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File 002 · Opened September 2026 · Research complete · Open for review

Tartaria, checked against the archives.

A lost world empire. Cities buried by a flood of mud. Grand buildings nobody remembers building, and a history someone erased. That is the Tartaria theory, and since about 2016 it has spread across YouTube and Reddit. This file takes its biggest claims one at a time and holds each one up against the documents of the period: contracts, city ordinances, engineers' reports, maps, encyclopedias and photographs. Everything found is below, with every source, so you can check it yourself.

32claims tested
18contradicted by the documents
1where the theory is right
157sources verified
97primary documents
67archive images
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Case file by James Duncan, Skeleton Files, Spring, Texas.

The theory, at its strongest

A world someone erased?

Tartaria, the theory says, was a vast and advanced civilization that once spanned the globe. Its builders left behind the domes, towers and white palaces you see in old photographs. Then a catastrophe, a “mud flood”, buried its cities up to their first floors, and whoever came after rewrote the history books and took the spoils.

These are the ten claims at the center of it, as the theory makes them:

  1. The world's fair buildings were already standing. They were not built for the fairs.
  2. Buried first floors and half-sunken windows are the mark of a “mud flood”.
  3. “Tartaria” on old maps proves a global empire that was later suppressed.
  4. A small group of families inherited or seized Tartaria's wealth: “the 13 families”, “the great steal”.
  5. The “food forests” and plantings at the great expositions were Tartarian agriculture.
  6. Ornate domes and towers were “free energy” antennas.
  7. Star forts around the world were built by Tartaria.
  8. The orphan trains were a “repopulation” after a reset.
  9. The great city fires of Chicago 1871, Boston 1872 and San Francisco 1906 were deliberate erasure.
  10. Giants appear in old photographs.
Why it feels true

The theory is built on real things

The great fairs really did vanish.

The palaces of Chicago 1893, Paris 1900, Buffalo 1901, St. Louis 1904 and San Francisco 1915 are gone. The documents record why: they were built as temporary exhibition halls and taken down after the fairs.

First floors really are underground.

In Chicago, Seattle, Sacramento, Galveston and Atlanta, old storefronts sit below today's streets. City ordinances and engineers' reports record the streets being raised on purpose.

“Tartary” really is on old maps.

European maps used the name from at least the 1520s into the 1800s. The real question is what the word meant to the people who printed it.

The 1771 Encyclopaedia Britannica really has an entry.

It is a short geographical entry: “a vast country in the northern parts of Asia”. What it does not say matters just as much.

So the question was never whether these things are real. It is what they mean, and that is something the documents can answer.

The claim ledger

Ten claims, one test at a time

Each claim is broken into tests, and each test names the document that settles it. Open a claim to see what the theory says, what the record shows, and the documents themselves.

01The world's fair buildings were already standing. They were not built for the fairs.55 tests
T01

Chicago, 1893: started in 1891, burning by 1894

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The buildings of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, known as the White City, were not built for the fair. They were pre-existing structures that stood before the exposition and were taken over for it.

What the record shows

The fair's official report, published in 1898, records dredging and filling of Jackson Park from February 11, 1891, Mines Building bids advertised May 14, 1891, and Machinery Hall and the Art Building contracted in October 1891. The Woman's Building was substantially completed by March 19, 1892. An 1893 guidebook states that construction began July 2, 1891, and puts the cost at $18,530,453, expected to exceed $22,000,000. The report describes the Art Building as brick and steel with an exterior covering of staff (plaster mixed with fiber). After the fair, a January 8-9, 1894 fire swept the Casino, Peristyle and Music Hall. A transcribed newspaper report, not yet checked against the original, describes five main buildings burning on July 5, 1894.

Contradicted by the documents: the buildings were contracted and built from 1891, then burned or were wrecked after the fair.

The documents

All 6 sources for this test
T02

Buffalo, 1901: promised in staff, sold for $80,000

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The Electric Tower and the exhibition palaces of Buffalo's 1901 Pan-American Exposition were pre-existing structures. In this view, the fair moved into buildings that already stood rather than building them.

What the record shows

The exposition company's prospectus of August 20, 1900 uses the future tense: “Like the others, these buildings will be constructed of staff, already made familiar to the public by its use at the Chicago, and more recent Omaha Exposition.” It says the ground was surveyed and graded in the early spring of 1900, and that the Service Building, completed in 32 working days, was the first building erected on the grounds. Photo captions dated August 1, 1900 show buildings under construction. Buffalo newspapers, summarized by The Buffalo History Museum, record the fair closing November 2, 1901 with a $3,000,000 deficit. The Chicago House Wrecking Co. bought the buildings for $80,000 on February 28, 1902 and began demolition March 5, 1902.

Contradicted by the documents: the buildings were going up in 1900 and were sold for demolition in 1902.

The documents

T03

St. Louis, 1904: roof work photographed in 1903

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The great palaces of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis were pre-existing structures. In this view, the fair occupied buildings that were already standing rather than building its own.

What the record shows

A glass plate negative dated October 1903, held by the St. Louis Public Library, is titled “Working on the roof of the Palace of Agriculture.” The Missouri Historical Society holds the exposition company's own records, 1898-1925: 35 cubic feet, with a Division of Works series, architectural drawings, contract files and two sets of construction albums. The city ordinance that let the company use Forest Park, reproduced in a federal commission's final report of 1906, required it to clear “all buildings, sheds, pavilions, towers, and other structures of every kind” within six months of closing and to fully restore the park within twelve months. The Chicago House Wrecking Co. then issued a 410-page catalog advertising the exposition it had bought.

Contradicted by the documents: a palace was photographed under construction in 1903, and the law required every structure removed.

The documents

T04

San Francisco, 1915: contracts in 1913, wreckers in 1916

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The exhibit palaces and the Tower of Jewels of San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition were pre-existing structures, not new buildings raised for the fair.

What the record shows

The official photographers, H.S. Crocker & Co. and Cardinell-Vincent Co., made “preparation and construction views taken in 1913-1914.” The official history by Frank Morton Todd puts the construction plant cost at $14,847,607.04. It dates each contract: the Machinery Palace let to W. W. Anderson & Co. on January 7, 1913 and completed by March 1914; Education by March 1913; Horticulture in October and November 1913; Fine Arts in December 1913; the Tower of Jewels steel frame last of all in 1913. The Palace of Fine Arts gallery had walls and roof of cement plaster on metal fabric. No contractor would wreck the huge wooden-frame palaces, so the Exposition did it, starting toward the end of March 1916.

Contradicted by the documents: built under 1913 contracts and wrecked from 1916.

The documents

T05

Paris, 1900: steel frames dressed as stone

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The palaces of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris were pre-existing structures that stood before the fair, rather than buildings put up for it.

What the record shows

The official report, by Commissioner General Alfred Picard and printed in 1902, explains how the Champ de Mars palaces were made. Steel and wood stayed visible inside the exhibit halls. Metal, reinforced concrete and wood were wrapped in plaster or staff (plaster mixed with fiber) to look as much as possible like monumental stone. Its chapter on the Palais de la Mécanique et de l'Industrie chimique states: “Tous les halls et galeries étaient construits en acier” (all the halls and galleries were built of steel). In April 1898, Baudet, Donon et Cie won the contract for the metal framework. Le Figaro of 12 October 1900 reported the plan to demolish every palace except the two permanent Palais des Beaux-Arts.

Contradicted by the documents: the palaces were contracted steel frames wrapped in plaster, slated for demolition after the fair.

The documents

02Buried first floors and half-sunken windows are the mark of a “mud flood”.415 tests
T06

Chicago, 1855-1866: a city lifted by ordinance

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Chicago's oldest blocks show ground floors and windows below the street. The theory reads them as a city buried by a nineteenth-century catastrophe, with the original street level hidden under soil.

What the record shows

In 1855 the Board of Sewerage Commissioners adopted chief engineer E. S. Chesbrough's sewer plan. It says the city must “raise the grades of the streets above their present level an average of eighteen inches.” By spring 1856 Chesbrough proposed raising the streets six to ten feet. The Common Council's “Ordinance Fixing Grades in the South Division of the City of Chicago,” passed May 4, 1857, set Lake Street at Market Street at eleven and one-half feet. Another clause let owners raise wooden buildings to the established grade. Newspapers followed the work: a Lake Street half-block lifted 4 ft 8 in over five days in 1860, the Tremont House in 1861, and the Briggs House in 1866.

Contradicted by the documents: Chicago raised its own streets, by ordinance, so new sewers could drain.

The documents

All 10 sources for this test
  • Raising a block of buildings on Lake Street, between Clark and La Salle Streets (lithograph by Edward Mendel)Chicago History Museum (Chicago Historical Society), ICHi-00698 per Encyclopedia of Chicago search result; reproduced on Wikimedia Commons · 1860 per Encyclopedia of Chicago/Wikipedia; Commons file page says 1857 · PrimaryEdward Mendel's lithograph of a brick block on Lake Street lifted on jackscrews (screw-driven jacks). The Commons file and the Encyclopedia of Chicago both date the view to 1857, so it is not a picture of the 1860 raising.
  • Raising the Briggs House (photograph/engraving)Chicago Historical Society (per Commons source line) · 1866 (Commons notes sources conflict, 1857 or 1866) · PrimaryA view of the brick Briggs House hotel standing on jackscrews. Its catalog date is uncertain: 1857 or 1866.
  • A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, vol. 2 (1857 to the fire of 1871)Internet Archive (digitized print copy; vol. 1 at https://archive.org/details/historyofchicago01andr) · 1884 · PrimaryA. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, volume 2 (1884), a nineteenth-century published history covering 1857 to the fire of 1871. Page 59 dates the first street-grade ordinance to March 1855.
  • Chicago Sewers Collection, 1855-circa 2004 (finding aid)Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Library Center, Special Collections · finding aid (collection 1855-2004) · PointerChicago Public Library's finding aid for its sewers collection. It records that by spring 1856 Chesbrough proposed raising the grade of the streets six to ten feet. Its copies of the 1855 and 1858 reports are reproductions.
  • Chicago Municipal Code: How to Find and Research Historical CodesChicago Public Library · blog guide (undated) · PointerA Chicago Public Library guide to where the period ordinance books are held: the 1856 charter and ordinances, the 1858 volume, and the 1866 laws and ordinances.
  • Raising of Chicago (Wikipedia) - reference list of period newspaper articlesWikipedia (pointer to Chicago Tribune / Chicago Daily Press and Tribune) · article citing 1854-1866 newspapers · PointerWikipedia's article on the raising of Chicago, used for its dated newspaper citations: Tribune, May 31, 1855; Press and Tribune, March-April 1860 (Lake Street); Tribune, 1861 (Tremont House); February 7, 1866 (Briggs House).
T07

Seattle, 1889: streets raised as much as 32 feet

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Beneath Pioneer Square, old storefronts and walkways lie below today's sidewalks, lit by glass set into the pavement. The theory treats this underground as an older city level buried by a mud flood.

What the record shows

Photographs show the burnt district after the fire of June 6, 1889, with ruins and tents at the old ground level. By June 22, 1889, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported the replat (a redrawn street plan) complete. The district's historic register nomination records James Street raised 18 feet at Front Street and 32 feet at Second Street, and avenues raised 6.5 to about 19 feet. It explains: “Since construction on some buildings had already begun, ground floors suddenly became basement levels. This created the district's underground areaways.” Areaways are the spaces under the sidewalk in front of those old ground floors. From 1904 to 1930, city engineers also photographed Denny Hill being sluiced away (washed down) by high-powered water cannons.

Contradicted by the documents: Seattle's underground formed when the city raised its streets after the 1889 fire.

The documents

All 6 sources for this test
  • Prism Lights: An Underground Story of Seattle (David B. Williams)Street Smart Naturalist (Substack) · May 26, 2022 · PointerA 2022 Seattle history article quoting Ordinance 2833, which requires sidewalk openings to be covered with prismatic lights (glass prisms in iron frames). It cites a 2011 count of 27,417 prisms. The ordinance text itself is not yet confirmed.
  • Raising Pioneer Square's Streets Following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 (Michael Ostrogorsky)Substack; photographs credited to University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections · August 18, 2026 · PointerA 2026 article describing three University of Washington photographs, 1889-1892, taken from the Olympic Block roof: a half-filled street, stacked prism-glass panels, and the finished grade. The photographs are not yet located in the catalog.
T08

Sacramento: streets raised 10 to 12 feet after floods

Contradicted by the record

The claim

In Old Sacramento, former storefronts sit in basements beneath hollow sidewalks. The theory sees these as first floors buried by a mud flood, not as the result of a city project.

What the record shows

Sacramento's adopted historic district plans record that the city raised the street levels of its business district after floods in 1852 and 1853, and again after the floods of winter 1861-1862. The work ultimately lifted the city's grade about 10 to 12 feet above the natural ground. In the plan's words, “First stories became basements.” Hollow sidewalks, built over the open space at the old ground level, were created as streets were filled and rebuilt up to the new grade. Property owners paid for it through taxes. The plan reproduces a photograph of Sacramento's second county courthouse being raised, dated about 1870. The city's daily newspaper survives in a searchable run; its 1864 reports have not yet been read.

Contradicted by the documents: Sacramento filled its own streets after floods, turning first stories into basements.

The documents

T09

Galveston: a whole city raised up to 22 feet

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Galveston's original ground level lies feet below its present streets. In the mud flood reading, buried ground levels like this are traces of a catastrophe that covered older cities, not the work of engineers.

What the record shows

The Legislature authorized a seawall on September 7, 1901. A board of engineers, H. M. Robert, Alfred Noble and H. C. Ripley, reported on January 25, 1902. Their plan included “the construction of a seawall and the raising of the city's elevation.” Fill lifted the city from around five or six feet above mean low tide to 8 feet on the bay side and 22 on the Gulf side. A canal was dredged through town, and residents walked on boardwalks fastened to fence tops. A library caption states: “every dwelling in the City of Galveston, South of Broadway, had to be raised by jacks.” Raising began in 1903 or 1904 (sources differ); the last area was filled in 1928.

Contradicted by the documents: Galveston was raised under an engineers' plan, with dredged fill and jacks.

The documents

  • Ave P during grade raising, G-59261FF3-12Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Library (sepia print 8.7 x 10.8 cm) · 1905-1907 · PrimaryRosenberg Library photograph G-59261FF3-12, Ave P during grade raising, dated 1905-1907. The catalog gives only the title.
  • St. Patrick's Church, G-59262FF3-6Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Library (b/w print 10.0 x 14.1 cm) · 1907 · PrimaryRosenberg Library photograph of St. Patrick's Church, 1907, filed under Grade Raising and tagged Pipelines. Related items show Grace Church being raised and the convent's front yard being filled.
  • Plan of the city of Galveston showing proposed sea wall and raising of grade (Clarke & Courts)University of Texas at Arlington Library, via The Portal to Texas History · 1902 · PrimaryA 1902 color map by Clarke & Courts, 54 x 41 cm, titled for the proposed sea wall and raising of grade, with cross-sections, flood history and cost estimates.
  • Galveston Grade Raising (research topic page)Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Library · page (project 1904-1928) · PointerThe Rosenberg Library's grade-raising page. It gives the original elevation, the new 8-to-22-foot grade, the canal dredged through the city, boardwalks on fence tops, and 1928 for the last area filled.
All 6 sources for this test
  • History of the Galveston SeawallGalveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Library · page (events 1901-1904) · PointerThe Rosenberg Library's seawall history. It records the Legislature's act of September 7, 1901, the engineers' report of January 1902, and a plan to build a seawall and raise the city's elevation.
  • Galveston Seawall and Grade Raising (ASCE historic civil engineering landmark)American Society of Civil Engineers · landmark page · PointerThe American Society of Civil Engineers landmark page. It dates the board's report to January 25, 1902 and the initial grade raising to 1903-1911. The fill supported the seawall and helped drainage and sewers.
T10

Atlanta, 1927-1928: viaduct work reported, primary proof pending

Still open: no primary document yet

The claim

Underground Atlanta keeps old storefronts one story below the modern street. The theory reads buried streets like this as a city covered by a mud flood rather than built over on purpose.

What the record shows

So far one source covers Atlanta: a 2025 article from a Georgia State University Library project. It points to 1927 glass-plate negatives at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, including Alabama Street looking west from Pryor and the southeast corner of S. Pryor at Alabama. It cites period press: “Atlanta's Viaducts in Sight,” The City Builder, August 1927, and two Atlanta Constitution reports, “Work For Viaduct Will Start Today” (March 8, 1928) and “Steam Shovels Prepare Way for Viaducts” (March 25, 1928). Still missing: those negatives and newspaper pages read directly, and the city's own records of the viaducts and the new street level.

A lead, not yet proven: a viaduct project is reported, but the primary records still need direct review.

The documents

  • Before Underground (Atlanta Studies)Atlanta Studies (Georgia State University Library project) · February 15, 2025 · PointerA 2025 Georgia State University Library project article. It cites 1927 Atlanta-Fulton Public Library negatives and 1927-1928 press reports on the viaducts. It is a secondary source; the negatives and newspapers have not been examined directly.
03“Tartaria” on old maps proves a global empire that was later suppressed.1113 tests
T12

Tartary on the map: real, from 1525 to 1845

The theory is right here

The claim

Old maps in major national and university collections label much of Asia Tartaria, Grande Tartarie or Great Tartary. Theory videos present these sheets as hard evidence that the name was real and widely used for centuries.

What the record shows

The label is real. The David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford, the Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque nationale de France all hold sheets that carry it. The earliest here is a map in a 1525 Ptolemy edition titled Tartariae Maioris, Greater Tartary. Ortelius's 1570 atlas names the region Tartary, or the Kingdom of the Great Khan, and draws the Khan in his tent. French sheets from 1684 to the early 1700s print Grande Tartarie. English sheets print Great Tartary (1732) and Western and Chinese Tartary (1796). An American atlas still used the word in 1845. The titles also show what it meant: a regional name, first tied to the Khan, later split by who ruled each part.

Confirmed: the name Tartary is real and appears on catalogued maps from 1525 to 1845.

The documents

All 12 sources for this test
T13

Defined at the time: many peoples, not one empire

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Across three centuries, maps print one huge name, Great Tartary, over most of Asia. Theory supporters read a name that large and that lasting as the mark of a single, unified empire, one that was later suppressed.

What the record shows

Reference books of the time define the word as a region, not a state. The French Encyclopédie (vol. 15) splits it three ways: Chinese Tartary, belonging to the Emperor of China; Independent Tartary, ruled by “divers chans” (various khans); and Russian Tartary. Britannica's first edition (1771) calls it “a vast country in the northern parts of Asia” and lists the Tartars of Astracan, Circassia, Dagistan, the Calmucs, Usbecs, Moguls and Tibet as separate peoples in separate places. The third edition (1797) fixes it by coordinates, divides it into Western and Eastern Tartary, and says it is “inhabited by a great number of nations, or tribes.” Witsen's 1692 book, written to explain his 1687 map, covers lands from Crimea to Korea.

Contradicted by the documents: at the time, Tartary meant a vast region of many peoples and rulers, not one state.

The documents

T14

Vanished name: Britannica recorded the fade in print

Still open: no primary document yet

The claim

The name Tartaria was erased from maps and books on purpose. Printed across Asia for centuries, it then vanished, and supporters read that disappearance as deliberate suppression of a lost empire.

What the record shows

The disappearance was announced in print. Britannica's 9th edition (1875–1889 series) states that the name Tartary “has almost disappeared from geographical literature,” while the name Tartars stayed in full use. The 1911 edition repeats it. A 2025 Library of Congress map-division post traces the label from Ortelius in 1570 to an 1885 Colton map of Central Asia with no Tartary, naming Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria instead. Scholarship describes the change: a peer-reviewed 2000 article shows the Tartary frontier becoming Manchuria under the Qing, and a 2014 book traces the terms that replaced Tartary. Still missing: the 1885 Colton map's own catalogue record, the full text of the 2000 article, and the further period sheets named for checking.

Open lead: the record so far shows an openly noted fade, not erasure; key documents remain to be pulled.

The documents

All 7 sources for this test
04A small group of families inherited or seized Tartaria's wealth: “the 13 families”, “the great steal”.213 tests
T29

13 families inherited the cities? No names, no deeds

Unsupported: no document cited

The claim

Tartaria Vault says that after Tartaria disappeared, a small network of 13 interconnected dynastic families suddenly rose to the top of finance, land ownership and politics and took over Tartaria's cities and land. Official history, it says, records the acquisition, not the construction.

What the record shows

The June 26, 2026 video description (294,081 views) opens with “A black-and-white photograph from 1867. St. Louis.” The photograph is not identified. It says builder and payroll records are “sparse or absent” and mentions “A handful of recurring dynastic families.” A mirror copy (a re-upload by another account) of a June 22, 2026 video, signed TARTARIA VAULT, places these families “at the commanding heights of global finance, land ownership, and political authority.” Not one family, deed, will, land record or archive is named in any of them. The only document cited is the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, checked in the next test.

Unsupported: no family or deed is named, and the only cited document does not support it.

The documents

T30

Britannica, 1771: Great-Tartary named, never ranked largest

Contradicted by the record

The claim

A video description signed by Tartaria Vault says the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica listed Great Tartary as the world's largest country, and that later editions systematically revised the entry with no explanation given.

What the record shows

The first edition was printed in 1771. Its “TARTARY” entry sits in volume III, between TARTAR and TASSEL. A National Library of Scotland scan shows a short entry. It calls Tartary a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west, called “Great-Tartary.” It then lists Tartar peoples: those of Astracan, Circassia and Dagestan, the Calmuc and Usbec Tartars, the Moguls, and those of Tibet. No wording that ranks it the largest country in the world appears in the entry, or near any other mention of Tartar in volume III. Volumes I and II, including the ASIA entry, and later editions are not yet checked, so the revision claim remains open.

Contradicted by the record: the 1771 TARTARY entry calls it vast, but never the world's largest country.

The documents

T32

The '13' traces to 1978 lectures, not deeds

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The Tartaria videos present the 13 families as a real, fixed group of dynasties whose rise to control of land and money is part of the historical record.

What the record shows

The earliest '13' here is in John Todd's lectures of Fall 1978 at Bible Baptist Church in Elkton, Maryland, published as a transcript titled The Illuminati & Witchcraft in 1980. Todd claims he was initiated into a secret Council of 13, which he calls the Grand Druid Council and describes as serving one banking dynasty. A 1989 book, Final Notice, by New Zealand preacher Barry Smith (1933-2002), is another reported early link; its text is not yet confirmed. No deed, will, land record or probate record appears anywhere in this chain. Later writers fill the same '13' label with different families: a July 2026 article lists the Counts of Champagne and Anjou, the St. Clairs and the Hapsburgs.

Contradicted by the record: the '13' traces to 1978 Illuminati lectures, not land records, and later lists disagree.

The documents

05The “food forests” and plantings at the great expositions were Tartarian agriculture.112 tests
T28

Lost food forests: no order, city or record named

Unsupported: no document cited

The claim

Tartaria Vault says city parks were once layered food forests of food-bearing trees designed for yield. Under undocumented removal orders before 1900, in one 50-year window on every continent, they were cleared, replaced with gravel and fountains, and the knowledge erased.

What the record shows

The channel's own written descriptions carry the claim. The June 27, 2026 video (about 25 minutes, 118,551 views) speaks of “undocumented removal orders in pre-1900 European cities” in “the same fifty-year window, across every continent.” The July 19, 2026 video (about 29 minutes, 299,036 views) describes one “claiming event” within “the same thirty-year window.” Neither names a city, a family, an ordinance, a park-board report, a nursery contract or a photograph. Both end with the line “The content shared should not be considered factual.” The channel's About page calls its work “creative speculation, shaped through fictionalized narrative storytelling.” The spoken narration was not available as text, so any document named only aloud is not yet confirmed.

Unsupported: no order, city or source is named, and the channel calls the content non-factual.

The documents

All 5 sources for this test
T31

World's fair gardens, 1893-1915: ordered, collected, transplanted

Contradicted by the record

The claim

As the videos imply, the tall columnar trees and lush plantings seen in old exposition photographs are remnants of an older, productive landscape that was already standing, not temporary decorative plantings put in for the fairs.

What the record shows

Chicago, 1893: Frederick Law Olmsted reported the fair could rely “but little on the ordinary commercial agencies.” Collecting parties gathered plants from lakes, rivers and swamps in Illinois and Wisconsin: 100,000 small willows, 75 railway car-loads of aquatic plants, 140,000 other aquatics and 285,000 ferns and perennials, “a little over a million” in all. St. Louis, October 1903: mule teams graded bare ground for the Horticulture gardens. San Francisco, 1915: plant orders went to Japan, Holland, Belgium and England in June 1914. Sixty orange trees bearing flower and fruit stood in the Court of Abundance. Even “trees that had died” gave a temporary palace “the venerable, haunting aspect of centuries of age.” The photographs used in the videos remain unidentified.

Contradicted by the record: fair gardens were collected, ordered from abroad and transplanted onto bare ground for each fair.

The documents

All 7 sources for this test
06Ornate domes and towers were “free energy” antennas.11 test
T23

Buffalo, 1901: a tower of steel, staff and light

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Ornate domes and towers on grand old buildings were antennas that gathered “free energy.” The test case here is one of the most dazzling: the Electric Tower at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901.

What the record shows

The tower's paper trail runs from plan to finished building. In August 1900, a Boston Herald report named architect John Galen Howard as designer. It described a steel frame covered in wood and staff (plaster mixed with fiber), openwork panels lit from inside, and a plaster model made in New York. It gave a planned height of 375 feet. The 1901 Rand-McNally guide gives the built height as 391 feet and names the power source: the Niagara Falls Power Company furnished 5,000 horsepower from Niagara Falls to run the machinery and electric lights. The fair's official photographer recorded the finished tower.

Contradicted by the documents: the tower was a lit display running on power supplied from Niagara Falls.

The documents

All 5 sources for this test
07Star forts around the world were built by Tartaria.11 test
T24

Star forts on paper: named builders, dated plans

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Star-shaped forts appear all over the world, built to the same striking pointed design. The theory says Tartaria built them, not the kingdoms and nations that history credits with them.

What the record shows

Three star forts, in Alsace, Florida and Maryland, can be traced in records made at the time. A 1675 manuscript plan in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, shows the Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine being built by royal order under Governor Pablo de Hita y Salazar. A National Park Service history drawn from Spanish records dates its groundbreaking to October 2, 1672. Plans printed in Paris in 1710 and 1740 name Marshal Vauban as the builder of Neuf-Brisach. For Fort McHenry, a federal survey gives a building date of 1798, copies William Tell Poussin's 1819 plan from War Department records, and names the French engineer Foncin as its designer.

Contradicted by the documents: these forts have named builders, governors and engineers, with plans dated 1675 to 1819.

The documents

All 7 sources for this test
08The orphan trains were a “repopulation” after a reset.11 test
T25

Orphan trains: a charity's records, child by child

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The orphan trains that ran from 1854 to 1929 were not ordinary charity. They were “repopulation” after a reset, moving children out to refill the land.

What the record shows

The orphan trains were the Children's Aid Society's program for placing New York City children with families in the West. Its records survive. The New-York Historical Society holds the Society's archive: 787 linear feet in 1,018 boxes and 807 bound volumes. Its largest series covers the Children's Emigration, Placing-Out and Foster Home programs from 1853: case files, correspondence, field-agent reports and statistical record books. The 1860 annual report lists 814 children sent out in one year, state by state, 328 of them orphans. Founder Charles Loring Brace described the work in a 497-page book in 1872. A transcribed 1880 New York Daily Tribune article tells of 35 children sent to Springville, Iowa.

Contradicted by the documents: a New York charity placed city children with western families and kept detailed records.

The documents

All 6 sources for this test
09The great city fires of Chicago 1871, Boston 1872 and San Francisco 1906 were deliberate erasure.11 test
T26

Chicago, Boston, San Francisco: fires investigated and photographed

Contradicted by the record

The claim

The great city fires of Chicago (1871), Boston (1872) and San Francisco (1906) were not accidents. They were deliberate erasure, set to wipe the older cities away.

What the record shows

Each fire left an official paper trail. In Chicago, the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners took testimony in 1871, including Catherine O'Leary's, and photographers made stereographs (paired 3-D photographs) of the ruins. In Boston, a city commission published a 662-page report in 1873. It records that the fire began on November 9, 1872, at 83-85 Summer Street, covered 65 acres and destroyed 776 buildings. The city then mapped the burnt district and widened seventeen streets. In San Francisco, the National Board of Fire Underwriters issued a special report in April 1906, and the U.S. Geological Survey studied the earthquake and fire's effects on buildings in 1907.

Contradicted by the documents: officials and insurers investigated and photographed each fire at the time.

The documents

All 11 sources for this test
10Giants appear in old photographs.11 test
T27

Giants on film: a gypsum carving, a digital fake

Contradicted by the record

The claim

Old photographs show giants: human figures and skeletons far larger than people today. The theory treats these images as proof that giants were real, and that history has left them out.

What the record shows

The best-known American giant, the Cardiff Giant of 1869, was a carved gypsum figure about 10 feet long. A search of newspapers from 1869 and 1870 finds 616 pages naming it. In December 1869, the New York Herald ran a paid advertisement for its exhibition at Apollo Hall, and the Massachusetts Historical Society met to discuss the Cardiff Giant controversy. The man behind the hoax, George Hull, was later photographed beside it. The most widely shared giant skeleton photo is modern: a 2002 entry in a Worth1000 digital-art contest, built on a 2000 aerial photo of a mastodon dig at Hyde Park, New York.

Contradicted by the documents: the giant was carved gypsum, and the skeleton photo is 2002 digital art.

The documents

All 6 sources for this test
  • 'Skeleton of Giant' Is Internet Photo Hoax, by James OwenNational Geographic News · 2007-12-14 · PointerA 2007 National Geographic News article tracing the giant skeleton photo to a 2002 Worth1000 contest entry, which placed third, built on a 2000 aerial photo of a mastodon dig at Hyde Park, New York.
  • Giant Human Skeleton — Museum of Hoaxes photo databaseMuseum of Hoaxes (hoaxes.org) · n.d. (modern) · PointerThe Museum of Hoaxes entry on the same image: made in 2002 from a photo of a Cornell-led mastodon dig, then spread from early 2004 as a Saudi Arabian discovery and reported as fact by newspapers in Bangladesh and India.
The evidence wall

67 documents, maps and photographs

Every image comes from the archive or library that holds the original, with its credit and rights line. Tap any image to see it full size.

A printed page (p. 36) from Harlow N. Higinbotham's 1898 Report of the President, the fair's official account of how Jackson Park was dredged, contracted and built from 1891.
The official report on the July 19, 1893 Cold Storage Warehouse fire at the fairgrounds. It calls the building “a large building of wooden frame covered with staff,” showing what the fair's buildings were made of.
The 1893 Rand, McNally handbook: “Construction work began on the 2d of July, 1891,” with costs totaling $18,530,453, expected to exceed $22,000,000. A guidebook from the fair's own year dates the start of building.
“Devoured By Fire,” Ann Arbor Argus, January 12, 1894: the January 8-9 fire that spread from the Casino through the Peristyle and Music Hall into the Manufactures building.
Pan-American Exposition prospectus, August 1900, p. 16: the buildings “will be constructed of staff, already made familiar to the public by its use at the Chicago, and more recent Omaha Exposition.” Future tense, months before opening.
From the same prospectus: the Service Building “was completed in 32 working days, and was the first building erected on the grounds.” The fair's own company counted the days it took to build.
The unfinished roof of the Palace of Agriculture, St. Louis, October 1903 (glass negative D80356). A dated photograph of a palace still being built before the 1904 fair.
Front cover of Catalogue No. 145 from the Chicago House Wrecking Co., dated 1906 by archive.org. It advertises the $50,000,000 Louisiana Purchase Exposition the firm bought, to sell off its materials.
An inside page of Catalogue No. 145 in which the wrecking firm describes, in its own words, the lumber, iron and piping it took from the St. Louis grounds. The page's figures are not yet confirmed.
Bare timber arches and trusses of the Palace of Machinery before sheathing and plaster, a plate in the official history (Todd, vol. 2). Its contract was let January 7, 1913; it was completed by March 1914.
Two plates from the official history (Todd, vol. 2): the steel arches of the Palace of Fine Arts going up, and workmen casting plaster ornament in a staff factory inside the unfinished hall.
Todd, vol. 5, p. 243, from the chapter on wreckage and salvage: the Tower of Jewels, which cost about $413,000, went to a wrecker for $9,000, and its $100,000 of plaster was a total loss.
Picard's official report, 1902, tome 3, p. 8: “Tous les halls et galeries étaient construits en acier” (all the halls and galleries were built of steel), with the metal wrapped in plaster or staff to imitate stone.
Front page of Le Figaro, 12 October 1900. An article on the palaces' future says they revert to the City after November 6 and that demolition could begin on some sites in December.
Page 11 of Chesbrough's adopted 1855 Chicago sewer plan. He argues for keeping the sewers low to avoid the expense of raising the street grades, so grade raising was already being planned in 1855.
Page 33 of Chesbrough's 1858 report on European sewers. After its great fire of 1842, Hamburg raised its streets to 12-13 feet above low water. Chicago's engineer studied that work.
Page 11 of the Sewerage Commissioners' report for the half year ending December 31, 1860. It compares sewer costs in 1856 and 1860 and notes Chicago's streets were not yet permanently graded.
The ordinance fixing street grades in Chicago's South Division, passed May 4, 1857, printed on page 67 of the 1858 ordinance book. It sets new street heights by law, starting with Market Street at Lake: 11.50 feet.
Edward Mendel's lithograph (a printed drawing, not a photograph) of a brick block on Lake Street, Chicago, lifted on jackscrews with shops still open. The Commons file and the Encyclopedia of Chicago both date it to 1857.
The brick Briggs House hotel, Chicago, standing on jackscrews with crews at work beneath it, lifted whole to the new street grade. Sources disagree on the date: 1857 or 1866.
Page 59 of A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, vol. 2 (1884). It dates the first street-grade ordinance to March 1855, setting Lake Street at 8.62 feet above the river's 1847 low-water mark.
Seattle city engineers' negative 8248, April 25, 1930: 7th Ave. N. looking north from Virginia Street toward the cut-down slope of the Denny Hill regrade, with shops and parked cars.
The 1902 Clarke & Courts plan of Galveston showing the proposed seawall and raising of grade, with a cross-section of the wall, a flood-history panel and cost estimates.
Ortelius, Antwerp, 1570. The title panel reads “TARTARIAE SIVE MAGNI CHAMI REGNI typus”: Tartary, or the Kingdom of the Great Khan. The Khan sits in his tent at upper left. The name is tied to a ruler.
Pierre Du Val, Paris, 1684. Grande Tartarie works as an umbrella: the interior is lettered Northern Tartary, Tartary of the Kin and Turkestan, and a side index divides Great Tartary into five principal parts and their peoples.
Pierre van der Aa's small engraved La Grande Tartarie, Leiden, dated 1714 or earlier, drawn after the new observations of the Paris Académie royale des sciences. It spans the region from the Caspian to the Pacific.
Nicolaas Witsen's Carte Nouvelle de la Grande Tartarie, French issue dated before 1717, two sheets joined. It runs from Nova Zembla and the Caspian to Korea and Japan. Witsen's book Noord en Oost Tartarye was written to explain this map.
Guillaume de l'Isle's Carte de Tartarie, Amsterdam reissue of 1757. One sheet letters Independent, Chinese, Western, Eastern, Little and Muscovite Tartary side by side, with the Great Wall, roads and political boundaries.
Neele's Modern Asia, London, 1796. Western Tartary is lettered in pink across the interior and Chinese Tartary in green over Manchuria. The catalogue calls Tartary a European name for lands of nomadic Turkic and Mongol peoples.
Britannica, first edition, 1771, vol. III, p. 887. The entry begins “TARTARY, a vast country in the northern parts of Asia” and goes on to list the Tartars of Astracan, Circassia, Dagistan, the Calmucs, Usbecs, Moguls and Tibet.
Britannica, third edition, 1797, vol. XVIII, p. 313. TARTARY is “a very large country of Asia,” fixed by longitude and latitude and divided into Western and Eastern Tartary, home to many nations or tribes.
Britannica, ninth edition, vol. XXIII (1888), p. 70. Kropotkin's entry on the Tartars says the name Tartary “has almost disappeared from geographical literature.” The fading of the name was stated openly in print.
Britannica, eleventh edition, vol. 26 (1911), p. 448. The entry opens “TATARS (the common form Tartars is less correct)” and repeats that Tartary “has almost disappeared from geographical literature.”
Blaeu/Visscher wall map of Asia, Amsterdam, about 1657 (Library of Congress G7400 1657 .B5). The Library of Congress uses it to show Tartaria as a regional label with no borders, “not a political designation.”
Guillaume Delisle, L'Asie (Paris, 1700), Library of Congress. Tartarie appears as a regional name across inner Asia, beside Tibet, China and Japan. Wikipedia uses this map to illustrate its Tartarian Empire article.
Palace of Horticulture, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915, on a Pacific Novelty Co. postcard. The theory claims temporary fair buildings like this one as Tartarian.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, first edition (Edinburgh, 1771), Vol. III, printed page 887. The full TARTARY entry describes a vast region of northern Asia and its Tartar peoples. It names no empire, capital or ruler.
Title page of Volume III of the 1771 first edition, printed in Edinburgh for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar. This is the volume that holds the Tartary entry.
Guillaume Delisle's Carte de Tartarie, 1706, Library of Congress copy (G7270 1706 .L5 TIL). The library holds two copies; one has red dots marked over church symbols.
The same Delisle plate reissued in 1766, via Wikimedia Commons. The Tartarie labels were still being printed sixty years after the first issue.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France copy of the 1706 Carte de Tartarie, via Wikimedia Commons. The library files it under Grande Tartarie, political and administrative divisions. Engravers: Nicolas Guérard and F. Desrosiers.
Giacomo Cantelli da Vignola, La Gran Tartaria (Rome, 1693), from G.G. de Rossi's Mercurio Geografico. A 17th-century Italian map using Tartaria as a regional name.
Strahlenberg's 1730 Nova Descriptio Geographica Tattariae Magnae, compiled by a Swedish prisoner of war in Siberia. Its Great Tartary title, often quoted in videos, also covers the whole Russian Empire.
The Electric Tower seen from the south: Detroit Publishing Co. photograph no. 09503 of the tower as built for the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901. A real, dated fair building, cataloged by the Library of Congress.
Page 21 of the 1901 Rand-McNally guide to the exposition, headed Electric Tower. It gives the height as 391 feet and the main body as 80 feet square, with perforated panels lit from within.
Official photographer C. D. Arnold's view no. 461, 1901: the finished Electric Tower behind the Court of Fountains, with crowds on the Esplanade. The fair's own record of the tower as it stood.
Title page of Mark Bennitt's 1901 guide, with a photo captioned “Electric Tower (from plaster model)” and a Library of Congress copyright stamp dated May 17, 1901. The design began as a plaster model.
Jean Crépy's engraved plan of Neuf-Brisach, Paris, 1710. Its title credits Marshal Vauban as builder of the octagonal star-fort town, about a decade after construction.
William Tell Poussin's 1819 plan of Fort McHenry, from War Department records at the National Archives (RG 77, drawer 51, sheet 2), as copied by the Historic American Buildings Survey. A dated survey of the pentagonal fort.
The 1675 manuscript plan of the Castillo de San Marcos from Governor Pablo de Hita y Salazar, now in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville. It records the castle's layout and state of construction, with a lettered key.
A plan from Governor Salazar's time showing the Castillo's construction up to 1680, as reproduced in Albert C. Manucy's National Park Service history of the fort.
Page 9 of the Children's Aid Society's 1860 annual report: a table of 814 children sent out from February 1859 to February 1860, by state, month, birthplace and parentage. Indiana took 352.
Ruins of the Cook County Courthouse after the Chicago fire of October 1871, a stereograph card from Library of Congress lot 12054. The damage was photographed at the time.
Opening page of the Boston Fire Commission's 1873 report. The fire began November 9, 1872, at 83-85 Summer Street, covered 65 acres and destroyed 776 buildings assessed at $13,500,000. About 200 witnesses were summoned.
City surveyor Thomas W. Davis's 1873 plan of the district burned on November 9 and 10, 1872, with the widened and extended streets tinted. Boston rebuilt to a new street plan.
Plate LVI of USGS Bulletin 324, 1907: San Francisco's burned district outlined in red, with earthquake breaks in streets, water mains, cisterns and 48 buildings examined, from Richard L. Humphrey's report.
The Cardiff Giant, the carved gypsum figure of 1869, in a Bain News Service glass negative dated about 1910 to 1915. The giant in the photograph is a carving, not a body.
George Hull, who commissioned the Cardiff Giant hoax, seated beside his carved figure, about 1908. The Library of Congress copy reproduces a photo and a drawing.
New York Herald, December 19, 1869, page 12. Its Cardiff Giant item is a paid advertisement announcing the figure's exhibition at Apollo Hall, saying it was discovered on the farm of W. C. Newell.
The complete TARTARY entry in the first Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771), vol. III, p. 887. It calls Great-Tartary a vast country in northern Asia and lists its peoples. Nothing ranks it the world's largest. National Library of Scotland scan.
Page 153 of Olmsted's 1893 report on the Chicago fair. It counts willows, aquatic plants and ferns gathered in Illinois and Wisconsin: “a little over a million” plants transplanted. The American Architect and Building News, Sept. 9, 1893.
Todd's official history of the 1915 fair, vol. 2, p. 339. In June 1914 the Landscape Department ordered 7,000 rhododendrons and 200,000 daffodil bulbs from Japan, Holland, Belgium and England. Tall blue-gum eucalyptus and old olive trees were also planted.
Todd, vol. 2, p. 340: the Court of Abundance held 120 Italian cypresses, about 240 Irish yews and 60 orange trees bearing flower and fruit. Nearby, 7,000 rhododendrons were “established in boxes.” Plantings made for a temporary fair.
St. Louis, October 1903: mule teams with scrapers grade the bare earth that became the gardens around the Palace of Horticulture, the autumn before the 1904 fair. Glass-plate negative D85336, St. Louis Public Library.
Glass-plate negative D80716, marked 12-23-03: the west corner of the Palace of Horticulture nearly finished, on bare, unplanted mud with lumber and barrels at its base. No garden had been planted yet.
Court of Palms, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915: small, newly set palms in fresh beds before a curved colonnade. The official history describes ranks of fan palms here. Hand-tinted postcard, Library of Congress.
Palace of Horticulture, St. Louis World's Fair, 1904. Barrel cacti and agaves stand staked between raw wooden posts on freshly worked ground, a display installed for the fair. Stereograph no. 5745 by William Herman Rau, Library of Congress.
The case graph

Every claim, test and source, connected

This is the working file behind this page, drawn as a graph: each dot is a note in the case vault, each line a link between two notes. Tap a dot to see what it is. Drag to move around, scroll or pinch to zoom.

The case board

How the file is organized

The case board from the vault, rebuilt here. It is the map of the investigation: where claims come in, where each one goes to be tested, and how a verified document becomes a known fact. Drag to move around.

File 002 — the case fileThe question: do the specific claims in the most popular Tartaria videos survive contact with primary sources?Claim ledgerTen claims, one row each, with the tests prepared under each.Known factsOnly what is proven, with the primary documents that prove it.Sources indexEvery document, by line of evidence and by status.Watch listThe claim videos, to be logged claim by claim with timestamps.Evidence galleryThe pictures: document pages, maps and photographs, each with its credit.Research logWhat was searched, when, and what came back, dead ends included.The ruleOne claim, one test, one primary source. Show the claim at its strongest. Name no living person unless a document does.01The world's fair buildings were already standing. They were not built for the fairs.tests: 5 502Buried first floors and half-sunken windows are the mark of a “mud flood”.tests: 5 4103“Tartaria” on old maps proves a global empire that was later suppressed.tests: 3 11104A small group of families inherited or seized Tartaria's wealth: “the 13 families”, “the great steal”.tests: 3 2105The “food forests” and plantings at the great expositions were Tartarian agriculture.tests: 2 1106Ornate domes and towers were “free energy” antennas.test: 1 107Star forts around the world were built by Tartaria.test: 1 108The orphan trains were a “repopulation” after a reset.test: 1 109The great city fires of Chicago 1871, Boston 1872 and San Francisco 1906 were deliberate erasure.test: 1 110Giants appear in old photographs.test: 1 1
Timeline

Five centuries in the record

Every date below comes from a dated document in the file. Tap an entry to jump to its test.

  1. 1525A Strassburg edition of Ptolemy prints a map of Greater Tartary (Tartariae Maioris)T12
  2. 1570Ortelius's atlas calls the region Tartary, the realm of the Great KhanT12
  3. 1570Ortelius names Tartary the kingdom of the Great KhanT14
  4. 1672Groundbreaking at St. Augustine under Governor Cendoya, recorded by public scribe Juan MorenoT24
  5. 1692Witsen publishes Noord en Oost Tartarye to explain his 1687 map of TartaryT13
  6. 1693Cantelli da Vignola's map La Gran Tartaria is published in RomeT18
  7. 1706Guillaume Delisle's Carte de Tartarie is engraved in ParisT18
  8. 1710Jean Crépy publishes in Paris a plan of Neuf-Brisach crediting Marshal Vauban as builderT24
  9. 1730Strahlenberg's map of Great Tartary, which also covers the Russian EmpireT18
  10. 1771Britannica's first edition lists the Tartars as separate peoples in separate placesT13
  11. 1771First edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica printed in Edinburgh; Volume III holds the TARTARY entryT17
  12. 1771First Britannica prints a short TARTARY entry in volume IIIT30
  13. 1797Britannica's third edition divides Tartary into Western and Eastern parts, home to many nationsT13
  14. 1819William Tell Poussin draws his plan of Fort McHenry, now in the National ArchivesT24
  15. 1845An American commercial atlas still prints Russia in Asia and TartaryT12
  16. 1853After back-to-back floods in 1852 and 1853, the city raises business-district streets.T08
  17. 1853Records of the Society's emigration and placing-out program beginT25
  18. 1855Sewer plan adopted; it calls for raising street grades an average of eighteen inches.T06
  19. 1857Common Council fixes South Division street grades by ordinance, passed May 4.T06
  20. 1860A Lake Street half-block is lifted 4 ft 8 in over five days.T06
  21. 1860Annual report lists 814 children sent out in a year, 328 of them orphansT25
  22. 1862After the floods of winter 1861-1862, the raising begins again.T08
  23. 1869Newspapers name the Cardiff Giant; 616 pages from 1869-1870 are in Chronicling AmericaT27
  24. 1869Massachusetts Historical Society's December meeting takes up the Cardiff Giant controversyT27
  25. 1870About this year, a photograph shows the second county courthouse being raised.T08
  26. 1871Catherine O'Leary testifies before Chicago's Board of Police and Fire CommissionersT26
  27. 1873Boston commission reports: fire began at 83-85 Summer Street, 776 buildings destroyedT26
  28. 1880Thirty-five children, 28 boys and 7 girls, sent to Springville, Iowa (newspaper transcription)T25
  29. 1885Colton's Central Asia map shows Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria, and no TartaryT14
  30. 1889Fire of June 6 leaves the burnt district in ruins and tents at the old ground level.T07
  31. 1889New street grades: James Street raised 18 feet at Front Street, 32 at Second.T07
  32. 1891Construction begins July 2, with the Mines Building first.T01
  33. 1893Olmsted reports over a million collected plants transplanted for the Chicago fairT31
  34. 1894Fire sweeps the Casino, Peristyle and Music Hall into the Manufactures building, January 8-9.T01
  35. 1896A secondary account dates the end of building removal to May 22, 1896.T01
  36. 1898The exposition company's surviving records begin.T03
  37. 1898Baudet, Donon et Cie win the metal framework contract, April.T05
  38. 1900Site surveyed and graded in early spring; the Service Building is the first erected.T02
  39. 1900Le Figaro reports all palaces but the two Beaux-Arts palaces will be demolished, 12 October.T05
  40. 1900Boston Herald report: John Galen Howard's design, a steel frame clad in wood and staffT23
  41. 1901The fair closes November 2 with a $3,000,000 deficit.T02
  42. 1901The Legislature authorizes a seawall, September 7.T09
  43. 1901Guidebook gives the height as 391 feet and the power as 5,000 horsepower from Niagara FallsT23
  44. 1901Official photographer C. D. Arnold records the finished tower at the fairT23
  45. 1902Chicago House Wrecking Co. buys the buildings for $80,000; demolition begins March 5.T02
  46. 1902The official report on the works is printed by the Imprimerie nationale.T05
  47. 1902Engineers Robert, Noble and Ripley report on January 25: build a seawall and raise the city.T09
  48. 1903A dated negative shows work on the roof of the Palace of Agriculture, October.T03
  49. 1903Mule teams grade bare ground for the St. Louis Horticulture gardensT31
  50. 1906Federal commission's final report reproduces the ordinance ordering all structures cleared after the fair.T03
  51. 1907USGS Bulletin 324 maps San Francisco's burned district and earthquake breaks in streetsT26
  52. 1911Britannica repeats that the name Tartary has almost disappeared from geographical literatureT14
  53. 1913Machinery Palace contract let to W. W. Anderson & Co., January 7.T04
  54. 1914The Machinery Palace is completed by March.T04
  55. 1914Plant orders go to Japan, Holland, Belgium and England for the 1915 fairT31
  56. 1916Exposition crews begin wrecking the courts toward the end of March.T04
  57. 1927Glass-plate photographs record Alabama and Pryor streets; The City Builder reports Atlanta's viaducts in sight.T10
  58. 1928The last area of the city is filled to the new grade.T09
  59. 1928Atlanta Constitution, March 8: work for the viaduct will start today.T10
  60. 1930City engineers photograph the Denny Regrade from 7th Ave. N., April 25.T07
  61. 1973Fomenko becomes interested in Morozov's theories, the start of the New ChronologyT15
  62. 1978John Todd lectures in Elkton, Maryland, on a secret Council of 13T32
  63. 1989New Zealand preacher Barry Smith publishes Final NoticeT32
  64. 1995Fomenko and Nosovsky's book Империя (Empire); its online text is dated Moscow 1995T15
  65. 2002The giant skeleton image places third in a Worth1000 digital-art contestT27
  66. 2003Levashov begins writing Russia in Crooked Mirrors, written between 2003 and 2007T16
  67. 2010Obninsk City Court rules the book extremist; Kaluga Oblast Court upholds it in DecemberT16
  68. 201312 April: Nosovsky discusses Great Tartaria on Echo of Moscow radioT15
  69. 2014Russian-language blog series argues Kazan and other towns were buried under soil.T11
  70. 201421 August: Part 1 of a LiveJournal series proposes Tartaria perished in a catastropheT19
  71. 201423 October: Part 5a, Buried cities, describes houses sunk one to two metersT19
  72. 2016First YouTube videos about the mud flood idea appear, in August.T11
  73. 2016Around 2016–2017 the idea moves into English, according to an online essayT19
  74. 2016August: the first YouTube videos on the Mud Flood idea appearT20
  75. 2016YouTube lists the Tartaria Vault channel as joined on Jan 2, 2016T28
  76. 2018Russian-language lecture series on a planetary catastrophe posted to YouTube.T11
  77. 2018December: the r/tartarianarchitecture forum starts on RedditT20
  78. 2020Russian Geographical Society links the idea to Levashov's use of the 1771 BritannicaT16
  79. 2022January: r/Tartaria counts more than 14,000 membersT20
  80. 2023Almost 300 million TikTok views for #tartaria, a counter-extremism network reportsT21
  81. 2024r/Tartaria passes 45,000 members; a related Facebook group passes 129,000T21
  82. 2025An archaeology society bulletin uses Grand Tartaria to teach students to spot pseudohistoryT21
  83. 2026April: a marketer's post on X claims the channel has 141,000 followers; unconfirmedT22
  84. 20267 September: the channel page shows 213K subscribers and 104 videosT22
  85. 2026June 27: video on food trees that were burned is publishedT28
  86. 2026July 19: video on 13 families inheriting the food forests is publishedT28
  87. 2026April 10: a post on X claims the channel is made with AI toolsT29
  88. 2026June 22: title date of the families video later mirrored on BitChute and RumbleT29
  89. 2026June 26: the 13 families and empty cities video is publishedT29
  90. 2026An online article lists a completely different set of 13 familiesT32
Where the theory came from

The paper trail of an idea

A theory has a history too. These background tests trace where the ideas behind Tartaria first appear in print and online, and who has already examined them.

T11

Where the mud flood idea began: 2014 to 2016

Background

The claim

Where the mud flood idea came from: Russian-language posts and lectures about buried cities, the Tartaria theory behind them, and the move into English-language YouTube and Reddit around 2016-2017.

What the record shows

The earliest dated pieces are Russian-language blog posts in a series, How did Tartaria perish? Part 5a (October 23, 2014) argued that old Russian houses stand buried 1 to 2 m deep. Part 5b (October 24, 2014) said Kazan's Tatar quarter, with a mosque built 1767-1770, lies under 1 to 1.5 m of soil. Russian-language YouTube lectures followed, such as Planetary Catastrophe, Part Two (January 10, 2018). Wikipedia traces the wider Tartaria theory to Anatoly Fomenko's new chronology (mid-1970s to early 1980s) and Nikolai Levashov's writings, and says it spread online from about 2016. A 2021 skeptic podcast dates the first YouTube videos on the mud flood idea to August 2016, with low viewership until December 2018 or January 2019.

Background: the buried-city idea appears in dated Russian posts in 2014 and spread online from 2016.

The documents

All 7 sources for this test
  • Skeptoid #765: Tartaria and the Mud Flood (Brian Dunning)Skeptoid Media (episode page https://skeptoid.com/episodes/765 refused connection; also archived at https://archive.org/details/1fpnc5rowejrhhylpy8vw5awin4u1uvcczcsnrps) · February 2, 2021 · PointerA skeptic podcast episode, No. 765, February 2, 2021. Using search-trend data, it dates the first YouTube videos about the mud flood idea to August 2016, with low viewership until about December 2018 or January 2019.
  • Inside the wild architecture conspiracy theory gaining traction online (Josie Adams)The Spinoff (New Zealand) · January 14, 2022 · PointerA New Zealand news article, January 14, 2022. It says the theory has gained traction since 2016 via YouTube and Reddit. An architectural historian explains Dunedin's half-buried windows by a street layout drawn in Edinburgh that ignored the local slopes.
  • Inside the 'Tartarian Empire,' the QAnon of Architecture (Zach Mortice)Bloomberg CityLab · April 27, 2021 · PointerA Bloomberg CityLab feature, April 27, 2021, on the Tartaria theory. It describes the belief that an apocalyptic mud flood buried the empire's great buildings, leaving basement windows below ground.
T15

The New Chronology: the theory's first building block

Background

The claim

Much of the theory's rewritten history comes from the New Chronology of Anatoly Fomenko of Moscow State University. With Gleb Nosovsky, he described “a vast Slav-Turk empire, called the Russian Horde (Great Tartaria)”.

What the record shows

Wikipedia's New Chronology article states that Fomenko became interested in Morozov's theories in 1973 and published articles on “new mathematical methods in history” in 1980. By 1996, it says, the theory covered Russia, Turkey, China, Europe and Egypt. The online full text of Fomenko and Nosovsky's book Империя (Empire) is dated Moscow 1995. In a chapter on 18th-century maps, the authors write that GRANDE TARTARIE runs across the same territory as “Emperie Russienne” in letters three times larger. In April 2013, co-author Nosovsky discussed Great Tartaria on Echo of Moscow radio. Wikipedia's Tartarian Empire article says aspects of the theory first appeared in the New Chronology “in the mid-1970s and early 1980s”.

Background: the empire called Great Tartaria enters the story through Fomenko and Nosovsky's New Chronology books.

The documents

All 5 sources for this test
  • Tartarian Empire — WikipediaWikimedia Foundation · fetched 2026-09-07 · PointerTertiary summary. Says aspects first appeared in the New Chronology “in the mid-1970s and early 1980s”, were “popularized by the racial occult history of Nikolai Levashov”, and spread online from about 2016.
T16

A Russian book ruled extremist cites 1771 encyclopedia

Background

The claim

Nikolai Levashov (1961–2012) popularized Великая Тартария (Great Tartaria) as the true name of Russia. His book Россия в кривых зеркалах (Russia in Crooked Mirrors) points to the 1771 Encyclopaedia Britannica as its evidence.

What the record shows

Russian Wikipedia gives Levashov's dates (8 February 1961, Kislovodsk, to 11 June 2012, Moscow) and says he wrote the book in 2003–2007. A user-uploaded transcription of an excerpt, The Suppressed History of Russia, says Great Tartaria was the largest country in the world, as the first edition of the British encyclopedia of 1771 describes it. The Russian Geographical Society (5 October 2020) confirms he cited the 1771 Britannica for a giant state in Central Eurasia. It adds that Nosovsky and Fomenko also called the Tartars Slavs, and that the name left maps in the early 19th century. Obninsk City Court ruled the book extremist on 23 April 2010. Kaluga Oblast Court upheld the ruling on 22 December 2010.

Background: the 1771 Britannica talking point traces to Levashov, whose book Russian courts ruled extremist in 2010.

The documents

All 6 sources for this test
T17

Edinburgh, 1771: what the encyclopedia actually says

Background

The claim

The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh, 1771) has an entry for TARTARY in Volume III. It is the passage Tartaria videos and Levashov's book point to.

What the record shows

The National Library of Scotland's scan of Volume III, mirrored on the Internet Archive, has the entry on printed page 887 (page 796 of the scan). It opens: “a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west”. It then calls this region Great Tartary and lists Tartar peoples: those south of Moscovy and Siberia, in Astracan, Circassia and Dagistan, then the Calmuc, Usbec, Mogul and Tibet Tartars. It names no empire, capital or ruler. The title page gives Edinburgh, printed for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, 1771. A full-text search finds Tartary 16 times in this volume.

Background: the entry is real. It describes a region of northern Asia and its peoples, naming no empire or ruler.

The documents

T18

Old maps of Tartary: a regional name for Asia

Background

The claim

European maps of the 1600s and 1700s label inner and northern Asia Tartarie, Tartaria or Tartary. These are the old maps of Tartaria shown in the videos, such as Guillaume Delisle's Carte de Tartarie (Paris, 1706).

What the record shows

Guillaume Delisle's Carte de Tartarie was engraved in Paris in 1706. The David Rumsey copy measures 49 x 64 cm at a scale of 1:10,700,000 and shows the Great Wall, forests and relief. The Library of Congress holds two copies in its vault. The plate was reissued in 1766. A rare-map dealer's 2026 essay traces the same name through Cantelli da Vignola's La Gran Tartaria (Rome, 1693), Strahlenberg's 1730 Nova Descriptio Geographica Tattariae Magnae and d'Anville's 1737 atlas of China, Chinese Tartary and Tibet. Strahlenberg's title also covers the whole Russian Empire. The Russian Geographical Society notes the name left maps in the early 19th century.

Background: Tartary was a normal European map name for inner and northern Asia. The maps survive in major libraries.

The documents

T19

Russian blogs, 2014: windows at ground level

Background

The claim

The mud-flood idea, that a disaster buried older cities, began in Russian-language posts on LiveJournal, a blogging platform. They reread the archaeological cultural layer (культурный слой), the ground that builds up over settlements, as sudden burial. A YouTube creator later carried it to English audiences.

What the record shows

A Russian-language LiveJournal blogger posted “Как погибла Тартария? Часть 1.” (How did Tartaria perish? Part 1) on 21 August 2014. It opens by noting that many articles already describe a huge state called Tartaria in today's Siberia before the 19th century, and it proposes a catastrophe about 200 years earlier. Part 5a, Засыпанные города (Buried cities), posted 23 October 2014, says many houses stand with windows at ground level, buried one to two meters deep, mostly buildings from before the 1820s. A second blogger reposted Part 5b, on Kazan buildings, on 24 October 2014. An anonymous 2026 essay says the idea moved into English around 2016–2017.

Background: the buried-cities strand is documented in Russian blog posts from August and October 2014.

The documents

All 5 sources for this test
T20

2016 to 2018: YouTube videos, then Reddit forums

Background

The claim

The English-language version of the theory took shape on YouTube and Reddit between 2016 and 2018. Its forums kept growing for years afterward.

What the record shows

A science podcast dates the first YouTube videos on the Mud Flood idea to “August of 2016” and the single consolidated claim to “around 2017”. Bloomberg CityLab (27 April 2021) says the theory “appears to have first emerged in 2016 and 2017”. It reports r/tartarianarchitecture, started December 2018, at 3,300 members and r/Tartaria at 8,700, and names one creator with over 100,000 subscribers. The Spinoff (14 January 2022) counted more than 14,000 r/Tartaria members. Later reports gave 23,000 in February 2023 and over 45,000 in August 2024. In September 2026 a statistics site showed r/Tartaria as quarantined (restricted), with no growth data.

Background: the English-language theory dates to 2016–2018, and its main forum grew past 45,000 members by 2024.

The documents

All 5 sources for this test
T21

Who has examined the Tartaria story, and when

Background

The claim

Journalists, fact-checkers and scholars have examined the Tartaria theory: in mainstream press, a peer-reviewed religion journal, an archaeology society bulletin and a Russian learned society.

What the record shows

An UnHerd opinion piece followed Bloomberg CityLab's 2021 report. In February 2023, a counter-extremism network counted almost 300 million TikTok views for #tartaria and a further 150 million for #mudflood, and noted Russian ethnonationalist use. A May 2023 fact check quoted two historians who found no evidence for the empire or a mud flood. Bloomberg CityLab returned to the theory in October 2024. An archaeology bulletin (September 2025) uses the Grand Tartarian Empire to teach students to spot pseudohistory. A January 2026 religion-studies profile dates r/Tartaria's founding to 26 December 2018.

Background: the theory has drawn steady press, fact-check and academic attention since 2021.

The documents

All 10 sources for this test
T22

2026: an AI-assisted channel with 213,000 subscribers

Background

The claim

By 2026, Tartaria videos also come from AI-narrated faceless channels, which have no on-screen presenter. One of them, Tartaria Vault, reached 213,000 subscribers.

What the record shows

Tartaria Vault's YouTube page, read on 7 September 2026, showed 213K subscribers and 104 videos. Its channel text describes the content as exploratory interpretation of history and creative speculation. It says “Visuals may occasionally be produced, altered or reconstructed using automated or generative artificial intelligence tools” and that the content “should not be regarded as factual”. Sister channels run in German (132 subscribers), French (12.2K), Portuguese (18.4K) and Italian (4.25K). A post on X dated 10 April 2026, by a marketer of faceless channels, claimed the channel then had 141,000 followers, was three months old and used AI for scripts, voice and images. Those claims are not confirmed.

Background: a large 2026 Tartaria channel's own description says its content should not be taken as fact.

The documents

Sources index

All 169 sources

Every source the file used, who holds it, and what it shows. “Primary” means a record made at the time; “pointer” means a later work that leads to one. Weak and dead sources stay listed for honesty but are not used as evidence.

#SourceHeld byDateTypeStatusTest
1Report of the President to the Board of Directors of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1892-1893 (Harlow N. Higinbotham)The fair's official report (Rand McNally, 1898). It records dredging from February 11, 1891, contracts let through 1891, and the Art Building “constructed chiefly of brick and steel, with exterior covering of staff.”Internet Archive (University of Michigan copy)1898PrimaryVerifiedT01
2Rand, McNally & Co.'s Handbook of the World's Columbian Exposition (comp. Stuart C. Wade)An 1893 guidebook compiled by Stuart C. Wade. It states “Construction work began on the 2d of July, 1891,” describes staff used on buildings and sculpture, and gives a total cost of $18,530,453, expected to exceed $22,000,000.Internet Archive1893PrimaryVerifiedT01
3World's Columbian Exposition Photographs by C. D. Arnold (Ryerson and Burnham Archives, reference no. 1989.2)The official photographer's prints, dated 1891-1894, remounted in fifteen oversize albums. The Art Institute of Chicago's catalog says they cover the fair from initial preparations to specific buildings and exhibitors.Art Institute of Chicago1891-1894PrimaryVerifiedT01
4'Devoured By Fire' - Ann Arbor ArgusNewspaper of January 12, 1894, on the fire that began in the Casino and spread to the Peristyle, Music Hall and Manufactures building, destroying foreign exhibits and killing firefighters.Ann Arbor District Library (digitized newspaper)1894-01-12PrimaryVerifiedT01
5'Big Blaze at Chicago. Five Buildings at the World's Fair Grounds Destroyed' - The Record-Union (Sacramento), July 6, 1894 (transcription)A hobbyist transcription of a July 6, 1894 Sacramento newspaper report: a fire from the Terminal Station, driven by a southwest gale, destroyed five buildings. Not yet checked against the original newspaper.greenerpasture.com (transcription; original newspaper is in the California Digital Newspaper Collection, which could not be reached this session)1894-07-06PointerVerifiedT01
6Death of the Republic: The fiery end to the golden colossus of the 1893 World's FairA 2021 secondary blog post, used only as a pointer to original newspapers of 1894-1896. It states the Chicago House Wrecking Company completed removal of the buildings on May 22, 1896.worldsfairchicago1893.com (secondary blog)2021PointerVerifiedT01
7Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, May 1st to November 1st, 1901 (Pan-American Exposition Company prospectus)The exposition company's own prospectus, dated August 20, 1900. Page 16 says the buildings “will be constructed of staff.” It names the Service Building as the first erected, completed in 32 working days.Internet Archive1900-08-20PrimaryVerifiedT02
8Demolishing the Pan-American ExpositionA museum article by its library and archives director, summarizing Buffalo newspapers: closing November 2, 1901, sale of the buildings for $80,000 on February 28, 1902, demolition from March 5, 1902.The Buffalo History Museum (blog)2021-06-26PointerVerifiedT02
9Working on the roof of the Palace of Agriculture (Louisiana Purchase Exposition Glass Plate Negatives Collection, ID D80356)A glass plate negative dated October 1903, titled “Working on the roof of the Palace of Agriculture,” cataloged under exhibition building design and construction in St. Louis, 1900-1910.St. Louis Public Library (CONTENTdm digital collection 'lpe')1903-10PrimaryVerifiedT03
10Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company Records, 1898-1925 (collection A0934), finding aidThe exposition company's own records, 1898-1925, 35 cubic feet. They include a Division of Works series, architectural drawings in boxes 31-32, Legal Department contracts, and related construction albums P0702 and P0703.Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center, St. Louis1898-1925PrimaryVerifiedT03
11Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission (Senate Doc. No. 202, 59th Congress, 1st Session)Federal commission report transmitted February 8, 1906. It reproduces the St. Louis ordinance requiring the company to clear the park of all structures within six months of closing and restore it within twelve months.Project Gutenberg (eBook #13266)1906PrimaryVerifiedT03
12Catalogue no. 145: $50,000,000 Louisiana Purchase Exposition bought by the Chicago House Wrecking Co. (archive.org title spells 'Expedition')A 410-page trade catalog from the Chicago House Wrecking Co., dated 1906 by archive.org, titled as the $50,000,000 Louisiana Purchase Exposition bought by the company. The archive.org title misspells Exposition as Expedition.Internet Archive (Building Technology Heritage Library, Alan O'Bright Collection)c. 1905-1906 (archive.org dates it 1906)PrimaryVerifiedT03
13Official photographs of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, approximately 1913-1915 (BANC PIC 1939.006)The official photographs: 28 volumes of prints and 21 boxes of negatives by H.S. Crocker & Co. and Cardinell-Vincent Co., chiefly “preparation and construction views taken in 1913-1914” and crowds at the 1915 opening.Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley (finding aid on Online Archive of California)1913-1915PrimaryVerifiedT04
14The Story of the Exposition: Being the Official History of the International Celebration Held at San Francisco in 1915, vol. 2 (Frank Morton Todd)Official history, vol. 2 (1921). Gives the $14,847,607.04 plant cost, contract dates from January 1913, the named contractors, and the Palace of Fine Arts gallery's walls and roof of cement plaster on metal fabric.Internet Archive1921PrimaryVerifiedT04
15The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5 (Frank Morton Todd)Official history, vol. 5 (1921), with chapters on wreckage and salvage. It records the Exposition wrecking the wooden-frame palaces itself from late March 1916, and states “The Palace of Fine Arts still stands.”Internet Archive1921PrimaryVerifiedT04
16Exposition universelle internationale de 1900 à Paris. Rapport général administratif et technique, tome 3 (Alfred Picard, Commissaire général)The official general report, tome 3, printed by the Imprimerie nationale in 1902. Page 8 describes steel halls wrapped in plaster or staff to imitate stone; page 19 records the April 1898 metal framework contract.Internet Archive (Getty Research Institute copy)1902PrimaryVerifiedT05
17Le Figaro : journal non politique (issue on Gallica, ark:/12148/bpt6k285291s) - article on the demolition of the 1900 Exposition palacesLe Figaro, 12 October 1900, page 1, located through Gallica's search tools. Written before closing, it reports the plan to demolish all palaces except the two permanent Palais des Beaux-Arts, starting on some sites in December.Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallicalate 1900 (exact issue date not retrievable this session; Gallica returned 403)PrimaryVerifiedT05
18Report and plan of sewerage for the city of Chicago, Illinois: adopted by the Board of Sewerage Commissioners December 31, 1855 (E. S. Chesbrough, Chief Engineer)Chesbrough's sewer plan, adopted December 31, 1855. It ties the sewers to raising street grades, an average of eighteen inches, much of it already provided for by grades the city council had recently set.U.S. National Library of Medicine copy, digitized on Internet Archive (Medical Heritage Library)1855PrimaryVerifiedT06
19Chicago sewerage: report of the results of examinations made in relation to sewerage in several European cities, in the winter of 1856-7Chesbrough's 1858 report on sewers in European cities, written after his tour in the winter of 1856-7. Page 33 describes Hamburg raising its streets after its great fire of 1842.U.S. National Library of Medicine copy, digitized on Internet Archive1858PrimaryVerifiedT06
20Report of the Board of Sewerage Commissioners of the city of Chicago, for the half year ending December 31, 1860The Board's official 20-page report for the half year ending December 31, 1860, signed by Chesbrough as chief engineer. It notes streets not yet permanently graded.U.S. National Library of Medicine copy, digitized on Internet Archive1861PrimaryVerifiedT06
21An act to amend the act entitled 'An act to reduce the law incorporating the city of Chicago...'; with the ordinances of the Common Council, passed from September 22, 1856, to April 5, 1858The printed Common Council ordinances, September 1856 to April 1858 (132 pages). They fix street grades by law in 1857 and let owners raise wooden buildings to the established grade and build brick or stone basements beneath.University of Illinois at Chicago copy, digitized on Internet Archive1858PrimaryVerifiedT06
22Chicago Sewers Collection, 1855-circa 2004 (finding aid)Chicago Public Library's finding aid for its sewers collection. It records that by spring 1856 Chesbrough proposed raising the grade of the streets six to ten feet. Its copies of the 1855 and 1858 reports are reproductions.Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Library Center, Special Collectionsfinding aid (collection 1855-2004)PointerVerifiedT06
23Chicago Municipal Code: How to Find and Research Historical CodesA Chicago Public Library guide to where the period ordinance books are held: the 1856 charter and ordinances, the 1858 volume, and the 1866 laws and ordinances.Chicago Public Libraryblog guide (undated)PointerVerifiedT06
24Raising of Chicago (Wikipedia) - reference list of period newspaper articlesWikipedia's article on the raising of Chicago, used for its dated newspaper citations: Tribune, May 31, 1855; Press and Tribune, March-April 1860 (Lake Street); Tribune, 1861 (Tremont House); February 7, 1866 (Briggs House).Wikipedia (pointer to Chicago Tribune / Chicago Daily Press and Tribune)article citing 1854-1866 newspapersPointerVerifiedT06
25Raising a block of buildings on Lake Street, between Clark and La Salle Streets (lithograph by Edward Mendel)Edward Mendel's lithograph of a brick block on Lake Street lifted on jackscrews (screw-driven jacks). The Commons file and the Encyclopedia of Chicago both date the view to 1857, so it is not a picture of the 1860 raising.Chicago History Museum (Chicago Historical Society), ICHi-00698 per Encyclopedia of Chicago search result; reproduced on Wikimedia Commons1860 per Encyclopedia of Chicago/Wikipedia; Commons file page says 1857PrimaryVerifiedT06
26Raising the Briggs House (photograph/engraving)A view of the brick Briggs House hotel standing on jackscrews. Its catalog date is uncertain: 1857 or 1866.Chicago Historical Society (per Commons source line)1866 (Commons notes sources conflict, 1857 or 1866)PrimaryVerifiedT06
27A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, vol. 2 (1857 to the fire of 1871)A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, volume 2 (1884), a nineteenth-century published history covering 1857 to the fire of 1871. Page 59 dates the first street-grade ordinance to March 1855.Internet Archive (digitized print copy; vol. 1 at https://archive.org/details/historyofchicago01andr)1884PrimaryVerifiedT06
28Narrative Statement of Significance, The Pioneer Square-Skid Road National Historic District (NRHP continuation sheets, Section 8)The Pioneer Square-Skid Road historic district nomination, Section 8. It gives the raised street heights, explains how ground floors became basements, and cites the Post-Intelligencer of June 22 and July 5, 1889.City of Seattle, Department of Neighborhoods, Historic PreservationNRHP nomination update (undated PDF, cites sources to 2004)PointerVerifiedT07
29Engineering Department Denny Hill Regrade Photograph Albums (finding aid)The city Engineering Department's album of 120 prints, 1904-1929, showing Denny Hill sluiced away by water cannons and the spoil (dug-out earth) dumped from barges into Elliott Bay. Sixty-one of the images are online.Seattle Municipal Archives1904-1929PrimaryVerifiedT07
30Denny Regrade Looking North from Westlake at 6th, 8th and 9th Avenue [7th Ave. No. from Virginia Street], item 4017City engineers' negative 8248, dated April 25, 1930, looking north on 7th Ave. N. from Virginia Street during the Denny Regrade.Seattle Municipal Archives, Record Series 2613-07 Engineering Department Negatives (original no. 8248, nitrate, Box 52)April 25, 1930PrimaryVerifiedT07
31Prism Lights: An Underground Story of Seattle (David B. Williams)A 2022 Seattle history article quoting Ordinance 2833, which requires sidewalk openings to be covered with prismatic lights (glass prisms in iron frames). It cites a 2011 count of 27,417 prisms. The ordinance text itself is not yet confirmed.Street Smart Naturalist (Substack)May 26, 2022PointerVerifiedT07
32Raising Pioneer Square's Streets Following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 (Michael Ostrogorsky)A 2026 article describing three University of Washington photographs, 1889-1892, taken from the Olympic Block roof: a half-filled street, stacked prism-glass panels, and the finished grade. The photographs are not yet located in the catalog.Substack; photographs credited to University of Washington Libraries Digital CollectionsAugust 18, 2026PointerVerifiedT07
33Seattle fire album photograph collection, 1889University of Washington album of 21 prints made after the June 6, 1889 fire, most attributed to John Soule. It shows ruins, temporary structures and tents in the burnt district.University of Washington Libraries, Special CollectionsJune 1889PrimaryVerifiedT07
34Sacramento Historic District Plans, Section 1: Sacramento's Historic Context and Standards & Criteria - City-Wide Historic ContextSacramento's adopted historic district plans, citywide history section. It records the street raising after the 1852-1853 and 1861-1862 floods, the 10-to-12-foot rise, first stories turned into basements, and funding by taxes on property owners.City of Sacramento, Community Development Department (adopted historic district plans)2018 (latest citation in text)PointerVerifiedT08
35Sacramento Daily Union - browse by title (all issues)The Sacramento Daily Union in the California Digital Newspaper Collection, browsable year by year, including 1864. Specific 1864 articles on the street raising have not yet been read.California Digital Newspaper Collection, UC Riverside1851-1890s runPrimaryVerifiedT08
36Center for Sacramento History Photo Collection on CalisphereCenter for Sacramento History via Calisphere (California Digital Library)photographs 1865-1972PointerWeakT08
37Galveston Grade Raising (research topic page)The Rosenberg Library's grade-raising page. It gives the original elevation, the new 8-to-22-foot grade, the canal dredged through the city, boardwalks on fence tops, and 1928 for the last area filled.Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Librarypage (project 1904-1928)PointerVerifiedT09
38Ave P during grade raising, G-59261FF3-12Rosenberg Library photograph G-59261FF3-12, Ave P during grade raising, dated 1905-1907. The catalog gives only the title.Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Library (sepia print 8.7 x 10.8 cm)1905-1907PrimaryVerifiedT09
39St. Patrick's Church, G-59262FF3-6Rosenberg Library photograph of St. Patrick's Church, 1907, filed under Grade Raising and tagged Pipelines. Related items show Grace Church being raised and the convent's front yard being filled.Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Library (b/w print 10.0 x 14.1 cm)1907PrimaryVerifiedT09
40Plan of the city of Galveston showing proposed sea wall and raising of grade (Clarke & Courts)A 1902 color map by Clarke & Courts, 54 x 41 cm, titled for the proposed sea wall and raising of grade, with cross-sections, flood history and cost estimates.University of Texas at Arlington Library, via The Portal to Texas History1902PrimaryVerifiedT09
41History of the Galveston SeawallThe Rosenberg Library's seawall history. It records the Legislature's act of September 7, 1901, the engineers' report of January 1902, and a plan to build a seawall and raise the city's elevation.Galveston & Texas History Center, Rosenberg Librarypage (events 1901-1904)PointerVerifiedT09
42Galveston Seawall and Grade Raising (ASCE historic civil engineering landmark)The American Society of Civil Engineers landmark page. It dates the board's report to January 25, 1902 and the initial grade raising to 1903-1911. The fill supported the seawall and helped drainage and sewers.American Society of Civil Engineerslandmark pagePointerVerifiedT09
43Before Underground (Atlanta Studies)A 2025 Georgia State University Library project article. It cites 1927 Atlanta-Fulton Public Library negatives and 1927-1928 press reports on the viaducts. It is a secondary source; the negatives and newspapers have not been examined directly.Atlanta Studies (Georgia State University Library project)February 15, 2025PointerVerifiedT10
44Как погибла Тартария? Часть 5б. Засыпанные города. (How did Tartaria perish? Part 5b. Buried cities) - sibvedPart 5b of the Russian-language blog series How did Tartaria perish?, dated October 24, 2014. It claims Kazan's Tatar quarter lies under 1 to 1.5 m of soil. The series is by another blogger; Part 5a appeared October 23.LiveJournal (blog 'sibved'); mirrored at https://kadykchanskiy.livejournal.com/716504.html and https://vol-majya.livejournal.com/673500.html (Part 5a)October 24, 2014 (date from search-index snippet; LiveJournal refused my direct fetch)PrimaryVerifiedT11
45Алексей Кунгуров. Планетарная катастрофа. Часть вторая (Alexey Kungurov. Planetary Catastrophe. Part Two)A Russian-language lecture, Planetary Catastrophe, Part Two, uploaded to the lecturer's YouTube channel on January 10, 2018. Its title and date are confirmed; its content has not been reviewed.YouTube channel 'Алексей Кунгуров' (https://www.youtube.com/@Kungurov_Alekxey); title and channel verified via YouTube oEmbedJanuary 10, 2018 (date from search index)PrimaryVerifiedT11
46Засыпанные первые этажи в старой Риге. Катастрофа, которую от нас скрывают (Buried first floors in old Riga. A catastrophe being hidden from us)A Russian-language video from December 2018 on buried first floors in old Riga, crediting several Russian alternative historians. It had only 509 views when checked: evidence the idea was circulating, not that this video spread it.YouTube channel 'Алексей Торгашов' (https://www.youtube.com/@AlexeyTorgashov); title and channel verified via YouTube oEmbedDecember 2018 (date from search index)PrimaryVerifiedT11
47Tartarian Empire (Wikipedia)Wikipedia's Tartarian Empire article. It traces the theory to Anatoly Fomenko's new chronology and Nikolai Levashov's writings, and says that since about 2016 it spread online, divorced from its original Russian nationalist frame.Wikipediacurrent articlePointerVerifiedT11
48Skeptoid #765: Tartaria and the Mud Flood (Brian Dunning)A skeptic podcast episode, No. 765, February 2, 2021. Using search-trend data, it dates the first YouTube videos about the mud flood idea to August 2016, with low viewership until about December 2018 or January 2019.Skeptoid Media (episode page https://skeptoid.com/episodes/765 refused connection; also archived at https://archive.org/details/1fpnc5rowejrhhylpy8vw5awin4u1uvcczcsnrps)February 2, 2021PointerVerifiedT11
49Inside the wild architecture conspiracy theory gaining traction online (Josie Adams)A New Zealand news article, January 14, 2022. It says the theory has gained traction since 2016 via YouTube and Reddit. An architectural historian explains Dunedin's half-buried windows by a street layout drawn in Edinburgh that ignored the local slopes.The Spinoff (New Zealand)January 14, 2022PointerVerifiedT11
50Inside the 'Tartarian Empire,' the QAnon of Architecture (Zach Mortice)A Bloomberg CityLab feature, April 27, 2021, on the Tartaria theory. It describes the belief that an apocalyptic mud flood buried the empire's great buildings, leaving basement windows below ground.Bloomberg CityLabApril 27, 2021PointerVerifiedT11
51Ta[bula] Superioris Indiae et Tartariae Maioris — Ptolemy, Geographia (Strassburg: Grüninger/Koberger, 1525), map by Lorenz Fries after WaldseemüllerA map in a 1525 Strassburg edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, titled Superioris Indiae et Tartariae Maioris (Upper India and Greater Tartary). Lorenz Fries copied it, reduced, from Waldseemüller's 1513 maps. Printed 45 years before Ortelius's atlas.David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries (List No. 10891.121; mirrored on Internet Archive as dr_ta-superioris-indiae-et-tartariae-maioris-10891121)1525PrimaryVerifiedT12
52Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus ('Tartaria siue magni chami imperivm'), in Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp, 1570), sheet 104Ortelius's first-edition atlas, 1570. Library of Congress scan 104 is titled “Tartaria siue magni chami imperivm.” The sheet draws the Great Khan in a tent; a lower-left panel says it maps all Tartary “Magno Chamo obediente” (obeying the Great Khan).Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, call no. G1006 .T5 1570 (LCCN 2003683482)1570PrimaryVerifiedT12
53La Grande Tartarie vers l'Orient ou sont le Turquestan, la Tartarie septemtrionale, et la Tartarie du Kin / par P. Du Val geographe du RoyPierre Du Val, geographer to the King, Paris, 1684. The title puts Turkestan, northern Tartary and the Tartary of the Kin under one heading, Grande Tartarie: a container name for several lands. BnF Arsenal, EST-1502 (81).Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Arsenal, EST-1502 (81); Gallica ark:/12148/btv1b53179327v1684 (Paris, chez l'autheur, avec privilège du Roy)PrimaryVerifiedT12
54La grande Tartarie / suivant les nouvelles observations de Mess. de l'Académie royale des sciences, augmentées de nouveau (Leiden: Pierre van der Aa)Pierre van der Aa's La grande Tartarie, Leiden, from his Nouvel atlas, drawn after the new observations of the Paris Académie royale des sciences. The BnF catalogue dates it 1714 or earlier. A small sheet, 31 x 37.5 cm.Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE DD-2987 (7359); Gallica ark:/12148/btv1b5963130q1714PrimaryVerifiedT12
55Carte nouvelle de la Grande Tartarie / par monsieur N. Witsen ; dressée sur les degrées de Sr. N. SansonWitsen's Carte nouvelle de la Grande Tartarie, a French issue on two sheets (64 x 99 cm), drawn on Sanson's degrees. The BnF catalogue dates it before 1717. Witsen's book Noord en Oost Tartarye was written to explain his map.Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE DD-2987 (7362 B); Gallica ark:/12148/btv1b5962781s1717PrimaryVerifiedT12
56Carte Nouvelle de la Grande Tartarie ou de l'Empire du Grand Cham, dressée sur les mémoires originaux ... Tom. V, No. 33, pag. 87 — Henri Chatelain & Nicolas Gueudeville, Atlas Historique, vol. V (Amsterdam: L'Honoré & Chatelain)Atlas Historique, vol. V (Amsterdam, 1719), by Henri Chatelain and Nicolas Gueudeville: New Map of Great Tartary or of the Empire of the Grand Cham. An engraved folded map from the Caspian Sea to Korea, with boundaries and major cities.David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries (List No. 13272.525; Internet Archive mirror dr_carte-nouvelle-de-la-grande-tartarie-ou-de-lempire-du-grand-cham-dresee-s-13272525)1719PrimaryVerifiedT12
57Great Tartary. With the tract of the Moscovite Ambassador's travels from Moscow to Pekin in China ... By H. Moll Geographer, 1732 (London: T. Bowles & J. Bowles, [1736?])H. Moll's Great Tartary, dated 1732, published in London around 1736. Hand-colored, with geographical notes, it traces a Moscow embassy's overland route to Peking, above 4,600 English miles.David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries (List No. 5580.032; Internet Archive mirror dr_great-tartary-with-the-tract-of-the-moscovite-ambassadors-travels-from-mo-00434075)1732/1736PrimaryVerifiedT12
58Carte generale de la Tartarie Chinoise, dressée sur les cartes particulières faites sur les lieux par les RR. PP. Jésuites ... par le Sr. d'Anville (1732), in Nouvel atlas de la Chine, de la Tartarie chinoise et du Thibet (The Hague: Scheurleer, 1737)D'Anville's general map of Chinese Tartary, dated March 1732, built from maps the Jesuit fathers made on the spot and from Father Gerbillon's notes. Published in The Hague, 1737. Centered on Mongolia; covers Korea, Japan and China.David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries (List No. 13322.027; Internet Archive mirror dr_carte-generale-de-la-tartarie-chinoise--dressee-sur-les-cartes-particulier-13322027)1732 (map) / 1737 (atlas)PrimaryVerifiedT12
59Carte de Tartarie: dressée sur les Relations de plusieurs Voyageurs de différentes Nations ... (LoC devised title: Map of the Great Tartary) — Guillaume de l'Isle, reissued by Covens & Mortier, AmsterdamGuillaume de l'Isle's Carte de Tartarie, a 1757 Amsterdam reissue by Covens and Mortier of a 1706 map. It shows the Great Wall, roads and political boundaries, with distance scales in French, Russian, Chinese and Persian units.Library of Congress (LCCN 2021668613; World Digital Library wdl.15038; original at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries), 1 map, hand colour, 47 x 61 cm1757 (later state of a 1706 map)PrimaryVerifiedT12
60(11) La Tartaria Indipendente delineata sulle ultime osservazioni (Rome: Calcografia Camerale, 1789) — Giovanni Maria Cassini, Nuovo atlante, vol. IIIGiovanni Maria Cassini's La Tartaria Indipendente, Rome, 1789, from his three-volume Nuovo atlante. The word is spelled Tartaria, exactly as in the theory, but qualified: Independent Tartary, one part of the wider region.David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries (List No. 14000.182; Internet Archive mirror dr_11-la-tartaria-indipendente-delineata-sulle-ultime-osservazioni-roma-pr-14000182)1789 (atlas issued to 1801)PrimaryVerifiedT12
61Modern Asia — engraved by Samuel John Neele, published by John Wilkes, London, 13 Aug. 1796Neele's Modern Asia, London, 1796. The catalogue notes the interior is shown as Western Tartary and Chinese Tartary, and that “‘Tartary’ was a designation applied by Europeans to those parts of Asia inhabited by nomadic Turkic and Mongol peoples.”Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, call no. G7400 1796 .W5 (LCCN 2006636625)1796PrimaryVerifiedT12
62Russia in Asia and Tartary. Engraved by J. & W.W. Warr — Tanner's Universal Atlas (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart)Tanner's Universal Atlas, Philadelphia, mid-1845 edition (title page dated 1844), prints Russia in Asia and Tartary. An ordinary American commercial atlas still used the word in 1845.David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries (List No. 5363.064; Internet Archive mirror dr_russia-in-asia-and-tartary-engraved-by-j--ww-warr-published-by-cary--5363064)1845PrimaryVerifiedT12
63'TARTARIE, (Géog. mod.)' by Louis de Jaucourt (signed D. J.), Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1st ed., vol. 15, p. 926 (Wikisource transcription)Louis de Jaucourt's article TARTARIE in the first-edition Encyclopédie, vol. 15, p. 926 (volunteer Wikisource transcription). It calls Tartary a “vaste pays” (vast country) split three ways: Chinese, Independent and Russian. It credits Witsen's map.fr.wikisource.org (transcription of the 1st edition; the scholarly ARTFL/University of Chicago edition exists but I could not obtain an article permalink)1765 (vol. 15 of the 1751–1772 first edition)PointerVerifiedT13
64'TARTARY', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st edition (Edinburgh: Bell & Macfarquhar), vol. III (M–Z), signature 'Vol. III. No. 97' — National Library of Scotland scan on Internet Archive (item 1771EncyclopediaBritannicaNLS, file 'Volume 3, M-Z', full-text search leaf 796)Britannica's first edition (Edinburgh, 1771), vol. III, scanned by the National Library of Scotland. TARTARY is “a vast country in the northern parts of Asia.” Another entry says ancient Scythia “afterwards obtained the name of Tartary.”National Library of Scotland (digital.nls.uk/encyclopaedia-britannica/archive/144133903 is the volume page); scan and OCR hosted on Internet Archive1771PrimaryVerifiedT13
65'TARTARY', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edition (Edinburgh, 1797), vol. XVIII (STR–ZYM), part 1 — National Library of Scotland scan on Internet Archive (item 1797EncyclopediaBritannicaNLS, full-text search leaf 350)Britannica's third edition (Edinburgh, 1797), vol. XVIII. TARTARY is “a very large country of Asia,” bounded by Siberia, the rivers Don, Wolga and Kama, the Caspian, China and Korea, and divided into Western and Eastern Tartary.National Library of Scotland; scan and OCR hosted on Internet Archive1797PrimaryVerifiedT13
66Nicolaas Witsen, Noord en Oost Tartarye (Amsterdam, 1st ed. 1692; 2nd ed. 1705) — English introduction to the Huygens Institute (KNAW) bilingual digital editionIntroduction to the Huygens Institute digital edition of Witsen's Noord en Oost Tartarye (1692; second edition 1705). It says inner Eurasia was then little known in the West and called Tartary, land of nomadic peoples.Huygens Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis (KNAW), 'retroboeken/witsen' digital edition; introduction PDF1692/1705 (source text); digital edition intro undatedPointerVerifiedT13
67'TARTARS' by Peter Kropotkin, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, vol. XXIII (Wikisource transcription)Peter Kropotkin's TARTARS article, Britannica 9th edition, vol. XXIII (Wikisource transcription). It says the name Tartary “has almost disappeared from geographical literature, but the name Tartars, in the above limited sense, remains in full use.”en.wikisource.org (transcription of the 9th edition, 1875–1889 series)1875–1889 series (vol. XXIII)PointerVerifiedT14
68'TATARS', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition, vol. 26 (Wikisource transcription)Britannica's 1911 edition, vol. 26, entry by Kropotkin and Charles Eliot (Wikisource transcription). It opens “TATARS (the common form Tartars is less correct),” derives the name from the Ta-ta Mongols, and repeats that Tartary “has almost disappeared from geographical literature.”en.wikisource.org (transcription of the 1911 edition)1911PointerVerifiedT14
69Amelia Raines, 'Tracking "Tartary" on Western Maps', Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps at the Library of Congress (blog)Library of Congress map-division blog, June 20, 2025. It traces the label: no Tartaria on a 1482 map, the Great Khan's realm on Ortelius 1570, no borders on a 1657 wall map, none on an 1885 Colton map.Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (page is behind a bot-check; text retrieved from the blog's RSS feed, https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/feed/?paged=6)2025-06-20PointerVerifiedT14
70Mark C. Elliott, 'The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies', The Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 3 (Aug. 2000): 603–646, doi:10.2307/2658945Peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Asian Studies (2000) on how the undifferentiated Tartary frontier of northeast Asia became the defined region of Manchuria, a shift that began in the 17th century under the Qing (Manchu) rulers. Abstract only.Cambridge University Press / Association for Asian Studies (abstract page; full text via JSTOR or institutional access)2000PointerVerifiedT14
71Svetlana Gorshenina, L'invention de l'Asie centrale. Histoire du concept de la Tartarie à l'Eurasie (Geneva: Droz, 2014), 704 pp. — reviewed by Felix de Montety, Abstracta Iranica 37–39 (2018)Svetlana Gorshenina's 704-page book (Geneva: Droz, 2014) traces European texts and maps of inner Asia from antiquity to modern imperialism, and the terms that replaced Tartary: Turkestan, Middle Asia, Turan, Central Asia, Eurasia. Cited through a 2018 review.OpenEdition Journals (review); the book is Droz, collection Rayon Histoire no. 4; also reviewed in American Historical Review 121(2), 2016, pp. 542–5432014 (book) / 2018 (review)PointerVerifiedT14
72Kevin J. Brown, 'The Empire That Never Was: Tartaria, Antique Maps, and the Invention of a Lost Civilization', Geographicus Rare Antique Maps blogEssay on an antique-map dealer's blog (August 2026). It names more period sheets to examine, such as Cantelli da Vignola 1693 and Strahlenberg 1730, and argues the label faded gradually. Commercial and secondary: a guide, not evidence.Geographicus (antique-map dealer; secondary)2026-08-27PointerVerifiedT14
73Harrison Pates, 'The Dangers of Pseudohistorical Conspiracy Theories', GNET (Global Network on Extremism & Technology)A 2023 analysis by GNET, the Global Network on Extremism & Technology at King's College London. It summarizes the theory and reports almost 300 million TikTok views for #tartaria and 150 million for #mudflood, as of early 2023.GNET, King's College London (secondary)2023-02-15PointerVerifiedT14
74New chronology (Fomenko) — WikipediaTertiary summary. States Fomenko took up Morozov's theories in 1973, published articles in 1980, and describes “a vast Slav-Turk empire, called the Russian Horde (Great Tartaria)”.Wikimedia Foundationfetched 2026-09-07PointerVerifiedT15
75Г.В. Носовский, А.Т. Фоменко — ИМПЕРИЯ. РУСЬ И МОСКОВИЯ (chronologia.org, vol. 5 book 1, section imperia0107)Primary text of the Fomenko strand. A chapter on 18th-century maps says GRANDE TARTARIE runs across the same territory as “Emperie Russienne” in letters three times larger.chronologia.org (official New Chronology site)located 2026-09-07; not fetched (ECONNREFUSED)PrimaryVerifiedT15
76Г.В.Носовский, А.Т.Фоменко. Империя (Части 1-3) — full text at lib.ruFull text of Империя (Empire), parts 1 to 3. Its header gives Moscow 1995, not the 1996 often cited. The word Тартария (Tartaria) appears once, in a passage about a map showing two states.Библиотека Мошкова (lib.ru)located 2026-09-07; not fetched (ECONNREFUSED)PrimaryVerifiedT15
77Глеб Носовский. Великая Тартария – как и когда она возникла? (Эхо Москвы broadcast, 12 Apr 2013)Transcript of Nosovsky's fifth talk on the New Chronology on Echo of Moscow radio, 12 April 2013, titled “Великая Тартария – как и когда она возникла?” (Great Tartaria: how and when did it arise?).chronologia.org2013-04-12 (per URL/title); not fetchedPrimaryVerifiedT15
78Tartarian Empire — WikipediaTertiary summary. Says aspects first appeared in the New Chronology “in the mid-1970s and early 1980s”, were “popularized by the racial occult history of Nikolai Levashov”, and spread online from about 2016.Wikimedia Foundationfetched 2026-09-07PointerVerifiedT15
79Левашов, Николай Викторович — Русская ВикипедияTertiary summary. Gives Levashov's dates, says he wrote the book in 2003–2007, and records the 2010 extremism rulings by Obninsk City Court and Kaluga Oblast Court. It does not mention Tartaria or the Britannica.Wikimedia Foundationfetched 2026-09-07PointerVerifiedT16
80Замалчиваемая история России : мысли из кн. Россия в кривых зеркалах (2004) — НЭБ catalogue record 000199_000009_002508113Национальная электронная библиотека (rusneb.ru)2004 (per record title); record not fetched (ECONNREFUSED)PrimaryWeakT16
81Суд признал экстремистской книгу 'Россия в кривых зеркалах' — Право.руRussian legal news, 30 December 2010. Reports that Obninsk City Court ruled the book extremist, on grounds that it aimed to stir hatred toward Jews, and that Kaluga Oblast Court upheld it. Gives no ruling dates.Право.ру2010 (per search); not fetchedPointerVerifiedT16
82В Калужской области суд признал экстремистской книгу Левашова 'Россия в кривых зеркалах' — ИА REGNUMREGNUM2010; not fetchedPointerDead linkT16
83Замалчиваемая История России (мысли из книги «Россия в кривых зеркалах») — text reproductionUser-uploaded transcription of Levashov's excerpt. Says Great Tartaria was the largest country in the world, citing the first edition of the 1771 British encyclopedia. Wording still needs checking against the printed pamphlet.studfile.net (user upload)located 2026-09-07; not fetchedPrimaryVerifiedT16
84Вся правда о Тартарии — Русское географическое обществоRussian Geographical Society article, 5 October 2020. Says Levashov cited the 1771 Britannica for a giant state in Central Eurasia, that Nosovsky and Fomenko also called the Tartars Slavs, and that the name left maps in the early 19th century.Russian Geographical Society (РГО)2020-10-05 (per Wikipedia citation); site refused connectionPointerVerifiedT16
85First Edition, 1771 Encyclopaedia Britannica; Or, A Dictionary Of Arts And Sciences — Volume 3, M–Z (NLS scan on Internet Archive), page 796The volume itself, scanned by the National Library of Scotland and mirrored on the Internet Archive. The TARTARY entry is on printed page 887; the scan viewer places it at page 796.National Library of Scotland (scan) / Internet Archive (identifier 1771EncyclopediaBritannicaNLS, ark:/13960/t4xh89t5c)1771PrimaryVerifiedT17
86Internet Archive full-text search hit for 'Tartary' in Volume 3, M–ZFull-text search of the scanned volume finds 16 mentions of Tartary. The hit at scan page 796 gives the entry's opening: a vast country in northern Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west.Internet Archivefetched 2026-09-07PrimaryVerifiedT17
87Volume 3, M–Z — Encyclopaedia Britannica first edition — National Library of Scotland digital galleryNational Library of Scotland1771PrimaryDead linkT17
88Carte de Tartarie. Dressee sur les relations de plusieurs voyageurs... par Guillaume Del'Isle... A Paris... 1706 — David Rumsey Map Collection, List No. 4764.087Catalogue record for the 1706 Paris map: engraved, outline color, the Great Wall, forests and relief shown in pictures, cartouche (decorative title panel) by N. Guerard, 49 x 64 cm, scale 1:10,700,000.David Rumsey Historical Map Collection1706PrimaryVerifiedT18
89Map Carte de Tartarie (Delisle, 1706) — Library of Congress item 99446168The Library of Congress copy: hand-colored, 49 x 64 cm, call number G7270 1706 .L5 TIL. The record notes two copies kept in the vault, one annotated with red dots over church symbols.Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division1706PrimaryVerifiedT18
90Category: Carte de la Tartarie (1706) — Wikimedia CommonsEleven high-resolution scans of the 1706 map and its 1766 reissue, drawn from Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) and the Library of Congress.Wikimedia Commonsfetched 2026-09-07PointerVerifiedT18
91The Empire That Never Was: Tartaria, Antique Maps, and the Invention of a Lost Civilization — Kevin J. Brown, Geographicus blogA rare-map dealer's essay, 27 August 2026, not peer-reviewed. Traces Tartaria labels from Cantelli da Vignola's 1693 map to d'Anville's 1737 atlas, and dates the modern theory to the 2010s.Geographicus Rare Antique Maps2026-08-27PointerVerifiedT18
92Как погибла Тартария? Часть 1 — mylnikovdm (Дмитрий Мыльников), LiveJournalThe first post of the series, dated 21 August 2014. Notes that many articles already describe a huge Tartaria in Siberia before the 19th century, and proposes a catastrophe about 200 years earlier.LiveJournal (user mylnikovdm)c. 2014–2016 (search metadata); not fetchedPrimaryVerifiedT19
93Как погибла Тартария? Часть 5а. Засыпанные города — mylnikovdm, LiveJournalThe buried-cities post, dated 23 October 2014. Describes houses with windows at ground level, buried one to two meters, mostly built before the 1820s. The direct ancestor of the English mud-flood claim.LiveJournal (user mylnikovdm)c. 2014–2016; not fetchedPrimaryVerifiedT19
94Как погибла Тартария? Часть 5б. Засыпанные города — sibved, LiveJournal (repost)A repost by a second Russian blogger, dated 24 October 2014, of Part 5b on buried buildings in Kazan. Shows the series spreading among Russian alternative-history blogs.LiveJournal (user sibved)not fetchedPrimaryVerifiedT19
95Tartaria and the Mud Flood — ApeirronAn anonymous essay, published 30 March 2026 and updated 30 June 2026. Dates the idea's start to the early-to-mid 2010s and its move into English to around 2016–2017. Weak as a citation on its own.apeirron.comfetched 2026-09-07 (no author/date shown)PointerVerifiedT19
96Mud Flood Chat Part Two with Philipp Druzhinin — Baked and Awake podcast (Spotify)Spotify / Baked and Awakenot fetchedPointerWeakT19
97Inside the 'Tartarian Empire,' the QAnon of Architecture — Zach Mortice, Bloomberg CityLabBloomberg CityLab, 27 April 2021, read through a verbatim repost. Says the theory “appears to have first emerged in 2016 and 2017”, gives forum sizes and names early creators.Bloomberg CityLab2021-04-27PointerVerifiedT20
98Inside the wild architecture conspiracy theory gaining traction online — Josie Adams, The SpinoffThe Spinoff (New Zealand), 14 January 2022. Counts “more than 14,000 people” in r/Tartaria, profiles several creators and quotes a Wellington architectural historian. Says the theory has gained traction since 2016.The Spinoff (NZ)2022-01-14PointerVerifiedT20
99Skeptoid #765: Tartaria and the Mud Flood — Brian Dunning (Internet Archive copy)Science podcast episode, 2 February 2021. Dates the first Mud Flood videos on YouTube to August 2016 and the consolidated claim to around 2017, and finds little interest until about December 2018.Skeptoid Media / Internet Archive2021-02-02PointerVerifiedT20
100r/Tartaria Subreddit Stats — subredditstats.comStatistics page for r/Tartaria. Shows a notice that the forum is quarantined and gives no creation date or member counts.subredditstats.comfetched 2026-09-07PointerVerifiedT20
101Deep Research: Tartaria — Joshua Citarella (Substack)Independent research newsletter, 18 July 2024. Lists where the theory circulates: r/Tartaria, r/tartarianarchitecture, four TikTok accounts and two YouTube channels.Joshua Citarella2024-07-18PointerVerifiedT20
102'Tartarian Empire' Conspiracy Theory Enters US Election Fray — Zach Mortice, Bloomberg CityLabBloomberg CityLab, 25 October 2024, read through the author's own repost. A follow-up report on how the theory kept spreading.Bloomberg CityLab2024-10-25PointerVerifiedT21
103The Dangers of Pseudohistorical Conspiracy Theories — Harrison Pates, GNETGlobal Network on Extremism and Technology, 15 February 2023. Reports the “#tartaria tag has amassed almost 300 million views”, a further 150 million for #mudflood, a 23,000-member r/Tartaria and Russian ethnonationalist use.Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET)2023-02-15PointerVerifiedT21
104Fact Check: NO Evidence Of Old 'Tartarian Empire' Or Of 'Mud Flood' Resetting Society — Ed Payne, Lead StoriesLead Stories fact check, 11 May 2023, of a 21 February 2023 TikTok video. Quotes historians from the University of Chicago and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Finds no evidence of the empire or a mud flood.Lead Stories2023-05-11PointerVerifiedT21
105Tartaria: The Mystery Behind the Lost Empire and the Mud Flood Conspiracy — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover MagazineDiscover Magazine, updated 30 May 2025. Calls the theory relatively new and traces the term to Martino Martini's De Bello Tartarico, from the mid-1600s. Quotes no named experts.Discover Magazineupdated 2025-05-30PointerVerifiedT21
106Exploration Mysteries: Tartarian Empire — Kristine De Abreu, ExplorerswebExplorersweb, 4 August 2024. Traces the theory from Fomenko's 1970s New Chronology to Levashovism, dates its online spread to 2016, and counts over 45,000 r/Tartaria members and over 129,000 in a Facebook group.Explorersweb (syndicated on Yahoo)2024-08-04PointerVerifiedT21
107Conspirituality and meme culture: transgressive dynamics in right-wing esoteric social media discourse — Moritz Maurer, Religion 55(1): 43–66Peer-reviewed paper in the journal Religion 55(1), 2025, on meme culture in right-wing esoteric social media. Its abstract does not mention Tartaria; Wikipedia cites it on the Tartaria community. The full paper is not yet checked.University of Vienna research portal (journal: Religion, Taylor & Francis; DOI 10.1080/0048721X.2024.2317865)online 2024-02-27; vol. 55 no. 1 (2025)PointerVerifiedT21
108Inoculation Approaches to Archaeological Misinformation in the Classroom: Teaching Students to Spot Pseudoarchaeologies — Luke Stroth (UC San Diego), The SAA Archaeological Record 25(4), September 2025The SAA Archaeological Record, September 2025. A teaching article uses “the pseudohistory of the Grand Tartarian Empire” as a weakened example, like a vaccine, to help students spot archaeological misinformation.Society for American Archaeology2025-09PointerVerifiedT21
109The Tartarian Empire — World Religions and Spirituality Project (WRSP) profileWorld Religions and Spirituality Project profile, 20 January 2026. Dates the first known Tartarian Empire YouTube content to 2016 and r/Tartaria's founding to 26 December 2018. Calls Fomenko's role controversial; does not mention Levashov.WRSP (Virginia Commonwealth University)2026-01-21PointerVerifiedT21
110Long live the Tartarian Empire! — Peter Franklin, UnHerdUnHerd opinion piece, 5 May 2021, reacting to the Bloomberg CityLab report. Offers no independent dating of the theory's origins.UnHerd2021-05-05PointerVerifiedT21
111Gorshenina, Svetlana. L'invention de l'Asie centrale: histoire du concept de la Tartarie à l'Eurasie. Droz, 2014 (ISBN 978-2600017886)Academic book by Svetlana Gorshenina (Droz, 2014) on the history of the concept of Central Asia, from Tartary to Eurasia. Its publication is confirmed; its contents are not yet checked.cited in Wikipedia's reference list2014PointerVerifiedT21
112Tartaria Vault — YouTube channel (@TartariaVault)The channel's own YouTube page, read 7 September 2026: 213K subscribers, 104 videos, sister channels in four languages, and a description warning that visuals may be AI-made and content “should not be regarded as factual”.YouTuberead 2026-09-07 17:04 UTCPrimaryVerifiedT22
113New YouTube Channels Surge: Unmasking the Tartaria Trend — MysteryLoresmysterylores.com2026; not fetched (403)PointerDead linkT22
114Devon Canup on X about 'Tartaria Vault'Post on X, 10 April 2026, by a marketer of faceless channels. Claims the channel uses AI for scripts, voice and images, had 141,000 followers and was three months old. These are unconfirmed assertions.X (Twitter)April 2026 (per search); not fetchedPrimaryVerifiedT22
115[Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, N.Y., 1901] — 'Electric Tower from the South', Detroit Publishing Co. photograph No. 09503 (LOT 3862; digital ID cph 3b26213)A Detroit Publishing Co. photograph, no. 09503, titled Electric Tower from the South. It shows the tower as built in 1901. The Library of Congress catalogs it under Exhibitions and Electricity.Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection)1901PrimaryVerifiedT23
116The Rand-McNally hand book to the Pan-American exposition (Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally & Co.) — scanned from the Library of Congress copyThe 1901 visitor's guide. It gives the tower's height as 391 feet and its main body as 80 feet square, describes perforated panels lit from within, and records 5,000 horsepower furnished from Niagara Falls.Internet Archive (identifier randmcnallyhandb02chic), Library of Congress copy1901PrimaryVerifiedT23
117'Buffalo's Electric Tower' (reprinted from the Boston Herald)A press description from August 2, 1900, reprinted from the Boston Herald. It names John Galen Howard as designer, describes a steel frame carrying wood and staff, and mentions a plaster model made in New York.Christian Science Sentinel, issue of August 2, 19001900-08-02PrimaryVerifiedT23
118Official views of Pan-American exposition, by C. D. Arnold (official photographer)The fair's official photographic view-book by C. D. Arnold, Buffalo, 1901. Its captions include views taken from the Electric Tower and the base of the tower at night.Internet Archive (identifier officialviewsofp00panarich), from UC Berkeley Bancroft Library1901PrimaryVerifiedT23
119The Pan-American exposition and how to see it (digitized book)Mark Bennitt's 1901 visitor's guide, published in Buffalo by The Goff Company. It reproduces a photograph captioned “Electric Tower (from plaster model).”Library of Congress, General Collections1901PrimaryVerifiedT23
120Plan du new Brisach, Ville de Haute-Alsace construite par Mr. le Maréchal de Vauban — Jean Crépy (Paris), 1710; BnF Cartes et plans GE D-12947An engraved plan published in Paris in 1710 by Jean Crépy. Its title credits Marshal Vauban as builder of the octagonal star-fort town of Neuf-Brisach. Held by the BnF, Cartes et plans, GE D-12947.Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans (via Gallica)1710PrimaryVerifiedT24
121Plan de New Brisach, Ville de la Haute-Alsace Construite par Mr. le Maréchal de VaubanA second plan of Neuf-Brisach, published in Paris by Beaurain in 1740 in an atlas (Tome IV), again naming Marshal Vauban as builder. BnF Cartes et plans, GE BB-565 (4, 74).Bibliothèque nationale de France (via Gallica)18th century (date not confirmed by fetch)PrimaryVerifiedT24
122Neuf-Brisach — Réseau des sites majeurs VaubanRéseau des sites majeurs Vauban (official UNESCO-site network)n.d. (modern)PointerWeakT24
123Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine, Baltimore, MD — HABS MD-63 (32 photos, 11 measured drawings, 78 data pages)The Historic American Buildings Survey record for Fort McHenry, HABS MD-63: 32 photos, 11 measured drawings and 78 data pages, compiled after 1933. It gives a building date of 1798 and copies historic plans.Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (Historic American Buildings Survey)1933 and later (documenting a fort built c. 1798–1803)PrimaryVerifiedT24
124HABS MD-63 photo 15: Plan of Fort McHenry by William Tell Poussin, 1819 (National Archives, RG 77, drawer 51, sheet 2)HABS photo 15: a copy of William Tell Poussin's 1819 plan of Fort McHenry, from War Department records at the National Archives (Record Group 77, drawer 51, sheet 2).Library of Congress (reproduction of a National Archives original)1819 (copied by HABS)PrimaryVerifiedT24
125MP-FLORIDA_LUISIANA,10 — 'Cortaduras y defensas hechas por don Pablo de Hita y Salazar... en el castillo que allí se fabrica de orden de su Magestad' with subtitle 'Declaración de la planta y estado de la fábrica. Año de 1675'A colored manuscript plan dated 1675, in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville. Its title describes defenses made by Governor Pablo de Hita y Salazar at the castle being built at St. Augustine by royal order.Archivo General de Indias, Seville (via PARES, Spanish Ministry of Culture)1675PrimaryVerifiedT24
126The Building of Castillo de San Marcos, by Albert C. Manucy (National Park Service Interpretive Series, History No. 1; U.S. Government Printing Office)Albert C. Manucy's National Park Service history, read in a later reprint. It names Governor Cendoya, engineer Ignacio Daza, the coquina stone dug on Anastasia Island, and the October 2, 1672 groundbreaking.Project Gutenberg (eBook #47216)1942 (reprinted 1960s)PointerVerifiedT24
127Guide to the Victor Remer Historical Archives of the Children's Aid Society, MS 111 (1836–2006, bulk 1853–1947; 787 linear feet in 1,018 boxes and 807 bound volumes)The published guide to the Children's Aid Society archive at the New-York Historical Society: 787 linear feet. Series XI holds the emigration and placing-out records, mostly 1853 to 1939, and the guide links them to the orphan train.New-York Historical Society (finding aid hosted by NYU Special Collections)1836–2006PrimaryVerifiedT25
128Annual report of the Children's Aid Society (New York, N.Y.), 1860The Society's own annual report for 1860, published in New York. Page 9 tables 814 children sent out from February 1859 to February 1860 by state, month, birthplace and parentage.Internet Archive (identifier annualreportofch00chil_12), State Library of Pennsylvania copy1860PrimaryVerifiedT25
129Annual report of the Children's Aid Society (New York, N.Y.), v. 27–31 (1879–1883)Five bound annual reports of the Society, volumes 27 to 31, covering 1879 to 1883, in 518 scanned pages.Internet Archive (identifier annualreportofch2731chil), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign copy1879–1883PrimaryVerifiedT25
130The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them, by Charles Loring Brace (New York: Wynkoop & Hallenbeck)Charles Loring Brace's own 497-page account, published in New York in 1872, of the Society's origins and its plan to send city children to homes in the West.Internet Archive (identifier dangerousclasse00bracgoog)1872PrimaryVerifiedT25
131New-York Tribune, January 21, 1880 (issue on Chronicling America, LCCN sn83030214)Library of Congress, Chronicling America1880-01-21PrimaryWeakT25
132New York Daily Tribune – January 21, 1880 (transcription)A transcription, not a scan, of an 1880 Tribune article: 35 children (28 boys, 7 girls) sent to Springville, Iowa, with agent E. Trott, funds channeled through Whitelaw Reid. The original newspaper page is not yet confirmed.National Orphan Train Complex, Concordia, Kansas1880-01-21 (transcribed)PointerVerifiedT25
133First Page of Handwritten Transcript of Catherine O'Leary's Testimony before the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, 1871 (CHM ichi-32210)The first page of Catherine O'Leary's handwritten testimony before Chicago's Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, 1871, held by the Chicago History Museum. It is part of the city's inquiry into the fire.Chicago History Museum, presented via 'The Great Chicago Fire & The Web of Memory'1871PrimaryVerifiedT26
134Chicago fire of 1871 collection: Chicago Fire Department transcript of inquiryChicago History Museum (record on Explore Chicago Collections)1871PrimaryDead linkT26
135The Chicago fire of October 1871 — 62 stereographs by P. B. Greene et al. (LOT 12054)A Library of Congress lot of 62 stereographs of Chicago's October 1871 fire by P. B. Greene and others, showing rubble and destroyed buildings, with a companion series of pre-fire views.Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division1870–1871PrimaryVerifiedT26
136Report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society of disbursement of contributions for the sufferers by the Chicago fireUniversity of Michigan Library, Making of America (also HathiTrust record 100008470)1874PrimaryDead linkT26
137Report of the Commissioners appointed to investigate the cause and management of the great fire in Boston (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill; xxiv, 662 p. incl. plan)The official report, published in Boston in 1873, of the commissioners appointed to investigate the cause and management of the great fire: xxiv and 662 pages, with a plan.Internet Archive (identifier reportofcommissi00bost), Library of Congress copy1873PrimaryVerifiedT26
138James Wallace Black photographic collection of the Boston Fire, 1872 (PC013)A Historic New England collection of 22 photographs dated 1872 by Boston photographer J. W. Black, most showing ruins and rubble of the Great Fire. Five show a house in Maine instead.Historic New England, via Digital Commonwealth1872PrimaryVerifiedT26
139Plan of burnt district, by fire of Nov. 9th and 10th 1872: showing street improvements as adopted by Board of Street Commissioners and City CouncilThe 1873 plan of the district burned on November 9 and 10, 1872, by city surveyor Thomas W. Davis. It shows the street changes adopted for rebuilding: seventeen streets widened and four extended.Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library1872–1873PrimaryVerifiedT26
140The San Francisco conflagration of April, 1906: special report to the National Board of Fire Underwriters, Committee of TwentyThe special report of April 1906 to the National Board of Fire Underwriters, Committee of Twenty, on the San Francisco conflagration. Held by the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library (via Calisphere)April 1906PrimaryVerifiedT26
141USGS Bulletin 324: The San Francisco earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, and their effects on structures and structural materials (Gilbert, Humphrey, Sewell, Soulé)The 1907 federal study of the April 18, 1906 earthquake and fire and their effects on structures and building materials, by Gilbert, Holmes, Humphrey, Sewell and Soulé: 170 pages and 57 plates.U.S. Geological Survey Publications Warehouse1907PrimaryVerifiedT26
142The California earthquake of April 18, 1906: Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission (A. C. Lawson, chairman; Carnegie Institution of Washington)Internet Archive (identifier californiaearth05reidgoog)1908–1910PrimaryWeakT26
1431906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Digital Collection: Selections from the Bancroft LibraryThe Bancroft Library's selection of period photographs and documents of the 1906 earthquake and fire: 3,371 items, part of a larger project of about 14,000 images and 7,000 pages of text.UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library (via Calisphere)1906PrimaryVerifiedT26
144Cardiff Giant — glass negative, Bain News Service (LC-B2-2781-13; digital ID ggbain 13790)A Bain News Service glass negative cataloged as Cardiff Giant, dated about 1910 to 1915. It shows the carved figure itself. The title comes from the news service's own unverified data.Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (George Grantham Bain Collection)ca. 1910–1915 per LOC record (Public Domain Review attributes the image to Calvin O. Gott, ca. 1869)PrimaryVerifiedT27
145[George Hull with the Cardiff Giant] (BIOG FILE; digital ID cph 3a42575)A photograph of George Hull beside the Cardiff Giant, about 1908. The Library of Congress item is a reproduction of a photo and a drawing, not an original print.Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Divisionc1908PrimaryVerifiedT27
146Chronicling America full-text search: 'cardiff giant', 1869–1870 (616 newspaper pages)A Library of Congress newspaper search: 616 pages naming the Cardiff Giant in 1869-1870, including the Kentucky Gazette of November 27, 1869, and a New York Herald exhibition advertisement of December 19, 1869.Library of Congress, Chronicling America1869–1870PrimaryVerifiedT27
147December Meeting. The 'Cardiff Giant' Controversy — Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 11, pp. 159–164The Massachusetts Historical Society's record of its December 1869 meeting on the Cardiff Giant controversy, in volume 11 of its Proceedings, which covers 1869-1870.Internet Archive (JSTOR Early Journal Content, identifier jstor-25079407)1869PrimaryVerifiedT27
148'Skeleton of Giant' Is Internet Photo Hoax, by James OwenA 2007 National Geographic News article tracing the giant skeleton photo to a 2002 Worth1000 contest entry, which placed third, built on a 2000 aerial photo of a mastodon dig at Hyde Park, New York.National Geographic News2007-12-14PointerVerifiedT27
149Giant Human Skeleton — Museum of Hoaxes photo databaseThe Museum of Hoaxes entry on the same image: made in 2002 from a photo of a Cornell-led mastodon dig, then spread from early 2004 as a Saudi Arabian discovery and reported as fact by newspapers in Bangladesh and India.Museum of Hoaxes (hoaxes.org)n.d. (modern)PointerVerifiedT27
150Tartaria Had Trees That Grew Infinite Food — Then They Burned Them All (video description, retrieved from watch-page JSON)The channel's own description of its June 27, 2026 video. It speaks of undocumented removal orders, one fifty-year window, and parks replaced with gravel and fountains. It names no city, document or family, and ends with a not-factual disclaimer.Tartaria Vault (YouTube channel ID UCDPnPGxw18XFq8uiJUYiO6w)2026-06-27 (118,544 views, 25 min at retrieval 2026-09-07)PrimaryVerifiedT28
151The 13 Families Who Inherited Tartaria's Food Forests (video description, retrieved from watch-page JSON)Description of the July 19, 2026 video. It describes one “claiming event” in a thirty-year window, with “gaps in the archive that cluster” around it, across England, India, Ottoman territories, Australia and the Americas. No family or document named.Tartaria Vault (YouTube)2026-07-19 (298,919 views, 29 min at retrieval)PrimaryVerifiedT28
152Tartaria Vault channel About page (retrieved from page JSON)The channel's About page: 213K subscribers, 104 videos, 16,674,558 views, country United States, joined Jan 2, 2016. It says visuals may be made with AI tools and the content “should not be regarded as factual.”YouTuberetrieved 2026-09-07PrimaryVerifiedT28
153The Harvest You Can Count (critique of the 'unlimited food forests' videos)An independent blog critique, July 19, 2026, partly AI-written by its own byline. It calls the videos a content farm and says real food forests, like Chagga gardens, declined through inheritance subdivision and colonial forest law, not coordinated erasure.xNet blog (author 'crs48 with Claude')2026-07-19PointerVerifiedT28
154Kathryn Chitwood LinkedIn post reposting 'The 13 Families Who Inherited Tartaria's Food Forests'A LinkedIn post from about August 2026 that shares the 13 families food-forest video and frames it as alternative history. It names no families or documents. It shows how far the video spread.LinkedInc. August 2026 ('1 month ago' at retrieval)PointerVerifiedT28
155The 13 Families Who Inherited Tartaria's Empty Cities After The Reset (video description, retrieved from watch-page JSON)The channel's description of its June 26, 2026 video (about 21 minutes, 294,081 views). It opens with an unidentified 1867 St. Louis photograph and mentions recurring dynastic families, but names no family or document. Same not-factual disclaimer.Tartaria Vault (YouTube)2026-06-26 (294,068 views, 21 min at retrieval)PrimaryVerifiedT29
156THEY DESTROYED TARTARIA — AND THESE FAMILIES GOT EVERYTHING [2026-06-22] - TARTARIA VAULT (BitChute mirror; meta description retrieved via curl)A BitChute mirror, also on Rumble from June 24, 2026, of a June 22, 2026 video. Its description cites only the first-edition Britannica and names no family. Only a TARTARIA VAULT sign-off attributes the text; authorship is not independently confirmed.BitChute (mirror uploader; Rumble copy at https://rumble.com/v7br7x8-they-destroyed-tartaria-and-these-families-got-everything-2026-06-22-tartar.html dated 2026-06-24)2026-06-22 (title date); Rumble upload 2026-06-24PrimaryVerifiedT29
157Devon Canup (@facelesscanup) post describing Tartaria Vault as an AI-produced 'faceless' channelA post on X dated April 10, 2026 claims the channel's scripts, voice-over and images are AI-made, and that it was 3 months old with 141,000 followers. Unverified. YouTube lists the channel as joined Jan 2, 2016.X (Twitter)2026 (seen via search snippet only; not fetched)PointerVerifiedT29
158Encyclopaedia Britannica, first edition (1771), vol. III (M–Z), entry 'TARTARY' (signature 'Vol. III. N°. 97', between TARTAR and TASSEL)The 1771 first edition, volume III, entry TARTARY, in a National Library of Scotland scan. It describes a vast country in northern Asia bounded by Siberia, called Great-Tartary, then lists Tartar peoples. No largest-country wording appears.National Library of Scotland scan, hosted on Internet Archive (full text file: Volume 3, M-Z_djvu.txt)1771PrimaryVerifiedT30
159Frederick Law Olmsted, 'A Report upon the Landscape Architecture of the Columbian Exposition to the American Institute of Architects', American Architect and Building News vol. XLI no. 924, pp. 151–154Olmsted's report on the Chicago fair's landscape, The American Architect and Building News, Sept. 9, 1893. It counts a little over a million collected plants transplanted to the grounds and names Rudolph Ulrich as chief of the planting work.Internet Archive scan of American Architect and Building News vols. 41–42 (1893)1893-09-09PrimaryVerifiedT31
160Frederick Law Olmsted's 1893 Report to the American Institute of Architects (web transcription)A 2020 web transcription of the same Olmsted report, with its full citation (vol. XLI, no. 924, pp. 151-54). A readable copy, not an independent source.worldsfairchicago1893.com2020-04-26 (transcribing 1893 text)PointerVerifiedT31
161Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition (official history of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition), vol. 2, ch. LXII 'Palms and Flowers', pp. 339–341, and cost/construction chaptersThe official 1921 history of the 1915 San Francisco fair. It records June 1914 plant orders from four countries, fruiting orange trees, boxed rhododendrons, temporary nurseries in the Presidio from October 1912, and a $597,535 planting cost.Internet Archive (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921)1921PrimaryVerifiedT31
162Preparing the gardens around the Horticulture palace for the 1904 World's Fair (glass plate negative D85336, negative no. 1687)Glass-plate negative D85336, October 1903, held by St. Louis Public Library. Workers with mules prepare bare ground for the gardens around the Palace of Horticulture, the autumn before the 1904 fair.Missouri Historical Society, Louisiana Purchase Exposition glass plate negative collection, call no. SC U:04 RB-F Photo1903-10PrimaryVerifiedT31
163Court of Palms. Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, Cal., 1915 (postcard, LC-DIG-pcrd-1a01239)A 1915 Library of Congress postcard of the Court of Palms at the San Francisco fair (LC-DIG-pcrd-1a01239). It shows the palm plantings the official history describes. The library notes the postcard's source is not identified.Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Postcard filing series, call no. PCRD 1 - California - San Francisco - Expositions, no. 151915PrimaryVerifiedT31
164McCarthy Album 01, Photograph 048 (ID 96-07-08-alb01-048): 'The Pioneer' in the Avenue of Palms at the entrance to the Court of Flowers, PPIEA 1915 California State Archives photograph: the statue The Pioneer in the Avenue of Palms at the entrance to the Court of Flowers. It shows the palm plantings in the fair's own year. The record names no photographer.California State Archives, William M. McCarthy Photograph Collection1915PrimaryVerifiedT31
165Palace of Horticulture and surrounding outdoor display of plant life, World's Fair, St. Louis, 1904 (William Herman Rau)A 1904 stereograph (a pair of photos viewed in 3-D) by William Herman Rau, Library of Congress (LC-DIG-stereo-1s03303): the Palace of Horticulture and its outdoor plant display at the St. Louis fair.Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division1904PrimaryVerifiedT31
166John Todd, 'The Illuminati & Witchcraft' (transcript of Fall 1978 lectures at Elkton, Maryland, republished with David Berg's comments, August 1980)Transcript of John Todd's Fall 1978 lectures at Bible Baptist Church, Elkton, Maryland, published in 1980. Todd claims he was initiated into a secret Council of 13, the Grand Druid Council, serving one banking dynasty.xFamily.org publications database (archive of The Family/Children of God literature)1978 lectures; 1980 publicationPrimaryVerifiedT32
167Fritz Springmeier, Bloodlines of the Illuminati (full text; introduction dated Feb. 10, 1995)Internet Archive (uploaded 2014); a copy also sits in the CIA's Abbottabad Compound reading room at https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/FC/FC2F5371043C48FDD95AEDE7B8A49624_Springmeier.-.Bloodlines.of.the.Illuminati.R.pdf1995 (compiled from 1991–1995 newsletters)PrimaryWeakT32
168Barry Smith (preacher) — bibliography listing Final Notice (1989), ISBN 0-908961-02-2Wikipedia biography of Barry Smith (1933-2002), a New Zealand preacher. Its bibliography dates his book Final Notice to 1989 (ISBN 0-908961-02-2). A pointer only; the book's text is not yet confirmed.Wikipediaretrieved 2026-09-07PointerVerifiedT32
169Rhoda Wilson, 'Who or what are the 13 Families?'A July 27, 2026 online article listing a completely different 13: the Counts of Champagne and Anjou, the St. Clairs, the Hapsburgs and others, drawn from books such as Knight and Lomas (1997). It does not mention Tartaria.The Exposé2026-07-27PointerVerifiedT32
Method

How this file was built

  1. Start from the claims.

    The ten claims in the ledger are the core of the theory. The next step, now under way, is logging each one in the exact words of the videos that make it, with a timestamp.

  2. One claim, one test.

    Each test names the claim, the document that would settle it, and the verdict.

  3. Primary or it doesn't count.

    A verdict needs a primary document: a record made at the time, held by an archive, a library or a government office. Later books and articles are listed as pointers.

  4. Every source checked twice.

    Every source was opened and checked by a second, independent research pass. Where that check found a wrong page number or a quotation that was not word for word, the corrected version is the one used here. Weak and dead sources are listed but never used as evidence.

  5. Research tools, in the open.

    AI tools did much of the searching and cross-referencing. They never decide what is true: every verdict rests on a document you can open yourself.

  6. What is still open.

    James is reading each document himself before the video. Two tests are still open because no primary document is in hand yet, and the file will be updated as answers come in.

Research: September 7, 2026. Page published: October 14, 2026.

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  • A claim ledger: every claim in the story, one row each
  • One test per claim, with the document that settles it
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