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Monolith: 2001, 2010, Today and Forever! - Pseudo 157
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Everyone’s favorite monolith must be the one from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but did you know that monoliths have been popping up across the world in mysterious and unexplained ways? Taking this one step further, if you are guessing that “mysterious and unexplained” may be secret code words for “fake and easily explainable” then you my friend may be a master of secret codes!
PS - We have to do a bit on 2010: The Year We Make Contact because all monoliths must be covered for the sake of science.
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- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/pseudo/157
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Transcript
Introduction to the Pseudo Archaeology Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
You are now entering the Pseudo Archaeology Podcast, a show that uncovers what's fact, what's fake, and what's fun in the crazy world of pseudo-archaeology.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Pseudoarchaeology Podcast, episode 157. And tonight, monoliths. Monoliths everywhere.
00:00:36
Speaker
Oh, not biliths or triliths. And don't even come at me with quadliths. Monoliths.
00:00:49
Speaker
All right. So here I am, your host, as always, Dr. Andrew Kinkala sitting here being like, hey, what should I talk about this week on the pseudo-archaeology
Dr. Kinkala's Podcast Experience
00:01:00
Speaker
podcast? And check this out.
00:01:03
Speaker
So... I think on one of the past episodes, fairly recently, i was talking about my castmates on Strange and Suspicious, this television show that I was a part of last summer. Right.
00:01:15
Speaker
I had this like sort of short run in the late summer. It was a lot of fun. And I really i think I was talking about how miss those guys and I really enjoyed working with them. And it turned out that recently one of them had a a show as part of her her um tour for her podcast.
00:01:38
Speaker
Her podcast is called Sisters Who Kill. And of course, it's about African-American women who are murderers or murderesses. And I thought...
00:01:49
Speaker
The whole thing was really fascinating. Like she invited the cast to come and a bunch of us showed up and i was like, wow, if you have a super successful podcast,
00:02:01
Speaker
this, how this business model goes is you get this successful podcast and then you go on tour and you kind of do this whistle stop kind of thing where you, you know, rent out a hall and where we were at, it held like maybe, uh, 250 people, something like that.
00:02:21
Speaker
Very similar to doing a, like a up and coming rock band show, right? Very similar, similar venues, all that kind of good stuff. But they, The Sisters Who Kill podcast filled the venue. And what they did was basically it wasn't a live show, but it was almost as if it was a live show. They it was about a two hour show. And they went through this famous murder case from the i think it was the late 50s, early 60s. And they had sort of a stage set up.
00:02:51
Speaker
And they also had a basically a a PowerPoint, you know, that would show behind them as as the two of them. This is a duo. Right. Would would present.
00:03:05
Speaker
This sort of murder of the week. And i just I thought it was fascinating. Of course, they did a great job and I really enjoyed, you know, seeing the show and catching up with my castmates, all that kind of good stuff.
00:03:16
Speaker
But I was just. Man, I was impressed. I was like, okay, this is how this kind of stuff works now. And so, of course, I became immediately jealous.
00:03:28
Speaker
And I was like, where's my tour? Where are my legions of fans? Where am I to sell out local venues? And I could talk about pseudo-archaeology and make the pseudo-archaeology podcast come to the next level.
00:03:45
Speaker
But I guess not. And who do I blame? I blame you. I blame you, the listeners.
What are Monoliths?
00:03:50
Speaker
It's all yours. Is it my fault? No, no. Somebody else's fault. Anyway, I just thought that was fascinating and a fascinating aspect to very successful podcasts.
00:04:05
Speaker
So with that, today, monoliths around the world. So when I say monoliths, Obviously, the word speaks for itself. Mono means one and lith means stone.
00:04:22
Speaker
One stone. The most famous monolith, I think, in pop culture is got to be the one from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey. Right. It's this large black, and just mirrored, you know, just sort of like the blackness is so dark that you almost fall into it.
00:04:40
Speaker
And its shape is one by four by nine. Right. It's supposed to have to do with something about the universe. More on that later. But one
The Utah Monolith Phenomenon
00:04:50
Speaker
thing I didn't realize and the reason why i brought up strange and suspicious in the first place, not just because I'm so jealous.
00:04:58
Speaker
is because when we did the show, we were going over themes and stories. There were dozens and dozens of stories, you guys, that we talked about. But one of them that kind of went by pretty quick and I'd forgotten about was about a monolith that had been found in Utah in 2020. And I just, you know, thinking about My time with that cast, I was like, oh, yeah, wait, the one about the monolith.
00:05:25
Speaker
What was that? You know, and I kind of revisited it. I revisited my notes and I can really relate this to sort of archaeology in the pseudo archaeology world. So check this out. There was indeed a monolith found in the middle of nowhere and in Utah in 2020. And it's exactly how you would think, right? It's in the sort of that middle of, you know, how Utah's kind of wildlands look. There's that desert, but really cool geological formations sort of thing. And way, way out there, they found this this metal monolith.
00:06:03
Speaker
Now, it wasn't a classic monolith because it was triangular. And what i mean by that, if you guys think about it it's like a prism stood up. Right. So it's tall and skinny, but it's three sided.
00:06:16
Speaker
Which, you know, not true monolith. How dare they people who put it up? And of course, finding something that weird in the middle of the of the desert. And it's it's very well made, if that makes sense. It's it's metallic. It's shiny. It's like the edges are nice and perfect. Right. Somebody spent a lot of time making this and it's about 10 feet tall. It's in it's in that range.
00:06:40
Speaker
And. So this, of course, being found started a whole kind of cult following of monoliths.
00:06:51
Speaker
And soon a bunch of others popped up. They popped up in England. They popped up in India. of course, there's going to be one here in California. Right. And so on, just kind of worldwide.
00:07:02
Speaker
And there's even a website called like monolith tracker, which that you can go to. And I know the numbers of monoliths they found, like recent monoliths, is way over 200.
00:07:14
Speaker
I think it's even over 250. Now, warning, though, i remember checking this months ago when we did the original story, but I checked it like two days ago and it did that thing where it was like, you may be entering an unsafe site.
00:07:29
Speaker
you know So I tried a bunch of different ways to look at the ah monoloth the monolith tracker site again, but There was no way in without like, I don't want a virus on my computer. So I'm not going to like post that link or anything. i'm just telling you guys it is out there. It is a real thing.
00:07:46
Speaker
It might have just gotten corrupted or something, but, but it is, you know, there's a fun there to it. And beyond this sort of cult of the monolith that's kind of begun in just the last handful of years, we got to realize that the one in Utah was found in 2020.
00:08:06
Speaker
More people and forces got to be involved in this. and Let me explain. So first, that 2020 monolith, it looks like it was actually made and placed in 2016 and been sitting out there for like four years before it was found.
00:08:22
Speaker
And I hate to ruin my own story, which, you know, listeners of the show, you guys know, I am classic for ruining my own story. I don't even wait till the end. I just give you the end like at the beginning.
00:08:37
Speaker
Again, that's probably why I'm not on tour right now. Stupid. But what you see is since it sat there for four years and so on, and based on its construction, this was made. This is an artistic installment, basically. Right. It's sort of a postmodern, you know, art installation.
00:09:01
Speaker
And because it was on BLM land, That stands for Bureau of Land Management. So it's not in a national park, but it's not on private land either. It's kind of like this government owned land. It's kind of in between.
00:09:14
Speaker
There's laws against doing that. And I understand those laws. You shouldn't be able to just kind of put up weird stuff in the middle of nowhere because it ruins nature, right? It ruins the natural world. So the BLM got involved, you know, hey, this is illegal. the This monolith, the one in Utah, after it was found, it was taken down really soon after under vaguely secret circumstances. Basically, I think whoever did it like was like, oh, crap. And they went out there and just like took it down.
00:09:41
Speaker
But you have this happening after this again and again and again. and there's There's also with the more famous ones, people who like take responsibility for it, who might be lying. Other people who probably did it and don't take responsibility. There's battles between like, oh, I did it. No, I did it. And then there's equal battles like I didn't do it. I didn't do it either.
00:10:07
Speaker
Right. Depending on the law, depending on if they want to continue the mystery of where did the monolith come from, because that's obviously the most. The favorite part, right?
00:10:18
Speaker
the mono ah The monolith is ancient.
Historical Monoliths
00:10:20
Speaker
It's been there for millennia, right? That's what these people want. And i get i get the fun in this, you know?
00:10:31
Speaker
I'm not old and crotchety enough. I mean, almost. But not quite to be like, how dare you with your monolith? A big part of me is kind of like, this is kind of fun and funny.
00:10:45
Speaker
You know, i will say that, of course, there's a crowd out there on your various Internet sites that are like, it was put down by aliens. OK, whatever. You know, it's put down by the ancients. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Oh, it's a sign.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah. But. Again, love them or hate them. We're way over like 250 of these worldwide. And I will say that these modern ones are all of a piece. They're all metallic and they're all like, are they six feet tall? Are they 10 feet tall? right They're in that vicinity. So this it's kind of like new wave monolith.
00:11:24
Speaker
You know, that's what they're making. And if we break it down, these aren't monoliths in the classic sense because they're not made out of stone, right? These are a metal art installations.
00:11:37
Speaker
So it's I don't know where I fall on this. You know, like again, i I like that human beings do weird stuff like this. If I was cruising around in the middle of the desert and I saw one just standing there, I would think it was actually kind of cool.
00:11:50
Speaker
On the flip side, I wouldn't want somebody putting this in front of an archaeological site or something and like ruining nature or ruining the environment. But if it was in a really out of the way place where it's not really hurting anyone, i don't know.
00:12:03
Speaker
With that said, though, when we return, real monoliths around the world hello and welcome to the pseudo-archaeology podcast yet again we are right back and doing segment two i am your host dr andrew kinkala and we were talking about monoliths and i was just finishing off on the sort of recent monolith trend right where these are art installations usually made out of metal. You know, it reminds me of crop circles. It's the same kind of thing where it's easily explained.
00:12:40
Speaker
Like how many of us truly believe in crop circles or truly believe these monoliths were put here by an alien race, right? Very few at the same time. Isn't a world with crop circles and monoliths in it kind of a little more fun.
00:12:55
Speaker
I'm a fan of crop circles. And monoliths. So where does this the sort of OG idea of monoliths come from? Like, who cares? This singular stone.
00:13:09
Speaker
Well, there's a lot of them, right? Let's think historically when we think of monoliths like ancient, what do you think of? For me, i think of Stonehenge, right, first and foremost.
00:13:24
Speaker
But remember that Stonehenge is not a monolithic site. It is a megalithic site. So Stonehenge megalith means big stone. It's because it's not a singular stone, right? It's a bunch of huge stones put together.
00:13:38
Speaker
And I'm sure there's a ritual component to it and all that kind of good stuff. And it's old, right? It's four and a half thousand years old. So that and there's a romance that has grown from that, right? We can all appreciate that.
00:13:51
Speaker
Makes sense. And there are other sites in the world that kind of have that same pull of like, This thing is made using big sort of angular rectangular stones, you know, big.
00:14:08
Speaker
I would say Gobekli Tepe fits in there. Same kind of thing. Easter Island, of course, right? The Moy carved. These big carved figures and those those by themselves are singular stones.
00:14:23
Speaker
think you could argue that you know a moi by itself is a monolith, singular stone. And there's others. Like if we do a tour around the world, you know?
00:14:35
Speaker
For the ancient Maya, you're going to have the Stella, right? The Maya carved stone Stella that often look like really big headstones. And they'll be like, hey, are they six feet tall or a big one at 10 feet tall? Or there's a handful of Maya Stella. There's one at a site called Kirigwa that's really tall. I don't know how that one might be 20 feet tall.
00:14:55
Speaker
It's that one saw that was big, but you get my meaning. I mean, let's take our old friend, ancient Egypt. We have obelisks, right? An obelisk is, is a monolith in its most basic sense.
00:15:10
Speaker
But so many of these are carved though. You know, it's, it is, it's rare to find like just a flat angular stone that's there.
00:15:25
Speaker
Just because is of its flat angularness, like like it's a finished product, you know, as this cliche, like 2001, a space odyssey flat stone. That's kind of rare, right? Because ancient people are going to make something out of that. It's like you took all that time to quarry that stone.
00:15:47
Speaker
And good God, you took all the time to move it. You're not going to do the easy part, which is decorate it. You know, so I do find it's hard. It's hard to find a a flat monolith. It isn't something found and in a prehistoric sense that was found in this state because it just wasn't finished.
00:16:07
Speaker
You know, going onward, I mean, if you if you Google monolith, you know, if you're just typing monolith in search, You're probably also going to get monolith in the most basic, almost geological sense, like something like, oh, what's it called? Devil's Tower. Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
00:16:28
Speaker
Devil's Tower made famous by Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If anybody's seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it's that natural geological formation that is a central
Monoliths in Pop Culture
00:16:40
Speaker
part of later on in the movie.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's the one that the character makes out of his own mashed potatoes. Right. If we remember that, that is a monolith. It is a singular, huge piece of stone, but it's not related to human beings. Human beings didn't make devil's tower.
00:16:58
Speaker
Right. We could also Googling like that. You're going to get stuff like, uh, You know what's funny? Is the Sphinx, in a sense, is a monolith. Isn't that weird?
00:17:13
Speaker
The Sphinx is a singular piece of bedrock that the the Egyptians just sort of carved it out of bedrock. Now they did sort of... Glam it up right with using some stones and such to make the make the sort of the paws of the lion. And, you know, and this this kind of thing.
00:17:31
Speaker
But the ah central structure of the Sphinx is a monolith, a singular piece of stone that's just connected to the earth. You know, it's just it's just made from the earth. So in a way, the Sphinx is.
00:17:47
Speaker
as much devil's tower as it is ah Moy, right? It's, it's that it's a really cool in between rare to find, you know, that kind of thing where it's a, a geological formation, but is of a size and scope that human beings can also kind of tweak to make look a certain way.
00:18:06
Speaker
They're out there though.
00:18:10
Speaker
But as I was looking at all these, you know, and thinking, oh, Stonehenge, well, a singular stone in Stonehenge that kind of has that vibe. Oh, you know, oh, an obelisk. I was like, OK.
00:18:23
Speaker
Let's just Google my heart out and look for what's like the biggest monolith. Right. And I want one. This is like a flat. I want a 2001. Big old monolith.
00:18:35
Speaker
Right. Right. And what kept coming up, if you want like the biggest monolith, is the Baalbek stones, which are in Lebanon.
00:18:49
Speaker
And I'm not sure if i'm I'm pronouncing that right. I did go down the rabbit hole of pronunciation on this. I think i think it's because there's different choices because Baalbek is spelled with two A's. So I think you could also say Baalbek stones, right? Little glottal stop in there.
00:19:05
Speaker
Either way, these are Roman. So they're in modern day lemon Lebanon, but they're Roman. And so these are going to be these are going to be made right around the time of Christ. I'm you know, I'm guessing like first century, first century A.D.
00:19:20
Speaker
is when these these are are are carved and they're huge. Right. The biggest one is called the Forgotten Stone. And it's I think it's it's 64 feet long.
00:19:34
Speaker
So that's big. Right. And by 20 by 18. So it doesn't give you that satisfying sort of flatness, you know, of the 2001 monolith. It's it's kind of more square on the bottom, you know, 20 by 18. Yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
But it is 64 feet long. That's that's pretty awesome. And they and they are guessing at it around. I've seen a couple different guesses. Some say it's about 1500 tons. Some say around 1800 tons.
00:20:03
Speaker
Either way, that's a lot of tons. Right. That is a big old stone. And there's two other ones sitting in this in the same area. Which one is called Stone of the South, which.
00:20:16
Speaker
You'll never guess where it is on the site. And there's one that's called Stone of the Pregnant Woman. And I looked into the pregnant woman one a little bit, too. And both you guys, these are a bit smaller than the Forgotten Stone, but they're in that world, right, of of around that size. Huge.
00:20:35
Speaker
The pregnant woman stone, it seems like nobody's quite sure why it's called that, but I have seen this cross culturally so often. And who knows when this came into play?
00:20:47
Speaker
um i'm I'm going to doubt that it was called that in Roman times, but a lot of times there'll be ah singular place on the landscape that is interesting or unique.
00:21:00
Speaker
And it's And it's defined as kind of a shrine. So the idea would be that either a woman wanting to get pregnant would go and touch the stone or leave something in the vicinity of the stone or a woman wanting an easy childbirth would touch the stone, leave something at the stone. It's really like a.
00:21:20
Speaker
It's a location for a fertility ritual. And I've seen these, you know, in very many different cultures and places around the earth. So I got no problem with the idea of the stone of the pregnant woman, but it is very hard to trace exactly how long that's been labeled that, you know, times change.
00:21:40
Speaker
So. The other thing about these is they tend to be sort of just laying there. They're kind of in the quarry. They're kind of quarried out. One of them, I think it's stone of the south. I could be wrong.
00:21:52
Speaker
Is it sort of tilted up a little bit. It's like tilted up at like 15 degrees, you know, but it's not. They're not satisfying like you want. They're not standing up and you walk up to them and you go, whoa, these are super tall. They're just kind of laying on the ground.
00:22:08
Speaker
And especially the forgotten stone. I think the forgotten stone was found recently. in the last decade or something. And it's because it was kind of covered with dirt. I think it's, it was just, it's sort of right there in the area. You're just kind of laying down. So it's again, it's not the most satisfying, but it's cool. It counts. They're cut out. You know, you can Google for some of the photos. It's spelled B A a L B E K the Baalbek stones. Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
Roman. Interesting, man. They had a couple others, too, that were a bit smaller, but still huge that were used in some of the structures in the town of Baalbek, which used to be called Heliopolis, right? In in Roman time. So the ancient town of Heliopolis.
00:22:56
Speaker
So with all that, you see that there's a real archaeological background for the idea of a monolith. Right. And in the in the case of the Baalbek stones, these are these are smooth with nothing on them, although it does seem like they were used. The idea would be that they were going to be used in like temples and in construction, you know, more than a singular piece, which might be why they have no carving on it.
00:23:28
Speaker
But either way, We have a lot of this archaeologically, and that's going to fuel the more modern kind of new age interpretation of what a monolith is.
00:23:41
Speaker
But beyond archaeology, the movies do it, too. When we come back, we got to check out 2001 A Space Odyssey.
00:23:52
Speaker
Hello, and welcome back to the Pseudoarchaeology Podcast, episode 157. We have been discussing monoliths. which I think is kind of an intrinsically interesting thing. You know, is there a book on monoliths around the world just called monolith?
00:24:07
Speaker
I don't think so. could be wrong, but I think it's something that is worth exploring this idea of these singular stones, you know, And there are times when there's certain singular stones in history that matter. Plymouth rock. You know what I mean? There's these singular. There's that rock.
00:24:26
Speaker
Watch my cultural ignorance. There's that rock in England that they put under the throne. It's the rock of whoever's rock, right? The throne that the king or the queen sits on.
00:24:39
Speaker
But that
Cultural Significance of Monoliths
00:24:40
Speaker
that would be you know considered a monolith. This idea of certain stones that have real meaning. Where does that where does that leave us? Right. It's it's it's an intrinsically interesting thing.
00:24:51
Speaker
It's cool.
00:24:54
Speaker
But we've gone through the archaeology, right? We've started with the sort of New Age resurgence of this monolith thing. And then we're going to end up with monolith kind of in pop culture. And the driving force of this entire thing has got to be 2001 A Space Odyssey. Right.
00:25:14
Speaker
Released in 1968, I believe. It's either 68 or 69. Stanley Kubrick, you guys, 2001 kicks ass. You gotta watch it. So me as a film major, right?
00:25:29
Speaker
I had to watch kind of all the classics throughout time, right? Whether it be Casablanca, whether it be Sunset Boulevard, you get what I mean over time. And I really enjoyed that overall.
00:25:44
Speaker
Although, you know what? Citizen Kane sucks. Deal with it, Citizen Kane. Anyway, 2001 was on the list and I was always a sci-fi fan, old school Star Wars fan and Star Trek fan. Right. And I remember as a college student watching 2001. And I really liked it.
00:26:06
Speaker
I got to say, like 2001 is of the only movies that only movies that attempts to explain or just give you a feeling for like the vastness of space and for like sort of time space and for other dimensions.
00:26:29
Speaker
And i think it's largely very successful in terms of this. And those are hard things to do. There are other more modern movies that I think have done it, have, have done decently on this, you know, interstellar.
00:26:45
Speaker
i totally dug that. And I dug ad Astra to both of those interstellar and ad Astra. They both, go for that same thing that 2001 has gone for. But barring that, man, it's it's hard. And whenever these movies come out, there's always a faction of people who just don't like it or don't get it or like this is boring.
00:27:07
Speaker
For whatever reason, all three of them speak to me. But 2001, the idea of the monolith, so much of it is kept vague, right? This is what so many modern movies won't do. They refuse to because they're too chicken.
00:27:22
Speaker
But the monolith. So the monolith basically shows up three times in 2001. At first, it's in the absolutely famous scene where we open like three million years ago.
00:27:37
Speaker
And we're basically looking at, you know, ah Australopithecines or early Homo habilis, that kind of thing. They're these sort of ape like creatures, right? Our ape ancestors.
00:27:50
Speaker
And they're just sort of in a group. And basically they learn how to use tools for the first time. Right. That's the idea of using a bone as a tool.
00:28:02
Speaker
And because this is such a huge step in humanity, that's when the monolith shows up. Right. The monolith shows up when humanity is about to take a huge step forward.
00:28:16
Speaker
So that sets the stage for the movie. And as an aside, one of the world's best, I think it would be a match on action where the ape throws the bone into the air. The bone swirls slowly up and then you crash cut to outer space and the bone is the same shape and size as a spaceship satellite orbiting the earth.
00:28:43
Speaker
That's filmmaking friends. But anyway, so we're in 2001 and then the monolith shows up on the moon and they're like, oh my God, there's this monolith on the moon. What's that? And of course, they're trying to study it and trying to poke at it. And the monolith always kind of pokes back.
00:29:03
Speaker
You know, it makes it makes it so you can't see what it's really made of or you can't test it. Right. It's just there. And then they find that there's ultimately another one.
00:29:15
Speaker
orbiting around Jupiter. And so they send out a handful of asked astronauts and in a spaceship to like check out this monolith.
00:29:26
Speaker
And the movie turns into sort of a bit of a horror movie at the same time because the computer Hal like ultimately goes crazy.
00:29:37
Speaker
And at the very end, you have one surviving crew member who basically is living and almost an alternate reality or, you know, beyond where time and space collide.
00:29:52
Speaker
Some people say that that near the end, that last bit at the end is to like 1960s kind of flower power. There's a like very dropping acid kind of thing.
00:30:04
Speaker
And I'll give them, a bit there. But what else are you supposed to do if you're trying to show like traveling through other dimensions and stuff? I think actually 2001 ages really well, you guys, but which is fascinating. You would think at certain times, I think if you were watching it in 1975, a couple of years after went out, you're like, oh this is going to age like crap. But it really doesn't.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yes, you can pick out little things that that but could' they couldn't have known, like like they still use Bell Telephone in 2001. You're like ah like, well, Bell was deregulated in the 80s.
00:30:39
Speaker
I know because my father used to work for the phone company. But ah barring little dumb stuff like that, we can all be like negative Nancy's. But overall, if we're honest and we watch the movie, it's like it really kicks ass and it really makes you think these deep thoughts. And the monolith is like this theme that keeps going through like something big is going to happen.
00:31:04
Speaker
So. That idea. And of course, whenever you see the monolith, you get with the music. What's it called? Like thus spoke the spoke Zarathustra, I believe. You know it.
00:31:15
Speaker
bomb
00:31:18
Speaker
oh but um Right. You know the music made so famous by this. So if it's if it's not obvious, I kind of like 2001.
00:31:32
Speaker
But our story doesn't end here. So check it out. There's another movie called 2010, right? The year we make contact. It was made in the mid eighties. I want to say 1986.
00:31:45
Speaker
It's right in there. I could be a year off, but I watched 2010 in, in theaters. I think I'd already seen 2001 actually with my dad or something, but i was a kid and I didn't quite get everything.
00:32:00
Speaker
But 2010, man, um I don't want to dog pile on it. it It's not that great. It's not terrible. It's one of those movies.
00:32:13
Speaker
where it's so funny, even though it was made like a decade and a half after 2001, it's aged much worse. Like when you watch 2010, any Gen Xers did watch 2010. You're going to go immediately back to the Cold War. It's like the whole thing is about the Cold War. It's it's really even though it was made in the mid 80s, it pushes the idea of the Cold War in the future. The idea that the Cold War has still gone on to 2010.
00:32:40
Speaker
And it's it's so dated in terms of that. It just it's that Russian versus American thing. The movie itself, it it's dying for a reedit. It's funny. It feels to me watching it. It feels longer than 2001, which you're like, oh, my God, 2001 itself is quite long, but I love it.
00:33:01
Speaker
2010, it feels long. There are certain parts that are super stretched out. And I'm like, why did they do this? Like, like stretched out parts where they're like going from one ship to another ship. And I'm like, I don't need to see a second by second account of getting from one ship to the other. It's okay. I'm an audience member. I can, uh,
00:33:19
Speaker
I can figure out when a little bit of time has passed. Dear editor, get up in there. Right. So there are moments, there are scenes in there where you're like, why is this scene even here? So in terms of a fully constructed movie, it's not, it's, it's middling.
00:33:36
Speaker
But the but the idea behind it is really cool. So now the they're the idea they're coming back and trying to figure out what the hell happened but to the crew from 2001.
00:33:52
Speaker
The actor, Keir Delia, who plays the one remaining guy from 2001, he makes a guest appearance. There are certain creepy, awesome elements where even the whole movie, the very first thing you hear in 2010 is Keir Delia going, my God, it's full of stars and it's kind of creepy and awesome.
00:34:13
Speaker
And then he has another quote that floats through almost in a Obi-Wan Kenobi way. Right. Every so often you'll hear him go like they'll ask him what's going to happen. And he goes something wonderful.
00:34:25
Speaker
Right. So you have these quotes going through really, really cool. But near the end of the movie, so they're at they're at Jupiter. They've been trying to figure stuff out. Nothing's going really well. They're trying to work together as Soviet American team.
00:34:39
Speaker
Jupiter, the planet, starts like creating just like millions of monoliths and they're all flying out. And in this movie, they really double down on the idea that the monolith is one by four by nine.
00:34:53
Speaker
Right. The square of one, two and three. And that is supposed to have, I think, some sort of cosmic meaning. And ultimately, at the end, the reason why the the million monoliths are showing up at Jupiter, I'm going to spoil 2010 right now. So if you don't want to know what happens, don't listen for the next 10 seconds.
00:35:14
Speaker
Jupiter turns into a new sun, like a dwarf small sun. So we become a like binary system. I don't know that what that would do to the Earth, ultimately, but we're going to let that go.
00:35:31
Speaker
Anyway, the idea is the monolith shows up because a new small sun is coming to the solar system. Right. And overall, of course, the idea that there's a knowledge or a culture or a system much greater than ours that's just out there, you know.
00:35:52
Speaker
And so ah whatever, right? With 2010, but it does keep that sort of wonder alive. You can see why people slap the aliens thing on monoliths so often.
00:36:06
Speaker
You can see how all of this backstory comes and makes what I would call the new age movement of monoliths kind of a thing now.
00:36:18
Speaker
Although to me, then the new movement of monoliths does have an element of fun to it and an an element of just art like Banksy style kind of thing, which is, you know, there are worse things on Earth, but that's where we're at.
00:36:36
Speaker
Right. So. Huge stone monoliths like the Balbek stones are long gone, but we get little metal ones out in the desert.
00:36:47
Speaker
And with that, I'll see you guys next time.
00:36:55
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Pseudo Archaeology Podcast. Please like and subscribe wherever you like and subscribe. And if you have questions for me, Dr. Andrew Kinkala, feel free to reach out using the links below or go to my YouTube channel, Kinkala Teaches Archaeology.
00:37:11
Speaker
See you guys next time.
00:37:16
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airey. Our social media coordinator is Matilda Sebrecht. And our chief editor is Rachel Roden. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of Cultura Media and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:37:37
Speaker
Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.