Speaker 1: Is this a dagger which I see before me, the
Speaker 1: handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch THEE. I
Speaker 1: have THEE not, And yet I see THEE. Still art
Speaker 1: thou not fatal visions sensible to feeling, as to sight,
Speaker 1: or art Thou but a dagger of the mind, a
Speaker 1: false creation proceeding from the heat of rests brain. I
Speaker 1: see THEE yet in form as palpable as this which
Speaker 1: now I draw Thou, marshalst me the way that I
Speaker 1: was going, and such an instrument I was to use.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: In today's episode and likely a follow up episode, I
Speaker 1: believe to be discussing daggers, but not just your common
Speaker 1: everyday daggers and dirks like I know you know most
Speaker 1: of you are carrying around. But no, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: busting out some awesome plus two and plus three daggers
Speaker 1: with all sorts of sacred, sacrificial, historically or culturally significant connotations.
Speaker 1: As is often the case with these multi part explorations,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna kind of open the dagger drawer here.
Speaker 1: We're going to pull some out and see what we learn,
Speaker 1: see what we discover. Not entirely sure what all the
Speaker 1: connections are necessarily gonna be, but I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: have some interesting artifacts to discuss here.
Speaker 3: Were you inspired to do this topic because of recent
Speaker 3: events in your D and D campaign?
Speaker 1: I mean, there are always cool daggers in D and
Speaker 1: D campaign, so I certainly reflected on that a fair amount,
Speaker 1: but no real recent things that I can think of.
Speaker 1: I think my current character doesn't even use a dagger.
Speaker 1: I mean she probably has one, like your character, unless
Speaker 1: they just are not allowed to have sharp objects. Probably
Speaker 1: has a dagger, or you'll have the opportunity to pick
Speaker 1: one up here there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at this point, I forget how many cult daggers
Speaker 3: we've stashed into our bag of holding. We got a
Speaker 3: bunch in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just keep throwing them in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, the shopkeepers want to buy them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the return rate you don't get much back on those,
Speaker 1: the cultest daggers. I mean, I guess they've been used
Speaker 1: a lot. They're a little bit dull, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit cursed from their usage. But in that
Speaker 1: we kind of get into something we will be discussing,
Speaker 1: and that is like, the dagger does seem to have
Speaker 1: a special place sometimes in our hearts, sometimes literally in
Speaker 1: our hearts, I guess. But the dagger itself is of
Speaker 1: course a human weapon invention that goes way back in
Speaker 1: our development of tools. Our ancestors, of course took up
Speaker 1: various nature facts, you know, found objects, and some of
Speaker 1: these might have taken on the form of a dagger,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of a talent or two, and
Speaker 1: eventually they went on to create full fledged artifacts, so
Speaker 1: short stabbing weapons crafted from say flint, ivory or bone,
Speaker 1: along with some other material to sort of bind things
Speaker 1: together to make it, you know, more than just one
Speaker 1: found implement, but multiple implements brought together into a proper artifact.
Speaker 3: I was just trying to think, is there a formal
Speaker 3: dividing line between the concept of a knife and the
Speaker 3: concept of a dagger. I can say my usage, which
Speaker 3: is that I would think of a knife as a
Speaker 3: all purpose utility tool, whereas a dagger is a weapon.
Speaker 3: It's something made for violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it does, it gets it gets a
Speaker 1: little subjective at times, for sure. I was reading a
Speaker 1: bit about this because you know, on one hand, you'll
Speaker 1: have plenty of examples throughout history where someone had a
Speaker 1: blade that certainly had a utility function. This would be
Speaker 1: your knife for you know, cutting through bits of rope
Speaker 1: or perhaps vegetation, maybe you use it in butchery. But
Speaker 1: then it might also be a weapon that not only
Speaker 1: can be used as a weapon, because certainly any knife
Speaker 1: can be used as a weapon against say other humans
Speaker 1: or you know, hostile organisms of one sort or the other.
Speaker 1: But then also sometimes you have you have weapons like this,
Speaker 1: You have blades that kind of a dual purpose like this,
Speaker 1: this is your working blade, but if me be it's
Speaker 1: also your stab in blade.
Speaker 3: Huh, and maybe you're eating blade too, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know it's going to vary culturally and individually.
Speaker 1: It's going to depend on the exact size of the weapon.
Speaker 1: It is worth noting that while the origins of the
Speaker 1: dagger are essentially like vanish into prehistory, you know, to
Speaker 1: the extent that we can even know these things, it
Speaker 1: does seem to predate the sword, but is not as
Speaker 1: old as the spear. And I think this makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense when we sort of get into how
Speaker 1: we divide up some of these weapons. I turn to
Speaker 1: book I frequently reference, and that is Brian Fagan's The
Speaker 1: Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World, and there's a
Speaker 1: chapter in there dealing with spears and swords and so
Speaker 1: forth that I've probably referenced in the past that he
Speaker 1: wrote with Thomas Hewlett, and they point out that scholars
Speaker 1: tend to decide what is a dagger, a dirk or
Speaker 1: a sword based purely on blade length, though this method
Speaker 1: in and of itself doesn't consider the method by which
Speaker 1: the blade would have been used. So it's just kind
Speaker 1: of like, all right, is it how long is it?
Speaker 1: Is it shorter than a sword? Well, that looks like
Speaker 1: a dirk. Oh, it's shorter than a dirk. It's a dagger.
Speaker 1: And that's about, you know, as nuance as they get,
Speaker 1: you know, leave the other details, I guess, for more
Speaker 1: detailed examination of the artifact. But in broad strokes, if
Speaker 1: you will, that the spear, of course keeps an adversary
Speaker 1: at a distance, and at a considerable distance if you
Speaker 1: get into, you know, examples of throwing the spear one
Speaker 1: way or another, which we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: but then if the enemy's closer, while the sword allows
Speaker 1: for a close quarters combat but still keeps the adversary
Speaker 1: at a modest distance and also allows for a fair
Speaker 1: amount of force, but then when we come in even tighter, well,
Speaker 1: then we get into dirk range and then dagger range,
Speaker 1: and the weapon becomes increasingly close combat, you know, risky.
Speaker 1: And also, while all hand weapons are an extension of
Speaker 1: the human body, you know, factored into the mind's body schema,
Speaker 1: the dagger is just about as intimate a weapon as
Speaker 1: you can get. You know that with a dagger, death
Speaker 1: and bloodshed are close, like they are, like it's I
Speaker 1: think it's ultimately one of the things that's so hypnotizing
Speaker 1: and ticing and like symbolically potent about the dagger is that, like,
Speaker 1: to get closer you'd be dealing with, like with a
Speaker 1: weapon you'd be dealing with like brass knuckles or something, right,
Speaker 1: something that's essentially just parts of the human body slightly augmented,
Speaker 1: but in terms of a weapon that one bears and
Speaker 1: again updates the body schema and kind of makes it
Speaker 1: a part of you, Like, the dagger is the most
Speaker 1: intimate of weapons.
Speaker 3: I think about that in the context of what often
Speaker 3: happened in combat between knights wearing plate armor. So if
Speaker 3: you're both wearing plate armor, it's going to be difficult
Speaker 3: to hurt each other with a sword and doing cuts
Speaker 3: and thrusts that just bounce off the plate. So often
Speaker 3: the way these duels or fights on the battlefield would
Speaker 3: go would be that you would initially trade blows with longer,
Speaker 3: heavier weapons at a distance, maybe like a pole arm.
Speaker 3: You probably also have a mace with you, and the
Speaker 3: goal would be to knock your opponent down on the
Speaker 3: ground or to tire them out and injure them with
Speaker 3: blunt force, and then usually into the fight by grappling
Speaker 3: with them and trying to get a killing stroke, by
Speaker 3: getting up close and using a short blade like a
Speaker 3: Rondell dagger to try to stab in between the plates
Speaker 3: of the armor or through the face plate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where it gets really, it gets really
Speaker 1: I get really squeamish thinking about it. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it would seem this is of course going
Speaker 1: to vary greatly by you know, individual and culture and
Speaker 1: proximity to these various martial arts, if you will, But
Speaker 1: it feels less of a like a dignified art form
Speaker 1: of battle, and it becomes more just about like personal
Speaker 1: murder and death at that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of the pretty illusions of heroic warfare kind
Speaker 3: of fade away when you get that close and you
Speaker 3: see what's really going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that makes it such an interesting focal point
Speaker 1: I think for so many authors and artists throughout time, Like,
Speaker 1: there's something about a knife fight that is frightening and
Speaker 1: also tantalizing. So, you know, it should come as no
Speaker 1: surprise that the Dagger was a frequent point of contemplation
Speaker 1: for author Jorae Luis Borges. Alongside things like mirrors and labyrinths.
Speaker 1: You know, knife fighters pop up again and again his
Speaker 1: short stories, including nineteen sixty nine's The Encounter, which I
Speaker 1: think has also I think it was published in The
Speaker 1: New Yorker under a different title back in the day,
Speaker 1: but in the collection I have it is listed as
Speaker 1: The Encounter, and it deals with a violent encounter between
Speaker 1: a pair of knife fighters or ku chi euros and
Speaker 1: the author. In the narrator anyway, it comes to believe
Speaker 1: that it was not the two men who fought each
Speaker 1: other ultimately, but the two antique dueling daggers that they wielded.
Speaker 3: So it's dagger versus dagger with some human pilots tacked on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna read from Borges and translation here it
Speaker 1: was the weapons, not the men, that fought. And then
Speaker 1: later this passage they had sought each other for a
Speaker 1: long time, down the long roads of the province, and
Speaker 1: at last they had found each other. By that time,
Speaker 1: their gauchos were dust in the blades of those knives.
Speaker 1: They're slept and lurked a human grudge. Things last longer
Speaker 1: than men. Who can say whether the story ends here,
Speaker 1: Who can say that they will never meet again?
Speaker 3: Well, by that logic, the bones of the men could
Speaker 3: meet again somehow.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, but yeah, something but I like it. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: something like this could be said of any weapon, or
Speaker 1: any antique weapon especially, but yeah, the dagger, especially via
Speaker 1: its closeness, it's intimacy. You know, it seems especially apt
Speaker 1: for this kind of reading. You know, perhaps it's just
Speaker 1: so close to our own bodies and our own wills
Speaker 1: it becomes like a focal point of our most violent
Speaker 1: designs and desires that it becomes something more.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, And I don't think we have to
Speaker 3: speculate about the symbolic importance of the dagger. I mean,
Speaker 3: we can literally just see that a huge number of
Speaker 3: the daggers produced and preserved throughout history are things that,
Speaker 3: as far as we can tell, might never have actually
Speaker 3: been used, you know, might never have been used for violence.
Speaker 3: They were symbols, They were decorations. They were something that
Speaker 3: people held and kept on their body to look a
Speaker 3: certain way and to mean something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whether they were actually used in any kind of
Speaker 1: a particular ritual of use or ritual without use, you know,
Speaker 1: like what was it used to cut open a you know,
Speaker 1: an animal in some sort of a practice, or was
Speaker 1: it just sort of presented or was it more what
Speaker 1: we might think of as decoration like in some cases
Speaker 1: We don't know, But yeah, the dagger takes on this
Speaker 1: important symbolic place in various cultures throughout time.
Speaker 3: In fact, I would not say this is not just
Speaker 3: true of daggers. I would extend this to weapons in
Speaker 3: all times and places as used by humans. Clearly, I
Speaker 3: mean obviously they are in many cases actually used for
Speaker 3: violence or defense. But that's not the only reason people
Speaker 3: get them. You know, people don't just have weapons because
Speaker 3: they will literally actually have to use them at some point.
Speaker 3: A lot of it's about how they make people feel,
Speaker 3: how you feel when you have a weapon. It's like
Speaker 3: a psychological self management issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's something to be said too, how we
Speaker 1: even end up buying weapons that, first of all, have
Speaker 1: no conceivable real life purpose. We're not planning to use them,
Speaker 1: either for a utilitarian purpose or even or even in battle,
Speaker 1: like people will buy things like cling on battle accents
Speaker 1: or whatnot.
Speaker 3: You know, this is my Samurai sword.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know, and again it may
Speaker 1: be tied to an actual culture, it may be tied
Speaker 1: to a misrepresentation of a culture or something from a
Speaker 1: science fiction fantasy show. But yeah, it still takes on
Speaker 1: this important meaning. And there's something about holding it in
Speaker 1: our hands. By the way, the knives in that Borgz story,
Speaker 1: he describes them a fair link for a short story.
Speaker 1: So I looked up some images of what these things
Speaker 1: actually looked like, and I have a picture here for you, Joe. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the two eyes that the Gauchos would use around the
Speaker 1: time that the story is taking place consisted of two
Speaker 1: different sorts of blades. There was the facan this would
Speaker 1: like a short and it almost looks like a bayonet.
Speaker 3: Kind of long, almost dirk like, you know, I would
Speaker 3: almost think of this as a short sword.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does look almost like a short sword.
Speaker 1: It has like a either a U or an S
Speaker 1: shaped crossguard on it. And then there was another blade
Speaker 1: called the Dagga, which was which had like a really
Speaker 1: short guard, so no S or U shapes, and it
Speaker 1: was apparently double edged. And the Facan especially was a
Speaker 1: blade that was both something that they would use for
Speaker 1: work and also if they were to engage in a
Speaker 1: knife fight, this would be their blade. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into our dagger selections for this episode. We
Speaker 1: came up with a whole list of possible choices sort
Speaker 1: of like get things started. And I have to admit
Speaker 1: this first one that I picked my selection here has
Speaker 1: everything to do with fantasy and RPGs because it sounds
Speaker 1: like something from a fantasy or RP. It sounds like
Speaker 1: it could be the name of a Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 1: adventure module. Well, let's hear it, and that is the
Speaker 1: rock Crystal dagger of the Ivory Lady. So many questions, right,
Speaker 1: is it made of rock crystal? Who's the Ivory Lady?
Speaker 1: What's her deal? Why does she have this blade or
Speaker 1: why does she want this blade?
Speaker 3: And so forth? What's the quest? Yeah, of the Ivory Lady.
Speaker 3: It makes me think like our Lady of Perpetual Knife.
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, let's start with the lady in question here,
Speaker 1: So not to be confused with the Ivory Bengal Lady,
Speaker 1: which I was momentarily sidetracked by, because this is also
Speaker 1: a fascinating sounding historical tidbit. The Ivory Bengal Lady is
Speaker 1: a fourth century CE skeleton found in North Yorkshire, England
Speaker 1: and apparently of North African origin, so not her different lady.
Speaker 1: The Ivory Lady in question here that we'll be discussing
Speaker 1: was found in southwestern Spain, near Seville and adjacent to
Speaker 1: the Tolos de Montellierio gravesite. The lady in question first
Speaker 1: believed to be a man till I believe a twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one analysis proved otherwise, was a woman of some importance,
Speaker 1: if not leadership, during the Iberian Copper Age. This would
Speaker 1: have been between thirty two hundred and twenty two hundred BCE.
Speaker 1: The main source I was looking at here for this
Speaker 1: is Amologen and peptide analysis reveal female leadership in copper age, Iberia.
Speaker 1: And this was by census Penna at all. This was
Speaker 1: published in Scientific Reports. It's a really interesting article that
Speaker 1: of course does a good job it just sort of
Speaker 1: laying out what was found, what we know about the
Speaker 1: body of the Ivory Lady, and what it signifies. But
Speaker 1: also they make this case that she was evidently like
Speaker 1: a eating social figure at the time, so perhaps a
Speaker 1: highly ranking priestess, and not only like a highly ranking priestess,
Speaker 1: but like perhaps the highly ranking priestess of her time,
Speaker 1: someone who would have commanded a great deal of power
Speaker 1: and authority among her people, and in doing so like
Speaker 1: retained that aura after death, like for generations. So the
Speaker 1: Ivory Lady in question here was buried with an African
Speaker 1: elephant's tusk. Again this is in an Iberian Spain, an
Speaker 1: ivory comb, an ostrocheg shell, a flint dagger inlaid with amber,
Speaker 1: which in and of itself is a pretty fascinating sounding dagger,
Speaker 1: but also a crystal dagger, which I'll come back to.
Speaker 1: She also had a large ceramic plate bearing trace elements
Speaker 1: of wine and cannabis, and some of these items seem
Speaker 1: to have been buried with her, while others include the
Speaker 1: crystal dagger, were left as offering some time after her death.
Speaker 1: Its thought that the crystal dagger was placed maybe some
Speaker 1: eighty years after her death.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can find images of this dagger online if
Speaker 1: you look for ivory lady, crystal dagger, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I included an image here for your Joe though, and
Speaker 1: you can see the blade and the reconstructed hilt here.
Speaker 1: So it was composed of rock crystal and had an
Speaker 1: ivory handle. The ivory, as with the other examples of ivory,
Speaker 1: would have been imported, and it was decorated with some
Speaker 1: ninety different decorative beads made of mother of pearl. The
Speaker 1: rock crystal itself. This is a transparent, colorless variety of quartz,
Speaker 1: so it's essentially a quartz dagger. But I think rock crystal,
Speaker 1: of course, is just going to sound a little more exciting.
Speaker 1: But still it does very much look like crystal.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: You can imagine this thing perhaps being held up to
Speaker 1: the light, be it fire light or sunlight, and it
Speaker 1: being quite an evocative site.
Speaker 3: Casting rainbows everywhere. Yeah, I mean perhaps wow. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: I'm trying to tell just looking at the picture if
Speaker 3: I'm seeing this correctly, So you said it is transparent
Speaker 3: or translucent, this is a blade that you can see
Speaker 3: through to some extent.
Speaker 1: To some extent, yeah, one gets the impression that would
Speaker 1: have done interesting things.
Speaker 3: With the light. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so clearly this is a rather different beast than
Speaker 1: the working and fighting blades we were talking about earlier, Like,
Speaker 1: this is clearly an item of prestige, of symbolic importance,
Speaker 1: and it was finally crafted. So it's a combination of
Speaker 1: rare materials, imported materials, and also just a high level
Speaker 1: of craftsmanship, especially when it comes to the working of
Speaker 1: the rock crystal, which I'm to understand would have been
Speaker 1: extra labor intensive and also maybe not as ideal for
Speaker 1: actual use if you were intending to stab a bunch
Speaker 1: of people with it or use it for some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, day to day sort of purpose. So
Speaker 1: it was something that would have signified class and or power.
Speaker 1: In this paper, they also include an illustration of what
Speaker 1: they think the lady, the Ivory Lady might have looked
Speaker 1: like in life. I included this for you here as well, Joe,
Speaker 1: and you can see her seated in a position of authority,
Speaker 1: and you'll notice that they've depicted her with like red
Speaker 1: pigment over part of her torso. And this is actually
Speaker 1: really key and quite interesting. This would be due to
Speaker 1: the red and the red ranges from like a bright
Speaker 1: scarlet to a brick red form of mercury sulfide. This
Speaker 1: is cinnabar, and this has been used in various places
Speaker 1: around the world for pigmentation and everything from art and
Speaker 1: clothing to cosmetics and body adornment, and it's also been
Speaker 1: used in various traditional medicines as well. But again it
Speaker 1: is mercury so far, so it is quite toxic.
Speaker 3: And we were not recommending it.
Speaker 1: Yes, ye, do not decide that you want to go
Speaker 1: upgrade your look with cinebar. Now it is toxic. And
Speaker 1: we know that she used cinnebar because she had quote
Speaker 1: striking strikingly high levels of mercury in the bones and
Speaker 1: these revealed intense anti mortem exposure to cinebar, So she
Speaker 1: would have she would have been using cinnabar on a
Speaker 1: level that she wouldn't have just picked up through just
Speaker 1: sort of like casual usage, like she had privileged access
Speaker 1: to this stuff. So this would again, as with her
Speaker 1: association with wine and cannabis. The argument here is that
Speaker 1: she probably had some sort of priestly role in the society.
Speaker 1: Now I mentioned already that this grave side is in
Speaker 1: close proximity to another grave site, that Tolos de Monteluerio site,
Speaker 1: and there are other women buried there as well, and
Speaker 1: they also have high levels of mercury due to cinebar
Speaker 1: and these were seemingly buried, according to the paper, two
Speaker 1: or three generations later. And so the assumption here is
Speaker 1: this they would have been buried close to her grave
Speaker 1: in an attempt to sort of connect them to her,
Speaker 1: or because they were you know, they were part of
Speaker 1: a lineage that was connected to her. And the authors
Speaker 1: of the paper make an argument for a powerful priestess
Speaker 1: class in this coppy age Iberian culture. One of the
Speaker 1: later buried females had an extra toe on each foot, incidentally,
Speaker 1: which they point out would have possibly been interpreted as
Speaker 1: a signifier of her special class and powers.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So again, the argument here is that she was
Speaker 1: an important person, and perhaps more than that, perhaps the
Speaker 1: most important person in her society at the time. And
Speaker 1: so this is not necessarily to say that The argument
Speaker 1: then therefore is that Copper Age Iberian people were part
Speaker 1: of a matriarchal society, though some might make that case,
Speaker 1: but I believe based on the reading here, like the
Speaker 1: main argument they're making is that previously it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the default assumption was, oh, they were a patriarchal society,
Speaker 1: and we can kind of see that in the idea
Speaker 1: that when we first discovered the Ivory Lady, we thought
Speaker 1: she was the Ivory Man, and then we came to
Speaker 1: realize that error later on with additional analysis, and so
Speaker 1: the idea here would be that women, and especially the
Speaker 1: Ivory woman, enjoyed a great deal of power in a
Speaker 1: society that was socially and politically more complex than we
Speaker 1: previously thought, or more complex than we previously gave them
Speaker 1: credit for.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Sadly, when it comes to the exact significance of the
Speaker 1: rock Crystal Dagger, you know, we just have to speculate again.
Speaker 1: A prestige item made with great skill and imported costly materials,
Speaker 1: we can only assume it had sacred or even magical
Speaker 1: attributes in the eyes of the people who crafted it
Speaker 1: and carried carried on with it, and ultimately buried it
Speaker 1: with the Ivory lady, and that adjacent gravesite also reveals
Speaker 1: other examples of rock crystal artifacts, so I don't believe
Speaker 1: there has been another rock crystal dagger discovered, but there
Speaker 1: are arrowheads and other examples of the craftsmanship with rock crystal,
Speaker 1: so the item wasn't completely a one off. But as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, the surviving artifact is one
Speaker 1: of a kind.
Speaker 3: You know, this kind of connects to something I've been
Speaker 3: thinking about wanting to do on the show for a while.
Speaker 3: I haven't locked in exactly what the topic would be yet,
Speaker 3: but something about interesting transparent materials in the ancient world.
Speaker 3: You know, there are some stories in the ancient texts
Speaker 3: hard to verify exactly how true they are about things
Speaker 3: that sound like transparent rocks or something in cases where
Speaker 3: it would be hard to imagine something of that sort.
Speaker 3: But then we do have these, you know, these rock
Speaker 3: crystals that are at least partially transparent or translucent like
Speaker 3: we have here with the dagger, So yeah, I think
Speaker 3: be worth looking at sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of the episode of Invention
Speaker 1: that we did on sunglasses and getting into some of
Speaker 1: these older accounts that may or may not have been
Speaker 1: something like sunglasses. Yeah, and and of course we also
Speaker 1: we've talked a little bit about the history of glass
Speaker 1: and mirrors and so forth as well.
Speaker 3: All right, you ready to look at another ancient dagger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm putting this one back in the drawer. And yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead and pull another one out.
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk for a minute here about the
Speaker 3: bush Barrow dagger. The Bush Barrow dagger is a partially
Speaker 3: preserved artifact from Bronze Age Britain found inside the ancient
Speaker 3: barrow grave known as Bush Barrow, which was excavated in
Speaker 3: the year eighteen oh eight by an English antiquarian named
Speaker 3: William Cunnington who was working for a patron named Sir
Speaker 3: Richard cult Whore. Rob if got a photo taken from
Speaker 3: a bit up in the air a bit overhead that
Speaker 3: shows Bush Barrow and some of the surrounding grave sites
Speaker 3: in this field in England. Bush Barrow is a mound
Speaker 3: shaped burial site also known as a tumulus, located on
Speaker 3: a ridge about one kilometer southwest of Stone Hinge, which
Speaker 3: is so it's part of a larger grave complex known
Speaker 3: as the Normanton Down Barrow Cemetery. So if you stand
Speaker 3: at Bush Barrow. You are actually looking out directly over
Speaker 3: the stone circle at Stone Hinge. It's the good seats.
Speaker 3: The bush Barrow Grave dates back to around nineteen hundred BCE,
Speaker 3: give or take a century or so, so this is
Speaker 3: a roughly four thousand year old burial and it is
Speaker 3: famous for being one of the richest Bronze Age tombs
Speaker 3: in Britain when measured by the quality and quantity of
Speaker 3: the grave goods deposited with the body inside. So who
Speaker 3: is this grave four? We don't know the person's name,
Speaker 3: but it was obviously a figure of great power and status,
Speaker 3: maybe a great priest or a great warrior or political leader.
Speaker 3: Usually this person is referred to as the Bush Barrow Chieftain.
Speaker 3: If you want to look up some of these artifacts
Speaker 3: from Bush Barrow online, you can find good photos of
Speaker 3: them and some good video content about them hosted by
Speaker 3: the Wilchair Museum and by the Wessex Museums. I think
Speaker 3: the Wilchair Museum might fall under the Wessex Museums, I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure, but the Wiltshire Museum website. I found
Speaker 3: a good video hosted by them that sort of goes
Speaker 3: through the artifacts from Bush Barrow one by one by
Speaker 3: and it's hosted by an expert affiliated with the museum.
Speaker 3: So before I get to the main dagger, I want
Speaker 3: to mention a few other things from this grave that
Speaker 3: are quite interesting. One is known as the gold lozenge.
Speaker 3: Lozenge is not just the thing you know grandparents take
Speaker 3: for when you got a cold. It's another word for
Speaker 3: a rhombus or a diamond shape. So to picture this artifact,
Speaker 3: think of a flat, very thin gold plate shaped like
Speaker 3: a diamond. It's about one hundred and eighty four millimeters
Speaker 3: long by one hundred and fifty six millimeters wide, so
Speaker 3: that's a little over seven inches by six inches and
Speaker 3: it's about one millimeter thick, so very thin. And on
Speaker 3: the Wessex Museum's website they include a passage about the
Speaker 3: discovery of this lozenge in the in the mound from
Speaker 3: the text of the original excavation report. So the passage
Speaker 3: starts off describing attempts by William Cunnington and several allied
Speaker 3: farmers to dig into the mound. At first they failed
Speaker 3: to get into the grave, but eventually they break through
Speaker 3: to the floor of the barrow in September eighteen oh
Speaker 3: eight and they write, quote, we discovered the skeleton of
Speaker 3: a stout and tall man lying from south to north.
Speaker 3: The extreme length of his thigh bone was twenty inches.
Speaker 3: Immediately over the breast of the skeleton was a large
Speaker 3: plate of gold Tumuli plate twenty six, in the form
Speaker 3: of a lozenge and measuring seven by six inches. It
Speaker 3: was fixed to a thin piece of wood over the
Speaker 3: edges of which the gold was lapped. It is perforated
Speaker 3: at top and bottom for the purpose probably of fastening
Speaker 3: it to the dress as a breastplate. The even surface
Speaker 3: of this noble ornament is relieved by indented lines, checks
Speaker 3: and zigzags, following the shape of the outline and forming
Speaker 3: lozenge within lozenge, diminishing gradually towards the center. Rob I
Speaker 3: included a picture for you to look at here, and
Speaker 3: I think if you zoom in you can see some
Speaker 3: of these interesting geometric etchings where you see lozenge within lozenge,
Speaker 3: like the vision of Ezekiel, but with sharp angles.
Speaker 1: Wow, I just have to say, especially in these images,
Speaker 1: which again there's no like reconstruction of the clothing. It's
Speaker 1: not placed on a human body or anything, is just
Speaker 1: set against a field of black. I mean this, I
Speaker 1: would mistake this for something like a solar sail or.
Speaker 1: It feels cosmic. You know. There are no etchings that
Speaker 1: I can see of anything like an animal or a
Speaker 1: human on them. It really feels kind of alien.
Speaker 3: Much like a solar sale. It is made to catch
Speaker 3: the light. And here's another way may relate to a
Speaker 3: solar sale. It may have an astronomical orientation. So speaking
Speaker 3: of those angles, the angles within angles, one really interesting
Speaker 3: thing about this gold lozenge is that at the two
Speaker 3: sharper points of the diamond shape, the points on the
Speaker 3: longer side, the meeting angle of the outline is eighty
Speaker 3: one degrees, which also happens to be at the latitude
Speaker 3: of Stone Hinge, the same as the angle between the
Speaker 3: sunrise at the winter solstice and the sunrise at the
Speaker 3: summer solstice. That, among other features, including the association with
Speaker 3: Stone Hinge through the burial, has led some experts to
Speaker 3: speculate that the bush Barrow lozenge is maybe not just
Speaker 3: a decoration that happens to have these angles, but it
Speaker 3: has some kind of relationship to astronomy or to the
Speaker 3: movement of the heavens. At least of the sun. Maybe
Speaker 3: it could be used as some kind of astronomical orienting
Speaker 3: or calculator tool, perhaps in conjunction with other tools or infrastructure,
Speaker 3: such as the alignment of stone hinge itself. We don't know.
Speaker 3: That's interesting possibility to think about. And even if it
Speaker 3: is not actually an astronomical tool of any kind, then
Speaker 3: this is just a decorative motif. It's interesting to imagine
Speaker 3: that maybe there would be esthetic reasons for making jewelry
Speaker 3: intentionally with the exact angle between the soulsticial dawns. It
Speaker 3: seems to me if so, this would imply a kind
Speaker 3: of sacred attitude towards certain mathematical ratios relating to the
Speaker 3: heavenly bodies. In any case, the precise and complex geometrical
Speaker 3: design of the lozenge indicates a really sophisticated understanding of
Speaker 3: mathematics and probably astronomy. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean again, you can kind of you
Speaker 1: can see that when you look at this artifact, it
Speaker 1: feels precise.
Speaker 3: You know, it has their size.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but just you know, without actually busting out
Speaker 1: a ruler like it just reads in the mind as such, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah. Yeah. Other things from this grave include a
Speaker 3: gold belt hook, which I think would be used to
Speaker 3: hold a dagger in place. There was a ceremonial mace
Speaker 3: where the haft is banded with decorative bones and the
Speaker 3: club head is made from a fossil sponge that has
Speaker 3: been polished smooth. There are a pair of daggers also
Speaker 3: and an axe. So let's look at one of those
Speaker 3: two daggers, the more famous one, the one known as
Speaker 3: the bush barrow dagger. Now in this case is sort
Speaker 3: of the opposite of the rock crystal dagger of the
Speaker 3: Ivory Lady. In the blade I think is the least
Speaker 3: interesting part. The blade is made of bronze. There are
Speaker 3: notes by a few sources that the dagger may have
Speaker 3: been made or forged in Brittany, which is now in
Speaker 3: northern France. The original wooden handle is mostly gone disintegrated,
Speaker 3: but it has been replaced in display at the museum,
Speaker 3: where it's now held with a modern wooden handle reconstruction,
Speaker 3: on which are mounted the few pieces of the handle
Speaker 3: that are still intact. And it's those pieces of the
Speaker 3: hand that have attracted the most attention and make the
Speaker 3: bush barrow dagger so extraordinary. So what's the deal? In
Speaker 3: its original form? The wooden handle of the stagger was
Speaker 3: decorated with tens of thousands of microscopically tiny gold studs,
Speaker 3: so not coated, not made of gold. It wasn't a
Speaker 3: handle that was solid gold. It wasn't coated in a
Speaker 3: single flat piece of gold leaf. It was a wooden
Speaker 3: handle that had these tiny tiny holes in it, bored
Speaker 3: with a tight with a little bronze all probably, and
Speaker 3: then it had been coated in some kind of resin,
Speaker 3: and into those tiny microscopic holes, thousands and thousands of
Speaker 3: gold pins had been mounted individually into the wood. Each
Speaker 3: of these pins about the thickness of a human hair.
Speaker 3: A human hair, of course, convary in thickness. People often
Speaker 3: say that the pins are like one fifth of a
Speaker 3: millimeter wide. They're usually less than a millimeter long, stuck
Speaker 3: vertically into the handle with their heads. The flat ends
Speaker 3: overlapping like scales, like the scales of a fish. And
Speaker 3: they're packed in so tight that there are more than
Speaker 3: a thousand for each square centimeter. Rob I've got some
Speaker 3: pictures for you to look at in the outline here,
Speaker 3: so you can get an idea of the texture of
Speaker 3: these pins all crowded together.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, This is incredible. It reminds me of that
Speaker 1: what is the little device with the pins in it
Speaker 1: that you stick your hand on. It makes an impression
Speaker 1: of your hand the little yeah yeah, yeah, like imagine that,
Speaker 1: but with but much smaller and little little gold pins
Speaker 1: instead of you know, some other metal.
Speaker 3: Yeah hair with pins. And they're all crowded right up
Speaker 3: against each other, in fact, overlapping at the at the ends. Wow.
Speaker 3: And even though I just gave the dimensions, I am
Speaker 3: afraid that some of you hearing this might not be
Speaker 3: understanding how tiny these pins are, how incredible small so
Speaker 3: rob At least I can show you the third picture
Speaker 3: I've got here in the outline shows a bunch of
Speaker 3: the pins that have been separated from their original mounting
Speaker 3: on the wood of the handle. They're just kind of
Speaker 3: scattered as dust in this little dish. They're they're they're
Speaker 3: so tiny you can barely pick out that they're made
Speaker 3: of gold. But of course the gold surfaces when all
Speaker 3: the pins are crowded together, takes on this composite gold appearance.
Speaker 3: But individually they're so small it's hard to read them
Speaker 3: as gold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this picture that you have of them and the
Speaker 1: little dish. It looks it looks like it's crushed up
Speaker 1: straw or something like. That's how tiny it is. It
Speaker 1: doesn't even read as gold particles necessarily.
Speaker 3: It looks like I've been grinding human to put in food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it looks like some sort of a herb.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So by looking at the parts of the handle
Speaker 3: that are preserved and seeing how tightly the studs are packed,
Speaker 3: and then multiplying that density across the total surface area
Speaker 3: of the decorated part of the original handle, experts have
Speaker 3: been able to estimate that the intact dagger would have
Speaker 3: had about one hundred and forty thousand gold pins. In
Speaker 3: one of those videos I mentioned put up by the
Speaker 3: Wheelchair Museum, the curator who's presenting it says, this means
Speaker 3: if you could place one pin per minute, that would
Speaker 3: be nine months of work to work on the handle.
Speaker 3: And indeed, it is hard for me to imagine shaping
Speaker 3: and mounting one of these microscopic pins, much less one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty thousand of them packed so close that
Speaker 3: their ends are overlapping. It really is amazing. And so
Speaker 3: there's also I wanted to mention this a tragic story
Speaker 3: of the original find as told by William Cunnington, quoted
Speaker 3: on the Wessex Museum's exhibit. So this is from his
Speaker 3: text about the dig and he's talking about the discovery
Speaker 3: of the handle and talking about he was doing the
Speaker 3: excavation with a father and son digging team named Stephen
Speaker 3: and John Parker, and he says, quote, the handle of
Speaker 3: wood belonging to the dagger had been richly and most
Speaker 3: singularly ornamented by an immense quantity of minute gold rivets,
Speaker 3: no thicker than the smallest pin. The end of the
Speaker 3: handle had been filled with these small points of gold,
Speaker 3: but in the flat part of the handle these rivets
Speaker 3: had been most elegantly arranged in a Van Dyke pattern,
Speaker 3: so as to procure a novel and most pleasing effect.
Speaker 3: Mister Crocker, talking about their illustrator, who did watercolors of
Speaker 3: the stuff they discovered, has drawn part of the end
Speaker 3: of the handle, which may give you a better idea
Speaker 3: of the whole. When we first discovered these shining points
Speaker 3: of gold, we had no concept of their nature. Otherwise
Speaker 3: we might perhaps have preserved thousands of them, But unfortunately John,
Speaker 3: with his trowel, had scattered them in every direction before
Speaker 3: I had examined them with a glass. Oh no, And
Speaker 3: I've read elsewhere of this event that when they found
Speaker 3: the dagger, the wayver Edit described is that the dagger
Speaker 3: was positioned facing up when it was uncovered, and the
Speaker 3: excavators mistakenly believed that they had come across the blade
Speaker 3: of a spear, and so they were trying to dig
Speaker 3: down deeper to dig out the handle, and apparently Parker's
Speaker 3: trowel just smashed on in there and caused quote a
Speaker 3: scatter of shining points of gold, and so he severely
Speaker 3: damaged the handle by accident.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, that is tragic. By the way, I
Speaker 1: had to look this up. I did not know what
Speaker 1: a Van Dyke pattern is. Maybe I should know what
Speaker 1: that is, but this is like this would be like
Speaker 1: little arrows or points.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a I think of it as like sort
Speaker 3: of like Chevron's I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's one of those. If you look
Speaker 1: up Van Dyke pattern, you're like, you know what it is.
Speaker 1: You see it all the time, especially in like knitted wear,
Speaker 1: not so much in ornamental daggers, at least not today.
Speaker 3: So back to the question, how on earth would bronze
Speaker 3: age crafts people do such delicate work with almost microscopic
Speaker 3: pieces of gold. This would have been again four thousand
Speaker 3: years ago, long before the invention of the magnifying glass.
Speaker 3: How would they do it well? One hypothesis suggested by
Speaker 3: some experts, this is not proven or like the full
Speaker 3: consensus of experts, but it's an idea that is taken seriously,
Speaker 3: is that the craft work was done by children. Oh
Speaker 3: so what's the reasoning here? Well, I was reading a
Speaker 3: few articles talking about this idea. These came out around
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen and when there was some work on this
Speaker 3: being released, and so there was one article I read
Speaker 3: in The Guardian by may of Kennedy, another one in
Speaker 3: The Independent by David Keyes. One thing worth noting is
Speaker 3: that this is not the only dagger ever found with
Speaker 3: these microscopically tiny gold studs. It's just, i think, considered
Speaker 3: the best one or one of the best. And scientists
Speaker 3: have proposed that there may have been an industry producing
Speaker 3: artifacts of this type in Bronze Age Brittany, because that's
Speaker 3: where the greatest number of the gold pin daggers have
Speaker 3: been found. So again that would be you know, across
Speaker 3: the English Channel from England in northern France. The crafts
Speaker 3: people would likely have required special tools to craft the pins,
Speaker 3: to cut them and roll them out into these tiny shapes,
Speaker 3: and then to set them in place. I've read speculation
Speaker 3: that for the latter job for setting them, they might
Speaker 3: have done it with like delicate bone or wooden tweezers.
Speaker 3: But the real question is how do you see what
Speaker 3: you're doing? Again, it's hard to communicate if you haven't
Speaker 3: looked up these magnified pictures. How how tiny these things are.
Speaker 3: The Guardian piece by may If Kennedy describes this child
Speaker 3: goldsmith hypothesis, citing an amusingly named British optician named Ronald B. Rabbits,
Speaker 3: who argues that he says only children, really children and
Speaker 3: young teenagers would naturally have eyesight sharp enough to do
Speaker 3: craft work like this. So if you imagine they started
Speaker 3: working on these crafts around age ten, he said that
Speaker 3: steady work focused on these extremely tiny objects, if you're
Speaker 3: doing this all the time, would leave probably a lot
Speaker 3: of them shortsighted by age fifteen and partially blind by
Speaker 3: twenty hikes. Yeah, and so Rabbits argued that this would,
Speaker 3: you know, leave the young goldsmith's unfit to do many
Speaker 3: other tasks, because if you're, you know, getting to age
Speaker 3: twenty and you're having a hard time seeing things one
Speaker 3: meter in front of you, you would need to be
Speaker 3: cared for in some way. But that maybe these people
Speaker 3: would be taken care of by the community for their
Speaker 3: service as specialists in this valuable trade of gold crafting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you better make me a part of the
Speaker 1: special priest class if you have one? If I just
Speaker 1: burned up my eyesight to make your fancy dagger.
Speaker 3: Yelts Reading from that article in the Independent quote, by
Speaker 3: their early twenties, many would have perceived people and objects
Speaker 3: more than a meter away as just blurred impressions. In
Speaker 3: a world without spectacles, it would have been impossible for
Speaker 3: them to operate normally within society, and they would have
Speaker 3: had no alternative but to continue with and develop their
Speaker 3: microworking crafts. But ironically, that would have made them valuable
Speaker 3: economic assets despite their poor site. You know, I don't think.
Speaker 3: I guess I was aware that people's eyesight often deteriorates
Speaker 3: throughout life, but I guess I wasn't aware how much
Speaker 3: better on average, the eyesight of children and young teenagers
Speaker 3: is even from you know, that of you, that of adults,
Speaker 3: people in their twenties who, again, according to this one
Speaker 3: optician at least, and some other people who have talked
Speaker 3: about this idea, by that point we probably age out
Speaker 3: of being able to do work this small.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have definitely reached and passed the threshold
Speaker 1: in my life where I found myself passing things with small,
Speaker 1: small script to children and saying, hey, can you read
Speaker 1: this for me?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then, of course, you know, turning increasingly to various
Speaker 1: lenses and devices that allow me to to either read
Speaker 1: text or if I'm working on like a miniature painting
Speaker 1: on the shirt, it's like I'm wearing multiple magnifying lenses.
Speaker 1: And then and then I'm I'm left with a rather
Speaker 1: curious situation where I've been painting on a figure that
Speaker 1: is going to be used by fellow adults who also
Speaker 1: have deteriorated vision. Nobody's going to see any of the
Speaker 1: details I've been slaving over, and I cannot see them
Speaker 1: myself without the aid of various lenses.
Speaker 3: But it helps to know they're there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's the fun of it.
Speaker 3: Until you started talking there, I had forgotten, by the
Speaker 3: fact that you paint miniatures, and so yeah, that's so
Speaker 3: you have more experience with this kind of very tiny,
Speaker 3: delicate work using the help of lenses.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, without lenses, like yeah, would would many painters
Speaker 1: be able to I mean, they would be able to
Speaker 1: do something, but you just wouldn't be able to see
Speaker 1: what you were doing. And so I guess yeah that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it does seem like such a tragedy. Well,
Speaker 1: one wonders, though, again you alluded to this, like how
Speaker 1: these skills that they had developed would still be appliable
Speaker 1: to other crafts. You know, maybe maybe maybe not the
Speaker 1: these precise gold work that they were doing obviously when
Speaker 1: they were younger, but maybe there there are other crafting
Speaker 1: skills that they can still utilize at that point in
Speaker 1: their life. I'm thinking especially of fiber arts, baskets and
Speaker 1: so forth, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, yeah, you know. One of these articles I
Speaker 3: just mentioned also quote a museum curator I guess this
Speaker 3: would be at the Wheelchair Museum where these artifacts are
Speaker 3: kept to named David Dawson, who's talking about just being
Speaker 3: astonished at how an artifact with gold work this tiny
Speaker 3: could have been produced and comparing the work done by
Speaker 3: these ancient people in Bronze Age Britain, or maybe not
Speaker 3: in Britain, and you know, in the Bronze Age wherever
Speaker 3: this was made to things done by modern metal workers
Speaker 3: and micro artists who you know, make replica pieces, but
Speaker 3: they are able to work with modern tools, and so
Speaker 3: he cites their official metal worker that they work with
Speaker 3: at the museum, a guy named Neil Burridge, who makes replicas,
Speaker 3: but has called this dagger quote the work of the gods.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting to think that, you know, the thing
Speaker 3: that's so hard to explain the work of the gods
Speaker 3: we don't know, but may well, based on some clues,
Speaker 3: have actually been the work of children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a divine force, ancient aliens. No, just
Speaker 1: good old fashioned child labor.
Speaker 3: But I think this also really drives home what we
Speaker 3: were saying earlier about well the often symbolic nature of
Speaker 3: the dagger design, because I don't you know it with
Speaker 3: something like this, something so intricate and obviously expensive. You know,
Speaker 3: this would have been one of the most probably most
Speaker 3: expensive types of items you could possibly get at this
Speaker 3: time in history. It can't be that this is for
Speaker 3: some functional reason. You know, this is a status item.
Speaker 3: This means something. It doesn't have all these gold pins
Speaker 3: because it's like, oh, yeah, it makes the grip feel better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe it does, but I doubt it. It seems like
Speaker 3: it's got to be that this is for symbolizing power
Speaker 3: and prestige and maybe something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And it's so fascinating again to think about
Speaker 1: the fact that it is the form of the dagger,
Speaker 1: something that at a very base level is again just
Speaker 1: a tool that we invented, that we created that gives
Speaker 1: us the powers of having talents or something, you know,
Speaker 1: making up for the biological limitations of the human body
Speaker 1: and giving us the sharp edge. Uh and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: and here we see like the function of it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, transformed into the symbolic. So yeah, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to think about these objects and try and imagine, well,
Speaker 1: especially in these cases again where we don't really we
Speaker 1: don't know all the ins and outs of what it
Speaker 1: symbolized exactly and what was said about the blade, what
Speaker 1: it was even called. Uh, but we know that it
Speaker 1: was important because we can see how much work went
Speaker 1: into it. All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: up part one here, but we'll be back in the
Speaker 1: next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly which daggers we're going to discuss, but we
Speaker 1: have a we have a short list of possibilities we're
Speaker 1: going to We're gonna pick each one up. We're gonna
Speaker 1: test its heft and see which ones are gonna be
Speaker 1: the most interesting to talk about. Uh and if you
Speaker 1: catch us in time, Hey, if you have a favorite
Speaker 1: dagger right in, we'd love to hear from you. Likewise,
Speaker 1: do you have a dagger or something like it that
Speaker 1: is important to you culturally historically? Is it a piece
Speaker 1: of sci fi memorabilia? Write in, send some pictures. We'd
Speaker 1: love to know more about.
Speaker 3: Huge Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Possway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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