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Speaker 1: These stones alas these gray stones. Are they all, all

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Speaker 1: of the famed and the colossal, left by the corrosive

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Speaker 1: hours to fate and me? Not all the echoes answer me?

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Speaker 1: Not all prophetic sounds and loud arise forever from us

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Speaker 1: and from all ruin unto the wise, as melody, from

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Speaker 1: mem Non to the sun. Welcome to stuff to blow

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Speaker 1: your mind from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you

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Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about stones that sing, and we'll sing the

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Speaker 1: phrases of stones that talk and sing. That's right. And

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Speaker 1: we started things off here with an expert from Edgar

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Speaker 1: Allan Poe's poem The Colosseum, which directly mentions the Colossi

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Speaker 1: of Memnon, which which is the prime thing we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about today. These these two statues, these two

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Speaker 1: stone coloss i, one toppled and then rebuilt, and then

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Speaker 1: another that still stands the test of time. And one

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Speaker 1: of them, the toppled colossus, is said to have emitted sounds,

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Speaker 1: at least in ancient times. I love the idea that

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Speaker 1: posts as all ruins must sing. Really, yeah, because they

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Speaker 1: kind of do. Ruins are Why do we love ruins

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Speaker 1: so much? We actually talked about this in another episode recently.

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Speaker 1: Uh they seem to suggest something about the folly of

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Speaker 1: human civilization. Yeah, I mean which that that's of course

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Speaker 1: brings us to to Shelley's Osa Ma Andiez, which it

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Speaker 1: is said was also at least partially inspired by these

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Speaker 1: particular ruins. Right, look on my work, see Mighty and Despair,

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Speaker 1: which which takes on a meaning different than the king

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Speaker 1: originally meant. Right, So he's saying, look on my work,

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Speaker 1: see Mighty and Despair, and you would despair because he's

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Speaker 1: so powerful and he's gonna bash your head in if

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Speaker 1: resist him. But of course we should look on his

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Speaker 1: works in despair because now there's not much left except

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Speaker 1: the loan and level sands stretching far away. Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: cannot help but be enthralled by ancient ruins. And the

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Speaker 1: thing is this was true in ancient times as well,

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Speaker 1: because during classical Antiquity, UH, tourists such as tourists from

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Speaker 1: throughout the Roman Empire would visit to the ruins of

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Speaker 1: Thebes in Egypt, which was already ancient even in their time.

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Speaker 1: This is something we've touched on before about ancient Egypt.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like that fact about dinosaurs where you know,

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Speaker 1: more time separates like the stegosaurus from the Tyrannosaurus rex

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Speaker 1: than separates us from the Tyrannosaurus rex. Uh. If you

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Speaker 1: were to go back to ancient Rome, there was stuff

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Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt that was older to them than ancient

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Speaker 1: Rome is old to us. Yeah. It's it's mind boggling

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Speaker 1: to think about, isn't it that these people who are

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Speaker 1: ancient to us Day's gaze back in time at an

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Speaker 1: even more ancient people that were just as ancient to them. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean on the scale of Egyptian civilization, ancient Rome

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Speaker 1: is fairly modern. Yeah, right down to the disrespectful tourist graffiti, right.

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Speaker 1: Because the Roman tourists, when they would they would come

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Speaker 1: out and they would look at the the two stone

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Speaker 1: Colossa or the Syringes as they would also call them.

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Speaker 1: They would make little notes on the base of the

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Speaker 1: fallen colossus describing what they saw and or heard, uh

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Speaker 1: maybe even who they were and when they visited. It

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Speaker 1: was kind of like a an ancient trip Advisor page. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we can talk more about those inscriptions later because

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Speaker 1: they tell us interesting things about the history of the

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Speaker 1: statue or the statues and how people experience them. But so,

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Speaker 1: what what are these colossi, the colossi of Memnon that

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Speaker 1: we're going to be focusing today. Primarily they are what

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Speaker 1: remains of the Great Temple of m in Office the

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Speaker 1: Third or m and Hotep the Third, who was a

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Speaker 1: pharaoh of Egypt in the fourteenth injury b c. That's right,

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Speaker 1: And there's a there's at least one level of misinterpretation

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Speaker 1: that gets thrown on top of of these ruins as

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Speaker 1: well discussed. But why we're talking about them today, I mean,

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Speaker 1: obviously we love any chance to talk about ancient ruins

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Speaker 1: and and uh and in olden times. But there's a mystery.

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Speaker 1: There's a mystery here, yes, and that in the mystery

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Speaker 1: here is that for a period of time, uh mere

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Speaker 1: centuries really, in the longer lifespan of these uh, these

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Speaker 1: two statues, they were said to speak or to Emit

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Speaker 1: sounds that is often described as like the cracking the

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Speaker 1: breaking of a liars string. Sometimes people allude to it

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Speaker 1: as more of a voice. But everyone seemed to view

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Speaker 1: these more or less as some sort of a natural

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Speaker 1: phenomenon that was taking place. I've read it described as

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Speaker 1: a harp, or as a twang, or as a breaking string.

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Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, very interesting. Why now that that would

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Speaker 1: be different if we were reading reports from the ancient

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Speaker 1: world that people went to, say, a statue of a

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Speaker 1: ruin of a statue in ancient Egypt, and that it

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Speaker 1: told them what to do, right, right, they have some

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Speaker 1: sort of an oracle, right, then we would start to think, Okay,

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Speaker 1: these people may be listening to I don't know, wind

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Speaker 1: sweeping over the sand and think they hear something. There

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Speaker 1: may be a bit of paradolia going on, their auditory paradolia,

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Speaker 1: or they might just be hallucinating. But no, these are

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Speaker 1: sounds that are described as sort of mechanical sounds, and

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Speaker 1: they're described in a very lucid way that seems to

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Speaker 1: indicate there really was probably some sound coming out of

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Speaker 1: the statues. We're not just getting like embellished stories of

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Speaker 1: people having a rapturous experience. Yeah, there's a sense that

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Speaker 1: this is a curiosity, that this is um you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's like, oh, this this statue is emitting a

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Speaker 1: sound and it's the darndest thing. It's not a matter

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Speaker 1: of the gods are speaking through it, at least not

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Speaker 1: in a literal sense tho. Though though some historians doom

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Speaker 1: have some fun with the sort of mythological ramifications of this,

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Speaker 1: right that gets laid on it. But there is enough

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Speaker 1: reporting of the straightforward character of the sound that it

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Speaker 1: does seem like these statues probably just made some sort

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Speaker 1: of sound. So what was the sound? Uh, that's what

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Speaker 1: we're going to be exploring today, and we are going

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Speaker 1: to be referring to a couple of key resources, right,

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Speaker 1: that's right. So the first, and i'd say really the

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Speaker 1: main source here is Miracle of Memnon, and this is

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Speaker 1: by G. W. Bauer Sock, published in the Bulletin of

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Speaker 1: the American Society of Paparologist nineteen eighty four. And then

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Speaker 1: we also refer to Memon the Vocal Statue by Massimo Patirino,

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Speaker 1: published in the International Phonetic Association. That was a little

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Speaker 1: more conspiratorial, but we can get into that later. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: before we get into the theories about the sound, the

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Speaker 1: origin of the sound, we should talk about the origin

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Speaker 1: of the class eye themselves. Like we said, there are

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Speaker 1: these two great statues, and we mentioned they were built

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Speaker 1: by this pharaoh I'm in office or m and Hotep

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Speaker 1: the third. That's right. He was a powerful ruler, and

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Speaker 1: it's it's said that his excess served as a catalyst

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Speaker 1: for the cultural revolution that that followed him, posed by

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Speaker 1: his son and successor, Kinnaton, who many of you might remember.

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Speaker 1: He's best remembered for abandoning the polytheistic religion of the

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Speaker 1: past in favor of the monotheistic worship of the Sun

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Speaker 1: disc Otten, and then of course after after his death,

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Speaker 1: the worship of Otten was was then abandoned in favor

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Speaker 1: of the polytheistic model that was previously established. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't think his model quite caught on right, But you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes you got to rebel against your your your parental

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Speaker 1: units and and make a statement. Here's a question, just generally,

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Speaker 1: do you think it's harder to by force impose monotheism

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Speaker 1: on a polytheistic culture or by force impose polytheism on

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Speaker 1: a monotheistic culture. Well, you would think, I mean, just

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Speaker 1: off off the hip, I would say that it would

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Speaker 1: be easier to impose monotheism on poly is it seems

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Speaker 1: like it's gone that way more often yeah, but I

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Speaker 1: mean clearly it didn't. It didn't take in this case. Granted,

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Speaker 1: there's more employ here than merely h getting a bunch

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Speaker 1: of people into a room and just sort of testing

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Speaker 1: their opinions on different um models of religion. But I mean, basically,

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Speaker 1: on on one hand, you could you would be making

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Speaker 1: an argument that say, hey, actually this one guy do

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Speaker 1: you all believe in? Well, actually there are many different

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Speaker 1: avatars with this god, and I can see that working.

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Speaker 1: And then the other argument is, hey, all these gods

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Speaker 1: that you believe in, well, actually they're one god and

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Speaker 1: you're just looking at different faces of the one true

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Speaker 1: Being or something to that effect. Right, So, if you're

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Speaker 1: a king like Akat and then you want to impose

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Speaker 1: a new paradigm for the religious views of your country,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of theological wiggle room for you to

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Speaker 1: play with. It's not just like stop believing in that.

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Speaker 1: Believe in this now, yeah, I mean, if if you

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Speaker 1: if you do it right, right. But but anyway, like

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Speaker 1: we said, this change did not really take. But but

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Speaker 1: but let's get back to I'm Inhotep the third again.

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Speaker 1: He was a powerful ruler. He made powerful statements in

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Speaker 1: the way that ancient Egyptian rulers did, made statues, made temples,

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Speaker 1: created these works of stone, and a lot of times

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Speaker 1: when you look at the rulers of the ancient world

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Speaker 1: building all these monuments, you know, to their own glory

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Speaker 1: and to themselves, it can look kind of ostentatious to us.

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Speaker 1: But another and I mean it probably would be fair

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Speaker 1: to say it is kind of ostentatious. But on the

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Speaker 1: other side, people have pointed out that the rule of

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Speaker 1: Amenhotep the Third was a period of like cultural flowering

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Speaker 1: in Egypt where it was sort of like the peak

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Speaker 1: of artistic achievement in ancient Egypt. Yeah, so you can

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Speaker 1: see why Houghton wouldn't really take off, right because everybody

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Speaker 1: was probably in love with the with with with the

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Speaker 1: previous ruler and in the world he'd created. So it

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Speaker 1: was kind of a golden age, right, And part of

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Speaker 1: that golden age is the design of this temple for

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Speaker 1: Amenhotep the Third on the west side of the Nile,

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Speaker 1: all around Thebes, and this is now the temple where

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Speaker 1: these these statues are what's left these statues now known

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Speaker 1: as the Colossi of Memnon. Now, of course they're not

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Speaker 1: statues of Memnon. We'll get into who Memnon is in

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Speaker 1: a minute. They are statues of the Pharaoh. I'm in Hotep,

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Speaker 1: the third right, that's right, So let's let's just describe

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Speaker 1: them a little bit. The landing page for this episode

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Speaker 1: is stuff to Blow your Mind. Dot Com should feature

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Speaker 1: a prominent image too, if I can make it work.

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Speaker 1: But but there are plenty of paintings, illustrations and photographs

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Speaker 1: of these statues. So each one is roughly sixteen meters

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Speaker 1: high or fifty two ft uh. And they are both

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Speaker 1: represent seated humans with large heads. But there there's a

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Speaker 1: key difference between the two. So the southern or left statue,

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Speaker 1: this one survives as a single block of sandstone. This statue,

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Speaker 1: though clearly ancient, is still in one piece. But then

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Speaker 1: the north were there in a right statue. This is

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Speaker 1: where he gets interesting. From the waist upward. Uh. If

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Speaker 1: you look at it today, it's been hastily restored with

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Speaker 1: rough stone cuttings topped with the original head. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: looks like it fell apart from the waist up and

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Speaker 1: then somebody put it back together with just like some

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Speaker 1: blocks and then stuck ahead on it. Right. I've actually

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Speaker 1: seen video and One of the funny things about it

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Speaker 1: is because it has this block construction. Now there are

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Speaker 1: all these gaps in it, and so I've seen videos

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Speaker 1: of of people visiting these statues in modern times, and

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Speaker 1: there will be birds living in the colossi of Memnon

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Speaker 1: in the the statue that's broken, the right statue. So

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Speaker 1: it's got these gaps in it, and birds are just

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Speaker 1: nesting in them and flying in and out all the time.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty funny. Now. In earlier times, the top half

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Speaker 1: would have been just toppled ruins with the head and

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Speaker 1: other pieces strewn out on the ground beside it. And

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Speaker 1: we mentioned all that ancient graffiti on them, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the eggs here on the toppled statue are inscribed with

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Speaker 1: ancient graffiti one hundred and seven texts, but I've also

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Speaker 1: read a hundred and eight. Uh. Basically, it gets into

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Speaker 1: a sort of a contest of determining how many you

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Speaker 1: can actually decipher and uh and and and point out

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Speaker 1: as individual inscriptions. Sixty one of them are in Greek,

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Speaker 1: roughly forty five of them are in Latin, and there's

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Speaker 1: apparently one that's a bilingual inscription. And these inscriptions are

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Speaker 1: from the first three hundred years of the Common Era,

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Speaker 1: and they were inscribed by ancient tourists, and these would

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Speaker 1: have been tourists of the Roman Empire or at least

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Speaker 1: of the Roman Imperial period. Yeah. I can often see

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Speaker 1: tourists going to ancient landmarks today and think that it's

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Speaker 1: kind of gross, like the behavior that display you know,

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Speaker 1: do do in the selfies and all that. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to criticize selfies too much, but you know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: at least selfies don't damage you know, the physical structure exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so tourists in the ancient world, we're actually much worse

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Speaker 1: than we are today. They were trying to take pieces

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Speaker 1: off of things and writing their name on things all

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Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, that was pretty brutal, it is. But

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Speaker 1: but as well discuss it did seem to take a

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Speaker 1: while to get going, and they didn't necessarily seem to

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Speaker 1: be in the regular practice of doing this sort of thing. Though.

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Speaker 1: Of course, there are plenty of examples of graffiti, uh

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Speaker 1: from the Roman Empire, so it's not like someone invented

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Speaker 1: graffiti at this point. But uh, it's certainly the graffiti

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Speaker 1: on them non picks up over time. Now. The interesting

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Speaker 1: thing again, is that we can look at these inscriptions though,

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Speaker 1: and and and gain intel about what they saw when

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Speaker 1: they visited it. Right, So did they say I came

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Speaker 1: here in whatever year the reign of Caesar whatever, and

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Speaker 1: aliens were helping build structures. Well, no, not nothing on

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Speaker 1: that scale, but they would give you know a time

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Speaker 1: their name. Uh. And then the inscriptions also they give

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Speaker 1: us an idea of what state the statue was in.

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Speaker 1: They mentioned that the northern statue is missing, it's for half.

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Speaker 1: And they also identified the statue as a likeness of

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Speaker 1: the Greek mythological figure Ethiopian king and uh Homeric hero Memnon. Right,

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Speaker 1: so this is how we get to the classical name

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Speaker 1: of the statue, the Colossi of Memnon, even though it's

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Speaker 1: not supposed to be statues of Memnon. So who was

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Speaker 1: this Memnon in Greek myth? Well, he was actually supposed

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Speaker 1: to be the son of Aos, the goddess of Dawn,

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Speaker 1: and Tithanus, a Trojan prince. And in this classic legend,

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Speaker 1: Aos the goddess falls in love with this mortal man Tithanus,

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Speaker 1: but she realizes, oh he's a mortal man. He's going

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Speaker 1: to die one day, and she weeps because that would

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Speaker 1: be so horrible, and she moves Zeus with her tears,

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Speaker 1: and Zeus very unfortunately grants Tiffannus the gift of eternal life,

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Speaker 1: but without the accompanying gift of eternal youth. Yes, that

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Speaker 1: is a that is a bad stu. But before the

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Speaker 1: situation gets too bad, and does it get real bad,

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Speaker 1: the two of them have a son. So the goddess

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Speaker 1: of Dawn Aios and the the now immortal former man Tiffanius,

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Speaker 1: they have a son, Memnon, who is the king of

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Speaker 1: the Ethiopians, and he comes to fight in the Trojan War,

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Speaker 1: only to get killed by Achilles and then granted immortality

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Speaker 1: by Zeus again because of the tears of his mother Aios. Well,

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Speaker 1: first of all, if you're gonna die in the Aliad

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Speaker 1: or or in the Trojan War in general, being slain

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Speaker 1: by Achilles not a bad way to go. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people went that way. Yeah, I I was looking

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Speaker 1: this up just for fun. Uh So, if if you

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Speaker 1: look at just the Aliad, and you just look at

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Speaker 1: at named characters that are killed within the Aliad, then

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Speaker 1: Achilles has a kill count of about twenty four four

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Speaker 1: confirmed kills and named characters, right, right, and and that's

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Speaker 1: that's pretty good. I do have to point out that

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Speaker 1: Patroclus uh Achilles's friend or possible lover depending on the interpretation,

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Speaker 1: and Odysseus, our hero, they both have high kill counts

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Speaker 1: as well. And Odysseus's kill count is actually higher as

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Speaker 1: one might expect. He's kind of the star. Odysseus is sneaky,

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Speaker 1: he's cunning. So the ancient Roman tourists they referred to

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Speaker 1: this these statues as as mim Noon. They associated them

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Speaker 1: with this figure of Memnon right, because there was a

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Speaker 1: there was a strong influence of Hellenistic culture throughout the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire and much it was often referred to in

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Speaker 1: many ways as sort of like the Greek world or

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Speaker 1: the Greek speaking world, even while Rome was in power, right.

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Speaker 1: And then they also had other ideas about the history

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Speaker 1: of the statute. For instance, they attributed it they attributed

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Speaker 1: it its partial destruction to the invasion of Canvasses the

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Speaker 1: second of the Acumenid or First Persian Empire. As to

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Speaker 1: what actually caused the destruction, we can revisit that in

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Speaker 1: a bit right right now. But the most important thing

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Speaker 1: really for our purposes here is again, not that they

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Speaker 1: just said who they were or when they visited these statues.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what they called them, how they misinterpreted

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Speaker 1: the past. It's about the sounds that they described. Again,

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Speaker 1: the this the sound of a breaking of a liar stream,

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Speaker 1: of a vocal sound, or even a crackle. And I

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Speaker 1: do have to say it does play nicely into this

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Speaker 1: idea of Memnon though, right, because Memnon's mother is the dawn,

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Speaker 1: and so many of these inscriptions are certainly the historical

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Speaker 1: text that referred to it. They they they say, when

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to hear the crackle or the sound, it

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Speaker 1: occurs at dawn. So there's this kind of communication between

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Speaker 1: the sun and this statue of allegedly Memnon. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: that was one of the ancient interpretations, was that dawn break,

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Speaker 1: Aos would come over the horizon and shine her light

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Speaker 1: onto this western statue on the western side of the nile,

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Speaker 1: and then of course the son of Aos, mem On,

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Speaker 1: would sing to his mother. Yeah, but of course he's broken.

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Speaker 1: So it just comes out as a kind of a crack,

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Speaker 1: all right, because it plays into this idea too, of

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Speaker 1: this this fallen thing, this thing that was once great,

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Speaker 1: that is now reduced. H But these are of course

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Speaker 1: all just sort of uh flavorful interpretations based upon the

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Speaker 1: fact that it was making or seem to have been making,

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Speaker 1: some sort of sound. All right, well, I think maybe

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Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and when we come

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Speaker 1: back we can discuss ancient descriptions of the sound the

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Speaker 1: statue made and then get into what could have caused it.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back, so

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Speaker 1: let's discuss uh, the singing and a bit more detail here.

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Speaker 1: Bower Stock writes that the inscription tells us that quote often,

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Speaker 1: as the sun rose at dawn, the surviving part of

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Speaker 1: the colossus would admit a mysterious twanging sound that seemed

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Speaker 1: to all who heard it unearthly and unforgettable. It seemed

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Speaker 1: as if the god himself were speaking in some way.

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Speaker 1: That he should be speaking from the waist down seemed

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Speaker 1: not to any particular problem among the viewers, and he

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Speaker 1: did not oblige unfailingly every morning. Some visitors, including the

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Speaker 1: imperial retinue with Hadrian, had to wait for the miracle

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Speaker 1: to occur. Yes, supposedly they went there to hear it,

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Speaker 1: and then it didn't happen. The first day, so they

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Speaker 1: had to wait around for a while. And I think

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Speaker 1: he touches on two details that are very telling here.

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Speaker 1: One that a famous person comes to view it and

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Speaker 1: they have to wait, which does make it sound like

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Speaker 1: it was it was indeed some sort of natural phenomenon

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Speaker 1: that could not be depended upon and you just had

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Speaker 1: to be patient with it, no matter how powerful you were.

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Speaker 1: And then also the fact that it seems like if

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Speaker 1: you were making the story up, it would be the

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Speaker 1: head of the statue that's right there that would be speaking,

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Speaker 1: not essentially like the legs and and groin region of

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Speaker 1: the of the broken Titan, right. I mean, there is

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Speaker 1: a certain kind of symbolic joy you can get from

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Speaker 1: the idea of a god's statue with a talking pelvis,

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Speaker 1: But it just doesn't seem like that's what they'd really

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Speaker 1: be producing if this was, say, a band of priests

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Speaker 1: attempting to uh to trick people into thinking a statue

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Speaker 1: made a sound, which is something that some people have proposed. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you see this as we'll discuss. You see this this

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Speaker 1: drift in the narrative as you deal with like second

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Speaker 1: and third hand accounts where they basically tweak it, where

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Speaker 1: like it'd really be a better story if it was

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Speaker 1: the head speaking, etcetera. Okay, so Bowersock, at the time

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Speaker 1: he was writing, summarizes what was generally thought about the

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Speaker 1: production of the sound in the ancient statue, right, yes,

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Speaker 1: and he was. He was also referring to some of

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Speaker 1: the writings of philosotrosts who would have lived around roughly

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Speaker 1: one seventy through two forty seven CE. But he points

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Speaker 1: out that that that we can be fairly sure that

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Speaker 1: to what toppled this statue was an earthquake that we

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Speaker 1: know occurred in in twenty six b c E. We

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Speaker 1: have other historical accounts that reference the earthquake, so everything

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00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:01,320
Speaker 1: lines up there. But then as far as the earthquake

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Speaker 1: damage goes, this is uh. This is the idea that

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Speaker 1: that Bowersock touches on quote. The earthquake damage evidently allowed

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Speaker 1: air to penetrate well inside the colossus in such a

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Speaker 1: way that the sudden warmth of the sun at dawn

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Speaker 1: affected a noisy discrepancy between the quickly heated exterior and

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Speaker 1: the still cool channels within. The sounding. Colossus was a

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Speaker 1: great tourist attraction under the Roman Empire. The Greeks of

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Speaker 1: that age identified it with the mythical hero Memnon. At

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Speaker 1: the end of the second century, A D. Septimius Severus

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Speaker 1: repaired the statue, it is alleged, and thereby silenced it.

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Speaker 1: So in this he touches on two really important facts here.

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Speaker 1: First of all, a long standing theory as to how

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Speaker 1: this sound was emerging from the top old colossus, that

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Speaker 1: that it only started after the earthquake, that it only

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00:21:50,600 --> 00:21:54,000
Speaker 1: started after the earthquake damage. Yes, and then it ended

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00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 1: after the restoration of the statue. So you got this window,

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Speaker 1: this window of the talking statue. It didn't talked before,

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Speaker 1: and it didn't talk after, right, doesn't talk now if

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Speaker 1: you visit it now that nobody is hearing a sound

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00:22:06,359 --> 00:22:10,119
Speaker 1: from this uh, this stone. So clearly something happened to it.

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Speaker 1: We're pretty sure it was earthquake damage, and it caused

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Speaker 1: the stone to to speak, if you will, uh, on

394
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:20,280
Speaker 1: particular mornings when conditions were just right, and then someone

395
00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:23,240
Speaker 1: came along and restored it and therefore caused the phenomenon

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00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 1: to to cease forever. So this particular summation Bowersock rides

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Speaker 1: popped up in virtually every modern mention of the coloss

398
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Speaker 1: I and likewise the the These these different modern interpretations

399
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: leaned extensively on the writings of French archaeologist Jean and

400
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Speaker 1: Anton Latron, who lived set eight uh, and he supported

401
00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:48,119
Speaker 1: the Severest hypothesis for the silencing of the Colossus. But

402
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:51,000
Speaker 1: Bowersock points out that all we really know is that

403
00:22:51,040 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: Severus visited the coloss I in one fourth century St.

404
00:22:57,119 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 1: Jerome did back up the notion that the sounds had

405
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:03,199
Speaker 1: east based on his visit. But the curious thing here

406
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:05,720
Speaker 1: is he assumed that it had stopped at the birth

407
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Speaker 1: of Christ, because Christ had essentially put an end to

408
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:10,360
Speaker 1: all this pagan nonsense. Now wait a minute, that sort

409
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: of throws the timeline off, right, because we we were

410
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Speaker 1: supposed to have it making sounds well into the second century,

411
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:21,280
Speaker 1: right there, the second century CE. Uh, So that would

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Speaker 1: kind of not line up with the birth of Christ.

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Speaker 1: But right, well, basically, I guess we're not positing that

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00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 1: as a real explanation. No, no, no, So this is

415
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:29,639
Speaker 1: an account, and I mean this is a case of

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Speaker 1: someone showing up and saying, those things not making a

417
00:23:31,680 --> 00:23:34,360
Speaker 1: sound anymore must have stopped at some point, probably when

418
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 1: Jesus was born, because why would why would there be

419
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:39,960
Speaker 1: any kind of like pagan weird magic stuff going on

420
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 1: under this new covenant. But ultimately he had no intel

421
00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: to go on there and was not bothering to read

422
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:48,679
Speaker 1: the trip Advisor reviews on the legs. Right, it's like

423
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 1: now the pharaoh's magicians can no longer do miracles themselves. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's ultimately kind of ridiculous thing to say,

425
00:23:55,920 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: but it's he's one of the many famous visitors. Uh.

426
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 1: You see this pop up in various writings about the

427
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: coloss I. Yeah, And most importantly, as as Bowersock points out,

428
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 1: it does a test that by a certain point nobody

429
00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:12,960
Speaker 1: was hearing these sounds anymore. Right, But it also becomes

430
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 1: difficult to really judge when it stopped based on the

431
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 1: the end of the inscriptions, because it's likely they simply

432
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 1: ran out of room to record it on the statues

433
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:26,160
Speaker 1: legs statues are that covered with inscriptions. But that being said,

434
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: we can still look at the dated duh inscriptions on

435
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:31,879
Speaker 1: the statue and try and figure out when they stopped.

436
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:35,119
Speaker 1: And uh, previously the last dated text used to be

437
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 1: held as a one, which certainly does line up with

438
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: this idea that that Severus visited in one, but later,

439
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 1: as Bowersock writes, an description from two oh five c

440
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 1: E was noted, and there's another superimposed over that, so

441
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:56,920
Speaker 1: Bowersock says, quote It therefore becomes quite impossible to imagine

442
00:24:56,920 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: that the sound was terminated in one by Severust, so

443
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,320
Speaker 1: people were still reporting hearing the sound after Severust visited

444
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 1: right now. The earliest known description of the singing is

445
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: from the geographer Strabo in twenty four b c E,

446
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: and he described this the scene as everyone else did,

447
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: with one statue partially destroyed by an earthquake. Because this

448
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:21,879
Speaker 1: led many to assume that a known, again known and

449
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 1: recorded earthquake from b c would have been the culprit

450
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:29,400
Speaker 1: and toppling one of the coloss i, though Bowersock he

451
00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 1: he adds that that Strabo is being a bit vague

452
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 1: if he's describing an earthquake that occurred two years ago,

453
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:40,000
Speaker 1: but he admits that based based on the evidence, it

454
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:43,719
Speaker 1: seems that the sound was quote exclusively a phenomenon of

455
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: the Roman imperial world. So we still have a pretty

456
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: solid time frame that we can look to in which

457
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: this this uh this statue was generating a noise specifically

458
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: it was sometime after b c E and stopping somewhere

459
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:04,359
Speaker 1: around down the end of the second century CE. Yes, okay,

460
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: well about two years of a singing statue and bad yeah. Yeah.

461
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: And during that time you have a lot of people

462
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:13,199
Speaker 1: visiting it, a lot of people been writing about it, uh,

463
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 1: and then people writing about those writings or writing about

464
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: other people's interpretations of it. Strabo himself wrote about it

465
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: in the first century d C. And then you had

466
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: Bassanius come around and he wrote about it in the

467
00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:29,560
Speaker 1: mid second century CE. And these two voices alone helped

468
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: to make it famous. Yes. So Pausanius was a Greek geographer.

469
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:36,120
Speaker 1: He wrote about places all over the Mediterranean world. And

470
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:39,639
Speaker 1: so here's his piece on this, from the translation by

471
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 1: Bostock and Riley quote, the colossus in Egypt made me

472
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: marvel far more than anything else in Egyptian Thebes. On

473
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: crossing the Nile to the so called pipes, I saw

474
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:56,159
Speaker 1: a statue still sitting which gave out a sound. The

475
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 1: many call it mem Non, who they say from Ethiopia

476
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: over ran Egypt and as far as Susa. The Thebans, however,

477
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 1: say that it is a statue not of Memnon, but

478
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 1: of a native named famine Off, and I have heard

479
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: some say that it is cessastrous. The statue was broken

480
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:16,199
Speaker 1: into by Cambyses at the present day, from head to

481
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 1: middle it is thrown down, but the rest is seated,

482
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:21,800
Speaker 1: and every day at the rising of the sun it

483
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:24,919
Speaker 1: makes a noise, and the sound one could best liken

484
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: to that of a harp or a liar when a

485
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,719
Speaker 1: string has been broken. I like that, I really like that.

486
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,199
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is that there is quite a

487
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,200
Speaker 1: bit of this. There are a lot of different UH

488
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:40,439
Speaker 1: writings from the period that we tell this story. Some

489
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:42,879
Speaker 1: of them are first hand, and some of them have

490
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: dubious descriptions of its state of disrepair or or the

491
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: details about the sound. It clearly indicate that this was

492
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: at at least a second hand UH description, if not

493
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,639
Speaker 1: a third hand description of of the phenomenon that was

494
00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: taking place. And then sometimes there's some of the writers

495
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:03,240
Speaker 1: just having fun with it. For instance, Uh Lucian the

496
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: writer joked about the statue speaking to him through its mouth.

497
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it have been funnier, though, for the statue to

498
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: speak to him through its pelvis? Yes, through through the butt? Yeah? Well,

499
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: you we can only wonder you know what versions of

500
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 1: of mem Non inspired dirty jokes, etcetera. Body humor was

501
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:26,679
Speaker 1: was passed about during the ancient world. I mean, clearly

502
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: people that did have a sense of humor in these times.

503
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: People were more or less like they are today in

504
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 1: many respects. So uh, there were probably ridiculous jokes about

505
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: Memnon speaking through its bottom. Uh. And of course plenty

506
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: of the individuals just had some took some poetic license

507
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: with Memnon as well. For instance, Roman poet Juvenal wrote

508
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 1: that the sound was the voice of a melancholy god,

509
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: upset over the destruction that was that was wrought against it,

510
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: this time by Cambaesis, who again was the destroyer in

511
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: many of the common tales about the statue, not the

512
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: earthquake that we later found out was probably the real cause.

513
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: Right now, to come back again to this idea that

514
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: that Severusts restored it, Bowerside points out that there is

515
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: ultimately no evidence that this took place. Uh. Now, Severists

516
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: certainly visited the area, and he could have visited the

517
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 1: coloss I. I mean it certainly, it's lines up. It's

518
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: not like saying Charlemagne appeared and fixed the statue. Um.

519
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: But he didn't leave any graffiti for what for what

520
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: that's worth, but there also could have been very little

521
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 1: space for him to inscribe it at that point anyway.

522
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: But by the fourth century it certainly was a silent

523
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: statue again by all accounts, and uh. And here we

524
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: encounter commentators like Jerome who believed that well, it just

525
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:48,719
Speaker 1: it must have been silent for a long time um

526
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: Or for instance. We also have one commentator, Ammianus Marcel Lenis,

527
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: for instance, who knew the coloss i but didn't seem

528
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 1: to know the story of the sound. So we see

529
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: like deep tales of the phenomenon beginning to pass out

530
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: of common knowledge and not of common circulation. Someone it

531
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: it stopped being the statue that speaks, and it became

532
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: the statue that used to speak if you knew the stories.

533
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 1: And Bowersock goes on. He admits that while we don't

534
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: have any real proof again that Severus ended the sound

535
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 1: by restoring the statue, we we still have to figure

536
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: out who might have restored it and then conceivably shut

537
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: down the sound, because that does seem the best based

538
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 1: on the timeline, that does seem to be what happened.

539
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 1: Somebody restored the statue. Somebody messed with the with the

540
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: remnants of the statue and in doing so ended the sound. Yeah,

541
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: they put a hand on the drumheads. Yeah, basically, uh.

542
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: And Bowersock has a little pet theory about this, right, Yeah.

543
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 1: He presents Queen Zenobia of Palmyra as a possible culprit here.

544
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: So she led an Arabian army into the region um

545
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: during this period, and during her occupy occupy of Egypt,

546
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: she presented herself as a new Cleopatra. So she championed uh,

547
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,720
Speaker 1: the Egyptian greatness of old and uh, and and did

548
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: so as like, you know, as a swipe at Roman imperialism.

549
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: This is not the country of the Romans. This is

550
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: the country of the noble Egyptians, and I am one

551
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 1: of you. And bowers I proposes that Zenobia and her

552
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: son may have carried out several restoration projects in the area.

553
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: That would make sense if she's trying to ingratiate herself

554
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: at the locals. Yeah. So it ultimately makes more sense

555
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: than severus because you can at least begin to in this. Again,

556
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: it's a pet theory, but it at least involves more

557
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 1: reasoning as to why this is taking place. Okay, well,

558
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: I think we should take another quick break. When we

559
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: come back, we will discuss what could have made a

560
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: statue making noises like like was reported for so many years.

561
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: Thank thank alright, we're back. Now we're discussing what could

562
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: have caused the Colossi Mimnon, the especially the one top

563
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 1: old statue to make sounds as people reported at dawn

564
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: for so many years. And so to look at that,

565
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, are there other cases where stones

566
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: appear to sing or make noises? There are actually plenty

567
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 1: of examples of things that are called singing stones, but

568
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: what that tends to refer to is that they sing

569
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: when struck, and that doesn't exactly fit the description of

570
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: what's going on. Right. So there's one study fromen I

571
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 1: came across in Time and Mind by Paul Devereaux and

572
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: John Wosencroft, uh, and this was about the role that

573
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:38,960
Speaker 1: sound may have played in the selection of the huge

574
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: stones at Stonehenge. Now you've probably read that, you know

575
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 1: the bluestones. These huge stones at stone Hinge Stonehenge were

576
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 1: moved over great distance to their final location. They weren't

577
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 1: just dug up out of the ground. And then placed

578
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 1: where they are. Why would you go through the effort

579
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: of moving huge, gigantic stones so far? And the papers

580
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: are reported on a project surveying once of a supposed

581
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: source of the stones and asking quote, what might stone

582
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 1: age eyes and ears have perceived in this landscape and

583
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: what aspects made it become important to the builders of stoneheinge.

584
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,560
Speaker 1: So one factor that they come up with is that

585
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: stones from this site in geologically similar sites nearby seem

586
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: to produce a tone a ring when struck with a hammer.

587
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: It's not just the dull thud you'd get from a

588
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: lot of stones, but but a more distinctive, tonal kind

589
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: of ringing. And they say, you know, if if this

590
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: is a religious site, this could have been a selection criterion.

591
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: It seems intuitively hinge e right, that you'd want the

592
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: stones to kind of ring and sing when you bang

593
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 1: on them. Yeah, But but again, clear clearly this is

594
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,040
Speaker 1: not what's going on with the Colossi of m Non.

595
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 1: Nobody's talking about striking the base of the toppled strat

596
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: statue and producing a noise. Yeah, And so there are

597
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: other stones like this around the world, but it all

598
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:58,959
Speaker 1: always seems to be the same story that there are

599
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:02,720
Speaker 1: locations in the world with singing stones or stones that ring,

600
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 1: but it tends to be when you hit them together

601
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:08,920
Speaker 1: with one another. And I've read about this a good bit.

602
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 1: It seems to be that there is it's hypothesized that

603
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:15,280
Speaker 1: there's something about the internal mineral structure of these stones

604
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: where they're there are certain types of strain relationships between

605
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: the minerals within them that produce this elastic effect that

606
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,280
Speaker 1: makes the stones more like a drum that kind of rings,

607
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 1: and less like a thudding regular stone. But that's not

608
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: apparently what's going on. We're not talking about people banging

609
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:34,800
Speaker 1: on it with a hammer. We're saying the light of

610
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: dawn comes in and then it twang's yeah. Likewise, I

611
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:44,800
Speaker 1: have read before various arguments about the the sacred aspects

612
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 1: of caves for ancient people's uh, which of obviously, if

613
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,360
Speaker 1: you're in the cave and you make a sound, that

614
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,320
Speaker 1: sound will be echoed, and it could be various supernatural

615
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,800
Speaker 1: interpretations of that. But again, clearly that's with a cave,

616
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: not with just a large statue. You can shout at

617
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: a statue all you want, uh, and there may be

618
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: some reverberation of of your sound waves, but but not

619
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 1: to to any like real practical extent. And that's not

620
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,320
Speaker 1: what people are described. Yeah, they're not they're not hitting it,

621
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: they're not shouting at it. They're showing up. The sun

622
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: is rising, and then there is this distinct crackle, and

623
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 1: of course that leads us back to that heated air

624
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 1: argument that we've already discussed. And this really, this really

625
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 1: seems to be the one that most people are focusing on.

626
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:34,120
Speaker 1: This seems to be curiously, it is a case where

627
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 1: where ancient minds pretty much figured it out and nobody

628
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:41,800
Speaker 1: really has a more effective answer. Yes, so this is

629
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:44,839
Speaker 1: as put by bower Stock. Just to refresh you, bower

630
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: Stock writes that quote, earthquake damage evidently allowed air to

631
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 1: penetrate well inside the colossus in such a way that

632
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 1: the sudden warmth of the sun at dawn affected a

633
00:35:55,560 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: noisy discrepancy between the quickly heated exterior and the still

634
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:02,919
Speaker 1: cool channels within. Now, I kind of wish we could

635
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: have more detail on exactly what's going on there, but

636
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: this does seem to be what most people are referring to.

637
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: There's some kind of version of this, there's some heating difference,

638
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: a difference in heat potential from the outside and the inside,

639
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:18,919
Speaker 1: and there are certain kind of cracks or channels within

640
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: the stones that cause it to make some shifting, adjusting

641
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: kind of sound. Yeah, now, I know what you're you're

642
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: all thinking. You're thinking, well, that sounds pretty good to me.

643
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: Joe and Robert seim on board with it. Is there

644
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: anybody that has a problem with this interpretation, and there

645
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,320
Speaker 1: is so. Earlier we mentioned the article from the International

646
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: Phonetic Association mem Non the Vocal Statue by Massimo Petterino,

647
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: and Petterino does have a problem with this, he says, quote,

648
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: the main objection against this kind of hypothesis is that

649
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 1: the other colossus, which stands still intact, made of the

650
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 1: same material, having the same side in shape, has always

651
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: been silent. If the environmental conditions were exactly the same,

652
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 1: why weren't there any microfractures of the sandstone on both. Furthermore,

653
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:12,240
Speaker 1: this hypothesis cannon explain why after the restoration the block

654
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 1: formed by the pedestal and the legs has stopped talking. Therefore,

655
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: this hypothesis leaves many questions unanswered. I don't really follow

656
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:26,839
Speaker 1: that reasoning there because so like he's ignoring the possibility that, right,

657
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:30,279
Speaker 1: the earthquake damage or whatever caused the damage is what

658
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 1: contributed to that one particular statue making the noise, and

659
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: the idea that restoration changed the load, changed the strange,

660
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 1: changed the pressure on the rock, and that affected what

661
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 1: sounds it could make. Yeah, I mean, it's I don't

662
00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:46,279
Speaker 1: really follow the argument either, because it's kind of like saying, well,

663
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:47,960
Speaker 1: you have these two twins. Why does one have a

664
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 1: broken arm and the other doesn't. Well, because one twin

665
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:52,400
Speaker 1: fell out of a tree house and the other did not.

666
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: One of the one of the coloss i toppled due

667
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: to an earthquake, and then the argument is, of course

668
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: that it it causes sort of micro fractures and necessary

669
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: for this phenomenon to emerge. The other does not meet

670
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:07,840
Speaker 1: that criteria. Yeah, I mean, so the heated air or

671
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 1: the channels within explanation I think is a generally reasonable

672
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: sounding explanation. Though I do to take Petterino side for

673
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: a minute, I do wish there was a little bit

674
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 1: more detail, like we could get more detail and exactly

675
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 1: how that works. Yeah, I agree, now, uh, even though

676
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 1: I do not agree however, with many of Petorino's arguments here,

677
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 1: I do think they're they're worth looking at because he

678
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:36,600
Speaker 1: is kind of, at the very least, he's a devil's

679
00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: advocate here, because not only does he have problems with

680
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 1: the established hypothesis, he has an alternate hypothesis. He suggests

681
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: that the sound might have been the result of an

682
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: artificial device UH that was positioned either in the head

683
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:58,279
Speaker 1: of the statue or kind of like stuck up in

684
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 1: one of the nooks and crannies UH involving mirrors that

685
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: conveyed the sun's rays onto a set of metal levers.

686
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:09,880
Speaker 1: Dilation due to h due to heating then would make

687
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: them hit stone keys and produce sound. And he sources

688
00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 1: this as well to an eighty nine French paper, but

689
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: I was not able to really follow his um his sourcing,

690
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:24,399
Speaker 1: so perhaps this is this is based in a more

691
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 1: elaborate argument, but for from the occult sciences, right, But

692
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 1: basically I do I do have a lot of problems

693
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:34,479
Speaker 1: with this because it does seem like a far less

694
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: elegant UH solution to say that instead of it being

695
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: a naturally occurring phenomenon that has a definite start and

696
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: stop date based on damage or restoration to the statue.

697
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 1: It instead requires a device and a plot and maintenance

698
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: of the of the device over the course of at

699
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: you know, two to three centuries. Now, He's not the

700
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: only person to suggest that trickery was involved, right, This

701
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:04,920
Speaker 1: is actually sort of an ancient meme that maybe what

702
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 1: the sound was was some priest class, some priesthood that

703
00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 1: was dedicated to always tricking people into thinking that the

704
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: statue made a sound. I don't think we have any

705
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: way to rule that out, though Petterino gets very specific

706
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:21,800
Speaker 1: in what he thinks they might have done, right, you know,

707
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 1: having this like thermally activated technological devices within the statue itself,

708
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: another way you could you could get that kind of

709
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 1: effect without going to quite such technological and specific links

710
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: as to say there was a priest hiding behind the

711
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: statue who would strike it with a with a hammer, right,

712
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,760
Speaker 1: you know. Now, Now, even Peerino, he he even admits

713
00:40:44,840 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: that one of the problems with this is that, uh

714
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 1: is that if it was a device, then why would

715
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: the statue need to be destroyed to produce the sound.

716
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:55,439
Speaker 1: So even he admits that that is a potential hole

717
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: in the plot here, you know. And then also why

718
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: would the Egyptians, presumable we have installed it to begin with.

719
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:04,879
Speaker 1: But but he also gets into another interesting area here.

720
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:11,239
Speaker 1: Part of his criticism of the phenomenon is that he

721
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 1: doesn't think it would have really been that much of

722
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:15,760
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that people are seemed to have gone crazy

723
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:18,840
Speaker 1: for the coloss I have memnon and this curious sound

724
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: that it's making. But he argues that if it was

725
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: indeed just a cracking sound emerging from stones, that this

726
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:26,759
Speaker 1: was happening elsewhere in the world and would not have

727
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: been seen as a big deal. I don't know. I

728
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: mean maybe so maybe this is a normal natural phenomenon.

729
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:36,479
Speaker 1: It doesn't occur all that often, but lots of people

730
00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: just haven't heard it. This is the only one they've heard.

731
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: I mean, how often have you heard a stone singing?

732
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: That's true, I have not heard one. And if I

733
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: heard one stone singing, it doesn't mean I wouldn't want

734
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:50,360
Speaker 1: to check out another one. It's still interesting. But but anyway,

735
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 1: that's that's his argument he and he actually points to

736
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: some other examples of of of of alleged a stone

737
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 1: crackling sounds that were uh known of at various points

738
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 1: and written about it. Various points in human history. So

739
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:10,320
Speaker 1: he lists sounds mentioned by Charles Darwin, by Alexander von Humboldt,

740
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:16,399
Speaker 1: by members of Napoleon's Commission of Egypt, etcetera. So there

741
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: are other accounts of stones making noise. That is true. Now.

742
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:23,319
Speaker 1: Being a big Alexander von Humboldt fan, since I read

743
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: Andrea Wolfe's excellent book about him a couple of years ago,

744
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 1: I wanted to look up what the Alexander von Humboldt

745
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: passages were, and so I found the passage that Petterino

746
00:42:33,640 --> 00:42:37,399
Speaker 1: seems to be directly referring to is actually not Von

747
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 1: Humboldt describing something he directly saw, but he's quoting a

748
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 1: report from some seventeenth century explorer named Father Acuna, who

749
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 1: I suspect is probably the Spanish missionary explorer Christo bald

750
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: Diatristan d Acuna Akunya, I think. And so here's the

751
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,719
Speaker 1: section from von Humboldt's personal narrative of the travels to

752
00:42:56,760 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: the Equinoctal regions of America. Quote on the north of

753
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:05,400
Speaker 1: the confluence of the Kuppatuba and the Amazon says Akuna

754
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:10,719
Speaker 1: is the mountain Parawaxo, which when illumined by the sun,

755
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: glows with the most beautiful colors, and thence from time

756
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:19,719
Speaker 1: to time issues a horrible noise. All right, but there's more.

757
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 1: So von Humboldt, in another section does actually describes rocks

758
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: making noises. So maybe this is what what Petterino was

759
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 1: obliquely referring to. So von Humboldt is narrating his journey

760
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:34,279
Speaker 1: with companions down a river in an area that I

761
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: believe would now be in Venezuela. They're on the Orinoco,

762
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 1: and von Humboldt writes the following quote, The granitic rock

763
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: or granite rock on which we lay is one of

764
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:48,040
Speaker 1: those where travelers on the Orinoco have heard, from time

765
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: to time towards sunrise subterraneous sounds resembling those of the organ.

766
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: The missionaries called these stones laxa stay musica. It is witchcraft,

767
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:04,160
Speaker 1: said Brujas, said our young Indian pilot who could speak Spanish.

768
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: We never ourselves heard these mysterious sounds, either at car

769
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: China Vieja or in the upper Orinoco. But from information

770
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:15,560
Speaker 1: given us by witnesses worthy of belief. The existence of

771
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that seems to depend on a certain state

772
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:22,799
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere cannot be denied. The shelves of rock

773
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 1: are full of very narrow and deep crevices. They are

774
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,800
Speaker 1: heated during the day to forty eight or fifty degrees.

775
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: I several times found their temperature at the surface during

776
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: the night at twenty eight degrees. It may easily be

777
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:39,520
Speaker 1: conceived that the difference of temperature between the subterranean and

778
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 1: the external air attains its maximum about sunrise, or at

779
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:47,359
Speaker 1: that moment, which is, at the same time farthest from

780
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: the period of the maximum of the heat of the

781
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:53,880
Speaker 1: preceding day. May not these organ like sounds which are

782
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: heard when a person lays his ear in contact with

783
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: the stone be the effect of a current of air

784
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: that shoes out through the crevices. Does not the impulse

785
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: of the air against the elastic spangles of mica that

786
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 1: intercept the crevices contribute to modify the sounds. May we

787
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:14,880
Speaker 1: not admit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing

788
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 1: incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same

789
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: observation on some rock of the Thebaid, and that the

790
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:24,880
Speaker 1: music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of

791
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 1: the priests in the statue of memnon jugglery meaning like chicanery.

792
00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: So I think he's he's going with the idea that

793
00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:35,120
Speaker 1: there there's uh, there's a theory that the priests were

794
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: doing something nefarious there to make the sound. So picking

795
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: back up with von Humbold, perhaps when quote the rosy

796
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 1: fingered Aurora rendered her son the glorious memnon vocal unquote,

797
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:49,520
Speaker 1: the voice was that of a man hidden beneath the

798
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 1: pedestal of the statue. But the observation of the natives

799
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 1: of the Orinoco, which we relate, seems to explain in

800
00:45:56,200 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 1: a natural manner what gave rise to the Egyptian belief

801
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:03,840
Speaker 1: of a own that poured forth sounds at sunrise. Almost

802
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,839
Speaker 1: at the same period at which I communicated these conjectures

803
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:11,320
Speaker 1: to some of the learned in Europe, three French travelers, Jomard,

804
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: Jolois and de Villiers were led to analogous ideas they

805
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: heard at sunrise in a monument of granite at the

806
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,800
Speaker 1: center of the spot on which now stands the Palace

807
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: of Karnak, a noise resembling that of a string breaking.

808
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:30,320
Speaker 1: Now this comparison is precisely that which the ancients employed

809
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: in speaking of the voice of Memnon. The French travelers

810
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 1: thought like me that the passage of rarefied air through

811
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:41,040
Speaker 1: the fissures of a sonorous stone might have suggested to

812
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 1: the Egyptian priests the invention of the juggleries of the Memnomium. Now,

813
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 1: what I love about this passage is that it kind

814
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: of has something for everybody, and you can you can

815
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:55,759
Speaker 1: kind of cherry pick and support any interpretation. You can say, well,

816
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:59,840
Speaker 1: von Hobald von Humbald here is talking about uh trickster

817
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:03,439
Speaker 1: at work in him Non. That's one possibility. And he's

818
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: also talking about natural phenomenon. Seems very on board with

819
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:10,840
Speaker 1: the idea that yes, uh stones could create a cracking

820
00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:15,000
Speaker 1: noise just based on the natural properties of of of

821
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,320
Speaker 1: the heating of the stone. Yeah. I think he doesn't

822
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: fully have the the exact mechanism figured out here, either,

823
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:25,800
Speaker 1: But he says, look, we're on a big slab of granite.

824
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: It's making sounds in the dawn. This other place has

825
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: big blocks of stone apparently making sounds at the dawn.

826
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 1: It could be a common natural cause. You don't necessarily

827
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: have to go to the trickster priests hypothesis. Right now,

828
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: Patterinho is using this as an example of Look, other

829
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:45,799
Speaker 1: people were talking about cracking stones. It's no big deal,

830
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 1: but but it kind of is like, well, it's spent

831
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: a lot of time here discussing it, and therefore it

832
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: was it was clearly a matter of interest to him. Yeah,

833
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 1: I mean, like von Humboldt, I don't encounter a lot

834
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: of spontaneously noise making stone. Yeah, I mean unless you

835
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:05,279
Speaker 1: count Mick Jagger, right who who is still creating a

836
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 1: noise Yeah, we can't quite explain it and is one

837
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: of the greatest relics of the ancient world. He is. So,

838
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: so you're probably wanted, well, okay, what is what is

839
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 1: Petorino's full hypothesis here? Well he he points out that, okay,

840
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 1: if it was a gadget, then you have to ask, well,

841
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,400
Speaker 1: who was capable of creating such a gadget? And at

842
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 1: that time and he points to Greek mathematician and engineer

843
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 1: heron or Hero of Alexandria, And Alexandria was a center

844
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: of learning at the time, and uh and and it

845
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 1: is is often mentioned that Hero had some ideas to

846
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:43,880
Speaker 1: what extent he actually built these out or fabricated them

847
00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 1: as uh. You know, it is an open question, but

848
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:50,439
Speaker 1: some of his ideas did resemble what would eventually become

849
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: steam technology, Like he seemed to be aware of the

850
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 1: basic uh natural processes that would uh that were necessary

851
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:00,839
Speaker 1: for that kind of technology to ex I don't want

852
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: to deny that the achievements of Hero of Alexandria were cool,

853
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: but this seems kind of like those conspiracy theories that say,

854
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 1: like something weird happened in I don't know, nineteen twenty whatever.

855
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 1: You know, there was this guy Tesla and he did

856
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: all these inventions. Maybe he was the guy behind this

857
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 1: thing that happened somewhere in the world. Yeah, so uh

858
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 1: And it does get very conspiracy theorist here shortly, so

859
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: Petterino says, all right, Hero is the kind of guy

860
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: that or if not, the guy who could have made

861
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:35,239
Speaker 1: the gadget. And he then he points to a few

862
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,520
Speaker 1: different machines that he that Hero was said to have

863
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 1: build a fountain that trickles due to the sun's heating

864
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: of a water in airfield globe and then sucks it

865
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 1: back up again in the shade. And it was also

866
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:49,840
Speaker 1: said to produce a hissing sound. So Petterino claims that

867
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: such a gadget could have been placed on the left

868
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: knee of the statue and as still visible cavity uh

869
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:59,320
Speaker 1: as in it's still visible today. But he also admits

870
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: that you have to keep the thing working after, you know,

871
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: for at least two centuries, so you have to expand

872
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory a little bit to involve priests and

873
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,400
Speaker 1: guardians of the Temple of of amenof of the Third

874
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 1: uh and they would have been the necessary keepers of

875
00:50:15,239 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 1: the secret gadget, and he argues that they would be

876
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:20,880
Speaker 1: the ones that would benefit from it as well. His

877
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: hypothesis tics another leap by entailing the possible murder of

878
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 1: hero yeah and his accomplices in order to keep the

879
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: work a secret, because clearly Heroes the sort of guy

880
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: who would want to make his wonder gadget known at

881
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: some point uh and uh. He also suggested the priests

882
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 1: might have silenced anyone who figured out the secret. And

883
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:42,799
Speaker 1: I feel like we're definitely getting into a conspiracy theory

884
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:47,759
Speaker 1: here because the Da Vinci code. Yeah yeah. I have

885
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:49,640
Speaker 1: to ask myself at the end of it, why is

886
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: it more believable to think that you had to have

887
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: a like a secret cabal um that was attending to

888
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 1: an ancient device and keeping it running for you know,

889
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:03,000
Speaker 1: two or three hundred years. Why is that a more

890
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 1: easily digestible uh explanation? Then, oh, well, there's this temperature

891
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:10,920
Speaker 1: differential in the stone and it's causing this slight crackle.

892
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to resort to a jugglery

893
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: of the priest's explanation, yet again, I think it might

894
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:19,880
Speaker 1: be a lot easier to just say, well, there was

895
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:23,320
Speaker 1: I don't know, a priest hiding somewhere in next to

896
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:25,160
Speaker 1: the statue or in the statue, I don't know, maybe

897
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: there's a box or some reads or something like that

898
00:51:27,160 --> 00:51:29,280
Speaker 1: you could hide in, and then they were just beating

899
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:32,360
Speaker 1: it with a hammer at dawn. That that seems to

900
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 1: fairly enough match what people are describing. It's possible people

901
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 1: might not have noticed this, and that's easier than saying, well,

902
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:45,160
Speaker 1: there was a special type of thermal autonomous musical instrument

903
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:49,120
Speaker 1: designed by an ancient inventor hidden within the statue, maintained

904
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: the secrecy by by this cabal of evil priests, or

905
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,800
Speaker 1: maybe he's not saying the evil but of trick tricksy priests.

906
00:51:57,680 --> 00:51:59,720
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I I'd go with the hammer.

907
00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: That's easier, right, right, Yeah, So, I mean, obviously we're

908
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:04,160
Speaker 1: having a little fun with this, but I do want

909
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: a stress that betterinos argument here. It I think it

910
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: is worth discussing just because it does serve as a

911
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 1: kind of Devil's advocate argument against the more established interpretation

912
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:17,759
Speaker 1: of what was going on here, and it does bring

913
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: us to our our final exploration in this episode, the

914
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 1: idea that, yeah, these devices, while I think it's unlikely

915
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: that one was installed at the at the colossi of Memnon,

916
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:34,440
Speaker 1: these gadgets are possible and uh can exist. Yeah, in

917
00:52:34,520 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 1: fact that they are inspiring people, even in more recent years,

918
00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: to want to create solar thermal automata that make music right,

919
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 1: essentially music making robots that work by sunlight. Yeah. You

920
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:51,319
Speaker 1: found a wonderful article this published in the Leonardo Music

921
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: Journal in two thousand seven by Mr Duffy, the Vocal

922
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: Memnon and Solar thermal Automata, And in this Duffy has

923
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:02,839
Speaker 1: just a non ice explanation of what one of these

924
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 1: devices would entail. Yeah, the simple version is in the

925
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:10,279
Speaker 1: description of a memnonium named after me. That is a

926
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 1: difficult word. I'm sure I'm gonna say it wrong if

927
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: I try to say it again. A memnonium quote is

928
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: a self actuating system that generates music using solar energy.

929
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 1: So this is going to be based on the theory

930
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,560
Speaker 1: that it was the soul, it was not some jugglery

931
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:29,800
Speaker 1: of the priests, That it was the solar thermal energy

932
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:33,360
Speaker 1: heating the stone which caused some kind of thing to

933
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 1: happen within it that made the breaking twang. That's right

934
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 1: and uh and and in this article Duffy alludes again

935
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 1: to the idea that that hero may have planned out

936
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 1: something that that that created sound via steam expansion. Uh

937
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:52,440
Speaker 1: And He also points to an earlier Greek scientist, to Cbs,

938
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 1: who would have lived five to two twenty two b c.

939
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,320
Speaker 1: That was also an incident, possibly the first head of

940
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 1: the Library of Alexandria, and he was credited with designing

941
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:09,760
Speaker 1: basically a solar powered mini pipe organ that was driven

942
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:13,360
Speaker 1: by siphoning water between chambers to affect air pressure. Right. So,

943
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:17,240
Speaker 1: Duffy and the paper goes on to describe different types

944
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 1: of solar thermal automata that could be created there's a

945
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 1: there's a great picture of one prototype which is demonstrated

946
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:26,879
Speaker 1: at the Tank in New York City in July two

947
00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:31,279
Speaker 1: thousand three, and it's described as you've got three parabolic

948
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:35,839
Speaker 1: solar concentrators, so sort of like a parabolic mirror that's

949
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 1: going to reflect hot sunlight, and they're they're focused on

950
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:44,200
Speaker 1: these singing tubes that are supposed to create a chord triad.

951
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:47,799
Speaker 1: And in the photo there's somebody working on positioning them

952
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:51,799
Speaker 1: with some heavy eye protection in place, because obviously these

953
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 1: things would be a little bit dangerous. I have to

954
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:57,839
Speaker 1: say that none of the memnonium devices depicted in here

955
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:02,080
Speaker 1: really strike me as a very you know, easibly easily

956
00:55:02,239 --> 00:55:08,320
Speaker 1: hidden object. They look a bit uh obnoxious in their presentation,

957
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:10,440
Speaker 1: like it would be very hard I would think to

958
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:13,239
Speaker 1: just tuck it away in a statue. Yeah. I like

959
00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:18,480
Speaker 1: the idea of memnonium as described by by the paper,

960
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: but it doesn't exactly match because one of the things

961
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 1: about the Colossi mnon is they say it happened at dawn, right,

962
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:29,240
Speaker 1: and then they don't say like, and then it happened

963
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 1: all day after that, So you'd have to make a

964
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 1: very special thing that It's not just like whenever their

965
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:38,320
Speaker 1: sunlight it's heating a certain device and that causes steam

966
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:40,560
Speaker 1: to rise and whatever. It would have to be only

967
00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 1: sunlight at a very specific angle or very specific thermal differential,

968
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 1: like right when the sun rises or something. Do you

969
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 1: think that this uh the story of the CLASSI im

970
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 1: noon at all inspired the scene in Raiders of the

971
00:55:54,520 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: Lost Arc where the the the ammulet to illuminate the map.

972
00:56:00,600 --> 00:56:02,800
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that, but it does make a sound,

973
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,239
Speaker 1: doesn't it When the when the sunlight goes through the

974
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:07,759
Speaker 1: amulet and it's focused down on the ground, it makes

975
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:11,560
Speaker 1: a kind of, uh, steaming kettle kind of sound. Oh man,

976
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,960
Speaker 1: I am. I am way overdue for another viewing of

977
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:18,400
Speaker 1: Raiders the Lost Arc, especially if we end up doing

978
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:20,479
Speaker 1: an episode on the Ark of the Covenant. Is. Yeah,

979
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:25,200
Speaker 1: another weird conspiracy theory about ancient technology, though though a

980
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:28,799
Speaker 1: pretty interesting one. Yeah, you know the one. The thing

981
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 1: I love about about all these different tangents to the class,

982
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:34,759
Speaker 1: like memnon is that it does kind of come back

983
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 1: around this azamandy as principle, right, the idea that you

984
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 1: have some epic work of that that humanity has robbed

985
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 1: and it just does not last. And and it applies

986
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,719
Speaker 1: certainly to the statues themselves, to the kingdom that they

987
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:52,960
Speaker 1: emerge from. It applies to this phenomenon that occurs with

988
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:56,120
Speaker 1: the sound, and it also applies to any kind of

989
00:56:56,200 --> 00:57:00,200
Speaker 1: device one might build to produce such a sound. I

990
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:03,880
Speaker 1: think it should give us another avenue of perspective on

991
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,280
Speaker 1: the idea of restorations. I mean, there's always a question

992
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:12,359
Speaker 1: when you've got some kind of landmark of ancient significance

993
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:16,280
Speaker 1: that has deteriorated, should you do a restoration on it,

994
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:18,480
Speaker 1: Should you try to make it more like it used

995
00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 1: to be, or should you just let it be as

996
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:24,600
Speaker 1: it is? Uh? There are different schools of thought about that, right,

997
00:57:24,680 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: But here we have one great example of where it

998
00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:31,320
Speaker 1: looks like what happened is a restoration killed the most

999
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:35,760
Speaker 1: interesting thing about this great work of ancient art. Yeah,

1000
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:38,840
Speaker 1: I think we've all seen examples of of works of

1001
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 1: ancient or older art that once they've been restored. On

1002
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,200
Speaker 1: one hand, it's great because now you know, conceivably we

1003
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: can we can learn much more about the painting or

1004
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: the sculpture that we can we can perhaps appreciate it

1005
00:57:53,200 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 1: in new ways. But there's also sometimes this this effect

1006
00:57:56,640 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: where we look at it and it looks kind of fake.

1007
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like the same piece. It does not,

1008
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:05,760
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the same aura of of of time

1009
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:08,280
Speaker 1: as it used to. I personally like the idea of

1010
00:58:08,320 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: replication as opposed to restoration. I mean, I'm not always

1011
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: opposed to restoration. There are some cases where it makes sense,

1012
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:17,560
Speaker 1: especially if you need to protect an artifact from rapidly

1013
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 1: deteriorating further. That's in some condition where it's you know,

1014
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:23,000
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, But in a in a

1015
00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:26,000
Speaker 1: situation where it's not like that, I like the idea

1016
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:30,240
Speaker 1: of leaving it as it is and it's presently deteriorated state,

1017
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:34,160
Speaker 1: but then also creating in a different place a replica

1018
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: of what it would have been in its original state.

1019
00:58:37,040 --> 00:58:40,120
Speaker 1: The Parthenon of Greece is probably a great example of this,

1020
00:58:40,280 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: because the Parthenon as it stands now is of course

1021
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:45,800
Speaker 1: in ruins, and the history of the Parthenon is a

1022
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 1: story of destruction and looting and of course just you know,

1023
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: things getting old and two varying extents falling apart, but

1024
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:59,120
Speaker 1: but but mostly destruction and looting. So there have been, uh,

1025
00:58:59,760 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 1: you know, efforts there have been individuals who said, will

1026
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:05,240
Speaker 1: let us restore it to its former glory. But if

1027
00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:07,720
Speaker 1: you if you do that, you're you're kind of erasing

1028
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: the past. Uh So it does seem like it's a

1029
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: better idea to keep things as in some cases, it

1030
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: seems like it's a better idea to keep things as

1031
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:19,120
Speaker 1: they exist, keep the ruins as they exist. But maybe

1032
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,880
Speaker 1: just build a replica I don't know, in Nashville, Tennessee.

1033
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: See how it goes. Hey, that Nashville Parthenon ain't bad. Yeah,

1034
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. I recommend it if you're if you

1035
00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:31,080
Speaker 1: find yourself in Nashville. Personally, I think in Tennessee we

1036
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 1: should have more great monuments to human sacrifice that what

1037
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: arguably yes, arguably yes. All Right, So there you have it,

1038
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:44,440
Speaker 1: the Colossi of Memnon. Hopefully we've we we've managed to

1039
00:59:44,480 --> 00:59:50,040
Speaker 1: take everyone um on a journey across millennia explaining why

1040
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: this uh this place, why these ruins are significant, and

1041
00:59:54,360 --> 00:59:55,920
Speaker 1: and why they're worth talking about here on stuff to

1042
00:59:55,920 --> 00:59:58,600
Speaker 1: buy your mind. It is fascinating. I'm sorry, we we

1043
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,320
Speaker 1: we don't have an ant here for you on exactly

1044
01:00:01,400 --> 01:00:04,720
Speaker 1: what caused the sound, but but it's something to ponder.

1045
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 1: I think we can leave here though fairly confident that

1046
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:12,320
Speaker 1: that it's the heat model, that the heat explanation, and

1047
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:14,800
Speaker 1: not some sort of ancient gadget that was placed by

1048
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:19,320
Speaker 1: by a secret cultist, unless there was also a jugglery

1049
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:23,560
Speaker 1: of priests to maintain such a hoax along the rocks

1050
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:25,640
Speaker 1: on the shores of the Orinoco. It's a it's a

1051
01:00:25,720 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: global conspiracy. That's the thing, right, all right. If you

1052
01:00:29,240 --> 01:00:31,959
Speaker 1: want to explore more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1053
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: as well as blog posts and links out to our

1054
01:00:34,200 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: various social media accounts, be sure to check out Stuff

1055
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:39,480
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That is the mothership,

1056
01:00:39,560 --> 01:00:42,920
Speaker 1: that's where it all originates, and I should also throw

1057
01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:44,720
Speaker 1: out there, hey, if you want to help support the show,

1058
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 1: rate and review us wherever you have the ability to

1059
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:51,360
Speaker 1: do that, huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio

1060
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Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Torry Harrison. If you would like

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Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly to let us

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Speaker 1: know your thoughts about this episode or any others, or

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Speaker 1: to suggested topic for a future episode, or just say

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Speaker 1: hi let us know what you think of the show,

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Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the mind at how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: b