January 26, 2021 • 38 mins
Why do some people believe the Middle Ages never happened? Can we really trust our calendars? Do current world powers have a compelling interest in suppressing our knowledge of the past? Listen in and learn more with Matt and Ben in this week's classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I've got to tell you, guys, some of the
classic episodes we have coming up are weirdly preciot. This
one is, uh, this one's a deep cut about alternative
history because mattell as as you guys, remember, some people
don't think the Middle Ages happen. No, they don't. They
(00:20):
subscribe to a theory that is known as phantom time,
and we're going to talk about it in this episode.
We're gonna talk about what if the year is not
one right now? And you know, also depending on what
calendar you subscribe to, it may or may not be
so here it is alternative history and you from UFOs
(00:40):
two ghosts and government cover ups histories really with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to now, everybody, welcome to the show
on Matt and I'm bed and today we're gonna look
at the story of history and the changes inside and
(01:04):
of course the stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
I started out when we were working on this podcast beforehand,
I started out wanting to have a quotation about history.
We've mentioned the Faulkner quotation at nauseum. Uh. You know,
Bob Dylan said the times they are changing. And that's
(01:24):
a pretty good one because as we're going to see,
history changes as often as the present apparently. Um. But
out of all those quotations um as side of one
of the best things that I could do, at least
is just start off with the most basic thing a
definition of history. History the study of past events, usually
(01:49):
human events, right, that's what we usually mean, and the
branch of knowledge dealing with this. Um. People being an
inherently self interested beecies have always been interested in the past,
the stories about ourselves. Yeah, we're storytellers because we're the
only animals that record in any way the things that
(02:12):
happened previously to us. Yeah, well we're the only ones
proven to do so. Yes, absolutely, because you know, as
we find the first histories were oral histories, right. The
just told I would if I was a person way
back in the day and something really interesting happening and
to me involving a caribou and a broken spear or something,
(02:35):
I would want to express that to my friends because
I thought it was a really fun and cool thing
that happened, So I just tell them or yeah, or
there could also be a song and in that song
someone has the lineage from which they derive, you know,
oh yeah, or a tale of gods and creation. Yeah, exactly.
(02:55):
And a lot of these things were mythical, right, they
were instructional things of one way or another. In some cases,
very very old histories contain uh values of a culture, right,
and history often back at this point in time, when
it was a world tradition, was one gigantic game of telephone. Now,
(03:18):
for our younger listeners, let's go ahead and say with
the game of telephone is okay? So the game of
telephone would be if there are a bunch of us
sitting in a circle, and we started with, let's say myself,
I told small story, maybe even just a sentence or two,
and then I would whisper it in the ear of
the person to my let's say left, and then that
(03:38):
would continue around until it got back to me, perhaps
a person sitting to my right. And then whatever that
person they would have to recite whatever it is that
they heard, and the change that occurs as it goes
around the circle. That is the game of telephone. Right, Yeah,
nobody really wins the game of telephone. Often too. I
suspected that there were people throwing a wrench in there
(04:02):
and purposefully saying something completely different. We're trying to make
it dirty. Yeah, isn't it weird that we just explained
telephone and there might actually be someone listening that had
never heard of that before. Uh, you know, I bet
it could happened. But I want to be honest. I
was one of those guys who had you know, when
I was in first or second grade. I would totally
(04:23):
switch up yeah, oh yeah, and then look to my
left and right when when they revealed the wrong message
classic bowling. I learned a lot. I've become a little
bit of a better person that. But the game of
the game of telephone is um instructive. It's a good
framework for us to look at the history of history,
(04:46):
as you said, right. So, uh, one thing that became
known as the first critical work of history that was
written down was called, in a burst of creativity, the
histories is by this uh this cat and herodotus. Right. Uh. Well,
here's the thing. It's full of errors, right, but it's
it's better than nothing. And this whole thing about stories
(05:08):
being full of errors, rife with exaggerations, outright fabrications and
everything that was the rule instead of the exception for
a very very very very very long time. Well, yeah,
the people writing these histories were a lot of time
very closely knit to the power structures at the time,
no matter what kind of power structure you have. So
(05:31):
there's a lot of times an attempt to make that
guy or that group look maybe a little better than
yeah they actually were, or or a little bit worse.
So exactly, that's why, that's why we get all these strange,
outlandish stories that seem to make no sense at the time, right. Uh.
(05:51):
For instance, the old canard that Napoleon was a really
short dude. No, there were slightly different measurings, sims. But
also is a little bit of propaganda. Yeah he's fairly short,
but you know, it's like within average height for that time. Um.
Or the lurid tales semi pornographic tales that some um
(06:13):
European writers would spin about the New World and they
would say, oh, yeah, hey, ladies love me in South America,
which isn't really true because as we know they were,
they were not there too. Uh, they were not there
to be friendly. So yeah. So so basically, a lot
of times we think of history as just this this
(06:36):
known thing that occurred or known set of things that occurred,
and that's just how it is. That's what happened on
that date. Now we know, but we we find more
and more that it's more of this weird amorphous conversation
of of events that just continues. And you can history
(06:57):
gets changed past long long ago. Past history gets changed
all the time even now. Yeah, like that thing that's
happened recently about whether the brontosaurus is a dinosaur. That's
a tough one for me, touch of one. I know, man,
I know, but but I love that. I love that
you make that comparison, because, yeah, different voices constantly interrupting
each other, and anything, no, while not anything, but virtually
(07:22):
anything could be up for grabs if evidence that contradicts
our accepted view comes in. And this is not, by
any means a new thing, and it's not, by any
means an outdated practice. Listeners, I assure you, regardless of
what country you are, in your country's history textbooks are
(07:45):
in in disagreement with at least several other countries textbooks.
That's not that's just the nature of the world. North
Korea's account of the Korean War is going to be
way way different it UH in comparison to even the
Republic of Korea or the United States, of course, especially
(08:06):
if you look at big events like wars like World
War Two. The differences in Oh my god, you were
you were saying something a while ago about Japan and China.
He had an earlier conversation. Their accounts World War Two
are hugely different, right, and create political tensions today are
used as an outlet for political tensions. Of course, it's
(08:28):
no surprise to anyone that Middle Eastern textbooks UH disagree
on quite a few things. And I don't mean just
the status of countries like Israel, or the role of
the Europe or the United States and colonization and UH
overthrowing governments, but also religious matters Shia, Sunni and so on.
(08:53):
But I I don't have the means currently to read
textbooks UM that are written in Arabic anything. But I'd
love to see the I guess the history of the
Crusades in that time. I'd love to see you with
the other what the other side of that story says? Yeah,
and UH Russian UH textbooks also would have a difference
(09:15):
in comparison to the rest of Europe. So so even now,
even now, What we're saying is that historians across the
world or countries across the world don't agree with each
other about what actually happened and why we are where
we are today. This leads us to the evolution of
(09:37):
historical studies or the big question is this revisionist history
we're talking about or is it pseudo history? Pseudo history?
Is that is that completely made up? Is that what
pseudo is implying? Well, it's a yeah, pseudo is implying
that it is history, that it's a tall ta all disguised,
(10:01):
This history made by people with an agenda or with
a pre existing conclusion. Right, all right, so we saw
a pseudo, We've seen pseudo history. Uh. Maybe one of
the easiest examples, which we've used before is in the
early European explorers of the African continent when they would say, oh, well,
(10:26):
here's the ruins of this great empire. I guess obviously
there was some white people living here at some point,
which is which just shows that even if it flies
in the face of all evidence, some people will never
sacrifice their pet theory for the facts. But then the
idea of revisionist history is a little bit different. Let's
(10:48):
get into that, all right. We've kind of talked about
the history of changing history already. Um, but it really
goes back to the to these ancient Greek and Roman scholars.
It you're looking at Plutarch and uh Tacitus and really
people have been editing history. Again, it's kind of what
we've been talking about. But but modern historical revision this
(11:11):
thing that we call historical revision that didn't originate until
the twentieth century and really was after the first major
global military conflicts, so World War One obviously, so that's
when there were multiple groups who wanted history to reflect
a certain you know story, right. Yeah, this is where
(11:33):
we start dealing with something you'll hear about often in
pr propaganda today, and that's the concept of narrative. So
how would we depict this conflict decades later? Right for
the children of the survivors? How did countries become involved
in the war contribute to it? Um. As they were
starting to twiddle their fingers at the fringes of this
(11:57):
Gordian not historians realized that it was possible to be
objective because even deciding what you should leave out or
put in becomes itself inherently subjective. Right, So we know
that historical revisionism has to occur because a researcher can
(12:17):
find a glaring inconsistency or something that's totally wrong. Because
let us not forget that for centuries people were writing
pretty much fictitious stuff and it was quoted as fact. So,
for instance, we mentioned a lot of things about US
history that are often misunderstood. Um, here's one, you know,
(12:40):
George Washington and cherry tree, pretty hard concrete data that
he did not chopped down a cherry tree and say
he couldn't tell a lie. It's a fun story. It's
a little bit weird that it's about. It's a it's
a lie about a guy being honest. You know, it
seems legendary. Yeah, that's a nice little Matroshka doll. Right,
(13:00):
But so okay, So here's the biggest thing for me,
history is it's just complicated. It's super complicated because everybody's
identity is connected up to their history, back to our
oral history days, right exactly. And you know, nobody wants
to look terrible. Everyone has a reputation and that goes
(13:24):
that goes out to from the individual person to a
group of people to an entire state and the way
you feel about this group or state that you're a
part of, and nobody wants to be made a fool
or look bad or look like the evil bad guy.
Yeah and UH. Because of this, it can be tough
to navigate things. Going back to our example about China
(13:45):
and Japan. UH, the the huge argument about comfort women, right,
remember that one. Yeah, and that is UH. That deals
with the horrendous activities of the Appanese Imperial Army during
its invasion occupation of Manchuria and other parts of China. Now,
(14:09):
are we saying that those were bad guys totally? Are
we saying that there were good guys in war? No,
I don't know if you can. I don't know if
you can say they're they're clear cut good guys, are
good entities in the war. But what we can say
is that even now, the status of what happened to
these women is a very hot button issue. And in
(14:32):
um Japan, some politicians leverage this. You could say their cynical,
or you could say they really believe it, but they
leverage this because they don't want it to be a
a loss of face for the army or humiliating for
the people that are regarded often as heroes, you know
what I mean. So you have to be very careful
(14:52):
how you look at that. And historical revisionism usually does
a couple of different things, um or it has I
guess lenses we could think about. So it has a
social or theoretical perspective to re examine the past through
a different framework. So Howard Zinn's People's History of the
(15:13):
United States, Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Um people. One
of the criticisms I've heard before is that Howard zen
has an agendas, which my answer is he clearly as
an agenda. Right. There's also a fact checking perspective that
that you can take to try and make corrections on
(15:33):
some of the errors that have been laid into history. Sure, yeah, uh.
And then there's also uh going back to that negative
perspective and the people who say, hey, it's not broke,
don't fix it. Why are you digging into all these
records about you know, Unit one or whatever. Why do
(15:53):
you why do you care, uh, what the United States
may or may not have on with Nazi scientists after
the war. Why are you trying to push your I
don't know, would be in that case your anti Nazi agenda, um,
you know, your anti Catholic agenda. If you say that
(16:14):
they had ratlines helping people escape, that is that's an
interesting perspective to me. The idea of going back through
another country's history to try and dig up dirt on them,
I don't I don't often think about that unless I'm
thinking of from a spy perspective or an intelligence perspective. Well,
there's it's great that you say that, because the historical revisionism,
(16:35):
or the the attempts to change the past through perpurgation
that occur in things like four or in some instances
in the days of the s s R. These are
things that can really happen and can intentionally occur four.
Of course it is fiction. But recently uh an event
(17:00):
in China, the anniversary of the a Tenement Square incidents,
showed us that historical revisionism in the negative sense is
alive and well. And then our video one of our
videos recently, you did that orwell quote that he who
controls the president controls the past, You controls the past,
(17:22):
controls the future, and it's scary because that's true. Funny story. Well, okay,
so to sew that up. Those are the three ways
in which historical revisionists can approach existing history. Right. Historians
like to refer to the years immediately after World War
Two as the age of historical consensus, because people were
(17:43):
trying to build this concept, this meme of unified America, stronger,
number one, superpower, get at me bro. That kind of
stuff didn't last long, last until about the sixties, and
then people started reading maybe no, I don't know, I
don't know. I couldn't tell you exactly what happened to
(18:04):
change that. I think that part of it would be
counterculture movements. And then also the struggle for equality in
the United States really gave lie to some of the
more rose tinted glass kind of stuff. And sometimes though
revisionist history does deserve its negative connotation, right, well yeah,
(18:25):
well yes, because well it's associated with highly contentious things.
So one of the biggest examples would be holocaust denialism. Um.
And we we don't just mean at least I don't
just mean, uh, denial of a holocaust in Europe, right,
because the German Holocaust is often the one that people
(18:49):
think of, but also the Armenian Holocaust, yeah, which is
still a subject of intense revisionism between Armenia and turn
Get today. Oh yeah, and you'll have people on either
side of that believe wholeheartedly that they're correct and the
other side is just lying and it's it's Those are
(19:10):
both two really tough subjects that I hopefully we're not
going to be touching on too much, right yeah. And also, um,
well there's another example right all the way across the world.
We could just go back to Japan, uh and the
idea that Japan was bullied into Pearl Harbor by the
United States and did the combat as a defensive measure,
(19:32):
that was forced to do this by you know, progressively
more prohibitive trade sanctions or embargoes. Right, and now it's
time that for us to do one of my favorite
parts of the show. Let's get weird with it, Nolan.
Could we have some music. Here's where it gets crazy.
(19:55):
Historical revisionism the way we're talking about it right now,
which is very PC and very reasonable and very box molder.
You know, I just want to find the truth, right,
But there are people who want to revise the concept
of history of the human story so much so that
they think we have had gotten entire centuries wrong, as
(20:19):
in made them up. Yes, the phantom time hypothesis, it's
the idea that our timeline has some holes in it
that were filled in historically, just with some junk that
wasn't true, some ideas, some stories, the idea that the
ruling class made some changes to make us think that
(20:41):
we're in a different year, calendar year at least than
we actually are. Psych your mind, that's right. Who used
to say that once upon a time? Yeah, it's it's
strange because you know, as you said, as a group
of theories. Uh, this French jesuit named John how do
I'm totally mispronouncing that, by the way, Uh, he started,
(21:04):
He's the one really dropped the beat on this first. Um.
He believed that art and literature from ancient Greece and
Rome were all forgeries century and a lot of stuff
that we think happened in Greece, in Rome and those
empires never occurred. And other people believed him. That's right. Uh.
(21:27):
A Russian mathematician named anatotally flamenco i he he in
the nineteen eighties. He really thought there was something to this.
So this guy flamenco He used, he used this thing
statistical analysis to look at texts and mathematical ideas, and
(21:48):
even even though he's looking at astronomy astronomical observations of
the time, and he basically showed that this guy wasn't
very far off and that perhaps the Jesuits add kind
of forged up some of this stuff. But not just
European history, right, oh no, no, you're looking at Greek history,
Roman history, Chinese Arabic, even Egyptian history just made it up.
(22:12):
Let's well again, that's what this guy is saying, right right, yeah,
I'm not accusing you say, okay um, but there's there's
even another one been Oh yeah, the more specific Phantom
Time claimed that that you and I talked about in
our original episode, uh Phantom Time, where oh I got uh,
I got one thing wrong and this is my bad.
(22:33):
I want to I'll annotate the video on this because
something I got wrong that everyone should know about. Uh.
I say in there that North Korea counts their years
from the foundation of their country. That's centruy. They count
it from the birthday of Kim Il sung. So that's
a slight correction that I'll annotate. But you know, as
always welcome corrections, and we're really glad whenever we get
(22:56):
an opportunity to make the show better. So this more
specific bick phantom time claim that we mentioned in our
video is it comes from two Germans, Herobert Ilik and
Hans Ulyric Nemts. They think our current calendar was filled
with almost three hundred years of utter, total absolute Matt
(23:16):
helped me out here, right, and uh, they think that
the Catholic Church did this for for different reasons. And
when it was two thousand and twelve, they thought was
seventeen fifteen. So we're recording in fourteen, which means right
now they think it is two thousand or they think
it is seventeen seventeen. And don't forget that's just going
(23:40):
by the Gregorian calendar, right, Yeah. The Gregorian calendar one
of one of the many calendars that the people of
the world use, right, all right, it keeps us on
track relatively Well, um, I was adopted in fifteen eighty
two because primarily because the Church wanted to keep Easter
(24:02):
in the right place. Well, yeah, that's one of the
most important dates his Easter, right that if you don't
have that right, then what the heck do you have right, right,
And previously the church had been using what was called
the Julian calendar system, and during this time Easter had
drifted for ten days. Right. The Julian system was simpler,
(24:25):
it had a leap year every four years, was also
less accurate. The guy who ordered this this is interesting
because this really is a little bit of phantom time, right.
The guy who ordered this, Pope Gregory the Um. One
day on October four, fifteen two, they instead of going
(24:45):
to October, they went straight to October. People went crazy, dude.
People were not happy. They felt like the Pope was
stealing days from their lives. Literally, you know, some of
their concert tickets couldn't be refunded. I mean, it was
just bad. The eggs went bad. I mean, the plague
doctor is supposed to show up on the ninth. Good luck.
(25:07):
I guess this next year. But um, all jokes aside,
All jokes aside, This was something that really upset a
lot of people. And if you think about it, you know,
we practice daylight saving time in many parts of the world,
and the it's still kind of weird when you feel
like you gained or lost an hour just because this
(25:28):
system of measurement. We use has changed slightly, so anyway, ill, right, Yeah,
So he's as he's looking back over these eighty two years,
he's he's counting up the leap years, right, and he
basically realizes that the ten day error that they thought
existed was actually too small, and it appears to be
a thirteen day error. And he said, there's only one
(25:50):
possible explanation. The only possible explanation is that the Pope
somehow faked three full centuries, almost full centuries of recorded history. Uh,
classic Pope, classic Pope movement. All right, Um, I'm kidding,
I don't. I'm not accusing the Pope of being some
sort of doctor Whovian time thief. But both of these camps,
(26:14):
these two camps of phantom timers that we've mentioned, they're not,
by any means the entire group of fringe theories about this,
but they have some things in common when it comes
to their claims. So they claim that there's a lack
of archaeological and documentary evidence from centuries in the first millennium.
And this is, uh, they say, you know, in these
(26:38):
relics and artifacts, and this corroborating evidence is rare or
doesn't exist because of the centuries never happened. But um,
this is often explained by saying there wasn't very much
construction or literature at the time one thing, because right, yeah, right,
which I think is already kind of calling something dark ages.
(27:01):
It's a little bit of a sweeping generalization. But they
also say that, um, Charlemagne was made up. Yeah yeah,
I'm not not really sure about that. So what's the
idea they made him up to or the Church made
up Charlemagne in order to support the existence of that
(27:22):
century like that, that's the whole reason that Charlemagne as
a character existed. And a lot of evidence from the
time that does remain is uh, you know, in some
way related to Charlemagne. So how fascinating would be if
that was true. If that was true, I would love it.
There's a there's a book. I can't remember the author's name,
maybe Octovio. Pause, No, I'm getting it wrong, but he
(27:43):
wrote a book named, uh the same the same guy
who wrote for Co's Pendulum wrote a book called Bodolino,
which is about this this guy who works with his
friends to completely bs parts of history, you know, and
they're they're making up different Uh. This is not a spoiler.
One of the things they do very often is they
(28:05):
make fake relics of saints nice and Bottleno Boutolino, like
body bo Um. That's a good read for anyone who
wants to see a fairly tongue in cheek look at
how people treated history and accuracy. So the problem with
(28:25):
that kind of stuff is they're saying that the absence
of evidence is proof, right, what of the most most
of the world's other historians dismiss this because they say, well,
what about radiometric data? What about dendro chronology. Yeah, dendro
chronology is the study of rings on a tree to
find the age, right, and and it's fairly simple. Or
(28:48):
you probably did it as a student somewhere or maybe
in some kind of scouting troop and count the rings
and that gives you the age. Yeah, exactly, and it's
and it's fairly reliable. Tree grow in a certain way.
You can also show you when a big event happened,
and the more sophisticated your analysis can be, the more
you can learn about the world around that tree at
(29:10):
the time it was alive. So then this guy Fimenko,
he he completely rejects the radio carbon dating that was used,
um kind of he's pointing out, it's the same thing
that Young Earth creationists point out. Okay, all right, so
the people who believe that the Earth is only six
thousand or so years old. Yeah, I don't know where
(29:33):
where else to go here, Ben, I don't I don't
want I don't want to offend anybody, but my personal
belief is that UM that the Earth is billions of
years old. Yeah, I understood. Well. The reason that they
use similar method of disagreement here, the creationist Dan Famenco,
is that specific radiometric dating UM is only approximate, right,
(30:00):
and and and it's only it only really works for
items have a certain age threshold because the isotopes that
are measured are they need to be in certain proportions,
So there has to be there's a sweet spot for
radiometric dating, right. So Famenco takes it a step even
further been and he's alleging that there's purposeful conspiring going
(30:23):
on between these guys who are doing the dating and
the people who want to have a different story or
want to perpetuate the idea. The archeological powers that be
n working in concert with the pope Um Also, this
is not to mention the other things Flamenco does address
(30:43):
point by point many of the prevailing rebuttals of his argument, right,
or the proof that time as we know it exists
in the chronology in which we know His idea is
something called the new chronology. And and this goes back
to pseudo history. A lot of people tell you it's
(31:04):
pseudo history. But he he also mentions that the astronomy
doesn't add up for him. He has he has all
these reasons. People say he's cherry picking data. Um. However,
the truth is ultimately this kind of stuff can't exactly
be disproven because of the nature of the way the
(31:25):
argument is constructed. And we should mention that Anatoly Fomenko
is uh crazy popular, especially in Russia. He's published and
sold over one million copies of his books. Um. Other
people have joined in on the internet and trying to
help him. Uh So. Critics say that his version of
(31:46):
history has this sort of nationalist Russian agenda, right, and
people people like to read it because history, as you
said earlier, being bound into one's identity makes you feel
better about your self. Yeah, definitely so. Gary Kasparov also
likes Flamenco. Yeah, you might remember that name. He's a
(32:07):
world chess champion. There are a couple other people, but
we don't have to go into all that. Um well
we should. We should mention that one of the things
about the Dark Ages, it's just that so we say that.
We often say we've heard that the Dark Ages were
time in which culture just dropped off right, plagues left
(32:32):
and right. People just had to deal with what was
right in front of him and trying to eat. I
don't have time to make a tapestry, you know what
I mean. That's the idea. Um. And so Flamenco and
people who support him, like hasprov believe that this stuff.
Um that that's sort of a yellow flag about the
(32:54):
Missing time, the phantom time, because of course nothing happened
because those centuries didn't happen were in their view. I
guess maybe there's nothing recorded at that time because it
all got burned. M M. That's true. But at this point,
with with all these with all these things together, you
and I have had a heck of a time looking
(33:18):
at history at large. You know, we also talked about
the theories regarding the Sphinx, which we unfortunately don't have
time to get into today. I think it's its own podcast.
What do you think? Oh, definitely, I think Age in
Egypt and just the archaeology of Egypt is a whole
series maybe. And I want to be completely fair and
point out this um first off, Matt. While I'm not
(33:44):
convinced by Illeg's arguments and Fimenco's arguments, I am entirely
certain that within our lifetimes we are going to weaving
human beings. Maybe you and I, maybe you listeners, we
will just covers something that completely blows our current understanding
(34:04):
human history out of the water. We found fossils of
humans and your humans that sound like total mythological clap
trap when you when you mentioned it earlier, you know,
we found real life hobbits, student they're real. We found
other versions of early Man. We have found human civilizations
thousands and thousands of years older than we ever thought possible.
(34:28):
So I think we're going to discover more and more stuff.
I I don't know if you can suppress it. I
don't know how you would, especially with the Internet, if
we can keep that open and freec Yeah, but that
my question is how how will historical revisionism work in
the future. When there are so many different points of
(34:50):
maintaining track of the history of what of current events
and what's going on, How is somebody going to go
through and change all of that? And is it even
possible now? Maybe if it's that's a very good question.
I don't know. You you know, you and I have
talked a lot about that, the ways in which the
ease of information is changing the human experience. Um, you know,
(35:16):
I'm sorry to go back on the sec thing and neutrality,
but if if only certain websites are able to be
reached at certain speeds, and then all of the other
ones that may be considered fringe or not as trafficked
or don't at least don't have enough money to get
(35:36):
into the Usain Bolt lane in Okay, So then all
you'd have to do is control the information that is
inside the fast lane, Right, That's true. So I don't
know that. Maybe that's just something I was thinking about yesterday.
That's a really good point, because I don't think it
would be sustainable. This might be some a story for
(35:58):
another day. I don't don't know if it's sustainable to
perpetrate that sort of inequality, because what we're talking about
then is an inequality of information, a segregation of information,
to be honest, and I'm not. I know that those
could be loaded words for some people, but that's what
it is. It's kind of information apartheid. And maybe not
that the goal. Um. I think the goal ultimately is
(36:22):
going to be an opportunity to profit. Yeah, I don't
think it's necessarily in cities thing. But what they would
say been is is it? Yeah? A s M I
s M I said before, maybe you and I are
secretly agents, right, I promise we're not. If we are,
we're so undercover that we don't know where agent. We're
Manchurian candidates, or maybe we're like Manchurion interns. That's it.
(36:45):
So one line from Skep Toyd that I thought was
interesting is that the author said these phantom time hypotheses
cannot be disproven because any evidence offered to show that
they're wrong is simply called fake or unreliable. No evidence
it's seen, no matter how well supported, is good enough.
And that's where I want to pass the question on
to our listeners. Do you think that the current human
(37:10):
understanding of history is right wrong? On a scale of
one to ten, ten being perfect you know where where
we at, where do we fall? How do we get
closer to ten? That's really great man. If you have
any ideas, send them to us at Facebook we are
conspiracy Stuff. There were also at conspiracy Stuff on Twitter.
(37:32):
We would love to hear from you what you have
to say and what you think, because honestly, we don't
quite know how we feel exactly. We'd love to share
some thoughts with you. And that's the end of this
classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about
this episode, you can get into contact with us in
a number of different ways. One of the best is
(37:52):
to give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three st d w y t K. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Well, I've got to tell you, guys, some of the
classic episodes we have coming up are weirdly preciot. This
one is, uh, this one's a deep cut about alternative
history because mattell as as you guys, remember, some people
don't think the Middle Ages happen. No, they don't. They
(00:20):
subscribe to a theory that is known as phantom time,
and we're going to talk about it in this episode.
We're gonna talk about what if the year is not
one right now? And you know, also depending on what
calendar you subscribe to, it may or may not be
so here it is alternative history and you from UFOs
(00:40):
two ghosts and government cover ups histories really with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to now, everybody, welcome to the show
on Matt and I'm bed and today we're gonna look
at the story of history and the changes inside and
(01:04):
of course the stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
I started out when we were working on this podcast beforehand,
I started out wanting to have a quotation about history.
We've mentioned the Faulkner quotation at nauseum. Uh. You know,
Bob Dylan said the times they are changing. And that's
(01:24):
a pretty good one because as we're going to see,
history changes as often as the present apparently. Um. But
out of all those quotations um as side of one
of the best things that I could do, at least
is just start off with the most basic thing a
definition of history. History the study of past events, usually
(01:49):
human events, right, that's what we usually mean, and the
branch of knowledge dealing with this. Um. People being an
inherently self interested beecies have always been interested in the past,
the stories about ourselves. Yeah, we're storytellers because we're the
only animals that record in any way the things that
(02:12):
happened previously to us. Yeah, well we're the only ones
proven to do so. Yes, absolutely, because you know, as
we find the first histories were oral histories, right. The
just told I would if I was a person way
back in the day and something really interesting happening and
to me involving a caribou and a broken spear or something,
(02:35):
I would want to express that to my friends because
I thought it was a really fun and cool thing
that happened, So I just tell them or yeah, or
there could also be a song and in that song
someone has the lineage from which they derive, you know,
oh yeah, or a tale of gods and creation. Yeah, exactly.
(02:55):
And a lot of these things were mythical, right, they
were instructional things of one way or another. In some cases,
very very old histories contain uh values of a culture, right,
and history often back at this point in time, when
it was a world tradition, was one gigantic game of telephone. Now,
(03:18):
for our younger listeners, let's go ahead and say with
the game of telephone is okay? So the game of
telephone would be if there are a bunch of us
sitting in a circle, and we started with, let's say myself,
I told small story, maybe even just a sentence or two,
and then I would whisper it in the ear of
the person to my let's say left, and then that
(03:38):
would continue around until it got back to me, perhaps
a person sitting to my right. And then whatever that
person they would have to recite whatever it is that
they heard, and the change that occurs as it goes
around the circle. That is the game of telephone. Right, Yeah,
nobody really wins the game of telephone. Often too. I
suspected that there were people throwing a wrench in there
(04:02):
and purposefully saying something completely different. We're trying to make
it dirty. Yeah, isn't it weird that we just explained
telephone and there might actually be someone listening that had
never heard of that before. Uh, you know, I bet
it could happened. But I want to be honest. I
was one of those guys who had you know, when
I was in first or second grade. I would totally
(04:23):
switch up yeah, oh yeah, and then look to my
left and right when when they revealed the wrong message
classic bowling. I learned a lot. I've become a little
bit of a better person that. But the game of
the game of telephone is um instructive. It's a good
framework for us to look at the history of history,
(04:46):
as you said, right. So, uh, one thing that became
known as the first critical work of history that was
written down was called, in a burst of creativity, the
histories is by this uh this cat and herodotus. Right. Uh. Well,
here's the thing. It's full of errors, right, but it's
it's better than nothing. And this whole thing about stories
(05:08):
being full of errors, rife with exaggerations, outright fabrications and
everything that was the rule instead of the exception for
a very very very very very long time. Well, yeah,
the people writing these histories were a lot of time
very closely knit to the power structures at the time,
no matter what kind of power structure you have. So
(05:31):
there's a lot of times an attempt to make that
guy or that group look maybe a little better than
yeah they actually were, or or a little bit worse.
So exactly, that's why, that's why we get all these strange,
outlandish stories that seem to make no sense at the time, right. Uh.
(05:51):
For instance, the old canard that Napoleon was a really
short dude. No, there were slightly different measurings, sims. But
also is a little bit of propaganda. Yeah he's fairly short,
but you know, it's like within average height for that time. Um.
Or the lurid tales semi pornographic tales that some um
(06:13):
European writers would spin about the New World and they
would say, oh, yeah, hey, ladies love me in South America,
which isn't really true because as we know they were,
they were not there too. Uh, they were not there
to be friendly. So yeah. So so basically, a lot
of times we think of history as just this this
(06:36):
known thing that occurred or known set of things that occurred,
and that's just how it is. That's what happened on
that date. Now we know, but we we find more
and more that it's more of this weird amorphous conversation
of of events that just continues. And you can history
(06:57):
gets changed past long long ago. Past history gets changed
all the time even now. Yeah, like that thing that's
happened recently about whether the brontosaurus is a dinosaur. That's
a tough one for me, touch of one. I know, man,
I know, but but I love that. I love that
you make that comparison, because, yeah, different voices constantly interrupting
each other, and anything, no, while not anything, but virtually
(07:22):
anything could be up for grabs if evidence that contradicts
our accepted view comes in. And this is not, by
any means a new thing, and it's not, by any
means an outdated practice. Listeners, I assure you, regardless of
what country you are, in your country's history textbooks are
(07:45):
in in disagreement with at least several other countries textbooks.
That's not that's just the nature of the world. North
Korea's account of the Korean War is going to be
way way different it UH in comparison to even the
Republic of Korea or the United States, of course, especially
(08:06):
if you look at big events like wars like World
War Two. The differences in Oh my god, you were
you were saying something a while ago about Japan and China.
He had an earlier conversation. Their accounts World War Two
are hugely different, right, and create political tensions today are
used as an outlet for political tensions. Of course, it's
(08:28):
no surprise to anyone that Middle Eastern textbooks UH disagree
on quite a few things. And I don't mean just
the status of countries like Israel, or the role of
the Europe or the United States and colonization and UH
overthrowing governments, but also religious matters Shia, Sunni and so on.
(08:53):
But I I don't have the means currently to read
textbooks UM that are written in Arabic anything. But I'd
love to see the I guess the history of the
Crusades in that time. I'd love to see you with
the other what the other side of that story says? Yeah,
and UH Russian UH textbooks also would have a difference
(09:15):
in comparison to the rest of Europe. So so even now,
even now, What we're saying is that historians across the
world or countries across the world don't agree with each
other about what actually happened and why we are where
we are today. This leads us to the evolution of
(09:37):
historical studies or the big question is this revisionist history
we're talking about or is it pseudo history? Pseudo history?
Is that is that completely made up? Is that what
pseudo is implying? Well, it's a yeah, pseudo is implying
that it is history, that it's a tall ta all disguised,
(10:01):
This history made by people with an agenda or with
a pre existing conclusion. Right, all right, so we saw
a pseudo, We've seen pseudo history. Uh. Maybe one of
the easiest examples, which we've used before is in the
early European explorers of the African continent when they would say, oh, well,
(10:26):
here's the ruins of this great empire. I guess obviously
there was some white people living here at some point,
which is which just shows that even if it flies
in the face of all evidence, some people will never
sacrifice their pet theory for the facts. But then the
idea of revisionist history is a little bit different. Let's
(10:48):
get into that, all right. We've kind of talked about
the history of changing history already. Um, but it really
goes back to the to these ancient Greek and Roman scholars.
It you're looking at Plutarch and uh Tacitus and really
people have been editing history. Again, it's kind of what
we've been talking about. But but modern historical revision this
(11:11):
thing that we call historical revision that didn't originate until
the twentieth century and really was after the first major
global military conflicts, so World War One obviously, so that's
when there were multiple groups who wanted history to reflect
a certain you know story, right. Yeah, this is where
(11:33):
we start dealing with something you'll hear about often in
pr propaganda today, and that's the concept of narrative. So
how would we depict this conflict decades later? Right for
the children of the survivors? How did countries become involved
in the war contribute to it? Um. As they were
starting to twiddle their fingers at the fringes of this
(11:57):
Gordian not historians realized that it was possible to be
objective because even deciding what you should leave out or
put in becomes itself inherently subjective. Right, So we know
that historical revisionism has to occur because a researcher can
(12:17):
find a glaring inconsistency or something that's totally wrong. Because
let us not forget that for centuries people were writing
pretty much fictitious stuff and it was quoted as fact. So,
for instance, we mentioned a lot of things about US
history that are often misunderstood. Um, here's one, you know,
(12:40):
George Washington and cherry tree, pretty hard concrete data that
he did not chopped down a cherry tree and say
he couldn't tell a lie. It's a fun story. It's
a little bit weird that it's about. It's a it's
a lie about a guy being honest. You know, it
seems legendary. Yeah, that's a nice little Matroshka doll. Right,
(13:00):
But so okay, So here's the biggest thing for me,
history is it's just complicated. It's super complicated because everybody's
identity is connected up to their history, back to our
oral history days, right exactly. And you know, nobody wants
to look terrible. Everyone has a reputation and that goes
(13:24):
that goes out to from the individual person to a
group of people to an entire state and the way
you feel about this group or state that you're a
part of, and nobody wants to be made a fool
or look bad or look like the evil bad guy.
Yeah and UH. Because of this, it can be tough
to navigate things. Going back to our example about China
(13:45):
and Japan. UH, the the huge argument about comfort women, right,
remember that one. Yeah, and that is UH. That deals
with the horrendous activities of the Appanese Imperial Army during
its invasion occupation of Manchuria and other parts of China. Now,
(14:09):
are we saying that those were bad guys totally? Are
we saying that there were good guys in war? No,
I don't know if you can. I don't know if
you can say they're they're clear cut good guys, are
good entities in the war. But what we can say
is that even now, the status of what happened to
these women is a very hot button issue. And in
(14:32):
um Japan, some politicians leverage this. You could say their cynical,
or you could say they really believe it, but they
leverage this because they don't want it to be a
a loss of face for the army or humiliating for
the people that are regarded often as heroes, you know
what I mean. So you have to be very careful
(14:52):
how you look at that. And historical revisionism usually does
a couple of different things, um or it has I
guess lenses we could think about. So it has a
social or theoretical perspective to re examine the past through
a different framework. So Howard Zinn's People's History of the
(15:13):
United States, Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Um people. One
of the criticisms I've heard before is that Howard zen
has an agendas, which my answer is he clearly as
an agenda. Right. There's also a fact checking perspective that
that you can take to try and make corrections on
(15:33):
some of the errors that have been laid into history. Sure, yeah, uh.
And then there's also uh going back to that negative
perspective and the people who say, hey, it's not broke,
don't fix it. Why are you digging into all these
records about you know, Unit one or whatever. Why do
(15:53):
you why do you care, uh, what the United States
may or may not have on with Nazi scientists after
the war. Why are you trying to push your I
don't know, would be in that case your anti Nazi agenda, um,
you know, your anti Catholic agenda. If you say that
(16:14):
they had ratlines helping people escape, that is that's an
interesting perspective to me. The idea of going back through
another country's history to try and dig up dirt on them,
I don't I don't often think about that unless I'm
thinking of from a spy perspective or an intelligence perspective. Well,
there's it's great that you say that, because the historical revisionism,
(16:35):
or the the attempts to change the past through perpurgation
that occur in things like four or in some instances
in the days of the s s R. These are
things that can really happen and can intentionally occur four.
Of course it is fiction. But recently uh an event
(17:00):
in China, the anniversary of the a Tenement Square incidents,
showed us that historical revisionism in the negative sense is
alive and well. And then our video one of our
videos recently, you did that orwell quote that he who
controls the president controls the past, You controls the past,
(17:22):
controls the future, and it's scary because that's true. Funny story. Well, okay,
so to sew that up. Those are the three ways
in which historical revisionists can approach existing history. Right. Historians
like to refer to the years immediately after World War
Two as the age of historical consensus, because people were
(17:43):
trying to build this concept, this meme of unified America, stronger,
number one, superpower, get at me bro. That kind of
stuff didn't last long, last until about the sixties, and
then people started reading maybe no, I don't know, I
don't know. I couldn't tell you exactly what happened to
(18:04):
change that. I think that part of it would be
counterculture movements. And then also the struggle for equality in
the United States really gave lie to some of the
more rose tinted glass kind of stuff. And sometimes though
revisionist history does deserve its negative connotation, right, well yeah,
(18:25):
well yes, because well it's associated with highly contentious things.
So one of the biggest examples would be holocaust denialism. Um.
And we we don't just mean at least I don't
just mean, uh, denial of a holocaust in Europe, right,
because the German Holocaust is often the one that people
(18:49):
think of, but also the Armenian Holocaust, yeah, which is
still a subject of intense revisionism between Armenia and turn
Get today. Oh yeah, and you'll have people on either
side of that believe wholeheartedly that they're correct and the
other side is just lying and it's it's Those are
(19:10):
both two really tough subjects that I hopefully we're not
going to be touching on too much, right yeah. And also, um,
well there's another example right all the way across the world.
We could just go back to Japan, uh and the
idea that Japan was bullied into Pearl Harbor by the
United States and did the combat as a defensive measure,
(19:32):
that was forced to do this by you know, progressively
more prohibitive trade sanctions or embargoes. Right, and now it's
time that for us to do one of my favorite
parts of the show. Let's get weird with it, Nolan.
Could we have some music. Here's where it gets crazy.
(19:55):
Historical revisionism the way we're talking about it right now,
which is very PC and very reasonable and very box molder.
You know, I just want to find the truth, right,
But there are people who want to revise the concept
of history of the human story so much so that
they think we have had gotten entire centuries wrong, as
(20:19):
in made them up. Yes, the phantom time hypothesis, it's
the idea that our timeline has some holes in it
that were filled in historically, just with some junk that
wasn't true, some ideas, some stories, the idea that the
ruling class made some changes to make us think that
(20:41):
we're in a different year, calendar year at least than
we actually are. Psych your mind, that's right. Who used
to say that once upon a time? Yeah, it's it's
strange because you know, as you said, as a group
of theories. Uh, this French jesuit named John how do
I'm totally mispronouncing that, by the way, Uh, he started,
(21:04):
He's the one really dropped the beat on this first. Um.
He believed that art and literature from ancient Greece and
Rome were all forgeries century and a lot of stuff
that we think happened in Greece, in Rome and those
empires never occurred. And other people believed him. That's right. Uh.
(21:27):
A Russian mathematician named anatotally flamenco i he he in
the nineteen eighties. He really thought there was something to this.
So this guy flamenco He used, he used this thing
statistical analysis to look at texts and mathematical ideas, and
(21:48):
even even though he's looking at astronomy astronomical observations of
the time, and he basically showed that this guy wasn't
very far off and that perhaps the Jesuits add kind
of forged up some of this stuff. But not just
European history, right, oh no, no, you're looking at Greek history,
Roman history, Chinese Arabic, even Egyptian history just made it up.
(22:12):
Let's well again, that's what this guy is saying, right right, yeah,
I'm not accusing you say, okay um, but there's there's
even another one been Oh yeah, the more specific Phantom
Time claimed that that you and I talked about in
our original episode, uh Phantom Time, where oh I got uh,
I got one thing wrong and this is my bad.
(22:33):
I want to I'll annotate the video on this because
something I got wrong that everyone should know about. Uh.
I say in there that North Korea counts their years
from the foundation of their country. That's centruy. They count
it from the birthday of Kim Il sung. So that's
a slight correction that I'll annotate. But you know, as
always welcome corrections, and we're really glad whenever we get
(22:56):
an opportunity to make the show better. So this more
specific bick phantom time claim that we mentioned in our
video is it comes from two Germans, Herobert Ilik and
Hans Ulyric Nemts. They think our current calendar was filled
with almost three hundred years of utter, total absolute Matt
(23:16):
helped me out here, right, and uh, they think that
the Catholic Church did this for for different reasons. And
when it was two thousand and twelve, they thought was
seventeen fifteen. So we're recording in fourteen, which means right
now they think it is two thousand or they think
it is seventeen seventeen. And don't forget that's just going
(23:40):
by the Gregorian calendar, right, Yeah. The Gregorian calendar one
of one of the many calendars that the people of
the world use, right, all right, it keeps us on
track relatively Well, um, I was adopted in fifteen eighty
two because primarily because the Church wanted to keep Easter
(24:02):
in the right place. Well, yeah, that's one of the
most important dates his Easter, right that if you don't
have that right, then what the heck do you have right, right,
And previously the church had been using what was called
the Julian calendar system, and during this time Easter had
drifted for ten days. Right. The Julian system was simpler,
(24:25):
it had a leap year every four years, was also
less accurate. The guy who ordered this this is interesting
because this really is a little bit of phantom time, right.
The guy who ordered this, Pope Gregory the Um. One
day on October four, fifteen two, they instead of going
(24:45):
to October, they went straight to October. People went crazy, dude.
People were not happy. They felt like the Pope was
stealing days from their lives. Literally, you know, some of
their concert tickets couldn't be refunded. I mean, it was
just bad. The eggs went bad. I mean, the plague
doctor is supposed to show up on the ninth. Good luck.
(25:07):
I guess this next year. But um, all jokes aside,
All jokes aside, This was something that really upset a
lot of people. And if you think about it, you know,
we practice daylight saving time in many parts of the world,
and the it's still kind of weird when you feel
like you gained or lost an hour just because this
(25:28):
system of measurement. We use has changed slightly, so anyway, ill, right, Yeah,
So he's as he's looking back over these eighty two years,
he's he's counting up the leap years, right, and he
basically realizes that the ten day error that they thought
existed was actually too small, and it appears to be
a thirteen day error. And he said, there's only one
(25:50):
possible explanation. The only possible explanation is that the Pope
somehow faked three full centuries, almost full centuries of recorded history. Uh,
classic Pope, classic Pope movement. All right, Um, I'm kidding,
I don't. I'm not accusing the Pope of being some
sort of doctor Whovian time thief. But both of these camps,
(26:14):
these two camps of phantom timers that we've mentioned, they're not,
by any means the entire group of fringe theories about this,
but they have some things in common when it comes
to their claims. So they claim that there's a lack
of archaeological and documentary evidence from centuries in the first millennium.
And this is, uh, they say, you know, in these
(26:38):
relics and artifacts, and this corroborating evidence is rare or
doesn't exist because of the centuries never happened. But um,
this is often explained by saying there wasn't very much
construction or literature at the time one thing, because right, yeah, right,
which I think is already kind of calling something dark ages.
(27:01):
It's a little bit of a sweeping generalization. But they
also say that, um, Charlemagne was made up. Yeah yeah,
I'm not not really sure about that. So what's the
idea they made him up to or the Church made
up Charlemagne in order to support the existence of that
(27:22):
century like that, that's the whole reason that Charlemagne as
a character existed. And a lot of evidence from the
time that does remain is uh, you know, in some
way related to Charlemagne. So how fascinating would be if
that was true. If that was true, I would love it.
There's a there's a book. I can't remember the author's name,
maybe Octovio. Pause, No, I'm getting it wrong, but he
(27:43):
wrote a book named, uh the same the same guy
who wrote for Co's Pendulum wrote a book called Bodolino,
which is about this this guy who works with his
friends to completely bs parts of history, you know, and
they're they're making up different Uh. This is not a spoiler.
One of the things they do very often is they
(28:05):
make fake relics of saints nice and Bottleno Boutolino, like
body bo Um. That's a good read for anyone who
wants to see a fairly tongue in cheek look at
how people treated history and accuracy. So the problem with
(28:25):
that kind of stuff is they're saying that the absence
of evidence is proof, right, what of the most most
of the world's other historians dismiss this because they say, well,
what about radiometric data? What about dendro chronology. Yeah, dendro
chronology is the study of rings on a tree to
find the age, right, and and it's fairly simple. Or
(28:48):
you probably did it as a student somewhere or maybe
in some kind of scouting troop and count the rings
and that gives you the age. Yeah, exactly, and it's
and it's fairly reliable. Tree grow in a certain way.
You can also show you when a big event happened,
and the more sophisticated your analysis can be, the more
you can learn about the world around that tree at
(29:10):
the time it was alive. So then this guy Fimenko,
he he completely rejects the radio carbon dating that was used,
um kind of he's pointing out, it's the same thing
that Young Earth creationists point out. Okay, all right, so
the people who believe that the Earth is only six
thousand or so years old. Yeah, I don't know where
(29:33):
where else to go here, Ben, I don't I don't
want I don't want to offend anybody, but my personal
belief is that UM that the Earth is billions of
years old. Yeah, I understood. Well. The reason that they
use similar method of disagreement here, the creationist Dan Famenco,
is that specific radiometric dating UM is only approximate, right,
(30:00):
and and and it's only it only really works for
items have a certain age threshold because the isotopes that
are measured are they need to be in certain proportions,
So there has to be there's a sweet spot for
radiometric dating, right. So Famenco takes it a step even
further been and he's alleging that there's purposeful conspiring going
(30:23):
on between these guys who are doing the dating and
the people who want to have a different story or
want to perpetuate the idea. The archeological powers that be
n working in concert with the pope Um Also, this
is not to mention the other things Flamenco does address
(30:43):
point by point many of the prevailing rebuttals of his argument, right,
or the proof that time as we know it exists
in the chronology in which we know His idea is
something called the new chronology. And and this goes back
to pseudo history. A lot of people tell you it's
(31:04):
pseudo history. But he he also mentions that the astronomy
doesn't add up for him. He has he has all
these reasons. People say he's cherry picking data. Um. However,
the truth is ultimately this kind of stuff can't exactly
be disproven because of the nature of the way the
(31:25):
argument is constructed. And we should mention that Anatoly Fomenko
is uh crazy popular, especially in Russia. He's published and
sold over one million copies of his books. Um. Other
people have joined in on the internet and trying to
help him. Uh So. Critics say that his version of
(31:46):
history has this sort of nationalist Russian agenda, right, and
people people like to read it because history, as you
said earlier, being bound into one's identity makes you feel
better about your self. Yeah, definitely so. Gary Kasparov also
likes Flamenco. Yeah, you might remember that name. He's a
(32:07):
world chess champion. There are a couple other people, but
we don't have to go into all that. Um well
we should. We should mention that one of the things
about the Dark Ages, it's just that so we say that.
We often say we've heard that the Dark Ages were
time in which culture just dropped off right, plagues left
(32:32):
and right. People just had to deal with what was
right in front of him and trying to eat. I
don't have time to make a tapestry, you know what
I mean. That's the idea. Um. And so Flamenco and
people who support him, like hasprov believe that this stuff.
Um that that's sort of a yellow flag about the
(32:54):
Missing time, the phantom time, because of course nothing happened
because those centuries didn't happen were in their view. I
guess maybe there's nothing recorded at that time because it
all got burned. M M. That's true. But at this point,
with with all these with all these things together, you
and I have had a heck of a time looking
(33:18):
at history at large. You know, we also talked about
the theories regarding the Sphinx, which we unfortunately don't have
time to get into today. I think it's its own podcast.
What do you think? Oh, definitely, I think Age in
Egypt and just the archaeology of Egypt is a whole
series maybe. And I want to be completely fair and
point out this um first off, Matt. While I'm not
(33:44):
convinced by Illeg's arguments and Fimenco's arguments, I am entirely
certain that within our lifetimes we are going to weaving
human beings. Maybe you and I, maybe you listeners, we
will just covers something that completely blows our current understanding
(34:04):
human history out of the water. We found fossils of
humans and your humans that sound like total mythological clap
trap when you when you mentioned it earlier, you know,
we found real life hobbits, student they're real. We found
other versions of early Man. We have found human civilizations
thousands and thousands of years older than we ever thought possible.
(34:28):
So I think we're going to discover more and more stuff.
I I don't know if you can suppress it. I
don't know how you would, especially with the Internet, if
we can keep that open and freec Yeah, but that
my question is how how will historical revisionism work in
the future. When there are so many different points of
(34:50):
maintaining track of the history of what of current events
and what's going on, How is somebody going to go
through and change all of that? And is it even
possible now? Maybe if it's that's a very good question.
I don't know. You you know, you and I have
talked a lot about that, the ways in which the
ease of information is changing the human experience. Um, you know,
(35:16):
I'm sorry to go back on the sec thing and neutrality,
but if if only certain websites are able to be
reached at certain speeds, and then all of the other
ones that may be considered fringe or not as trafficked
or don't at least don't have enough money to get
(35:36):
into the Usain Bolt lane in Okay, So then all
you'd have to do is control the information that is
inside the fast lane, Right, That's true. So I don't
know that. Maybe that's just something I was thinking about yesterday.
That's a really good point, because I don't think it
would be sustainable. This might be some a story for
(35:58):
another day. I don't don't know if it's sustainable to
perpetrate that sort of inequality, because what we're talking about
then is an inequality of information, a segregation of information,
to be honest, and I'm not. I know that those
could be loaded words for some people, but that's what
it is. It's kind of information apartheid. And maybe not
that the goal. Um. I think the goal ultimately is
(36:22):
going to be an opportunity to profit. Yeah, I don't
think it's necessarily in cities thing. But what they would
say been is is it? Yeah? A s M I
s M I said before, maybe you and I are
secretly agents, right, I promise we're not. If we are,
we're so undercover that we don't know where agent. We're
Manchurian candidates, or maybe we're like Manchurion interns. That's it.
(36:45):
So one line from Skep Toyd that I thought was
interesting is that the author said these phantom time hypotheses
cannot be disproven because any evidence offered to show that
they're wrong is simply called fake or unreliable. No evidence
it's seen, no matter how well supported, is good enough.
And that's where I want to pass the question on
to our listeners. Do you think that the current human
(37:10):
understanding of history is right wrong? On a scale of
one to ten, ten being perfect you know where where
we at, where do we fall? How do we get
closer to ten? That's really great man. If you have
any ideas, send them to us at Facebook we are
conspiracy Stuff. There were also at conspiracy Stuff on Twitter.
(37:32):
We would love to hear from you what you have
to say and what you think, because honestly, we don't
quite know how we feel exactly. We'd love to share
some thoughts with you. And that's the end of this
classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about
this episode, you can get into contact with us in
a number of different ways. One of the best is
(37:52):
to give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three st d w y t K. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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