From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where we sometimes keep the topics fresh,
even if the freshness is kind of a load of bullshit.
We are your podcast host Taylor and Chelsea, and today we look at a theory that has jumped
from the screens of TikTok and to your ears of Journey to the Fringe.
And that is, Chelsea, brace yourself for this.
Okay.
Mud flood.
Okay, I've never heard of it, but I love a good TikTok theory.
This is, like, you can't really find much more than a couple years old on this theory,
so it is fairly new.
I love that TikTok is pushing out these insane conspiracy theories.
Yeah.
Is it a conspiracy theory?
I guess we're gonna find out.
Yeah, you'll find out.
But I definitely think it falls into a conspiracy theory.
I'm very excited about it.
Somebody has to be hiding something if we don't know what mud flood is as general public
people.
Yeah.
As a general rule of thumb, I just always consider people to be hiding things.
I want to know what they are.
Yeah.
Which is why we always start conversations with people with that.
Hey, what are you hiding?
Exactly.
Hey, what are you hiding?
Is it stuff?
You ever heard of this cryptic vegetable man?
We have the most well-informed audience.
They are just the best social people.
And if someone says yes, I'd be like, you are cultured.
Yeah.
You listen to a lot of podcasts, turning to the friends specifically.
Okay, let's talk about this.
We don't listen to enough podcasts to guarantee that, but it's probably just us, yes.
Chelsea, you hear mud flood.
What would you think this theory is?
I would think somewhere where it rained a lot and there wasn't a lot of trees.
Like an earth slide.
To keep the mud down.
And in some place, which I guess technically, yeah, you basically got the gist of this theory
then.
Mud flood theory is that there was an unexplained occurrence of massive amounts of mud flooding
streets and cities throughout the world sometime in the 19th century.
Okay.
Too much mud.
More mud than you would usually expect.
And it happened basically everywhere.
So mud came from somewhere, but we didn't know where we can't get lost in the details.
Okay.
This is not a detailed one.
But we got some details we can get into where the mud came from.
We can't talk about it.
And why there's only one mud flood in the 1800s.
We're not really going to get into that.
Just one.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's a lot of mud.
Why haven't we heard about this?
Well, it's because the mud flood actually covered up the advanced civilization of Tartaria,
which was said to span pretty much all of the world, Asia, Europe, North America.
And it's subsequently since the mud flood been erased from public records.
Under mud.
But there are remnants of the civilization everywhere.
You would think if it's just under the mud, you just find where all the mud is and look
under it, it'd be pretty easy to find.
Yeah.
You just dig down.
And in fact, this is what the theory basically is.
There are evidence of this ancient civilization that are everywhere and they're buildings
that we literally use.
They just seem slightly out of place.
And basically they're saying they're all the fancy buildings and towns that look out of
place, like that were built in the 1800s around like rickety old wooden structures.
And they're like those big halls built out of stone that just seem to not fit in with
everything else.
Yeah.
You know, anything on TikTok can seem pretty convincing with that like creepy background
music.
Is that how they presented it?
You know what?
I didn't watch all of the people doing the videos.
I watched a couple.
Okay.
Yeah, we can't expect you to do that.
Yeah, that's a lot of work.
It is.
I'd be impressed if you said you watched every TikTok.
And you people are not willing to pay us to do this.
So I just volunteer my time.
Okay.
Okay, so here is the evidence that gets put forward for the mudflat.
Okay.
There are buildings around the world such as the Singer Building, the original New York
Penn Station, and even the Great Peerlands.
The Singer Building is one of them.
It has been taken down.
It was a fairly tall structure.
Oh, this was from the lost civilization, you say?
Yeah.
They say.
TikToks.
They say.
TikToks.
Okay.
So this is the architectural evidence that they say from the previous civilizations.
And why do they say that?
These structures are often attributed with having advanced architectural features that
suggest a level of civilization far beyond what would be expected from the time period
they were supposedly built.
I see.
And the theory suggests that these buildings are actually part of a vast empire that has
been suppressed from history.
And Chelsea, there are subreddits for this.
There is Tartaria.
There is the Tartarian Architecture Subreddit.
I believe there's even a mudflat subreddit.
And you can see pictures of what they deem as Tartarian architecture that seems out of
place.
And it's basically the colonial age has these big white structures or these brick structures
that are pretty much everywhere throughout the world.
And that's what they're pressing on as saying this was a civilization that we didn't know
about.
Okay.
I really had to scroll to find the Tartaria subreddit.
A lot of bad history comes up.
Yeah.
Okay.
I immediately see some structures here.
And of TikTok, it's actually really hard to find proponents of mudflats.
More a lot of debunkers you find.
Yeah.
I find that with some TikTok.
You gotta love TikTok conspiracy theories.
Big fan.
I'm a big fan actually.
I love a good conspiracy.
I will be taken in by a good conspiracy theory.
Logical or not.
I just like them.
Theory points out that there are similar styles of architecture such as the domed capital
buildings or star forts.
Star forts are a big one for this as well around the world.
This suggests a common architectural heritage that could not have been developed independently
in different parts of the world.
There are also photographs from the turn of the 20th century showing deserted city streets
in many capital cities across the world.
This contrast between the elaborate stone megastructures and the muddy streets inhabited
by horses and cart dwellers is cited as evidence of a lost civilization.
The theory also suggests that these images are of cities that were once bustling but
were destroyed by a catastrophic event.
This theory reflects a cultural discontent in modernism and a preference for traditional
styles over modern ones and it has been described as the QAnon of architecture, suggesting a
broader dissatisfaction with the perceived decline in cultural and architectural quality
from historical times to the present.
Not surprisingly the word QAnon is going to come up again in this episode at some point.
The theory originates out of Russia with aspects first appearing in Anatoli Fomenko's
new chronology then popularized by a racial occult history of Nikolai Levoshov.
It is presented as a rejection of the narrative that Russia was ignored in the West and a
claim that Tartaria was the real name for Russia and this aspect of the theory is deeply
rooted in Russian nationalism and pseudoscience.
The theory also delves into the urban development suggesting that the underground features of
modern cities such as tunnels buried lower floors and excavation are remnants of Tartaria
and this interpretation is based on the observation that urban development often leads to the
uncovering of old structures and the alteration of street levels.
This is where you really see the TikTok videos or videos like them on there is people walking
down the street and they'll say like oh that's definitely a pre-mud-flood building and it's
because there's windows that go below street level.
They're clearly only there because something happened to raise the street level to a point
where the window is below street level.
Oh they like what about all these cities that like Seattle that had an underground and then
they built the city on top.
That was the mud yeah.
Oh that was for sure mud.
I just it just clicked for me I apologize.
If you need to ask a question the answer is mud.
Of course it's just evidence.
That's the theory in the gist.
I was hoping for more but that's literally it nobody really talks about where the mud
comes from and the best evidence of it is that some buildings are below ground when they
look like they shouldn't be.
Or these buildings look like they have a round dome top.
Yeah.
So it's just remaining architecture for a while.
And it's not just that other places like in Asia have domes on top so why would they
both build with domes on top if it wasn't some previous civilization.
Forgetting the fact that we've basically colonized the entire world.
Yeah humans right.
Yeah well I meant Europeans more so.
They explore the culture to the extreme.
Yeah no they did do that.
Basically there's kind of two different ways to really talk about it when it comes to the
below street level windows.
The first thing you can say is yeah you know what over time building up roads and debris
it does technically slowly but surely raise the ground level.
That is something that happens.
And that's why when we dig when we look for ancient civilizations we do dig.
It's because things do get buried over time.
The second part of it though is we've only had electricity for about 150 years.
Sorry I shouldn't say electricity.
We've only had light bulbs indoor lighting that is electric for about 150 years.
So you used to want to get as much light as possible.
So even if it's really low even if it's very low you're still going to get some light from
it.
So you want as many windows as possible.
Yeah that all makes sense.
I don't think there's a lot to support this theory but like Tartaria that's a weird one
right.
This hasn't come up I don't think before.
No I've never heard of it before.
And if you look at ancient maps there is a region that is usually labeled tartar or tartary.
Like this top.
I'm just going to get out of the way.
We're not going to talk about the sauce at all completely unrelated.
So Chelsea if you want to take a look you can look up map tartary and you can see ancient
maps that label this region.
Map tartary.
I mean that doesn't really count for evidence towards anything.
Oh yeah.
It does exist.
That proves the theory.
It does exist.
And in fact there's even a jurisdiction.
I can't remember what they call them.
State province in Russia called tartar.
Like there's a tartar people that live in Russia.
This one's Chinese tartary.
And there's an independent tartar.
Well I'm going to talk a bit about that now.
I didn't know this.
I actually just learned this researching this.
Did you know that Mongolians used to refer to themselves as the tartars.
No.
And in fact like well before the Mongolian Empire started it was tartar and it eventually
changed as it was going to Mongol and replace that word.
But for that time Europeans from the 12th century onwards used the term tartar to refer
to just this big swath of central and northern Asia.
And it would encompass all of basically eastern Russia to Manchuria for China.
Oh the historical name for central Asia in Siberia.
No I had no idea.
Yeah.
It's one of those weird ones that you don't really think about.
It's kind of like some people call Asia the Orient and it's because east used to be the
top of the map.
So it was the Orient of the map with Asia on top.
Oh wow I'm learning a lot.
But that name kind of fell out of favor as we actually learned and traveled to these
places and learned what people wanted to be called.
So as maps get more and more recent it falls out of favor because we're like well they
don't call themselves tartars.
They're Mongolians.
So let's just put their borders there and give it Mongolia.
Except when you get to other places where we just tell them what they're supposed to
be called like Japan and Korea and China.
They don't call themselves that in their languages at all.
We just decided to pick their ruler's name and make that their country.
Oh I didn't know that.
I assume that we gave the names to a lot of people.
I have a theory that there's kind of a life cycle of how we named countries.
When we were first starting out we kind of said hey what do you want to be called and
that's how most countries kind of get their names for Europe.
In France let's be called France sure.
England wants to be called England sure.
Didn't get that far though because the Germans called themselves Deutschland.
The next step is we went somewhere asked who was in charge and said okay that's your name.
That's where Eastern Asia gets its names.
China, Korea, Japan which are really Jung-Gwul, Hangu and Ilbun.
I think is what Japan is in Japanese.
Urban.
I can't remember if they do ours or else.
And then after that we said okay you can name yourself anything you want and that's how
we got the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
I love that we still just call it those things that we gave it.
Yeah that's my theory anyways.
We went from passive to very aggressive back to passive.
So the tartar...
Tartar...
Ah jeez I can't even say it.
Tartaria originates from the Mongol Empire and apparently is just a continuation of it
that made it up until fairly recent days like 200 years ago-ish.
And then we decided to cover up its entire historical record.
Okay so the theory actually says that it's from this area.
I shouldn't say that.
It's just this evidence that the tartar empire did exist.
Doesn't mean that that's where it only was or where it originated from.
And that's the hard part you get with the tartar part of it is nobody really talks
about the actual whole empire where it starts from and whatnot.
It's just it was an advanced civilization which they must have been because we inhabit
their buildings still to this day.
That's incredible.
The workmanship unmatched.
I'm just gonna quote now from a Bloomberg article that I was reading for this.
The tartaria storyline is not directly related to the Adrena Chrome harvesting satanic pedophile
cabal that lies at the heart of QAnon, the unfounded conspiracy theory that crashed into
the real world in 2020, but it shares some of what Peter Ditto, a social psychologist
at the University of California Irvine, who specializes in conspiracy theories calls QAnon's
cafeteria quality.
There's no overarching narrative or single authorial voice interpreting events.
It's just a gusher of outlandish speculation.
Adherents can pick and choose which elements they want to sign on to.
And that's what I mean.
Like it's hard to actually get an overall idea as people are more so just wanting to
point out little things that allude to tartaria than what tartaria is.
Yeah.
And I think you get that a lot with TikTok with people just making short videos probably
being like, look, this is evidence.
I did find on the tartaria subreddits, they do list a few YouTubers who push or explain
the theory.
None of them are good.
I have to say.
Or some of them videos are too long.
I didn't want to get into it.
So our cakes might be good.
I haven't had time to watch his two hour videos.
One quote from one YouTuber named John Levi is with these preserved buildings around us,
we would have viewed the whole world differently and we would not have thought about Greece
and Rome and Turkey as separate places from us here in North America.
No, the world would have a unified feel once people realized that there was one world people
building the same style everywhere.
So that's his theory as to why it's being hidden.
A lot of different people have different explanations for why it's being hidden.
Some of them incredibly anti-Semitic.
Others just not as bad.
But at the end of the day, it's yeah.
Chelsea, I did want to show you one of his videos.
I have one right down the road from me, Burtarian building, Riverview Hospital.
Look how fancy he is.
So this is John Levi going over what he believes is evidence that Salt Lake City was built
by somebody else.
Today I want to look at abandoned Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City and ruins.
This is a collection of 73 photos from 1850 to 1964.
Here it says Utah's capital.
Salt Lake City was founded by Brigham Young in 1847.
It becomes a state in 1894, the Enabling Act, signed by Grover Cleveland.
So here we go.
All of this city is essentially built out before it's even a state.
Just a big gamble if we're to believe the narrative.
And I've lived in Salt Lake City.
And right away, even before doing this research over 20 years ago, I thought to myself, why
is this city so worldly and European?
My best friend growing up in this morning, their family lived next door.
And they're very kind and simple people to this day.
He describes the city as being in ruins.
You got to remember this is the 1800s, so photo quality isn't great.
I can't say that that's in ruins.
No, I wouldn't necessarily.
I mean, if it was in ruins, I would be like, wow, that city is in ruins.
It looks like a regular old picture.
We see a completely built out city in ruins.
This absolute tech on the top.
It doesn't look like it's been recently built.
It looks as if they're just recently erecting this scaffold around it.
For what I don't know, I don't know.
So he says that it looks like this was not recently built, doesn't cite anything or explain
why he feels that way, but that the scaffolding around it is new.
In Indian.
Yeah.
And then I love this.
He speculates on what they're doing up there.
He doesn't know.
Maybe they're going to blow it up.
Maybe there's TNT in these boxes.
The caption tells us George Albert Smith and Temple Electrician Ephraim holding copper
on the southeast tower of the temple prior to 1893 dedication.
So they're electrifying it.
They're putting copper wire in.
It would have been beautified by now.
Break or stone or whatever.
Not this.
Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing.
You can even see they're putting light bulbs.
So that's what they're doing, right?
You're not.
Yeah, you couldn't amend that if that's what they're really doing.
I just like that's the effort that goes into this.
This is these all seem out of place.
It's a TikTok theory, of course it is.
I love how we saying that that's not a new building.
It actually looks newer than any of the other buildings in the picture.
A little family, perhaps in the bicycle business.
Really creepy swimming photo.
I don't know what's going on here.
This person back here looks like he's walking on water.
And here's how they went swimming.
Really having uniforms.
What is he just doing while he's taking a beating?
Not looking like normal people.
These look like uniforms.
This is a creepy child.
It looks like he has a beard and is old.
I think in the Bible it says your children will be born old.
That's not a child.
I know.
You think that's a child?
He's interpreting it.
Idiot.
It didn't look like a child.
It looked like an old guy.
This guy just...
I love it.
And then Chelsea, I saw somebody post a telegram link for this stuff and this was the first
video that popped up on the Tartaria and History Channel Telegram.
This gave me the vibes of this channel immediately.
Hey, everybody.
I could not find out how to turn videos in telegram into audio for the podcast.
So I have to describe this video to you now.
This man is asked about his thoughts on the solar eclipse coming on April 8th.
His first statement is that you should not take any glasses or light filters from anybody.
You should just stare directly at the solar eclipse because he did it last time for 20
straight minutes and that was the most beautiful thing he's ever done.
It goes on from there, but I kid you not, that is actually what he is saying.
Please go find this video.
It is just ridiculous.
I really wanted to include this video, so sorry I wasn't able to figure this out.
Also, in case it's not very apparent based on how I just described this, you should never
look directly at the solar eclipse unless you have protective eyewear that is certified
for looking at a solar eclipse.
That's the first video is, hey, you can look straight at a solar eclipse.
So that's the world this conspiracy theory inhabits.
Tartaria.
Okay.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
Why is that even posted on there about Tartaria?
I don't know.
I can't even figure who this guy is because now I want to do an episode on him, but I have
no idea who he is.
He's just looking straight at the eclipse.
Yeah, so that's Tartaria and the mudflod.
I was hoping for so much more, but there's just nothing behind this.
So I decided what is an episode about a lost civilization if we don't rope in a genocide
of sorts.
So I think this is somewhat be connected to the Hometic hypothesis, which Chelsea, I
don't think you've ever heard this term know I had a few kids.
One of them was Ham.
His name was Ham.
One of them was Sam.
That's where the semites come from.
They're about meatloaf.
No meatloaf.
Ham.
No meatloafites.
But anyhow, when we're discovering the world as Europeans, there was always rumors of white
civilizations being out there.
And the theory was proposed that this can all be traced back to Ham, one of Noah's kids
who spread off to Africa.
And it's called the Hometic theory or Hometic hypothesis that that's why there were white
tribes in Africa.
Sounds scientific.
Yeah.
And I kind of feel like you can at the end of the day draw this back to too is the idea
of they're just being large civilization out there.
Like it kind of feels like because it's world spanning, they're just saying it's like this
big European federation or European civilization that was all over the world before we got
there.
Does it not?
Yeah.
So I looked a bit at the Hometic hypothesis and it turns out that Rwanda, this theory took
quite a hold there and the Tutsi population actually said that they originate from Ham
and they're originally from white people.
That's where their tribe comes from.
Part of this racial difference with the Tutsis ends up leading to the Rwanda genocide of
the Tutsi people where I have 100 to 800,000 people were machete down in the streets.
Yeah.
What?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
I was very surprised when I learned that.
I'm not sure what to do with this information.
That is insane.
I think that's where I'm going to leave that off.
Okay.
Thank you.
I don't have much more.
That's it.
What?
Okay.
I don't know what to do with that information.
I mean, I know what to do with the mud flood information.
The QAnon theories are just insane.
Yeah.
Sorry, I put that little curveball in at the end.
I just felt like I couldn't do an episode about a lost civilization without getting
a genocide in there.
Sure enough, this one I feel is close enough to actually put it in there.
They do really all connect the genocides together.
Yeah.
Really.
Outside of that.
I'm glad you brought it back.
It just seems like mud flood.
Okay.
I have to remember.
People having fun on TikTok.
Yeah, it's like, because nobody seems to want to explain the mud flood.
They just know.
No, TikTok theories are the best.
We should do more TikTok theories because it's literally just like a couple second videos
set to like some like spooky music or something.
And then you get so into the music and they say it really nice.
And you're like, oh yeah, I'm totally behind this conspiracy theory.
And then you lay it out like you do in the real world.
And then you're like, oh fuck.
Yeah.
Or if you give somebody more than a minute, man, are they going to screw it up apparently?
Now what I'm wondering why mud flood?
Why?
What that has no bearing on it.
It doesn't seem.
On Tartaria or?
Yeah.
Like why, why, where does the mud come from?
Well the mud is because all the old photos just seem to be one muddy and two things seem
to be slightly below ground.
So they're literally just like, this could be the only explanation.
Mud came through and put this below ground.
So they're using it as a pre-mud like post-mud.
Yeah, basically.
Now we're a lot cleaner.
There's a lot less mud these days, but we have these weird buildings that seem like
they came from before the mud.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm glad you understand the theory.
I'm sorry to anyone who is listening to this thinking this could really be something, but
they kind of sound like idiots.
But a fun theory nonetheless.
Yeah, no, that was definitely fun.
I guess that's what I have to say.
And yeah, I hope you guys had a good time for this ride.
I was hoping for so much more out of this one.
I kept pushing this episode off because I'm like, the script isn't coming together.
But like I said, we're not paid to do this.
So I'm not going to throw out my research.
So you watch the Tik Tok and you're like, holy shit, this could really be something.
There's something.
I was thinking this would be a great episode.
I'm sure there's something put into this.
And boy did it disappoint.
Yeah.
Not a mudflat believer.
That's where I ended up.
You guys can do whatever you want.
I probably will judge though.
In the end, you really can do what you want.
Yeah.
And that's what we should leave this on.
Nobody has unfortunately given us that power yet.
Just probably don't commit a genocide.
And what was it, Ham?
A medic hypothesis.
Yeah, that one.
I'm not sure where I was going with that, but this seems like a good place to end it.
Yeah.
And with that, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.
Bye.
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