going to make a fat base and you're going to build it up to the tiny top. And that's how you make the biggest structure in a very basic way."
— Ed Barnhart [05:05]

3. Lost Cities, Mysterious Collapses, and Environmental Theories

• The "Maya collapse" (800-900 AD) remains unsolved. Theories include internecine warfare, possible environmental factors (like drought), and loss of faith in divine kingship (12:07, 16:34).
• It's misleading to say the Maya "disappeared"; populations moved, evolved, and continue to the present (15:50).
• Modern technology (lidar, DNA) is revolutionizing discovery—hundreds of previously unknown sites are emerging from jungles, validating native oral traditions (44:09).

"The general population could have gone 10 kilometers out and started a little farm … but where did all the ruling class go?"
— Ed Barnhart [15:51]

4. Ancient Agriculture & Lost Technologies

• The Amazon "black earth" (terra preta) is evidence of sophisticated ancient soil engineering—so fertile it still supports intensive agriculture (18:44, 20:19).
• Modern scientists are still puzzled by how these cultures created such enduringly rich soils (18:35).

5. Mayan Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Calendar

• Maya mathematicians devised precise calendars and astronomical records—like the Dresden Codex's Venus pages—that continue to challenge experts (21:45).
• They tracked solar, lunar, and planetary cycles with accuracy rivaling or surpassing Old World cultures (24:03).
• The “2012 prophecy” resulted from a misunderstanding of their calendrical cycles; the Maya never predicted an apocalypse, but rather tracked vast cosmic epochs (59:22, 60:06).

"There are things even for a guy like me that's studied it for 20 years … I'm still scratching my head about certain aspects of their math."
— Ed Barnhart [21:45]

6. Ritual, Sacrifice, and Spiritual Life

• Maya spiritual practices were complex, with auto-sacrifice (king’s bloodletting to commune with ancestors) more central than mass human sacrifice—though this changed in later eras under Toltec/Aztec influence (32:37).
• Post-classic Maya adopted some of the bloodier rituals from their northern neighbors (34:34, 35:21).
• Their religion focused on a pantheon of gods, but most interactions were through ancestral spirits, not direct deity contact—an approach paralleling Chinese ancestral worship and North American indigenous practices (49:30, 54:43).

7. The Impact of Spanish Conquest & Destruction of Knowledge

• Spanish conquerors systematically destroyed Maya books (codices) and religious artifacts—only four pre-Columbian codices survive today (46:41).
• The erasure was both devastating and incomplete; oral traditions and archaeological evidence endured (47:23, 46:22).
• Disease introduced by Spaniards decimated Maya populations (over 90% loss)—a catastrophe compounded by missionary zeal (42:05, 53:25).

8. Cosmology: The Maya and the World’s Sacred Patterns

• Maya believed in a three-level cosmos (upper world, earthly world, underworld)—the underworld was not hellish, but a realm of continued existence for ancestors (77:38).
• Their cosmology shares striking structural parallels with global myths, e.g., Greek, Egyptian, Hindu (58:36, 73:00).
• The Maya and other ancient cultures independently calculated long cosmic cycles (precession of the equinoxes) with surprising similarity (71:35, 73:11).

9. Archaeology, Paradigms, and Breaking Old Models

• Mainstream archaeology can be resistant to paradigm shifts due to entrenched theories, but technological advances (lidar, DNA) and younger, open-minded scholars are shifting the field (67:54, 68:38).
• Storytelling and forming new models—when supported by new evidence—are vital to advancing understanding (66:24).

"Archaeology is the best story wins. Whoever's got the coolest story that would fit the facts gets the most love."
— Ed Barnhart [66:24]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ancient Innovation:
  "The Maya, unlike a lot of the North American cultures, created a writing system. So … one generation could do studying of the sky and take notes and do math and then hand it to the next generation."
  — Ed Barnhart [23:11]

• On the Real Maya Collapse:
  "It would be the equivalent of something like that happening to the United States … it would have to be something so massive. … It's complicated."
  — Alex Ferrari [17:32]

• On 2012:
  "Mathematically, it looked like the Maya were saying the world's Gonna reset in 2012."
  — Ed Barnhart [61:34]

  "This was an example of Y2K, essentially."
  — Alex Ferrari [65:18]

• On the Limits of Archaeology:
  "Sometimes archaeology is the best story wins … whoever's got the coolest story of the, that would fit the facts gets the most love."
  — Ed Barnhart [66:24]

• On Spiritual Structure:
  "The Greek gods and humans are interacting all the time. The Maya never directly interact with the gods … Their ancestral spirits act as liaisons."
  — Ed Barnhart [54:43]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Topic | |----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:33 | Ed Barnhart introduction and background | | 05:05 | Why pyramids across cultures? The “trial and error” explanation | | 06:31 | Chichen Itza’s scale and sophistication | | 08:15 | Deep origins: Maya & pre-Maya architecture | | 09:36 | The Olmecs and cultural predecessors | | 12:07 | The mysterious Classic Maya collapse | | 16:34 | Collapse theories: war, environment, societal loss of faith | | 18:35 | Amazon’s ‘black earth’ and lost agricultural prowess | | 21:45 | Unsolved Maya mysteries: Math, calendar, and Venus tables | | 24:03 | Astronomical alignments and calendrical genius | | 28:40 | Solar alignments: Architecture as practical and ceremonial | | 32:37 | Ritual and sacrificial shifts—Maya, Toltec, Aztec influence | | 42:05 | Spanish conquest and catastrophic loss of life | | 44:09 | Lidar, modern discoveries, and lost cities in the Amazon | | 46:41 | The burning of Maya codices by Spanish clergy | | 49:30 | Maya religion—pantheon, ancestor spirits, and living traditions | | 54:43 | Ancestor veneration—Maya, Chinese, Native American parallels | | 59:22 | The “2012 prophecy,” calendar cycles, and what was really intended | | 67:54 | Archaeological resistance and the evolution of mainstream paradigms | | 71:35 | Maya calendar cycles and connections to global cosmic cycles (Yugas, precession) | | 73:11 | Precession of the equinoxes—did the Maya discover it independently? | | 77:38 | Maya cosmology—three-tiered universe and the afterlife | | 82:19 | Teotihuacan: Pre-Aztec pyramids and cross-cultural comparisons | | 86:24 | Where to find more from Ed Barnhart (Maya Exploration Center, Archaeo Ed podcast) |

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Additional Highlights

• The Maya were “just as smart as we are”—not primitive, simply advanced in different realms (23:11).
• Engineering marvels (e.g., aligning pyramids with solar events) were achieved through generations of shared knowledge (24:03, 28:40).
• The destruction and survival of knowledge: “They used to have tons [of codices]. … In the jungle they’re like stains. … The paper’s all gone.” (47:23)
• Spiritual tradition persists—today’s Maya in Guatemala have thousands of daykeeper priests upholding ancient calendar wisdom (54:43).
• Many globally-shared mythical structures (three worlds, four directions, cycles) point to common human cognitive/spiritual roots (58:36, 77:38).

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Conclusion

This episode offers a sweeping, nuanced look at the Maya’s profound legacy, dispelling myths about collapse and apocalypse while highlighting their achievements in science, architecture, and spirituality. Ed Barnhart’s expertise and storytelling illuminate both the grandeur and humanity of this ancient civilization, reminding us of the ongoing journey to recover, interpret, and honor lost threads of our collective history.

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Learn more about Dr. Ed Barnhart and his projects at the Maya Exploration Center. Listen to his podcast "Archaeo Ed" for deeper dives into ancient mysteries.

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Transcript

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[Alex Ferrari]

welcome to Next Level Soul. The place where we deep dive into the mysteries of existence, uncover hidden layers of consciousness, and explore the journey of the soul. I'm your host, Alex Ferrari, and every week we sit down with the world's leading spiritual teachers, mystics, scientists and truth seekers to illuminate the path towards awakening. Here we ask questions that truly matter. Why are we here? Where are we going? And how do we elevate our lives, our purpose, and our consciousness to the Next level? This is a space for transformation, a space for expansion. A space to remember who you really are. So take a deep breath, open your mind and prepare to step into your Next Level Soul. Now, if you're ready to take Your spiritual journey to the Next level. Explore Next Level Soul tv, our streaming platform filled with exclusive movies, docs, original shows, transformative series, guided meditations, channeling sessions, audiobooks, and deep spiritual teachings you won't find anywhere else. New content drops every week, helping you expand your consciousness and live from your highest potential. Start your journey today at Next Level Soul tv. The views, opinions and statements expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or positions of Next Level Soul, its host, or any of the companies they represent. Now, let's dive into today's episode. I'd like to welcome the show Ed Barnhart. How you doing, Ed?

[Ed Barnhart]

I'm doing great. Thanks for inviting me.

[Alex Ferrari]

Thank you so much for coming on the show, my friend. I am, I am excited to talk to you about the Mayan history. Mayan lost history. All the. The Mayans are one of my favorite cultures to study, is one of the first ancient civilizations I was exposed to. When I couldn't go to Egypt, I was like, well, I'm in my 20s. Let's go down to Mexico. That's what I went. And I saw Chichen Itza, Tulum Coba, and a couple other sites as well. And it really kind of changed my perspective on. On ancient civilizations. So I am really excited to talk to you. You are an expert in Mayan civilizations. And how many years have you been studying the Mayan culture in general?

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, gosh, you know, I get older every year. I. I think it's over 30 years now. Wow.

[Alex Ferrari]

Geez. So, so my first question I have to ask you is, you know, the, the. When I was down in Chichen Itza and I saw the pyramid and, and, and the observatory and the whole, that whole, that whole area, that site, the one thing I kept thinking about even back when I was in my 20s was like, how is it that Egypt and the, the Mayans and the Chinese and Indonesians and the Japanese, they all have p. But yet none of these cultures technically should have ever known about each other or ever connected from your experience. How do you explain that kind of coincidence, if you will?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, you know, I'm a. I'm a dirt archaeologist, so my explanation might be a little boring for your audience, but I think it's basically trial and error. You know, if you give a kid a set of blocks and tell them to build the tallest structure he can. He builds a tower a couple of times, but without rebar and cement, it falls over. If you want to build a tall structure that's not going to fall down without Cement or metal, then you're going to make a fat base and you're going to build it up to the tiny top. And that's how you make the biggest structure in a very basic way. And I think that trial and error for all of these groups, some of them dirt, some of them stone, they figured that out.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, how do you explain, like again, when I was at Chichen Itza, the, the amount of art, the architecture of that, of that, that one site is so remarkable, how tight everything is, how beautifully is designed. How did the people of that time build something so sophisticated to the point where, and I'm sure you've done this, you sit at the, at the steps at the bottom and you, you clap your hands and you hear the bird chirping kind of thing. That's a fairly sophisticated building technique. You know, that generally speaking can't be, I mean I sure can be done today, but it takes another level of engineering to do stuff like that. How do you explain that how, how they built it in general?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, you know, the bird call thing aside, it really. Chichen is a magnificent urban metropolis. That's what it is. What you see as a tourist is just part of it. It was a city of some 35,000 people. And you know, for a radius away from the big pyramid in the middle, there's buildings everywhere. So it's even more impressive than people think. But you know, it's the Maya as a culture, as a civilization went on, you know, really, if we keep the clock going till today, they've been at it for almost 5,000 years. So by the time Chichen Itza was built, let's say, you know, it's, it's post classic start was somewhere around 900 A.D. the Maya had been building pyramids for almost 2,000 years. So these guys stood upon the shoulders of giants who created all of their engineering and architecture and probably transmitted it through their hieroglyphic language.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, that was, this is the first time, and again, please excuse my ignorance is the first time I've heard that the Maya being that old of a culture, you know, so that's kind of new to me because I haven't really, I knew that they were, you know, maybe a thousand years prior to, you know, maybe around the time of, of Jesus. Let's say that there was something starting. But what you're saying is they're going back towards the, the Egyptian times, you know, actually that like 5,000 years back. So if my math is correct and I'm not good at math, we're talking about 3,000 BC is kind of where they started. Where are, if that's the case, then where are these other structures that they've been building up that you found?

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, oh, we have an entire chronological narrative of them. You know, if we go back to 3,000 B.C. people are building in the Maya highlands of Guatemala and down by the coast they're building the first stone and dirt structures. And then, you know, but, but as we go up we go into a culture called Mo Kaya and then we get into Maya, but that's still, you know, we're looking at a thousand BC. So 3,000 years ago they're building major pyramids in, along the coast of Chiapas and up into the highlands of Guatemala. At the same time the Olmec culture is happening and making their, you know, colossal heads and these multi ton statues that everybody's crazy about. That's going on too. And then between them and some the other cultures like the Zapotecs and the people that are in the Valley of Mexico, they start regularly building big stone pyramids and palaces and ball courts and all sorts of things. So you know, by, let, let me revise and say it was 1800 years before Chichen Itza starts building their architecture that the Maya and their neighboring civilizations are experimenting with and improving engineering and

[Alex Ferrari]

architecture are the Olmecs. The Olmecs are fairly mysterious because there's not as much information about them. They are a much older civilization than the Maya or the Aztecs. Correct?

[Ed Barnhart]

Yes. Some would call them the mother culture. They, they are the first real ones to start putting out big, huge religious pieces of architecture. All of their buildings are packed earth, which is a little, a little strange that they would drag a 20 ton monument into a plaza and then build an earthen pyramid in front of it. It's a little odd. It's explainable because there wasn't much stone where they chose to live. But they are the oldest ones. Nowadays we have more of a nuanced understanding that they're kind of interacting with the people that are the proto Maya and the proto Zapotex and the proto kind of way proto Aztecs in the same region, valley of Mexico. And so those cultures all kind of help each other up in what we call the Pre Classic. Then we hit the Classic period where tons of Maya cities are being built up in the jungles of the Paten. They're also all over Yucatan where Chichen Itza is, but there are other sites that are older around it that are less visited. And then finally that all Falls apart in what we call the Classic Maya collapse where all of those cities get abandoned for reasons fully not understood still. And then they evolve into this post classic form where in the Yucatan, Chichen Itza is the capital city.

[Alex Ferrari]

So that collapse of the Maya, which is what. When I was down there, that was something that they kept saying a lot of my tour guide and stuff, they're like, yeah, they just disappeared. They just disappeared. And you know, we're talking about essentially millions of people across, across the continent. I mean, it's a lot of people. It's not like a. A village. It's a lot of people. I've heard an explanation that it was possibly the Spanish who brought over disease and just wiped out, wiped out large swaths of people. Is that something that makes sense or is there any.

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, that indeed did happen, but at like 1500 CE okay, the famous Maya collapse where everybody just abandons the city. That happens between 800 and 900 AD or CE I I and there.

[Alex Ferrari]

And there's no explanation of it.

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, you know, we have various theories. Nations, but big cities winners. There was a big civil war between the cities that basically were either Team Tal or Team Katm, the two big cities that finally settled out. And it seemed like the winners would take their bigger chunk of land and the other ones would be quiet and be subsidiary. But instead everybody from the winners and loser cities, those cities depopulate.

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[Alex Ferrari]

And now back to the show,

[Joe]

really.

[Ed Barnhart]

And they don't put up any more monuments. There's no more pyramids. They just walk away from them. Now, the general population, they could have gone, you know, 10, 10 kilometers out and started a little farm. And archaeology had never seen it. But where did all the ruling class go? Some people think they filtered their Way into places like Yucatan and back down into the highlands of Guatemala and started the post classic cities there. There's some evidence to suggest lineages from those abandoned cities started places like Chichen Itza.

[Alex Ferrari]

Wide leave. It's like essentially New York, New Yorkers leaving New York and, and going down, going down to Colorado.

[Ed Barnhart]

You know, a general societal wide loss of faith in the power of these divine kings. That could have been a factor. There are environmental factors that people bring up. Jared Diamond's books, famously, he wrote one called Drought, where he suggests from Mesoamerica all the way up into North America that there was this terrible period of drought that destroyed all the civilizations at its time. The Maya doesn't really work like that because there's tons of rivers that they, that they went away from and a lot of them clustered in one of the driest parts of the Yucatan. So that the evidence that they ran because of climate change doesn't fit everywhere. Again, the Maya world is so huge. To try to say one environmental factor affected the people in the highlands and the lowlands, on the coasts, in the jungles. It's, it's complicated.

[Alex Ferrari]

It would be the equivalent of something like that happening to the United States. Let's say, like one event has taken over. It's taken the west coast out, taking the east coast out, taking, taking the middle of the country out. It's like it would have to be something so massive that it wouldn't just happen to the United States, it probably happened to the entire world.

[Ed Barnhart]

Right. Even in the drought hypothesis, there were parts of the United States, like all the civilizations that grew up around the Mississippi river, that didn't miss a beat when, when this drought period was there. It destroyed the American Southwest, but it empowered the Mississippians.

[Alex Ferrari]

Now there was.

[Ed Barnhart]

That's another culture.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yeah, exactly. Very different than the Mayan. Now there was something else I, I learned about, which is, and, and I don't know if the exact name of it, but the black Earth that they figure out a way to create, to regenerate soil to make it very fertile. And, and it was a, and it was, they found, they have found it, but we, we haven't been able to redo something like that and like making, you know, barren land fertile all of a sudden.

[Ed Barnhart]

With a technique, if I understand what you're talking about. Right, you're talking about the stuff specifically in the Amazon.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yes, exactly.

[Ed Barnhart]

In the Maya, we don't have to guess whether there were people living there. They built pyramids on top of it. In the Amazon, you know, we always had the old theory was Betty Metger's theory, counterfeit paradise that though it seemed so resource rich that you couldn't possibly farm there. And then they start finding all these archaeological sites where there's clearly farms and then there's some things where you know, there's nobody there. But what you're talking about, this black earth, the anthropology calls it an anthropogenic landscape, that a huge area has much, much richer soil than it should. The idea, the thought is that civilizations had actually been manipulating that soil for thousands of years and it turned it into this fertile soil. And the, the Amazonian tribes that sit on it today and farm are farming basically in the in thousand year old mulch. Which is why our civilization that we don't see because it's a perishable world. If they're all building their things out of wood and feathers and pelts, all we're going to find is. Is black dirt.

[Alex Ferrari]

Right, Exactly. From what I understand though, if you took some of that black dirt now even it's so fertile that it can actually help regenerate other. It's like a weird. I saw something about that on a documentary somewhere, maybe on the History Channel or something. But.

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, it is incredibly fertile. And I did a couple of years back, I did a little boat trip up the Amazon and into the Rio Negro side, specifically visiting tribes and seeing where they lived. And every one of these, you know, really remote tribes could talk to me intelligently about this black earth and that that's why they put their village there because it's a big huge patch of black earth and they can do all this farming and that they know that there are places along the river that doesn't have the black earth and that would be a stupid place to build their village because they can't farm, they are taking advantage of it. So in many ways, you know, archaeologists got the idea to look for this from the natives, which happens all too often in archaeology. There's always some, you know, white guy in a hat going I've discovered this with my little friend here who showed me where it is exactly.

[Alex Ferrari]

I think that happens in all cultures essentially. And all in all in all findings in archaeology there generally seems to be that in Egypt and is Indonesia. So on. One thing I was going to ask you is what out of all the mysteries that the Mayans have, and there are many, which is the one that most intrigues you, that just keeps you up at night just like how is, how did that happen or where did that like questions that are just mysteries that have not been solved yet.

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, that's a good question. You know, I'm, I, I'm a math and science nerd. So I, I look a lot at, you know, the way their mathematics work and their way their astronomy works. I, I wonder things like that. I wonder, you know, just how exactly they made their observations. I'm in like, way too deep into the mechanics of the Maya calendar. And there's a couple of things that just make their math break if we take their word for how the calendar works. There's this, this whole like the World resets at 13 Bachtoons, 13400 year periods. It doesn't actually work with the rest of their math in many ways. And they're such magnificent mathematicians, I can't imagine they got it wrong. It bugs me that I'm probably getting it wrong. There are things even with, for a guy like me that has studied it for 20 years, I'm still scratching my head about, you know, certain aspects of their math. Another one is the, the Dresden Codex's Venus pages. Teams of people for generations now have been trying to decode the entire meaning of the math that that lies beneath it, and they're still unanswered questions.

[Alex Ferrari]

How could a culture that quote unquote primitive comparatively to where we are today have such an advanced understandings of mathematics and astronomy?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, I mean, you know, I would respectfully say sometimes we need to rethink our definition of primitive because those guys were just as smart as we are. And the Maya, unlike a lot of the north, the American cultures created a writing system. So they actually had the ability for one generation to do studying of the sky and take notes and do math and then hand it to the next generation who continues the observations. And after a while, you get pretty darn good at it. They get, they get a foundation of knowledge which they build. And probably writing was a big part of that, but also they just had a, a mentality to understand their universe. They probably did it, you know, in, in the search for God rather than science like we think we're doing these days.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, the thing is, the one thing that was always fascinated me about the Maya as well is that and especially some of the pyramids and, and structures that they built, they're all so perfectly aligned to the stars at a level that is almost perfection to where the equinox, the, the solar equinox and the lunar equinox create that dragon that comes down the steps. If I'm not mistaken, it's the equinoxes that create that Twice.

[Ed Barnhart]

But, yeah, yeah, the snake.

[Alex Ferrari]

Excuse me, they're not the dragon, but this. Yeah, the snake out of the stairs. The amount of infer. The amount of intelligence and knowledge and engineering to do something like that at that time period seems insane to do. And as well as the. As well as the bird clap thing, like, I still, you know, if you could explain that to me, I'd be really interested. They did that.

[Ed Barnhart]

You know, I'm not sure about the bird clap. There's a. That's in a lot of Maya sites, and there. There's a quality where stone will bounce off and. And echo the. You know, the Greeks did it, too, on purpose to a great extent, in their theaters and auditoriums sometimes when the.

[Alex Ferrari]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Joe]

Hey, guys, it's Joe, it's Kevin, and this is Nick Jonas from. Hey, Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

to think it was me. A class of one.

[Alex Ferrari]

Congratulations.

[Joe]

But we're not here to talk about favorite students. We want to talk about a teacher's real favorite Kleenex tissues. According to teacher list, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue brand trusted by teachers. Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues are silky soft

[Alex Ferrari]

to help prevent skin irritation.

[Joe]

And now you can take them anywhere with Kleenex Snap and Go. Between dance, soccer, school events, and everything else kids have going on after school, Kleenex Snap and Go is easy to take along. It fits in backpacks, sports bags, or even in the car. So it's ready for whatever comes next. So do the best thing for your kids and teachers. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. Maybe you'll even become the teacher's favorite parent.

[Alex Ferrari]

We still haven't settled who would be the favorite in our school. We haven't settled who the favorite brother is either.

[Joe]

For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Ed Barnhart]

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[Alex Ferrari]

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[Alex Ferrari]

And now back to the show.

[Ed Barnhart]

When the sound bounces off a building like that, the guides always say it's the, it's the voice of a quetzal. Yeah, you know why? You know why they say it's the voice of a quetzal? Because nobody's ever heard a quetzal.

[Alex Ferrari]

And we, and we'll buy it.

[Ed Barnhart]

But very few people know what the heck a ketzol sounds like. It's, it's a cool effect. I do not know whether the ancient Maya meant it to sound like a bird, much less a quetzal or even.

[Alex Ferrari]

But it's like if you, but you have to stand at this one space up the stairs, perfectly aligned. If you move over five feet or move over five, it doesn't work. But anyway. But how, but that's, that's, that's, that's almost a parlor trick, comparatively to understanding the stars and understanding the equinoxes and how the sun is going to lie, hit the pyramid at a certain time period to create this effect of this snake. How does, how do you explain, or is there an explanation of how they understood the stars so well?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, it's certainly the, the, the arrangements of the buildings at certain sites like Chichen Itza. And this example with the snake coming down at equinox, that is, you know, that's urban planning. That is somebody getting out there with a crew and an engineer and workers and looking at where the shadows will land first making models and then, and then perfecting it. It took a lot of organization. They were a very organized, smart people. And, you know, they were also an agricultural people. So Things with the sun are what most we see when we talk about alignments of buildings. It's a lot of the sun, like this examp, but not much of the planets, only a little bit of that that we find in their books. We find their calculations, but they were so in. The sun was so important because of the agricultural cycle. And so the march was the beginning of a season of the cycle. So they would all get together to celebrate that.

[Alex Ferrari]

Would, Would there be an instance and correct me if I'm wrong, if the priests, let's say of the culture, the higher the, the, the royalty, whatever you would like to call it, understood things that the, that they had access to the books, had access to the knowledge, and they knew that if they stand at the top of the pyramid at this day, at this time, the sun's going to come through and create this spark, this kind of shining light and almost godlike image would appreciate it. He would, let's say that ruler would say on Tuesday at 6 o', clock, I will show you my power. And they would stand there and do that and everybody will go, oh, is that something that, is that something that would have, would have happened back then?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, I, it's possible we, you know, we really are all recreating the. What would have happened. I prefer to look at it somewhat the opposite, that if the majority of Maya are corn farmers. Every farmer I've ever met knows exactly on his own, on his own land, when to plant and when to sow. He says, you know, when the sun comes up over that hill there, it's time to plant. And when it sets over near that tree, it's time. The seasons are changing, so I don't think to, to think that regular Joe farmer Maya didn't know how the sun worked. Seems strange to me. I think instead of these priests and rul. Lording over special knowledge that they keep in books about what the sun's going to do. Those celebrations that are happening at solar stations are honoring the farmers. And the thing that ties all of society together. I think those are, those are honoring shared knowledge and shared important things, rather than a elite teaching an ignorant population how to do their job is the Maya.

[Alex Ferrari]

From my understanding, the Maya were not as bloodthirsty as the Aztecs, let's say, with sacrifices and throwing people off of pyramids and decapitations and things like that. Is that, is that true? Or was there a, a phase or a stage in their evolution that because they have that game that, I guess just the ball through the little hoop, it's basically a basketball, essentially. Almost something like basketball. But if you lost, you died or something along those lines. If, if Apocalypto showed us.

[Ed Barnhart]

Apocalypto showed us very little.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yes. Beautiful movie though.

[Ed Barnhart]

Movie. I mean it was a good movie, it was a great. But it was not a accurate on the Maya by any stretch.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yeah, that's when I saw that. Because I understood that Maya were not that bloodthirsty, that we were not that sacrificial. Aztecs were much more known for that than they.

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, it depends on what phase of Maya you're talking about. You just mentioned that it really is phase dependent. As we see time pass for the Maya, the Classic period people, they're doing a lot of warfare against each other and they are sacrificing people that they bring back from war. So there was some sacrifice there, but the main sacrifice of the Classic period was an, what we call an auto sacrifice that the king would do. He would bloodlet himself and then connect to his ancestors. So that was, there's more of that displayed at least in their art than the sacrifice of people. But once that Classic period ends and the Post Classic begins, the Maya get a lot more influenced by the people from Central Mexico who eventually evolve into the Aztecs. But they are a much more bloody and sacrifice oriented civilization. And as they influence and interact with the Maya, the Maya picked that same bad habit up. Like right in, in Chichen Itza. There's actually in between the ball court and the big pyramid, there is a platform that carved all the way around it are skulls on stakes stacked like they're a shish kebab. And that looks just like the Aztec skull rack from their main city that's now Mexico City. So it looks pretty darn clear that Chichen Itza had a skull rack full of people that, heads that were sacrificed at that site at Chichen Itza. I think by the time the Toltecs start influencing them, the Aztec, the Maya do get a lot more bloody and sacrifice oriented. Classic period, not so much Chichen Itza and the Post Classic. Yeah.

[Alex Ferrari]

Is that so after that, that stage is, Is that when they disappeared after that stage or how many more years before they disappear?

[Ed Barnhart]

No, they, they never really disappeared, but

[Alex Ferrari]

you know, it'd be like abandoned.

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh no, the, the, the, you're talking about the mysterious collapse of my society. That's like 700, 800. So that's, that's the end of that period where they're not doing that much sacrificing. Then we have A couple hundred years that we call the terminal Classic that we don't really. Everything's evolving so fast it's hard to see pinned down and then it settles down at about a thousand into the post classic. And that's where they interact with the Toltec and Central Mexicans more and get considerably more sacrifice happy.

[Alex Ferrari]

Were the Toltecs sacrifice happy?

[Ed Barnhart]

Yep, they seem to have been. And the Aztecs hold up the Toltecs as their model. So there, there's an indicator for you too.

[Alex Ferrari]

How did the, how did the Toltecs create some of those, these giant heads that everyone talks about? They're pretty sophisticated carvings for such a brutal quote unquote time in their, in their evolution. It's. Sometimes it just doesn't connect with me where, you know, a culture that would build something like Chichen Itza, have that intelligence of the stars and mathematics and are pretty, pretty smart and pretty evolved, yet they are sacrificing and, you know, cutting hearts out and cutting heads off and putting them on stakes and things like that. There's a disconnect for me there because like right now we are, quote unquote, at a very civilized time in our, in our history as, as, as, as a, as a, as a society, quote unquote, I say, but at least most of us. Yeah, at least most of us, exactly. And there are sections of the world that are very barbaric and still are doing barbaric things. And there are sections of the world, like in the Amazon who are living like they did 500 years ago, almost exact. So there's a little bit of everything all over the place. So I'm curious on what you think. How do you kind of put that those two things together? Something that's, I mean, the intelligence and the wisdom of mathematics and almost like almost philosophical, the Greek period, almost in philosophy that they were so advanced, but yet they're just killing people, decapitating them and shoving them down spikes. It just seems a real big disconnect.

[Ed Barnhart]

I totally agree with you. And you know, from our Western perspective, those two elements of society do not belong together. But you know, my, my, my mentor, Linda Shealy used to tell me when I was a student, Ed, if you don't stop thinking like a Westerner and try to put yourself in the shoes of how these Mesoamerican people live, you're never going to understand anything. And I, I think that, you know, I'm still struggling to understand, but I have at least accepted that the Aztecs, the Maya, the Zapotecs especially the Aztecs, are proof that, you know, are a lot of things that we count as civilized behavior and barbaric behavior can coexist in a single society. The Aztecs, they probably really did sacrifice 20,000 people in a three day period to inaugurate a temple.

[Alex Ferrari]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Joe]

Hey guys, it's Joe, it's Kevin, and this is Nick Jonas from hey Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

to think it was me. A class of one.

[Alex Ferrari]

Congratulations.

[Joe]

But we're not here to talk about our favorite students. We want to talk about a teacher's real favorite Kleenex Tissues According to Teacher list, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue brand trusted by teachers. Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues are silky soft

[Alex Ferrari]

to help prevent skin irritation.

[Joe]

And now you can take them anywhere with Kleenex Snap and Go. Between dance, soccer, school events, and everything else kids have going on after school, Kleenex Snap and Go is easy to take along. It fits in backpacks, sports bags, or even in the car. So it's ready for whatever comes next. So do the best thing for your kids and teachers. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. Maybe you'll even become the teacher's favorite parent.

[Alex Ferrari]

We still haven't settled who would be the favorite in our school. We haven't settled who the favorite brother is either.

[Joe]

For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.

[Commercial Announcer]

This episode sponsored by She's Birdie. Every woman knows that feeling, and she's Bertie knows it too. The Just in case feeling. Just in case I hear something. Just in case someone tries the door. Just in case I need to wake up fast. It's not fear, it's awareness. And Birdie Box from She's Birdie was made for exactly that. Birdie Box is a portable travel door alarm designed by She's Bertie for hotels, dorms, Airbnbs, and anywhere you're staying away from home. It installs in seconds on the door frame, and if the door is opened, it activates a loud siren and flashing strobe to help draw attention instantly. She's because peace of mind should check in with you. Birdie Box by she's birdie visit she's birdie.com that's S H-E-S-B-I-R-I-E.com and order your Birdie Box before your next day away from home.

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[Alex Ferrari]

And now back to the show.

[Ed Barnhart]

But on the other hand, their, their leaders were supposed to be poets and statesmen and they were supposed to be able to at a party just get up and recite a poem that everybody knew or maybe a new one they made. And they could play instruments and they were the, and they loved flowers. The gardens of the Aztecs were magnificent. There were so many aspects of art and culture and nature and beauty that they appreciated hand in hand with murdering each other. And I, I, you know, it's kind of one of the magnificent things about studying anthropology. There's a, there's a revelation humans can actually live and prosper like that too. Because they did prosper there. They said that the Tenochtitlan was the biggest market that they had ever seen in their life. There were 60000 people mulling around a very pro economic market.

[Alex Ferrari]

That must have been mind blowing to the Spanish when they, when they came. I mean it must did. Now I know the Spanish basically took over most of South America as we all, they mostly all speak Spanish now. But how I know the stories of the Aztecs and what they did with the Aztecs and, and the Inca, they did the same thing with the Mayans as far as they just came in and they, they gave them disease, you know, accidentally or on purpose and they just basically destroyed them essentially. Is that true?

[Ed Barnhart]

Yep, that is, you know, in a nutshell that is absolutely true. It took them a little while longer to get to the Maya because the Maya had nothing. They want no gold. Cities have any gold. And they didn't have much in the way of commerce. Eventually they figured out they had some things they wanted. And they were also independent city states where the Aztecs, you could really chop the head off the snake and just go through the rest of it. If you took out the capital city, you owned the empire. But the Maya, you had to do it city by city by city. And it was, it was much more tedious to get to them all. And they didn't really have any gold. They were looking for, you know, they were to convert. So they were, you know, they were on the list, but they were there. But I think the, the lack of resources that they were looking for kept the Maya safe for a. But eventually, you know, really before the Spanish even started swinging swords in the Maya area, people were getting sick everywhere. The deadly diseases, you know, I think that modern studies now are proving Fairly conclusively that 90 to maybe 95% of people died in the first 50 to 100 years of contact. There were like 10% of Maya left by the time the Spanish really started taking over.

[Alex Ferrari]

Now with the new technology that we have with a sonar and an aerial sonar, if I'm not mistaken, they're discovering pyramids throughout the Amazon that are completely covered and have not been excavated yet. How exciting is that for you? And where do you think, Is there any site that you have seen that they go, oh, my God, there is this giant temple there. It's just. You can't get to it right now. It's costing too much money or something like that to even get to that place. Are there any sites that you've heard about that you're just dying to get to?

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, gosh. I mean, there, there is a lot of progress. It's out. It's coming too fast and furious. I, I don't even know what's going to come next. It's lidar is the technology that's. And it kind of takes the trees away and shows us the, the landscape. And we're seeing all sorts of interesting networks of cities down in the Amazon. What they do is they build up these big earthen berms and they live on top of those, and then they make causeways to other earthen berms. And the whole thing looks like a big spiderweb from the sky. But collectively, it's like city centers and neighborhoods that have tens of thousands of people. Some of them, some of them in the Bolivian rainforest in a part called the Benny, have these just huge civilizations. And it's funny, the researchers down there looked through all of the, the religious conversion documents from the Franciscans and Jesuits that there were people down there in the late 1500s that were trying to Christianize Amazonians. And they saw these big pyramids, these big mounds and the causeways going out, and they were, they grumped about, they said they've built this incredible network and an urban center in the middle of the jungle. And all they ever use these causeways for is to go from party to party. These people are totally unproductive and won't do what they're told. So they were having a grand old time living in a big city that nobody ever realized was there. The, the, the Jesuits did. They just gave up on them because they were shiftless.

[Alex Ferrari]

Which brings me, which brings me to my next question about the, the Catholic Church, which is obviously with. When Spain came over, they brought over Jesus because obviously God forbid that these, these heathens have not not be exposed to Christianity. But from what I understand, they were priests who burned all of the knowledge and libraries of I guess, scrolls or what did they hold. This written knowledge that you're talking about,

[Ed Barnhart]

codexes, they were kind of fanfold books that you could open up in the pages. Instead of having a spine and opening up like, like wings, you'd open it up like an accordion and lay it long ways across the table to read it.

[Alex Ferrari]

Right. So they, that they burned so much knowledge and history of the Maya. Is that a true statement?

[Ed Barnhart]

It's exaggerated, but true. There are. Sometimes we get the impression that they just, you know, they burned them everywhere. There was one big episode where Diego Delanda in the Yucatan burned a whole pyre of books and people too. He burned people with the stakes in the same, in the same event. We, we tend to not talk about that as much as the books in this conversation. But yeah, they were burning them. They were. They were looking to eradicate especially religion, to replace it with the new one.

[Alex Ferrari]

And how many of these, these, the, the accordion esque books have you found of ancient minds have been found and been translated?

[Ed Barnhart]

We have four. We have four left on the planet. Maybe that's all we've got. I have found them archeologically, but in the jungle they're like stains. They're just goo, piles of pigment. The paper's all gone. And so I, we. They used to have tons. A lot of them did. That's why I said exaggerated. A lot of the books just, you know, if you put a book on a shelf in a jungle, it's gone in 10 years.

[Alex Ferrari]

But in the desert, but the deserts of Egypt, it holds because it's dry.

[Ed Barnhart]

Exactly, exactly. All those things held up all those scrolls. So the ones that we have were ones that the Spanish took to Europe and then they filtered around for a couple centuries until somebody figured out, hey, those are Maya. One of them almost got burned up in the library in Paris. It was in a stack that was going to go into the furnace to keep the building warm. In the 1800s and somebody. Somebody said, hey, yeah, isn't that a. Isn't that a Maya codex? We should. We should keep that.

[Alex Ferrari]

So how did. Was there a Rosetta stone that allowed us to figure out that the writing of the Maya.

[Ed Barnhart]

Not exactly a Rosetta stone, but there. It's actually work, thanks to the work of the same guy that did all the book burning, Diego delanda. He did a big ethnography talking to the Maya, and he had an informant try to explain to him how their Alphabet worked. So he had him say out like he said in Spanish, right? Ah, here, Right, Bay. Here. Right. Say here. And the guy just wrote.

[Alex Ferrari]

He.

[Ed Barnhart]

He wrote what he heard. They actually have a syllabary. So that. Not really an Alphabet. That Delanda recorded his book in the 1500s turned out to be the key to helping us break the code.

[Alex Ferrari]

Now, you talked about religion, you know, trying to eradicate the first religion to bring in the new religion of Christianity. What was there? Religion or spiritual practices throughout the. From as far back as we can go to where. To where they. Until the Spanish showed up.

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, for the Maya, they had a pantheon of gods that. That evolved and changed slightly over the thousands of years. But there was a. A pantheon. There's not necessarily a king of the Maya gods like Zeus, much like Maya society with their city states. They. It was kind of a council of gods.

[Alex Ferrari]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Joe]

Hey, guys, it's Joe. It's Kevin. And this is Nick Jonas from. Hey, Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

to think it was me.

[Alex Ferrari]

A class of one. Congratulations.

[Joe]

But we're not here to talk about favorite students. We want to talk about a teacher's real favorite Kleenex tissues. According to teacher list, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue brand trusted by teachers. Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues are silky soft

[Alex Ferrari]

to help prevent skin irritation.

[Joe]

And now you can take them anywhere with Kleenex Snap and Go. Between dance, soccer, school events, and everything else kids have going on after school, Kleenex Snap and Go is easy to take along. It fits in backpacks, sports bags, or even in the car. So it's ready for whatever comes next. So do the best thing for your kids and teachers. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. Maybe you'll even become the teacher's favorite parent.

[Alex Ferrari]

We still haven't settled who would be the favorite in our school. We haven't settled who the Favorite brother is either.

[Joe]

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[Alex Ferrari]

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[Ed Barnhart]

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sneak past me and ends up right in my blind spot. I turn slowly, so accident avoided. But no car should be in the blind spot for a 40,000 pound bus.

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[Ed Barnhart]

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Visit www.sharetheroadsafely.gov and now back to the show.

[Ed Barnhart]

And so, you know, there's, there's a number of them. There's a corn God, there's a sun God, there's a, a death God. So it's a, you know, that's fairly, you know, run of the mill kind of assignment of natural forces gods. But they followed those fo those gods until the Spanish showed up. Now the thing about that was so. The, the, the circumstances were perfect for this conversion in the regard that Maya and really all of the Native American societies before the Europe showed up believe that illness is a supernatural attack. It's not a, it's not a physical thing. You don't get a cold. You get imbued by some spirit, some bad spirit makes you sick.

[Commercial Announcer]

Yeah.

[Ed Barnhart]

And you're, well, not necessarily possessed. But you know, it's, it's the disfavor of some supernatural thing. Like, so when somebody gets sick, they think, oh, you know, some witch made them sick. We got to make, we got to bring our nice witch over here to Corindero to fix them. Because everything has kind of you're all part of an animate spirit. But when everybody starts getting sick, then they conclude that their gods are angry with them and that the gods are making everyone sick. So that's, that's how they interpreted everybody getting sick just in time for these guys in brown robes to show up and say, oh, by the way, there's only one God and if you just let me splash this water on your face, you'll be baptized and maybe he'll save you. Oh, Geez, was that water infected? Oh, sorry about that. I guess I, I actually accelerated the disease with that.

[Alex Ferrari]

Oh my God. You see, the more you get into history, sometimes you, you see how that,

[Ed Barnhart]

that was the real tragedy. Those, those priests, people to stay alive and be good Christians. But baptizing was actually accelerating the spread of the disease. One bowl of holy water would be splashed on a hundred people who would walk up willingly to follow this new God if it meant they stopped dying. But they got delivered the disease right to their face.

[Alex Ferrari]

So as far as spirituality is concerned, was it more. Was there ever a point where they began to transcend these, these kind of elemental gods? And was there always. It. Was it always kind of like a, A poly. A poly when there's multiple gods. I forgot the word. You know, that kind of like worshiping multiple gods. Or did they ever. At one point. Exactly. Did they ever look inward, kind of like the, the Vedic text or the, or the Vedic cultures or the Indian cultures, that they started to look inward for answers as opposed to always looking outward?

[Ed Barnhart]

No, I don't, I don't think we have any hint of that. And again, you know, wonders of anthropology. Everybody does something different. They were very unique religions. Now there, there were elements of things that we would call shamanism.

[Alex Ferrari]

Sure.

[Ed Barnhart]

Or ancestor worship that were part of it. An interesting thing about the, the Maya who have a pantheon of gods, say, versus the Greeks who have a pantheon of gods. The Greek gods and humans are interacting all the time. The Maya never directly interact with the gods. They have their ancestral spirits who live in the world of the gods, act as liaisons. That was somewhat of the, the right to rulership for Maya kings that they had. They had people in important places that could act as liaisons. But gods did not directly communicate with humans. Humans, they communicate with the spirit world, which is somewhere between the level of the gods and the spirits. And a lot of what happens in the spirit world is communicating with ancestors. The, the modern Maya today who live in Guatemala, have a group of people called daykeepers. There's over 7,000 daykeeper priests in an association still. So it's a strong tradition. Millions of people see this and they talk about the 20 days of the Maya calendar as spirits that are all ancestors. And they, that they all have different powers and do different things. And they're all collectively called the mom, which is the grandmother, grandfather, spirits. And these daykeepers can commune with those spirits and divine. What's going on? They kind of, they can help people that are sick. Why are you sick? Well, you need to do this, you need to pray at this shrine to this particular mom, or should I get married to this girl? Well, you know, your grandparents up there in heaven say that they argued back and forth and you need to mend some fences here before you should get happily married, that sort of thing. But they, they implore wisdom from this middle level, not the gods, but this spirit level that's all about ancestors. And when we talk about that, then it falls into the category of ancestor worship, which also happens all over China today and in the past. So it's not that in that regard, they're not completely isolated in what they think. They have a lot in common with early religions of China, I think, which

[Alex Ferrari]

is odd as well, since they should have never spoken to each other. But also, it seems, but it also seems that they were. Have something in common with the Native Americans up in the north, which are very, very much ancestral worship and also animal worship or, you know, earth elemental worships as well. Correct?

[Ed Barnhart]

Yes, yes. There's a lot of overlap or, you know, core similarities, I should say, between all of the religions of the Americas, North America, Mesoamerica, like we're talking about here and South America. I see it as, you know, my theory is that 12,000 years ago now, maybe, you know, starting 33, 000 years ago, people started coming across from Asia, and as they filtered through, they developed their own cultures. But just like languages can be reconstructed to a core language, I think that religions also work that way where they're core principles, that they're all, they're the foundations of all of these religions and they turn out to, you know, flower in different ways. But when you look at the core things, they're all the same. Like, for example, North America versus the Maya. Both of them at the core of how they think our cosmos is constructed, they have the four directions and the three levels of the universe. And both of them make all sorts of art talking about that four directions and those three levels, but they never met each other. That's a core principle of religion that I think came over tens of thousands of years ago.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I mean, at the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam at the core have very similar ideas.

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, they're, they are a group called, you know, Joseph Campbell calls them all the Judeo Christian religions. And then you've got the, the Asian religions that he called, what do you call, Confucius or something?

[Alex Ferrari]

Confucius, Buddhism.

[Ed Barnhart]

No, there's another word I'm missing that. But there's. They lump all those ones together as well, Hinduism and Buddhism, of course, are, you know, Buddhism sprung out of Hinduism. That's, that's what the book says.

[Alex Ferrari]

It's, it's pretty fascinating. Now, about 12 years ago, there was a lot of hoopla going around. The Maya were really in the news in 2012.

[Ed Barnhart]

Those were good times for me.

[Alex Ferrari]

I'm sure they were. I'm sure you were in high demand, sir. I. Sure you were in high demand back then. Your speaking rate must have been like.

[Ed Barnhart]

Loved Maya math like a nerd was. All of a sudden somebody. People wanted to hear from those. Those were interesting years.

[Alex Ferrari]

Exactly. What, what can you explain to people what that whole end of the Mayan calendar was? You know, what the prophecy was and what it actually meant. And did the calendar restart itself after 2012 or that was just the end of. Was it. Obviously it was an end of the world because you and I are still talking, but it seemed to have been an end of an era. And then certain things have to happen or are happening after this error. What's your take on it?

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, gosh, you know, back in those days, I had a, a whole hour lecture explaining it. Can I do that in a couple of sentences? Let's, let's.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yeah, I'll give you, I'll give you like a few more than a few sentences. Go ahead.

[Ed Barnhart]

Okay. Well, the, the crux of the problem was that people believe that the Maya calendar reset itself to start the fourth creation of my. Of the Maya creation story in the year 3114 BC, specifically August 13th. And so if it reset itself, it went 13 sets of 400 years Bach tunes in Maya and then it reset to zero, like the odometer on your car. So that meant if you followed the, that math logically, that when we get to 13 more 400 year periods from 3114 BC, the clock's going to reset again and we're going to start the fifth creation. Oh, what happens to us? The last four creations got totally trashed. Everybody died. And if you do the math, you get to December 21, 2012. And so mathematically, it looked like the Maya were saying the world's Gonna reset in 2012.

[Alex Ferrari]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Joe]

Hey, guys, it's Joe. It's Kevin. And this is Nick Jonas from. Hey Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was?

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

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[Alex Ferrari]

A class of one. Congratulations.

[Joe]

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[Alex Ferrari]

And now back to the show.

[Ed Barnhart]

But that's not really what they meant. And I it didn't happen. You can see like math nerd guy like me. I've looked through all of the calendrical math that we have available to us in the Maya and there are a number of places where they talk about time well after 2012. And they talk about time way before 3114 BC. So we were misunderstanding the cycle. I. I still don't have a good answer why the calendar reset at 13,5000 years ago. I think it the creation story implies that the magical deeds of the hero twins reset it. Like pressing the button on your odometer. But then normally it should run. Each cycle should run in groups of 20. Maya math is base 20. Ours is base 10 decimal. Theirs is base 20 vagesimal. So in our little odometer analogy, when it clicked to 13 and 000, the next number was 00001 for the first day. But the Maya math can't work out like that. That was something I was saying at the start, it, the, the whole system breaks if it jumps at 13 there because it's base 20, it should be a 20 there. And there are a few texts that actually do tell us that it is a 20 there because Baktun's 400 year periods is not the biggest period. The Maya also talk about a Pictun which is a 8,000 year period, and a Calabatun which is 160,000 year period. And there are bigger ones too. Sometimes they'll talk about millions of years in a calculation. And that whole math system of how they tell me to go back 5 million years, it breaks if it's a 13. Mathematically. The Maya would have never done that.

[Alex Ferrari]

So this was, this was a, an example of Y2K essentially.

[Ed Barnhart]

Yes, it was. Yes it was. You know, they were both good excuses to have great parties, weren't they?

[Alex Ferrari]

That's, that's without question, without question.

[Ed Barnhart]

I attended both. They were fantastic.

[Alex Ferrari]

No, what's fascinating to me is that is the, the, the lens that we look back at ancient civilizations across, across the world. We look at them through the lenses of our technology today and we look at them as primitive because they don't have an iPhone or the Internet. But yet they in many ways could have been more advanced than us in other aspects of our lives, whether it be mathematics in a way that we just can't grasp anymore. It'd be the equivalent of someone finding an iPhone 500 and there's an Amazon somewhere and they're picking this up. They're like, what is this? How do I explain it? They have no context. Or I, like, like you're, like your mentor said, you have to think like them. But it's very difficult to think like them if you weren't there.

[Ed Barnhart]

That's, that's the fun of the job, to recreate these stories. And I'll admit openly, you know, sometimes archaeology is the best story wins. Whoever's got the coolest story of the, that that would fit the facts gets the most. Gets the most love.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, let me ask you this, being an archaeologist, there is a lot of, there's a lot of theories. I mean, there's just so many theories flying around about ancient civilizations. Obviously the History Channel has built an entire billion dollar business around it. Yes, they have, without question. But it seems to me that there is some things that when they're brought up to, to mainstream archeology in all aspects that they're very resistant to change to someone. So an example is to my understanding, the concept that the Great Pyramid of Giza's were tombs came from a white guy in the 1800s who said, oh, this must have been this, this and this. And they just kind of ran with that idea. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but in the. But inside of the pyramid of Giza, there is no tomb, there is no hieroglyphs. And Egyptians were very well known to do all of that and to talk about everything they've ever done because they, they love the press. So why do you think that sometimes. And do you agree that sometimes mainstream archaeology might be resistance to change as, as with physics, as with medicine, as with any major institution?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, it is a conservative field based on, you know, we have very few facts to go on and we try to conservatively put forward our theories based on those few facts. But yeah, and there are, there is a, there's a generational thing that goes on. I, I want to say that I, I partially agree with that statement and I partially don't. The part that I do, there are people who are just people who have spent their entire life championing an idea and the thought that some new person is going to come with a brand new idea that invalidates your idea and via that your entire life is a hard pill to swallow.

[Alex Ferrari]

Fair enough.

[Ed Barnhart]

And fair enough. People who just will, will fight their wrong theories till their deathbed. And they exist within the field, definitely. But I'd like to say that also, you know, myself and a lot of my colleagues are very open minded about things. We are actually thrilled when we prove each other wrong or prove ourselves wrong. That's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be advancing our understanding and oftentimes it means giving up what we previously thought. And I think that, you know, the whole idea of mainstream archeology is funny, that it's really just a collection of guys like me that get paid professor wages. Mainstream, you know, Graham Hancock is mainstream archaeology. We hide in the foxholes of academia with the smaller voices.

[Alex Ferrari]

Right. No, and, but you're absolutely, you're absolutely right. And I have heard that though there are the new generations coming up, the younger, the younger professors, the younger, just different generations, people, they are becoming more open to this because you're exactly right, we should be disproving ourselves constantly because as, as history has shown us, man always thought they had it figured out at the moment, that they figured it out. You know, when Zeus was around, that was Zeus. You know, there was, there's nothing else. It was Zeus. God forbid it was anything else. And same thing goes so when quantum physics showed up and threw a monkey wrench into physics, they're still trying to, to try to deal with that. But newer, newer generations are going no, wait a minute. They have no attachment to the status quo, to those old things, those ideas and theories that have been held on to for centuries. They're like well wait a minute, there's a new way of doing this, there's a new idea, let's deal, let's go into that new idea.

[Ed Barnhart]

And new techniques give us new information. Things like lidar is a, is a miracle for archeology. Another one is DNA studies. I mean, gosh, we have gotten answers to things about, you know, fundamental things like, you know, who migrated, where were. You know, some of those were terribly wrong in the early publications of archaeology. And DNA has turned us around and really given us a dimension that archaea, you know, when I was a young archaeologist I never thought we'd have that kind of information at our disposal. And it really does change some things we thought were fundamental. And I think it's my job as this generation guys to accept that and move forward instead of die on my own sword of my old theories.

[Alex Ferrari]

Now you were talking about the cycles that the Mayan were talking about in their calendars. Is there a correlation with the, the Indian Yugas, which is a 25000 or 24000 cycle that repeats itself constantly? Is there any correlation?

[Ed Barnhart]

I don't think a cultural correlation, but they are structured similarly. Well, I'd say that they are similar in that they cover vast periods of time. A, you know, if you take a Maya period as 13 Baktoons, which I just explained, I really don't that's 5125 years. And if you take five of them that's 25000 years. The important number there is that that is the full cycle of precession for this which is close all the way around us. 365 degrees and come back takes 25000 years which is essentially that that 1 degree of procession is 72 years. And so they would watch that and sometimes that number would pop up in their numerology in weird ways. I'm that that's one of the numbers that drive me crazy and I hunt.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yeah, so it does sound that there is a correlation at least structurally that

[Ed Barnhart]

because it's The Yuga is 1200 20, 400, 3600, 4800 and it goes in a cycle. That's the difference that once the 4801 ends a new 1200 year one starts and then the cycle keeps going. The Maya calendar does not cycle. At least, at least the long count. It is linear. Which is weird because the Maya aren't linear people, they're cycle people.

[Alex Ferrari]

But that 25,000 year cycle, regardless of how it's piecemealed, seems to have a correlation with the stars. Of all the stars wrapping around. So they two different groups figured that out.

[Ed Barnhart]

That's like the holy grail of archaeoastronomy. If your culture could actually calculate precession of the equinoxes, they were badass astronomers. And the Maya did it maybe earliest. It's either the Babylonians or the Maya who did it earliest. And then the the Greeks figured it out. The Hindu figured it out. But a lot of cultures Chinese.

[Alex Ferrari]

The Chinese figure it out. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Joe]

Hey guys, it's Joe, it's Kevin. And this is Nick Jonas from. Hey Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

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[Alex Ferrari]

A class of one. Congratulations.

[Joe]

But we're not here to talk about favorite students. We want to talk about a teacher's real favorite. Kleenex tissues. According to teacherlist, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue brand trusted by teachers. Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues are silky soft

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[Ed Barnhart]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Alex Ferrari]

Okay.

[Ed Barnhart]

I think that, I mean everybody did eventually, but I know ancient archeology is like, well, did they hear it from those guys or did they actually calculate it on their own? The, the Babylonians and the Maya. Pretty sure they calculated on their own. The Babylonians probably told everybody else and just, you know, it kind of fell into a dark hole for a couple centuries and then somebody rediscovered it along for the rest of time.

[Alex Ferrari]

Exactly. Now, during, with your, with your research, have you ever heard of any mystical stories, mystical experiences in the Mayan mythology or, or religion? Anything of anything in the mystical span in space? Well, it defined mystical mystical God. Like, well, things that would, if we sound, if we heard today, we'd be like, oh well that's kind of interesting, you know, because there's mystical things that happen in, in the, in the Hindu traditions. There's mystical things that happen to the Chinese traditions. There's mystical things even in the, in the Arthurian tradition.

[Ed Barnhart]

You're talking about, you know, mythology.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yeah, mythology. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Mystical, mystical mythology kind of things. Yeah.

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, along the lines of you just defined the, the Popol Vu is full of that stuff. Their, their creation document is full of all sorts of magical, mystical things that happen. We follow the adventures of these hero twins who, who talk to animals and turn people into monkeys and go down into the underworld and play a ball game against the lords of death and turn into catfish and dogs and it's, it's a really fun adventure.

[Alex Ferrari]

So they, so they have again, it's fascinating that a culture that, that's not connected to any other culture, they always figure or not other cultures on the other side of the world, they have an underworld. They have, they have these kind of similar aspects, you know, the connecting. I'm trying to connect the dots. It's one of my favorite things to do with, with everything I this show is to connect do to things that I'm just trying to put it all together not just one piece. The Maya is one piece, but there's thousands of cultures around the world at different time periods. And I always like to see what's similar in them. So obviously the Greeks had the underworld, obviously the Egyptians and now the Maya. Is that something that's innate in humanity to feel that there is an underworld and a heaven, if you will?

[Ed Barnhart]

Well, a lot of world cultures do think of it that way. A three tiered universe, the world of the living, the upper world and the lower world. I, I For the Maya, it's a little, in Mesoamerica in general, it's a little more convoluted. The underworld is not necessarily hell and the upper world is not necessarily heaven. And the entrance from this world to that is the same. It's, you know, sometimes I want to call it the other world because there's, there's things that are going on in that supernatural world, some low, some above, but they're not necessarily like a bad place. It is that there are scary lords of death in the Maya one, but that's where everybody lives. That's where all the dead people continue living. That's the world of the dead. And the lords of death are scary guys to the people that are living, but to the people that live in their realm, they're just people's grandparents are still just hanging out in villages and farming and getting water from the river just like it is on the, on the world above. That's what, that's what the hero twins find down there.

[Alex Ferrari]

So it's almost, it's, I wouldn't call it parallel realities, but definitely different dimensions of existence, essentially.

[Ed Barnhart]

Yeah. So it's a little different than, you know, the Christian idea of we all go up to the heavens or hell idea that we reincarnate.

[Alex Ferrari]

So it's not fear based, it's not a fear based mythology in the sense that if you go down to the underworld, you're going to be poked in the, with a, with a pitchfork kind of thing.

[Ed Barnhart]

It is a scary place for the living who don't want to die. But once you're dead, they lay off then, then you just get to go live there.

[Alex Ferrari]

And is it a nice place to live or is it a dark place to live?

[Ed Barnhart]

It's a nice enough place to live. When the sun goes down, it rises in the underworld. And so they get sun to sun themselves and grow their crops and do their things.

[Alex Ferrari]

Now how about, and how about the other world that they're the, the above

[Ed Barnhart]

world, the upper world is where the, the gods live. And as I said earlier, they're totally disconnected from the Mesoamericans except for a liaison of dead ancestral spirits, Maya kings, the Classic period. Basically their story of their right to rulership was that their spirits, the ants, their ancestor spirits, went up, up, they started down, but then they were allowed to ascend to the level of the heavens. And they could act as liaisons. Not Joe Maya's parents are just down in the underworld. He could do, he could do rituals to Contact them. But he'd just get his grandpa. The king gets his grandpa who's up in heaven and has.

[Alex Ferrari]

Obviously

[Ed Barnhart]

has connections.

[Alex Ferrari]

Yeah, he knows. He knows. He knows what? Palms degrees.

[Ed Barnhart]

Because his dad is up in heaven talking, negotiating. Well, for us,

[Alex Ferrari]

which is fascinating, which is very similar to a priest or, or an organization saying, well, if you want to talk to God, you got to come through us. And we're the ones that have the privilege of going. So it's again, similar ideas that seem to be innate in human. Just humanity's brain essentially, you know, or

[Ed Barnhart]

a line to gain power that we just keep falling for.

[Alex Ferrari]

There is that, my friend. There is that. Oh, you. Are you scared? I know someone. I. Follow me. I can help you worry.

[Ed Barnhart]

I got this.

[Alex Ferrari]

I got this, though. Well, he says he's got it. Let's go follow Joe. And Joe goes up. It. It is. It is really fascinating the connections between all these cultures and the Maya. Ed, I could talk to you for another hour.

[Ed Barnhart]

It's like it's Star Trek, which. I'm also that kind of nerd.

[Alex Ferrari]

Fair enough.

[Ed Barnhart]

They had a theory of human parallel development that it was going all over the universe. Of course, that was, you know, a little too far. But I like to think of something akin to that, that there are certain qualities that all of us humans, regardless of, of the color of our skin or where we are on the planet, go through levels of discovery and evolution at different time periods. But there's kind of a commonality that. You know that thing that we said at the very start where humans all across the planet decided that they wanted to build something tall and they ended up with a pyramid because the, because the tower kept falling over.

[Alex Ferrari]

What is. And remind me the. I always forget the name of it. The Pyramid of the Sun.

[Ed Barnhart]

Teotihuacan.

[Alex Ferrari]

Teotihuacan, exactly. That's Aztec, if I'm mistaken. Correct.

[Ed Barnhart]

Pre. Before the Aztecs. They're actually a weird enigma. They, they. They're not even a culture. We name that culture for the city Teotihuacan.

[Alex Ferrari]

So that culture that created those pyramids was not. Is not the Aztecs.

[Ed Barnhart]

They weren't the Aztecs. No, they were. They. That city burned to the ground in 650 AD. So the pyramids.

[Alex Ferrari]

But the pyramids. So the pyramids were there. So. But we don't know who built those pyramids then.

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, no, we know who the, the Teotihuacanos are. It's just a weird culture. They don't. They act different than everybody else. And for a While they imposed their will on everybody else all the way down into the Maya world, Teotihuacan took over and then the city burned and every. And things changed.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, isn't there a lot of coincidences between Teotihuacan and Giza in the way it's set up? Astrologically, the size of the base of Teotihuacan is the same size of the base of the pyramid, but just exactly half the size. I mean, that's, that's coincidental to say the least.

[Ed Barnhart]

I consider that a coincidence that the, the basal dimensions are not perfect. Perfect. They're pretty close, which is weird. And they are, you know, the, the biggest pyramid by a stretch is Giza Cheops. And then. Well, actually, depending on who I. I mis. Said that. I mean, I really think that I betrayed my own hand. But the numbers volumetrically say that the biggest pyramid of the world in the world is Cholula, which is a couple hours away from Teotihuacan and the Pyramid of the Sun. So number two is Giza. Number three is the Pyramid of the sun in Teotihuacan. Both two of the three biggest are in the Valley of Mexico. But they, it is weird that they're, you know, they're not aligned the same. That is not true. Neither. All three of them have different alignments.

[Alex Ferrari]

Okay.

[Ed Barnhart]

The Cholula is way wider at its base than Giza and Giza and Teotihuacan have. I almost. It's not perfect, but they are similar in their base though. Totally different in the way they pitch.

[Alex Ferrari]

Sure, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Barnhart]

They have. One has, one has steps, one doesn't. And one is just smooth and exhibits some, some neat geometry that the others don't.

[Alex Ferrari]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Joe]

Hey guys, it's Joe. It's Kevin. And this is Nick Jonas from. Hey, Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

to think it was me.

[Alex Ferrari]

A class of one. Congratulations.

[Joe]

But we're not here to talk about our favorite students. We want to talk about a teacher's real favorite Kleenex tissues. According to teacher list, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue brand trusted by teachers. Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues are silky soft

[Alex Ferrari]

to help prevent skin irritation.

[Joe]

And now you can take them anywhere with Kleenex Snap and Go. Between dance, soccer, school events and everything else kids have going on after school, Kleenex Snap and Go is easy to take along. It fits in backpacks, sports bags, or even in the car so it's ready for whatever comes next. So do the best thing for your kids and teachers. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. Maybe you'll even become the teacher's favorite parent.

[Alex Ferrari]

We still haven't settled who would be the favorite in our school. We haven't settled who the favorite brother is either.

[Joe]

For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.

[Ed Barnhart]

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[Alex Ferrari]

back to the show. Edit is a fascinating story, my friend. This is the stuff that you could talk to about for 30 years as you have been doing so sir. And will continue to do so. I appreciate you coming on the show and talking to us about all this amazing stuff. Where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?

[Ed Barnhart]

Oh, thanks for asking. Well, I'm the director of Maya Exploration center which has all sorts of free for the public use information on the website. I also run a couple of tours around the the world through that. Most of them are actually sold out this year. Funny enough, I also do a podcast that's you know that that's my biggest hope if I my appearance on your podcast, I hope it helps. My podcast, which is archaeo ed, it's a bit of a weird spelling but if it's on all the major podcast things and it's really just me talking like I just did to you for an hour and a half on varying subjects, I'm. I'm really happy with it. It's my own thing. I, I don't have a big crew, it's just me but I put it out once a month and I hope that your your audience takes a look at it. Now your audiences mostly filmmakers, right?

[Alex Ferrari]

No, no, that's another podcast. So my, my podcast yeah my original podcast was indie film Hustle which is that was all filmmaker based but my, my current one is more our ancient civilizations, lost history, spirituality, near death experiences.

[Ed Barnhart]

Okay. Well I'm sure you have some overlap and I'm always available to help out with films and things. I love doing that it. But that also hits your audience very well demographically that my stuff is the sort of stuff you talk about. So I hope absolutely take a look

[Alex Ferrari]

at it my friend. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you so much for for giving us a really great hour of fun stories and information. So I appreciate you my friend. Thank you.

[Ed Barnhart]

It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. Alex.

[Alex Ferrari]

Thank you for spending this sacred time with us today. If you feel feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll find the show notes for this [e-mail] 430 and if your soul is craving an even deeper journey, step into Next Level Soul tv, our streaming sanctuary for spiritual films, documentaries, original shows, guided meditations, channeling sessions, audiobooks and transformative teachings. It's a space created to support your awakening, your healing, and your return to the truth of who you really are. Begin your journey at Next LevelSoul TV. Until next time. Keep expanding, keep seeking and keep walking your path towards the next level of your soul.

[Joe]

Hey guys, it's Joe. It's Kevin. And this is Nick Jonas from hey Jonas. Do you remember growing up when it felt like every teacher had a favorite student? Everybody knew who it was.

[Alex Ferrari]

Well, I was homeschooled, so I like

[Joe]

to think it was me.

[Alex Ferrari]

A class of one. Congratulations.

[Joe]

But we're not here to talk about our favorite students. We want to talk about a teacher's real favorite Kleenex tissues. According to Teacher list, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue brand trusted by teachers. Kleenex Ultra Soft tissues are silky soft

[Alex Ferrari]

to help prevent skin irritation.

[Joe]

And now you can take them anywhere with Kleenex Snap and Go. Between dance, soccer, school events, and everything else kids have going on after school, Kleenex Snap and Go is easy to take along. It fits in backpacks, sports bags, or even in the car. So it's ready for whatever comes next. So do the best thing for your kids and teachers. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. Maybe you'll even become the teacher's favorite parent.

[Alex Ferrari]

We still haven't settled who would be the favorite in our school. We haven't settled who the favorite brother is either.

[Joe]

For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex. Looking for a little Hollywood style fun? Check out Ryan Seacrest 10K ways. Exclusively at Chumba Casino.

[Alex Ferrari]

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