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Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #1975. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding North American Environmental History, Wildlife Ecology, and the Cultural Legacy of the American West.
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan

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Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by

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night, all day. Yeehaw. How are you, Dan? Great

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to see you. Great to see you too, Joe. Listen,

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man, I know I've talked to you since I read Coyote

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America, but God damn, that's a good book. It's

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such a good book. So I'm very excited about this.

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I'm sure this is going to be awesome, too. Wild

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New World, the epic story of animals and people

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in America. I've told so many people about coyotes

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because of you, and I seem so smart. Well, I

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appreciate that. It's such a crazy animal. You

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know, one of the things that's interesting about

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coyotes in our area is they don't howl. I think

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they've learned. Oh, yeah. That's that's happening

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in L .A. too. They've learned not to howl. Really?

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Yeah. Interesting. Attracts attention to them.

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Well, I used to hear it a lot where I lived.

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I lived in Ventura County and we had real problems

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with them. Like they killed all my chickens.

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It was like they were everywhere. But also fucking

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cool. You know, it's such a conflicted thing

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because I hated them because they killed my chickens.

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And they also honey -potted my dog into killing

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my chickens. Did I tell you that story? No, you

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didn't tell me that. Oh, boy. Listen to this.

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This is how smart these motherfuckers are. I

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had this dog, rest in peace. His name was Johnny

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Cash. He was the best dog. I'll get sad. But...

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Let me catch my breath here, because I really

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loved that dog. No, I understand this. I just

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lost a dog last May. this dog was just he was

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just such a sweetheart but he was a big dog he

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was a mastiff a regency mastiff his father was

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actually on fear factor and his father was this

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we we put people in these big bite suits and

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they had to run and we did it with belgian malinois

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and the problem was for like really super athletic

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guys like we had some like uh real high -end

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athletes on the show occasionally look like amateur

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football players guys are just stacked and strong

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as hell and a malinois no matter what it's still

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only 60 70 pounds and so we brought in these

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regency mastiffs because they wanted to figure

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out a dog that could do bite work but was way

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stronger and this dog was like a buck 60 and

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built like a brick house His dad, my dog's dad,

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was actually in the movie The Hulk. If you ever

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saw the movie The Hulk with Eric Bannon, when

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they turned the dogs into Hulk dogs, that was

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actually that dog. So my friend Joe shout out

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to Joe who raised these dogs he raised them for

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intelligence and temperament And he wouldn't

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let any dog breed that had any aggression towards

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other dogs or any aggression towards people So

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they were the best dogs And so this dog was hanging

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out with all these other dogs that were doing

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bite work and everything and he was just so chill

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Just hanging out go. How does this dog so chill

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and just like he goes. He's just fucking smart.

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He's smart He's well raised and well trained

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and loved so anyway. I had his son And he was

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the fucking best. But he was in the yard during

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the day. And a coyote would come by the fence.

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And the fence was six feet high, like a wrought

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iron fence. He couldn't get over this fence.

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He didn't even try to get over the fence. It

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was a nice big yard. But the coyotes could get

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over that fence like it didn't even exist. It

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was wild to watch. I watched one with a chicken

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in his mouth jump and put his feet at the top

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of that fence and over like a Cirque du Soleil

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acrobat. It was amazing. So we had this large...

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coop where the chickens were that the coyotes

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couldn't figure out a way to get into. And then

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have you ever raised chickens before? My dad

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raised chickens. They do a thing called brooding.

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And what brooding is, chickens lay an egg, you

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know, almost every day, but none of them are

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going to become. chicks because there's no rooster

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so these are unfertilized eggs but they don't

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understand that so they decide every now and

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again that this egg is going to become a chick

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and they won't let anyone near it and they pluck

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their feathers out and they just sit on this

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egg and they they stop making eggs and they get

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real weirded out. And the only way to cure them

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of this is to put them in a smaller pen with

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a post so that they have to hold onto the post

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to stand. They can't sit and squat like over

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an egg. So you put a post in there and put a

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small coop next to the coop. It takes a little,

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I forget how many days it takes, but they get

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over it and then you can put them back in with

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the regular hands. Well, that little coop, this

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sneaky ass fucking coyote had figured out that

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he could get my dog to destroy that little coop

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because my dog was he was huge. And so somehow

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or another, this coyote became friends with my

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dog, just kept hanging around. And my dog's like,

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oh, it's another dog, because he has a little

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dog friend. Like, this is my other little dog

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friend. Hey, what's up, buddy? What are you doing?

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He's like, hey, you want to know where the chickens

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are? And my pool guy fucked up and left one of

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the gates open into where the chickens usually

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are. And I was inside the house with my kids.

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And my wife and we were playing some sort of

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a game. I forget what game it was, but I saw

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in the background a coyote run across the backyard

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and hop the fence with the chicken in his mouth.

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I'm like, motherfuckers. I thought maybe somebody

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left the coop open or something happened. So

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I run outside and there's Johnny standing over

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this destroyed coop. that he was so proud that

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he busted apart. The coyote tricked him into

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smashing that coop, and then the coyote grabbed

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the chicken and ran off with it. I wish I had

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known about this story when I was writing. How

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amazing is that? I would have put it in there.

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How amazing is that? Like, there's no doubt in

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my mind that that coyote tricked that dog into

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doing that because that dog had never destroyed

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that coop. And then afterwards, he realized he's

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so strong, he can go right through the whole

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coop. So he tore a hole in the mesh. The chicken

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wire, he just tore it apart. He was so big. And

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then he went in and killed nine of them. Your

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dog killed nine of them? Yeah, he killed nine

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of them. I had 22 of them at one point in time.

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And he killed nine of them. In one, like, in

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just as much time as it took for him to get out

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there. He fucked up a couple other ones, too,

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but they lived. He was just grabbing them and

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shaking them and grabbing them and shaking them.

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He was having a party. Unfortunately, he was

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taught to do that by the fucking coyotes. Well,

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I mean, this is an example of what one would

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call animal culture. I make an argument for it

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in Wild New World that this is something that

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happens fairly commonly. Animals, just like us,

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have culture and they teach one another things.

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That sounds like a pretty good for instance of

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it. Well, they're so clever. They're so clever.

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And it's so interesting, our thoughts about intelligence.

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Because just until recently, we've realized how

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intelligent ravens and crows are. They can use

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tools. They understand water displacement. So

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if they can't drink out of something, they'll

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drop rocks into it so the water level raises

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so they can drink out of it. I mean, it's brilliant

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stuff. So I wonder, because we don't have a way

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of measuring that with coyotes, I wonder how

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smart those motherfuckers are. Well, they are,

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I think, probably among the smartest of the wild

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animals, certainly in America. I mean, you know,

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one of the reasons we domesticated wolves and

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created dogs out of them is because, for one

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thing, we understood them. They live in the same

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kind of circumstances we do in social groups.

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They have to acculturate their pups just the

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way we have to do with kids. And so I think...

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Part of the explanation for why dogs are our

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oldest domesticate is because of their ability

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to understand us, to understand human language.

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I mean, this is one of the theories for early

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domestication of wolves is that there were some

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of them that were not only hyper -social and

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so amenable to... being with humans and hanging

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out with us, but also because there are some

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that were gifted word learners. We didn't have

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to learn their language. They learned our language.

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And I think that is probably an indication of,

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you know, coyotes are out of the canid family.

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All these creatures come out of the same family

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from 5 .3 million years back. And I think Coyotes,

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in some respects, may be the shrewdest and cleverest

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of all those groups because unlike wolves, they're

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not the big brawny dogs on the block. They're

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the ones who have to play this game of, man,

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I can't let this big burly wolf get me. I've

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got to figure out how to elude it. And that's

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responsible for a lot of their intelligence and

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cleverness is they co -evolved alongside wolves

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for so long. They had to learn how to be the

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little guy who managed to survive by his wits.

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Yeah. And also one of the things that I learned

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from your book that's a good thing to bring up

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here is that they are not directly related to

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gray wolves. So they didn't interbreed with them.

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That's right. They interbreeded with red wolves.

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So when the gray wolves were around, the gray

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wolves just slaughtered them. Yeah. And so they

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had developed this ability to spread their territory.

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Which is what, when humans started killing them,

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now they're in every single city in the country.

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And this is, when did that happen? It's relatively

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recent, right? Yeah, the expansion started really

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out of two things. Two things that took place

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in the early 20th century. One was the elimination

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of wolves in the east, which created an open

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niche for a mid -sized predator. And the other

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was... this campaign that first the states and

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then the federal government began to launch against

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coyotes and wolves in the West. The government

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hunters were pretty successful in taking out

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wolves because wolves are so attuned to be pack

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animals that if you kill one wolf in a pack,

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you could use the scent from that wolf basically

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to catch, trap, kill every single wolf in the

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pack. But coyotes responded to that basically

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by going, you probably remember our conversation

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about this, Joe, back in 2017, they would go

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into what's known. as a fishing mode. They are,

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coyotes, like humans, are fish and fusion animals.

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And when they're in fusion, they can exist in

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a pack. When they're in fishing, they break apart

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the packs, and in singles and pairs, they scatter.

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And that's what they do when they're pressured.

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They learned how to do this from wolves. And

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so when we started trying to take them out with

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poisons and gunning in the West, they went into

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this fishing mode, and it caused them to start

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spreading. across the country. And that started

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in the early 20th century. I mean, when I was

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growing up in Louisiana in the 1960s, coyotes

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were first beginning to appear in Louisiana,

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which is how I got fascinated with them. First

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beginning. Yeah, first beginning in the early

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1960s. I started seeing them in about 1962 or

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something, 61 or 2. Is there a historical record

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of them ever being on the East Coast previously?

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No, there is not. So they really were just a

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West Coast animal? Well, there's a couple of

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archaeological sites dating from the Pleistocene

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from 10 ,000 years ago that appear to show coyotes

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probably fairly randomly appearing in places

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like Virginia and Pennsylvania. In the historical

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record that we have, they weren't on the East

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Coast until the middle of the 20th century. And

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they start showing up in northern New York and

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upstate New York by about the 1920s or so. And

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they start coming down south from that point

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until, I mean, they're finally they're reaching.

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Manhattan, for example, in the 1990s. Had this,

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had they already, had wolves already been extirpated

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at this point? Yeah, wolves had been taken out.

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I mean, the great, you know, and I talk about

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it in Wild New World, the whole wolf campaign

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in America, but the two guys who put together

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this classic volume on wolves, the wolves of

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North America. Stanley Young and E .A. Goldman

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published this work in 1944. They're government

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hunters. And they argue that by 1944, there are

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no wolves. at all left east of the Mississippi

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River. Wow. They are all gone. There are wolves

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down in Louisiana. In the deep south, there's

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still some red wolves. There's 1 ,400 or so gray

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wolves up in the Great Lakes country. But even

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in the west, I mean, in their book in 1944, they

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claim there are only six wolves remaining. in

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the state of Wyoming. Wow. Even with all those

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animals and all that public lands, I mean, the

00:13:37.799 --> 00:13:40.480
campaign against wolves has been that successful.

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So, yeah, by 1950 or so, there are no wolves

00:13:44.539 --> 00:13:47.240
in the East, and that opens up this niche for

00:13:47.240 --> 00:13:50.840
coyotes to come in and fill it. And one of the

00:13:50.840 --> 00:13:52.480
other things that I learned from you is that

00:13:52.480 --> 00:13:55.220
coyotes, when they do that roll call, when they

00:13:55.220 --> 00:13:58.220
scream out and howl, if one of them's missing,

00:13:58.419 --> 00:14:02.070
the females will make more pups. Yeah, they are

00:14:02.070 --> 00:14:05.330
able to, when they howl, one of the things they

00:14:05.330 --> 00:14:06.750
do with howls, I mean, they're communicating

00:14:06.750 --> 00:14:09.610
all kinds of things. But one of the things we're

00:14:09.610 --> 00:14:12.110
pretty certain they do with howls is to take

00:14:12.110 --> 00:14:16.570
a census of how many coyotes are in the area.

00:14:16.629 --> 00:14:19.529
Because, of course, howling is infectious, both

00:14:19.529 --> 00:14:21.830
for coyotes and wolves. Whenever they hear a

00:14:21.830 --> 00:14:26.340
howl, they'll respond to it. During the spring

00:14:26.340 --> 00:14:32.000
mating period, if howling produces fewer responses

00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:36.179
in a particular area, it can trigger something

00:14:36.179 --> 00:14:41.399
not exactly sure in coyotes that will have the

00:14:41.399 --> 00:14:44.759
effect of producing larger litters. And, of course,

00:14:44.799 --> 00:14:48.720
with fewer other predators in an area, one of

00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:50.860
the things that happens is it... the food base

00:14:50.860 --> 00:14:54.580
is larger. So if you've got, if you have a coyote

00:14:54.580 --> 00:14:59.440
pack as a, say seven pups, If there are fewer

00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:02.320
coyotes that have been taken out by trapping

00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:04.879
or poisoning or whatever, it's possible to get

00:15:04.879 --> 00:15:08.220
more of the pups up to adulthood because there

00:15:08.220 --> 00:15:10.840
are more food resources. So it's kind of a loop

00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:14.480
that functions like that. The coyotes are certainly

00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:19.039
playing a role in it. But, of course, our attempts

00:15:19.039 --> 00:15:22.580
to take them out are producing this feedback

00:15:22.580 --> 00:15:26.220
that. often causes them to have larger litters,

00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:29.500
to be more successful in raising their pups.

00:15:30.830 --> 00:15:34.730
They will respond by rising to the level of the

00:15:34.730 --> 00:15:37.269
carrying capacity of the landscape in any case.

00:15:37.429 --> 00:15:40.210
It's just amazing. And it's amazing how well

00:15:40.210 --> 00:15:43.330
they adapt to Los Angeles. They're everywhere.

00:15:43.789 --> 00:15:46.850
I remember the first time I saw one. It was 1994,

00:15:47.250 --> 00:15:50.970
and they had these pre -furnished apartments.

00:15:51.129 --> 00:15:53.750
I got one of those when I first moved to L .A.

00:15:53.769 --> 00:15:57.610
It's the Oakwood Apartments. And it was in Burbank.

00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:00.600
You're in the middle of everything. It's sort

00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:03.399
of the Tonight Show films. I'm driving down the

00:16:03.399 --> 00:16:06.480
street, and I see these two little wolves. I

00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:09.000
was like, what the fuck is that? And I'm like,

00:16:09.100 --> 00:16:12.120
oh, my God, it's coyotes. Oh, yeah. Because I

00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:14.879
had heard, but I was like, what? You see coyotes.

00:16:14.899 --> 00:16:18.399
Like, how often? You know, how often? Like, right

00:16:18.399 --> 00:16:20.860
there, right away. Yeah, I mean, you know, Walt

00:16:20.860 --> 00:16:25.139
Disney was doing films about coyotes in the Hollywood

00:16:25.139 --> 00:16:30.159
Hills in the early 1960s. But coyotes had been

00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:31.700
there all along. I mean, that was, you know,

00:16:31.740 --> 00:16:34.700
they were there when L .A. was founded, and they

00:16:34.700 --> 00:16:37.340
basically never left. I mean, there are records

00:16:37.340 --> 00:16:40.500
back in the 20s and 30s of, you know, the local

00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:44.799
authorities sending people out to try to take

00:16:44.799 --> 00:16:48.480
out coyotes way back 100 years ago. So they've

00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:52.120
always been there. When I would have talks with

00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:53.940
friends, you know, that lived there that were

00:16:53.940 --> 00:16:56.539
upset about coyotes, I'd say, but you know what's

00:16:56.539 --> 00:16:58.600
great? When was the last time you saw a rat?

00:16:59.259 --> 00:17:02.799
That's right. I mean, like L .A., the hills,

00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:04.640
like where I used to live in Ventura County,

00:17:04.759 --> 00:17:08.299
should be littered with rats. It should be everywhere.

00:17:08.420 --> 00:17:09.960
There's garbage cans everywhere. Where's all

00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:12.029
the rats? Yeah. They're all getting jacked by

00:17:12.029 --> 00:17:14.390
coyotes and owls. Well, that's one of the great

00:17:14.390 --> 00:17:16.650
things about coyotes being in the east. I mean,

00:17:16.690 --> 00:17:19.250
you know, all the east coast cities have huge

00:17:19.250 --> 00:17:21.049
problems with rats. They should let them loose

00:17:21.049 --> 00:17:23.769
in New York City. Yeah. No kidding. But the rats.

00:17:23.829 --> 00:17:26.670
They'll take out your rats. I watched a rat trip

00:17:26.670 --> 00:17:30.470
a mousetrap, a rat trap, today. Have you ever

00:17:30.470 --> 00:17:32.609
seen this? Yes. Watch this. Jamie, you're the

00:17:32.609 --> 00:17:35.210
best. How did you do this? Man, he was right

00:17:35.210 --> 00:17:37.109
on top of it. You're the best. So look at this

00:17:37.109 --> 00:17:40.490
rat. This rat goes. He realizes that's a trap.

00:17:40.710 --> 00:17:42.750
There's a nice piece of cheese on it. So he brings

00:17:42.750 --> 00:17:47.569
a stick, and he trips the fucking trap. I mean,

00:17:47.609 --> 00:17:51.329
come on, man. How smart are those little motherfuckers?

00:17:51.329 --> 00:17:53.869
That little tiny -ass brain. How smart is he?

00:17:53.990 --> 00:17:56.470
He's using tools. He's using a tool. That's right.

00:17:56.589 --> 00:17:59.130
I mean, that's incredible. I mean, it's really

00:17:59.130 --> 00:18:01.390
incredible. And he knows what he's doing. He

00:18:01.390 --> 00:18:04.150
didn't even freak out. Look, see how he reacted?

00:18:04.450 --> 00:18:06.789
No, it didn't startle him at all. At all. Imagine

00:18:06.789 --> 00:18:09.970
being a wild animal subject to predators, subject

00:18:09.970 --> 00:18:13.390
to other territorial rats, and you're not even

00:18:13.390 --> 00:18:16.410
freaked out by a giant spring snapping down on

00:18:16.410 --> 00:18:18.769
a board. Yeah, that could break your neck. Easily.

00:18:18.809 --> 00:18:21.069
That's supposed to kill you. He's got to know

00:18:21.069 --> 00:18:23.970
probably. These things killed my friends. Yeah,

00:18:24.109 --> 00:18:29.150
and I mean, that certainly is... It's a trait

00:18:29.150 --> 00:18:32.390
common to... The whole wolf story in America,

00:18:32.529 --> 00:18:35.170
too, because wolves learned all these kinds of

00:18:35.170 --> 00:18:37.309
techniques. I mean, I don't really have a record

00:18:37.309 --> 00:18:41.430
of a wolf using a tool like that, but they certainly

00:18:41.430 --> 00:18:45.369
learned and taught one another over many, many

00:18:45.369 --> 00:18:49.670
generations how to avoid traps, what to do when

00:18:49.670 --> 00:18:51.809
people were trying to poison them and how to

00:18:51.809 --> 00:18:55.250
spit out bait if they smell strychnine in it.

00:18:55.390 --> 00:19:00.960
So that kind of thing is a fairly common. response

00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:05.359
of animals that feel as if humans are after them.

00:19:05.980 --> 00:19:08.880
One of the things that I noticed when I rented

00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:12.359
a house in Encino for a while, and we had a problem

00:19:12.359 --> 00:19:15.579
with rats in the garage. And one of the things

00:19:15.579 --> 00:19:17.460
I noticed is rats had realized that if they get

00:19:17.460 --> 00:19:20.160
to the garbage in the garage, there's no coyotes

00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:23.460
and owls. And so the only time I ever saw rats

00:19:23.460 --> 00:19:26.339
was in my own house, was in my garage. And one

00:19:26.339 --> 00:19:28.980
time the trap went off and I heard it. I was

00:19:28.980 --> 00:19:31.339
in the kitchen and I opened the door and there's

00:19:31.339 --> 00:19:35.019
a rat like the size of my forearm. I mean, it's

00:19:35.019 --> 00:19:38.099
a huge rat. I was like, look at that sucker.

00:19:38.299 --> 00:19:40.880
Jesus Christ. But it was late at night. I was

00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:42.440
like, I'll clean this motherfucker up in the

00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:44.559
morning. I'm going to bed. I went to bed. I got

00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:46.039
up in the morning. There was nothing left but

00:19:46.039 --> 00:19:50.819
the tail. They had eaten him. That's a hard,

00:19:50.839 --> 00:19:55.460
hard world. And that world is existing simultaneously

00:19:55.460 --> 00:20:00.519
with me, a fucking young kid who's on a sitcom,

00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:05.740
who's going to drive a sports car into this studio

00:20:05.740 --> 00:20:09.660
in Hollywood. And at the same time, like this

00:20:09.660 --> 00:20:13.559
cannibalism fight for survival is going on in

00:20:13.559 --> 00:20:17.269
my garage. But I don't even think. That it applies

00:20:17.269 --> 00:20:20.369
to me. No, you don't. You know, I have an agent.

00:20:20.650 --> 00:20:24.410
I have a manager I have to call. And a sports

00:20:24.410 --> 00:20:26.289
car. Yeah, I have a sports car. I have a Toyota

00:20:26.289 --> 00:20:29.430
Supra. But it was like watching that, seeing

00:20:29.430 --> 00:20:32.490
that thing take place. It was very, I'll never

00:20:32.490 --> 00:20:34.829
forget it. Because it made me realize, oh, you

00:20:34.829 --> 00:20:38.650
coexist with brutality. You're just not completely

00:20:38.650 --> 00:20:41.509
aware of it. This is real nature. It's happening

00:20:41.509 --> 00:20:45.559
right here. You've just, everyone's numb themselves

00:20:45.559 --> 00:20:49.160
to it, buildings and fast food. But this is happening

00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:52.220
right where you are. And that's why coyotes are

00:20:52.220 --> 00:20:54.700
so fascinating to me. I mean, even when I watched

00:20:54.700 --> 00:20:56.559
that one kill my chicken and hop over the fence

00:20:56.559 --> 00:20:58.839
with it, I was like, respect. I got to respect

00:20:58.839 --> 00:21:00.700
this game. Well, you got to respect that kind

00:21:00.700 --> 00:21:03.019
of athleticism for one thing. The athleticism,

00:21:03.039 --> 00:21:05.220
but also the cleverness, figuring out how to

00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:07.079
trick the big dog, because he couldn't break

00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:10.660
the coop. He figured out, he's like, hey, you

00:21:10.660 --> 00:21:14.420
big motherfucker, go break that thing. They're

00:21:14.420 --> 00:21:18.279
amazing animals. But, you know, fuck, it sucks

00:21:18.279 --> 00:21:22.579
if they eat your cat. It sucks. I've had a bunch

00:21:22.579 --> 00:21:25.680
of friends and I've, you know, and family members

00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:28.160
that have, and recently a very good friend of

00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:31.359
mine out here lost his dog. It's, you know, it

00:21:31.359 --> 00:21:33.900
sucks. And you know, a coyote just tore your

00:21:33.900 --> 00:21:37.420
fucking little buddy alive. Well, I know it does.

00:21:37.579 --> 00:21:40.859
I mean, I will admit I've never had anything

00:21:40.859 --> 00:21:43.160
like that happen with a dog, in part because

00:21:43.160 --> 00:21:46.980
I always have really big dogs. I have Alaskan

00:21:46.980 --> 00:21:49.440
Malamutes, which, you know, I mean, the dog I

00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:52.480
lost, as I mentioned last year, last May, I mean,

00:21:52.500 --> 00:21:56.119
he was 140 -pound Alaskan Malamute. And so he

00:21:56.119 --> 00:21:58.519
would sit on the front porch and a pack of coyotes

00:21:58.519 --> 00:22:01.819
would trot through the yard in New Mexico. The

00:22:01.819 --> 00:22:04.660
alpha male of the pack would turn and grimace

00:22:04.660 --> 00:22:08.559
at him, show his teeth. But, you know, Cody,

00:22:08.700 --> 00:22:11.160
which is my dog's name, would just sit there

00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:14.400
on the porch and kind of smile. I mean, a coyote,

00:22:14.440 --> 00:22:16.660
you know, even a good -sized coyote in New Mexico,

00:22:16.660 --> 00:22:20.339
a good adult male, is barely going to weigh 35

00:22:20.339 --> 00:22:25.269
pounds. So Cody outweighs him five times. I've

00:22:25.269 --> 00:22:29.109
not had that experience. I've lost cats a couple

00:22:29.109 --> 00:22:32.329
of times because I've always lived in the country.

00:22:32.470 --> 00:22:35.930
I mean, my whole adult life, I've bought places

00:22:35.930 --> 00:22:40.309
outside town and usually or built places outside

00:22:40.309 --> 00:22:43.950
town and lived half an hour away from the city

00:22:43.950 --> 00:22:46.630
where I was working or where I had to commute

00:22:46.630 --> 00:22:51.710
to. So I always lived around wild animals of

00:22:51.710 --> 00:22:55.819
all kinds. And I've lost cats two or three times,

00:22:55.859 --> 00:23:01.240
at least one time for some reason I never found.

00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:05.079
The cat just disappeared. But the other couple

00:23:05.079 --> 00:23:09.240
of times I lost cats, what I concluded was that

00:23:09.240 --> 00:23:11.779
it was actually great horned owls that got them.

00:23:12.259 --> 00:23:16.019
And what I've often told people who've, you know,

00:23:16.019 --> 00:23:19.500
related to me their stories about coyotes getting

00:23:19.500 --> 00:23:23.579
their cats. or getting small dogs, is that one

00:23:23.579 --> 00:23:26.420
of the questions I always ask is, did you find

00:23:26.420 --> 00:23:30.420
your pet? Was it lying there? Because if it's

00:23:30.420 --> 00:23:34.400
lying there, that's probably an indication that

00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:38.319
it may have been a coyote. Coyotes often will

00:23:38.319 --> 00:23:42.640
kill small dogs. Not because they want to eat

00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:45.619
them, but because they regard them as intergill

00:23:45.619 --> 00:23:47.579
predators that are invading their territory.

00:23:48.180 --> 00:23:52.500
But if the dog or the cat completely disappears,

00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:55.319
is gone, and you don't find it or you only find

00:23:55.319 --> 00:23:58.359
it months later, that's usually a great horned

00:23:58.359 --> 00:24:00.819
owl because they will pluck up a small dog or

00:24:00.819 --> 00:24:04.680
a cat and they fly away with them to their roosting

00:24:04.680 --> 00:24:07.180
spot. I mean, there are instances where great

00:24:07.180 --> 00:24:12.000
horned owl roosts have yielded. 75 cat collars

00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:16.920
with Kiki and, you know, Mousy and so forth on

00:24:16.920 --> 00:24:19.819
the names on the collars. But the owls have just

00:24:19.819 --> 00:24:22.099
snagged them and taken them off and eaten them.

00:24:22.140 --> 00:24:24.500
And the owners never know what happened. And

00:24:24.500 --> 00:24:26.420
a lot of people, because they're aware of coyotes

00:24:26.420 --> 00:24:29.400
being on the scene, they will assume that it's

00:24:29.400 --> 00:24:31.420
a coyote that's done it. That's fascinating.

00:24:31.660 --> 00:24:36.690
75 collars. Yeah. I love owls. One of the wildest

00:24:36.690 --> 00:24:39.130
videos that I ever saw was this night vision

00:24:39.130 --> 00:24:42.750
video of a nest. And there's these hawks in the

00:24:42.750 --> 00:24:45.930
nest. And you just see in the distance the eyes

00:24:45.930 --> 00:24:48.829
of the owl as it swoops in and just snatches

00:24:48.829 --> 00:24:52.569
a hawk out. But the ferocity. Watch this. The

00:24:52.569 --> 00:24:55.730
way it hits this hawk. Are those baby hawks?

00:24:56.390 --> 00:24:58.869
Bang. Oh, man. Look at that. And the other one's

00:24:58.869 --> 00:25:00.470
like, what the fuck happened? Yeah, no kidding.

00:25:01.170 --> 00:25:03.829
What the fuck? What the fuck happened? I mean,

00:25:03.849 --> 00:25:06.309
play that again. Watch. I love the eyes. When

00:25:06.309 --> 00:25:08.730
you see the eyes in the distance. Look at this.

00:25:08.829 --> 00:25:15.009
Here it comes. Bang. Yeah. What an amazing predator,

00:25:15.250 --> 00:25:18.470
right? That's what happens to a lot of cats.

00:25:18.789 --> 00:25:21.750
Oh, I'd imagine. Yeah. I'd imagine. Yeah. I mean,

00:25:21.789 --> 00:25:24.099
there's a story in the little. town near where

00:25:24.099 --> 00:25:27.839
I live in New Mexico, of people sitting out on

00:25:27.839 --> 00:25:32.480
the front porch of the cafe bar one evening as

00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:35.220
a cat is walking the railing in front of them.

00:25:35.259 --> 00:25:37.440
And while seven or eight people are sitting there

00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:39.759
drinking beer and shooting the shit, and the

00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:42.839
cat is walking the railing, just like that scene,

00:25:42.980 --> 00:25:45.200
suddenly out of nowhere, a great horned owl appears.

00:25:45.690 --> 00:25:48.210
Bang, hits the cat, and they're all sitting there

00:25:48.210 --> 00:25:51.190
open -eyed watching this owl fly away with the

00:25:51.190 --> 00:25:54.769
cat squirming in its claws, disappearing into

00:25:54.769 --> 00:25:57.529
the tree cover down on the river. Imagine being

00:25:57.529 --> 00:26:01.690
a cat. You've been killing birds forever. If

00:26:01.690 --> 00:26:04.750
you're a cat outside, one thing that I found

00:26:04.750 --> 00:26:06.450
that I actually learned from our good friend

00:26:06.450 --> 00:26:10.150
Stephen Ronell was the sheer numbers of animals

00:26:10.150 --> 00:26:13.630
that feral cats and wild cats, just outdoor cats,

00:26:13.769 --> 00:26:17.680
kill. Every year. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's

00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:20.700
unbelievable. It's an animal holocaust. It is

00:26:20.700 --> 00:26:25.049
billions of animals. It is. And, you know, there

00:26:25.049 --> 00:26:28.750
are ornithologists who are great advocates for

00:26:28.750 --> 00:26:32.690
coyotes appearing on the scene and taking out

00:26:32.690 --> 00:26:35.509
cats that people, either feral cats that are

00:26:35.509 --> 00:26:39.269
living outside or cats that people just let sort

00:26:39.269 --> 00:26:41.609
of roam so they can actually kill birds. Look

00:26:41.609 --> 00:26:44.950
at this. A recent study by the Smithsonian Institute

00:26:44.950 --> 00:26:47.349
in the U .S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated

00:26:47.349 --> 00:26:52.130
that domestic cats kill about 2 .4 billion birds.

00:26:53.199 --> 00:26:57.740
12 .3 billion small mammals each year in the

00:26:57.740 --> 00:27:02.519
lower 48 states alone. That is incredible. Yeah,

00:27:02.579 --> 00:27:04.480
that's incredible. That's how ruthless those

00:27:04.480 --> 00:27:06.519
little motherfuckers are. Those numbers are hard

00:27:06.519 --> 00:27:08.680
to wrap your mind around. And so, I mean, it's

00:27:08.680 --> 00:27:10.720
a, you know, it's an argument for people who

00:27:10.720 --> 00:27:13.680
have cats. I mean, don't let your cat do this.

00:27:13.859 --> 00:27:15.819
Yeah, don't let your cat do this or an owl's

00:27:15.819 --> 00:27:18.539
going to get them. Yeah, that's right. I mean,

00:27:18.539 --> 00:27:21.599
the owl problem, we see obviously owls eat birds.

00:27:21.720 --> 00:27:23.960
The owl probably also thought of as the cat as

00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:25.880
a predator, a fellow predator, but also prey.

00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:29.000
Yeah, also prey. Yeah. Isn't it interesting how

00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:33.160
there's certain animals that we have anthropomorphized

00:27:33.160 --> 00:27:36.420
and put these weird characteristics to? And with

00:27:36.420 --> 00:27:39.000
owls, they're like wise and they give advice.

00:27:39.799 --> 00:27:42.099
They're like, give a hoot, don't pollute. Like

00:27:42.099 --> 00:27:45.700
the owls tricking the candy people. How many

00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:47.720
licks does it take to get to the center of a,

00:27:47.740 --> 00:27:50.299
what is it, a licorice tootsie roll? A tootsie

00:27:50.299 --> 00:27:52.920
roll pop. What's inside, a licorice? It takes

00:27:52.920 --> 00:27:56.119
three. One, two, and then he crushes it. And

00:27:56.119 --> 00:28:00.839
he's playing a game. They're clever. It's interesting

00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:03.240
that we always think of them as being very wise.

00:28:03.539 --> 00:28:07.410
Like owls in cartoons, they wear glasses. Which

00:28:07.410 --> 00:28:08.769
is hilarious because they have the greatest vision

00:28:08.769 --> 00:28:11.269
of all time. Like, why do they need glasses?

00:28:11.430 --> 00:28:13.650
They have giant fucking eyes that see crystal

00:28:13.650 --> 00:28:17.329
clear late at night. We give them glasses. No,

00:28:17.329 --> 00:28:19.589
it gives them that studious intellectual look.

00:28:19.730 --> 00:28:22.529
But a bizarre choice. And that stuck with us.

00:28:22.630 --> 00:28:24.809
Like, if you ask most people about owls, they

00:28:24.809 --> 00:28:27.609
think of them as, oh, the wise old owl. That's

00:28:27.609 --> 00:28:31.309
a ruthless monster. A raptor that flies down

00:28:31.309 --> 00:28:34.089
and just swoops shit up and flies away with it.

00:28:34.150 --> 00:28:37.609
And it lives amongst people. They do indeed.

00:28:37.829 --> 00:28:40.789
And, you know, the next time you see one, just

00:28:40.789 --> 00:28:43.130
sort of make a projection in your head about

00:28:43.130 --> 00:28:46.430
how many cat collars may be lying at the base

00:28:46.430 --> 00:28:50.630
of the tree. I saw one two nights ago. I saw

00:28:50.630 --> 00:28:53.450
one swoop across the road. I was like, wow, they're

00:28:53.450 --> 00:28:56.250
cool, man. They're so big. It's like it's kind

00:28:56.250 --> 00:28:58.630
of stunning how big they are. You know, you think

00:28:58.630 --> 00:29:00.670
of an owl as being a small bird, but you see

00:29:00.670 --> 00:29:02.789
their wingspan and their body. That's a pretty

00:29:02.789 --> 00:29:05.049
large. That's why it makes sense they could snatch

00:29:05.049 --> 00:29:08.289
up a cat. Oh, yeah. Great Hornet Owls in particular.

00:29:08.470 --> 00:29:10.289
I mean, they have like a three -and -a -half

00:29:10.289 --> 00:29:11.930
-foot wingspan, three -and -a -half to four -foot

00:29:11.930 --> 00:29:14.170
wingspan. I mean, they're really big. And they

00:29:14.170 --> 00:29:17.470
sound cool. You know, when it's nighttime and

00:29:17.470 --> 00:29:21.390
you're outside and you hear one bird, and you

00:29:21.390 --> 00:29:24.089
know that that's a ruthless killer, a ruthless

00:29:24.089 --> 00:29:26.450
all -seeing killer just perched up on things.

00:29:26.789 --> 00:29:28.549
They're so good at killing things that you can

00:29:28.549 --> 00:29:30.609
get a rubber one, and it keeps everybody away.

00:29:31.269 --> 00:29:33.710
You know that? Oh, yeah, sure. I've done it.

00:29:34.029 --> 00:29:36.210
Have you done it? Oh, yeah, I have done it. Isn't

00:29:36.210 --> 00:29:38.430
that crazy? It works for a while. And then they

00:29:38.430 --> 00:29:40.369
realize. Yeah, and then they realize it's fake.

00:29:40.470 --> 00:29:42.509
But, yeah, it works for a while. How long does

00:29:42.509 --> 00:29:44.890
it work for? Well, it depends on what you're

00:29:44.890 --> 00:29:48.410
trying to alarm. I mean, some birds are quicker

00:29:48.410 --> 00:29:50.230
than others. I mean, as you mentioned a few minutes

00:29:50.230 --> 00:29:54.630
ago, a raven is not going to be tricked by something

00:29:54.630 --> 00:29:59.230
like that for more than a day or so. A raven

00:29:59.230 --> 00:30:01.630
will quickly get it. Some birds are not so fast

00:30:01.630 --> 00:30:03.670
on the uptake. Raven will probably start shitting

00:30:03.670 --> 00:30:06.700
on it. Oh, yeah. On purpose. Yeah. I actually

00:30:06.700 --> 00:30:11.480
have a kind of a wild pet raven at the moment.

00:30:11.539 --> 00:30:15.380
Really? Yeah, and have had since I lost my dog.

00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:17.420
And I've just got a new dog. I just got a new

00:30:17.420 --> 00:30:22.599
puppy here recently. But I had lost my dog. He

00:30:22.599 --> 00:30:27.480
was sort of my constant companion. And I realized

00:30:27.480 --> 00:30:31.059
that, I mean, I spend a lot of time raised with

00:30:31.059 --> 00:30:35.779
animals from being a little kid. In fact, I'll

00:30:35.779 --> 00:30:38.619
tell you a story in a minute, sort of how this

00:30:38.619 --> 00:30:41.859
Wild New World book came to be. It came out of

00:30:41.859 --> 00:30:44.859
the first animal companion I ever had and what

00:30:44.859 --> 00:30:49.960
happened to it. But this particular raven started.

00:30:51.099 --> 00:30:53.599
hanging around where, I mean, in New Mexico and

00:30:53.599 --> 00:30:56.579
Southwest, we have a lot of rats and mice. And

00:30:56.579 --> 00:30:59.119
they'll, of course, what rats and mice do, which

00:30:59.119 --> 00:31:01.000
is the reason the East Coast cities have such

00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.359
a problem with rats, is that they're drawn to

00:31:03.359 --> 00:31:06.519
human inhabitations because we produce excess

00:31:06.519 --> 00:31:08.660
stuff for them to get into, food in particular.

00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:15.259
So commonly, I'll have a rat zapper or two out,

00:31:15.359 --> 00:31:18.759
and every two or three days, I'll catch a mouse

00:31:18.759 --> 00:31:21.980
or a rat. And so I had this particular spot where

00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:24.759
I was taking these rats and mice out and dropping

00:31:24.759 --> 00:31:28.079
them. And I noticed that a raven started flying

00:31:28.079 --> 00:31:31.259
up on a nearby tree and waiting for me to do

00:31:31.259 --> 00:31:34.599
this. And so after this happened four or five

00:31:34.599 --> 00:31:37.559
times and I began to look at this raven and I

00:31:37.559 --> 00:31:39.839
thought the way that raven is lighting on the

00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:44.000
same spot, this is the same raven keeps coming

00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:47.960
back to this exact branch. So I started experimenting

00:31:47.960 --> 00:31:52.240
with what happens if I drop the rat out and just

00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:56.019
back up 10 feet. The raven would wait a minute

00:31:56.019 --> 00:31:58.259
or so and then fly down and pick up the rat.

00:31:58.420 --> 00:32:02.400
So then I started closing the distance into five

00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:06.579
feet and then three feet. This raven, over time,

00:32:06.799 --> 00:32:10.680
came to realize I was no threat. I was providing

00:32:10.680 --> 00:32:14.700
a free meal. And so since that time that started

00:32:14.700 --> 00:32:16.579
happening about six months ago, since that time,

00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:20.180
I've got this raven that basically when my new

00:32:20.180 --> 00:32:23.279
puppy and I go out for walks in the canyon below

00:32:23.279 --> 00:32:27.500
the house outside Santa Fe, this raven actually

00:32:27.500 --> 00:32:31.539
flies along with us, lighting from one tree to

00:32:31.539 --> 00:32:35.359
another, waiting for me, hoping that I'm going

00:32:35.359 --> 00:32:38.319
to provide him with some sort of free meal. And

00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:41.779
what I've taken to doing when. the dog is not

00:32:41.779 --> 00:32:45.480
paying attention or asleep and i don't have a

00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:48.380
mouse to give him is i'll pull four or five kibbles

00:32:48.380 --> 00:32:51.940
of dog food out and i can put those things anywhere

00:32:51.940 --> 00:32:54.940
and that raven will fly down and pick them up

00:32:54.940 --> 00:32:57.900
and walk around and talk to me and make these

00:32:57.900 --> 00:33:01.740
these sounds that i actually haven't quite figured

00:33:01.740 --> 00:33:05.079
out i haven't understood i'm not as smart as

00:33:05.079 --> 00:33:07.519
wolves were about human language i haven't figured

00:33:07.519 --> 00:33:10.579
out raven language yet but this raven talks to

00:33:10.579 --> 00:33:14.319
me. And so we have conversations. I have no idea

00:33:14.319 --> 00:33:17.160
what he's saying, but he's very vocal and he's

00:33:17.160 --> 00:33:20.440
very expressive. You know, that's an amazing

00:33:20.440 --> 00:33:23.839
story. And that was one of John Lilly's things

00:33:23.839 --> 00:33:26.319
that he was working on with dolphins. And he

00:33:26.319 --> 00:33:29.259
was trying to use LSD to better communicate with

00:33:29.259 --> 00:33:31.680
dolphins. And he used sensory deprivation tanks.

00:33:33.149 --> 00:33:36.549
His idea was there's got to be some way to crack

00:33:36.549 --> 00:33:39.670
that code and to at least intuitively understand

00:33:39.670 --> 00:33:42.470
what these things are saying. And they even tried

00:33:42.470 --> 00:33:45.289
to get dolphins to speak human language because

00:33:45.289 --> 00:33:46.809
they could apparently understand what we were

00:33:46.809 --> 00:33:48.490
saying, but we couldn't understand what they

00:33:48.490 --> 00:33:50.349
were saying. So they were trying to get dolphins,

00:33:50.470 --> 00:33:52.490
but they just don't have lips. They don't have

00:33:52.490 --> 00:33:54.529
a tongue like ours. They can't make the same

00:33:54.529 --> 00:33:58.170
noises. Their noises are so different. All those

00:33:58.170 --> 00:34:00.470
people that are studying orcas and dolphins,

00:34:00.670 --> 00:34:02.950
they've determined that there's dialects, that

00:34:02.950 --> 00:34:04.950
they sound different in different areas. But

00:34:04.950 --> 00:34:07.990
they have no idea what they're saying. No idea,

00:34:08.110 --> 00:34:11.469
which is amazing. No, but they are communicating

00:34:11.469 --> 00:34:14.070
with one another. They can't communicate with

00:34:14.070 --> 00:34:16.269
us. And the conclusion we draw from that, of

00:34:16.269 --> 00:34:18.889
course, is that other animals, other creatures

00:34:18.889 --> 00:34:22.329
in the world are not as intelligent as we are.

00:34:22.570 --> 00:34:27.809
But the truth is. All the recent science about

00:34:27.809 --> 00:34:30.789
animal culture and about animal consciousness

00:34:30.789 --> 00:34:33.769
is indicating something that I think we sort

00:34:33.769 --> 00:34:39.210
of, as early humans living amongst wild animals

00:34:39.210 --> 00:34:42.210
in Africa, in Europe, in Asia, and ultimately

00:34:42.210 --> 00:34:46.539
in the Americas. understood is that these are

00:34:46.539 --> 00:34:51.159
creatures that share with us all the traits that

00:34:51.159 --> 00:34:55.099
we tend to think make us distinctively human.

00:34:55.239 --> 00:34:58.760
We think that The ability to talk, the ability

00:34:58.760 --> 00:35:03.440
to transmit culture is what makes us exceptional

00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:06.559
among all other creatures. And yet what we're

00:35:06.559 --> 00:35:10.679
discovering almost day by day from the scientific

00:35:10.679 --> 00:35:13.300
literature that's been focused on these things

00:35:13.300 --> 00:35:17.300
is that animals just like us have culture. As

00:35:17.300 --> 00:35:20.960
Charles Darwin said, it's just a matter of...

00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:26.000
degree, not kind. They have all the same attributes

00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:30.000
and all the same abilities. They just don't have

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:33.699
things like 8 billion other members of their

00:35:33.699 --> 00:35:37.460
species to be thinking up ideas and transmit

00:35:37.460 --> 00:35:40.179
to one another around the world through things

00:35:40.179 --> 00:35:44.900
like the internet or Twitter or, 5 ,000 years

00:35:44.900 --> 00:35:47.440
ago, written languages. I mean, what we've done

00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:50.260
is we've been able to amplify all those abilities

00:35:50.260 --> 00:35:53.840
by how many of us there are, and our ability

00:35:53.840 --> 00:35:56.969
to communicate with one another. So many other

00:35:56.969 --> 00:35:59.949
creatures. I mean, there was a declaration on

00:35:59.949 --> 00:36:05.269
consciousness issued by a bunch of biologists

00:36:05.269 --> 00:36:09.610
in Europe in 2012 that argued that the higher

00:36:09.610 --> 00:36:11.849
species in particular, some of the ones that

00:36:11.849 --> 00:36:14.949
we've been talking about here, share the same

00:36:14.949 --> 00:36:20.449
level of cultural transmissibility, of the ability

00:36:20.449 --> 00:36:23.670
to communicate with one another, the ability

00:36:23.670 --> 00:36:29.489
to plot out strategies for new problems that

00:36:29.489 --> 00:36:32.289
they confront, just like the... the ravens we

00:36:32.289 --> 00:36:35.010
were talking about or about the rat who used

00:36:35.010 --> 00:36:39.429
a tool to set off that trap. So all these kinds

00:36:39.429 --> 00:36:42.690
of things that we've thought for so long make

00:36:42.690 --> 00:36:45.849
us exceptional in the world. And this comes out

00:36:45.849 --> 00:36:49.630
of a long Western European tradition of thinking

00:36:49.630 --> 00:36:52.590
that we're exceptional, that we're the only creatures

00:36:52.590 --> 00:36:54.989
made in the image of God, the only ones with

00:36:54.989 --> 00:36:58.250
souls and all that. What we're discovering, of

00:36:58.250 --> 00:37:02.489
course, is that Ancient people understood that

00:37:02.489 --> 00:37:05.829
humans were part of the mix. Charles Darwin gave

00:37:05.829 --> 00:37:08.949
us scientific evidence that this was true. And

00:37:08.949 --> 00:37:12.090
the more we study other creatures, the more we

00:37:12.090 --> 00:37:15.989
realize that all these animals that we've set

00:37:15.989 --> 00:37:20.329
aside as just things that we regard as expendable,

00:37:20.429 --> 00:37:26.309
as useful as commodities, domesticated possibilities.

00:37:27.630 --> 00:37:30.630
They actually have many of the same capabilities

00:37:30.630 --> 00:37:35.170
we do. So, I mean, it makes sense if you think

00:37:35.170 --> 00:37:37.909
about Ravens. It makes sense if you think about

00:37:37.909 --> 00:37:39.550
their ability to use tools and their ability

00:37:39.550 --> 00:37:41.730
to displace water. They're obviously thinking.

00:37:42.090 --> 00:37:44.670
And so if they can make noises, of course they

00:37:44.670 --> 00:37:47.409
would associate those noises with different things.

00:37:47.650 --> 00:37:51.090
Did you see any patterns when he would, like

00:37:51.090 --> 00:37:53.110
when you put the food down, did he make specific

00:37:53.110 --> 00:37:55.789
sounds when you put the food down? Well, what

00:37:55.789 --> 00:37:58.989
he began to do that probably caught my eye more

00:37:58.989 --> 00:38:03.449
than anything. When he would first come down,

00:38:03.510 --> 00:38:05.429
he would take the food and fly off immediately,

00:38:05.650 --> 00:38:07.989
especially when I was closing the distance between

00:38:07.989 --> 00:38:10.710
us. When I was getting to the point where I was

00:38:10.710 --> 00:38:12.829
only three or four feet away from where I would

00:38:12.829 --> 00:38:16.389
put down a mouse or a rat or four or five kibbles

00:38:16.389 --> 00:38:18.570
of dog food, he would come down and grab the

00:38:18.570 --> 00:38:21.630
food. And once he would, say, go through all

00:38:21.630 --> 00:38:24.550
six kibbles that I'd put down, he would immediately

00:38:24.550 --> 00:38:32.980
fly off. This raven fairly clearly, it seemed

00:38:32.980 --> 00:38:37.280
to me as I observed him, came to some kind of

00:38:37.280 --> 00:38:40.539
conscious conclusion that I was not a threat

00:38:40.539 --> 00:38:44.380
and that the sounds that I was making, my human

00:38:44.380 --> 00:38:47.099
voice and the inflections that I was making were

00:38:47.099 --> 00:38:52.239
something that were not dangerous to him. Then

00:38:52.239 --> 00:38:56.750
he started hanging around. So he would eat. the

00:38:56.750 --> 00:39:01.230
food, eat the kibbles or eat the mouse. And instead

00:39:01.230 --> 00:39:04.110
of flying away, he would waddle around on the

00:39:04.110 --> 00:39:07.289
ground four or five feet away from me or hop

00:39:07.289 --> 00:39:10.070
up on a limb. And this is when we were having

00:39:10.070 --> 00:39:12.369
these conversations I was referring to a minute

00:39:12.369 --> 00:39:17.079
ago where. he would actually respond to my voice

00:39:17.079 --> 00:39:20.539
as I talked. And as I said, the raven is probably

00:39:20.539 --> 00:39:23.059
better at understanding what I'm saying than

00:39:23.059 --> 00:39:26.260
I am at understanding what the raven is trying

00:39:26.260 --> 00:39:30.320
to convey to me. But he very clearly is expressing

00:39:30.320 --> 00:39:36.500
what I sort of... to it as a kind of comfort

00:39:36.500 --> 00:39:39.920
and, I mean, maybe even, you know, a thank you.

00:39:39.980 --> 00:39:43.079
Thanks for, you know. Friendship. Thanks for

00:39:43.079 --> 00:39:45.880
the friendship. Thanks for all the fish. Thanks

00:39:45.880 --> 00:39:53.099
for the food. He's actually somehow come to realize

00:39:53.099 --> 00:39:57.199
that I'm completely trustworthy and so he can

00:39:57.199 --> 00:40:00.579
hang out. And it's not too long after. He began

00:40:00.579 --> 00:40:03.340
to do that, that he started accompanying me on

00:40:03.340 --> 00:40:06.739
walks as I would walk around the place and go

00:40:06.739 --> 00:40:09.599
for hikes. And now doing it with this 16 week

00:40:09.599 --> 00:40:12.980
old puppy that I have, the raven comes along.

00:40:13.199 --> 00:40:16.920
I mean, he spots us going out the back door into

00:40:16.920 --> 00:40:20.079
the canyon and flies along from tree to tree

00:40:20.079 --> 00:40:22.900
and just kind of hangs out with us. I mean, it's

00:40:22.900 --> 00:40:24.840
it's a really remarkable. I've not ever had another

00:40:24.840 --> 00:40:27.699
animal do anything like this, but it probably.

00:40:28.599 --> 00:40:30.860
means that I've not had an animal quite as smart

00:40:30.860 --> 00:40:34.000
as a mature raven to deal with. Do you miss him

00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:37.260
when you go on the road? Well, I'm talking about

00:40:37.260 --> 00:40:41.039
him, obviously. I would imagine I would miss

00:40:41.039 --> 00:40:42.719
that. Oh, yeah. I would imagine I would want

00:40:42.719 --> 00:40:44.360
to go back in the woods and bring him some dog

00:40:44.360 --> 00:40:46.039
food and hang out with him. Oh, man, no kidding.

00:40:46.039 --> 00:40:48.599
That's so cool. Yeah. That is so cool. I've taken

00:40:48.599 --> 00:40:50.619
to putting a few kibbles in my pocket, you know,

00:40:50.619 --> 00:40:54.909
so that when Kiska, the new young puppy. goes

00:40:54.909 --> 00:40:56.769
to sleep. Because, of course, as long as the

00:40:56.769 --> 00:40:59.710
puppy is awake, you know, he's watching the raven

00:40:59.710 --> 00:41:02.570
too. Right. I mean, this is a kind of an ancient

00:41:02.570 --> 00:41:05.809
relationship between ravens and wolves. And I

00:41:05.809 --> 00:41:09.110
think, I mean, I've hiked enough with my Alaskan

00:41:09.110 --> 00:41:12.349
Malamutes in the mountains in the west to notice

00:41:12.349 --> 00:41:14.969
how ravens circle around them in the same kind

00:41:14.969 --> 00:41:18.210
of approach that ravens do with wolves. They'll

00:41:18.210 --> 00:41:21.650
follow wolves because they know wolves very possibly

00:41:21.650 --> 00:41:25.389
signal a free meal. So the The puppy is watching

00:41:25.389 --> 00:41:27.550
the raven. He's very aware of the raven. But

00:41:27.550 --> 00:41:29.769
as soon as he goes to sleep, I'll pull my kibbles

00:41:29.769 --> 00:41:32.449
out, drop them out for the raven to get. That's

00:41:32.449 --> 00:41:35.849
awesome. That's such a cool relationship. It's

00:41:35.849 --> 00:41:37.590
been very fun. I've never had anything like it

00:41:37.590 --> 00:41:39.610
before. I mean, that's what a great way to test

00:41:39.610 --> 00:41:41.510
the intelligence of an animal like that. The

00:41:41.510 --> 00:41:43.969
fact that it's recognizing that you're a friend

00:41:43.969 --> 00:41:46.610
and then communicates with you like a thank you

00:41:46.610 --> 00:41:49.530
or at least some sort of a. A gesture of friendship.

00:41:49.829 --> 00:41:52.269
Yes. And I don't have to put the food in the

00:41:52.269 --> 00:41:54.610
same spot. I mean, I was starting out by, of

00:41:54.610 --> 00:41:56.289
course, putting everything in the exact same

00:41:56.289 --> 00:41:59.869
spot that I'd begun. But now I can sort of put

00:41:59.869 --> 00:42:02.250
it anywhere. And he's watching and he comes and

00:42:02.250 --> 00:42:04.929
gets his meal. That's pretty cool. How long do

00:42:04.929 --> 00:42:08.690
ravens live? They live to about 12, 13, 14 years

00:42:08.690 --> 00:42:11.429
old. And I have no idea how old this raven is.

00:42:11.989 --> 00:42:13.909
You know, there's no way of telling. I mean,

00:42:13.929 --> 00:42:16.289
and ravens kind of tend to all look alike. But

00:42:16.289 --> 00:42:22.159
this particular bird conveys his... he conveys

00:42:22.159 --> 00:42:25.380
his presence, his individual presence, by, as

00:42:25.380 --> 00:42:29.119
I mentioned, lighting in exactly the same spot

00:42:29.119 --> 00:42:32.039
every time. So when he sees me come out of the

00:42:32.039 --> 00:42:34.380
house in the morning, he goes to a particular

00:42:34.380 --> 00:42:37.260
spot and lands. And, I mean, there are a lot

00:42:37.260 --> 00:42:40.440
of other ravens in the neighborhood, but I can

00:42:40.440 --> 00:42:42.960
always tell that it's this particular one because

00:42:42.960 --> 00:42:46.860
he goes and hits a signal to me. It's me. He

00:42:46.860 --> 00:42:50.639
goes to a particular spot to land. wait to see

00:42:50.639 --> 00:42:53.860
what I've got for him on a particular day. That's

00:42:53.860 --> 00:42:57.280
awesome. What a great story. That's so cool.

00:42:57.539 --> 00:42:59.920
So you live in an area that probably has a lot

00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:02.980
of wildlife. I do live in an area that has a

00:43:02.980 --> 00:43:04.719
lot of wildlife. And I, you know, much of my

00:43:04.719 --> 00:43:07.019
life I have, man, I lived 22 years in Montana,

00:43:07.300 --> 00:43:10.559
out in the foothills of a mountain range outside

00:43:10.559 --> 00:43:12.340
Missoula. I was teaching at the University of

00:43:12.340 --> 00:43:17.039
Montana. Certainly had, I mean, I lived with

00:43:17.039 --> 00:43:21.099
all the grand animals that still remain from

00:43:21.099 --> 00:43:24.199
the historic period in the West in that spot.

00:43:24.380 --> 00:43:27.320
I mean, we had, I was there when we reintroduced

00:43:27.320 --> 00:43:31.519
wolves to Montana and Idaho in 1995. And within

00:43:31.519 --> 00:43:34.920
about three or four years, there was a wolf pack

00:43:34.920 --> 00:43:39.300
on the slopes right above the house. They began

00:43:39.300 --> 00:43:43.039
having litters, so we began having wolves there.

00:43:43.199 --> 00:43:49.380
Grizzly bears would appear sporadically. Their

00:43:49.380 --> 00:43:52.639
main range was just to the north of where I was,

00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:56.460
but they were steadily attempting to repopulate

00:43:56.460 --> 00:43:59.760
the Bitterroot Valley. And so about every two

00:43:59.760 --> 00:44:01.840
years, there would be a grizzly in the area.

00:44:01.940 --> 00:44:06.239
I had black bears fairly commonly. Lions, of

00:44:06.239 --> 00:44:08.739
course. Never saw a lion, but I saw a prince.

00:44:09.099 --> 00:44:14.039
And tons of elk. deer and all that sort of thing.

00:44:14.159 --> 00:44:17.039
And in New Mexico, not so many where I live.

00:44:17.159 --> 00:44:20.199
I don't live in the foothills of a mountain range.

00:44:20.300 --> 00:44:22.179
I live out in the Pinyon Juniper country, about

00:44:22.179 --> 00:44:26.579
10 miles from the southern Rockies. And in that

00:44:26.579 --> 00:44:30.599
zone, you have a few mule deer. There are pronghorn

00:44:30.599 --> 00:44:33.780
antelope in the open prairies not too far away.

00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:37.760
But the primary animals that I see all the time,

00:44:37.780 --> 00:44:40.769
which is why. Back seven or eight years ago,

00:44:40.789 --> 00:44:42.329
I wrote a book about them, and one of the reasons

00:44:42.329 --> 00:44:46.130
was it's coyotes. I mean, I'm sort of constantly

00:44:46.130 --> 00:44:50.070
living with coyotes. Elk have such a distinct

00:44:50.070 --> 00:44:52.510
language in the way they talk to each other that

00:44:52.510 --> 00:44:55.269
there's elk calling championships. I'm sure you're

00:44:55.269 --> 00:44:58.070
aware of these. Oh, yeah. Jason Phelps, who's

00:44:58.070 --> 00:45:01.250
a guy that is well -known in the elk hunting

00:45:01.250 --> 00:45:03.690
world, has developed these amazing elk calls

00:45:03.690 --> 00:45:08.269
to mimic them. He knows how to get them upset.

00:45:08.530 --> 00:45:11.550
He knows how to challenge them. It's really interesting

00:45:11.550 --> 00:45:15.809
when you see a master caller at work. Because

00:45:15.809 --> 00:45:17.929
the elk hunting that I've done, most of it has

00:45:17.929 --> 00:45:22.210
been ambush, like sneak up on them. And I like

00:45:22.210 --> 00:45:29.190
that. I like the stalking and trying to get close

00:45:29.190 --> 00:45:31.710
and playing the wind. But there's a lot of guys

00:45:31.710 --> 00:45:34.610
that... They're so good at getting the elk pissed

00:45:34.610 --> 00:45:37.610
off that the elk, against their better judgment,

00:45:37.789 --> 00:45:40.190
will come, what the fuck is going on over there?

00:45:40.269 --> 00:45:42.809
And whack, and they get hit. Yeah, well, they're

00:45:42.809 --> 00:45:46.190
issuing a challenge. And at the time when elk

00:45:46.190 --> 00:45:47.650
are bugling, I mean, what they're bugling for

00:45:47.650 --> 00:45:52.190
are cows. And so, yeah, if they sense there's

00:45:52.190 --> 00:45:54.989
a challenge from another bull, then they're coming

00:45:54.989 --> 00:45:58.949
to. to vie for access to the females. And that's

00:45:58.949 --> 00:46:01.690
how they get lured in. They also learn too. So

00:46:01.690 --> 00:46:04.150
when there's heavy pressure areas, they learn

00:46:04.150 --> 00:46:06.510
that a lot of these calls are bullshit. And so

00:46:06.510 --> 00:46:09.309
they learn to shut up. And so in a heavily pressured

00:46:09.309 --> 00:46:11.269
elk area, sometimes there's elk around you and

00:46:11.269 --> 00:46:12.610
you don't even know where they are because you

00:46:12.610 --> 00:46:14.949
don't hear anything. One of the best ways to

00:46:14.949 --> 00:46:17.110
locate elk in the morning, you listen and you

00:46:17.110 --> 00:46:22.869
hear bugles. Well, I have not hunted elk. And

00:46:22.869 --> 00:46:28.519
I mean, I grew up in Louisiana, a rural kid growing

00:46:28.519 --> 00:46:33.559
up in the South, and went to high school. In

00:46:33.559 --> 00:46:36.500
fact, I went to high school with the Duck Dynasty

00:46:36.500 --> 00:46:39.780
guys. I played football with the Duck Dynasty

00:46:39.780 --> 00:46:44.300
guys. That's awesome. Yeah, the older guy, Phil.

00:46:46.320 --> 00:46:48.980
was the quarterback of the high school football

00:46:48.980 --> 00:46:51.559
team. And there was one guy in between us, a

00:46:51.559 --> 00:46:53.579
guy named Johnny Prudhomme, was the next quarterback

00:46:53.579 --> 00:46:55.679
after Phil. But I succeeded Johnny Prudhomme

00:46:55.679 --> 00:46:57.239
as the quarterback of the high school team. And

00:46:57.239 --> 00:47:00.699
I even wore Phil's number, number 10 in high

00:47:00.699 --> 00:47:04.880
school. Wow. And I played the younger Robertson,

00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:07.860
Cy. He and I played when I was a freshman and

00:47:07.860 --> 00:47:10.239
he was a sophomore. We played in the backfield.

00:47:10.340 --> 00:47:12.380
Or I was a sophomore. He was a junior. We played

00:47:12.380 --> 00:47:14.420
in the backfield football team. So I went to

00:47:14.420 --> 00:47:17.539
high school with... Those kind of guys and grew

00:47:17.539 --> 00:47:20.880
up in that kind of world and, you know, and hunted

00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:25.940
and fished. And I mean, but our paths, I guess,

00:47:25.960 --> 00:47:30.400
kind of separated at one point. They stayed in

00:47:30.400 --> 00:47:34.559
Louisiana. Cy went off to Vietnam and returned.

00:47:34.900 --> 00:47:39.000
And what I did was I went off to college and

00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:42.059
other places and ended up, you know, getting

00:47:42.059 --> 00:47:45.679
a. Ph .D. and getting university jobs and going

00:47:45.679 --> 00:47:48.940
to live in places like Montana. So our worlds

00:47:48.940 --> 00:47:51.179
kind of diverged. Do you still keep in touch

00:47:51.179 --> 00:47:53.400
with those guys? No, I don't. I haven't kept

00:47:53.400 --> 00:47:55.559
in touch with them. And I don't know if they're

00:47:55.559 --> 00:47:56.880
you know, I'm certainly aware of them because

00:47:56.880 --> 00:48:00.820
I've watched their their show some. But I don't

00:48:00.820 --> 00:48:03.440
know if they are aware of anything that I've

00:48:03.440 --> 00:48:05.039
done. I haven't tried to get in touch with them

00:48:05.039 --> 00:48:08.469
or anything. I loved. the success of that show

00:48:08.469 --> 00:48:11.750
because i knew that there was people because

00:48:11.750 --> 00:48:14.710
you know i did stand -up comedy for you know

00:48:14.710 --> 00:48:17.429
30 years so i was always on the road i was always

00:48:17.429 --> 00:48:19.650
traveling to the south i was traveling to the

00:48:19.650 --> 00:48:21.650
north we traveled all over the country telling

00:48:21.650 --> 00:48:26.010
jokes And you get a way better sense of what

00:48:26.010 --> 00:48:28.449
the country is actually like than if you only

00:48:28.449 --> 00:48:30.550
live in these cultural elite cities like Los

00:48:30.550 --> 00:48:33.710
Angeles. And in Los Angeles, the idea that a

00:48:33.710 --> 00:48:36.650
show about a bunch of fucking duck hunters who

00:48:36.650 --> 00:48:39.889
have a dynasty from duck calls, how is that going

00:48:39.889 --> 00:48:42.230
to be popular? And then it was huge. It was huge.

00:48:42.409 --> 00:48:46.210
It was gigantic. And people loved it. People

00:48:46.210 --> 00:48:48.670
in these what they would call the flyover states,

00:48:48.949 --> 00:48:52.150
the disrespectfully most of the country. They

00:48:52.150 --> 00:48:54.969
would call the flyover states. That's why I love

00:48:54.969 --> 00:48:57.710
a show like that that succeeds, because those

00:48:57.710 --> 00:48:59.909
people had no idea. They were like, what the

00:48:59.909 --> 00:49:03.610
hell is going on? Like, what is, you know, I

00:49:03.610 --> 00:49:06.329
want to watch all the stuff that I want to watch.

00:49:06.469 --> 00:49:09.889
How do these people even like this? What world

00:49:09.889 --> 00:49:14.469
do they live in? Well, I will say that those

00:49:14.469 --> 00:49:18.769
guys, Phil and Cy both, they were. uh not only

00:49:18.769 --> 00:49:21.050
really accomplished duck hunters and i i never

00:49:21.050 --> 00:49:22.949
duck hunted with them but i did go dove hunting

00:49:22.949 --> 00:49:26.150
with them one time um and of course they didn't

00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:29.019
It was on private property for which they had

00:49:29.019 --> 00:49:31.400
no permission. And halfway through the dove hunt,

00:49:31.480 --> 00:49:34.460
we had maybe shot 10 or 15 rounds. And here comes

00:49:34.460 --> 00:49:36.519
the landowner in a pickup truck driving about

00:49:36.519 --> 00:49:39.920
60 miles an hour across rutted fields after us.

00:49:39.960 --> 00:49:42.920
And so my memory of going hunting with the Robertson

00:49:42.920 --> 00:49:45.539
boys is running through the Red River Valley

00:49:45.539 --> 00:49:50.000
trying to get away from an irate landowner. But

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:53.119
those guys were funny. They were really funny

00:49:53.119 --> 00:49:57.340
as hell back in those days. And it kind of didn't

00:49:57.340 --> 00:50:00.860
surprise me when they were able to translate

00:50:00.860 --> 00:50:04.280
that into that show, because, I mean, we all

00:50:04.280 --> 00:50:06.480
thought that they were and they told so many

00:50:06.480 --> 00:50:09.579
stories. I mean, the South, of course, is storytelling

00:50:09.579 --> 00:50:13.380
part of the part of the United States. Those

00:50:13.380 --> 00:50:16.340
guys told so many stories that we used to just

00:50:16.340 --> 00:50:19.280
number them. And whenever they would start on

00:50:19.280 --> 00:50:21.659
a story, we would just say, OK, it's number 112,

00:50:21.880 --> 00:50:24.500
guys. And so everybody would start laughing because

00:50:24.500 --> 00:50:28.739
we all knew what 112 was. That's hilarious. Didn't

00:50:28.739 --> 00:50:30.880
even have to listen to the story. It's number

00:50:30.880 --> 00:50:35.900
112. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Well, maybe

00:50:35.900 --> 00:50:39.469
we can. Reunite you guys. Maybe this podcast

00:50:39.469 --> 00:50:41.909
will reunite you guys. Yeah, maybe so. It might.

00:50:42.070 --> 00:50:45.010
So this book, this new book that you've written,

00:50:45.349 --> 00:50:48.710
Wild New World, the epic story of animals and

00:50:48.710 --> 00:50:53.369
people in America. When did you start this? Well,

00:50:53.449 --> 00:50:57.969
it's kind of my pandemic vacation book. That's

00:50:57.969 --> 00:50:59.869
why I asked. A lot of people, Joey Diaz wrote

00:50:59.869 --> 00:51:02.269
this during the pandemic. Yeah, I wrote it during

00:51:02.269 --> 00:51:06.940
the pandemic. I mean, I'll say, you know. Coyote

00:51:06.940 --> 00:51:13.159
America and American Serengeti kind of set me

00:51:13.159 --> 00:51:18.099
up to be able to take a step back, farther back,

00:51:18.179 --> 00:51:22.599
to look at the bigger story of animals in America.

00:51:23.139 --> 00:51:25.860
I mean, I'd focus very specifically on coyotes

00:51:25.860 --> 00:51:29.559
in the one book and wrote about the animals,

00:51:29.619 --> 00:51:31.900
all these grand animals of the Great Plains,

00:51:31.900 --> 00:51:35.440
this part of North America that. once, up until

00:51:35.440 --> 00:51:39.199
about 120 years ago, was our version of the Serengeti.

00:51:39.440 --> 00:51:43.679
And somehow, while East Africa and Southern Africa

00:51:43.679 --> 00:51:46.579
managed to get these great game parks preserving

00:51:46.579 --> 00:51:49.300
their large charismatic animals, here in the

00:51:49.300 --> 00:51:51.420
United States, we ended up privatizing all the

00:51:51.420 --> 00:51:53.679
Great Plains, turning it into farms and ranches,

00:51:53.679 --> 00:51:56.980
and losing our ability to do that, at least until

00:51:56.980 --> 00:52:00.960
the present day, where we're trying to. to accomplish

00:52:00.960 --> 00:52:03.639
something like returning the American Serengeti.

00:52:03.980 --> 00:52:08.260
But those two books kind of set me up for stepping

00:52:08.260 --> 00:52:12.599
back and looking at the really big picture of

00:52:12.599 --> 00:52:17.579
this. And so I was inspired, I'll admit, by Yuval

00:52:17.579 --> 00:52:22.440
Harari's Sapiens, his big history of humans across

00:52:22.440 --> 00:52:27.639
time. So what I was compelled to do with Wild

00:52:27.639 --> 00:52:31.880
New World was to, To write a book that was a

00:52:31.880 --> 00:52:37.699
big history of North America and the relationship

00:52:37.699 --> 00:52:43.440
that people and animals have had in North America,

00:52:43.539 --> 00:52:46.599
starting from, I mean, the book actually starts

00:52:46.599 --> 00:52:50.619
with the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact. That's

00:52:50.619 --> 00:52:54.300
the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs and

00:52:54.300 --> 00:52:56.940
ushered in the age of mammals. The reason I started

00:52:56.940 --> 00:53:00.670
there is because. That's the moment at which

00:53:00.670 --> 00:53:03.769
North America starts acquiring its bestiary,

00:53:03.949 --> 00:53:07.670
its creatures. In the aftermath of the dinosaur

00:53:07.670 --> 00:53:12.030
age, both through continental evolution in North

00:53:12.030 --> 00:53:16.030
America and through acquiring animals from other

00:53:16.030 --> 00:53:18.510
parts of the world as they cross the land bridges

00:53:18.510 --> 00:53:23.269
and enter North America, in those millions of

00:53:23.269 --> 00:53:26.760
years after the Chicxulub impact, Chicxulub,

00:53:26.840 --> 00:53:28.960
by the way, is the name of the little Mayan village

00:53:28.960 --> 00:53:31.159
on the north coast of the Yucatan near where

00:53:31.159 --> 00:53:36.760
that asteroid hit 66 million years ago. But in

00:53:36.760 --> 00:53:40.679
the aftermath of it, that's how we acquire our

00:53:40.679 --> 00:53:45.320
creatures. That's how we acquire mammoths and

00:53:45.320 --> 00:53:49.360
mastodons and saber -toothed cats and buffalo

00:53:49.360 --> 00:53:56.070
and pronghorns and camels and horses. It happens

00:53:56.070 --> 00:53:59.289
through continental evolution, as I said, and

00:53:59.289 --> 00:54:02.110
also through this migration from other parts

00:54:02.110 --> 00:54:05.809
of the world. But what I try to create with that

00:54:05.809 --> 00:54:09.070
and try to set up with that is this bestiary

00:54:09.070 --> 00:54:12.070
of creatures that when humans finally get here,

00:54:12.150 --> 00:54:14.190
and I mean, after all, North and South America

00:54:14.190 --> 00:54:16.969
are the last places on Earth humans find, except

00:54:16.969 --> 00:54:19.269
for a few islands in the Pacific that we get

00:54:19.269 --> 00:54:23.400
to later. The last grand continents on Earth

00:54:23.400 --> 00:54:26.219
that humans get to are North and South America,

00:54:26.380 --> 00:54:31.619
by which time we have had, well, if you date

00:54:31.619 --> 00:54:34.659
us back even to Neanderthals, which goes back

00:54:34.659 --> 00:54:38.199
about 800 ,000 to a million years, and you assume

00:54:38.199 --> 00:54:40.440
that we and Neanderthals are obviously close

00:54:40.440 --> 00:54:43.079
enough to one another that we can hybridize.

00:54:43.630 --> 00:54:46.190
I mean, have you done 23andMe? Yeah, I got a

00:54:46.190 --> 00:54:49.530
lot of it. Yeah, so do I. And my wife has even

00:54:49.530 --> 00:54:52.889
more. And I think all of us that are from particularly

00:54:52.889 --> 00:54:57.369
sort of Northwestern European backgrounds have

00:54:57.369 --> 00:55:01.590
ended up with a lot of Neanderthal, you know,

00:55:01.630 --> 00:55:04.469
for some people as much as 2 .5 % of their genes.

00:55:05.110 --> 00:55:10.239
Yeah. And it produces, you know, it makes you

00:55:10.239 --> 00:55:12.739
different than you would be otherwise. I supposedly,

00:55:13.099 --> 00:55:16.400
according to 23andMe, I have less hair on my

00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:19.800
back than I would if I didn't have Neanderthal

00:55:19.800 --> 00:55:23.300
genes. I'm a little taller because of Neanderthal

00:55:23.300 --> 00:55:28.619
genes. All kinds of things like that. So if you

00:55:28.619 --> 00:55:32.650
date... the human story, even back, and I started

00:55:32.650 --> 00:55:38.050
our story as wild animals in Africa. And I bring

00:55:38.050 --> 00:55:41.550
us in one of the early chapters, in the first

00:55:41.550 --> 00:55:44.909
chapter, really, up to the point where we're

00:55:44.909 --> 00:55:48.050
leaving Africa, going into Europe, going into

00:55:48.050 --> 00:55:52.190
Asia. And of course, that process Again, if you

00:55:52.190 --> 00:55:54.809
start with Neanderthals, it goes back 800 ,000

00:55:54.809 --> 00:55:57.570
years out of Africa and to the rest of the world.

00:55:57.670 --> 00:56:02.449
But the Neanderthals never get to the Americas.

00:56:03.030 --> 00:56:07.369
But when modern humans, we emerged about 315

00:56:07.369 --> 00:56:10.449
,000 years ago in Africa, and when we spread

00:56:10.449 --> 00:56:14.909
out of Africa and replaced Neanderthals in Europe,

00:56:15.239 --> 00:56:19.920
and Denisovans in Asia, and finally get to Siberia

00:56:19.920 --> 00:56:23.880
about 45 ,000 years ago, as soon as there's a

00:56:23.880 --> 00:56:27.900
possibility for getting farther east, in other

00:56:27.900 --> 00:56:31.119
words, into North America, we take advantage

00:56:31.119 --> 00:56:34.179
of it. And, I mean, as I argue in this book,

00:56:34.260 --> 00:56:36.780
the reason we do this, this is kind of one of

00:56:36.780 --> 00:56:40.860
the reasons why all of us love to find spots

00:56:40.860 --> 00:56:44.769
where... It's a beautiful morning. I'm out here

00:56:44.769 --> 00:56:47.670
on this mountain. There's not another soul in

00:56:47.670 --> 00:56:52.289
sight. It's just me and the world. That compulsion,

00:56:52.289 --> 00:56:55.230
I think, is really ancient. And it's what drew

00:56:55.230 --> 00:56:57.349
us out of Africa to other parts of the world

00:56:57.349 --> 00:57:01.250
to start with. And what we're looking for are

00:57:01.250 --> 00:57:04.210
animals that have never encountered us before

00:57:04.210 --> 00:57:09.449
because they're naive about humans as predators.

00:57:10.110 --> 00:57:15.710
So this compulsion. to travel, finally to get

00:57:15.710 --> 00:57:20.710
to the great plum of the Americas as the last

00:57:20.710 --> 00:57:25.849
great spot we get to on Earth, drives us to the

00:57:25.849 --> 00:57:30.030
point where, I don't know if you caught the news

00:57:30.030 --> 00:57:32.690
out of White Sands National Park about three

00:57:32.690 --> 00:57:36.789
or four years ago, about the footprints that

00:57:36.789 --> 00:57:42.150
were discovered there, 23 ,000 years old. I mean,

00:57:42.170 --> 00:57:44.170
that's at the height of the glacial maximum,

00:57:44.329 --> 00:57:47.909
man. That's when the ice is at its greatest extent.

00:57:48.010 --> 00:57:53.409
And somehow people have gotten out of Asia, we

00:57:53.409 --> 00:57:57.869
think probably along the coastlines, into what

00:57:57.869 --> 00:58:00.130
is now the United States. And the place that

00:58:00.130 --> 00:58:02.730
always seemed to draw them is the country south

00:58:02.730 --> 00:58:04.949
of the Rocky Mountains in what is New Mexico

00:58:04.949 --> 00:58:09.659
and Arizona. These people managed to get 23 ,000

00:58:09.659 --> 00:58:12.719
years ago into what is now New Mexico and left

00:58:12.719 --> 00:58:17.579
79 footprints that have been carbon dated based

00:58:17.579 --> 00:58:21.559
on seeds that their feet crushed as they walked

00:58:21.559 --> 00:58:25.280
along the marshy shore of this lake. So we know

00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:28.579
that people probably coming down the coastlines,

00:58:28.679 --> 00:58:32.079
maybe in some kind of craft, managed to get here

00:58:32.079 --> 00:58:36.989
as long ago as 23 ,000 years. But what? really,

00:58:37.150 --> 00:58:39.550
of course, propels the great human migration

00:58:39.550 --> 00:58:43.369
into America is when the ice sheets finally open

00:58:43.369 --> 00:58:46.369
at about 16 ,000 years ago as the glacial maximum

00:58:46.369 --> 00:58:49.250
begins to recede. There's an ice -free corridor

00:58:49.250 --> 00:58:52.769
that opens from Alaska down into Alberta and

00:58:52.769 --> 00:58:56.150
Montana. And at that point, you get this massive

00:58:56.150 --> 00:58:59.130
migration, probably not massive to start with,

00:58:59.190 --> 00:59:02.769
maybe not very many people at all, but they encounter

00:59:02.769 --> 00:59:08.050
a wild new world. a world that is populated by

00:59:08.050 --> 00:59:11.610
some creatures they recognize, many ground sloths

00:59:11.610 --> 00:59:14.030
and so forth, humans have never seen before.

00:59:14.329 --> 00:59:20.309
And so we enter this American paradise of animals

00:59:20.309 --> 00:59:26.590
some 16 ,000 years ago in large numbers of humans

00:59:26.590 --> 00:59:30.789
and spread within about three centuries all the

00:59:30.789 --> 00:59:33.090
way to the tip of South America. It's kind of

00:59:33.090 --> 00:59:37.119
one of the great... colonization stories in world

00:59:37.119 --> 00:59:40.039
history. That's amazing. Now, at this point in

00:59:40.039 --> 00:59:42.420
time, what weapons do we think that they were

00:59:42.420 --> 00:59:44.539
using to hunt with? Were they using atlatls?

00:59:44.639 --> 00:59:47.019
Were they using spears? Were they using, well,

00:59:47.079 --> 00:59:50.139
a combination of these things? They were definitely

00:59:50.139 --> 00:59:55.239
using, so the first successful group that sort

00:59:55.239 --> 00:59:57.440
of spreads coast to coast, I mean, our first

00:59:57.440 --> 01:00:01.119
American culture that spreads from the Pacific

01:00:01.119 --> 01:00:04.590
to the Atlantic as a consistent culture of people.

01:00:05.369 --> 01:00:08.489
And I titled this particular chapter in the book,

01:00:08.590 --> 01:00:12.110
Clovisia the Beautiful, because they establish

01:00:12.110 --> 01:00:15.269
a world that lasts longer than the United States

01:00:15.269 --> 01:00:18.309
has lasted so far. They're America the Beautiful.

01:00:18.769 --> 01:00:22.530
Clovisia the Beautiful lasts well over 300 years.

01:00:23.070 --> 01:00:28.010
And they're probably using spears, but they have

01:00:28.010 --> 01:00:32.679
come up with a great new technology, which is

01:00:32.679 --> 01:00:36.380
the fluted point. They figured out a way, and

01:00:36.380 --> 01:00:39.159
fluted points aren't found in earlier times,

01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:41.760
even in Siberia, so this was a purely American

01:00:41.760 --> 01:00:44.400
invention. They figured out a way to take flint

01:00:44.400 --> 01:00:47.840
points and flute the base on either side so that

01:00:47.840 --> 01:00:52.280
you can solidly and very securely attach a spear

01:00:52.280 --> 01:00:54.800
to them, and they'll remain in place without

01:00:54.800 --> 01:00:58.320
flipping off or breaking off. So the fluted point

01:00:58.320 --> 01:01:01.880
is one of their They're great technological inventions.

01:01:02.179 --> 01:01:05.780
But the other thing that they bring to the game,

01:01:05.940 --> 01:01:12.420
Joe, is they come out of a tradition of at least

01:01:12.420 --> 01:01:19.480
40 ,000 generations of hunting big animals. I

01:01:19.480 --> 01:01:23.460
mean, they know how to do this at literally a

01:01:23.460 --> 01:01:28.679
professional level. They are extremely good at

01:01:28.679 --> 01:01:32.429
it. I mean, one of the stories I tell in this

01:01:32.429 --> 01:01:35.230
early chapter, Clovisia the Beautiful, which

01:01:35.230 --> 01:01:38.510
is the second chapter of the book, is of an episode

01:01:38.510 --> 01:01:41.670
that takes place in southern Arizona, what's

01:01:41.670 --> 01:01:44.429
now southern Arizona, about 13 ,000 years ago,

01:01:44.550 --> 01:01:49.510
when a group of Clovis hunters surround a herd

01:01:49.510 --> 01:01:54.110
of mammoths. And in this herd is a bull, a herd

01:01:54.110 --> 01:01:58.349
bull, a herd cow, and 13 calves and adolescents.

01:01:59.000 --> 01:02:01.880
There are three archaeological sites associated

01:02:01.880 --> 01:02:05.380
with this particular episode. In one site, the

01:02:05.380 --> 01:02:08.920
most westerly, all 13 calves and adolescents

01:02:08.920 --> 01:02:15.440
archaeologists found dead in one spot, each with

01:02:15.440 --> 01:02:21.679
a single Clovis point in its body. East of there,

01:02:21.840 --> 01:02:25.159
in two different locations, the herd bull...

01:02:25.389 --> 01:02:28.409
was found. He had run about three or four miles.

01:02:28.610 --> 01:02:31.889
He had two Clovis points in him, and he finally

01:02:31.889 --> 01:02:36.269
bled out and died. But they found the cow about

01:02:36.269 --> 01:02:40.550
eight miles away. She had eight Clovis points

01:02:40.550 --> 01:02:45.269
in her before she died, indicating to the archaeologists

01:02:45.269 --> 01:02:48.829
who've studied these sites that the cow, in classic

01:02:48.829 --> 01:02:53.019
elephant fashion, had fought to defend those

01:02:53.019 --> 01:02:56.380
calves and those adolescents. She had put up

01:02:56.380 --> 01:02:59.340
a huge fight to try to defend them, and ultimately

01:02:59.340 --> 01:03:02.219
she hadn't been successful. They had all been

01:03:02.219 --> 01:03:05.360
killed. She runs away and finally dies with eight

01:03:05.360 --> 01:03:10.460
Clovis points in her. Wow. But that's one episode

01:03:10.460 --> 01:03:13.039
out of, I mean, we have no idea how many. There

01:03:13.039 --> 01:03:17.079
are something like 78 Clovis sites around North

01:03:17.079 --> 01:03:23.360
America. I mean, we don't actually, know when

01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:26.519
the transition to get to your question happened

01:03:26.519 --> 01:03:30.099
to add addles. But when the Clovis period is

01:03:30.099 --> 01:03:33.800
over, it's basically when the mammoths are done.

01:03:34.079 --> 01:03:35.739
I mean, these people seem to have been fairly

01:03:35.739 --> 01:03:39.559
specialized as big game hunters. I mean, they

01:03:39.559 --> 01:03:41.659
killed other animals, but they really went after

01:03:41.659 --> 01:03:44.329
mammoths a lot. But they were succeeded by a

01:03:44.329 --> 01:03:47.469
group known as the Folsom people, and the Folsom

01:03:47.469 --> 01:03:50.469
people used ad adults. I mean, I opened the book

01:03:50.469 --> 01:03:54.289
with the discovery of the first Folsom site.

01:03:54.409 --> 01:03:57.849
It's in Folsom, New Mexico, discovered. in the

01:03:57.849 --> 01:04:00.469
year 1908. Can we pause this for a second? Because

01:04:00.469 --> 01:04:02.329
I have to pee. And this is too fascinating for

01:04:02.329 --> 01:04:04.929
me to hold this in. 1908, Folsom people. Yeah,

01:04:04.929 --> 01:04:06.630
we'll come back. We'll be right back. And we're

01:04:06.630 --> 01:04:10.789
back. So 1908, they discover Folsom sites. Yeah,

01:04:10.849 --> 01:04:14.309
the first Folsom site. And I mean, so, you know,

01:04:14.309 --> 01:04:15.650
and I don't want to spend too much time on this

01:04:15.650 --> 01:04:17.570
because this is all basically just the first

01:04:17.570 --> 01:04:20.670
couple of chapters of Wild New World. The rest

01:04:20.670 --> 01:04:23.409
of it is about subsequent history down to the

01:04:23.409 --> 01:04:27.639
present. But the Folsom discovery is really kind

01:04:27.639 --> 01:04:31.079
of important in the whole American history story,

01:04:31.300 --> 01:04:36.739
because up until this point, you know, and this

01:04:36.739 --> 01:04:38.820
is the kind of thing that, you know, the Europeans

01:04:38.820 --> 01:04:42.940
are really good at, of course. They they sort

01:04:42.940 --> 01:04:46.119
of cast dispersions on America because their

01:04:46.119 --> 01:04:48.639
argument was, you know, America is really marginal

01:04:48.639 --> 01:04:50.940
to world history. I mean, you guys, we've had

01:04:50.940 --> 01:04:54.530
we know that we had people. interacting with

01:04:54.530 --> 01:04:57.469
cave bears and mammoths, and we have an ancient

01:04:57.469 --> 01:05:00.130
history going back to Greece and Rome. And you

01:05:00.130 --> 01:05:02.369
Americans, you kind of just, you know, you don't

01:05:02.369 --> 01:05:06.630
have much going on at all. And so what the Folsom

01:05:06.630 --> 01:05:15.809
site did was to give America an ancient... A

01:05:15.809 --> 01:05:19.710
history that made us a major part of this world

01:05:19.710 --> 01:05:22.530
story that I was kind of alluding to when I was

01:05:22.530 --> 01:05:25.590
describing people finally discovering the Americas

01:05:25.590 --> 01:05:28.929
as the last grand continents on Earth. And what

01:05:28.929 --> 01:05:31.590
happened with the Folsom story is that there

01:05:31.590 --> 01:05:37.929
was a flash flood on a river called the Dry Cimarron

01:05:37.929 --> 01:05:42.789
River in August of 1908. And in the aftermath

01:05:42.789 --> 01:05:45.730
of that flash flood, this African -American cowboy

01:05:45.730 --> 01:05:51.489
named Charles McJunkin is out riding fence for

01:05:51.489 --> 01:05:54.250
one of the local ranchers, seeing what he's going

01:05:54.250 --> 01:05:57.590
to have to repair. And as he's riding along,

01:05:57.769 --> 01:06:01.289
his horse suddenly pitches up and its hooves

01:06:01.289 --> 01:06:05.590
slide in the mud right to the edge of this freshly

01:06:05.590 --> 01:06:10.179
cut, about 30 -foot chasm in the slope. that

01:06:10.179 --> 01:06:12.920
he's riding. And when he leans out of his saddle

01:06:12.920 --> 01:06:17.960
and looks down into this cut, what he sees are

01:06:17.960 --> 01:06:21.760
bones of a gigantic size that he's never seen

01:06:21.760 --> 01:06:24.639
before. I mean, this is a guy who, he had been

01:06:24.639 --> 01:06:28.619
on the buffalo hunting planes back in the 1870s,

01:06:28.619 --> 01:06:30.780
so he had seen buffalo butchered. He knew what

01:06:30.780 --> 01:06:33.460
bones from big animals look like, but these were

01:06:33.460 --> 01:06:38.340
giant bones. And so this guy, McJunkin, started

01:06:38.340 --> 01:06:41.920
trying to called attention to the site. He never

01:06:41.920 --> 01:06:45.039
was able to do so and get any archaeologists

01:06:45.039 --> 01:06:48.360
out or paleontologists out to look at it. He

01:06:48.360 --> 01:06:52.159
dies in 1922, but about four years after his

01:06:52.159 --> 01:06:56.320
death, this museum curator from Denver, a guy

01:06:56.320 --> 01:06:58.900
named Jesse Figgins, comes down and brings a

01:06:58.900 --> 01:07:01.239
crew down. And what Figgins is interested in,

01:07:01.340 --> 01:07:04.340
he's sort of an amateur guy himself. He's just

01:07:04.340 --> 01:07:08.150
interested in some fancy big bones for his museum

01:07:08.150 --> 01:07:12.230
up in Denver. But his crew starts digging into

01:07:12.230 --> 01:07:17.489
this site, and they began uncovering these giant

01:07:17.489 --> 01:07:20.329
bison, what they're finding is a site of bison

01:07:20.329 --> 01:07:23.309
antiquus, these giant bison that became extinct

01:07:23.309 --> 01:07:25.889
about 10 ,000 years ago, the ones that the Folsom

01:07:25.889 --> 01:07:28.550
people had particularly specialized in hunting.

01:07:29.030 --> 01:07:33.349
And as they're excavating this site in the first

01:07:33.349 --> 01:07:37.179
summer, they come across just sort of lying in

01:07:37.179 --> 01:07:41.480
the debris a couple of points like they've never

01:07:41.480 --> 01:07:45.239
seen before, which are three or four inches long

01:07:45.239 --> 01:07:49.260
and have these thin flutes on either side at

01:07:49.260 --> 01:07:53.099
the base. There's one right there. Yeah, there's

01:07:53.099 --> 01:07:58.400
one right there, the Folsom Point. So what Figgins'

01:07:58.500 --> 01:08:05.690
guys realize is that the hurdle, for convincing

01:08:05.690 --> 01:08:07.809
the world, the scientific hurdle for convincing

01:08:07.809 --> 01:08:11.309
the world that humans had been present in America.

01:08:11.489 --> 01:08:14.449
At the time, everybody thought Indians had only

01:08:14.449 --> 01:08:16.010
been in America for maybe a couple of thousand

01:08:16.010 --> 01:08:20.050
years before Europeans got here. But the hurdle

01:08:20.050 --> 01:08:24.670
was finding an extinct animal out of the Pleistocene.

01:08:26.579 --> 01:08:30.880
indicating that it had been killed by human technology

01:08:30.880 --> 01:08:35.779
while the animal was still alive. And the next

01:08:35.779 --> 01:08:38.739
summer, I mean, it happened to be a summer when

01:08:38.739 --> 01:08:40.979
the Smithsonian had just published an article

01:08:40.979 --> 01:08:44.739
by some fancy archaeologist saying, you know,

01:08:44.800 --> 01:08:48.500
North America has no antiquity in its history.

01:08:48.739 --> 01:08:51.260
Indians have only been here for at most 2 ,000

01:08:51.260 --> 01:08:54.079
years, probably less than that. And within about

01:08:54.079 --> 01:08:58.670
two months of that article, coming out, this

01:08:58.670 --> 01:09:03.609
crew finds the scapula of one of these bison

01:09:03.609 --> 01:09:06.130
they're excavating with one of these Clovis points

01:09:06.130 --> 01:09:08.770
embedded three quarters of the way into the bone.

01:09:09.350 --> 01:09:13.130
And at that point, they stop digging. They call

01:09:13.130 --> 01:09:16.210
on all the famous archaeologists in the United

01:09:16.210 --> 01:09:19.630
States. A guy named Alfred Kidder was the most

01:09:19.630 --> 01:09:21.369
famous archaeologist in America at the time,

01:09:21.390 --> 01:09:24.909
and he comes, takes a look, and proclaims this

01:09:24.909 --> 01:09:29.229
one of the greatest discoveries in American history.

01:09:29.710 --> 01:09:32.550
So they don't have radiocarbon dating yet, and

01:09:32.550 --> 01:09:34.810
nobody knows how old this is. All they know is

01:09:34.810 --> 01:09:38.090
that that particular bison species has been extinct

01:09:38.090 --> 01:09:43.050
for quite a while. Figgins says this site is

01:09:43.050 --> 01:09:47.310
400 ,000 years old. But when we finally do get

01:09:47.310 --> 01:09:50.430
radiocarbon dating about two decades later, it

01:09:50.430 --> 01:09:54.069
looks as if a band of Folsom hunters using adattles,

01:09:54.170 --> 01:10:01.329
using spear throwers, had killed 32 bison antiquus

01:10:01.329 --> 01:10:05.369
in what had once been a box canyon on the southern

01:10:05.369 --> 01:10:11.229
plains 12 ,450 years ago. And so suddenly...

01:10:11.949 --> 01:10:14.609
That discovery in the early 20th century, in

01:10:14.609 --> 01:10:18.510
the 1920s, gives America a kind of an antiquity

01:10:18.510 --> 01:10:21.529
that it had never had before. And within a decade,

01:10:21.609 --> 01:10:25.550
we discover the Clovis site, which is out on

01:10:25.550 --> 01:10:28.890
the Texas -New Mexico border. And the Clovis

01:10:28.890 --> 01:10:31.409
site is of these elephant hunters who are actually

01:10:31.409 --> 01:10:35.649
even older than the Folsom people. And this pushes

01:10:35.649 --> 01:10:38.510
when they're finally radiocarbon dated, that

01:10:38.510 --> 01:10:43.470
site pushes the dates back to the 13 ,000 year

01:10:43.470 --> 01:10:47.949
range. So what these discoveries in the 20s and

01:10:47.949 --> 01:10:50.989
30s are finally indicating that contrary to what

01:10:50.989 --> 01:10:53.770
most Americans of the 20th century think, America

01:10:53.770 --> 01:10:56.890
is a brand new place. History dates to the time

01:10:56.890 --> 01:11:02.890
Europeans got here in the 1600s. You know, Indian

01:11:02.890 --> 01:11:04.430
people have only been here a couple thousand

01:11:04.430 --> 01:11:07.270
years. Suddenly we realize America is this really

01:11:07.270 --> 01:11:12.770
vastly old place. And that sets up the subsequent

01:11:12.770 --> 01:11:16.130
story that I mean, I try to what I try to do.

01:11:16.210 --> 01:11:17.989
I mean, I was an English major as an undergraduate,

01:11:17.989 --> 01:11:21.010
so I'm kind of drawn to narrative storytelling,

01:11:21.409 --> 01:11:24.029
telling a lot of stories. And when you write

01:11:24.029 --> 01:11:27.170
a book with. about 66 million years of history,

01:11:27.229 --> 01:11:29.449
obviously had a lot of opportunity to tell stories

01:11:29.449 --> 01:11:31.170
because there are a lot of stories in a span

01:11:31.170 --> 01:11:36.109
of time like that. When you say that the Clovis

01:11:36.109 --> 01:11:38.689
points and the Folsom points with the fluted

01:11:38.689 --> 01:11:42.050
part of it so you could attach a stick to it,

01:11:42.130 --> 01:11:45.909
there's no people in Europe that figured this

01:11:45.909 --> 01:11:50.329
out? No, this was an American invention. What

01:11:50.329 --> 01:11:53.310
did they use in Europe? They were just using...

01:11:54.130 --> 01:11:58.449
Blade points sometimes with the ears at the bottom.

01:11:59.050 --> 01:12:02.069
The ears. Yeah, the ears. So you have a triangular

01:12:02.069 --> 01:12:05.289
point and it has two ears coming out and you

01:12:05.289 --> 01:12:09.050
attach, you use the ears as a place to attach

01:12:09.050 --> 01:12:13.109
the rawhide. And so this was metal? No, not metal.

01:12:13.229 --> 01:12:14.649
What were they using? Flint. They were using

01:12:14.649 --> 01:12:17.750
flint as well. So when they were making these

01:12:17.750 --> 01:12:19.430
points, they were just doing it in a different

01:12:19.430 --> 01:12:21.170
way. They were doing it in a different way. So

01:12:21.170 --> 01:12:22.850
they'd figured out the same sort of technology,

01:12:23.010 --> 01:12:25.569
kind of, attaching a stick, but they had different

01:12:25.569 --> 01:12:28.270
methods that seemed to just be human ingenuity.

01:12:28.390 --> 01:12:31.670
Yeah. When did they figure that out? Well, they

01:12:31.670 --> 01:12:34.289
certainly figured it out by what's called the

01:12:34.289 --> 01:12:37.590
Solutrean culture, which is a sort of a contemporary

01:12:37.590 --> 01:12:41.710
with Clovis. They're hunting big animals. They're

01:12:41.710 --> 01:12:44.310
hunting mammoths and rhinos and things like that

01:12:44.310 --> 01:12:48.890
in Europe. So that's in the 16 ,000, 17 ,000

01:12:48.890 --> 01:12:54.199
year range. Yeah. So this this fluted idea is

01:12:54.199 --> 01:12:58.180
a distinctive North American invention. Is there

01:12:58.180 --> 01:13:00.539
any difference in the quality of the type of

01:13:00.539 --> 01:13:02.840
the stone that was accessible to people in North

01:13:02.840 --> 01:13:06.279
America versus Europe? Well, I mean, both places

01:13:06.279 --> 01:13:09.760
had outcrops of flint and flint and obsidian

01:13:09.760 --> 01:13:12.560
were the two two types of stone you went for.

01:13:12.760 --> 01:13:19.750
But North America had some really great. flint

01:13:19.750 --> 01:13:24.550
and obsidian outcrops and one of the things that's

01:13:24.550 --> 01:13:27.449
really pretty fascinating about these Clovis

01:13:27.449 --> 01:13:30.510
people about Clovisia the beautiful and it's

01:13:30.510 --> 01:13:33.050
and they were all over America by the way there

01:13:33.050 --> 01:13:35.930
are more of their points discovered in the southeast

01:13:35.930 --> 01:13:40.350
and in New England than there are in many places

01:13:40.350 --> 01:13:43.689
in the west so this is not just a western phenomenon

01:13:43.689 --> 01:13:46.029
this just happens to be where we discovered them

01:13:46.029 --> 01:13:50.180
first But they were all over America. But they

01:13:50.180 --> 01:13:54.180
went for they seem to be making pilgrimages to

01:13:54.180 --> 01:13:57.840
four or five locations that had the absolute

01:13:57.840 --> 01:14:02.680
best, sharpest, hardest flint in America. And

01:14:02.680 --> 01:14:05.340
they would go back to those spots again and again

01:14:05.340 --> 01:14:08.039
and again. Kind of had a in their minds, a mental

01:14:08.039 --> 01:14:11.840
geography of where these locations were. Wow.

01:14:12.140 --> 01:14:14.810
Yeah. So they one of the. great things about

01:14:14.810 --> 01:14:18.149
the whole Clovis period, to a little lesser extent

01:14:18.149 --> 01:14:23.350
Folsom, is that there are these spectacular blades

01:14:23.350 --> 01:14:26.630
that they did. And sometimes they would do blades

01:14:26.630 --> 01:14:29.630
that were like eight or nine or 10 inches long.

01:14:30.189 --> 01:14:33.489
And there are some of them, caches of some of

01:14:33.489 --> 01:14:35.869
these blades of that size that indicate they

01:14:35.869 --> 01:14:38.930
were never used. They basically were kind of

01:14:38.930 --> 01:14:42.649
ceremonial objects. I mean, I kind of argue in

01:14:42.649 --> 01:14:45.100
the book, I mean, it's pretty much speculation

01:14:45.100 --> 01:14:48.279
because we don't really know a huge amount about

01:14:48.279 --> 01:14:51.939
these people. But one of the things I I argue

01:14:51.939 --> 01:14:55.300
is that they unlike in Western Europe, they didn't

01:14:55.300 --> 01:14:59.399
leave us grand cave art of these animals that

01:14:59.399 --> 01:15:04.520
they were hunting. It's almost as if their tools

01:15:04.520 --> 01:15:10.520
were their art and it was their tools kind of

01:15:10.520 --> 01:15:18.520
represented. This ultimate technology, the sublime

01:15:18.520 --> 01:15:23.439
technology that they would actually create in

01:15:23.439 --> 01:15:26.739
some form in blaze that they never really used

01:15:26.739 --> 01:15:30.300
to hunt just to have a ceremonial objects. Wow.

01:15:30.840 --> 01:15:35.439
So it's a I mean, it's a really fascinating story.

01:15:35.500 --> 01:15:37.199
I mean, we've known about the Clovis people,

01:15:37.319 --> 01:15:40.310
obviously, for a long time. We've been trying

01:15:40.310 --> 01:15:42.350
to figure out, of course, other explanations

01:15:42.350 --> 01:15:44.829
for what happened to the animals of the Pleistocene

01:15:44.829 --> 01:15:47.810
because we lost a lot of them during the Pleistocene.

01:15:47.850 --> 01:15:51.550
And people have proposed all sorts of other theories.

01:15:52.229 --> 01:15:55.029
But one of the strange things about this story,

01:15:55.149 --> 01:15:57.630
I mean, I tried to do a book that's based on

01:15:57.630 --> 01:15:59.909
all the latest science I could find and all the

01:15:59.909 --> 01:16:04.380
best. people who are doing archaeology and paleontology

01:16:04.380 --> 01:16:06.939
and genomic science. I mean, that's one of the

01:16:06.939 --> 01:16:10.239
possibilities these days. We have genomic science

01:16:10.239 --> 01:16:12.640
that's able to tell us things now that we've

01:16:12.640 --> 01:16:15.619
never known, even over the last 15 or 20 years.

01:16:16.460 --> 01:16:19.939
And one of the fascinating things about it is

01:16:19.939 --> 01:16:25.020
that it's almost like climate change. We've tried

01:16:25.020 --> 01:16:27.180
to come up with every other possible explanation

01:16:27.180 --> 01:16:31.329
to let ourselves off the hook. for climate change.

01:16:31.869 --> 01:16:35.810
But it almost looks like this is an old attribute

01:16:35.810 --> 01:16:40.409
of human self -interest and human nature. We

01:16:40.409 --> 01:16:44.149
tend to not want to blame ourselves for very

01:16:44.149 --> 01:16:46.670
much at all. We tend to look for other excuses

01:16:46.670 --> 01:16:49.770
for things. And none of the other suggestions

01:16:49.770 --> 01:16:54.630
about what might have happened, other than humans

01:16:54.630 --> 01:16:57.329
probably entered a continent with animals that

01:16:57.329 --> 01:17:01.770
were completely naive about us. And in the time

01:17:01.770 --> 01:17:04.630
that it took them to smarten up and confront

01:17:04.630 --> 01:17:08.430
us, we were able to scatter them enough that

01:17:08.430 --> 01:17:12.289
what we kind of think now is that we may have.

01:17:13.000 --> 01:17:16.119
gotten like populations of mammoths so separated

01:17:16.119 --> 01:17:18.460
from one another that they couldn't exchange

01:17:18.460 --> 01:17:21.979
their genes. And they may have succumbed to,

01:17:22.159 --> 01:17:24.640
I don't know if you've probably heard of what

01:17:24.640 --> 01:17:26.619
happened to the mammoths on Wrangell Island.

01:17:26.720 --> 01:17:28.680
There was a group of mammoths out on an island

01:17:28.680 --> 01:17:35.510
in the sea off the coast of Alaska. that were

01:17:35.510 --> 01:17:38.989
caught by rising waters in the Bering Sea and

01:17:38.989 --> 01:17:42.649
were isolated and survived down to about 4 ,000

01:17:42.649 --> 01:17:46.130
years ago. But even though humans never found

01:17:46.130 --> 01:17:49.310
them, even though the climate changed, the animals

01:17:49.310 --> 01:17:52.130
were fine until they finally reached a point

01:17:52.130 --> 01:17:55.689
where they had a small enough genetic diversity

01:17:55.689 --> 01:17:58.569
that as they interbred with one another over

01:17:58.569 --> 01:18:02.770
and over again, mistakes began to build into

01:18:02.770 --> 01:18:06.470
their genome. to the point where they finally

01:18:06.470 --> 01:18:10.649
became unable to reproduce. And 4 ,000 years

01:18:10.649 --> 01:18:13.970
ago, without any other effect being present,

01:18:14.109 --> 01:18:18.329
they died out. Do we have biological remains

01:18:18.329 --> 01:18:22.729
or skeletal remains of Clovis people and people

01:18:22.729 --> 01:18:28.090
from that time period? Yeah, we do. There's actually

01:18:28.090 --> 01:18:36.319
a Clovis burial site in Montana. of two infants,

01:18:36.699 --> 01:18:40.600
a young child and an infant. And they were buried

01:18:40.600 --> 01:18:45.960
with ceremonial Clovis points, several inches

01:18:45.960 --> 01:18:50.000
long, covered in sacred, what we think was sacred

01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:55.819
red ochre. And that particular site in 2014,

01:18:56.140 --> 01:19:00.399
the local native people in Montana is near Bozeman.

01:19:01.100 --> 01:19:04.460
And the local native people and archaeologists

01:19:04.460 --> 01:19:08.760
went out to the Shields River, the nearby Shields

01:19:08.760 --> 01:19:14.220
River, and after studying these young skeletons,

01:19:14.539 --> 01:19:18.199
they reburied them in the Shields River. So they

01:19:18.199 --> 01:19:22.010
returned them to the earth in 2014. So they reburied

01:19:22.010 --> 01:19:23.550
them in the same site where they found them?

01:19:23.609 --> 01:19:26.069
Near the same site. Yeah, they were found on

01:19:26.069 --> 01:19:28.930
the banks of the Shields River. Why now? That's

01:19:28.930 --> 01:19:30.649
interesting that they chose to do that. Because

01:19:30.649 --> 01:19:33.109
I could understand why they would think to respect

01:19:33.109 --> 01:19:35.470
the bodies and bury them, but I could also understand,

01:19:35.529 --> 01:19:38.689
like, for science. Like, what an incredible discovery.

01:19:39.189 --> 01:19:43.369
Yeah, well, they did. Do science on them. Was

01:19:43.369 --> 01:19:46.170
there genetic material? There was not. No physical

01:19:46.170 --> 01:19:48.829
tissue? No. No marrow or anything? Not that I'm

01:19:48.829 --> 01:19:51.090
aware, you know, and I could be wrong about that,

01:19:51.149 --> 01:19:54.449
but I don't think so. Do they have an understanding

01:19:54.449 --> 01:19:57.449
of where these people might have come from originally?

01:19:58.470 --> 01:20:01.409
They seem to have come, yeah, and again, because

01:20:01.409 --> 01:20:06.289
we do have some sites. I mean, the Clovis people

01:20:06.289 --> 01:20:08.109
ended up all the way down into South America.

01:20:08.729 --> 01:20:12.329
And we do have genomic evidence from some of

01:20:12.329 --> 01:20:15.670
the sites that have preserved enough DNA to make

01:20:15.670 --> 01:20:20.010
educated guesses about this, that their origin

01:20:20.010 --> 01:20:24.449
was probably the Lake Baikal region in Siberia,

01:20:24.449 --> 01:20:28.069
and that they probably, when the ice sheets opened,

01:20:28.130 --> 01:20:30.949
they probably came down in two different migrations.

01:20:31.850 --> 01:20:35.810
a kind of a northern Native American and a southern

01:20:35.810 --> 01:20:38.750
Native American migration, they're often called,

01:20:38.890 --> 01:20:42.270
even though both groups ended up with genetic

01:20:42.270 --> 01:20:46.090
markers as far south as Colombia and Brazil and

01:20:46.090 --> 01:20:49.789
places like that. But, yeah, so we've got enough

01:20:49.789 --> 01:20:53.109
genetic material that we are able to do that

01:20:53.109 --> 01:20:55.649
kind of thing. I don't think that burial site

01:20:55.649 --> 01:20:58.689
in Montana yielded any, but there were other

01:20:58.689 --> 01:21:02.060
sites that did. When did archery? make its way

01:21:02.060 --> 01:21:04.979
to North America. Well, that was the next great,

01:21:05.039 --> 01:21:08.699
obviously the next great innovation. And the

01:21:08.699 --> 01:21:11.100
reason these innovations were important, by the

01:21:11.100 --> 01:21:14.399
way, and to answer your question, it was about

01:21:14.399 --> 01:21:16.960
2 ,000 years ago, and it seemed to come from...

01:21:17.430 --> 01:21:20.170
The late arrival of Inuit people, the ancestors

01:21:20.170 --> 01:21:24.050
of folks who are sometimes called Eskimo, the

01:21:24.050 --> 01:21:27.310
Inuit people seemed to either adapt or bring

01:21:27.310 --> 01:21:29.930
archery with them when they got to North America.

01:21:30.010 --> 01:21:33.329
And the idea for that then diffused, spread through

01:21:33.329 --> 01:21:37.130
all of North America within about 500 or 600

01:21:37.130 --> 01:21:40.529
years. So we know that archery absolutely existed

01:21:40.529 --> 01:21:43.529
2 ,000 years ago in Africa and in some other

01:21:43.529 --> 01:21:47.479
places. When did archery first... When did they

01:21:47.479 --> 01:21:50.260
believe archery was first invented? Let's find

01:21:50.260 --> 01:21:53.399
that out. That's interesting. Yeah. So just 2

01:21:53.399 --> 01:21:56.720
,000 years of archery, which is incredible. You

01:21:56.720 --> 01:21:59.579
know, and what it meant was each one of these

01:21:59.579 --> 01:22:03.500
developments, particularly add addles and archery

01:22:03.500 --> 01:22:08.840
and bows, meant that you didn't have to do what

01:22:08.840 --> 01:22:14.000
Neanderthals had done, which is engage in sort

01:22:14.000 --> 01:22:19.750
of hand -to -hand. with large, strong, and sometimes

01:22:19.750 --> 01:22:24.449
really resilient creatures like wild horses or

01:22:24.449 --> 01:22:27.689
mammoths at close range. I mean, some of these

01:22:27.689 --> 01:22:31.829
Neanderthal sites, for example, I mean, the guys

01:22:31.829 --> 01:22:37.369
were just beaten to hell, man. I mean, they had

01:22:37.369 --> 01:22:40.970
their cheeks caved in. They had broken, I mean,

01:22:41.029 --> 01:22:45.630
thigh bones broken. They had amputated arms,

01:22:45.729 --> 01:22:50.609
all kinds of really severe injuries from taking

01:22:50.609 --> 01:22:54.189
on animals. But Neanderthals, one of the things

01:22:54.189 --> 01:22:57.770
we know from nitrogen isotope studies of their

01:22:57.770 --> 01:23:01.229
bones is Neanderthals were more carnivorous than

01:23:01.229 --> 01:23:04.149
wolves were. I mean, they were eating a higher

01:23:04.149 --> 01:23:08.689
percentage of meat diet than even gray wolves

01:23:08.689 --> 01:23:12.229
in Europe were. So each one of these kind of

01:23:12.229 --> 01:23:15.609
innovations, addles, of course, by extending

01:23:15.609 --> 01:23:18.569
the human arm, you're able to stand back 30,

01:23:18.689 --> 01:23:22.130
40 yards from an animal and throw a dart and

01:23:22.130 --> 01:23:25.130
kill it. With bows, you're able to get back even

01:23:25.130 --> 01:23:28.689
farther. I mean, they rescue you from sort of

01:23:28.689 --> 01:23:31.109
doing hand -to -hand combat with an animal that

01:23:31.109 --> 01:23:34.189
can easily kill you or crush you. What were Neanderthals

01:23:34.189 --> 01:23:36.640
using for weapons? They were primarily using

01:23:36.640 --> 01:23:39.659
wooden spears. They didn't have flint points.

01:23:39.800 --> 01:23:44.000
They were using spears with points that had been

01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:48.600
hardened in fires. Wow. The oldest arrow is here,

01:23:48.800 --> 01:23:52.619
like 70 ,000. 72 ,000 years ago. The oldest bow

01:23:52.619 --> 01:23:54.920
is only like 8 ,000, so they didn't find a bow.

01:23:55.479 --> 01:24:01.500
Wow. That's insane. 72 ,000 to 60 ,000 years

01:24:01.500 --> 01:24:04.159
ago. Yeah. Some of which poisons may have been

01:24:04.159 --> 01:24:08.890
used. Likely arrowheads were reported in 2020

01:24:08.890 --> 01:24:13.949
by Faheen Cave in Sri Lanka, dated to 48 ,000

01:24:13.949 --> 01:24:17.829
years ago. Wow. Bow and arrow hunting in Sri

01:24:17.829 --> 01:24:20.449
Lankan site likely focused on monkeys and smaller

01:24:20.449 --> 01:24:23.069
animals such as squirrels. Remains of these creatures

01:24:23.069 --> 01:24:25.649
have found the same sediment as the bone points.

01:24:25.890 --> 01:24:30.609
Oh, they used bone points. Yeah. In 2022, arrowheads

01:24:30.609 --> 01:24:33.119
were reported from the Grot. How do you say that?

01:24:33.180 --> 01:24:37.399
Mandarin cave in France dating to around 54 ,000

01:24:37.399 --> 01:24:41.739
years ago. Wow. Yeah, so you can get an idea

01:24:41.739 --> 01:24:45.399
of, and this is important to this whole story,

01:24:45.600 --> 01:24:48.539
of the isolation of North America once people

01:24:48.539 --> 01:24:53.640
get there. And the glacial maximum recedes and

01:24:53.640 --> 01:24:57.220
the climate begins to warm enough to break apart

01:24:57.220 --> 01:25:01.159
the corridor that links Asia and North America.

01:25:02.079 --> 01:25:05.380
Then North America is completely isolated, except

01:25:05.380 --> 01:25:08.140
for the South American connection through Panama,

01:25:08.300 --> 01:25:11.279
is completely isolated from the rest of the world.

01:25:11.380 --> 01:25:15.260
It's isolated not only from innovations like

01:25:15.260 --> 01:25:21.399
the use of bows and the old world, but, and this

01:25:21.399 --> 01:25:23.220
becomes, of course, a major part of the story

01:25:23.220 --> 01:25:26.779
when Europeans arrive, with domesticated animals.

01:25:27.390 --> 01:25:30.689
from which they, for 8 ,000 or 9 ,000 or 10 ,000

01:25:30.689 --> 01:25:34.630
years, have been contracting spillover diseases,

01:25:35.210 --> 01:25:38.750
creating a European population that, of course,

01:25:38.810 --> 01:25:42.930
has now been winnowed by things like measles

01:25:42.930 --> 01:25:47.569
and smallpox and plague and all kinds of diseases

01:25:47.569 --> 01:25:51.090
that had spread across Eurasia but never got

01:25:51.090 --> 01:25:55.720
to isolated North and South America. When Europeans

01:25:55.720 --> 01:26:00.399
arrive with domesticated animals and animal diseases,

01:26:00.659 --> 01:26:05.880
they confront an American population of native

01:26:05.880 --> 01:26:08.140
people who have never been exposed to any of

01:26:08.140 --> 01:26:12.739
them. And that results in one of the great, possibly

01:26:12.739 --> 01:26:15.399
the greatest catastrophe in human history. It's

01:26:15.399 --> 01:26:18.039
the term that people have been using these days

01:26:18.039 --> 01:26:22.199
is the great dying. I mean, we think. By the

01:26:22.199 --> 01:26:24.880
time Europeans got here, and I don't want to,

01:26:24.880 --> 01:26:27.319
by the way, admit the fact I do a whole chapter

01:26:27.319 --> 01:26:30.920
called Ravens and Coyotes America that is about

01:26:30.920 --> 01:26:34.680
the 10 ,000 years after the Pleistocene. Because

01:26:34.680 --> 01:26:39.239
native people are here for 10 ,000 years. And

01:26:39.239 --> 01:26:42.140
managed to preserve almost all the biological

01:26:42.140 --> 01:26:44.960
diversity, at least what's left after the Pleistocene,

01:26:44.960 --> 01:26:47.939
for 10 ,000 years. There's only one extinction

01:26:47.939 --> 01:26:51.279
that I was able to find during that time. A flightless

01:26:51.279 --> 01:26:54.840
sea duck became extinct in that 10 ,000 year

01:26:54.840 --> 01:26:57.939
period. I mean, they managed to preserve almost

01:26:57.939 --> 01:27:00.640
all of North America's biodiversity across that

01:27:00.640 --> 01:27:04.899
time span. And then Europeans arrive with all

01:27:04.899 --> 01:27:07.899
these old world diseases. And in a blink of an

01:27:07.899 --> 01:27:13.039
eye, what had at one point been, and to be sure,

01:27:13.079 --> 01:27:15.239
most of this population is in South America,

01:27:15.420 --> 01:27:20.560
56 million people in the two Americas, something

01:27:20.560 --> 01:27:24.239
like 80 to 85 percent of that population is taken

01:27:24.239 --> 01:27:27.369
out. And a few decades by old world diseases.

01:27:27.750 --> 01:27:34.270
Wow. Yeah, it's, as I said, it may be the greatest

01:27:34.270 --> 01:27:36.609
human catastrophe in history. That's the speculation

01:27:36.609 --> 01:27:39.869
for what happened to the Mayans and the Aztecs

01:27:39.869 --> 01:27:42.810
and a lot of these amazing structures that they're

01:27:42.810 --> 01:27:45.630
now finding in the Amazon jungle. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

01:27:45.710 --> 01:27:47.550
they were taking, I mean, you know, some of these

01:27:47.550 --> 01:27:50.470
civilizations, like, you know, in North America,

01:27:50.510 --> 01:27:55.670
we had the great Chacoan civilization. That was

01:27:55.670 --> 01:28:02.810
our version of the Mayan or Aztec or Toltec groups

01:28:02.810 --> 01:28:05.970
down in Central America. I mean, we had this

01:28:05.970 --> 01:28:08.750
great civilization in the American Southwest

01:28:08.750 --> 01:28:12.590
centered around what are today the Chaco and

01:28:12.590 --> 01:28:16.720
National Park ruins. with a civilization that

01:28:16.720 --> 01:28:19.579
spread over probably 50 ,000 square miles and

01:28:19.579 --> 01:28:23.319
included hundreds of small hamlets and a central

01:28:23.319 --> 01:28:27.119
city, Chaco, that was sort of like the Vatican.

01:28:27.460 --> 01:28:29.720
I mean, there were priests who lived there most

01:28:29.720 --> 01:28:33.300
of the year, priests who, through the history

01:28:33.300 --> 01:28:36.720
of Chaco, inherited generation after generation

01:28:36.720 --> 01:28:41.149
their position. I mean, there's a... fascinating

01:28:41.149 --> 01:28:46.609
archaeological site at Chaco that shows 14 burials

01:28:46.609 --> 01:28:52.989
in one room. Nine of those burials span the entire

01:28:52.989 --> 01:28:57.550
history, the 300 -year history of Chaco. Every

01:28:57.550 --> 01:29:02.229
one of those nine is related to one another through

01:29:02.229 --> 01:29:08.189
a female line, the mitochondrial line, and each

01:29:08.189 --> 01:29:12.319
of the nine present from the start of Chaco to

01:29:12.319 --> 01:29:15.319
the end of it, from about 900 to about 1200,

01:29:15.619 --> 01:29:23.220
has a genetic abnormality, a sixth toe on one

01:29:23.220 --> 01:29:27.060
foot. Whoa. So these were the people who were

01:29:27.060 --> 01:29:30.800
regarded as the priests of the place. And so

01:29:30.800 --> 01:29:34.039
a couple of times a year, usually at the solstices,

01:29:34.119 --> 01:29:36.960
they would have these big celebrations and 40

01:29:36.960 --> 01:29:41.439
,000 people would flock into. Chaco and observe

01:29:41.439 --> 01:29:44.220
the solstices and do ceremonies and, you know,

01:29:44.239 --> 01:29:46.319
no doubt engage in all sorts of epic nightlife,

01:29:46.399 --> 01:29:52.699
too. But over time, over 300 years of time, drought

01:29:52.699 --> 01:29:57.840
and a local overuse of resources. And also, I

01:29:57.840 --> 01:30:00.159
mean, this is kind of the famous story of Chaco.

01:30:01.140 --> 01:30:04.680
What really sort of happened to Chaco is that

01:30:04.680 --> 01:30:08.199
the priests were promising all of their followers.

01:30:09.100 --> 01:30:11.260
that they could make it rain in the desert because

01:30:11.260 --> 01:30:14.300
this was an agricultural, agriculture had finally

01:30:14.300 --> 01:30:17.899
come to North America. And we reached a point

01:30:17.899 --> 01:30:21.920
when droughts began to strike and the priests

01:30:21.920 --> 01:30:26.600
couldn't make it rain, at which point all their

01:30:26.600 --> 01:30:30.279
followers basically abandoned their religion.

01:30:30.840 --> 01:30:33.319
And the archaeologists who have gone in have

01:30:33.319 --> 01:30:35.979
sort of pointed out that, so it kind of looks

01:30:35.979 --> 01:30:42.770
as if A disparity in lifestyle must have contributed

01:30:42.770 --> 01:30:47.350
because the priests and the priestly class, they

01:30:47.350 --> 01:30:49.949
were the ones that were getting to eat all the

01:30:49.949 --> 01:30:53.470
protein from the deer and the antelope. As a

01:30:53.470 --> 01:30:56.069
result, they were their skeletons are three or

01:30:56.069 --> 01:31:00.449
four inches taller than all the peasants. They

01:31:00.449 --> 01:31:05.060
lived longer. Their children. got past the age

01:31:05.060 --> 01:31:09.399
of five much more easily. And so there is speculation

01:31:09.399 --> 01:31:14.800
about Chaco that the disparity in wealth followed

01:31:14.800 --> 01:31:20.220
by the inability of the priests to deliver and

01:31:20.220 --> 01:31:23.079
make it rain is what caused this civilization

01:31:23.079 --> 01:31:25.979
to collapse when the peasant class basically

01:31:25.979 --> 01:31:29.640
rose up and overthrew it. Wow. That's so fascinating

01:31:29.640 --> 01:31:31.760
because that seems like that just happens with

01:31:31.760 --> 01:31:34.680
humans. When humans get into a position of power,

01:31:34.840 --> 01:31:37.180
they want to maintain it and tighten up the grips

01:31:37.180 --> 01:31:39.859
on everybody else. They want rules for them,

01:31:39.859 --> 01:31:42.300
but not for everyone else. They want to have

01:31:42.300 --> 01:31:45.180
different privileges. We're dealing with this

01:31:45.180 --> 01:31:47.340
like literally right now. Well, sure. I mean,

01:31:47.359 --> 01:31:49.479
you know, it shouldn't surprise us, I guess.

01:31:49.560 --> 01:31:51.420
It shouldn't surprise us. Human nature has been

01:31:51.420 --> 01:31:53.939
the same. Yeah. It's probably been the same for

01:31:53.939 --> 01:31:55.840
three million years. But it's just so fascinating

01:31:55.840 --> 01:31:58.289
when you see it. manifesting in this ancient

01:31:58.289 --> 01:32:00.670
culture and the people wise up and go, you can't

01:32:00.670 --> 01:32:02.810
make it rain. Yeah. And then they eventually

01:32:02.810 --> 01:32:05.489
get sick of giving these people all their deer.

01:32:05.750 --> 01:32:09.250
Yeah. Are there images of this particular site

01:32:09.250 --> 01:32:11.250
that Jamie could find? We could see what it looks

01:32:11.250 --> 01:32:15.810
like? Yeah. If you just punch up Chaco Canyon

01:32:15.810 --> 01:32:20.409
Historic National Park, you'll find the major

01:32:20.409 --> 01:32:22.529
site. And I've got, of course, photographs of

01:32:22.529 --> 01:32:24.670
all this in the book. But the major site is called

01:32:24.670 --> 01:32:29.439
Pueblo Benito. B -O -N -I -T -O. And so how long

01:32:29.439 --> 01:32:32.039
did their civilization thrive for? For about

01:32:32.039 --> 01:32:36.439
300 years. Just like us. Yeah, just like us.

01:32:38.000 --> 01:32:41.380
It's a cycle. With a disparity of wealth that

01:32:41.380 --> 01:32:45.659
produced. Unless you have authoritarian dictatorship.

01:32:46.000 --> 01:32:47.859
Yeah, here you go. You can get people to do whatever

01:32:47.859 --> 01:32:49.159
the fuck you want and you keep things going.

01:32:49.439 --> 01:32:52.079
So that's Pueblo Benito. And so you'll notice

01:32:52.079 --> 01:32:54.800
this. The caption there, did women control the

01:32:54.800 --> 01:32:57.359
bloodline, which speaks to what I was just telling

01:32:57.359 --> 01:33:00.659
you a minute ago. Out of those burials in this

01:33:00.659 --> 01:33:07.180
central room in this structure, they all, nine

01:33:07.180 --> 01:33:10.699
of the 14 buried there were all related to a

01:33:10.699 --> 01:33:14.319
single woman who was at Chaco at the founding

01:33:14.319 --> 01:33:18.979
of this civilization. Now, is there an artist's

01:33:18.979 --> 01:33:21.439
rendering or representation of what it must have?

01:33:21.560 --> 01:33:23.739
Look at that. That looks incredible. Yeah, there

01:33:23.739 --> 01:33:26.260
is. The National Park Service, I know, has done

01:33:26.260 --> 01:33:28.859
one on some of their brochures of what it looked

01:33:28.859 --> 01:33:31.140
like originally. See if you can find anything

01:33:31.140 --> 01:33:33.840
like that, Jamie, an artist's rendering of what

01:33:33.840 --> 01:33:41.180
it looked like. That's wild stuff. And so what

01:33:41.180 --> 01:33:45.949
years was this again? Basically 900 to... To

01:33:45.949 --> 01:33:51.909
1 ,200. Wow. Look at that. Yeah. That's incredible.

01:33:52.010 --> 01:33:57.029
They built 400 miles of roads, by the way. And

01:33:57.029 --> 01:34:01.069
they built their roads straight arrow across

01:34:01.069 --> 01:34:03.949
the landscape. I mean, they didn't swerve around

01:34:03.949 --> 01:34:07.590
mesas or buttes. So, yeah, this would have been

01:34:07.590 --> 01:34:10.850
what Pueblo Benito looked like in, as you see,

01:34:11.069 --> 01:34:13.229
AD 1100. I like how they have that one tree.

01:34:13.449 --> 01:34:20.500
Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. When they first settled

01:34:20.500 --> 01:34:24.279
the area, it was covered in a pinyon juniper

01:34:24.279 --> 01:34:30.319
vegetation. But almost all those trees disappeared

01:34:30.319 --> 01:34:34.699
over the life of Chaco because these people were

01:34:34.699 --> 01:34:37.640
farming the classic Mexican cultivar complex,

01:34:37.819 --> 01:34:40.420
corn, beans, and squash, all of which require

01:34:40.420 --> 01:34:46.359
fires to prepare. And so when you have a food

01:34:46.359 --> 01:34:50.220
dish that requires you to build a fire to prepare

01:34:50.220 --> 01:34:53.500
it and you're in an area with a limited resource

01:34:53.500 --> 01:34:59.380
of possible wood, over time, a civilization of

01:34:59.380 --> 01:35:02.399
that size almost completely obliterated all the

01:35:02.399 --> 01:35:06.270
surrounding vegetation. Oh, no. The stone axes.

01:35:06.590 --> 01:35:09.090
Yeah, sure. I mean, it's yet another example

01:35:09.090 --> 01:35:11.989
of human nature that's always been in place.

01:35:12.170 --> 01:35:16.510
And, you know, we tend to be so self -centered

01:35:16.510 --> 01:35:18.750
or living in our own heads that we think all

01:35:18.750 --> 01:35:21.569
these things, this just applies to us. Right.

01:35:21.670 --> 01:35:24.390
But these kind of things, living for status,

01:35:24.630 --> 01:35:29.109
you know, acting in a way that separates you

01:35:29.109 --> 01:35:32.489
from the lowly peasants of the world. I mean,

01:35:32.489 --> 01:35:36.130
this is ancient. We have always figured out ways

01:35:36.130 --> 01:35:39.310
to do it, ways to distinguish ourselves, and

01:35:39.310 --> 01:35:43.050
those kinds of things have often led to serious

01:35:43.050 --> 01:35:45.970
problems in human history. Yeah, it's just so

01:35:45.970 --> 01:35:48.750
fascinating to see that this has always been

01:35:48.750 --> 01:35:51.949
the case. People have always been very short

01:35:51.949 --> 01:35:54.449
-sighted in terms of allocation of resources

01:35:54.449 --> 01:35:57.710
and preservation of resources. We always have,

01:35:57.789 --> 01:35:59.989
and we have another instinct, too. We tend to,

01:36:00.109 --> 01:36:02.630
whenever things start growing short of things,

01:36:02.729 --> 01:36:06.590
we always blame somebody else. This is the classic

01:36:06.590 --> 01:36:09.750
way. Bad spirits. Yeah. Enemies. Yeah, enemies.

01:36:09.789 --> 01:36:12.289
Voodoo. Some other group. Right. Yeah. I mean,

01:36:12.350 --> 01:36:14.829
you know. Witchcraft. In subsequent European

01:36:14.829 --> 01:36:18.090
history, and so I will say what we've been talking

01:36:18.090 --> 01:36:20.489
about is primarily of the first three chapters

01:36:20.489 --> 01:36:24.289
of this book, and the last seven chapters, plus

01:36:24.289 --> 01:36:26.310
the epilogue, is all about the period from the

01:36:26.310 --> 01:36:28.729
time Europeans arrive up to the present, up to

01:36:28.729 --> 01:36:34.050
really last year. But, I mean, all these same

01:36:34.050 --> 01:36:40.529
things play out in the story. I mean, Europeans,

01:36:40.670 --> 01:36:45.289
unlike Native people, I mean, and I make an argument

01:36:45.289 --> 01:36:48.250
for why Native people, I think, preserve that

01:36:48.250 --> 01:36:51.689
biodiversity for so long. I mean, despite examples

01:36:51.689 --> 01:36:55.109
like Chaco, you still have virtually all the

01:36:55.109 --> 01:36:58.710
animals, all the birds, all the reptiles that

01:36:58.710 --> 01:37:01.510
had survived the Pleistocene 10 ,000 years of

01:37:01.510 --> 01:37:04.149
human occupation later. They're all still here

01:37:04.149 --> 01:37:07.210
when Europeans get here. And I think, I mean,

01:37:07.229 --> 01:37:10.140
I explain it several ways. one of which is the

01:37:10.140 --> 01:37:12.399
population of North America north of the Rio

01:37:12.399 --> 01:37:16.159
Grande River, never rises above 5 million. These

01:37:16.159 --> 01:37:18.659
people understand that you've got to keep your

01:37:18.659 --> 01:37:22.279
population in check or you will use up the world.

01:37:22.460 --> 01:37:26.239
And so they consciously do it. How do they consciously

01:37:26.239 --> 01:37:28.600
do that? Do we know? Well, they do it primarily

01:37:28.600 --> 01:37:33.020
by various techniques of holding birth rates

01:37:33.020 --> 01:37:36.460
down. And they one way of doing it is birth spacing.

01:37:36.640 --> 01:37:40.420
You nurse children, say, for till they're five

01:37:40.420 --> 01:37:43.640
or six years old. And as long as women are nursing,

01:37:43.859 --> 01:37:48.659
they don't go through another chance to get pregnant.

01:37:49.340 --> 01:37:53.420
So that spaces births out. And the other thing

01:37:53.420 --> 01:37:55.699
they do is, frankly, they engage in abortion.

01:37:55.859 --> 01:38:00.119
I mean, they very actively decide in some instances

01:38:00.119 --> 01:38:05.050
that we. We don't have the resources to support

01:38:05.050 --> 01:38:08.710
this infant. Do we know how they did that? Well,

01:38:08.789 --> 01:38:12.989
they did it by various herbal means. And they

01:38:12.989 --> 01:38:15.470
also sometimes engaged from, you know, this is

01:38:15.470 --> 01:38:18.550
pretty draconian, but they sometimes engaged

01:38:18.550 --> 01:38:24.470
in killing infants after they were born. Infanticide

01:38:24.470 --> 01:38:27.930
is, I mean, it wasn't hugely common. And I'll

01:38:27.930 --> 01:38:31.449
say this also about infanticide. After a woman

01:38:31.449 --> 01:38:36.569
would carry a baby to term and then have it killed,

01:38:36.789 --> 01:38:43.810
it created the impulse that probably helped lead

01:38:43.810 --> 01:38:48.029
to the development of agriculture. I mean, agriculture

01:38:48.029 --> 01:38:51.930
is the next great economy and innovation in the

01:38:51.930 --> 01:38:57.529
way humans live. And what it enables you to do.

01:38:58.140 --> 01:39:00.800
I mean, one of the things that seems to prompt

01:39:00.800 --> 01:39:05.739
it is that you've lowered the possible animal

01:39:05.739 --> 01:39:09.460
life around you to the degree that you can't

01:39:09.460 --> 01:39:12.479
really keep going as hunters and gatherers. So

01:39:12.479 --> 01:39:15.130
you have to come up with something else. And

01:39:15.130 --> 01:39:17.909
in North America, Native people do this several

01:39:17.909 --> 01:39:20.050
thousand years. They go to agriculture several

01:39:20.050 --> 01:39:22.470
thousand years later than Europe does. I mean,

01:39:22.529 --> 01:39:25.470
Europe has been continuously occupied for 55

01:39:25.470 --> 01:39:28.609
,000, 60 ,000 years. So they reach a point where

01:39:28.609 --> 01:39:31.029
the animal populations have been reduced earlier

01:39:31.029 --> 01:39:33.859
by 8 ,000 or 9 ,000 or 10 ,000 years ago. and

01:39:33.859 --> 01:39:36.380
have to go to agriculture and domestication.

01:39:36.479 --> 01:39:39.359
In North America, we don't really do it until

01:39:39.359 --> 01:39:42.239
about 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 years ago. And in what

01:39:42.239 --> 01:39:44.819
is now the United States, only really about 1

01:39:44.819 --> 01:39:48.279
,500, 2 ,000 years ago do you have the first

01:39:48.279 --> 01:39:52.279
evidence of going to agriculture. But people

01:39:52.279 --> 01:39:56.439
are anxious to come up with a new economy that

01:39:56.439 --> 01:39:59.239
doesn't require you to be so draconian about

01:39:59.239 --> 01:40:02.579
population suppression. So they just thought

01:40:02.579 --> 01:40:05.000
of any new baby as a threat to the food source?

01:40:05.279 --> 01:40:08.100
Well, some new babies, not everyone. Yeah, but

01:40:08.100 --> 01:40:10.399
some new babies. They just had a number. They

01:40:10.399 --> 01:40:12.100
had a number. They're very clear. I mean, they

01:40:12.100 --> 01:40:14.300
had really short feedback loops and they understood

01:40:14.300 --> 01:40:17.300
their local ecologies really well. And one of

01:40:17.300 --> 01:40:20.100
the things you knew is that you couldn't base

01:40:20.100 --> 01:40:23.380
your population on the best years you experienced.

01:40:23.720 --> 01:40:26.319
You had to base your population usually on the

01:40:26.319 --> 01:40:28.979
worst years, because if you went for the best

01:40:28.979 --> 01:40:32.380
years. Whenever the worst ones came along, you

01:40:32.380 --> 01:40:35.460
were going to end up really hit hard. Starving

01:40:35.460 --> 01:40:37.500
to death was a real possibility. A real possibility.

01:40:37.920 --> 01:40:41.680
So you're cautious and you base what you think

01:40:41.680 --> 01:40:44.180
the carrying capacity of your resource base is

01:40:44.180 --> 01:40:47.300
on the worst years you're going to face. And

01:40:47.300 --> 01:40:51.000
this is speculation? Is this educated guess?

01:40:51.260 --> 01:40:53.960
Like, how do we know this? Well, it's... Beyond

01:40:53.960 --> 01:40:56.420
speculation. I mean, we know this is a principle

01:40:56.420 --> 01:40:59.220
of sort of hunter -gatherer lifeways around the

01:40:59.220 --> 01:41:01.680
world, even still among some hunter -gatherers

01:41:01.680 --> 01:41:04.340
that exist today. They still employ those kind

01:41:04.340 --> 01:41:06.380
of techniques? They still employ those kind of

01:41:06.380 --> 01:41:10.579
techniques. But they're always looking for the

01:41:10.579 --> 01:41:16.319
opportunity to escape that. And for people in

01:41:16.319 --> 01:41:18.520
Europe 10 ,000 years ago and for people in North

01:41:18.520 --> 01:41:22.210
America, you know, between five and... 2 ,000

01:41:22.210 --> 01:41:26.130
years ago, the opportunity to escape it somewhat

01:41:26.130 --> 01:41:30.470
was agriculture because that produced, if you

01:41:30.470 --> 01:41:36.369
specialized in a few food crops, and by the way,

01:41:36.409 --> 01:41:39.729
one of the differences in agriculture in the

01:41:39.729 --> 01:41:41.630
Neolithic Revolution in the old world and the

01:41:41.630 --> 01:41:43.670
Americas is, in the old world, obviously, much

01:41:43.670 --> 01:41:46.630
of it depends on domesticating animals. The animals

01:41:46.630 --> 01:41:49.789
that are left after the end of the Pleistocene

01:41:49.789 --> 01:41:55.699
in Europe, horses, camels, goats, sheep, hogs,

01:41:55.699 --> 01:41:59.340
cows, wild oryx, are almost all domesticated.

01:42:00.260 --> 01:42:02.760
I mean, in some cases, in the case of wild horses,

01:42:02.800 --> 01:42:04.680
it's probably what saved them is that they got

01:42:04.680 --> 01:42:09.279
domesticated. In North America, though, there

01:42:09.279 --> 01:42:12.779
were almost no domestications. Wild turkeys were

01:42:12.779 --> 01:42:15.640
domesticated. Some groups domesticated ducks.

01:42:16.239 --> 01:42:19.939
But there weren't any. mammals. Nobody domesticated

01:42:19.939 --> 01:42:26.300
bison or bighorn sheep or pronghorns. And one

01:42:26.300 --> 01:42:30.739
of the things that does when Europeans arrive

01:42:30.739 --> 01:42:34.180
is that, I mean, Europeans come out of this ancient

01:42:34.180 --> 01:42:38.800
8 ,000 -year -old herding culture. They've been

01:42:38.800 --> 01:42:42.920
herding goats and sheep, and they've developed

01:42:42.920 --> 01:42:49.109
a religious tradition. ultimately the Judeo -Christian

01:42:49.109 --> 01:42:51.470
tradition, which is probably based on earlier

01:42:51.470 --> 01:42:55.289
things, to be sure, that is basically a herder's

01:42:55.289 --> 01:42:59.470
religion, where what that religion teaches you

01:42:59.470 --> 01:43:04.930
is that not only are humans exceptional, but

01:43:04.930 --> 01:43:09.449
it teaches you that predators are the enemy.

01:43:10.170 --> 01:43:13.510
Any animal that preys on your sheep or your goats

01:43:13.510 --> 01:43:18.289
has to be eliminated. Meanwhile, in North America,

01:43:18.409 --> 01:43:21.229
where you don't have domestications of animals,

01:43:21.470 --> 01:43:26.529
predators are regarded as these prized, sacred

01:43:26.529 --> 01:43:30.350
creatures who keep the world functioning the

01:43:30.350 --> 01:43:35.289
way it's supposed to function. And people look

01:43:35.289 --> 01:43:39.270
for a predator as a totem animal in a vision

01:43:39.270 --> 01:43:42.850
quest. Or they name their clan the Wolf Clan

01:43:42.850 --> 01:43:49.659
or the Panther Clan. So it produces a whirl when

01:43:49.659 --> 01:43:53.640
the two groups come together. Here are these

01:43:53.640 --> 01:43:58.399
native people who still have the ancient human

01:43:58.399 --> 01:44:03.159
idea that we are part of everything around us.

01:44:03.880 --> 01:44:07.880
Other animals are just like us. They have societies.

01:44:10.170 --> 01:44:13.869
can actually intermarry with us. I mean, many

01:44:13.869 --> 01:44:16.909
native ceremonies, and I describe several of

01:44:16.909 --> 01:44:20.130
them in the book, are about whenever you confront

01:44:20.130 --> 01:44:23.529
the idea of animals are becoming scarce, you

01:44:23.529 --> 01:44:27.829
do ceremonies that are designed to not only make

01:44:27.829 --> 01:44:31.300
the animals reappear for you, But the way you

01:44:31.300 --> 01:44:34.060
do that is to convince them that you still regard

01:44:34.060 --> 01:44:36.840
them as kin. You're still willing to, you're

01:44:36.840 --> 01:44:39.380
going to do a ceremony where you go through a

01:44:39.380 --> 01:44:43.659
kind of a faux series of marriages between humans

01:44:43.659 --> 01:44:48.920
and bison. Wow. And so this kind of, we're all

01:44:48.920 --> 01:44:52.539
part of a kinship web. I mean, it's what Charles

01:44:52.539 --> 01:44:56.239
Darwin finally provides the scientific evidence

01:44:56.239 --> 01:45:01.520
for. And on the origin of species in 1859, we're

01:45:01.520 --> 01:45:04.399
out of the same evolutionary stream. Europeans

01:45:04.399 --> 01:45:07.439
have, meanwhile, old -worlders have come up with

01:45:07.439 --> 01:45:09.680
a completely different idea. This herding religion

01:45:09.680 --> 01:45:14.840
they have posits that, well, I'll tell you the

01:45:14.840 --> 01:45:17.239
story that sort of launched me writing this book.

01:45:17.359 --> 01:45:20.399
This is kind of a good way to say this, I guess.

01:45:21.060 --> 01:45:25.420
My oldest memory is from when I was four years

01:45:25.420 --> 01:45:28.029
old. psychologists say a lot of us, our oldest

01:45:28.029 --> 01:45:30.630
memory is from the age of four. This is the only

01:45:30.630 --> 01:45:33.170
one I really remember from the age of four. And

01:45:33.170 --> 01:45:35.449
I think the reason I remember is because it's,

01:45:35.449 --> 01:45:39.109
you know, sort of laden in emotional content.

01:45:39.310 --> 01:45:43.770
So it's really engraved in my system. And here's

01:45:43.770 --> 01:45:46.710
what happened. When I was four years old, I had

01:45:46.710 --> 01:45:48.949
the first little animal companion I ever had.

01:45:49.430 --> 01:45:52.750
And it was a little chicken, a little, you know,

01:45:52.770 --> 01:45:56.930
few weeks old chicken, still yellow. And, you

01:45:56.930 --> 01:45:59.029
know, I'm not very imaginative as a four -year

01:45:59.029 --> 01:46:02.149
-old, so I name it Chicky. And so Chicky and

01:46:02.149 --> 01:46:07.699
I, my first great friend and buddy. spend our

01:46:07.699 --> 01:46:11.359
time dashing through my parents' house in Louisiana

01:46:11.359 --> 01:46:14.699
in a game of chase. And I'm chasing Chickie underneath

01:46:14.699 --> 01:46:16.880
the sewing machine, underneath the couch, and

01:46:16.880 --> 01:46:20.060
underneath the dining table. And one day, you

01:46:20.060 --> 01:46:23.199
know, as a little clumsy four -year -old, I miscalculate

01:46:23.199 --> 01:46:25.020
and I step on my little chicken and I kill it.

01:46:26.539 --> 01:46:31.079
So I'm four years old. I'm confronting mortality

01:46:31.079 --> 01:46:34.520
and loss for the first time. My mom and I go

01:46:34.520 --> 01:46:36.300
out in the backyard, and, I mean, we're both

01:46:36.300 --> 01:46:39.979
crying, and we bury Chickie. And as we're standing

01:46:39.979 --> 01:46:43.439
there, and I've, you know, shoveled dirt over

01:46:43.439 --> 01:46:46.460
Chickie and sobbing away the whole time, and

01:46:46.460 --> 01:46:51.239
I turn to my mother, and I say, so, Mom, just

01:46:51.239 --> 01:46:56.100
sort of one last plead, Mom, I get to have Chickie

01:46:56.100 --> 01:47:01.020
again in heaven, don't I? And my mother, who

01:47:01.020 --> 01:47:06.140
is this good Southern Methodist and has absorbed

01:47:06.140 --> 01:47:11.079
the Western worldview in its entirety, and who's

01:47:11.079 --> 01:47:13.760
also kind of known all her life for giving you

01:47:13.760 --> 01:47:15.720
the unpainted version of things anyway, even

01:47:15.720 --> 01:47:18.560
if you're four years old, I guess. She looks

01:47:18.560 --> 01:47:23.680
down at me and although she's crying and feels

01:47:23.680 --> 01:47:26.500
compassion for me, she says, she's got to tell

01:47:26.500 --> 01:47:30.050
me the truth. Why no, honey? You're made in the

01:47:30.050 --> 01:47:33.789
image of God and you have an everlasting soul.

01:47:33.970 --> 01:47:38.029
So when you die, you get to go to heaven. Chickie

01:47:38.029 --> 01:47:41.850
is just an animal. Chickies don't get to do anything

01:47:41.850 --> 01:47:45.189
like that. So I'm afraid Chickie is just dead.

01:47:47.170 --> 01:47:51.069
So it was my instruction in the European worldview.

01:47:52.350 --> 01:47:57.289
Other creatures are something completely different.

01:47:58.000 --> 01:48:01.779
There in the Judeo -Christian tradition, other

01:48:01.779 --> 01:48:07.300
animals are made for our use. They're made, as

01:48:07.300 --> 01:48:12.680
Genesis puts it, unto your hand are they delivered.

01:48:13.420 --> 01:48:18.039
You can basically do anything you want with them.

01:48:19.239 --> 01:48:24.260
And with this idea of humans as exceptional and

01:48:24.260 --> 01:48:30.399
everything else out there, as just sort of for

01:48:30.399 --> 01:48:33.600
utility purposes to make the lives of humans

01:48:33.600 --> 01:48:37.720
better. I mean, we arrive in North America with

01:48:37.720 --> 01:48:41.199
this idea, very different from what native people

01:48:41.199 --> 01:48:44.239
with their kinship notions have, and also with

01:48:44.239 --> 01:48:48.680
burgeoning capitalism, the beginnings of the

01:48:48.680 --> 01:48:54.449
global market economy, and with... So many Native

01:48:54.449 --> 01:48:57.510
people dying. North America is undergoing this

01:48:57.510 --> 01:49:02.409
huge ecological release of wildlife. It's the

01:49:02.409 --> 01:49:05.649
origin of our Virgin America stories where North

01:49:05.649 --> 01:49:07.829
America is just teeming with everything under

01:49:07.829 --> 01:49:12.250
the sun. And we look on animals then as just

01:49:12.250 --> 01:49:18.229
being like gold, trees, grass, whatever we want

01:49:18.229 --> 01:49:21.149
to exploit. We turn them into commodities. And

01:49:21.149 --> 01:49:25.109
it's sort of the explanation for the global North

01:49:25.109 --> 01:49:30.029
American fur trade. Beavers as an object of pursuit.

01:49:30.470 --> 01:49:33.449
White -tailed deer as an object of pursuit for

01:49:33.449 --> 01:49:36.090
leather. We should tell people that beaver were

01:49:36.090 --> 01:49:39.210
so in pursuit that at one time the richest man

01:49:39.210 --> 01:49:44.979
in the world was a beaver furrier. Yes. The richest

01:49:44.979 --> 01:49:47.220
man in the world sold beaver pelts. John Jacob

01:49:47.220 --> 01:49:50.020
Astor, yeah. And the first great American corporation

01:49:50.020 --> 01:49:53.500
was a fur trading corporation to exploit the

01:49:53.500 --> 01:49:55.779
beaver populations of North America. How wild

01:49:55.779 --> 01:50:00.199
is that? Yeah. So this is the story then that

01:50:00.199 --> 01:50:04.279
starts unfolding. And it's amplified by the fact

01:50:04.279 --> 01:50:07.840
that all these Europeans who have come over,

01:50:07.960 --> 01:50:09.880
especially the ones from England and France.

01:50:12.840 --> 01:50:15.539
They've gone through centuries of the feudal

01:50:15.539 --> 01:50:20.939
economy where these lords of the manor and kings

01:50:20.939 --> 01:50:24.319
control access not just to landscapes but to

01:50:24.319 --> 01:50:28.119
animals. So, I mean, it's the origin of the Robin

01:50:28.119 --> 01:50:31.520
Hood story. Robin Hood is a deer poacher who

01:50:31.520 --> 01:50:34.960
represents the peasant population that the king's

01:50:34.960 --> 01:50:37.180
forest and the sheriff of Nottingham as the game

01:50:37.180 --> 01:50:42.920
warden won't let him at. Suddenly, this population

01:50:42.920 --> 01:50:46.140
of people who have been resentful about the fact

01:50:46.140 --> 01:50:49.380
that they can't hunt, that they can't enjoy the

01:50:49.380 --> 01:50:53.359
bounty of the forests in Europe, arrive in North

01:50:53.359 --> 01:50:55.779
America. And even though the native people try

01:50:55.779 --> 01:50:59.920
to convince Europeans the deer are like our cattle,

01:51:00.039 --> 01:51:02.699
you have to understand, they belong to us. Europeans,

01:51:02.939 --> 01:51:05.300
of course, don't acknowledge that. And suddenly,

01:51:05.340 --> 01:51:08.359
here are all these animals, all this wildlife.

01:51:09.159 --> 01:51:12.579
I mean, in super abundance. And nobody is telling

01:51:12.579 --> 01:51:15.439
you that you can't go after it. And then there's

01:51:15.439 --> 01:51:18.180
market hunting. And then there's. And so, yeah.

01:51:18.319 --> 01:51:21.039
And so a lot of them. I mean, this is how rural

01:51:21.039 --> 01:51:23.859
and lower class people basically rise to the

01:51:23.859 --> 01:51:26.819
middle class as you exploit animal populations

01:51:26.819 --> 01:51:31.520
and sell them. And that gets you into the currency

01:51:31.520 --> 01:51:37.520
economy. It's so fortunate. that they figured

01:51:37.520 --> 01:51:39.979
this out somewhere early in the 20th century

01:51:39.979 --> 01:51:43.720
and started instituting wildlife conservation

01:51:43.720 --> 01:51:48.640
and reintroducing animals and things along those

01:51:48.640 --> 01:51:52.899
lines. Well, yeah, and of course I track the

01:51:52.899 --> 01:51:55.579
story all the way through, and I won't elaborate

01:51:55.579 --> 01:51:59.939
on it. on how it goes. I will say that, you know,

01:51:59.939 --> 01:52:03.760
there have been a couple of reviews on like Goodreads

01:52:03.760 --> 01:52:06.680
and Amazon of this book where people say, well,

01:52:06.680 --> 01:52:11.340
this is an anti -hunting book. I mean, which

01:52:11.340 --> 01:52:14.800
is kind of, you know, it caused me a certain

01:52:14.800 --> 01:52:16.920
amount of chagrin because of how I grew up. I

01:52:16.920 --> 01:52:20.039
mean, I grew up hunting. I mean, I stopped hunting

01:52:20.039 --> 01:52:23.220
in my 20s, but when I was in Montana, at least

01:52:23.220 --> 01:52:26.760
three times in the last... a decade i was there

01:52:26.760 --> 01:52:29.020
i would buy a deer license and shoot a mule deer

01:52:29.020 --> 01:52:31.399
out in the pasture in order to stock my freezer

01:52:31.399 --> 01:52:34.470
with venison And in some ways, I mean, I look

01:52:34.470 --> 01:52:36.750
at this book as this is probably the most comprehensive

01:52:36.750 --> 01:52:39.909
story of the human relationship with animals,

01:52:39.989 --> 01:52:42.369
which obviously involves hunting, that anybody

01:52:42.369 --> 01:52:45.710
has told, at least about North America. You can't

01:52:45.710 --> 01:52:48.890
read reviews. Because there's always going to

01:52:48.890 --> 01:52:50.750
be someone that has a ridiculous take on things.

01:52:50.810 --> 01:52:52.569
Then you have to argue that ridiculous take because

01:52:52.569 --> 01:52:54.010
it doesn't make any sense to you. And then you're

01:52:54.010 --> 01:52:56.789
wasting time on some fool's ideas. Yeah, you're

01:52:56.789 --> 01:52:58.329
wasting time. You know, what a lot of people

01:52:58.329 --> 01:53:02.800
do is if they... Already think what you're saying.

01:53:03.000 --> 01:53:05.579
I mean, you get five star reviews. If you say

01:53:05.579 --> 01:53:08.399
something that is not part of the package that

01:53:08.399 --> 01:53:10.779
they bring to the game. Right. Yeah, of course.

01:53:10.880 --> 01:53:14.399
Yeah, of course. Yeah, that the anti -hunting

01:53:14.399 --> 01:53:16.399
notion is an interesting one. I mean, it's just

01:53:16.399 --> 01:53:19.199
reality, the reality of North America to say

01:53:19.199 --> 01:53:20.859
that that's anti -hunting. That's ridiculous.

01:53:21.220 --> 01:53:23.859
That's just reality. It's just the market hunting

01:53:23.859 --> 01:53:27.279
thing is well documented, particularly in regards

01:53:27.279 --> 01:53:30.039
to the buffalo. When you see bison skulls stacked

01:53:30.039 --> 01:53:32.189
on. top of each other, anybody that doesn't think

01:53:32.189 --> 01:53:34.250
that that looks absolutely hideous and horrific.

01:53:34.449 --> 01:53:37.890
Like, how did they get so far gone that they

01:53:37.890 --> 01:53:40.090
thought that was okay? Yeah. I mean, and at the

01:53:40.090 --> 01:53:42.210
same time that was happening, I mean, we were

01:53:42.210 --> 01:53:44.510
taking out, I mean, this is one of the ones that

01:53:44.510 --> 01:53:47.670
stuns me. Passenger pigeons, the most numerous

01:53:47.670 --> 01:53:50.789
bird, not just in North America, but in the world,

01:53:50.869 --> 01:53:52.750
we think there may have been 10 billion of them

01:53:52.750 --> 01:53:56.050
at one point, had been in North America for 15

01:53:56.050 --> 01:54:01.159
million years. Those birds couldn't survive 400

01:54:01.159 --> 01:54:04.039
years of our presence. That's amazing. Once we

01:54:04.039 --> 01:54:08.300
arrive, they can't last. I mean, actually, they

01:54:08.300 --> 01:54:11.460
only last about 300 years after we arrive. How

01:54:11.460 --> 01:54:13.399
did they kill so many of them before they had

01:54:13.399 --> 01:54:17.239
firearms? Well, passenger pigeons, I mean, it

01:54:17.239 --> 01:54:20.539
was very much like the industrial hunt for bison.

01:54:20.619 --> 01:54:22.399
I mean, you had to use firearms, obviously, for

01:54:22.399 --> 01:54:26.270
that. But for passenger pigeons, the... The commercial

01:54:26.270 --> 01:54:28.590
hunt, the market hunt, was basically done with

01:54:28.590 --> 01:54:32.729
nets. You spread nets across the forest, and

01:54:32.729 --> 01:54:36.350
they were spring -loaded and were released. And

01:54:36.350 --> 01:54:41.390
what they would do is they used live passenger

01:54:41.390 --> 01:54:46.930
pigeon decoys that were placed on the end of

01:54:46.930 --> 01:54:49.390
a pedestal that rocked back and forth. They were

01:54:49.390 --> 01:54:54.090
called stools. And so the passenger pigeon decoy

01:54:54.090 --> 01:55:01.189
was referred to as a stool pigeon. Wow. So that's

01:55:01.189 --> 01:55:02.770
where that comes from. That's where it comes

01:55:02.770 --> 01:55:04.670
from. What did that look like? Can you see if

01:55:04.670 --> 01:55:06.390
you can find an image of what that looked like?

01:55:07.109 --> 01:55:10.869
So, you know, we get stool pigeon from, you know,

01:55:10.890 --> 01:55:14.489
the gangster movies about the 1920s, 1930s. And

01:55:14.489 --> 01:55:16.130
what they're referring to is stool pigeon is

01:55:16.130 --> 01:55:19.390
basically a traitor. The stool pigeon rats you

01:55:19.390 --> 01:55:25.369
out. Wow. And so this was all market hunting

01:55:25.369 --> 01:55:28.229
as well, the pasture pigeon. Yeah, it was market.

01:55:28.409 --> 01:55:31.029
I mean, people don't think of pigeons as being

01:55:31.029 --> 01:55:33.189
a food source, but that is really what they were.

01:55:33.430 --> 01:55:37.729
Yeah. So this pigeon is secured in place somehow?

01:55:37.909 --> 01:55:40.609
Yeah. So it is? Its feet are attached to the

01:55:40.609 --> 01:55:45.430
stool. Wow. And the live ones, the live birds

01:55:45.430 --> 01:55:48.539
that you did this with, when you rocked. the

01:55:48.539 --> 01:55:51.079
stool back and forth it would flap its wings

01:55:51.079 --> 01:55:54.739
if it's as if it were landing and that would

01:55:54.739 --> 01:55:59.119
then bring down wow they would spring load the

01:55:59.119 --> 01:56:01.680
nets and capture them all yeah and they wiped

01:56:01.680 --> 01:56:04.260
out the entire population that way that's incredible

01:56:04.260 --> 01:56:07.100
and one of the reasons they wiped the population

01:56:07.100 --> 01:56:11.220
out was because i mean in the last in the last

01:56:11.220 --> 01:56:14.220
hunts which were taking place in the upper midwest

01:56:14.220 --> 01:56:19.800
in wisconsin uh in particular I mean, they went

01:56:19.800 --> 01:56:22.979
after them while they were on their nests. So

01:56:22.979 --> 01:56:28.119
why were they surprised? I mean, the whole idea

01:56:28.119 --> 01:56:32.060
is, when the last passenger pigeon died, for

01:56:32.060 --> 01:56:34.819
example, in 1914, a famous story, it dies in

01:56:34.819 --> 01:56:37.899
the Cincinnati Zoo, Martha, it's called, after

01:56:37.899 --> 01:56:41.560
Martha Washington. Martha dies in 1914. Okay,

01:56:41.659 --> 01:56:43.819
so that's the beginning of World War I, the Great

01:56:43.819 --> 01:56:46.579
War. To be sure, lots of newspapers were focused

01:56:46.579 --> 01:56:50.220
on other things. But I could hardly find any

01:56:50.220 --> 01:56:54.000
newspapers in America that wrote an obituary

01:56:54.000 --> 01:56:57.640
about the last passenger pigeon, what had been

01:56:57.640 --> 01:57:01.140
the most numerous bird, the most charismatic

01:57:01.140 --> 01:57:06.199
bird, and the emblem bird, our symbol. of avian

01:57:06.199 --> 01:57:08.779
America, I could find one newspaper that wrote

01:57:08.779 --> 01:57:13.340
an obituary. Wow. And that newspaper said, you

01:57:13.340 --> 01:57:17.319
know, we guess we should feel bad about the loss

01:57:17.319 --> 01:57:20.079
of the pasture pigeons, but on the other hand,

01:57:20.079 --> 01:57:24.560
maybe it's a good thing that they're not going

01:57:24.560 --> 01:57:27.020
to be like grasshoppers and stick around with

01:57:27.020 --> 01:57:34.399
us. So that was kind of the extent. Anyway, I

01:57:34.399 --> 01:57:38.199
use a lot of this to essentially argue that,

01:57:38.199 --> 01:57:41.720
you know, I mean, I do this theme of first contact

01:57:41.720 --> 01:57:44.600
a lot. And I mentioned the first contact between

01:57:44.600 --> 01:57:46.460
humans and animals that they had never seen.

01:57:46.760 --> 01:57:48.840
Talk about first contact in the book between

01:57:48.840 --> 01:57:51.380
Europeans and native people. And the whole idea

01:57:51.380 --> 01:57:53.460
of first contact theory is that the only way

01:57:53.460 --> 01:57:56.140
you can really relate to something brand new

01:57:56.140 --> 01:57:58.779
that you've never seen is through what's already

01:57:58.779 --> 01:58:01.979
in your head. You already have some notions,

01:58:02.039 --> 01:58:05.140
and that's how you understand the new. And then

01:58:05.140 --> 01:58:07.840
after you've had some familiarity with it, you

01:58:07.840 --> 01:58:10.539
can develop new notions. But one of the themes

01:58:10.539 --> 01:58:14.579
I do in the book is essentially continental first

01:58:14.579 --> 01:58:17.699
contact. And what I'm arguing with it is that

01:58:17.699 --> 01:58:21.380
what we bring out of the old world to America

01:58:21.380 --> 01:58:23.840
is the conviction that we're going to recreate

01:58:23.840 --> 01:58:27.720
North America, the United States, in the image.

01:58:28.439 --> 01:58:32.920
or as clones of England, France, Germany. Because

01:58:32.920 --> 01:58:35.340
that's all we know. That's all we know. And these

01:58:35.340 --> 01:58:37.659
are places, of course, that in the previous several

01:58:37.659 --> 01:58:40.260
hundred years before colonization in North America

01:58:40.260 --> 01:58:43.460
had wiped out all their big animals. I mean,

01:58:43.460 --> 01:58:45.340
all you've got left in England hasn't had any

01:58:45.340 --> 01:58:47.800
wolves since the 1400s. They got partridges.

01:58:48.479 --> 01:58:53.180
And so people come to North America and immediately

01:58:53.180 --> 01:59:00.819
the idea is whatever is really wild, We really

01:59:00.819 --> 01:59:04.880
need to get rid of it. Passenger pigeons, bison,

01:59:05.100 --> 01:59:10.079
grizzly bears, wolves, those are not the earmarks

01:59:10.079 --> 01:59:14.140
of a civilized society. England doesn't have

01:59:14.140 --> 01:59:18.180
those kinds of things. And so, I mean, it kind

01:59:18.180 --> 01:59:20.800
of takes the heroes of this book, I think, are

01:59:20.800 --> 01:59:24.939
probably the ecologists of the 20th century who

01:59:24.939 --> 01:59:28.439
began to realize, so North America is really

01:59:28.439 --> 01:59:31.800
old. It's had all these animals for a really

01:59:31.800 --> 01:59:35.819
long time. And all these ideas out of Europe,

01:59:35.859 --> 01:59:38.699
actually, they're not based on science. They're

01:59:38.699 --> 01:59:42.520
based on just old folk traditions out of this

01:59:42.520 --> 01:59:46.739
herding kind of culture. So we've got a chance

01:59:46.739 --> 01:59:49.840
to do something new here. And we've created this

01:59:49.840 --> 01:59:54.000
vast public land system in North America. So

01:59:54.000 --> 01:59:58.350
we actually are able to get to have. all these

01:59:58.350 --> 02:00:02.430
big charismatic animals. If we just wake up in

02:00:02.430 --> 02:00:05.189
time, I mean, it's Aldo Leopold, really, who

02:00:05.189 --> 02:00:07.930
sort of is the advocate for this more than anybody

02:00:07.930 --> 02:00:10.529
else by the middle of the 20th century. He's

02:00:10.529 --> 02:00:14.069
arguing that we need to do an American thing,

02:00:14.170 --> 02:00:16.470
not just try to make the United States into some

02:00:16.470 --> 02:00:21.789
version of England, because as Henry David Thoreau

02:00:21.789 --> 02:00:24.029
had famously said back in the middle of the 19th

02:00:24.029 --> 02:00:26.859
century, He was reading the accounts of the first

02:00:26.859 --> 02:00:29.579
Europeans to get to Massachusetts, seeing all

02:00:29.579 --> 02:00:32.979
these creatures in huge abundance. 200 years

02:00:32.979 --> 02:00:37.060
later, 1857, he's sitting there in his study

02:00:37.060 --> 02:00:41.000
and realizing, I don't get to see any of this,

02:00:41.060 --> 02:00:44.520
really. And he writes this incredible passage

02:00:44.520 --> 02:00:48.300
in his journal in March of 1857 where he says,

02:00:48.399 --> 02:00:56.569
I realize it's like going to a symphony. And

02:00:56.569 --> 02:01:00.449
midway through the first movement, it suddenly

02:01:00.449 --> 02:01:04.109
occurs to me, wow, there are no strings. There

02:01:04.109 --> 02:01:06.210
are no, wow, there are no woodwinds. There's

02:01:06.210 --> 02:01:09.989
no percussion. That's all gone. And then he goes

02:01:09.989 --> 02:01:12.050
further and he says, it's like looking up at

02:01:12.050 --> 02:01:16.109
the stars at night and realizing that some demigod

02:01:16.109 --> 02:01:20.250
has come before you and plucked all the best

02:01:20.250 --> 02:01:23.310
of the constellations out of the sky. And you're

02:01:23.310 --> 02:01:27.220
not getting to see. The full night sky. And he

02:01:27.220 --> 02:01:31.340
says, you know, I realize somebody has come along

02:01:31.340 --> 02:01:36.359
and emasculated America before I could live in

02:01:36.359 --> 02:01:40.819
it. Quickly. And then he has this great line,

02:01:40.880 --> 02:01:43.819
and I use it as the title of one of the chapters

02:01:43.819 --> 02:01:48.640
in here. I wish to know an entire heaven and

02:01:48.640 --> 02:01:52.619
an entire earth, he says. I want to know the

02:01:52.619 --> 02:01:55.720
full thing. I don't want to think that somebody

02:01:55.720 --> 02:01:59.680
has come before me and selfishly robbed me of

02:01:59.680 --> 02:02:04.659
all these experiences. It's just so bizarre that

02:02:04.659 --> 02:02:08.100
human beings repeat these same patterns over

02:02:08.100 --> 02:02:11.420
and over and over again. And with the invention

02:02:11.420 --> 02:02:14.739
of firearms, they were able to do it so effectively.

02:02:14.760 --> 02:02:17.859
And with those traps they use for the stool pigeons,

02:02:18.020 --> 02:02:21.300
use it so effectively. Yeah. That they could

02:02:21.300 --> 02:02:23.579
completely change the landscape in a relatively

02:02:23.579 --> 02:02:26.600
short amount of time. In a short amount of time,

02:02:26.619 --> 02:02:29.939
you know, and I mean, it takes until. So this

02:02:29.939 --> 02:02:34.420
year, 2023, is the 50th anniversary of the Endangered

02:02:34.420 --> 02:02:39.329
Species Act of 1973. I mean. This was kind of

02:02:39.329 --> 02:02:41.970
the Hail Mary. Now, to be sure, back at the beginning

02:02:41.970 --> 02:02:44.069
of the 20th century when Teddy Roosevelt was

02:02:44.069 --> 02:02:47.750
president, I mean, we come up with the game laws

02:02:47.750 --> 02:02:50.590
for most of the states, which are all aimed,

02:02:50.630 --> 02:02:52.689
of course, at what we're trying to preserve are

02:02:52.689 --> 02:02:55.500
the things that people want to hunt. And we have

02:02:55.500 --> 02:02:57.800
the idea that we're going to get rid of all the

02:02:57.800 --> 02:03:00.199
predators and we're going to substitute human

02:03:00.199 --> 02:03:03.319
sport hunters for predation. This is how we're

02:03:03.319 --> 02:03:05.340
going to... Because one of the things they're

02:03:05.340 --> 02:03:07.619
confronting in the early 20th century is what's

02:03:07.619 --> 02:03:11.319
called, as they remove predators from various

02:03:11.319 --> 02:03:15.739
regions, the ungulate populations, deer and elk

02:03:15.739 --> 02:03:18.600
and moose, start going through eruptions. Their

02:03:18.600 --> 02:03:22.720
population starts just booming. And then they'll...

02:03:23.119 --> 02:03:26.720
eat all the forage and die. Elder Leopold studied

02:03:26.720 --> 02:03:32.039
this and said before 1900, he could find mentions

02:03:32.039 --> 02:03:34.760
of only two eruptions like this that had happened

02:03:34.760 --> 02:03:38.659
in America. After 1900 and we started the predator

02:03:38.659 --> 02:03:43.859
war, he found 42 of them. So the idea was we're

02:03:43.859 --> 02:03:47.800
going to use human hunters as the substitute

02:03:47.800 --> 02:03:51.859
for the predators that we're taking out. And,

02:03:51.939 --> 02:03:54.020
of course, that enabled us to preserve a lot

02:03:54.020 --> 02:03:56.640
of animals that people want to hunt, elk and

02:03:56.640 --> 02:04:00.000
deer and pronghorns and so forth, even though

02:04:00.000 --> 02:04:02.300
we've gotten pronghorns from 35 million down

02:04:02.300 --> 02:04:05.619
to 5 ,000 by this point. They're the most ancient

02:04:05.619 --> 02:04:07.619
of the North American animals, right? Yeah, and

02:04:07.619 --> 02:04:10.199
they're distinctively North American too. It's

02:04:10.199 --> 02:04:13.039
so weird. Such a strange animal. Strange and

02:04:13.039 --> 02:04:14.500
beautiful. When you see them in comparison to

02:04:14.500 --> 02:04:17.100
everything else. Are they an actual antelope?

02:04:17.220 --> 02:04:23.210
What are they? Well, they're… Antelope goat.

02:04:24.630 --> 02:04:29.390
Antelope capridae is the family name, which had

02:04:29.390 --> 02:04:32.170
to be created for them. And actually, it looks

02:04:32.170 --> 02:04:35.449
like maybe their closest relatives are giraffes.

02:04:35.609 --> 02:04:37.590
Whoa, they kind of look like giraffes. Yeah,

02:04:37.590 --> 02:04:40.810
their legs in particular. Their eyes, too. Yeah,

02:04:40.850 --> 02:04:42.670
and the great big eyes that are mounted on the

02:04:42.670 --> 02:04:44.850
sides of the head. Yeah, look at that guy. What

02:04:44.850 --> 02:04:47.699
a cool animal that is. Yeah, and, you know, one

02:04:47.699 --> 02:04:50.020
of the great things about them, too, is that,

02:04:50.100 --> 02:04:53.039
okay, so they can run, the females in particular,

02:04:53.079 --> 02:04:57.880
can run 60, 65 miles an hour, which puzzled biologists

02:04:57.880 --> 02:05:02.260
for a while because the only predators they have

02:05:02.260 --> 02:05:05.840
possibly are wolves and coyotes, neither of which

02:05:05.840 --> 02:05:09.439
can run over about 42 or 43 miles an hour. So

02:05:09.439 --> 02:05:12.359
the question for a while was, so why the speed

02:05:12.359 --> 02:05:16.760
overkill? Until we began to realize. These guys

02:05:16.760 --> 02:05:19.380
developed their ability to run back during the

02:05:19.380 --> 02:05:22.159
Pleistocene when they were being pursued by American

02:05:22.159 --> 02:05:29.319
cheetahs. And they still, the females still select

02:05:29.319 --> 02:05:33.640
for the fastest males to breed with in order

02:05:33.640 --> 02:05:37.779
to preserve this high speed. So the result is

02:05:37.779 --> 02:05:42.060
pronghorns only have predators when they're fawns.

02:05:42.760 --> 02:05:45.600
They don't have predators as adults because nothing

02:05:45.600 --> 02:05:48.699
that's alive now can catch them. At one time,

02:05:48.699 --> 02:05:51.340
a cheetah could catch them, but nothing can catch

02:05:51.340 --> 02:05:54.560
them now. And since they are preyed on only as

02:05:54.560 --> 02:05:58.380
fawns, one of the adaptations that pronghorns

02:05:58.380 --> 02:06:02.359
have made to predation is they have two fawns.

02:06:02.359 --> 02:06:07.340
You have two fawns, a spare and an heir, with

02:06:07.340 --> 02:06:10.020
the idea that the spare is likely to be taken

02:06:10.020 --> 02:06:13.319
out as a fawn. But at least you're going to preserve

02:06:13.319 --> 02:06:16.979
your genetic line. Is it mostly coyotes? What

02:06:16.979 --> 02:06:20.000
gets them? Primarily coyotes. Coyotes are able

02:06:20.000 --> 02:06:22.180
to find them. I mean, we don't have enough wolves

02:06:22.180 --> 02:06:25.359
out in the prairie country anymore to have any

02:06:25.359 --> 02:06:28.210
impact on pronghorns. But coyotes certainly look

02:06:28.210 --> 02:06:30.270
for the fawns. Yeah, there's some in California

02:06:30.270 --> 02:06:32.869
still, and they used to have a larger population

02:06:32.869 --> 02:06:36.590
up until, I think, 20 or 30 years ago. And then

02:06:36.590 --> 02:06:39.029
the coyotes started taking them out with such

02:06:39.029 --> 02:06:41.289
regularity that they're reduced to just a very

02:06:41.289 --> 02:06:44.810
small number now. Yeah, there's another spot

02:06:44.810 --> 02:06:47.670
or two where coyotes have had an impact on them.

02:06:47.710 --> 02:06:50.609
But, I mean, this adaptation of two fawns is

02:06:50.609 --> 02:06:53.010
evidently very old, and obviously it's allowed

02:06:53.010 --> 02:06:56.939
them to survive. One of the fascinating things

02:06:56.939 --> 02:07:01.239
that I learned from you also is the subject of

02:07:01.239 --> 02:07:05.680
bison and the enormous populations of bison that

02:07:05.680 --> 02:07:08.239
were witnessed at one point in history and that

02:07:08.239 --> 02:07:10.699
it coincided with the European spread of diseases.

02:07:11.739 --> 02:07:14.699
Yeah, and the spread of bison out of the Great

02:07:14.699 --> 02:07:18.399
Plains. Yeah, the bison story, and, you know,

02:07:18.439 --> 02:07:21.279
I obviously, I tell it in several places, sort

02:07:21.279 --> 02:07:24.340
of the advent of the bison story early in Wild

02:07:24.340 --> 02:07:27.710
New World and then the... the sort of, you know,

02:07:27.750 --> 02:07:34.909
the denouement in a later chapter. But the modern

02:07:34.909 --> 02:07:41.029
bison is actually a dwarfed animal compared to

02:07:41.029 --> 02:07:45.010
the bison of the Pleistocene that succeeded those

02:07:45.010 --> 02:07:49.710
earlier larger forms about 8 ,000 years ago and

02:07:49.710 --> 02:07:57.500
very likely became dwarfed because of anthropogenic

02:07:57.500 --> 02:08:04.380
selection, human hunting pressure. Because only

02:08:04.380 --> 02:08:07.920
wolves and humans really are effective predators

02:08:07.920 --> 02:08:15.060
of bison. And what you get by becoming smaller

02:08:15.060 --> 02:08:24.199
is a quicker emergence as fertile. Bison that

02:08:24.199 --> 02:08:27.060
are smaller can have calves at an earlier age.

02:08:27.659 --> 02:08:30.159
When the cows are two years old or three years

02:08:30.159 --> 02:08:33.840
old, they can begin having calves. The gestation

02:08:33.840 --> 02:08:36.960
period is not as long for smaller animals. In

02:08:36.960 --> 02:08:40.699
other words, these are advantages for reproduction.

02:08:41.720 --> 02:08:46.279
And this new bison 8 ,000 years ago essentially

02:08:46.279 --> 02:08:48.880
inherits the grazing niche on the American Great

02:08:48.880 --> 02:08:53.560
Plains. had formerly been occupied by all kinds

02:08:53.560 --> 02:08:56.800
of creatures that are now gone, including things

02:08:56.800 --> 02:08:59.899
like mammoths that are grazers just like modern

02:08:59.899 --> 02:09:05.380
African elephants are. And so as a result of

02:09:05.380 --> 02:09:09.300
inheriting a grazing niche now depopulated with

02:09:09.300 --> 02:09:12.180
no horses to compete with, with no mammoths to

02:09:12.180 --> 02:09:17.250
compete with, they... they become this huge mass.

02:09:17.649 --> 02:09:22.189
I mean, this is why bison multiply into the millions

02:09:22.189 --> 02:09:25.250
on the Great Plains. And in fact, they probably

02:09:25.250 --> 02:09:27.909
become so numerous, like passenger pigeons. This

02:09:27.909 --> 02:09:29.590
is one of the arguments for why passenger pigeons

02:09:29.590 --> 02:09:33.470
survive so long. They're so numerous that they

02:09:33.470 --> 02:09:37.310
saturate the predator possibilities. Predators

02:09:37.310 --> 02:09:40.310
just can't take enough of them to ever actually

02:09:40.310 --> 02:09:46.390
reduce their numbers. So what happens, I mean,

02:09:46.409 --> 02:09:50.170
native people hunt bison for, modern bison for

02:09:50.170 --> 02:09:52.430
8 ,000 years. That's the longest economic life

02:09:52.430 --> 02:09:57.069
way in North American history. But just about

02:09:57.069 --> 02:10:00.109
the time that Europeans are arriving and very

02:10:00.109 --> 02:10:05.470
likely contributed to by the arrival of Europeans

02:10:05.470 --> 02:10:08.270
in the disease epidemics that wipe out so many

02:10:08.270 --> 02:10:11.779
native people. bison populations began to expand

02:10:11.779 --> 02:10:14.600
out of the Great Plains west of the Rocky Mountains.

02:10:14.859 --> 02:10:16.779
I mean, they get all the way to places like Oregon,

02:10:16.920 --> 02:10:23.319
Arizona, and east of the Great Plains when they

02:10:23.319 --> 02:10:28.420
get to places like Georgia and Florida and Virginia

02:10:28.420 --> 02:10:32.060
and West Virginia and possibly even western Pennsylvania.

02:10:32.880 --> 02:10:38.420
And the argument about this is when Europeans

02:10:38.420 --> 02:10:44.260
arrive, And out of a hemispheric population,

02:10:44.500 --> 02:10:48.659
or I should rephrase that, out of North America

02:10:48.659 --> 02:10:50.699
and South America having a native population

02:10:50.699 --> 02:10:56.159
as high as maybe 56, 57 million people, most

02:10:56.159 --> 02:10:59.079
of which indeed are from Mexico South into South

02:10:59.079 --> 02:11:03.239
America where agriculture has prevailed. So many

02:11:03.239 --> 02:11:08.340
people like that taken out, which is... more

02:11:08.340 --> 02:11:11.060
than 10 % of the global population when the great

02:11:11.060 --> 02:11:14.439
dying happens. People who have been cutting down

02:11:14.439 --> 02:11:17.939
forests and building fires and using fires as

02:11:17.939 --> 02:11:20.140
their primary method of heating and cooking and

02:11:20.140 --> 02:11:24.579
everything else. When that ends, the recent idea

02:11:24.579 --> 02:11:32.719
advanced is that that enables a... reduction

02:11:32.719 --> 02:11:36.319
of carbon in the atmosphere, formerly put into

02:11:36.319 --> 02:11:38.979
the atmosphere by all these burning fires of

02:11:38.979 --> 02:11:42.819
all these millions of people. And when that happens,

02:11:42.859 --> 02:11:45.520
it produces an effect called the Little Ice Age.

02:11:46.199 --> 02:11:48.699
And the Little Ice Age, which lasts for about

02:11:48.699 --> 02:11:54.939
300 years, from about 1450, 1550 or so, somewhere

02:11:54.939 --> 02:11:59.800
in that range, around 1500 to 1800 or maybe 1830

02:11:59.800 --> 02:12:04.359
or so. produces cooler, moister weather in the

02:12:04.359 --> 02:12:07.039
northern hemisphere, and that grows more grass,

02:12:07.140 --> 02:12:11.539
and that expands the bison population over a

02:12:11.539 --> 02:12:14.979
lot of North America. So when Europeans get here,

02:12:15.220 --> 02:12:18.920
you know, as a consequence of all these factors,

02:12:19.039 --> 02:12:21.340
nobody really understands. I mean, nobody knows

02:12:21.340 --> 02:12:24.720
anything about disease transmission. Nobody suspects

02:12:24.720 --> 02:12:29.649
that your breath can kill people. I mean, there's

02:12:29.649 --> 02:12:32.390
an early European who I quote in the book who

02:12:32.390 --> 02:12:35.930
says, boy, we just experienced the strangest

02:12:35.930 --> 02:12:39.489
thing. We went ashore for a couple of weeks.

02:12:39.529 --> 02:12:41.789
And when we came back on board our ship, word

02:12:41.789 --> 02:12:44.970
came that every village, every Indian village

02:12:44.970 --> 02:12:48.130
that we went to, within two or three days of

02:12:48.130 --> 02:12:50.729
us being there, almost all the people in the

02:12:50.729 --> 02:12:55.409
village fell sick and they're dying. It seems

02:12:55.409 --> 02:12:58.470
to have happened only where we went. Nowhere

02:12:58.470 --> 02:13:02.770
else is reporting this. But I mean, so it happens

02:13:02.770 --> 02:13:05.470
like that. I mean, just almost instantaneously.

02:13:05.930 --> 02:13:08.329
They don't understand why it's happening. The

02:13:08.329 --> 02:13:11.029
European idea is, well, God has he's killing

02:13:11.029 --> 02:13:14.590
them to enable us to settle the place. And they

02:13:14.590 --> 02:13:17.750
certainly don't understand what's causing, you

02:13:17.750 --> 02:13:21.390
know, the little ice age. But what they're reaping

02:13:21.390 --> 02:13:24.899
the benefit of is. This explosion of animals

02:13:24.899 --> 02:13:27.920
that even brings buffalo all the way almost to

02:13:27.920 --> 02:13:31.899
the East Coast. Wow. Yeah, it's another one of

02:13:31.899 --> 02:13:34.760
these amazing stories that, I mean, we've only

02:13:34.760 --> 02:13:37.180
been figuring this kind of stuff out, you know,

02:13:37.180 --> 02:13:41.449
for the last 20 or 30 years. Some of it even

02:13:41.449 --> 02:13:44.050
more recently than that. It's got to be so rewarding

02:13:44.050 --> 02:13:46.170
as a person who studies that, though, that this

02:13:46.170 --> 02:13:49.729
information is being discovered in new revelations

02:13:49.729 --> 02:13:52.250
and new understanding. Yeah, it's really fun.

02:13:52.329 --> 02:13:54.050
You know, I mean, I had a tremendous amount of

02:13:54.050 --> 02:13:57.109
fun doing this book. You know, I mean, I was.

02:13:58.350 --> 02:14:00.210
There were parts of it that certainly surprised

02:14:00.210 --> 02:14:02.750
me. You know, I mean, I kind of knew this story.

02:14:02.829 --> 02:14:04.729
I mean, what I was trying to do was to tell in

02:14:04.729 --> 02:14:09.229
one book this whole North American story of humans

02:14:09.229 --> 02:14:12.890
and people in under 400 pages. I mean, I managed

02:14:12.890 --> 02:14:16.310
to do it. It's 398 pages. It's a thickie. Yeah,

02:14:16.409 --> 02:14:19.350
it's 398. So it's got a lot of information in

02:14:19.350 --> 02:14:24.210
it. I mean, it is in an audio version, too. Do

02:14:24.210 --> 02:14:27.050
you do it? No, I didn't do it. Damn it. Yeah,

02:14:27.090 --> 02:14:31.609
the press I was with, W .W. Norton, retained

02:14:31.609 --> 02:14:34.409
the rights to the audio book. I mean, with Coyote

02:14:34.409 --> 02:14:38.130
America, my agency, my literary agency, retained

02:14:38.130 --> 02:14:42.250
the rights, and I got to select who read it for

02:14:42.250 --> 02:14:45.750
the audio book. But in this case, Norton retained

02:14:45.750 --> 02:14:48.729
the rights, and I had no say. You would be so

02:14:48.729 --> 02:14:51.229
good at it. Yeah, well, I've offered myself a

02:14:51.229 --> 02:14:52.989
couple of times. Nobody's ever taken me up on

02:14:52.989 --> 02:14:54.970
it. Why are they so dumb about that kind of stuff?

02:14:55.050 --> 02:14:57.489
They did that with Rinella as well, with his

02:14:57.489 --> 02:14:59.369
book, The American Bison. I know, and Stephen

02:14:59.369 --> 02:15:01.829
would be a fantastic reader. Well, he did read

02:15:01.829 --> 02:15:03.109
it. He eventually gained the rights to it. Oh,

02:15:03.109 --> 02:15:04.090
he did get the rights to it? And then he went

02:15:04.090 --> 02:15:06.949
and read it, and it's amazing. Yeah. Well, maybe

02:15:06.949 --> 02:15:09.770
at some point I can get the rights to do it,

02:15:09.810 --> 02:15:12.720
but I've offered myself. More than once, and

02:15:12.720 --> 02:15:15.640
I never had anybody take me up on it. They have

02:15:15.640 --> 02:15:18.579
their stable of people they want to use. They're

02:15:18.579 --> 02:15:20.979
silly, especially a guy like you who's been on

02:15:20.979 --> 02:15:23.039
this podcast a couple of times. You have such

02:15:23.039 --> 02:15:25.640
a great voice and such a passion for this stuff

02:15:25.640 --> 02:15:29.170
that's so tangible. When you talk about it. Well,

02:15:29.229 --> 02:15:31.170
I'd love to be able to do it. Well, hopefully

02:15:31.170 --> 02:15:33.689
the guy did a great job. One of the things that

02:15:33.689 --> 02:15:35.750
I'd be amiss if I didn't talk to you about is

02:15:35.750 --> 02:15:38.729
I want to get you together with Randall Carlson.

02:15:38.909 --> 02:15:41.270
Because Randall Carlson is a big proponent of

02:15:41.270 --> 02:15:43.550
the Younger Dryas impact theory being a leading

02:15:43.550 --> 02:15:46.409
factor in the extinction of North American animals.

02:15:46.750 --> 02:15:49.430
What do you think about that? Have you looked

02:15:49.430 --> 02:15:52.250
into it? Yeah, I have. And so, I mean, here's

02:15:52.250 --> 02:15:58.449
my deal. I mean, I'm a historian. as I said,

02:15:58.449 --> 02:16:02.010
an English major, really, and kind of an environmental

02:16:02.010 --> 02:16:04.850
writer, a writer about this stuff. So I'm not

02:16:04.850 --> 02:16:07.289
an archaeologist or a paleontologist. I mean,

02:16:07.310 --> 02:16:09.649
my approach to doing this kind of stuff, doing

02:16:09.649 --> 02:16:12.550
archaeology and paleontology, is I go to what

02:16:12.550 --> 02:16:15.609
I consider to be the best people and other folks

02:16:15.609 --> 02:16:17.930
consider the best people out there. You know,

02:16:17.970 --> 02:16:20.729
Ross McPhee from the American Museum of Natural

02:16:20.729 --> 02:16:25.510
History, Donald Grayson, certainly Paul Martin,

02:16:25.670 --> 02:16:28.399
you know, who is the... He's kind of the Einstein

02:16:28.399 --> 02:16:33.100
of all this. And what I always look for are the

02:16:33.100 --> 02:16:36.180
people who are publishing in the peer -reviewed

02:16:36.180 --> 02:16:41.600
journals who are doing work that, like Paul Martin's,

02:16:41.760 --> 02:16:45.280
Paul Martin is like Einstein. I mean, his work

02:16:45.280 --> 02:16:49.620
has survived for decades because nobody has been

02:16:49.620 --> 02:16:53.079
able to. shoot it down. I mean, he's that sort

02:16:53.079 --> 02:16:56.200
of bulletproof in his arguments. So I'm relying

02:16:56.200 --> 02:16:58.799
on all of those guys, the people who are spending

02:16:58.799 --> 02:17:02.600
all their time, you know, using science -based

02:17:02.600 --> 02:17:05.739
research to study this. And what they, when I

02:17:05.739 --> 02:17:09.819
look at their work, Ross McPhee, for example,

02:17:09.979 --> 02:17:14.899
about the younger Dryas period, which is... For

02:17:14.899 --> 02:17:17.940
your listeners, that's a period at about 11 ,500,

02:17:18.219 --> 02:17:20.559
12 ,000 years ago when there was a sudden really

02:17:20.559 --> 02:17:27.139
cold pulse in North America that amounted to

02:17:27.139 --> 02:17:29.979
essentially kind of a climate change. It didn't

02:17:29.979 --> 02:17:32.840
last a very long time, but it certainly was a

02:17:32.840 --> 02:17:36.040
change from what had happened before and after.

02:17:36.340 --> 02:17:41.739
And there is a corollary argument called the

02:17:41.739 --> 02:17:47.329
fireball hypothesis. that came from an article

02:17:47.329 --> 02:17:49.989
that was in Science Magazine in about 2005 or

02:17:49.989 --> 02:17:53.489
2006 that argued that sort of in the tradition

02:17:53.489 --> 02:17:56.969
of the Chicxulub asteroid, there may have been

02:17:56.969 --> 02:18:02.170
a comet or possibly an asteroid or a meteorite

02:18:02.170 --> 02:18:06.530
that struck, that set off the Younger Dryas period

02:18:06.530 --> 02:18:12.379
and that also resulted in kind of a scorched

02:18:12.379 --> 02:18:14.959
earth, at least in sort of the northern climes

02:18:14.959 --> 02:18:18.079
in Alaska. I mean, I know you've had on the John

02:18:18.079 --> 02:18:21.639
Reeves guy, the Boneyard Alaska. How amazing

02:18:21.639 --> 02:18:23.780
is his place? Yeah. Don't you want to go there?

02:18:23.860 --> 02:18:26.020
Absolutely. Don't you want to go there? It's

02:18:26.020 --> 02:18:28.479
less. Less than five acres? Two acres. And then

02:18:28.479 --> 02:18:30.899
there's another site that's - Have you been there?

02:18:31.020 --> 02:18:33.260
No, I have not, but I really desperately want

02:18:33.260 --> 02:18:35.840
to. John's a fascinating guy. Yeah. I mean, the

02:18:35.840 --> 02:18:39.280
fact that he has complete control over this is

02:18:39.280 --> 02:18:41.399
so interesting. Yeah, yeah. And I could tell

02:18:41.399 --> 02:18:43.440
you some more stuff off the air. Yeah, okay.

02:18:43.700 --> 02:18:45.739
But he's just, I mean, you know what's going

02:18:45.739 --> 02:18:47.559
on in the East River right now. Are you aware

02:18:47.559 --> 02:18:49.899
of this? I don't know. There's a bone rush in

02:18:49.899 --> 02:18:51.920
the East River because he talked about in the

02:18:51.920 --> 02:18:56.459
early 1900s, the museum in New York City had

02:18:56.459 --> 02:19:00.100
so much property from his or so many artifacts,

02:19:00.299 --> 02:19:04.319
so many mammoth tusks and so many step bison

02:19:04.319 --> 02:19:07.219
jawbones and things that they dumped them in

02:19:07.219 --> 02:19:12.069
the East River. And he found the exact location.

02:19:12.209 --> 02:19:14.889
He told people where it is, and they've already

02:19:14.889 --> 02:19:17.129
started discovering things. They've discovered

02:19:17.129 --> 02:19:20.149
a step bison jawbone, and they recently discovered

02:19:20.149 --> 02:19:22.770
a fragment of a mammoth tusk. So there's these

02:19:22.770 --> 02:19:27.030
guys, Dirty Water Don, and that's a piece of

02:19:27.030 --> 02:19:28.829
the mammoth tusk they found. See if you can find

02:19:28.829 --> 02:19:32.149
also the bison skull. The bison skull was maybe

02:19:32.149 --> 02:19:35.780
even more compelling. In the area where this

02:19:35.780 --> 02:19:37.819
guy told them to look, they've started to find

02:19:37.819 --> 02:19:41.659
things. He's got so much on his property. It's

02:19:41.659 --> 02:19:43.360
so incredible. I think it's a little further

02:19:43.360 --> 02:19:47.879
up, Jamie. These look older. So a bison priscus,

02:19:47.899 --> 02:19:51.860
huh? Yeah, bison jawbone. Is that it right there?

02:19:53.379 --> 02:19:54.639
That's it right there? It should be right here.

02:19:54.680 --> 02:19:58.559
It's not. Well, you can find it if you just Google

02:19:58.559 --> 02:20:02.100
it. Bison, what year? What were you looking at?

02:20:02.139 --> 02:20:04.079
How far away is this? April. When was he here?

02:20:04.340 --> 02:20:06.399
So this is probably, okay, these are pretty recent

02:20:06.399 --> 02:20:10.889
photos. We're still in. March, I think, was when

02:20:10.889 --> 02:20:12.690
they discovered it, if I remember correctly.

02:20:12.729 --> 02:20:15.610
So this is the one you did with John, huh? Yes.

02:20:16.229 --> 02:20:19.170
And look at that. They found cats and things

02:20:19.170 --> 02:20:22.950
and cave bears that they didn't think were native

02:20:22.950 --> 02:20:24.469
to that area. They didn't even think they were

02:20:24.469 --> 02:20:27.250
in that area. So they're making these significant

02:20:27.250 --> 02:20:30.129
discoveries in this piece of property that he

02:20:30.129 --> 02:20:33.729
has that really kind of changes. There it is,

02:20:33.790 --> 02:20:35.809
right there. Right below that, that's the piece.

02:20:35.889 --> 02:20:37.670
That's the piece where he's pulling it out of

02:20:37.670 --> 02:20:39.770
the water. Oh, boy. Yeah, isn't that amazing?

02:20:39.829 --> 02:20:42.069
And then right below that, you can see the actual

02:20:42.069 --> 02:20:45.909
piece itself. We can see it's 10 inches. Really

02:20:45.909 --> 02:20:50.120
amazing stuff. A chunk of a jawbone of a steppe

02:20:50.120 --> 02:20:52.680
bison that they found in the East River. In the

02:20:52.680 --> 02:20:54.100
East River. And there's a lot more out there,

02:20:54.139 --> 02:20:56.459
apparently. But, you know, you're dealing with

02:20:56.459 --> 02:20:59.280
almost 100 years of it sitting there. But just

02:20:59.280 --> 02:21:01.100
the fact that they could still find some pieces

02:21:01.100 --> 02:21:04.180
is really encouraging. I mean, that's 100 years

02:21:04.180 --> 02:21:07.899
of silt, a moving river, who knows how much pollution

02:21:07.899 --> 02:21:10.940
and garbage. But they're finding things, which

02:21:10.940 --> 02:21:13.500
is pretty damn cool. Well, it's exciting to do

02:21:13.500 --> 02:21:16.010
it. I mean, I found at one point. When I was

02:21:16.010 --> 02:21:19.090
living on the Great Plains back in the 1980s,

02:21:19.090 --> 02:21:24.069
I found a bison skull eroding out of a stream

02:21:24.069 --> 02:21:27.290
bank. And I have no idea how old it was, but

02:21:27.290 --> 02:21:30.170
it was of a calf. It was a fairly small skull,

02:21:30.350 --> 02:21:33.489
but the horn cores were... there and yeah it

02:21:33.489 --> 02:21:36.389
was very exciting to find something like that

02:21:36.389 --> 02:21:38.149
one of the things that john has found one of

02:21:38.149 --> 02:21:39.750
the things that's very extraordinary is it seemed

02:21:39.750 --> 02:21:42.510
like these animals all died together and there's

02:21:42.510 --> 02:21:47.610
a very distinct layer of scorched earth I remember

02:21:47.610 --> 02:21:50.950
seeing that. The Younger Dryas impact theory,

02:21:51.190 --> 02:21:53.569
what's fascinating about it, it's not one event.

02:21:53.709 --> 02:21:55.989
It's multiple events that take place over thousands

02:21:55.989 --> 02:21:58.409
of years, and there's a lot of physical evidence

02:21:58.409 --> 02:22:00.829
of it. Iridium in particular, which is common

02:22:00.829 --> 02:22:03.770
in space and rare on Earth, and also nanodiamonds,

02:22:03.889 --> 02:22:06.450
these impact diamonds, these microdiamonds that

02:22:06.450 --> 02:22:09.889
get created upon impact of these, whether it's

02:22:09.889 --> 02:22:12.190
comets or asteroids, whatever it is, they think

02:22:12.190 --> 02:22:15.149
that there was multiple ones of these. This also

02:22:15.149 --> 02:22:18.139
coincides. with the time period in which, you

02:22:18.139 --> 02:22:20.899
know, we apparently pass through this every,

02:22:20.959 --> 02:22:23.420
I think it's every June and every November. Is

02:22:23.420 --> 02:22:28.250
that correct? this asteroid, this shower that

02:22:28.250 --> 02:22:31.750
we see, this meteor shower. And that also coincides

02:22:31.750 --> 02:22:34.729
with the Tunguska explosion, which they believe

02:22:34.729 --> 02:22:39.610
is an asteroid that blew up right above the surface

02:22:39.610 --> 02:22:43.110
of the Siberian forest and to this day is like

02:22:43.110 --> 02:22:46.309
flattened, like this enormous area. The photographs

02:22:46.309 --> 02:22:49.170
are extraordinary of the post -impact discovery

02:22:49.170 --> 02:22:52.200
of the site. And for a long time they're trying

02:22:52.200 --> 02:22:54.639
to figure out when, but this coincides exactly

02:22:54.639 --> 02:22:58.959
when Earth passes through this meteor shower,

02:22:59.159 --> 02:23:01.700
which is really, really interesting stuff. And

02:23:01.700 --> 02:23:04.219
I think the two of you together might be able

02:23:04.219 --> 02:23:06.440
to, if you have a conversation, it would be very

02:23:06.440 --> 02:23:09.280
fascinating. He's incredibly impressive, this

02:23:09.280 --> 02:23:12.200
guy. And I know he's heterodox in his sort of

02:23:12.200 --> 02:23:15.700
ideas, but... brilliantly researched. I mean,

02:23:15.739 --> 02:23:18.040
and has had debates with scientists over this.

02:23:18.100 --> 02:23:20.620
Even on my podcast, they were talking about this

02:23:20.620 --> 02:23:23.959
evidence, and they put it together with Graham

02:23:23.959 --> 02:23:27.500
Hancock's work. And Graham Hancock, who has Ancient

02:23:27.500 --> 02:23:31.340
Apocalypse, right? Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix,

02:23:31.639 --> 02:23:34.920
which is basically all about that. It's all about

02:23:34.920 --> 02:23:37.379
the evidence of these sophisticated cultures

02:23:37.379 --> 02:23:40.459
that existed 11 ,000, 12 ,000 years ago that

02:23:40.459 --> 02:23:43.540
we really didn't know. were around until they

02:23:43.540 --> 02:23:45.799
started discovering gobekli tepe and all these

02:23:45.799 --> 02:23:47.760
things they can carbon date to that time period

02:23:47.760 --> 02:23:49.979
where we thought at one point in time they were

02:23:49.979 --> 02:23:52.159
just hunters and gatherers now we know they were

02:23:52.159 --> 02:23:54.340
they were capable of very sophisticated stone

02:23:54.340 --> 02:23:57.139
work in turkey and there's only to this day i

02:23:57.139 --> 02:23:59.840
think less than 10 of them has been uncovered

02:23:59.840 --> 02:24:02.379
they use lidar and they found more of them the

02:24:02.379 --> 02:24:07.420
surrounding hills but he believes that this coincides

02:24:07.420 --> 02:24:10.930
with these meteor impacts and that there was

02:24:10.930 --> 02:24:14.290
probably a huge disruption of human civilization

02:24:14.290 --> 02:24:17.090
and a restart of it. And it coincides with the

02:24:17.090 --> 02:24:19.129
end of the ice age. And there's some really fascinating

02:24:19.129 --> 02:24:23.729
erosion data and data of massive amounts of water

02:24:23.729 --> 02:24:26.010
that happened very quickly. And he believes what

02:24:26.010 --> 02:24:28.370
happened was something hit the actual ice cap

02:24:28.370 --> 02:24:31.129
that was over North America. This guy's very

02:24:31.129 --> 02:24:33.590
well researched in this. It's a really fascinating

02:24:33.590 --> 02:24:36.049
conversation, I think, with the two of you together.

02:24:36.129 --> 02:24:37.530
And I would love to have if you're interested

02:24:37.530 --> 02:24:41.120
in that. Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly intrigued

02:24:41.120 --> 02:24:43.479
by it. I always like to see people, whenever

02:24:43.479 --> 02:24:48.360
they have some, you know, some dramatic new argument

02:24:48.360 --> 02:24:51.420
or claim for something that has other explanations.

02:24:52.489 --> 02:24:55.290
Come up with something like a scientific article

02:24:55.290 --> 02:24:57.889
that you submit to a peer -reviewed journal and

02:24:57.889 --> 02:25:01.430
see what the Ross McPhees of the world think

02:25:01.430 --> 02:25:03.170
of it. I would like to see that too, but I do

02:25:03.170 --> 02:25:05.510
think that people do preserve their initial notions,

02:25:05.750 --> 02:25:07.750
especially if they've been teaching that and

02:25:07.750 --> 02:25:09.530
writing books on that and they've proclaimed

02:25:09.530 --> 02:25:13.809
that to be the exact history of how things went

02:25:13.809 --> 02:25:17.090
down. I would like just to see you have a conversation

02:25:17.090 --> 02:25:19.889
with this guy because, again, he's very impressive.

02:25:20.149 --> 02:25:23.370
His ability to describe these things and his

02:25:23.370 --> 02:25:26.610
recall of the information is second to none.

02:25:26.889 --> 02:25:30.030
Well, what I would say to the younger Dryas so

02:25:30.030 --> 02:25:33.930
far and certainly the Fireball article published

02:25:33.930 --> 02:25:37.780
back in 2005 or 2006. had some currency for quite

02:25:37.780 --> 02:25:41.639
a number of years. Obviously, when I was working

02:25:41.639 --> 02:25:44.159
on these initial chapters, or particularly on

02:25:44.159 --> 02:25:47.049
that Clovisia, the beautiful chapter, for Wild

02:25:47.049 --> 02:25:49.670
New World. I mean, I looked at what scientific

02:25:49.670 --> 02:25:52.190
literature I could find in the journals, and

02:25:52.190 --> 02:25:55.850
they weren't really citing it anymore. And I

02:25:55.850 --> 02:25:59.190
think the reason was basically this. The argument

02:25:59.190 --> 02:26:03.709
goes as a kind of a test for something that could

02:26:03.709 --> 02:26:08.610
cause a major extinction is, okay, so the Younger

02:26:08.610 --> 02:26:12.819
Dryas produced a cold pulse, to be sure. But

02:26:12.819 --> 02:26:15.100
it's going to be difficult to argue that these

02:26:15.100 --> 02:26:17.940
animals are going to expire in a cold pulse when

02:26:17.940 --> 02:26:21.639
they survive the glacial maximum 8 ,000 years

02:26:21.639 --> 02:26:24.440
ago. His argument is massive devastation. His

02:26:24.440 --> 02:26:27.639
argument is instant flooding, the creation of

02:26:27.639 --> 02:26:29.620
the Great Lakes almost instantaneously. It's

02:26:29.620 --> 02:26:32.200
a wild argument. It's a wild conversation. So

02:26:32.200 --> 02:26:34.680
here are the other two arguments then. The other

02:26:34.680 --> 02:26:38.760
two arguments are if you have an extinction like

02:26:38.760 --> 02:26:42.479
the five that we've had before. I mean, I argue

02:26:42.479 --> 02:26:44.680
that, you know, we're all talking about the sixth

02:26:44.680 --> 02:26:47.760
extinction when we're in. My argument, sort of

02:26:47.760 --> 02:26:50.379
following an article that was published in the

02:26:50.379 --> 02:26:54.219
National Academy of Sciences in 2018, is that

02:26:54.219 --> 02:26:57.559
the sixth extinction that we think of today has

02:26:57.559 --> 02:27:01.040
actually, unlike all the previous five, the fifth

02:27:01.040 --> 02:27:04.500
one being Chicxulub, the sixth one has actually

02:27:04.500 --> 02:27:07.340
been happening in slow motion for 30 ,000 years.

02:27:07.659 --> 02:27:11.649
It's not just started. It's happening, as the

02:27:11.649 --> 02:27:14.110
people in the National Academy of Sciences piece

02:27:14.110 --> 02:27:17.670
put it, when humans spread out of Africa, took

02:27:17.670 --> 02:27:21.409
out more than 300 mammal species as they spread

02:27:21.409 --> 02:27:25.549
across the earth over the subsequent several

02:27:25.549 --> 02:27:29.409
thousand years, and cost us in what they called

02:27:29.409 --> 02:27:33.829
in this 2018 article. almost a worst case scenario,

02:27:34.090 --> 02:27:37.069
cost us like two and a half billion years of

02:27:37.069 --> 02:27:42.010
specially evolved genetics. So the reason I have

02:27:42.010 --> 02:27:44.469
been following that argument, and that's kind

02:27:44.469 --> 02:27:48.309
of the one I do, is that when the younger, driest

02:27:48.309 --> 02:27:50.690
thing comes up, what people point out is that

02:27:50.690 --> 02:27:54.549
in all the extinctions before the Pleistocene

02:27:54.549 --> 02:27:59.030
one, those extinctions took out everything. They

02:27:59.030 --> 02:28:01.930
took out life in the oceans. They took out small

02:28:01.930 --> 02:28:04.809
creatures. They took out amphibians, reptiles,

02:28:04.850 --> 02:28:08.430
birds. But the Pleistocene seemed to just be

02:28:08.430 --> 02:28:14.469
mammals and often just big mammals. And so there's

02:28:14.469 --> 02:28:18.149
this sort of logical attempt to try to come up

02:28:18.149 --> 02:28:22.090
with what would explain an extinction scenario

02:28:22.090 --> 02:28:25.149
that doesn't take out things in the ocean, that

02:28:25.149 --> 02:28:29.260
doesn't take out little creatures. but just focuses

02:28:29.260 --> 02:28:32.180
on big mammals, which is why sort of the consensus

02:28:32.180 --> 02:28:36.540
is going towards this human spread. Dan, I don't

02:28:36.540 --> 02:28:38.959
think they're mutually exclusive. I think you

02:28:38.959 --> 02:28:41.020
probably have both things working in conjunction.

02:28:41.200 --> 02:28:43.319
And I think the good explanation for why it only

02:28:43.319 --> 02:28:45.360
kills things that are on Earth and not in the

02:28:45.360 --> 02:28:49.069
ocean is that it impacts the ice shell. It impacts

02:28:49.069 --> 02:28:52.790
these ice sheets and causes this almost instantaneous

02:28:52.790 --> 02:28:56.629
melting of the ice caps in a catastrophic way.

02:28:56.750 --> 02:28:59.489
And not everything is affected by it. Only the

02:28:59.489 --> 02:29:02.069
things that get impacted by the water and get

02:29:02.069 --> 02:29:05.559
impacted by this melting of the caps. I don't

02:29:05.559 --> 02:29:07.100
know enough about it to have this conversation

02:29:07.100 --> 02:29:10.440
with you, but I'm blown away by this guy, Randall

02:29:10.440 --> 02:29:13.020
Carlson, and his descriptions of it and his understanding

02:29:13.020 --> 02:29:15.180
of it. I just think it would be an amazing thing

02:29:15.180 --> 02:29:17.860
to get together with you. There's no doubt human

02:29:17.860 --> 02:29:20.799
beings had a massive effect on it, and I think

02:29:20.799 --> 02:29:22.479
that all these things you're pointing out are

02:29:22.479 --> 02:29:25.450
really fascinating. pretty tragic, too, that

02:29:25.450 --> 02:29:28.729
human beings did. I mean, the one thing that's

02:29:28.729 --> 02:29:30.549
interesting is the gestation period of these

02:29:30.549 --> 02:29:32.649
mammoths, right? Like, they had to carry their,

02:29:32.750 --> 02:29:34.370
because they were so big, you alluded to this

02:29:34.370 --> 02:29:36.709
when you were talking about the bison. So, if

02:29:36.709 --> 02:29:39.969
you wiped out a clan of them, you're making a

02:29:39.969 --> 02:29:43.000
significant impact. It's not like... Like rabbits

02:29:43.000 --> 02:29:45.719
or like coyotes. No, that's exactly right. Right.

02:29:46.079 --> 02:29:48.579
Biologists call those K species, which have these

02:29:48.579 --> 02:29:51.299
really long gestation periods. So they would

02:29:51.299 --> 02:29:54.059
make them more vulnerable to human predation.

02:29:54.120 --> 02:29:57.379
Yeah. And they also were ignorant to us until

02:29:57.379 --> 02:29:58.319
we came here. They were ignorant to us. They

02:29:58.319 --> 02:30:00.840
evolved for who knows how many years before we

02:30:00.840 --> 02:30:03.639
got here. Yeah. Well, one of the things I have

02:30:03.639 --> 02:30:08.200
always loved about you and your podcast is your

02:30:08.200 --> 02:30:14.459
wonderful openness to... Everybody. I mean, it's

02:30:14.459 --> 02:30:16.680
I think it's one of the explanations for why,

02:30:16.780 --> 02:30:19.799
you know, the Joe Rogan experience is such a

02:30:19.799 --> 02:30:24.360
global hit, man. I mean, you come across as.

02:30:25.460 --> 02:30:28.940
Tell me your shit, and I bet I'm going to love

02:30:28.940 --> 02:30:33.860
it. Well, with your case, it's easy. Your shit

02:30:33.860 --> 02:30:36.940
is amazing. And one of the big successes is the

02:30:36.940 --> 02:30:38.360
fact that people like you are willing to come

02:30:38.360 --> 02:30:40.239
on. So I really appreciate that. Oh, hell, man.

02:30:40.239 --> 02:30:42.040
I love it. It was really entertaining. I can't

02:30:42.040 --> 02:30:44.000
wait to listen to this one again. It was so good.

02:30:44.139 --> 02:30:45.620
There's so much information. And I can't wait.

02:30:45.840 --> 02:30:47.819
Even though somebody else is reading this book,

02:30:47.920 --> 02:30:50.479
I'll get it on audio anyway. But it's a wild

02:30:50.479 --> 02:30:53.219
new world, epic story of animals and people in

02:30:53.219 --> 02:30:54.959
America. Dan Flores. And I can't recommend it.

02:30:54.950 --> 02:30:57.270
enough his other book Coyote America that I've

02:30:57.270 --> 02:30:59.809
read and then there's the American Serengeti

02:30:59.809 --> 02:31:02.049
Dan you're the man I appreciate you very much

02:31:02.049 --> 02:31:04.309
let's do this again we'll do it with Randall

02:31:04.309 --> 02:31:07.010
thank you very much bye everybody