Graham Hancock’s theory on ancient civilization in the Amazon | Paul Rosolie and Lex Fridman

on the point of uncon uncontacted tribesit's interesting to think aboutwhat kind of civilizations have therebeen yeah this is something that you'vetalked about a little bit uh GrahamHancock has uh written aboutancient civilizations instead ofchallenging the conventionals of themainstream thinking about the thecivilizations that have been there inthe Amazon Can you steal man andcriticize the idea so the pro and thecon are the idea that there have beenancient Advanced ancient civilizationsin the Amazon like how much do we knowwhat are all the possibilities of what'sin the Amazon in this past so like whenorianna went down the Amazon the reportswere that there was great civilizationsin the Amazon and then you know a fewhundred years later when people got toactually check up on this stuff it wasall gone and so was that because ofdisease that we wiped out all thesecivilizations and these communities ofpeople potentially probablywas he just wrong probably not this is aguy that navigated by the stars back toSpain after building his own boat likeyeah or did he you know or was he tryingto just I don't know I don't know butthey're clearlyis a long history of complexcivilizations in the Amazon 100 there'sno one that can deny thatthe thing that I reacted to was thatI've heard videos I've seen moments inpodcasts where the narrative becomes notthere's more ancient civilizationinformation in the Amazon than wepreviously thought true statement we'rediscovering with lidar and this is whatGraham Hancock is talking about thatwe're discovering constantly thatthere's there's more civilizations thanwe thought in various placesthe place where I takeoffense is wherethey start to say that the Amazonthere's actually articles that that aretitled this that the Amazon is aman-made Gardenwhich is not true so the actual which Ithink is a really different idea thatthe uh the entire ecosystem everythingwe've been talking about all the speciesuh all the forestry and the differentjust life life one of the most diverseecosystems on Earth is initially createdby humansridiculous well it's not first of allit's unlikely but it's not ridiculous sowe can't well there's no ridiculous inumin scienceno but the complexity of life is verydifficult to engineer as as you the moreyou study about biological systems andso on it's very difficult to create thekind of things that nature is able to dothat said I don't know if you've heardbut the entire Earth the world has gonethrough pandemic recently and if andeverybody said of course it's naturalOrigins viruses mutate all the timeand nevertheless it seems more and morelikely in this particular case it was ofan artificial origin leaked from a labso humans are able to create stuff atleast modern technological uh geneticengineering made golden retrieverscome onyou can't be that nice and that goodlookingI used to be a wolf yeah but so thatbothers you because it it allows you tothink thatum we don't need to preserve the Amazonwe can always engineer it yeah exactlythen just this is just to me that's aslippery slope like I totally I'm it'sjust it's so quick from I'm a fan ofexpeditions to find ecological ruins andand to learn more about the ancientcivilizations to which I don't think iswhat he's putting out is that then sortof like news articles which I thinkthey're trying to bait you where they'regoing was the Amazon man-made and it'slikeyou know because then you get you'regoing to get a Brazilian president to gosee see what they said it's man-made sowe might as well continue to engineer itand manage it and it's like there's suchcomplex systems and interactions andsuch a such a giant Web of Life therethatat least in my opinionis clearly one of the most authenticallynatural things and again are therethings that we've engineered did theuncontacted tribes sometimes they theyhave banana plants that they've stolenand we could see it from the air thatthey've they have banana plants we madebanana plants that's engineered by us weknow for a factum so agricultural engineeringagricultural engineering and stuff likethat but suggesting that the Amazonbasin you know it's just it's just aweird way to think about it I've justheard peopledismiss the concert the protection ofthe Amazon based on the fact they'relike oh well if people made it and it'ssuch a giant leap from from from thefrom zero to a hundredum you know is there slash and burn thatthe ancient civilizations did of courseare there areas that were affected bypeople of course I just get worried whenwe start talking about it was a man-madething here you loud and clear on thatand I personally think that's completelyseparate from wondering about what theancient civilization have been able toaccomplish oh sure it's almost reallysad because if all the humans on Earthdie no how long does it take before allsigns of humans ever exist and disappearoh for the most part[Music]um from an alien perspectivewhat timeline are we talking about Imean like I mean there's there's ahundred thousand years like it could beless it could be less it could be like afew thousand because a hundred thousandis complete destruction 100 000 is likenothing but but then it could be in justa few hundred years it starts becomingyou're gonna the government of the aliencivilization is gonna have to pay quitea bit of money to do the research rightbecause they're going to find other lifefirst trying to find the Dolphins in thefish and so on they're gonna find thetrees maybe the trees are theinteresting thing sure the buildings arenot that interesting humans but theremust be examples of cities that havebeen lefton unattended for a few decades and likehow quickly thethe plants push up through the streetand everything starts to get broken downif you really look you'll be like ohthat's some interesting geometry herefor the buildings and so on but mostmost of the most computer stuff yeah allall the stuff of the past 100 years theairplanes all that all the Technologiesall the paperwork that all the harddrives that store all the information Iwant to I want to actually know how longit takes like a 747 to like biodegradelike how like if you just leave it theresitting on the runway Society stops yeahhow long does it take for that thing todisappear like that's completely versusuh to a point where it's on a definablemight be different but sure I mean thepoint I'm trying to say here is asyou've brilliantly put the the Amazonchurns yeah oh yeah and the fact that Iwonder throughout its historywhat are the peaks of the awesomenesswell how many banana how manyagricultural Einsteins of bananas yeahwere there the creating different kindsof ideas different kinds of geometriesdifferent kinds of tools but yeah lookwhat the Incas did I mean the Incas youknow Machu Picchu I mean when they foundwhen Hiram Bigham found Machu Picchu wascovered in Jungle you could hardly seeit and I mean the the stone work theydid much like what the Egyptians didwith the pyramids a lot of it we don'treally understand how they did it if youcome to the Jungle you got to go toMachu Picchu because it's not far fromthere and I usually like I'm I'm theperson like I I won't I don't usually gosee like the you know like I've neverbeen to see the Taj Mahal after livingin India for five years like I'm justnot but when you look up and you seeMachu Picchu you goeither they were communicating with thegods there or these people were so smartthat they knew that anybody they broughtthey were going to impresstheythey've built something there that whenyou look up at that mountain you go whoawith those giant Stones the beauty of ityou know it's just it's just stunning toimagine that there was this culture ofpeople that that could achieve this andso through the Amazon I mean that's sortof up in the Andes butthere's all kinds of stuff in the Amazonthere are places where they say there'scan um pyramids beneath the canopythat we just don't know aboutum I mean there's it's endless if youhad uh billions of dollars trillions ofdollars well what would be the effortsin the Amazonfor the for both conservation and forexploration all right well first let'sget tied together yeah exactly firstarrest the the deforestation so we don'thave an ecological crisis on our handswe don't want to keep losing specieslosing indigenous cultures losing theclimate stabilizing services that theAmazon provides as a whole stop thatthat's my first mission next then we canplayand then it's like let's go find I meanyou I've flown over the Amazon andassessment it's like you see thingswhere you go we have to go see what thatis you know weird lakes or or shapes inthe jungle that don't make sense thatare that are that are strange and likeso even at that level you can seeweirdness you can see different oh yeahlike signs of possible awesomeness ohthe jungle is so weird and here's theother thing is that mostso like the region I've been working inyou seewhere the researchers go the certainbiological stations the certain placeswhere like oh like this university has arelationship with this this forUniversal is this so everybody goes tothe same few study sites and then theywalk on the same trails and they havethe same guides when you fly in a Cessnaand you flyfew hours away from all that and you seea tiny little tributary and then you flyfor 40 minutes over unbroken green justwild before you reach another tributaryeven if somebody could survive going upthat tributary had the expeditionaryexpertise and the ability to survivegetting shot at by arrows if they couldget up that tributarynowcut perpendicular into the jungle whichI don't do on the solos you can't youcan never don't ever leave the riverbut you tell me that in that span of 70miles between tiny tributaries at theedge of the world no one's been therenone of us have been there you knowmaybe somebody 10 000 years ago wasthere but we don't know what populationsof things are there we don't know whatruins are thereand so there's so much undiscoveredstuff in the Amazon that isjust waiting just waitingwhat what is the process of exploringthat so how does money get convertedtowards explorationis thereis there safe ways of doing that there'splaces where you know we found out aboutthings that have to be explored butwhere you come up with well how do we dothis without getting shot and all andnot only without getting shot but alsowithout endangering them toobecause how stupid are we if we if we goin there to people that are living inthe jungle not bothering us and we goinsert ourselves into there becausewe're curious about some rocksas that doesn't seem fair for the lossof life and So likeum but yeah that's that's something thatwe're working on and like one thing ofcourse is like lidar and stuff buteventually eventually at the end ofeverything it comes down to boots on theground