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Luke Caverns (2025) - Echoes of Lost Civilisations · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Great to be back.
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  So today we're taking a deep dive into a recent conversation.
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  Specifically, it's episode hashtag 2328 of The Joe Rogan
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  Experience, featuring guest Luke Caverns.
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  Right, Luke Caverns. That was a fascinating 1.
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  Yeah, we're going to unpack this really wide-ranging discussion.
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  It touched on ancient mysteries, lost civilizations,
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  archaeological controversies. And some pretty unconventional
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  theories, definitely. Absolutely.
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  Our mission here, as always, is to kind of pull out the most
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  interesting insights, the surprising facts, the key
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  arguments from that material will be your guide to the
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  conversation. And we'll explore a bit of the
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  guests own journey too, right his path into uncovering what he
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  sees as like hidden history. Exactly.
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  Yeah, something really stood out for me from this whole thing was
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  how it weaves together his personal story, historical
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  stuff, and then boom, modern tech challenging old ideas.
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  Yeah, it makes you think. Not just about what they found,
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  but like the different takes on why it matters.
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  And who gets to say what it means?
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  You know who interprets it? OK so let's start with the
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  guests path. Luke talks about how he got into
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  all this right? He mentions pretty openly not
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  being a top student. Said he had like a 1.7 GPA in
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  college at one point. Wow.
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  OK. But that passion for ancient
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  history that was sparked by his grandpa?
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  Apparently it was always there. So he eventually switched his
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  major to cultural anthropology, focused on the Amazon Lost
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  civilizations. That was his mock thesis topic.
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  And that kind of less than stellar academic start actually
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  pushed him towards something different, didn't it?
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  Going independent? Yeah, exactly.
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  Pursuing research outside the usual university system, he
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  found academia well, restrictive.
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  You talked about having trouble getting interesting ideas
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  approved right, especially for younger folks wanting to get out
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  in the field. Right.
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  He felt kind of shut down maybe by older academics who'd felt
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  the same way earlier on, you know, there'd be.
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  But he describes independent research as the sort of Wild
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  West. Yeah, I like that.
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  Description. It lets people just pull
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  together their own trips, document sites they find, get
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  local permission. Without needing the university
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  stamp of approval or like the funding asset or the.
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  PhD even, which he thought was going to be almost impossible
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  for him in that field anyway. It's just a different kind of
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  freedom to just go do it. Which really brings up that big
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  question running through the whole conversation, doesn't it?
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  Yeah. Like who's the real authority
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  here? Is it just the degree or does
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  that boots on the ground, passionate independent work
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  count just as much, maybe even more sometimes?
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  Yeah, the material definitely flags that tension big time, and
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  you can feel it. There's this tension discussed
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  between, let's say, mainstream archaeologists, the gatekeepers
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  as the source kind of frames them, and then the independent
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  researchers, popular figures like Graham Hancock, Jimmy
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  Corsetti, the guest himself. The guest, Luke, said he often
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  found the official explanations for big mysteries kind of
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  disappointing. Lacking death, maybe.
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  Yeah, or sometimes just aggressively dismissive of
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  anything alternative. That came through strong and he
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  gave examples, right, Like with Zahi Hawas in Egypt.
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  Right, the former big boss there, he mentioned Hawas
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  dismissing Robert Chose's work on the Sphinx.
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  The water erosion theory suggesting it's much older.
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  Exactly, and he also brought up Hawas seemingly not knowing
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  about Gobekli Tepe. Which is huge, That 12,000 year
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  old site in Turkey, it changes everything, right?
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  Or even ancient king lists like the Turin Papyrus that mentioned
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  rulers way way back. The guess was kind of like, how
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  can the guy in charge not know this basic stuff?
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  That's a fair question, I guess. Another one was the Italian
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  scientist scans near a pyramid suggesting something deep
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  underground. Oh yeah, the comography scans.
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  The guest argued the technique worked fine elsewhere at depth,
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  but maybe their initial artistic guesses about what was down
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  there kind of tanked the data's credibility with officials.
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  So the interpretation overshadowed the data itself.
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  That was his take, but the overall feeling he expressed was
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  this like general resistance from the mainstream to anything
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  pointing towards older, more advanced civilizations than the
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  books say. And it can get nasty apparently,
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  like mentioning Graham Hancock being called awful things.
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  Yeah, even a Nazi just for proposing different timelines.
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  That's extreme. But what's really shifting
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  things, according to the source, is the Internet platforms like
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  YouTube. The power shift, yeah.
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  Independent folks like Caverns, Corsetti, Hancock, they can
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  reach millions directly now. They don't need the traditional
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  gatekeepers, the journals, the media.
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  And that Direct Line, the guests argued, is chipping away at the
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  public credibility of some traditional figures who maybe
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  look dismissive or out of touch on shows like Rogans.
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  Right. The idea presented is that the
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  gatekeepers resist, partly because these independents are
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  outside the academic funding game and are just really good at
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  talking to regular people. So it's framed as this clash of
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  approaches, humility versus maybe arrogance in defending the
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  old ways. Something like that.
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  A contrast between just following the evidence and
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  rigidly sticking to the established story.
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  OK, so let's shift from the academic fights to the actual
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  dirt, the discoveries, hidden worlds.
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  Yeah, the Amazon was a big focus.
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  Percy Fawcett, right, early 20th century, looking for lost
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  cities. The City of Gold.
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  El Dorado, Yeah. And Fawcett had this view,
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  really unusual for his time, that the Indigenous people
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  weren't primitive savages. He saw them as descendants of
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  something sophisticated, maybe fallen based on their language.
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  Village layouts, Yeah. And you found stuff too.
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  Sophisticated Pottery, stone vessels, sculptures.
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  In that weird Blackstone object he couldn't identify now lost
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  apparently. Yeah, intriguing.
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  And his last message right from Dead Horse Camp, May 1925 before
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  heading into the Xingu region. And then vanished.
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  But the crazy thing is how modern tech is kind of proving
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  him right posthumously. Totally leadar.
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  It's been revolutionary just in the last decade.
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  Being through the jungle canopy with lasers, it's incredible.
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  And it's revealed these massive Amazonian cities nobody knew
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  were there, like Kirikuyu estimated million people.
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  Size of ancient Rome, they said. With huge raised platforms,
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  miles long highways, all totally hidden by the jungle.
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  Invisible from the ground, you'd walk right over.
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  It and the Lidar data actually confirms spots where Fawcett had
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  privately guessed cities Might be he was onto something.
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  Makes you wonder what else is under there, or, you know, under
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  other dense environments. Like the Sahara that came up
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  too. Right, another potential spot
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  for a lost pre Ice Age civilization.
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  Because 10,000 plus years ago it wasn't desert, it was green
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  lakes. Rivers, an Oasis, perfect place
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  for societies to develop, just like the Nile Valley later on.
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  Speaking of big stuff, the mystery of moving huge stones
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  that came up a lot. It's.
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  A classic right Egypt. Baalbek in Lebanon.
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  Those stones at Baalbek are just insane.
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  Some of the biggest cut blocks anywhere.
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  And the Olmec heads in Mexico? Yeah, the Olmec heads, that's a
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  real head scratcher. The salt heads sum up to 52
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  tons. Moves like 90 kilometers over
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  tough terrain. And the conversation pointed
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  out, yeah, experiments show basic rafts sync with maybe 5
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  tons. The smallest Olmec head is 6
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  tons. Yeah.
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  So how, just how do they do it? No good conventional.
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  Answer. Then you jump to Peru, the
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  Andes, that incredible stone fitting Inca stuff.
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  Stone. It looks almost melted molded
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  together. Yeah, fitting super tight at
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  these impossible angles like that famous 12 sided stone in
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  Cusco. And Doctor Ed Barnhart's theory
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  was mentioned. Right, that they might have used
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  acids from the Atacama Desert to soften the stone surfaces.
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  Allowing them to kind of squish them together before they
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  hardened again. Wild theory, but there's some
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  interesting backup, right? The earthquakes in Cusco.
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  Exactly big ones. In 16501950, the Spanish
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  buildings on top collapsed. But the Inca foundations
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  underneath still standing, perfectly fitted, stable.
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  Pretty compelling evidence for something unusual going on with
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  that stonework. The conversation also gave a nod
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  to Christopher Dunn's idea about the Great Pyramid.
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  The power plant theory. Hydrogen production, Yeah.
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  The guest wasn't claiming expertise there, but found it
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  fascinating just exploring potential function beyond just
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  tombs. You know, looking for ancient
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  tech? Which kind of leads into what's
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  under the surface and using modern scans.
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  Right, the scanning projects in Egypt, Muon tomography and
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  stuff. There was that drama with the
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  Italian scientist scans suggesting something maybe 2
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  kilometers deep. Yeah, the goodest felt.
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  Maybe their artistic renderings got a bit ahead of the raw data,
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  causing some backlash. But the Scan Pyramids project
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  did find something concrete, didn't they?
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  Oh yeah, that big void above the Grand Gallery in the Great
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  Pyramid. Undeniable.
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  Described as like what size of 2 semi trucks or the grand gallery
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  itself again? Something like that.
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  Huge and totally unknown before. So naturally everyone's asking
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  what's in there. The guests mentioned hearing an
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  Egyptian Egyptologist suggest it might be Kufer's actual burial
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  chamber. The real one with the others is
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  decoys. That was the speculation.
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  Who knows? But a point that kept coming up
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  was how long it takes for this info to get out the delays.
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  Yeah, the guest shared his own story about visiting tunnels
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  under Cusco near Sacsaywaman. Before they were officially
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  announced last year. Exactly.
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  And he mentioned Tutmos's tomb discovery being known internally
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  for months before the big reveal.
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  Interesting. He even told this anecdote about
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  an Egyptian archaeologist pulling out their phone and
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  showing him an unpublished photo of what an interior chamber in
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  the Great Pyramid he'd never seen published anywhere.
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  Wow, so there's stuff known, just not shared widely yet?
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  Seems like it. It really makes you wonder how
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  much is held back or just slow to come out.
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  OK, staying with hidden things and surprises, let's jump across
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  the Atlantic again. The Americas.
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  Yeah, the idea that these continents were way more
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  connected, maybe even to the old world, than we usually think.
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  The Olmecs came up again. Big mystery, right?
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  They just kind of appear fully formed around 1500 BCE, no
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  obvious lead up. We don't even know their real
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  name. Olmec is what the Aztecs called
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  them later. And the source material points
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  to hints of potential Old World contact.
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  DNA clues maybe? And the look of some figures
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  like on the El Negro monument, seeming African.
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  Yeah, that was mentioned, but the really striking 1 was the
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  Traveler Monument about 900 BC. Right, the guy with the flag
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  turban beard boots doesn't look typically American for that
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  time. And the glyphs interpreted as
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  saying he's a traveler. And the theory connects this to
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  Mediterranean sailors like Phoenicians, master sailors
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  around 900 BC. The idea being if their ship got
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  caught in the wrong Atlantic currents leaving Gibraltar.
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  It could theoretically carry them straight across the Gulf of
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  Mexico. Plausible mechanism at least.
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  But besides potential ocean crossings, there's strong
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  evidence for connections within the Americas, too.
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  Definitely the Nazca Lines in Peru came up.
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  Just the sheer scale, the planning, the details that.
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  Spider glyph being anatomically correct.
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  Yeah. And then similar stuff may be
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  younger, like the blue lines in California.
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  Geoglyphs again. And things like finding
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  Amazonian monkeys in zoos way up near Mexico City at Tio 2 walk
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  in. Shows long distance travel trade
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  interaction between these ancient cultures much more
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  connected than isolated pockets. Something else that really
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  jumped out in this deep dive was getting into, well, the mind
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  mystery plant medicine. Oh yeah, the shamanic angle, the
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  where Jaguar motors. That human turning into a Jaguar
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  thing. Fangs, claws.
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  You see it big time in Olmec culture and also Shaveen
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  Dehontar in the Andes. And it's seen as solid evidence
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  for shamanism being central. There is even this interesting
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  theory floated about a potential conflict.
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  Conflict between who? Between maybe a ruling class
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  symbolized by those giant Olmec heads and a shamanic class the
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  wear Jaguars. Like a power struggle.
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  Possibly maybe even shown physically by Jaguar claw marks
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  found on some non wear Jaguar statues.
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  The guest drew a parallel to other times ruler suppressed
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  mystical stuff. Right?
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  Like Rome shutting down the Elusinian mysteries.
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  Yeah. And there's direct evidence for
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  hallucinogens too, like those mushroom stones found in Almbek
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  areas. And the Shavindo Huntar case
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  study was powerful. Totally this coastal culture,
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  the Kalupe, not very artistic initially.
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  They move into the Andes. Interact with people from the
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  Amazon. And bam, suddenly they've got
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  complex art Wear Jaguar, religion, cool architecture,
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  pottery matching Amazon style. And the carved heads on their
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  temples face the Amazon. Yeah, pretty clear where the
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  influence came from. And the connection to
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  psychoactive plants like ayahuasca was made explicit.
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  Personal accounts of like seeing through Jaguar eyes.
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  Anthropological accounts of tribes saying the plants taught
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  us how to make the brew. Even Jaguars themselves eating
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  similar plants in the wild. And Terence Mckenna's idea came
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  up that psychedelics might tap into some kind of collective
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  consciousness or history tied to the substance itself.
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  Explaining maybe why similar visions or symbols appear across
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  cultures or experiences. But the guests also talked about
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  resistance from some archaeologists to even
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  acknowledge this stuff. Right, the hallucinogen
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  influence. He kind of blamed modern biases.
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  Maybe the whole just say no thing from the 80s influencing
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  older academics. Making it hard for them to
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  square psychedelic use with the sophisticated cultures they
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  study. And the argument was, look, if
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  you've never experienced an altered state, even legally,
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  like with cannabis. How can you fully grasp how
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  ancient people might have seen the world, how they developed
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  their beliefs, their art? Exactly that experiential
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  understanding might be missing, leading to misinterpretations.
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  It's a compelling point. The conversation also hit on
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  something pretty sobering just how much knowledge has been
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  wiped out? Lost history.
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  Yeah, the Library of Alexandria burning.
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  The guest noted how that squared spiral pattern kind of vanishes
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  from the Mediterranean record after that.
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  And the Maya codices being burned by Diego Dalonda.
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  Almost all of their written history gone.
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  He mentioned Aztec paper production later, just to give a
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  sense of the scale. How much written material
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  probably existed and was lost. Catastrophic.
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  So these events create huge blind spots for us.
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  But maybe something? Survived like symbols enduring
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  knowledge carriers even without the tests.
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  That was the idea. Like that squared spiral or
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  meander pattern. It's everywhere.
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  Greece. Egypt.
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  The Americas. And that 11,000 year old example
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  from Ukraine on Ivory Hamble? It's ancient.
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  And the guest's personal theory that the pattern is basically a
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  map of the Big Dipper flipping through the night sky.
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  Interesting interpretation. Visual Astronomy.
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  And the whole understanding of the procession of the equinoxes
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  came up too. That slow wobble of Earth's
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  axis? Yeah, Usually credited to
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  Aparkas, 2nd century BCE. But the possibility that earlier
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  cultures, maybe the Maya with their crazy long time
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  calculations, knew about it too. More lost knowledge.
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  Potentially very sophisticated astronomical understanding,
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  yeah. So wrapping this all up, what's
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  the take away from this deep dive into the source?
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  Well, a big one is just acknowledging how much we don't
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  know about the ancient world. Yeah, that our current picture
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  is definitely incomplete, probably wrong in places.
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  And the guest contrasted that, you know, humble reality with
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  what he saw as arrogance in some academic gatekeeping, advocating
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  for more openness, more curiosity.
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  He argued that studying these mysteries isn't just, like, fun.
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  It matters, right? It challenges the standard
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  stories about human history, about our capabilities, gives
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  perspective. He even shared his own pet
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  theory that maybe the Amazon, with all this new evidence, was
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  the actual cradle of American civilization and religion
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  spreading outwards. Old idea.
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  But ultimately, the value of mystery itself, it keeps us
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  wondering, exploring. Fuels the fire.
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  Yeah. And if you want to check out the
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  guests work, it's under Luke Caverns.
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  So we've really covered a lot the whole gatekeeper versus
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  independent researcher thing. The amazing stuff Lidar is
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  uncovering. Those impossible megaliths.
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  The connections across the Americas, maybe even the oceans.
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  The huge role of plant medicine and shamanism often overlooked.
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  And just the sheer amount of history that's been lost or
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  destroyed. It really leaves you with the
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  sense of wonder, doesn't it, how much is still out there, how the
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  story keeps changing. Absolutely.
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  It's far from a closed book. So here's something to think
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  about, given how much history has been destroyed or is still
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  hidden, and you know, considering our own modern
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  biases might be clouding our view, what else about the
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  ancient world are we just fundamentally misunderstanding
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  or maybe missing completely? It's a powerful question to chew
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  on, especially as new finds keep popping up.
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  Definitely something to think about.
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  Thanks for joining us on this deep dive.