Lost and found

Every once in a while I'll run across something and think, "Yeah, I remember hearing about that," but even after thinking about it, I can't bring back to mind much in the way of detail.  This happened just yesterday, when a friend of mine, who is a loyal reader and frequent contributor to Skeptophilia, sent me a link along with the message, "Take the bait, little mouse... take the bait."

Of course, I couldn't let something like that just sit there, so I clicked on the link.  Which is just what he intended.  And the link turned out to be about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.  And I thought, "Don't they have something to do with the Babylonian Captivity?  And Mormons?  Or something?"

So before I tell you what the link had to say -- which is truly stunning, and for which I should give you a while to prepare either your mind or else a strong drink -- let's look at what I found out when I did some research on the Ten Lost Tribes.

Apparently the idea is that of the twelve tribes of ancient Judea, ten of them were overrun by the Assyrians somewhere around 722 B.C.E. and deported, presumably because they had done something naughty in God's sight, which always seemed to be what kicked off these kinds of mass genocides.  In any case, the whole lot of them were killed or else sold off into slavery, and were never more seen or heard of.  Except that (1) a good many reputable historians seem to think that the whole thing is a myth, and (2) now everyone and his next-door-neighbor is claiming descent from them even though there seems to be no hard evidence of any of it.

We have the Chinese (Kaifeng) Jews.  We have the Bnei Menashe of India.  We have the Igbo Jews of Nigeria.  We have the Pashtun of Afghanistan.  We have the Cimmerians of the Caucasus.  We have the Beta Israel of Ethiopia.  Farther afield, we even have a few wackos who think the Japanese are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes.  And farther afield yet (in fact, given the spherical nature of the Earth, about as far afield as you can get) are the Mormons, who think that the Native Americans are actually of Ten Lost Tribes descent, despite no archaeological, genetic, or any other kind of support for the contention.

So a great many people are of the opinion that the Ten Lost Tribes aren't really all that lost.  In fact, if you believe half of the tales out there, you'll come away with the impression that you can't swing a stick without hitting a Ten Lost Tribesman.

What may come as an even greater surprise, though, is that I haven't told you the wackiest theory on record about these Palestinian Hide-and-Seek World Champions.  Because the website that my friend sent me claims that the Ten Lost Tribes are actually...

... inside the Earth.

And I don't mean underground, as in caverns or something.  I mean that the Earth is hollow, and the Ten Lost Tribes vanished because they found a big hole up at the North Pole and went down there and haven't come out since.  And they're not the only ones down there, either:

What is Our Hollow Earth like?

It is a terrestrial paradise,
...where the original Garden of Eden is located today
...where the Lost Tribes of Israel live
...where the Political Kingdom of God is located
...where the Lost Viking Colonies of Greenland migrated to
...where vanquished Germans migrated to after World War II
...where flying saucers come from
...where people live to be hundreds of years old in perfect health
...where peace and prosperity exists for everyone
...where Heaven is located (the inner sun)

Well, with all of that inside the Earth, no wonder they stayed lost, although you have to question how nice it would be given the presence of Vikings and Nazis.  But maybe if everyone has been living for centuries in peace, prosperity, and health, there's no reason for the Vikings and Nazis to engage in rape, pillage, plunder, and mass executions any more.

I dunno.  But on the website there are all sorts of testimonials from people who claim to have been inside the Earth, so I took a look at the first one, which was written in the nineteenth century by one Willis Emerson, who was (he said) recording the narrative of an Olaf Jansen of Sweden.  Jansen claimed to have sailed north into the Arctic and ended up going down some kind of hole into an "inner land" inhabited by giant beautiful people who spoke "something like Sanskrit."  The whole thing sounded like Jules Verne on acid, so I can't say I was all that impressed.

We also have Phoebe Marie Holmes, who claims to have visited the Sun.  Yes, the real Sun, not the "inner sun" that the Hollow Earth people claim is where the Earth's core should be, along with the stars and galaxies and all:

Note: diagram not to scale.

Holmes wrote all about it in a book called, unsurprisingly, My Visit to The Sun, in which she claims that the New Jerusalem is being built there for us by Jesus and all the Saints, in the interior of the Sun, because apparently it's hollow, too.

How she got there, being that the Sun is kind of hot and all, I'm not sure.  Perhaps she went at night.

In any case, the whole site reads like an Encyclopedia Wingnuttica, so I spent most of it torn between laughing and looking around for the footnote that said, "Ha ha.  This is a satire.  Gotcha."  But no, however bizarre it seems, these people are sincere.

What did sort of impress me, though, is that the header for the site says that the information contained therein qualifies as "WORLD TOP SECRET."  So secret, in fact, that you would never find it unless you Googled "World Top Secret Hollow Earth."

Or else had a friend who knows just how to bait you just right to get you to open a ridiculous link.

**************************************

Lurking under the ice

So once again I've been sent a link several times with either "Oh, lord, here we go again" or "Ha!  This is real!  You skeptics are so dumb!" notes appended.  The link is to a story in The New York Post about a "massive anomaly lurking in Antarctica."

My first thought was to wonder how an anomaly can lurk, whether in Antarctica or elsewhere, and of course this put me in mind of H. P. Lovecraft's seminal horror story "At the Mountains of Madness."  In this tale some explorers head out to the Frozen Continent after the discovery of certain artifacts of great age, and upon investigation they find a massive city (I believe it's described as "cyclopean" and "eldritch," two of Lovecraft's absolute favorite words), following which they're one by one picked off and eaten by Shoggoths, who apparently lurk quite effectively.

So the usual stuff.  But the particular anomaly referenced in the Post article was discovered not through direct exploration but by use of a magnetometer, and the conclusion was that there is a large metallic object hidden (or lurking, as the case may be) underneath the ice in Wilkes Land, a region of eastern Antarctica.  It's buried at a depth of 900 meters, and is 250 kilometers across.

Which is pretty big.  Cyclopean, even.

Wilkes Land, also known as "Not My Idea of a Vacation Spot" [image courtesy of NASA/JPL and the Wikimedia Commons]

Some scientists have suggested that the anomaly is the remains of a huge asteroid -- perhaps twice as large as the one that created the Chicxulub Crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, and in the process did in most of the species of dinosaurs.  If so, the Wilkes Land Magnetic Anomaly is a good candidate for the smoking gun of the Permian-Triassic Extinction, which occurred 252 million years ago and is estimated to have wiped out 96% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life in one fell swoop.  The timing certainly seems right, as do the characteristics of the site.

But of course, far be it from your average New York Post reader to accept something like the results of scientific study.  No, the lurking anomaly has to be something more mysterious.  Some of the suggestions have been:

• it's a massive UFO base
• it's an underground (or underice, as the case may be) city where the Nazis escaped to after their defeat in World War II
• it's where they moved HAARP after they decommissioned the one in Alaska.  (Yes, I know that HAARP studies the atmosphere, so it wouldn't do you much good buried 900 meters deep in ice.  Stop asking questions.)
• it's a portal to the inside of the Hollow Earth

Then there's the "UFO-hunting crew" that calls itself "Secure Team 10," which basically combined all of the above into one all-purpose loony explanation.  The Post explains their claim as follows:

Secure Team 10 suggested the Nazis built secret bases in Antarctica during World War II, which were designed to be used by flying saucers. 

The UFO hunters added: “There is some evidence of this coming to light in recent years, with images purporting to show various entrances built into the side of mountains, with a saucer shape and at a very high altitude.” 

“This begs the question: how would you enter these entrances without something that could fly and was the same shape as the hole itself?”

My general opinion is that it begs a great many more questions than that one, but do go on.

Secure Team also suggested the US Navy led a mission to investigate the mysterious continent. 

This expedition was called Operation High Jump, which conspiracy theorists believe was an attempt to find the entrance to a secret world hidden underneath Earth.

Have I emphasized strongly enough that this magnetic anomaly, whatever it is, is covered by a 900-meter-thick sheet of ice?

Anyhow.  Once again we have the woo-woos coming up with bizarre ideas, which of course is what woo-woos do, and tabloid clickbait like The New York Post enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon to induce readers to provide them with ad revenue by clicking on the link.

And, as a side effect, inducing my readers to send it to me, which they've done (at the time of this writing) six times and counting.  So thanks to all of my loyal readers for keeping me informed on the latest missives from the wingnuts.  As for me, I think I'm going to lurk my way up to the kitchen and get another cup of coffee.

Lost and found

Every once in a while I'll run across something and think, "Yeah, I remember hearing about that," but even after thinking about it, I can't bring back to mind much in the way of detail.  So it was today when a friend of mine, who is a loyal reader and frequent contributor to Skeptophilia, sent me a link along with the message, "Take the bait, little mouse... take the bait."

Of course, I couldn't let something like that just sit there, so I clicked on the link.  Which is just what he intended.  And the link turned out to be about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.  And I thought, "Don't they have something to do with the Babylonian Captivity?  And Mormons?  Or something?"

So before I tell you what the link had to say -- which is truly stunning, and for which I should give you a while to prepare either your mind or else a strong drink -- let's look at what I found out when I did some research on the Ten Lost Tribes.

Apparently the idea is that of the twelve tribes of ancient Judea, ten of them were overrun by the Assyrians somewhere around 722 B.C.E. and deported, presumably because they had done something naughty in god's sight, which always seemed to be what kicked off these kinds of mass genocides.  In any case, the whole lot of them were killed or else sold off into slavery, and were never more seen or heard of.  Except that (1) a good many reputable historians seem to think that the whole thing is a myth, and (2) now everyone and his next-door-neighbor is claiming descent from them even though there seems to be no hard evidence of any of it.

We have the Chinese (Kaifeng) Jews.  We have the Bnei Menashe of India.  We have the Igbo Jews of Nigeria.  We have the Pashtun of Afghanistan.  We have the Cimmerians of the Caucasus.  We have the Beta Israel of Ethiopia.  Further afield, we even have a few wackos who think the Japanese are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes.  And further afield yet (in fact, given the spherical nature of the Earth, about as far afield as you can get) are the Mormons, who think that the Native Americans are actually of Ten Lost Tribes descent, despite no archaeological, genetic, or any other kind of support for the contention.

So a great many people are of the opinion that the Ten Lost Tribes aren't really all that lost.  In fact, if you believe half of the tales out there, you'd come away with the impression that you can't swing a stick without hitting a Ten Lost Tribesman.

What may come as an even greater surprise, though, is that I haven't told you the wackiest theory on record about these Palestinian Hide-and-Seek World Champions.  Because the website that my friend sent me claims that the Ten Lost Tribes are actually...

... inside the Earth.

And I don't mean underground, as in caverns or something.  I mean that the Earth is hollow, and the Ten Lost Tribes vanished because they found a big hole up at the North Pole and went down there and haven't come out since.  And they're not the only ones down there, either:

What is Our Hollow Earth like?

It is a terrestrial paradise,
...where the original Garden of Eden is located today
...where the Lost Tribes of Israel live
...where the Political Kingdom of God is located
...where the Lost Viking Colonies of Greenland migrated to
...where vanquished Germans migrated to after World War II
...where flying saucers come from
...where people live to be hundreds of years old in perfect health
...where peace and prosperity exists for everyone
...where Heaven is located (the inner sun)

Well, with all of that inside the Earth, no wonder they stayed lost, although you have to question how nice it would be given the presence of Vikings and Nazis.  But maybe if everyone has been living for centuries in peace, prosperity, and health, there's no reason for the Vikings and Nazis to engage in rape, pillage, plunder, and mass executions any more.

I dunno.  But on the website there are all sorts of testimonials from people who claim to have been inside the Earth, so I took a look at the first one, which was written in the 19th century by one Willis Emerson, who was (he said) recording the narrative of an Olaf Jansen of Sweden.  Jansen claimed to have sailed north into the Arctic and ended up going down some kind of hole into an "inner land" inhabited by giant beautiful people who spoke "something like Sanskrit."  The whole thing sounded like Jules Verne on acid, so I can't say I was all that impressed.

We also have Phoebe Marie Holmes, who claims to have visited the Sun.  Yes, the real Sun, not the "inner sun" that the Hollow Earth people claim is where the Earth's core should be, along with the stars and galaxies and all:

Note: diagram not to scale.

Holmes wrote all about it in a book called, surprisingly,  My Visit to The Sun, in which she claims that the New Jerusalem is being built there for us by Jesus and all the Saints, in the interior of the Sun, because apparently it's hollow, too.

How she got there, being that the Sun is kind of hot and all, I'm not sure.  Perhaps she went at night.

In any case, the whole site reads like an Encyclopedia Wingnuttica, so I spent most of it torn between laughing and looking around for the footnote that said, "Ha ha.  This is a satire."  But no, however bizarre it seems, these people are sincere.

What did sort of impress me, though, is that the header for the site says that the information contained therein qualifies as "WORLD TOP SECRET."  So secret, in fact, that you would never find it unless you Googled "World Top Secret Hollow Earth."

Or else had a friend who knows just how to bait you just right to get you to open a ridiculous link.