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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. In the past two

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Speaker 3: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we've been talking

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Speaker 3: about a couple of famous, supposedly anomalous underwater images, weird,

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Speaker 3: spooky looking photographs and images produced by sonar of objects

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Speaker 3: on the ocean floor, which, to observers with the right predisposition,

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Speaker 3: seemed like compelling evidence of alien visitation of Earth, or

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Speaker 3: ancient technology of lost civilizations, or something else in that

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Speaker 3: narrative space. And in a way, I think it's kind

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Speaker 3: of telling that you look at an object and say, well,

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Speaker 3: this could be aliens, or it could be atlantis. It's

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Speaker 3: one of the two or both.

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Speaker 2: You can have both sometimes yeah.

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Speaker 3: I guess you could. But anyway, explanation referring to explanations

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Speaker 3: that are big, exciting, mind rending explanations that would change

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Speaker 3: everything we think we know about the world and about

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Speaker 3: the history of life on Earth. Today's episode is not

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Speaker 3: a strict like Part three or anything, but we are

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Speaker 3: going to be continuing the theme, so I thought it

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Speaker 3: would be good to start off with a recap of

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Speaker 3: what we've talked about in the last couple of episodes,

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Speaker 3: though today we're going to be taking it in a

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Speaker 3: different direction. So what's the theme. Well, to start with,

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Speaker 3: I'll do a brief review of the things we talked

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Speaker 3: about in the last two episodes. One object was something

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Speaker 3: that was photographed in the nineteen sixties and known in

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Speaker 3: the UFO literature as the el tanin antenna. It looks

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Speaker 3: to the untrained observer like some kind of antenna, some

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Speaker 3: kind of receiver, you know. They called it, I think

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Speaker 3: a microwave aerial or something in some of the early

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Speaker 3: articles on it. But actually once people with the right

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Speaker 3: background of marine biolology knowledge looked at this photo, they

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Speaker 3: identified it with near certainty as a species of carnivorous

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Speaker 3: sponge that lives on the bottom of the ocean. The

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Speaker 3: other object that we talked about in the second of

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Speaker 3: those two episodes was captured on fuzzy sonar images by

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Speaker 3: treasure hunters and salvage divers in twenty eleven, and it

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Speaker 3: has been referred to in the media as the Baltic

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Speaker 3: Sea anomaly because it was supposedly somewhere on the floor

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Speaker 3: of the Northern Baltic Sea and hidden knowledge. Enthusiasts called

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Speaker 3: it everything from a crashed flying saucer to a monument

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Speaker 3: built by the civilization of Atlantis, and in this case

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Speaker 3: a positive idea is slightly more difficult than it is

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Speaker 3: in the case of the Eltanan antenna, which is almost

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Speaker 3: definitely the sponge, But numerous experts have commented that this

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Speaker 3: is most likely just an interesting looking geologic formation, in

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Speaker 3: other words, a big mass of rock that may be

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Speaker 3: a result of the freezing and thawing of glaciers. But

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Speaker 3: ultimately we don't know for sure, and so it's kind

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Speaker 3: of interesting that in both cases, the story goes that

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Speaker 3: someone captured a fuzzy or low resolution image of something

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Speaker 3: that looked weird and to some extent, looked intuitively unnatural

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Speaker 3: or out of place. That image was then published to

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Speaker 3: a lay audience that had no background knowledge to help

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Speaker 3: them understand what they were looking at, and then some

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Speaker 3: observers concluded that since the object looked unusual, unnatural, or

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Speaker 3: out of place, it must be a piece of anomalist

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Speaker 3: technology deposited by aliens or time travelers, or a past

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Speaker 3: human civilization about which all knowledge has been erased. However,

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Speaker 3: in both cases, the more information entered into the picture,

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Speaker 3: the more it seemed like these anomalies were probably just

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Speaker 3: weird looking natural phenomena like animals or rocks. And so,

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Speaker 3: while it's always important to keep an open mind, you

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Speaker 3: want to keep your mind open to good evidence if

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Speaker 3: it were to age of big and worldview changing discoveries,

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Speaker 3: it is at the same time important not to let

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Speaker 3: emotional excitement guide your reasoning. And one reason to be

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Speaker 3: skeptical about putting something that looks weird and out of

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Speaker 3: place into the aliens or atlantis column is that if

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Speaker 3: you follow these kinds of stories long enough, you really

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Speaker 3: start to see a trend. And that trend is the

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Speaker 3: more information we have to inform our judgment, the less

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Speaker 3: it seems like aliens. So the cases where a piece

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Speaker 3: of evidence like a photograph or a video, remains unexplainable

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Speaker 3: and thus still possibly aliens, those tend to be the

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Speaker 3: cases where there are notable deficits of information, and these

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Speaker 3: could be deficits within the evidence itself, like the picture

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Speaker 3: or the video is very grainy and low resolution, so

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Speaker 3: it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at, and

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Speaker 3: you kind of just have to shrug and say, I

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Speaker 3: don't know, it looks weird, hard to say what it is.

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Speaker 3: Or the information deficit could be in the person or

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Speaker 3: community that is assessing the evidence. It could be in us.

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Speaker 3: For example, most of us have a lack of background

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Speaker 3: knowledge about what sponges on the ocean floor look like,

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Speaker 3: or about what kinds of patterns can be found in

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Speaker 3: natural rock formations, and so information deficits kind of keep

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Speaker 3: the mystery alive. Meanwhile, the converse also seems true. The

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Speaker 3: more information there is, the more likely it becomes that

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Speaker 3: the object gets pinned down to an explanation from within

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Speaker 3: the range of known causes. So you get a higher

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Speaker 3: resolution video, or you get new videos of the same thing,

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Speaker 3: maybe an additional angle, better light conditions, more experience or

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Speaker 3: background knowledge with which to judge the video or photo,

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Speaker 3: and oh okay, in these cases it's a milar balloon

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Speaker 3: or oh I see that's a star, or that's an airplane.

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Speaker 3: Rob Actually, another excellent example that you brought up in

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Speaker 3: the last episode was the so called face on Mars.

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Speaker 3: You know this was it's a wonderful photo, like I

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Speaker 3: love the face on Mars, but this was done in

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Speaker 3: by higher resolution photography.

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Speaker 2: Done in to a certain extent. But like some of

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Speaker 2: these other images, the face of Mars still remains this

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Speaker 2: image that's kind of an article of faith to some

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Speaker 2: you know, or at least this kind of totem of

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Speaker 2: the paranormal and the potentially you know, cosmic, And I

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Speaker 2: guess it is still certainly a testament to our ability

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Speaker 2: to see ourselves in anything.

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Speaker 3: Well exactly. And I wouldn't wish, by the way, that

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Speaker 3: we could not read beauty and meaning into I don't know,

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Speaker 3: things that might on their own merits not necessarily shout

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Speaker 3: out to be meaningful, like a rock doesn't necessarily say

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Speaker 3: that it has meaning, but you can see faces in it,

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Speaker 3: and it can make you feel all kinds of things.

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Speaker 3: This is like the basis of all art. Yeah, But

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Speaker 3: when it comes to looking for explanations of things in

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Speaker 3: the world, this pattern just pops up again and again

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Speaker 3: and again. If the picture stays fuzzy, it still might

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Speaker 3: be aliens, or it still might be atlantis. But if

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Speaker 3: you're able to sharpen the focus or to have more

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Speaker 3: background knowledge when you're assessing it, it's almost definitely not aliens.

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Speaker 3: Then that's when you realize it's a balloon. And this

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Speaker 3: doesn't mean we will never discover good evidence of alien

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Speaker 3: visitation of Earth or anything, or of you know, maybe

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Speaker 3: some big discovery about something previously unknown about the ancient world.

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Speaker 3: That's always possible. But I think if you follow these stories,

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Speaker 3: it's sort of impossible not to notice the trend, and

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Speaker 3: awareness of the trend should put us on guard when

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Speaker 3: new pieces of evidence bubble up from the low information

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Speaker 3: or low resolution zone. So today we wanted to look

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Speaker 3: at some similar trends, not in underwater imagery, but in

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Speaker 3: imagery related to another domain that can often appear in

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Speaker 3: degraded or low resis form and be kind of put

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Speaker 3: cold in front of people who don't have contextual background

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Speaker 3: knowledge to understand what we're looking at. And this is

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Speaker 3: artifacts from ancient history.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think examples like this can be at times

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Speaker 2: a little harder for us to wrap our heads around,

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Speaker 2: especially if we are more inclined to sort of rally

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Speaker 2: behind an outside idea about what we're looking at, because

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Speaker 2: in some of these other examples of n amalists, data,

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Speaker 2: anomalist photography, et cetera, there's often maybe a sense of

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Speaker 2: kind of like a a rabbit duck illusion scenario, you know,

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Speaker 2: or one of these, you know, one of these optical

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Speaker 2: illusions where someone shows it to you and they say, hey,

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Speaker 2: do you see a duck or a rabbit and you say, well,

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Speaker 2: I see a rabbit. I don't see a duck at all.

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Speaker 2: And then someone says, well, look, i'll show you, and

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Speaker 2: you show show them the parts of the duck, and

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Speaker 2: they're like, okay, now I can see it both ways.

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Speaker 2: It can maybe be a little bit harder if in

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Speaker 2: order to truly see it both ways, you have to say,

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Speaker 2: understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. So, like one of the examples

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna touch on here is one where we absolutely

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Speaker 2: know what it is and we absolutely know what it's not,

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Speaker 2: and yet even you know, reading the explanation, you know,

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Speaker 2: hearing from experts about it, you know, it can still

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Speaker 2: be difficult. It's difficult for me to see exactly what

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Speaker 2: we're talking about there, and it's actually easier for me

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Speaker 2: to sort of lean in to the ridiculous explanation for

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Speaker 2: what appears to be in front of us. So we'll

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Speaker 2: get to this in a second, but first I just

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Speaker 2: want to talk in general about the overarching theme of

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Speaker 2: egypt Doomania. Now Egyptomania is more often used to refer

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Speaker 2: specifically to nineteenth century European fascination with all things Egypt

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Speaker 2: during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, but it can also generally be

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Speaker 2: leveled at various points in time when various cultures have

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Speaker 2: pursued sued an interest in ancient Egyptian civilization and culture.

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Speaker 2: And of course this general interest is irresistible because we've

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Speaker 2: touched on many times in the show. I'm ancient Egyptian civilization,

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Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian culture and mythology. These are fascinating.

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Speaker 3: Topics, absolutely, Yeah, a beautiful entrancing and not just to

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Speaker 3: people in the modern world. I mean, something I've read

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Speaker 3: before is that people in the world that still appears

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Speaker 3: as the ancient world to us looked back to the

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Speaker 3: even more ancient Egyptian civilization and they were fascinated by it.

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Speaker 3: There were there were ancient Greco Romans who had a

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Speaker 3: kind of Egyptomania.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I think we've we've mentioned the sort of

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Speaker 2: mind blowing fact before. You know that the ancient Romans

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Speaker 2: were greatly intrigued by ancient Egypt, which was already as

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Speaker 2: ancient to them as the Romans are to us.

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Speaker 3: Right, So at the time of Caesar Augustus, ancient Egyptian

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Speaker 3: civilization was thousands of years old.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And of course we've touched before on the

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Speaker 2: ancient wonders of the world. You know, the Pyramids, the

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Speaker 2: Great Pyramids were certainly on that list, and those still

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Speaker 2: remain some of the most enigmatic man made structures on

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Speaker 2: the planet, and we still don't know everything there is

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Speaker 2: to know about them. So Egyptology remains a living field

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Speaker 2: of study. Now. I was looking at a really, really

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Speaker 2: good book about this that I highly recommend. It's from

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Speaker 2: Ronald H. Fritz, titled Egyptomania, and in the book, the

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Speaker 2: author discusses various forms of Egyptomania over the ages, from

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Speaker 2: the ancient Hebrews, from Greeks and Romans to European models.

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Speaker 2: There's a whole section on like fiction and gets into movies.

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Speaker 2: He also has a great chapter on Afrocentrist movements that

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Speaker 2: engage in Egyptomania, and he drives home that just many

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Speaker 2: different peoples across different times have attempted to imagine and

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Speaker 2: even remake the ancient Egyptians in their own image, to

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Speaker 2: enhance their own worldview, their own their own ideology, etc.

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Speaker 2: And the energy of this exercise ranges from just merely

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Speaker 2: attempting to understand a fascinating time in people. I mean,

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Speaker 2: that's one of our main tools is to think about

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Speaker 2: even people from the distant past in different lands, to

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Speaker 2: try and imagine what it would be like to be them.

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Speaker 2: But on the other end of the spectrum you get

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Speaker 2: into just outright pseudohistory, pseudoscience, and just everything else you

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Speaker 2: might expect to encounter on the fringes.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, there's an interesting duality that comes from trying

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Speaker 3: to see yourself and imagine people like you and other

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Speaker 3: times and other civilizations, because of course there probably is

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Speaker 3: something that all people at all times kind of have

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Speaker 3: in common. There is a common human experience, and you

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Speaker 3: can try to imagine what it would have been like

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Speaker 3: to live in ancient Egypt. But there's a possibility that

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Speaker 3: in doing so, you kind of lull yourself into the

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Speaker 3: false belief that you can say, look at ancient Egyptian

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Speaker 3: art or look at ancient Egyptian artifacts and just intuitively

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Speaker 3: identify what you're looking at, when in fact, you would

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Speaker 3: probably need some very specific cultural knowledge to understand what

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Speaker 3: you're looking at.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of this imagery getting right into

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Speaker 2: what we're talking about here is the kind of stuff

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Speaker 2: that can be mysterious enough, that can seem cryptic enough

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Speaker 2: to folks who don't know what they're looking at that

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Speaker 2: you can apply other ideas modern ideas to them. You know,

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Speaker 2: like you just read a book about UFOs. Well, go

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Speaker 2: look at these these images without any context, and you

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Speaker 2: may see UFO related ideas. There. Read a book about

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Speaker 2: the bicameral mind and start looking at some of these images. Well,

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Speaker 2: you might have some alarming ideas and some interesting interpretations

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Speaker 2: of what you see as well.

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Speaker 3: Right, we read the world through the lenses that are

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Speaker 3: available to us, and very often the lenses that are

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Speaker 3: available to us sort of, what's the top lens on

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Speaker 3: the stack is whatever you've recently been thinking about.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, not to say that, you know, fresh eyes and

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Speaker 2: fresh perspectives are not potentially important in reevaluating what we

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Speaker 2: know and what we think we know. But oftentimes, when

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Speaker 2: there is a particular preconceived notion in mind, you're not

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Speaker 2: necessarily checking back in with the experts to see if

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Speaker 2: this radical new theory matches up with the old school interpretation, etc.

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Speaker 2: Certainly when we get into fringe ideas. So anyway, there's

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Speaker 2: a long history of Gyptomania in Western magic and occultism

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Speaker 2: continues to play into modern ideas of magic and ocultism,

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Speaker 2: but also modern branches of fringe ideas concerning UFOs, ancient

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Speaker 2: alien discourse, which of course we've discussed on the show

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Speaker 2: in the past, and other paranormal concepts and yeah, so

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Speaker 2: it's no surprise that various examples of iconography, archaeological remnants,

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Speaker 2: and so forth that are not located on the bottom

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Speaker 2: of the sea still end up speaking to us across

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Speaker 2: time and culture in a way that to inexpert eyes

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Speaker 2: or eyes seeking only confirmation of the paranormal examples of

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Speaker 2: ancient technology and so forth, you know they're going to

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Speaker 2: see that in these images. So in just a few

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Speaker 2: minutes we'll get to a couple I think of interesting

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Speaker 2: examples of this. But going back to the book Egyptomania,

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Speaker 2: Fritz points out that there are other not necessarily alien

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Speaker 2: fringe ideas that pre exists UFO fascination that already insisted

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Speaker 2: that ancient Egypt was, for instance, much older than mainstream

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Speaker 2: historians believe today some of these pushed back to like

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Speaker 2: ten thousand BC or earlier, as opposed to the accepted

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Speaker 2: view that the Archaic Age stretches five thousand to three

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Speaker 2: thousand BC, with the Old Kingdom coming in at around

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Speaker 2: three thousand BC. And then you have a number of

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Speaker 2: fringe ideas that don't again don't concern alien or anything

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Speaker 2: like that, but they they get into this idea that like,

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Speaker 2: surely there is some ancient advanced civilization at the heart

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Speaker 2: of all of this, and so Fritz discusses a few

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Speaker 2: of these. There's this idea. One idea is that the

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Speaker 2: ancient ancient Egyptian civilization extends from civilization X or the

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Speaker 2: Ice Age supercivilization.

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Speaker 3: Oh, there are similar analogs to this that are still

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Speaker 3: kicking around today.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course a big, big one is Atlantis,

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Speaker 2: the idea that like refugees from sunken Atlantis founded ancient Egypt,

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Speaker 2: that sort of thing. And then you also have the

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Speaker 2: ancient alien discourse coming in the ancient Aliens teaching the

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Speaker 2: ancient Egyptians how to do things, or ancient Aliens interbreeding

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Speaker 2: with the ancient Egyptians, supercharging human DNA and basically anything

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Speaker 2: else you want to happen. I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of alien discourses like wrong

286
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Speaker 3: but fun, But like the alien supercharging DNA thing goes

287
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Speaker 3: is not wrong and fun, it's like wrong Engross.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you get it. You, I mean so much of this.

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Speaker 2: It can these ideas, they can start in a place

290
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Speaker 2: that feels just fun and escapist, but you follow them

291
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Speaker 2: long enough, they can get into perhaps creepier territory. But

292
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Speaker 2: there is still a lot of variety here to choose from.

293
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Speaker 2: And Fritz writes the following quote. The outpouring and accumulation

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Speaker 2: of the many theories that alternative historians advanced about ancient

295
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Speaker 2: Egypt could be considered a cornucopia. But since so many

296
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Speaker 2: of the theories clash with and contradict each other, a

297
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Speaker 2: better description might be a cacophony. And I think we

298
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Speaker 2: saw this in some of the discussion of our previous

299
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Speaker 2: underwater examples as well. You know what is the anomaly? Well,

300
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Speaker 2: there's never like this single paranormal explanation, but a whole

301
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Speaker 2: host of them. Certainly, the deeper you go into a

302
00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:53,760
Speaker 2: theme like okay, it's an antenna, but is that is it?

303
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Speaker 2: The secret world? Government that built it, or is it

304
00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:58,840
Speaker 2: the ancient loss civilization that built it, or is it

305
00:17:58,920 --> 00:18:02,879
Speaker 2: current UFO, current alien visitors that built it. And within

306
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:05,399
Speaker 2: a given person's body of work, they might have a

307
00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:07,800
Speaker 2: specific idea, but it's going to be different from the

308
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Speaker 2: next book on the shelf.

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Speaker 3: Or as we mentioned directly earlier, if you look at

310
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Speaker 3: an object on the ocean floor and you think, well,

311
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Speaker 3: this could be a UFO, or it could be a

312
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Speaker 3: temple built by the people of Atlantis, or it could

313
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Speaker 3: be a Nazi bunker. In that case, like, could it

314
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Speaker 3: really possibly even suggest any of those like that? Those

315
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Speaker 3: are so different it sounds like you're just kind of

316
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Speaker 3: like reaching around for whatever, not like saying, oh, it

317
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Speaker 3: really has attributes that would make us conclude it is

318
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Speaker 3: x yeah exactly.

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Speaker 2: Now. The Atlantis connection to ancient Egypt goes way back.

320
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Speaker 2: Apparently goes back to the writings of Plato concerning the

321
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Speaker 2: idea that the ancient Egyptians coexisted with Atlantis nine thousand

322
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Speaker 2: years earlier. Fritz writes that while Plato was likely stating

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Speaker 2: all this purely to make a philosophical point, the idea

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Speaker 2: that Egypt was already a nine thousand year old civilization

325
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Speaker 2: was probably what contemporary Greeks believed in the fourth and

326
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Speaker 2: fifth centuries BCE, and to be clear, other civilizations of

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Speaker 2: the day were cited with bloated timelines as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, one big difference between like an ancient Greek historian

329
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Speaker 3: and a modern historian is that modern historians have a

330
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Speaker 3: wealth of physical scientific evidence that they can draw on

331
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Speaker 3: to help inform you how they should process the received

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Speaker 3: stories told about the past. You know, you can, like

333
00:19:27,920 --> 00:19:31,359
Speaker 3: you can do digs, and you can do radiometric dating,

334
00:19:31,400 --> 00:19:33,240
Speaker 3: and you can do all kinds of things that give

335
00:19:33,320 --> 00:19:37,640
Speaker 3: you physical clues to help you either confirm or disconfirm

336
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Speaker 3: things that have been written down about what happened in

337
00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:40,399
Speaker 3: the past.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely now, of course, one of the things about Atlantis

339
00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:48,199
Speaker 2: is that the concept never completely goes away, certainly in

340
00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:51,040
Speaker 2: the West, but it comes and it goes. It's heightened

341
00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:54,359
Speaker 2: by the discovery of an inhabited America's and then again

342
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:58,240
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with modern pseudohistory of

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Speaker 2: Egypt and Atlanta's emerging largely from the writings apparently of

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Speaker 2: American politician Ignacious Donnelley in eighteen eighty two, Donnelly, if

345
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Speaker 2: you're not familiar with him, represented Minnesota in the US

346
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Speaker 2: House of Representatives from eighteen sixty three through eighteen sixty nine.

347
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Speaker 2: He pushed a number of ideas concerning pseudoscience and pseudohistory. So, yeah,

348
00:20:22,960 --> 00:20:26,760
Speaker 2: definitely one of the many characters that Fritz writes about

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Speaker 2: in this section. Oh boy, Now another figure that Fritz

350
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Speaker 2: touches on here and credits largely with this sort of

351
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Speaker 2: modern idea that Egypt had advanced technology. Ancient Egypt had

352
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Speaker 2: advanced technology. This goes back to the psychic readings of

353
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Speaker 2: when Edgar Casey, who lived eighteen seventy seven through nineteen

354
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Speaker 2: forty five, a self professed clairvoyant who carried out quote

355
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Speaker 2: unquote life readings for people and revealed their past lives

356
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Speaker 2: in ancient Atlantis, as well as the advanced technology that

357
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Speaker 2: the Atlanteans supposedly had, such as advanced crystal laser weapons

358
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Speaker 2: that they ultimately used to destroy Atlantis with the survivors

359
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Speaker 2: fleeing to Egypt.

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Speaker 3: Crystal laser weapons.

361
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it sounds remarkably like that old Atari

362
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Speaker 2: twenty six hundred game Atlantis. I don't know if any

363
00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:19,119
Speaker 2: went out there actually played this, but I remember as

364
00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:21,920
Speaker 2: a kid seeing the commercials for it online and it

365
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:24,640
Speaker 2: was kind of a scary commercial with a whole narrative

366
00:21:24,840 --> 00:21:27,080
Speaker 2: structure going on. Had to do with that. I believe

367
00:21:27,119 --> 00:21:31,240
Speaker 2: Memory serves an ongoing war between the Gorgons and the

368
00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:34,760
Speaker 2: people of Atlantis, and it was a great commercial. Look

369
00:21:34,760 --> 00:21:35,800
Speaker 2: it up if you haven't seen.

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Speaker 3: It, you know, I kind of can't help but think

371
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Speaker 3: though all these ideas about ancient Egypt having advanced technology.

372
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Speaker 3: In a way, they did have advanced technology, but they

373
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Speaker 3: had advanced technology for the time in which they lived. Like,

374
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Speaker 3: you do not have to turn to bad standards of

375
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Speaker 3: evidence for examples of amazing technological achievements in ancient Egypt.

376
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Speaker 3: They built the Pyramids, among tons of other things. That

377
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:05,480
Speaker 3: was not ancient aliens. That was extremely smart and industrious

378
00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 3: people creating amazing technological achievements with a very limited set

379
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:13,199
Speaker 3: of tools compared to what's available to people today. That

380
00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:16,800
Speaker 3: is an amazing technological feat. It was just an amazing

381
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Speaker 3: technological feat for the time.

382
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean that's one of the tragedies about

383
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:23,160
Speaker 2: all of this is like when you when you get

384
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:26,040
Speaker 2: wrapped up in say ancient alien discourse, you end up

385
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:31,440
Speaker 2: reducing the importance of of of what people were actually

386
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:33,560
Speaker 2: doing if you're if you just attribute it to the

387
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:36,920
Speaker 2: gifts of the gods, the gifts of the alien visitors,

388
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:39,119
Speaker 2: and so forth. Now, I want to stress that in

389
00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:41,480
Speaker 2: this chapter, Fritz touches on a number of different names,

390
00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:43,240
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to get into everybody here, but

391
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,120
Speaker 2: you know it's there there. There are various writers and

392
00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:49,640
Speaker 2: occasional outright con men that are engaged in the sort

393
00:22:49,680 --> 00:22:52,480
Speaker 2: of work, and there were kind of feeds off each other.

394
00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:55,800
Speaker 2: One of the big ones, uh, One of the big names,

395
00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:59,680
Speaker 2: certainly an ancient alien discourse, is the work of Eric Vondanikin,

396
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:01,960
Speaker 2: who we've talked about in the show before because he

397
00:23:02,520 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 2: was the author of Chariots of the Gods in nineteen

398
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:07,879
Speaker 2: sixty eight. I say it that way because the title

399
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:11,360
Speaker 2: does have a question mark at the end, always pronounced

400
00:23:11,359 --> 00:23:12,240
Speaker 2: the question mark.

401
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:14,400
Speaker 3: Like he's like kind of getting you with the elbow

402
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:15,320
Speaker 3: and winking while he.

403
00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:20,440
Speaker 2: Says, yeah, I think we mentioned and we went in

404
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:23,880
Speaker 2: and discussed this idea at length and the various criticisms

405
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 2: to it. But even this idea like it was influenced

406
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:29,879
Speaker 2: by the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and other weird

407
00:23:29,920 --> 00:23:34,520
Speaker 2: writers of the early twentieth century. Lovecraft and his contemporaries,

408
00:23:34,560 --> 00:23:37,200
Speaker 2: by the way, also wrote about tales related to Egyptian

409
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 2: motifs and Egyptian oriented occultism and so forth, So you

410
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 2: have a lot of these sources feeding into each other.

411
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:49,120
Speaker 3: It's been years since we did the Eric Vondanikin episode,

412
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:51,879
Speaker 3: but am I remembering something about how he had like

413
00:23:52,080 --> 00:23:54,639
Speaker 3: created the Chariots of the Gods theme park?

414
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:55,159
Speaker 2: Is that?

415
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 3: Am I losing my mind?

416
00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,600
Speaker 2: No? No, there was Slash is a theme park. I'm

417
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,040
Speaker 2: not sure off the top of my head what's going

418
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:03,800
Speaker 2: on with it right now, but like, that's how big

419
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:04,800
Speaker 2: this guy.

420
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,920
Speaker 3: I want to flat earth six flags.

421
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 2: Now. Fritz points out, though that early ancient alien discourse folks,

422
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 2: and even Vondanikin's original book don't actually reference Egypt all

423
00:24:18,359 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 2: that much. So you have other individuals who kind of

424
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 2: come in with the Egyptology alternative Egyptology view of everything,

425
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:28,680
Speaker 2: and that gets, you know, sucked into the whole concept.

426
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 2: He points out one particular author, I believe this is

427
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:37,440
Speaker 2: a book from nineteen eighty four from one zechariash Si

428
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 2: Chen who lived nineteen twenty through twenty ten. This is

429
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 2: apparently one of the only serious competitors to Vondanikan because

430
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:46,919
Speaker 2: the Vondanakan's books generated a lot of discussion, and you know,

431
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:48,960
Speaker 2: they're pretty popular for the time period. So a lot

432
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:52,399
Speaker 2: of other authors came in to try and cash in

433
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 2: on ancient alien discourse, but this particular individual sition seems

434
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 2: to have been one of the more successful of those

435
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:05,399
Speaker 2: to come in and try and get cash in on

436
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 2: everything here, and Fritz points out that he seems to

437
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:12,400
Speaker 2: have avoided a lot of the criticism that was reserved

438
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 2: for von Dannakin. So Vontanagan got big enough to where

439
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 2: like when people like Carl Sagan entered the chat, Vondanakin's

440
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 2: ideas are the one or the ones that Carl Sagan

441
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 2: is going to respond to. Carl Sagan doesn't have time

442
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 2: to deal with everybody else in the genre.

443
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:30,440
Speaker 3: And to be clear, Carl Sagan was not saying that

444
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 3: ancient aliens like were a viable explanation for the Pyramids

445
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 3: or anything. He, as I recall, entered the discourse to

446
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 3: kind of say, well, if we're going to entertain this possibility,

447
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 3: we should have some standards of evidence, right, like we

448
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 3: should lay out in advance what would we be looking

449
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:50,120
Speaker 3: for instead of just like looking at what's out there

450
00:25:50,200 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 3: and saying like, eh, that could be aliens.

451
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I thought Sagan has some great responses to it.

452
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 2: They were not like one hundred percent shut it down,

453
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:02,720
Speaker 2: dismissive of it as a concept, were but also reiterated

454
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 2: that there are high standards for this, and if you

455
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 2: were looking for evidence, you would be looking for very

456
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 2: specific sorts of evidence and so forth. But again, when

457
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 2: Sagin's entering the conversation, when other critics are coming in

458
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 2: and dealing with what Vondnigan's written about, especially with that

459
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:20,640
Speaker 2: first book, they're not dealing with the Egyptian themed content.

460
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 2: Individuals likes Sitchin apparently are the ones who were the

461
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 2: ones to initially drag Egypt and ancient Egypt into the scenario,

462
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 2: and perhaps a lot of that Fritz Rights seems to

463
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 2: have maybe existed below the mainstream radar for a while,

464
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 2: you know, being just a part of the stuff that's

465
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 2: discussed in the fringe movements. And it's not until the

466
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:45,639
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties. He writes that we see quote, the penetration

467
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:50,920
Speaker 2: of highly speculative theories about ancient Egypt into mainstream popular culture.

468
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 3: I think maybe the designation as highly speculative is a

469
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 3: good one, because sometimes I'm looking for the right blanket

470
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:01,719
Speaker 3: terminology to describe all these different types of explanations that

471
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 3: we're talking about. They're not all necessarily like conspiracy theories,

472
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 3: they don't all necessarily have exactly the same content, But

473
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:12,439
Speaker 3: what they do seem to have in common is that

474
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 3: they are highly speculative, meaning they are elaborating a lot

475
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 3: of explanatory narrative on a very weak evidential basis.

476
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 2: So to be clear here, what apparently is going on

477
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,440
Speaker 2: at this time leading into the nineteen nineties, according to

478
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 2: the author here of Fritz, is that under the surface

479
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:45,640
Speaker 2: of all this other talk about ancient aliens and so

480
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:49,360
Speaker 2: forth and other paranormal ideas, there's this kind of growing

481
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 2: swell of alternative Egyptology, and then during the nineteen nineties

482
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:00,680
Speaker 2: it begins to bubble up into the mainstream discourse. And

483
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 2: Fritz cite's two main reasons for this. One is the

484
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:09,160
Speaker 2: approaching millennium and various ideas concerning the new millennium that's

485
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 2: about to be here. The second reason he brings up

486
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 2: is that there are just a number of new archaeological

487
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 2: discoveries that were taking place in Egypt that were capturing

488
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:22,640
Speaker 2: mainstream attention, and we're inadvertently fueling the nonsense that, again

489
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:24,199
Speaker 2: was festering in the fringe.

490
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 3: I see so like because for totally legitimate reasons, ancient

491
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,120
Speaker 3: Egypt might be popping up on the news, like you're

492
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 3: seeing it on TV in ways that you probably didn't

493
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:37,880
Speaker 3: see it as much before. It's just sort of in

494
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 3: the air, and it is one more thing you could

495
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 3: attach highly speculative theories too.

496
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you have other individuals that are writing

497
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:48,400
Speaker 2: more directly about it. It's popping up in the writings

498
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:52,239
Speaker 2: of Graham Hancock, for example. He also cites the X

499
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 2: Files as being popular. Though you have more expertise for

500
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 2: the X Files. I don't know the X Files that

501
00:28:56,880 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 2: ever actually had any ancient Egypt themed content. I don't

502
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 2: know if they ever went up against a mummy or anything.

503
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 3: I recall very little about that except well, actually, now

504
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:10,560
Speaker 3: that I think about it, I think there may have

505
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 3: been a mummy episode that is remembered as one of

506
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 3: the worst episodes of the X Files ever, unless that's

507
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 3: hold on, got to look it up now. Oh no,

508
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 3: I see why my memory was confused here. Yeah, one

509
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 3: of the worst X Files episodes ever does concern a mummy,

510
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 3: but it's not an Egyptian mummy. It's a South American mummy.

511
00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:34,240
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, even if the X Files are not directly

512
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:40,240
Speaker 2: contributing to alternative egyptology discourse, you can, I guess look

513
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 2: at it as kind of like a sign that fringe

514
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 2: ideas were entering into the mainstream, at the very least

515
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 2: as entertainment. But then I guess sometimes entertainment has a

516
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 2: way of bleeding over into other things.

517
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 3: Don't drag the X Files into this. The X Files.

518
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 3: The X Files are pure and holy they didn't do

519
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 3: anything wrong. That's a fictional show. It's okay.

520
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 2: But I guess the bigger thing that's going on here

521
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 2: that Fitz points out is that at the time, academics

522
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 2: had largely ignored these trends, like academics in egyptology and

523
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:20,479
Speaker 2: so forth, archaeologists and so forth. Yeah, they weren't venturing

524
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 2: into arguments against ancient alien discourse folks and so forth.

525
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:29,239
Speaker 2: And that's sensible by and large because like, that's not

526
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 2: what their work is, that's not what they have set

527
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:34,720
Speaker 2: out to do with their work and their careers to

528
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 2: just respond to various highly speculative ideas about why things

529
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 2: appear the way they are.

530
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 3: Well, and it's often difficult to respond to highly speculative

531
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 3: ideas from an informed point of view, because a lot

532
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 3: of times all you can just say is like, there's

533
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 3: no reason to think all that, you know, like, the

534
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 3: claims of highly speculative theories are often not like the

535
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 3: kinds of tight, pecific focused claims about specific pieces of

536
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 3: evidence that you can that you would be used to addressing,

537
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 3: say in an academic archaeology journal or something like that.

538
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 3: They're like these elaborations. They spend these wild narratives that

539
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 3: are kind of too big to even know where to

540
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 3: get a toe hold in if you're trying to criticize them,

541
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:22,959
Speaker 3: other than to just kind of say, like, well, that

542
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 3: just sounds all made.

543
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 2: Up, yeah, Fritz Wright's quote. Academics generally avoid dealing with

544
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 2: alternative scholars This attitude is justified by the excuse that

545
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 2: debating alternative or fringe scholarship only gives it a false credibility.

546
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 2: Some consider debating speculative scholars as a dialogue of the

547
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 2: death since the speculative ideas tend to be treated by

548
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 2: their adherents in a manner of religious faith rather than

549
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 2: scientific inquiry, while some academics just hold speculative ideas in contempt,

550
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 2: ignoring the alternative Egyptologists did not, however, serve the academic

551
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 2: Egyptologists well. During the nineteen nineties, they found themselves marginalized

552
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 2: in the popularne mind and put on the defense. So

553
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 2: the argument here is yah, perhaps they did wait too

554
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 2: long to respond to a lot of these ideas that

555
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 2: were welling up into the mainstream, and he points out

556
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 2: that it was apparently wasn't until a pair of BBC

557
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 2: Horizon documentary specials titled Atlantis Uncovered in Atlantis Reborn weighed

558
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 2: in and offered a scathing rebuke of these ideas in

559
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 2: the mainstream, And this wasn't until nineteen ninety nine.

560
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 3: You know, I feel like this mirror is a pattern

561
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 3: that's still a problem with like highly speculative alternative ideas

562
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 3: of all sorts today, because usually people who have real

563
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 3: expertise in the field are busy talking to each other

564
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 3: and they're kind of in a contained conversation space. Meanwhile,

565
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 3: people who are offering highly speculative ideas go straight to

566
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 3: the media into a popular audience.

567
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can understand too why I mean, thinking

568
00:32:56,600 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 2: that the pyramids were built by aliens? Does that necessarily

569
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 2: pose like a real threat to you know, at what

570
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 2: point do you actually make the call? It's like, Okay,

571
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 2: enough is enough. We need to say something about this,

572
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 2: We need to put together a documentary to dismiss this nonsense,

573
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 2: because it seems like for a long stretch of the

574
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 2: build up you can say like, well, this is dumb,

575
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:21,000
Speaker 2: or this doesn't really match up with any actual work.

576
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 2: But it's been conducted, any actual research or evidence. But

577
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 2: it's not hurting anybody.

578
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 3: You could say that. A lot of people do say that,

579
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 3: But I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if these supposedly harmless,

580
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 3: I mean, probably they are somewhat harmless in themselves. Highly

581
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 3: speculative theories or conspiracy theories sort of engender a pattern

582
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 3: of thinking that can easily be used to foster incredibly

583
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 3: destructive and dangerous ideas that are violent.

584
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think I think at this point, certainly this

585
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 2: day and age, I think most of us realize that

586
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 2: like the realm of conspiracy thinking is not just a

587
00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 2: domain of like escapist ideas that are not hurting anybody.

588
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 2: There are plenty of harmful ideologies that are that are

589
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 2: woven throughout many of these these branches of conspiracy thought.

590
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 3: Then again, I mean, I want to be realistic and

591
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 3: say I don't I don't know if you can really

592
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 3: say that if if we had done a better job

593
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 3: of convincing people that aliens didn't build the pyramids, that

594
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:26,920
Speaker 3: they wouldn't end up thinking, you know, some kind of

595
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 3: violent conspiracy theory. But you do have to wonder if

596
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 3: just sort of like ignoring and letting it pass when

597
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,719
Speaker 3: people are engaging in conspiracy thinking and these other domains

598
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:41,280
Speaker 3: just sort of like, let's that style of thought fester.

599
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's let's look at the evidence. And

600
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:45,880
Speaker 2: by look at the evidence, I mean let's look at

601
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 2: a couple of examples. We are not setting out to

602
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 2: look like at like all the evidence or alleged evidence

603
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 2: for ancient Egyptian advanced technology and chariots of the gods

604
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 2: and so forth. There's just a few a couple examples

605
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 2: that I think match up with what we've been discussing

606
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:09,839
Speaker 2: about information, data, images, etc. That can be perplexing and

607
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:13,959
Speaker 2: that can certainly lead to an interpretation that is again

608
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 2: not based in expertise and not based in like a

609
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 2: wider body of evidence, but are based in confirmation bias

610
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:26,359
Speaker 2: and based in some sort of an alternative understanding of

611
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 2: science and or history.

612
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:29,320
Speaker 3: Okay, what you got?

613
00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 2: So, did the ancient Egyptians have apache helicopters?

614
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 3: Gotta be yes?

615
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 2: Surely no, We're going to move forward with the spoiler

616
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,799
Speaker 2: in place that no, they did not. But there is

617
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:47,800
Speaker 2: an image that you will find, and you've probably seen online.

618
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 2: You see some hieroglyphics, and there is an image or

619
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 2: a character towards the top that, if we're being generous,

620
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:58,400
Speaker 2: kind of looks like a modern helicopter. And next to

621
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 2: it is something that I guess kind of looks like

622
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 2: a space tank.

623
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 3: I mean, while we're doing this, let's not go all

624
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 3: out under the helicopter. There is an R two D

625
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 3: two and I don't know what you're saying, is a

626
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 3: tank that looks to me kind of like a MiG

627
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:12,240
Speaker 3: fighter jet.

628
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, we also got.

629
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 3: A we get we have keeping up with the R

630
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 3: two D two theme. We have Luke Skywalker's land Speeder.

631
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 3: You see that one?

632
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's That's what I was kind of

633
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 2: seeing as a tank. It does look at the look

634
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 2: at speeder as well. Yeah, and then of course we

635
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 2: have a we have a bug of some sort as well.

636
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 2: That's clearly a bug. But is it a giant bug? Right?

637
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 2: You know, your your theory may vary. Now. One of

638
00:36:36,640 --> 00:36:37,880
Speaker 2: the things about this image is a lot of the

639
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 2: places where you see it, they're not going to be

640
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 2: approaching it from a skeptical point of view, uh, and

641
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:49,279
Speaker 2: actually finding like good sources on this where someone's just

642
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 2: gonna come in and and tell you exactly what you're

643
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 2: looking at, are actually a little harder to come across.

644
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 2: And I think this is where you get into the

645
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 2: the problem of like, like experts in ancient Egypt and

646
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 2: hieroglyphics are not necessarily wasting their time weighing in on

647
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 2: whether ancient hieroglyphics show as a helicopter.

648
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 3: Right, So, I haven't checked, but I would guess that like,

649
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 3: is this hieroglyphic a helicopter? Is not like the subject

650
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 3: of many Egyptology journal articles.

651
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 2: Right, Right. But I was able to find, you know,

652
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 2: a few different sources that discuss it in a way

653
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 2: that I could I could get behind the image in question.

654
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 2: I've seen in a couple of places it attributed to

655
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 2: a nineteen eighty seven photo by an American who is

656
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 2: visiting the Temple of Osiris in Abydos, Egypt. So it's

657
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 2: a it's a real photo of a real object, of

658
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 2: real you know, etchings, and it's pretty clear like there's

659
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:50,399
Speaker 2: it's one of these things where the photo quality and

660
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 2: the reality of the thing that is photographed, these are

661
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 2: not in question. But it's this interpretation of what you're

662
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:01,800
Speaker 2: looking at that's where you see these enormous leaps taken

663
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 2: where people are seeing bits of advanced technology. But fortunately

664
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 2: there is a very straightforward explanation for what we see here.

665
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 2: I found a couple of different discussions of this, but

666
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:17,919
Speaker 2: the one I'm going to lean on mostly is this

667
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:21,720
Speaker 2: was from an article that Asian historian Richard C. Carrier

668
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 2: wrote about back in nineteen ninety nine for The Skeptical

669
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 2: Inquirer in an article titled flash Fox News reports that

670
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:33,319
Speaker 2: Aliens may have built the Pyramids of Egypt. As the

671
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 2: title suggests, this is about coverage at the time on

672
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 2: Fox News. Again, this is nineteen ninety nine about alternative

673
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 2: Egyptology and the broadcast included images of the alleged helicopter

674
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:50,320
Speaker 2: and comparison images to modern Apache attack helicopters. So Carrier

675
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 2: spoke to some Egyptologists for the article, and it seems

676
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:55,720
Speaker 2: to have seems to have been sort of new pseudohistory

677
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 2: to some of them at the time. Again, this was

678
00:38:59,239 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 2: daring that than the very end of the nineteen nineties,

679
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 2: so it seems like, you know, the subculture was bubbling

680
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 2: up into the mainstream quite a bit. He writes the

681
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 2: following to sum it all up, But what do the

682
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 2: experts say about this helicopter glyph? This will serve as

683
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:16,280
Speaker 2: an example for all the rest. The helicopter, in fact,

684
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 2: is the abodos palimpsest. A palimpsest is what is created

685
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 2: when new writing is inscribed over old. In the case

686
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 2: of papyri, old ink is scraped off, but in the

687
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:28,880
Speaker 2: case of inscriptions, plaster is added over the old inscription

688
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:32,919
Speaker 2: and a new inscription is made. The image described as

689
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,319
Speaker 2: a helicopter is well known to be the names of

690
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 2: Rameses inscribed over the names of his father, something Rameses

691
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 2: was known to do quite frequently. A little bit of

692
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:47,319
Speaker 2: damage from time and weathering has furthered the illusion of

693
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:51,839
Speaker 2: a helicopter. It basically comes down to this basic fact though,

694
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 2: that a previous image, a previous inscription, was plastered over

695
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 2: and replaced with another one, and then when stuff starts

696
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 2: wearing away, a sort of hybrid image emerges that doesn't

697
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 2: mean anything, but that looks like something from our modern age.

698
00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 2: You know, I guess it would be like it'd be

699
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 2: like if one billboard were plastered over another one and

700
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:14,840
Speaker 2: then there's a fierce storm and it tears part of

701
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 2: the billboard away, and then so you have a mix

702
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 2: of the old billboard and the new billboard, and what

703
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 2: you're left with is just kind of confusing. But maybe

704
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 2: it looks like a monster. Maybe it looks like you know,

705
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 2: what have you. And by the way that the topic

706
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 2: of palms is fascinating, there's a much older episode of

707
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind that goes into it. But yeah,

708
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 2: you get into this whole realm of you know, erased

709
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 2: books just under the surface of ancient tomes, and you know,

710
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 2: sometimes they've been on earthed. Sometimes you have to use

711
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 2: you know, modern technology to sort of see through the

712
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 2: printed page and see what was originally there. And you

713
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,080
Speaker 2: see it in paintings and much more, and it can

714
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 2: seem a bit foreign to us, given how just disposable

715
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,399
Speaker 2: paper is. And you know, you can rewrite files, you know,

716
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,239
Speaker 2: as many times as you want. You can just set

717
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:06,880
Speaker 2: around creating new documents and deleting them all day. But

718
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 2: there was a time when in order to erase document

719
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 2: and create new document while that meant grabbing the plaster.

720
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 3: Okay, So this strikes me as a case that is

721
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 3: in the low information category we've been talking about in

722
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 3: multiple ways. So the original image is somewhat altered or

723
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:28,840
Speaker 3: degraded in the way that it's been photographed like it

724
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 3: might be hard, especially if you're not familiar with ancient

725
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 3: Egyptian inscriptions, to understand that what you're looking at is

726
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 3: not even one single continuous drawing or piece of imagery,

727
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 3: but is instead a couple of things sort of bleeding

728
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 3: into each other. And then on top of that, there's

729
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 3: the low information condition of us looking at it without

730
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:52,800
Speaker 3: being familiar with, say, the way the name Rameses is

731
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:54,720
Speaker 3: depicted in hieroglyphics.

732
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:58,879
Speaker 2: Yes, Now, the second example we're going to look at

733
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:02,239
Speaker 2: here is also really fascinating, and this one is a

734
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 2: lot in a way. In a way, this one is

735
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 2: a lot more clear, but is also even more cryptic

736
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,239
Speaker 2: and even harder to really understand. And you'll see what

737
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 2: I'm talking about as we roll into the discussion here.

738
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,759
Speaker 2: But this concerns the so called Dindara Lights or the

739
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:20,240
Speaker 2: Dindara Light. So these are a series of stone release

740
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 2: in the hawt Or temple in Dindera, Egypt. Now you

741
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 2: can look up images of this, and I've included one

742
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 2: of the images here for you to look at, Joe,

743
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 2: and they are quite captivating. And I mean it's almost

744
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 2: unfair to throw people at this with sort of alternative

745
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 2: Egyptology in the back of their mind, because it's going

746
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:48,120
Speaker 2: to make you lean in too, perhaps seeing things again

747
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 2: from not only a modern standboy point, which we can't

748
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 2: help but do, but also from a standpoint of looking

749
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 2: for some sort of crazy advanced technology in the past.

750
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,000
Speaker 2: So if you were looking at these just kind of

751
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 2: out of context, but not with any specific expectations of

752
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:06,439
Speaker 2: the advanced technology, I think you might guess that we're

753
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 2: looking at a couple of ancient Egyptian individuals who have

754
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 2: giant eggplants, and those giant eggplants have giant snakes on them.

755
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:19,319
Speaker 2: This would this would of course be be incorrect. This

756
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 2: is not exactly what we're looking at, but that's what

757
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 2: it kind of looks like to me.

758
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 3: I might have said, giant shields. I mean, they're holding

759
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 3: some what looks like a really large flat object on

760
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:34,880
Speaker 3: which a sort of slithering snake is depicted. But of

761
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 3: course the strange thing is that out of the bottoms

762
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:41,760
Speaker 3: of the shields there is coming some sort of line, which, again,

763
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 3: if you're playing into ancient technology thinking, you could say,

764
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:47,760
Speaker 3: is that a power cord? Is that some kind of cable?

765
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:52,120
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, so there's this sense of plant to it. Yeah,

766
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:54,720
Speaker 2: there's definitely a snake, there's no doubt about this snake.

767
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:58,360
Speaker 2: But then there's this this large sort of bulb or

768
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 2: eggplant like shape to the thing. And so the the alternative,

769
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:09,880
Speaker 2: the highly speculative hypothesis here that once he's reflected and

770
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:14,359
Speaker 2: some of this you know, ancient alien discourse and and

771
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:19,800
Speaker 2: you know pseudohistories and pseudo scientific ideas concerning ancient Egypt,

772
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 2: are that well, what they are holding here are filament

773
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 2: light bulbs or representations of filament light bulbs.

774
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,840
Speaker 3: Okay, well, if you are familiar with incandescent light bulbs.

775
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:33,879
Speaker 3: You can absolutely see how somebody would make that comparison.

776
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:37,440
Speaker 3: There is the shield or the eggplant shape, looks like

777
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,800
Speaker 3: it could be a you know, a transparent glass tube.

778
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 3: The snake depicted on it looks like it could be

779
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:49,880
Speaker 3: maybe looks like it could be the filament inside the bulb.

780
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 3: And then the sort of line. There's like a sort

781
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 3: of flower looking thing at the base of the bulb,

782
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:58,759
Speaker 3: and you could imagine that is the socket or not

783
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 3: the socket, what would you call it, the uh, you know,

784
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 3: the metal part at the base of an incandescent light bulb.

785
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 3: And then the line extending away from the bottom. You

786
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 3: could say, okay, that looks like a power line. It

787
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,040
Speaker 3: looks like, you know, whatever the electricity is going in through.

788
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the radical idea here would be that the

789
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptians had mastery over electricity. They made light bulbs

790
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:20,399
Speaker 2: or I guess received light bulbs from someone. They got

791
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 2: a you know, a monthly delivery from the aliens or something,

792
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,280
Speaker 2: and they wired up their various buildings with electric lights

793
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 2: of one sort or the other.

794
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 3: The aliens gave them highly inefficient incandescent light bulbs.

795
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or I mean, when you get into the

796
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:39,880
Speaker 2: various arguments, they also they draw comparisons to you know,

797
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:44,799
Speaker 2: sort of like early different variations of artificial lighting. So

798
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:48,680
Speaker 2: I don't know, the exact model may vary, but the idea, yeah,

799
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 2: is that the ancient Egyptians had light bulbs. Now, actual

800
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 2: experts who weigh in on this will we'll say, well,

801
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,359
Speaker 2: these are these are not light bulbs. Obviously, what we're

802
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 2: looking at is a symbolic motif. And another huge important

803
00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 2: fact here is that these are not illustrations or engravings

804
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 2: that are occurring in isolation and out of context. Like,

805
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 2: there's plenty of context, the most important being that this

806
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,640
Speaker 2: is a temple of Hatlar. This is a god of

807
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 2: ancient Egypt who Geraldine Pinch in the book Egyptian Mythology

808
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 2: describes as a golden goddess that aided in childbirth, the

809
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 2: rebirth of the dead, and the renewal of the cosmos.

810
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 2: She was seemingly a complex deity with both destructive and

811
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,800
Speaker 2: beneficial attributes, and she was commonly depicted as a beautiful

812
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:39,840
Speaker 2: woman with a red solar disc between a pair of

813
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 2: cow horns. Now, she could be worshiped in a few

814
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 2: different forms, but one of the main roles she has.

815
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 2: Here is a mother, and she is the mother of Horace,

816
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 2: Uniter of the Two Lands. Horace, of course, is a

817
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:58,359
Speaker 2: very important god in Egyptian mythology, the celestial falcon and

818
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 2: the god of kings. So here Horace is Haarsmatus uniter

819
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 2: of the two Lands, and apparently in these images we're

820
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 2: seeing representation of him in the primeval form of a serpent.

821
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:17,279
Speaker 2: In rebirth. He is depicted emerging in the form of

822
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 2: this serpent from the lotus flower, which is in turn

823
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 2: inside a boat, lining up with the concept of the

824
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 2: solar god rays solar barge.

825
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,439
Speaker 3: Ah, okay, this is starting to make sense.

826
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, So like emerging from the lotus flower is

827
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:36,799
Speaker 2: the serpent, that is horse. Now you're probably wondering, what

828
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 2: about that light bulb, what about that eggplant? Well, this

829
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:42,640
Speaker 2: is thought to be and I hope I'm pronouncing this

830
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 2: right a hen that's h n And it may represent

831
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:51,319
Speaker 2: the womb of the sky goddess nut or note. And

832
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:54,919
Speaker 2: this is a goddess that was associated with the fig

833
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 2: tree and also with cosmic motherhood. The image in question

834
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 2: also entails the symbol as of the jed pillar with

835
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 2: added arms coming out. So this this is I mean,

836
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 2: to my eyes like, this is way weirder. This is

837
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:12,399
Speaker 2: the far weirder helmet. Is this strange pillar looking thing

838
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 2: that's sort of holding up one of the eggplant shapes

839
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 2: and has arms coming out like some sort of like

840
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:25,720
Speaker 2: bizarre psychedelic muppet. But this is also grounded in ancient

841
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 2: Egyptian symbolism. You know, it's about stability and you know,

842
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 2: and holding up the cosmos and so forth.

843
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 3: You could argue that this looks like a baseball bat

844
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 3: with several rings around it, and it has arms, it

845
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,319
Speaker 3: has two arms, and it's pushing on the so called

846
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 3: light bulb.

847
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the same way that if we look

848
00:48:44,239 --> 00:48:48,239
Speaker 2: at hieroglyphics, we're looking at at language that we have

849
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 2: no frame of reference for. It's similar with with the

850
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 2: icons that we're seeing represented here. We have no unless

851
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:58,799
Speaker 2: we are trained in it. We have no frame of

852
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 2: context for what these symbols are and what they represent.

853
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:04,719
Speaker 2: And all you can ultimately do is sort of like

854
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 2: try and take them at I guess sort of base level,

855
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 2: and then you can potentially lean into these elaborate explanations

856
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:15,760
Speaker 2: for what you're seeing and you know, you can imagine

857
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:17,959
Speaker 2: the what would occur if you were to take any

858
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:21,759
Speaker 2: form of highly symbolic art from the modern world and

859
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:25,160
Speaker 2: try and understand what you're looking at. So anyway, yeah,

860
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 2: it's it's speaking of visual language that we probably are

861
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:32,719
Speaker 2: not going to pick up on in the modern age

862
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:35,239
Speaker 2: again unless we have the expertise and we've you know,

863
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 2: we are an Egyptologist, et cetera, or it's been explained

864
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 2: to us because at the end of the day, what

865
00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 2: we're likely looking at here is some representation of the

866
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 2: rise of the sun and its journey through the night,

867
00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:50,720
Speaker 2: though delivered through religious ideas and symbolism of the time

868
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 2: and also the specific theology of this particular deity.

869
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 3: Right, And it looks like a light bulb to us

870
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 3: rather than this ancient Egypti artistic motif because we're used

871
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 3: to seeing light bulbs, who were not used to seeing

872
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 3: this artistic motif. And if you happen to be familiar

873
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 3: with the right ancient Egyptian art, you recognize it as Oh,

874
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 3: it's one of those.

875
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I've looked at a particular book by archaeologist

876
00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 2: and author Kenneth L. Fetter on this matter. The book

877
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:24,719
Speaker 2: is frauds, myths and mystery science and pseudoscience, and archaeology,

878
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 2: and he points out that these quote unquote lights a

879
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 2: factor into Eric von Doniican's nineteen ninety six book The

880
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 2: Eyes of the Sphinx, in which von Donican argues that

881
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 2: the only rational way that the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians

882
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 2: could have worked in the dark confines of the Pyramids

883
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 2: and other locations other structures without leaving telltale lampblack from

884
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 2: burning lamps. The only possible way this could be the

885
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:55,400
Speaker 2: case is if they were using electric lights.

886
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:57,280
Speaker 3: Air Tight.

887
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:03,319
Speaker 2: Now points out that Egyptologists have a far less imaginative

888
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 2: explanation backed up by actual evidence, and that is that

889
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,800
Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptians used linen soaked in oil or animal

890
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:14,760
Speaker 2: fat and twisted into wicks. These wicks would have burned

891
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:19,360
Speaker 2: quite brightly, and then with salt applied, this would produce

892
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:23,880
Speaker 2: less smoke, which would produce less lamp black and they

893
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 2: would have, yeah, they would have burned pretty brightly, bright

894
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:28,919
Speaker 2: enough to conduct their work. And they would also burn

895
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:31,399
Speaker 2: for a set amount of time that would apparently mark

896
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 2: the length of an artisan where a worker's shift. And

897
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:38,359
Speaker 2: again this is something we have context, for we have

898
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:42,320
Speaker 2: physical evidence for it factors into our overall understanding of

899
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 2: who the ancient Egyptians were and what their world was like.

900
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:49,439
Speaker 2: But if you go with a light bulb hypothesis, well

901
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 2: you have no evidence because where are examples of the

902
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 2: other light bulbs, the spent bulbs, Where's evidence of the

903
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 2: bulb production facility, the power sources, the wiring, et cetera.

904
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 2: I mean, it all just falls quickly apart. Instead, Von

905
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:12,319
Speaker 2: Donikin apparently leaned on the thoroughly discredited hypothesis of the

906
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:13,880
Speaker 2: Baghdad battery as proof.

907
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:18,399
Speaker 3: This is yet another artifact that has been interpreted by

908
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:22,759
Speaker 3: some as electrical technology in the ancient world, but probably

909
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 3: was not.

910
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 2: Right, and so the author here not Von Donican sums

911
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 2: up quote because prehistoric pictorial depictions and even early written

912
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 2: descriptions are sometimes indistinct or vague, and perhaps more important,

913
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 2: because they are part of a different culture and have

914
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 2: a context not immediately apparent to those who do not

915
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:48,919
Speaker 2: explore further. You can see or read anything you want

916
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 2: into them, just as you can with ink blots. And

917
00:52:53,200 --> 00:52:55,000
Speaker 2: so he refers to this elsewhere in the book as

918
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 2: the ink block principle, which I think is a good

919
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 2: way of thinking about avidence of this nature.

920
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 3: Now, one way in which I would distinguish this example

921
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:08,719
Speaker 3: from many of the others is that this example does

922
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:13,200
Speaker 3: not seem as within the image itself as degraded in

923
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:16,640
Speaker 3: quality or vague to me, at least in the like

924
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:19,440
Speaker 3: the illustrations I see from books. It looks like, you know,

925
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 3: we get a pretty clear picture of what the artwork,

926
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 3: whether at least the outlines and the artwork we're supposed

927
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:27,719
Speaker 3: to be. But you're still, even though the picture is

928
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:31,799
Speaker 3: fairly sharp, in the low information zone, because you don't

929
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 3: have the context, the background knowledge to place what you're

930
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 3: looking at within its cultural milieu.

931
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we just don't have the symbolic language

932
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 2: at our disposal to necessarily look at this and understand

933
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:48,319
Speaker 2: what's taking place. And again, I think this is not

934
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:53,360
Speaker 2: something that is unique to ancient Egyptian religious imagery. I

935
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 2: think you could apply this to various other examples of

936
00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 2: even contemporary religious imagery, where if you if you don't

937
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 2: know what you're looking at, yeah, you're not going to

938
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:05,400
Speaker 2: understand the message of it, like what is being theologically

939
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 2: relayed in this image, and you have to fall back

940
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 2: on either just like again, a very literal interpretation of

941
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:14,799
Speaker 2: what you're looking at, or dragging in some sort of

942
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,600
Speaker 2: other belief system or some sort of other mode of

943
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:21,440
Speaker 2: understanding which may or may not involve aliens.

944
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:26,160
Speaker 3: Another thing that I'm struck is sort of the general

945
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:31,399
Speaker 3: principle of thinking behind the Eric Vondanakan argument that Okay,

946
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:34,759
Speaker 3: they're working in the dark inside the pyramid chambers, and

947
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have been able to see what they were

948
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 3: working on without leaving lampblack unless they had light bulbs.

949
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 3: That seems to be a general style of argument used

950
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:45,440
Speaker 3: by like ancient aliens people. I mean, the same thing

951
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:47,880
Speaker 3: is said about the construction of the pyramids. More generally,

952
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:50,520
Speaker 3: it's like, I can't see how they could have done this,

953
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:54,319
Speaker 3: therefore it must have been aliens with advanced technology. That

954
00:54:54,440 --> 00:54:57,759
Speaker 3: is a really poor way to reason. Instead, you could

955
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:00,879
Speaker 3: start by saying, like, well, what if instead of invoking

956
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,640
Speaker 3: entities that would radically reshape our way of thinking about

957
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:08,239
Speaker 3: the world and there is no independent evidence of what if?

958
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 3: Instead of that, we think that maybe they figured out

959
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 3: a solution that you haven't thought of or you don't

960
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 3: have awareness of.

961
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:19,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean, you would it would be understandable

962
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:22,440
Speaker 2: if you didn't know about this whole adding salt to

963
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:27,319
Speaker 2: tortures or lights as a way to decrease lampblack There's

964
00:55:27,360 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 2: so many things like that in life that would have

965
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:34,720
Speaker 2: been apparent or known to individuals who depended on lamp

966
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:39,480
Speaker 2: technology or fire based illumination technology as opposed to the

967
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 2: mode we're familiar with and the mode that we then

968
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 2: potentially read into these ancient images.

969
00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:47,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would just say be careful about making the

970
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 3: move of I can't understand how someone could have done

971
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:55,080
Speaker 3: X two. Therefore they must have relied upon powers that

972
00:55:55,160 --> 00:55:58,279
Speaker 3: are extraordinary and we have no other independent evidence of.

973
00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:03,320
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of various time travel movies that we've discussed

974
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,600
Speaker 2: or looked at on weird House cinema where you have

975
00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:09,000
Speaker 2: some sort of time traveler from the past going into

976
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 2: the future and they are and they may not be

977
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 2: time traveling, perhaps they're frozen, etc. You know. Well, a

978
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 2: man out of time wakes up and they're trying to

979
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:21,400
Speaker 2: understand our advanced contemporary technology. They might look at a

980
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:23,880
Speaker 2: TV and they're like they shrunk a person down and

981
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 2: put him in a tiny box, you know, And this

982
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:28,480
Speaker 2: is often played up for comedy. But it's not that

983
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:33,200
Speaker 2: different from the sort of you know, you know what

984
00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:38,720
Speaker 2: you can consider ridiculous analysis of past technology, where instead

985
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:43,320
Speaker 2: of you know, leaning on you know, the actual context

986
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:45,839
Speaker 2: of the thing and what they're capable of, you're going

987
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 2: to this extreme model that you can't possibly explain with

988
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:51,799
Speaker 2: any degree of accuracy.

989
00:56:52,160 --> 00:56:55,520
Speaker 3: That's an amazing analogy. Actually, we are the unfrozen caveman

990
00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:58,879
Speaker 3: lawyer in reverse when we look at the ancient world.

991
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 3: You know, so he up and says, I am but

992
00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:03,560
Speaker 3: a simple cave man. When I get into an airplane,

993
00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:06,919
Speaker 3: I think is this some giant bird? But we are

994
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:09,240
Speaker 3: doing the same thing. We look at an ancient inscription

995
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 3: and say, when I look at an inscription of a bird,

996
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:14,120
Speaker 3: I think is this an attack helicopter?

997
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 2: Exactly? All right, well, that's perfect. I think we have

998
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 2: to leave it at that. I think that that puts

999
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 2: a nice cap on it. But you know, were perfectly

1000
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:25,920
Speaker 2: happy to continue talking about this particular topic or this

1001
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 2: sort of thing in general, if nothing else in future

1002
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 2: listener Mail episodes. So write in let us know what

1003
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 2: your thoughts are on egyptology, alternative egyptology and so forth,

1004
00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:38,800
Speaker 2: or just in general, if there are other examples of

1005
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:43,200
Speaker 2: this sort of data, this sort of imagery, etc. That

1006
00:57:43,880 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 2: you know is difficult for the average modern viewer to

1007
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:52,000
Speaker 2: understand and then lends itself well to some sort of

1008
00:57:52,600 --> 00:57:58,240
Speaker 2: paranormal or alternative or conspiracy explanation. Just a reminder that

1009
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:01,880
Speaker 2: Stuff to Will Your Mind's episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

1010
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:04,640
Speaker 2: and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We

1011
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:07,440
Speaker 2: have listener mail on Monday, short form artifactor, Monster Fact

1012
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set aside most serious

1013
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird

1014
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:12,760
Speaker 2: House Cinema.

1015
00:58:12,920 --> 00:58:16,320
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1016
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with

1017
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:20,400
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1018
00:58:20,480 --> 00:58:22,960
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1019
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:25,680
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1020
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:33,960
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1021
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:37,400
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1022
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:40,280
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