January 16, 2019 • 55 mins
In an earlier episode, the guys delved into the modern mystery of Genghis Khan's hidden grave, and found he was far from the only famous historical figure lost to secrecy and the inevitable march of time. Travel with the gang as they unravel more stories of humanity's famous lost tombs, hidden corpses and more in the first part of this two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined
with our returning guest super producer Casey the con pegrom
k h A n Yes. Very important. Also, most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Today's episode is a
(00:46):
bit of a rabbit hole for us. I mean every
episode is a bit of a rabbit hole for everyone involved.
But we have a little bit of backstory here. In
a previous episode of this show, we explored this strange,
ongoing and likely doomed quest to find the grave of
Jengis Khan, and we also discovered that is the correct pronunciation, Yes,
(01:11):
Genghis Khan like like Jenga like the game New No. No,
that's Carl Tart. And along the way we learned that
not only is it's nearly impossible for anyone to find
the CON's actual resting place, not only is it maybe
(01:34):
possible that people know where it is and will never
share that information. But we learned a lesson that Matt,
you and I learned years and years ago when we
looked at lost civilizations, and that is that this species
on the whole is just terrible at holding onto or
remembering anything. We've lost the location of tons of other
(01:56):
immensely important historical figures. And sure some times that's through honest,
bone headed mistakes, moments of instability and confusion as empires
rise and fall, and in some other cases it's on purpose,
it's through purposeful obstfucation. But before we explore all the famous,
(02:18):
uh incredibly crucial historical figures who have disappeared from the
modern day, we have to we have to admit that
there's some deceptive number play at work here. When you
think about it, folks, most people's tombs are lost. Over
of people's tums are lost in the big picture. But
(02:40):
what do we mean when we say that here are
the facts. Well, it's a combination of quite a few
different factors. But um, overall, there are two really important
things that um really are stick in the craw of
of of your Laura crofts of the world. Right, Um,
first tombs were expensive and on slee that's not any
(03:01):
different today if you want like a fancy burial or
some kind of mausoleum or a plot. You know, land
is scarce, lots of people die. You know, it's quite
an expense unless you just want to go the cheap route,
and even then you got to pay for a damn urn. Yeah,
funerals are a racket in this I can't recall whether
we've done an episode on this yet, but funerals are
very much I racket, at least in the West. And
(03:23):
you know, if your family is in the funereal business,
I know there's the whole notion that it is a comfort,
it is a service you are providing. That's one way
to look at it. But there is absolutely money to
be made, and people are often kind of swindled into
overpaying for things in memory of their loved one or
in some kind of tribute to them when I don't
(03:43):
know it's it's the old Bernts thing that we talked
about in an episode one. Guys create the need, Yeah,
create the need, and then don't be swayed. As the
consumer or the person going through some kind of traumatic
emotional thing, you can't be swayed by those. Please to
your emotion. So point being this remains true today, but
throughout the course of history, the vast majority of people
were buried in much more modest structures, or in some
(04:08):
cases the body was just burned. That was back when
you could burn your own loved ones. Now you can't
do that anymore, not, I mean, you can't get Yeah,
that's fair, that's fair. That smell really gives it away.
Or there was there were things like sky burial, you
know what I mean, where the funereal process becomes more
important than the you know, the physical resting site and
(04:30):
that kind of coming back. Isn't there such a thing
as like green burials or modern sky burials. I don't
know about modern sky burials, but green burials are definitely huge.
And in our home state of Georgia here in the US,
there is a nearby Catholic monastery that practice that's one
of the only two places I believe in the United
States that practices green burial. And that's a good observation
(04:52):
to know because with green burial, the idea is that
ultimately everything involved in the burial, from the box, to
the to the wrappings around the corpse, to the corpse
itself will just become part of the soil, leave no trace,
no grave site left behind. And that's how many many
(05:13):
people ended their lives, right. They were maybe in some
cultures thrown into the sea, uh wear. In some unfortunate places,
people just rotted where they felt. And as we said
a minute ago, there's also the issue of scarcity of
burial sites because there are just so many people. There
(05:34):
are so many people, especially if we look over the
long term. All right, let's let's do something very cheerful
and dive into some of the death statistics, the statistics
of uh morpidity or fatalities. We were able to find,
in a very rough way, the number of people who
(05:55):
have died ever like not from not from seven teen seventy,
whatever on. But it's up until, it's up until. But
I messed with a math a little got so. According
to the Population Research Bureau, modern Homo sapiens, meaning people
(06:16):
who were more or less like all of us listening now,
are this this hot, new fangled Homo sapien stick walked
the earth about fifty thousand years ago, and since then,
more than one hundred and eight billion members of our
species have been born. That's a rough number because again
(06:39):
we have virtually no demographic data for of the span
of human existence. Thousand years ago. People weren't like, hey,
let's get the tribe together and figure out everybody's average age,
interest and preference for you know, type of food, type
of leisure. Yeah, they weren't so much into analytics back then.
(07:00):
Surprisingly not these days. We can't get enough of them correct,
But we did. We did find a pretty accurate number, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's right. Man. If we do a little simple math,
we can find some astonishing things. So let's take a
fairly accurate number um of people living on the planet today.
(07:21):
That's seven point seven billion. Again, very rough, because longtime listeners,
if you remember an earlier episode, Uh Matt, you actually
pulled up the world population clock and we looked at
how many people were born and died just in the
forty five minutes that we spent doing the episode. I
can't remember the exact number. It was somewhere around ten
(07:42):
thousand that were added while we recorded the episode. Yes,
that's true, that's true. So welcome if you're listening. So
all we have to do is a little bit of subtraction.
Take that seven point seven billion away from the one
eight billion who have ever been born. We arrive at
this number around one hundred billion, three hundred million human
(08:06):
beings that have died on this planet overall, just on
the on in the course of this ugly, brutal thing
called human life on Earth. And so with this in mind,
we can we can easily see that we don't know
where all one hundred billion, three hundred million graves are
(08:27):
right and and many, many, many, many of those people
didn't get a grave at all, you know, like like
you said, no, many were probably burned or disposed of
according to the cultural values or more as of the time.
And when we think about this, it means it's reasonable
to assume that many people got lost in the historical shuffle.
(08:48):
As we said, empires rise, they changed names, um, the
rulers change families, names of cities change. It's Istanbul, not Constantinople.
And that's nobody's business, but it's sort of everybody's, etcetera.
And not for nothing did Shelley write the poem oz Mandius,
(09:08):
which is great, Oh yeah, look look on my works.
He mighty and dispersed all of this sand, look at it. Yes, yeah,
that's that's a poem that I hope is familiar with
a lot of people. Um. It's quoted to great effect
in the Ballad of Buster Scrugs recently debuting on Netflix
(09:30):
in the Super Bummer episode right super Bummer vignette. But
the guy does a great excerpt of it. He really does.
I say this every every time we bring up Azzi Mandius.
He was my grandfather's favorite poem, and he would recite
it all the time because he he was beautifully obsessed
with his own mortality, and he would just constantly talk
(09:50):
about Ozzi Mandius. Were you ever like grandpa? You're kind
of freaking me out. No, it was this, Um, I
don't know. It was a really charming thing about him
in a weird way. Did he have a good voice?
For my grandpa just drank and grunted. Well, perhaps he
was reciting something too in his head. He didn't share
it with me, So we know that. Unfortunately, we're never
(10:15):
going to find the resting place of most people on
the planet. That's that's just the way things have shaken
out for us so far. But what about the people
who were a big deal? This is interesting what you're
saying about your your grandfather having this fascinating obsession with
(10:35):
his own mortality. Because virtually every culture in our history,
in one way or another, venerates the dead. Death is
up there with birth, the one of the huge inexplicable things. Right.
Tons of people personally believe that they know or have
an inkling of what happens, right, and some people agree
(10:57):
and many people don't. But no one has come up
is something that everyone can get on board with. Right.
So it's this mystery. And we do our best to
honor or remember our loved winds or in some cases
and some gory cases, to vilify the people we despise.
(11:18):
And each year hundreds of millions of people make pilgrimages
to one resting place or another. It could be like
Jim Morrison's grave in Europe, right, absolutely, it could be um,
it could be a resting place of of lenin you
know or yeah, And it's usually a famous or powerful
person or a famously powerful person, yes, yes, or powerfully
(11:40):
famous person. So it seems reasonable then that since since
our species pays so much attention to this, it seems
reasonable to assume that we can at least keep track of,
if not everybody, the most important people who ever lived. Right,
you think of course no, it turns out no, okay.
(12:05):
End of show. Well will tell you why this is
the case. After a word from our sponsors. Here's where
it gets crazy. Not not even counting the normal people
like like you and I, like everybody who's ever lived,
(12:29):
the normal people, right right, We have lost tons and
tons and tons of incredibly influential historical figures over the ages.
We can divvy it up into a couple of rough
category spoiler alert. We do not have the wherewithal to
go into every single famous person who has disappeared or
(12:52):
been hidden from history, but we can. We can touch
on some interesting stories that are not Jengis Khan. Uh.
We've got stories of misplay, east corpses, stories of rumored
burial sites and these are old, old rumors too, as
we'll find. And then we also have stories of people
who were purposefully buried in secret. So let's get let's
(13:14):
get it started with old Alexander the Great. Let's get
it started, didn't you? Yep, Alexander the third of Macedon?
Is that correct? Great? Is that a different way of
saying Macedonia? It became Macedon, It was one of the
world's Uh. This this gentleman was one of the world's
greatest military minds. We've probably heard of him just from
(13:36):
classes way way back in the day. Maybe you're in
one right now listening to this. If so, shame on
you put your phone away, not to be confessed with
our amazing cohort alex the Great. Yeah. Correct, But in
this gentleman Alexander the Third's short life, he established the
largest empire the ancient world had ever seen up to
that point, and I lasted that way for a while.
(13:59):
It was the Great Empire. Yeah, it's so weird. Would
you read about these people? His his moniker is not ironic.
He was Alexander the Great. It was not like a
little john name. And I think about conquerors like this
every time I do something really dumb, like this guy
was died in his thirties, took over most of the
(14:20):
known world at the time, and two weeks ago I
fell asleep trying to put on a pair of pants.
You know what I mean. It makes you think it really,
it really really does you know? I just recently learned,
you know how much I love acronyms. Goat greatest of
all time? So he could have been alex he's the
original goat. Alexander the Goat, That's what I'm gonna call him.
This is it, This is it. Well, here's the thing.
(14:42):
Alexander the Great was just a regular old guy doing
all this conquering with his giant armies, you know, his
numerous giant armies that roamed the planet. Died feeling like
a failure, even though he did name a city after himself.
Just goes to show, just goes to show. We all
have him ster syndrome, all of us. No matter no
(15:03):
matter what you know, no matter how much you achieve,
how much you conquer, it's never enough unless you get
right with yourself and love yourself. And so far everybody
has died no matter no matter what they do. It
turns out life as a terminal condition. Except for that
one guy. You remember. That's a different episode years ago
or so. You remember talking about one guy. I can't
(15:27):
remember his name, all right, So oh and Henriette alas Ah,
there you go. Immortality via cancer cells. Okay, So here's
here's one of the big things. It's not exactly known,
or at least as debated, how he died, but it
is known when he died. Yeah, yeah, three three BC
(15:48):
and Babylon. But but you're raising an interesting point. Man.
We we don't know too much about how we died.
Was it malaria? Was it poisoning? Was it West Nile virus? Uh?
There's a somewhat idealized, romanticized account that says he died
of heartbreak. Oh my gosh, that's not a thing. People
(16:11):
have died of heartbreak. They need to suck it up
and you know, start going to the gem. You know,
you've got all this advice for these agent people really
do in this time, in this time in human civilization,
just surviving was like being at the gym all. But
that's what I'm saying, though, Like, you know, with everything
(16:31):
that they was getting thrown at you, how are you
going to die of a broken heart? That just sounds
like giving up to That's surprisingly cold. Man. Hey, listen,
I've been through the ringer this year, okay, last year? Yeah, okay,
I see, I see what you have come out the
other side though the year knew me. What's that quote?
Be kind while everyone is facing I'll do it again,
be kind for everyone is facing a great battle. It's
(16:54):
one of Chuck Bryant's favorite quotes. Actually, that's a good point.
It's also one of those things about being It's like
you could rephrase that to be be nice to the
person everyone you meet, because they could be dealing with
something that you do not know about. Yeah, or you
know the golden rule. Just treat him like you want
to be treated. So what happens? So okay, So there's
(17:16):
this idea debatable, probably not true, that he died of
good old fashioned grief over the death of his best
friend hefesion. I don't know. I heard via the internet
that the age is silent, but I am no uh
helfestian Festian expert. So so what what happens? Though, like I,
(17:37):
regardless of how he dies, he dies around three beats CE.
So what happens after that? Well, I mean his corpse.
He's the guy that conquered most of the world, at
least in the known the known world, as we said,
and his body is going to be venerated in some way,
in probably some you know, um grandiose fashion. That's just
(17:59):
what's gonna happen. No matter what. His body is going
to be an artifact for for what comes after him
now that the leader is dead, because there's gonna be
a power struggle, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, because in this
case his body becomes a symbol. In some ways, possessing
his body gives an implicit endorsement of your right to rule,
(18:26):
almost like oh, that is so strange, treating it almost
as an error in a way, or being an heir
to it because you have it. Yeah, yeah, possession being
nine tenths of the law and so on. So first,
his body's mummified and for two years it lay in
state in a golden sarcophagus, and eventually the people are
(18:47):
finding about where he should be placed, where he should
be buried, make a decision, and they decide to bury
him in Greece, in the first capital of the Macedonian kings,
whoa in a place called gay And again the Internet says,
I should pronounced it that way. It's spelled a e g. A.
(19:07):
We're just going with it. But but the plan goes arise,
isn't they correct? Oh? Yeah, According to ancient sources, his
his hearse that was actually you know, his body was
traveling in was hijacked of all things, near Damascus, and
his corpse was taken to Egypt and it was first
(19:28):
sure or I guess it was first taken to Memphis
in Egypt, uh not to not the home of the
other king right way before Elvis, and then from there
things start to get fuzzy. Sometime between two eight three
b c E. His body is taken to Alexandria, the
(19:50):
city we mentioned earlier that he founded and named after himself,
and then from there he gets disinterred and put in
at least two other places, the most famous being a
mausolim called the Soma. The soma, which I believe is
a isn't that an herb that kind of makes you sleepy?
And I think there's a psycho antipsychotic medication called Soma,
(20:13):
or at least it's some kind of um valli um
esque type drug. It's a drug in Brave New World.
By all this hucks, and that's exactly what I was thinking.
Maybe it's not even real. I wonder if the real
drug was named after the drug in Huxley, because there
really is a drug called soma. I think the real
drug is a muscle relaxer. I think you want to say,
I've been prescribed it before but didn't take it. It's
(20:35):
also it's also a wonderful, wonderful I like, I like
using this word for this horror game, like a psychological
horror game. It's also a quite good Smashing Pumpkins song
from before Billy Corgan lost his damn mind. The is
a brand name of a real drug. It's Karas Soper Doll.
That's the one that is the one to all that
(20:58):
aside drugs, smashing Pumpkins imaginary drugs. Um. This is where
in this mausoleum, the soma, the looting began as his
want to happen with Graves. It's basically like a big
old target in the ground saying, hey, free stuff if
you want to get your hands dirty and possibly your soul. Yeah. Well,
(21:19):
and you know, Alexander found himself for his body at
least inside a giant golden sarcophagus I believe we mentioned
are in conspicuous. Yeah, and what do you do when
you have a giant thing made out of gold? Melt
it down? Of course you do. And that happened, but
it got replaced with like a glass sarcophagus, or at
(21:40):
least a glass container or some kind of crystalline container,
which is fascinating to me. Um. I really would have
liked to have seen that. Yeah, it's it's strange because
you have to wonder did they decide did they decide
that gold being you know, a currency at times they
(22:01):
decide that was just asking for trouble to make another
golden thing. And they decided, well, glass is nice, and
glass and crystal are expensive, but no one will steal
it to try to pay for things that I mean,
that makes a lot of sense. And also, you know,
whoever is running the show, now, you need a lot
of gold and money to to pay for all the
war that you're waging because we're empire building here people. Yeah,
(22:24):
I mean, it's not cheap. It's game on. Even Cleopatra,
who don't worry, shows up later in this story, took
gold from this tomb to pay for her war against Octavian.
There you go, and then things continue to get worse,
which is kind of the story of humanity. Oh man,
no question about it. In three six h there were
a series of unfortunate events that included warfare, rioting, an earthquake,
(22:49):
a tsunami. All of this threatened or possibly even destroyed
the tomb um. By the time St. John Chrysostom visited
in four CE, the two whom was lost and ever
since then, no one has been able to find the
resting place of one of history's greatest conquerors, and Alexander
(23:10):
the Great, which is just out there somewhere. His remains
exist because it takes a long time for bones and
in the human body to break down, it's there. Traces
of him may well be somewhere in some form right,
but he is now also it's fair to call him
Alexander the lost. Searches continue for his his remains or
(23:35):
his tomb to date, but no one has found it.
One thing we can say, and I don't want to
sound too cynical about this, is that this this makes
a lot of careers. The search for these sorts of
lost sites can literally change the course of human history.
(23:56):
And so as we're speaking, if you're if you're an archaeo,
pologists or a budding archaeologist researching this or something like this,
we want to hear from you. Let us know what
your search, your particular searches, and let us know what
um what you think your fellow listeners would be surprised
to learn about it. In the meantime, that's fast forward.
(24:18):
I just were right here before we get into it,
I watched a movie with my wife last night, and
I couldn't tell you the name of it right now.
It just showed up on one of the streaming sites
and she had wanted to see it. It's all about
this woman who goes back to college with her daughter
to become an archaeologist, and I just happened. I had
no idea that that was the plot. Is it a
fartwarming rom com? Yeah, I guess it's kind of that,
(24:41):
but a psychological thriller. No. I couldn't even tell you
who's in it or what what it was. It was
called bleep. It was not for Bucks. Oh, I can't believe.
I can't even think of it right now. Is it
police Academy for That's what it was. Anyway, it just
happened to have an archaeologist archaeolog g B plotline that
(25:02):
may be very happy. It's fascinating. I have a subscription
to Archaeology magazine. Well, okay, look, I mind it for
possible episodes in the future. I'm just gonna be honest.
I inexplicably have a subscription to maxim. It just started coming.
I can't get it to stop. I think that's something
that happens in the magazine industry that I'd love to
look into because I had a former girlfriend who inexplicably
(25:26):
began receiving a subscription to Muhair magazine. And Muhair magazine
is a lifestyle fashion interest thing for the Latino population
in the US and North America, I guess. And we
couldn't get them to stop sending it. Like I emailed them,
(25:47):
I sent an actual letter and they still kept sending Muhair. Wow.
As far as I know, you know, the my x
and now are on good terms, so I could probably
write to an ask her she it'd still be getting
Muhir like they locked it down. There was no way out,
Like she's moved three times, still follows her wherever she goes. Yeah,
(26:08):
we have that with Rolling Stones. Somehow my wife still
gets Rolling Stone sent to our house. We have not
paid for that. And I don't even know how long
we should look into this. This is actually I think
we might have just uncovered a new conspiracy. Is it
worth sending us these magazines for the advertising that we
are potentially looking at that just just just just aclaim circulation,
(26:28):
just to boost numbers. That's fine, I'm fine. I love magazines.
They canceled a lot of subscriptions because we received them
here at work and read a ton of them. But uh,
but anyway, yeah, but anyway that that may well be
a future episode. Tell us about the magazine subscriptions that
you are non consensually receiving and and I we'll hatch
(26:50):
this conspiracy with you if you need it. It's a
bit unethical, but if you have a subscription that you
want people to think you are non consensually receiving, right
to us, and we will totally pretend that you are
non consentually receiving it beautiful. Someone's like, no, I hate
uh Horseback Monthly. So it's there's so many weird magazines. Yeah, gosh,
(27:13):
well okay, yeah, we're gonna do an episode on that.
Let's let's let's definitely do that. And let's also jump
forward to a really cool figure in history, Mr Thomas Paine. Yes,
let's bring the pain, Matt. What's what's the gist about
this guy? Well, he's a he's an Englishman, an England
born political philosopher. He's a writer. You certainly have heard
(27:34):
about him. He supported the revolutionary causes in both America
and in Europe. He's perhaps best known for the old
seventeen seventies six essay Common Sense, along with other works
such as The American Crisis, Rights of Man and the
Age of Reason, which is a really great read. Actually,
and I didn't expect it to be when I when
(27:55):
I cracked that thing open, it's very readable. It's it's
it's strange because I think we sometimes have a stereotype
about things written in English in that period of time
where they're going to be dry and every sentence is
going to be three paragraphs long. Yes, and you're not
gonna understand most of it. Largely responsible for the philosophy
behind Enlightenment thinking. And also are our monument buddies, the
(28:18):
Georgia Guides Noose, yes exactly. Pain influence on those those
guys huge, they were huge. End of the pain. That
is a weird mixed accent. And again my grandfather. The
reason why I read it is because my grandfather, old Papa,
brought it, brought it to my attention. It's a it's
a good read, you know, and I know I know
these the idea there are certain trigger words people here
(28:40):
that make them not want to read things. One of
those is essay. The other is you know the reason rights.
But but he was writing to communicate with the common people,
you know what I mean. He wasn't trying to do
fancy acts of rhetorical gymnastics or acrobatics. But eventually, despite
(29:02):
all the great things that he did, he also spoiler
alert died. Man. I was hoping it was going to
go the other way. He's outside of the studio right now, Matt,
waiting to talk to you. I only wish about his
multi level marketing scheme. Oh god, it's kind of a
new Central Oils again paint. Uh. So. He died on
(29:24):
June eighteen o nine in New York City, and today
he is the only founding father that does not have
an official grave site that you can go and visit.
There Isn't that crazy? I'm so surprised. Why, let's talk
about what happened. Let's so. He was first buried in
(29:45):
New Rochelle, New York, on his farm after the Quakers
refused him, in a town that was very, very hostile
towards this man. Yeah, because he criticized the Quakers during
his lifetime for their pacifism and for some of their
other political beliefs. That's right, And in eighteen nineteen, a
(30:06):
Pain admirer named William Cobbett, himself a Democrat, a democratic
advocate rather from England, saw the disrespect that Pain received
where he was buried, and decided to dig him up.
Took it upon himself to dig the man up. Just
grab the shovel, grabbed a shovel, heart one, that's true, uh,
and to take him to England where he would be
(30:28):
treated with more respect um. And he wanted to help
spur the movement for democracy there, so I guess he
saw this as sort of a symbolic act. Yeah, again,
using a dead body for almost a for definitely a
political reason and did it work. Not really, There's still
a monarchy in that area of the world. There's a parliament, Yeah,
(30:49):
house of lords in a House of Commons. That should
tell you what you need to know. Well, here in
the States we basically just have two houses of lords.
So at least I don't know, I don't know. This
isn't that kind of the same thing. The representatives representative people,
which would be the Commons, and then the senators are
more like the lord's. The senators on paper also supposed
to represent the people. Psych So over the years Pain's
(31:14):
body was was divided, it was split, the bones were
circulated across the planet. People were making relics of his remains,
and now we have we we don't know where the
bones are. We don't know where pieces of this guy's
(31:34):
body are. There's a Thomas Pain foundation that has some
of his hair and a bit of his brain. They
admit to owning that. But there were unverified rumors that
some of Thomas Paine's bones were cut into get this
guy's buttons and sold to finance the revolution. But the
thing is kind of like in the Middle Ages when
(31:55):
people would unscrupulously sell, you know, slivers of the Jesus
the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. There are
enough slivers of that stuff to make a forest essentially,
where it's like those Passion of the Christ necklaces. Oh yeah,
or any and all holy water ever, well, holy water,
(32:15):
you can you could just make holy water. That's what
I'm saying, was was you we were having I was
having this conversation with somebody about hunting vampires. In vampire films,
there's almost always a priest right, and the priest has
the ability to bless water, making it holy and therefore, uh,
dangerous for vampires. Why don't they just like bless a
(32:38):
water treatment system or like a storm or something. Well, yeah,
how does it work to start getting buckets? Well, anyway, there,
there you go, vampire producers who check out our show.
And now that now that the Universal Life Church of
California exists, literally all of us have a massive defense
(32:59):
of it against empires because we can just get ordained
with in a few minutes. Isn't that where your ordination
and me as well? Exactly the only one is not ordained. Yes,
we've talked about this. Let on this train, but I
guess I gotta get on the ordained train casey is ordained.
Look at him, he's in he's in three or four
different sects that he's a minister for. And I think
a priest, a priestess, and what was the other thing,
(33:22):
um a shaman. He's a major. Are you making this up? Yes? Yes? Yes?
Uh so, So back to this idea of counterfeiting relics
very common in ancient days and surprisingly common still in
the eighteen hundreds, there were more buttons that were purportedly
(33:44):
Thomas Paine's bones that were sold than could have come
from ten bodies. You could you could build a jam
band off the amount of buttons sold, well, the skeletons
of a jam band. Yeah, what it makes you wonder
who else was in that jam band that ended up
as a Thomas Pain button. Yes, these are also the
(34:05):
days of resurrection, then, weren't they. Do you think that
any of those are still around and they're confirmed to
be Pain buttons around? Yes? Confirmed? No, because how could you?
Well you could there there are there are some forms
of testing could do to verify it, because there are
rumors of a leg bone hanging in a wall of
a tavern in England, and then there are other place
(34:27):
that would be Thomas Paine. Right, that's a large enough
sample where you could try to do some investigatory thing.
You could probably at least narrow down the time frame
and the region. Was that kind of what you're saying, right,
You could you could do some analyses that would indicate
that there are also some pieces that were claimed in Europe.
It's possible that the skull has been located in Wales
and then later moved to Australia, but to the point,
(34:51):
no testing is confirmed this and today it seems that
Pain's remains are largely scattered amidst various grizzly collections and
some unscrupulous private collectors. There are more of these people
than you think. My friends have likely have pieces of
Thomas Paine held in a secret collection today, sort of
(35:12):
the way that particular secret society here in the United
States collects skulls. That is wow, creatively named the Skull
and Bones. By the way, that's who we're talking about. Yeah,
that is true. Just sitting there, do you think maybe
they haven't. I don't know. I don't know, but you
know what, honestly, I would not be that surprised if
(35:33):
they had a piece of it. It would make so
much sense. Oh yeah, that's Yale. Oh dude, they totally
have something in there. Hey. By the way, three and me,
if you're listening, just whoever you are, I saw this news.
Just go ahead and just get on there and just
start just testing them bones especially go to the Skull
and Bones first. Oh, I thought you were talking about
(35:54):
the twenty three and me news that just came out. Okay,
super due there could we get a breaking news sound cue?
So twenty three and Me has teamed up with a
drug manufacturer pharmaceutical giant named Glaxo like Smith Klein. Uh huh,
(36:16):
Glaxo Smith Klein. They're giving the they're giving away the
DNA test results of the five million something customers of
twenty three and me what Claxus Smith Climb will use
this data to create research and create new drugs. I'm sorry,
I'm sorry called it, called it. He said it was
(36:39):
going to happen. Oh my god, I gotta tell Jason,
our executive producer, because he totally just did that. Well,
go ahead and preemptively thank him for possibly contributing to
important medical research. There you go, there you go against
his Well well, I mean, yeah, he clicked the terms
(36:59):
of serve us. You know, once you do that, it's
like you don't know what's going to happen. It's that
told us. They told us in their offices they wouldn't
do this. So should we take a little break before
we get to rumored burial places. Sounds good. Let's do
it and we are back, as Matt would say, with
(37:22):
no delay. He said it once and I was taken
by it. I don't know what it means, but I
like it very much. Yeah, you can hear this is
a very dry track. There aren't a lot of effects
on it. That's right, definitely, no delay. No delay. Also
it means that we're getting right to it. Rumored burial
places number one with a bullet on the list. The
Queen Nefertiti of ancient Egypt. She was a queen of Egypt,
(37:47):
the wife of the pharaoh Akanatan, who ruled in the
mid fourteenth century b c. E um So before Nefertiti,
Nakanat in Egypt had been a polytheistic civilization, worshiping entire
pantheon of anthropomorphic animal deities, ranging from the crocodile god
so Beek, who was depicted often as a man with
(38:08):
the head of a crocodile, a staff in one hand
and an onc that Egyptian symbol a little loop with
the cross through it um in the other, and with
a weirdly a giant golden temple um acting as some
sort of larger than life crown sitting atop his scaly
head um. And then you had like God's like a Nubis,
who has depicted the god of the Dead, who was
depicted very much the same way as Sobek, was only
(38:31):
with the head of a jackal and a last no
golden temple headpiece. Yeah, I love I love the idea
of all the gods being a person with a different
animal head. That is really I actually really like that.
But here's the thing, um aka Natan and his queen
thought this whole worshiping multiple animal headed gods was for
the literal birds, not not to be confused with the
(38:52):
ibis headed god of wisdom. Thought, which is so fun
to say. Thought. It's since I got a th h
on the front end and a t h on the
back end. Man, I love that. Uh, I really do
like EBIs or what is it? Thought is the god?
I've seen that in so many different places. Um anyway,
the fair thought would be a good, better idea at
(39:12):
least to stick with. Just let's call it one god.
This will be easier. We can all, you know, know
that there's one singular force that we can worship. Let's say,
let's say the Sun, that giant orange thing that just
shoots light at us all the time and it makes
us warm and happy. That's a good thing to worship.
Let's do that, it seems legiti. It's important to note
(39:35):
that the sun disc also known as Aton, had already
held a place in ancient Egyptian religion and the state's
way back to the Old Kingdom, where it was worshiped
as an aspect of the composite god raw am on
the Horace. And this is not to get too into
the weeds about it, but raw represents the daytime son
(39:57):
am On, the son of the underworld horace of course,
the eising son. I love the idea of a composite god.
That is so cool to me. It's really common in
the ancient world. Yeah, yeah, but it's something we don't
really think about everything. Every god is kind of their
own thing. Although it is kind of similar to the Trinity,
like the Holy Trinity. Right, Monotheism, that's they didn't make
that up out of whole cloth, right, Monotheism being exactly
(40:19):
where we're heading. Right, So this is this is this
is backstory that we promise will deliver. So what what
happens next? Because you have to know this stuff about
polytheism and monotheism, right. Akanatan and Neffertidi attempted with all
their might to obliterate all traces of We're gonna go
Game of Throne style and call them the old gods
(40:41):
by defacing carvings temples, hieroglyphics that depicted them, and you know,
this didn't go over so well with you know, the
general public that had been worshiping these gods for so long,
that's right, And and neither did it last particularly long,
right then, that's right, it did not. It did not.
(41:02):
It wasn't as unsuccessful as uh New Coke when that
came out, but it was it was still pretty No,
it was actually way worse than New Coke because I
believe that acanat in rain for seventeen years um, and
this whole worshiping the sun god business came in about
(41:23):
three or four years into his reign, so that's kind
of a blip in ancient Egyptian history, right, And the
people who came after Aknatan did their best to erase
him and Nefertiti herself from official history. And this this
is important. So we don't talk about this as much
(41:47):
as we should in the modern day. But it is
true that the victors, right the history textbooks you read,
and they are the ones who tell the stories of
events in the past. And it is at least back then,
it was alarmingly easy to erase people from history, and
Stalin did it. Uh during his reign. These subsequent pharaohs
(42:09):
did it as well, and you can see why they
did it, whether or not you agree with them, it
is true that this could pose a clear and present
danger to their own legitimacy, you know. And uh Neffertidi
went right along with this whole deal, because she actually
disappeared from the historical record before her husband did um
about twelve years into his reign, So it's possible that
(42:30):
she might have died. There was a plague, as we know,
that swept through Egypt around this time UM, but there
are some Egyptologists who believed that she was actually elevated
to co regent and changed her name therefore kind of
slipped out of the historical record into a new role. Um.
And then the name Nefertidi disappeared, and she was named
something that sounded remarkably like Neffertidi. I can't remember exactly
(42:52):
what it was, but it was sort of a it
was almost like a permutation of the name nefertid Um.
And the thing is too, in a lot of the
historical record, or a lot of the depictions of she
and her husband, they were very much on the same level.
She already had a lot of power even before this
possible elevation to literal co region like vice president or
(43:12):
really I think a co region would be like co ruler. Right,
So that's one possibility, But there's more. Many archaeologists believe
that she could have been buried uh in one of
the tombs of what's now called Amarna, which was a
new capital city that Akanatan built during his reign. Whoa right, Yeah,
(43:37):
these tombs were plundered after as death, so it is
possible that never t t could have been reburied in
the Valley of Kings. The thing is, people will tell
you that, no matter how much animosity there was of
for her and her husband, no pharaoh would normally deny
(43:58):
a former ruler the burial accorded to their station, even
even somebody that everybody hated, Like I cannot And here's
something that we I don't think we've even mentioned this yet.
She had a very important step son. You may know him,
Tuting Common Tuting Common, Yes, the old king Tutt that
we have discussed and before on this show about the
(44:19):
curse that existed for his tomb. Oh yeah, and I
think in breeding was the curse of his lifetime. Have
you seen the forensic analysis. Also, I like to think
of him as the originator of the phrase tut tut.
There you go. I'm a big fan like I like
the single tut that you do. Ben said, that's so
that's very touch Yes, it is when something is very tough. Yeah,
(44:42):
when something's touch well. And the idea that she had
such a famous and powerful son in law that perhaps
her body was actually you know, put in his tomb somewhere.
That's right. Not to mention the fact that he took
over after his father in law died, and he is
also the one um that pretty much instantly started the
(45:02):
process of going back, taking Egypt back to the old
polytheistic ways and refurbishing all of those desecrated sites and
monuments and hieroglyphs and all of that business. But yes,
you're absolutely right, this theory that um Nefertiti's body was
possibly buried in her son in law's tomb. There's one
part of it that is super interesting, is this idea
that that tomb may have actually been meant for Nefertidi
(45:25):
in the first place. But that Tuton Common died unexpectedly
quite young, the boy king, right, because one piece of
evidence behind this, it's all. It seems a little conjecture,
but it's that it was a much smaller tomb than
some of the other ones, and that if it was
for a woman, they might have considered it diminutive less
then so they might have made it smaller. But you
could also argue that it was for a boy um,
(45:46):
and that you could say the same thing in that respect.
But here's the thing. This theory was put forth by
an Egyptologist named Nicholas Reeve, who's the director of the
Amarna Royal Tombs Project. Um. He commissioned some radar scans
of the site of Tuton Commons tomb um, and they
supposedly showed evidence of two secret chambers, complete with masonry
(46:07):
walls and quote metallic and organic substances. But there are
other experts who aren't so sure that this was definitive
of what he wanted it to be. Kind of yeah,
And then of course, as soon as the theory like
that comes along, you've got somebody else who comes along
and says, well, I'm gonna do some scans, and we're
gonna or we're at least gonna relook at the scans
(46:29):
that we're done. See what we have here and according
to you know, this other group of scientists in this case,
it's Lawrence Conyers who's at the University of Denver. He
he's an anthropology professor. By the way, he's looking at
these scans and he's saying it quote, it does not
appear that these GPR ground penetrating radar data have been
(46:50):
processed or that any of the so called anomalies are
visible in the raw data that are provided. This guy,
by the way, I saw this in every thing that cided.
This dude, he wrote the book on ground penetrating radar.
There you go. It's gonna make a joke about penetrating
the ground via the that old poet laureate of the West.
(47:10):
But we'll go back to um. Let's go back to
the quote he says. My suggestion to those who are
collecting it is that they released the raw data, the
raw data for some peer review by other GPR people
before they allow the antiquities people to hold a press
conference about all the riches that might be in these
supposed tombs. That peer review would cut down all the
(47:30):
speculation and critiques that have been going on around the
email for the last few days. As there might be,
as there might be as many scientists who could reach
a consensus in advance of the speculation in the press.
This was in two thousand and sixteen. By the way,
I was not able to find any um more recent
updates to this, But in two thousand sixteen, Egypt's Antiquities
Ministry refused to follow Knyer's advice or acknowledge another series
(47:54):
of scans that were carried out by National Geographic Or
with their assistants saying they would independently has the site. Instead,
UM Reeve and his co author were allowed to present
their findings unchallenged UM within the Egyptology community in Egypt.
So I don't know, Ben, we were talking about this
(48:14):
off air like it seems like the ministry here is
protecting there like what to tourism kind of booned this
could produce. I'm confused as to why they would be
so secretive or not allow other perspectives in this in
this discussion. Could it be grant money coming in from
NGOs or some other thing. It could be grant money,
(48:35):
It could be a U n s Go thing, It
could be it could be any number of things. We
do know that in some cases, UH state. Organizations like
this are incentivized or incentive, depending on which word you prefer,
to preserve a certain status quo. It happens, um It
(48:57):
happens as well in Central America and Mexico, where in
some cases some countries don't want lost sight to be
found because then they are responsible for restoring and maintaining it.
It also could, and this is somewhat depressing, it could
just be a matter of corruption. They may have just
not greased the right poems yet, but they did allow
(49:21):
him to like they just didn't respond, right, Yeah, No,
I mean they they definitely did. It wasn't even the
father of GPR or whatever. He's he was just kind
of weighing in on this, And I think he was
even quoted at another time saying he was considering going
and conducting some tests himself, but he's glad he didn't
because the whole thing seems like a real debacle, and
(49:43):
you know, didn't want to fly halfway around the world
to be part of this kind of total ship show.
Now I know that as of twenty eighteen, professors were
still fighting over a three D image that was constructed
of someone who was presented as Neffert d a thirty
(50:03):
four hundred year old mummy that was identified as the
younger lady, but that was discovered back in and then
TV producers got ahold of it. So yeah, so I
drama trusted well. Point being is this is still a
hotly contested issue, and um, I think the backstory of
this whole Neffert t d akanat In situation is really
(50:25):
interesting and kind of points to, uh, how history can
kind of obscure the truth, you know, based on ideological disagreements.
And although you didn't hear it through the magic of editing,
we just had a break off air ourselves. And we
hope that you are enjoying this episode. Because time got
(50:48):
a little bit ahead of us, we have more famous tombs,
but we are going to have to save those for
another day. The second part of what has become a
two part episode. We will rejoin you next time as
we stay in Egypt and travel further throughout the ancient
and not so ancient world. In the meantime, we have
(51:12):
to ask, while you're way on part two, what benefits
do you see these searches having for modern civilization? You
know some people, oddly enough, I don't know about you guys.
But this surprised me. Some people have argued, in a
very utilitarian way, we should just let the past die
and focus on the future. Why I spend hundreds of
thousands or millions of dollars finding these long gone, long
(51:34):
neglected tombs when there are people starving, you know what
I mean? In the real world. Should we spend that
money saving the people who are alive instead of finding
the venerated corpses of people who have died, or you know,
spend it on sending us all the mars? There we go,
there we go? Uh? In case Ellan is tuning in
and its Secondly, do you think it's possible that someone
(51:55):
alive today might know the location of one of these
graves or some of these remain and if so, why
would they continue to keep it a secret? Yeah? And
have you ever come across bones that are purportedly from
Thomas Paine? We want to know about it. Tell us
about your buttons. Don't send it to twenty three and me,
I guess, but you know, maybe send it to one
of the other ones. You think ancestry is clean so far,
(52:18):
I think it's an inevitable situation. Well send it somewhere
I also don't think it's necessarily bad. I mean, what
do you guys think? This is valuable stuff? And we
have episodes about that. You can find them all on
our website stuff they don't want you to know, dot
com or wherever you find your favorite podcast, and you
can send us the answers to those questions via. I mean,
(52:42):
we're we're all over the social meds right on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
Social m E A d S Social meds, Yes, social
meds ales and I P a S Yes. As you said,
conspiracy stuff on most conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. If
you want to, maybe there's all those ways you can
get ahold of us. Check out Here's where it gets crazy.
(53:04):
That's our face one of our Facebook pages. It's our
I guess more of our member group that you have
to join. The only thing you have to know to
get in is our names. And it is so surprising
how many people get it so wrong when trying to
join that page. I don't know about you, Matt, but
I really enjoy the thing is like, the question is
(53:24):
can you name the host of this show? You know,
Ben Matt Noel, super producer, Paul or Casey. Thanks for
coming by. The way casey. We also just for peek
behind the curtain. Uh if we think the answer is
funny enough, if we actually laugh, we'll be like, oh
go come on, let him in. Yeah, if we can
(53:46):
tell it's an inside joke or something that, we're like, okay,
they know what's going on. What are some of the
weird nicknames you guys saw? Mostly what I see is
just strange pronunciations or writings of Noel's name, just really
interesting and O A L N O L E and
you U L I think I like that. That was like,
that's a good one. There was also k N O
(54:08):
W L. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite things,
I think. And uh so you can join the conversation
with us, most importantly with your fellow listeners and we
we we dropped by there too. Oh yeah. And if
you don't want to do that stuff, give us a
call one eight three three s T d W y
(54:30):
t K. That's one eight three three stuff they don't
want you to know, by the way, And there are
numbers there. You just dial them and you'll, you know,
leave a message if you'd like, and you make it
on the air. If you don't want to do any
of that. The one thing you can do is send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com.
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. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined
with our returning guest super producer Casey the con pegrom
k h A n Yes. Very important. Also, most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Today's episode is a
(00:46):
bit of a rabbit hole for us. I mean every
episode is a bit of a rabbit hole for everyone involved.
But we have a little bit of backstory here. In
a previous episode of this show, we explored this strange,
ongoing and likely doomed quest to find the grave of
Jengis Khan, and we also discovered that is the correct pronunciation, Yes,
(01:11):
Genghis Khan like like Jenga like the game New No. No,
that's Carl Tart. And along the way we learned that
not only is it's nearly impossible for anyone to find
the CON's actual resting place, not only is it maybe
(01:34):
possible that people know where it is and will never
share that information. But we learned a lesson that Matt,
you and I learned years and years ago when we
looked at lost civilizations, and that is that this species
on the whole is just terrible at holding onto or
remembering anything. We've lost the location of tons of other
(01:56):
immensely important historical figures. And sure some times that's through honest,
bone headed mistakes, moments of instability and confusion as empires
rise and fall, and in some other cases it's on purpose,
it's through purposeful obstfucation. But before we explore all the famous,
(02:18):
uh incredibly crucial historical figures who have disappeared from the
modern day, we have to we have to admit that
there's some deceptive number play at work here. When you
think about it, folks, most people's tombs are lost. Over
of people's tums are lost in the big picture. But
(02:40):
what do we mean when we say that here are
the facts. Well, it's a combination of quite a few
different factors. But um, overall, there are two really important
things that um really are stick in the craw of
of of your Laura crofts of the world. Right, Um,
first tombs were expensive and on slee that's not any
(03:01):
different today if you want like a fancy burial or
some kind of mausoleum or a plot. You know, land
is scarce, lots of people die. You know, it's quite
an expense unless you just want to go the cheap route,
and even then you got to pay for a damn urn. Yeah,
funerals are a racket in this I can't recall whether
we've done an episode on this yet, but funerals are
very much I racket, at least in the West. And
(03:23):
you know, if your family is in the funereal business,
I know there's the whole notion that it is a comfort,
it is a service you are providing. That's one way
to look at it. But there is absolutely money to
be made, and people are often kind of swindled into
overpaying for things in memory of their loved one or
in some kind of tribute to them when I don't
(03:43):
know it's it's the old Bernts thing that we talked
about in an episode one. Guys create the need, Yeah,
create the need, and then don't be swayed. As the
consumer or the person going through some kind of traumatic
emotional thing, you can't be swayed by those. Please to
your emotion. So point being this remains true today, but
throughout the course of history, the vast majority of people
were buried in much more modest structures, or in some
(04:08):
cases the body was just burned. That was back when
you could burn your own loved ones. Now you can't
do that anymore, not, I mean, you can't get Yeah,
that's fair, that's fair. That smell really gives it away.
Or there was there were things like sky burial, you
know what I mean, where the funereal process becomes more
important than the you know, the physical resting site and
(04:30):
that kind of coming back. Isn't there such a thing
as like green burials or modern sky burials. I don't
know about modern sky burials, but green burials are definitely huge.
And in our home state of Georgia here in the US,
there is a nearby Catholic monastery that practice that's one
of the only two places I believe in the United
States that practices green burial. And that's a good observation
(04:52):
to know because with green burial, the idea is that
ultimately everything involved in the burial, from the box, to
the to the wrappings around the corpse, to the corpse
itself will just become part of the soil, leave no trace,
no grave site left behind. And that's how many many
(05:13):
people ended their lives, right. They were maybe in some
cultures thrown into the sea, uh wear. In some unfortunate places,
people just rotted where they felt. And as we said
a minute ago, there's also the issue of scarcity of
burial sites because there are just so many people. There
(05:34):
are so many people, especially if we look over the
long term. All right, let's let's do something very cheerful
and dive into some of the death statistics, the statistics
of uh morpidity or fatalities. We were able to find,
in a very rough way, the number of people who
(05:55):
have died ever like not from not from seven teen seventy,
whatever on. But it's up until, it's up until. But
I messed with a math a little got so. According
to the Population Research Bureau, modern Homo sapiens, meaning people
(06:16):
who were more or less like all of us listening now,
are this this hot, new fangled Homo sapien stick walked
the earth about fifty thousand years ago, and since then,
more than one hundred and eight billion members of our
species have been born. That's a rough number because again
(06:39):
we have virtually no demographic data for of the span
of human existence. Thousand years ago. People weren't like, hey,
let's get the tribe together and figure out everybody's average age,
interest and preference for you know, type of food, type
of leisure. Yeah, they weren't so much into analytics back then.
(07:00):
Surprisingly not these days. We can't get enough of them correct,
But we did. We did find a pretty accurate number, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's right. Man. If we do a little simple math,
we can find some astonishing things. So let's take a
fairly accurate number um of people living on the planet today.
(07:21):
That's seven point seven billion. Again, very rough, because longtime listeners,
if you remember an earlier episode, Uh Matt, you actually
pulled up the world population clock and we looked at
how many people were born and died just in the
forty five minutes that we spent doing the episode. I
can't remember the exact number. It was somewhere around ten
(07:42):
thousand that were added while we recorded the episode. Yes,
that's true, that's true. So welcome if you're listening. So
all we have to do is a little bit of subtraction.
Take that seven point seven billion away from the one
eight billion who have ever been born. We arrive at
this number around one hundred billion, three hundred million human
(08:06):
beings that have died on this planet overall, just on
the on in the course of this ugly, brutal thing
called human life on Earth. And so with this in mind,
we can we can easily see that we don't know
where all one hundred billion, three hundred million graves are
(08:27):
right and and many, many, many, many of those people
didn't get a grave at all, you know, like like
you said, no, many were probably burned or disposed of
according to the cultural values or more as of the time.
And when we think about this, it means it's reasonable
to assume that many people got lost in the historical shuffle.
(08:48):
As we said, empires rise, they changed names, um, the
rulers change families, names of cities change. It's Istanbul, not Constantinople.
And that's nobody's business, but it's sort of everybody's, etcetera.
And not for nothing did Shelley write the poem oz Mandius,
(09:08):
which is great, Oh yeah, look look on my works.
He mighty and dispersed all of this sand, look at it. Yes, yeah,
that's that's a poem that I hope is familiar with
a lot of people. Um. It's quoted to great effect
in the Ballad of Buster Scrugs recently debuting on Netflix
(09:30):
in the Super Bummer episode right super Bummer vignette. But
the guy does a great excerpt of it. He really does.
I say this every every time we bring up Azzi Mandius.
He was my grandfather's favorite poem, and he would recite
it all the time because he he was beautifully obsessed
with his own mortality, and he would just constantly talk
(09:50):
about Ozzi Mandius. Were you ever like grandpa? You're kind
of freaking me out. No, it was this, Um, I
don't know. It was a really charming thing about him
in a weird way. Did he have a good voice?
For my grandpa just drank and grunted. Well, perhaps he
was reciting something too in his head. He didn't share
it with me, So we know that. Unfortunately, we're never
(10:15):
going to find the resting place of most people on
the planet. That's that's just the way things have shaken
out for us so far. But what about the people
who were a big deal? This is interesting what you're
saying about your your grandfather having this fascinating obsession with
(10:35):
his own mortality. Because virtually every culture in our history,
in one way or another, venerates the dead. Death is
up there with birth, the one of the huge inexplicable things. Right.
Tons of people personally believe that they know or have
an inkling of what happens, right, and some people agree
(10:57):
and many people don't. But no one has come up
is something that everyone can get on board with. Right.
So it's this mystery. And we do our best to
honor or remember our loved winds or in some cases
and some gory cases, to vilify the people we despise.
(11:18):
And each year hundreds of millions of people make pilgrimages
to one resting place or another. It could be like
Jim Morrison's grave in Europe, right, absolutely, it could be um,
it could be a resting place of of lenin you
know or yeah, And it's usually a famous or powerful
person or a famously powerful person, yes, yes, or powerfully
(11:40):
famous person. So it seems reasonable then that since since
our species pays so much attention to this, it seems
reasonable to assume that we can at least keep track of,
if not everybody, the most important people who ever lived. Right,
you think of course no, it turns out no, okay.
(12:05):
End of show. Well will tell you why this is
the case. After a word from our sponsors. Here's where
it gets crazy. Not not even counting the normal people
like like you and I, like everybody who's ever lived,
(12:29):
the normal people, right right, We have lost tons and
tons and tons of incredibly influential historical figures over the ages.
We can divvy it up into a couple of rough
category spoiler alert. We do not have the wherewithal to
go into every single famous person who has disappeared or
(12:52):
been hidden from history, but we can. We can touch
on some interesting stories that are not Jengis Khan. Uh.
We've got stories of misplay, east corpses, stories of rumored
burial sites and these are old, old rumors too, as
we'll find. And then we also have stories of people
who were purposefully buried in secret. So let's get let's
(13:14):
get it started with old Alexander the Great. Let's get
it started, didn't you? Yep, Alexander the third of Macedon?
Is that correct? Great? Is that a different way of
saying Macedonia? It became Macedon, It was one of the
world's Uh. This this gentleman was one of the world's
greatest military minds. We've probably heard of him just from
(13:36):
classes way way back in the day. Maybe you're in
one right now listening to this. If so, shame on
you put your phone away, not to be confessed with
our amazing cohort alex the Great. Yeah. Correct, But in
this gentleman Alexander the Third's short life, he established the
largest empire the ancient world had ever seen up to
that point, and I lasted that way for a while.
(13:59):
It was the Great Empire. Yeah, it's so weird. Would
you read about these people? His his moniker is not ironic.
He was Alexander the Great. It was not like a
little john name. And I think about conquerors like this
every time I do something really dumb, like this guy
was died in his thirties, took over most of the
(14:20):
known world at the time, and two weeks ago I
fell asleep trying to put on a pair of pants.
You know what I mean. It makes you think it really,
it really really does you know? I just recently learned,
you know how much I love acronyms. Goat greatest of
all time? So he could have been alex he's the
original goat. Alexander the Goat, That's what I'm gonna call him.
This is it, This is it. Well, here's the thing.
(14:42):
Alexander the Great was just a regular old guy doing
all this conquering with his giant armies, you know, his
numerous giant armies that roamed the planet. Died feeling like
a failure, even though he did name a city after himself.
Just goes to show, just goes to show. We all
have him ster syndrome, all of us. No matter no
(15:03):
matter what you know, no matter how much you achieve,
how much you conquer, it's never enough unless you get
right with yourself and love yourself. And so far everybody
has died no matter no matter what they do. It
turns out life as a terminal condition. Except for that
one guy. You remember. That's a different episode years ago
or so. You remember talking about one guy. I can't
(15:27):
remember his name, all right, So oh and Henriette alas Ah,
there you go. Immortality via cancer cells. Okay, So here's
here's one of the big things. It's not exactly known,
or at least as debated, how he died, but it
is known when he died. Yeah, yeah, three three BC
(15:48):
and Babylon. But but you're raising an interesting point. Man.
We we don't know too much about how we died.
Was it malaria? Was it poisoning? Was it West Nile virus? Uh?
There's a somewhat idealized, romanticized account that says he died
of heartbreak. Oh my gosh, that's not a thing. People
(16:11):
have died of heartbreak. They need to suck it up
and you know, start going to the gem. You know,
you've got all this advice for these agent people really
do in this time, in this time in human civilization,
just surviving was like being at the gym all. But
that's what I'm saying, though, Like, you know, with everything
(16:31):
that they was getting thrown at you, how are you
going to die of a broken heart? That just sounds
like giving up to That's surprisingly cold. Man. Hey, listen,
I've been through the ringer this year, okay, last year? Yeah, okay,
I see, I see what you have come out the
other side though the year knew me. What's that quote?
Be kind while everyone is facing I'll do it again,
be kind for everyone is facing a great battle. It's
(16:54):
one of Chuck Bryant's favorite quotes. Actually, that's a good point.
It's also one of those things about being It's like
you could rephrase that to be be nice to the
person everyone you meet, because they could be dealing with
something that you do not know about. Yeah, or you
know the golden rule. Just treat him like you want
to be treated. So what happens? So okay, So there's
(17:16):
this idea debatable, probably not true, that he died of
good old fashioned grief over the death of his best
friend hefesion. I don't know. I heard via the internet
that the age is silent, but I am no uh
helfestian Festian expert. So so what what happens? Though, like I,
(17:37):
regardless of how he dies, he dies around three beats CE.
So what happens after that? Well, I mean his corpse.
He's the guy that conquered most of the world, at
least in the known the known world, as we said,
and his body is going to be venerated in some way,
in probably some you know, um grandiose fashion. That's just
(17:59):
what's gonna happen. No matter what. His body is going
to be an artifact for for what comes after him
now that the leader is dead, because there's gonna be
a power struggle, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, because in this
case his body becomes a symbol. In some ways, possessing
his body gives an implicit endorsement of your right to rule,
(18:26):
almost like oh, that is so strange, treating it almost
as an error in a way, or being an heir
to it because you have it. Yeah, yeah, possession being
nine tenths of the law and so on. So first,
his body's mummified and for two years it lay in
state in a golden sarcophagus, and eventually the people are
(18:47):
finding about where he should be placed, where he should
be buried, make a decision, and they decide to bury
him in Greece, in the first capital of the Macedonian kings,
whoa in a place called gay And again the Internet says,
I should pronounced it that way. It's spelled a e g. A.
(19:07):
We're just going with it. But but the plan goes arise,
isn't they correct? Oh? Yeah, According to ancient sources, his
his hearse that was actually you know, his body was
traveling in was hijacked of all things, near Damascus, and
his corpse was taken to Egypt and it was first
(19:28):
sure or I guess it was first taken to Memphis
in Egypt, uh not to not the home of the
other king right way before Elvis, and then from there
things start to get fuzzy. Sometime between two eight three
b c E. His body is taken to Alexandria, the
(19:50):
city we mentioned earlier that he founded and named after himself,
and then from there he gets disinterred and put in
at least two other places, the most famous being a
mausolim called the Soma. The soma, which I believe is
a isn't that an herb that kind of makes you sleepy?
And I think there's a psycho antipsychotic medication called Soma,
(20:13):
or at least it's some kind of um valli um
esque type drug. It's a drug in Brave New World.
By all this hucks, and that's exactly what I was thinking.
Maybe it's not even real. I wonder if the real
drug was named after the drug in Huxley, because there
really is a drug called soma. I think the real
drug is a muscle relaxer. I think you want to say,
I've been prescribed it before but didn't take it. It's
(20:35):
also it's also a wonderful, wonderful I like, I like
using this word for this horror game, like a psychological
horror game. It's also a quite good Smashing Pumpkins song
from before Billy Corgan lost his damn mind. The is
a brand name of a real drug. It's Karas Soper Doll.
That's the one that is the one to all that
(20:58):
aside drugs, smashing Pumpkins imaginary drugs. Um. This is where
in this mausoleum, the soma, the looting began as his
want to happen with Graves. It's basically like a big
old target in the ground saying, hey, free stuff if
you want to get your hands dirty and possibly your soul. Yeah. Well,
(21:19):
and you know, Alexander found himself for his body at
least inside a giant golden sarcophagus I believe we mentioned
are in conspicuous. Yeah, and what do you do when
you have a giant thing made out of gold? Melt
it down? Of course you do. And that happened, but
it got replaced with like a glass sarcophagus, or at
(21:40):
least a glass container or some kind of crystalline container,
which is fascinating to me. Um. I really would have
liked to have seen that. Yeah, it's it's strange because
you have to wonder did they decide did they decide
that gold being you know, a currency at times they
(22:01):
decide that was just asking for trouble to make another
golden thing. And they decided, well, glass is nice, and
glass and crystal are expensive, but no one will steal
it to try to pay for things that I mean,
that makes a lot of sense. And also, you know,
whoever is running the show, now, you need a lot
of gold and money to to pay for all the
war that you're waging because we're empire building here people. Yeah,
(22:24):
I mean, it's not cheap. It's game on. Even Cleopatra,
who don't worry, shows up later in this story, took
gold from this tomb to pay for her war against Octavian.
There you go, and then things continue to get worse,
which is kind of the story of humanity. Oh man,
no question about it. In three six h there were
a series of unfortunate events that included warfare, rioting, an earthquake,
(22:49):
a tsunami. All of this threatened or possibly even destroyed
the tomb um. By the time St. John Chrysostom visited
in four CE, the two whom was lost and ever
since then, no one has been able to find the
resting place of one of history's greatest conquerors, and Alexander
(23:10):
the Great, which is just out there somewhere. His remains
exist because it takes a long time for bones and
in the human body to break down, it's there. Traces
of him may well be somewhere in some form right,
but he is now also it's fair to call him
Alexander the lost. Searches continue for his his remains or
(23:35):
his tomb to date, but no one has found it.
One thing we can say, and I don't want to
sound too cynical about this, is that this this makes
a lot of careers. The search for these sorts of
lost sites can literally change the course of human history.
(23:56):
And so as we're speaking, if you're if you're an archaeo,
pologists or a budding archaeologist researching this or something like this,
we want to hear from you. Let us know what
your search, your particular searches, and let us know what
um what you think your fellow listeners would be surprised
to learn about it. In the meantime, that's fast forward.
(24:18):
I just were right here before we get into it,
I watched a movie with my wife last night, and
I couldn't tell you the name of it right now.
It just showed up on one of the streaming sites
and she had wanted to see it. It's all about
this woman who goes back to college with her daughter
to become an archaeologist, and I just happened. I had
no idea that that was the plot. Is it a
fartwarming rom com? Yeah, I guess it's kind of that,
(24:41):
but a psychological thriller. No. I couldn't even tell you
who's in it or what what it was. It was
called bleep. It was not for Bucks. Oh, I can't believe.
I can't even think of it right now. Is it
police Academy for That's what it was. Anyway, it just
happened to have an archaeologist archaeolog g B plotline that
(25:02):
may be very happy. It's fascinating. I have a subscription
to Archaeology magazine. Well, okay, look, I mind it for
possible episodes in the future. I'm just gonna be honest.
I inexplicably have a subscription to maxim. It just started coming.
I can't get it to stop. I think that's something
that happens in the magazine industry that I'd love to
look into because I had a former girlfriend who inexplicably
(25:26):
began receiving a subscription to Muhair magazine. And Muhair magazine
is a lifestyle fashion interest thing for the Latino population
in the US and North America, I guess. And we
couldn't get them to stop sending it. Like I emailed them,
(25:47):
I sent an actual letter and they still kept sending Muhair. Wow.
As far as I know, you know, the my x
and now are on good terms, so I could probably
write to an ask her she it'd still be getting
Muhir like they locked it down. There was no way out,
Like she's moved three times, still follows her wherever she goes. Yeah,
(26:08):
we have that with Rolling Stones. Somehow my wife still
gets Rolling Stone sent to our house. We have not
paid for that. And I don't even know how long
we should look into this. This is actually I think
we might have just uncovered a new conspiracy. Is it
worth sending us these magazines for the advertising that we
are potentially looking at that just just just just aclaim circulation,
(26:28):
just to boost numbers. That's fine, I'm fine. I love magazines.
They canceled a lot of subscriptions because we received them
here at work and read a ton of them. But uh,
but anyway, yeah, but anyway that that may well be
a future episode. Tell us about the magazine subscriptions that
you are non consensually receiving and and I we'll hatch
(26:50):
this conspiracy with you if you need it. It's a
bit unethical, but if you have a subscription that you
want people to think you are non consensually receiving, right
to us, and we will totally pretend that you are
non consentually receiving it beautiful. Someone's like, no, I hate
uh Horseback Monthly. So it's there's so many weird magazines. Yeah, gosh,
(27:13):
well okay, yeah, we're gonna do an episode on that.
Let's let's let's definitely do that. And let's also jump
forward to a really cool figure in history, Mr Thomas Paine. Yes,
let's bring the pain, Matt. What's what's the gist about
this guy? Well, he's a he's an Englishman, an England
born political philosopher. He's a writer. You certainly have heard
(27:34):
about him. He supported the revolutionary causes in both America
and in Europe. He's perhaps best known for the old
seventeen seventies six essay Common Sense, along with other works
such as The American Crisis, Rights of Man and the
Age of Reason, which is a really great read. Actually,
and I didn't expect it to be when I when
(27:55):
I cracked that thing open, it's very readable. It's it's
it's strange because I think we sometimes have a stereotype
about things written in English in that period of time
where they're going to be dry and every sentence is
going to be three paragraphs long. Yes, and you're not
gonna understand most of it. Largely responsible for the philosophy
behind Enlightenment thinking. And also are our monument buddies, the
(28:18):
Georgia Guides Noose, yes exactly. Pain influence on those those
guys huge, they were huge. End of the pain. That
is a weird mixed accent. And again my grandfather. The
reason why I read it is because my grandfather, old Papa,
brought it, brought it to my attention. It's a it's
a good read, you know, and I know I know
these the idea there are certain trigger words people here
(28:40):
that make them not want to read things. One of
those is essay. The other is you know the reason rights.
But but he was writing to communicate with the common people,
you know what I mean. He wasn't trying to do
fancy acts of rhetorical gymnastics or acrobatics. But eventually, despite
(29:02):
all the great things that he did, he also spoiler
alert died. Man. I was hoping it was going to
go the other way. He's outside of the studio right now, Matt,
waiting to talk to you. I only wish about his
multi level marketing scheme. Oh god, it's kind of a
new Central Oils again paint. Uh. So. He died on
(29:24):
June eighteen o nine in New York City, and today
he is the only founding father that does not have
an official grave site that you can go and visit.
There Isn't that crazy? I'm so surprised. Why, let's talk
about what happened. Let's so. He was first buried in
(29:45):
New Rochelle, New York, on his farm after the Quakers
refused him, in a town that was very, very hostile
towards this man. Yeah, because he criticized the Quakers during
his lifetime for their pacifism and for some of their
other political beliefs. That's right, And in eighteen nineteen, a
(30:06):
Pain admirer named William Cobbett, himself a Democrat, a democratic
advocate rather from England, saw the disrespect that Pain received
where he was buried, and decided to dig him up.
Took it upon himself to dig the man up. Just
grab the shovel, grabbed a shovel, heart one, that's true, uh,
and to take him to England where he would be
(30:28):
treated with more respect um. And he wanted to help
spur the movement for democracy there, so I guess he
saw this as sort of a symbolic act. Yeah, again,
using a dead body for almost a for definitely a
political reason and did it work. Not really, There's still
a monarchy in that area of the world. There's a parliament, Yeah,
(30:49):
house of lords in a House of Commons. That should
tell you what you need to know. Well, here in
the States we basically just have two houses of lords.
So at least I don't know, I don't know. This
isn't that kind of the same thing. The representatives representative people,
which would be the Commons, and then the senators are
more like the lord's. The senators on paper also supposed
to represent the people. Psych So over the years Pain's
(31:14):
body was was divided, it was split, the bones were
circulated across the planet. People were making relics of his remains,
and now we have we we don't know where the
bones are. We don't know where pieces of this guy's
(31:34):
body are. There's a Thomas Pain foundation that has some
of his hair and a bit of his brain. They
admit to owning that. But there were unverified rumors that
some of Thomas Paine's bones were cut into get this
guy's buttons and sold to finance the revolution. But the
thing is kind of like in the Middle Ages when
(31:55):
people would unscrupulously sell, you know, slivers of the Jesus
the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. There are
enough slivers of that stuff to make a forest essentially,
where it's like those Passion of the Christ necklaces. Oh yeah,
or any and all holy water ever, well, holy water,
(32:15):
you can you could just make holy water. That's what
I'm saying, was was you we were having I was
having this conversation with somebody about hunting vampires. In vampire films,
there's almost always a priest right, and the priest has
the ability to bless water, making it holy and therefore, uh,
dangerous for vampires. Why don't they just like bless a
(32:38):
water treatment system or like a storm or something. Well, yeah,
how does it work to start getting buckets? Well, anyway, there,
there you go, vampire producers who check out our show.
And now that now that the Universal Life Church of
California exists, literally all of us have a massive defense
(32:59):
of it against empires because we can just get ordained
with in a few minutes. Isn't that where your ordination
and me as well? Exactly the only one is not ordained. Yes,
we've talked about this. Let on this train, but I
guess I gotta get on the ordained train casey is ordained.
Look at him, he's in he's in three or four
different sects that he's a minister for. And I think
a priest, a priestess, and what was the other thing,
(33:22):
um a shaman. He's a major. Are you making this up? Yes? Yes? Yes?
Uh so, So back to this idea of counterfeiting relics
very common in ancient days and surprisingly common still in
the eighteen hundreds, there were more buttons that were purportedly
(33:44):
Thomas Paine's bones that were sold than could have come
from ten bodies. You could you could build a jam
band off the amount of buttons sold, well, the skeletons
of a jam band. Yeah, what it makes you wonder
who else was in that jam band that ended up
as a Thomas Pain button. Yes, these are also the
(34:05):
days of resurrection, then, weren't they. Do you think that
any of those are still around and they're confirmed to
be Pain buttons around? Yes? Confirmed? No, because how could you?
Well you could there there are there are some forms
of testing could do to verify it, because there are
rumors of a leg bone hanging in a wall of
a tavern in England, and then there are other place
(34:27):
that would be Thomas Paine. Right, that's a large enough
sample where you could try to do some investigatory thing.
You could probably at least narrow down the time frame
and the region. Was that kind of what you're saying, right,
You could you could do some analyses that would indicate
that there are also some pieces that were claimed in Europe.
It's possible that the skull has been located in Wales
and then later moved to Australia, but to the point,
(34:51):
no testing is confirmed this and today it seems that
Pain's remains are largely scattered amidst various grizzly collections and
some unscrupulous private collectors. There are more of these people
than you think. My friends have likely have pieces of
Thomas Paine held in a secret collection today, sort of
(35:12):
the way that particular secret society here in the United
States collects skulls. That is wow, creatively named the Skull
and Bones. By the way, that's who we're talking about. Yeah,
that is true. Just sitting there, do you think maybe
they haven't. I don't know. I don't know, but you
know what, honestly, I would not be that surprised if
(35:33):
they had a piece of it. It would make so
much sense. Oh yeah, that's Yale. Oh dude, they totally
have something in there. Hey. By the way, three and me,
if you're listening, just whoever you are, I saw this news.
Just go ahead and just get on there and just
start just testing them bones especially go to the Skull
and Bones first. Oh, I thought you were talking about
(35:54):
the twenty three and me news that just came out. Okay,
super due there could we get a breaking news sound cue?
So twenty three and Me has teamed up with a
drug manufacturer pharmaceutical giant named Glaxo like Smith Klein. Uh huh,
(36:16):
Glaxo Smith Klein. They're giving the they're giving away the
DNA test results of the five million something customers of
twenty three and me what Claxus Smith Climb will use
this data to create research and create new drugs. I'm sorry,
I'm sorry called it, called it. He said it was
(36:39):
going to happen. Oh my god, I gotta tell Jason,
our executive producer, because he totally just did that. Well,
go ahead and preemptively thank him for possibly contributing to
important medical research. There you go, there you go against
his Well well, I mean, yeah, he clicked the terms
(36:59):
of serve us. You know, once you do that, it's
like you don't know what's going to happen. It's that
told us. They told us in their offices they wouldn't
do this. So should we take a little break before
we get to rumored burial places. Sounds good. Let's do
it and we are back, as Matt would say, with
(37:22):
no delay. He said it once and I was taken
by it. I don't know what it means, but I
like it very much. Yeah, you can hear this is
a very dry track. There aren't a lot of effects
on it. That's right, definitely, no delay. No delay. Also
it means that we're getting right to it. Rumored burial
places number one with a bullet on the list. The
Queen Nefertiti of ancient Egypt. She was a queen of Egypt,
(37:47):
the wife of the pharaoh Akanatan, who ruled in the
mid fourteenth century b c. E um So before Nefertiti,
Nakanat in Egypt had been a polytheistic civilization, worshiping entire
pantheon of anthropomorphic animal deities, ranging from the crocodile god
so Beek, who was depicted often as a man with
(38:08):
the head of a crocodile, a staff in one hand
and an onc that Egyptian symbol a little loop with
the cross through it um in the other, and with
a weirdly a giant golden temple um acting as some
sort of larger than life crown sitting atop his scaly
head um. And then you had like God's like a Nubis,
who has depicted the god of the Dead, who was
depicted very much the same way as Sobek, was only
(38:31):
with the head of a jackal and a last no
golden temple headpiece. Yeah, I love I love the idea
of all the gods being a person with a different
animal head. That is really I actually really like that.
But here's the thing, um aka Natan and his queen
thought this whole worshiping multiple animal headed gods was for
the literal birds, not not to be confused with the
(38:52):
ibis headed god of wisdom. Thought, which is so fun
to say. Thought. It's since I got a th h
on the front end and a t h on the
back end. Man, I love that. Uh, I really do
like EBIs or what is it? Thought is the god?
I've seen that in so many different places. Um anyway,
the fair thought would be a good, better idea at
(39:12):
least to stick with. Just let's call it one god.
This will be easier. We can all, you know, know
that there's one singular force that we can worship. Let's say,
let's say the Sun, that giant orange thing that just
shoots light at us all the time and it makes
us warm and happy. That's a good thing to worship.
Let's do that, it seems legiti. It's important to note
(39:35):
that the sun disc also known as Aton, had already
held a place in ancient Egyptian religion and the state's
way back to the Old Kingdom, where it was worshiped
as an aspect of the composite god raw am on
the Horace. And this is not to get too into
the weeds about it, but raw represents the daytime son
(39:57):
am On, the son of the underworld horace of course,
the eising son. I love the idea of a composite god.
That is so cool to me. It's really common in
the ancient world. Yeah, yeah, but it's something we don't
really think about everything. Every god is kind of their
own thing. Although it is kind of similar to the Trinity,
like the Holy Trinity. Right, Monotheism, that's they didn't make
that up out of whole cloth, right, Monotheism being exactly
(40:19):
where we're heading. Right, So this is this is this
is backstory that we promise will deliver. So what what
happens next? Because you have to know this stuff about
polytheism and monotheism, right. Akanatan and Neffertidi attempted with all
their might to obliterate all traces of We're gonna go
Game of Throne style and call them the old gods
(40:41):
by defacing carvings temples, hieroglyphics that depicted them, and you know,
this didn't go over so well with you know, the
general public that had been worshiping these gods for so long,
that's right, And and neither did it last particularly long,
right then, that's right, it did not. It did not.
(41:02):
It wasn't as unsuccessful as uh New Coke when that
came out, but it was it was still pretty No,
it was actually way worse than New Coke because I
believe that acanat in rain for seventeen years um, and
this whole worshiping the sun god business came in about
(41:23):
three or four years into his reign, so that's kind
of a blip in ancient Egyptian history, right, And the
people who came after Aknatan did their best to erase
him and Nefertiti herself from official history. And this this
is important. So we don't talk about this as much
(41:47):
as we should in the modern day. But it is
true that the victors, right the history textbooks you read,
and they are the ones who tell the stories of
events in the past. And it is at least back then,
it was alarmingly easy to erase people from history, and
Stalin did it. Uh during his reign. These subsequent pharaohs
(42:09):
did it as well, and you can see why they
did it, whether or not you agree with them, it
is true that this could pose a clear and present
danger to their own legitimacy, you know. And uh Neffertidi
went right along with this whole deal, because she actually
disappeared from the historical record before her husband did um
about twelve years into his reign, So it's possible that
(42:30):
she might have died. There was a plague, as we know,
that swept through Egypt around this time UM, but there
are some Egyptologists who believed that she was actually elevated
to co regent and changed her name therefore kind of
slipped out of the historical record into a new role. Um.
And then the name Nefertidi disappeared, and she was named
something that sounded remarkably like Neffertidi. I can't remember exactly
(42:52):
what it was, but it was sort of a it
was almost like a permutation of the name nefertid Um.
And the thing is too, in a lot of the
historical record, or a lot of the depictions of she
and her husband, they were very much on the same level.
She already had a lot of power even before this
possible elevation to literal co region like vice president or
(43:12):
really I think a co region would be like co ruler. Right,
So that's one possibility, But there's more. Many archaeologists believe
that she could have been buried uh in one of
the tombs of what's now called Amarna, which was a
new capital city that Akanatan built during his reign. Whoa right, Yeah,
(43:37):
these tombs were plundered after as death, so it is
possible that never t t could have been reburied in
the Valley of Kings. The thing is, people will tell
you that, no matter how much animosity there was of
for her and her husband, no pharaoh would normally deny
(43:58):
a former ruler the burial accorded to their station, even
even somebody that everybody hated, Like I cannot And here's
something that we I don't think we've even mentioned this yet.
She had a very important step son. You may know him,
Tuting Common Tuting Common, Yes, the old king Tutt that
we have discussed and before on this show about the
(44:19):
curse that existed for his tomb. Oh yeah, and I
think in breeding was the curse of his lifetime. Have
you seen the forensic analysis. Also, I like to think
of him as the originator of the phrase tut tut.
There you go. I'm a big fan like I like
the single tut that you do. Ben said, that's so
that's very touch Yes, it is when something is very tough. Yeah,
(44:42):
when something's touch well. And the idea that she had
such a famous and powerful son in law that perhaps
her body was actually you know, put in his tomb somewhere.
That's right. Not to mention the fact that he took
over after his father in law died, and he is
also the one um that pretty much instantly started the
(45:02):
process of going back, taking Egypt back to the old
polytheistic ways and refurbishing all of those desecrated sites and
monuments and hieroglyphs and all of that business. But yes,
you're absolutely right, this theory that um Nefertiti's body was
possibly buried in her son in law's tomb. There's one
part of it that is super interesting, is this idea
that that tomb may have actually been meant for Nefertidi
(45:25):
in the first place. But that Tuton Common died unexpectedly
quite young, the boy king, right, because one piece of
evidence behind this, it's all. It seems a little conjecture,
but it's that it was a much smaller tomb than
some of the other ones, and that if it was
for a woman, they might have considered it diminutive less
then so they might have made it smaller. But you
could also argue that it was for a boy um,
(45:46):
and that you could say the same thing in that respect.
But here's the thing. This theory was put forth by
an Egyptologist named Nicholas Reeve, who's the director of the
Amarna Royal Tombs Project. Um. He commissioned some radar scans
of the site of Tuton Commons tomb um, and they
supposedly showed evidence of two secret chambers, complete with masonry
(46:07):
walls and quote metallic and organic substances. But there are
other experts who aren't so sure that this was definitive
of what he wanted it to be. Kind of yeah,
And then of course, as soon as the theory like
that comes along, you've got somebody else who comes along
and says, well, I'm gonna do some scans, and we're
gonna or we're at least gonna relook at the scans
(46:29):
that we're done. See what we have here and according
to you know, this other group of scientists in this case,
it's Lawrence Conyers who's at the University of Denver. He
he's an anthropology professor. By the way, he's looking at
these scans and he's saying it quote, it does not
appear that these GPR ground penetrating radar data have been
(46:50):
processed or that any of the so called anomalies are
visible in the raw data that are provided. This guy,
by the way, I saw this in every thing that cided.
This dude, he wrote the book on ground penetrating radar.
There you go. It's gonna make a joke about penetrating
the ground via the that old poet laureate of the West.
(47:10):
But we'll go back to um. Let's go back to
the quote he says. My suggestion to those who are
collecting it is that they released the raw data, the
raw data for some peer review by other GPR people
before they allow the antiquities people to hold a press
conference about all the riches that might be in these
supposed tombs. That peer review would cut down all the
(47:30):
speculation and critiques that have been going on around the
email for the last few days. As there might be,
as there might be as many scientists who could reach
a consensus in advance of the speculation in the press.
This was in two thousand and sixteen. By the way,
I was not able to find any um more recent
updates to this, But in two thousand sixteen, Egypt's Antiquities
Ministry refused to follow Knyer's advice or acknowledge another series
(47:54):
of scans that were carried out by National Geographic Or
with their assistants saying they would independently has the site. Instead,
UM Reeve and his co author were allowed to present
their findings unchallenged UM within the Egyptology community in Egypt.
So I don't know, Ben, we were talking about this
(48:14):
off air like it seems like the ministry here is
protecting there like what to tourism kind of booned this
could produce. I'm confused as to why they would be
so secretive or not allow other perspectives in this in
this discussion. Could it be grant money coming in from
NGOs or some other thing. It could be grant money,
(48:35):
It could be a U n s Go thing, It
could be it could be any number of things. We
do know that in some cases, UH state. Organizations like
this are incentivized or incentive, depending on which word you prefer,
to preserve a certain status quo. It happens, um It
(48:57):
happens as well in Central America and Mexico, where in
some cases some countries don't want lost sight to be
found because then they are responsible for restoring and maintaining it.
It also could, and this is somewhat depressing, it could
just be a matter of corruption. They may have just
not greased the right poems yet, but they did allow
(49:21):
him to like they just didn't respond, right, Yeah, No,
I mean they they definitely did. It wasn't even the
father of GPR or whatever. He's he was just kind
of weighing in on this, And I think he was
even quoted at another time saying he was considering going
and conducting some tests himself, but he's glad he didn't
because the whole thing seems like a real debacle, and
(49:43):
you know, didn't want to fly halfway around the world
to be part of this kind of total ship show.
Now I know that as of twenty eighteen, professors were
still fighting over a three D image that was constructed
of someone who was presented as Neffert d a thirty
(50:03):
four hundred year old mummy that was identified as the
younger lady, but that was discovered back in and then
TV producers got ahold of it. So yeah, so I
drama trusted well. Point being is this is still a
hotly contested issue, and um, I think the backstory of
this whole Neffert t d akanat In situation is really
(50:25):
interesting and kind of points to, uh, how history can
kind of obscure the truth, you know, based on ideological disagreements.
And although you didn't hear it through the magic of editing,
we just had a break off air ourselves. And we
hope that you are enjoying this episode. Because time got
(50:48):
a little bit ahead of us, we have more famous tombs,
but we are going to have to save those for
another day. The second part of what has become a
two part episode. We will rejoin you next time as
we stay in Egypt and travel further throughout the ancient
and not so ancient world. In the meantime, we have
(51:12):
to ask, while you're way on part two, what benefits
do you see these searches having for modern civilization? You
know some people, oddly enough, I don't know about you guys.
But this surprised me. Some people have argued, in a
very utilitarian way, we should just let the past die
and focus on the future. Why I spend hundreds of
thousands or millions of dollars finding these long gone, long
(51:34):
neglected tombs when there are people starving, you know what
I mean? In the real world. Should we spend that
money saving the people who are alive instead of finding
the venerated corpses of people who have died, or you know,
spend it on sending us all the mars? There we go,
there we go? Uh? In case Ellan is tuning in
and its Secondly, do you think it's possible that someone
(51:55):
alive today might know the location of one of these
graves or some of these remain and if so, why
would they continue to keep it a secret? Yeah? And
have you ever come across bones that are purportedly from
Thomas Paine? We want to know about it. Tell us
about your buttons. Don't send it to twenty three and me,
I guess, but you know, maybe send it to one
of the other ones. You think ancestry is clean so far,
(52:18):
I think it's an inevitable situation. Well send it somewhere
I also don't think it's necessarily bad. I mean, what
do you guys think? This is valuable stuff? And we
have episodes about that. You can find them all on
our website stuff they don't want you to know, dot
com or wherever you find your favorite podcast, and you
can send us the answers to those questions via. I mean,
(52:42):
we're we're all over the social meds right on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
Social m E A d S Social meds, Yes, social
meds ales and I P a S Yes. As you said,
conspiracy stuff on most conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. If
you want to, maybe there's all those ways you can
get ahold of us. Check out Here's where it gets crazy.
(53:04):
That's our face one of our Facebook pages. It's our
I guess more of our member group that you have
to join. The only thing you have to know to
get in is our names. And it is so surprising
how many people get it so wrong when trying to
join that page. I don't know about you, Matt, but
I really enjoy the thing is like, the question is
(53:24):
can you name the host of this show? You know,
Ben Matt Noel, super producer, Paul or Casey. Thanks for
coming by. The way casey. We also just for peek
behind the curtain. Uh if we think the answer is
funny enough, if we actually laugh, we'll be like, oh
go come on, let him in. Yeah, if we can
(53:46):
tell it's an inside joke or something that, we're like, okay,
they know what's going on. What are some of the
weird nicknames you guys saw? Mostly what I see is
just strange pronunciations or writings of Noel's name, just really
interesting and O A L N O L E and
you U L I think I like that. That was like,
that's a good one. There was also k N O
(54:08):
W L. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite things,
I think. And uh so you can join the conversation
with us, most importantly with your fellow listeners and we
we we dropped by there too. Oh yeah. And if
you don't want to do that stuff, give us a
call one eight three three s T d W y
(54:30):
t K. That's one eight three three stuff they don't
want you to know, by the way, And there are
numbers there. You just dial them and you'll, you know,
leave a message if you'd like, and you make it
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