WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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These standing stones are enormous
and made of solid granite.

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When you're near them,
they are genuinely impressive and imposing,

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the sort of thing that makes you wonder how
ancient people ever managed to raise them up,

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and to place them so precisely that
they act as an astronomical calendar.

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These particular stones don't
make you wonder that, though.

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Because these are the
Georgia Guidestones, in the USA,

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and they were put up in 1980 by modern people
with modern equipment.

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They are not a theme park
fiberglass replica, though,

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they're more than a hundred tons of rock and
they are built to last.

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Inscribed on them in eight languages are

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what seem to be rules for a
future post-apocalyptic civilisation,

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the sort of thing that maybe seemed
like a reasonable way

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to send a message to the far distant future

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in an era when the Cold War was looking dicey

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and Ronald Reagan's finger was
very close to the nuclear button.

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The person or people who paid for these stones
stayed anonymous,

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so no-one knows if they were actually intending
to troll conspiracy theorists.

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Maybe they really were just hoping to create
a modern Stonehenge,

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something that could be taken as
a set of principles

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for the world's population to follow as we
recovered after an apocalypse.

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This might seem like a reasonable purchase,
even altruistic from a certain perspective,

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if you're the sort of person who writes a
story in your head that says,

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yes, I'll be dead in a nuclear fireball,
but if civilization survives,

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perhaps someone will come across these,
perhaps some language will have survived,

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perhaps I will have influenced the entire
path of a civilization to come.

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It'd take a lot of money and a lot of ego,

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but then, it was America in the 1980s,

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so perhaps we should just be surprised that there
aren't more stones like this all over the place.

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Imagine a dozen different monuments,
all with different rules,

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and all being followed by a
different group of survivors.

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I don't normally speculate like this in videos,

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but these stones inspire some
pretty good stories.

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And some pretty bad ones, too.

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Because like I said, if you wanted to
inflame conspiracy theorists?

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Building a modern Stongehenge,
that acts as an astronomical calendar,

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with ten commandments
inscribed upon it,

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one of which says that you should
"guide reproduction wisely",

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and another says that it'd be
a really good idea

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to have a world population under 10%
of what it currently is,

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and doing all that while hiding your identity?

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Yes, I can see why that might make people with
a slightly tenuous grasp on reality a bit angry.

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All the best secret societies, after all,

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do put up giant monuments
advertising their goals for the world.

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Maybe someday we will know the real reasons
behind these stones:

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but until then there's a rule of thumb
called Occam's Razor.

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The simplest solution tends to be
the correct one.

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And a rich person who saw Stonehenge and thought
"I want one of those"

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is a pretty simple solution.

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♪ [a faint recording of the US Marine Band playing
"Nearer, My God, To Thee"] ♪