WEBVTT - The Sunken Lands, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:15.480 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is. 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:19.160 Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And in today's episode, 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:21.640 we're going to be kicking off a series that we're 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:25.480 calling The Sunken Lands, that is about the idea of 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:31.200 lands submerged underwaters. Now, not too long ago, we did 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:35.199 a series of episodes on the tendency people have to 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:41.200 quite readily interpret any weird looking, low resolution photograph as 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.479 evidence of our highly speculative theory of choice, whatever you like. 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.520 So here's a picture of a shape that maybe doesn't 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.919 look organic in origin, so it is evidence of an 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.400 alien spacecraft that crash landed on our planet five thousand 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:58.160 years ago. But then, as we discussed in that series, 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:01.280 often if you're able to get a higher resolution image 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.560 of the same object or just get more contextual information, 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:09.840 oh wait, it's actually a rock. But one very popular 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:15.760 genre of imagery for this exercise is underwater photography. It 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:18.080 happens with, you know, images of things in the sky 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:22.280 as well or things just obscured in various contexts, but 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:28.160 underwater photography is especially juicy here. I think because the 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:34.040 conditions of underwater photography naturally lend themselves to the kind 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:40.479 of tantalizing state of low information that sets our imagination 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:43.840 running wild. Unlets you fill in the gaps with whatever 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.440 you were excited about. And when the weird looking thing 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.800 is underwater, the highly speculative theory people use to explain 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.360 it might still be aliens, as we discussed in the 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:59.040 example of you know, one underwater object, probably a glacial 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.240 erratic boulder that people did in some cases interpret as 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:07.200 a crashed alien spacecraft. But another common explanation for weird 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:12.840 looking things underwater is the sunken civilization, most often Atlantis, 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.240 but there are other candidates as well, and the idea 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.200 of a lost civilization vanished under the sea is so 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.760 captivating to people it is hard to resist the urge 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:28.200 to see an underwater rock with sharp corners and say 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:30.880 that's not a rock, that's a building. This is one 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.960 of their ancient skyscrapers, and now it's hidden under the waves. 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.320 Yeah, it's basically the same energy, but in a different 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:43.040 temporal direction. Instead of looking to aliens from beyond, you're 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:47.720 looking for some sort of advance to civilization from the 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:51.000 past that may or may not match up with realistic 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.120 expectations of the past right now. 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.519 Of course, in some limited cases, there are examples of 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.880 human artifacts or human built at a faciity that can 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.360 be found underneath the water. Now we'll probably talk about 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.080 some of those examples. But in most cases we can 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.640 say with pretty high confidence that the things people are 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.280 looking at in these images are not even intelligently designed artifacts. 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.600 It's usually like a rock or some kind of undersea creature, 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.680 something like that. And for various reasons that we might 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:23.480 get into, even if what you find under the water 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.920 was designed by humans, there are strong reasons for doubting 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.000 anybody who says, aha, we have discovered Atlantis. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:31.679 Rob. 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:33.120 I don't know if you want to talk about this 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:36.480 now or later, but there are reasons for thinking Plato's 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.160 allegory of Atlantis was maybe not even meant to refer 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:44.320 to an actually existing place, or if there, or if 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.840 it was, there's no reason to think that it's anything 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.000 more than a legend, that it's like a thing we 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:50.960 should actually be looking for on Earth. 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:54.240 Yeah, let's get back to Atlantis in just a second. 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.920 That we could easily devote an entire podcaster more to 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.360 just chasing the idea of Atlanta. It's around, but we'll 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:02.400 try and keep it contained. 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.200 But while all of that is true, while Atlantis hunting 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:10.400 is probably a misguided exercise, it's also true that there 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:15.120 actually are some places on planet Earth where what is 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:21.000 now the seafloor was relatively recently land land that could 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.000 have been, or in some cases was occupied by humans. 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:27.039 And so that's what we want to talk about in 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:29.839 the series, places on Earth that are now under the 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.679 waves but were once part of the world above. 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:35.599 And while we're mostly I guess talking like that, we 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:37.480 talk about the waves, we think about atlant as we 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:39.880 think about the ocean, but we may also touch on 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:44.479 some examples that have been lost underneath rivers or lakes, 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:51.360 sometimes with man made lakes in play. But perhaps we'll 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:52.880 come back to that in another episode. 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.880 Oh that's a good variation. Yes. Now, one thing to 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:58.400 be clear about is that part of what makes these 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:03.120 sunken lands interesting is merely a question of time. Because 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.039 of course Earth is, you know, is geologically active. It 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:09.760 has a dynamic surface, and over millions of years, the 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.360 crust of the Earth undergoes changes. There's continental drift, there 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:15.240 are all kinds of changes that happen to the crust 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.360 of the earth. Areas that were formerly exposed are buried. 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:22.320 Areas that were formerly buried are exposed. Areas that used 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:24.719 to be ocean become land, Areas that used to be 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.800 land become ocean. So we know that happens on a 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.200 geological time scale. What we're talking about here are lands 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.719 that have become covered in water relatively recently, maybe on 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:38.240 the order of thousands of years or even less. Yeah. 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.760 Yeah, So we have these basic geologic realities to keep 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:46.440 in mind, but then we see them reflected in different 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:50.800 ways in our folklore, our mythology, our religion. Like even 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:53.720 if you weren't, if you were, if you somehow avoided 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:59.640 any scientific inquiry, in any scientific understanding about these changes, 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.599 you would perhaps be exposed then to religious ideas about 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:07.400 these changes, the various religious and mythological ideas that go 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:12.719 way back in multiple different faiths, involving global or regional 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:17.000 flooding that is attributed to divine causation in many cases. 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.480 So given all of this, though, again it should come 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.720 as no shock that just the mere idea of sunken islands, 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:29.000 lost islands, phantom islands, lost continents, etc. This has long 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.719 stirred the human imagination, and a lot has been written 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.720 on this, but interestingly enough, one of the more well 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.560 regarded books on this, now it's a slightly older book, 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.840 came out, I believe, nineteen fifty four, so it doesn't reflect, 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:47.680 you know, decades upon decades of additional contemplation and discovery. 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.359 But El Sprague de Camp, who have nineteen oh seven 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.160 through two thousand wrote a book titled Lost Continents the 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:58.000 Atlantis theme in history, science, and literature. Now de Camp 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.440 is an interesting fellow because he was also an influential 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.680 sci fi author, whose works include nineteen thirty nine's Less 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:11.679 Darkness Fall. He was also a posthumous collaborator with Conan 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:15.480 creator Robert E. Howard, so he actually contributed quite a 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.720 bit to the literary world of Conan the Barbarian, and 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.760 interestingly enough, he served as an advisor on both nineteen 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:25.400 eighties Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer movies, as 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.960 well as nineteen ninety seven's Cole of a Conqueror, which 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.080 does not have Arnold in it, but is an adaptation 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:33.119 of a Conan novel. 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.320 Idea is okay, So that's the one that's got Kevin 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:41.160 Sorbo in it, right, right, Kevin Sorbo But these hercules, Yeah, so. 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.000 I think it was based on a Conan novel. But 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.800 then they just changed his name to coll the Conqueror, 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.680 who's another character in Robert E. Howard's world. But I'm 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.880 not super familiar with this movie or this other character. 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.880 I've never seen that one. But my mind is aroused 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.800 at the thoughts of scripts that Schwarzenegger said no to. 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.240 Now, it is worth noting that Robert E. Howard was 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:06.920 one of numerous Pulp era authors to make use of 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.960 lost in sunken islands, and a lot of this, you know, 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.320 does have to do as sort of the timeline of 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.480 interest in these fantastic ideas. I'll touch on a few 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.080 other examples from the pulp era in just a minute, 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.720 but in this book, De Camp discusses at length this 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:31.120 idea of a human fascination, literary, pseudohistorical, pseudo geogological, various 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.560 interests in this idea of lost lands, lost continents, etc. 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:36.960 And he points out that a lot of it comes 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:39.840 back to this idea of a lost land that is 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:45.280 often situated as some sort of utopia. It's a utopian ideal, 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.280 or where it's an eden. It is a place where 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.720 where we got it right or things were right before 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.800 the fall. You know, this idea that Okay, things are 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:57.480 not great, but there must have been a point in 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:01.480 time where things were in balance. And of course, and 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.480 in summoning this idea, there is at least implied the 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:06.839 idea that we might be able to return to it, 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:09.720 either by our own efforts or by some sort of 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:10.800 divine intervention. 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:13.440 Yeah. I think that's interesting and that that's correct. A 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.520 lot of these stories about sunken lands and the civilizations 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:21.560 that inhabited them. I guess there are some exceptions, but 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:23.640 they don't usually seem to be well, this is just 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.680 another place like many others, you know, that was just 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.560 happened to be low lying and was swallowed by the waves, 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.160 or there was some kind of weather event. It almost 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.880 always is idealized in some way. It was a place 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.800 that was especially good or especially advanced, or especially bad 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:40.520 in some way. 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.160 Yeah, and yeah, in some manner or another, this place 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:47.439 ties it all together, Which comes back to so many 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:51.120 of these these threads that we've discussed in conspiracy thinking 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.320 and and so forth. The idea that like Okay, I 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.840 have found something, and if true, and of course I 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.520 believe it is true, it will explain all these other mysteries. 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:04.640 You know, you drop this in the middle of everything 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:05.679 and it all makes sense. 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:07.800 It's the master key. Yes. 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.319 So I don't really want to do an exhaustive list 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.440 of every mythical and fictional sunken land. I mean, there's 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:17.000 there's a lot there, and a lot of them are 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:20.240 also closely connected. I mean just in fantasy alone. It's 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.640 like who anybody engaging in some broad world building is 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:28.600 going to have perhaps in Atlantis or at least a 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.240 lost land. I mean, it's just it's too attractive a 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.360 trope to give up on, right, But I thought we 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:36.840 might hit some notable examples in the main three or 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:41.720 four categories you might consider mythology, fiction, pseudoscience. But I 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:43.920 do want to note that some entries will move between 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:48.440 these classifications because once once you introduce an idea and 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:51.400 other folks will come and and use it and maybe 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:55.640 drifted into another category. So in mythology, I thought I 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.559 might mention Avalon of course, the magical island where King 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:04.719 Arthur was taken after sustaining mortal wounds. It's also the 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.720 origin place of his sword EXCaliber, and in general just 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:13.000 a magical land of Authorian legend, possibly linked in origin 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:17.960 to Fladamorgana or Glastonbury tor Note that this isn't even 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.880 the only sunken island in Authurian legend, though there are 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:25.000 there are others. It's just like an irresistible magical idea, 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.880 though again one that may be rooted in strange observations. 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:31.960 Islands that seem to be there but are not that 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.959 are you know, Fata Morgana, that are due to an 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:39.400 illusion of one sort or another, or just a mistake 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:43.600 of cartography, of trying to figure out what's out there 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:45.040 and making mistakes. 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:49.800 Both direct perceptual illusions and knowledge illusions give rise to 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.000 the idea of islands that used to be there, but 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:53.719 now you can't find them. 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:55.920 Right And then of course in the background again the 0:11:55.960 --> 0:12:00.400 geologic reality that things do change, and it is not 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:04.360 beyond the realm of possibility that a lost island could 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:06.440 truly be lost. It could have been a physical place 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.360 and is no more. Another one is Brazil or High Brazil. 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:15.160 This has generally nothing to do with Brazil, the South 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:19.080 American country. This is an Irish lost Isle of myth, 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.719 a phantom island that is covered by myst most of 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.200 the year, but then that mist opens up. Sometimes featured 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.440 on old maps and was sought after by cartographers, because 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:31.120 again you have anytime you have this idea of an 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:33.560 island that is thought to exist, and then it seems 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.200 like it doesn't exist. I mean, that's a mystery that 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.679 has to be explored. Now. It doesn't have to be 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:43.040 an island, of course, you can also have coastal areas 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:47.679 that are swallowed up. There's a mythical city in the 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.560 traditions of Brittany and France. And I may be pronouncing 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.080 this one wrong, yees, I believe it's y s. I 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:59.080 assume it's not wise, But anyway, it's allegedly consumed by 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.040 the ocean, and it's fatured into a number of creative works, 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:06.520 especially in French traditions. But of course the whole other 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:08.520 realm is fiction, of course, and once something has been 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:12.160 introduced in myth, given enough time, it may enter into fiction. 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:16.640 And this leads us to Atlantis, as we've already discussed. Yeah, 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.959 the lost continent of Atlantis, so called, has a prominent 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:24.920 place in pseudo science and conspiracy thinking and fiction. Among 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:27.240 the many entries here, I have to point out a 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:29.760 couple of things from nineteen eighty two. One I brought 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:32.120 up many times before, but if you have not seen 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:36.200 the commercial for Atari's Atlantis video game from nineteen eighty two, 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.319 look it up. It's marvelous. I think I saw this 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:43.680 when I was like four years old, and it's scared 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:45.280 and amazed me. 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:49.200 Rarely does a thirty second TV commercial have such a 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.240 bone chilling plot twist it does. 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:54.880 They really packed a lot into this one. I have 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:57.160 no idea if the game was fun at the time 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:02.240 or is well remembered like a retro experience. But as 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:04.680 I was revisiting this, because anytime this comes up, I 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.320 have to go rewatch it. And then I discovered, weirdly 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.560 enough that the brothers Hildebrand did a wall calendar of 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:15.199 original art themed around Atlantis the same year, and I 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:17.080 kept thinking, well, these have to be connected. There must 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:19.640 have been some connective tissue here. If there is, I 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:23.840 couldn't find it. But I love the brother's Hildebrand. They did, 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:25.760 of course, a lot of great Tolkien work, and they 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.240 did Tolkien calendars back in the day, and yeah, they 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:31.560 have this one calendar of Atlantis art with all sorts 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.600 of like fantastic adventures going on, some sort of like 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.920 demon lord, a dragon, so forth. So many people don't 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.400 realize that their origins are of Atlantis are also based 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.520 in fiction. You go back to around three fifty five BCE. 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:50.560 That's when Greek philosopher Plato discusses the concept of Atlantis 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:55.240 and a pair of dialogues Tomaeus and Critias. Atlantis is 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:58.880 described as a naval empire that rules the western known world, 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.800 but they all sintly fail when they come up against 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:04.320 the Athenians. Then they fall out of favor with the 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:07.280 gods and their world is consumed by the Atlantic Ocean. 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:11.680 It's described along the lines as being like the you know, 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.200 the the ideal of Plato's Republic. But here's the thing. 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.800 There's no other surviving mention of Atlantis in the ancient 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:23.840 Mediterranean world, aside from commentaries and responses to Plato's work. So, 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.160 in other words, there's no indication that this was a 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:31.400 pre existing idea, that this was something that was considered 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:35.720 actual history, or even like a pre existing I guess 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:37.080 you would say literary. 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.600 Trope, right, So it's not even clear that it was 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:43.960 thought to actually be a place right now. 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:49.440 Among those various commentators over many years, it looks like 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.720 many took it as meta metaphor and or as myth, 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:55.840 though you do have some folks that pop up that 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:59.280 end up taking a more literal approach to it, or 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.680 so it seems, based again on surviving texts. As such, 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.400 you end up with a legacy of varying interpretations, which 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.920 DeCamp summarizes is either taking it on as a fiction, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.680 finding actual societies that you can compare to Atlantis, the 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.080 investigation of land bridges and islands with Atlantis in mind, 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.480 and also just the wholesale acceptance of the concept as 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:25.000 historical truth. And of course this approach especially is widely 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:28.840 regarded as pseudohistory at the very least now. Again, though, 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.280 just because something is introduced in fiction doesn't mean it 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.080 stays in fiction like these. That's one of the interesting 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:36.840 things about this, and I guess in general about about 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:41.160 human imagination is once something has been imagined, it doesn't 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.600 have to stay in that realm of sort of safe 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:48.560 unreal in fiction. It can move into other categories of 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:54.000 the unreal, the mythological, the the pseudoscientific, the pseudohistorical, the 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.240 pseudo archaeological, et cetera. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.760 I have to wonder if in thousands of years they're 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.240 going to be people being like you know, when Tolkien 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:07.080 talked about the elves going to valen or across the ocean, 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:10.720 was that referring to the island of Cuba. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:15.080 Do you think, yeah, exactly, And you do end up 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:17.439 with that sort of inquiry. I mean in part of that, 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:19.080 of course, too, is you have someone like Plato who 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.520 has such high standing and sort of the intellectual world 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:25.680 for centuries and centuries. You know, people are going to 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:39.120 come back and and reanalyze everything that they wrote. Now 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.760 in terms of fiction, I will just mention in passing 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:44.439 like a few examples that I love the work of 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.000 Clark Ashton Smith, and a lot of his stories involved 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.560 lost continents. I think he has three different lost continents. Well, 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:53.680 the one of them is a continent from the future 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:55.720 that doesn't exist now. So it's sort of kind of again, 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.800 kind of the same concept but put in reverse, taking 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:01.520 in the future and saying in the future there will 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:03.600 be a new continent and these are the sort of 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.840 adventures that will take place there. And of course J R. 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:08.919 Tolkien got in on the action as well. We have 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:13.760 the lost Kingdom of Middle Earth, Numenor. This was corrupted 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.480 by Sauron in his fair form, and then it's destroyed 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.600 in a cataclysm as the kingdom turns against the Valor. 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.320 Oh is Numanor swallowed by waters. I never understood that, 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:25.760 I guess I just thought of it as like an 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:26.840 empire that fell. 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:32.240 Yeah, it's like a star shaped island I believe, according 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:37.440 to the maps and the recent Amazon series, I believe 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:42.320 depicts the fall of Numenor. I'm having trouble remembering offhand. 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:44.639 I need to revisit it before they put out another season. 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:45.040 I guess. 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.080 Oh, I haven't watched that yet, but been meaning to 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:49.160 check it out at some point. 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:50.879 High production values. 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:51.760 Yeah. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.879 Now, in the pseudoscientific world, and again there's a lot 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.200 of overlap with these, with these sort of loose categories, 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.400 you have the Island of MoU. This is both a 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.400 place of pseudoscience and fantasy, according to de Camp, proposed 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.920 in the nineteenth century by British American archaeologist and photographer 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.359 Augustus Lplogion, who used it to connect Mayan civilization to 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:17.960 ancient Egyptian civilization. Again, this is one of those classic 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:22.560 examples of like, if this exists, it explains everything, and 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:24.800 getting into this idea of like, well, look, we have 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.159 things in Mayan civilization, we have things in ancient Egyptian civilization. 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:31.040 They remind me of each other. There must be some 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.840 like missing link to connect them. Otherwise this doesn't make 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:35.400 sense to me. 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:39.080 That they could. They both built pyramids sort of, so 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.440 that couldn't be explained by them both just figuring out 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:44.560 how to build pyramids right right. 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:50.080 But then on top of this, British occultist James Churchward 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.200 would go on to write about MoU as well, associating 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.600 it with Lemuria, which we'll get to in a second. 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.399 In works of pseudoscience that argue that it was the 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:00.560 not only was it this kind of like single link 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.040 in terms of understanding global civilizations, but it was the 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.640 location of the Garden of Eden and a cultural connection 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:12.199 for various ancient civilizations. And then Atlantis also enters the 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.159 mix here, even though its origins I think most serious 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.199 scholars would agree is as a metaphor is as a 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:21.600 work of fiction. Various individuals have made arguments for the 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:25.880 discovery of a lost Atlantis or have gone all in 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:29.000 on the idea of Atlantis, and according to the komp, 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.800 a great deal of modern Atlantis mania stems from sixteenth 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.320 century enthusiasm for the concept, and a lot of this 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:42.040 enthusiasm coincided with excitement for the new world of the Americas. 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:45.960 So you know, again, you have a lot of energy, 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:47.960 like new lands are discovered, and then you have this 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.320 idea of Atlantis, and then people were proposing things like, well, 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:56.000 are the Americas Atlantis? Well no, but I guess you 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.560 can lean into that interpretation if you so desire. 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:00.480 You know, I was just thinking about the the sort 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:07.080 of common strain of thinking that connects conspiracy thinking with 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:11.359 with highly speculative lost civilization thinking, and like why you 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:16.480 would typically find both beliefs in the same brain, Like 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:18.879 why people are drawn to one if they're often if 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:21.320 they're drawn to the other. The idea of a lost 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:25.280 civilization that was vanished beneath the waves is a is 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:30.880 a literal, physical manifestation of the type of hidden knowledge 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.840 or covered up knowledge that that you know, guides conspiracy thinking. 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.399 Like if you're a you're a conspiracy thinking person, you 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:42.840 think that there is a there is a mechanism somehow 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.960 that explains all these disparate phenomena. But the but the 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:49.600 nature of that mechanism is being covered up. It is 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.040 hidden from you somehow. Usually it's a social mechanism. It's like, 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:55.719 you know, an agreement of people, or it's a you know, 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.400 an extraterrestrial mechanism there are aliens doing things or something 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:03.920 like that. The Lost Civilization under the Waves is kind 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:07.920 of like that. It explains history in a similar way, 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:10.800 but it has been literally physically covered up. 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:14.399 Yeah, and again it goes back to this idea of 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:19.320 lo fi information to support an idea. Though interestingly enough, 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:22.679 like coming back to the idea of Mayan and Egyptian civilizations. 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:27.760 So obviously, like the Great Pyramids are are not lo 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:33.560 fi evidence. Likewise, you know, various megastructures in the Americas 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:36.679 are not lo fi evidence either. But if you're using 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.640 both of these as evidence for this third thing that 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:43.400 doesn't exist, then they do become kind of lo fi 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:45.800 because again, there is there is not a thing there 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.920 to prove there is not this lost civilization that connects 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:50.280 the two. 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:54.160 You might also, though, be coming at them from a 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.119 position of low information, in that you don't have a 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:01.679 lot of contextual knowledge about these these civilisations, and thus, 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.639 you know, you just see like similarly shaped buildings and 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:07.920 think like has to be a common source between them. 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.600 Yeah. Now, now I don't want to make it seem like, 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:14.560 you know, just the idea of lost continents and lost 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.399 lands that aren't there, you know, are entirely rooted in 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:23.360 you know, conspiracy thinking and sort of non logical inquiry. 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:26.760