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Megan Fox Teaches Archaeology - TAS 54
190 Plays6 years ago
So, Megan Fox likes archaeology and wants to tell us all about it. Well, our host Chris Webster has a few things to say about that. They're, surprisingly, not all bad. Check out the show if you haven't - it won't be on for long.
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Transcript
Introduction to Legends of the Lost
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast. Hello and welcome to the Archaeology Podcast, Episode 54. I'm Chris Webster, and on today's show, I'm talking about the new TV series called Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox. Let's dig a little deeper.
00:00:33
Speaker
All right, welcome back to the archaeology show. I'm Chris Webster and I'm flying solo today because I am on vacation in North Carolina and I'm actually in a closet, in a basement because that's how you podcast when you are on vacation and don't have a studio. So you might hear some sounds, apologies for that, but I think I've probably managed to EQ most of this stuff out. So anyway, one of the advantages of going on vacation is I get to watch
00:01:00
Speaker
TV shows an advantage if you want to call it that way but I get to watch TV shows that I may not otherwise would have watched the reason is I don't have cable and Some of these don't come out on Hulu Netflix Amazon things like that until way later So one of those shows that's been in the news a lot which is why I wanted to talk about it especially for this audience because you might be aware of it is the new show on the travel channel called legends of the lost and it's by actress Megan Fox now she's essentially
Megan Fox's Archaeological Journey
00:01:28
Speaker
famous for, well, being attractive is one of the things. She's made all the big lists about her IMDb profile shows how she's listed as the number hottest woman of this year and the 15th hottest woman of this year and blah, blah, blah. So that's one thing I guess she's known for.
00:01:48
Speaker
And also, one of the things that put her on the map from an acting standpoint is the first two Transformer movies. She was the love interest in those. So if you saw the Transformers, then you know who I'm talking about. If you like the show New Girl, apparently she was on like 15 episodes of that. I think that was after we stopped watching it.
00:02:06
Speaker
Anyway, she's had a bunch of small roles since then. She kind of ghosted a little bit on acting for the last few years. She was focusing on her children. And I guess that's definitely a credit to her. If she had the money and didn't need to worry about anything, then kudos to her for deciding to take care of her family because she had the means to do so.
Did Women Fight in Viking Times?
00:02:26
Speaker
So good on her for that.
00:02:28
Speaker
I've also seen a few articles about her interest in archaeology. She's always apparently had an interest in history and archaeology and really kind of alternative theories of the past as well and she had an idea for doing a show like this and I'm not sure how it developed but she approached probably various people and
00:02:49
Speaker
Travel Channel picked it up, but she is listed as the creator, the writer, and the producer for the show. It's got a number of producers, but she's listed as the first producer. The writing is definitely, well, I don't know, I'm almost gonna say just watch the show.
00:03:06
Speaker
if you want to. Let's talk about the show first. Legends of the Lost is a four-episode series. It's finally all played out. I think it was designed to play throughout the month of December. We set up the DVR here at my sister-in-law's house in North Carolina. I just finished watching the episode today. It's the day after Christmas as I'm recording this.
00:03:28
Speaker
So I'm just going to go through the four episodes and you know with the caveat that I'm not an expert in some of these areas. I mean some of them I have deeper knowledge than others but I'm not an expert. I'm just really I'm watching these how I would expect you to watch these or anybody.
00:03:45
Speaker
and that's with a critical eye.
Critique of the Show's Approach
00:03:47
Speaker
Look at what somebody is telling you and say, using your critical thinking skills, is this accurate? Does this make any sense? I guess you can't really talk about accuracy if you don't know about the subject, but you can say, does that sound right? And then maybe do your own research. But that's how you exercise your critical thinking skills.
00:04:07
Speaker
So the first episode was about the Vikings. And the real thesis behind the episode was that women were warriors alongside the Vikings. And one thing you'll notice when you watch this throughout is that she's really, Megan Fox thinks that she's
00:04:24
Speaker
I guess bucking the academic system and going against the mainstream and saying that people in the scientific community have been putting forth these theories and they don't really have the full story or they're not telling us the full story. There's a real conspiracy theorist bent to everything that she's saying, which is really my first issue with it. She's going in skeptical, which is good.
00:04:50
Speaker
but then clouding your judgment of the facts by instantly being a little too skeptical and just not skeptical in the right way. You know what I mean? So anyway, the first episode about the Vikings were women warriors and
00:05:06
Speaker
Without even doing any research, I'd have to say probably yes. Nothing is absolutes, but when we look at history, we can generally say that these people did this thing and these people did this thing. Were there outliers? Were there commonalities that we don't know about? Anything that was common in the historical record?
00:05:23
Speaker
probably hasn't been suppressed. So that's one thing you can look at. It probably hasn't been suppressed, only because it would be really hard to do so. The evidence would be overwhelming. So anyway, she does talk to some people that bring forth evidence that women fought alongside men in Viking times or were even trainers in some cases. And there's some evidence that there's a mass burial of Viking graves in England where men and women were found together.
00:05:53
Speaker
suggesting that they were battling alongside. But there's also one that was found with, I guess, some artifacts that indicate like a scale or like weights like a merchant would carry. And it's the terminology she uses in the show that I have a lot of problem with because she used that one piece of evidence to say that women were merchants.
00:06:14
Speaker
and that they were basically controlling international finance in the Viking Age. That's a little much. She does that throughout the show. She takes a small fact and blows it completely out of proportion. The one thing that I always try to look at as an archaeologist is that when I find an artifact is that I'm probably looking at an average example of that artifact. I'm probably looking at something that is commonplace in history because the thought of the
00:06:43
Speaker
the likelihood of me finding something unique in the archaeological record is incredibly unlikely because unique things are by nature unique and scarce and there's not very many of them so you know we have to look at most of the things we find and say well this was probably common unless we're on some sort of crazy site that is uncommon in itself then the things on that might be uncommon as well
00:07:09
Speaker
But not necessarily. Looking at some of these things, we have to assume that when we find that stuff, that we're finding common examples. Finding a woman buried with things that a merchant would have,
00:07:27
Speaker
could mean any number of things. It could mean that she was a merchant herself. It could mean that she assisted another merchant. It could mean a number of things, but does it mean the merchants are common in the archaeological record for the Vikings? Who knows? Maybe. I'm not sure that it really changes the way we overall think about the Vikings, but
Was Stonehenge a Healing Site?
00:07:46
Speaker
Who knows? Another thing that she does throughout this entire series is she makes it sound like she's going on this evidentiary quest and that she is uncovering this evidence but really she's talking to other experts and using the information that they have researched and they have pulled together and then just
00:08:03
Speaker
sort of honestly passing it off as her own, as though she had put all these things together and each one of these people had given her a piece of the puzzle and she's come up with this grand theory. So that's not really how you do science.
00:08:18
Speaker
Moving on to episode two, this one's all about Stonehenge, and the basic thesis behind this is that what was the purpose of Stonehenge, and did the stones themselves hold some sort of, I guess for lack of a better phrase, supernatural power? Did they themselves have some sort of power that people were going there for? I'm not sure where she got this, where she got this idea, but
00:08:42
Speaker
This is what she was basically asking about when she would talk to local people. She had this guy running around with her who was listed as a local expert. I'm not really sure what his qualifications are, but she did go talk to actual experts in certain things. And she also talked to Graham Hancock, who has been widely known as somebody purporting
00:09:03
Speaker
alternative theories like, you know, ancient aliens type theories and things like that. So his opinions on this subject are certainly suspect. He's all about the lost society. You know, like somebody back in the day had this high technology and was wiped off the planet by, you know, meteor, Ice Age, whatever. Like that's what his thing is. I'm not saying that's not possible, but it's just not very likely. So
00:09:29
Speaker
A little bit of background about Stonehenge is it was built over the course of something like a thousand years or more, and there's different types of stones there. There's the big stones in the middle that are kind of a horseshoe shape that stand up. I don't know the terms for all these things. There's a ring around the outside, but there's also a ring around the inside. Those are the blue stones, the shorter ones, and those came from an area over in Wales.
00:09:54
Speaker
And apparently the blue stones have this quality that when you hit them with another rock they have this tonal quality to them. And they went out to the place where the blue stones were actually quarried, which is actually pretty cool, and recorded this sound of hitting them.
00:10:10
Speaker
And the theory was, and I'll get to why in a second, but the theory was possibly that Stonehenge was like a healing place. Like they would go there and have these ceremonies, or she called it an ancient hospital. I think that's a little stretch, but a place of healing is where we're going for. And the reason for that is there's a lot of other monumental architecture and burials and things like that.
00:10:30
Speaker
in that area in England, which I think it's pretty much all over England, but in these areas where they're focusing, and there are things like the Amesbury Archer, they call him, because he was found with a lot of, you know, projectile point arrowhead type stuff, and isotope analysis, I think.
00:10:48
Speaker
showed that he was from Switzerland and that he also, congenitally, was missing a patella. He was born without a patella, so he had some real bone issues going on. The fact that he walked from Switzerland to Southern England to go to Stonehenge was a statement on the healing powers of Stonehenge because they were saying by then, people in the rest of Europe would have known about Stonehenge because it was such a big deal.
00:11:12
Speaker
Again, there's no proof to that, but they're saying it's likely that that would have happened, and he would have heard about the healing powers and tried to walk there. Apparently, it didn't work because he was buried there. They forgot to point that out. He was actually buried like two miles from Stonehenge. Then there was this burial with three children. Again, healing powers, really? They're buried there. I'm not sure how that fits with the thesis. They died when they got there. That's what it looks like to me.
00:11:41
Speaker
Anyway, she did this somewhat dubious thing. They recorded these bluestone hammer hits, the sounds, and then she went to this, I'm not sure what he was, a neurologist or some sort of auditory guy, and he put basically a sensor on her head, a sensor net on her head.
00:12:04
Speaker
and let her listen to these bluestone sounds, I think it was for two minutes, and then took a couple days to analyze results and showed that it had an increase in alpha wave activity in her brain when she was listening to the bluestones. And that has been linked to
00:12:19
Speaker
healing, your body healing itself, and the brain's doing these kinds of things. Again, I'm not a neurologist, I don't really understand the theory behind it, but pretty much sealed her theory that Stonehenge was then a healing place. Now, of course, if you're a critical thinker and a skeptic, you know that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, which means
00:12:41
Speaker
just because when I hit something on the blue stones doesn't mean that it was created for that specific purpose when I make this tone. I mean, maybe it was. Who knows? Maybe that was part of it, but it also doesn't necessarily mean that without further evidence.
Rethinking Early Human Migration
00:12:55
Speaker
For example, you can go over to an interstate underpass right now
00:12:58
Speaker
and bang on the concrete or the rebar down there with a hammer, and it's also gonna make a tone. But does that mean interstates were built for healing powers? I don't really think so. However, in a thousand years, when our interstates, when we're all gone, we're on another planet, somebody comes back here and somebody decides to do that because they read a book somewhere, they might think that these structures, that they have no concept of a vehicle or really understood what they were for, might have been constructed for healing powers, which would be totally hilarious.
00:13:27
Speaker
So the idea that Stonehenge is a healing place was, of course, conferred by her research. And that again is one of the issues I have with this show, is it's not setting out to necessarily postulate a hypothesis and say, this is what I think, and then prove that. She's really only finding evidence that supports this.
00:13:50
Speaker
and only talking to people that supports her theories, right? Anybody can do that. I mean, you can have some crackpot theory. I'm not saying her theories are even crackpot, but you can have some crackpot theory and actually find the people that will support you. Usually that's called family or your support group, like whatever you think.
00:14:08
Speaker
just go on Facebook, you know, you probably agree with most of the people on your friends list because you curated your own friends list. So does that mean you're right? Not necessarily, you know, I mean, it's like politics, you know, you surround yourself with Democrats or surround yourself with Republicans and you're going to find that, oh, look, I'm right all the time. No, you're not right all the time. You're just surrounding with people. You're surrounding yourself with people that agree with you. So that's not necessarily the same thing. And that that is what
00:14:35
Speaker
any show not just this show but that's what any show does wrong is they put forth a theory and then since they have a limited time frame they only show you evidence that supports that theory and it makes you think oh look there's no other evidence you know this this must be true because these experts say it's so um and there's just
00:14:55
Speaker
There's alternatives out there, which is all I'm putting out. There's alternatives out there, and you have to be skeptical, and you have to evaluate for yourself, based on the available evidence, what's actually out there and what's possible. All right, we're going to take a break real quick, and we'll come back and talk about the third and fourth episodes of Megan Fox's Legends of the Lost, debuting on the History Channel December 2018. Back in a minute.
00:15:29
Speaker
So hey, we just had Christmas here in the United States and a few other holidays, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, things like that. People are in the giving spirit. So I just wanted to do this sort of live ad for the Archeology Podcast Network membership site. So go to arkpodnet.com forward slash members. That's A-R-C-H-P-O-D-N-E-T dot com forward slash members. If you want to have more commentary like this from actual archeologists, if you want to have more interviews and things like that,
00:15:55
Speaker
I hate to sound like a pledge drive, but honestly, we need money to make this whole thing work. I'm the founder, one of the founders of the APN, and Tristan Boyle is the other founder. We both have full-time jobs. I do the full-time editing on this. I really don't have time for it, and I'd love to hire a full-time editor to do this. And to do that, we need to be able to bring in the money. So for $5, $10, or $20 a month, and you can get annual discounts of 30% off if you buy a whole year.
00:16:23
Speaker
you can support the APN. Now, I see all those levels as just different levels of support. It's whatever you can afford, you can join at one of those levels. But they do come with some perks. I'll send you a nice handwritten card and a sticker. At the first level, at the second level, you start getting into our private Slack team and some bonus episodes. And at the third level, we'll send you a bunch of stuff, but you also get access to the hosts on the Slack team.
00:16:47
Speaker
and we ask you about new shows, and you also get all the content over at Team Black, arxert.black, A-R-C-H-C-E-R-T.black, all of our webinars over there for free. So, we've got a couple of webinars that are actually $50 a seat, and if you're a member of the APN, a professional member of the APN, you get those for free, okay? So, thanks a lot for those members that we do have, and for any new members out there that are coming on in January, hopefully,
00:17:15
Speaker
Thanks again for your support of archaeological outreach and education. Now back to the show.
00:17:27
Speaker
All right, welcome back to The Archaeology Show, Episode 54, where we talk about Megan Fox's new show, Legends of the Lost, that debuted on the History Channel here December 2018. If you check it out and do so, I actually think there's some, you know, it's still a show about archaeology and history, so there is some good information in there that's entertaining.
Did Humans Arrive in San Diego 130,000 Years Ago?
00:17:46
Speaker
But we're looking at this with a critical eye as archaeologists trying to say what's right and what's wrong and how should we be looking at these things? So the third episode is called is all about America's lost civilization and the basic thesis here is that we were taught that
00:18:06
Speaker
I'll get to that in a second. We were taught that people came to this continent around 13,000 years ago. Generally, that's thought of as the Clovis people because of certain productive points found in Clovis, New Mexico that date back to that timeframe. But Clovis points have been found all over North America. There's a bit of a range there.
00:18:29
Speaker
but that people came across the Bering Land bridge when the Ice Age covered it with ice and created this bridge between Asia and North America. So they came across that and then populated all of North America and presumably South America. That's been the prevailing theory for quite some time. So what Megan Fox does
00:18:53
Speaker
is she says now she's I think in her 30s if I'm not mistaken and she's like oh I was taught in school this this and this and everything we were taught was wrong I'm like no not everything you taught was wrong everything you were taught was 20 plus years ago you know 25 years ago and I hope to god archaeologists have learned something new in that amount of time so yes lots of things you were probably taught not just about archaeology
00:19:19
Speaker
are probably incorrect or inaccurate from when you were a child, right? Because science progresses and moves on. And you've got to read the new theories. You've got to read the new books. You've got to figure out what's going on out there. So yes, you're right. Everything you were taught as a child, not everything, but a lot of things are probably wrong or have been updated. And that's good. That's called science. Look into it. But what she's talking about here is she first goes to Meadowcroft Rock Shelter.
00:19:46
Speaker
and talks to Jim Adivazio, which is surprising in and of itself. I'm really glad that she got him on there, but anyway, Meadowcraft has stuff that dates back well before 13,000 years, and I think it goes back to 16,000 or even more.
00:20:02
Speaker
They've got evidence of fire pits and things like that, which is awesome. The farther you go back, the less likely things are to be preserved very well, so that's why the archeological record gets a little more sparse. Also, there were fewer people, typically, the farther you go back. Populations increased through time, so the farther you go back, you're still looking for an even smaller needle and an even bigger haystack.
00:20:23
Speaker
It's really tough. But I think most archaeologists are coming to the realization that there must have been other ways that people got here than just the Bering Land Bridge. We do have evidence that people came across that way, but that can't be the only way. And it's just probably evidence for earlier stuff. So, Metalcroft is one of those things that starts pointing to that earlier history. And I've always said that if you're looking at a fire pit in a cave that dates to 16,000 years ago,
00:20:50
Speaker
They didn't teleport over there using a transporter beam from Star Trek. They were probably here for quite some time before they got to that point, right? So they found the cave. This is in Pennsylvania. They got here from somewhere and made it to Pennsylvania. It could have been a few hundred years. So when you look at 16,000 year date, you might even be looking at 17,000 plus arrival or something like that, or at least 16,500. I mean, I don't know what it is, but it's gotta be some time.
00:21:19
Speaker
Then she went to, so next she went to Naya, who is supposed to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, human remains found in North America. It's found in the Yucatan Peninsula, one of the cenotes, and cenotes are like caves underwater.
00:21:35
Speaker
And this particular one, they found her remains. And she would have been, she was about five feet tall, 100, 105 pounds. Looks like she bore a child by looking at her hips. And it looks like she was about 15 to 16 years old when she died. But she was found in association with a bunch of, you know, like Pleistocene megafauna and other things. So of that time period.
00:21:59
Speaker
Which is pretty cool, but that, again, proves that her society, her people, must have been there for quite some time. She dates to 13,000 years. She didn't come across the Bering Land Bridge the week before she died. Neither did her family, so they'd been there for a long time and possibly got there by another means, even. I mean, who knows?
00:22:20
Speaker
One of the other cool things that she did talk about, which really surprised me, was talking about the 130,000-year-old possible human site in San Diego. Now, on this show, and I'll link to this in the show notes, we talked to the primary researcher that was on that project back in, I think, the 90s or something when they actually did this road excavation project.
Denisovan DNA and Giants Theories
00:22:45
Speaker
And then we talked to him about a year and a half ago on this show when he was getting some more publications are coming out. They're talking about 130,000 year old humans in San Diego. Now that's pushing all the boundaries back, pushing back all the barriers and just knocking everything out of whack. And their evidence is
00:23:04
Speaker
They've got these big bones from mastodons and it looks like they've been shattered and it looks like they have the stones that shattered them sitting right there. They've taken these stones or scans of the stones and sent them off to researchers around the world that deal with really paleolithic type stuff.
00:23:22
Speaker
And they said, hey, what do you think about this? And they didn't tell them where it was from. They didn't tell them anything about it. They just said, analyze this stone. And was it modified by humans, or was it used by humans? And experts time and time again said, yes, that looks like it. Where did you find these? They were expecting France or Africa. But he said, San Diego. And they about lost their crap over it. And they were like, what are you talking about?
00:23:49
Speaker
That's pretty good evidence. Again, we would need some more evidence. We need more sites. This person's claim was that people aren't digging deep enough. We get below a few sterile layers and we stop, and we're not getting down deep enough to where these things are, which may actually be true. I kind of took that on and said, yeah, you're possibly right. We aren't digging deep enough to find
00:24:12
Speaker
some of these older things because we've had these assumptions that 13,000 years is basically it. So once we get to that level, there's no need to go any farther because we won't find any humanity. But I think on most sites, we should start digging random deeper units and just go down as far as we can. Set somebody to that task and just have them dig until the project's over or until they hit bedrock, one of the two. And just say, hey, see how far you can get and let's see what's down there.
00:24:41
Speaker
One of the bigger things that they were talking about, which is actually a problem here, especially in this country, is there's a lot of coastal sites that are underwater. A lot of stuff we don't know that date back to when the Ice Age was actually in full swing, which would have been 13,000, 16,000 years ago. A lot of those sites, because when the ice caps and the ice plates were being created, like the big Wisconsin plate over in North America and a few others,
00:25:08
Speaker
When those were forming and they were a mile thick ice that sucked up the oceans into that ice and really reduced the sea levels, which meant all the coastal lands that were below sea level now were exposed. And they were just nice places to hang out by the water like we do now. So a lot of those older sites are actually underwater. And Megan Fox went out to the Catalina Islands. I think that's what they're called. Or Catalina Island is an island off the coast of Southern California.
00:25:37
Speaker
I think they do call them the Channel Islands, actually. She went out there because those would have been hills, basically, on the landscape. They were looking between there and the mainland to try to find submerged sites. There were a couple of researchers, some really awesome women, actually, looking for these submerged sites.
00:26:00
Speaker
That's pretty valid. People are doing that. People are trying to look at coastal sites now before they become submerged. It's definitely something that's on our mind. One of the more wacky theories that came out of this episode was
00:26:17
Speaker
Giants that's no other way to say it. There's been talk of Giants for a long time You talk about I don't know people people want to think that there's a lost race of beings They don't talk about where they came from or how they got here But that there were Giants people, you know, seven eight feet tall and more, you know seven to ten feet tall actually and higher and
00:26:39
Speaker
And that they interacted with Native Americans. Again, there's no explanation for it. There's no solid, solid proof for it, which you'd think we'd have that. People think that we have it, but there's other explanations.
00:26:55
Speaker
One of the things that really floored me, and I had to look up and see if anything else had been published on this, but in a cave in Georgia, and not Georgia in the United States, but Georgia, Russia, that area over there, not Russia, but talking about Eastern Europe, they found these, I think it was a finger bone first, and then they found teeth eventually later, and these proved to be a new subspecies of human.
00:27:22
Speaker
They call them Denisovans because they were from Denisovan Cave or Denisova Cave or something like that. Anyway, the teeth were a little big. Don't get me wrong, the teeth were big, but these people are taking it to mean that the teeth were the teeth of giants. Where this ties into North America is that we're finding that the Denisovans intermingled with Neanderthals, and Neanderthals we know intermingled with humans.
00:27:47
Speaker
Neanderthals ended up with Denisovan DNA, and humans ended up with Denisovan DNA, and now there's people. When you do these DNA searches, analysis in this country are finding that people here, including Native Americans, have Denisovan DNA. So, they're saying that
00:28:05
Speaker
They made it over here somehow, which is the theory, and that they were giants because of the big teeth, and that they ripped the heads off of warriors and drank
Was Troy a Real Place?
00:28:15
Speaker
their blood. I don't know where that comes from. One of the proofs she had towards this was a couple of Native Americans that were talking about this, and they first started by saying,
00:28:28
Speaker
Their oral traditions are basically like reading a book because they said, when we tell our oral tradition stories, they're told word for word, which means if you hear it now, it's the same story that was told a thousand years ago. If it's that old, it's identical. And I'm like, hmm.
00:28:45
Speaker
Is it though? Because details do change as people get older. One tiny detail could change here, but when you tell it 700 generations down the line, that tiny detail is now 700 tiny details, right? And they're all different. And the basics of the story might be the same, but the details are going to be different. And I mean, it's pretty common that that happens in oral traditions. So I'm not sure how native Americans could be so good at it where the rest of the world is so bad at it, but
00:29:15
Speaker
That's just one point at which I'm a little skeptical is that these traditions and I'm saying that because they have these oral traditions that mention That mentioned Giants and things like that, but they're not the only ones there's been Giants throughout history, you know talked about in other societies It's just a you know fantastical kind of thing. So that's pretty much it for episode three She again
00:29:39
Speaker
One of the things I hate that she does is she asks kind of with a smile when somebody says something crazy. She's like, so how is this received by the scientific community? And just knowing the answer she's going to get. And it's just like, this is not science and you're not an archaeologist. So stop talking.
00:29:55
Speaker
All right, so moving on to the fourth and final episode. This was about the Trojan War and not necessarily the Trojan War itself, but whether or not it actually existed, you know, was it a thing? You know, there's a lot of people trying to find Troy and a lot of people who think they have found Troy.
00:30:12
Speaker
But the problem with Troy and the Trojan War is that they were only mentioned once by Homer in the Iliad 400 years after the war was supposed to happen. But there are people that think that it's actually based on historical fact because
00:30:28
Speaker
Some of the basics are in that time frame when the Trojan War was coming to an end after it finished, then the whole region was basically plunged into these dark ages. And the history, and nobody was writing anything down, and history was lost and all that, and somehow the story persisted.
00:30:48
Speaker
Homer heard about it and wrote it down as part of the Iliad. And first off, that seems unlikely. I mean, maybe that's true. But you'd think somebody else would have written something down. Maybe we just haven't found it yet. But anyway, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that he made the entire thing up. I mean, the Iliad is a work of fiction. So why would that one thing in there be true? Why would we latch onto that? I mean,
00:31:14
Speaker
He was a good storyteller. Let's just leave it at that.
Need for Scientific Rigor
00:31:17
Speaker
But if Troy were real, then let's go find it. I'm not sure, again, why she latched onto this. The other stuff seemed to be a little ancient alien-y, but Troy's not. Troy's either real or it's not real. There's no theories that giants or, well, there's gods involved, but giants or aliens had anything to do with it. So I'm not really sure what the big deal was with this one. But anyway, anyway.
00:31:43
Speaker
There were some cool things. I thought this was probably one of the better episodes just because there wasn't any crazy theories. She just went to a bunch of places and talked to people that are studying this. She stood in the place that Homer wrote about, and it really matches up exactly, which again is legit. If Homer lived in that area,
00:32:05
Speaker
or at least was a good writer and went to these areas, he would have described what he wrote and the landscape has not changed since he wrote it. So it only makes sense that you'd be able to follow along. I mean, how many people have read the Harry Potter books and then gone to platform nine and three quarters? You know what I mean? I mean, that doesn't mean Harry Potter is real. The castle they use in Hogwarts is an actual castle. That doesn't mean magic is there. So,
00:32:32
Speaker
You know, looking at these things a thousand years later and saying, well, could it have been real because we can actually find these things? That doesn't mean it's real. That just means he's a really good writer. So whether or not Troy existed, whether or not the Trojan War actually happened, I'm not going to speculate on. That's for these researchers to find out. I think they're on the way to finding out that there was something akin to the Trojan War that Homer did write about and that there was a Troy that Homer did write about.
00:32:59
Speaker
And we've lost lots of cities and lots of civilizations, and things have changed names lots of times, so it's not a surprise that the existence of Troy has been lost to history, and we need to peace it out and find it. But trying to match up what we think is Troy with what's written in a work of fiction, is there validity in that? I don't know. I really don't.
00:33:21
Speaker
Okay. Well, that is it for the episode recap. We're going to take one more short break and when we come back, we will talk about some of the, uh, some of the real issues with these types of shows, Megan Fox and, uh, and how we can kind of get around all this back in a second.
00:33:43
Speaker
Hey, it's Chris Webster again for the RKLG Podcast Network. I wanted to tell you guys about Team Black because I mentioned it in the last ad about members, professional members to the APN at arcpodnet.com for slash members, get free access to all Team Black webinars. And Team Black is a concept that we set up. Basically Team Black comes from Black Ops and it's like,
00:34:03
Speaker
your training archaeologists and people knowledgeable in history to where they're like a black ops team and can go anywhere, work anywhere, and know anything. Obviously that's not true, but that's the ideal or the avatar that we're striving for. So that's where the Team Black name came from.
00:34:19
Speaker
What we have over there is a growing list of webinars that are live, and coming in 2019 soon, I'm hoping in the first quarter, the ability to actually just log in and view these webinars whenever you want. So we'll have a certain time period where the live webinars are available only to the people who paid for it, and then maybe a few weeks to a month later, they'll be available to anybody who's a subscriber on Team Black. The benefit, of course, of going to the live webinar
00:34:44
Speaker
is the hour-long question and answer period with the expert at the end of it. And that's incredibly valuable if you're really interested in the topic. ArcSert, A-R-C-H, C-E-R-T dot black is the website. Go over there, check it out. The first thing you're gonna see is a calendar of when the live webinars happen. I'm teaching a lot of the ones about archeology and then we've got Dr. Garfinkel teaching ones about rock art and spiritualism and shamanism and things like that.
00:35:11
Speaker
And we've got some more coming down the line in 2019. If you are an expert in a very particular topic and want to give one of these webinars, the cut is 70-30. So whatever we charge for it, you'll get 70% and the Team Black gets 30% because we're paying for the hosting software. We're keeping the webinar on there. That's my time. So I think that's fair. That's the model that iTunes, Amazon, everybody else uses.
00:35:36
Speaker
70-30 seems pretty legit. We just sent out a check for one of our last webinars to our presenter who did basically in two hours worth of work. He already had the presentation. I sent him a check for $400. So if you want to make a little extra money, then, and you're an expert in something, contact us. You can send me an email at the APN email, chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com, if you're interested, and we will work out the details. Okay? All right, so arxert.black for great webinars on archaeology and training.
00:36:06
Speaker
And we'll get back to the show.
00:36:15
Speaker
Welcome back to the final segment of episode 54, The Archaeology Show. Megan Fox teaches us about archaeology. We're talking about Megan Fox's new show, Legends of the Lost, on the Travel Channel, debuted in December 2018 as a four-episode series. I don't know if she's planning on doing more. I haven't seen anything.
00:36:36
Speaker
Let's talk about, we talked about the episodes, now let's talk about Megan Fox, and we'll talk about the show. So first, what's wrong with Megan Fox doing this? On the surface of it, nothing really. I'm impressed that she has this drive and passion for archeology. That's awesome. I think a lot of people have this passion for history, but they don't do anything about it. And I'm glad that she did something about it. She has the money, she has the fame, and she was able to put together a show like this. If I could put together
00:37:05
Speaker
travel channel show about archaeology and people would watch it I would do it a heartbeat right because I love talking about this stuff obviously you're listening to me talk about it now but what's wrong with her doing this well what's wrong with her doing this is she doesn't have a scientific academic critical thinking background in order to really present the information in a critical way and to present and to talk to people and
00:37:30
Speaker
in that sort of scientific way, and that's important because you influence the people that are watching this by your actions and your attitude, and when she's got that smug look on her face and nodding and smiling when she says, you know, oh, everybody hates your theory, or women did this, or whatever she's saying,
00:37:49
Speaker
That just makes you not along right along with her and that's not science. That's opinion and opinion doesn't have opinion. Hasn't a place in science, but it's gotta be backed up by fact. Okay. So I think that instead of having Megan Fox do this on her own, let Megan Fox organize this, pay for it, even write it and, and pair her with somebody who is an actual expert in the field. She could have had a different one in each episode. It wouldn't have been a permanent co-host, but.
00:38:15
Speaker
pair her with somebody that could actually ask the right questions, be there with the critical thinking, and honestly maybe even present some people that have competing theories to what you're trying to prove. That gives it a little more credibility to me. Instead of talking to 10 different people that follow right along the party line that you're trying to tow here,
00:38:37
Speaker
bring in somebody that says, well, I don't think this is true, and here's why. And that'll lend more credibility to me because you can see the competing theories. But we were talking on the CRM archaeology podcast about who good co-hosts for her would have been. I think Sarah Parkek, who won the TEDx Prize a few years ago,
00:38:56
Speaker
Space archaeologists are calling her. I think she would have been a great host because she's an awesome speaker I think dr. Alexandra Jones of the Archaeology in the community over in Washington DC would have been an awesome co-host. She's also a great speaker and Both of these women are experts in their field
00:39:14
Speaker
and could have spoken intelligently about any one of these sites. So, I mean, you don't have to know anything about Troy to speak intelligently about archeology, right? I mean, you just, you talk about the science behind it. You know, okay, how did you do this? What did you do here? And go from there. So if she'd done that, it would have added more credibility to it. But her celebrity and people tuning in to see Megan Fox would have drawn in a bigger crowd. Nobody's gonna tune in to see me. They don't know who Chris Webster is, but if I was paired up with Harrison Ford,
00:39:44
Speaker
We'd have 10 million viewers in the first episode because it's Harrison Ford. So use them to bring in the audience and then present the audience with something that they can actually benefit from. That's what I think we should do.
Impact of Fringe Theories on Public Understanding
00:39:57
Speaker
The other thing that I think was really wrong with this is she's trying to shake things up and bring doubt to pretty solid science.
00:40:03
Speaker
Again, showing competing theories, showing things that go against what she's trying to prove would have helped counteract that a little bit. You want to present your crackpot theories about giants? That's great, but show me a couple scientists that say, you're nuts. That'll give you more credibility in my eyes. That's just how that works.
00:40:23
Speaker
And I think, finally, one of the things that really irritates me about shows like this is, and this must be based on some kind of data that these networks have, but they seem to think that the only thing that they can get published and put up and actually do well on a TV show is stuff that goes against the mainstream. Ancient Aliens is a great example. Ancient Aliens is probably the number one show on the History Channel, which is shocking, because it has nothing to do with history.
00:40:51
Speaker
It should be on the Sci-Fi channel. That's where Ancient Aliens should be. Then it would be an okay show. But the fact that it's on the History channel makes it nuts, right? I'm okay with Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox being on the Travel channel because maybe that'll get people to get out and go see these things for themselves. That's fine. Maybe they want to travel. Maybe they want to go see those things. I think that it's sad to me that the only shows that really get the high ratings
00:41:15
Speaker
That are related to history and archaeology are ones that cast doubt on modern science and the hard work of researchers You know, these people aren't crazy. They're doing actual research and sure they might be wrong but that's why they're doing their research because they're trying to prove something one way or the other and They don't usually turn away evidence that disproves their theories. They might just have to change them a little bit. So I don't know it's
00:41:39
Speaker
I wish we could figure out a formula to make a show successful because it has to be successful for the networks because they have to make money, advertisers have to make money. Get over ourselves on that and understand that that has to be a thing. But then find a formula that presents information that we can all be proud of, that we can all listen to and then also teach people and hopefully get them to go. I mean, you're listening to this podcast right now. What interests you about this podcast? Why can't this be a TV show? I'm not saying I want to do a TV show.
00:42:08
Speaker
I mean, I would, because I think it's a great way to get information out there, but why can't a TV show be something like this? It's got to be filled with special effects and filled with, you know, crazy doubt and dramatic music. I mean, why can't we just talk about stuff and have that be successful? I don't know. It's a weird world we live in.
00:42:26
Speaker
Anyway, what all this comes down to is there's a massive amount of misrepresentation going on.
Conclusion and Future Plans
00:42:33
Speaker
People are being talked to, their ideas are being presented in interesting and creative ways that's not necessarily true to what they think. And it's just, it's not the right way to view things and to do stuff. I mean, I've watched the show.
00:42:45
Speaker
So I'm part of the problem, but I did it so I could review it. So if I call that a win, but it's just It's interesting to me and it saddens me that we have to have shows like this And this is the only kind of thing that that really gets popular. So I encourage you to write about this if you have a blog Comment tell me what your you know Favorite or least favorite parts about the show where if you saw it I'd love to hear about other shows that you've seen
00:43:13
Speaker
that you think hit the mark or didn't hit the mark, because I'd like to review them and talk about them critically. I think we're going to start doing that on this show. And then we just have the conversation. And that's what we're doing here at the Archaeology Podcast Network, because we're really just having conversations that you guys can be a part of and trying to keep this information out in the open. So this show, just as one last final plug here, I've taken it live on the radio.
00:43:40
Speaker
And if you're listening to this in real time, on January 4th, 2019, I am going to be going live again. I had to go dark a little bit and put some retooled episodes of this podcast on the radio the last few Fridays because I've been out of town. But I'm going live again January 4th, 2019 at 12 p.m. Pacific time on knvc.org. That's a radio station in Carson City, Nevada, Carson City Community Media. And you can actually call in. We'll present the phone number during that time.
00:44:09
Speaker
You can call in and we can talk about this stuff. I think it's gonna be a rock art episode next Friday, but You know, we're gonna bring in some people to talk about some of these TV shows and other topics. So Please check that out. You can go to again knvc org and I think it's forward slash listen dash live But just look for the listen live link on the website and you'll find it. So alright. Thanks a lot hope everybody had a
00:44:35
Speaker
Happy holiday, whatever holiday you support. And if you're listening to this in real time, happy new year for 2019. And again, I think we got some great things coming for not only the APN, but Team Black. So we'll see you guys all in the new year. And again, thanks for supporting the archaeology podcast network.
00:44:58
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeology Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. You can provide feedback using the contact button on the right side of the website at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com or you can email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:45:14
Speaker
Please like and share the show wherever you saw it so more people can have a chance to listen and learn. Send us show suggestions and follow ArcPodNet on Twitter and Instagram. This show was produced by the archaeology podcast network. Opinions are solely those of the hosts and guests of the show, however, the APN stands by their hosts.
00:45:30
Speaker
Special thanks to the band C Hero for letting us use their song, I Wish You'd Look. Check out their albums on Bandcamp at chero.bandcamp.com. Check out our next episode in two weeks, and in the meantime, keep learning, keep discovering new things, and keep listening to the archaeology podcast network. Have an awesome day.
00:45:53
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.