00:00.10 archpodnet Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 102 and we've been talking about the sarudi mastodon site and in this bit here I want to take a bit deeper dive into what the nature article says. Um, Richard Sarudi the person who originally found it and kind of pushed this and my take on some of this. So if you look at the nature article from 2017. It's very serious. You would think this is a well well respected publication and there's quotes in there if you didn't know any better. You would think that this site was absolutely 100% unequivocally human because they have quotes in there like you know the site was. Radiometrically dated and it has ah oops if you can cut that small part out there where I messed up that will be great. The artifacts found include hammerstones. 01:12.77 archpodnet Anvils and cobbles and you also find spiral fractured bone that could only have been broken while fresh. And then as you look at all this stuff and read along at the very end the findings confirm an otherwise unknown kind of homo that populated the world a hundred and thirty thousand years ago ah so you know what this reminds me of this reminds me of something that happened to me and you're like oh no Kin Kella is this one of your stories that's twenty years old no it's a story of mine. That's only 18 years old. Ok I was on this crm project in ah, really out there area ah of Palmdale which is which is inland from Southern California right from the coast and I was working on this. 02:24.69 archpodnet Ah, this area doing crm work. They were going to build a new housing development and it was up to me and a couple other archeologists to watch the construction and look out for artifacts and this was a place that was worth looking like. It would have been a place where ancient people could have lived so the possibility of finding artifacts was real and I will tell you guys that we ultimately did find real artifacts and real archeological sites months and months into the project I want to say like six months in or whatever. But. 3 hree months in or so we were finding nothing nothing nothing nothing and that's okay in archeology. But you know what it does it makes you start thinking things are there when they're not because the human brain just does it to. Stop you from going crazy to make you think you're doing something worthwhile you know like oh I must have found something right here and it's like well you didn't you know that rock two thousand years ago ancient peoples used it as a rock as they walked by, you know so. This kind of came to a head I am going to give my gold myself a gold star yet again and tell you guys that I'm pretty good at this I'm pretty good at not seeing something that isn't there or seeing something that isn't there right? I'm I'm good at at keeping kind of a cool head. 03:54.60 archpodnet But other people aren't and so a couple months in we're finding nothing we're finding nothing one of the other archeologists on the project was like hey did you see that quartz outcrop right quartz just this regular stone I'm like yeah, he's like oh that's cultural meaning human beings used to have used it and I'm Like. Um, know man it just looks like a crappy quartz outcrop you know outcrop of that white Translucent Yellow Quartz stone which was used for practically nothing in the past because it's not very good. It's not very good. Toolstone. It's not very good that it is true that sometimes. You'll see Quartz Crystals used as kind of amulets or jewelry or this kind of thing but overall or or actually I've seen this once really tiny little arrowheads made out of it because they had nothing else because it was an area that had completely crapstone. But anyway I'm looking at this court's outcrop and I'm like there's that little voice inside my head. That's like this is nothing you know and the other archeologists is like no no look at it look at it look you know people came up here. They broke this stone up. Are you telling me that these broken stones weren't done by people. And I'm looking close and I'm like yeah, that's what I'm telling you you know because these stones broke off naturally and so what you have is you have this outcrop like again, just picture a large stone. 05:24.86 archpodnet Broken up stones coming out of the side of a hill and underneath it. There's broken bits that have naturally spalled off because it gets cold. It gets warm the seasons change and the stone naturally cleaves off and I'm like dude this is natural. No no, no, no, no, no, this is a site this is a site and I'm like no it's not but things got so overcooked that this guy would not stop that. Finally one day I was like okay I'll record it so I spent a day. I went up to the ancient quartz outcrop and I drew it I took a photo and I spent you know a couple hours like doing a good drawing like a good plan view drawing of the outcrop and where all the broken bits are and I filled out. You know? yeah. Where it is precisely and took Gps points and I treated it like a real archeological site even though I knew it wasn't it was just to like stop the madness you know. So yes, if you look up the paperwork of that area. There is a quartz outcrop listed now. It didn't really make any difference ultimately because we did find real stuff down the way you know real. So I don't feel bad. We didn't record a fake archeological site but it was just this sort of toss off thing. But I'm not going to double down and say oh yes, proof that humans were here. 07:01.52 archpodnet Thousands of years ago it's not it's just a quartz outcrop you know? and yeah, there were humans down the way there. There is a 2% chance that one of those humans came up and took 1 glancing blow off it to get 1 pizza quartz because he wanted a cool necklace that's possible. But it's not probable know what I'm saying so the seruy mastodon site reminds me a lot of that I think it was kind of group think where they just they made themselves believe this was a thing and it wasn't you're standing out there at the side of the road. For days and weeks and months you see nothing nothing nothing and then you see the um this mastodon you're like oh my god and then you look closer and you start to try and make something out of nothing those quotes I gave you guys before about the artifacts, hammerstones anvils and cobbles. Let me translate. 07:57.53 archpodnet Rocks you guys get that? Um, and if this was really a butchering site for a mastodon you would it would just look different. You know that. Little hair on my back of my neck that I was talking about before when I looked at the quartz outcrop and I was like no, it's the same thing with this I look at it and it's just no and I wish them the best. I wish it was true. It sounds awesome I wish it was ah and ah evidence for 130000 year old occupation by humans. But it's not. You know it's you'll have to go back to 1 of some of those old truisms like um, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is an extraordinary claim. They do not have extraordinary evidence and I think a lot of this goes down to the head of Richard Sarudi who originally found it now. Richard Cirruy is he's passed away now he just he just died like like three years ago or so but. He is one of those old archeology guys been out there for a long time and I think he just let it get the best of himself I read his obituary and I thought it was really telling first that. 09:23.78 archpodnet Early on in like the first paragraph of it. It talks about the sarudy mastodon site as the most contentious discovery in North American Archeology and just as an aside ah the only thing making it contentious is the overyped media coverage. It's not contentious for people like me. For people like me. It's a really awesome mastodon site. We can't lose track of that this happens so often on this podcast right? You guys what whether it'srouded to ran. You know what? I mean like it's cool. It's just being being misrepresented. A mastodon is cool anyway, you cut it. I know I'll be here all week. Um, so what as I read through it it first there's a photo of him in his kind of Indiana Jones hat holding a pick. You know that's the photo they choose. He's indoors with his hat on. And I mean we all do it a little bit. We all play the part a little bit but you know, um, he talks about wanting to be an archeologist forever. Um, that he once had 45 buckets of chip stones in his house. And that even to me I'm like what 45 buckets that's a lot and he says things like you know the local area is blanketed with artifacts. We just don't recognize them. That's a little true. 10:56.50 archpodnet You know it is true that there is all kinds of interesting real evidence of people who've been here for thousands of years but not one hundred and thirty thousand years and every broken rot you see was not broken by a person. So. I can feel it when I read through his obituary you know this person who's done this for a long time and has done it so long that they're seeing what's not there because they want it too bad. They're letting their feelings get the best of them remember you guys archeology is data. Not feelings and this has gone way down the feelings rabbit hole you know because we want it and it plays to our wants how often on this podcast have we have we talked about this right? You know it it. It could be you know it could be a hundred and thirty thousand years old yeah it could also not be a hundred and thirty thousand years old ah there's cherry picking of data here. You know oh we're only looking at the best bits to try and make us look good. We're not being honest and looking at the parts where it's like dude this does not look reasonable. You know it's oh there's there's a a doubling down on high technology and some of this too. This is a common thing that people do when they have something that is not supported well. 12:22.77 archpodnet They'll be like but we've made 3 d models of it. We've expanded our dating methods. We've done replication of the artifacts. It's like yes I see you've put a ton of work in this. It doesn't change anything. It's still nothing. You know what? I mean. Yeah I've seen this several times throughout my career you guys where people want something so bad I've done this see none of us. We can all fall down this dark path easily like I didn't trust my carbon 14 dates once I wrote about this in my textbook i. I thought for sure the area I was digging was 1000 years old and it kept coming back as 300 years old and I was like these dates must be wrong. No the dates were right I was wrong. You know and it's okay, but we get so wrapped up I mean the therudy mastodon is like. Classic example of this those artifacts and quotes are not artifacts you know and and the scientists working on this again I feel for them I'm I'm not here to say they're like unprofessional or something I'm not I'm just here to say that they've. They're trapped in this rabbit hole man and it's time to start clawing your way out. You know I've seen quotes from them or people who support them and this is in San Diego again a lot of stuff is I believe the San Diego natural history museum you'll see quotes like they're demanding unequivocal proof. 13:55.70 archpodnet That's what the scientists are saying about the rest of the scientific community and we're like yeah we're demanding unequivocal proof because you're saying 130000 you know if you were bumping it up a tick to 17000 instead of 16 all right I might give you a little more leash on that one you know, but come on man and again the stone the stone tools in quotes. They just don't look right? You know they're too basic. The stone itself sucks. Think about the courts example even people of one hundred and thirty thousand years ago let's go with it. Let's say they're been here for one hundred and thirty thousand years they're going to use good toolstone. But that's not what you see there. You see this really junkie low end stuff. Could it have been used. Yeah. But could it have not been used. Yeah, when we come back what to do with the sirrudi mastodon site.