Jason Wilde: From Sky Lords to Water Sages, The Forgotten Ties that Shape Civilization

Cliff Dunning (0:25)

You know, archaeology is fairly new. I think in the 1900s, it was somewhat launched in the 1920s, 2010, 2030s.

We had teams from various universities excavating Mayan ruins and traveling throughout Central and South America and other parts of the Americas as a whole. And we're getting some very accurate material. And I have to tell you, I have been pleasantly surprised by what I have found through artificial intelligence, my research into all things Maya. Hey, this is Cliff, your host of Earth Ancients. And I have to tell you, I am having a blast working with ChatGPT, Claude, and this is what's happening. They are increasing the brain power and the reach of these tools. And for somebody who is writing a book on ancient Maya, you want to have this data. And what I'm able to do is upload volumes and books and white papers and research analysis and details. And I'm getting back just really great material. Here's a case in point. In 1930, Carl Rupert, who was an archaeologist for Harvard University, was tasked with excavating the El Caracol, which is what the Spanish called the snail, otherwise known as the observatory. And what I didn't realize until I started analyzing his research was that he took the thing apart. As they were excavating and slowly rebuilding the ruins of this observatory, he found not only extensive enhancements that were made to it, he changes our entire understanding of an observatory. Now, this isn't a simple building that you peer through holes or look out to the heavens. This is a very sophisticated, multi-level, Stairing-Cased building. And what this Rupert discovered, and this is what's so fascinating about this research, is that he actually reconstructed each level. Now, the first level has these slits in them that allows you to peer through the walls of the observatory, and with the naked eye observe certain planets.

If you go to the next level, level two, and by the way, you get up there by a staircase, you see different types of slots, smaller slots, that are directly peering at Mars and Venus. And then you go to the very top, which today is collapsed and broken, and you really can't get into that area. One person could get into this upper chamber and observe this heavens through unique slots. Now, my questions to AI were, was there a telescope? Was there any lenses? Were there any tools? And the reason I'm giving the AI these questions or these prompts is that there is a document within the resident codex, one of the only codexes we have on Sky Observatory, that reveals something called the Venus Table.

And they were able to chart the 584-day cycle of the planet through observation. I think, and I think Ruber guesses that this is the tool, this is the observatory they use to observe the planet. Now, what makes this fantastic is that I've always questioned, archaeoastronomies claim that they could see these planets with a naked eye. Now, you can see Venus during the evening because it's very, very bright. But to say that you're looking at it and observing the changes and its availability by sighting it 584 days is a big deal. Not only that, they also reveal very specifics about the planet that is very hard to consider with direct sight by itself. My belief is that they had the telescope or a lens, and Rupert helps me here in a little bit too, in his excavation of these upper sections of this observatory. And what he finds is housings and parts of the mortar that may have held some form of apparatus. Now, we're still in the infancy of understanding who the Maya were. We don't know if they had lenses. We haven't found one. We know that they were able to polish obsidian and create mirrors.

But we don't find anything that resembles a lens of any kind. And so I have to leave that alone in my writing and say, well, my guess is that they had a lens, but we don't have evidence of it. And so perhaps they were very acute observers of the heavens, and they were able to see the details of the planet Venus.

But I don't think it's possible. But I have to tell you, in the reconstruction of the observatory, this is the largest building of its kind in the entire Maya world.

And the elders who I spoke to years ago said to me that Chichen Itza where the observatory is located was a university, was a Maya university. And I was like, what does that mean? Well, they actually talk people how to observe the heavens. Prepare for the seasons, you prepare for the equinox, spring equinox, summer solstice. These are seasons for planting. These are seasons for animal husbandry. When's the best time to mate animals? When's the best time to grow certain crops? And these are what they use the heavens to determine, the seasons of change. So I have such a great interest in this that what I did is I went ahead and I uploaded Ruberts entire analysis of Caracol, the observatory, into AI, into Chachi BT.