September 27, 2022 • 31 mins
For centuries self-assured academics believed Troy was a mythological city -- until, that is, the ruins were discovered. Over the span of history, the human species has lost people, cities and entire civilizations. Occasionally, governments don't want these lost empires to be found. So what happens when a controversial linguist claims to discover an ancient people spanning Iran to Southern China? They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So here's the thing about humanity. I've mentioned this on
the air before, folks. Human beings are very very good
at losing stuff, everything from car keys to cities, too
potentially entire civilizations. Remember that for centuries, people thought the
(00:21):
city of Troy was little more than a myth until
someone actually found the real life, historical ruins of that city.
And over the span of history, we've seen many, many
claims about lost cities or lost civilizations, and that's where
today's story takes place. Join us as we answer the
(00:44):
question did Sheldon Gosling discover a lost civilization? From UFOs
to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with
unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the
stuff they don't want you to know. Hello, welcome back
(01:15):
to the show. My name is Matt. Noel's not here today,
but he is joining us in spirit. Yes, and he's
not going to be gone forever. No, he will return
your return shortly, but the show must go on in
the meantime. My name is Ben You regardless of what
(01:36):
name you're wearing today, are you? Because names are just
sort of another kind of clothing that we put on things,
aren't they ask if you will, yes, a cowl, a cassock. Yes.
H Aside from sorry my vaguely creepy talk of names
(01:57):
and nomenclature, we are here to talk today and to
explore today the thing that I always love. I was
inspired by this. I was inspired to find this. In
our previous episode, Lost Civilizations, we've talked about several right,
Oh yes, we have extensively gone over. Oh man, I'm
(02:18):
trying to think Atlantis. Certainly we've hit which also Limurria er. Uh,
we've talked a little bit about We've talked a little
bit about various locations of Atlantis, people who allegedly predicted
its rise for fall and you know its location. And
(02:38):
we've also looked at missing cities in South and Central America.
We haven't looked at some of the early African nations,
which I think we could explore absolutely more in depth. Uh.
And then I don't know if we ever looked at
Hilk the Turkish what did you say, cuts Hall? Heyok No,
(03:03):
I don't know this what it's the one that changed.
It's the one that changed the way we see human civilization.
Oh man, Okay, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Uh,
and I know, listeners, and I'm sure that's very familiar
too many of us. Um, well, we'll check it out.
But our story today starts with a fellow named Sheldon
(03:25):
Lee Gosling. Ladies and gentlemen, Sheldon Lee Gosline is an
American egyptologist. He knows nine ancient languages. How many do
you know, listener, Matt knows zero? And he's taught at
numerous institutions. Yeah, he's got a lot of a lot
of bachelor's degrees, several masters, PhD is from the University
(03:49):
of Madison, Wisconsin. I think he went on to get
a PhD the history of medicine. So this is a
smart guy, Sheldon a little bit. Yeah, and uh, he
seems to be driven by his passions. He spent years
researching in China, where he was also teaching at a
(04:10):
couple those are the universities he had taught at. UH
for more than a decade, he had been playing around
with the idea that it was a baffling mystery to
the emergence of written language in China. He thought that
the earliest writing in China could be connected with writing
in the Indus Valley, where an earlier. Early civilization stretched
(04:33):
across parts of India and Pakistan. Writing did not appear
in China until more than a thousand years later in
the second millennium BC, and there's very little evidence of
how it's developed and no idea whether or to what
degree other languages in the West may have influenced it.
(04:53):
So for a linguist, amateur or professional, this is fascinating stuff.
Before we go on, let's take a look at the
rise of written language in China and abroad. The very
first known written language that we have access to now
comes from the Samarians. First example of writing in general
(05:15):
appeared in Mesopotamia three to three thousand BC. Egyptian was again,
so far as we know, developed independently around the same period.
The Chinese writing system, the first writing system there appears
around no obvious reference to other writing systems. So it's
(05:43):
interesting to think about what we're thinking about the lack
of We're thinking about the holes in the theory. Right. Uh.
We we have this example here with Egyptian rising independently, right,
But then I'm sure there was interaction after that, but
other otherwise, you know, unless we have something to back
(06:05):
it up, unless we have something to back up this
idea of of language migrating somehow from the Indus Valley.
Then this is little more than a nice conversation for
the folks at the linguist conference when they're in the
hotel bar. So the idea is that the earliest writing
(06:26):
in China and all these other places all came from
this original Indus Valley group of people or culture, at
least in the case of China. Okay, So it was
more of a huh, what if, and nothing was going
to come of it, at least that is until twent
(06:46):
and we'll tell you what happened after a word from
our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. In two thousand thirteen,
our protagonists, doctor Gossline, was shown a mysterious set of
(07:07):
ancient inscriptions etched into flat stones found by farmers in
Guangshi Province. Gosling found that several of these characters appeared
to belong to this Indus script. The Indus Script is
an undeciphered set of symbols from more than forty five
hundred years back. Others he thought could have been Persian Keneiform,
(07:30):
turned ninety degrees interesting. Then in April, our doctor made
a field trip to the area where these stones had
been found, and he discovered clear evidence of long human
occupancy and an advanced civilization that extended at least one
hundred and forty kilometers along the Yui Jang River, now
(07:54):
hidden in dense tropical overgrowth. So this place existed and
then was lost, right, Yeah, that's that's his idea. He
presented initial reports the Chinese officials, This was published in
Chinese news outlets, and he kept working in the field
through If in this or Persian characters have made their
(08:17):
way to southern China, it means that people there had
an extensive trade network that connected them to South Asia
and the Middle East. Again, it might also mean that
imperial conquerors from northern China had wiped out evidence of
a thriving writing culture in the south a k a.
A lost civilization. Either way, it would undermine a traditional
(08:41):
UH view of Chinese history, which goes like this, the
Chinese culture developed exclusively in the north and diffused outwards
and southwards. UH the Han majority claimed that they encountered
barbarians in the south, which is called the U a Uh,
who were thought to be less civilized in their conquerors
(09:03):
spoke a different language as of sen Right now, Gosleen's
observation about these inscriptions has not been proven. It hasn't
been proven. Rather that their Persian caneo form, which would
be crazy to find something uh that far south and
(09:23):
east in China from Iran at that time. If his
conclusions are correct, Gosling has indeed found a lost civilization,
an ancient one responsible for bridging a gap between cultures.
And his discovery raised questions, with huge and potentially dangerous questions,
(09:43):
what the hell was Persian canea form doing in this
remote village in southern China? Could it be real? And
if it was real, what did it mean? So before
we go any further been, I think we have to
address drag in bones. Yes, yes, you're right, Matt. And
that sounds silly, right, that sounds like what right, that's
(10:06):
a that's a nickname. You're you're right, because we need
to address the story of how Chinese writing was discovered,
or the earliest forms of Chinese writing. So for a long, long, long,
long long time, farmers around the Yellow River basin area
(10:27):
would dig up these bones. They would find turtle shells
and ox bones and would take them away from their fields,
and they would sell them to people who practice traditional
Chinese medicine. In eight nine nine, a scholar who was
getting these bones, these bones also had scratches on them.
Right scholar found these bones either as getting it as
(10:51):
a prescription for some kind of treatment or buying them
from an antique stealer. This person realized that those are
early forms of these characters on these bones. And the
people who sell these farmers, the so called dragon bone dealers,
wanted to keep their location secret. Of course, that's just
good business. But in the nineteen twenties, a team of
(11:14):
archaeologists discovered the bones source at a place called an
young Uh site that's a few hours south of Beijing
and the Yellow River basin, and they found thousands and
thousands of dragon bones, all carefully inscribed with prophecies of
the past. Yeah, and they figured out what people were
using the bones for. We were using them to tell
(11:34):
the future. So they would here's what we think happened.
They would throw the bone in the fire and they
would read the cracks that it made, and then they
would write down what they saw as a prediction. The
big thing is they had names of kings on some
of these bones, and those names matched with later records
(11:56):
of the Shong dynasty, which had ruled in the second
millennium b c e. And up to that point in
the eighteen at the late eight hundreds. Up to that point,
a lot of people had considered the Shan dynasty largely
a legend, at least in the west. That is strange.
So the discovery of these bones was big, right at
(12:18):
least for the West. Uh. It reinforced the belief that
Chinese civilization began there at the Yellow River, that the
writing arrived independently, But it didn't match with this stuff
the Gosling found because those inscriptions were so far south
(12:39):
and they were on the border, I mean, like all
in China's border with Vietnam. Yeah, that's a long distance away.
Then you would expect we're talking. Well, let's take it
to US standards standards, let's just look at the US.
What's a comparison. I would be like traveling from New
(12:59):
York to Kansas City. Yeah. And also, very little work
has been done in this area in Guanghi because the
climate subtropical and it's considered historically a backwater. So we
have some we have some questions, right, if if Gosling
(13:21):
believes that he has found a lost civilization, which is
totally possible, but there's a there's a big gap between
plausible and possible. He thinks he found this because of writing,
but I don't like. What's the first question we would
ask him? Well, I mean, is he mistaking something? That's
(13:42):
the first thing, right, as a researcher, as anyone who's
looking into evidence trying to find something, you have to
check yourself first. Yeah. And then also is this yeah,
is this confirmation bias? Is this like? Uh? And this
is just a question that would come up. You know,
if somebody is looking for a law civilization already believes
(14:05):
it's around as a hunch, and then finds it, make
the evidence fit your belief, like, that's that's a danger,
right right exactly? Uh. And the second question would be
could this be a hoax? You know, like the pilt
Down man or something. We know that hoaxes are distressingly
(14:27):
common in archaeology, So those first examples might have been
brought in by farmers, but he had found more of
these Persian these sideways Canada formed Persian looking characters in
uh official archaeological dig in the same area. So if
the inscriptions were forged, the person who was forging them
(14:51):
would either have to be able to fool the archaeologist
or the archaeologist would have to be working with them.
And also, Chinese scholars had ever seen anything like this.
This was new stuff, and when he visited the site himself,
he thought he wouldn't find much interesting, much interesting stuff
other than these inscriptions. Until that is, he noticed that
(15:13):
there were these tall, symmetrically spaced rocks at even intervals,
and they lined up along particular diagonal lines. They had
deep crevices. He thought the space was somehow special, and
so he started mapping it out and he looked. He
says that he found a man made platform of megalithic construction,
(15:36):
I think kind of stonehengi, you know. And he said
that he found a carved chair or throne, and he
was convinced that this might be some kind of calculating device,
maybe using astronomical terms. Chinese scientists, for the record, are
(15:56):
much much much much much more skeptical. Uh and Vietnamese
authorities are saying, hey, maybe this is just an ancient
site of early Vietnamese culture, right, that's possible. Gosling believes
that this is indeed lost civilization. UH. Investigators who contacted
(16:16):
some of the Chinese scientists UH say that the Chinese
scientists essentially told them, you know, you're you're not going
to be impressed when he come see it. We have
to wonder is there is there a cover up or
(16:37):
is there like is is Gosling knowingly telling the truth?
Is the Chinese Does the Chinese government have an interest
in this? It seems like the interests could be protecting
at least the agreed upon history UH in the area
and of of the entire country in the region. Right. Yeah,
(17:00):
that's gonna be one of the um that's going to
be one of the first accusations people would make would
be that this is being covered up. Two preserve the
official narrative, right, but you know, gods, it's hardly keeping
the secret. He does public lectures, he's part of a
(17:24):
couple of international organizations, and the Chinese academic community apparently
still couldn't figure out what to make of the writing
at this point. At this point, the claim remains incredibly controversial.
It's rooted in linguistics, right, and there's not too much
(17:51):
at least official archaeological activity in that area, in that
Quanshi area. However, that's sort of tantalizing, isn't it, Because
we don't know what. To quote some old politicians, we
don't know what, we don't know. It's an unknown unknown
(18:12):
And with this, with this in mind, we are hoping
to learn more about law civilizations and reach out and
contact uh Dr Gosling if possible to hear more details.
He has some papers available and he is far from
(18:33):
the only academic looking for evidence of civilizations and time
and history forgot. Now we'll pause for a word from
our sponsor. Welcome back to the show. I guess what
(18:57):
time it is? Chat atgon Okay. Our first shout out
for it today comes from Sam samue Rotos via email.
Sam says you did an episode over a year back
about celebrity deaths and briefly mentioned Hitler faking his death.
I heard a rumor that Hitler did not go to
(19:17):
South America, but to Glacier National Park in Montana, where
he lived out his days in a lodge amongst some
other close personal Nazi acquaintances, including his bodyguard, who confessed
to his daughter's boyfriend on his deathbed in secret. I
was wondering if you guys could do an episode or
even a little snippet on this because I'm interested in
your findings. Thanks for getting me through the work day.
(19:40):
That's fascinating. I have never heard that, Sam. Have you
heard that Matt no Glacier National Park with a good
old Hitler in there? And never heard of that at all, Montana, Uh,
because usually we hear a lot of stuff about South America.
I mean, South America is the only the only major
theory I've heard about where Hitler disappeared to if he
(20:01):
did not in fact die. My favorite, my favorite of
the Hitler escape theories is that he escaped to Antarctica
and that Operation High Jump was a secret nuclear war
between the Allies and what was left of the German
powers with the help of the underground People's Yes, with
(20:22):
the help of the underground race. Now I'm laughing a
little bit. But of course we do know that cavern
systems are extensive, and we know that especially adapted flora
and fauna do thrive. There is there a technologically advanced
race that looks completely Aryan. Yet UH has chosen to
(20:43):
stay underground Andrea Antarctica and is there an internal sun
or star inside of the center of the Earth. Yeah,
it's yet to be seen. It's the nicest way we
can put it. As you're being too kind. Yeah, but hey,
it would blow my mind if it got proven somehow.
But I mean, it would just destroy our whole understanding.
(21:07):
Now we do know, We do know that the Germans
were planning to colonize and conquer at least part of Antarctica.
If you have the inclination to explore a rabbit hole,
go check your nearest search engine for New Schwabia. Yeah.
Do you remember New Schwapia met when we did a
(21:27):
piece on that. I do certainly. Oh, Man, new Swabia
gotta annex a little bit of land in Antarctica just
in case. Uh it was in Queen Maudland. Uh it was.
It's really at this point, it's just a name that's
given to an area of Antarctica. But the the hope
(21:51):
there was that they would map the area and then
establish some sort of beachhead right or some sort of
research center there. They made no official claims, um, they
made no official claims to the area, but in nine
(22:15):
one they built a The German government, sorry, the non
Nazi government, the actual current German government built a research
center there in nineteen eighty one and can check out
operation of High Jump for more information. To uh Sam,
this is fascinating. I can feel the pool, I can
(22:37):
feel the call to start digging around in this Montana situation.
I've never heard that. It seems strange. And we know,
of course that with the deaths of any dictators, any
great influencers of people, that there will always be questions
(22:58):
about their deaths. There will always be the ease concerns. Right,
just through a cursory Google search here, there's quite a
bit written about Hitler's grave supposedly found outside of Glacier
National Park. Let's see something here about a bunker discussing
(23:19):
travel channel. All right, I'm I'm officially going to look
into this. We got sect it, okay, so we'll we'll
get into that off the air. The net who's our
next shout out to Arnie has written us a bit
of a snarky email about our Noah's Ark episode and
I appreciated it. So here it goes. I just listened
to your show about Noah's Ark, and if we take
(23:40):
the story as it goes as gospel and the whole
world was flooded that Noah and his family were the
only people spared. I would like to know how the
world was populated with seven billion plus people. Where did
all of the ethnic diversity come from? Are we all related? Also?
What about the inbreeding? Oh, that would that could be
(24:02):
a problem. And certainly with the diversity that we see
today in our world with the human population, it wouldn't
make much sense. But yeah, we had a lot of
people who wrote to us regarding that episode. Uh, from
both sides, you know what I mean, which which I appreciate,
(24:25):
and we have more more emails than we can probably
ever get to. But I will I will have to
say that that is a that is a question, and
too to your point, Ernie, we had several listeners who
gave what they believed was a uh what was a
(24:49):
coach answer for this? You know? Yeah, And they said
that certain things where if you, if one looked at
the Bible verse and depth then interpret did it correctly?
That there were things that would explain this or make
it seem less implausible, or that the story itself was
mischaracterized in many ways in the modern day, which I
(25:13):
you know, I understand, I appreciate everybody who wrote in.
I think we'll have Noah's arks emails appearing for a
while in our shout out. Continuing with Thoah's Ark, several
people on Twitter and email have written to us. We
were asking about films that dealt with Noah's ARC or
a version of an ARC. A lot of people writing
(25:35):
to us about Titan A, and I'm a little embarrassed.
I've never seen it, so I'm gonna have to check
into that now. My inspire since makes me want to
say it was on Netflix for a while. I'm not. Uh,
it's animated, right, I believe so, Yes, it is animated,
all right, So we have time for one more listener mail,
(26:00):
one more shout out, and that goes to Sergeant L.
We're gonna go ahead and withhold the name here just
because it does address military experience. This is in response
to our earlier episode on the military and drugs. Uh.
The sergeant says, first and foremost, thanks for the great podcast.
I listened to a lot of the how stuff works stuff.
(26:22):
I've just caught up on all your audio. I've watched
significant portion of the videos. I like the addition of
super producer Old to the audio. Ben if you could
resurrect the Invisible Man, that would be awesome. The voice
over at least that's a deep cut. Sergeant oh Man,
(26:43):
Oh wow. I I think just people don't know what
the If you've ever seen always study in Philadelphia, you'll
have a good sense of what what our crew looked
like having the wear of that suit. Uh So, Sergeant
lt goes on to say, I've been in the us
R for almost thirteen years. I've been deployed to Iraq
for a total of thirty nine months over three deployments.
(27:06):
I work in computers, not in the public affairs office.
So everything here is my opinion and observations, not of
the army. Drugs are severely frowned upon by the Army
as a whole. Drug tests are common. Positive results for
legal drugs are dealt with harshly, including marijuana were illegal.
If there's no prescription for drug like adderall or morphine
(27:26):
from a doctor within the test period, then legal action
will be taken and they'll probably be separated from the Army.
During the height of the Iraq War, soldiers were less
likely to be kicked out, but we're still punished. I
have never seen nor heard of a prescription that was
not a medical necessity. Alcohol and nicotine and caffeine are
being discouraged by the Army as an institution. Since the
(27:49):
late nineties, the Army had the policy of deglamorizing alcohol
or declamorization of alcohol. Commands can't use alcohol to promoted
events or promote It's the Army Substance Abuse Program as
at can and will help those they are addicted to
drugs or alcohol. Smoking succession classes are offered to anyone
using tobacco products, Caffeine and supplements are being openly discouraged.
(28:15):
The sergeant goes on that being said, army culture is
still quite strong in alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and supplements. Drugs
and alcohol are used to self medicate by some, as
with the general population. Unfortunately, we have deep rooted traditions
evolving alcohol, like the grog. The grog started as a
way that all the soldiers would get their leftover alcohol
(28:36):
and mix it together to celebrate or relax. Now the
grog is a ceremony used to remember past wars and
the fallen at Army balls, sometimes with alcohol and sometimes without.
As you mentioned, nicotine and caffeine are used a lot
for stimulants. So many soldiers low off energy drinks, coffee,
no doughs, and dipped during long missions or shifts. In Iraq,
(28:57):
there was an energy drink with nicotine and a bowl
slushing machine in the p X and Baghdad. Finally, there's
little to offer Jim rats to get them to not
take supplements. I said, sorry for the long email. As
someone who knows some of the stuff they don't want
you to know. Most secret info is really boring. I
don't know if I believe that Sarch Well, I'm not
(29:20):
concerned about most of it then. Yeah, so thank you
so much for for writing and please stay safe, uh,
please stay safe out there. That goes for everybody in
the armed forces who's listening to our podcast, and we've
been getting some really great, great feedback, some great details
(29:40):
about this. The part about a prescription being a medical
necessity reminds me of our earlier email from the psychologists.
Remember that who said that during war times, when you
had to have somebody still pulling a trigger for longer
than nature would inten end, given whatever cocktail you can,
(30:02):
or yeah, give them something. It was it was relatively vague,
but I imagine that there's I imagine there's several different
possibilities there. So we know that you know, we know
that the culture of the U. S. Armed forces is changing.
Uh and in times of great stress, however, people do
(30:25):
still tend to self medicate. And if you haven't listened
to our episode on the history of militaries and drugs,
please do check it out. If you are part of
another country's armed services, we would also like to hear
of your experience with these substances. But for now, that
(30:45):
concludes our gosh 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 to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
(31:08):
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.
So here's the thing about humanity. I've mentioned this on
the air before, folks. Human beings are very very good
at losing stuff, everything from car keys to cities, too
potentially entire civilizations. Remember that for centuries, people thought the
(00:21):
city of Troy was little more than a myth until
someone actually found the real life, historical ruins of that city.
And over the span of history, we've seen many, many
claims about lost cities or lost civilizations, and that's where
today's story takes place. Join us as we answer the
(00:44):
question did Sheldon Gosling discover a lost civilization? From UFOs
to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with
unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the
stuff they don't want you to know. Hello, welcome back
(01:15):
to the show. My name is Matt. Noel's not here today,
but he is joining us in spirit. Yes, and he's
not going to be gone forever. No, he will return
your return shortly, but the show must go on in
the meantime. My name is Ben You regardless of what
(01:36):
name you're wearing today, are you? Because names are just
sort of another kind of clothing that we put on things,
aren't they ask if you will, yes, a cowl, a cassock. Yes.
H Aside from sorry my vaguely creepy talk of names
(01:57):
and nomenclature, we are here to talk today and to
explore today the thing that I always love. I was
inspired by this. I was inspired to find this. In
our previous episode, Lost Civilizations, we've talked about several right,
Oh yes, we have extensively gone over. Oh man, I'm
(02:18):
trying to think Atlantis. Certainly we've hit which also Limurria er. Uh,
we've talked a little bit about We've talked a little
bit about various locations of Atlantis, people who allegedly predicted
its rise for fall and you know its location. And
(02:38):
we've also looked at missing cities in South and Central America.
We haven't looked at some of the early African nations,
which I think we could explore absolutely more in depth. Uh.
And then I don't know if we ever looked at
Hilk the Turkish what did you say, cuts Hall? Heyok No,
(03:03):
I don't know this what it's the one that changed.
It's the one that changed the way we see human civilization.
Oh man, Okay, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Uh,
and I know, listeners, and I'm sure that's very familiar
too many of us. Um, well, we'll check it out.
But our story today starts with a fellow named Sheldon
(03:25):
Lee Gosling. Ladies and gentlemen, Sheldon Lee Gosline is an
American egyptologist. He knows nine ancient languages. How many do
you know, listener, Matt knows zero? And he's taught at
numerous institutions. Yeah, he's got a lot of a lot
of bachelor's degrees, several masters, PhD is from the University
(03:49):
of Madison, Wisconsin. I think he went on to get
a PhD the history of medicine. So this is a
smart guy, Sheldon a little bit. Yeah, and uh, he
seems to be driven by his passions. He spent years
researching in China, where he was also teaching at a
(04:10):
couple those are the universities he had taught at. UH
for more than a decade, he had been playing around
with the idea that it was a baffling mystery to
the emergence of written language in China. He thought that
the earliest writing in China could be connected with writing
in the Indus Valley, where an earlier. Early civilization stretched
(04:33):
across parts of India and Pakistan. Writing did not appear
in China until more than a thousand years later in
the second millennium BC, and there's very little evidence of
how it's developed and no idea whether or to what
degree other languages in the West may have influenced it.
(04:53):
So for a linguist, amateur or professional, this is fascinating stuff.
Before we go on, let's take a look at the
rise of written language in China and abroad. The very
first known written language that we have access to now
comes from the Samarians. First example of writing in general
(05:15):
appeared in Mesopotamia three to three thousand BC. Egyptian was again,
so far as we know, developed independently around the same period.
The Chinese writing system, the first writing system there appears
around no obvious reference to other writing systems. So it's
(05:43):
interesting to think about what we're thinking about the lack
of We're thinking about the holes in the theory. Right. Uh.
We we have this example here with Egyptian rising independently, right,
But then I'm sure there was interaction after that, but
other otherwise, you know, unless we have something to back
(06:05):
it up, unless we have something to back up this
idea of of language migrating somehow from the Indus Valley.
Then this is little more than a nice conversation for
the folks at the linguist conference when they're in the
hotel bar. So the idea is that the earliest writing
(06:26):
in China and all these other places all came from
this original Indus Valley group of people or culture, at
least in the case of China. Okay, So it was
more of a huh, what if, and nothing was going
to come of it, at least that is until twent
(06:46):
and we'll tell you what happened after a word from
our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. In two thousand thirteen,
our protagonists, doctor Gossline, was shown a mysterious set of
(07:07):
ancient inscriptions etched into flat stones found by farmers in
Guangshi Province. Gosling found that several of these characters appeared
to belong to this Indus script. The Indus Script is
an undeciphered set of symbols from more than forty five
hundred years back. Others he thought could have been Persian Keneiform,
(07:30):
turned ninety degrees interesting. Then in April, our doctor made
a field trip to the area where these stones had
been found, and he discovered clear evidence of long human
occupancy and an advanced civilization that extended at least one
hundred and forty kilometers along the Yui Jang River, now
(07:54):
hidden in dense tropical overgrowth. So this place existed and
then was lost, right, Yeah, that's that's his idea. He
presented initial reports the Chinese officials, This was published in
Chinese news outlets, and he kept working in the field
through If in this or Persian characters have made their
(08:17):
way to southern China, it means that people there had
an extensive trade network that connected them to South Asia
and the Middle East. Again, it might also mean that
imperial conquerors from northern China had wiped out evidence of
a thriving writing culture in the south a k a.
A lost civilization. Either way, it would undermine a traditional
(08:41):
UH view of Chinese history, which goes like this, the
Chinese culture developed exclusively in the north and diffused outwards
and southwards. UH the Han majority claimed that they encountered
barbarians in the south, which is called the U a Uh,
who were thought to be less civilized in their conquerors
(09:03):
spoke a different language as of sen Right now, Gosleen's
observation about these inscriptions has not been proven. It hasn't
been proven. Rather that their Persian caneo form, which would
be crazy to find something uh that far south and
(09:23):
east in China from Iran at that time. If his
conclusions are correct, Gosling has indeed found a lost civilization,
an ancient one responsible for bridging a gap between cultures.
And his discovery raised questions, with huge and potentially dangerous questions,
(09:43):
what the hell was Persian canea form doing in this
remote village in southern China? Could it be real? And
if it was real, what did it mean? So before
we go any further been, I think we have to
address drag in bones. Yes, yes, you're right, Matt. And
that sounds silly, right, that sounds like what right, that's
(10:06):
a that's a nickname. You're you're right, because we need
to address the story of how Chinese writing was discovered,
or the earliest forms of Chinese writing. So for a long, long, long,
long long time, farmers around the Yellow River basin area
(10:27):
would dig up these bones. They would find turtle shells
and ox bones and would take them away from their fields,
and they would sell them to people who practice traditional
Chinese medicine. In eight nine nine, a scholar who was
getting these bones, these bones also had scratches on them.
Right scholar found these bones either as getting it as
(10:51):
a prescription for some kind of treatment or buying them
from an antique stealer. This person realized that those are
early forms of these characters on these bones. And the
people who sell these farmers, the so called dragon bone dealers,
wanted to keep their location secret. Of course, that's just
good business. But in the nineteen twenties, a team of
(11:14):
archaeologists discovered the bones source at a place called an
young Uh site that's a few hours south of Beijing
and the Yellow River basin, and they found thousands and
thousands of dragon bones, all carefully inscribed with prophecies of
the past. Yeah, and they figured out what people were
using the bones for. We were using them to tell
(11:34):
the future. So they would here's what we think happened.
They would throw the bone in the fire and they
would read the cracks that it made, and then they
would write down what they saw as a prediction. The
big thing is they had names of kings on some
of these bones, and those names matched with later records
(11:56):
of the Shong dynasty, which had ruled in the second
millennium b c e. And up to that point in
the eighteen at the late eight hundreds. Up to that point,
a lot of people had considered the Shan dynasty largely
a legend, at least in the west. That is strange.
So the discovery of these bones was big, right at
(12:18):
least for the West. Uh. It reinforced the belief that
Chinese civilization began there at the Yellow River, that the
writing arrived independently, But it didn't match with this stuff
the Gosling found because those inscriptions were so far south
(12:39):
and they were on the border, I mean, like all
in China's border with Vietnam. Yeah, that's a long distance away.
Then you would expect we're talking. Well, let's take it
to US standards standards, let's just look at the US.
What's a comparison. I would be like traveling from New
(12:59):
York to Kansas City. Yeah. And also, very little work
has been done in this area in Guanghi because the
climate subtropical and it's considered historically a backwater. So we
have some we have some questions, right, if if Gosling
(13:21):
believes that he has found a lost civilization, which is
totally possible, but there's a there's a big gap between
plausible and possible. He thinks he found this because of writing,
but I don't like. What's the first question we would
ask him? Well, I mean, is he mistaking something? That's
(13:42):
the first thing, right, as a researcher, as anyone who's
looking into evidence trying to find something, you have to
check yourself first. Yeah. And then also is this yeah,
is this confirmation bias? Is this like? Uh? And this
is just a question that would come up. You know,
if somebody is looking for a law civilization already believes
(14:05):
it's around as a hunch, and then finds it, make
the evidence fit your belief, like, that's that's a danger,
right right exactly? Uh. And the second question would be
could this be a hoax? You know, like the pilt
Down man or something. We know that hoaxes are distressingly
(14:27):
common in archaeology, So those first examples might have been
brought in by farmers, but he had found more of
these Persian these sideways Canada formed Persian looking characters in
uh official archaeological dig in the same area. So if
the inscriptions were forged, the person who was forging them
(14:51):
would either have to be able to fool the archaeologist
or the archaeologist would have to be working with them.
And also, Chinese scholars had ever seen anything like this.
This was new stuff, and when he visited the site himself,
he thought he wouldn't find much interesting, much interesting stuff
other than these inscriptions. Until that is, he noticed that
(15:13):
there were these tall, symmetrically spaced rocks at even intervals,
and they lined up along particular diagonal lines. They had
deep crevices. He thought the space was somehow special, and
so he started mapping it out and he looked. He
says that he found a man made platform of megalithic construction,
(15:36):
I think kind of stonehengi, you know. And he said
that he found a carved chair or throne, and he
was convinced that this might be some kind of calculating device,
maybe using astronomical terms. Chinese scientists, for the record, are
(15:56):
much much much much much more skeptical. Uh and Vietnamese
authorities are saying, hey, maybe this is just an ancient
site of early Vietnamese culture, right, that's possible. Gosling believes
that this is indeed lost civilization. UH. Investigators who contacted
(16:16):
some of the Chinese scientists UH say that the Chinese
scientists essentially told them, you know, you're you're not going
to be impressed when he come see it. We have
to wonder is there is there a cover up or
(16:37):
is there like is is Gosling knowingly telling the truth?
Is the Chinese Does the Chinese government have an interest
in this? It seems like the interests could be protecting
at least the agreed upon history UH in the area
and of of the entire country in the region. Right. Yeah,
(17:00):
that's gonna be one of the um that's going to
be one of the first accusations people would make would
be that this is being covered up. Two preserve the
official narrative, right, but you know, gods, it's hardly keeping
the secret. He does public lectures, he's part of a
(17:24):
couple of international organizations, and the Chinese academic community apparently
still couldn't figure out what to make of the writing
at this point. At this point, the claim remains incredibly controversial.
It's rooted in linguistics, right, and there's not too much
(17:51):
at least official archaeological activity in that area, in that
Quanshi area. However, that's sort of tantalizing, isn't it, Because
we don't know what. To quote some old politicians, we
don't know what, we don't know. It's an unknown unknown
(18:12):
And with this, with this in mind, we are hoping
to learn more about law civilizations and reach out and
contact uh Dr Gosling if possible to hear more details.
He has some papers available and he is far from
(18:33):
the only academic looking for evidence of civilizations and time
and history forgot. Now we'll pause for a word from
our sponsor. Welcome back to the show. I guess what
(18:57):
time it is? Chat atgon Okay. Our first shout out
for it today comes from Sam samue Rotos via email.
Sam says you did an episode over a year back
about celebrity deaths and briefly mentioned Hitler faking his death.
I heard a rumor that Hitler did not go to
(19:17):
South America, but to Glacier National Park in Montana, where
he lived out his days in a lodge amongst some
other close personal Nazi acquaintances, including his bodyguard, who confessed
to his daughter's boyfriend on his deathbed in secret. I
was wondering if you guys could do an episode or
even a little snippet on this because I'm interested in
your findings. Thanks for getting me through the work day.
(19:40):
That's fascinating. I have never heard that, Sam. Have you
heard that Matt no Glacier National Park with a good
old Hitler in there? And never heard of that at all, Montana, Uh,
because usually we hear a lot of stuff about South America.
I mean, South America is the only the only major
theory I've heard about where Hitler disappeared to if he
(20:01):
did not in fact die. My favorite, my favorite of
the Hitler escape theories is that he escaped to Antarctica
and that Operation High Jump was a secret nuclear war
between the Allies and what was left of the German
powers with the help of the underground People's Yes, with
(20:22):
the help of the underground race. Now I'm laughing a
little bit. But of course we do know that cavern
systems are extensive, and we know that especially adapted flora
and fauna do thrive. There is there a technologically advanced
race that looks completely Aryan. Yet UH has chosen to
(20:43):
stay underground Andrea Antarctica and is there an internal sun
or star inside of the center of the Earth. Yeah,
it's yet to be seen. It's the nicest way we
can put it. As you're being too kind. Yeah, but hey,
it would blow my mind if it got proven somehow.
But I mean, it would just destroy our whole understanding.
(21:07):
Now we do know, We do know that the Germans
were planning to colonize and conquer at least part of Antarctica.
If you have the inclination to explore a rabbit hole,
go check your nearest search engine for New Schwabia. Yeah.
Do you remember New Schwapia met when we did a
(21:27):
piece on that. I do certainly. Oh, Man, new Swabia
gotta annex a little bit of land in Antarctica just
in case. Uh it was in Queen Maudland. Uh it was.
It's really at this point, it's just a name that's
given to an area of Antarctica. But the the hope
(21:51):
there was that they would map the area and then
establish some sort of beachhead right or some sort of
research center there. They made no official claims, um, they
made no official claims to the area, but in nine
(22:15):
one they built a The German government, sorry, the non
Nazi government, the actual current German government built a research
center there in nineteen eighty one and can check out
operation of High Jump for more information. To uh Sam,
this is fascinating. I can feel the pool, I can
(22:37):
feel the call to start digging around in this Montana situation.
I've never heard that. It seems strange. And we know,
of course that with the deaths of any dictators, any
great influencers of people, that there will always be questions
(22:58):
about their deaths. There will always be the ease concerns. Right,
just through a cursory Google search here, there's quite a
bit written about Hitler's grave supposedly found outside of Glacier
National Park. Let's see something here about a bunker discussing
(23:19):
travel channel. All right, I'm I'm officially going to look
into this. We got sect it, okay, so we'll we'll
get into that off the air. The net who's our
next shout out to Arnie has written us a bit
of a snarky email about our Noah's Ark episode and
I appreciated it. So here it goes. I just listened
to your show about Noah's Ark, and if we take
(23:40):
the story as it goes as gospel and the whole
world was flooded that Noah and his family were the
only people spared. I would like to know how the
world was populated with seven billion plus people. Where did
all of the ethnic diversity come from? Are we all related? Also?
What about the inbreeding? Oh, that would that could be
(24:02):
a problem. And certainly with the diversity that we see
today in our world with the human population, it wouldn't
make much sense. But yeah, we had a lot of
people who wrote to us regarding that episode. Uh, from
both sides, you know what I mean, which which I appreciate,
(24:25):
and we have more more emails than we can probably
ever get to. But I will I will have to
say that that is a that is a question, and
too to your point, Ernie, we had several listeners who
gave what they believed was a uh what was a
(24:49):
coach answer for this? You know? Yeah, And they said
that certain things where if you, if one looked at
the Bible verse and depth then interpret did it correctly?
That there were things that would explain this or make
it seem less implausible, or that the story itself was
mischaracterized in many ways in the modern day, which I
(25:13):
you know, I understand, I appreciate everybody who wrote in.
I think we'll have Noah's arks emails appearing for a
while in our shout out. Continuing with Thoah's Ark, several
people on Twitter and email have written to us. We
were asking about films that dealt with Noah's ARC or
a version of an ARC. A lot of people writing
(25:35):
to us about Titan A, and I'm a little embarrassed.
I've never seen it, so I'm gonna have to check
into that now. My inspire since makes me want to
say it was on Netflix for a while. I'm not. Uh,
it's animated, right, I believe so, Yes, it is animated,
all right, So we have time for one more listener mail,
(26:00):
one more shout out, and that goes to Sergeant L.
We're gonna go ahead and withhold the name here just
because it does address military experience. This is in response
to our earlier episode on the military and drugs. Uh.
The sergeant says, first and foremost, thanks for the great podcast.
I listened to a lot of the how stuff works stuff.
(26:22):
I've just caught up on all your audio. I've watched
significant portion of the videos. I like the addition of
super producer Old to the audio. Ben if you could
resurrect the Invisible Man, that would be awesome. The voice
over at least that's a deep cut. Sergeant oh Man,
(26:43):
Oh wow. I I think just people don't know what
the If you've ever seen always study in Philadelphia, you'll
have a good sense of what what our crew looked
like having the wear of that suit. Uh So, Sergeant
lt goes on to say, I've been in the us
R for almost thirteen years. I've been deployed to Iraq
for a total of thirty nine months over three deployments.
(27:06):
I work in computers, not in the public affairs office.
So everything here is my opinion and observations, not of
the army. Drugs are severely frowned upon by the Army
as a whole. Drug tests are common. Positive results for
legal drugs are dealt with harshly, including marijuana were illegal.
If there's no prescription for drug like adderall or morphine
(27:26):
from a doctor within the test period, then legal action
will be taken and they'll probably be separated from the Army.
During the height of the Iraq War, soldiers were less
likely to be kicked out, but we're still punished. I
have never seen nor heard of a prescription that was
not a medical necessity. Alcohol and nicotine and caffeine are
being discouraged by the Army as an institution. Since the
(27:49):
late nineties, the Army had the policy of deglamorizing alcohol
or declamorization of alcohol. Commands can't use alcohol to promoted
events or promote It's the Army Substance Abuse Program as
at can and will help those they are addicted to
drugs or alcohol. Smoking succession classes are offered to anyone
using tobacco products, Caffeine and supplements are being openly discouraged.
(28:15):
The sergeant goes on that being said, army culture is
still quite strong in alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and supplements. Drugs
and alcohol are used to self medicate by some, as
with the general population. Unfortunately, we have deep rooted traditions
evolving alcohol, like the grog. The grog started as a
way that all the soldiers would get their leftover alcohol
(28:36):
and mix it together to celebrate or relax. Now the
grog is a ceremony used to remember past wars and
the fallen at Army balls, sometimes with alcohol and sometimes without.
As you mentioned, nicotine and caffeine are used a lot
for stimulants. So many soldiers low off energy drinks, coffee,
no doughs, and dipped during long missions or shifts. In Iraq,
(28:57):
there was an energy drink with nicotine and a bowl
slushing machine in the p X and Baghdad. Finally, there's
little to offer Jim rats to get them to not
take supplements. I said, sorry for the long email. As
someone who knows some of the stuff they don't want
you to know. Most secret info is really boring. I
don't know if I believe that Sarch Well, I'm not
(29:20):
concerned about most of it then. Yeah, so thank you
so much for for writing and please stay safe, uh,
please stay safe out there. That goes for everybody in
the armed forces who's listening to our podcast, and we've
been getting some really great, great feedback, some great details
(29:40):
about this. The part about a prescription being a medical
necessity reminds me of our earlier email from the psychologists.
Remember that who said that during war times, when you
had to have somebody still pulling a trigger for longer
than nature would inten end, given whatever cocktail you can,
(30:02):
or yeah, give them something. It was it was relatively vague,
but I imagine that there's I imagine there's several different
possibilities there. So we know that you know, we know
that the culture of the U. S. Armed forces is changing.
Uh and in times of great stress, however, people do
(30:25):
still tend to self medicate. And if you haven't listened
to our episode on the history of militaries and drugs,
please do check it out. If you are part of
another country's armed services, we would also like to hear
of your experience with these substances. But for now, that
(30:45):
concludes our gosh 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 to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
(31:08):
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.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com