WEBVTT - The Bone Palace, Part 1 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.840 I cannot wait to begin our exodus from this gray country, 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:09.680 said Asthma. Yes, my Matmor. The people of Teneratic death too, seriously. 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:12.960 There's no room for the bailful arts here, and truth 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:16.280 be told, they do not deserve our necromatic skills. I 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:19.959 concur and agree wholeheartedly. If the people here insist on 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.959 taking such a sacred stance on expiration, then fine. Good 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:26.279 luck talking to the dead and raising skeletons from the 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:29.720 grave without us around. Indeed, I wish them luck too 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:33.080 in the completion of the canal project without our splendid 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:37.000 bone golumns to do the heavy lifting. Yes, they lack vision, 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:41.040 I shall not miss them, Yes, good bones, though strong 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:45.320 dairy industry here, I will miss the calcium well, yes, 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.080 but but but our destination will first of all be 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.479 free of their hyper religious nonsense, and it is filled 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:55.320 with the remains as well, For sinsor is populated exclusively 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.440 by the bones and mummies of a people ten centuries dead. No, 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:04.160 at more, we shall build such an empire of necromancy. Oh. Yes, 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:09.440 flying buttresses made from actual ixia and coxyges, a vast 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:15.000 amphitheater of gladiators reanimated mummies serving us delicacies on silver trays, 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.480 skull goblets of wine and all to the music of 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:23.360 piping bone flutes, or a public bathwork made entirely of 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:29.480 Maxillayan mandibles, twin thrones crafted of coiling vertebrae, Hell to 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:44.399 our powers of bones. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:53.440 The production of My Heart Radio. Hey, are you welcome 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.720 to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb, 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.480 and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I I know today's 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.040 episode at you in a necromantic adventure mood. So you 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:06.559 dove into the old Clark Ashton Smith, didn't you. Yeah. 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:08.200 When I saw that we were going to be doing 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:12.520 an episode titled The Bone Palace about novel uses for 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:17.080 bones throughout human and to a certain extent, animal history, 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.760 my mind instantly went to necromancers, and so I instantly 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:24.440 thought of Clark Ashton Smith's excellent little short story, The 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:28.120 Empire of the Necromancers, And so the cold open we 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.360 began with that little skit. It was basically a riff 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.520 on on that particular tail and the characters in it, 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.680 in which we find a couple of necromancers packing up 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.520 shop leaving of the city in the world of the 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:46.160 living in order to set up like a decadent necromantic 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.000 playground in the desert. You know, you think that they 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:51.160 would need to stay at least around some of the 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.880 living to do business, right, Like, you can't just like 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.320 be a necromancer inside a pyramid, Like there's a lot 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.799 to work with, but nobody to work for, right, I mean? 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.960 And yeah, and then when you actually get into necromancy 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.240 as it's treated in a lot of fantasy, you know, 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:09.880 it's about not only death but life. It's about the 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:12.400 cross of between the two. And so I don't know, 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:14.480 it's it's one of these tales. A lot of Clark 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:18.440 Ashton Smith's tales are at once very you know, very 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.400 deep and exotic feeling. You know, they have this this 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.760 dark otherworldliness to them, and yet there's often a little 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.639 cheekiness as well. There's a sort of strange humor to them. 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.840 And I think that's that's evident in his original story, which, 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:33.760 by the way, if you want to read it out there, 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:38.080 you can find it online for free at Eldric Dark 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.840 dot com. I believe they have all of Clark Ashton 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:46.960 Smith's writings assembled there well, so obviously a palace made 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:51.000 out of bones, a bone building, would be a necromancer's dream. 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.400 But it's hard to imagine such a place existing in reality, 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:56.400 or at least it would have been for me a 0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:00.360 few days ago. But now maybe, um, maybe that should 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.080 not be so hard to imagine, because I want to 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.360 start off today by going on a voyage of the 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.360 mind's eye to to venture into the prehistoric past. Will 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.720 you come with me, Robert, let us go to a 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.440 place that is almost a necromantic kingdom. Uh. It's a 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:19.359 place that is today in southwestern Russia. This would be 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:23.720 about five hundred kilometers south of Moscow, uh, close to 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:26.479 the banks of the Don River, near the modern day 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:30.719 city of Voronesh. And today this area is is basically 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.160 kind of a fertile region of prairie type ecosystems, relatively 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.840 moderate continental climate. It's a major center of agriculture in 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:41.600 modern Russia. Actually, I think they grow staple crops like 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.920 sugar beets and potatoes, and they do animal agriculture as 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.960 well there. But twenty thousand years ago there was still 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.200 an ice age ruling the planet, and especially these northern 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.360 realms of the planet. The most recent ice Age, known 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.800 scientifically is the Last Glacial Period or l g P, 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.880 lasted from more than a hundred thousand years ago I 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.120 think maybe roughly like a hundred and twenty thousand years 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:10.640 ago or so to roughly twelve thousand years ago, and 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:16.200 this was the last great glaciation of the broader Pleistocene Age, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:18.800 which began more like two and a half million years ago. 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.160 So the Pleistocene Age has featured this back and forth 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.919 pattern over over geological time, this pattern of repeated glaciation 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.880 events where for thousands of years at a time, the 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.479 world will grow cold and the polar ice caps will 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.640 creep down over the map towards the equator, like this 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.640 sort of slow paint drip of frozen death. And then 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:46.120 these glacial periods will be followed by warmer interglacial periods, 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:47.840 sort of like with the one we think we're in 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:51.000 right now, where the ice sheets retreat back toward the 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.080 polls and complex life pours back into these ice paved 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.480 landscapes that are left behind. Now, of course this sounds 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:02.840 very apocalyptic, but again remember that these changes happen over 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.720 like many thousands of years, so you know, generally humans 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.280 and animals have have time to sort of adapt in 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.280 migrate back and forth to adjust their lives to the 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:15.120 changing climates. The interglacial period that we're in right now 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.600 is known as the Holocene epoch, and since it began 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.800 more than ten thousand years ago, this relatively warm Holocene 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:27.680 includes all of recorded human history. Think about that. We 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:32.920 have no surviving literature at all with firsthand accounts of 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.920 what these little ice ages were like, but there absolutely 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:40.440 were humans around at the time. There were humans, humans 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.920 like us, crawling the earth during these frozen periods. Homo 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:48.760 sapiens actually came to exist during the Pleistocene ilbe at 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.440 first in warmer equatorial regions, but they soon began to 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:54.760 spread all over the planet. We've we've talked about the 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.760 spread of humans in recent episodes, even too far reaches 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:01.479 in the north where the end would be ever howling, 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:04.800 and this this menace of ice loomed. Yeah, I believe 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.000 we've also talked about how the Neanderthal is u is 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:13.840 perhaps more ideally suited for this sort of cold weather environment. Yeah, 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.240 and the Neanderthal will will come up a bit in 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.200 this episode. But so Homo sapiens and Neanderthals both actually 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.720 eventually spread to this general region the Russian Plain. This 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.560 area in like southwest Russia and Ukraine uh and more 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:32.240 specifically this area I mentioned earlier, that's, you know, a 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:36.040 few hundred kilometers south of modern day Moscow along the 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.239 banks of the Dawn. So the last glacial period would 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.400 have reached its most bitter cold in this place between 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:48.600 about twenty three thousand and eighteen thousand years ago. The 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:52.360 summers then would have been very short and very cool. 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:57.119 Winters would be long and freezing, and at that time 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:00.360 winter in this place would have averaged about negative twenty 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.360 degrees celsius or about negative four degrees fahrenheit, and that's 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:07.320 before wind chill is taken into account, and it would 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.800 have been windy. So if you try to picture it, 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.560 this region of the Russian plane at the time would 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:17.320 have been a freezing step landscape, just a bit south 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.600 of the ice sheets that reached down from the polar 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.560 regions and covered much of North America, Europe and Asia 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.120 at times. These glaciers, it's kind of hard to imagine this, 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:32.360 but they were sometimes between three and four kilometers thick, 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.880 or more than two miles. So just imagine a mountain 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:40.640 sheet of ice reaching down from the top of the 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:45.319 world down into the continents into totally inhabited regions today, 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.480 and there were people who lived here at this time. 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:53.679 The archaeological record indicates that most humans left this region 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.720 of southwest Russia during the harshest climate period of this 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.440 Ice Age, you know, the like between twenty three thousand 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.280 and eighteen thousand years ago. And of course that's probably 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:05.440 because first of all, it's so cold, but as a 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.319 response to the cold, it's also because you know, most 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.840 food and fuel sources would have disappeared. Uh. In the 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:13.440 words of a study that we're going to cite in 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.000 a minute, this was quote a period of intense cold 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:22.319 when similar latitudes in Europe were already abandoned, but here 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:27.320 some people stayed and survived. I find myself wanting to 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:31.120 hear a Bruce Springsteen song about living in this environment, 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.520 you know, after after other folks have have gone on 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.840 and left for warmer climates, and you're you're just digging 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:41.360 in and trying to make life work in this harsh environment. 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.880 The wind's healing in this cold town, and I can 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.360 hear you, uh, And in fact it will it'll get 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.160 even more real relevant because this town also rips the 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.240 bones from your back. Um. So I'm trying to imagine 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.920 the people who lived in the shadow of this gigantic glacier. 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.480 And I'm rem ended, of course, of that great line 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:03.400 from literature that we come back to on the show 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.120 from time to time. It's John Gardner's description of the 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:10.400 monster Grendel in his reimagining of the Beowulf legend, when 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.920 he calls him uh a shadow shooter, an earth rim roamer, 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:19.800 walker of the world's weird wall uh. And that's that's 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.199 so lovely because it's it's first of all, just great imagery, 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.679 but it also actually uses poetic devices that appear in 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:30.640 the original Beowulf epic. Uh, the devices of alliteration, which 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:32.640 is there in Beowulf, you know, repeating sounds at the 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.079 beginning of words, and this weird way of forming metaphors 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.439 known as kinning, where you you sort of like combine 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:44.040 words into into a new compound. One example, often in 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.840 translation in Beowulf would be calling the seas the whale roads. 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.240 But for me, the the Beowulf comparison doesn't stop there, 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.400 because when I think of people trying to survive in 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.560 this world, I get this kind of similar feeling of 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:01.680 horror and mystery that invoked by the story of Beowulf. 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:05.800 More generally like this small band of humans gathering around 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:09.720 a fire set against the backdrop of this vast, frosty 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:13.960 wilderness full of darkness and monsters. Uh. And in reality, 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.400 of course, this wouldn't have been monster monsters, but maybe 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.760 desperate predators and scavengers that are also trying to eke 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.120 out a survival alongside you at the edge of the world. 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.760 And this in these utterly unforgiving elements, I mean truly 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.680 a time when you would you wouldn't have to create Grendel, 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:37.199 because Grindel like organisms uh still roamed this region. I mean, 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.040 of course, one of the most astonishing creatures to roam 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:42.720 this region at the time would have been the great, 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.920 the powerful, the wooly mammoth. But also to compare it 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.880 to Beowulf again, uh, the wooly mammoth is interesting. But 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.520 because as great, as powerful, as terrifying an animal as 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:55.320 this is, if you were to you know, come in 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:59.679 come into combat with one, it ultimately did form the 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.600 prey a diet of many of the humans who or 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.360 maybe all of the humans who lived in this place 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.040 at the time. So you know, they became the bailwolf. 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.600 They went out to kill the monster. Yeah, I mean 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:14.200 when you had the tools and the skills, uh to 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:18.200 actually bring these creatures down. They were such such such 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:21.600 a wealth of resources exactly. And that's really getting us 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.600 to the heart of the issue here. So there's another 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:28.200 way this historical situation gives these real life flashes of 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:31.080 grin daly and horror. And this is the real reason 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.720 I brought up these Ice Age hunter gatherers. Archaeologists have 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:39.960 uncovered evidence in about seventy different places so far that 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.880 the prehistoric peoples of this region of Ice Age Russia 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:48.800 and Ukraine and the Russian Plane, they built buildings out 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:55.200 of bones, especially out of the skulls, skeletons, and tusks 0:12:55.280 --> 0:13:00.520 of the wooly mammoth. Now, most often the structures take 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:05.080 the form of large bone circles, and if you're trying 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:06.720 to picture this, you can look it up with some 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.440 terms I'll give you in a minute. Um. But it's 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:14.239 as if the builders were stacking up ring shaped walls 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:19.439 around a central chamber, except the walls are made out 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:24.559 of wooly mammoth skeletons. There are no detectable roofs left 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.720 or you know that would cover up these walls if 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:30.439 there were ever any roofs. There are just the circular 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:35.560 or oval shaped walls of bone. Dating methods reveal that 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.000 humans were building these bone rings maybe from like twenty 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.120 five thousand years ago up until about twelve thousand years 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.960 ago in the region. And uh and the wooly mammoth 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:48.640 went extinct in this region about ten thousand years ago, 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:50.960 so the numbers could have been dwindling at the time 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.360 that these buildings went out of fashion. And the amazing 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:58.560 mystery is that so these ancient hunter gatherer humans were 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:03.080 building these ring shaped structures out of mammoth bones. And 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:07.360 archaeologists are not in agreement about what these bones circles 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.760 were for. Yeah, because if you try and picture one 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:12.760 in your mind, I mean, for for me anyway, it 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.560 sounds it sounds regal, it sounds a bit sacred, right, 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:18.520 I mean, it's made from the bones of this uh, 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.280 this this organism that you've grown to depend on. But 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:24.080 but then again, you could also wonder is it just 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.920 is it just a material resources issue? Is it like 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.520 if I started building uh, like like little houses and 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.080 forts out of the leftover Amazon boxes that I have 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:37.440 accumulating in my house. Well, I mean, I think you 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.640 might have more options overall than we're available to the 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:42.840 people of the Russian Plane at this time. But I 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.320 think you are absolutely on the right track there, Robert, 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.280 I mean, as as best we can guess. So maybe 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:50.320 we should take a break and then when we come back, 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:52.800 we can talk about a new study just from the 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:56.720 past month about the oldest and largest of these structures 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:03.800 built by modern humans. Alright, we're back, Okay, So we've 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:06.920 been talking about the idea that all throughout this place 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.840 known as the Russian Plain, in this area of eastern Europe, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.800 in like southwest Russia and Ukraine, there are at least 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:18.160 like seventy locations that archaeologists have found where Ice Age 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:23.560 hunter gatherers built buildings out of bones. Now, I want 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:25.960 to be fair, we called this episode the Bone Palace. 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:30.720 These are not gigantic, elaborate buildings, they're not castles. But 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:34.000 it is pretty amazing to see people, especially people who 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.600 we did not believe had any kind of settled existence, uh, 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:43.360 building structures out of wooly mammoth bones. Yeah, I mean, 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:46.680 for the time period, I think this is like a cathedral. 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.160 I mean, you know, in terms of like what else 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.360 could we possibly compare it to that that humans, especially 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.760 in that region were constructing. Uh, that we're building in 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.840 one place, Yeah, exactly. Um So I want to go 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.720 back to a more specific place within this region I 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:05.080 mentioned it earlier on. Remember that specific place about five 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:09.280 hundred kilometers south of Moscow, near the modern day city 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.920 of Voronesh. That this site is known to archaeologists as 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:18.600 Kostenky eleven. And since the mid twentieth century, archaeologists have 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:21.520 known about a couple of smaller structures built out of 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.880 mammoth bones at this location. But just a few years back, 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:30.560 around fourteen, I've seen both years sited, excavation began on 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:34.640 a newly discovered bone circle there. And this new bone 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:38.640 circle at Costinky eleven dates back more than twenty thousand years. 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.240 Radio carbon dating of some of the elements here it 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:45.000 pushes its construction possibly back to about twenty five thousand 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.240 years before the present. Uh So, twenty five thousand years 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:50.480 is the number that a lot of news reports have cited. 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:55.080 This bone circle is more than twelve point five meters 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.040 in diameter, which is about forty one ft wide. Uh, 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:01.560 and in the present structure when it was found, was 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.080 buried about a foot beneath the surface before being unearthed. 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.120 But the researchers think that this ring wall of bones 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.800 was probably about twenty inches or about fifty centimeters high 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.560 before it collapsed many thousands of years ago, so the 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:17.720 bone wall would have come up, you know, more than 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:19.760 a foot and a half off the ground or so. 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:23.480 Now here's where things start getting really weird. How many 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.600 mammoths do you think went into the construction of this building? 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.440 You might think, oh, well, you know, a mammoth's big. 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:31.960 You could probably build a building with one or two 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:37.040 mammoth's right, Well, I mean it is a big, big animal. 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:39.040 But then when then you start thinking about, okay, which 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:41.640 of the bones are actually useful? Uh? You know, which 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.359 ones are going to be actually large enough or long 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:46.960 enough to be supportive? Like it's still the creature is 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.760 only going to have so many ribs, right or which 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.600 bones have you not used for other purposes? Another possibility? 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.800 That's right, because this is going to be a very 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.359 utilitarian culture, right, You're gonna have to if that bone 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:03.359 is better used for scraping hides or you know, aiding 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:07.760 in the the actual mission of acquiring and processing other 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.160 mammoths for your survival. Uh it doesn't make as much 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:15.840 sense at least without like really significant religious uh um 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.320 underpinnings to use it in the construction of this mysterious structure. 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.520 Or I mean so well, actually, I'm not gonna spoil it. 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.439 There's another possible use for the bones here that that 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:28.959 I want to get to in just a little bit. 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.360 I'll leave that a tantalizing mystery for now. But so, 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:35.400 how many wooly mammoths here? This structure was built out 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:39.560 of the bones of more than sixty wooly mammoths, and 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:41.719 this is indicated by the by the fact that there 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:46.640 were sixty four individual mammoth skulls used in construction, as 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:51.879 well as many other types of bones, including lower jaws, longbones, vertebrae, 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:54.840 and tusks. Uh. And while mammoth bones made up the 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:57.600 bulk of the building materials, there were also a small 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.760 number of bones from reindeer, horses, as bears and foxes 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.520 like the red fox and the Arctic fox. Uh. And 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.280 the circle today it sits on an east facing slope, 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.040 sort of an incline, a slight incline of about six degrees, 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.840 and curiously, the bones make up a continuous wall with 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:21.480 no apparent door or entry way. Well, that that makes 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:23.720 me think that it's either it's either less of a 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.960 building and more of just a sheer structure, almost like 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:30.639 a piece of public art, or it's it's something that 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:32.840 you're not supposed to come out of. And in that case, 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:34.760 it makes me think it might be a tomb. Well, 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.160 we find no evidence that it's a human tomb because 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:39.960 there are no human remains inside it. So so we 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:43.040 could mark that one off, though that might not be 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.960 totally off the mark. In terms of the possibilities for 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.760 ritual significance, we we don't know, and but we'll discuss 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.879 those possibilities as we go on. Um So, this find 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.440 was described in a paper published in the journal Antiquity. 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:00.320 It was out just this past month by Alexander J. E. Friar, 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:05.639 David G. Barrasford Jones, Alexander E. Doodon, E. Katerina M. 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:09.919 Kona Cova, John F. Hoffeker, and Clive Gamble, and it 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.600 was called the Chronology and Function of a new circular 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.560 mammoth bone structure at Kostenky eleven and so this new 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:18.919 circle they found, the one we've been talking about, is 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:22.159 now believed to be both the oldest and the largest 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.440 bone structure yet discovered that was built by Homo sapiens. 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.400 It's at least a thousand years older than the other 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:32.480 mammoth bone structures of Eastern Europe. Uh. And as a 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.560 side note, when I had to qualify built by Homo sapiens, 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.200 that's because I was actually reading reports of a single 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.560 possibly older bone structure, uh maybe more than forty thousand 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.920 years old at a site called Malativa one in Ukraine. 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.159 But this one is believed to have been built by 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:52.040 Neanderthals and not Homo sapiens, which either way is very interesting. 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:56.280 Interesting to see Homo sapiens and Neanderthals participating in extremely 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:02.040 similar cultures of proto construction out of bones, like before 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.880 long before a settled agricultural life evolved, which is when 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:08.960 we normally think of people, you know, building buildings and 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:12.560 stuff like that. So it makes me wonder where the 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:16.760 Homo sapiens copying the Neanderthals? Yeah yeah, or or are 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:21.359 we just talking about two intelligent species, uh coming to 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:24.760 the same conclusions based on the materials available, Yeah, and 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:27.520 that that could be something there too, because we might 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.720 not be when we're trying to understand what the heck 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:31.879 was going on here, Why would you build a little 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.120 the circular buildings out of bones. Maybe we're just not 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:40.320 imagining how what their material limitations in life were. So 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.240 the excavation of this new site, it took about three years. 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:48.160 It included experts from University of Exeter, from Cambridge, from 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:52.439 the Kostinky State Museum Preserve, and from the University of 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:55.679 Colorado Boulder in the University of Southampton. And it was 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:58.600 done using a technique called flotation, and that's where you 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.800 apply water to dig site in order to kind of 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:07.440 sieve out archaeologically significant material to remove it from the sediment. So, 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:09.359 as we go on to discuss a little bit more 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:11.600 about this finding and what makes it so interesting, I 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.119 want to keep a couple of main questions in mind. 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:19.280 First of all, again, remember the utterly harsh, you know, 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.640 reality of of surviving in this place during the last 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:26.239 glacial maximum, especially the worst part of it from like 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:28.600 you know, twenty three thousand years ago or so to 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.199 about eighteen thousand years ago. Uh, you know, would have 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.960 been so cold and so unforgiving and resources would have 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.200 been pretty scarce. Why would people come to or stay 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:40.800 in this place at all? And then yeah, like if 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.840 it's a place of seasonal return, then like it would 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:46.280 there would have to be some some advantage there. Like 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:49.520 he's often been brought up before that the nomadic people's 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.359 would have regularly returned to, say a hot spring at 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:57.080 geothermal spring, which has an obvious advantage for your survival. 0:22:57.240 --> 0:22:59.520 But in this case, we can we find anything that 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.720 obvious us Yeah, and then the other thing, of course, 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:05.919 would be Okay, we know people were coming here, what 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.320 on earth was this little bone palace for? Why would 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:12.639 you go to the trouble of making this thing? Uh? So, 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:15.080 first I want to focus on what the research on 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.000 this this new bone circle found, and then we can 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:20.760 move to the what was it for? Question? Okay, So 0:23:20.840 --> 0:23:23.119 first of all, what did the research find? So usually 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.399 these mammoth bone buildings made by the Stone Age humans 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:29.119 are surrounded by a number of big pits, and this 0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:32.399 new find at Kostinky eleven is no exception. Um, there 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:36.080 were several large pits around it, but again we don't 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.119 know what these pits were for. It could be storage, 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:41.760 it could be places to dumperberry trash. It could be 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:44.640 a type of quarry that maybe mud or other building 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.119 material was sourced from. I read about the possibility. We 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.800