Episode #383: Mysteries in the Desert - SnakeBros Live

Summary

After a long wine harvest hiatus, the Allen brothers return to explore a mysterious ancient road in Egypt's Faiyum region, partly paved with petrified wood and running from the megalithic temple of Qasr el-Sagha toward a remote basalt quarry. They walk through a 2006 Science paper on how climate shifts in the Sahara drove human migration and the rise of Pharaonic civilization, and ask where a hypothetical lost civilization could fit in that timeline. They also question mainstream explanations for catastrophic fossil deposits and for the saw-cut basalt found at Giza and other sites.

Key takeaways

• 1The 'oldest road' in the Faiyum runs roughly 11 km from Qasr el-Sagha toward the Widan el-Faras basalt quarry, dropping about 265 meters in elevation, with sections apparently paved with petrified wood.
• 2The paper discussed is 'Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa's Evolution' by Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin (Science, 2006). It describes four occupation phases between 8500 and 1500 BCE.
• 3The hosts argue that the Nile Valley was too flood-prone to live in from about 8500 to 5300 BCE, when people moved into a green Sahara, and that a lost civilization would therefore have to predate 8500 BCE. They mention John Anthony West's claim of a date around 36,000 years ago.
• 4They claim that Valley of the Whales fossils, upright mangrove roots, and aligned petrified logs point to catastrophic deposition rather than the gradual processes described on the site's plaques.
• 5They note that basalt paving at Giza, Abu Rawash and Tell el-Roba shows matching saw cuts, while Aswan granite shows 'scooped' tool marks. They suggest this could mean different technologies or different builders.
• 6They report saw cuts and diamond-pattern cut marks in andesite blocks at the Sun Temple of Ollantaytambo, Peru, and mention ongoing joint research with Adam of the Artifact Foundation.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

We are live. Let's hit it. Let me try this out. StreamYard. Oh, yeah. You did it. Flawlessly executed zero mistakes. Listener comms. And welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, angels and demons and monsters and serpents. This is Brothers of the Serpent podcast. I am Russ Allen coming to you from my new studio where I am hiding from Sam's wrench and eldritch horrors nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And I'm Kyle Allen, still, still high atop the Edwards Plateau here in the 10 by 10 by 10 Tantacube of Science. And glad to be here, folks. Finally. Yeah. It was a it was a long harvest. Yes. Longest yet. Yeah. I do apologize to people. I mean, we were starting to get people were like, are you guys dead? Almost. I almost almost dead. Yeah. So I know. Yeah. Russ came flew down here and saved me. You really saved my ass, bro. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. It was actually I was worried when you were at first. I was like, bro, I need you. And then you were like, oh, I'll get there on the 10th. And I was like, damn, that's like that's like eight or nine days from now. So and then when you got there, I was like, shit, I think I told me you called me too early. Yeah. I was like, I think I may have told you to come too early. But then by the time you like got all the tanks clean and we had everything basically ready, it was like, oh, we're harvesting. Yeah. Then we had a break in the harvest and we were waiting for the big reds, the Tanat, the Montepulciano, the Cab. Yep. ...

Excerpt from Brothers of the Serpent, Sep 21, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.