Feed Drop! Tales From Aztlantis and "How Conspiracy Theories Undermine Ethnic Studies!"

Introduction to Skeptoid and Tales from Atlantis

0:00Hi, this is Ray Magliazzi from Car Talk. Since you appreciate the facts, you know that Skeptoid brings the rigors of science to the world of wacko theories. What do I know about wacko theories? Well, my brother and I are responsible for most of them. But you can combat wacko theories and support science journalism at Skeptoid with your old car. Yeah, even your old car can be donated to Skeptoid and turned into more of the podcasts that you love. Want to find out more? Visit Skeptoid.com slash giving.

0:30Or call 877-215-0277 today. That's 877-215-0277 or Skeptoid.com slash giving. S-K-E-P-T-O-I-D dot com slash giving.

0:50You must excuse me. I've grown quite where I... This hasn't been easy, I know.

1:00But you've learned a lesson. A lesson in honesty.

1:04Honesty to yourself and honesty to others. That lesson will stand you in good stead all your life. I think we've all learned a good lesson. I've always heard that honesty is the best policy. Now I'm catching on to why that's so... Why that's so... Why that's so... Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Atlantis, where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and we help combat the spread of disinformation about these very topics.

1:41I am your host, Curly Tlapoyawa. Recently, I had the pleasure of presenting at the inaugural Skeptic Camp New Mexico, presented by New Mexicans for Science and Reason. The event featured a variety of speakers, including Adrian Hill of the Skeptic Zone podcast, Brian Dunning of Skeptoid, and Ben Radford of the Squaring the Strange podcast, among many other great presenters.

2:12Topics included Bigfoot, Internet hoaxes, UFOs, ghosts, and moral panics, just to name a few. My presentation was called Course Correction, How Pseudo-History, Pseudo-Archaeology, and Conspiracy Theories Undermine the Goals of Ethnic Studies. I've had a lot of people ask me about this particular presentation, so we here at the Tales from Atlantis podcast thought that it would be an excellent topic for the show.

2:46So, with that being said, I hope you enjoy the talk. I'm also the co-host of the Tales from Atlantis podcast, where we examine pseudo-archaeology, pseudo-history as it relates to Mesoamerica, Mexican-American community, Mexico. And we try to focus mainly on that, but we also include topics that we feel are relevant to our community. We, my co-host, Dr. Ruben Mariano-Tlacateca, is a professor of history, and I'm the archaeologist.

3:19So, if you want to check us out, I ask that you do so at Tales from Atlantis.

Pseudo-history in ethnic studies

3:25So, today I want to talk about, this talk is called Course Correction, How Pseudo-History, Pseudo-Archaeology, and Conspiracy Theories Undermine the Goals of Ethnic Studies. And I say this as somebody who has taught ethnic studies classes, I work as a cultural consultant, I've written books, a product of the Chicano movement. So, Chicano studies has had a huge impact on my life, and I see value in teaching the history of my people. But what I see sometimes is pseudo-history and pseudo-archaeology, conspiracy theory can make its way into these programs and affect how they're being taught.

4:02And I feel that this undermines the intent, the goals of ethnic studies, and it takes away from the value that they can be given to people.

The invented origins of Hunab Ku

4:13And I want to start with this idea here. I don't know if you've ever seen this symbol right here. It's pretty popular. If you read this slide, it says, The Philosophical Foundation, right? In lach-ech, panche-be, and hunab-ku. So, of these three concepts, I want to talk about this. Hunab-ku. And as it relates to this symbol right here, this symbol is very, very popular in Chicano communities, in Mexican-American communities, and in Mexico as well.

4:45You'll see this symbol all over the place. And it turns out that this symbol has a rather interesting history behind it, and also how it relates to this idea of hunab-ku, which these slides are from a Chicano Studies class. And the way that they defined hunab-ku is as movement and measure, the name the Maya gave to the equivalence of the supreme being or the grand architect of the universe. If that sounds very Freemasonry, it's because a lot of it is connected to Freemasons from the 1800s and the influence that they had on Mexico and Central America.

5:25This idea, this idea, this is from a website called Dissidic Voice, and this individual, Roberto Rodriguez, he's a friend, he's passed away recently, but we were friends. We disagreed on a lot of things, but we maintained our friendship. And he was a big proponent of this style of teaching. So this is an article he wrote called Inlach Ech Panchebe and Hunab-ku, the philosophical foundation for Vasa Studies or Chicano Studies. And so this idea that these allegedly Maya concepts were the philosophical foundations for these classes is something that I want to get into.

6:03So if you've never looked up the image, if you Google Hunab-ku under Google Images, you'll get this wide variety of representations of it, right? Some of them are made to look more. So you see more Mesoamerican-ish depictions of this alleged Maya symbol. You see it as tattoos. You see it on murals. You see this really awesome AI-generated image. But all of them say, right, the Mayan symbol for the creator, the enigmatic Hunab-ku, the Mayan god, Hunab-ku.

6:38And I can tell you this as an archaeologist. One of the main ways you can tell somebody is full of shit, doesn't know what they're talking about, is they use Mayan to describe the people. The people are Maya. The language is Mayan. This is one thing that we learned right off the bat in archaeology, and so we could tell the hucksters immediately. And this symbol appears, here it is, on this cool mural. And it's a cool symbol. Like, I'm not going to deny that this isn't a very cool-looking symbol.

7:11Some people get it tattooed on their bodies, making it like this indelible part of their existence. But where does this symbol come from, and what does it actually mean, and how is it tied to this idea of Hunab-ku? Well, to answer that, we need to go back to the Spanish invasion of Mexico. And when we look at the invasion of Mesoamerica by the Spaniards, we have to understand that the Catholics who were coming were tasked with the responsibility of converting the native people, right?

7:45But if you think about it, and you're encountering people who have an entirely different cosmovision, an entirely different worldview, an entirely different language than you do, how are you going to make your concepts clear to them? You don't even speak the same language. How are you going to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity? How are you going to explain the concept of, you know, the blood of Christ, the body of Christ, if you don't even speak the same language?

8:16And these people have no idea. There's no words in their language that even closely equate to the ideas that you're trying to give them. So, what you do is, is there's this great book, if you're interested, it's called Maya and the Age of the Cross. I can't recall the author right now, but he calls it Maya Reducido. And essentially, you need to invent words in the Maya language that transmit these ideas, right? So, how are we going to get across the idea of a singular god, of a monotheistic god?

8:52There's no concept that exists in the Maya language for that. So, you have to invent new words. So, you start asking people, like, in your language, how would you approximate this idea? And they'll start telling you. I refer to this as the vocabulary of conquest, and I have some examples here. You had to invent new terms and expressions known as neologisms in the indigenous language that could adequately carry the necessary meanings, right? For example, in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs or the Mexica, the words teotlaxcali, which means sacred tortilla, literally, a sacred tortilla, teotlaxcali.

9:33Or, istak tlaxcali, which means tiny white tortilla, these were both invented terms used to identify the Eucharist. So, you had to come up with new words to describe these ideas, right? And so, one of the more notable examples of this practice comes from the invasion of the Yucatan, where the term junabcu was invented by a Spanish friar named Antonio de Ciudad Real with the help of his Maya-speaking indigenous aides.

10:11Junabcu was invented for his Dictionary of Motul. It was invented as a way to introduce the Maya to the idea of monotheism. And here's the page from the actual Dictionario de Motul, junabcu, right here. And the definition, the only living and true God, which sounds very Catholic, right? Also, the greatest of the gods of the people of Yucatan. He had no form because they said he could not be represented as he was in Corporeal.

10:48Well, and we suspect that this was done because later Maya people would be like, well, if this God is so important, how come he's not represented in any of our codices, in any of our architecture, in any of our murals, in any of the stila? Why is there no existence of this idea of junabcu? And the Catholic friars could say, well, I mean, he could not be represented, right? You know, didn't you know this? Your ancestors knew this. Because junabcu is obviously the only living and true God.

11:19Junabcu, this idea, was repopularized in the 90s by this individual, Domingo Martinez Paredes, a native speaker of Yucateco and a professor at UNAM. In his book, Junabcu, Synthesis del Pensamiento Filosófico Maya, Synthesis of the Maya Philosophical Thought, right? It's very new agey. He really pushed this idea as junabcu as being the only giver of movement and measurement,

11:52which is, again, a vela Freemason saloon, a very Freemason-y idea that he was picking up. Paredes used to promote the idea that the Maya were monotheistic. And he was a member of an extreme nationalist organization called the Movimiento Confederado Restaurador de la Cultura de Anahuac, or the MCRCA. And it was a very nationalistic group with the reputations for spreading pseudo-historical accounts of Mexico's indigenous history.

12:24So their idea was, we're going to elevate our people by saying, you know, we didn't believe in a lot of gods. That's for savages. We had one true god, and it was junabcu. And we traveled across the ocean, and we taught this to the Egyptians, and we, you know, descended from Atlantis, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it turns out that Domingo Martinez Paredes was heavily influenced by the writings of a guy named Augustus Laplangean. And Augustus Laplangean was a French occultist and Freemason and archaeologist who went to

12:58Mexico, and he came up with a lot of these ideas. He wrote these insane books, and they're slogs. If you try to sit down and read one of his books, they're really, really hard to get through. But he came up with all of these ideas that were later basically cribbed by Domingo Martinez Paredes as, like, ancestral Maya knowledge, right? So he, this idea of junabcu was invented by Catholic priests, and then it was repopularized in the 1960s by this individual right here.

13:29Then later, junabcu underwent another transformation.

The true source of the Mayan symbol

13:35Thanks to this guy, New Age author and artist, Jose Arguez. In 1987, Arguez published his book, The Mayan Factor. So once again, Mayan, it's like, eh, you don't know what you're talking about. So this guy, on the cover of his book,

13:55El Factor Maya, El Camino Más Allá de la Tecnología,

14:00threw this image on there, and he called it junabcu. And it's, it's a neat image, right? It's, it looks sort of like the yin-yang. You could see how people would be drawn to this image. Again, I'm not dogging on the image. I think it's kind of cool. But where did this image come from? And what does it actually mean? Well, the image isn't Maya at all. It is Mexica. And these are pages from the Codex Magalibachiano, where it's described as the manta de agua, the arraña, the mantle of the water spider,

14:33because the Spaniards thought it looked like a water spider. And then here it's described as a tilma de sacat o besote del diablo, which means a librette of the devil. And that's because some of the Mexica deities were depicted wearing these nose pieces and lip gairseings with this design on. And so this is the actual image. It's from the Magalibachiano. A lot of people still argue over the actual meaning of this image,

15:06but we could notice a couple of things. It's not black and white, and it's not a circle. This is how it's depicted.

15:13So how did it become black and white and get turned into a circle? Right.

15:21Basically,

15:24Arguez thought if he turned it into a circle, it would look more like the yin-yang, and that he could push this idea that it was part of this Maya identity. But we now know that it's not a Maya image at all. It's Mexica or Aztec. But how did it become black and white? For the longest time, I thought Arguez turned it black and white to make it look more like the yin-yang, like it made sense to me. But then I spoke to a friend of mine named Gordon Whitaker.

15:56Gordon Whitaker is an epigrapher. He wrote this great book on deciphering Mexica glyphs. And the story that Jose Arguez tells is that he was in the weaving communities in Teotiplan in Oaxaca, and he saw this image being sold in the marketplace on the blankets. And he's like, this image is beautiful. So he bought it and decided, well, this is going to be Hunapku. This is going to be the image that I promote as Hunapku.

16:27So Gordon was kind enough to send me an email. And I think this story is hilarious. He says, in the 1970s, I was preparing to write my dissertation for Yale, and I spent the summers of 1975 and 76 in the Valley of Oaxaca, studying the inscriptions at Montalban. In my spare time, and to supplement my work, I collected folk beliefs in Teotiplan that seemed to relate in some fashion to pre-Hispanic Zapotec culture.

16:58While there, I spent much time interviewing weavers and chatting with the people tending the stalls in the marketplace. When I returned in 1976, I brought with me my favorite Aztec design from the Codex Magladeciano, which, that right there. I had used this image as a mural motif in my dorm room. I had turned the yellow and black, original, into black and white for my mural, because he just thought it looked cool.

17:28This was the design I gave to one of the weavers in Teotiplan. I paid him, and I would return to pick it up the following summer.

17:39Unfortunately, I was unable to return the following summer. And when I finally got back in 1978, I stopped in Oaxaca to discuss epigraphic matters. On a stroll through the market, I was surprised to see my adapted design design on blankets being sold in the stalls at Teotiplan.

18:02So, at the conference in Bonn, there was considerable amusement over the history of this motif and my part in it. On returning from the conference, and while surfing cyberspace, I discovered that Jose Arguez claims to have bought a blanket with this image on it in Teotiplan. So, it became black and white not because of Jose Arguez, but because this, like, you know, Gordon Whitaker

18:32painted a mural, turned it black and white, he had somebody weave it onto a blanket, and then the other weavers thought it was a cool design, so they made a bunch of blankets with this design on it. Jose Arguez pops in, says, oh, this is awesome. He buys it, and then he started pushing it off as this ancient Maya symbol, right? So, it's like this super convoluted, like, sandwich of bullshit, right? You got the Catholic invention of the concept of Hunap, and then you have this symbol

19:03that was taken by a New Age writer, but was actually invented by this other guy, and now it's showing up in Chicano studies classes as, like, this legitimate idea. It's being taught, and people are getting it tattooed on their bodies and T-shirts and all of these things. Here's a photo that Gordon sent me. This is the actual mural from his dorm that he, this is the photo he took with him

19:33to Teotitlan to have the blanket made, and so we're able to track exactly where these ideas are coming from, and it's become so entrenched in some of these classrooms that when I bring this up, I'm seen as attacking the value of Chicano studies, and I'm like, no, I'm not attacking the value of these classes. I'm saying that my history is important enough to me to be told correctly. It doesn't need

20:03to be propped up with nonsense. It could stand on its own two feet, and we do our people a disservice when we teach them nonsense instead of teaching them their actual history. And two, the right, people on the right have a hard-on for attacking ethnic studies classes, and we make it easier for them to attack and dismantle if they could point out that, well, you guys are just teaching bullshit anyway. You're not even teaching real history. It's nonsense. It's all this new age stuff. So I'm not against DEI or ethnic studies

20:35or Chicano studies, African American studies. I'm just saying that it's worth

The black Olmec myth in academia

20:39teaching correctly. And so that brings me to my second point.

20:47On the podcast, a lot of people send us articles and videos and they ask us, like, is there anything to this? Like, what is this? And so this paper was published in an academic journal called The Urban Review, and the paper is called Early Pioneers of the Americas, The Role of the Olmecs in Urban Education and Social Studies Curriculum. And so we're like, oh, okay, let's check it out. Let's look into this paper and see what's going on.

21:17And among the things this paper says is this paper seeks to answer the following research question. What are the educational implications of the Olmecs and their civilization, the oldest in the Americas, not exactly, for social studies standards and curriculum development processes? So I was like, oh, okay, cool. They want to teach about ancient Mesoamericans and social studies. That's awesome. I'm down with that. So then I read more. This paper provides primary source documentation as it addresses the omission of the Olmecs in public school curricula.

21:49Fine. I'm totally fine with that opening statement. And then the paper goes on to say, over 3,000 years since their arrival, the Olmecs, early pioneers of the Americas, have left an indelible mark on La Venta, Mexico, where stone statues and step pyramids mark their pre-colonial presence. Period. Next sentence. Africans showed their brilliance as they utilized cutting-edge technology like those used to build pyramids when they applied their skills in shipbuilding, as well as their understanding

22:20of geography and trade winds to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which was originally called the Ethiopian Ocean, and created a civilization and culture in La Venta, Mexico known as Olmec City. And that's what I was like, what the hell's going on here? While many distinct Olmec societies existed in the Americas, apparently there are more than one, they all shared unique cultural practices, distinctive African art forms, and language systems. Anthropological

22:50and archaeological research suggests that the original Olmecs were Africans who migrated to the Americas as early as 900 BCE and created a civilization in present-day La Venta, Mexico. This was a journal article that was published. So we were like, well, hold on. And if you read the paper, the purpose of the paper is to say, how can we teach this better in schools? Whether is any of this even accurate?

23:21The starting position is that Black Africans came over to Mesoamerica and taught the, like, birthed, seeded civilization, birthed civilization, taught the Mexicans, the ancient Mexicans, how to build pyramids, how to write, how to do this, how to do that. And we were like, well, hold on, hold on. None of this is even remotely accurate. So, we responded. We wrote this open letter called Hijacking History, The Problem with the Black Olmec Myth. We published it

23:51to our Medium site and then we converted our open letter into a script that we used for the podcast and we covered it in a couple of episodes. This one directly about that article, the journal article, and then we followed it up a little bit later to see where things were standing presently. And we concluded our letter. Like, we weren't, like you were saying earlier, we weren't snarky, we weren't confrontational, we weren't saying, you know, ah, you guys are assholes.

24:22Like, we weren't going off like that. We just wrote a very well-reasoned letter to the journal saying, look, this is why you might want to reconsider this paper that you've already published, by the way, interestingly. And we finished by saying, we certainly agree that the history and legacy of African peoples in the Americas is still not sufficiently taught in schools. But we do children a disservice by advancing opinions as facts. Promoting the idea that the Olmec, the Olmec were black

24:52is more than simply poor scholarship. It is an erasure of the accomplishments of indigenous Mexicans. Africa and Mexico are both home to fascinating civilizations, each with their own advancements in technology, linguistics, agriculture, and science. When we embrace the pseudo-history of black Olmecs, we trivialize and marginalize the legacies of both Africans and indigenous Mexicans. So we wrote this letter

25:23and the response we got online was generally, you guys are racists, you guys are, what are you talking about, you guys, and especially myself as an archaeologist, why are you hiding the truth? What are you afraid of? Why are you hiding these facts?

25:42We'll be back after a quick break. If you've ever wanted to experience the ancient Maya world for yourself, well, I have an incredible opportunity for you because Tales from Astlanthus is teaming up with the fine folks at the Skeptoid Podcast to bring you the mysteries of the Maya adventure. This December, I will be joining Skeptoid Adventures as your guide for the mysteries of the Maya. We're going to travel through the Yucatan exploring remarkable

26:14archaeological sites, uncovering the real history behind the Maya civilization, and separating fact from fiction along the way. Together, we'll examine the archaeology, history, and culture of one of the world's greatest civilizations through the lens of evidence, not sensationalism. To reserve your spot, all you need is a fully refundable $500 deposit. Your deposit is refundable through August 1st,

26:44so you can reserve your place with confidence. After August 1st, deposits become non-refundable. Even better, if you heard about the trip from the Tales from Astlanthus podcast, be sure to use the promo code CURLY in the How Did You Hear About This Adventure field when you sign up and you will get a $200 discount. And if you're feeling extra adventurous, you can combine the Maya Adventure with the New Orleans Escapade and receive

27:15$500 off when you reserve both trips. Just visit skeptoid.com slash adventures to learn more and reserve your spot. I hope that you will join me this December as we explore the mysteries of the Maya together.

27:39But, to our surprise, the journal retracted the paper.

Journal retraction and university controversy

27:44So here's the headline. Thank you. And like, we're still pretty proud of this. It's like one of the best moments of the podcast is that we got this paper retracted from the article. I mean, this article retracted from this journal. The journal retracts paper claiming that group of indigenous Americans were black Africans. And this is what was interesting, though. In the announcement, it says, the editor-in-chief has retracted this article following concerns raised by readers. After post-publication

28:14peer review, it was found that the theory that Olmecs were black Africans it's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. Anyway, on which the lesson plan is based is not substantiated according to current Mesoamerican archaeology and genetic evidence. The authors have been offered to submit a revised manuscript updated with information based on current knowledge for further peer review. Author Greg Wiggins stated on behalf of all co-authors they do not agree to this retraction. But it was that line right there.

28:44Post-publication peer review. Which kind of blew my mind. It's like, isn't that supposed to happen before? I don't know. So it makes me question everything else that this particular journal has published up to that point. I haven't looked through this journal since this, but it's a little bit sus. Unfortunately, so this happened in 2020. And we thought the matter was pretty much settled with these authors.

29:15Well, it wasn't so because we found out in 2023 that they just published it anyway on their own as a chapter in a book that they wrote. And the book is called Unbleaching the Curriculum, Enhancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Beyond in Schools and Society. And it's chapter five. And basically, they repurposed the article to work better as a chapter, but none of the content was substantially changed. None of the claims

29:46were readdressed. None of the science was re-evaluated. It was just published claiming the same stuff. And this book is used in some classes, in ethnic studies classes. So, still, there's a fight, right? There's still a struggle against this type of disinformation being introduced in classes. And we are not immune here in New Mexico because my good old alma mater

30:16of UNM put out this class. And they've been running this class for about 10 years. And the class is called, it's their study abroad, exploring the African presence in Mexico, which is fine. There is an Afro-Mexican presence. It deserves to be examined. People should know about it. There's a history there that is legitimate. But what we see is as part of ongoing efforts to build lasting academic ties with university and cultural centers

30:46in Mexico, Chicana and Chicano Studies has partnered with the Universidad Veracruz and Civil Association in Veracruz to sponsor a unique study abroad opportunity. This intersession trip explores the African presence in Mexico in three different epochs. Olmec, colonial slavery and contemporary struggles of newly nationally recognized Afro-Mexican communities. Additionally, students will delve in the San Orocho and meet cultural practitioners like Julio Caro and Mauro Zalo.

31:17So again, they're using in their promotional materials an Olmec head and then they straight up say, you know, African presence in Mexico dealing with, starting with the Olmec. So this was at UNM. So once again, right, we spring into action. We get all these archaeologists and historians to write letters of concern to the university and say, why is this being taught at the school that I went to? Like, it makes me think twice about the value of my degree that I got from your university if you're teaching

31:48pseudo-history and pseudo-archaeology.

31:53A lot of people got wind of this. It became kind of a pretty big deal at UNM. Once again, I was accused of being a racist, of being anti-black, of being anti-ethnic studies. So instead, I even got a text from a friend of mine who was in a meeting who's a professor at UNM. He sends me this text. Excuse me.

32:13And he says, bro, I'm in a meeting right now. They're talking about me. And I'm like, why are they talking about me? And I said, they're trying to figure out the best way to frame, you know, to frame you as somebody who is anti-black. And I'm like, well, you're defending me, right? He's like, well, yeah, yeah, I got you back. You know, like, not everybody's going for it, but, like, this is going to be a problem. I can tell. And sure enough, I started getting

32:44some hate mail from students at UNM. So this caught the eye of Jason Colavito. I don't know if you all know who Jason Colavito is, but he wrote a piece about it. And he said, the University of New Mexico came under fire online from anthropologists, archaeologists, activists, and skeptics after a flyer, that's one, for an upcoming study abroad trip sponsored by their Chicano Studies Department caused outrage by promising to help students learn about

33:14the African presence in Mexico during Olmec times. It was the decision to follow the Afrocentric claim that Olmec society had an African component that set off alarm bells. So the way that the class was described, and I already showed this to you on the flyer, but once again, our trip explores African presence in Mexico for three different perspectives, old Maccolonial slavery and contemporary Afro-unist-thesal communities. So this right here is the original

33:45description for the class that appeared on the UNM website. So after we wrote all these letters and this big, you know, wave of concern happened, they revised this description to be much longer and they say, you know, we delve into the roots of Olmec culture and we examine all but a few of the colossal Olmec heads of Las Tuchlas, La Venta, and San Lorenzo. Our purpose is not to claim that these heads reflect a pre-Columbian African presence, but to help our students understand how and why many people

34:16of African descent have come to revere these magnificent heads. Acknowledging concerns of anthropologists, it is important to note we do not claim that the Olmec are of African descent beyond the notion that all of humanity finds its origins in Africa. That's weird. Yeah. For more than a decade, we have allowed UNM students to view these magnificent works of art in person and visit with anthropologists in Mexico about their origins. And then this ends. We discuss the visceral and often hostile

34:47response to Jose Melgar's and later Ivan Van Serteman's suggestion that the Olmec reflect a pre-Columbian African presence. We make sure that our students know that research offers no credible evidence that proves a pre-Columbian connection to Africa. This seems highly disingenuous to me. And it also did to Jason Colavito because he noted in his paper that there is, of course, this is from Jason,

35:18there is, of course, some irony in the Afrocentrist acceptance of the idea that the Olmec Stoneheads represent Black Africans instead of actual Maya people of the region whom they so clearly resemble. The original claim that the heads were of Africans was made in the 19th century as a racist argument that Native people of the Americas were so racially inferior that they even accepted Black Africans as their superiors, even though the Black Africans

35:50themselves were slaves of white Atlanteans. So that's where this idea stems from.

Racist roots of ancient contact theories

35:57Our good friend of skeptics all over, Ignatius Donnelly, in his book, The Antediluvian World, put forth this idea that the white Atlanteans showed up, they brought Black slaves, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas were so pathetic that they even accepted the Black slaves as their superiors, right? And he notes, there's a lot to unpack, but it's interesting to see how defensive the trip organizers are in their discussion.

36:27It is implausible that they have spent 10 years visiting the Olmec's heads and explicitly stated that there was no evidence of an African presence in Mexico without really meaning it. Now they claim that their importance lies in how Afro-Mexicans have used American Afrocentric pseudoscience to create a false culture history tied to indigenous Mexico. So we did manage to get them to change, at least on paper,

36:57the description of the class, of how they said they were going to present the class to students. But we don't know, I mean, because then COVID happened and the class hasn't happened since. So we have no idea what their intentions actually were and we won't until this study abroad program, if it ever does, happens again and we're able to somehow find out if they're still teaching that the Olmecs represented a Black African presence in the Americas.

37:27And I want to quote from Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis, the antediluvian world, because he's the one who really put forth this idea to begin with. And what he said was the features are unmistakably Negroid. As the Negroes have never been a seagoing race, the presence of these faces among the antiquities of Central America proves one of two things. Either the existence of a land connection between America and Africa via Atlantis, obviously,

37:58as revealed by the deep sea soundings of the Challenger, or commercial relations between America and Africa through the ships of the Atlantean, or some other civilized race, whereby the Negroes were brought to America as slaves at a very remote epoch. So like, just the pure racism that lies at the heart of this idea, and then to see it picked up and promoted in journal articles and at the university

38:28that I went to as some sort of empowerment idea, right? Like, African Americans should know about this because it shows this connection between their ancestors and Central, and if that were true, that would be amazing. I would have no problem with exploring that. But it's not true. It's rooted in racism, and these ideas, like I said, when they make their way into ethnic studies classes, into the classroom, into textbooks, it's a problem. And what we've found

38:59through the podcast is that a lot of professors, historians, anthropologists who are not people of color are afraid of addressing this stuff because the response, just like we got, the response was to call us racists, to call us anti-black, to call us anti-ethnic studies, and this onslaught of attacks, a lot of people just don't want to deal with it. We were like, look, we know it's nonsense, but what am I going to do?

39:30Right? There's nothing I can do about it. There was a mural that appeared in San Antonio about, it was a Juneteenth mural, so it highlighted African American history as a beautiful mural, but smack dab in the center was an Olmec head. And we were like, come on, guys. So we spoke to the artists, and we spoke to historians in the area, and all the same, it's the same feedback we got from the professors and historians in the area where we don't want to touch it. We don't want to deal with it.

40:01We did finally get the artist, an African American muralist, to look at all the data and be like, oh, okay, yeah, you know, I see how that could be offensive. And they changed the mural. So small victories, right? Small victories that we're able to get.

Counteracting misinformation with Atlantis Academy

40:15But what we've done as part of the podcast is we start, we're starting, we haven't started it yet, something called Aslantis Academy, because we learned that a lot of professors are using our podcast in their classrooms, and they're creating, you know, study guides to go along with our podcast episodes. And so we're taking advantage of that. We're collecting all of this material for professors who are using them,

40:45and we're going to make them available free online so that other teachers can access them in their ethnic studies classes, right? Because we're not anti-ethnic studies. We're against teaching our history incorrectly and trivializing our history. So we do this where we've created, in addition to our podcast, we have a publishing house, we put out books, we do YouTube videos, we do Instagram videos, we've done a couple of documentary films.

41:16So we're putting all of this out there as a way to sort of counteract the misinformation and hopefully preserve what ethnic studies is supposed to be about and keep it on the right track, basically. So as part of that, if, and this is the sales part, if you guys want to support us, please check this out online. We take donations. We also sell books. We just put out this book called The Four Disagreements. It's a take on the book The Four Agreements, the Toltec Wisdom book, which is not Toltec Wisdom,

41:47but it's letting go of magical thinking and we've been sending these out for free to ethnic studies classes to hand out to their students. We also try to send them out to prisons and other places so that people have access to just how to think more critically and how to use scientific literacy and skeptical inquiry to get at the root of problems. So thank you. That is my short talk. Thank you for that.

42:18That was amazing. Thank you.

42:23If you've ever wanted to experience the ancient Maya world for yourself, well, I have an incredible opportunity for you because Tales from Astlanthus is teaming up with the fine folks at the Skeptoid Podcast to bring you the mysteries of the Maya adventure. This December, I will be joining Skeptoid Adventures as your guide for the mysteries of the Maya. We're going to travel through the Yucatan, exploring remarkable archaeological sites,

42:54uncovering the real history behind the Maya civilization, and separating fact from fiction along the way. Together, we'll examine the archaeology, history, and culture of one of the world's greatest civilizations through the lens of evidence, not sensationalism. To reserve your spot, all you need is a fully refundable $500 deposit. Your deposit is refundable through August 1st, so you can reserve your place with confidence.

43:26After August 1st, deposits become non-refundable. Even better, if you heard about the trip from the Tales from Aslantis podcast, be sure to use the promo code CURLY in the How Did You Hear About This Adventure field when you sign up, and you will get a $200 discount. And if you're feeling extra adventurous, you can combine the Maya Adventure with the New Orleans Escapade and receive $500 off when you reserve

43:56both trips. Just visit skeptoid.com slash adventures to learn more and reserve your spot. I hope that you will join me this December as we explore the mysteries of the Maya together.

Gorilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

44:15This is Susan Gerbeck from the Gorilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project. I've been listening to Skeptoid since the beginning in 2006. These are wonderful snapshots into the paranormal, topics I'd never heard of before, and some I've often wondered about. They are bite-sized and great to share with people who want to know more. I've found supporting Skeptoid Media Projects gives me the satisfaction that my money is really helping to get great information beyond the skeptical choir. I highly recommend

44:45listeners become a financial supporter. from PRX.