Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we thought we would treat you to the beginning
Speaker 1: of an early nineteen eighties film trailer. Yeah, before we
Speaker 1: go any further, Uh, take a load of this. For
Speaker 1: ten centuries it has waited m to be awakened, to
Speaker 1: be worshiped again, like a god, to fill the skies,
Speaker 1: to cast its shadow over the earth, to release its fury. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's October. You know we're doing stuff related to monsters,
Speaker 1: horror movies. What on earth was that? Robert? That was
Speaker 1: a was? It was part of the trailer to Cue
Speaker 1: the Winged Serpent, released in nineteen eighty two, written and
Speaker 1: directed by b movie legend Larry Cohen. Oh the guy
Speaker 1: who made God Told Me To Yeah, also known for
Speaker 1: It's Alive and the Stuff. This particular film, though, is it's,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, a real gym because it's it's nine
Speaker 1: two New York, so it's essentially like late seventies New York. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It it really gets that grimy nous and that doomy nous.
Speaker 1: I've I've been trying to figure out exactly what it
Speaker 1: is about, like late seventies New York in movies, where
Speaker 1: it just there's this grim, fatalistic, doomy kind of cynicism
Speaker 1: that everybody's got where it's like they know the end
Speaker 1: of the world is coming soon. Yeah, I mean what
Speaker 1: part of it is that? I mean, we could do
Speaker 1: you could do a whole episode, the whole podcast series
Speaker 1: just on that vibe. I mean, really, the the HBO
Speaker 1: series The Deuce is kind of attempting to do the
Speaker 1: same thing, looking particular at particular areas of of the
Speaker 1: culture during that time. But yeah, I think there's a
Speaker 1: certain national cynicism, and then there obviously some some major
Speaker 1: issues going on in New York City at the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: This trailer adds a little extra issue to that. Heap
Speaker 1: that being a giant, uh flying serpentine creature that may
Speaker 1: or may not be an Aztec god that is roosting
Speaker 1: somewhere in the city and occasionally a soaring down to
Speaker 1: grab a Sunbathe is off the roofs of New York
Speaker 1: City skyscrapers and window washers, window washers, cops, anybody who
Speaker 1: happens to be up there within reach. Now, essentially this
Speaker 1: creature is a dragon, right, It is a giant, angry
Speaker 1: looking bird lizard thing. I don't really I don't think
Speaker 1: it has feathers, does it. No, it's very very smooth,
Speaker 1: very reptilian. It looks kind of like a winged saua
Speaker 1: pod with enormous eyes. It's a very strange design. But
Speaker 1: it's stopped motions, so every moment you spend with it
Speaker 1: in the film is magic. So this movie is you know,
Speaker 1: it's got that that grimy, nasty, sleazy B movie quality,
Speaker 1: that late seventies Larry Cohen kind of thing. But it's
Speaker 1: also kind of good. It's like, it's got a funny script.
Speaker 1: There's like a great scene where the cops are about
Speaker 1: to storm the nest of the of the dragon creature
Speaker 1: and one of them is just drinking a Budweiser. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has an ingenious plot because well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe not ingenious, but it has a clever plot that
Speaker 1: I really like for a monster movie. Uh, which, just
Speaker 1: to run through the cast real quick, You've got Candy Clark,
Speaker 1: you have David Carradine, you have Richard Rowntree, David Carradine
Speaker 1: Beta Carotene. Why is it every time I say David Carradine,
Speaker 1: I want to say beta Caroteen. I don't know, he's
Speaker 1: he's just rich in it, I guess. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: you have Michael Moriarty, who's just great at playing a
Speaker 1: down on his luck slee's bag, and he really brings
Speaker 1: it in this movie. Reviews from the year it came
Speaker 1: out pretty much agreed with this him and they were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this monster movie, but that Michael
Speaker 1: Moriarty is fabulous, and he is fabulous in it. He
Speaker 1: plays essentially, yeah, this New York sleeves bag who I
Speaker 1: think he's involved in a diamond highst and he flees
Speaker 1: and he ends up stumbling upon the nest of the
Speaker 1: of Q the Winged Serpent, because he just happens to
Speaker 1: climb to the top of the Chrysler building. I don't
Speaker 1: remember why he does that. He's just like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: up here now. But he discovers like where the monster
Speaker 1: that is terrorizing the city is located, where it's egg
Speaker 1: is located, and so what does he do with this
Speaker 1: heroic information? He blackmails the city. I was just right,
Speaker 1: babe me a million dollars and and give me immunity
Speaker 1: for all my crimes or I won't tell you where
Speaker 1: the egg is. Yes, and there there's some other elements
Speaker 1: to the plot that really uh fun as well. That
Speaker 1: there's one scene, and this is in the trailer where
Speaker 1: David Decaradine's police officer character's detective character says, this thing
Speaker 1: has been prayed back into existence. And there's this whole
Speaker 1: plot with like an az Tec cult and ritual murders. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a fabulously fun film. Now with the
Speaker 1: nod to the to the cult and with Q standing
Speaker 1: in for quetzel Kadal, Uh, it's clear that the beast
Speaker 1: in this film is a monster ified version of the
Speaker 1: ancient meso American god ketzel Coadal. And I think it's
Speaker 1: worth stopping to appreciate that the the original ketsel Coadal,
Speaker 1: the feathered serpent, is not a monster, but is a
Speaker 1: holly magnificent god of the heavens. Right, And it's unfair
Speaker 1: to really do associated with a bunch of blood sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Though we were discussing this little offline before we came
Speaker 1: in here. That's often where a lot of people's imagination
Speaker 1: goes when they are reminded of the Aztec civilization or
Speaker 1: other meso American or or South American civilizations. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is one thing that I think is is kind of
Speaker 1: sad and unfair that that ancient meso American religions often
Speaker 1: get associated with human sacrifice. And it's not unfair because
Speaker 1: there was no human sacrifice. So there there was, It's
Speaker 1: pretty clear that that was a feature of some ancient
Speaker 1: meso American religion. But what's unfair is that it's like
Speaker 1: meso American religion gets singled out for association with human
Speaker 1: sacrifice when human sacrifice is just everywhere in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: There's evidence that the ancient Greeks probably did human sacrifice,
Speaker 1: the you know, ancient Nordic religions, you know, the Celts
Speaker 1: and the Scandinavians. I mean, everywhere you look, you'll find
Speaker 1: evidence of human sacrifice somewhere back in time. So it's
Speaker 1: not like this was unique to the Mesoamerican religions. So
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're going to mostly talk about the
Speaker 1: religious origins of quetzo Quaddle as well as some of
Speaker 1: the things that it has inspired uh and may have
Speaker 1: inspired yet we're gonna talk a little bit about serpents
Speaker 1: that actually sort of fly through the air. We're also
Speaker 1: going to talk about a particular prehistoric flying creature that
Speaker 1: has been named in the Quetzo kadals honor. But let's
Speaker 1: start with the god itself, quetzal Kadal, the plumed serpent.
Speaker 1: Tell me about this god, Robert. So, in reading a
Speaker 1: bit about the plume serpent god, a number of things
Speaker 1: it became really clear. Um. I was one book I
Speaker 1: picked up was RUDOLPHO Andy as a fictional Lord of
Speaker 1: the Dawn the legend of Quetzo Kwaddle, which is I
Speaker 1: say fictional. Basically, what he attempted to do in this
Speaker 1: book is to provide a narrative, easily read, narrative version
Speaker 1: of Quetzo Quaddle's story. And I actually saw a really
Speaker 1: good user review for this where they pointed out, you know,
Speaker 1: with with Greek myths in particular, it's not just archaeological
Speaker 1: and anthropo anthropological information that we're exposed to as a kid.
Speaker 1: We were exposed to the stories themselves. We get to
Speaker 1: kind of experience the stories as just pure stories. And
Speaker 1: this particular reviewer was saying, you know, I had trouble
Speaker 1: finding that with meso American religions, and this book provided that.
Speaker 1: So in the book itself is is a very good
Speaker 1: I'll mention a little bit more as we go forward,
Speaker 1: but there's an introduction in this book from the University
Speaker 1: of New Mexico's David M. Johnson, and yeah, he does
Speaker 1: a great job of just just rolling through, like what
Speaker 1: was quetzo kaddle, what did what did it stand for?
Speaker 1: And what is our what do we know? What do
Speaker 1: we not know about it? And he points out that
Speaker 1: there's a lot that we do not know about the
Speaker 1: toll Tech Empire. This would be uh, one of the
Speaker 1: empire's proceeding of the Aztec Empire. He says, he said
Speaker 1: that we're only we're only talking the Mesoamerican world roughly
Speaker 1: seven hundred years ago, so we're not going into the
Speaker 1: the the ancient past really uh. He says that we
Speaker 1: know more about Athens of two thousand years ago or
Speaker 1: Hebraic traditions from three thousand years ago. Uh, meso American
Speaker 1: world against seven h years ago, and there's so much
Speaker 1: we don't know. And he says this is largely because
Speaker 1: Spanish friars did what they could to destroy the codices
Speaker 1: of the Aztecs in the Maya. We have to remember
Speaker 1: that the most obvious thing here is that this was
Speaker 1: a world that was invaded by Westerners, by the Spanish,
Speaker 1: by the Portuguese UH and UH, and that the culture
Speaker 1: was ravaged for it. On top of this, the hieroglyphic
Speaker 1: style books of the Aztecs UH were there to apparently
Speaker 1: aid in the memorization of oral literature. So imagine, perhaps
Speaker 1: this is my my read on the scenario. Imagine if
Speaker 1: only the illustrations and the illuminations of Christian stories survived,
Speaker 1: but the Bible did not, or we had you know,
Speaker 1: mostly artwork to go by uh in order to figure
Speaker 1: out what the Greek pantheon consisted of, you know, and
Speaker 1: what the stories were that were associated with those individuals.
Speaker 1: I think that that's just a rough example to sort
Speaker 1: of outline the problems of not having the you know,
Speaker 1: complete access to the information. But so in general, there's
Speaker 1: been a great loss of Mesoamerican literature that was in
Speaker 1: many ways caused by colonialism. Yeah. He pointed out in
Speaker 1: this that only something like sixteen books survive, three Mayan,
Speaker 1: six Wahaka books, and that most of what we know
Speaker 1: about pre conquest culture in Mesoamerica comes from archaeological evidence
Speaker 1: and postconquest scribes and scholars, but quetzo Quaddle seems to
Speaker 1: have existed in this pantheon of meso American culture for
Speaker 1: a while. Is this kind of wind god who creates
Speaker 1: the earth by lifting up the heavens. And he was
Speaker 1: probably a very old god emerging from the beliefs of
Speaker 1: coastal regions associated with shells and wind and sea. The
Speaker 1: the quet soul part of his name refers to a
Speaker 1: rare bird with precious green feathers, feathers used in ceremonial dresses,
Speaker 1: and um At should point out that there you can
Speaker 1: look up pictures of quets as they are like five
Speaker 1: different species of quets als and there, and their feathers
Speaker 1: are quite beautiful. They're found in Mexico in the extreme
Speaker 1: southern United States. Yeah, I think does the Does the
Speaker 1: name refer to their long tail feathers? Is that right?
Speaker 1: I believe so. And these would have been used in
Speaker 1: uh various religious attire. They are beautiful birds. And now
Speaker 1: the cowaddle aspect of the name that refers to a
Speaker 1: snake tied to earth energy fertility in the cyclical nature
Speaker 1: of life. So in this combo UH, this god, we
Speaker 1: have a convergence of earthly and spiritual energy. We have
Speaker 1: a creature of the ground and a creature of the sky,
Speaker 1: both as one, and he went by other names as well.
Speaker 1: He was known as Kukulkin in the Yucatan and Guku
Speaker 1: Mats in Guatemala. In devotion to the feathered serpent spread
Speaker 1: as far north as New Mexico and south to Columbia, Peru,
Speaker 1: and Bolivia. And of course outside of this tradition, obviously
Speaker 1: we have to point to the fact that this is
Speaker 1: not the only tradition that involves a winged serpent. You
Speaker 1: encounter feathered serpents and other religions as well, uh and
Speaker 1: in Europe and Asia. And essentially, as we pointed out
Speaker 1: with with Q from the movie, it's it's not that
Speaker 1: different from other ideas of a dragon, a great holy
Speaker 1: winged creature. Now, I don't want to try to over
Speaker 1: smooth or overconform the differences between different mythical beasts from
Speaker 1: around the world, but I am always fascinated by the
Speaker 1: fact that it seems to me, you know, if if
Speaker 1: I'm not over you know, over generalizing that so many
Speaker 1: different cultures have something like a dragon. There's the European dragon,
Speaker 1: the ancient Near Eastern dragon, the Chinese dragon. And then
Speaker 1: if we're saying cuetzel Kadal is in many ways kind
Speaker 1: of like a dragon. Is that? Um? Is that just
Speaker 1: us seeing patterns and things that are objectively not all
Speaker 1: that similar or is that really a pattern? And if so,
Speaker 1: what is it that causes dragon imagery to arise spontaneously
Speaker 1: in so many different cultures around the world. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you can also tie in just the serpentine aspect
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, obviously there are a lot of
Speaker 1: world servants in mythologies, and there's a lot to be
Speaker 1: said about our basically, our our encoded response to the
Speaker 1: side of a snake. Um, if if cats had a
Speaker 1: god of the sky they worshiped, perhaps it would be
Speaker 1: a what is it a cucumber with wings in the sky. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again I yeah, we don't want to over generalize things,
Speaker 1: but I feel like there are certain creatures of the
Speaker 1: Earth that humans have a natural heightened response to. And
Speaker 1: then add you know, several thousand years worth of myth
Speaker 1: building and world building on top of that, and you
Speaker 1: get some curious forms. Well, yeah, I wonder if this
Speaker 1: goes back to something we talked about, like in our
Speaker 1: the First Monster episode, where we discussed the idea what
Speaker 1: types of animal forms would become most embedded in review
Speaker 1: eared in human consciousness, and you would tend to assume
Speaker 1: it might be something like an apex predator or some
Speaker 1: animal representing danger, but then also bringing in qualities that
Speaker 1: we associate with, like intelligence and human characteristics. But also
Speaker 1: just a minute ago, I think you mentioned something about
Speaker 1: the cyclical nature of of the world and of time.
Speaker 1: I figured that had something to do with with the
Speaker 1: ancient Mesoamerican theology we're talking about here, right, Yeah, The
Speaker 1: belief system in ancient Mexico is one in which you
Speaker 1: had various ages that had preceded our own. Each fallen
Speaker 1: age was ruled over by an appropriate god. So we
Speaker 1: at ages of water, ages of fire, each ended by
Speaker 1: disharmony between the forces that must otherwise exist in balance.
Speaker 1: And these were not strictly moral dimensions of good versus evil,
Speaker 1: but forces apparently more akin to Eastern models of yin
Speaker 1: and yang um. Though there is a timeless struggle at
Speaker 1: the heart of this, and it is I think very
Speaker 1: easy to categorize the two players in it into sort
Speaker 1: of a good versus evil interpretation. But then again that's
Speaker 1: our Western minds approaching it too right. You might want
Speaker 1: to put things in the familiar categories and say you've
Speaker 1: got God and the devil, but it's not quite that
Speaker 1: case with what Ketzelkadal and tes Catlee PoCA. Yes, tes
Speaker 1: catlet PoCA, whose name apparently means smoking mirror, referring to
Speaker 1: the obsidian mirrors used in worship. That's so good, So
Speaker 1: it's essentially he's essentially the god of the Black mirror Um.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, that black Mirror came up in an episode
Speaker 1: that Christian and I did on John d the the
Speaker 1: the English Um really polymath but also sorcerer. He had
Speaker 1: a mirror that that originated in South America or Mesoamerica.
Speaker 1: What did he use it for? Well, magic, of course, right,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna have a an obsidian mirror of of
Speaker 1: test Catlet PoCA of you're gonna be better be using
Speaker 1: it from magic. But anyway, these these two beings that
Speaker 1: they created the world, It's said, by tearing apart a
Speaker 1: primordial Earth goddess. The world was created from the parts
Speaker 1: of her body out of remorse from the two gods
Speaker 1: for the the for her unfortunate death, and they also
Speaker 1: created man and woman. Um there's an interesting little story
Speaker 1: where um quetzo Quaddle himself has to has to make
Speaker 1: a regular pilgrimage into the land of the Dead, into Michlin,
Speaker 1: and there he has to complete a series of trials
Speaker 1: for its king and queen so that they'll let him
Speaker 1: bring the old bones of the dead back up to
Speaker 1: the surface and then use their ground up substance to
Speaker 1: create the next generation of humans. Yeah, and uh and
Speaker 1: and again. In this we see you know, some models
Speaker 1: here that are present elsewhere in the world, and we're
Speaker 1: reminded of, you know, the harrowing of Hell or or
Speaker 1: the descents into the underworld in in the Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: maybe ice A and o Sirius. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: his story as old as human time anyway. On top
Speaker 1: of this, um uh Quetzokado is also a culture bringer,
Speaker 1: so he we associated with architecture, art, and the sacred calendar.
Speaker 1: Yet another theme we see in religions all throughout the
Speaker 1: world the the this ancient figure figure from the gods
Speaker 1: bringing knowledge or customs or culture cultural practices to the humans. Now,
Speaker 1: according to the Johnson um Quatso Kaddle was a major
Speaker 1: object of worship from around two hundred to nine hundred
Speaker 1: sea in the urban center of teoti Wakin, a city
Speaker 1: of Mesoamerican pyramids and some two hundred thousand residents. So
Speaker 1: the toll texts would inherit this city and dominate Mexico
Speaker 1: through the twelfth century, and worship of Katskatdo really took
Speaker 1: off in the tenth century when we have this case
Speaker 1: whether the myth really melded with his tree. He became
Speaker 1: associated with a cultural hero named say A Coddle told
Speaker 1: Pilsen and so so you get this idea that told Piltson,
Speaker 1: this historic figure, by some estimates like the the oldest
Speaker 1: historical figure uh in Mexico. Uh. He becomes merge. We
Speaker 1: we end up merging Getzok Waddle and to Pilsen into
Speaker 1: a single entity. He becomes the incarnation of the feathered God.
Speaker 1: And in doing this, to Piltson becomes a spiritual figure
Speaker 1: of peace uh. And in doing so he all alienates
Speaker 1: the more militaristic segments of society that don't want to
Speaker 1: give up human sacrifice and war, two things that to
Speaker 1: Piltson is opposed to saying, you know, hey, maybe we
Speaker 1: don't need to be at constant war with our neighbors.
Speaker 1: Maybe we don't need to sacrifice human beings. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can just sacrifice I think it's like butterflies and lizards
Speaker 1: and whatnot as opposed to to to humans. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: And I have to point out and and he's retelling
Speaker 1: this tale because Rudolpho and I is retelling, really is
Speaker 1: concerned with this incarnation of cats cooddle. He does a
Speaker 1: great he has a great way of characterizing this in
Speaker 1: a very believable way, not a xenophobic, barbarian approach, where
Speaker 1: you where you'd be like, oh, one guy saying let's
Speaker 1: not kill everybody, of course, let's do something peaceful instead.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's putting in a form that feels
Speaker 1: very modern in some respects where where the opposing king
Speaker 1: is saying, look, I mean human sacrifices. What we do.
Speaker 1: We have to have armies, we have to have firm borders,
Speaker 1: we need to expand and get more farmland, we have
Speaker 1: to have war, and uh and uh to Piltson is
Speaker 1: standing in opposition to that, So it represents chaos right,
Speaker 1: often peace is represented as chaos. Yeah, so he's a
Speaker 1: major threat to the establishment. So the story goes that
Speaker 1: the king conspires with three sorcerers to deal with Piltson,
Speaker 1: and one this is the militaristic king. Yes, and one
Speaker 1: of the sorcerers is none other than Ketsok Waddle's arch enemy,
Speaker 1: uh Tescotli PoCA in human form. So they end up
Speaker 1: using a black mirror to tempt to pelts and uh
Speaker 1: they corrupt and in doing so, they corrupt him and
Speaker 1: make him fully carnal, so he like loses his god nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a gradual thing, Like they show him the
Speaker 1: mirror and he sees himself and becomes a little vain,
Speaker 1: and uh, then there's a you know, an additional level.
Speaker 1: I think it's so very very much like a rule
Speaker 1: of three type thing. And eventually they bring about his
Speaker 1: downfall and he's you know, fully carnal. And after that
Speaker 1: he he he has been defeated. He lays in a
Speaker 1: stone coffin for four days and then he emerges. He
Speaker 1: departs on a raft of snakes, and then he emolates
Speaker 1: himself and the ashes become rainbow colored birds that ascend
Speaker 1: into the sky, and in doing so ketsok waddle Uh
Speaker 1: passes away from the earth, but he promises to return, however,
Speaker 1: to to reincarnate at some point in the future in
Speaker 1: the year say a Coddle Uh. And this is the
Speaker 1: the Aztec calendar. Okay, So the result of this though, Uh.
Speaker 1: And then again we have the situation where the myth
Speaker 1: and the history are are entangled. But to Pilsen, the
Speaker 1: individual Uh is brought down and society ends up splittering, splintering,
Speaker 1: and then the in doing so, the toll Tech dynasty crumbles. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he remains a messianic figure, driven out in Diosgrace,
Speaker 1: dying in exile, but prophesies to return. Well, that is
Speaker 1: a great story. It makes me want to read this
Speaker 1: book by h. This is this is all from the
Speaker 1: Rudolpho and I a book. Yes, Like I said that,
Speaker 1: the introductions fabricst in the book itself is wonderful too.
Speaker 1: It's short, it's a short read, so I recommend it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got to check that out. But I guess we
Speaker 1: need to take a quick break and then when we
Speaker 1: come back we can explore more about this story. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, alright, so we started off by talking about
Speaker 1: kind of kind of the crude version of the plumed
Speaker 1: serpent idea as it as it appears in say, slimy
Speaker 1: b movies from the early eighties. And then we got
Speaker 1: into the idea of quetzel Coadal is actually this magnificent
Speaker 1: god from Mesoamerican religion, and Robert you told the story
Speaker 1: from from this excellent sounding book about quetzel coadls uh
Speaker 1: coming down to embody this character in in the History
Speaker 1: of the Empire, and how how all that played out
Speaker 1: when the hero was betrayed and exiled, and the idea
Speaker 1: that he might return. So let's pick up from there.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's jump right in. So one
Speaker 1: of the issues here is that so far we've been
Speaker 1: discussing quetzo Coaddle in a pre Columbian since and we
Speaker 1: say pre Columbian America's were of course talking about before
Speaker 1: the arrival of Columbus, before the arrival of of the
Speaker 1: various western colonial powers, the colonial invaders that would subjugate
Speaker 1: the both continents. And so when this we come to uh,
Speaker 1: an idea we've discussed on the show before, and that
Speaker 1: is UH, the idea of an outside context problem. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a term coined by the late sci Fi
Speaker 1: author E. N. M. Banks to describe a problem faced
Speaker 1: by a civilization um that that has no ability to
Speaker 1: prepare for or scarcely comprehend the problem they're faced with.
Speaker 1: An o CPS is when they refer to it is
Speaker 1: often fatal. In most societies or civilizations only ever encounter
Speaker 1: one of them. The most common example is one civilization
Speaker 1: suddenly encountering another civilization of far greater technological power, such
Speaker 1: as humans encountering an alien species that can travel between
Speaker 1: the stars. But a less extreme version of this, of course,
Speaker 1: could simply be encountering a civilization has much more advanced
Speaker 1: weapons of war. Exactly, for example, beings that are encased
Speaker 1: in iron and traverse the entire oceans and great wooden
Speaker 1: vessels and capture the power of wind to do so,
Speaker 1: whose weapons pierced the air like thunder, and whose very
Speaker 1: very bodies exude a creeping death that cannot be stopped. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in this we have the conquistadors. We have the
Speaker 1: armies of her non Cortes, the conquerors of the Spanish
Speaker 1: Empire that arrived in Mesoamerica. And of course we know
Speaker 1: that the European colonial invaders brought more than one kind
Speaker 1: of warfare. It wasn't just the explicit technologies was like steel,
Speaker 1: armor and swords and guns and stuff. It was also
Speaker 1: biological warfare. So in the case of the Spanish arriving
Speaker 1: in meso America, this is obviously a situation where there
Speaker 1: was a lot of destruction, a lot of cultural descripted destruction.
Speaker 1: This was a catastrophic event for the peoples of the Americas.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned the year, say a Coddle earlier, the
Speaker 1: the year that uh Quetzo ku Waddle was prophesied to return.
Speaker 1: So that year, that year ends up rolling around once more,
Speaker 1: and by Western measure, this the year fifteen nineteen. This
Speaker 1: was the year as well that Cortez arrived. No, so
Speaker 1: you can understand the confusion, right Uh you look and
Speaker 1: you say, well, here, surely this is quetzoquad returned to
Speaker 1: claim his throne, attended to by an unnatural army and
Speaker 1: arriving on what was described as perhaps floating mountains or
Speaker 1: even the four mythic temples of quetsok Waddle. Interesting, now,
Speaker 1: I had heard before the idea that when I say
Speaker 1: Cortez and his armies arrived, that that they were perceived
Speaker 1: as gods. And I didn't know if that was actually
Speaker 1: historically true or historically likely, or if maybe that was
Speaker 1: like an untrue rumor or Spanish tale. Do you have
Speaker 1: do you have a sense of whether that's actually historically accurate? Well,
Speaker 1: it seems to be. There seems again we don't have
Speaker 1: complete knowledge of everything I went down, but there do
Speaker 1: seem to be a few different ways of interpreting this
Speaker 1: from what I've seen so far. So you're dealing primarily
Speaker 1: with UH, with the the ruler makte Zuma the second
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to monte Zuma and UH. And so he's
Speaker 1: he sees this, he sees what's happening, he sees the
Speaker 1: Spanish that have arrived. And you could say that either
Speaker 1: oh well, he and his people think there are gods,
Speaker 1: or perhaps just the the the weirdness of this is
Speaker 1: enough to make them hesitate. You don't know how to RESPONCD.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how to respond. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: the problem of an outside context. Problem is that you
Speaker 1: have no context for it, and therefore you don't have
Speaker 1: a response. Uh, and readily available at hand. Wisdom is
Speaker 1: often prudence holding back and you know, not acting hastily, right, So,
Speaker 1: and you also have other factors at work here. We
Speaker 1: mentioned that the disease factor. You also have the fact
Speaker 1: that the invaders are fairly quick to align themselves with
Speaker 1: the enemies of the Aztecs, Like they doesn't take them
Speaker 1: long to figure out like what are the power dynamics
Speaker 1: and how they can exploit the situation. And however it
Speaker 1: ends up exactly playing out. It's clear that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Aztec empires is toppled within two years years uh
Speaker 1: makta Zuma the second becomes a mere prisoner. But there
Speaker 1: wasn't There's another interpretation of events here that I thought
Speaker 1: was fascinating, and that is that Montezuma the Second uh
Speaker 1: was apparently you know, he's worried by the portents of
Speaker 1: doom and in the typical mode of rulers, somewhat paranoid
Speaker 1: about plots against him. And then he meets Cortez and
Speaker 1: his Spanish retinue, who were you know, also in awe
Speaker 1: of this great city. Uh, and they're also that that
Speaker 1: would be to nok Titlain. Yes, and there and again
Speaker 1: they've aligned themselves with with enemies of the Aztec Empire
Speaker 1: and so he ends up presenting Cortes with quote the
Speaker 1: treasure of Quatzokuadle. Okay, so, markte Zuma presents Cortes with
Speaker 1: like a a religiously significant piece of raimond a costume,
Speaker 1: And as explored briefly in Robert Draper's National Geographic Magazine
Speaker 1: article Unbearing the aztec Uh, it's possible too that monte
Speaker 1: Zoom of the second was quote cunningly outfitting Cortez in
Speaker 1: the godly garment of the soon to be sacrificed. So again,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really get into this a lot in this article,
Speaker 1: but think back again to the The Rise and Fall
Speaker 1: of Ketso Kwaddle. Ketzoku Waddle is a king prophesies to return,
Speaker 1: but also a king whose very story is one of
Speaker 1: sacrifice and death. So perhaps the idea is that montag
Speaker 1: Zuma was maybe not so much a fly trapped in
Speaker 1: the web of symbols and myth, but a spider trying
Speaker 1: one last clever trick to ensnare his enemy within the
Speaker 1: trappings of symbol and myth, to turn the people against
Speaker 1: him by essentially laying a trap of religious belief. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find much else on this this
Speaker 1: read this theory, but I find that fascinating. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of our our episode on ritual regicide, the idea
Speaker 1: that that even rulers can be trapped within this, uh,
Speaker 1: this myth cycle of death and rebirth. Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: thought about that episode much recently, but that was a
Speaker 1: really interesting one. You know, we talked about all the
Speaker 1: traditions of the sacrifice of the king. You often think
Speaker 1: of the king sacrificing like you know, other people captured
Speaker 1: enemies or whatever, but sometimes occupying a position of glory
Speaker 1: also puts a target on you, even a even a
Speaker 1: sacred or religious target. Yeah, so that's that's an interesting read.
Speaker 1: In this scenario, obviously that plan, if that was the plan,
Speaker 1: did not work. So what happens after an outside context problem?
Speaker 1: Will you end up with a struggle for cultural survival? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of in a way the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, assuming you're not just completely destroyed decimated by
Speaker 1: the encounter and uh. One of the methods by which
Speaker 1: the old ways may be preserved is within the new.
Speaker 1: And we see this tradition of merging the idea of
Speaker 1: Ketzokadal with the apostle St. Thomas from Christian trade editions,
Speaker 1: who is said to have traveled far preaching the Gospel.
Speaker 1: And you see this and this is you know, after
Speaker 1: the fact, this is certainly more and say the uh,
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, but you see this merging of iconography
Speaker 1: and identity where you have the plumid serpent God essentially
Speaker 1: crossed over with this Christian apostle. And by the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: writers and priests began to make more of these comparisons,
Speaker 1: and the trend ended up dying back down in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. But but it's but it's it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: look at how these two figures became once more, ketzo
Speaker 1: Quaddle became associated merge with a historic individual. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to think that, I know, the members of
Speaker 1: the Church Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints believe that
Speaker 1: Jesus himself came and preached in the America's right. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so you you do see this trend within the
Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints of some
Speaker 1: individuals reinterpreting Ketzokuaddle as Jesus Christ. This, oddly enough, though,
Speaker 1: I have to point out, has no connection to the
Speaker 1: so called Jesus lizard of southern Mexico and Central America.
Speaker 1: Creatures that also bear the name of our previous topic,
Speaker 1: the basilists, right, the basilist lizards that can run on
Speaker 1: top of the water. Apparently I have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with quetzel kattle. Yeah, they're they're real lizards as opposed
Speaker 1: to mythological snake guy. Now, speaking of reptiles, lizards, snakes,
Speaker 1: all all that kind of stuff. One of the other
Speaker 1: avenues we wanted to explore, the idea of the plumed
Speaker 1: serpent in is stepping out of the specific religious context
Speaker 1: of keutzel Coatl himself, also getting away from the weird
Speaker 1: Larry co and monster version and looking at biology. So, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you want to go to a mental place with
Speaker 1: me to close your eyes and imagine. Imagine you're wandering
Speaker 1: through the jungle in Malaysia. In one nearby tree, you
Speaker 1: notice a snake with a speckled body of black, green
Speaker 1: and gold climbing vertically up the trunk of the tree.
Speaker 1: And it uses it's the scales on its underbelly to
Speaker 1: sort of grip the bark and slowly make its way
Speaker 1: up the tree, and eventually it forks off of the
Speaker 1: main trunk to explore a branch, and you wonder, what's
Speaker 1: it doing up there? Is it looking for something? Maybe
Speaker 1: it's looking for a bird's nest to raid or a
Speaker 1: sleeping bat to eat. And it doesn't find anything on
Speaker 1: the branch, but it keeps following the branch farther and
Speaker 1: farther out, and you're like, where's it going. There's not
Speaker 1: that much branch there, right, And then it goes all
Speaker 1: the way to the tip of the branch and there's
Speaker 1: just nothing nowhere left for it to go. Why is
Speaker 1: it doing that? And you might be wondering this when
Speaker 1: suddenly the snake coils its head off the branch and
Speaker 1: kind of a hanging j shape, and then it dives
Speaker 1: straight off the branch, straight in your direction. So obviously
Speaker 1: you might flinch and take cover right because the snake
Speaker 1: just doves straight at you. But then you realize it's
Speaker 1: not stick. Its path is not following a straight line.
Speaker 1: It's actually not diving straight at you at all, because
Speaker 1: immediately after the snake leaves the branch, it stops plunging
Speaker 1: down at a sharp angle and begins to gliding smoothly
Speaker 1: through the air and a kind of horizontal pattern as
Speaker 1: its body undulates in an S shape, and then finally
Speaker 1: it lands in another tree branch high above your head,
Speaker 1: in a different tree. You have just watched a snake fly.
Speaker 1: And these snakes are real. This would I can I
Speaker 1: can see, this would be a very alarming thing. Because again,
Speaker 1: if we have an innate fear of snakes and in
Speaker 1: all late well, and even if not a fear, at
Speaker 1: least a hyper awareness to them, like realizing that snakes
Speaker 1: can pose a risk to our mortality. And then here's
Speaker 1: one flying through the air like they they should not
Speaker 1: be able to do. They should be creatures of the ground,
Speaker 1: and this one is seemingly a creature of the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the thing that should not be
Speaker 1: You could not blame someone for reacting with horror and all.
Speaker 1: But one thing I should be clear about immediately is
Speaker 1: that these types of snakes, I believe they are venomous,
Speaker 1: but not especially venomous, so they're not really dangerous to humans.
Speaker 1: I mean, generally we don't want to promote snake fear
Speaker 1: of any kind, but these especially, they're they're not really
Speaker 1: dangerous humans. So there are five species of snake in
Speaker 1: the genus Chrysopelia, native to South and Southeast Asia, including
Speaker 1: countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, India, South China, Vietnam, Cambodia, loose
Speaker 1: in other places, generally southern and Southeast Asia. They generally
Speaker 1: grow up to about one point two meters or about
Speaker 1: four feet long. And Chrysopelia are the flying snakes, or
Speaker 1: perhaps more appropriately the gliding snakes. Because you've got to
Speaker 1: make that important distinction, I would say usually the way
Speaker 1: we use the word flying means to travel horizontally through
Speaker 1: the air on your own power. You know, it's self
Speaker 1: powered flight in a way that can theoretically continue gaining altitude,
Speaker 1: whereas gliding is using existing momentum. The momentum you've already
Speaker 1: got to travel horizontally through the air without losing altitude
Speaker 1: too fast. Airplanes fly, hang, gliders glide, and these snakes glide.
Speaker 1: So on average, these snakes can cover a horizontal distance
Speaker 1: of about ten or about thirty three ft from a
Speaker 1: branch at a starting height of about nine meters or
Speaker 1: about twenty nine point five feet. Some reports have them
Speaker 1: flying much farther. I read a National Geographic article that
Speaker 1: claimed they've been known to glide up to a hundred
Speaker 1: meters horizontally, but I couldn't determine the source of that claim.
Speaker 1: It seems kind of nuts, but maybe you know, we
Speaker 1: can take it. So in order to fly like that,
Speaker 1: obviously the snakes they can't flap their wings. They don't
Speaker 1: have wings. So what do they do? How do you
Speaker 1: generate the lift to glide like that? And the answer is,
Speaker 1: instead of flapping their wings, they turn their whole body
Speaker 1: into a wing. So wings work, and this would be
Speaker 1: the simple version, by guiding air flow in such a
Speaker 1: way as to generate lift. And generally they do this
Speaker 1: by trying to form a relatively flat, horizontal surface under
Speaker 1: which air can flow and push the flying object up
Speaker 1: against gravity. So if you're a snake and you want
Speaker 1: to turn your snake body into a wing or a
Speaker 1: pseudo wing, one thing you'd probably want to do is
Speaker 1: make yourself as flat and as wide as possible, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they do. So in recent years, a
Speaker 1: few studies, often associated with a Virginia tech biologist named
Speaker 1: Jake Soca, have captured and analyzed high speed video of
Speaker 1: the flying snakes, and also made digital and physical models
Speaker 1: based on these analyzes to understand how they glide from
Speaker 1: tree to tree, and what they found is that these
Speaker 1: snakes can literally splay their own ribs out to the
Speaker 1: sides and flatten their body into a semiconcave cross section.
Speaker 1: So imagine a snake. You know, you normally imagine the
Speaker 1: skeleton of a snake has got a backbone and then
Speaker 1: kind of a circle of ribs forming almost a cylinder, right,
Speaker 1: So imagine that C shape of the ribs. Instead spreading
Speaker 1: out like a bird opening its wings, the ribs spread
Speaker 1: out kind of flat, and in doing this, the snake
Speaker 1: can basically double its width. But then it also undulates
Speaker 1: in an S shape as it glides with waves traveling
Speaker 1: down the length of the body, and this also helps
Speaker 1: keep it aloft. So the whole process begins with a
Speaker 1: ballistic dive where the snake reaches off of the off
Speaker 1: of the branch, spreads its ribs and goes flat, gathers
Speaker 1: its body into an S shape, and then it begins
Speaker 1: to wriggle the S shape in large amplitude undulations. And
Speaker 1: this process allows the snake, instead of falling straight toward
Speaker 1: the ground, to glide an angle of about fifteen degrees
Speaker 1: to about thirty five degrees until it floats down at
Speaker 1: its target destination. Speaking to the BBC for an article,
Speaker 1: Soka characterized it as sort of like the animal is
Speaker 1: swimming in air. I could see where that just seeing
Speaker 1: something like that would open the door from mystical interpretations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've gotta wonder if somebody saw that in ancient times,
Speaker 1: how would they not come up with some kind of
Speaker 1: dragon based on it or something. Now, of course, this
Speaker 1: is not This is not something that you would find
Speaker 1: in Mesoamerica. So we're not saying that this snake inspired
Speaker 1: the Cutzel Coadal story or anything like that. But you
Speaker 1: can see how similar ideas of flying serpents plumed serpents
Speaker 1: might be inspired by something like this. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: every article about this research also mentions, Robert, can you
Speaker 1: guess what it also mentions in the very last paragraph
Speaker 1: of every one of these articles, snakes on a plane? No,
Speaker 1: what will we use this knowledge of analyzing snake flight
Speaker 1: to do? Oh? Yes, well, that's that's the closing of
Speaker 1: any good science article, right, What are the practical applications?
Speaker 1: Build robots? Always says, build robots. There's so many of these.
Speaker 1: I wish we could just get more science articles that say,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's just great to study snakes, and
Speaker 1: they don't have to justify it at the end by
Speaker 1: saying we will use this knowledge one day to build
Speaker 1: weapons snakes that fly into enemy territory in ways you
Speaker 1: can't possibly imagine. Well, But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: do understand that, you know you you want to end
Speaker 1: on a really strong aw note with the science article
Speaker 1: and and and off times. That's the future applications, that's
Speaker 1: where you find that gold. But these snakes themselves inspire all.
Speaker 1: Look this up. Watch the video as imagine this is
Speaker 1: a snake flying. I mean it's not it's not gaining out,
Speaker 1: but it's gliding tree to tree. It's it's amazing to see.
Speaker 1: This is what's all inspiring. Not to knock people who
Speaker 1: make robots. Making robots is great. I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: come off overly strong there. I'm all, I'm all for robots,
Speaker 1: but come on, you don't have to justify it by
Speaker 1: making robots. You could just study snakes and that'd be great.
Speaker 1: I can get behind that. One more thing, of course,
Speaker 1: to mention is that there are of course also flying lizards. Again,
Speaker 1: if you want to go in the sort of flying
Speaker 1: reptile direction. Again, this would be gliding, not flying. But
Speaker 1: the draco lizards of the Draco genus are also found
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia, and they've got rib flaps that fold
Speaker 1: up against the body when not in use, but they
Speaker 1: can be spread out to form a wing and allow
Speaker 1: the lizard to glide between trees. Now, the thing I
Speaker 1: was wondering is why would snakes and lizards need to
Speaker 1: glie between trees? What's useful about that? And so there
Speaker 1: I think there are a couple of hypotheses. One is
Speaker 1: that once you're already up in a tree and you
Speaker 1: want to get in another tree, it might take less
Speaker 1: energy to glide to another tree than to climb down
Speaker 1: and climb back up. That makes sense. But then the
Speaker 1: other thing, that maybe the bigger thing, is that crossing
Speaker 1: the forest floor exposes you to large predators. The forest
Speaker 1: floor is the danger zone. Once you're up in a tree,
Speaker 1: you're safer. So once you are in the safety of
Speaker 1: a tree, it would be much better if you could
Speaker 1: glide from tree to tree instead of having to go
Speaker 1: back down across the forest floor and maybe get picked
Speaker 1: up by a leopard along the way. Now, this might
Speaker 1: not be a factor, but it also seems like if
Speaker 1: something were perhaps following you or stalking you. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a great way to escape them. From one
Speaker 1: tree to the other. You can glide and it can't
Speaker 1: if there's a monkey in the tree that wants to
Speaker 1: eat you. You know, you can glide farther than that
Speaker 1: monkey can jump potentially. Yeah, though some of those monkeys
Speaker 1: can jump. Right, all right, we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break. When when we come back, we will discuss
Speaker 1: the key of the beastly flyers of the ancient past,
Speaker 1: the pterosaurs. Than all right, we're back, Robert, take me
Speaker 1: to the pterosaurs. All right, Well, we're talking about one
Speaker 1: particular terras, so we're all familiar with pterosaurs. I think
Speaker 1: at this point these are the the flying creatures of
Speaker 1: the prehistoric world, the flying lizards of the prehistoric world,
Speaker 1: not dinosaurs, right, not dinosaurs. You call him dinosaur, your
Speaker 1: six year old will correct you. Um, I have I
Speaker 1: have had this happened before, because sometimes that you do
Speaker 1: just sort of like a like a like non scientifically,
Speaker 1: you just refer to everything from the dinosaur age as
Speaker 1: a dinosaur, and uh, yeah, it's inaccurate to call everything
Speaker 1: a dinosaur. So the the king or one of the
Speaker 1: kings of the of the pterosaurs was undisputably a creature
Speaker 1: that is that now bears the name Ketsokadalus, and you'll
Speaker 1: never guess what he's named. He's an himed after Ketsoquaddle,
Speaker 1: the the the meso American snake god. Robert. You actually
Speaker 1: did a reading from a children's book on the podcast
Speaker 1: one time that had a great little, you know, sub
Speaker 1: story about Ketzel Coatless and it ended with this this,
Speaker 1: I am Ketzel Coatlas. Yes, I forget the author's name offhand,
Speaker 1: but if you do a search for I am Ketzo
Speaker 1: Coatless or I am I think there's one on Diplodocus
Speaker 1: as well, but they're all, like really, they're all really
Speaker 1: good children's books about dinosaurs that do not candy coat
Speaker 1: the life and death nature of of a of a
Speaker 1: prehistar creature's life. So we're talking about as far as
Speaker 1: Ketzkatless goes. We're talking about the Cretaceous period, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about the region that is now known as North America.
Speaker 1: First fossils were discovered in Texas in the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and this this creature was apparently just a flying monster.
Speaker 1: This thing was incredibly huge. Uh. The estimated wingspan, and
Speaker 1: this is something that's changed over the years, that was
Speaker 1: higher than they kind of kind of scaled back, but
Speaker 1: current data seems to put it estimated at around thirty
Speaker 1: three to thirty six ft or ten to eleven meters.
Speaker 1: That's roughly the wingspan of a mid sized airplane. For instance, Uh,
Speaker 1: the World War two US fighter P fifty one Mustang
Speaker 1: that had a wingspan of thirty seven ft or eleven
Speaker 1: point twenty eight ms. The swept wing span of an
Speaker 1: F FOURT Team Tomcat. That's the uh, the fighter plane
Speaker 1: from top gun for anybody who can make that connection, Uh,
Speaker 1: that has a swept wingspan of thirty eight feet or
Speaker 1: eleven point fifty five What has swept me? So the
Speaker 1: the F fourteen can fly with its wings in a
Speaker 1: swept position or in an extended position. I see when
Speaker 1: when it becomes sort of streamlined. Yeah, okay, Yeah. There
Speaker 1: was a great g I Joe toy airplane that was
Speaker 1: essentially an F fourteen, uh, and it had wings that
Speaker 1: moved like that. That's my main connection with it. So
Speaker 1: compared to other things that fly and have wings. This
Speaker 1: thing was an absolute beast, absolutely. I mean, even if
Speaker 1: it's on the ground, this was a huge creature. So
Speaker 1: in a bipedal stance, it would have stood roughly three
Speaker 1: meters or nine point eight feet tall, and it may
Speaker 1: have scrambled around and like this kind of quadripue quadropedal stance. However,
Speaker 1: much like a bat. Have you ever seen it? Um?
Speaker 1: Bats crawled, bats crawl or some of the I think
Speaker 1: there's creepy. Look, it's creepy. Yeah, there's one particular I
Speaker 1: believe there's even one particular species of bad it's primary
Speaker 1: primarily ground based. Uh, and it is. It's kind of
Speaker 1: creepy to look at. So this thing might have scrambled
Speaker 1: around like that, But by many estimates, including Ruta and
Speaker 1: bent On in Evolution of morpheological Disparity in Terra Sours
Speaker 1: from two thousand eleven, this mighty flying beast would have
Speaker 1: probably stood roughly as tall as a modern day giraffe,
Speaker 1: but with just a far larger head. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: like giraffe with with like a screwed up lizard like
Speaker 1: pelican head. Yeah, like this great squatting winged beast. Just
Speaker 1: imagine that thing looming over you. I feel like this
Speaker 1: thing should be right up there with the Tarandosaurus rex.
Speaker 1: You know, people should appreciated them on the same level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I really, it's it's amazing. It is. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's I mean, certainly all the terosaurs are amazing creatures.
Speaker 1: To look back on this, this evolved mode of flying
Speaker 1: that that again is is a little bit different from
Speaker 1: from birds or bats. It is like we have essentially
Speaker 1: three modes of vertebrate flight that evolved, and this is
Speaker 1: one of them. And that's talking about powered flight, not correct. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and thinking about this, you know, like again,
Speaker 1: it would have it would have seemed like a god
Speaker 1: if you were able to see it. And uh, I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of Edgar Rice Burrows. Uh pellucidar
Speaker 1: I believe is the pronunciation. Uh, a series of books
Speaker 1: that's a setting that he did them. I haven't haven't either,
Speaker 1: but I was introduced to them just by some of
Speaker 1: the art. Initially, they feature a psychic master race of
Speaker 1: flying reptiles called the Mahars, and they pop up. They
Speaker 1: also pop up in the nineteen seventies six movie At
Speaker 1: the Earth's Core starring Peter Cushing. Yes, Doug McClure, oh boy,
Speaker 1: and Caroline Monroe. Wow, I've got to see that. How
Speaker 1: have I not? Well, I'll tell you. It's actually one
Speaker 1: of the movies in the most recent Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 1: three thousands serially season, So that all star cast, that
Speaker 1: all star cast. If you want to see see Peter
Speaker 1: Cushing just totally misused in a film, this is a
Speaker 1: great place to find it. Peter Cushing was misused in
Speaker 1: about nine percent of the films he was in, but
Speaker 1: this one especially because you got Doug McClure in there
Speaker 1: to play kind of a goofus, which he did well.
Speaker 1: I love Doug McClure. Yeah, he's the classic mid century
Speaker 1: movie lug. Yeah. But then Peter Cushing also kind of
Speaker 1: plays a dufus, so it's I think he's a scientist dufus.
Speaker 1: And then you have like two different levels of dufus
Speaker 1: going up against stuff forces they can how should comprehend
Speaker 1: How sharp are his cheekbones in it? Does he cut
Speaker 1: anything with them? I don't know. They might have been
Speaker 1: dulling a bit by that point, I have to say,
Speaker 1: But but he's still it's still Peter Cushing, So it's
Speaker 1: still a lot of fun. But you have these kind
Speaker 1: of wretched looking Terra Sar mahar Uh creatures that show
Speaker 1: up in the film. There's also a I think it's
Speaker 1: a Boris file a Jo painting that was done for
Speaker 1: one of these book covers that has a of course,
Speaker 1: like a scantily clad woman, uh. And there's this terrace
Speaker 1: star creature, one of these Mahars creeping up on her
Speaker 1: to snatch her away, because you know, it's Edgar Rice Burrows.
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of the plot. And I can't help
Speaker 1: but assume that the Mahars also inspired the Savage Land
Speaker 1: Mutants saw On from the X Men comics. Not saar
Speaker 1: On from Lord of the Rings, but the what is
Speaker 1: essentially like a Terra Saar human ooid that the Mutants
Speaker 1: battle in those comic books. Okay, so what else do
Speaker 1: we know out this creature, the quetzal Katlas? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's fitting that the creature is named
Speaker 1: for a god with so much mystery around it, because
Speaker 1: a lot of mystery remains surrounding this massive, winged prehistoric creature.
Speaker 1: And this, of course is part of the course with
Speaker 1: fossil remains, paleontologists have to solve the riddle of the
Speaker 1: remains as best they can. We have all these you know,
Speaker 1: massive gaps in the in the in the fossil record,
Speaker 1: and that's just part of trying to understand the past
Speaker 1: through fossils. We have, I think, based on I think
Speaker 1: current data, we have I think only one adult Quetzo
Speaker 1: katlas fossil to go off of, and it's only wing fragments.
Speaker 1: The other specimens have been like smaller, like younger um specimens.
Speaker 1: So we we've seen a wide range of estimates than
Speaker 1: regarding the flying or gliding abilities of the Ketzo katlas,
Speaker 1: a creature with more of an inland range than many
Speaker 1: of its flying relatives, So we don't know exactly. We
Speaker 1: don't know for sure to what extent it flew exactly.
Speaker 1: For instance, Donald M. Henderson went so far in his
Speaker 1: two thousand nine Journal Vertebrate Paleontology article to wonder if
Speaker 1: it could fly at all. He argued that given its
Speaker 1: estimated body mass, this was maybe a flightless creature. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it might be like the ostrich of pterosaurs or something. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you always have to wonder, because I mean, so there
Speaker 1: are limits on the size that an organism could reasonably
Speaker 1: be expected to fly. Right. You know, you might wonder
Speaker 1: like how come dragons don't exist? What why don't we
Speaker 1: see birds with a hundred foot wingspan? And I think
Speaker 1: part of that has to do with like how how
Speaker 1: mass scales up with relationship to volume. Right, Like, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons you can't get super giant creatures is
Speaker 1: that would be cooling problems with like the surface area
Speaker 1: of the giant creature, how much stuff it's got inside
Speaker 1: it um And you would probably encounter similar problems when
Speaker 1: you keep trying to scale up bigger and bigger flying organism.
Speaker 1: As the mass keeps going up, it's going to take
Speaker 1: more and more power to lift that mass off the ground.
Speaker 1: And you know, well you can. You can generate lift
Speaker 1: in multiple ways. You can have bigger wings, but eventually,
Speaker 1: like you'd run into structural problems like where bones would
Speaker 1: not be strong enough to support the wings at a
Speaker 1: certain amount of you know, size and weight. Or you
Speaker 1: could have more powerful muscles to flap them harder and faster,
Speaker 1: but eventually you might run into fuel problems. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're just physics limits on how big a flying organism
Speaker 1: can get. And you know, I have to say that
Speaker 1: a flightless catsl co outless is terrifying in its own way,
Speaker 1: because here it would be a situation where here's a
Speaker 1: creature that is like I don't have to fly anymore
Speaker 1: because I'm enormous, and I will just eat you with
Speaker 1: my toothless beak. I would just gobble you up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I want this is not based on evidence, is just speculating.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could also imagine something like a chicken,
Speaker 1: where it's not a flying bird, but it's a bird
Speaker 1: that can sort of like use wings to it off
Speaker 1: the ground for a short period of time. I mean
Speaker 1: you wonder about like maybe it doesn't sustain flight, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of like hops up and flies very briefly
Speaker 1: in order to swoop down and pounce something. Right, But
Speaker 1: this is not the only argument that you have the
Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum, For instance, where a
Speaker 1: British paleontologist Mark Witten, working with biomechanics researcher Mike Habib,
Speaker 1: modeled the creature in two and argued that he could
Speaker 1: fly up to eighty miles an hour or a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty eight kilometers per hour for seven to ten
Speaker 1: days at altitudes of fifteen thousand feet or four point
Speaker 1: six kilometers, with a maximum range of between eight thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve thousand miles. That's up to nineteen thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve kilometers. Wow, so that's some range. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is so if you're a flint stone and you
Speaker 1: want to ride a dinosaur for like a for a
Speaker 1: transoceanic flight, this is the one you want to snag.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not a dinosaur, sorry, a pterosaur quetzo
Speaker 1: koitles air. But then we also have more balanced to
Speaker 1: pro just falling in between these two. For instance, paleobiologist
Speaker 1: David Unwin believes that the creatures could certainly fly, but
Speaker 1: we don't really have a lot else to go on. Again,
Speaker 1: think to the limited fossils we talked about earlier. He
Speaker 1: argues that the distance estimates here might be just premature.
Speaker 1: It's also been argued in some of these models that
Speaker 1: the creature, if it could fly, you know, it could
Speaker 1: probably get aloft via a high powered four legged pounce
Speaker 1: into the air, which I have to say that is
Speaker 1: alone is just amazing to try and envision, imagine this
Speaker 1: massive dump truck of a creature just launching into the air.
Speaker 1: And then flapping like crazy and uh, descending a winged
Speaker 1: giraffe with a giant pelican head, leaping into the clouds
Speaker 1: and then once it's once it's up or or once
Speaker 1: it lands again, the question is, well, what does it eat? Well,
Speaker 1: one theory the answer is you, well, yes, if we were,
Speaker 1: if we were around, that would that would probably be
Speaker 1: a possibility. But one theory was that it was a
Speaker 1: scavenger and it used its long beak to like dig
Speaker 1: into dino corpses, which would also seem to work given
Speaker 1: their inland range. You know, so this is not a
Speaker 1: thing that's going out and needing a lot of sea creatures.
Speaker 1: But perhaps it's flying over vast distances and encountering dead
Speaker 1: dinosaurs and it can go down and feast. Uh. And
Speaker 1: of course flying is an attractive foraging strategy for scavengers, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a tremendous ability to to take in the
Speaker 1: surrounding the region. But they also could have skimmed fish
Speaker 1: from freshwater lakes and rivers. That's one theory, but it's
Speaker 1: also been pointed out that they likely lacked the next
Speaker 1: structure and jaw to really carry that out. A more
Speaker 1: likely hypothesis apparently is that they fed much like a
Speaker 1: modern stork, stalking shorelines for large and small prey alike.
Speaker 1: And uh, I have to say that that is a
Speaker 1: terrifying possibility, because if you've ever seen footage of storks
Speaker 1: engaging in this sort of terrestrial hunting practice, uh, it
Speaker 1: can be it can be pretty horrifying. I accidentally showed
Speaker 1: some footage from a documentary I want to say it
Speaker 1: was a Disney's Flamingo documentary, uh, to my son, and
Speaker 1: he was younger at the time, and there's a scene
Speaker 1: where the stork just is stalking the shore and gobbling
Speaker 1: up live flamingo chicks. Yeah, it's it's absolutely horrifying. After
Speaker 1: he saw that, uh, there was some some later point
Speaker 1: we'd forgotten about it, and then we tried to show
Speaker 1: him a cartoon that has, you know, the typical like
Speaker 1: stork and baby motif. It might have been in one
Speaker 1: of the Pixar shorts, and he was instantly not having
Speaker 1: any of it. He's like, I know what storks are about,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to show me this this, uh,
Speaker 1: this short film that involves human babies and storks, because
Speaker 1: I know what's going to happen that baby is gonna
Speaker 1: get gobbled. No. I mean we we try to present
Speaker 1: a level headed view of predation in nature, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you just do have a visceral emotional reaction. And I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. I haven't seen storks,
Speaker 1: but I've seen video of UM. I believe it's in
Speaker 1: U some David Attenborough near rated documentary UM that had
Speaker 1: not storks but pelicans eating baby birds. Just horrifying. Watch it.
Speaker 1: Like the way they don't blink, They just got these
Speaker 1: big lower beak areas and they just scoop up the
Speaker 1: baby birds in and they're like wings and legs poking
Speaker 1: out of their mouth and stuff. Is just horrible, frightful.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, now I shouldn't apply that moralistic tone
Speaker 1: to nature, but like it. It is hard to watch.
Speaker 1: But here's the question with the quetzo quatless. Would it
Speaker 1: be able to scoop sunbathers up from a New York rooftops.
Speaker 1: I would say probably not. I think it would need
Speaker 1: to land in Central Park where it would still have
Speaker 1: plenty to eat. It could attack picnickers and like young
Speaker 1: people making out on blankets. Um, you know, school groups
Speaker 1: that have arrived there to play soccer, whatnot. There's so
Speaker 1: much to eat in Central Park. Hey, we've seen pizza
Speaker 1: at now you get pizza ketsel coatlas exactly, just the
Speaker 1: junk food. It doesn't need to even deal with live pray.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, as we begin to close thing is
Speaker 1: out here, I do want to mention that there there,
Speaker 1: Ketzo Quaddle has has survived to a certain extent or
Speaker 1: re emerged in culture. It hasn't been like the complete
Speaker 1: second Coming that was perhaps prophesized, but he remains a
Speaker 1: figure of interest, and sometimes you actually see physical, like
Speaker 1: new physical manifestations of him. There's a really cool Ketzo
Speaker 1: Quaddle statue in San Jose, California, for instance. I have
Speaker 1: not seen it in person yet, but I was reading
Speaker 1: about it on Atlice Obscura and it points out that
Speaker 1: it's downtown, it's very Aztecan style, and it was controversial
Speaker 1: back in the nineties as it cost about half a
Speaker 1: million dollars. And also some Christian fundamentalists claimed that this
Speaker 1: was this was gonna be a place of where you know,
Speaker 1: people were gonna worship a bloodthirsty god. Oh yeah. They
Speaker 1: were saying that they were going to be human sacrifices.
Speaker 1: The statue, which, of course, based on everything we've discussed
Speaker 1: regarding this god, that was not going to be the case,
Speaker 1: or if it us, it would have been very misinformed
Speaker 1: cultist showing up there. Meanwhile, other critics just argued that
Speaker 1: it was a religious sculpture on public grounds and then
Speaker 1: shouldn't be allowed. But then there's the criticism that they
Speaker 1: say that the sculpture kind of looks like coiled dog poop. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess coiled serpents sometimes do. Yeah. Well, it's pointed
Speaker 1: out on Atlas Obscura, and there is no author attributed
Speaker 1: on this particular article. The positioning here isn't crazy, especially
Speaker 1: when you look at some of the architectural motifs of
Speaker 1: say the Aztecs of Quetzo, kadal Uh and Uh. It
Speaker 1: also matches up with this description that of the God
Speaker 1: that D. H. Lawrence made in his ninety six novel
Speaker 1: The Plume Serpent, where he describes quote, snakes coiled like excrements,
Speaker 1: snakes feigned and feathered beyond all dreams of dread. I
Speaker 1: have not ventured into that D. H. Lawrence book. Lawrence's novel,
Speaker 1: by the way, concerns the Mexican Revolution and a cult
Speaker 1: attempting to revive the older legion of Mexico, and he
Speaker 1: apparently wanted to title the book Quetzo Quaddle, but his
Speaker 1: publishers disagreed. I can see why, like nobody's going to
Speaker 1: be able to pronounce that. Well, it's probably one of
Speaker 1: the reasons. Probably Larry Cohen's film was called Q or
Speaker 1: Q The Wing Serpent, Right. Yeah. One other point of
Speaker 1: possible interest, I haven't wait, wait a minute, do you
Speaker 1: think that Larry Cohen's movie was in any way based
Speaker 1: on the D. H. Lawrence novel. I have not read
Speaker 1: anything to suggest that it was, um and I would
Speaker 1: say that no, it's probably not, but in it maybe
Speaker 1: maybe so in a very Larry Cohen kind of way,
Speaker 1: like you picked up on like cultists bringing back an
Speaker 1: old religion. Let's get a giant monster in there, and
Speaker 1: you've got a movie. On another literary note, I'm very
Speaker 1: interested to check out. I haven't read these yet, but
Speaker 1: the author Alliotte de Bodard wrote the Obsidian and Blood Trilogy,
Speaker 1: a trilogy of books that I've seen described as a
Speaker 1: like pre Columbian as tech noir. Oh that sounds cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm interested in that out and again I
Speaker 1: wanna say that an I is book that a reference
Speaker 1: at the top of the podcast is an excellently read,
Speaker 1: is an excellent read and readily available in like you know,
Speaker 1: kindle and physical format however you like to read your books. Awesome.
Speaker 1: I think I'll be checking that one out all right.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. We've gone from B movie
Speaker 1: monsters to uh meso American gods, two prehistoric creatures, uh
Speaker 1: flying snakes. What more could you ask for? Well, you
Speaker 1: could ask for more monster science content, which we will
Speaker 1: be bringing to you for the rest of the month.
Speaker 1: That's right, you can check out all these episodes stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. Dot com that's the mother ship.
Speaker 1: That's where we find all the podcast episodes. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find links out to our various social media accounts.
Speaker 1: That's where you will find a tab at the top
Speaker 1: of the page that has our store. On a click,
Speaker 1: go to the store, buy some merchandise with our logo.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to support the show. But if
Speaker 1: you don't want to spend money and you want to
Speaker 1: support the show, then rate and review us wherever you
Speaker 1: have the power to do so. It really helps us
Speaker 1: out huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Tori Harrison. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us to let us know feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hi, let us
Speaker 1: know where you listen from, how you found out of
Speaker 1: the show, and so forth, you can email us at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com