Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: Iheartradios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today I think we're bringing kind of a sequel episode,
Speaker 1: but a sequel to multiple prequels. What streams are coming
Speaker 1: together on this one? All right? Well, for starters, we're
Speaker 1: following up on a previous episode we did about quetzal Quadal.
Speaker 1: This was an episode that dealt with this, this deity
Speaker 1: of pre Columbian Mesoamerican traditions, this plumed serpent being and
Speaker 1: and and in that episode we discussed, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the myths surrounding it, the tradition surrounding it, as
Speaker 1: well as its ties into paleontology, with the with the
Speaker 1: the prehistoric quote so Koatlas which is named for this deity, right,
Speaker 1: you know, just recently in town at the fern Bank
Speaker 1: Science Museum they had an exhibit on pterosaurs. Of course,
Speaker 1: kettl Coatlas is you know the greatest. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think there may actually have been there was some dispute
Speaker 1: about this while I was there. There may be indications
Speaker 1: of a larger one, but Yeah, the Ketzl Coatless has
Speaker 1: long at least been understood to be the largest known
Speaker 1: of the pterosaurs. Yeah, so big that there have at
Speaker 1: times been competing theories as to whether it actually flew
Speaker 1: or if it just shambled around like, you know, this
Speaker 1: big walking winged creature and just scavenge from the you know,
Speaker 1: the seaside. But they had a like full model and
Speaker 1: full cast of this creature there up in the air,
Speaker 1: where you could, you know, compare your own puny, delicious
Speaker 1: body to this powerful predator that would have sorry to
Speaker 1: get sidetracked. The thing about those pterosaurs that's most terrifying
Speaker 1: is not what they look like when they're in flying posture,
Speaker 1: but how they walk. You know, this is a thing
Speaker 1: that we we've come to understand more over time, because
Speaker 1: there used to be this debate about what exactly their
Speaker 1: their locomotion would look like when they weren't in flight.
Speaker 1: Would they just crawl on vertical surfaces or something. But
Speaker 1: now we have a pretty good idea of how Pterosaurus
Speaker 1: generally walked around on flat ground, and it just looks awful.
Speaker 1: It just looks like, you know, this weird, jumbly membranous
Speaker 1: robot it's it's amazing. You should look it up. So
Speaker 1: that was a case where we had, you know, a
Speaker 1: later fossil find and then they named the species after
Speaker 1: this Mesoamerican serpent got But we didn't get into any
Speaker 1: actual fossil connections beyond that. In other episodes, though, we
Speaker 1: have discussed this idea of geo mythology. We've we've we've
Speaker 1: devoted whole episodes to generally looking at some sort of
Speaker 1: mythological monster and saying, you know, asking the obvious question,
Speaker 1: a question that people have been asking for it for
Speaker 1: quite a while. Were these ideas of be it dragons
Speaker 1: or or cyclops is, whatever, But were they Were they
Speaker 1: inspired by fossils that were discovered by ancient people? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Was it pure imagination or was it based on something
Speaker 1: they'd seen? And if it was based on something they'd seen,
Speaker 1: was it, you know, an exaggerated account of a live
Speaker 1: animal or maybe a misinterpretation of bones or fossils that
Speaker 1: had been made from the bones of long dead creatures.
Speaker 1: And it's not hard at all to see how, say
Speaker 1: a dragon might be inspired by the skull of a dinosaur,
Speaker 1: you know, especially like maybe a large theropod dinosaur imagine
Speaker 1: coming across that when you didn't know there was such
Speaker 1: a thing as dinosaurs. And there are many ways that
Speaker 1: the geological features of fossils can make them seem especially
Speaker 1: mystical and like they're some kind of monster with supernatural properties.
Speaker 1: A great example of this is given that this was
Speaker 1: in our last discussion where we talked about the work
Speaker 1: of Adrian Mayer, who's going to come up again in
Speaker 1: today's episode, and we'll brief you a bit more on
Speaker 1: who she is in a moment, but we talked about
Speaker 1: her book The First Fossil Hunters, Paleontology in Greek and
Speaker 1: Roman Times, and one of the examples she talks about
Speaker 1: in that book that I remember standing out of my
Speaker 1: head was this interesting example that in some regions calcite
Speaker 1: and selenite crystals form inside fossilized bones, which could have
Speaker 1: been connected to tales of jim stones within dragon's heads.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Adrian Mayer. So born in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, still active in the world today, Stanford University
Speaker 1: historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist who specializes
Speaker 1: in geo mythology, and she's written several books of interest,
Speaker 1: including a twenty eighteen book on Gods and Robots in
Speaker 1: Mythology all about Taylos, not all about Tailos, but Tailo's future. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you also probably remember us discussing her two thousand
Speaker 1: book The First Fossil Hunter's Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times,
Speaker 1: which deals with these very questions, you know, in the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks and depicting and imagining these various creatures. Were
Speaker 1: they commenting on fossil finds? Yeah, And in that episode
Speaker 1: we talked about a bunch of examples put forth by
Speaker 1: Mayor where discovery of fossils by ancient people's could have
Speaker 1: given rise to legends of mythical beasts. We just talked
Speaker 1: about the dragon example, but a few others, like the
Speaker 1: idea that legends of the fearsome griffin, you know, the
Speaker 1: jealous gold hoarding creature with a lion's body and the
Speaker 1: you know, the wings that creature of the Gobi Desert
Speaker 1: could have been inspired by the discovery of Protoceratops fossils,
Speaker 1: though we also discussed arguments against this connection, and another
Speaker 1: one that was very popular was the idea that tales
Speaker 1: of the Cyclops could have been inspired by elephant skulls,
Speaker 1: which of course have this large single hollow or socket
Speaker 1: in the center that could easily be mistaken for a
Speaker 1: giant single eye socket in the middle of the face,
Speaker 1: though it actually is the nasal cavity that connects to
Speaker 1: the trunk. But she also turned her attention to the
Speaker 1: world of the plume serpent in her two thousand and
Speaker 1: five book Fossil Legends of the First Americans. So in
Speaker 1: this she points out that pre Columbian Aztec codeses and
Speaker 1: Inca traditions describe the remains or seam in her estimation
Speaker 1: to describe the remains of mammoths and other creatures from
Speaker 1: the past, including giant birds. And of course this is
Speaker 1: where we come back to Quetzalquadal, because Quetzequadal again is
Speaker 1: generally depicted as this great serpent with feathers, this reptilian
Speaker 1: being that is also bird like. And it's really kind
Speaker 1: of surprising looking back on it that we didn't actually
Speaker 1: explore this avenue because it makes so much sense, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you're talking about this amorphous idea, and all generally, all
Speaker 1: ideas in mythology over the landscape of time are amorphous.
Speaker 1: They shift this way and that but essentially this sounds
Speaker 1: like a good lineup rather well with terosaar remains or
Speaker 1: even the remains of non flying u dinosaurs. You know,
Speaker 1: any kind of a sauropod, you could you could you
Speaker 1: could latch onto any of these, any evidence of some
Speaker 1: sort of great creature, and low and behold here is
Speaker 1: the evidence of quetzel Cotal. Yes, though, the the link
Speaker 1: between fossils and the possible inspiration of the plume serpent
Speaker 1: being like kutzel Caudal is not the only, UH, say,
Speaker 1: meso American or South American example where we have a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea that bones of large creatures could have
Speaker 1: inspired belief in supernatural beings. A big example that comes
Speaker 1: in with UH with meso American and South American mythology
Speaker 1: is the belief in giants. Yes, and there's a yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's an interesting history there and one that that
Speaker 1: Mayer spends a lot of time with. So she points
Speaker 1: out that after Cortes arrived in the New World, the
Speaker 1: tlexical Teca people aligned with him against their enemies, the Aztecs,
Speaker 1: and they they brought the conquistodo or gigantic bones, and
Speaker 1: they told him the story of how their ancestors had
Speaker 1: found these lands filled with these evil giants, and that
Speaker 1: they subsequently vanquished most of them, and the survivors were
Speaker 1: eventually just too few to continue and died out. And look,
Speaker 1: here are the bones that are proof of this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to read from a first hand account
Speaker 1: of what happened at this event. This is a first
Speaker 1: hand account by Bernal Diaz de Castillo, one of the
Speaker 1: Spanish conquistadors who was working under Cortes. Now, keep in
Speaker 1: mind anything what we read here is just Castillo's version
Speaker 1: of the story, written many years after the fact, and
Speaker 1: it's very possible he's not remembering everything accurately or not
Speaker 1: understanding or reporting correctly. But this first hand account is
Speaker 1: what we have here. So he's speaking to some of
Speaker 1: the tlexical take up people and he's asking them, quote,
Speaker 1: how it was that they came to inhabit that land,
Speaker 1: and from what direction had they come? And how was
Speaker 1: it that they differed so much from and were so
Speaker 1: hostile to the Mexicans, as he's referring to the Aztecs,
Speaker 1: seeing that their countries were so close to one another. Quote,
Speaker 1: they said that their ancestors had told them that in
Speaker 1: times past there had lived among them men and women
Speaker 1: of giant size, with huge bones. And because they were
Speaker 1: very bad people of evil manners, that they had fought
Speaker 1: with them and killed them, and those of them who
Speaker 1: had remained died off. So that we could see how
Speaker 1: huge and tall these people had been, they brought us
Speaker 1: a leg bone of one of them, which was very
Speaker 1: thick and the height of a man of ordinary stature.
Speaker 1: And that was the bone from the hip to the knee.
Speaker 1: I measured myself against it, and it was as tall
Speaker 1: as I am, although I am of fair size. I
Speaker 1: wonder if he's getting a little defensive there. I'm not
Speaker 1: that short. They brought other bones, or they brought other
Speaker 1: pieces of bones like the first, but they were already
Speaker 1: eaten away and destroyed by the soil. We were all
Speaker 1: amazed at seeing those bones, and felt sure that there
Speaker 1: must have been giants in this country. And our captain
Speaker 1: Cortes said to us that it would be well to
Speaker 1: send that great bone to Castile, so that his Majesty
Speaker 1: might see it. So we sent it with the first
Speaker 1: of our agents who went there. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: know what happened with that bone. But apparently that's a
Speaker 1: that's a sad mystery that doesn't turn out well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mayor writes that she tried to track it down and
Speaker 1: and couldn't couldn't quite find it. But she points out
Speaker 1: that this this myth, and this was account of the myth.
Speaker 1: You know, it does reveal, you know, an understanding of
Speaker 1: several things, reveals an understanding of extinction. For example, right
Speaker 1: that is, sufficiently reduced population is doomed. It's just not
Speaker 1: going to bounce back. So they didn't have to kill
Speaker 1: all of the giants. If they just reduced the population enough,
Speaker 1: the giants died out naturally. Yeah. And she also points out, yeah,
Speaker 1: that those bones presented by the flax Callteca were sent
Speaker 1: back to Spain apparently, though there seems no surviving record
Speaker 1: of them after that. However, based on later fossils sent
Speaker 1: back to Spain and those displayed in Cortes Palace there
Speaker 1: in Mexico, we can judge that these were probably mammoth bones.
Speaker 1: Like it seems, it's not even a you know, it's
Speaker 1: a very safe guess. I'm interested by this phenomenon of
Speaker 1: people seeing bones of large extinct megafauna and not just
Speaker 1: not knowing what they were, but concluding that there's some
Speaker 1: form of human you know, and obviously this is not
Speaker 1: just the conclusion reached by the talexical Teca people. This
Speaker 1: is like a widespread I mean, the Spanish seemed to
Speaker 1: think the same thing. Yeah, I mean, part of it
Speaker 1: is by virtue of our modern understanding of fossils and
Speaker 1: the ascent of man and knowing exactly what sort of
Speaker 1: humanoid and primate creatures lived that we know lived in
Speaker 1: prehistoric times. But and then on the other side, it's like,
Speaker 1: all we all have stories of giants. The Europeans brought
Speaker 1: with them, the Spanish brought with them knowledge of stories
Speaker 1: of giants. No, the Spanish they totally believed in giants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's crazy that all the things that
Speaker 1: are not lining up with Cortes here. This is a
Speaker 1: doomed scenario, and we should really drive remind everyone that
Speaker 1: Cortes is a destroyer here in this encounter. But this
Speaker 1: is like one thing that they instantly both have in
Speaker 1: common is the belief in giants. So Mayor writes that
Speaker 1: Father Jose de Acosta, who lived fifteen thirty nine through
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred, traveled to Mexico and recorded native oral histories,
Speaker 1: and when he spoke to the pleax Cauteca, they described
Speaker 1: the giants of old as beings that dwelt in caves
Speaker 1: and used great clubs and wooden swords. They quote pulled
Speaker 1: down trees as if they had been stalks of lettuces,
Speaker 1: and Mayer argues that this brings to mind the behavior
Speaker 1: of elephants and that the giants again might be essentially
Speaker 1: ancestral memories of the Colombian mammoths that definitely lived in
Speaker 1: the area that we definitely have the fossil evidence of
Speaker 1: see evidence of in the fossils displayed in Cortez Palace.
Speaker 1: That it's kind of through the telephone game of oral
Speaker 1: tradition and the remaining fossil evidence of their bones. Like
Speaker 1: this is the giants, the giant mythology that remains, right,
Speaker 1: so we know that these giant extinct mammals did stretch
Speaker 1: in the range as far south as like Central America, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: as far south as Costa Rica. I think I was
Speaker 1: reading and up into the northern United States, though then again,
Speaker 1: I do think, I mean I wonder about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is a long time for a legend like that
Speaker 1: to persist even in altered form. The Colombian mammoth, which
Speaker 1: was the species that would have spread that far south right,
Speaker 1: the willy mammoth was a further north species. So the
Speaker 1: Colombian mammoth, this huge being, went extinct probably like ten
Speaker 1: to eleven thousand years ago. We think, certainly not impossible
Speaker 1: for you know, elements of myth to exist across that
Speaker 1: time span. But I wouldn't let too much hinge on
Speaker 1: that in friends, because that's a long time. A lot
Speaker 1: can happen, certainly from the human standpoint, and that did
Speaker 1: that amount of time. Yeah. It's also worth pointing out
Speaker 1: that it wasn't just the tlexical Teca. The Inca also
Speaker 1: had tales of ancestral victories over giants. In this case,
Speaker 1: though the giants were destroyed by fire from heaven. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So these myths were recorded in One of the places
Speaker 1: they were recorded was in a source in the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: One of these was by Sieza de Leone in the
Speaker 1: Chronicle of Peru, published in fifteen fifty three. So the
Speaker 1: people telling this story were people living in I think
Speaker 1: it was Peru at the time modern Ecuador, who told
Speaker 1: stories about how their ancestors in ancient times had been
Speaker 1: invaded by these people from the sea, who were evil
Speaker 1: and destructive giants, who landed at a point called Point
Speaker 1: Santa Elena in what's now Ecuador. And I want to
Speaker 1: read from Siza de Leone's record of the stories that
Speaker 1: were told to him by the native peoples. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: they arrived on the coast in boats made of reeds
Speaker 1: as big as large ships, a party of men of
Speaker 1: such size that from the knee downwards, their height was
Speaker 1: as great as the entire height of an ordinary man,
Speaker 1: though he might be of good stature. So this yet again,
Speaker 1: it's like part of the leg is as tall as
Speaker 1: a guy, even though he's pretty tall. Right, they're making
Speaker 1: it clear. Yeah, Their limbs were all in proportion to
Speaker 1: the deformed size of their bodies, and it was a
Speaker 1: monstrous thing to see their heads with hair reaching to
Speaker 1: the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates.
Speaker 1: They had no beards, and were dressed in the skins
Speaker 1: of animals others, only in the dress which nature gave them.
Speaker 1: And they had no women with them. And then so
Speaker 1: SiZ Leone goes on to tell more about the story
Speaker 1: of the conflict between the people and these giants. SiZ
Speaker 1: Leone does not strike me as a great narrator. He
Speaker 1: kind of disparages the people who were telling him the story.
Speaker 1: He refers to their vulgarity and says that they're prone
Speaker 1: to exaggeration. So I think he's got a patronizing attitude,
Speaker 1: it seems like here. But he also embellishes their account
Speaker 1: by adding Christian theological material to it. So later on
Speaker 1: he says, quote, all the natives declare that God, our Lord,
Speaker 1: brought upon them a punishment in proportion to the enormity
Speaker 1: of their offense. And he's talking about the giants. Here,
Speaker 1: A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven with
Speaker 1: a great noise, out of the midst of which there
Speaker 1: issued a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which,
Speaker 1: at one blow they were all killed, and the fire
Speaker 1: consumed them. There only remained a few bones and skulls,
Speaker 1: which God allowed to remain without being consumed by the fire,
Speaker 1: as a memorial of this punishment. So that's interesting. There's
Speaker 1: this idea that some bones are left for us to see,
Speaker 1: and so what about these bones? Well, Adrian Mayer writes
Speaker 1: about this in her account. She says that in fifteen
Speaker 1: four three there was a deputy governor of Trujillo named
Speaker 1: Juan day Almost who decided to investigate these stories about
Speaker 1: the extinct giants and their bones by conducting a paleontological excavation.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty interesting, right, we got the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: here and they're trying to excavate the bones of extinct beings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially engaging in paleontology. Which is one of Mayor's frequent
Speaker 1: points is that is that when when you're engaging with
Speaker 1: these fossils and you're trying to figure out what they
Speaker 1: were and how to fit into history, even you know,
Speaker 1: even though you're dealing with, say, you know, a version
Speaker 1: of history that is influenced by mythology and perhaps even
Speaker 1: the mythology of some you know, conquerors who have just arrived,
Speaker 1: then that you're still engaged in the exercise of trying
Speaker 1: to understand fossils. Yeah, and that's what one day Almost
Speaker 1: was apparently doing. So. Mayor writes that Almost and as workers,
Speaker 1: they went and they dug up pits in this valley
Speaker 1: that they'd been directed to by the name of People's
Speaker 1: where the giants had been reportedly destroyed or put down
Speaker 1: by this angel from heaven or where they'd been consumed
Speaker 1: by the fire, put down by this being from the sky.
Speaker 1: And then so they apparently found some things. They found
Speaker 1: skulls that seemed to look sort of human. And remember
Speaker 1: again the comparison between like the idea of the cyclops
Speaker 1: and the giant elephant skulls. Yeah, yeah, like it is
Speaker 1: unlike so many you know, large herbivore skulls, the elephant's
Speaker 1: sull does not look you know, it's not a long skull.
Speaker 1: It is not like the skull of a deer or
Speaker 1: even like a hippo or something. It does seem to
Speaker 1: have like the vertical alignment of a primate skull. So
Speaker 1: then again, these these bones were found to not be
Speaker 1: exactly human in proportion, and this was explained away by
Speaker 1: the fact that, well, in the story, these giants, you know,
Speaker 1: they've got all these deformities. You know, that's almost like
Speaker 1: an indication of their monstrousness, which is sort of a
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy. Right, we're looking for human shaped thing
Speaker 1: that aren't correctly human shaped because they were monsters. Therefore,
Speaker 1: when the things aren't correctly human shaped, almost can can conclude, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we found the bones of giants here, and apparently they
Speaker 1: did so that you know, they dug up these bones.
Speaker 1: They said, yep, looks like there were giants, and Mayor
Speaker 1: points out it points to other sources as well on this,
Speaker 1: such as leading Mexican archaeologist doctor Leonardo Lopez Lujon, who
Speaker 1: backs up the notion that Mesoamerican myths of giants and
Speaker 1: ogres originated in at least the discovery of fossil remains
Speaker 1: without getting into the sort of oral history the thing.
Speaker 1: But I should probably add like, there's there's the there's
Speaker 1: the oral history of the creatures, but then there's just
Speaker 1: the oral history of finding the fossils, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's that's probably more what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody found these bones once and maybe they
Speaker 1: kept the bones, maybe they didn't, But there is the
Speaker 1: story of the encounter and then the subsequent interpretation of
Speaker 1: what the bones mean. Okay, I think maybe we should
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We'll be right back with more.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, so you know, I want to
Speaker 1: drive home that and we're talking about Quetzalcotal and some
Speaker 1: of these other traditions. You know that there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot we don't know about these cultures. Again, Cortes and
Speaker 1: those who came after him, they were a destroying force.
Speaker 1: They were conquerors. They brought with them death and disease
Speaker 1: and uh and and and and often cases like a willingness,
Speaker 1: like a a an intent to destroy the culture of
Speaker 1: the people that they subjugated. Yeah, and did that in
Speaker 1: many cases through literally destroying written records. Right, So you know,
Speaker 1: there're luckily some things survived, but so much was destroyed.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the in the meso American world initially
Speaker 1: like like seven hundred years ago. And and yet, as
Speaker 1: is often pointed out in case was pointed out by
Speaker 1: a University of New Mexico's professor David M. Johnson, that
Speaker 1: we know more about Athens, Greece of two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: or we know more about Hebraic traditions of three thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, than we know about meso America seven hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, because mainly of the destruction of the conquistatory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the destruction that they wrought on the cultures, the destruction
Speaker 1: of codeses that the Aztecs and the Maya kept, and
Speaker 1: on top of this, the hieroglyphic style books of the Aztecs.
Speaker 1: You know that they were there to aid in the
Speaker 1: memorization of oral literature. So you know that with you know,
Speaker 1: you're so you're destroying it on both ends. If you're
Speaker 1: destroying the culture that that that retains the oral tradition,
Speaker 1: but then you're also destroying the books that enabled it
Speaker 1: to begin with. You know. So it's it's often a
Speaker 1: taxing exercise to try and reassemble you know what some
Speaker 1: of these stories and traditions actually were. But Quetzelkotal, as
Speaker 1: we discussed in our previous episode, there they're basically like
Speaker 1: two major different like Sagas off of It or him,
Speaker 1: they're sort of the more primal myths and then the
Speaker 1: more humanoid myths. Yeah, that was the distinction. I remember,
Speaker 1: sort of like the celestial Quetzalcaudal, like the creator being,
Speaker 1: and then there's like the human version or the human embodiment, right,
Speaker 1: and and ultimately I think that's something that that ended
Speaker 1: up lining up a lot with sort of Christian traditions,
Speaker 1: the idea of there being sort of a part one
Speaker 1: that's very cosmic and and a little harder to grasp
Speaker 1: and then a second part that's a little more human
Speaker 1: and it's telling. But in both of these were like
Speaker 1: a hero legend. Yeah, exactly. In both of these cases, though,
Speaker 1: it's really important to drive home the quetzal Cotal was
Speaker 1: was not like a like a bloodthirsty god. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes there is this tendency to someone says as tag
Speaker 1: god something, then you're going to instantly think about blood
Speaker 1: sacrifices or something like because of Q the Winged Serpent
Speaker 1: the movie, right, you're going to think of that. But
Speaker 1: quetzal Cotal was, by all the accounts we were looking at,
Speaker 1: you know, this was a benign, benevolent, even entity. This
Speaker 1: was a divine being that represented peace and not bloody
Speaker 1: warfare or anything of the sort. So I just want
Speaker 1: to drive that home before we continue here. And you're
Speaker 1: probably wondering again, Okay, you're talking about giants, you're talking
Speaker 1: about elephants, but what about quetzal Cootal. What does Mayor
Speaker 1: write about the winged serpent? And she does mention him. Shoot,
Speaker 1: she writes that in the Florentine Codex, which is the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica conducted by a
Speaker 1: Spanish friar that the human quetzal Cootal was said to
Speaker 1: stop to rest with his followers on a journey at
Speaker 1: a place that was considered holy because quote the marks
Speaker 1: which quetzal Cootal left upon the stone with his hands
Speaker 1: when he rested there. When he sat down and he
Speaker 1: supported himself on the rock by his hands, they sank deeply,
Speaker 1: as if in mud. Did the palms of his hands
Speaker 1: seek down. Likewise, his buttocks as they touched the rock
Speaker 1: sank deeply. Wow, And the holy buttock marks, Yeah, of
Speaker 1: the winged serpent. And the place was known as timk
Speaker 1: Palco the impression of the hands. So we ultimately have
Speaker 1: no current knowledge or evidence of this place, no further
Speaker 1: descriptions or illustrations even in this codex. But Mayer suspects
Speaker 1: they might have been quote a genuine track site, track
Speaker 1: site being where we have the fossilized tracks of creatures,
Speaker 1: a genuine track site of some extinct creature, or else.
Speaker 1: There were carvings that resembled fossilized prints, perhaps made to
Speaker 1: illustrate or commemorate an episode in the quetzel Cootal epic.
Speaker 1: And I think the implication is in that case, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be something if it was artificial, if it
Speaker 1: was man made, it could have been inspired by actual
Speaker 1: fossilized tracks that had been discovered, or she doesn't mention this,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I can imagine it could be a
Speaker 1: combination of the two, like the actual fossils that were
Speaker 1: then embellish by humans that are interpreting it as being
Speaker 1: part of a divine story. She also points out that
Speaker 1: in terms of extinction, the Aztecs believed that there were
Speaker 1: four previous ages that were destroyed by cataclysm, and the
Speaker 1: survivors of these ages, monsters and giants were sometimes encountered
Speaker 1: in subsequent ages, and Quetzelkota was said to have been created,
Speaker 1: said to have created the bones of fifth age humans
Speaker 1: by mixing blood with the ground bones of our fourth
Speaker 1: age ancestors. So you know, there's already an emphasis on
Speaker 1: bones here, and Mayor thinks it's suggestive of bone grinding
Speaker 1: medicinal practices seen elsewhere among Native American peoples, but she
Speaker 1: also stresses that she found nothing in the Spanish accounts
Speaker 1: of Mesoamerican peoples regarding bone grinding practices. However, she does
Speaker 1: point to a twentieth century practice in the village of Charcas,
Speaker 1: on the northern border of the old Aztec Empire, famed
Speaker 1: for its minds, The villagers collected large fossil bones known
Speaker 1: as the and I apologize for my Spanish here koisos
Speaker 1: diaspanto the bones of fear. Uh. These would have been
Speaker 1: the bones of the old giant and the dell the
Speaker 1: old giants that are now on the earth, and the
Speaker 1: ground powder was used in a potion to calm anxiety
Speaker 1: and fear. Wow. And she points out that this actually
Speaker 1: lines up with the use of ground dragon bones in
Speaker 1: Chinese traditional medicine and in the treatment of fossils by
Speaker 1: European apothecaries. You know who would maybe of course, I
Speaker 1: think we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind before
Speaker 1: about the use of mummified remains by apothecaries, but also
Speaker 1: fossil bones as well. Yeah, mummy paste. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: in the Chinese traditional medicine, what are the ground dragon bones?
Speaker 1: What bones end up becoming supposedly dragon bones. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure on that actually, but it does bring to mind
Speaker 1: that we're perhaps talking about fossils here. Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: We'll have to do a part three where we talk
Speaker 1: about the use of fossils in Chinese traditional medicine and
Speaker 1: Chinese folklore. I'm I'm offhand, I can't. I don't know
Speaker 1: for sure if Mayor has has written about Chinese traditions
Speaker 1: exclusively in any book, or perhaps that's an upcoming book.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take one more break and we
Speaker 1: come back. We will continue to discuss geo mythology and
Speaker 1: quetzo quadal sor right, we're back. So last time we
Speaker 1: talked about ketzl Quaddal, we obviously made the connection to
Speaker 1: terosaur species because of the giant pterosaur ketzel Kowatlas, which
Speaker 1: gets its name from this magnificent meso American god. So
Speaker 1: I wonder, could there actually be any connection between terosaur
Speaker 1: fossils and UH and the belief in a giant plumed
Speaker 1: serpent god. On one hand, I would tend to assume
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, because terosaurs are not really
Speaker 1: They're not really serpentine, are they. That's true. And then,
Speaker 1: of course another and this is a key thing that
Speaker 1: we're always arguing, is that fossils are not necessary to
Speaker 1: dream up these creatures like of course, as we discussed
Speaker 1: in the questl cotal episode previously, like the God embodies
Speaker 1: the snake and the bird. I mean, it's already embodying
Speaker 1: natural creatures that inspire various ideas about the world, the cosmos,
Speaker 1: and our role in it and our relationship with nature.
Speaker 1: It's already this hybrid being and therefore like this special
Speaker 1: kind of metaphor and human understanding. Yeah, and that's something
Speaker 1: to keep in mind with all of these cases. You know,
Speaker 1: geomethology is full of sort of interesting inferential hypotheses. In
Speaker 1: most cases can be really hard to make a solid
Speaker 1: case that yes, a you know, a mythical beast or
Speaker 1: a legend or something from an ancient religion is definitely
Speaker 1: inspired by geological facts geofacts like fossils, But you can
Speaker 1: often kind of infer there's a good chance that something
Speaker 1: like that could have happened, you just it's hard to
Speaker 1: know for sure. Luckily Mayer does go into this, though
Speaker 1: she does, she does explore the idea that, you know,
Speaker 1: the question could actual winged fossil remains have influenced meso
Speaker 1: American traditions and you know, of course there would there
Speaker 1: would be no room for oral traditions of encountering these
Speaker 1: creatures here. They would have been long extinct before the
Speaker 1: first humans were around in this area. But of course
Speaker 1: that hasn't stopped some cryptozoologists, She points out to the claiming, uh,
Speaker 1: you know otherwise. However, she does argue, oh no, that's well, no,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking that crypto when cryptozoologists get involved.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean I don't want to not all
Speaker 1: quote cryptozoologists are of the same caliber, right, But there's crypto.
Speaker 1: This is something we I feel like we should explore.
Speaker 1: There are there are certain scientific professionals. There are certain
Speaker 1: scientists who have given a lot of thought to stuff
Speaker 1: like you know, the yetti, and have done so in
Speaker 1: a reasonable fashion and put the scientific exploration first. There are,
Speaker 1: of course, more less scientifically based and more you know,
Speaker 1: overly enthusiastic individuals out there who bear the cryptozoologists title. Well,
Speaker 1: there are always going to be people who are excited
Speaker 1: about stories of you know, any kind of interesting, unusual
Speaker 1: being of any kind because it somehow feeds into their
Speaker 1: fantastical worldview. I mean, I remember reading stories about how
Speaker 1: these native traditions of extinct races of giants in ancient
Speaker 1: meso America and in South America fed a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of like theological speculation among European Christians. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd read these stories and think, ah, this means something
Speaker 1: about the nephilth. Yeah. Yeah, And you can imagine that
Speaker 1: too if you were like the spear point of a
Speaker 1: bloody uh you know, religious conquest of a new world,
Speaker 1: and then you were you were you were learning about
Speaker 1: their traditions of giants and there their belief in it.
Speaker 1: It almost is uh. It reminds me of you know,
Speaker 1: some of the ideas we've explored with witchcraft persecution, the
Speaker 1: idea that that on some level part of the the
Speaker 1: reason for it was because if you by by sort
Speaker 1: of drawing these these stories out of the victims of
Speaker 1: witchcraft persecution, you were creating proof for a supernatural realm
Speaker 1: that that backed up your own, uh, failing religious ideas.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of a whole discussion onto itself. But
Speaker 1: any rate Mayor does and you know, she doesn't explore
Speaker 1: cryptozoological ideas in this, but she does argue that the
Speaker 1: thunderbird beliefs of North American native people's were likely inspired
Speaker 1: by such fossils, and and she asked paleontologist James Clark,
Speaker 1: who had worked with the northeastern Mexican terosaar fossils before
Speaker 1: if if these remains would have been likely to elect
Speaker 1: strong responses from ancient peoples, and he thought probably not.
Speaker 1: And his reasoning was that, Okay, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: see a fully as simple terrasaar at your local science
Speaker 1: museum or in a you know, in a book, and
Speaker 1: certainly if it's illustrated as a living creature. But when
Speaker 1: you look at the actual fossil remains, and again this
Speaker 1: is someone who'd worked with the actual terosaur fossil remains
Speaker 1: from northeastern Mexico, he says, you end up looking at
Speaker 1: this just jumble of bones. That's a really good point.
Speaker 1: When you see the impressions of terosaur fossils in situ
Speaker 1: as they're found, they're often you know, in say, the
Speaker 1: former flat bed of a body of water, and the
Speaker 1: indentations are just a tangled mess, right, And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of this has to do in fact, often
Speaker 1: bird bones are the same way when they get fossilized.
Speaker 1: I think it has to do with the sort of
Speaker 1: lightweight structure of the bones, the way they just kind
Speaker 1: of get all collapsed together that they don't seem to
Speaker 1: be as often articulated and in full body posture as
Speaker 1: you might get with a larger animal with more solid bones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean can we can. We're easily spoiled sometimes by
Speaker 1: the really nice fossil remains that we see with certain
Speaker 1: certain fines and certain species where we see just a
Speaker 1: like a like a complete or near complete vision of
Speaker 1: what the creature looked like and how the bones were arranged.
Speaker 1: But that is that is not all fossils. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: the you know, the whole discipline of paleontology entails a
Speaker 1: lot of reassembly of of of guesswork, and and generally
Speaker 1: and often you know times as some of these even terosaurs,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with creatures where we we have, you know,
Speaker 1: far short of a complete fossil, sometimes even just a
Speaker 1: single bone, and you're just having to to base everything
Speaker 1: off off of that, extrapolate based on other fossil remains. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think it's true of pterosaurs, especially like even
Speaker 1: more so than dinosaurs generally, that you have that fossils
Speaker 1: as they're found are very often unimpressive until you start
Speaker 1: extrapolating what this living creature would have looked like. However,
Speaker 1: Mayra Wris as she thinks the giant terrasa remains in
Speaker 1: southern Mexico might have been harder to miss and might
Speaker 1: have led to some of these tales of giant winged creatures.
Speaker 1: And this would have included Asdland, the Aztec homeland. Now
Speaker 1: what about these So we're not saying, though, that we
Speaker 1: think terosaurs would have inspired the belief in ketzel Coadal
Speaker 1: just because these are these are very differently formed creatures, right,
Speaker 1: we must be talking about some kind of other being. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and luckily there are other flying creatures in meso American traditions.
Speaker 1: For instance, the Yaqui people of Sonara believed in a
Speaker 1: great bird that lived on Skeleton mountain or or O
Speaker 1: tom Qui, and the belief was that it preyed on
Speaker 1: humans and then when a child hero killed it, its
Speaker 1: feathers turned into all the birds that live today. But
Speaker 1: the likely suspect in these myths, Mayor says, are reports
Speaker 1: of living California condors and the fossils of older condor species,
Speaker 1: so you know, namely the giant raptors of the Ice age.
Speaker 1: So these would have been more likely if inspired by
Speaker 1: the bones of a creature or a living creature would
Speaker 1: have been a real bird of prey rather than pterosaur fossil,
Speaker 1: right and holding that makes more sense, like just think,
Speaker 1: you know, you're dealing with something again where there is
Speaker 1: there is the actual potential for an oral tradition to
Speaker 1: carry some word about it. And then you also have
Speaker 1: on top of the fossilized condors, you have actual condors
Speaker 1: still in the world today that can be glimpsed and
Speaker 1: would have been glimpsed by some of these people were
Speaker 1: discussing here. So if we're talking about direct fossil inspirations
Speaker 1: that could have possibly had something to do with Ketzelcoadle himself,
Speaker 1: what we're probably talking about is the alleged reports of
Speaker 1: the hand prints and the butt prints right right, which
Speaker 1: certainly feels more like fossil like basically discovering fossil evidence
Speaker 1: of the thing that you already believe in and maybe
Speaker 1: serving as a way to you know, physically connect with
Speaker 1: the with with your religion and with this this deity,
Speaker 1: but but not the thing that inspires it outright, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the idea we come back to
Speaker 1: time and time again anytime we discuss geo mythology. Like
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a fun exercise to look at like could this,
Speaker 1: could this fossil remain have entirely inspired this entity? But
Speaker 1: in most cases it feels like there's there's a number
Speaker 1: of factors, and fossils are maybe just one of those factors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to know for sure. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you're almost never gonna
Speaker 1: have a case where it's clear that it was inspired
Speaker 1: by a fossil legend. You might have a few, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, interest I was thinking about that, actually I was, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd say one of the best cases of
Speaker 1: the pretty clear inspirations are the ones where they bring
Speaker 1: out the bones, where people wherever they are on Earth
Speaker 1: just have bones on hand that they keep as relics
Speaker 1: and say these are the bones like these myths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this. The mammoth example that we discussed here is
Speaker 1: is a I think a wonderful example of of actual
Speaker 1: geo mythology, because that's what they said. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: situation where we're just later saying maybe they could have
Speaker 1: inspired by been inspired by these bones. Well, no, they
Speaker 1: brought the bones out. The bones were part of their interpretation. Now,
Speaker 1: it is also possible that the myths actually predated the bones.
Speaker 1: You can't rule that out, but it seems like it's
Speaker 1: a very good candidate that since they have the bones
Speaker 1: and they have this belief that they're that these are linked,
Speaker 1: there's a causation link here. You know, I can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder how God'zilla fits into all of this, because
Speaker 1: because think about it, like Godzilla is ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly a fictional creature of the modern era, but in
Speaker 1: some cases when you consider like the secular world of
Speaker 1: popular culture, it's he's kind of a god. I mean,
Speaker 1: we said Godzilla in the you know, the English name
Speaker 1: for for golhedra, So it's more kind of an old
Speaker 1: school god, right, Yeah, maybe one of those gods like
Speaker 1: Poseidon that most of the time isn't nice. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: rises up out of the sea to destroy us. But
Speaker 1: also there's a fossil connection, because Godzilla in his in
Speaker 1: his form is base is basically based on the older
Speaker 1: interpretation of Tyrannosaurus rex fossils. You know, we know today
Speaker 1: that Tyrannosaurus rex likely you know, walked with its tail
Speaker 1: out in a vertical position, you know, in a balanced position,
Speaker 1: you know, the version that we see in Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: but the older interpretation was that it kind of stood
Speaker 1: more upright with its tail on the ground like Godzilla does.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's maybe you know, a dash of
Speaker 1: geo mythology in Godzilla as well. I feel like we
Speaker 1: might need to come back and do an episode on
Speaker 1: Godzilla again because there was recently a paper that came
Speaker 1: out that looked at Godzilla's increase in size, how every
Speaker 1: film version that comes out makes Godzilla bigger, and comparing
Speaker 1: that to certain cultural changes, namely like how much money
Speaker 1: a given culture invest into its military. So that might
Speaker 1: be fun to discuss. Anytime we can discuss Godzilla on
Speaker 1: the show, it's always a win. The saddest thing is
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't make a direct sequel to shin Godzilla,
Speaker 1: even after they set one up. Oh is it? Is
Speaker 1: it out of the question? Well, well, I mean that
Speaker 1: could be misunderstanding here. I think something happened where they
Speaker 1: couldn't make a sequel to shin Godzilla because they were
Speaker 1: making this American movie that just came out, King of
Speaker 1: the Monsters, which I haven't seen but I've heard isn't
Speaker 1: very good. And I just want another more in the
Speaker 1: spirit of Shin Godzilla, please, And that's like the best
Speaker 1: modern Godzilla movie. Yeah, I mean, I love probably all Godzilla.
Speaker 1: MAYF you show me a Godzilla movie, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: watch it and enjoy it. But Shin Godzilla was a real,
Speaker 1: real treat, a Godzilla movie that made you think. I
Speaker 1: think I tend to like the Japanese ones better than
Speaker 1: the recent American ones. Yeah, I would agree. Shin Godzilla
Speaker 1: has the best bureaucratic meetings. It does. It's I'm always
Speaker 1: describing it to my wife and saying, oh, you should
Speaker 1: see it. It's like a Godzilla movie, but it's full
Speaker 1: of meetings and politicians talking to each other. And she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds awful, and I know, no, it's really good.
Speaker 1: It's just so you can't turn your head away from it.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you have it. I follow up
Speaker 1: to a couple of past episodes, like two prequels in
Speaker 1: one and and hey, maybe a Glance of the future.
Speaker 1: Let us know, do you want to hear a whole
Speaker 1: other episode on Godzilla? Do you want to hear more
Speaker 1: episodes on Geo Mythology? Let us know. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Your your input is important to us,
Speaker 1: whether it's correcting us on something we get wrong or
Speaker 1: just you know, helping helping us to grow as were
Speaker 1: You know, that's part of the whole purpose of the
Speaker 1: show is that we feel like through exploring these topics,
Speaker 1: we're growing and hopefully you know listeners that are growing
Speaker 1: as well and discovering a new facts about the world,
Speaker 1: new avenues to explore in their own time. So let
Speaker 1: us know. There are number of ways to reach out
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