Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From how stupor
Speaker 1: com a man he had known in Boston, a painter
Speaker 1: of strange pictures with a secret studio and an ancient
Speaker 1: and unhallowed alley near a graveyard, had actually made friends
Speaker 1: with the ghouls and had taught him to understand the
Speaker 1: simpler part of their disgusting meeping and glibbering. For all
Speaker 1: their laughter, ghouls or a doola hunger is the fire
Speaker 1: in which they burn, and it burns hotter than the
Speaker 1: hunger for powers over men or for knowledge of the
Speaker 1: gods in a craze mortal. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves
Speaker 1: behind only a slag of anger and lust. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And those were two quick readings,
Speaker 1: the first from HP Lovecrafts The dream Quest of Unknown
Speaker 1: Cataf and the second from Brian McNaughton's The Throne of
Speaker 1: bones Um, available via Wildside Press. And that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is not only one of my favorite publications that deal
Speaker 1: with Google's, it's probably one of my favorite books of
Speaker 1: all time. Now do you love it more than the
Speaker 1: D and D Monster Manual. Well, the two different types
Speaker 1: of reads there. I mean, I do love the Monster
Speaker 1: Manual for my sort of catalog oriented monster consideration. And indeed,
Speaker 1: girls have have long had a cherished role in the
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons setting. So what is Throwing of Bones about.
Speaker 1: Throwing of Bones is a It's a collection of short
Speaker 1: stories in one central novella set in a dark fantasy
Speaker 1: setting that's vaguely Roman, vaguely tolkien Esque, I guess, but
Speaker 1: but has more common with the works of say Clark,
Speaker 1: Ashton Smith and some of the weird dark fantasy writers
Speaker 1: of an earlier time. Oh, I should get into that,
Speaker 1: because I've recently discovered that I really dig Roman themes
Speaker 1: in in dark literature, because on your and Christians recommendation,
Speaker 1: I read The Great God Pan, which has that that
Speaker 1: fantastic reference to the statues from ancient Rome of the
Speaker 1: you know, the horrific visage of the goat, the old
Speaker 1: goat skin. Yeah. Well, one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about mcnonton's work is that he brings this dark seriousness
Speaker 1: of weird fiction and horror into his writing. But there's
Speaker 1: also this gallows humor. There's this Uh, especially prominent with
Speaker 1: the ghouls, because the ghoul is this creature that in
Speaker 1: It's in the versions that I like the most. They're
Speaker 1: they're gross, they're evil, they're sly, but they're also a
Speaker 1: little mischievous. They also have this weird, black sense of
Speaker 1: humor about them. Uh, and I feel mcnaton it really
Speaker 1: brings that to life. Well, if you haven't figured it
Speaker 1: out by now, we're going to be talking about Google's today,
Speaker 1: and sadly, I think this is going to have to
Speaker 1: be our final October podcast. It has been a great
Speaker 1: run this month of monsters and demons and madness. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to sober up in the next episode a
Speaker 1: little bit and get get back on track for the holidays.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's been a fun right, Okay, So Google's.
Speaker 1: I think these days, when the average person is presented
Speaker 1: with the concept of a ghoule, what kind of descriptive
Speaker 1: features are you're gonna get? I would say they'd be
Speaker 1: very generic. I mean, what is a ghoul to us today?
Speaker 1: It's just some kind of vaguely monstrous creature. In fact,
Speaker 1: you could even think of Google as a broader term
Speaker 1: into which other monsters fit, like the vampire is a
Speaker 1: type of Google. Well, the word is used that way
Speaker 1: a lot. I have to admit that I have to
Speaker 1: bite my tongue to keep from correcting people when someone
Speaker 1: refers to a non Google as a Google, I want
Speaker 1: to say, no, that's that's technically not a Google. That
Speaker 1: is just a ghost, that is somebody in a vampire costume.
Speaker 1: A Google is a specific thing, and you have to
Speaker 1: use the term appropriately. Yeah, well I brought that up
Speaker 1: specifically to provoke you. So Robert, come on, tell me
Speaker 1: what is a gooul really? All right, So it's gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna vary, and we're gonna get it before we
Speaker 1: end up at discussing actual science behind the Google. So yes,
Speaker 1: that is coming in the second half. We're going to
Speaker 1: discuss the ancient roots and sort of the modern fictional roots.
Speaker 1: But in most cases, you're looking at this creature that
Speaker 1: might be unliving or maybe it's just living on the
Speaker 1: margins of what we think of as as an actual
Speaker 1: appropriate member of the natural world. It's very much the
Speaker 1: monster as outsider, a motif very much so, yeah, making
Speaker 1: its home graveyards and places of of of loss and death,
Speaker 1: and it feasts upon human remains, so it is essentially
Speaker 1: a cannibalistic scavenger and scavin you're in the true sense,
Speaker 1: and that it's sort of dwells at the edges of
Speaker 1: the camp. You know, you have civilization as the encampment
Speaker 1: where our activity dwells. You don't find the Ghoul in
Speaker 1: the middle of the city. You find the Google trailing
Speaker 1: behind you, feasting on what you leave behind. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think in some cases you have Googles that are
Speaker 1: following armies. I always love that motif and would love
Speaker 1: to see that that that used more, especially in the
Speaker 1: fantasy settings. You have some some sort of army going
Speaker 1: out to fight a battle as they always do. Well,
Speaker 1: then surely they are camp followers and there are Googles
Speaker 1: right behind them. Yeah, the other type of camp follower.
Speaker 1: But based on what we've said so far, it should
Speaker 1: be clear that the concept of the Google has not
Speaker 1: remained static over time. I mean, it's not even fully unified. Today.
Speaker 1: You've got this generic goal and then you've got Robert's
Speaker 1: very specific goal. How has the goule changed over time?
Speaker 1: And where did the idea originally come from? All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginnings. Then if not the
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe, because we have to look at
Speaker 1: pre Islamic Arabic mythology. This mythology is so cool and
Speaker 1: I was so delighted to read it. So our main
Speaker 1: source on this is a paper by Ahmed al Rawi
Speaker 1: called the Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture, and this was
Speaker 1: a really fun read. Yes it was. This was one
Speaker 1: of my key sources on the house stuff works article
Speaker 1: how ghouls work. Um, yeah, and he gets into the
Speaker 1: you know, just the original root of the word word
Speaker 1: for starters, which is from the Arabic ghoule or g
Speaker 1: h u l that may stem from Galu, which is
Speaker 1: the name of an ancient demon correct and the galou
Speaker 1: played a role in some of their their key literature
Speaker 1: and mythology, one of them being the death and rebirth
Speaker 1: mythology of the god Demuzi or the Demuzi is sort
Speaker 1: of equal to Tamus, which is another god of the
Speaker 1: ancient Middle East. But the death and rebirth mythology corresponds
Speaker 1: to the growth and harvest cycle of food crops. So
Speaker 1: there you can see another one of the ways that
Speaker 1: that our mythology ties into our way of life, the
Speaker 1: way we make a living in our and our basic
Speaker 1: material concerns inform the stories we tell about, you know,
Speaker 1: the creation of the world and the behavior of the gods.
Speaker 1: And and there you've got just like the crops die
Speaker 1: every year and then are reborn later in the next
Speaker 1: season or regrow out of you know, the dead fields
Speaker 1: of the previous harvest. You've got the god Demuzi or
Speaker 1: Tammuz is a vegetation god who is abducted and taken
Speaker 1: down into the realm of death. And who is the
Speaker 1: abductor of Demuzi or Tammus. It's the Galu, the demon right.
Speaker 1: And this is fascinating too, because we see the google
Speaker 1: tied into some of our our earliest and most powerful
Speaker 1: myths concerning the flow to seasons. Totally yeah, But following
Speaker 1: its role in the official mythology of of ancient Babylon
Speaker 1: and ancient Mesopotamia, you have this idea of the ghoule
Speaker 1: emerging as more of a ground the level folklore creature.
Speaker 1: You know that that it's mentioned all in all of
Speaker 1: the standard mythology and folk tales and superstitions of the
Speaker 1: average person living in the Arabian Peninsula and Arabic scholars
Speaker 1: have actually documented the way in which this monster emerged
Speaker 1: in the thinking of the people. Yeah, Arabic scholars of
Speaker 1: the eighth, ninth, and ten centuries, they compiled various Bedouin
Speaker 1: folk tales involving the Gooules, and many of these found
Speaker 1: their way into the collection The Thousand and One Nights.
Speaker 1: And this is key because translations of this book, of
Speaker 1: course traveled to Europe in the eighteenth century, as did
Speaker 1: the notion with the Ghoul. And this is where, as
Speaker 1: we'll get into later, we see the google emerge in
Speaker 1: Western culture and in the in eventually in fictional creations
Speaker 1: of the late eighteenth century and a most importantly the
Speaker 1: nineteenth twentieth century. Yeah, so I get the feeling it's
Speaker 1: more the European grave ghoul that ends up becoming the
Speaker 1: D and D monster. Yes, you do see at times,
Speaker 1: say the modern motifs kind of reaching back into into
Speaker 1: Arabic folklore for for some additional depth. Yeah, I figured
Speaker 1: we should mention a couple of these pre Islamic ghoul
Speaker 1: accounts because they are fascinating. So one of the stories
Speaker 1: that al Rawi tells in his paper is that it's
Speaker 1: recounted according to the scholar Al Masudi, and he writes
Speaker 1: the following. Arabs before Islam believed that when God created
Speaker 1: genies from the gusts of fire, he made from this
Speaker 1: type of fire their female part, but one of their
Speaker 1: eggs was split into hince the kutrube, which looked like
Speaker 1: a cat, was created. As for the devils, they came
Speaker 1: from another egg and settled in the seas. Other evil
Speaker 1: creatures such as the mariad inhabited the islands, The ghoul
Speaker 1: resided in the wilderness, and the siloi dwelt in the
Speaker 1: lavatories and waste areas, and the Hamma lived in the
Speaker 1: air in the form of a flying snake. So these
Speaker 1: are some awesome monsters that are being described here. I
Speaker 1: love the idea of a lavatory and waste area monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's again it's a it's a wonderful place for
Speaker 1: a haunting. That's a wonderful borderland. Right. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: place where you're vulnerable and usually where you're isolated, right
Speaker 1: where do you have to go off by yourself? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where you might encounter the supernatural. Um But then,
Speaker 1: of course there is another source that says that quote
Speaker 1: the devils wanted to eavesdrop on heaven, so God threw
Speaker 1: meteors at them, where upon some were burnt, fell into
Speaker 1: the sea and later turned into crocodiles, while others dropped
Speaker 1: onto the ground and changed into ghouls. So there you've
Speaker 1: got a ghoule origin and a crocodile origin at the
Speaker 1: same time. They're essentially siblings. Um and plenty of the
Speaker 1: other stories also depict the ghoul as a shape shifter
Speaker 1: that's able to disguise its appearance. Uh. This appears to
Speaker 1: be a common feature. Other common features are that the
Speaker 1: traditional Arabic goal is often female in appearance. And I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. It can be killed with a
Speaker 1: good chop from a sword, and if I'm reading this right,
Speaker 1: it sort of makes it different from the vampire, the werewolf,
Speaker 1: and these other monsters which can often only be killed
Speaker 1: through magically appropriate means, like you have to have the
Speaker 1: you know, the one magic bullet that is known to
Speaker 1: kill the monster, as a silver holy water stake through
Speaker 1: the heart or or whatever it is for that monster. Individually,
Speaker 1: the ghoul can be killed by violence, but it does
Speaker 1: have to be a very mighty and strategic form of violence.
Speaker 1: Because an interesting development on the myth is that, according
Speaker 1: to some versions, the ghoul would only die if you
Speaker 1: hit it with one mighty blow with a sword, because
Speaker 1: if you hit it more than once, then you would
Speaker 1: have to hit it a thousand times more before it
Speaker 1: would die. Yeah, that's so you had to time your
Speaker 1: one strike, you know, you had to get the one
Speaker 1: really good one in. Well, that could I could see
Speaker 1: that making sense in terms of the creature. You sort
Speaker 1: of have to get that surprise hit in. You've got
Speaker 1: to get that. To put in D n D terms,
Speaker 1: you have to get that that that surprise attack bonus, right,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, then you're gonna have to apply
Speaker 1: a lot of smaller attacks to win. I've also read
Speaker 1: and this would of course be post uh Islamic interpretations,
Speaker 1: but in these interpretations you could also at least drive
Speaker 1: a ghoul away with readings from the Koran. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: definitely comes up later where you can use the holy
Speaker 1: or spiritual power of of a of a good spiritual
Speaker 1: force by like saying the name of Allah or by
Speaker 1: quoting from the Koran, and that will tend to drive
Speaker 1: it into remission. Essentially, it will say, no, why do
Speaker 1: you do this to me? But you can also whack
Speaker 1: it with the sword as long as you whack it
Speaker 1: really good. Just once. Now, speaking of Islamic traditions, you're
Speaker 1: probably wondering, what did Mohammed have to say about Google's. Well,
Speaker 1: Mohammed's words on the existence of gules vary depending on
Speaker 1: which text you read, So the Koran does not mention
Speaker 1: them at all. That's important to stress here that the
Speaker 1: Koran does mention gin but not not ghoules. Yes, but
Speaker 1: contested references do pop up in the head Ether that's
Speaker 1: a book of mohammed attributed acts and sayings. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're they're definitely conflicting bits of scholarship about what Mohammed
Speaker 1: had to say about ghouls if anything, But to quote,
Speaker 1: I'll RAWI again on the people who do say that
Speaker 1: the prophet had something to say about ghouls. What he
Speaker 1: said was quote, Ghouls are the demons or enchantresses of
Speaker 1: genies that hurt human beings by eating or spoiling their
Speaker 1: food or by frightening travelers when they're in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: and in order to avoid their harm, one can recite
Speaker 1: a verse from the Holy Koran or call for prayer.
Speaker 1: Since they hate any reference to God. And that first
Speaker 1: part mentioned something about the wilderness. This is something that
Speaker 1: pops up again in in in the literature about the
Speaker 1: about the ghouls that you know, these ancient ghoul folk tales,
Speaker 1: is you don't expect to encounter them in the middle
Speaker 1: of civilization there. You encounter them on the road in
Speaker 1: the wilderness between places there, in that intermediary world. I
Speaker 1: like to how this mentions um eating and spoiling of food.
Speaker 1: It's tied uh inherently to our survival via consumption of
Speaker 1: food and the potential violation of that food, and and
Speaker 1: and just into general um ideas of purity and cleanliness
Speaker 1: in our food. Yeah. Well, I mean, you certainly don't
Speaker 1: want something that eats corpse flesh getting into your pantry, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just going to tear it out in there, obviously.
Speaker 1: But you may have noticed that so far there hasn't
Speaker 1: been a whole lot, if anything, about the eating of
Speaker 1: corpse flesh. That's right, And that's something that we'll get
Speaker 1: into in a bit now. In some accounts, Mohammed dismisses
Speaker 1: ghoules as completely non existent, and others he gives advice
Speaker 1: on banishing them. His companion, though abou Asad al Sadi
Speaker 1: takes a more balanced approach, and he states that ghoules
Speaker 1: lived in the pre Islamic past, but that Allah no
Speaker 1: longer permits them to exist. Meanwhile, there's also a legend
Speaker 1: that Umar been All caught him another of Mohammed's companions,
Speaker 1: put a google to the sword on the road to Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was great. So the story goes a female ghoul
Speaker 1: stops him on the road and asks him where are
Speaker 1: you going? And Umar says it is none of her business.
Speaker 1: And then she does the move from the Exorcist where
Speaker 1: she turns her head all the way around. That's really
Speaker 1: part of the story. It said that. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: he splits her down the middle with the sword. Alright,
Speaker 1: so single I'm guessing single blow there, right, he does it, right,
Speaker 1: He hits her with the one blow. But then later
Speaker 1: he comes back and the body is gone. H So
Speaker 1: either she survived or the other ghoules came and took
Speaker 1: her body away, or more some sort of magical disappearance. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so if we consider the google that eats human flesh
Speaker 1: kind of perversion of the idea of corpse cannibalism, what
Speaker 1: is the ghoul that eats ghoul flesh. It's like meta cannibalism. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it certainly ties in with with how
Speaker 1: we see scavengers, the hate towards their own sometimes. And
Speaker 1: that's that's key here, because although ghouls were sometimes associated
Speaker 1: with scavenging hyenas in a in Arabic test, they really
Speaker 1: don't have this grave ghoul association where they're going to
Speaker 1: come and take your dead loved ones from the graveyard
Speaker 1: after the funeral and eat their corpses. Yeah. This particular detail,
Speaker 1: according to al Rawi, seems to emerge from Anton Glan's
Speaker 1: French translation of The Thousand and One Nights in the
Speaker 1: early eighteenth century. So not only did Ghalan take liberties
Speaker 1: in his translation, he even introduced and allegedly created a
Speaker 1: female character named Amina who prefers the company of graveyard
Speaker 1: ghouls to that of her new husband. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: and you can see this definitely appealing to some of
Speaker 1: the Gothics sensibilities of the time in Europe. Right, But
Speaker 1: this inaccurate translation was hugely influential in the Western world
Speaker 1: and and in you know, informing their the Western worlds
Speaker 1: understanding of the Middle East, so inspiring the work of
Speaker 1: William Beckford, the eighteenth century author of the Arabian theme
Speaker 1: novel Vfic, and the folkloric studies of of another individual
Speaker 1: named Sabine Baring Gould. So we see. So that's interesting,
Speaker 1: and you have this rich tradition of ghouls within in
Speaker 1: the Arabic traditions, just some wonderful details. They're already a
Speaker 1: fabulous creature. But then it gets tweaked a little bit,
Speaker 1: either in you know, mistranslation or creative embellishment of the
Speaker 1: myth as it translates into European um fiction and folklore
Speaker 1: and European understandings of the Middle East. Yeah, it's fascinating,
Speaker 1: this evolution of the ghoul meme because if you trace
Speaker 1: the ancient pre Islamic Arabic ghoul up through the way
Speaker 1: the grave ghoul comes to be under stood in European culture.
Speaker 1: What's the common thread there? I mean, you've seen the
Speaker 1: evolution basically of a word, the word ghoul, But is
Speaker 1: there a common thematic element that remains the same throughout
Speaker 1: it despite just general monstrousness or malevolence. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it works like I feel like that the google as
Speaker 1: we have seen it and discussed it in in pre
Speaker 1: European traditions. I feel like it's able to take on
Speaker 1: the mantle of of corpse eating rather rather honestly like
Speaker 1: it adds another dimension to it and certainly tweaks it
Speaker 1: in a new direction, but not in a direction that
Speaker 1: feels out of character with its origins. Okay, I can
Speaker 1: accept that. Now, if we look elsewhere in the world,
Speaker 1: do we find myths of creatures that are similar to
Speaker 1: the ghoul we do? Uh? Yeah, It's definitely worth noting
Speaker 1: that even if the original Arabic ghouls didn't eat corpses,
Speaker 1: they have peers in Asian folk tales that do so.
Speaker 1: In the Tamil mythology of India, they have the shaggy
Speaker 1: haired creatures known as the pay, who sought out human
Speaker 1: battle so as to lap blood from the open wounds
Speaker 1: of the dying um. Still, other ghoules emerge in the
Speaker 1: eighth century. In the eighth century Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Speaker 1: which details the Buddhist journey through death and into the
Speaker 1: realms beyond death via reincarnation. Um Here, in the dream
Speaker 1: like state known as Bardo, the departed soul encounters that
Speaker 1: the the Pisachi ghouls and These are fierce female beings
Speaker 1: with be steel heads and an appetite for bones and viscera. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Now, another thing that we see commonly here
Speaker 1: is that in these early visions, the ghouls are very
Speaker 1: often female, like explicitly described as female and appearance, whereas
Speaker 1: the ghouls that I think we think of today tend
Speaker 1: to be either sort of um androgynous, tending toward masculine,
Speaker 1: or or fully male. Yeah. Yeah, I think there is
Speaker 1: a definite tendency to to generate a masculine idea of
Speaker 1: the ghoule in Western culture, though though some of my
Speaker 1: favorite books on the matter have definitely have female ghoules. Now,
Speaker 1: in the conclusion of his article uh al Rawi, he
Speaker 1: says that the ghouls may have been inspired just by,
Speaker 1: you know, things that people actually did encounter in reality,
Speaker 1: like people with various birth defects. Yeah, particularly things like
Speaker 1: cleft palate, cleft lip, distortions of the mouth and in
Speaker 1: facial features you know, which sadly do um can and
Speaker 1: do interfere in our interpretation of of a of an
Speaker 1: individual substance. Yeah, I think this is a common feature
Speaker 1: you see in the origins of monster legends. This is
Speaker 1: often hypothesized that we would just see someone that uh
Speaker 1: that had you know, some kind of atypical way of looking,
Speaker 1: and that we would interpret that as well, you know,
Speaker 1: this person is cursed or evil or there there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with them. They didn't have the light of modern
Speaker 1: medical science to just say no, they're a person like
Speaker 1: anybody else. Yeah, very much in keeping with the changeling
Speaker 1: traditions that you find in Europe. Right that surely that
Speaker 1: this year your actual child was taken away by fair
Speaker 1: is and this is the goblin that's left in in
Speaker 1: its place. Yeah. Now, on top of that, Victorian adventure
Speaker 1: and Middle Eastern scholar and just all around fascinating individual,
Speaker 1: Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, uh He explained the Arabic
Speaker 1: ghoul as a mythical creature that embodies human fears and
Speaker 1: tapoos concerning graveyards check, desert wastes check and cannibalism and
Speaker 1: specifically survival cannibalism. If we were to tie it into
Speaker 1: other myth cycles that such as the wind to Go,
Speaker 1: that did definitely have such a strong resident place in
Speaker 1: uh in the Native peoples of North America, because it's
Speaker 1: tied with that fear of survival, cannibalism as an a
Speaker 1: as a possible necessity during winters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see a very strong sort of theme emerging, which
Speaker 1: is that all of these disparate things are sort of
Speaker 1: united by the sense that they're playing on fears of
Speaker 1: the periphery, the edges, the outside, and the taboo as
Speaker 1: as many monsters do. So. As previously mentioned, thousand and
Speaker 1: one Night serves as this cultural bridge, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of a slightly distorted cultural bridge by which Middle Eastern
Speaker 1: ghoules migrate into Western fictional traditions. And in addition to
Speaker 1: the above examples, in the original Arabic text, the ghouls
Speaker 1: of thousand and one Nights are also vile tricksters and
Speaker 1: depending on again those translations, they may be flesh eaters.
Speaker 1: They kidnapped victims, They lure lust wulm into their doom
Speaker 1: by taking on the guys of beautiful women. Again, that
Speaker 1: shape shifting motif. Yeah, that's a common thing you see
Speaker 1: in the Arabic stories, is that there's a like a
Speaker 1: female ghoul hanging out by the road and calling men
Speaker 1: to come over and see her. Yeah, and over, come
Speaker 1: over and see me. Sometime in deserts, and of course
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful uh, a classic monster trope that we
Speaker 1: continue to play with today. Um. But then of course
Speaker 1: also sometimes they break into your storerooms and they much
Speaker 1: on your dates, right, I think that's what Mohammed was mentioning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But some of the key early adapters, if you will,
Speaker 1: to Golden were po Lord Byron and hands Christian Anderson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all made mention of ghouls um in the in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and their writings. What what did Hans
Speaker 1: Christian Anderson write about ghouls? Um? It's just in one
Speaker 1: particular story, and I don't think they play a huge role,
Speaker 1: but they pop up like clearly they were, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the many magical creatures. He was too, and
Speaker 1: they're just in the mix. They're in the cultural mi asthma. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they end up picking him up, playing with him
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, and then you have a new
Speaker 1: generation come along in the twentieth century. Lovecraft of course,
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft, who we've mentioned other weird fiction authors of
Speaker 1: the day, including Clark Ashton Smith who wrote some wonderful
Speaker 1: ghoul stories. They continue to cultivate gold in a new
Speaker 1: dark form tying it in with some of the the dark,
Speaker 1: weird motifs that are a part of weird fiction. Uh,
Speaker 1: particularly in Lovecraft case, you have Pickman's Model, Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you read correct. Yeah yeah. Robert told me before
Speaker 1: this episode that I should read Pickman's Model, and I did.
Speaker 1: It was very interesting and it's also one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about it to me is that it is
Speaker 1: different from all these other stories that where we've been
Speaker 1: saying that the ghoul is sort of on the periphery,
Speaker 1: as a scavenger on the outside, trailing behind the camp
Speaker 1: or whatever. In this story, the ghoul emerges as a
Speaker 1: feature of a sort of shadowy meta city, a shadowy
Speaker 1: city within a city that there's a part of the
Speaker 1: city that the narrator is taken to by Pickman, who's
Speaker 1: this creepy artist who draws creepy things or I guess
Speaker 1: paints creepy things, and they go to his house in
Speaker 1: this bizarre part of the city where suddenly there are
Speaker 1: tunnels going back to seemingly maybe back in time to
Speaker 1: Salem and Witchcraft and monstrous things may be emerging from them.
Speaker 1: And it's right there in the heart of Boston in
Speaker 1: that story, right Yeah, it is. There's very much this
Speaker 1: feeling that the gould kind of resides in the city's
Speaker 1: history as well as in its architectural history. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a sense that the bodies that the ghoules
Speaker 1: feed on, or not even current graves, they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of feasting on the past. So Pigman's model is a
Speaker 1: key work in the Western ghoul and we see here
Speaker 1: that it really gets its clause into our our horror literature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are several key scenes describing well describing paintings of
Speaker 1: ghouls eating the dead flesh of human beings and uh.
Speaker 1: And from here this spreads that Lovecraft of Courses is
Speaker 1: hugely influential, and so his idea of Gouldham spreads into
Speaker 1: various works of fantasy and dark fantasy again Clark, Ashton Smith,
Speaker 1: Brian McNaughton, Neil Gaiman more recently. And do you even
Speaker 1: see ghouls show up in the Harry Potter series, though
Speaker 1: not that convincingly. Now, if we're gonna go with the
Speaker 1: D and D model, what would you what type of
Speaker 1: creature would you say, Lord Voldemort is Is he more
Speaker 1: of a lich or he's kind of got some ghoul
Speaker 1: features right than the I feel like he's a he's
Speaker 1: a variation on the lich, you know, like what with
Speaker 1: the whole storing of the soul and the various hork cruxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he has a ghoulish appearance for sure. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: I was curious. I didn't have time to look this
Speaker 1: up before we recorded, but I just had the thought, Um,
Speaker 1: what about the nasgool in Tolkien? Do you think that
Speaker 1: the ghoul in Nascool meaning the nascoul or the ring
Speaker 1: raiths in the Lord of the Rings and these evil
Speaker 1: spirits who are obsessed with finding the Ring of Power
Speaker 1: and they want to grab it and bring it back
Speaker 1: to their master. Uh. And and I believe word nasgoul
Speaker 1: means ring wraith, and so the ghoul there being some
Speaker 1: kind of evil spirit. I wonder if Tolkien was inspired
Speaker 1: by the Arabic word ghoul there. Well, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not that much of a Tolkien scholar, so we have
Speaker 1: to have to call out for our listeners to see
Speaker 1: if anybody has any insight on that. But and I
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent he was interested in Arabic
Speaker 1: culture and Arabic languages. I know he was in the
Speaker 1: language and the language, and it seems completely possible that
Speaker 1: he would have been familiar with with these tales, So
Speaker 1: I would if I had to bet on it, I
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, he surely. The nas goal has two
Speaker 1: has its origins in pre Islamic Arabic folklore, and of
Speaker 1: course we continue to see great works of horror and
Speaker 1: other fictions that involved the ghoul. Catlin R. Kiernan has
Speaker 1: a great um has a great novel called Daughter of
Speaker 1: Hounds that deals with ghouls. I'd recommend that he's a
Speaker 1: wonderful old weird Tales short story called Far Below by
Speaker 1: Robert Barbara Johnson, and this involves ghoules in the New
Speaker 1: York subway system. That's a great read if you can
Speaker 1: find a copy, Oh man, that does sound great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in comics and TV we see plenty of examples there.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful episode of Tales from the Crypt called
Speaker 1: Morning Mess that involves UH, a shadowy organization that seems
Speaker 1: to be very interested in in supplying burial for vagrants
Speaker 1: and transients to Guy. But of course there's a ghoulish
Speaker 1: secret at the heart of it. Oh No, Now I
Speaker 1: recall a particular Tales from the Crypt comic segment that
Speaker 1: I read years ago that was about It was about
Speaker 1: a tale of a tragic tale of young lovers and
Speaker 1: the woman dies and she her body is entombed in
Speaker 1: a crypt, and then her lover is locked in the
Speaker 1: mausoleum with her like locked into the crypt, and he
Speaker 1: cannot get out, and he's trying to escape and he can't.
Speaker 1: And then much or the police find him and they
Speaker 1: find that he actually survived in there for a long time,
Speaker 1: and the ominous ending is that they find he died
Speaker 1: of formalde hyde poisoning. Well, that's that's a pretty good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to go back and read some of these
Speaker 1: old tales from the crypt. I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with actual comics, but oh I haven't read
Speaker 1: many either. That's a one of That's one a friend
Speaker 1: of mine recommended to me. Excellent to have to look
Speaker 1: that up. So, yeah, we made and we mentioned Dungeon
Speaker 1: and Dragons already that the Gohougles have have a long
Speaker 1: played a role in in in Dungeons and Dragons. They've
Speaker 1: always been in the monster manuals, both Googles and I believe,
Speaker 1: and they also have a like an advanced version of
Speaker 1: the Google called a gas, and then variations on Googles
Speaker 1: that pop up in different add on. So tell me
Speaker 1: just basically, what is your encounter with the ghoul? Look
Speaker 1: like it's just basic sword fodder, Like it's not very
Speaker 1: very tough. The standard Google isn't particularly tough or intelligent.
Speaker 1: The Gas is a little more potent and uh in,
Speaker 1: a little more yeah, and a little tougher to encounter.
Speaker 1: But they're not They're not high end monster encounters, unless,
Speaker 1: of course you're encountering them in significant numbers. But despite
Speaker 1: all this, the Ghoul has never really, as you I
Speaker 1: think eloquently put it in our notes, exploded into the
Speaker 1: main stream, at least not in the way that the
Speaker 1: vampire or the werewolf or or even Frankenstein's creature has.
Speaker 1: You know, we never got the universal monster movie of
Speaker 1: the Ghoul. Yeah, yeah, I mean there have been occasional
Speaker 1: films that I think there was even a Boriscarla film
Speaker 1: titled the Ghoul though, really yeah, but it's not particularly
Speaker 1: and keeping obviously I've never seen it. Yeah, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just I guess the Ghoul is not that sexy.
Speaker 1: The Ghoul, the ideas that it represents are maybe maybe
Speaker 1: not as comfortably uh contemplated as that of vampires and werewolves. Well,
Speaker 1: certainly not as sexy. I mean, that's the thing about
Speaker 1: if you go back and watch a bell legosies Dracula,
Speaker 1: it's it's very slick, you know, It's Dracula is kind
Speaker 1: of sexy. He's not gross and monstrous. The ghoul is disgusting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the big reason, but it continues
Speaker 1: to be. It's kind of like one of those bands
Speaker 1: that never really you know, takes off into stupid superstardom,
Speaker 1: but they always have their following, right, So I would
Speaker 1: say that ghouls are kind of like the maybe they're
Speaker 1: the fish of the monster world, right, Like, not everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot of familiariority with them or be
Speaker 1: able to tell you what their top ten hits are,
Speaker 1: but they have a hardcore following. They're not going away
Speaker 1: even if you know some of the details about them,
Speaker 1: you know, are a little ambiguous. So we've discussed the folkloric, mythological,
Speaker 1: fictional history of the ghoul from ancient pre pre Islamic
Speaker 1: Arabic traditions on up into the latest edition of The
Speaker 1: Dungeons and dragons, monster man. Yeah, but of course, the
Speaker 1: eating of dead flesh is not merely the stuff of fantasy.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a This is not only something
Speaker 1: you commonly see in the natural world. It is a
Speaker 1: standard way of making a living for many organisms. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we've discussed on this show before. In the past,
Speaker 1: we've discussed basic cannibalism as it occurs in nature is
Speaker 1: a very When you strip away all the human complications,
Speaker 1: it makes a certain economic sense. You're just talking about flash,
Speaker 1: you're talking about energy. You're talking about absorbing the energy
Speaker 1: back into a viable being. I think a question we
Speaker 1: should keep in mind throughout the course of this part
Speaker 1: about science is the question of why cannibalism is such
Speaker 1: a taboo among humans. And it's and obviously, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be quite clear why violent cannibalism is so,
Speaker 1: like you kill somebody and eat their flesh. But I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the kind of cannibalism that, as you just
Speaker 1: alluded to, makes a kind of basic energy economics sense,
Speaker 1: Like your loved one dies and then we say no, no,
Speaker 1: you will not eat their flesh. Right. Well, I feel
Speaker 1: like the big theme here, and we'll discuss another possible
Speaker 1: theme in a minute. But the big one, of course,
Speaker 1: ties right into what we've previously talked about concerning natural
Speaker 1: burial versus uh modern burial traditions, is that we just
Speaker 1: get wrapped up in the idea of that corpse still
Speaker 1: being the person than it was. Yeah. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: did definitely allude to this in our episode called Human
Speaker 1: Remains Past President in the Future. But there there is
Speaker 1: the idea that we can never fully accept that the
Speaker 1: dead body of the person we loved is not in
Speaker 1: some sense still that person, not in some sense still
Speaker 1: in a way alive, and thus in that way they're
Speaker 1: really among humans at least may not be such a
Speaker 1: thing psychologically as non violent cannibalism. Like if you if
Speaker 1: your cousin dies and you rationally know you're no longer
Speaker 1: hurting him by eating his body, you just can't on
Speaker 1: some level except that you're doing violence to his flesh,
Speaker 1: and it seems like you're doing a harmful thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's go on a journey traveling back down the
Speaker 1: highway of human evolution and human ascension, uh, a road
Speaker 1: that as we travel, what you're gonna see some rather
Speaker 1: ghoulish characters standing along the wayside. I think if we
Speaker 1: look back into early human history, we can see both
Speaker 1: of the major aspects of the goal, both the scavenger
Speaker 1: aspect and the cannibalistic aspect. Okay, so we're gonna travel
Speaker 1: back two point five million years to the dawn of
Speaker 1: the Policetocene epoch and you'll find our austar looked at
Speaker 1: the scene ancestors scrambling to deserve diversify their diets in
Speaker 1: a changing world. Okay, so these are people who are
Speaker 1: They're not living a comfortable existence like us, supported by
Speaker 1: agriculture and supply to stores of food. They're living at
Speaker 1: the edge r at the edge of hunger. They need
Speaker 1: to find food constantly. Yeah and uh. According to the
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen paper Humans and Scavengers the Evolution of
Speaker 1: Interactions and Ecosystem Services that's published in the journal Bioscience,
Speaker 1: we're specifically talking about increasing seasonality in uh precipitation in
Speaker 1: the African savannahs, and this is forcing our ostrolepisthosine ancestors
Speaker 1: to diversify again to cope with the developing seasonal bottleneck
Speaker 1: in fruits and other soft plant foods. So it's becoming
Speaker 1: harder to make a living gathering plant matter exactly. So
Speaker 1: you end up with two approaches to responses to this bottleneck. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have some early hominides that turned to seeds and roots.
Speaker 1: They start diversifying in that direction. Uh, the roots are
Speaker 1: going to be available year round. Uh, seeds can be
Speaker 1: uh can be acquired in different seasons as well. That
Speaker 1: doesn't sound very good to me. Yeah, well that's what's
Speaker 1: the what this other group decided. And they're the ones
Speaker 1: who decided to try out some of the meat to
Speaker 1: be found on large vertebrate carcasses. But they're not hunting
Speaker 1: because we're not like hunting. Hunting is a is a
Speaker 1: technological advancement, but all aheadn't come along yet. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: think about all of the deficiencies human human beings have
Speaker 1: as natural hunters, and we don't have uh teeth and
Speaker 1: claws and powerful jaws like a lion or a tiger
Speaker 1: or something like that. We do have smarts and we
Speaker 1: can make tools, but we can't just chase down a
Speaker 1: gazelle and rip it apart the way that these other
Speaker 1: large predators can. And that's what these early meat eaters
Speaker 1: had to do. They had to they had to Wait,
Speaker 1: they had to watch, they had to look for the
Speaker 1: signs they have vultures in the sky, or or the
Speaker 1: movements of known predators or larger known scavengers. Strategic meat acquisition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: find find where they're going and try and either pick
Speaker 1: up the pieces afterwards or try and steal it. Again.
Speaker 1: These are scavengers. Are their whole past is scavenging, and
Speaker 1: so if they're going to start in encompassing meat into
Speaker 1: their diet as well, then they're gonna try to do
Speaker 1: it through scavenging strategies. Yeah. And you can even see
Speaker 1: this in what scientists say about the most ancient human
Speaker 1: tools we've discovered, because what do you think the first
Speaker 1: human tools are. Obviously what would come to your mind
Speaker 1: is hunting tools, right that you think about, like, yeah, yeah, spears, axes,
Speaker 1: stuff like that to kill animals with. Uh. And obviously
Speaker 1: if we do go back to certain periods, we do
Speaker 1: find ancient hunting weapons, but a lot of what you
Speaker 1: find appears to be early tools used for the processing
Speaker 1: of animal carcasses, so not necessarily for the killing, but
Speaker 1: for for processing for like a butchery. Yeah, like very much.
Speaker 1: The idea of finding the body and needing to get
Speaker 1: that narrow out right, trying to get some meat out
Speaker 1: of this uh, this dead large vertebrate. Uh that can
Speaker 1: that you can can sustain you, but you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to use your tools to do it. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: smart strategy, and hominids are not the only animal species
Speaker 1: that has ever tried it. But yeah, you you look
Speaker 1: to what the predator has already done, and then you
Speaker 1: engage in kolepto parasitism, the stealing parasitism. You you take
Speaker 1: advantage of their work and claim it for your own. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you take you to the next level, you
Speaker 1: engage in confrontational scavenging. So this is uh, and this
Speaker 1: is something we still see to this day, uh in
Speaker 1: rare instances and and there are these are the kind
Speaker 1: of traditions that you know may not survive too much
Speaker 1: longer in our modern world, But there are Cameroonian villagers
Speaker 1: who continue to steal meat from lion kills to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a smart strategy that totally makes sense.
Speaker 1: The lion has done the work, and if you can
Speaker 1: bluff your way in just long enough to just to
Speaker 1: scare him a way enough to where you can cut
Speaker 1: off a little bit of a kill and run off
Speaker 1: with it. And then instead of hopefully, instead of coming
Speaker 1: after you, they'll just return to their own kill to
Speaker 1: harvest the rest of the meat for themselves. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can bribe the lion with the work it's already done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bribe it with the work it's already done. Steal just
Speaker 1: enough to where they're not going to miss it, and
Speaker 1: and come after you. Now, over time, this eventually developed
Speaker 1: into more powerful hunting skills. Right, we develop the technology
Speaker 1: and the strategies and the brain power to not only
Speaker 1: drive away the hunters, but to usurp their role as hunters.
Speaker 1: And according to that paper published in the journal Bioscience, quote,
Speaker 1: the close association between human hunters and vertebrate scavengers probably
Speaker 1: played a role in the diversification of cultural services. So
Speaker 1: this is interesting because we're all used to these motifs
Speaker 1: of the the early hunter and gatherer, right, and we
Speaker 1: tend not to think about scavenging too much in that scenario.
Speaker 1: We don't think about the ghoulish history of human ascension
Speaker 1: and the idea that there was a time where we're
Speaker 1: essentially hyenas were essentially vultures. And maybe that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that the the the the idea of the
Speaker 1: google still is so repellent because it does mirror our
Speaker 1: own history. Well, there is something that we find inherently
Speaker 1: is tasteful about scavenging as a way of life, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that is very common among humans to sort
Speaker 1: of see it as essentially ignoble or unchivalrous, almost like
Speaker 1: it is honorable to hunt and kill your food, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a sort of an admirable struggle. But there's something
Speaker 1: just kind of like gross and unpleasant about scavenging and
Speaker 1: looking through you know, trash piles and dead bodies and
Speaker 1: stories and right it's probably one of the modern ideas
Speaker 1: that it's just you tend to just to treat back like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a screwed up hillbilly thing to do to eat
Speaker 1: the deer that you hit with your car. But really,
Speaker 1: why Like if you ran over a deer with your
Speaker 1: car and you're into eating deer meat and the problem
Speaker 1: and you have the means to process it, that's still
Speaker 1: a fresh kill. It's just as fresh as the one
Speaker 1: that the dude shot from a deer stand. So why not. Now,
Speaker 1: if we think of these ancient hominids as in a
Speaker 1: way very economically conscious, essentially that they are making maximum
Speaker 1: use of what's les and tools they have to get
Speaker 1: energy resources from their environment, and the main way they
Speaker 1: find to do that is scavenging, even maybe kind of
Speaker 1: dangerous and scary forms of scavenging. Did they ever turn
Speaker 1: that scavenging impulse in word? Yeah, that's the big, big question, right,
Speaker 1: because it leads into into concerns about well, how does
Speaker 1: this scavenging creature, this creature that has that has learned
Speaker 1: the value of meat, has adapted to survive via meat,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly suddenly it puts new it applies new
Speaker 1: meaning to their own debt. Suddenly, Hey, I could go
Speaker 1: out and I could try and steal this body from
Speaker 1: a lion, but here's a dead member of our own community.
Speaker 1: It's made out of meat. I can eat that meat.
Speaker 1: And it's also worth noting too that eventually, as we
Speaker 1: developed technologies to to better process and cook meat, we're
Speaker 1: better able to deal with some of the disease issues
Speaker 1: that are inherent with scavenging. Right, we reduced some of
Speaker 1: the natural risk. Yeah, but why not why not turned
Speaker 1: to that meat? Especially if I haven't really built up
Speaker 1: as much? Uh? You know, human cultural whole taboos regarding
Speaker 1: the consumption of that food. Yeah, and I think some
Speaker 1: scientists think that we did make that leap. Yes. According
Speaker 1: to paleontologist Isabelle Cassaries, our ancestors likely turned to cannibalism
Speaker 1: due to lack of resources and competition for territory at
Speaker 1: critical points and their ascensions. So you basically we're talking
Speaker 1: again about survival cannibalism. You find ways to supplement your
Speaker 1: diet when it gets tough, you can, you can deal
Speaker 1: with you can scavenge for meat. But then what happens
Speaker 1: when that runs low? Bats, when you turn to your
Speaker 1: own dead and you give it a try. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: did ancient hominids and the Donner Party have in common? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they knew what made economic sense. Yeah, and it makes sense.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the economy of cannibalism. It's widespread death
Speaker 1: throughout the animal kingdom, including among human and non human primates.
Speaker 1: Because sure, killing and eating your own kind tends to
Speaker 1: interfere with the long term genetic mission of just reproducing
Speaker 1: and making more of yourself, but it works like a
Speaker 1: charm in terms of short term survival. Nevertheless, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, there is this intensely strong taboo against it.
Speaker 1: We we just do not feel generally like this is
Speaker 1: an okay thing to do, or at least I can.
Speaker 1: I can speak for myself and say that, no, that
Speaker 1: does not seem like an okay idea. And I think
Speaker 1: to most people seems that way. Yeah, Like, even if
Speaker 1: the sandwich is really good and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this is such a good sandwich, in the back of
Speaker 1: your mind you're thinking, but this this us to be ron.
Speaker 1: Now I'm eating and ron as a sandwich and really
Speaker 1: messing it up. Oh, he's so savory. But there may
Speaker 1: be reasons for this taboo beyond what we mentioned before.
Speaker 1: So earlier we were talking about the idea that it's
Speaker 1: just hard to shake the feeling that the flesh of
Speaker 1: a dead person is not still in some way able
Speaker 1: to be harmed or in somebody still that person. But
Speaker 1: there could possibly be selection pressures that favor a taboo
Speaker 1: against cannibalism, right, yes, And this is this is where
Speaker 1: we end up talking about Kuru disease and all and
Speaker 1: and discussing prions. So what are prions? Well, prions are
Speaker 1: abnormal proteins that induce irregular protein folding in brain cells,
Speaker 1: and this construction leads to flawed brain tissue, resulting in
Speaker 1: progressive and incurable brain damage. One of the most notable
Speaker 1: examples here, certainly for our purposes in this podcast, is
Speaker 1: Curu disease, which is found in New Guinea among the
Speaker 1: four A people. It's a rare breed of of disorder
Speaker 1: caused by the by this type of prion. Also, it's
Speaker 1: known as the shaking disease what's what kuru means, right,
Speaker 1: and sometimes referred to as the laughing disease because scientists
Speaker 1: observed bits of hysterical laughing among those afflicted. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so obviously it is a it is a fatal, very
Speaker 1: terrible disease that you do not want to get at all.
Speaker 1: But what scientists observed is that it only really tends
Speaker 1: to have and though it's comparable to some other priorn
Speaker 1: diseases like like c j D, but it only really
Speaker 1: seems to happen in the for A tribe of New Guinea.
Speaker 1: And this is related to the some of the rituals
Speaker 1: practiced by this tribe of Indo cannibalism, which sort of
Speaker 1: flips the script on cannibalism. Like we've been talking about
Speaker 1: I mean, from our cultural perspective, we've got this taboo
Speaker 1: on cannibalism because we think of it as a kind
Speaker 1: of disrespectful or harmful thing to do to the remains
Speaker 1: of a person. But it's not necessarily thought of by
Speaker 1: everyone in that way. I mean, this is a sort
Speaker 1: of respectful cannibalism. The the the loving incorporation of a
Speaker 1: dead loved one's flesh back into your society in the
Speaker 1: form of food. Yeah, taking your dead loved one back
Speaker 1: into yourself as food into your body, taking their body
Speaker 1: and spirit into yourself. So it in their beliefs and
Speaker 1: their traditions that the cannibal endo, cannibalism takes on a
Speaker 1: form of of beauty. Really. Yeah, So this, in a
Speaker 1: way that might seem strange to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: could be a beautiful way of looking at the consumption
Speaker 1: of human flesh, excepted that it did have this very
Speaker 1: very unfortunate medical consequence of leading to kuru disease. Right
Speaker 1: and doctors first first really focused in on this in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties when curu is popping up among the
Speaker 1: four A tribespeople decimating whole villages, and the scientist quickly
Speaker 1: discovered that the only way to acquire the disease was
Speaker 1: through the consumption of contaminated brain tissue, So they just
Speaker 1: had to shut down the funeral rights, and that is
Speaker 1: how they were actually able to to stop the spread
Speaker 1: of Kuru disease among these tribes people. But the obvious
Speaker 1: idea here is if it is possible to get an
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous fatal disease by consuming in this case, I
Speaker 1: believe the brain tissue of your dead loved ones, but
Speaker 1: possibly there could be other cases where consuming the dead
Speaker 1: tissue of human being is a disease threat. Would there
Speaker 1: eventually be an evolutionary selection pressure against cannibalism, Well, would
Speaker 1: there be enough of a pressure that that is an
Speaker 1: argument is often made. However, I did find us some
Speaker 1: work by a medical researcher, Michael Alper's, and he points
Speaker 1: out that the widespread presence of genes protecting against Prian
Speaker 1: disease suggests that human endo cannibalism was fairly common for
Speaker 1: thousands of years. So we see the genetic legacy of
Speaker 1: continuous indo cannibalism, the continuous consumption of human debt enough
Speaker 1: to where we build up a certain amount of resistance
Speaker 1: to these prior on, So, why do we need a
Speaker 1: gene for indo cannibalism taboo? If we can just have
Speaker 1: a gene for indo cannibalism, I don't know, shield that
Speaker 1: makes it safe. It's basically like finding a cannibalism cookbook
Speaker 1: in your on your friends bookshelf. Yeah, and then confining
Speaker 1: when you have this if you didn't right right, like
Speaker 1: clearly clearly that we know what the secret ingredient is
Speaker 1: in the meat loaf. Now, so it seems like there
Speaker 1: are some lines of evidence indicating that in the past
Speaker 1: humans were eating some some some grave flesh. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: I believe so based on the research material we were
Speaker 1: looking at. Scavenging, just scavenging for debt meat is a
Speaker 1: part of our evolutionary history, and so is the consumption
Speaker 1: of our own debt. And therefore the the idea of
Speaker 1: the graveyard ghougle is very much a dark reflection of
Speaker 1: if not who we are today, then at least of
Speaker 1: who we have been as a species in the past.
Speaker 1: The scavenger. Yes, so I think about that. The next
Speaker 1: time you you see an episode of I don't know, Supernatural,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes as ghouls, or you watch an Old
Speaker 1: Tales from the Crypts episode, or read some delightful fiction
Speaker 1: that involves the Google death. Well, Unfortunately, as I said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I think this episode is going to
Speaker 1: have to conclude our October lineup of creepy and mons
Speaker 1: stress content. But please keep listening because even after October,
Speaker 1: we will continue to serve up to all of you
Speaker 1: intellectual scavengers some tasty and sometimes forbidden morsels. Indeed, and
Speaker 1: in the meantime, be sure to check out Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find all the podcast episodes. You'll find videos, including
Speaker 1: a new monster Science episodes that have been going up.
Speaker 1: You'll find blog posts as well as links out to
Speaker 1: our social media accounts uh such as Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1: We'll blow the Mind on both of those, and we
Speaker 1: are Stuff to Blow your Mind on tumbler. And if
Speaker 1: you want to write to us and let us know
Speaker 1: your favorite appearance of ghouls in literature or your favorite
Speaker 1: scientific fact about scavenging or cannibalism or any other eating
Speaker 1: of corpse flesh, you can email us at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how Stuff Works at dot com for more
Speaker 1: on miss and baths of other topics visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com,