Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Rant and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we are
Speaker 3: going to be kicking off a series looking at paddles
Speaker 3: and oars, rowing and paddling the boats of the ancient world.
Speaker 3: Rob So you pick this topic out. What got you
Speaker 3: thinking about paddles and oars?
Speaker 2: Well, I was kind of hungry for another dip into
Speaker 2: the invention style episode that we frequently come back to.
Speaker 2: You know, something that talks about generally or as often
Speaker 2: as the case, you know, some sort of ancient technology
Speaker 2: and how it comes about, and what what what leads
Speaker 2: to these innovations, you know, what is the environment that
Speaker 2: they evolve in and so forth. And I started looking
Speaker 2: around of some of my usual primary sources and I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, this looks like the perfect thing to
Speaker 2: get into, like getting into the history of these ancient
Speaker 2: Mediterranean or powered boats. In many cases we're dealing with warships,
Speaker 2: but this would have also applied to varying degrees to
Speaker 2: various trade vessels as well. And it's one of those
Speaker 2: topics when you really get into it, like all these
Speaker 2: different disciplines converge because there's archaeology, modern maritime archaeology, there
Speaker 2: is there's of course literary history. There are also all
Speaker 2: these enduring mysteries and disagreements throughout the ages about how
Speaker 2: to interpret what has been passed down concerning these vessels.
Speaker 3: Now with these ancient warships that were powered by many rowers,
Speaker 3: you know, and we can talk as we go on
Speaker 3: about the different designs there, the different numbers of levels
Speaker 3: of rowers and things like that is part of the
Speaker 3: idea there that you would have these even in the
Speaker 3: case where it's a boat that could move under sail
Speaker 3: power in some cases, but you would transition to ore
Speaker 3: power to increase like maneuverability and speed during a battle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is a big part of it. Like
Speaker 2: you could you could certainly get by with just sails,
Speaker 2: but having the oars on hand meant that you could
Speaker 2: absolutely have the power at your disposal when you needed it,
Speaker 2: especially if you're dealing with an environment where the winds
Speaker 2: might not cooperate with you. You can't necessarily count on
Speaker 2: the winds to be there for that push to the shore.
Speaker 2: If you're doing some sort of like a marine landing,
Speaker 2: or you can't depend on the wind to help you
Speaker 2: outrun or chase down another vessel. But if you have
Speaker 2: your oars, well, then you're only limited by the amount
Speaker 2: of skilled oarsmanship on board your vessel. And I think
Speaker 2: that's an important That's one of the things that attracted
Speaker 2: me to this too, because I feel like, speaking for myself,
Speaker 2: I felt like growing up, I pretty much had a
Speaker 2: Scooby Doo level understanding of what it meant to have
Speaker 2: or power on a vessel. You know, sort of like
Speaker 2: thinking about maybe not Scooby Doo in particular, but various
Speaker 2: fictions in which people were captured by you know, some
Speaker 2: sort of nefarious enemy thrown into the hold of the
Speaker 2: ship where they have to pull the oars, and you know,
Speaker 2: the idea here is like, oh, and we can easily,
Speaker 2: you know, imagine ourselves in that scenario like oh, I
Speaker 2: don't know how to pull an or mean, I've never
Speaker 2: done this before, but now someone's going to whip me
Speaker 2: if I don't, Well, why.
Speaker 3: Was that Scooby Doo? Does this happen in Scooby Doo?
Speaker 2: I don't know if it happened in Scooby Doo, but
Speaker 2: it may have happened in something consumed in that general area.
Speaker 2: You know, it probably happened on some of these old cartoons.
Speaker 3: Or Scooby and Shaggy would not be good at rowing.
Speaker 2: But whatever you're imagining was Scooby Doo and Shaggy thrown
Speaker 2: into the into a ship and made to pull an oar.
Speaker 2: Like that's kind of like where my head used to
Speaker 2: be concerning this. But when you get into it, especially
Speaker 2: in the ancient world, you're not dealing with a bunch
Speaker 2: of like forced amateur oarsmen down there. You're dealing with
Speaker 2: trained oorsmen. And it also non specialized doorsmen. Like it
Speaker 2: might be very good, but this is not the only
Speaker 2: thing they're going to be called on to do, so,
Speaker 2: you know. Suffice to say, I feel like it's a
Speaker 2: topic where I had a lot of long standing bits
Speaker 2: of misinformation in my head, you know, and just assumptions
Speaker 2: about what this world consisted of, and when you get
Speaker 2: into the details, when you get into what is known
Speaker 2: and even what was written about in the ancient world,
Speaker 2: it's a far more complex scenario. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like it when we can learn everything we assumed
Speaker 3: was wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, I thought an interesting place to kick this
Speaker 2: off would be to sort of jump ahead and talk
Speaker 2: about one of the more extreme and unsustainable examples of
Speaker 2: the technology, sort of like looking at the spruce goose
Speaker 2: before we talk about airplanes in general.
Speaker 3: Well, look at the lineage by seeing what's one of
Speaker 3: the most ridiculous places that can go right.
Speaker 2: And the place to start is, by all accounts, the
Speaker 2: tessar Aranka terrace, which means forty road or simply forty.
Speaker 2: This was an allegedly massive catamaran galley warship, an extreme
Speaker 2: example of a polyrem or mini ORed vessel, and this
Speaker 2: was like you can look up pictures of what this
Speaker 2: may have looked like. There's a lot of guesswork and
Speaker 2: analysis involved here, but think about like an ancient world
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier with oars, and you're kind of in the
Speaker 2: right zone for this.
Speaker 3: The version I'm looking at has like more oars than
Speaker 3: you can count sticking out all the sides of it,
Speaker 3: and it's got what looks like a giant gramophone horn
Speaker 3: on it. I don't know what that's for.
Speaker 2: So this would have been the pride and joy of
Speaker 2: the ruler Ptolemy the fourth philopatter that means lover of
Speaker 2: his father, which I don't know. It sounds like if
Speaker 2: that's your title, now I'm questioning your love for your
Speaker 2: father because you're making such a big deal out of it.
Speaker 2: But anyway, he was the fourth Ptolemaic pharaoh of Egypt.
Speaker 2: A little background. I think we've touched on the Ptolemies
Speaker 2: on the show before, but the rule of the Ptolemies began
Speaker 2: in three oh five BCE after the collapse of the
Speaker 2: Macedonian rule established by Alexander the Great. When Alexander's expansive
Speaker 2: empire collapsed, his followers ended up competing with each other
Speaker 2: for the fragmented remains of that empire, and his general
Speaker 2: and companion, Ptolemy the First Solder or Ptolemy the Savior,
Speaker 2: claimed the Egyptian territory, the Egyptian centered territory, and established
Speaker 2: the Ptolemaic kingdom there. So the Ptolemies would rule over
Speaker 2: Egypt as essentially a Hellenistic state for three centuries until
Speaker 2: the death of Cleopatra. That's when the Roman Empire conquered
Speaker 2: Egypt in thirty BCE. Historians often point to make Egypt
Speaker 2: as the longest and final Egyptian dynasty. During their rule,
Speaker 2: they faced constant threats. Like at the very beginning, there
Speaker 2: were the wars of the Diodechai. These were the successors
Speaker 2: of Alexander, again fighting for the scraps of that empire.
Speaker 2: There were multiple wars with the Seleucid Empire and the
Speaker 2: Kushite Empire to the south. There were rebellions in southern Egypt,
Speaker 2: and then, of course, finally the Roman Empire which conquered them.
Speaker 2: Now coming to Ptolemy, the fourth lover of his father,
Speaker 2: who he would have ruled two twenty one through two
Speaker 2: four BCE, generally held up as part of the dynasty's decline.
Speaker 2: Despite some successes in the Fourth Syrian War, it was
Speaker 2: a period of rebellion in the south of Egypt, and
Speaker 2: he was often criticized as being far more concerned with luxury,
Speaker 2: ceremony and the trappings of empire rather than the severe
Speaker 2: work required to prolong its era. But if nothing else,
Speaker 2: he by all accounts had a massive boat, and that
Speaker 2: is where the Tesla ronca terras comes into play. Now.
Speaker 3: If he had a reputation for being being more concerned
Speaker 3: with luxury and ceremony than with practicality does the boat
Speaker 3: follow this design?
Speaker 2: It seems like most of the sources I've looked at
Speaker 2: argue that this is the case. That this was. I've
Speaker 2: seen some quibbles, and we'll get into some of this,
Speaker 2: but by and large, a lot of people are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is exactly the sort of vessel that someone more
Speaker 2: concerned with appearances and pomp would would want constructed, A
Speaker 2: massive vessel that is maybe not actually an operational war platform,
Speaker 2: but just a way to show off how awesome you
Speaker 2: are and could potentially be in battle, as long as
Speaker 2: you don't think too hard about how the ship's going
Speaker 2: to get around. Okay, let's hear about it, all right.
Speaker 2: So I mentioned it has a lot of ores. Depending
Speaker 2: on how you try and reconstruct it on paper in
Speaker 2: your head, you might have had more more than five
Speaker 2: rows of ores. We'll get into the details of that,
Speaker 2: probably more in the next episode. But seven naval rams
Speaker 2: and flat on top an enormous aircraft carrier style deck,
Speaker 2: and this would have been used to carry or at
Speaker 2: least show off troops and or siege equipment. Now, to
Speaker 2: be clear, we have no physical evidence of the Tessar
Speaker 2: Raga teris. We have archaeological evidence of some very old
Speaker 2: boats and ships from around the world, and thanks to
Speaker 2: twentieth and twenty first century maritime archaeology and all of
Speaker 2: its technological innovations, we actually know more than ever before.
Speaker 2: I noticed that Michael Levinson had an article in The
Speaker 2: New York Times from earlier this year get the point
Speaker 2: that it's a golden age for shipwreck discoveries. We're just
Speaker 2: able to see what's down there, detect things, and then
Speaker 2: analyze them in ways that we couldn't even do last century,
Speaker 2: and last century was a pivotal time for advancing our
Speaker 2: understanding of what came before. Well, it's interesting to think
Speaker 2: about because, on one hand, an operational wooden ship, as
Speaker 2: I've seen pointed out, is just in a perpetual state
Speaker 2: of decay. I mean, that's why we have the concept
Speaker 2: of the ship of theseus. It's constantly rotting. Essentially, it wears,
Speaker 2: it breaks, it requires upkeep and replacement, and if left
Speaker 2: to the ravages of time, if conditions are not right,
Speaker 2: the whole thing is lost. For instance, one of the
Speaker 2: main culprits, it's often pointed out, is the shipworm, as
Speaker 2: a simil pullock, a nautical archaeologist at Texas A and
Speaker 2: M University and College Station pointed out, and this is
Speaker 2: who was citing a that GEO article from twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: titled five Shipwrecks Lost to Time that archaeologists would love
Speaker 2: to get their hands on by Jane J. Lee, which
Speaker 2: which does get into some ships from this time period.
Speaker 2: But basically the idea is that this is this worm
Speaker 2: is a wood burrowing mollusc. We may have talked about
Speaker 2: it on the show. Before they can break down a
Speaker 2: submerged wooden vessel apparently in as little as five years.
Speaker 2: But the main way that ancient ships survive are by
Speaker 2: winding up buried under sediment or buried under their own cargo,
Speaker 2: such as you know, a bunch of ceramic andphora, you know,
Speaker 2: basically earthenware containers that end up serving as man made
Speaker 2: sediment to preserve the portion of the hull underneath it.
Speaker 2: If you've watched any documentaries about, you know, ancient Mediterranean shipwrecks,
Speaker 2: you've probably seen some footage like this where it looks like, oh,
Speaker 2: it looks like a bunch of urns on the bottom
Speaker 2: of the ocean, and that's essentially what it is. But
Speaker 2: then what is underneath those urns, what else is preserved?
Speaker 2: And sometimes we can learn a lot from what remains beneath.
Speaker 2: And this is why harbors, rather than open ocean, are
Speaker 2: often considered better hiding places for some of these ancient wrecks.
Speaker 2: And there also may be factors related to just how
Speaker 2: many of these ships operated and so forth, and how
Speaker 2: they operated. But yeah, it's like it's one of these
Speaker 2: these cases where, yeah, we have one particular giant vessel
Speaker 2: that one's lost to history. But in terms of more
Speaker 2: common vessels of this type, yeah, we do have examples
Speaker 2: of shipwrecks we've been able to find and learn from,
Speaker 2: you know, especially in recent years. But as with the
Speaker 2: fossil record, you know, depending on what we have to
Speaker 2: depend on, has various holes in it. You know, we
Speaker 2: have physical evidence of ships, and then we also have
Speaker 2: the written word to turn to. But as Christopher E.
Speaker 2: Choffen discusses in the Tessaranka Terras reconsidered this is this
Speaker 2: was a nineteen ninety one through nineteen ninety three a
Speaker 2: publication of Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Technical
Speaker 2: information in these ancient texts is uncommon, so it's you'll
Speaker 2: have mentions of ships, but you know how many times
Speaker 2: do they stop to really roll out the details and
Speaker 2: the stats for a given vessel. But I guess the
Speaker 2: thing about the about a ship this big is that
Speaker 2: there would be some descriptions, some stats. It's out there
Speaker 2: since it is so novel. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like if you look in like biblical texts, are you
Speaker 2: going to have this, you know, actual length and with
Speaker 2: descriptions for a cart? Now probably not everyone knows what
Speaker 2: a card is the arc of the covenant, well, and
Speaker 2: then you got might get some details right. So, concerning
Speaker 2: the Tessaranka terras, there are two main sources that are
Speaker 2: typically cited. One is a second century CE Greek source,
Speaker 2: the writings of Athenaeus of Necratis. This is more than
Speaker 2: two hundred years after the reign of Ptolemy. The fourth.
Speaker 2: Chaffin cites this one in his work, and among the
Speaker 2: details included are the following two hundred and eighty cubits
Speaker 2: in length, which, to understand this would be like four
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty feet or one hundred and thirty meters
Speaker 2: a breadth of thirty eight cubits or fifty seven feet
Speaker 2: seventeen meters. I'm not sure if this is per catamaran
Speaker 2: hole seven naval rams. As we discussed proportions, breathtaking decorations.
Speaker 2: This is all subjective. And then it's said to have
Speaker 2: required four thousand oarsmen and four hundred sailors and officers.
Speaker 2: That alone is is incredible, if not unbelievable. And if
Speaker 2: it's said to carry two eight hundred and fifty.
Speaker 3: Marines, okay, and the marines would refer to like armed
Speaker 3: soldiers who were not involved in the piloting or powering
Speaker 3: of the vessel, so they could you know, if you
Speaker 3: made contact with another ship at sea or made a landing,
Speaker 3: they could disembark or board another vessel to attack.
Speaker 2: Yeh, pretty much now in terms of whether they were
Speaker 2: pulling the oars or not, as we'll get into maybe so.
Speaker 2: But then you look at these stats, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: four thousand oarsmen. Even if every single marine was double
Speaker 2: doing double duty and also pulling the oars, you still
Speaker 2: would and also throwing the four hundred sailors and officers,
Speaker 2: You're still short by a lot. You still need hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of additional oarsmen to power this thing.
Speaker 3: So do experts have an opinion of like whether this
Speaker 3: could be possible, whether this possibly existed as described, or
Speaker 3: what's going on here?
Speaker 2: I mean it basically the big discussion comes down to
Speaker 2: whether it was for show or operational, you know, like
Speaker 2: because another detail that is mentioned in this text is
Speaker 2: that it required this big specialized launching system in docks.
Speaker 2: So it was like so huge that it required something
Speaker 2: new to be built in order to even you know,
Speaker 2: go up to it and use it to any limited
Speaker 2: degree in the water. But even still ancient authors were
Speaker 2: still skeptical about it as well, like for instance, another
Speaker 2: the other major description is a lot shorter, and it
Speaker 2: comes from Plutarch. He lived forty six through one nineteen CE,
Speaker 2: and he repeats some of the exact same stats, but
Speaker 2: also add that the ship was just for show and
Speaker 2: could only be moved with great difficulty and danger. So
Speaker 2: he comments that it was not at all a practical warship,
Speaker 2: but a spectacle, certainly in keeping with the reputation of
Speaker 2: Ptolemy the Fourth that has passed down through the centuries. Okay, now,
Speaker 2: I guess you could get into a more nuanced discussion
Speaker 2: about to what extent the spectacle is as useful or
Speaker 2: more useful than a functional vessel. I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: that's that's on the table. And then we have to
Speaker 2: also take into account the reputation of ancient rulers as
Speaker 2: becomes kind of submitted in the in the historical record.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's a there's a lot of back
Speaker 2: and forth to have there, But it sounds like there's
Speaker 2: a strong case to be made that this was not
Speaker 2: very a very functional warship, that it was just about
Speaker 2: showing off your military mind. But I think it's an
Speaker 2: interesting place to set out on our journey here. You know,
Speaker 2: looking at the Tessaranka tear is something that exists as
Speaker 2: the most outrageous and possibly grotesquely unrealistic example of an
Speaker 2: evolution of design in the ancient world. And I think
Speaker 2: this is especially interesting in light of how absolutely on
Speaker 2: point the engineering of the try Rem is considered to
Speaker 2: have been. I'm going to share a quote from Chaffin
Speaker 2: on this that I referenced earlier. To be clear, this
Speaker 2: is he's not talking about the Tessaranga teris here. He's
Speaker 2: talking about the more common and functional tri rem or
Speaker 2: driven vessel. He writes it was a warship design at
Speaker 2: the very limits of available technology, incapable of further development,
Speaker 2: expensive to maintain, costly and trained manpower, and in the
Speaker 2: long run too costly for the resources of the city state.
Speaker 2: So I think it seems reasonable to think of these
Speaker 2: almost as like jet fighters in the modern area, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of their upkeep and the technology involved, and
Speaker 2: just how expensive they are to maintain and use. So
Speaker 2: we're going to come back around to these, We're going
Speaker 2: to come back around to the Tasaronkataris, We're going to
Speaker 2: come back around to the Trireme, and they sort of
Speaker 2: pinnacle of this technology as it develops in the ancient world.
Speaker 2: But before we get into that, we need to talk
Speaker 2: more basically about oars and paddles and other related technologies
Speaker 2: that are the basis for all of this. So I
Speaker 2: guess to kick off here just a discussion of some
Speaker 2: of the basic terminology that is used here. I was
Speaker 2: looking at the chapter in the seventy Great Inventions of
Speaker 2: the Ancient World by Brian M. Fagan, and the chapter
Speaker 2: that deals one of the chapters that deals with boats
Speaker 2: has Sean mcgrail on there as the co author who
Speaker 2: wrote the book Boats of the world. It covers the
Speaker 2: basics of paddles, polls, and ores. So polling involves the
Speaker 2: use of a long pole or setting pole, sometimes forked
Speaker 2: at the end, to push a small craft along by
Speaker 2: pushing it against the bottom of a body of water.
Speaker 2: And of note, this is a technology that may leave
Speaker 2: no trace on the vessel itself, like it's you know,
Speaker 2: you can imagine it. You've probably seen some version of this,
Speaker 2: you know, in the world around you, because it is
Speaker 2: still used to this day. You know, it's just somebody
Speaker 2: poling along.
Speaker 3: Because they're especially useful in very shallow bodies of water
Speaker 3: and shallow channels. You might often see them paired with
Speaker 3: a kind of boat called a punt, which is a
Speaker 3: more square shaped, flat bottomed boat that goes less deeply
Speaker 3: into the water. So yeah, you'll see people out on
Speaker 3: you know, shallow reams and streams and rivers, punting out
Speaker 3: on a kind of flat bottom boat, pushing along the
Speaker 3: bottom of the pole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you see, you see these out in the
Speaker 2: world for sure. And then of course there are paddles.
Speaker 2: Use of a paddle generally doesn't leave any evidence on
Speaker 2: craft itself either, And then you have ores. Ores require
Speaker 2: a pivot and possibly other specialized fittings, something that often
Speaker 2: will leave evidence on a vessel, though you know, should
Speaker 2: enough of that vessel survive and I guess, depending on
Speaker 2: the materials used, you could also have like some of
Speaker 2: these fittings alone survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yes, to pick up on that. This is
Speaker 3: a distinction that I did not fully have in my
Speaker 3: mind before researching for this episode. But there is a
Speaker 3: difference between a paddle and an ore. I would have
Speaker 3: previously used these words interchangeably. But a paddle is a
Speaker 3: bladed beam that is held freely in the hands. And
Speaker 3: you might have a blade just on one end you
Speaker 3: paddle on one side of the boat, or you might
Speaker 3: have a double sided paddle with two different blades, and
Speaker 3: you can alternate which side, like you might use in
Speaker 3: a kayak or something. So the paddle is held freely
Speaker 3: in the hands, while an ore is mounted to the
Speaker 3: boat in some way through a lock or a pin,
Speaker 3: sometimes called an ore lock, though that is a false
Speaker 3: cognate with the name or lock, as in count or lock.
Speaker 3: It is skilled differently thoar locked. Okay, And as with
Speaker 3: the different names of these devices, the verb is different
Speaker 3: as well, so Pushing through the water with a paddle
Speaker 3: is called paddling. Pushing through the water with an ore
Speaker 3: is called rowing. That's what rowing is. Now. If you
Speaker 3: have no experience with canoes or row boats yourself, you
Speaker 3: might not think of this. But there's a difference in
Speaker 3: the orientation of the operator with these two different ways
Speaker 3: of pushing through the water with bladed sticks. A person
Speaker 3: operating a free hand paddle is usually facing the same
Speaker 3: direction they're traveling, while a person rowing with a locked
Speaker 3: or is usually facing away from their direction of travel.
Speaker 3: So a canoe you're looking ahead, a row boat you're
Speaker 3: looking behind.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting that I've done both of these before,
Speaker 2: only a little bit of rowboat usage, mostly like canoe
Speaker 2: stuff packing. But my mind instantly goes to how these
Speaker 2: translate differently in cinematic usage. You know, like if you
Speaker 2: have someone in a row boat and you want their face,
Speaker 2: you want their emotions, their facial expression in the picture,
Speaker 2: then you are focusing, you're looking at the rear of
Speaker 2: the vessel and you're seeing them move away from the camera,
Speaker 2: Whereas if you're going you want the same effect more
Speaker 2: or less with someone in a canoe, where you're going
Speaker 2: to have to have them coming towards the camera. So
Speaker 2: I don't know, you could probably get into a into
Speaker 2: a into a big, you know, cinematic discussion about how
Speaker 2: the different technologies transfer differently to the screen and what
Speaker 2: they say about the characters and their journeys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting, you know. For some reason, I tend
Speaker 3: to think of when you have a shot of somebody
Speaker 3: powering a rowboat with oars with in oarlocks, so they're
Speaker 3: facing towards the stern of the boat. They're usually talking
Speaker 3: to somebody, aren't they Usually there's somebody sitting facing forward
Speaker 3: opposite them, sitting behind them, talking to them, and it seems.
Speaker 2: Like that, yeah, or they're like a lonely individual like
Speaker 2: rowing away from the shore where our point of view is,
Speaker 2: and it seems to like, you know, drive home a
Speaker 2: sort of like sort of a negative connotation, like they
Speaker 2: are leaving us, or they're going off into loneliness or something.
Speaker 2: Whereas again, if someone's in the canoe, they're often moving
Speaker 2: towards us. So I don't know, I guess there are
Speaker 2: ways of sorting that out in our hands.
Speaker 3: Rowing and paddling is like more interesting the more I
Speaker 3: think about it. It reveals more kind of unappreciated physical
Speaker 3: forces in play that I don't know are just invisible
Speaker 3: to you while you're doing it. But one of the
Speaker 3: other things I was thinking about that makes rowing a
Speaker 3: powerful way of moving an object is the idea that
Speaker 3: there is great resistance to a paddle blade moving through
Speaker 3: water than there is to a paddle blade moving through air. Right,
Speaker 3: so you have the ability at the surface of the
Speaker 3: water to dip the ore in for a power stroke,
Speaker 3: and there's greater resistance there, which allows you to have
Speaker 3: more force pushing the boat forward, and then you can
Speaker 3: lift the ore up out of the water to move
Speaker 3: it back into place for another power stroke. But while
Speaker 3: it's moving through the air to go back for the
Speaker 3: next stroke, the return stroke is not really offsetting your
Speaker 3: movement very much, because the ore moves very easily through
Speaker 3: the air, and in some cases you can even see
Speaker 3: like practiced rowers tilting the blade so that it's like
Speaker 3: sharp edge going through the air instead of flat edge
Speaker 3: going through the air. I guess, to get even less
Speaker 3: air resistance while they're moving it back.
Speaker 2: This makes me think of various illustrations of like old
Speaker 2: illustrations of possible submarines, only you would see ores on them, now,
Speaker 2: I guess, without getting into ancient submarine designs, I guess
Speaker 2: sometimes these were depicted as ways that a submarine would
Speaker 2: move along as a traditional boat, and not how they
Speaker 2: would operate beneath the waters. But if you were to
Speaker 2: I guess you could operate ores beneath the waters, probably
Speaker 2: having to turn the blade so that it could move
Speaker 2: more easily back up to a starting position, but not
Speaker 2: as easily as you'd be able to do this by
Speaker 2: having the blade of the ore dip in and out
Speaker 2: of the water.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, So I think you could still move
Speaker 3: by a rowing motion under the water, And in fact,
Speaker 3: you can think of the way some like a fish's
Speaker 3: pectoral fins can kind of you know, move it around
Speaker 3: a little bit with with a sort of rowing like
Speaker 3: motion in the water. But yeah, I think by all
Speaker 3: accounts of oars would be much less efficient if you
Speaker 3: were if you were only able to move them under
Speaker 3: the water, you could probably still get some movement out
Speaker 3: of them, like you said by yeah, like by orienting
Speaker 3: the blades differently or going flat or going flat when
Speaker 3: it's time to push and then for the return stroke
Speaker 3: laying them, laying them sharp side forward. Maybe also by
Speaker 3: this is a good question. I'm not sure if this
Speaker 3: would work. Maybe also by altering the speed of movement
Speaker 3: through the water, like with a fast power stroke and
Speaker 3: then a very slow return stroke. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: It sounds reasonable to me, but I don't.
Speaker 3: Know for sure. I haven't tested it out. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's like by existing, by floating on top of
Speaker 3: the water, existing at the interface between the greater resistance
Speaker 3: of the water and the lower resistance of the air,
Speaker 3: you can get a greater advantage from the rowing movement
Speaker 3: by having this resistance on the power stroke and then
Speaker 3: relatively easier environment for the return stroke.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, so it's fascinating to break down the basic
Speaker 2: physics behind these different methods, these different machines. But in
Speaker 2: terms of when did they develop, well, this is one
Speaker 2: of those questions. It's ultimately unanswerable, and we have to
Speaker 2: throw in all the general caveats about wooden artifacts and
Speaker 2: how frequently are lost. At the time of the publication
Speaker 2: of Fagan's book, they cited the earliest known paddles dating
Speaker 2: to seventy five hundred BCE in Germany and Britain. They
Speaker 2: Cite thirty two one hundred BCE is the oldest evidence
Speaker 2: of polling from Mesopotamia and date rowing to third millennium
Speaker 2: BCE in Egypt. Also, paddle use was apparently first illustrated
Speaker 2: in the fourth millennium BCE in Egypt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't know for sure when the earliest paddle
Speaker 3: driven boats were used, but we have some interesting pieces
Speaker 3: of evidence from apparently fairly early use at least. So
Speaker 3: One source I was looking at was a paper published
Speaker 3: in a journal called Past Mobilities by Mark Dunkley called
Speaker 3: Traveling by Water A Chronology of Prehistoric Boat Archaeology slash
Speaker 3: Mobility in England. This was published in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 3: the author here notes something interesting about the archaeological record
Speaker 3: in Northern Europe at least, which is that the evidence
Speaker 3: of the use of boats and water transport goes back
Speaker 3: to very generally between the tenth and fifth millennium before present,
Speaker 3: which falls within the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age, but
Speaker 3: that the earliest evidence for water transport is generally not
Speaker 3: the physical remains of boats. Rather it is first of
Speaker 3: all circumstantial evidence and Dunky sites, as one example here,
Speaker 3: evidence of human settlement on islands such as the Inner
Speaker 3: Hebrides and Ireland, and in those cases this was by
Speaker 3: the ninth millennium before present, during times when we can
Speaker 3: be fairly confident that they were not connected to the
Speaker 3: rest of Eurasia by land bridges or expanses that were
Speaker 3: traversible in any method other than by boat. So this
Speaker 3: implies there must have been some way for Stone Age
Speaker 3: settlers to cross these large expanses of water. Thus they
Speaker 3: likely had some form of watercraft. Another piece of evidence
Speaker 3: early evidence that Dunkley mentions for water transport in northern
Speaker 3: Europe is paddles dated from the tenth to fifth millennium
Speaker 3: before present, especially found in areas on the edge of
Speaker 3: the Baltic Sea. And one example that I came up
Speaker 3: when I was looking for I was looking for specific
Speaker 3: examples of earliest known paddles in the archaeological record, and
Speaker 3: one is the so called Duvincy paddle, which was discovered
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties. I've seen two different dates on
Speaker 3: this nineteen twenty six in nineteen twenty four, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure which is right, but discovered in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 3: at an archaeological site associated with Middlestone Age hunter gatherers
Speaker 3: in northern Germany in a place now called du Vinci.
Speaker 3: And this paddle is made of pine wood and based
Speaker 3: on two different samples, it has been dated to between
Speaker 3: eight and nine thousand years ago. Interesting note is it's
Speaker 3: not huge. It seems that it was about fifty two
Speaker 3: cinema in length, or you know, it's just over twenty
Speaker 3: inches long. So that's kind of interesting to think about.
Speaker 3: Usually the paddles I think of today are longer, but
Speaker 3: you can still paddle with a shorter paddle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And looking at the photograph here of the artifact,
Speaker 2: I mean it very much looks like paddle. You don't
Speaker 2: have to read into it too much. I mean it
Speaker 2: instantly reads as a paddle to just casual observation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I was trying to understand the human context
Speaker 3: in which this paddle would have been used. I was
Speaker 3: reading about the apparent Mesolithic settlement in this area in
Speaker 3: a source called spade Paddling on a Mesolithic Lake, Remarks
Speaker 3: on pre boreal and boreal sites from du Vinsi, Northern
Speaker 3: Germany by Klaus Bochelmann, published in twenty twelve in some
Speaker 3: kind of collection. It's called a mindset on flint studies
Speaker 3: in honor of Dick Stapert Part three the Mesolithic and Neolithic,
Speaker 3: and so the area of Lake Douvency, interestingly was likely
Speaker 3: exploited at this time as a temporary encampment for the
Speaker 3: harvesting of hazel nuts. You a fan of hazel nuts, Rob.
Speaker 2: I don't know. My mind instly goes to like hazel
Speaker 2: nut coffee, and I say no, thank you, And no,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that what hazel nuts, and you
Speaker 2: think of of various like hazel nut based chocolate spread.
Speaker 2: So no, I'm I guess I'm very much in favor
Speaker 2: of them in other contexts.
Speaker 3: I guess they didn't have chocolate yet. But you're like
Speaker 3: halfway to stone Age in nutella? Wait, is there even
Speaker 3: chocolate in nutella? It's like brown and sweet.
Speaker 2: There is chocolate and nutella. Yeah, okay, but nutella. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I think I've looked into this before
Speaker 2: and it's like conceivable that you had some form of
Speaker 2: ancient nut butter based on hazel nuts, but you could
Speaker 2: not have possibly had nutella yet because you didn't have
Speaker 2: access to chocolate from of course South America.
Speaker 3: Right, But about these people who were harvesting hazel nut.
Speaker 3: Bokelman writes, quote short term harvesting camps, sometimes under pine
Speaker 3: trees and marked not by huts but by birch bark mats,
Speaker 3: were set up on muddy ground near open water and
Speaker 3: on islets of the lake. These were optimal locations for
Speaker 3: spade paddling harvesting trips to hazel groves in the vicinity
Speaker 3: of the lake. Hazelnuts were roasted in hot sand in
Speaker 3: open fireplaces, and the edible kernels were either consumed on
Speaker 3: the spot or were stored for future use. Doesn't that
Speaker 3: just sound cozy? I don't know, it sounds nice. So
Speaker 3: Bokeelman says that the evidence indicates that small family based
Speaker 3: groups probably occupied the area for several days at a
Speaker 3: time until the area became more thickly forested. I guess
Speaker 3: there's some changing climate and flora around there, and as
Speaker 3: the forest came in, this reduced the productivity of the
Speaker 3: hazel groves and thus made Lake d Vinci less attractive
Speaker 3: as a gathering location for humans because there were fewer
Speaker 3: hazel nuts to harvest.
Speaker 2: Fewer nuts, less reason to go there.
Speaker 3: Right, But so this paddle was found, it seemed to
Speaker 3: have been become buried in sediments sometime you know, eight
Speaker 3: to nine thousand years ago and was preserved until it
Speaker 3: was found in the nineteen twenties. And so somebody was
Speaker 3: paddling obviously, somebody was paddling some kind of watercraft, some
Speaker 3: very early watercraft through the water, possibly to harvest hazel
Speaker 3: nuts in this area at the time. And now interestingly,
Speaker 3: according to Dunkley, the author I mentioned earlier, these types
Speaker 3: of paddles appear in the archaeological record before the earliest
Speaker 3: evidence of log boats, leading to the speculation by an
Speaker 3: author named Lanting in nineteen ninety seven that the earliest
Speaker 3: watercraft were not log boats but were skin boats or
Speaker 3: bark boats. So some kind of design that you know,
Speaker 3: you might you would build around a frame and make
Speaker 3: roughly waterproof, but would be less likely to be preserved intact.
Speaker 3: And there are some sort of candidate pieces people have found,
Speaker 3: you know, like a piece of work to Antler, where
Speaker 3: somebody's looked at this and said, ah, this might have
Speaker 3: formed part of the skeleton of a skin boat or
Speaker 3: a bark boat or something, but it's hard to be sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wonder if part of that The idea
Speaker 2: here is that like a skin boat would perhaps be
Speaker 2: easier to carry around. You could if you're having to
Speaker 2: depend on a lifestyle then involves more of a transient
Speaker 2: existence and moving from point A to point B with
Speaker 2: the seasons and so forth. Then the skin boat you
Speaker 2: can carry with you, as opposed to a dugout canoe,
Speaker 2: which might be harder in some context to carry around.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wouldn't know for sure, but that makes sense
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: Now. Much of what we'll be discussing here concerns the
Speaker 2: seagoing vessels of the ancient Mediterranean or the wine dark Sea,
Speaker 2: if you will, to invoke a common translation from Homer's
Speaker 2: Iliad in the Odyssey, But what was it about these
Speaker 2: waters and what were some of the defining elements in
Speaker 2: the development of ancient marine navigation here? Well, one of
Speaker 2: my chief sources on this is The Ancient Mariners by
Speaker 2: Lionel Cason, published nineteen ninety one. He was to cease now,
Speaker 2: he was, but he was one of the leading scholars
Speaker 2: on ancient ships and marine operations. And as we progress,
Speaker 2: we'll also try to incorporate added insight garnered via later
Speaker 2: twentieth and twenty first century maritime archaeology. But Casein writes
Speaker 2: that while historians have differed over the years on the subject,
Speaker 2: evidence suggests that Mediterranean sailors kept mostly to this inland
Speaker 2: sea the Mediterranean, and the key innovation that enabled them
Speaker 2: to make use of the sea here was wind. So
Speaker 2: prior to this they depended on poles for shallow navigation
Speaker 2: and various forms of paddling and rowing if they needed
Speaker 2: to go farther out. But wind power, case In Wrights,
Speaker 2: was a real game changer. So I want to read
Speaker 2: a quote here. This is from again his book The
Speaker 2: Ancient Mariners nineteen ninety one. For the first time they
Speaker 2: harnessed a force other than their own muscles, their servants,
Speaker 2: or their wives. It was a discovery whose effect reached
Speaker 2: down the ages. From this moment on, the easiest and
Speaker 2: cheapest way of transporting bulky loads over distances of appreciable
Speaker 2: length was by water.
Speaker 3: And remain so today, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we get into this discussion though, and
Speaker 2: we'll deal more with this in the next episode. But
Speaker 2: so you're gonna end up with a situation where you
Speaker 2: have wind power your disposal, which is very clearly awesome
Speaker 2: and is a real game changer. But you also have
Speaker 2: these technologies of the ore and the paddle. But on
Speaker 2: top of this in the Mediterranean zone in particular, coming
Speaker 2: back to Fagan and one of his other contributing riders,
Speaker 2: Boris Rankoff, who will come back to points out that
Speaker 2: the galley, the sea going vessel powered by oars in
Speaker 2: the ancient world, this was, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 2: a Mediterranean phenomenon. Elsewhere at this time, ores were more
Speaker 2: for powering small vessels on rivers and lakes, and you
Speaker 2: often were able to lean more into the sail the
Speaker 2: rest of the time. But they point out that a
Speaker 2: lot of the reason that we see this emphasis on
Speaker 2: ores in the ancient Mediterranean it comes down to the
Speaker 2: unreliability of the wind there. Unreliability by the way, as
Speaker 2: it applies to high stakes, often conflict oriented sailing. None
Speaker 2: of this is directly applicable to modern discussions of wind energy.
Speaker 3: Ah, But what you're saying there makes sense as to
Speaker 3: why you would often think of a trade ship as
Speaker 3: being one that solely relied on wind power versus a
Speaker 3: warship being more likely to have lots of rowers and ores.
Speaker 2: Right, Because it comes down to a situation where you're
Speaker 2: going to depend on the sales as much as you can.
Speaker 2: But when it comes down to it, when you need
Speaker 2: to close the distance between yourself and an enemy or
Speaker 2: try to greatly increase that distance, you might not have
Speaker 2: the wind on your side. You cannot necessarily count on it.
Speaker 2: But what you can count on are the mechanisms of
Speaker 2: the ores and the muscle power of the people to
Speaker 2: pull those ores. So yeah, if you need that power
Speaker 2: and you can't count on the wind or the wind
Speaker 2: is not cooperating, well, then you bust out the oars
Speaker 2: and you use or power to meet your objective. Nice
Speaker 2: So in the next episode, we'll come back in and
Speaker 2: we'll talk at a greater length about this, and then
Speaker 2: we'll get into some examples of ancient sea battles that
Speaker 2: we know based on the written record and some illustrations,
Speaker 2: and then we'll get into the technology of these or
Speaker 2: powered vessels that are so famous among the Greeks, and
Speaker 2: then later the Romans.
Speaker 3: I can't wait, all.
Speaker 2: Right, so ramming speed in the next episode, but for
Speaker 2: now we're gonna go ahead and close it out. We'll
Speaker 2: remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we do a short form episode.
Speaker 2: We've been running a lot of monster facts recently, but
Speaker 2: in the weeks ahead, I'll come back with more Animalia stependium,
Speaker 2: some more artifacts as we move forward. And then on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: to topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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