Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of IHEARTRADI.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Bed.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission
Speaker 4: control decands. Most importantly, you are here, and that makes
Speaker 4: this the stuff they don't want you to know. We're
Speaker 4: looking at the wonders of the world. This is a
Speaker 4: phrase we've all heard at some time or another. Right,
Speaker 4: I feel like you hear this a lot in elementary
Speaker 4: school and middle school history.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, for sure, the seven Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you're learning general history. This is a big
Speaker 2: deal because you're going back into BCE and you're looking
Speaker 2: at the things that humanity has been able to create.
Speaker 2: That literally, if you look upon it, you will experience wonder.
Speaker 3: There we go. Yeah, that's a great definition.
Speaker 4: And of course nowadays, some of the world wonders are
Speaker 4: more famous than others. There are a couple on the
Speaker 4: lists that might see a month familiar to a lot
Speaker 4: of us, just because we don't think of them that often.
Speaker 4: And it might surprise some of us tuning in tonight
Speaker 4: to realize that there's still a lot of mystery about
Speaker 4: some of these world wonders. One of them in particular,
Speaker 4: this evening, we're on a search for the hanging Gardens
Speaker 4: of Babylon.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about what those wonders were. We kind
Speaker 2: of mentioned it already. They're exceptional human built places. It's
Speaker 2: architecture generally that existed in the Middle East, in North Africa.
Speaker 2: They're in Egypt and southern Europe. One of them existed
Speaker 2: allegedly in Babylon, which is pretty far to the east
Speaker 2: of a lot of these other places. And you know,
Speaker 2: how again, who made that list, who decided those are
Speaker 2: the wonders? Who was the world traveler that was, you know,
Speaker 2: writing at the time and saying, dang, guys, you've got
Speaker 2: to see these pyramids.
Speaker 4: It was it was a guy named Philo of Byzantium,
Speaker 4: but not but there's more than one Filo of Byzantium,
Speaker 4: so it becomes really confusing. It's like someone says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm visiting Philadelphia and you say, oh, Philly, do you
Speaker 4: know John John Philly? Yes, So there are a lot
Speaker 4: of filos in play, and historians believe that the compilation
Speaker 4: of these wonders goes back to Alexander the Great, a
Speaker 4: notably humble guy who conquered a vast swath of the
Speaker 4: Western world right around the fourth century BCE. And this,
Speaker 4: to your point, Matt, this gave people of that society
Speaker 4: of the Hellenistic travelers, this unprecedented access to all these
Speaker 4: other civilizations, ancient Egypt, Persia, Babylon. And just like travelers
Speaker 4: today posting on Instagram or sending letters, they wanted to
Speaker 4: share their experiences with their friends back home. This was
Speaker 4: an immensely entertaining thing and educational, you know, even though
Speaker 4: it was often riddled with errors. They were not originally
Speaker 4: called wonders. They were called things to be seen. The
Speaker 4: list was like, look at this stuff.
Speaker 5: Points of interest, Yeah, just so side attractions.
Speaker 3: And people got competitive, right.
Speaker 5: Oh, they sure did. As would make sense honestly for
Speaker 5: things like this like my you know, I mean it's
Speaker 5: like when you were traveling and you see assigned for
Speaker 5: you know, south of the border, and now it's like
Speaker 5: competing with BUCkies, you know, I mean, it's there are
Speaker 5: a lot of eyeballs to be vied for and on
Speaker 5: a global sense. That just kind of blows the whole
Speaker 5: equation up. So a lot of these writers were kind
Speaker 5: of making their own little listicles and noting their favorites
Speaker 5: and attempting to get theirs to kind of rise in
Speaker 5: the overall ranks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like travel blogs competing travel blogs in the
Speaker 2: first century BCE. But again, remember most of these ancient
Speaker 2: structures were built four hundred, five hundred, six hundred years
Speaker 2: before these writers were making their lists. And we've got
Speaker 2: one here, right, Ben. This is from Antipater of Sidon
Speaker 2: or Sidon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was an epigramist. What a weird job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he made a list of wonders. And we've
Speaker 2: got a quote.
Speaker 4: I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon along
Speaker 4: which chariots may race.
Speaker 3: That's one.
Speaker 4: And on the Zeus, by the banks of the Altheus
Speaker 4: that's two. I've seen the hanging gardens and the colossus
Speaker 4: of the Helios that's three, and four, the great man
Speaker 4: made mountains of the lofty Pyramids. Five, the gigantic tomb
Speaker 4: of Mazulus. Huh Maslem right, So six and then he says,
Speaker 4: but when I saw the Sacred House of Artemis, the
Speaker 4: towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the
Speaker 4: shade for the sun himself is never looked upon its
Speaker 4: equal outside Olympus. So like to your point, Noel, he's saying, yeah,
Speaker 4: there are definitely seven, here are six, But here's the real.
Speaker 5: Banker, here's the real banger. It's true. So I mean,
Speaker 5: there is definitely a lot of wiggle room in these
Speaker 5: at least in terms of like depending on who the
Speaker 5: source was. And then it's all about who do we
Speaker 5: ascribe as the ultimate authority on wonders of the world?
Speaker 5: And are they even telling the truth? Are they describing
Speaker 5: things that they actually saw? Are they big uping things
Speaker 5: that maybe weren't quite as impressive as they're describing them
Speaker 5: to be entirely possible.
Speaker 2: But let's point out something really important in that quotation there.
Speaker 2: The first sentence, I have gazed on the walls of
Speaker 2: impregnable Babylon, which chariots may race. Now that's one little
Speaker 2: phrase there. The next phrase isn't And the hanging gardens,
Speaker 2: which you know, the hanging gardens is we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about, are supposedly in Babylon and he didn't mention
Speaker 2: him when he's talking about the Walls of Babylon. You
Speaker 2: mentioned him way further down.
Speaker 4: He's just like also gardens that hang somewhere, and Herodotus
Speaker 4: does something similar to to your point, Matt. He is
Speaker 4: an early adopter of world wonder list or this genre,
Speaker 4: and he comes about just a century after Nebekinezer, and
Speaker 4: when he writes his world wonder List, he doesn't mention
Speaker 4: the gardens so far as we can tell, because like
Speaker 4: a lot like we're going to see a lot of
Speaker 4: people who write at this time they're writing, disappears and
Speaker 4: we only know about it because later writers name check
Speaker 4: it or reference it. So we don't actually have Herodotus's
Speaker 4: list his list listical.
Speaker 3: We just have references to it later.
Speaker 2: And we need to mention there. Nemican Nezzar that you
Speaker 2: just mentioned is allegedly the person the King nemican Azer,
Speaker 2: the second, the king that built this thing that is
Speaker 2: known as the hanging gardens in Babylon allegedly.
Speaker 5: Well, and today we have things like UNESCO World Heritage
Speaker 5: Sites and there's like whole organizations that are devoted to
Speaker 5: pointing out these incredible features of the known world and
Speaker 5: they there are cross references in there, you know, historical
Speaker 5: precedents for these things. This stuff is a lot of hearsay,
Speaker 5: you know, and there isn't like one unified organization that's
Speaker 5: identifying these things.
Speaker 4: So it gets a little murky, it sure does. And
Speaker 4: just for name check, we'll give you the rest of
Speaker 4: the of the wonders of the world, the canonical ones.
Speaker 4: This comes from the list made by Philo back in
Speaker 4: the day, Greek engineer or another Filo from Byzantium. Again
Speaker 4: it gets Yeah, it's the inventor of television Filo farms.
Speaker 3: Isn't amazing, dude.
Speaker 5: I'm thinking of the professor from Futuramas also a good
Speaker 5: also a good reference.
Speaker 4: So the Great Pyramid is by far the lebron of
Speaker 4: this list. It is the oldest world wonder. It is
Speaker 4: the only one still standing, and it was old when
Speaker 4: they first started writing these lists, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's hard to it's it's difficult for us to understand
Speaker 4: just how long that pile of rocks has been around.
Speaker 2: Some people think it was there before the Egyptians.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, before they started calling themselves Egyptians. And then,
Speaker 4: of course they're some people who think it was there
Speaker 4: before humans.
Speaker 3: That'll be a fun episode, right.
Speaker 4: So then there's the statue of Zeus at Olympia, big
Speaker 4: as heck, forty feet high, encrusted with gems and ivory
Speaker 4: and ebony. Super impressive. Quite a spectacle destroyed in an earthquake.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's kind of funny to because Zeus it is
Speaker 5: like a statue of a statue holding a statue. He's
Speaker 5: also in his clutches holding a statue of another Pantheonic figure, Nike,
Speaker 5: the goddess of victory and sportsmanship. I mean, that's second
Speaker 5: part of nice.
Speaker 2: Then you got the goddess of the hunt, Artemis. There's
Speaker 2: a temple for her in Aphesus, Turkey.
Speaker 5: Then we have the Mausoleum of Hallikarnassis, also in Turkey,
Speaker 5: which is what it sounds like. It's an incredibly ornate,
Speaker 5: elaborate mausoleum destroyed.
Speaker 3: By an earthquake. Yeah, you know, the Colossus of Rhodes.
Speaker 4: That's what a lot of people have heard about because
Speaker 4: it's depicted in so much fiction, or it's inspired so
Speaker 4: many visual elements in philm.
Speaker 5: Wasn't there a thing in Game of Thrones that was
Speaker 5: very much inspired by this? I believe it was called
Speaker 5: you know, it was in Wow, gosh, what was it
Speaker 5: called the Titan or something like that, or Bravos, the
Speaker 5: Titan of Bravos.
Speaker 3: That's it's rights.
Speaker 5: And also in Lost there's a big part where they
Speaker 5: all of a sudden see the remains of this kind
Speaker 5: of colossus type Greek statue that I believe is a
Speaker 5: nod to this big boy as well. Next we have
Speaker 5: the lighthouse of Alexandria, big old lighthouse, one hundred and
Speaker 5: seven meters three hundred and fifty feet tall, you know,
Speaker 5: not really much different than the types of lighthouses that
Speaker 5: we see today, very technologically ahead of its time, which
Speaker 5: is I think part of the marvel of it all.
Speaker 3: It was destroyed by earthquake, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Earthquakes, and then the colossus also went down to earthquakes.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 4: One of our exceptions here is the temple you mentioned, Matt,
Speaker 4: the Temple of Artemis. A human destroyed that one mainly
Speaker 4: to get famous because people.
Speaker 3: Uh so.
Speaker 4: The last one is the hanging gardens, which are conventionally
Speaker 4: called the hanging Guards of Babylon in modern day Iraq,
Speaker 4: and that last one is the most baffling because even
Speaker 4: now in twenty twenty three. No one can agree on
Speaker 4: where these gardens were, what they looked like, or whether
Speaker 4: they existed at all. So did someone make up a
Speaker 4: wonder of the world?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Let's we've got to figure this one out. You want
Speaker 4: to pause for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 5: I think that's smart.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy, all right.
Speaker 4: So we got the one still standing, the pyramid, and
Speaker 4: we've got five other wonders that are gone or smashed ruins.
Speaker 4: But if those are god, how can we know that
Speaker 4: they also existed?
Speaker 2: Mostly writing canea forum often very very old writing, that
Speaker 2: is from the time that these structures stood. That's why
Speaker 2: it's a bit strange that we've mostly got classical writers
Speaker 2: like Greek writers and Roman writers who are talking about
Speaker 2: the hanging gardens. And my goodness, there is all kinds
Speaker 2: of strange descriptions. Guys. I've got a list here from
Speaker 2: This is from Grant Frame, who is Grant Frame, PhD.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, who was in twenty fifteen the associate curator
Speaker 2: of the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum
Speaker 2: of Archaeology and Anthropology. He I guess was giving a
Speaker 2: talk at some point on the hanging gardens, and he
Speaker 2: made this amazing list that I just took a screenshot
Speaker 2: of the shows all all the different descriptions of where
Speaker 2: the hanging gardens existed, what they looked like, why they
Speaker 2: were built, how they were built. And it's crazy that
Speaker 2: these again Greek and Roman writers didn't agree. No, nobody
Speaker 2: agreed on what the heck the thing was?
Speaker 5: Right, Like, what does hanging even mean? Comes into question?
Speaker 5: You know, I mean because there aren't elaborate descriptions of
Speaker 5: the thing, you know, So this title of this supposed
Speaker 5: space leaves a lot to the imagination and the idea
Speaker 5: of how are they irrigated? You know, what kind of
Speaker 5: technology that they possess to build such a thing in
Speaker 5: such an arid climate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to your point about descriptions, we can tell you
Speaker 4: all about these these gardens, and a lot of writers
Speaker 4: did over time, and they've got some of the same.
Speaker 4: Like the soul the theme of the description is is
Speaker 4: pretty constant. But to your point, all the translations that
Speaker 4: occur over the centuries make a big game of telephone.
Speaker 4: It might sound silly to say what does hanging mean?
Speaker 4: But getting a clear understanding of what this thing is
Speaker 4: will help people in this search to find it.
Speaker 5: Because I mean, I believe just having a garden that
Speaker 5: is hanging like that. I mean the fact that you
Speaker 5: could have a garden at all that would thrive, and
Speaker 5: like I said, such a dry and very low rainfall
Speaker 5: climate is in and of itself a marvel.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: To be able to do that at this time it
Speaker 5: require a lot of technological advances that maybe we don't
Speaker 5: even think they were capable of. But to have it
Speaker 5: like up in the air, you know, that's its own thing,
Speaker 5: you know. And we do have descriptions of the gardens
Speaker 5: that vary, but what ultimately remains is like, how in
Speaker 5: the hell have they do something like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the imagine, if you will, fellow conspiracy realist, a
Speaker 4: giant green mountain. In some descriptions it's built out of
Speaker 4: mud bricks, and others it's built out of heavier, nicer stone,
Speaker 4: and the mountain is terraced with all these trees and
Speaker 4: shrubs and plants and flowers that come from local areas
Speaker 4: and from very far away. I think, what do you
Speaker 4: guys think about this? Is it best to think of
Speaker 4: it as like a gigantic ziggurat of good landscaping.
Speaker 5: I think that's accurate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been reproduced in all kinds of animations over
Speaker 2: the years as looking precisely like that, like a lot
Speaker 2: of the other reproductions of Babylon, of ancient Babylon, because
Speaker 2: we know to some extent what Babylon looked like, right,
Speaker 2: because of who was that guy that excavated it? Oh
Speaker 2: cold of A Yeah, Cold of A is German archaeologist
Speaker 2: that excavated the site from eighteen ninety nine to nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: like a long time, right, and we actually get to
Speaker 2: see Babylon. You can go and visit Babylon now. You
Speaker 2: can see ishtar Gate and some of the amazing architecture
Speaker 2: that existed at the time. So the imagining of what
Speaker 2: this place looked like is like these stepped stepped to
Speaker 2: Zigarotte kind of structure similar to the Tower of what
Speaker 2: is referred to as the Tower of Babel that did
Speaker 2: exist there in Babylon, except it's just got a bunch
Speaker 2: of trees, like you said, been a bunch of shrubs
Speaker 2: and other stuff hanging out on each level, which would
Speaker 2: be kind of crazy to be able to support plant
Speaker 2: life at each one of those levels, no matter how
Speaker 2: you got the water there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we don't have to go into a bunch
Speaker 4: of detail with quotes from Filo and so on, but
Speaker 4: they what you do need to know is the impressiveness
Speaker 4: for the spectator. Right when the philos of the world,
Speaker 4: the visitors in this Hellenistic society, when they make it
Speaker 4: out there to Babylon, according to the story, and they
Speaker 4: see this thing, they're by the engineering and they're definitely
Speaker 4: impressed by this complex irrigation system. Even now, if you
Speaker 4: think about it, the fact that human beings can go
Speaker 4: to the fortieth floor of a skyscraper and still have
Speaker 4: the sink in the bathroom work, that's amazing. That's really impressive,
Speaker 4: you know, And that's kind of what they were doing.
Speaker 5: I mean, how I'm impressed and also annoyed by the
Speaker 5: fact that I have to have a sump pump in
Speaker 5: my house to pump the water from my basement upstairs.
Speaker 5: And when that thing stops working, you sure as heck
Speaker 5: know it. It's really gross. Really fast technology is crazy.
Speaker 5: But again, that's a thing that plugs in and has
Speaker 5: a motor. You know, we're talking about for this stuff
Speaker 5: much more analog technology. You know, things like the screw
Speaker 5: of Archimedes or whatever like these, you know, very very
Speaker 5: forward thinking methods for raising water from lower to higher elevations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and sometimes there are mentions again by later authors
Speaker 4: tierpoint Matt. A lot of these people are quoting each
Speaker 4: other and remixing each other, and they're they're writing about this,
Speaker 4: these wonders far after they have been destroyed.
Speaker 3: There's one guy, Deodorus.
Speaker 4: Cecilia's Greek historian from Sicily, who talks about this irrigation
Speaker 4: and says there were machines quote raising the water in
Speaker 4: great abundance from the river. It's all pretty impressive, but
Speaker 4: you know, it makes me think, I think we talked
Speaker 4: about this previously. It makes me think of the first
Speaker 4: time I saw the Tower of London. Like it's a
Speaker 4: it's a venerated building. It's historically incredibly important, but to
Speaker 4: the modern eye, it doesn't necessarily look like a tower,
Speaker 4: because it takes a few more stories for us to
Speaker 4: count something as a tower these days. So maybe if
Speaker 4: we I'm putting this out there because maybe if explorers
Speaker 4: find the hanging gardens or the ruins of it, they
Speaker 4: don't recognize it, because it does the real thing doesn't
Speaker 4: look the way it's been depicted for centuries by very
Speaker 4: excited people.
Speaker 5: I also love this quote uses the word machines because
Speaker 5: to your point, Ben, when we hear that word, we
Speaker 5: think of robotics, you know, we think of motors and
Speaker 5: gas fueled engines. But they're talking about here what we
Speaker 5: would refer to as simple machines. You know, Fulcrum's and
Speaker 5: some of the earliest innovations that led to the modern
Speaker 5: machines that we know today. So while these things might
Speaker 5: not have seemed impressive to the modern eye, the fact
Speaker 5: that they were able to kind of harness this stuff
Speaker 5: in that way is mega impressive.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about what an Archimedes screw is, guys.
Speaker 2: Fascinating invention that you know supposedly came a lot later
Speaker 2: than this time when Nebuchonizer the second was ruling Babylon.
Speaker 2: But it's it's fairly simple in construction when you think
Speaker 2: about it. It is a screw, like a large screw
Speaker 2: looking usually wooden or metal, thing that turns either it's
Speaker 2: usually through mechanical means. It turns, and as it turns,
Speaker 2: it takes water from a water source slowly in a
Speaker 2: roundabout way up that screw till it gets, you know,
Speaker 2: up a certain elevation, like let's say six feet up
Speaker 2: into the air, or upwards on an elevated slope. And
Speaker 2: that's a way to get water from let's say, in
Speaker 2: this case, the Euphrates River up to the first terrace.
Speaker 2: Then perhaps you'd have another one once you've got enough
Speaker 2: water pooled up there, going up to the next level
Speaker 2: and the next level and the next level. And that
Speaker 2: would be highly highly highly impressive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and also funny story just to show you how
Speaker 4: confusing history can be. The Archimedes water screw is named
Speaker 4: after Archimedes, but it was invented before Archimedes was alive.
Speaker 4: It's just branding at that point. Yeah, It's like it's
Speaker 4: like calling it the the Google Grand Canyon.
Speaker 5: I wish I could remember the guy's name. But there's
Speaker 5: this YouTuber I've been watching who's got some great videos
Speaker 5: on this. I'll think of it by the end. But
Speaker 5: he said it's sort of similar to the way often
Speaker 5: many pithy English sayings are just attributed to Oscar Wild.
Speaker 5: You know what this is, like the most famous guy
Speaker 5: you know kind of gets credit for all the other stuff.
Speaker 5: You know, which is unfortunately the way the game of
Speaker 5: telephone that his history works a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just give concrete dates for this, because you're
Speaker 2: you're absolutely right. Here been Archimedes born in two eighty
Speaker 2: seven BCE. But nebekan Azer, the second who supposedly built
Speaker 2: this thing was around from six oh four BCE to
Speaker 2: five sixty two BCE, so you know, just a couple
Speaker 2: one hundred years before Archimedes was around.
Speaker 3: And what's that?
Speaker 4: What's a couple hundred years you know in the big
Speaker 4: Christian stream of things. Yeah, there's another strange thing about
Speaker 4: the literature. No survive being actual from Babylon. Babylonian text
Speaker 4: ever mentioned them, ever mentioned the gardens. So what happened?
Speaker 4: Could this be some sort of historical whoopsie? Could this
Speaker 4: be a no no? And could one kind of fake
Speaker 4: thing have accidentally snuck into a list of very real
Speaker 4: world wonders for scholars, the best way to find to
Speaker 4: prove the existence of this thing starts with the literature,
Speaker 4: and the literature, as we've established, is super confusing because
Speaker 4: so many writers borrowed from each other, remixed things to
Speaker 4: suit their own taste and time, and they spread their
Speaker 4: word to anyone who would read or listen. And honestly,
Speaker 4: that's part of why the gardens got so famous in
Speaker 4: the first place. Because somebody made a pitch for the
Speaker 4: babylon Gardens as a story of romance.
Speaker 3: We think, we think he did. His writing is gone.
Speaker 2: Also, yeah, we've got one from who is this I'm
Speaker 2: gonna butcher this Diodorus Sicolus Sicolis or yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that's how you'd say. It's a Greek historian from the
Speaker 2: first century. I want to just give you this what
Speaker 2: we're talking about romance. Here's a quote, and this is
Speaker 2: also from that same doctor, from the Penn Museum quote.
Speaker 2: There was also beside the acropolis hanging the hanging garden,
Speaker 2: as it was called, which was built not by Semamis,
Speaker 2: but by a later Syrian king to please one of
Speaker 2: his concubines, for she, they say, being a Persian by
Speaker 2: race and longing for the meadows of her mountains, asked
Speaker 2: the king to imitate, through the artifice of a planted garden,
Speaker 2: the distinctive landscape of Persia.
Speaker 4: And apparently that story from our Greek Sicilian friend comes
Speaker 4: from a earlier source. A Babylonian priest named Barysosis, who said,
Speaker 4: who said that nebucad Dresser the second built? He said,
Speaker 4: kind of the same story, but in his story it's
Speaker 4: not a concubine. It's his wife, Amtis of Medea, who,
Speaker 4: like you said, Matt wanted to be reminded of Persia.
Speaker 4: Now is that story true?
Speaker 5: Really?
Speaker 3: We have no way of knowing.
Speaker 5: But what we do know is that it put this
Speaker 5: thing you know, when you can't find something or you've
Speaker 5: got like something that's lost to history, but yet people
Speaker 5: are talking about it, and the counts might vary, like
Speaker 5: the Lost City of Atlantis, for example, It certainly ignites
Speaker 5: people's imagination and the hunt is on right.
Speaker 4: Oh, we shall also point out we talked about this
Speaker 4: a little bit off here. Nebuchad Nezzar, as we end
Speaker 4: up saying it in English right in the west, has
Speaker 4: a couple of different spellings because it's from so long ago,
Speaker 4: right in a different language. But he also had a
Speaker 4: street name which was like Alexander's, who was very humble.
Speaker 4: It was Nebuchnezer the Great.
Speaker 5: Got it, yeah, not just not just the fine. He
Speaker 5: was the great? Right, I wonder I anybody's was ever
Speaker 5: like somebody the best. Maybe that's a little more modern.
Speaker 5: The idea of being the best the great seems to
Speaker 5: have been more of a go to in antiquity. But
Speaker 5: so now we've got this concept this like you know,
Speaker 5: white whale, you know of a of a seven wonder
Speaker 5: of the world, and so it becomes basically part of legend,
Speaker 5: you know, And scholars of course try to stick to
Speaker 5: the facts. But when you have all of these varying
Speaker 5: accounts and not an actual location or perhaps a you know,
Speaker 5: artifact pointing to a location, it starts to get really confusing.
Speaker 5: So scholars do believe that the passage in Diodorus's Biblioteca
Speaker 5: Historica describes something that they believe to be the Hanging
Speaker 5: Gardens is actually derived by like you said, Ben, Alexander
Speaker 5: the Great's biographer, Cleo Tarkas, I believe that's how you
Speaker 5: pronounced that, who was writing in around the late fourth
Speaker 5: century BCE.
Speaker 4: Oh, And like the work of Herodotus, this stuff didn't survive.
Speaker 4: We know it existed because other writers mention it later.
Speaker 4: And this, this confusing game of storytelling, just accelerates the
Speaker 4: confusion surrounding the locations of the gardens.
Speaker 3: Matt, I'm really glad.
Speaker 4: You mentioned out the fact that they're an outlier on
Speaker 4: Filo's original listical and they'll now you've got listical stuck
Speaker 4: in my head. But that's what they were, that's what
Speaker 4: they were done for. Yeah, And so he wrote the
Speaker 4: gardens were quote a long journey to the land of
Speaker 4: the Persians on the far side of the Euphrates, and
Speaker 4: all the other wonders were in or around the eastern Mediterranean, so.
Speaker 3: We know it was far away.
Speaker 4: We know all sources that reference a Babylonian garden that
Speaker 4: is super impressive and tiered and high and has this
Speaker 4: cool irrigation. Those all come from the fourth century BC
Speaker 4: at the earliest, and folks like Caradotas, who are just
Speaker 4: one century after nebucon Ezer.
Speaker 3: They write this huge history.
Speaker 4: Of all the cool stuff they can think of, and
Speaker 4: the gardens are nowhere on that list. So how did
Speaker 4: one guy, one very smart guy, miss it so soon
Speaker 4: after and then centuries later a bunch of people are
Speaker 4: like Reddit level experts on it.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. It does seem like it's very
Speaker 2: odd because, as this person from Penn Museum notes, there's
Speaker 2: a ton of writing on these these clay cylinders and
Speaker 2: on clay tablets from nebekan Azer's time. But often or
Speaker 2: most of this stu that they have is about him
Speaker 2: and his conquerings, right, because he controlled the largest version
Speaker 2: of the Babylonian Empire that ever existed, that you went
Speaker 2: from Egypt all the way over far to the east,
Speaker 2: and most of his stuff is writing about building temples
Speaker 2: in other places that he's basically been through. Right, we
Speaker 2: rode through this area and I build a badass temple
Speaker 2: and it only took me fifteen days. Like that's literally
Speaker 2: what some of his writings said, and you can see
Speaker 2: that stuff echoing through some of the classical writers. You
Speaker 2: can see some like specific phrases like the I built
Speaker 2: it in fifteen days thing talking like some people mention
Speaker 2: that Nebekinezer built his one of his temples in Babylon
Speaker 2: in fifteen days, but that's actually incorrect because they're just
Speaker 2: pulling it from his other writing and attributing it to
Speaker 2: him building parts of the actual like Babylon. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, it does feel like it's the game
Speaker 2: of telephone you just mentioned there, that we're trying to
Speaker 2: piece it together the best we can kind of like
Speaker 2: they were trying to piece things together the best they
Speaker 2: could couple hundred years after Nebuchinezer's reign. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's feeling like maybe this whole hanging gardens thing never
Speaker 2: was in Babylon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can see how this can get frustrating. And
Speaker 4: then some people will say, well, maybe it wasn't a
Speaker 4: thing at all. Maybe somebody just saw some plants on
Speaker 4: a hill and made a big deal out of it
Speaker 4: because they wanted other folks to know they travel right.
Speaker 4: But I don't know if it's on that far end
Speaker 4: of the spectrum there, because we have to remember it
Speaker 4: was years ago. It was baffling we because of this show.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you guys, but I didn't know
Speaker 4: that Troy had ever been considered a legendary city, and
Speaker 4: it was until pretty like until all the way up
Speaker 4: to the late eighteen hundreds when guy Heinrich Schleiman actually
Speaker 4: found it. Before then, people thought Troy was a bunch
Speaker 4: of other cities that have been confused over time or
Speaker 4: just made.
Speaker 3: Up for a good story.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the questions we have to ask
Speaker 4: when we ask about the hanging gardens of to your point,
Speaker 4: Matt Babylon or the hanging guards of at breaks.
Speaker 5: Asiria, that's one.
Speaker 2: What do you what do you Assyria? What do you
Speaker 2: guys think? What do you guys think people will write
Speaker 2: about or think about the Georgia guidestones in one hundred years,
Speaker 2: four hundred years? Did they really exist? Were they there?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 2: I mean, we've got photographic evidence maybe, but it's all digitized.
Speaker 2: Can they access it.
Speaker 5: Depends exactly whether they can access it or not. And
Speaker 5: to your point, Ben, whether or not like one, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe well known chronicler or you know, let's say proto
Speaker 5: travel blogger, was the one who just said, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: make this place a star because I see it and
Speaker 5: I think it's cool and I want to get myself
Speaker 5: some clout. Now we have so much more access to information,
Speaker 5: and I just wanted to point out the YouTube channel
Speaker 5: I was talking about earlier as Geographics, and the lovely
Speaker 5: British fellow that narrates these videos pointed out that at
Speaker 5: the time, you know, these were the equivalent of travel bloggers,
Speaker 5: and today how many travel bloggers are writing about places
Speaker 5: that they've never actually set foot in. That was not
Speaker 5: possible back then. You were observing either firsthand or quoting
Speaker 5: some of these other writers, which is I guess that's
Speaker 5: sort of similar to you know, just googling things, but
Speaker 5: you had a lot fewer folks that were doing this
Speaker 5: that would have enough prominence to be circulated.
Speaker 4: And we're going to pause for a word from our response,
Speaker 4: or we're going to circulate through an ad break with
Speaker 4: our own complex podcast irrigation system, and then we'll return
Speaker 4: to dive a little bit further into the mystery.
Speaker 3: We're back.
Speaker 4: There have been some amazing, incredibly impressive attempts to discover
Speaker 4: the Hanging Gardens. But even when those attempts failed, which
Speaker 4: they all have so far, there were still other astonishing
Speaker 4: discoveries made. Like we've got to chat about Robert Coldove,
Speaker 4: like you said, Matt, Between eighteen ninety nine nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 4: this guy led the first modern excavation of ruins in Babylon,
Speaker 4: and they found at one point a strange arched structure
Speaker 4: beneath the northeast corner of the Southern Palace. And as
Speaker 4: soon as they found it, they knew they were certain
Speaker 4: they have found something important.
Speaker 5: That's right, they found a large stone structure carved stone
Speaker 5: structure that was resistant to moisture, or at least it
Speaker 5: was somewhat more resistant to moisture than what maybe typically
Speaker 5: would have been used in the situation, which would be
Speaker 5: mud brick, which of course is much more porous.
Speaker 2: Which is what most of the place was made out of.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right. So these thick walls would have really
Speaker 5: done a fine job of supporting a lot of plant life.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, okay, sounds like good, good planning for a garden.
Speaker 4: There was also evidence of wells, and Cultivated took this
Speaker 4: to be evidence of irrigation. They they really dove into this,
Speaker 4: and they were increasingly well. Factions of the excavation were
Speaker 4: increasingly certain they had discovered the hanging gardens, but later
Speaker 4: research would indicate this was probably an ancient version of
Speaker 4: a warehouse like They even found some writing depicting, you know,
Speaker 4: X number of goods is going is stored here, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Doesn't mean it wasn't the hanging gardens. Somebody could have
Speaker 4: been in the gardens and you know, drop their tablet
Speaker 4: their shopping list. Maybe I don't know, but that's the thing.
Speaker 4: There are multiple other near misses in the search, and
Speaker 4: each time these excavations and the people leading them with
Speaker 4: the best of intentions, they find amazing ruins of other structures,
Speaker 4: just not these legendary hanging gardens, and that led scholars
Speaker 4: to ask the question that you were asking at And
Speaker 4: I think that we're all asking.
Speaker 3: What if we're just looking in the wrong place. What
Speaker 3: if we're leading.
Speaker 4: Too hard on this Babylon aspect right? What if there
Speaker 4: is some other hanging garden in some other part of
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: You mentioned to Syria, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, we'll go to serious sec. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: spend one more moment here on cold of A's excavations. Guys.
Speaker 2: I think it's incredible that that team built an entire
Speaker 2: railway just to get the dirt out of the thing
Speaker 2: that they were trying to excavate. So, you know, when
Speaker 2: we're talking about coldi of A in the this you know,
Speaker 2: archaeologist and team of people working with them looking for
Speaker 2: the hanging gardens or whatever it is. It's not like
Speaker 2: they checked everything out and they thought, Okay, maybe that's
Speaker 2: not here. Because it's a huge site. Again, they built
Speaker 2: a railway to get the dirt out, and they looked
Speaker 2: everywhere they possibly could and it just wasn't. It didn't
Speaker 2: seem to be there, right unless it completely fully collapsed
Speaker 2: and there was zero you know, there's no way you
Speaker 2: could look at one of the structures that still kind
Speaker 2: of at least in some way stands there. I just
Speaker 2: don't think it's possible that they missed the hanging gardens.
Speaker 3: Right well under the Euphrates.
Speaker 2: It could be under the Euphrates, but there's some weird
Speaker 2: stuff there because when Babylon was you know, conquered and everything,
Speaker 2: the Euphrates River was diverted away from the city for
Speaker 2: a time, which is you know, makes me think it
Speaker 2: probably I don't know, maybe they built it when it
Speaker 2: was moved away, but that doesn't match up with the timelines.
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, it's still just maybe. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: feels like to me it just wasn't ever in Babylon.
Speaker 2: And I'm glad we're going, you know, checking out some
Speaker 2: other places because I think some of the Assyrian kings
Speaker 2: may have wanted to make something like this too.
Speaker 4: Oh, they definitely wrote about it right. Shout out to
Speaker 4: Oxford University assyriologist Stephanie Dolly Daily, the author of a
Speaker 4: book called Lost Gardens of Babylon, this professor is legitimate.
Speaker 4: She argues that the hanging gardens were not built by
Speaker 4: nebukandezer At in Babylon at all, nebukdzer the second, but
Speaker 4: in Nineveh by an Assyrian ruler named here we go
Speaker 4: Sena Cherub, sena Cherub. And don't know why I'm doing
Speaker 4: Alex trebek voice that always irritated me on Jeopardy when
Speaker 4: Alex Trebek would by all accounts a tremendous guy, but
Speaker 4: some game show hosts, but you know, he would read
Speaker 4: sometimes he'd read off the answers as though he uh,
Speaker 4: as though he was super familiar with it.
Speaker 5: So sorry, that's sort of his job.
Speaker 3: Though, you know, you know, you've got the card in
Speaker 3: front of him.
Speaker 5: He does have the card. He didn't know, he didn't
Speaker 5: write the questions, and he is definitely not the possessor
Speaker 5: of the wealth of Jeopardy pantheon knowledge. But yeah, and
Speaker 5: uh and rip national treasure. And this argument leans pretty
Speaker 5: heavily on some records that were found, these prism shaped
Speaker 5: stone records that chronicled the reign of the king. And
Speaker 5: there is a passage that quotes the king directly and
Speaker 5: saying I raised the height of the surroundings of the
Speaker 5: palace to be a wonder in capital for all People's
Speaker 5: a high garden imitating the Amanas mountains. I laid out
Speaker 5: next to it with all kinds of aromatic plants. So
Speaker 5: that fits the bill, guys, wouldn't you say, the idea
Speaker 5: of mimicking a different you know, uh climate, the idea
Speaker 5: of of mimicking a different landscape, and that in and
Speaker 5: of itself is sort of the flex right. It's like,
Speaker 5: I can, I can build anything.
Speaker 3: I'm the king, and it does sound like a kick
Speaker 3: ass garden.
Speaker 5: Indeed, and just you know, just to go back to
Speaker 5: what I was saying, this really does feel in keeping
Speaker 5: with the notion of the king of Babylon imitating a landscape, right,
Speaker 5: that was like the whole kind of deal. So this
Speaker 5: very much him saying that, you know, I will raise
Speaker 5: a high garden imitating the Amanis mountains. I laid next
Speaker 5: to it with all kinds I laid out next to it,
Speaker 5: with all kinds of aromatic plants. I mean, this really
Speaker 5: is I mean, it could well be parallel thinking, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean this again, like the idea of controlling the
Speaker 5: environment is kind of tail as old as time and
Speaker 5: something that man is always sort of aspired to be
Speaker 5: able to do. I mean, that's sort of what building,
Speaker 5: you know, archae exture is in and of itself. But
Speaker 5: the idea of controlling the environment is in a way
Speaker 5: a godlike power.
Speaker 4: And Senatorub's records from the records from that administration talk
Speaker 4: about this imitation of Mount Amanus, which is a range
Speaker 4: in the very very south of modern day Turkey, just
Speaker 4: the same way people talked about Babylon's King Nebukonezer the
Speaker 4: Second imitating Persian landscapes for his paramore. Another argument in
Speaker 4: favor of this is the idea that the Senator administration
Speaker 4: was also really well known for irrigation and engineering innovations.
Speaker 4: If there was someone to build a complex irrigation system
Speaker 4: in this area at this time, it would.
Speaker 3: Be this dude.
Speaker 4: Well, I say this dude, it would be this dude's
Speaker 4: administration and civilization. And that's that's why for a while
Speaker 4: some historians even credited him with the invention of the
Speaker 4: Archimedes water screw. But again, all we know about the Archimedes'
Speaker 4: water screw is it was definitely not invented by Archimedes,
Speaker 4: and it works.
Speaker 5: Have you guys seen the new Indiana Jones film yet?
Speaker 2: Is it out?
Speaker 5: It is out in a big This isn't a spoiler
Speaker 5: because it's literally the name of the film is The
Speaker 5: Dial of Destiny, which refers to the antithic Kara mechanism
Speaker 5: at which is, you know, supposedly a lost invention of Archimedes.
Speaker 5: And again, Archimedes sort of represents this innovative mind you know,
Speaker 5: of history like like again, like he is sort of
Speaker 5: credited with being the first person to like invent maths,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean, not exactly but overstating the case.
Speaker 5: But that's sort of what happens, you know, with guys
Speaker 5: like that, who just occupy such a massive space and
Speaker 5: history and loom so large that the ideas of others
Speaker 5: often get kind of lumped in with things that maybe
Speaker 5: they didn't have anything to do with, or that they
Speaker 5: were just kind of copying or improving upon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a single individual or name becomes kind of an
Speaker 4: historical repository for a bunch of other stories, a bunch
Speaker 4: of other events and inventions. But this this is interesting too,
Speaker 4: because archaeologists found an aqueduct system built during the reign
Speaker 4: of Sinich arab that used two million blocks of stone.
Speaker 5: Jeez.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was like a big deal. It was
Speaker 4: a genuine public work. So right now, as a result,
Speaker 4: this Assyrian argument is one of the most intriguing and
Speaker 4: plausible theories surrounding the mystery of the hanging gardens. Maybe
Speaker 4: they were just maybe people were just looking in the
Speaker 4: wrong place for a long time and found many other
Speaker 4: amazing things on the way.
Speaker 5: Ben, don't we typically credit the ancient Romans Greeks with
Speaker 5: inventing aqueduct It's an irrigation and stu, I mean just
Speaker 5: in general, like is this in in dispute? Like are
Speaker 5: we are we like questioning even whether or not this
Speaker 5: technology actually existed or or do we know about these
Speaker 5: two million blocks? If so, I would think that it
Speaker 5: would be unequivocally credited to the Assyrians. You know, the
Speaker 5: idea of inventing public works and aqueducts.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I think.
Speaker 4: Right now, the first aqueduct is considered to be the
Speaker 4: aqua Appia, which was made in by ancient Romans. It's
Speaker 4: a good question who gets the who gets the credit
Speaker 4: for that one? If enough time passes, you know, and
Speaker 4: We're the last podcast around that survives and mentions the
Speaker 4: word aqueducts maybe will be in the history books.
Speaker 5: Well, it's also the nature of conquering forces, isn't it.
Speaker 5: You know, if you conquer and topple a civilization, you
Speaker 5: can then rewrite the history books in your favor and
Speaker 5: take credit for a lot of their innovations. So it
Speaker 5: is good, It is good at least some of these
Speaker 5: little remnants, historical remnants remain to at least call into
Speaker 5: question some of that stuff. But yeah, the idea, it's
Speaker 5: so much easier is to swallow the big story painted
Speaker 5: by the winners than it is to maybe think a
Speaker 5: little further back or a little deeper.
Speaker 4: And that there's a great quote you found, which I
Speaker 4: believe is it hits on one of the most frustrating
Speaker 4: parts of this mystery, and it comes from the expert
Speaker 4: you cited earlier. Maybe we end with this one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Grant Frame. He gave a talk you can
Speaker 2: find on YouTube right now titled Great Wonders colon searching
Speaker 2: for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. He just says, all right,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about the hanging Gardens of Babylon, I
Speaker 2: could tell you all about all this other stuff in Babylon.
Speaker 2: I could tell you about all these other things. Let's
Speaker 2: talk about that for days. But the hanging gardens, well,
Speaker 2: we don't know where they were, We don't know what
Speaker 2: they looked like, and maybe we found them, but we
Speaker 2: didn't recognize them, and they're lost again, so.
Speaker 4: Completely possible, and unlike the unlike the gardens of Babylon
Speaker 4: or wherever they may be, we try to be very
Speaker 4: easy to find, so you won't need an intense excavation.
Speaker 4: You won't need to build your own rail infrastructure. All
Speaker 4: you have to do is pop online, give us a
Speaker 4: call or drop us an email.
Speaker 5: Yes, point your browser to any number of social media sites.
Speaker 5: Are we on threads yet? Guys? We should know, we
Speaker 5: should We have no Do.
Speaker 3: You know the thing about threads?
Speaker 4: You know the big news. If you start a thread's account,
Speaker 4: first off, no one reads terms and conditions. We should
Speaker 4: do an episode about that. If you start a thread's
Speaker 4: account and you decide it's not for you and you
Speaker 4: want to cancel your account, then you also have to
Speaker 4: cancel your Instagram account if you have an Instagram account. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it's like walking into a restaurant saying oh, you know,
Speaker 4: this isn't for me. I'm not into it, and then
Speaker 4: having the manager pop out the back of the kitchen
Speaker 4: and say you can leave if you want, but you'll
Speaker 4: never into another restaurant to get Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, I guess the key there is like, how many
Speaker 5: of us have you know, social media accounts that we
Speaker 5: just don't even look at. I did the thing. I'm
Speaker 5: such a dummy. Gosh, I wish I would to wait
Speaker 5: until I have this now I am. I did the
Speaker 5: thing and I looked at it and I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: but that that is definitely not in the bold print
Speaker 5: because there is no bullprint, because they make it so
Speaker 5: easy for you just to click through. Oh you get
Speaker 5: all your followers, You're only gonna be looking at stuff
Speaker 5: from them. And I believe Zuckerberg netted about ten million
Speaker 5: new users overnight.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And you know, and obviously this they pushed the
Speaker 5: launch of this thing over the holiday kind of quietly,
Speaker 5: while Twitter is at its absolute lowest, and so, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of funny how Zuckerberg poured all this money into
Speaker 5: this metaverse thing totally fell on his face and now
Speaker 5: he's back in the news By just doing what he's
Speaker 5: all always done and copied other folks.
Speaker 2: Well, can I be k for some kind of blue
Speaker 2: thread so everybody knows I'm legit or.
Speaker 5: No, you don't. You don't pay You can't. That's the thing.
Speaker 5: You can't. You can't pay for it on Instagram. That's
Speaker 5: exclusively a Twitter thing and part of the reason that
Speaker 5: it's become such an embarrassing debacle. But that's an episode
Speaker 5: for another day, possibly an update in our next Strange
Speaker 5: news Uh. You can, in fact, though, point your browser
Speaker 5: to our handle conspiracy stuff on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook,
Speaker 5: Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
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