December 30, 2016 • 30 mins
For centuries self-assured academics believed Troy was a mythological city -- until, that is, the ruins were discovered. Over the span of history, the human species has lost people, cities and entire civilizations. Occasionally, governments don't want these lost empires to be found. So what happens when a controversial linguist claims to discover an ancient people spanning Iran to Southern China?
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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. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel
is not here today, but he is joining us in spirit. Yes,
and he's not going to be gone forever right now.
He will return your return shortly, but the show must
go on in the meantime. My name is Ben You
(00:45):
regardless of what name you're wearing today, are you? Because
names are just sort of another kind of clothing that
we put on things, aren't they ask if you will yes,
a cowl, a cassock us uh. Aside from sorry my
vaguely creepy talk of of names and nomenclature, we are
(01:10):
here to talk today, to explore today the thing that
I always love. I was inspired by this. I was
inspired to find this. In our previous episode, Lost Civilizations.
We've talked about several right. Oh yes, we have extensively
gone over Oh man, I'm trying to think Atlantis. Certainly,
we've hit which also Limuria. Er uh. We've talked a
(01:35):
little bit about We've talked a little bit about various
locations of Atlantis, people who allegedly predicted its rise for fall,
and you know its location. And we've also looked at
missing cities in South and Central America. We haven't looked
(01:56):
at some of the early African nations, which I think
we could explore absolutely more in depth. Uh. And then
I don't know if we ever looked at Hilk the
Turkish What did you say, katal Yolk? No, I don't
know this what it's the one that changed, It's the
(02:18):
one that changed the way we see human civilization. Oh man, Okay,
we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Uh. And
I know, listeners, and I'm sure it's very familiar too
many of us. Um, we'll we'll check it out. But
our story today starts with a fellow named Sheldon Lee Gosling.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sheldon Lee Gosline is an American egyptologist.
(02:43):
He knows nine ancient languages. How many do you know, listener,
Matt knows zero? And he's taught at numerous institutions. Yeah,
he's got a lot of a lot of bachelor's degrees,
several masters, PhD. Is from the University Madison, Wisconsin. I
think he went on to get a PhD. Uh the
(03:04):
history of medicine. So this is a smart guy, Sheldon
a little bit, Yeah and Uh. He seems to be
driven by his passions. He spent years researching in China,
where he was also teaching at a couple those are
the universities he had taught at. UH for more than
(03:24):
a decade. He had been playing around with the idea
that it was a baffling mystery to the emergence of
written language in China. He thought that the earliest writing
in China could be connected with writing in the Indus Valley,
where an earlier early civilization stretched across parts of India
(03:45):
and Pakistan. Writing did not appear in China until more
than a thousand years later in the second millennium BC,
and there's very little evidence of how it was developed
and no idea whether or to what degree other languages
in the West may have influenced it. So for a linguist,
(04:05):
amateur or professional, this is fascinating stuff. Before we go on,
let's take a look at the rise of written language
in China and abroad. The very first known written language
that we have access to now comes from the Sumarians.
First example of writing in general appeared in Mesopotamia three
(04:28):
thirty to three thousand BC. Egyptian was again, so far
as you know, developed independently around the same period. The
Chinese writing system, the first writing system there appears around
(04:48):
no obvious reference to other writing systems. So it's interesting
to think about what we're thinking about the lack of
We're thinking about the holes in their theory. Right. Uh.
We we have this example here with Egyptian rising independently, right,
(05:09):
But then I'm sure there was interaction after that. But
other otherwise, you know, unless we have something to back
it up, Unless we have something to back up this
idea of of language migrating somehow from the Indus Valley,
then this is little more than a nice conversation for
(05:30):
the folks at the linguist conference when they're in the
hotel bar. So the idea is that the earliest writing
in China and all these other places all came from
this original Indus Valley group of people culture, at least
in the case of China. Okay, So it was more
of a huh what if, and nothing was gonna come
(05:53):
of it, at least that is until twenty And we'll
tell you what happened After a word from our sponsor,
Here's where it gets crazy. In two thousand thirteen, our protagonists,
(06:13):
doctor Gosline, was shown a mysterious set of ancient inscriptions
etched into flat stones found by farmers in Guangshi Province.
Gosling found that several of these characters appeared to belong
to this Indus script. The Indus script is an undeciphered
set of symbols from more than forty five hundred years back.
(06:35):
Others he thought could have been Persian keneiform turned ninety
degrees interesting. Then in April, our doctor made a field
trip to the area where these stones had been found,
and he discovered clear evidence of long human occupancy and
an advanced civilization that extended at least one hundred and
(06:58):
forty kilometers along the Yuijang River, now hidden in dense
tropical overgrowth. So this place existed and then was lost, right, Yeah,
that's that's his idea. He presented initial reports to Chinese officials,
This was published in Chinese news outlets, and he kept
(07:19):
working in the field through If in this or Persian
characters have made their way to southern China, it means
that people there had an extensive trade network that connected
them to South Asia and the Middle East. Again, it
might also mean that imperial conquerors from northern China had
(07:39):
wiped out evidence of a thriving writing culture in the
south a k a a lost civilization. Either way, it
would undermine a traditional UH view of Chinese history, which
goes like this, the Chinese culture developed exclusively in the
north and diffused outwards and south words Uh. The Han
(08:02):
majority claimed that they encountered barbarians in the south, which
is called the U a Uh, who were thought to
be less civilized than their conquerors, spoke a different language
as of sixteen Right now, Gosling's observation about these inscriptions
has not been proven. It hasn't been proven. Rather that
(08:24):
their Persian caneo form, which would be crazy to find
something UH that far south and east in China from
Iran at that time. If his conclusions are correct, Gosling
has indeed found a lost civilization, an ancient one responsible
for bridging a gap between cultures, and His discovery raised
(08:48):
questions with huge and potentially dangerous questions, What the hell
was Persian caneo form doing in this remote village in
southern China. Could it be real? And if it was real,
what did it mean? So before we go any further been,
I think we have to address dragon bones. Yes, yes,
(09:10):
you're right, Matt. And that sounds silly, right, that sounds
like what right, that's a that's a nickname. You're you're right,
because we need to address the story of how Chinese
writing was discovered, or the earliest forms of Chinese writing.
So for a long, long, long, long long time, farmers
(09:33):
around the Yellow River basin area would dig up these bones.
They would find turtle shells and ox bones and would
take them away from their fields and they would sell
them to people who practice traditional Chinese medicine. In eight
nine nine, a scholar who was getting these bones, these
(09:53):
bones also had uh scratches on them. Right. Scholar found
these bones either as getting it as a prescription for
some kind of treatment or at buying them from an
antique dealer. This person realized that those are early forms
of Chinese characters on these bones, and the people who
sell these farmers, the so called dragon bone dealers, wanted
(10:16):
to keep their location secret. Of course, that's just good business.
But in the nineteen twenties, a team of archaeologists discovered
the bones source at a place called an young Uh
site that's a few hours south of Beijing and the
Yellow River basin, and they found thousands and thousands of
dragon bones, all carefully inscribed with prophecies of the past. Yeah,
(10:39):
And they figured out what people were using the bones for.
They were using them to tell the future. So they
would here's what we think happened. They would throw the
bone in the fire, and they would read the cracks
that it made, and then they would write down what
they saw as a prediction. The big thing is they
had names of kings on some of these bones, and
(11:01):
those names matched with later records of the Shang dynasty,
which had ruled in the second millennium b c e.
And up to that point in the eighteen at late
eighteen hundreds. Up to that point, a lot of people
had considered the Sean dynasty largely a legend, at least
(11:21):
in the West, that is strange. So the discovery of
these bones was big, right, at least for the West.
It reinforced the belief that Chinese civilization began there at
the Yellow River, that the writing arrived independently, But it
didn't match with this stuff that Gosling found because those
(11:45):
inscriptions were so far south and they were on the border,
I mean, like all China's border with Vietnam. Yeah, that's
a long distance away. Then you would expect we're talking. Well,
let's take it to U S standards standards, let's just
look at the US. What's a comparison. I would be
(12:06):
like traveling from New York to Kansas City. Yeah. And also,
very little work has been done in this area in
Guanghi because the climate subtropical and it's considered historically a backwater.
So we have some we have some questions. Right if
(12:28):
if Gosling believes that he has found a lost civilization,
which is totally possible, but there's a there's a big
gap between plausible and possible. He thinks he found this
because of writing, but I don't like, what's the first
question we would ask him? Well, I mean is he
(12:50):
mistaking something? That's the first thing, right, as a researcher,
as anyone who's looking into evidence trying to find something,
you have to check yourself first. Yeah. And then also
is this yeah, is this confirmation bias? Is this like? Uh?
And this is just a question that would come up.
You know, if somebody is looking for a law civilization
(13:13):
already believes it's around as a hunch, and then finds it,
make the evidence fit your belief, like, that's that's a danger,
right right exactly. Uh. And the second question would be,
could this be a hoax, you know, like the pilt
down man or something. We know that hoaxes are distressing
(13:36):
and common in archaeology, So those first examples might have
been brought in by farmers. But he had found more
of these Persian these sideways canea form Persian looking characters
in uh official archaeological dig in the same area. So
if the inscriptions were forged, the person who was forging
(14:00):
them would either have to be able to fool the
archaeologist or the archaeologist would have to be working with them.
And also Chinese scholars had never seen anything like this.
This was new stuff, and when he visited the site himself,
he thought he wouldn't find much interesting, much interesting stuff
other than these inscriptions. Until that is, he noticed that
(14:22):
there were these tall, symmetrically spaced rocks at even intervals,
and they lined up along particular diagonal lines. They had
deep crevices. He thought the space was somehow special, and
so he started mapping it out and he looked. He
says that he found a man made platform of megalithic construction,
(14:45):
I think kind of stonehenge, you know. And he said
that he found a carved chair or throne, and he
was convinced that this might be some kind of calculating advice,
maybe using astronomical terms. Chinese scientists, for the record, are
(15:05):
much much much much much more skeptical UH and Vietnamese
authorities are saying, hey, maybe this is just an ancient
site of early Vietnamese culture, right, that's possible. Gosling believes
that this is indeed lost civilization. UH investigators who contacted
(15:25):
some of the Chinese scientists UH say that the Chinese
scientists essentially told them, you know, you're you're not going
to be impressed when you come see it. We have
to wonder is there is there a cover up or
(15:46):
is there like is is Gosling knowingly telling the truth?
Is the Chinese Does the Chinese government have an interest
in this? It seems like if the interests could be
protecting at least the agreed upon history UH in the
area and of of the entire country, in the region. Right, Yeah,
(16:09):
that's gonna be one of the um that's gonna be
one of the first accusations people would make would be
that this is being covered up two preserve the official narrative, right,
but you know, gods, it's hardly keeping the secret. He
(16:30):
does public lectures, he's part of a couple of international organizations,
and the Chinese academic community apparently still couldn't figure out
what to make of the writing at this point. At
this point, the claim remains incredibly controversial. It's rooted in linguistics, right,
(16:55):
and there's not too much at least official archaeological activity
in that area, in that Quanshi area. However, that's sort
of tantalizing, isn't it, Because we don't know whether to
(17:16):
quote some old politicians, we don't know what we don't know.
It's an unknown unknown And with this, with this in mind,
we are hoping to learn more about law civilizations and
reach out and contact uh Dr Gosling if possible to
hear more details. He has some papers available, and he
(17:41):
is far from the only academic looking for evidence of
civilizations and time and history. Forgot. Now we'll pause for
a word from our sponsor Welcome back to the show.
(18:04):
Guess what time it is, guys, shut at Conners? Okay.
Our first shout out for it today comes from Sam
sam Erotos via email. Sam says you did an episode
over a year back about celebrity deaths and briefly mentioned
Hitler faking his death. I heard a rumor that Hitler
did not go to South America, but to Glacier National
(18:27):
Park in Montana, where he lived out his days in
a lodge amongst some other close personal Nazi acquaintances, including
his bodyguard, who confessed to his daughter's boyfriend on his
deathbed in secret. I was wondering if you guys could
do an episode or even a little snippet on this
because I'm interested in your findings. Thanks for getting me
through the work day. That's fascinating. I have never heard that, Sam.
(18:49):
Have you heard that? Man, no Glacier National Park with
a good old Hitler in there, and never heard of
that at all Montana because usually we hear a lot
of stuff about South America. Yeah, I mean South America
is the only the only major theory I've heard about
where Hitler disappeared to if he did not in fact die.
(19:10):
My favorite, my favorite of the Hitler escape theories is
that he escaped to Antarctica and that Operation High Jump
was a secret nuclear war between the Allies and what
was left of the German powers with the help of
the underground People's Yes, with the help of the underground race.
(19:32):
Now I'm laughing a little bit. But of course we
do know that cavern systems are extensive, and we know
that especially adapted flora and fauna do thrive. There is
there a technologically advanced race that looks completely Aryan, yet
uh has chosen to stay underground Andrea Antarctica. And is
(19:53):
there an internal sun or star inside of the center
of the Earth. Yeah, it's get to be seen. It's
the nicest way we can put it. As you're being
too kind. Yeah, but hey, it will blow my mind
if it got proven somehow, But I mean, it would
just destroy our whole understanding. Now we do know, We
(20:15):
do know that the Germans were planning to colonize and
conquer at least part of Antarctica. If you have the
inclination to explore a rabbit hole, go check your nearest
search engine for New Schwabia. Yeah, do you remember New
Schwapia that when we did a piece on that. I
do certainly oh Man new Swabia gotta annex a little
(20:40):
bit of land in Antarctica just in case. Uh it
was in Queen Maudland. Uh it was. It's really at
this point, it's just a name that's given to an
area of Antarctica. But the the hope there was that
they would map the area and then establish some sort
(21:06):
of beachhead right or some sort of research center there.
They made no official claims, um, they made no official
claims to the area, but in one they built a
The German government, sorry, the non Nazi government, the actual
(21:29):
current German government built a research center there in nineteen
eighty one. And can check out operation of High Jump
for more information to uh Sam. This is fascinating. I
can feel the pool, I can feel the call to
start digging around in this Montana situation. I've never heard that.
(21:52):
It seems strange. And we know of course that with
the deaths of any dictators, any great influencers of people,
that there will always be questions about their deaths. The
will always be these concerns. Right just through a cursory
Google search here, there's quite a bit written about Hitler's
(22:16):
grave supposedly found outside of Glacier National Park. Let's see
something here about a bunker discussing travel channel. All right,
I'm I'm officially going to look into this. We get
sect that, okay, so we'll we'll get into that off
the air. The net who's our next shout out to
(22:37):
Arnie has written us a bit of a snarky email
about our Noah's Ark episode and I appreciated it. So
here it goes. I just listened to your show about
Noah's Ark, and if we take the story as it
goes as gospel and the whole world was flooded, that
Noah and his family were the only people spared, I
would like to know how the world was populated with
(22:58):
seven billion plus people. Where did all of the ethnic
diversity come from? Are we all related? Also, what about
the inbreeding m that would that could be a problem,
And certainly with the diversity that we see today in
our world with the human population, it wouldn't make much sense.
(23:19):
But yeah, we had a lot of people who wrote
to us regarding that episode. Uh, from both sides, you
know what I mean, which which I I appreciate. And
we have more more emails than we can probably ever
get to, but I will I will have to say
(23:43):
that that is a that is a question, and too
to your point, Ernie, we had several listeners who gave
what they believed was a uh, what was a coach
answer for this? You know? Yeah, I said that certain
things where if you, if one looked at the Bible
(24:05):
verse and depth, then interpreted it correctly, that there were
things that would explain this or make it seem less implausible,
or that the story itself was mischaracterized in many ways
in the modern day, which I you know, I understand.
I appreciate everybody who wrote in. I think we'll have
Noah's arks emails appearing for a while in our shout out.
(24:31):
Continuing with Thoah's Ark, Several people on Twitter and email
have written to us. We were asking about films that
dealt with Noah's ARC or a version of an ARC.
A lot of people writing to us about Titan a E.
And I'm a little embarrassed. I've never seen it, so
I'm gonna have to check into that now. My inspire
since makes me want to say it was on Netflix
(24:53):
for a while, I'm not Uh, it's animated right, I
believe so. Yes, it is animated. All right, So we
have time for one more listener mail, one more shout out,
and that goes to Sergeant L. We're gonna go ahead
(25:14):
and withhold the name here just because it does address
military experience. This is in response to our earlier episode
on the military and drugs. Uh. The sergeant says, first
and foremost, thanks for the great podcast. I listened to
a lot of the how stuff works stuff. I've just
caught up on all your audio. I've watched significant portion
of the videos. I like the addition of super producer
(25:37):
Nold to the audio. Ben. If you could resurrect the
Invisible Man, that would be awesome. The voice over at
least that's a deep cut. Sergeant oh man, oh wow.
I I think just people don't know what the if
you've ever seen Always Stunny in Philadelphia, you'll have a
good sense of what what our crew looked like having
(26:00):
the wear of that suit. Uh So. Sergeantell goes on
to say, I've been in the U. S. Army for
almost thirteen years. I've been deployed to Iraq for a
total of thirty nine months over three deployments. I work
in computers not in the Public Affairs Office, So everything
here is my opinion and observations, not of the Army.
(26:21):
Drugs are severely frowned upon by the Army as a whole.
Drug tests are common. Positive results for legal drugs are
dealt with harshly, including marijuana were illegal. If there's no
prescription for drug like adderall or morphine from a doctor
within the test period, then legal action will be taken
and they'll probably be separated from the Army. During the
height of the Iraq War, soldiers were less likely to
(26:43):
be kicked out, but we're still punished. I have never
seen nor heard of a prescription that was not a
medical necessity. Alcohol and nicotine and caffeine are being discouraged
by the Army as an institution. Since the late nineties,
the Army had the policy of de glamouri zing alcohol
or declamorization of alcohol. Commands can't use alcohol to promote
(27:05):
events or promote its use. The Army Substance Abuse Program
as AT can and will help those that are addicted
to drugs or alcohol. Smoking succession classes are offered to
anyone using tobacco products. Caffeine and supplements are being openly discouraged.
The sergeant goes on that being said, army culture is
(27:26):
still quite strong in alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and supplements. Drugs
and alcohol are used to self medicate by some, as
with the general population. Unfortunately, we have deep rooted traditions
evolving alcohol like the grog. The grog started as a
way that all the soldiers would get their leftover alcohol
and mix it together to celebrate or relax. Now the
(27:47):
grog is a ceremony used to remember past wars and
the fallen at army balls, sometimes with alcohol and sometimes without.
As you mentioned, nicotine and caffeine are used a lot
for stimulants, so many soldiers loft energy drinks, coffee, no
doughs and dipped during long missions or shifts. In Iraq,
there was an energy drink with nicotine and a rebel
(28:07):
slushing machine in the p X and Baghdad. Finally, there's
little to offer Jim rats to get them to not
take supplements. I said sorry for the long email. As
someone who knows some of the stuff they don't want
you to know. Most secret info is really boring. I
don't know if I believe that. Sarch Well, I'm not
(28:27):
concerned about most of it then, So thank you so
much for for writing and please stay safe, uh, please
stay safe out there. That goes for everybody in the
armed forces who's listening to our podcast, and we've been
getting some really great, great feedback, some great details about this.
(28:49):
The part about a prescription being a medical necessity reminds
me of our earlier email from the psychologists. Remember that
who said that during war times, when you had to
have somebody still pulling a trigger for longer than nature
would intend, give whatever cocktail you can, or yeah, give
(29:11):
them something. It was it was relatively vague, but I
imagine that there's I imagine there's several different possibilities there.
So we know that, you know, we know that the
culture of the US Armed Forces is changing. Uh. And
in times of great stress, however, people do still tend
(29:34):
to self medicate. And if you haven't listened to our
episode on the history of militaries and drugs, please do
check it out. If you are part of another country's
armed services, we would also like to hear of your
experience with these substances. But for now, that concludes our
(29:57):
gosh and if you want to write to us, find
us on Twitter or We are conspiracy Stuff also on
Facebook conspiracy Stuff, And if you want to find us
on Instagram, send us a picture like things. Honestly, I
don't really know who Instagram works that well. Either way,
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to do any of that stuff and you just want
to write to us, send us an email. We are
(30:19):
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel
is not here today, but he is joining us in spirit. Yes,
and he's not going to be gone forever right now.
He will return your return shortly, but the show must
go on in the meantime. My name is Ben You
(00:45):
regardless of what name you're wearing today, are you? Because
names are just sort of another kind of clothing that
we put on things, aren't they ask if you will yes,
a cowl, a cassock us uh. Aside from sorry my
vaguely creepy talk of of names and nomenclature, we are
(01:10):
here to talk today, to explore today the thing that
I always love. I was inspired by this. I was
inspired to find this. In our previous episode, Lost Civilizations.
We've talked about several right. Oh yes, we have extensively
gone over Oh man, I'm trying to think Atlantis. Certainly,
we've hit which also Limuria. Er uh. We've talked a
(01:35):
little bit about We've talked a little bit about various
locations of Atlantis, people who allegedly predicted its rise for fall,
and you know its location. And we've also looked at
missing cities in South and Central America. We haven't looked
(01:56):
at some of the early African nations, which I think
we could explore absolutely more in depth. Uh. And then
I don't know if we ever looked at Hilk the
Turkish What did you say, katal Yolk? No, I don't
know this what it's the one that changed, It's the
(02:18):
one that changed the way we see human civilization. Oh man, Okay,
we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Uh. And
I know, listeners, and I'm sure it's very familiar too
many of us. Um, we'll we'll check it out. But
our story today starts with a fellow named Sheldon Lee Gosling.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sheldon Lee Gosline is an American egyptologist.
(02:43):
He knows nine ancient languages. How many do you know, listener,
Matt knows zero? And he's taught at numerous institutions. Yeah,
he's got a lot of a lot of bachelor's degrees,
several masters, PhD. Is from the University Madison, Wisconsin. I
think he went on to get a PhD. Uh the
(03:04):
history of medicine. So this is a smart guy, Sheldon
a little bit, Yeah and Uh. He seems to be
driven by his passions. He spent years researching in China,
where he was also teaching at a couple those are
the universities he had taught at. UH for more than
(03:24):
a decade. He had been playing around with the idea
that it was a baffling mystery to the emergence of
written language in China. He thought that the earliest writing
in China could be connected with writing in the Indus Valley,
where an earlier early civilization stretched across parts of India
(03:45):
and Pakistan. Writing did not appear in China until more
than a thousand years later in the second millennium BC,
and there's very little evidence of how it was developed
and no idea whether or to what degree other languages
in the West may have influenced it. So for a linguist,
(04:05):
amateur or professional, this is fascinating stuff. Before we go on,
let's take a look at the rise of written language
in China and abroad. The very first known written language
that we have access to now comes from the Sumarians.
First example of writing in general appeared in Mesopotamia three
(04:28):
thirty to three thousand BC. Egyptian was again, so far
as you know, developed independently around the same period. The
Chinese writing system, the first writing system there appears around
(04:48):
no obvious reference to other writing systems. So it's interesting
to think about what we're thinking about the lack of
We're thinking about the holes in their theory. Right. Uh.
We we have this example here with Egyptian rising independently, right,
(05:09):
But then I'm sure there was interaction after that. But
other otherwise, you know, unless we have something to back
it up, Unless we have something to back up this
idea of of language migrating somehow from the Indus Valley,
then this is little more than a nice conversation for
(05:30):
the folks at the linguist conference when they're in the
hotel bar. So the idea is that the earliest writing
in China and all these other places all came from
this original Indus Valley group of people culture, at least
in the case of China. Okay, So it was more
of a huh what if, and nothing was gonna come
(05:53):
of it, at least that is until twenty And we'll
tell you what happened After a word from our sponsor,
Here's where it gets crazy. In two thousand thirteen, our protagonists,
(06:13):
doctor Gosline, was shown a mysterious set of ancient inscriptions
etched into flat stones found by farmers in Guangshi Province.
Gosling found that several of these characters appeared to belong
to this Indus script. The Indus script is an undeciphered
set of symbols from more than forty five hundred years back.
(06:35):
Others he thought could have been Persian keneiform turned ninety
degrees interesting. Then in April, our doctor made a field
trip to the area where these stones had been found,
and he discovered clear evidence of long human occupancy and
an advanced civilization that extended at least one hundred and
(06:58):
forty kilometers along the Yuijang River, now hidden in dense
tropical overgrowth. So this place existed and then was lost, right, Yeah,
that's that's his idea. He presented initial reports to Chinese officials,
This was published in Chinese news outlets, and he kept
(07:19):
working in the field through If in this or Persian
characters have made their way to southern China, it means
that people there had an extensive trade network that connected
them to South Asia and the Middle East. Again, it
might also mean that imperial conquerors from northern China had
(07:39):
wiped out evidence of a thriving writing culture in the
south a k a a lost civilization. Either way, it
would undermine a traditional UH view of Chinese history, which
goes like this, the Chinese culture developed exclusively in the
north and diffused outwards and south words Uh. The Han
(08:02):
majority claimed that they encountered barbarians in the south, which
is called the U a Uh, who were thought to
be less civilized than their conquerors, spoke a different language
as of sixteen Right now, Gosling's observation about these inscriptions
has not been proven. It hasn't been proven. Rather that
(08:24):
their Persian caneo form, which would be crazy to find
something UH that far south and east in China from
Iran at that time. If his conclusions are correct, Gosling
has indeed found a lost civilization, an ancient one responsible
for bridging a gap between cultures, and His discovery raised
(08:48):
questions with huge and potentially dangerous questions, What the hell
was Persian caneo form doing in this remote village in
southern China. Could it be real? And if it was real,
what did it mean? So before we go any further been,
I think we have to address dragon bones. Yes, yes,
(09:10):
you're right, Matt. And that sounds silly, right, that sounds
like what right, that's a that's a nickname. You're you're right,
because we need to address the story of how Chinese
writing was discovered, or the earliest forms of Chinese writing.
So for a long, long, long, long long time, farmers
(09:33):
around the Yellow River basin area would dig up these bones.
They would find turtle shells and ox bones and would
take them away from their fields and they would sell
them to people who practice traditional Chinese medicine. In eight
nine nine, a scholar who was getting these bones, these
(09:53):
bones also had uh scratches on them. Right. Scholar found
these bones either as getting it as a prescription for
some kind of treatment or at buying them from an
antique dealer. This person realized that those are early forms
of Chinese characters on these bones, and the people who
sell these farmers, the so called dragon bone dealers, wanted
(10:16):
to keep their location secret. Of course, that's just good business.
But in the nineteen twenties, a team of archaeologists discovered
the bones source at a place called an young Uh
site that's a few hours south of Beijing and the
Yellow River basin, and they found thousands and thousands of
dragon bones, all carefully inscribed with prophecies of the past. Yeah,
(10:39):
And they figured out what people were using the bones for.
They were using them to tell the future. So they
would here's what we think happened. They would throw the
bone in the fire, and they would read the cracks
that it made, and then they would write down what
they saw as a prediction. The big thing is they
had names of kings on some of these bones, and
(11:01):
those names matched with later records of the Shang dynasty,
which had ruled in the second millennium b c e.
And up to that point in the eighteen at late
eighteen hundreds. Up to that point, a lot of people
had considered the Sean dynasty largely a legend, at least
(11:21):
in the West, that is strange. So the discovery of
these bones was big, right, at least for the West.
It reinforced the belief that Chinese civilization began there at
the Yellow River, that the writing arrived independently, But it
didn't match with this stuff that Gosling found because those
(11:45):
inscriptions were so far south and they were on the border,
I mean, like all China's border with Vietnam. Yeah, that's
a long distance away. Then you would expect we're talking. Well,
let's take it to U S standards standards, let's just
look at the US. What's a comparison. I would be
(12:06):
like traveling from New York to Kansas City. Yeah. And also,
very little work has been done in this area in
Guanghi because the climate subtropical and it's considered historically a backwater.
So we have some we have some questions. Right if
(12:28):
if Gosling believes that he has found a lost civilization,
which is totally possible, but there's a there's a big
gap between plausible and possible. He thinks he found this
because of writing, but I don't like, what's the first
question we would ask him? Well, I mean is he
(12:50):
mistaking something? That's the first thing, right, as a researcher,
as anyone who's looking into evidence trying to find something,
you have to check yourself first. Yeah. And then also
is this yeah, is this confirmation bias? Is this like? Uh?
And this is just a question that would come up.
You know, if somebody is looking for a law civilization
(13:13):
already believes it's around as a hunch, and then finds it,
make the evidence fit your belief, like, that's that's a danger,
right right exactly. Uh. And the second question would be,
could this be a hoax, you know, like the pilt
down man or something. We know that hoaxes are distressing
(13:36):
and common in archaeology, So those first examples might have
been brought in by farmers. But he had found more
of these Persian these sideways canea form Persian looking characters
in uh official archaeological dig in the same area. So
if the inscriptions were forged, the person who was forging
(14:00):
them would either have to be able to fool the
archaeologist or the archaeologist would have to be working with them.
And also Chinese scholars had never seen anything like this.
This was new stuff, and when he visited the site himself,
he thought he wouldn't find much interesting, much interesting stuff
other than these inscriptions. Until that is, he noticed that
(14:22):
there were these tall, symmetrically spaced rocks at even intervals,
and they lined up along particular diagonal lines. They had
deep crevices. He thought the space was somehow special, and
so he started mapping it out and he looked. He
says that he found a man made platform of megalithic construction,
(14:45):
I think kind of stonehenge, you know. And he said
that he found a carved chair or throne, and he
was convinced that this might be some kind of calculating advice,
maybe using astronomical terms. Chinese scientists, for the record, are
(15:05):
much much much much much more skeptical UH and Vietnamese
authorities are saying, hey, maybe this is just an ancient
site of early Vietnamese culture, right, that's possible. Gosling believes
that this is indeed lost civilization. UH investigators who contacted
(15:25):
some of the Chinese scientists UH say that the Chinese
scientists essentially told them, you know, you're you're not going
to be impressed when you come see it. We have
to wonder is there is there a cover up or
(15:46):
is there like is is Gosling knowingly telling the truth?
Is the Chinese Does the Chinese government have an interest
in this? It seems like if the interests could be
protecting at least the agreed upon history UH in the
area and of of the entire country, in the region. Right, Yeah,
(16:09):
that's gonna be one of the um that's gonna be
one of the first accusations people would make would be
that this is being covered up two preserve the official narrative, right,
but you know, gods, it's hardly keeping the secret. He
(16:30):
does public lectures, he's part of a couple of international organizations,
and the Chinese academic community apparently still couldn't figure out
what to make of the writing at this point. At
this point, the claim remains incredibly controversial. It's rooted in linguistics, right,
(16:55):
and there's not too much at least official archaeological activity
in that area, in that Quanshi area. However, that's sort
of tantalizing, isn't it, Because we don't know whether to
(17:16):
quote some old politicians, we don't know what we don't know.
It's an unknown unknown And with this, with this in mind,
we are hoping to learn more about law civilizations and
reach out and contact uh Dr Gosling if possible to
hear more details. He has some papers available, and he
(17:41):
is far from the only academic looking for evidence of
civilizations and time and history. Forgot. Now we'll pause for
a word from our sponsor Welcome back to the show.
(18:04):
Guess what time it is, guys, shut at Conners? Okay.
Our first shout out for it today comes from Sam
sam Erotos via email. Sam says you did an episode
over a year back about celebrity deaths and briefly mentioned
Hitler faking his death. I heard a rumor that Hitler
did not go to South America, but to Glacier National
(18:27):
Park in Montana, where he lived out his days in
a lodge amongst some other close personal Nazi acquaintances, including
his bodyguard, who confessed to his daughter's boyfriend on his
deathbed in secret. I was wondering if you guys could
do an episode or even a little snippet on this
because I'm interested in your findings. Thanks for getting me
through the work day. That's fascinating. I have never heard that, Sam.
(18:49):
Have you heard that? Man, no Glacier National Park with
a good old Hitler in there, and never heard of
that at all Montana because usually we hear a lot
of stuff about South America. Yeah, I mean South America
is the only the only major theory I've heard about
where Hitler disappeared to if he did not in fact die.
(19:10):
My favorite, my favorite of the Hitler escape theories is
that he escaped to Antarctica and that Operation High Jump
was a secret nuclear war between the Allies and what
was left of the German powers with the help of
the underground People's Yes, with the help of the underground race.
(19:32):
Now I'm laughing a little bit. But of course we
do know that cavern systems are extensive, and we know
that especially adapted flora and fauna do thrive. There is
there a technologically advanced race that looks completely Aryan, yet
uh has chosen to stay underground Andrea Antarctica. And is
(19:53):
there an internal sun or star inside of the center
of the Earth. Yeah, it's get to be seen. It's
the nicest way we can put it. As you're being
too kind. Yeah, but hey, it will blow my mind
if it got proven somehow, But I mean, it would
just destroy our whole understanding. Now we do know, We
(20:15):
do know that the Germans were planning to colonize and
conquer at least part of Antarctica. If you have the
inclination to explore a rabbit hole, go check your nearest
search engine for New Schwabia. Yeah, do you remember New
Schwapia that when we did a piece on that. I
do certainly oh Man new Swabia gotta annex a little
(20:40):
bit of land in Antarctica just in case. Uh it
was in Queen Maudland. Uh it was. It's really at
this point, it's just a name that's given to an
area of Antarctica. But the the hope there was that
they would map the area and then establish some sort
(21:06):
of beachhead right or some sort of research center there.
They made no official claims, um, they made no official
claims to the area, but in one they built a
The German government, sorry, the non Nazi government, the actual
(21:29):
current German government built a research center there in nineteen
eighty one. And can check out operation of High Jump
for more information to uh Sam. This is fascinating. I
can feel the pool, I can feel the call to
start digging around in this Montana situation. I've never heard that.
(21:52):
It seems strange. And we know of course that with
the deaths of any dictators, any great influencers of people,
that there will always be questions about their deaths. The
will always be these concerns. Right just through a cursory
Google search here, there's quite a bit written about Hitler's
(22:16):
grave supposedly found outside of Glacier National Park. Let's see
something here about a bunker discussing travel channel. All right,
I'm I'm officially going to look into this. We get
sect that, okay, so we'll we'll get into that off
the air. The net who's our next shout out to
(22:37):
Arnie has written us a bit of a snarky email
about our Noah's Ark episode and I appreciated it. So
here it goes. I just listened to your show about
Noah's Ark, and if we take the story as it
goes as gospel and the whole world was flooded, that
Noah and his family were the only people spared, I
would like to know how the world was populated with
(22:58):
seven billion plus people. Where did all of the ethnic
diversity come from? Are we all related? Also, what about
the inbreeding m that would that could be a problem,
And certainly with the diversity that we see today in
our world with the human population, it wouldn't make much sense.
(23:19):
But yeah, we had a lot of people who wrote
to us regarding that episode. Uh, from both sides, you
know what I mean, which which I I appreciate. And
we have more more emails than we can probably ever
get to, but I will I will have to say
(23:43):
that that is a that is a question, and too
to your point, Ernie, we had several listeners who gave
what they believed was a uh, what was a coach
answer for this? You know? Yeah, I said that certain
things where if you, if one looked at the Bible
(24:05):
verse and depth, then interpreted it correctly, that there were
things that would explain this or make it seem less implausible,
or that the story itself was mischaracterized in many ways
in the modern day, which I you know, I understand.
I appreciate everybody who wrote in. I think we'll have
Noah's arks emails appearing for a while in our shout out.
(24:31):
Continuing with Thoah's Ark, Several people on Twitter and email
have written to us. We were asking about films that
dealt with Noah's ARC or a version of an ARC.
A lot of people writing to us about Titan a E.
And I'm a little embarrassed. I've never seen it, so
I'm gonna have to check into that now. My inspire
since makes me want to say it was on Netflix
(24:53):
for a while, I'm not Uh, it's animated right, I
believe so. Yes, it is animated. All right, So we
have time for one more listener mail, one more shout out,
and that goes to Sergeant L. We're gonna go ahead
(25:14):
and withhold the name here just because it does address
military experience. This is in response to our earlier episode
on the military and drugs. Uh. The sergeant says, first
and foremost, thanks for the great podcast. I listened to
a lot of the how stuff works stuff. I've just
caught up on all your audio. I've watched significant portion
of the videos. I like the addition of super producer
(25:37):
Nold to the audio. Ben. If you could resurrect the
Invisible Man, that would be awesome. The voice over at
least that's a deep cut. Sergeant oh man, oh wow.
I I think just people don't know what the if
you've ever seen Always Stunny in Philadelphia, you'll have a
good sense of what what our crew looked like having
(26:00):
the wear of that suit. Uh So. Sergeantell goes on
to say, I've been in the U. S. Army for
almost thirteen years. I've been deployed to Iraq for a
total of thirty nine months over three deployments. I work
in computers not in the Public Affairs Office, So everything
here is my opinion and observations, not of the Army.
(26:21):
Drugs are severely frowned upon by the Army as a whole.
Drug tests are common. Positive results for legal drugs are
dealt with harshly, including marijuana were illegal. If there's no
prescription for drug like adderall or morphine from a doctor
within the test period, then legal action will be taken
and they'll probably be separated from the Army. During the
height of the Iraq War, soldiers were less likely to
(26:43):
be kicked out, but we're still punished. I have never
seen nor heard of a prescription that was not a
medical necessity. Alcohol and nicotine and caffeine are being discouraged
by the Army as an institution. Since the late nineties,
the Army had the policy of de glamouri zing alcohol
or declamorization of alcohol. Commands can't use alcohol to promote
(27:05):
events or promote its use. The Army Substance Abuse Program
as AT can and will help those that are addicted
to drugs or alcohol. Smoking succession classes are offered to
anyone using tobacco products. Caffeine and supplements are being openly discouraged.
The sergeant goes on that being said, army culture is
(27:26):
still quite strong in alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and supplements. Drugs
and alcohol are used to self medicate by some, as
with the general population. Unfortunately, we have deep rooted traditions
evolving alcohol like the grog. The grog started as a
way that all the soldiers would get their leftover alcohol
and mix it together to celebrate or relax. Now the
(27:47):
grog is a ceremony used to remember past wars and
the fallen at army balls, sometimes with alcohol and sometimes without.
As you mentioned, nicotine and caffeine are used a lot
for stimulants, so many soldiers loft energy drinks, coffee, no
doughs and dipped during long missions or shifts. In Iraq,
there was an energy drink with nicotine and a rebel
(28:07):
slushing machine in the p X and Baghdad. Finally, there's
little to offer Jim rats to get them to not
take supplements. I said sorry for the long email. As
someone who knows some of the stuff they don't want
you to know. Most secret info is really boring. I
don't know if I believe that. Sarch Well, I'm not
(28:27):
concerned about most of it then, So thank you so
much for for writing and please stay safe, uh, please
stay safe out there. That goes for everybody in the
armed forces who's listening to our podcast, and we've been
getting some really great, great feedback, some great details about this.
(28:49):
The part about a prescription being a medical necessity reminds
me of our earlier email from the psychologists. Remember that
who said that during war times, when you had to
have somebody still pulling a trigger for longer than nature
would intend, give whatever cocktail you can, or yeah, give
(29:11):
them something. It was it was relatively vague, but I
imagine that there's I imagine there's several different possibilities there.
So we know that, you know, we know that the
culture of the US Armed Forces is changing. Uh. And
in times of great stress, however, people do still tend
(29:34):
to self medicate. And if you haven't listened to our
episode on the history of militaries and drugs, please do
check it out. If you are part of another country's
armed services, we would also like to hear of your
experience with these substances. But for now, that concludes our
(29:57):
gosh and if you want to write to us, find
us on Twitter or We are conspiracy Stuff also on
Facebook conspiracy Stuff, And if you want to find us
on Instagram, send us a picture like things. Honestly, I
don't really know who Instagram works that well. Either way,
we are conspiracy Stuff show. And if you don't want
to do any of that stuff and you just want
to write to us, send us an email. We are
(30:19):
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com
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