WEBVTT - Dendera Lights and Ancient Egyptian Pseudohistory 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:14.560 Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:15.440 name is Robert. 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:19.759 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. In the past two 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.040 episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we've been talking 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:28.040 about a couple of famous, supposedly anomalous underwater images, weird, 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:33.160 spooky looking photographs and images produced by sonar of objects 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:37.919 on the ocean floor, which, to observers with the right predisposition, 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:42.240 seemed like compelling evidence of alien visitation of Earth, or 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:46.919 ancient technology of lost civilizations, or something else in that 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:49.319 narrative space. And in a way, I think it's kind 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.239 of telling that you look at an object and say, well, 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.240 this could be aliens, or it could be atlantis. It's 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:57.680 one of the two or both. 0:00:57.760 --> 0:00:59.640 You can have both sometimes yeah. 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.960 I guess you could. But anyway, explanation referring to explanations 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:07.759 that are big, exciting, mind rending explanations that would change 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:10.400 everything we think we know about the world and about 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.800 the history of life on Earth. Today's episode is not 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:16.520 a strict like Part three or anything, but we are 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:18.760 going to be continuing the theme, so I thought it 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.640 would be good to start off with a recap of 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.200 what we've talked about in the last couple of episodes, 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:27.120 though today we're going to be taking it in a 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:30.560 different direction. So what's the theme. Well, to start with, 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.199 I'll do a brief review of the things we talked 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:36.959 about in the last two episodes. One object was something 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:40.800 that was photographed in the nineteen sixties and known in 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:45.840 the UFO literature as the el tanin antenna. It looks 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:50.080 to the untrained observer like some kind of antenna, some 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.040 kind of receiver, you know. They called it, I think 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.680 a microwave aerial or something in some of the early 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:58.440 articles on it. But actually once people with the right 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.920 background of marine biolology knowledge looked at this photo, they 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:06.640 identified it with near certainty as a species of carnivorous 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.240 sponge that lives on the bottom of the ocean. The 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.560 other object that we talked about in the second of 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:16.560 those two episodes was captured on fuzzy sonar images by 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:21.000 treasure hunters and salvage divers in twenty eleven, and it 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:23.560 has been referred to in the media as the Baltic 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.000 Sea anomaly because it was supposedly somewhere on the floor 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:31.160 of the Northern Baltic Sea and hidden knowledge. Enthusiasts called 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.720 it everything from a crashed flying saucer to a monument 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.000 built by the civilization of Atlantis, and in this case 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.560 a positive idea is slightly more difficult than it is 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:44.079 in the case of the Eltanan antenna, which is almost 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:48.600 definitely the sponge, But numerous experts have commented that this 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:52.320 is most likely just an interesting looking geologic formation, in 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.280 other words, a big mass of rock that may be 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.160 a result of the freezing and thawing of glaciers. But 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.120 ultimately we don't know for sure, and so it's kind 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.440 of interesting that in both cases, the story goes that 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:09.440 someone captured a fuzzy or low resolution image of something 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:14.520 that looked weird and to some extent, looked intuitively unnatural 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.280 or out of place. That image was then published to 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.679 a lay audience that had no background knowledge to help 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.679 them understand what they were looking at, and then some 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:29.400 observers concluded that since the object looked unusual, unnatural, or 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.560 out of place, it must be a piece of anomalist 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:37.280 technology deposited by aliens or time travelers, or a past 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:41.160 human civilization about which all knowledge has been erased. However, 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:46.240 in both cases, the more information entered into the picture, 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:49.080 the more it seemed like these anomalies were probably just 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:53.640 weird looking natural phenomena like animals or rocks. And so, 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:56.360 while it's always important to keep an open mind, you 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.240 want to keep your mind open to good evidence if 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:02.880 it were to age of big and worldview changing discoveries, 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.160 it is at the same time important not to let 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:10.960 emotional excitement guide your reasoning. And one reason to be 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.760 skeptical about putting something that looks weird and out of 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:19.320 place into the aliens or atlantis column is that if 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:21.919 you follow these kinds of stories long enough, you really 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.920 start to see a trend. And that trend is the 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.800 more information we have to inform our judgment, the less 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.479 it seems like aliens. So the cases where a piece 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.839 of evidence like a photograph or a video, remains unexplainable 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:40.440 and thus still possibly aliens, those tend to be the 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:44.880 cases where there are notable deficits of information, and these 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.400 could be deficits within the evidence itself, like the picture 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.400 or the video is very grainy and low resolution, so 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:53.960 it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at, and 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:55.600 you kind of just have to shrug and say, I 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:57.920 don't know, it looks weird, hard to say what it is. 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.800 Or the information deficit could be in the person or 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:05.360 community that is assessing the evidence. It could be in us. 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.480 For example, most of us have a lack of background 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:11.599 knowledge about what sponges on the ocean floor look like, 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.640 or about what kinds of patterns can be found in 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:19.760 natural rock formations, and so information deficits kind of keep 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:24.440 the mystery alive. Meanwhile, the converse also seems true. The 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.960 more information there is, the more likely it becomes that 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.839 the object gets pinned down to an explanation from within 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.839 the range of known causes. So you get a higher 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.680 resolution video, or you get new videos of the same thing, 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:43.599 maybe an additional angle, better light conditions, more experience or 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.160 background knowledge with which to judge the video or photo, 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.920 and oh okay, in these cases it's a milar balloon 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.920 or oh I see that's a star, or that's an airplane. 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.039 Rob Actually, another excellent example that you brought up in 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.320 the last episode was the so called face on Mars. 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:04.599 You know this was it's a wonderful photo, like I 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.680 love the face on Mars, but this was done in 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.400 by higher resolution photography. 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.680 Done in to a certain extent. But like some of 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.839 these other images, the face of Mars still remains this 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.520 image that's kind of an article of faith to some 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:23.120 you know, or at least this kind of totem of 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.560 the paranormal and the potentially you know, cosmic, And I 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:31.200 guess it is still certainly a testament to our ability 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:33.760 to see ourselves in anything. 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.960 Well exactly. And I wouldn't wish, by the way, that 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.640 we could not read beauty and meaning into I don't know, 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:43.400 things that might on their own merits not necessarily shout 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:48.000 out to be meaningful, like a rock doesn't necessarily say 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.240 that it has meaning, but you can see faces in it, 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:52.040 and it can make you feel all kinds of things. 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.680 This is like the basis of all art. Yeah, But 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.800 when it comes to looking for explanations of things in 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.960 the world, this pattern just pops up again and again 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.560 and again. If the picture stays fuzzy, it still might 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.640 be aliens, or it still might be atlantis. But if 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.560 you're able to sharpen the focus or to have more 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:15.840 background knowledge when you're assessing it, it's almost definitely not aliens. 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.720 Then that's when you realize it's a balloon. And this 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.720 doesn't mean we will never discover good evidence of alien 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.360 visitation of Earth or anything, or of you know, maybe 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:30.119 some big discovery about something previously unknown about the ancient world. 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:34.000 That's always possible. But I think if you follow these stories, 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:39.080 it's sort of impossible not to notice the trend, and 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:43.200 awareness of the trend should put us on guard when 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.560 new pieces of evidence bubble up from the low information 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.320 or low resolution zone. So today we wanted to look 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.560 at some similar trends, not in underwater imagery, but in 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.440 imagery related to another domain that can often appear in 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.520 degraded or low resis form and be kind of put 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.240 cold in front of people who don't have contextual background 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.400 knowledge to understand what we're looking at. And this is 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:11.120 artifacts from ancient history. 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:15.240 Yeah, I think examples like this can be at times 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.840 a little harder for us to wrap our heads around, 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.320 especially if we are more inclined to sort of rally 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:27.600 behind an outside idea about what we're looking at, because 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.160 in some of these other examples of n amalists, data, 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.760 anomalist photography, et cetera, there's often maybe a sense of 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:41.960 kind of like a a rabbit duck illusion scenario, you know, 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:44.400 or one of these, you know, one of these optical 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:47.120 illusions where someone shows it to you and they say, hey, 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:48.360 do you see a duck or a rabbit and you say, well, 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:49.760 I see a rabbit. I don't see a duck at all. 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:52.000 And then someone says, well, look, i'll show you, and 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.319 you show show them the parts of the duck, and 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:56.280 they're like, okay, now I can see it both ways. 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.080 It can maybe be a little bit harder if in 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.600 order to truly see it both ways, you have to say, 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.720 understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. So, like one of the examples 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:11.120 I'm gonna touch on here is one where we absolutely 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.800 know what it is and we absolutely know what it's not, 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.440 and yet even you know, reading the explanation, you know, 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:20.760 hearing from experts about it, you know, it can still 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:23.280 be difficult. It's difficult for me to see exactly what 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.480 we're talking about there, and it's actually easier for me 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:31.400 to sort of lean in to the ridiculous explanation for 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.840 what appears to be in front of us. So we'll 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:35.880 get to this in a second, but first I just 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.960 want to talk in general about the overarching theme of 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:45.840 egypt Doomania. Now Egyptomania is more often used to refer 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:50.560 specifically to nineteenth century European fascination with all things Egypt 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:55.240 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, but it can also generally be 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:59.679 leveled at various points in time when various cultures have 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:04.160 pursued sued an interest in ancient Egyptian civilization and culture. 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:07.920 And of course this general interest is irresistible because we've 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.679 touched on many times in the show. I'm ancient Egyptian civilization, 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.480 ancient Egyptian culture and mythology. These are fascinating. 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.760 Topics, absolutely, Yeah, a beautiful entrancing and not just to 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:21.120 people in the modern world. I mean, something I've read 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:24.880 before is that people in the world that still appears 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.600 as the ancient world to us looked back to the 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:31.800 even more ancient Egyptian civilization and they were fascinated by it. 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:35.240 There were there were ancient Greco Romans who had a 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:36.559 kind of Egyptomania. 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.280 Yeah, absolutely, I think we've we've mentioned the sort of 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:43.840 mind blowing fact before. You know that the ancient Romans 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.160 were greatly intrigued by ancient Egypt, which was already as 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:50.120 ancient to them as the Romans are to us. 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:54.720 Right, So at the time of Caesar Augustus, ancient Egyptian 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:56.839 civilization was thousands of years old. 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:00.760 Yeah, yeah, And of course we've touched before on the 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:03.400 ancient wonders of the world. You know, the Pyramids, the 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.720 Great Pyramids were certainly on that list, and those still 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.360 remain some of the most enigmatic man made structures on 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.200 the planet, and we still don't know everything there is 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:16.960 to know about them. So Egyptology remains a living field 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.000 of study. Now. I was looking at a really, really 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.640 good book about this that I highly recommend. It's from 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:27.360 Ronald H. Fritz, titled Egyptomania, and in the book, the 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:31.720 author discusses various forms of Egyptomania over the ages, from 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:36.040 the ancient Hebrews, from Greeks and Romans to European models. 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.319 There's a whole section on like fiction and gets into movies. 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.840 He also has a great chapter on Afrocentrist movements that 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:48.679 engage in Egyptomania, and he drives home that just many 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.360 different peoples across different times have attempted to imagine and 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.600 even remake the ancient Egyptians in their own image, to 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:01.960 enhance their own worldview, their own their own ideology, etc. 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:06.559 And the energy of this exercise ranges from just merely 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.360 attempting to understand a fascinating time in people. I mean, 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:12.800 that's one of our main tools is to think about 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.800 even people from the distant past in different lands, to 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.160 try and imagine what it would be like to be them. 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:21.760 But on the other end of the spectrum you get 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.440 into just outright pseudohistory, pseudoscience, and just everything else you 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.840 might expect to encounter on the fringes. 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:33.640 Well, yeah, there's an interesting duality that comes from trying 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:38.360 to see yourself and imagine people like you and other 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:42.080 times and other civilizations, because of course there probably is 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:44.480 something that all people at all times kind of have 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:46.960 in common. There is a common human experience, and you 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.000 can try to imagine what it would have been like 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:54.480 to live in ancient Egypt. But there's a possibility that 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.679 in doing so, you kind of lull yourself into the 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.080 false belief that you can say, look at ancient Egyptian 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.920 art or look at ancient Egyptian artifacts and just intuitively 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.520 identify what you're looking at, when in fact, you would 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:11.200 probably need some very specific cultural knowledge to understand what 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:11.880 you're looking at. 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:16.199 Yeah, and a lot of this imagery getting right into 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:18.240 what we're talking about here is the kind of stuff 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.560 that can be mysterious enough, that can seem cryptic enough 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:25.160 to folks who don't know what they're looking at that 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.640 you can apply other ideas modern ideas to them. You know, 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.240 like you just read a book about UFOs. Well, go 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:35.080 look at these these images without any context, and you 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.800 may see UFO related ideas. There. Read a book about 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.920 the bicameral mind and start looking at some of these images. Well, 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:47.240 you might have some alarming ideas and some interesting interpretations 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:48.200 of what you see as well. 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.200 Right, we read the world through the lenses that are 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.040 available to us, and very often the lenses that are 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.560 available to us sort of, what's the top lens on 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.120 the stack is whatever you've recently been thinking about. 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:01.360 Yeah, not to say that, you know, fresh eyes and 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:06.000 fresh perspectives are not potentially important in reevaluating what we 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.400 know and what we think we know. But oftentimes, when 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:13.080 there is a particular preconceived notion in mind, you're not 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.800 necessarily checking back in with the experts to see if 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.600 this radical new theory matches up with the old school interpretation, etc. 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:31.520 Certainly when we get into fringe ideas. So anyway, there's 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.560 a long history of Gyptomania in Western magic and occultism 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.560 continues to play into modern ideas of magic and ocultism, 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:44.640 but also modern branches of fringe ideas concerning UFOs, ancient 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.680 alien discourse, which of course we've discussed on the show 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.000 in the past, and other paranormal concepts and yeah, so 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:55.720 it's no surprise that various examples of iconography, archaeological remnants, 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:57.960 and so forth that are not located on the bottom 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:00.600 of the sea still end up speaking to us across 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:04.000 time and culture in a way that to inexpert eyes 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:08.000 or eyes seeking only confirmation of the paranormal examples of 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:13.160 ancient technology and so forth, you know they're going to 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:17.000 see that in these images. So in just a few 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.400 minutes we'll get to a couple I think of interesting 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:23.200 examples of this. But going back to the book Egyptomania, 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:27.800 Fritz points out that there are other not necessarily alien 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:34.720 fringe ideas that pre exists UFO fascination that already insisted 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.680 that ancient Egypt was, for instance, much older than mainstream 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.080 historians believe today some of these pushed back to like 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.560 ten thousand BC or earlier, as opposed to the accepted 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.960 view that the Archaic Age stretches five thousand to three 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.120 thousand BC, with the Old Kingdom coming in at around 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.040 three thousand BC. And then you have a number of 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:00.600 fringe ideas that don't again don't concern alien or anything 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.040 like that, but they they get into this idea that like, 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:07.680 surely there is some ancient advanced civilization at the heart 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:10.400 of all of this, and so Fritz discusses a few 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.120 of these. There's this idea. One idea is that the 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:18.120 ancient ancient Egyptian civilization extends from civilization X or the 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:19.800 Ice Age supercivilization. 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.680 Oh, there are similar analogs to this that are still 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:24.640 kicking around today. 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:27.520 Yeah, and of course a big, big one is Atlantis, 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:33.760 the idea that like refugees from sunken Atlantis founded ancient Egypt, 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:35.840 that sort of thing. And then you also have the 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.800 ancient alien discourse coming in the ancient Aliens teaching the 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:45.200 ancient Egyptians how to do things, or ancient Aliens interbreeding 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.560 with the ancient Egyptians, supercharging human DNA and basically anything 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:51.200 else you want to happen. I don't know. 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.800 I feel like a lot of alien discourses like wrong 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:57.800 but fun, But like the alien supercharging DNA thing goes 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.040 is not wrong and fun, it's like wrong Engross. 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:04.960 Yeah, you get it. You, I mean so much of this. 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:07.960 It can these ideas, they can start in a place 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.880 that feels just fun and escapist, but you follow them 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.960 long enough, they can get into perhaps creepier territory. But 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:18.520 there is still a lot of variety here to choose from. 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.600 And Fritz writes the following quote. The outpouring and accumulation 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.639 of the many theories that alternative historians advanced about ancient 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:29.960 Egypt could be considered a cornucopia. But since so many 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.719 of the theories clash with and contradict each other, a 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.639 better description might be a cacophony. And I think we 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:38.760 saw this in some of the discussion of our previous 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.880 underwater examples as well. You know what is the anomaly? Well, 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:46.680 there's never like this single paranormal explanation, but a whole 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.520 host of them. Certainly, the deeper you go into a 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.760 theme like okay, it's an antenna, but is that is it? 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:56.439 The secret world? Government that built it, or is it 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:58.840 the ancient loss civilization that built it, or is it 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.879 current UFO, current alien visitors that built it. And within 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:05.399 a given person's body of work, they might have a 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:07.800 specific idea, but it's going to be different from the 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:08.800 next book on the shelf. 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:11.800 Or as we mentioned directly earlier, if you look at 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:13.800 an object on the ocean floor and you think, well, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.320 this could be a UFO, or it could be a 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:19.120 temple built by the people of Atlantis, or it could 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:22.480 be a Nazi bunker. In that case, like, could it 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:27.200 really possibly even suggest any of those like that? Those 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.520 are so different it sounds like you're just kind of 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.840 like reaching around for whatever, not like saying, oh, it 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:37.159 really has attributes that would make us conclude it is 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:39.280 x yeah exactly. 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.280 Now. The Atlantis connection to ancient Egypt goes way back. 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:45.879 Apparently goes back to the writings of Plato concerning the 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:50.520 idea that the ancient Egyptians coexisted with Atlantis nine thousand 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.080 years earlier. Fritz writes that while Plato was likely stating 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.959 all this purely to make a philosophical point, the idea 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:00.640 that Egypt was already a nine thousand year old civilization 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:04.639 was probably what contemporary Greeks believed in the fourth and 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.720 fifth centuries BCE, and to be clear, other civilizations of 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:11.720 the day were cited with bloated timelines as well. 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:15.200 Yeah, one big difference between like an ancient Greek historian 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.679 and a modern historian is that modern historians have a 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:21.240 wealth of physical scientific evidence that they can draw on 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:25.119 to help inform you how they should process the received 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:27.560 stories told about the past. You know, you can, like 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.359 you can do digs, and you can do radiometric dating, 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:33.240 and you can do all kinds of things that give 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.640 you physical clues to help you either confirm or disconfirm 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:39.960 things that have been written down about what happened in 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:40.399 the past. 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.199 Absolutely now, of course, one of the things about Atlantis 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.199 is that the concept never completely goes away, certainly in 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.040 the West, but it comes and it goes. It's heightened 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.359 by the discovery of an inhabited America's and then again 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.240 in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with modern pseudohistory of 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:02.639 Egypt and Atlanta's emerging largely from the writings apparently of 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:08.840 American politician Ignacious Donnelley in eighteen eighty two, Donnelly, if 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:11.960 you're not familiar with him, represented Minnesota in the US 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.560 House of Representatives from eighteen sixty three through eighteen sixty nine. 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:22.720 He pushed a number of ideas concerning pseudoscience and pseudohistory. So, yeah, 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:26.760 definitely one of the many characters that Fritz writes about 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.679 in this section. Oh boy, Now another figure that Fritz 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.800 touches on here and credits largely with this sort of 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.600 modern idea that Egypt had advanced technology. Ancient Egypt had 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:41.560 advanced technology. This goes back to the psychic readings of 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:44.959 when Edgar Casey, who lived eighteen seventy seven through nineteen 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:49.560 forty five, a self professed clairvoyant who carried out quote 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:53.000 unquote life readings for people and revealed their past lives 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:57.000 in ancient Atlantis, as well as the advanced technology that 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:01.359 the Atlanteans supposedly had, such as advanced crystal laser weapons 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.000 that they ultimately used to destroy Atlantis with the survivors 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:05.960 fleeing to Egypt. 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:08.080 Crystal laser weapons. 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:13.840 Yeah, I mean, it sounds remarkably like that old Atari 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:16.600 twenty six hundred game Atlantis. I don't know if any 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:19.119 went out there actually played this, but I remember as 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:21.920 a kid seeing the commercials for it online and it 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:24.640 was kind of a scary commercial with a whole narrative 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.080 structure going on. Had to do with that. I believe 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:31.240 Memory serves an ongoing war between the Gorgons and the 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.760 people of Atlantis, and it was a great commercial. Look 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:35.800 it up if you haven't seen. 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.320 It, you know, I kind of can't help but think 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:42.720 though all these ideas about ancient Egypt having advanced technology. 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.200 In a way, they did have advanced technology, but they 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.960 had advanced technology for the time in which they lived. Like, 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.480 you do not have to turn to bad standards of 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:57.119 evidence for examples of amazing technological achievements in ancient Egypt. 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:01.880 They built the Pyramids, among tons of other things. That 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.480 was not ancient aliens. That was extremely smart and industrious 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:10.320 people creating amazing technological achievements with a very limited set 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:13.199 of tools compared to what's available to people today. That 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.800 is an amazing technological feat. It was just an amazing 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:18.600 technological feat for the time. 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.480 Yeah. Absolutely, I mean that's one of the tragedies about 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:23.160 all of this is like when you when you get 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:26.040 wrapped up in say ancient alien discourse, you end up 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.440 reducing the importance of of of what people were actually 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:33.560 doing if you're if you just attribute it to the 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.920 gifts of the gods, the gifts of the alien visitors, 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:39.119 and so forth. Now, I want to stress that in 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:41.480 this chapter, Fritz touches on a number of different names, 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:43.240 and I'm not going to get into everybody here, but 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:46.120 you know it's there there. There are various writers and 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:49.640 occasional outright con men that are engaged in the sort 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:52.480 of work, and there were kind of feeds off each other. 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:55.800 One of the big ones, uh, One of the big names, 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:59.680 certainly an ancient alien discourse, is the work of Eric Vondanikin, 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:01.960 who we've talked about in the show before because he 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:05.600 was the author of Chariots of the Gods in nineteen 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:07.879 sixty eight. I say it that way because the title 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:11.360 does have a question mark at the end, always pronounced 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:12.240 the question mark. 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:14.400