Lucy Wyatt | Ancient Archetypes and Civilization | Megalithomania Podcast (Audio)

Our guest this week is Lucy Wyatt who's the author of Approaching Chaos with the subtitle Could an Ancient Archetype Save 21st Civilization? She's an independent researcher and she spent 10 years researching this book and it originally grew out of the ancient Greeks and how they worked with homeopathy and alternative medicine and this developed into the much bigger picture which became this book. So Lucy, welcome to the show. Hi Hugh, hi thanks for inviting me, it's great. So what really got you into these sort of ancient mystery studies and really got you into writing this book in the first place? Well as you said Hugh, you know the thing kind of came out of my interest in homeopathy and when my youngest daughter went off to start school I thought well I've got a bit of time on my hands you know I'm really interested in that kind of thing. Also I had these doctor friends, GPs, who were like really anti-homeopathy, thought it was very unscientific and I had a feeling if I went back to the origins of it I'd find out a different story. But the story then just took off of its own accord and became eventually the book which went much deeper and further and wider than I could ever have anticipated. So it's been very exciting. So what did the Greeks, what were they doing with alternative medicine back then? I mean what sort of era are we talking about? Well to be perfectly honest I never really discovered the answer to that. I mean there was a lot of stuff about tracks like opposites and things like that because that's really what homeopathy is all about. You know you use the poison ivy to cure the symptoms that poison ivy gives you and it's kind of a strange sort of concept to us in the West. And we're talking I suppose around the 2nd, 3rd, 4th century BC, that kind of time period. But what I really began to discover there was a much bigger thing to do with civilization and much more to discover about science and the origins of stuff and that's really what I went looking for. Because traditionally the Greeks are sort of where the origins of science and maths and things like this come from. In your book there's a whole different direction with that. Oh completely. Well that was one of the things that I really wanted to expose really, our rather foolish idea that it all starts with the Greeks. But in actual fact what they didn't really, well they did, they did attribute their sources but we just don't believe them. I mean Pythagoras is rumoured to have spent 25 years in Egyptian temples for example. And the thing is it came from a much, much older civilization and that's really where the story starts to get very interesting. But with this kind of knowledge that you've started researching with the Egyptians, the Sumerians, why do you think it's important that this knowledge is sort of coming back into the public consciousness now? I think this is absolutely critical that we have this completely different attitude towards the ancients because the more you study, and you'll know this yourself Hugh, the more you study them, the more you realise how advanced and how sophisticated they were and that they had a completely different take on stuff and how to approach the physical world. And it's that difference of approach that we need to reconnect with. I mean you know the evidence is in the big stones that they could move around and all that kind of thing. And we need to have a completely different attitude of respect towards them instead of just thinking of them as backward, pagan, you know. Yeah, I understand. And it's like, but with the era we're kind of looking at here, I mean the Greeks are a few hundred BC, the Egyptians go back to roughly 3000 BC traditionally, but are you talking about like with Sumeria, are we talking about an era much before that? Yeah, yeah. Well essentially what I did is I went right back to where we normally start the story which is at the end of the Ice Age, you know, and looked at how civilisation came about. And the fact that we've been telling ourselves the wrong story, you know, we've been telling ourselves, and you can read it in the British Museum, that it all grows out of some kind of farming experiment. And actually when you really, really look at the evidence, it doesn't stack up. It's so not the case, you know. It wasn't that we suddenly had market towns growing out of exchange of, you know, seeds and all this kind of, you know, surplus of crop. And cities didn't grow out of that kind of thing. It wasn't farmers who started cities, it was priests. And that's the really extraordinary thing. And we've kind of fooled ourselves into thinking about how these things start, and it's not correct. If that's the case, then I mean, why would they do that? I mean, why would the priestly sort of caste want to actually kind of create these kind of societies? Were they not just happy roaming about hunter-gatherer style? Well, I think they were completely different people. I mean, one of the things I don't write about in the book, I had it in earlier drafts, it has to be said, but I don't write about it in the end in my book, because they were physically different people. I mean, there's all that evidence of the different skull shapes, you know, they were the original eggheads, these huge, great domed foreheads that these early peoples had. And I think they were completely different type of person. Where they come from, that is total speculation. And I would like to even go down that route, because I think it's very important to stay with the extraordinary facts that we can look at, that are available, rather than completely speculate on origins of people. But I think they were definitely different people. Well, I mean, if you look at the sites in that area, like Sumeria, Turkey and Iraq and stuff, I mean, I think Göbekli Tepe is on everyone's lips at the moment, in southern Turkey, which the dating of that now is, what is it, goes back about nine or 10,000 years? Yes, easily. Yes, exactly. I know. Well, my sort of feeling about those places, like Çatalhöyük as well, which is the other really well known, much better excavated site in southern Turkey. My feeling about those places is that, to take a Graham Hancock phrase, there's fingerprints of these civilisers all over these things. But I think a lot of the local style and local character of them is down to the indigenous people. But I don't think, I think what you have to look at is motive. You know, what is the motive behind here? And I don't think indigenous people had a motive to create these sites, whereas I think the civilisers did, but probably used the local people to do various things, even decorate various things and so forth. But I think the underlying concepts behind these places is, the driving force is from the civilisers, is from the more sophisticated people. And they just use local teams to actually work them and create them and run them, you know, which is why I think some of the carvings are quite crude, really, even though they're very interesting and fascinating, but they're not of great sophistication. It's just the whole concept is extraordinarily amazing at Göbekli Tepe. So I'm not surprised that people are very confused about them, you know. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, just that era kind of interests me because everyone talks about 10,000 years ago, you know, this kind of Atlantis date where the people who fled from the construction of Atlantis came from. I mean, so, and yet that's kind of like discredited by academics and laughed at. Whereas there seems to be some kind of origin date from that era, which is sort of seems to be all over the world, in fact. And so I've read that, you know, not only in Sumeria, they were growing crops and they started things like 8,000 or 9,000 years ago, also in Peru and Bolivia, and also even evidence in other parts of the world. And then suddenly all these sites are turning up, like Nabta Playa in Egypt, Göbekli Tepe, some of the earliest sites in Peru. And it's just like, hang on a sec. So who were they? And why isn't that mentioned in the history books? I mean, have you got any thoughts on who these people were and how they were so sophisticated so quickly? Well, that is a very, very difficult one. I did decide to deliberately avoid the whole Atlantis thing. I looked at it quite carefully, as one does, because it's very fascinating. But I just decided there wasn't quite enough evidence to exactly pinpoint an Atlantean type thing. And I prefer to rest on the facts. But I mean, I also think we have to look at where these places are. I don't know about the Nabta Playa, but certainly the Göbekli Tepe and also the South American stuff. Why be up high in the mountains? This is a question that the orthodox historians have not addressed. Why start a farming experiment in very hostile farming conditions? And that's why you have to look at motive. And the reason, as far as I can see, there's a very strong motive for being up in the mountains is because of what there is in mountains. I mean, some friends of mine have said, oh, it's for defensive reasons. But I don't think these are fortifications. These people aren't growing crops in these foothills of these mountainous areas for warfare reasons. I think it's because they are growing these crops in these relatively hostile conditions because they want to support operations elsewhere up in the mountains. Because it's in the mountains that you find the minerals, the metals, and all those things that we now know from later evidence of civilization were incredibly important to them. And that, for me, is the thing that really makes sense. Because you know that Çatalhöyük is part of a whole line of Halafian settlements, don't you? It's just one of many. There was no center to the Halafian culture in that part of Turkey. They couldn't work out where the centers of these places were because these sites occur at fairly regular intervals. And to me, that really does suggest a whole kind of support network to support something else that's going on elsewhere. I don't think it makes any sense to me. I mean, because one of the ways I look at it is that if you were to take modern day Soweto and you see that they're watching television, would you assume that they had invented television? No, you wouldn't. I mean, the point is just because people have things doesn't mean say they were the inventors or it was their idea to have these places and the way they decorated them and the rest of it. And I do think it's quite plausible that there are two different types of person involved in these sites. You know, one is the one that's creating the conditions that wants them there. And the other is the people who are actually running them and operating them. They could be quite easily two different peoples. So you're looking at kind of like a more... It doesn't kind of fit in. Yeah. So this is where the sort of priestly sort of caste kind of comes in rather there. And then they kind of work with the sort of locals or the indigenous sort of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, part of the problem is, is that we have this rather stupid idea that mankind evolves in leaps and bounds. And this is sort of evidence of primitive man doing something that then gets a bit more sophisticated and that it's all about what the local people do. And then the local people become more sophisticated. I mean, that's just a load of rubbish. I mean, no city grows out of Çatalhöyük. You know, Çatalhöyük stays as is, as indeed did Göbekli Tepe, just stayed as was and then was buried deliberately. So, you know, we're telling ourselves a completely wrong story, confusing ourselves by making these assumptions about it being part of an evolutionary progressive thing. These things serve their purposes and then they were abandoned. You know, they don't start the story and end up with a city. You know, it doesn't happen like that. There are huge gaps, thousands of years before cities appear that we know about, if you think about it. And so with that in mind, were these people, whoever they were, were they traveling around the whole world and like working with whatever indigenous culture was there? Yes, I think that's a very plausible explanation, interpretation. I mean, you know, Graham Hancock, for example, writes about the Shem Suhoor, you know, that the companions of Horus, you know, traveling around and continuing their projects somewhere else. You know, these various Egyptian texts that talk about the elite group who go from place to place. So I think that's perfectly plausible, that they were moving from place to place. And you, yourself, are very familiar with all the South American, you know, things and Quetzalcoatl and all those legends, you know, how they come from outside and so forth. Just because they're given local names doesn't mean to say that they're local gods. You know, there's plenty of evidence that they do come from somewhere else and don't fit in with the indigenous type. You know, they don't have the black, dark hair and the dark eyes. They're often described as fair-haired and blue-eyed and with no beards and things like that. And so that, in itself, should make us a little bit suspicious. Yes, because in Central America, there's Quetzalcoatl, and like you said, in South America, Peru, Bolivia, there's Viracocha. But also you get, like, these legends in Ireland of Tuatha Dé Danann, and you get similar legends even in Egypt with the creator gods, you know, Osiris, Isis and all these others. And so does that suggest that whoever these were, I mean, that they really were the teachers, the ancient teachers of mankind? Does that kind of ring true with you? I think there's a lot to be said for that kind of interpretation, you know. I mean, I don't particularly want to go on about biblical stuff because I have a sort of pinch-of-salt attitude towards all of that. But, you know, all the discussion of the Watchers and some ideas of the Nephilim and these distant elites and so forth. So I think it's perfectly plausible that there are. And also, if you look at where agriculture starts, it just starts in these pockets. You know, was it sort of nine sites around the world or something? Just in these tiny pockets. And then the other thing that's so curious is that when cities do start, they nearly always have the same principles. There is an archetype. You know, there's a regional variation, but the principles of each city, whether it's South America, whether it's Sumeria, whether it's Egypt, they're pretty similar. I mean, you can really point to the fact that this is the same ideas running through these things, even if there are variations on a theme. So I think that in itself should arouse our suspicions that there's something going on, without a doubt. It could be said that, you know, if they weren't traveling, there's a whole idea that when a good idea occurs in one place on Earth, that good idea kind of spreads through the sort of consciousness web around the planet. So I don't know what you think about that, but I kind of like that kind of idea. But there's so much evidence of traveling, ancient traveling, going back, you know, five to ten thousand years. That's hard to dismiss as well, isn't it? Well, exactly. Yes, Thor Heyerdahl, yes, all of his Contiki stuff and all of that. And, you know, the things like the cocaine mummies, you know, that our dear friend Gary Evans talks about, for example. Yes, the cocaine mummies found in Egypt with cocaine from South America. Exactly. So there's plenty of indications of people actually physically traveling. But then that's also possible that they did access, in a kind of shamanic way, a common archetype. And that's why I referred to it as an archetype, you know, that they were able to do out of body experiences. And the concept of cities that they accessed in that kind of spiritual consciousness Akashic record type thing was always the same archetype. I mean, that's also plausible as well. They don't rule each other out. I think you can have both. And I think that also explains why the concept is so consistent. And I think perhaps what the traveling people did is to teach them the shamanic process, to teach them the shamanic ritual and allow them to get access to this common concept and this common archetype. So I don't think they rule each other out at all. No, indeed. Well, what I mean is that in terms of shaman is this whole ability to go on an out of body journey, you know, kind of spiritual quest. And what's more familiar to us are shaman from Siberia or Peru or, you know, jungle medicine men type thing. But I think that in terms of these early cities, they were incredibly sophisticated. And it's my belief that that was the whole role of the pharaoh, that he was actually a shaman and that he did this out of body thing on behalf of his people. And it's that role of the pharaoh that seems to have completely disappeared from history. Nobody really connects pharaohs with shamanism. But I do think that that explains so much about how a culture like Egypt was able to survive for so long because he knew exactly what to do. I mean, if you take the coffin texts in the pyramids, they describe the journey of the pharaoh's soul. And we've always assumed that if you talk about a soul, it's somebody who's dead. But actually, Jeremy Nadler is one of the few who has had this view. I've taken his research as part of my work that is actually describing the journey of the pharaoh's soul while in life. And that's why it's actually a shamanic ritual. And this is kind of groundbreaking stuff here. You know, not many people are talking about it like that. You know, they just assume pyramids are tombs where a dead body goes and all of that. But actually, when you talk about being as part of a life journey on behalf of people to get information, it takes on a whole different kind of thing that we're not familiar with in the West at all. Because this comes back to some other research you've been doing as well. And something I'm fascinated by is the monatomic gold and the fact that in the Sinai, they discovered that. And there's evidence now that perhaps the pharaohs were using that to deify themselves. Yeah, exactly. Or to use that as part of this shamanic journey is what I think. I think that the monatomic gold is what was the base of the solar bread. And the solar bread was a meal that was taken as part of the ritual for the Heb Sed festival, which is often referred to as the pharaoh's jubilee. And I think it's during that, which is every 30, 40 years. During that particular festival, he had these secret parts of the ritual where after he consumed this bread, he then went into a tomb within the pyramid. And that's where he had his out-of-body death-like experience, a near-death experience, in order to make inquiries and find out useful information that could keep civilization on track. And it's that part of it that's secret, has been secret to us and unavailable to us, that knowledge of what he was doing. And we've only judged it by our very narrow Western experiences. But actually, it was something extremely powerful. And it's also my view that that is the true meaning of alchemy. Do you want me to discuss that part of it? Yes, please. Well, I mean, the thing is, what people normally say about alchemy is that the word they say comes from the word chem, to do with black plans, and alchemy is linked to Egypt because of the name of Egypt being the Black Lands. But I actually think what is more plausible is that alchemy comes from an Egyptian word to do with the chemi, which are the fixed stars, the imperishable northern stars. And that actually what that relates to is the pharaoh astral planing, is the pharaoh having his out-of-body experience. And that, to me, makes far more sense than just saying it's Black Lands. But our whole problem is, is that we only really understand what the Egyptians were up to through the eyes of the Greeks, because it's through their knowledge that so much about Egypt has come down through the Greeks. And if the Greeks misunderstood something, they often passed on faulty information to us. We didn't get the whole picture. And I think the problem with the Greeks was that where alchemy was concerned, they had access or knowledge of the process in terms of preparing the ritual meal, which is the gold. And that's why all our stuff to do with alchemy is something to do with purification into gold. Well, we say into gold, but actually it's purification of gold. And what they weren't privy to, they did not know about, was what that gold is used for. And those were the secret parts of the ritual. But that is the true meaning of alchemy. It was that ritual, the out-of-body shamanic astral planing journey that is really the underlying explanation for what alchemy truly is. But the Greeks had no understanding of that. They probably had no access to that aspect of it at all. And that's why we've ended up with a very confused idea that it's something spiritual, it's something lead, gold, base metals, and all of that. But I think what they were actually producing, the philosopher's tone, was the white powder that they made then into this bread, which looks like a kind of cone. You see plenty of engravings in Egypt of this cone-like thing being offered, and that is the solar bread. And the role of Hathor in all of that, you know, the cow goddess in the purification gold process, is another kind of clue as to what was going on. What is she said to have, how was she connected with the gold? Well, I think the whole point about Hathor is that she has many names, and one of her names is to do with gold. Nubut, N-U-B-T, is one of her names. And when you go to her temple at Dendera, and you go to look at the back wall, the outside of the back wall, you will see the hieroglyph for gold carved into the back wall, which is basically an offering bowl with a drape across it. And she had this role as the nurturer of the pharaoh, so it's a kind of idea of a food of nurturing. And also, there's some other very odd things that in Dendera, for example, there is that crypt, which I have seen and know that you're familiar with, where there's strange light bulb type things are carved onto the wall, which look like a kind of electrical device. And I do believe that there's some role of electricity in all that purification of gold process. And also, the other circumstantial part about it is, is in her temple in the Sinai Peninsula at Sarabit el-Khadim, where Flinders Petrie in the 19th century, he excavated and discovered this place. Under the stones there, Lawrence Gardner writes about it, under the stones there is a huge quantity of this white powder. And it's known, as you know, that the monatomic gold forms a white powder when it's exposed to very high charges of electricity and so forth. So I think she's very much implicated in all of this. And, you know, her role shouldn't be ignored. And with the white powder gold, I mean, basically, just in case people aren't aware of it, it's kind of like it has to be alchemically produced, doesn't it? It has to be a certain hit. Is it 3,000 degrees? Something like that? Well, I think it can be, as Lawrence Gardner describes it, it's about getting the impurities out of gold. The platinum group of metals need to be removed or whatever to make this as pure product as possible. And then you expose it to a very, very high charge of electricity. And that's when it kind of falls apart, as it were, and forms this gold powder, this white powder. And I mean, I kind of go along with the idea that that was the role of the Ark of the Covenant to produce this as an electrical device. I think there's a lot to be said for that as a capacitator to produce that white powder. I'm not a technology person, but the explanations that I've read make sense to me that that's what its role was. And they use a form of superconducting to make this a very effective machine for creating this product, this white powder. So that all makes a lot of sense to me. And then they could use it for ritual. I mean, I think the thing for us in the West is they don't produce toasters and electric irons because, you know, we have this very limited view of what electricity is for. But for them, it was an important part of ritual and a key thing in their whole lives in a secret sort of way. I think it's also part of the explanation as to how the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid comes about, you know, the use of vibration within that and create kind of an electrical field as part of the shamanic process going on in there. Jeremy Nadler is one of those who's of the opinion that the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt was constructed as part of a Heb Sed festival site, just like Saqqara, which you can still see parts of its Heb Sed festival site next to the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. But it's quite possible that Giza had the same role as being part of all that. So with the white powder gold, is there evidence that other ancient cultures were also using it in prehistory or is it just focused on Egypt? Well, that's I mean, I don't I don't personally know because I decided not really to look very much at South and Central and Southern America, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. I mean, we know that gold is incredibly important to those cultures. And also what the point that you and I have forgotten to mention is that this importance of gold to these cultures and in this use in the shamanic ritual explains why they start off in mountains, why they were in mountains and why mountains are so important to them, because that is where the gold is. And as part of my research, the thing that really made the hair stand on the back of my neck was when I realized that the earliest sites for things like pottery and things like that in the Golden Crescent in Iraq, Mesopotamia, was on very near the roots for early gold mines and that kind of thing. The proximity of it was just extraordinary, whether it's gold or other metals. But to find that they were there, you know, there's evidence of their existence near these places is just amazing. That was very, very fascinating. And I should mention to you that the old name for Mesopotamia, the Sumerian name, means land where gold is chief. And Mesopotamia, I mean, did you know that? The Mesopotamia, the bit between the Euphrates and the Tigris, had no gold at all. The gold had to come from the Golden Crescent, from the mountains. But isn't that just so fascinating that they had that title in those words, in their name for their own place? I find that just amazing. So with this kind of knowledge we're talking about, how come nowadays we've lost this kind of high knowledge, this shamanic knowledge, this alchemical knowledge? And it seems to be it's just coming back at the moment. The research is just coming out now. I mean, what's your take on that? Well, it's very simple that there's a very easy explanation for all of that. What one has to remember is that one of the drivers, huge drivers, specters for change is environmental catastrophe. And what one has to look at is the shift from Bronze Age to Iron Age, which I think happens at about 1200 BC. The sort of iconic thing is the fall of Troy, isn't it? That's the thing that happens around then. And that's the shift. And that's really a shift backwards. And it's because, again, we blame an Icelandic volcano which blows up at that time and creates 20 years of famine. And this time the tribes that went on the march looking for food were actually better armed. They'd found the secret of iron, of smelting iron, which is a much simpler thing. It's much less complicated than bronze. So more evidence of things going backwards. And it's at that point that places like Egypt start to become vulnerable because Egypt was essentially a fairly, not pacifist exactly, but it was a place of great temples and all this important knowledge and so forth. And at about 600 BC, first of all, the Persians invade Egypt. And then, of course, we then get Alexander the Great at 333 BC invading. Now the point about all of that is the Egyptians, they kind of came to a compromise with the Greeks. They were happy to do a sort of deal with the Greeks whereby they kind of educated them and passed on some of their knowledge, but didn't quite let them into the country. But the people they became really worried about were, of course, the Romans. And the reason why we've lost all this high knowledge is because the Egyptians were really worried about their secret rituals falling into the wrong hands. A very good friend of mine said, well, why didn't they just drop big stones on their heads? They knew how to levitate huge stones. Well, the point is, by the time the Romans get hold of Egypt, which is around 30 BC with Antony and Cleopatra, the people in charge of Egypt weren't Egyptian anymore. They were Greek. They were the Ptolemies. And they can't have obviously known the secret of how to move the big stones. And these priestly elites were very aware of their responsibilities. They knew that their secret knowledge mustn't fall into the wrong hands. And so alchemy really does become very, very secretive after that point. It doesn't die out completely. I think it goes very underground and it disappears back up, I think, to the northern Euphrates. I think that's where it ends up, in a place like Haran, where the Sabians were. They were very well-known alchemists and so forth. And that knowledge just ticks along in that hidden part of the world in southern Turkey. Northern Syria up there. Only to be really rediscovered in some senses by the Knights Templars, as it were, a thousand or more years later. A whole new chapter opens up in the history of it all. And that's really why, because they didn't want a very, very powerful tribe like the Romans getting this potentially extremely destructive knowledge and they didn't want to fall into the wrong hands. So with the Knights Templar, is it true from your research that you found that they sort of preserved some of this knowledge and they maintained it up to relatively modern times where it's now in the hands of Freemasons and other secretive groups? Yeah. Well, effectively, it became maintained and protected by Islam to begin with. And I think it's very fascinating, very significant that for a short period, Islam becomes the main spreader of civilization. You think about Moorish Spain, how very sophisticated that was in the context of the time. So many elements of civilization are kept going through these Muslim societies. But there's plenty of evidence of discussion of the emerald tablets, things like that to do with Hermes Trismegistus, going back to ancient Egypt, that kind of connection is acknowledged at times. And this secret knowledge, as you say, gets passed down through Knights Templars, Freemasons. And Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, who is often credited as being the father of science, he was a man who was fascinated by alchemy. A significant proportion of his library in his college, in King's College, Cambridge, was based on alchemy. I personally think that he made his discoveries to do with gravity through his research, through his studying of old manuscripts and so forth, and that he just invented some story about apples and all the rest of it, because alchemy at the time when he was practicing and was alive was still a capital offense. You weren't allowed to be an alchemist. You could find yourself in deep, deep trouble, mainly because they were very worried about people interfering with currency and making false gold and counterfeiting. So it's very ironic that he was actually master of the mint. But there you go. Yeah, so that's the sort of extraordinary thing. And people couldn't acknowledge their sources. They couldn't say, because the church wouldn't allow for these things. So they had to come at stuff in a different kind of way. So that's the sort of knowledge we're looking at here. It's not just the alchemical knowledge, but is it potentially other knowledge, such as the understanding of geodetics and surveying and ancient metrology and these more kind of sophisticated earth mysteries kind of studies? Well, I think there's several aspects to all of that, isn't there? One of my personal jokes is that a certain gender likes measurement and is kind of a bit obsessed with measurement and how you get from A to B and that kind of logistical thing. And there's no doubt about it that the ancients were very sophisticated and advanced in the way they could use earth grids and they could get about and use geodetics and surveying and all of that. But that's only one part of the whole story. This is just evidence of their general sophistication and advancement. But what we don't realise is that part of this whole city package was things like domestication of animals, domestication of cereals, the invention of medicine, generally a whole different way of living, cooking, cuisine, the art of cooking, trade contracts, legalistic contracts. This is all part of a very ancient concept to do with civilisation. And I think it's all part of the general package. And certainly, earth measurement geometry, that whole idea of earth measurement contained in that word geometry is just one aspect of the whole thing. And, you know, you can't isolate one from the other. I think that the total package, the total concept, the complete archetype was there from the beginning. Okay. So this is like the 6,000th. So this is the archetype you talk about in your book. Yeah. So Lucy, can you tell us a bit about more evidence of this archetype from ancient civilisations and where it may exist? Yeah, sure. I mean, one of the things that for me was completely fascinating, and I think I'm reasonably unusual in finding this information. I haven't read it in many places. And it kind of came to me as part of piecing a jigsaw together, is the evidence in our very own languages, our Indo-European language of concepts to do with civilisation. And the linguists and so forth have established that certain tribes, certain Indo-European tribes lived together, last lived together over 5,000 years ago. And that when they get analysed down to the root words, that we have these root words in common. And these tribes are those who moved to India, the Iranians, Persians, Germans, Romans, Greeks, French, Spanish, all those romance languages, but not Hungarians, for example, and not the Basques and not the Finns or Slavs. They had different root languages. And the thing that's just bizarre is that we had these concepts to do with cities. And I'll give you an example of what one of them is. Two and a half thousand years before we actually lived in cities. And nobody has questioned this. Nobody has said, what's this all about? I mean, I've got some explanations of what it's all about. The example that I give is the word to do with king, which in Proto-Indo-European, which is a 5,000 year old word, is usually given reg, R-E-G. And as you can imagine, that comes out in Latin as rex, regulation, and has all these ideas to do with straightness. It's a word you find in India to do with Raj. It's a word you find in German, recht, reich, that kind of idea. And the idea to do with the right hand and to do with correctness and accuracy and laws and regulation and all these sort of things. And the extraordinary part about this is, is that this word was a common word amongst tribes from aspects of other bits of language. We know they were also warlike and lived in mud huts, and the focus of their life was the hearth. No cities at all. And the explanation that I've come up with is that they must have come into contact with the civilizers for a very good reason. And that reason is because they lived in a part of the world where there was a wild creature that was of interest to the civilizers. And that creature was the early horse, the tarpan. And the area that we're talking about is the Ukraine, going towards the steppes. Now there's other people who think that the Indo-Europeans start off in Turkey and places like that. But it's the Pontic Caspian, the Ukraine, that really does it for me, because that's where the earliest horse remains are found, 4,000 year old horse remains. And this horse was of no use to the early Indo-Europeans until the civilizers came along and showed them how to domesticate them, possibly genetically modified them to make them docile and so forth. And useful beyond just meat and hides. You know, it's after that point that they could be ridden and used for plowing and all those things. I mean, in terms of civilization, this is called the secondary products revolution. And it's that change in domesticated animals, which I think occurs around 5,000-6,000 BC at the same time as the cities arrive in Sumeria, in southern Mesopotamia. And I think that the cities created the stimulus for the change in animals, not the other way around. And it's called secondary products because it's after that point you can take milk from a cow and make butter and cheese. That the coat on a sheep changes from being like that of a deer into this woolly thing that we know. Before that, they didn't have coats that were useful. So you can make wool and all the useful things from that. And further evidence that the Indo-Europeans, the proto-Indo-Europeans had contact with the civilizers is that they benefited from this secondary products revolution. You can find in analysis of the early language words to do with sowing, reaping, churning, milk, butter, that kind of thing. So I think that what happened was is that the civilizers went to the area where the horses were. And in exchange for the horse, they left behind techniques, they left behind words, they left behind concepts. And that's been buried in our language for 5,000 years. I mean, that's an amazing thought. And nobody's really picked up on that. I've never seen any discussion of it. And the reason why I came across it is because I had a template where I kind of worked out what the archetype of civilization was. And then I kind of applied it and thought, oh, my goodness. The Indo-Europeans have got elements, but they weren't civilized. The Romans, when they arrived on the Tiber, did not arrive with a blueprint of cities in their heads. The Etruscans were already there and they basically infiltrated Etruscan society and took over because the Etruscans, it's fairly well established, were very well connected with the Phoenicians and the Egyptians and were part of the whole civilizing archetype concept, the same thing. And the Romans were just more like militaristic male groups who found that that part of Italy was appealing to them. And the rest, as they say, is history. It's interesting with the Etruscans, Rome was just one of their 12 city states, wasn't it? Yes, yes, exactly. That grew out of, you know, got really big and took over half the planet. So it's amazing how influential the Etruscans really were. Not many people discuss that, but I think Gary Biltcliffe's probably the best person on that, isn't he? Yes, very much so. I mean, I do write about it in the sense that I see the Romans as being like cuckoos in the nest and that they kind of grow from within Etruscan society and they take on the trappings of the Etruscans, you know, all their royal insignia and so forth and rituals are Etruscan, but they take on these things without fully knowing what it really means. I mean, they still ask Etruscan priests to do divination, for example. They don't themselves work out how to do these things. And they use Etruscan architects to build their first great big temple on the Capitoline Temple in Rome. So they become like the dominant force, but without the real knowledge. But because they're so powerful, and after all, Rome is a Greek word meaning strength, meaning power, the Etruscans have no choice but to agree to it. And after a while, Etruscan language and possibly Etruscans do start to fade away by the first century BC. The Etruscans are barely mentioned at all. But for a long time, the Romans kind of go along with them and eventually they do, of course, attack Etruscan cities. I can't remember the exact date, but it's sort of third or fourth century BC when they start to attack the other Etruscan cities and do start to dominate. We see essentially the site of Rome on the Tiber had lots of strategic advantages because it had these seven hills that could be easily defended and it became a very useful base from which the Romans could start to expand and, as you say, take over the world. And they were very, very successful at that because they were so well organised. I refer to them in my book as being a bit like an American corporation that you would, you know, quoted on the stock market would be a buy because they were very efficient and organised and completely focused around the end justifies the means. And that, in my view, is now our current undoing is because we're still stuck in this Roman mentality. We're still thinking the end justifies the means. And I think that's what's heading us into huge problems, actually. And another reason why we need to rediscover how other ancient cultures saw life and get a different perspective on everything. Okay. And so, you know, fundamentally, how could this ancient archetype save 21st civilisation, which is the subtitle of your book? I mean, what's your answer to that? And how do we need to approach this kind of knowledge? Well, the first thing, if you want to change actions, as Marx would tell you, you need to change thoughts and theory and praxis and all of that. And the point about the difference between this Roman way of doing things, the end justifying the means, and the Egyptian or the Phoenician or whoever it is who's part of the original archetype, is they saw everything as being interconnected. They had very much a holistic view of life that we might describe as an animist view. Now, they understood that stones and trees and water and rivers and buildings and everything was all part of a sacred continuum. They had total respect for every element of life. And that is an attitude that we need to rediscover, to really understand the importance of our planet to us and to respect it and appreciate it and not keep on this terrible degradation that we do, this appalling devastation of our planet that we inflict on it. You know, they understood that the gods of the Nile would be upset if you polluted the and so forth. And that isn't superstition. It's just a very sensible attitude towards looking after your home base. So that's one important thing, is change of attitude, reconnecting with that holistic philosophy, and also the whole Hermes Justus thing of as above, so below, and understanding our connection with the wider universe and universal energies and so forth. And then the other thing is to do with, if you have that deeper understanding and you can connect, you can understand how to manipulate your physical world in such a way that you can learn how to interfere with gravity, you can learn how to cut those big stones or whatever it is. They could do things with the physical world that we really struggle with. They knew these techniques because they were in tune with their world. And I don't fully know what those techniques are, but they were effectively zero-carbon techniques because they could move 50 tons of granite from Aswan on the Nile, 500 miles to Giza. And we would really, really struggle even today to do that kind of logistical thing. And that's another reason why we should have total respect for these people. They knew how to live. They knew how to approach life. They knew what to do. And they survived for a really long time. You know, the Egyptians went on for thousands of years. And our little blip of the Industrial Revolution, I mean, it was a couple of hundred years, all our modern science stuff. Whereas, as I think we said at the beginning, people knew how to get about. They knew how to travel across continents. They may even have known how to do some kind of levitational thing that could help them, as it were, fly from one place to another. I don't really know. But there's certainly so much more to it than we've given them credibility for. And that's really why we need to re-examine, reconnect and understand that there's more to it and stuff that could help us, very much so. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And that's something that, you know, we like to sort of express on the show as much as we can. And also, obviously, at the Megalithomania Conference, there seems to be a resurgence in this kind of understanding, I believe. And I think the time is now for it to really come back, you know, with some force, because we live in such a destructive world. And I get a sense, and I'm sure you agree, with the sense that we're coming to the end of civilisation in the same way that the Roman civilisation ended. And I think it's happening swiftly and it's going to be very kind of profound for those of us, for us, and we're going to witness it. Definitely. But then we need big cleansing, don't we? We need to have something that really faces us up to the consequences of our appalling behaviour and our lack of care and our pollution and all of that. I mean, isn't this a dreadful thing to think you cannot go down to a river and just drink out of it? Yeah, yeah. You'd probably die of some horrible modern chemical in that water. You know, that's an appalling statement that we 21st century people cannot actually just exist in our own nature. You know, we can cope with it if it's in a reserve, and that's a nature reserve, but everything else has to be chemically treated and processed and hygienic and so forth. And that's an appalling, appalling state of affairs that we've rendered our planet so poisonous to us that we can't just take a sip out of a stream and not worry about where that water's come from. How progressive is that? How advanced is that? Excuse me. I think it's just so backward. I mean, just awful, really awful. Well, it looks like there is going to be a paradigm shift, you know, and this archetype could come in very handy. So thank you, Lucy. Well, let's hope so. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show and discussing your research. We're going to have to wind things down now. So I just want to remind people who are listening of Lucy's book, which is called Approaching Chaos, Could an Ancient Archetype Save 21st Century Civilization? So thanks again, Lucy. It's been really great to have you on the show. Cheers. Thanks, Hugh. It's been really good.