#2039 - Michael Easter

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Hello, Michael. Good to see you, buddy.

Michael Easter (0:14)

Yeah, likewise, man.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

Last time I saw you, we were in Elk Camp in Utah.

Michael Easter (0:18)

We were indeed in Elk Camp. It was a good time.

Joe Rogan (0:20)

Yes. So, I was just pointing out to you about these discoveries they've found at the Boneyard in Alaska. And my friend John Reeves, who's been on the podcast before, Jamie, I'm going to send this to you.

You got it ready? So, the most recent thing they've found is evidence that looks like saw marks on these bones. It looks like they saw these bones to get the marrow out. Now, a lot of these bones that they've dated are 10,000 plus years old.

And the thing is, the saw was really supposedly invented somewhere around 7,000 years ago.

Michael Easter (1:00)

I feel like we often think that early humans weren't as advanced as they actually were.

And every time we make a new discovery, it just pushes it back. It pushes it back. And you learn that people were way more interesting, had a lot more tools, had a lot more skills than I think we think.

Joe Rogan (1:20)

Yeah, this is really interesting. I mean, if they do date this, some of the stuff they've dated is like 30,000 plus years old that they've found out here. The Boneyard is an amazing place. I think it's the Boneyard Alaska is the Instagram page.

Michael Easter (1:36)

Do you know where on the map it is in Alaska?

Joe Rogan (1:38)

I do not know. Do you know, Jamie?

Jamie (1:40)

I sort of remember. It's in the middle of Alaska.

Joe Rogan (1:44)

But this is amazing.

He's also found some bones from some animals that supposedly didn't even live there. Some certain cats, ancient cats. The craziest thing is, it's a very small area. He's excavating somewhere in the neighborhood of like six and a half acres. And there's another place that's like somewhere similar in size. And they're finding massive amounts of bones in these areas.

Michael Easter (2:11)

That's crazy.

Joe Rogan (2:12)

Woolly mammoth tusks and all this crazy stuff. But this is really interesting because that seems to be really clear evidence of tools that were used to saw a bone, another one they found. Like, look at this.

Michael Easter (2:25)

And the cut is so clean.

Joe Rogan (2:27)

So it really does look like a saw that they sawed to get to the marrow, which is wild stuff. I don't know if anyone has ever found anything like this before, but it's pretty extraordinary.

Michael Easter (2:44)

Changes how we think about how advanced we were.

Joe Rogan (2:46)

I mean, who knows? I mean, maybe they could find out that the saw marks are actually only a thousand years old and someone found these bones and tried to saw them a thousand years. I mean, I don't know.

Michael Easter (2:57)

Humans are amazing because we're such great explorers. That's something that I think makes us so unique among animals.

So Homo sapiens comes out and we take over the world in a very short amount of time. Neanderthals lived 200,000 years. They basically made it into Europe. We get Homo sapiens, all of a sudden, they move into the Americas. We put freaking boats in the water and go to Australia.

We take submarines down to the bottom of the ocean. We shoot off rockets into outer space. We are a species that never stops exploring. We want to know what is that? What's over there? I want to find out.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

Massive curiosity.

Michael Easter (3:39)

Massive curiosity, and it's shaped us so much. So, my book, Scarcity Brain, which is coming out soon, it has a whole chapter on this and why exploration is so important to humans as a species, but also how it's changed. So, if you think about how people explore today, we still explore in a sense, but it's mediated through the internet, right? So, it's like we have this urge to find information that can enhance our life.

Joe Rogan (4:06)

Yeah.

Michael Easter (4:06)

In the past, you had to go there. You had to go talk to someone. You had to go up around the riverbend. You had to go, okay, where is this greener grass? I'm going to go find it on foot. And there's going to be some amount of effort.

Now when we have this sort of information itch, we scratch it through a screen, which on one hand, that's great because we can get information quickly.

On the other hand, it's so easy to access, and there's so little effort we have to do. I think sometimes we get overwhelmed by it. And it's a very different form of information we can get today.