Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Our imaginations are drawn
Speaker 2: to the unknown, whether that's the open expanse of the
Speaker 2: night sky or the deepest depths of the ocean. We're
Speaker 2: primed to wonder what secret realms lie just beyond our
Speaker 2: comfort zone. Those realms are the source of some of
Speaker 2: our most potent myths and stories, and few places have
Speaker 2: the same enduring mystery as a cave or a well.
Speaker 2: It's like a portal into the innards of the planet.
Speaker 2: Will refreshing water bubble up from a fissure in the
Speaker 2: earth or will it be hot lava? Anything seems possible.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen eighties, a curious story emerged from the
Speaker 2: frozen reaches of Siberia. People claimed that a Russian research
Speaker 2: expedition had made a terrifying discovery. They had drilled a
Speaker 2: whole nine miles deep, discovering a strange, hollow pocket of air. Intrigued,
Speaker 2: the diggers lowered a heat resistant microphone down into the depths,
Speaker 2: and that microphone picked up sounds of agonized screaming, a
Speaker 2: chorus of voices wailing in pain. Basically, the reports claimed
Speaker 2: that Soviet Russia had discovered a portal to Hell. This was,
Speaker 2: of course inaccurate. It was an urban legend spread by
Speaker 2: evangelical Christians to credulous tabloid newspapers. The actual story was
Speaker 2: far more ordinary. There was a hole that deep in
Speaker 2: the Cola Peninsula, but not Siberia, and it produced no
Speaker 2: such screams. The inner layers of the Earth are strange
Speaker 2: and unsettling, but not satanic as suggested by the tabloids.
Speaker 2: The urban legend labeled the story as the well to Hell,
Speaker 2: and even without the supernatural element, it's an impressive achievement.
Speaker 2: It took the Soviet Union twenty years to dig that deep,
Speaker 2: a mission inspired by the global competition of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: a sort of inverse space race. Now the borehole can
Speaker 2: be used to sample the Earth's mantle and inspire real
Speaker 2: geological study. Not a bad end result for an urban legend.
Speaker 2: But this is not the only well to Hell on
Speaker 2: planet Earth. In fact, it wasn't even the first. The
Speaker 2: other is much older and not man made. Viewed from
Speaker 2: a bird's eye view, it's a big black hole in
Speaker 2: the Middle East.
Speaker 1: Ninety eight feet across.
Speaker 2: The Well of Barhut lies in the eastern corner of Yemen,
Speaker 2: and for a millennia it was a fixation of the
Speaker 2: local imagination. No tabloid have ever claimed that they heard
Speaker 2: screaming from within its depths, but it still earned the
Speaker 2: nickname the Well of Hell, and locals were wary of
Speaker 2: venturing near it for a very long time. The stories
Speaker 2: were first written down sometime around the seventh century, although
Speaker 2: they're likely much older than that. They tell various accounts
Speaker 2: of the well's origin and purpose. Some ancient king perhaps
Speaker 2: carved it out of the earth to hide his treasure. However,
Speaker 2: the most enduring theory is that it's a prison to
Speaker 2: contain scores of evil gin known as Ephrit, and Aphritz
Speaker 2: is many things in Islamic tradition, a shape shifter, a demon,
Speaker 2: a trickster spirit. They're the gin who have chosen to
Speaker 2: pursue evil and mischief, so naturally, local imagination filled the
Speaker 2: Well of.
Speaker 1: Barhut with them.
Speaker 2: The prophet Muhammad even supposedly proclaimed that the water in
Speaker 2: the well of Barhut is the worst water on the
Speaker 2: face of the earth. It would be poisonous to drink.
Speaker 2: Eventually people tested this theory. Many amateur cavers entered Barhut
Speaker 2: over the years, but it wasn't until twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: that an expedition actually reached the bottom. As villagers gathered
Speaker 2: around to watch, a team of professional cavers secured ropes
Speaker 2: and repelled into the Well of Hell. They descended almost
Speaker 2: four hundred feet into the earth, reaching the boom. What
Speaker 2: they found wasn't gin, but waterfalls, cave pearls, and a
Speaker 2: unique ecosystem that included birds, toads, lizards, and strange translucent snakes.
Speaker 2: The water isn't poisonous, but quite fresh. When the team
Speaker 2: came back to the surface, they showed pictures to the
Speaker 2: locals and brought up the infamous cave water to sample.
Speaker 2: After all those stories and folk myths, I can only
Speaker 2: imagine what this must have been.
Speaker 1: Like to witness.
Speaker 2: It's tempting to see science as a force that eradicates
Speaker 2: mystery from the world, But the Well of Barhut is
Speaker 2: a good example of how one mystery can be replaced
Speaker 2: with another. The formation of a strange and miraculous biome underground,
Speaker 2: a pocket sized world just beneath the surface.
Speaker 1: Of our own.
Speaker 2: And it's fair to say that is certainly a more
Speaker 2: inspiring discovery than a gateway to hell. William Watt huddled
Speaker 2: in his four post bed, trembling as the wind howled outside.
Speaker 2: At seventy four years old. The layered of Scalehouse had
Speaker 2: seen his share of storms. Bad weather was a fact
Speaker 2: of life on the Orkney Islands, where his family had
Speaker 2: lived for generations. The archipelago lay ten miles off the
Speaker 2: coast of Mainland Scotland, exposed to the relentless fury of
Speaker 2: the North Atlantic. Over centuries, wind and waves have shaped
Speaker 2: the islands, carving cliffs and shifting sand dunes, constantly remaking
Speaker 2: the landscape. Watt had lived through more storms than he
Speaker 2: could count, but this tempest put them all to shame.
Speaker 2: It struck in the winter of eighteen fifty, and it
Speaker 2: battered the island for days. Rain lashed the stone walls
Speaker 2: of Scalehouse, rattling its windows with such ferocity that Watt
Speaker 2: feared they would shatter. He lay awake, listening to the
Speaker 2: roof grown, praying that his home would still be standing
Speaker 2: when the storm passed. By morning it was over, Watt stepped,
Speaker 2: blinking out into the sunshine, bracing himself for what he
Speaker 2: might find. The destruction was worse than he feared. Roofs
Speaker 2: torn from cottages, farmland flattened, boats scattered and strewn across
Speaker 2: the shore. The storm had claimed the lives of some
Speaker 2: two hundred people, many of them were fishermen, their bodies
Speaker 2: lost to the waves. And yet, as what trudged toward
Speaker 2: the Bay of Scale, something else caught his eye. A
Speaker 2: low stone wall jutted up from the sand, its precise,
Speaker 2: stacked formation too deliberate to be natural. This wasn't more
Speaker 2: damage from the storm, but something the storm had uncovered. Curious,
Speaker 2: Watts and a few of his farm hands began to dig.
Speaker 2: What they discovered astounded them. Beneath the sand lay a
Speaker 2: series of interconnected dwellings built with large flat stones. Inside
Speaker 2: each one, Watt found evidence of a sophisticated society. There
Speaker 2: was stone furniture, tools, and jewelry, even artwork. The more
Speaker 2: he unearthed, the more he realized these structures weren't medieval
Speaker 2: or even Roman. They weren't hundreds of years old, but thousands.
Speaker 2: Archaeologists believed that the site known today as Scarabray was
Speaker 2: a thriving pastoral village around three thy two hundred BC.
Speaker 2: That means it was built centuries before Stonehenge or the
Speaker 2: Great Pyramids of Egypt. It's one of the oldest Neolithic
Speaker 2: settlements in Western Europe, Neolithic, meaning that it dates back
Speaker 2: to the Late Stone Age, and yet, thanks to the
Speaker 2: fact that it was buried in sand for five thousand years,
Speaker 2: it's remarkably well preserved. The village consisted of at least
Speaker 2: eight houses, constructed a flagstone sourced from the nearby area.
Speaker 2: They were connected by a labyrinth of stone tunnels so
Speaker 2: that the inhabitants didn't have to brave the elements to
Speaker 2: visit one another. There were no windows, which meant that
Speaker 2: the interiors were dark and smoky, lit by large central hearts.
Speaker 2: The dwellings were covered in a protective insulating mixture of
Speaker 2: dung ash, animal bone, and other debris. Grass probably grew
Speaker 2: over this top layer, camouflaging the village from prying eyes.
Speaker 2: Any seafarers who happened to pass spy would have only
Speaker 2: seen a cluster of hills, and considering how long ago
Speaker 2: they lived, the people of Scarabray possessed remarkable inventions. Many
Speaker 2: of the homes contained a waterproof stone box that might
Speaker 2: have been used to store live seafood. They even had
Speaker 2: a primitive sewer drain and the world's earliest known indoor toilets,
Speaker 2: three thousand years before the Roman latrines would be built.
Speaker 2: But for all the site can tell us about the past,
Speaker 2: it still holds countless mysteries. The people who lived at
Speaker 2: Scarabray didn't keep written records, so much of what we
Speaker 2: know about them is cobbled together from inferences and just
Speaker 2: best guesses. And one of those mysteries is how seven
Speaker 2: separated from the other structures. It's the only building at
Speaker 2: Scarabray where the door is barred from the outside. Anthropologists
Speaker 2: theorized that it might have been used as a jail,
Speaker 2: or possibly for some kind of ritual ceremony.
Speaker 1: But the real mystery the one.
Speaker 2: That's puzzled experts, since what discovered the site is where
Speaker 2: everyone went. It seems that Scarabray was abruptly abandoned around
Speaker 2: twenty five hundred BC. To this day, no one knows why.
Speaker 2: There's no evidence of weapons or unburied human remains at
Speaker 2: the site, so it doesn't seem like the inhabitants were
Speaker 2: driven off by invaders. It's possible they fled to escape
Speaker 2: a storm just like the one that uncovered the village,
Speaker 2: or they simply might have relocated somewhere with better weather. Today,
Speaker 2: Scarbray is a World Heritage Site visited by thousands of
Speaker 2: tourists each year. You can go yourself, weather permitting, and
Speaker 2: get a rare glimpse into the lives of Stone Age humans,
Speaker 2: but you better hurry. It might not be there much longer.
Speaker 2: Experts worry that due to climate change, the site is
Speaker 2: at risk of being lost forever. As the sea levels rise,
Speaker 2: chances increased that a powerful storm like the one experienced
Speaker 2: by William Watt could wipe Scarabray off the face of
Speaker 2: the Earth, and to lose it like that would be
Speaker 2: both ironic and deeply tragic. Scar Obray was preserved and
Speaker 2: hidden by nature for over five thousand years, and if
Speaker 2: we're not careful, it could all be gone in an instant.
Speaker 2: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 2: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 2: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 2: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 2: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 2: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 2: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 2: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.