Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back for part two of talking about helmets. Last time,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of fun. We we talked about
Speaker 1: caterpillars piling up their old exoskeleton heads on top of
Speaker 1: their current heads. We talked about helmets from the ancient
Speaker 1: Greek world. We talked about horned helmets and where those
Speaker 1: motifs came from, the association with vikings, and and we
Speaker 1: had so much more. And we're back today. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: episode is going to be more of a um a
Speaker 1: selection of various helmets and helmet traditions, uh from different
Speaker 1: parts of the world. Um, we are going to get
Speaker 1: into samurai armor a bit more. We toil. We very
Speaker 1: briefly mentioned it in the first episode, and I've figured
Speaker 1: it was deserving of a deeper dive. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, we're going to touch on just a
Speaker 1: really bizarre helmet from European tradition. Yeah, this is one
Speaker 1: that we were sort of planning on talking about last time,
Speaker 1: but I guess we ran out of time. But if
Speaker 1: if you're if you're talking about horned helmets and you're
Speaker 1: just looking around for historical examples worth mentioning, you are
Speaker 1: bound to come across one that is I would say
Speaker 1: literally unbelievable, and I mean literally unbelievable in the correct
Speaker 1: use of the word literally, because when you see it,
Speaker 1: you will be inclined to think, there is no way
Speaker 1: this is actually an early sixteenth century artifacts this is
Speaker 1: a prop from a Terry Gilliam movie. Oh. Absolutely had
Speaker 1: the exact same response when I first came across because
Speaker 1: if you if you start researching helmets, and if you
Speaker 1: start looking on using image searches to find examples, you
Speaker 1: find a lot of of creative energy that has gone
Speaker 1: into the creation of fictional helmets and sort of artistic
Speaker 1: um twists on fictional helmets and sci fi helmets. Everything.
Speaker 1: You have to do a fair amount of of digging
Speaker 1: around to make sure that what you're looking at is
Speaker 1: something from the real world. And when I looked at this,
Speaker 1: this is just this is just too weird. I figured
Speaker 1: this is some bizarre art experiment here. There's no way
Speaker 1: that this was an actual helm from European history. Well
Speaker 1: it is, I think a bizarre art experiment. But it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, five years old. Uh so, No, it's not
Speaker 1: from Terry Illium movie. It's not from the set of Legend.
Speaker 1: This is a helmet that is known as the horned
Speaker 1: helmet of the English King Henry the Eighth. It is
Speaker 1: astonishingly bizarre. It is definitely worth actually looking up an
Speaker 1: image of if you have a chance, but I am
Speaker 1: going to describe it if you're not in a place
Speaker 1: where you can look it up right now. So you
Speaker 1: can read about this artifact and see close up photos
Speaker 1: at the website for the British Royal Armories Collection and leads.
Speaker 1: This helmet was commissioned as part of an armor set
Speaker 1: in fifteen eleven by then Holy Roman Emperor maximil In
Speaker 1: the First and it was given as a gift to
Speaker 1: King Henry. So Henry the eighth when he's a young man,
Speaker 1: he's given this, this helmet and this suit of armor
Speaker 1: as a gift. But I'm wondering what a gift like
Speaker 1: this was supposed to signify, given its visual features. So
Speaker 1: first of all, it's a helmet that's made of steel.
Speaker 1: It's very close fitting, it's got features and a couple
Speaker 1: of other metals. It's got a pair of corkscrew rams
Speaker 1: horns made of sheet iron. And if you're trying to
Speaker 1: picture this, they're not the tightly curled like Princess Leiah
Speaker 1: rams horns. They're not the sticky bun rams horns. They're
Speaker 1: like the curling out like a corkscrew that you would
Speaker 1: use to open a bottle of wine. Then on the
Speaker 1: face it has spectacles like glasses. Spectacles made of copper alloy,
Speaker 1: so they shine in a kind of different color than
Speaker 1: the rest of the face, and the spectacles may once
Speaker 1: have been gilded. So this is a helmet that fully
Speaker 1: encloses the head with front facing flats that hinge open
Speaker 1: like a flower spreading its petals in the sunlight, you know,
Speaker 1: or like the face of the demag organ in uh
Speaker 1: in stranger things. You know, it's got the petals that
Speaker 1: open up. So it's got two side plates that hinge
Speaker 1: out to the right and the left. So imagine these
Speaker 1: would fold over sort of the the the jaw area.
Speaker 1: The side burns and they flap out, and then the
Speaker 1: face plate hinges up over the forehead. And so you
Speaker 1: can open the flaps up like this and put the
Speaker 1: helmet on by sliding it over the back of your
Speaker 1: head and then you close the plates around the sides
Speaker 1: in front of your head, which I have to admit it,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard for me to picture just looking
Speaker 1: at an image of the helmet. I think most of
Speaker 1: the images, if not all, the images you run across,
Speaker 1: are of the closed helmet, as if it's being worn
Speaker 1: and it's sealed up. Yeah. Actually, though, you can look
Speaker 1: it up on the Royal Armory's website. They've got a
Speaker 1: video with a curator at the museum. They're unfolding the
Speaker 1: flaps and showing you how it works, So you can
Speaker 1: check that out on their website if you're interested. But so,
Speaker 1: the front of the front plate on this helmet, the
Speaker 1: face plate is carved with a level of intricacy that's
Speaker 1: almost kind of awkward, you know how when somebody like
Speaker 1: makes a parody of something but they put way too
Speaker 1: much effort into it. If you look close at this
Speaker 1: face plate, you will see these delicate wrinkles etched in
Speaker 1: around the eyes, and stubble all around the mouth and lips,
Speaker 1: and a texture that looks almost like pours across the
Speaker 1: cheeks and the nose. The expression on the face is
Speaker 1: really hard to describe. It's something I guess the way
Speaker 1: I could come closest just to say it is a
Speaker 1: demonic rictus. Uh. It suggests I must scream, but my
Speaker 1: lips are stapled together, loosely stapled together, but stapled together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, it is really hard to describe um. Certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, the stubble is very interesting, especially in light
Speaker 1: of mustaches on helms that we mentioned in the last
Speaker 1: episode and and well up again in this episode later. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this this expression, it's it is hard to
Speaker 1: categorize because it it is intimidating. There's this there is
Speaker 1: a sense of that when I look at this helmet,
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine thinking that anyone who would wear this
Speaker 1: um has good intentions. Like there's a there's a vileness
Speaker 1: to it, you know. There there's the mouth is making
Speaker 1: you get the impression it's making a sound kind of
Speaker 1: like a you know, it's a there's a goblin esque
Speaker 1: aspect to it. I will say that the the the
Speaker 1: expression on the mouth of this face reminds me of
Speaker 1: some of the faces that Willem Dafoe polls in some
Speaker 1: of his various villainous roles. You know, this kind of
Speaker 1: intense um grim lenoid kind of a smile, but but
Speaker 1: not necessarily a happy smile or not a happiness that
Speaker 1: is shared by other people in the room. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like part Memlin or Goblin, part mad scientist, and
Speaker 1: part Willem Dafoe in Streets of Fire. But so apparently
Speaker 1: after the English Civil War, so this would be about
Speaker 1: a hundred years after Henry the Eighth to death. After
Speaker 1: the English Civil War, most of the rest of Henry's
Speaker 1: armor was discarded. It was you know, used for scrap metal.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, this helmet, this this grotesque, bizarre
Speaker 1: horned helmet was preserved. And it's quite possibly just because
Speaker 1: it looked so weird. You know, you can almost kind
Speaker 1: of imagine Oliver Cromwell finding this and thinking like, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: this is an accurate representation of the monarchy. But another
Speaker 1: thing is something that we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 1: which is the dual use of helmets. Helmets that you know,
Speaker 1: you might wonder like, would this actually be very useful
Speaker 1: in battle or you know, if it was actually designed
Speaker 1: to protect the head in battle, wouldn't it wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be kind of different than it is. And this is
Speaker 1: another one of those helmets where it's just hard to
Speaker 1: imagine it being very practical for a fighting scenario. It's
Speaker 1: got the curling horns which just scream, you know, grab me,
Speaker 1: knock me, use me as a lever. Uh and uh. This,
Speaker 1: this intuition that we get from looking at this thing,
Speaker 1: is in fact historically correct, because this wasn't fighting armor.
Speaker 1: This was party armor. Um. I actually found a similar looking,
Speaker 1: though less elaborate helmet in the online collection of the
Speaker 1: Swedish Royal Armory Museum because I was trying to find
Speaker 1: other examples of helmets kind of like this that we're
Speaker 1: used as party armor, ceremonial armor instead of armor for battle.
Speaker 1: And there so there's this helmet in the Swedish Royal
Speaker 1: Armories collection that belonged to the Swedish King Gustav Vasa,
Speaker 1: who lived from four to fifteen sixty. And this helmet
Speaker 1: has everything. It's got a dorsal fin, it's got a
Speaker 1: carved mustache, it's got splayed eye holes, it's got a
Speaker 1: grimace straight from hell. It does not have horns or spectacles, though,
Speaker 1: and it is it is a beauty I do want
Speaker 1: to come back to the idea of of dress armor
Speaker 1: versus battle armor for a king because I know some
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not, you know, super familiar with
Speaker 1: the history of British royalty and battle, you might think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, why would Henry have any armor but uh,
Speaker 1: fancy armor for non combat events? Would a would a
Speaker 1: king have battle armor? So Henry lived through fifteen forty seven. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's worth to put that in context of King
Speaker 1: Richard the Third uh died of his wounds on August
Speaker 1: eighty five, and he was the last English king to
Speaker 1: die in battle. Um. So the idea of a king
Speaker 1: having battle armor not entirely out of the question for
Speaker 1: that time period. No, not at all. And uh and
Speaker 1: you know, Richard the Third is not even thought of
Speaker 1: as an especially like you know, he's not thought of
Speaker 1: as a warrior king usually. But no, he rode straight
Speaker 1: into battle. He was trying to kill Henry Tutor, who
Speaker 1: was attacking him to usurp the throne, and he was
Speaker 1: like literally in there in the fight himself. But just
Speaker 1: to reference what the Swedish Royal Armories Museum says about
Speaker 1: the helmets with face plates like this, you know. They
Speaker 1: say that around the sixteenth century it was popular for
Speaker 1: wealthy elites like kings and other nobility in Europe to
Speaker 1: wear armor, including close helmets, to wear these things too celebrations, parades,
Speaker 1: big parties, and in the early sixteenth century, they say
Speaker 1: that it was common to where these with quote grotesque
Speaker 1: visors in the form of animal or human faces like
Speaker 1: this one, the one we were talking about a minute ago,
Speaker 1: to enhance the festive atmosphere and heighten the sense of theatricality.
Speaker 1: So I guess it's possible to some extent that the
Speaker 1: weirdness of these face plate grotesques, like King Henry's horned
Speaker 1: helm or King Gustav's weird looking face mat s here.
Speaker 1: It's not just that something is being lost in translation
Speaker 1: across time, language, and culture. It's possible that some of
Speaker 1: them were supposed to look weird. They were supposed to
Speaker 1: look funny. Yeah, it's like a masked ball, only a
Speaker 1: lot more clinky. But when you really look into the
Speaker 1: significance of the visual features, Henry the Eighth's horn helmet
Speaker 1: gets even weirder. So I just want to mention a
Speaker 1: couple more facts that are brought up by the Royal
Speaker 1: Armories collection. One is that I mentioned the face plate
Speaker 1: has spectacles, right, These cover the eyeholes, so their eye
Speaker 1: holes in the face plate, and then these spectacles descend
Speaker 1: down from a hinge at the bridge of the nose,
Speaker 1: And that might look kind of weird to us today,
Speaker 1: but this actually was a common format for spectacles at
Speaker 1: the time. They would kind of have a rivet in
Speaker 1: between these two separate arms that each went to one lens,
Speaker 1: and it would fold down over the bridge of the nose,
Speaker 1: so you can kind of clip it on your nose,
Speaker 1: but on the mask. There's no indication that these spectacles
Speaker 1: ever held lenses, so it appears they were decorative rather
Speaker 1: than functional. But why would you have decorative spectacles without lenses,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the the immediate answer that would come
Speaker 1: to mind as well, if you if you had spectacles
Speaker 1: on a lot, or you use them and they were
Speaker 1: part of your identity, then you might want them replicated.
Speaker 1: In the same way that people who have, like for instance,
Speaker 1: warned glass eyeglasses for a long time and then have
Speaker 1: lasic surgery might still keep some glasses with just plain
Speaker 1: glass as lenses just because that's part of their look.
Speaker 1: That's possible. I don't think spectacles were really considered part
Speaker 1: of Henry's look, especially when he was young. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: another thing they point out that that might be the
Speaker 1: answer here. Apparently spectacles were an accessory that in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century often appeared in renderings of the stock character
Speaker 1: from from culture at the time known as the food owl.
Speaker 1: So I guess something kind of like the Shakespearean fool, right,
Speaker 1: like touchstone and as you like it? Okay, so well.
Speaker 1: On one hand, this is of course disappointing because it
Speaker 1: sounds a bit like it's it's essentially like a nerd joke, right,
Speaker 1: it's like making making fun of the very important individuals
Speaker 1: at the time who at the time where we're using
Speaker 1: them to get a lot of work done for the crown,
Speaker 1: And here you're just gonna turn it around and use
Speaker 1: it as a goofy trope because glasses look funny. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that this is just a costume of the fool,
Speaker 1: in the sense that a lot of times these fest
Speaker 1: there would be festivals in which the fool is made king. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is kind of perhaps a play on that. That's possible.
Speaker 1: Here's another thing in that column. If Henry's helmet was
Speaker 1: supposed to make him look like a fool. That would
Speaker 1: also possibly explain the horns. Now, we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: last episode that horns had appeared on European decorative helmets
Speaker 1: and times gone by, but by the sixteenth century a
Speaker 1: human depicted with horns had negative kind of stations, often
Speaker 1: either demonic connotations or connotations specifically of cuckoldry. And this
Speaker 1: gets really interesting for a for a brief diversion that
Speaker 1: really does come back to the helmet. So I was
Speaker 1: reading an article by a scholar named Una mckilvina, who
Speaker 1: is a historian at the University of Melbourne, and she
Speaker 1: argues that there was something of a popular obsession in
Speaker 1: the early modern period with cuckoldry, this bizarre paranoia pulsing
Speaker 1: through European culture during the Renaissance about wives cheating on
Speaker 1: their husbands. And it shouldn't come as any surprise given
Speaker 1: the sexual politics of the time, right, Yeah, So obviously
Speaker 1: there's a lot of paternalism and misogyny rolled up into this.
Speaker 1: There was this idea that women were more lustful than
Speaker 1: men and less rational, less in control of their actions,
Speaker 1: and that they could lose control of their behavior and
Speaker 1: commit scandalous acts of infidelity, and as a res old,
Speaker 1: a married man, by a virtue of being married to
Speaker 1: a woman, was constantly at risk of being humiliated by
Speaker 1: her cheating on him. Uh and this state of humiliation
Speaker 1: was expressed through the imagery of invisible horns on the head.
Speaker 1: This imagery shows up in Shakespeare in several different ways.
Speaker 1: For example, in Much Ado about Nothing, there's a character
Speaker 1: named Benedict who's being cynical about marriage, and Benedict says, basically, hey,
Speaker 1: if I ever get married, I might as well quote
Speaker 1: pluck off the bulls horns and set them in my forehead.
Speaker 1: The ideas that he's like, what's the point. As soon
Speaker 1: as you get married, a woman will cheat on you,
Speaker 1: and then you'll have these horns. Now, it's not known
Speaker 1: exactly where this link between horn imagery and sexual humiliation
Speaker 1: comes from, but there are several theories. She mentions a few.
Speaker 1: Some have to do with various types of castrated domestic animals,
Speaker 1: such as the ox, which has horns, of course, or
Speaker 1: the capon, which is a castrated male chicken. It was
Speaker 1: once common, apparently to ingraft the spurs from the legs
Speaker 1: of a capon into its comb so that it could
Speaker 1: be told apart from the other roosters. And maybe this
Speaker 1: had something to do with it. But we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure where this imagery comes from. But here we
Speaker 1: tie it back in with the spectacles because apparently during
Speaker 1: the early modern period there were also popular associations between
Speaker 1: cuckoldry imagery and the stock character of the fool. So
Speaker 1: sometimes the fool might have been depicted with spectacles. Other
Speaker 1: times the fool might have been depicted with horns. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so it all again could be part of just
Speaker 1: sort of the the trope cartoon character of the day
Speaker 1: for the fool possibly. So, I mean, it just makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, like, Maximilian, what are you trying to say
Speaker 1: with this gift? Man? Yeah, it's it sounds like either
Speaker 1: just h it really depends on to what extent you
Speaker 1: get Henry's sense of humor, because this is this would
Speaker 1: be kind of a dangerous gift to give a key
Speaker 1: unless you knew he was really into this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I want to be clear that I don't mean
Speaker 1: to suggest that the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First
Speaker 1: was insinuating anything about Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon
Speaker 1: at the time or anything like that. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting that this elaborate gift helmet includes elements that exist
Speaker 1: in this nexus of association with the character of the fool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it must suggest either I don't know, he's
Speaker 1: that he thinks maybe Henry is going to have a
Speaker 1: good sense of humor and will dress up in Fool's
Speaker 1: armor for ceremonial occasions. I don't know. There is also
Speaker 1: it really stinks of luxury to to have a helmet
Speaker 1: like this, and helmets, says we've discussed in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: You know, these are they're well crafted, um implements of
Speaker 1: of battle like these are expensive items and to have
Speaker 1: one that, for many reasons is is nonfunctional and could
Speaker 1: even be something that would never be worn because it's
Speaker 1: something of a but you know, perhaps like a white
Speaker 1: elephant gift, you know. So maybe that that's part of
Speaker 1: the the appeal of this helmet as well. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if it was kind of the horsehead mask of the
Speaker 1: early undreds, oh man. So yeah, if they if they
Speaker 1: could do selfies like this would be a helmet you'd
Speaker 1: wear for your selfie. Now, speaking of Goofy helmets from
Speaker 1: the medieval period. Specifically um one that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us have seen many times and it's always
Speaker 1: kind of puzzles you on some reason is the hound
Speaker 1: skull helmet, which comes from the German uns google or
Speaker 1: or a hound's hood or sometimes translated as pig faced helmet.
Speaker 1: So it's not quite a horn, but this helmet has
Speaker 1: something that looks like a snout on the front of it, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like the snout of say a indeed, a
Speaker 1: hound or a pig. It has a very be steel
Speaker 1: look to it. Uh and it even so it has
Speaker 1: a very transformative nature to it. You see these nights
Speaker 1: uh uh in depictions of nights dressed in this armor,
Speaker 1: and they look kind of like Eastman, right. And this
Speaker 1: is a common theme that we talked about in the
Speaker 1: last episode, the zoom morphic mask or the theory anthropic mask,
Speaker 1: the one that suggests transformation into an animal or having
Speaker 1: some kind of animal characteristics, right. And and so this
Speaker 1: style of armor also looks very goofy. It gets it
Speaker 1: has kind of a spy versus spy feel, you know,
Speaker 1: with like the pointed nose, very cartoony. So it raises
Speaker 1: the question why do we see this design? Indeed, why
Speaker 1: was this an extremely popular um form of the design?
Speaker 1: This is not something where you just saw a few
Speaker 1: examples of you know, relegated to the the you know,
Speaker 1: the fancy affairs of a king. No, this was this
Speaker 1: was a legit battle armor, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a pretty widespread um uh throughout medieval Europe. Um. Let
Speaker 1: me guess it was a beak for pecking the enemy.
Speaker 1: It does kind of look like it looks kind of
Speaker 1: you know, offensive in that regard, but it turns out
Speaker 1: it did have two key purposes. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: breathing is always uh an issue in a helmet like this.
Speaker 1: You know, you put some sort of big metal contraption
Speaker 1: over your head, Well, you still need to see out
Speaker 1: of it, and you still need to breathe. Well, if
Speaker 1: you just have a like a flat face mask in
Speaker 1: front of you, there are only so many holes, so
Speaker 1: many um events you can put in that thing to
Speaker 1: allow you to breathe. But if it is elongated like this, uh,
Speaker 1: then that allows for even more breathing holes. So it
Speaker 1: depends on what example you pull up. Sometimes you pull
Speaker 1: put you find an example of of this helmet and
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like they're really that many they're not
Speaker 1: really taking advantage of this feature, but others have a
Speaker 1: lot of holes in the miss Essentially it's almost like
Speaker 1: a whiffleball. But perhaps the more important aspect of this
Speaker 1: design was that its shape would deflect blows to the face.
Speaker 1: So if your face is shaped like a cone, it
Speaker 1: is going to be harder for the enemy to land
Speaker 1: a spear or a sword in such a way that
Speaker 1: it's going to, you know, just through and cut your
Speaker 1: face in half. Yeah, I see that. It's gotta it's
Speaker 1: got a natural perrying formation. Yeah, so it and I
Speaker 1: have to say it does also look kind of creepy
Speaker 1: into humanizing and while also being kind of goofy uh.
Speaker 1: You know. You also see lower slits in some of
Speaker 1: these helmets, so they'll be like the upper is slip
Speaker 1: like clearly for for for viewing, and then there's a
Speaker 1: lower slit that kind of looks like a mouth. And
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in History of Armor eleven
Speaker 1: hundred through seventeen hundred by PAULA. F. Walker, and the
Speaker 1: author points out that most of these lower slits were
Speaker 1: probably intended to allow the night to look down, which
Speaker 1: makes us again, think of the the movement limitations and
Speaker 1: the vision limitations in a helmet like this, How are
Speaker 1: you going to see what's going on below, you say,
Speaker 1: in your lap on the horse or whatnot. Um you
Speaker 1: know you're you gonna do a full body movement to
Speaker 1: look down or do you need essentially lower windows in
Speaker 1: your head cage so that you can see what's going
Speaker 1: on down there? I see. Now, we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the last episode. To the idea that and you're
Speaker 1: designing armor and especially helmets, you're often that, uh, you're
Speaker 1: working with trade offs, right, you know, you've got the
Speaker 1: level of protection versus what kind of limitations come along
Speaker 1: with that protection. Sometimes it might be limitations and mobility,
Speaker 1: especially for types of armor on the body, but with
Speaker 1: helmets and armor on the head, you're gonna have limitations
Speaker 1: to the senses. That's right. So apparently this is a
Speaker 1: pretty successful design though. Um Walker writes that the style
Speaker 1: here became universally used across Europe during the fourteenth century
Speaker 1: and a lot of those were lost. But if you
Speaker 1: survive today, so if you do a little bit of
Speaker 1: image searching around online for a hound skulls or or huns,
Speaker 1: google helmets, you'll find some really interesting examples. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we need to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So in the previous episode, we we mentioned the helm
Speaker 1: of the samurai in passing, but there's just way too
Speaker 1: much beauty and complexity in the Samurai tradition to leave
Speaker 1: it at that. So I want I wanted to go
Speaker 1: into it a bit more and a bit more detail
Speaker 1: on what we're really looking at. When we behold examples
Speaker 1: of Samurai armor, especially Samurai helms, which have to rank
Speaker 1: among the most elegant military helmets ever created. Some of
Speaker 1: them are so beautiful and looks so delicate I would
Speaker 1: be afraid to touch them. Yes, yeah, that, and and
Speaker 1: really they they're an art unto themselves. That also makes
Speaker 1: searching up examples of it kind of difficult because people
Speaker 1: continue to create riffs on Samurai armor and Samurai helmets,
Speaker 1: and at times it it becomes a challenge to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: am I looking at an actual military helmet? Am I
Speaker 1: looking at this kind of showy military helmet. There's more
Speaker 1: or less in line with the sort of fancy dress
Speaker 1: helmets you know, a status symbol or am I looking
Speaker 1: at something more recent, something that is a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a purely modern artistic flourish that is playing on samurai identity. Um,
Speaker 1: it's there's a there's a whole world of design here.
Speaker 1: But to go back to sort of the beginning, you
Speaker 1: know what, what is a samurai? Just to refresh everybody,
Speaker 1: This was the Japanese warrior class, which originally denoted the
Speaker 1: bushy or aristocratic warriors, but eventually referred to all members
Speaker 1: of the warrior class. They came to power in the
Speaker 1: twelfth century and they held power till the Meiji restoration
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty eight. They grew out of the Kamakura period,
Speaker 1: which would have been eleven ninety two through UH thirteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, taking the pre existing refinement of the Imperial
Speaker 1: court and transforming it through a unique mix of military skill,
Speaker 1: warrior ethos, and stoicism. So you have elements of Zen, Buddhism,
Speaker 1: Confucian thought, fill the old Pity and Shinto mixed together
Speaker 1: into this uh, this code of the Bushido, which by
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century also became just an ethical blueprint for
Speaker 1: Japanese society itself. Now that's not to say that the
Speaker 1: details of bushido were set in stone, as it did
Speaker 1: drift depending on external influences such as the influence of
Speaker 1: the aforementioned uh um, you know, outside philosophies. So the
Speaker 1: samurai were loyal to specific feudal lords to an all
Speaker 1: consuming degree. The warriors honor purpose in life, we're all
Speaker 1: bound to these individuals. So, of course there's this long
Speaker 1: history of Samurai armor, and its story is one of
Speaker 1: just design evolution, continual tinkering, artistic embellishments, and at times
Speaker 1: archaic revival. Uh when you basically see all of these
Speaker 1: and other armor armor traditions as well. But some of
Speaker 1: the earliest examples can be examined in terra coda figurines
Speaker 1: and grave goods from the Tumulus period from CE two
Speaker 1: fifty through five two, which shows us this uh uh,
Speaker 1: the scaled armor that is we've just touched on this
Speaker 1: briefly in the previous episode that is predominantly Chinese in
Speaker 1: its design, but with few purely Japanese flourishes those would
Speaker 1: follow uh. This was this is according to Samurai and
Speaker 1: Illustrated History UH by Mitsuo Curi. Now, Curry points out
Speaker 1: that this armor style resembles Chinese tongue and song style
Speaker 1: lamelar armors. And that whether the Japanese ruling class of
Speaker 1: the day, you know, originally migrated from Northern Asia, or
Speaker 1: if native Japanese borrowed or imported foreign fighting techniques and technologies,
Speaker 1: whichever it may be, it's still a controversial question. But
Speaker 1: the films would have been either peaked or beaked, according
Speaker 1: to Curry, now explain to me the difference there. So
Speaker 1: basically there's gonna be either it's gonna gonna be kind
Speaker 1: of almost like a cone at the top, you know,
Speaker 1: or it's going to come out almost like the bill
Speaker 1: of a cap. Okay that makes sense, Yeah, which you know,
Speaker 1: not just I guess it would also protect your eyes
Speaker 1: from the sun, but also it would help shield your
Speaker 1: face from blows. But this is just essentially the beginning. Uh.
Speaker 1: Curry's book is an excellent read if you want an
Speaker 1: in depth history of the various styles of Samurai armor.
Speaker 1: And indeed there are so many fascinating addition and add
Speaker 1: ons that end up making up this armor. Again, there's
Speaker 1: just continuous evolution. Uh. And and also given the modular
Speaker 1: aspects of a lot of armor, traditions, but especially Samurai armor.
Speaker 1: It gets even more intricate because you'll see like the
Speaker 1: addition of a of a of a net guard here,
Speaker 1: the refinement of cheek guards over here and then, and
Speaker 1: also the evolution of just like the purely artistic aspects
Speaker 1: of it. But as far as the helmet itself goes, uh,
Speaker 1: here are a few interesting facts that that curry gets into.
Speaker 1: So first of all, the top of the helmet bowl
Speaker 1: features a small four centimeter hole called a hotchi manza
Speaker 1: that apparently had a dual purpose. So first of all,
Speaker 1: it provided provided ventilation, helping you breathe a little better
Speaker 1: in the in the helmet um, but it also allowed
Speaker 1: the warriors top knot hairstyle to be drawn up through it.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting here is that this helps steady the helmet.
Speaker 1: Uhar helmets had no inside liner and they were only
Speaker 1: fixed to the head by the chin cord and the
Speaker 1: top knot. I have never heard before of your actual
Speaker 1: organic hair being used to secure a helmet in place,
Speaker 1: but that is a brilliant idea. Yeah, as long as
Speaker 1: the hairstyle matches up with that, Because apparently during the
Speaker 1: thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, hairstyles change toward a looser style,
Speaker 1: and there was growing concern as well that the holes
Speaker 1: now only benefit of ventilation was overshadowed by the fact
Speaker 1: that it provided a weak point for arrows when the
Speaker 1: warrior charged head down at adversaries. So by the fifteenth
Speaker 1: century it goes away as an actual whole, but you
Speaker 1: still retain an exterior decorative flourish that it tests to
Speaker 1: its previous existence. Uh, kind of a decorative groment um.
Speaker 1: Because also it had other ideas. Other ideas were bound
Speaker 1: up in it as well. There's this notion that the
Speaker 1: whole allowed the ninety eight thousand gods of war to
Speaker 1: enter into the warrior, and in fact, the fact that
Speaker 1: the name Hatchi Manza apparently comes from the name hat Chiman,
Speaker 1: which was a patron god of war, a Shinto god
Speaker 1: who embraced Buddhism. I was reading about this um, or
Speaker 1: actually I was listening to Anthony Cummins, an author and
Speaker 1: translator on Samurai arms, armor and the tactics of warfare,
Speaker 1: who also host a series of informative videos on YouTube
Speaker 1: about the topic. So by designing the helmet this way,
Speaker 1: the idea was that the gods of war could sort
Speaker 1: of enter into the warrior and inhabit them and give
Speaker 1: them strength and battle or guide their actions. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: at least that was sort of the the philosophical ideas
Speaker 1: that were attached to this whole, though it seems like
Speaker 1: it was mostly for the hair, and certainly when you
Speaker 1: begome become concerned that that it's going to be a
Speaker 1: hole through which arrows will enter the warrior. It seems
Speaker 1: like everyone's was it was pretty much on board with
Speaker 1: the idea of sealing it up with something that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you think about all these different
Speaker 1: aspects of inventions that dwell for a long time in culture,
Speaker 1: where they might have a rich and only had a
Speaker 1: functional purpose, but then over time is the functional purpose
Speaker 1: goes away. I wonder if people are more inclined to
Speaker 1: read religious or cultural significance into that that element of
Speaker 1: the invention. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things
Speaker 1: people do is we brood over our objects. We attached
Speaker 1: an assign meaning to the things that we create and
Speaker 1: the details of it, and sometimes those those are the
Speaker 1: things that live on well past the functionality of a
Speaker 1: particular element of the design. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: like church bells, for instance, that were once functional and
Speaker 1: signaling times of day for for worship or just for
Speaker 1: time keeping in a locality, and then over time just
Speaker 1: came to mean more. It is just something that is
Speaker 1: part of what a church is, even though it's not.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got a clock now. Yeah, shutters on houses another example.
Speaker 1: You know, how often do you see shutters actually closed
Speaker 1: on windows unless you're dealing with say like a beach
Speaker 1: house or something. A lot of times you'll see examples
Speaker 1: of this where the shutters either are never used or
Speaker 1: even be incapable of being used. It could be a
Speaker 1: purely decorative flourish. Yeah, it's interesting. So the main bowl
Speaker 1: of the helmet or kabuto here was was the hatchie,
Speaker 1: and you have the plated neck guard with this was
Speaker 1: the shikorro, which is made of overlapping plates, and then
Speaker 1: you have a brim or a visor as well, which
Speaker 1: I kind of mentioned already. But then if you ever
Speaker 1: look at a samurai helmet, you often see these wing
Speaker 1: like or ear like backwards folding flaps, and these were
Speaker 1: these were known as the fuka gaishi, and these were
Speaker 1: the front parts of the neck guard. But they became
Speaker 1: folded back like this to enhance visibility and to prevent
Speaker 1: getting in the way of drawing a bow. So another
Speaker 1: example of the evolution of the helmet being to a
Speaker 1: certain extent aesthetic but also purely functional. And then you
Speaker 1: have the sunamoto and this is the This is in
Speaker 1: the front. It's a mounting point on the front of
Speaker 1: the helmet and where you might have horns or antlers
Speaker 1: or a flower motif or something like that. That added. Now,
Speaker 1: something else that you see with a lot of these
Speaker 1: helmets is that they don't just cover the top and
Speaker 1: sides of the head, but they, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the other helmets we've been talking about today, have a
Speaker 1: face mask. Yeah. And this is often one of the
Speaker 1: most you know, arresting aspects of the samurai helmet and
Speaker 1: one that clearly resonates, uh in our fiction around the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, you look at, say, the Darth Vader's helmet,
Speaker 1: and there is a strong samurai element in its design.
Speaker 1: Oh was it? Do you know if it was directly
Speaker 1: inspired by samurai helmets? Uh? Well, I was. I looked
Speaker 1: this up the other day and it seems like that
Speaker 1: has been cited as one of the influences, though there
Speaker 1: are a couple others, like there's some old sci fi
Speaker 1: cereal with a helmeted bad guy that may have played
Speaker 1: a role. Uh you know. Some others have pointed to
Speaker 1: Dr Doom as another likely influenced, but it seems like
Speaker 1: the samurai aesthetic was part of the influence for sure.
Speaker 1: I do think George Lucas was was a fan of
Speaker 1: Japanese cinema, wasn't he Like, Oh yeah, definitely, He's definitely
Speaker 1: cited Curasawa is an influence for sure. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think when you see Darth Vader, you're you're definitely
Speaker 1: seeing some samurai influence there. Now on the samurai helmets,
Speaker 1: of course, they these these masks often take on the
Speaker 1: likeness of a human face, though often with very aggressive flourishes. Also,
Speaker 1: you'll frequently find mustaches that have been added a lot
Speaker 1: of times. They're kind of like you know, brush base.
Speaker 1: They're they're they're were made with horse hair or something,
Speaker 1: so there they actually have a brustlely aspect to them.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's so much better than the metal mustache
Speaker 1: of Sutton Who and all these others. Yeah. Now, one
Speaker 1: one thing to note about the face mask of the
Speaker 1: samurai is there are actually several different varieties. So there's
Speaker 1: the the hapuri, which Cury writes date back to the
Speaker 1: Hayon period of seven to eleven eighty five, and they
Speaker 1: covered the foreheads and the cheeks and a kind of
Speaker 1: upside down you shape. You don't see that as much
Speaker 1: when you just get you know, look for sort of
Speaker 1: stereotypical uh samurai armor. Far more prevalent in just standard
Speaker 1: samurai iconography is the partial face mask or menpo, which
Speaker 1: emerged in the fourteenth or fifteen centuries to provide protective
Speaker 1: coverage for the lower face that was apparently lost by
Speaker 1: some of the design trends that were affecting other aspects
Speaker 1: of the helmet. So this would have covered like basically
Speaker 1: from the eyes uh down to the chin, and sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a scaled net guard hanging below this. Another variety
Speaker 1: was the the hen bow, which covered the nose to
Speaker 1: chin area as well, but not the cheeks. Now, you
Speaker 1: also see examples of the sulman, which covered the entire face,
Speaker 1: and some of the examples of this are very uh
Speaker 1: beautiful as well, But apparently this was not a popular
Speaker 1: choice as it was said to be uncomfortable to wear. Uh,
Speaker 1: So I guess, you know, just more constricting of your
Speaker 1: face and perhaps limiting your your your senses a bit. Now,
Speaker 1: the overall look and feel of the helmet was was
Speaker 1: sometimes crafted to represent something about the warrior's character, such
Speaker 1: as through an animal motif, and samurai tended to like
Speaker 1: to stand out from the crowd. Um. In the book Samurai,
Speaker 1: author Anthony J. Bryant points out that for early samurai,
Speaker 1: crests were a privilege of rank. Uh. These date mono
Speaker 1: were mounted on the front, sometimes on the sides, taking
Speaker 1: the form of dragonflies, butterflies, crescent moons, disks, horns, various emblems, etcetera. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they were mostly made of wood or paper mache,
Speaker 1: even that had been painted and affixed to the helmets,
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting because you're getting into this
Speaker 1: area where okay, there's the purely functional aspects of the
Speaker 1: helmet that are going to be made of more durable material.
Speaker 1: But indeed, if you're gonna have some sort of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, flourish affixed to the top of your helmet,
Speaker 1: it makes more sense really that you would have it
Speaker 1: constructed of paper mache or wood or something and not
Speaker 1: be a physical part of the helmet that would again,
Speaker 1: you know, send your your helmet flying or twist your
Speaker 1: neck around if it were to catch a stray sword blow.
Speaker 1: I yeah, that's extremely smart. Actually, paper mache adornments could
Speaker 1: be They can still be seen, they can convey the
Speaker 1: same symbolism, but they can't become a lever. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: rip right off. Yeah, So it seems like that that
Speaker 1: would be a key advantage here now in terms of
Speaker 1: this sort of tug of war between aesthetics and uh
Speaker 1: and and just utilitarian purpose. Uh, you certainly see things
Speaker 1: perhaps going more in the direction of of just aesthetics.
Speaker 1: When you consider the kawari kabuto or the changed helmets
Speaker 1: or in usual helmets, and these are the more elaborate
Speaker 1: examples of samurai helmets you'll you'll come across, and some
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful, uh they were. They were expensive,
Speaker 1: so only the wealthy were able to have them unless
Speaker 1: they claimed them on the battlefield from a falling samurai.
Speaker 1: But these would have been highly decorative helmets with unique
Speaker 1: shapes or even the overall likenesses of an animal. So
Speaker 1: instead of there being just this you know, this wooden
Speaker 1: paper mission a flourish added to the front of the helmet,
Speaker 1: like the helmet itself would be transformed like a parade
Speaker 1: float into uh an animal or with any enormous animal
Speaker 1: motif affixed to the top of it. So like the
Speaker 1: entire thing is the body of a of a fish
Speaker 1: or some kind of yokai or something. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: pretty great fish based one that I've seen images of,
Speaker 1: and there's also a really beautiful one from the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century that apparently is in the Mets collection. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's currently on display or hasn't been recently, but uh,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful because it looks like this black cresting wave. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's just elegant to behold and also kind of
Speaker 1: shiny black. It looks a lot like like the material
Speaker 1: of Darth Vader's helmet. Yes it does. Yeah, this one's
Speaker 1: very Darth vadery and it's almost it's almost got like
Speaker 1: a scorpion's tail aspect curling up at the top. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's tons more we could talk about
Speaker 1: with some Samurai helmets and Samurai armor. We've only really
Speaker 1: touched the you know, the tip of the iceberg here
Speaker 1: for an example of just how many very designs you
Speaker 1: come across. I was I was reading Samurai Armor though
Speaker 1: one Tabby Art Museum Samurai Armor Collection Volume one by
Speaker 1: Trevor Absalon and David Thatcher, and they the authors here,
Speaker 1: point out that the kawari kabudah encompasses so many different
Speaker 1: variations that like, for instance, there's this one that they
Speaker 1: pull out. It's a design from the mid late Edo
Speaker 1: period that has this horned helmet, horned samurai helmet. But
Speaker 1: then over it is this hood. So this is hood
Speaker 1: in place, and then the horns are sticking out through
Speaker 1: the fabric of the hood. So that's just another example
Speaker 1: of the rich variety you'll find with these helms. Joke,
Speaker 1: and you pull up an image of this side. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it right now. This is cult movie material.
Speaker 1: This is so good. So the hood, yes, the hood
Speaker 1: has holes. The horns come through the holes. It's like
Speaker 1: little sleeves for your horns. Uh. So creepy looking. And
Speaker 1: then the face mask it has not just a bristly mustache,
Speaker 1: but a whole briskly beard. Uh. And this is great
Speaker 1: because like if you if you were to try to
Speaker 1: kiss somebody wearing this mask, you would feel the bristles,
Speaker 1: but legitimately creepy and beautiful to sign. Yeah, this is awesome. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna discuss just a few more
Speaker 1: examples of philut design from around the world and throughout history.
Speaker 1: Thank thank thank all Right, we're back now, Robert, I
Speaker 1: know you wanted to mention a bit about pre Columbian
Speaker 1: cultures in meso America and South America. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've discussed um the Inca civilization on the show before,
Speaker 1: as well as aspects of Aztec civilization, and especially when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Inca, we talked about their amazing
Speaker 1: fiber based technologies. Um I believe we talked a lot
Speaker 1: about their use of knots, as well as the use
Speaker 1: of things like elaborate rope bridges. But it also played
Speaker 1: into how they can truct did their body armor and
Speaker 1: their helmets. So the Inca depended on quilted and padded
Speaker 1: cotton tunics for body armor, with wooden plates added in places,
Speaker 1: especially the back, I understand, and likewise their helmets were
Speaker 1: mostly wooden. Apparently, generals or other prestigious individuals might have
Speaker 1: theirs decorated with a little bit of copper as well.
Speaker 1: Now you might wonder like, wait a minute, why would
Speaker 1: wool be all that useful for armor, But I mean
Speaker 1: think about helmets and pads of today that say a
Speaker 1: football player would wear, or that you might wear if
Speaker 1: you're riding a bicycle. These often involve a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of soft padding elements which are quite useful if
Speaker 1: you suddenly get hit on the head or hit somewhere
Speaker 1: in the body. As that you know, they might not
Speaker 1: stop a sword from stabbing you, but they can't slow
Speaker 1: the acceleration or deceleration of impacts, which makes a big
Speaker 1: difference in in protecting your body from injury. Right, so,
Speaker 1: even if you are going to have some sort of
Speaker 1: robust plating on your body, you also want some sort
Speaker 1: of uh, some some sort of material there to help
Speaker 1: absorb the blow as well, because otherwise, yeah, that the
Speaker 1: sword might not break the skin, but the impact of
Speaker 1: the sword might break several bones. So, uh, that's just
Speaker 1: the inca in brief. But also I was looking around
Speaker 1: at the the Aztec. According to Handbook to Life in
Speaker 1: the Aztec World by Manuel uh Aguilar Marino, the Aztecs
Speaker 1: also utilize similar cotton tunic body armor, and war leaders
Speaker 1: would wear feathered tunics over these. So as far as
Speaker 1: their helmets go, the helmets varied. Some were made from
Speaker 1: wood and bone and decorated with feathers. Others were far
Speaker 1: more animalistic, made in the likeness of a wild animal
Speaker 1: of divine significance and associated with different warrior groups such
Speaker 1: as wolves, coyotes, jaguars, and pumas and the And in
Speaker 1: these mass the warrior would gaze out of the animal's
Speaker 1: open mouth, and these were generally supported over a frame
Speaker 1: of wood or quilted cotton. Yeah, and it's worth looking
Speaker 1: up examples of these. A couple of the ones that
Speaker 1: come to my mind are the jaguar warriors and the
Speaker 1: eagle warriors. The jaguars and the eagles were like different
Speaker 1: classes of military combatants in the in the ancient Aztec
Speaker 1: or Mexico culture. Yeah, with a lot of sacred associations
Speaker 1: with these animals. So it wasn't just like, hey, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be cool if I looked like a jaguar, wouldn't
Speaker 1: I be intimidating like it? It went deeper to that
Speaker 1: and was more entrenched in a in in a sacred
Speaker 1: battle um ethos. But I wanted to to also talk
Speaker 1: about another far flung example of helmet technology, and that
Speaker 1: is the helmet that you would find um uh used
Speaker 1: by the Hawaiian people. Interesting. Yeah, so, you know, I
Speaker 1: do want to stress there's so many different variations in
Speaker 1: warrior helms throughout human history, and there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of sameness to a certain degree. You see fabric, fiber, leather,
Speaker 1: and hide helms across all cultures. Bone and wood are
Speaker 1: frequently taken up as our metals, as metallurgical advancements and
Speaker 1: um you know, and and also the local environment allow
Speaker 1: but but these are a couple of reasons why it's
Speaker 1: really neat to look at Polynesian technology, and specifically Hawaiian helmets.
Speaker 1: So I would love to come back at some point
Speaker 1: and do a proper look at Polynesian technology, because the
Speaker 1: various cultures at this far flung tip of human expansion
Speaker 1: are and we're really amazing and advanced in ways utterly
Speaker 1: the fitting of their challenges. So here's one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about about Hawaiian warriors. So, given the complete
Speaker 1: absence of iron on the volcanic islands, the ancient warriors
Speaker 1: of Hawaii were instead masters of wooden spears, slings, wooden forks,
Speaker 1: and daggers. Sometimes they had these two pronged eye daggers
Speaker 1: as well as these unique shark tooth weapons for close
Speaker 1: quarters combat. They kind of looked like in some cases
Speaker 1: they look kind of like paddles or or kind of
Speaker 1: like wooden daggers, but they're lined around the edges with
Speaker 1: the saw blades made of sharks teeth. Uh So they
Speaker 1: if you getting close enough, you know, you can essentially
Speaker 1: you know, gut your enemy or or you know, slice
Speaker 1: a vital part of their anatomy. They also had strangling
Speaker 1: chords that sometimes featured shark teeth as well, and all
Speaker 1: of this would would have been additionally incorporated into specialized
Speaker 1: tactics and specialized martial arts as far as protection goes.
Speaker 1: According to Warrior Arts and Weapons of Ancient Hawaii by
Speaker 1: Sid Campbell, the warrior chieftains of old would wear a
Speaker 1: brightly colored cape into battle, often slung on one arm
Speaker 1: to deflect or snag spears. He writes, uh quote, so
Speaker 1: these decorative capes looked more ceremonial than martial to foreigners
Speaker 1: unaccustomed to the Kia's battle accouterments. They proved very effective
Speaker 1: in instances of close range combat, which were frequent where
Speaker 1: clubs and sharp toothed daggers were commonplace. The cape used
Speaker 1: as a shield could also be a protective barrier to enshroud, deflect, perry,
Speaker 1: or confine the enemy's weapon. The This reminds me of
Speaker 1: some of the earliest examples of body armor that we
Speaker 1: talked about it in the last episode which depicted on
Speaker 1: the Royal Standard of Or. I think it was where
Speaker 1: these ancient Mesopotamian warriors are shown wearing heavy leather capes
Speaker 1: as armor and battle. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think in
Speaker 1: the last episode two we we had a brief tangent
Speaker 1: where we talked about the capes worn by Darth Vader
Speaker 1: and Count Dooku and General Grievous in the Star Wars films. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then so certainly there's historical presidents for the use
Speaker 1: of capes as armor in close combat and in the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe. On top of that, they have this
Speaker 1: idea that you have these garments made out of armor
Speaker 1: weave which would be capable of dissipating blaster bolts or
Speaker 1: at really and at least providing limited resistance to lightsabers.
Speaker 1: And I do want to stress again that there there
Speaker 1: would have been an entire martial arts at play here
Speaker 1: in the use of these various weapons and this protective cape.
Speaker 1: Now they also had helmets that would they would use,
Speaker 1: and there at least two example polls of of it.
Speaker 1: So first of all, there's this gourd mask helmet design
Speaker 1: that it was traditionally known as macacay or makini I believe,
Speaker 1: and they're also they've also been commonly referred to as
Speaker 1: uh okay okay I believe. It's a it's actually a
Speaker 1: popular cultural motif today. So if you if you do
Speaker 1: some image searches for this or um you know, or
Speaker 1: or do any amount of driving around the Hawaiian islands,
Speaker 1: you will you will see examples of this where it
Speaker 1: is like to describe it, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: gorge shape with kind of a big hourglass shape cut
Speaker 1: into the front, allowing uh one to to to look
Speaker 1: out and also exposing cheeps and nose region. There's often
Speaker 1: kind of a feather based um um kind of a
Speaker 1: mohawk or crest on the back of it. And then
Speaker 1: you'll also have some material hanging down from the edges
Speaker 1: covering the neck. Yeah, a lot of the examples I've
Speaker 1: seen involved not a single space in the front of
Speaker 1: the face, but with two whole separate eye holes. So
Speaker 1: I guess you could do it multiple ways, but the
Speaker 1: a lot of the ones I've seen, they end up
Speaker 1: making you look kind of like Jack Skellington. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is kind of. I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that it's such an interesting image and one that uh
Speaker 1: that that that people keep coming back to. I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from it's it's it's cultural relevance, it also has
Speaker 1: this kind of skull like quality. It feels, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're coming at it from a sci fi direction,
Speaker 1: it almost feels like a space helmet. And also being
Speaker 1: gourd based. It it's a little it's a little different.
Speaker 1: It it um you know, it's it's uh, it's a
Speaker 1: different tradition, a different way of of covering the head
Speaker 1: and protecting the head. And apparently this would have been
Speaker 1: a design that the very first European explorers to arrive
Speaker 1: in a y you would have observed various warriors wearing.
Speaker 1: Now there's also another variety of helmet and these would
Speaker 1: have been more um artistic and more just purely for
Speaker 1: for show, But there would have been a crested helmet
Speaker 1: known as majol, and these would have been um uh
Speaker 1: made of aerial vine roots that were woven into kind
Speaker 1: of a basketry frame, so kind of a wicker helmet
Speaker 1: that was then decorated with feathers. Again with this kind
Speaker 1: of crested appearance to them, that reminds I think we
Speaker 1: we easily remind a uh, you know, a Westerner of
Speaker 1: various Greek helmets or some of the uh, the the
Speaker 1: head gear that is associated with Tibetan monks. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: certainly looks very elaborate and regal. I mean, you see
Speaker 1: somebody wearing this, and it does suggest that they are
Speaker 1: in charge. But there's something also about the images I've
Speaker 1: seen of this type of helmet. The texture on the outside.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's original. It might be a
Speaker 1: sign of of where weathering over time. It looks kind
Speaker 1: of like coral. I know it's not made of coral,
Speaker 1: but it's got that fuzzy pink kind of texture on
Speaker 1: the outside. Yeah. Well, like the the use of feathers
Speaker 1: in this helmet helmet, for example, um, if you're not,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen a picture of you may be
Speaker 1: thinking of something that is very feather like, enormous feathers,
Speaker 1: but a lot of these look to be very small feathers,
Speaker 1: which creates a oh almost kind of a furry appearance
Speaker 1: that it looks like it's something made from the fur
Speaker 1: or some sort of fabulous multicolored mammal that that we
Speaker 1: just don't know about, kind of sponge like almost like
Speaker 1: you might imagine that if you were to touch the helm,
Speaker 1: it would sting you. Yeah. So anyway, just another example
Speaker 1: of the various materials and designs that have been used
Speaker 1: to to cover the human skull, to enhance protection for
Speaker 1: the human skull, but also transform the human body to
Speaker 1: create some different idea of who we are and what
Speaker 1: our status is in a given culture. Robert, I have
Speaker 1: enjoyed this helmet journey. Yeah, there's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And of course we we only got to touch base
Speaker 1: on on so few examples. I mean, there there's so
Speaker 1: many other traditions and and again you people have whole
Speaker 1: books about samurai arm or about you know, the martial
Speaker 1: arts and uh an armory and uh and weaponry of say,
Speaker 1: the Hawaiian people. So I hopefully this episode will be
Speaker 1: more as a more of a starting point for folks
Speaker 1: out there that one of these examples really perks your interest,
Speaker 1: then look into it more because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of cool material out there, a lot of
Speaker 1: photography reconstructions, uh that that really make it rewarding. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we'd love to hear from everybody about this. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if we've touched on a particular helmet that
Speaker 1: is important to you culturally, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Or if it's we've just touched on a topic that
Speaker 1: you have some additional insight regarding. Perhaps you've worn some
Speaker 1: of these helmets, tried them on, or tried on reconstructions
Speaker 1: of them. We would love to hear from you about
Speaker 1: all of that. In the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of the show, you can find
Speaker 1: us wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens
Speaker 1: to be if you have the ability to do so. Uh,
Speaker 1: just rate, review, and subscribe, because those are just some
Speaker 1: small acts that help us out all in the long run.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
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