Luke Reagan

Reagan complains that the wishes of modern tribal descendants prevent him from studying 6,000-year-old West Texas mummies.

“I cannot study ancient mummification in West Texas because it is forbidden by the modern descendants of the natives of West Texas”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:44:34

Reagan says archaeology funding is drying up under the current administration and that very few archaeologists study the Mogollon region.

“There are only three active archaeologists that study that cultural region, just three”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:42:04

Reagan argues that wealth and leisure harm Americans' mental health compared with poorer people abroad.

“that's why those people that live in slums in Egypt are happier and have less mental illness than people in the United States do”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:18:56

Reagan claims that in Egypt, unlike in the United States or Mexico, enough money can buy access to almost any site.

“I don't think there's anything that's sacred in Egypt. Like you could, if I had enough money, I could get access to whatever I wanted”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 1:57:14

Reagan argues that archaeology is partly an art because its first analysis of a site cannot be repeated.

“It's an art as much as it is a science because the analysis, that first analysis can only be done once, right?”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 1:02:38

Reagan argues that the mound builders' underwater panther myth depicts a jaguar, not an eastern cougar.

“which is this panther that would go and be under the water and then come up and be on the upper world, that's not a cougar”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:51:47

Reagan rejects the conventional reading of jaguar gorgets found in Missouri and says jaguars lived there around 250 BC.

“There were fucking jaguars in Missouri in 250 BC, absolutely for sure”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:51:31

Reagan concludes that jaguars ranged from North Carolina to Florida.

“And so without a doubt, dude, Jaguars were all the way up in North Carolina, all the way down in Florida”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 24:09

Reagan argues that John Lawson's account of a large cat makes it indisputable that jaguars lived in the Carolinas.

“I don't even know why this is disputed among wildlife biologists. Like it should be basically printed in a textbook that this is a fact”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 23:55

Reagan says that under current law he can legally lidar-scan a mound site with a drone even if the landowner refuses him access.

“I can go, all right, well, I'm still going to LIDAR scan it, and that's fully legal”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 3:09:12

Reagan says he has used a proprietary lidar dataset over three and a half years to find about 80 unrecorded sites.

“I've spent the last three and a half years and I've just I have found um, about 80 sites that are not labeled”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:05:29

Reagan says his team's lidar work at Moundville will take place within the next six months.

“Uh, Moundville is going to be within the next six months”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 3:05:34

Reagan believes a serpent-shaped depression he found near Moundville will prove to be a new category of eastern North American site.

“my hunch is that that is going to be an entirely new category of ancient sites that nobody else has ever identified before”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 3:03:29

Reagan speculates that Louisiana, rather than the Olmec heartland, could be where North American civilization began.

“So like Louisiana could be the Fertile Crescent of North America, right? It could be where civilization was born”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:38:05

Reagan says the evidence shows Archaic North Americans built large settlements before farming because wildlife was so abundant.

“is that people were living in massive cities even when they were just foraging and hunting”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:34:39

Reagan rejects the idea that a detailed Atlantis story could have survived from 9,000 BC.

“I don't just don't think that there's any way that if if Atlantis was destroyed in 9,000 BC, that there's any way anybody would have preserved such a specific kind of story”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 1:37:11

Reagan argues that the Greek Atlantis story preserves a memory of the Bronze Age eruption that destroyed Akrotiri.

“I think it's incredibly obvious that when the Greeks are later on talking about Atlantis, they're remembering the cataclysmic eruption of the island of Akrotiri”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 1:29:08

Reagan says his ancestor John H. Reagan was the only Confederate cabinet member to oppose Robert E. Lee's push toward Gettysburg.

“he was the only cabinet member of the Confederacy to vote against Robert E. Lee pushing into Gettysburg because he knew that was a terrible idea”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 3:20:30

Reagan says lidar showed an ancient archaeological site of Ancestral Puebloan pit houses on Jeffrey Epstein's New Mexico ranch.

“Yeah, so he had an archeological site on his ranch. That's crazy. Who knows if he knew about it or anything or ever”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 2:11:48

Reagan says the growth of alternative archaeology has shown academics that they need to communicate better.

“I do think that the explosion of the alternate space has basically put up a mirror to academics and been like, you guys really have to work on your delivery”

Danny Jones Podcast: #448 - Lost 6,000 Year Old 'Pyramid City' Just Found in North America | Luke Reagan (Nov 13, 2026) · Listen from 1:12:43