WEBVTT - Q2: Bones of the Plumed Serpent 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:04.880 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:14.200 Iheartradios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.120 your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.040 And today I think we're bringing kind of a sequel episode, 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:24.040 but a sequel to multiple prequels. What streams are coming 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.400 together on this one? All right? Well, for starters, we're 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:31.880 following up on a previous episode we did about quetzal Quadal. 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.080 This was an episode that dealt with this, this deity 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:42.919 of pre Columbian Mesoamerican traditions, this plumed serpent being and 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.680 and and in that episode we discussed, uh, you know, 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.440 the the myths surrounding it, the tradition surrounding it, as 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:55.680 well as its ties into paleontology, with the with the 0:00:55.520 --> 0:01:01.560 the prehistoric quote so Koatlas which is named for this deity, right, 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:04.480 you know, just recently in town at the fern Bank 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:08.520 Science Museum they had an exhibit on pterosaurs. Of course, 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:12.240 kettl Coatlas is you know the greatest. Yeah, well, I 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.480 think there may actually have been there was some dispute 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:18.240 about this while I was there. There may be indications 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.040 of a larger one, but Yeah, the Ketzl Coatless has 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.119 long at least been understood to be the largest known 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:28.160 of the pterosaurs. Yeah, so big that there have at 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:30.920 times been competing theories as to whether it actually flew 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:33.840 or if it just shambled around like, you know, this 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.640 big walking winged creature and just scavenge from the you know, 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.679 the seaside. But they had a like full model and 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:43.520 full cast of this creature there up in the air, 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.920 where you could, you know, compare your own puny, delicious 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.840 body to this powerful predator that would have sorry to 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.760 get sidetracked. The thing about those pterosaurs that's most terrifying 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.960 is not what they look like when they're in flying posture, 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:01.440 but how they walk. You know, this is a thing 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.559 that we we've come to understand more over time, because 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:06.920 there used to be this debate about what exactly their 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.840 their locomotion would look like when they weren't in flight. 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.560 Would they just crawl on vertical surfaces or something. But 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.000 now we have a pretty good idea of how Pterosaurus 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:19.880 generally walked around on flat ground, and it just looks awful. 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.080 It just looks like, you know, this weird, jumbly membranous 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:25.440 robot it's it's amazing. You should look it up. So 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.359 that was a case where we had, you know, a 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.640 later fossil find and then they named the species after 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:37.480 this Mesoamerican serpent got But we didn't get into any 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.600 actual fossil connections beyond that. In other episodes, though, we 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:45.880 have discussed this idea of geo mythology. We've we've we've 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.280 devoted whole episodes to generally looking at some sort of 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:53.200 mythological monster and saying, you know, asking the obvious question, 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:54.840 a question that people have been asking for it for 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:59.160 quite a while. Were these ideas of be it dragons 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:04.280 or or cyclops is, whatever, But were they Were they 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.079 inspired by fossils that were discovered by ancient people? Yeah? 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.440 Was it pure imagination or was it based on something 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.880 they'd seen? And if it was based on something they'd seen, 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:15.560 was it, you know, an exaggerated account of a live 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:21.560 animal or maybe a misinterpretation of bones or fossils that 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.560 had been made from the bones of long dead creatures. 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.200 And it's not hard at all to see how, say 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:31.960 a dragon might be inspired by the skull of a dinosaur, 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.400 you know, especially like maybe a large theropod dinosaur imagine 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:37.760 coming across that when you didn't know there was such 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:41.360 a thing as dinosaurs. And there are many ways that 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:46.040 the geological features of fossils can make them seem especially 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:51.560 mystical and like they're some kind of monster with supernatural properties. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.480 A great example of this is given that this was 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:56.839 in our last discussion where we talked about the work 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:58.800 of Adrian Mayer, who's going to come up again in 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.280 today's episode, and we'll brief you a bit more on 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.320 who she is in a moment, but we talked about 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.360 her book The First Fossil Hunters, Paleontology in Greek and 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.400 Roman Times, and one of the examples she talks about 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:11.360 in that book that I remember standing out of my 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:15.320 head was this interesting example that in some regions calcite 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:20.359 and selenite crystals form inside fossilized bones, which could have 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:24.440 been connected to tales of jim stones within dragon's heads. 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.280 So let's talk about Adrian Mayer. So born in nineteen 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:32.000 forty six, still active in the world today, Stanford University 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:36.240 historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist who specializes 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:40.000 in geo mythology, and she's written several books of interest, 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.120 including a twenty eighteen book on Gods and Robots in 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:49.720 Mythology all about Taylos, not all about Tailos, but Tailo's future. Yeah. 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.640 But you also probably remember us discussing her two thousand 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.600 book The First Fossil Hunter's Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.719 which deals with these very questions, you know, in the 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:05.640 ancient Greeks and depicting and imagining these various creatures. Were 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.240 they commenting on fossil finds? Yeah, And in that episode 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:10.360 we talked about a bunch of examples put forth by 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.800 Mayor where discovery of fossils by ancient people's could have 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.800 given rise to legends of mythical beasts. We just talked 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.479 about the dragon example, but a few others, like the 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.479 idea that legends of the fearsome griffin, you know, the 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.640 jealous gold hoarding creature with a lion's body and the 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.400 you know, the wings that creature of the Gobi Desert 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.680 could have been inspired by the discovery of Protoceratops fossils, 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.479 though we also discussed arguments against this connection, and another 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.680 one that was very popular was the idea that tales 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.880 of the Cyclops could have been inspired by elephant skulls, 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.440 which of course have this large single hollow or socket 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.039 in the center that could easily be mistaken for a 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:52.760 giant single eye socket in the middle of the face, 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:55.360 though it actually is the nasal cavity that connects to 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:57.520 the trunk. But she also turned her attention to the 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.880 world of the plume serpent in her two thousand and 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:05.600 five book Fossil Legends of the First Americans. So in 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.279 this she points out that pre Columbian Aztec codeses and 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:14.599 Inca traditions describe the remains or seam in her estimation 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:19.080 to describe the remains of mammoths and other creatures from 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:23.080 the past, including giant birds. And of course this is 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.880 where we come back to Quetzalquadal, because Quetzequadal again is 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:32.400 generally depicted as this great serpent with feathers, this reptilian 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.680 being that is also bird like. And it's really kind 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:37.680 of surprising looking back on it that we didn't actually 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:41.120 explore this avenue because it makes so much sense, right, Like, 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:46.080 you're talking about this amorphous idea, and all generally, all 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:49.799 ideas in mythology over the landscape of time are amorphous. 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.839 They shift this way and that but essentially this sounds 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.400 like a good lineup rather well with terosaar remains or 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.479 even the remains of non flying u dinosaurs. You know, 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.839 any kind of a sauropod, you could you could you 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.240 could latch onto any of these, any evidence of some 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:10.680 sort of great creature, and low and behold here is 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:13.920 the evidence of quetzel Cotal. Yes, though, the the link 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.720 between fossils and the possible inspiration of the plume serpent 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.080 being like kutzel Caudal is not the only, UH, say, 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:24.400 meso American or South American example where we have a 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:28.120 pretty good idea that bones of large creatures could have 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:32.960 inspired belief in supernatural beings. A big example that comes 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.560 in with UH with meso American and South American mythology 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.920 is the belief in giants. Yes, and there's a yeah, 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.200 there's there's an interesting history there and one that that 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:45.000 Mayer spends a lot of time with. So she points 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.960 out that after Cortes arrived in the New World, the 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:53.120 tlexical Teca people aligned with him against their enemies, the Aztecs, 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.240 and they they brought the conquistodo or gigantic bones, and 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:00.680 they told him the story of how their ancestors had 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.520 found these lands filled with these evil giants, and that 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.520 they subsequently vanquished most of them, and the survivors were 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:13.120 eventually just too few to continue and died out. And look, 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.280 here are the bones that are proof of this story. Yeah, 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:19.320 I actually wanted to read from a first hand account 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:21.920 of what happened at this event. This is a first 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.520 hand account by Bernal Diaz de Castillo, one of the 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.120 Spanish conquistadors who was working under Cortes. Now, keep in 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.760 mind anything what we read here is just Castillo's version 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.440 of the story, written many years after the fact, and 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.440 it's very possible he's not remembering everything accurately or not 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.079 understanding or reporting correctly. But this first hand account is 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.280 what we have here. So he's speaking to some of 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:49.000 the tlexical take up people and he's asking them, quote, 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:51.560 how it was that they came to inhabit that land, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.400 and from what direction had they come? And how was 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:56.880 it that they differed so much from and were so 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.880 hostile to the Mexicans, as he's referring to the Aztecs, 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:04.480 seeing that their countries were so close to one another. Quote, 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.160 they said that their ancestors had told them that in 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:09.959 times past there had lived among them men and women 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.600 of giant size, with huge bones. And because they were 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.160 very bad people of evil manners, that they had fought 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:19.680 with them and killed them, and those of them who 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.680 had remained died off. So that we could see how 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:26.080 huge and tall these people had been, they brought us 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.160 a leg bone of one of them, which was very 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.360 thick and the height of a man of ordinary stature. 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.280 And that was the bone from the hip to the knee. 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.559 I measured myself against it, and it was as tall 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.680 as I am, although I am of fair size. I 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.520 wonder if he's getting a little defensive there. I'm not 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:48.480 that short. They brought other bones, or they brought other 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.200 pieces of bones like the first, but they were already 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.280 eaten away and destroyed by the soil. We were all 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.080 amazed at seeing those bones, and felt sure that there 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.920 must have been giants in this country. And our captain 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.160 Cortes said to us that it would be well to 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.400 send that great bone to Castile, so that his Majesty 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.800 might see it. So we sent it with the first 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:10.280 of our agents who went there. So I'd love to 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:13.160 know what happened with that bone. But apparently that's a 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.040 that's a sad mystery that doesn't turn out well. Yeah. 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.920 Mayor writes that she tried to track it down and 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.319 and couldn't couldn't quite find it. But she points out 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:26.440 that this this myth, and this was account of the myth. 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.360 You know, it does reveal, you know, an understanding of 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.360 several things, reveals an understanding of extinction. For example, right 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.160 that is, sufficiently reduced population is doomed. It's just not 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.080 going to bounce back. So they didn't have to kill 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.160 all of the giants. If they just reduced the population enough, 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:46.920 the giants died out naturally. Yeah. And she also points out, yeah, 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.680 that those bones presented by the flax Callteca were sent 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.480 back to Spain apparently, though there seems no surviving record 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:57.560 of them after that. However, based on later fossils sent 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:01.920 back to Spain and those displayed in Cortes Palace there 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:06.000 in Mexico, we can judge that these were probably mammoth bones. 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.400 Like it seems, it's not even a you know, it's 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.400 a very safe guess. I'm interested by this phenomenon of 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:17.880 people seeing bones of large extinct megafauna and not just 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:20.720 not knowing what they were, but concluding that there's some 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.200 form of human you know, and obviously this is not 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.600 just the conclusion reached by the talexical Teca people. This 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.680 is like a widespread I mean, the Spanish seemed to 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.640 think the same thing. Yeah, I mean, part of it 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.480 is by virtue of our modern understanding of fossils and 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.520 the ascent of man and knowing exactly what sort of 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.719 humanoid and primate creatures lived that we know lived in 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:49.080 prehistoric times. But and then on the other side, it's like, 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:52.600 all we all have stories of giants. The Europeans brought 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:55.640 with them, the Spanish brought with them knowledge of stories 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:59.520 of giants. No, the Spanish they totally believed in giants. Yeah, 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.040 it's kind of it's crazy that all the things that 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.160 are not lining up with Cortes here. This is a 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.960 doomed scenario, and we should really drive remind everyone that 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:14.120 Cortes is a destroyer here in this encounter. But this 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:16.360 is like one thing that they instantly both have in 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.040 common is the belief in giants. So Mayor writes that 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.800 Father Jose de Acosta, who lived fifteen thirty nine through 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:29.280 sixteen hundred, traveled to Mexico and recorded native oral histories, 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.920 and when he spoke to the pleax Cauteca, they described 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:36.320 the giants of old as beings that dwelt in caves 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:40.920 and used great clubs and wooden swords. They quote pulled 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.280 down trees as if they had been stalks of lettuces, 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.960 and Mayer argues that this brings to mind the behavior 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:52.960 of elephants and that the giants again might be essentially 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:57.400 ancestral memories of the Colombian mammoths that definitely lived in 0:12:57.440 --> 0:12:59.520 the area that we definitely have the fossil evidence of 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.160 see evidence of in the fossils displayed in Cortez Palace. 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.200 That it's kind of through the telephone game of oral 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:11.719 tradition and the remaining fossil evidence of their bones. Like 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.160 this is the giants, the giant mythology that remains, right, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.200 so we know that these giant extinct mammals did stretch 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.880 in the range as far south as like Central America, right, yeah, 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.840 as far south as Costa Rica. I think I was 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.840 reading and up into the northern United States, though then again, 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.520 I do think, I mean I wonder about that. I mean, 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.760 that is a long time for a legend like that 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.200 to persist even in altered form. The Colombian mammoth, which 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.720 was the species that would have spread that far south right, 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.120 the willy mammoth was a further north species. So the 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:49.880 Colombian mammoth, this huge being, went extinct probably like ten 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.800 to eleven thousand years ago. We think, certainly not impossible 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:56.960 for you know, elements of myth to exist across that 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:59.520 time span. But I wouldn't let too much hinge on 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.000 that in friends, because that's a long time. A lot 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:04.840 can happen, certainly from the human standpoint, and that did 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.320 that amount of time. Yeah. It's also worth pointing out 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.920 that it wasn't just the tlexical Teca. The Inca also 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:16.520 had tales of ancestral victories over giants. In this case, 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.320 though the giants were destroyed by fire from heaven. Oh yeah. 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.520 So these myths were recorded in One of the places 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:27.280 they were recorded was in a source in the sixteenth century. 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:31.080 One of these was by Sieza de Leone in the 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.320 Chronicle of Peru, published in fifteen fifty three. So the 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.480 people telling this story were people living in I think 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.760 it was Peru at the time modern Ecuador, who told 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:44.640 stories about how their ancestors in ancient times had been 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.280 invaded by these people from the sea, who were evil 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.560 and destructive giants, who landed at a point called Point 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.240 Santa Elena in what's now Ecuador. And I want to 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:59.120 read from Siza de Leone's record of the stories that 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.720 were told to him by the native peoples. He says, quote, 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.640 they arrived on the coast in boats made of reeds 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.440 as big as large ships, a party of men of 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:11.360 such size that from the knee downwards, their height was 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:14.400 as great as the entire height of an ordinary man, 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:18.240 though he might be of good stature. So this yet again, 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:20.400 it's like part of the leg is as tall as 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.200 a guy, even though he's pretty tall. Right, they're making 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:27.120 it clear. Yeah, Their limbs were all in proportion to 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.720 the deformed size of their bodies, and it was a 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:33.040 monstrous thing to see their heads with hair reaching to 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.840 the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates. 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.760 They had no beards, and were dressed in the skins 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.920 of animals others, only in the dress which nature gave them. 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:46.840 And they had no women with them. And then so 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:49.760 SiZ Leone goes on to tell more about the story 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:54.400 of the conflict between the people and these giants. SiZ 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.600 Leone does not strike me as a great narrator. He 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.800 kind of disparages the people who were telling him the story. 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.400 He refers to their vulgarity and says that they're prone 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.520 to exaggeration. So I think he's got a patronizing attitude, 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:12.480 it seems like here. But he also embellishes their account 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.560 by adding Christian theological material to it. So later on 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:21.880 he says, quote, all the natives declare that God, our Lord, 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.120 brought upon them a punishment in proportion to the enormity 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.240 of their offense. And he's talking about the giants. Here, 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.360 A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven with 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.760 a great noise, out of the midst of which there 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:36.360 issued a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which, 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.040 at one blow they were all killed, and the fire 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:43.040 consumed them. There only remained a few bones and skulls, 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.680 which God allowed to remain without being consumed by the fire, 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:51.400 as a memorial of this punishment. So that's interesting. There's 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:54.560 this idea that some bones are left for us to see, 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.280 and so what about these bones? Well, Adrian Mayer writes 0:16:57.320 --> 0:16:59.680 about this in her account. She says that in fifteen 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:03.560 four three there was a deputy governor of Trujillo named 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:08.680 Juan day Almost who decided to investigate these stories about 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:13.399 the extinct giants and their bones by conducting a paleontological excavation. 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.360 So that's pretty interesting, right, we got the sixteenth century 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:20.640 here and they're trying to excavate the bones of extinct beings. Yeah, 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:24.200 essentially engaging in paleontology. Which is one of Mayor's frequent 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.720 points is that is that when when you're engaging with 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:29.920 these fossils and you're trying to figure out what they 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.760 were and how to fit into history, even you know, 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:34.960 even though you're dealing with, say, you know, a version 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:39.520 of history that is influenced by mythology and perhaps even 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:43.520 the mythology of some you know, conquerors who have just arrived, 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:48.560 then that you're still engaged in the exercise of trying 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.360 to understand fossils. Yeah, and that's what one day Almost 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:56.160 was apparently doing. So. Mayor writes that Almost and as workers, 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:58.320 they went and they dug up pits in this valley 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.600 that they'd been directed to by the name of People's 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.800 where the giants had been reportedly destroyed or put down 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.000 by this angel from heaven or where they'd been consumed 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.359 by the fire, put down by this being from the sky. 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.800 And then so they apparently found some things. They found 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.840 skulls that seemed to look sort of human. And remember 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.640 again the comparison between like the idea of the cyclops 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.399 and the giant elephant skulls. Yeah, yeah, like it is 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:28.560 unlike so many you know, large herbivore skulls, the elephant's 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.919 sull does not look you know, it's not a long skull. 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:33.800 It is not like the skull of a deer or 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.000 even like a hippo or something. It does seem to 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.879 have like the vertical alignment of a primate skull. So 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:43.080 then again, these these bones were found to not be 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:47.080 exactly human in proportion, and this was explained away by 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.800 the fact that, well, in the story, these giants, you know, 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.320 they've got all these deformities. You know, that's almost like 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.800 an indication of their monstrousness, which is sort of a 0:18:56.800 --> 0:18:59.959 self fulfilling prophecy. Right, we're looking for human shaped thing 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:04.000 that aren't correctly human shaped because they were monsters. Therefore, 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:08.560 when the things aren't correctly human shaped, almost can can conclude, yeah, okay, 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.600 we found the bones of giants here, and apparently they 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:13.680 did so that you know, they dug up these bones. 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.240 They said, yep, looks like there were giants, and Mayor 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.240 points out it points to other sources as well on this, 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:24.600 such as leading Mexican archaeologist doctor Leonardo Lopez Lujon, who 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.000 backs up the notion that Mesoamerican myths of giants and 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.560 ogres originated in at least the discovery of fossil remains 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.360 without getting into the sort of oral history the thing. 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:37.840 But I should probably add like, there's there's the there's 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.159 the oral history of the creatures, but then there's just 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.760 the oral history of finding the fossils, right, And I 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:46.160 think that's that's probably more what we're talking about here. 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.240 You know, somebody found these bones once and maybe they 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.600 kept the bones, maybe they didn't, But there is the 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.480 story of the encounter and then the subsequent interpretation of 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.200 what the bones mean. Okay, I think maybe we should 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:00.320 take a quick break. We'll be right back with more. 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.199 All right, we're back, so you know, I want to 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.119 drive home that and we're talking about Quetzalcotal and some 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:12.199 of these other traditions. You know that there's there's a 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:17.679 lot we don't know about these cultures. Again, Cortes and 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:21.639 those who came after him, they were a destroying force. 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.800 They were conquerors. They brought with them death and disease 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:30.000 and uh and and and and often cases like a willingness, 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.879 like a a an intent to destroy the culture of 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.520 the people that they subjugated. Yeah, and did that in 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.199 many cases through literally destroying written records. Right, So you know, 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.800 there're luckily some things survived, but so much was destroyed. 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.000 We're talking about the in the meso American world initially 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:52.159 like like seven hundred years ago. And and yet, as 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:54.320 is often pointed out in case was pointed out by 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.880 a University of New Mexico's professor David M. Johnson, that 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.920 we know more about Athens, Greece of two thousand years ago, 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:05.000 or we know more about Hebraic traditions of three thousand 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:08.200 years ago, than we know about meso America seven hundred 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.120 years ago, because mainly of the destruction of the conquistatory. Yeah, 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.400 the destruction that they wrought on the cultures, the destruction 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.239 of codeses that the Aztecs and the Maya kept, and 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.399 on top of this, the hieroglyphic style books of the Aztecs. 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:24.879 You know that they were there to aid in the 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:28.840 memorization of oral literature. So you know that with you know, 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:30.760 you're so you're destroying it on both ends. If you're 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:35.600 destroying the culture that that that retains the oral tradition, 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.359 but then you're also destroying the books that enabled it 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.440 to begin with. You know. So it's it's often a 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:46.080 taxing exercise to try and reassemble you know what some 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:51.400 of these stories and traditions actually were. But Quetzelkotal, as 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.760 we discussed in our previous episode, there they're basically like 0:21:54.880 --> 0:22:01.760 two major different like Sagas off of It or him, 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:03.719 they're sort of the more primal myths and then the 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.600 more humanoid myths. Yeah, that was the distinction. I remember, 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.080 sort of like the celestial Quetzalcaudal, like the creator being, 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.920 and then there's like the human version or the human embodiment, right, 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:17.040 and and ultimately I think that's something that that ended 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:19.280 up lining up a lot with sort of Christian traditions, 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:21.680 the idea of there being sort of a part one 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:25.879 that's very cosmic and and a little harder to grasp 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.200 and then a second part that's a little more human 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:30.480 and it's telling. But in both of these were like 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.760 a hero legend. Yeah, exactly. In both of these cases, though, 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:37.080 it's really important to drive home the quetzal Cotal was 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.520 was not like a like a bloodthirsty god. I think 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:44.000 sometimes there is this tendency to someone says as tag 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:46.439 god something, then you're going to instantly think about blood 0:22:46.440 --> 0:22:49.479 sacrifices or something like because of Q the Winged Serpent 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.000 the movie, right, you're going to think of that. But 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:55.840 quetzal Cotal was, by all the accounts we were looking at, 0:22:55.880 --> 0:23:00.800 you know, this was a benign, benevolent, even entity. This 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:07.280 was a divine being that represented peace and not bloody 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:09.880 warfare or anything of the sort. So I just want 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:13.640 to drive that home before we continue here. And you're 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:16.920 probably wondering again, Okay, you're talking about giants, you're talking 0:23:16.920 --> 0:23:20.439