Is Architectural history a lie? – The Tartarian Mudflood Conspiracy.
A basement window looking out to Murray Street - Gawler.
Recently on the Haunts of Adelaide Facebookpage, we have had a few conspiracy theories that certain older buildings inAdelaide were built by a highly advanced global empire that visited Australia(and other locations around the globe) pre-European settlement. Theconspiracy is that the Tartarian global empire was intentionally erased, and thathistory was rewritten to make buildings seem younger and more modern.Subscribers to the theory believe that a vast, technologically advanced empirearose in north-central Asia, and spread peacefully across the globe. Theybelieve that approximately one hundred years ago a great cataclysm occurredthat toppled the empire which led to many of its buildings being destroyed, andits history erased from records.
EuropeanCartographers often used the toponym ‘Tartary’ to describe Central Asia. Thearea was bound by the Caspian Sea, the Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.There were a multitude of different cultures living within this area. Tartarywas not defined, nor did it represent one race of people. In modern terms, thisarea spans from the east of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea and includesAfghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and Siberia.
TheTartarian ‘theory’ was originated and perpetuated by pseudo-historians whocombined a Russian fervour for their allegedly lost empire (Tartaria being thesupposed real name of Russia according to some conspiracy believers) with analternative historical chronology. Basically, the timeline we all know isactually much shorter in reality. This theory has then been picked up byinfluencers and shared as a fact being hidden by someone in authority – usuallya shadow Government, the Rothschilds, the Illuminati or the Secret Owl Society.
Buildingssuch as the Capitol in Washington, the Pyramids in Egypt, The Great Wall ofChina, and Bastian Star forts, such as seen in Portugal, Netherlands, and SriLanka (Sri Lanka was a Portuguese and Dutch colony, so no mystery how thedesign was utilized there). Here in Adelaide, buildings being assigned to theTartarian include the Adelaide Town Hall, the General Post Office and theEdmund Wright Building. This is despite detailed records of design andphotographic evidence of construction.
One of the things that Tartarian conspiracytheory believers love to argue as a feature of Tartarian architecture isbuildings with basement windows. If you look around Adelaide, Port Adelaide,Gawler, or Kapunda, you’ll see this common feature that allows light to getinto basement rooms with pre-electric light (it is widely believed that PortAdelaide has lower basements because the city was ‘built up’ to stop tidalfloods, however, there is no evidence of this. One would think if this were thecase the original ground-level doors would be visible in what are nowbasements, and sub-basements, that were originally basements, would be presentin all buildings).
Another featureof the conspiracy is that much of our history has been intentionally razed ordestroyed by disasters and war. An example is the fire in the Norte-Dame deParis, the 12th-century Roman Catholic cathedral in France was seenas a deliberate attempt to destroy more Tartarian architecture by conspiracybelievers. Some believers in the theory cite Napoleon’s invasion of Russia as the beginning of the rewriting of Tartarianhistory and add that further World Wars destroyed much of what was left of theempire in the 20th century. However, they do not cite how Napoleon’sarmy overcame the vastly superior weaponry of the Tartarian – as one mustassume, a world power with such great architectural stills, would also have anadvanced military and weaponry.
There is little reasoning offered onwhy such a coverup and rewriting of history has occurred. Much of the rhetoricinvolves believers riffing on old maps, weaving together narratives based onconjecture picking out small inconsistencies, and a flagrant disregard fordocumented history.
There also seems to be little or nounderstanding of economic differences between now and two hundred years ago.Today, glass, steel and concrete are reasonably cheap to build with; stone,terracotta and marble are not. It was also much cheaper to hire skilled workersand labourers two hundred years ago than it is today.
© Allen Tiller 2025
EmilieLe Beau Lucchesi, What Is the Lost Empire OfTartaria?, Discover, (2023), https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-....
Zach Mortice, ‘Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon ofArchitecture’, Bloomberg, (2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featur....
Mark C. Elliot, "The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and NationalGeographies". The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 59,(2000), pp. 603–646.
Josie Adams, Inside the wild architecture conspiracy theory gaining tractiononline, The Spin Off, (2022),https://thespinoff.co.nz/internet/14-01-2022/inside-the-wild-architecture-conspiracy-theory-gaining-traction-online.
Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, What Is the Lost Empire Of Tartaria?, Discover,(2023), https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-....
Zach Mortice, ‘Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon ofArchitecture’, Bloomberg, (2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featur....
