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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to the observable unknown, where science meets the unexplained.
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B
I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupper.com.
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A
And after two decades of working at the intersection of comparative religious studies, brief counseling, anthropology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies, I've discovered that our most profound human experiences often exist in the space between what we can prove and what we can perceive. In this podcast, we'll explore the measurable influences of immeasurable forces, those hidden factors that shape our reality, but often escape our traditional scientific frameworks. From the latest research in consciousness studies to the ancient wisdom that's now finding validation in neuroscience and quantum physics, we're here to bridge the gap between academic rigor and spiritual insight. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or simply curious about the deeper mechanics of human experience, you're in the right place. Together, we'll examine the evidence, challenge our assumptions, and explore what happens when we dare to look beyond the obvious. Today, we step quietly into the archaeology of forgetting. Across centuries, humanity has lost more knowledge than it has kept, from burned scrolls to vanished data. Yet each erasure leaves a faint afterimage, a kind of cultural DNA, whispering through us still. Our guest, author and historian, Jack R. Bialik, has devoted his life to tracing that whisper. His book, Lost in Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge, is not simply about what disappeared, but about why disappearance itself may be the engine of evolution. Together, we'll ask how civilizations curate their own amnesia. What is buried by choice, what is forgotten by necessity, and whether remembering is ever a purely intellectual act or a moral one. So settle in, breathe deeply, and listen for what remains between the ruins.
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B
Without any further ado, let's join the conversation. Jack, the prospect of speaking with you today has brought a bright thread into my week. How are you doing?
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C
I'm doing excellent, thank you.
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B
Jc I want to start off by asking, when you open Lost in Time, by suggesting that civilizations forget not by accident, but by design, what does that mean, in your view? Does it mean that forgetting itself might be a survival strategy rather than a failure?
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C
Well, I think by design, I. I really was referring to the fact that we design things to fail sooner than they. Than we think they should. You know, our time horizon that we look at when we build something is relatively short. You know, you think about when we build a new type of storage technology, we're thinking about how we could best do it so that it's cheaper, faster. You know, I can put. I can put five terabytes on this USB drive. You know, that's the Important thing not. You know, one of the criteria is not, will this last a thousand years? You know, will I be able to read this? Will my children be able to read it? You know, that is not the design strategy.
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So.
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C
I, I don't think we consider enough about the future when we design something.
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B
So the design of our storage tools is something that we intend to become obsolescent or it's accidental.
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C
Yeah, yeah, we either, yeah, either we don't care. You know, it's fine. You know, this is gonna die. And, you know, some things are. I, you know, like your car. You know, a lot of people say, well, the car is built to last five years because that's what my. Or a hundred thousand miles. And after that, you know, the, the, the mechanics stop working sometimes, you know, all kinds of problems. So do they design that in purpose to, you know, that it stops and, and, you know, when the warranty expires? Well, maybe sort of, you know, they want you to buy a new one. That's true. You know, do we do that with electronics? Do we do that with our computers? You know, how long does a computer last? Five years, maybe 10? I'm not 10. It's really, really pushing it. But they don't, they don't design those to last very long. So what about the knowledge that's stored on. On a computer or on a, you know, laptop or a desktop or SSD or hard drive or whatever the storage technology is? They don't care. Or they design it on purpose so that you have to go buy the next one.
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B
So if loss is adaptive, what determines what a culture chooses to bury, by your estimation?
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C
It seems like we only remember what. It's human nature, you know, we remember what we like, what we want to remember. You know, if you look at history, look at what different countries teach about history can vary somewhat. I was in Canada not too long ago, and I was up there on a cruise and got to go to several different provinces in Canada. And their history of what happened over time and how Canada came to be was quite different than what I was taught in school or what I remember from. From reading in books. And not that it was one was right and one was wrong. They were just different. Know, they had a different viewpoint.
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A
Can you elaborate on that?
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What seemed remarkable to you about the difference in historical referencing?
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C
Yeah, well, so, for example, I went to one place in. Where was it now? In Nova Scotia, I believe. And they. They were talking about how when the people moved in there, they. From Scotland. Nova Scotia means New Scotland. And There was one area where the people moved in and they kicked out the French that were staying there. Well, the French that were staying there all went down to Louisiana in the United States, and that's where, that's where all the French come from that were in Canada. You know, I didn't know that. I've been to Louisiana. I've been to New Orleans a couple times and everything. You know, I didn't, I never heard that story where the people came from. So I came from Canada. They didn't come from France, so. Well, they, you know, came from France originally, technically.
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B
Yeah, of course they would have come from France. That's, that's a remarkable point. I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't know that. Can you point to a moment in modernity where you see deliberate amnesia playing out again, perhaps in our own time?
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C
Oh, well, certainly that happens all the time. It's. If we look at libraries, you know, libraries become quite controversial in a lot of countries and cont. Cultures where books are destroyed on purpose. Right. They don't want, you know, even in ancient times, there, there were books that were, you know, they didn't want the, the normal people, the average person, to know some piece of information, so they would destroy the books. And there's even cases in, in China, ancient China, where they would go, if you were caught with one of these books, you could be incarcerated or worse. So, you know, knowledge becomes kind of a tool of the, the leadership. And they can, they can kind of try to control the people by controlling what information they have, burning books and, and destroying libraries. Well, that's done on purpose sometimes, sometimes done by accident of wars. Iraq is a, a great example of, of tens of thousands of artifacts that have been destroyed and, and lost just because of the war. Now, that's not intentional. You know, people aren't doing that on purpose, but the war is on purpose, you know, and they're not thinking about, well, let's not hit that building. No, they're, they're trying to do whatever their mission is, and if the building is in the way, they blow it up. You know, it gets bombed or tore down or whatever. So, you know, we do, we do it on purpose a lot of times lose our knowledge, and then on accident, you know, we've lost. I did. There's quite a bit in my book about, you know, time capsules that we buried, put somewhere, and then we lost them and we can't find them again. And so here we are trying to save some little piece of knowledge Some little nugget of humanity and the, we can't, we can't find it again.
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B
From cuneiform to the cloud, we've built archives that promise permanence and deliver entropy. Do you see digital storage as a continuation of humanity's memory problem or as its final iteration?
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C
Yeah, well, we, we try to use digital storage as a good medium, but if you look, if you really look over time and see how our storage medium has declined in the amount of time it's still usable, you know, we can go way back and see where they put it in, put knowledge on stone, you know, wrote on tablets. Cuneiform, great example of that. As a matter of fact, they just recently found a new library of cuneiform tablets and all the knowledge that's been stored on there and information has been invaluable in understanding the people of that time. But, you know, cuneiform, okay, that lasts what that was done in 2500 BC. So that's lasted 4, 4000, 5000 years, you know, whatever, 4500 years. Take micro fish that was used in libraries some time ago. Or you take magnetic tape that doesn't last hardly any time at all. Maybe 20, 30 years, 40 years. It gets dry and brittle and cracks and it's unusable again. You know, as we get further in time, even DVDs and, and CDs only have a last life of 30 to 40 years. Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less, depending on how it's stored and different criteria. But we, we don't realize it, you know, that we think if we put it on a DVD it's good forever, but the pits in the DVD will oxidize and it will become unreadable again. And I even had an experience with that myself. My wife and I, we took a VHS tape that we taped our wedding on and recorded it on a DVD. And so this was 20 years ago and tried to play that DVD just recently and it wouldn't play. It was, it was, you know, was. I don't know, whatever failed inside because it just doesn't last as long as you think. So we're going the wrong way. You know, you think about SSD or thumb drives that we use today, it's all electronics. And how long does electronics last? How long is your TV last or your computer or your phone or whatever? You know, it's got a, a finite lifetime and it's not that long.
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B
So.
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C
We really have to think about where we store our information and save it. Interesting story. I interviewed the head Curator for the Internet Museum in San Francisco. And they have stored there all these IBM XTS and PCs, you know, the original computers that were commercially available. And they were, you know, having problems because, you know, they had floppy disks that they used in there, and those become dry and brittle and unusable. I don't even think you can buy them anymore. What he, what he said was to save the programs that were used on those computers, they print the programs on paper. So they use paper to save the information that was put on a computer. So it's kind of going backwards a little.
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B
Yeah. That's remarkable. That's a very interesting insight. Thank you for that. How does the digital echo of knowledge differ from oral traditions in this vulnerability? As you've pointed out, they're transferring floppy disks to paper. So do you believe this is the, the potential safeguard that manuscript traditions will be the centurion against the loss of knowledge?
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C
Well, it is, it is an option. I don't know if it's the best one. I think, you know, oral traditions were really powerful, especially early on. You know, if we think about manuscripts, old manuscripts, use for an example, the Bible, which was used and for, for many years, right in antiquity, they used to write that. There's sections that are written to make them easy to memorize. So a lot of that was shared. A lot of that information and knowledge was shared down through the ages orally. You know, same way with the Indians have. A lot of American Indians have a lot of knowledge that they, they've saved. So the, the, the issue with all this is that, you know, what is the answer? You know, what is the right way to, for us to save our information? You know, I don't know that we have it totally figured out. And I don't think we've put that much thought into it, you know, and that's part of the reason for my book Lost in Time or Forgotten and Vanishing Knowled. Make people aware, you know, to bring awareness to this idea. Because without it, you just go on your daily life, you know, and, and I don't think we're thinking enough about it, and we, we don't really have a good solution for how this is going to play out. How, what's, what's the right way to do it?
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B
You write quite passionately about lost centers of learning. In Lost in Time, was there one destroyed archive codex or civilization that felt really personal to you while researching this book?
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C
Yeah, there's several. I really enjoy talking about one. One that I find fascinating is the V noic manuscript. Now Many people may not have heard of that one. It's a manuscript that was purchased in 1912 by Wilfred Vanoich. And it's a manuscript that they've been able to. Linguists have validated that it's written in a real language. They've run, you know, they have way. There's Zip's law that shows that letters and. And word frequencies are. Represent a real language. And they've been able to verify that the language that this manuscript has is in fact a real language, but no one's been able to decode it. And the thing is, you lose, you know, if that culture goes away and you don't have that knowledge base passed on, there is no way to. To capture that information again. So it's very difficult, you know, without, without the Rosetta Stone, they probably never would have figured out how to read hieroglyphs in Egypt. So this is an example of.
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Of.
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You know, a language in a manuscript that I think is fascinating, and hopefully someday we'll figure that one out.
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B
Do you see any symbolic continuity between those vanished libraries and our modern universities?
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C
Well, there, there is. But, you know, what's interesting is our libraries have the problem that typical libraries have with, you know, insects destroying books or fires or earthquakes or any number of natural disasters that destroy libraries. But our current libraries have a different kind of a problem that they have to deal with, where they have terabytes of photos, videos, you know, different digital artifacts that can be. They become obsolete. You know, you keep on getting different versions of JPEG or other standards for saving videos and pictures, and they have to deal with, well, what do they do? You know, do they take all the information they have and then upgrade it to the next newest standard, or do they leave it behind, you know, and then how. How do you read that? Will you be guaranteed that you can read that in a hundred years, say, or are we thinking of 100 years? Are we thinking of 200 years? How far do you want to save a. A video? You know, how far into the future will you be able to. To access it and to read it, that becomes a bigger problem. You know, it's sort of similar to the problem of reading, you know, a floppy drive. You know, if you had a floppy drive with some. A pick, say a picture on it today, or a floppy disk, I should say, how could you read that? You know, it would be. I don't think you could find a device. It would probably be difficult to. To find, but, you know, so the libraries have this problem. You know, I just read an article where JPEG is going to become changed into it. There's a new standard coming out for, for jpeg and over time, you know, how do you deal with that? So yeah, our libraries have to deal with the same thing that, you know, the Library of Alexandria had, where they were, was burned down. Yep. Our libraries can burn down as well. So the only, the only advantage maybe we have is that we have many copies. So hopefully, you know, one, one library disappear. Disappearing doesn't cause loss of knowledge because we have redundant copies in other locations.
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B
And that reminds me, one of your recurring distinctions in Lost in Time is between knowledge and wisdom. When did we as a culture start making the mistake of displacing one for the other?
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C
Well, at the beginning we, we have always struggled with knowledge versus wisdom. So the definition of wisdom is the proper application of knowledge. So we can find many instances of people who are brilliant. You know, they can be brilliant in, in many ways very smart people. Brilliant at playing the piano or brilliant at, you know, remembering facts or remember, brilliant at, you know, sports or whatever, you know, physical, you know, abilities. But are they smart about it? Do they know how to properly apply the knowledge they have? And I mean, that's an age old, that is an age old issue. Know we have a lot of, have a lot of smart people, but if you, you know, don't know how to apply it properly, it doesn't have a good outcome. You know, it doesn't have a, a positive outcome for the person or for humanity or whomever the person is making the decision for.
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B
That also apply to the survival of information. Information that doesn't transfer to wisdom the same way short term memory might transfer to long term memory doesn't get preserved or doesn't get recognized as preservable.
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C
You know, I, I don't know if we recognize what should be preserved and what shouldn't be. Is that kind of what you're going towards?
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B
Well, the idea that we as a culture have made a distinction, as you already pointed out, between knowledge, people who know pointless facts, and wisdom, the proper application of what we've learned. But what rises to the level of wisdom when there's a vast sea of knowledge before us clearly has to have some sort of logic to it. Is the idea that something should be preserved what makes it into wisdom? If something is valuable for the society, is that why we classify it as wisdom? Or do you think that there are aspects of knowledge that get maintained even though they might not fit into this broader category of wisdom?
- [24:15]
C
Yeah, yeah, this, this is tough because Knowledge can be taught very simply, you know. You know, the knowledge that a car goes fast and it's hard to stop can be taught very easily, but the wisdom to not run out in front of a very fast, hard to stop car is something, you know, you know, is maybe a little bit tougher to teach. You know, you think of a child, you say, now don't touch that hot pan. You know, it's, it's very hot. You know, he just took it out of the oven. And you know, you're, you're trying to impart wisdom on the other person. And guess what? The child goes ahead and touches the pan anyways.
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Yeah.
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C
And so wisdom is more a sense of learning, you know, it's, it's a deeper understanding of a particular thing, you know, that that is, makes good sense, you know, it's the right thing, you know, yeah, sure, I shouldn't touch that hot pan, you know, but, you know, you and I know that, but small child growing up, you know, they, they have to learn it somehow. So can we, can we learn wisdom? I. I think we can, but we have to want to. You know, and that was the point really to the book is at the very end. No, it's about humility. It's about being humble and being able to put aside your personal, I don't know, not your personal beliefs, but being open to new ideas and to being open to, you know, hey, okay, I, I understand what you're saying. That's hot. It's going to burn me. That makes sense. I'm not going to do it, you know, and you have to be humble to say, well, no, I know what I'm doing. I'm just going to touch the hot pan. You know, it's not really humble. You know, you're, you're thinking you're smarter than the other person.
- [26:42]
B
An interesting dilemma that we're even in the middle of right now. We're suffering this current data deluge. Obviously, this is just the latest incarnation of the Tower of Babel. So what do we do with how much information is going to be lost because of an overlo. Too much coming in, too much displacing things that we probably should be focusing on and converting from knowledge into wisdom.
- [27:04]
C
Yeah, well, we have so much information coming in. I think I talk about that in the book as well. You know, we look at the mountains of information. How are we going to parse through that and figure out what is the right thing to say, what's the right thing to let go, you know, and around that Thought. I been giving it a lot of thought lately, and I'm thinking that AI may be able to help us. You know, it's like a lot of new inventions. I'm sure many of your listeners, you know, we've been through different changes in what's happened over the time. You know, I, I can remember people in, in school saying, oh, the calculator, that's going to ruin, you know, humanity because we're never going to have to remember how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide again, you know, but in fact, it didn't. No, we, we, we survived. We went on and we did more than we could before now because we have a calculator at a tutor. And the Internet, of course, was another big thing that came about, and many people probably thought the same thing. Oh, that Internet. I'm not learning the Internet, you know, I'm not going on the Internet. I don't need it. You know, that's not, that's not the way of the future. I think even when the, the book came out, you know, the, the first printed books or printed manuscripts, some of the philosophers, some of the ancient philosophers thought, well, that was the end of humanity because now we didn't have to remember anything anymore. It be written down. Yeah, that didn't happen. Didn't happen at all. So I think, I think we're going to go through the same thing with A.I. you know, we're going to have to figure out how to weave through it to make it useful and, you know, how, how it can, maybe I, I think it might be able to help us figure out, well, how do we save this knowledge? What, what way would be the best and, and maybe which pieces should we save and shouldn't save? You know, thinking about how it, you know, it doesn't really forget, so to speak, but does it have wisdom either? I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe just the wisdom we impart onto it.
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B
Yeah. You know, what role does slowness or contemplation play in restoring wisdom to knowledge?
- [29:49]
C
Well, yeah, well, that's an excellent, excellent question, you know, because we're so fast to act, you know, and I think we need to. I was saying humility. And you think to be humble is really to think about things. You know, think before you act. And I think that that can really help one to impart wisdom on, on their actions by being thoughtful and taking your time. You know, everything's so fast today, whether it's in your car or, you know, you're, you're you're speeding and, and there's five other guys passing you at the same time. You know, our life is fast. Everything's fast. We got, you know, text messages are fast, emails fast. You know, communication is fast. So I think there is something to that, you know, being thoughtful, you know, meditating on things or meditating in period, you know, giving yourself some time to think about things. I think that can help make wiser choices.
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B
Now, some of your work implies that memory operates collectively, almost biologically. Do you think that our brains carry inherited traces of what humanity once knew but maybe didn't record?
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C
Yeah, I, I, I do, I, I don't know. I think maybe on several levels. You know, we do carry, in our culture, we carry memories along. You know, there's people today who still listen to, say, Elvis Presley, you know, who's no longer with us, but the culture has brought the music along. But I think also, you know, there's, there seems to be some indication, I've done a little bit of research on this there, you know, genetically, you know, you carry some, is it information? You know, you carry something down from generation to generation. Genetically, of course, but there's also been some research done. I think you at the University of Virginia has done quite a bit of research on children that remember past lives.
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B
You know, but could remembering itself have a physiological consequences, rewiring both species and self?
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C
Yeah, that, that's, that's great. You know, that's a super concept of, you know, what you, what you think. Well, you know, you think about it. You can make yourself sick.
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B
Oh yeah.
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C
Thinking about something. Well, can you make yourself well by thinking about something?
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B
Yeah, I'm remembering something.
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C
Yeah. So if you could remember, you know, if, if there's memories or knowledge from past cultures, maybe we can, we can learn from that.
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B
Every recovered text alters the present. Do you think their truths humanity isn't ready to remember yet?
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C
Yeah, well, I, I have a kind of a, interesting view on that. And that is that, you know, we are not presented with information unless we can use it or utilize it properly. You know, it seems like things come to light. You know, there's always new findings constantly. And it seems like things come to light when they're best absorbed or needed. You know, when, when we have a time when something is best for the culture or humanity to use. I think there's still so much information out there that we don't know. You know, again, you know, it's that idea of humility. But, you know, I'll just talk about the pyramids Just for a moment because I've done a lot of research on those was. And you know, how did those guys do that? You know, of course we have the one group who says, well, it was aliens. Well, okay, maybe, but I like to think it was probably some technologies we had that we've forgotten, we've lost in time and something that helped us to build that and design it. I mean the, the, it isn't just putting the stones up. It's the, you know, the project, you know, how do you design a project to do that? If, if I take a look at, you know, the 2.3 million stones and the time frame that experts, experts say that we built it. I mean, just the raw numbers. You have to lay 13 ton stone every 2.3 minutes for 20 years, 365 days a year, 12 hours a day for, for 20 years to place all those stones. I mean, it's phenomenal. It's impossible. I, I don't think we could do it today. I mean, I'm just looking at the numbers. And not only that, you got to cut those stones. So you got to be cutting 323, you know, 3 ton stones a day. You know, I mean, it's like, how do you do this? So, and that's, you know, 4,000, 5,000 years ago. How, how'd they do that? You know, without wheels, without pulleys, without, you know, a lot of the tools we use today. So they had to have some way of doing it and it's lost. So I think we'll have a lot more that we can find. A lot more will be presented to us. I think we'll find maybe some information stored in places that will help us to understand that.
- [36:44]
B
Elaborate on that. Where do you think we'll be finding information of this variety? Technological advantages that helps ancients construct structures. Where do you think something like that might be stored? Or where do you think we'll discover it?
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C
Yeah, well, there's a lot written about that in other places. I think you have mentioned that, Casey. I know he's said there are storehouses of knowledge in South America and in Egypt. Now you know, there's other people that are skeptical of that, which is fine. But you know, you have to think we. I was thinking about it today. If you lived in 1248, you probably thought you knew everything, you know, there was to know or you knew the, the, the best, you know, you were the smartest in that year. And so did those people save some knowledge? Well, yeah, sure, they put things away they put, they put information away. But today we're thinking the same thing. We're thinking, well, we're, we're the smartest, you know, we're the smartest that's ever been. And so we're going to put some knowledge away. Well, I think people have put knowledge away through all time, know, always, you know, people have been basically the same. Not the same, but, you know, thoughtful, maybe in the same ways. And I think those, their storehouses of knowledge. Who knows where and who knows how it's stored? I mean, for somebody to, you know, like an iPhone or a phone, if, if you were to find one in, in 5,000 years buried somewhere, would you know how to turn it on or how to find the information that's in it? No, I don't know. I. I doubt it. I doubt you'd know it. So could there be storehouses somewhere else stored in a way that we don't understand today? You know, I think it's a good possibility.
- [39:04]
B
You know, why then is so much lost? I believe you gave a fantastic percentage, like 1.7%. Is that correct? Is all that we've really preserved from the past.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Right.
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C
And, you know, it's. It's interesting. Well, you brought up the point also that maybe we don't need everything, you know, that, that there was, you know, all knowledge. But is 1.7% the right amount? Could maybe, maybe 10%. Maybe we should have. Should be able to, you know, remember a little bit more than what we do. But it's. It sounds like, you know, mankind, humankind, we kind of do this to ourselves. You know, it's like. It's like the child. Almost like our collective selves do not have the wisdom to preserve our knowledge for the long term. We have a lot of knowledge, but our collective self, you know, our cultures don't save the information on purpose. You know, we destroy it on purpose. But we don't think about the consequences of that. Well, it's, you know, it's a war, so. Oh, well, you know, museum here, museum there, library here, library there got destroyed.
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B
That's what it thinks about the consequences for future generations.
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C
They are too bad.
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B
Now, my most exciting part, you describe myth as a storage device for endangered wisdom. How does that metaphor reshape our understanding of folklore and religion?
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C
Yeah, I think that is, that is the problem, that our myth, Our myth is that we, we have information. Our storage devices are the way to save endangered wisdom. Right. And it's not really. It's not really the. The answer. Our storage devices are the answer to a business question that some businesses put forth. It is not the answer to saving our, our wisdom for the future. I think the, the ancients had a better take on that. You know, using word of mouth, using stories to, to preserve their knowledge. You know, a lot of that, A lot of that knowledge hasn't changed. It's really amazing how they've been able to verify information. I know there is some specific examples with the Bible where they found. They have the current version of the Bible and then they found older versions that were stored for thousand years, over a thousand years, and they were able to compare them and find very few differences because people were interested in preserving that knowledge and they took the right steps. You know, they had used some wisdom when they saved it. But I think until our culture gets smart enough to understand that, we need to preserve some of what we know for the future. And that'll be, that'll be the change, that'll be the, the shift that we need in our cultures to preserve this knowledge forever for our children and for, for future people to make their life better and to live a longer life.
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B
Can myth remember what history forgets? Do you believe it acts as a substrate, kind of absorbing the pieces that might be left behind as remnants from cultures?
- [43:41]
C
Yeah, I, that, that is an excellent take on that. No, I haven't spent a tremendous amount of time on that thought. I think that's really excellent idea, though, that, you know, our, our cultures try in whatever ways they can to remember these things. But I was talking about the Vanoich manuscript, you know, since that, since that culture's gone and whoever wrote that, there is no record of them. There's no, you know, there's no bridge. We don't have a bridge between one place, one people, one place or people. And today it's very difficult. You just don't have a. You don't have any basis to understand where these concepts came from, where the language came from, and where the knowledge came from that they used to make that. So, you know, is that a, a myth? I don't know if it's a myth. I always think of a myth as something that may or may not be true. But I think all this is, there's a lot of truth in, in what you find. The, the information we find, in the, the artifacts we find. But it's difficult to make that, you know, to make that continue on.
- [45:32]
B
Since you've done so much research into the Vanoish Manuscript, are there other examples of the script used in the manuscript elsewhere? Have Any other ties to previous historical texts or anything that might substantiate the manuscript being something other than a singularity?
- [45:51]
C
Yeah, yeah. Well, there are some people that think it's a hoax that was written. You know, it's. I think they've been able to verify that it was like, 1400s or 1500s is what the. The paper, you know, shows. You know, using. I don't know what they use. Carbon dating or.
- [46:08]
A
Carbon dating.
- [46:09]
C
Yeah, yeah, but the. The problem is that they don't really. They don't really know where it came from. You know, they. Some king had it at one point and, you know, was passed down to various people and, and people have tried to sell it and. And that sort of thing, and it ended up at the Bernanke Museum at Yale, but they don't have any other, you know, the pictures in it. I, I really think you should take a look at it. If you ever get a chance, Just look it up. Some of the pictures in there are like nothing you've ever seen before. Pictures of plants and people doing different dances and whatever. So it's very strange, it's very odd and not. Not connected. You know, you could imagine somebody in, say, South Africa who's never really seen language written or has only seen, you know, whatever language they use in their culture, and all of a sudden they're presented with a book in Chinese, you know, how do you. How do you break that? How do you. How do you jump from, you know, aboriginal language? Say, let's use for an example, and try to understand a Chinese language, you know, that's written in a text. That's practically impossible. So I think that's what we're up against. They've had cryptologists, they've had linguists, they've had several people who have said they've cracked the code. But there. The academia doesn't recognize anyone is having cracked the code on the. The no manuscript.
- [48:21]
B
So you brought up a really good point, that there's the idea, there's the thinking that perhaps it's a hoax. Does that complicate the idea of what to preserve and what to let go of? Obviously, we don't want to preserve invalid information, information that can't be usable knowledge or wisdom. Is that part of how you arrived at your percentage of what's been brought forward because there's so much that has to be forgotten or that has to be let go of because it's not useful or relevant for that matter?
- [48:55]
C
Yeah, well, my percentage, I. I based that on some research I did from some Other sources to come up with that number. So I didn't calculate it myself, per se.
- [49:09]
B
Okay.
- [49:10]
C
Yeah, but, you know, you know, in reality, how do we. I mean, it might be 1.7, it might be a lot less, you know, you know, how far back are you going to, to save that information? But I think the point is we saved very little, you know?
- [49:33]
B
Very little.
- [49:33]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [49:35]
B
So to that end, is symbolic transmission more resilient than literal transmission? For instance, oral traditions rather than written traditions?
- [49:44]
C
Yeah, I, I don't know. I think they're both powerful. I think, I think knowledge, you know, lives on language. Knowledge is transferred on language. So, you know, you have to use something. You have to use a written language, or you have to use an oral language. I don't think, you know, do we have any other choices? I, I don't know, touch or feel. I don't think that's going to work. But, you know, I, I think it has to transfer on, on some kind of language that, that you can keep continuity with through the ages.
- [50:34]
B
Beyond archives and data. You suggest there's a spiritual entropy at work, an inner erosion of meaning. What does that look like in an individual's life?
- [50:47]
C
Well, you know, we think about. If you think about humanity, you think about people, you know, we forget things, of course. Well, whether it's done on purpose or not, but let's just take an example of growing up as a child to an adult. You know, you, you don't remember everything. You know, as you were growing up, you kind of pick and choose what to remember for whatever reason, because it may impressed you or because you know something really good that happened or something really bad that happened, you know, you'll remember it as you grow up. And I think as humanity, we kind of have that same technique we'll call it, you know, where we remember certain things along the way, you know, and tend not to remember everything. But, I mean, it could be that it's not useful in the long term. Maybe these are the things you're supposed to remember. The, the big events, what you can.
- [52:02]
B
Apply rather than what you can't apply. Do you believe this entropy of information, whether it's in a single person's life or in a culture's life, can be reversed through, say, ritual art. Anything that might help to resurrect memories that perhaps we didn't know we had access to?
- [52:22]
C
Oh, yeah, I, I think that is possible. And think about it yourself. Have you ever been somewhere and maybe you heard a piece of music, you know, and you. Oh, yeah, I Remember, I remember the first time I heard this, I was, you know, here at this location. So, you know, I think it's possible that, you know, seeing other things, maybe hearing a certain music or seeing a certain sight or seeing or smelling maybe something can resurrect memories and it might be interesting. So I'm working on a, a follow on book, a collaboration where myself and another author, we're going to go to megalithic and monolithic sites and we're going to try to see if we can find some linkages to some of these. So we might be looking in spiritual ways more about these. But what kind of information can we glean from, you know, some of these megaliths or monoliths that have been left behind, you know, rather than, oh yeah, they just put a bunch of blocks up here, you know, is there something more that we can get from it? So maybe it's along the same lines as we remember things because, you know, that sound, that music, that sight, that smell, maybe if we go to some of these other sites, we can remember some of the cultural things that have happened to us as a, as a, you know, as humanity.
- [54:19]
B
You have personal theories about any existing structures like Gobekli Tepe or maybe Stonehenge. Do you have ideas that are differing from the mainstream?
- [54:31]
C
I don't think I have any predisposition on any of those. I think they're very, you know, that Gobekli Tepe, I, I saw that early on, before it really hit mainstream news. And I always thought, wow, that is a curious place, what was going on there?
- [54:59]
B
So where do you stand on the subject that our record is actually significantly longer than what right now it's believed to be, go back to being one of these instances. You know, when I was a young man, the record went back maybe four and a half thousand years. But now of course the, the idea is that it goes back 10,000 years, which is a massive difference.
- [55:20]
C
I, I think we've only touched the surface of it really. You know, a lot, a lot of the lot of things get buried, you know, just over time. When I say buried, you know, the dirt and dust, whatever, and Gobekli Tepe, they buried on purpose. So there's another twist to it. But I, I, I agree totally that, you know, you know, we keep uncovering information. Who knows what else is buried out there that we haven't found. And the, the, the, you know, mainstream archaeology, very difficult, you know, to, to break some of the thought processes that, that people may have. Again, I think that goes back to being Humble and thinking you don't know it all. You know, there's more information out there, but I think we'll find more. You know, I, I definitely do, and we keep finding it.
- [56:28]
B
So that's an interesting point. Do you believe that by setting knowledge sets into academic disciplines where as a species causing ourselves a disservice because of the politicization of information that is very common in academia?
- [56:45]
C
Yeah, I, well, first of all, I think we need academia. I think it's very important and it's a, a great tool. It's, it's, you know, important that we have that whole process to impart our knowledge on others. You know, it's a great tool for keeping our knowledge moving. I think where, where the difficulty lies is when we start thinking we know it all, you know, we're, we're not humble about our knowledge and not open to new pieces of the probability that, and the possibility that, you know, there are, there is more information out there. We just need to awaken ourselves to the fact, concept and probability that we don't know everything. And you can see that right away by looking into the past and looking into the future. Just like you brought up, you know, what do we think about the human species a hundred years ago, how long were we around and what do we think now? Has it changed? Of course it's changed.
- [58:00]
B
Absolutely.
- [58:01]
C
Yeah. So it's, and what. It's good. What's it going to look like in 500 years from now? It's going to be different. You know, it's guaranteed. Guarantee it.
- [58:10]
B
Throughout Lost in Time, I gleaned a sense that you feel curiosity itself is endangered. How do you see wonder functioning as an evolutionary force? Curiosity functioning as an evolutionary force?
- [58:24]
C
Oh, yeah, for sure. And, and you know, curiosity is really the key. You know, it's one of the attributes we have as a human is being creative. You know, it's one of the, the attributes we have as a person and we, we will always be creative. And it's just a catalyst that we have to keep inventing things and to keep creating things. Of course, but curiosity can't be put down. You know, creativity can't be hindered. It's just, it's actually interesting enough. It's the catalyst for how we keep reinventing things. You know, our curiosity, you know, the, the, the vending machine we had in ancient Rome, you know, somebody hero of Alexandria invented that. And, you know, it was a device that you could put a Roman coin in and it would dispense holy water at temples and they Even had one device where it would dispense a steam out the top of it that would be on an idol on a wall and would make the idol look like it was crying. Kind of an ingenious invention.
- [60:10]
B
Beautiful things that have been lost, no doubt about that. But you're right, the curiosity that we keep as an impulse does seem like a saving grace. The arc of your research, I'm sure, will continue. What do you think the next frontier looks like for yourself? You did mention going to look at megalithic sites. Are you focused now more on archaeology? Are you focused on psychological improvements in the human condition, cognitive ecology, or something else entirely?
- [60:35]
C
Yeah, those. That was great ideas. Yeah, I think we are. Well, so for me, I think I'm trying to look, to branch out, to find new areas where knowledge could be uncovered. And it, it pops up all the time in the news. You know, I'll just relate this one I thought is fascinating about cranial surgery that was done in Peru. In the years, I think it was 400 to 1400, they did cranial surgery. So people who had their, their skull injured, maybe by an accident or maybe by, you know, war fighting or that sort of thing, and they found that, that the people were doing cranial surgery that was 40% effective in the year 400. And by the year of 1400, they were over 90% effective. And in doing cranial surgery, yeah, they would make a plate was made out of gold or partially out of gold. And the reason they knew that the, they were able to improve that was that the skull itself would grow back partially over the plate if the person lived, if the person died, then the plate just stayed there. So they were able to see what percentage of the skulls they had that would, that were successful over the years. But I digressed a little bit, but I thought that was just such an interesting thing that they found because we think, you know, we are the ones who do cranial surgery today. But I. But to your point in your original question, I want to find more things that can make people aware. And that's my whole intent, is to make people aware that we keep doing this over and over again and we need to stop it. Need to, we need to figure out how to break that cycle because it's not a good one, you know. Yeah, yeah. Stop forgetting. So, yeah, so my next, my next frontier is to look at megalithic, monolithic structures above ground and underground.
- [63:15]
B
Tell me about the underground ones you're going to.
- [63:17]
C
Yeah, well.
- [63:21]
B
I.
- [63:22]
C
Sorry, I don't have names of some of these right off the top right now. But there are underground structures that were built that are huge, large ones that were built in a way that they have certain properties that are very curious. For example, there's one that has chambers and it's a very large underground structure that was built. And if you sing at a certain frequency inside the, the chamber, it resonates throughout the whole structure. And why, I mean, why did these people build this underground structure to do this? I mean, of course, it could have been to live there for safety from whatever, you know, time they were living there, whether it was, you know, heat or cold or whatever was going on above ground wars. But, you know, there has to be a bigger story around some of these structures and why, why did they do it? You know, so we're going to try to investigate that and try to understand what maybe, what do they have in common? What was the thought process between each of these structures and why did they just move large stones and put them in a big pile? You know, there has to be more.
- [65:05]
B
To it or there is, and I'm sure you'll figure it out. There's no doubt my mind at all. Your presence here, your insight, your wisdom has absolutely elevated this space. So thank you very much, Jack. I know that we're all looking forward to holding hard copies in our hand.
- [65:22]
C
You can get it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any book retailer actually can order it. It's also available hardback, paperback and on Kindle.
- [65:34]
A
Will you be doing any signings?
- [65:35]
B
Do you have any events planned?
- [65:37]
C
I don't have any planned right now. I. I think we'll have some working right now. It'll probably be in start in Phoenix, Arizona and then I'll see. We'll branch out from there.
- [65:52]
B
Yeah, well, if you make your way to Las Vegas, let me know.
- [65:55]
C
Oh, okay, great.
- [65:56]
B
Yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much, Jack. And hopefully I'll have you back on once you finish the next one.
- [66:01]
C
All right, thank you, J.C. it's been a pleasure to be here. Yeah, absolutely.
- [66:05]
B
Thank you so much. Take care now.
- [66:07]
C
Okay.
- [66:11]
A
Every civilization leaves its fossils, some in stone, others in story. Today's conversation reminds us that knowledge is never permanent, but neither is loss. What we forget often finds its way back, disguised as intuition, art, or the sudden ache of recognition. If this episode stirred something in you, a question, a reflection, a fragment of memory, I'd love to hear about it. You can reach me, Dr. Juan Carlotlosure of crowscubboard.com by writing me@theobservableunknownmail.com or by texting me directly at 336-675-5836. And if you believe as I do, that wonder is a kind of remembering, please rate and review the observable un unknown. It helps others find this inquiry and keeps the conversation alive. Until next time, Stay curious, stay conscious, and never stop listening for what the world is trying to recall.