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Why Did Tartaria Disappear From Every Map? · Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History

0:01
Imagine you wake up tomorrow morning, you grab
0:04
your phone, you open Google Maps, and everything
0:06
is different.
0:07
The continents look wrong.
0:09
Borders are shifted.
0:10
Russia is no longer there.
0:12
Instead, in big letters, it says Tartaria, a
0:15
name stretching from the Baltic Sea to the
0:17
Pacific Ocean.
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You search online.
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Nothing.
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You ask your history teacher.
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They have no idea what you're talking about.
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But the map doesn't lie.
0:25
It's there.
0:26
And you're the only one who can see
0:28
it.
0:31
Welcome to this episode.
0:32
We're going to talk about Tartaria,
0:34
an empire that filled half the world's maps
0:36
for 200 years, and that almost no one
0:40
has heard of today.
0:41
We're going to find out whether it was
0:44
the greatest civilization the world ever forgot,
0:47
or whether it was just a name on
0:50
the map.
0:51
Sit back.
1:14
Let's begin.
1:15
I want to start by telling you about
1:17
a map.
1:18
It's from 1624, and it was drawn by
1:21
Abraham Ortelius.
1:23
He was the first person to create a
1:25
true modern atlas, a book of maps that
1:29
more or less fit together.
1:31
On that map, somewhere in Asia, it says
1:34
Tartaria.
1:35
It's not a small region.
1:37
It's enormous.
1:38
From the Caspian Sea to the Pacific, from
1:41
Siberia to the Himalayas, And it's not just
1:45
Ortelius.
1:46
I've seen dozens of maps from the 16th
1:49
and 17th centuries.
1:50
French, Dutch, German, English.
1:54
They all call it something similar.
1:57
Magna Tartaria, Grand Tartarie, Great Tartary.
2:02
In 1771, the first edition of
2:07
the Encyclopædia Britannica was published.
2:10
It says Tartary is a vast country in
2:14
the northern part of Asia, bordering Siberia to
2:17
the north and west, and which is called
2:20
Great Tartary.
2:22
Great Tartary.
2:23
The largest country in the world, according to
2:27
Britannica, in 1771.
2:30
So what happened?
2:32
Because by 1850, Tartary is gone.
2:36
Gone from the maps, gone from the Encyclopædia, gone
2:39
from memory.
2:40
Ask a historian today what Tartaria was, most
2:44
will shrug.
2:45
Some will say it was an old name
2:47
for Siberia.
2:48
Others will call it a misunderstanding.
2:53
But here is what keeps me awake at
2:55
night.
2:55
If it was just a mistake, why was
2:58
it on every map for 200 years?
3:02
If it was just another name for Russia,
3:05
why did it suddenly disappear?
3:08
And if it never existed, why are so
3:11
many different people talking about it?
3:15
In the last 10 years, Tartaria has become
3:17
one of the most debated conspiracy theories on
3:21
the internet.
3:22
On YouTube, videos on the subject have hundreds
3:24
of millions of views.
3:26
On Reddit, thousands of users discuss the mud
3:29
flood.
3:30
The flood of mud that supposedly buried Tartaria
3:34
cities in the 19th century.
3:37
On TikTok, people zoom in on old photographs
3:40
on buildings with windows underground and ask, why
3:44
is the first floor buried?
3:47
And in the center of it all is
3:49
a question that no one really can answer.
3:52
What happened to Tartaria?
3:56
Today we are going to dig into that
3:57
question.
3:58
We are going to look on maps, the
4:00
buildings, the photographs, the documents.
4:03
We will hear what the proponents say and
4:05
what the skeptics answer.
4:07
And in the end, we will try to
4:09
figure out what is fact, what is interpretation,
4:12
and what might be visual thinking.
4:14
But before we begin a small disclaimer, I
4:17
am Rene.
4:18
I speak Danish and as a Dane, I
4:20
have a special talent for pronouncing foreign names,
4:23
especially those with lots of consonants, few vowels,
4:26
or just a general resistance to Dane's tongue
4:29
placement, just slightly wrong.
4:32
So when I say Tartaria, Tunguska, or something
4:34
else, please bear with me.
4:36
I promise that the content is better than
4:38
the pronunciation.
4:42
Let's start.
4:46
What does the historian say?
4:48
If you ask an ordinary historian today what
4:51
Tartaria was, you will get roughly this answer.
4:55
Tartaria was never a country.
4:57
It was a geographical concept.
5:00
Just as when we say Scandinavia today about
5:03
a region with several countries, European cartographers in
5:08
the 16th and 17th centuries used the word
5:10
Tartary for the vast areas of Central Asia
5:14
and Siberia that they do not know very
5:17
well.
5:18
The name comes from Tatar, a term for
5:22
various Turkic and Mongol peoples who lived on
5:25
the steppes.
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And why are they called Tatars?
5:29
Well, that takes us back to the 13th
5:32
century.
5:35
The Mongol invasion of Europe under Genghis Khan
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and his successors was so brutal that the
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Europeans began associating the invaders with Tartaros, the
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Greek word for the underworld, a place so
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deep that even the gods feared it.
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Tartar – Tartaros, well, it's hard not to
5:53
see the connection.
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So the name was originally a mix of
5:57
real people, the Tatars – and a mythological reference
6:01
to hell.
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But here is what is important.
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Tartary was not a central governed state.
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It was never an empire with a capital,
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an emperor, a flag, or an army.
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It was a cartographic catch-all.
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When European cartographers didn't know who lived somewhere
6:26
or which kingdom controlled the area, they simply
6:28
just wrote Tartary.
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It was convenient, it was imprecise, and it
6:34
struck for centuries.
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During the 17th and 18th centuries, Russia began
6:39
expanding into Siberia.
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Cities like Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Irkutsk were founded.
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Borders were drawn, and as the Russians gained
6:49
control over these areas, Tartary disappeared from the
6:53
maps, replaced by the Russian Empire.
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By the 19th century, Tartary was largely gone,
6:59
not because anyone hid it, but because it
7:02
was no longer useful.
7:04
That is the official explanation, and it's actually
7:07
quite reasonable.
7:10
But there is a problem.
7:12
There are maps, many maps, where Tartary is
7:15
just an empty region.
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There are maps with cities, with borders, with
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rivers, with mountain ranges, descriptions of governments, of
7:24
emperors, of flags, and that starts to look
7:28
like something other than unknown territory.
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Let me give you an example.
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In 1650, the Dutch cartographer Jan Bloh published
7:38
a large world atlas, one of the maps
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where it says Tartary or the Empire of
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the Great Khan.
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It says that in plain text, not region,
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not unknown, but empire, and he's not the
7:55
only one.
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In 1626, the map of the English cartographer
8:00
John Speed, it says a new map of
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Tartary, and the map shows borders, cities, and
8:07
even an image of the Great Khan.
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So the question is, if Tartary was just
8:14
a loose concept, why did the greatest cartographers
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of the time read it like a real
8:19
kingdom?
8:21
And that brings us to the first crack
8:23
in the official narrative.
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Let's travel back to the 1730s.
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St. Petersburg, the Russian Empire, is becoming a
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European power.
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The city is new.
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Peter the Great built it on a swamp,
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and in the middle of the city, in
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the Kunstkamera, stands a giant globe.
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It's called the Gottorp Globe.
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It's over three meters in diameter, and it's
8:50
covered with copper plates engraved with a world
8:53
map.
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The globe was completed in the 1650s in
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Germany.
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Peter the Great received it as a gift
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and brought it to Russia.
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And on that globe, something interesting is written.
9:07
On the Asian part of the globe, east
9:09
of the Ural mountains, it says Tartaria Magna,
9:13
or Great Tartary.
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It was not an empty region, but a
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named territory with borders.
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And here's what is important.
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The globe was renovated in the 1750s after
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a fire.
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The original copper plates melted, and they were
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replaced with new ones.
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But Tartaria was not removed.
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It's still there.
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So, if Russia had an interest in erasing
9:40
Tartaria from history, why didn't they remove it
9:43
from their own globe?
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And it's not the only globe.
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In Moscow, in the State Historical Museum, there's
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another globe.
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It was made in the 1650s by Jan
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Blå.
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Again, it says Tartaria.
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Again, it hasn't been removed.
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It's as if Tartaria was a part of
10:03
the normal world view, until it suddenly wasn't.
10:08
Let's jump forward to 1771.
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Encyclopædia Britannica.
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In the first edition, Tartaria is described as
10:18
a country, a large country, with provinces, Muscovite
10:21
Tartaria, Independent Tartary, Chinese Tartaria.
10:25
But already in the second edition, just a
10:28
few years later, the word begins to disappear.
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By the 17th century editions, Tartaria is reduced
10:34
to a footnote, and by the 20th century
10:37
editions, it's gone.
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The question is why?
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The official explanation says, better geographical knowledge.
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The Russians mapped Siberia Tartaria become obsolete.
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But that doesn't explain why the word also
10:53
disappears from the Russian maps.
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Or are there documents well into the 19th
11:01
century where the Russian official writes about Tartaria
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as a country one travels to?
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Let me read you a quote.
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In 1734, Empress Anna Ioannovna issued a decree.
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It was about trade routes.
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It says, permission to travel to Great Tartary,
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to Bukhara, to Samarkand.
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That's in an official Russian decree.
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Not a foreign cartographer, not a conspiracy theorist,
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but the Russian empress's own government.
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If Tartaria didn't exist, what were they traveling
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to?
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Now we come to the heart of the
11:51
mystery.
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The alternative theory, with thousands of people online
11:55
spending hours researching, says something completely different from
12:00
the official story.
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It says, Tartaria was real.
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It was a global civilization, perhaps the most
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advanced of its time.
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It stretched from Eastern Europe to America.
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It has colossal cities, impressive architecture, and technology
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that we only rediscovered in the 20th century.
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And then, somewhere, sometime in the 18th, 19th
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century, it was destroyed, not by war, not
12:26
by disease, but by a deliberate act, by
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a global elite that wanted to hide the
12:33
truth about our past.
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It sounds wild, I know.
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But let me present the theory as the
12:40
proponents do.
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The first evidence is the buried buildings.
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If you walk through old districts like St.
12:49
Petersburg, New York, Paris, Berlin, you will notice
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something strange.
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Many of the older buildings has windows that
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start below ground level.
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Not basement windows, but regular windows with decorations
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that continues into the ground.
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In some places, the entire first floor is
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buried.
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You enter through a door that was once
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on the first floor.
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Now it's in the basement.
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So what happened?
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The official explanation says, cities raised their street
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level over time due to floods, sewer systems,
13:26
or planning.
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The alternative explanations say, a global mud flood.
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A single catastrophic event buried the cities in
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one moment.
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And the evidence, yeah, look at the photographs
13:38
from the 19th century.
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There are images from cities like Seattle, Chicago,
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San Francisco showing excavations where dirt is being
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removed from the streets, revealing windows and doors
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that were previously buried.
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In some pictures, workers are standing down at
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what once was street level with buildings original
14:04
entrance above their head.
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The theory says, the disaster happened, the cities
14:11
were buried, survivors dug into the upper floors
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and built a new street on top of
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the rubble.
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And then we forgot what happened.
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Take a flight, at least in your mind,
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to San Francisco.
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Look at the Palace of Fine Arts.
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Large domes, columns, classical proportions.
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Now go to Moscow.
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Look at St. Basil's Cathedral, domes. Arches, same
14:43
style.
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Now go to Beijing.
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Look at the Forbidden City, domes. Arches, same
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idea.
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Now go to Budapest, to Paris, to Rome,
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to Istanbul.
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Everywhere you see buildings with an architectural similarity
15:00
as if they were drawn by the same
15:02
hand.
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The official explanation says it's neoclassicism, a style
15:08
that spread across the world in the 18th
15:10
and 19th centuries.
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The alternative explanation says it's Tartarian architecture, remnants
15:18
of a global civilization that later powers took
15:22
over and called their own.
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And here is one of the most cited
15:27
arguments.
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Many of these buildings are said to have
15:31
been built in the 19th century, often in
15:34
record time, without modern machinery, without construction cranes,
15:39
without photographic documentation of the building process.
15:43
And yet they stand there, perfect, monumental.
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How?
15:55
Next evidence.
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The lost cities.
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On old maps of Tartary, there are cities
16:01
marked, dozens of cities, that does not exist
16:04
on any modern map.
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Cities like Grustina, Serponov, Kashli.
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Historian says that they were never really cities,
16:13
cartographers invented them.
16:16
Proponent says they were real cities, they were
16:20
buried or destroyed and then removed from history.
16:23
And then there is Mangazeya, a city in
16:27
Siberia.
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On old maps, it is marked as a
16:31
wealthy trading city.
16:33
In official history, it flourished in the early
16:36
17th century and then disappeared.
16:39
Why?
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The official explanation, the city burned, trade routes
16:44
changed.
16:45
The alternative explanation says that the city was
16:48
a part of Tartary.
16:49
When Tartary fell, Mangazeya fell with it.
16:56
Next evidence.
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Technology.
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This is where it gets really speculative, but
17:01
also fascinating.
17:04
Proponents point out to old photographs of buildings
17:06
with metal spirals on the roof, copper balls
17:10
on domes and antennas, long before the radios
17:13
was invented.
17:15
They point to Nikola Tesla, one of history's
17:18
greatest inventors, who worked on wireless energy.
17:23
His Wardenclyffe tower from 1901 looks like
17:27
something that could have stood in the
17:30
Tartary.
17:31
The theory says that Tartary had free energy.
17:35
They draw electricity directly from the atmosphere.
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That is why there's no chimneys.
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That is why they had domes and spirals.
17:46
When Tartary fell, the technology was concealed, because
17:49
it was dangerous to those who made money
17:52
from coal and oil.
17:53
Is it true?
17:54
We don't know, but it's a part of
17:56
the story.
18:00
Next evidence.
18:01
The maps.
18:04
Proponents shows maps after map from the 16th,
18:08
the 17th and the 18th centuries, all with
18:11
Tartary written in large letters over half history,
18:15
sorry, half of Asia.
18:17
They ask, if Tartary was a myth, why
18:20
did it keep appearing for 200 years?
18:25
Cartographers were stupid.
18:28
They didn't just copy each other's mistakes.
18:31
They used travelers' accounts, merchants' reports and diplomats'
18:35
dispatches.
18:37
When everyone said the same thing, that there
18:40
was a large kingdom in the east, there
18:43
were probably something to it.
18:47
Next evidence.
18:48
The erasure.
18:50
And now we come to one of the
18:51
most controversial points.
18:53
The theory says that Tartary didn't disappear on
18:55
its own.
18:56
It was actually erased.
18:58
In the 19th century, at the time Tartary
19:01
vanishes from the maps, something else happens.
19:04
Libraries burn, documents disappear, archives were closed.
19:09
History is rewritten by those who won.
19:14
Who were they?
19:16
Well, there's different answers.
19:18
Some points to the Roman, sorry, to the
19:20
Roman of destiny in Russia.
19:22
They held power over the areas that were
19:25
once Tartary.
19:26
They wrote history so that themselves appears as
19:30
civilizers and not as conquerors.
19:34
Others point to the Catholic Church or the
19:37
Jesuit order, which supposedly had an interest in
19:40
hiding a non-Christian civilization.
19:43
Still others point to an international elite of
19:46
bankers and politicians, the same ones who, according
19:50
to the theory, still rules the world today.
19:54
It's a great narrative.
19:57
It has elements of archaeology, cartography, architecture, technology,
20:04
and conspiracy.
20:06
The question is, does it hold up?
20:10
To answer that, we have to go deeper.
20:12
We have to look at the evidence one
20:14
piece at a time and see who's strong,
20:17
what is weak, and what might be a
20:19
good story.
20:20
So let's do that.
20:25
Now begins the real work.
20:27
We are going down the rabbit hole, the
20:29
connections, the patterns, and related mysteries that makes
20:33
the Tartary history so compelling.
20:36
Because Tartary is not just about Tartary, it's
20:39
about something bigger.
20:41
The question is of why we believe what
20:44
we believe.
20:46
Let's start with one of the most concrete
20:48
physical evidence, the buried buildings.
20:52
If you walk through Seattle's Underground, a tourist
20:57
attraction where the old streets are preserved beneath
21:00
the new city, you can see storefronts with
21:06
windows and doors that are now underground.
21:09
Official explanation, after a major fire in 1889,
21:14
the city decided to raise the street levels
21:16
to prevent flooding.
21:18
The new city was built on top of
21:19
the old.
21:21
The alternative explanation, the fire was an excuse.
21:24
The original buildings were buried by mud.
21:28
People dug into them and raised the streets
21:30
to hide the evidence.
21:33
The problem, there is documentation of the fire.
21:37
There are city plans showing how the streets
21:39
were raised.
21:40
There are photographs of the reconstruction.
21:44
So Seattle's Underground is hardly evidence of a
21:47
global catastrophe, but there are other places.
21:50
In St. Petersburg, a city built on a
21:53
swamp, streets have also been raised several times,
21:57
because otherwise the city would have drown.
22:01
In Paris, during Baron Haussmann's renovation in the
22:05
19th century, entire neighborhoods were demolished and rebuilt.
22:11
Old streets disappeared, new ones appeared.
22:14
In Rome, in the Roman Forum, the oldest
22:19
buildings lie several meters below the current street
22:22
level, because the city was built on top
22:24
of itself for 2,000 years.
22:27
The point is, city grows, layer upon layer.
22:30
That's not a conspiracy, it's archaeology 101.
22:37
But proponents of Tartaria claims that layers are
22:39
too uniform, that the burial happens too quickly,
22:43
that there's no intermediate debris, only clean soil.
22:47
Is that true?
22:48
Here we run into a problem.
22:50
There is no scientific studies of soil layers
22:53
that confirms a mud flood in the 18th
22:56
or in the 19th century.
23:00
Geologists can date soil layers.
23:02
If a global catastrophe had occurred, there would
23:05
be traces in ice cores, in tree rings,
23:08
in sediment layers.
23:10
Those traces do not exist.
23:13
That doesn't mean that there couldn't have been
23:16
local floods.
23:17
They have, in 1815 – the year without summer,
23:22
after the Tambora volcanic eruption, there was crop
23:26
failure across the globe.
23:28
But that was ash in the atmosphere, not
23:31
mud over cities.
23:33
So the mud flood was a global event.
23:37
Should we say that lacked geological evidence?
23:41
That is a Then we have the architecture.
23:45
It's true that there are similarities between buildings
23:48
in different parts of the world.
23:50
But there are also explanations.
23:52
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the neoclassicism
23:55
was the dominant style in Europe and its
23:57
colonies.
23:58
Buildings were meant to look like ancient Greece
24:01
and Rome, columns, domes, symmetry.
24:06
When the United States was founded, the capital,
24:08
Washington, D.C., was built in the neoclassical
24:12
style because Americans saw themselves as heirs to
24:15
the Roman democracy, or republic to be precise.
24:20
When Russia wanted to modernize under Peter the
24:23
Great and later Catherine the Great, they brought
24:25
Italian architects to build palaces and cathedrals in
24:29
the same styles.
24:32
When Britain built in India, in cities like
24:35
Mumbai and Kolkata, they built in the neoclassical
24:39
style because that is how they built.
24:43
So the similarities can be explained by cultural
24:47
diffusion, not by a global civilization.
24:51
But proponents respond, if they built in the
24:54
same style...
24:57
Sorry, why did they build in the same style
25:00
in Australia, in New Zealand, and in South
25:02
Africa?
25:04
Well, because British architects traveled to the colonies.
25:09
Why did they build in China?
25:11
Because the European powers and later Chinese rulers
25:16
with European inspiration built in the style that
25:19
was modern.
25:20
It's boring, it's prosaic, but it's also the
25:23
most plausible explanation than a hidden civilization.
25:30
Then there's the maps.
25:32
The maps are perhaps the strongest argument, because
25:35
there is no doubt that Tartary appears on
25:37
hundreds of old maps.
25:40
But the question is, what does it mean?
25:43
Historians like Matthew Edney, a professor of cartography,
25:47
explains the maps of the 16th and 17th
25:50
centuries were not like maps, like our maps
25:54
today.
25:55
They were a mixture of knowledge, rumors, guesswork,
26:00
and political messaging.
26:01
When a cartographer wrote Tattooey, it could mean
26:06
Tatars live here, or here in this area
26:10
we don't know, or here is the old
26:13
Mongol Empire.
26:15
It was not a precise definition of a
26:18
state, or should I say a delineation of
26:22
a state.
26:23
And here's an important point.
26:26
Tattooey borders changed dramatically from map to map.
26:29
Sometimes it goes to the Volga, other times
26:34
it goes to the Pacific, sometimes it includes
26:37
China, other times not.
26:39
If Tattooey was a real empire, the borders
26:42
should have been more fixed, and they are
26:45
not.
26:47
So the maps does not support the theory
26:50
of a central governed kingdom.
26:51
But they also does not support the official
26:55
narrative that Tattooey was just an unknown territory.
27:02
Because there's too many details, too many cities,
27:05
too many descriptions.
27:07
The truth is probably somewhere between.
27:10
Tattooey was a concept, but a concept with
27:13
historical content.
27:16
Like the Orient or the Levant, words that
27:20
covers real places but without precise borders.
27:28
Where does the territory theory actually come from?
27:32
Well, it's not an old tradition, it's a
27:34
modern phenomenon.
27:36
The early sources I can find are from
27:39
the 1990s Russia.
27:43
There, alternative historians like Nikolai Levashov and Anatoly
27:47
Fomenko spoke of a hidden Russian past.
27:52
Levashov is a self-proclaimed academic who wrote
27:55
books about Slavic-Aryan empires.
27:58
He claimed that Russia had actually ruled the
28:01
entire world until the West conspired to hide
28:04
it.
28:05
Fomenko is a mathematician who claims that all
28:12
of the ancient history is invented and most
28:15
of events actually happened in the Middle Ages.
28:20
Both were widely rejected by historians, but the
28:23
ideas spread online and they became mixed with
28:27
maps, photographs, and architectural observations.
28:32
In the 2010s, interest exploded.
28:36
YouTube channels like Mind Unveiled and Tartaria Explained
28:40
compiled the evidence into hours-long videos.
28:45
The Reddit forum, r/CulturalLayer, which originally dealt
28:51
with archaeological layers in cities, became a center
28:54
for the Tartaria discussion.
28:57
And suddenly, there was a movement.
29:03
And what does Russia say about this?
29:06
And here there's something that surprises many.
29:09
Official history in Russia today also does not
29:12
recognize Tartaria as an empire.
29:15
Russian historians explain Tartaria in the same way
29:18
as Western one does, as a geographical concept.
29:24
But there is a nuance.
29:25
In recent years, there has been official events
29:28
using the word Tartaria in a positive context.
29:33
In 2018, Vladimir Putin presented the president of
29:37
Tatarstan, the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, with
29:41
a copy of an old map showing Tartaria.
29:44
This was interpreted as a symbolic gesture, an
29:47
acknowledgment of the region's history, and not a
29:50
confirmation of an empire.
29:52
But conspiracy theorists saw it as proof that
29:57
even Putin knows Tartaria was real.
30:01
In 2022, the Russian Academy of Science held
30:05
a seminar titled, From the Tatar Empire to
30:09
the Russian Empire under Peter the Great.
30:13
The wording is interesting.
30:15
Tatar Empire, not Tartaria.
30:17
And the seminar was about state formation, not
30:21
conspiracy.
30:23
But proponents cite it as with yet more
30:27
evidence.
30:28
So what is going on?
30:30
Is Russia reintroducing Tartaria into the history textbooks?
30:34
I don't think so.
30:36
I think it was an attempt to include
30:38
Tatarstan and Siberia's history in the Russian narrative
30:42
without challenging the official chronology.
30:46
But it creates confusion, and confusion is fertile
30:49
ground for theories.
30:52
Then there is the connections.
30:55
The Tartaria theory is rarely alone.
30:57
It's often connected to another alternative histories.
31:02
The mud flood, which we already have discussed.
31:05
The white pyramids of China, which some believe
31:09
are evidence of a global civilization.
31:12
Lost technology, which Tesla allegedly rediscovered.
31:17
Secret societies, which supposedly hides the truth.
31:20
The New Chronology, which claims that our entire
31:24
calendar is wrong.
31:26
The deeper you dig, the more connected it
31:28
becomes.
31:29
And that is what both theories, strength and
31:32
weakness.
31:33
Strength, it feels like you're discovering a network
31:37
of hidden knowledge.
31:38
Weakness, when one piece falls like the mud flood,
31:42
the whole house of cards is collapsing.
31:48
So who started this?
31:51
Let's try to find the early sources of
31:53
the Tartaria theory as we know it today.
31:56
I took through forums, books and videos.
32:00
It appears that the theory in modern form
32:02
was born on the internet around 2015-2016.
32:08
Before that, there was Shattered References, Levashov, Fomenko
32:12
and a few YouTube videos.
32:15
But it wasn't until people started sharing maps
32:18
and photographs on Reddit and Facebook that it
32:21
became a movement.
32:23
One of the first major videos was Tartaria
32:26
The Lost Empire uploaded in 2016.
32:29
It has over 1 million views.
32:32
Today, there are hundreds of channels.
32:34
Some of them have well over 100,000
32:37
subscribers, some over a million.
32:41
And here's what is important.
32:43
None of these channels present new evidence.
32:46
They reuse the same maps, the same photograph,
32:49
the same arguments.
32:51
This suggests that the theory isn't growing because
32:54
new evidence is emerging.
32:56
It's growing because the story it tells is
32:59
compelling.
33:00
And that brings us to the central questions.
33:03
Why do we believe it?
33:10
We heard the theory, now let's hear the
33:13
critic.
33:14
And the critic is harsh.
33:16
Let me introduce you to one of the
33:17
strongest opponents I have found, Aidan Mattis.
33:21
He's a historian specializing in Celtic history and
33:25
medieval studies.
33:26
He runs a YouTube channel called The Lore
33:29
Lodge.
33:32
In 2023, he made a series totaling over
33:37
three hours on Tartaria.
33:38
He goes through every single piece of evidence
33:41
and dismisses it.
33:43
Let me summarize his main points.
33:47
First, the maps.
33:49
Mattis points out that the maps proponents cite
33:53
are often misunderstood.
33:55
On many maps, Tartaria appears, but also do
33:58
Siberia, Russia, and China as separate regions.
34:04
The maps do not show a unified empire.
34:07
It shows a mosaic of people and areas.
34:10
Furthermore, proponents often quote a single sentence from
34:15
an encyclopedia but ignore the rest.
34:19
In the 1771 Encyclopedia Britannica, it is true
34:24
that Tartaria is described as a vast country,
34:28
but it also says it's a part of
34:29
Asia, not an independent state, and that it
34:36
is inhabited by Tartars, Mongols, and other nomadic
34:39
peoples.
34:40
That is not a description of an empire.
34:44
His next point is the architecture.
34:47
Mattis points out that the buildings proponents call
34:50
Tartarian were actually built in different centuries by
34:55
different architects for different purposes.
34:59
Yes, there are similarities, but the similarities are
35:02
because architects copied each other's styles, not because
35:06
they are all built for the same empire.
35:08
Moreover, there are blueprints, letters, and documentation for
35:13
many of these buildings that were constructed.
35:16
Take the 1893 Chicago World Fair.
35:22
Proponents say that the exhibition buildings were Tartarian
35:25
ruins that were reused, but Mattis finds contemporary
35:29
newspaper articles describing the construction process, foundation work,
35:35
scaffolding, workers.
35:37
There are photographs of the construction.
35:39
There are accounts, ledgers for materials, everything that
35:43
indicates that the buildings were built and not
35:46
reused.
35:48
His next point is the mud flood.
35:51
Here, Mattis is relentless.
35:53
He points out that there is no geological
35:56
proof of a global mud flood in the 18th
35:59
or 19th centuries.
36:00
There is also no contemporary accounts of such
36:03
a catastrophe.
36:05
If a mud tsunami had buried cities around
36:08
the world, someone would have written about it.
36:11
They didn't.
36:14
What about the buried windows?
36:15
Mattis explains that it is often due to
36:18
urban renewal.
36:20
Cities raised streets to improve civil systems or
36:24
to protect against river flooding and not rain
36:26
from the sky.
36:28
In Seattle, for example, streets were raised after
36:31
a fire, not by a mud flood.
36:34
And there is documentation on the decision.
36:36
There are meeting minutes, there are city plans,
36:39
and there are newspaper articles.
36:41
Nothing suggests a conspiracy.
36:45
Then his next point is the technology.
36:47
Mattis points out that there is no physical
36:50
proof of Tartarian energy generators, no machines, no
36:53
devices, no technical drawings.
36:57
The spiral and ball proponents point out are
37:01
ornamentation, not technology.
37:08
Moreover, most of the buildings with these spirals
37:11
were built in the 19th century, long after
37:14
Tartaria disappeared from maps.
37:17
So even if the spirals had a function,
37:20
which they don't appear to do, it would
37:24
have been too recent to be Tartarian.
37:27
Then there is the sources.
37:29
And here he comes with the most devastating
37:31
critics.
37:33
Mattis points out that many of the sources'
37:36
proponents are unreliable.
37:38
For instance, they often cite a book by
37:40
Connor MacDari from the 1920s.
37:43
MacDari claims Irish to be the world's oldest
37:47
language and that all civilization originated in Ireland.
37:54
MacDari was not a historian.
37:56
He was an amateur.
37:57
His theories have been rejected for nearly 100
38:00
years.
38:01
Yet, the Tartaria proponents cite claim him as
38:04
an authority.
38:06
Similarly, they cite Nikolai Levashov.
38:11
Those books have been declared extremist in Russia,
38:15
and Anatoly Fomenko, whose New Chronology has been
38:19
rejected by virtually all historians.
38:23
Mattis' point is, if you only cite discredited
38:27
sources, something is wrong.
38:30
And then there is the burden of proof.
38:33
And the final critic is mythological.
38:36
Proponents of the Tartaria theory claim that there
38:40
has been a global conspiracy to hide the
38:42
truth.
38:44
The problem is that such a conspiracy would
38:47
require thousands of people to participate.
38:50
Cartographers, historians, architects, archivists, librarians, politicians, and
38:57
so on.
38:58
And there is no proof of such a
39:00
conspiracy ever took place.
39:02
There's no secret documents, no leaked emails, no
39:04
witnesses.
39:05
All proponents has the absence of evidence that
39:10
some document has been lost and for some
39:14
questions that remain unanswered.
39:18
But the absence of evidence is not evidence
39:20
of a conspiracy.
39:22
It's just absence of evidence.
39:28
Mattis' conclusion is clear.
39:29
Tartaria was not an empire.
39:31
It was a geographical concept used during a
39:36
period when Europeans had limited knowledge of Asia.
39:40
When knowledge improved, the concept disappeared.
39:44
The matter, it's called urban renewal.
39:47
The architecture, yeah, that's neoclassicism.
39:50
The maps, that's misunderstanding.
39:52
The technology, fantasy.
39:55
The theory originated on the internet in 1910s,
39:59
built on discredited sources and selective reading of
40:03
historical document.
40:04
It is not supported by scientific research and
40:08
it has no evidence that cannot be explained
40:10
otherwise.
40:11
So is the case closed?
40:13
But why?
40:15
Because critics like Mattis also have their blind
40:18
spots and let me explain.
40:24
We heard the theory, we heard the critics
40:26
and now let's try to separate the things.
40:30
What are documented facts?
40:32
What are likely and what is possible?
40:34
And what are speculation?
40:36
Let's take it step by step.
40:40
We start with the documented facts.
40:42
The following thing we can say with high
40:44
certainty.
40:47
It's a fact that Tartaria was a name
40:50
on old maps.
40:52
There are hundreds of maps.
40:54
The name disappeared in the 19th century.
40:57
That's also a fact.
40:59
There are buildings with buried windows in many
41:02
old cities.
41:03
That is a fact.
41:05
There are architectural similarities between buildings on different
41:09
continents.
41:11
That is fact.
41:12
There is no geological proof of global mud flood
41:15
in the 18th and the 19th century.
41:18
That's a fact.
41:19
There are no contemporary account of such a
41:22
catastrophe.
41:23
That's a fact.
41:24
The alternative Tartaria theory emerged on the internet
41:29
in the 1910s.
41:31
That's a fact.
41:32
This is the core.
41:34
Everything else is interpretation.
41:37
So if you look at the likely conclusions
41:41
and we look at the evidence, the following
41:44
are likely.
41:45
Tartary was not an empire in the modern
41:47
sense.
41:48
There is no evidence of a central governance,
41:51
fixed borders, or permanent institutions.
41:56
The mud flood was a series of local events
41:59
and not a global catastrophe.
42:01
Cities waste streets for practical reasons, floods, sewer
42:05
systems, fires etc.
42:07
The architectural similarities are due to cultural diffusion,
42:12
not a global civilization.
42:14
Neoclassicism was an international style in the 18th
42:19
and 19th centuries.
42:22
And most of the Tartaria theory resources are
42:26
unreliable or discredited.
42:28
Magdari, Levashov, Formenko.
42:32
None of them are recognized historians.
42:36
Now we come to the possibilities and here
42:38
it becomes more open.
42:42
Could there have been a political entity in
42:44
Central Asia that Europeans called Tartary?
42:48
Yes.
42:49
The Mongol Empire was such an entity.
42:52
But it disappeared in the 14th century, long
42:55
before most Tartary maps were even drawn.
43:00
Could documents have been lost intentionally or unintentionally?
43:04
Yes.
43:05
Archives burned.
43:06
Documents disappeared.
43:07
It happens all the time.
43:09
But that is not evidence that it was
43:12
coordinated to hide Tartary.
43:17
Could a natural disaster have occurred in the
43:20
18th century that affected large areas?
43:22
Yes.
43:23
We know that.
43:24
The large volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1783
43:28
affected all of Europe.
43:29
And then there was the Tampoa in 1815
43:33
that affected the whole globe.
43:35
But none of them buried cities in mud.
43:40
And now we go into speculation.
43:45
And here is where the theory leaves the
43:48
evidence behind.
43:51
That Tartary was a global civilization with advanced
43:54
technology.
43:55
We have no evidence of that.
43:57
That Tartary was deliberately destroyed by an elite.
44:00
Again, no evidence.
44:03
That there are hidden archives with the true
44:06
history.
44:07
No evidence.
44:10
That the technology was based on free energy
44:12
from the atmosphere.
44:14
No evidence.
44:15
This is speculation.
44:17
Not necessarily wrong, but it's not supported by
44:19
the data.
44:21
But if you look at the unanswered questions,
44:24
and that is what still bothers me.
44:26
After reading Mattis critics, after reviewing the evidence,
44:30
there are questions that official history does not
44:33
really answer.
44:34
The first question.
44:36
Why is Tartary detailed on some maps?
44:39
If it was just a concept.
44:42
Why do cartographers mark specific cities?
44:49
Why draw borders?
44:50
Why describe the government?
44:54
This is not terra incognita.
44:56
That is Tatar empire.
45:00
The next question is, why does Tartary disappear
45:03
so suddenly?
45:04
Yes, I agree, knowledge improve.
45:07
But that does not remove a name that
45:09
has been used for 200 years overnight without
45:12
something happened.
45:13
So, what happened?
45:17
Question three.
45:20
Who were the Tatars?
45:21
Official history says that they were Mongols and
45:24
Turkic nomads.
45:25
But some sources describe them as tall, fair
45:28
-haired, blue-eyed.
45:31
Not like Mongols.
45:37
Are they just bad descriptions, or is something
45:40
else going on?
45:42
So, next one.
45:44
Why are there so many Russian documents mentioning
45:46
Tartary as a country?
45:49
We saw the 1734 decree has no misunderstanding.
45:53
This is an official document.
45:55
If Tartary does not exist, why did the
45:58
Russian empress write about it?
46:01
Why didn't she know?
46:03
Question five.
46:05
Why are there so many architectural similarities that
46:09
are hard to explain by simple cultural diffusion?
46:13
I'm thinking of building with identical proportions across
46:17
continents, built in the same decades, with no
46:20
visible communication between the architects.
46:24
Is this a just coincidence, or is this
46:26
a common source?
46:31
And here is my honest assessment.
46:33
The official history explains a lot.
46:36
It explains the maps, it explains the names,
46:38
it explains the buried windows, it explains the
46:40
architecture.
46:42
But there are remnants, small nagging remnants that
46:45
does not quite capture.
46:47
And those remnants are what the Tartary theory
46:51
fits on.
46:53
Not because the theory is true, but because
46:56
it asks about something that official history has
47:00
never really answered.
47:02
What if Tartary was a political entity, not
47:05
just in the European sense?
47:08
What if it was a confederation of tribes
47:10
or city-states with a shared culture, but
47:14
without a central government?
47:17
What if it disappeared, wasn't an empire, but
47:21
a way of life?
47:22
What if the story of Tartary is the
47:24
story of how we forget?
47:27
That brings me to something neither proponents or
47:30
skeptics has talked about enough.
47:33
Maybe Tartary isn't about a lost empire.
47:36
Maybe it's about our long mysteries.
47:46
We live in a time when the world
47:48
has been fully mapped.
47:50
There are no blank spots on the globe
47:51
anymore.
47:53
There are no unknown continents, no hidden civilization
47:56
waiting to be discovered.
47:58
Satellites see everything.
47:59
Drones fly everywhere.
48:01
Google Earth has photographed every square meter.
48:06
And that's wonderful, but also a little sad,
48:09
because humans need mysteries.
48:12
We need something just beyond our grasp.
48:15
Tartary is such a mystery.
48:17
It's a story about an empire that was
48:20
filled half the world maps, and that almost
48:23
no one knows today.
48:26
It's a story about colossal buildings that looks
48:29
like that they were buried in mud, and
48:32
about windows that started underground.
48:35
It's a story about conspiracy, about hidden archives,
48:39
about an elite that deliberately erased our past.
48:43
That is compelling, but compelling is not the
48:48
same as true.
48:49
After digging through hundreds of sources, after reading
48:52
both proponents and skeptics, after looking at the
48:56
maps, the buildings, the photographs, I land here.
49:00
Tartary existed, but not as an empire.
49:04
It existed as a concept, a way for
49:07
Europeans to understand the vast eastern areas they
49:10
didn't know.
49:14
The mud plot existed, but not just as
49:17
a global catastrophe.
49:18
It existed as a local urban renewal, street
49:21
racing, civil systems, and rebuildings after fires.
49:25
The architecture existed, but there's no evidence of
49:29
a global civilization.
49:31
It's evidence that the, sorry, it's evidence that
49:36
architects in the 18th and 19th century copied
49:39
each other's styles, and that European powers exported
49:42
their building practices into the colonies.
49:45
The conspiracy, it only exists as the narrative.
49:49
There is no evidence that anyone deliberately erased
49:52
Tartary from history.
49:54
It's only the normal that knowledge changed, that
49:58
archives burned, that documents are lost, and that
50:01
history is always written by the victors.
50:08
But there is one thing I learned from
50:09
this research.
50:11
When people believe in Tartary, when they spend
50:14
hours investigating maps and photographs, when they share
50:17
videos on YouTube and discuss on Reddit, it's
50:20
not about a lost empire.
50:22
It's about trust.
50:24
Trust that official history has hidden something.
50:28
Trust that there is another truth, a truth
50:30
that is bigger, more fantastic, more meaningful than
50:33
the boring version that we learn in school.
50:37
And that trust is not entirely unfounded.
50:41
History is not objective.
50:44
It is written by people with opinions, interests,
50:46
and power.
50:48
There are things we do not know, things
50:51
that have been forgotten, things that have been
50:53
actively suppressed.
50:55
That's not a conspiracy.
50:57
That's history.
50:59
So what is Tartary?
51:01
Tartary is a mirror.
51:03
It reflects our own longing to find something
51:06
greater than ourself, something that can explain why
51:10
the world is the way it is.
51:12
And maybe that's okay.
51:14
Maybe we don't need to find it.
51:17
Maybe the search itself is valuable.
51:22
I started the episode with a question, what
51:24
happened to Tartaria?
51:26
Now, after hours of research, I think the
51:28
answer is both simpler and more complex than
51:31
I expected.
51:33
Tartary disappeared because the world changed.
51:36
Russia expanded.
51:38
Maps improved.
51:39
The concept became obsolete.
51:41
But Tartary also disappeared because we humans need
51:45
to forget.
51:46
We forget what doesn't fit into our world
51:49
view.
51:49
We forget that our knowledge is always incomplete.
51:53
We forget that history is always written by
51:55
someone with a purpose.
51:58
And then one day we discover an old
52:00
map and ask, what is this?
52:03
And the mystery begins again.
52:09
Thank you for listening.
52:11
In the next episode, we'll dive into
52:12
another forgotten chapter of history.
52:15
Until then, stay curious, stay critical, and don't
52:18
forget to ask questions, even when the answers
52:20
are uncomfortable.