EP 52 · 11:06

The explorer historians thought was lying

From The Amazon’s Hidden Civilization (One Year Anniversary)

Episode
5/23
Watch The Amazon’s Hidden Civilization (One Year Anniversary)
Transcript

207 words · auto-generated from the episode video

11:06in 1542. He went up the Amazon River and when he went back to the King of Spain he talked about crowded cities, advanced societies along the Amazon River. Later explorers came to corroborate what he was talking about and they found no one. Okay? This was in a span of about 100 years. So, within 100 years there was no one. Historians traditionally say, well, he's just BS-ing, okay? He was just trying to impress the king of Spain. He's talking about these wide roads, busy marketplaces, large armies of local warriors. But, hey, maybe he was just trying to

11:47like get in with the Spanish royalty to like get more money, to do more expeditions. >> There is a current story in geopolitics around the Spanish king right now. And so, this idea of people trying to curry favor or not curry favor is very topical. >> Yeah. Well, this guy was trying to do it, apparently. That's what we all think. Okay. We all think that he was just lying because he wanted some credibility, he wanted more funding to do more expeditions, right? Now, it turns out, if we if we really go back, we're starting to find evidence for more and more

From the episode
  1. EP 52

    The Amazon’s Hidden Civilization (One Year Anniversary)

    For FFP’s first anniversary, we uncover the densely populated precolonial Amazon, imagine what our civilization will leave behind, and build the first shelves of the From First Principles library.

    The Amazon’s Hidden Civilization (One Year Anniversary)

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