Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We're heading into
Speaker 2: the vault for an older episode of the show. This one,
Speaker 2: originally published June fourteenth, twenty twenty two, is part three
Speaker 2: of our exploration of the Cauldron. Let's ladele some out here.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Hey, we were out
Speaker 2: for a little bit, but now we're back, and you
Speaker 2: know what, we're back with more cauldrons. Our brains are
Speaker 2: like pots, and those pots are full of pots, and
Speaker 2: the pots have pots in them, and it never stops.
Speaker 1: I know, my wife is still teasing me about this.
Speaker 1: It's like, you guys are still doing episodes about cauldrons
Speaker 1: and soup, and I'm like, yeah, there's like we're probably
Speaker 1: going to do three or four of these total, and
Speaker 1: we're still not going to cover everything. And a lot
Speaker 1: of it comes down to the fact, and certainly go
Speaker 1: back and listen to those first two episodes if you
Speaker 1: haven't It comes down to the fact that we're talking
Speaker 1: about ancient technology, and since it we inevitably use technology
Speaker 1: as a way of understanding ourselves, understanding the cosmos, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It ends up becoming a part of our not only
Speaker 1: are a discourse, but of course our religions and so forth.
Speaker 1: And we see that with the cauldron for sure.
Speaker 2: Yes, though I have to say one of the big
Speaker 2: examples we're going to talk about in this episode. I
Speaker 2: don't know if the whole episode will end up focusing
Speaker 2: on it, but it's a really interesting historical artifact that
Speaker 2: is called a cauldron. Like it is called the Gunduestrup cauldron.
Speaker 2: But I was reading a paper on it, and the
Speaker 2: very first sentence of the paper, this author insists that
Speaker 2: it is not a cauldron, it is a ceremonial container.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean this is something that is kind of
Speaker 1: under the surface of many of these discussions, right Like
Speaker 1: obviously not all of these people would have called this
Speaker 1: a cauldron, and then you get into discussions of Okay,
Speaker 1: is it a cauldron or a pot, Is it a
Speaker 1: cauldron or a bowl? Is it a cauldron or some
Speaker 1: other kind you know, what exactly.
Speaker 2: Is the sh will Daddy. Oh, Okay, this is a cauldron.
Speaker 2: Come on, it's a big metal pot. I think we
Speaker 2: can call it a cauldron.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah. As we've discussed in previous episodes, we
Speaker 1: wanted to get into European traditions with a cauldron, and
Speaker 1: cauldrons in Europe are sometimes uncovered in bogs places, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed in the show before, that had sacred connotations
Speaker 1: to the ancient people who visited them. They were a
Speaker 1: place between land and water, and so they were also
Speaker 1: seen as a place between life and death. So various
Speaker 1: funeral rites seem to have been conducted its various bogs
Speaker 1: and peat bogs, and given the low oxygen city soil
Speaker 1: of bog environments, we often gain a great deal more
Speaker 1: insight into what occurred there, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: organic materials that would have otherwise decayed. So bodies were
Speaker 1: left in these bogs and teared in these bogs, and
Speaker 1: we also see examples of cauldrons and cauldron like artifacts.
Speaker 1: One notable bog retrieved cauldron is the Gundestrap cauldron, an
Speaker 1: incomplete but very stunning silver artifact discovered in a bog
Speaker 1: in Himmelund, Denmark in eighteen ninety one. Now, while dating
Speaker 1: has been a matter of some discussion here exact dating anyway,
Speaker 1: it's suspected to date back to between one fifty BCE
Speaker 1: and the dawn of the Common Era. It was evidently
Speaker 1: given to the bog and an act of sacrifice, perhaps
Speaker 1: to a god or god's, but its origins don't seem
Speaker 1: to be quite Danish. It bears images that are generally
Speaker 1: associated with more Southern cultures, lying d or griffins. There
Speaker 1: seems to be a hornet or antlered god on there,
Speaker 1: alongside other potential gods and goddesses. It contains scenes of
Speaker 1: warriors falling in battle, and there is actually an image
Speaker 1: of a magic cauldron that is on this cauldron with
Speaker 1: a gigantic figure, perhaps a god or a goddess, about
Speaker 1: to dunk a smaller man into its depths.
Speaker 2: That's right, we got cauldrons on our cauldrons and I
Speaker 2: want to come back to more interpretation of this panel
Speaker 2: later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, as we're talking about the Gundestrup cauldron, look
Speaker 1: up images of it. That's spelled g U n d
Speaker 1: E S t r u P. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of images online that show the various panels here the
Speaker 1: various the various images that we're going to be discussing here,
Speaker 1: including this one of what is clearly a giant of
Speaker 1: some sort taking a man and dunking him headfirst into
Speaker 1: a bucket or cauldron or vessel of some sort adjacent
Speaker 1: to this battle scene. So the exact origins of the
Speaker 1: cauldron here are still a matter of debate, with some
Speaker 1: pointing to the Thracians or what is in these would
Speaker 1: have been people from what is now Bulgaria and Romania.
Speaker 1: Yet there are also Celtic helmets and trumpets depicted on
Speaker 1: the cauldron, suggesting it might have been made in a
Speaker 1: place in the aforementioned region where Thracians and Celts coexisted,
Speaker 1: though it's uncertain how this then wound up in Denmark.
Speaker 1: Could have been a tribute, it could have been spoils
Speaker 1: of war. Either way, it may be accurate to think
Speaker 1: of the Gundestrap Cauldron as not a product of a
Speaker 1: single culture, a single place, or even a single time,
Speaker 1: but something that was created by mingling cultures on the move,
Speaker 1: in part due to Roman expansion and conquest during this
Speaker 1: time period, and ultimately constructed by different artisans over many years.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't think about the Roman connection. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so if this would have been in the first century BCE,
Speaker 2: and the middle of that century was when Julius Caesar
Speaker 2: himself was waging a war of conquest in Gaul against
Speaker 2: Celtic tribes in that region, so yeah, that's an interesting possibility.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Rob, you dug this thing up, not physically,
Speaker 2: but yes, you had brought it into our outline. But
Speaker 2: I got really obsessed with it, and I found I
Speaker 2: find this artifact so interesting, specifically because of the different
Speaker 2: mysteries about it its provenance, like you were just talking about,
Speaker 2: but also about what it's depicting, because there are tons
Speaker 2: of question you know, it clearly is showing scenes that
Speaker 2: are part of a rich mythology that we apparently know
Speaker 2: little to nothing about, and so there are a lot
Speaker 2: of attempts to try to understand what the different panels
Speaker 2: are depicting and if and if so, how they connect
Speaker 2: to mythologies that we might know something about. But coming
Speaker 2: back to that provenance question, Yeah, I think it's so
Speaker 2: interesting that there are at least three different distinct regional inputs. Now,
Speaker 2: as you already mentioned, based on physical characteristics of the cauldron,
Speaker 2: like the silversmithing techniques that were used to create it,
Speaker 2: it seems to be a product of Southeastern Europe. Yes,
Speaker 2: but most scholars pointing to the metalworking techniques of the
Speaker 2: Thracians who live in as you said, what is today
Speaker 2: Bulgaria or Romania. And I was trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what are some examples of this distinctive style that's so
Speaker 2: strongly linked to Thracian culture. Well, I was reading about
Speaker 2: this on the website for the National Museum of Denmark,
Speaker 2: which has a lot of great materials about the Gundestrup cauldron,
Speaker 2: and they compare the Gundestrup cauldron to the metalworking on
Speaker 2: a gilded silver pitcher from Bulgaria from roughly three hundred BCE,
Speaker 2: and looking at it, I would agree, Yeah, the techniques
Speaker 2: and the artistic style look extremely similar, like the way
Speaker 2: the animal figures are in embossed. Remember that this is
Speaker 2: not just like an illustration or a carving, but this
Speaker 2: is like hammered and punched metal. So it has raised
Speaker 2: animal figures with like textures that you could feel with
Speaker 2: your fingers running over them. And those textures are very
Speaker 2: similar between the two works. So like the animal figures
Speaker 2: are embossed and punched with patterns of texture that seem
Speaker 2: to indicate hair or fur, and it's extremely distinctive. You
Speaker 2: see some of the same patterns on the apparent herringbone
Speaker 2: patterns on the clothing of the people on the Gunda
Speaker 2: strip cauldron. So based on the techniques, it's pretty clear
Speaker 2: that it was created by an artisan who had been
Speaker 2: trained in the traditions of Southeastern Europe. But as you
Speaker 2: also said, the imagery depicts objects and motifs associated with
Speaker 2: the culture of the Celts who were in more kind
Speaker 2: of western central Europe at the time, and a few
Speaker 2: examples of this would be a Celtic musical instrument known
Speaker 2: as the carnix, which we can discuss in more detail later,
Speaker 2: certain types of Celtic ceremonial jewelry such as an object
Speaker 2: called a torque, which I can also get to in
Speaker 2: a minute, and things like that. So those are your
Speaker 2: two inputs. It's like Celtic subject matter done in the
Speaker 2: metal working style of the Thracians or of Southeastern Europe,
Speaker 2: and then it's found in the territory of neither one.
Speaker 2: It's found up in Jutland in modern day Denmark in
Speaker 2: a bog. So yeah, you really have to wonder how
Speaker 2: all this comes together. Did a Celtic person commission a
Speaker 2: Southeastern European silversmith to make a pot containing images from
Speaker 2: their culture and mythology? Or maybe did it somehow arise
Speaker 2: from a border region where these cultures came into contact,
Speaker 2: and then somehow this item ends up in the bogs
Speaker 2: of Jutland.
Speaker 1: It would be like finding what a Bulgarian band that
Speaker 1: only does covers of Celtic music in modern Denmark and
Speaker 1: wondering how they came to be there.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, the thrash metal polka bands of Canada. Now
Speaker 2: I wanted to mention just a little bit more about
Speaker 2: the state that this cauldron, the so called cauldron was
Speaker 2: in when it was discovered. So altogether this object weighs
Speaker 2: about nine kilograms or about twenty pounds, and it appears
Speaker 2: to have been deposited in the bog deliberately, especially because
Speaker 2: it was disassembled when it was put into the bog.
Speaker 2: So this cauldron has many detachable features, so the rim
Speaker 2: can be taken off, and the silver image panels which
Speaker 2: line the sides of the pot, those can be taken off,
Speaker 2: and when it was found they were all removed and
Speaker 2: placed inside the vessel, So I don't know, you see that,
Speaker 2: and that makes it sound like this wasn't just sort
Speaker 2: of like it wasn't like it fell off a wagon
Speaker 2: or something. That sounds like somebody put it in there.
Speaker 2: There is no text anywhere on it, so it's not
Speaker 2: like a political cartoon where everything's labeled so you know
Speaker 2: what it means. It's you just have to infer from
Speaker 2: the imagery. So that makes it difficult to identify things.
Speaker 2: But the imagery, as you already said, Rob, is fascinating.
Speaker 2: There are animals you would not expect to see. There
Speaker 2: are lions, There are images of gods that we know
Speaker 2: little or nothing about. In fact, there are even images
Speaker 2: of elephants.
Speaker 1: Ah, and yeah that should be surprising, especially like where
Speaker 1: are these images of elephants coming from?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So at this point, I just want to
Speaker 2: pick out a few of the individual plates and focus
Speaker 2: on what's going on on them, one at a time.
Speaker 2: So the first one I wanted to look at, I've
Speaker 2: got a picture for you to look at, Rob, but
Speaker 2: of course we will describe it for you out there,
Speaker 2: the listener. So it shows a god or a mythic
Speaker 2: figure that's mostly human in form, except it has antlers
Speaker 2: like a stag growing from its head. And this figure
Speaker 2: is sitting cross legged right next to an actual stag.
Speaker 2: And then on the other side of it, there are
Speaker 2: a bunch of other animals. There are four legged, predatory
Speaker 2: looking animals that might be dogs or maybe lions, I
Speaker 2: can't tell for sure. And then I love this a
Speaker 2: tiny dude riding on the back of a fish. Yes,
Speaker 2: is it now compared to the god with the antlers,
Speaker 2: the dude is much smaller, But I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's a question of perspective. Maybe he's farther away, or
Speaker 2: maybe maybe this is just separate imagery, or maybe the
Speaker 2: god is supposed to be really big, or maybe the
Speaker 2: dude's supposed to be really small. I can't tell what
Speaker 2: the deal with the size difference is. But if it
Speaker 2: is a regular sized man on the fish's back that
Speaker 2: is a very big fish, it's got to be like
Speaker 2: dolphin or shark sized.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's also kind of a different flavor to
Speaker 1: these two images. So the hornet or antlered God or
Speaker 1: whatever this being is supposed to be is in it
Speaker 1: has a kind of a serene pose. His legs. His
Speaker 1: or her legs are crossed, holding as what a serpent
Speaker 1: in one hand and I'm not sure what the implement
Speaker 1: is in the other hand.
Speaker 2: Oh well, that is a Celtic object. Actually, I think
Speaker 2: this is an object that is bigger than just Celtic culture,
Speaker 2: but it was big in Celtic culture called a torque,
Speaker 2: which is a type of metal ring worn around the
Speaker 2: neck that seems to have had significance for multiple Iron
Speaker 2: Age European cultures, symbolizing power. It's power or status or rank,
Speaker 2: sort of like a crown. So if somebody's wearing a torque,
Speaker 2: that would seem to indicate that they are a leader
Speaker 2: or a high status person. So this figure with the
Speaker 2: antlers has the torque in his right hand, and then
Speaker 2: in the other hand he's grasping, like you said, the
Speaker 2: neck of a giant snake. But I just wanted to
Speaker 2: point out that the snake has features on its head,
Speaker 2: which one scholar I was looking at identified as rams horns.
Speaker 2: So it's a snake with ram horns.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. So there's clearly a lot going on here,
Speaker 1: as one often finds with depictions of powerful individuals or
Speaker 1: da or demi gods and it's one of these images
Speaker 1: that I think it speaks across the ages. When you
Speaker 1: look at this, you get a sense of power and
Speaker 1: divinity from it. Meanwhile, the individual writing the fish or dolphin,
Speaker 1: it looks more comical to me, and it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if there is in fact it is supposed to
Speaker 1: be comical on some level, like even if it is
Speaker 1: a god of some sort, maybe it is a tricks
Speaker 1: to God. Maybe it's something that is not supposed to
Speaker 1: be interpreted with the same air of reverence as we
Speaker 1: have with this central individual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, fish boy looks very funny, and I
Speaker 2: think it's partly in the way his knees are bent
Speaker 2: and he's sort of reaching forward while riding the fish,
Speaker 2: almost as if you can imagine him kind of rocking
Speaker 2: and kicking back and forth and saying like, go faster,
Speaker 2: come on.
Speaker 1: Now. Obviously, another possible explanation for differences could also be
Speaker 1: different authors over time. But as we alluded to earlier.
Speaker 2: But an interesting thing I wanted to point out again.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot we don't know about what these
Speaker 2: images are supposed to depict. But this antler headed god
Speaker 2: who is holding a torque in one hand, is also
Speaker 2: wearing a torque around his neck, so he appears to
Speaker 2: be a leader or high status figure himself. But maybe
Speaker 2: by holding a torque in one hand, I don't know,
Speaker 2: just speculating, but maybe it means he can also make
Speaker 2: a king. He can also give the crown to another.
Speaker 2: But to go on to discuss another panel, Rob, I
Speaker 2: wanted to come back to one you sort of mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: the panel that has the cauldron dunking on it, because
Speaker 2: this panel's really interesting and there was some good interpretive
Speaker 2: material on the National Museum of Denmark website about it.
Speaker 2: So this is one of the interior wall panels. This
Speaker 2: would be lining the inner wall of the cauldron, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot going on on it, so let's try
Speaker 2: to break it down piece by piece. So one thing
Speaker 2: is that there is a row of soldiers on the
Speaker 2: bottom and they are on foot, they're holding spears and shields,
Speaker 2: and they are moving toward the left side of the panel.
Speaker 2: And then above them is a straight horizontal tree branch
Speaker 2: with little leaves forking off of it. And then above
Speaker 2: the tree branch are soldiers on horseback moving in the
Speaker 2: opposite direction of the procession. Below they are moving to
Speaker 2: the right side of the panel, and then on the
Speaker 2: lower right side of the panel, there are three warriors
Speaker 2: playing instruments that are known as carnisses. When I first
Speaker 2: looked at these things, I had no idea what they were,
Speaker 2: but I looked them up, and these are a well
Speaker 2: known type of artifact. Rob I've got a close up
Speaker 2: for you to look at here. But the carnix was
Speaker 2: a wind instrument used by the Celts of the Iron Age.
Speaker 2: It is essentially a giant s shaped trumpet, but most
Speaker 2: of the length of this trumpet is a vertical pipe
Speaker 2: reaching far up above your head. So picture a kind
Speaker 2: of long periscope tube, except it's not going to your eye,
Speaker 2: it's connecting to your mouth, and you blow through it,
Speaker 2: and then the sound comes out of this tube that
Speaker 2: ends maybe a whole other person's height above your head.
Speaker 2: And so the bell part of this instrument, the part
Speaker 2: where the sound comes out, would often be shaped to
Speaker 2: look like an open jawed head of an animal such
Speaker 2: as a dragon or a serpent, or maybe sometimes a bore.
Speaker 2: The carnax was identified in ancient literary sources as associated
Speaker 2: with warfare, so you might play it on the battlefield
Speaker 2: for a coordination of tactics or for intimidation of the enemy.
Speaker 1: Ah, long distance communication.
Speaker 2: There you go. But what's going on with the warriors
Speaker 2: on the bottom row of the panel, Well, they seem
Speaker 2: to be moving toward the left side, where one by
Speaker 2: one they will face a god of some kind depicted
Speaker 2: as a giant who is you know, at least twice
Speaker 2: as big as probably three times as big as the warriors,
Speaker 2: and the god or the giant will grasp a warrior
Speaker 2: with both hands, turn him upside down, and then dunk
Speaker 2: him headfirst into a cauldron. Now, I think there's plenty
Speaker 2: of room to question the interpretation of these panels. Again,
Speaker 2: they don't come with words on them, so they don't explain,
Speaker 2: and they don't super clearly connect to mythology that we
Speaker 2: know about. Connections that would be established have to be
Speaker 2: kind of inferred. They might be kind of tenuous. But
Speaker 2: the curators of the National Museum of Denmark argue that
Speaker 2: the warriors on foot in the bottom of this panel,
Speaker 2: they are being represented as probably in the underworld, meaning
Speaker 2: that they were just killed in battle, and so they
Speaker 2: are being depicted as I don't know, the dead forms
Speaker 2: of their former selves and you can tell they're in
Speaker 2: the underworld because they are underneath this horizontal tree bring branch. Apparently,
Speaker 2: the tree branch probably denotes the Earth itself and the
Speaker 2: division between worlds. So if the tree branch is the earth,
Speaker 2: what's below it is the underworld, and what's above it
Speaker 2: is some kind of heavenly afterlife. And from here the
Speaker 2: interpretation goes on to say that as these figures are
Speaker 2: dunked into the cauldron by the God, their fate is decided,
Speaker 2: and this fate might include being resurrected or reincarnated in
Speaker 2: some exalted state, such as in this heavenly realm up
Speaker 2: above on the top of the panel, and perhaps as
Speaker 2: a person of higher status or rank. Remember that the
Speaker 2: soldiers shown above the branch were on horseback, so maybe
Speaker 2: this means a fallen warrior could be resurrected as an
Speaker 2: officer or as a member of the equestrian classes higher
Speaker 2: socioeconomic class. And I thought it was really interesting how
Speaker 2: this recalls the imagery of cauldrons used in visions of
Speaker 2: hell in multiple very different Asian cultures that we talked
Speaker 2: about in the previous part of this where the cauldrons
Speaker 2: were not only an instrument of torture in the realms
Speaker 2: of hell, but they were secondarily a symbol of transformation
Speaker 2: into something more honorable and refined, if you could be
Speaker 2: reincarnated as a sort of better being after the stint
Speaker 2: in hell. And it makes me think again, Like, seeing
Speaker 2: this motif arise in multiple different cultures, separated greatly in
Speaker 2: time and geography and language and all these different barriers,
Speaker 2: makes one wonder if there's not a common, universal human
Speaker 2: experience underlying that theme, which would seem to me to
Speaker 2: be very likely the transformation of raw food into cooked food,
Speaker 2: or of dirty clothing into clean clothing, as would be
Speaker 2: just you know, natural things where we see transformed by
Speaker 2: the work of the cauldron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the basic nature of cauldron technology and the
Speaker 1: idea that it enables transformation, It does seem to be
Speaker 1: something you just see in culture after culture after culture,
Speaker 1: just across vast distances on the planet. And the laundry
Speaker 1: note God is important too. I've seen that pop up
Speaker 1: in a few different sources, pointing to specific cauldrons of note,
Speaker 1: and often discussions regarding that cauldron come back to cooking
Speaker 1: and the preparation of food, the transformation of organic matter
Speaker 1: into some sort of delicious or hearty dish. But also
Speaker 1: sometimes laundry is discussed as a possibility as well, And
Speaker 1: I mean that is a transformation. I think we tend
Speaker 1: to totally take for granted that you can have foul
Speaker 1: and soiled clothing, and yet here is this fabulous specialized
Speaker 1: cauldron in your house or at the local laundry mat,
Speaker 1: or in the basement of your building that you put
Speaker 1: these items into, and you come back later and behold,
Speaker 1: they have been refreshed. They are new again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, who doesn't love clean laundry, especially clean sheets.
Speaker 2: It's a wonderful thing. Oh yeah, Okay, I got another
Speaker 2: panel I want to focus on. This one's very special
Speaker 2: and it may be the most important of all of
Speaker 2: them due to its place within the cauldron, and that
Speaker 2: is the panel that is in the bottom of the
Speaker 2: cauldron bowl.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I might not have even noticed this one just by
Speaker 2: looking at pictures of the plates on the Internet, because
Speaker 2: a lot of the photography that's out there focuses on
Speaker 2: the side plates for good reason. But I actually saw
Speaker 2: this one brought up in a curator's video feature from
Speaker 2: the British Museum that was focused on the Gundestrup cauldron.
Speaker 2: I think maybe when they had it on loan or something.
Speaker 2: But it was by an archaeologist named Julia Farley, and
Speaker 2: this was really interesting. So this panel is at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the pot, so if you're looking down into
Speaker 2: the pot, it's what you'd see at the very bottom,
Speaker 2: assuming the pot's empty. And because of that feature, I
Speaker 2: started to think about how if the pot had something
Speaker 2: in it, like soup or whatever. I don't know if
Speaker 2: this was ever used to serve soup, probably not, actually
Speaker 2: more of a ceremonial vessel, but I don't know. I
Speaker 2: guess I couldn't rule that out. If it had anything
Speaker 2: in it, this panel would be hidden and then it
Speaker 2: would be revealed as the contents were taken out of
Speaker 2: the bowl. So what do you see in this panel, Well,
Speaker 2: it depicts a gigantic bull reclining. When I first saw it,
Speaker 2: it looked to me like it was kind of, I
Speaker 2: don't know, lazily resting. But I've seen it written about
Speaker 2: as if this bull is laying on the ground because
Speaker 2: it has been wounded, but I couldn't tell that just
Speaker 2: by looking at it. So for whatever reason, it's a
Speaker 2: bull laying on its side, but then with its head
Speaker 2: propped up, and the head of the bull is actually
Speaker 2: a very prominently vertically raised three D feature. Technically, the
Speaker 2: whole thing, like the other panels, is three D. It's
Speaker 2: all hammered and stamped and embossed into three D textures,
Speaker 2: but the head of the bull is sort of more
Speaker 2: three D than the rest, like it really rises into
Speaker 2: prominence off the base. And then behind the back of
Speaker 2: the bull, we see a goddess or a female warrior
Speaker 2: posed with sword raised and her legs are bent. They're
Speaker 2: kind of tucked up under her as if she were jumping,
Speaker 2: like as if she were in midair at the peak
Speaker 2: of a great leap, and she's going to come down
Speaker 2: with the sword and strike and slay this giant bull.
Speaker 2: So it's an action shot. There are also three dogs
Speaker 2: in the image. It seems two of them seem to
Speaker 2: be alive and helping this warrior or goddess slay the bull,
Speaker 2: and the other dog appears to be dead. But something
Speaker 2: I noticed also about this bull. So it's got this
Speaker 2: raised head coming up off of the body, turning at
Speaker 2: an angle, and then the bull has what looked like
Speaker 2: two holes behind its eyes exactly where the horns would
Speaker 2: emerge from. And I wondered, does this mean that the
Speaker 2: bull at some point had some kind of horns I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe made of a different material coming out
Speaker 2: of these holes that may be known. And if so,
Speaker 2: I just didn't find anything about it, so I don't know.
Speaker 2: But if so, I wonder what those horns were. And
Speaker 2: again I don't know if this is significant, but if
Speaker 2: you had anything opaque in the pot, as the pot
Speaker 2: was emptied, you would first see the bull's raised head
Speaker 2: coming up out of that opaque material. But then as
Speaker 2: more and more was taken out of the pot, as
Speaker 2: the bottom was revealed, it would reveal the goddess or
Speaker 2: the female warrior, this person with the sword and her
Speaker 2: three hounds surrounding the bull, ready to strike. And I
Speaker 2: thought that was a kind of interesting. It's almost like
Speaker 2: by taking the contents out of this bowl, it would
Speaker 2: be pulling back the curtain on the dramatic aspect of
Speaker 2: the scene.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, that's a lot to unpack because on one hand,
Speaker 1: there's just sort of the I guess, the basic pleasure
Speaker 1: to be had, and this potential scene of the level
Speaker 1: of soup lowering and revealing horns and then head and
Speaker 1: then beast, not unlike some of the novelty mugs you'll
Speaker 1: find today, where there's some sort of a like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a cartoon octopus on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the mug. You drink half of your hot cocoa and oop,
Speaker 1: there's an octopus peering up at you. And I mean
Speaker 1: that alone is fun. That alone transcends time and space.
Speaker 1: But yeah, on top of it, to have this dramatic
Speaker 1: action scene playing out and then the question arise as well,
Speaker 1: then is this a story that I mean? What did
Speaker 1: it take place beneath a liquid? Did it take place
Speaker 1: within a cauldron? You know? What is the exact connection?
Speaker 1: How does having it at the bottom of the cauldron?
Speaker 1: What does that illustrate? What does that do? What is
Speaker 1: the function of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I love this, though I want to be clear,
Speaker 2: I am not arguing that this was used to serve soup.
Speaker 2: I don't know of any evidence of that, So I
Speaker 2: guess we don't know what went into this bowl. If anything,
Speaker 2: we don't know exactly how it was used. But another
Speaker 2: question is what does the killing of this bowl symbolize?
Speaker 2: So clearly this goddess is ready to bring the sword
Speaker 2: down on its neck, but we don't know what that
Speaker 2: act meant. And this is another one of the mysteries
Speaker 2: of the cauldron. The National of Denmark page it has
Speaker 2: an interpretation that the bull may symbolize chaos, and the
Speaker 2: woman who is fighting and killing the bull is doing
Speaker 2: so in order to protect the cosmic order, though I'm
Speaker 2: not sure exactly what supports that speculation, but I don't know. Yeah, Personally,
Speaker 2: I'm just intoxicated by the mysteries of like, what are
Speaker 2: the stories that are being told in these little metal
Speaker 2: comic strip panels with no words on them, Like we
Speaker 2: don't know what the surrounding context is, and and I
Speaker 2: really wish we could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because I mean the context would have been
Speaker 1: clear to someone at least a privileged few within the
Speaker 1: given culture, if not everyone within the given culture. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating, fascinating mystery.
Speaker 2: Now. I was looking up to see if there were
Speaker 2: any good papers that were using clues in the images
Speaker 2: to try to understand better what stories were being told
Speaker 2: or what the significance of these gods and mythic figures were.
Speaker 2: One paper I found that caught my attention was by
Speaker 2: a scholar named David Alexander Nance called Plate F on
Speaker 2: the Gundestrup Cauldron Symbols of Spring and Fertility, published in
Speaker 2: a journal called Anthropozoologica in twenty nineteen. Anthropozoologica is a
Speaker 2: journal put out by the French Museum of Natural History
Speaker 2: that seems to be focusing on the role of non
Speaker 2: human animals in the history of humankind. And I looked
Speaker 2: up Nance. He is a scholar at the University of Aberdeen.
Speaker 2: Now specifically, this paper adds it tries to do a
Speaker 2: zoological identification of a bird species on one of the
Speaker 2: plates in order to help elucidate what the mythic significance
Speaker 2: may have been. So Nance notes that on this plate
Speaker 2: called Plate F, which broadly I mean so, first of all,
Speaker 2: it shows this huge face of like a giant figure
Speaker 2: with long hair, and then other depictions of what may
Speaker 2: be the same figure in like smaller scenes around the
Speaker 2: big head. And then the big figure with the long
Speaker 2: hair is holding a bird in its hand. And then
Speaker 2: there are also birds and I think cats and dogs
Speaker 2: flanking it in different places. But Nance is specifically looking
Speaker 2: at the birds and says, hey, wait a second, the
Speaker 2: birds on this plate have a very distinctive morphological feature,
Speaker 2: which is zygodactyly. Zygodactyly is a foot morphology where there
Speaker 2: are two claws facing forward and two facing backward. And
Speaker 2: given that characteristic, there are really only a few types
Speaker 2: of birds that could be it's obviously not most of them.
Speaker 2: So the only real candidate for this is the common
Speaker 2: cuckoo or Cuculus canoris. And this is interesting because the
Speaker 2: cuckoo connects to a whole other known nexus of mythological significance,
Speaker 2: so Nance writes quote. This species is also identified on
Speaker 2: a number of other widespread European artifacts where it was
Speaker 2: previously thought to be a bird of prey. The plate
Speaker 2: depicts a goddess in triplicate flanked by two cuckoos releasing
Speaker 2: the first cuckoo of spring. The bird is an obligate
Speaker 2: brood parasite, laying its eggs in other birds' nests, leading
Speaker 2: to misconceptions of its life cycle, and the misconceptions about
Speaker 2: cuckoos in antiquity were that there were no female cuckoos,
Speaker 2: that there were only males, and the male birds mated
Speaker 2: with the host females of all the other bird species.
Speaker 2: Now that's not true, but Apparently, Nance argues that that
Speaker 2: was believed in the ancient world, and for this reason,
Speaker 2: the cuckoo's symbolized male fertility across many different cultures in
Speaker 2: its summer range. So during the summer months all across Eurasia,
Speaker 2: this bird would fly in and then it would be
Speaker 2: associated with fertility, and sometimes with European fertility goddesses like
Speaker 2: the bird might sort of be its implied consort.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fascinating. I mean that reminds me of various
Speaker 1: misinterpretations regarding spontaneous generation, or the idea that the scare
Speaker 1: of beetle, you know, the dung beetle emerges from the dung.
Speaker 1: That it is that it is a thing that is
Speaker 1: borne out of the dirt and of the waste, as
Speaker 1: opposed to enough of life form that's making use of
Speaker 1: this material.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's interesting. So, but to be biologically precise,
Speaker 2: what is happening with the cuckoos is that they are
Speaker 2: depositing their own So cuckoos are mating with cuckoos, and
Speaker 2: then they're laying cuckoo eggs. They're just laying in the
Speaker 2: nests of other birds, and so that's known as brood parasitism.
Speaker 2: But because of the confusion of like not seeing them
Speaker 2: with their own nests, they were just like, yeah, they're
Speaker 2: only male cuckoos, and they're just they essentially said that
Speaker 2: they were cooked colding the male birds of other species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, brute parasitism is a fascinating topic, and of course
Speaker 1: we see this in the insect world as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not certainly but not confined to just these birds.
Speaker 1: Fascinating topic we could easily come back to because they're
Speaker 1: also even with the cuckoo there, as I recall, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of ins and outs regarding the enforcement
Speaker 1: of this policy. Yes, both with actions that are sometimes
Speaker 1: compared to almost mafia tactics, and also just like how
Speaker 1: does the egg appear and how is there like a
Speaker 1: physical deception or mimicry going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's widely believed to be like just
Speaker 2: an ongoing evolutionary arms race between the host species ability
Speaker 2: to recognize cuckoo eggs and be like wait a minute, no,
Speaker 2: and then the cuckoo's ability to adapt to that and
Speaker 2: further blend in oh but sorry. The other thing about
Speaker 2: the cuckoo that would make it probably associated with fertility
Speaker 2: would be its seasonal migratory patterns, because this is one
Speaker 2: of the migratory birds that would show up in northern
Speaker 2: stretches of Europe and Asia in the summer months, and
Speaker 2: so it might show up in spring you would say like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's the there's the first cuckoo of the of the
Speaker 2: warm season. And so it would thus be associated also
Speaker 2: with the regeneration of plants and things like that, having
Speaker 2: fertility associations for that reason. Anyway, I guess we'll call
Speaker 2: it there for the Gundestrup Cauldron. But I find this
Speaker 2: such an intriguing artifact. I don't know. I like every
Speaker 2: time there's a new paper providing some interpretation of what's
Speaker 2: going on in these panels. I want to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And by all means, when you get a chance,
Speaker 1: you're not driving a vehicle or something, look up images
Speaker 1: of the Gundestrup cauldron. And certainly, if you have access
Speaker 1: to the Gundestrup Cauldron, if you can go see it
Speaker 1: at a museum now or in the future, please do so.
Speaker 2: If you can steal it, you know, tuck it into
Speaker 2: the breeches and get it out of there, and not.
Speaker 1: Steal the Gundestripe cauldron now cauldrons are are also found
Speaker 1: in rivers, which is interesting. Rivers also have of course
Speaker 1: have divine importance in many cultures, and one example is
Speaker 1: the Battersea cauldron that was found in the River Thames
Speaker 1: at Battersea in South London. It's a large riveted bronze
Speaker 1: vessel with signs of maintenance over many years. Originally crafted
Speaker 1: an estimated three thousand years ago, so this would have
Speaker 1: been a highly advanced example of metalwork from this time period. Now.
Speaker 1: This cauldron is mentioned in a blog entry on the
Speaker 1: British Museum website by Jennifer Wexler and Neil Wilkin titled
Speaker 1: Cauldrons and flesh Hooks between the Living and the Dead
Speaker 1: in Ancient Britain and Ireland and Yeah. They also point
Speaker 1: out an example of a three thousand year old flesh
Speaker 1: hook found in a bog in Northern Ireland, and when complete,
Speaker 1: when one piece, it would have been a long metal
Speaker 1: and wood rod decorated with bronze birds. The hook would
Speaker 1: have been used in ritual feasting for the purpose of
Speaker 1: pulling cooked meat from a cauldron, and such tools were
Speaker 1: also used when working with hides and tanning pits and
Speaker 1: so forth. But this particular artifact also had birds on it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. I'm going to read just a
Speaker 1: quote from that British Museum blog post quote. The two
Speaker 1: sets of birds may have represented opposing forces in the
Speaker 1: world of ancient people. Swans are white birds of the water,
Speaker 1: but also associated with the sun and light, and the
Speaker 1: family group suggests fertility because they're depicted in a family
Speaker 1: group here. The ravens, on the other hand, are blackbirds
Speaker 1: of the air and divine communication, connected with wild uplands.
Speaker 1: Their dark color and gruesome dietary habits were connected with
Speaker 1: war and death. These differences may have represented the competing
Speaker 1: forces of good and evil in the world.
Speaker 2: But both of them will help get your meat out
Speaker 2: of the pot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, remember the pot is no mere pot.
Speaker 1: There's no you know, there are no technologies. This is
Speaker 1: central to human existence that don't take on all these
Speaker 1: other meanings and metaphors and so forth. So the cauldron
Speaker 1: is it's where you're cooking your meat, it's where you
Speaker 1: may be doing your laundry. But that cauldron is also
Speaker 1: the universe. That cauldron is also life itself. It is
Speaker 1: the whole experience of humanity.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's some profound fondue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't even get into fondue. There you go,
Speaker 1: another miniature cauldron.
Speaker 2: Well wait, yeah we did. Come on flesh you this
Speaker 2: is basically fondue.
Speaker 1: You're talking, Oh, that's right, get any I guess with fondue.
Speaker 1: I have so little experience with it. I just instantly
Speaker 1: think of only cheese and bread, and yeah, I forget
Speaker 1: sometimes that there's a richer tradition of of fondue. I
Speaker 1: mean there are also other, you know, wonderful traditions of
Speaker 1: you know, communal feasting from heated bowls, you know, Chinese
Speaker 1: hot pot traditions and all so and and certainly that's
Speaker 1: a that's a fun experience if you get a chance
Speaker 1: to partake of that.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever actually done that. But that's
Speaker 2: usually with a not with like like an oil like
Speaker 2: you might use to cook in fondu, but that's like
Speaker 2: a highly flavored broth, broth.
Speaker 1: And you can find you know, plenty of modern restaurants.
Speaker 1: In fact, I went to one, I want to say
Speaker 1: this was in Florida, where not only were was there
Speaker 1: a hot pot at your table, but there was also
Speaker 1: a conveyor belt going through like a little sushi conveyor belt,
Speaker 1: except instead of sushi, it contained various plated ingredients that
Speaker 1: you could add to the hot pot.
Speaker 2: Oh that sounds awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. It was quite a parade of meats
Speaker 1: and vegetables. But that's another thing worth worth keeping in
Speaker 1: mind too with these with these cauldrons, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is the pot, is this this thing at the center,
Speaker 1: It is this thing on the fire. It is the
Speaker 1: thing that is then communally you, so you can you
Speaker 1: can easily imagine how it just becomes this hyper magnet
Speaker 1: for meaning, especially in the ancient world. You know.
Speaker 2: I keep thinking back to this plate on the Gundestrup cauldron,
Speaker 2: the one where the giant god is dunking the warriors
Speaker 2: in from the underworld into the cauldron. And one thing
Speaker 2: I can't tell from the image is the warrior scared
Speaker 2: to be dunked or is the warrior excited like he's
Speaker 2: going in head first. You can see he's got one
Speaker 2: arm sort of raised up, but that it could be
Speaker 2: like a oh no, oh no, please don't dunk, or
Speaker 2: it could be like a wee arms up thing. It's
Speaker 2: hard to tell.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you're being manhandled by a god
Speaker 1: like this, and you're about to be dunked into a
Speaker 1: cauldron or a vat of some sort like you should
Speaker 1: be afraid. I think a certain amount of fear is ideal.
Speaker 2: But then again, if the interpretation is right, this warrior
Speaker 2: is about to maybe be transformed into a higher state
Speaker 2: of existence.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe so maybe so. Now one thing that sort
Speaker 1: of capping off our serious discussion here, And to be clear,
Speaker 1: we will be back in another episode on cauldrons. We
Speaker 1: have a number of wonderful cauldron mythologies to discuss. We'll
Speaker 1: also get into at least a little bit of Dante's Inferno.
Speaker 1: But this also brings me back to a recent film
Speaker 1: we looked at on Weird House Cinema, Jason Takes Manhattan.
Speaker 1: There is a scene where Jason, who again can be
Speaker 1: at least loosely compared to various divine and semi divine
Speaker 1: beings in history, he dunks somebody in this vat of
Speaker 1: like nasty New York water possible. I guess it's not
Speaker 1: actually toxic sludge, but it looks gross. Kill somebody by
Speaker 1: drowning them, holding them by the feet and dunking them.
Speaker 2: I think it's supposed to be toxic waste, and I
Speaker 2: think that is part of the mythology of Jason Takes
Speaker 2: Manhattan is that New York is full of open steel
Speaker 2: drums of toxic waste.
Speaker 1: But don't lease lie on the street later that is
Speaker 1: clearly labeled toxic waste. That confuse this is the matter.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the flavors of the soda
Speaker 2: fountain machines.
Speaker 1: And you know, you you.
Speaker 2: Make you a mix, so you get some new grape
Speaker 2: and then you get some some diet Fanta, and then
Speaker 2: you get some some toxic waste manga.
Speaker 1: Fair enough now to be clear that individual in this
Speaker 1: movie does not re emerge from the cauldron changed. He's
Speaker 1: just killed in the the the vat or the bucket
Speaker 1: or whatever it was, the barrel.
Speaker 2: But well, now hold on a second. I would say
Speaker 2: that the fact that they are in a Friday the
Speaker 2: Thirteenth movie, and that we will later see another Friday
Speaker 2: the thirteenth movie with an almost exactly the same stock
Speaker 2: character may in fact mean that these characters are reincarnated
Speaker 2: throughout each film and sort of attain new forms. You know,
Speaker 2: you've always got your your jock hunk, You've always got
Speaker 2: your nerd. You've always got your u you know, strict
Speaker 2: older gentleman. You know, they show up again and again.
Speaker 2: So this may in fact be a well I guess
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be a transformation.
Speaker 1: Well I guess you could argue that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: So first of all, I do have to ask, is
Speaker 1: this a widely discussed theory or is it?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm just riffing here, No, I see. Okay, maybe
Speaker 2: a bad character gets dunked and then in the next
Speaker 2: movie they're reincarnated as a final girl.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so they're moving up. There is a transformation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you get it's that hierarchy of kill order
Speaker 1: where you're going to either fall down or you ascend upwards.
Speaker 2: Possibly.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, interesting. Interesting. You know, it's also interesting
Speaker 1: if you take this just context of immersion and rebirth,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into some more in our next episode.
Speaker 1: Like you see this in all sorts of films, Like
Speaker 1: I was just thinking of the Star Wars films, like
Speaker 1: what happens when a character is is terribly injured They
Speaker 1: go into the Bacta tank And what is the Bacta
Speaker 1: tank but a kind of magical space cauldron that heals
Speaker 1: your wound and allows you to re emerge.
Speaker 2: I thought that scene was weird. Luke's all cut up
Speaker 2: and he's in that like weird white diaper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that I remember as a kid thinking that
Speaker 1: was funny. It really and it is still funny. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: this comes from also baptismal imagery, and we'll discuss that
Speaker 1: a little bit in the future. I'm also in this
Speaker 1: also reminded of a scene, particularly in the film adaptation,
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty six adaptation of Umbertawecos and Name of
Speaker 1: the Rose, in which I believe the second murder has
Speaker 1: been committed and the body is found immersed in a
Speaker 1: that of pigs blood, that the blood that is going
Speaker 1: to be processed into sausage. And of course that's a
Speaker 1: that's a wonderfully terrifying image I remember, especially from the
Speaker 1: movie trailer that I watched as a child, because here's
Speaker 1: this cauldron of blood and two legs sticking out of it,
Speaker 1: and even that there's so much, so much going on there,
Speaker 1: because here's the cauldron as a vessel of life and death,
Speaker 1: of food and transformation. But also just here an instrument
Speaker 1: of murder for some deranged individual who's causing chaos at
Speaker 1: the abbey.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think we must cease cauldroning for today, but
Speaker 2: there will be one more cauldron.
Speaker 1: Yes, and like I say, it should be a fun one.
Speaker 1: We'll get into some more mythologies, we'll discuss a little
Speaker 1: bit of Dante and who knows what else. All right
Speaker 1: in the meantime, Again, if you didn't listen to those
Speaker 1: first two episodes on the Cauldron, go back and listen
Speaker 1: to those. A lot of good, good content there. Join
Speaker 1: us for the next episode. Core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Mondays. We
Speaker 1: usually do listener mail. On Wednesdays, we usually do a
Speaker 1: Monster Factor Artifact episode that's a short form episode, and
Speaker 1: then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 1: we just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest topic for the future, or us to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.