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Home » Transcript of Joe Rogan Podcast: #2449 w/ Raul Bilecky

Transcript of Joe Rogan Podcast: #2449 w/ Raul Bilecky

Editor’s Notes: In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience #2449, Joe Rogan sits down with Raul Bilecky, the creator behind the “Pillars of the Past” YouTube channel, to explore the mysteries of ancient civilizations. The conversation delves into Bilecky’s fascinating work in Peru, where he has documented undocumented megalithic sites and the tragic, widespread looting of historical ruins. Together, they discuss the friction between heterodox archaeology and academic gatekeeping, while also touching on intriguing formations like the Sage Wall and the Rockwall in Texas. It is a deep dive into the hidden history of our world and the challenges of preserving it for future generations. (Feb 5, 2026)

TRANSCRIPT:

Meeting Raul Bilecky

JOE ROGAN: Raul.

RAUL BILECKY: Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Very nice to meet you, brother.

RAUL BILECKY: It’s so good to be here.

JOE ROGAN: I have enjoyed your content tremendously online. And I really got into a video this morning that I was watching where you found this megalithic site that was undocumented in Peru. It’s incredible that they still have these ancient sites that for whatever reason, it seems like the money that they get gets stolen. Like the money that is supposed to be allocated towards documenting these things and registering these things. People just say, “f* it, I’m going to pocket it.”

RAUL BILECKY: And it happens a lot more than you think.

The Tragedy of Looting

JOE ROGAN: I just, hard to believe, man. Some of the stuff that you document is very heartbreaking. Like one of them was when you flew a drone over these ancient ruins and you showed the amount of places that have been looted.

RAUL BILECKY: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And it’s just all of it. It’s just pop. You see these holes. And when I first saw that, I’m like, what is he showing me? And then you’re like, these are all spots where someone has dug in and looted. And most of it has been done in this area of Peru over the last 20 years.

RAUL BILECKY: Over the last 20 years.

JOE ROGAN: So from 2006 to 2026 more, I would have.

RAUL BILECKY: The biggest amount of looting happened. It’s actually died down some, but the end of the 20th, so 1980s to 2000s, I would say that’s when it really took off. And you can tell from the trash that’s left there, like cigarettes that were only produced in the 80s, soda bottles that were only produced in the 90s.

JOE ROGAN: How nice of them to steal the artifacts and leave trash.

RAUL BILECKY: They’ve become landfills of human remains. This place you’re talking about is, I mean, it’s eight full kilometers of just, it looks like the moon. Every single location has been looted. And I was like, I got to go up there and see what this looks like.

JOE ROGAN: And so pull up to the microphone a little bit more there. So looting, what are they at that point in time? I mean, these are hundreds, thousands of years old, these sites. So what are they finding?

RAUL BILECKY: Well, a lot of the mummies that I’ve, because I found mummies that have been torn apart, literally. Like the cotton that they’re wrapped in, the textiles that they’re wrapped in. I mean, it’s just they’ve been scavenged.

JOE ROGAN: Are they looking for jewels or for some sort of?

RAUL BILECKY: Metallurgy on the person themselves. The unfortunate thing is, I mean, all you’ll see is you’ll just see these bones littered across the landscape with broken pieces of pottery.

JOE ROGAN: That was also disturbing. How much bones you see everywhere. So this is a bone right there. These are all human bones that you just find scattered.

RAUL BILECKY: That’s all cotton. And what we’re about to see here is an actual mummy that’s been torn apart.

JOE ROGAN: This is, it’s so sad that there’s no protection.

RAUL BILECKY: Nobody’s going out there, man. Nobody except for the looters.

The Scale of Peru’s Archaeological Sites

JOE ROGAN: But I know very little about Peru other than, obviously, the Nazca lines, the mummies, all these different things. The mystery of the place. Showing that, please. Oh, it’s over.

RAUL BILECKY: But there’s a couple burial drone shots.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s just.

RAUL BILECKY: You go to the top.

JOE ROGAN: How big is Peru? I don’t even know geographically how large it is.

RAUL BILECKY: I mean, Peru is huge. I mean, it takes up. This is another, this is a different looted site. So this is all, all of this is in the Paracas Nazca ecoregion.

JOE ROGAN: These skulls are just sitting there.

RAUL BILECKY: So the looters will oftentimes leave, I don’t know, set them up in this fashion. There isn’t a site I’ve gone to where I haven’t seen something set up like this in the end. But so I pull out to show the scale of it. I mean, every little piece of white you see is some part of a human. Wow. It’s tragic, man.

JOE ROGAN: Just so much history lost. And so does this stuff wind up in private collections? Do museums ever get it? Like, what happens to that stuff?

RAUL BILECKY: I don’t think museums get it at all. It’s private buyers. I actually met a, the term is a grave robber. I actually met one in Miraflores in Lima proper, at one of the Artesinales, where they’re selling ancient goods. Well, some of them have real things that they go out and they loot. And I mean that, this is one of the things I’ve been thinking about, like, for the future. Like what can be done about this?

Because the government, nobody from the government’s going out there. And so these things end up in private collections. Textiles, humans, pottery, things that you would see in museums.