Megalithic Marvels - China’s Impossible Ancient Artifacts / Cassie Coppersmith

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Back by popular demand, I sit down in this episode with researcher, explorer and host of the new "Secrets in Stone" podcast - Cassie Coppersmith. Harnessing her unique power-point-presentation prowess, Cassie guides us down a forbidden rabbit-trail that will take us on a journey to ancient China where a very little known ancient site has revealed some very big out-of-place-artifacts. How could the ancients, using primitive hand-tools, have precision fashioned these impossible relics as the mainstream narrative theorizes? Are these astounding discoveries actually far older than we know? Were they made with lost ancient technology? Follow Cassie on YoutubeJoin me on a tour

Well, I am very excited to welcome back a fellow explorer, researcher, friend, and now the host of Secrets in Stone podcast, Cassie Coppers with Martin. Cassie, how are you? I'm good, Derek. How are you doing? Great. It's great to have you back. We did a show together a month or so ago on the Secrets of Anchor Wat in Cambodia, and that was very popular. People loved it. So back by popular demand. And congrats on launching the YouTube channel, the podcast, everybody watching, listening, go follow the Secrets in Stone Podcast on YouTube, on Spotify, everywhere else it might be. But I was looking at your YouTube channel and Cassie, you're like three episodes in. Your last video you put out five days ago already has 17,000 views. The one before that that you put out two weeks ago has 65,000. thousand views. Like, what's your secret? I think it's just a weird YouTube algorithm. I have no

idea, Derek. My hope is that it's just something people like. But I just have a feeling that, I don't know, the next one I put out is going to get 300 views or something. So I'm not, I'm not getting too sure of myself just yet. But you had to have gotten some great feedback, you know, and that's got to be encouraging, right? Three episodes in and you're, you've got a video approaching 100,000 views on YouTube? Yeah. I think the most fun part for me has been reading the comments. I mean, I've had, I did two episodes, one on Bolivia and one on this little-known site

in Cambodia. And I've had people who live in Bolivia. I've had Cambodians reach out. You know, people who have lived by these sites their whole lives and say that they've never been there and they appreciate the videos. And so I think for me, that's been the most fun. And, you know, I have you to thank for this, Derek. I would never, ever have thought of doing it.

And then last summer when we were traveling in England, you said, oh, you know, these conversations are really fun. You should be a YouTuber. And I was like, yeah, right. No way. And then I guess it planted a seed. And, you know, our discussion a couple months ago was really fun for me. And, and yeah, so I launched about a month ago.

It's been great. Yeah. Well, I've got to be honest. I am, I've been doing this a while now. Social media, content creation, episodes, you know, and I am impressed. Like, right out of the gate, you don't just launch these channels with YouTube, Spotify, you're on X now, and Instagram. But, like, you're putting out not just episodes, but reels.

You've got graphics made, like, I mean, come on. This is, do you have somebody helping you make the, record the video too, or is that just through the camera. No, it's just through a camera that I had in my closet. So, you know, I think until a month ago, I didn't even really know what a reel was or how to make it. So you graciously offered about an hour of your time to give me advice and lessons learned. And that was really, really helpful. And I just, I don't know, dove in and did some research and just tried. I used to have a photo behind me of this like Delorean with an astronaut. But I got some, some feedback from some of the people watching my videos saying, you know, I think that might be a little

inappropriate. Maybe you should go with a different graphic. So I switched it up to a map. So I'm just sort of learning as I go, Derek. Well, hey, one word of advice is don't. I guess I've learned not to barely even read the comments anymore. Yeah. Because I mean, everyone's some of all encouraging stuff, but it seems like it's more brutal than encouraging. Yeah. I mean, the two most memorable comments I've gotten that are in the negative. One just said nope, which I thought was funny. And the other one told me that I needed to find a different hobby. But for the most part, people have been really wonderful and kind. So it takes more than a comment like that to get me down. Take the comments with a grain of salt. Like I said, I've learned almost not even read them.

Hurt people, hurt people, Derek. Right. Well, anyway, congrats on the success. and launch of the podcast, I hope you keep it going. Again, not that I'm the expert, but I've learned consistency is key, right? So just keep cranking them out. And when you love kind of what you do, it makes it somewhat fun and, you know, easier than normal. Absolutely. But I loved your comment to me the other day when we were talking off air about that you said something like, I can't believe how much work it takes to get a 15 minute episode out.

Yeah. Yeah, like days. So hopefully I get a little faster as time moves on. Oh, that's, yeah, that is my world. Well, I'm excited and so pumped about what we're going to get into. We're going to be talking about ancient China, correct? Yes. Give us like a 30-second preview before I give one an announcement.

Yeah, so, you know, you and I were both in England last year and both went to the British Museum where they, you know, they have these sung to. and B disks. And that's how you pronounce it. It took me a minute in my research to figure out the way that it's properly pronounced. So it's B, but it's spelled B-I and sung, but it's spelled C-O-N-G. So I think a lot of people probably mispronounce that. But, you know, I was standing in front of those artifacts in the British Museum,

and I was just blown away by them. I couldn't understand how they could possibly have been made by anything other than a machine. So that just sparked a little curiosity in me. I started diving down the rabbit hole. So today we're going to talk about those artifacts. We're going to talk about the culture that they're attributed to. And then at the end of the video, I'm going to tell you who I think actually made them. Everybody stick around for this full episode.

It's going to be incredible. But just a quick reminder about some upcoming tours. If you haven't heard about them this November, we have our secrets. of Cambodia tour. And again, my last episode with Cassie was all about the secrets of Cambodia and and Kerwatt, so much to see there. And right now you can still lock in the early bird price of it's $1,49, through the end of June. So go to Stargate voyager.com slash tours or click the link in the show notes below to lock

that price in. And I thought we only had five spots left, but we just were able to get another bus. So we have like 20 spots left now. So we already have almost 40 people signed up. This is going to be a big, awesome tour. So we're going to see, again, Anchorwat, all of the incredible sites that Cassie showed us in her last episode regarding the Lost Ancient Tech. So I am so pumped. We're going to talk about history and ancient sites that you rarely don't hear about on podcasts.

And I saw these artifacts too in England and I was blown away and I want to learn more. So you are the expert take us on an expedition. All right. So today I thought we could discuss the Neolithic culture that the archaeologists believe made these precision artifacts, as well as some very mysterious things that I found in ancient China. So the Lianzhu culture is the Neolithic civilization that's been dated to between the. 3,400 and 2250 BC, so around the same time as the beginning of the first dynasty in Egypt. It was located primarily in east central China, about 160 kilometers or 100 miles southwest of modern-day Shanghai. The discovery of the Yangtube culture is a really interesting story.

In 1983, an archaeologist discovered a report from the 1930s during a warehouse cleanup that discussed an ancient culture in this area. He and his team spent two years searching for the culture. Then one day a factory announced that it planned to excavate soil from a large local hill. And this archaeologist believed that this hill might have been manmade. So he got permission to excavate it before the factory took the soil. And what they found, Derek, changed the course of archaeological history in China. They discovered noble tombs that had an incredible amount of grave goods. one of the tombs, which is called Tomb 12,

was clearly the richest and highest ranked tomb of all of these tombs. On and around the body were 1,200 artifacts, most of which were jade, and these weren't just any artifacts. They were the now famous B-disks and sung tubes, similar to the ones that you and I saw in the British Museum. I'm going to talk much more about these artifacts in a few minutes, but here in this very tomb,

they found some of the most precise, most unexplainable artifacts ever on earthed. And it wasn't just a burial site. It took the archaeologist about six years, but eventually they discovered the beating heart of the Liangzhu culture. And it wasn't just another hill site. It was an entire complex covering over three square kilometers. It featured a central palace area on a raised platform with packed earth. And this central palace alone was about 630 meters. across. And you know, I'm struck, Eric, by how similar this structure looks to, you know,

some of the earth and mounds that we see in even North America down in Louisiana and Mississippi and places like that. So it reminds me a lot of the other mound structures that we've seen in other places in the world. These images are fascinating because I was literally, right before you said that, thinking the same thing, this looks like a mound complex. in the southeast of America from the ancient mountain builders and we're talking something so similar across the world in China

and it was crazy to see that one image there of the B-disc, just white in the dirt. And how many artifacts were there? 1,200, just in this one tomb. Now, this tomb was clearly the king or the chief of this tribe I mean, it had 10 times the artifacts as any of the other tombs that they discovered.

But yeah, this one was really spectacular. So they also discovered massive inner and outer walls. If you're looking at this on Spotify or YouTube, I have a photo that shows the scale of these walls around the central palace. Some sections of these walls are up to 60 meters wide and four and a half meters tall, and they span over 30 kilometers total around this site. So this would have taken an estimated 1.1 million cubic meters of soil to construct. And anybody who's watched my other two videos knows that I love putting these big numbers into perspective.

So how much is 1.1 million cubic meters of soil? That's the equivalent of 440 Olympic-sized swimming pools or the equivalent of filling up over 900 Boeing 747s with soil. and rock. The Liangzhu hydraulic system was also incredibly impressive and one of the earliest documented systems like these in the world. It included 11 dams, which were 10, 5 to 10 meters tall. There were eight water gates entering the complex and one land gate on the southern wall, which was, of course, aligned almost perfectly on the north-south axis. And these waterways linked the inner city to the outer city and beyond to the river system. In other words, Derek, this is an incredibly advanced feat of engineering for a culture that lived 3,000 years ago, and certainly, or sorry,

in 3,000 BC, and certainly makes them one of the most complex neolithic societies in China, and, you know, I would argue in the world. But the Liangzhu's culture's earthworks alone are incredibly impressive, but even with their advanced engineering, capabilities, they clearly had similar to many of the other Neolithic societies around the world. Archaeologists have never found evidence of any Liangzhou writing system or metal tools. They have mainly found flint and stone tools in these workshops and fairly unsophisticated pottery, as you can see in the picture in front of us. So I think this makes the precision artifacts found in their burial plots a real mystery.

Yeah, these here look nothing like the precision article. effects we're going to get to. Right. I mean, this looks like any North American archaeological site that you would stumble upon today. So let's take a close look at Tomb 12 and talk about what was found there. So as I mentioned before, this was clearly the richest and highest ranked of the tombs. On and around the body were 1,200 artifacts, most of which were jade. Interestingly, in these burials, jade is placed deliberately on certain parts of the body. So some pieces were always placed on or near the head, others near the shoulder, and then the rest sort of scattered around the body.

And this is consistent across all of the ancient burial sites that have been found in China. Even, you know, there are even some grave sites where archaeologists found small jade discs placed in the eye sockets of the dead. So for this culture, it seems that this jade placement in burials was a ritual arrangement. So in this tomb, they found two artifacts that have since become quite famous. They found a song that has since been dubbed the King of Jade's Sung due to its large size compared to other tubes. This particular song weighs six and a half kilograms or almost 15 pounds and stands nine centimeters tall. It features the classic sung design, a cylindrical tube encased in a square prism.

with the exterior that gradually tapers to the bottom. The second artifact is a giant axe, which they call the king of jade axe, and it measures approximately 17 centimeters or around seven inches on each side. And the axe features a broad flat blade with a slightly curved cutting edge. It is unsharpened, which indicates it was used for ritual purposes, rather than practical use. and its upper section has a single board hole, presumably for halfting.

Now, what sets both of these artifacts apart from other artifacts that they found in other tombs are their intricate engravings, which have since made them quite famous. These carvings portray a human-like figure with a large feathered headdress whose outstretched arms bent to touch the mythical beast below it. The beast is in a squatting posture with quad feet and fangs sticking out of its mouth. And the microcarvings here, Derek, are so small that in some places there are five separate lines within one millimeter of space. So this entire thing is only maybe an inch tall. And the ax plate bears the same designs. So it's pretty, pretty cool. This is an inch tall, this actual, pop to bottom what we're seeing on the screen.

Yeah, this carving. That's wild. Yep. The other now famous artifacts that were found in this tomb were the B disks. In Tomb 12, there were somewhere between 24 and 33 of these disks found. These discs are flat, circular jade artifacts with a central hole, kind of like a giant flat donut. They vary in size with diameters typically ranging from 6 to 10 inches. Yeah, tell us again about the details of these B disks. So the B disc's thickness are remarkably uniform with deviations of, get this, Derek, less than 0.2 millimeters across the entire surface.

Each disc has near perfect circularity. The center is equally precise. And the surfaces are polished in a glossy finish, reflecting light, evenly with no visible scratches, even under 10 times magnification. In other words, these discs are polished. are astonishingly precise. These are incredible. I mean, to me, this is the antithesis of lost technology.

There's no way you can tell me primitive hand tools made these B-discs. I totally agree with you. It's crazy. And can you take us back now to the slide? I think it was the kind of the squarish thing that you said was like two inches. Okay. We're back at that slide. Go to the one before that or maybe two before.

Yeah, that. So you're saying this one's called the King of Jade Sung on the left. Yep. And about how tall or wide is this? It weighs 15 pounds and it's nine centimeters tall. Okay. I mean, when I look at this, this thing is incredible. It's got almost perfect curvature on top, which it probably was perfect at one point,

just, you know, considering how old it probably is. Yep. Looks like it has a precision hole that goes through it all the way to the bottom. Yes. But then you can see the sides go square. And not only are there the little face, which is what you showed us afterward, right, that's on that? Yep. Okay.

So I just see, that's what I just put together. That little face that's an inch is on that thing. But then you can see almost what looks like precision, finite cuts, you know, that go down three layers on each side. Yes. Yep. So there's high relief or I guess low relief carvings all the way around the song. You'll also see that same carving that you see on the left. You'll see that up at the top of the axe on the right. And this is the only app that this carving is on. Okay. Yeah. It's the exact same depiction on both. That's wild. Yeah. It's this man riding the beast. And do we know any more about this?

writing the beast according to the legends? No, we don't. We don't. One thing I did learn when I was doing my research is there's a jade carver in China who's sort of revered as this famous jade carver and he tried to replicate this carving on using the tools that he believed that they had available to them, which was, you know, effectively an obsidian flake. And, you know, the whole time he was carving, he was just shaking his head saying, I

I have no idea how they did this. I have no idea how they did this. So this is incredibly minute, incredibly precise carvings. What's crazy about this is, yeah, on one hand, you see the man riding the beast. On the other hand, it just looks like a face with a hat and glasses. I'm going to talk about that here in a minute, Derek. So yeah, yeah, this is wild. Keep going. There's something I uncovered. All of these artifacts that I just discussed are displayed prominently in the local Liangziu Museum, which honestly looks like one of the nicest museums in the world. China seems to really do it right when it comes to their archaeology. And honestly, Derek, I can't wait to plan a trip there with you someday.

Yeah, I think we need to get that in the works now. So how were these artifacts created? We'll start with what they're made of. The best example of these artifacts and the ones that appear to be the highest quality are made out of nephrite, which is a type of. jade. It's known for its toughness due to the dense, fibrous crystal structure, making it ideal for carving into artifacts. It has a hardness of a six to seven on the Moes scale, which is actually softer than some minerals, but exceptionally tough due to its interlocking fibers, which makes it

less resistant to breaking. So let's talk about how archaeologists believe that these were made. We'll take the Sung tube, for example. Since the Liangshu culture didn't have metal, tools, archaeologists believe that they used cord saws, either larger ones like the ones in the photo, or simpler versions with strings or sinews coated with abrasives like port sand to cut the nephrite. This involved pulling the cord back and forth over the stone, gradually wearing it down. And in this black and white photo I'm showing here, this was a jade workshop from the 1930s in China that was studied by an archaeologist. And this archaeologist noted that it took these gentlemen here several weeks to cut through the jade chunk, which is about the size of a

basketball. Then archaeologists say that they created the core in the middle using bamboo, wood, or bone, rotated with the bow drill or some other hand-turned mechanism, and a slurry of coarse sand and water served as the abrasive to grind through the nephite. But as you can see from the photos I've included here, the so-called drill marks from the bamboo experiment look very different than the drill marks found inside the actual artifacts at the site. So I'm fairly sure that bamboo is not what drilled these course. I mean, yeah, look at the left and right. The bamboo experiment does not even have the finite lines that you see in the actual artifact, on the actual artifact, those microscopic lines. Yeah. I mean, what does that drill, the drill marks on the right

remind you of? I mean, just everything you see in Egypt, right? It's exactly. Exactly, yeah, like what you see in Egypt, on a lot of these boxes inside what are called vases, but are actually the granite artifacts. Yeah, you can see those same marks inside, hence the tool they use, right? So finally, after the bore was complete, the fine carvings were made, according to archaeologists, by using either sharp stone or bone tool with the abrasives, and then the exterior was ground to refine the shape. So we're told that the artisans used flat stones or sand-covered surfaces, applying pressure to smooth the faces and sharpen the corners. In these songs, the square sides have quarter angles, corner angles that are perfect or near-perfect 90 degrees. So archaeologists say that in order to achieve that, they must have used measuring guides like

board lengths or wooden frames. And maybe these explanations convince some people, but I just really have a very hard time believing that these artifacts were created using string, bamboo, sand, and wooden frames. The pictures you showed are incredible because it just gives such a visual to the insult to our intelligence. I believe it is to say that a string saw made those precision jade artifacts. I mean, are you kidding me? Yeah. No, there's no way. And then when they try to replicate it in experiments, it looks nothing like the actual artifact. And, you know, we're told not to question that. So the mainstream narrative is that they use these string bows or you said sinews. And then what?

Did they like super glue on sand or did they just dump the sand in? In the experiment that they showed from the 1930s, there was somebody dumping sand and quartz over the top of the blade that was going back and forth. So that becomes the abrasive that it theoretically cuts through this jade. And the string is just the tool that delivers that abrasive. I mean, again, I could see this working, like you said, it took them weeks to cut through this one jade basketball sized piece. Yeah.

Yeah, at some point, you're going to cut through something. But again, it's not going to be this precision, perfectly symmetrical artifact like we're seeing with these artifacts from the tomb, not only are they, you know, perfectly straight, but they're curved and squared and it goes down, you know, it looks like it's a little bit wider at the top. Yeah, and, you know, the discs, there's, there were discs that they found in later tombs that were clearly mimics of the earlier ones. But these earlier ones like the ones that you see in the British Museum are just, you know, for all intents and purposes, absolutely perfect.

Are you going to talk about this artifact that I took a picture of in the museum? Look at this crazy artifact. Ancient precision crafted jade cylinder unearthed in China between, they say, 3,000 and 5,000 years old. But yeah, you look at that and it's got literally precision drill holes in it that go all the way through it. but it looks like a silenoid out of, you know, some space age vehicle. Yeah, would be hard to make today without a 3D printer. So another really interesting thing about these artifacts that I want to point out. To me, it appears that these now famous images that you see all over the museums in China of the man and the beast,

I believe that they are secondary carvings. If you look at the image on the screen, I think the original versions are the ones you can find with either no carvings on them at all, or very clean, minimalist carvings with extremely precise lines like the image on the left. These artifacts display a simple mask image. The eyes are rendered as two small circles and a short bar represents the nose or the mouth.

These are carved with raised, not incised lines, and the bands are perfectly straight. Now, compare to this on the left to the famous carved image on the right, The image on the right was clearly edited in post-production, so to speak. It's been embellished with tiny spirals and striated brick bands. These secondary carvings are typically carved directly into the jade. If you look closely, you can see the original raised carvings,

and then the lines that were added that create this man-writing-of-beast image. Another image you often see on these artifacts is the image of a bird. The original bird image is a very, precise, low relief carving with clean lines. And then the image on the right, you can see the birds have been carved directly into the surface to mimic the original. So what's going on here? Did the Liangzhu culture make these artifacts with fine, clean lines, and then scratch additional images into them? Or did they find them somewhere? Or were they given them as a gift from a different culture. It seems to me, and this is only my theory, that the Liangzhu did not make these,

but once they had possession of them, they added their own carvings, which admittedly are still really cool, but these were like their branding to the artifacts. Maybe the famous carved man figure on the back of the beast represented the image of their king, who was ultimately buried with these artifacts. So I love Cassie, where you're ticking this. Again, back to Egypt, this reminds me. My first thought was the boxes in the Serapium. Yeah. You've got precision, perfect, megatone, 100-ton black boxes if you take the body of it in the lid, right? But then on a lot of these, you find what looks literally like scratched in hieroglyphs

and writing from the Dynaski Egyptians. there's no way the maker of this precision box then almost scribbled on it with a knife, right? So you have two different things going on. You've got the older box, I believe, with the later dynastic Egyptian carvings. Literally, we're just etching into it, claiming it is there as when I believe it's from a far earlier epoch. So it looks like the same thing here, right? Exactly the same thing. The same thing you see in Cambodia, the same thing you see in Egypt, the same thing you see in South America.

It's culture's finding or being given older artifacts and then claiming them as their own through almost graffiti, right? And you can clearly see the difference, especially when you put them side by side. Wow. So are you going to get to how old you think these might be? Yes. Okay. later. All right, all right.

When you mention the little bird that is raised, you can clearly see on the right side the bird is not raised, and it's more of the scratch etched in version. And, you know, they clearly adapted and adopted this mask image. They liked the bird image because they saw these on these artifacts, and then they replicated them on either, you know, blank slates that they had. or as you can see here on the right, the mouth is raised still, so that was the original artifact underneath,

but you see all of these precision carvings on top of and around the original low relief carvings here. Artifacts like these were primarily found in elite, early stage Liangzhou burials and became much less common in later periods. The concentration remains highest in the Liangzhou Heartland, with diminishing complexity and frequency as you find these artifacts outside of this area, which archaeologists just write off

as regional adoption or imitation. But here's what I think. I think they ran out of artifacts. They didn't have the technology to produce them any longer, and so the early stage graves had a lot of them, and then as graves became later in time period or further from this center, there became fewer and fewer artifacts.

to go around. I can imagine they became a really coveted possession later on. So there are other precision artifacts that are much less well known, but I think just as interesting that have been found in these tombs. Okay, so here are what archaeologists call headdress-shaped fittings. They have a unique outline in an indented top. And at the bottom, there are these three drill holes on a thinner piece of stone that almost looks like it was meant to fit into something else. And if you look back across the various carvings on the Sungs and the axe, I think this artifact looks a lot like the headdress, quote unquote, that was worn by the figures carved on the jades.

And I included the picture of the headdress down at the bottom so you can kind of see the similarity there. Very similar. And then, of course, you see the clean version and then the marked up edited version later with all of the face carvings on it. There are also three-pronged jades that have a rounded bottom and three projections carved on the top. Some have a perforation that runs through the central prong or other drill marks. I can't help but think that these look a little bit like a tool or a key or something other than an ornamental piece. There are all-shaped jades that have an elongated shape and a pointed tip, and the opposite end is pierced with a hole.

they look a little bit like a long pen. Some speculate they might be reworked material from the inner core of the song. In the photos I have on the screen, the one on the left has a squared section and the surface is decorated with three highly simplified versions of the human-like mask that you see on the songs. The one on the right is decorated with a zoomorphic mask, has round, bulging eyes, and a short raised bar for the mouth. and it also has a very long skull. I don't know.

Maybe it's my imagination, but that's what I see when I look at it. So yeah, I was going to ask you, the one on the right, it's like I see a face on the bottom in the handle area, and that would be one big elongated skull. That would be a very long elongated skull. Or just, again, fascinating if it's depicting an elongated skull, right?

Absolutely. Finally, there are cylinder-shaped jades with mask motifs. Again, the details are reduced to the essential. The jade tube is well polished, and the internal tube has been smoothed down. These masks are essentially of the zoomorphic type. Interestingly, the Liangzhu culture mysteriously came to the end and end at the late 3rd millennium BC. It's been observed, however, that their material culture did not simply vanish. Some of their pottery and their tools that I showed earlier continued in use in the cultures that followed. But the ritual goods, especially these precision-stayed artifacts, as well, honestly, as the elite tombs and the large earth mounds, they all largely disappeared. In one research report I read, it said, the descendants of the Liangzhou appear to have lost interest in supporting a deified elite group. and that the new society seemed much less elaborate in their material culture. So effectively, the archaeologists say, you know, they probably just weren't interested in making this stuff anymore. Yeah, I mean, this image of the mound complex and then these different layers of outer walls,

fascinating to see. It looks very organic, very, it reminds me even of Peru where the walls just kind of fit in nature, you know, how the megalithic engineers of Peru could take a rock outcropping and then just build their wall almost right out of it seamlessly. It kind of appears something similar going on here with these walls, very earthen-like, but organic. And at the bottom of these walls, you know, in the archaeological reports, it's lined with stone, which if you think about that, it means that they excavated the dirt, lined the bottom with stone, put the dirt back in, and then found other dirt probably from these waterways that they excavated and piled it on top. So, you know,

what a monumental earthwork project they did here to build just this one city. And, you know, it's interesting to note the cultures preceding the liang-ju had no advanced jade working and no massive earthworks. So this specific culture and all of the incredible things it produced, seem to come out of nowhere, and then all of their technologies seem to have mostly disappeared with them. Yeah, so crazy how similar that is to Dynastic Egypt again. You had the pre-Dynastic cultures, which were considered to be like cavemen, 8,000 BC up to 3,000 BC. And then the Dynastic Egyptians come along about 3,000 BC. And, you know, about...

Of nowhere. Out of nowhere. And they just magically start to build these superstructures. But then all of a sudden the superstructures, you know, start to get worse and worse as the dynasties get older. Don't forget those early dynastic cultures also made those precision vases. Yeah, that's a great point you bring up about the vases. Because even the mainstream Egyptologists, they say that if you go to a lot of the museums and you find the precision stone vases or vessels, they were found in pre-dynastic burials.

Yeah. Predynastic were like, again, the cavemen of ancient Egypt. Their pottery, a lot of their other pottery is just like hand-painted, rural archaic-looking. So it's clearly that they found these precision stone vessels and were buried with them. So there's so much more going on to history isn't there than we've been told. you know, it's kind of interesting that you bring up the comparison to Egypt. A, the vases and these precision artifacts you and I are talking about, you know, are from about the same time period or are being attributed to the same time period around, you know, 3,3,100 BC.

Both of these cities also, where the pyramids are and where Liangzhu is, are all on the 3,3,100. 30 degree latitude line, like exactly the same. Then they had the precision artifacts come up at exactly the same time. A culture sort of come out of nowhere. You know, it feels to me like they might be related or, if not, it's a wild coincidence. So the original meanings of the sung and the bee have been lost, although later Chinese texts suggest that they represented cosmological concepts of the ancient worldview. With the circular shaped heaven and the square shaped earth.

Archaeologists also frequently just cite these as ceremonial objects that denote royalty and power. So what could they have really been used for? There are a couple of interesting theories out there that some would call fringe, but I thought they might be worth mentioning, if only to get everyone's creative juices flowing. They could have been ancient sound instruments or resonance tools used to generate specific frequencies for ritual or psychological effects. effects. The B-disc's hole and the Sungs Hollow tube could have been features for producing sound or resonance. They may have been healing or energy amplification devices, tapping into the supposed mystical properties of jade. Nephrite jade is believed by some to have vibrational qualities that can balance energy or emit healing

frequencies. So maybe the song's hollow center acted like a jade wand to amplify energy passing through it. Or finally, maybe they were portals or stargates to other dimensions, your favorite, Derek. Yes. B-disc's central hole could have been a vortex for astral travel, while the sung's tubular form could be interpreted as a stabilizer to anchor the user between worlds. We may never know, but it's fun to consider the possibilities. Finally, as promised, I'm going to talk about where I think these artifacts may have really originated. So there's an archaeological site that was only discovered in 2012, and it's 1,300 kilometers, or around 800 miles, northwest of Liangzhou in the northern part of

China. It's called the Shemau site. The site is dated to 2300 to 1800 to 1800 BC, so it began around the same time as the Liangzhu culture disappeared. The site was originally believed to be part of the Great Wall of China, but once it was excavated in 2012, it was discovered to be a massive complex with a 70-meter-high-stepped pyramid built on a modified hill. This place is massive. It was primarily constructed with rammed earth walls and smaller stacked stonework. It reminds me a little bit of the Inca construction you see in Peru. But, Derek, there's something very interesting that was found at this site. In the walls and around the site in various locations are 70 high-relief stone carvings.

And check them out. Do they look familiar? Yeah. Some of these megalithic stone blocks have the same carved eyes and mouth as the carvings on the jade pieces. But the photos of the site don't appear to me that it was built using megalithic construction. You can see the small stonework above, around, and below the megalithic block, for example. It appears to me that the megalithic blocks were found and utilized in the construction of this site. Also, one of the more interesting images found in Shemau is a human face, which looks eerily Olmec to me,

blanked by arms and legs and hands. It has heavy brows, a large nose, and a frowning mouth. It also has long ears and the exact same round earrings. Again, similar to the Olmec heads in Mexico. If you study the Mayans, there's a lot of images that look kind of similar to this in the Mayan carvings as well. Yeah, can you go back real quick to the first image you showed of that one? When I first saw that, I thought you were making a Mayan comparison to the Chinese artifacts here. But that is from China.

It's from China. That's wild. You know, I have to believe that there must have been some absolutely incredible megalithic structure somewhere. And I haven't dove deep into any of the other Chinese sites, although as I understand it, there are a bunch of them in northern China. And a bunch of them have images like this. So was this the home, so to speak, of this culture that created these artifacts? There are several other interesting themes at the site, both semi-human and mythic. The ones in this photo look a little bit more like animals, maybe a pig or a monkey,

but definitely have the same features as the carvings on the jade. And there are also elaborate stone totems carved all the way down and around with the same serious mask-like face. One totem looks like it's been hollowed out in the middle, a little bit like a sung tube. And there are serpent carvings that look almost identical to the serpents we see in so many other sites around the world. This particular serpent looks almost exactly like the photo I took in Malta of the serpents there. So. Yeah.

And remember, there isn't any megalithic stonework at the Liangshu Complex. So they primarily built earth and mounds, which means this must be something different. I don't know what it is, but I do know it holds a definitive clue that maybe the original makers of these artifacts were a separate megalithic culture. Anyway, the mystery indoors. Another thought I'm having, Cassie, as I think of all these incredible images you've collected, and thank you for finding all this. And that's what I love about the style in which we're doing some of these interviews is this PowerPoint presentation style. of coming from your work background, comes very in handy for ancient history interviews.

But I'm thinking of all of the ancient mound photos I've seen in North America. From Ohio and Mississippi Valley, they look not only similar to these earthworks that you're showing us in China, but also so many of the artifacts found inside these mounds are eerily similar to what you're showing. showing in that like there is these effigy pipes that are almost precision carved that they've found in these mounds that are elaborate some of them look literally like they're Mayan artifacts straight from Mexico found in Ohio mounds so we're talking about a global connection they were traveling

how do you find a Mayan-looking artifacts in Ohio mounds yeah and I you know I think that that's the advantage of really spending time with these unknown sites. And this site that I just talked about in China was only discovered, what, 13 years ago? So, you know, what else have they not discovered? But, you know, as a community, an alternative history community, if you want to call us that, overlooking these little known sites, I think, are to our peril because there's so much to be discovered there that people don't talk about. And if you start to systematically go through them, I think you're going to make more and more connections back to Mexico or Egypt or, you know, Turkey.

They all have the same themes. And the more examples you have of how similar all of these are, I think the better the case is that there was an ancient global unified civilization. Well, Cassie, thank you for your time and thank you for this incredible presentation you put together. You know, because when you think of ancient China, people think of their. Great Wall of China, which, you know, it's old, it's not ancient. And they think of the terracotta warriors and all this incredible history. Yeah. Most people have no idea.

And I've probably never heard about these artifacts before. And so there's so much more to history, too ancient China than we've been led to believe. Cassie, tell everybody watching, listening, maybe about how they can follow you, the podcast, and maybe what they can look forward to on your next episode or something. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, so my my podcast is on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts under Secrets and Stone. You can also find me on Instagram, Twitter, or X, under the same name, Secrets and Stone. As I said before, I only have three episodes out, but I'm starting to learn what I'm doing. So, you know, this month, I think I'll probably, you know, this episode has sparked some curiosity in me with regard to some of these sites in Northern China. So I think I'll probably probably hang out there for a little bit. Maybe I'll bounce over to India. And then honestly, Ethiopia is super interesting to me. There's a lot of really mysterious stuff down there. So

just look forward to episodes where I just cover sites that maybe you've never heard of. And we'll have some fun together. Awesome. I am so glad that we met in England. And so glad I put that bug in your ear that's coming to fruition now and keep it up. You're crushing it. It's just so cool to have your style in this ancient history alternative space because I love the kind of the academic mind you bring and the style of your videos with the PowerPoint. And obviously people are loving it with all the views you're getting just three episodes in. So everybody follow the Secrets and Stone podcast on Spotify, on YouTube, subscribe to it. On Spotify, give her a five-star rating that'll help her break through the algorithms.

and follow her on Instagram X. And where else? Instagram X and Facebook. In Facebook. Yes. Secrets in Stone Podcast. Well, Cassie, thank you for your time. And I look forward to another episode with you soon.

Sound good? This has been so much fun. Thank you, Derek.