Could This Hidden Megalithic Site in Mexico Point to a Globally Connected Ancient Civilization?

Hello everyone, welcome to the channel. As you can probably already tell from that montage, in this video we will be adventuring well off the beaten path to, in my opinion, what could potentially be the most underrated and unknown megalithic site in Mexico. And honestly, probably more broader than that. And it is rarely visited even by the locals, let alone a foreigner like yours truly. The site itself is known as the Cruciform Tomb of Girón, spelled G-U-I-R-U-N if you want to look it up. And just to give you an idea of the kind of significance this place might hold, as far as I know, this is the only site in Mexico, and maybe beyond, that contains specifically the same distinct stone features as the ones we see in places like Peru or Egypt. The features here include the same bar-type protrusions, and even the infamous nubs feature on some of the stones, which are also found elsewhere many thousands of miles away. But probably the coolest part of Girón is that basically nobody knows about it. At one point during the trip, my guide who only spoke Spanish told me that he only takes about one person up to the site per month, and that I was the first foreigner he had ever taken up there. And honestly, that seems to be true of this site in general, because as far as I know, there's only been one English-speaking person who has ever made a video on this site, which is actually how I found out about it in my research, because before that I had never even heard of it. The name of his channel is The ARX Project. If you guys want to take a look at his channel, I'll make sure to link it in the description. He also makes some other really cool videos as well. The real point I want to clearly show here is that the site is just not well known at all, and as far as I could tell, I was probably the first foreigner to visit the site in years, which is simply shocking, because I really have not seen anything like this site in terms of the obvious similarities it has with places like Peru. There are probably a few reasons why this site has not gotten much attention, and as we dive deeper into this video, we'll look into some of those. We'll also be looking into why I personally think that this particular site was not built by the Zapotec culture, but instead could be much older. And as you all are watching this video, I hope that you'll take note of some of the striking similarities that we'll see at the site compared to some of the other sites I've shown on this channel. It is truly an anomaly, and I am extremely grateful to have visited this site. This place is quite unique, but you do have to get a guide because it's like a community-run place. It's not a very popular site, not a lot of people know about it, but the crazy thing is is that this place may hold an unbelievable amount of significance for a few reasons. It's not the megalithic ruins in particular that is most interesting, it's the fact that the stones from what I've seen look almost exactly like the ones we saw in Ollantaytambo in Peru, with the same nubs and potentially some scoop marks, and the overall shape of it is very, very similar, but it's not like anything in the area. It is very, very unique, it kind of stands out, it doesn't really be, it doesn't really seem to be a tomb, they haven't found any bodies, they haven't even, I don't even think they found pottery at it actually. They might have, I'm not entirely sure. And it looks like, oh not yet, I'm supposed to be waiting for him, so in about a few minutes we're gonna head up there, and yeah, I'll see you guys there. In order to get to the megalithic ruins themselves, you must hire a local guide. There are a number of reasons for this, but once you've got your guide lined up, you'll need to somehow make your way over to Oaxaca City in Mexico. From there, you will need to hire a taxi, or colectivo, to take you to the town of Mitla, which is about an hour southeast of the city. The town of Mitla is quite nice, it's definitely a colorful town with plenty of life in it. But now that you're in Mitla, this is where the actual journey can begin. My guide's name was Arturo, and I really don't have anything bad to say about him. He was a great guide and very nice to have around. Of course, he only spoke Spanish, as you will be hard-pressed to find anyone that speaks English to take you up to this place. As it is a long-held tradition that only locals are doing the guiding work here, the drive to get you to the start of the site will take you a few kilometers outside of Mitla to a town called Saga. You have to go through Saga to get to the site, and since Saga is a community-run town, it is sort of a gamble when you pass through their little security checkpoint, because there is a chance that they just simply won't let you go through. And certainly, if you tell them that you are going to do the hike, it is highly likely that you will either have to pay or you will not be able to go. And that gives you sort of a picture as to how unknown this site really is. There are not a lot of tourists here at all. After driving a bit outside of town on this dirt road, you will eventually arrive at the point where you essentially just have to park somewhere, as there is not really any parking spots. This is also where we come back to the point where you need a guide, because the trail is not really visible. So at this point, we got out of the car and started the hiking portion of the trip. All right, so it looks like we're beginning our hike to the site. Overall, it takes about an hour and a half of consistent uphill hiking to arrive at the megalithic site. And along the way, we will also hit a couple of unexcavated Zapotec sites before that, which themselves are not very visually impressive, but it does provide some important context for the people that were actually living here, as they are also the people that mainstream archaeology credits with the construction of the megalithic sites. This is the ceremony patio, the place where the religious people would gather, I suppose, we'll go up. There's a roof. Offrendas. Oh, so actually here, where we are now, these are supposed to be terraces beneath us, but unfortunately you can't see any of them, because they're all buried. At least maybe here, you can see a little bit, that whole space. So this would have been... Okay, so this is not a pyramid. They're just terraces where they would have gathered in their living area. So here's some more construction. You can imagine there was construction on all of this, but it's just buried now. And here you can see the remnants of what once was a Zapotec culture. Oh my, this is a really interesting spot. As we were getting closer to the megalithic site on top, we first made a pit stop at what appears to be another cross-shaped stone construction. However, this one is completely buried underground, and the only way to get into it is to crawl through a small hole into the tomb. There are a lot of interesting things about this tomb, and I'm really grateful that we had the chance to stop here first, because it provides a lot of context before we see the megalithic tomb on top. This particular tomb, as you'll see inside, is not very advanced in its construction. It is actually quite primitive and quite crude. Some of the stones there are pretty large, especially the ones on top, which you can't really see from the outside, but from the inside you can get an idea. But none of the stones are particularly shaped in any way. They've mostly just been loosely fitted together and placed on top of one another. Very large stone, but keep that in mind as we enter the other tomb. The tomb. Gracias. Yes, this is my offering. Before we enter the tomb, we did a sort of ritual or offering for the people that had passed away here many years ago. My guide Arturo took the lead on this, and we basically put some corn in a hole, drank some mezcal, and poured some out as well. When we're inside this tomb, make sure to pay close attention to the type of construction we see here, because this is going to be very important when we get up to the larger megalithic site. Now we're entering. Okay. Oh yeah, so the inside would have been painted red, and this is, I think, a plaster. Tuko. Look how massive these... These are very, very big rocks that they've laid here on top. Very, very large rocks. So this tomb is also in the shape of a cross, a cruciform. The reason that this is different, it's not quite as nice, there aren't as many... There aren't carvings here or whatnot, is because it was a different rank for someone with a lower rank. I'm really grateful to have... Muchas gracias, Arturo, for taking me here. You can see more of the red in this tomb, and you can see how a lot of these rocks have been more or less loosely placed and then filled in with dirt here. But there are some pretty big rocks here. The difference is, though, is that this first one is fairly simple. The rocks have not been carved, and the art is not carved directly into the rocks themselves. So this is a very big one right here. In fact, a lot of these on the lower level are pretty big too. Notice how the roof has the largest stones, which have been placed on top in a rough sort of way. The other thing you'll notice is that here you don't see any designs on the interior of the tomb, which is contrary to what we'll see at the top. The other thing is that this one is significantly smaller. Quite obviously, we're not able to stand up in here, we have to crawl our way through it. One of the other interesting things, not necessarily exactly about this tomb but related to it, is that it appeared to be that all of the normal traditional Zapotec construction is found below the level of the megalithic tomb. In other words, everything else is lower and the megalithic stuff is on top. I'm not sure if that has any meaning to it, but I do find it quite interesting. At this point, we left the first tomb where I do believe they have actually found human remains, hence the ritual we did before entering. And now we proceed up to the grand finale. Why they were designing these tombs the way that they were, that's a question that I have. Like I mentioned earlier, the explanation for the differences in varying levels of, you know, precision is supposedly due to the rank of whoever was being buried there. I will be looking this up after, but at this next tomb I actually am very certain that they have not found any bodies buried here. At least at this particular tomb we're going to visit. Oh, look at that. This is so cool. But I think one of its thorns or whatever they're called. ¿Cómo estás, Carlos? Ah, no. No bueno. He's not doing good. Carlos está muy cansado. We did it. Yo. I think this is it. This is definitely it. Oh my gosh. This is so much taller than I thought it would be. Ay, ay, ay. Dude, we're in the cruciform. I really can't emphasize enough just what a specimen this site is. There's really nothing else like it. And in a minute we're going to get into some of the reasons why I personally believe this particular site is extremely important and why it ties things together in a way that I don't think many other megalithic sites do, particularly in Mexico. We're going to check out one of these others. Right off the bat. Yeah, it's rough. So right off the bat, the first thing I'm noticing here is these right here, the nubs. The one thing that's really interesting though is that these rocks remind me almost exactly like the ones at Ollantaytambo in Peru. Massive. They have these nub features. The one thing that's different is that these are way more eroded. And I think that's partly just because this whole site was covered before for a very, very long time. And even still, excavations haven't really been done. Like, as you can see, the stones are still in the ground for the most part. But it's pretty wild. If you look from the top, you can see that piece looks like it was cracked. That one is sort of out of place, also cracked. But you can see sort of the outline of where they would have put another stone on top, which is almost exactly like what we see at places like Coricancha in Cusco. And this is, okay, this is the craziest part of the whole site, I'm going to be completely honest. And I actually heard about this before I came, but I am going to try to put up a side-by-side photo of this rock and some of the ones that you'll find at Ollantaytambo and show you guys how they look almost exactly identical. Because this beam of sorts, this, you know, carving, is literally the exact same thing you're going to find on the massive stones at Ollantaytambo. The real question is, what happened here? As I mentioned earlier, I think there are striking similarities between here and places like Ollantaytambo in Peru. At a certain point, these things really do become impossible to ignore. The common themes found all over the world. And I think this site is really the culmination, or at least one of the epitomes of those themes. So as you're already getting a pretty good idea, this site is simply just different from everything else we've seen. And what's interesting to me is that it really isn't anything huge. It's a small site and there doesn't appear to be anything else like it in the surrounding area. Now, I honestly can't wrap my head around this, because the general mainstream understanding, not that there has been a ton of research done on it, is that this place was a tomb. But from what I've heard, they actually have not found any bodies at this so-called tomb. So it does raise the question of why they're calling this a tomb in the first place. It doesn't really make sense to me. One of the most obvious signs that there's more going on here is the damaged stones around the site. There's one in particular that is unusually large compared to the others, and it has been completely split in half. It really is confusing, because the mainstream argument is that this stone or stones like it were damaged during the construction process. Basically some kind of construction mishap. But I just find it kind of ridiculous to believe that this kind of damage would have been caused by that. If you look at the tomb itself, well, they're supposedly calling it a tomb, but I'm just going to call it a tomb because it's easier. It's at ground level, or at least very close to ground level, and on the same level as the broken stone. So to me, it makes me wonder how in the world you can get this much damage on a stone that simply fell a few inches, or at most a foot. It really is unexplainable to me, and I just don't see that parallel. Now on the other hand, if you go to places like Ollantaytambo in Peru, you're going to see something similar. Heavy damage on these massive stones, it really just doesn't make sense. At least if you're thinking of it in terms of normal wear and tear over time. Because what you'll notice is that especially at Ollantaytambo, the Inca construction, or at least the common Inca construction, is not nearly as damaged or weathered compared to the megalithic stuff. And I just find that strange, because if they were built around the same time, you would expect similar damage, if not more, on the Inca construction. The same applies here and around the Oaxaca area. Before we move on, I want to mention a few striking details that immediately stood out when I heard about this place. And these are the reasons why I knew I needed to see this place in person. One of those details is the nubs you'll find on one of the stones that is not part of the tomb. The nubs are slightly different in shape and style compared to what we see in places like Peru or Egypt or elsewhere. But what we do see is that there are two nubs specifically, which is also what we find in those other areas. But I think the other major point here is the long column or bar that seems to be protruding from the outside of some of these stones. The strange thing to me though is that both the nubs and the column bar don't appear on all of the stones. They don't appear on all the stones at this site, nor do they appear on all the stones in Peru. And that is impossible to ignore, in my opinion. It's a consistent anomalous theme that the normal explanation just doesn't really make sense for. I've talked about it in other videos, but just for some context, the mainstream archaeological explanation for these nubs was that they were used for lifting. In my opinion, the real gaping hole in this argument is that they're not found on all of the stones, and not even found on some of the largest ones in many of these places. So it brings into question, if they were needing nubs for lifting on some of the smaller stones, why weren't they needing them on the bigger ones? As if you visit these sites, you'll notice that they're almost seemingly just randomly placed, with seemingly no specific reason for them. I'm not 100% sure what the reasoning is for this. Some people do speculate that it could be related to the geopolymer theory, where these stones were poured somehow, and the nubs we're seeing are simply leftovers from this casting process. I personally don't think that's the case, but I do think it is very interesting, and definitely worth pursuing. And then, not sure what's going on here, at least not entirely. These are massive stones. Here is quite interesting. I can't tell if this has been cracked off, or these are two meant to be separate. I think it's been cracked. And another note on the point of damage. There is actually quite an impressive archaeological site in the nearby town of Mitla, and what you'll notice is that the above structure is quite intact and well preserved. However, that is not what we see here at the site of Girun, where you have this monumental damage done to these massive stones. If they were built during the same time, or similar times, you would expect consistent damage, and certainly not the kind we see here. One could simply write this off as coincidence. However, it is pretty consistent with a lot of other megalithic sites we find all over the world, where it's usually the most advanced layers that are the most damaged, at least in terms of the stones themselves. At the megalithic layers, we find very damaged stones, but the highest archaeological levels of Mitla are fairly well preserved. However, the story could look completely different below the surface of the main archaeological site in Mitla. Now, I was not able to visit the site in Mitla. I just didn't have enough time, and it was nearing the end of my trip, but I will mention that in 2023 and 2024, there were recent scans done around the site in Mitla to look into supposed claims made by Spanish missionaries during their conquest of Mexico during the 16th century. According to those accounts, they claim to have found a massive labyrinth below the tomb, in subterranean chambers often referred to as a literal door to hell. There's a wild story behind it, and I won't get into it too much here, but the labyrinth these accounts describe has likely been found through those scans. Here is a short quote from the Dominican chronicler Francisco Burgoa in 1674, describing those Spanish missionaries entering the labyrinth, quote, such was the corruption and bad smell, the dampness of the floor, and a cold wind which extinguished the lights, that at the little distance they had already penetrated, they resolved to come out and ordered this infernal gate to be thoroughly closed with masonry, end quote. This account describes the Spanish having sealed shut the door and passage into the labyrinth due to its stench odor, and I think it is pretty clear that the Zapotec people would have been placing their dead there. In another part of this account, along with others, this place is literally described as the doorway to hell. Mainstream research has suggested for many years that these claims of the lost labyrinth beneath Mitla's place of the dead were likely rubbish, because people had searched for it and nobody could confirm the claims. But as you heard, the story suggests that the passage had been sealed, and only recently have those claims been heavily supported due to modern technology. In my opinion, I think what we are likely seeing here, and in the surrounding area, is the epitome of a certain theme that tends to show up at these places, and that is the clear evidence for reuse and repurposing of older, more impressive sites. I believe it's quite likely that the Zapotec people simply found this subterranean space, along with some of the other megalithic stuff that's there, rather than constructing it themselves. Although the stones used at the surface of Mitla fit together with no mortar, I personally believe that what we are most likely looking at is an attempt at replication, an attempt to preserve, or do their best to reintroduce, what they had found or maybe known about before. And you can really see that, because although the stones are placed with no mortar on top, they're relatively small stones, and there's no doubt in my mind that this certainly would have been possible for them. They were actually quite advanced in many areas, and they no doubt had relatively sophisticated mathematical concepts understood. It's really when you take the leap up to the much larger stones, and also some of the other anomalies we mentioned, that it starts to actually become positive evidence for the fact that, although maybe they could have constructed some of these things, there are still major questions. And lastly, while we're still on this segment, I must bring up possibly the most interesting, however largely mysterious, anomaly pertaining to the site of Girón, but more broadly, the whole region. In 1994, archaeologist Nelly Robles Garcia published a study called Las Canteras de Mitla, Oaxaca, Technology for Stone Architecture, which focused on the ancient quarries around Mitla, and how stone was being extracted and worked on for the monumental architecture in the region. In that study, she describes a place tied to this broader zone where there are multiple massive work stones, including one truly gigantic block that appears to have been intentionally cut. What is so striking about this particular stone is its reported size. Based on the dimensions given, it is roughly 12 meters long, 4 meters wide, and 2.5 meters high, meaning this thing may have weighed somewhere in the range of nearly 300 tons, depending on the density of the rock. That is an absolutely enormous piece of stone, and far beyond what most people would ever imagine being worked on in this region. And to me, that is where the mystery really starts to deepen, because now we are not just looking at finished ruins or nicely fitted masonry. We may be looking at evidence of quarrying and stone working on a scale that raises a much bigger question. What exactly were they attempting to build here? To wrap up this site and this segment of the video, I want to send a massive shout out to Marco, who runs the ARX project, for sharing some of these photos that they were able to capture on their own while visiting the quarry site. If you want to know more, you can find them on YouTube as they run a great channel over there, and if you're more curious about the specifics of the massive stone these images are referencing, you can also find an article that the ARX project put out a few years ago, I believe, and it's on their website, which goes into much more detail. I will make sure to provide a link to both their YouTube channel and the article in the description of this video. Definitely be sure to go check them out. On this note of quarrying of massive monolithic stones, we are now going to be moving on from the actual megalithic site of Girún itself and transitioning on this journey to a local quarry that my guide Arturo knew about, which, needless to say, had some very intriguing and, in my opinion, anomalous elements to it. So, here is us making our way over there. We have to walk all the way back. How far? Once we arrived at the quarry, we did have to walk just a bit to get up the hill, but once we got there, it was quite an interesting experience. I wanted to go look at this other quarry that had a 350 ton stone, but unfortunately, that's a little too far away. We'll go check out another one. I wonder if we'll be able to see any large stones, like some really big ones, you know? A lot of these large boulders that had sort of been tumbled around don't really appear to have been cut or shaped or anything like that, at least not in the small area we were in. However, after a little bit more walking here, we did eventually arrive at a place that I later found out people had actually been living there a few years ago. It was a small family, which is absolutely wild to think about, but I want you to pay close attention to some of the details of this particular part of the quarry because here we are going to be able to see one of the stones, or at least what would have been a stone, currently in the extraction process. And from my perspective, it appears that it just abruptly ended. An interesting thing you'll notice is that this particular stone, which is in the middle of being extracted, has a very flat clean edge to it, which I think immediately contradicts the idea that these stones were hauled in their rough shape from the quarry and then shaped on site. It just doesn't add up to me. But anyway, take a look. It is just, it has not been preserved. Look at this. I mean, this looks like really old rock. Like really, really, really old. I don't know. It's a lot of rock. This one is really interesting. Yeah, pretty cool. Yo, so I did not see this earlier. Look at that. Look at how flat it is. Where did this come from? Look at that. That's so weird. Remember, this is like a part of the ground. So they must have like done this or something else. One really interesting thing that I definitely want to mention here is just how eroded this block is. I mean, it is unbelievably eroded. And clearly it was as if the work just abruptly ended, which is a common thing we find in a lot of these areas. The work just stops. And this obviously would have been one of the larger megalithic stones had the extraction process been completed. This is a pretty common thing we find. We see the larger megalithic work abruptly ending in the extraction phase and then the smaller, cruder work or other structures looking complete. To me, I'm just trying to piece this all together. I don't really know for sure, but it's quite an interesting thing we're looking at here. I don't know personally how you would date these particular stones in the extraction process itself or how exactly you would do that. But everybody's always learning. It's too bad we didn't see too many other stones that were shaped or anything like that. But it is still quite mysterious because who knows where that stone would have ended up. It would have been an incredible task, especially considering how far away the site is or even the site of Mithla. But anyways, guys, at this point, we are going to be wrapping up the video. I just want to say thank you to the people who have supported these videos, even when some of them have not done so well. If you guys enjoy this stuff, I really encourage you to comment because it does help spread the video and get it out there to more people. I love doing videos on site. Unfortunately, travel expenses are creeping up there and it is definitely not sustainable for every video to be on site. But if you guys do want to help with that and you enjoy the on-site videos as much as I do, then there are a couple of ways you can support me. I have linked a PayPal donations link. It should either be in a pinned comment or in the description. Any amount helps and I promise you the money is strictly for supporting future creation of these videos. Other than that, the best way to support is to stay tuned for more, subscribe, and definitely comment. Putting your ideas and thoughts in the comment section really does help this video. And to end this episode, once again, I am just truly grateful, especially for some of you guys that have been supporting the channel over the last few months. I really do just want these videos to contribute and help the greater cause of pursuing the truth about our past. And part of that is because I believe in order to do better in our future as human beings, we have to learn about who we are. But to do that, I think we also owe it to ourselves to learn about who we were and how we've grown. Anyways, I've talked a lot in this video so I won't bore you anymore. With that being said, I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.