November 20, 2025 • 16 mins
George Noory and author Jack Bialik discuss how ancient civilizations acquired advanced knowledge only to lose it and rediscover it centuries later, the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and if there is evidence that the mythical kingdom of Atlantis might have actually existed.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to George Norry along with Jack Bilk, whose
book is called Lost in Time. Jack, you were talking
about the terra Cotta warriors, the clay warriors and their swords.
Go ahead and finish that.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yeah. Yeah, we were talking about Emperor Quinn in two
hundred and ten BC. So he had made swords that
were made out of they had chromium in him. Well,
we didn't learn how to make chrome until the eighteen
hundred's where we used it in manufacturing. But that's not
what's really interesting about this emperor. The emperor built a
(00:40):
mausoleum where he was buried, and it was said, it's
been written that this mausoleum is booby trapped, and the
archaeologists there will not open that mausoleum because they know,
oh number one, this guy was really sharp and he
(01:05):
built a they say a lake of mercury around this
and they said, also it's booby trapped. So whatever technology
he had, it keeps everybody here at bay. So he's
an interesting man.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Could be a guillotine when you open the bay door
or something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes, thinking of Raiders of the Lost Ark or something,
you know, a big rolling ball or who knows.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
How far back do you think this intelligence goes?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, wow, that's that's a great question. Well, you know,
we just have so few records that go back beyond
oh even three thousand BC. You know, there's so little
written down that we have access to that, you know,
(02:02):
that's about as far back as we go. You know,
information travels on language, so if you don't have the language,
you can't understand what the people are saying. There's a
very famous manuscript at the Yale University Library that's called
(02:24):
the Vanoich Manuscript, and it's been dated to the fourteen hundreds.
It's been carbon carbon dated to the fourteen hundreds. And
they have had you know, cryptologists, they've had scholars, they've
(02:45):
had you know, linguists. Take a look at this text
in this book. You can look it up online. It's
pretty interesting. It's got all kinds of figures in there
of you know, dancing people, plants that seem otherworldly, all
kinds of interesting kind of pictures. And the writing in
(03:07):
there is what is really interesting. Because the scholars have
been able to determine that the language in this book
is an actual language. And the way they did that
is they can do a analysis of the number of
letters and the number of words, and they've got calculations
(03:28):
they can do to determine not made up language, like
somebody made it up for a movie or a hoax
or something along those lines. But scholars believe that it's
a real language. But we have not been able to
understand it because you know, there isn't the continuity of
(03:51):
that information.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
That's pretty dramatic all by itself. Jack, How do they
come up with stuff like that?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I don't know, but we you know, we have other examples.
You know, there's even a government, the government of Tamil
Nadu in northwest India has a reward out. Now if
you want to make a few bucks, they have a
reward out for a million dollars if you can crack
(04:22):
the script they have over there that's in some ancient writings.
So you know this this happens all the time and
those kind of languages get lost. You know, if it
wasn't for the Rosetta Stone, we would have never cracked
the hieroglyphs and the and the you know in Egypt.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So with all the sophisticated decoding machines we've got available,
they can't do it. Huh.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
As a matter of fact, that that was a question
that came up about, well couldn't they just use AI
or you know, some computer. But the the thing is,
if you don't have a basis to run that language against,
you can't figure it out. You know, you just don't
know what it's trying to say.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So, ye, in your opinion, with all this lost knowledge,
why do you think it was lost over the over
the years?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
What was missing?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, well a little bit of it.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
It's like libraries that get destroyed over the years too,
but it's all for different random events pretty much. You know,
like we have fires, earthquakes, you got people that come in,
you know, the huns come in and attack Rome or
(05:53):
or you know, the the Great Library at Alexandria caught
fire and who knows how many scrolls were lost in
there and kinds of information. So in order for us
to be really smart about this, we have to really
think it through, you know, and some people are doing that.
(06:16):
There is organizations around the world that are taking little
tidbits of say tidbits of information, you know, there's the
Slivbard Seed Bank in Norway where they've stored you know,
millions of seeds in the snow banks there and sub
(06:40):
zero temperatures for the future. But you know, that's just
a little piece, you know, it's not really necessarily knowledge,
but it you know, could help future civilizations.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
What are your thoughts on using time capsules to preserve information?
Do they work?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, well, they can work, but there's two problems with
time capsules. The first problem is you can't save enough information.
You know, we can write a little bit, you know,
there's various examples of this. There's you know, Oglethorpe University
(07:22):
has one that they've put in their school there. They
wanted to be opened in the year eighty one thirteen,
but you know they've stored like Donald Duck and an
empty Budweiser can and they do have some some microfiche
(07:42):
and that sort of thing that they've stored in there.
But you know, it's only going to be a part
of our knowledge, you know, Is that going to be
something that's going to help the future. You know, we
had a case at the White House where you know,
a time capsule was buried there in seventeen ninety three
(08:05):
by George Washington buried a time capsule and in one
of the cornerstones at the White House, and they have
attempted to find it. They've looked at it. I don't
know if the most recent reworked there, you know, refurbishment
at the White House might have found it. I haven't
(08:25):
heard about it. But you know, the the white the
time capsules get lost is the real problem.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Don't we have a seed time capsule full of seeds
in case something happens.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, yeah, that's the one in Norway's Levelvard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, they've got what seeds for everything?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Oh, they have millions of seeds that they've stored in there.
So yeah, that's that's a valuable asset. You know, that
could last.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
That's smart. Yeah, that is smart. In your book, you
discussed about knowledge and wisdom. Is there a difference there
between those two.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Well, yeah, you know, I think that may be part
of the thing, the part of the issue. What we
need to do is make sure we use wisdom along
with our knowledge. So I kind of you know, the
example there is, you know a child, you'll tell a child, hey,
(09:33):
don't touch that stove. That stove is hot, you know,
that's knowledge. You know, the stove is hot, that's going
to burn you. But the child goes and touches the
stove anyways, and they get burned, and then they cry
and they don't touch the stove again. And that's wisdom,
you know, using knowledge for the right purpose in the
(09:54):
right way, so that you don't get burned, you know,
and you make the right choice. So I think part
of our challenge is to make sure we're using our
knowledge in the right way so that we can save
it for the future, for future generations.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
We've got stone circles all over the planet, hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, as some have predicted. What do you
think they were used to? What happened to the knowledge there?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, that's an excellent point, I am. So that kind
of leads me into where my next foray is going.
I'm going to study megalists and monolithsts above the ground
and below the ground. I'm doing a collaboration with a
(10:47):
Mary Madras who's an author, and we're going to go
around the world and try to see if we can
find some thread in between all these because there's a
lot You're right, I mean, there are a lot of
these and I think the problem is we've studied them
individually and they haven't really looked at it as a
(11:11):
whole necessarily. You know, there's some some work has been
done in that area, but I think we're going to
take an in depth look at that in the future. Here.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
How would you grade science Jack on investigating the past?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, well, I think we do. You know, we do
a pretty darn good job our colleges and universities, the
archaeologists and so on. But I think there might be
an element missing, and that is keeping an open mind.
(11:50):
You know. I talk about this in the book as well,
being a little humble and keeping an open mind to
old ideas, new ideas, things that might not fit. You know.
There's there's findings every day and they say, oh, you know, now,
(12:11):
you know, the oldest human now is older than what
we thought. I just saw it and it was just
the last week.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know, unless you talk to our buddy Michael Kremo,
who's a regular guest who told us years ago humankind
is much older than science is saying he was right.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah, yeah, And they keep finding it over and over again.
So and the schools teach that, I mean, they have
to teach something, and they do a good job, but
I still think we need to keep open mind, you know,
about those things. And a lot of times, probably your
friend there has got beat up because he's not talking
about things that are you know, maybe within the norm,
(12:53):
but but you know, he's maybe trying to break through
and find out something that is above and beyond. You know,
maybe maybe he's got a little bit more open mind.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
What about cultures like Atlantis that must have had high
technology and they've just disappeared, They're gone. What about them?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of a lot written
about Atlantis. Certainly they went the way of other organizations,
their cultures that you know, did something or maybe someone
did something to them. I'm not sure. I guess we'll
(13:40):
find out someday, hopefully, But you know, just like we
lose this information like a Noyage manuscript, something happened to
those people, something happened to that culture where they ended
up doing something that wasn't wise or wasn't didn't have
(14:05):
a lot of wisdom, I suppose, or someone else did,
and they kind of got lost, you know, and we
seem to keep doing this over we have to find
a way, we need some really smart people to take
a look at this for our own future. You know,
there's an interesting effect that I looked a little bit into.
(14:31):
It's called a Carrington event.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh yeah, that huge solar flare from the sun.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, and you probably know that there was one that
happened in eighteen fifties that energized all the wires that
were on the poles at that time. Well on the
only polls they had with wires in the eighteen fifties
were telegraphed, that's right, and so it fires at the
(15:01):
telegraph stations. You know. But what would happen today if
we had one of those? You know, what would happen
to our knowledge, would our houses catch on fire? I mean,
who knows what would happen if we had some kind
of an event like that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
We've been very, very lucky, Jack. That's one of the
topics for twenty three years I've been talking about on
this program that we need to insulate and protect our
power grid because one day, either the sun is going
to bop something like that, or someone's going to detonate
a new nuke over our atmosphere with an electromagnetic pulse
(15:38):
and shut us down. We got to protect it.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Oh, one hundred percent, yep, exactly, yep.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
What do you think the ancients would say if they
were listening to this show right now or listening to you.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah, well, they might say, maybe we should have done
things differently, Maybe we should think about that ourselves. You know,
what are people going to say about us in the future,
say maybe they should have thought about things differently. I
think the idea of keeping our knowledge for a long
(16:17):
time doesn't really enter into our thought processes enough, you know,
I just don't think it does.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to George Norry along with Jack Bilk, whose
book is called Lost in Time. Jack, you were talking
about the terra Cotta warriors, the clay warriors and their swords.
Go ahead and finish that.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yeah. Yeah, we were talking about Emperor Quinn in two
hundred and ten BC. So he had made swords that
were made out of they had chromium in him. Well,
we didn't learn how to make chrome until the eighteen
hundred's where we used it in manufacturing. But that's not
what's really interesting about this emperor. The emperor built a
(00:40):
mausoleum where he was buried, and it was said, it's
been written that this mausoleum is booby trapped, and the
archaeologists there will not open that mausoleum because they know,
oh number one, this guy was really sharp and he
(01:05):
built a they say a lake of mercury around this
and they said, also it's booby trapped. So whatever technology
he had, it keeps everybody here at bay. So he's
an interesting man.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Could be a guillotine when you open the bay door
or something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes, thinking of Raiders of the Lost Ark or something,
you know, a big rolling ball or who knows.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
How far back do you think this intelligence goes?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, wow, that's that's a great question. Well, you know,
we just have so few records that go back beyond
oh even three thousand BC. You know, there's so little
written down that we have access to that, you know,
(02:02):
that's about as far back as we go. You know,
information travels on language, so if you don't have the language,
you can't understand what the people are saying. There's a
very famous manuscript at the Yale University Library that's called
(02:24):
the Vanoich Manuscript, and it's been dated to the fourteen hundreds.
It's been carbon carbon dated to the fourteen hundreds. And
they have had you know, cryptologists, they've had scholars, they've
(02:45):
had you know, linguists. Take a look at this text
in this book. You can look it up online. It's
pretty interesting. It's got all kinds of figures in there
of you know, dancing people, plants that seem otherworldly, all
kinds of interesting kind of pictures. And the writing in
(03:07):
there is what is really interesting. Because the scholars have
been able to determine that the language in this book
is an actual language. And the way they did that
is they can do a analysis of the number of
letters and the number of words, and they've got calculations
(03:28):
they can do to determine not made up language, like
somebody made it up for a movie or a hoax
or something along those lines. But scholars believe that it's
a real language. But we have not been able to
understand it because you know, there isn't the continuity of
(03:51):
that information.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
That's pretty dramatic all by itself. Jack, How do they
come up with stuff like that?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I don't know, but we you know, we have other examples.
You know, there's even a government, the government of Tamil
Nadu in northwest India has a reward out. Now if
you want to make a few bucks, they have a
reward out for a million dollars if you can crack
(04:22):
the script they have over there that's in some ancient writings.
So you know this this happens all the time and
those kind of languages get lost. You know, if it
wasn't for the Rosetta Stone, we would have never cracked
the hieroglyphs and the and the you know in Egypt.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So with all the sophisticated decoding machines we've got available,
they can't do it. Huh.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
As a matter of fact, that that was a question
that came up about, well couldn't they just use AI
or you know, some computer. But the the thing is,
if you don't have a basis to run that language against,
you can't figure it out. You know, you just don't
know what it's trying to say.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So, ye, in your opinion, with all this lost knowledge,
why do you think it was lost over the over
the years?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
What was missing?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, well a little bit of it.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
It's like libraries that get destroyed over the years too,
but it's all for different random events pretty much. You know,
like we have fires, earthquakes, you got people that come in,
you know, the huns come in and attack Rome or
(05:53):
or you know, the the Great Library at Alexandria caught
fire and who knows how many scrolls were lost in
there and kinds of information. So in order for us
to be really smart about this, we have to really
think it through, you know, and some people are doing that.
(06:16):
There is organizations around the world that are taking little
tidbits of say tidbits of information, you know, there's the
Slivbard Seed Bank in Norway where they've stored you know,
millions of seeds in the snow banks there and sub
(06:40):
zero temperatures for the future. But you know, that's just
a little piece, you know, it's not really necessarily knowledge,
but it you know, could help future civilizations.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
What are your thoughts on using time capsules to preserve information?
Do they work?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, well, they can work, but there's two problems with
time capsules. The first problem is you can't save enough information.
You know, we can write a little bit, you know,
there's various examples of this. There's you know, Oglethorpe University
(07:22):
has one that they've put in their school there. They
wanted to be opened in the year eighty one thirteen,
but you know they've stored like Donald Duck and an
empty Budweiser can and they do have some some microfiche
(07:42):
and that sort of thing that they've stored in there.
But you know, it's only going to be a part
of our knowledge, you know, Is that going to be
something that's going to help the future. You know, we
had a case at the White House where you know,
a time capsule was buried there in seventeen ninety three
(08:05):
by George Washington buried a time capsule and in one
of the cornerstones at the White House, and they have
attempted to find it. They've looked at it. I don't
know if the most recent reworked there, you know, refurbishment
at the White House might have found it. I haven't
(08:25):
heard about it. But you know, the the white the
time capsules get lost is the real problem.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Don't we have a seed time capsule full of seeds
in case something happens.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, yeah, that's the one in Norway's Levelvard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, they've got what seeds for everything?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Oh, they have millions of seeds that they've stored in there.
So yeah, that's that's a valuable asset. You know, that
could last.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
That's smart. Yeah, that is smart. In your book, you
discussed about knowledge and wisdom. Is there a difference there
between those two.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Well, yeah, you know, I think that may be part
of the thing, the part of the issue. What we
need to do is make sure we use wisdom along
with our knowledge. So I kind of you know, the
example there is, you know a child, you'll tell a child, hey,
(09:33):
don't touch that stove. That stove is hot, you know,
that's knowledge. You know, the stove is hot, that's going
to burn you. But the child goes and touches the
stove anyways, and they get burned, and then they cry
and they don't touch the stove again. And that's wisdom,
you know, using knowledge for the right purpose in the
(09:54):
right way, so that you don't get burned, you know,
and you make the right choice. So I think part
of our challenge is to make sure we're using our
knowledge in the right way so that we can save
it for the future, for future generations.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
We've got stone circles all over the planet, hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, as some have predicted. What do you
think they were used to? What happened to the knowledge there?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, that's an excellent point, I am. So that kind
of leads me into where my next foray is going.
I'm going to study megalists and monolithsts above the ground
and below the ground. I'm doing a collaboration with a
(10:47):
Mary Madras who's an author, and we're going to go
around the world and try to see if we can
find some thread in between all these because there's a
lot You're right, I mean, there are a lot of
these and I think the problem is we've studied them
individually and they haven't really looked at it as a
(11:11):
whole necessarily. You know, there's some some work has been
done in that area, but I think we're going to
take an in depth look at that in the future. Here.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
How would you grade science Jack on investigating the past?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, well, I think we do. You know, we do
a pretty darn good job our colleges and universities, the
archaeologists and so on. But I think there might be
an element missing, and that is keeping an open mind.
(11:50):
You know. I talk about this in the book as well,
being a little humble and keeping an open mind to
old ideas, new ideas, things that might not fit. You know.
There's there's findings every day and they say, oh, you know, now,
(12:11):
you know, the oldest human now is older than what
we thought. I just saw it and it was just
the last week.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know, unless you talk to our buddy Michael Kremo,
who's a regular guest who told us years ago humankind
is much older than science is saying he was right.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah, yeah, And they keep finding it over and over again.
So and the schools teach that, I mean, they have
to teach something, and they do a good job, but
I still think we need to keep open mind, you know,
about those things. And a lot of times, probably your
friend there has got beat up because he's not talking
about things that are you know, maybe within the norm,
(12:53):
but but you know, he's maybe trying to break through
and find out something that is above and beyond. You know,
maybe maybe he's got a little bit more open mind.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
What about cultures like Atlantis that must have had high
technology and they've just disappeared, They're gone. What about them?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of a lot written
about Atlantis. Certainly they went the way of other organizations,
their cultures that you know, did something or maybe someone
did something to them. I'm not sure. I guess we'll
(13:40):
find out someday, hopefully, But you know, just like we
lose this information like a Noyage manuscript, something happened to
those people, something happened to that culture where they ended
up doing something that wasn't wise or wasn't didn't have
(14:05):
a lot of wisdom, I suppose, or someone else did,
and they kind of got lost, you know, and we
seem to keep doing this over we have to find
a way, we need some really smart people to take
a look at this for our own future. You know,
there's an interesting effect that I looked a little bit into.
(14:31):
It's called a Carrington event.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh yeah, that huge solar flare from the sun.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, and you probably know that there was one that
happened in eighteen fifties that energized all the wires that
were on the poles at that time. Well on the
only polls they had with wires in the eighteen fifties
were telegraphed, that's right, and so it fires at the
(15:01):
telegraph stations. You know. But what would happen today if
we had one of those? You know, what would happen
to our knowledge, would our houses catch on fire? I mean,
who knows what would happen if we had some kind
of an event like that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
We've been very, very lucky, Jack. That's one of the
topics for twenty three years I've been talking about on
this program that we need to insulate and protect our
power grid because one day, either the sun is going
to bop something like that, or someone's going to detonate
a new nuke over our atmosphere with an electromagnetic pulse
(15:38):
and shut us down. We got to protect it.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Oh, one hundred percent, yep, exactly, yep.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
What do you think the ancients would say if they
were listening to this show right now or listening to you.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah, well, they might say, maybe we should have done
things differently, Maybe we should think about that ourselves. You know,
what are people going to say about us in the future,
say maybe they should have thought about things differently. I
think the idea of keeping our knowledge for a long
(16:17):
time doesn't really enter into our thought processes enough, you know,
I just don't think it does.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
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