Weird pseudoscience on YouTube Shorts – a debunking

Last night I was mindlessly scrolling through YouTube Shorts, when I came across this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6BoCt6vo558

It looks like a 3D reconstruction of the Fountain of the Lions from the Alhambra, taken from a longer show on the Alhambra water system.

The comments are all slop about people not being stupid in the past, and about the fountain being built in Al-Andalus, in really weird tones.

Here is the full video, which already has 2.7 million views, in just 3 weeks:

The 3D and the animations are quite well done, unfortunately the actual content is mostly bullshit! The factual part seems to be largely inspired by this BCC Travel article from 2022.

The central claim is about the Fountain of the Lions being a water clock. They have a textual version of each of their videos: https://primalnebula.com/the-engineering-of-the-alhambras-water-system/. The only source they have for the horological features is this “paper”, which is quite evidently devoid of any validity: https://ijisrt.com/assets/upload/files/IJISRT22JAN498.pdf

If we look at the actual sources on the 2011 restoration of the fountain:

• La conservación y restauración de la Fuente de los Leones – CARMEN TIENZA DURÁN Y BEATRIZ MARTÍN PEINADO
• THE MASTERY IN HYDRAULIC TECHNIQUES FOR WATER SUPPLY AT THE ALHAMBRA LUIS JOSÉ GARCÍA-PULIDO
• Fountain of the Lions. Methodology of a Restoration

There is no mention of the horological feature in any serious text, for the very simple reason that the fountain is not a clock! Water simply comes out of all twelve spigots.

There are other basic physics mistakes, but I don’t understand why one would go to all the effort of doing all of this 3D reconstruction, all of these renders, just to spread lies on the internet. I guess the motive is actually quite clear: get millions of views, make lots of money.