What about the other pyramids?

For many people, the word "pyramid" instantly conjures up images of ancient Egypt -- of pharaohs and mummies, treasure and (maybe) curses. But while the pyramids of Egypt may be the most well-known, they are far from the only example of these structures. Join the guys as they explore the stories of pyramids across the globe, including their alleged uses and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M

(00:34):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They called me Ben. You are you?
And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
We've got our super producer Trysted there and the uh
let's see once too. We got a whole stable of superproducers.
I feel like the name is taken on less of
a special meaning. Are you just mad because I called

(00:55):
you a super producer? First? I am? What? Am I now?
An inferior producer? You're a super co host? Yea. So
it's true. We have been expanding and we're hoping to
build something that stands the test of time, which turns
out is a fairly tricky endeavor the longer the timeline

(01:19):
becomes right, I hear the trick is to stack things
on the ground and then stack another layer that's slightly
smaller on top of that one, and then just keep going.
It's the Lego rule, yeah, or from red Solo cups
to UH decks of cards. You know this is such
a side note, but I had no idea. Apparently, red

(01:42):
solo cups or solo cups in general are US thing,
and they've appeared in so many films that people around
the world associated with American culture. So people travel traveling
to the US from outside of the US often buy
these cups and bring them back to their friends and
associate them with getting plastered. Sort of like pyramids in Egypt.

(02:04):
Am I right, Yes, sort of like pyramids in Egypt. Uh,
that is true, that's what we are. We sort of
circumnavigated the uh, the topic, and so let's get right
to it. Let's jump into the bush instead of beating
around it. Pyramids, Well, you may have seen one of
these things before, perhaps in a history book, perhaps you've

(02:24):
taken a trip to somewhere in the world where they exist.
It's a structure with a triangular outer surface, like we
were talking, Uh, smaller layers on top of bigger ones,
and it converges to a single point at the top.
Hold your horses, kids, are about to get into some
serious geometry. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral,
or any polygonal shape. You guys remember that stuff. Oh yeah,

(02:48):
I don't so let's look at his square pyramid is
square pyramid has a base for triangular outer surfaces. This
is a common version and the design is simple but brilliant. Right.
Pyramid keeps the majority of the structure's weight closer to
the ground. And uh, the pyramid ian on top, that's

(03:10):
the fancy word for a capstone, means that less material
higher up on the pyramid will be pushing down from above.
So these are structurally very very stable. And when early
civilizations created these, uh, they quickly realized, you know, this
is way more durable than just building straight up the

(03:30):
way we do with skyscrapers. Yeah, and we can build
these things much larger than any other building that we've
created thus far. And they're cool looking. Yeah, that's true.
And let's be honest. When most people hear the word pyramid,
they don't really think of geometry, quadrilaterals and polygons. They
think of and Egypt. That's I mean, you're totally right,

(03:55):
they think of They can go Egypt, pharaohs, mummies, right
and nw who can blame them? Egypt has a huge
amount of pyramids. The estimates vary, but sources currently site
anywhere from eight to a hundred and thirty eight identified pyramids,
and there could be more hiding out underneath something which
we this will be a common thing that we find

(04:18):
throughout this episode. Yeah, most of these right, No, I
think you're spot on to mention mummies, because most of
the ones in Egypt were built as tombs. You know,
it was the it was the very last word in luxury,
and these were common during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.
The earliest known pyramids are found in a place northwest

(04:40):
of Memphis, Memphis in Egypt. The Memphis in Tennessee is
named after the Memphis in Egypt, which I didn't know
for a long time, but it's an old town called
uh Sakara. The earliest of these pyramids is the Pyramid
of jos Er d j O se Er, and it

(05:01):
was built during the Third dynasty. In this pyramid and
it's surrounding complex, I guess you could say it's almost
like a kind of compound where everything is sort of
built around it, like a mall or something. Um They
were designed by the architect Emma tap and they're generally
considered to be the world's oldest monumental structures constructed of

(05:23):
what's called dressed masonry, so not like not like a
earthen mound. Yeah, I mean, they're more polished and finished stones, right,
and by far the most famous pyramids that exist. When
you close your eyes and you imagine a pyramid, you're
probably thinking, Okay, yeah, what are you saying? It's probably
the Pyramids of Giza, the on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.

(05:45):
These have been featured all over the place since you
were a baby. These have these things have been on
covers of magazines and on television and in movies, and
there's some of the largest structures ever built. The largest
one Giza. The largest pyramid is the Pyramid of Cufu.
And as remember the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world,
the Hanging Gardens, all that jazz, the Pyramid of Cufu

(06:09):
is the only one still in existence. So pretty serious
accomplishment for a structure. I mean, I'm not surprised they
beat the garden, but any any man made structure. You've
probably seen this in various uh non fiction television shows
where they talk about what would happen if humans just
disappeared or when the species goes extinct, start talking about

(06:31):
how quickly things will deteriorate. The US has a couple
of durable structures, but not as many as we think. No,
the Hoover Dam is pretty pretty cool. That thing is
still curing. It's technically not finished. That's an odd thought.
But the pyramids will probably outlast a lot of the

(06:52):
architecture that's currently on the planet. And for thousands and
thousands of years, these were the largest man made structures
on Earth. For example, let's take a closer look at
the Pyramid of Cufu, which is built mainly of limestone
in the exterior and most of the pyramid itself, but
then as you get towards the interior, there are some
large red granite blocks in there. Yeah, and it contains

(07:17):
over two million blocks, and they have a wide range
of weight, but they're they're all gigantic. The large limestone
blocks weighs six point five to ten tons, and the
smaller ones would weigh in at about one point three tons,
And so you can see various calculations of this. There's

(07:40):
another thing. It's not just the size and the weight
of the structure. The placement is surprisingly precise, right. It
has four sides that face the four cardinal points. Absolutely
as you said precisely, and it also has an angle
of fifty two to Greece. Originally it was fo feet high,

(08:03):
but today, um, I guess through pyramid shrinkage, we the
well known, undocumented phenomenon. It's only four hundred and fifty
five ft. So what happens that missing thirty three ft?
Somebody stole it? Right, it wasn't erosion. Nature didn't steal it.
People stole it. There was this high quality casing limestone,

(08:24):
not a thing. Well, I guess in the way that
retail stores refer to shoplifting and shrinkage spoilage, right, I
urged shrinkage spoilage might be one too, But nonetheless, this
thing still remains as a massive structure out there in
the desert or at least on the outskirts of a city.
And yeah, and when we hear this word again, we

(08:45):
we often think of ancient Egypt, one of the world's
most influential situations. Tombs, desert, mystery, winds in the night,
and curses. Right. Uh, Pyramids are mysterious, though for hundreds
of years societies around the world forgot what they were for.
I had no idea why they were built. Would just

(09:07):
take tours to stare at them and then to steal stuff.
And to be fair, there are a lot of human
beings out there that don't believe we've nailed down exactly
what these pyramids are for, even though, yes, even though
it's kind of a known thing, but we're gonna, we're

(09:28):
gonna get into it. Yeah, Okay, So there's a precedent
for pyramids. The earliest proven precedents for pyramids are called
zig rats, and they they're not in Egypt. Instead, the
earliest zig rats were located in Mesopotamia. So when you
just if you're thinking about what Mesopotamia is, if you're
not going back to those high school classes, Uh, it's

(09:50):
a rock Syria of a couple other countries right in
the Middle East there that goes through the Tiber Euphrates River.
It's the cradle of civilization, right It's where mass yes,
but it's where massive war is being waged right now.
And that's why it was the cradle of civilization because
it was very supportive of you know, growing crops, and

(10:13):
it was you know, within all that desert, it was
a sort of an oasis. It's great soil. Absolutely, yeah,
and we see that we see different civilizations springing up
around uh, fertile deltas you know, and the convergence of
rivers silt silt. Yeah, it's all about the silt. Uh So.
The earliest cigarettes are towards the end of what's called

(10:34):
the early Dynastic period, and the latest or most recent
ones date from the sixth century BC. They were all
the rage, and they weren't you know, they used to
look way cooler. They were brightly painted and gold and bronze.
But since they're constructed from the sun dried mud bricks,
over time they've decayed. Can you imagine rolling up in

(10:56):
a somewhat desert area and seeing a gold covered giant
building that's just reflecting sun directly back at itself, back
at the sun and at your face. I would assume
that I was my life was immortal danger, and whomever
built it was going to sacrifice. I'd be like, that's
pretty dope. But yeah, especially if you're talking the what

(11:19):
you said, the latest ones were sixth century. Yeah, and
just imagine the technology available, the understanding of the world
at the time. It's a big thing with pyramids even
today is like people are like, how did they manage
to hoist these blocks, and they're still you know, wild speculation.
That's two different methods that they could have used, and
some of those include help from extraterrestrials. And zigarettes were

(11:44):
also built by the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Elamites, the Acadians,
and the Assyrians, typically for local religions. And as as
we mentioned earlier, these didn't exist in a vacuum. Each
one was part of a larger complex. So there would
be a place for storage, there might be a place

(12:04):
where a priest lives, and in various other buildings with
some bureaucratic functions, some support functions, and some official proceedings
and my official, I guess in this case we mean
like religious or governmental proceedings. And when we talk about
how these things are structured, we discussed the pyramid, which is,
you know, more of that traditional structure that you imagine

(12:27):
of a sloping side. Even though it's not you know, perfect,
you're still dealing with layers of blocks. When you think
about a ziggar atte, it's a little more of a
tiered system. So if you're looking at it, you're gonna
see some kind of base, so it's either rectangular, oval,
some like perhaps a square, and then the pyramidal structure

(12:47):
is similar, but it's just divided more as you go up. Well,
that's the thing to The ziggattes are obviously super cool
to look at as well, but construction and engineering wise
a little more straightforward. Right on was like building a
brick wall like or a brick staircase, whereas the pyramids
are like smooth and like to actually do the math
and figure out how to get those blocks just the

(13:09):
right size to slide in there, and how to be
structurally sound and also make those amazing sloping, perfectly flat sides.
That's that's where the real mystery kind of comes in.
It's like, man, how did you even conceive this? Yeah,
that's the thing. The where you have the capstone with
the pyramid. With the zigarettes, you have more of a
flat top, so you could do things at the top
of a zigarette, like sacrifice virgins. Sure if that's uh,

(13:33):
if that's what your religion dictates, or just sacrifice you
know whomever. Yeah. Yeah, a lamb could be just a lamb,
could be a land, It could be a king, it
could be the child of the king, depending on the weather.
It was a different time, it was it's a different time.
There's another thing here that I thought was was interesting

(13:54):
and a practice that you can see even in the
modern day. Kings sometimes had their names on the bricks.
And it makes me think of various public works and
parks where people donate to a cause, right like in
we have a thing in Atlanta called Centennial Park and
there are these huge swaths of of of cobblestone or

(14:18):
brick where people have People during the Olympics paid some
sort of fee to have a brick with their name
on it. Have you seen that episode of Curb Your
Enthusiasm where it's like Anonymous, he's really upset that he
gets his name put on a wing of a museum,
and then the other guys anonymous, and it turns out
it's Ted dancing, but he keeps telling everybody that it's
him and cool and chill because it's like anonymous for

(14:42):
the For me that it reminds me of presidential libraries
or something where it just has your name across the
top emblazon there. I'd make my anonymous. Yeah, people and
people do a lot of stuff to just to get
their name on something, you know, maybe a hotel, maybe
an I mean this podcast is so I could maybe
one day end up like on a T shirt. There

(15:04):
you go, so alright, so we we can see then
the most famous examples also pyramids and zigarettes. The comparison
always think of, you guys, we talked about legos earlier.
We mentioned that, you remember do plos? Do plose like
the less sophisticated version of legos. I think their age
range is a little younger, okay, right, yeah, yeah, a

(15:26):
little little rabbit rabbit. Yeah. So, uh, that's that's what
I always think of, because it's like you're building zigarettes
and then you've upgraded to right, MAD don't know about
I don't know about no, but I'll learn, you'll remember
maybe I don't know. I think I think he got

(15:48):
the concept though, right, I understand they're big legos. It
was an apt metaphor. Be it really does make sense.
Over over the centuries, you know, people have, as we said,
speculated endlessly about the Pyramids. Some theories range from nearly
certain widely accepted in academic circles, and then some get

(16:09):
further and further out there to the fringes and beyond.
But today we're going to ask a question. A lot
of listeners have asked us over the years. Yeah, we
know a lot about the Egyptian pyramids. They're literally people
called a gyptologist who spend their lives studying this stuff.
But what about all those other pyramids? Oh yeah, there

(16:30):
are in other places, and we'll get to that right
after a quick sponsor break. Here's where it gets crazy.
There are other pyramids. It's not just ziggarettes in the

(16:54):
ancient cradle of civilization. And it wasn't like an empty tease. No, no,
we're gonna deliver. It turns turns out, you see, this
might come as a surprise to some people, but the
ancient world was actually chalk full of pyramids, lousy with
them on continents across the planet. And they're not all
these tombs to some god king that you know, sat
above all the rest of the citizen ray and you know,

(17:17):
dictated what to do. Uh. There were temples. A lot
of them were temples, some cases their sites of human sacrifice.
And we know that because we found the evidence. But
we still don't know how many existed or even still
exists today. But in archaeologists actually discovered thirty five pyramids

(17:37):
in the Sudanese Necropolis that dated back around two thousand
years when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan, and
that's insane. Twenty yeah, twenty thirty were still finding pyramids,
and these in particular were pretty pretty darn interesting because

(17:58):
they're really closely together the way there, you know they're located,
they're concentrated, right, and they're pretty big, larger than an
NBA basketball court. And you know, it's so surprising to
me that you can just discover this just because the
sand has moved so much over such a period of

(18:19):
time that they got covered up and you can't see
them anymore. Sometimes there's growth on top of them that
you have to basically just dig away and then oh,
there they are. You've heard of these. I'm sure the
Mayan pyramids that exist in Mesoamerica technically their ziggarattes and
were used for human sacrifice. I guess when I was
conjuring the image of virgin sacrifices, I was maybe thinking

(18:41):
more along the Mayan lines. You know, it's it's not
far it's not far off, because a lot of the
in Mesoamerica and Aztecan and Mayan culture there were religious sites,
but there's also documented human sacrifice, and a lot of
times sacrifices might involve prisoners of war, so AZ tech

(19:05):
parties at least would send out raiding parties two wage
war with these really brutal crazy Have you seen what
was sort of the analog of a sword in that culture?
It was like this wooden slap with these obsidian chips. Yeah,
terribly sharp, frightening. Uh. Did you ever see that movie Apocalypto?

(19:27):
Remember that I still haven't seen that. I still haven't
seen the passion of the Christ. Oh jeez. I also
have not seen the passion of the christ Man neither.
That's why I haven't seen Apocalypto, because it just struck
me as kind of like taking that movie to Meso America.
I mean, it's got the similar kind of you know,
brutal gourd and violence, and I don't usually go for
you wouldn't think that, but I'm a little bit sensitive

(19:49):
about that kind of stuff. It's a you know, Apocalypto
I thought was a great film. I can't speak to
the passion of the Christ because I haven't. I did
see part of it, so Satan makes a couple of appearances,
and I went on YouTube and watched those parts. Is
it like played by like an actor, is he in
makeup or something? No, it's the devil really yeah, it

(20:12):
just mean like is it just like a dude, like
it's to spoil passion of the crisis. It's a it's
an ambiguous figure, but it's not all fire and brimstone,
at least from the stuff I saw. There might be
another segment of the film where they're like wings sprouting
and al Pacino comes out and it's like we're carrying

(20:33):
all those bricks for Kevin God, that's Devil's advocate. I
love that one. But there are also pyramids in Nigeria.
Now these are ones that I was not aware of,
but upon looking into it, it turns out that the
sud Pyramids at the Nigerian town of in the suit
Um in northern Igbo Lands were in fact a thing.

(20:56):
Ten pyramidal structures were built of clay and mud, much
like the early zigarattes we talked about um and the
first base section was sixty feet in circumference and three
ft in height. The next stack was forty ft in circumference,
and then you had these circular stacks that continued up um,
almost like a chimney stack kind of look at the top,

(21:17):
and then you had those going on until you got
to the very top of the structure. Uh. These were
temples for the god Allah or Uto, who was believed
to reside at the top um and a stick was
placed at the top to represent the god's residence, sort
of like you know, putting an angel on a Christmas tree. Yeah,
that's a really good analogment, a really good comparison. There

(21:40):
were also pyramids in Spain. Yeah, there were some more
recent ones that were that our thought to have come
from the nineteenth century. They look like zigarattes, but they
they appear to be just agricultural techniques. Um. But you
know that's not a sure kind of thing. But then
you go to a gentleman, gentleman named Manuel A Brill

(22:03):
that thinks he's discovered something even bigger. Yes, manuel A
Brill is an amateur archaeologist, and you might see armchair
archaeologist if you want to call a turkey a bird
about it. Uh. Other professional archaeologists sort of dismissed him
as an amateur at times. So he believes that he

(22:24):
found this gut reported in twenty sixteen. He believes that
he discovered a huge ancient building buried beneath undergrowth in Spain.
It's on the outskirts of a town called Cannette, and
it's believed to be the first of monolithic structure discovered
in the country. Yeah, if you look at it looks
like a hill that maybe has a little more structure

(22:44):
to it, a little more pointed than you'd normally see
in a you know, a naturally forming hill of that
sort um. But you know, it's it's pretty compelling, but
it's not as of this point, it hasn't been verified, correct, Right,
So for hundreds of years, locals thought this was just
a natural formation. You know, the eternal question is that

(23:07):
a pyramid or a hill? Right? But this guy's making claims.
We were waiting to see how they developed. He's making
claims that this earthwork conceals a gigantic structure. And it
would be uh tremendous deal if it turned out that
Europe had these these megalithic structures, these megalithic pyramids as well.

(23:33):
They're also pyramids in China. Nat Geo did a great,
a great exploration of the lost pyramids of China. Yeah,
that's coreact. It was a whole show that they created.
It's kind of awesome. Goes back to I think two
hundred and twenty something BC in search of pyramids from
different warring kingdoms in China, and it appears that perhaps

(23:57):
there where pyramids built, don't know, all over the place.
I haven't seen the show yet, but I'm definitely interested.
China's first emperor, the guy who got all of the
various tribes and communities to form a cohesive nation, uh,
pretty much bankrupted the country and oppressed thousands of people

(24:19):
to build some of the largest mortuary complexes. There was
something about ancient kings where they thought, you know, what's
really making it is having a big building that commemorates
that I'm dead. Yeah, just you gotta make sure people
remember that you existed after you're gone. Some people even have,

(24:41):
you know, like some of the aristocrats had kitchens and
toilets and these underground complexes. I just don't get it.
I was talking to my mom the other day about, like,
you know, our family burial plot, and so I'm like,
that's mom, that's depressing. I don't want to talk about that.
I don't want to think about that. Why do we
have to make these arrangements. Can't they just you know,
chuck us in a paper bag into the highway or
something to wrap you up in newspaper. These things are important, son,

(25:05):
and you know you'll understand. And so they are also
pyramids in India, Indonesia and Peru. Uh. There was for
a time, and people who visit the state of Georgia
or people who live in that state will find this interesting.
For a time there was a complex of pyramids here

(25:26):
in our own state, in Eatonton, Georgia. They were not ancient, no,
and they're a little more modest in their size, but
they were pyramids. They were built by a religious group.
I would hesitate to use the C word just because
I don't you know, I I it's got a bit

(25:46):
of a negative connotation. Yeah, yeah, trying to look down
on anybody for their beliefs. But they definitely hadn't, let's say,
a very particular set of skills, beliefs, police skills. The
New Wabi ins Uh, the New Wabi impyramids were constructed
in the early nineteen nineties on their compound Toma Ray

(26:07):
and that is again in Eatonton, Georgia. I do want
to say one thing is interesting about the literature of
this group is they have a they have a linguistic
practice where they take words and sort of switched them
around into something that rhymes but they feel is more
true to what the thing that the object they're describing is. Uh.

(26:31):
The example I remember most prominently is they don't say television,
they say tell lies vision that's perfect, and they're like
dozens of words they use this. Unfortunately, these pyramids are
no more. Yeah, they don't exist anymore. It's a shame.
Looking up some aerial shots of the whole compound right now,

(26:52):
it's actually quite beautiful from you know, a helicopter. It's
the whole thing is. The way it's laid out is
very purposeful. And then you've got the pyramid surrounded by
these almost like hedge maze looking pieces, and then all
of the other plots are very kind of colored in
such a way where the whole thing that looks almost
like a face. It's pretty pretty interesting. And then you

(27:12):
think that, you know, the government sees it, and then
they tore the entire thing down. I have two thoughts.
I wish they would have left it. What's the story? First? Something, Well,
the guy was arrested on some pretty heinous charges. The molestation.
You can only imagine probably what went down, you know,
near there or in some of those structures. Yeah. So,

(27:37):
to be fair to the people who still adhere to
Nuabian beliefs, there are a lot of X members obviously,
but they believe that their leader was force or is
kind of was framed, was a set up. And that's
despite the Nuabian leader as a phone named Dwight York.

(27:58):
He was charged with interstate transportation of miners for sex
hundred and sixteen charges of child molestation, and he was Okay, Look,
I'll say the New Abian is a black supremacist sect,
so it subscribes to and subscribes to some beliefs that

(28:22):
you know, are racially tinged and therefore reprehensible. But they
also thought spaceship would take the group away in two
thousand and three. It is I have not had contact
with any of the New Abian folks, so perhaps some
of them did make it on their ship. You know,
this might even make a good podcast in its own light.

(28:47):
They built again, they built pyramids as religious structures, right,
But that brings us to another question. Why have such
similar structures rang up in unrelated cultures across the planet.
We'll explore some of the answers or some of the
theories after a word from our sponsor. So since the

(29:19):
first missions to Antarctica early in the twentieth century, there
have been tales of a mysterious pyramid discovered on this
icy continent near the South Pole Um. There were British
explorers in the early nineteen tens who found a pointy
rock and they named it the pyramid and included it

(29:40):
on their maps. So this formation is most likely the
source of various Antarctic pyramids legends throughout modern history. But
I'd just like to go here and say, oh, look
at this trap. Oh do you see that's pointing out
with the ice there? What does that look like to you?
I declare that is that's a tad pointing. Don't you

(30:03):
think You're quite pointy? Much more pointy than I would
expect here on this icy continent. And then you take
a big pull from your calabash, I say, mark that down.
Jeffrey's Pyramids pretty good. So do you want to do
want it to be named after you or perhaps your
lovely wife? Phone make it anonymous pyramid of Suffice? And

(30:29):
so and so as we said this, you can imagine right,
it's understandable. It sounds a little weird today, but you
can easily understand how people return right from Antarctica and
they have these maps, and maybe the maps are reproduced,
and then you get a cold of a map and
you're just a regular person and you're looking at this
map of this mysterious unknown continent, and then you think,

(30:52):
holy snikey is a pyramid? Do people still say? R? I?
P Chris? Oh? It was Chris Farley speaking of which
apparently I stole skadooche from Kung Fu Panda. And I'm
okay with that because I was a big, tenacious D
fan back in the day, and I'm sure I heard

(31:13):
Jack Black say something scadoch she, you know, back in
the old days when he was on a MR Show
and TD. So I did not know that that was
directly from Kung Fu Panda. I stand by it, though,
and it's it's just kind of a fun sound that
sort of means like zippity do die, you know, It's
just kind of that's it. I wasn't trying to rip
off of animated. Has this been on you? It really has.

(31:34):
It's been pressing down on my soul. I remember one
time when we're off air. You we were meeting about
something else and then you stopped, Matt now and you say, guys,
I gotta say something, And I didn't know what was
gonna come up. I was worried about you. Do you
feel better? Do you feel lighter? I feel a little unburdened. Yeah,
that's well, right in and let noel how much you're

(31:56):
angry at him for stealing from the beloved Jack Black.
He has quite beloved. And as always we do have
a special email for any complaints about the show. Your
criticism is very important. Keep us honest and just email
us directly at Jonathan dot Strickland at how stuff works
dot com. Yeah, and really just feel free to open it,

(32:18):
open up, and yesus know how you feel. Again, that's
Jonathan dots Strickland at how stuff works dot com. So
back to Antarctica. Back to Antarctica from from two thousand
twelve to twenties sixteen, there was this whole other round
of rumors that were spreading about pyramids and Antarctica because

(32:39):
there were photographs they got put online that showed something
apparently sitting down there with these regular triangular sides. Now,
I have to say I saw these. I saw you know,
the crystal links links in the UFO sites links that
had these pictures, and I got super interested. But you know,

(33:00):
as we do on our show, you dig down a
little deeper and then you find the skeptic side, which
throws salt on all my excitement. Uh. And you know
they're saying that this is actually some kind of natural
structure that got photographed at an angle that makes it
feel even more mysterious, which is similar to the old
argument about the uh face on Mars. Right. Is it

(33:24):
just the angle of the photograph that makes a otherwise
mundane topographical formation appear to be you know, man made
and purposeful, or or they're buried pyramids out there. Man.
Maybe maybe that's where that's where civilization started, was in
Antarctica before it all iced over. What do you some

(33:46):
kind of hippie. I'm just saying, that's one of my
favorite troops, and a lot of science fiction me too,
that that moment about two thirds of the way through
a sci fi story where someone goes, we are the
aliens right before they get sucked out into spaces and
you just spoiled every every single one shut down the theaters.

(34:10):
But for me, the idea of an Atlantean civilization that existed,
you know, of some kind of intelligent life existing down
there in Antarctica before everything froze over, I don't know.
That just pulls me, pulls my heart. Well, we do
know that, we do know that there's a lot of
stuff that historians got wrong over the years, and we

(34:33):
know that history is still a continuing conversation. Right. There's
no solid, widely accepted proof of a global ancient civilization yet.
But that just that could just mean, although it may
it may be implausible, it could just mean that we

(34:56):
haven't found something yet. Yeah, but technology continues to advance,
and as lidar gets better, Ben, We're gonna find some stuff.
I know it, Yeah, I think so. Oh, before we
go on, these these rumors that Matt just mentioned, they
were linked with a couple of famous visitors to Antarctica
in late seen as the US presidential campaign was in

(35:21):
in hot, hot heat. Uh. John Kerry went to Antarctica
in November and then just just just to be clear here,
it was Forest Collan Bones reunion. Yes, they were hanging
out in Antarctica. Point Rock was decide dislike men is

(35:42):
like a duel. Yeah, that's where the real election took
place Pointy Rock, Antarctica in just a short time later
in December of I think this one was interesting. This
was just a rumor. Okay, I haven't confirmed it. This
was just what's what's the word? Uh? Scalia? You sus
scuttle buttons or what else? They do? He the guy,

(36:06):
Regardless of what you think about the guy at a
gift for obscure words? Was it the straight poop? Straight poop?
We got an email about that too, uh, he said,
Argyll bargel, which is a real word, Hurley, Burley Is
that a real one too? It works though, Hurdy gurdy Man,
Hurdy gurdie Man. Buzz Aldrin astronaut rumored again just rumored

(36:34):
to have tweeted We're all in danger. It is evil itself,
along with a picture of the alleged ice pyramid Antarctic
ice periman, and then he rapidly deleted it. Let's let's
take a note here. Buzz Aldrin is notorious for his
distaste for what he considers conspiracy theorists and for his

(36:57):
sense of humor. It's also not obvious why somebody would
fly buzz out to Antarctica to investigate a pyramid. And
one last thing here, according to Snopes, that website that
is loved and loathed by so many it's it says
this is false. Yeah, so okay, that's not that's just

(37:19):
what it doesn't mean. It does. Well that that just
means if you believe Snopes, then it's scuttled. But so
apparently there are not astronauts trape scene about Antarctica, although
the US military did have some excursions there in the

(37:40):
World War two days. And if you are feeling like
a lovely trip down a rabbit hole, uh, go ahead
and hop on your preferred Internet search engine and type
in operation high Jump. Definitely. And just to stay on
Aldrin for a moment, Do you guys remember when he
was on c SPAN and he had that little he

(38:00):
mentioned that aside about the monolith on one of the
moons of Jupiter. Do you guys remember this? He actually
says his statement. I don't have an exact quotes in
in front of you, but a statement is like, when
people see that monolith monolith on one of the moons
of Jupiter, they're gonna say, where did that come from?

(38:21):
Who built that? And then he just goes on with
this conversation. It's pretty incredible and it's real. It's absolutely real.
And so there are other theories. I think we should
just jump to this theory. Some people, Okay, so we
can divide theories about pyramids into three rough buckets. There's

(38:44):
the bucket of how are they built? Right, and there's
the bucket of what were they for? And then there's
the other one, which is what do they do? Because
some people, you know, people who believe in uh, sacred
geometry for example, um people, there are people who believe
that these shapes or the polacement of these structures has

(39:07):
some sort of significance in a in a larger sense, right,
you can find people who believe that the pyramids are
built along lay lines L. E. Y. Right, which is
sort of the belief in lay lines is the belief
that the planet has something like its own nervous system

(39:28):
and that these lines aggregate some sort of energy or power.
People who have tested this feel that that is not
scientifically valid, right, they say, okay, there's the secretion of energy,
or you stand in Stonehenge on the right time of

(39:50):
the lunar year or the solar year, and you you
feel like there's some great thing happening, but there's no
measurement of it. Right, there's no if there's no heat
differential hold, there's not massive geothermal vent or anything. We're
definitely not fully discounting that, but we are saying there
is no scientific evidence to prove its existence. So let's

(40:14):
bounce around these theories a little bit. No, I know
you've been dying to talk about this. Yeah, grain, you'll
know me whe Where where does grain come into all this?
That I mentioned that a couple couple of times. I
wasn't tried to poke fine, but just a friend of
the show, Ben Carson, who I believe currently serves as

(40:35):
our HUD secretary. Um. He came out during the campaign
for president with an interesting theory that that the Pyramids
were created by Joseph Um and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat
to store grain. Yeah, there were granaries. This disbelief surprised

(40:58):
a lot of people when, uh, when Ben Carson said this.
When Secretary Carson said this, because he uh, he was
espousing a belief that a lot of people had never
heard before. It turns out medieval Europeans believe the pyramids
were these granaries that were described in the Old Testament,
and that's where the description of the pyramids is Joseph's

(41:20):
Granaries come from. It It goes back to like the
sixth century. So he wasn't just you know, off the
dome making a guess um this uh. This was in
a book called History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours,
and then it got popularized by a book called the
Book of John Mandeville. That was back when there were

(41:42):
a way fewer books, so you could just call the
thing you wrote the book. Yeah, what his His main
argument was that the pyramids were hermetically sealed um, and
that you wouldn't need to hermetically seal a crypt um,
but that would be something would come in handy if
you were trying to preserve grain. I've got a quote

(42:03):
here from a BBC article from an egyptologist. Remember those
guys we talked about them, They exist, They're real. One
of them is named James Allen of Brown University, and
he says, quote, there's no way in the world an
ounce of grain would be stored in a structure like that.
It would be totally impractical. It's like saying the Tower

(42:24):
of London was built as a granary store. You could
put grain in it, and I mean, so is it granary?
Just any structure that contains grain essentially that's used specifically,
that's it. So we could fill this studio with grain
and that way, it wouldn't make it a granary because
we didn't build it specifically for that purpose, I guess.

(42:47):
But you also have to think about how does the
grain get in? How do you get it out? Does
it make sense? I mean with the pyramid, it just
doesn't make any sense. And there's another there's another idea here.
In eighteen fifty nine, a British publisher named John Taylor
wrote a book called The Great Pyramid, Why It Was Built?

(43:07):
And Who built it? Uh? He said that Noah, not
the Egyptians, the biblical Noah built the pyramid because he
built the arc and then he was therefore the most
competent to direct the building of the pyramid. He also
believes that the purpose of the pyramid, if we're going

(43:27):
to a different theory, is to be a repository for
the divine system of all mathematical truths. WHOA right? That's fun?
What is that is that? Like a like a like
a real fancy slide rule or something. Yeah, it's it's
an enormous slide rule because they couldn't get the moving
parts for an abbocus. Got it, and we're going to

(43:48):
build a huge advocus. There are other people who believe
that the Great Pyramid is predictive. There's a book called
Our Inheritance of the Great Pyramid, also published in the
eighteen hundreds, revealed to use to use our patented air
quote revealed the date of the apocalypse. I mean that's cool,

(44:16):
is it? Yeah? I mean why not if you could?
You want to know, if you could glean the date,
then maybe you can prevent it. What are you gonna
do about it? Drink more water and less soda? Where
more sunscreen? So we can see that. A lot of
the more m HM out there theories about pyramids come

(44:38):
from the pyramid craze in the eighteen hundreds, right, and
a lot of them are religiously based. There of course,
people who will say that pyramids were built by some
diabolical force, right, an ancient evil or a demon. Uh.
There is of course no proof of that. Back in

(45:01):
the time when a lot of these theories were propagated,
people were sort of feeling around in the dark. Um.
One of the interesting things probably interested a lot of
people here, is that for a long time there was
a fairly popular conspiracy theory of sorts that, uh, you know,

(45:21):
a global civilization built all of these things, to to
with the Atlantis fabled lost civilization of Atlantis built the pyramids.
So let's look at the arguments of fellow named Ignatious
Loyola Donnelly. How's that for a name that sounds great?
Congressman from Minnesota in the late eighteen hundreds, he argued

(45:46):
this very point, he said, and that there once existed
in the Atlantic Ocean opposite the mouth of the mediterrane
see a large island was a remnant of another Atlantic
continent known as Atlanta. Us Uh. He said that Plato's description,
which Soften taken to be a fable, was the straight poop,

(46:07):
that it was actual history, and that modern man first
rose from barbarism to civilization in Atlantis. And then he
said that the Atlanteans stablished colonies around the world. I mean,
we've we've heard all of this, right, uh. And at
this point we know that there have been ancient low civilizations,
but again, there's never been one big, you know, like

(46:33):
one people to rule them all found. You know. Still
people love this theory. What do you guys think about
the cargo cult theory of pyramids? Oh, that's interesting. So
cargo cults, which do exist. Cargo cults came from Polynesian

(46:55):
islands out in the Pacific Ocean, where in pretty fairly
isolated communities saw for the first time technology that they
had never seen before radio towers, right, airplanes, weapons of war,
even clothing, even clothing of type yeah, that they had
never seen before. And so they also would see these

(47:19):
cargo drops which would contain food and clothing, survival materials,
stuff like that humanitarian aid for example. And so these
cargo cults began, uh instituting religious practices, spiritual practices wherein
they would build uh radio towers or an airplane. Yeah,

(47:42):
but it would be out of available materials. Yeah, it
wouldn't be a flying It would be a symbolic radio tower,
symbolic airplane, and they would reproduce or enact various ritualistic
behaviors in hopes of, uh, hopes of the cargo returning.

(48:02):
One of these groups worshiped Prince Philip oh Wow as
a god, as it like, not as a cool guy,
not as just a regular dude as it should bear.
Have you've seen as jawline. I mean you can break sunning,
break walnuts and hearts on that jo line. So the
thing with this would be that the pyramids sprung up

(48:25):
throughout the world in all these different developing civilizations because
of some in the agent alien theory, some either ship
that resembled a pyramid and then they were built like
in Memoriam in a way or to try and get
them back down. You're doing a stargate thing here. It's
essentially little kind of like a star gate, but just

(48:46):
you know, a signal, a large enough signal that says, hey,
wherever you are up in the heavens, come visit again
or come back to us. It's fascinating. So then it
would be oh side note, the religious sect that we
mentioned is referred to as the Prince Philip Movement. They're

(49:06):
in an island in Vanuatu called Tana Nice. So if
you are searching spiritually for something and you think you
want to just try out a religion you have not
heard of, then go ahead and uh give the Prince
Philip Movement ago and let us know how it works
out for you. So, ancient aliens. We've mentioned this on

(49:30):
the show before, and I feel like we'd be remiss
if we didn't explore this a little bit, because this
ties into one of the conspiracies, not a theory, but
one of the conspiracies that happened when Europeans began exploring
possibilities of the origin for pyramids. Right, So, there are

(49:53):
a couple of things we should address here. First, a
lot of the ancient alien theory stuff that exists now
is descended from earlier, earlier, very racially based theories, wherein uh, Europeans,
maybe not the same guys who found the Pointy Rock

(50:13):
and Antarctica, but as someone who for the sake of argument,
sounded very much like them, would see a pyramid and say,
you know, this is remarkable, This is remarkable. Where where
is the lost civilization of clearly white people who built this?
And so that just the same way that, um, a

(50:35):
lot of modern urban legends descend from earlier what we
call fairy tales. Right, Um, there's still that that folklore
progression or storytelling progression, because history, as we know, is
just one long game of telephone, and we have to
we have to consider that because the real, the real
cover up, at least one provable cover up, is that

(51:00):
a lot of early explorers, we're searching for something that
confirmed the belief they already had. They had confirmation bias,
because not only did they not believe that native people
could accomplish such tremendous works, but they didn't want to

(51:23):
believe that. And if we were presented would proof, they
probably would have just if we know how confirmation bias works,
they probably would have just doubled down on their idea. Exactly.
That's what I always do. That, No, I mean, really
that is what we do psychologically, unfortunately. I So these
are these are some of the ideas. We do know

(51:46):
that one provable cover up was was either through negligence
or malevolence. Where does this all lead us? You know,
we've learned that anything can arguably be a granary if
you fill it with grain. Um, But that's kind of

(52:07):
like saying that any any bag you put a sandwich
in automatically becomes a sandwich bag. Yeah, you know. So
we do know that there was one provable cover up situation,
and that occurred when earlier explorers from different parts of
the world said clearly they didn't build this the line

(52:34):
you see, and I know that can be an ugly thing,
but it happened. As for the state of pyramids, now,
the craziest thing to me is we still don't know
how many are out there. We found the big ones,
We found the big ones, and well there are also
pyramids that appear to be in protected areas where perhaps

(52:55):
an insular government doesn't want any third party or NGO,
you know, looking around to find new ones that perhaps
might be there or just covered up in jungle that
we can't see unless we have highly sophisticated lighter just
going through the jungle acre by acre, which is a

(53:17):
task that I wouldn't want to do well. I guess
that wraps up the topic. But should we do some
some shouting outing, cornering, absolutely tally ho shout at corners.
Our first shout out today comes from Sean. Sean says, guys,
I've loved this show up to your most recent episode.

(53:37):
You're moving to Mars episode I felt like it turned
into a reading of get this guy's the Communist Manifesto? Listen.
I get that political opinions of people sink into their
work intentional or unintentional. You're usually very good about presenting
counter opinions, even if one of you is just playing
devil's advocate. It was pretty sad to hear a conspiracy

(53:57):
podcast advocating from more government. Wow, well, I I can
see what Sean is saying where there were definitely definitely
some ideas that could be considered communists, and we pointed
that out in the episode. Absolutely, there's definitely a centralization
of government, which is not necessarily communism. But I don't

(54:20):
think he's talking about just that, because there were other
aspects there to yeah, spreading out everything where everybody gets
an equal share. Um, there's no real trading of goods
for profit in this way, they're just our goods and
you get them. You know, when the whole idea of
like some greater power authority assessing your worth and giving

(54:41):
you work assignment based on a series of algorithms that
I guess look through your past work history and you know,
kind of tell you what you are and what you
need to be doing. But we we we talked about
this even before we did the interview, and maybe it
didn't come across as much as we would have liked,
but these were things that we discussed when kind of

(55:02):
like preparing for this interview. Yeah, I think one of
the things is when we're hanging out off air, we
just for a peek behind the curtain. These episodes don't
usually end for us when the episode ends on, you know,
the the official episode stream that you're hearing. Yeah, because
we'll we'll sit, we'll sit somewhere, we'll go somewhere after work,

(55:25):
and we'll still be talking about the thing. And one
of one of the things that we would say would
be a difference between straight up orthodox communism and what
was being advocated here is that, uh, what Marshall Brain
was advocating was that this would be a technocracy. So
instead of a Stalin or another strong man at the

(55:47):
top who was still human, Uh, there would be an
artificial intelligence. Almost scarier to me, it's definitely unknown. Well
it's like who programs the artificial intelligence? You know, where
does that? It's like a chicken or the egg kind
of question. But we also should point out that he
said from the start this whole thing was a thought experiment.

(56:08):
It wasn't necessarily advocating for any of this because he
totally was like very adamant about the fact that this
is pretty much impossible. Did you even get there to
even have the environment that would allow us to start
such a society? And that's why it was a lot
of fun for us to talk about, because that's kind
of what we like to do, is you know, get
hypothetical with stuff and sort of play Devil's advocate for

(56:28):
big questions and that sort of this gave us that
opportunity a big time And I would say, um Sean Marshall.
At the end of that episode, he gave his email
address and he asked for people to write to him
to discuss so if and actually I have forwarded him
everything that's been written to us specifically to conspiracy it

(56:49):
how stuff works, because he wants feedback, He wants to
know what people think about some of this stuff. So sure,
it's very much work in progress, as he said, and
I think that's I'm glad you did that matter well.
One of the things that I would like to explore
in in a future episode would be the actual technology
nuts and bolts, because we didn't really talk about that,

(57:11):
right and we have, uh, we have received a lot
of great questions about this. I'm laughing because one of
them comes up in a later episode, and I don't
want to spoil it for anybody, but it was a
great question and I'm still thinking about it. So thank you,
Sean everyone else who wrote in regarding this topic. Marshall
Brain is quite prolific, uh and he does read every

(57:34):
email he receives, and as he said, he sincerely welcomes feedback.
Our next shout out comes from Justin. Send us an email.
Justin says, good morning. I recently started listening to stuff
they don't want you to know, and I'm enjoying it
very much. Awesome, Justin, thank you for listening and hanging
out with us. I think you guys should do a
cast on cryptocurrency. You could begin with the discussions on

(57:56):
Bitcoin the leader, and then move on to companies that
you is the blockchain to solve problems in our everyday world.
Take care of Justin. That's a that's a great topic.
There's a lot to discover there on On my part,
at least, I need to do a lot of research
just to really wrap my head around how it all functions.
I recently got a coin base, which is like this

(58:18):
app that allows you to buy different cryptocurrencies. The whole
thing is fascinating to me. And we have actually some
colleagues at work who bought into bitcoin back in the
day where it kind of boomed and actually I want
name names, but sold it before it boomed. Hard would
have been a minor millionaire he or she at the

(58:40):
very least a hundred thousand point being the history of
cryptocurrency in itself is really cool, and the whole Mount
Cox thing, and you know, all of that is its
own stuff, and then like how it's being used now
and the black market aspects of it and the deep Web.
Totally great episode, and some mysterious inventors stuff is in
there still in the future cash list society that we're
running up on future, I don't know, we're getting so

(59:03):
close and you just have to buy credits and have
them put on your wrist bands so that you can
scam them. Festival, they're gonna alter your d n A
so that every cell you every cell in your body,
reflects how much worth you have. That sounds like a
personal hell, Like the world is just one big music festival.
Yeah yeah, well if it was Bonnaroo, then for sure

(59:26):
that is everywhere. I mean, developing countries are increasingly cashless
and that our previous episode on whether money is a religion,
I've really had us thinking about that too, Like it's
it doesn't it's not attached to a commodity directly now,
so it's an idea. It's out in the ether. It

(59:47):
requires faith, It requires a massive amount of faith. And
we got some cool emails about that one too. We
should bring up another time. Absolutely, you're so right. Just
I just want to say, you're so right about the
music festival thing being test run essentially of how it
would function when he's getting like a little village, like
like a society, you know, where we're all just living

(01:00:07):
in love and listening to string cheese incident and hemorrhaging money,
hemoraging money on fifteen dollar red bull and Vodkas. It
doesn't you know, it doesn't even have to have alcohol.
It's anything is at least ten dollars a hot dog,
five dollar waters plus four four dollars for bun service.
That's where they give you a hot dog, bun charging

(01:00:28):
for the mud before you know it. Yeah, but but
it is true. It is a microcosm of society. So
this is fascinating, all right. We got one last one
from Anthony just finished watching your latest video on Alisa
Lamb's mysterious disappearance. Staying on the topic of disappearances, have
you guys looked into the thousands of cases of National

(01:00:49):
park disappearances? Say that Anthony most notable David Pelt's in
his book series. He also recently released a short docu
Nentury about it that would make for an interesting topic
to play. It's all, this is a very prescient email.
You guys gonna leave it at that, but just yes

(01:01:09):
and yes, and and to quote our boss Jason Hope,
stay tuned. And the book series, the book series Anthony's
referring to is missing for one one as well as
the documentary that is now available. So yes, as as
a colleague here said, stay tuned. And that concludes our

(01:01:33):
go but not our show. That is right, Matt Noel
and I will be returning next week with something probably
completely different then pyramids. Yes, yep, okay, And we're going
to talk about a different shape. Yes, yep, it's gonna
be a schapizoid. Perhaps you never know decahedrons. What if

(01:01:56):
there are no angles, What if it's just a formless
massive jelly. What if it's non euclidean alien love crafty
and geometry right, and just looking at it drives you bad?
Isn't that sort of what spawned you? I mean, you know,
I don't talk about my personal life shows. It could

(01:02:16):
be any number of things. It might even be government continuity.
Who knows, it may well be. Uh. But by the way,
we hope that you do tune in, and we hope
that you find it interesting. In the meantime, if you
were like, this was not enough strange weird stuff for
this week? Where do I find more before next Friday?
We have just the place for you. If you'd like

(01:02:37):
to learn more about ancient technology, low civilizations, mysterious structures,
visit our website stuff they don't want you know dot com,
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And if you want to find us on social media,
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(01:02:58):
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