Speaker 1: Oh well, hello there, Yes, that's right, I am back
Speaker 1: again with still more Atlantis. This is Let's talk about
Speaker 1: Mitt's baby, and I am your host live. Just like
Speaker 1: I told you on Tuesday's episode, Atlantis is back in
Speaker 1: the so called news again, and so I am here
Speaker 1: to remind the world why searching for it is not
Speaker 1: only a pointless endeavor, but one rooted in racism and
Speaker 1: white supremacy. This might be getting repetitive, but Atlantis wasn't
Speaker 1: ever real. There is no debate about this amongst people
Speaker 1: who pay attention to the sources and the evidence. Plato
Speaker 1: made it up. He made that very clear, and no
Speaker 1: one in the ancient world questioned that like at all.
Speaker 1: No one in the ancient world believed it to have
Speaker 1: been real or even a myth. It was an invention,
Speaker 1: an allegory, a nritological device to prove a point about
Speaker 1: tyranny and governing in ancient Athens. In fact, not only
Speaker 1: is that absolutely certain that it was never anything at all,
Speaker 1: but even if it were, if we were to believe
Speaker 1: Plato believed it, there still is absolutely no evidence because again,
Speaker 1: it did not ever exist. There was no ancient apocalypse,
Speaker 1: no Ice age, civilization lost to time there was no Atlantis.
Speaker 1: If there were again, there would be actual material evidence.
Speaker 1: And because it's not only the new documentary that isn't
Speaker 1: a documentary ancient Apocalypse that's claiming Atlantists, but also a
Speaker 1: nonsense YouTuber who doesn't care for again, actual evidence claiming
Speaker 1: he's claiming that it's like the eye of the Sahara. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's all nonsense. But here I am again to remind
Speaker 1: you why it's not only nonsense but dangerous. Archaeologists are
Speaker 1: hiding something, they say, but seriously, I mean, like, this
Speaker 1: is an honest question. Just like last week, I'm just
Speaker 1: repeating myself, but why would archaeologists hide it? Like, why
Speaker 1: would they do that when it would bring them worldwide
Speaker 1: a claim, It would affirm all of their work. It
Speaker 1: would be incredible if it were true anything that these
Speaker 1: people claim that archaeologists are hiding because they're not, Like,
Speaker 1: why would they hide it? So, once again, in an
Speaker 1: effort to counter these new and exciting bits of extremists information,
Speaker 1: I am here to remind you all of the Atlantis
Speaker 1: series that I created last year. Today's episode is all
Speaker 1: of the incredible conversation episodes that featured into last year's series,
Speaker 1: except for the bonuses conversations with Flint Dibble, David s Anderson,
Speaker 1: and Steph Holmhoffer, all of whom have been once again
Speaker 1: coming forward to debunk all of this nonsense that's being
Speaker 1: spewed about Atlantis and an ancient apocalypse. Fortunately I caught
Speaker 1: them before the current mess, and before they were I
Speaker 1: can only imagine quite sick of talking about Atlantis. So
Speaker 1: let's have another listen to those absolutely fascinating conversations about
Speaker 1: why we know that Atlantis isn't and wasn't ever a thing,
Speaker 1: and why pseudo archaeology and popular figures denouncing archaeologists broadly
Speaker 1: is bad and dangerous actually, in addition to just being
Speaker 1: like weird and mean and rude. Oh hi, hello, welcome.
Speaker 1: This is Let's talk about myths, baby, But this week,
Speaker 1: once again better known as Let's Talk about Things Plato
Speaker 1: invented Baby, doesn't have the same ring to it. I
Speaker 1: am your host, live, the woman who's trying to very
Speaker 1: kindly and considerately destroy all your childhood dreams about a
Speaker 1: lost island of Atlantis. But hey, we'll always have the
Speaker 1: Disney movie, right Milo. This week is the first in
Speaker 1: my series of Atlantis related conversation episodes. Honestly, this is
Speaker 1: kind of what sparked the idea for me in general,
Speaker 1: or more so made it clear that my covering Atlantis,
Speaker 1: while non traditional and tricky and requiring heavy, heavy amounts
Speaker 1: of research into things I'm much less familiar with, is important.
Speaker 1: The idea of Atlantis as a myth from ancient Greece
Speaker 1: or a story from actual history has picked up in
Speaker 1: recent years, with so called documentaries covering Atlantis on major
Speaker 1: networks and in often deceptive sorts of ways. There's a
Speaker 1: group out there who would suggest that it's harmless to
Speaker 1: search for Atlantis, a concept that we heard on Tuesday's
Speaker 1: episode is truly based in Plato's imagination, and as we'll
Speaker 1: cover on next Tuesday's episode, serves explicitly as an allegored
Speaker 1: proof of philosophical point about ideal societies and hubris. But
Speaker 1: the truth is that searches for things like that, things
Speaker 1: that are inherently false and not based in reality, take
Speaker 1: away from real archaeology, a field that is supremely important
Speaker 1: to understanding ancient cultures and human history. But on top
Speaker 1: of that, Atlantis is linked with really dark conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and bad actors online who promote nonsense science and nonsense
Speaker 1: pseudo archaeology that often devolves into racist theories on human evolution. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the idea of Atlantis maybe being real is no longer harmless,
Speaker 1: and I'd rather you all hear me talk about the
Speaker 1: truth of the story of Atlantis rather than accidentally stumbling
Speaker 1: upon some of those dark and troubling racist theories and ideologies.
Speaker 1: So today I'm bringing you the first of these conversations
Speaker 1: I've had with archaeologists, real archaeologists. Today's episode is with
Speaker 1: Flint Dibbel, a researcher at Cardiff University who studies animal
Speaker 1: bones and who's knowledgeable on the Bronze Age Mediterranean, particularly
Speaker 1: Bronze Age Athens, which is the best starting point for
Speaker 1: looking at why Atlantis isn't something anyone should bother looking for.
Speaker 1: We talked about Mediterranean archaeology of the Bronze Age zo archeology,
Speaker 1: that is, animal bones and what they mean about these
Speaker 1: time periods. Fascinating. I got to ask about hecatombs, a
Speaker 1: special interest of mine since reading you while the Iliad.
Speaker 1: We talked about the dangers of pseudo archaeology and the
Speaker 1: importance of working from the known to the unknown rather
Speaker 1: than the other way around. We talk about these recent
Speaker 1: so called searches for Atlantis and the issues around them,
Speaker 1: and so much more. It's seriously fun in addition to
Speaker 1: being fascinating, important and full of Bronze Age archaeological tidbits. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think you'll all really enjoy this episode and you
Speaker 1: will absolutely learn something. A couple notes. This was recorded
Speaker 1: back in November, as you'll hear with the connection to
Speaker 1: American Thanksgiving and if you can believe it, hecatoms. And
Speaker 1: you'll also just note a couple moments where I've removed
Speaker 1: or silenced a couple of people's names because well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get sued in Atlantis is touchy as hell.
Speaker 1: I am nervous enough about this series without naming people.
Speaker 1: As always, I absolutely love these conversation episodes. I learned
Speaker 1: so much and then I get to bring it to you.
Speaker 1: These special Atlantis conversations are no different. Oh, is there
Speaker 1: so much to learn? So much? I didn't know until
Speaker 1: I started digging into this and speaking with these archaeologists,
Speaker 1: you were in for a wild ride. As if I
Speaker 1: haven't said that enough. When it comes to Atlantis conversations
Speaker 1: from the Known to the unknown Atlantis versus Mediterranean archaeology
Speaker 1: with Flint Dibbel. I think a lot of people come
Speaker 1: at it from a really like, really honest place of
Speaker 1: just growing up in a world where you think it's
Speaker 1: at least a Greek myth. I mean, even I saw
Speaker 1: I thought that for a while until I sat down
Speaker 1: and looked into it and I realized what it was
Speaker 1: coming from. And so you know, yeah, it's something that's
Speaker 1: totally understandable. It's just presented in that way you're sort
Speaker 1: of brought up to think it. Like I grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in my thirties, which means I was
Speaker 1: a kid when that Atlantis movie came out, in the
Speaker 1: Disney movie, right, And like, I think that one's so fascinating,
Speaker 1: and that's definitely going to tie in to these series
Speaker 1: of episodes. That's some kind of funny bonus. But I
Speaker 1: sort of definitely always thought that Atlantis was at the
Speaker 1: very least a Greek myth. Like I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever thought it was real or something that could be found,
Speaker 1: but I at least associated it with Greek mythology, in
Speaker 1: the Greek mythology that I study now. In a way
Speaker 1: that it is deeply not It is just a thing
Speaker 1: that Plato wrote, so I'd loved to I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess just generally your thoughts on that, but also how
Speaker 1: it kind of how you think it sort of exploded
Speaker 1: from beyond That's that's actually a tough question for me
Speaker 1: to answer, because you know, I'm in my thirties too,
Speaker 1: barely but still am. And so I grew up thinking
Speaker 1: that as well, watching the same movies and seeing the
Speaker 1: same TV shows, and reading the same comics comic books,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, in many ways, I thought it
Speaker 1: was kind of like a Greek myth as well, and
Speaker 1: it actually wasn't until I got on Twitter back in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, when I started seeing people like David Anderson
Speaker 1: and Steph Holmhover tweeting so much about pseudo archaeology and
Speaker 1: the problems that it has in the world. I always
Speaker 1: thought of stuff like ancient Aliens as something to joke about, Right,
Speaker 1: you can make a joke, Oh yeah, Aliens did this,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And I slowly and I even
Speaker 1: said that on Twitter, you know, look, this is just
Speaker 1: all fun in games. What's the real harm? And so
Speaker 1: I started doing some more reading and research and I
Speaker 1: started realizing that this is harmful, partly because there is
Speaker 1: a rise in conspiracy theories of late, partly because this
Speaker 1: oftentimes does connect to racism. White people can't White people
Speaker 1: can do this, but people of color cannot. Indigenous people
Speaker 1: throughout the world in Atlantis one of those that has
Speaker 1: been used to kind of steal people's accomplishments and to
Speaker 1: promote different groups of people, like the Arians. And so
Speaker 1: it's only slowly dawned upon me how harmful this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff is. But as I've started recognizing it, of
Speaker 1: course I've started to do more research on it and
Speaker 1: to get at the core of that. And so, I
Speaker 1: being an archaeologist who focuses on ancient Greece and who
Speaker 1: focuses on classical Grease, I'm very very familiar with Plato,
Speaker 1: but I had not actually read the feed Risks or
Speaker 1: the Timaeus in detail until that the latest TV series
Speaker 1: on Atlantis came out and I got involved with the
Speaker 1: host on Twitter, and so I sort of sat down
Speaker 1: and I read it, and I sort of dawned on
Speaker 1: me that this isn't like other myths. This very much
Speaker 1: comes out of Plato's imagination, and there's a few reasons
Speaker 1: that I can see that. Sorry, now I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm rambling the thing right. Once you actually sit down
Speaker 1: and you read it, I think it becomes so much
Speaker 1: more clear how bizarre it is, that it has become
Speaker 1: what it is, this thing that people think they can
Speaker 1: find because you're reading it. And not only is it
Speaker 1: pretty clear that it's out of Plato's imagination, but he
Speaker 1: often doesn't even seem to be totally serious, like there's
Speaker 1: some tongue in cheek, like there's some you know, it
Speaker 1: is so an allegory, but it's almost kind of like
Speaker 1: a nudge nudge, like, look, how salious is kind of allegory? Yes,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of that there. There's actually
Speaker 1: a fantastic article written by M. Thomas Johansson in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight called truth Lies in History and Plato's to
Speaker 1: Maus Critius, And that's the entire part of the article
Speaker 1: is this is all this tongue in chief thing where
Speaker 1: they set up they first say we're lying to you.
Speaker 1: Then they set up the history behind how this lie
Speaker 1: gets built in a way that seems truthful, so there
Speaker 1: would be historiography, and then and then they do this
Speaker 1: nudge n ug wink wink thing. We're telling the truth
Speaker 1: about this, right, there's all these there's this history behind it.
Speaker 1: My great grandfather told this to or heard this from
Speaker 1: Solon and Da da da da da, And so they
Speaker 1: build this kind of fake history and it's all done
Speaker 1: completely in this nudge nudge wink wink way. And and
Speaker 1: you know, and like you sit down and you read
Speaker 1: the Iliot and the Hodyssey, it's nothing like that. That's
Speaker 1: done is if it's a myth, it's a sing to
Speaker 1: be muse about what happened with these heroes. But you
Speaker 1: go and you kind of think about the dialogues of
Speaker 1: Plato and you read, say the Republic, which you know
Speaker 1: they set it up as if that took this. These
Speaker 1: dialogues take place right after the Republic. It's done kind
Speaker 1: of in a similar way where they sort of you
Speaker 1: think about the City of Pigs, where Socrates kind of says, oh,
Speaker 1: imagine this city where a boom, and then they build
Speaker 1: off of that with that kind of imaginary thought experiment.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it's very different within the narrative of
Speaker 1: Plato in that sense. Yeah, and it's just so intentionally,
Speaker 1: you know, he's He's the whole thing is to make
Speaker 1: a point, you know, the whole thing is an unrelated
Speaker 1: point about Hubris. And the thing that gets to me most,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think we can go lots of
Speaker 1: different ways with this conversation, but the thing that stands
Speaker 1: out to me when you're reading that and looking for,
Speaker 1: you know, the reasons why it's so obviously nonsense, is
Speaker 1: this idea that at the exact same supposed time that
Speaker 1: Atlantis was this like powerhouse of super technologically advanced, like
Speaker 1: all of this stuff there. The idea is that Athens
Speaker 1: was also and they give a timeline right, like, what
Speaker 1: is it? It's like eight thousand years before when Plato
Speaker 1: was writing or something in that nine thousand Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then he's like, yeah, so nine thousand years ago you
Speaker 1: know Atlantis. For one, it says specifically that it's also
Speaker 1: Atlantis was bigger than Asia and Libya, and I'm kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, you know, given Libya when they say that,
Speaker 1: they mean like most of northern Africa, Like okay, so
Speaker 1: how could it possibly be that big? And we don't
Speaker 1: know where it is whatever, you know, it's huge, and
Speaker 1: nine thousand years ago, this huge epic place was so
Speaker 1: technologically advanced, and at the same time Athens was too,
Speaker 1: and they were equally amazing, and they fought. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're like, why does everyone like everyone leaves out
Speaker 1: that Athens was too whenever they wanted this idea that
Speaker 1: Atlantis was real, it's like, ignore Athens because that's easily
Speaker 1: provably wrong. That's exactly what I thought when I sat
Speaker 1: down to write my first Twitter threat in May was
Speaker 1: at first I was invited to write this thread by
Speaker 1: a colleague of mine to debunk this show, and so
Speaker 1: at first I was like, I don't want anything to
Speaker 1: do with this. I just want to stay away. And
Speaker 1: then I kind of looked at the theory behind the
Speaker 1: show and it was like, well, the problem is not
Speaker 1: that people have been working in the wrong places, that
Speaker 1: they've been looking in the wrong time, right, And so
Speaker 1: Plato says nine thousand years before Solon, so we're talking
Speaker 1: ninety six hundred BC. There's just no way there's no
Speaker 1: archaeology from that period of settled societies in these areas.
Speaker 1: There's there's no archaeology from Athens, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's always been a problem with people looking for Atlantis.
Speaker 1: Is ninety six hundred BC. You just have the beginnings
Speaker 1: of maybe some settlements in the Near East, and then
Speaker 1: that's it. There's no Egypt, there's no Grease, there's no
Speaker 1: people settled down in farming in these areas like the
Speaker 1: Greek world. Not at all. There's still thousands of years
Speaker 1: prior to farming in the Greek world, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just no way. There's not a single fining from
Speaker 1: Athens from that time period. But so I sit down
Speaker 1: and reading and it's like saying, well, let's redate it
Speaker 1: to you know, four thousand years before Plato for X
Speaker 1: Y Z reason. And I'm even then thinking, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really easy to disprove because we can still go to
Speaker 1: Athens because Athens, all right, at this time there's archaeological evidence,
Speaker 1: but it's the very first archaeological evidence from Athens. It's
Speaker 1: basically like twelve wells full of people's trash, and then
Speaker 1: up on the acropolis there's a fragment of a figurine
Speaker 1: and that's basically and by trash, I mean like broken
Speaker 1: up pot shirt, so your plates and your bowls and
Speaker 1: your cups and then animal bones and that's it. One
Speaker 1: figurine and there's like, you know, Plato describes the temple
Speaker 1: of Athena, and he describes the warriors that live on
Speaker 1: the acropolis and all this kind of stuff. We've excavated
Speaker 1: the acropolis down to bedrock, and none of that stuff exists.
Speaker 1: It's not like we're not sure about it. It certainly
Speaker 1: did not exist. And so yeah, it sort of became
Speaker 1: easy to kind of say, well, the archaeology can't back
Speaker 1: it up. And it always surprised me why people never
Speaker 1: thought about this. In the public imagination. Everybody goes immediately
Speaker 1: to disproving Atlantis. They pay attention to the description of
Speaker 1: Atlantis that Plato gives and they say, well, this might
Speaker 1: match this, it might match that, it might not match that,
Speaker 1: And they always play this game with his description of Atlantis,
Speaker 1: but they never even look for his description of Athens
Speaker 1: and think about how it doesn't work. And on that note,
Speaker 1: sorry I'm still rambling. No, no, on that note, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really work at any time period, you know. So
Speaker 1: when you sit down and you look at the description
Speaker 1: of Athens, it doesn't match any periods. So another time
Speaker 1: period that people like to think of for Atlantis is Santorini,
Speaker 1: So you know, the time of the Minoans, the Bronze
Speaker 1: Age and the volcanic eruption at Santorini that destroys the
Speaker 1: city of Acritiri there, right, And so it's obviously a
Speaker 1: major natural disaster, a catastrophe that destroys the city that
Speaker 1: we you know, like Pompei type style, let's say, freezing
Speaker 1: it in time, bigger, bigger in some ways. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it caused a major tsunami that people think could be
Speaker 1: felt on different islands, including crete. But even then, if
Speaker 1: you go and look at Athens from that period, now,
Speaker 1: Athens it's bigger. At that time, we have more evidence,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly not what Plato is describing. And even
Speaker 1: the clearest thing that you could even say, maybe as
Speaker 1: bronze age, he describes a wall around the acropolis, right,
Speaker 1: And there is a Bronze age wall around the acopolis,
Speaker 1: but it's built after Santorini by several hundred years, and
Speaker 1: so it clearly doesn't match that. And so yeah, nothing
Speaker 1: about it can really match Athens. I had reading this
Speaker 1: fairly recently. I have this idea that what Plato used
Speaker 1: when he described Ath and so just to step back
Speaker 1: a second, when Plato what he's doing, is he's trying
Speaker 1: to He builds this city in the republic that's the
Speaker 1: ideal city, and then he wants to set up the
Speaker 1: story of what happens when that city goes to war.
Speaker 1: So they say, let's make Athens that city, and then
Speaker 1: let's make Atlantis the city they're fighting against. And so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like. He then looks around the city
Speaker 1: of Athens and he finds three things that he knows
Speaker 1: are pretty old. And so one of those is the
Speaker 1: early Acropolis Wall, which we just mentioned, that's built right
Speaker 1: near the end of the Bronze Age, so you know,
Speaker 1: twelve fifty BC certainly well after the eruption of Santorini theorem.
Speaker 1: Then he finds the Athena temple that's built around six
Speaker 1: fifty BC. And and that's really cool because the Persians
Speaker 1: destroyed that right around four ADBC. When the Persians came,
Speaker 1: they take over Athens and they destroy him. So this
Speaker 1: is like a generation before Plato and the people. Then
Speaker 1: that generation, after it was destroyed, they said, we want
Speaker 1: to leave these ruins visible, so they they they they
Speaker 1: didn't build anything on the Acropolis for fifty years until
Speaker 1: Pericles came around and built the Parthenon and the Raphion,
Speaker 1: but even then they didn't touch those ruins. Those ruins.
Speaker 1: If you go on Google Map today, Google Earth today,
Speaker 1: and you zoom in on the Acropolis, you can see
Speaker 1: the outline of that Athena temple. It was left untouched.
Speaker 1: It's still visible today if you go up to the
Speaker 1: Acropolis or you zoom in on it, because they monument
Speaker 1: they memorialized it, let's say, and so that was visible
Speaker 1: for Plato to see. He knew about it, so he
Speaker 1: knew this was an earlier thing to put into this story, right,
Speaker 1: So he has that wall from twelve fifty BC, the
Speaker 1: temple the Athenas from six to fifty BC, and then
Speaker 1: he adds one other thing, which is this spring called
Speaker 1: the Clipseedra, which is right at the Acropolis. Basically, all
Speaker 1: the bedrock is limestone, so when water rains on it,
Speaker 1: it absorbs into it and creates these channels which you
Speaker 1: can tap as a spring. And so that's what the
Speaker 1: Clipseedro is. And we know that the clipseither was used
Speaker 1: during the Bronze Age and down the Archaic period, but
Speaker 1: right around the time Plato was writing was when they
Speaker 1: built it up. They built some walls around it and
Speaker 1: turned it into something sort of more formal to use.
Speaker 1: And so these were the three sort of archaeological artifacts
Speaker 1: at the past that he could use to build his
Speaker 1: early Athens, let's say. And so those were accurate, though
Speaker 1: the timeline is not very accurate. Never were they in use,
Speaker 1: all three of them at the same time. The walls
Speaker 1: around the acropolis were destroyed before the Athena Temple, for example.
Speaker 1: But then he then builds up this idea of like geology,
Speaker 1: because this is kind of it's a story about the
Speaker 1: natural you know, natural disasters destroying Atlantis, right, because Zeus
Speaker 1: does that he buries it in water. But it's also
Speaker 1: a story about Athens where he talks about how he Athens,
Speaker 1: I guess, experienced these natural disasters in a more plausible
Speaker 1: believable way with erosion, for example. So he describes how,
Speaker 1: you know, you go out to Attica and you see
Speaker 1: the hills, and the hills have been they used to
Speaker 1: have all the soil, but due to the rainfall, the
Speaker 1: big sort of rainfall that happened, the soil washed away,
Speaker 1: very believable, like, right, And so he describes the acropolis,
Speaker 1: for example, is much bigger, it used to be huge.
Speaker 1: It would stretch from the Acropolis to Lekavitos, and we
Speaker 1: know our modern geology shows that can't happen. And it's
Speaker 1: also kind of ironic because his acropolis wall is around
Speaker 1: the acropolis as he saw it, So if the acropolis
Speaker 1: was bigger, then the acropolis wall would have to be
Speaker 1: somewhere else, right, And so it's even like kind of
Speaker 1: ironic in his own description of it. And yeah, it
Speaker 1: just can't match for all these various reasons. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that always gets me. And then you know,
Speaker 1: you even think just even from a complete, like lay person,
Speaker 1: just base level mythology, you know, the thing that always
Speaker 1: gets me is Athens is barely in the Iliad. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like a tiny little footnote almost like in
Speaker 1: the catalog of Ships, and I think, like maybe somebody
Speaker 1: is from Athens and that's it. And so it's just
Speaker 1: such an obvious thing to me where it's like from
Speaker 1: that time period, from that, you know, even just the
Speaker 1: time period of the Iliad and the Odyssey, let alone earlier,
Speaker 1: Athens was nothing like they weren't a major powerhouse. They
Speaker 1: weren't you know, they weren't a region to be worried
Speaker 1: about or to be like looked up to, you know,
Speaker 1: like we've got my scene and you know, the Minoans
Speaker 1: and all of that was they were major players in
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age, and Athens just wasn't like they were around.
Speaker 1: But they weren't like them, right, I mean, well maybe
Speaker 1: that's actually an open ended question. A lot of people
Speaker 1: think they were like them. So that wall I was
Speaker 1: telling you about, now not much of it's left, you know,
Speaker 1: we just have little fragments of it because it's the
Speaker 1: later rebuilding of the wall of the Acropolis after the
Speaker 1: Persian destruction that where they built the column drums from
Speaker 1: the earlier parthen On into it, that destroyed most of
Speaker 1: that Bronze Age wall, and so you can kind of
Speaker 1: peek through and see some of it. Though as you're
Speaker 1: going up to the Acropolis, there's the bastion where the
Speaker 1: temple of Athena Nique city, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: look in and you can see parts of the Bronze
Speaker 1: Age wall that are left. And so and again remember
Speaker 1: that rebuilding that I'm talking about that happened during Plato's lifetime,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of freshened his mind, that Bronze Age wall,
Speaker 1: and so because of that leveling of stuff, there's actually
Speaker 1: some thoughts that there was a pretty large palace at Athens.
Speaker 1: People oftentimes think that part of the reason that Athens
Speaker 1: was not a major player in the ilia An odyssey
Speaker 1: was just partly the types of groups that were writing
Speaker 1: the orally communicating that mythology. It wasn't that Athens wasn't big,
Speaker 1: because we have pretty important burials and graves from the
Speaker 1: Bronze Age. UM. There's Doloi in Attica, for example. UM.
Speaker 1: So like at Marathon there's a really large dolos with
Speaker 1: some horses buried in the Dromos and some of the
Speaker 1: other burials inside UM and then in the Agara. So downtown,
Speaker 1: the marketplace and stuff, there's all these civic buildings. UM
Speaker 1: there's the civic building called the Stoa Bazilaus, the Royal Stoa,
Speaker 1: and so right there in front of it is the
Speaker 1: largest architectural block in Athens, and that's where the archons
Speaker 1: would swear their oath of office. It was it was
Speaker 1: a very important stone and one of the there's a
Speaker 1: pretty important hypothesis. Oh, I'm trying to I'm blanking on
Speaker 1: who came up with it was decades ago that that
Speaker 1: was actually a lintel block from Atholos in Athens, that
Speaker 1: it had been destroyed and dismantled in the cemetery underneath
Speaker 1: the agora in that area, and so it probably was
Speaker 1: a pretty important city really from the from the late
Speaker 1: Bronze Age on at least it was certainly one of
Speaker 1: the larger settlements in Greece, and the burial evidence would
Speaker 1: confirm that, but it might not if we don't have
Speaker 1: like the gold and the wealth of Mycene and Kenosos
Speaker 1: and things like that, So it's not quite necessarily on
Speaker 1: that scope, but it's still it's pretty important. Um. But
Speaker 1: that addition in the Iliad, that's that some people think
Speaker 1: that's something called the piesistratid recension. So you know, when
Speaker 1: when the Iliad starts, it's it's oral poetry and it
Speaker 1: eventually gets written down, and that's a long process probably,
Speaker 1: and some people think that that the writing down the majority,
Speaker 1: but might have happened in in an orthodox sort of
Speaker 1: form uh during or at least semi attacks form during
Speaker 1: the sixth century when Pisistratus was ruling Athens. He was
Speaker 1: a tyrant and was fairly powerful, and so he might
Speaker 1: have lobbied to include Athens in there in that cattle,
Speaker 1: because that's an easy place to slip. Somebody got a
Speaker 1: lot of ships named twelve hundred different city states, right,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, yeah, that's that's interesting. I actually I
Speaker 1: just recently had Joel Christensen on to talk about Homeric
Speaker 1: epic and when it was written down and all those
Speaker 1: different things, and yeah, he also mentioned that it was
Speaker 1: probably written down in Athens and therefore maybe they got
Speaker 1: included in that way a little bit of a you know,
Speaker 1: propaganda going on. Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. I love that. Um. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just it's so fascinating to me. That's
Speaker 1: the number one thing that this idea of like looking,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at Atlantis as if you know, in
Speaker 1: the furthest reaches of whatever, you know, that it could
Speaker 1: possibly maybe even slightly be anything real. But then everyone
Speaker 1: forgets about Athens, like as if that is not part
Speaker 1: of the story. And it's just it's such an obvious
Speaker 1: way to completely you know, to to just completely fudge
Speaker 1: your argument by by like forgetting this vital piece that
Speaker 1: makes it easily you know, provable or disprovable, and I
Speaker 1: like to think that that's a big difference between pseudo
Speaker 1: archaeology and real archaeology. So real archaeology one of the
Speaker 1: rules when you're excavating, let's say, right, and so you're
Speaker 1: excavating and you start hitting upon a new layer of dirt,
Speaker 1: let's say, or a couple of stones that might be
Speaker 1: a wall, but you're not sure. One of the rules
Speaker 1: of thumb is you work from known to unknown. And
Speaker 1: so because you start with what you know and you
Speaker 1: you you uncover in that direction towards what you're trying
Speaker 1: to find out. And so you do that when you're
Speaker 1: surveying in the landscape, you do that when you're when
Speaker 1: you're excavating, you do that when you're trying to understand
Speaker 1: the past period. And pseudo archaeology, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: is going for this really large, big fake atlantis thing.
Speaker 1: So you just start with that. You say, oh, Plato
Speaker 1: mentioned round settlements, Well, there's only round settlements here. There's
Speaker 1: round settlements everywhere. You realize you can find round settlements
Speaker 1: in almost all every single period of history and prehistory.
Speaker 1: And wherever people are settling, they're they're off times building
Speaker 1: round settlements. And so you know, you start finding these
Speaker 1: things and you say, well, this kind of looks like
Speaker 1: it you squint a little bit. But but what real
Speaker 1: scientific archaeology does as it works from no, don no,
Speaker 1: and so and that's where you know, that's what that's
Speaker 1: what really struck me with that Athens thing was we
Speaker 1: need to start with that. And it's also an easy
Speaker 1: way to kind of disprove it um. You also mentioned
Speaker 1: the mythology aspect, and that's another important way to be
Speaker 1: able to disprove this as well. This just doesn't read
Speaker 1: like mythology, you know, and it doesn't appear in a
Speaker 1: single myth like exactly if it was a myth, if
Speaker 1: it was a story, if it was history, if it
Speaker 1: was literally anything except a thing out of Plato's mind,
Speaker 1: it would appear in at least one other story or
Speaker 1: a piece of art because we get we get mythical
Speaker 1: mythical representations on art that we don't always have mythical
Speaker 1: stories of, like this is really famous one of I
Speaker 1: think it's Achilles and Odysseus playing to play the game
Speaker 1: in the game. Yeah, or you get you get you
Speaker 1: get repre presentations of Eneas carrying his father out the
Speaker 1: city of Troy three hundred years before the Eneas, four
Speaker 1: hundred years before the Enias. So we know that that
Speaker 1: was a story in circulation as an oral story, right,
Speaker 1: and so but yeah, Atlantis, you have none of that, nothing, nothing,
Speaker 1: So there's the only the only thing is in Plato,
Speaker 1: and Plato has all kinds of stuff that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: elsewhere except for afterwards by other philosophers, and so yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. And I mean yeah, especially you know
Speaker 1: if you look at Okay, so the story it says
Speaker 1: that Solon, you know, told it to somebody or to
Speaker 1: this guy's great grandfather or whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 1: and then Solon heard it in Egypt. So okay, why
Speaker 1: is there not a single piece of representation of it
Speaker 1: into any kind of history or art or anything from Egypt.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, we also know there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: So if the Egyptians were watching, you know, and paying attention,
Speaker 1: and they had these stories, they would have also referenced
Speaker 1: it in some kind of way. Like it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems so easy to just say that, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's simply impossible that something this major, this important, this
Speaker 1: kind of this like the thing that Atlantis is supposed
Speaker 1: to be, that something like that could have ever existed
Speaker 1: or happened, and not a single other reference, people serious reference,
Speaker 1: like Herodotus would have heard something. That dude was wandering
Speaker 1: around everywhere, you know, like Herodotus would have heard something.
Speaker 1: He would have said, he would have written it down.
Speaker 1: You know, there would be a minute, there was done
Speaker 1: so many things. He would have done his Grandpa Simpson
Speaker 1: thing and told like a long story about it. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we would have something, you know. No, and I mean
Speaker 1: archaeologists have looked, you know, like it's not like in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were not a
Speaker 1: lot of scholars looking for it. There were, but you know,
Speaker 1: in the last seventy years, I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: serious archaeologists that have even tried to look for it,
Speaker 1: because it's now every single avenue of possibility has been explored.
Speaker 1: It's not like there's there's all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: I know people are searching for that I even think
Speaker 1: is kind of silly, certain things from myth, for example,
Speaker 1: but searching for things from myth has a better basis
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: mean searching for this. Every single avenue has been explored,
Speaker 1: and the issue is is now it's just being misused,
Speaker 1: and sometimes just on a greedy level to sell books
Speaker 1: and TV shows, sometimes on a more sinister level, to
Speaker 1: you know, bring people back towards Nazi level of thinking.
Speaker 1: I was attacked by this YouTuber who basically is an
Speaker 1: outright Nazi. He consistently tweets about the meanings of swastikas
Speaker 1: and how they're good and things like that, like literally
Speaker 1: a Nazi. I don't mean like that in any sort
Speaker 1: of exaggerated way. I mean he is literally a Nazi,
Speaker 1: reading Nazi scholarship and sharing it with his audience on
Speaker 1: his YouTube channel. And so, you know, this is my
Speaker 1: issue with sort of popularizing this kind of thing, because
Speaker 1: if you start getting people to think that, hey, there's
Speaker 1: actually some archaeologists maybe out there looking for atlantis, you
Speaker 1: go and google it, you you might find the they're
Speaker 1: not good either. They're just trying to sell books and
Speaker 1: stuff like that for money and TV shows. But you
Speaker 1: could also find actual Nazis. And so you know, it's
Speaker 1: just I don't want people going in that direction. I
Speaker 1: want them to go towards real archaeology because it's pretty cool. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing, right, like real archaeology, real history, very cool.
Speaker 1: And yeah and then that's you know that too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely big fan over here, I hear that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing too that you know. That just reminds
Speaker 1: me that the Nazis were looking for Atlantis, and I
Speaker 1: think that really says something too, right and that that
Speaker 1: has spread further. But they actually had like a subsection
Speaker 1: looking for Atlantis in seriousness, and and I think that's
Speaker 1: I mean, the suggestive of the the bigger problem. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of people can go to Atlantis out of curiosity,
Speaker 1: out of interest, just thinking that's cool. And I get that,
Speaker 1: you know, it is cool, especially if you know, you
Speaker 1: grew up watching the Disney move and you think, man,
Speaker 1: that'd be kind of cool, Like if that was real,
Speaker 1: that would be cool. The problem is is that if
Speaker 1: you're not one of those people, but or even if
Speaker 1: you are, you can find your way, you can accidentally
Speaker 1: get into this world of the very dark side of it,
Speaker 1: which you know, to my understanding, is along the lines
Speaker 1: of a way to disprove the theory that everyone came
Speaker 1: out of Africa is to say well, no, this subset
Speaker 1: of white people came out of Atlantis, and thus there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no you know, Africa in them, and that is
Speaker 1: horrifying and dark. And then you're suddenly in this like
Speaker 1: deeply horrifically racist realm of the Internet and then maybe
Speaker 1: real life. Yeah no, And I mean early archaeologists also
Speaker 1: took away credit for from African nations and and and
Speaker 1: American indigenous peoples saying that this was Atlantis, right, because
Speaker 1: that's the explanation for these kind of things. And so
Speaker 1: you know, there's all kinds of different let's say, degrees
Speaker 1: to this of but none of them are good. It's
Speaker 1: all just pseudo archaeology that's made up, and there's always
Speaker 1: some underlying level of racism there, unfortunately, I mean, with
Speaker 1: much of that exists in our world. We live in
Speaker 1: a world that has been built upon white supremacy within
Speaker 1: the last several hundred years. So it's very pervasive. But
Speaker 1: this is an easy one to at least try to
Speaker 1: tackle because it's not part of there's there's nothing for
Speaker 1: it at all now other than fiction, which you know
Speaker 1: what our fictions fiction. There's different ways to use fiction,
Speaker 1: but to argue that it's real has these real problems
Speaker 1: and can lead people even further towards other kinds of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that are out there today, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of them. They're really quite pervasive, let's say in
Speaker 1: our twenty first century. Ever, Yeah, well, one thing I
Speaker 1: could say about the racism is I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that actually can even be laid it back to Plato.
Speaker 1: So Plato really talks about the you know, because the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks were really into pure bloodlines and things like that,
Speaker 1: and Plato really talks about eugenics in his Republic, and
Speaker 1: so part of the reason why Zeus destroys Atlantis is
Speaker 1: because their bloodline started becoming mixed. And so even that
Speaker 1: very aspect builds into ideas of eugenics today that are
Speaker 1: and you can see why it's immediately quickly adopted by
Speaker 1: racist elements and white supremacist elements, because this story that
Speaker 1: Plato told has that sort of baked in um, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it's it's, it's, it's it's why we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily philosophy has moved on from Plato, for example,
Speaker 1: And at the same time, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: be careful with how we read these kind of things
Speaker 1: and how we how we interpret them and how they
Speaker 1: can be picked up. Um. Yeah, sorry, just as an aside. No,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I've I've not read any Plato except for
Speaker 1: this because I really don't have a ton of interest.
Speaker 1: Uh and just wild stuff. Um, but yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: that's that's good to know. I mean I also think it,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is the trouble with the whole
Speaker 1: like a whole realm of this world of you know,
Speaker 1: the the amount of you know, quote unquote whiteness that
Speaker 1: has been put on ancient Greece, you know, for for what,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing to be said about you know, the
Speaker 1: races or skin colors back then, because they just didn't
Speaker 1: have any kind of frame of reference. It wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't the same thing, you know, they weren't. They weren't
Speaker 1: thinking that way. They were they had their their major
Speaker 1: you know issues, their their xenophobias and everything. But it
Speaker 1: was not necessarily to do with skin color. But there's
Speaker 1: been a huge amount of whiteness that has been placed
Speaker 1: upon Greece, specifically ancient Greece, as a way to you know,
Speaker 1: you know, account for a quote unquote Western civilization. And
Speaker 1: you know, the invention of all of the good things
Speaker 1: and all the you know, I recently got into a Instagram.
Speaker 1: I've been attempting to do Instagram reels, which I should
Speaker 1: learn that it's a bad idea, but you know, I
Speaker 1: just made the They're just like basically sixty seconds worth
Speaker 1: of video, which means you're really limited in terms of
Speaker 1: what you can say. And yeah, they're like TikTok exactly,
Speaker 1: unt a touch ham because I'm like Instagram instead of
Speaker 1: the cool one, which is TikTok. But but basically, I
Speaker 1: just made the point of, you know, the way in
Speaker 1: which we talk about um or with some basically just
Speaker 1: some something connecting the whiteness that has been put upon
Speaker 1: each and Greece and how raising them up as this
Speaker 1: like special, most incredible, like the best group of the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean is inherently linked to white supremacy. And oh my god,
Speaker 1: the way people lose their minds and prove my point
Speaker 1: by saying I'm wrong. Um you know, they're like, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Greece invented literally everything arts and
Speaker 1: poetry and fluff, and I'm like, well, you've just proved
Speaker 1: my point. My point is we can't. That's not true,
Speaker 1: and we can't be saying stuff like that promote the
Speaker 1: white supremacy. And the Greeks were pretty terrible people. They
Speaker 1: ate dogs pretty regularly, a whole lot of butcher dog bones.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you're supporting the ancient Greeks, you're
Speaker 1: supporting dog eating. Then again, if you're supporting most ancient cultures,
Speaker 1: you're probably supporting dog eating, because you know, it's just
Speaker 1: a fairly recent thing that we stopped eating dog to
Speaker 1: be honest. No, but that's the thing, right, It's like
Speaker 1: any anything that suggests that one culture was better than another,
Speaker 1: you know, and then when you have that culture be
Speaker 1: the one that whiteness has been put upon in such
Speaker 1: a like strong and you know, overarching way, like there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a problem. But it's yeah, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: it links back to all of that from a I
Speaker 1: suppose an archaeology side, or just like a you know,
Speaker 1: myth versus nonsense from Plato side. I'm interested in in
Speaker 1: the fact that like we've we've found something that they
Speaker 1: can call Troy. So I guess the search for Troy
Speaker 1: has become you know, less of the forefront, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same racial implications as looking for Atlantis.
Speaker 1: But do you have any thoughts on like the yeah,
Speaker 1: the you know, proving of things from Homer. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that that's important too, because I think that actually
Speaker 1: builds into this. Having engaged on Twitter with a lot
Speaker 1: of these pseudo archaeologists, UM, a lot of people will say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Schliemann found Troy when everybody thought that nobody
Speaker 1: could find that, and it's sort of like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Schliman was like one of the first archaeologists ever, and
Speaker 1: so it was before archaeology. Well, sure, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: he was a good archaeologist, that's not the point here
Speaker 1: is that there wasn't a field of archaeology at the
Speaker 1: time of Schliman, and so you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: different to bring up that kind of analogy. And even
Speaker 1: then there's all kinds of it's a big can of worms.
Speaker 1: The reason we know that that city is Troy has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with us knowing that it's the Troy
Speaker 1: from the Iliad. It has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that the later Greeks and Romans thought that that was Troy,
Speaker 1: and so certainly there was a city there from twelve
Speaker 1: hundred BC. From earlier there there's the city goes back
Speaker 1: by millennia. But at the same time, there's no real
Speaker 1: clear evidence for like a Trojan war right there. So
Speaker 1: it's not like we have Hector's grave or Patroclus's tumulus.
Speaker 1: We don't have that kind of stuff. It's not like
Speaker 1: we have we hear about the mask of Agamemnon back
Speaker 1: at Mycene. No, that's not Agamemnon's mask. That dates from
Speaker 1: a completely different period then the twelve hundred BC that
Speaker 1: we think that this war, if it could have happened,
Speaker 1: could have happened. We really don't have any evidence for
Speaker 1: some kind of large conflict at that time. What we
Speaker 1: have is a sort of collapse a civilization that occurs
Speaker 1: at that time, but that's much more widespread than the
Speaker 1: area where the Trojan War took place. That includes from
Speaker 1: the entire eastern Mediterranean, from Egypt all the way up
Speaker 1: through the Near East, all the way through Turkey, all
Speaker 1: the way through Greece and potentially beyond. And like, I
Speaker 1: just had an article coming out about how that can
Speaker 1: relate to climate change and how people adapted to it
Speaker 1: and change their ways of producing food, and so you know,
Speaker 1: that's a bigger issue than a trojan war. And so
Speaker 1: what we do have in myths, of course, our pieces
Speaker 1: of material culture, so descriptions of armor and weapons and
Speaker 1: things like that that we can relate to things on
Speaker 1: the ground, right, And that's actually really fascinating too, because
Speaker 1: it's all mixed and mashed up. I always love it
Speaker 1: when we go and you you think of like your
Speaker 1: your stereotypical historian or archaeologists in a movie. So you know,
Speaker 1: like let's say I'm watching the movie Troy with Brad Pitt,
Speaker 1: You'd probably be thinking, God, I'm gonna critique that armor, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna critique that the way that that wall
Speaker 1: is built or something like that. Well, you could do
Speaker 1: that to Homer because the Iliot and the Odyssey just
Speaker 1: mixes and matches shield types. So it mentions shields that
Speaker 1: we know from burials, the date to sixteen hundred BC,
Speaker 1: twelve hundred BC, eight hundred BC, they're all in there, right.
Speaker 1: There's it's full of anachronisms. It's like Brad Pitt on
Speaker 1: his mobile phone, you know, like it's that kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's right there in the Iliot, and you even
Speaker 1: get it within the very same scene. So I'm forgetting
Speaker 1: the name of the hero. So we know different spear types, right,
Speaker 1: So you have like the big, hefty spear that you'll
Speaker 1: sort of have to stab people with versus the lighter
Speaker 1: spear that you'll throw. And we know that these days
Speaker 1: to different periods from the Bronze Age, which is when
Speaker 1: we think the Trojan War happens, and the Iron Age
Speaker 1: when Homer's writing or composing, not writing whatever, when he's
Speaker 1: when he's telling his story. That's right, I know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, but I need to make it simple. Okay,
Speaker 1: Homer was writing, he wasn't actually and you thought it
Speaker 1: wasn't realm was even a person, right, yeah? A guy
Speaker 1: or a girl or a guy and a girl, I
Speaker 1: don't know. And and so we have these different types
Speaker 1: of spears within the exact same scene, like within a
Speaker 1: couple lines of each other. It goes from one spear
Speaker 1: to another in the hands of this one hero. And
Speaker 1: so it's just like Homer, Homer the poet. God damn it,
Speaker 1: I do it too, but my listeners should understand I
Speaker 1: do this in class as well. I mean, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: It's fine. Homer is a metaphor. For the poets, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so so the poets they're using what works for
Speaker 1: the meter, because everything's defined by that jack tail hexameter.
Speaker 1: And so if the terms they're using, they have these
Speaker 1: different phrases that they're repetitively using. Sometimes they fit right
Speaker 1: there at that point in the line, and so that
Speaker 1: fits for that kind of long spear. Other times it's
Speaker 1: for the short spear. And so you'd expect that kind
Speaker 1: of change because it's not consistent narratively or material culturally.
Speaker 1: It's a totally anachronistic. And so if you ever have
Speaker 1: me in the movie, I just care if the movie's good.
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's accurate if it's anachronistic. And
Speaker 1: and and and Brad Pitt phones up Fetis on his
Speaker 1: cell phone saying, tell Zeus to send an explosion towards
Speaker 1: the Trojans rolling barrels on fire. I'm all for that
Speaker 1: if it's fun, because that's who the Iliad was, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. I had no idea because I obviously
Speaker 1: don't know any of the I mean warfare, let alone
Speaker 1: just like the the intricacies of you know, that kind
Speaker 1: of historical part. But that's really that's really interesting just
Speaker 1: to hear the level of anachronisms that even existed in
Speaker 1: that it's such as mash it. So it's so funny
Speaker 1: and you can't What that means though, is you can't
Speaker 1: really pick out exactly which parts or scenes that you're
Speaker 1: not sure of our early Iron Age from Late Bronze Age.
Speaker 1: You have to work from known to unknown, so you
Speaker 1: can only go with what you already have. We have
Speaker 1: these spear types that we have already given chronology to,
Speaker 1: and then we can try to pick them out in Homer.
Speaker 1: You can't go from Homer to archaeology. It has to
Speaker 1: go from archaeology to Homer if you want to if
Speaker 1: you want to look at what's real, let's say, right,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah no, that's really important
Speaker 1: and interesting, and I mean it's definitely the most obvious
Speaker 1: way to differentiate between this like pseudo archaeology nonsense, where
Speaker 1: it's like, I want to prove this thing, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to go and I'm going to find all these
Speaker 1: things that I think prove this thing. Because I'm going
Speaker 1: to prove what I want to prove. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to look at what the actual you know, evidence is
Speaker 1: what the what the history, the archaeological evidence, whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to prove what I want to prove. And
Speaker 1: and if you do it that way, it's really easy
Speaker 1: to prove nonsense things because you're just picking and choosing,
Speaker 1: and you're just connecting random dots. And so that's the
Speaker 1: problem with conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists, in my mind, they
Speaker 1: do a lot of real good research, but the problem
Speaker 1: is is they're starting from the unknown and then just
Speaker 1: dipping into the known, and they're saying, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: circular settlement, not realizing that there's circular settlements all over,
Speaker 1: or saying, oh, that's a spear type, you know. And
Speaker 1: so early scholars had to do this too, after all,
Speaker 1: because the most known thing was like the iliot, you know,
Speaker 1: because archaeology had not started right, and so you're working
Speaker 1: from the iliad at that time, that's the most known thing.
Speaker 1: And that's why there's so many crazy, what we think
Speaker 1: of as crazy today, hypotheses and theories and very early
Speaker 1: scholarship non history and archaeology, and so it took time
Speaker 1: to really sit down and build up this giant corpus
Speaker 1: of evidence we would call the archaeological record to really
Speaker 1: be able to say, or even the epigraphic record, inscriptions
Speaker 1: and letter forms and things like that. Art, you know,
Speaker 1: all the different iconography on Greek phases or sculpture, all
Speaker 1: those kind of things had to be built up really
Speaker 1: really slowly over the last two hundred years. And then
Speaker 1: once you now that we have that, that's actually firmer
Speaker 1: evidence in some ways of life on the ground than
Speaker 1: a lot of our textual sources. I oftentimes sort of
Speaker 1: like in textual sources to like Facebook today or Instagram
Speaker 1: or TikTok in a sense, I have this project. I
Speaker 1: study animals, right, and so what I do is my
Speaker 1: job is basically at account animal bones. So that's why
Speaker 1: I'm kind of boring, right, you know. So I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there just counting one bone after another sheep tibia that's
Speaker 1: a goat humorous, and then I end up counting thousands
Speaker 1: and hundreds of thousands of them, and so I'm constantly
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, how can I link this to ancient texts,
Speaker 1: because that's something that's more engaging and people recognize what
Speaker 1: they're saying. So I started counting animals in there. I'm
Speaker 1: basically counting sheep and goats and cattle. And it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because the animal bones. When I count those, I
Speaker 1: get a lot of sheep, and I get a lot
Speaker 1: of goat. When I counted in texts or in art,
Speaker 1: I get a lot of cows. And Yeah, people write
Speaker 1: about what's really cool and sexy. They just like what
Speaker 1: we do on Facebook and Instagram. We we post the
Speaker 1: photo of us looking at our best. We don't post
Speaker 1: the photo of us with BedHead. We post the photo
Speaker 1: of that meal that is just going to make all
Speaker 1: of our friends jealous. We don't post the crappy little
Speaker 1: lunch we have on the bus on the way to work.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's something different, or at least
Speaker 1: percentage wise, obviously we occasionally make a joke. But uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so I see that in ancient texts as well,
Speaker 1: and myths and things like that. It's it's not there.
Speaker 1: The truth is in the trashes. I like to say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a little different than what you actually do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I think you know, it's there's this
Speaker 1: I think expectation or or understand or like this idea
Speaker 1: that the ancient people wouldn't have lied that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made stuff up. They wouldn't have you know, invented
Speaker 1: or exaggerated or all these different things. And and yeah,
Speaker 1: you used to look at the world around now where
Speaker 1: you're like, well, why would they not like if we
Speaker 1: do it now? Nonsense. I mean, there's that woman on
Speaker 1: TikTok who says the Rome wasn't real, and there's a
Speaker 1: whole hell of a lot of people who are believing
Speaker 1: her right now, and you're saying, well, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: go back to herodotus. There's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: herodotus said that we can now be like, dude, what
Speaker 1: what were you doing? You know, like, there's no there's
Speaker 1: no reason why they wouldn't have invented stuff or exaggerated,
Speaker 1: wanted to make their their writing sound more exciting or
Speaker 1: you know or whatever. But now I have to ask
Speaker 1: because of animal bones, because it's something that comes up
Speaker 1: for me a lot, and I'm fascinated and it blows
Speaker 1: my mind. Hecatombs, hecatombs tombs whatever did they do that often?
Speaker 1: It's horrifying. Did they like actually sacrifice like a heck
Speaker 1: tome of animal I'm not sure why it's horrifying, because
Speaker 1: we do it today. All the time, I know, but
Speaker 1: I can't think about how many turkeys do you think
Speaker 1: we're consumed over Thanksgiving last weekend? Last week? Well, as
Speaker 1: a Canadian, I don't know how many we're okay, but
Speaker 1: you know, like that idea still stands where now you
Speaker 1: look at the modern world. If you I lived in Athens,
Speaker 1: Greece for a while, and there's this holiday they're called
Speaker 1: seek no Pempty, which means smokey Thursday. And this is
Speaker 1: so much better than any Thanksgiving because whatever, it's a
Speaker 1: barbecue in February where the weather of course is nice
Speaker 1: and Greece, and you just barbecue. That's the smoke. And
Speaker 1: so if you go into a butcher right before it
Speaker 1: seek no Pempty, it is just lamb carcasses everywhere or
Speaker 1: on Easter, you know that kind of thing. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it certainly happened in the past. Oh, of course, only
Speaker 1: in larger cities or larger sanctuaries. Are you going to
Speaker 1: have enough people to justify a hypotone? I guess that's
Speaker 1: my point. So it would it would be justified by
Speaker 1: the number of people that needed to eat it. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't just be like zoo quants like atoms, and the
Speaker 1: idea of a hecatom is totally a mythological thing. You Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look at like you know, the Alien and the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: they talk about slaughtering a hecatomb, this nice even number
Speaker 1: of one hundred. You look at the inscription evidence of
Speaker 1: the records of the receipts of what the Athenians were doing.
Speaker 1: We don't actually have a receipt of the number of
Speaker 1: animals they're killing, but what we have is receipts afterwards.
Speaker 1: They would sell the skins and the hides tanners to
Speaker 1: make in the leather, and so we have the receipts
Speaker 1: from that from which we can estimate the amount of
Speaker 1: animals slaughtered. And it certainly varies, and so we have
Speaker 1: a pretty decent sense of the economy behind this. And
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's always this neat number. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like what they had the funds for this
Speaker 1: year versus next year, versus whatever. And so, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not always neat, neat and nice like a hecatom. But certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, there's times when they're slaughtering more than one hundred,
Speaker 1: and other times where it's less. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people can eat a cow.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I cook, I cook Easter. I've I've
Speaker 1: roasted lambs for Easter for many hungry Americans and Greeks
Speaker 1: and other nationalities in Athens. And two lambs I can
Speaker 1: feed seventy people easily with side dishes and stuff. But
Speaker 1: you know, so imagine what a hundred cattle it can feed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's the thing, and it's you know, I read,
Speaker 1: I've done like obviously episodes on the Eliad and the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: but I've also uh, during the beginning of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: was bored and I just started reading them out loud,
Speaker 1: just like public domain translations. And that's when I finally
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, the number of hecatoms that
Speaker 1: they are sacrificing to the gods. Like guys, I call
Speaker 1: that many food porn. It's food porn. Seriously, yeah, simple,
Speaker 1: I know. And it's like for a long time, actually,
Speaker 1: scholars thought that that was reflective of society, and so
Speaker 1: there was this The biggest hypothesis before I started doing
Speaker 1: animal bones, when I first got involved in my PhD
Speaker 1: helped disprove this was that so the Bronze Age palaces
Speaker 1: collapse and then people. What they do to respond to
Speaker 1: that is they become basically herders and cowboys. And they
Speaker 1: looked to Homer where there's all these animals. People are
Speaker 1: stealing cows from one another, you know, like cattle rustling.
Speaker 1: And so there was this one site where they studied
Speaker 1: the bones, and the bones go from mostly sheep to
Speaker 1: mostly cattle in the Iron Age, and so I had
Speaker 1: to go restudy this. This was called the pastoral hypothesis,
Speaker 1: and the paleontologists before there was an archaeologists who studied
Speaker 1: these bones. Even in his autobiography, he's like, I proved
Speaker 1: that the Greeks were gauchos cowboys basically at that time.
Speaker 1: And so all that was was that this soil was
Speaker 1: more acidic at that site. The upper layers, which is
Speaker 1: where the early Iron Age layers, they were over the
Speaker 1: Bronze Age layers because the stratigraphy, you know, nobody can
Speaker 1: see the emotions I'm doing. I'm trying to build particle
Speaker 1: it down, and so the upper layers were more acidics.
Speaker 1: The smaller animal bones were destroyed. The cattle survived. But
Speaker 1: if you look at what you can do to study
Speaker 1: people's diet, besides studying what they eat, so foods and
Speaker 1: plants is you can study their bones and their teeth,
Speaker 1: and you can do you can do isotope analysis, is
Speaker 1: what it's called. And the nitrogen isotope that's locked into
Speaker 1: your teeth and bone give you a sense of where
Speaker 1: you are on the food chain. So if you eat
Speaker 1: more animal protein, you have an elevated isotope ratio compared
Speaker 1: to somebody who's like a vegetarian. Right and in the
Speaker 1: early Iron Age, so at the time of Homer and
Speaker 1: those poets, I got it right that time. At the
Speaker 1: time and those poets, people were eating a lot less
Speaker 1: animal protein. And so you know, people were in general
Speaker 1: there were smaller settlements then they have much poorer material culture,
Speaker 1: and they were also eating a lot less animal protein.
Speaker 1: They also have a lot more dietary issues. You can
Speaker 1: see this in their bones and their teeth as well. Um,
Speaker 1: and so people were a lot less well nourished and
Speaker 1: more malnourished even and uh so to me, I tend
Speaker 1: to think of the home eric epics as food porn,
Speaker 1: you know, And and you can think about how modern fantasy.
Speaker 1: You go and you sit down and read Jerrar Tolkien
Speaker 1: and those hobbits are having like twelfth breakfasts and like
Speaker 1: they're eleven zeas and that's food porn too. Taken from that,
Speaker 1: it's adapted to the modern world, you know. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I think of it as I have an
Speaker 1: article I'm writing on I have a Twitter threat on too,
Speaker 1: and uh, but a lot of the ancient texts for
Speaker 1: food porn all those big cows, you know. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: if the classical Greeks did eat more animal protein, they
Speaker 1: still ate a lot less than we eat now. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, oh that's really interesting. That makes so
Speaker 1: much sense of just yeah, I mean, it would have
Speaker 1: been like almost aspirational, like look how much they could eat,
Speaker 1: like yeah, and it's sort of like you're just sort
Speaker 1: of salivating. Yeah, the burger are steak, yeah, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. It's just so funny and interesting
Speaker 1: to read about it an Iliad because you just kind
Speaker 1: of wonder, like, what's the logic on where would they
Speaker 1: have gotten that many hecatombs of cattle if they're just
Speaker 1: like camped down on the beaches of Troy, Like I know,
Speaker 1: they stole a lot of things. You know, You're like, okay,
Speaker 1: sure they raided a lot of town. They did a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. There's some explanation, but like there's just
Speaker 1: no way that. It's like, I want you to sacrifice
Speaker 1: five hecatombs of cattle and they're like cool, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got those. Yeah. Our beach camps no problem. Like
Speaker 1: the side of the Mediterranean. Yeah, we're ten and our
Speaker 1: tents keep getting bigger as we sacrifice cattle and we
Speaker 1: can expand them with the leather. But yeah, oh that's
Speaker 1: really that's really interesting. Do you know anything about UM.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the varied theories, the like less problematic
Speaker 1: theories if there are some of Atlantis, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, I think I know Santorini is
Speaker 1: the big one, right of like, well, Santorini is Atlantis, which,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, we've kind of already talked about
Speaker 1: the volcanic eruption, while enormous and troubling UM, you know,
Speaker 1: and certainly like affected the region in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: was definitely not Atlantis. UM. But do you know, like
Speaker 1: I wonder about Crete. I guess I've never heard anything
Speaker 1: about it being a big contender, but to me it
Speaker 1: seems like it would be no because the Cretan one
Speaker 1: is connected to Acriti to Santorini because you know, at
Speaker 1: that time people think that the Manoans were sort of
Speaker 1: in charge of acritiri Um. You see this change in
Speaker 1: the fresco style and the pottery style and whatnot, and
Speaker 1: so you know, people think that they were the Manoans.
Speaker 1: And there is an idea that the eruption of of
Speaker 1: theory the volcano there caused a tsunami which then impacted
Speaker 1: crete itself. Um. There's also an idea that the ash
Speaker 1: might have made it might have screwed up agriculture for
Speaker 1: a year that could have affected crete. But now that
Speaker 1: we've gotten closer dating on this stuff, Minoan civilization thrived
Speaker 1: for you know, centuries after this, and so it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem as if the as if this really destroyed the
Speaker 1: the you know, conosos or anything like that. Um. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, so that's not a super popular theory. I
Speaker 1: don't know about all of them. Once you get further afield.
Speaker 1: There's a big theory that Troy was Atlantis um. And
Speaker 1: in fact, an archaeologist wrote about that one of the
Speaker 1: former excavators at Troy, but like decades decades ago, not
Speaker 1: not not today. The current archaeologists certainly would not believe
Speaker 1: in that having talked with him. So yeah, so there there.
Speaker 1: There doesn't seem to be any much scholarly plausibility for Troy,
Speaker 1: though there's there's this one geoarchaeologist ever heard, Zengger, who
Speaker 1: has a lot of crazy theories. Um, he for a while,
Speaker 1: I think, promoted that Trojan thing, and now he's promoting
Speaker 1: some other Luvian. He founded some institute for Luvian studies.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but he has some weird theories about
Speaker 1: Atlantis that I don't even know what they all are,
Speaker 1: because people just try to find it everywhere rather than
Speaker 1: you know, because it's so easy you have circular settlements,
Speaker 1: you have a natural disaster. I mean, come on, when
Speaker 1: you're talking about thousands of years of time scale over
Speaker 1: the entire world, let's say when you're looking for Atlantis, Well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find some places that have, you know, natural disasters,
Speaker 1: whether at a rapid pace like a volcano or at
Speaker 1: a slow pace like erosion or coastal change, that you
Speaker 1: can match to stuff. And so you know, I think
Speaker 1: that the vault cann elogists on or the recent show
Speaker 1: about atlantis her entire time. She's like, there's a thousand
Speaker 1: ways that geology can kill civilizations. And so that's the point.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we know this. It's not like
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that they're all atlantis. Yeah, maybe they
Speaker 1: all are. Everything's atlantis. Atlantis is the friends you make
Speaker 1: along the way. Yeah, that's the thing, right, It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it all goes back to the pseudo archaeology of it, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that if you want to prove a thing, everything,
Speaker 1: yeah can suggest proof to that thing. If you want
Speaker 1: to ignore all the context of everything and just doing
Speaker 1: in one read one article that to look at for
Speaker 1: your idea, you're going to find some sentence in that
Speaker 1: article that fits. And so you know that's pretty easy too.
Speaker 1: That's why to get a PhD, you spend you know, however,
Speaker 1: many countless years reading all this stuff to have a
Speaker 1: better grounding, a context to even be a successful podcast host.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're going to stick to truth, you're
Speaker 1: going to take years of reading this stuff and rereading
Speaker 1: this stuff to be able to have the broader context.
Speaker 1: And so you know, yeah, exactly, And so it's not
Speaker 1: even about credentials. It's just about sitting. I'm doing that
Speaker 1: for years, but doing it in a way that's guided
Speaker 1: by having a context for something, not guided by that unknown.
Speaker 1: First right, guided by the unknown is gonna lead you
Speaker 1: dipping into all the nons. But if you're guided by
Speaker 1: the known, then you can start to look for, you know,
Speaker 1: things that are plausible, were interesting. Yeah. I feel very
Speaker 1: proud of my podcast evolution just based on that alone,
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what I've done too, perhaps to a
Speaker 1: fault sometimes where I'm like, okay, but the sources say this, this,
Speaker 1: this and this, and I'm like, is this still a
Speaker 1: good episode? Is this a good narrative story? When I
Speaker 1: just tell you all the different sources and all the
Speaker 1: random crap they all said, people, Yes, exactly, we're listening.
Speaker 1: I can't hear anybody out there. Hello, Hello, dude. That's
Speaker 1: the key to podcasting. You just put it out there
Speaker 1: and you never have to if you're listening, to find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter and send me a message so that
Speaker 1: I know somebody heard this episode. This far out, lots
Speaker 1: of people are going to hear this episode. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited for this series. It's oh my god. I've hinted
Speaker 1: it at covering Atlantis before, and I've wanted to, but then,
Speaker 1: you know, the more I look into it and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, there's just so so much.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I mean, I think the thing is Atlantis, right,
Speaker 1: people want to hear Atlantis, So I'm just excited to
Speaker 1: be the voice in their heads being like, I know
Speaker 1: you want to hear about Atlantis. I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you why you should want to hear about it. But
Speaker 1: it's not what you think. It's not true. It's not yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, like yeah, but I think what's most fascinating
Speaker 1: is how it has become this thing. You know, for
Speaker 1: all the bad you know, ultimately it's not good that
Speaker 1: it has become this thing. But to me, it's just
Speaker 1: so interesting that it has based on the fact that
Speaker 1: there is just absolutely no evidence for it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: how did this happen? You know? And that alone, I
Speaker 1: think is is so fascinating, and it says a lot
Speaker 1: about humanity, you know, again, not in a great way,
Speaker 1: but the fact that Plato just wrote a thing that
Speaker 1: he clearly was not trying to say it was true,
Speaker 1: you know, and it becomes this it's a it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating I mean, humans have always believed things that are
Speaker 1: not true. I mean, I'm not sure. I believe a
Speaker 1: whole lot of things that are not true, and so
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just gonna chalk that up to reality
Speaker 1: and us that's okay. What worries me is how prevalent,
Speaker 1: how it's getting worse right now. I don't mind the
Speaker 1: history of what has happened in previous generations. Um, I
Speaker 1: wasn't there to tell them no, but uh not that
Speaker 1: I have much sway, but you know what I mean, Like, like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's worrisome to live through a period right
Speaker 1: now where these kind of things are getting worse. A
Speaker 1: lot of different conspiracy theories and they all build upon
Speaker 1: each other. And uh it's why I've taken to being
Speaker 1: more active on Twitter and online. I'd like to join
Speaker 1: TikTok one day if I ever find the time. I
Speaker 1: have a series i'd love to do, but it's just
Speaker 1: time consuming. Um, somebody wants to fund me, I'll do
Speaker 1: TikTok all day, but uh no, it's just it's we
Speaker 1: need to get out there and spread reality and knowledge
Speaker 1: and actual facts and move people back towards the known.
Speaker 1: Because I think a lot of it is I think
Speaker 1: the ecosystem that is the Internet. A lot of the
Speaker 1: early movers on there were bad actors, and it's taken
Speaker 1: some time for better actors, whether it's academics or whether
Speaker 1: it's people like you who are doing outreach from a
Speaker 1: grounded point of view, to get on there and build
Speaker 1: up a following and to do that. But we're all
Speaker 1: so far behind by like a decade, and so you
Speaker 1: can see that on YouTube, that's for sure, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's just like, we need to do this,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to convince everybody I can to do
Speaker 1: more of this, and because we have to fight against
Speaker 1: this and I definitely think it can't all just be
Speaker 1: debunking this stuff. But at the same time that's part
Speaker 1: of it as well. I think there needs to be
Speaker 1: a big tent room for you know, real knowledge. Let's say,
Speaker 1: it's to get out there and be accessible and fun.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think that's important. H Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole the whole reason I have this podcast,
Speaker 1: started it and keep it going is is that but
Speaker 1: in the mythological realm and that you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you read through most older even more recent mythological retellings,
Speaker 1: and the way they talk about the treatment of women
Speaker 1: is utterly wild. It's like I mean, I and I
Speaker 1: get it. It's because it's from the original sources. But
Speaker 1: just because the original sources didn't care like what happened
Speaker 1: to women doesn't mean we have to continue on like that.
Speaker 1: And like I said, there's anachronisms throughout those This is
Speaker 1: my whole point. People say, oh my god, we need
Speaker 1: this because it's there, or you can't have a black
Speaker 1: Achilles or something like that, and it's just like, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? There was nothing real or realistic about
Speaker 1: the Iliot or the Odyssey. It was full of anachronisms
Speaker 1: that were used and changed for each retelling and each
Speaker 1: new iteration of the story. So us doing anything we
Speaker 1: want that's creative and compelling and fun. It's fine by
Speaker 1: me with the leader in the Odyssey as an archaeologist
Speaker 1: and historian, I am all for that. And if you
Speaker 1: can have a better way to tell that story which
Speaker 1: promotes a different way of looking at women or people,
Speaker 1: minoritize people or whatever, a more just for society, let's say,
Speaker 1: but still fun and entertaining, I'm all for that, you know,
Speaker 1: The only reason the fun and entertaining is important is
Speaker 1: because that helps to get traction inter Yeah, that's important
Speaker 1: to make it a fun thing. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we need a juster way of a better way of
Speaker 1: telling these stories and to be pedantic about whatever. Most
Speaker 1: of the time that's just racist or sexist. Well that's
Speaker 1: the thing, you know, And in my case, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying anything that is inherently untrue. I'm just saying the
Speaker 1: things that we don't necessarily have a written record for
Speaker 1: because they weren't keep they weren't like copying down the
Speaker 1: things women wrote if women were able to write at all,
Speaker 1: and thus we don't have it, That doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: didn't exist. Yeah, Plus we don't have to anyway, so
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like you know, it's I mean, this
Speaker 1: is why I'm writing this, This is why I'm trying
Speaker 1: to work on these threads about the relationship between mythology
Speaker 1: and archaeology. It was actually this experience with Atlantis that
Speaker 1: made me realize that people don't actually understand the reality
Speaker 1: of what these myths are. The myths are great stories,
Speaker 1: they're fantastic, but they're not real, and they weren't real,
Speaker 1: and they weren't even real in the eyes of the Greeks,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they obviously have this long oral
Speaker 1: tradition behind them, but for us to treat them as
Speaker 1: if that's a justification for saying a movie or a
Speaker 1: book or whatever is crap. What the fuck that is? Sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can curse there, please I
Speaker 1: shouldn't warn't you the beginning? What the fuck? I mean?
Speaker 1: You know, like it doesn't matter. The ancient Greeks wouldn't
Speaker 1: have cared, so why we care, right, Yeah, so no,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, yeah, yeah, like this in the past
Speaker 1: and oh yeah, yea yeah, and most of again, most
Speaker 1: of that is it just comes down to racism and
Speaker 1: sexism every time, especially the really strong arguments for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I see that all the time. I yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's not it's just silly. It's people that
Speaker 1: don't know what they're talking about in the end, and
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's yeah. It's fascinating the way people use
Speaker 1: this stuff to prove what they want. It's a messy time,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a messy world on the line, especially
Speaker 1: when you're when you're discussing something that is so linked
Speaker 1: to this, like nonsense view of whiteness and Western civilization
Speaker 1: and all of that, and you know there's always there's
Speaker 1: always somebody to come and scream about it. I know
Speaker 1: that's the problem is has become battlefield, and I mean
Speaker 1: that's just a problem as well. It's a problem because
Speaker 1: you can't actually do education in an educational way because
Speaker 1: it becomes a battle rather than you're just sharing real
Speaker 1: evidence and inform people about what they say archaeology or
Speaker 1: history and how it can relate to the world Santino
Speaker 1: climate change as well. If it becomes this ideological battle,
Speaker 1: then you can't break through the noise. And so it's
Speaker 1: part of the reason I try not to fight it
Speaker 1: too hard because if I'm too overt about it, then
Speaker 1: you get just so much dig back and I'd rather
Speaker 1: try to get people hooked. And if you follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter, don't listen to me this. I try to
Speaker 1: get people hooked with jokes or whatever. But then you
Speaker 1: don't use buzzwords to try to get a more nuanced,
Speaker 1: less prejudiced way of looking at the world across to people,
Speaker 1: and it just becomes a fight. I have full respect
Speaker 1: for people want to engage in these fights, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have the energy, and it doesn't to me
Speaker 1: seem to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm accomplishing what I'm trying to accomplish,
Speaker 1: but I'm trying trying. Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean I agree completely. There's a there is a reason
Speaker 1: why my podcast does not have the word feminism in
Speaker 1: the official description on podcast apps. It's because people are
Speaker 1: gonna listen and if if they get it and they're learning,
Speaker 1: great and they cut out the whole part, or you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose half your audience. Nah. Now they know at
Speaker 1: this point the word feminism certainly appears in the episode,
Speaker 1: and the same with my Twitter followers, they certainly know.
Speaker 1: It's just but it's about thinking about how to how
Speaker 1: to do it with also without stressing yourself out too much.
Speaker 1: Or look, we all do this in our free time.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's it's it's a job and of itself,
Speaker 1: even though we have jobs to do things and we're
Speaker 1: trying to pay bills and things like that, and so
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's it's a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: I see a lot of people I respect fighting these battles,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's hard and stressful. Well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta keep yourself, you know, mentally healthy too when it
Speaker 1: comes to that stuff, right, you gotta prioritize that as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's real hard. Respect to everybody that's doing what they
Speaker 1: can to fight for what's right. That's say, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: well okay, I mean I feel like we've come to
Speaker 1: a sort of natural conclusion as well. But is there
Speaker 1: anything else you you feel like you want to yell about?
Speaker 1: Like Atlantis pseudo archaeology. I don't know, tune in the
Speaker 1: real archaeologists if you can, UM check out who live
Speaker 1: follows on Twitter, UM or Instagram. I'm not on Instagram,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. UM, try your best. I tend
Speaker 1: to think that the best history and archaeology out there
Speaker 1: is actually just made organically right now. I hope one
Speaker 1: day that'll change. So yeah, and Atlantis is not feeling
Speaker 1: neither of his ancient aliens and the what I really
Speaker 1: want to say though, is that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really cool archaeology out there, And there really is, and
Speaker 1: so go and find it. There's a lot of us
Speaker 1: on social media, YouTube, etc. Sharing TikTok even a few people,
Speaker 1: and uh try to get into that ecosystem and branch
Speaker 1: out and find more really cool people. So yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. I mean, real archaeology is completely fascinating.
Speaker 1: I took a couple of courses in it in my
Speaker 1: undergrad ten years ago and it was great and I
Speaker 1: would love to do more. So yeah, no, it's that's
Speaker 1: the thing where the real stuff is is interesting enough.
Speaker 1: You don't have to go something it's really dark. It's
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, absolutely lovely, and it's usually pretty dirty
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I mean I got covered in dirt
Speaker 1: and also in a sexual way. God's ancient Greece and
Speaker 1: Rome lurd. I say, room there, because that's where all
Speaker 1: the really dirty stuff, arty Greek stuff on erotic vases.
Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, well, I will absolutely include your
Speaker 1: your Twitter handle in the episode's description, as well as
Speaker 1: some Twitter threads that you've mentioned about the Atlantis mess.
Speaker 1: But do you want I guess perfect, Yeah, please send
Speaker 1: me that one and I'll add the erotic vases in
Speaker 1: as well. But do you want to mention your Twitter
Speaker 1: handle as well? So I'm named after a rock flint
Speaker 1: and Divil's my last name. That's an ancient digging implement
Speaker 1: to plant seeds. So it's like a good archaeology named Flint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. That's great. Yeah, well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for doing this. I really really appreciate it. Oh Nerds.
Speaker 1: Thank you as always for listening. I'm thrilled to be
Speaker 1: bringing you this series. Like I've said, both because it's
Speaker 1: fascinating and also important to look at these stories and
Speaker 1: how they've morphed into what they are today and what
Speaker 1: that means. As mentioned in the episode, Flint does a
Speaker 1: lot of really interesting Twitter threads, both on Atlantis and
Speaker 1: the issues surrounding these searches and archaeology that the actual
Speaker 1: archaeology that he studies. I've linked to them in this
Speaker 1: episode's description, and their referenced a bit in the episode itself.
Speaker 1: You can also find Flint's Twitter linked in the description
Speaker 1: as well, so go ahead and follow him so you
Speaker 1: can learn even more. I know it's disappointing to learn
Speaker 1: that Atlantis isn't some super cool Greek myth that I've
Speaker 1: just somehow avoided all these years. That everything we've learned
Speaker 1: from pop culture adaptations actually perpetuates an idea that's become,
Speaker 1: if very separate from the fun pop culture, a dark
Speaker 1: and dangerous notion. But hey, like I've said, you can
Speaker 1: still be interested in Atlantis, but this way you have
Speaker 1: all the information, so you can stay interested in Plato's dialogues,
Speaker 1: what he was doing with this allegory and why and
Speaker 1: what his points were. Just don't go looking for a
Speaker 1: lost city because there isn't one. On Tuesday, more about
Speaker 1: that allegory and why he used it, what it means,
Speaker 1: how we know that it's fictional, and what it really
Speaker 1: means to have no sources beyond Plato and more. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned if I've gained any new listeners or are these
Speaker 1: episodes too. Thank you for joining. You'll find actual mythology
Speaker 1: and the rest of the show and a much more
Speaker 1: narrative storytelling style. But narrative storytelling doesn't actually fit with Atlantis,
Speaker 1: so I've had to adapt. Thank you all, You're truly
Speaker 1: the best. I'm live and I love actual mythology and
Speaker 1: history very much. Philosophy I could take or leave. Oh hi, Hello, welcome.
Speaker 1: This is Let's talk about Myth's baby, and I'm your
Speaker 1: host Live, the woman who's here telling you all about
Speaker 1: something that is explicitly not a myth, even if it's
Speaker 1: being covered on her myth show. I'm just thrilled to
Speaker 1: have the ability to share all this with you, particularly
Speaker 1: as always these conversation episodes. Last week, when I spoke
Speaker 1: with Flint Dibble, we covered the true archaeology of the region,
Speaker 1: Why we know that Atlantis isn't a place anyone should
Speaker 1: bother looking for because every bit of real evidence that
Speaker 1: we have enforces the idea that it was simply something
Speaker 1: Plato made up to prove his philosophical theory. We touched
Speaker 1: upon why it's an issue to be looking for places
Speaker 1: like Atlantis, how it hurts real archaeology, and how it's
Speaker 1: linked to some really dark and racist shit. But this
Speaker 1: week we are really diving into that. I spoke with
Speaker 1: David S Anderson, an archaeologist who studies pseudo archaeology, archaeology
Speaker 1: that purports to be real archaeology but ignores methodology and
Speaker 1: simply wants to prove something they've already decided it is true,
Speaker 1: even if none of the evidence suggests that it is.
Speaker 1: We talked about pseudo archaeology and how it's become a
Speaker 1: pop culture sensation. We talked about why It's so dark
Speaker 1: and dangerous that shows exist where the entire premise is
Speaker 1: theorizing on whether or not non white ancient peoples were
Speaker 1: capable of building things like the Pyramids. Even just editing
Speaker 1: this episode, I learned so much all over again. It's
Speaker 1: so true, so interesting and dark at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I'm so thrilled I was able to have David
Speaker 1: on the show to talk about this. It's seriously important,
Speaker 1: especially when one is talking about Atlantis, and speaking of Atlantis,
Speaker 1: David gives a bit of a breakdown on when and
Speaker 1: how Atlantis transformed from a thing that Plato invented to
Speaker 1: what it is today. Spoiler, it happened very recently, at
Speaker 1: least in comparison to when pet Plato actually wrote it.
Speaker 1: Before we dive in. We did record this episode back
Speaker 1: in October, so you'll have to bear with past live
Speaker 1: who hadn't had the chance to reread the Timius and
Speaker 1: the Crittius before recording. But oh I certainly have now.
Speaker 1: Also listening back, I found myself sounding very judgmental on
Speaker 1: believers of Atlantis, and so I just want to clarify
Speaker 1: that any of that judgment or annoyance or even disdain
Speaker 1: is for those people who believe it against all of
Speaker 1: the facts, who dispute all of the facts and continue
Speaker 1: on with this theory that has so much basis and
Speaker 1: racism and a willful ignorance of act ual archaeology and history.
Speaker 1: Those people are shit, and I'm actually afraid of them
Speaker 1: with every moment that I prepare and record these episodes,
Speaker 1: because even if you haven't encountered it, there is a
Speaker 1: whole wide world of this shit, and it's scary. But
Speaker 1: if you just believed Atlantis like I did when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, because you never knew any better because
Speaker 1: you were raised to believe it was a myth or
Speaker 1: even history, and you're listening to this now, oh you
Speaker 1: are so welcome here, Welcome to the other side. Conversations
Speaker 1: Deis x Alien Ancient Realities versus pseudo Archaeology with David
Speaker 1: S Anderson. One of the questions I get all the
Speaker 1: time is like it goes to Troy in Atlantis. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: there was this myth about Troy and that was real,
Speaker 1: and so if there's a myth about Atlantist, it must
Speaker 1: be real. And for me, it's really important to approach
Speaker 1: that and say, like, wait, a second, these are not
Speaker 1: the same kind of stories and they don't have the
Speaker 1: same kind of origin to them. Well. Also, I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea of Troy being real in the way that
Speaker 1: it's real in the Iliad is not at all confirmed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not even like there's total consensus on that. And yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well we'll just dive right in, I mean talking about
Speaker 1: pseudo archaeology and sort of how that interacts with I
Speaker 1: guess real archaeology in the ways it causes trouble. But
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, all of this came up because the
Speaker 1: huge subset of the world seems to believe or want
Speaker 1: to believe that Atlantis is a myth and therefore could
Speaker 1: be a real place. But it's neither. It's not even
Speaker 1: a myth, which is what the thing I always go
Speaker 1: back to is, as somebody who you know, tells mythology
Speaker 1: for a job, it isn't one. And I'll by the
Speaker 1: time this air is I'll have gotten into that more
Speaker 1: in depth in my podcast. But you study pseudo archaeology,
Speaker 1: I know, not specifically Mediterranean or anything, right, you do
Speaker 1: you focus on Mesoamerica, did I see? Yeah? So, my
Speaker 1: my background as an archaeologist is working in Mexico studying
Speaker 1: the ancient Maya. I've done field work, you know, in
Speaker 1: many sites in Mexico. I've done some fieldwork in North America,
Speaker 1: and I've been lucky enough to work in Egypt ones.
Speaker 1: But yes, this is my traditional archaeological background is not
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean per se. And so how did you
Speaker 1: get into sort of the more the pseudo archaeology aspect,
Speaker 1: the sort of and maybe we should define that as
Speaker 1: well if you want to do that. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: think it's actually important to talk about, like what do
Speaker 1: I'm you know, what do we mean when say pseudo archaeology,
Speaker 1: because especially I get a lot of kickback online if
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, you just don't like that interpretation,
Speaker 1: or you don't want to believe that, or you're denying
Speaker 1: or covering up the truth in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: The reality is a pseudo archaeology is something very particular,
Speaker 1: and it's one that you know, it's making claims about
Speaker 1: the archaeological record while and sort of using archaeological data
Speaker 1: sometimes to do that, but totally sort of ignoring, throwing
Speaker 1: out the window any kind of archaeological methodology. And so
Speaker 1: you know, a common example a way of looking at
Speaker 1: this is cherry picking. Right. When somebody scrabs a couple
Speaker 1: of things and tells you, oh, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that other stuff, you know, then you know
Speaker 1: it's you're dealing with some form of pseudoscience or pseudo
Speaker 1: archaeology in that process. And I think Atlantis is an
Speaker 1: interesting one when I talk about this with my students
Speaker 1: and whatnot. It Atlantis doesn't become what I would call
Speaker 1: pseudo archaeology until like the nineteenth century, because it's not
Speaker 1: until the nineteenth Well, we've got some people in the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds who try to claim it might have been
Speaker 1: a real place and try to kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: suggest the Americas where Atlantis, by and large, we don't
Speaker 1: get any sort of serious claims of trying to allegedly
Speaker 1: find or interact with the archaeological record until the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century when Ignatius Donnelly publishes his book. And Donnally
Speaker 1: if for those who have not heard of this guy
Speaker 1: Minnesota congressman, because you know, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think when you're not in Congress, I guess you
Speaker 1: just have stuff to do, so you write Atlantis books.
Speaker 1: But he wrote this book Atlantis in the Antediluvian World,
Speaker 1: and he was, in the modern era, basically the first
Speaker 1: person to try to say I can find Atlantis. And
Speaker 1: he does so by looking at the archaeological record of
Speaker 1: the world, and in particular, he looks at the Maya
Speaker 1: and Egypt and he basically tries to say, like, you know, these,
Speaker 1: you know, these two cultures and other cultures are so
Speaker 1: similar they must have a common origin. And the reality
Speaker 1: is is that, you know, when he wrote his book,
Speaker 1: and we didn't know very much, particularly about the Maya.
Speaker 1: We knew like practically nothing about the Maya when he
Speaker 1: wrote his books. It was very easy for him to
Speaker 1: kind of draw these parallels and claim that these two
Speaker 1: cultures were super similar because he didn't have a very
Speaker 1: critical audience. Because his audience there wasn't much information they
Speaker 1: could push back on him with, but Atlantis. You know,
Speaker 1: so if we like, what is pseudo archaeology for me,
Speaker 1: Atlantis doesn't become that until, you know, the ignacious Donnely
Speaker 1: comes along and says, hey, I can find or pinpoint
Speaker 1: where Atlantis was using the archaeological record. That's yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so interesting. I mean, I've seen that book because it's
Speaker 1: very old, it's in the public domain and kind of
Speaker 1: just like flipped through it, and I'm sure by the
Speaker 1: time this is out, I'll have gone into it a
Speaker 1: bit in the episode, because I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the only I mean, if you if you look up
Speaker 1: books on Atlantis when it I mean, obviously it's not
Speaker 1: coming up very often because it's incredibly old. But certainly
Speaker 1: the used bookstore used books are near me, there's they
Speaker 1: have this series of like it's some kind of series
Speaker 1: of like really old public domain, weird books that they've
Speaker 1: kind of republished and like people are just trying to
Speaker 1: make money off of it, you know, good or bad.
Speaker 1: But I think you could definitely pick that up and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, this is like a this is an
Speaker 1: old book, and therefore, you know, I'm sure there's some
Speaker 1: real interesting stuff in here. And then it's like and
Speaker 1: there's another you know, especially to think of it that way,
Speaker 1: these kind of books that show up, you know, free
Speaker 1: online and one not people can look for. There's a
Speaker 1: whole other crop of books about Atlantis that come out
Speaker 1: sort of in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century
Speaker 1: that can look very serious well, and they are they
Speaker 1: are very serious. I shouldn't say that. It can look
Speaker 1: very legit, but they're not archaeological. They are spiritual books.
Speaker 1: The rise of the spiritualism movement in the late twentieth
Speaker 1: century gets very invested in Atlantis. This happens with the
Speaker 1: writings of Helena Bovatski from the Theosophical Society. This happens
Speaker 1: with Rodolph Steiner. This happens with Edgar Casey, the American
Speaker 1: psychic Edgar Casey. These folks get super into Atlantis and
Speaker 1: write a lot about it, and they add a lot
Speaker 1: to what we think we know about Atlantis, especially if
Speaker 1: you kind of slide into the pop culture world. I
Speaker 1: love to play this game. I do it with my
Speaker 1: students every year or so with a new crop of students,
Speaker 1: and I'll just say, hey, what do you know about Atlantis? Anything?
Speaker 1: Go what do you know? Tell me anything? And I
Speaker 1: start writing stuff on the board as they tell me stuff.
Speaker 1: And I always kind of start dividing it up the
Speaker 1: big chalkboard or the white board in front of the
Speaker 1: room and put stuff on. All the stuff that came
Speaker 1: from Plato one are sort of on one side, and
Speaker 1: then all the stuff that actually comes from these sort
Speaker 1: of late nineteenth century spiritualists on the other side of
Speaker 1: the board, and both side of the board. Sides of
Speaker 1: the board end up being pretty full by the time
Speaker 1: we're done with this exercise. And then I, you know,
Speaker 1: I try to ask them, well, how do you know
Speaker 1: any of this stuff? And it's it's this great sort
Speaker 1: of moment where they're like, I don't know. And I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to pick on my students. This is what
Speaker 1: we all do. They're like, I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: I saw a movie or I saw something on TV,
Speaker 1: and they have these little factoids that they remember, but
Speaker 1: you know, where it actually came from is sort of
Speaker 1: all over the map and isn't even coming all the
Speaker 1: way from Plato sometimes or for that matter, Donnally even well,
Speaker 1: I think, you know so often it's like you just
Speaker 1: take in information throughout your life. You often can't call
Speaker 1: back exactly where you heard it. We're like, I've seen
Speaker 1: this thing or I've heard this thing, and I mean,
Speaker 1: for me, you know, I forget when it came out,
Speaker 1: but I think I was like a early teenager, young
Speaker 1: teenager when the Disney Atlantis movie came out, which is
Speaker 1: you know, I'll stand by it's a very entertaining thing
Speaker 1: of nonsense, Like yeah, it's it's really enjoyable. It's I
Speaker 1: think more interesting when you know that there is a
Speaker 1: not you know, this like backstory, this history, this mythology
Speaker 1: around it. The last time I watched it, I was
Speaker 1: like I had just started trying to dive into it.
Speaker 1: I tried to do it for an episode of the
Speaker 1: podcast ages ago, but it is it's such a daunting
Speaker 1: task trying to properly convey it. And so I'd read
Speaker 1: the tims and critius of Plato and just it's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is it. How did I not know that this
Speaker 1: is it? This is like the only thing from the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek world that we have on Atlantis, And somehow
Speaker 1: it's become this thing that like I think there's so
Speaker 1: much more based unless you have looked or you know,
Speaker 1: are in this world, Like you think that there is
Speaker 1: so much more to base everything we know Atlantis on.
Speaker 1: Oh and it's and the Disney Atlantis is a perfect
Speaker 1: one for just where I was talking. So much of
Speaker 1: how Atlantis is represented in that movie actually comes from
Speaker 1: Edgar Casey. Edgar Casey talks a lot about how Atlantis
Speaker 1: had these crystalline energy sources, which of course everyone's got
Speaker 1: the crystal necklace in the movie, that you know, they
Speaker 1: can turn things on, including the flying cars. Edgar Casey
Speaker 1: also says that Atlantis had flying vehicles of sorts powered
Speaker 1: by these crystals and other things. And the big underlying theme,
Speaker 1: which is a little less explicit than Disney, is just
Speaker 1: sort of this air of spiritual wisdom. And certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: for Casey and for a lot of these other spiritualists,
Speaker 1: they're very interested in the ancient world as a source
Speaker 1: of wisdom. And I would say, I think you have
Speaker 1: to kind of read into it. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: excessively reading into the Disney Atlantis, but the Atlanteans are
Speaker 1: certainly presented as wise and sort of you know, profound
Speaker 1: in a way that the upper world or people are not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so much in that of how
Speaker 1: they're meant to be this, yeah, this incredibly special people
Speaker 1: in some way. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's sort
Speaker 1: of forming all of my thoughts on it because I
Speaker 1: think I'm just I'm still not over how much I
Speaker 1: sort of feel like I was led to believe that
Speaker 1: there is you know, more to it well, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to keep harping on the Disney
Speaker 1: here really too, because it really is truly a phenomenal example.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of others. I mean, this didn't
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. There's lots of pop fiction that
Speaker 1: started this back in the twenties and the thirties, and
Speaker 1: the comic books pick it up and continue it as well.
Speaker 1: But you get that intro, which was what I deal with,
Speaker 1: where I was trying to tell the establishment about his
Speaker 1: amazing ideas and they won't listen to him. And that's
Speaker 1: a great narrative. We all love that narrative of an
Speaker 1: underdog who's fighting for the truth and it has the
Speaker 1: truth on his side, but nobody will listen to them.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: I get plastered with all the time. I got you
Speaker 1: don't believe in Atlantis because you're covering it up. But no,
Speaker 1: it would be so it would be totally cool if
Speaker 1: this was true. I've got nothing invested in you know,
Speaker 1: trying to say this isn't real. It doesn't help me
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. In fact, you know,
Speaker 1: it might even hurt me, like to spend so much
Speaker 1: time talking about things that aren't real. It that kind
Speaker 1: of narrative that you know, thrives in the subculture, thrives
Speaker 1: in the conspiracy circles and in the sort of the
Speaker 1: anti academia circles. It's the fictional trope, like it's been
Speaker 1: there all along. Yeah, And I think, I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be so satisfying too, if if you know, there
Speaker 1: was this all these little bits of evidence that you
Speaker 1: could find for real that suggested it, or I mean,
Speaker 1: for me coming from the side of looking at the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek sources all the time, if there was a single,
Speaker 1: i mean even one other source from the ancient Greek
Speaker 1: world that made reference to it, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it would be just a tiny bit more convincing. But
Speaker 1: it's the fact that it's it's just Plato. And when
Speaker 1: you read it, I think the key is to read
Speaker 1: it too right, and to read it with the open
Speaker 1: mind or a you know, historical minded brain of just
Speaker 1: he doesn't even sound like he's serious. And that's how
Speaker 1: I go, like, how did we get here? Because he
Speaker 1: does not sound serious. I mean, he pulls the whole
Speaker 1: this happened nine thousand years ago, beyond the pillars of Hercules,
Speaker 1: like he's he's pretty like like it's out there and
Speaker 1: the distant passed. You know, it's he's and I always
Speaker 1: fall back on too. It's like we have to think
Speaker 1: about who Plato is and what kind of author Plato is.
Speaker 1: There's a reason we referred to him as a philosopher.
Speaker 1: Everything he wrote is debating, you know, different philosophical ideas
Speaker 1: and repeat eedialy. He uses metaphorical examples or thought experiment
Speaker 1: style examples. This is not an unusual thing for him
Speaker 1: to do, to make up a story to try and
Speaker 1: prove a point. He does it time and time again.
Speaker 1: He doesn't talk about history. He's not known as a historian. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've not read a ton of Plato. I
Speaker 1: think I've read probably some of it in my undergrad
Speaker 1: but otherwise probably just the Atlantist bit. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's Plato. He's not a mythologer, or it's not a mythographer.
Speaker 1: He's not writing down stories from his people like he is.
Speaker 1: What you're saying, he's doing thought experience. He's he's an
Speaker 1: analogies and metaphors. He's he's like making a point through
Speaker 1: a larger fictional telling in order to demonstrate his point.
Speaker 1: And you know, we we even have the the Athens
Speaker 1: part of it all right, which I think is another
Speaker 1: good example of how obvious it is that he wasn't
Speaker 1: serious the idea that that at the same time the
Speaker 1: Athenians were like equally advanced, but you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: get punished in the same I'm forgetting exactly all of
Speaker 1: the details, but basically the idea that there was an
Speaker 1: Athenian people who were, you know, as sort of ahead
Speaker 1: of their time, all the way back, you know, nine
Speaker 1: thousand years before Plato, which is of course absurd according
Speaker 1: to like all of the physical evidence and textual evidence
Speaker 1: that we have. Yeah, yeah, no, And that's the you know,
Speaker 1: there's this kind of a boundary. I feel like that
Speaker 1: some of these authors of pseudo archaeological claims feel like,
Speaker 1: if they're at least ten thousand years in the past,
Speaker 1: they know that the rest of us don't know much
Speaker 1: about that, and so we can kind of imagine it
Speaker 1: as a blank landscape that they can paint on. But well,
Speaker 1: and behold, we have a good archaeological record from ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand years in the past. We know not everything,
Speaker 1: but we know a lot about what was actually going
Speaker 1: on during those time periods. And so yeah, like there's
Speaker 1: talk to flint Table, he will be great about this.
Speaker 1: But like Athens was not the city of Athens nine
Speaker 1: thousand years earlier than Plato. It does not even remotely correlate.
Speaker 1: And that's not because we know well other things that
Speaker 1: are going on in Greece in the Mediterranean at that
Speaker 1: point in time. It's there's something that resonates to me
Speaker 1: in this idea that every couple of years somebody comes
Speaker 1: out like I have solved the mystery. I have found Atlantis,
Speaker 1: and it's actually here. It's actually there, and it's always
Speaker 1: somewhere else. It's always you know, like in the Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: outside of the Mediterranean, in North America, in Spain, in Ireland,
Speaker 1: it's all over the map. And it reminds me of
Speaker 1: you know, so the axiom I was taught a long
Speaker 1: time ago when I was learning statistics and analysis. It's
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out. If there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: your sort of original premise, it does not matter how
Speaker 1: sophisticated your analysis, how detailed your breakdown of the text,
Speaker 1: does not matter. If you can break down Plato word
Speaker 1: by word by word, that doesn't prove it was real
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. And so I think
Speaker 1: you know, to me that garbage in garbage out really
Speaker 1: to the idea of Atlantis, because there's a reason that
Speaker 1: every time someone claims to find Atlantis, it's in like
Speaker 1: a totally different place, over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: because there's there's no actual basis to start with for
Speaker 1: whatever analysis somebody wants to pull on Plato or anyone
Speaker 1: else to come along since then well and if and
Speaker 1: if you're ignoring such important parts of or such important
Speaker 1: you know, facts about the situation, it becomes useless analysis.
Speaker 1: Like if you're ignoring the fact that Plato did not
Speaker 1: tell myths in his works, that he was not in
Speaker 1: the business of talking about ancient history or mythology generally.
Speaker 1: And then you break it all down, you say, well,
Speaker 1: this is why it's here or why it's real or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if you're ignoring that that inherent nature of Plato,
Speaker 1: well then you know your whole argument is tainted by that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is where it has been said to me
Speaker 1: many a time, And I've seen TV shows try to
Speaker 1: do this, and I were discussing, like some people like,
Speaker 1: well Troy, maybe Troy is a real place. It's from
Speaker 1: you know, there's a written record to talk about Troy,
Speaker 1: and the archaeologists seemingly found Troy, which is it's way
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, but there's there's some reasonable arguments
Speaker 1: to be had there. So if Troy's real, maybe Atlantis
Speaker 1: is real. It's it's not that simple that that completely
Speaker 1: assumes that the texts about Troy and the text about
Speaker 1: Atlantis come from the same place and have the same
Speaker 1: kind of origins, and they don't. I'm like you said
Speaker 1: that Plato is not a historian. He's not a mythographer,
Speaker 1: as you said, like he is a philosopher. He is
Speaker 1: making up examples to prove his point. And that's great
Speaker 1: and that's wonderful. But if we ignore that, if we
Speaker 1: ignore who he is, of course we're going to get
Speaker 1: all of our interpretations of his work wrong. Well exactly,
Speaker 1: and you know, Troy's inherently even if what we think
Speaker 1: of as Troy as a real location, it doesn't also
Speaker 1: prove the Trojan War, So you know it doesn't. The
Speaker 1: point remains, like, yeah, but Troy might have been a
Speaker 1: real place, is based on this, but even still, like
Speaker 1: that doesn't make the Trojan war reel and you know,
Speaker 1: I doesn't the ideas that they're just so you can't
Speaker 1: you can't equivocate them like at all. Well, but I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, it's an important thing for us
Speaker 1: to discuss because so much, you know, it's hard for
Speaker 1: me sometimes, like I eat, drink and sleep this stuff.
Speaker 1: Like I love the ancient world. I focus on it,
Speaker 1: I teach it, I talk about it, I write about it.
Speaker 1: But most people don't spend that much time in these spaces,
Speaker 1: and so it's pretty easy for someone to say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of this, I've heard of that, and let
Speaker 1: them slide together. But that's where you know, I think
Speaker 1: I say about my own fellow archaeologists, And I think
Speaker 1: part of the problems that we have in archaeology with
Speaker 1: the prevalence of pseudo archaeology and the media, is that
Speaker 1: archaeologists aren't good enough about showing their work. We're not
Speaker 1: good enough about demonstrating how we come to the results
Speaker 1: that we do. Because sure, there's a lot of doubt
Speaker 1: and archaeological interpretation, there's a lot of room for reinterpretation
Speaker 1: new discoveries to change our minds. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that our interpretations are just completely pulled out of the blue,
Speaker 1: that they're just complete malarchy. There, there's something real, you know,
Speaker 1: they're based on actual information that even if we get
Speaker 1: new information or better analyzes that come along later, doesn't
Speaker 1: inherently change or get rid of those original facts underneath them.
Speaker 1: I suppose it's just the nature of these things. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not going to be able to understand
Speaker 1: how these people get to their arguments, because I, you know,
Speaker 1: have a mind that's willing to look reasonably at these things.
Speaker 1: But I just can't ever wrap my head around the
Speaker 1: idea that Plato white and I suppose it comes back to,
Speaker 1: you know, while he's talking about yeah Solon, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he says that, you know that hears it from Solon,
Speaker 1: except there's a couple of generations removed here, so even
Speaker 1: within the realm of his storytelling, the story has already
Speaker 1: been passed down by a couple of generations. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of I heard it from this guy
Speaker 1: who heard it from this guy who heard it from
Speaker 1: this guy who heard that nine thousand years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely and the and the you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote foreigner told them this too, right, and Egypt is
Speaker 1: a great even for the Greeks. Egypt is this wonderful
Speaker 1: mystical place of sort of lost knowledge and lost wisdom
Speaker 1: as well. And it really it's an air of mysticism
Speaker 1: to say that you got something from a foreigner and
Speaker 1: sort of in that sense an air of plausible reality
Speaker 1: but distant. If I don't know if there's there's probably
Speaker 1: an exact term for this that I'm missing, but it's
Speaker 1: like that, you know, it's kind of like orientalism in
Speaker 1: the modern world, like, you know, we heard about it
Speaker 1: from the foreigners, and so as this are more plausibility
Speaker 1: to it. Well, and then you add to that that
Speaker 1: the Egyptians, you know, already were around so many thousands
Speaker 1: of years earlier that then you know, and at another
Speaker 1: level of well, of course they would know, because you
Speaker 1: know they were, but even still, it's like the idea
Speaker 1: is that Atlantis was even way more you know, ancient
Speaker 1: than even the Egyptian I always love I think I
Speaker 1: see a few eyeballs pop every once in a while
Speaker 1: when I talk, because in my classes, I'll talk about
Speaker 1: the Egyptian pyramids, and we'll we always talk start at
Speaker 1: one point or another with Herodotus, because it is from
Speaker 1: Herodotus that today we have this idea that the pyramids
Speaker 1: are built by slaves, and there isn't. Actually the archaeological
Speaker 1: data is actually pretty good to show that these were
Speaker 1: not slaves. But we talked about it in class and
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, so you know, what's the evidence
Speaker 1: you know for the workers at Giza, what do we
Speaker 1: know about them? What? You know, why did Herodotus say slaves?
Speaker 1: And ever, eventually I point out to them that Herodotus was,
Speaker 1: you know, as was further if when I get this
Speaker 1: quite right, is further away from Yeah, that there's more
Speaker 1: time between Herodotus and the construction of the pyramids at
Speaker 1: Giza than there is between us today and Herodotus, like
Speaker 1: this is an ancient place and he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: he's talking about. He's just sort of like running with
Speaker 1: it and going with what people tell him, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a long time ago. Yeah, that's the thing. And
Speaker 1: you know, that comes up for me a lot in
Speaker 1: the stories, because there's a lot of oh, well, why
Speaker 1: is this one different than that one? And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like five hundred years in between some
Speaker 1: of these versions of stories, and things change in five
Speaker 1: hundred years, oh gosh. Yeah. And it's that we're so
Speaker 1: willing to accept sort of contradictions or multiple versions in
Speaker 1: our own world, but if we see that in someone
Speaker 1: else's culture or someone else's religion, it's like, wait, but
Speaker 1: how could they have a contradiction. It's like we kind
Speaker 1: of do that all the time. Well exactly, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of specifics is mythology. But you know
Speaker 1: the difference between Ovid's version of something and you know,
Speaker 1: an archaic text that we have from Greece and somebody like, well,
Speaker 1: what one's right and one's wrong or whatever, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: there's just like seven hundred years there. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like saying that everything Shakespeare said should be exactly the
Speaker 1: same as how we live now, and like, yes, I
Speaker 1: mean I think even just using that as an example,
Speaker 1: it's a good like wake up call of oh right,
Speaker 1: you know, a few hundred years matters quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But that's yeah, that's that's fascinating with the timeline. And
Speaker 1: I actually didn't realize I knew that, you know that
Speaker 1: what we know now suggests that the pyramids weren't built
Speaker 1: by enslaved people. But I didn't realize that it was Herodotus,
Speaker 1: which I was meaning to bring up Herodotus earlier because
Speaker 1: I think he's such a good example of you know,
Speaker 1: even if Plato was a historian, that doesn't mean shit,
Speaker 1: Like Herodotus said a lot of crazy things. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'd call him the first historian. Yeah, and he got
Speaker 1: things right too, And it's a great read, and it's
Speaker 1: a fun thing to go back to. But you know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't read, you know, one single historian today and
Speaker 1: assume that they are completely and utterly uncontroversial or that
Speaker 1: they couldn't have gotten something wrong. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: we should never look at somebody like Herodotus and assume
Speaker 1: that there couldn't be errors or anything else at that
Speaker 1: point too, well, exactly, And you know, you're working off
Speaker 1: of a lot of oral traditions and traveling and talking
Speaker 1: to people who don't speak the same languages, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's so many things, but it's just fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. I think what's most fascinating to me is
Speaker 1: just how people can look at what Plato said and
Speaker 1: decide that that means that Atlantis definitely existed. There's from
Speaker 1: my perspective talking with people outside of the disciplines of
Speaker 1: classics and archaeology in general, it seems like if somebody
Speaker 1: sees a really old book, the older that book is
Speaker 1: sort of like the greater air of authenticity that it
Speaker 1: tends to have. And we don't think about people in
Speaker 1: the past lying, not not saying Plato's lying, but I
Speaker 1: mean just we don't think about people in the past,
Speaker 1: as you know, lying or mischievous or inventing examples. We
Speaker 1: sort of ossify them into this block and say that
Speaker 1: they are this great, you know, carved in marble bust
Speaker 1: of an individual who you know, is austere and important
Speaker 1: and couldn't possibly have been wrong about something or made
Speaker 1: something up just for the fun of it in that
Speaker 1: whole process. Well, and I think that's especially true when
Speaker 1: it comes to ancient Greece, you know there, and there's
Speaker 1: a much darker side to that of the inherent you know,
Speaker 1: morality kind of of ancient Greece and the way they're
Speaker 1: sort of put up on this pedestal of ancient people.
Speaker 1: And therefore, you know, especially someone from there and Plato,
Speaker 1: you know, this philosopher that everyone knows his name. It's
Speaker 1: it's not like it was, you know, I mean, even
Speaker 1: somebody like Herodotus or Thucidides, like, if you're not in
Speaker 1: the realm of classics, you're a lot less likely to
Speaker 1: know who they are. But Plato, his name has sort
Speaker 1: of gone much further than even some of the historians.
Speaker 1: So it's, yeah, it's certainly the idea of him telling
Speaker 1: the sort of ultimate truth because he's this ancient Greek
Speaker 1: philosopher is Yeah, that's convincing to a lot. Atlantis has
Speaker 1: definitely hit that point too, though, with as I said,
Speaker 1: when I like to do this exercise with my students
Speaker 1: and where I ask them what they know about Atlantis,
Speaker 1: and when I ask them those questions about sources, how
Speaker 1: do you know these things? Somebody in the room always
Speaker 1: knows who Plato is or has some idea of who
Speaker 1: Plato is. And there's always some students who just don't
Speaker 1: want to raise their hand. But there are absolutely students
Speaker 1: in the room who can tell me things about Atlantis
Speaker 1: who don't necessarily know who Plato is and maybe don't
Speaker 1: even know his name. Sometimes, you know, this information has
Speaker 1: percolated so far that you know, and it kind of
Speaker 1: don't know where it came from anymore for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Well, I'll admit even I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: I knew offhand that it was from Plato before I started,
Speaker 1: you know, being as deep in the myths as I
Speaker 1: am now before the podcast, even though I did a
Speaker 1: classics degree. Because the thing is, I just always assumed
Speaker 1: that Atlantis was some kind of myth because of everything
Speaker 1: that surrounded me. So I just assumed there was a
Speaker 1: myth that I hadn't heard, you know, even having done
Speaker 1: a classics degree that told of Atlantis. I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was convincing. I didn't believe it, but I figured
Speaker 1: there was, you know, something that I could call a
Speaker 1: myth that told him. Until it's like, no, there's not
Speaker 1: even that. And I realize now in hindsight, you know,
Speaker 1: the reason it didn't come up in my degree is
Speaker 1: because it's not anything. It's just like a thing. Plato
Speaker 1: talked about it, and I didn't. I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: study philosophy or the philosophers generally, and so that's why
Speaker 1: I didn't hear it. But I think unless you have
Speaker 1: that contradiction unless you have a reason to learn that
Speaker 1: it is only in Plato and it wasn't presented seriously,
Speaker 1: it is a thought experiment, then you're just sort of
Speaker 1: going to take in what's around you and just assume
Speaker 1: it's a myth, even if you don't necessarily assume it
Speaker 1: was a real place. And I think, especially for modern Americans,
Speaker 1: there's a very real issue here that it is part
Speaker 1: of our modern mythology. That is, Atlantis is regularly a
Speaker 1: feature of things like Marvel and DC comics and other
Speaker 1: movies that are going on out there. In the Disney
Speaker 1: movie that we were talking about, and this is literally
Speaker 1: one hundred years of storytelling in the modern American landscape,
Speaker 1: and it goes back to that pulp fiction era with
Speaker 1: particular writers like Roberty Howard was one of the most influential.
Speaker 1: Howard is known today best known today for his character
Speaker 1: Conan the Barbarian, but he had regularly featured Atlantis in
Speaker 1: his stories. He had a character cal who was from Atlantis,
Speaker 1: who was a king of Atlantis. A whole bunch of
Speaker 1: the other pulp fiction authors picked up the same thread
Speaker 1: and started writing Atlantis stories of great warriors from this
Speaker 1: mythical place, and it's there's a very real tie from
Speaker 1: that pulp fiction world over back to those spiritualists for
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century early twentieth century, because you know,
Speaker 1: especially if we slide over into HP. Lovecraft, Lovecraft and
Speaker 1: some of the other pulp fiction authors were very deliberately
Speaker 1: lifting from that world of spiritualism because they wanted to
Speaker 1: add sort of an air of authenticity to their stories
Speaker 1: about occult and demons and other sundry things. And so
Speaker 1: that basically that spiritualism world brit large becomes sort of
Speaker 1: a regular dipping well for these pulp fiction authors who
Speaker 1: are looking for story ideas. And so Atlantis La Muria Moo.
Speaker 1: There's some different histories to all of these lost continents
Speaker 1: and how they came about, but they all end up
Speaker 1: part of the canon of pulp fiction and early science
Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy that works its way into the comic
Speaker 1: books in the movies to this day. And so like,
Speaker 1: why do we think it's a myth today, because we've
Speaker 1: got a hundred years of mythological style storytelling about it
Speaker 1: that you know, everyone's heard of Atlantis. They don't always
Speaker 1: know why or how, but absolutely everyone's heard of it
Speaker 1: because of that last sort of one hundred years of storytelling. Hmm. Well,
Speaker 1: and even just you talking about that, it reminded me
Speaker 1: that the Little Mermaid lives in Atlantis. Like I actually,
Speaker 1: now that I say that, I think it's so. I
Speaker 1: think it's like maybe a bit of a suggestion and interesting,
Speaker 1: but even one thing. So, I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: the Assassin's Creed Odyssey game, you know, wandering through ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so accurate in so many ways, and
Speaker 1: you can tell they did some really incredible research in
Speaker 1: so many ways. And then they toss in an additional
Speaker 1: one you can go to, and it's Atlantis. And it's
Speaker 1: such a huge bummer to me because truly, so much
Speaker 1: is incredibly well researched and accurate historically, and then and
Speaker 1: then there's Atlantis. And just like you ryally did well,
Speaker 1: I was working with a student last year to do
Speaker 1: doing some database sing like we're trying, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: combile lists of different pop culture appearances of Atlantis and
Speaker 1: others through archaeology stuff, and she came across I don't
Speaker 1: know how representative it necessarily is, but she actually came
Speaker 1: across some blog posts from players of Assassin's Creed who
Speaker 1: the players, there's the authenticity and the game is valued
Speaker 1: by the players, and so there were at least some
Speaker 1: players who are apparently pretty upset that they added Atlantis
Speaker 1: to the game as they were stepping away from that
Speaker 1: accuracy world. Well, I'm glad to hear that and not
Speaker 1: the other way around. Of players then went on to
Speaker 1: assume that Atlantis was a myth because they put it in.
Speaker 1: It was an unusual counterexample. It's usually goes the other
Speaker 1: way around. Basically, yeah, I mean it certainly annoys me,
Speaker 1: and I like, I played that those levels just like angrily,
Speaker 1: like why am I even here? This is particulous. It's
Speaker 1: a loser. And you know, people who are deep in
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed will have a lot of explanations for why
Speaker 1: it makes sense in the lore or whatever. But ultimately
Speaker 1: they make a very real ancient Greece with incredible like
Speaker 1: archaeological evidence, and then they throw an Atlantis. Well, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, see, this is one where you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to help me, because I know there are some
Speaker 1: vague freemasons and templars references and the Assassin's Creeds series
Speaker 1: there are also in the realm of some Masonic authors.
Speaker 1: There are some Masonic authors that try to tie things
Speaker 1: back to Atlantis as well, including ignacious Donnally. Donaldy is
Speaker 1: actually kind of a weird one, So, I mean, he
Speaker 1: was the one who got us started on this Atlantis boom.
Speaker 1: He suggests that the Masonic traditions originate in Atlantis. It's
Speaker 1: not a big part of his book. It's like one line,
Speaker 1: one paragraph. And there's a very real question whether he
Speaker 1: was a Mason or not, because there's like one photograph
Speaker 1: of him with his hand sort of in his shirt
Speaker 1: between his shirt buttons that some people claim as a
Speaker 1: Masonic hand sign. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's certainly not. Wouldn't have been unreasonable that
Speaker 1: he could have been a Mason, but we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure. But he does literally say in his book
Speaker 1: that these traditions Masonic tricians go back to Atlantis. And
Speaker 1: then we have there's I kind of defy Masonic authors
Speaker 1: into sort of secular Masonic authors and esoteric Masonic authors,
Speaker 1: and the secular are certainly the more common and more
Speaker 1: popular within Masonry. But you get to people like Augustus
Speaker 1: Laplan Jean, who was absolutely a Mason, and he goes
Speaker 1: way further down the well here of basically suggesting that
Speaker 1: Masonic traditions came from the Maya, and the Maya took
Speaker 1: it to Atlantis, and from Atlantis that went to Egypt,
Speaker 1: and you get all the sort of sundry stories going on.
Speaker 1: And Laplan Jean was super influential, and he has sort
Speaker 1: of long threads that still hit people to this day. Wow,
Speaker 1: I guess at least he thinks the Maya are older
Speaker 1: than Atlantis. Yeah, the chronology is all a total mess,
Speaker 1: it is, and he's you know, it's funny. He hits
Speaker 1: an unusual place in the history of my archaeology because
Speaker 1: he's did some of the very first sort of quasi
Speaker 1: official excavations at chichen Itza, this famous Maya city in
Speaker 1: the northern Lowlands. He is the first person to have
Speaker 1: excavated a chalk mule statue, which is a very famous
Speaker 1: style of statue found in among the Maya, particularly among
Speaker 1: Central Mexico. But at the same time all those he
Speaker 1: chose where to excavate by psychic powers, he told all
Speaker 1: the workers that he was reincarnated. He used to be
Speaker 1: a Maya prince himself and whatnot. He is very very
Speaker 1: specifically in this world of spiritualism and he for him,
Speaker 1: not for all Masons, but for him, there was this
Speaker 1: very real overlap between Masonic tradition and esoteric spirituality. And
Speaker 1: then yeah, it's like he's let's just throw an Atlantis
Speaker 1: and everything else into it. That's fascinating. He sounds like
Speaker 1: a much more out there like Heinrich Lehmann. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's in the same time period. He's in
Speaker 1: Yucatan in the eighteen seventies, and he's he's got the
Speaker 1: beard like all the way down to his belly button,
Speaker 1: and he's got his wife Alice is a real pistol.
Speaker 1: Like they're they're quite the couple, and they were really
Speaker 1: like in exciting and fun people. Yeah, it's fascinating those.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if he accounts as the
Speaker 1: the gentleman scholars they call back and we're allowed to
Speaker 1: just go do whatever they wanted because they had money,
Speaker 1: and we're right, Yeah, he had money, power and influence,
Speaker 1: and yeah he could just kind of go and follow,
Speaker 1: you know, wherever he wanted to go and get it
Speaker 1: done and you know. That's that's yeah, it's very much
Speaker 1: the way that archaeology began. And he's we don't want
Speaker 1: to claim him, but he's kind of, you know, hard
Speaker 1: to totally ignore. M That's fascinating. Yeah, it's interesting the
Speaker 1: way that Atlantis has become something, you know, so far
Speaker 1: beyond ancient Greece. I don't know much about Lemuria or
Speaker 1: those other places. I don't know if it's something that
Speaker 1: I've missed or they just Atlantis really fills the space. Now.
Speaker 1: Lamaria and MoU are both sort of modern world lost
Speaker 1: continents in that they they Lamuria gets its start in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century as well, and is actually Lemuria actually
Speaker 1: was proposed by geologists and are natural historians is probably
Speaker 1: a better term here. Really that they were suggesting there
Speaker 1: might have been a land bridge between Madagascar and an Asia,
Speaker 1: because they were trying to suggest some there there's some
Speaker 1: biological similarities between lemurs from Madagascar and other animals in
Speaker 1: throughout the Old World, they thought, and so they the
Speaker 1: sort of explanation of the day is like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: there's this Lemurian land bridge connecting the two and that
Speaker 1: disappears really fast because it doesn't work at all geologically,
Speaker 1: it does not it's not necessary for the evolution of
Speaker 1: any of these species that were involved. Uh, the natural
Speaker 1: historians stopped talking about this really quick. But then a
Speaker 1: Lemuria for gets picked up very specifically by Helena Bovatski,
Speaker 1: who is one of this author from the Theosophical Society
Speaker 1: whose rights about Atlantis, and she suggests that humanity sort
Speaker 1: of used to live in Atlantis and Lemuria and that
Speaker 1: we work I did out of both of these places
Speaker 1: by spirits from beyond this world, and there's some ancient
Speaker 1: alien origin points and all of this stuff. But she's
Speaker 1: there's she makes this Lamaria and Atlantis sort of very
Speaker 1: deliberate parts of her spiritual world. And yeah, and mood
Speaker 1: doesn't come along till the actual twentieth century with a
Speaker 1: guy named James No, actually might be nineteenth century after
Speaker 1: double check this, but it's a guy James Churchward who
Speaker 1: is trying to sort of create his own version of
Speaker 1: history for the Pacific and South America and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: it's yeah, these they get equated though, because they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: lost continents, they must all be ancient, they must all
Speaker 1: come from these ancient myths. And it's like now, those
Speaker 1: two are totally modern creations entirely and from not ancient
Speaker 1: sources or mythographers or anything like that. Yeah, not even
Speaker 1: a Plato. Yeah yeah, oh that's really interesting. I had
Speaker 1: no idea. And is it just named for Lemurs then? Yeah?
Speaker 1: La Mauria was actually named after Lemurs, right, I mean
Speaker 1: I Lemurs. Yeah, they have their own fake con that
Speaker 1: named after them. Yeah and so, and you know you
Speaker 1: mentioned that aliens part, So I mean, how prevalent is that?
Speaker 1: Like before I guess is what I'm asking, Like before,
Speaker 1: you know, there were TV shows and the internet, Like
Speaker 1: when did the Aliens built pyramids? Aliens did all this nonsense?
Speaker 1: When did that sort of start coming out? It's got
Speaker 1: a long history. So the ancient alien concepts you can
Speaker 1: absolutely trace back to Lane of Vatsky in her book
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties, The Secret Doctrine, where she does
Speaker 1: she's very spiritual about or esoteric about it, where she
Speaker 1: talks about humans being guided by spirits from beyond this world.
Speaker 1: And it's not clear that, you know, if you could
Speaker 1: tire down and talk to her today, like I'm not
Speaker 1: sure she meant extraterrestrials necessarily, but it is something that
Speaker 1: she alludes to as something they're not of this planet,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of hard to pass around. You get
Speaker 1: fictional stories in the eighteen nineties as well, of you
Speaker 1: aliens building pyramids or aliens being involved in the pyramids,
Speaker 1: and it sort of grows from there, where as we
Speaker 1: get into the pulp fiction era. As I said, they're
Speaker 1: readily borrowing from these spiritualist authors Lovecraft in particular Lovecrafts
Speaker 1: Old Ones sort of his like really creepy extraterrestrial Spirits
Speaker 1: is of course the most famous of Lovecraft's old Ones.
Speaker 1: These are definitely cribbing off of some of these spiritual traditions.
Speaker 1: If you read Call of Cthulhu, sort of his most
Speaker 1: famous story, he directly cites Theosophy and the Theosophical Society
Speaker 1: and there several times, and it blossoms from there. The
Speaker 1: real sort of like breakout Ancient Aliens moment is in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight when Eric Vandoniican publishes a book called
Speaker 1: Chariots to the Gods, and this was like a real
Speaker 1: pop culture sensations, sold millions of copies translated into Humptin
Speaker 1: languages sort of book, and it's you know, he was
Speaker 1: ultimately claiming that the arch He's the kind of the
Speaker 1: first one who says the archaeological record contains evidence for
Speaker 1: all of this alien contact in sort of such specific ways.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, he's so not new in
Speaker 1: his ideas that he actually gets taken to court for
Speaker 1: plagiarism when his book gets it's popular, Like he's he's
Speaker 1: not the originator of any of these ideas, but he
Speaker 1: is the one who popularized all of these ideas. And
Speaker 1: ultimately the TV show Today, by the you know, was
Speaker 1: the original season one of Ancient Aliens was an Omah.
Speaker 1: She was like a four episode homage to Eric Vondonikan
Speaker 1: and it was so popular that they just kept going,
Speaker 1: and so I actually lost count. I think they're in
Speaker 1: season sixteen now. They don't do annual seasons. They started
Speaker 1: in twenty ten, but they don't do annual seasons, and
Speaker 1: so I've kind of lost count of exactly how many
Speaker 1: seasons they have. But they are just churning this stuff
Speaker 1: out over and over again, and truly, you know, I
Speaker 1: actually I have fun with this because you know, this
Speaker 1: is a hundred plus year old idea. The show itself
Speaker 1: is at least a fifty plus year old idea because
Speaker 1: it is deliberately based off of Eric Vondonikan's work, and
Speaker 1: so I always show my archaeology students episode one from
Speaker 1: season one of Ancient Aliens. It's like, let's they've had
Speaker 1: fifty years to work on this, what do they got?
Speaker 1: And you know, it was like they they've trot out
Speaker 1: stuff that it's like, it's just it's just ridiculous, Like
Speaker 1: it's just not even remotely good or reasonable evidence of
Speaker 1: alien contact of any kind. And so it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I always tell my students, like, you can't. You know,
Speaker 1: you got to watch this stuff. You've got to read
Speaker 1: the original sources. You've got to watch the TV shows
Speaker 1: if you're going to say that they're not true. But
Speaker 1: you know I'm not, And I just let them have
Speaker 1: at it and they just tear it to pieces, like
Speaker 1: it's so logically inconsistent. Yeah, I mean, it's that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen any of it, um, but
Speaker 1: was I'm fine with. But I mean the idea alone,
Speaker 1: you know, I know enough about the Egyptian Pyramids certainly,
Speaker 1: and just the history there and all of that. It's
Speaker 1: always sounded like a real bummer to me. Just the
Speaker 1: idea of even suggesting that aliens did anything, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's it's one of those things. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I think archaeologists need to do a better job of
Speaker 1: showing their work, because not only do we have a
Speaker 1: good idea of how the pyramids are built, but like
Speaker 1: I said, we have we actually have. You know, Mark
Speaker 1: Laner has excavated the workers village at Giza. We have
Speaker 1: the houses they lived in. We have inscriptions about the
Speaker 1: teams that they were organized into for hauling blocks. We
Speaker 1: have names of the teams they were organized into. We
Speaker 1: were particularly looking at in class just the other day,
Speaker 1: some of the skeletal remains, and we have literal bodies
Speaker 1: of people who lived, worked, and died working on these pyramids,
Speaker 1: and their bodies are riddled with arthritis and broken bones
Speaker 1: and strain injuries because they were doing this hard task.
Speaker 1: Not only do we have like some decent evidence, we
Speaker 1: literally have the bodies of the people who did this,
Speaker 1: and the hard work that they did shows on their
Speaker 1: skeletons to this day. To claim like, oh, the deosx
Speaker 1: alien is how I usually referred to, It's like it
Speaker 1: must have been. It's a big building. I don't know
Speaker 1: it must have been the aliens. It's like a you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a spit in the eye of that
Speaker 1: guy literal body that is riddled with arthritis and broken
Speaker 1: limbs that from building these structures. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: that's I can't believe or I'm just amazed to learn
Speaker 1: that we have their bodies and the names and all
Speaker 1: of that, because I wasn't aware of that, and I
Speaker 1: think that's so important and interesting and I mean great evidence.
Speaker 1: Not that it really helps for people who are already
Speaker 1: going to believe what they're going to believe, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure some people can be turned. But yeah, the idea,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just it says so much about you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be speaking with others as well about this,
Speaker 1: but obviously, you know, it's inherently taking away from the
Speaker 1: people the culture who did this, who use their skill
Speaker 1: and their you know abilities, and did this incredible thing,
Speaker 1: and then we come in later and it's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was people from the rest of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Dasx aliens perfect term for it, of they
Speaker 1: just came in and they figured it out right, and
Speaker 1: they just they gave it to the Egyptians. It was
Speaker 1: a nice gift. That's where, you know, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite lost city topics that I've written about is the
Speaker 1: so called lost city of z that this British explorer,
Speaker 1: Percy Fawcett, when looking for in the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 1: Hollywood made a movie about him, and there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of He's got kind of a cult following out there
Speaker 1: about him, and I was there has been a couple
Speaker 1: of people who have tried to retrace this. There are
Speaker 1: many people who have tried to retrace his steps and
Speaker 1: look for this city and whatnot. And it's it's really
Speaker 1: kind of it's sad. It's this is just one of
Speaker 1: these sad stories out there because Fawcett became convinced that,
Speaker 1: you know, he had heard allegedly heard rumors about a
Speaker 1: city somewhere in the jungle, and he became convinced in
Speaker 1: particular that it was a colony from Atlantis, that it
Speaker 1: was a set of refugees from Atlantis. And the Fawcett's
Speaker 1: reputation gets bolstered in the media often because he you know,
Speaker 1: they say like, oh, he believed that Native Americans could
Speaker 1: build cities like no, he didn't he thought why the
Speaker 1: Atlanteans built cities and in his own published memoirs that
Speaker 1: I literally bought an Amazon. It's not like they're hard
Speaker 1: to find. Like in his published book that he wrote
Speaker 1: about this, you know, he has at one point he's
Speaker 1: interviewing an Amazonian native and who says like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: my ancestors built pyramids and built big cities in the jungle.
Speaker 1: And Fawcett, in his notes writes down like, but I
Speaker 1: know that's not true because he is of the brown
Speaker 1: skinned variety, you know, and he and he thought that
Speaker 1: this city of z was built by you know, white
Speaker 1: skinned people with red hair and hazel eyes. Like he's
Speaker 1: very explicit that. And this is just, you know, another
Speaker 1: one of these examples that pull pools into you know,
Speaker 1: how we understand the Americas Atlantis over and over again
Speaker 1: has been used as sort of an attempt to explain like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, those Native American populations couldn't have done this
Speaker 1: stuff in one way, shape or form. It had to
Speaker 1: have been some other. You know, the Greeks were great, right,
Speaker 1: so it's like a Greek thing actually going on here.
Speaker 1: And so it's these these ideas are not just fun
Speaker 1: and you know, like maybe a mystery to solve they
Speaker 1: have done literal harmed how we understand people it's around
Speaker 1: the world, well exactly. I mean, yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just obvious racism that it perpetuates, right, it's just because
Speaker 1: I mean, and I don't know again, like I don't
Speaker 1: know all the claims of Aliens, but like I've certainly
Speaker 1: heard the ones about Aliens building the Pyramids and building
Speaker 1: Sphinx and all this. I've never heard them saying that
Speaker 1: the Aliens built the Parthenon. Yeah, you know, like we're not.
Speaker 1: There's no claim that the Greeks didn't build the Greek stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's it's only the claim that the Brown people didn't
Speaker 1: build like the impressive Like we're perfectly happy to let
Speaker 1: medieval cathedrals be built over multiple generations. But yeah, Like
Speaker 1: there's one of my favorite bits in that season one
Speaker 1: episode one of Ancient Aliens. They're interviewing a stonemason and
Speaker 1: the Stonemason's like, oh my god, there's no way the
Speaker 1: people of Tiwanaku could have possibly carved this stone in
Speaker 1: South America. But at the very end of his interview,
Speaker 1: he's he i'd have to I'm paraphrasing, but he more
Speaker 1: or less says like, well, they could have, but it
Speaker 1: were taking a lot of time. Yeah, yeah, could Yeah,
Speaker 1: they absolutely could have. Like just because you know, they
Speaker 1: were maybe smarter in certain ways than we a lot
Speaker 1: of people are now, doesn't mean that they were like
Speaker 1: too smart to be realistic, right. They just came up
Speaker 1: with things differently, and they you know, used different skills
Speaker 1: and you know, they just figured things out in a
Speaker 1: fascinating way. It's why we should be so interested in
Speaker 1: them and not you know, debating whether or not they
Speaker 1: physically could do these things. Yeah. It reminds me too,
Speaker 1: because there's the common sort of theme and ancient aliens
Speaker 1: and other pseudo archaeological claims to find some big rock
Speaker 1: like that rock, that one, it's too big, no one
Speaker 1: could have moved it. There must be alien technology. There
Speaker 1: must be Atlantean technology or levitation rais or something like that.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of years ago Stonehenge, the heritage site
Speaker 1: in England, invited some school child or an out for
Speaker 1: a Solstice celebration and they as part of the celebration,
Speaker 1: they had a block not from not from the original site,
Speaker 1: but they had another like multi ton. I think it
Speaker 1: was a three ton stone block, and they invited the
Speaker 1: school children to move the block and they did, like
Speaker 1: you know, you strap a bunch of people onto a
Speaker 1: rope and get them to pull and walk it around,
Speaker 1: and like you can do that. And that's just school
Speaker 1: children moving one of these blocks around of a similar size.
Speaker 1: It's so tempting to just look at these things. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't move that myself, and so it
Speaker 1: must be aliens or something else under there. And it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's actually not even that hard to do
Speaker 1: some of these things. And it's like just because you
Speaker 1: haven't set out to try your personal self, because you
Speaker 1: have other things you're doing, doesn't mean that people couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. Well. I remember, I very much remember a
Speaker 1: personal conversation I was somebody once where he made some
Speaker 1: sort of argument about like laser. You know, lasers couldn't
Speaker 1: cut the blocks at Giza as nicely as they are
Speaker 1: cut and I and my first question like, well, are
Speaker 1: you suggesting the Egyptians use lasers? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, I'm not suggesting that. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: what are you even suggesting them? Like it's yeah, your
Speaker 1: stone flat fractures on flat planes. You know, My favorite,
Speaker 1: like Instagram meme are these like quarry guys who go
Speaker 1: in and just hit rocks with hammers and they hammer
Speaker 1: in some nails into them and after a bunch of hammers,
Speaker 1: like the rock just splits open on this nice long
Speaker 1: flat plane like low and behold, doing stuff by hand
Speaker 1: is totally feasible and fine and can be done. We
Speaker 1: just don't do it anymore, so people don't see it
Speaker 1: or think about it well exactly. And then you know,
Speaker 1: what's the argument for why Greek columns have those perfect flutes,
Speaker 1: like they're doing that by hand? You know, it's not
Speaker 1: they can do that by hand. They the carvings, the statuary, like,
Speaker 1: all of that's by hand. What's what on earth is
Speaker 1: the difference between carving marble into like a perfectly realistic
Speaker 1: looking human and figuring out how to cut blocks for pyramids. Now,
Speaker 1: and this is you know, the ultimate thing is that
Speaker 1: people done so many amazing things all around the world,
Speaker 1: and these pseudo archaeological claims, in one way or another
Speaker 1: take them away from those people they at their best.
Speaker 1: They take them away and they give them way to
Speaker 1: another group of mythical people and at their worst to
Speaker 1: take them away and give them extraterrestrials and say people
Speaker 1: couldn't have done this, or particularly these people couldn't have
Speaker 1: done this, and so we're going to find some sort
Speaker 1: of diosex alien to bring in and have do it
Speaker 1: for them instead. M well, that's it. Like the whiteness
Speaker 1: ascribed to Atlantis becomes one of the biggest problems of it.
Speaker 1: You know, anything to suggest that white people were somehow
Speaker 1: the fanciest and most like, oh my god, you know
Speaker 1: what would that math be, Like eleven thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: the Atlanteans were this white race that were the most incredible, Like,
Speaker 1: it's inherently horrifying. And then to suggest that, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly in the case of building pyramids in the Americas,
Speaker 1: that Atlanteans did it, it's like, oh my god, like
Speaker 1: stretch of horror to just make sure that it was
Speaker 1: the white people doing impressive things. It's so troubling. It
Speaker 1: is the perpetual sort of underbelly of all these pseudo
Speaker 1: archaeological claims, and it's one that I think it's important
Speaker 1: to talk about, but I'm important to engage with because
Speaker 1: I don't think like if you were like, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: Atlantis is real, it doesn't mean you're a white supremacist.
Speaker 1: But a lot of white supremacists did think that, and
Speaker 1: so we need to dismantle these ideas and talk about
Speaker 1: where they came from and how we can come up
Speaker 1: come up with better interpretations and understandings of the past. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think the more people who come at it with
Speaker 1: like a genuine interest or just fascination, and then they
Speaker 1: start to look at these things and be interested. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you're finding those people and you're pointing
Speaker 1: out the inherent racial aspects that they did not you
Speaker 1: take into consideration when they started being interested, Like most people,
Speaker 1: the good people are going to see that and be like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you're right, Like that's you know that
Speaker 1: this is a problem. And yeah, I think that's the
Speaker 1: most important part because it can be interesting and entertaining
Speaker 1: to think about how on earth do these people think this?
Speaker 1: Like what are they? You know, how do they get there?
Speaker 1: But then you do have to look at it and
Speaker 1: see like, well, it's not harmless. You know, it might
Speaker 1: seem silly, but it's certainly not harmless. Oh, in no way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, m Oh, it's all I mean, the
Speaker 1: pseudo archaeology generally is is fascinating. So yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: such a piece. And this is where so much of
Speaker 1: where my work and my writing has been turning over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years is looking at how much
Speaker 1: overlap there is between these claims and the end fiction
Speaker 1: and how much this stuff shows up in fiction all
Speaker 1: of the time. And I think that's not a coincidence,
Speaker 1: because I think that pseudo archaeological claims tend to paint
Speaker 1: a sort of misngaging, mysterious past that draws people in.
Speaker 1: And it's a very real part of why archaeologists need
Speaker 1: to do better public outreach and when we need to
Speaker 1: work on engaging publics in the same way. When I
Speaker 1: do talk about this stuff, especially it's the professions getting better,
Speaker 1: but especially when I was a grad student and just
Speaker 1: say like talking about this stuff, you know, my advisors
Speaker 1: and my senior people in the field be like, that's
Speaker 1: not worth your time, That's just a lunatic fringe. You
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about that, you don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with that. And I have sort of two response
Speaker 1: in my response in the day was always like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think any problem goes away by ignoring it,
Speaker 1: and quite literally, you know, I, when I was an
Speaker 1: undergrad read one of these pseudo archaeological books and thought
Speaker 1: it was really cool and started taking archaeology classes. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very real effect in this world,
Speaker 1: in my world. But in particular, I think you know
Speaker 1: that we've actually have some survey data nowadays too. That
Speaker 1: is important to talk about because the most recent survey
Speaker 1: was done out of Chapman University in twenty nine teen.
Speaker 1: They've not brought it back since coronas started, so hopefully
Speaker 1: they're gonna get some more data for us soon. But
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, they had forty one percent of Americans
Speaker 1: saying that ancient alien contact was real, and that number
Speaker 1: had doubled over like five years or so of the
Speaker 1: survey running they had. They have an Atlantis number as well.
Speaker 1: I believe in twenty nineteen the Atlantis number was fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent of Americans saying that Atlantis was real. But
Speaker 1: the Atlantis question was really problematic, and I've talked with
Speaker 1: some of the people behind this survey and they're thinking
Speaker 1: and the wording of the Atlantis question was something to
Speaker 1: the effect of did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist?
Speaker 1: And they were trying to cast a wide net to
Speaker 1: catch things like La Mauria and Moo and some of
Speaker 1: the work of some claims of other claims that are
Speaker 1: out there by other authors about these like twelve thousand
Speaker 1: year oldlaws civilizations. So they were trying to cast it
Speaker 1: wide net. But I think I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people reading that question to ancient advanced civilizations exist. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people will be like, yeah, the Egyptians,
Speaker 1: the Romans, the Miyans, you know they. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who would just checked the yes
Speaker 1: to that. So I think that fifty seven percent is
Speaker 1: a harder number to really deal with. But the ancient
Speaker 1: alien questions really blunt. It's like, you know, it's you know,
Speaker 1: was there ancient is there evidence for ancient alien contact? Yes?
Speaker 1: Or now? And like you know, it's, well, there's an agree,
Speaker 1: strongly agree breakdown in all of this, but the agrees
Speaker 1: come up to forty one percent. And I always look
Speaker 1: at that number as an example of like me and
Speaker 1: my profession aren't doing enough and we need to be
Speaker 1: out more and talking to more people because there's no
Speaker 1: evidence for ancient alien contact, not even remotely. Is there
Speaker 1: any way, shape, or form decent evidence. That's also since
Speaker 1: we're on a podcast and people always hit me for this,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean I think that aliens could not possibly
Speaker 1: exist out there somewhere in the universe. It's a big universe.
Speaker 1: Like the question does alien life exist is a separate
Speaker 1: question to have. Has it visited us in the modern day,
Speaker 1: another separate question. I can we can talk about my
Speaker 1: opinions on those, but they are separate from my opinions
Speaker 1: as an archaeologist about ancient alien contact. The claims are horrible.
Speaker 1: The evidence is ridiculous. It is cherry picked, it's taken
Speaker 1: out of context, it's misinterpreted, sometimes deliberately, and there's just
Speaker 1: no evidence for it. But when we have forty one
Speaker 1: percent of Americans saying that it's real, then we've got
Speaker 1: a problem, and it's that problem starts with the archaeologists
Speaker 1: not talking enough. Yeah, that's a huge, huge number. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the as much as I'm sure that's true,
Speaker 1: the archaeologist not speaking enough, But it's also a matter
Speaker 1: of who has the voice right and not to say
Speaker 1: that people shouldn't continue to try to have a louder voice.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true. But it's just, you know, it's unfortunate
Speaker 1: that's where the money is is, because that's where the
Speaker 1: excitement is. Is these you know, and I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there's somebody who can make archaeology seem
Speaker 1: as exciting as I'm sure that it is, but just
Speaker 1: without you know, it's yeah, I mean, I keep thinking
Speaker 1: of this is sort of leaping back a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I meant to bring it up earlier. But the um,
Speaker 1: the latest, the fourth and bad Indiana Jones movie. I
Speaker 1: like to refer to that as the fourth film in
Speaker 1: the Indiana Jones trilogy. Yeah, that's that's good. That's certainly
Speaker 1: how I see it. Like, I know, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to be said about the first three and
Speaker 1: the archaeology obviously, but it was the introduction of aliens
Speaker 1: that made me even then go oh okay, no you
Speaker 1: jumped the shark, like this is not you know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's things like that. It's it's the voices. The loudest
Speaker 1: voices in the room are the ones talking about aliens. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: and there's I love to hate the fourth Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: film because it hits some of these themes we've been
Speaker 1: talking about it brings. And the rumor for years was
Speaker 1: when they were trying to make that film was that
Speaker 1: you know that Lucas kept coming to Spielberg and Harrison
Speaker 1: forward with scripts saying like you wanted to do this,
Speaker 1: you want to do that, and then and they said
Speaker 1: no to him several times apparently, and allegedly he would
Speaker 1: not give up his main hook. And that main hook,
Speaker 1: from my impression, either has to be the aliens themselves
Speaker 1: or the crystal skull as an object. And the crystal
Speaker 1: skulls are one of my other favorite pseudo archaeological topics,
Speaker 1: like there are actual crystal skulls that exist. They have
Speaker 1: been alleged to be ancient. The scientific data with suggest
Speaker 1: that none of them are. That they're all products of
Speaker 1: the modern world, but they are. They're all kinds of
Speaker 1: again going back to that, these have been picked up
Speaker 1: by New age spiritualism movements that have been alleged to
Speaker 1: come from myasite or astic site through other sites out there,
Speaker 1: and they've absolutely wrapped up. In that movie, they referenced
Speaker 1: the Mitchell Hedge's Skull of Doom, which is an actual,
Speaker 1: real Crystal Skull. In that movie, they reference some of
Speaker 1: the Spanish conquistadors who went and maybe did see cities
Speaker 1: in the Amazon and whatnot. Like that, That film The
Speaker 1: Crystal Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull is a really
Speaker 1: good example of like how fiction takes real elements and
Speaker 1: intersperses them in between that fictional narrative. And when you
Speaker 1: walk out from the movie like, oh, I've heard of
Speaker 1: crystal skulls. Maybe they're real, maybe they're not. They are,
Speaker 1: they're not, we don't know. And ten years later, fifteen
Speaker 1: years later, twenty years later, when you see a documentary
Speaker 1: on TV about this subject, you don't quite remember where
Speaker 1: you heard it from anymore, and it all gets mixed up,
Speaker 1: and we get to that point where everyone's heard of
Speaker 1: Atlantis but not quite sure what the real original data
Speaker 1: might have been. Yeah, I didn't know that about I
Speaker 1: suppose I might have heard of the Crystal skulls, but
Speaker 1: I I just remember watching a movie and thinking, this
Speaker 1: is awful. What's happening. I love the other three? Why
Speaker 1: but it is? It's just like that's something and this
Speaker 1: is probably just the way I see the ancient world too,
Speaker 1: Like I'm almost curious how people came at it when
Speaker 1: they don't already have an interest in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: But immediately seeing aliens even back then, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, now I'm mad, Like, you've just taken away everything,
Speaker 1: all the agent see of this ancient civilization. You've taken
Speaker 1: it away and you've given it to aliens, and now
Speaker 1: I'm angry. Yeah. Yeah, we have great evidence up down
Speaker 1: sideways all directions that all of these cities in the
Speaker 1: Americas were in fact built by indigenist American People's m yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's it's fascinating. But I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: glad whether are people who are doing this, and specifically
Speaker 1: that so many wanted to talk to me on this show,
Speaker 1: because I'm really excited about it. This is going to
Speaker 1: be like the first time I've really dived into archaeology
Speaker 1: specifically and something that is explicitly not a myth that
Speaker 1: I'm going to be covering in an explicitly this is
Speaker 1: not a myth kind of way. It's perfect though, because
Speaker 1: so many people think it's a myth when it's not
Speaker 1: a myth, and there's a very real difference to be
Speaker 1: talked about there. Yep, exactly, and I'm still kind of
Speaker 1: working out how I'm going to do it, but I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to make it as dramatic a reveal and like,
Speaker 1: really really make it good because it's just fascinating. I'm
Speaker 1: also very proud to have I'm lucky enough to be
Speaker 1: able to publish a book of Greek myth themed cocktails
Speaker 1: and oh fantastic it's gonna be. It's very dorky and silly,
Speaker 1: and one of them is called Plato's Theory of Atlantis,
Speaker 1: and like, I think the first line is, like, Atlantis
Speaker 1: is not a myth. I don't think it's a myth.
Speaker 1: I think we need two shots of alcohol in that drink.
Speaker 1: It's pretty strong if I recall it very blue, and yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I've it's basically I've used a cocktail to debunk Atlantis
Speaker 1: in a way that I think is just very sun
Speaker 1: That's fabulous. That is exactly that. I think. That is
Speaker 1: important work. Yeah, thank you, it's otach. It is spreading
Speaker 1: the work well. And this is you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously probably you know where I'm going from here. But
Speaker 1: it's like academia has been so goddamn serious for so long,
Speaker 1: and I don't. You know, we do need to do
Speaker 1: our research seriously, but we don't. That doesn't mean everything
Speaker 1: has to be drum and dullin that that's the best
Speaker 1: way to reach people well exactly. And I'm that's why
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled, you know, people on the show all the time,
Speaker 1: because that's sort of what I'm trying to do, is,
Speaker 1: you know, have an accessible mythology podcast that is like
Speaker 1: incredibly accurate and well researched, and you know, I dive
Speaker 1: into all the primary sources at all of it and
Speaker 1: have scholars on But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to come at it away that is not
Speaker 1: academic because I personally found academia stifling. I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I fit into it. It was it was too serious.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it's it's great to have so
Speaker 1: many different like avenues to be able to spread, you know,
Speaker 1: important things, and academia is one of those important avenues
Speaker 1: and certainly vital, but that there are so many other
Speaker 1: ways as well. So it's all to say, I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to be talking about this. It's so interesting. I'm super
Speaker 1: happy you're talking to all three of us, and I
Speaker 1: think it'll all come together really great. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this. To appreciate it now, thank you
Speaker 1: for doing it. Like I said, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm serious. I say yes to these kind
Speaker 1: of requests whenever I can, because I think that it's
Speaker 1: like we need to be talking to more people about
Speaker 1: these topics and they're only on it better if we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm glad a lot of people feel that way.
Speaker 1: So that's really wonderful. All right, Well, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: oh nerds, Thank you so much for listening. I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: with this Atlanta series, even if I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: afraid of who might discover the series. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've struggled on how to form episodes around something that
Speaker 1: is not a myth and thus completely an entirely out
Speaker 1: of my narrative wheelhouse. But these conversation episodes are really
Speaker 1: something else I learned so much, so you can too.
Speaker 1: But also it's just so important. These things run so
Speaker 1: rampant in our world today, this distrust in history and
Speaker 1: archaeology in exchange for the idea that ancient people, usually
Speaker 1: not white ancient people, were just incapable of all the
Speaker 1: incredible feats of ingenuity and genius that they accomplished. It's
Speaker 1: sad and dark, and even if it seems funny and silly,
Speaker 1: it perpetuates a really dangerous idea and allows people to
Speaker 1: believe that there is some conspiracy amongst academics to hide
Speaker 1: these things. I've talked to enough academics to learn that
Speaker 1: they are neither coordinated nor well paid enough to deal
Speaker 1: in group conspiracies to cover up the truth. They're just
Speaker 1: nerds like us, and I'm so glad I get to
Speaker 1: talk with them and spread the word. So I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this. I certainly did, and in honor of
Speaker 1: all the chatting we did on Disney's Atlantis, tomorrow I
Speaker 1: will be dropping a bonus episode all about Disney's Atlantis.
Speaker 1: Lisa Charlotte of Sweetbetter and I watched the movie and
Speaker 1: we talked about it and everything they did within it
Speaker 1: when it comes to Atlantis conspiracy and lore Lisa didn't
Speaker 1: know the realities of Atlantis. You know, she was me
Speaker 1: before I discovered she is most of you, and so
Speaker 1: going into it, we had some really good fun breaking
Speaker 1: it all down. Tuesday's episode, I'm back with more on
Speaker 1: the how and the why of the Atlantis story, the
Speaker 1: history and lack thereof behind it, as well as the
Speaker 1: conspiracy around it. I'm not going into modern theories of
Speaker 1: location because they're all based in inherent bullshit. But I
Speaker 1: was too intrigued by the origins of the lore of
Speaker 1: it all not to dip my toe in that origin
Speaker 1: story from so many hundreds and hundreds of years after Plato.
Speaker 1: And next Friday, I spoke with Steph Helmhoffer, another archaeologist
Speaker 1: specializing in pseudo archaeology. But Steph is even deeper into
Speaker 1: the darkness of it, the links to the old Right,
Speaker 1: the inherent racism, all the dirty details. Stay tuned. Thank
Speaker 1: you all so much. I'm really grateful for everyone who's listening.
Speaker 1: I am live and I absolutely love real mythology from
Speaker 1: ancient Greece. Oh hi, hello, Yes it's me again. This
Speaker 1: is Let's talk about Myth's baby, and I'm your host
Speaker 1: Live she who has learned so so much during this
Speaker 1: run of Atlantis episodes. I've honestly been so blown away
Speaker 1: by what I've learned, both in research and in speaking
Speaker 1: with these archaeologists. I'm willing to bet most of you
Speaker 1: have learned a few things along the way. Too. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: who knew Atlantis wasn't even a myth let alone all
Speaker 1: the other wild and often troubling things floating just below
Speaker 1: the surface. Get it anyway, bad jokes aside. This is
Speaker 1: the last episode of my series of conversations with archaeologists
Speaker 1: about Atlantis, the real archeology of the Mediterranean, pseudo archaeology,
Speaker 1: and even conspiracy. There is truly, deeply so much to
Speaker 1: say about the thing that the story of Atlantis has become.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, what would Plato have to say about
Speaker 1: the way his philosophical allegory has shifted into well, what
Speaker 1: exactly it's become? His best explained in this very episode,
Speaker 1: I spoke with archaeologist Steph Holmhoffer about Atlantis, but not
Speaker 1: really the Atlantis of Plato. Instead, Steph gives us a
Speaker 1: rundown on what Atlantis has become and how it got there.
Speaker 1: Steph is not only an archaeologist, but an archaeologist studying
Speaker 1: pseudo archaeology and conspiracy, straight up cult style groups and
Speaker 1: even the alt right. It blew my mind just learning
Speaker 1: this was a field of study, let alone it's connections
Speaker 1: with Atlantis and even an unrelated group that Steph studies
Speaker 1: that is from my own home island. But more on
Speaker 1: that later. This episode was so incredibly fun to record
Speaker 1: and to edit and thus learn it all over again.
Speaker 1: Steph and I had so much fun chatting, not least
Speaker 1: because we're both from BC and like I said, she
Speaker 1: studies a group that was on Vancouver Island, where I
Speaker 1: live and where I grew up. I can't wait for
Speaker 1: you all to hear this episode. Conspiracy, conspiratuality, pseudo archaeology.
Speaker 1: We dive into it all and then some conversations the
Speaker 1: conspiracy and conspirituality of Atlantis with Steph Holmhofer. In theory,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Atlantis, but also kind of everything that
Speaker 1: stems from Atlantis and the idea of those kind of
Speaker 1: dangerous conspiracy theories. Right, yes, oh boy, Atlantis it. I
Speaker 1: have these sort of like two sayings where I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's always Atlantis. One of them is, it's always Atlantis
Speaker 1: because so many conspiracy theories tie in these elements of Atlantis,
Speaker 1: or conspiracy theory shows or just anything with the M
Speaker 1: word mysterious always draws in Atlantis. So I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's always Atlantum. But then the other thing I always say,
Speaker 1: is it's always Blevatsky, Helena Blovotsky, and so Helena Blovotsky
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons Atlantis is so popular today. Um,
Speaker 1: she was an occultist in the nineteenth century, I started
Speaker 1: the Theosophy Society or Theosophy movement, and I mean Atlantis
Speaker 1: could be traced back to her popularizing it, helping to
Speaker 1: popularize it. But also so many other conspiracy theories also
Speaker 1: draw from Blovatsky, or or movements or religious move or
Speaker 1: spiritual movements and conspiritual movements. It's it is always Blevatsky.
Speaker 1: I will go digging through these ideologies and I will
Speaker 1: always find Blevatsky in there. Interesting. Okay, So that just
Speaker 1: made me realize that I should probably also ask you
Speaker 1: to tell my listeners a bit about like why I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you. So, what are you studying? You are
Speaker 1: you're you're doing your PhD in this right now? Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yes? Yes? And great? And in your Canadian
Speaker 1: I want to say too, which is very exciting. Or
Speaker 1: are you Canadian? Are you just studying in Canada? I
Speaker 1: am Canadian. I am Canadian. I rarely get to talk
Speaker 1: to Canadians, so it's an extra thrill so Philly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny. Is like, I have the same thought when
Speaker 1: it comes to like certain subjects that I'm interested. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't often get to talk to Canadians,
Speaker 1: but when I started diving into extremism research and getting
Speaker 1: to know the extremism experts, there are a lot from Canada,
Speaker 1: some really wonderful Canadian experts. So that was very exciting
Speaker 1: for me. That is good. We do love other Canadians, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have so many problems with this country, but I'm
Speaker 1: still like, oh, you're Canadian. Oh that's cool, Like they're Canadian.
Speaker 1: Very It's true. It's her thing. I think it's like
Speaker 1: just bread into you. Right. Do you remember the you
Speaker 1: remember the Tim Hornons commercial whereas like this couple was
Speaker 1: traveling and they had their like Tim Horns travel mug
Speaker 1: and everywhere they went they're like, oh, hey, I'm from Calgary,
Speaker 1: I'm from Toronto. Yeah. Yeah, we love to say that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've made it my thing on the podcast, certainly when
Speaker 1: I'm having conversations with people, like anytime like an actor
Speaker 1: is mentioned, like I find it's my obligation to point
Speaker 1: out if they're Canadian, and I'll just like make make
Speaker 1: a point, even interrupt, just like really quiet to a Canadian,
Speaker 1: like it's necessary. It comes from my mother, who always
Speaker 1: says it comes from my grandmother. So it's a long
Speaker 1: studying Yeah yeah, so yeah, so you're studying, like please
Speaker 1: tell me, yeah, tell me what you're studying. It's it's
Speaker 1: so weird that sometimes it's hard to like summarize, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I saw Honestly, one of the best recent descriptions was yesterday,
Speaker 1: I saw him just pulling it up right now. There
Speaker 1: was a tweet from somebody who was kind of just
Speaker 1: joking around, but they said, um, they were joking around
Speaker 1: about the Q and one of the big qan on conferences.
Speaker 1: That's not a Q and on conference, definitely not a
Speaker 1: Q non conference. And so there was this person who
Speaker 1: would have would mean and that memetic warfare. So memes
Speaker 1: are very popular within the alt right, and there's been
Speaker 1: this sort of warfare actually going on for a time now.
Speaker 1: And this person was like, oh, mememic warfare has been
Speaker 1: going on for forever. And then this other person just
Speaker 1: retweeted that and said, I picture archaeologists dusting off a
Speaker 1: faded peak peppymine. They just dug up on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: marveling at the number of spelling errors it contains, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, that's my PhD. So basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: my PhD is in archaeology. I've been archaeologist for a
Speaker 1: number of years before I went back to school, and
Speaker 1: I am studying what's called conspirituality, so ideologies that are
Speaker 1: built from blending New Age spirituality with conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 1: so I study how archaeology and pseudo archaeology in particular
Speaker 1: are sort of embraced within conspirituality used to justify and
Speaker 1: support and build these beliefs in contemporary North America, but
Speaker 1: also historic North America as well. And so there's a
Speaker 1: particular conspiritual movement that I'm studying from the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties that had a settlement on Vancouver Island, Vancouver
Speaker 1: Island to Corsi Island and Valdez Island. They had three
Speaker 1: settlements spread across these three islands, so local for me,
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled, I thig Idea would probably know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I study this movement called the Aquarium Foundation. They were
Speaker 1: called the Aquarium Foundation. They were led by a man
Speaker 1: who called himself Brother twelve. He claimed, I mean, he
Speaker 1: didn't give himself the name. He said it was the
Speaker 1: Ascended Masters that gave him the name Brother twelve. That
Speaker 1: is the Bulbotsky connection. So yeah, he had a settlement
Speaker 1: and they're really into theosophy. He was also really into
Speaker 1: other conspiracy theories, and they kind of people end at
Speaker 1: theosophy and these conspiracy theories, and that's sort of what
Speaker 1: the Aquarium Foundation was built off of. But they draw
Speaker 1: there are a lot of parallels between this group in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and movements like qan On today, which
Speaker 1: are nearly one hundred years apart, but they're still into
Speaker 1: kind of the same things. The same basic conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: are prevalent in both and they're still very popular today
Speaker 1: as they were in the nineteen twenties. So that is
Speaker 1: kind of what I do. That's fascinating. Where on the
Speaker 1: island just south of Nanaimo. Okay, you can tell him
Speaker 1: from here, because I realized I'd literally just say the
Speaker 1: island and then I assume everyone knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: But it's yeah, it's true. If you're from BC and
Speaker 1: somebody says the island, even though there are so many islands,
Speaker 1: there are so many exactly which island you're referring to?
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, Cedar by the Sea is where Brother
Speaker 1: twelve in the Aquarian Foundation built their first headquarters when
Speaker 1: they first came to Canada. He was British and he
Speaker 1: came to Canada. He had actually lived in Canada for
Speaker 1: number years, moved back to Britain or a year if
Speaker 1: I should say, had this encounter with the Ascended Masters
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four who told him he was going
Speaker 1: to be the twelfth Brother of the Great White Brotherhood.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen he sort of published a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff, gained some popularity, and then in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven is when he came back to Canada. He believed
Speaker 1: that humanity was transitioning into I guess, kind of two
Speaker 1: different things. So one transition was we were moving into
Speaker 1: the Age of Aquarius, hence he named his group the
Speaker 1: Aquarium Foundation. But also he believed that there's so much
Speaker 1: like context and backstory here. The Blavatsky thing is, basically
Speaker 1: she argued for seven root races, that there were seven
Speaker 1: root races, that we're sort of basically just different time
Speaker 1: periods in human evolution, and each root race had seven
Speaker 1: sub races as well. Oh my god, right, So we
Speaker 1: start off with the Polarians. They are very ethereal race
Speaker 1: of people. They just kind over these little lobs. The
Speaker 1: Plarians evolved into the Hyperboreans, the Hyperboreans evolved into the Lamarians.
Speaker 1: Lamarians evolved into the Atlanteans, and the Atlanteans evolved into
Speaker 1: the fifth and the greatest of all the root races,
Speaker 1: the Arians. Oof right, big oof, big oof. And then
Speaker 1: the sixth and seventh sub ray or root races hadn't
Speaker 1: yet come to happen. They were kind of going to
Speaker 1: happen in the future. Brother twelve believed that he was
Speaker 1: going to begin the transition of humanity into the sixth
Speaker 1: sub race of the fifth root race, which was apparently
Speaker 1: very important. So and all of this was going to
Speaker 1: happen in British Columbia on these islands. So he took
Speaker 1: his disciples with him. They collected more because they landed.
Speaker 1: They landed in Toronto first, right, obviously it's Toronto. They
Speaker 1: landed there. He gave a bunch of talks to some
Speaker 1: of the local theosophies because he was really really into Theosophy,
Speaker 1: even though he had kind of separated himself from the
Speaker 1: Theosophical official Theosophical Society, which is also other backstory. But
Speaker 1: he so he gave these talks, and he collected a
Speaker 1: bunch of a bunch more disciples and followers from the
Speaker 1: Theosophical Societies. I think either the Toronto chapter or the
Speaker 1: Ottawa chapter of the Theosophical Society had to fully shut
Speaker 1: down because everyone left to John b Other twelve. And
Speaker 1: he did this, and he moved his way across west,
Speaker 1: collecting very wealthy followers until they got to Cedar by
Speaker 1: the Sea and they bought the first of the three
Speaker 1: properties they ultimately would own where the transition into the
Speaker 1: sixth sub Race would begin. That is wild the way.
Speaker 1: I did not expect that this call was going to
Speaker 1: end up with my island, where not only I still live,
Speaker 1: but I fully grew up here. Like this is so weird.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's so interesting, and I can't believe
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I went through a whole period
Speaker 1: where I was really obsessed with cults and everything. And
Speaker 1: I've been recently talking to somebody about do you know
Speaker 1: this is like, I mean, it's still equally, I would
Speaker 1: say conspiracy but very religious. But do you know the
Speaker 1: book Michelle Remembers about Victoria, it's about Yeah, it's about
Speaker 1: it's like basically started the Satanic panic. The idea of
Speaker 1: this woman like remembers that she was a child like
Speaker 1: basically sacrificed to Satan in Victoria and turns out like, oh,
Speaker 1: this Invictoria is like this extremely satanic place. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: all the say, I like research all that when I
Speaker 1: was young, and I can't believe I didn't come across
Speaker 1: this like local wildness. That's fascinating. Um. Yeah, so I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear then how this I mean, I want
Speaker 1: to make sure we're talking about I mean definitely, like
Speaker 1: I think it's inherent how problematic stuff like this is.
Speaker 1: But I want to make sure that that is a
Speaker 1: big focus of this. But when it comes to the
Speaker 1: idea of these you know, the Atlanteans in this, So
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated because you also said Hyperboreans, which is I'm
Speaker 1: not as familiar, but is a term from Greek mythology. Um.
Speaker 1: And then but so where does the Atlanteans come in?
Speaker 1: Because in theory, they're like some of the most ancient
Speaker 1: but they were really far down on your list, right
Speaker 1: kind of how that yeah, um, well to learn how
Speaker 1: that works, yeah, we'd have to read them. The Secret
Speaker 1: Doctrine in particular, so Blavatsky m wrote a couple of um,
Speaker 1: these occult cosmologies, Ices Unveiled. She wrote in I Want
Speaker 1: to Say No eighteen seventy fives when she started these
Speaker 1: Opical Society, it was at eighteen seventy she wrote Ices Unveiled.
Speaker 1: Then a few years later she wrote The Secret Doctrine,
Speaker 1: and these were she claimed, this was knowledge that had
Speaker 1: been found in these secret texts. The dayson there's a
Speaker 1: d and there's a stead in there, and I to
Speaker 1: remind myself. So in the Secret Doctrine in particular, she
Speaker 1: goes into a lot of detail about each of these
Speaker 1: sort of root races and the history behind all of them,
Speaker 1: the history of the planets, and it's like millions and
Speaker 1: millions and millions and millions of years of history, and
Speaker 1: each each root race also evolved from a particular sub
Speaker 1: race of the previous root race as well. Yeow, it's
Speaker 1: very very complicated, I find her. And these two cosmologies,
Speaker 1: A Secret Doctrine in particular, became kind of the doctrines
Speaker 1: of the Theosophical Society. So she had already started co
Speaker 1: founded the Theosophical Society by the time she wrote the
Speaker 1: Secret Doctrine. But they really adopted all of these cosmologies,
Speaker 1: and they're really difficult to read, to be honest, I
Speaker 1: have copies of both and I've gone through them, and
Speaker 1: I it's just it's so complex and difficult to tease
Speaker 1: out what she's sort of saying and how she talks
Speaker 1: about the actual evolution. So, to be honest, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure why Atlantis ended up kind of
Speaker 1: middle of the list. It just sort of fits in
Speaker 1: with her idea of these evolutions and life cycles and whatnot,
Speaker 1: So I'm sure the complexity is part of it too, right.
Speaker 1: It's just that like, the more complex, the more confusing
Speaker 1: and ridiculous to read, like, the more likely it is
Speaker 1: that people are going to believe that she's really got
Speaker 1: all this knowledge, because like, oh, how could it be
Speaker 1: so detailed and complex a cosmology if it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I can imagine it's just so troublingly exactly right,
Speaker 1: and she got this knowledge from the Secret Text that
Speaker 1: nobody has ever seen right, and for also from these
Speaker 1: ascended masters who also have all this like intense knowledge,
Speaker 1: and they are they're not like physical beings, they are
Speaker 1: these ethereal beings on this other plane that she could
Speaker 1: communicate to. And how do you doubt that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: especially at that time, how do you doubt something like
Speaker 1: that just you can't see it, but doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: this person isn't communicating with them. So yeah, and she
Speaker 1: was also quite inspired by Ignacious Donnelly and his version
Speaker 1: of Atlantis as well. So it's a time. It was
Speaker 1: a time where people were so curious about where did
Speaker 1: we come from as people? And she and Ignacious Donnelly
Speaker 1: and so many others were kind of just trying to
Speaker 1: fill in these blanks. M Yeah, I was going to say,
Speaker 1: he's the other one that I think, between the two
Speaker 1: of them, that's we can probably trace all of the
Speaker 1: current Atlantist everything to those two people, both of whom came,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple thousand years after Plato wrote about
Speaker 1: that nonsensical thing that he was not trying to say
Speaker 1: was history and he did not believe and he is
Speaker 1: not telling a myth and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You know,
Speaker 1: an allegory, Plato wrote an allegory, and then suddenly, two
Speaker 1: thousand or so years later, these people are coming up
Speaker 1: with these wild stories of how real it was. And
Speaker 1: then how you know, I think Ignacious done. I have
Speaker 1: not read. I have it, but I've not read through
Speaker 1: that yet. I don't want to say yet. I probably
Speaker 1: won't read the whole thing at least, But you know,
Speaker 1: I think his was more about proving it existed. And
Speaker 1: then it seems this Blovatsky was more about the spirituality
Speaker 1: section that then people think have taken hold of. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Ignacious Donnely in the Atlantis the Antidiluvian world, he kind
Speaker 1: of was like, Okay, look guys, I haven't found Atlantis,
Speaker 1: but it was real, and these are my thirteen points
Speaker 1: to prove it was real. We just need to find
Speaker 1: a proof for that. So his kind of I always
Speaker 1: think of the Antidiluvian world is almost like a call
Speaker 1: for help, one of those Okay, I'm giving you all
Speaker 1: this information, now, historians and archaeologists and linguistics folks like you,
Speaker 1: go find me that proof. That's the way I've sort
Speaker 1: of always thought about the anti Duluvian world. So, and
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, it's interesting to listen to people talk
Speaker 1: about Atlantis today when they talk about these Atlantis theories,
Speaker 1: and everybody mentions Plato and they're like, well, Plato first
Speaker 1: mentioned Atlantis, And I'm like, yes, he did, but you're
Speaker 1: telling me Ignatious Donnelly's Atlantis. You're not telling me Plato's Atlantis.
Speaker 1: Plato didn't actually even write that much about Atlantis. No,
Speaker 1: there was like a few odds and end's mentions here,
Speaker 1: but not really that much, that's the thing. And it
Speaker 1: was so like you can tell by the way people
Speaker 1: talk about it that they want to call back to
Speaker 1: Plato because then they've got this ancient Greek source, right,
Speaker 1: you have to have this ancient Greek name in order
Speaker 1: to make it sound legitimate. But they clearly or if
Speaker 1: they have read Plato, they're not paying attention to Plato
Speaker 1: or they don't know what he was writing. And like,
Speaker 1: I don't study the philosophy firs. You know, like I
Speaker 1: did my degree and I somehow managed to like never
Speaker 1: read any philosophy in an entire classics degree. And I'm
Speaker 1: fine with that. But even I know, thank you mythology, right,
Speaker 1: But I think I mean, even I know enough about
Speaker 1: Plato to know that he's not a mythographer. He's not
Speaker 1: trying to tell mythology. He has no interest in that
Speaker 1: side of it. Not to say he doesn't have an
Speaker 1: interest in mythology because it was part of their world.
Speaker 1: They didn't consider it mythology. They considered it part of
Speaker 1: their world. So he certainly cared, He certainly like mentioned
Speaker 1: gods and things, but he wasn't telling a story from
Speaker 1: myth He was making an allegory to prove an unrelated
Speaker 1: point about Hubris. And it's so interesting to me the
Speaker 1: way people reference Plato but then don't reference what he
Speaker 1: actually said, because in order to believe Atlantis from Plato,
Speaker 1: you have to believe that Athens was equally advanced in
Speaker 1: that time period, which is historically and archaeologically untrue. And
Speaker 1: nobody ever mentions this incredibly advanced Athens. That's like it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because it's not lost and it's provably untrue,
Speaker 1: and so it's like, no, no, no, in my theories
Speaker 1: of Atlantis, there's no Athens. I don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. It's fascinating and I think it's so telling
Speaker 1: about the things the way that these conspiracy theories pick
Speaker 1: what they want and ignore the rest, and I think
Speaker 1: that's basically pseudo archaeology too, right, yeah, yeah, exactly pseudo archaeology.
Speaker 1: It's just a type of conspiracy theory, and archaeological conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory is the way I've been defining it, and it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very much just cherry picking what suits the narrative.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that the information that's being
Speaker 1: used is incorrect. At times, like if people are pulling
Speaker 1: from archaeological sources historical sources, they're using information, but they're
Speaker 1: forcing it from its context, and they're leaving out certain
Speaker 1: bits and pieces and I guess counting on their audience
Speaker 1: to not go looking for that. And then, of course
Speaker 1: the other idea too, is that this idea of suppression
Speaker 1: and circular reasoning and where if you're trying to argue
Speaker 1: like no, that that's not true, like there's here's the
Speaker 1: evidence to help us say that's that's not likely, not
Speaker 1: how it happened, that is taken to mean it is
Speaker 1: true because we're now trying to suppress that information or
Speaker 1: reject that information, stigmatize it. And then of course if
Speaker 1: they do find something that does support them that also
Speaker 1: means it's true. So if yeah, conspiracy theories are difficult
Speaker 1: to deal with because of that fact. They can be
Speaker 1: tricky because the real conspiracy, they say, would then be
Speaker 1: everyone hiding the truth. Yes, you know, it's everyone's teamed up.
Speaker 1: All the historians and archaeologists have teamed up to talk
Speaker 1: about how it ittis isn't real because they're hiding the
Speaker 1: real Atlantis. What would be the point of that is
Speaker 1: always my question. It's how I felt about all the
Speaker 1: COVID conspiracies. It's like, why would the whole world team
Speaker 1: up to pretend that there was a pandemic? And also
Speaker 1: talk to me about how you think the US and
Speaker 1: Russia and China are going to come together and plan this,
Speaker 1: because historically I think this is unlikely. Any getting into
Speaker 1: my own but like I think and I think that
Speaker 1: that sort of is inherently you know, the nature of
Speaker 1: the way certain people think is like there's a government
Speaker 1: conspiracy for everything. It's true, it's true. Conspiracy cases are
Speaker 1: actually just really easy to fall into. Um and then
Speaker 1: you get the idea also the idea of community being
Speaker 1: part of this group of like minded individuals and who
Speaker 1: are supporting you and when you find that sense of community.
Speaker 1: It's like cults, right, people doing cults to find community,
Speaker 1: get this community like individuals. Once they find that, that's
Speaker 1: so hard to break people out of that, right. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Conspiracy theories are They are a lot easier
Speaker 1: to fall into than what you think. And just I've
Speaker 1: had conversations where recently I had a conversation, for example,
Speaker 1: where this woman was telling me, no, I don't believe
Speaker 1: in any conspiracy theories and immediately launched into a particularly
Speaker 1: aggressive conspiracy theory. In this conversation, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: there it is. There's a conspiracy theory. But the issue
Speaker 1: that then, like sort we were just talking up about,
Speaker 1: is how do we address that without feeding into that
Speaker 1: idea of suppression and stigmatization. And that's that's the struggles.
Speaker 1: How do we address these issues, confront these issues without
Speaker 1: being suppressive. It's hard. M Do you have any like
Speaker 1: strategic ways that you try to go about it or
Speaker 1: are you just sort of constantly learning, constantly learning. I Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's tough. I'm working on finding ways to address and
Speaker 1: discuss conspiracy theories without amplifying them. That for me, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the first step, because I think it is
Speaker 1: important to talk about these and I think it is
Speaker 1: important to highlight these ideas that are being shared, and
Speaker 1: these ideologies and these beliefs when they're built from archaeological knowledge,
Speaker 1: when they're built from our information. I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to address that and talk about that. But have
Speaker 1: to find a way to do that without amplifying the message,
Speaker 1: and especially when we're dealing with the ultright, and social
Speaker 1: media is a great wonderful tool to have these discussions on,
Speaker 1: and especially because we see examples of this everywhere, it's
Speaker 1: also a really easy tool to amplify these messages. So
Speaker 1: that's where I'm kind of out right now, is trying
Speaker 1: to find the best way is to talk about without
Speaker 1: adding oxygen to it and driving attention and followers and
Speaker 1: elevating that. Another thing that I find sort of helps
Speaker 1: is when I talk about the historiography essentially of these ideas,
Speaker 1: the development of these ideas. So when I talk to
Speaker 1: somebody about Atlantis and they say, well, you know what
Speaker 1: Atlantis might be real, I like to talk about how
Speaker 1: Atlantis went from fiction to fact essentially, and I trace
Speaker 1: this path, and I find sometimes that that helps people
Speaker 1: sort of take an extra breath, and they it doesn't
Speaker 1: escalate in more in at least in the experiences I've had,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always escalated as much as just outright being like, no,
Speaker 1: you're wrong. There are always exceptions to that rule. Oh Man,
Speaker 1: Atlantis has some fierce fan boys that I've tangled with
Speaker 1: a few times, but currently deciding how I'm how best
Speaker 1: to release these and how much to put myself out
Speaker 1: there with them. I'm like, right right, yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1: It's really tough. And yeah, especially, oh man, there's this
Speaker 1: one guy who likes to email me just these these
Speaker 1: epic emails in defense of Atlantis, and he got particularly
Speaker 1: riled up by all the discussions that led to this
Speaker 1: podcast interviewing. You clearly remember those discussions that were I do,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate how cryptic you're being about them. Yes,
Speaker 1: So these discussions happen on Twitter, and this man got
Speaker 1: even angry about it and was harping at me on
Speaker 1: Twitter and sending more, more and more emails. And it's
Speaker 1: especially it impacts women marginalized genders far more than it
Speaker 1: impacts men. So that's also something we have to consider
Speaker 1: when we're trying to discuss these as. Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: were just saying, how much can we discuss that's not
Speaker 1: going to or that's also going to minimize potential harm
Speaker 1: to ourselves. So it's yeah, there's so many different things
Speaker 1: to think about when discussing these, and something that I
Speaker 1: also want to be part of my PhD is trying
Speaker 1: to come up with the best way to discuss these
Speaker 1: and address these without amplifying and trying not to feed
Speaker 1: into that stigmatized mindset either. So right now, still learning,
Speaker 1: still practicing different things, but maybe one day we'll have
Speaker 1: a good idea. Yeah, I mean, just the way you
Speaker 1: were saying about tracing the historiography of it, that's sort
Speaker 1: of what I and I haven't I haven't written at
Speaker 1: the time of this recording. I have not written the
Speaker 1: episode or episodes that will accompany them, and so I
Speaker 1: intend to have these narrative episodes that basically just track
Speaker 1: what happened, because I do think might go to and
Speaker 1: you know, it tends to be I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: really dive in on Twitter because I sort of learned
Speaker 1: my lesson there, but I just kind of go straight
Speaker 1: to the Plato didn't believe it was real and let
Speaker 1: me tell you about that kind of right. I think
Speaker 1: that's it's one of the simplest and it's certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: unless you pople are really deep, Like if people just
Speaker 1: have a basic idea of it that they think is real,
Speaker 1: they're going to second guess everything by just hearing it,
Speaker 1: Like you don't. No, Plato, that wasn't even what Plato
Speaker 1: was doing. He didn't seem to believe it at all.
Speaker 1: If you read it, it's it's definitely an allegory. It
Speaker 1: might even be tongue in cheek. Like there's so much
Speaker 1: you can read into the very the only ancient sources
Speaker 1: we have for Atlantis. That's the clear the clear point
Speaker 1: to make too, is it is the only ancient source
Speaker 1: that mentions Atlantis. There is not a single other. And
Speaker 1: thus like that, you know, there's there's so many things
Speaker 1: that should make it obvious, and then it's interesting when
Speaker 1: it's it doesn't make it obvious to people. Yeah, Atlantis.
Speaker 1: From what Plato wrote of Atlantis, Atlantis sound like an
Speaker 1: amazing place, Like what a cool place to be with
Speaker 1: all these like gold dolphin statues and these like rings
Speaker 1: of land and these huge ampitheaters and structures and all
Speaker 1: these things like what a cool place. An enormous too,
Speaker 1: I think he described as larger than Asia and Libya combined.
Speaker 1: And of course this is based on what the Greeks
Speaker 1: knew of those land masses and how they've napped at
Speaker 1: that time show, so not necessarily Asian and Libya as
Speaker 1: we know it today, But the general idea still exists
Speaker 1: that Atlantis was enormous. So why was Plato the only
Speaker 1: one talking about it? Where were the people traveling to Atlantis?
Speaker 1: Where where are the people trading and living there and
Speaker 1: moving in and out? Because we know that the Greeks
Speaker 1: were record keepers. They love to write shit down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if it's just like a linear B reference too,
Speaker 1: because of course this is bronzeged and you know, the
Speaker 1: whole thing then is well it was so many thousand
Speaker 1: years before blah blah blah. But even still, like you know,
Speaker 1: the likelihood is that we would have a linear B
Speaker 1: reference to like, well, we gave them some wine, or
Speaker 1: we gave some wine to some people who were just
Speaker 1: passed those ruins of Atlantis. You know, like there certainly
Speaker 1: would be something, you know, Herodotus would have heard about it,
Speaker 1: and even he made up a lot of history at times,
Speaker 1: but he also did travel around and talk to a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and you know, Herodotus would have heard
Speaker 1: about it at the very least in you know, all
Speaker 1: of his talk, and yeah, that's the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: there there would be at least one other reference, but
Speaker 1: there would certainly be lots of references. Were it true
Speaker 1: or or were there some kind of um, you know,
Speaker 1: epic event that caused the fall of Atlantis? And then
Speaker 1: of course the ultimate thing is, well, where is this
Speaker 1: super advanced Athens? Then, because we have all the archaeology
Speaker 1: of Athens, and like Bronze Age, Athens was pretty met
Speaker 1: comparatively to other Bronze Age sites in the area, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I think, yeah, it's best described as met.
Speaker 1: It wasn't not there, but it wasn't one of the
Speaker 1: big ones, No, not at all. And you know, we're
Speaker 1: always we're always learning more. Obviously, we're always uncovering more.
Speaker 1: We're always learning more. Part of archaeology is being flexible
Speaker 1: and accepting new ideas. And we're always accused. I'm always told, oh,
Speaker 1: your closed minded archaeologrits are closed minded. No, we are
Speaker 1: extremely open minded. That's how our knowledge shifts and we
Speaker 1: learn more and we adjust our thoughts as they come
Speaker 1: about most of us. So yeah, I mean you could argue, sure,
Speaker 1: maybe there's the possibility that one day all this information
Speaker 1: will be uncovered, but what like I would expect to it.
Speaker 1: It has been uncovered by now, so many people have
Speaker 1: gone looking and again, thinking of the size the materials
Speaker 1: that they had, I honestly would expect we would have
Speaker 1: found it by now, to be honest. Well, also, Plato
Speaker 1: is quite clear about where it is, right, He's like
Speaker 1: billows of Pericles, right, So he's basically saying it's at
Speaker 1: the Strait of Gibraltar. So if we you know, well,
Speaker 1: then we'll argue it's like somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, But he says very clearly colors
Speaker 1: of Heracles, which is the straight of g Berraltar, you know,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's that's the thing, right. He's not being
Speaker 1: cryptic about it because it's an allegory, because he's not
Speaker 1: presenting something that he believes as real and that he
Speaker 1: is presenting as fact. Now, one thing I really want
Speaker 1: to make sure that we talk about with you, because
Speaker 1: I think you're probably my best source for it. Is
Speaker 1: how harmful these things can be specifically, and I know
Speaker 1: base level amounts of this, but the way that it's
Speaker 1: then used to justify white supremacy. Yes, right, So again,
Speaker 1: if we think about Bolovatsky, we can start with Pulvovski.
Speaker 1: It's always Bolvovski. But yeah, so Bulovowski talked about how
Speaker 1: the Arians, which were the best of the best of
Speaker 1: the root races evolved from Atlantis, and Germany went through
Speaker 1: this really intense period of re enchantment trying to find
Speaker 1: their history, trying to find their stories leading up to
Speaker 1: World War One world War Two. It didn't the stuff
Speaker 1: didn't just start in World War two. It started a
Speaker 1: long long time before that. And some of the influential
Speaker 1: thinkers who were part of this re enchantment that ultimately
Speaker 1: the Nazis ended up attaching themselves to this line of thinking.
Speaker 1: They were really enthralled by Bolvovski's idea of Arians and Atlantis,
Speaker 1: and they combine that with many other sources to essentially
Speaker 1: create this idea of these Arians as being like almost
Speaker 1: supernatural beings, these incredible beings with just like super white
Speaker 1: skin and blue eyes and super super powerful. And so
Speaker 1: during World War two. The Nazis, they had the what
Speaker 1: was called Amna Airbae, the ss on An Airba. It
Speaker 1: was like their archaeology and heritage division, and they were
Speaker 1: very interested in finding proof of the Arians, kind of
Speaker 1: the ignacious Donnelly approach to Atlantis. They were interested for
Speaker 1: the Arians, so looking for this archaeological proof of Aaryan
Speaker 1: homelands and centers and all this stuff. But part of
Speaker 1: that involved also looking for Atlantis, because they were looking
Speaker 1: for their homeland essentially, so they're looking for the Arians,
Speaker 1: but where the Arians come from, So they were looking
Speaker 1: for Atlantis. And so yeah, that was a bigger part
Speaker 1: of the war. It wasn't like an enormous part of
Speaker 1: the war, but it was a bigger part of World
Speaker 1: War two in Nazi ideologies and beliefs than many people realize.
Speaker 1: And so since then you have Atlantis, at least from
Speaker 1: what I've been looking at, Atlantis traveling into from the
Speaker 1: original Nazis right into Neo Nazism as well. And this
Speaker 1: I threw this idea of Aryan. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of and again I'm just focusing on North America,
Speaker 1: not necessarily European groups, but in North American groups you
Speaker 1: have a lot of a lot of neo Nazi movements
Speaker 1: or individuals, high level individuals who have spoken about Atlantis
Speaker 1: and talked about this history and because of its connections
Speaker 1: to Aryan, you've got leaders. There was one man who
Speaker 1: was a leader of some major American neo Nazi parties
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies who now writes books, book
Speaker 1: after book after book about Atlantis and Atlantis in North America.
Speaker 1: North America rewrites North American history to suit these ideologies.
Speaker 1: You have other folks today who his most recent book
Speaker 1: actually was published just this last July. You have other
Speaker 1: folks who write for some big time white nationalist websites
Speaker 1: and they also talk about Arians and Atlantis and they
Speaker 1: pull it. They even actually pull in ancient Aliens. I've
Speaker 1: seen one guy talking about the show Ancient Aliens, and
Speaker 1: he just argues, well, no, no, no, they're not. They're
Speaker 1: mistaken when they're describing aliens. They haven't found proof of aliens.
Speaker 1: They found proof of these arians. And they just need
Speaker 1: to recognize that there was another neo Nazi group in seventies.
Speaker 1: I have to find it again who had Atlantis in
Speaker 1: their name. There's other neo Nazi groups who write these
Speaker 1: very long manifestos talking about the history of there's one
Speaker 1: in particular thinking of who has this very very long manifests,
Speaker 1: so describing the history of arianism, and they also draw
Speaker 1: in Atlantis. So it's yeah, it's just through these like
Speaker 1: it's almost like the telephone game. You start off with
Speaker 1: this one idea Blavatsky, and then as it gets passed on,
Speaker 1: it changes and it changes, and it changes into what
Speaker 1: a lot of white nationalists and theo Nazis are using today. Well,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, even just simply and from my
Speaker 1: non research in it, it seems like the easiest way
Speaker 1: to counter the idea that everyone came from Africa is
Speaker 1: to say that, no, there's a subset that came from Atlantis,
Speaker 1: we just don't have it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, It's true.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also why so many people, a
Speaker 1: lot of these sort of groups latch onto archaeological knowledge,
Speaker 1: and because it's this idea of Atlantis is very intangible.
Speaker 1: Archaeology provides tangible. It provides these things you can hold,
Speaker 1: you can go see, you can travel through these rooms
Speaker 1: at these sites, So it gives something tangible to the
Speaker 1: intangible so I see a lot of groups and individuals
Speaker 1: trying really hard to pull in archaeology and tie it
Speaker 1: to things like Aryan Atlantis or just these other white
Speaker 1: European ancestors thinking about the slutrain hypothesis in particular, just
Speaker 1: to find to be able to say, look, here is
Speaker 1: this tangible item that proves this all true, even though
Speaker 1: it does anson again, like what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: it's that divorced from context and filling in these blanks
Speaker 1: with our own narratives. It's extra fascinating too, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, if you just let yourself
Speaker 1: kind of believe that sure actually the one time, you know,
Speaker 1: Plato was actually secretly telling us this history, even though
Speaker 1: you know he didn't actually do that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: even if so that you have to still connect to
Speaker 1: the other problematic idea that exists within study of the
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman world, this idea that they were particularly
Speaker 1: white in the way that we see whiteness now. Like
Speaker 1: you know, there's I've been trying of learning to put
Speaker 1: the phrase on it that we you know, the way
Speaker 1: we see whiteness now impacts that versus them being white
Speaker 1: or not white. Yeah, because obviously they did not see
Speaker 1: race in any of the same ways that we did.
Speaker 1: And like they didn't really care about scale, skin color.
Speaker 1: It was all about whether or not you spoke Greek.
Speaker 1: That's what made you a good person or or like
Speaker 1: worthy of you know extreme. You know, what's the word
Speaker 1: I want prejudice against you is what if you did
Speaker 1: you speak Greek, you could be you know, person that
Speaker 1: we would call black. But if you spoke Greek, you're fine,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I mean, in the ancient world, they they
Speaker 1: traded throughout the whole Mediterranean, which includes Africa and the
Speaker 1: Middle East, and they absolutely traveled around and emigrated and
Speaker 1: all of these different things, where the idea of whiteness
Speaker 1: placed upon Greek or Greece and Rome is so absurd
Speaker 1: and nonsensical that you know, you have to have this
Speaker 1: just this alternative view of all of it. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to believe Plato and you have to believe
Speaker 1: that everyone was white, even though it's simply marble has
Speaker 1: lost its color. Polychromy you know, existed and it all
Speaker 1: just came off and we all just see marble and
Speaker 1: men think of this whiteness. It's it's so I mean,
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating. It's so dark too, but it
Speaker 1: is just so interesting the way these things have become
Speaker 1: the mass that they are. Yeah, it's true. And the
Speaker 1: thing about conspiracy theory too, and stigmatize knowledge, which is
Speaker 1: a particular term coined by Michael Barkin who has written
Speaker 1: some wonderful, wonderful work about conspiracy theories. But people who
Speaker 1: believe in one conspiracy theory tend to believe in others,
Speaker 1: and all of those come together to form a particular
Speaker 1: worldview that this person holds. So, yeah, this idea of
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks being only white and tying that to Atlantis,
Speaker 1: you have to also believe, like you're just explaining in
Speaker 1: other sort of conspiracy theories that help support each other
Speaker 1: to create this particular world view. I mean, and all
Speaker 1: of these reasons are why I want to create these
Speaker 1: episodes on Atlantis, because it's not about just like disproving Atlantis.
Speaker 1: That's not the point, right, Like, if it was just
Speaker 1: about people believing in this like ancient world that was
Speaker 1: kind of cool and that's all it was, then who cares,
Speaker 1: like let them believe that, you know, But it's it's
Speaker 1: all of the problems that stem from this belief and
Speaker 1: all of the racial issues and the straight like dangerous
Speaker 1: racist ideologies that come out of this, and you're like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I would like my listeners personally, who are goodhearted and
Speaker 1: not racist, and not sexist and not misogynists and all
Speaker 1: of these different things. I would like them to understand
Speaker 1: that Atlantis is not real for all of these reasons.
Speaker 1: And it just interests me so much in the idea
Speaker 1: of how it became this because yeah, you know, growing up,
Speaker 1: I think we're probably a similar age. Growing up, we
Speaker 1: had the Disney movie, you know, and I always just
Speaker 1: believed Atlantis was a not necessarily that I believed it
Speaker 1: was real, but I believed it was a Greek myth.
Speaker 1: And then getting to a point where I learned that
Speaker 1: it is not remotely a Greek myth, that alone was
Speaker 1: mind blowing to me. And I think most people think
Speaker 1: it's a myth, even if they don't have any strong
Speaker 1: views about it as history or conspiracy or whatever, but
Speaker 1: they at least think it was a myth because the
Speaker 1: world treats it like a myth. Yeah, it's true, it's true,
Speaker 1: and especially, I mean, it doesn't help that we have
Speaker 1: all these these documentaries coming out on History Channel or
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel or Travel Channel or whatever that are all
Speaker 1: about finding that evidence for Atlantis. There's this this concept
Speaker 1: called discovery paranormalism, which comes from David Anderson and Jeb Card.
Speaker 1: They didn't come up with this term, but they've sort
Speaker 1: of begun applying it to pseudo archaeology, and discovery paranormalism
Speaker 1: sort of prefers to being the first to find the
Speaker 1: proof of something. That is a very simplistic way of
Speaker 1: arming it, but that's part of the thrill. And so
Speaker 1: when you watch these shows, it's kind of like equal
Speaker 1: parts finding proof of Atlantis, to prove these conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: true or prove your ideas right, but also just that
Speaker 1: thrill you get from finding being the first to find
Speaker 1: this evidence, and that just when you have folks who
Speaker 1: don't really know the history, and they don't really know
Speaker 1: all this background context that we are all very privileged
Speaker 1: to have because we happen to be within these fields
Speaker 1: and these disciplines and we have access to these resources,
Speaker 1: it's kind of easy to fall for it. I don't
Speaker 1: blame anybody for falling for pseudo archaeology, any pseudo archaeological
Speaker 1: theory I'll never be mad at anybody who falls into that.
Speaker 1: It's really easy to see why, Like, those are the
Speaker 1: books you get on the bookshows, those are the shows
Speaker 1: you get on Netflix and Prime and TV channels and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So we just need to I'm a big advocate of
Speaker 1: giving folks the tools that I use to deconstruct these
Speaker 1: and assess these and hoping that it's sort of makes
Speaker 1: people a bit more aware. I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: bad thing to talk about Atlantis. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a bad thing to have books and shows and movies
Speaker 1: that use Atlantis as a plot line. But you do
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that side of the Atlantis story, this
Speaker 1: dark side, how Atlantis has been used to cause some
Speaker 1: really serious harm to people. And I'm talking like physical
Speaker 1: harm to people. If you're going to use Atlantis as
Speaker 1: a plot line, acknowledge that shit, talk about it, make
Speaker 1: people aware, make yourself aware, and don't repeat that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are my concerns. Yeah, I think that's so valid.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, And to be clear, like I think
Speaker 1: that Disney movie is great, Like it's so fun, I
Speaker 1: love it, it's wonderful. It's an incredibly entertaining movie. It's
Speaker 1: more entertaining even when you understand how little there actually is,
Speaker 1: like you know, how little history, how little you know.
Speaker 1: There's the whole sort of beginning scene where he's laying
Speaker 1: out his whole argument and you think, oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at all of this, so much evidence, and it's
Speaker 1: like no, literally no. Yeah, so that's the thing, right,
Speaker 1: It's well, and that's why, you know, to any of
Speaker 1: my listeners who didn't know that Atlantis wasn't a myth,
Speaker 1: or who didn't know all these problematic things and just
Speaker 1: assumed Atlantis was like this cool idea or this cool
Speaker 1: lost city or all of these different things. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: no blame, Like I used to think it was a
Speaker 1: myth until probably until this podcast, where I you know,
Speaker 1: just read up enough. Like I don't even think in
Speaker 1: my degree, there was any reason for anyone to just
Speaker 1: come out and say Atlantis was never a myth. Right,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't necessarily come up, whereas it does come
Speaker 1: up in pop culture to teach you that it is
Speaker 1: a myth. Yeah, and so yeah, it's more about just
Speaker 1: pointing out that, you know, it's it wasn't a myth,
Speaker 1: it was not history, you know, all these different things
Speaker 1: and but also specifically the harm that has been caused
Speaker 1: in its name, and thus why you have to be
Speaker 1: a little careful about the idea of it and you
Speaker 1: know what you believe and why and where you've gotten
Speaker 1: it from and who had these ideas also, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that the Nazis were looking for Atlantis,
Speaker 1: I think is it's a good thing to know because
Speaker 1: I think it makes a connection there between you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps you know what can become a problem with believing.
Speaker 1: We're not necessarily believing, but you know just the side,
Speaker 1: the different aspects of it and where it has gone
Speaker 1: over time. Yes, exactly, And especially I like your point
Speaker 1: about knowing where that information came from. If you're going
Speaker 1: to use something, know where it came from. I think
Speaker 1: about like a comic series that I read that I
Speaker 1: really enjoy but was based on Atlantis and kind of
Speaker 1: in the back of each issue. To Dave Anderson talked
Speaker 1: to you about pop culture. I'm assuming he talked about
Speaker 1: pop culture. He's a pop culture kind of to an extent.
Speaker 1: We talked about the movie, the Atlantis movie, and like
Speaker 1: a couple of other things, but I don't think about Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm not sure if he would have talked
Speaker 1: about this series or not, but it's it's a great series.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. But at the back of each issue,
Speaker 1: they were, like, I guess, supposed to be like diary
Speaker 1: entries from the character that the other characters were looking
Speaker 1: for in the series. He had disappeared while searching for Atlantics,
Speaker 1: and so they find his diary, and I guess each
Speaker 1: of these issues is sort of a diary entry. And
Speaker 1: it's clear that these comic creators did a lot of
Speaker 1: research by like the information that's in these diary issues
Speaker 1: or diary entries. You could go on Google and you
Speaker 1: can find a lot of this information, these theories that
Speaker 1: people believed, or these like illustrations of maps that actually exist,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, which is great, Like I like detail
Speaker 1: and accuracy, but also in this case, like where did
Speaker 1: that information come from that you are now putting into
Speaker 1: your comic and broadcasting out to your audience. And I see,
Speaker 1: I've seen some of the things in those diary entries
Speaker 1: picked up by some Qann believers who talked about kind
Speaker 1: of the same things and stuff like that. So that's
Speaker 1: why I think it's it's so important to know where
Speaker 1: that information came from acknowledged that own that too. Like
Speaker 1: I know other pseudo archaeologists and conspiracy theorists. I've seen
Speaker 1: one in particular. I'm thinking of a video or one
Speaker 1: of his books where he was writing about something to
Speaker 1: do with Mars if I remember correctly, in this particular section,
Speaker 1: and he's quoting this one person quite often information from
Speaker 1: this one person, and it's basically like, yeah, this guy
Speaker 1: was a Nazi, but that doesn't really matter. It actually
Speaker 1: does matter, So yeah, be aware of where that information
Speaker 1: is coming from. I mean, I think it should always
Speaker 1: matter if a person was a Nazi. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of groups where it maybe matters less. I think it
Speaker 1: always matters if somebody was a Nazi. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been told when talking about this the
Speaker 1: Nazis and Atlantis. I have been told by this individual
Speaker 1: how I mentioned earlier, who likes to email me and
Speaker 1: on Twitter, that you know it's time to let's let's
Speaker 1: move past the Nazis. Stop talking abou the Nazis. It's
Speaker 1: time to kind of move on. We've heard enough about
Speaker 1: the Nazis. I'm like, m, I don't think we have no,
Speaker 1: I don't think we are as a humanity are ever
Speaker 1: allowed to move one. That should be the point. We
Speaker 1: are not allowed. You're not allowed to ever say like
Speaker 1: we've boothed past the Nazis. Nope, No, that's that's why
Speaker 1: they say history repeats itself, Like right now, history is
Speaker 1: repeating itself right now. So you are more so than ever? Yeah, absolutely, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, Atlantis always an interesting conversation. Yeah, well, um,
Speaker 1: I mean what else, Like this is just fascinating and
Speaker 1: it's fun, and I uh, yeah, it's nice talking to
Speaker 1: a woman about this as well, because I think you
Speaker 1: get it. You have a different side of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's also damn fascinating, So it is, it is. It's
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's um, it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: I think archael just are really really opening up to.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we we knew it was there, um,
Speaker 1: but to what degree we weren't entirely aware? And I um,
Speaker 1: I've spent time going into really terrible places on the
Speaker 1: Internet and just see what people are saying, and it
Speaker 1: is shocking even to me. Like I expected to find archaeology,
Speaker 1: I expected to find pseudo archaeology, but even then, I'm
Speaker 1: still surprised at how much is in there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it just sort of all comes down to
Speaker 1: this idea of just trying to find this tangible proof
Speaker 1: of something. And and it's certain certain thirties more so
Speaker 1: than others like Salutrian, it's very very popular Atlantis. The
Speaker 1: Salutrian hypothesis, So Salutrie hypothesis is this idea that was proposed.
Speaker 1: It's proposed I think originally in the thirties and then
Speaker 1: it kind of died away because even back then archaeologists
Speaker 1: were like this, now, this isn't very credible theory, and
Speaker 1: then it was revived in the nineties. Is the idea
Speaker 1: that about twenty ish thousand similar I think it's somewhere
Speaker 1: between seventeen and twenty thousand years ago. The Salutrian folks
Speaker 1: which were culture within southwestern Europe France and Spain, Portugal, Portugal,
Speaker 1: France in Spain in any case, they're known for their
Speaker 1: like beautiful artwork. Also they have these very particular stone
Speaker 1: lithic points called salutrim points for the and it's the
Speaker 1: way they're crafted and whatnot. They're known for these. So
Speaker 1: the solutre In hypothesis suggested that sometimes shone fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty thousand years ago, Salutrim people came across the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: which was frozen, so they partially climbed across, almost like
Speaker 1: portaging across this frozen bridge, also with boats, and they
Speaker 1: came into North America was now in North America. And
Speaker 1: it's entirely based on a couple of fluted lithic points
Speaker 1: that were found that resembles Solutrean. They really do look
Speaker 1: like Salutrim points. But like that, people can sort of
Speaker 1: come up with the same thing and independently, so anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was this idea. Also, like there's no evidence for
Speaker 1: Lutrians having watercraft at all, so where did this idea
Speaker 1: of them taking boats come across? And especially thinking about
Speaker 1: how they were known for their artwork. They have this
Speaker 1: just beautiful, beautiful artwork. Nowhere do boats appear in that artwork.
Speaker 1: So there are sort of many it's it's not a
Speaker 1: lot of archaeologist disagree with this theory. They don't find
Speaker 1: it very credible. They've discredited it for decades now. The
Speaker 1: Salutrity hypothesis has become very very popular within white national
Speaker 1: circles because of this idea of Europeans. First, even though
Speaker 1: recent genetic evidence suggests that Salutrian folks, or people who
Speaker 1: were living around that time period twenty two ish thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, likely had darker skin. Yeah, especially in that area. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that does not matter. So yeah, within white nationalist circles,
Speaker 1: the Slutrian has been very, very adopted. It appears on
Speaker 1: particular white national's websites within this sort of manifesto on
Speaker 1: one White Nationals website, like the first thing that's discussed,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they these nationalists sort of use it to say,
Speaker 1: you know, white Europeans were here first, and then First
Speaker 1: Nations people came and violently displaced us and we were Oh.
Speaker 1: It feeds into this this conspiracy theory called the Great
Speaker 1: Replacement theory. Oh ye yes, and and this is viewed
Speaker 1: as as proof physical proof of that, even though there
Speaker 1: is no evidence for any sort of violent displacement of
Speaker 1: white Europeans at any point. But yeah, that is a
Speaker 1: very popular popular theory. It also, like I was saying,
Speaker 1: it's been widely discredited by archaeologists. But a few years ago,
Speaker 1: the CDC on the Nature of Things had a documentary
Speaker 1: dedicated to the salutary hypothesis and the what if it
Speaker 1: is real? Type of thing, and that was a whole
Speaker 1: thing the director archaeolgists Immediately We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: Hang on, this isn't particularly great. Part of the issue
Speaker 1: was in the early two thousands on Discovery Channel, there
Speaker 1: was a documentary about Solutary and Hypothesis that used only
Speaker 1: white actors, and that also sort of is what fed
Speaker 1: into this idea of or why white nationalists adopted is
Speaker 1: they cite that documentary quite often too. So there was
Speaker 1: concern about that essentially being repeated through the CBC questions
Speaker 1: about are you going to address the white nationalists appropriations
Speaker 1: of this theory? And CBC was like, or the director,
Speaker 1: I should say, it was like, nah, Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to give any licku of air to that discussion
Speaker 1: at all, because their idea was by not talking about it,
Speaker 1: you're not amplifying it or not supporting it, but you're
Speaker 1: also not saying no to that. Yeah, and you're not
Speaker 1: pointing out the problematic nature of the theory. And yes,
Speaker 1: So that was there was an interview for one of
Speaker 1: the big newspapers about that, and that's where this director
Speaker 1: was saying that. But then also one of the archaeologists
Speaker 1: also said that that that racist appropriation side was not
Speaker 1: his issue and he can't control how people are going
Speaker 1: to use the theory and oh definitely, h yeah, white
Speaker 1: middle aged man, Oh right, had they that weird? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly if And that line, Like, I think about that
Speaker 1: line all the time. It just drove me bananas, because
Speaker 1: I think it is your issue, Like, yes, you can't
Speaker 1: control how people are going to to appropriate your work,
Speaker 1: but I do think you have a responsibility to speak
Speaker 1: out against that. Also, keeping in mind like what we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier about how certain um folks do
Speaker 1: have to be more concerned about their safety than other
Speaker 1: folks that they're going to confront us, but we do,
Speaker 1: we do have to confront it, and it is our issue.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think about that. And one of the
Speaker 1: one of the neo Nazi groups I mentioned also ties
Speaker 1: Atlantis to Solutrians, so they sort of all run in
Speaker 1: the same circles. Well, and I think as Canadian two
Speaker 1: we have a I don't I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's bigger than those in the States, but I certainly think,
Speaker 1: you know, given our world at this current moment, like
Speaker 1: white Canadians have a real responsibility to not perpetuate problematic
Speaker 1: theories that affect you know, Indigenous people that we have
Speaker 1: already yeah, like completely ruined over generations. The idea of
Speaker 1: then adding something on top of that that that like
Speaker 1: suggests that they were not you know, here first, and
Speaker 1: that we you know, any of it. Like, it's such
Speaker 1: a important issue in Canada specifically. Yeah, it is, it
Speaker 1: really is. It's that history we can't deny. Don't deny
Speaker 1: that history except that has happened and it's really it's
Speaker 1: not history. M Yeah, don't deny it, don't re write it,
Speaker 1: don't try to like alter it to make yourself feel
Speaker 1: better as a white settler Canadian, you know. Hmm yeah,
Speaker 1: gosh absolutely, Oh my gosh, I guess this is just
Speaker 1: when it's occurred to me. But are there archaeologists working
Speaker 1: on residential schools then? Is that like a thing happening
Speaker 1: in Canada? Yeah, so archaeologists. It's it's not archaeology that
Speaker 1: work is. Yeah, it's very clearly not archaeology. Archaeologists have
Speaker 1: some archaeologists too, not all, but some have a very
Speaker 1: particular skill set in using GPR equipment to be able
Speaker 1: to analyze the data in particular ways to determine if
Speaker 1: there are graves or not. And it's a very particular
Speaker 1: skill set, and it's a very small number of archaeologists
Speaker 1: who have that skill set. One of my my PhD colleagues,
Speaker 1: he's also doing his PhD. He and my supervisor, he's
Speaker 1: also my supervisor student. They are some of them, some
Speaker 1: of those very small group of archaeologist who have those skills.
Speaker 1: And the group that I'm part of has sort of
Speaker 1: my supervisor in particular, has really taken the lead on
Speaker 1: starting those conversations, drawing together these archaeologists. We've been putting
Speaker 1: together resources to give to communities because not there are
Speaker 1: so few of us that we can't possibly expect to
Speaker 1: go and do the physical work ourselves. But we also
Speaker 1: want to make sure that communities are going to hire
Speaker 1: like geophysics companies, they know the right questions to ask
Speaker 1: to help them feel more sure that they're going to
Speaker 1: get the right information or get as much information as
Speaker 1: they can. So, yes, we've been very very involved in that.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, we've been. We've been working with several communities.
Speaker 1: We've gone and done a few services. That's where I
Speaker 1: was the other week as on one of those surveys,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, there are a lot of a fair
Speaker 1: number of archaeologists now who are working with communities for
Speaker 1: that work specifically. That's great. I didn't know that. That's yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's so important, and yeah, the government should
Speaker 1: be doing it, but hey they're not. Yeah, they definitely
Speaker 1: should be funding it, and they're yeah they are to
Speaker 1: some degree, but it's the fun is not enough? No, no,
Speaker 1: not enough? No? Oh lord, anyway, Canada, I so hardly
Speaker 1: talk to Canadians as you like, oh my gosh, things
Speaker 1: that other people understand that. It's so it's I'm usually
Speaker 1: like explaining half the things to anybody, right, nice, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. Okay, well this turns out when I
Speaker 1: get along with people. That means for a really disjointed
Speaker 1: but really entertaining conversations. Thank you so much. I just
Speaker 1: want to kind of wrap things up for however I
Speaker 1: cut this together, But thank you Steph so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Is so fascinating and interesting and I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's so dark. I've so much trouble with I
Speaker 1: sound so excited talking about how interesting, but it just
Speaker 1: I mean that the way all of these things happen
Speaker 1: and how they get to these horrifying points interest me
Speaker 1: so much. It's just my god. I mean, I must
Speaker 1: interest you too, because you're doing your PhD's and we
Speaker 1: should be interested in it because yeah, it's through that
Speaker 1: interest that we become more aware, right, So that's so true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good to hear it. Well, do you want to share
Speaker 1: where people can maybe learn more about your research or
Speaker 1: follow you or anything? If you don't want to, that's
Speaker 1: also fine. I am not a hard person to find.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter. Are you gonna Are
Speaker 1: you gonna include like links on your website? I can yeah,
Speaker 1: okay whatever, Yeah, yeah, that's totally fine. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: find me. Twitter is where I'm most active. I'm all
Speaker 1: over Twitter, and that is definitely the best place to
Speaker 1: find me. Wonderful. I think it's such really interesting and
Speaker 1: obviously important work that you're doing researching this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even I guess it didn't even occurred
Speaker 1: to me that, I mean, certainly archaeology, and it is
Speaker 1: so interesting. And now, of course, the more we hear
Speaker 1: about Atlantis, like, the more I think it's obviously important.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad to hear people are doing it. If
Speaker 1: not always specifically Atlantis, but you know, it's all so interconnected,
Speaker 1: but it is, it is sometimes Atlantis pops up in
Speaker 1: surprising places. I bet. Yeah. The more I hear, the
Speaker 1: more that does not surprise me. It has gone everywhere
Speaker 1: up always Atlantis, always, Lebowski. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: This has been so great. Thank you very much, oh nerds, Nerds, Nerds.
Speaker 1: This Atlantis series has been so incredibly fun, and I
Speaker 1: certainly hope you felt the same way. It was definitely
Speaker 1: a departure from my regularly scheduled programming covering the story
Speaker 1: that is so explicitly not a myth but also is
Speaker 1: something in itself somewhat bizarre and interesting. And then to
Speaker 1: look at what it's become, the links to outright racism,
Speaker 1: straight up Nazism, among so much more, it blew my
Speaker 1: mind every step of the way. I want to give
Speaker 1: a huge thank you to my archaeologists, to my archaeologist
Speaker 1: guests Flint Dibble, Davids Anderson, and Steph Holmhoffer. Their expertise
Speaker 1: added so so much to this series and I'm just
Speaker 1: so thrilled I was able to share their knowledge with
Speaker 1: all of you to help it influence my research the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Also to my other guests, one of whom
Speaker 1: you haven't even heard from yet, Kira Jones and Lisa Charlotte,
Speaker 1: who joined me to talk about Atlantis in pop culture
Speaker 1: and what that means for the story that isn't a myth. Truly, truly,
Speaker 1: this has been so much fun, it's been so rewarding.
Speaker 1: I'm so thrilled I got to bring all of this
Speaker 1: to you, to teach you all of this, to learn
Speaker 1: it myself. Fucking Atlantis like who fucking new god A.
Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for listening back to some
Speaker 1: mythology very soon, some regular old, just lovely oral tradition
Speaker 1: mythology of ancient Greece. What a time. Thank you all
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thank you to my guests. Thank
Speaker 1: you to anyone who cares about learning the truth about
Speaker 1: Atlantis so that you don't fall into some dark and
Speaker 1: dangerous conspiracy hole that you don't even know is there.
Speaker 1: I am live and I love this shit being learning
Speaker 1: not the conspiracies of Atlantis.