Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 2: we're continuing Cat Week here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: If you are not aware, it is Cat Week, a
Speaker 2: celebration of cats in our own weird stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind and eventually weird house cinema manner. In this episode,
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about, to a large extent,
Speaker 2: the domestication of cats. And when we think about the
Speaker 2: oldest human civilizations to value the domestic cat, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of us tend to, in many ways rightfully
Speaker 2: think about the ancient Egyptians. After all, the ancient Egyptians
Speaker 2: held the cat in high esteem, living with them, depicting
Speaker 2: them in their art, casting gods and their likeness, and
Speaker 2: of course sometimes mummifying their remains. So you'd be quite excused,
Speaker 2: I think of you came into this episode assuming that
Speaker 2: that ancient egypt provided us with the earliest evidence of
Speaker 2: domesticated cats, and in fact up until I mean reasonably recently,
Speaker 2: like the early two thousands, but certainly recent enough that
Speaker 2: it occurred on the other end of a lot of
Speaker 2: our schooling used to this was exactly what was assumed
Speaker 2: based on evidence from something like thirty six hundred years
Speaker 2: ago concerning the domestication of the Near Eastern and Egyptian
Speaker 2: populations of the African wildcat. But then in the early
Speaker 2: two thousands, as we'll be discussing, new archaeological findings pointed
Speaker 2: researchers to a new possible location for the oldest known
Speaker 2: evidence of domesticated cats, and that is on the Isle
Speaker 2: of Cyprus. For those of you trying to pull up
Speaker 2: the map in your own head, or perhaps you know,
Speaker 2: opening another window on whatever device you maybe I'll save
Speaker 2: you a trip and a little brain power. The Mediterranean
Speaker 2: island of Cyprus is the third largest Mediterranean island after
Speaker 2: Sicily and Sardinia, and it was first settled by hunter
Speaker 2: gatherers approximately thirteen thousand years ago, and it's been uniquely
Speaker 2: situated over the millennia to experience cultural exchange with Europe, Africa,
Speaker 2: and Asia, shaping the Cypriot culture. And so, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: it's possible that evidence of domesticated cats does indeed go
Speaker 2: back some nine five hundred years and of course then
Speaker 2: some maybe two ancient humans in.
Speaker 3: Cyprus, that's right. But before we get to the archaeological
Speaker 3: evidence for cats as human companions on the island of Cyprus,
Speaker 3: I thought we should briefly look at the question how
Speaker 3: did cats become domesticated? Where does the cat come from?
Speaker 3: So my main source here is a paper by Atoni
Speaker 3: at all Claudio Atoni and co authors published in the
Speaker 3: journal Nature, Ecology and Evolution in twenty seventeen, and it's
Speaker 3: called the Palaeogenetics of Cat dis bersail in the Ancient World.
Speaker 3: The top line here is the discovery. And this wasn't
Speaker 3: always known because there are a number of different wildcats
Speaker 3: sub varieties you find around the world. There you know,
Speaker 3: there's a European wild cat, there is a Central Asian wildcat,
Speaker 3: different wildcats you find all over the place, and so
Speaker 3: it was not always known where the domesticated cat came from.
Speaker 3: But now researchers can say with a pretty high degree
Speaker 3: of confidence that all domesticated cats are thought to descend
Speaker 3: from an original population of wildcats native to North Africa
Speaker 3: and Southwest Asia, known as Felis silvestros libica, or the
Speaker 3: African wildcat. So the cats that are domestic cats around
Speaker 3: the world originally come from the subgroup of the African wildcats,
Speaker 3: and there appear to have been two waves of domestication.
Speaker 3: So the authors of this paper a tony at all
Speaker 3: that they studied cat DNA collected from all around the
Speaker 3: globe and they determined through genetic analysis that cat domestication
Speaker 3: started first in the Fertile Crescent, that's the earliest time
Speaker 3: in the Neolithic period, that's the last part of the
Speaker 3: Stone Age, and then it accelerated in Egypt in the
Speaker 3: first millennium BCE.
Speaker 2: So we can still basically look at our household cats
Speaker 2: and think think of them as being descendants of the
Speaker 2: goddess Bastett, right or bast So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: Egyptian heritage to the domestic cat species.
Speaker 3: It does seem like ancient Egyptian civilization does contribute hugely
Speaker 3: to the domestic cats of today. But ancient Egypt was
Speaker 3: not the first time cats were domesticated. That seems to
Speaker 3: be in the Fertile Crescent a little bit earlier in
Speaker 3: the in the Neolithic period.
Speaker 2: But maybe the last time they would be domesticated. Because
Speaker 2: it seems like we're done, it seems like we're at
Speaker 2: a good, good level with the current domestication of the
Speaker 2: of the of the common healthcat.
Speaker 3: I think they're here to stay. But speaking of the
Speaker 3: idea that a domestication attempt of an animal could not
Speaker 3: stick around, I was reading about an interesting variation in
Speaker 3: a paper by an author that we'll come back to
Speaker 3: several times in this episode. A paper by Jean Denis
Speaker 3: Vignert and a bunch of co authors from PLUS one
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen called earliest domestic cats in China identified
Speaker 3: as leopard cat. So in this paper the authors agree
Speaker 3: that all domestic cats today are descended from the African wildcat,
Speaker 3: so it's not a dispute about like the leopard cat
Speaker 3: being a part of the genetic heritage of any cat
Speaker 3: that you would find in a house today. Instead, this
Speaker 3: paper documents archaeological remains from China dating from between fifty
Speaker 3: five hundred to forty nine hundred years before present, showing
Speaker 3: what appeared to me to be domesticated cats buried in
Speaker 3: human contexts, so found in human storage areas or dwellings,
Speaker 3: and analysis of the bones of these animals shows that
Speaker 3: these are not African wildcats, but rather from a historically
Speaker 3: short lived attempt to domesticate the Asian leopard cat and
Speaker 3: now an extant wild animal.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, I mean you think about
Speaker 2: we tend to think about the domestication success stories, and
Speaker 2: you know, with the cat, I think we're still figuring
Speaker 2: out how successful that was. I know, I had my
Speaker 2: own household cat just pee all over the place this morning,
Speaker 2: So yeah, it definitely gave me some time for a
Speaker 2: little A few sidebars. As I was finishing the research
Speaker 2: for this episode, it's like, have we reached a good
Speaker 2: point with this domestication. I'm not sure, but clearly there
Speaker 2: are cases where there's even less of a match and
Speaker 2: where not enough lines up in short enough time for
Speaker 2: the domestication to really take hold.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean I guess you're sort of asking
Speaker 3: this question now, but yeah, it raises the question like
Speaker 3: what counts as domesticated? Like how sticky does the relationship
Speaker 3: have to be between the humans and these animals for
Speaker 3: it to really be domesticated, Because yeah, in the case
Speaker 3: of these semi domesticated or proto domesticated leopard cats, the
Speaker 3: practice appears to have died out. There's not like a widespread,
Speaker 3: you know, population of domesticated leopard cat descendants.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, imagine there are a number of different elements,
Speaker 2: like the cultural attachment, religious significance, and then just is
Speaker 2: it useful? Like are they serving a purpose in the
Speaker 2: household or on you know, or on the land surrounding
Speaker 2: the household? Are they killing the enemies of man? And
Speaker 2: so forth?
Speaker 3: I have to wonder. I don't have direct evidence of this,
Speaker 3: but I have to wonder if the spread of the
Speaker 3: domesticated African wildcat descendant could have possibly replaced, you know,
Speaker 3: previous attempts to domesticate cats or cat like animals.
Speaker 2: That's a good point, yeah, because if you're kind of
Speaker 2: like putting in a lot of work to try and
Speaker 2: domesticate these leopards and then someone shows up with something
Speaker 2: maybe a little more, a little more closely aligned to
Speaker 2: what we think of as a modern house cat, yeah,
Speaker 2: you might be inclined to think, well, heck, let's just
Speaker 2: go at this.
Speaker 4: This model seems to work.
Speaker 3: So how did domestic cats come to cover the entire globe?
Speaker 3: Since the African wild cat is native to North Africa
Speaker 3: and the Middle East, how did it spread all over
Speaker 3: the world? A TONI had all determined by looking at
Speaker 3: DNA from cat remains, especially in major ancient port cities.
Speaker 3: That domestic cats spread around the world on ships, it
Speaker 3: had to have been by sea travel that they made
Speaker 3: it from place to place and eventually basically to the
Speaker 3: whole world. And they argue, I think this makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense. They were probably kept aboard ships to
Speaker 3: kill rats and mice that would otherwise get into food
Speaker 3: stashes during transport. And this will be a theme. Actually.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny how a lot of people listening
Speaker 3: probably today do not think of the cat as like
Speaker 3: a functional or working animal. It's a companion animal. You
Speaker 3: have a cat, you know, to be friends with it,
Speaker 3: you know, to feel nice when you're petting it and
Speaker 3: taking care of it, to feel good, just you know,
Speaker 3: getting that reciprocal relationship of companionship and mutual enjoyment with
Speaker 3: another creature. But for much of history the cat had
Speaker 3: a job to do.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you know, I don't know, I still think
Speaker 2: about this. I think of my cat primarily as a
Speaker 2: companion animal. But you know, there are times where you know,
Speaker 2: live I live near some railroad tracks, there's always there's
Speaker 2: some there are rodents out there, and so it does
Speaker 2: cross my mind from time to time. That she is
Speaker 2: also kind of like the last line of defense that
Speaker 2: I Odin's center the house. It's her job to take
Speaker 2: to take care of it, and if not, I will
Speaker 2: satirize her with poetry so hard.
Speaker 3: Well, you better be careful you don't summon the King
Speaker 3: of Cats.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm not going to drag him into this.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna just target Mochi, my cat with that.
Speaker 3: Oh right, I forgot what Shaun chan Jin was not.
Speaker 3: Did he not satirize cats hard enough to invite the
Speaker 3: King of cats just like to protect them on the
Speaker 3: Did he actually have to satirize the King of cats himself?
Speaker 2: He went straight to the King of cats because he's like,
Speaker 2: it's like cats are under his jurisdiction and cats have
Speaker 2: failed me and not eating the mice that ate this
Speaker 2: egg that I was going to eat. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: he went straight to the top.
Speaker 3: You run in his mouth about the boss. That's a
Speaker 3: bad idea. Oh but this all brings us back to
Speaker 3: the connection between cats and the island of Cyprus and
Speaker 3: the Mediterranean, because, as you were alluding to earlier, Rob,
Speaker 3: it seems that our earliest archaeological evidence of cat human
Speaker 3: companionship may be in an ancient Stone age grave on
Speaker 3: the island of Cyprus.
Speaker 2: That's right, And so we're gon we're gonna skip over
Speaker 2: Egyptian cats here and mostly focus on Cyprus. But I
Speaker 2: do want to note that we could easily come back
Speaker 2: in another episode, maybe next Cat Week, maybe sooner, and
Speaker 2: discuss the ancient Egyptians and their cats. But again, this
Speaker 2: was an important find. This really changed the way we
Speaker 2: understood humanity's relationship with domesticated or nearly domesticated felines. And
Speaker 2: again this is the work of French scientists Jean Denis
Speaker 2: Vignier of the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris,
Speaker 2: along with his co authors. The big initial paper was
Speaker 2: Early Taming of the Cat in Cyprus, published in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four in the journal Science, and it essentially
Speaker 2: set the clock back, I believe, like a good five
Speaker 2: thousand years on what we understood about humanity's relationship with
Speaker 2: a domesticated cat. Yeah, so this is essentially how it
Speaker 2: went down, And Joe, we were both looking at the
Speaker 2: same sources here, so jump in if you want to
Speaker 2: expand on anything that I'm mentioning here. But essentially the
Speaker 2: researchers discovered a mostly complete skeleton. And I want to
Speaker 2: add the caveat that it seems to have been buried
Speaker 2: in complete form. It's just parts of the skeleton were
Speaker 2: damaged at some point or another.
Speaker 3: And the fact that it's in complete form is important
Speaker 3: for reasons. We'll get into it in a minute.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes, so mostly complete skeleton of an eight month
Speaker 2: old cat next to the nine five hundred year old
Speaker 2: grave of a human being. And this grave was located
Speaker 2: in the Shiluru Combas archaeological site. This is a pre
Speaker 2: Pottery Neolithic b site. I'm to understand this was a
Speaker 2: settlement occupied from the end of the ninth till the
Speaker 2: end of the eighth millennium BCE. And this is in
Speaker 2: southern Cyprus, a site that had been first excavated just
Speaker 2: a decade earlier. And this would have been one of
Speaker 2: the Neolithic people that had traveled from the mainland bringing
Speaker 2: crops and livestock to Cyprus, not individually one of the people,
Speaker 2: I mean more broadly, like the people the strain of
Speaker 2: humanity that came to the island.
Speaker 3: Right, so, sometime previous in the previous few thousand years,
Speaker 3: there had been settlers from the mainland. Originally occupants of
Speaker 3: somewhere in the Fertile Crescent were Stone Age humans that
Speaker 3: got in boats and made their way to the island.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So this particular human that was buried again
Speaker 2: alongside this cat was apparently about thirty when they died,
Speaker 2: and they were buried with various items, which was always
Speaker 2: interesting to see what kind of items they were buried with,
Speaker 2: or at least the ones we know about because they've
Speaker 2: survived in one form or another. And it consisted of
Speaker 2: a marine shell, a stone pendant, a flint scraper, two
Speaker 2: small polished axes and those was damaged, a pumice stone,
Speaker 2: a fragment of ochre, a large flint piercing tool, and
Speaker 2: then several flint blades, so a lot of utilitarian tools
Speaker 2: on their body. They'd probably been buried in a bag
Speaker 2: placed in a circular pit that also contained various additional
Speaker 2: shells and stones. The cat's grave was oval shaped and
Speaker 2: about fifteen centimeters deep. The body was seemingly again complete
Speaker 2: at burial, though parts of it were destroyed I believe
Speaker 2: by plowing, because it was like the uppermost bones that
Speaker 2: had been damaged here and the cat was laid out
Speaker 2: on its side, head to the west and back to
Speaker 2: the south. That happens to be the exact same positioning
Speaker 2: as the human buried beside it. The cause of death
Speaker 2: for the feline could not be determined, but evidence suggested
Speaker 2: that it had not been cut, had not been burned,
Speaker 2: its body had not been opened up. Gender of the
Speaker 2: cat was unknown due to missing or destroyed pelvic bone pieces, So.
Speaker 3: We don't know if the cat died of nashe causes
Speaker 3: or was killed, but the evidence of its death was
Speaker 3: not clear.
Speaker 2: Right, It's entirely possible that it could have been killed
Speaker 2: as a sacrifice and buried alongside the human, but there's
Speaker 2: no evidence that that happened. There's no evidence that that
Speaker 2: didn't happen. And you know, it's not like either possibility
Speaker 2: really alters the argument for this animal being important to
Speaker 2: the person who's buried with I mean, either way, it
Speaker 2: has a privileged position alongside the human, or vice versa,
Speaker 2: the human has a privileged position alongside the cat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and the really important thing here being that
Speaker 3: it's clear to the archaeologists that this cat was intentionally
Speaker 3: buried on purpose. This isn't it's not a situation where like, oh,
Speaker 3: a cat was running around and it just happened to
Speaker 3: die near the grave, and they're mistaking it for and
Speaker 3: for there were several reasons for thinking that this is
Speaker 3: an intentional burial alongside the human, not just the proximity
Speaker 3: it is right beside the other grave, but also you
Speaker 3: mentioned the fact that the cat's skeleton was articulated, maybe
Speaker 3: like the joints and were still connected and intact.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, and Vigne also points out that the mere
Speaker 2: fact that it was buried like this articulated almost entirely intact,
Speaker 2: if not entirely intact, it means it was likely a
Speaker 2: tame species because when wild animals were rarely buried during
Speaker 2: this time, the skeletons were generally rather incomplete. So just
Speaker 2: everything about the way this creature has been buried, in
Speaker 2: the way that, the way it's positioned, and so forth,
Speaker 2: it seems to indicate that this animal was likely domesticated
Speaker 2: to some degree. And we should also note that these
Speaker 2: findings Vigner backs up by pointing to various other cat
Speaker 2: remains found at least in pieces elsewhere on the island,
Speaker 2: and also the idea. He mentions the idea that cats
Speaker 2: had special status among these individuals is also backed up
Speaker 2: by discovery of figurines in neighboring regions from this time,
Speaker 2: as well as the one that was found at the
Speaker 2: same archaeological site in Cyprus, though from a slightly earlier time.
Speaker 2: So everything seems in place here to suggest. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: tame cat, a cat that is that is considered close
Speaker 2: to humans for one reason or another. We'll get into
Speaker 2: more about, you know, some of those reasons. And and
Speaker 2: also by a culture that that values the cat enough
Speaker 2: to create its likeness. Again, maybe for religious purposes, maybe
Speaker 2: you know, for some other purpose, but they certainly held
Speaker 2: the cat in the high esteem.
Speaker 3: Now, another thing that would be interesting to know is
Speaker 3: do we know what kind of cat this was?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, So Vigner contends that that the quote the
Speaker 2: post cranial and cranial measurements fall in the upper half
Speaker 2: of the range variation of size of the western Asian
Speaker 2: Felis Silvestris livica. So this does seem to be the
Speaker 2: African wildcat. And I'm only just now realizing that the
Speaker 2: cartoon cat Sylvester gets its name probably from this. Well.
Speaker 3: I think the name Sylvester means like from the forest
Speaker 3: or of the woods, though I assume that's what it
Speaker 3: means in the context of this cat's name as well
Speaker 3: the cartoon cat, well, the real species and the cartoon cat. Okay,
Speaker 3: I don't know about the cartoon cat. That probably just yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe that comes.
Speaker 2: From this, but anyway, this does seem to be the
Speaker 2: African wildcat, so the ancestor of the domestic cat, though
Speaker 2: this would of course have been the earlier domestication wave,
Speaker 2: not the one that really took hold. And this specimen
Speaker 2: was apparently bigger than a modern domestic cat, had longer limbs,
Speaker 2: but it is definitely an African wildcat. Points out that
Speaker 2: there's no evidence of a native field species of cat
Speaker 2: on Cyprus, so they would have had to have been
Speaker 2: introduced by these neolithic settlers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll have more on that in just a minute.
Speaker 2: So this updated timeline would put the domestication just three
Speaker 2: thousand years after the likely domestication point of the dog,
Speaker 2: and alongside the human domestication of the sheep mastery of
Speaker 2: wheat as well. So I think settlers of Katan fans
Speaker 2: out there will recognize that this is just one stone
Speaker 2: short of getting to buy a development cost. So this
Speaker 2: is a big deal and when it comes to the
Speaker 2: advancement of your civilization.
Speaker 3: But does it help you with the longest road.
Speaker 2: Nope, You're going to need what bricks and wood for that.
Speaker 3: Now, just a note about the timeline of dog domestication,
Speaker 3: because I think reading about the timeline of dog domestication
Speaker 3: can be confusing sometimes because while the earliest undisputed archaeological
Speaker 3: evidence of a dog buried with humans comes from the
Speaker 3: fifteenth millennium before present, so that that's from a site
Speaker 3: in modern Germany, genetic evidence shows that modern domestic dogs
Speaker 3: began to diverge from their wolf ancestors something like twenty
Speaker 3: to forty thousand years ago. I think there are some
Speaker 3: different figures on that commonly cited range. So genetic evidence
Speaker 3: shows the process beginning much earlier, But the genetic evidence
Speaker 3: doesn't tell us exactly how domesticated those proto dogs or
Speaker 3: divergent wolves were in terms of behavior and living arrangements. So,
Speaker 3: for example, it could be that for thousands of years
Speaker 3: these proto dogs were only partially domesticated, not necessarily treated
Speaker 3: as companions, but genetically and behaviorally adapted to increased interaction
Speaker 3: with human populations. One example of this would be following
Speaker 3: humans around and scavenging their camps. So yeah, the truth
Speaker 3: is we don't know exactly when people started treating dogs
Speaker 3: like pets or like working animals, but the first clear
Speaker 3: archaeological evidence for that kind of relationship comes from the
Speaker 3: fifteenth millennium before now. And again, like with the cat example,
Speaker 3: that's from an example of humans being buried along with
Speaker 3: their dog. I think it's from a couple being buried
Speaker 3: with their dog.
Speaker 2: It's also going to fusing because sometimes we use BP
Speaker 2: in measuring this, because we're just saying before Pluto, before Pluto,
Speaker 2: the Disney cartoon dog. Yeah, so it's essentially the same,
Speaker 2: but it's off by a few decades.
Speaker 3: So apart from the proximity to a human grave, one
Speaker 3: clue that the cat skeleton found at schileuro Cambos might
Speaker 3: have been a domesticated cat begins with the observation that,
Speaker 3: as you said a minute ago, Rob, the African wildcat,
Speaker 3: was not native to Cypress before the arrival of humans.
Speaker 3: That's worth stressing there were no wildcats on Cypress at all,
Speaker 3: and we know that pretty conclusively from the fossil record.
Speaker 3: No cats. In fact, the fossil record indicates that before
Speaker 3: humans there were very few terrestrial mammals at all on Cypress.
Speaker 3: This is probably because even during glacial maximum periods the
Speaker 3: sea levels were at their lowest, Cypress was never connected
Speaker 3: to the mainland, so the only pre human terrestrial mammals
Speaker 3: on Cypress appear to have been The following one was
Speaker 3: the dwarf hippopotamus. This seems to have gone extinct when
Speaker 3: humans arrived, which was about twelve five hundred years before present,
Speaker 3: so they were very likely hunted or otherwise driven extinct
Speaker 3: by humans. The dwarf elephant also disappeared when we showed up.
Speaker 3: The Cypriot genet, which is a small carnivore sort of
Speaker 3: a catlike weasel like creature, a little bit raccoony maybe
Speaker 3: it's got a long tail, may have survived a few
Speaker 3: thousand years after humans arrived, but it is now extinct.
Speaker 3: And then finally, the Cypriot mouse, which is the only
Speaker 3: native land mammal from Cypress that still exists today.
Speaker 2: And you know, that's quite a compliment for the Cypriot
Speaker 2: mouse to have survived given what is about to follow.
Speaker 3: Well, mice are hardy, but yeah, when humans show up
Speaker 3: on an island, we do a lot of damage, especially
Speaker 3: us and the things we bring with us.
Speaker 2: Do you think humans are the reason that the hippopotamus
Speaker 2: and the elephant disappeared? Just a coincidence size.
Speaker 3: So, since cats were not native to the island and
Speaker 3: thus not acquired locally, we know that ancient humans and
Speaker 3: these would have been in Stone Age farmers originally from
Speaker 3: the Fertile Crescent, must have crossed the sea with cats
Speaker 3: in their boats. And given the size of the boats
Speaker 3: that would have been used, and given the fact that
Speaker 3: you need multiple breeding pairs to establish a stable island population,
Speaker 3: it's just not very plausible that we could be dealing
Speaker 3: with the case of cat stowaways that established themselves on
Speaker 3: an island. That's not I don't know, it's not impossible,
Speaker 3: but it seems very unlikely.
Speaker 2: Right, especially because you know, to be clear, over the
Speaker 2: course of time, unlikely introduction do occur. We see that,
Speaker 2: especially when you go beyond the span of human civilizations
Speaker 2: and you look at just like you know, more like
Speaker 2: geologic time.
Speaker 3: But this is about millions of years is years.
Speaker 2: This is within the range of human domain, and it
Speaker 2: suspiciously involves an animal that humans took a liking to yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it seems much more likely that humans brought
Speaker 3: cats to Cyprus across the sea on purpose. But why Well,
Speaker 3: one clue is that cats were not the only non
Speaker 3: native animal species introduced by humans. So here I want
Speaker 3: to reference another paper again where Jean Deni Vignier is
Speaker 3: the first author. This one is called Historical Dynamics of
Speaker 3: the Human Environment Interactions in Cyprus during the twelfth to
Speaker 3: tenth millennium before present the last thirty years of contributions
Speaker 3: of the Amathus area. This was published in the Journal
Speaker 3: of Archaeological Science Reports in the year twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: once again by vigne at All. So in this paper
Speaker 3: the authors are actually looking at a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 3: They're tracking what we know about how the physical environment
Speaker 3: of Cyprus changed before, during, and after its early colonization
Speaker 3: by humans. And they look at quote, hydrological changes and
Speaker 3: their impact on the establishment and preservation of Neolithic sites,
Speaker 3: Plant and vertebrate faunal evolution, especially as a consequence of
Speaker 3: the introduction of new wild and domestic species. Birth and
Speaker 3: evolution of the commensal fauna e g. Mice, cats and crows,
Speaker 3: and commensal fauna means things living alongside. Commensalism in biology
Speaker 3: is typically it's a type of symbiotic relationship in which
Speaker 3: one organism gets a benefit and the other is not
Speaker 3: really affected one way or another. And then the list
Speaker 3: goes on local domestication of wild boar and goats, adaptation
Speaker 3: and intensification of cultiv and breeding to the local environments,
Speaker 3: so to zoom in specifically on the introduction of new
Speaker 3: animal species. The author is right that the first introduction
Speaker 3: we have evidence of is actually the wild bore, which
Speaker 3: was established on the island during the Epipalaeolithic, probably as
Speaker 3: hunting stock. So the bore remains found on Cyprus show
Speaker 3: insular dwarfism, meaning that they're about fifteen percent smaller than
Speaker 3: the mainland variety and they were often wounded with arrowheads.
Speaker 3: So this would be an interesting early case of intentional
Speaker 3: animal management, or like game management, bringing a live stock
Speaker 3: of a wild species to an island to release so
Speaker 3: that it can establish itself there and so you can
Speaker 3: hunt it on the island.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is fascinating to think about because I
Speaker 2: know it for my own part. I often think about
Speaker 2: this more when I'm thinking about Europeans, you know, setting
Speaker 2: off during the age of Discovery and as well as
Speaker 2: the the as well as the expansion you know of Polynesian,
Speaker 2: Micronesian and so forth, seafaring folks coming to an island
Speaker 2: and realizing, Hey, nice island here, but there's nothing to
Speaker 2: eat here. I better leave some pigs, I better leave
Speaker 2: some goats, and then I can come back in. This
Speaker 2: island will be my larder. But you know, clearly this
Speaker 2: has been in the human playbook for a very long time.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean this is like thousands of years before
Speaker 3: I imagine there was such a practice. Yeah, so seeding, Yes,
Speaker 3: seeding an island with a new game species that can
Speaker 3: be hunted for generations to come. But then well after
Speaker 3: the introduction of the board during the eleventh millennium before present,
Speaker 3: we get other mammals appearing, and this includes domestic dogs
Speaker 3: brought from the levant, the Western European house mouse, and cats.
Speaker 3: This would be the African wildcat, as we've been talking
Speaker 3: about now. To clarify, there is no evidence that the
Speaker 3: wildcats brought along were initially treated as companions or had
Speaker 3: any special significance to humans. That evidence would start to
Speaker 3: appear more than a thousand years later. With that human
Speaker 3: cat co burial. So why were cats brought The authors
Speaker 3: here argue that it was likely that African wildcats were
Speaker 3: brought to Cyprus as an already semi domesticated commensal species
Speaker 3: that were valued for pest control, because if you are
Speaker 3: a farming society and you take foods, you take grain
Speaker 3: or other food somewhere with you, it is pretty much
Speaker 3: a guarantee that rodents are sneaking along for the ride,
Speaker 3: or that there are already rodents where you're going, and
Speaker 3: either way they're going to get into your food. Rodent
Speaker 3: attacks on human food caches are just a perennial problem
Speaker 3: for human cultures going back as far as we have evidence.
Speaker 3: So if these moody, little carnivorous critters, these cats already
Speaker 3: like to hang out around your villages and kill the mice,
Speaker 3: it is definitely worth bringing some of them along with
Speaker 3: you when you move to a new place across the sea.
Speaker 3: So these early cats were probably intentionally brought to Cyprus
Speaker 3: for the purpose of pest control. And then after this,
Speaker 3: well around the same time, maybe a few hundred years later,
Speaker 3: we start to see some other things goats and cattle.
Speaker 3: Goats seem to have been treated not as domestic animals initially,
Speaker 3: but as wild game stocks. So kind of like the
Speaker 3: bors like hunted for some time wild on the island
Speaker 3: before they were either domesticated or redomesticated on the island.
Speaker 3: They may have been domesticated earlier on the mainland and
Speaker 3: then released wild on the island, but eventually they get
Speaker 3: redomesticated or domesticated for the first time. Then after this
Speaker 3: we start to see more introductions. You get fallow deer
Speaker 3: again brought and established as a wild population, and then
Speaker 3: to domestic sheep, and then curiously, I thought this was
Speaker 3: so interesting. Foxes.
Speaker 2: Foxes.
Speaker 3: Foxes not native to the island of Cyprus. They were
Speaker 3: not there on their own. They had to have been
Speaker 3: brought by humans. It is hard to imagine foxes could
Speaker 3: establish themselves by accident, like just stowing away in boats.
Speaker 3: Right again, you need multiple breeding pairs to have a
Speaker 3: stable population there. How would you get enough foxes to
Speaker 3: the island. Uh, It's it's harder for foxes to stow
Speaker 3: away than it is for mice.
Speaker 2: I think, why bring them?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: I don't know. This seems along the lines of, say,
Speaker 2: intentionally introducing raccoons to this.
Speaker 3: Is like you to get into your trash cans.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, well, I mean, and I imagine, you know,
Speaker 2: folks living in urban foxes probably see that as a
Speaker 2: more direct comparison. Yeah, but like, ye, why bring the foxes?
Speaker 3: Uh? The authors say, we don't know, we don't know
Speaker 3: why they brought the foxes. Maybe this is just a guess.
Speaker 3: There's not a reason to think this. You're just having
Speaker 3: to guess. Maybe foxes had some kind of cultural or
Speaker 3: religious significance to the settlers. Possibly the physical evidence indicates
Speaker 3: that foxes were not hunted and they were tolerated as
Speaker 3: commensals in the early Cypriot villages. The authors say, quote
Speaker 3: this also strengthens the idea that early Neolithic people were
Speaker 3: experimenting with a lot of different systems of relationships with animals.
Speaker 3: So just like just try it out, why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you if you think about like
Speaker 2: the idea of bringing cats with you, and these cats
Speaker 2: are not necessarily your friends. They just live in the
Speaker 2: same area and they eat something, they kill something that
Speaker 2: is useful to you that they're.
Speaker 3: They're killing them enemy of my enemy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so maybe something similar with foxes here, Like
Speaker 2: we have seen the foxes eat the mice or something
Speaker 2: that we don't want around. They seem to have a
Speaker 2: meaningful purpose, so let's just bring them along.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder, Yeah, could boxes have possibly been thought
Speaker 3: of as pest control? I don't know how plausible that is.
Speaker 3: Somebody who has more experienced with foxes please write in
Speaker 3: about that. Is that plausible that there were a complementary
Speaker 3: pest control system? Possibly? Once again, I want to make
Speaker 3: clear the authors don't say that we don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it seems to me anyway that it like
Speaker 2: the discovery that any of these introductions could backfire on
Speaker 2: us is a pretty recent revelation for human beings. So
Speaker 2: maybe I'm wrong. Maybe earlier civilizations did realize that they
Speaker 2: could blow it introducing animals intentionally for one purpose and
Speaker 2: then it just doesn't work out. But yeah, but either way,
Speaker 2: they had to have some reason to bring them there,
Speaker 2: and it's yeah, it's fascinating to try and guess what
Speaker 2: that could have been. They just like the look of them, maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I would not dismiss the idea of people
Speaker 3: simply liking the look of cats. In the gradual evolution
Speaker 3: of the cat from a working animal, you know, a
Speaker 3: commensal tolerated because of their pest can troll capabilities into
Speaker 3: becoming a companion animal that you would want to have
Speaker 3: sit in your lap and pet and feed and have
Speaker 3: buried alongside you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I imagine another thing you could factor
Speaker 2: in is always how cute do the pops look? How
Speaker 2: cute do do the kittens look? And so forth. I
Speaker 2: mean that has been a major factor with dogs and
Speaker 2: cats and various other animals. You know, if they kind
Speaker 2: of look like human babies, if they get that cute
Speaker 2: response out of us, then that has a benefit to us,
Speaker 2: but it also really benefits the animal that we are
Speaker 2: inevitably trying to domesticate. It's true, baby foxes are quite cute.
Speaker 2: I imagine I'm not summoning an image to my mind
Speaker 2: right off the bat, but I'm just going to assume
Speaker 2: they're very cute to look at. So, yeah, maybe that's
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 3: But how this relationship evolved on Stone age cypress, we
Speaker 3: don't know. We can only speculate. But Rob, you had
Speaker 3: some other stuff on cats and cypress for more recent history, right.
Speaker 2: That's right. There are still domesticated cats on the isle
Speaker 2: of Cypress, which should not come as a surprise to anyway,
Speaker 2: because domesticated cats are everywhere now and there's a part
Speaker 2: yeah there again they're here to stay. I think this
Speaker 2: is the last domestication of the African wild cat. And
Speaker 2: there's there's apparently no known connection between all of the
Speaker 2: cats you'll find there on Cypress today and and this,
Speaker 2: you know, the so called ancient Cypriot wild cat, this
Speaker 2: this initial wave of domestication that we see in the
Speaker 2: archaeological record there. But the Cypress cat is a designated
Speaker 2: domestic cat breed found on the island. Again, just a
Speaker 2: breed of domestic cat, sometimes called the Saint Helen cat
Speaker 2: and sometimes called the Saint Nicholas cat.
Speaker 3: So if you are those two things are the same animal.
Speaker 2: Yes, But I want to walk through the saintly connections here,
Speaker 2: and in this we're going to be dealing more with
Speaker 2: a lot of legends as in some fact, but certainly
Speaker 2: less science. So let's let's discuss this Saint Helen connection first.
Speaker 2: This refers to Helena of Constantinople, who would have lived
Speaker 2: two forty six or two forty eight through three point
Speaker 2: thirty CE, mother of Constantine the first and she does
Speaker 2: again an actual historic person here who does. It does
Speaker 2: seem like she may have spent some time in Cyprus,
Speaker 2: as it was under her patronage. And the legend here
Speaker 2: is that she imported hundreds of cats from Egypt, or
Speaker 2: Persia or Palestine. The exacts on this seemed to vary.
Speaker 2: I've seen various sources that point to different places, but
Speaker 2: somewhere that had cats, she, according to this legend, ship
Speaker 2: them in like a thousand or so, and this would
Speaker 2: have been in the fourth century CE, and the purpose
Speaker 2: was to rid the monastery there which she founded of snakes.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of legends about the travels and
Speaker 3: pilgrimages of Saint Helen. I know it said also that
Speaker 3: didn't she make a journey to find the True Cross?
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of that going on.
Speaker 3: Yes, she was at least one of the people who
Speaker 3: found the True Cross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so take all of these legends with at least
Speaker 2: a grain of salt, you know, especially what we were
Speaker 2: dealing from saints with saints from this era like this
Speaker 2: is where you can potentially run into the problem of
Speaker 2: like this person has there are too many relics out there.
Speaker 2: They're more relics than she had. Bones, not specifically in
Speaker 2: this case. But that sort of thing can sometimes occur.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of legends that build up around these individuals,
Speaker 2: even though at the core we're dealing with an actual
Speaker 2: human being who existed. So snakes, yeah, Cypress is home
Speaker 2: to numerous snake species, venomous and non venomous. There's one
Speaker 2: that's actually called the cat snake, and there's a there's
Speaker 2: one called the Cypress whipsnake, and this one is endemic
Speaker 2: to Cypress. But this is the legend that the monastery
Speaker 2: had a snake problem, and so Saint Helena brings in
Speaker 2: a bunch of cats, or has cats brought in. According
Speaker 2: to the Slate.
Speaker 3: I was just picturing her trying to bring them all herself.
Speaker 2: Oh God, yes, I mean yeah, if you try to,
Speaker 2: trying to bring one would be a task. I can't
Speaker 2: I don't even want to imagine, Like the effort is
Speaker 2: like load up the ship with a thousand cats. That's
Speaker 2: going to be a pretty cross ship by the time
Speaker 2: you get over. But according to the Slate article, the
Speaker 2: Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas of the Cats solved a
Speaker 2: snake problem with felines. This is by Eric Grundhauser. I
Speaker 2: also looked at the website of the author, Charlotte Wriggle
Speaker 2: Charlotte Wriggle dot com. She has some materials on this,
Speaker 2: and basically legend has it that Cypress was in the
Speaker 2: midst of an epic drought at the time. I've seen
Speaker 2: it given an account of like thirty seven years of drought,
Speaker 2: and it's just driving the snakes indoors in search of water.
Speaker 2: And namely it's mainly it's running them into the monastery,
Speaker 2: so they're trying to do the Lord's work in there,
Speaker 2: but they're just too many snakes. Somebody's got to do
Speaker 2: something about these snakes.
Speaker 3: Sounds like this up to a a I don't know,
Speaker 3: ancient Snakes on a plane prequel.
Speaker 2: Essentially, the legend makes it sound like that level of infestation,
Speaker 2: like it's just completely out of control, and it's driving
Speaker 2: people off the island, Like people are leaving Cyprus because
Speaker 2: they're just too many snakes.
Speaker 3: Popping out of the Holy Water basin, yeah, dangling from
Speaker 3: the ceiling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this this led me to wonder a little
Speaker 2: bit like is this at all reasonable? Like is this
Speaker 2: just purely legendary? Is it possible that snakes would get
Speaker 2: this out of control? I mean, one potentially one way
Speaker 2: to think about this is that we should mentioned that
Speaker 2: this is not the only tidbit from the ancient world
Speaker 2: about snake infestations getting out of control, or or particular
Speaker 2: problem snakes interfering with the machinations of various rulers. There
Speaker 2: are various accounts of plagues of serpents, of course, depictions
Speaker 2: descriptions rather of foreign lands and enemy battlefields that are
Speaker 2: infested with snakes and other undesired creatures, and of course
Speaker 2: a lot of that you can you can think about
Speaker 2: from various angles, like how are you gonna how do
Speaker 2: you want to insult the land of foreigners? You can
Speaker 2: just say, oh, it's just nothing but snake, snakes and
Speaker 2: scorpions everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of these they just sound
Speaker 3: like obvious exaggeration. Though then again, I don't want to
Speaker 3: say it provides any evidence that this particular story is true.
Speaker 3: But we have talked on the show before about great
Speaker 3: gatherings of snakes, like at the narciss how do we
Speaker 3: pronounce it the narcissa or narciss snake.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, to be clear, I'm not saying like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: what's happening here, and therefore the story is true. But
Speaker 3: snakes can gather in massive numbers.
Speaker 2: I mean, anyone who's ever been around snakes you know that, yes,
Speaker 2: snakes do enter into human areas, and when they do,
Speaker 2: given the place that snakes hold in our minds, you
Speaker 2: know that the threat that snakes can pose to us,
Speaker 2: the fact that we are often frightened by snakes, and
Speaker 2: also all of the layers of meaning that we attribute
Speaker 2: to snakes, all of this makes it meaningful when a
Speaker 2: snake is where we don't think a snake should be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is magic, this is a curse.
Speaker 2: Yeah there was. Looking around for other examples of it
Speaker 2: honestly gets a little confusing at times, looking for even
Speaker 2: legendary histories that are referring to snake infestations. One reason
Speaker 2: I've found is that there are certain works of Mormon
Speaker 2: apology jedics out there that talk about some of this
Speaker 2: apparent There is apparently an incident in the Book of
Speaker 2: Mormon that involves a serpent infestation, and so some at
Speaker 2: at least some of these works of apologetics like attempt
Speaker 2: to back this up with other examples from ancient history.
Speaker 2: As with any work of apologetics, we often have to
Speaker 2: take that with a grain of salt, because obviously, you
Speaker 2: know it's it's an attempt to back up certain ideas
Speaker 2: with an interpretation of reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, religious apologetics being one of the most straightforward forms
Speaker 3: of motivated reasoning. Yeah, but not without value as literature.
Speaker 3: I mean, it can still point you to these these
Speaker 3: real examples, but it doesn't necessarily prove that you know
Speaker 3: the story they're using it as evidence.
Speaker 2: For now, this one doesn't involve a bunch of snakes.
Speaker 2: It just involves one giant snake, and that it involves
Speaker 2: the adventures of Roman general Marcus Attilius Regulus during the
Speaker 2: First Punic War. His troops are said to have encountered
Speaker 2: a giant snake and it just became like a whole battle,
Speaker 2: like essentially a kaiju battle.
Speaker 3: Wait, where are you saying in on Cyprus.
Speaker 2: Or no, no, this is elsewhere in the Oh okay, sorry, sorry,
Speaker 2: this was not on Cyprus, but just an example of
Speaker 2: a snake showing up in another legend about it and
Speaker 2: again another historic individual, though in this case it is
Speaker 2: not mentioned in the primary histories. For instance, it's not
Speaker 2: in the writings of Polybius about the Punic Wars. It's in,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of secondary sources, and it's thought to
Speaker 2: just generally be a legend, a tall tale about how
Speaker 2: great this guy was. I see now elsewhere in legends
Speaker 2: and tall tales about holy places infested by snakes. There
Speaker 2: are a couple of stories that popped up, and I realized, yes,
Speaker 2: we're getting a little far away from cats here, but
Speaker 2: these were too fascinating to not cover on the show.
Speaker 2: So from the seventh century CE there is the story
Speaker 2: of Saint Hilda's Abbey. This is in Yorkshire, in Britain.
Speaker 2: This is all also the area where Count Dracula moves
Speaker 2: to in Bromstoker's Dracula.
Speaker 3: By the way, Oh interesting, did I forget about it?
Speaker 3: In the novel? Does he not actually come directly to London.
Speaker 3: He goes somewhere up in the north.
Speaker 2: I believe. I believe so now I haven't actually I
Speaker 2: haven't actually read Dracula in a number of years. I've
Speaker 2: mostly been watching various cinematic adaptations that drift pretty far
Speaker 2: from the sourus at times. But there does seem to
Speaker 2: be a Dracula connection here, very loose loosely, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna mention it. So the idea here is that Saint
Speaker 2: Hilda's Abbey was infested by snakes until Hilda of Whitby
Speaker 2: turned them to stone with I guess holy magic. And
Speaker 2: there is actually a science tie into this legend, though
Speaker 2: as it seems to be a there seems to be
Speaker 2: a strong case for geo mythology here in order to
Speaker 2: explain the presence of fossilized ammonites in the area. Oh, now,
Speaker 2: you can look up images of ammonites here if you're
Speaker 2: If you're not instantly recognizing them, but once you see them,
Speaker 2: you go like, oh, yes, that I've seen that fossil
Speaker 2: many times. You know, it essentially has the look It
Speaker 2: does look like something curled up. You can easily be
Speaker 2: mistaken for a curled up serpent or a curled up
Speaker 2: centipede or something that has been fossilized.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ammonites were cephalopods that lived in the sea that
Speaker 3: went extinct the KPg extinction along with the dinosaurs, the
Speaker 3: non avian dinosaurs. But yeah, the fossils will be basically
Speaker 3: a spiral shell because they had a spiral shell shape,
Speaker 3: kind of like nautiluses today. But from what I understand,
Speaker 3: they're more closely related to some other species than the nautiluses,
Speaker 3: but they look superficially similar. And yeah, and you can
Speaker 3: still find lots of fossils of these shells. I remember
Speaker 3: coming across amonite fossils and reading about the discovery of
Speaker 3: a lot of ammonite fossils on the Jurassic Coast in
Speaker 3: England when I was there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can imagine folks running across these and
Speaker 2: thinking these look like snakes that have been turned to stone.
Speaker 2: And then to add an extra layer here and kind
Speaker 2: of getting back to apologetics, and to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: you have examples where where these ammonites have then been
Speaker 2: carved a little serpent's head or something's supposed to be
Speaker 2: a serpent's head has been carved at the very end
Speaker 2: of the of the creature to make it look like
Speaker 2: it is a snake. And you can you can look
Speaker 2: images up of this online as well. The one I
Speaker 2: found here I shared with you. Joe looks so much
Speaker 2: like the sandworms from Beetlejuice, but except friendlier. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have sharp teeth, and it's going high. Yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 2: look as fearsome and looks a little duck like I'm
Speaker 2: just a little snake. Now there's another legend I ran across.
Speaker 2: This is a legend of the monastery of Langovarda in Greece,
Speaker 2: located on the island of Catalonia, in which the snakes
Speaker 2: are said to have actually defended the monastery against pirates.
Speaker 2: And I believe seventeen oh five.
Speaker 3: That's my kind of story. I like that. I like
Speaker 3: a trap for intruders that involves animals, like a pit,
Speaker 3: a mote with piranhas in it, a pit full of snakes,
Speaker 3: something like that crab pit, crab pit, that'd be really good.
Speaker 2: Well, in this case, it was snakes protecting nuns that
Speaker 2: were living there at the time. And then afterwards these
Speaker 2: snakes find Christ, they become holy snakes, sometimes said to
Speaker 2: have crosses on their heads, and then they show up
Speaker 2: at the monastery it's said in the days leading up
Speaker 2: to August fifteenth, the feast of the Dormition of the
Speaker 2: Virgin Mary. So essentially right now, this place is sometimes
Speaker 2: called the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, of the Snakes,
Speaker 2: of the snakes. You can look up pictures of these
Speaker 2: snakes too. I don't know, I'm not seeing the cross
Speaker 2: on their foreheads so much, but you know this is
Speaker 2: more of a this is more an article of faith
Speaker 2: rather than a matter of herpetology.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I've really enjoyed this snake hunt. But does
Speaker 3: this inform our attempt to answer the question is there
Speaker 3: any historical truth to the idea of Saint Helena bringing
Speaker 3: a bunch of snakes to the monastery in Cyprus to
Speaker 3: or not sorry, not snakes, bringing cats to the monastery
Speaker 3: to get rid of the snakes.
Speaker 2: I don't know that it actually provides additional answers, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess I'll just come back to like, when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with snakes, a snake is just such a loaded creature.
Speaker 2: We have so many thoughts about the snakes, so many
Speaker 2: layers of meaning with the snake, and so the legends
Speaker 2: just pile up. But yeah, there are other accounts of
Speaker 2: snake infestations being a thing, and you know, we do
Speaker 2: see examples. There are places in the world where snakes
Speaker 2: do become a problem, soecially when you're dealing I mean
Speaker 2: mainly when you're dealing with venomous snakes, because a non
Speaker 2: venomous snake is essentially going to do as good, if
Speaker 2: not more good, than having a cat around. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not as maybe not as too many people's eye,
Speaker 2: not as friendly, maybe not as cutly. Though, listeners who
Speaker 2: keep snakes, you will say, no, this cat, this particular snake,
Speaker 2: is cutly. But and you know you have a strong
Speaker 2: case to make there as well.
Speaker 3: I want to hear from listeners who have cats and
Speaker 3: snakes which one is cuddlier. Well, wait a minute, hold on,
Speaker 3: there's a mystery here. So that explains why the cats
Speaker 3: of Cyprus would be called Saint Helen's cats or Saint
Speaker 3: Helena cats. But wasn't there another name for them, Saint
Speaker 3: Nicholas cats or something.
Speaker 2: Right, And and you might be thinking, well, this couldn't
Speaker 2: possibly be Santa Claus, right, But you'd apparently be wrong,
Speaker 2: because as far as I can tell, this is supposed
Speaker 2: to be the Saint Nicholas, who then went on to
Speaker 2: Mira and, through the accumulation of legend and holiday tradition,
Speaker 2: becomes the figure of Santa Claus. According to the aforementioned sources,
Speaker 2: as well as the Virginia Theological Seminary Saint Nicholas Center,
Speaker 2: this was supposedly where the future Saint Nicholas was at
Speaker 2: the time, like he was there at this monastery, potentially
Speaker 2: like ringing the bell for the for the cats to
Speaker 2: come and eat the snakes.
Speaker 3: Whoa yet another crazy Saint Nicholas story. Do you know
Speaker 3: the one about how he resurrected the three boys who
Speaker 3: had been chopped up and pickled and cooked in a
Speaker 3: pot or something.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'd forgotten about them, but yeah, I think that
Speaker 2: that does ring a bell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the the
Speaker 2: the legends of Saint Nicholas, we get pretty fascinator.
Speaker 3: Gets here in the Christmas spirit.
Speaker 2: So the monastery or the Monastery of the Holy Monastery
Speaker 2: of Saint Nicholas of the Cats, is still around. It
Speaker 2: became known for taking in stray cats. The local fishermen
Speaker 2: would for a while reportedly donate their entire catch to
Speaker 2: the cats on the feast day of Saint Nicholas. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's a lot has happened over the course
Speaker 2: of its existence, but apparently it's still around today as
Speaker 2: an active monastery and an active cat sanctuary. Like you see,
Speaker 2: you see people visiting it and taking photos in there.
Speaker 2: Indeed are a lot of cats, arguably maybe too many cats,
Speaker 2: but this is a place where they're allowed to do
Speaker 2: their thing.
Speaker 3: Nonsense it's beautiful cat Heaven Monastery.
Speaker 2: So Cypress. So if you are a cat fancier and
Speaker 2: you're trying to plan your next cat based vacation, maybe
Speaker 2: Cypress is your destination.
Speaker 3: By the way, I looked up the Cypress cat breed
Speaker 3: in my opinion certified cute.
Speaker 2: Well, which cats are not cute? Really?
Speaker 3: I guess that's true.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know we'll get some answers for some
Speaker 2: of my listeners out there, but it's all subjective.
Speaker 3: It's got fur, it's got big ears. What more could
Speaker 3: you want? Well, Rob, shall we wrap this up before
Speaker 3: the King of Cats comes a knocking?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think we should. This will be the end
Speaker 2: of our second core episode of Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind here for Cat Week, but we have one more episode,
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema tomorrow will also be cat based. And
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't expect it to be this way,
Speaker 2: but I feel like the movie we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about really lines up with a lot of the
Speaker 2: actual serious cat information we've been discussing in the core
Speaker 2: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I think the
Speaker 2: King of Cats would approve. Okay, so tune in for
Speaker 2: that if you're interested. It is a title that has
Speaker 2: also been suggested over the years by Weird House Cinema listeners.
Speaker 3: You are invited tune in if you don't want yourisan
Speaker 3: to repute to shreds.
Speaker 2: Exactly all right, Just a reminder that Stuff to bliw
Speaker 2: your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with
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Speaker 3: Huge things as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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