WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Sunken Lands, Part 1 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:09.200 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.440 name is Joe McCormick. Today is Saturday, so we're reaching 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:14.640 into the vault for an older episode of the show. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.680 This one originally published November twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.560 and it's part one of our series called The Sunken Lands. 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:29.160 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:31.000 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.279 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:39.919 is Robert. 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.120 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And in today's episode, 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:45.600 we're going to be kicking off a series that we're 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:49.400 calling The Sunken Lands that is about the idea of 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:54.880 lands submerged under waters. Now, not too long ago, we 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.880 did a series of episodes on the tendency. People have 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:04.720 to quite readily interpret any weird looking, low resolution photograph 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:09.039 as evidence of our highly speculative theory of choice, whatever 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.680 you like. So here's a picture of a shape that 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:15.600 maybe doesn't look organic in origin, so it is evidence 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.720 of an alien spacecraft that crash landed on our planet 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.560 five thousand years ago. But then, as we discussed in 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:23.959 that series, often if you're able to get a higher 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:27.240 resolution image of the same object, or just get more 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:32.640 contextual information. Oh wait, it's actually a rock. But one 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:39.480 very popular genre of imagery for this exercise is underwater photography. 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:41.720 It happens with, you know, images of things in the 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:46.119 sky as well or things just obscured in various contexts, 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:51.960 But underwater photography is especially juicy here, I think because 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:57.680 the conditions of underwater photography naturally lend themselves to the 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:03.800 kind of tantalized state of low information that sets our 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.200 imagination running wild. Unlets you fill in the gaps with 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:11.160 whatever you were excited about. And when the weird looking 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:15.280 thing is underwater, the highly speculative theory people used to 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:18.160 explain it might still be aliens, as we discussed in 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:23.480 the example of one underwater object, probably a glacial erratic 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:27.239 boulder that people did in some cases interpret as a 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:31.480 crashed alien spacecraft. But another common explanation for weird looking 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:36.920 things underwater is the sunken civilization, most often Atlantis, but 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.440 there are other candidates as well, and the idea of 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:45.200 a lost civilization vanished under the sea is so captivating 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.840 to people it is hard to resist the urge to 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.560 see an underwater rock with sharp corners and say that's 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:54.880 not a rock, that's a building. This is one of 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:57.919 their ancient skyscrapers, and now it's hidden under the waves. 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.280 Yeah, it's basically the same energy, but in a different 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:07.000 temporal direction. Instead of looking to aliens from beyond, you're 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:11.640 looking for some sort of advance to civilization from the 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.960 past that may or may not match up with realistic 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:16.040 expectations of. 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.800 The past right now. Of course, in some limited cases, 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:24.120 there are examples of human artifacts or human built edifices 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:26.919 that can be found underneath the water. Now we'll probably 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.760 talk about some of those examples, but in most cases 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:33.200 we can say with pretty high confidence that the things 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:35.480 people are looking at in these images are not even 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.880 intelligently designed artifacts. It's usually like a rock or some 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:43.760 kind of undersea creature, something like that. And for various 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.200 reasons that we might get into, even if what you 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.840 find under the water was designed by humans, there are 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.520 strong reasons for doubting anybody who says, aha, we have 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:55.000 discovered Atlantis. 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:55.640 Rob. 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:57.040 I don't know if you want to talk about this 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.440 now or later, but there are reasons for thinking Plato's 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:04.120 allegory of Atlantis was maybe not even meant to refer 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.240 to an actually existing place, or if there, or if 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:10.800 it was, there's no reason to think that it's anything 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:12.960 more than a legend, that it's like a thing we 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:14.880 should actually be looking for on Earth. 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.159 Yeah, let's let's get back to Atlantis in just a second. 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.880 That we could easily devote an entire podcaster more to 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.480 just chasing the idea of Atlantis around, but we'll try 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:26.360 and keep it contained. 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.120 But while all of that is true, while Atlantis hunting 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.360 is probably a misguided exercise, it's also true that there 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:39.080 actually are some places on planet Earth where what is 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:44.920 now the seafloor was relatively recently land land that could 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.960 have been or in some cases was occupied by humans. 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:51.000 And so that's what we want to talk about in 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.800 this series, places on Earth that are now under the 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:56.600 waves but were once part of the world above. 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.479 And while we're mostly I guess talking like that, we 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:01.360 talk about the waves, we think about it land as 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.680 we think about the ocean. But we may also touch 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:08.400 on some examples that have been lost underneath rivers or lakes, 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:15.280 sometimes with man made lakes in play. But perhaps we'll 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:16.800 come back to that in another episode. 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:19.839 Oh that's a good variation. Yes, Now, one thing to 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.360 be clear about is that part of what makes these 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:27.039 sunken lands interesting is merely a question of time. Because 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:32.279 of course Earth is geologically active. It has a dynamic surface, 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.480 and over millions of years, the crust of the Earth 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.040 undergoes changes. There's continental drift, there are all kinds of 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:40.120 changes that happen to the crust of the earth. Areas 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.880 that were formerly exposed are buried. Areas that were formerly 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.719 buried are exposed. Areas that used to be ocean become land, 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:50.520 Areas that used to be land become ocean. So we 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:53.840 know that happens on a geological time scale. What we're 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.359 talking about here are lands that have become covered in 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.880 water relatively recently, maybe on the order of thousands of 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:02.200 years or even less. Yeah. 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.719 Yeah, So we have these basic geologic realities to keep 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:10.400 in mind, but then we see them reflected in different 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.760 ways in our folklore, our mythology, our religion. Like even 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.680 if you weren't if you were, if you somehow avoided 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:23.640 any scientific inquiry, in any scientific understanding about these changes, 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.560 you would perhaps be exposed then to religious ideas about 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:31.320 these changes. The various religious and mythological ideas that go 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:36.640 way back in multiple different faiths, involving global or regional 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:40.880 flooding that is attributed to divine causation in many cases. 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.440 So given all of this, though again it should come 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.640 as no shock that just the mere idea of sunken islands, 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:52.640 lost islands, phantom islands, lost continents, et cetera, this has 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.320 long stirred the human imagination, and a lot has been 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:59.120 written on this. But interestingly enough, one of the more 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:01.479 like well regarded to books on this, now it's a 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.400 slightly older book, came out, I believe, nineteen fifty four, 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.160 so it doesn't reflect, you know, decades upon decades of 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:14.320 additional contemplation and discovery. But L. Sprague de Camp, who 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.040 of nineteen oh seven through two thousand wrote a book 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.400 titled Lost Continents The Atlantis Theme in History, science, and Literature. Now, 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.520 De Camp is an interesting fellow because he was also 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.960 an influential sci fi author, whose works include nineteen thirty 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:34.280 nine's Less Darkness Fall. He was also a posthumous collaborator 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.800 with Conan creator Robert E. Howard, so he actually contributed 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.000 quite a bit to the literary world of Conan the Barbarian, 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.240 And interestingly enough, he served as an advisor on both 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.920 nineteen eighties Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer movies, 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:51.800 as well as nineteen ninety seven's Cole of a Conqueror, 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:55.480 which does not have Arnold in it, but is an 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:57.080 adaptation of a Conan novel. 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.560 Idea is okay, so that's the one that's got Kevin. 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:04.920 Sorbo and right right, Kevin Sorbo. But in these hercules, yeah, 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.800 so they I think it was based on a Conan novel, 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.760 but then they just changed his name to Cull the Conqueror, 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.640 who's another character in Robert Y Howard's world. But I'm 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.840 not super familiar with this movie or this other character. 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:20.840 I've never seen that one. But my mind is aroused 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.760 at the thoughts of scripts that Schwarzenegger said no to. 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.400 Now, it is worth noting that Roberty Howard was one 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.240 of numerous Pulp era authors to make use of lost 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.920 and sunken islands, and a lot of this, you know, 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:36.240 does have to do as sort of the timeline of 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.400 interest in these fantastic ideas. I'll touch on a few 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:42.040 other examples from the pulp era in just a minute, 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.480 but in this book, de Camp discusses it at length, 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:54.320 this idea of human fascination, literary, pseudohistorical, pseudo geogological, various 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.520 interests in this idea of lost lands, lost continents, etc. 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:00.920 And he points out that a lot of it comes 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.760 back to this idea of a lost land that is 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:09.240 often situated as some sort of utopia. It's a utopian ideal, 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:12.240 or where it's an eden. It is a place where 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:15.680 where we got it right, or things were right before 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.760 the fall. You know, this idea that Okay, things are 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:21.400 not great, but there must have been a point in 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:25.360 time where things were in balance. And of course, and 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:28.360 in summoning this idea, there is at least implied the 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.000 idea that we might be able to return to it, 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.680 either by our own efforts or by some sort of 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:34.720 divine intervention. 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.400 Yeah, I think that's interesting and that that's correct. A 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.480 lot of these stories about sunken lands and the civilizations 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.480 that inhabited them, I guess there are some exceptions, but 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:47.600 they don't usually seem to be well, this is just 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:51.640 another place like many others, you know, that was just 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.480 happened to be low lying and was swallowed by the waves, 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.120 or there was some kind of weather event. It almost 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.920 always is idealized in some way. It's a place that 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.960 is especially good or especially advanced, or especially bad in 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:04.480 some way. 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.080 Yeah, and yet in some manner or another, this place 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:11.400 ties it all together, Which comes back to so many 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:15.080 of these these threads that we've discussed in conspiracy thinking 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:19.240 and and so forth, the idea that like, Okay, I 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.800 have found something, and if true, and of course I 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:26.880 believe it is true, it will explain all these other mysteries. Yeah, 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:28.559 you know, you drop this in the middle of everything, 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:30.800 and it all makes sense. It's the master key. 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:31.840 Yes. 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:35.240 So I don't really want to do an exhaustive list 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.400 of every mythical and fictional sunken land. I mean, there's 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:40.800 just there's a lot there, and a lot of them 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.000 are also closely connected. I mean just in fantasy alone. 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:48.360 It's like who anybody engaging in some broad world building 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:52.319 is going to have perhaps in Atlantis or at least 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.080 a lost land. I mean, it's just it's too attractive 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.240 a trope to give up on, right, But I thought 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.800 we might hit some notable examples in the three or 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:05.680 four categories you might consider mythology, fiction, pseudoscience. But I 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:07.880 do want to note that some entries will move between 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:12.400 these classifications because once once you introduce an idea and 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.280 other folks will come and and use it may be 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:19.599 drifted into another category. So in mythology, I thought I 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.480 might mention Avalon, of course, the magical island where King 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:27.559 Arthur was taken, taken after sustaining mortal wounds. It's also 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.480 the origin place of his sword EXCaliber, and in general 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.360 just a magical land of Authorian legend, possibly linked in 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:41.679 origin to Fadimorgana or Glastonbury Tor. Note that this isn't 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.720 even the only sunken island in Authorian legend, though there 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:48.920 are there are others. It's just like an irresistible magical idea, 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:53.800 though again one that that may be rooted in strange observations. 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:55.880 Islands that seem to be there but are not that 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:59.880 are you know, fatam Organa, that are due to an 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.320 illusion of one sort or another, or just a mistake 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:07.560 of cartography, of trying to figure out what's out there 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:09.560 and making mistakes. 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:13.760 Both direct perceptual illusions and knowledge illusions give rise to 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:15.960 the idea of islands that used to be there, but 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:17.800 now you can't find them right. 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:20.439 And then, of course in the background, again the geologic 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.280 reality that things do change, and it is perhaps not 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:28.280 beyond the realm of possibility that a lost island could 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.400 truly be lost. It could have been a physical place 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.280 and is no more. Another one is Brazil or High Brazil. 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:39.120 This has generally nothing to do with Brazil, the South 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:43.040 American country. This is an Irish lost isle of myth, 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.680 a phantom island that is covered by myst most of 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.160 the year, but then that mist opens up. Sometimes featured 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.400 on old maps and was sought after by cartographers because 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.040 again you have anytime you have this idea of an 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.520 island that is thought to exist, and then it seems 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.120 like it doesn't exist. I mean, that's a mystery that 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:03.640 has to be explored. Now. It doesn't have to be 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.000 an island, of course, you can also have coastal areas 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:11.640 that are swallowed up. There's a mythical city in the 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.480 traditions of Brittany and France. And I may be pronouncing 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.360 this one wrong. Yes, I believe it's ys. I assume 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:23.520 it's not Wise, but anyway, allegedly consumed by the ocean, 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.600 and it's featured into a number of creative works, especially 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.760 in French traditions. But of course the whole other realm 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:32.920 is fiction, of course, and once something has been introduced 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.079 in myth, given enough time, it may enter into fiction. 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:40.600 And this leads us to Atlantis, as we've already discussed. Yeah, 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.920 the lost continent of Atlantis, so called, has a prominent 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:48.840 place in pseudo science and conspiracy thinking and fiction. Among 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:51.240 the many entries here, I have to point out a 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:53.720 couple of things from nineteen eighty two. One I've brought 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.040 up many times before, but if you have not seen 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:00.200 the commercial for Atari's Atlantis video game from nineteen eighty two, 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.080 to look it up. It's marvelous. I think I saw 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.079 this when I was like four years old, and it 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.240 scared and amazed me. 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.160 Rarely does a thirty second TV commercial have such a 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.160 bone chilling plot twist it does. 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:18.840 They really packed a lot into this one. I have 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.120 no idea if the game was fun at the time 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:25.920 or is well remembered as like a retro experience. But 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.560 as I was revisiting this, because anytime this comes up, 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.880 I have to go rewatch it. And then I discovered, 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.280 weirdly enough that the brothers Hildebrand did a wall calendar 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:38.240 of original art themed around Atlantis the same year, and 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:40.800 I kept thinking, well, these have to be connected. There 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.440 must have been some connective tissue here. If there is, 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:47.640 I couldn't find it. But I love the Brother's Hilda brand. 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:49.440 They did, of course, a lot of great Tolkien work, 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:53.040 and they did Tolkien calendars back in the day. And yeah, 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:55.280 they have this one calendar of Atlantis art with all 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:58.440 sorts of like fantastic adventures going on, some sort of 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:02.360 like demon Lord, a drag and so forth. So many 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.760 people don't realize that their origins are of Atlantis are 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.440 also based in fiction. You go back to around three 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:13.000 fifty five BCE. That's when Greek philosopher Plato discusses the 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:17.680 concept of Atlantis in a pair of dialogues Tomaeus and Critias. 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.600 Atlantis is described as a naval empire that rules the 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.280 western known world, but they ultimately fail when they come 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.000 up against the Athenians. Then they fall out of favor 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.360 with the gods, and their world is consumed by the 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:34.480 Atlantic Ocean. It's described along the lines as being like 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:39.360 the ideal of Plato's Republic. But here's the thing. There's 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.920 no other surviving mention of Atlantis in the ancient Mediterranean world, 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:48.440 aside from commentaries and responses to Plato's work. So, in 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.520 other words, there's no indication that this was a pre 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:56.480 existing idea, that this was something that was considered actual history, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:15:59.880 or even like a pre existing I guess you would 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:00.920 say literary trope. 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.120 Right so, it's not even clear that it was thought 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:05.840 to actually be a place. 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:13.000 Right now, among those various commentators over many years, it 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.760 looks like many took it as med of metaphor and 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:19.200 or as myth, though you do have some folks that 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.880 pop up that end up taking a more literal approach 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:25.640 to it, or so it seems, based again on surviving texts. 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.760 As such, you end up with a legacy of varying interpretations, 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:33.400 which de Camp summarizes is either taking it on as 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:37.880 a fiction, finding actual societies that you can compare to Atlantis, 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:42.040 the investigation of land bridges and islands with Atlantis in mind, 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.440 and also just the wholesale acceptance of the concept as 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.960 historical truth. And of course this approach especially is widely 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.760 regarded as pseudohistory at the very least now. Again, though, 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.240 just because something is introduced in fiction doesn't mean it 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:58.040 stays in fiction like these. That's one of the interesting 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:00.760 things about this, and I guess in general about about 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:04.800 human imagination is once something has has been imagined, it 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.600 doesn't have to stay in that realm of sort of 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:12.440 safe unreal and fiction. It can move into other categories 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.040 of the unreal, the mythological, the uh you know, the 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.200 pseudo scientific, the pseudohistorical, the pseudo archaeological, et cetera. 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.760 I have to wonder if in thousands of years they're 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.600 going to be people being like, uh, you know when 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:30.360 Tolkien talked about the elves going to Vallen or across 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:34.680 the ocean? Uh, was that referring to the island of Cuba? 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:39.000 Do you think, yeah, exactly, And you do end up 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:41.359 with that sort of inquiry. I mean in part of that, 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:43.080 of course, too, is you have someone like Plato who 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.439 has such high standing and sort of the intellectual world 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.639 for centuries and centuries. You know, people are going to 0:17:49.680 --> 0:18:03.080 come back and and reanalyze everything that they wrote. Now, 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:05.720 in terms of fiction, I will just mention in passing 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.800 like a few examples. I love the work of Clark 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.960 Ashton Smith, and a lot of his stories involved lost continents. 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.720 I think he has three different lost continents, well, though 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:17.720 one of them is a continent from the future that 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:19.680 doesn't exist now, So it's sort of kind of again, 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:23.760 kind of the same concept, but put in reverse, taking 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:25.440 into the future and saying in the future there will 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:27.520 be a new continent and these are the sort of 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.800 adventures that will take place there. And of course J R. 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:32.879 Tolkien got in on the action as well. We have 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.680 the lost Kingdom of Middle Earth Numanor. This was corrupted 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.440 by Sauron in his fair form, and then it's destroyed 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.600 in a cataclysm as the kingdom turns against the valor. 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.280 Oh is Newmanor swallowed by waters. I never understood that, 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:49.680 I guess I just thought of it as like an 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:50.760 empire that fell. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:56.200 Yeah, it's like a star shaped island, I believe, according 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:01.359 to the maps and the recent Amazon series, I believe 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:06.280 depicts the fall of Numanor. I'm having trouble remembering offhand. 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.600 I need to revisit it before they put out another season. 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.320 I guess I haven't watched that yet, but I've been 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:13.119 meaning to check it out at some point. 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:19.080 High production values, yeah, now in the pseudoscientific world, and 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:21.120 again there's a lot of overlap with these these sort 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:24.639 of loose categories. You have the island of MoU. This 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.840 is both a place of pseudoscience and fantasy, according to 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.280 de Camp, proposed in the nineteenth century by British American 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:35.960 archaeologist and photographer Augustus Leplogion, who used it to connect 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:41.119 Mayan civilization to ancient Egyptian civilization. Again, this is one 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.960 of those classic examples of like, if this exists, it 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.520 explains everything, and getting into this idea of like, well, look, 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:50.800 we have things in Mayan civilization, we have things in 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:54.200 ancient Egyptian civilization. They remind me of each other. There 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.080 must be some like missing link to connect them. Otherwise 0:19:58.080 --> 0:19:59.280 this doesn't make sense to me. 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:04.119 They both built pyramids sort of, so that couldn't be 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:08.040 explained by them both just figuring out how to build pyramids, right. 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.840 But then on top of this, British occultist James Churchward 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.159 would go on to write about Moo as well, associating 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:19.560 it with Lemuria, which we'll get to in a second 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.359 in works of pseudoscience that argue that it was the 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:24.480 not only was it this kind of like missing link 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:27.960 in terms of understanding global civilizations, but it was the 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.560 location of the Garden of Eden and a cultural connection 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.119 for various ancient civilizations. And then Atlantis also enters the 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:39.119 mix here. Even though its origins I think most serious 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.159 scholars would agree is as a metaphor, is as a 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:45.520 work of fiction. Various individuals have made arguments for the 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.800 discovery of a lost Atlantis or have gone all in 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:53.000 on the idea of Atlantis, And according to the kamp 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:57.680 a great deal of modern Atlantis mania stems from sixteenth 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:01.280 century enthusiasm for the concept, and a lot of this 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:05.960 enthusiasm coincided with excitement for the new world of the Americas. 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.919 So you know, again you have a lot of energy, 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:11.879 like new lands are discovered, and then you have this 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.280 idea of Atlantis, and then people were proposing things like, well, 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.960 are the Americas Atlantis? Well no, but I guess you 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.520 can lean into that interpretation if you so desire. 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:24.520 You know, I was just thinking about the sort of 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:31.119 common strain of thinking that connects conspiracy thinking with with 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:35.560 highly speculative lost civilization thinking, and like why you would 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:40.640 typically find both beliefs in the same brain, Like why 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:43.040 people are drawn to one if they're often if they're 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:46.040 drawn to the other. The idea of a lost civilization 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.320 that was vanished beneath the waves. Is a is a literal, 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:55.600 physical manifestation of the type of hidden knowledge or covered 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:59.959 up knowledge that that you know, guide's conspiracy thinking. Like 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:02.600 if you're a you're a conspiracy thinking person. You think 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:07.280 that there is a there is a mechanism somehow that 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:11.359 explains all these disparate phenomena, but the but the nature 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:14.000 of that mechanism is being covered up. It is hidden 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.040 from you somehow. Usually it's a social mechanism. It's like, 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:19.679 you know, an agreement of people, or it's a you know, 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:23.320 an extraterrestrial mechanism there are aliens doing things or something 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:27.840 like that. The lost civilization under the waves is kind 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:31.879 of like that. It explains history in a similar way, 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:34.720 but it has been literally physically covered up. 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.200 Yeah, and and again it goes back to this idea 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:43.240 of lo fi information to support an idea. Though interestingly enough, 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.639 like coming back to the idea of Mayan and Egyptian civilizations. 0:22:47.040 --> 0:22:51.720 So obviously, like the Great Pyramids are are not lo 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:57.520 fi evidence. Likewise, you know, various megastructures in the Americas 0:22:57.560 --> 0:23:00.960 are not lo fi evidence either. But you're using both 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:05.520 of these as evidence for this third thing that doesn't exist. 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.000 Then they do become kind of low five, because again 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:10.200 there is there is not a thing there to prove 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:14.240 there is not this lost civilization that connects the two. 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.080 You might also though, be coming at them from a 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:21.080 position of low information, in that you don't have a 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:25.639 lot of contextual knowledge about these these civilizations, and thus, 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:28.560 you know, you just see like similarly shaped buildings and 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:32.880 think like has to be a common source between them. Yeah. 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:35.520 Now, now I don't want to make it seem like, 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:38.480