Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and
Speaker 1: moments in time. There's a stone that looks like a tongue,
Speaker 1: the tongue of a human, or a snake or a dragon,
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask. It's roughly in the shape
Speaker 1: of a triangle or even a heart, with rounded edges
Speaker 1: and a rough textured bulge on one of its three sides.
Speaker 1: In ancient Rome, these were known as glosso petrie, meaning
Speaker 1: tongue stones. Our first written record of them comes from
Speaker 1: the first century Roman author Pliny the Elder, who mentions
Speaker 1: them in the mineralogy section of his surviving master work
Speaker 1: The Natural History. He doesn't say a lot, but what
Speaker 1: he does tell us is tantalizing. He writes that glossy
Speaker 1: petrie are stones that resemble the human tongue. He records
Speaker 1: a common folk belief that they are not created within
Speaker 1: the earth like other stones. Instead, people say that they
Speaker 1: fall from the sky when the moon goes into eclipse.
Speaker 1: They're used for the purpose of selenimancy, which is a
Speaker 1: form of divination that draws hidden knowledge from the appearance
Speaker 1: of the phases of the moon. What roll the tongue
Speaker 1: stone plays in this magic art is unclear. But from
Speaker 1: here Plenty goes on to doubt the folk wisdom about
Speaker 1: these rocks, since it's also said that they have the
Speaker 1: power of quelling the winds of a storm, which in
Speaker 1: his mind is clearly ridiculous. So what were these stones
Speaker 1: and where did the belief in their powers come from?
Speaker 1: Christopher J. Duffin of the Natural History Museum in London
Speaker 1: writes a chapter on the tongue stones for a book
Speaker 1: called Toxicology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. According
Speaker 1: to Duffin, apart from a you reproductions of Plenty's comments,
Speaker 1: written references to gloss of Petrie mostly vanish in the
Speaker 1: following centuries. However, the stones returned with a vengeance in
Speaker 1: late Middle Aged Europe as a regular entry in lapidaries
Speaker 1: or gimstone reference manuals of the time, where it seems
Speaker 1: they were believed to have power over the snakelike domains
Speaker 1: of magic, poison and venom. The fourteenth century lapidary of
Speaker 1: Jehan Mandeville claims that gloss of petrie are alexi far mix,
Speaker 1: meaning they work as antidotes to poison, in this case
Speaker 1: changing color in the presence of a deadly draft. During
Speaker 1: this period in history, many rich and powerful Europeans seemed
Speaker 1: to be terrified of poisoning, especially due to the widespread
Speaker 1: knowledge and use of arsenic based compounds, which could be
Speaker 1: dissolved into a glass of wine or a ladle of
Speaker 1: gravy without a hint of smell or taste to give
Speaker 1: them away. Remedies for this sphere included everything from goblets
Speaker 1: made of was believed to be unicorn horn, often in
Speaker 1: reality sourced from a narwhall or rhinoceros, to bees or stones,
Speaker 1: which are masses of undigested material from the guts of
Speaker 1: an animal. Gloss of petrie appear to be interpreted firmly
Speaker 1: within this tradition. The sixteenth century Sloan Lapidary, for instance,
Speaker 1: advises that the tongues of adders should be set in silver,
Speaker 1: both for kings and lords at their meat, so that
Speaker 1: yet they may be kept safer from poison. So how
Speaker 1: will they keep the kings and lords safe? If your
Speaker 1: rival mixes arsenic into your quail pie. The Sloane texts
Speaker 1: suggests that rather than changing color, the stones will begin
Speaker 1: to sweat. Sometimes these stones were worn as pendants and jewelry.
Speaker 1: In other cases they were incorporated directly into the tableware.
Speaker 1: One example of the latter approach is the elaborate dinner
Speaker 1: table ornament known as that naturn Zungenbalm, meaning the adder's
Speaker 1: tongue tree. This and other ornaments like it were commissioned
Speaker 1: from gold or silversmiths of the day, and they were
Speaker 1: a luxury available only to the upper echelons of society.
Speaker 1: One explanation for this legendary alexipharmic power of Glossopetrie is
Speaker 1: pure sympathetic magic, since they either looked like snakes tongues
Speaker 1: or sometimes were in fact believed to be snakes tongues
Speaker 1: turned into stone, and since snakes were associated with the venom,
Speaker 1: the stones were believed to have power against chemical toxins
Speaker 1: according to the broad like cures like logic of pre
Speaker 1: scientific medicine and magic. However, by the Renaissance some authors
Speaker 1: began to question the legendary and magical accounts of these stones.
Speaker 1: In a separate article entitled Cochleodonts and caimeroids, Arthur Smith
Speaker 1: Woodward and the hollow cephalians. Duffen traces the evolving scholarship
Speaker 1: on these objects during the late Middle Ages to the
Speaker 1: early Modern period, noting that Leonardo da Vinci argued in
Speaker 1: his no books that Glosso petrie were likely the remains
Speaker 1: of ordinary, once living organisms, in other words, fossils. In
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, the Danish scientist Nils Stenson, also known
Speaker 1: as Nicholas Steno, mounted a persuasive argument that these stones
Speaker 1: were not tongues at all, but teeth, the fossilized teeth
Speaker 1: of ancient sharks. This was based in part on his
Speaker 1: studies of the cranial musculature of a living great white
Speaker 1: shark captured at Lavorno in sixteen sixty seven. Duffin notes
Speaker 1: that the Sicilian painter Augustino Scilla came to the same
Speaker 1: conclusion around the same time, and that the Swiss naturalist
Speaker 1: Conrad Gessner had suggested the possibility a hundred years earlier,
Speaker 1: though he had been unable to prove it. So think
Speaker 1: back to the naturn Zungenbaum. Now that we know what
Speaker 1: these stones were, Nobles and clergymen were decorating their fine
Speaker 1: dinner tables with what looked like leafless, withered elms dangling
Speaker 1: with the fossilized teeth of extinct sea monsters. To read
Speaker 1: from duffin quote, the mounted shark's teeth were suspended from
Speaker 1: a central tree like structure, ready for picking and dipping
Speaker 1: into the wine before it was drunk. If the tooth
Speaker 1: did not undergo a color change on being extracted from
Speaker 1: the wine, the beverage was deemed safe to drink. One
Speaker 1: description of a tree like this mentions as many as
Speaker 1: eleven sharks teeth suspended from eight branches made of red coral.
Speaker 1: Records indicate that a major consumer of these snake tong
Speaker 1: trees was the papacy, especially during the Avignon period of
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century. According to Duffen, there are at least
Speaker 1: four surviving examples of these trees. One he describes in
Speaker 1: some detail is truly difficult to imagine without seeing, so
Speaker 1: it's worth looking up. Quote. A specimen in the green
Speaker 1: room of the stat Lika Kunst sam Lungen in Dresden
Speaker 1: consists of a silver base with Jesse, the father of David,
Speaker 1: lanked by a snake and reclining at the base of
Speaker 1: a tree. Six long pedicels then emerge through a canopy
Speaker 1: of serrated silver leaves, each terminating in a drooping flower,
Speaker 1: from which a tooth of issyrus or a mako shark
Speaker 1: is suspended in the crown of the tree. Mary with
Speaker 1: the baby Jesus in her lap, leans against a large
Speaker 1: specimen of otodous megalodon. This was new to me, our
Speaker 1: Lady of the Megalodon. Another example cited by Duffin as
Speaker 1: a thirty two centimeter piece held by the Treasury of
Speaker 1: the German Order in Vienna, consisting of a coral tree
Speaker 1: on a silver gilt base with fourteen megalodon teeth dangling
Speaker 1: like peaches from its red limbs. The Megalodon, whose name
Speaker 1: just happens to mean giant tooth, is an extinct species
Speaker 1: of enormous shark that lived from roughly twenty three million
Speaker 1: years ago until about two and a half million years ago.
Speaker 1: This amazing shark ark is one of the largest predators
Speaker 1: that ever lived, though its body size has to be
Speaker 1: estimated from incomplete data due to the poor fossilization potential
Speaker 1: of its cartilaginous skeleton. It may have grown up to
Speaker 1: around twenty meters or over sixty feet in length. What
Speaker 1: we know for sure is how big its teeth got,
Speaker 1: with the largest examples measuring almost seven inches or eighteen centimeters,
Speaker 1: which is probably too big to fit into a wine glass.
Speaker 1: While Renaissance popes and nobles may not have known exactly
Speaker 1: what the serpent's tongues were, they knew what kind they wanted.
Speaker 1: While it seems any shark's teeth were at least sometimes
Speaker 1: believed to have alexipharmic effects, the most prized specimens were
Speaker 1: Miocene fossils of Otodus megalodon from Malta. It appears Malta
Speaker 1: was a significant exporter of fossil shark teeth during this period.
Speaker 1: Malta is an island composed of sedimentary rock formed from
Speaker 1: ancient sea floors, which is a perfect place for serpent's
Speaker 1: tongues to leak out of eroding cliffs and hillsides. Also
Speaker 1: tying into Malta are some legendary explanations for the origin
Speaker 1: of gloss of Petrie, which traced back to a story
Speaker 1: in the New Testament in the Book of Acts where St.
Speaker 1: Paul is bitten by a viper but miraculously left unharmed
Speaker 1: to read from Acts chapter twenty eight in the n R.
Speaker 1: S V. After we had reached safety, we then learned
Speaker 1: that the island was called Malta. The natives showed us
Speaker 1: unusual kindness, since it had begun to reign and was cold.
Speaker 1: They kindled a fire and welcomed all of us around it.
Speaker 1: Paul had gathered a bundle of brushwood and was putting
Speaker 1: it on the fire when a viper, driven out by
Speaker 1: the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the natives
Speaker 1: saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to
Speaker 1: one another, this man must be a murderer. Though he
Speaker 1: has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him
Speaker 1: to live. He, however, shook off the creature into the
Speaker 1: fire and suffered no harm. They were expecting him to
Speaker 1: swell up or drop debt. But after they had waited
Speaker 1: a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened
Speaker 1: to him, they changed their minds and began to say
Speaker 1: that he was a god. Over time, this story was
Speaker 1: embellished to include details not mentioned in the Bible, such
Speaker 1: as Paul turning the poison tongues of all of Malta's
Speaker 1: snakes into stone, or the idea that Paul's sermons were
Speaker 1: so righteous and commanding that they left physical impressions of
Speaker 1: his tongue in the rock strata of the island itself, which,
Speaker 1: of course, hundreds of years later would be dug up, collected,
Speaker 1: and sold as serpents tongues so they could be used
Speaker 1: to detect poison in a drink, or for Mary and
Speaker 1: baby Jesus to recline against them in a centerpiece. That
Speaker 1: does it for this edition of The Artifact. Tune in
Speaker 1: each week for new episodes of The Artifact, hosted by
Speaker 1: Robert or myself. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, and if you'd like to
Speaker 1: get into contact with us, you can always email us
Speaker 1: at cont act at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.