June 10, 2020 • 64 mins
You've probably heard of the Atlantis before, but have you heard the legends of another lost city, somewhere out in the endless sands of the Arabian Peninsula's Rub' al Khali (or "Empty Quarter")? Tales of this city, known as Ubar or Iram of the Pillars, surface in countries throughout the region. The city is even mentioned in the Quran. And, like Atlantis, over the centuries numerous people have tried to find it -- but there's one important difference between Iram and Atlantis... it appears someone actually found Iram. Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our friend Noel is on adventures today.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul mission controled decade. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Quick check in, Matt. They my
(00:47):
dear dear friend, over these many years. How are you today, Well,
let me tell you know. I'm great. I'm gonna get
to play some magic later tonight of my buddy Charlie,
who lives in upstate New York, and I haven't talked
to him in forever, and he finally agreed to, uh
(01:09):
just you know, to let me be my middle school
self again and play some magic with him. And I'm
very excited about that. Uh, you and I are going
to have a game together pretty soon. That's right, That's right, Matt. Yeah,
I've got to go back to the office and pick
up one of my favorite gifts I ever received, a
deck of Magic carts that I suppose are vintage nowadays
(01:31):
that you and Tyler made for me many moons ago.
I'm quite excited. I'm gonna I'm probably gonna scoop those
up this weekend and spend some time, UH doing what
I did pretty often as a child, playing multiplayer games
with myself. Shout out to my one D and D campaign,
(01:53):
just to make sure I know what's going on there. Yeah,
just and for other listeners just who are interested here.
There is a reason that we don't have to talk
about on air here that you and Nolan I may
have to be at least somewhat close to each other
in proximity. Very soon. I'm thinking about bringing a deck
for Noel and forcing him to play a game with us,
(02:13):
because I don't know that he's ever played magic before. Um,
we'll see if it works out. I imagine he'll be delighted.
I am Magic, He'll be delighted. So so, before we
get into today's episode, we do have one uh on
air correction that a couple of listeners caught, and I
just wanted to get this out here because it's important, UH,
(02:36):
specifically earlier in our episode on Operation Infection with a K.
We had a couple of times referred to AIDS as
standing for auto immuno deficiency syndrome. That is incorrect. I
misspoke there. I think probably I'm the most egregious person
(02:56):
with this one. It is actually acquired a mune no
deficiency syndrome. So that's a that's maybe a small difference
in terms of speech, but it's a big difference in
terms of what it stands for, and of course it
affects a great many people. If you don't know what
we're talking about, please check out Operation Infection, where we do,
(03:17):
in fact uncover a proven conspiracy about HIV and AIDS. Yes,
and specifically some meddling that occurred from uh, from Russian actors.
Let's say, there we go. When we say Russian actors,
we don't mean the stars of screen and stage right,
(03:40):
we mean other actors. Yeah, today we're I'm super excited
about this one. Uh. Maybe a way to segue into
this is the world of games, specifically video games. Now. UM,
you know, Matt, you and I have talked at length
for more than a decade now that we've been hanging
(04:03):
out about video games of all sorts and all stripes. Um,
you remember Uncharted three. I do Uncharted as a fabulous franchise. Uh.
The fourth iteration recently was available on PS plus or
PlayStation Plus. If anybody subscribes to that, hopefully you've played it.
(04:25):
Great treasurer Hunter series. UM And in the third version,
the third iteration, Oh boy, you get into a lost city.
Is it lu Maria Limiria that that is featured in
that one? Or is it Atlantis? It is a lost
city in the wild desert of the Middle East, a
(04:52):
city that was rumored to be home to Jinn, A
city that was rumored to have untold wealth before it
was cursed by the divine. We won't spoil it too much.
I believe you can still get at least Uncharted one
through three for free on PlayStations. UH special looking out
for you during the quarantine deal. So I recently replayed this.
(05:16):
It's a It's a fantastic game. If you're a fan
of Indiana Jones. If you're not really a fan of
UM video games, but you do like film and films
like Indiana Jones, then think of that almost as at times,
it's more like an interactive movie, you know what I mean.
It's a journey and you, and you can set the
uh let if you're particularly unmotivated for video games stuff,
(05:40):
you can set the levels low enough such that you're
just kind of sitting through a movie where you occasionally
push buttons. Well, you know, it's like, what was that
Dragon's Layer? That's another old, old one. But you're right, Matt,
lost cities, they play a big part and uncharted because
lost cities play a huge part in human civilization. Like typically,
(06:05):
right when you hear people talk about ancient lost cities,
let's say you're flipping through television, you're flipping through your books,
and you you come across that phrase lost city, lost civilization.
In the modern day, we tend to dismiss that concept
like right out. You know, places like you mentioned Lemuria
or It's um the Beatles to its rolling Stone, Atlantis
(06:30):
and so on. These are all kind of thought to
be legends, right, and we've done stories on those in
the past. I think we actually we got to a
pretty surprisingly solid answer on the mystery of Atlantis a
while back. But lost cities, lost civilizations. The the amazing
(06:51):
and disturbing thing about this is they're not that crazy.
It turns out our species, as you said before, cartoonishly
good at losing things, whether we're talking about car keys, passwords, technologies, cities,
entire civilizations. The vast span of human history is this
like long running joke about us making stuff and then
(07:13):
completely forgetting about it, or at least mostly forgetting about it. Yeah,
I mean you can look at almost every major civilization space.
So a place where a civilization began, you can look
even if it's a city. Now, let's say in a
place like Atlanta, just as an example, there are versions
(07:37):
of Atlanta that exist below it, that were built on
top of, you know, for for cities to exist. London
is a really good example of that, New York where
there's a version of that place of history that literally
went away or went underground essentially. Um. And you can
think about all kinds of things that we've lost over time, um,
(07:59):
you know, entire technologies that have come and gone, you know,
even just an entire civilization of a whole place where
humanity grew and thrived for a while and just went
away for one reason or another. And sometimes even when
we know the uh, the location of a lost place
(08:21):
quote unquote lost, even when we know where the ruins are,
we still can run into mysteries about why tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of people one day just just left. Right.
There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered because
history is alive. Right in today's episode, we're exploring a
(08:45):
city that some people may not have heard of, but
but a city that occupies a unique place in folklore
and in science. Here in the modern date. In fact,
we call this a lost city, but it may have
already been found. And where better to start with this
story than with a legend. So here are the facts.
(09:09):
There was once, according to legend, a place known as
Iram of the Pillars, was also known as Ubar or
you Bar for short. We're going to be calling it
Ubar in this uh in this story, but it was
also known as wu Bar with a w irem ireum Uh.
Sometimes it was just known as the city of the Pillars.
(09:29):
It was this legendary place Uh it was, or it
has been, over the course of history, taken as this
indisputable fact that there was a true place a thing
that existed by one of these names um generally by
people who follow in the faith of Islam. It's explicitly
mentioned by the way in the Quran, which is a
(09:50):
good thing to know for the rest of this story. Here. Um.
The specific phrase, by the way that that's found there
is iram dot al imad uh, sometimes translated to you know, um,
maybe a less prestigious sounding phrase called iram of the
tent poles. Yeah, not so not so cool. Sounds much
(10:11):
better when it's ali mahd, but the English translation of
its meant. But we've got it actually here, we've got
the English translation of it's mentioned in the Koran. Right, Yeah,
here's how the explicit mentioned in the Koran reads in English.
Quote uh, and we're because of the differences between English
and Arabic, there are gonna there's gonna be some slippage here.
(10:34):
There are some um words or pieces of sentence structure
that don't quite translate. But we'll give you the gist. Quote.
Have you not considered how your lord dealt with a
ram who had lofty pillars, the likes of whom had
never been created in the lands, And with the mood
who carved out the rocks in the valley, and with Pharaoh,
(10:55):
owner of the stakes, all of whom oppressed within the lands,
and increase therein the corruption. So your lord poured upon
them a scourge of punishment. Indeed, your Lord is in observation.
That's the that's the words of the prophet right in
(11:16):
in the Koran. That's the story of the story of
this kind of warning to the reader. It's like, hey,
think about what happened to this place, Think about what
happened to this guy. Uh. And that last line comes
off I think a little bit mild where it says indeed,
your Lord is an observation. Maybe a more direct way
(11:37):
to say that in American English today would be, you know,
watch out, God is watching you. You know, yeah, it
always feels like somebody's watching me, because it is an
be stated here that he she it is indeed. There's
another version of of this. By the way, where or
(11:58):
I guess that the story of the led and where
Ubar was the center of trade, of wealth of society.
It was located along this really lucrative trade route that
existed at the time in which it was a place
that was you know, thriving um and it's you know,
it's where merchants would transport all kinds of things or
(12:18):
or this this trade route is where merchants would trade
all kinds of things and Ubar was a major stop
there and one of the big things that they traded
was frankincense. And this is has been mentioned a lot,
or at least is a major point of this one
version of the legend. Yeah. Oh, they were balling out.
They were making so much money off this frankincense trade,
(12:40):
which included mr uh you know for people who people
were fans of the three the three wise men. Then
then you you'll notice that frankincense and mir which are
not super big commodities to a lot of people today,
were profoundly in press. It gives back then they were
(13:02):
you know, they were status symbols. They were associated with
things that were holy and so being a part of
this trade and the people of Ubar made a lot
of money. They uh, they obtained many riches, jewels, etcetera. Uh.
And and this story follows, you know, the kind of
Pixar version. Once upon a time, as you said, matt
(13:25):
Ubar was the center of the trade in frankincense, and
every day they got wealthier and wealthier and wealthier, until
one day a prophet arrives. And there's a pre Islamic prophet,
by the way, in this legend, a prophet arrives and
fore tells that the city and the entire civilization of
Ubar would be destroyed by God as punishment for their wicked,
(13:47):
wicked ways. The king, who was not aware that he
was to be the last king of Ubar, ignored the
prophet in a short while later, the city disappeared from
the historical record. It was buried under the shifting sands
of the empty Quarter. In Arabia, they called it that,
but Saudi Arabia we call it now. It's a it
(14:10):
feels maybe at first glance or first listen as a
similar parable that has existed in a couple of different
holy books and a couple a couple of different societies
and kind of historical records, where there's this place that
became so wealthy. Uh, they just were bored in some
(14:30):
ways because they had so much time on their hands,
and they started to do the things that idle hands do,
which is generally considered you know, the devil's work or
the bad things, the wicked, evil things. Um. And then
it gets destroyed because a force of good in this case,
God comes through and says no, um. But and you know,
(14:53):
but if you continue along the legend, even though it
was destroyed it you know, if it, if it was real,
then it would still exist out there somewhere, right, at
least according to legend, right somewhere out there in the
dry ocean of the desert, one may still discover the
ruins of ancient Ubar, all the riches within, and possibly
(15:16):
all the all the curses and consequences you would run
into for uh, for violating the wishes of the divine
and and you know, I'm mad, but but mostly mostly
all those all those vases full of that dank, frankincense,
dankinsense that would be the dame of the company we start, dankinsense. Uh, yeah,
(15:39):
we'll find something for Mirr as well, because Mirrors still
is very much of the game in this part of
the story. But you're right, so the details of the
disaster are are naturally vague, the idea, you know, at
the time this story takes place, when it's traced to antiquity.
Usually natural disasters are always seen as happening for some
(16:04):
sort of reason. No one is ever saying, hey, uh,
we have famine because we couldn't grow crops because of
the drought. They say, oh, we are encountering famine because
we have crops because of the drought, because God is
super poed at us, you know, because we didn't make
the right sacrifices, or you didn't propitiate the right prayers
(16:27):
at the right time in the calendar, etcetera. Um. And
that's there's nothing wrong with that. That's just the human mind,
because humans have always been you know, these are still
Homo sapien there very much like us. There is still
trying to categorize and frame and understand the world. Uh
So when you hear details about Ubar's demise, you might
(16:47):
you'll hear people say, you know, well, it was God
that struck them down. And then we'll hear other people say,
oh is God who struck them down. But God did
it this way, right through an earthquake maybe, or through
a sandstorm that never stopped. It's kind of like Atlantis, right,
that's another example. Or Sodom and go mora. It's a
it's a yeah, yeah because as the wickedness, right, and
(17:10):
it's and it's still you know, it's a story that's
common to what they call people of the book, right,
Udeo Christian Islamic belief systems. But Bar has a couple
of things in its legend that make it different. First,
speculation about Ubar has continued, you know, since the writing
(17:33):
of the Quran, which really popularized it, because that is
that is a book that is fundamental too many civilizations,
and then some other lost city legends just by contrast.
They claim that there are ancient origins to them, but
they end up being examples of embellishment maybe or outright hoaxes.
(17:57):
This is not the case here. I mean aram Ubar
was popularized in the West in the thirties and really
picked up some modern UH shine in PRTLC in the
ninety nineties. But again it's been known in the Middle East.
The West alone is not the world. It was known
in the Middle East since l Kros. Since before then
(18:20):
it assumed it's more modern interpretation. Way back during the
aggregation and um dissemination of the anthology we know of
as one thousand and one nights Uh fantastic book that
was composed over centuries during the Islamic Golden Age. We
still don't know to to be completely clear, how that
(18:42):
book was formed. It's a mystery of its own. But
that's not the only reason Ubar is unique. Yeah, there
are some some pretty old maps that actually placed a
physical location of Ubar on these maps. Um, there was
there's one where it's depicted as Omanum and Oreum there
and that's on Ptolemy's lap P T O. L. E.
(19:04):
M y his map of the world. Um, this guy
Claudius Ptolemy, he was born in Greece, lived in Egypt.
And this is around a hundred and ten to a
hundred and seventy a d. So that's some time ago.
Let's say. It's also mentioned by several other Islamic commentators
throughout the years of the centuries that have existed as
(19:25):
possibly existing in one place or another and in multiple
versions of it, essentially of the legend. Yeah. Yeah. The
primary evidence, which you know, we're very thankful for a
lot of the primary evidence comes from religious or religious
affiliated text. So there's going to be this ongoing debate
(19:45):
about translation, you know, and then about like you said, Matt,
is this is this literally a city? Is this literally
a civilization? Is this a metaphor you know, is this
like a a larger version of all those stories that
even today kids here like don't do act A, B
or C or else you'll have consequence X y or z.
(20:08):
What if it wasn't a city at all? What if
it was a region instead? So instead of uh, you know,
like what if or whenever the US falls and you
fast forward a couple of millennia or something, Uh, what
if no one remembers the city of Atlanta and they
(20:28):
talk about the Lost City of Georgia. It's located somewhere
on this continent and everybody but everybody's got weird ideas
about it. It would be the lost city of coming
I think there we go. That stuff happens all the time,
and then the name we get uh distorted and telephoned
and it would be like ku mink or kumong or
something like that. Yeah, that that happens constantly, constantly. So
(20:53):
maybe it wasn't even reagion. Maybe it was not geographical.
Maybe it was a name for a people, which also
happens often, right, because we know that in ancient times
and even now, groups of people, communities and tribes, the
names that outsiders use refer to the place where those
people are found, right, and the places where they live
(21:15):
get named after them. Uh, Israelites, Israel, you know what
I mean? Like, especially the Middle East is full of
this stuff. So Ubar has long been associated with a
group of people called the Ould, spelled like apostrophe a D,
but pronounced more like ould. And back in the eleventh
(21:37):
century there was a guy a commentary named Nashwan bin
said him Yari, who said Quoa Bar is the name
of the land which belonged to Ould in the eastern
part of Yemen. Today it's non trouded desert owing to
the dying up of its water. There are to be
found in it great buildings which the wind is smothered
in sand. Doesn't really mentioned God just mentioned these people
(22:00):
built some stuff and they're no longer in the game.
How intriguing is that though? I mean again, like bring
back Indiana Jones. Just some of these concepts that at
least I as as a child and then growing up,
we're so fascinating of, you know, finding being able to
one day maybe chase down some historical place like this,
(22:21):
or discovering a lost place, a lost people that existed somewhere. Um,
it's it's it's just such fuel for the imagination. And
you know, it really just depends on where you look,
who you ask, who you just want to believe. I
guess on how you think about Ubar, where it could be,
(22:44):
what it could be, who the actual people were, and
what occurred there um or. And it also depends on
your faith, honestly, depending on you know, the books you
grew up with, as in the important pillars of your
your faith and your understanding of the world. But it's
really cool that this place has all of this potential
(23:04):
built within it. You know, you may you may have
grown up most familiar with that description in the Kuran.
You may have you may have been a fan of
Te Lawrence, the famous and very strange explorer and military officer.
Uh he's the one who I think popularized calling it
(23:27):
the Atlantis of the Sands. But the most important thing
about the Atlantis of the Sands is that we're pretty
sure someone found it. What are we talking about. We'll
tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
(23:55):
it gets crazy, Matt. We gotta we gotta talk about
these searches. Know it's people are out here changing the world. Man.
One time I fell asleep trying to put on a
pair of pants like this is this This is a
great examination of human ingenuity of nothing else. The other
day I fell asleep, I stuck my head into my
(24:16):
son's rocket ship tent and I was playing with him
really actively and I totally passed out right there. So
I feel you've been just saying, uh, maybe maybe we
should stop falling asleep on our various jobs such as
pants putting on. But but other people have not been
sitting around getting drowsy. They've been out there searching the
(24:38):
desert for stuff, um, which is really really cool. There
are several individuals who believe they have uncovered this place, uh,
that was mentioned in the Koran. And you know, there's
there's debate on who's right, who actually found it, and
we're gonna go through all that stuff right now. But
(24:59):
you really can and find people who have claimed, at
least to have found this legendary place Ubar or Iran
that was mentioned in the Koran, that specific version of it,
and they think they found it in the Middle East
in places from Oman to Yemen, uh to Jordan's places.
(25:20):
In Jordan, the place called the Waddy Room in the
Wadi Room. This is oh, the infamous Rube What has
this been? I don't know this, the infamous Rube al Khali. Yeah,
that's right, the Rube al Khali. We should or the
Empty Quarter. We should note that, as far as we know,
neither of us are Arabic speakers, unless we had a
(25:41):
wild weekend and forgot about it. Uh. The Empty Quarter
is a vast stretch of immensely inhospitable land. And we'll
we'll talk about in a little bit. But I noticed,
Matt you pointed out Wadi room, Uh, Wadi rum. Let's
let's let's talk about this a little bit. So it's
in Jordan's it's its name translates or it's called the
(26:04):
Valley of the Moon. And this looks otherworldly. It's a
desert landscape picture a lot of flat sandy valley beds.
Wadi is Arabic for valley, and they're bordered by these
enormous red sandstone cliffs. It's the largest valley in Jordan's
(26:25):
and it also carries the signs of ancient human occupation.
We've got inscriptions, petrock, Glyff's, ruins of temples, uh, graffiti, uh,
stuff that dates back as far as twelve thousand years.
People have been there for a long long time. Yeah,
and it's one of those places that the glory of,
(26:48):
you know, the natural surroundings in this you know, the
somewhat starkness of it as well, wasn't really known by
the West until some guy walked through there who happened
to be British. Um, a man named T. E. Lawrence.
He's a British military officer. Um. He really brought it
to the west attention. Who was passing through there during
(27:10):
the Arab Revolt which occurred between nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen.
And he he, you know, was moved by the experience
of going through that area, and he wrote a book
about his experience called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And then
we get into a a weird circumstance here, a little
(27:31):
bit of a pr move because there's a formation at
Wady Room called the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. That's what
it's called today. It's great for tourism. That's not its
original name. Its original name was like Jibral all moms
are the mountain of the plague, and so nobody wants
(27:52):
to visit the mountain of the plague. But you know,
I'm sure there's another mountain of a plague somewhere. So
this was this was renamed even though the the formation
that's mentioned has nothing to do with the Seven Pillars
actually mentioned in Lawrence's book, even in like later editions,
(28:14):
it is all about tourism there. It is a hugely
popular tourist destination, and it's of course an enormously important
side of human civilization. It's also something that you, fellow
conspiracy realists, have probably seen before. You just didn't know it.
You might have thought it was Planet Mars in the
(28:35):
Martian you might have thought it was any number of
backdrops for films set in the Middle East or on
our red neighbor just just to plan it away. It's
also in um It's in some famous ones. Oh yeah,
there's a Star Wars movie, Rogue one that used it.
(28:56):
The Transformers Revenge of the Fallen featured this, and my
favorite one, even though it wasn't my favorite movie, but
my favorite version of it is seen in Prometheus. I
really liked the way it was treated there, at least
on camera. Yeah. Also, of course it's in the Aladdin reboot,
the live action. I forgot about that one. I never
(29:17):
asked your you know, I forgot to ask your opinion
that I know that we both love that film growing up,
and I still think it holds up. But what did
you see the remake hottake. I suffered through it until
Will Smith's like tenth line, and then I turned it off.
I didn't turn it off. My son and my wife
continued to watch a little bit, but I left the
(29:40):
room and handle it in silent protest. No, it wasn't.
It wasn't very silent. It was definitely like and then left. Yeah,
Robin Williams left some big shoes to fill. And I
don't think it's I mean, it's funny because I really
liked I really enjoyed all the other actors in there.
(30:01):
I thought they nailed it. And for some reason, again
that's just one person's opinion. Uh, we'll have to get
Paul's about this off are too. Uh. It just felt
like they were trying to make it. Will Smith plays
Will Smith as a genie. I mean, to be fair,
(30:22):
That's that's what Robin Williams was doing too. I just
I like the earlier songs. Yeah, me too. Uh. It's
a real Mountain of the plague seven Pillars of Wisdom scenario,
you know, the translation, just story and to change up
just didn't didn't play as in this case, didn't play
(30:45):
as well. Yeah yeah, true. Uh, but again visually you know,
they're they're stunning scenes in there, and and again, I
think the vast majority of the actors nailed it. So
I don't want to be unfair. I just I just
I think I figured out how I like my culturally
appropriated idea of Jenn in Disney films, because it's not
(31:07):
like it's not like the Robin Williams genie is in
any way accurate to begin with. Uh. Indeed, but if
you're gonna if you're gonna make a scary version like
the scariest version of a Jin, which is the one
that this genie is supposed to inhabit, and you're gonna
make them like a family friendly, friendly g version, then
(31:30):
you know, go all the way with it. Just think
I'm super happy and transforming into all kinds of different
Western characters from pop culture. That's right. So I've benna
watch that later. Uh. As long as we don't get disappeared,
I think we can close the book. Though. On the
Wady Room, it's definitely an historically significant site, but it
(31:52):
is probably not the Atlantis of the Sands, as T.
Lawrence called it. It's probably not a lost city. There
are some ancient temples there, but The fact is, there's
so much tourism there now that if there were an
ancient empire or gigantic city, it would have been found
(32:13):
like the the I mean, people travel from around the
world to visit and film there. I would say that
just going with the name the Mountain of the Plague
may make you think if you put yourself in the
shoes of maybe someone exploring the area who isn't fully
familiar with it, may make you think that, well, you know,
(32:34):
this place was named the Mountain of the Plague. Perhaps
there was something that happened here a long time ago
that we don't fully understand. I can imagine that scenario,
or at least that thought process totally totally, and I agree.
I mean, you know, when you get to a place
that has had human beans for that long, I'm sure
(32:54):
there were several plagues, you know what I mean. I'm yeah,
I don't think somebody probably didn't make that name up
for fun. I didn't think it was cool. They remembered
when people died of the plague in the area, and
they were like, don't don't even get to where you
can freaking see that mountain, bro, it's messed up. I
could totally. See history is filled with ghosts there, and
(33:19):
now we shoot movies there. Now we shoot movies there,
so UH there are also a lot of films shot
around the area of the empty quarter. The rulebuck Cali.
If if you're going just off the oral traditions and
the legends, it makes a lot of sense to think
(33:39):
that uh city might have been there and vanished, because
it feels like the easiest place for human human beings
to vanish. It's it's vast, it's a sand desert. It
covers most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula
and eaties huge. It's like two hundred and fifty thousand
(34:03):
square miles. That means it goes across Saudi Arabia, goes
across the United Arab Emirates, goes across Aman Yemen, and
today it's it's a rough neighborhood for humans. It's actually
rougher for humans now than it was in ancient times.
And even then it was no walk in the park.
It rains like or sorry in rain, and the precipitation
(34:25):
is like maybe one point four inches on a good year.
The temperatures can reach as high as fifty one degrees
Celsius for everyone in bad right, for everyone in the States,
that's a hundred and twenty four degrees fahredheit. Uh and
then and it gets cold af at night. It's like
one of those places in the world where, if you
(34:48):
look at it objectively, are humans supposed to be here?
Are we really do we need to go out here?
You know? Like I don't know, man, I really don't know. Well,
maybe not anymore. But back before the intense desertification, desertification
that's been occurring out there, and you know, on a
(35:09):
continual level and increasing um, it was a pretty cool
place to be, a good place to at least travel
through in a lot of the areas of it because
guess what. Guess what they did. They traded things in
caravans like uh, frankincense and M and M and mer.
(35:32):
I don't know why. It feels like it feels like
there's a Simon and car Funkle thing going on with
frank It sets of murder. Or maybe it's like if
we were selling a box of frank It sets, who
would say, like frank It SAIDs now with murr and dude, no,
I'll tell you a better one. It's it's hall and oats. Wow,
(35:53):
because it feels so healthy. It's or something like extra.
They don't need you just want the hall. So yes,
I getta. You know. It's like it's like people will
eat the eat the oats, but yeah, we're here for
the halls. That makes that makes a lot of sense.
Like so maybe that's it. Maybe that's it, But your
(36:14):
point is right. Desert desertification, the process of becoming more
desert like, has increased over time to the present level today.
Before then it was still very much waste land, but caravans,
often on camel back would would be able to traverse
established roots here to get that sweet sweet frankensense emmer
(36:38):
and move it to uh, move it to more densely
populated areas where it would fetch a great premium as
much as for its rarity as for its smell and these.
This trade occurred till around and estimated like three people
were doing this. But the problem with the empty quarter
(36:58):
is the same thing that makes made people think that's
where a rom could be or who bar could be.
It's that it is. It is huge. In the days
before satellite observation, it would be really difficult for early explorers,
especially as you said, the British guys, the Aristos, who
are walking in and quote unquote discovering all this stuff,
(37:21):
it would be really tough for them to systematically comb
the desert without without dying of thirst starvation when they
got lost. Now, the native people, the Bedouin, knew their
way around, right, But yeah, exactly, especially if you're trying
to do it, you know Spaceball's style and combing the
desert like that, that would be a rough gig. It's
(37:41):
a rough gig. It takes a lot of people in
a lot of time. So, yeah, there could be an
ancient oasis in the area. We know there are oases
all around the edges of the Empty Quarter. That's what
defines the Empty Quarter. It's the empty parts and the
stuff around the edges has stuff there. But if you
(38:06):
were going to find something, if you're gonna find an
ancient city, uh, where would you start looking? How would
you find it? This leads us to, uh, the various
attempts to discover it. So we've nailed down that it's
probably not in the Empty Quarter, at least so far
as we know. It's unlikely that it would be. And
then it's probably not in uh waddy room in Jordan's.
(38:32):
But we've got we've got a bunch of pretty moneyed
British explorers who have nothing, who have no other goals
other than to make some money off the native cultures,
and later bragged to their friends at the Royal Geographic
Society and they were all about this. And we also
(38:53):
have satellite technology now and other you know, advanced technology.
Uh So that's a bit of a spoiler, and we'll
tell you about the potential discovery after a word from
our sponsor. We're back. So let's start in nine. There
(39:17):
is an explorer named Bertram Thomas. Bertram Thomas has the
goal of being the first European in his opinion, to
officially cross the sands of the Empty Quarter. He's at
the southern edge of the area. And I'm just saying
in his opinion because I take issue I take issue
(39:38):
with the idea of him being the first person ever
from Europe to do that, because this is and there
was a lot of stuff that happened before he got
this idea. Anyway, So he starts this journey and he's ready,
and he's guys, camels, guys, entourage and stuff. People who
are who are native to the land and members of
(40:00):
his Bedouin entourage tell him about the story of this
lost city, and he says, ah, well, I don't find that.
That's gonna be something I can rag to the rest
of my my lads about back home. He didn't find it,
but he did tell te Lawrence about it. T Lawrence
is the guy who popularized the phrase the Atlantis of
(40:23):
the Sands. He didn't just tell him about it, he said, right,
old Chap and he marked a map for Lawrence with
the supposed location. Lawrence again, very weird, dude. I don't
want to kink shame anyone. I don't want to yuck
anyone's yum, as Chuck would say. But Lawrence was a
(40:44):
smart dude, and he immediately knew what we had just
talked about, the vast difficulties of finding this needle of
civilization in this haystack of the wild. So we said,
you know, the only way we're gonna be able to
find this is if we somehow get in the air.
We searched by like airship, by a blimp, but he
never followed through with it. You know, again, it's nineteen thirties,
(41:07):
nineteen forties. A lot of stuff's going down in the
Middle Eastern Europe. But these statements that he made and
that other explorers made cemented the idea of this lost
Arab city in the Western zeitgeist. So people were obsessed
with it. Yeah, and remember t Lawrence that we spoke
about earlier, is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom guy in
(41:28):
the Waddy room that we talked about. Same same dude,
same British military officer, um who who tended to write
a lot about these kinds of things. So that's why
it makes sense that it kind of expanded out there
in the minds of people in the West. But it
didn't stop there, everybody. Let's jump forward sixteen years to
nineteen forty six and to another English explorer, wiest fellow
(41:53):
named named Wilfrid Fessiga. Actually, uh uh, maybe it's Wilfred
this the seizure. I don't know how to say. Wow,
it's it's English messenger maybe little British Polish on it.
I think he nailed it. It It couldn't. It could be
the Seeger. Well, we'll call Wilfordsager. Well, so, uh, he's
(42:23):
hanging out in a place called Shissir. It's in southern
Oman he's hanging out by this well, that's that's over there,
just in an area, let's an undefined area. And he
notes that he's seeing some kinds of crude stone, some
kind of ruins maybe from a fort. You see him
on this rocky eminence. That's a quote there about the
(42:45):
eminence and some of the things that he finds there,
let's let's call them shards. Uh, some of the things
he finds an area maybe in his opinion, they may
be early Islamic. And you know, he tells the Royal
Geographic Society do but nothing you know, official comes out
of it. There's no like exploration in the moment because
(43:07):
of this guy Wilfred passagers experience. But people remember, right, people,
people are keeping no. Just two years later, party of
Bedouins and oil company employees are traveling there. They're surveying
no far province. This is of course, part of Western
(43:31):
Europe's um state sponsored push to divide up the territories
for resource acquisition. Right. And they first see this place,
sir or also called ash this year. Uh. They're approaching
it from the south and the the first thing they see
is this white cliff in the distance. As they get
(43:53):
closer they say, Hey, this cliff is not just a cliff,
it's man made. It's the wall of a ruined fort,
and it's built above this large cave, and there's an
entrance to this cave, but it's obscured by a sand dune.
I mean, I'm just I am pictured. I don't know
about you guys, but I am picturing like this crazy
(44:15):
Indiana Jones music in my head. They found the fort
had been built from the same white rock as that cliff,
and this gave them this to them, it seemed to
indicate that this whole thing was a single structure. One
of the geologists said, you know, there are no houses
or tents or people here. There's just this tumble down
(44:38):
ruin and the spurt Islamic fort wamp wamp. Because the
geologists didn't have modern satellites. God, we're throwing so many
spoilers in this. They didn't have archaeological equipment. They were
unimpressed by the ruin. They were like, there's not even
oil here. Bro uh. In fact, their guides and them,
(44:59):
they all referred to it as quote difficult water because
it was the only watering hole for miles and miles
and miles around and they had to spend three days
trying to get water from this dying well for their camels.
So it's like they they stopped in a place because
(45:20):
it had one thing that they needed they barely had that.
They wrote down a one star review of it in
their Yelp travel journal, and then they dipped out. But
all of those things that happened, we're still on a record.
Fast forward, uh to the eighties and nineties. Yeah, that's right,
(45:42):
zero Michelin stars for just served before that. Now jump
to same area. There's a just before we get into this,
there is a fantastic New York Times Old School are
Goal from nine two. I think there was written about
this that we recommend you go check out. The title
(46:05):
of it is on the Trail from the Sky Rhodes
Point to a Lost City. So if before we talk
about it, if you want to read it, hey, good
stuff in there. Um. So, there's there's a filmmaker from
Los Angeles named Nicholas Clapp. Uh really really cool spelling.
By the way. I don't know if he spells it
that way because of a Screenwriter's Guild thing, but C
(46:28):
L A P. P is his last name. Um, you know,
he's one of those guys. It's it's the nineties. This
guy has grown up with a fascination of you know,
the the romantic mystery that exists out there in ancient
you know, Arabia and the sands as well as you
know this the concept of these huge caravanning um Frankensten's
(46:51):
trade that that's occurring, right. Um. And he goes out
to that same areas, just sir. And really what he
wants to do is use that new technology that has
been developed since people have been looking at this place,
and he wants to you know, he really just wants
to discover this place, right, and he ends up finding
(47:13):
things things that have never been found out there before. Yeah.
So he assembles this, um, this crew of of specialists,
as you said, to investigate. Uh. They include financial backers. Uh.
They also include uh, scientists from JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratories.
(47:35):
And then he also gets with Randolph Finds, who yes,
is related to the actor Ralph Finds who plays Voltemore.
I thought you would enjoy that, Paul. He also plays
a protect the antagonist in Red Dragon. Uh in the
Silence of the Lamps franchise. Anyhow, Uh, he has his relative.
(47:56):
Randolph finds he's a well to do European and he
is also affiliated with the Sultan of Oman, so he's
kind of their fixer on the ground. So they get
together and they're they're reviewing this footage from the satellites
and again there's a very early days of this. This
is before your widespread use of a lot of other
(48:19):
technologies that people have today. But they see things that
you wouldn't see if you're walking on the ground. One
of the most important things they find is a network
of ancient camel tracks caravan roots that seem to converge
on a couple of different places. One of them is
Asta Sure in Oman. And this is like they you know,
(48:40):
they do all the ground, they do all the mental
legwork they can before they go there because it's a
bit of a journey. So their first ground exploration takes
place in they learned so much stuff and that's where
we get to that that breathless like old school in
yt headline on the Trail from the Sky own points
to a lost city and then it begins with this
(49:03):
beautiful quotation. It's the first sentence is just is just
solid gold. Mattieve do you have maybe like a I
almost hate to ask, do you have a Transatlantic voice
for this one? Yeah, okay, I'll do it. Guided by
ancient maps and sharp eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and
explorers have discovered a lost city deep in the sands
(49:27):
of Arabia. They are virtually sure it is Ubar, the
fabled entropos of the rich frankincense trade thousands of years
ago and it continues. Yes, and now doesn't seem to
be much question that we have discovered or monum emporium,
(49:47):
says Dr Joris ar Artist, the expeditions chief archaeologist Losight.
He has is very rich, no doubt about it. So
is this the real Ubar? You know? Under the direction
of Doctor's errands, the team starts digging. They excavate the
walls and towers of this fortress. They're working fast. They
(50:07):
find a site that dates back more than two thousand years.
How can they work that fast? You know? Archaeological digs
are a huge issue in the Middle East, and because
there's so many ancient civilizations, because there are so many
modern civilizations of war over history right now, they're able
to do this again because Ranald Finds is buddy buddy
(50:30):
with the Sultan. What he says goes So doctors Arns
doesn't just find this this ancient site, he also find
is able to trace its demise a little bit. And
he says, uh, look, the site has this huge sinkhole
kind of bisecting it if you look at the pictures,
(50:51):
and he says, it fell sometime between a D three
hundred in a D five hundred. And if you recall
earlier at the top of the show, we said a
D three is about when the frankincense trade is suspected
to have declined. Interesting, right, And you know, when you
keep thinking about it in this way, if there was
(51:13):
some kind of cataclysm or a huge earthquake or a
big sinkhole that formed and sucked in everything pretty quickly
over the course of you know, even a couple of years,
you can imagine how perhaps that would have been blamed
on an act of God of some sort. Mm hmmm.
And and he says specifically, it's like, look, you know
(51:36):
there is fossil water here. Uh. Fossil water is something
we talked about a little bit um and our work
on Libya years ago. Uh. Fossil water is a non
renewable source of potable or drinkable water, and says kind
of how this oasis was working, But it was also
built over limestone, and so is more and more people
(51:58):
and animals and agriculture. Because that irrigation schemes, more and
more things started draining more and more water. It probably
contributed to uh an earthquake, or maybe it was the
primary cause of this collapse. So the thing fell, the
center could not hold. However, doctor Arns himself is quick
(52:19):
to point out that there might be a chicken and
egg thing because if Franken sent straight, if the Franking
sin Strade was still you know, doing Gangbusters, then there
would have been enough finance, right, there would have been
enough um political will to rebuild this lost place. And
(52:41):
that all depends on whether our modern idea of u
bar existed at all, because she doc Z is not convinced.
He's not. And by the way, it also depends on
whether or not they could actually get water if if
that you know that fossil water was actually the reason
that caused the collapse. But but let's let's talk about
(53:03):
drs Errands and why he was unsure, because there was
this great interview with him from Nova. If If you
haven't watched a lot of Nova and you're listening to this,
I highly recommend you do. It's really great. Um. They're
not a sponsor, but I very much enjoyed the programming
with with the stuff they put out there. Um. But
they were speaking with him about Ubar, and we've got
(53:25):
a quote from him. He says, there's a lot of
confusion about that word talking about Ubar. If you look
at the classical texts and the Arab historical sources, Ubar
refers to a region and a group of people, not
to a specific town. People always overlook that. It's very
clear on Ptolemy second century map of the area, it
says in big letters law Bitarte, and in his text
(53:47):
that accompanies the maps, he's very clear about that. It
was only the late medieval version of the one thousand
and one Nights in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that
romanticized Dubar and turned it into a city rather than
a region or a people. Instead, he says, she's here.
The site they found is one of maybe three or
four major trade and civilization centers of the uber Right
(54:12):
at a time when this tribal group, the uber Rights,
thrived along the edges of the empty quarter. So he's
saying that they didn't discover the mythical city, but in
a way that they discovered something more important. They discovered
the truth that inspired the myth. We have to remember
that when people saw this city, they were seeing it
(54:36):
after seven eight days journey through utter desolation, no food,
no water. We also have to understand that when when
they saw like when you see it now. You can
see photographs of the ruins today along with artist depictions
of how the actual fortress looked at its time, right,
(54:57):
and the fortress itself, especially after you've at all these myths,
it looks a little underwhelming, honestly, But you have to
consider that many of the people who are living there,
who were populating it, even on a permanent basis, they
weren't living in this relatively small fortress. They were living
outside around it. They were living in large tents that
(55:19):
you could open up to catch a breeze and things
like that. They would probably only be in the fortress
if there were some sort of siege or attack. It
reminds me like it doesn't okay, it doesn't look like
a shining city of pillars in the pictures of the
ruins or even in the artistic depictions. Uh. But you know,
then again, for anyone who's seeing the Tower of London
(55:41):
and stuff, doesn't look like a skyscraper, right, we have
very different definitions of towers hundreds of years ago, you
know what I mean? Anything over two three three floors
that's a tower. Oh absolutely. And I really like your
point there of just to reach that area, no matter
for what reason you're traveling through or you know, to
get there, you would have been on a perilous journey. Um.
(56:03):
This is a weird kind of way to think about it.
But I you shot a picture into my head, been
of a day that I worked a full day, like,
let's say, eight nine hours, then immediately after that shot
a film festival forty eight hours thing immediately following a
full day of work, and I hadn't eaten food in
(56:23):
like thirty hours or something, and somebody suggested getting popeyees.
I didn't know what that was. I tried it for
the first time with my wife and it was the
best piece of chicken I had ever eaten in my life.
Now is that because it was actually the best piece
of chicken? Or is it because I was starved? Or
I felt starving, and you know, I was so hungry
(56:46):
that this just became a prized thing in that moment.
I wonder if that experience is correct. And that's it's
a really great point, Ben, that's I mean, you're making
a really great point too. And and not to date
you there, Matt, but that is before of the famous
chicken sandwich that was just like you got a two
or three piece right with a Biscuit's true? Yeah, I mean,
(57:08):
I still I stand by Popeyes. This is not an
advertisement for Popeyees, but I think, at least here in Atlanta,
one thing we love about Popeyees is you can tell
how good the chickens are going to be by like
how abrasive. The people who work there are the best,
the probably some of the best. Popeyes uh here in
our our neck of the Global Woods is right down
(57:30):
the street from our office, where famously, I don't know
about you, I I went there for lunch one day.
I was just trying to pick up some neto is
in a hurry, and when I pulled up at the
drive through, the person on the other end said, what
it's a one to one ratio? How good the chicken
(57:50):
is gonna be and how much grief you get. But
I think you make a really great point about the
psychology of people. They're because because you know, you are
going into a place that a looked much more impressive
when it was in its glory days before it collapsed,
back when there were hundreds of people there, there was
(58:11):
irrigation and stuff. Uh, it looked much better and people
were much more appreciative because some of them probably came
pretty close to dying while they were risking their lives
and their fortunes in the Frankinstin's trade. So there really
was there an ubar of myth? Probably not? Was there
a real place upon which hubar is based? Yes, and
(58:33):
we probably found it. This is a real life's case
of a lost city that was found, like the lost
City of Troy. And you know, if it looks disappointing,
and the Tower of London, example, is maybe a little disappointing.
To let's be further disappointing. The Pyramids used to look
way better. Those things used to be painted like you know,
(58:55):
I wish people would point that out more. They used
to be more colorful. Anyway. Uh, this this fortress was
surrounded by smaller villages that stretched out as far as
six miles. It was. Um, it's an example kind of
of what's called a caravan Sarah that because you know,
a roadhouse, a stop on the road. Um. You know,
(59:19):
like the same kind of thing that made Samarcans in
Rezbekistan a huge global force, regional force it was. It's
it's like, imagine if the only gas station for hundreds
and hundreds of miles uh became a town. That's that's
(59:39):
another way to look at it. And I don't think
I don't think that's pejorative or dismissive at all. It's amazing.
So maybe in conclusion, maybe the game of telephone strikes again.
I know that's disappointed to some people. That's amazing to me.
I love it. And he only makes me think, Man,
I don't know about you may wonder what else is
out there. It's got to be more. That's exactly what
(01:00:01):
I was gonna say. Just because we found this one
doesn't mean other stuff isn't out there. We haven't fully
light ard that desert yet, at least I'm pretty sure
we haven't, because it would take a lot of light
er to go through that desert. But I'm just telling
you like my excitement for possibilities out there in the
(01:00:22):
shifting sands. It remains peaked, and it will stay that
way for a good time. Yeah, And it will probably
have to stay a sense of excitement and anticipation for
a while because you know, so much of that part
of the world is embroiled in political instability. There are
war zones, you know, in seats of ancient human civilization,
(01:00:45):
and we're really they're being destroyed right right, And we're
really faced with we're faced with a powerful dilemma, which is,
you know, um, will our species be able to come
together and save it past? It's collective past, Make no mistake,
you know, the the ancient history of the Middle East.
(01:01:07):
If you're listening to this, it is part of your
history too. You trace yourself back far enough, it's it's
part of your history somehow. So it's it's our collective
responsibility to try to keep it around for those who
come after. We're just as we said in the very
very beginning, we're very very good at losing things. Let's
(01:01:28):
hope we get a little bit better at rediscovering and
preserving them. Um, let us know what you think about
today's episode. We've run a little long, but we hope
you enjoyed it. Uh. You can find us on Facebook
and can find us on Instagram. You can find us
on Twitter. Were Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We're
We're Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. But personally, if you're
(01:01:50):
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(01:02:12):
three st d w y t K and you can
leave us a message that Ben and I will certainly hear.
Noel likely will as well. Paul refuses to listen to
your messages on on account of principle that his ears
can only be used for a certain number of hours
every day and he's generally producing or having to listen
to us. Uh, but we do look forward to hearing
(01:02:35):
from you your thoughts on this episode or on future episodes,
or just chatting with us, or you know, talking to
us about your favorite magic the gathering cards, or how
Thomas middle Dish on the New Special talks about it
in episode two a lot and it made me smile. Oh,
just all day long thinking about Thomas middle Ditch playing
Magic the Gathering. Yeah that's really good. Yeah, do check
(01:03:00):
that out. Uh. And also if none of that quite
bags your badgers where if you are more comfortable with
a little bit more an nimity, please remember you can
always contact us to talk about law, civilizations, Magic the Gathering,
Harry Potter, Popeye's Chicken, whatever, whatever crosses your mind. We
(01:03:22):
would love to hear from you, and we have an
easy way for you to do it. It will be
on as long as we have this show around. It's
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iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
(01:03:54):
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app podcasts,
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our friend Noel is on adventures today.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul mission controled decade. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Quick check in, Matt. They my
(00:47):
dear dear friend, over these many years. How are you today, Well,
let me tell you know. I'm great. I'm gonna get
to play some magic later tonight of my buddy Charlie,
who lives in upstate New York, and I haven't talked
to him in forever, and he finally agreed to, uh
(01:09):
just you know, to let me be my middle school
self again and play some magic with him. And I'm
very excited about that. Uh, you and I are going
to have a game together pretty soon. That's right, That's right, Matt. Yeah,
I've got to go back to the office and pick
up one of my favorite gifts I ever received, a
deck of Magic carts that I suppose are vintage nowadays
(01:31):
that you and Tyler made for me many moons ago.
I'm quite excited. I'm gonna I'm probably gonna scoop those
up this weekend and spend some time, UH doing what
I did pretty often as a child, playing multiplayer games
with myself. Shout out to my one D and D campaign,
(01:53):
just to make sure I know what's going on there. Yeah,
just and for other listeners just who are interested here.
There is a reason that we don't have to talk
about on air here that you and Nolan I may
have to be at least somewhat close to each other
in proximity. Very soon. I'm thinking about bringing a deck
for Noel and forcing him to play a game with us,
(02:13):
because I don't know that he's ever played magic before. Um,
we'll see if it works out. I imagine he'll be delighted.
I am Magic, He'll be delighted. So so, before we
get into today's episode, we do have one uh on
air correction that a couple of listeners caught, and I
just wanted to get this out here because it's important, UH,
(02:36):
specifically earlier in our episode on Operation Infection with a K.
We had a couple of times referred to AIDS as
standing for auto immuno deficiency syndrome. That is incorrect. I
misspoke there. I think probably I'm the most egregious person
(02:56):
with this one. It is actually acquired a mune no
deficiency syndrome. So that's a that's maybe a small difference
in terms of speech, but it's a big difference in
terms of what it stands for, and of course it
affects a great many people. If you don't know what
we're talking about, please check out Operation Infection, where we do,
(03:17):
in fact uncover a proven conspiracy about HIV and AIDS. Yes,
and specifically some meddling that occurred from uh, from Russian actors.
Let's say, there we go. When we say Russian actors,
we don't mean the stars of screen and stage right,
(03:40):
we mean other actors. Yeah, today we're I'm super excited
about this one. Uh. Maybe a way to segue into
this is the world of games, specifically video games. Now. UM,
you know, Matt, you and I have talked at length
for more than a decade now that we've been hanging
(04:03):
out about video games of all sorts and all stripes. Um,
you remember Uncharted three. I do Uncharted as a fabulous franchise. Uh.
The fourth iteration recently was available on PS plus or
PlayStation Plus. If anybody subscribes to that, hopefully you've played it.
(04:25):
Great treasurer Hunter series. UM And in the third version,
the third iteration, Oh boy, you get into a lost city.
Is it lu Maria Limiria that that is featured in
that one? Or is it Atlantis? It is a lost
city in the wild desert of the Middle East, a
(04:52):
city that was rumored to be home to Jinn, A
city that was rumored to have untold wealth before it
was cursed by the divine. We won't spoil it too much.
I believe you can still get at least Uncharted one
through three for free on PlayStations. UH special looking out
for you during the quarantine deal. So I recently replayed this.
(05:16):
It's a It's a fantastic game. If you're a fan
of Indiana Jones. If you're not really a fan of
UM video games, but you do like film and films
like Indiana Jones, then think of that almost as at times,
it's more like an interactive movie, you know what I mean.
It's a journey and you, and you can set the
uh let if you're particularly unmotivated for video games stuff,
(05:40):
you can set the levels low enough such that you're
just kind of sitting through a movie where you occasionally
push buttons. Well, you know, it's like, what was that
Dragon's Layer? That's another old, old one. But you're right, Matt,
lost cities, they play a big part and uncharted because
lost cities play a huge part in human civilization. Like typically,
(06:05):
right when you hear people talk about ancient lost cities,
let's say you're flipping through television, you're flipping through your books,
and you you come across that phrase lost city, lost civilization.
In the modern day, we tend to dismiss that concept
like right out. You know, places like you mentioned Lemuria
or It's um the Beatles to its rolling Stone, Atlantis
(06:30):
and so on. These are all kind of thought to
be legends, right, and we've done stories on those in
the past. I think we actually we got to a
pretty surprisingly solid answer on the mystery of Atlantis a
while back. But lost cities, lost civilizations. The the amazing
(06:51):
and disturbing thing about this is they're not that crazy.
It turns out our species, as you said before, cartoonishly
good at losing things, whether we're talking about car keys, passwords, technologies, cities,
entire civilizations. The vast span of human history is this
like long running joke about us making stuff and then
(07:13):
completely forgetting about it, or at least mostly forgetting about it. Yeah,
I mean you can look at almost every major civilization space.
So a place where a civilization began, you can look
even if it's a city. Now, let's say in a
place like Atlanta, just as an example, there are versions
(07:37):
of Atlanta that exist below it, that were built on
top of, you know, for for cities to exist. London
is a really good example of that, New York where
there's a version of that place of history that literally
went away or went underground essentially. Um. And you can
think about all kinds of things that we've lost over time, um,
(07:59):
you know, entire technologies that have come and gone, you know,
even just an entire civilization of a whole place where
humanity grew and thrived for a while and just went
away for one reason or another. And sometimes even when
we know the uh, the location of a lost place
(08:21):
quote unquote lost, even when we know where the ruins are,
we still can run into mysteries about why tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of people one day just just left. Right.
There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered because
history is alive. Right in today's episode, we're exploring a
(08:45):
city that some people may not have heard of, but
but a city that occupies a unique place in folklore
and in science. Here in the modern date. In fact,
we call this a lost city, but it may have
already been found. And where better to start with this
story than with a legend. So here are the facts.
(09:09):
There was once, according to legend, a place known as
Iram of the Pillars, was also known as Ubar or
you Bar for short. We're going to be calling it
Ubar in this uh in this story, but it was
also known as wu Bar with a w irem ireum Uh.
Sometimes it was just known as the city of the Pillars.
(09:29):
It was this legendary place Uh it was, or it
has been, over the course of history, taken as this
indisputable fact that there was a true place a thing
that existed by one of these names um generally by
people who follow in the faith of Islam. It's explicitly
mentioned by the way in the Quran, which is a
(09:50):
good thing to know for the rest of this story. Here. Um.
The specific phrase, by the way that that's found there
is iram dot al imad uh, sometimes translated to you know, um,
maybe a less prestigious sounding phrase called iram of the
tent poles. Yeah, not so not so cool. Sounds much
(10:11):
better when it's ali mahd, but the English translation of
its meant. But we've got it actually here, we've got
the English translation of it's mentioned in the Koran. Right, Yeah,
here's how the explicit mentioned in the Koran reads in English.
Quote uh, and we're because of the differences between English
and Arabic, there are gonna there's gonna be some slippage here.
(10:34):
There are some um words or pieces of sentence structure
that don't quite translate. But we'll give you the gist. Quote.
Have you not considered how your lord dealt with a
ram who had lofty pillars, the likes of whom had
never been created in the lands, And with the mood
who carved out the rocks in the valley, and with Pharaoh,
(10:55):
owner of the stakes, all of whom oppressed within the lands,
and increase therein the corruption. So your lord poured upon
them a scourge of punishment. Indeed, your Lord is in observation.
That's the that's the words of the prophet right in
(11:16):
in the Koran. That's the story of the story of
this kind of warning to the reader. It's like, hey,
think about what happened to this place, Think about what
happened to this guy. Uh. And that last line comes
off I think a little bit mild where it says indeed,
your Lord is an observation. Maybe a more direct way
(11:37):
to say that in American English today would be, you know,
watch out, God is watching you. You know, yeah, it
always feels like somebody's watching me, because it is an
be stated here that he she it is indeed. There's
another version of of this. By the way, where or
(11:58):
I guess that the story of the led and where
Ubar was the center of trade, of wealth of society.
It was located along this really lucrative trade route that
existed at the time in which it was a place
that was you know, thriving um and it's you know,
it's where merchants would transport all kinds of things or
(12:18):
or this this trade route is where merchants would trade
all kinds of things and Ubar was a major stop
there and one of the big things that they traded
was frankincense. And this is has been mentioned a lot,
or at least is a major point of this one
version of the legend. Yeah. Oh, they were balling out.
They were making so much money off this frankincense trade,
(12:40):
which included mr uh you know for people who people
were fans of the three the three wise men. Then
then you you'll notice that frankincense and mir which are
not super big commodities to a lot of people today,
were profoundly in press. It gives back then they were
(13:02):
you know, they were status symbols. They were associated with
things that were holy and so being a part of
this trade and the people of Ubar made a lot
of money. They uh, they obtained many riches, jewels, etcetera. Uh.
And and this story follows, you know, the kind of
Pixar version. Once upon a time, as you said, matt
(13:25):
Ubar was the center of the trade in frankincense, and
every day they got wealthier and wealthier and wealthier, until
one day a prophet arrives. And there's a pre Islamic prophet,
by the way, in this legend, a prophet arrives and
fore tells that the city and the entire civilization of
Ubar would be destroyed by God as punishment for their wicked,
(13:47):
wicked ways. The king, who was not aware that he
was to be the last king of Ubar, ignored the
prophet in a short while later, the city disappeared from
the historical record. It was buried under the shifting sands
of the empty Quarter. In Arabia, they called it that,
but Saudi Arabia we call it now. It's a it
(14:10):
feels maybe at first glance or first listen as a
similar parable that has existed in a couple of different
holy books and a couple a couple of different societies
and kind of historical records, where there's this place that
became so wealthy. Uh, they just were bored in some
(14:30):
ways because they had so much time on their hands,
and they started to do the things that idle hands do,
which is generally considered you know, the devil's work or
the bad things, the wicked, evil things. Um. And then
it gets destroyed because a force of good in this case,
God comes through and says no, um. But and you know,
(14:53):
but if you continue along the legend, even though it
was destroyed it you know, if it, if it was real,
then it would still exist out there somewhere, right, at
least according to legend, right somewhere out there in the
dry ocean of the desert, one may still discover the
ruins of ancient Ubar, all the riches within, and possibly
(15:16):
all the all the curses and consequences you would run
into for uh, for violating the wishes of the divine
and and you know, I'm mad, but but mostly mostly
all those all those vases full of that dank, frankincense,
dankinsense that would be the dame of the company we start, dankinsense. Uh, yeah,
(15:39):
we'll find something for Mirr as well, because Mirrors still
is very much of the game in this part of
the story. But you're right, so the details of the
disaster are are naturally vague, the idea, you know, at
the time this story takes place, when it's traced to antiquity.
Usually natural disasters are always seen as happening for some
(16:04):
sort of reason. No one is ever saying, hey, uh,
we have famine because we couldn't grow crops because of
the drought. They say, oh, we are encountering famine because
we have crops because of the drought, because God is
super poed at us, you know, because we didn't make
the right sacrifices, or you didn't propitiate the right prayers
(16:27):
at the right time in the calendar, etcetera. Um. And
that's there's nothing wrong with that. That's just the human mind,
because humans have always been you know, these are still
Homo sapien there very much like us. There is still
trying to categorize and frame and understand the world. Uh
So when you hear details about Ubar's demise, you might
(16:47):
you'll hear people say, you know, well, it was God
that struck them down. And then we'll hear other people say,
oh is God who struck them down. But God did
it this way, right through an earthquake maybe, or through
a sandstorm that never stopped. It's kind of like Atlantis, right,
that's another example. Or Sodom and go mora. It's a
it's a yeah, yeah because as the wickedness, right, and
(17:10):
it's and it's still you know, it's a story that's
common to what they call people of the book, right,
Udeo Christian Islamic belief systems. But Bar has a couple
of things in its legend that make it different. First,
speculation about Ubar has continued, you know, since the writing
(17:33):
of the Quran, which really popularized it, because that is
that is a book that is fundamental too many civilizations,
and then some other lost city legends just by contrast.
They claim that there are ancient origins to them, but
they end up being examples of embellishment maybe or outright hoaxes.
(17:57):
This is not the case here. I mean aram Ubar
was popularized in the West in the thirties and really
picked up some modern UH shine in PRTLC in the
ninety nineties. But again it's been known in the Middle East.
The West alone is not the world. It was known
in the Middle East since l Kros. Since before then
(18:20):
it assumed it's more modern interpretation. Way back during the
aggregation and um dissemination of the anthology we know of
as one thousand and one nights Uh fantastic book that
was composed over centuries during the Islamic Golden Age. We
still don't know to to be completely clear, how that
(18:42):
book was formed. It's a mystery of its own. But
that's not the only reason Ubar is unique. Yeah, there
are some some pretty old maps that actually placed a
physical location of Ubar on these maps. Um, there was
there's one where it's depicted as Omanum and Oreum there
and that's on Ptolemy's lap P T O. L. E.
(19:04):
M y his map of the world. Um, this guy
Claudius Ptolemy, he was born in Greece, lived in Egypt.
And this is around a hundred and ten to a
hundred and seventy a d. So that's some time ago.
Let's say. It's also mentioned by several other Islamic commentators
throughout the years of the centuries that have existed as
(19:25):
possibly existing in one place or another and in multiple
versions of it, essentially of the legend. Yeah. Yeah. The
primary evidence, which you know, we're very thankful for a
lot of the primary evidence comes from religious or religious
affiliated text. So there's going to be this ongoing debate
(19:45):
about translation, you know, and then about like you said, Matt,
is this is this literally a city? Is this literally
a civilization? Is this a metaphor you know, is this
like a a larger version of all those stories that
even today kids here like don't do act A, B
or C or else you'll have consequence X y or z.
(20:08):
What if it wasn't a city at all? What if
it was a region instead? So instead of uh, you know,
like what if or whenever the US falls and you
fast forward a couple of millennia or something, Uh, what
if no one remembers the city of Atlanta and they
(20:28):
talk about the Lost City of Georgia. It's located somewhere
on this continent and everybody but everybody's got weird ideas
about it. It would be the lost city of coming
I think there we go. That stuff happens all the time,
and then the name we get uh distorted and telephoned
and it would be like ku mink or kumong or
something like that. Yeah, that that happens constantly, constantly. So
(20:53):
maybe it wasn't even reagion. Maybe it was not geographical.
Maybe it was a name for a people, which also
happens often, right, because we know that in ancient times
and even now, groups of people, communities and tribes, the
names that outsiders use refer to the place where those
people are found, right, and the places where they live
(21:15):
get named after them. Uh, Israelites, Israel, you know what
I mean? Like, especially the Middle East is full of
this stuff. So Ubar has long been associated with a
group of people called the Ould, spelled like apostrophe a D,
but pronounced more like ould. And back in the eleventh
(21:37):
century there was a guy a commentary named Nashwan bin
said him Yari, who said Quoa Bar is the name
of the land which belonged to Ould in the eastern
part of Yemen. Today it's non trouded desert owing to
the dying up of its water. There are to be
found in it great buildings which the wind is smothered
in sand. Doesn't really mentioned God just mentioned these people
(22:00):
built some stuff and they're no longer in the game.
How intriguing is that though? I mean again, like bring
back Indiana Jones. Just some of these concepts that at
least I as as a child and then growing up,
we're so fascinating of, you know, finding being able to
one day maybe chase down some historical place like this,
(22:21):
or discovering a lost place, a lost people that existed somewhere. Um,
it's it's it's just such fuel for the imagination. And
you know, it really just depends on where you look,
who you ask, who you just want to believe. I
guess on how you think about Ubar, where it could be,
(22:44):
what it could be, who the actual people were, and
what occurred there um or. And it also depends on
your faith, honestly, depending on you know, the books you
grew up with, as in the important pillars of your
your faith and your understanding of the world. But it's
really cool that this place has all of this potential
(23:04):
built within it. You know, you may you may have
grown up most familiar with that description in the Kuran.
You may have you may have been a fan of
Te Lawrence, the famous and very strange explorer and military officer.
Uh he's the one who I think popularized calling it
(23:27):
the Atlantis of the Sands. But the most important thing
about the Atlantis of the Sands is that we're pretty
sure someone found it. What are we talking about. We'll
tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
(23:55):
it gets crazy, Matt. We gotta we gotta talk about
these searches. Know it's people are out here changing the world. Man.
One time I fell asleep trying to put on a
pair of pants like this is this This is a
great examination of human ingenuity of nothing else. The other
day I fell asleep, I stuck my head into my
(24:16):
son's rocket ship tent and I was playing with him
really actively and I totally passed out right there. So
I feel you've been just saying, uh, maybe maybe we
should stop falling asleep on our various jobs such as
pants putting on. But but other people have not been
sitting around getting drowsy. They've been out there searching the
(24:38):
desert for stuff, um, which is really really cool. There
are several individuals who believe they have uncovered this place, uh,
that was mentioned in the Koran. And you know, there's
there's debate on who's right, who actually found it, and
we're gonna go through all that stuff right now. But
(24:59):
you really can and find people who have claimed, at
least to have found this legendary place Ubar or Iran
that was mentioned in the Koran, that specific version of it,
and they think they found it in the Middle East
in places from Oman to Yemen, uh to Jordan's places.
(25:20):
In Jordan, the place called the Waddy Room in the
Wadi Room. This is oh, the infamous Rube What has
this been? I don't know this, the infamous Rube al Khali. Yeah,
that's right, the Rube al Khali. We should or the
Empty Quarter. We should note that, as far as we know,
neither of us are Arabic speakers, unless we had a
(25:41):
wild weekend and forgot about it. Uh. The Empty Quarter
is a vast stretch of immensely inhospitable land. And we'll
we'll talk about in a little bit. But I noticed,
Matt you pointed out Wadi room, Uh, Wadi rum. Let's
let's let's talk about this a little bit. So it's
in Jordan's it's its name translates or it's called the
(26:04):
Valley of the Moon. And this looks otherworldly. It's a
desert landscape picture a lot of flat sandy valley beds.
Wadi is Arabic for valley, and they're bordered by these
enormous red sandstone cliffs. It's the largest valley in Jordan's
(26:25):
and it also carries the signs of ancient human occupation.
We've got inscriptions, petrock, Glyff's, ruins of temples, uh, graffiti, uh,
stuff that dates back as far as twelve thousand years.
People have been there for a long long time. Yeah,
and it's one of those places that the glory of,
(26:48):
you know, the natural surroundings in this you know, the
somewhat starkness of it as well, wasn't really known by
the West until some guy walked through there who happened
to be British. Um, a man named T. E. Lawrence.
He's a British military officer. Um. He really brought it
to the west attention. Who was passing through there during
(27:10):
the Arab Revolt which occurred between nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen.
And he he, you know, was moved by the experience
of going through that area, and he wrote a book
about his experience called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And then
we get into a a weird circumstance here, a little
(27:31):
bit of a pr move because there's a formation at
Wady Room called the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. That's what
it's called today. It's great for tourism. That's not its
original name. Its original name was like Jibral all moms
are the mountain of the plague, and so nobody wants
(27:52):
to visit the mountain of the plague. But you know,
I'm sure there's another mountain of a plague somewhere. So
this was this was renamed even though the the formation
that's mentioned has nothing to do with the Seven Pillars
actually mentioned in Lawrence's book, even in like later editions,
(28:14):
it is all about tourism there. It is a hugely
popular tourist destination, and it's of course an enormously important
side of human civilization. It's also something that you, fellow
conspiracy realists, have probably seen before. You just didn't know it.
You might have thought it was Planet Mars in the
(28:35):
Martian you might have thought it was any number of
backdrops for films set in the Middle East or on
our red neighbor just just to plan it away. It's
also in um It's in some famous ones. Oh yeah,
there's a Star Wars movie, Rogue one that used it.
(28:56):
The Transformers Revenge of the Fallen featured this, and my
favorite one, even though it wasn't my favorite movie, but
my favorite version of it is seen in Prometheus. I
really liked the way it was treated there, at least
on camera. Yeah. Also, of course it's in the Aladdin reboot,
the live action. I forgot about that one. I never
(29:17):
asked your you know, I forgot to ask your opinion
that I know that we both love that film growing up,
and I still think it holds up. But what did
you see the remake hottake. I suffered through it until
Will Smith's like tenth line, and then I turned it off.
I didn't turn it off. My son and my wife
continued to watch a little bit, but I left the
(29:40):
room and handle it in silent protest. No, it wasn't.
It wasn't very silent. It was definitely like and then left. Yeah,
Robin Williams left some big shoes to fill. And I
don't think it's I mean, it's funny because I really
liked I really enjoyed all the other actors in there.
(30:01):
I thought they nailed it. And for some reason, again
that's just one person's opinion. Uh, we'll have to get
Paul's about this off are too. Uh. It just felt
like they were trying to make it. Will Smith plays
Will Smith as a genie. I mean, to be fair,
(30:22):
That's that's what Robin Williams was doing too. I just
I like the earlier songs. Yeah, me too. Uh. It's
a real Mountain of the plague seven Pillars of Wisdom scenario,
you know, the translation, just story and to change up
just didn't didn't play as in this case, didn't play
(30:45):
as well. Yeah yeah, true. Uh, but again visually you know,
they're they're stunning scenes in there, and and again, I
think the vast majority of the actors nailed it. So
I don't want to be unfair. I just I just
I think I figured out how I like my culturally
appropriated idea of Jenn in Disney films, because it's not
(31:07):
like it's not like the Robin Williams genie is in
any way accurate to begin with. Uh. Indeed, but if
you're gonna if you're gonna make a scary version like
the scariest version of a Jin, which is the one
that this genie is supposed to inhabit, and you're gonna
make them like a family friendly, friendly g version, then
(31:30):
you know, go all the way with it. Just think
I'm super happy and transforming into all kinds of different
Western characters from pop culture. That's right. So I've benna
watch that later. Uh. As long as we don't get disappeared,
I think we can close the book. Though. On the
Wady Room, it's definitely an historically significant site, but it
(31:52):
is probably not the Atlantis of the Sands, as T.
Lawrence called it. It's probably not a lost city. There
are some ancient temples there, but The fact is, there's
so much tourism there now that if there were an
ancient empire or gigantic city, it would have been found
(32:13):
like the the I mean, people travel from around the
world to visit and film there. I would say that
just going with the name the Mountain of the Plague
may make you think if you put yourself in the
shoes of maybe someone exploring the area who isn't fully
familiar with it, may make you think that, well, you know,
(32:34):
this place was named the Mountain of the Plague. Perhaps
there was something that happened here a long time ago
that we don't fully understand. I can imagine that scenario,
or at least that thought process totally totally, and I agree.
I mean, you know, when you get to a place
that has had human beans for that long, I'm sure
(32:54):
there were several plagues, you know what I mean. I'm yeah,
I don't think somebody probably didn't make that name up
for fun. I didn't think it was cool. They remembered
when people died of the plague in the area, and
they were like, don't don't even get to where you
can freaking see that mountain, bro, it's messed up. I
could totally. See history is filled with ghosts there, and
(33:19):
now we shoot movies there. Now we shoot movies there,
so UH there are also a lot of films shot
around the area of the empty quarter. The rulebuck Cali.
If if you're going just off the oral traditions and
the legends, it makes a lot of sense to think
(33:39):
that uh city might have been there and vanished, because
it feels like the easiest place for human human beings
to vanish. It's it's vast, it's a sand desert. It
covers most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula
and eaties huge. It's like two hundred and fifty thousand
(34:03):
square miles. That means it goes across Saudi Arabia, goes
across the United Arab Emirates, goes across Aman Yemen, and
today it's it's a rough neighborhood for humans. It's actually
rougher for humans now than it was in ancient times.
And even then it was no walk in the park.
It rains like or sorry in rain, and the precipitation
(34:25):
is like maybe one point four inches on a good year.
The temperatures can reach as high as fifty one degrees
Celsius for everyone in bad right, for everyone in the States,
that's a hundred and twenty four degrees fahredheit. Uh and
then and it gets cold af at night. It's like
one of those places in the world where, if you
(34:48):
look at it objectively, are humans supposed to be here?
Are we really do we need to go out here?
You know? Like I don't know, man, I really don't know. Well,
maybe not anymore. But back before the intense desertification, desertification
that's been occurring out there, and you know, on a
(35:09):
continual level and increasing um, it was a pretty cool
place to be, a good place to at least travel
through in a lot of the areas of it because
guess what. Guess what they did. They traded things in
caravans like uh, frankincense and M and M and mer.
(35:32):
I don't know why. It feels like it feels like
there's a Simon and car Funkle thing going on with
frank It sets of murder. Or maybe it's like if
we were selling a box of frank It sets, who
would say, like frank It SAIDs now with murr and dude, no,
I'll tell you a better one. It's it's hall and oats. Wow,
(35:53):
because it feels so healthy. It's or something like extra.
They don't need you just want the hall. So yes,
I getta. You know. It's like it's like people will
eat the eat the oats, but yeah, we're here for
the halls. That makes that makes a lot of sense.
Like so maybe that's it. Maybe that's it, But your
(36:14):
point is right. Desert desertification, the process of becoming more
desert like, has increased over time to the present level today.
Before then it was still very much waste land, but caravans,
often on camel back would would be able to traverse
established roots here to get that sweet sweet frankensense emmer
(36:38):
and move it to uh, move it to more densely
populated areas where it would fetch a great premium as
much as for its rarity as for its smell and these.
This trade occurred till around and estimated like three people
were doing this. But the problem with the empty quarter
(36:58):
is the same thing that makes made people think that's
where a rom could be or who bar could be.
It's that it is. It is huge. In the days
before satellite observation, it would be really difficult for early explorers,
especially as you said, the British guys, the Aristos, who
are walking in and quote unquote discovering all this stuff,
(37:21):
it would be really tough for them to systematically comb
the desert without without dying of thirst starvation when they
got lost. Now, the native people, the Bedouin, knew their
way around, right, But yeah, exactly, especially if you're trying
to do it, you know Spaceball's style and combing the
desert like that, that would be a rough gig. It's
(37:41):
a rough gig. It takes a lot of people in
a lot of time. So, yeah, there could be an
ancient oasis in the area. We know there are oases
all around the edges of the Empty Quarter. That's what
defines the Empty Quarter. It's the empty parts and the
stuff around the edges has stuff there. But if you
(38:06):
were going to find something, if you're gonna find an
ancient city, uh, where would you start looking? How would
you find it? This leads us to, uh, the various
attempts to discover it. So we've nailed down that it's
probably not in the Empty Quarter, at least so far
as we know. It's unlikely that it would be. And
then it's probably not in uh waddy room in Jordan's.
(38:32):
But we've got we've got a bunch of pretty moneyed
British explorers who have nothing, who have no other goals
other than to make some money off the native cultures,
and later bragged to their friends at the Royal Geographic
Society and they were all about this. And we also
(38:53):
have satellite technology now and other you know, advanced technology.
Uh So that's a bit of a spoiler, and we'll
tell you about the potential discovery after a word from
our sponsor. We're back. So let's start in nine. There
(39:17):
is an explorer named Bertram Thomas. Bertram Thomas has the
goal of being the first European in his opinion, to
officially cross the sands of the Empty Quarter. He's at
the southern edge of the area. And I'm just saying
in his opinion because I take issue I take issue
(39:38):
with the idea of him being the first person ever
from Europe to do that, because this is and there
was a lot of stuff that happened before he got
this idea. Anyway, So he starts this journey and he's ready,
and he's guys, camels, guys, entourage and stuff. People who
are who are native to the land and members of
(40:00):
his Bedouin entourage tell him about the story of this
lost city, and he says, ah, well, I don't find that.
That's gonna be something I can rag to the rest
of my my lads about back home. He didn't find it,
but he did tell te Lawrence about it. T Lawrence
is the guy who popularized the phrase the Atlantis of
(40:23):
the Sands. He didn't just tell him about it, he said, right,
old Chap and he marked a map for Lawrence with
the supposed location. Lawrence again, very weird, dude. I don't
want to kink shame anyone. I don't want to yuck
anyone's yum, as Chuck would say. But Lawrence was a
(40:44):
smart dude, and he immediately knew what we had just
talked about, the vast difficulties of finding this needle of
civilization in this haystack of the wild. So we said,
you know, the only way we're gonna be able to
find this is if we somehow get in the air.
We searched by like airship, by a blimp, but he
never followed through with it. You know, again, it's nineteen thirties,
(41:07):
nineteen forties. A lot of stuff's going down in the
Middle Eastern Europe. But these statements that he made and
that other explorers made cemented the idea of this lost
Arab city in the Western zeitgeist. So people were obsessed
with it. Yeah, and remember t Lawrence that we spoke
about earlier, is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom guy in
(41:28):
the Waddy room that we talked about. Same same dude,
same British military officer, um who who tended to write
a lot about these kinds of things. So that's why
it makes sense that it kind of expanded out there
in the minds of people in the West. But it
didn't stop there, everybody. Let's jump forward sixteen years to
nineteen forty six and to another English explorer, wiest fellow
(41:53):
named named Wilfrid Fessiga. Actually, uh uh, maybe it's Wilfred
this the seizure. I don't know how to say. Wow,
it's it's English messenger maybe little British Polish on it.
I think he nailed it. It It couldn't. It could be
the Seeger. Well, we'll call Wilfordsager. Well, so, uh, he's
(42:23):
hanging out in a place called Shissir. It's in southern
Oman he's hanging out by this well, that's that's over there,
just in an area, let's an undefined area. And he
notes that he's seeing some kinds of crude stone, some
kind of ruins maybe from a fort. You see him
on this rocky eminence. That's a quote there about the
(42:45):
eminence and some of the things that he finds there,
let's let's call them shards. Uh, some of the things
he finds an area maybe in his opinion, they may
be early Islamic. And you know, he tells the Royal
Geographic Society do but nothing you know, official comes out
of it. There's no like exploration in the moment because
(43:07):
of this guy Wilfred passagers experience. But people remember, right, people,
people are keeping no. Just two years later, party of
Bedouins and oil company employees are traveling there. They're surveying
no far province. This is of course, part of Western
(43:31):
Europe's um state sponsored push to divide up the territories
for resource acquisition. Right. And they first see this place,
sir or also called ash this year. Uh. They're approaching
it from the south and the the first thing they see
is this white cliff in the distance. As they get
(43:53):
closer they say, Hey, this cliff is not just a cliff,
it's man made. It's the wall of a ruined fort,
and it's built above this large cave, and there's an
entrance to this cave, but it's obscured by a sand dune.
I mean, I'm just I am pictured. I don't know
about you guys, but I am picturing like this crazy
(44:15):
Indiana Jones music in my head. They found the fort
had been built from the same white rock as that cliff,
and this gave them this to them, it seemed to
indicate that this whole thing was a single structure. One
of the geologists said, you know, there are no houses
or tents or people here. There's just this tumble down
(44:38):
ruin and the spurt Islamic fort wamp wamp. Because the
geologists didn't have modern satellites. God, we're throwing so many
spoilers in this. They didn't have archaeological equipment. They were
unimpressed by the ruin. They were like, there's not even
oil here. Bro uh. In fact, their guides and them,
(44:59):
they all referred to it as quote difficult water because
it was the only watering hole for miles and miles
and miles around and they had to spend three days
trying to get water from this dying well for their camels.
So it's like they they stopped in a place because
(45:20):
it had one thing that they needed they barely had that.
They wrote down a one star review of it in
their Yelp travel journal, and then they dipped out. But
all of those things that happened, we're still on a record.
Fast forward, uh to the eighties and nineties. Yeah, that's right,
(45:42):
zero Michelin stars for just served before that. Now jump
to same area. There's a just before we get into this,
there is a fantastic New York Times Old School are
Goal from nine two. I think there was written about
this that we recommend you go check out. The title
(46:05):
of it is on the Trail from the Sky Rhodes
Point to a Lost City. So if before we talk
about it, if you want to read it, hey, good
stuff in there. Um. So, there's there's a filmmaker from
Los Angeles named Nicholas Clapp. Uh really really cool spelling.
By the way. I don't know if he spells it
that way because of a Screenwriter's Guild thing, but C
(46:28):
L A P. P is his last name. Um, you know,
he's one of those guys. It's it's the nineties. This
guy has grown up with a fascination of you know,
the the romantic mystery that exists out there in ancient
you know, Arabia and the sands as well as you
know this the concept of these huge caravanning um Frankensten's
(46:51):
trade that that's occurring, right. Um. And he goes out
to that same areas, just sir. And really what he
wants to do is use that new technology that has
been developed since people have been looking at this place,
and he wants to you know, he really just wants
to discover this place, right, and he ends up finding
(47:13):
things things that have never been found out there before. Yeah.
So he assembles this, um, this crew of of specialists,
as you said, to investigate. Uh. They include financial backers. Uh.
They also include uh, scientists from JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratories.
(47:35):
And then he also gets with Randolph Finds, who yes,
is related to the actor Ralph Finds who plays Voltemore.
I thought you would enjoy that, Paul. He also plays
a protect the antagonist in Red Dragon. Uh in the
Silence of the Lamps franchise. Anyhow, Uh, he has his relative.
(47:56):
Randolph finds he's a well to do European and he
is also affiliated with the Sultan of Oman, so he's
kind of their fixer on the ground. So they get
together and they're they're reviewing this footage from the satellites
and again there's a very early days of this. This
is before your widespread use of a lot of other
(48:19):
technologies that people have today. But they see things that
you wouldn't see if you're walking on the ground. One
of the most important things they find is a network
of ancient camel tracks caravan roots that seem to converge
on a couple of different places. One of them is
Asta Sure in Oman. And this is like they you know,
(48:40):
they do all the ground, they do all the mental
legwork they can before they go there because it's a
bit of a journey. So their first ground exploration takes
place in they learned so much stuff and that's where
we get to that that breathless like old school in
yt headline on the Trail from the Sky own points
to a lost city and then it begins with this
(49:03):
beautiful quotation. It's the first sentence is just is just
solid gold. Mattieve do you have maybe like a I
almost hate to ask, do you have a Transatlantic voice
for this one? Yeah, okay, I'll do it. Guided by
ancient maps and sharp eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and
explorers have discovered a lost city deep in the sands
(49:27):
of Arabia. They are virtually sure it is Ubar, the
fabled entropos of the rich frankincense trade thousands of years
ago and it continues. Yes, and now doesn't seem to
be much question that we have discovered or monum emporium,
(49:47):
says Dr Joris ar Artist, the expeditions chief archaeologist Losight.
He has is very rich, no doubt about it. So
is this the real Ubar? You know? Under the direction
of Doctor's errands, the team starts digging. They excavate the
walls and towers of this fortress. They're working fast. They
(50:07):
find a site that dates back more than two thousand years.
How can they work that fast? You know? Archaeological digs
are a huge issue in the Middle East, and because
there's so many ancient civilizations, because there are so many
modern civilizations of war over history right now, they're able
to do this again because Ranald Finds is buddy buddy
(50:30):
with the Sultan. What he says goes So doctors Arns
doesn't just find this this ancient site, he also find
is able to trace its demise a little bit. And
he says, uh, look, the site has this huge sinkhole
kind of bisecting it if you look at the pictures,
(50:51):
and he says, it fell sometime between a D three
hundred in a D five hundred. And if you recall
earlier at the top of the show, we said a
D three is about when the frankincense trade is suspected
to have declined. Interesting, right, And you know, when you
keep thinking about it in this way, if there was
(51:13):
some kind of cataclysm or a huge earthquake or a
big sinkhole that formed and sucked in everything pretty quickly
over the course of you know, even a couple of years,
you can imagine how perhaps that would have been blamed
on an act of God of some sort. Mm hmmm.
And and he says specifically, it's like, look, you know
(51:36):
there is fossil water here. Uh. Fossil water is something
we talked about a little bit um and our work
on Libya years ago. Uh. Fossil water is a non
renewable source of potable or drinkable water, and says kind
of how this oasis was working, But it was also
built over limestone, and so is more and more people
(51:58):
and animals and agriculture. Because that irrigation schemes, more and
more things started draining more and more water. It probably
contributed to uh an earthquake, or maybe it was the
primary cause of this collapse. So the thing fell, the
center could not hold. However, doctor Arns himself is quick
(52:19):
to point out that there might be a chicken and
egg thing because if Franken sent straight, if the Franking
sin Strade was still you know, doing Gangbusters, then there
would have been enough finance, right, there would have been
enough um political will to rebuild this lost place. And
(52:41):
that all depends on whether our modern idea of u
bar existed at all, because she doc Z is not convinced.
He's not. And by the way, it also depends on
whether or not they could actually get water if if
that you know that fossil water was actually the reason
that caused the collapse. But but let's let's talk about
(53:03):
drs Errands and why he was unsure, because there was
this great interview with him from Nova. If If you
haven't watched a lot of Nova and you're listening to this,
I highly recommend you do. It's really great. Um. They're
not a sponsor, but I very much enjoyed the programming
with with the stuff they put out there. Um. But
they were speaking with him about Ubar, and we've got
(53:25):
a quote from him. He says, there's a lot of
confusion about that word talking about Ubar. If you look
at the classical texts and the Arab historical sources, Ubar
refers to a region and a group of people, not
to a specific town. People always overlook that. It's very
clear on Ptolemy second century map of the area, it
says in big letters law Bitarte, and in his text
(53:47):
that accompanies the maps, he's very clear about that. It
was only the late medieval version of the one thousand
and one Nights in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that
romanticized Dubar and turned it into a city rather than
a region or a people. Instead, he says, she's here.
The site they found is one of maybe three or
four major trade and civilization centers of the uber Right
(54:12):
at a time when this tribal group, the uber Rights,
thrived along the edges of the empty quarter. So he's
saying that they didn't discover the mythical city, but in
a way that they discovered something more important. They discovered
the truth that inspired the myth. We have to remember
that when people saw this city, they were seeing it
(54:36):
after seven eight days journey through utter desolation, no food,
no water. We also have to understand that when when
they saw like when you see it now. You can
see photographs of the ruins today along with artist depictions
of how the actual fortress looked at its time, right,
(54:57):
and the fortress itself, especially after you've at all these myths,
it looks a little underwhelming, honestly, But you have to
consider that many of the people who are living there,
who were populating it, even on a permanent basis, they
weren't living in this relatively small fortress. They were living
outside around it. They were living in large tents that
(55:19):
you could open up to catch a breeze and things
like that. They would probably only be in the fortress
if there were some sort of siege or attack. It
reminds me like it doesn't okay, it doesn't look like
a shining city of pillars in the pictures of the
ruins or even in the artistic depictions. Uh. But you know,
then again, for anyone who's seeing the Tower of London
(55:41):
and stuff, doesn't look like a skyscraper, right, we have
very different definitions of towers hundreds of years ago, you
know what I mean? Anything over two three three floors
that's a tower. Oh absolutely. And I really like your
point there of just to reach that area, no matter
for what reason you're traveling through or you know, to
get there, you would have been on a perilous journey. Um.
(56:03):
This is a weird kind of way to think about it.
But I you shot a picture into my head, been
of a day that I worked a full day, like,
let's say, eight nine hours, then immediately after that shot
a film festival forty eight hours thing immediately following a
full day of work, and I hadn't eaten food in
(56:23):
like thirty hours or something, and somebody suggested getting popeyees.
I didn't know what that was. I tried it for
the first time with my wife and it was the
best piece of chicken I had ever eaten in my life.
Now is that because it was actually the best piece
of chicken? Or is it because I was starved? Or
I felt starving, and you know, I was so hungry
(56:46):
that this just became a prized thing in that moment.
I wonder if that experience is correct. And that's it's
a really great point, Ben, that's I mean, you're making
a really great point too. And and not to date
you there, Matt, but that is before of the famous
chicken sandwich that was just like you got a two
or three piece right with a Biscuit's true? Yeah, I mean,
(57:08):
I still I stand by Popeyes. This is not an
advertisement for Popeyees, but I think, at least here in Atlanta,
one thing we love about Popeyees is you can tell
how good the chickens are going to be by like
how abrasive. The people who work there are the best,
the probably some of the best. Popeyes uh here in
our our neck of the Global Woods is right down
(57:30):
the street from our office, where famously, I don't know
about you, I I went there for lunch one day.
I was just trying to pick up some neto is
in a hurry, and when I pulled up at the
drive through, the person on the other end said, what
it's a one to one ratio? How good the chicken
(57:50):
is gonna be and how much grief you get. But
I think you make a really great point about the
psychology of people. They're because because you know, you are
going into a place that a looked much more impressive
when it was in its glory days before it collapsed,
back when there were hundreds of people there, there was
(58:11):
irrigation and stuff. Uh, it looked much better and people
were much more appreciative because some of them probably came
pretty close to dying while they were risking their lives
and their fortunes in the Frankinstin's trade. So there really
was there an ubar of myth? Probably not? Was there
a real place upon which hubar is based? Yes, and
(58:33):
we probably found it. This is a real life's case
of a lost city that was found, like the lost
City of Troy. And you know, if it looks disappointing,
and the Tower of London, example, is maybe a little disappointing.
To let's be further disappointing. The Pyramids used to look
way better. Those things used to be painted like you know,
(58:55):
I wish people would point that out more. They used
to be more colorful. Anyway. Uh, this this fortress was
surrounded by smaller villages that stretched out as far as
six miles. It was. Um, it's an example kind of
of what's called a caravan Sarah that because you know,
a roadhouse, a stop on the road. Um. You know,
(59:19):
like the same kind of thing that made Samarcans in
Rezbekistan a huge global force, regional force it was. It's
it's like, imagine if the only gas station for hundreds
and hundreds of miles uh became a town. That's that's
(59:39):
another way to look at it. And I don't think
I don't think that's pejorative or dismissive at all. It's amazing.
So maybe in conclusion, maybe the game of telephone strikes again.
I know that's disappointed to some people. That's amazing to me.
I love it. And he only makes me think, Man,
I don't know about you may wonder what else is
out there. It's got to be more. That's exactly what
(01:00:01):
I was gonna say. Just because we found this one
doesn't mean other stuff isn't out there. We haven't fully
light ard that desert yet, at least I'm pretty sure
we haven't, because it would take a lot of light
er to go through that desert. But I'm just telling
you like my excitement for possibilities out there in the
(01:00:22):
shifting sands. It remains peaked, and it will stay that
way for a good time. Yeah, And it will probably
have to stay a sense of excitement and anticipation for
a while because you know, so much of that part
of the world is embroiled in political instability. There are
war zones, you know, in seats of ancient human civilization,
(01:00:45):
and we're really they're being destroyed right right, And we're
really faced with we're faced with a powerful dilemma, which is,
you know, um, will our species be able to come
together and save it past? It's collective past, Make no mistake,
you know, the the ancient history of the Middle East.
(01:01:07):
If you're listening to this, it is part of your
history too. You trace yourself back far enough, it's it's
part of your history somehow. So it's it's our collective
responsibility to try to keep it around for those who
come after. We're just as we said in the very
very beginning, we're very very good at losing things. Let's
(01:01:28):
hope we get a little bit better at rediscovering and
preserving them. Um, let us know what you think about
today's episode. We've run a little long, but we hope
you enjoyed it. Uh. You can find us on Facebook
and can find us on Instagram. You can find us
on Twitter. Were Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We're
We're Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. But personally, if you're
(01:01:50):
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(01:02:12):
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every day and he's generally producing or having to listen
to us. Uh, but we do look forward to hearing
(01:02:35):
from you your thoughts on this episode or on future episodes,
or just chatting with us, or you know, talking to
us about your favorite magic the gathering cards, or how
Thomas middle Dish on the New Special talks about it
in episode two a lot and it made me smile. Oh,
just all day long thinking about Thomas middle Ditch playing
Magic the Gathering. Yeah that's really good. Yeah, do check
(01:03:00):
that out. Uh. And also if none of that quite
bags your badgers where if you are more comfortable with
a little bit more an nimity, please remember you can
always contact us to talk about law, civilizations, Magic the Gathering,
Harry Potter, Popeye's Chicken, whatever, whatever crosses your mind. We
(01:03:22):
would love to hear from you, and we have an
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on as long as we have this show around. It's
our good old fashioned email address. We are conspiracy at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
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