1
00:00:06,200 --> 00:00:08,560
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It is

2
00:00:08,760 --> 00:00:11,160
Speaker 1: once more Saturday, so it is once more time to

3
00:00:11,160 --> 00:00:12,920
Speaker 1: go into the vault. This is going to be the

4
00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:17,320
Speaker 1: episode Dindara Lights and Ancient Egyptians Pseudohistory. This one originally

5
00:00:17,360 --> 00:00:20,560
Speaker 1: published eight seventeen, twenty twenty three. This was the third

6
00:00:20,600 --> 00:00:24,759
Speaker 1: part in our look at how low resolution images have

7
00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:29,280
Speaker 1: provoked paranormal and fringe explanations over time, despite convincing an

8
00:00:29,280 --> 00:00:33,600
Speaker 1: even conclusive expert analysis. And this is once more a

9
00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:38,920
Speaker 1: good excuse to dive into ancient Egyptian concepts. So without

10
00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:40,199
Speaker 1: further ado, here we go.

11
00:00:43,560 --> 00:00:47,440
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

12
00:00:53,240 --> 00:00:55,320
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

13
00:00:55,360 --> 00:00:55,920
Speaker 1: is Robert.

14
00:00:55,760 --> 00:00:59,760
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. In the past to

15
00:01:00,280 --> 00:01:03,520
Speaker 3: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we've been talking

16
00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:08,560
Speaker 3: about a couple of famous, supposedly anomalous underwater images, weird,

17
00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:13,640
Speaker 3: spooky looking photographs and images produced by sonar of objects

18
00:01:13,760 --> 00:01:18,399
Speaker 3: on the ocean floor, which to observers with the right predisposition,

19
00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:22,679
Speaker 3: seemed like compelling evidence of alien visitation of Earth, or

20
00:01:22,880 --> 00:01:27,400
Speaker 3: ancient technology of lost civilizations, or something else. In that

21
00:01:27,520 --> 00:01:29,800
Speaker 3: narrative space, and in a way, I think it's kind

22
00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:32,720
Speaker 3: of telling that you look at an object and say, well,

23
00:01:32,720 --> 00:01:35,760
Speaker 3: this could be aliens, or it could be atlantis. It's

24
00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:38,160
Speaker 3: one of the two or both.

25
00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:40,119
Speaker 1: You can have both sometimes, yeah, I.

26
00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:43,520
Speaker 3: Guess you could. But anyway, explanation referring to explanations that

27
00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:48,840
Speaker 3: are big, exciting, mind rending explanations that would change everything

28
00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:51,280
Speaker 3: we think we know about the world and about the

29
00:01:51,360 --> 00:01:54,560
Speaker 3: history of life on Earth. Today's episode is not a

30
00:01:54,680 --> 00:01:57,120
Speaker 3: strict like Part three or anything, but we are going

31
00:01:57,160 --> 00:01:59,480
Speaker 3: to be continuing the theme, so I thought it would

32
00:01:59,520 --> 00:02:03,800
Speaker 3: be good to start off with a recap of what

33
00:02:03,880 --> 00:02:05,880
Speaker 3: we've talked about in the last couple of episodes, though

34
00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:08,320
Speaker 3: today we're going to be taking it in a different direction.

35
00:02:08,800 --> 00:02:11,680
Speaker 3: So what's the theme. Well, to start with, I'll do

36
00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:14,000
Speaker 3: a brief review of the things we talked about in

37
00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:17,680
Speaker 3: the last two episodes. One object was something that was

38
00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:22,160
Speaker 3: photographed in the nineteen sixties and known in the UFO

39
00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:27,480
Speaker 3: literature as the Eltanan antenna. It looks to the untrained

40
00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:31,359
Speaker 3: observer like some kind of antenna, some kind of receiver,

41
00:02:31,639 --> 00:02:33,800
Speaker 3: you know. They called it, I think a microwave, aerial

42
00:02:33,960 --> 00:02:36,560
Speaker 3: or something in some of the early articles on it,

43
00:02:36,919 --> 00:02:40,240
Speaker 3: but actually once people with the right background of marine

44
00:02:40,240 --> 00:02:44,320
Speaker 3: biology knowledge looked at this photo, they identified it with

45
00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:48,040
Speaker 3: near certainty as a species of carnivorous sponge that lives

46
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:50,639
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the ocean. The other object that

47
00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:53,000
Speaker 3: we talked about in the second of those two episodes

48
00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:58,400
Speaker 3: was captured on fuzzy sonar images by treasure hunters and

49
00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:01,720
Speaker 3: salvage divers in two thousand and eleven, and it has

50
00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:04,440
Speaker 3: been referred to in the media as the Baltic Sea

51
00:03:04,639 --> 00:03:07,600
Speaker 3: anomaly because it was supposedly somewhere on the floor of

52
00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:11,720
Speaker 3: the Northern Baltic Sea, and hidden knowledge enthusiasts called it

53
00:03:11,760 --> 00:03:15,520
Speaker 3: everything from a crashed flying saucer to a monument built

54
00:03:15,560 --> 00:03:18,720
Speaker 3: by the civilization of Atlantis, and in this case a

55
00:03:18,919 --> 00:03:22,160
Speaker 3: positive idea is slightly more difficult than it is in

56
00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:25,079
Speaker 3: the case of the Eltanan antenna, which is almost definitely

57
00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:29,320
Speaker 3: the sponge. But numerous experts have commented that this is

58
00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:33,280
Speaker 3: most likely just an interesting looking geologic formation, in other words,

59
00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:36,360
Speaker 3: a big mass of rock that may be a result

60
00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:39,320
Speaker 3: of the freezing and thawing of glaciers, but ultimately we

61
00:03:39,320 --> 00:03:42,160
Speaker 3: don't know for sure, and so it's kind of interesting

62
00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:46,360
Speaker 3: that in both cases, the story goes that someone captured

63
00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:50,520
Speaker 3: a fuzzy or low resolution image of something that looked

64
00:03:50,600 --> 00:03:55,560
Speaker 3: weird and to some extent looked intuitively unnatural or out

65
00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:59,200
Speaker 3: of place. That image was then published to a lay

66
00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:02,960
Speaker 3: audience that had no background knowledge to help them understand

67
00:04:03,040 --> 00:04:06,320
Speaker 3: what they were looking at, and then some observers concluded

68
00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:10,560
Speaker 3: that since the object looked unusual, unnatural, or out of place,

69
00:04:11,240 --> 00:04:14,680
Speaker 3: it must be a piece of anomalist technology deposited by

70
00:04:14,720 --> 00:04:19,080
Speaker 3: aliens or time travelers, or a past human civilization about

71
00:04:19,080 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 3: which all knowledge has been erased. However, in both cases,

72
00:04:23,240 --> 00:04:27,800
Speaker 3: the more information entered into the picture, the more it

73
00:04:27,839 --> 00:04:30,640
Speaker 3: seemed like these anomalies were probably just weird looking natural

74
00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:35,200
Speaker 3: phenomena like animals or rocks. And so, while it's always

75
00:04:35,240 --> 00:04:37,320
Speaker 3: important to keep an open mind, you want to keep

76
00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:40,240
Speaker 3: your mind open to good evidence if it were to

77
00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:44,640
Speaker 3: emerge of big and worldview changing discoveries, it is at

78
00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:48,720
Speaker 3: the same time important not to let emotional excitement guide

79
00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:53,240
Speaker 3: your reasoning. And one reason to be skeptical about putting

80
00:04:53,279 --> 00:04:56,320
Speaker 3: something that looks weird and out of place into the

81
00:04:56,400 --> 00:05:00,200
Speaker 3: aliens or atlantis column is that If you've if all

82
00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:02,680
Speaker 3: of these kinds of stories long enough, you really start

83
00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:05,680
Speaker 3: to see a trend. And that trend is the more

84
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:09,400
Speaker 3: information we have to inform our judgment, the less it

85
00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:13,560
Speaker 3: seems like aliens. So the cases where a piece of evidence,

86
00:05:13,640 --> 00:05:17,760
Speaker 3: like a photograph or a video, remains unexplainable and thus

87
00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:21,839
Speaker 3: still possibly aliens, those tend to be the cases where

88
00:05:21,880 --> 00:05:25,680
Speaker 3: there are notable deficits of information, and these could be

89
00:05:25,720 --> 00:05:29,120
Speaker 3: deficits within the evidence itself, like the picture or the

90
00:05:29,200 --> 00:05:32,839
Speaker 3: video is very grainy and low resolution, so it's hard

91
00:05:32,839 --> 00:05:34,960
Speaker 3: to tell exactly what you're looking at, and you kind

92
00:05:34,960 --> 00:05:36,400
Speaker 3: of just have to shrug and say, I don't know,

93
00:05:36,440 --> 00:05:39,080
Speaker 3: it looks weird, hard to say what it is. Or

94
00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:42,960
Speaker 3: the information deficit could be in the person or community

95
00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:45,839
Speaker 3: that is assessing the evidence. It could be in us.

96
00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:48,960
Speaker 3: For example, most of us have a lack of background

97
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:52,080
Speaker 3: knowledge about what sponges on the ocean floor look like,

98
00:05:52,640 --> 00:05:55,120
Speaker 3: or about what kinds of patterns can be found in

99
00:05:55,200 --> 00:06:00,280
Speaker 3: natural rock formations, and so information deficits kind of keep

100
00:06:00,279 --> 00:06:04,960
Speaker 3: the mystery alive. Meanwhile, the converse also seems true. The

101
00:06:04,960 --> 00:06:08,440
Speaker 3: more information there is, the more likely it becomes that

102
00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:12,320
Speaker 3: the object gets pinned down to an explanation from within

103
00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:15,320
Speaker 3: the range of known causes. So you get a higher

104
00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:19,160
Speaker 3: resolution video, or you get new videos of the same thing,

105
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:24,120
Speaker 3: maybe an additional angle, better light conditions, more experience or

106
00:06:24,200 --> 00:06:27,640
Speaker 3: background knowledge with which to judge the video or photo,

107
00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:31,400
Speaker 3: and oh, okay, in these cases it's a milar balloon

108
00:06:31,760 --> 00:06:35,400
Speaker 3: or oh I see that's a star, or that's an airplane.

109
00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:39,520
Speaker 3: Rob Actually, another excellent example that you brought up in

110
00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:42,800
Speaker 3: the last episode was the so called face on Mars.

111
00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:45,080
Speaker 3: You know, this was it's a wonderful photo, Like I

112
00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,200
Speaker 3: love the face on Mars, but this was done in

113
00:06:48,279 --> 00:06:50,880
Speaker 3: by higher resolution photography.

114
00:06:51,200 --> 00:06:54,159
Speaker 1: Done in to a certain extent. But like some of

115
00:06:54,160 --> 00:06:57,280
Speaker 1: these other images, the face of Mars still remains this

116
00:06:57,520 --> 00:07:00,000
Speaker 1: image that's kind of an article of faith to sign,

117
00:07:00,160 --> 00:07:03,600
Speaker 1: you know, or at least this kind of totem of

118
00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:08,560
Speaker 1: the paranormal and the potentially cosmic. And I guess it

119
00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:12,440
Speaker 1: is still certainly a testament to our ability to see

120
00:07:12,480 --> 00:07:14,840
Speaker 1: ourselves in anything well exactly.

121
00:07:14,880 --> 00:07:17,040
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't wish, by the way, that we could

122
00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:20,800
Speaker 3: not read beauty and meaning into I don't know, things

123
00:07:20,840 --> 00:07:24,200
Speaker 3: that might on their own merits not necessarily shout out

124
00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:28,600
Speaker 3: to be meaningful, like a rock doesn't necessarily say that

125
00:07:28,640 --> 00:07:30,720
Speaker 3: it has meaning, but you can see faces in it,

126
00:07:30,760 --> 00:07:32,520
Speaker 3: and it can make you feel all kinds of things.

127
00:07:32,720 --> 00:07:36,160
Speaker 3: This is like the basis of all art. Yeah, But

128
00:07:36,320 --> 00:07:39,280
Speaker 3: when it comes to looking for explanations of things in

129
00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:42,440
Speaker 3: the world, this pattern just pops up again and again

130
00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:46,040
Speaker 3: and again. If the picture stays fuzzy, it still might

131
00:07:46,080 --> 00:07:49,120
Speaker 3: be aliens, or it still might be atlantis. But if

132
00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:52,040
Speaker 3: you're able to sharpen the focus or to have more

133
00:07:52,080 --> 00:07:56,320
Speaker 3: background knowledge when you're assessing it, it's almost definitely not aliens,

134
00:07:56,720 --> 00:07:59,200
Speaker 3: then that's when you realize it's a balloon. And this

135
00:07:59,320 --> 00:08:03,239
Speaker 3: doesn't mean we will never discover good evidence of alien

136
00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:06,920
Speaker 3: visitation of Earth or anything, or of you know, maybe

137
00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:10,600
Speaker 3: some big discovery about something previously unknown about the ancient world.

138
00:08:10,600 --> 00:08:14,520
Speaker 3: That's always possible. But I think if you follow these stories,

139
00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:19,600
Speaker 3: it's sort of impossible not to notice the trend, and

140
00:08:19,880 --> 00:08:23,680
Speaker 3: awareness of the trend should put us on guard when

141
00:08:23,760 --> 00:08:27,040
Speaker 3: new pieces of evidence bubble up from the low information

142
00:08:27,280 --> 00:08:30,800
Speaker 3: or low resolution zone. So today we wanted to look

143
00:08:30,840 --> 00:08:35,040
Speaker 3: at some similar trends, not in underwater imagery, but in

144
00:08:35,200 --> 00:08:38,920
Speaker 3: imagery related to another domain that can often appear in

145
00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:43,000
Speaker 3: degraded or low resolution form and be kind of put

146
00:08:43,160 --> 00:08:46,720
Speaker 3: cold in front of people who don't have contextual background

147
00:08:46,760 --> 00:08:49,880
Speaker 3: knowledge to understand what we're looking at, and this is

148
00:08:50,120 --> 00:08:51,600
Speaker 3: artifacts from ancient history.

149
00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:55,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think examples like this can be at times

150
00:08:55,760 --> 00:08:58,320
Speaker 1: a little harder for us to wrap our heads around,

151
00:08:58,720 --> 00:09:01,360
Speaker 1: especially if we are more we're inclined to sort of

152
00:09:01,480 --> 00:09:07,040
Speaker 1: rally behind an outside idea about what we're looking at,

153
00:09:07,720 --> 00:09:11,640
Speaker 1: because in some of these other examples of anomalist data,

154
00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:16,040
Speaker 1: anomalist photography, et cetera, there's there's often maybe a sense

155
00:09:16,040 --> 00:09:22,120
Speaker 1: of kind of like a a rabbit duck illusion scenario,

156
00:09:22,240 --> 00:09:24,000
Speaker 1: you know, or or one of these, you know, one

157
00:09:24,040 --> 00:09:26,439
Speaker 1: of these optical illusions where someone shows it to you

158
00:09:26,480 --> 00:09:28,240
Speaker 1: and they say, hey, do you see a duck or

159
00:09:28,240 --> 00:09:29,360
Speaker 1: a rabbit? And you say, well, I see a rabbit.

160
00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:31,720
Speaker 1: I don't see a duck at all. And then someone says, well, look,

161
00:09:31,880 --> 00:09:33,800
Speaker 1: i'll show you, and you show show them the parts

162
00:09:33,840 --> 00:09:35,800
Speaker 1: of the duck and they're like, okay, now I can

163
00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:39,120
Speaker 1: see it both ways. It can maybe be a little

164
00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:42,560
Speaker 1: bit harder if in order to truly see it both ways,

165
00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:47,400
Speaker 1: you have to say, understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. So like

166
00:09:47,440 --> 00:09:49,600
Speaker 1: one of the examples I'm gonna I'm gonna touch on

167
00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:52,400
Speaker 1: here is one where we absolutely know what it is,

168
00:09:52,760 --> 00:09:56,280
Speaker 1: and we absolutely know what it's not. And yet even

169
00:09:56,400 --> 00:09:59,880
Speaker 1: you know, reading the explanation, you know, hearing from experts,

170
00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:02,320
Speaker 1: you know, it can still be difficult. It's difficult for

171
00:10:02,360 --> 00:10:05,360
Speaker 1: me to see exactly what we're talking about there, and

172
00:10:05,440 --> 00:10:08,240
Speaker 1: it's actually easier for me to sort of lean in

173
00:10:08,240 --> 00:10:12,960
Speaker 1: to the ridiculous explanation for what appears to be in

174
00:10:12,960 --> 00:10:15,440
Speaker 1: front of us. So we'll get to this in a second,

175
00:10:15,440 --> 00:10:18,280
Speaker 1: but first I just want to talk in general about

176
00:10:18,440 --> 00:10:25,520
Speaker 1: the overarching theme of Egyptomania. Now, Egyptomania is more often

177
00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:30,160
Speaker 1: used to refer specifically to nineteenth century European fascination with

178
00:10:30,200 --> 00:10:34,600
Speaker 1: all things Egypt during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, but it can

179
00:10:34,640 --> 00:10:38,840
Speaker 1: also generally be leveled at various points in time when

180
00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:43,520
Speaker 1: various cultures have pursued an interest in ancient Egyptian civilization

181
00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:47,520
Speaker 1: and culture. And of course this general interest is irresistible

182
00:10:47,559 --> 00:10:50,000
Speaker 1: because we've touched on many times in the show. I'm

183
00:10:50,160 --> 00:10:55,959
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian civilization, ancient Egyptian culture, and mythology. These are fascinating.

184
00:10:55,360 --> 00:10:59,240
Speaker 3: Topics, absolutely, yeah, a beautiful entrancing and not just to

185
00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:01,880
Speaker 3: people in the mind. I mean, something I've read before

186
00:11:01,960 --> 00:11:05,559
Speaker 3: is that people in the world that still appears as

187
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:08,400
Speaker 3: the ancient world to us looked back to the even

188
00:11:08,480 --> 00:11:12,280
Speaker 3: more ancient Egyptian civilization and they were fascinated by it.

189
00:11:12,400 --> 00:11:17,040
Speaker 3: There were ancient Greco Romans who had a kind of Egyptomania.

190
00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:20,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I think we've we've mentioned the sort of

191
00:11:21,440 --> 00:11:24,320
Speaker 1: mind blowing fact before. You know that the ancient Romans

192
00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:28,640
Speaker 1: were greatly intrigued by ancient Egypt, which was already as

193
00:11:28,640 --> 00:11:30,600
Speaker 1: ancient to them as the Romans are to us.

194
00:11:31,160 --> 00:11:35,200
Speaker 3: Right, So at the time of Caesar Augustus, ancient Egyptian

195
00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:37,319
Speaker 3: civilization was thousands of years old.

196
00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:41,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And of course we've touched before on the

197
00:11:41,280 --> 00:11:43,880
Speaker 1: ancient wonders of the world. You know, the Pyramids, the

198
00:11:43,880 --> 00:11:47,160
Speaker 1: Great Pyramids were certainly on that list, and those still

199
00:11:47,240 --> 00:11:49,840
Speaker 1: remain some of the most enigmatic man made structures on

200
00:11:49,880 --> 00:11:52,680
Speaker 1: the planet, and we still don't know everything there is

201
00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:57,400
Speaker 1: to know about them. So Egyptology remains a living field

202
00:11:57,480 --> 00:11:58,000
Speaker 1: of study.

203
00:11:58,360 --> 00:11:58,600
Speaker 3: Now.

204
00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:01,280
Speaker 1: I was looking at a really really good book about

205
00:12:01,320 --> 00:12:04,720
Speaker 1: this that I highly recommend. It's from Ronald H. Fritz,

206
00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:09,199
Speaker 1: titled Egyptomania, and in the book, the author discusses various

207
00:12:09,280 --> 00:12:13,720
Speaker 1: forms of Egyptomania over the ages, from the ancient Hebrews,

208
00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:17,080
Speaker 1: from Greeks and Romans to European models. There's a whole

209
00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:20,760
Speaker 1: section on like fiction and gets into movies. He also

210
00:12:20,800 --> 00:12:26,480
Speaker 1: has a great chapter on Afrocentrist movements that engage in Egyptomania,

211
00:12:26,960 --> 00:12:30,520
Speaker 1: and he drives home that just many different peoples across

212
00:12:30,600 --> 00:12:35,440
Speaker 1: different times have attempted to imagine and even remake the

213
00:12:35,520 --> 00:12:39,600
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians in their own image to enhance their own worldview,

214
00:12:39,920 --> 00:12:43,880
Speaker 1: their own interests, their own ideology, etc. And the energy

215
00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:48,239
Speaker 1: of this exercise ranges from just merely attempting to understand

216
00:12:48,280 --> 00:12:50,199
Speaker 1: a fascinating time in people. I mean, that's one of

217
00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:55,360
Speaker 1: our main tools is to think about even people from

218
00:12:55,559 --> 00:12:58,240
Speaker 1: the distant past in different lands, to try and imagine

219
00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:00,720
Speaker 1: what it would be like to be them. But on

220
00:13:00,760 --> 00:13:02,680
Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum you get into just

221
00:13:02,760 --> 00:13:07,600
Speaker 1: outright pseudohistory, pseudoscience, and just everything else you might expect

222
00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:09,320
Speaker 1: to encounter on the fringes.

223
00:13:09,920 --> 00:13:14,120
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, there's an interesting duality that comes from trying

224
00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:18,800
Speaker 3: to see yourself and imagine people like you and other

225
00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:22,560
Speaker 3: times and other civilizations, because of course, there probably is

226
00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:24,960
Speaker 3: something that all people at all times kind of have

227
00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:27,440
Speaker 3: in common. There is a common human experience, and you

228
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:29,480
Speaker 3: can try to imagine what it would have been like

229
00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:34,960
Speaker 3: to live in ancient Egypt. But there's a possibility that

230
00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:38,160
Speaker 3: in doing so, you kind of lull yourself into the

231
00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:41,560
Speaker 3: false belief that you can say, look at ancient Egyptian

232
00:13:41,640 --> 00:13:45,400
Speaker 3: art or look at ancient Egyptian artifacts and just intuitively

233
00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:48,000
Speaker 3: identify what you're looking at, when in fact, you would

234
00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:51,680
Speaker 3: probably need some very specific cultural knowledge to understand what

235
00:13:51,720 --> 00:13:52,760
Speaker 3: you're looking at.

236
00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:56,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of this imagery getting right into

237
00:13:56,720 --> 00:13:58,720
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is the kind of stuff

238
00:13:58,760 --> 00:14:02,040
Speaker 1: that can be mysterious enough, that can seem cryptic enough

239
00:14:02,320 --> 00:14:05,640
Speaker 1: to folks who don't know what they're looking at that

240
00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:09,120
Speaker 1: you can apply other ideas, modern ideas to them. You know,

241
00:14:09,280 --> 00:14:11,719
Speaker 1: like you just read a book about UFOs, Well, go

242
00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:15,560
Speaker 1: look at these these images without any context, and you

243
00:14:15,679 --> 00:14:19,280
Speaker 1: may see UFO related ideas there. Read a book about

244
00:14:19,800 --> 00:14:22,600
Speaker 1: the bicameral mind and start looking at at some of

245
00:14:22,600 --> 00:14:26,080
Speaker 1: these images, Well, you might have some alarming ideas and

246
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:28,680
Speaker 1: some interesting interpretations of what you see as well.

247
00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:31,680
Speaker 3: Right, we read the world through the lenses that are

248
00:14:31,680 --> 00:14:34,520
Speaker 3: available to us, and very often the lenses that are

249
00:14:34,560 --> 00:14:37,040
Speaker 3: available to us sort of, what's the top lens on

250
00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:39,600
Speaker 3: the stack is whatever you've recently been thinking about.

251
00:14:40,040 --> 00:14:41,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not to say that, you know, fresh eyes

252
00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:46,360
Speaker 1: and fresh perspectives are not potentially important in reevaluating what

253
00:14:46,400 --> 00:14:49,560
Speaker 1: we know and what we think we know. But oftentimes

254
00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:53,440
Speaker 1: when there is a particular preconceived notion in mind, you're

255
00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:56,120
Speaker 1: not necessarily checking back in with the experts to see

256
00:14:56,120 --> 00:14:58,800
Speaker 1: if this radical new theory matches up with the old

257
00:14:58,840 --> 00:15:11,800
Speaker 1: school interpretation. Certainly when we get into fringe ideas. So anyway,

258
00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:15,280
Speaker 1: there's a long history of Gyptomania in Western magic and

259
00:15:15,280 --> 00:15:20,040
Speaker 1: occultism continues to play into modern ideas of magic and ocultism,

260
00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:25,120
Speaker 1: but also modern branches of fringe ideas concerning UFOs, ancient

261
00:15:25,160 --> 00:15:28,160
Speaker 1: alien discourse, which of course we've discussed on the show

262
00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:31,480
Speaker 1: in the past, and other paranormal concepts and Yeah, so

263
00:15:31,480 --> 00:15:36,200
Speaker 1: it's no surprise that various examples of iconography, archaeological remnants,

264
00:15:36,240 --> 00:15:38,440
Speaker 1: and so forth that are not located on the bottom

265
00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:41,080
Speaker 1: of the sea still end up speaking to us across

266
00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:44,440
Speaker 1: time and culture in a way that too inexpert eyes

267
00:15:44,600 --> 00:15:48,480
Speaker 1: or eyes seeking only confirmation of the paranormal examples of

268
00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:53,640
Speaker 1: ancient technology and so forth. You know they're going to

269
00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:57,480
Speaker 1: see that in these images. So in just a few

270
00:15:57,480 --> 00:15:59,800
Speaker 1: minutes we'll get to a couple I think of interesting

271
00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:03,680
Speaker 1: samples of this. But going back to the book Egyptomania,

272
00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:08,280
Speaker 1: Fritz points out that there are other not necessarily alien

273
00:16:08,360 --> 00:16:15,200
Speaker 1: fringe ideas that pre exists UFO fascination that already insisted

274
00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:19,160
Speaker 1: that ancient Egypt was, for instance, much older than mainstream

275
00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:22,560
Speaker 1: historians believe today. Some of these push back to like

276
00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:27,040
Speaker 1: ten thousand BC or earlier, as opposed to the accepted

277
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:30,440
Speaker 1: view that the Archaic Age stretches five thousand to three

278
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:33,600
Speaker 1: thousand BC, with the Old Kingdom coming in at around

279
00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:36,520
Speaker 1: three thousand BC. And then you have a number of

280
00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:41,040
Speaker 1: fringe ideas that don't again don't concern aliens or anything

281
00:16:41,080 --> 00:16:44,520
Speaker 1: like that, but they get into this idea that like,

282
00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:48,160
Speaker 1: surely there is some ancient advanced civilization at the heart

283
00:16:48,160 --> 00:16:50,880
Speaker 1: of all of this, And so Fritz discusses a few

284
00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:53,960
Speaker 1: of these. There's this idea one ideas that the ancient

285
00:16:53,960 --> 00:16:58,960
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian civilization extends from civilization X or the Ice

286
00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:00,080
Speaker 1: Age super civil.

287
00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:04,160
Speaker 3: Oh, there are similar analogs to this that are still

288
00:17:04,200 --> 00:17:05,119
Speaker 3: kicking around today.

289
00:17:05,400 --> 00:17:08,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course a big, big one is Atlantis,

290
00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:13,240
Speaker 1: the idea that that like refugees from sunken Atlantis founded

291
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:15,920
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt that sort of thing. And then you also

292
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:19,720
Speaker 1: have the ancient alien discourse coming in ancient alien aliens

293
00:17:19,760 --> 00:17:24,280
Speaker 1: teaching the ancient Egyptians how to do things, or ancient

294
00:17:24,320 --> 00:17:29,200
Speaker 1: aliens interbreeding with the ancient Egyptians, supercharging human DNA, and

295
00:17:29,280 --> 00:17:31,679
Speaker 1: basically anything else you want to happen. I don't know.

296
00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:34,280
Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of alien discourses like wrong

297
00:17:34,440 --> 00:17:38,280
Speaker 3: but fun. But like the alien supercharging DNA thing goes

298
00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:41,240
Speaker 3: is not wrong and fun, it's like wrong and gross.

299
00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:45,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get it. You, I mean so much of this.

300
00:17:45,680 --> 00:17:48,440
Speaker 1: It can these ideas they can start in a place

301
00:17:48,440 --> 00:17:52,360
Speaker 1: that feels just fun and escapist, but you follow them

302
00:17:52,359 --> 00:17:56,439
Speaker 1: long enough, they can get into perhaps creepier territory. But

303
00:17:56,720 --> 00:17:59,000
Speaker 1: there is still a lot of variety here to choose from.

304
00:17:59,080 --> 00:18:03,080
Speaker 1: And Fritz writes the following quote, the outpouring and accumulation

305
00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:07,119
Speaker 1: of the many theories that alternative historians advanced about ancient

306
00:18:07,160 --> 00:18:10,440
Speaker 1: Egypt could be considered a cornucopia. But since so many

307
00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:14,199
Speaker 1: of the theories clash with and contradict each other, a

308
00:18:14,200 --> 00:18:17,119
Speaker 1: better description might be a cacophony. And I think we

309
00:18:17,160 --> 00:18:19,240
Speaker 1: saw this in some of the discussion of our previous

310
00:18:19,440 --> 00:18:23,360
Speaker 1: underwater examples as well, you know what is the anomaly? Well,

311
00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:27,160
Speaker 1: there's never like this single paranormal explanation, but a whole

312
00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:31,040
Speaker 1: host of them. Certainly the deeper you go into a

313
00:18:31,080 --> 00:18:34,119
Speaker 1: theme like, Okay, it's an antenna, but is that is

314
00:18:34,160 --> 00:18:36,760
Speaker 1: it the secret world government that built it, or is

315
00:18:36,800 --> 00:18:39,200
Speaker 1: it the ancient lass civilization that built it? Or is

316
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:42,919
Speaker 1: it current UFO, current alien visitors that built it. And

317
00:18:43,080 --> 00:18:45,800
Speaker 1: within a given person's body of work, they might have

318
00:18:45,840 --> 00:18:48,240
Speaker 1: a specific idea, but it's going to be different from

319
00:18:48,240 --> 00:18:49,280
Speaker 1: the next book on the shelf.

320
00:18:49,680 --> 00:18:52,280
Speaker 3: Or as we mentioned directly earlier, if you look at

321
00:18:52,280 --> 00:18:54,280
Speaker 3: an object on the ocean floor and you think, well,

322
00:18:54,320 --> 00:18:56,800
Speaker 3: this could be a UFO, or it could be a

323
00:18:56,840 --> 00:18:59,560
Speaker 3: temple built by the people of Atlantis, or it could

324
00:18:59,600 --> 00:19:02,960
Speaker 3: be an Nazi bunker. In that case, like could it

325
00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:07,680
Speaker 3: really possibly even suggest any of those like that? Those

326
00:19:07,720 --> 00:19:11,000
Speaker 3: are so different. It sounds like you're just kind of

327
00:19:11,040 --> 00:19:14,320
Speaker 3: like reaching around for whatever, not like saying, oh, it

328
00:19:14,480 --> 00:19:18,360
Speaker 3: really has attributes that would make us conclude it is x.

329
00:19:18,920 --> 00:19:23,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Now. The Atlantis connection to ancient Egypt goes

330
00:19:23,359 --> 00:19:25,800
Speaker 1: way back. Apparently goes back to the writings of Plato

331
00:19:25,800 --> 00:19:30,000
Speaker 1: concerning the idea that the ancient Egyptians coexisted with Atlantis

332
00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:33,720
Speaker 1: nine thousand years earlier. Fritz writes that while Plato was

333
00:19:33,840 --> 00:19:37,639
Speaker 1: likely stating all this purely to make a philosophical point,

334
00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:40,320
Speaker 1: the idea that Egypt was already a nine thousand year

335
00:19:40,359 --> 00:19:44,720
Speaker 1: old civilization was probably what contemporary Greeks believed in the

336
00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:48,240
Speaker 1: fourth and fifth centuries BCE, and to be clear, other

337
00:19:48,280 --> 00:19:52,200
Speaker 1: civilizations of the day were cited with bloated timelines as well.

338
00:19:52,680 --> 00:19:55,720
Speaker 3: Yeah. One big difference between like an ancient Greek historian

339
00:19:55,760 --> 00:19:58,159
Speaker 3: and a modern historian is that modern historians have a

340
00:19:58,200 --> 00:20:01,720
Speaker 3: wealth of physical scienceientific evidence that they can draw on

341
00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:05,000
Speaker 3: to help inform, you know, how they should process the

342
00:20:05,119 --> 00:20:07,840
Speaker 3: received stories told about the past. You know, you can,

343
00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:11,840
Speaker 3: like you can do digs, and you can do radiometric dating,

344
00:20:11,880 --> 00:20:13,720
Speaker 3: and you can do all kinds of things that give

345
00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:18,120
Speaker 3: you physical clues to help you either confirm or disconfirm

346
00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:20,439
Speaker 3: things that have been written down about what happened in

347
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:20,879
Speaker 3: the past.

348
00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:24,760
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now, of course, one of the things about Atlantis

349
00:20:24,920 --> 00:20:28,679
Speaker 1: is that the concept never completely goes away, certainly in

350
00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:31,520
Speaker 1: the West, but it comes and it goes. It's heightened

351
00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:34,840
Speaker 1: by the discovery of an inhabited America's and then again

352
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:38,720
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with modern pseudohistory of

353
00:20:38,800 --> 00:20:43,119
Speaker 1: Egypt and Atlantis emerging largely from the writings apparently of

354
00:20:43,160 --> 00:20:49,320
Speaker 1: American politician Ignacious Donnelley in eighteen eighty two. Donnelly, if

355
00:20:49,480 --> 00:20:52,440
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with him, represented Minnesota and the US

356
00:20:52,440 --> 00:20:56,000
Speaker 1: House of Representatives from eighteen sixty three through eighteen sixty nine.

357
00:20:56,880 --> 00:21:01,479
Speaker 1: He pushed a number of ideas concerning pseudoscience and pseudo history.

358
00:21:02,520 --> 00:21:06,600
Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely one of the many characters that Fritz

359
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:07,879
Speaker 1: writes about in this section.

360
00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:09,960
Speaker 3: Oh boy, Now.

361
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:13,560
Speaker 1: Another figure that Fritz touches on here and credits largely

362
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:17,359
Speaker 1: with this sort of modern idea that Egypt had advanced technology.

363
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:20,919
Speaker 1: Ancient Egypt had advanced technology. This goes back to the

364
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:24,560
Speaker 1: psychic readings of when Edgar Casey, who lived eighteen seventy

365
00:21:24,560 --> 00:21:29,160
Speaker 1: seven through nineteen forty five, a self professed clairvoyant who

366
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:32,440
Speaker 1: carried out quote unquote life readings for people and revealed

367
00:21:32,480 --> 00:21:35,760
Speaker 1: their past lives in ancient Atlantis, as well as the

368
00:21:36,080 --> 00:21:40,440
Speaker 1: advanced technology that the Atlanteans supposedly had, such as advanced

369
00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:44,399
Speaker 1: crystal laser weapons that they ultimately used to destroy Atlantis,

370
00:21:44,520 --> 00:21:46,440
Speaker 1: with the survivors fleeing to Egypt.

371
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:48,760
Speaker 3: Crystal laser weapons.

372
00:21:49,080 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it sounds remarkably like that old Atari

373
00:21:54,359 --> 00:21:57,200
Speaker 1: twenty six hundred game Atlantis. I don't know if anyone

374
00:21:57,280 --> 00:21:59,679
Speaker 1: out there actually played this, but I remember as a

375
00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:02,520
Speaker 1: kid seeing the commercials for it online and it was

376
00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:05,800
Speaker 1: kind of a scary commercial with a whole narrative structure

377
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:07,919
Speaker 1: going on how to do with that. I believe memory

378
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 1: serves an ongoing war between the Gorgons and the people

379
00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:15,280
Speaker 1: of Atlantis, and it was a great commercial. Look it

380
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:16,280
Speaker 1: up if you haven't seen.

381
00:22:16,119 --> 00:22:18,800
Speaker 3: It, you know. I kind of can't help but think

382
00:22:18,840 --> 00:22:23,200
Speaker 3: though all these ideas about ancient Egypt having advanced technology.

383
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,680
Speaker 3: In a way, they did have advanced technology, but they

384
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:30,159
Speaker 3: had advanced technology for the time in which they lived.

385
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:32,919
Speaker 3: Like you do not have to turn to bad standards

386
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:37,600
Speaker 3: of evidence. For examples of amazing technological achievements. In ancient Egypt,

387
00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:41,840
Speaker 3: they built the Pyramids, among you million tons of other things.

388
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:45,199
Speaker 3: That was not ancient aliens. That was extremely smart and

389
00:22:45,280 --> 00:22:50,560
Speaker 3: industrious people creating amazing technological achievements with a very limited

390
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:53,480
Speaker 3: set of tools compared to what's available to people today.

391
00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:56,880
Speaker 3: That is an amazing technological feat. It was just an

392
00:22:56,880 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 3: amazing technological feat for the time.

393
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:01,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean that's one of the tragedies

394
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:03,480
Speaker 1: about all of this is like when you when you

395
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: get wrapped up in say ancient alien discourse, you end

396
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: up reducing the importance of of of what people were

397
00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:14,399
Speaker 1: actually doing if you just attribute it to the gifts

398
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:17,520
Speaker 1: of the gods, the gifts of the alien visitors and

399
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:20,119
Speaker 1: so forth. Now, I want to stress that in this chapter,

400
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:22,160
Speaker 1: Fritz touches on a number of different names, and I'm

401
00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 1: not going to get into everybody here, but you know

402
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:28,240
Speaker 1: it's there. There are various writers and occasional outright con

403
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:31,200
Speaker 1: men that are engaged in the sort of work, and

404
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:34,320
Speaker 1: their work kind of feeds off each other. One of

405
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: the big ones, one of the big names, certainly an

406
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 1: ancient alien discourse is the work of Eric von Donakin,

407
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 1: who we've talked about on the show before because he

408
00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: was the author of Chariots of the Gods in nineteen

409
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:48,359
Speaker 1: sixty eight. I say it that way because the title

410
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 1: does have a question mark at the end. Always pronounce

411
00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:52,720
Speaker 1: the question mark.

412
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:54,879
Speaker 3: Like he's like kind of getting you with the elbow

413
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:56,880
Speaker 3: and winking while he says yeah.

414
00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned we went in and discussed this

415
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:06,000
Speaker 1: idea at length and the various criticisms to it. But

416
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:08,480
Speaker 1: even this idea like it was influenced by the writings

417
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 1: of HP Lovecraft and other weird writers of the early

418
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, by the way, also

419
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 1: wrote about tales related to Egyptian motifs and Egyptian oriented

420
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:24,119
Speaker 1: occultism and so forth, so you have a lot of

421
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:25,560
Speaker 1: these sources feeding into each other.

422
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 3: It's been years since we did the Eric Vondanikin episode,

423
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,359
Speaker 3: But am I remembering something about how he had like

424
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,639
Speaker 3: created the Chariots of the Gods theme park? Is that?

425
00:24:35,920 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 3: Am I losing my mind?

426
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:40,120
Speaker 1: No? No, there was Slash is a theme park. I'm

427
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: not sure off the top of my head, what's going

428
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: on with it? Right? Now, but like, that's how big

429
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:45,280
Speaker 1: this guy.

430
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 3: I want to flat earth six flags.

431
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:54,520
Speaker 1: Now. Fritz points out, though that early ancient alien discourse folks,

432
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: and even Vondnikin's original book don't actually reference Egypt all

433
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,680
Speaker 1: that much. So other individuals who kind of come in

434
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:07,159
Speaker 1: with the Egyptology alternative Egyptology view of everything, and that

435
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 1: gets you know, sucked into the whole concept. He points

436
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,680
Speaker 1: out one particular author, I believe this is a book

437
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty four from one zechariash Si Chen who

438
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:21,560
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty through twenty ten. This is apparently one

439
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 1: of the only serious competitors to von Danakan because the

440
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:27,399
Speaker 1: Vondanakin's books generated a lot of discussion, and you know,

441
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:29,440
Speaker 1: they're pretty popular for the time period. So a lot

442
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:32,719
Speaker 1: of other authors came in to try and cash in

443
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:39,479
Speaker 1: on ancient alien discourse. But this particular individual, Sich seems

444
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: to have been one of the more successful of those

445
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 1: to come in and try and get cash in on

446
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: everything here, and Fritz points out that he seems to

447
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:52,880
Speaker 1: have avoided a lot of the criticism that was reserved

448
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 1: for von Dannakin. So Vontanagan got big enough to where

449
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: like when people like Carl Sagan entered the chat, Vonda

450
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: Anakin's ideas are the one are the ones that Carl

451
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: Sagan is going to respond to. Carl Sagan doesn't have

452
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,479
Speaker 1: time to deal with everybody else in the genre.

453
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 3: And to be clear, Carl Sagan was not saying that

454
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 3: ancient aliens like were a viable explanation for the Pyramids

455
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 3: or anything. He as I recall, entered the discourse to

456
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 3: kind of say, well, if we're going to entertain this possibility,

457
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 3: we should have some standards of evidence, right, Like we

458
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 3: should lay out in advance what would we be looking

459
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 3: for instead of just like looking at what's out there

460
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:32,440
Speaker 3: and saying like, eh, that could be aliens.

461
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I thought Sagan has some great responses to it.

462
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,720
Speaker 1: They were not like one hundred percent shut it down,

463
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: dismissive of it as a concept, but we're but also

464
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:44,919
Speaker 1: reiterated that there are high standards for this, and if

465
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: you were looking for evidence, you would be looking for

466
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: very specific sorts of evidence and so forth. But again,

467
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 1: when Sagan's entering the conversation, when other critics are coming

468
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: in and dealing with what von Donigan's written about, especially

469
00:26:56,800 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: with that first book, they're not dealing with with the

470
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: themed content. Individuals like Sitchin apparently are ones who were

471
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: the ones to initially drag Egypt and ancient Egypt into

472
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: the scenario, and perhaps a lot of that Fritz Rights

473
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: seems to have maybe existed below the mainstream radar for

474
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: a while, you know, being just a part of the

475
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 1: stuff that is discussed in the fringe movements. And it's

476
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:24,920
Speaker 1: not until the nineteen nineties. He writes that we see

477
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: quote the penetration of highly speculative theories about ancient Egypt

478
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 1: into mainstream popular culture.

479
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 3: I think maybe the designation as highly speculative is a

480
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 3: good one, because sometimes I'm looking for the right blanket

481
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:42,199
Speaker 3: terminology to describe all these different types of explanations that

482
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:47,200
Speaker 3: we're talking about. They're not all necessarily like conspiracy theories.

483
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 3: They don't all necessarily have exactly the same content, But

484
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:52,919
Speaker 3: what they do seem to have in common is that

485
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:57,560
Speaker 3: they are highly speculative, meaning they are elaborating a lot

486
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 3: of explanatory narrative on on a very weak evidential basis.

487
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: So to be clear here, what apparently is going on

488
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:19,920
Speaker 1: at this time leading into the nineteen nineties, according to

489
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: the author here of Fritz is that under the surface

490
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,120
Speaker 1: of all this other talk about ancient aliens and so

491
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 1: forth and other paranormal ideas, there's this kind of growing

492
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 1: swell of alternative Egyptology, and then during the nineteen nineties

493
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: it begins to bubble up into the mainstream discourse. And

494
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: Fritz cite's two main reasons for this. One is the

495
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: approaching millennium and various ideas concerning the new millennium that's

496
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: about to be here. The second reason he brings up

497
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: is that there are just a number of new archaeological

498
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: discoveries that were taking place in Egypt that we're capturing

499
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 1: mainstream attention and inadvertently fueling the nonsense that again was

500
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: festering in the fringe.

501
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:10,120
Speaker 3: I see so like because for totally legitimate reasons, ancient

502
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:12,600
Speaker 3: Egypt might be popping up on the news, like you're

503
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 3: seeing it on TV in ways that you probably didn't

504
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 3: see it as much before. It's just sort of in

505
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 3: the air, and it is one more thing you could

506
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 3: attach highly speculative theories too.

507
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you have other individuals that are writing

508
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 1: more directly about it. It's popping up in the writings

509
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,719
Speaker 1: of Graham Hancock, for example, He also cites the X

510
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: files as being popular, though you have more expertise for

511
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:37,479
Speaker 1: the X files. I don't know the X files ever

512
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: actually had any ancient Egyptian themed content. I don't know

513
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:44,240
Speaker 1: if they ever went up against a mummy or anything.

514
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 3: I recall very little about that except well, actually, now

515
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 3: that I think about it, I think there may have

516
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 3: been a mummy episode that is remembered as one of

517
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 3: the worst episodes of the X Files ever. Unless that's

518
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 3: hold on, got to look it up now. Oh no,

519
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,719
Speaker 3: I see why my memory was confused here. Yeah, one

520
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 3: of the worst X Files episodes ever does concern a mummy.

521
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 3: But it's not an Egyptian mummy. It's a South American mummy.

522
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, even if the X Files are not directly

523
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:20,720
Speaker 1: contributing to alternative egyptology discourse, you can, I guess, look

524
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: at it as kind of like a sign that fringe

525
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: ideas were entering into the mainstream, at the very least

526
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: as entertainment. But then I guess sometimes entertainment has a

527
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 1: way of bleeding over into other things.

528
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 3: Don't drag the X files into this. The x files.

529
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 3: The X files are pure and holy they didn't do

530
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 3: anything wrong. That's a fictional show. It's okay.

531
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: But I guess the bigger thing that's going on here

532
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 1: that Fitz points out is that at the time academics

533
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: had largely ignored these trends, like academics in egyptology and

534
00:30:55,840 --> 00:31:00,959
Speaker 1: so forth, archaeologists and so forth. Yeah, they weren't venturing

535
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: into arguments against ancient alien discourse folks and so forth.

536
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: And that's sensible by and large because like, that's not

537
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:12,960
Speaker 1: what their work is, that's not what they have set

538
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 1: out to do with their work and their careers to

539
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: just respond to various highly speculative ideas about why things

540
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: appear the way they are.

541
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 3: Well, and it's often difficult to respond to highly speculative

542
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 3: ideas from an informed point of view because a lot

543
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 3: of times all you can just say is, like, there's

544
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 3: no reason to think all that you know, Like, the

545
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 3: claims of highly speculative theories are often not like the

546
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 3: kinds of tight, specific focused claims about specific pieces of

547
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 3: evidence that you can that you would be used to addressing,

548
00:31:47,000 --> 00:31:50,640
Speaker 3: say in an academic archaeology journal or something like that.

549
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 3: They're like these elaborations. They spend these wild narratives that

550
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 3: are kind of too big to even know where to

551
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 3: get a toe hole if you're trying to criticize them,

552
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 3: other than to just kind of say, like, well that

553
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 3: just sounds all made.

554
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: Up, yeah, Fritz Wright's quote, Academics generally avoid dealing with

555
00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: alternative scholars. This attitude is justified by the excuse that

556
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: debating alternative or fringe scholarship only gives it a false credibility.

557
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 1: Some consider debating speculative scholars as a dialogue of the death,

558
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: since the speculative ideas tend to be treated by their

559
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: adherents in a manner of religious faith rather than scientific inquiry,

560
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: while some academics just hold speculative ideas in contempt. Ignoring

561
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: the alternative Egyptologists did not, however, serve the academic Egyptologists well.

562
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: During the nineteen nineties, they found themselves marginalized in the

563
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: popular mind and put on the defense. So the argument

564
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,960
Speaker 1: here is that perhaps they did wait too long to

565
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: respond to a lot of these ideas that were welling

566
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: up into the mainstream, and he points out that it

567
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 1: was apparently wasn't until a pair of BBC Horizon documentary

568
00:32:56,200 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: specials titled Atlantis uncovered in Atlantis. Reborn weighed in and

569
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: offered a scathing rebuke of these ideas in the mainstream,

570
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 1: and this wasn't until nineteen ninety nine.

571
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 3: You know, I feel like this mirror is a pattern

572
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 3: that's still a problem with like highly speculative alternative ideas

573
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 3: of all sorts today because usually people who have real

574
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 3: expertise in the field are busy talking to each other

575
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 3: and they're kind of in a contained conversation space. Meanwhile,

576
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 3: people who are offering highly speculative ideas go straight to

577
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 3: the media into a popular audience.

578
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can understand too why I mean, thinking

579
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 1: that the pyramids were built by aliens? Does that necessarily

580
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: pose like a real threat to you know, at what

581
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 1: point do you do you actually make the call. It's like, Okay,

582
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: enough is enough. We need to say something about this.

583
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: We need to put together a documentary to dismiss this nonsense,

584
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: because it seems like for a long stretch of the

585
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: build up you can say like, well, this is dumb,

586
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 1: or this doesn't really match up with any actual work,

587
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: but that it's been conducted, any actual research or evidence,

588
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 1: but it's not hurting anybody.

589
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 3: You could say that and a lot of people do

590
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 3: say that, But I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if

591
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:18,040
Speaker 3: these supposedly harmless I mean, probably they are somewhat harmless

592
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 3: in themselves. Highly speculative theories or conspiracy theories sort of

593
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,760
Speaker 3: engender a pattern of thinking that can easily be used

594
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,720
Speaker 3: to foster incredibly destructive and dangerous ideas that are violent.

595
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:35,839
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think I think at this point, certainly this

596
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 1: day and age, I think most of us realize that

597
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: like the realm of conspiracy thinking is not just a

598
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 1: domain of like escapist ideas that are not hurting anybody.

599
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: There are plenty of harmful ideologies that are woven throughout

600
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: many of these branches of conspiracy thought.

601
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 3: Then again, I mean, I want to be realistic and

602
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 3: say I don't I don't know if you can really

603
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 3: say that if we had done a better job of

604
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 3: convincing people that aliens didn't build the pyramids, that they

605
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 3: wouldn't end up thinking, you know, some kind of violent

606
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 3: conspiracy theory. But you do have to wonder if just

607
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 3: sort of like ignoring and letting it pass when people

608
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:18,360
Speaker 3: are engaging in conspiracy thinking and these other domains just

609
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:21,760
Speaker 3: sort of like, let's that style of thought fester.

610
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's look at the evidence, And by

611
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 1: look at the evidence, I mean let's look at a

612
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 1: couple of examples. We are not setting out to look

613
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:36,280
Speaker 1: at all the evidence or alleged evidence for ancient Egyptian

614
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: advanced technology and chariots of the gods and so forth.

615
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:41,439
Speaker 1: They are just a couple of examples that I think

616
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:46,839
Speaker 1: match up with what we've been discussing about information data, images, etc.

617
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: That can be perplexing and that can certainly lead to

618
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: an interpretation that is again not based in expertise and

619
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: not based in like a wider body of evidence, but

620
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: are based in confirmation bias, and based in some sort

621
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:08,360
Speaker 1: of an alternative understanding of science and or history.

622
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 3: Okay, what you got?

623
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 1: So, did the ancient Egyptians have Apache helicopters?

624
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:16,800
Speaker 3: Gotta be yes?

625
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: Surely, No, We're we're gonna move forward with the spoilering

626
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: place that no, they did not. But there is an

627
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:28,280
Speaker 1: image that you will find, and you've probably seen online.

628
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: You see some hieroglyphics, and there is an image or

629
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 1: a character towards the top that, if we're being generous,

630
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a modern helicopter and next to

631
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: it is something that I guess kind of looks like

632
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: a space tank.

633
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 3: I mean, while we're doing this, let's not go all

634
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 3: out under the helicopter. There is an R two D

635
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 3: two and I don't know what you're saying, is a

636
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 3: tank that looks to me kind of like a MiG

637
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:52,760
Speaker 3: fighter jet.

638
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 1: Okay, all right.

639
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 3: We also got a get we have keeping up with

640
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 3: the R two D two theme. We have of Luke

641
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:01,920
Speaker 3: Skywalker's land speeder.

642
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 1: You see that one, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's that's what

643
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 1: I was kind of seeing as a tank. It does

644
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 1: look at the speeder as well. Yeah. And then of

645
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: course we have a we have a bug of some

646
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 1: sort as well. That's clearly a bug. But is it

647
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:13,800
Speaker 1: a giant bug?

648
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 3: Right?

649
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: You know, your your theory may vary.

650
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 2: Now.

651
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: One of the things about this image is a lot

652
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 1: of the places where you see it, they're not going

653
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 1: to be approaching it from a skeptical point of view. Uh,

654
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: and actually finding like good sources on this where someone's

655
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 1: just gonna come in and and tell you exactly what

656
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: you're looking at, are actually a little harder to come across.

657
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:35,960
Speaker 1: And I think this is where you get into the

658
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:41,240
Speaker 1: the problem of like experts in ancient Egypt and hieroglyphics

659
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: are not necessarily wasting their time weighing in on whether

660
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: ancient hieroglyphics show as a helicopter.

661
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 3: Right, So, I haven't checked, but I would guess that, like,

662
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 3: is this hieroglyphic a helicopter is not like the subject

663
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 3: of many Egyptology Journal articles.

664
00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:02,320
Speaker 1: Right right. But I was able to find, you know,

665
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: a few different sources that discuss it in a way

666
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 1: that I could I could get behind the image in question.

667
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 1: I've seen in a couple of places. It attributed to

668
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty seven photo by an American who is

669
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: visiting the Temple of Osiris in Abydos, Egypt. So it's

670
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 1: a it's a real photo of a real object of

671
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: real you know, etchings, and it's pretty clear, like there's

672
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:30,879
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where the photo quality and

673
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 1: the reality of the thing that is photographed these are

674
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:38,759
Speaker 1: not in question. But it's this interpretation of what you're

675
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:42,280
Speaker 1: looking at that's where you see these enormous leaps taken

676
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: where people are seeing bits of advanced technology. But fortunately

677
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 1: there is a very straightforward explanation for what we see here.

678
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: I found a couple of different discussions of this, but

679
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:58,399
Speaker 1: the one I'm going to lean on mostly is this

680
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:02,160
Speaker 1: was from an article that Asian historian Richard C. Carrier

681
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: wrote about back in nineteen ninety nine for The Skeptical

682
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:09,239
Speaker 1: Inquirer in an article titled flash Fox News reports that

683
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:13,799
Speaker 1: Aliens may have built the Pyramids of Egypt. As the

684
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 1: title suggests, this is about coverage at the time on

685
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,920
Speaker 1: Fox News. Again, this is nineteen ninety nine about alternative Egyptology,

686
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: and the broadcast included images of the alleged helicopter and

687
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: comparison images to modern Apache attack helicopters. So Carrier spoke

688
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:33,920
Speaker 1: to some Egyptologists for the article, and it seems to

689
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: have seems to have been sort of new pseudohistory to

690
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: some of them at the time. Again, this was daring

691
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,719
Speaker 1: that the very end of the nineteen nineties, so it

692
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:44,879
Speaker 1: seems like, you know, the subculture was bubbling up into

693
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: the mainstream quite a bit. He writes the following to

694
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: sum it all up, but what do the experts say

695
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: about this helicopter glyph? This will serve as an example

696
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 1: for all the rest. The helicopter, in fact, is the

697
00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: Avados palimpsest. A palimpsest is what is created when new

698
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:03,920
Speaker 1: writing is inscribed over old. In the case of papyri,

699
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: old inc is scraped off, but in the case of inscriptions,

700
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 1: plaster is added over the old inscription and a new

701
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: inscription is made. The image described as a helicopter is

702
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 1: well known to be the names of Rameses inscribed over

703
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: the names of his father, something Rameses was known to

704
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,879
Speaker 1: do quite frequently. A little bit of damage from time

705
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: and weathering has furthered the illusion of a helicopter. It

706
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:33,080
Speaker 1: basically comes down to this basic fact, though, that a

707
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 1: previous image, a previous inscription, was plastered over and replaced

708
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:38,520
Speaker 1: with another one, and then when stuff starts wearing away,

709
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 1: a sort of hybrid image emerges that doesn't mean anything,

710
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:48,360
Speaker 1: but that looks like something from our modern age, you know,

711
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: I guess it would be like it'd be like if

712
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: one billboard were plastered over another one, and then there's

713
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: a fierce storm and it tears part of the billboard away,

714
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: and then so you have a mix of the old

715
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:02,359
Speaker 1: billboard and the new billboard, and what you're left with

716
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: is just kind of confusing. But maybe it looks like

717
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 1: a monster. Maybe it looks like you know, what have you.

718
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: And by the way that the topic of palms is fascinating,

719
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:13,560
Speaker 1: there's a much older episode of Stuck to blow your

720
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:15,759
Speaker 1: mind that goes into it. But yeah, you get into

721
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,959
Speaker 1: this whole realm of you know, erased books just under

722
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 1: the surface of ancient tomes, and you know, sometimes they've

723
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 1: been on earthed. Sometimes you have to use you know,

724
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: modern technology to sort of see through the printed page

725
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 1: and see what was originally there. And you see it

726
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: in paintings and much more, and it can seem a

727
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: bit foreign to us, given how just disposable paper is.

728
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: And you know, you can rewrite files, you know, as

729
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: many times as you want. You can just set around

730
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: creating new documents and deleting them all day. But there

731
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: was a time when in order to erase document and

732
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: create new document, well that meant grabbing the plaster.

733
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 3: Okay, So this strikes me as a case that is

734
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 3: in the low information category you've been talking about in

735
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 3: multiple ways. So the original image is somewhat altered or

736
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:09,319
Speaker 3: degraded in the way that it's been photographed like it

737
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,880
Speaker 3: might be hard, especially if you're not familiar with ancient

738
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 3: Egyptian inscriptions to understand that what you're looking at is

739
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:22,320
Speaker 3: not even one single continuous drawing or piece of imagery,

740
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 3: but is instead a couple of things sort of bleeding

741
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 3: into each other. And then on top of that, there's

742
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 3: the low information condition of us looking at it without

743
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 3: being familiar with, say the way the name Rameses is

744
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 3: depicted in hieroglyphics.

745
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:39,359
Speaker 1: Yes, Now, the second example we're going to look at

746
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 1: here is also really fascinating, and this one is a

747
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:44,880
Speaker 1: lot in a way. In a way, this one is

748
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 1: a lot more clear, but is also even more cryptic

749
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:50,719
Speaker 1: and even harder to really understand. And you'll see what

750
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: I'm talking about as we roll into the discussion here.

751
00:42:53,840 --> 00:42:57,239
Speaker 1: But this concerns the so called Dindara Lights or the

752
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: Dindara Light. So these are a series of stone release

753
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: in the hawt Or temple in Dindera, Egypt. Now you

754
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: can look up images of this, and I've included one

755
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: of the images here for you to look at, Joe,

756
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: and they are quite captivating, and I mean, it's it's

757
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: almost unfair to throw people at this with sort of

758
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: alternative Egyptology in the back of their mind, because it's

759
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: going to make you lean into perhaps seeing things again

760
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 1: from not only a modern standboy point, which we can't

761
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:35,120
Speaker 1: help but do, but also from a standpoint of looking

762
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: for some sort of crazy advanced technology in the past.

763
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: So if you were looking at these just kind of

764
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:43,279
Speaker 1: out of context, but not with any specific expectations of

765
00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:46,919
Speaker 1: the advanced technology, I think you might guess that we're

766
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: looking at a couple of ancient Egyptian individuals who have

767
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:55,879
Speaker 1: giant eggplants, and those giant eggplants have giant snakes on them.

768
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: Would this would of course be be incorrect. This is

769
00:43:59,880 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 1: not exactly what we're looking at, but that's what it

770
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 1: kind of looks like to me.

771
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 3: I might have said, giant shields. I mean, they're holding

772
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 3: some of what looks like a really large flat object

773
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 3: on which a sort of slithering snake is depicted. But

774
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 3: of course the strange thing is that out of the

775
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:22,240
Speaker 3: bottoms of the shields there is coming some sort of line, which, again,

776
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 3: if you're playing into ancient technology thinking, you could say,

777
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 3: is that a power cord? Is that some kind of cable?

778
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, so there's this sense of plant to it. Yeah,

779
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: there's definitely a snake. There's no doubt about this snake.

780
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:38,800
Speaker 1: But then there's this this large sort of bulb or

781
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: or eggplant like shape to the thing. And so the

782
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 1: the alternative, the highly speculative hypothesis here that that once

783
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,720
Speaker 1: he's reflected in some of this you know, ancient alien

784
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 1: discourse and and and you know pseudohistories and pseudo scientific

785
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 1: ideas concerning ancient e are that well, what they are

786
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:06,760
Speaker 1: holding here are filament light bulbs or representations of filament

787
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: light bulbs.

788
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:11,320
Speaker 3: Okay, well, if you are familiar with incandescent light bulbs,

789
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,359
Speaker 3: you can absolutely see how somebody would make that comparison.

790
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 3: There is the shield or the eggplant shape looks like

791
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:21,280
Speaker 3: it could be a you know, a transparent glass tube.

792
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:25,839
Speaker 3: The snake depicted on it looks like it could be

793
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:30,360
Speaker 3: maybe looks like it could be the filament inside the bulb.

794
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 3: And then the sort of line there's like a sort

795
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 3: of flower looking thing at the base of the bulb,

796
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:39,239
Speaker 3: and you could imagine that is the socket or not

797
00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 3: the socket, what would you call it, the you know,

798
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 3: the metal part at the base of an incandescent light bulb.

799
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 3: And then the line extending away from the bottom. You

800
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 3: could say, okay, that looks like a power line. It

801
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 3: looks like, you know, whatever the electricity is going in through.

802
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the radical idea here would be that the

803
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:58,320
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians had mastery over electricity. They made light bulbs

804
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:00,879
Speaker 1: or I guess receive light bulbs from someone, They got

805
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: a you know, a monthly delivery from the aliens or something,

806
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,760
Speaker 1: and they wired up their various buildings with electric lights

807
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: of one sort or the other.

808
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 3: The aliens gave them highly inefficient incandescent light bulbs.

809
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:16,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, or I mean, when you get into the

810
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:20,359
Speaker 1: various arguments, they also they draw comparisons to you know,

811
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 1: sort of like early different variations of artificial lighting. So

812
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 1: I don't know, the exact model may vary, but the idea, yeah,

813
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 1: is that the ancient Egyptians had light bulbs. Now, actual

814
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:37,279
Speaker 1: experts who weigh in on this will we'll say, well, there,

815
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,480
Speaker 1: these are not light bulbs, obviously. What we're looking at

816
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 1: is a symbolic motif. And another huge important fact here

817
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: is that these are not illustrations or engravings that are

818
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:51,800
Speaker 1: occurring in isolation and out of context. Like, there's plenty

819
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:55,359
Speaker 1: of context, the most important being that this is a

820
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: temple of Hator. This is a god of ancient Egypt

821
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: who Geraldine Pinch in the book Egyptian Mythology describes as

822
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 1: a golden goddess that aided in childbirth, the rebirth of

823
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 1: the dead, and the renewal of the cosmos. She was

824
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: seemingly a complex deity with both destructive and beneficial attributes,

825
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 1: and she was commonly depicted as a beautiful woman with

826
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: a red solar disc between a pair of cow horns. Now,

827
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 1: she could be worshiped in a few different forms, but

828
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,719
Speaker 1: one of the main roles she has here is a mother,

829
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: and she is the mother of Horace, Uniter of the

830
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: Two Lands. Horace, of course, is a very important god

831
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:40,040
Speaker 1: in Egyptian mythology, the celestial falcon and the god of kings.

832
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: So here Horace is Harsmatus Uniter of the two Lands,

833
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:51,319
Speaker 1: and apparently in these images we're seeing representation of him

834
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:55,360
Speaker 1: in the primeval form of a serpent. In rebirth, he

835
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: is depicted emerging in the form of this serpent from

836
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: the lotus flower, which is in turn inside a boat,

837
00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: lining up with the concept of the solar god rays

838
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: solar barge.

839
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:10,920
Speaker 3: Oh okay, this is starting to make sense.

840
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,480
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, so like emerging from the lotus flower is

841
00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:17,279
Speaker 1: the serpent that is horse. Now you're probably wondering, what

842
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 1: about that light bulb, what about that eggplant? Well, this

843
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 1: is thought to be and I hope I'm pronouncing this

844
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: right a hen that's h n. And it may represent

845
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: the womb of the sky goddess nut or note. And

846
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:35,399
Speaker 1: this is a goddess that was associated with the fig

847
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: tree and also with cosmic motherhood. The image in question

848
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:43,760
Speaker 1: also entails the symbolism of the jed pillar with added

849
00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 1: arms coming out. So this is I mean, to my

850
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:49,359
Speaker 1: eyes like, this is way weirder. This is the far

851
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:53,399
Speaker 1: weirder helmet is this strange pillar looking thing that's sort

852
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:57,560
Speaker 1: of holding up one of the eggplant shapes and has

853
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: arms coming out like some sort of like are psychedelic muppet.

854
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 1: But this is also grounded in ancient Egyptian symbolism. You know,

855
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: it's about stability and you know, and holding up the

856
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 1: cosmos and so forth.

857
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 3: You could argue that this looks like a baseball bat

858
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 3: with several rings around it, and it has arms, it

859
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:21,759
Speaker 3: has two arms, and it's pushing on the so called

860
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:22,320
Speaker 3: light bulb.

861
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:24,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in the same way, that if we look

862
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:28,680
Speaker 1: at hieroglyphics, we're looking at at language that we have

863
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,920
Speaker 1: no frame of reference for. It's similar with with the

864
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 1: icons that we're seeing represented here. We have no unless

865
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:39,319
Speaker 1: we are trained in it. We have no frame of

866
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: context for what these symbols are and what they represent.

867
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 1: And all you can ultimately do is sort of like

868
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: try and take them at I guess, sort of base level,

869
00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: and then you can potentially lean into these elaborate explanations

870
00:49:53,560 --> 00:49:56,240
Speaker 1: for what you're seeing, and you know, you can imagine

871
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:58,439
Speaker 1: the what would occur if you were to take any

872
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 1: form of highly some art from the modern world and

873
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: try and understand what you're looking at. So anyway, yeah,

874
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 1: it's speaking of visual language that we probably are not

875
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 1: going to pick up on in the modern age again

876
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 1: unless we have the expertise and we've you know, we

877
00:50:16,239 --> 00:50:19,359
Speaker 1: are an egyptologist, et cetera, or it's been explained to us.

878
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: Because at the end of the day, what we're likely

879
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: looking at here is some representation of the rise of

880
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:28,760
Speaker 1: the sun and its journey through the night, though delivered

881
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: through religious ideas and symbolism of the time, and also

882
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: the specific theology of this particular deity.

883
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 3: Right, and it looks like a light bulb to us

884
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 3: rather than this ancient Egyptian artistic motif because we're used

885
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:45,160
Speaker 3: to seeing light bulbs, who were not used to seeing

886
00:50:45,160 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 3: this artistic motif. And if you happen to be familiar

887
00:50:47,680 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 3: with the right ancient Egyptian art you recognize it as Oh,

888
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 3: it's one of those.

889
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:57,719
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I've looked at particular book by archaeologist and

890
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:02,280
Speaker 1: author Kenneth L. Fetter on this matter. The book is Frauds,

891
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: Myths and Mysteries, Science and Pseudoscience and Archaeology, and he

892
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:09,840
Speaker 1: points out that these quote unquote lights a factor into

893
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: Eric von Donican's nineteen ninety six book The Eyes of

894
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:18,760
Speaker 1: the Sphinx, in which Vondnican argues that the only rational

895
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:21,840
Speaker 1: way that the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians could have worked

896
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:24,280
Speaker 1: in the dark confines of the Pyramids and other locations

897
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:30,520
Speaker 1: other structures without leaving telltale lamp black from burning lamps.

898
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: The only possible way this could be the case is

899
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: if they were using electric lights.

900
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 3: Air tight.

901
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 1: Now, Feeder points out that Egyptologists have a far less

902
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: imaginative explanation backed up by actual evidence, and that is

903
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:50,840
Speaker 1: that the ancient Egyptians used linen soaked in oil or

904
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,319
Speaker 1: animal fat and twisted into wicks. These wicks would have

905
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: burned quite brightly, and then with salt applied, this would

906
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 1: produce less smoke, which would produce less lampblack and they

907
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 1: would have yeah, they would have burned pretty brightly, bright

908
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:09,399
Speaker 1: enough to conduct their work, and they would also burn

909
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:11,879
Speaker 1: for a set amount of time that would apparently mark

910
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:16,800
Speaker 1: the length of an artisan where a worker's shift. And again,

911
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,320
Speaker 1: this is something we have context for, we have physical

912
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:23,560
Speaker 1: evidence for. It factors into our overall understanding of who

913
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians were and what their world was like.

914
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:29,919
Speaker 1: But if you go with a light bulb hypothesis, well

915
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:35,400
Speaker 1: you have no evidence because where are the examples of

916
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 1: the other light bulbs, the spent bulbs, Where's evidence of

917
00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: the bulb production facilities, the power sources, the wiring, et cetera.

918
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: I mean, it all just falls quickly apart. Instead, von

919
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:52,799
Speaker 1: Donikin apparently leaned on the thoroughly discredited hypothesis of the

920
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: bagdad battery as proof.

921
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:58,879
Speaker 3: This is yet another artifact that has been interpreted by

922
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:03,239
Speaker 3: some as electrical technology in the ancient world, but probably

923
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 3: was not.

924
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:09,680
Speaker 1: Right, and so the author here feter not von do Onic,

925
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: and sums up quote because prehistoric pictorial depictions and even

926
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: early written descriptions are sometimes indistinct or vague, and perhaps

927
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:22,280
Speaker 1: more important, because they are part of a different culture

928
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 1: and have a context not immediately apparent to those who

929
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: do not explore further. You can see or read anything

930
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:32,240
Speaker 1: you want into them, just as you can with ink blots.

931
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 1: And so he refers to this elsewhere in the book

932
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 1: as the ink block principle, which I think is a

933
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: good way of thinking about evidence of this nature.

934
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:45,719
Speaker 3: Now, one way in which I would distinguish this example

935
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 3: from many of the others is that this example does

936
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:53,680
Speaker 3: not seem as within the image itself as degraded in

937
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 3: quality or vague to me, at least in the like

938
00:53:57,160 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 3: the illustrations I see from books. It looks like, you know,

939
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,600
Speaker 3: we get a pretty clear picture of what the artwork,

940
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 3: whether at least the outlines and the artwork we're supposed

941
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 3: to be. But you're still, even though the picture is

942
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:12,279
Speaker 3: fairly sharp, in the low information zone, because you don't

943
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 3: have the context, the background knowledge to place what you're

944
00:54:16,080 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 3: looking at within its cultural milieu.

945
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we just don't have the symbolic language

946
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 1: at our disposal to necessarily look at this and understand

947
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 1: what's taking place. And again, I think this is this

948
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: is not something that's that that is unique to ancient

949
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:35,320
Speaker 1: Egyptian religious imagery. I think you could apply this to

950
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:38,960
Speaker 1: to various other examples of even contemporary religious imagery, where

951
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:41,319
Speaker 1: if you if you don't know what you're looking at, you're, yeah,

952
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: you're not going to understand the message of it, like

953
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:48,360
Speaker 1: what is being theologically relayed in this image, and you

954
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 1: have to fall back on either just like again, a

955
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:54,480
Speaker 1: very literal interpretation of what you're looking at, or dragging

956
00:54:54,520 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: in some sort of other belief system or some sort

957
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:00,520
Speaker 1: of other, you know, mode of understanding which may or

958
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: may not involve aliens.

959
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:06,640
Speaker 3: Another thing that I'm struck is sort of the general

960
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:11,879
Speaker 3: principle of thinking behind the Eric Vondanakan argument that Okay,

961
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:15,239
Speaker 3: they're working in the dark inside the pyramid chambers, and

962
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:17,160
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have been able to see what they were

963
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:21,200
Speaker 3: working on without leaving lampblack unless they had light bulbs.

964
00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 3: That seems to be a general style of argument used

965
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:25,960
Speaker 3: by like ancient aliens people. I mean the same thing

966
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:28,360
Speaker 3: is said about the construction of the pyramids. More generally,

967
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 3: it's like, I can't see how they could have done this,

968
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:34,799
Speaker 3: Therefore it must have been aliens with advanced technology. That

969
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 3: is a really poor way to reason. Instead, you could

970
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:41,359
Speaker 3: start by saying, like, well, what if instead of invoking

971
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:46,120
Speaker 3: entities that would radically reshape our way of thinking about

972
00:55:46,120 --> 00:55:48,719
Speaker 3: the world, and there is no independent evidence of what if?

973
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 3: Instead of that, we think that maybe they figured out

974
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:55,640
Speaker 3: a solution that you haven't thought of or you don't

975
00:55:55,680 --> 00:55:56,560
Speaker 3: have awareness of.

976
00:55:57,600 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I mean you would It would be understand

977
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,920
Speaker 1: if you didn't know about this whole adding salt to

978
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:07,799
Speaker 1: torches or lights as a way to decrease lampblack There's

979
00:56:07,840 --> 00:56:10,680
Speaker 1: so many things like that in life that would have

980
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: been a parent or known to individuals who depended on

981
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:19,680
Speaker 1: lamp technology or fire based illumination technology as opposed to

982
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:22,319
Speaker 1: the mode we're familiar with and the mode that we

983
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 1: then potentially read into these ancient images.

984
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would just say be careful about making the

985
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:31,239
Speaker 3: move of I can't understand how someone could have done

986
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:35,560
Speaker 3: X two. Therefore they must have relied upon powers that

987
00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 3: are extraordinary, and we have no other independent evidence.

988
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: Of I'm reminded of various time travel movies that we've

989
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:46,880
Speaker 1: discussed or looked at on weird house cinema, where you

990
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: have some sort of time traveler from the past going

991
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,520
Speaker 1: into the future and they are and they may not

992
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:54,839
Speaker 1: be time traveling, perhaps they're frozen, etc. You know. Well,

993
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:58,160
Speaker 1: a man out of time wakes up and they're trying

994
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:01,799
Speaker 1: to understand our advanced contemporary technology. They might look at

995
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:04,239
Speaker 1: a TV and they're like, they shrunk a person down

996
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:06,279
Speaker 1: and put him in a tiny box, and you know,

997
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:08,640
Speaker 1: and this is often played up for comedy, but it's

998
00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 1: not that different from the sort of you know, you

999
00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:18,000
Speaker 1: know what you can consider ridiculous analysis of past technology

1000
00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:22,960
Speaker 1: where instead of you know, leaning on you know, the

1001
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:25,920
Speaker 1: actual context of the thing and what they're capable of,

1002
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: you're going to this extreme model that you can't possibly

1003
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: explain with any degree of accuracy.

1004
00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 3: That's an amazing analogy. Actually, we are the unfrozen caveman

1005
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:39,360
Speaker 3: lawyer in reverse when we look at the ancient world.

1006
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 2: You know.

1007
00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 3: So he comes up and says, I am but a

1008
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:44,400
Speaker 3: simple caveman. When I get into an airplane, I think,

1009
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 3: is this some giant bird? But we are doing the

1010
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:50,480
Speaker 3: same thing. We look at an ancient inscription and say,

1011
00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:52,919
Speaker 3: when I look at an inscription of a bird, I think,

1012
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:54,600
Speaker 3: is this an attack helicopter?

1013
00:57:55,360 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 1: Exactly? All right, Well, that's perfect. I think we have

1014
00:57:57,640 --> 00:57:59,640
Speaker 1: to leave it at that. I think that that puts

1015
00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 1: a nice cap on it. But you know, were perfectly

1016
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 1: happy to continue talking about this particular topic or this

1017
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,520
Speaker 1: sort of thing in general if nothing else in future

1018
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: listener Mail episode. So write in let us know what

1019
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:16,680
Speaker 1: your thoughts are on egyptology, alternative egyptology and so forth,

1020
00:58:17,080 --> 00:58:19,280
Speaker 1: or just in general, if there are other examples of

1021
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:23,680
Speaker 1: this sort of data, this sort of imagery, etc. That

1022
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: you know is difficult for the average modern viewer to

1023
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:32,480
Speaker 1: understand and then lends itself well to some sort of

1024
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:38,720
Speaker 1: paranormal or alternative or conspiracy explanation. Just a reminder that

1025
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:41,880
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your minds Core episodes published on Tuesdays

1026
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:44,320
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.

1027
00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:47,640
Speaker 1: We have listener Mail on Monday, short Form Artifactor, Monster

1028
00:58:47,680 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 1: Effect on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set aside most

1029
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:52,200
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on

1030
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:53,800
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema.

1031
00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If

1032
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with

1033
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:00,920
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any there, to suggest a

1034
00:59:00,960 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

1035
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1036
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:14,880
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1037
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1038
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:20,760
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1039
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:37,680
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.