Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode. This one originally published on
Speaker 1: April ninth, and it's the second part of our Bone
Speaker 1: Palace series. So we hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stook
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: part two of our episodes the Bone Palace, where the
Speaker 1: humans are the bone Lords, the bones are their houses,
Speaker 1: and we all build with bones. That's right. Last episode
Speaker 1: we spoke quite a bit about the use of mammoth
Speaker 1: bones by early people's and the harsh reality of the
Speaker 1: Ice Age. Yeah, that's right. We we we talked about the
Speaker 1: the bone circles of the Russian plane from the from
Speaker 1: the last glacial maximum, where a Stone Age hunter gatherers
Speaker 1: would take mammoth bones from either scavenged or or from
Speaker 1: memoths that they had killed in hunting, and they would
Speaker 1: build these strange circular walls out of them. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's not exactly known what all of these structures were
Speaker 1: for We talked about a recently discovered one that that
Speaker 1: yielded some especially intriguing results. We talked about what the
Speaker 1: function of these buildings could have been. Was it a dwelling?
Speaker 1: Was that a storehouse for food? To have some kind
Speaker 1: of symbolic or religious significance? Uh? And today we wanted
Speaker 1: to continue on that theme. We wanted to build with bones.
Speaker 1: That's right. So it's easy, of course to just wallow
Speaker 1: and the necromantic, Gothic and death metal glory of imagine
Speaker 1: palaces built out of bone, and and certainly we we
Speaker 1: enjoy doing that as well. Uh, paluses of bone, thrones
Speaker 1: of bone, bone forged weapons that incur one D six
Speaker 1: chronic damage on a critical hit, that sort of thing
Speaker 1: orcus name be praised. But to use or the lord
Speaker 1: of bones old rattle shirt from Game of Thrones, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll come back to rattle shirt in a bit. But yeah,
Speaker 1: to use bones as tools and raw materials, I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's just good sense. So first, let's consider why so
Speaker 1: for starters to state the obvious bones do decay, They
Speaker 1: just decay at a much slower rate than soft tissue.
Speaker 1: It might take a decade and say a rainforest environment,
Speaker 1: or thousands of years in a dry environment, But decomposition
Speaker 1: still eventually occurs, because we have to remember that fossils
Speaker 1: are of course no longer proper bones, but they have
Speaker 1: undergone mineralization. Yeah, there are a couple of methods by
Speaker 1: which fossils are formed, but when you're looking at like
Speaker 1: dinosaur fossils, those are not the bones of the dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: They are ways that other minerals have have taken the
Speaker 1: shape of the original bones. Right, But given our short lives,
Speaker 1: it's easy to sort of fall into the loose idea
Speaker 1: that bones last and flesh does not, and any way
Speaker 1: you shake it. For us vertebrates, our bones do tend
Speaker 1: to outlive us. The fledge rots away, but the bones remain,
Speaker 1: And then what are you going to do with them? Now,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a great deal of room here for human complexity.
Speaker 1: We reflesh the bones with memory, magical thinking, and symbolism.
Speaker 1: The skull becomes a species wide symbol for impermanence in
Speaker 1: the inexorable pull of the grave. But in congress with
Speaker 1: this for humans, and separate entirely from it from any organisms,
Speaker 1: bones are simply durable materials of varying and novel size
Speaker 1: that can lend themselves very well to various uses. And uh,
Speaker 1: I thought we might begin by just considering just a
Speaker 1: few quick examples from the animal world. All right, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So our necromancers are fictional necromancers. From the
Speaker 1: top of the first episode, they love a good bone pile.
Speaker 1: Any necromancer is going to love a good bone pile.
Speaker 1: And while other animals display complex emotions around death as well,
Speaker 1: burial of the dead is generally the domain of humans
Speaker 1: and Neanderthals. But there are other ways to amass a
Speaker 1: collection of bones, and that is via predation. So think
Speaker 1: of the Killer Rabbit and Monty Python and the Holy
Speaker 1: Grail right right, yeah, look at the bones? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Tim the enchanterer the bones or does somebody say bones shmones?
Speaker 1: I think do they? I don't remember that part. Certainly,
Speaker 1: this is a deadly killer organism and as such is
Speaker 1: places just littered with with their remains. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: uh the way in which predators are often predators and
Speaker 1: scavengers can become what's known in the fossil record as
Speaker 1: an accumulating agent that that sort of gathers stuff together
Speaker 1: into a single site, right, and then this accumulation is
Speaker 1: often referred to as a nidden. So I want to
Speaker 1: return us to a place that we've gone to many
Speaker 1: times in the podcast, and that is the world of
Speaker 1: the octopus or the octopus midden is a great example
Speaker 1: of this, consisting of the remains of various creatures that
Speaker 1: the octopus has preyed upon. And so this includes generally
Speaker 1: it's you we're talking about shells, but also it can
Speaker 1: include bones. Now, a midden like this need only be
Speaker 1: the accumulated bones of one's prey, but it can be more. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Sydney octopus, for example, Octopus uh tetricus. According to
Speaker 1: a two thousand fourteen paper from David Shell and Peter
Speaker 1: Godfrey Smith UH. Peter Godfrey Smith is the author as
Speaker 1: well of Other Minds, The Octopus, the Sea and the
Speaker 1: Deep Origins of Consciousness. They point out that this particular
Speaker 1: octopus may be engaging in a form of ecosystem engineering
Speaker 1: via their middens. Basically, they occur in large numbers on
Speaker 1: a shell bed of their prey. Shell bed that has
Speaker 1: become ends up becoming home to a community of invertebrate
Speaker 1: grazers and scavengers, while all also creating additional shelter possibilities
Speaker 1: for the occupods themselves. However, the downside seems to be
Speaker 1: that the increased fish population can then bring in sharks
Speaker 1: and make it a bit busier and more dangerous than
Speaker 1: it would normally be for these octopuses. So, uh, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting example, like it kind of getting into this
Speaker 1: area of perhaps like accidental tinkering with the environment, accidental
Speaker 1: ecosystem engineering that becomes then becomes part of this uh,
Speaker 1: this creature's habit, part of its life cycle. But then
Speaker 1: there's an unbalancing that occurs as well. So this makes
Speaker 1: me think, so if the octopus is um, let me
Speaker 1: know if I'm understanding this wrong. Is the idea maybe
Speaker 1: that the octopus is using instinctually using this pile of
Speaker 1: shells from its prey to attract other animals to the site,
Speaker 1: which can then themselves become prey. Yeah, I believe so,
Speaker 1: though again it comes with certain complications, maybe also attracting predators.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. The octopus here that we're talking about
Speaker 1: is is typically solitary. But the side they observed here
Speaker 1: was just one of a couple of examples that scientists
Speaker 1: have come across of where we've seen octopods living in
Speaker 1: high density populations with complex social behaviors. Trash makes friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the you know, the the impact of the middens here,
Speaker 1: I think drives home how the use of bone or
Speaker 1: shell material can sort of emerge out of a creature's lifestyle.
Speaker 1: You know, like by eating a lot of creatures and
Speaker 1: then leaving their bones, you begin to create artificial environments
Speaker 1: that are composed of bones, and that opens and that
Speaker 1: changes the ecosystem, at least in pockets. Now, these are,
Speaker 1: of course, uh, extant octopods, But what about extinct dctopods. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot we don't know about extinct octopods because
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about creatures composed uh, you know,
Speaker 1: mostly soft tissue, and there they are a rarity in
Speaker 1: the fossil record. But there's there's one potential example, certainly
Speaker 1: a controversial hypothesis that I've brought up on the show
Speaker 1: before and I can't help but bring it up again here.
Speaker 1: It's a by paleontologist Mark mcminimon, and he and his
Speaker 1: co authors proposed in twleven that a peculiar arrangement of
Speaker 1: etheosaur bones from the Triassic period were arranged in a
Speaker 1: linear pattern by a presumed giant octopus that was playing
Speaker 1: with its food, perhaps even creating some manner of And
Speaker 1: this is where he gets really kind of trippy and
Speaker 1: more controversial, the idea that perhaps this creature was not
Speaker 1: only arranging the bones of its prey in a novel pattern,
Speaker 1: but was engaging in some sort of self portrait. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I love this idea, but it is we should
Speaker 1: definitely acknowledge like at least two layers of pure speculation.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is not not accepted by the scientific
Speaker 1: community in any brought way at all. So the first
Speaker 1: layer of speculation is just the idea that the octopus
Speaker 1: was arranging the bones like this, which that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: implausible to me, but still it's speculative. We don't know
Speaker 1: that's what happened. The second level is the intention behind
Speaker 1: the arrangement, the idea that the octopus was creating a
Speaker 1: portrait of its own tentacle, right or not tentacle arm? Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know there's a there's no way to for
Speaker 1: us to know that it is pure speculation. I mean,
Speaker 1: and again, even the the idea of this being an
Speaker 1: actual species. It's just we have a presume the researchers
Speaker 1: are presuming that there is an octopus here that did this,
Speaker 1: because there is again no no fossil evidence of its
Speaker 1: of it's of the soft tissue that would be associated
Speaker 1: with this creature that is sometimes informally referred to as
Speaker 1: a crack in a Triassic kracking. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I would not say at all that it would be
Speaker 1: implausible for an octopus to mess around with the bones
Speaker 1: of its prey animals and put them in strange arrangements,
Speaker 1: because octopus is absolutely modern. Octopuses play, They play with
Speaker 1: objects all the time. They manipulate objects in ways that
Speaker 1: have no obvious, uh practical advantage. You know, they're not
Speaker 1: just like using objects as tools or something. They apparently
Speaker 1: engage in purely recreational object manipulation. Right, And then one
Speaker 1: can easily imagine that you have this, you have this
Speaker 1: play that's occurring with the bones. This you know, steady
Speaker 1: manipulation of the bones, and it's the thing that could
Speaker 1: in theory, lead to more complex uses of bones later on,
Speaker 1: the use of bones as tools. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: we've see anything occurring in nature with octopods with bones
Speaker 1: like this, But we do have examples of octopods seeming
Speaker 1: to engage in tool you say, with with coconuts or shells, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: using them basically is like a shield for their bodies. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: other animals certainly work with bones and shells as well.
Speaker 1: Bones factor into the nesting behaviors of certain birds and
Speaker 1: pack rats. Bower birds have been no known to use
Speaker 1: bones in the creation of their mating bowers. But when
Speaker 1: you think of bones as tools or bones as materials,
Speaker 1: you can't help but think of hominids and their two
Speaker 1: and the two use of early humans in particular, perhaps
Speaker 1: in part due to that stunning sequence uh that we've
Speaker 1: all seen from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey, right,
Speaker 1: in which a human ancestor discovers that the bone of
Speaker 1: a taper might be used as a weapon, not stonework,
Speaker 1: but bone work. Now. I love this scene. We've talked
Speaker 1: about it on the show before, But this scene is
Speaker 1: actually a reference to the nineteen forty nine uh Osteodonto
Speaker 1: choratic culture hypothesis or O d K hypothesis by Professor
Speaker 1: Raymond Dart, the man who also identified the tongue child
Speaker 1: fossil in nineteen two UM What does that mean? The
Speaker 1: O d K hypothesis is basically bone tooth horn culture
Speaker 1: OSTEO danto choratic culture, and the idea here is that
Speaker 1: austro Lepithecus Africanists would have engaged in a carnivorous and
Speaker 1: sometimes cannibalistic lifestyle augmented by bone and horn tools that
Speaker 1: they used to hunt other animals and each other. Dart
Speaker 1: based this on skeletal part representation patterns at fossil sites,
Speaker 1: presenting evidence that they were possibly using bones as tools
Speaker 1: and weapons. Essentially, it's a model for the transition from
Speaker 1: ape to human via bone assisted predation, depending on tools
Speaker 1: made from the bones of their own kills and or
Speaker 1: the kills of other predators that they have scavenged. Now,
Speaker 1: this hypothesis has met with a generally skeptical audience and
Speaker 1: it's and it had several notable detractors. Now it is
Speaker 1: generally considered that O. D K culture did not exist
Speaker 1: as Dart envisioned it, and that the bones he observed
Speaker 1: were simply due to the natural breakup of skeletons, predator preferences,
Speaker 1: and environmental damage to skeletal remains. The criticism of the
Speaker 1: hyena is is often brought up as a possible scavenger
Speaker 1: responsible for the bone. Didn'ts that Dart interpreted as an
Speaker 1: example of this O d K culture. All right, so
Speaker 1: darts picture of this extinct human relative making this tool
Speaker 1: use transition through the use of bones for wide scale
Speaker 1: or large scale predation. That's probably not accurate, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that humans never used bones as tools, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I want to drive home that od K culture
Speaker 1: hypothesis was not it was this was not like a
Speaker 1: crazy hypothesis, and it's you know, it's it's it's very
Speaker 1: very sensible. But yeah, it just doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 1: really um held up over time. But still at the
Speaker 1: same time, the use of bone tools is an important
Speaker 1: part of of human tool use. There's evidence of early
Speaker 1: humans using bone tools one point five million years ago
Speaker 1: and what is now South Africa, and these would have
Speaker 1: been used, uh we believe to dig in termine mounds.
Speaker 1: Included a photo here for you to look at them. Know,
Speaker 1: they the kind of thing where you know, if you
Speaker 1: didn't know what you were looking at, you might not
Speaker 1: get that these were tools. But but these were specialized tools.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a huge problem in archaeology actually.
Speaker 1: I mean by the time we as just lay consumers
Speaker 1: of artifacts come to these artifacts, they've already been interpreted
Speaker 1: as tools. But when you're just like looking at sediments
Speaker 1: in the ground and fragments of things, it's often hard
Speaker 1: to tell what is a tool and what is not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another example, I came across bone knives from North Africa
Speaker 1: dating back ninety thousand years connected with Middlestone Age terry
Speaker 1: and culture, and these would have been made from rib bones. Wait,
Speaker 1: rib bones of what of humans or of something else?
Speaker 1: I believe animal, But I'm not sure they really were
Speaker 1: able to figure out exactly what sort of animal. Now.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand fifteen study from the University
Speaker 1: of Montreal, Neanderthals of the Middle Paleolithic might have used
Speaker 1: made use of multi purpose bone tools. These were found
Speaker 1: at grot Dubaison grotd Bissan at r C Circure in Burgundy, France,
Speaker 1: and they would have been used alongside stone tools. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's not this idea of like bone or stone,
Speaker 1: but like bone and stone. And I think that makes sense,
Speaker 1: especially based in the UH the example that we uh
Speaker 1: we we focused on for the first episode in this
Speaker 1: pair of episodes about bone technology. Yeah. Now, I can
Speaker 1: think about some ways in which stone I think would
Speaker 1: be superior to bone it for certain types of tool uses.
Speaker 1: And one of the things is that, uh it seems
Speaker 1: there are certain types of stones that flake away in
Speaker 1: a kind of shearing pattern, which along with the technique
Speaker 1: of napping, which is where you strike stones together to
Speaker 1: try to shear off part of a target stone to
Speaker 1: make a sharp edge on it. That that works with stones,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really work with bones, at least as
Speaker 1: far as I can imagine. But that doesn't mean bones
Speaker 1: would be useless. It would just mean that you couldn't
Speaker 1: use them really to create a knife edge as effectively
Speaker 1: as you can with napping of certain types of rock. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I could be wrong about that, does it? Does
Speaker 1: that seem right to you? Yeah? I think so? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again, this would have been a multi purpose bone
Speaker 1: tool that the Neanderthals would have used here. Uh so,
Speaker 1: the Reacher's researchers point out that, first of all, naturally
Speaker 1: the prime purpose of hunting an animal was to obtain
Speaker 1: meat and also hide, but the bones were very useful
Speaker 1: as well. Uh So, for example, one of the bone
Speaker 1: tools found here, that the pivotal multi tool that they're
Speaker 1: talking about here, was made from the left femur of
Speaker 1: an adult reindeer, and it was seemingly used for a
Speaker 1: few different purposes. First of all, carved sharpening of cutting
Speaker 1: edges of stone tools, So you would have used bone
Speaker 1: tools to help refine and make your stone tools. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. Uh. This would have also been probably used
Speaker 1: as a scraper and quote evidence of meat butchering and
Speaker 1: bone fracturing to extract marrow or evidence on the tool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this would have been a very useful device.
Speaker 1: And again I included a picture for you to see, Joe.
Speaker 1: And again it's one of these things where you know,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you're not, you didn't know
Speaker 1: what you're looking at. If you're not you know paleontologists, uh,
Speaker 1: you you might not get that what you're looking at
Speaker 1: is a multi tool. Are staring at it here for
Speaker 1: the longest time trying to figure out what it looks like.
Speaker 1: I realized if you turn it sideways, it looks like
Speaker 1: an iguana head. So it does kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a horner ear on it. Yeah, but that that spike
Speaker 1: edge there. Yeah. Now, another interesting thing about this particular
Speaker 1: study is that prehistoric experts were previously reluctant to attribute
Speaker 1: bone work tools to Neanderthals, but such fines as this
Speaker 1: from the very late nineteen nineties and then into the
Speaker 1: twenty first century changed that. I also want to point
Speaker 1: out that the Eureka Alert release on this particular study
Speaker 1: bears the amusing title quote, you have a dab a
Speaker 1: dough stone age man wasn't necessarily more advanced than the Neandertals.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Ten points So that's so good. Wait wait, wait,
Speaker 1: should they have gone with the abadebba? Don't because he
Speaker 1: was not necessarily more advanced. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: quite makes sense. Uh, that one was probably on the table.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing. I'm just guessing. And then someone's like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: what if we work Homer into this as well? Fred
Speaker 1: Flintstone and Homer in one single uh science press release title.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be great. Alright, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but when we come back, we are going
Speaker 1: to discuss more about bone tools and bone technology. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So bone technology stands alongside stone technology is
Speaker 1: as a key marker of technological and cognitive development, even
Speaker 1: if we're not putting all of our eggs in the
Speaker 1: O d K basket, so you won't really find it
Speaker 1: popping up in extent non human animals. But how about
Speaker 1: how about this You mentioned old rattle shirt earlier, Um,
Speaker 1: you mentioned bone armor and that I brings to buy
Speaker 1: not only old rattle shirt, but it makes me think
Speaker 1: of the Kurgan from Highlander. Remember that bone armor that
Speaker 1: he wears or it's like bone augmented to armor, don't
Speaker 1: do the necromongers in in in Chronicles of Riddick were
Speaker 1: bone armor. I don't remember. I mean they certainly have
Speaker 1: some some dark, gloomy, you know, necromantic aspects to their armor.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if they actually had any real bone,
Speaker 1: but but certainly they would have appreciated those who wore
Speaker 1: pone without a doubt. Another example that's really burned into
Speaker 1: my mind is the character General Cal from Willow. You
Speaker 1: saw Willow, Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's been a long time,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he was the sub villain in that particular movie.
Speaker 1: And of course he was played by Pat Roach, everyone's
Speaker 1: favorite former pro wrestler British heavy man. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: he's alway, he was always fighting. He's he's what he's
Speaker 1: He's been killed by Indiana Jones, He's been killed by
Speaker 1: Conan the Barbarian, all the greats. In fact, he as
Speaker 1: he played the Sorcerer in Conan the Destroyer. Uh if
Speaker 1: you're really wait a minute, did the Sorcerer and Conan
Speaker 1: the Destroyer also have bone armor and get like a
Speaker 1: sword thrown through his head or something? Um? It was
Speaker 1: the scene with the mirrors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: really a fantastic sequence. I really need to I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm saying this. I really need to watch Conan
Speaker 1: the Destroyer again because it does have some great two
Speaker 1: scenes there. It has a reputation for being quite bad,
Speaker 1: but we should revisit anyway. It had a tough act
Speaker 1: to follow, for sure, but it has some some pretty
Speaker 1: wonderful magic in it, as I recall, certainly really more overt,
Speaker 1: you know, fantasy magic than what you find in the
Speaker 1: first film. Uh. Well, anyway, this is making me wonder. Okay,
Speaker 1: bone armor real thing? Did anybody ever actually try to
Speaker 1: wear armor made out of bones? Well? You know, obviously
Speaker 1: there's some problems with the idea. I mean it would
Speaker 1: it would be ideal if there was a slightly larger
Speaker 1: bipedal creature that had bones and bone plates that were
Speaker 1: just already perfectly made for someone to wear his armor. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure we would hunt it to extinction
Speaker 1: uh in no time. But I don't know. I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's been that idea has been explored in fantasy.
Speaker 1: That's where all the squatches went, so they were to
Speaker 1: extinction for their bones. Uh. Yes, the squatch skull makes
Speaker 1: such a great helm. Well, in reality, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: there are probably some examples you can come to where
Speaker 1: people are used utilizing bone ornamentation, but in terms of
Speaker 1: using bone as like the primary material and construction, I
Speaker 1: did run across a really cool example. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: from a three thousand, nine hundred year old suit of
Speaker 1: bone armor that was unearthed in Omsk, Siberia. And in
Speaker 1: this example, and I encourage anyone to look up an
Speaker 1: example of this, you'll find a picture if you just
Speaker 1: look for bone armor OMPs that's O. M. S. K Uh.
Speaker 1: In this example, what we have is basically a shirt
Speaker 1: of plate mail, but with each individual plate carved from
Speaker 1: animal bone and Uh, you know, it reminds me too
Speaker 1: of the sort of the ceremonial jade armor that you
Speaker 1: see used in Chinese culture. Um, where nobody's wearing like
Speaker 1: just like the big obvious bones of a creature, but
Speaker 1: you have all of these little plates of bone. They
Speaker 1: are then stitched into this this garment that is worn
Speaker 1: by the warrior. And this would have been worn, the
Speaker 1: researchers point out, by a very specialized warrior, a hero
Speaker 1: if you will, a prince of the universe, if you will, yes, Well,
Speaker 1: do we know exactly what the pros and cons of
Speaker 1: this type of armor would have been if it involved bone? Like,
Speaker 1: are there like how does that compare to standard materials?
Speaker 1: Do do we know anything about that? About the it's durability?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is something we need to
Speaker 1: explore and if if for a future like full on
Speaker 1: look at armor, which is something we've been talking about
Speaker 1: wanting to do for a while. But I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: we do see so many different approaches to armor in
Speaker 1: different cultures depending on available resources. You know, we we've
Speaker 1: discussed in the past, Uh, the Inca and how Inca
Speaker 1: armor depended so heavily on fiber. You know, and UH
Speaker 1: and it could apparently it was apparently quite effective in
Speaker 1: their engagements. Uh. Certainly you get into cultures that have
Speaker 1: more access to uh various metal working UH strategies, and
Speaker 1: you see the metal armor. Uh. This seems to to
Speaker 1: make sense though, because you would have a durable material
Speaker 1: that would would augment whatever, you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: hide based armor. You're you're you're you're creating. Uh, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna be it's gonna be lighter than using little
Speaker 1: bits of stone. It's gonna be lighter than weighing yourself
Speaker 1: down with this with an enormous stone garment. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I think that's it's basically it's just gonna come down
Speaker 1: to material availability. Now you said this was unearthed in
Speaker 1: Omsk in Siberia. I wonder with the people living in
Speaker 1: this region have had access to many other types of
Speaker 1: resources to make armor out of, or would would be
Speaker 1: closer to like the the Bone House in uh In
Speaker 1: in the Ice age situation where basically this is what
Speaker 1: you got. Yeah, I like I said, I feel like
Speaker 1: resource availability is is one of the key aspects of this.
Speaker 1: And U this would have been UM. This would have
Speaker 1: been Bronze age UM technology basically. Uh. The article I
Speaker 1: was reading about this from the Siberian Times titled Warriors
Speaker 1: thirty year old suit of are of the bone armor
Speaker 1: uneartheden OMPs uh from September six, two fourteen. UH. They
Speaker 1: mentioned that that at the at the time, uh in
Speaker 1: the individual using this armor and uh and also the
Speaker 1: individuals they would have have battled, you would have found
Speaker 1: the weapons at the time consisting of bone and stone arrowheads,
Speaker 1: but also bronze knives, spears tipped with bronze and bronze axes,
Speaker 1: and and and they contend that this sort armor would
Speaker 1: have held up reasonably well against the armors of the time,
Speaker 1: and therefore this would have been like a very precious suit.
Speaker 1: This would have been like, this would have been high
Speaker 1: end again, the stuff a true hero would wear, and
Speaker 1: not just for decorative reasons, actually like for functional reasons. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They seem to think that this would have this would
Speaker 1: have been functional. Yeah, alright, well I'm getting some Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that the artistic interpretation looks looks rather cool,
Speaker 1: rather stylish. You know, it's not rattle shirt. It's not
Speaker 1: nearly as intimidating in terms of looking like you're just
Speaker 1: covered in bones, but it has trans it has used
Speaker 1: the bone as a raw material for their technology. All Right,
Speaker 1: we need to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more. Thank and we're back. So earlier
Speaker 1: we talked about octopods creating their bone middens and in
Speaker 1: doing so, remaking the local ecosystem. And uh, I haven't
Speaker 1: an example here that that is really interesting that that
Speaker 1: I ran across concerning human and is doing much the
Speaker 1: same way. In two thousands, sixteen, researchers from the University
Speaker 1: of Georgia discussed how native people's in southwest Florida, known
Speaker 1: as the Caloosa, engaged in landscape engineering quote essentially terraforming,
Speaker 1: according to study lead and University of Georgia anthropologist of
Speaker 1: Victor Thompson, Alright, so how would this work? Okay, so,
Speaker 1: what we're dealing with fisher gatherer hunter people here. You know,
Speaker 1: they're depending a lot on on gathering up um and
Speaker 1: and and hunting creatures that live in and around the water.
Speaker 1: So what they would have done is they would have
Speaker 1: piled their accumulated shells, all the shells of the creatures
Speaker 1: that they've scavenged and you know for food already. They
Speaker 1: would put these in massive heaps to construct water bound towns,
Speaker 1: essentially artificial islands. Hundreds of millions of shells would have
Speaker 1: ultimately been required to produce these islands. But again it's
Speaker 1: it's very much in keeping with sort of what those
Speaker 1: octopods are doing and and also ties back to what
Speaker 1: we were talking about with the mammoths early on, Like
Speaker 1: you're accumulating these leftovers, these remnants, uh, these these hard
Speaker 1: materials that that are the results of your lifestyle. And
Speaker 1: then you put all that together, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: material You can start doing things with it. You can
Speaker 1: build uh, some sort of a small palace out of them,
Speaker 1: or you can keep them together, you know, add mud
Speaker 1: and other materials and essentially start remaking the landscape that
Speaker 1: you live in. Yeah, letting these in edible animal products
Speaker 1: not just become trash, but become building materials, become tools,
Speaker 1: become a way of shaping your world. Now, in terms
Speaker 1: of other bone structures and human culture, you'll find various
Speaker 1: examples of this as well. Various crips and assuarias come
Speaker 1: to mind. You know, bone houses that at times have
Speaker 1: say walls or structures that are decorated with bones, if
Speaker 1: not made of bones and stuff. To Bow Your Mind
Speaker 1: actually has an older episode about ossuaries that I would
Speaker 1: refer listeners to. This is what I did with Julie
Speaker 1: Douglas several years ago. But one of the more amusing
Speaker 1: and less gloomy examples of the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: I came across is that the fossil bone Cabin in
Speaker 1: Medicine Bow, Wyoming, which you absolutely should look up a
Speaker 1: picture of. There's an Atlas Obscura article about it as well,
Speaker 1: and it is this uh it first, it just looks
Speaker 1: like a rock little house, you know, nothing too gloomy,
Speaker 1: nothing too weird, but it's just standing out in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere where it's kind of like waste land
Speaker 1: landscape around it. And it has a sign out front
Speaker 1: at least when this picture was taken that says believe
Speaker 1: it or not. And this cabin is is itself only
Speaker 1: about eighty years old, but it's bill using rock that
Speaker 1: contains fossilized dinosaur bone fragments, So essentially it is a
Speaker 1: dinosaur bone house out in the middle of Wyoming. I
Speaker 1: want to be I'm gonna be the Indiana Jones of
Speaker 1: this house. This belongs in a museum Yeah, you know, Joe,
Speaker 1: we don't have any any live shows coming up, but
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go and say it. If we could
Speaker 1: book this location store for a for a live show,
Speaker 1: I would do it. We maybe we only have like
Speaker 1: one wyoming listener out there, uh, that could possibly come,
Speaker 1: but it would still be worth it to record in
Speaker 1: the Believe it or not, fossil dinosaur cabin. Wyoming mind
Speaker 1: blowers out there, chime in, let us know you exist,
Speaker 1: tell us contact and stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: If enough of you let us know what, We'll try
Speaker 1: to see if we can do a show from the roof.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're beginning to to reach the end here,
Speaker 1: But Joe, I understand you have one more gnarly bone
Speaker 1: palace denizen to discuss with us here. Well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about other species that practice something like the
Speaker 1: prehistoric bone lords the Russian plane, and I came across
Speaker 1: evidence of a marvelous wasp species that I think would
Speaker 1: have had a real affinity for the mammoth bone houses.
Speaker 1: This animal lives in southeast China and it's known as
Speaker 1: due to a genia O sari um. You can probably
Speaker 1: hear in the the second part of its species name
Speaker 1: osari Um. That's named after the ossuaries right the the
Speaker 1: the human bone houses where where bones are stored or
Speaker 1: sometimes used in construction um. And this is also known
Speaker 1: that this animal is known as now the bone house wasp. Now,
Speaker 1: the use of the word bone there might be a
Speaker 1: little misleading, because while this wasp absolutely does practice corps architecture,
Speaker 1: it's bricks are not the bones of mammals, but the
Speaker 1: crumpled exoskeletons of ants. And I gotta give credit to
Speaker 1: Gwin Pearson, writing for Wired, for one of the best
Speaker 1: article leads I've ever read. So she's writing an article
Speaker 1: about this animal, and she starts with a quote from
Speaker 1: Conan the Barbarian. You know that scene where the general
Speaker 1: asks Conan what is best in life? And Conan says,
Speaker 1: of course, to cross joy to me. See them driven
Speaker 1: before you and hear the lamentations of the women and
Speaker 1: they all laugh. You know, ha ha, that is good.
Speaker 1: But Pearson goes on to say, a newly described wasp
Speaker 1: species would disagree. What is best in life is to
Speaker 1: feed your children living spiders and build a wall around
Speaker 1: your nursery in which you've entombed the bodies of giant ants.
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty good point in comparison, because
Speaker 1: it's like, um, the same way that the you know,
Speaker 1: the the general riding out over the step, you know,
Speaker 1: must project strength in order to in his mind protect
Speaker 1: his own clan. This, uh, this female wasp that that
Speaker 1: builds this nest out of dead insects is also doing
Speaker 1: it in a way from a place of love. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a wonderful organism if memory serves. I did
Speaker 1: a monster blog post about them, uh back when we
Speaker 1: had blogs. I did one comparing the good old days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did one comparing this species to the creeper from
Speaker 1: the Jeeper Creepers movie, which is another intitated like builds
Speaker 1: stuff out of dead things. Really, I guess kind of
Speaker 1: a common trope, or at least not an uncommon trope
Speaker 1: in the world of fictional monsters. But here we have
Speaker 1: the real deal that the natural world example. This was
Speaker 1: the only example that I could really find of this
Speaker 1: being done with insects. And maybe there's another one, but
Speaker 1: but I didn't come across it. Uh So, this species
Speaker 1: and its unique nest building strategy was described in the
Speaker 1: paper in Plos one by Michael stab, Michael Ohl, Chaodong
Speaker 1: Jou and Alexandra Maria Klein uh And the paper was
Speaker 1: called a unique nest protection strategy in a new species
Speaker 1: of spider wasps. So the species was found and described
Speaker 1: during a biodiversity survey in the forests of young Z
Speaker 1: Province and uh So. The bone house wasp is a
Speaker 1: pomp a lid, which is a family of spider hunting wasps.
Speaker 1: This also includes the famous tarantula hawk. And there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of different species of pompa lids, but most
Speaker 1: are pretty similar in their basic survival and reproduction strategy.
Speaker 1: A lot of times the adults on their own would
Speaker 1: seem to be fairly peaceful. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: you know, sort of vegetarian nectar feeders, but when it's
Speaker 1: time to reproduce and provide for the next generation, that's
Speaker 1: when the true horror comes in. So they tend to
Speaker 1: be solitary rather than living in colonies like so many
Speaker 1: other bees and wasps. And the standard predatory reproductive strategy
Speaker 1: is that a female wasp, a female pomp lid, will
Speaker 1: find a spider and then sting the spider, and the
Speaker 1: sting will paralyze it and it will drag the still
Speaker 1: alive but paralyzed spider back to a nearby nest and
Speaker 1: then lay an egg, usually a single egg, on the
Speaker 1: spider's body, often like sort of on the abdomen, and
Speaker 1: then it will seal the spider up in this cask
Speaker 1: of a manteado style live burial, and then the egg
Speaker 1: hatches and the larva begins to eat the spider, slowly
Speaker 1: inside it out as it grows, often saving the most
Speaker 1: vital internal organs For last man, I love wasps um.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, I actually wrote how Wasps work for
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works years and years ago, and I remember
Speaker 1: that was one of the features. One of the many
Speaker 1: features about wasps in general that I love is that
Speaker 1: that adult solitary wasps mostly feed on nectar, but then
Speaker 1: they spend most of their time foraging food for their
Speaker 1: carnivorous younglings. Yeah. Well, I mean it makes me think
Speaker 1: like the human analogy would be like an adult an
Speaker 1: adult who is vegan, but they also are like hunting
Speaker 1: animals for their for their babies to like eat while
Speaker 1: they're still alive. Yeah, baby needs meat, Baby needs a
Speaker 1: living meat in the nursery, but the hunt entirely powered
Speaker 1: by blueberry smoothies. Yes. Um, so what makes this bone
Speaker 1: house wasp different from the other pomplids is the strategy
Speaker 1: that it uses to protect the net where its larva
Speaker 1: gets sealed in with its food source. And uh and
Speaker 1: so the basic idea here is that the nest will
Speaker 1: have a vestibular cell or sort of like an outer
Speaker 1: cell area where the adult wasp will pack in the
Speaker 1: dead bodies of ants. And uh So the nests of
Speaker 1: the species the researchers found were less vulnerable to attacks
Speaker 1: than the nests of other similar wasps. And this would
Speaker 1: would seem to suggest that the dead ants play a
Speaker 1: role in repelling predators or parasites from the nest, likely
Speaker 1: through chemical cues smells, Right, so there's something about these
Speaker 1: ants that, you know, even when they're dead, they give
Speaker 1: off this smell like, oh, that's something I don't want
Speaker 1: to mess with, and the predators will go away because
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, an ant colony can be a
Speaker 1: formidable adversary. You know. This also reminds me of another
Speaker 1: group of famous cinematic corpse de filers, uh, the chainsaw
Speaker 1: family from Texas Chainsaw mask here, because what do they
Speaker 1: do with the various bones uh, and and fragments that
Speaker 1: they have left over they hang from the trees right
Speaker 1: surrounding the compound. Uh, you know, almost to warn people away. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, except for, of course, the meddling teenagers that
Speaker 1: are central to the plot. Well, I mean, it makes
Speaker 1: me think back to the to the bone lords, the
Speaker 1: prehistoric peoples of the Russian plane. Obviously, again there is
Speaker 1: no direct evidence whatsoever that the bones that they built
Speaker 1: these rings out of were in any way to repel predators.
Speaker 1: But now I'm just trying to imagine for a second,
Speaker 1: could could play any kind of role like that? Could
Speaker 1: there be some significance we're not imagining where this is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it gives off a stink like a carnivore's den
Speaker 1: or something. And I don't know, pure guess work. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess any kind of any kind of benefit you'd
Speaker 1: get like that, you'd probably also get get concurrent downsides
Speaker 1: of stinking like meat and attracting carnivores in the process.
Speaker 1: But but you can easily see with this wasp example,
Speaker 1: how like this is the sort of thing that they
Speaker 1: would likely emerge out of just the keeping of a midden,
Speaker 1: you know, like the leftovers of these metals are around
Speaker 1: and or in the nest, and then in some cases
Speaker 1: they can they can come to have a you know,
Speaker 1: a key uh, you know benefit, They can offer a
Speaker 1: key benefit to the nest itself. Okay, So if you
Speaker 1: were going to play the strategy and try to plant
Speaker 1: something around your house to keep people out that that
Speaker 1: worked on a on the basis of smell, what would
Speaker 1: it be? What would repel everything and attract nothing? Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of grizzly examples, but um
Speaker 1: but you know, an actual real life example, and this
Speaker 1: is completely ridiculous, but there have been times where I've
Speaker 1: been working on my laptop on my front porch and
Speaker 1: once the mosquitoes are active, I'll kill a mosquito and
Speaker 1: they'll be this weird idea that I should leave the
Speaker 1: corpse of the mosquito out where the others can see
Speaker 1: it as a warning, you know, that they shouldn't mess
Speaker 1: with me because I will kill them. They're not going
Speaker 1: to be fast enough. Um but but of course that's
Speaker 1: just ludicrous on my part. But there's like some sort
Speaker 1: of weird instinct to do that, to make an example
Speaker 1: out of the creature that is that is hunting me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say probably works to the opposite effect. You've
Speaker 1: created a martyr and now they must avenge their falling sister. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. There is that, but in terms of like, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, hanging skulls outside of my my home.
Speaker 1: I mean around Halloween we all do that, but that
Speaker 1: that actually has the opposite effect that people in Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, going back to that first episode
Speaker 1: about the about the bone circles, I mean, some of
Speaker 1: the hypotheses offered do seem interesting, but I've still got
Speaker 1: this mystery banging around in my head. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to forget about this. Yeah, it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: that really forces you to to think long and hard
Speaker 1: about you know, who our ancestors were, and you know
Speaker 1: what was important to them in this uh this this
Speaker 1: this time of great trial. All right. So there you
Speaker 1: have it, a second dose of the Bone Palace. More
Speaker 1: examples of bone technology, bone collection, and the remaking of
Speaker 1: our world with the remnants of those that came before.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: Grizzly episodes of stuff to blow your mind, you will
Speaker 1: find them wherever you find our podcast and you can
Speaker 1: find us just about anywhere. If you go to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com, that will shoot you
Speaker 1: over to the I Heart Listening for our show and
Speaker 1: you can of course subscribe and listen there as well.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our amazing audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, to let us
Speaker 1: know you listen and you listen from Wyoming, or just
Speaker 1: to say hi, you can email us at contact that's
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