Medieval Found Footage, Time Travel, And Advanced Civilizations
During the time between the now and the inauguration, I plan on trying some new things regarding my blog on Medium. Specifically, I plan on taking about a large number of new issues, instead of just doing politics like I am now.
This does not mean that I’m going to stop talking about politics, even ignoring my daily political podcast Peaceful Globalist Review and the fact that I have no plans of slowing down on Twitter I still have some issues that need to be addressed here, but it does mean I’m going to try some new things over the next two months.
My other interests; lost media, bizarre films, rom hacks, retro video games, and much more, have sadly been left to the side of the road to the point where my own personal blog barley feels personal. However, I plan to fix that starting now, this is day one of year one.
Over the weekend, I was catching up on Blameitonjorge — easily my favorite YouTuber for lost media — when I saw he did a video on a “lost media iceberg meme.” For those unaware, the iceberg meme is an image that shows different “layers of knowledge,” as the iceberg gets lower and lower — with each level getting more and more obscure. The meme is based on the fact that you only see a small amount of an iceberg when on the surface as most of the mass is on the bottom below the surface — which is also where the phrase “tip of the iceberg” comes from.
Near the very bottom of the iceberg is what the meme calls “medieval found footage.” Basically, it’s the idea that in the future, once humans event time travel, people will go back in time and record found-footage/documentary style films about the lives of people in Medieval Europe.
The idea of time travel has basically become nothing but science fiction — in spite of just how much of our popular culture is based around it. Easily the most famous British television series is Dr. Who, which is based around the concept of time travel. The Back To The Future trilogy remains one of the most popular film trilogies decades after its release in large part because of how it uses the concept. One would be hard-pressed to think of a television show where time travel was possible that didn’t take advantage of it, and even some shows bent the rules in order to get a time travel episode (such as the mostly realistic Disney sitcom Jesse).
It’s not even as if there’s a film or television show that was so awful it moved the idea out of public consciousness. Even on Mystery Science Theater 3000 the films based around time travel (Time Chasers, for example) were commonly considered some of the better movies on the show. The worst time travel movie I can think of, 2011’s The Time Machine That I Found At A Yard Sale, is a rather obscure film basically only known to people who live on the internet.
However, nothing about time travel is particularly impossible. All that is needed for forward time travel to be possible is for time distortion to be created. Meanwhile, all that is possible for backwards time travel to be possible is for there to be a code of some kind humans could enter in order to go back into the past. Are both of those things impossible? As it stands, I have no reason to believe that to be the case. The issue at hand, however, is not one of of the end result is possible, but one of if creating such a thing in the first place is possible.
Time distortion is not impossible, although creating such a thing is rather unlikely. The aforementioned time codes, however, are much more likely to be fully impossible — similar to motion, time is relative to the observer and as such a time code that would be needed for backwards time travel is about as likely as us suddenly rediscovering the Aether.
Those were my basics thoughts regarding first hearing that idea, however, this is only getting started. First off, there is a video on YouTube titled “Medieval Found Footage,” which is about a one minute long clip with no audio of what looks like a film taking place under feudalism. It should be noted that “feudalism” does not necessarily mean “Medieval Period,” as some nations, Russia under the Tsar for example, had feudalism after the concept of film was created. The Russian Revolution of 1917 actually took place half a decade after Woodrow Wilson made the first campaign ad film during the 1912 Presidential Election. For that matter, it is also possible that this is simply a little known old movie with the Medieval period as its setting.
Upon looking into it further, I was able to find an episode of the Dead Rabbit Radio podcast on this story. Basically, the story he tells is that a bunch of archeologists in the United Kingdom dug up a film strip of what appeared to be a documentary from Medieval Europe.
One thing I should note is that I have no idea where the host got this story from. The episode has a (now dead) link in the description labeled “Medieval Found Footage,” however that links to a history of found footage films that make no mention of this story. I should also note that, despite Dead Rabbit Radio being a rather small podcast, I’m near certain he is the primary source for this information. I was able to find an archived thread on 4chan’s /x/ board (the paranormal board of the website) about it dated 1/5/2020 — but even /x/ thought the idea was absurd. One user said they heard of it in a different iceberg meme about conspiracy theories, however, I was unable to find such an image and even then — where that came from I bluntly have no idea.
While the investigation of this specifically may end here, there is one more thing I would like to talk about. Dead Rabbit Radio mentions that it’s possible for a real film to be made during the Medieval period on the condition that film was developed simply a century or two earlier than believed. Something like this is not impossible, for decades people thought the first anime was created about a decade after the first anime was made (the first anime, for the record, was a three second motion picture titled Katsudō Shashin).
Dead Rabbit Radio goes into detail about how such a thing could even have been created, albeit tediously, using the technology of the era. Considering many Kings did have more wealth than they knew what to do with during times of stability (one king hired a man to try and figure out what pi would look like as a rational fraction, for example) something like this would also be far from impossible.
The first idea however, that humanity devolved faster than we currently realize, is one that is worth looking into. The most famous claims of early advancements come in the form of an old advanced civilization that was wiped out (those that Graham Hancock talks about) or the idea that dinosaurs were around only a few thousand years ago (this is a common claim made by Young Earth Creationists). Mind you, the claims of Young Earth Creationists are absurd while the claims of Hancock and the like are nothing more than a mild curiosity. However, that does not mean that all claims that we advanced faster than most realize are either wrong or worthless. Or, for that matter, the idea that ancient people used what they had in ways we would not have thought of.
Rather you believe this is a case of ancient people using technology in interesting ways, time travel, or an internet rumor, either way, this is a pretty cool story.
