January 26, 2018 • 52 mins
The Grand Canyon is a breath-taking natural formation, and every year more than 4 million people visit. Despite its popularity, areas of the canyon remain dangerously remote, and it’s no secret that numerous people have disappeared in or around the canyon over the years. But what if there was more to the story than missing couples and individuals? Is it possible that an entire civilization went missing in the canyon?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained defense, you can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. They
called me Ben. We are joined with our super producer
Paul Deckett. Most importantly, you are you and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. Have you guys,
ever been to the Grand Canyon? Yes, I feel like
that was right at the same time it was, but
it wasn't a jinx because we didn't say the same thing.
You're right, You're you're so right. Yes, I have been there.
(00:47):
Have you been there been? Yes? Yeah, excellent? Yea. What
did you do in your travels? Yeah? Me too? Um,
that was not a yes, and yeah, us went over this,
Yes we did, Yes, and I will I will play
these reindeer games. Traveled there on a family road trip,
(01:08):
as a lot of people do in the United States.
Was completely amazed and beflum mixed by the sheer scale
of the thing. And you know when we fly out
west in the course of our job, which happens a
couple you know, it happens on a not uncommon basis.
(01:29):
Then we usually fly over the Grand Canyon and on
a good day you can see it. Yeah, and from
up there it looks amazing. It looks like kind of
the photographs, like a little miniature version of it, and
you it's hard to understand truly how vast this area is.
And uh, did you go on a family trip as
a child. No. I went with some friends. We had
a wonderful time. Did you trip acid? I did not,
(01:51):
though um I probably wouldn't do that anyway. Did you
ride a bureau? I did not. I literally stood at
the precipice on one the rims and just looked out
for about an hour. Probably South Rim R. Yeah, it was.
South Rim is the easier, the easiest access. Just a
little bookkeeping. We do have another guest on today's show,
and it is called construction Noise, So here that occasionally
(02:14):
we're not gonna just we're not gonna pause the recording,
we're gonna barrel right through, but just f y I
we want you to know that you're not crazy. And
we hear it too, yes, which I think is an
important thing that people should say more often when there's
a weird noise around. So Matt, when you took this
trip with your friends. First off, it does sound way cooler.
No offense to family, but I think a friend road
(02:36):
trip is probably just on average, more fun than a
family road trip. They were essentially my family too. Oh man,
it's true, and I believe you. You know, I believe
you and you and your friends had the right idea.
In fact, every year more than four million people visit
the Grand Canyon National Park System. Just not me, not yet,
(02:58):
but hey, we'll get there. Man. In you want to
go to the Grand Canyon. You want to do like
friendship to the Grand Canyon? Are you in? Yeah, we
can do a space camp as long as we can
write a donkey. Yeah, that is the thing. I'm not
making that out. But you have to book it way
in advance, no time like the president, my friends. So
where did this canyon come from? Let's let's talk about
(03:19):
what it is today. Most people living in the US
have a have a pretty solid idea of what the
Grand Canyon is. It exists in so much folklore, so
many tropes, It's referenced all the time, and physically it's huge.
It's kind of tough to miss. It's in the Northwest,
corner of Arizona, and it's near the borders of Utah
(03:40):
and Nevada. It's managed by the National Park Service and
several tribal organizations who have an historic claim to the land.
It's divided into the North Rim and the South Rim.
When we go on a road trip there, will probably
go to the South Rim because it's open all year,
and about the parts of his yars go there. The
(04:01):
North Rim is apparently spectacular. It's closer to Utah, but
it's much less accessible. Yeah, it's one of the craziest
things about this. It takes roughly five hours to drive
the two fifteen miles or excuse me, three and forty
six kilometers between the South Rim where the village is
there to get to the North Room. It takes that
(04:22):
long five hours and if you think, if you look
at it on a map, it does not seem like
it should take that long. And you have to be
very careful when you travel to the North Rim because
it closes during winter. Yes, yes, it's very true. So
how did this How did this thing get here? It's
been around a while, right, well. The general consensus from
(04:45):
the scientific community as of the Grand Canyon was formed
by the constant erosion of the Colorado River, and that
started somewhere between five to six million years ago, way way,
way back. It's a golden oldie cut. Yeah, I guess
Grand Canyon is literally a deep cut. Oh well, you
win this round, Ben Bowling. I didn't know we were
(05:06):
I didn't know we were playing. I feel like we
all lost for letting that joke pass. Were not the war.
Recent research may upend the notion of the canyon forming
all in one go and at the same pace. That
makes sense right over the same span of time. In fact, Uh,
the Grand Canyon might have been the result of two
separate canyons converging. That's interesting. That makes sense because of
(05:30):
the way erosion works, right, So if there were two
canyons that just eroded continually, they sort of grew into
each other. Yeah, I mean that that sounds like. That
doesn't sound crazy, not at all. And it's like two
slightly less Grand canyons, you know, kind of joining their
forces and forming a much grander canyon. That's correct. So
(05:51):
let's let's hit some numbers really fast just to get
this whole scale thing under under a microscope. Lay at all.
Even though you couldn't ever fit any of this under
a microscope, would have to be a very big micros
a massive one, a macroscope, a macroscope. The Grand Canyon
is two hundred and seventy seven miles long, two hundred
and seventy seven miles long, and it's up to eighteen
(06:13):
miles wide at any point. At several of the points
it's the largest, and it's more than a mile deep.
If you're talking about the surface level at the top
all the way down, that's a mile That is hard
for me to fathom. It's and again we're talking about
erosion here. It's just over time, five six million years,
just all that water, all of the weather, the sand, everything,
(06:36):
the rocks, just getting weather down and weather down and
weather down, weather down till you're a mile deep. And
what type of rock are we talking here, Well, there's
a couple of different kinds. We've got sandstone, We've got
an old favorite shale, one of my personal favoritestone. Yeah, yeah,
all the good ones, all the hits. That's always stunny
(06:57):
in Philadelphia. Reference that I probably should have explained on
a family show. And we owe the If we were
to write a thank you card to something responsible for
the Grand Canyon. We would probably send that card to
the Colorado River, right, which is worn this down. It's
uh one thousand, four hundred fifty miles long and I'm sorry, Matt,
(07:17):
I didn't check the kilometers on that one. Uh. And
it goes through seven U. S. States to Mexican States.
That's the lay of the land. This, this very long river,
this huge canyon that's a mile deep. Do we do
we already mentioned how many acres it covers total? No,
we did not. Let's let's just do the number. One million,
two hundred and eighteen thousand, three hundred and seventy five
(07:40):
roughly acres. Well, Matt, that's the finest number reading I've
heard in my days. It's a huge number, that number
of acres. If you think about you know, if you're
gonna buy a house anywhere near a city, you're gonna
get about point to five to one acre. Do you
want to buy the whole canyon? Matt? I'm just saying,
if you imagine that amount of space and then multiply
(08:03):
it by that number, Holy mackerel and people, it turns out,
have been living in the area for quite a long time.
As we record this in seventeen. Current archaeological evidence suggests
that humans were in the Grand Canyon as far as
four thousand years ago in a in like a permanent
residential kind of situation. But before then, at least six
(08:26):
thousand five years ago, they were visiting the Grand Canyon
checking it out, going, whoa, I mean it sticks out thing.
Can you imagine just happening upon that and just like you're,
you know, a daily walk. Yeah. I wonder too if
when people were doing that, if the weather would change,
(08:47):
you know, if you're walking from a long distance. Man,
I bet you're right, because it's so massive that it
could even have impacts on like air pressure and all
kinds of different variables that could be perceptible, especially thinking
about the flat air in land that you'd be walking
to to journey upon it and just go, oh, what
happened here? You know, some being God or whatever what
(09:11):
have you? Created this? Um? Cool? We should at least
set something up here. And who was the first person
to get to the bottom and then back up without dying?
I feel like there were probably a couple of people
who got to the bottom and didn't make it back. Yea,
Like this was a really bad idea. Yeah, I guess
we're going to start a village down here now. And today,
(09:33):
this era, this group of human inhabitants is referred to
as the ancestral Pueblo of the basketmaker three era. In archaeology,
you'll often hear them referred to as the Anasazi, although
the modern pueblo and people do not, uh, they don't
really truck with this name because the word Anasazi is
(09:59):
Navajo for are either ancient ones or ancient enemies. And
today people are still trying to figure out exactly when
this distinct culture emerged. But the point is that there
have been cultures there for a very long time. Evidence
suggests that these Inner Canyon dwellers were part of Desert culture,
(10:21):
a group of semi nomadic hunter gatherer Native Americans. They
inhabited the Rim and the Inner Canyon. They survived by
hunting and gathering, along with a little bit of agriculture,
but not a not a huge amount, and as you
can probably tell by the name, they were noted for
their basketmaking skills. Yeah, they lived in these little small
communal bands inside caves, which makes a lot of sense
(10:43):
if you think about the structures around there. What would
give you shelter, and they made these circular mud structures
that they called pit houses are now referred to as
pit houses. And then through further refinement of agriculture and
some technology as it's being developed, it led to a
more sedentary, more able lifestyle for the Ancestral Pueblos starting
around five hundred CE, So that's when things start to
(11:06):
change a little bit from the hunter gatherer into not
close not what we would imagine as being a sedentary life,
but getting closer to that. And there's this other group
called the what is it the coh Coonia Coina. They
lived west of the current side of the Grand Canyan
village that part of the South room if you're imagine
(11:28):
you're looking at a map, and they lived there around
the same time that these ancient Pueblou people were living.
And you know, we know civilizations rise, the civilizations they
also do tend to fall, especially ancient ones, and archaeological
sites show that the Ancestral Pueblo and the Coconina flourished
(11:49):
only until about twelve hundred CE, and that's because something
likely happened a hundred years later that forced both of
these cultures to gedaddle uh several lines of evidence lead
to a theory that climate change, what's that caused a
severe drought in the region from twelve seventy six to
twelve nine, and that forced these agrarian people cultures to
(12:16):
move on to greener pastures. Yeah, you can't get any
crops to grow here. Our animals don't have enough food.
Let's get out. Yeah, and we should point out, you know,
a lot of this is about the timing of their
move into an increasingly agriculture focused society. And that's that's
typically what we see happening in cultures around the world.
Right a hunter gatherer, you grow some crops, domesticate some animals, etcetera.
(12:41):
There's a curious gap here in the record because it
turns out that, as Noel pointed out, this drought occurred
and people's skidaddults, and this is droughts are one of
the reasons, one of the common reasons behind a lot
of civilizations in decline, like angor Watts suffer from a drought,
which led to, you know, the loss of the city's population.
(13:05):
And in the case of the Grand Canyon, what we
find is that for about a hundred years after people
left because of this drought, just no one lived there.
We have to wonder why we're people just telling their
kids that place sucks. It's for the birds. It could
have been thought maybe there was some kind of curse
or you know, something that was occurring there that was unnatural,
(13:27):
the sort of So it's possible. I mean, you can
imagine that being a word of mouth tail. So for
thousands of years, other than this one, this gap, for
about a century, there's been a continual inhabitants, right can
There's there's always been some sort of human population there,
primarily Native Americans who built settlements within the canyon, and
(13:49):
as Matt pointed out, it's many caves. The public people
considered the Grand Canyon a holy site. They made pilgrimages
to it, and of worse, at some point a European
quote unquote discovers it. Yeah. Yeah. The first European known
to have even viewed set eyes on the Grand Canyon
(14:12):
was Garcia Lopez Dicardennes from Spain, and he arrived there
in fifteen forty, so he was a little late to
the party. But when he discovered its tend to be
but you know, hey, he found it and put it
on a map. Somewhere, good guy, and fast forward to
the present. That's a quick and dirty look at the
past of the Grand Canyon. But there's still mysteries in
(14:34):
the present day. As we've covered in earlier episodes, people
disappear in public parks way more often than you might think.
And I don't know about you, guys, but I was
stunned to discover that there is no federal database tracking
these people. Yeah, it seems like they're probably should be.
Even if it was, even if it was just shorthand
(14:57):
somewhere or a single Google doc that would be that
would make a lot of sense. But no, And people
forget the United States is very much a wilderness. Uh.
We have these vast swaths of unoccupied land right no roads,
no cities, no cell phones, et cetera. We do have
(15:18):
wilderness here, and thankfully a lot of it is protected. Otherwise,
you know, commerce would probably find a way to swoop
in and bulldoze a whole lot of it. Yeah, but
it's the wilderness, dude. Anything could be out there, It's true,
But I mean, you know, it can be tamed by combines,
geese or another thing that has absolutely nothing to do
(15:39):
with this episode. But I think it is interesting is
the habit that a lot of companies have of buying
access or buying land that has a water source on
it and then taking that water and making bottled water. Yeah, Nestle, yes,
exactly like Nestleie. It sounds like some evil doctor Soda
scheme to me. Really is. And the Grand Canyon is
(16:03):
no different from a lot of these other wild areas.
They're challenging trails, you know. Um, Nolan is not joking
about the borrow. It's a real thing. Uh. There's tremendous
isolation in parts of it, right, Like can you imagine
some for some reason being stuck at the North Rim
in winter? It was not just a borrow, right. It
comes with a guide, Yes, someone who really knows the
(16:24):
lay of the land, and we'll you know, guide you
on this uh this donkey ride down these steep passes
and and hopefully you know, get you there alive. You
are excited about this, Well, I'm into it manly on
a book. Yeah, let's book. Okay, let's go. So you're
talking about these these mile long or mild depth areas
which you know are really scary, like you're talking about
(16:47):
you've also got the Colorado River which is just rapidly
flowing down below you, and most of the places where
you're going to be visiting and climbing. Absolutely, and we
also know that these they're gonna be disappearances, injuries, and
deaths due to natural causes, right, but there are some
things that are a little more sinister, and we have
(17:08):
to admit that. Yes, over time, several people have likely
been murdered in the canyon. Some might remain undiscovered today.
It's just gigantic. It's it's worse than a needle in
a haystack situation, especially before the invention of GPS. Yeah,
if you think about the number of people over time
that will visit any certain point in the Grand Canyon,
(17:29):
that isn't some of the most trafficked your your numbers
are gonna be really small, absolutely, And I mean think
of all the the the neat tuckaway kind of spots
on the way down to there's probably little caves and
areas that would be harder to get to, and if
you had a really good sense of all this stuff,
you could probably hide a body pretty easily. That's a
(17:49):
really good point. You're right, we should go in. We
have an example. Sorry, we have an example. These Idaho
farmers named Glenn Hyde and Bessie how I had traveled
six miles along the Green and Colorado Rivers in this
huge wooden boat, a sweep scow. The boat was found intact,
they found the couples, uh, food, their diary, their guidebook, clothing,
(18:14):
the gun, and it was forty six miles from the
mouth of the Grand Canyon. But the honeymooners, oh yeah,
as you mentioned, they were on their honeymoon, were never found.
And ever since, Glenn and Bessie Hyde have been the
focus of campfire stories and at least four maybe Glenn's
(18:34):
and Bessie's appeared or sighted in later years and over
these legends of this miraculous escape. But that's just one example.
That's just one example of something that still remains officially unsolved.
And if you look, by the way, I just want
to say, if you look at the sweep scale boat,
it looks like something that should not be going down
rapids in a river. It looks like this wooden I
(18:58):
mean large, like the shape of a boat, a big
boat with with two humans on it that look away
too small compared to the boat to be going down
a river. Like that with rocks like giant, huge boulders
just kind of sitting there and outcroppings. That sounds like
Glenn and Bessie Hyde may have signed up for more
than they were ready for. Well they had, they had
done it before, apparently like they were pretty seasoned, right
(19:21):
they had. I think they had uh done some rafting
and wyoming. Yeah, they've done things very similar, So I
think they expected it to be okay because there's no
like Bunny trail in the in the Grand Canyon. I mean,
it's like you said, one side is a little easier
to access than the other, but overall it is uh
some pretty punishing terrain. Yeah. True. And you're probably asking
(19:42):
us and maybe yourself, you know, Matt Noel, super producer,
Paul Ben this is interesting, But why are you telling
us about the Grand Canyon that this is all the
set up. All we've been doing now is setting up
the actual episode because today's twist, you see, it's not
a out a normal disappearance of a couple, tragic as
(20:03):
it may be, nor is it about the disappearance of
individuals today story. Instead, it's about the disappearance of civilization.
And today's question is is there a lost civilization in
the Grand Canyon, And we'll dive right into that after
a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(20:28):
What if there really was some other unknown to uh,
to modern history, unknown to you and I listening to
this right now, some ancient civilization that called the Grand
Canyon home, that was their way before any of the
proven civilizations that we've discussed, the ancient pueblos. What if
(20:49):
it's been there all along, someone just had to discover it. Yes,
what if? And not not just some kind of like
city of ghost city of dead hikers, but like ancient forces, right, like,
what has it been the Hopie? The Keeper of Death? Yes, yes,
the Keeper of Death is said to reside in the
(21:11):
Grand Canyon. Have not independent all you gotta do a
slip on a rock and you will meet him. The
Hopie Keeper of Death is waiting for you. They just
don't put it in a lot of the brochures, but
they're out there, and according to newspapers, the Hopie believe
there was an earlier iteration of civilization in the Canyon.
They believed that their ancestors once lived in an underworld
(21:35):
until dissension rose between the good people and the bad people,
which they described as the people of one heart and
the people of two hearts, and this conflict led them
to leave this underground paradise. And the just this legend
is really cool to look into. It gets complicated quickly
with the different types of people, how they're described, um,
(21:58):
and you'll see people that we'll talk about a little later,
like David Ike, who are ascribing things maybe a little
differently to them than than I would ascribe to what
I have read. But you get into thoughts of lizard
people here. You get into images of other otherworldly humanoids
(22:18):
right right, whether they are purported to be purely folklore,
whether they are purported to be you know, ancient extraterrestrials
or some sort of parallel sapient species that existed along
with Homo sapien. I love this though, This kind of
mythology of the Grand Canyon being almost like a gate
(22:39):
to the underworld or a passage into the afterlife, that
is that is cool. Yeah, man, I keep harping on this,
but it's a mile down and that is the You're
getting close. So nowadays, although we have a wealth of
facts and information about the Grand Canyon, we don't have
(23:01):
the same sense of it that people had back in
the day. Like in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the
Grand Canyon was this fascinating, mysterious and very dangerous thing.
US residents were stunned by the Formation, and to be
honest with you, a lot of readers, especially in the
early nineteen hundreds, would have believed any number of strange
(23:24):
things about it. They're probably not going to go right,
They probably only have a few newspapers that they read, right,
and they their chances of meeting someone who traveled there
are much lower than our chances of meeting a Grand
Canyon visitor would be today. Yeah, it's it's the thing
that Ben talks about a lot on this show, where
the cost of communication back in the day, as well
(23:47):
as the cost of transportation, When you add those two
things together and you're talking about the early twentieth century,
it's exactly. I'm just meaning to reiterate it. You're not
going to get to the Grand Canyon unless you have
the means. And now, like the Internet is democratized, like
information in such a way that like everybody knows everything,
not everything, but like they have access to it if
(24:08):
they so choose to seek out set information. Absolutely, Pandora's
jar is open for better or for worse. So we
we looked into this because we had we had received
several emails and correspondencies. Do I see correspondencies cool? While
we're going with it, Um, We received several messages from
(24:31):
you and your fellow listeners who asked us to look
into these stories of low civilization in the Grand Canyon.
And one thing that was profound to us is we
deal with a lot of hoaxes just in the nature
of our research, and we we like to think we
have an okay nose for determining what's fake or determining
(24:54):
what's real. UM. Noel and Matt are both audio and
video experts, so they are able to They're able to
look at a picture and say whether it's a it's
a fuzzy light, or if it's actually something spooky able
to analyze audio. People back then didn't have that benefit.
But I was totally not expecting to find real newspaper articles.
(25:18):
That's what I should say, you know what it's just
say at the top. I thought I was going to
find a bunch of fake stuff that by fake, I
mean like something someone made in that they look like
it was made in that time, not like the fake
news of today. I guess kind of like that. Yeah,
but like about the Grand King, it required a lot
(25:40):
more effort to do it back then. Though. You had
you had to really like go through with your paste
and you had cut out stuff and do a real
good job. Today people can just write bull crap on
the internet. It's it's true. And in this instance, it
was an actual newspaper, the Arizona Gazette, and it published
an actual story that ran in the paper. Was it
(26:00):
was published, it was printed, it was sent out to readers.
It was a series of stories. Yeah. A March twelfth
of nineteen o nine, Uh, the Arizona Gazette reported that
an explorer by the name of G. E. Kincaid. Please
keep that in your mind, because we'll get back to ge.
They said that he was traveling alone or along the
Colorado River and he had discovered profound, previously unknown architecture
(26:24):
and artifacts inside a vast series of caverns within the
Grand Canyon. So this is in the early so unlike
I mean, Indian Native American artifacts were very much a
known quantity, right, yeah, so unknown, Like what are we
talking about, right? He uh would. The implication in the
(26:45):
story is that they were clearly not from any known
Native American source. Interesting. Yeah, we're gonna get into a
lot of that stuff. But the big question that I
had immediately upon reading this is, all right, who is
this Mr Kincaide, Ge Kincaid fellow. I'm glad you asked,
because we know very very little about him other than
(27:07):
that he came from Lewiston, Idaho, and according to the
Arizona Gazette, he had worked as a scout for the
Smithsonian for over thirty years. Oh that's okay, all right.
He was also when you read newspapers from this time,
the things they choose as descriptors and the way that
they prioritize information just seems really weird. One of the
(27:29):
few facts we know is that the Arizona Gazette said
Ge Kincaid is, in addition to being a scout for
the Smithsonian, the first white child born in Idaho. Um.
I just have to say that is the first thing
that they say about ge Kinkaid in the article. That's
how they introduce him, Gee Kinkaid, the first white child
born in Idaho. The first white child that's in Idaho.
(27:52):
That is what is printed on the page. As I know,
who seems like one of the whitest places in America
To me, I got, wow, who knew? But I guess
you know what you're talking about Western expansion and all
that stuff, so well, I guess it's his fault. Yeah.
Also nine, Yeah, I know. Really it just seems like
(28:14):
that's so funny. Yeah, it's it's a weird way to
describe someone, you know. So Additionally, he had spent time
traveling down the Green River, and he was noted as
carrying a camera unspecified type of camera, but some sort
of camera, and the initial article in the gazette prompted
a series of expeditions by people who were seeking the
(28:37):
answers for themselves as well as wealth and buried treasure.
So if you're a scout for the Smithsonian, you're not
even like the ones actually taking the pictures they're going
to publish. You're just going out there and identifying spots
for the real photographers to come back out there, knowing
that it's safe and then take the real pictures. Right,
I bet you're right. Yeah, maybe he was expendable. That's
(28:57):
why they sent him down the Colorado River and they
literally sold him down the river. He was a red shirt. Yeah. Yeah.
So there's a lot that we haven't unpacked about this yet,
and it's pretty crazy. It's we're gonna get into stuff
you're asking about, noel. Um. The first thing we have
to really think about here is tracking these sources, like
(29:18):
where where are we getting the information? Where is the
gazette getting its information? And you know, the gazette itself. Yeah.
So according to the Gazette, again a real newspaper, uh,
the exploration was being directed by the Smithsonian, specifically by
an anthropologist there named s. A. Jordan's professor s. A.
(29:40):
Jordan's And apparently Kincaid was well known in these circles.
They paint him as sort of an Indiana Jones type,
very much so. And in the article Kincaid talks a
little bit about the location of the cavern system. Yes,
he said it was in the Marble Canyon region. You
(30:02):
can look that up if you'd like to. But we
I'm just gonna read a passage from the article here.
The cavern was described as being quote nearly a mile underground. Okay,
that kind of checks out. About one thousand, four hundred
and eighty feet below the surface. The main passage had
been delved into to find a mammoth chamber, from which
(30:25):
radiates scores of passageways like the spokes of a wheel.
Several hundred rooms have been discovered, reached by passageways running
from the main passage, one of them having been explored
for eight hundred and fifty four ft and another for
six hundred and thirty four ft. This is amazing. How
would you have accessed this like from the from the
Grand from the canyon, because that's all open to the
(30:48):
sky such for it to be underground? Does that mean
you would have to go into like a cave and
then go down through a passage. So yeah, here's here's
my issue with this whole thing. So the entrance is
about one was a foreign and eight feet below the surface,
So we have to imagine the surface would be top
of the Grand Canyon, right, and then go down that
much then you get to the entrance and then nearly
(31:10):
a mile underground from there. I I don't know, perhaps
these two things are being described as the same. Um
not just trying to picture this is amazing though, and
that go on, what what what? What did he find? Yeah?
What's in there? Well, they found numerous artifacts from some
ancient unknown civilization articles which have never been known as
(31:31):
native to this country, and doubtless they had their origin
in the orient Wall weapons, copper instruments, shop edged at
hodd As steel indicate the high state of civilization reached
by these strange people. Sorry, there was also this Buddha
(31:52):
like I would describe it as Buddha like statue which
sits with its legs crossed like in a almost like
a meditative, meditative pose. Yeah, with a lotus flower or
a lily in each hand. And that that description is
very um. That description is meant to further their argument
(32:13):
that these seem to be somehow asiatic and extracial. Even
is quoted as saying, quote, the cast of the face
is Oriental unquote. But what the devil were they doing
here in the canyon? Ah don't know, uh they were?
According to the article, Um, the scientists are not certain
(32:33):
as to what religious worship it represents. It is possible
that this worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibetan.
Bet it sounds very Tibetan, doesn't. Among the other other
finds are vases or urns and cups of copper and
gold made very artistic in design. And we know that
using the term oriental is incredibly racist. Yes, that's why.
(32:55):
That's just kind of lopping it in with a whole
white child thing. But the steel happens, the lotus flower holding,
you know, Buddha figure. This all really does sound like
stuff that would have been around, you know, in in
Asian cultures. Yeah, and it sounds amazing. And you can
imagine why this article being printed caused so many people
(33:17):
to want to get out there and like find that stuff.
Oh man, I'm gonna be rich. And that's the that's
the big question. Why was this so important? What happened next?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, So
(33:37):
I hope everybody had a good break. We're going to
look at why this was so crucial and so important,
why it means such a splash, And probably one of
the best ways to do that is with an excerpt
from the gazette directly discoveries which almost conclusively prove that
(33:59):
the Ray East, which inhabitant this mysterious cavern hewne in
solid rock by human hands, was of Oriental origin. Cringe,
possibly from Egypt, tracing back to Ramsey's. If their theories
are born of by the translation of the tablets engraved
with hieroglyphics, the mystery of the prehistoric peoples of North America,
(34:24):
their ancient arts, who they were, and whence they came
will be solved. Egypt and the Nile and Arizona and
the Colorado will be linked by a historical chain running
back to ages, which staggers the wildest fancy of the fictionist.
(34:45):
Well done, and I love the idea of using fictionists
as a fictionist, you sir, fictionists, let's do that. Can
we make that happen on this show? And then we
we slapped them with a glove, Yes, yes, bite our thumbs,
all right, we have to get gloves. Paul you in, Okay,
he's not a hundred percent, but he's gonna he's gonna
go along with them. Gave us a gloved thumb up right.
(35:08):
So this, this excerpt shows something that we have seen
before in different cultures. You know, when European explorers found
ancient African cities, if you know, they tried to write
it with their preconceived ideology, their framework through which they
(35:30):
saw the world, which unfortunately usually meant them going ah, yes,
there's evidence of white people, but they called it civilization
as a euphemism. But let's be clear, that's what they meant.
They meant like something that was closer to what they
thought of as society, which was European. And you can
(35:53):
read a lot of criticism for stuff like ancient alien
theory that we've talked about before, and and stuff like
claiming to find a loss civilization in One of the
big tentpoles of this sort of criticism is saying that
the people who believe that or argue it despite the
evidence are actually unconsciously or consciously, they're devaluing the work
(36:21):
and the existence of the people who were really there.
So we can't we can't read this and not recognize
that on some level, the implication here is like Native
Americans are not as good as you know us the
first white child and Ido, speaking of the first white child,
(36:42):
this story has sort of a spooky stories to tell him,
the dark esque kind of twist. It's either that or
it just means the whole thing was was a hoax.
But whatever the case may be, the Smithsonian have no
record of either g. Ken Ka or his supposed supervisor,
(37:03):
The professor s A. Jordan's gasp. Yeah, there's no records,
so that can mean a couple of things. Yeah, Either
it really is an Indiana Jones style explorer, and maybe
maybe s A Jordan's as pops. We just don't know that.
Maybe that's his dad, Sean Connery child. Yeah, yeah, he
was kidnapped, told Indiana no but but but really, um,
(37:30):
if we look into it, the Smithsonian spokespeople um have
asserted that quote, no Egyptian artifacts of any kind have
ever been found in North or South America. Therefore, I
can tell you that the Smithsonian Institute has never been
involved in any such excavations. So so our primary source
here is still just this gazette article, this Arizona Gazette
(37:52):
article that identifies these people with their as having an
affiliation with the Smithsonian, right, and the later series of
articles they published because ge Kincaid for a guy who
doesn't exist, went on a couple of adventures. But I mean,
we know, you know, journalists get stuff wrong, but that's
that's a that's a doozy to get that kind of
that level of attribution completely wrong, don't you think. Yeah,
(38:14):
And so just to go back, either they did get
some attribution wrong or this these two guys got wiped
out of the record for some reason, or they didn't exist.
Maybe it was a back to the future type scenario
where they were sort of ghosted out of existence by
their actions in the ghost tunnels. We do know that
(38:35):
we've run into this in the past. We do know
that there have multiple beliefs or theories that paint the
Smithsonian Institution as villainous, like they're stealing ancient or regular
skeletons and hoarding them for some reason and then denying
their existence and then just not telling anyone. That's interesting.
(38:59):
Lots of other ancient to human artifacts that are allegedly
being you know kept. Yeah, and to be like kind
of like the first game in town as far as
like cataloging and getting all of this very priceless stuff.
You know, some corners got cut and some people probably
did some things they weren't proud of. I don't know.
(39:19):
I would never accuse of the Smithsonian of doing anything
like that. Don't at least for this episode. Yeah, I
hope you know what, if someone from the Smithsonian is
listening and there is any sand to that, yes, please
come at me. I want that to be true. I
don't think it is. I just personally I I have
(39:41):
a really tough time believing that the Smithsonian is up
to something villainous. But I do completely agree with Knowle's
point that in the past they probably did some stuff.
That's all I meant. Yeah, I mean the Smithsonian is
a is a is a storied history, and and the
stuff that they have that that they have preserved, it's
around and you can see and there are many mus
ems and publications. It's all priceless to you know, human
(40:04):
culture and civilization and the preservation of all that stuff.
But you know, the wild West man, when you're like
going on these expeditions and sending out scouts and all
the stuff, who knows what what what goes down in
the wilderness, And they hadn't dealt with the ethics of
taking things from other cultures, right, And that's still sort
of a problem. But we that's still a huge problem.
(40:25):
That's sort of a problem. But we do know that
the Smithsonian has done amazing work preserving culture as well.
Oh absolutely. And I'm being completely facetious about saying the
Smithsonian is gonna come get me. No one ever expects
the Smithsonian. That's very true. But let's get back to
the article itself and just discuss if you're gonna post
something in an Arizona Gazette, you're gonna publish a story. Um,
(40:49):
as a reader reading that, UM, you're not exactly going
to have the time or perhaps the money, as we
spoke before, UM, to go an independently very verify what's
being said in the story to fact check it, especially
in yeah nineteen o nine. Come on, um, you you know,
think about how inconvenient that would be for you. If
(41:11):
you're just, um, Matt Frederick reading the Arizona Gazette, just
opening up on the Sunday morning and going, oh, well,
look at this incredible you'd most likely write a letter
to the editor if you wrote to anyone. So we
can imagine the Gazette received a ton of inquiries about
this information. But we have to ask ourselves what happened,
(41:34):
right If if the Grand Canyon is such a popular
site now, as we said at the top of the show,
over four million visitors a year, and if it's been
extensively covered by surveillance, right in terms of scouts going
out physically, park rangers, GPS, satellite imagery, if there's something there.
(41:56):
How is it still hidden? Is this hidden history? We're hopeless?
Hoax is a very illiterate day. The host of Skeptoid,
which is a great podcast, Brian Dunning, summed it up
as such, quote, these stories were not just isolated pranks
or whimsies in regional newspapers, not even fads or trends.
(42:18):
But we're emblematic of much broader cultural currents. The American
Romanticism and Transcendentalism movements were at full bore, rejecting the
corruption of modern society and yearning for the perceived purity
of ancient Eastern cultures, of which Egyptian and Tibetan were
among the most revered. Makes a lot of sense. So
(42:41):
how to get into paper? How how did pass muster?
You know some just one person as editors, yes or no,
some hippie. We gotta get readership up, guys. It's first
quarter nineteen o nine papers. They aren't getting bought as
much anymore. People are buying them for that dime over
in the diner. We gotta get more readership. Put that
put that Grand Canyon story page one. Yeah, nobody wants
(43:04):
to lose out to the tombstone. Pick a une main rival.
I made that up. But there are people who will
tell you that there is a cover up a foot,
particularly writer known as John Rhodes, known as John Rhodes
because that's his name, not to be cryptic about it. Uh.
He claims to know the exact location of the caverns
(43:24):
and the site is guarded today, according to him, by
a loan soldier carrying an M sixteen, and that the
caverns are actually a museum for the shadowy cabal that
runs civilization. So okay, it's a bit of a fringe writer,
say right, yeah, just let's just quickly talk about John Rhodes. Um,
(43:44):
if you go to the website reptoids dot com, that
is where he does a lot of his writing. Um,
you know, it's a it's a person who's doing a
lot of research and has an outlet to to write
about it and has some very interesting ideas. I have
not spoken to him. But here's the thing. I have
(44:06):
not been able to locate this any quote that is
close to what is being said here because that that
what Ben just read was from a Gizmoto article. And
again I cannot verify independently that he said anything about
shadowy elites and caverns and a lone M sixteen carrying
guy that guards it. But wow, that's a cool idea.
(44:30):
And where are you telling me earlier that David Ike
has a connection with this? Yeah, the book that you
put on our instagram, ben uh the biggest secret then,
I think guest book that was written by Mr Ike.
It connects the Grand Canyon discovery, specifically this one the
(44:51):
Concaid discovery with the Reptilian overlords. Like we were talking
in the beginning, like perhaps this is where they started
or one of the places where they land ended, or
one of the places where they arose from. Yeah, and
you can see this um the connective tissue of these
various fringe theories stretching out right in either direction. And
(45:13):
with that, we do have to say that at this
point it does not seem as though there is some
sort of non Native American law civilization in the Grand Canyon,
unless it is being so well covered up and protected
that we just don't know about it. But why maybe
it's like a place to worship the lower Ones. My
(45:36):
favorite tidbit and all of this is the idea of
the Grand Canyon being this gateway into the underworld. That
fascinates me and captivates me more than the hidden civilization stuff. Personally,
I'm really into this idea of a shadow museum, like
a top secret evil museum. I want to go. I mean,
(45:56):
I guess if there's not one like that already, I'll
just eventually build one, right, someone should. So we do
know that the odds are right now that there isn't
some sort of lost civilization, at least in the Grand Canyon. However,
these rumors, these hoaxes, these beliefs, do not come out
of thin air. In the modern era, our species has
(46:17):
discovered cave dwellings that radically redefine what we thought we
knew about the course of humanity. Here, I'm thinking specifically
of uh, go Backley, the Turkish cavern system. Yes, oh man,
that really uh changed things there there, Like you said,
been They've been numerous versions of this. Even if you
(46:38):
look at some of the cave paintings that we've discovered
over the years, you discover you realize that humans have
been around for much longer in places that we didn't
think they existed at the time. Right and for in
the case of go Backley Tepe, Uh, it wasn't even
excavated until starting in the nineteen nineties and people where
(47:00):
they're from the tenth to eighth millennium BC. So there
are still things out there in the ground waiting to
be found. And we've talked before about the technology that
is aiding in the search, and we also talked just
a little bit about this is a wild theory, but
it's completely plausible about how some countries don't want old
(47:24):
sites to be found because then they're responsible for preserving them,
reconstructing them, guarding them, and it's a huge drain, could
be a drag even like uh, those inn Esco heritage
sites and things like that that can be um prohibitively
expensive for places that don't have a whole heck of
a lot of money. Yeah, unless you're talking about NGEO
(47:45):
or a nonprofit or something, you're going to spend tax
dollars on that. And also, the majority of the time
that someone rediscovers an ancient site, uh, they've put a
lot of work in and I'm not dinging the people
with on this work, but the majority of the time
what we see is that native populations are people who
have lived in the area for a long time. We're
(48:07):
already somewhat aware of something. You know, So we know
that in our lifetimes and probably the next few years,
they are going to be more discoveries. We don't know
exactly what or where they will be, but we do
have questions for you. Do you think there's any kind
of significant undiscovered ruins or structures that exist deep in
(48:29):
the Grand Canyon? Somewhere maybe in the middle of the
canyon about half a mile down, there's an cave entrance
that's extremely hard to get to. Do you think that
exists right to us? And where in the US have
you heard of other alleged sites of law civilizations? Speaking
of you? That reminds us it's time for at conners.
(48:54):
Our first shout out comes from Kathy. Cathy says, how
about looking into what is being labeled the Bama boom.
It is occurring in other locations as well. The ones
located around Alabama are just getting some of the best coverage. Thanks.
And this is another one of those things where it's
a mysterious sound. In this case, it is literally a boom.
And you can find a Fox News article that discusses
(49:17):
this mysterious boom that jolted part of the state and
apparently it's happened more than once. Um. In this case,
evidence pointed to a sonic boom from either an aircraft
that was flying overhead or meteor uh, some kind of
explosion in the air. Also a delicious fruit flavored malt beverage. Yeah,
mahama boom. Let's let's look into this. Thank you for writing, Kathy.
(49:39):
We also have a message from Narrison I hope I'm
pronouncing your name correctly, who says, f y I head
rest in your car are mad to have pointed tips
to break windows in case you're stuck or submerged with
windows closed, And then he followed up, yeah, he followed
up saying it looks like that was an internet myth.
Sorry for the misinformation. Fell into the conspiracy myself, but
I saw this, and they are the little kind of
(50:01):
pointy parts that go into the seat where you can
pull the head rest off. The ends of them are
shapes very similarly to the kind of tool you would
use to break a window. So whether or not it's intentional,
and I certainly think you could use that to break
a window possibly, I think the problem is when you
are trying to hold that headdressed and then hit the window.
I think maybe there's a problem they're in there. Two.
(50:23):
So your decreer like having the amount of impact, want
the focus to be on a single point with one
of those little hammers or whatever. There's also a cool
trick that you, well, you probably never do it, but
it's possible to break a window just using the resonance
of a soft touch in a pattern. We're singing a
particularly high note right, which is far out of my range.
We have one more shut up. This one comes from
(50:43):
Lena on Twitter tweets at as if you dudes are
ready to start an adult Triple X space camp, I'm
in and I probably know other triple X ladies who
are super interested as well. What does triple X stand for?
Is it? Well, is it like the alcohol thing' it's
it's it's it's on my Alabama Canabama, Bama boom. And
(51:06):
the the X does We talked about this in an
interview with like A Yates. The X does indicate the
number of times something has been distilled. Okay, yeah, exactly,
super potners, so so A I guess just highly refined.
Lena is talking about a highly refined space camp for adults. Okay,
that's cool. I'm done with that, and thank you Lena
Nerrison and Cathy. This concludes our but not our show.
(51:31):
Noel Matt, super producer, Paul and I will be back
very soon. In the meantime, you can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
on Facebook. That's the other one. Facebook, were conspiracy stuff
on all of those butt Instagram at which we are
conspiracy stuff show. Yeah, And if you don't want to
do any of that stuff, you don't want to find
us on social media, you don't care what we look like,
(51:52):
you can just send us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained defense, you can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. They
called me Ben. We are joined with our super producer
Paul Deckett. Most importantly, you are you and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. Have you guys,
ever been to the Grand Canyon? Yes, I feel like
that was right at the same time it was, but
it wasn't a jinx because we didn't say the same thing.
You're right, You're you're so right. Yes, I have been there.
(00:47):
Have you been there been? Yes? Yeah, excellent? Yea. What
did you do in your travels? Yeah? Me too? Um,
that was not a yes, and yeah, us went over this,
Yes we did, Yes, and I will I will play
these reindeer games. Traveled there on a family road trip,
(01:08):
as a lot of people do in the United States.
Was completely amazed and beflum mixed by the sheer scale
of the thing. And you know when we fly out
west in the course of our job, which happens a
couple you know, it happens on a not uncommon basis.
(01:29):
Then we usually fly over the Grand Canyon and on
a good day you can see it. Yeah, and from
up there it looks amazing. It looks like kind of
the photographs, like a little miniature version of it, and
you it's hard to understand truly how vast this area is.
And uh, did you go on a family trip as
a child. No. I went with some friends. We had
a wonderful time. Did you trip acid? I did not,
(01:51):
though um I probably wouldn't do that anyway. Did you
ride a bureau? I did not. I literally stood at
the precipice on one the rims and just looked out
for about an hour. Probably South Rim R. Yeah, it was.
South Rim is the easier, the easiest access. Just a
little bookkeeping. We do have another guest on today's show,
and it is called construction Noise, So here that occasionally
(02:14):
we're not gonna just we're not gonna pause the recording,
we're gonna barrel right through, but just f y I
we want you to know that you're not crazy. And
we hear it too, yes, which I think is an
important thing that people should say more often when there's
a weird noise around. So Matt, when you took this
trip with your friends. First off, it does sound way cooler.
No offense to family, but I think a friend road
(02:36):
trip is probably just on average, more fun than a
family road trip. They were essentially my family too. Oh man,
it's true, and I believe you. You know, I believe
you and you and your friends had the right idea.
In fact, every year more than four million people visit
the Grand Canyon National Park System. Just not me, not yet,
(02:58):
but hey, we'll get there. Man. In you want to
go to the Grand Canyon. You want to do like
friendship to the Grand Canyon? Are you in? Yeah, we
can do a space camp as long as we can
write a donkey. Yeah, that is the thing. I'm not
making that out. But you have to book it way
in advance, no time like the president, my friends. So
where did this canyon come from? Let's let's talk about
(03:19):
what it is today. Most people living in the US
have a have a pretty solid idea of what the
Grand Canyon is. It exists in so much folklore, so
many tropes, It's referenced all the time, and physically it's huge.
It's kind of tough to miss. It's in the Northwest,
corner of Arizona, and it's near the borders of Utah
(03:40):
and Nevada. It's managed by the National Park Service and
several tribal organizations who have an historic claim to the land.
It's divided into the North Rim and the South Rim.
When we go on a road trip there, will probably
go to the South Rim because it's open all year,
and about the parts of his yars go there. The
(04:01):
North Rim is apparently spectacular. It's closer to Utah, but
it's much less accessible. Yeah, it's one of the craziest
things about this. It takes roughly five hours to drive
the two fifteen miles or excuse me, three and forty
six kilometers between the South Rim where the village is
there to get to the North Room. It takes that
(04:22):
long five hours and if you think, if you look
at it on a map, it does not seem like
it should take that long. And you have to be
very careful when you travel to the North Rim because
it closes during winter. Yes, yes, it's very true. So
how did this How did this thing get here? It's
been around a while, right, well. The general consensus from
(04:45):
the scientific community as of the Grand Canyon was formed
by the constant erosion of the Colorado River, and that
started somewhere between five to six million years ago, way way,
way back. It's a golden oldie cut. Yeah, I guess
Grand Canyon is literally a deep cut. Oh well, you
win this round, Ben Bowling. I didn't know we were
(05:06):
I didn't know we were playing. I feel like we
all lost for letting that joke pass. Were not the war.
Recent research may upend the notion of the canyon forming
all in one go and at the same pace. That
makes sense right over the same span of time. In fact, Uh,
the Grand Canyon might have been the result of two
separate canyons converging. That's interesting. That makes sense because of
(05:30):
the way erosion works, right, So if there were two
canyons that just eroded continually, they sort of grew into
each other. Yeah, I mean that that sounds like. That
doesn't sound crazy, not at all. And it's like two
slightly less Grand canyons, you know, kind of joining their
forces and forming a much grander canyon. That's correct. So
(05:51):
let's let's hit some numbers really fast just to get
this whole scale thing under under a microscope. Lay at all.
Even though you couldn't ever fit any of this under
a microscope, would have to be a very big micros
a massive one, a macroscope, a macroscope. The Grand Canyon
is two hundred and seventy seven miles long, two hundred
and seventy seven miles long, and it's up to eighteen
(06:13):
miles wide at any point. At several of the points
it's the largest, and it's more than a mile deep.
If you're talking about the surface level at the top
all the way down, that's a mile That is hard
for me to fathom. It's and again we're talking about
erosion here. It's just over time, five six million years,
just all that water, all of the weather, the sand, everything,
(06:36):
the rocks, just getting weather down and weather down and
weather down, weather down till you're a mile deep. And
what type of rock are we talking here, Well, there's
a couple of different kinds. We've got sandstone, We've got
an old favorite shale, one of my personal favoritestone. Yeah, yeah,
all the good ones, all the hits. That's always stunny
(06:57):
in Philadelphia. Reference that I probably should have explained on
a family show. And we owe the If we were
to write a thank you card to something responsible for
the Grand Canyon. We would probably send that card to
the Colorado River, right, which is worn this down. It's
uh one thousand, four hundred fifty miles long and I'm sorry, Matt,
(07:17):
I didn't check the kilometers on that one. Uh. And
it goes through seven U. S. States to Mexican States.
That's the lay of the land. This, this very long river,
this huge canyon that's a mile deep. Do we do
we already mentioned how many acres it covers total? No,
we did not. Let's let's just do the number. One million,
two hundred and eighteen thousand, three hundred and seventy five
(07:40):
roughly acres. Well, Matt, that's the finest number reading I've
heard in my days. It's a huge number, that number
of acres. If you think about you know, if you're
gonna buy a house anywhere near a city, you're gonna
get about point to five to one acre. Do you
want to buy the whole canyon? Matt? I'm just saying,
if you imagine that amount of space and then multiply
(08:03):
it by that number, Holy mackerel and people, it turns out,
have been living in the area for quite a long time.
As we record this in seventeen. Current archaeological evidence suggests
that humans were in the Grand Canyon as far as
four thousand years ago in a in like a permanent
residential kind of situation. But before then, at least six
(08:26):
thousand five years ago, they were visiting the Grand Canyon
checking it out, going, whoa, I mean it sticks out thing.
Can you imagine just happening upon that and just like you're,
you know, a daily walk. Yeah. I wonder too if
when people were doing that, if the weather would change,
(08:47):
you know, if you're walking from a long distance. Man,
I bet you're right, because it's so massive that it
could even have impacts on like air pressure and all
kinds of different variables that could be perceptible, especially thinking
about the flat air in land that you'd be walking
to to journey upon it and just go, oh, what
happened here? You know, some being God or whatever what
(09:11):
have you? Created this? Um? Cool? We should at least
set something up here. And who was the first person
to get to the bottom and then back up without dying?
I feel like there were probably a couple of people
who got to the bottom and didn't make it back. Yea,
Like this was a really bad idea. Yeah, I guess
we're going to start a village down here now. And today,
(09:33):
this era, this group of human inhabitants is referred to
as the ancestral Pueblo of the basketmaker three era. In archaeology,
you'll often hear them referred to as the Anasazi, although
the modern pueblo and people do not, uh, they don't
really truck with this name because the word Anasazi is
(09:59):
Navajo for are either ancient ones or ancient enemies. And
today people are still trying to figure out exactly when
this distinct culture emerged. But the point is that there
have been cultures there for a very long time. Evidence
suggests that these Inner Canyon dwellers were part of Desert culture,
(10:21):
a group of semi nomadic hunter gatherer Native Americans. They
inhabited the Rim and the Inner Canyon. They survived by
hunting and gathering, along with a little bit of agriculture,
but not a not a huge amount, and as you
can probably tell by the name, they were noted for
their basketmaking skills. Yeah, they lived in these little small
communal bands inside caves, which makes a lot of sense
(10:43):
if you think about the structures around there. What would
give you shelter, and they made these circular mud structures
that they called pit houses are now referred to as
pit houses. And then through further refinement of agriculture and
some technology as it's being developed, it led to a
more sedentary, more able lifestyle for the Ancestral Pueblos starting
around five hundred CE, So that's when things start to
(11:06):
change a little bit from the hunter gatherer into not
close not what we would imagine as being a sedentary life,
but getting closer to that. And there's this other group
called the what is it the coh Coonia Coina. They
lived west of the current side of the Grand Canyan
village that part of the South room if you're imagine
(11:28):
you're looking at a map, and they lived there around
the same time that these ancient Pueblou people were living.
And you know, we know civilizations rise, the civilizations they
also do tend to fall, especially ancient ones, and archaeological
sites show that the Ancestral Pueblo and the Coconina flourished
(11:49):
only until about twelve hundred CE, and that's because something
likely happened a hundred years later that forced both of
these cultures to gedaddle uh several lines of evidence lead
to a theory that climate change, what's that caused a
severe drought in the region from twelve seventy six to
twelve nine, and that forced these agrarian people cultures to
(12:16):
move on to greener pastures. Yeah, you can't get any
crops to grow here. Our animals don't have enough food.
Let's get out. Yeah, and we should point out, you know,
a lot of this is about the timing of their
move into an increasingly agriculture focused society. And that's that's
typically what we see happening in cultures around the world.
Right a hunter gatherer, you grow some crops, domesticate some animals, etcetera.
(12:41):
There's a curious gap here in the record because it
turns out that, as Noel pointed out, this drought occurred
and people's skidaddults, and this is droughts are one of
the reasons, one of the common reasons behind a lot
of civilizations in decline, like angor Watts suffer from a drought,
which led to, you know, the loss of the city's population.
(13:05):
And in the case of the Grand Canyon, what we
find is that for about a hundred years after people
left because of this drought, just no one lived there.
We have to wonder why we're people just telling their
kids that place sucks. It's for the birds. It could
have been thought maybe there was some kind of curse
or you know, something that was occurring there that was unnatural,
(13:27):
the sort of So it's possible. I mean, you can
imagine that being a word of mouth tail. So for
thousands of years, other than this one, this gap, for
about a century, there's been a continual inhabitants, right can
There's there's always been some sort of human population there,
primarily Native Americans who built settlements within the canyon, and
(13:49):
as Matt pointed out, it's many caves. The public people
considered the Grand Canyon a holy site. They made pilgrimages
to it, and of worse, at some point a European
quote unquote discovers it. Yeah. Yeah. The first European known
to have even viewed set eyes on the Grand Canyon
(14:12):
was Garcia Lopez Dicardennes from Spain, and he arrived there
in fifteen forty, so he was a little late to
the party. But when he discovered its tend to be
but you know, hey, he found it and put it
on a map. Somewhere, good guy, and fast forward to
the present. That's a quick and dirty look at the
past of the Grand Canyon. But there's still mysteries in
(14:34):
the present day. As we've covered in earlier episodes, people
disappear in public parks way more often than you might think.
And I don't know about you, guys, but I was
stunned to discover that there is no federal database tracking
these people. Yeah, it seems like they're probably should be.
Even if it was, even if it was just shorthand
(14:57):
somewhere or a single Google doc that would be that
would make a lot of sense. But no, And people
forget the United States is very much a wilderness. Uh.
We have these vast swaths of unoccupied land right no roads,
no cities, no cell phones, et cetera. We do have
(15:18):
wilderness here, and thankfully a lot of it is protected. Otherwise,
you know, commerce would probably find a way to swoop
in and bulldoze a whole lot of it. Yeah, but
it's the wilderness, dude. Anything could be out there, It's true,
But I mean, you know, it can be tamed by combines,
geese or another thing that has absolutely nothing to do
(15:39):
with this episode. But I think it is interesting is
the habit that a lot of companies have of buying
access or buying land that has a water source on
it and then taking that water and making bottled water. Yeah, Nestle, yes,
exactly like Nestleie. It sounds like some evil doctor Soda
scheme to me. Really is. And the Grand Canyon is
(16:03):
no different from a lot of these other wild areas.
They're challenging trails, you know. Um, Nolan is not joking
about the borrow. It's a real thing. Uh. There's tremendous
isolation in parts of it, right, Like can you imagine
some for some reason being stuck at the North Rim
in winter? It was not just a borrow, right. It
comes with a guide, Yes, someone who really knows the
(16:24):
lay of the land, and we'll you know, guide you
on this uh this donkey ride down these steep passes
and and hopefully you know, get you there alive. You
are excited about this, Well, I'm into it manly on
a book. Yeah, let's book. Okay, let's go. So you're
talking about these these mile long or mild depth areas
which you know are really scary, like you're talking about
(16:47):
you've also got the Colorado River which is just rapidly
flowing down below you, and most of the places where
you're going to be visiting and climbing. Absolutely, and we
also know that these they're gonna be disappearances, injuries, and
deaths due to natural causes, right, but there are some
things that are a little more sinister, and we have
(17:08):
to admit that. Yes, over time, several people have likely
been murdered in the canyon. Some might remain undiscovered today.
It's just gigantic. It's it's worse than a needle in
a haystack situation, especially before the invention of GPS. Yeah,
if you think about the number of people over time
that will visit any certain point in the Grand Canyon,
(17:29):
that isn't some of the most trafficked your your numbers
are gonna be really small, absolutely, And I mean think
of all the the the neat tuckaway kind of spots
on the way down to there's probably little caves and
areas that would be harder to get to, and if
you had a really good sense of all this stuff,
you could probably hide a body pretty easily. That's a
(17:49):
really good point. You're right, we should go in. We
have an example. Sorry, we have an example. These Idaho
farmers named Glenn Hyde and Bessie how I had traveled
six miles along the Green and Colorado Rivers in this
huge wooden boat, a sweep scow. The boat was found intact,
they found the couples, uh, food, their diary, their guidebook, clothing,
(18:14):
the gun, and it was forty six miles from the
mouth of the Grand Canyon. But the honeymooners, oh yeah,
as you mentioned, they were on their honeymoon, were never found.
And ever since, Glenn and Bessie Hyde have been the
focus of campfire stories and at least four maybe Glenn's
(18:34):
and Bessie's appeared or sighted in later years and over
these legends of this miraculous escape. But that's just one example.
That's just one example of something that still remains officially unsolved.
And if you look, by the way, I just want
to say, if you look at the sweep scale boat,
it looks like something that should not be going down
rapids in a river. It looks like this wooden I
(18:58):
mean large, like the shape of a boat, a big
boat with with two humans on it that look away
too small compared to the boat to be going down
a river. Like that with rocks like giant, huge boulders
just kind of sitting there and outcroppings. That sounds like
Glenn and Bessie Hyde may have signed up for more
than they were ready for. Well they had, they had
done it before, apparently like they were pretty seasoned, right
(19:21):
they had. I think they had uh done some rafting
and wyoming. Yeah, they've done things very similar, So I
think they expected it to be okay because there's no
like Bunny trail in the in the Grand Canyon. I mean,
it's like you said, one side is a little easier
to access than the other, but overall it is uh
some pretty punishing terrain. Yeah. True. And you're probably asking
(19:42):
us and maybe yourself, you know, Matt Noel, super producer,
Paul Ben this is interesting, But why are you telling
us about the Grand Canyon that this is all the
set up. All we've been doing now is setting up
the actual episode because today's twist, you see, it's not
a out a normal disappearance of a couple, tragic as
(20:03):
it may be, nor is it about the disappearance of
individuals today story. Instead, it's about the disappearance of civilization.
And today's question is is there a lost civilization in
the Grand Canyon, And we'll dive right into that after
a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(20:28):
What if there really was some other unknown to uh,
to modern history, unknown to you and I listening to
this right now, some ancient civilization that called the Grand
Canyon home, that was their way before any of the
proven civilizations that we've discussed, the ancient pueblos. What if
(20:49):
it's been there all along, someone just had to discover it. Yes,
what if? And not not just some kind of like
city of ghost city of dead hikers, but like ancient forces, right, like,
what has it been the Hopie? The Keeper of Death? Yes, yes,
the Keeper of Death is said to reside in the
(21:11):
Grand Canyon. Have not independent all you gotta do a
slip on a rock and you will meet him. The
Hopie Keeper of Death is waiting for you. They just
don't put it in a lot of the brochures, but
they're out there, and according to newspapers, the Hopie believe
there was an earlier iteration of civilization in the Canyon.
They believed that their ancestors once lived in an underworld
(21:35):
until dissension rose between the good people and the bad people,
which they described as the people of one heart and
the people of two hearts, and this conflict led them
to leave this underground paradise. And the just this legend
is really cool to look into. It gets complicated quickly
with the different types of people, how they're described, um,
(21:58):
and you'll see people that we'll talk about a little later,
like David Ike, who are ascribing things maybe a little
differently to them than than I would ascribe to what
I have read. But you get into thoughts of lizard
people here. You get into images of other otherworldly humanoids
(22:18):
right right, whether they are purported to be purely folklore,
whether they are purported to be you know, ancient extraterrestrials
or some sort of parallel sapient species that existed along
with Homo sapien. I love this though, This kind of
mythology of the Grand Canyon being almost like a gate
(22:39):
to the underworld or a passage into the afterlife, that
is that is cool. Yeah, man, I keep harping on this,
but it's a mile down and that is the You're
getting close. So nowadays, although we have a wealth of
facts and information about the Grand Canyon, we don't have
(23:01):
the same sense of it that people had back in
the day. Like in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the
Grand Canyon was this fascinating, mysterious and very dangerous thing.
US residents were stunned by the Formation, and to be
honest with you, a lot of readers, especially in the
early nineteen hundreds, would have believed any number of strange
(23:24):
things about it. They're probably not going to go right,
They probably only have a few newspapers that they read, right,
and they their chances of meeting someone who traveled there
are much lower than our chances of meeting a Grand
Canyon visitor would be today. Yeah, it's it's the thing
that Ben talks about a lot on this show, where
the cost of communication back in the day, as well
(23:47):
as the cost of transportation, When you add those two
things together and you're talking about the early twentieth century,
it's exactly. I'm just meaning to reiterate it. You're not
going to get to the Grand Canyon unless you have
the means. And now, like the Internet is democratized, like
information in such a way that like everybody knows everything,
not everything, but like they have access to it if
(24:08):
they so choose to seek out set information. Absolutely, Pandora's
jar is open for better or for worse. So we
we looked into this because we had we had received
several emails and correspondencies. Do I see correspondencies cool? While
we're going with it, Um, We received several messages from
(24:31):
you and your fellow listeners who asked us to look
into these stories of low civilization in the Grand Canyon.
And one thing that was profound to us is we
deal with a lot of hoaxes just in the nature
of our research, and we we like to think we
have an okay nose for determining what's fake or determining
(24:54):
what's real. UM. Noel and Matt are both audio and
video experts, so they are able to They're able to
look at a picture and say whether it's a it's
a fuzzy light, or if it's actually something spooky able
to analyze audio. People back then didn't have that benefit.
But I was totally not expecting to find real newspaper articles.
(25:18):
That's what I should say, you know what it's just
say at the top. I thought I was going to
find a bunch of fake stuff that by fake, I
mean like something someone made in that they look like
it was made in that time, not like the fake
news of today. I guess kind of like that. Yeah,
but like about the Grand King, it required a lot
(25:40):
more effort to do it back then. Though. You had
you had to really like go through with your paste
and you had cut out stuff and do a real
good job. Today people can just write bull crap on
the internet. It's it's true. And in this instance, it
was an actual newspaper, the Arizona Gazette, and it published
an actual story that ran in the paper. Was it
(26:00):
was published, it was printed, it was sent out to readers.
It was a series of stories. Yeah. A March twelfth
of nineteen o nine, Uh, the Arizona Gazette reported that
an explorer by the name of G. E. Kincaid. Please
keep that in your mind, because we'll get back to ge.
They said that he was traveling alone or along the
Colorado River and he had discovered profound, previously unknown architecture
(26:24):
and artifacts inside a vast series of caverns within the
Grand Canyon. So this is in the early so unlike
I mean, Indian Native American artifacts were very much a
known quantity, right, yeah, so unknown, Like what are we
talking about, right? He uh would. The implication in the
(26:45):
story is that they were clearly not from any known
Native American source. Interesting. Yeah, we're gonna get into a
lot of that stuff. But the big question that I
had immediately upon reading this is, all right, who is
this Mr Kincaide, Ge Kincaid fellow. I'm glad you asked,
because we know very very little about him other than
(27:07):
that he came from Lewiston, Idaho, and according to the
Arizona Gazette, he had worked as a scout for the
Smithsonian for over thirty years. Oh that's okay, all right.
He was also when you read newspapers from this time,
the things they choose as descriptors and the way that
they prioritize information just seems really weird. One of the
(27:29):
few facts we know is that the Arizona Gazette said
Ge Kincaid is, in addition to being a scout for
the Smithsonian, the first white child born in Idaho. Um.
I just have to say that is the first thing
that they say about ge Kinkaid in the article. That's
how they introduce him, Gee Kinkaid, the first white child
born in Idaho. The first white child that's in Idaho.
(27:52):
That is what is printed on the page. As I know,
who seems like one of the whitest places in America
To me, I got, wow, who knew? But I guess
you know what you're talking about Western expansion and all
that stuff, so well, I guess it's his fault. Yeah.
Also nine, Yeah, I know. Really it just seems like
(28:14):
that's so funny. Yeah, it's it's a weird way to
describe someone, you know. So Additionally, he had spent time
traveling down the Green River, and he was noted as
carrying a camera unspecified type of camera, but some sort
of camera, and the initial article in the gazette prompted
a series of expeditions by people who were seeking the
(28:37):
answers for themselves as well as wealth and buried treasure.
So if you're a scout for the Smithsonian, you're not
even like the ones actually taking the pictures they're going
to publish. You're just going out there and identifying spots
for the real photographers to come back out there, knowing
that it's safe and then take the real pictures. Right,
I bet you're right. Yeah, maybe he was expendable. That's
(28:57):
why they sent him down the Colorado River and they
literally sold him down the river. He was a red shirt. Yeah. Yeah.
So there's a lot that we haven't unpacked about this yet,
and it's pretty crazy. It's we're gonna get into stuff
you're asking about, noel. Um. The first thing we have
to really think about here is tracking these sources, like
(29:18):
where where are we getting the information? Where is the
gazette getting its information? And you know, the gazette itself. Yeah.
So according to the Gazette, again a real newspaper, uh,
the exploration was being directed by the Smithsonian, specifically by
an anthropologist there named s. A. Jordan's professor s. A.
(29:40):
Jordan's And apparently Kincaid was well known in these circles.
They paint him as sort of an Indiana Jones type,
very much so. And in the article Kincaid talks a
little bit about the location of the cavern system. Yes,
he said it was in the Marble Canyon region. You
(30:02):
can look that up if you'd like to. But we
I'm just gonna read a passage from the article here.
The cavern was described as being quote nearly a mile underground. Okay,
that kind of checks out. About one thousand, four hundred
and eighty feet below the surface. The main passage had
been delved into to find a mammoth chamber, from which
(30:25):
radiates scores of passageways like the spokes of a wheel.
Several hundred rooms have been discovered, reached by passageways running
from the main passage, one of them having been explored
for eight hundred and fifty four ft and another for
six hundred and thirty four ft. This is amazing. How
would you have accessed this like from the from the
Grand from the canyon, because that's all open to the
(30:48):
sky such for it to be underground? Does that mean
you would have to go into like a cave and
then go down through a passage. So yeah, here's here's
my issue with this whole thing. So the entrance is
about one was a foreign and eight feet below the surface,
So we have to imagine the surface would be top
of the Grand Canyon, right, and then go down that
much then you get to the entrance and then nearly
(31:10):
a mile underground from there. I I don't know, perhaps
these two things are being described as the same. Um
not just trying to picture this is amazing though, and
that go on, what what what? What did he find? Yeah?
What's in there? Well, they found numerous artifacts from some
ancient unknown civilization articles which have never been known as
(31:31):
native to this country, and doubtless they had their origin
in the orient Wall weapons, copper instruments, shop edged at
hodd As steel indicate the high state of civilization reached
by these strange people. Sorry, there was also this Buddha
(31:52):
like I would describe it as Buddha like statue which
sits with its legs crossed like in a almost like
a meditative, meditative pose. Yeah, with a lotus flower or
a lily in each hand. And that that description is
very um. That description is meant to further their argument
(32:13):
that these seem to be somehow asiatic and extracial. Even
is quoted as saying, quote, the cast of the face
is Oriental unquote. But what the devil were they doing
here in the canyon? Ah don't know, uh they were?
According to the article, Um, the scientists are not certain
(32:33):
as to what religious worship it represents. It is possible
that this worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibetan.
Bet it sounds very Tibetan, doesn't. Among the other other
finds are vases or urns and cups of copper and
gold made very artistic in design. And we know that
using the term oriental is incredibly racist. Yes, that's why.
(32:55):
That's just kind of lopping it in with a whole
white child thing. But the steel happens, the lotus flower holding,
you know, Buddha figure. This all really does sound like
stuff that would have been around, you know, in in
Asian cultures. Yeah, and it sounds amazing. And you can
imagine why this article being printed caused so many people
(33:17):
to want to get out there and like find that stuff.
Oh man, I'm gonna be rich. And that's the that's
the big question. Why was this so important? What happened next?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, So
(33:37):
I hope everybody had a good break. We're going to
look at why this was so crucial and so important,
why it means such a splash, And probably one of
the best ways to do that is with an excerpt
from the gazette directly discoveries which almost conclusively prove that
(33:59):
the Ray East, which inhabitant this mysterious cavern hewne in
solid rock by human hands, was of Oriental origin. Cringe,
possibly from Egypt, tracing back to Ramsey's. If their theories
are born of by the translation of the tablets engraved
with hieroglyphics, the mystery of the prehistoric peoples of North America,
(34:24):
their ancient arts, who they were, and whence they came
will be solved. Egypt and the Nile and Arizona and
the Colorado will be linked by a historical chain running
back to ages, which staggers the wildest fancy of the fictionist.
(34:45):
Well done, and I love the idea of using fictionists
as a fictionist, you sir, fictionists, let's do that. Can
we make that happen on this show? And then we
we slapped them with a glove, Yes, yes, bite our thumbs,
all right, we have to get gloves. Paul you in, Okay,
he's not a hundred percent, but he's gonna he's gonna
go along with them. Gave us a gloved thumb up right.
(35:08):
So this, this excerpt shows something that we have seen
before in different cultures. You know, when European explorers found
ancient African cities, if you know, they tried to write
it with their preconceived ideology, their framework through which they
(35:30):
saw the world, which unfortunately usually meant them going ah, yes,
there's evidence of white people, but they called it civilization
as a euphemism. But let's be clear, that's what they meant.
They meant like something that was closer to what they
thought of as society, which was European. And you can
(35:53):
read a lot of criticism for stuff like ancient alien
theory that we've talked about before, and and stuff like
claiming to find a loss civilization in One of the
big tentpoles of this sort of criticism is saying that
the people who believe that or argue it despite the
evidence are actually unconsciously or consciously, they're devaluing the work
(36:21):
and the existence of the people who were really there.
So we can't we can't read this and not recognize
that on some level, the implication here is like Native
Americans are not as good as you know us the
first white child and Ido, speaking of the first white child,
(36:42):
this story has sort of a spooky stories to tell him,
the dark esque kind of twist. It's either that or
it just means the whole thing was was a hoax.
But whatever the case may be, the Smithsonian have no
record of either g. Ken Ka or his supposed supervisor,
(37:03):
The professor s A. Jordan's gasp. Yeah, there's no records,
so that can mean a couple of things. Yeah, Either
it really is an Indiana Jones style explorer, and maybe
maybe s A Jordan's as pops. We just don't know that.
Maybe that's his dad, Sean Connery child. Yeah, yeah, he
was kidnapped, told Indiana no but but but really, um,
(37:30):
if we look into it, the Smithsonian spokespeople um have
asserted that quote, no Egyptian artifacts of any kind have
ever been found in North or South America. Therefore, I
can tell you that the Smithsonian Institute has never been
involved in any such excavations. So so our primary source
here is still just this gazette article, this Arizona Gazette
(37:52):
article that identifies these people with their as having an
affiliation with the Smithsonian, right, and the later series of
articles they published because ge Kincaid for a guy who
doesn't exist, went on a couple of adventures. But I mean,
we know, you know, journalists get stuff wrong, but that's
that's a that's a doozy to get that kind of
that level of attribution completely wrong, don't you think. Yeah,
(38:14):
And so just to go back, either they did get
some attribution wrong or this these two guys got wiped
out of the record for some reason, or they didn't exist.
Maybe it was a back to the future type scenario
where they were sort of ghosted out of existence by
their actions in the ghost tunnels. We do know that
(38:35):
we've run into this in the past. We do know
that there have multiple beliefs or theories that paint the
Smithsonian Institution as villainous, like they're stealing ancient or regular
skeletons and hoarding them for some reason and then denying
their existence and then just not telling anyone. That's interesting.
(38:59):
Lots of other ancient to human artifacts that are allegedly
being you know kept. Yeah, and to be like kind
of like the first game in town as far as
like cataloging and getting all of this very priceless stuff.
You know, some corners got cut and some people probably
did some things they weren't proud of. I don't know.
(39:19):
I would never accuse of the Smithsonian of doing anything
like that. Don't at least for this episode. Yeah, I
hope you know what, if someone from the Smithsonian is
listening and there is any sand to that, yes, please
come at me. I want that to be true. I
don't think it is. I just personally I I have
(39:41):
a really tough time believing that the Smithsonian is up
to something villainous. But I do completely agree with Knowle's
point that in the past they probably did some stuff.
That's all I meant. Yeah, I mean the Smithsonian is
a is a is a storied history, and and the
stuff that they have that that they have preserved, it's
around and you can see and there are many mus
ems and publications. It's all priceless to you know, human
(40:04):
culture and civilization and the preservation of all that stuff.
But you know, the wild West man, when you're like
going on these expeditions and sending out scouts and all
the stuff, who knows what what what goes down in
the wilderness, And they hadn't dealt with the ethics of
taking things from other cultures, right, And that's still sort
of a problem. But we that's still a huge problem.
(40:25):
That's sort of a problem. But we do know that
the Smithsonian has done amazing work preserving culture as well.
Oh absolutely. And I'm being completely facetious about saying the
Smithsonian is gonna come get me. No one ever expects
the Smithsonian. That's very true. But let's get back to
the article itself and just discuss if you're gonna post
something in an Arizona Gazette, you're gonna publish a story. Um,
(40:49):
as a reader reading that, UM, you're not exactly going
to have the time or perhaps the money, as we
spoke before, UM, to go an independently very verify what's
being said in the story to fact check it, especially
in yeah nineteen o nine. Come on, um, you you know,
think about how inconvenient that would be for you. If
(41:11):
you're just, um, Matt Frederick reading the Arizona Gazette, just
opening up on the Sunday morning and going, oh, well,
look at this incredible you'd most likely write a letter
to the editor if you wrote to anyone. So we
can imagine the Gazette received a ton of inquiries about
this information. But we have to ask ourselves what happened,
(41:34):
right If if the Grand Canyon is such a popular
site now, as we said at the top of the show,
over four million visitors a year, and if it's been
extensively covered by surveillance, right in terms of scouts going
out physically, park rangers, GPS, satellite imagery, if there's something there.
(41:56):
How is it still hidden? Is this hidden history? We're hopeless?
Hoax is a very illiterate day. The host of Skeptoid,
which is a great podcast, Brian Dunning, summed it up
as such, quote, these stories were not just isolated pranks
or whimsies in regional newspapers, not even fads or trends.
(42:18):
But we're emblematic of much broader cultural currents. The American
Romanticism and Transcendentalism movements were at full bore, rejecting the
corruption of modern society and yearning for the perceived purity
of ancient Eastern cultures, of which Egyptian and Tibetan were
among the most revered. Makes a lot of sense. So
(42:41):
how to get into paper? How how did pass muster?
You know some just one person as editors, yes or no,
some hippie. We gotta get readership up, guys. It's first
quarter nineteen o nine papers. They aren't getting bought as
much anymore. People are buying them for that dime over
in the diner. We gotta get more readership. Put that
put that Grand Canyon story page one. Yeah, nobody wants
(43:04):
to lose out to the tombstone. Pick a une main rival.
I made that up. But there are people who will
tell you that there is a cover up a foot,
particularly writer known as John Rhodes, known as John Rhodes
because that's his name, not to be cryptic about it. Uh.
He claims to know the exact location of the caverns
(43:24):
and the site is guarded today, according to him, by
a loan soldier carrying an M sixteen, and that the
caverns are actually a museum for the shadowy cabal that
runs civilization. So okay, it's a bit of a fringe writer,
say right, yeah, just let's just quickly talk about John Rhodes. Um,
(43:44):
if you go to the website reptoids dot com, that
is where he does a lot of his writing. Um,
you know, it's a it's a person who's doing a
lot of research and has an outlet to to write
about it and has some very interesting ideas. I have
not spoken to him. But here's the thing. I have
(44:06):
not been able to locate this any quote that is
close to what is being said here because that that
what Ben just read was from a Gizmoto article. And
again I cannot verify independently that he said anything about
shadowy elites and caverns and a lone M sixteen carrying
guy that guards it. But wow, that's a cool idea.
(44:30):
And where are you telling me earlier that David Ike
has a connection with this? Yeah, the book that you
put on our instagram, ben uh the biggest secret then,
I think guest book that was written by Mr Ike.
It connects the Grand Canyon discovery, specifically this one the
(44:51):
Concaid discovery with the Reptilian overlords. Like we were talking
in the beginning, like perhaps this is where they started
or one of the places where they land ended, or
one of the places where they arose from. Yeah, and
you can see this um the connective tissue of these
various fringe theories stretching out right in either direction. And
(45:13):
with that, we do have to say that at this
point it does not seem as though there is some
sort of non Native American law civilization in the Grand Canyon,
unless it is being so well covered up and protected
that we just don't know about it. But why maybe
it's like a place to worship the lower Ones. My
(45:36):
favorite tidbit and all of this is the idea of
the Grand Canyon being this gateway into the underworld. That
fascinates me and captivates me more than the hidden civilization stuff. Personally,
I'm really into this idea of a shadow museum, like
a top secret evil museum. I want to go. I mean,
(45:56):
I guess if there's not one like that already, I'll
just eventually build one, right, someone should. So we do
know that the odds are right now that there isn't
some sort of lost civilization, at least in the Grand Canyon. However,
these rumors, these hoaxes, these beliefs, do not come out
of thin air. In the modern era, our species has
(46:17):
discovered cave dwellings that radically redefine what we thought we
knew about the course of humanity. Here, I'm thinking specifically
of uh, go Backley, the Turkish cavern system. Yes, oh man,
that really uh changed things there there, Like you said,
been They've been numerous versions of this. Even if you
(46:38):
look at some of the cave paintings that we've discovered
over the years, you discover you realize that humans have
been around for much longer in places that we didn't
think they existed at the time. Right and for in
the case of go Backley Tepe, Uh, it wasn't even
excavated until starting in the nineteen nineties and people where
(47:00):
they're from the tenth to eighth millennium BC. So there
are still things out there in the ground waiting to
be found. And we've talked before about the technology that
is aiding in the search, and we also talked just
a little bit about this is a wild theory, but
it's completely plausible about how some countries don't want old
(47:24):
sites to be found because then they're responsible for preserving them,
reconstructing them, guarding them, and it's a huge drain, could
be a drag even like uh, those inn Esco heritage
sites and things like that that can be um prohibitively
expensive for places that don't have a whole heck of
a lot of money. Yeah, unless you're talking about NGEO
(47:45):
or a nonprofit or something, you're going to spend tax
dollars on that. And also, the majority of the time
that someone rediscovers an ancient site, uh, they've put a
lot of work in and I'm not dinging the people
with on this work, but the majority of the time
what we see is that native populations are people who
have lived in the area for a long time. We're
(48:07):
already somewhat aware of something. You know, So we know
that in our lifetimes and probably the next few years,
they are going to be more discoveries. We don't know
exactly what or where they will be, but we do
have questions for you. Do you think there's any kind
of significant undiscovered ruins or structures that exist deep in
(48:29):
the Grand Canyon? Somewhere maybe in the middle of the
canyon about half a mile down, there's an cave entrance
that's extremely hard to get to. Do you think that
exists right to us? And where in the US have
you heard of other alleged sites of law civilizations? Speaking
of you? That reminds us it's time for at conners.
(48:54):
Our first shout out comes from Kathy. Cathy says, how
about looking into what is being labeled the Bama boom.
It is occurring in other locations as well. The ones
located around Alabama are just getting some of the best coverage. Thanks.
And this is another one of those things where it's
a mysterious sound. In this case, it is literally a boom.
And you can find a Fox News article that discusses
(49:17):
this mysterious boom that jolted part of the state and
apparently it's happened more than once. Um. In this case,
evidence pointed to a sonic boom from either an aircraft
that was flying overhead or meteor uh, some kind of
explosion in the air. Also a delicious fruit flavored malt beverage. Yeah,
mahama boom. Let's let's look into this. Thank you for writing, Kathy.
(49:39):
We also have a message from Narrison I hope I'm
pronouncing your name correctly, who says, f y I head
rest in your car are mad to have pointed tips
to break windows in case you're stuck or submerged with
windows closed, And then he followed up, yeah, he followed
up saying it looks like that was an internet myth.
Sorry for the misinformation. Fell into the conspiracy myself, but
I saw this, and they are the little kind of
(50:01):
pointy parts that go into the seat where you can
pull the head rest off. The ends of them are
shapes very similarly to the kind of tool you would
use to break a window. So whether or not it's intentional,
and I certainly think you could use that to break
a window possibly, I think the problem is when you
are trying to hold that headdressed and then hit the window.
I think maybe there's a problem they're in there. Two.
(50:23):
So your decreer like having the amount of impact, want
the focus to be on a single point with one
of those little hammers or whatever. There's also a cool
trick that you, well, you probably never do it, but
it's possible to break a window just using the resonance
of a soft touch in a pattern. We're singing a
particularly high note right, which is far out of my range.
We have one more shut up. This one comes from
(50:43):
Lena on Twitter tweets at as if you dudes are
ready to start an adult Triple X space camp, I'm
in and I probably know other triple X ladies who
are super interested as well. What does triple X stand for?
Is it? Well, is it like the alcohol thing' it's
it's it's it's on my Alabama Canabama, Bama boom. And
(51:06):
the the X does We talked about this in an
interview with like A Yates. The X does indicate the
number of times something has been distilled. Okay, yeah, exactly,
super potners, so so A I guess just highly refined.
Lena is talking about a highly refined space camp for adults. Okay,
that's cool. I'm done with that, and thank you Lena
Nerrison and Cathy. This concludes our but not our show.
(51:31):
Noel Matt, super producer, Paul and I will be back
very soon. In the meantime, you can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
on Facebook. That's the other one. Facebook, were conspiracy stuff
on all of those butt Instagram at which we are
conspiracy stuff show. Yeah, And if you don't want to
do any of that stuff, you don't want to find
us on social media, you don't care what we look like,
(51:52):
you can just send us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com.
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Noel Brown
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Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.