Ok. Taylor does not hold back here on how mad she is at this week’s historical subject – in 1562 Franciscan Friar Diego de Landa was so convinced that the Mayan gods were the work of the Christian Devil that he burned all of the Mayan history he could find. Literally, burned in a pile of fire, books, and sculptures, and histories. At the very least it’s a tragedy of epic proportions and only adds to our never-ending terror that most of the history of the world remains unknown. Pic of this ahole via Creative Commons + pics Taylor took at museums + #midjourney Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Ok. Taylor does not hold back here on how mad she is at this week’s historical subject – in 1562 Franciscan Friar Diego de Landa was so convinced that the Mayan gods were the work of the Christian Devil that he burned all of the Mayan history he could find. Literally, burned in a pile of fire, books, and sculptures, and histories.
At the very least it’s a tragedy of epic proportions and only adds to our never-ending terror that most of the history of the world remains unknown.
Pic of this ahole via Creative Commons + pics Taylor took at museums + #midjourney
🎧 Maya Warfare & Sacrifice - 🎧 The Ancients - History Hit
Elizabeth Graham - Professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology
The Lost Village of Cerén in El Salvador
William Gates, Introduction to his translation of Diego De Landa, "Yucatan Before and After the Conquest"
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod
Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
congratulations 39 years young I look 25 according to most people
very very young fresh face that's what I hear about you all the
time hey is that far as guy even old enough to have a job there you go he's so young looking they literally ID me
when I try to rent cars that's how young I look just follow more uh follow Doom to fail
for more advice on how to look young forever like me um which leads us into the Doom NFL Port
before I ask how you're doing Taylor welcome to Doom to fail the podcast will recover a historic and or True Crime
situation once twice a week that are just due to fail did I
I somehow modeled my way through it am I listening because I'm trying to find a background for this Zoom call that one
Taylor what's going on with you I want to look at him at a party yeah yeah look
at that um no one can see this and it looks terrible oh my God okay
um forget that turn it off um so it is what'd you ask me I'm doing
great oh my god this is my problem here we go I hadn't checked to touch up my appearance block on Zoom now I did that
now I feel better anyway um I'm good I've been awake for a very long time which is very rare in this
household but yesterday we went to oh my God soccer game started at freaking eight in the morning and I was
mad I was like this sucks it was hot okay heat rash I was like this is terrible
um and then we went to a birthday party at a Trampoline Park Indoor place that was
hot as balls it was in Palm Desert it was like 112 outside it was not much cooler inside the place everyone was
like soaking wet I didn't even jump I was just like hot for being there so we got home and um anyway we all went to bed at like 8 30. like with the lights
on wake up 6 30. it was weird um so the kids have been up and then I
was like I set my alarm for 6 30 anyway because I hadn't written anything for today yet so I was like I have to write it so I spent a couple hours this
morning writing nice yes um I was in your state I was in LA last
Hurricane LA
week and I have to say that the hurricane was probably the most
overblown thing I it was it was incredible it was it was the best time to be in La it was absolutely stunning
um so they everything's fine although the earthquake probably did suck a little bit but the hurricane itself probably freshened up the air quite
quite a bit so yeah you know I think that that is a good point because I was in LA the week before and you can see
the [ __ ] smog cloud from like 50 miles away you know like you see it
descending on La it's covered in swag and then also one thing that I really I
remember from when I moved from New York to LA being like in New York yes people pee on the street
but it rains all the time in LA people pee on the street and it never [ __ ] rains it's just disgusting you know so
it needs a shower I I actually because for context I I
used to being Taylor used to live in LA I used to live in downtown L.A for a brief period of time which is where all
the urine smell is and so while I was in this conference I was just talking about how great it
was that the storm showed up the hurricane whatever you want to call it because it washed
away all the piss in downtown and everybody was looking at me like you realize that you're like a professional work conference right and I was like oh
yeah I guess I shouldn't be talking about piss stains and piss odor um at a work conference but that is 100 true it
washed it away and it felt fantastic if you um want to move to downtown L.A give me a
call I will talk you out of it because I'm always right I taught people out of it that is true that is true when people people do it and they're like I
shouldn't have done it and I was like oh remember where I told you not to do it I mean I did a lot of desperation I really had nowhere to go God and I knew
someone who I worked with at that time when you lived in that building and she was always like I live in downtown L.A
in the coolest neighborhood and it is so cool and so fun and I find out you lived in your building and I was like I follow
fars on that citizen app and there is a murder underneath as far as apartment like every other day I was like you do
not live in the nicest neighborhood what's wrong with you every morning there was like several people with heroin needles stuck out of their arms
passed out on the front of the building it was definitely not a nice neighborhood that 7-Eleven was always getting robbed that someone always came
up and also it actually like so that friend was trying to be fancier than the truth because that was technically
Westfield it was not actually I know I was like girl you're a liar you were I can't I don't even understand
you're flexing on the wrong thing this is not something I'm sorry exactly um but she moved and hopefully she's
happy where she lives now and safer because it's not safe there and hopefully it gets better like everything
Meeting Taylor
like everything so Taylor what are we today you go first
I believe right I do so tell me what you're what you're drinking my friends
dumb it is your birthday no because I'm going I'm going so I so okay so the the
new Mrs fars picked a um I asked for a place that has like a really good
espresso martinis and so she picked a really good espresso Martini place which is actually kind of local here and so um
so we're going to that in like an hour and a half two hours and so I I did my yoga in the morning and now I'm having
this because that's how I say looking young
all right old man thank you it's fine it was it was funny Taylor I
was um I had a I had breakfast with our former CEO
um in in La last week and somehow we ended up on our age and everything else
and you know how like she's generally a very very sweet and nice person and
we're talking about our age and I go yeah I mean do I look like I'm about to turn 30 nicely yeah I can see it I was
like [ __ ] 39 is Young nothing's wrong with it 39
is the new I don't know Eve don't who wants to be in their 20s again you literally have my I literally
have the health exam results of my life insurance policy on this other window right now so yeah it's great you own
your house I mean the bank the bank technically owns the house but yeah I know I
explained the mortgage to my kids and they're like worried I'm like no we own it don't worry stop it's fine it's like
yeah watch what happens when you actually own it and you don't pay your property taxes then you you really somebody always somebody else can always
Own It Down the Line yeah exactly
you look youthful thank you yeah um okay well I am drinking Mexican hot chocolate
not really but in in my theme because I try to do a theme um have you had Mexican hot chocolate no
but it sounds really good I don't know why because I assume it has some like Cayenne or something it has something spicy in it right yeah okay oh my God
exactly that so I actually just remember this hilarious family story that has nothing to do with my story but I had
Mexican hot chocolate or like spicy hot chocolate exactly that in Colonial Williamsburg for some reason because
they had it there as well and obviously they got chocolate from the Yucatan in Mexico but I was with my husband's
Hot Chocolate Story
family many many years ago in um in Colonial Williamsburg and they gave
us a spicy chocolate and they said what are the ingredients and they were like oh it has like cayenne pepper like you said and turmeric and a couple other
spices in it and we all lost our minds laughing because we have this family story and we do this in a Puerto Rican
accent that I will not be doing because Juan has a Puerto Rican family but his husband canceled no his cousin made a
cake that was full of pot like super a High cake and her mom ate a piece of it
and she was like this cake is delicious and she was like what is in this cake and Juan's cousin was like cayenne
pepper and turmeric so we were like laughing so hard and said that that was the ingredients on
the hot chocolate because we always say like this is delicious what's in it and we're like oh it's cayenne pepper and turmeric but like obviously her mom was
just super high and it was so funny I mean laugh about it all the time was she trying to get her mom high no it was
like accident she accidentally made some of the cake there you go she was like oh [ __ ] my mom made some of this this weed
cake anyway so fun so fun um so anyway that's what I'm drinking imagine I'm drinking that but not in
Colonial Williamsburg in the Yucatan so
I chocolate and hot chocolate as you may know it's actually an ancient drink that
was popular with the Mayan people we're going to talk a little bit about the Maya people in their history but
specifically I'm going to talk about one specific [ __ ] Friar Diego de Landa a Franciscan priest
who burned most of the Mayan books and hundreds of their Idols because of God
a piece of [ __ ] so let me drink some coffee before I do this I have a lot to rant about does he
have the Friar Tuck haircut his name is Friar a little bit he's not great Okay so
you know first my two official stances on religion one is hey this is America
do whatever you want just don't hurt people pointing at you people who are hurting people
stance two is [ __ ] you God is fake grow up are you [ __ ] serious so I I waffle
between the two depending on who I'm talking to specifically with the Catholic Church does the Catholic Church have any
redeeming qualities oh my God yes like what they gave us Satanism they gave us
like the most morbid Jesus Christ is a six-pack like it is the most like sexual
religion there is no does that origin [ __ ] quality for
The Catholic Church
all this [ __ ] it was awesome well okay take away the pedophilia and and no it's
nothing so yesterday my friend was telling me when we were at this trampoline park that she left her dog
alone for a few hours and her dog threw up and pooped all over her house and for me I'm like that's not enough reading
quality for me to ever have a dog and I know you love your dog but like that's [ __ ] gross but she was like but he's a good boy so for her his like goodness
is makes it okay that she had to like it's been three hours cleaning up puke which is disgusting and
so for her that's the redeeming quality that she wants to have a dog even though it's [ __ ] and threw up all over
everything so I'm imagining the Catholic Church [ __ ] and throwing up all over the whole [ __ ] world and
they have no redeeming qualities they've killed so many people they've ruined so many lives so many cultures
assaulted so many children for so long the only thing I could possibly think of is the architecture because it's
beautiful and like maybe the Sistine Chapel because it's also beautiful
um and also I know that Sinead O'Connor recently passed and I remember when she tore up the picture of the Pope I
thought that was like an Irish thing because like Ireland's always like Catholic Protestant mad at each other but it was actually specifically about
the pedophilia in the Catholic church and I just want to say recently in the news the Archdiocese of San Francisco is
going to declare bankruptcy because they've spent all of their money defending 500 molestation allegations
so like more than zero little old ladies are giving their money to the Catholic
church for the Catholic Church to defend pedophiles yeah that's how nuts okay so
it's bananas um plus all of their um non-tax real estate and all that [ __ ] so
that's the worst and that's kind of an overarching thought during this but back to the minds and how I got here
I was on Instagram like I am all the time and I saw a book um that was like in an ad
reel that someone had done by an author named Marcos Antonio Hernandez it's about Friar Diego but he was like this
is about the monk that burned all of the Mayan history it's called where they burn books they also burn people I have
it right here it's great so I have it here I read the whole thing
um holding it up for you yeah that is awesome got a donut cover that is a dope cover yeah so I usually spend like one
week you know this like researching something that someone spends their whole life learning about so that's what I have been doing this week this book
I've been reading for about a month I took it on vacation with me um and then this week I started doing more about the Maya in general but when
Marcos Antonio Hernandez
I got this book I was like a little disappointed because it's a fiction book and I was like Oh I thought it was going to be like his history but
it was it's so good it's actually two books that he read he wrote one of them is about fire Diego specifically and
then one of them is about like a man nowadays like a fiction story and he weaves them together it's really really good
um and I loved it so much that next week I'm going to be interviewing Marcos Antonio Hernandez and recording it for
the podcast wait seriously how do you I emailed him and told him I love his book
what yeah I'm super excited I've told them I'm like my podcast is coming out on Monday it's about your book it's
about Friar Diego I'd love to talk to you more about it he writes a ton about Latin American history
um and so I'm so so I'm gonna record next week with him and and I'll post that for you all
this is incredible Taylor I know I'm stoked um yeah this book is great highly recommend I'll post a link and all that
you're so creative Taylor you came up with a series concept with the volcano thing you're you're doing interviews now
like man I'm so like behind thank you thank you
I'm very very excited um and I think one of the things that is a very loose theme uh from this book
very clear is burning books is always bad always always um another so you know I started reading
this and I started reading a lot about the Mayans I actually had read a book last year about them because I was like why don't I know anything about them I
read it again this week to because now I have more context of like reading this book um I also in a non-academic turn
watched the 2009 movie 2012 with John Cusack have you watched that oh like 80
times okay it's great I did not know how good it was going to be I was like I might not watch it again because I had a
panic attack the entire time because wait this is the first time you saw 2012. yes well I I think I thought I
couldn't emotionally handle it like before because it was like it's like la like it's totally destroyed the White House gets
destroyed by a tsunami it was so good it was awesome I really liked it it was ridiculous but
I loved it I said I wrote 10 out of 10. just great and that's because the Mayans had a calendar that essentially ended on
December 21st 2012 but spoiler alert the world to not end so we're still here
unless it's a different calendar I know well who knows we're gonna I mean we'll see what happens
um so I have a lot of sources besides these things so um I listened to a podcast on History hit about Maya
Warfare and sacrifice um I what else I listened to a fall
The Maya
civilizations podcast about the Mayan collapse I read the book the Maya by Michael D Co there's a article I read
about the village of saren that I'll talk to you about later and then I also read the introduction to Friar Diego's
history of the Yucatan by William Gates and that kind of gives you a history of like what we're talking about here but
I'll tell you about it in a second I also happened to be at two museums recently both the Natural History Museum
in New York and in La where there were a bunch of Mayan um like pottery and artifacts and I knew
I was going to do this so I took a ton of pictures so I'm also going to post those later too um so
before I tell you exactly what Friar Diego did I'm going to tell you a
non-comprehensive and non-academic list of things that I learned about the Mayan people just this week by listening to
books really fast cool so the Mayan people lived in the Yucatan Peninsula of mesoamerica so
right now that's like Mexico Guatemala Belize Honduras like that area
today there are about 9 million Mayan people living in these areas so there's still people who identify as Mayan like
indigenous to the land it's also like a blanket term for a lot of the people that the Europeans encountered there's
obviously nuances like every culture there were like little kingdoms and like different cities and different rulers
and different types of people but like the Maya is like a turn that kind of encapsulates the whole thing okay make sense
um they lived in this area for thousands of years so there's evidence of different eras there's a classical era
like a neoclassical era where there were huge kingdoms and huge cities some cities in this area could have held up
to 90 000 people wait Taylor like Mexican people
look like they look like Mexican people are those is is that like the Mayan Gene
that makes them a lot of it is a lot of it is like an the indigenous people who live there and a lot of it is Mayan yes
not all of it of course but like a lot of it is there's a lot of mine people I think the most are in Guatemala at the
right now but there are a lot of people who have like mind ancestry in those places sweet okay thank you
um so by the time the Spanish got there in the 1500s things were not in a golden
age there was a lot of Kingdoms and a lot of things that had actually collapsed and the Mayan civilization a
lot of it had already had its Heyday and that and it was on to like a different you know whole different rulers whole
different things because this area is not great for huge
Food and Salt
populations it has periods of intense rain with periods of intense drought so it's hard to like have big cities here I
mean now it's easier because of Technology but like ancient times it was hard to live there the land does not
lend to farming and agriculture you can slash and burn maybe three times before the land is ruined you have to move
um it's on like a limestone Bedrock so it's hard to Farm there the primary food of the Mayan people was
Maize which is like corn you would eat it like in an oatmeal or a tamale you would not have a tortilla yet until
later it's like the ancient mines didn't have tortillas um also something that I think is super
fascinating is this area doesn't have any natural salt and you need salt to live so obviously like in America our
[ __ ] toothpaste has sodium I don't know if that's true but I'm guessing like sodiums and everything like we're not going to die for not having any salt
you know right but you need salt to live and ancient people all over the world figured this
out which I think is just like unbelievable if they figured it out that I mean it's not it's not
only in the Yucatan and in in South America it's you know all over the world there's actually a book that I read that
I'm remembering now maybe like 15 years ago called salt about how cultures had to go out and find ways to add salt to
their food to be able to survive because they knew they couldn't live without it and somehow they figured that out so in
the Yucatan they would boil seawater or let it air dry isn't that crazy and there's a huge
business of delivering salt all over the Yucatan via canoes and Via canals
um which is so cool I will say I don't think it's that impressive that they figured out their body needed Salt
because you've been in situations before where you're like you know your body needs something sometimes and you don't even know why you know that like there
are times when you're like how do you know that it's salts because you've been in the ocean you're
like some of it got in your mouth and and you feel better and you took your
board shorts you just like scraped off the salt into you know okay oh good
thank you thank you for solving that that ancient mystery for me I appreciate it why is 39 year old totally
um anyway I think that's super cool um we also know that they drank and ate chocolate so like you know that was
something that they started cultivating very early I actually went to the cadburys museum in England and it was all fun and games
until you get to the part where they show the Conquistadors invading and you're like uh it's like these like
mannequins of conquistadors like stealing chocolate from the you know it's pretty shitty we got chocolate from
the Mayans yeah whoa okay that's a big get yeah that's a
huge get yeah we didn't have it before got it from them took it to to Europe
everyone loves it obviously because it's delicious um I also wrote that my trip to the Cadbury Museum wasn't fun because I was
very cold and I was being a super [ __ ] about being cold and it was the funny family story now that it's over
um also Hershey's company has actually funded some Expeditions and science
things to look into ancient pots they found to find um like reference to Chocolate being
have being in them like using carbon dating or whatever so that's a good thing it's the least they could do is
help fund some of my next excavations yeah well so basically Easter and
Halloween two of America's favorite holidays wouldn't exist but for the
Mayans I mean you can you can have those holidays without chocolate but I don't
know it helps I guess peeps yeah I guess peeps I guess you need peeps
it's a great a great discovery good job yes yes
um also in this area fresh water is very hard to find um it it gathers in a thing called the
Cenote yes yeah so it's like a freshwater sinkhole that goes into underground caves and that's where the
water would would stay um there is a Octonauts episode for parents who
um might watch The Octonauts it's these animals they're under sea explorers it's great but there's a whole
um like longer episode called the cave of sakatoon where they go to the Yucatan and one of them gets lost in the Cenote
when they go to the Cenote there's these like Mayan carvings and there's two iguanas that are like on the side and
the iguanas go not everyone who goes into this denote day comes out of the Cenote day that's very fun and um it's a
great great show um so several things about cenotes is
they find human bones in the bottom of the note it is all the time it could have been sacrifices we'll talk
about later but also people could have just fallen into it and drowned and then also I just wanted to make another
blanket statement to never go in an underwater cave because oh God yeah that's my favorite
my favorite pastime when I wanted to share the show out of myself is I watch YouTube videos of underwater cave diving it is the scariest thing I can possibly
like I would it's incredible how horrible way of it
is today oh my God there's like four people in the world who are qualified and you were not one of them everyone listens to me
yes it's terrifying um so that's why they got their water and these like big scary sinkholes full
of water um there are a lot of pyramids and cities that we see
um in in that area and the way we see them now they're like abandoned and there's like trees going through them like you can picture it everyone
um but actually a lot of the trees would have been cut down when they were being used so you could have technically like
stood on the top one of those pyramids and you would have seen a city you would have seen houses and people and markets and like tons of things happening and
the trees would have been cut down for a while um but now obviously they're back and like I said before I think with um
going back to Pompeii going back to the Battle of Hastings where our all we have
is that one um that one Banner to tell us what had happened that tapestry there's so much that we're missing
because we're missing the fabric and we're missing the wood and we're missing the sounds and we're missing the smells
and we're missing the color so there's so much life in history that we don't get to see because only the stone is
what survives right now so it's just crazy and I just wish we had I
wish we could just like turn it on for a second and like see what it was like you know and then like turn it off because it was scary
you can see be like what am I doing oh yeah they turn it off I think that'd be so fun um and we also far as you and I have
talked about Ancient Aliens and I'm not gonna pretend that I didn't love it when it first came out because it's such a
fun idea I love mysteries I love that you're like what is a stone relief trying to tell us because most of what
we have is just stone relief carving what does it mean it would be so fun if it was aliens but obviously the what we
know now is a problem with Ancient Aliens is that what they're saying is that these people couldn't have done it
it must have been aliens so like brown people couldn't have done it it maybe it was aliens maybe it was like the
Catholic spot maybe they're one of the Lost tribes of Israel that's like a story I don't know but white people just saying like brown
people couldn't have built these things um but they did don't be an [ __ ] I didn't even know this was a thing
until someone told me or YouTube yeah whatever Lindsay brought it up yeah so
it's about that's a bummer because Ancient Aliens was fun but um but no the Mayans built them themselves and they're
probably about a thousand pyramids in the Yucatan at different periods of time and the
reason that it's so freaking amazing is they didn't have the wheel or steel so
they did it all like with Flint like carving out Limestone
um which they said in one of the things like that's easy to do I'm like that sounds hard to me just like cutting a big Brock I don't
Ancient Aliens
block out a limestone with another rock and they made concrete Out of the Dust
and they mine Jade and precious things so we did all this stuff with pretty Stone Age materials like
they didn't see steel until the Spanish got there whenever I picture Ancient Aliens and
the Mayans I picture the entire anthology of Predator raising aliens to
hunt and that humans were the caretakers
or the no when would they were the slaves of the Predators and they cared
for the alien babies
no it was it was the aliens needed human prey and so they used the Mayans as a
sacrifice to feed to the baby so they could grow up and become aliens who could be hunted by predators
we definitely watched all the Predator movies recently because that new one came out yeah it was like the girl
um I should watch them all again I don't remember but I believe you there's something of Ancient Aliens in
Mayans that's where my head goes I that is so fun those movies are great yes a delight
um so we also know that you know during this is like oh my God during thousands
of years of time there's tons of Wars obviously between different factions different sections and there's gruesome battles like there is over the whole
[ __ ] world for all of time so the history hit podcast I listened to with Dr Elizabeth Graham was really
interesting and she has spent a lot of time in um the Yucatan like picking things up
and like being an archaeologist and being dope and she makes a point that I didn't really
read anywhere else but I thought was really interesting that she thinks that the human sacrifice aspect that you think of when you think of the Mayans is
not true she calls it fake news because she's a delight and she also called it the Mel gibsonization of History because
like his movie Apocalypto it makes him look very very brutal because he's well it's a story but also he's racist
so um you know it might not it may not have been that way we also don't know but she has some good points so when I bought
when I brought this book The where they burn books they also burn people on vacation some of some of my cousins were
like one guy was like well aren't the Mayans the ones that that sacrifice people and I was like
well I we don't know we don't know the details don't you want to know the details don't you wish we had the details and he was like yeah I guess I
was like it's not like we would discount their history because we thought they had this brutality then you discount all history
there's [ __ ] brutality everywhere you know where did the where did it originate that they sacrificed people so
Sacrifice
here's what she's what Dr Graham said that I thought was really interesting she said there's also things that could be Lost in Translation because there's a
lot we have not translated um the word sacrifice means to make holy so it could have been like an anointing
of someone or you know there's they're very religious there's a lot of different gods so it could have been
like anointing people for different gods it could have been just animals and you know we saw that over over again in Rome
in Greece and you know all over the world where people sacrifice animals to gods for a good harvest for rain for
whatever you know why is it even bad to assume that they would have sacrificed a human
not bad it's just like it might not be true thank you okay that assumption might not
be true which is interesting because that assumption is one of the first things that you think of you know yeah
okay and it could have been she says like just in war like it could have been
cutting people's heads off after War which they did in France until like 1970s you know literally doing the
cartels in Isis are literally doing that today exactly so if that's all you have
of this culture like that's what you'll think they did all the time you know like lots of heads and spikes lots of
you know warnings like in Europe they do that all the time so she talks about like the Rules of Engagement of War so
when like when when a marine sniper comes back from war we don't put him in jail for killing 100 people you know
even though technically he murdered 100 people so it's like
you know we hear what we want to hear about this so we see though those stories and we
see maybe like a a carving of like someone holding a head and we think like that's what they did
all the time that might not be true and it's something that we might never ever know really um but just think about if all you knew
about us was like the Bible and the movie Oppenheimer you could be like what the [ __ ]
I mean in the Anthology it's actually the Predators who are sacrificing the
humans so the sacrifice Human Sacrifice did happen but it was just a different being it did it
who was hunting the humans the Predators or the aliens no the Predators were hunting the aliens
but they needed the aliens to be raised to grow up and become like big and healthy so they could have like a fair
fight got it yes and that's why in the movie the
second the last one the Predator makes friends with the humans because they were like we gotta
kill these things because they're like rabid dogs like they're uncontrollable because they got out of control they're like it's a Raptors and Jurassic Park
Predator
yes and then and then and then the T-Rex shows up except the T-Rex you know what this is not working anymore let's keep
going no I like it I like where I'm going with that I think we should we should have a movie night where we watch
all eight of those or whatever um the original ones also I feel like
the um like making things invisible and stuff it's not bad like for being like a
20 year old movie you know the Predator holds up way better than the original alien and then aliens I know that it's a
James Cameron thing everybody loves it but you watch it again you're like this is so stupid looking like it is you can
like see the person yeah yeah yeah so but whereas Predator holds up a lot better I think yeah I definitely watched
alien and I was like oh that's a different alien stew so obviously you're doing a nailing costume
what has the best scene in the world where they're eating oh yeah that's true that's true that's
like one of the best scenes in all Cinema chess bursters yep uh okay great
so anyway the point is the Spanish need the Spanish wanted and needed them to be brutal so who knows but I just wanted to
bring up that other idea that Dr Graham had we also know that the Mayan people knew
a lot about science and math they calculated Venus's orbit they were specifically focused on Venus to like
point to like they thought it was like 400 and it's actually like 399.98 or
whatever like whatever the calculation is they were like very close um they also had complicated calendar
which we know about and that ended in ended in 2012 um maybe and they had a ton of books for
thousands of years but also because of the climate a lot of the books didn't make it because they would get like moldy and like right away so there's
also that but they had they were you know had a science they had math um they also had obviously a very complex religion many gods for different
things they had a couple of General creation myths where other people were made and
um they were made of clay and didn't work and then they were made of brick and it didn't work and then there was a great flood and then they made our people
um so the great flood myth is really fun because there's also probably controversial show called
ancient apocalypse that I really like and that's the one that we were watching and we're like this is so fun every culture has a has a flood myth like what
happened and then Joe Rogan was on it and we were like oh I think I told you that broken is not a bad person like it
is this is like this crazy no it's it's okay okay whatever I'm not going but I
was like oh that this show loses its credibility it is always people who've literally never listened to him who are like he's just he's a right-wing
Mayan Culture
Republican crazy person it's like no he's not but nobody's listening to him thinks that right that's the point okay anyway
so also the ending of 2012 the movie was very much like the flood and they all went back to Africa it was quite
delightful um so we know that they had Royal courts there was also Royal etiquette which I didn't
think about until recently that etiquette is made to make poor people feel bad about
themselves because you would couldn't like sneak into court because you wouldn't know how to follow the rules so they like made it clear that like only
certain people could do certain things um that was something that they did to keep the pores out
um and some of the things so those are some of the things that we know there's a lot more to that there's thousands of books that you can read now
about it um of people who devote their lives to my own culture but here's one really [ __ ] cool thing
some of the ways we know about um about Mayan culture is one in 1864 a
Dutch engineer named s-a-s-a the letters van Brom found a
carving called the light and plaque that has a calendar and some helpful things in it that help translate some things
and that was really really helpful to like sort of understanding more about them and then the really cool thing in
El Salvador there is a city called saren and as luck would have it in 595 guess
what destroyed the city of saren a flood a volcano whoa it is the North American
Pompeii that you have never heard of on your series is going to be another
it's gonna be eight now isn't it oh my God on on an August night
um the Loma Caldera volcano erupted five meters of Ash covered the area
from excavations it was buried until bulldozer founded in 1978. so buried and
forgotten just like pompe and Herculaneum were um they found dinner on the table in
people's houses it's a small village they found four households so far one sweat bath a Civic building a sanctuary
and Fields they can tell that people had kitchen Gardens so they came out in
their backyard they had Gardens that had beans squash cotton agave avocados guava cacao all sorts of things
like growing right outside their house um in one of the houses there's four
buildings there's a garden there's um a thatched like evidence of a
thatched roof columns there's storage jars one had fibers and seeds with a
Diego De Landa
spindle by it so they would have used it to like make fabric in there one of the kitchens has shelves and has beans and
other foods like in containers they can tell that Chili Peppers hung from the rafters so super cool then we have that
a little bit of a little bit of a look into it obviously people died but it's still really cool the volcanoes have given us these glimpses into the past
you know into it super cool okay now do you feel like you have a
really good overview of the Mayan culture I think I have appropriate context okay perfect
so we know a lot of those basics for various reasons we found some things we've translated some things we've you
know we have some some ruins the rest of what we know is Bo is because of fire Diego delanda
in the um William Gates who wrote the introduction to Diego's Fire jago's book
Yucatan before and after the conquest said 99 of what we know is because of
Friar Diego and 99 of what we lost is also because of him so
this [ __ ] I feel like I didn't say that enough but I really feel it in this
in this instance was born Diego de Landa caldrone on November 12 1524 in
Guadalajara Spain in 1541 he became a Franciscan Friar and in 1549 he arrived
in the Yucatan he mostly lived in ismal which is now in Mexico so he arrived specifically to convert the native
people to Catholicism uh okay I'm with you I'm with you so
the first um a smidge about the Spanish con Conquest the first asphalt to show up
was of course Christopher Columbus on his fourth trip um so he showed up they brought disease
some Villages were destroyed by disease before the Spanish even got there because it like spread so fast you know
people were just like of their normal trade routes the normal communication like it's Reza fast so many people died
they also brought weapons the [ __ ] have never seen they brought steel they hadn't seen swords they hadn't seen
stilted arrows they hadn't seen these things that could like destroy someone in such a quick way
um they also just kills and destroyed because they're trying to find gold which is like a gross over simplification of what happened but how
was the Fountain of Youth that's in there but like mostly goals okay yeah which he doesn't even really have it's
not there are no streets of gold yeah anywhere um so some of the Spanish are there to
The Friars
get rich and those who did they Enslaved the natives obviously um they also brought um slaves from Africa like it
was you know bad and they used the natives to help with their Mining and
farming and whatever and then some of the Spanish were there to convert Natives and this is mostly The Franciscan friars the Friars would go on
foot all over the Yucatan so these [ __ ] would like yell the Bible at people and like
think that it's working it reminds me of that guy in the boat to try to go to that Island remember that we talked about before it was like holding up his Bible and
then like they oh yeah yeah and they like shot him because like you
I don't I this a lot of it that does not compute in my brain but just like yelling at someone in Spanish and
holding the Bible who has no idea what you're talking about like what do you think is gonna happen like I hope they were mostly shot and
a lot of it is people were like Sarah it boils my blood I think it makes me so mad like what do you think is happening
people's houses being like here and you're like what I don't understand you what is this like it is a uniquely awful
trait of Christianity because like if you think about it like other religions well I don't know I guess Islam does try
to convert I believe Judaism is probably the best version but it's like you know we're not
trying to convert anybody like if you think that you this is your faith and you can come to us but nobody's nobody's
out there trying to get you it's so weird it's so weird and I do I mean I I try to be like
I don't know I'm trying to think maybe if if I truly believed in my heart that
someone was gonna live an internal Hellfire for all of eternity if they
didn't do what I told them to do then like maybe I try to save people like I but I
I don't have that I that is bananas to me I would never believe that so I can't I can't I didn't miss me that missed me
entirely yeah so I don't know but um it sounds like so a lot of the
natives did eventually go to church you know they built Big monasteries and they would teach them Spanish and like read
from the Bible often in Latin of course so like even more confusing but yeah Taylor one one thing that like it
described to me is like you also gotta leave it from the perspective like the people who are like receiving that message here you have these folks who
show up who dress in this finery well-developed
clothes and they have books which are probably a new technology A New Concept
to them they have weaponry that looks out of this world how much different
would it be if like aliens showed up to us and we're like hey guys this is how
you are not going to burn forever like you don't yeah most of the time I look at this from
perspective like [ __ ] those people for doing that to those people because we can see objectively the [ __ ] of it
all but if you look at it sometimes from the perspective like them it's like you can see why like oh we're not like being
this is not like a punishment to us this is a blessing like these guys are giving us something that we would never have on our own I'm not just a different
perspective I guess no I know but they also like um
took advantage of that you know that they were they had more stuff in the friar is like didn't have all the gold
but they had the like ideas and a lot of the native people were like cool another God
whatever you know they were like oh I have a soul great I didn't know I had a soul that's awesome I'll pray to your
God for my soul but I'm gonna pray to this guy for rain and this guy for corn like I have been doing for millennium
you know right right and you're like great they're like this is no big deal um but the Catholics hated that because
there's only one God you know so they were like you can't do that so Friar Diego would walk for days and days
finding people to convert bringing them back to the monastery he said that he
saw human sacrifices and he's once stopped a sacrifice of a boy and I don't
really I don't know if I believe him like I don't know he needed that to happen you know
um I have a random blow Point that's also he smelled terrible how do we know that because he was
wearing like a Franciscan frock in the middle of Mexico yeah
so he also is not just a normal priest Catholic priest
he was also someone who believed that Christ was coming back in the year 1600.
so he needed to convert as many people as possible to be ready for that
for a whole new age where the Catholic Church would dismantle and it would be a new age that he needed to be at like the
top of the whatever of the poll for that and the way he would do that is converting the
most my people and like native people as possible spoiler alert Christ is never coming
back he never left it's not real he didn't come back 1600 he's not coming back now
so but he was doing this for this idea this other extra crazy idea that he had so they would do things like burn
villages to get them to move closer to the um to the monastery like trying to
save people as possible but in that way like tons of people died they didn't have enough food you know they didn't have enough water they you can't just
people live in places so because they can survive there you know they would just like forcibly move them so tons of
Religious fervor
people died and he was so like
he's so much religious fervor that they did like you said they did trust him they did say like this guy must have
something like this guy's crazy about this God he must maybe he knows something you know so they would some of
the Mayan priests some religious people showed him their books and showed him
their idols and showed him the histories of their people that they had written down and
prior Diego was like oh obviously these are written by the devil and this is all the devil like the devil has time
like he has time to make up a whole religion can we break I wish I had like
an ounce of the confidence [ __ ] idiots have all the time all the time
I just got a I got a magnet um and I put in the fridge that says carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white
man this is my motto what's up what's up Lukowski saying it was my favorite saying it was like it was like um the
problem with the world is that the stupid people The Confident people are too quiet and
the stupid people are too loud or so I forgot what it was it was like no it was very very it was very good but it's that
concept like just like man you are so confident you have to be right but it's like it's always a dumb one just never
the fight I know I know uh so anything that isn't God God is the
devil so the devil made all these other gods the devil made all these idols and Idols means like little like wooden
Stone clay statues of their other gods that they've had for you know thousands
of years so he starts to hear that people are still praying to their old
gods and just added God God to their like prayer book and he loses his [ __ ] mind and so Friar Diego has an
inquisition where he ties people up by their arms and has weights put on their
um on their waist and on their feet and so they're um their arms come out of the socket their legs come out of the socket
um until they confess they have Idols of their homes so like yes I have a book yes I have a couple of statues that I
pray to you and then they would have to like you know like any [ __ ] torture just say whatever he wanted until he let them go and then afterwards he was like
no one was really hurt like [ __ ] you they were they're absolutely hurts absolutely heard from this and
um so he made everybody go home and go to their family cave where they have everything
that their family has had for hundreds of years and go to their you know go to their Villages go to these ancient temples go to these places and bring
everything to him every book they could find um because there were books every Idol they could find and put them in a pile
Burning books
and on July 12 1562 he held a ceremony where he burned he sent 27 books but
they think it might have been thousands of books and at least 5 000 Idols so he burned all of the history of the Mayan
people not just their religion but their history how did he have the authority for this
he just said he was he was the good question he was like one of the highest
ranking people in um in like the friarness like they had like leaders and stuff why didn't did
Mayans feel strongly about their own belief structure and want to like could they have challenged him or I think they
were afraid they didn't they were afraid yeah you know like he had these weapons and he was like and they're also like
confused about God you know like right it's he just went in he like scared the
[ __ ] out of them and then he hurt them and then he stole herself and then he burned it um he said quote we found a large number
of books in these characters meaning the Mayan characters and as they contained
nothing in which were not to be seen as Superstition and lies of the devil we burned them all which they the Maya
regretted to an amazing degree and which caused them much affliction and I wrote [ __ ] you yeah [ __ ] you oh my God so he
also believed that this would bring Christ back faster I wrote [ __ ] you twice because yeah so awful and he did
get sent back to Spain to justify what he did because people were like that was a
little intense you know like you maybe shouldn't have done that and while he was in Spain he
wrote the history of the Mayans and his book is the only book we have that has
the history of the Mind written down from his perspective from what he heard before he burned everything
an account of the things of Yucatan mm-hmm
daddy looks annoying he's the worst so he actually spoke their language and knew their writing enough he wrote an
alphabet um of the Mayans it's a mix of hieroglyphics and sounds it wasn't
totally correct it actually didn't get really cracked until a Soviet code guy did it in the 1950s which is cool
um so Friar Diego's dumb memory is the best thing we have so we're lucky that
he wrote it down in the same way that it's his fault that he had to write it down makes sense I did that yeah and
it's all through his [ __ ] up lens of being like this must be the devil so he was sent back to Spain
um by the bishop of the Yucatan to go on trial for his illegal Inquisition and
the Council of the Indies whatever that means was like um was they condemned it but in 1569
they absolved him of his crimes um the bishop of Yucatan died and he
went back and became the second Bishop of the Yucatan where he continued to like be in charge of the Friars and be
in charge of the Catholic conversion and he died there um when did he die
he died in the Yucatan he died in 1579 in 1579 back in the land
that he helps to destroy no interesting guy
he did a lot he accomplished a lot
um but yeah it's the worst okay well um that's unfortunate you know
I um I've brought this up to you in an episode forever ago I don't even
remember which it was but it was I was going through this phase where I would like watch um these like Narco stuff like these
cartel videos and like real life stuff not like the the show of like what they
would do to each other and all that kind of stuff and I think I like crazy I was like dude it's crazy it's like these
people are like from like Mayan ancestry they're like Warriors and like they're doing cutting each other's heads off
over like five dollars of Swag weed and like it like that is the downstream impact of like colonization when you
take because like so somebody said something interesting once which is like um well how like there really isn't like an
identifiable American culture how like being raised American there's like
swaths of it like there's different variations of it and so having some sort of like a root rooted uh
a foundational grasp of a culture is like a thing that humans generally need to feel part of something and when you
take that away through things like Christianity and like it's just it's
just the most perverse thing like yeah it's like you're taking away like someone's ability to identify with their
mom dad grandparents their land their like so perverse yeah
it's pretty awful and it's just I and you know my biggest crisis is like we don't know what happened in most of
history and then like the fact that it was like at our fingertips and then destroyed I think is so crazy
Humans Never Change
and like here's okay like like when oh my God what was it when it was
when Isis was rolling through Syria destroying all those statues and the
live running the library it's like humans never change like we are uniformly regardless of like where we
are in the world or cultural religion uniformly this is what we do like see
someone and think oh we gotta change them people can just be different that's okay too that's okay too that's cool
I don't know well I like it Taylor thank you for sharing um it
sounds like excited to not worry about this anymore
yeah I can't wait that's so cool like you're being so creative with this stuff we are going to start heavily pushing
things on the podcast front even more Taylor was kind enough to order a bunch of um stickers that we're gonna I'm gonna I
guess I should have my next weekend and so next weekend if you're in Austin if you're on the lookout because you're at a coffee shop I'm going to be giving you
a sticker and asking to download the podcast so every coffee shop in Austin when I was at my conference last week I
was at the bar and I got two or three different people to download the podcast
um yeah my my listener mail this week is is coming from me I'm gonna just I have
my contact list and I was like how do I I kind of cleaned it up like I have a list of everyone I've ever met and then
I exported from my Gmail and then I deleted some of the ones that I know aren't real or like I don't know them
really and then I have like 600 people left that I like might might remember me so I'm gonna start emailing them in
batches and have them sign up for sub stack because I feel like no one's looking at my social media
and they don't care I don't know no everybody loves you Taylor is our insta
following growing a little bit we're working on it
we are working on it um I also Maggie our friend Maggie
um sent me a post from someone who is posting about um history how history is
just gossip for nerds and that he already covered um like in the quick little Clips like Eleanor and um Oscar Wilde so I dm'd him
and we're laughing about history together as well so I'm hoping to like make friends who have bigger followings
and talk about the same things because they're talking about the same things and they're really fun I would love to make friends with anybody that is in
this line of topics that we're going yeah um cool we'll tell her we will go ahead
and cut this off and um yeah no thank you and I will join you
back here momentarily thanks for listening everyone [Music]