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Conspiracy file · On maps 1200s–1800s · the legend since 2016

Tartaria

Tartary was the name European mapmakers gave to northern and central Asia from the 1200s to the 1800s. Since about 2016 an internet theory has recast it as a lost world empire whose grand buildings were buried by a "mud flood" and erased from history.

Also known as Tartary · Great Tartary · The Tartarian Empire · The mud flood

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Tartaria: Tartarian World's Fair Sticker
From Tartarian World's Fair Sticker

The story

For about six hundred years, Tartary (Tartaria in Latin) was what Europeans called the part of Asia they knew least: the land between the Caspian Sea, the Urals and the Pacific. The name came from the Tatars and the Mongol conquests of the 1200s, with an extra "r" that may echo Tartarus, the underworld of Greek myth. Mapmakers divided it into Great or Russian Tartary (Siberia), Chinese Tartary (Manchuria), Independent Tartary (Central Asia) and Little Tartary (Crimea).

It was a label, not a state. The first Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 1771, called Tartary "a vast country in the northern parts of Asia" and then listed the separate peoples who lived there. As the map filled in, the word gave way to Siberia, Manchuria and Central Asia, and by the middle of the 1800s it had mostly disappeared. The Russian Geographical Society, which holds many of the old maps, describes Tartaria as a mythologized land that never had precise borders.

The theory starts in Russia. From the 1970s the mathematician Anatoly Fomenko's "New Chronology" argued that recorded history had been falsified, and that a Slavic and Turkic "Russian Horde", or Great Tartaria, once ruled Eurasia. The occult writer Nikolai Levashov carried the idea further. Around 2016 it reached English-language video channels and forums, shed its Russian nationalism and picked up architecture. World's fair palaces, star forts, domed capitols and demolished train stations became the surviving works of a lost Tartarian civilization, buried by a worldwide "mud flood" and written out of the books. Bloomberg's Zach Mortice called it "the QAnon of architecture".

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How a World’s Fair Became a Conspiracy Theory · Stewart HicksWatch on YouTube

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Tartaria

On the record

  1. European writers and mapmakers used "Tartary" for northern and central Asia from the 13th century. By the mid-1800s the name had largely given way to Siberia, Manchuria and Central Asia.
  2. Abraham Ortelius included a map titled Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus in his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. The Library of Congress holds a hand-colored sheet from the 1603 edition.
  3. The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771) defines Tartary as "a vast country in the northern parts of Asia", then lists separate Tartar peoples rather than one government.
  4. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago drew more than 27 million visitors. Its "White City" facades were staff, a mix of plaster, cement and jute fiber, and almost all of its buildings were designed to be temporary.
  5. Star forts are bastion forts: a design developed in Italy in the late 1400s and early 1500s to stand up to cannon fire, then used across Europe for about three centuries.
  6. New York's Pennsylvania Station opened in 1910 and was demolished between 1963 and 1966. The city passed its landmarks preservation law in 1965, while the demolition was under way.
  7. In October 2020 the Russian Geographical Society published "The Whole Truth About Tartaria", pointing out that the old maps are public and that Tartaria was never a state with fixed borders.

The theory

  • Believers hold that Tartaria was a technologically advanced world civilization, not a region of Asia, and that it was deliberately erased from the history books. They cite the 1771 Britannica entry and a 1957 CIA paper on Soviet rewriting of Tatar history as proof.
  • A worldwide "mud flood", usually placed in the 1800s, is said to have buried its cities. Basement windows and doors below street level are offered as the evidence.
  • Grand buildings are said to be Tartarian leftovers that later governments only claimed to have built: the pavilions of the 1893 Chicago and 1915 San Francisco world's fairs, domed capitols, star forts, and demolished landmarks such as New York's old Penn Station and Singer Building.
  • Many versions add unlimited wireless energy and a race of giants. Old photographs of very tall people are passed around as pictures of Tartarians.
  • In the Russian original, promoted by the New Chronology authors and by Nikolai Levashov, Tartaria is the true name of a great Slavic empire that Western historians hid.

Timeline

  1. 1200sAfter the Mongol conquests, Europeans begin calling inner Asia Tartary
  2. 1570Abraham Ortelius publishes his atlas, with the map Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus
  3. 1626John Speed prints his map of Tartary
  4. 1771The first Encyclopaedia Britannica calls Tartary "a vast country in the northern parts of Asia"
  5. 1808John Cary's atlas still shows Independent Tartary and Chinese Tartary
  6. 1893The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago with temporary plaster-faced palaces
  7. 1915San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition; almost all of it is pulled down by the end of the year
  8. 1963Demolition of New York's Pennsylvania Station begins
  9. 1973Anatoly Fomenko takes up Nikolai Morozov's revised chronology, the seed of the New Chronology
  10. 2016The first "mud flood" videos appear on YouTube (August)
  11. 2018A post on the forum stolenhistory.org says Tartary was "a country with its own flag, its own government"; search interest climbs late in the year
  12. 2020The Russian Geographical Society publishes "The Whole Truth About Tartaria"
  13. 2021Bloomberg calls the theory "the QAnon of architecture"

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