Hang this on your wall — all 17 known Olmec heads🗿

Slowly getting there

When I find out you can’t be trusted, you’re dead to me. I will never acknowledge your existence again.

The first hand account of an explorer who saw the Carolina Jaguars & other extinct species in the foothills of Appalachia

Getting deep into more ‘archival archaeology’ today. Usually I’m digging up old & forgotten accounts from the Americas… this time, I’m going to Africa. The history of the frontier (~1492-1930s) is still mostly sitting in darkness, in dusty libraries & digitized archives that most people have never read through.

Well, the curtains have closed on our first Raiders Egypt tour! From Cairo to Luxor, we had an amazing adventure across ancient Egypt’s 3000+ years of history. More than that, the friends we made are the real highlight. Getting to finally meet a group Raiders in person & introduce them to Egypt was an experience that I don’t know if I can really digest & fully appreciate yet. Finally leading an expedition with one of my best friends, Jahannah James, was one of the highlights of my whole career. Everyone survived the heat, Ramses Revenge & questionable 100ft ladders - couldn’t be more proud at how our maiden voyage went off without a hitch. Thank you Raiders for joining us & I would love to see all of you again somewhere in the world!🧭

Well my African adventure has ended. Finally got home last night. Kenya & Egypt are amazing. I’m looking forward to researching & telling more on the history of these lands. Nothing quite like those African sunsets.

The Osirieon was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the ancient world. Standing down at eye-level with the granite columns (the word “column” might be an understatement), seeing the class of workmanship in the stone, it’s all constructed as a scale that is pretty bewildering. To see this intentionally buried site in its day must have been utterly mind bending for an ancient person. The architecture of the Osirieon is a not-so-subtle harkening back to the great monuments of the 4th Dynasty (if it isn’t a 4th Dynasty structure itself). Egyptologists seem settled on the idea that it’s a 19th Dynasty structure built under Seti I, but I think there are interesting arguments for it being built in the Old Kingdom & later repaired under Seti I.

Visited Hawara & walked over its lost labyrinth. Egypt’s greatest monument ever built may be buried somewhere out here…

With the real Masai Bushmen of the Mara🦒 This has been one of the most insightful anthropological expeditions I’ve ever been on. The ancestral people of Africa have a set of ancient wisdom passed down from deep time that few people appreciate today.

Cold nights in the bush of Masai Mara, East Africa 🐆

The first wild lion I saw with my own eyes. Masai Mara, West Kenya🦒

Obsidian artifact I just found along the Mara River in West Kenya, 50k to 300k years old🦒 … also a hippo chased me back to the Jeep immediately after this

Headed to Africa 🌍 I’ll be back just in time for Halloween🎃

A book about my great great great Grandfather

This is original research that I’ve been working on since early this year: several of these accounts had never been translated into modern English before I found them. There is an entire world that’s been forgotten & buried, hidden within 400 year old Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, & some English explorer’s logs that have only been scanned once. By far the most fascinating work I’ve ever done & there’s so much more. Archival Archaeology reveals not only more about ancient civilizations - but also lost natural worlds🐅🐆 youtu.be/wl90xATd1qM?is=Mutw…