Loading summary
Host 1
This episode is brought to you by Factor. I don't know about you, but my busy schedule and summer plans make it really hard to get in the kitchen and cook myself a proper meal. Sometimes for me, that's where Factor comes in. Factor's chef crafted dietitian approved meals are ready in just two minutes, taking the hassle out of eating well. Factor Meals arrive fresh and ready to eat, perfect for any active lifestyle over the summer and beyond. With 45 weekly menu options, you could pick gourmet meals that fit your summer gains and goals. Choose from options like Calorie, Smart, Protein plus, Keto, and more. I love Factor. It's a way for me to have home cooked meals that are healthy and easy without having to waste money eating out or ordering delivery. Because I hate the feeling at the end of the week knowing that I wasted money and ate like crap the entire time. Get started@factormeals.com OtherWorld 50 off and use code OTHERWORLD50OFF to get 50% off and free shipping on your first box. That's code OTHERWORLD50OFF@Factor Meals.com OtherWorld 50 off.
Sponsor Voice
When you haven't found love, it can feel like everyone else has. It's in every movie, every song and all the PDA Looking for love sucks. Thankfully, California Psychics can give you the guidance you need to find the one we guarantee if you're reading as a life changing, it's free and new customers receive 20 minutes for just $20. Visit californiapsychics.com and experience the joy of certainty.
Joshua Citarella
California Psychics.
Host 1
Hey Otherworld listeners. Believe it or not, right now we are already starting to prep for our October episodes. It is also my birthday coming up this week, so for that reason I thought it would be a good week to unlock one of our classic Patreon episodes onto the main feed. Like I said, we are already in full interview mode for October, so if you have experienced something paranormal, supernatural or unexplained, send us your story@storiesotherworldpod.com I'd say right now I am especially looking for terrifying ones for this season. So send in your stories if you've already sent one in and haven't heard back. My apologies. We do get so many emails. In fact, I'm going through a lot of unread ones right now. We do eventually read all of them, I promise. If you have a crazy one and you think we might have missed it, feel free to email again. I'm looking forward to reading these once again. The email is storiesotherworldpod.com. so this episode that we're unlocking is one of my favorites. It's from a series of episodes that Joshua Citarella did for Otherworld called Deep Research. Joshua is a brilliant guy and an incredible researcher. In these episodes he takes a conspiracy theory, fringe belief, or a topic that might sound questionable or far fetched to the average person, and then he does his very best to research it thoroughly and see if there is any truth to it. In this episode, Josh investigates Tartaria, a vast conspiracy theory involving lost civilizations, architecture, and something called the Mud Flood. I think you're going to enjoy this one. If you want to hear more episodes like this and others, you can find them on the Otherworld. Patreon.
Sponsor Voice
Welcome to Otherworld. Beneath the cloak of time, where history's murmurings echo, lies the enigmatic tapestry of Tartaria. A conspiracy woven with threads of intrigue and obscured truths. A lost civilization possessing great technology far beyond our comprehension, covered in time by a great mud flood and erased from our collective consciousness. Did Tartaria truly exist? A beacon of sophistication and influence? Or is this narrative but a mirage conjured by the conspiratorial winds that blow through the corridors of speculation? A tale imagined by middle aged men who smoke the synthetic weed that they sell at gas stations? Join us dear listener, as we join our host to unravel the great mysteries of our world. Joshua Citarella, a luminary at the forefront of contemporary art, a researcher and a trailblazer whose work transcends the confines of the present, offering a glimpse into the future of innovation and intellectual discourse. A man who once nearly killed himself by poisoning after accidentally purchasing the wrong type of oven. Welcome to Deep Research.
Host 2
Sa. Welcome back to the podcast. Tonight I'd like to talk to you about the lost civilization of Tartaria, AKA Great Tartaria, Grand Tartary, or the Tartarian Empire. Tartaria is an old world civilization with advanced technology and architecture that spanned the entire globe. It was an era of peace and prosperity with abundant resources and energy, until it was wiped out by a catastrophic mud flood. An unpredictable event of extreme weather with devastating consequences. I first heard about this theory from Vitruviangrimis on Instagram. A wise sage with masterful and encyclopedic knowledge of all esoteric topics. Also a great meme poster. If you've spent time on the sketchier parts of the Internet, you have undoubtedly heard of the Great Reset. This is the World Economic Forum's recovery plan post pandemic, or as some people say, the plan for the New World Order to take over? I'll let you decide for yourself. Tartaria is the theory that humanity has already lived through a great reset and that we are currently in the new era of civilization without knowledge of our true past. This global reset may have occurred as little as 100 years ago. All of the history leading up until that point is a fabrication. Today's societies have colluded to suppress and tear down the few remaining architectural achievements from Tartaria in order to erase the evidence and remove all traces of the civilization that came before us. Adherents of this theory propose that demolished buildings, such as the Singer Building in New York, the original Penn Station also in New York, or the temporary grounds of the 1915 World Fair, were actually the buildings of a vast empire that has been erased from history. The evidence for this is all around us. Tartarian architecture consists of an ornamented Gilded Age style with majestic elevations and intricately detailed enclosures. Many buildings have columns, vast domes, decorative terracotta exteriors, and noticeable spires on the top. In fact, these spires were designed to collect free energy from the air because they were Tesla coils. And this powered a global and prosperous society without any pollution or waste. This is a viral video I grabbed from TikTok. And this should give you a sense of what we're about to explore tonight.
Guest 1
So Tartaria was thought to be a global and technologically advanced civilization that existed way before the 1800s up until the 1900s, where it was wiped out by a Great Reset, aka the mud flood. Then it was completely erased from the history books and rewritten in order to hide us from the truth. Now, I know this sounds crazy, but I brought the receipts. Comes directly from the CIA's website. It was released in 1957. The Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a directive ordering the Party's Tartar Provincial Committee to proceed to a scientific revision of the history of Tartaria. In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten. Let us be frank. Was to be falsified. And why would Tartaria be depicted in old world maps if it wasn't a thing? Now, take a look at some of these buildings. We were told that these were built by people that rode in horse and buggies. We're expected to believe that they built things like this with a hammer and a chisel. These people were way more advanced than we give them credit for. Like, these buildings are said to have been built in the 1800s. The math ain't math. And now this civilization was thought to have been wiped out by a huge.
Guest 2
Flood that buried it in feet of.
Guest 1
Mud, which was also known as the mud flood. And that is why we see so many buildings that look like they have just been buried or that have basement windows and doors. And this would be kind of a stretch if they didn't dig up the buildings and find that they were in fact buried.
Host 2
And I know you're probably wondering, like.
Guest 1
Why the heck would they hide this from us? But it was thought that Tartarians actually knew how to harvest free energy from the Earth's magnetic field, or aether. Now, on that note, I'm going to leave you with one more thought. Who are these doors built for?
Host 2
And if you're wondering, those giant doors were built for giants, which were of course common in the Empire of Tartaria, and explains the prevalence of massive domed ceilings, giant doors, and elevations much larger than human proportions. We'll return to this part of the story in a moment. The main argument coming from Tartaria theoris is the existence of similar architectural styles around the world. These include an extensive list, so I'll just name a few of them. St. Petri's Church in Berlin. The Crystal palace in London, constructed in 1851, destroyed in 1936. New York's Pennsylvania Station, which opened in 1910 and was demolished in 1963. The Marlboro Building in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Erie County Savings Building in Buffalo, New York, 1893. The Gillner Building in NYC, built in 1896, demolished in 1910. You can start to notice the trend here. The San Francisco call Building in 1898. The New York World Building, constructed in 1890, demolished in 1955. The Iowa City University General Hospital. The Boston post office in 1885, and in particular the entire city of San Francisco, which was leveled in 1906 by an earthquake, as I was taught. But the Tartarian theorists claim that this was in fact a controlled demolition. So we have a rough timeline emerging here. Around 1900, there's some kind of reset that happened and the new societies, meaning the countries we knew today, us, Canada, China, Brazil and so on. The governments we recognize today all begin to destroy these buildings to erase the evidence of the society that came before Much of the Tartaria theory. Videos, articles and posts contrast old photos of incredibly ornate and majestic buildings depicted next to simple horse and buggy carriages. Around the turn of the century, muddy streets are filled with impoverished people scurrying about their business, while grand architecture looms above them in the background.
Guest 2
The lost Empire of Tartaria as you can see, it's depicted in many old maps. During this time period, all of these amazing structures were built. It was a unified civilization with advanced technology and they mastered the ability to have free energy for the entire city. And yet history wants us to believe that people that rode around in horse and buggies built all of this.
Host 2
So we're only a few minutes in and we already have a full bingo on the esoteric checklist. There's Antiquatech, advanced technology from an ancient civilization. We have Cryptids if you're willing to count giants. We've got lost civilization but also sunken civilization. We have a two for one on this and of course free energy. Who could do without? So who actually believes this? I spent the last week doing some survey research and I uncovered a scattered network of video makers and posters across various online platforms. Starting with YouTube. We have a large account called John Levy with 276,000 followers. My personal favorite is a channel called mind unveiled with 250,000 followers. I'm going to read just a few of the video titles here because they're really something unique and special. The Bible Is Tartarian Exposed Is Magic evil Tartaria explained Part 4 Ancient EMF technology Homunculus Jesus Artificial Generation Lost Esoteric Secrets this is I've spent a lot of time with this channel recently. We also have Martin Lytka, AKA Flat Earth British who explores a civilizational reset before Tartaria. He claims that Tartaria is actually the second reset and there was one that preceded it. Additionally, there is tales of the Old World and Tartaria meltdown, both around 18k. There's a few communities on Reddit. We have Tartarian architecture with 11,000 followers and the main one which is just R. Tartaria, 33,000 followers. But perhaps surprisingly, the majority of this content is highly concentrated on TikTok. The hashtag Tartaria on TikTok has 865 million views. 865 million. Now I have done many deep dives into all sorts of weird niche Internet cultures. My sense is that on YouTube it's a really small group of true believers. There's these kind of two big accounts that produce most of the content in long form. Video Reddit is mostly people posting beautiful buildings, but it's not really substantiated in long form argument. Tartaria thrives overwhelmingly with esoteric influencers. On TikTok the views are 10 to 1, 100 to 1, any other platform and I think there's a few reasons for this. It's visually compelling These are some of the most incredible architectural achievements you'll ever see. They're just beautiful exteriors and interiors. The story also fits neatly into a one minute format. You don't really have to go in depth in a TikTok video. My sense is that there's not really much of a grassroots community on TikTok. I think this is something that is latching onto other conspiracy lore and it's well suited for the algorithm. It's really being pushed by a variety of influencers on TikTok. It tends to thrive in that format 10x100x anywhere else. And once you go through a few of those videos, your algorithm starts to get very, very weird.
Joshua Citarella
Is the government hiding an entire civilization from us? The Tartarians were said to be a civilization that unlocked the key to free energy, allowing the Tartarians to advance exponentially as citizens were allowed to express their creativity freely without the stress of work, leading to many great inventions and grand architecture. However, a powerful organization that controlled the world with a cell of energy had already invested heavily into energy production and lobbied against Tartaria. This organization tore Tartaria apart and erased them from our history books, making it seem like Tartaria never existed. But if you look carefully, the evidence of Tartaria is still there in old maps in architecture around the world that seemed too advanced.
Guest 2
Let's take a moment to observe the significance of this photograph. Look at this man's height in comparison to this light pole. These people were literally giants. Could this explain why we see these enormous doors and structures throughout the world? Like look how massive this door is compared to us humans. And you can even see the handles up here. Who was opening and closing this door because we couldn't even reach it. These entrances were made for certain beings. Giants for the most part. Dinosaurs to my knowledge, are something scientists just say was here before we got here. How do we really know those fossils didn't belong to something else? Because scientists just recreated the structures and assumed that it looked like this. We don't really know what it looked like. I believe that majority of those skeletons belong to giants. For whatever reason, that part of history is trying to be hidden from us.
Host 2
Okay, so let's look at the evidence for Tartaria. Let's try to make the best case possible for the existence of Tartaria. I've condensed these into three main points. We have number one, mud, flood windows. This is windows that are partially below ground. The buildings appear as if they were buried. We also have this CIA document that frequently gets mentioned on TikTok. There is of course the Tesla coil, the field of quote, free energy. This part is actually. This is really interesting. And lastly, we have Tartaria's clear, undeniable existence on old colonial maps. You can see it with your own eyes. We'll find out what the story is behind that. So mud flood windows. In some cases these are just basement windows. That's not especially convincing. But more curiously, when you excavate cities, you do actually see many below ground floors. Some of the images that are posted reveal the foundations of buildings that can extend many, many floors down. A six story building may be almost as tall below as it is above the ground. And this is so it doesn't shift around. It has a firm foundation. It doesn't shake with earthquakes. Curiously, these foundations also include passageways, literal holes that resemble windows and doors to install plumbing, cabling and so on. But seeing this revealed in a Reddit post, out of context, it does look extremely convincing. If you dig up the foundation around a city block, it visually appears like there's a whole other city beneath it. It's kind of wild to see. What's more interesting though is that some cities actually raise the ground level and they do this strategically to prevent flooding. They move earth into the low lying areas and build up the ground level to prevent overflow. Chicago did this in the 1850s and 60s. Seattle did it in 1889, raising some areas as much as 8ft. Chattanooga famously did it between 1875 and 1905, raising the ground between 3 and 15ft in some places. Today you can tour underground Chattanooga. Many parts of the new city are built on top of the old one that would frequently flood underground. City tours are fun and very spooky. You can literally buy tickets for them on Eventbrite. It's not very hidden. I feel like this first one we can reasonably dismiss. But the second piece of information, the CIA document, is indeed real. It's real and I found it on the CIA's website. Everybody mentions it. I tracked down the original. It is not hidden, it's actually public information.
Joshua Citarella
In 1998, the CIA declassified a document which they had produced in 1957. A section within the document mentions the existence of the Tartarian civilization. In other words, Tata history was to be rewritten, let us be frank, was to be falsified in order to eliminate references to the great Russian aggressions and to hide facts of the real center of Tata Russian relations. A book that covers Tartaria very well is the James William Lee book called the One World Tartarians the greatest civilization ever to be erased from history. And in the book he explains how the historians historical presence of Tartaria was deliberately censored and deleted.
Host 2
I'll read the full quote in context here. On the 9th of August in 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party sitting in Moscow issued a directive order to the party's Tatar Provincial Committee to proceed with a scientific revision of the history of Tartaria. To liquidate serious shortcomings and mistakes of a nationalist character committed by individual writers and historians in dealing with Tartar history. In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten, let us be frank, was to be falsified in order to eliminate references to great Russian aggressions and to hide the facts of the real course of Tartar Russian relations. And this was no isolated case. Now the quote usually ends there, but literally the next sentence. Every Muslim area within the USSR historians on orders of the Communist Party have rewritten history to distort the facts so that the Russians always appear in a good light. Needless to say, histories which present the facts truthfully have been withdrawn and destroyed so that the present and future generations of Muslims are forever denied the chance of learning the true facts of their nation's past. So despite what the tiktokers are claiming, this document is actually the CIA criticizing the Soviet Union for rewriting history. The CIA has nothing to do with Tartaria under Stalin in 1944. The USSR rewrites history all on their own. They want to create a narrative that includes the ethnic group Tartars. This is the Muslim population who has no relation to the supposed ancient empire of Tartaria because they only moved there a few decades earlier. The Tartar's name was applied in reference to the region, modern day Siberia. But the Tartar people had only recently emigrated from Crimea and thus could not be the original inhabitants of the previous great empire. I'm sure Tartaria theorists will throw all of this out as a falsification, but at least I tried in this case. The Soviet Union is trying to invite the ethnic group Tartars in. They want them to become good communist citizens, but they choose to do it in a very duplicitous way. The CIA rightly and correctly criticizes the Soviets for falsifying history.
Host 1
All right, we'll be right back after this quick break.
Ad Voice
Out here we feel things. The sore calves that lead to epic views, the cool waterfall mist during a hot hike, and the breeze that hits just right at the summit. But hey, don't just listen to us. Experience it for your yourself. Alltrails makes it easy to discover the best of the outdoors with more than 450,000 trails around the world, points of interest along the trail and offline maps for always on navigation. Download the free app today and find your next outdoor adventure.
Host 2
Hey, what's up flies? This is David Spade Dana Carvey. Look at I know we never actually left, but I'll just say it. We are back with another season of Fly on the Wall. Every episode, including ones with guests, will now be on video. Every Thursday you'll hear us and see us chatting with big name celebrities. And every Monday you're stuck with just me and Dana. We react to news, what's trending, viral clips follow and listen to Fly on the Wall Everywhere you get your podcasts this season, let your shoes do the talking. Designer Shoe Warehouse is packed with fresh styles that speak to your whole vibe without saying a word. From cool sneakers that look good with everything to easy sandals you'll want to wear on repeat, DSW has you covered. Find a shoe for every heel from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, New Balance and more. Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.
Ad Voice
Bombas makes the most comfortable socks, underwear and T shirts.
Host 2
Bombas are so absurdly comfortable you may throw out all your other clothes.
Ad Voice
Sorry, do we legally have to say that?
Host 2
No, this is just how I talk. And I really love my Bombas.
Ad Voice
They do feel that good. And they do good too. One item purchased equals one item donated. To feel good and do good, go to bombas.com and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S dot com and use code audio at checkout.
Host 2
Instacart is on a mission to have you not leave the couch this basketball.
Host 1
Season because between the pre game rituals and the post game interviews, it can be difficult to find time for everything else.
Host 2
So let Instacart take care of your.
Host 1
Game day snacks or weekly restocks and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes because we hear it's bad luck.
Host 2
To be hungry on game day. So download the Instacart app today and.
Host 1
Enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
Host 2
Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurants.
Guest 2
This is a cavity magnetron. This thing is basically a high powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves. The microwaves that it emits can act as a source of free energy. This is a cathedral window and this is the magnetron. Do you see the similarities in the center of the magnetron is called a cathode. What does that word sound like? Cathode sounds like cathedral. They are corrupting the truth with lies. Now look at this. The antennas used to harvest the energy. Boom. This is located all over the world. This means that at one point in time, humans were a unified civilization. They all knew something. They all knew how to do this. You see how the ether energy is being harvested into the domed resonator. These structures are located all over the world. Look at that. The domed resonator and the antenna. This is a motherboard. This is located inside the computer. And look what it looks like. It resembles cities. Our Earth is just a giant power grid. It's meant to distribute the free energy.
Host 2
Topic three, free energy is actually. This is really fascinating, I have to admit. Tesla coils, if you are not familiar with them, this is a metal conduit that usually has an oblate orb on the top of it. It's like a steel ball on the top. You can see similar features on the Tartarian buildings. And Tesla coils are. They're really cool. They're really cool because you can literally send electric through the air invisibly, miraculously, magically, you can send electricity through the air. If you hold a light bulb near a Tesla coil, the light bulb will turn on. Not plugged into anything. The light bulb just miraculously turns on. That's because it's powered through an invisible electrical field generated by the Tesla coil. If it sounds absurd, just type it into YouTube. You can see this for yourself. You can actually make these at home. I strongly recommend that you don't, because it can kill you. You will probably get electrocuted. So please just watch a video on YouTube. Tesla invented the coil in 1891, and it is, to be clear, an incredible feat of real science. This happens because the coil creates a field of electricity that radiates through the air. But this is also its biggest drawback, because that energy is not directed. Imagine you're powering directly to a device through a wire. All of that energy goes to the single light bulb. It's extremely efficient. In the Tesla coil, the energy is radiating just in a sphere around the device itself. So you might be picking up on 1% of the energy, but the overwhelming majority, 99% of it, is lost. It just dissipates into the air. So because it's not efficiently directed, a lot of it just goes to waste. Additionally, it only works within a few inches to feet radius. So for example, if you were on like the other side of the couch. You would not be able to charge your phone if the Tesla coil was like six feet away. They are in some cases used to transmit low frequency radio waves, but the electric current simply can't reach far enough to be used to power our devices. It looks like literal magic. It's incredible to see, but the application is extremely limited. Most importantly, other than the very loose formal similarity between the Tartarian spires and the Tesla coil, there is seemingly no evidence to make one think that the spires conducted electricity, much less an explanation for how it was stored or directed. Other than tiktokers literally pointing at an old photo, there is not one document that supports this claim. I have spent a week searching for this, so if you do find one, please send me a DM and tell me. Perhaps this is almost too obvious to say, but Tesla coils merely dispense energy from another source. They can radiate the field of electricity that will wirelessly power a light bulb. But the coils themselves need to be plugged in. I know this sounds silly, but I want to be absolutely clear because some people on the Internet are very confused about this last part. Just because you can wirelessly transmit the energy from the coil to the light bulb does not mean that the coil is wirelessly receiving electricity. Pull up those YouTube videos and you can just see the plug in the corner. It is plugged in. It's not just magically generating electricity. Tiktokers try to get around this by saying that the coil somehow harnesses electricity from the air or the earth's magnetic field. But I am very sorry to disappoint everyone. That part does not work. Previously we did a whole episode on abiotic oil. I encourage you to go back and listen. The myth of free energy is a powerful motif that occurs in a lot of this material. A lot of conspiracy content has buried within it a utopian dream of a society without scarcity. They hope for abundance and energy and optimism. There's a sense that the technology of the world today is incomplete, that the project of history is incomplete. We'll talk a bit more about that in the conclusion. Lastly, we have this question of the old maps. Some of these are up to 400 years old. They span the 16th to 19th centuries and they label a huge area around Russia as Tartary, Tartaria, Great Tartaria, Grand Tartary and so on. I think it's important to place some context on this that when Christopher Columbus sailed in 1692, remember, he literally expected to land in China. Europeans knew very little about geography Outside of the most popular and highly trafficked trade routes. Tartaria is the European name for the region, the geographic area, but not a political body or a certain kingdom. It's like saying South America as opposed to Brazil. One is a region, the other is a state. Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, broadly, Eurasia is labeled Tartaria. It doesn't have a lot of natural resources at the time and it's not sufficiently explored for trade. Importantly, Tartaria is not in reference to the modern day Tartars. That's a different group. Tartars has referenced various peoples at different times, including the political empire of Mongolia, which later becomes synonymous with the geographical region. These terms are over hundreds of years they become interchangeable. But Tartaria theorists are going to argue that all of this was actually suppressed because the empire of Russia took the Tartarian kingdom over. Old glossaries of maps do include a Tartarian flag. There is a black dragon on a yellow color field. Coincidentally, the Russian imperial flag features a knight on horseback crushing a black dragon under the rider's lance. That's proof enough for me. What I see when I look at these Tartarian images, grand buildings next to peasants on horseback, is the extreme wealth inequality at the turn of the century. This is like taking a picture of an Amazon fulfillment center employee in front of Jeff Bezos house. I don't see any mystery, just an extreme concentration of resources. There's obviously the surface level, aesthetic observation that old buildings are pretty and new buildings are made of steel and glass and they're kind of ugly. I tend to agree with this. Actually in an art historical context, much of the Tartarian architecture is what we would call Beaux Arts, from the Eco des Beaux Arts in France, which translates to the School of Fine Arts. This is where students would be trained in classical architecture. I would personally prefer to live in a city full of beautiful buildings. But what happened shortly after the turn of the century is that factory produced materials like steel and concrete and glass became much, much cheaper and artisan labor became way more expensive. As a result, architects could no longer afford to use the old materials and decorative style and had to transform their works to fit the funds and materials available. There's a great video about this by mia Mulder on YouTube. The video is called the Futuristic Empire that Never Existed. Big fan of that video. For a bit of further context, there's a piece in Bloomberg by Zach Mortis called Inside the Tartarian the Qanon of Architecture. Now this is. To be honest, this is sensational and inaccurate. People love to call everything qanon just to drive traffic and drive clicks. I would say it's much more like the flat earth of architecture. I think that's a more reasonable and less sensationalist claim. But Mortis goes on to write that before the Industrial Revolution, labor was cheap, so paying artisans to sculpt elaborate masonry even for relatively humble structures, wasn't a great expense. It seems today when labor prices are higher and factory made steel, concrete and glass is cheap. That's why we see so much of these materials in buildings today, and so much less filigreed terracotta so after wasting a week of my life plumbing the depths of the Internet, I have to say that I am thoroughly unconvinced. Usually when I do the deep dive on a piece of Internet folklore, I find some shred of evidence or really uncertain fact that holds the story together. But in the case of Tartaria, I think we're seeing something a bit different. Social media has obviously changed a lot in the past few years with phenomena like fake news and disinformation and so on. I think Tartaria is silly and cute enough to skate by all the algorithmic filters without getting flagged. Basically, this is the sanitized version of some more wild conspiracy theories, and because it exists in this limbo of entertainment and a low risk for harm, it's basically able to circulate without too much friction. Additionally, a lot of content creators who may have been posting more extreme things a few years earlier are now posting about Tartaria because it's one of the few bits of esoteric content that won't get their account deplatformed. Like many esoteric theories, the Tartarian narrative appeals to people for a good reason. In today's society, many of us are downwardly mobile. Each generation is having a harder time than the last. The boomers did better than Gen X, Gen X did better than Millennials, and the zoomers on TikTok have it even harder still. So the idea that we are living in the ruins of a great society from before is kind of true. That story resonates with a lot of us, but it doesn't mean that we have to throw out all of history for literally, and I stress this literally, no evidence other than influencers pointing at old photographs. Ideas like antiquatech invert notions of the future and the past. We're used to thinking of the future as an optimistic time. Technology is getting better, things are progressing onward and upward, and the lived experience of today seems really inconsistent congruent with that idea. So antiquatech as A concept really appeals to people because this idea of further progress into the future, more prosperity, the abundant and optimistic future that we were taught to expect, all of that seems very improbable today. So in terms of a myth structure, Tartaria absolutely resonates with people and I think that's very understandable. Ideas of free energy, allegories of abundance in today's society with extreme scarcity, it's really clear why that resonates with people. In the scope of this research, I'm interested to do the deep dive on a variety of different topics. Esoteric conspiracy theory, Internet folklore and such. All of those things. I want to get to the truth. I'm always interested to find that kernel of truth that you don't expect when you first crack open the story. Topics like Tartaria that no pun intended, have very little of a foundation to stand on, ultimately work against that truth seeking impulse. So to promote this story as something that is legitimate and worthy of investigation, I find that to be very disingenuous. I think there's a lot of people basically chasing clicks and views and search engine optimization because the topic seems to be trending, but the idea of standing this thing upright as if it's worthy of serious investigation. After looking into it for a week, watching hours of video browsing all of these communities, I am totally and utterly unconvinced. At Vitruvian Grimace, I've traveled great lengths. I can come seeking the true esoteric knowledge of Tartaria. Please share your wisdom.
Joshua Citarella
Patience, mortal. The true power of Tartarian architecture cannot be understood by those who have not walked the path. This knowledge is far deeper and more ancient than your four dimensional mind can comprehend.
Host 2
How tall were the giants? Did they have one in every town? Or was the whole town giants? Were the giants like enchanted charge of the humans? Or did the giants work for the humans Also? Why didn't the humans get covered by the mud and the giants survive? Because they were taller.
Joshua Citarella
Silence, boor. You are not prepared to accept the truth of the full Flamenco chronology. The Levisov revelations tell us that lunar fragments from the explosion of Earth's moon shatter the continents into separate empires. Tartaria is more ancient than your feeble mind could even imagine. You are not prepared.
Host 2
So we are deep enough into the podcast where all the kids have gone to bed. I mentioned before that Tartaria is the sanitized social media version of some more radical ideas. In particular, the story is highly similar to Anatoly Fomenko's new chronology. This is an extensive Seven volume research project in Air quotes Research Project so called, where he uses astronomy and lunar cycles to revise basically all of known history. Looking back at various historical events, he disputes the years these events are claimed to have occurred and instead uses astronomical calculations to deduce their supposed date. And while that sounds mathematical and somewhat scientific, it also means that all of antiquity, including the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece and Egypt, actually occurred during the Middle Ages. Basically because of some old charts and paintings that depict a few constellations out of place, we have to throw away a thousand years of recorded history in a political context. Fomenko is a Russian nationalist and has a biased interpretation of basically everything. His goal is pretty explicitly to rewrite known history, to center Russia as the central figure, including rewriting Russian history to valorize a grand past and instill a sense of nationalistic pride. I'll read the description of one of his books here. The title is Fiction or Science? Chronology, Volume 4. The consensual world history was manufactured in Europe in the 16th through 19th centuries with a political agenda of the powers of that period on the basis of an erroneous clerical chronology. By the middle of the 16th century, Europe had reached superiority in the sciences and technologies, but was still inferior militarily to the empire of Eurasia. The concerted effort of European aristocracy, Catholic clergy, Protestants, humanists and scientists in the 15th through 17th centuries was the creation and dissemination of a fictional ancient world which served its political agenda. The fictional ancient world was created by representing the events of the 11th through 16th centuries as ones that happened thousands of years before. According to the ancient sources, they invented a considerable part of the European aristocracy who were refugees from Byzantine and or the inheritors of Eurasian warlords supported the myth of the ancient world to justify their claims to the countries they ruled. Now, skipping forward a bit, this goes on for quite a long time. And this is, mind you, just the description of the book, not the seven volume project. Why, oh why do mainstream historians not gratify prominent mathematician Dr. Fomenko with laurels, but instead call the riot police? For example, the English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transported to English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility as a sign of recognition of the special role of the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of world history. The COVID of the present book portrays Jesus Christ crucified on Big Ben. Now this is where, this is where it gets really interesting. Dr. Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar or Mongol invasion. Followed by over two centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documented evidence to support his assertion. These so called Tartars and Mongols were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians living in a trilingual state with Arabic and Turkic spoken as free freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities, and the hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription. Their invasions were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Dr. Fomenko proves that official Russian history is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scholars brought to Russia by the Usurper dynasty of the Romanovski. Their ascension to the throne was the result of a conspiracy. So they charged those German historians with the noble mission of making the Romanov's reign look legitimate. End quote. So here you have it. The true history of Russia is actually the great Tartarian Empire. The Romanov tsars fell to the Bolsheviks. So it's hard to rally nationalists around a regime that has already and recently fell. Instead, Fomenko invents an entirely new civilization to rally people to his cause, achieving a great and powerful empire that is not burdened with the terrible history of either the Soviet Union or the brutal reign of the Russian czars. All of it is entirely made up. It is purely ideological. There are literally a thousand years of recorded history that dispute it. But the desire for some people to believe this, especially in the context of a collapsing Soviet Union, is extremely powerful. Whenever societies are going through a difficult period, the human desire to create a new narrative that inspires us and gives us something to aspire to can become extremely compelling. I've spent the last week immersing myself in this lore. I've watched way too many YouTube videos, I've scrolled way too many meme accounts. I have thoroughly poisoned my brain at this point. Walking around the city, I do find myself looking up at old buildings and looking down at mud flood windows. It feels silly at first, but it's an oddly compelling story. Generally, I think Tartaria is pretty low risk. I don't think a lot of people actually believe this. I don't think we should ban it. I don't think it's a danger to society. But I also, I don't want to completely dismiss that some of the people in these communities might believe a whole bunch of other things that are a bit more extreme than what they can say publicly that may exist. I try to approach these things with a cool head. I try to give a compassionate reading for me, the only real solution to all of this is to fix the external circumstances and address the real crises in society. And once those problems are solved, the number of people who believe in conspiracies all of a sudden goes way down. People don't need to create a fictional reality because the actual reality is quite good now. It's not Utopia. You're still going to get a tummy ache, you still can get your heart broken, but maybe we won't also be wrecking the planet and the economy at the same time. Once that's out of the way, we can return to addressing the real unsolved questions of the human experience. Things like spirituality, self fulfillment, the great mystical of the human consciousness, all of that really important stuff. So those are my thoughts on Tartaria. I hope you liked the episode and I will see you in a better future Scene.
Ad Voice
Craving something refreshingly delicious? Meet Joyba Ready to drink bubble tea. Packed with juicy popping boba and bursting with bold, refreshing flavor, these delicious fruity bubble teas are available ready to drink at your local retailers. Just grab, go and sip your way into bubble bliss. Discover Joyba's full flavor lineup and where to buy at joyba.com shop warning the.
Host 2
Following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled.
Ad Voice
With F words when you're hiring. We at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn, even, like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that, and right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com Zip with ZipRecruiter you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
Host 1
Fantastic.
Ad Voice
So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com Zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget that's ZipRecruiter.com Zip finally, that's ZipRecruiter.Com Zip.
Otherworld Podcast Summary: Deep Research – Tartaria
Released on July 14, 2025
In the July 14, 2025 episode of Otherworld, host Jack Wagner delves into the enigmatic conspiracy theory surrounding Tartaria, a purported lost civilization with advanced technology and architectural marvels. This episode is part of the "Deep Research" series, where host Jack collaborates with researcher Joshua Citarella to investigate fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories.
The episode begins with Host Jack Wagner setting the stage for an in-depth exploration of Tartaria. Tartaria, also known as Great Tartaria or the Tartarian Empire, is described as an ancient civilization that spanned the globe, characterized by grand architecture and advanced technology.
Host 2 introduces the concept at [05:32], stating:
"Tartaria is an old world civilization with advanced technology and architecture that spanned the entire globe. It was an era of peace and prosperity with abundant resources and energy, until it was wiped out by a catastrophic mud flood." [05:32]
Advanced Architecture and Technology
"We were told that these were built by people that rode in horse and buggies. We're expected to believe that they built things like this with a hammer and a chisel. These people were way more advanced than we give them credit for."
The Mud Flood Event
"Flood that buried it in feet of mud, which was also known as the mud flood. And that is why we see so many buildings that look like they have just been buried or that have basement windows and doors."
Suppression of History
"What I see when I look at these Tartarian images, grand buildings next to peasants on horseback, is the extreme wealth inequality at the turn of the century."
Free Energy and Tesla Coils
"The domed resonator and the antenna. This is a motherboard. This is located inside the computer. And look what it looks like. It resembles cities. Our Earth is just a giant power grid. It's meant to distribute the free energy."
Joshua Citarella provides a critical examination of the Tartaria theory, challenging its validity through historical context and logical inconsistencies.
Historical Context of Tartaria
"On the 9th of August in 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party sitting in Moscow issued a directive order to the party's Tatar Provincial Committee to proceed with a scientific revision of the history of Tartaria."
Architectural Analysis
"In an art historical context, much of the Tartarian architecture is what we would call Beaux Arts, from the École des Beaux-Arts in France, which translates to the School of Fine Arts."
Mud Flood Windows and Foundations
"Curiously, these foundations also include passageways, literal holes that resemble windows and doors to install plumbing, cabling and so on."
Free Energy Misconceptions
"Tesla coils merely dispense energy from another source. They can wirelessly transmit the energy from the coil to the light bulb, but the coils themselves need to be plugged in."
Old Maps and Geographic Misinterpretations
"Tartaria is the European name for the region, the geographic area, but not a political body or a certain kingdom. It's like saying South America as opposed to Brazil."
The episode draws parallels between Tartaria and other fringe theories, such as Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology, which attempts to rewrite historical timelines based on astronomical calculations. Citarella critiques Fomenko’s work, emphasizing its lack of credible evidence and its ideological motivations.
At [40:03], he discusses Fomenko's perspective:
"Dr. Fomenko proves that official Russian history is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scholars brought to Russia by the Usurper dynasty of the Romanovski."
Despite the lack of credible evidence, Citarella acknowledges the psychological appeal of the Tartaria narrative. He suggests that societal issues, such as economic downturns and class disparities, make the utopian vision of a lost advanced civilization particularly resonant.
At [38:00], he reflects:
"In today's society, many of us are downwardly mobile. The idea that we are living in the ruins of a great society from before is kind of true. That story resonates with a lot of us."
Joshua Citarella concludes the episode by reiterating his skepticism toward the Tartaria theory. He emphasizes the importance of addressing real societal challenges rather than diverting attention to unfounded conspiracies. Citarella advocates for focusing on tangible issues like spirituality, self-fulfillment, and the deeper mysteries of human consciousness.
At [46:00], he summarizes:
"The only real solution to all of this is to fix the external circumstances and address the real crises in society. And once those problems are solved, the number of people who believe in conspiracies all of a sudden goes way down."
Guest 1 on advanced Tartarian architecture:
"These people were way more advanced than we give them credit for." [09:22]
Guest 2 on giants and architectural features:
"These entrances were made for certain beings. Giants for the most part." [16:14]
Joshua Citarella on the CIA document misinterpretation:
"The CIA has nothing to do with Tartaria under Stalin in 1944." [20:45]
Host 2 on architectural styles:
"These are just beautiful exteriors and interiors." [12:21]
Joshua Citarella on the psychology behind the theory:
"Antiquatech as a concept really appeals to people because this idea of further progress into the future, more prosperity, the abundant and optimistic future that we were taught to expect, all of that seems very improbable today." [39:12]
This episode of Otherworld offers a comprehensive examination of the Tartaria conspiracy theory, presenting both the claims of its proponents and the critical analysis challenging its validity. Through thoughtful discussion and research, host Jack Wagner and Joshua Citarella provide listeners with a balanced perspective on one of the internet's most intriguing fringe theories.