#2433 - James McCann

James McCann (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

SPEAKER_4 (0:14)

That's fucking good.

James McCann (0:15)

Have we started? Have we gone?

Joe Rogan (0:17)

We're starting.

Jamie (0:18)

Oh, no.

James McCann (0:20)

Not over the relics.

Joe Rogan (0:21)

The dirtier this table is, the better.

James McCann (0:24)

Get it away from the relics.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

That is, that's from my friend John Reeves. He gave that to me. That's a mastodon tooth. Or a woolly mammoth or what's the difference? What is the difference between a woolly mammoth and a mastodon? They must be a different age. A different era. But that's a giant tooth. There's a company in Alaska, I forgot the name, but they, it kind of seems fucked to carve into this thing because it is 10,000 years old, at least.

James McCann (0:53)

How many of them are there though? Do they have heaps of them?

Joe Rogan (0:55)

They have heaps of them. But this is really cool. It's like they carved a mammoth in it. So what is the difference? According to our sponsor, Perplexity, a woolly mammoth and a mastodon were related, but quite different ice age elephants. Mammoths were taller, more slightly built grass eaters, while mastodons were shorter, stockier browsers that ate woody plants.

Jamie (1:17)

I was going to say the hair maybe, but it's obviously more.

Joe Rogan (1:21)

Woolly mammoth, right? Yeah, mastodon looks like an elephant.

James McCann (1:23)

Yeah, the mastodon horn does look cooler.

Joe Rogan (1:26)

They're pretty cool. They're all pretty cool. You know, they lived on an, what's it? Well, where were the last mastodons? I want to think, I want to say they lived on an island until like 10,000 years ago or something like that. Because most of them died out.

They don't know how they died out, but there's two theories. One theory is people killed them all, which is a shaky theory. Because it's people of 10,000 years ago with fucking sticks.

James McCann (1:56)

Were they around 10,000 years ago?

Joe Rogan (1:58)

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

James McCann (2:00)

We definitely did that, then.

Joe Rogan (2:01)

I don't think so. I think it was a cataclysm. I think it was the same thing that killed 65% of all megafauna. That's the problem. It killed so many different animals almost instantaneously. Yeah, that's it. Four thousand years ago, Wrangel Island, remote Arctic island off Siberia's coast, had the last woolly mammoths until about 4,000 years ago. Isn't that nuts?

James McCann (2:22)

That's nothing.

Joe Rogan (2:23)

That's nuts. Yeah, that's like before the pyramids were built.

James McCann (2:28)

It's...

Joe Rogan (2:28)

No, I mean after the pyramids were built, rather.

James McCann (2:30)

It's like similar time. Yeah, after.

Joe Rogan (2:31)

Yeah, after the pyramids. Allegedly. I think they were probably built earlier than that. But the official date is 2,500 BC.

James McCann (2:38)

I've seen that strange man with the beard and the...

Joe Rogan (2:40)

Which one?

James McCann (2:41)

That man you had on to debate it who's always clapping back on Twitter and going like, there's nothing funny about the...

Joe Rogan (2:46)

Oh, Flint Debel? Yeah.

James McCann (2:48)

I don't want to invoke his irer.

Jamie (2:49)

I don't want him.

James McCann (2:51)

He's got a lot of time and a lot of hate.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

I actually enjoyed talking to him about non-archaeology, non-ancient history related stuff. Here's some interesting things about seeds. Like he does a lot of work in seeds.

Jamie (3:03)

Okay.

Joe Rogan (3:04)

No, it's actually really interesting how...

James McCann (3:06)

The history of seeds.

Joe Rogan (3:07)

Yeah. So say if you have a wild plant, they can tell the difference between a wild plant and an agriculturally grown plant.

James McCann (3:14)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:14)

And the way is the seeds change. So when you have a wild seed, it is more conducive to the growth of the plant if the seeds break off easier, and scatter, and they get into the ground easier. So they break free of the plant. But then when you use agriculture, the seeds don't become important for the creation of new plants, because you're always taking the seeds anyway and planting the seeds, right? So those seeds are more robust and they hang on more.

James McCann (3:43)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:43)

So you could tell by looking at the actual seeds themselves, whether it's an agriculturally based seed, or whether it's a wild seed.

James McCann (3:53)

That is good. I hadn't thought about that.