Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The Maya were an honor-based society, and the fights take place not just in regular space, but in terms of all the sorcery stuff will take place in supernatural space. And you'll get into these scenarios where these rulers will summon one and then summon another one, almost like Pokemon, and they'll go after each other.
And you'll actually have images of these things fighting on ceramics of like, you know, like flaming skeletal flying creature versus owl with a head attached to it, you know, fighting each other, right? Wow. To me, that's a lot more interesting than the alien stuff.
What if the ancient civilizations of the Americas weren't primitive at all, but operating on a completely different level of intelligence? Because thousands of years ago, in the jungles of Mesoamerica and the highlands of South America, people were engineering concrete.
building earthquake-proof cities that are still standing to this day, and developing writing systems sophisticated enough to record history in detail.
They were drinking chocolate not as a treat but as a currency, using psychoactive substances and rituals designed to break the mine and rebuild it, and reshaping entire ecosystems, cutting down forests so aggressively that they may have altered the climate themselves and contributed to their own collapse. This isn't a lost world of simplicity.
It's a world of power and hierarchy and deeply complex belief systems centered around death and transformation in the afterlife. And today, we are joined by Dr. James Fitzsimmons, a brilliant storyteller and an expert in the field to explain everything about these people.
He's a Mesoamerican archaeologist whose work uncovers how these civilizations lived, the people in them, what their actual life was like, what they believed, and how much of their story we're only just beginning to understand. If you are a fan of lost civilizations, of actual cities in South and Central America, we still haven't discovered cities of gold like El Dorado and ancient technology.
Well, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Canva. Dr. Fitzsimmons, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks. Thanks for having me. This is a pleasure. I love the tent.
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Chapter 2: What technological features of ancient civilizations are mind-blowing?
You might pass out. Yes. So they're ripping this back in the day, potentially not literally this, but a tobacco dense concentrate that basically give them that effect.
Yeah, yeah. So other sort of fun things. You're talking about technology, right? So I mentioned concrete, right? And the concrete that they used that held together a lot of their buildings, it's a separate invention. It's not like it's gotten from the old world. It's their own concrete, right? So that's kind of an amazing thing.
But back on this tobacco thing, one thing that's probably not all that commonly known is actually they had cigars. So they actually were rolling cigars. Just like how we would do them today. Yeah. There's images of like Maya rulers and gods and things smoking cigars.
Wow. Just like old mob bosses. Yes. That's kind of fun. Yeah. I mean, that would be a good like time travel place to go. Yeah. Like go back in time with like an old like Maya emperor. Ew.
Okay, so here's the thing about time travel, and you might find this sort of surprising to coming from an archaeologist. Like, the past is a terrible place. Like, I... People sometimes ask me, like, oh, would you want to get in a time machine and go back and such? I might go back if it was, like, a hermetically sealed bubble. They can't see me. No one can hurt me. Nothing. I can't get sick.
Maybe. Maybe, right? Maybe for, like, five minutes, ten minutes. But really, I would never want to go back because it's... the odds of getting killed or getting sick, some sort of horrible disease, something happening, uh, too high. Uh, I really, yeah, I would not want to, I don't want to see that stuff. Nope.
I mean, I would, I would, as I said, if I could see it and never be seen, um, never, never interact with anybody, but just like, you know, view it and be completely safe maybe. But other than that, no way it's, it's, uh,
You wouldn't go just do like a little mescaline, you know? No, no, I think, no, probably not.
Okay, well, the thing is, is like, you can't really get, my archaeologists are just academics more generally, right? To do this stuff and admit it. Fair, that's a good point. You can't get us to admit it, right? You can't just do this stuff and admit it. And it's not really a technology, but it's something that, you know, is really related to this.
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Chapter 3: How did ancient Maya rituals influence their beliefs about death?
You mean in South America or Mesoamerica? I can do both. Let's start with Mesoamerica. Okay, start with Mesoamerica. Most grand structure. Oh, it's got to be Teotihuacan. That's got to be the archaeological site of Teotihuacan. It's got to be Pyramid of the Sun. So the Pyramid of the Sun... So Teotihuacan was this, it's not Maya, it's not Aztec, it's actually its own civilization.
It's just called Teotihuacan, right? T-E-O-T-I-H-U-A-C-A-N. They're their own people. Yeah, Teotihuacan, right? They're their own people. And Teotihuacan was based in central Mexico. It was basically, right now it's about an hour north of the epicenter of Mexico City, right? And if you look really carefully, you'll see maybe little dots. Those little dots are people. Oh, wow.
Teotihuacan is the largest... you know, for its time, at least in the same, say in the sixth century, it was, it was the, it was the, I think it was the sixth largest city in the world at the time. Um, nothing compared to it. Uh, it was, it was enormous, maybe 125,000 people, um, something like that, maybe 150, something like that. Uh, quite large. Yeah.
Those little, those little tiny dots are people. Um, just an amazing, an amazing center. Uh, that building, um, I think pretty much up until the industrial revolution was the largest building in the Americas, like the tallest building in the Americas. It's the size of the great pyramid of Giza. It's not quite as tall, but it's, it's enormous.
You go there, it's like, you know, the death star or something. It's, it's, it's enormous. So those are people. Yeah. It's just so big. Um, And this was built around what time, roughly? So Teo is... It's early classic, so late pre-classic. So I think it's starting to be built maybe about... I don't know, first century BC collapses roughly around 600, something like that.
650 starts to go downhill. Well, it's already going downhill by 650, but let's just say around there. But in the sixth century, at least, it's the sixth largest city in the world. You basically have some places in the Middle East. Obviously, you have Constantinople, places like that. But this is right up there. It's right up there with them. It's huge.
And so from 600 until like the 1800s, it's like the tallest building in the Americas? It's the largest thing.
Wow. It is massive. You go there, it is massive. And, you know, I love Tejo. I do. I love the site. Just the amount of labor it would have taken to build something like that is just, it's mind boggling. They must have been building for hundreds of years. You'd be surprised what people can do.
You'd be surprised what people can do when they're either, when they're facing a labor tax or under duress, you'd be surprised. I don't know what, I don't know how long that would have taken to be built, but it's not, I wouldn't say it's hundreds of years. I'd say it's, you know,
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Chapter 4: What role did ancient Maya hieroglyphs play in their culture?
So you're not allowed to go up that one anymore. But it's an iconic building. It's like what Maya temples tend to look like, right? So it's between that and maybe Chichen Itza. And I think people know Chichen Itza, you know, the big pyramid there. That's a pretty common one. But I've always liked Tikal Temple 1.
Yeah, I mean, it's so beautiful. It's an interesting looking building.
Yeah. And the fun part about all these pyramids is that all of that is just rubble inside. There's nothing, like, there's burial. There's some burials, but you can't really go in any of that. It's just a giant pile of rocks with rock face on it, you know, with stone face on it. The only part you can actually go inside is that little tiny piece on the top. That's it.
There's just a little tiny room there. And what you do is, you go up these stairs, right? And there'll be a, imagine a crowd. I want you to imagine like a big crowd there and their performance spaces. So you go up to the top of there, you know, you go maybe behind a wall or something. And then when it's time to like come out, you're like,
you know, and then like people on the bottom, you do perform something sort of ritual or ceremony at the top and you're good to go. Oh, wow. That's what it is. That's what all these places are. What year roughly was this being utilized? Uh, this is, uh, let's see, it's post, let's see, post 675. So this is like, um,
Late 7th, early 8th century, roughly, when this one is sort of being constructed. Wow. So you would imagine some sort of high priest type person coming out? It's rulers, yeah. It's mostly rulers and royal family members that are doing this. And you look at those steps. Don't think of the steps as just steps. Sometimes those are platforms, too, and those are performance spaces, too.
So there's dancers and stuff on them. There's all kinds of stuff that's happening. The other thing that I would say about most of your Maya centers, and Mesoamerican centers more generally, is that they're not... The past is not in black and white or in gray and white or brown or something like that, right? It's in color. Everything is in color.
So this would have been painted... And it's painted to clash. It's not painted to look nice with the jungle. It's painted to... you know, bright reds with like hematite sparkles in them. So there's like a glitter bomb when you walk past it, you know, it's, it's designed to like, or like bright white.
So it's hard to look at just like, yeah, you're not building a giant pyramid to blend in.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the double-headed snake in Mayan mythology?
There's a double-headed snake that's coming out. So one head of the snake is there, and it's opened its mouth, and there's like a mask coming out of it. You can see like a skull-looking mask thing, right? It's not a skull, but there's a mask coming out of it.
If you go up, back all the way up, and you follow where that snake's going, and see it winds off to the left, keep going up, keep going up, keep going up. It's actually a giant centipede, but okay. So then it's opening its mouth, And then this god is popping out of it. And it's the patron god of the city. It's a guy named Achak Ochak, which I find funny. It almost sounds Irish. Ochak, right?
Achak Ochak, right? He's coming out of the thing. And she's talking to him, right?
Chapter 6: How do Maya rituals involve pain and supernatural experiences?
She's probably engaged, like one, even if she's only cut her tongue with a surgical knife, she's probably in a lot of pain. The guy, whoever she was with, her husband, was probably in a lot of pain at this point. I've never been in pain, you know, and had pain levels to where I would be tripping like that.
But even if they weren't tripping on that, they probably were tripping on mushrooms and other things too. They probably were when this is happening, right? To make it even cooler, the glyphs here, they're in reverse, right? This is designed to be looked at with a mirror or a bowl of water. You're supposed to actually be in supernatural space. So whatever you saw in that thing, right?
The Maya had this idea that there were mirrors and the mirrors were portals to other worlds. And that there were things that were going on on the other side of the mirror, like Alice in Wonderland style, and you could access that stuff. And so that's what this is. It's actually showing you what's on the other side of the mirror. It's really awesome. Interesting.
Chapter 7: What role do mirrors play in Mayan rituals and beliefs?
Yeah. Now, when you say the other side of the mirror, you mean that they would look at this through a mirror? So they're looking at it. They would put a mirror down and it would be on the ceiling.
That's how they would look at it? Yeah, it would be right side up. But the way that this particular thing was done, they put you in the building and everything was reversed. So you're actually entering, you're supposed to be on the other side of the mirror when you get into the building and you're actually looking out at the regular world when you look in the... in the mirror. Interesting. Yeah.
Wow.
So as I said, these guys are probably high as, like they're probably really high.
The mirror thing is so interesting because that shows up a lot. Yeah. Like a lot of different cultures. Like, I mean, John Dee, who is, you know, even like the queen's, you know, sort of mystical advisor in like, I don't know, 1700, 1800, something like that. Yeah.
Like he had this obsidian mirror that he would like conjure beings and like that's how he would he was doing his stuff for like these sort of like incantation bowls of water that you would kind of like look into. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: How did the Aztec Empire utilize human sacrifice in their culture?
And it's interesting that they kind of independently also came up with this mirror thing. There's something about mirrors and reflections like sort of invoke the supernatural.
Yeah, there's a lot of magic that's going on in the Maya area in the late classic period. So in about 600 to about 900 or so, there's a lot of magical things that we know about that are happening. Interesting.
And so these high pain, really intense acts and behaviors, you would propose that this is maybe a... I guess some type of vehicle to accessing this supernatural being through intense pain.
It's pain plus drugs, essentially, is what's doing it. There's a... there's almost a sense that, um, if it's a sacrifice, it needs to hurt, right. It needs to, it needs to actually not just be like, Oh, what'd you do? Oh, I gave up chocolate for Lent or something like that. No, it's like, no, it actually has to like really hurt. Right. Um, and so I think, um, there's that access there.
Now I should say that it's, um, it's a bit restrictive. So the way that it worked at least at this point for these, for these guys is that, um, the rulers and the sort of the royal family was largely descended from these patron gods. So they essentially had god blood. So when they're shedding blood for these sorts of things, it's because it's already kind of magical god blood that they're using.
It's the blood of the gods.
Yes, you need god blood to actually make this stuff work. So your average person can't just be like doing this. They can't just go to their house and like, you know, it's not going to work.
Right, because they don't have the divine right. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. And now is your theory is that it's ritualistic or that it is because they're actually cutting themselves, they're releasing a ton of cortisol and adrenaline that they're, you know, hallucinating along with these drugs or is it kind of both?
I think it's kind of both. I don't know whether, you know, who knows what you see in these kinds of scenarios, right? But I think they conceptualized those centipedes. There's different kinds of them. There's centipedes, there's snakes, there's things that look like dragons. The general idea is that you want to conjure this god called Kawil. It's a glottal, Kawil.
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