The Real Truth Behind the Ancient Maya Disappearance

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[@decodingtheunknown2373]

Check out Foreo at foreo.se/2lp9 and get 21% off BEAR. Thank you FOREO for the sponsorship!

[@Frontier2000AnoDomin]

Why does Simon hate the History Channel sooo very much? Something funky going on there. Did they turn him down for a high salaried job one time? Did they refuse to sponsor one of his channels? “It´s like the JFK assassination or the Marilyn Monroe death. I´m not quite sure what happened, but there´s some suspicious sh#t going on there.” And what about the Animal Planet shows too? The mockumentaries about the mermaids and the cannibal in the jungle? Simon totally removed his water-proof shoes, squatted and took a giant dump on them too! It´s not Animal Planet´s fault that there are so many Americans out there with so little critical thinking ability. Those shows were great fun… fictional drama (with a tinge of science) high production and entertainment value… excellent. You can´t blame the producers for all those “small-brains” out there, who can´t distinguish between Hollywood and Reality!

[@magus104]

ah the "Simon likes money so heres a falsely advertised snake oil product" sponsor.

[@DaxianPreston]

even if its snake oil it might increase your confidence. more mates are interested in confidence over looks anyway so who cares. don't buy it if you don't believe in it. but buy it if you do either way who cares.

[@ricardobimblesticks1489]

@@magus104 Interesting tangent, Chinese snake oil is actually medicine, it is a proven anti inflammatory and is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and bursitis to this day. The term only became synonymous with quackery because of Americans selling horse piss to exploited Chinese migrants seeking medicine during the building of the Central Pacific Railroad. Times have not changed that much, they still try to sell horse piss to the unsuspecting they just call it beer nowaday :D

[@ricardobimblesticks1489]

Yea nice try. I'm not going to rub your balls on my face.

[@JamesFromTexas]

"Why are people so stupid" is a good Decoding the Unknown video idea! Asking the real questions we need answers to.

[@Macilnar0Anquietas]

That would need to be a multi-episode series of hour long videos, there are so many variables to cover and that doesn’t get into conspiracies.

[@iswordlogici7760]

It's simple. Stupid people died quickly back then. Stupid people now have many societal crutches allowing them to live longer lives. Plus the internet and social media in particular doesnt help

[@morkusmorkus6040]

The fact that this is the top comment is hilarious. Dunning-Kruger anyone? 😂

[@sookendestroy1]

The history channel

[@Exxar-Kuun]

It’s the chemicals in the water turning the frickin frogs gay

[@Im-Not-a-Dog]

The Inca also didnt use the wheel for carts. And it wasnt that they didnt have it, they just didnt use it for carts because they lived in mountainous areas where wheels are more dangerous than useful. Plus, they had Llamas which are amazing for transporting large loads on their backs both up and down hill, where a wheel would actually be disadvantageous.

[@tahlialysse]

Yeah, both cultures had plenty of wheels that they used when appropriate...but the appropriate place for wheels was mostly on toys and stationary contraptions (that used wheels for purposes other than moving around). It's the same thing for other cultures around the world living in these types of rough terrain (well, rough for wheel usage), and yet it's mostly only Native cultures that folks spout about "not having the wheel."

[@willmfrank]

Wheels have an annoying tendency to roll downhill far more easily than they roll uphill.

[@Wraith3100]

They had horses too

[@Im-Not-a-Dog]

@@Wraith3100 Not until after Europeans brought them to the Americas.

[@Zackaria_sMax]

They used them for hot wheels. 🔥

[@sookendestroy1]

Fun fact: it's a common misconception that the mayans and Inca didnt have the wheel in reality they did, usually on children's toys as wheels werent very useful on mountains and the jungle and rivers, especially when your largest domesticated animals were gerbils, small dogs and llamas. The horse came across with the Europeans.

[@Iris_1217]

You just need enough gerbils.

[@sookendestroy1]

@@Iris_1217 or one very large gerbil... humanity is lucky we stopped them before they got to this point

[@Silkenray]

Guinea pigs, not gerbils. Gerbils aren’t native to the Americas.

[@ChrisCronix]

Well to be fair, they probably hadn't invented bearings yet. So the wheel would in fact be of no significant use for them.

[@OldSchoolLPsGames]

@@ChrisCronix Heck, we've been using the wheel a lot longer than we have had bearings. Medieval carts have some interesting solutions for it, like greasing the axle and using the difference in diameter of the wheel and the shaft to minimize friction. If it's something you're interested in, I highly recommend that Google rabbit hole.

[@bo7341]

Simon, rant about the wheel. Ilze puts it exactly correct. They did understand the wheel as a concept but had no use for it. The largest animal in their territory was the llama, which isn't built to pull weight. On top of that, it's hard to build roads in mountainous jungle terrain, and especially not roads that wheels can use.

[@Zackaria_sMax]

They had use for the wheel... that's why they've found so many of them.

[@h4nn4h___]

​@@Zackaria_sMaxthey mainly used them in children's toys

[@farmdog93]

The forest and hills make it extremely difficult for the use of the wheel there but they knew, like someone said above they manly used them in kids toys

[@Sabrowsky]

"were they killed by the Spanish or was that the Inca" Simon, you pretty much described the fate of most mesoamerican/andean societies that existed in the 16th century.

[@paulwhiston1836]

It was the Aztecs

[@ATLmodK]

And the Incas but not in North America

[@joemagnus5085]

I am baffled by Simon's steel sieve of a mindbrain. I've heard him mangle "Tenochitlan" in multiple videos.

[@grimdarkgeek]

I’m an archaeologist who worked with the Maya culture in Belize for Well over a decade and I approve this video. My thesis from about 20yrs ago actually covered a lot of what was in the video. In case you are wondering, yes, people have asked me to point out what’re the aliens landed.

[@OnlyOneTubing]

what're? is that even a word?

[@AppalachianAntidote]

What're you up to over there?

[@BenEargle]

​@@OnlyOneTubingif you consider contractions words then yes, unfortunately it is a word.

[@653j521]

@@BenEargle Word maybe if you think any two words can be a contraction, but senseless in a sentence. What was needed was the single word where. Did AI get its claws on that word and change it?

[@Alejandro_BoniIIa]

⁠@@OnlyOneTubingmy favorite contraction I’ve seen is “y’ain’t” Y’ain’t= y’all + ain’t = you + all + are + not Example: y’ain’t gonna take my land from me!

[@semaj_5022]

The Maya(and other South and Central American cultures) didn't really have much use for the wheel due to the geography of the region and lack of local domesticable pack animals. Llamas and Alpacas aren't exactly great at pulling carts, and carts aren't really going to have an easy go of rolling through the jungle or up a mountain. Also, the Mayan calendar just..rolled over. It didn't end, it just did what calendars do and started over after it ended. Edit: I could have just shut the hell up and kept watching lol but I'm not deleting this.

[@Im-Not-a-Dog]

I basically wrote the same thing but about why the Inca didnt have carts either. It really boils down to 2 things 1) Wheels are dangerous on mountains And 2) Llamas are great at carrying shit on mountains.

[@robunderwood7689]

Good point.

[@theodoresmith5272]

They knew about the wheel. It is found on kids toys all over the Americas. Dogs were used to pull stuff by many tribes. A canoe is a better mode of transport in Southern Mexico. The Inca roads are often pretty vertical and or nothing more then a great trail.

[@semaj_5022]

@@theodoresmith5272 Yeah, between the animals they did have and the many, many navigable rivers of the Americas, wheels just weren't really necessary for any of the ancient and classical civilizations of the areas. Hell, the Maya even generally made their pottery by hand instead of on a pottery wheel, so they were pretty much just fine going without. *edited for clarity.

[@morkusmorkus6040]

​​@@semaj_5022 There arent ANY navigable rivers in the Yucatan (which contained a large swath of Maya civilization, and the last area they inhabited at scale). Is there even any rivers at all in the Yucatan?

[@JimothyScrivens]

The Aztecs are the tribe you're forgetting. They were notorious for their human sacrifices. And they were the ones that the Conquistadors pitted against each other. Aztecs were in Mexico.

[@GrievousReborn]

The Spanish also had help from other native people that didn't like the Aztecs like the Tlaxcala and Cempoala

[@jaredthehawk3870]

​@cancermcaids7688 more like the Assyrians actually.

[@Faviomec]

They were also called the Mexica, but Western historians were tired of using "Mexican" and being unable to differentiate between pre and post colonial Mexico so they looked for another word to use. The Mexica in their myth came from a place called Aztlán so Western historians named them Aztec. (-ec Like Olmec, Toltec, even Celtic)

[@Peachcreekmedia]

None of these ethnic groups disappeared! They still exist.

[@johncenashi5117]

The funny thing about the sacrifrises is that yes, they happend. But not as much as people think. There would be massive massgraves but there are none. They took prisoners of war and killed them. But the claim that there was 1000s of them are false reports from the conqistadors. They reported that so they had a more just cause to take over. And every civ back in time had sacrifices.

[@Caranig]

Simon: "Our favorite villains, the Spanish!" Britain: "Am I a joke to you?"

[@StefanMedici]

France: 👀👀👀

[@londonpharaoh1603]

😂😂😂👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👌🏾💯

[@harrietharlow9929]

@@StefanMedici They were all pretty bad. So runner-up, the Belgians in the Congo.

[@TerenceClark]

My kids each just spent a month on an immersion program in the Yucatan. There's Mayan culture everywhere there, alive and well. They learned some of the local Maya dialect while there, too. They may have largely abandonned their big cities, but it was more like a larger scale US ghost town situation than a complete collapse. I'd be willing to bet they even still remained partially occupied until the conquistadors came along, akin to how Acoma Pueblo in the US desert Southwest still has a small population of about 30 people living there 900 years after its founding despite most Puebloans moving to neighboring villages.

[@frostbiteproduction3972]

“Fall Of Civilisations” podcast. Definitely worth a listen. He explains a lot about many lost and old civilisations. Great show.

[@joshuamills2136]

Only wish they’d put out videos more frequently.

[@ladyspectre8408]

It's worth noting that the Maya people are not gone.. they didn't disappear, there are still millions of people of Maya descent residing in the Yucatan, Central America and elsewhere today. Their society and much of their culture has been lost but they're definitely still there.

[@raymondclark1785]

I was going to say that. They can be seen all over Central America. Just not living in their cities that are tourists traps.

[@RealOngoGablogian]

Yeah he said that

[@larryblake842]

No, they are a shadow of what they were. They know fragments of their history and mythos. Just because they have the blood doesn't make them Mayan in the least. They are just descendants who have an inkling what their ancestors were.

[@danidavis7912]

@@larryblake842 Thank you.

[@wjanes11]

@ladyspectre8408 he said that.

[@danesorensen1775]

The drought and crop failure seen in the second act of Apocalypto are pretty much spot-on, it's just that they happened at least 500 years earlier than shown in the film. It also gave us a letter-perfect Huitzilopochtli sacrifice scene - by the Maya, who didn't worship Huitzilopochtli - in the name of Kukulkan, who didn't require human sacrifice. Yeah, it was a weird movie.

[@cecilialeni3664]

And the iconography on the temples during the sacrifices was Olmec :D Terribly funny film!

[@wingerding]

You still have to give Gibson props for attempting to make the film as close as he could to the truth he was shown, it would have been far more successful if he made the movie English language and slanted the story, but he didn't, he made it as accurately as he could have.

[@bryanmccarthy6493]

Yeah, Mel did a great job of telling a story based on historical events. He didn't make a fact based documentary on the rise and fall of the indigenous peoples of central and south America. But don't let that stop you. Nerd.

[@piresmari]

Like Simon does for Vessi, I think we deserve a video, a snapshot… maybe a how-to for Foreo, beautifully edited with proper memes and sound effects of him applying the product.

[@MissBlueEyeliner]

We are all the Mayan civilisation watching our world fall apart before our eyes. It’s both fascinating and terrifying.

[@glendohms9446]

the only thing that's fascinating and terrifying is your general lack of evidence combined with melodrama and stupidity

[@vikingunicorn]

The editing on these videos just sent me. I'm warching through all the content from June onward to chip away at the backlog from this summer; the experience just keeps getting better with each new video! My compliments to all the writers, editors, and of course to Simon for being such a delightful presentator!

[@heathersmith8549]

Good one Simon. I’ve been to many Maya archeological sites and yes, it’s been found that most of the pyramids, if not all, contain inner rooms

[@--enyo--]

I think Simon might be confusing the Maya with the Aztecs.

[@Zackaria_sMax]

Who doesn't? For 2 completely different civilizations, they are damn near identical lol

[@BimmerBros]

That’s like Greek and Romans, but fair enough people can’t tell those apart sometimes either 😅

[@MajoraZ]

@@Zackaria_sMax They lived in drastically different environments, have pretty different art and architectural styles, had an ENTIRELY different language that wasn't even in the same language family, etc. They are absolutely NOT identical.

[@blackeyedsusan727]

​@@MajoraZExacto . . .pinche Gringos

[@Mr.AimToMisbehave]

​@MajoraZ to those who are not educated on the cultures and only know the most basic things about them, they are basically identical. 1) Both lived in central america/mexico 2) Both are now non-existent 3) Both built ziggurats 4) Both were relatively primitive (no steel production etc)

[@DungeonDragon18]

It was the Inca that didn't have the wheel, because they lived in mountains where wheeled carts were useless. They did invent suspension bridges hundreds of years before anyone else, because bridges, unlike wheels, are super useful in the mountains.

[@pauleveritt942]

33 seconds from it being uploaded... I've never came so quickly to something with Simon.

[@biofoot7874]

They make a pill for that mate

[@kingnaga619]

Giggity

[@jordi0011]

That’s what she said BOOM

[@wendybrenner2614]

I am completely addicted to everything that Simon puts out! I completely agree with you the closest I have ever been is 1 minute 😢

[@luisinfant6025]

Allegedly

[@zjwmusic1936]

there were no continuous or smooth roads to wheel with at that time, Simon. Removing jungle is more trouble than it's worth, even in the 1900's when we had machinery to make the Panama canal.

[@tomhenry897]

Yet cleared jungle to build and farm

[@thehumanperson7448]

Simon: "The smart people say that the Maya probably went north. But to the more creative among us, they disappeared, without a trace" Me: [Realizes creative people wrote my grade school history textbook]

[@TheLittlestViking]

Listening to the whole "extended drought, deforestation, corn overproduction, humidity drop, population density, food shortages, etc" leading to the fall of the Mayan civilization, and here I am going down the checklist of what's happening in our world right now but adding on things like "disrupting the water cycle by breaking up groundwater reservoirs, etc" and just thinking, "welp, we're fucked, aren't we?"

[@Loralanthalas]

Anyone telling you we don't produce enough food is selling you something

[@hdfwk4wjj69wjvi8]

​@@Loralanthalasno one said that

[@cleanerben9636]

Don't worry by spraying reflective metals into the sky everything will be fine.

[@johncenashi5117]

Fall of civilization by Paul Cooper talks about this in his recenr book. Its really interesting.

[@piperjaycie]

Love the X-files!!! I remember when Simon found out they made more episodes a few years ago! That was funny.

[@TealCheetah]

They had the wheel, but without *beasts of burden*, it wasn't useful for anything more then toys.

[@julialerner3322]

Would be better for moving heavy stones for all those Yucatan temples than what they probably had tho.

[@bjw4859]

I was right into ancient cultures when I was at school & still find them interesting even today, this channel is one of my favourites. Also leaving he planet because they didn't want to learn Spanish has to be one of Simon's best one liners yet.

[@CountGremlin]

"Isn't that coffee hot??😮" "Extremely! 😏" One of my favorite Stargate scene 😂

[@FearHimself666]

I think people think the Mayans were peaceful is because they think of them in tandem with the Aztecs. And compared to them they were as violent as quakers is I’m guessing the thought process

[@TheAntiburglar]

Edit: The wheel wasn't particularly useful for the Maya largely due to the geography of the region. The thick forests and mountains weren't particularly wheel-friendly lol Ooh the disappearance of the Maya! This is one of those that is fairly well understood, but still very interesting. Plus I'm always down for more Deciding the Unknown :D

[@tommyrotton9468]

a wheel barrow might have been useful

[@--enyo--]

Did they have animals strong enough to pull carts, ploughs etc?

[@M1ggins]

@@--enyo-- nope, no pack animals native to South America. And they did use wheels, just not for transportation.

[@tommyrotton9468]

@@--enyo-- In North America they had wolves and domesticated work dogs like the Malamute, I just have the feeling they didn't bother having working animals and just ate them.

[@chainhold]

@@M1gginswhat’s a gaucho?

[@jonsherman9224]

Simon said he thought the wasnt an inside to the pyramids at Chichen Itza. You arent allowed to go inside, but there are pictures from when you used to be allowed to. Easily googled :)

[@hdfwk4wjj69wjvi8]

Yeah I personally went in when I was a kid! Just couldn't as an adult 😢

[@Nyc_figure_fanatic]

I've been hoping that you guys would cover this for so long🙌🏽

[@hannahsolo27]

I still haven’t figured out this channel’s upload schedule (or that of any other in the Whistlerverse)… all I know is that I’m a simple woman, I get the notification and I show up.

[@BruceBoyde]

All I know is that the videos drop at 9 p.m. UTC (conveniently 2 p.m. my time), so I check the channel at that time every day.

[@semaj_5022]

Yeah I just have the little notification bell set cause I have no idea when they're gonna do a new vid but I absolutely have to watch them when they come out haha

[@MrValentine101]

Simon, my beautiful bald bearded man. That whole bit about the PCs from the 70s... That was basically the source of the millennium bug/ Y2K scare. Although in this case, with a bit more substance as some older computers couldn't interpret dates beyond the year 2000, which would then cause a bunch of other errors. Not world ending errors mind, but enough to cause some disruption had there not been a large portion of the IT sector dedicated to creating work arounds for the problem.

[@willythemailboy2]

And it had (almost) nothing to do with people thinking the computers wouldn't still be in use, it was the fact that memory was such a precious commodity that they couldn't spare two additional digits to record years. Hell, they used special characters to denote 11 and 12 for the month field to save that second month digit in dates as well.

[@julieb8730]

I always look forward to when one of your videos upload. You and your writers are very entertaining 😊

[@animisttoo3890]

Another brilliant bit of research and scripting by Ilze, and wonderful commentary by Simon. There, take that, you algorithm! I've known a lot of maya folks, and no, they didn't disappear. They just got fed up with the high taxes and huge bullshit of big-city fuedalism and moved out to the country over a period of generations. They are still there, various regions having defeated conquest attempts by both the aztecs and the spanish [First rule of warfare: don't mess with hill folk in their own hills, or swamp folk in their swamps. You won't succeed, and you probably won't come back.]. Even today, spanish is a minority second language in some interior areas, and even the coastal maya still have their own music, culture, and family customs. Trivia: some of the "alien" languages depicted in the Star Wars movies were based on Mayan dialects, because the glottal, whistling, and clicking phonemes sound so exotic and expressive to outsiders. At this point, many years later, all I remember of my Mayan phrases is "alomb" for "head" because they said I had such a "strange head," a primeval mind (...and they weren't wrong). The Spanish speaking elders called me "El Tigre Loco, el demon chupasangre en la noche de la selva, para proteger la gente contra los malditos," and apparently thought I was an avatar of the ancient Jaguar God. Of all my adventures, that was one of the sweatiest.

[@fanellaforever]

Simon always says 'have I told this story before?' I'm like...yes 😂

[@darianashkevron9969]

The calendar "ending" was kinda/sorta an inaccurate interpretation. The mayan calendar is cyclical, and the cycle ended back in whatever year that was. That's why there were a bunch of people saying stuff would happen, because it marked the end of what essentially amounted to a mayan Era (the technical term, not "end of an era" as a common phrase).

[@semaj_5022]

People just got way too caught up in the hype and completely forgot that when one cycle ends, another begins. Like a year, or a decade. They just used the same calendar to track each cycle instead of making a new one like we do in the modern western world.

[@amywilson3084]

Our daughter was due on December 21, 2012 but she came 3 months early. We like to joke we prevented the Mayan Apocalypse by her coming early!!

[@Zeta9966]

This was a fantastic and eye-opening episode. The magic of the Maya is in fact true, and so powerful, that the entirety of this episode was immediately transmitted to my brain. My favorite DTU to date!

[@MKei-nr5tl]

When societies decline the wheel, it's because wheels wreck roads. In feudal Japan, wheels were forbidden on the major highways. So the trade off is this: how much labor does it take to maintain a road, versus how much labor does it take to simply carry things? If you're the ruler, your response is, "I am not going to pay to fix this road. You are going to stop breaking it."

[@tomsmith8515]

You may be a prophet and not know it Is the writing on the wall We see in 30-50 years

[@meryamdjeghri7737]

Great script Elsa, hopefully all is good in your home country. Keep up the good work!

[@Bubbaist]

I didn’t believe the world would end in 2012 (though I did take the morning off that day because I didn’t want to get up early if there was any chance the world would end.) As silly as the whole thing was, the image at the end of the calendar showed the world being covered in water. So that’s why people thought the Myans expected the world to end when the calendar did. It was silly to think the world really end that day, but it gave me an excuse to have a morning off.

[@laurachapple6795]

ILZE: "Time travel is sillier than aliens." SIMON: "NO IT ISN'T."

[@ButWhyWasTaken]

Simon, can you do a video about the Saxons conquest of Britain and displacement of the native Celtic people and things just ot adding up in any way with some archaeologists firmly believing the native celts were killed even though there are not nearly enough signs of large scale battles while others believe the celts just fully adapted the saxon lifestyle and culture over the span of a few years even though this is the opposite of what everyone else has done throughout history?

[@dstinnettmusic]

This is exactly what people have done throughout history, especially in Britain. They adopted the Roman lifestyle quite readily, as an example. The logic for mass invasion would be akin to people assuming an invasion of Europe by Americans because everyone started wearing blue jeans. Moreover, genetic evidence suggest that the celts never left. The Cheddar Man’s direct descendants still live in the area that guy was found. It seems more likely that the “invasion” displaced the ruling class, and the upper class are the only ones we have any writings about or that left major archeological evidence (castles, forts, cities)…while the masses of farmers (because for the vast majority of human history after hunter gatherer times were farmers who never left their immediate area) simply continued on as they always had. They adopted the language of the ruling class out of necessity, with English emerging as first a pidgin to allow the rulers to get food rent from those they ruled, and then developing into a conlang, and finally a full language. This could happen over a single lifetime, as language and cultural development has been observed in the modern day, driven by late colonialism and the movement of people into less populated areas of the world due to the world wars. Famously, an entire religious concept emerged around cargo accidentally dropped and then later purposefully dropped by passing British and American ships during World War II. It isn’t that much of a mystery, but I would appreciate a video to bust the myth of Anglo-Saxon invasion. To summarize, they probably did invade in the south and east of Britain. The place names make this clear (essex = east saxony, Wessex = west saxony, Sussex = south saxony) and did displace some number of the native Celts, but the number of invaders is over estimated in the popular imagination, based on an inability of historians and archeologists to understand the level of trade and exchange of material culture…the Celts were likely happy to take the new technology after the dark ages in the aftermath of Rome pulling out.

[@ButWhyWasTaken]

@@dstinnettmusicit's different, the people allegedly accepted the Saxon lifestyle not only in a few years but also 100% of them di and most definitely not all Britains accepted the Roman lifestyle but many pockets of Britains who stuck to their old lifestyle were left. Not with the arrival of the Saxons. Everything points towards violence being used to force the people to adapt, especially because the Saxon lifestyle was not really superior unlike with the Britains by the time the Romans invaded. There was no incentive to adapt much beyond the usual mingling and interest people take in the lifestyle of others and yet within a very short time allegedly literally all of them supposedly converted without any kind of violence. That just makes no sense. Either there was violence but signs have not been found for some reason or other or there was a different reason that lead to the very abrupt stop of the then British lifestyle shortly after the Saxons arrived. But the idea people just throw away centuries of traditions without being forced to and adapt 100% in a few years is insane. That is simply not how people work, never have and never will. The only way they change rapidly is because they are forced to, either it is because of violence or some other reason.

[@colosine]

The computer example already happened, we called it y2k, my first apocalypse

[@bettyswallocks6411]

Strictly speaking, the PC did not exist before August 12th 1981, when IBM launched the 5150, dubbed the IBM PC. Desktop microcomputers did exist before that date, but the were really not very good and not in widespread use. The Apple Macintosh was not released until 1984.

[@trishapellis]

"Maybe I do know more about the Maya" - Simon, after confusing them for the Aztecs. It's obvious that Simon knows some things about the ancient mesoamerican cultures in general, but isn't sure which tidbit belongs to which culture. The Aztecs ripped people's hearts out on top of their pyramids. The Incas left children on the top of mountains, drugged out of their minds, to die of exposure (the Andean mummies are generally Inca). I don't know what exactly the Maya did but considering what they were surrounded by (both in time and space) I'm not surprised they did practice human sacrifice.

[@Im-Not-a-Dog]

The "Spanish killed the Maya" theory is more ridiculous than "Aliens took them" only on the grounds that the Spanish would have to invent Time Travel in order to have done it, whereas Aliens would just have to develop space travel.

[@darthtac]

Great video Simon, I do enjoy Ilza scripts. Just wondering? Have you thought of doing an episode on The Face on mars?

[@jordanroof5380]

I was really expecting a "Dog is a fine meal" from The Patriot inserted at the beginning

[@jordi0011]

YES Simon, STARGATE rules!!!

[@--enyo--]

Agreed. I know it was heavily funded by the military as propaganda, but it’s still my favourite sci-fi show.

[@captmorgan3515]

“Ppl wouldn’t think the world was gunna end cuz the calander on the computer ended” Did Simon skip y2k? Also the maya had the wheel.. they just didn’t use it for transportation.

[@garymerfdudegui9452]

Finally someone mentioned y2k

[@PhenomRom]

I completely forgot about y2k while he was explaining that lol

[@rashkavar]

The blood sacrifice thing was the Aztec. The Maya are from the same general region - Mesoamerica - but are a very culturally distinct people.

[@lonnarheaj]

Throughout history, agrarian societies, those that farm a fixed location for sustenance for many years, strip the land of nutrients by growing the same crop in the location year after year. Crop rotation is a relatively modern concept. This trend also increases the likelihood of crop destruction from pests and plant diseases. The reduction in crop production worsens year after year until the harvest can no longer sustain the population. Also, forested land, especially rainforest land, tends to be relatively low in nutrients and very low in micronutrients. If a severe drought occurred, an entire crop could be lost, which would not only result in no food for the population but also leave no viable seeds to plant another crop.

[@ATLmodK]

I loved and took care of my kids. I love and take care of my dogs, got it now Simon. You take responsibility for something you love.

[@Thromash]

Man the wheel was a rollercoaster of emotion in this video 🤣

[@PoleTooke]

13:23 "I've met several Spanish, never an alien" 😂😂

[@Jason-fm4my]

One minute, the Mayans are driving their nuclear cars to the spaceport, the next, Mayxit passes MayCongress.

[@steel8231]

The Pleiades star cluster actually has a really cool as hell myth about them all being sisters, with an extra one you can't see because she's in hiding. The myth repeats more or less the exact same way across multiple cultures, which seems coincidental as hell until you find out that there used to be an additional star in the cluster that has since gotten so close to another in the constellation that the human eye can no longer tell there are 2. So either a bunch of cultures with no contact all had near identical myths about the same group of stars, or multiple cultures had oral histories and myths dating back far enough to register celestial drift.

[@NicholasJeffery]

The editor of this video was having so much fun on this

[@rileyhogan5196]

I love how aggressively skeptical Simon is. He gets like two lines in and then immediately enters "Nope" phase.

[@katmannsson]

the wheel thing is a gross misunderstanding; They lacked pack animals that would have made meaningful use of a wheel, but they also had like pottery wheels so in a literal sense they didn't not have 'the wheel' what they didn't have was 'wheeled carts'

[@sekaramochi]

Pure love dude. Please please please never stop ♥️

[@lostbutfreesoul]

Chain-collapse is always a nice theory whenever I hear it. Best I heard was applying it to the Bible text detailing the Curses of Egypt. One thing led to another which led to another, all the way to a slave revolt at the end because the rulers where dying of a food born disease on top of an insect driven famine. The right series of events would cause one catastrophe to roll into another, and then into another, and another, and... well, enough to make the Curses of Egypt.

[@Iris_1217]

And not even necessarily a Semetic slave revolt.

[@891Henry]

The shifting of rivers can destroy civilizations. The great cities of Ur and Uruk in Mesopotamia finally fell with the movement of the great rivers away from the cities. No irrigation, no crops, so no food. Trade also left. Water is everything.

[@robertwilliams9010]

Take a drink every time Simon asks whether the Inca does something when he's thinking of the Aztecs.

[@IIDave]

I'd love to see Simon make something about Stargate SG1 on one of his channels. Not sure exactly what, but i would watch it regardless.

[@aaronbrakefield]

How is that iPad not covered in boogers. 😅 Love this channel!!

[@auroradefae]

You mentioned it in your Son of Sam episode, but the big (silly?) conspiracy that connected him, satanic worship, the Manson murders, and other crimes of the period might be worth diving into.

[@deannagiuliani8541]

Simon....you have been mixing up the Maya and the Aztecs through this whole thing....fun fact I went to the Mayan pyramids and a guy on the tour kept trying to tell the tour guide about how the world was going to end in 2012, the tour guide kept trying to explain it nicely and then finally just signed real loud and said "IT'S A CIRCLE. CIRCLES DON'T END!" and rolled his eyes hella dramatically. It was beautiful

[@Sevo-]

Fun fact they used wheels for their toys. They didn't use it as they didn't have animals to pull it, so they just didn't use them. Or so I was told by a docu lol

[@dstinnettmusic]

Simon…Y2K (the thing with computer clocks you mentioned before the ad read) was a big deal. People spent collectively thousands of hours to make it seem like nothing. Yes, if the Unix time code “bug” was not worked around, many computer systems would have been messed up in ways that would have caused major issues in banking, as well as military computer applications.

[@BartOppeel]

I'm not sure from where I heard this, but I was told the Mayas used some agricultural technique to make the ground more fertile by burning all the flora. However this technique does destroy the land beneath, making it completely infertile/arid eventually. And this was indeed a big reason for them migrating away and "disappearing".

[@ladyspectre8408]

This is correct. Its called slash and burn agriculture. It's still used in certain areas of the world today. It has it's pros and cons, it can create some very fertile ground and major crop yields for short periods of time, but the ground needs to be allowed to replenish in between growing seasons. It's thought that the Maya became too large to support their form of agriculture and they began overworking their lands, eventually leading them to become infertile.

[@patrickbrumm4120]

Fun Fact about The Pleiades: They had long been known world-wide as The Seven Sisters. This cluster was used to judge people's eyesight, by determining how many of the Sisters one could count

[@javoc_jovian]

I will never stop laughing at "a proper fuck-off satellite dish" Someone make that into a children's book

[@ShakerCheeseIsRite]

Simons bout to start stocking up on Spaceballs canned air xD

[@loka7783]

I kinda like the idea that the Maya either built spaceships or were taken by aliens, is that if we here on Earth blow ourselves up, then there are humans somewhere out there in the universe still.

[@Sam-tm2un]

The aztecs were in Mexico while the Maya were in central America and the Yucatan

[@thataintbool]

The Yucatán is Mexico

[@tristanhallmark2724]

I do really wish Simon would make more native american content. there are so so many crazy stories and people from both north and south America. Like how has he not done a Crazy Horse biographic? of all the pyramids in the Americas, including the largest in the world. There are dozens of mega projects videos waiting to be written.

[@oliviabelisle8316]

I watch also @miniminuteman and man, between these two, they'd excellently cover this topic!!

[@oliviabelisle8316]

Simon Whistler and Milo Rossi collab 😍

[@Zackaria_sMax]

I hate that "fact" about the mexican pyramid... The Giza pyramid is twice as tall as the Mexican one... nobody is going to visit a pyramid because they are impressed with how wide the base is.... that's like going to visit the eiffle tower and being more impressed with the fence surrounding it because it's bigger and more of it touches the ground...

[@tristanhallmark2724]

@Zackaria_sMax then you really need to research it more. The Egyptian pyramids are cool, no doubt. That literally doesn't have any bearing on American pyramids. They are very very different. You're like a person who hates apples because you like bananas. That's weird.

[@antobyn869]

Asphyxiation! New phobia unlocked. Thanks for that.

[@rodsprague369]

When people talked about the Mayan calendar ending so time should end, also, I wanted to make t-shirts that said "Do we have to party like its 1999 again?"

[@chriseradley6083]

I am intrigued by your vintage mug. Wherever did you find a mug from a company that ended in bankruptcy nearly two decades ago?

[@RIXRADvidz]

Speculation based on historical information is always fun, especially when it's your turn on the bong and you have to come up with something. .... uh, Aliens !!

[@Zackaria_sMax]

6:29 They had wheels... They just only used them on toys though. The issue was they didnt have any beasts of burden, and they built everything ontop of rocky mountains and deep jungles, so you end up having to pick up your cart every 10 seconds to get it over another tree stump or boulder, so its easier just to get a few dudes to carry it. Its like thinking Native Americans in the Arizona desert were dumb for never inventing the sailboat...

[@paulornascimento]

Holy cow! How many channels does this guy have?

[@alaintobin6690]

When is this man gonna get his own TV show? Surly this voice of an angle can get time on the big screen? over 5 channels each with or close to 1million subscribers. half if not all of the history channel cast couldn't pull in numbers like this

[@tahlialysse]

Simon "...and all that Big Brain stuff..." Also Simon: "can you BELIEVE we have to BREATHE AIR?!? We'll die in MINUTES!!!"

[@Horvath_Gabor]

Simon: "We're such a fragile species." As opposed to 90% of other multicellular life, which definitely don't need air and won't die in minutes without it. ... Wait...

[@showmestate1842]

Good stuff!

[@stevelee5724]

Hi Simon. Your a funny funny funny (looking) man ! I love your work mate. Cheers from New Zealand 🇳🇿

[@kevinfoster1138]

Thank you finally I hear a video that talks about deforestation basically killed themselves with the slash-and-burn technique

[@Faux.Player]

Love the show. Keep them up

[@marinasaake7260]

This is the earliest I've ever been--and I'm SO FUCKING EXCITED FOR THIS VIDEO I live for your channels

[@mattbunce2509]

I live in playa del carmen... This will be an interesting watch! Let's go...

[@MCsCreations]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

[@Horvath_Gabor]

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology." - Some schmuck on the internet.

[@Snarmeggedon]

"There was a bowl or something and everyone was like, really bad." - Simon Whistler; Sage, Scholar, man with countless automobile issues.

[@Julathegreat]

Thank you foreo, i was feeling excluded with the sponsor of Sheild popping up all the time

[@terryenby2304]

Did you like Farscape too Simon? We are the same age so I’m guessing it was on the Beeb when you were growing up too!

[@ButWhyWasTaken]

21:47 Simon, beware of the AIR THIEVES!

[@ubserrano8180]

10:00 Yes, well… it used to be. Nowadays is not longer allowed in most places. I went in when I was a kid, there was a narrow staircase descending to a chamber with a tomb. Temperature is higher inside. Even back then taking pictures (because of the flash) were prohibited.