Megalithic Marvels - Ben Van Kerkwyk of UnchartedX: Smoking Gun Evidence for Ancient Granite Machining

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Derek Olson here to reconstruct the prehistoric past with you! In this episode, I feature a brand new interview that I just did with researcher & explorer Ben Kerkwyk from UnchartedX. We are going... to discuss the ancient apocalypse awakening that is currently under way and then we will discuss Ben’s recent trip to Egypt, where he will share about several incredible anomalies that point to a lost ancient technology that was employed by the megalithic builders of Egypt, you are not going to want to miss this episode! SHOW NOTES Peru Tour Egypt Tour Follow Megalithic Marvels on the following platforms: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/megalithicm... Blog - https://megalithicmarvels.com/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpiP... Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/megalithicma... TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@megalithicmarvels Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/10186... Twitter - https://twitter.com/MegMarvels

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Starting point is 00:00:05 Megalithic Marvels. Derek Olson here to reconstruct the prehistoric past with you. So in this episode, I feature a brand new interview that I just did with researcher and explorer Ben Van Kirkwick from Uncharted X. We're going to discuss the ancient apocalypse awakening that's currently underway, and then we'll discuss Ben's recent trip to Egypt. And he's going to share about several incredible anomalies that point to a lost ancient technology that was employed by the megalithic builders of egypt you are not going to want to miss
Starting point is 00:00:46 this episode but before we jump into it i want to remind you or let you know if you haven't heard that i'm really excited to announce registration is now live for the first annual megalithic marvels of peru tour coming october 2nd to the 12th 2003 this will be the most epic expedition of a lifetime an 11-day journey that will take us to such ancient sites like Machu Picchu and over 20 other sites that were built by the Inca or by a previous Megalithic civilization that predated them. Go to megalithic marvels.com forward slash tours or click the link in the show notes below for more info. And lastly, our Egypt tour is coming up this May and it's going to be a 12-day expedition. We're going to go inside the Great Pyramid and have a private two-hour tour. We're going to visit over 20 other sites.
Starting point is 00:01:46 It's going to be incredible. And I hope that you'll consider joining us. Again, click the link in the show notes below or go to megalithic marvels.com forward slash tours. All right. Let's get to my interview with Ben right now. Well, I'm excited to be joined today by researcher and explorer Ben Van Kirkwick from Uncharted X. Ben, thanks so much for joining me in Megalithic Marvels.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Derek, mate. Thank you so much for having me. Big fan of your work. It's great to connect. Really great to connect and did it of that. Big fan of your work. I've been following you the last couple years. And, man, your YouTube channel is just epic, loving your video content.
Starting point is 00:02:31 I know you just got back from a fresh trip to Egypt. So I definitely want to ask you about that. But I thought we'd start with selfishly. I'd just like to learn a little bit about your journey. my audience would too. Tell us a little bit about your story and how you came to this place of traveling the world and going to Egypt and researching all this lost ancient check with technology with uncharted X. Well, it's, yeah, I mean, I didn't get into this immediately, I guess. I've had a 20-year career in IT. I worked for Hewlett-Packett for 20 years, more or less.
Starting point is 00:03:07 I was, I had a very much, I was a technologist and an architect. I ended up in the chief technology office for the networking division and doing a lot of like data center cloud stuff like that i was always interested in history my mother was a history teacher uh so i you know i i almost went that way at university but you know i mean i decided it to be better to to go and make some money and do that type of thing and i was i'm very interested in the computer side of the technology side as well but i maintain that interest and and i think it's a it's a similar story to a lot of people and i i always credit him with getting me into this this this field to this depth it was graham hancock so it was i think i'd read a couple of his books and then i saw his
Starting point is 00:03:47 very first appearance on on the joe rogan experience uh and that just kind of really opened my eyes to a little bit more depth about some of the things he was saying it exposed me to some of his work around consciousness and psychedelics things like that and so you know you i guess you go through you when you start to explore those avenues in your own life you can have a shift in priorities and sort of figure out a little bit more about what's uh what's uh what's what's important to you and certainly that happened to me but then I I was following Graham and it was like 2012 or thereabouts 2013 and he threw out a tweet that said hey I'm going to Peru and Bolivia to research his his next book which was at the time magicians of the gods the follow
Starting point is 00:04:28 up to the finger prints of the gods and and I jumped on it straight away so so I was like I think it was October of 2013 I had the chance to travel through Peru and Bolivia with like you know 25 other people and graham and brian forster was there as well and uh and that sort of kicked it off for me i mean i think two years later 2015 i graham went to egypt this was the uh some people may be aware of this but the sort of the infamous debate with with zahi this is the tour that was set up around that event i was in the room for that little um so-called debate and and all of the things that happened there but yeah and that was my first trip to egypt in 2015 and that was it at the back end of that i I thought, yeah, I've got a, I've got to, I'm just so fascinated by this.
Starting point is 00:05:12 I've been taking more and more time off from work to travel and visit sites. And I kind of saw looking at YouTube and reading all these books that there was an opportunity for some, what I would call like high quality footage and a fresh look at a lot of these sites that incorporates a lot of the ideas that are buried in these books. Like if people are into this topic, like a lot of the really interesting stuff is buried in these books. but at the time there wasn't there wasn't a real exposure to that i guess in that new media form on on youtube and in these you know the sort of mini documentaries and it coincided with the rise of
Starting point is 00:05:47 you know high quality consumer grade sort of stabilized 4k video equipment so you know it was at that time there was a real lack of high quality footage on these sites that was easily available so that's what i did i mean just took the took the gamble and and uh decided to to take a couple years off work in IT to go pursue that and travel and build up a library of footage, which is what I did. And I kind of work with a partner for a while. We had another channel. It didn't work out in the end. And then I sort of reevaluated and thought about what I was going to do.
Starting point is 00:06:22 And I thought, well, I haven't said what I want to say. I haven't created the content I want to make and, you know, do the things that I want to do. So I put together the whole just unchartedex branding and page. and then sort of dived in and started from there. And thankfully, it grew well. People seemed to respond well to it. And I've kind of been writing the crazy world that is, that is, you know, being a YouTube ever since.
Starting point is 00:06:48 And it's been, yeah, I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Yeah, it's, again, really enjoyed your YouTube page. That seems like your premier platform there. And for everybody watching, you definitely got to go subscribe to Uncharted. X and I want to ask you again a lot about your recent Egypt trip and your latest couple of videos but you mentioned wow being way back there I think you said 2013 was that in Egypt yep
Starting point is 00:07:18 13 was Peru and Bolivia the first time 15 was 2015 was Egypt my first trip there 2015 and you were there with Graham Hancock and you you witness this debate with Zawui yeah is there anything you can tell us a little bit more about that that as you experienced it was there like a moment where it was like graham really uh took him to the woodshed or was it just respect on both sides and just asking questions well so there was it was it was definitely my graham uh in the room it was certainly on graham side pretty respectful zahi you could tell in my opinion and and so the famous part of that is and a lot of this is there's a couple of segments of this that are filmed they're on youtube you can find them if you like
Starting point is 00:08:01 if you search for like graham hancock zahy was There was a moment before the lectures had started. There's only a few people in the room when, you know, Graham's flipping through his slides. And I think a picture of Robert Boval appeared in one of Graham's slides. It's the Orion correlation at the Great Pyramids. And, you know, I think it's not unknown that Zahy really doesn't like Robert Boval. He's had an issue with him for many years.
Starting point is 00:08:27 It wasn't always that way. In fact, you can go back and find I've got a picture of, you know, Robert Boval, John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Zahey, whilst like arm in arm in front of the Sphinx at one point. They guys worked together and were friendly at one point, but I'm not sure what happened. But anyway, Sazaki kind of flipped out, and this is all on YouTube if people want to see it. But Graham talked about it after the trip too quite a bit. But yeah, it was unfortunate. I honestly think that he didn't want to be there.
Starting point is 00:08:56 He probably didn't want to debate. He probably had no intention of debating. He initially said he was just going to leave. He wasn't going to do anything. and then settled on the fact, well, he said, you know, I'll give, I'm not going to watch your presentation, but I'll come in and give my presentation, then I'll take some questions. So that happened. Graham did a fantastic job. His presentation was as if, like, was set up for a debate. He addressed a lot of these topics head on. Zahi gave his presentation, which wasn't quite the same thing. I think it was his stock standard kind of his me with, you know, presidents of the United States and royalty, and this is these stories.
Starting point is 00:09:33 and you know this is i'm batman and i caught the robbers that that rob something from the you know the egypt museum the kaira museum during the uh the arab spring and the revolution so he told this story and he just did his overall thing and then there was a few questions afterwards and some of those were quite telling too i remember there's a good and again this is on youtube if people want to find it uh he was asked about gobekli tepe he wasn't aware of that site didn't didn't didn't see that it had any relevance whatsoever to the story of civilization in Egypt. Also, famously at that point, it's a sound clip that I use quite often. He sort of hit the table and said, you know, I don't believe in radar.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Like as if I've never found anything with ground penetrating radar, it doesn't work or whatever. But yes, it was an interesting, it was a really dramatic kind of end to the two weeks. We were with Graham for two weeks and then we had, we had one day with Zahy, we went into the Sphinx early that morning. He gave his talk, I guess, in the Sphinx enclosure, and then we had the debate that evening. But the funny thing about that was that after all this went down, we're at the Minhaus, this beautiful resort that's right at the foot, almost at the foot of the Great Pyramid. And in the middle of the night, everyone that attended that debate had had an excerpt that was written from a book that he was working on with Mark Lehner, the whole the pyramid's sort of
Starting point is 00:10:56 section of it and it's i still have it here it's in a little bind and a bit it's like a chapter from that book that that he must have had printed said everybody needs to to read this and have so everyone at their room had this had this little little little uh little pamphlet of of a chapter for his book sort of shoved under the door and it was kind of a weird way for it for it to end but it as far as i was concerned i mean you know it's it's sad i talked to graham i was the only one to interview him last year and you know i think he he did express a few regrets around how that worked out and you know it's it's sad that there hasn't been real like legitimate debate and and cordial sort of civil debate in this space because I think it's what we really need it's all
Starting point is 00:11:39 you know these things make the news when they they blow up but you can see the reaction to Hancock's work now with ancient apocalypse I mean it's just he's getting all this vitriol sputed him and there's a real lack of actual civil debate trying to address the specific topics that are in this field that are in this alternative view on history. And these are some of the things we're trying to address. We've got a big summit coming up next or this year, I guess, the Cosmic Summit, which is in June in Asheville, North Carolina. I'll be speaking there.
Starting point is 00:12:10 Grahams are there, Randall, Randallson, George Howard, and Graham's trying to set up some debate. He's trying to invite some people to come in and actually get into this and do it in a sort of moderated civil way, which is exactly what I think we need rather than. you know, vitriol and and sort of accusations and, and the crazy things that have been said about Graham by the, the press on the back of ancient apocalypse. But yeah, it was a real interesting experience. And I do remember my, my, there was a few people there and my, my mother's kind
Starting point is 00:12:40 of in this crowd where you had this impression of Zahy and he uses a charming guy on TV. You know, he's the world's most famous Egyptologist. He wears his hat. He's got his clothing line. And, you know, you have this impression of him from, from that footage and the stuff he's done on TV, but I know there was a few people that were shocked to see kind of the reaction that he gave and how he handled himself in that debate. So yeah, I think Graham came out really well on the back of that.
Starting point is 00:13:08 But it was very much a formational thing for me to go, all right, there's definitely something here. And a lot of these topics need more exploration, more depth and more research. Absolutely. Yeah, you mentioned ancient apocalypse, Graham's latest, Netflix series and being that you are
Starting point is 00:13:26 close to him and I have done some interviews with him, I've got to ask you how exciting has it been to have, you know, this really it seems like the first ever, again, alternative history, documentary go mainstream, I mean, where it's
Starting point is 00:13:43 a premier Netflix show. Obviously, like you referenced, there's so much vitriol and media coming against Graham Hancock and we see it on Twitter, but I mean, I've never had so many people that really aren't into this stuff messaging me. Have you seen ancient apocalypse? What do you think?
Starting point is 00:14:01 Like, to me, it shows there is a mass awakening really in large part because of the show. How cool has that been for you as somebody who's also leading the charge in the alternative history world? It's been great. I mean, I was, yeah, it's a fantastic show. I applaud Graham for persevering and getting it done and making it happen. and making it happen. I kind of knew it was happening for a little while before it came out.
Starting point is 00:14:26 It was a big, you know, he was keeping it on the downline for quite a while. I think like the last couple of years while he was filming it. As some people know, he's had some issues. Like he got banned from Egypt. The serpent mound people banned him from coming in with his alternative ideas and filming. But it's,
Starting point is 00:14:41 I think it's great. And as you said, like it's, it is, and it's certainly something that I've seen, even on the YouTube side, it does seem to be a lot more people becoming aware of some of the issues that really do surround the earliest parts and the history,
Starting point is 00:14:59 like the origins of human civilization and this idea that, you know, maybe we're not the only, this might not be the only time where we've risen to what you might call an advanced civilization. It seems quite likely in the evidence is certainly pointing in the direction that it's happened before. Certainly that's the space that I focus on. But it's, yeah, it's fantastic that it's getting the eyeballs that it is. the whole vitriol side of it and the it became politicized i think what happened i mean three years ago he was graeme was attacked by um several mainstream academics in the the society of american archaeology journal they dedicated 27 pages of their journal to attacking him
Starting point is 00:15:38 and i did a whole deconstruct of it on a live stream but three years ago and the fun and even then i was calling it back like this is this is political like they're calling him a white supremacist and racist, which is the most nonsense terms, if you know the man. And he doesn't ever mention these sort of things in any of his work. But that's, it's kind, I consider it kind of like almost liberal dog whistling terms that are being thrown at him trying to rally, you know, and he gets compared to ancient aliens. It's, it's, it's a, it's a collection of ad homonyms and logical fallacies and association fallacies. And the funny thing is, it's, you, you fast forward three years to now. And it's exactly the same argument.
Starting point is 00:16:17 arguments being made by exactly the same people, spewing the same kind of dog whistles at him. And what happened was, in my opinion, is that, you know, as soon as you see the previews for it, and you have guys like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson in the clip, which I think they were, then that triggers to what you might consider the left a little bit. And so you have some left-wing publications like The Guardian, and they'll go out looking for the opposition to it, and that amplifies that same argument. And they get, you know, guys like John Hoops and Jason Covalido, these same guys that were saying the same thing for years now.
Starting point is 00:16:54 They get their message gets amplified. But ultimately, I mean, whatever, it's the nature of the internet, right? It brings more eyeballs to the whole thing. And I think they've made themselves look a little silly by saying things like, well, how is this is the most dangerous show on Netflix? How has this been allowed as if, you know, it shouldn't be allowed somehow? Some of the articles that were written about this are utterly ridiculous. But yeah, it's generated a lot of interest in the space, which has been been great.
Starting point is 00:17:21 And I think it will continue to do that. I think there's a lot of depth to a lot of these topics and a lot of different directions. You can go in particular, you know, the thing Graham talks a lot about with the apocalypse side is obviously the younger dryness. We know now that the true cataclysm happened on this planet, not that long ago. It's associated with, you know, an extinction event that happened and humans lived through it. and it would have been an absolute civilization ender. So, yeah, I think there's just a lot more to be done here. And I hope it stirs up a lot more legitimate debate, legitimate research,
Starting point is 00:17:56 and even, you know, over time, hopefully starts to change the, what you might call the mainstream narrative. It's still, this whole space is still somewhat controlled by academia, if you like. It's still, the official narrative of history hasn't changed much in 100 years in terms of civilization is more or less in the hands of the academic establishment, the guys in professors and the people that write the textbooks and that teach the courses in universities and whatnot. But there's a lot of different vectors that are coming at that now, and a lot of different
Starting point is 00:18:31 people have voices that are being recognized. And I think that's one of the issues that I think some of these people find quite threatening, like the nature of the discourses has shifted. Other people, me, whatever, the YouTubers, authors, they can gain a platform and they can have a voice and they can start to convince people. And I think that's threatening. But I think I do have some hope on this front. I mean, I've been contacted by lots of students and people that are in, you know, archaeology courses, the people that will be the academics of tomorrow. And I think they're being forced to deal with some of these questions and issues and topics that really show, well, there's actually some vectors that should be affecting history.
Starting point is 00:19:12 So I have hope that over time, you know, this whole field might become a bit more open-minded on the academic side and we'll be able to embrace some of these new topics and really factor them into what our picture of history is. Well said. So you just got back from Egypt. It sounds like you've been there several times. Was there an aha moment or something you saw this time that you never saw before? Maybe it was at a site. maybe it was some kind of revelation or new idea new theory anything like that you want to share to start out with sure yeah well so i i went twice this year i was there in october and then again in november uh so i spent a fair bit of time in egypt and i did i had um i had absolutely in october and then in on in november there was i mean we we hit a lot of sites uh for me one of the the best things that i've managed to do in the last couple of years and the first time i did this was
Starting point is 00:20:09 was 2021, was getting down beneath the step pyramid to where they, they, they, of Josa at Sakara. And this is where they found, you know, 40 to 50,000 of these of these stone vases. The phase, the, the, the hard stone vases have always fascinated me. And they're, to me, they're really a smoking gun, uh, that unlocks kind of the story of, of advanced technology deep in the past because you can point at lots of other aspects of Egyptian, um, artifacts and architecture and some of them get attributed to like new kingdom in later periods and they're sort of spread out across the civilization but not the jars the the jars and vases are generally said to have come from the first and second dynasty even though we have and this is mainstream uh evidence
Starting point is 00:20:55 of them going back to as far as like 15 000 bc uh so well into like mesolithic uh times even even even in Neolithic sort of times in Egypt. But then they disappear. They sort of stop right there. And it's, you know, Joseph hoovered them all up and he had them buried with him. And even in the museum at Tsukara, they talk about it being, you know, that he, most of these were inherited heirlooms from earlier times. They actually say that on one of the displays.
Starting point is 00:21:24 But after that period, they pretty much disappear from the narrative. And what you get are these handmade alabaster vessels, which developed in a high art form. They're beautiful. but it's they're nothing technologically speaking compared to you know vases made from from schist or corundum or uh or porphyry and granite and things that are much much harder and they display much more precision and and machining than these handmade alabaster vessels so getting down beneath the step pyramid being able to handle some of these fragments that are still down there you you can actually touch them feel them measure them uh examine them you can't do any of that in in museums unfortunately everything's locked up behind
Starting point is 00:22:01 case is not allowed to touch all of these these objects so that's been a real revelation and i've got some content out out there on that but this year in particular and it was the subject of my last video there was what i would call some some real um incontrovertible evidence of of advanced machining i mean there's lots of different flavors of that you can say but this one was in particular something that was then confirmed by a real master stone mason um artist stoneworker who was with us on the tour and it was something i kind of realized like yeah this is this is really really it's impossible to explain with hand tools and this is the this is that there's that box on elephantine island like it's this it's a shrine i guess it's got a it's got a pyramid like top
Starting point is 00:22:47 it's got tube drills in it it's this giant big single piece granite box it's probably the most famous and well-known artifact at elephantine island but it has this edging this cornice this bull nose thing that runs around it and on one side of it um it's it's It's perfect like a semi-circle. Maybe it's two inches across, but it's just semicircle edging that runs around it, all part of the single-piece box. But on one side of the box,
Starting point is 00:23:11 halfway down where this thing runs around the edge of it, it's not finished. And it's like that. You can see where the polishing has, and the polishing to give it that round shape ends. And then for a meter or so of this, of this bullnose, it's faceted.
Starting point is 00:23:27 Like it faceted like you would think of a gemstone being faceted, these flat planes. It has these straight flat planes, about nine of them, around this semicircular shape. And it's, we know that it's not finished, right? So this isn't the intended finished shape for this bull nose. This is the result of machining on the stone. This is the result of whatever tool was roughing out the stone to create that shape and then they would polish it out and for whatever reason they never finished it.
Starting point is 00:23:54 It kind of shows the value of unfinished work. Lots of examples of this across Egypt. It's almost more valuable than seeing finished. work but you know we had this um um alma allen with us who's he's a really well-known artist in the art world works in stone billionaires and zuckerberg and these guys buy his work but he looked at this and in the same way he looked at the vases beneath the step pyramid and there's fragments and said there's just no way like this isn't it's just 100 100% the result of um of uh of of machine tools and and you just can't do this work by hand so yeah he um that was a really a really
Starting point is 00:24:31 Real revelation to me, I've been looking at this thing for a few years and not really connecting the dots between like, well, this is unfinished work. These flat planes can't be done with hand chisels. They must have been done with some form of rotating tool that was machine guided. It was very precisely guided to create these straight facets. And it's just, yeah, it's those types of things that are just like you can't, it becomes very difficult to argue. I think that this was done with pounding stones and chisels or whatever, you know, and just
Starting point is 00:24:57 grinding because the evidence isn't there. It's just, it's something else. the only way you can achieve it is with these machine tools. So that for me was was huge. But yeah, every time we go to Egypt though, you learn something new. I always in every site revisit, you see little details. It's one of the benefits of going back there several times. You keep, you keep getting to, you think about stuff after you come back and then you go back and look at it closer and learn a little more. Yeah, it was, those were fantastic trips. Yeah, I really enjoyed your latest YouTube video.
Starting point is 00:25:30 Thank you. About evidence of advanced machining on Elephantine Island. I got to see this box, yeah, this last February when I was there. And so incredible to walk up to this multi-ton rose granite box. Or like you said, a lot of people call it a shrine. And just see the precision work, 90-degree corners, as you say, inset edges, tube drill holes on the inside of it, corners. Yeah, that's a challenge in its own. Yeah, and your video is just perfect
Starting point is 00:26:04 because you're so close up to these holes and I never actually paid much attention to this edging that you're talking about. So that was just incredible to see the close-up close-up shots in video footage of the edging and how like you say, I like how you made the point that it's not the final appearance for the,
Starting point is 00:26:29 edging. Right. And you said it was like the signature of the tool that did the shaping. It's the mark left by the machining process. And so I know we're theorizing here, but when you kind of consider what this ancient tool might have looked like, do you have anything like that you can share? Well, and it is speculation. Like I don't know.
Starting point is 00:26:54 But to my mind and discussing it with people that, like guys like Ulmer Allen, who was there who has literally worked in stone with both hand tools, machine tools, and then later robotics, and you know, these like CNC machines, real expert. I'm convinced that that particular thing was created by something that was rotating. It had to be rotating to create these facets and then be guided. The trick is you have two problems. You have to have something that can make that can eat away stone. I mean, that's a challenge in its own when you're talking about granite. not easy to do people people make a lot of comparisons to the wood but it's like there's there's a there's a world of difference between working in wood and working in granite
Starting point is 00:27:35 uh you know marble and and alabaster and stuff like that's much softer and much easy but granite's like why you almost question why are they doing this in grants like that one of the hardest things to work in material wise but to me there's there's two things where it has to be something that's rotating in a tool tip that's wide enough to create these small facets but it has to be very precisely guided so almost machine guided all or there's a jig involved, like something that creates it and runs it along, you know, keeps it very straight because that's the thing. These facets aren't wobbling and all over the place.
Starting point is 00:28:05 They're straight for like a meter. So in my mind, it's either a tool that makes a facet per pass almost, or it could be something more complex where it was like, well, this is the bullnosed tool and we slap it in here and it just creates that whole thing in one part. They might have had like nine several different faces that were rotating to create that shape. and then after that they come in with the whatever tool it is that that polishes it down or whatever technique that it is to polish it down to make it semi-circule and get rid of those facets. So that's what I think something like that may look at, but it's very difficult to say we don't know.
Starting point is 00:28:43 I don't, I mean, when it comes to like the speculation about how some of this stuff was done or even what it was for, because I firmly believe that a lot of these old kingdom sites and things like the boxes and the Serapian were functional. There must have been a purpose. for them. I don't think they're everything ceremonial. It's it it it strays into that realm of well, you know, it's we we have to we're almost forced to look at this stuff through the lens of our own technology through our own evolution and science and for sure we know that there's stuff that's outside of that lens of that viewpoint right. We're going to know more about science in the world and
Starting point is 00:29:16 the nature of everything in 10 years and 100 years in a thousand years we'll know more. So we know there's stuff outside the realms of our understanding today and I do believe that that some of these things, perhaps some of the techniques and perhaps some of the functions of these sites and objects may exist outside those realms of understanding. So it becomes quite difficult to really speculate. All I can do, or we tend to look at this and go, well, how would we do it today? How would we solve this problem? And that's not necessarily the way it was done, I think, back then or what it was for. You know, we have this electromechanical approach to problem solving and that may will be have other fundamental directions of technology that might have been
Starting point is 00:29:57 explored by the ancients in the past and that don't that we haven't quite got there yet or were any beginning to explore stuff you know resonance and frequency stuff or or using organic materials in the way that they did uh obviously didn't seem to have the need to make composite materials those sort of things so i don't yeah i i i don't know but if i was to guess i'd say it was some sort of rotating tool that that that was very precisely guided and that's the that's the challenge and we see that we see that in a lot of objects you have to have this you have to have this precision this guiding this crazy precision and it's really well exemplified by stuff things like the the the the faces of the giant statues at luxor
Starting point is 00:30:42 all the the head jets the crowns the peshents and the head jets just the pure symmetry that's in those from left to right and it was exemplified really well by Christopher done in his work, lost technologies of ancient Egypt. And because you often get the question, well, you know, enough time and these artists work on it and look at what Michelangelo did with David, and I agree that's spectacular, but A, it's in marble and B, it's not symmetrical. It's very human. But this pure symmetry that you get in complex objects from left to right isn't something that's really achievable by hand. And it seems to have been stamped out again and again and again,
Starting point is 00:31:22 almost like there was a template, almost like there was a machine making it. And I think that's the most logical explanation for what we see, because that type of symmetry is, is, is, is evidence for some seriously advanced technology and, and capability to, to be able to do that. It's not, you don't really do it by accident and you don't really, it's almost impossible, I would imagine to achieve by hand doing things like that in granite. And it's like, you know, one mistake and it's, you're done.
Starting point is 00:31:49 But they seem to have had a lot of confidence in their ability to, execute this stuff in single pieces of stone and it's just astonishing. Right. So like, you know, we had talked about Zawai Havas at the top and, you know, these Egyptologists, basically they tell us and, you know, I mean, I grew up believing before I really got into a lot of this alternative research that, yeah, everything you see in Egypt was built by the dynastic Egyptians. Like you point out, I point out, and if you're listening, you don't know, the dynastic Egyptians
Starting point is 00:32:22 of about 3,000 BC, there are the ones that were told create everything in Egypt, everything Ben's talking about this incredible precision box on Elefine Island that the pyramids were made as tombs. But like you
Starting point is 00:32:37 point out in a lot of your videos, when you look at the archaeological record, the dynastic Egyptians had certain tools, right? They had copper tools and even some iron tools, right? Which... Later on, yep.
Starting point is 00:32:51 later on on the most scale of hardness rank between three and four I think around there and yeah like copper is the three bronze might be a four steel ions like a five steel can be five and a half six is but still less than granite and certainly some of the other stones they used right so how were they precision crafting these uh eight plus on the most scale hardness granite whether it's statues or you mentioned these vessels stone vessels, these statues, these boxes, and I definitely want to talk to you about the statues, because that was my biggest takeaway in this last Egypt trip. I mean, I knew the pyramids weren't built as tombs, but I had never really thought a whole lot about statues until we got
Starting point is 00:33:41 to some of these sites, and our guide, Muhammad Ibrahim, was pointing out like that 1,000-ton statue. And so I know you recently did a video on this as well. and I want you just to talk to us about these ancient, whether it's the precision statues or just colossal statues, which are precision too. Yep. One, it sounds like you lean like me that these may have been created way before the dynastic Egyptians.
Starting point is 00:34:10 So, I mean, right there, we're just, this is mind-blowing to consider that these, we might be looking at depictions of the earlier civilization. Yep. And then just tell us about this 1,000 ton statue and what is craziest to you about the precision and then like the symbols you even see on like the shoulders or the base of that one. Yeah. So there's a lot to unpack there. So I would preface this by going back and saying, yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:41 So you're right in that in the archaeological record we have we have copper tools, bronze tools, pounding stones, flint chisels, stuff like that. And that's all we've found. Now, when I look at ancient Egypt, and this spreads across architecture, but also categories of artifacts, that columns, boxes, statues, slabs, vessels, you, I'm honing in on this, this concept of what I would call a tale of two industries. Because, as you said, ancient Egypt ran from more or less just after 3,000 BC up until around like 30, I think it was 30 BC, when Cleopatra committed it. side that was officially the end of it there's there is there's a lot of time for renovation
Starting point is 00:35:25 rework existing on these sites we know they they did that obviously built a lot of stuff you know they they were amazing civilization but when you look closely at the artifacts and what we see you see two classes of objects you see stuff that absolutely matches the tools and techniques that we have in the archaeological record much rougher work uh definitely handmade statues boxes columns things like this but then you have this other class of Things like the box on Alphitina Island, some of the statues. And I would put anything that's above, say, 200, 250 tons into this category, just from a logistics perspective, because I don't believe that they had the capability to shift loads that large.
Starting point is 00:36:07 Or stuff like the Serapian boxes, like moving them in underground. I think you could up above ground, they're probably capable of doing stuff at 150 tons. because they didn't use pulleys, you know, these wooden sleds and levers and human horsepower and ropes. But in those tight spaces, it's a different story. So you have all these, you have these two categories of, of artifacts, one that's explainable by the tools that we have in the record and one that really isn't that requires something else. And, you know, I do, I do think that a lot of this stuff, the advanced stuff is most likely inherited because we do see it at the very earliest parts of the Egyptian civilization, the vases, the big single piece granite
Starting point is 00:36:49 columns, the palm-shaped columns. You see him at Abbe, see it, Sakara. And I think, I think, you also see him in places like Luxor and Karnak, and I think that those temples were rebuilt in the New Kingdom in the 19th dynasty by Ramsey's around some of that original granite infrastructure, like with the obelisks. And yeah, so I would include statues in that as well. And so you mentioned the thousand-ton statue. There's actually several of them. We have evidence for at least three or four that I know of. There is the one at the Ramisdium, probably the best known one is it's fallen over. You still see that like the shoulder and the head and it's the pedestal still there. Just the pedestal that thing sits on and is not less than 460 tons, single piece block of granite.
Starting point is 00:37:34 I paste it out and you can calculate kind of the mass of it roughly. It's insane. And we see them at at Karnak, there's evidence for at least a thousand-ton single-piece statue. There's a giant hand and thumb, and they've kind of put most of the arm together on the ground. It's all these fragmented pieces of it all over the place. And that one's actually made from an even harder material than granite. It's a conglomerate quartzite, which includes huge chunks of flint, and that's an eight on the most scale. Like working, they used flint to cut the, to cut granite. You know, it's when you're making it out of Flint, and you're polishing these surfaces and making it, it's mind-bendingly difficult.
Starting point is 00:38:10 and in these conglomerate materials where you go from softer to harder, it's much more difficult than working in something, even as difficult as granite. And then for me, probably one of the most impressive examples of a thousand-ton statue is what's left at Tannis. There's not much of it left. There's a foot. And this foot is about the same size as the foot of the Statue of Liberty.
Starting point is 00:38:33 So if you're looking for a scale comparison, how big this statue likely was, it's probably about the same size as the Statue of Liberty, but carve from a single piece of ground. And the crazy thing about it being in Tannis is that that's up in the north in the Delta. That's more than a thousand miles from Aswan from the source of that material of that stone. So at some point, there was what could have been 12 or 1,500 tons of single piece granite moved more than a thousand miles and then put up there in the delta. And the river doesn't run right to Tannis.
Starting point is 00:39:02 Like there's not just shipping it on a boat. There's a lot more involved. So there's, you know, that stuff is utterly remarkable. And as you said, there's a, there's a high degree of precision. And I'd love to see more of them, more of these statues analyzed. I do think that, that some of them were worked on. Some of them may have been replicated by the dynastic Egyptians. I mean, they became very capable over time of working in stone.
Starting point is 00:39:26 You look real close at the statues at Luxor. There is differences in precision and in sort of cleanness of what things are. So I don't think every statue at Luxor is pre-Dynastic, but certainly several of them are. and in particular the ones that have been analyzed and shown things like this perfect symmetry. You see a couple of signs. For me, we talked about symmetry. That's one.
Starting point is 00:39:50 The other one is you see repeated radius cuts. Like you see the same radius being employed in different parts of the face and the curves in the objects. It's kind of difficult to analyze given they're all three dimensions. It's not just like a flat plane. They're three dimensional faces. But just that alone is a sign that, okay, you have to imagine like some giant CNC machine with the same tool that's making cuts in different places because that's how, you know, the algorithm made it, made it go.
Starting point is 00:40:22 But that in itself is kind of a sign of some pretty seriously advanced tool users. But yeah, so what's interesting about the statutes are is there's not a huge argument to be made that they're functional. Like they're clearly representational. Like they're not, they don't have a function other than as a marker perhaps. like they could have been used to mark a location but yeah i think they were in they were they i think several of them and particularly the the big ones were most likely inherited and what's interesting about that is as you said it seems to be depictions of the builder culture
Starting point is 00:40:54 whatever the civilization atlanta whoever you want to call them that came before the dynastic civilization and you know let's not forget the egyptians themselves recognized that they called themselves a legacy civilization they trace their own history back some 36,000 years. And I think what a better explanation, because I get the question often, it's like, well, if the statues, if you think the statues are so old, then how come they look like the
Starting point is 00:41:20 dynastic Egyptians? I actually think it's the other way around. I think that they, if you are a culture that comes out of nowhere, in the old kingdom, boom, we're here and we're building, we've got these pyramids, we've got these statues, these are our, these are your ancestors, your gods. they likely, they didn't start from nothing. They came from, with images of their gods. They came with probably culture, religion, perhaps, maybe even in language.
Starting point is 00:41:48 And that's where it starts. Because one thing is that's consistent. If you go and look at all the temples, the beautiful temple of like Sedi the First and all of the artwork that's undoubtedly dynastic, there's something that doesn't change throughout the ages. You always see these pharaohs and rulers being depicted as being amongst the gods. They're always in there, and here's, here's, you're with ISIS, or you're with Horus, or you're with Amun. And, you know, the gods are giving them the gifts of life and stability and power,
Starting point is 00:42:17 the, the, the, the wuss, the jedd pillar, like all these symbols. And that seems really consistent. So they always pictured themselves as being amongst the gods. And so they have these representations of that iconic look. So they created themselves in these images of these gods that were gods to them. I think a lot of that iconography and the gods. and that that look of what we associate with the nastic Egypt may will be very old very much older and they're they're inheriting than that so it's almost a form of like a cargo cult you know
Starting point is 00:42:46 that it's it's like they're trying to gain significance through ceremony and through you know just just what would you call it like significance like by creating these ceremonies and trying to take some of that power and bring it upon themselves and make themselves seem godlike in their own times. And this, you know, this extends, you know, you have thousands of years of this, and then you do get like really huge powerful empires, like in the 19th dynasty with, you know, set of the first, Ramsey's the second, Merrin Patar, these guys that are notorious for claiming these things. And, you mean, everything, today we consider Ramsey's the second to be the most powerful Pharaoh and the biggest one, the best one, because his names on everything.
Starting point is 00:43:31 We don't really, it's not really talked about as much in these days, but it certainly was in Flinders Petrie's time and when they were really, there was a lot of that, you know, really primary Egyptological research going on where they know that he was claiming older objects. Like there's so many examples of it where he's overriding glyphs. He's overriding the names. He's chiseling his name into statues, into slabs, into obelisks. And, and, you know, over the top of features, I get into it in a bunch of my videos.
Starting point is 00:44:01 And yet the science of Egyptology pretty much depends. on that writing to then date and relate the object, if not the object, the whole site itself, into the story of history. So it's kind of like this faulty premise for how we date and relate a lot of these objects. They could potentially be far older than that, but this guy just came along later on and chiseled his name deeply into it. And he would do it really deeply because he knew that somebody after him would probably try and do the same thing to him, which they did. And there's a bunch of objects like statues at Luxor, for example, that have the names of two or three different rulers on them. So how do we know who did what first or if this thing was here before them
Starting point is 00:44:39 or not? We don't. But it seems we have lots and lots of evidence that they were recycling and renaming and claiming these artifacts for themselves. I assume as a, you know, it's just the arrogance and the power of being a king in a really powerful time like the 19th industry. I mean, they had tons of resources and power and money to do that stuff. He did embark on these huge building projects. Ramsey's supposedly built, you know, Karnak and Luxor and all those beautiful sandstone hyperstyle halls. I think that's all dynastic work, but I think it was built around a core of pre-existing granite work, and that's, there's lots of evidence for that on those sites, and those are topics that I want to get into in future, future videos. Yeah, let's end with talking about
Starting point is 00:45:24 kind of resonance and harmonics. You know, you mentioned Chris Dunn, who basically concludes in his books that the Great Pyramid must have been, you know, originally built to provide a highly technical society with energy, like this holistic energy device that's harmonically coupled with the earth. And do you tell us kind of your thoughts on that side of things when it comes? You've been to Egypt many times now. You've been inside the pyramids. I've seen some of your videos somewhere where I think you guys are kind of humming inside
Starting point is 00:45:57 and you're talking a little bit about what's happening. just anything energy harmonics give us your theories on that it's well it's it's a it's a interesting and i look forward to more serious research being done uh into it i i do think there is something there's something there like i don't know i mean look you can get into a water drunk like a water tank and and it'll resonate like lots of concrete rooms are resonated so that in frequency so but there are a few specific spots in particularly the Giza Plateau and in the pyramid that have just a remarkable resonance to them and it does seem likely and as you said Chris Darn's theory does rely on you know he talks about the Grand Gallery housing these
Starting point is 00:46:43 series of Heimholz resonators and that's part of the whole theory about that Giza power plant now Chris is working I'm close with Chris as well and he's working on a follow-up to that book based on a lot of the new information that's come out with the Scan Pyramids project and I very much look forward to seeing his findings on that. But yeah, I would go back and say that I absolutely think it was functional. I do think that the best explanation for the great pyramid
Starting point is 00:47:12 at the moment is Chris Dunn's Giza Power Plant theory because it does explain every aspect of the pyramid and he used it to correctly predict what was behind Gaten Briggs door, which is the little slugn's, lab at the end of the shafts or the northern shaft from the queen's chamber, which was remarkable. And based on his theory, he predicted what they would find.
Starting point is 00:47:33 And that's exactly what they'd like a void in another little door, which is what they found when they drilled through it. But I'm not, I think that's the best explanation for it, but I'm not saying, I'm not really convinced that that is the full explanation for it. And I don't know, I do think that that resonance has something to do with it. And, you know, another thing that he gets into and sort of speculates on in his book is the use of things like ultrasonic drilling and tools that used resonance to help work the stone. And that's certainly a plausible aspect. We use some of those tools and techniques today.
Starting point is 00:48:06 We're starting to use them in the drilling industry. We do use ultrasonic drilling rigs to do jewelry, but also to do larger, larger form board drills and things like that to go through materials. So resonance seems to have been something that was. very familiar to the build of culture whoever that was and i think it was definitely a tool uh in their toolbox but i yeah in terms of how it all worked at what it does i i don't know i i do hope that we do more significant serious research into into the nature of some of that and um the more the more we do along those lines the better because i think we we have if we my big problem with i guess the mainstream's approach to just shutting down these arguments and saying this is all the
Starting point is 00:48:52 nonsense we know what happened it was a tomb you know case closed is that it's it's frustrating because there are so many things we could be doing that we have we have a lot of capability today and if we actually applied ourselves we might stand to learn something like we we could not only move closer towards solving some of these mysteries but we might actually stand to learn something that benefits us and you know slowly slowly i'm we're doing a few of those things ourselves when we go to Egypt and outside of Egypt, I've got a few interesting things happening that could hopefully peel back a few layers of the onion in terms of precision and machining and defining the degree of precision and technology that may have been used to create some of these artifacts.
Starting point is 00:49:40 There's some interesting work happening outside of Egypt. And yeah, it's kind of sad that nobody's allowed to analyze these artifacts. Nobody's really allowed to go in and do any work or do any experiments. and many of them would be completely benign. Like, they're not going to hurt anything. Things like scanning with the high definition, you know, LiDar scanners, not the iPad versions that we use here and there, but, you know, actually doing like detailed scans
Starting point is 00:50:05 is there's endless uses for robotics to explore lots of different aspects. We've got all sorts of full spectrum tools that we could be using to analyze some of these things holistically as well. And yeah, that's what I hope we can get to. to try and uncover that space and just be open to these ideas like resonance and not just dismiss them out of hand because yeah as you said i think i think it's part of the toolkit i don't think it's an accident that those we find those properties in places like the great pyramid or in these chambers beneath the geese plateau yeah last quick question and you can just give a real real quick answer
Starting point is 00:50:44 as you were sharing i was remembering inside the great pyramid I think most people call it the ante chamber right before you go into the King's Chamber, that space. That to me was the, that wasn't my favorite part of going inside the Great Pyramid, was seeing this little space. You know, if I remember right, you crouch under to get in it. Yeah, stand up. You stand up, and it's like you're in a machine, a literal machine with, you know, the way the grooves come down. Yep. anything you want to share about that specific piece of the Great Pyramid?
Starting point is 00:51:22 Well, yeah, that's typically called part of this whole Port Cullis mechanism, which I'm not convinced that's what it is. But yeah, and I just, all I can say is, yeah, it's, that's an amazingly resonant space and just was in there, you know, last, what, in November. Yeah, I was, I was tone. I can hit the tone in there to make it resonate. And, yeah, I took a couple of people in there. And it just blows your mind when you get in there.
Starting point is 00:51:46 and you do that. It's a very interesting little space. There is, you know, there is a, there is a good history and a good, there's, there were more stones and there was more stuff involved with that area. And there's a good channel out there called History for Granite. I know, I know that guy as well, that does explore kind of the history of some of the granite blocks that were potentially part of that because they were all busted up and then, you know, moved and thrown down the well shaft down into the the the grotto and there's there's blocks the granite here and there around the the great pyramid that have these big tube drills in them that were potentially part of that mechanism so it certainly bears further investigation there was something else going on
Starting point is 00:52:28 there like this there a you know there seems to have been some sort of overpressure event in in the whole king's chamber that affected that just going in there you can see how the granite changes color as you go around the corner from red to kind of black it's almost been burned And there is some evidence that that whole chamber has been expanded, like the best part of an inch in all, in, you know, all of the walls. But yeah, I don't know. It's, I don't have much to say about the anti-chamber other than, yeah, it's incredible. And if ever you get in there, then that's one of the most resonant spaces you'll ever be in. And it's just when you hit that tone in there, you just feel it vibrating in your chest.
Starting point is 00:53:04 There's a, it's quite an experience. Yeah. Well, Ben, thanks so much for your time today. This has been a fascinating interview in closing. Is there any projects you're working on You want people to know about and how can they best Connect with you follow you in your research Cheers Derek yeah
Starting point is 00:53:19 I am working on a few things It's just mostly videos at the moment I've got a trip to Turkey coming up in April There'll be a few spots for I'm going to let people know But if anyone wants to check out my work It's YouTube.com slash C slash unchartedex X I post everything on my website UnsharteredX.com
Starting point is 00:53:37 I'm UnsharteredX1 on Twitter And UncharteredX7 on Instagram right. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much and hopefully we'll do this again in the near future. Derek, it's been a pleasure, Mike. Thanks for having me. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hey, make sure to follow Uncharted X on YouTube and on the website where Ben mentioned. He's doing such incredible research. Really thankful that I was able to interview him. And also check up my last interview on the podcast where I talked. about Ireland's mysterious wormhole and a very strange elongated skull discovery that took place in Jericho.
Starting point is 00:54:25 So check that out for sure. Until next time, keep exploring.

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