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 an episode from the Vault. This one originally
Speaker 1: published on Marche and this is called the Nile Inundation.
Speaker 1: This is an episode we did on the on the
Speaker 1: regular flooding of the Nile, and so we get into
Speaker 1: some great mythological and scientific connections to that. All right,
Speaker 1: let's dive right in. Hail to you, hoppy sprung from Earth,
Speaker 1: come to nourish Egypt of secret ways at darkness by day,
Speaker 1: to whom his followers sing, who floods the fields that
Speaker 1: ray has made to nourish all who thirst. Let's drink
Speaker 1: the waterless desert his due descending from the sky. Welcome
Speaker 1: to stot to Blow your Mind product and by 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 today we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about inundation. That's right. And we we
Speaker 1: opened there with a reading from the translation from m
Speaker 1: Lithium in Ancient Egyptian Literature, a book of Readings, Volume one,
Speaker 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, um. And this is referring
Speaker 1: to a particular deity who is associated with, but not
Speaker 1: the sole representation or embodiment of the inundation the annual
Speaker 1: flooding of the Nile. Right, So this would be the
Speaker 1: god we've been saying. Hoppy. He He is a god
Speaker 1: whose name in English is usually spelled h a p
Speaker 1: y uh. And I have not I searched in Vain
Speaker 1: to find a correct pronunciation for this name and could not,
Speaker 1: But I think it's Hoppy yeah. And I think also
Speaker 1: Hoppy sounds a little less like happy, Like I have
Speaker 1: an inclination to not want to call a god by
Speaker 1: the name happy, but at the same time, as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss so later on, like this is ultimately a very
Speaker 1: joyful deity. Everybody loves Hoppy. Hoppy is happy, so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the worst faux pa. Now, one thing I
Speaker 1: like about Hoppy is that Hoppy is the god that
Speaker 1: embodies not not just a physical geo fact, not just
Speaker 1: an object in the world, but a process within a
Speaker 1: geo fact. So Hoppy is not the god of the Nile,
Speaker 1: but the god of the seasonal cyclical flooding of the Nile. Right.
Speaker 1: Or or you can even get more specific in saying
Speaker 1: that he is he is one of various gods that
Speaker 1: is tied up with the inundation. Uh So, depending on
Speaker 1: like what aspects of the inundation you're focusing on, uh,
Speaker 1: be it positive or negative, or the origin, etcetera, there
Speaker 1: are different deities that can come into play. And it's
Speaker 1: it's super fascinating to break it down because ultimately you're
Speaker 1: talking about something that that that was so central to
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian life and therefore became so central to their
Speaker 1: their worldview and cosmology. It makes sense that you would
Speaker 1: have a cast of deities as opposed to a single deity.
Speaker 1: Summing it up, now, Rob, did you end up thinking
Speaker 1: about doing an episode on the Inundation of the Nile
Speaker 1: because of that earlier episode we did this year on
Speaker 1: the Tempest Stela Um? I think it was every time
Speaker 1: we've touched on something that involves ancient Egypt, I've been
Speaker 1: reminded that this is a great episode idea, or at
Speaker 1: least I don't know it's a great episode, Dada, but
Speaker 1: one that I was interested in covering um just because
Speaker 1: I was I was reading a book that I'm going
Speaker 1: to reference here in a bit, uh pick this up
Speaker 1: around Christmas. I think Egyptian Mythology, A Guide to God's
Speaker 1: Goddesses and Traditions of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine pinch Um,
Speaker 1: and Uh, part of it is encyclopediaic and cyclopedic. Part
Speaker 1: of it is more just an overview of Egyptian mythology
Speaker 1: and UM and Egyptian history at least as as much
Speaker 1: as is necessary to understand the mythology and um. And
Speaker 1: this author went into this affair amount and UM. I
Speaker 1: just hadn't thought about it, uh in these terms before,
Speaker 1: or certainly in this much detail. And I thought this
Speaker 1: would be a fascinating topic to look at because not
Speaker 1: only is it a chance to sort of geek out
Speaker 1: on Egyptian mythology and talk about, you know, ancient civilizations,
Speaker 1: but also I feel like a trend that that we've
Speaker 1: found on the show before is any time we take
Speaker 1: a particular mythology and analyze it and try and break
Speaker 1: it down like, it helps us understand other mythologies more,
Speaker 1: and it it helps us understand sort of the whole
Speaker 1: human exercise itself a little better. And in this case,
Speaker 1: I think we end up getting into some very interesting
Speaker 1: scientific territory as well. Yeah, absolutely, um, and and they're
Speaker 1: they're actually actually future episode of stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: We can do that kind of um launch off of
Speaker 1: some of the broader themes that we end up exploring
Speaker 1: a little bit in this episode. So we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking a bit about mythology here at at
Speaker 1: the top of the episode. And as we've discussed before
Speaker 1: in the show, there are numerous angles from which to
Speaker 1: approach a given cultures mythology. That there are tales and
Speaker 1: traditions that emerges a way of explaining the physical world,
Speaker 1: to explain the origins or the end of things, to
Speaker 1: tackle questions about life and death, and to ponder a
Speaker 1: great many contemplations of objective and subjective reality. Uh. They
Speaker 1: can provide a framework by which to interpret our lives,
Speaker 1: give our lives meaning or to say, empower rulers, and
Speaker 1: even to provide creative outlets and and provide entertainment. So
Speaker 1: we don't want to leave anyone with the idea that
Speaker 1: there's just one way to interpret a myth and cosmology,
Speaker 1: one way to to dissect it, one way to skin
Speaker 1: the cat as if you will, Nor do we want
Speaker 1: to limit the capacity for creativity and complex thought in
Speaker 1: ancient people. But without a doubt, environment and place are
Speaker 1: one of the factors that influence the creation of a mythology,
Speaker 1: because of course mountain gods don't emerge simply because the
Speaker 1: mountains exist. No, there has to be a connection of experience. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and this, uh, this made me pick up a
Speaker 1: book I hadn't looked at in a while. I think
Speaker 1: I picked this up in college um by Jonathan Z. Smith,
Speaker 1: titled to Take Place, and in it, uh, Smith quotes
Speaker 1: Alan Gusso, an environmental artist, who said, quote, the catalyst
Speaker 1: that converts any physical location, any environment, if you will,
Speaker 1: into a place is the process of experiencing deeply. A
Speaker 1: place is a piece of the whole environment that has
Speaker 1: been claimed by feelings. Oh yeah, I think that is
Speaker 1: so true. The world is full of natural environments, but
Speaker 1: within those natural environments are places. And what makes a
Speaker 1: place a place is the is the part of the
Speaker 1: environment that you remember and talk about. Yeah. So, so
Speaker 1: on one level, you can go very specific with this.
Speaker 1: For instance, Smith's book deals primarily with ritual in relation
Speaker 1: to place, in particular constructed ritual environments. But you can
Speaker 1: also you can pull out I think, and you can
Speaker 1: look at at the bigger picture, and you can look
Speaker 1: at something like a great river, uh, large bodies of water, mountains, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And you know these, you know, the mythology is full
Speaker 1: of of this relationship between humans and there and then
Speaker 1: then their environments. You know, how how we feel about it,
Speaker 1: how we interact with it, for sure, but then how
Speaker 1: we feel about it, what hopes are tied up in it,
Speaker 1: what fears are tied up in it, the order, the
Speaker 1: chaos and uh and so a lot of that is
Speaker 1: very visible, uh in is going to be very visible
Speaker 1: in our discussion about the Nile. So to kick things off,
Speaker 1: let's just remind everybody a bit about Egypt and the Nile.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Egypt, the Egypt you know from a modern map,
Speaker 1: is located in the northeastern corner of Africa, but it's
Speaker 1: technically a transcontinental country because it is it's uh. It
Speaker 1: also includes a very southwestern corner of Asia that's connected
Speaker 1: by land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. There's a
Speaker 1: very long history of human civilization here. Rock carvings date
Speaker 1: back to roughly ten thousand b C. Though the pre
Speaker 1: Dynastic period generally the earliest Egyptian period discussed by historians
Speaker 1: stretches from fifty five hundred to thirty two hundred b C. Now,
Speaker 1: for starters, as as we did, we definitely mentioned in
Speaker 1: the Tempest Stela episode UH that also dealt with with
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt, the northern portion of Egypt, closest to the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean was thought of as Lower Egypt, while Upper Egypt
Speaker 1: is the region that is to the south. Furthermore, we
Speaker 1: know the world of the known world was much smaller
Speaker 1: to the ancient Egyptians. The full extent and size of
Speaker 1: Africa was unknown, and as Geraldine Pinch points out in
Speaker 1: her book, the known world for the ancient Egyptians in
Speaker 1: the third millennium extended roughly from modern Greece and Turkey
Speaker 1: in the north to Ethiopia and the south, and from
Speaker 1: Libya or what is modern day Libya in the west
Speaker 1: to what is currently Iraq in the east. Now, the
Speaker 1: defining characteristic of Egypt is of course the mighty Nile River,
Speaker 1: which cuts through its center and empties through the Nile
Speaker 1: Delta into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile itself flowing north
Speaker 1: out of its flows north out of its two primary
Speaker 1: tributaries the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The Blue
Speaker 1: Nile stems from Lake Tana and modern day Ethiopia, and
Speaker 1: the White Nile stems from Lake Victoria further south on
Speaker 1: the borders of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. It's worth noting
Speaker 1: that Egypt itself gets extremely little rain. Some of some
Speaker 1: of the northern areas. I was reading a little bit
Speaker 1: of rain every year, like maybe a few millimeters, but
Speaker 1: most of the country gets basically no rain at all
Speaker 1: on average. And uh, that's pretty interesting to consider, like
Speaker 1: being completely tied to a river or tributaries of that
Speaker 1: river for your only sources of water. There there is
Speaker 1: all most you can almost count on the fact that
Speaker 1: no rain is going to be coming down out of
Speaker 1: the sky. It's just the river or bust. But it's
Speaker 1: also interesting that while it has been that way for
Speaker 1: thousands of years, it was not always that way. That's right,
Speaker 1: if you go back to the the truly ancient path
Speaker 1: like basically prehistoric egypt Um, you go back, you go
Speaker 1: back to this period of time, and you know, for
Speaker 1: thousands of years, northern Egypt and northern Africa in general
Speaker 1: had a wetter climate, grasslands and animal population stretched across
Speaker 1: areas that are now just complete desert, and the the
Speaker 1: the life that you would find there. The animals also
Speaker 1: included nomadic peoples who ranged across the grasslands, while of
Speaker 1: course still other humans enjoyed the rich environment along the
Speaker 1: coasts of the Great River. Yeah, and this damp period
Speaker 1: in ancient prehistoric Africa is one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: you can, for example, find beautiful rock carvings at places,
Speaker 1: say in the middle of the Sahara Desert that could
Speaker 1: not support human life today or not, and not a
Speaker 1: sustained sedentary life there today. Yeah. So so yeah, these
Speaker 1: areas that are now desert were once um more more
Speaker 1: filled with life, but then the land began to dry
Speaker 1: out and that left the river as the main thing,
Speaker 1: really the only thing to cling to and pinch. Rights
Speaker 1: that this would have been a period of not only
Speaker 1: great climatic change but also cultural change, and that it
Speaker 1: might have helped shape the idea in Egyptian mythology that
Speaker 1: the world was once different, and of course we see
Speaker 1: this in other cosmologies as well, the idea that there
Speaker 1: was a world before, that there was a life before.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting to think of that about that in
Speaker 1: terms of of of climate change. Yeah, totally so by
Speaker 1: the fourth millennium BC, agricultural communities, you know, it certainly
Speaker 1: cropped up along the Nile, and uh, the resulting world
Speaker 1: of the ancient Egyptians was rather unique. So you had
Speaker 1: host wild deserts that were difficult to cross that made
Speaker 1: up nine of Egyptian territory, cutting them off from uh,
Speaker 1: from from these uh you know, other lands to the east, west,
Speaker 1: and south and also sufferance serving as a buffer zone
Speaker 1: between them and these lands. These sort of empty lands
Speaker 1: were called the red lands. Um. Though Uh, it's also
Speaker 1: worth noting that you have mountains in some of the
Speaker 1: desert regions that did offer mineral wealth. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: just it wasn't simply a case of well, there's nothing
Speaker 1: out there that that was of use to the Egyptians. Uh,
Speaker 1: but certainly in terms of like the thing that gave
Speaker 1: you life on a daily basis, that that was tied
Speaker 1: to the Nile. Meanwhile, to the north you had where
Speaker 1: the Nihil empties into the Mediterranean Sea, you have the
Speaker 1: vast salt marsh, and and then of course the Mediterranean itself.
Speaker 1: And Pinch notes that the Egyptians were never enthusiastic seafares,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of a rarity and being one of
Speaker 1: the very few coastal cultures to worship no deities of
Speaker 1: the sea. That's interesting. I never thought of that before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean you think about certainly, um uh, you
Speaker 1: know Greek traditions. You know, you see the mighty role
Speaker 1: that Poseidon plays, and not only Poseidon, but various other
Speaker 1: um see gods and goddesses minor and major that we're
Speaker 1: you know that that that we're also worshiped, and sometimes
Speaker 1: we're worshiped instead of Poseidon, and all kind of are
Speaker 1: kind of caught up in the more or less canonized
Speaker 1: versions of of Greek mythology that we have today. Well,
Speaker 1: in Greek and Roman mythology, I think you can absolutely
Speaker 1: see this duality of the ocean embodied in the gods
Speaker 1: and monsters that are associated with it. Because the sea
Speaker 1: is a place of great opportunity, so it's often sort
Speaker 1: of associated with wealth somehow, but it is also a
Speaker 1: place of great danger, and it's temperamental and it's unpredictable. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Poseidon is often just like the jerky ist
Speaker 1: of gods. Yeah, and so we're gonna see a lot
Speaker 1: of that same duality in the ancient Egyptian treatment of
Speaker 1: the Nile, because, I mean, a river is not a
Speaker 1: docile thing, especially when you're talking about a great river
Speaker 1: like like the Nile, which is depending on how you're
Speaker 1: measuring it against the Amazon, it's either the longest river
Speaker 1: on Earth or like the second longest. It is it
Speaker 1: is undoubtedly a great river, uh, and which means it
Speaker 1: has great power to both create and destroy. And key
Speaker 1: to that is the inundation. So the Nihil is subject
Speaker 1: to This annual inundation occurs between May and August UH,
Speaker 1: caused by a combination of monsoon rains and melting snow
Speaker 1: in the mountains of Ethiopia, and as a result, the
Speaker 1: Nile River expands, the Nile River explodes, It floods low
Speaker 1: lying lands and the Nile River basin, and the Nile
Speaker 1: delta Uh. Not only does it water the lands, it
Speaker 1: also deposits a thick layer of silt, so the waters recede,
Speaker 1: they leave behind rich and fertile soil that is ideal
Speaker 1: for agricultural use. Yeah, and this proves really important in
Speaker 1: things you'll later see, like the technology that the ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptians figured out in order to irrigate their crops, which
Speaker 1: involved um often ways of constructing dikes and canals and
Speaker 1: stuff where you would let in the waters of the
Speaker 1: flooding Nile as it comes in from the highlands. Uh
Speaker 1: and and then you would just let that water sort
Speaker 1: of sit there and soak in the in the irrigation
Speaker 1: ditches for a while before you'd eventually let it run
Speaker 1: back out into the river later on. And I think
Speaker 1: the idea there was not just that it would moisten
Speaker 1: the soil, but that you were you were trying to
Speaker 1: give it time for the mineral rich silt that comes
Speaker 1: down from the highlands and the river to settle onto
Speaker 1: the bottom and and sort of bring the vitamins I
Speaker 1: know they're not vitamins, but the but the minerals and
Speaker 1: uh and chemical riches of that soil to help put
Speaker 1: put the nutrients into the soil in your fields that
Speaker 1: your crops need. Yeah, the link here to irrigate ation
Speaker 1: is U is certainly worth noting because uh, with with
Speaker 1: the inundation, we're talking about natural irrigation. And this is
Speaker 1: this is where our you know, our our our ancestors
Speaker 1: understanding of of what is would be possible with with
Speaker 1: unnatural irrigation man made irrigation. Uh, you know what they
Speaker 1: could do in terms of okay, well, you know we
Speaker 1: have this flooding that occurs, but what if we try
Speaker 1: to control the flooding? And this is of course not
Speaker 1: a tail specific to um to Egypt. We see this
Speaker 1: in uh In in all the the the great civilizations
Speaker 1: of old, you know, the the importance of the floodplain
Speaker 1: and then the the eventual technology that emerges in managing
Speaker 1: the waters in order to enable agriculture to continue to
Speaker 1: flourish in a way that could be you know controlled.
Speaker 1: Oh there are great Chinese myths about controlling the flow
Speaker 1: of rivers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So this is this is
Speaker 1: a trend, like like a referenced earlier, Like we could
Speaker 1: we could go from here and do a whole series
Speaker 1: of episodes, invention based episodes just on um irrigation technology,
Speaker 1: because human history is basically a story of humans figuring
Speaker 1: out the best ways to manage their water supply. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. But I wanted to mention another aspect
Speaker 1: of the Nile and I know you've got thoughts about
Speaker 1: this too, which is that so we were saying that
Speaker 1: sometimes gods of the sea are kind of fickle, they're
Speaker 1: kind of unpredictable there that they can be dangerous at
Speaker 1: the same time that they can represent great wealth, you know,
Speaker 1: you you can the sea can be your livelihood, but
Speaker 1: also it can bring storms that crash you against the rocks.
Speaker 1: And the same thing can be very true of the Nile,
Speaker 1: but in a different way. So on the banks of
Speaker 1: the Nile, for for the farmers and the crops that
Speaker 1: support Egyptian civilization, there would be this flooding season that
Speaker 1: would allow you to moisten your fields and nourish your crops.
Speaker 1: But if the flooding season fails in either direction, if
Speaker 1: the waters either do not climb high enough or if
Speaker 1: they climb too high, it's disaster, right yeah, yeah, If yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't get enough water, then you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: enough flooding and you're not gonna grow enough food. Um,
Speaker 1: if you get just the right amount, then it's perfect
Speaker 1: because you're gonna get enough food to feed the entire
Speaker 1: population plus more. You know, that's surplus. That is such
Speaker 1: a vital aspect of of the rise and and and
Speaker 1: you know, and sustaining nature of civilizations. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: if you get too much water, then it's overflowing of
Speaker 1: the flood zones. Then it's destroying communities, it's drowning people,
Speaker 1: it's causing death and destruction. Yeah, and you saw this, uh,
Speaker 1: this version of the calamity coming through in one interpretation
Speaker 1: of the situation that was being described in The Tempest Steela.
Speaker 1: I remember there was this idea that the Nile is
Speaker 1: flooding for some reason, and it says that there are well,
Speaker 1: there's one passage that I think was somewhat open to interpretation,
Speaker 1: but it sounded like it was talking about the bodies
Speaker 1: of dead people floating like skiffs of papyrus in the water.
Speaker 1: And uh and so yeah, obviously like if the water
Speaker 1: has come too high, I can destroy your towns. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh. Pinch nicely summarizes this by saying, quote, the
Speaker 1: whole welfare of the country depended on this one phenomenon. Uh.
Speaker 1: And because of this, the ancient Egyptians seem to have
Speaker 1: felt both uniquely blessed and uniquely vulnerable. And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting to think about it. Again. You see
Speaker 1: shades of this in a in a lot of mythologies
Speaker 1: that the idea that you're ultimately depending on on some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, natural abb and flow that you
Speaker 1: do not control. There's a certain amount of chaos uh
Speaker 1: to this system, even if there is uh still some
Speaker 1: order that you can cling to. Now um as we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, they're multiple Egyptian gods and goddess is tied
Speaker 1: up with the inundation and ultimately with the Nile. Uh. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: if you if you were ever read anywhere, if you
Speaker 1: see like a god or goddess of the ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: pantheon described as the god of the Nile, then that
Speaker 1: is that isn't that is at least an oversimplification of things,
Speaker 1: because there is no one true god of the Nile.
Speaker 1: There's no one uh central god even of the inundation,
Speaker 1: but rather different divine beings that represent different parts of it,
Speaker 1: which which is uh which also me I think makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense because again, if this river and
Speaker 1: this annual flooding is so central to life and your
Speaker 1: view of the the of the universe, then it's going
Speaker 1: to be too They're too complicated to have one figure,
Speaker 1: one sort of you know, humanoid apparition summing it all up, well, yes,
Speaker 1: and I think you can see ways in which the inundation,
Speaker 1: the yearly inundation of the Nile, took up so much
Speaker 1: of the brain space of ancient Egyptian peoples that it
Speaker 1: becomes a central sort of meta for for anything that
Speaker 1: is overwhelming or unpredictable, or bringing great great riches or
Speaker 1: bringing bringing great destruction. I was looking at a different
Speaker 1: part of Geraldine Pinch's handbook on Egyptian mythology, and there's
Speaker 1: one part where she's talking about one of the stories
Speaker 1: of the poisoning of the god Ray and I think
Speaker 1: the story I believe is called the True Name of Ray.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's a part where she quotes from the
Speaker 1: from a translation of the text that said, after he's
Speaker 1: been poisoned, that the poison had overwhelmed his body, like
Speaker 1: the inundation overwhelms everything in its path. So it's just
Speaker 1: this ready made metaphor. It's the imagery that easily comes
Speaker 1: to mind whenever you're thinking about, uh, any number of
Speaker 1: different dynamics. Yeah. Yeah, And the same way that we
Speaker 1: depend so much on various technologies today, is there there,
Speaker 1: you know, to draw our metaphors from to make sense
Speaker 1: of what we're doing and the world we're living in. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I might compare it to the metaphor of
Speaker 1: like the metaphors of the seasons and many other cultures,
Speaker 1: that the inundation metaphor could be as common and easily
Speaker 1: accessed when one is searching for something with which to
Speaker 1: compare the thing you're talking about right now to the
Speaker 1: way that we so easily reach for metaphor, is about
Speaker 1: winter turning into spring, you know, spring and sprong or
Speaker 1: something like that. Is the winter of our discontent? Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you would say something more on the lines of
Speaker 1: now is the inundation of our discontent or our content
Speaker 1: depending on how it goes, It's in inundation time in America.
Speaker 1: Uh so, you know, we have more on on the
Speaker 1: deities in a bit, but basically the inundation itself was
Speaker 1: seen as part of the divine order of things or
Speaker 1: or MOTT which is generally spelled M A A T
Speaker 1: in English, and the creator of all things, though ultimately
Speaker 1: there's less emphasis on this. In an ancient Egyptian mythology
Speaker 1: is the Sun, uh you know, the the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 1: where the children of the Sun and the Egyptian world existed.
Speaker 1: At the center. Uh and in its divine order. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all encompassing and in surrounding it, you had
Speaker 1: the primeval waters of None, out of which the creator
Speaker 1: God emerged, and the nile and the inundation extend out
Speaker 1: of the nun So they're flowing out of that as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what you said reminds me of something else I
Speaker 1: was just reading about recently, about the idea of primeval waters.
Speaker 1: One thing that's really interesting about a lot of mythic
Speaker 1: geography or cosmology around the world is the idea of
Speaker 1: waters that are beyond the mundane waters. You know, so
Speaker 1: you've got your rivers, lakes, and seas that are just
Speaker 1: sort of part of the world. But then there are
Speaker 1: waters beyond. And these could be beyond some kind of
Speaker 1: physical horizon or beyond some kind of like time or
Speaker 1: metaphysical horizon. Uh, so they're there are often waters that
Speaker 1: exist underneath the earth, and some mythic cosmology's or waters
Speaker 1: that surround the continents, or even waters that sur round
Speaker 1: the sky. I mean a lot of ancient people's thought
Speaker 1: that the sky was somehow full of a flood, and
Speaker 1: you could easily see that, you know, when the when
Speaker 1: the skies break open and it rains. That's water falling
Speaker 1: down from above. But then also there are waters that
Speaker 1: there are tons of stories about waters that existed and
Speaker 1: flooded everything before the creation of the world. I was
Speaker 1: reading about this in the Encyclopedia of Creation Myths by
Speaker 1: the scholar David Lehming, who argues that no motif occurs
Speaker 1: more often in creation myths around the globe than that
Speaker 1: of primordial waters. It is the single most common theme
Speaker 1: of cosmic origin stories in all of human culture, uh
Speaker 1: and that it's central to a number of different kinds
Speaker 1: of creation myths, like the creation out of chaos myths,
Speaker 1: the earth diver type creation myths. All of these have
Speaker 1: waters that existed before there were lands and and all
Speaker 1: of the you know, living things on them and all
Speaker 1: of the order there. There's some kind of previous time
Speaker 1: of an expanse of undifferentiated ocean. And so the question
Speaker 1: is like, why are there so many creation myths involving
Speaker 1: this landless cosmic ocean before before the current order of
Speaker 1: the world. And Leaming actually has thoughts about why that
Speaker 1: is so. Just to read from his entry here, he
Speaker 1: says there are several reasons for the ubiquity of this motif.
Speaker 1: All cultures naturally recognize water as a necessary source of
Speaker 1: life and survival, making it a useful symbol of creative fertility.
Speaker 1: Large masses of water are uncontrollable and therefore aptly representative
Speaker 1: of chaos. In tandem, these two symbolic functions lead us
Speaker 1: to the idea of potential as yet unformed creation. Oh
Speaker 1: and he and he also talks about the idea of
Speaker 1: waters as traditionally often having UH sort of a divine
Speaker 1: gender associations like uh waters in some ways being mythically
Speaker 1: associated with female qualities and having to do with maternal
Speaker 1: waters and and creation of the earth as a kind
Speaker 1: of birth. But the central idea is that water is
Speaker 1: necessary for every aspect of life, and yet the oceans
Speaker 1: are untamed and untamable sort of chaos embodied. And this
Speaker 1: these two things come together to create the the ultimate
Speaker 1: human vision of a chaos of potential before the world.
Speaker 1: We know, Yeah, absolutely, we see that. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: see they reflected here as well. Yeah. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like when whenever I picture the creation myth that
Speaker 1: says creation from the void or creation from chaos, I'm
Speaker 1: always picturing space. You know, my my brain has been
Speaker 1: fed with science fiction. So I'm picturing inner interplanetary interstellar space.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can see a starfield in the background, But
Speaker 1: that wouldn't make sense because if it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: creation out of nothing or from chaos, there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: stars yet that's some kind of order. It would just
Speaker 1: have to be space. But but really, maybe to be
Speaker 1: more in the tradition of of ancient human thinking, I
Speaker 1: should be picturing waters. Again, that's not true for every
Speaker 1: culture and every creation myth, but it's shockingly common. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so again in the in the Egyptian tradition, we
Speaker 1: have Noon that that's the primeval waters, and Noon feeds
Speaker 1: the Nile and the inundation Um. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that we also have the foreign lands and deserts
Speaker 1: that border Egypt, and these are realms of chaos or
Speaker 1: is fet but um. Again, the Nile was thought to
Speaker 1: flow from Noon and therefore is the work of the
Speaker 1: Creator God. And there are several different versions of the
Speaker 1: Creator God Uh. And specifically, the floodwaters were said to
Speaker 1: flow from the two secret caverns formed by the Creator Sandals.
Speaker 1: And so this is where we get into some of
Speaker 1: the not all, but some of the the major deities
Speaker 1: that are tied up with the Nile and specifically the
Speaker 1: the inundation. So the creator god Kenum guards over these caverns,
Speaker 1: it said, and also could be thought to control the inundation.
Speaker 1: And he was often depicted as a human with the
Speaker 1: head of a long horned ram, and was said to
Speaker 1: have created human beings from the wet clay left over
Speaker 1: from the inundation. Thus he's a god of of pottery
Speaker 1: as well, kind of a god of creative technology, and
Speaker 1: like a lot Like like all gods and goddesses, and
Speaker 1: in long standing cultures, his exact role shifts over time.
Speaker 1: There's an evolution, there's their changes that he's not a
Speaker 1: singular thing but part of a tradition like all of
Speaker 1: these these entities. But he's associated ultimately not only with
Speaker 1: the creation of humans, but of technologies like boats, and
Speaker 1: also with the birthing of of of newborn gods and kings.
Speaker 1: So he is the god of the wheel as well,
Speaker 1: and this is this is beautiful as well, the god
Speaker 1: of the nocturnal son. He is the soul of ray
Speaker 1: passing through the underworld. Wow. The nocturnal son. So that
Speaker 1: that's when they have the idea that the on during
Speaker 1: the day goes through the sky and at night goes
Speaker 1: has to pass through the underworld. Okay, yeah, again, we
Speaker 1: have to put our put our ourselves in the mindset
Speaker 1: of of this kind of cosmology where there is only
Speaker 1: our world, there is only Egypt, and where the sun
Speaker 1: goes when it goes over the horizon, you know, it's
Speaker 1: going into darkness. It's going through this uh, this arduous
Speaker 1: journey so that it might come back up again and
Speaker 1: light the world. Oh God, I wish I could remember
Speaker 1: the details. Isn't there something about how in at least
Speaker 1: one version of the story, the sun is a barge
Speaker 1: that as it goes under the ground at night, it
Speaker 1: gets attacked by the same monster every night, and that's
Speaker 1: to be set by and by monsters, demons, and it
Speaker 1: is it's like a group effort to fight off these
Speaker 1: monsters and protect the sun so that it can come
Speaker 1: back up the next day. It's gorgeous. Yeah. Uh So,
Speaker 1: So that that's one major deity. And then one of
Speaker 1: the other ones, of course, is is Hoppy, who we
Speaker 1: talked about at the top of the podcast. The one
Speaker 1: that's often spelled h ap y. It looks a lot
Speaker 1: like happy And again that's not completely off the mark,
Speaker 1: because this god is the personification of the positive aspects
Speaker 1: of the inundation and is sometimes depicted as an obese,
Speaker 1: green or blue man with pendulous breasts. Yeah. So sometimes
Speaker 1: you'll see him represented with Uh, they don't always look
Speaker 1: exactly like like organic human breasts, like sometimes they look
Speaker 1: like a kind of strange like triangle coming out of
Speaker 1: his armpit, at least some some of the illustrations I've seen,
Speaker 1: But I think they are supposed to be breasts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And because ultimately he is nourishing. Um though, I have
Speaker 1: to admit, like when when I picture him in my mind,
Speaker 1: I imagine something like Max Rebo from Return of the Jedi,
Speaker 1: you know, the keyboard player, um oh, because he's often
Speaker 1: got blue or green skin. Yeah. And also I mean
Speaker 1: Max Rebo has a very um you know, pleasant aura.
Speaker 1: He's he's he's happiness in good times and thus is
Speaker 1: is hoppy. All humans seeing hymns to him, the creatures
Speaker 1: of joyce. So uh when when he's approaching So he
Speaker 1: is the lord of fishes, he's the maker of grain,
Speaker 1: and he also plays a key role in the vital
Speaker 1: Egyptian myth of murdered Osiris uh as the waters of
Speaker 1: inundation play a role in reviving him, just as they
Speaker 1: revived the crops every year. But okay, so that's the
Speaker 1: this is the pleasant side, the beneficial side of the inundation.
Speaker 1: But of course the inundation has this destructive side as well,
Speaker 1: this dark side, and it is personified by the distant
Speaker 1: goddess Um, which you can, I guess you can kind
Speaker 1: of think in in pinches writing. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: this is the this is the goddess, but it is
Speaker 1: also kind of a broad categorization of goddess that is
Speaker 1: associated with different individual goddesses at times. Um. But basically
Speaker 1: the idea here is that, first of all, it's the
Speaker 1: distance thing again in the ancient Egyptian cosmology distance and
Speaker 1: it probably means pushing you out into the desert and
Speaker 1: towards those kingdoms of chaos, and so that that is
Speaker 1: the place where the distant goddess is said to resides.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's depicted as having this terrible um leonine form. She's,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like some sort of giant lion,
Speaker 1: and and so she inhabits these lands. Uh. She is
Speaker 1: associated with with Ray or Rob, perhaps as a feminine
Speaker 1: aspect of him or the soul i Uh. But she
Speaker 1: becomes an uncontrollable and angry deity that therefore takes up
Speaker 1: in the chaotic land. So she's kind of like a
Speaker 1: shard of of the almighty Sun God, you know, She's
Speaker 1: like a piece of him. But she's gone rogue and
Speaker 1: is therefore a danger to the people of Egypt. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though there are myths associated with her retrieval by Onerous
Speaker 1: the the mythical hunter who brings the solar Lion back
Speaker 1: to Egypt too much rejoicing. So Pinch writes that the
Speaker 1: implication of the various distant goddess myths is that quote,
Speaker 1: if the destructive anger of the Solar eye is not
Speaker 1: balanced by the justice and truth personified by Matt, the
Speaker 1: world will slide into chaos. And again, different goddesses are
Speaker 1: associated with this role Uh, depending on the exact account,
Speaker 1: including Uh, Bastet, hath Or, and others. Now, again, there
Speaker 1: are multiple additional gods that factor into the inundation in
Speaker 1: one way or another. UM. And again we have to
Speaker 1: remember the central role that it played in Egyptian life,
Speaker 1: all the sacred connotations that absorbed. We're not gonna attempt
Speaker 1: to list them all here. Um. You can read about
Speaker 1: about many of them in Pinches Egyptian Mythology book if
Speaker 1: you want. There are also some other excellent texts out
Speaker 1: there on on Egyptian deities. But there is one in
Speaker 1: particular I wanted to bring up, and that is heck At.
Speaker 1: This is a frog headed goddess who plays a vital
Speaker 1: role in childbirth and the rebirth of the dead. So
Speaker 1: she's she's the divine midwife. So she's a follower of
Speaker 1: hope and um sometimes a female counter counterpart of of
Speaker 1: of of keydom and if frequent motif on ivory wands,
Speaker 1: which are these kind of boomerang shaped pendent things that
Speaker 1: were that were used to protect women and children, um.
Speaker 1: But plenty of the elder actually wrote on some of
Speaker 1: this talking about the frog motif, apparently commenting that the
Speaker 1: Egyptians thought that frogs spontaneously emerged from the mud left
Speaker 1: over by the inundation, which is interesting because on one hand,
Speaker 1: of course that's that's not exactly how it works. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the mud of the inundation is not giving birth to
Speaker 1: the frogs. But but, but but that flooding is what
Speaker 1: makes the reemergence of the frogs possible, you know. It
Speaker 1: is the the annual sustaining um uh flood. It is
Speaker 1: the is the bringing of the water and the bringing
Speaker 1: of the nutrients that make life possible in Egypt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. Now I wonder I don't know if
Speaker 1: Plenty is correct in ascribing that belief to the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 1: but he is. But if he is correct, that would
Speaker 1: be in keeping with a lot of theories throughout history
Speaker 1: about the spontaneous generation of animals from certain types of
Speaker 1: especially damp sorts of conditions. Now, one thing I was
Speaker 1: thinking about is that, of course, things are different in
Speaker 1: the Nile today because of human technology. You know, in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, Egypt implemented a system of dams and
Speaker 1: reservoirs to control the flow of the Nile pretty much
Speaker 1: with with complete success. Now like the people of Egypt,
Speaker 1: of course, have been using various forms of dams and
Speaker 1: dikes and irrigation on the Nile for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: but with modern techniques and modern technology that were available
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, I think the real keystone here
Speaker 1: was the construction of the aswan Hi Dam under Nassa
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. UH. Following that, Egypt was essentially
Speaker 1: able to end its flooding cycle like that it could
Speaker 1: now store up excess water from the rainy season to
Speaker 1: be released in a controlled way even during the traditional
Speaker 1: dry season, which of course would just be a revolutionary
Speaker 1: change for the Egyptian people. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I have wonder, like, in in mythological terms, does this
Speaker 1: represent a kind of de acide? Is this a slaying
Speaker 1: of Hoppy? Um? Yeah, you could look at it that way, right,
Speaker 1: like the like this is the tale of how humans
Speaker 1: finally um conquer the gods. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, um, you know Kenom was the
Speaker 1: is kind of a god of technology as well as
Speaker 1: this god tied up with the inundation, so you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of president at the victory celebration. So
Speaker 1: it's it's he's ultimately some of these entities are tied
Speaker 1: up in the same the same tale. I mean, also,
Speaker 1: Hoppy in a way, he would be there right because
Speaker 1: he's all about the good stuff that comes with the inundation. Um,
Speaker 1: And that I mean, the story of modern technology is
Speaker 1: that the the the negative connotations are are never completely dispelled,
Speaker 1: So the distant goddess is never that distant. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: you could think about it now that that Hoppy is
Speaker 1: just h embodied in the water that sits in the
Speaker 1: reservoir high in the damn and has just released gradually
Speaker 1: throughout the year. So instead of sending his blessings in
Speaker 1: an unpredictable way, his blessings can now be distributed in
Speaker 1: a very organized and orderly way. Instead of being a
Speaker 1: comedian or music of you know, a music star that
Speaker 1: that periodically appears at the casino, Hoppy has a residency
Speaker 1: at this point, so you can count on him being there.
Speaker 1: Thank So, I've got another thing I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: and this is going to take us into the realm
Speaker 1: of biochemistry because I was thinking about the cycles associated
Speaker 1: with the flooding of the Nile and uh, this this
Speaker 1: led me to a really interesting article that was published
Speaker 1: just a few months ago, was in December of and
Speaker 1: it was a news feature for the journal Nature, written
Speaker 1: by Michael Marshall that was called how the first life
Speaker 1: on Earth survived its biggest threat Water. So we've discussed
Speaker 1: this a bit on the show before, but obviously one
Speaker 1: of the biggest outstanding puzzles in all of the biological
Speaker 1: sciences is the origin of life on Earth. You know,
Speaker 1: assuming that the first living cells evolved from precursor chemicals
Speaker 1: somewhere in the early history of the planet, how did
Speaker 1: that happen? You know, what were the conditions that led
Speaker 1: to that, How common are those conditions and could they
Speaker 1: be replicated? So for a long time, the dominant thinking
Speaker 1: among biochemists has been that the earliest chemical precursors to
Speaker 1: life as we know it must have arisen in the ocean.
Speaker 1: This is the classic primordial soup idea, right that somehow
Speaker 1: in the ancient oceans that would have been the swirling
Speaker 1: mix of organic molecules of carbon based chemistry, and then
Speaker 1: gradually those molecules would kind of come together and form
Speaker 1: the molecular building blocks of life. This was something that
Speaker 1: was advocated by people like JBS Haldane, and there are
Speaker 1: still some theory is about life emerging, but about the
Speaker 1: first precursors to Earth life emerging in parts of the ocean,
Speaker 1: for example, around deep hydrothermal vents. That's one of the
Speaker 1: the versions of this theory that's still going today, but
Speaker 1: an alternative explanation has been really gaining some traction in
Speaker 1: recent years. Um because what seems absolutely clear is that
Speaker 1: you need water in order to put together the first
Speaker 1: building blocks of cells. So these building blocks would include
Speaker 1: things like DNA or RNA, which are information carrying molecules,
Speaker 1: but then also things like proteins that can do the
Speaker 1: work of metabolism in life. But that doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that the ocean is the best place for those chemicals
Speaker 1: to come together. And Marshall in this article calls attention
Speaker 1: to the research of a scientist named John Sutherland, who
Speaker 1: is a biochemist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Speaker 1: at Cambridge Marshal rights quote. Several studies suggest that the
Speaker 1: basic chemicals of life require ultra violet radiation from sunlight
Speaker 1: to form, and that the watery environment had to become
Speaker 1: highly concentrated or even dry out completely at times. In
Speaker 1: laboratory experiments, Sutherland and other scientists have produced d n A, proteins,
Speaker 1: and other core components of cells by gently heating simple
Speaker 1: carbon based chemicals, subjecting them to UV radiation, and intermittently
Speaker 1: drying them out. Chemists have not yet been able to
Speaker 1: synthesize such a wide range of biological molecules in conditions
Speaker 1: that mimic seawater. So, in other words, if these studies
Speaker 1: are going in the right direction, it may be evidence
Speaker 1: that the origins of life itself are not in the
Speaker 1: deep dark of the ocean, but in the cyclical flooding
Speaker 1: and drying out of something like a sun baked puddle
Speaker 1: or stream bed on the surface of a continent. So
Speaker 1: in effect, we're talking about not the inundation but a
Speaker 1: kind of primeval inundation. Yeah, I mean this, the seasonal
Speaker 1: flooding and drying out of I mean the metaphorical connection
Speaker 1: to the nile here is fascinating, and in some ways
Speaker 1: the similarities are not just like aesthetic or superficial, like
Speaker 1: you could say that there are actually there are there
Speaker 1: are There are significant similarities in the causal effects of
Speaker 1: of what's going on in these two cases. We'll get
Speaker 1: to more of that as I go on. Um. So,
Speaker 1: not all biochemists agree with this direction, obviously, but Martial
Speaker 1: rites that quote. It offers a solution to a long
Speaker 1: recognized paradox that although water is essential for life, it
Speaker 1: is also destructive to life's core components. And now remember,
Speaker 1: you know we we talk on the show a lot
Speaker 1: about how water is an amazing chemical because it is
Speaker 1: a master solvent. It's a polar molecule with the terrible clause,
Speaker 1: you know, these two hydrogen claws, that this molecule will
Speaker 1: dissolve almost anything, and the molecules necessary for life tend
Speaker 1: to break down over time when submerged in water. Martial
Speaker 1: rights quote, Proteins and nucleic acids such as DNA and
Speaker 1: RNA are vulnerable at their joints. Proteins are made of
Speaker 1: chains of amino acids, and nucleic acids are chains of nucleotides.
Speaker 1: If the chains are placed in water, it attacks the
Speaker 1: links and eventually breaks them. And he quotes the biochemist
Speaker 1: Robert Shapiro who famously said that when you're talking about
Speaker 1: organic chemistry, quote, water is an enemy to be excluded
Speaker 1: as rigorously as possible, which which is so funny because
Speaker 1: I mean, what we're normally thinking about when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about water in life is how necessary water is, and
Speaker 1: it is necessary, but uncontrolled inundation of water will destroy
Speaker 1: the very information and machinery necessary. Uh too, that's underlying
Speaker 1: all life and all cells on Earth. Yeah. Again, the
Speaker 1: very duality that is summed up in and in these
Speaker 1: these these deities that we discussed here. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you can see almost a kind of like the irrigation
Speaker 1: systems and the systems of dams and dikes that are
Speaker 1: used to manage the nile, that actually there's something similar
Speaker 1: going on in our cells. Like the cells in organisms
Speaker 1: today keep very tight control on the movement of their
Speaker 1: water contents to prevent the water in their cytoplasm. And
Speaker 1: the cytoplasm is the kind of gel that makes up
Speaker 1: the interior of a cell, uh to keep the water
Speaker 1: in their cytoplasm from harming the genetic material and proteins
Speaker 1: that it surrounds. Marshal in this article quotes a synthetic
Speaker 1: biologist from the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis named Kate Adamala,
Speaker 1: who says, quote, we are taught that cytoplasm is just
Speaker 1: a bag that holds everything and everything is swimming around.
Speaker 1: That is not true. Everything is incredibly scaffolded in cells,
Speaker 1: and it's scaffolded in a gel, not a water bag.
Speaker 1: So cytoplasm is mostly made of water. I think it's
Speaker 1: something something like eight percent water by mass or something.
Speaker 1: But there are structural features in cells that keep the
Speaker 1: water from tearing up the important stuff again, kind of
Speaker 1: like the structures built around the nile to manage its flooding. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can look at the things that civilization does
Speaker 1: are only that in many cases the things that the
Speaker 1: that are happening just in life itself. Right, But of
Speaker 1: course that's that's once we have the cells that have
Speaker 1: evolved today, think about how the first cells could have
Speaker 1: evolved when they didn't have those structures in place yet.
Speaker 1: So the implication is that if the earliest life arose
Speaker 1: in some kind of natural condition, you know, it didn't
Speaker 1: have cell structure to protect it. Yet those natural conditions
Speaker 1: must have somehow placed limits on how and in what
Speaker 1: ways things got wet. And again this brings us back
Speaker 1: to the idea of places that would intermittently flood and
Speaker 1: then dry out again. And the article goes on to
Speaker 1: site some examples of recent studies supporting this idea. UH.
Speaker 1: One example by a team including that researcher mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: John Sutherland, the biochemist from Cambridge UH. This study is
Speaker 1: by Matthew W. Pounder, Beatrice Garland, and John D. Sutherland
Speaker 1: published in Nature in two thousand nine called Synthesis of
Speaker 1: Activated pyramidine Ribonucleotides in pre biotically plausible conditions. So basically
Speaker 1: what happened here is that uh and this is summarized
Speaker 1: by Marshall, but I trust his summary. Here he says
Speaker 1: that the team managed to create two of the four
Speaker 1: nucleotides in RNA out of some simple chemical precursors, so
Speaker 1: this would be phosphate and some carbon based compounds. I
Speaker 1: think cyanide salts were an important part of it. So
Speaker 1: you just start with some chemicals in water and then
Speaker 1: by dissolving those chemicals in the water too down to
Speaker 1: a very high concentration, they were able to create two
Speaker 1: of these four nucleotides by by some reactions that mimic
Speaker 1: the kind of reactions that would take place in a
Speaker 1: pool or st aam of water that was drying out
Speaker 1: and concentrating while being exposed to sunlight, including UV radiation.
Speaker 1: And the UV radiation was important and another study in
Speaker 1: showed that researchers were were able via similar means to
Speaker 1: create the precursors to proteins or lipids and another study
Speaker 1: did the same to the constituents of d n A.
Speaker 1: Here's what I thought that was interesting. Also, it references
Speaker 1: a a researcher who's close to us. So there's a
Speaker 1: biochemist named Moran Frinkle Pinter at the NSF NASA Center
Speaker 1: for Chemical Evolution in Atlanta, and she and colleagues published
Speaker 1: an article in p n AS in twenty nineteen that argued,
Speaker 1: again this is marshall summary quote. It showed that amino
Speaker 1: acid spontaneously linked up to form protein like chains if
Speaker 1: they were dried out, and those kinds of reaction were
Speaker 1: more likely to occur with the twenty amino acids found
Speaker 1: in proteins today compared with other amino acids. That means
Speaker 1: intermittent drying could help explain why life uses only those
Speaker 1: amino acids out of hundreds of possibilities. Yet again, so
Speaker 1: like if if this were the way that life on
Speaker 1: Earth first evolved, it would explain some chemical features of
Speaker 1: modern life that you might otherwise be able to see
Speaker 1: is just kind of random or contingent. Another interesting finding
Speaker 1: about those wet dry cycles. So several of the researchers
Speaker 1: that Marshall talks about in this article point to the
Speaker 1: importance again not just high concentrations of chemicals and reducing
Speaker 1: pool of water, but the cycles specifically repeated wet dry cycles.
Speaker 1: It gets wet, it gets dry, gets wet, it gets dry.
Speaker 1: And one cool example he brings up his research going
Speaker 1: back several decades by a couple of scientists who were
Speaker 1: at you see Davis at the time, named David Deemer
Speaker 1: and Gail BArch Field, and they were studying the formation
Speaker 1: of lipids. Now, lipids are also long chain molecules like
Speaker 1: protein is like DNA and RNA, and lipids generally do
Speaker 1: not dissolve in water. You know, of course, you know
Speaker 1: that oil and water don't mix well. Oil is a lipid.
Speaker 1: Lipids include things like fatty acids and waxes, and cells
Speaker 1: make use of lipids to survive. Cells tend to have
Speaker 1: a protective membrane around them, the sack that holds everything inside,
Speaker 1: and this protective membrane that goes all around the outside
Speaker 1: is made in part of lipids. There's the thing on
Speaker 1: them called the lipid by layer. Uh. And of course
Speaker 1: cell membranes. They do a lot of things, but you
Speaker 1: can think of them mainly as a means of chemical
Speaker 1: control of what gets in and what gets out of
Speaker 1: a cell. They're almost in a way like putting a
Speaker 1: dam on a river, controlling the flow of materials rather
Speaker 1: than just letting a free flow in in either direction.
Speaker 1: And so here again this is martial summary of the
Speaker 1: research by Deemer and Bartschfeld. To quote. They first made
Speaker 1: vesicles spherical blobs with a watery core surrounded by two
Speaker 1: lipid layers. Then the researchers dried the vesicles and the
Speaker 1: lipids reorganized into a multi layered structure like a stack
Speaker 1: of pancakes. Strands of DNA previously floating in the water
Speaker 1: became trapped between the layers. When the researchers added water again,
Speaker 1: the vesicles reformed with DNA inside them. This was a
Speaker 1: step towards a simple cell. So you're beginning to see
Speaker 1: ways that again you know, it's not knowing that this
Speaker 1: is how it's happened, but very intriguing ways to imagine
Speaker 1: cells structurally coming together for the first time. If you've
Speaker 1: got chemical reactions in reducing concentrated water that are creating
Speaker 1: molecules like DNA or RNA, and then somehow that DNA
Speaker 1: or RNA is getting trapped inside layers of lipids, it
Speaker 1: can start to function like the cells we know today.
Speaker 1: Very cool. Yeah, I love it. It's the the primordial water,
Speaker 1: so the the inundation all in one. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: of course again the key thing being these repeating wet
Speaker 1: dry cycles as a means of getting the constituents of
Speaker 1: life suspended inside protective lipid membranes. And uh and Marshall
Speaker 1: of course mentions a bunch of other stuff. Actually, they're
Speaker 1: they're subsequent research by Deemer and colleagues that has continued
Speaker 1: to drive this logic forward. There's also some cool stuff
Speaker 1: in this article about ways that you could think about
Speaker 1: about wet and dry cycles is almost kind of an
Speaker 1: evolutionary pressure on early chemical constituents of life by like
Speaker 1: repeatedly wetting them and drying them out. There was this
Speaker 1: process of uh, sort of winnowing out the weaker forms
Speaker 1: of molecules and allowing the more robust types of life,
Speaker 1: precursor molecules to to survive, a kind of evolution before
Speaker 1: there's actually a cell, which is which is pretty interesting possibility.
Speaker 1: But anyway, towards the end of the article it starts
Speaker 1: talking about, well, so specifically, what kind of situation. Are
Speaker 1: these scientists really imagining like where life could have arisen?
Speaker 1: And so several researchers mentioned different ideas. One is the
Speaker 1: idea of a partially flooded meteorite impact crater drying out
Speaker 1: in the sun, maybe with streams running into and out
Speaker 1: of it somehow, or perhaps a volcanic hot spring pool
Speaker 1: with wet and dry cycles that its edges. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this goes against the traditional idea of the
Speaker 1: earliest life forms arising in the ocean, But I like
Speaker 1: this new image that it's almost the kind of like
Speaker 1: a tidal zone of a tiny ocean that may have
Speaker 1: been no bigger than a puddle, you know, the part
Speaker 1: of the rock surface that gets wet and then dries
Speaker 1: out in the sun and then gets wet again could
Speaker 1: be where the the oldest of our ancestors came from.
Speaker 1: And then the article also mentions a bunch of other
Speaker 1: studies that it comes back I think to be even
Speaker 1: handed with reasons for thinking that oceanic origins, particularly those
Speaker 1: around deep sea hydrothermal vents, could still be viable explanations.
Speaker 1: According to some other experts, there's even like one hypothesis
Speaker 1: about how you could pretend really create wet dry cycling
Speaker 1: in and around the rocks, lining deeps events. So the
Speaker 1: article as a whole is definitely worth a read. But
Speaker 1: then one last thing that's cool is he connects this
Speaker 1: strain of research to some of the goals of the
Speaker 1: Mars Perseverance Rover around the Ja zero Crater on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars, because it's going to be looking for
Speaker 1: possible signs of past or present life on Mars in
Speaker 1: similar wet dry conditions. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that that makes sense. So yeah, you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: we're looking for the possible uh birth of of of life,
Speaker 1: the birth of a new pantheon on Mars. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: recurring blessings of Hoppy on another planet. Yeah space Hoppy.
Speaker 1: I love it, uh, And I also love that that
Speaker 1: we were able to, you know, to begin by by
Speaker 1: talking about about mythology and um in irrigation and and
Speaker 1: get into these these questions about life itself that ultimately
Speaker 1: kind of loop back around into the mythological you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the areas that are that are contemplated by both uh,
Speaker 1: you know, science and mythology. Oh, this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that really gets my brain tingling. Yeah, absolutely, And like
Speaker 1: we said, we uh, there are various jumping off points
Speaker 1: from here, so we we I guess we can ask
Speaker 1: the listeners to chime in, like what what would you
Speaker 1: like next? You want us to do you want us
Speaker 1: to talk about of Cyrus in a future episode? Do
Speaker 1: you want us to to go all in on irrigation technology?
Speaker 1: Or maybe you just wanted to go like partially in,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, knee deep in irrigation technology. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's your comfort level? Because it's I was looking through
Speaker 1: some of it earlier and it's you know, super fascinating. Again,
Speaker 1: human human civilization is kind of a story of irrigation technology.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to discuss. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and close it out there, But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where to find
Speaker 1: them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: and you can get that, oh pretty much anywhere wherever
Speaker 1: you get podcasts. Uh, you'll find core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, we try and slip in an artifact on Wednesdays.
Speaker 1: Listener mails on Monday and Friday is weird how cinema.
Speaker 1: That's the far less science, far less uh depth. It's
Speaker 1: all about the weird films in those episodes, and then
Speaker 1: we run a vault episode of rerun over the weekend.
Speaker 1: So however, you get the show if the platform gives
Speaker 1: you the power to do so, just rate, review, and subscribe.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us with feedback on this episode or any other, to
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. They persist joints
Speaker 1: four point four po