You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.

Welcome to Digging Up Ancient Aliens.

This is the podcast where we examine alternative history and ancient alien narratives in popular media.

To do these ideas hold water to an archaeologist or are there better explanations out there?

We are now on episode 79 and I am Frederick, your guide into the world of pseudoarchaeology.

And this time it will be a competition.

I will compete against Mark who hosts the channel Archusoup and we will see who is the best expert on pseudoarchaeology dating to 2024.

So what happened last year?

More or less.

It's hosted by Michel Franklin from Lectures and Legends.

Both of these have been guests on this podcast previously.

So this will be well interesting episode and see well who walks out a victory.

And you can participate by just pausing after the questions and see if you get the correct answer.

Let me know how many well right answers you got on quiz.

And I want to thank all of those of you who are supporting the show.

You're really helping out producing this content and I'm humbled and grateful for your support.

And if you want to help out, I will tell you how to do that and get some bonus stuff at the end of the episode.

Remember that you find well often sources, resources and reading suggestions on the website diggingupancientaliens.com but there you won't find much sources but some hopefully there you can also find contact info if you have any questions or notice any mistakes in any of the episodes you are listening to.

And if you like the podcast but don't want to donate any money, that's alright.

But I would really appreciate if you left one of those fancy five star reviews or thumbs up or whatever they use on the well podcast player you're listening to.

Now that we have finished our preparations, let's dig into the episode.

So I want to welcome two returning guests to this show.

We have again Michelle and Mark from Archusoop.

So what we will do today is watch a 2 1/2 hour ancient alien special on the British Isles.

We did that already.

I think Mark and I had to be professionally resuscitated after.

After that.

Mark, you got this.

A plank.

It's still one of the best episodes I think that you've ever done because you can visibly see our brains melting out through our eyes.

Yeah, yeah.

I had liquid on the back of my neck.

I was like what's that?

And then I real.

It was just, you know, raw intelligence just leaving my body.

Yeah, I had to have a shower.

No, I won't Surprise you with that.

I will actually hand things over to Michelle for this special episode.

This is A Year in Archaeology.

Frederick asked me to make a quiz based on all of the things that we've covered over the Year in Archaeology and history.

And neither Mark nor Frederick have seen these questions, so they have asked me to make this so they can compete to see which one of them dies first.

What?

What?

I've only just learned it's a competition.

Now death is on the line.

Well, if it's a competition, there better be some stakes.

Otherwise there's no point.

I don't even know if there's a reward for winning.

I think the.

The reward is not dying dumb.

The reward is knowledge.

That's about it.

So, Mark, do you have your scoreboard ready?

Yes.

Yeah, Mark.

So if you will keep tally.

Although honestly, I don't think there's even a reason to keep tally.

But Frederick desperately wants to win, which I think both of you are going to win anyway, because these are the.

These are the topics that both of you have covered on your programs, each of you throughout 2024.

So once we'll start off with the first question.

I mean, the loser, I mean, just shows that they have not, you know, watched Ancient Aliens and other pseudo programming.

As much that could be, you know, if you win, that could be a reward not to watch Ancient Aliens for one week.

Wow.

Give your brain a break.

Yeah, you just emerge from the office and your partner's like, is it not happening?

Are you.

Are you okay?

It's the Internet down.

Okay, cool.

Yep.

So good to go.

Question 1.

How did the Vikings actually bury their dead?

I'm going to say it depends when and where you're talking about.

Okay, good, continue.

In some places, we're talking about cremation.

In other places we're talking about disarticulated burial and storage of bones, in fact.

And in other cases, we are talking about complete burials.

But I suppose it's a matter of definition.

I mean, for example, there may be a local tradition near to you, Frederick, that I'm not aware of.

Yeah, we have the burial ships and the mounds and the stone ships also.

Don't forget those.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Yeah.

And actually, those are beautiful, aren't they?

The little ships laid out in almost like ellipsis of.

I mean, if you walk in some fields, especially on Gotland, you have whole fields of these little boats just laying around, scattered in the landscape.

Is there no fire in these burials?

Ah, well, yeah, obviously.

Obviously in the cremations you have to.

Yeah, I mean, Well, I mean, obviously we all know that if you're really important, then you're put on a boat, pushed out to sea and then set alight.

Yes, according to one saga.

Yes, yes.

But they didn't actually put it on fire in that saga.

They just pushed it out to sea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's why Outlander is the superior Viking movie.

Yeah, yeah.

The whole.

I mean, we can't say that it didn't happen, but we do.

There's no evidence of people having their ship set on fire and set out to sea.

There's just no evidence for it whatsoever.

Okay.

See, I told you you would do fine with all of these because these are subjects that you've covered, even some of them recently.

Question 2.

What is the archaeological evidence for the loch ness monster?

0oh, Mark has a different answer.

No, I'm just gonna say that would be paleontology.

Plus, he's not a dinosaur.

No.

Is it?

Are they not?

I thought they were.

Thought they were thought to be.

I forgot what the.

Which one it is now, why there's not a dinosaur.

Is it because it's thought to be a prehistoric creature of the same age of dinosaurs?

Which is a paleontology, paleontological thing, isn't it?

That's not exclusively dinosaur, is it?

I don't know.

So.

But why do people think that Nessie is real?

Or why do people think that Nessie was a dinosaur?

Is their cultural memory of a dinosaur?

It is absolutely impossible, by the way, because Loch Ness, even though it's one of the deepest lakes, it was covered over in ice until we were talking about the.

The history of Earth until very recently.

Yeah.

So why do people think that Nessie is a dinosaur?

That's a good question.

But it's from the surgeons.

I think it's the surgeon's photos.

But it has this long neck like a swan.

So, I mean, could be some sort of swan monster.

Nessie just goes off.

Yeah.

And then along comes the UK monarch, because they have unique rights to eat it.

It's made.

It is a spawn.

That's right.

I say that's mine.

Yeah.

You know who made up.

Made up most of the quote unquote evidence for Nessie?

No.

Interesting.

I don't have his name.

I think he's a surgeon, though.

But other than that, it's.

Yeah, it was.

It was one person in particular who essentially fabricated most of the quote unquote evidence.

And even there was a great race to.

This was really all.

It was a publicity stunt.

And that was it.

And so ever since then, people have said, oh, I can see Nessie, or Nessie is there.

People use it as a great way to get people to Loch Ness, which is fine.

I mean, it's really no different than having King Arthur at In Tagil, to be quite honest with you.

But it was a publicity stunt and people just used this as a way to now get people to.

To visit the area.

All right, so question three.

Was Rapa Nui established by aliens?

Yes, of course.

No, no, no.

Atlanteans, I guess.

Atlanteans.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

That's the lost city of Atlantis.

Yeah, yeah.

But why do people.

What is.

What is the whole.

Frederick did a whole program on this.

But what is the whole difficulty that people have with the return of Moai and Rapa Nui?

Well, it mostly boils down to this idea.

I mean, the alien part is kind of new, but people look at structure on Rapanui and narratives from the local population, and some interpret it as a wide set of people came there and brought culture with them.

And Thor Heyeral, the Norwegian raft enthusiast, went there trying to find this lost civilization that he thought originated from South America and before that in Europe.

But they got kicked out by the brown population in South America, went to Rapanui where they were killed off by the local population or by population immigrating from Polynesia.

But a lot of those idea comes from there.

And then people are somehow befuddled by how you can move stones.

Well, there was a story.

There's a story.

Isn't there a tradition that the stones wall into place and that may well be literally that they were guided.

You can sort of rock.

And there's been similar experiments done with some of the sarsen stones, I believe at Stonehenge as well.

You can sort of meander them.

There's three archaeologists that actually tested walking moi.

So they made a.

Almost full replica, we're talking 10 tons plus.

And then they made the bottom a bit roundish and then they took a couple of people and then you could just got along.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you just wiggle it back and forth and it kind of moved.

You see those memes of like the statues having toes.

Yeah.

On the.

On the other end of the world, like the head here.

The toes are here.

Yeah.

Although was our Norwegian man, was he disgusted when he got to Rapa Nui and it wasn't Rafta Nui and he was like, ah, oh man, I thought it was rafts.

And then.

No, because he spoke Norwegian, Mark.

Oh, get it.

Okay, never mind.

They flotin away.

Yeah, yeah, hey, hey, I understand that.

That's fine.

Yeah, so maybe, yeah, maybe he misheard, you know, the floaty aspect.

And I'm going to back off from that.

Here's a question just for you, Mark.

Okay.

Who made all the crystal skulls?

I know that they, they sort of turned up in the mid 20th century.

Seemingly, seemingly made by modern people basically out of using, you know, techniques that are in fact, you know, not appropriate.

I don't know the full history of it.

I do remember being very disappointed when they turned up in, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The movie we should not lose.

We don't remember that movie, Mark.

We don't remember.

But you've got to, you've got to for the canon.

That's the thing.

I don't remember.

Indy in the fridge.

I don't remember.

I don't remember the aliens talking at the end.

I don't remember.

No, no, but the crystal skulls originate in at least the most famous.

The Michael had your skull come from?

Crystal juler dealer from Germany.

Yeah.

Oh, okay, right, I forgot.

But he bought it there.

He bought it from an auction and then he tried to tell this story a while later that he found it in, was it Belize or something like that.

And then his daughter has embellished on the legends ever since.

And I mean his daughter thought that the skulls actually they could tell the future and that they talked to her.

And I just want to know how she, how she divided, how she thought that the skull like did, did she put her hand in and they went.

Or did she like shine the back, the back of the skull and looked in it?

I just want to know what, what, what?

How they actually spoke to her and told her the things.

I think it's telepathically and if you want to have this power yourself, you can actually buy a set of 12 crystal skulls on Etsy.

Nowadays you can have a complete set with a little mat you can place.

It on straight there, straight to Etsy.

See this?

I have a sickness, okay?

I really do.

Because all I've got going around in my head is, believe me guys, it's the real thing.

It's just like, for God's sake, mob, what's wrong with you?

What's wrong with you?

We don't even have to say anything.

We just watch Mark go in circles going.

And then.

Oh no, I'm a self trolling pun maniac.

Yeah.

Yep.

Ugh, terrible.

As long as you know I've been told.

All right, next question.

Just for you Frederick, the Kensington Runestones.

Evidence of vikings in the U.S.

no.

It'S evidence of a Norwegian with too much time on his hand.

No, sorry, a Swede.

Yeah, Norwegian companion, too.

But this one is not the only one.

So what other great frauds are there in the US and why.

Why specifically great frauds were these runestones actually made?

Obviously, there's the 2020 election, then we've got.

No, that's not.

That's not funny.

That's not funny right now.

Well, when it comes to runestones, there's two of them, I think one is in Oklahoma and who want to go there.

So, I mean, obviously a fraud, but, I mean, a lot of this ties into Scandinavian identity of the immigrants in the early 1900s.

So these rune hoaxes are in reality, a more interesting history from a modern perspective.

But it's also part of this idea that Americans, the white part of the population, want to feel that this is their land, it's them first.

So you kind of invent ways to kind of, oh, but you Europeans were here a lot earlier.

So we don't steal land from the native, we just reclaiming it as if.

The Vikings were there before the natives.

No, on the Kensington Runestone, they're apparently killed by the natives.

But, I mean, it ties them deeper to the country.

Then instead of a couple of hundreds of years, we're talking thousands of years of history there that they can relate to and claim heritage from.

But there was a lot of identity movement in the early 1900s, late 1800s, especially among the Scandinavian population that moved to Minnesota and these places that they still had a strong Scandinavian.

Scandinavian identity.

They still spoke their language.

They didn't integrate properly.

So they want to, you know, create their own celebration.

They got the yellows that they celebrate Columbus and not Eric the Red or anything like that instead, because, well, Columbus, America.

Yeah.

Leif Erikson.

But Leif Erikson, according to the sagas, discover it, you know, much earlier than Columbus.

So there was this idea that we should celebrate Columbus.

And that's maybe why the Kensington Runestone was created, because it was found close to the world fair that was taking place where they celebrated Columbus.

And they were a bit upset that the Norwegian and Scandinavian Swedish people didn't get their representation there.

And according to the Norwegian that seems to have been participating in the hoax, at least according to his children who talked with historians in the 70s, they said about that they wanted to, you know, show off those stuffed academics.

But.

And it.

I can't really decide how I feel about it, because in that sense, I wonder if these hoaxes were designed to be taken seriously in a sort of a later sort of states wide national story or if it was just someone trying to set up folktales.

I mean you could, you can ask similar questions of for example the origins of Mormonism, for example.

What sort of impact was actually intended in those early stories of discoveries in the woods and being visited by an angel?

Was it actually just to impress the people around in your immediate vicinity?

Or actually was it a sort of a.

As some places in the world today do, an attempt to use interpretations of archaeological evidence to legitimize full on statehood as opposed to just sort of feeling comfortable where you are.

Do you know, I mean I have.

A bit of sympathy in the case of Mormonism.

I don't think there's any archaeological evidence that you.

Oh no, no, no wooden submarine has been found to date.

No, no, no.

But in that sense I can imagine a bored Swede just know.

Carving out a.

And it takes a little bit of knowledge.

I mean like he, he, he clearly knew some older forms of Swedish and, and Norse derived.

Not really the runic Alphabet that he used.

We have several version of it and we have to remember runes were used in Sweden as late as 1911.

Yeah.

And the script he used has no earlier evidence than 1875.

Oh, so not even.

I always was always under the impression that while the, the runes were flawed but the.

Something about the grammar was pushing it back to medieval at least.

Or not.

No, I mean I have read a lot of rules both medieval and Viking age.

And when you approach this early Scandinavian language, it's very difficult, especially if you're not used to it.

Right.

You can't really, really go to a runestone, read it fluently even if you know the individual letters or look them up.

But this is like someone in the 1800s imagining how it would sound in the 1300s.

And I mean it's a mixture of modern Swedish, Danish and Norwegian languages that the creator obviously had access to.

Yeah, he said his biggest flaw was obviously not including Icelandic or pharaoh, but.

Also as well it sounds.

In that case then it's a little bit like bad, bad dialogue written that's sort of medieval, you know, thee, thou.

Yeah, ye old my lord.

Yeah, okay.

Interesting.

Okay, sorry.

In that sense it sounds more like a D and D prop.

It's kind of like a, you know.

You know what's funny?

Mark there actually is like a fake runestone like that where apparently at a larp.

This is true.

There was a runestone to commemorate it There was a LARP where they shot down a drone, and somebody took a spear and threw it.

And you can.

Yeah.

So they decided to commemorate this very funny LARP event.

And you can see it, and it's like a really angry person with a spear, and then like an evil drone with a sad face on it.

Think it's really incredible.

Okay, next question.

I.

I want to be petty about the Kensington Runestone, because it's actually medieval.

It was written according to the stone itself, in the 1400s.

Yeah, yeah.

So no Viking was involved at any point?

No, no, impossible.

When.

When.

When was the Viking period over?

Depends on who you ask.

I would say 1100s.

Yeah.

At latest.

Yeah, 1200s.

And if you ask any home DNA testing kit, it's still going on.

Turns out I'm Viking.

Like, no.

You know, but actually, so one little point on that.

An awful lot of.

And also, lots of people get very excited when they see a percentage of Scandinavian something or other in the.

In the.

The results.

But actually, recent research has shown bigger movements of people in the preceding ages.

So Bronze Age movements of people and so on and so forth.

And also, of course, people, as you say, traveled the world continuously after.

And it's fascinating how all it takes is for someone to get.

I saw a meme today, actually, is, like, man, American man, when he discovers he has 2% Scandinavian DNA and he's basically got a beard, a horn.

He's on.

He's on, like, a mountain somewhere.

And.

And y.

It's interesting that people think that that must mean Viking as opposed to, you know, just Scandinavian, as we talked about.

When you and Howard were on our program.

That doesn't mean anything.

A Viking was somebody who very specifically went somewhere and did a specific thing.

If you stayed home, you were not a Viking.

Yeah, but it also wasn't a genetic quarantine.

It's not like you had a group of people who.

But you have one of those genes.

You need to leave.

Go away.

But I don't want to leave Sweden.

No, you have to go now.

Okay.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

Okay.

Something else to infuriate both of you.

How many Templars made it to the US A lot.

And they buried treasure in very deep pits.

Yeah.

Under.

Under a church at the edge of the old Dutch city of New York.

Don't forget the Treasure island in Canada.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Where is that?

I've never heard of this.

Where's my treasure island?

Is it Oakmont?

Oak.

Oak Island.

Oak island, yeah.

Yeah.

Have you missed Oak Island?

You haven't Heard him digging.

What myth is this?

What is this?

The old kind of mystery.

It even has a.

It has a show on the History Channel.

Yes.

Like it's sec.

It's second only to Hunting Hitler.

Like it's, it's a big show.

It's long running.

I never heard this, this magical treasure island in Canada.

No one ever told me this.

Plus according to legends discovered by some kids that decided to dig a very, very deep hole, I think 30ft or something like that.

Because they figure out that it would be treasure when they found it.

And then the hole started to get sold to different treasure parties who has been searching and people have been killed in there and it keep flooding and they've been digging there for about 100 years or so as I show on History Channel.

All kind of mystery.

You don't know.

Treasure is the stupidity we found along the way.

Yeah.

Although in a very literal sense, actually, I guess if you sell a mine, you are selling a hole.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, yeah, I guess it's a money pit because you know, they have sunk a lot of money into it.

Hey, nice.

I'm going to give you an extra point for that.

No, no, no.

You take away points for fun.

So now we operate on this program.

Michelle, are you not familiar with your own history?

Apparently not.

Apparently I have never been told about the gold caves.

And it's not a cave, it's just.

A pit where my money is at this point.

I mean, you know, 41 years I have turned in this world and no one has told me that there's a magic money pit that I can go and dive into and retrieve gold from.

But nobody has found gold.

No, they're not digging hard enough.

It's not true, is it?

Really?

That's what happens when we take the children out of the mines.

Yeah, this is, this is true.

But money has been found in the form of franchise rights and tv.

So there is, you know, there's drama in them there.

Pits.

Gotta film it.

Oh, that's great.

Next question.

Yep.

Did the Vikings and their gods have spaceships?

Of course.

And spy drones.

Oh yes.

Yeah.

And heat seeking missiles.

Where did heat seeking missiles come from?

Odin's returning spear.

Of course.

It's Vikings.

Try to describe.

Oh, I see.

It returns because he's so hot.

It just comes back.

I am the old father.

The hottest man alive.

The spear returns.

Except that one time when it hit him in the face, he's like, oh, my eye.

I do appreciate Stargate's riff on this though and how they just thought that Thor was the little green men and Asgard was the ship.

And they just go, yeah, this totally makes sense.

Sure.

Yeah.

I do appreciate that they kind of leaned into that nonsense and just went.

I seem to recall I didn't watch a lot of that series.

I don't think it was easily available.

But I remember seeing an episode where they were in what looked like a sort of an alpine village almost, and it was meant to be a sort of a projection of an unbroken sort of Norse influence on a planet somewhere.

And then I remember them going, we're going to go and meet Thor now.

I was like, oh, it's going to be interesting.

And it's just that little gray thing with like big eyes.

And I was like, I'm very disappointed.

Where's the blonde hair?

Where's the muscles?

I didn't have to have blonde hair, but, you know, just have a.

Have a.

Have a face, you know.

I mean, it was interesting.

It sounds interesting because usually they apply the area on aliens on that.

So it's.

I'm glad to hear that they didn't go that route because.

No, no, it's great.

And they actually made them like they, they need help because they've been around a long time that the grays are having difficulty reproducing.

They've copied themselves so much that they can't reproduce themselves anymore.

And they actually have other intergalactic enemies called the replicators that end up coming and swarming the shit.

But the replicators could solve their issue.

I mean, well, the replicators replicate themselves, not other things.

But Stargate SG1 was really good with that.

They leaned into a lot of the conspiracy theories and made fun of them, but in a very creative way.

So they had a whole conspiracy theory about the.

Obviously the ancient Egyptians who took people.

The aliens took people and they put them on another planet and then they built like a whole ancient Egyptian sort of thing and that the.

The aliens were really called the.

The Goa'uld.

So like Ra and Apophis and all these other gods were really parasitic symbiotes that lived inside people and that continuously went into their supporters throughout time.

Yeah, their, their whole take on things were.

Was very interesting.

But yes, the boar was one of the Grays.

And I really, I really enjoyed that.

Next question.

What is Europe's.

So can I just say both of those?

Interestingly, though, add an interesting query, don't they.

They imply that if you take a group of people from a certain time of place and you isolate them.

So in the case of the Alpine village, or in the case of the Egyptians, that their culture will stagnate, that somehow it will just self replicate.

No pun intended.

Yes.

Or they'll language where they can all just magically speak English for 500 years ago.

Yeah, well, yeah, but aside from that, in terms of art, in terms of scientific development, it seems as though the idea is people.

And maybe this is true.

It probably is true, actually, that you need to have inputs from outside your bubble to be challenged and to grow and to develop, perhaps.

It's an interesting sort of implication, I suppose, but it also actually implies that people are too.

Too unimaginative to change what they already have.

Anyway, I just.

Yeah, just intriguing.

They do.

They do run into civilizations that are.

Most of them are either dying out or they need help.

Right.

And so, yeah, they are.

Their culture is stagnated or on.

On the edge of dying.

And so they do come to help those.

The civilizations oftentimes, whether they're sometimes they're fungi, they're strange balloon people, and they have to help them anyway.

So you like the way you worded that.

They have to help them anyway, despite them being disgusting fungi people.

They'll just replicate by themselves anyway.

Yeah, just get a hose and make a moist environment.

Yeah, get a wet log.

There are great wars with the moss people.

Yeah.

Okay, so next question.

Okay.

Did.

Did Europe have any ancient pyramids?

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Bosnia.

Yeah.

So in Bosnia, there's actually a whole national park for the Pyramid of the sun set up.

And is it.

Oh, Osmanovich, I think, is the guy.

Oh, yeah, it's ancient.

It's like from 19,000 years ago or something like that.

The only problem is there's no evidence of it.

And whenever people go there, like geologists, they go, this is geology.

And I like the way you both are simultaneously taking it.

He's got this.

But it's just geology.

And also, though, interestingly enough, though, to this day you do get people who've been there to the archaeological park and say that they've taken part in and seen archaeological excavation.

And I just.

I wonder, presumably what they're seeing is people doing digging, not actually finding archaeology.

But.

Yeah, but yeah, it's interesting.

They're called flatirons, which for a long time I called them flatirons because I'd never heard that said out loud.

And then one day I heard on, I think it was a National Geographic program talking about the flatirons in part of the US And I went, oh, flatirons.

Ah, not flatirons.

Yeah, yeah, but semiro's managies have excavated a lot before.

He had on his web page picture from his excavations where he came.

We found a ancient road leading up and what he ever done is dug down.

So he hit bedrock.

Yeah.

And then just put the angles of the shaft a bit so it goes like a road.

But he has no idea what he's doing.

And part of his evidence is photos with a crystal camera that can be only be interpreted by its inventor that photos the area of the hill.

Wow.

Wow.

And I thought geophysics was complicated.

That's astonishing.

But.

So his background I believe was in oil perspection.

He went and worked in Texas for a long time.

Yeah.

He has had a.

I think it's a BA in economic of some sort.

Then he got a PhD in social science about the crystal skull.

Okay.

And how the ancient Maya invented them.

I have no idea how it.

So.

So what institution did he pay for that one?

No, it was from a real Bosnian university.

But I think he was kind of forced through because if you read that Ph.D.

i have no idea how he made no.

Through the final rounds.

It's just.

I mean you can go and read it because I have a link to it on my website on the Bosnian pyramid episode if you want to have a real headache.

And this wasn't written from a sort of a folk tales perspective.

This was written as though it was an ancient.

No, so it's like a archaeology paper, but written by someone who has no idea about archaeology.

And for a social science or something.

My PhD then.

Oh yeah, Social politics degree.

And then he was part of.

He became a professor, but it was just for a paper mill or a diploma mill.

Okay, okay.

So he often refer himself as a professor.

And my favorite thing about him is that when people started to write him and complain about what he was doing and all that, he just add all these real archaeologists that wrote him in complaining as advisors on his website.

Listen, that's a genius move.

That's a genius move.

Yeah.

Hey, you're advising me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You get.

You get exposure.

It's a win win.

Genius move.

Oh, wow.

But to answer your question more seriously, there are one ancient pyramid in Europe that still stands and it's in Rome and it's an actual burial.

Then we have a pyramidal structure in Hellenicon in Greece.

But I don't think those were pyramids.

I think they were just leaning inwards and then would go up as a tower.

And they seem to be quite recent.

I even visited those earlier this spring.

Beautiful place.

But it looks more like construction that we use in farming.

And there's other similar examples in.

I think it's Croatia with similar structure.

And then it had a straight tower on top, but the sides were kind of leaning, had a slope on them.

And crucially, the Rome example is inspired by, of course, expeditions into North Africa.

So in that sense, it's not a Roman pyramid, it's inspired by something else similar to, for example, near to me, Darren Cathedral.

Its architecture is inspired by people coming back from the Middle east having seen mosques and going, oh, we could make that and doing something similar.

No, it was aliens.

They did it, Mark, they did it.

I love the idea of an alien.

They also put the spaceman on the cathedral.

Yeah, yeah.

And the xenomorph.

The xenomorph in Glasgow.

Yeah, the.

I love the idea of an alien going round with, like, either a salesman's coat or a suitcase, briefcase, rather, and just.

Just turning up and going, take me to a leader.

See, you're taking to the leader and she goes, right, have you considered pyramids?

And they just go.

Slaps down the staircase and the pyramid scheme pops up.

Yeah, yes, exactly.

It's a pyramid scheme.

Precisely.

Yeah, yeah.

That's literally what it is.

Yeah, yeah.

Opened up the suit, the briefcase, and before, before.

Before they know it, they signed up.

So the Emperor is just like, so what?

Sorry, what?

Who are you?

What.

What's going on?

This is.

Right, so you want.

Yeah, we're just looking at the.

The thing that signed, going, what's a timeshare?

Yeah, he's like, right, so we're signed up to Package B, Right, okay, yeah.

And.

And they have no time to back out of it before, you know, the Senate's having to, you know, fund a pyramid and the aliens, like, yes, commission.

At the beginning of Saints Row 4, which is one of the best games ever there, there's a whole sequence where Keith David is like the advisor to the.

You are the president and Keith David is the advisor to you.

Goes, okay, so which one, like, the aliens are attacking.

There is literally an alien ship coming and attacking people.

The aliens are coming to suck up Jane Austen.

This is a real thing that happens.

And, oh, if you've never played this game, this game is absolute genius.

So Keith David holds up two contracts and he goes, which one do you want to do first?

Do you want to cure cancer or do you want to cure hunger?

And that's like your first choice as president.

And you go, oh, no, man, fuck cancer.

And then the aliens come and they stop you from curing.

Cancer.

Wow.

Okay.

And so that's really why we have cancer in the world, because, you know, 20 years ago, we stopped the aliens, or the aliens stopped us from making medical.

Yeah, if only.

Speaking of other infuriating things, is the Shroud of Turin real or fake?

In what sense do you mean real?

Well, Mel Gibson just decided to say that it was real.

Oh, come on.

Mel Gibson sail to the Americas and that he don't believe in evolution or carbon dating or whatever he said.

So.

Yeah, yeah.

It's real in the sense that it's a natural artifact that was made by an artisan in the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages, it was, I believe, commissioned by the church itself.

Locally, there are letters discussing this.

It's known as.

There are also letters discussing how it's a fake and how people are really upset that it's a fake.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And people are starting to get a bit too attached to it.

And I believe it was under the previous Pope that the last statement was issued on the Turin Shroud.

And what they said was, undoubtedly, it is central to many people's faith, or rather, it plays a great role in people's faith.

Yes.

But they don't go so far as to say it's not real.

They've read the only reason that people think that this is quote, unquote real is just like Frederick said with our previous question, somebody faked evidence and they claimed that there was blood on the shroud.

There was no blood on the shroud.

It was a paper that got pushed through by somebody who saw the shroud.

I think it was in 1998.

That looks like they had a vision.

They had a vision that it was real and that there was blood on it.

And apparently that was good enough for the people who pushed the paper through.

And of course, that paper has since been retracted.

And it's not real.

We know it isn't.

And people have to understand that in the Middle Ages, people didn't think that this was real.

In the Middle Ages, there were lots of pilgrimages to see lots of different relics and artifacts.

We know that these relics were not real.

It was a representation.

It was a Sunday out.

People could go and see the finger in a cabinet, and then they could come home.

And it was a nice excuse to have a good picnic, to have a nice day out.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a tourist trap, in a sense.

You go there, you bought a medal to show that you was there, and then you went back.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it.

It is.

And no matter What?

And the problem is, of course, conspiracy theorists will keep going back to this one paper in the 90s and going, oh, but you see, he said, he said it was real and they pushed the paper through, so it must be real.

And now, of course, no, he's silencing him.

You have the Shroud Research group, I think they're called, that consists of real scientists, all of them religious, surprise, surprise.

But they are still publishing paper, trying to prove.

And they actually get PA and trying to get new dating techniques.

And the only object I have tested them on is the Tauren shroud.

It's such a shame because in that sense I know fine well that there are religious scientists in my friend group who are deeply skeptical people.

In that sense, you don't have to be making up things just because you have a faith in something else.

But it's also a real shame that, that this comes actually back to the episode that we recorded on Magic, doesn't it?

This idea that somehow in the past there wasn't the complex cultural capacity for people to enjoy fiction in a deeply meaningful, complex way, you know?

Yeah.

In the past people knew that magic was, it was entertainment.

Yeah.

Magic is entertainment.

Mystery plays as.

As.

As a representation and artifacts, icons even of faith as something to inspire you as opposed to something that's literally, in this instance, the shroud of.

That wrapped the body.

So it's.

Yeah, it's an, It's a.

It's an interesting example.

But also this is.

I don't know if this, this is on your list, Michelle, but this is something that I was mentioning to Frederik the other day.

This is, this is why I suspect that the Gunung Padang retracted paper is going to just echo on forever.

For a couple of decades at least.

Because I actually wasn't going to mention that.

You did.

No, because in that sense we've had.

So I sent one link over to you, Frederic, but Now there's been two more since then, since that one on the 27th of December.

There were three or four in the autumn last year.

And obviously the paper was retracted back in March.

And I think what I'm finding quite disappointing is the.

Is the lack of literacy on the part of journalists to understand how important it is that it says this is retracted.

It may still be.

I will, I will just say this, Mark, that I don't think that.

I think that's by design because they will automatic to get clicks.

They will automatically print an article based on a retracted paper and then all the comments on the article will be this Is not true.

This is being retracted.

But they do it purposely to get the rage bait going.

Yeah, and that's one explanation.

But then we have to remember that most papers has gotten rid of their.

Well, science journalists, meaning that they have people that actually can read a scientific paper because it's not like picking up a book.

You have to train a bit to do it.

But the definition of the word retracted is universal.

You don't have bad from the publisher sides in this because they should just remove it off the Internet.

Of course, there can be PDFs floating in obscure places, but they should just put a retracted and then pull down the article and the abstract, basically, and just.

Yeah, this was not correct.

No, no.

Next question.

To infuriate.

So were the four golden hats from the European Bronze Age just priestly antennas?

No, it's to communicate with the space overlord, Mitchell.

Oh, yes.

Sorry.

Excuse me.

Yeah, well, I can't.

You can't see for people who are listening, but Mark's confusion is just really.

Wonderful about the Jormun golden cone hats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But in that sense it was more just a case of the space overlords.

I wonder which ones these are.

Which particular space overlords are we talking about at this point?

It's.

It's a fascinating thing, isn't it?

As well, with hats.

But that's a whole other story.

But are these actually.

Are they just conical?

I'm not quite sure which ones you're referring to.

So these are Bronze Age.

From the Bronze Age and found in Germany.

And there are speculations that they are part of calendar.

If I remember correctly, I actually saw one of them here in December when I was in Berlin and realized that the Pergamon machine was closed for the next 30 years.

That was beautiful.

Delivery.

Thank you.

I was like, oh, no, it's Saturday.

When's it going to be open?

Well, 2050, 2065.

Yeah.

And I realized that they closed it, I think it was in November.

So I was like two weeks too late.

Oh, man, that sucks.

But you got to see the hat.

Got to see the hat.

Yeah.

At least did you get to talk to the alien?

No, I wasn't allowed to put it on.

It was just a bunch of guards tackling me and.

But you did manage to lick it.

That's what's important.

Not even that.

Don't mess with the Germans.

No, no, no.

The next question.

So are mummies, vampires and Draugrs aliens?

Of course.

Where the.

Sorry, where the hell are we getting this idea from?

This comes straight From Frederick's podcast.

This is amazing.

Wow.

I've heard lots of other interesting conversation around, particularly draugr, but that they are alien.

So is it the idea that the alien consciousness is seeding itself into the recently deceased?

If I.

I'm a bit hazy on that because it's quite long ago, but there's something.

The ancient aliens quickly ran out of ideas and tried to scramble to find content.

So I think it's that they have this weird disease and, you know, since they are immortal, it must be some sort of alien connection between them.

Oh, is it possible that.

Yeah.

Okay, interesting.

Okay, yeah.

Here's another question for you, Mark.

Okay, yeah.

What archaeological evidence is there for giants, specifically the Lovelock Giant, the San Diego Giant, and the famous Cardiff Giant.

There's real bodies.

I've seen the news clipping.

Well, the Cardiff one, is that a real body?

I don't know about that.

I.

I have been.

The one good thing about having now actually finally taken an indefinite hiatus from having an arcaseu Facebook presence is that I no longer have to sift through the feed of Photoshop skulls.

And I mean, the other day there was a toothbrush.

This was AI actually an AI toothbrush.

It was meant to be the size of a.

Basically, I don't know, a bus.

Because giants.

And they can't even get the scale of these things consistent because, like, sometimes the giants appear to be just big people.

In other cases they seem to be the size of.

Of the Colossus of Rhodes or something.

And it bothers me.

But then what bothers me even more, yes, this is a long winded answer because I have no actual answer for you.

What bothered me even more is that we're getting this now in.

In the new Indiana Jones computer game, which is a fantastic game.

I'm very much.

So good.

It's so good.

So good.

But they're doing it.

They're doing the Nephilim and they're doing something else at the end.

I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't finished the game, and that's a shame because it's one of the.

More.

It's not as overtly colonially crap as ancient aliens and so on so forth, but it's one of the most persistent pseudoarchaeological New Age myths, and it's strangely popular with people who are very much of faith of a belief, and they need this to be real.

For some reason.

It confuses and upsets me, basically, because clearly you have people who are making, especially in the early days Is it.

Any better than the Ark of the Covenant?

It is better.

I think the Ark of the Covenant is.

Is better actually, in terms of.

Because at the very least there's a focused single object which has a connection to the storage of laws and Moses and all this.

There's a reason for this focus of an object.

In that sense, it could be construed as something similar to the Chirin Shroud.

It's an icon of faith.

It's a representation of a story.

But with the giants, it's the fact that it's so inconsistent.

But it's more.

In the early 2000s, especially in the early 2010s, people were really ramping up their Photoshop skills and you had these really upsetting little people next to giant skulls, like they don't want you to know the truth.

We all saw that crap.

Yeah.

And it's such a.

I mean they've.

Been going on with this for ages though.

I mean look at all the tabloids.

You know, you see everybody, tabloids, alien baby is born to giant man.

Everybody knows it's fake.

It's just funny.

But I have a special place in my heart for those old school Photoshop pictures.

It's just something.

I mean, I do.

But the problem is that the comments below are indistinguishable from comments you get still today.

People just go, really push it.

So for example, this is completely off topic, but someone commented the other day on it on a TikTok piece about it was the Joe Rogan wristwatches clip.

So someone shows him pictures of.

I think it's a Sumerian carvings with so called wristwatches.

And, and someone commented saying, ah, but isn't it possible that, you know, don't get me wrong, she said, I don't believe that they're wristwatches.

But isn't it possible that our leaders are trying to make us think that gems and quartz and diamonds don't have special time travel powers so that we don't.

Not at all where I thought you were going.

Yeah, I know, I know.

So that we don't investigate it.

So that we remain powerless.

And I didn't respond, but I really wanted to say no, you know what?

Because Sharon, you take your little rose quartz and you go up to a world leader and you magically bibbidi bobidi boo them away, I'll believe you.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, do it.

Fine.

But I think it's much more likely that people getting lost in those comment sections is precisely what lets people get away with not tackling climate change.

Not doing effective economic work, not actually working for the benefit of humanity.

It's.

It's my giants and my research.

And then you have to humanity.

Yeah.

You have to remember that the science often radicalizes you in a way.

So I completely destroyed my social media accounts for this podcast thinking of ancient aliens, because I press the, you know, pseudoscience.

It gets more and more and it gets darker and darker for every day that passes by.

But I mean, for a normal person that clicks it, oh, this looks interesting.

Then they see it again and again and kind of reinforces this idea that it must be true.

And I mean, as I said, special plus for plays in the heart for the old school Photoshop AI.

I'm not really.

I hate those.

But they.

They even got lazier recently.

So have you encountered Stargate Voyager or Derek Olson, as he's also known?

He published.

He published a lot of weird claims online, but recently he published a picture of a skeleton and said, 15 real evidence for giants.

And I reverse Google that image.

So it's from a mirror article talking about the excavation in the Astrakhan region in Russia that mentions nothing about them being very tall.

So it's just a fake.

This skeleton is far away.

Dougal.

No cropped it, so it kind of looks big, but wow.

Wow, that is lazy.

That is very.

We're not going to talk about the Holy Grail, but I just want to mention it for a second because all of these, and obviously all these giants are fake, but all of them for specific reasons.

But especially like the Cardiff Giant, which was just like a carnival hoax and it's made out of stone, and when you look at it, you just go, oh, come on.

Like, who would believe that this is real?

This is ridiculous.

He looks like a Pez candy.

It's really terrible.

But people, I.

I've heard.

I've even heard people say things like, oh, but people who don't believe in conspiracy theories say, oh, but the Holy Grail was real.

And I go, no, we know who invented it.

It was never real.

It was really, you know, it's part of the Christian cycle and it's meant as a symbol of purity and faith and it's unattainable.

That is what the Grail means.

But it's something that's completely unattainable.

But people still believe that it's real.

But just because it's so prevalent in media and as well when it comes to Enochian literature, which is what the giant, these giants of the Nephilim are from, people, people look at the Ark.

And they go, oh, but like the Ark of the Covenant, that might have been real.

We don't have any evidence for it, but it might have been.

So why not the Nephilim?

If we can find evidence for it, then no, it has to be.

They think that, like the Book of Enoch and the Book of Giants were taken out of canon because, oh, the government doesn't want you to know.

They don't want you to know that there are really giants.

You go, no, those were written way later.

That's Greco Roman time.

People don't understand the timeline of when things biblically were written down.

So in that sense, they see books like this and they just think, well, why isn't it part of Canada?

Why don't we know about this?

So in that sense, do you think then that actually there isn't.

Is there a safe level in that sense?

If I was trying to make a distinction between the Ark and giants and even, for example, the Charing Shroud and giants, but is it possibly a case of, for example, maybe actually the Shurin shroud should be considered to be akin to the Ark, if not giants, because it's clearly an artifact of fiction.

It's religious fiction, but it's still fiction.

Should we get into the whole.

Is all religious fiction just fiction?

It's a pretty deep discussion.

I'm not, I don't, I don't want, I don't.

This comment section is going to be hard enough anyway.

But, you know, I think it's.

I think it's possible for people to have articles of faith.

Yeah, yeah.

In like a personal way.

But it's interesting.

Yeah, I think, I see, I see why you get, why you, you hop from the giants then to, to the ark.

Because in that sense, which, why are you letting one through, as it were, the gap and not the other?

Yeah, yeah.

So, for example, if the Nephilim were mentioned in conjunction with Noah and the Ark, and if we don't have.

I mean, there's obviously Dr.

Ring Finkel, who's such a legend, has written the Ark before Noah, in which they talk about what the ark might have looked like and how based on the instructions, there's probably a giant coracle and that kind of thing, but again, we have no evidence of the Ark.

No evidence of Noah's Ark, I should say.

So is it really, at that point, is it really any different than the Ark of the Covenant?

Yeah.

Let'S make you angrier, Mark.

So the.

I'm always angry.

That's my secret.

I'm just going to Hulk out eventually.

Are the obelisks.

An Illuminati conspiracy.

Which specific obelisks?

All of them.

Right, okay.

No.

No, because they're part of the ancient alien Egyptian power grid.

So we all know that the pyramids generate the hard drive, electricity, and then the obelisks are, you know, like pylons that makes it flow forward.

Yeah, well, there you go.

That's it.

Yeah.

I mean, one interesting thing I know about the obelisk that ended up in London, the Cleopatra's Needle, is that they used as a ballast for the ship.

Mummies, cat mummies, and other remains of the dead, which when they got to London, they then used as fertilizer on fields in and around the countryside.

So, you know, why do people work so hard to make these things make sense?

Because the Illuminati, you think that they'd have better things to do, wouldn't you?

I mean, also, I mean, that organization lasted a handful of years and that was it.

They were done thousands of years after the last obelisk.

That's what they want you to think.

Oh, yeah, sorry, yes, exactly.

That's what they want you to think, you know.

Yeah.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

And just like that, he's gone.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that one.

Obelisks.

This is.

Yeah, this is.

This is an education.

Yeah, thank you.

Here's another one you probably haven't heard, Mark.

Is Newgrange aligned with the Orion star alignment?

No.

No, it's not.

Yes, according to ancient alien theory.

It's like we're all trying to out dry each other.

There's this moment where I go, what?

Oh, no.

Yeah.

We got someone commenting that it was proven that it was aligned the Orion constellation.

And it's well known that all monuments in this area aligns with different stars and star signs.

And then I asked, what paper was this published in?

And then he stopped responding.

Probably because he's still trying to find the paper.

I mean, paywalls are horrible things.

Jstor, my friends.

Jstor, Edudemia, Edu.

You can find all papers there for free.

And all you have to do is make an account.

There is no cost whatsoever.

Oh, I know.

You can do it as well through your public library.

They can do it for you.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's cool.

I know I have a legacy login as a alumnus from my uni, but I've never used it because frankly I forgot.

And then now I'm now just going, oh, yeah.

All this time I've been going, papers need access.

Okay, thank you.

Public Service.

Next question, just for you, Mark.

Yeah.

Why do archaeologists love bricks so much?

Because they're amazing.

Bricks are bricks of wonderful things.

Baked bricks, cooked bricks, ceramic bricks that exist, broadly speaking, further north than 40 degrees on our planet because it's too damp to have sunbaked.

Bricks that don't collapse are not only like Lego, they're not only sort of little things that you can build almost anything out of, but they're also wonderful little records of material usage, of building techniques, but also just of things like footprints.

You know, you get cats and dogs and people.

You get beautiful.

There's an antifix tile from a Roman bathhouse in Prastatin where I'm from, that exists because actually, tiles and bricks and other ceramic building material is actually quite hard.

It's one of the best pieces of evidence that we have.

And I feel like you've just given me a little.

You've given me a little shop window here for one of my not so jokey genuine loves.

I've given you hope, which I'm now going to crash.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Well, I'll just say I've got a small collection of bricks in the back garden.

I can send you a photo if you want.

I also enjoy good bricks, but in Sweden, we don't really have brick building until the 1200s.

So it was our first building made out of brick, was built just outside of Birke, the Viking settlement, by the Swedish royalty at the time.

And, I mean, Sweden isn't really placed for bricks.

We have other cheaper materials.

We haven't used it as much, but it was supposed to be a very fabulous building.

And we even have found bricks with marks of who made them.

And he was very proud, so he signed it in both sides in runes.

So we know that one who made these bricks was named Bove.

Nice, Nice.

You see bricks.

Great.

Here's a question to crush your soul, Mark.

Okay.

Why won't archaeologists just submit that the Earth is flat?

Oh.

I lift you up and I put you down.

Well, because, to be fair, why would we like.

And I mean that as in you won't admit it.

Okay.

No, no.

But not only.

Well, actually, no.

Okay, let's flip it on its head.

Why wouldn't we?

Okay, so in that sense, if the Earth was flat and we lived in a perfect Euclidean geometric projection, that actually it would be wonderful for strata, it'd be fantastic for doing an excavation because everything would be flat and you wouldn't have confusing shapes and gravity wouldn't mess up a site after the fact.

You wouldn't have to figure out the processes going on once something is actually in the ground.

Life would be much easier as an archaeologist if the world was flat.

But it's not, and we know it's not for various reasons, which I'm.

I understand, but I'm also not an astrophysicist who can.

Who points this out stuff out a lot else.

Just very simply.

Even the Greeks knew the world was flat.

That's the point.

Yeah, Aristotle, the idea that the world is fly.

People think, oh, no, they knew the world was round.

But how did they knew that, Michelle?

Because of the aliens?

No, no, they.

No, they knew it because of sticks in the ground and observing shadows.

And actually there's a.

One thing.

Sorry, I know that was a joke, but one thing that I've been playing Horizon Zero dawn in the past couple of months and there's a wonderful moment in that game where the protagonist is climbing up a hill to get somewhere and someone in her ear is saying, the world isn't flat.

Aloy, this may surprise you.

And she just goes, of course it's not flat.

And she talks about how just observer observing.

I think it was shadows from the top of the ruin in the city.

You could tell that they change.

Yeah, and.

And I thought, yeah, people just thinking about it, just genuinely just mulling it over always.

No, this whole idea came from Washington Irving and it was really just a new Catholic idea.

It had nothing to do with any kind of ancient anything.

Ancient people as far back certainly as Greeks knew that there were.

Even the very first map of the world that we have from Babylon is round.

End of story.

And that's something that amazed me with the ancient alien people.

That they might be anti evolution, they might be anti history, they might be racist, but they are not flat Earthers.

Dude, you can call me a lot of things, but yeah.

Even that I looked at.

That's dumb.

Guys, the alien told us they're around this Earth and they are alien.

They're flying above.

That's how ancient people know the globe is round.

How would they otherwise know?

It's impossible to know.

I do wonder what happens when these guys share a conference.

Oh, Frederick, you gotta go, man.

You gotta go and just, just get the flat Earthers to talk to the.

To the guys, the other guys who are talking about how they.

Oh, that would be a fun documentary idea.

Take flat Earthers to argue with ancient.

Alien people and I imagine you can probably track this stuff on a sort of almost like a logic gate where they're together.

They're together.

Together.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

The Earth is flat.

No, the Earth isn't flat.

And then they're together.

They're together.

And then.

Oh, oh, aliens.

Oh, no, brown people.

And then you'll just see this sort of.

This progression of.

It could be a beautiful diagram, you know, and then, ironically, they all come back to one point after all of that, when it just says against the main.

You know, the mainstream is against us.

Yeah.

So it would all come back.

It was like a.

Be like a bell curve at the other.

At the other end of it would be like, but the mainstream is against us.

They all say in one voice.

And then where they will start fighting again about who is mainstream of them.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you're mainstream, man.

Yeah.

You just have some random guy in the middle, breaking up the fight going, bro.

Trust me.

Absolutely.

We only have a couple questions left.

So next question.

Why is nobody mentioning the fact that an alien ship came to see Charlemagne?

I can't keep saying this, but that's a new one on me.

Did I cover this or have you started improvising, Michelle?

I said this one you mentioned very briefly.

Yeah, Charlemagne.

Well, but all world leaders, they kind of want to assign alien connection with.

Because you can't be a powerful leader without alien interference.

So you're ruling from the benevolence of the alien space lord.

The same with Alexander the Great.

He apparently had either UFO fighting for him and maybe even against him.

In this one specifically, in the annals of Lorsch in Germany, it says that there were two shields burning with red color and moving above the church when Charlemagne got there.

So, I mean, there are other medieval texts that recall other celestial phenomena around this same time.

But it's the same thing with the wood plaque from Germany.

There are so many things that people will look at these old medieval depictions and they go, aha.

You see aliens.

My favorite is the one, the one from England with the aliens that climbs down from rope ladders.

Oh, that one I don't know about.

That one's fun.

I don't remember the full story, but it's kind of like a sailor and he comes down and then he drowns in the air because he's not from.

Oh, oh, oh, that poor guy.

I think one of them is also about an anchor that gets stuck in a church because they kind of.

They need to anchor the spaceship.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Makes sense, I suppose.

Second to last question.

What happened to the aliens who fell from Magonia?

From what?

Magonia.

Magonia.

Is this too much?

Have we entered a realm that's too much for Frederick?

I think Frederick's brain, a certain part of his brain just automatically wipes every time he gets a trauma response.

Yeah.

Deep into the hole and he just goes, oh, God.

I don't remember.

This one is a 9th century Latin manuscript.

The archbishop Agobard of Lyon complained about the French peasantry insisted belief that a certain region called Begonia when ships came in the clouds and apparently there were people who showed up and got off and.

Yeah, yeah, that's part of the legends I just mentioned.

But I'm bad with names.

It's horrible.

It's likely that the archbishop just made up this story because nobody else mentions it whatsoever.

And it was.

It was.

People think of this one because it was the Brothers Grimm who latch on to the story and then repeat it.

Okay.

No, there's no.

There's no evidence this ever happened.

And people think it might have been some kind of part of either part of a Germanic or Frankish mythology, but there's no evidence ever happened.

Same thing with the airship of colonic noise.

There's a very famous.

Actually, Howard and Frederick were talking about this.

As Howard said, I don't understand where people get this whole idea of Celtic and Viking peoples and airships.

So there is a story about the airship of Palm Hua's that happened in the early medieval times.

And there was an airship that came in again.

People got off and said, oh, how do you do?

How do you do?

Let's have lunch.

And then that's it.

But nothing else happened.

And this is talked about.

This event is actually talked about in a couple of sagas.

Okay.

Yeah.

But flying boats are quite common idea.

I mean, if you want to have people.

I've always wanted to fly and using a boat seems like a logical idea.

I know that Canada has some.

Some lumber stories regarding flying birch Canutes and.

Yeah, lumbers to make a deal with the devil and then it can go to Montreal and celebrate.

It's very hard to get the wings on the canoes this time of year.

Hey.

Yeah.

That's the magic word that makes the boats fly.

Yeah, exactly.

This is a slightly dark joke, but I saw the other day, obviously, with recent talk of US expansion, the idea of Canada becoming a state, which is laughable.

People were workshopping names for the new country and they were saying it should be the usa.

Very good.

No, not very good.

No.

Okay.

It's not funny.

You're not looking Forward being the 51st state, Michelle.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, you know, we'd love to take over the US and give them free health care.

That's great.

Yeah, let's do that for them.

Yeah.

Especially with the horrible fires going on now.

We would, you know, Canada's already down there fighting the fires, so we would love to give them insurance.

Yeah.

Canadians and gay firefighters, apparently.

Are they one in the same?

I'd love to see pictures of those.

Fantastic.

Great.

Love it.

Last question.

Did the aliens build Rome so that all roads lead to the same spaceship?

Come on.

Come on.

That's a saying, man.

That's a saying that someone.

I don't know where it comes from.

I can't remember where it comes from, but it's a saying and it's not.

That's not a guiding principle.

Rome wasn't built before the road.

After the road network.

Rather, that implies that there were roads there.

And then the Romans founded Rome.

That's not how it worked.

That's not how it happened.

And then the idea that therefore it's a drawing process to suck in humanity onto the mothership.

It's.

Oh, just logic, you know, basic, like, like, like, like, like just, just principles of.

Of cause and effect.

That's all we need in 2025, and I'm not sure we're going to get it.

And all roads go to the object that it's referring to, not the Coliseum.

Do you know, I would say it goes to Coliseum because it's a great place to land your spaceship.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

The circuit.

Okay, I see that it's in reference to the malarium aureum, the stone.

But I mean, it's logical that the Romans would build roads that lead to Rome since it was the capital.

Yeah, that's where the aliens are, obviously.

Yeah.

I'm like, I love you guys, but can we, like, next time do a quiz that doesn't kill us?

This was at Frederick's request, so on that.

How'd you do, Mark?

What's the score?

Well, I haven't actually.

This isn't taught.

I have a score of seven, which Frederic will be happy to know is not as high as his score, which is 7.5.

So very well done, Frederick.

Well done.

And the 0.5 was just for a little bit of extra, extra knowledge here and there.

So very well done.

Thank you, Mark, now that you've won, what do you get?

Yeah, I guess I don't have to leave the show to Mark, who otherwise would be your new host.

Oh, God.

Just crying.

I don't want to have to, Mark.

Ugly crying in a microphone.

But I didn't know, I didn't, I didn't mean to win the quiz.

Wow.

Well, I don't know.

I mean do, do we, do we think that, that the ideas are going to calm down as far as.

No.

No.

Okay.

No.

Okay.

As long as there is.

It's something I've known in general well, I think I've seen really in the last 20 years, especially now with horrific AI and all those kinds of things.

People will believe what they want to believe and the interest in the truth and in history, people are just not interested.

We do this as well on my show where we talk about things that actually are historical events that people will say happened, which we don't mean did not happen.

And it really is down to education and the education systems in everybody's individual country.

And unfortunately there are certain countries that have unfortunate education systems that are designed to keep people guessing really.

And they just leave people to find out on their own.

And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't.

But I actually working on Ancient Apocalypse at the moment, season two.

So I have new headaches going on here.

But Michelle, Mark, great having you back.

Happy that I didn't have to hand over the show to you.

Mark.

I think you're equally as happy.

Remember, read a fine print in the contract next time.

Yeah, Predatory Frederick contract.

Yeah.

But take care and I hope to see you again sometime.

Bye bye.

We'll see if we come back.

And again, a huge thank you to Michelle and Mark.

I'm happy to walk out to this a victor even if the well victory was slim.

And make sure to check out Mark's and Michelle's content on other channels.

I will link their stuff in the show notes to this podcast so you can just go there and get even more history, archaeology and a lot of different things over at their channels.

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Again if you want to contact me it can be done through most social media sites and if you have comments, corrections, suggestions or hankering to write that email in all caps, you find my contact in info on the website.

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You find a lot of other great shows like the CRM Podcast and well and My Travel on their website.

Producer of the show is Ashley Array and I, Frederik Tresahan wrote most of the episodes, not this one, edited and mastered the episode you are listening to.

Sandra Martelor created intro music and her outro is by the band called Tralsgruve who sings their song Fuli Hut.

Links to both of these artists can be found in the show notes.

Until next time, keep shoveling that science.