Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning to you with a
Speaker 1: classic episode. Who doesn't love hopping on a plane? Statistically
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but humans have been in love
Speaker 1: with the ideal flight for a long long time.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: We can just hop into like a giant tube that
Speaker 3: takes off from the ground and floats through the sky
Speaker 3: and then get out at another location. Short of some
Speaker 3: of the inconveniences that go along with it, It's pretty miraculous.
Speaker 4: And simultaneously, guys, human beings have been reporting, writing down,
Speaker 4: drawing pictures of weird vites in the sky, flying contraptions,
Speaker 4: and then what have these things been? I always think
Speaker 4: of Ondanakin when I when I say the word vias.
Speaker 1: Vias that's right, yes, oh Vimana's described in the Vedas. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you about these are texts written in India over
Speaker 1: three thousand years ago. They definitely made Eric Vondanikin's career
Speaker 1: or a big part of it. And back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, we started asking ourselves was this just really
Speaker 1: good fiction or the Should these just be taken as
Speaker 1: spiritual tales or folklore or were they based on something else?
Speaker 2: Now, what a great setup. Let's just roll the table.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 5: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 4: my name is Noel.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. Today's episode follows up on an
Speaker 1: earlier Listener Male segment inspired by an episode of a
Speaker 1: program known as Ancient Aliens. Ernest contacted us and asked
Speaker 1: some interesting questions about mercury and ancient tombs, and then
Speaker 1: took a turn to something that we have thought about
Speaker 1: for years, which is, weirdly enough, a topic we've never covered,
Speaker 1: the idea of ancient flying machines. Talk about a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I know you guys have heard of, you know, like
Speaker 1: Chariot of the Gods with Eric von danikin right.
Speaker 3: No, that it sounds amazing. I just love the expression
Speaker 3: chariot of the Gods.
Speaker 4: I believe it's chariots of the gods of the goods.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Eric von Danakin is one of the advocates, or one
Speaker 1: of the main voices in this sphere of hidden history
Speaker 1: conspiracies that argues ancient civilization had technology that was even
Speaker 1: more sophisticated than the technology we have today. This technology
Speaker 1: was lost and may one day be rediscovered. So this
Speaker 1: how does this all relate to mercury? We'll tell you
Speaker 1: the main headline here first is that mercury was super
Speaker 1: popular with ancient elites for a number of reasons. Here
Speaker 1: are the facts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the use of mercury has been going on
Speaker 3: for quite a long time, much longer ago than those
Speaker 3: hatters that got their moniker of being mad from mercury poisoning. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: mercury actually played a role in ancient civilizations across the
Speaker 3: entire world.
Speaker 2: It's one of the first metals.
Speaker 3: That was known to humanity and that humanity figured out
Speaker 3: a way to use. Archaeologists found mercury in an Egyptian
Speaker 3: tomb that dated back to fifteen hundred BC, and the
Speaker 3: Egyptians and the Chinese might have been using something called
Speaker 3: cinnabar as a red pigment for centuries even before the
Speaker 3: birth of Christ. So in many civilizations, mercury was almost
Speaker 3: like considered a magical substance that was used to satisfy
Speaker 3: or chase away the malevolent spirits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and cinebar itself is a toxic mercury sulfide mineral
Speaker 1: that was once commonly used as a pigment. So alchemists
Speaker 1: of old thought that mercury had these a wide range
Speaker 1: of mystical properties that through the use of mercury properly applied,
Speaker 1: one could transform metals transmute based metals into more valuable
Speaker 1: things like gold. They also thought it could have you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about anti aging technology in a previous episode.
Speaker 1: They also thought that mercury could be the key to
Speaker 1: a much longer lifespan. There were legends of people living
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of years entirely due to their judicious
Speaker 1: consumption of mercury. Greek civilization knew about mercury also used
Speaker 1: it as a medicine. The use of mercury to treat
Speaker 1: specifically syphilis, started around the fifteenth century continued into the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen hundreds. Spoiler, folks, it's not the best syphilis
Speaker 1: treatment out there.
Speaker 3: To put it mildly, now, it's sort of like cutting
Speaker 3: off your ear, you know, to help you with some
Speaker 3: other problem, like yeah, exactly, yeah, there you go, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: I'd love to see a modern commercial for that time
Speaker 4: in mercury as a medicine for syphilis, Like why would
Speaker 4: the side effects be? What would they have to read
Speaker 4: legally as the side effects?
Speaker 3: It would be madness, existential dread more so than usual,
Speaker 3: and what like death instant death because of how much
Speaker 3: you consume.
Speaker 1: So it would probably be something like the Who's warning,
Speaker 1: which we'll just read an end of the commercial voice.
Speaker 1: So I picture, you know, picture some nice music, Paul,
Speaker 1: can you give us some like prosaic, big pharma ad
Speaker 1: music perfect okay?
Speaker 2: And then the tag.
Speaker 4: Your life with mercury.
Speaker 1: Yes, the inhalation of mercury vapor can produce harmful effects
Speaker 1: on the nervous, digestive, and immune system, lungs, in kidneys,
Speaker 1: and maybe fatal. The inorganic salts of mercury are corrosive
Speaker 1: to the skin, eyes, and gastrointestinal track, and may induce
Speaker 1: kidney toxicity if ingested.
Speaker 2: Mercury. It's not just for thermometers.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the ad right, that's it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're making light of it, but mercury is a poisonous substance.
Speaker 1: That's why we grow up being told not to break
Speaker 1: open the thermometers, no matter how cool they are. But
Speaker 1: back in the day, like Noel just said, this was
Speaker 1: used in multiple civilizations. Ancient Indian civilizations knew about mercury.
Speaker 1: The tomb of China's first emperor Qin Shihuang is it's
Speaker 1: this massive complex underneath this hill, this mound, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty much the size of a city, right of all
Speaker 1: these interconnected underground caves containing all the things you need
Speaker 1: in the afterlife if you're an emperor. And for more
Speaker 1: than two thousand years, this guy's been entombed in this
Speaker 1: incredibly ornate complex, and archaeologists believe that his tomb was
Speaker 1: originally surrounded by a moat of mercury. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of mercury, right, Like, a moat is a weird measurement
Speaker 1: to use. I don't think I've ever measured something in
Speaker 1: moat units.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, yeah, in this case, it's surrounding a tomb.
Speaker 4: I guess how large your moat is depends precisely on
Speaker 4: how large you're tomb is or your sarcophagus or you're
Speaker 4: you know, whatever you're inside of, because it's not the
Speaker 4: entire building that was surrounded by a moat the way
Speaker 4: you would imagine a castle or something in a moat.
Speaker 4: But it was certainly way more mercury than you'd expect.
Speaker 1: He was mercury rich. Chinese tradition at the time of
Speaker 1: this emperor's life and his burial held that mercury could
Speaker 1: bestow immortality or a very extreme form of longevity. So
Speaker 1: there's an archaeologist named Kristin Romi who argues that this
Speaker 1: belief and the curative powers of mercury could have actually
Speaker 1: been the cause of the emperor's death because this guy
Speaker 1: was also I think we mentioned this on the listener mail,
Speaker 1: this guy was also taking mercury pills on a regular
Speaker 1: basis in hopes of extending his lifespan, and those pills
Speaker 1: are probably what killed him at the age of thirty nine.
Speaker 1: So he died like in modern terms, who would think
Speaker 1: of that as an early death. He probably would have
Speaker 1: lived a little longer if he hadn't been you ingesting
Speaker 1: mercury on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and as you were saying this reverence for mercury
Speaker 4: or use of mercury was across the globe, and in Teotihuacan,
Speaker 4: in Mexico, there was this other weird thing that was
Speaker 4: found with liquid mercury. It's like half a world away
Speaker 4: in Mexico from where we're talking about, this moat was located.
Speaker 4: There's an archaeologist named Sergio Gomez who accidentally stumbled upon
Speaker 4: this hidden tunnel. Essentially there at a temple. There was
Speaker 4: a rainstorm or something and he just happened to shine
Speaker 4: a light down into this sinkhole that opened up, and
Speaker 4: they discovered something very strange. There was basically a recreation
Speaker 4: of the what of the underworld that is described at
Speaker 4: least by the peoples of the time, the people who
Speaker 4: built Tao Tequo Con who built the Temple of the
Speaker 4: Sun and there and some of the other structures. Part
Speaker 4: of it was large quantities of liquid mercury. And it's
Speaker 4: at least it's thought right now. We can't say for sure,
Speaker 4: but it's thought that those pools of liquid mercury were
Speaker 4: meant to represent essentially the parts of the underworld, the
Speaker 4: waters of the underworld. And you can imagine in your
Speaker 4: mind if you've ever seen liquid mercury. That kind of
Speaker 4: the color, the way this liquid metal, the way it
Speaker 4: looks fill, the way it fills you know, any volume
Speaker 4: of container that it's in.
Speaker 2: It's just.
Speaker 4: It's otherworldly almost, And you can imagine how symbolically that
Speaker 4: would be very powerful.
Speaker 1: And basins of mercury would sometimes be used in divination rituals,
Speaker 1: right because of that mirror like surface into it. This
Speaker 1: is strange because it gives it leads us to a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting lines of thoughts. I'm choosing that phrase carefully.
Speaker 1: So first we ask ourselves what role did mercury play
Speaker 1: in these vastly different ancient cultures. The question is still
Speaker 1: a bit of a mystery in the modern day. We
Speaker 1: know that, like we said, Tibetan, China, those civilizations believe
Speaker 1: that mercury had curative powers. It also had symbolic significance,
Speaker 1: for sure in Meso American society. In numerous other societies,
Speaker 1: it was both symbolic and perceived to be medicinal. So
Speaker 1: why is it such a popular.
Speaker 2: Thing in these communities.
Speaker 1: It gives us a couple There are a couple of
Speaker 1: There are a couple of possibilities. So one, it's just
Speaker 1: one of the earliest metals known, so people were more
Speaker 1: likely to know about it and to independently discover it
Speaker 1: through the use of centabar stuff like that. Or Two,
Speaker 1: A very out there one is what if these civilizations
Speaker 1: had some sort of contact that we're not aware of
Speaker 1: in the modern day. I think the way we phrased
Speaker 1: it is, so the meso American structure is built after
Speaker 1: the tomb of the quote unquote first Chinese emperor. So,
Speaker 1: and there's a legend that this emperor sent ships east
Speaker 1: to explore other possible aging cures. So what if some
Speaker 1: of the folks that emperor sent east ended up in
Speaker 1: meso America and they were like, hey, we want to
Speaker 1: teach you our ways. Also, if you guys heard of mercury,
Speaker 1: it's super cool. Look at this bowl. There's no proof
Speaker 1: that that happened yet, but we know mercury remains a
Speaker 1: crucial substance here in twenty twenty one. Like, people still
Speaker 1: use mercury. You know, you might have mercury in your
Speaker 1: house if you have I don't know, a thermometer. That's
Speaker 1: what I mostly associated with.
Speaker 3: What about you guys, Yeah, same, I mean more like
Speaker 3: in a thermostat, like it's still like an old school thermostat.
Speaker 3: If you open it up, it's got a little tiny,
Speaker 3: kind of level looking glass tube that's got a little
Speaker 3: bit of mercury in it. I think people maybe use
Speaker 3: digital thermometers more often than old school mercury ones for safety,
Speaker 3: I guess with kids, but that certainly is still a
Speaker 3: use for it in things, you know.
Speaker 2: In your home. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean there are a lot of reasons to use
Speaker 4: mercury and other things for switching, like metal switching purposes,
Speaker 4: you know, and traditionally it was used in things like
Speaker 4: alarm clocks. There's there are a lot of uses for
Speaker 4: mercury and measuring devices. I forgot about barometers. Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: that's really important.
Speaker 3: Is that because it's it's sensitive to like it expands
Speaker 3: and contracts, uh, you know, with temperature very well better
Speaker 3: than others. And it also stays in a liquid form.
Speaker 1: Yeah, baby, Yeah, it's it's got that high density. Right,
Speaker 1: So the height of the column and the barometer can
Speaker 1: be a reasonable size. Your barometer doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a huge contraption. Like there's an interesting tidbit there. So
Speaker 1: you could make a barometer using water. It would need
Speaker 1: to be thirteen point six times taller than a mercury barometer.
Speaker 1: So to your point, no, mercury is super convenient for this.
Speaker 1: But back to that question, and there is a question
Speaker 1: that other people have tried to answer. What caused ancient
Speaker 1: civilizations to be so fascinated with this substance? And why
Speaker 1: do some people believe that mercury may be more than
Speaker 1: just an element, Why do they believe it may be
Speaker 1: the key to some sort of lost technology of nie
Speaker 1: unimaginable power. It's a big question, and it's one we'll
Speaker 1: tackle after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: Our story about the alleged powers of mercury kind of
Speaker 1: start kind of starts in ancient India.
Speaker 2: When you say.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, if we go back in ancient Indian lore, you
Speaker 3: have something called the legend of Vimana. In Hindu and
Speaker 3: Sanskrit texts or scriptures, Vimyana were flying palaces. It's one
Speaker 3: of these things where it's like, is this a product
Speaker 3: of the imagination, is this something that's based in lare
Speaker 3: or did they actually know how to build these things.
Speaker 2: Here's here's where it starts.
Speaker 3: The crafts actually have supposedly these magical abilities that almost defy,
Speaker 3: you know, physics. In Hindu mythology, there was a demon
Speaker 3: king named Ravana of Lanka, that's ancient Sri Lanka, who
Speaker 3: brought something called the Pushpaka vimyana to India. The word
Speaker 3: vimyana actually translate to traverse or to measure. Other uses
Speaker 3: might imply an existence of a temple or a flying machine.
Speaker 1: Ding ding ding a flying machine. Yes, so this captures
Speaker 1: the imagination, right, But there's there's something interesting. So we
Speaker 1: said flying palace or a flying machine. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of the popular image of angels in you know, Islamic, Judaic,
Speaker 1: Christian mythology versus the actual description of angels in the Bible.
Speaker 1: They're two very different looking creatures, right, like these wheels
Speaker 1: spinning with all these eyes and multiple wings versus a
Speaker 1: kindly person in a white robe with a humble halo.
Speaker 1: The description of the flying palace or the vimyana here
Speaker 1: is that it's shaped like a giant peacock. It's not
Speaker 1: especially aerodynamic if you if you look at it, or
Speaker 1: if you draw something according to the description. But long
Speaker 1: story short, yes, ancient aircraft could Some civilization from thousands
Speaker 1: of years in the past have cracked the code to flight,
Speaker 1: you know, millennia before the Ripe Brothers, only for this
Speaker 1: technology to have been forgotten in the modern day. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's an awesome story. It's definitely true that it's
Speaker 1: an awesome story. How does mercury figure into the mix.
Speaker 4: Though, Well, there is one Sanskrit text. It's called the
Speaker 4: Vi Monika Shastra. And now remember we cannot, I cannot
Speaker 4: pronounce these words correctly, so I apologize. V v A
Speaker 4: I M A n I Ka Shastra s h A
Speaker 4: s t r A. Now this text, at least on
Speaker 4: the surface, appears to fully describe the construction of these
Speaker 4: things called vimanas, as well as their propulsion systems, such
Speaker 4: as a mercury vortex engine. So cool, right, so cool
Speaker 4: mercury vortex engine. Yeah, let's do that, spin that mercury around.
Speaker 4: Let's see what happens. And remember these texts, texts, not
Speaker 4: this one in particular, but the vedas are written. It's
Speaker 4: thought around fifteen hundred BC twelve hundred BC. That's when
Speaker 4: the like rig veda is thought to have been created.
Speaker 4: In some of these ancient texts that are describing some
Speaker 4: of these things, this one that we're going to talk
Speaker 4: about is a little different, but still this is a
Speaker 4: much older text that has This is the one that
Speaker 4: has illustrations, right Ben.
Speaker 1: That's correct. Yeah, And this is let's set it up
Speaker 1: this way. So when we were talking about this earlier
Speaker 1: in the listener mail segment, this is the text that
Speaker 1: was referring to when I said these things are described
Speaker 1: as fact rather than as as myth. So it's important
Speaker 1: we'll see why this text in particular bears some scrutiny.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we we have to look to that show,
Speaker 4: the old the show that holds a special place in
Speaker 4: my heart, and hopefully it does yours to ancient aliens,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: So I gotta say that who's the host? I love
Speaker 3: his hair and I love his spray tan.
Speaker 2: Georgio, Georgia. Yeah.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of people who kind of rotate
Speaker 4: through as the subject matter experts on that show. One
Speaker 4: of them is Vontanakin. One of them is Suclos. But
Speaker 4: in that show, not yet, but in one of these episodes,
Speaker 4: we we've got a quote from it that is describing
Speaker 4: this text. And here it is one of the texts
Speaker 4: talks about Mercury wrote and driving some sort of powerful
Speaker 4: wind or a windmill machine. That might be some sort
Speaker 4: of what we call a flywheel energy storage, where you
Speaker 4: have a spinning disk and you extract energy from it slowly.
Speaker 4: That would be the mercury that could be used to
Speaker 4: drive some sort of propeller or what we call a
Speaker 4: conducted fan.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, let's pause, let's pause.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's true.
Speaker 1: That was said on that show. That is true. So
Speaker 1: we know that we know that flywheels are a real thing.
Speaker 2: We know that.
Speaker 1: We know that it's true that mercury at very low temperatures,
Speaker 1: think like four degrees kelvin, which is negative four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two something fahrenheit, or for people in the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, negative two hundred and sixty nine
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. When you get to that very low temperature,
Speaker 1: mercury can function as is superconductor. And as for the
Speaker 1: rest of the stuff described there, What a cool story.
Speaker 1: It is true that that is such a cool story.
Speaker 1: You'll see versions of this story going even further afield
Speaker 1: into like Indiana Jones Hellboy territory. There's this argument that
Speaker 1: in World War two, Nazi German forces took an expedition
Speaker 1: into Tibet and into India to retrieve this ancient technology,
Speaker 1: which they understood to be something called real VRL, and
Speaker 1: they would later use their discoveries to power their own
Speaker 1: fantastical flying machines. So shout out to the Nazi Bell.
Speaker 1: Here's another thing that's true. There really was a German
Speaker 1: expedition to Tibet and India in nineteen thirty eight to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, and it was weird.
Speaker 2: It was a weird expedition.
Speaker 3: The Germans were into all kinds of spooky stuff, weren't they.
Speaker 3: I mean really, they put a lot of stock in
Speaker 3: the supernatural.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've talked about this before in a previous episode
Speaker 4: that you could go listen to now. I can't remember
Speaker 4: what it was called the Nazi Magic Made. No, we
Speaker 4: didn't know.
Speaker 3: That's We've got that coming up as a classic. We
Speaker 3: did an intro for that the other day.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah we did.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: I can't remember if the Magic one. There's so much
Speaker 4: Nazi content, you guys, I can't remember if.
Speaker 3: Got that premium Nazi content.
Speaker 4: It's either the Diglock Bell episode or the Magic one.
Speaker 4: There's one of those where we.
Speaker 6: Go in into could be that so so we do
Speaker 6: know that this was an expedition in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 6: nineteen thirty nine and then, and that there were some strange,
Speaker 6: seemingly strange reasons for going.
Speaker 4: And we know this to be true. Let's just let's
Speaker 4: let's say what it was. The Germans at that time
Speaker 4: wanted to figure out whether or not Tibet could be
Speaker 4: used as a staging ground for attacks on British India. So, right,
Speaker 4: so could we actually go from Tibet to attack.
Speaker 2: Our enemies gorilla style?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that makes sense, that's military strategy. They also
Speaker 4: wanted to prove this other guy's idea, Heinrich Himmler. They
Speaker 4: wanted to prove his idea that there was some group
Speaker 4: of pure blooded Arians at least that's his that's his
Speaker 4: concept there had settled into Bet and according to what
Speaker 4: we know, there was a This expedition was thought to
Speaker 4: be a success.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: They came back with all kinds of samples from from
Speaker 4: the area inti Bet, of the floor and the fauna
Speaker 4: of that locality. But the big question is did they
Speaker 4: come back with some kind of I don't know, mercury
Speaker 4: engine and flywheel system that would change the trajectory of
Speaker 4: the German military machine.
Speaker 2: That sounds cool.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe that's what the bell was. Good luck proving it,
Speaker 4: but we tried, we tried, We did try.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, did they discover some thing that could have
Speaker 1: changed the course of the war, with the only problem
Speaker 1: being the timing, you know what I mean, like where
Speaker 1: they just too late with the secret knowledge they had
Speaker 1: gleaned from some hyperborean society of old. Again, a wonderful story.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: And we'll be back. And we've returned.
Speaker 1: I promise this is the last time I will say
Speaker 1: what a cool story this whole thing is, because I
Speaker 1: do think it's a cool story and I love it.
Speaker 1: The problem is it is maybe not a true story.
Speaker 1: Let's go let's go back to that Indian literature, right,
Speaker 1: Matt Nol. The vadas you guys mentioned.
Speaker 3: Those are very real, Right, those are real, correct, the
Speaker 3: Hindu Vadas. It's it's you know, I mean, there's a
Speaker 3: sacred text.
Speaker 4: But it's a.
Speaker 3: Lot more fun than the Bible. I'm not gonna lie
Speaker 3: because it's like almost more like reading Greek mythology, where
Speaker 3: you have all these gods who have these incredible powers
Speaker 3: and they're fighting for supremacy, you know, in this mystical
Speaker 3: world with all kinds of vehicles. It's like I can
Speaker 3: imagine there being action figure playsets made out of some
Speaker 3: of these incredible gods epic battles that supposedly took place
Speaker 3: in ancient times. These sagas are widely thought to be
Speaker 3: mythological stories or allegories to be taken, you know, as
Speaker 3: ways to model, you know, learn lessons, almost like Esop's
Speaker 3: fable type situations which we'd used to teach children life lessons.
Speaker 3: But in the Ancient Aliens program, they pause it that
Speaker 3: these might there might have been some truth to this stuff,
Speaker 3: that maybe there were these ancient forgotten flight machines and
Speaker 3: these gods kind of battling it out in the skies.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, And there appears to be a misstep
Speaker 1: in that presentation or the way it's framed. The argument
Speaker 1: about forgotten flight machines sites ancient Indian literature and primarily
Speaker 1: mentions a text called the Viemannika Shastra. Right, and again
Speaker 1: to Matt's earlier point, we are not native speakers of
Speaker 1: this language. What is this shastra? So it begins by
Speaker 1: covering the definition of an airplane of flying craft. It
Speaker 1: talks about pilots of these crafts, it talks about aerial
Speaker 1: roots these craft would take, and more. It's markedly different
Speaker 1: from the Vedas in that it is not It is
Speaker 1: written as though it is factual, and as though it
Speaker 1: is almost an engineering guide or depiction of real life
Speaker 1: events and artifacts.
Speaker 2: It's claimed to.
Speaker 1: Be a small fragment of a much larger work called
Speaker 1: the Yantra Sarvaswa, which translates roughly to all about machines.
Speaker 1: It's one fortieth of this much bigger thing, right, so
Speaker 1: we're only we're only seeing.
Speaker 2: Part of the work. Here's here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This Vimanika Shastra is real. It is real, It is
Speaker 1: in Sanskrit, and it does claim that the vi mignanas
Speaker 1: mentioned in other texts are advanced flying machines. But the
Speaker 1: Vimanika Shastra itself is not ancient by any means.
Speaker 4: No, no, And this is where we kind of burst bubbles.
Speaker 4: And I'm sorry for that, but it's just what we
Speaker 4: kind of have to do. So for this text, we
Speaker 4: have to jump way way back to nineteen fifty two
Speaker 4: AD or CD. Yeah, correct, that's nineteen fifty two, like
Speaker 4: right after my parents were born. That's when this text
Speaker 4: was first revealed by person named G. R. Josier. Gr
Speaker 4: Josier that is the name there. And it was claimed
Speaker 4: to have been written by someone named Pendit Subaraya Shastri,
Speaker 4: who probably, at least according to the story, dictated it
Speaker 4: between nineteen eighteen and nineteen twenty three. Now, Shastri claimed
Speaker 4: that he was receiving this information from a spirit guide.
Speaker 4: So what you're actually finding in that text, according to
Speaker 4: the person that wrote it, it's dream like visions that
Speaker 4: are being translated. Now, a very skeptical person can immediately
Speaker 4: look at that and go, oh, come on, well, then, okay,
Speaker 4: this is all made up. This is just somebody's imagination,
Speaker 4: somebody's creativity at work. But when you think about almost
Speaker 4: any ancient text, there is a good amount of visioning
Speaker 4: that's occurring, of divine inspiration, at least if you believe
Speaker 4: the story of the actual text and how it was created.
Speaker 4: So it's you know, you can't completely discount it, right.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, we know this text's origin
Speaker 4: and we know that it was again inspired in some
Speaker 4: way through someone's imagination.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, it was inspired perhaps divinely inspired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to their mind.
Speaker 1: Spiritually inspired, and maybe in that perspective it was based
Speaker 1: on earlier, pre existing wisdom, sort of like when Adam
Speaker 1: Weishoppt formed the Bavarian Illuminati and said, really, what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is continuing an ancient tradition.
Speaker 2: I'm not making a new thing.
Speaker 1: So Shastri most likely does not believe that he's.
Speaker 2: Making a new thing out of whole cloth.
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing he is. Josier, you know, describes
Speaker 1: Shastri as a guy's gifted with sensory.
Speaker 2: Abilities beyond that of mere mortals.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 1: It's tough to talk about this without trying to phrase
Speaker 1: it in our modern experiences, but if you have lived
Speaker 1: in a city for any length of time, you may
Speaker 1: at one point have seen people who seem to be
Speaker 1: a little bit unbalanced or mentally unwell, who are perhaps
Speaker 1: appearing to hear things that other people don't hear, or
Speaker 1: loudly addressing someone or something that other people can't see.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, there used to be a time that those
Speaker 3: folks were considered like seers or prophets, and now they're
Speaker 3: largely treated as you know, folks with mental illness, which
Speaker 3: you know, obviously is is a real thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this person in the early nineteen hundreds was
Speaker 1: known to you know, spontaneously address people or spontaneously share
Speaker 1: verbally these inspirations or these messages they received. At the time,
Speaker 1: that was seen as a legitimate source of information. But
Speaker 1: it leads us to a modern controversy, doesn't it, Because
Speaker 1: those what this means is no matter how you slice it,
Speaker 1: those various claims about ancient flying machines in Indian literature,
Speaker 1: whether they're craft mentioned in actual text from antiquity, or
Speaker 1: whether they're more modern hoaxes, all of this leads to
Speaker 1: an enormous controversy. In twenty fifteen, during the one hundred
Speaker 1: and second Indian Science Congress in Mumbai. The Indian Science
Speaker 1: Congress is like another another scientific conference, right, you've heard
Speaker 1: of these before. Academics, researchers, scientists. They get together and
Speaker 1: they present papers, right, and they have q and a's,
Speaker 1: and they discuss and review one another's ideas. And the
Speaker 1: goal of this is to spread the awareness of the
Speaker 1: latest science with the hope that maybe two different fields
Speaker 1: of research will be able to lend some sort of
Speaker 1: insight to one another.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful idea.
Speaker 1: Things didn't go the way the congress planners wanted them
Speaker 1: to go in twenty fifteen because somebody brought up this
Speaker 1: brought up this shastra and argued that ancient ancient aircraft
Speaker 1: using exotic power sources like a mercury moor were real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the organizers of this conference allowed a non
Speaker 3: Jay Bodas and his co presenter, a person by the
Speaker 3: name of Amaya Jadhav, to submit and present a paper
Speaker 3: that claimed that aircraft more advanced than the world has
Speaker 3: ever known existed in ancient India, and in various interviews,
Speaker 3: these researchers claimed that the craft were massive and could
Speaker 3: fly to other planets, apparently also again kind of defying
Speaker 3: what we know about physics of aircraft, fly backwards, left, right, up, down, out,
Speaker 3: maneuvering modern airplanes. I mean, these are things that we
Speaker 3: have yet to achieve. So in December of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: ram Prasad grand Hiraman, who was a scientist at NASA's
Speaker 3: Aims Research Center, created a petition that would prevent the
Speaker 3: paper from being presented at this conference. So by December
Speaker 3: thirty first, two hundred and twenty scientists and academics had
Speaker 3: signed this petition. Grand Chereman criticized the paper as being
Speaker 3: pseudoscience and said the mythology should not be mixed with science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because again this is this is a congress that
Speaker 1: is meant to advance scientific understanding, and part of the
Speaker 1: review process is to evaluate the merits of these claims.
Speaker 1: Other experts dunked on the proposals in this paper and
Speaker 1: this Shastra text left and right. One of my favorites
Speaker 1: is an author named JB. Hare who was working for
Speaker 1: the Sacred Text Archive. He had some especially snarky stuff
Speaker 1: to say about the aerodynamics of the craft described in
Speaker 1: the Vermonica Shastra. He said, quote, they are absurdly non aerodynamic,
Speaker 1: brutalist wedding cakes with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers,
Speaker 1: which is like hot fire level, hot fire level insult
Speaker 1: in academia.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Well again, like it depends on the propulsion system, guys, issue,
Speaker 4: they've got some kind of special mercury unknown technology propulsion system.
Speaker 4: If it's true, Like there's stuff in there that may
Speaker 4: be some kind of electromagnetic field that functions outside of
Speaker 4: our understanding of modern physics, like it wouldn't matter how
Speaker 4: it was shaped, if it could slip through matter in
Speaker 4: a different kind of way because it's not being affected
Speaker 4: by gravity or whatever. But which is again way out
Speaker 4: there in conceptual and not currently possible or even conceivable.
Speaker 4: But it wouldn't matter if it looked like a brutalist
Speaker 4: wedding cake with spiky things on the side. You know,
Speaker 4: you could just be a bubble essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a fair point because also we would add
Speaker 1: to this, it depends on the medium in which this
Speaker 1: kind of craft would be uh would be moving, right,
Speaker 1: So if it's in space, it's functioning in a very
Speaker 1: different environment. So maybe maybe there's something to that along
Speaker 1: with the propulsion mechanism. I mean, those are those are
Speaker 1: fair points.
Speaker 4: Because some of them look like like return capsules essentially.
Speaker 4: For sure, some of NASA's technology that was being developed
Speaker 4: in the fifties and sixties, it looks very similar to that,
Speaker 4: just kind of turned upwards, so the point is up
Speaker 4: rather than you know, if it was well, no, because
Speaker 4: it was returning. If they're returning, the pointy side is
Speaker 4: still pointed up anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So when we put the pieces together with all this
Speaker 1: in mind, it looks currently as if the story of
Speaker 1: ancient mercury powered flying machines is either an honest mistake
Speaker 1: in the reading of text or a dishonest, purposeful attempt
Speaker 1: to shoehorn ancient mythology into a modern cultural framework. So like,
Speaker 1: there are these questions, right, these important questions. If, for example,
Speaker 1: there were real ancient flying machines, then where were they?
Speaker 1: Where are they? How come no other culture has written
Speaker 1: about them?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 3: This makes me think of as in a science purely
Speaker 3: sci fi context, what was the Alien prequel Prometheus, Yes,
Speaker 3: it kind of It kind of makes me think of
Speaker 3: that kind of like it's it's ancient technology created by
Speaker 3: these like giants that were essentially.
Speaker 2: Gods, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know there was problems with that movie,
Speaker 3: but I like the base level lore of it and
Speaker 3: the way those creatures looked and the way their tech worked,
Speaker 3: And what was that Like the pilot guy that was like,
Speaker 3: you know, designed by hr Geeker that you saw in
Speaker 3: the original Alien movie that kind of made an appearance
Speaker 3: in Prometheus. This very much makes me think of that
Speaker 3: kind of I wonder if that was inspired by this stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean I'm almost certain that it was in some way, right,
Speaker 4: because in that movie and Prometheus, it's it's planet seeding, right,
Speaker 4: It's it's like the seeds of life are planted by
Speaker 4: these by this pilot and by you know, maybe the
Speaker 4: species are correct.
Speaker 3: Or were they They were called something the gray weird
Speaker 3: blue gray guys.
Speaker 2: It's been a.
Speaker 1: While, yeah, they were called the uh engineers the humans.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and you can imagine and you know, in God,
Speaker 4: I guess when when the actual battles were occurring in
Speaker 4: some of these things. You can imagine that seeing technology
Speaker 4: that is so far beyond your understanding would just it
Speaker 4: would be a mind blowing thing. Reminds me of I
Speaker 4: think the filth, Yeah, the filth by Grant Morrison, when
Speaker 4: when people encounter technology that is so strange and outside
Speaker 4: of their realm of understanding, they just the the human
Speaker 4: mind just chooses to not remember it, or it's as
Speaker 4: though it didn't exist, or you can't see it because
Speaker 4: because it's just so far beyond your your capabilities of observation,
Speaker 4: Like you can imagine that stuff, right. That's why Ancient
Speaker 4: Aliens is such a successful show, I think, because part
Speaker 4: of it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I can, I can. I can go with
Speaker 1: you there, because if we imagine, if we imagine those
Speaker 1: events from the perspective of people who lived during that
Speaker 1: time period, then you can easily imagine how weird some
Speaker 1: stuff may have looked. Like if you're from a culture
Speaker 1: that's never seen an elephant, for instance, and then you
Speaker 1: get into a scrap and the other side comes rolling
Speaker 1: up on you riding elephants, You're gonna freak out. That's like,
Speaker 1: that's insane, you know, and that's inspired so many like
Speaker 1: sword and Sorcery fantasy fight scenes. Is the idea of
Speaker 1: somebody encountering something like an elephant for the first time.
Speaker 4: So or imagine just an explosion from a simple explosive
Speaker 4: device for the first time when you're in a battle, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, just what that would do to your mind?
Speaker 1: People on horses, that's crazy too, you know. Back in
Speaker 1: the days, that was very surprising in an unpleasant way
Speaker 1: for many people. And sadly that surprise probably didn't last
Speaker 1: long because neither did they.
Speaker 4: Guys, we didn't even talk about the nuclear nuclear bomb,
Speaker 4: nuclear war. Serious.
Speaker 2: I know, saving it.
Speaker 1: I think it's its own thing. Because to talk about that,
Speaker 1: we also have to talk about ancient traces of radiation,
Speaker 1: like the first nuclear reactor, which is real and.
Speaker 2: Not man made.
Speaker 1: There's a nuclear reactor that's super ancient. But I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: ancient nuclear war is an episode for another day. I
Speaker 1: know it sounds like we have clearly dismissed the ideas
Speaker 1: of ancient flying machines, but there are some important considerations here,
Speaker 1: some important caveats. First, what we what we've really done,
Speaker 1: is made a pretty good case that the text people
Speaker 1: are basing a lot of these claims on is not
Speaker 1: near as old as it is sometimes assumed to be.
Speaker 1: But second, we have to remember humanity is very, very
Speaker 1: very good at losing things, so good at losing stuff.
Speaker 1: We have lost technology before, and it's usually rediscovered at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: There are examples like Greek fire, Damascus steel, And then
Speaker 1: there are things that looked really advanced for their time period,
Speaker 1: like the anti Cathera mechanism. You guys remember that one,
Speaker 1: of course?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, So like where does.
Speaker 4: That turn out?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's some really cool newer concepts about the
Speaker 4: origins of that that we could definitely, Yeah, we should
Speaker 4: definitely bring that back up. So I know where we
Speaker 4: need to get out of here. I want to bring
Speaker 4: up one other thing when it comes to vimanas for
Speaker 4: this episode. Weirdly enough, several of us independently found an
Speaker 4: article out of Medium that I've been I think we
Speaker 4: have to bring.
Speaker 1: Up Okay, all right, yeah, so so Medium if anybody
Speaker 1: doesn't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Medium dot com is.
Speaker 1: A website, a platform where people can write and post
Speaker 1: their own material.
Speaker 2: Right, So I did put this in the notes, and
Speaker 2: I think we all we all found it.
Speaker 1: We were looking for the most out there story, right Gosh, Matt,
Speaker 1: you brought it up all the honors with the headline.
Speaker 4: We'll start it with the headline.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the headline.
Speaker 4: A five thousand year old ancient Indian viamana found in
Speaker 4: Afghanistan cave. Eight American soldiers stuck in time well.
Speaker 2: Time well is all.
Speaker 4: Caps disappeared in attempt to remove it. So the soldiers
Speaker 4: disappeared in a time well when they were trying to
Speaker 4: remove the vimana. Now, this is written by Sathish Ramyan,
Speaker 4: and if you can read it, I would just recommend
Speaker 4: you go to Medium and read the story. There's nothing
Speaker 4: really sighted in it when it comes to what is
Speaker 4: happening or the facts, But it has some incredible things said. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: it has to do with exactly what the title says,
Speaker 4: just kind of expanded a little bit, and it includes
Speaker 4: Barack Obama and I think Nicholas Sarkozy and Angola Merkle
Speaker 4: all going to Afghanistan in twenty twelve for a weird thing,
Speaker 4: which would be which in this case, the weird thing
Speaker 4: is that there's a Vimana stuck in a time well
Speaker 4: with a bunch of other American soldiers.
Speaker 2: What's a time well? Is that like a wormhole or
Speaker 2: a portal?
Speaker 4: It explains the time well. It appears to be an
Speaker 4: electromagnetic radiation gravity field, first postulated by Albert Einstein as
Speaker 4: the unified field theory and long rumored to be behind
Speaker 4: the infamous American World War Two experiment in teleportation called
Speaker 4: the Philadelphia Experiment. Heard of it, Heard of it? So yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, cool stuff, cool story again, but there's just
Speaker 4: no I where's it coming from? Who's who was actually
Speaker 4: stating some of this stuff there? There are references cited
Speaker 4: at the bottom down here, but there's nothing to actually
Speaker 4: in any way to prove that this even kind of happened.
Speaker 2: Well, it could have been covered up.
Speaker 4: It could have been But dude, stheash, how did you
Speaker 4: find out about it? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 1: So I guess though, I am so into stories like this,
Speaker 1: and it would be amazing if these were true. It
Speaker 1: would be amazing if this kind of technology was discovered
Speaker 1: and if people could prove that it existed.
Speaker 2: But at this point we have two big takeaways.
Speaker 1: First, we know again that document that is cited so
Speaker 1: often as ancient research is not in fact ancient.
Speaker 2: It's not saying it's untrue.
Speaker 1: It's just saying we know the provenance of it, and
Speaker 1: it likely occurred in the early nineteen hundreds and was
Speaker 1: later revealed in the nineteen fifties to the public. The
Speaker 1: second thing we know, however, is that technology does get lost.
Speaker 1: The thing is a lot of it ends up being
Speaker 1: rediscovered or just as often reinvented by someone else later
Speaker 1: on down the line. So this possibility, that very real
Speaker 1: possibility of lost technology. I would argue that is the
Speaker 1: core of what makes the ancient flying machines lore so
Speaker 1: compelling and so fascinating. While mercury powered ancient flying machines
Speaker 1: probably never existed, based on what we know at this point,
Speaker 1: it's enormously difficult to say that we somehow know all
Speaker 1: the technology, techniques and research of ancient peoples and civilizations.
Speaker 1: Like there are stone works that are still around today
Speaker 1: and Peru and other parts of the world where people
Speaker 1: we have theories about how they were able to build
Speaker 1: these seamlessly constructed stone walls with no mortar or anything
Speaker 1: like that that lasted centuries and centuries and centuries. Well,
Speaker 1: we're not sure because people back then we're just as
Speaker 1: intelligent as people now, and they figured stuff out just
Speaker 1: like us. So I'm going to say, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, guys. I am super open to getting some
Speaker 1: hard proof about an ancient flying machine.
Speaker 2: That would be so cool.
Speaker 4: Please please send send us anything if you've got it.
Speaker 4: If you actually have something, we want to read it.
Speaker 1: And with this our episode draws to a close. We
Speaker 1: passed the We passed the Mercury Vortex torch to you, folks.
Speaker 1: What do you think Is there any real lost technology
Speaker 1: out there left waiting to be rediscovered? And if so,
Speaker 1: what do you think it is?
Speaker 2: Where? Where could it be found? Right?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Maybe? I don't know.
Speaker 1: This goes so many directions, you know, like is there
Speaker 1: is there a city or community that was buried beneath
Speaker 1: the waves that is home to like a ton of
Speaker 1: anti Cathera mechanisms or something like that.
Speaker 2: It's again cool stories, dude.
Speaker 4: Have you guys heard have you guys heard of the
Speaker 4: I think it's every twenty six second the earth like
Speaker 4: blips essentially sends out a small seismic had those tiny
Speaker 4: seismic event every twenty six seconds. And it's been happening
Speaker 4: for decades and decades and decades or is discovered at
Speaker 4: least several decades ago, and it continues and it's it's
Speaker 4: allegedly at least according to some research that's occurred in
Speaker 4: the two thousands, maybe the twenty tens, where it's off
Speaker 4: the coast of it's like the kind of the mid
Speaker 4: west coast of the continent of Africa. Allegedly it's coming from.
Speaker 2: There, Guinea specifically, right, so I think it's off.
Speaker 4: The coast of Guinea. Yeah, kay, I can't recall right
Speaker 4: now the place, but allegedly the Earth is just like
Speaker 4: doing this pulse and seismologists geologists are unsure what it is.
Speaker 4: The best theories that its waves crashing against this one
Speaker 4: particular place. But I don't think as waves, y'all.
Speaker 1: Every twenty six seconds, some ancient civilization left a very
Speaker 1: weird snooze button.
Speaker 2: They're just not They're just not hitting the button.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating because that's one of those things, you know,
Speaker 1: I think when you read read about this. It's also
Speaker 1: been called a micro sizsm right, like a very small
Speaker 1: seismic event that is probably undetectable by humans without technology.
Speaker 2: But whenever you read about this thing, the.
Speaker 1: Main I would say, the weirdest part is that no
Speaker 1: one is sure exactly why it's happening, right, We don't know, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So let us know what you think. Why is the
Speaker 1: earth pulsing every twenty six seconds? Are there ancient pieces
Speaker 1: of technology? If not flying machines? Are there ancient pieces
Speaker 1: of lost technology that might be rediscovered? We want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We try to make ourselves easy to
Speaker 1: find online.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: You can find this in the usual social media locations
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Speaker 3: real time conversations with your fellow conspiracy realists. Yes, we
Speaker 3: also have a phone number you can reach us one
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Speaker 3: will get a voicemail and you can leave a message.
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Speaker 3: increase your chances of actually getting on the air. Matt,
Speaker 3: and if I did my first callback the other day,
Speaker 3: oh nice, A lovely gentleman, a music teacher who had
Speaker 3: some real cool ideas about coded messages being sent to
Speaker 3: the Nazis by contemporary composers. Turns out didn't have as
Speaker 3: much sand to it as we would have liked, but
Speaker 3: we had a nice conversation and he sent me some
Speaker 3: cool follow up articles. So really, yeah, you will potentially
Speaker 3: maybe not even get a callback from me or Ben
Speaker 3: who knows.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true. We always love to hear from you,
Speaker 1: And as Matt said, if there is a story that
Speaker 1: you need to tell that is longer than three minutes,
Speaker 1: please please please don't feel like you have to edit yourself.
Speaker 1: Squeezing a ten minute story into three minutes worth of
Speaker 1: time is, you know, sometimes a dubious endeavor. So if
Speaker 1: you have something else to tell us, you don't like
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Speaker 1: Yanna is one other way you can always contact us.
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