Ben Van Kerkwyk: The Unknown History of Egypt

What it's April. What do you mean it's April? What happened in March? What happen in February? There we go. Time is ticking on. You know, I'm excited because this is the month for our Grant Egyptian Tour number five, and we're taking a nice group of listeners to the secrets of

ancient Egypt. And you know what makes us fun is that we start off in Cairo and we spend a day on the plateau looking at some of the buildings there, and there's some amazing megalithic buildings, the Sphinx Temple and the Pyramids themselves, and the surrounding area has all kinds of fascinating bits and pieces of history that we discover we enjoy. And so that is the kickoff. That's the twenty sixth of this month that is coming up, and wow,

exciting to go back. You know, I have to mention this that I have been fortunate to run into some really great tour operators who aren't focused so much on the almighty dollar. They want to give back to the tourists, meaning that they find great locations. For the most part, our tours are private, meaning that we get to go to these locations without the general public. You know, we go inside the Pyramid when everyone's gone, we go I mean they shut it down at five. We go there around seven when

it's aired out, it's been somewhat refreshed, and there's no line. There's no line. I can't imagine going into the Great Pyramid, the Cufu Pyramid with a line of people. That would be not only claustrophobic, but just oh a challenge because everything's staircases and down through the subterranean chamber, which is just a tube, basically a square tube. So yeah, it's great to

do private visits. And then we go to Abodos and we see the Osiren unusual building, We go to the Serapim, we go to a number of museums. Oh, it's just just an amazing time of year ago and we're looking forward to it. I want to mention this real quickly. I found out a couple of months ago that doctor Ed Barhard, our own doctor Ed, has been to and taking groups to Easter Island Jesus. And when he showed me some photographs, I was like, oh, I got to do

that. And so I don't know how many people we can take I think it's gonna be maxing at twenty five, but we want to do this in twenty twenty five. We want to do this next year. So if you're interested in joining us in the Easter Island and Ed's tour is in some areas that don't typically get a tourism, come out and join us. Send me an email to Earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com. Let me know if you want to go. I think I got fourteen people so far,

so that's like, what's that it's almost a little more than half. Well take twenty five us less than half, and that's gonna be amazing because I've

been wanting to go there for years. So check that out. Check out out all of our tours at earth Ancients dot com forward slash tours Egypt this month, we're gonna be in Turkey in August, and then we do our the Mexico Yucatan Temples on November eighth through the seventeenth, So Earth Ancient you want to see it all, They're all listed on Earth ancients dot com, forward slash tours Hey. Today is the beginning of our programming with Cosmic Summit

Conference, which is June fifteenth, and sixteenth. They have an amazing lineup of guests speakers from around the world, people like Randall Carlson, Robert Schock, Scott Walter from Unearth America, our own favorite Praven Mohan, Hugh Newman, and a whole bunch of other people including today's guest Ben Van Kirkwick from Uncharted X. This is a very very good program, great conference. If

you can get out to North Carolina, consider it. For more information on all the details, go to cosmicsummit dot com, forward slash Earth Ancients. We are our media sponsor, and if you can't get out there, consider doing the streaming. You can see these guys live from the comfort of your computer, your TV, wherever you are. And I gotta tell you the reason I love this is the price fifty bucks to do the streaming for the

Saturday the fifteenth of June or Sunday the sixteenth. Fifty bucks is nothing. It's so cheap. And we're gonna have George Howard on next week to talk about this. These a listers from the world of anomalist Discoveries. Always fun to have. Rendal Carlson. By the way, Randall will be on the show as well as most of these other people throughout the next two and a half months, so we'll get a chance to discuss what they're talking about.

But Cosmicsummit dot com stream it. You know, I've always telling people, if you can get to these conferences, sit down and see what is going on. Most of them have exhibits of their material, some of them have artifacts. Really get a sense of what's happening, where the whole industry is heading, and lots of new discoveries. So it's always fun to be a media sponsor because not only do we have great people to talk with, we get a chance to promote these worthy conferences. And I got to tell you

there's a lot that are not worthy. I shouldn't say that everyone's doing their best, but you know, there's so many conferences on UFOs, on aliens and stuff like that. It's really rare to have a conference that has actual scientists and really top of the line research investigators giving us a sense of the ancient past. And this is what Cosmic Summit is all about. So again for the details on the tickets on the lineup, go to Cosmicsummit dot com,

forward slash Earth Ancients and check it out. My guest today is going to be Ben vn Kirkwick from Uncharted x and he is got a lot to say about not only the Egyptian ruins that he's visited. He just came back, I think a couple of weeks ago, after a six week tour of many of the ruins, and of course he is doing research there and so we're gonna hear about what he discovered, what's some of the what are some

of the interests that he is pursuing. And we finished this interview with new highlights on these unusual vases that have been found at Sakara that apparently our machine was some unknown technology and they don't really know if they were used as everyday household fases, plates, bowls, whatever, but it's it's a it's evident that these things were uh carved using some technology we don't know and they're really,

really, really a great fascination. So so again the program is the Unknown History of Egypt, and my guest today is Ben Van Kirkwick from Uncharted x H. This week we start our support of the conference Cosmic Summit. It's going to be held in North Carolina June fifteenth to the sixteenth, and one of the feature presenters is a gentleman who I haven't met, but I've

heard a hell of a lot from about and that's Ben van Kirkwick. He is the Uncharted ex Promoter author and he's a research and investigator who's done a hell of a lot of good work. And it's funny because it's a small world. We know a lot of the same people out there, and so we want to get into it pretty quickly. Can see Ben at the conference, and they do have streaming media, which I think is fantastic. So

if you can't get yourself out to North Carolina, check out Ben. You can go to a cosmicsummit dot com forward slash Earth Ancients and see the detail. They're charge gen fifty bucks for two days of streaming, and I got to tell you people, that is unheard of. Usually it's about one hundred and fifty a day and there's all kinds of side gigs and things they want to do, So fifty bucks for two days is excellent. So, hey, Ben, welcome to Earth Ancient. It's great to see you, Cliff,

thanks so much. Yeah, it's great to finally meet. Yeah, I've like you say we're running similar circles, but we've never actually had the chance to chat before. Been looking forward to it. Yeah, okay, let's get down to it. When did you you have this? You have a background in engineering, but yeah, this whole phenomenon. I mean, I started traveling to Egypt in twenty eighteen, and I had heard about it,

and I'd read Chris's book, and I've known Chris for years. Blown away by the by the pyramid, blown away by buildings like the Ossyrian, blown away by just so much. What is what is your interest? I mean, is it the same or are you taking it a step further and drilling down into I try to character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a route to the name. But yes, so my interest. I've always been interested, I would say, just the whole history topic. I did

get started in technology and engineering. I have a computer science degree. I started an engineering I switched over to computer science, but I had a twenty year career in that, working for Hewlett Packard more or less the whole time.

But I had always been interested, and I was always and this is a similar story to a lot of people, but I was always a fan of Graham Hancock and his work Fingerprints of the Gods was a fantastic read for me, and it revitalized a lot of that interest, I guess in the early two thousands for me, and then I had the chance to travel with him. I was following him pretty closely, and I think I was back

in twenty thirteen. I spent a couple of weeks with him in Peru and Bolivia, which is another one of those spots on the world that's just full of these mysteries and this incredible stuff work and these giant deltas in technology that are very obvious once you see it between what the Inca were capable of and then this older sort of mysterious megalithic stone work. And then a year or two after that, I went to Egypt also with Graham on a tour with

him. I think that was twenty fifteen, and you know, it was really on that trip to Egypt, my first time in Egypt, but I was just like, man, there's there's absolutely something here. It was during those two weeks where I met a very good friend of mine and a teacher of mine for many years now, usef Awen, who's the son of a chem Laonen and he you know, he has that a similar mindset to me in terms of he's drilling down into these engineering details. I wouldn't say the

two drills and the analysis of toolworks, and he's a stonemason. That's not really a topic that you know, Graham goes super heavy into, but it's certainly one that I'm particularly interested in. So that really I was like, man, there's something here. I've got to go and pursue this in more detail. So after that, I just kept going back to Egypt and back to Egypt and other places around the world and diving into it and then learning

about guys like Chris done the work. You know, you started reading Flinta's Petrie and getting into that engineering aspect of it. And I typically do focus a lot on the evidence for what I'd call like a lost ancient technology, which is literally I think the title of one of Chris's books has, you know, lost lost, lost Egyptian technology, whatever it is, lost technology

of ancient Egypt. I'm sorry, and yeah, and that's that's my focus, and that's just I like to dive into those details and try and look

at the history of discovery of these things. What were the controversy that they've that some of these different bits of evidence have been generating, and in some cases you're talking about debates that have been going on for one hundred and fifty plus years, when you know, from Petrie's time right up until modern day, and I've never really found any of the standard model explanations for it to

be sufficient. And and yes, by doing that, it's it's led us to where we are today with and it's something I was super pleased to hear from, you know, Chris Dunn, and I became friends with Chris Dunn also his son Alex, and just to find out that then they had actually been doing something that I'd been calling for for years without the capability to do it, I guess, but the idea that we can apply our modern technology, apply all of our efforts in an open minded fashion to investigate some of

these mysteries and these objects and artifacts and try to peel back that onion and

learn a bit more about how they've been made. And we started, you know, they were doing that with the vases, and then I started to cover it and came in and and and that was that whole project, I guess, And that the videos that came out from that led to this open source, crowd sourcing nature of a lot of other people piling in and with various expertises in different areas, whered cryptographers and other even investors who then went

out and purchased more vas for more analysis. And it's just we've learned a tremendous amount in the last the last year or so on some of these artifacts, and I think it's it represents kind of one of the largest leaps forwards in our understanding of some of these precise objects in many decades. I got to mention that your YouTube channel unshuted x as a monster. It's almost at

half a million people. Bravo to you to do that, and you have good, very high production standards, and I really enjoy watching your program, So you got you've got a good following. Why do you think the orthodoxy, if you want to call it, the academia is so disconnected from this

obvious what we see as super anomalies. It's yeah, I mean I think there's a few reasons for it. The first one I'd say is that and this is something that I hope in the future a little bit, and that is that I wouldn't describe euroclassic Egyptology, or I mean archaeology in general as being particularly engineering focused, Like I think, there, you know it is. It's a science, but it's probably more closely related to like cultural studies.

A lot of archaeology and egyptology is looking at what daily life like, how did their society work, what was their structure, what were they saying, what were they writing. That's what they're interested in. There's generally not a huge amount of interest in how things are manufactured, or what level of precision is shown in particular artifacts, or know how they achieved some of the

things that they obviously did. Who I mean, the evidence is right there and in front of us that these things were achieved, So that's the first thing. So but at the same time, they do try to address these problems, and they I find that it's an interesting fact that they do claim dominion over ancient artifacts. It's something I say often is like you wouldn't ask an archaeologist to to design the chair that he's sitting on, but if it's

an ancient chair, he's going to claim sort of authority over it. So that's that's been one problem. Because a lot of the new data and new these new things that are I think affecting that story of history are coming from

fields outside of archaeology, adjacent fields of science. You've got there's all sorts of things now in you know, climate science and DNA and genetic evidence along with the engineering aspects of it. So I think ultimately i'd like to I'd hope that archaeology itself becomes a bit more multidisciplinary and the other the other aspect to this, I think is and this is something that is the case in many sciences that have a have it established or just like an establishment which it's

by its own nature is sort of going to resist change. You have people that have their authority I think, and their positions that are derived from their their sense of personal power, and their authority is derived from their position as an expert in this particular interpretation of it. So I think there's been a strong defense of that standard model of history, which really hasn't changed much in

the last one hundred years. We've had that similar story of civilization started six thousand years ago, et cetera, and it was very much a primitive build up from you know, Stone age to a Bronze Age, then you know, on to where we are today, and that's you know, that's that's

something that may may be only shifted through generational change. I certainly remain hopeful at that because I do get contacted by students that are going to be the academics of tomorrow, and they, I think have no choice but to deal with some of the evidence that independent researchers and other fields of science are presenting, and they seem and certainly there's I think it there's going to be a

bit more of an open minded approach in the future. But I think that's one of the challenges and one of the reasons why I think the academics in this field have such a strong response and pushing back. It's because the nature of the discourse has changed too like it used to be. That's why I'm such a fan of guys like Flinder's Petrie, because if you read their work, some of these old sort of Victorian era or turn of the nineteenth century

explorers, I mean, they're a bit more open minded. I mean Petrie was would tell you when there's something he couldn't explain. But those discussions he was having with his peers happened in those you know, in those society groups or in the university halls of residents and things, and that's shifted now like that's in you know, fifty so years ago. We see the rise of alternative, independent researchers publishing books that are doing an end run around there's university

systems that the conversation started to get broadened out. And then you have the Internet and you have YouTube, and you have you know, punters like me can somehow get a voice in a platform and present their ideas, and it's

I think in some ways it's probably a little threatening to that establishment. If you look at the reaction to Graham Hancock show, you know, Engine Apocalypse, that's evident that I think guys like John Hoops and the Society of American Archeology, they're desperate to be able to figure out how they can get into

social media and popular media and podcasts and things like that. So I think I think it's just forced a bit more of a visceral reaction given that the now there's a lot of this discussion and a lot of these topics are being talked about outside of those just purely academic domains. I think you're right. I think that there is a need to present history in some kind of a logical manner, even though it isn't always logical when you look at the artifacts,

and these these guys are threatened by people like Graham Hancock. So I'm curious Ben on your take on the unusual artifacts and buildings like the Osirian and Serrapium, the Gigantic boxes. We're told that you know, from an an

novelist point of view, that there's a prehistory, an unknown history. But there's also a group of Egyptologists and even people that I hang with, like Mohammed Embriam, who does our tours I know my pretty well, who believes that perhaps in the Middle Kingdom there was a Renaissance period where maybe there was a discovery of this high tech. But what do you say about that, because you know, the problem when you're dealing with any ancient culture is there's

so little documentation. Yeah, it's all guesswork. Yeah it's tough, and he's you know, you're right, there is this is in the nuance of kind of ancient Egyptian history. But there is definitely there seems to be almost a high quality or high and the Middle Kingdom is quite short relative to the other periods. There is this seems to be a little an uptick in quality

of work. There's the subtle differences between say, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom, and the Middle Kingdom stuff seems to be often superior in terms of stone work. It's possible. I do think that a lot of I mean, it's something Use also says a lot and I agree with him as you can't

ever underestimate the dynastic Egyptians. I mean, so, for example, I think some of the statues at Luxe or there's a subtle difference between what is what is achievable, and what isn't And some of those statues there I think were done during those periods, potentially in the Middle Kingdom as well, and then they were overwritten later on by Ramsy's a second in the New Kingdom and

had his name put on them. But you know, it's there's evidence for I think these the real significant tools and stone work that goes back to the very earliest periods of time as well. And these are you know, Old Kingdom things that are in the pyramids. You've got tube driels something that I

kind of term on the trips and stuff is like pyramid builder technology. So to me, it's it seems clear that there was certainly something going on before the dynastic Egyptians sort of rose and had their civilization as we know it, which is also something that they themselves say, like they have their own history in their books, and there's several sources for this, the Turin Papyrus Manato that goes back some forty two thousand years, I think, And they talk

about themselves as a legacy civilization and refer to times like Zeptepi, when the gods themselves walk to the earth. So it does this idea that there was a precursor civilization and that they are the legacy of that. They are still connected to, they have cultural memories of it, if not their technology. I think that matches with what they say and it it does, to my

mind, matches some of the evidence we see on the ground. But it's also possible that some of that may there may have been either groups or like sex or certain parts of ancient Egypt during that they might have had some some of this capability. I'm not entirely convinced that that's the case. I do think you can explain a lot of this with the idea that there's been and you know, it's the result of just generation after generation after generation of particular

trades, and they became very skilled at working in stone. But there are differences, like there are even I think the Middle Kingdom statues the good ones at lux Or, if you look closer, there's there's a real difference between in the stone finishing, the tool marks, the details, the depth of cuts, things like that that I think that separate even the best work that comes from the Middle Kingdom from stuff that I just don't think you can explain

with any Bronze Age tools or technology. And then of course the dating of all of this gets really mixed up. It's one of the reasons why I think the vases are such a smoking gun in this argument, because the vases go back fifteen thousand years plus, right, they well and truly proceed the Egyptian civilization. You see the same technology on the vases that you see on things like statues, box of slabs, and architecture. But those are massive

objects that you can't have buried with you. They can't be buried in a tomb that then gets dated later on through carbon dating or whatever. These things are massive objects that sit on sites, so the sites get inherited, they get renovated, reused, and then some pharaoh with hubris and self importance puts his name on it later on, and then therefore that's how it gets dated. That's like the bedrock of Egyptology is like whatever's written on it is kind

of the authoritative. I want to touch on that point real quickly. Ben. You highlight an issue that I have come to recognize, where these pharaohs have tremendous egos, and Ramsey is the second is credited with a huge building pyramid, but looking more and more like he may have just decided to reuse

temples, pyramids and even statuary. And this is not something that Egyptology is recognizing or even considering, even in the face where you a cartouche which is very roughly cut into a statue and then you have a beautiful piece of statue. Whey, that's gorgeous. In fact, it's it's it's really high level stuff. Yeah, well it's it. They do actually acknowledge it. It's it's not often, it's not often talked about, but they do. It

is even Petrie. Petrie called Ramses the great usurper, and he did, Yeah, he called him Ramses they instead of the great He'd called him the great usurper because he would was notorious for doing this, and it is, it's somewhat it's like quietly acknowledged. They don't often talk about it. They just they just look if his name is on it, then it gets dated and related to him. But there's tremendous evidence that that's that he was overriding.

He wasn't the only one. There was a number of pharaohs. His son, like Marion Petar even said he the first was doing some of it.

So these these nineteenth dynasty kings were particularly notorious for it. But you know, I personally think there was recycling and reuse of of stuff going on as far back as the Old Kingdom and Ramsey's I mean, look that there are there's some artifacts that have the name of three or four different pharaohs on them, like cartouosh is carved into it that span a thousand year time period,

so it's it becomes very hard to date and relate that stuff. And then there's other, as you say, other evidence where there's there's clear obvious evidence that cartoushes have been added later. I mean not only the quality of the cartouche relative to the rest of the stonework. That's a huge point. But also where you have cartoushes that have been added over pre existing features of a statue. So it's a really good example I'd like to show people at

lux Or. Again it's it's like a cartouche that's been added over the belt line of one of these statues, and they have that like a dagger and this kilt that they're wearing, and you can still see the dagger, like the lines of the dagger and the kilt behind the cartous Now, of course, if you were designing that statue to have a cartoushe on it in the first place, you would you wouldn't go to the effort of of actually, you know, carving those delicate features on it, only to then eraise it

and hammer over it roughly with these glyphs. So yeah, it's it's tough to say. I mean he was he was taking stone from the Middle Pyramid. I mean he was taking granite stone from the Middle Pyramid. I think the sites themselves that are mostly attributed to him, places like karnak Ye and

Luxor. I mean there's obvious levels and multiple periods of building to those that there's lower levels, there's you know, these these sites often feature a granite core that show very sophisticated stone work, and then clear imitation of that in

the sandstone work that Ramses likely did. I mean he did have. They were extremely wealthy and powerful during his time, so he probably did do an awful lot of building, But I don't think he had the capability to do some of that granite work that we see, and he was imitating it.

Like there's if you ever look at like those palm shaped or lotus shaped, massive single piece granite columns, there are incredible pieces of art work, but then you put one of those and you look at and right next to it, there'd be a sandstone column that's oftentime is larger, but it's made up of these round blocks of sandstone that have been stacked up on top of each

other, and it's imitating that shape. And even though it's a bigger column, it's exponentially easier to do that in sandstone than it is to carve this

one single piece of granite. So I think in the case of a lot of these sites and a lot of these artifacts, their history is probably far older and more complex than we're led to believe by kind of the orthodox story that you get when you go there with a regular tour guide and or you read the history books and say, you know, Ramsey's built Karnak or Ramsey's built lux or even the highs, Like there's literally names of Middle Kingdom and

even Old Kingdom pharaohs on those sites, so we know those sites were there well and truly before the New Kingdom. You know, we get into the problem with the King's List and it goes back tens of thousands of years, and yet the the uh, how does it be only recognize dates that seem to fall into the hunter gatherer period and then beyond that it's all myth?

That's right, Well, it's it's a I like to think of this, it's like a so, yeah, you have the King's List, and particularly there's more than one source for this, but it's generally broken up into three

periods. You have ZEPTEPI, which is the oldest period where they say the gods themselves walked to the earth and that's I think it was almost like thirty something thousand years and then or twenty eight thousand years, and then you have the shemsu Hare, the time of the followers of Horus, who are these

semi divine mystical beings also described as having mystical powers. And I like to always think of like, well, if you are a primitive culture or any culture really that is seeing the evidence or seeing technology that they can't explain, it's just that's magic, right, That's that's what magic is. That's we or science. That's just science you haven't discovered yet. But the period of zeb Tepi is about sixteen thousand years. It's it's about it. It's a

similar period to sorry, shemsu Whore is about sixteen thousand years. And then that's a that follows zep Tepi, and then you then you end up with Menes, the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty, and then off we go, and the Egyptians describe all of this as their history, like they didn't. They made no distinction between like, well, this is myth and legend

and this is our history. But it's our modern scholars and academics who decide, well, no, it's it starts it with Menes in the you know, the first the first phaar of the First dynasty, the Old Kingdom, and everything before that is just myth and legend like that's this arbitrary line in the sand that's been made by our our scholars today. Is zep Tepi's what like eighty thousand years ago or something? What depends that there's a couple of

different sorts. I think it's I think it's it's forty forty thousand. I think it's okay, Yeah, yeah, it's I think the whole thing spans like forty six or forty eight thousand years. I have to look it up, but there's it's in that realm. Yeah. The interesting thing to point out, though, is if they kept the same traditional clothing or costume and you know, design themes from forty thousand to yeah, you know a few

thousand years ago, that's open for interpretation. You can get confused. And if there was a high art which you identify in your work, then the only thing we can think of is comparative study. You compare one period to another. One of these areas that I'm curious about. Have you been to Abu Sabil? Yes, Simbel, yes, I have you. I think when they attribute that to a Ramsey second, I think that's one of those places where he just put his cartoons on or yeah. Do you know the

story of one of his engineers. He asked one of his engineers to fix the one body of the torso on the head that had been broken down. It's in the lais in front. And the story goes that Ramsey asked his engineers to fix this, and the engineers say, we have no way of doing and you have no way of fixing it. We don't know how, we don't know how it was. I have to find that that's a good story. I'd like to like to hear that Abison Bell is interesting. I

you know, I'm not. I don't know. I suspect it's I think Abison Bell is a possible it's possibly dynastic, just my opinion, because it's it's one thing. It's it's sandstone. It is I mean it's massive, right, it's it's it's the biggest carving, isn't it one of the biggest not free standings. So Abison Bell is carved into a sandstone. I mean, yeah, it's cuffed into the Yeah, so nobody had to move anything like that's one thing. So nobody had to move anything. It's it's not

the biggest statue there. There are bigger there's evidence for bigger single piece of granite statues well and truly in excess of a thousand tons in Egypt, several of them. And this is the difference to me, This is I think Ramses was probably trying to emulate. If he did that, I think he was trying to emulate these statues, because as amazing as Abison bell is,

I just I don't quale the proportions are a little off. I just looking at it, and I've only been there that once, I feel like it's just he might have just had that carved into a sandstone hillside, and there's no none of the logistic, logistic challenges that you would have when you're talking

about say a thousand or twelve hundred ton statue made from granite. And we have evidence for several of these, like there's one of these, the one, probably the best preserved one is that the Ramesseum on the West Bank. Of course it's the Ramesseum because it's attributed to Ramseys. But there's a giant the shoulders and knee but torso of this and the head of this thing,

and it's laying on its side. It's one of the most massive pieces of granite you'll see just the pedestal that it sits on is seven hundred tons, and that's an individual block of granite, just the just the block that they statue was lifted up and put on as seven hundred tons. And you know that's still one hundred and fifty miles from Aswine, where the granite came from. But what's even more remarkable is we have evidence for this type of a

statue. There's a giant foot up in Tannis in the delta way up in the north, and that's I think it's like a thousand kilometers if not, I think it's a thousand kilometers from as One the foot this granite foot, and Petree found this as well. This is it's about the same size as the foot of the statue of Liberty. So you can draw a comparison statue. It's huge. Yeah, you can't. My hand, my spread hand doesn't fit. I mean it's the toenail is bigger than my outspread hand.

And all that's left of it is this foot, which was repurposed as a block in the wall. But you can clearly see it's a foot, and there's some other pieces of it laying around. And this was a single piece granite statue that would have weighed easily in excess of one thousand tons, that's found at least a thousand kilometers from the ry location for that stone. You

know, that's that's an insane logistical achievement. It's and you've got evidence for at least half a dozen of these statues that I know of, between Karanak and the Rameseum and up up in the up in the delta, and I think that's it's a hugely different level of achievement to carving something out of a sandstone hillside. We don't have to move anything. You also raise an interesting point when you started here, and this is it's one that I often get

asked. It's like, because I think some of these statues, particularly these thousand plus ton granite statues, it's beyond the logistical capabilities of a Bronze Age culture. Certainly what we know about the Donastic Egyptians, who didn't use pulleys or capstans, they didn't use force multipliers as far as we can tell from everything that they drew on the walls, and they did describe how they moved stuff around. You know, they had dudes with ropes and maybe some wooden

levers and they drag stuff on sleds. I think this is unachievable. I mean, you might be able to move one hundred tons that way, but you're not move a thousand. And Some people would say, well, okay, if you think the statues are so old, how come they look like

dynastic Egyptians. I actually think it's the other way around. I think it's I think the dynastic Egyptians are connected to this what you might call a builder culture, and if they have inherited these statues, can you imagine like like a ninety foot tall, thousand ton granite statue that's in that iconic pharonic Egyptian style. I mean, these are your gods. These are you would see this and think it's a god, and you would one hundred percent be modeling

your culture. And you were connected to this culture just through through generations, and you have some cultural memory of it. This is the iconic look that you are then seeking to emulate. And it's if you ever go and look as across a three thousand years of Egyptian history, if you go look in all the terms from Old Kingdom terms to New Kingdom and Tolemaic era. Look at how the pharaohs are depicted. They're always showing them as being amongst the

gods. There was try to position themselves as a god, as being given gifts by the gods and being accepted into godhood in the afterlife. And they always that iconic look, that dress, that that it gets a bit more elaborate in later periods, but it's the same style. It's the same look. And I kind of look at ancient Egypt as potentially the world's most sophisticated cargo cult. You know, have you ever seen that gods must be crazy? You know, they get the coke bottle to that tribe in Africa and

it just causes all these problems and they're emulating and whatever. I think, I think there's a chance that that's I think that's an explanation that is, that does make a lot of sense of some of these artifacts and sites and that iconic look of ancient Egypt. Will you make a good point where a later periods trying to emulate a column, a granite column, and they do it very poorly. The original granted may have been spun on a lathe of

some kind with technology and then the Newerwan hand carbon. It's just nate and de difference. You see the same thing. You see that. You see the concept of imitation across almost all the categories of ancient Gypan artifacts. You see it in vases, you see it in boxes, statues, architecture like columns. I mean, there's I love taking people to the Egyptian Museum because

you'll see stuff that's pre dynastic. You'll see like a beautiful, like obviously precision formed like hard stone vase might be granite might be you know, diar ride or some other even harder stone, and then right next to it is a pottery imitation of it that's hand like, hand thrown, you know, it's it's the pinched method. It's not even made on a potter's wheel. And then they paint it to look like granite, you know they do, and it's like, well these they just say, well, these are found

in the same burial, so the same person must have made them. And it's just there's they're worlds apart technologically speaking, it's it's insane. And you see the same thing with boxes. There's lots of like limestone and even granite boxes that are very rough obviously hand hammered, handmade, and they're just a I think it's an imitation of some of these other boxes that they have. And the same thing applies to statues. You can see the handmade statues.

You can see the result of the hand tools, the handwork, the tools and technology and techniques that we know the ancient Egyptians had because we found the tools. They drew on the walls, They drew the scenes on the walls of how they did stuff, and there's a whole category of artifacts that match that capability and tool set. Then you have this I call it the tail

of two industries. There's one industry that matches what we know about them and all the evidence we've collected about Dynastic Egypt and their tools and techniques, and then there's this other category of stuff like the hardstone vases, the precision card boxes, the giant statues, the columns, things like that that really don't

match it. And there's just there's simply no evidence that the Dynastic Egyptians had the capability to do any of this stuff, which is odd to me, because they were very you can find scenes on the walls they show you how they worked on stone how they worked in wood. We found the tools that they used, and you just simply can't use those things to explain this other

class of artifact. We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will be right back with our guest today, Ben van Kirkwick, coming to us from northern California and his discoveries of

ancient Egypt. Will be right back. My guest today is Ben van Kirkwick, who is a field of research investigator who has spent a considerable amount of time in Egypt, in Peru, in Mexico, and a number of other locations where there is evidence for not only very very old civilizations, but forgotten civilizations. Have you been to Memphis and seeing the Outdoor Museum. Yes, I saw that the Ramsey to sculpture on his back for the first time last

year and it's impressive, very impressive. Yeah, that's a great statue, like one hundred and fifty tons thereabouts. I think, well, I wonder what the original block was was, because that thing looks like it's early dynastic because it's just beautifully carved. And then it was pointed out to us that there's more recent cartouches placed on the shoulder, which are hack jobs. Yep,

uh, what do you say about that? That's one hundred percent agree, it's it's it's painfully at times obvious that a lot of these statues have essentially been vandalized in in in the later later years in the New Kingdom, used typically by Ramseys. That's the that's the one cartoons. She you get

very good at recognizing his name because it's everywhere. But yeah, they it's if you look at and and this also actually applies to the other even biggest statues, the ones that are probably ten times that size, where the stone works perfect like it's you know it is. It is a great example of a of a giant hand and a thumb that's at Karnak and it's made from composite quartzite, which is even a harder stone than grantit it's got flint in

it. It's insane, it's it's like a nightmare for stone carvers. But if you look at this thumb that's sticking out like he's it's holding it. It's the same thing as that statue at Memphis where it's holding this scroll or something in the hand right, it's like, and they often put a cartouche on the top of that little scroll or whatever it is that's that's in the hand, and you can you can look at the details of the thumbnail and these fine details you see the cuticle, you know, carved and polished,

beautiful stone work. And then you look at this cartoushe and you can literally see these hammer and chisel marks from where they just packed this thing in there. I mean, some people have said to me like, oh, well, you know, there's a different guy doing the cartoushes, you know, the scribes doing it. I'm like, that's nonsense. That if you can be great at calligraphy, try and do calligraphy in stone. It's an entirely

different skill set. So even if you probably had scribes that came and they drew the cartoosh, they pould have painted it in red oak, paine or something. But then it's the stone carver's job to come along and carve it. And presumably if the statues made at the same time the cartouoshes has done, then this stone carve is going to be of the same school. He's going to have the same tools, he's going to have the same technology. Is the guy who made the statue. But that's not what we see.

We see this there's a massive difference in the carving of the riding in the cartouches, obviously handmade, done with hammers and chisels, flint chisels or whatever, and there's a you know, they're not polished, they're not they're not you don't see these fine details. Obviously they whoever made the statues could polish very uneven and fine pieces of stone. You see it all over these statues, from large to small, but you never see that in these cartouoshes.

And to me, that's a very strong indication that there's a massive technological gap between whoever was riding on them and whoever made the statue. And it I think that the statues were there first, and it's not like it had The statues had to be there first for then someone to come along and write on them later. And I suspect there was a huge time gap between those two things occurring. Christin highlights this in his first book that it's the precision that

is so telling. Yeah, it's just off the charts precision when you are dealing with statuary. And you brought up a good example when you go to Karnak, some of those big fifty eighty ton seated statues, they're machined in some manner that we just don't understand. We don't know because and what he uses as the mirror effect. You look at one side, you flip that over, it's and it's the exact same eyes, nose, mouth, chin.

Yeah. The symmetry, symmetry is an aspect of precision. Yeah, and yeah, he uses a reverse transparency overlay, which is, yeah, you take a photo, make it fifty percent transparent, copy it, take one copy, flip it horizontally, then overlay them and you can you can see the differences. It's a wonderful technique for showing symmetry because it is perfect. When you look at that face from that front on angle, it's like it lines up perfectly. And you know, symmetry is not not it's not

a human feature. It's like everyone's nostrils and eyeballs are a bit different. This isn't like a feature of humans. And it's also not something that gets Symmetry is not a thing that happens in sculpture either, like even I've seen Michelangelo, Oh sorry, Michelangelo's David. You know, in where is it up in Florence and you know you don't. It's amazing statue and it's very lifelike, but it's not symmetrical. And symmetrical is an aspect of precision,

which to my mind also speaks to design. Like it probably the most efficient way to maybe design this thing was to design half of it and then mirror image it on the other side, and then now you've got you know, you can then put that through whatever manufacturing process created it. And symmetry to that detail is really not achievable by hand, particularly when you're talking about a three dimensional object. You know, it's not just symmetrical just front on,

it's symmetrical from left to right like around it as well. A very complex

shapes and artifacts. And I would hope that we can apply a similar technique that we've that has started to be applied to artifacts like the vases, where you can scan them with modern technology like structured light scanning, where you can create an extremely detailed and high resolution model of it and then analyze this these these artifacts in you know, g D and T software where and start to really drill down on just how precise is this Because we've started to do that

with these vases, and the numbers that are coming back are just remarkable. I mean, they're they're I think it should be a huge, a huge paradigm shifting event really, because there's just simply no way you can reach these levels of precision that we've we've demonstrated exists in a lot of artifacts like the vases with any hand method, certainly not with the very primitive methods that they say we used in the Old Kingdom or even the pre Dynastic times, which

is literally dudes banging on them with sticks and rocks and sand like. That's no spinning tools, no nothing, it's it's just nonsense to suggest that that's how some of these artifacts were made. But that's literally what people insist happened. Let's let's get into that. You were part of a team that what did you call it, the Stoneware analysis or something like they scan Yeah, bay scan. Yeah. And before we started we mentioned our mutual friend Adam

Young, who introduced me to these was a vice. They don't know the date, they know it's ancient. They I believe he found it in Socara or it was listed at being found in Sacara. Yeah, it's not his vase. I mean it's pre dynastic, it's and then the reason you would classify it as pre dynastic is is it matches very very closely in form and stone type to other artifacts that were found in pre dynastic burials. It's one

of the it's it is. One of the questions that's come back on the vay scan project is is, well, what's the provenance of these vases? How do we know their ancient Egyptian or what how do we know their age?

And when you're dealing with artifacts that come from you know, the antiquities market, that's it's it gets a little murky at times because the more providence that the more expensive it is. And also if it's too much providence, then you know, museums and countries might even be like asking for them back.

And a lot of this stuff is I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that's that hasn't necessarily come out of Egypt in the proper fashion, I'll say, but there's tons of stuff that has like these these sort of artifacts have been given as gifts to ambassadors and diplomats and governors and people that have been there, and and lots of these you know Victorian era and European Egyptologists have taken that stuff from Egypt. And I mean I've seen them on Southerby's too.

Oh yeah, they come up all they come up on auction. They are in a lot of there's a lot of the there's like probably up to one hundred thousand of these things floating around, I mean, or at least parts of it. There was forty to fifty thousand of them were found in one location beneath the step pyramid at Sakara, but they've been found in Gizer and all sorts of other places as well. And the crazy thing about the vases is they do stretch back in time to like truly pre dynastic times.

Like the oldest site that I've seen, there's a fantastic display in the Nubian Museum at Aswan that looks at a lot of these predynastic sites going back fifteen sixteen thousand years, and they've they've you can see from the photographs there are stone vases on these sites and some of these these these places, these vases are attributed to sites that have all carbon dated is going back in that time. Interesting thing about the vases though, is that they essentially disappear from the

dynastic records. So you have the vast majority of the found were found underneath the Step Pyramid, which is the third dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Really like sixty thousand that were found. Yeah, number forty to fifty thousand beneath the Step Pyramid, and that's the doge You're pyramid, right, Josi, Yeah, Josea. And that do we know because I saw a video of you. Is it like in the third layer underneath the second layer or something.

Yeah, it's like there's like two or three miles of tunnels beneath that thing. It's actually amazing. I go down there now. They opened it up for special permission. So I love to take people down there because it's an adventure going down there. First of all, what's down there is super interesting. There's a huge shaft beneath that pyram's like forty five feet wide and ninety hundred feet tall, and there's this massive thirty two piece granite box that's

in there. And then below that you sort of shoot off in the corners and there's all these catacombs and chambers and three or four levels at least of chambers and tunnels beneath that. In fact, we don't know where it goes or how deep it goes. I've been down to the deepest layer, which they typically don't allow, even on special permissions. They don't really want people

going down there. But you open this trap door that's got a padlock on it, you go down another twenty foot ladder, and there's even there's big chambers down there, and then there's there's these passages that go off into the ground that they've not excavated yet. It probably keeps going. But yeah, in those galleries and in those chambers, who was that Jean Feliployer found between forty and fifty thousand of these hardstone vases. And this is the archaeological This

is not controversial at all. This is this is what you know he reported and what they say in the Sacara Museum even and so there's we know there's a lot of these exist, and you know Petrie found them at Geezer as well, which he kind of attributes to the fourth dynasty. But after that period, after that time, they they sort of disappear. It's funny that the vase industry in Egypt shifts to this alabaster industry and you can see these

beautiful alabastera vases this much softer stone. Right, it's white calcite. It's like a three three and a half on the most scale of hardness versus you know, these hardstone vessels, which is like six seven. Even there's even a a corundum vase in the museum that's a nine on the most skeats. It's amazing, but they disappear, and that this is a real telling thing to me. It's you know, after that, there's this industry of alabasta

vass which do not reflect the same levels of precision. They're obviously handmade, they do reach a high level of craftsmanship. They're beautiful pieces. But that's that's the vase industry after that. And I think that actually gets kind of explained in the in the Imhotep Museum at Sakara, they say, well, there's a there was a vase industry before im Hotep or Imhotep was Jose's architect. That's the famous guy is not the bad guy in the mummy movies,

is actually a venerated figure in ancient Egypt. They were still writing about him in the New Kingdom. He's a genius and a polymath. But I think what happened is he came up with a method to try and best imitate these hardstone vases as best he could. And there's a scene on a wall, it's literally in the museum, and it shows them working on what I think we're ALABASTERA vass with these bent sticks with weights on them and flint tips and

they're turning them. And then there's a the pictures the guy's rubbing on them with rocks and polishing them. And you can look at the ALABASTERA vases and see exactly how they were made that way. And in fact, if you go to one of the Alabasta factories over on the West Bank, I seen them. They're still they're doing it. They do it exactly the same way, the handmade stuff. They just use steel tools today, and it's it's it's I think. So what I think we're looking at is you had these

vastly ancient objects. Who knows how old they are? The vases they're small enough that and you know, if you're in if you're a pre dynastic culture or primitive culture and you're making pottery vases or vessels, and you find one of these hardstone vessels. You're immediately going to recognize that it's something special, like it's made from granite. You're like, holy crap, how do they do? This becomes precious. You then collect them and you keep them and

you bury them with you because it's your precious artifacts. And then that that builds up to eventually jose that comes along, he's a king in the third

dynasty. He sends his boys out to to basically raid all the tomb they can find, collect as many vases as they can, bury them with him beneath the step pyramid, like which is what seems to have happened, and they and even in that museum, this is I love this because they acknowledge there that a lot of these artifacts are inherited heirlooms, because on some of these vases there are very crudely scratched inscriptions that match the names of First and

second dynasty rulers, So they know that some of these vases came out of the tombs of first and second first and second dynasty rulers that Joseph then had inherited them. But after that, I think they basically collected as many as they could, and they pretty much disappear from the record, which tells you that that technology disappears. But those vases reflect the same technology that we see on these other artifacts, like the statues, the big stuff, the stuff

that can't be buried with a guy. So it's like, that's why they think the vases are so important, because they tell you a story of there was a technology that existed long ago, and the Nastic Egyptians obviously didn't have it, because otherwise they would have kept making these vases and using that technology. But it's the same technology we see in all these other precision artifacts that are much larger. You can't move them, you can't be buried with them.

They stay on these sites. The sites grow up over time, they get renovated, reused, and then this stuff gets rebadged and a guy writes his name on it, and today we interpret that as like, well, he must have built it. I mean, it's the same thing. Imagine imagine Adam Young touchwood. You know, when Adam Young passes away, he wants to be buried in his mausoleum with his granite vase. Our civilization ends.

Yeah, five thousand years later, the archaeologists of the future dig up Adam's mausoleum and they see his name on it, and they see this vase and go, Adam Young must have had this vase made. I mean, it's yeah, it's we're doing the exact same thing when we say that about ancient Egypt. We have no we don't know when these things were made. So talk a bit about the technology you're using to analyze these these vases and

plates. I think it's just a viase, is what you're doing. But I heard a rumor a few months ago that now the feeling is from the group, and that's part of your area, is that they weren't necessarily used as jars. They may have had another more advanced use. YEP, so I do. Yeah, So I'll hit that bit first. I do think these were functional. I think the boxes were functional. I think a lot of the stuff we're looking at and Engineergypt was functional. It had a purpose.

We just don't know what it is. We might not have. We lack the context to view it correctly at this point, which is one of the reasons I think we should be open minded about approaching it. They were certainly used as vases by the dynastic Egyptians. I mean some of these aren't vases like they literally you can't. You have to stand them upside down. If you know, they have to come to a pointed tip. Some of them that you know, like a narrow pointed tip that they won't you have

to put them upside down. But but what happened, and I really have to also credit Adam Young again for being the driving force behind this to make He's been wanting to do this for years and when he he got a hold of you know, Alex and Nick who were metrologists who work in the aerospace industry. If you have the Alex Dunn is Alex dun Chris Dun's son and Nix Sierra, I don't know this other case engineer at the area of work

work. Yeah, it works with with Alex okay, and so they're metrologists, I mean literally their job is to analyze precision and and and use the techniques that we're using to to basically analyze these vases. So they scanned that

first phase. They scanned it with a process called structured light scanning, which is like a laser scanning process that basically maps the artifact down to within a thousands of an inch or a little little under that and it does that by you know, just basically creating a point cloud of you know, millions and millions of points and creates this artifact that then you can create, you know, an object in a in software in and then you can start to analyze

it with what's GD and T tools are geometric distancing and tolancing tools. These are industry standard tools and a technique that's used to basically look at you know, precision parts for jet engines and rocket engines. And we literally use this to in order for us to fly across the country in planes like it's the same and that the crazy thing that came out of this is that we're seeing

precision on the same level as parts that we put into jet engines. It's it's stuff that where you see you see tolerances and and levels like a single thousandth of an inch, like you know, parts being perpendicular or with roundness, concentricity. Just just absolutely amazing results coming back from it that are really only achievable today on some of our very best kind of machinery like lathes and

see and see mills and things like that. Certainly, no one's ever demonstrated that you can hit these sort of tolerances on complex oblate objects like these by hand. It's it's not no one. And now all the machinists and people that see there's these results, and people that understand machining and manufacturing, they understand this immediately. So one of my challenges has been trying to explain this to every to people that aren't in those fields, and explain what it means.

But it's been truly remarkable results came out of this first phase. And then we've through guys like Matt Bell and his acquisitions of vases, We've we've had access to many more vases he's now he's got a huge collection now and we've seen we've seen vases of similar precision and even better like there's there's I think he has at this point one where I think the average the average deviation across all of the measurements that they've taken on that vases between one and two

thousands of an inch, which is remarkable. I think your average on that on that original vase from Adam might be between five and six or seven thousands. Some measurements are very low, some are a little higher, but this we see some we've seen some remarkable artifacts. And the really cool thing about this is that you know, there's garnded some attention, and there's been some interest from universities in Egypt who have engineers and egyptologists on stuff, and they

have access to museums. They're already doing photogrammetry and light out scanning of artifacts for like virtual reality, so you can look at an object on the web or whatever. And they're interested in this process and this technique, and I'm very hopeful that they'll be able to get into some museums and start to expand that data set looking at artifacts that are in museums. Similar story with the Petrie Museum. I'm hopeful to get into the Flinder's Petrie Museum that's on the

University College of London. I saw it yet two years ago. It's got a few really good pieces. But hey, my point on this precision, ben is are we looking at houseware or are these parts to a machine? Yeah? I don't think they're houseware. I don't think these are just made to be vases. I don't think you need so there's a relationship between precision

and function. You don't develop precision unless you're chasing function. However, once you have a manufacturing system that delivers precision, then that's kind of what you get. It's the reason why our toasters are so well made today, our car panels fit so much better together than they did in the nineteen sixties. Our manufacturing systems just deliver precision. But the reason that precision was developed was

to chase a particular function. I think these vases were something else that potentially parts of larger machines. I think one of the concept that they might have been resonators is an interesting one, and actually I know there's some testing underway to sort of test resonance in these vases. My intuition about them is that they're functional. I look at them, a lot of them with lug handles.

I mean, I look at those things that they seem to represent like a camlock to me, so you can imagine putting that thing in and turning it and it locks in. A lot of them really wouldn't perform well as as vases. I mean the vases. They you know, they span in scale from the size of my thumbnail up to vases. And yeah, that's the other thing. They're tiny, functional for well, maybe for small flowers,

but I don't know. Well, they say they're for perfumes and oils, right, this is what they Okay, standard models, you know, perfumes and oils, which they say, well, well those were more valuable than the vases themselves, which I didn't. I think is nonsense. Well, did you guys find a residue of anything like that? No, I've not. I've not heard of anything like that. Look, I think the Dynastic Egyptians when they had them, they probably used them that way. They

may well have used them as vases. You can see even some of them have. Yeah, I actually think it's it's sort of complex, but I think that the there's lots of most, in fact, the majority of vases with lug handles that stick out on the sides. Most of them they're not effect of handles. You couldn't even the angles on them wouldn't make them effective for holding up. And then most of them, there's certainly a lot of them that have holes through the lug handles. But these holes are very imprecise.

They don't match up, they're offset, you know, they're like they've been drilled from either end. And I think that was probably done by the Dynastic Egyptians. They ground these holes through them so they could put metal in there. And you even have a couple of vases with metal handles that are stuck through there. So I just I think this is a reuse and a

repurposing of them that happened later. My intuition about the vases is that they were were probably functional, either parts of a larger machine or they had some function. I don't know what that is. That's I think we need to approach it with an open mind and maybe we'll learn more about it in the future. But it kind of fits that category of these boxes the same thing.

To me, it's like the serapeum and this phenomena of you know, precision stone boxes that are either in pyramids or they're under the ground that they went to just readible lengths to make as as massive and as precise as they are. I don't think that was done simply to just bury a ball in

or anything like that. They went I mean, the boxes are crazy, like they they wanted them to be solid, Like the lengths they went to in the therapeum to scoop out cracks and to just maintain solidity of those boxes is astonishing. And if you just you're talking about a single use box. You stick a bull carcascent and you put the lid on it. Who cares if it's got a crack in the surface. But but but man, the length they went to to scoop out cracks and then to polish those surfaces.

It's it's astronomical amount of work there is. I think a lot of this

stuff is functional. There's a group of alternative academics, I guess you could call them, who are saying that there was a period in Egyptian history where there was high art and I can't remember what the name was, but it's like, I don't want to name names, but it's like they're they're attributing these precision boxes and sculptural reliefs and things like that to this period of time, and it's like you can't They're so desperate to keep it on the ground

and say, hey, no, there's no way there was an unknown civilization you're going, you know. And the funny thing about it is, and I'm glad that I've never met you, but this is the first time. I'm glad. You're not very often going, well, this is ancient aliens. No, No, you know, because that really drives me nuts. Whatever you can, I can't explain this agian alien. Well that trust me. People levy that that one at me all the time. I'm sure it

happens to you too. But yeah, it's like, yeah, it's that's the trope, right, that's the standard responses. Well, if you don't

think they did it, you must think aliens did it. And I'm like, no, You look at the span of human history like this is one of the other factors that really should be affecting the story of history is we are while than we thought we were, like as a species, we've been around and when we are the last humans left, there were other types of humans here too that also lived for millions of years longer than we did.

So and you know Neanderthals, for example, bigger brains than us. I thought for the longest time they couldn't talk, but the latest research shows that

no, no, they could. They have the vocal cord structure to communicate, which is a basis for civilization, and you know, lovely singing voices by all accounts, and you know it's we used to think we were fifty thousand years old, then we went to one hundred and ninety five thousand years old, and they found a jawbone in Morocco that pushed it out to three

hundred thousand years old. Now, the latest studies into you know, our split with a common ancestor and you know, teeth morphology rates puts the date at like eight to nine hundred thousand years old. So this idea that civilization only ever emerged in the last six thousand years is patently ridiculous. At this point. It's you know, you're talking a span of time that goes back to you know, the other side of the last glacial maximum into more.

I mean, not that the last glacial maximum was a problem everywhere. It was just it was literally like there were still temperate areas of the world. Giza would have been fine, that whole area would have been completely livable, but we existed for hundreds of thousands of years ago. And there's the other huge part of this is cataclysm, right, the younger, driest cataclysm. This we know there was just an absolute civilization ending event that occurred only thirteen

thousand years ago. It changed the surface of the earth, that rose sea levels four hundred feet, completely basically destroyed the world. And we've built our world on the remains of the old world, and this should be all these things should be factoring into this story of history, but they're generally ignored. And this is all new evidence that's turned up in the last twenty years, and I hope that someday soon it'll have a significant effect on that story of

history. But yeah, at some point that it's going to become an I have a whelming amount of evidence and we just need to re examine this idea that where the only advanced civilization to have ever existed. I guess is Ben van Kirkwick. He is from Uncharted X And as we close, Chris Dunn, in his most recent book, believes that the people who built the pyramid this is the Kufu Pyramid and Serpieme and some of the anomalies were Earth based

scientists, and he defines that as using Earth's natural geomagnetic fields. You know light sound when Earth, you know birth Earth based compositions. What do you say, you say, that's close or it looks like whoever were? These people were not into nuclear energy? Obviously we would see their reactors, but they were what to you, what do you say, well, how did they evolve? Well? I think that earth based scientist is a very good

one. It's very apt they whoever did this work, I mean, they certainly seemed capable of working in this material in a much easier fashion than we would find it today. It could we build the Great Pyramid again, Yes, I think we could, but it would be so astronomically expensive that nobody's

got the stomach or the budget to do it. They were. And if you're going to build in its like I do like the idea, if you actually extend technology out far enough, it's like, let's project our technology today a little bit like and go, all right, so we make spaceships today, and we're concerned we use lightweight composite materials, titanium and all these other advanced alloys because we need them to be light and strong because we've got to

overcome gravity and get out of the gravity. Well, but if you extend technology far enough and you say, well, eventually, you know, you gain control over those fundamental forces of nature, gravity itself. What does a spaceship start to look like if that, if those things are no longer a concern for you, Well, spaceships might start to look like a small planet or a moon something that has its own gravity, so it contains its own

atmosphere even like that's it's that's it's just projecting science out there. And if so, if you if you don't, if you have no need to use advanced alloys or metals in some of your construction projects. And the best material we have available on this planet least is stone, granite, things like that, they'd last forever. It's you can't, you know it's it's it's extremely

sturdy and nothing lasts longer than it. Like it's it's literally you know that most of the hardiest, strongest material you could build with, and and the evidence is right there that that's what happened. So yeah, I suspect that whoever did this stuff had the ability to work in that material in a much easier fashion than we find today. And I think that's only only achievable through the use of probably advanced sciences and uh and technology that we don't yet understand.

And I always find it a little bit arrogant potentially to suggest that everything from the past it has to be a subset of what we know. We tend to look at the past as this subset of everything that we know. But all you have to do is look at the last fifty years to know that, Okay, technology is moving forward. We're going to know more about fundamental sciences and technology in ten years and one hundred years and a thousand years

than we do now. And from that you can say that there are totally there are whole realms of science and technology that we have no clue about. Like we're only just starting to explore some of these realms now, resonance and frequency and vibrations and things like this. So what if they had the ability to control some of those things. I think it's a case of looking at it with an open mind. I really do believe that there was some science

and technology involved in what we're looking at. I think a lot of the stuff we're looking at was functional. It's we just lack the context to understand it. It's a similar idea to say, take an iPhone back in time. It's one hundred years ago or a thousand years ago. I mean that it's just going to look like a shiny piece of glass to those people. But you and I know what a touchscreen is, or a cell phone, camera and microphone, the Internet, all these Wi Fi signals, So we

have the context to look at it and understand its capabilities. But without that context, it just looks like a shiny piece of glass or a piece of rock. Maybe we're in a similar situation when we're looking at some of these complex stone artifacts and these weird alignments of structures that we see at places like

Abusir and whatnot. And yeah, I applaud Chris. I love his new book, The Tesla Connection as well, because it explores the possibility that the pyramid might be an electron harvester, and that's all based on new science that's come out of NASA in the last couple of years, some incredible new work. It's highly recommended read for anyone out there looking for something to blow your mind. But yeah, I think we just need to approach this with an

open mind. If we can do that and we can use our technology to its limits to investigate this sort of stuff, we might actually end up learning something. I'm curious. We're about ready to close here, but I've been to Egypt enough times to realize that there is some form of a cover up

going on by the officials. And I say that not as a conspiracy theorist, because I don't care about that, but I've had people on the show, and in fact, we have an engineer coming on in a couple of weeks who has written a very important white paper on the ground penetrating radar that he has done on the Giza Plateau. It is an underground lethra of canals, tunnels and rooms, and people like Zahi Owas have known about it. They don't talk about it. It's the evidence is everywhere, and we see

this all through Egypt. It's like, why aren't we getting the details? Why are we being pushed back into the dark age. Yeah, I don't know why. I mean, I suspect it's a similar story to what we talked about before, where it's sort of protecting positions of authority and whatnot. There's certainly a lot that happens there that we don't know anything about. I've heard a lot of stories and rumors about this too. I did an investigation

into all of the works you talk about grand penetrating radar. I mean, there's been at at least two studies that I know of, Robert Shock and John Anthony West, and then later during the shore expedition in the mid nineties That'sahi was involved in at least two of these are using grand penetrating radar as well as other seismic techniques that mapped out chambers and tunnels beneath the Sphinx. I mean, one hundred percent it's there, and I haven't heard about I'm

very interested. I'm going to definitely tune into your next episode because I want to hear about any further GPR studies that have been done there. But yeah, one hundred percent, there's been stuff done. I mean there's a long history of excavations and drilling at the Sphinx. That's secret. It's been going on since the seventies. This is you know, it's a UAS and the Edgar Casey Foundation. I mean, he's been enabling them to go look for

the Hall of Records. Literally, their stated goal is to find Atlantis and the Hall of Records. He's been enabling them to do that since the seventies. And there's been four or five different drilling experiments that have happened. There only one that's been publicly acknowledged, which was supposedly to look at for groundwater and the quality of the bedrock, and that was done at the body of the Sphinx, not at the pause, but yeah. I mean it's there's

a ton that goes on that we don't know about. And I see the evidence for every time I going to the Great Pyramid, there's things happening in there. They're doing all sorts of work. They're up in the relieving chambers above the King's Chamber at the moment doing who knows what. I suspect they're drilling and trying to find that big void that's shown to exist through that. So they're doing that when you were just there, Let's say they've definitely been

up there. So I was there last year as well, in October November, and I saw a I saw a cable like this, power cable running up. So the entrance to those relieving chambers is in the top left corner of the Grand Gallery. It's way up in the corner, but there's a cable running up in there, power cable. And then this last time, there's the ladder that they were using to get in and out of there was strapped to the rails in the Grand Gallery. I asked the guy, Hey,

can we get this ladder out and go up in there? No, no, no, you can't do that, but I tried. I really want I'm like, let me in there, bro, I want to see what's up there. But yeah, this stuff happens. I don't know why. I mean, honestly, even in the last trip, which was like six weeks, I went to sites, I went like, Abby grew up. Great example they had the first trip was there they had excavated the floor. They've been excavating at that site, and they had dug up the floor

and there was an archaeologist there's walking around taking photos of it. And then and then a month later when I came back on the second tour, they'd reburied it all. It's just like, okay, so where's that data? Is that ever going to be publicly available? I mean who, I mean, it's just this. I think this sort of stuff happens all the time. I know it does, and it's just it's just crazy that we just

don't they don't publish it. My big frustration is is a hath Or temple where we now know that there is an earlier temple underneath, right, and the authorities will not do ground penetrating radar anywhere near that, And I'm like, why, wh what's your story? I'm the same, I'm like why hasn't someone maybe this guy has that you're going to talk to a But why hasn't someone dragged a GPR so I up and down the causeway of the Middle Pyramid complex. I mean you go down the Asar shaft, it's three levels

deep, it's one hundred and fifty feet down. There literally passages going up and down the causeway beneath there that we've never explored. According to Zahi, they've never explored. You know, for sure, there's there's passages and rooms and chambers. I just can't tell. There's a like a world to discover and we're just still working on. Instead of saying flat out there's no tunnels, there's nothing underneath the sphinx. Well, I mean it's like, come

on, guy, who's who's peeing you off? Dude? It gets it gets him? What he just lasting, I'll says that is he in the nineties as part of this the Shaw Expedition. So this is all so connected to the edgu Casey Foundation. Yeah, and he made an announcement in the Egyptian papers. It was in Arabic, but he said, hey, we've made a momentous discovery. It's going to change everything we think we know about the history of civilization, and then nothing. He never said another word about

it, and shortly after that he changed his tune entirely. And he's been a champion of what you would call the standard model. And you know, we noticed Sphinx is related to Kafra, and it's all the Egyptians did it. It's not old at all. But he literally said that they'd made this momentous discovery and then it was just like, never another word said about it.

It's just And this was right around the time of the show expedition, which was he granted those guys, the Ari people, Joseph saw Joseph Jehodah Boris said, a five year unlimited permit to do whatever they wanted on the giar A plateau. And there wasn't a single archaeologist amongst them. And they did stuff, and I Boris aid, and these guys went on art bell and you can dig up some of the interesting things they said about it. But yeah, they did stuff in the Great Pyramid, up and down the

causeway at the Spheing, So we're doing stuff all over the place. Nobody knows what happened or what they found. Ben we could talk about this forever. It's a fascinating subject and I really appreciate your time. What day at the Cosmic Semmino are you speaking and can you give us the title of your talk? Yes, it's June fifteenth and sixteenth. I believe I'm speaking on the sixteenth from the agenda that I saw Sunday, it's Sunday. Yeah,

I'll be on the main stage. I am going to be talking about where I think the opportunities are for future discovery. I think there's a bright future ahead of us in terms of possibilities for future works like where is this going? And I also would like to talk about some of the other forms of technology and how they relate to the Pyramids. So it's like I think there's a whole story around the two drills and then how they connect to the pyramids

and how all that technology actually is. I think that that's going to be what I get into. I think Adam is talking there also, he's going to talk about the visis. So I wasn't going to do the vises at this I heard the rumor that somebody was going to bring some one or two pieces to show off I have. Yeah, maybe Adam, Maybe Adam will bring his vice. I don't know if and if Matt turns up he might bring his that'd be wonderful. Yeah, but that's I'm looking forward to that.

That's yeah, Ashville fifteenth and sixteenth. All right. So for more information and information on what Ben's talking about, as well as the others, you can go to Cosmicsummit dot com, Forward slash Earth Ancients and you can buy your tickets. If you can get there in person, that's great. But they will be doing streaming and I got to tell you, fifty bucks for two days is outrageous, so check that out. Hey, Ben, really a pleasure speaking with you, and love what you're doing. And keep

it up man, you run. Yes, Thanks, thanks Cliff. Great great speaking with h Man. The production on his YouTube channel Uncharted X is excellent and he edits them beautifully and that's why he's got a pretty concise following. And you know, it's a great channel to really see some of these amazing sites. Years ago he was with Graham and Peru. He goes through some of the big sites there. He's all over Egypt, Mexico and a lot of other places too. So good to have met him, Good to

have him on the program. I hope, I hope you enjoyed that as always. Catch him and the other presenters, the A listers, and there's you know, I think in total there's maybe twenty five, maybe twenty speakers in total. So your streaming media fee of fifty bucks is great. The other thing I didn't mention is the fact that you get to keep the files when you pay for the streaming media for the Cosmic Summit conference, you get

the live feed. But if you don't, if you're not able to catch you know, everybody at the time because you're living in a different country or a different time zone, you can just store it and come back to it. It's yours to keep. For more information on streaming or to get yourself there live, go to Cosmicsummit dot com, Forward slash Earth Ancients. You

can see everything there. We'll be there in heart and soul. I'll be traveling and just recently come back, so I can't get to that one this year, but I plan to go to the twenty twenty five and see the lineup. Then, great conference, good people. We'll speak to the producer next week, that's George how and we will be featuring a few of the main people in the future. We're gonna speak with grand old Carlson, Pravene Mohan No. I haven't spoken to Pravene in probably four years, and I

miss chatting with him. He's having I mean, he's got so much to cover. And you know, it's funny because Hugh Newman was just in Bangalore, India and was with Provene and covered some of the temples there. But you know, there's so much to see there, and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, Okay, tour time, tour time, tour time. So okay, we'll see what happens. Anyhow, check it out, great lineup, fantastic price, streaming, live conference material, you get

to keep it. For more information, go to Cosmic Summit dot com. Forward Slash Earth Agents. Hey, if you're enjoying Earth Answers, please consider becoming a subscriber for as little as five dollars a month. You can support the work we do here on this podcast, as well as Destiny and Earth Ancients Special Edition the Archives. It takes a lot of resources, manpower and time to put these together and if you could help us out, we would

really appreciate it. To become a subscriber. Go to Patreon PA t R e O N dot com, Forward Slash Earth Ancients and subscribe five, ten, fifteen, even twenty dollars a month makes a huge, huge difference. And I got to tell you, not only would I appreciate it, but we have gifts for you, and gifts in the form of ebooks. We have We're up to I think over thirty copies of wonderful different ebooks in a variety of subjects as a thank you from our guests authors and this is for

you. Just simply download on your desktop, so we appreciate it. We could use the funding to become a subscriber. Go to Patreon dot com Forward Slash Earth Ancient. All right, that's it for this week. I want to thank my guest today, Ben van Kirkhoick, coming to us from northern California. As always, the team of Gil Tour, Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys rock all right, take care of you well and we will talk to you next time. Man