WEBVTT - Lost Continent: Part 2

0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:06.280
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:13.520
<v Speaker 1>Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:15.880
<v Speaker 1>your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.

0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.000
<v Speaker 1>And this is the second part of a two part

0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:22.720
<v Speaker 1>series titled Lost Continent, where we are discussing the idea

0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:28.880
<v Speaker 1>of lost continents, sunken continents, sunken islands, lost civilizations. Um,

0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.920
<v Speaker 1>why this idea is so intoxicating for us The actual

0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:35.839
<v Speaker 1>science at work here as well as the pseudoscience and

0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.520
<v Speaker 1>the cult as the occultless nonsense you consider as well. Yeah,

0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:41.920
<v Speaker 1>and so let's get in a little bit of column

0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.800
<v Speaker 1>and calm be there with our next topic here, which

0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:53.080
<v Speaker 1>is Lamia. Yes, the Lemur king's rule the lands. You know,

0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.720
<v Speaker 1>if you if we hadn't researched it, and you just

0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:58.520
<v Speaker 1>mentioned Lamaria and I had no background on it whatsoever,

0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:00.320
<v Speaker 1>I don't think I would have thought of Lemurs. I

0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.360
<v Speaker 1>would have it instantly. It sounds hellenistic somehow, it sounds

0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.160
<v Speaker 1>it sounds exotic and magical. And I'm thinking that about

0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.399
<v Speaker 1>this this rich world, you know, like something out of

0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.280
<v Speaker 1>a you know, an early twentieth century pulp story where

0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.240
<v Speaker 1>there's you know, some sort of fantastic kingdom and and

0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.160
<v Speaker 1>maybe lemurs, but I'm I'm not picturing them as the

0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.600
<v Speaker 1>ruling class. Yeah, I just see them popping up around

0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.720
<v Speaker 1>the landscape with crowns on their heads. So the sad

0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:30.760
<v Speaker 1>thing here is that there are no lemur kings, no,

0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:33.319
<v Speaker 1>because you know, they don't lemurs don't need kings. They

0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.120
<v Speaker 1>have it pretty well situated there on that a gascar

0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.759
<v Speaker 1>where for the outside of the fassa, And of course

0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:41.560
<v Speaker 1>humans they don't really have much in the way of

0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.880
<v Speaker 1>natural adversaries, and they've they've they've had that, they've they've

0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.520
<v Speaker 1>experienced sort of a uh an evolutionary shangri law there.

0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:51.840
<v Speaker 1>But in eighteen seventy five, if you were trying to

0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:55.520
<v Speaker 1>figure out where these lemurs came from, you might come

0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:59.480
<v Speaker 1>up with a wacky theory, wacky hypothesis. Rather. Yeah, indeed,

0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:01.640
<v Speaker 1>you might look around at the some of the fossil

0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.600
<v Speaker 1>evidence and you see some and also just sort of

0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.760
<v Speaker 1>evolutionary evidence of similar forms in Africa, some maybe some

0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:10.480
<v Speaker 1>similar forms in India. And that leads us to Philip

0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.640
<v Speaker 1>Lute Lee slater Um. So slater is is again he's

0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.360
<v Speaker 1>tackling the same issue what's up with the lemurs? What's up?

0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.000
<v Speaker 1>What's up with the I I? What's up with some

0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:22.920
<v Speaker 1>of these other forms that are similar, such as the

0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:27.200
<v Speaker 1>lorist of Asia UH and the and the and other

0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:30.760
<v Speaker 1>forms found in say, Indonesia UH. And he ultimately observed

0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.440
<v Speaker 1>that quote, while thirty different species of lemurs are found

0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.280
<v Speaker 1>in Madagascar alone, all of Africa contains some eleven or twelve,

0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:40.280
<v Speaker 1>while the Indian region has only three. And again he's

0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.200
<v Speaker 1>drawing in some forms here there are not actually lemurs

0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.320
<v Speaker 1>in the modern sense of the world, but he's saying

0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.359
<v Speaker 1>these are similar forms. What's going on here? So eighteen

0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.040
<v Speaker 1>sixty four he pins an essay titled the Mammals of

0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:55.560
<v Speaker 1>Madagascar UH. Madagascar, of course, is pointed out as the

0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:59.240
<v Speaker 1>principal homeland of lemurs uh and UH. And he's saying

0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:01.640
<v Speaker 1>that this is to spread out all over Asian Africa

0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.160
<v Speaker 1>by a land bridge connecting uh these continents. So he's

0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.639
<v Speaker 1>speculating that this this connection might even have extended to America.

0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.040
<v Speaker 1>And we would have had this supposed land bridge slash continent,

0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:18.080
<v Speaker 1>and we would call this Maria. Yeah, and you also

0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.000
<v Speaker 1>have an a son. Five scientists Hackle and Blandford jumping

0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:23.840
<v Speaker 1>on this bandwagon, saying, yeah, there was a land bridge

0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.040
<v Speaker 1>and it connected this and then therefore that is why

0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.679
<v Speaker 1>they're all these lemurs or lemur like creatures populating the earth. Yeah,

0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:34.800
<v Speaker 1>and of course land bridges have existed. Uh, that's that's

0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:37.440
<v Speaker 1>that's not crazy theory in and in and of itself.

0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.040
<v Speaker 1>But we're talking about a rather sizeable land bridge here.

0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:45.120
<v Speaker 1>We're talking about a lost continent that would have us,

0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:49.320
<v Speaker 1>that would have bridged our modern continents together, Gone One,

0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.440
<v Speaker 1>a land which was supposed to have reached three quarters

0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:54.720
<v Speaker 1>of the way around the southern hemisphere with a gap

0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.120
<v Speaker 1>in the Pacific. And scientifically, these continents have little to

0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:03.320
<v Speaker 1>do with Atlantism, and even Gone want Aline is considered speculative,

0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.360
<v Speaker 1>although it's still widely accepted. So some of this Lameria

0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.680
<v Speaker 1>is connected to Atlantis as well in the idea of

0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:16.800
<v Speaker 1>the sort of genesis of how things came into being. Yeah,

0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:18.880
<v Speaker 1>and we see this sort of trend again and again

0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:23.600
<v Speaker 1>introduced the idea of a mysterious island, either as allegory

0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:29.040
<v Speaker 1>or near hypothesis, and other individuals are going to grasp

0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.440
<v Speaker 1>onto it. They're going to lift that idea up first, uh,

0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.000
<v Speaker 1>first with the polls of of of science, than with pseudoscience,

0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:42.880
<v Speaker 1>and eventually lofted high above us on the air of occultism, fiction, fantasy, dreaming,

0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.320
<v Speaker 1>and uh and at times insanity. Well, and but it's

0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:48.800
<v Speaker 1>just like the the idea of the Greek ideal of

0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:53.520
<v Speaker 1>symmetry had an interesting idea behind it, like there's got

0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:55.400
<v Speaker 1>to be another land mass over there to balance this out,

0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:59.400
<v Speaker 1>because there was an understanding of mass in this example,

0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:04.600
<v Speaker 1>there's want of an understanding that land masses have changed

0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:10.640
<v Speaker 1>over the years, right over deep time really, and there's

0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.200
<v Speaker 1>an understanding that animals could spread via that way, and

0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.960
<v Speaker 1>but there's not really an understanding of a speciation. So

0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:21.839
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of again, it's sort of like, Wow, they trying,

0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.279
<v Speaker 1>they're trying to tell the story of how this came

0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.479
<v Speaker 1>to be, and this is an explanation that makes sense

0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.000
<v Speaker 1>to them at that time with the information that they had. Now,

0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.080
<v Speaker 1>the problem with that is that you have the occult

0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.160
<v Speaker 1>is hanging out right, and you have a little bit

0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:36.680
<v Speaker 1>of information going on that's being extrapolated in a way

0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:40.560
<v Speaker 1>that is not right. And what happens is that Lameria

0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:46.159
<v Speaker 1>theory is picked up by Hellonia p. Blavotsky. She is

0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.839
<v Speaker 1>at that time in an influential occultist, and that's incorporated

0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.320
<v Speaker 1>into her U gaudy cosmos. That's how it's explained from

0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.720
<v Speaker 1>Natural History magazine. And it's also woven into Atlantis. As

0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.080
<v Speaker 1>I had said, and according to her works and those

0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:06.559
<v Speaker 1>of her disciples, the Lamians were the third root race,

0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:12.280
<v Speaker 1>gigantic ape like men, hermaphroditic and ouvi paris, with some

0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.320
<v Speaker 1>with something like four arms and a third eye in

0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.080
<v Speaker 1>the back of their heads. They interbred with animals, the

0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.200
<v Speaker 1>offspring being the ancestors of the apes. Their discovery of sex,

0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:27.160
<v Speaker 1>of which Madame Blovotsky took a poor view, caused their downfall.

0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.640
<v Speaker 1>Who Yeah, and they were succeeded by the Atlanteans, the

0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.719
<v Speaker 1>fourth root race and the ancestors of the modern mongoloids.

0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.120
<v Speaker 1>According to her, and both the third and fourth races

0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:42.560
<v Speaker 1>were full of cosmic consciousness. I love the idea that

0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:44.479
<v Speaker 1>even back in the day, this is the idea of

0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:48.839
<v Speaker 1>cosmic consciousness is being explored. That is phenomenal. I was

0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:55.160
<v Speaker 1>not up on this particular theory. Yeah, I know. When

0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:56.600
<v Speaker 1>I read that the theory, I was like, yeah, it's

0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:58.839
<v Speaker 1>not really a theory that I love the idea of

0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.320
<v Speaker 1>forearmed to maphrodic apes with a third eye in the

0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:04.920
<v Speaker 1>back of their head. It's wonderful whose downfall was sex,

0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.960
<v Speaker 1>which is just such a scientific line of reasoning. Right, Well, yeah,

0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:09.880
<v Speaker 1>I mean, well, maybe that's why they had the third eye, right,

0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:11.880
<v Speaker 1>and when they were so intosex, because they could do

0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.239
<v Speaker 1>it as much as they wanted and they could always

0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.120
<v Speaker 1>see behind them if someone else is walking into the room.

0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:21.320
<v Speaker 1>All right, So um, moving on from Limeria. Now that

0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:26.400
<v Speaker 1>we've again fully filled up the bathtub with occultist nonsense

0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:30.280
<v Speaker 1>on that count, then uh, let's look to the very

0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.160
<v Speaker 1>real world of lost continents. Uh. And indeed, if you

0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:36.120
<v Speaker 1>want to find a lost continent, you can't do any

0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.960
<v Speaker 1>better than to look back in time to the loss

0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:43.240
<v Speaker 1>super continent of Pangaea. I mean, in a sense still

0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.040
<v Speaker 1>with us, but it no longer exists in this form.

0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:49.600
<v Speaker 1>Now it's generally forgotten that Pangaea is just the latest

0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:52.600
<v Speaker 1>in a long line of about I don't know, something

0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:54.920
<v Speaker 1>like it does in super continents, and we're going to

0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:56.840
<v Speaker 1>see a lot more in the next two hundred and

0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:01.040
<v Speaker 1>fifty million years, and certainly in the whole five billion

0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.840
<v Speaker 1>more years we have left for the Sun exploits. But

0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.760
<v Speaker 1>Pangaia is the one that is most known to us

0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:09.520
<v Speaker 1>because we can imagine, we know what it looked like

0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.080
<v Speaker 1>we are and we can imagine it. We can imagine

0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:16.920
<v Speaker 1>our current configuration fitting into it. Yeah, I mean it's uh.

0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:19.200
<v Speaker 1>I've seen the analogy drawn. I think there's a House

0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.400
<v Speaker 1>Stuff Works article by Molly Edmonds that that is a

0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.000
<v Speaker 1>little bit of this. But imagine the continent of Pangia

0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.320
<v Speaker 1>super continent is formed much like a supergroup or any

0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.360
<v Speaker 1>kind of a really influential rock band. Right, first, one

0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.120
<v Speaker 1>guy gets together with another guy or gal uh, they

0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.720
<v Speaker 1>start playing drums together whatever. Then and somebody else joins

0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:39.800
<v Speaker 1>the band. Finally have the full band going on. It's

0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.640
<v Speaker 1>really great, and then they can't get along. They break up.

0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.040
<v Speaker 1>Maybe first one one band member leaves, in another leaves,

0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.720
<v Speaker 1>and suddenly everybody's doing side projects or their own solo work.

0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.520
<v Speaker 1>But then eventually they're gonna get back together. You know,

0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:54.959
<v Speaker 1>they're going to get back together if they're all still alive,

0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:56.840
<v Speaker 1>or even if they're not, because the money is just

0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:00.199
<v Speaker 1>too good, all right, So they're continually drifting apart and

0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.960
<v Speaker 1>drifting back together, albeit at the slowest rate like this

0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.560
<v Speaker 1>rock band. That's got to be immortal, right, because the

0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.880
<v Speaker 1>rate at which this happens is um It's something like

0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.320
<v Speaker 1>here here it is. To get some idea of how

0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:15.880
<v Speaker 1>slow it really has. Let your hair and fingernails grow

0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.600
<v Speaker 1>uncut for an entire year. Your fingernail growth represents the

0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.199
<v Speaker 1>slower pace of plate movement, while your hair growth is

0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.960
<v Speaker 1>the same as the absolute greatest distance any plate has

0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:32.520
<v Speaker 1>traveled in the last year. That's very insignificant. Yeah, I

0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.240
<v Speaker 1>mean we're talking the average rate of motion on these

0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.600
<v Speaker 1>these plates range from less than one to more than

0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.280
<v Speaker 1>fifteen centimeters per year. Now, just to give a quick

0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.800
<v Speaker 1>basic run through on what's happening with plate tectonics, the

0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.959
<v Speaker 1>Earth's outermost layer is fragmented into a dozen or more

0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:55.120
<v Speaker 1>large and small solid slabs called lithospheric plates or tectonic plates,

0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.240
<v Speaker 1>and they're moving relative to one another as they ride

0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:02.480
<v Speaker 1>a top hotter, more mobile mantle material. And these a

0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.800
<v Speaker 1>plate teconic cup processes have almost certainly been going on

0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.760
<v Speaker 1>since the formation of the Earth four point six billion

0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.719
<v Speaker 1>years ago. Yeah, and nearly all the world's earthquake and

0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:17.400
<v Speaker 1>volcanic activity will occur along or near boundaries between these plates.

0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:19.480
<v Speaker 1>So not only are you getting the drifting, but you're

0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:23.800
<v Speaker 1>also getting the collisions these plates colliding into one another.

0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:27.720
<v Speaker 1>And when they do that, they either create mountain ranges

0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.840
<v Speaker 1>or one plate will slip under the other and just

0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:38.280
<v Speaker 1>get subsumed into the to the molten lava. And most

0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:42.960
<v Speaker 1>of these scenarios will cause volcanic activity. So this is

0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.880
<v Speaker 1>where you see I wouldn't say it's see lost continents

0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:49.800
<v Speaker 1>happening because it's happening at such a small or tiny rate.

0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.280
<v Speaker 1>But here's this idea again that emerges that with all

0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:59.319
<v Speaker 1>of these dynamic changes happening into these continents, maybe there

0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:01.679
<v Speaker 1>is something going on. Now. To put this in sort

0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.480
<v Speaker 1>of the timeline of of the of all the thinking

0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.240
<v Speaker 1>that we've been discussing in this pair of podcasts, it

0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:12.319
<v Speaker 1>wasn't until nine that meteorologist Alfred Vegner hypothesized that our

0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:15.440
<v Speaker 1>seven continents had once been joined together as a super continent.

0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.120
<v Speaker 1>We've all this is just a straight up you know,

0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:22.360
<v Speaker 1>elementary school uh geography a puzzle. At this point, we've

0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.160
<v Speaker 1>all seen what happens when you take the continents out

0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.640
<v Speaker 1>of the puzzle board of the globe and placed them

0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:29.200
<v Speaker 1>next to each other. You can say, oh, well, this

0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:31.800
<v Speaker 1>corner fits here, this corner fits there. And indeed that's

0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.120
<v Speaker 1>what of that Veganer was was noticing here that the

0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:37.640
<v Speaker 1>borders of the continents matched up, they fit together almost

0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:40.679
<v Speaker 1>like a giant jigsaw puzzle. And then when you throw

0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.880
<v Speaker 1>in other clues such as matching rocks and fossils that

0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:47.600
<v Speaker 1>are found in countries separated by vast oceans, tropical plant

0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.400
<v Speaker 1>fossils that were found in polar regions, and vice versa,

0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:53.560
<v Speaker 1>it all, it all indicates that that that something's going

0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.600
<v Speaker 1>on here, that these continents were, in fact, uh once

0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.560
<v Speaker 1>linked together. But the idea of plate tectonics Lee didn't

0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.400
<v Speaker 1>come to the forefront ut of the nineteen sixties. So

0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:07.719
<v Speaker 1>it's a relatively new um spin on what's happening with

0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.600
<v Speaker 1>the continents, or a better understanding, I should say. So,

0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:13.600
<v Speaker 1>if you turn back the clock, can you start looking

0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.560
<v Speaker 1>for lost land masses or you know, land masses that

0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.680
<v Speaker 1>that either no longer exist or no longer exists anywhere

0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:21.280
<v Speaker 1>near the forum. I mean, you can go back four

0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.240
<v Speaker 1>billion years ago and you can find a plate building

0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:28.280
<v Speaker 1>blocks known as craton's, which are essentially giant rock cores

0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:33.240
<v Speaker 1>starting to rise up out of the primordial ocean um

0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.600
<v Speaker 1>and according according to a History of super Continents on

0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:41.040
<v Speaker 1>Planet Earth by Alistair Wilkins on I nine UH, there's

0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.079
<v Speaker 1>some evidence that two cratons date back to as much

0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.360
<v Speaker 1>as three point five billion years ago, forming the tiny

0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:51.880
<v Speaker 1>continent of Valbara. But there's there's a lot of speculation

0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:55.640
<v Speaker 1>involved in this. So there's there's the more certain candidate

0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.599
<v Speaker 1>for the oldest super continent would be a place called er,

0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:01.640
<v Speaker 1>which I like because or sounds a lot like Moo.

0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.440
<v Speaker 1>It's it's very it's very primordial, very primordial, and it

0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:09.520
<v Speaker 1>sounds like it would definitely pop up in an early

0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:13.040
<v Speaker 1>twentieth century pulp novel. But this craton, though, is behind

0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:17.280
<v Speaker 1>an idea of Mauritia, if I remember correctly, Yes, and

0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.720
<v Speaker 1>for for this idea, we need to visit Mauritius, which

0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:24.920
<v Speaker 1>is well known tourist destination, located about twelve hundred miles

0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:27.600
<v Speaker 1>or two thousand kilometers off the coast of Africa east

0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:31.439
<v Speaker 1>of matted Gascar and in Uh. In two thousand thirteen,

0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:38.640
<v Speaker 1>UM researchers found sand grains on the Mauritius beaches, and

0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:40.440
<v Speaker 1>they looked at these and they found that they contained

0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:44.679
<v Speaker 1>fragments of the mineral, the mineral zircon, and these were

0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.000
<v Speaker 1>between six hundred and sixty and two billion years old,

0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:50.640
<v Speaker 1>far older than the island itself. So yeah, they were like,

0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:55.280
<v Speaker 1>what how is that working? Yeah, so they stay theorized, well, okay,

0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.640
<v Speaker 1>sand grains must be the remnants then of Mauritia, a

0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.600
<v Speaker 1>law microcontinent that once existed off the coast of Africa,

0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:06.840
<v Speaker 1>and it was eventually submerged when India broke apart from

0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.719
<v Speaker 1>Madagas Gascar about eighty five million years ago. So the

0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:15.120
<v Speaker 1>thing is is that they had discovered that this area,

0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:21.400
<v Speaker 1>this crust, is much thicker than elsewhere. And the idea

0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:27.680
<v Speaker 1>is that instead of uh Mauritia being below in the ocean,

0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:32.280
<v Speaker 1>that is actually sort of been consumed in that land

0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:37.800
<v Speaker 1>mass itself. It is in the bottom reaches of of

0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.840
<v Speaker 1>that area, if that makes any sense, and it is

0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:43.840
<v Speaker 1>under the it is submerged under the Indian Indian Ocean.

0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:47.080
<v Speaker 1>But it's not like floating there, you know, three thousand

0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.520
<v Speaker 1>miles below right, Yeah, it's just kind of crunched down

0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.400
<v Speaker 1>if you will. And in fact, analysis of verse gravitational

0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.920
<v Speaker 1>fields has revealed other areas in the world's ocean where

0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.800
<v Speaker 1>the rock does appear to be thicker than normal and

0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.560
<v Speaker 1>could in theory be a sign of of other continental crusts.

0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.720
<v Speaker 1>So just basically like the land eating itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:09.320
<v Speaker 1>I mean we just go we come back again and

0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.960
<v Speaker 1>get into this idea that that that the Earth is in,

0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:15.920
<v Speaker 1>our shape of the Earth is is just in continual change.

0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:19.160
<v Speaker 1>It's just the change that takes place in geologic time

0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.280
<v Speaker 1>and in deep time UM, and not the kind of

0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.200
<v Speaker 1>thing that we can really truly comprehend from our very

0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:31.200
<v Speaker 1>limited human perspective. Now, just to revisit Atlantis for a second. Uh.

0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.760
<v Speaker 1>In Josh Clark's article about Atlantis, he talks about a

0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:40.360
<v Speaker 1>city called Haliki, which may have been the blueprint for Atlantis,

0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.800
<v Speaker 1>or at least the allegory. And this is an area

0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:48.360
<v Speaker 1>that UM would have existed for about two hundred years

0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.360
<v Speaker 1>by the time plate I wrote about Atlantis, and it

0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:56.200
<v Speaker 1>had been submerged underwater. And it's a coastal city located

0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.120
<v Speaker 1>on the Gulf of Corinthine, Greece. Was once a seat

0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.720
<v Speaker 1>of power there controlled shipping in the area. It was

0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:07.240
<v Speaker 1>also a major site of worship of Poseidon, whom Plato

0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:11.200
<v Speaker 1>deemed the patron saint of Atlantis. And in three seventy

0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:15.040
<v Speaker 1>three b C, and major earthquake followed by tsunami washed

0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.560
<v Speaker 1>over the area and just completely wiped it out. So

0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.880
<v Speaker 1>what's interesting about this is that archaeologists have gone back

0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.720
<v Speaker 1>to this area and they said they've seen resettlement over

0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:27.520
<v Speaker 1>and over again, and they've seen that this Helliki Delta

0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:31.440
<v Speaker 1>was a really popular area to be in because these

0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:34.000
<v Speaker 1>three rivers formed a delta of the broad and fresh

0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:38.520
<v Speaker 1>water irrigated crops, and you had the coastal area, which

0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:40.840
<v Speaker 1>is always nice. It's always beautiful to residing in a

0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.600
<v Speaker 1>coastal area. Um And as soon as they started to

0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:46.960
<v Speaker 1>figure this out, they began to do some really heavy

0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:52.000
<v Speaker 1>duty excavation and in n archaeologists found a buried ancient

0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:56.880
<v Speaker 1>sea wall as well as ten Spartan ships that supposedly

0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.000
<v Speaker 1>came to try to help out after the tsunami UH

0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.960
<v Speaker 1>and then twelve ft beneath farmland they found ruins of

0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.439
<v Speaker 1>industrial buildings, kilns looms, a bust of Poseidon, and some

0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:11.760
<v Speaker 1>bronze age jugs. So looping this all back to this

0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:16.320
<v Speaker 1>idea of lost countinance in our desire to rediscover these

0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.960
<v Speaker 1>areas of civilization. Hliki is a great example of that.

0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:22.680
<v Speaker 1>And I think it's why it's so interesting to think

0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:26.560
<v Speaker 1>that this other area Mauritia, existed and perhaps there was

0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:31.440
<v Speaker 1>a civilization there. Um, and this idea that with all

0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.000
<v Speaker 1>of this stuff is just getting recycled over and over

0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:39.240
<v Speaker 1>again and is lost to us. Yeah, and and and certainly, uh,

0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:42.120
<v Speaker 1>I think there's a lot of love of the Apocalypse

0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:44.520
<v Speaker 1>pound up in all of this too. I mean, who,

0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.640
<v Speaker 1>it's great to hear about a wonderful civilization, but it's

0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:49.560
<v Speaker 1>even better in a way if we hear about the

0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.280
<v Speaker 1>civilization falling. You know, in the same way that we

0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.160
<v Speaker 1>look to our celebrities. We wanted to see them do well,

0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.480
<v Speaker 1>but we also really want them to fall. So we

0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.440
<v Speaker 1>can read about that too, because that's the the stuff

0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.880
<v Speaker 1>of great of great fiction. And so yeah, I can

0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:07.119
<v Speaker 1>well imagine that that Plato might would have known about

0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:09.560
<v Speaker 1>the places that have been wiped out, islands that had

0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.680
<v Speaker 1>where the civilization advantaged, or even the island itself had

0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.159
<v Speaker 1>had been lost, and say, hey, that's a great idea.

0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:17.600
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to use that. And when I'm writing, you're right,

0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:19.960
<v Speaker 1>because he was probably like, I'm going to talk about

0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.160
<v Speaker 1>this terrible moment in which the city was seized by

0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.560
<v Speaker 1>something and this, and then there's this idea that this,

0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:31.399
<v Speaker 1>uh this might exist frozen in time somewhere. And there

0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:33.080
<v Speaker 1>are other examples we can look to elsewhere in the

0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:36.040
<v Speaker 1>world where where there's a there there's a land math

0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.280
<v Speaker 1>that was once above the waters, but now it's below UH.

0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:44.000
<v Speaker 1>There's the Kurgouland Plateau, which is an underwater of volcanic

0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:50.199
<v Speaker 1>large Uh province, also a micro continent UH and submerged

0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.120
<v Speaker 1>continent in the Southern Indian Ocean lies about three three

0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:56.280
<v Speaker 1>thousand kilometers to the southwest of Australia and is nearly

0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.480
<v Speaker 1>three times the side of the Japan But to return

0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:04.000
<v Speaker 1>to mid Earth, one of my favorite examples here is Zeilandia,

0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:08.879
<v Speaker 1>which Zilandia and it sounds familiar if you're thinking of

0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.960
<v Speaker 1>New Zealand, well then spot on because Zoolandia is a

0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.680
<v Speaker 1>nearly submerged continental fragment that sank after breaking away from

0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.720
<v Speaker 1>Australia eighty five million years ago, having separated from Antarctica

0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.920
<v Speaker 1>between eighty five and one hundred thirty million years ago,

0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.000
<v Speaker 1>and it may have been completely submerged about twenty three

0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:32.159
<v Speaker 1>million years ago, and most of it, nine of it

0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:36.840
<v Speaker 1>remains submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean today. Um So, all

0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.040
<v Speaker 1>in all, we're talking about, you know, a land mass

0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:44.639
<v Speaker 1>that's uh three million, five hundred thousand kilometers square kilometers inside,

0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.000
<v Speaker 1>larger than Greenland or India, uh and almost half the

0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:50.560
<v Speaker 1>size of Australia. But the only part of it that's

0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:55.000
<v Speaker 1>really the main part really that's above uh the ocean

0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.080
<v Speaker 1>that's actually visible, that actually has people and plants and

0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.280
<v Speaker 1>and and is alive in that sense, is that New Zealand.

0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.320
<v Speaker 1>And New Zealand is only a hundred and three hundred

0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:06.560
<v Speaker 1>three thousand, four hundred and eighty three square miles or

0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:10.560
<v Speaker 1>two hundred sixty eight thousand, twenty one kilometers squared. That

0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:12.240
<v Speaker 1>through a lot of numbers and stuff out there, but

0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:17.560
<v Speaker 1>basically New Zealand is the tip of this iceberg and

0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.879
<v Speaker 1>the rest is is lost beneath the ocean. Yeah, we

0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.560
<v Speaker 1>mentioned earlier that the band has to get back together again, right,

0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.280
<v Speaker 1>the reunion show is inevitable even if all the remaining

0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.960
<v Speaker 1>members are no you are no longer alive and in

0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:35.320
<v Speaker 1>all likelihood based on our current understanding plate Ticonics. The

0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.720
<v Speaker 1>theory is that the continents will merge again to form

0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.280
<v Speaker 1>a new super continent within the next two hundred fifty

0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.399
<v Speaker 1>million years, and this will complete the latest turn of

0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:49.199
<v Speaker 1>the supercontinent cycle. And then they'll break up again and

0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:51.240
<v Speaker 1>do their solo projects. But then they'll get back together

0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:55.639
<v Speaker 1>again for an even greater reunion in some incomprehensible distant

0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.480
<v Speaker 1>future and who knows what that will look like. And

0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:02.360
<v Speaker 1>robotics Share will be out there, Robotic Share will be there, um,

0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.240
<v Speaker 1>and the great old ones will come back. Uh, there'll

0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.480
<v Speaker 1>be an alien colony and uh. And also those four

0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:10.399
<v Speaker 1>armed apes with the eye in the back of their head,

0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:13.920
<v Speaker 1>the Lamarans, we will be the dominant race center. Yeah.

0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:18.080
<v Speaker 1>There's also the astral projections. Yes, yeah, yeah, there's some

0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.159
<v Speaker 1>some of them probably escaped into the astral plane and

0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:22.639
<v Speaker 1>will come back, because who doesn't want to be around

0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:25.159
<v Speaker 1>for the super continent coming back again. They're just waiting

0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:28.480
<v Speaker 1>it out on the solar winds, my friend. Uh. So

0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:33.239
<v Speaker 1>there you have it, super Continents, Lost Continents, Lost Worlds, Atlantis,

0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.840
<v Speaker 1>all of the above wrapped up into two episodes. We

0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:38.760
<v Speaker 1>would love to hear what all of you have to

0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:41.960
<v Speaker 1>say about this. Yes, so let us know. Um, you

0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.200
<v Speaker 1>can always visit us at stuff toblave, mind dot com. Yes,

0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:48.399
<v Speaker 1>as well as our various social media accounts where on Facebook,

0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:50.800
<v Speaker 1>We're on Twitter, We're on Tumbler, run Google Plus, our

0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.959
<v Speaker 1>YouTube accounties mind Stuff Show. Be sure to follow us

0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:56.040
<v Speaker 1>there so you can stay on top of all the

0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.520
<v Speaker 1>cool video projects that we're putting out now and in

0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:02.280
<v Speaker 1>the future. Oh and that reminds me, Hey, guys, did

0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.440
<v Speaker 1>you know me that July is National Talk in an

0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:08.440
<v Speaker 1>Elevator Day? WHOA If you're talking one of these now,

0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:11.040
<v Speaker 1>we may choose to just listen. But I thought I

0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:13.600
<v Speaker 1>would bring that up because we have a handy dandy

0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:17.280
<v Speaker 1>playlist of the Information Elevator in which all these little

0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:22.040
<v Speaker 1>awkward um collisions between humans happens and information is dis first.

0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:24.040
<v Speaker 1>So if you want to check that out, make sure

0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:26.800
<v Speaker 1>you go to mind Stuff Show on YouTube so you

0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.639
<v Speaker 1>can check out the Information Elevator series. In the mean time,

0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.159
<v Speaker 1>please send us an email and you can do that

0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:40.160
<v Speaker 1>at below the mind at how stuff works dot com

0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:42.640
<v Speaker 1>for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:49.840
<v Speaker 1>it how stuff Works dot com