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00:00 How well do you know your history? Is there anything from the past that makes you
00:04 question what really happened? And could any of the many alt-theories offer a better explanation?
00:10 In this video, first we'll take a closer look at the bizarre theory that all of the mountains of
00:14 Earth are actually trees from an ancient time. Next, we'll deep dive into the real history of
00:20 giants, exploring whether huge people ever did live on our world. And finally, we're counting
00:26 down the top 20 alternate theories in history in general, covering everything from Atlantis
00:32 to the Illuminati. This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at some of the strangest
00:38 alternate theories that have ever been suggested. Do you need the big questions answered? Are you
00:43 constantly curious? Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one,
00:47 and ring the bell for more thought-provoking content.
00:54 When we gaze out across the many landscapes of this Earth, it's perhaps clear that Earth holds
01:01 many secrets from us. This 4.5 billion year old world has certainly been around much longer than
01:09 mere humans have. But still, you'd think by now we'd have got the basics right. Trees are trees,
01:16 and mountains are mountains, aren't they? Well, not according to one controversial idea.
01:24 The Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory
01:33 By now, the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory has arguably become the most widely recognised
01:38 conspiracy theory of all, with certain celebrities and high-profile figures peddling its various
01:45 eye-catching claims. What might be somewhat surprising, however, is that the theorists
01:50 themselves can't wholly agree on the layout of the Flat Earth. For example, while some believe
01:57 the Earth to be a disk that is walled in on all sides by massive ice sheets in Antarctica, which
02:04 are guarded by none other than NASA, others think that really there's no edge to Flat Earth at all,
02:12 and that the plane of Earth extends on and on. As strange a theory as Flat Earth in general is
02:20 in our modern times, though, it has yet managed to give rise to an even stranger one. In 2016,
02:28 a video appeared on a now-deleted YouTube account arguing for the certainly unusual "No Forests on
02:35 Flat Earth" theory, and it gained some initial popularity. Since then, the ideas within it have
02:42 become key to some Flat Earth beliefs. The astonishing theory argues that trees – normal,
02:49 everyday trees – are actually only bushes and shrubbery, and shadows of their once much larger
02:56 and greater former selves. Real trees of long ago, as per the theory, were massive structures that
03:05 towered into the sky, miles and miles high. And the forests we have now aren't real forests,
03:13 as the real forests no longer exist. That's the idea, anyway. So, what's going on?
03:21 The basic gist of the "No Forests" suggestion is seemingly that the Earth we know today
03:27 is nowhere near as majestic or as massive as it once was. In some ways, this might be considered
03:35 an understandable position to take. Scientists and researchers, even in the mainstream, do agree
03:42 that Earth has at times been a much more abundant place than it is now, with wholly different and
03:50 often bigger lifeforms to the point that if we, today, were to somehow be transported back in
03:56 time, we might mistake ancient Earth for some other unrecognizable alien planet. But if there
04:03 were once giant trees in amongst all this, as the "No Forests" idea suggests, then where are they
04:12 now? Here, the theory makes another surprising claim; that the visible remains of those massive
04:20 trees from long ago can still be found today, all around us. We just call them mountains.
04:28 According to the theory, which, importantly, is thoroughly unsupported by conventional science
04:35 or research, mountains are evidence that trees used to be towering structures because mountains
04:41 are the remnants of those ancient trees. Mountains are like huge, sprawling, roughly cut and jagged
04:49 tree stumps, so it's said. The old trees, the ones that no longer exist, were some 40 or 50 miles
04:57 tall, with trunks multiple miles wide. Unsurprisingly, it's said that they totally
05:04 dominated the landscape. Our mountains are, then, merely the corpses of these trees, the leftovers,
05:12 with the "No Forests" theory claiming that there's evidence of this if we look at mountains close
05:19 enough. The original video, now removed from YouTube, showed various images of famous mountains
05:26 and monuments and compared them side by side with tree trunks. Uluru, in Australia, for example,
05:33 is a large and somewhat flat island mountain that, the theory tells us, looks extraordinarily
05:41 like a massive tree stump. Uluru was a tree, so the claim goes, but its destruction has turned
05:48 it into what it is now. Elsewhere, Devil's Tower, a large, steep formation with almost vertical sides
05:56 in Wyoming, USA, allegedly looks like a tree that was cut down before it could grow to full height.
06:03 While the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, an iconic monument of basalt columns, is purported
06:09 evidence toward a dramatically alternate history, too, with it claimed that the Causeway's hexagonal
06:16 pattern must be linked to organic life. Overall, the theory asks for quite a leap of faith,
06:23 or foolishness, depending on your view, imploring that we look at these monuments and others not
06:30 as we've come to know them, but as fallen trees. Long dead, but once magnificent, and giant fallen
06:38 trees. An immediate realisation is perhaps the clear and obvious difference between the wood
06:45 of the trees and the rock of our mountains, however. But here, too, the theory makes another
06:52 astounding claim, because according to the No Forests point of view, rocks don't actually exist
07:00 either. All the rocks we see in our day-to-day lives, from miniscule pebbles to massive cliff
07:06 faces, are apparently nothing more than rubble left behind by the ancient trees. If you've ever
07:14 held a rock in your hand, you've actually held part of the body of a long dead tree, is the general
07:21 idea. Understandably, and while this is by no means the only aspect of the theory that they've
07:28 taken issue with, scientists, academics, researchers, most of everyone else can immediately
07:35 see various and huge problems here. The inherent real-world differences between rocks and trees
07:43 are, in reality, vast, but in this retelling of how the world works, they're one and the same thing.
07:51 Again, if plain flat earth theory wasn't strange enough already, then this extension of it
07:57 certainly is. Finally, the last part of the No Forests theory attempts to explain what happened
08:05 to the ancient trees, which, if they did exist, must clearly have gone through a truly catastrophic
08:12 deforestation event to bring Earth to be almost entirely rid of them now. It's said, by advocates,
08:19 that there are a couple of different possibilities, including a great flood, or even that
08:25 their destruction was the work of a race of long-lost giants. Another suggestion is that there
08:32 was, at some time, a massive fire on Earth that ravaged the landscape and burned down the trees,
08:40 leaving just the stumps, or mountains, we see today. Probably the most confusing answer offered,
08:48 though, is that the trees were destroyed in nuclear warfare, waged during a time long before
08:55 nuclear weapons were invented, as per the conventional history of humankind. More broadly,
09:01 the idea that humanity is, or was, at fault in some way, even without nuclear weapons, is common.
09:10 Perhaps these ancient, miles-high forests were cut down by humans for energy, during an episode,
09:17 or even a whole era, that's otherwise been completely lost to history. And, if not for
09:23 energy, then maybe it was to prevent the trees from breaking through the "Heavenly Dome," that
09:30 some versions of Flat Earth theory insist is encasing the world we live in. There have been
09:36 a number of possibilities floated as to what might have befallen the trees, but perhaps here,
09:42 more so than at any other point, is where the theory falls on itself. Because, to recap the
09:49 basics, the idea is that there are no forests on Earth, because real trees don't exist anymore.
09:56 The trees we have today are tiny shrubs compared to their great ancestors, but all that's left of
10:03 them, the ancestors, are our mountains, which are actually the remainder of massive tree trunks.
10:10 Suffice to say, this isn't a claim that's in any way supported by conventional scientific research.
10:18 And, what's more, it has even caused some division in the Flat Earth movement itself,
10:23 with many Flat Earthers distancing themselves from it. Perhaps the only shred of scientifically
10:30 backed truth we can glean from the whole thing is that it's generally agreed that Earth was once a
10:37 lot greener than it is now, with much of the world map hosting more than double the forest land than
10:44 it does today, a change brought on by the urbanization of humankind. We live in cities now,
10:52 towns and villages, with commuter links, air travel, and far fewer green spaces. Times have
11:00 certainly changed, and, depending on the view you take, maybe for better or worse, but gigantic
11:07 trees that reached miles into the sky to the point that mountains, those immense natural
11:13 structures, are mere leftovers of a time gone by? It's an entertaining idea, but it's not one that
11:21 science takes all that seriously. Think of the natural world, and your mind's eye can immediately
11:31 picture some truly massive things. The immense oceans that cover most of the Earth, the majestic
11:37 mountains that form some of our planet's most iconic and humbling landscapes, or the sprawling,
11:43 sub-zero wilderness of the Arctic and Antarctica. Think of human beings in amongst all of that,
11:48 or of most living things in general, and we quickly realize that really, we're incredibly
11:53 small. For all of their apparent power and influence, humans and most animals are physically
12:00 tiny. Although, according to some ideas, that might not have always been the case.
12:05 First things first, we of course know that Earth certainly has hosted giant life forms in its
12:19 history. The dinosaurs walked this planet for almost 200 million years, up to an extinction
12:24 event - widely held to be an asteroid strike - that wiped them out some 66 million years ago.
12:30 So many of these magnificent creatures were far bigger than any examples of life on Earth today.
12:36 But the biggest of the lot is usually held to be the Argentinosaurus, which researchers believe
12:42 was up to 130 feet long and may have weighed more than 100 tons. Unsurprisingly, given its name,
12:49 it's thought to have lived in modern-day Argentina. And for a contemporary comparison,
12:54 its size was about 15 times that of the African elephant, the largest land animal today.
13:00 Naturally, we also have giant creatures that do still exist, though off-land in our waters.
13:06 While we continually hear myths and legends such as that of the Loch Ness Monster or the Kraken,
13:12 not even those gigantic, fantastical creatures could match what we have confirmed in real life;
13:17 the Blue Whale. This extraordinary animal can measure up to 100 feet long and weigh 200 tons.
13:23 In fact, it's the largest animal known to have ever lived on Earth. And it's here, with us, today.
13:30 So, could any theory implying that ancient Earth played host to other giants really hold its own?
13:36 Could any suggestion of human-like giants ever require serious consideration? There's no doubt
13:41 that these are controversial claims, but some have gone ahead and made them anyway.
13:45 The general argument usually starts with the age of the dinosaurs. At that time, when everything,
13:51 it seems, was bigger, it's thought that Earth's atmosphere was more oxygen-rich, too… which may
13:56 have led to life taking much larger forms. This basic idea works well to explain how the dinosaurs
14:02 grew to the spectacular sizes they did… before inevitably perishing as a result of the extinction
14:08 event 66 million years ago. At that point, smaller mammals were able to survive and rise as they were
14:14 able to better adapt to the changing conditions. In mainstream science, there's no suggestion that
14:19 giant, human-like creatures existed at this time, though, nor at any other time before or since.
14:25 But so often, when conspiracy theories of past giants come up, here is where they begin.
14:31 It isn't only the conspiracists that promote the idea, though. Another major influence is that
14:36 mention of giants comes up across most of the major religions of the world, and in the stories
14:41 and the legends of most major civilizations. In the Old Testament of the Bible, for example,
14:46 there's mention of the Nephilim, the Anakim, and others, all of which are depicted as being a race
14:51 of giants. Many of the biblical giants, then, are said to have been killed as part of the Great
14:56 Flood, and that's why they no longer exist alongside us today, according to the Bible.
15:00 And then, of course, there's the much-told tale of David and Goliath, another story that originates
15:05 from the Bible, with Goliath's legendary size variously described as anything from being six
15:10 feet nine inches tall to more than ten feet tall in some retellings. Besides religious texts,
15:15 though, there are no official records to show that a man of ten feet or more really did exist.
15:20 In Greek mythology, we have regular mention of the one-eyed Cyclops. In and amongst the many
15:26 medieval legends of King Arthur, there are heroic tales of giants slaying. With Norse mythology,
15:32 it's said that all aspects of the world were actually made by the gods from the flesh of a
15:36 spectacular giant named Ymir. In Chinese myth, there's a similar figure named Pangu.
15:42 In Northern Ireland, the legend of the Giants' Causeway says that the unusual rock formation
15:47 along the coast was physically put there by giants. And, of course, we have countless
15:52 children's fairy tales featuring giants, like the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. We can perhaps see,
15:58 then, why humans hold on to the idea of giants. We're taught stories all about them as children,
16:04 and they often feature in traditional tales of creation or of pre-human times. But from a truly
16:10 scientific perspective, all from the Cyclopses to the giant that Jack slays exist much more in
16:17 fantasy than in fact. Nevertheless, even science has something to say about giants in the past,
16:23 even if its version of them isn't quite so… incredible. A long-extinct type of ape,
16:29 Gigantopithecus, is known to have inhabited Earth until it disappeared around 300,000 years ago,
16:36 at around the same time that the first modern humans were emerging. Scientists don't have a
16:40 lot to go on with regard to fossil examples, because finding any remains of the Gigantopithecus
16:46 is a pretty rare event, with almost all of the evidence of them amounting to preserved teeth only,
16:53 found predominantly across China and parts of Southeast Asia. Even so, it's been estimated that
16:58 this creature may have weighed comfortably more than 600 pounds, and that it may have stood up to
17:04 twelve feet tall. It was much more like a giant gorilla than a giant human in stature, however,
17:09 and it isn't generally thought to have been part of the human Homo sapiens' line of evolution.
17:14 Still, the Gigantopithecus occasionally makes its way into modern folklore, too, as it has before
17:20 been linked to the supposed existence of Bigfoot. According to mainstream, conventional science,
17:25 though, while Gigantopithecus did exist, Bigfoot doesn't. But, really, this blurring of the
17:31 boundaries between what's real and what's not is an all-too-common theme across all talk of giants,
17:37 whether it's from an academic, archaeological, pseudo-archaeological, or theological point of
17:42 view. And, as a result, history is full of notorious hoaxes. In the modern world, we've
17:48 seen various supposedly legitimate photographs published across the internet that seemingly
17:53 show the excavation of giant bones or skulls. But, after scrutiny, these are almost always shown to
17:59 be simple fakes; manipulated images to carry on our long tradition of giant tales. Perhaps,
18:06 in the distant past, people may have unearthed large, fossilised bones and not realised that
18:11 they had once belonged to dinosaurs or to some other ancient creature, and instead assumed that
18:16 they were evidence of one-time giant people. But, today, science doesn't generally draw that
18:21 conclusion. Ultimately, the stories and legends we tell of giants aren't likely to disappear
18:27 anytime soon. But science is also increasingly confident that evidence of their actual existence
18:33 isn't likely to appear anytime soon, either. Over the years, there have been various theories put
18:38 forward suggesting that humans were once bigger than they are now. But, really, the only giant
18:44 anythings we have physical evidence for are the dinosaurs. There's no doubting that the dinosaurs
18:50 were here, and for a longer period of time than humans have been so far. But, beyond that, talk
18:55 of giants is one big fantasy. This is Unveiled, and today we're looking at strange and interesting
19:12 premises about the nature of history and the universe that don't jive with any standard
19:17 conception of accepted reality. For the purposes of this list, we are not including creation myths.
19:22 There is a huge amount of unrecorded human history beneath the ocean surface that we don't know
19:29 very much about at all.
19:31 Number 20. Cosmic Garbage Theory. Human beings are the eponymous garbage of the cosmic garbage
19:46 theory. In 1969, Thomas Gold was attempting to make a name for himself in the world of astrophysics.
19:56 While he would eventually be successful, his journey kicked off with a rough start. Almost
20:01 a decade earlier, he devised a theory considered so absurd that Gold was utterly rejected by the
20:07 scientific establishment. He came up with the "Cosmic Garbage Theory" in 1960. Gold suggested
20:13 the possibility that eons ago, interstellar alien travellers used the Earth as an interplanetary
20:20 garbage dump. After they left, life bloomed in their wake, springing up thanks to their leftover
20:27 waste. Number 19. The Ancient Romans Discovered America. It's somewhat common knowledge that
20:38 Christopher Columbus didn't actually discover the Americas. In addition to the fact that the
20:42 continents were already inhabited, Viking Leif Erikson "discovered" Canada 500 years earlier.
20:49 The only remains of a Norse settlement found in North America, at present-day L'Ansey Meadows,
20:55 is most likely Leif Erikson's original camp, as described in the sagas. But did you know that
21:00 the ancient Romans explored the west hundreds of years before Erikson? Neither did we. This
21:06 burgeoning online theory is based on the discovery of supposed Roman artifacts among Aztec relics.
21:11 Ancient Roman and Athenian coins have also allegedly been found in the central United States.
21:16 Were they elaborate hoaxes? Were errors made? Or did ancient Romans find a way to row across the
21:22 Atlantic Ocean 2,000 years ago? Number 18. The Ancient Greeks Were Transplants From Northern
21:29 Europe. Some self-anointed online "scholars" have a very particular reading of Homer's "Iliad and
21:36 the Odyssey." They believe that his description of the journey of Odysseus didn't take place in
21:53 the Aegean. Instead, they say it describes the landscape of their true original home in the
21:58 far north. The geography described in these epic poems, they believe, fits better with the Baltic
22:04 and North Seas than the Mediterranean. Felice Vinci, an Italian engineer, is the driving force
22:10 behind this theory. He even wrote a book, "The Baltic Origins of Homeric Tales." Few historians
22:16 agree with Vinci, but in this golden age of conspiracy theories, it remains alive, if not well,
22:22 online. Number 17. Alastor Crowley, Occult Spy? Alastor Crowley, infamous occultist,
22:30 earned many ignominious nicknames in his life. People called him "the wickedest man in the world"
22:35 and "the great beast." Crowley believed in a sort of sexual mysticism, which was likely just a cover
22:54 to excuse his promiscuity. Years after Crowley's death, author Richard B. Spence wrote a biography
23:00 of Crowley titled "Secret Agent 666." According to Spence, in addition to being an occultist,
23:07 Crowley was a secret agent of the British Empire. He had deep ties to pro-German factions in America
23:13 during World War I. His service, according to the theory, continued through the Second World War.
23:19 There are claims that he knew Winston Churchill, and it was he who gave Winston his famous "V for
23:24 Victory" sign. It was then that Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame, allegedly recruited Crowley
23:30 to interrogate top Nazi occultist Rudolf Hess. Number 16. The Freemasons gave Germany the
23:38 Franco-Prussian War? The Freemasons are a not-so-secret secret society first established
23:44 in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since that time, Freemasons have supposedly been the bogeyman
24:02 behind one conspiracy or the other. One of the strangest took place after the Franco-Prussian
24:07 War. In victory, Germany emerged as one of Europe's major military and industrial superpowers.
24:13 The French, however, were humiliated by defeat. Looking for someone to blame for the loss,
24:18 groups of far-right Catholics and nationalists used the Freemasons as a scapegoat. Conspiracy
24:24 theories spread. One of the crazier anti-Mason theories was pushed by a man named Leo Texile.
24:30 He promoted a particularly pernicious hoax, calling the Freemasons "devil worshippers".
24:39 Somewhat ironically, anti-Masonic sentiment and purges spread in Germany a generation later,
24:45 thanks to Adolf Hitler. Number 15. William Shakespeare had a ghostwriter. Rumors have
24:51 surrounded the authorship of William Shakespeare's oeuvre for centuries. Not a single manuscript
24:57 of any kind has ever been found written in Shakespeare's own hand. In 400 years,
25:06 not one document. Determining the "true identity" of Shakespeare's alleged ghostwriter has always
25:11 been a favorite pastime of amateur sleuths and historians. There are several usual suspects.
25:17 According to some French historians, the prime suspect is Sir William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby.
25:23 A Jesuit spy named George Fenner wrote a pair of letters to his superiors while searching for noble
25:28 Catholic sympathizers in 1599. He seemed to indicate that Derby was the true author of
25:34 Shakespeare's work. This connection dovetails with another related conspiracy theory,
25:39 namely that William Shakespeare too was a secret Catholic spy.
25:43 Though there are a list of other suspects, it's a question that will never be answered without a
25:54 time machine. Number 14. The Bear Cult Hypothesis. Anthropologists and historians have long been
26:01 fascinated by ancient religions. Unfortunately, it's hard to know much about civilizations that
26:06 predated writing. What we do know is that examples of animism, the worship of animals,
26:12 can be found the world over. Some historians have developed a theory about the animal worship of
26:16 ancient Indo-Europeans. The Bear Cult Hypothesis believes that bear worship is the most ancient
26:22 form of religion, potentially dating back to the dawn of humanity.
26:26 "In the high Alps of Switzerland and Silesia, there have been found half a dozen small cave chapels
26:38 in which there are cave bear skull caches." While bear worship can be found from Russia
26:46 to North America, virtually every European nation has a bear cult connection. Finland,
26:52 France, Spain, and even Greece have paleontological proof of bear worship.
26:57 There is even evidence of Neanderthal funeral rites conducted for slain bears.
27:01 Number 13. The Olmecs Came From China or Africa. Their civilization existed between 1200 to 400
27:19 BC and were the precursors to later cultures such as the Maya and Zapotec Empires. This particular
27:25 historical theory is a little far out there. According to one line of thought, it wasn't
27:30 Columbus, Erikson, or even the ancient Romans who first crossed the ocean to the Americas.
27:35 The Olmec civilization is the oldest known organized society from Mesoamerica. They ruled
27:42 what is now Veracruz, Mexico from around 1200 to 400 BCE. In 1975, American archaeologist Betty
27:50 Meggers from the Smithsonian Institute argued that there were significant similarities between the
27:55 Olmecs and the Shang Dynasty of ancient China. Chinese author H. Mike Hsu claimed to have found
28:01 Olmec tools with Chinese characters. Another theory claims that the Olmecs came from Africa.
28:06 The Scientific Consensus believes that these theories are too often filtered through racist
28:11 tropes and stereotypes to take seriously. Number 12. Tectonic Strain Theory. Professor
28:18 Michael Persinger was a psychologist and professor of psychology whose theories earned him both fame
28:23 and harsh criticism. He was accused of being a crank running pseudoscientific experiments.
28:40 Persinger's biggest claim to fame was the tectonic strain theory. According to this theory,
28:45 visual phenomenon like UFOs and ball lightning aren't real objects or energy in the sky.
28:51 They are actually hallucinations within the human brain triggered by electromagnetic fields.
28:57 These fields are caused by the mostly undetectable tectonic strain within the Earth,
29:02 in the weeks and months leading up to major seismic events. The form these hallucinations
29:06 take, namely alien spacecraft, is a figment of the imagination shaped by popular culture.
29:12 Number 11. Clockwork Universe Theory. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote several treatises
29:23 on the nature of the universe. In his writings, Aristotle hypothesized the existence of a supreme
29:28 being. He called it the "prime" or "unmoved mover", a being who designed the universe and put it to
29:34 work. In more recent years, this notion has been expanded into the clockwork universe theory.
29:40 According to the theory, a supreme being sits at the metaphysical centre of existence.
29:45 This universe as we know it is a clock-like device, using the laws of physics as its gears.
29:51 Just as with Aristotle, the god of a clockwork universe doesn't take an active role in the
29:56 universe. It just created the mechanism and set it in motion. Number 10. The world is a cylinder.
30:03 An axomander was a pre-Socratic philosopher from Iona, a region in modern-day Turkey. He was a
30:13 scientist and empiricist who was particularly interested in the nature of the universe.
30:17 He is known for a number of beliefs, the most famous being the shape of the world.
30:21 An axomander believed that the world was neither flat nor a globe, but was instead a cylinder.
30:27 Building upon the earlier work of the philosopher Thales, an axomander described the world as a
30:32 cylindrical disc floating in infinite space. That disc is in turn surrounded by wheels of fire,
30:39 the source of the sun, stars, and planets. In this modern era of online conspiracies,
30:44 the cylindrical earth theory has found a place in social media debates.
30:47 Number 9. Expanding Earth Theory. We know one thing for sure, the universe is
31:02 expanding. Celestial bodies are, at the current moment, soaring at great speed through the cosmos.
31:12 It is believed by some that the earth itself is following a similar pattern. Tectonic plates are
31:18 causing the earth to slowly expand, getting larger and larger over time. This expansion,
31:23 rather than greenhouse gases, are responsible for the increase in global temperature over time.
31:29 A similarly ludicrous theory claims that the exact opposite is true, the earth is actually
31:33 getting smaller. Unsurprisingly, mainstream scientific proof of either theory is lacking.
31:39 Number 8. Jesus Christ Appeared in North America. In the nearly two centuries since
31:45 the founding of the Mormon Church, some of their core beliefs have courted controversy.
31:50 In its early days, polygamy was the source of great tension with other, more mainstream
31:54 Christian sects. The church has also had to grapple with a long, racist legacy. One of the
32:09 more esoteric Mormon beliefs relates to the history of Jesus' life. According to the Book
32:14 of Mormon, a group of Israelites followed a prophet Nephi across the Atlantic. Some 600 years later,
32:29 Jesus appeared in North America, preaching his gospel. Centuries later, a failure of belief led
32:34 these Nephites to their destruction in the year 385 CE. There is no archaeological evidence for
32:41 this belief, however. Number 7. Hollow Earth Theory. Long before Godzilla fought Kong,
32:54 several cultures and writers envisioned a hollow earth. Some Buddhists believe that a city named
32:59 Shambhala existed at the earth's core; Europeans called the city Agartha. Jules Verne's classic
33:05 story, Journey to the Center of the Earth, found great popularity in Western culture. The entrance
33:10 to the hollow earth is often thought to be at the North Pole. In 1964, one researcher named Raymond
33:22 Bernard claimed that the core of the earth had been colonized by the Incas fleeing conquistadors.
33:27 What may have begun as an ancient legend or fantastical piece of fiction has evolved into
33:32 a full-blown conspiracy theory. Even as Hollywood envisions a kaiju-filled hollow earth, conspiracists
33:38 debate the efficacy of a real-world version. Number 6. Anunnaki Aliens. Conspiracists have
33:46 spent years theorizing that aliens helped shape human civilization. Sites like Easter Island or
34:02 the world's great pyramids have long been sources of fantastical speculation. In 1976, author Zechariah
34:09 Sitchin centred one such theory on the Anunnaki, the gods of ancient Sumer. According to Sitchin,
34:15 the Anunnaki were actually giant aliens from a planet called Nibiru. They travelled to earth
34:32 half a million years ago after discovering a planet rich with gold. They created humanity,
34:38 a small hybrid of their own race, as slaves to mine the precious metal. The melting of
34:43 Antarctic glaciers forced the Anunnaki to temporarily leave, though they are likely
34:48 to return. Presumably, that day will be less than pleasurable for the human race.
34:52 Number 5. The Phantom Time Conspiracy. Despite its fun name,
35:02 the Phantom Time Conspiracy has nothing to do with metaphysics or the nature of time.
35:06 It's actually a wild theory about the Catholic Church. In 1991, Heribert Illich claimed that
35:12 when the Church was establishing the Anno Domini dating system, they completely rewrote history.
35:17 In order to make the then-current year AD 1000, the Church added 297 years to European history.
35:25 According to Illich, the Carolingian period of European history was made up out of whole cloth.
35:31 Charlemagne never existed, and we are actually currently living in the 18th, not the 21st,
35:36 century. Illich says that Charlemagne was specifically designed as propaganda to
35:41 support the calendar change. Number 4. The Illuminati Through History.
35:45 They are accused of pursuing a sinister objective, of seeking to rule the world.
35:50 Perhaps, as many claim, they rule it already. Like the Freemasons before them, the Illuminati
35:58 were a secret society from the 18th century often blamed for accidents of history. Founded in
36:03 Bavaria in 1776, their stated goal was to control levers of power without dominating the people.
36:10 The secret organization grew in size. In its heyday, the Illuminati had around 2,000 members,
36:17 all of them high-ranking representatives of society.
36:20 They quickly found themselves at the center of European conspiracists.
36:24 Conservative institutions like the Church often took advantage. They blamed the Illuminati for
36:29 the French Revolution, before the organization fell apart at the end of the century. They
36:33 re-entered the zeitgeist in the 1960s as the result of a practical joke. Since then,
36:39 the Illuminati has been blamed for everything from poverty to major wars.
36:43 Number 3. The Silurian Hypothesis. Life on Earth began at least 3.7 billion years ago.
36:50 Since then, it has ended and restarted over and over. Homo sapiens are less than 200,000 years
36:56 old. Is it inconceivable, then, that a technological civilization grew on Earth before
37:02 humanity? Named after a Doctor Who villain, the Silurian Thought Experiment asks just that.
37:07 Posed by an astrophysicist in 2018, it imagines how we could discover such a society's remnants.
37:17 Would any of their artifacts have survived here on Earth or on the Moon? Did they escape Earth
37:22 and colonize the stars? Evidence is non-existent either way, so in theory it could be possible.
37:28 The crust is recycled roughly every half a billion years, meaning much of the early
37:32 fossil record has been deleted, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to track the early
37:37 rise of life. Number 2. Lemuria and Atlantis. There is a huge amount of unrecorded human history
37:45 beneath the ocean's surface that we don't know very much about at all. Atlantis and Lemuria are
37:51 each mythical lost civilizations. Supposedly ancient and possessed of superior technology,
37:57 each was allegedly lost to calamity and time. Atlantis was an island landmass supposedly lost
38:03 to the sea. Lemuria was an entire continent, located somewhere in the Indian or Pacific
38:15 Oceans. While the common consensus shows no evidence for either, both lie at the heart of
38:21 pseudoscience history. The existence of these long-lost continents, they said, explained why
38:26 two landmasses far apart can have similar species. Once geologists discovered plate tectonics,
38:32 the theory essentially died. We now know that Pangea explains biodiversity and similarities.
38:39 Number 1. The Earth is Flat. The continuation of the Flat Earth conspiracy,
38:50 after centuries of empirical evidence, shows just how enduring conspiracies can be. The ancient
38:56 Greeks proved the Earth was round, centuries before Copernicus and Kepler disproved the
39:01 geocentric theory. Just as the Earth revolves around the sun, both bodies are empirically
39:07 spheres. And yet, thanks to YouTube and social media, the theory persists to this day. The
39:12 Flat Earth Society has meetings all over the globe, which they say is not a globe at all.
39:17 Even when flat earthers prove themselves incorrect, the theory just won't go away.
39:34 So what's your verdict? Are mountains trees? Did giants exist?
39:38 And which of our top 20 countdown did you find most interesting? Or perhaps most alarming?
39:45 So
40:10 for now, what's clear is that with 4.5 billion years of earthly history to fill in,
40:16 modern humankind has certainly been hard at work. Many of the claims made don't hold up to
40:20 mainstream scientific scrutiny, but for those who propagate them, that's all part of the reason
40:26 why they should be listened to. What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the
40:31 comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring
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