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