WEBVTT - From the Vault: Oh Goat, You Devil - Part 1 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:08.400 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:09.520 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:12.160 And I am Joe McCormick. And Rob and I are 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.720 out this week, but we are bringing you some episodes 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.959 from the vault, from the Halloween Vault, to be specific. 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:22.280 This was originally aired on October eighteenth, twenty twenty two, 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:24.800 and it's part one of our series on the Goat. 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:27.000 That's right, let's jump right in. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:38.240 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.560 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:43.280 is Robert. 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:47.160 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, it's still October here 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:49.199 on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. And you 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:51.400 may have noticed that we've been talking a good bit 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.600 about farm animals this month. That was not by design, 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:56.840 It just sort of happened that way. But you know, 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:02.000 it started with discussing elf shot, which was this folk 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:06.720 belief about wounds inflicted often on cattle and horses by 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.640 supernatural fairy weapons. And then we talked about the cattle 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.119 mutilation panic of the nineteen seventies, and all this talk 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.000 about livestock actually brought me back to a question I've 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:19.959 wondered about in recent years and I'm glad we're finally 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:23.280 getting around to devoting some episodes to it. What is 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:29.080 the deal with goats and evil incarnate? Modern audiences will 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:34.200 probably think of a particularly awesome bit of goatish devilry 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:38.920 from the twenty fifteen historical horror film The Witch, directed 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.840 by Robert Eggers. I don't want to spoil too much 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:43.800 for those of you who still haven't seen it. If 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.560 you haven't, it's great, But let's just say the movie 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:53.680 overfloweth with megacreepy goat stuff, a link between goats and 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:58.200 demons and Satan himself. And of course this link between 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:01.120 goats and demons and occult magic is not original to 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:04.840 that film. There appears to be a long running association 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:09.360 between goats and beliefs about witchcraft and devil worship, not 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.160 so much in New England, where that movie is set, 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:16.519 but especially in continental Europe, where the goat form was 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.839 an important part of, for one thing, the imagery of Baphomet, 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.960 a figure that will definitely come back to in more 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.639 detail later in this series. But I figured that I 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:30.600 think Christians associated with evil because it was allegedly worshiped 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:34.680 by the Knights Templar and later by other occultists, I 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:39.119 think emphasis on allegedly with that square with your understanding, rob. 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.680 Oh, yes, yes, definitely, and we'll touch on that later then. 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.080 And then also you can when you start talking about 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:49.600 occultists and some of the occult usages of Baphomet and 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.639 Baha mein iconology, like that breaks down a bit as well, 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.359 because you get into like, well, what is worship and 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.799 what is the occult? And you can certainly go down 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:02.239 some rabbit holes there as well. 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:04.880 But apart from Baphamet, even the goat pops up in 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:09.200 all other kinds of continental witchcraft imagery. Some of the 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.320 greatest examples that come to mind for me are two 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:18.400 similar paintings by the Spanish romantic artist Francisco Goya. The 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.040 first one is a painting from seventeen ninety eight called 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:27.000 Witch's Sabbath, which depicts a coven of women gathered in 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:30.359 a circle around an upright he goat in the moonlight. 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.960 And the goat's horns are magnificently curled, as if curled 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:38.600 by the physical substance of evil, and they're decorated with 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:42.880 branches of oak leaf, and his four hoofs are outstretched 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.200 like the arms of a man kind of like you 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:49.000 might see depictions of sleepwalkers with their arms stretched out 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:51.839 in front of them, but also almost like a king 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:54.600 holding out his hand so that you can kiss his ring. 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.400 And the women worshiping the goat are offering up children 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.120 for human sacrifice, and you can see bats circling the 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:06.760 moon above. It is an absolutely splendid depiction of malignant 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.480 magic and terror, and I love this painting. 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.000 Yeah, this is an interesting painting because, on one hand, yes, 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:18.760 it is invoking the very fictional idea of witchcraft and 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:23.360 sacrifice that was, as we've discussed on the show before, 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.160 is very much a part of the like the campaign 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:30.040 against imagined witches and played a huge part in witchcraft 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:34.000 persecution of very real human beings. On the other hand, 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.880 this particular image is a lot more chill compared to 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:41.159 some of the various woodcuts you see that were used 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.880 during the periods of witchcraft persecution and drumming up, you know, 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:49.760 fantastic ideas of satanic worship like this one. Aside from 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.880 the offering of the children, and even then the offering 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.320 of the children, it could be you're just holding the 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.760 child up to better see the great he goes otherwise, 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:02.760 you know, folks are just kind of hanging about and 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.000 here's the goat, and the goat looks not particularly evil 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:07.520 but kind of regal. 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.840 Well, yeah, I think some of that ambiguity might come 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.839 down to what this painting was intended for, because I'll 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:16.320 get back to that in just a second after I 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:21.200 mentioned there's another painting. Strangely, this one is often known 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.600 by the same title The Witch's Sabbath, but with the 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:29.280 subtitle The Great he Goat or El Grande Cabron. This 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.640 one was finished sometime in the early eighteen twenties, but 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.280 I think it was not actually intended for public display. 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:38.760 I think Koya just did this one like on a 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.680 wall in his house. But in this one, once again 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.560 you've got a congregation of witches gazing up at their 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:48.160 goat lord in terror and awe. But now the goat 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.800 is just a dark silhouette in the foreground with horns 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.680 and a little billy beard and his body draped in 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:59.080 robes like a priest. As brimming with menace as these 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:03.640 paintings are, I think scholars of Goya do not typically 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.880 understand these artworks as depictions of a literal belief in witchcraft, 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:12.520 but more kind of the exact opposite, as satirical works 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:18.839 about superstition, human brutality, and about religious persecution. Because Goya 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.800 was apparently a devotee of the Enlightenment, and I've seen 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.160 his occult paintings described as a sort of mockery of 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.600 the witchcraft trial mentality and of the Spanish Inquisition and 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.159 the darker side of human nature in general. Because Rob, 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:36.040 as you just reminded us, of course, a belief in 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.719 witchcraft and occult magic did lead to terror, oppression, brutality, 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:44.279 and human sacrifice, but not so much at the hands 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.120 of witches, almost exclusively at the hands of people who 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.920 thought they were opposing witchcraft and heresy rather than practicing it. 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:55.320 Yeah. Yeah, and perhaps reaching for some faint evidence of 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.760 the divine themselves. Yeah. This reminds me of another piece 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:00.640 by Goya that I actually they talked about in a 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:02.720 Monster Fact episode at some point in the last year 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:08.200 or so, a seventeen ninety nine piece titled the translation 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:13.040 is here comes the Boogeyman or Koko, and it has 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:17.000 a robed figure and children. There are these two children 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.360 held by a mother, and the children are screaming in 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:21.920 terror and trying to look away from it, and the 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:26.280 mother's gazing up at the Boogeyman almost with admiration. And 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.440 it's a lovely image that touches on some of these 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:31.200 elements you're talking about, because the backstory for this image 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:35.000 is not the Boogeyman is real, or it is more like, 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:39.200 look at what parents have done by engaging in this 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:44.240 kind of supernatural nonsense, this kind of supernatural terror to 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:47.840 control their children. Look at the world there helping to 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:49.160 make through this sort of thing. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:51.960 And yet I think it's funny that despite the clearly 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.040 ironic intention of these paintings, Goya was a master at 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:02.640 creating deliciously frightening monsters and including these these great he goats, 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.559 including the Elgrand Cabron. So the question for the series 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.120 of episodes is why what is the deal with this 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:16.200 cultural association primarily stemming from Christian continental Europe, between goats 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:21.080 and devils or goats and wickedness? And does the thematic 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.720 harmony of goat and evil at all relate to the 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.520 biological features of the goat as an organism. 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.400 Yeah, it's a great question, because really, if your main 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:37.959 relationship with goats is via like goat satanic imagery and 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:42.959 baphomets and you know, you know, heavy metal iconography and 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.760 so forth. You might say, oh, yeah, yeah, goats are scary. 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.719 But if you've been around goats, either goat farms or 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:54.160 various petting zoos, you know it did zoos where children 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:56.240 are encouraged to meet the goats and the sheep and 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.319 to pet them and groom them, you'll quickly realize that 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.880 in real life goats aren't really scary at all. Like, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.880 generally speaking, the scariest thing about a goat is, well, 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.400 I might step in poop, or if they're a little 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:12.959 revved up, one might button me a little bit, or 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:15.520 might nibble like if I have a map hanging out 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.160 of my pocket or something. They might try and eat 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:20.480 something they're not supposed to do. But for the most part, yeah, 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:25.480 the goat is more comical and weird and at least 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.040 to my eyes, as opposed to anything that is nefarious 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:30.839 when you're actually experiencing them firsthand. 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:33.120 I actually had a face to face with some goats 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.839 just a few weeks ago at a farm that was 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.480 attached to a restaurant I went to, and the goats 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:40.280 were just hanging out by the side of the fence. 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:44.040 So I went and communed with them a little bit, 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.360 and I walked away from that thinking, yeah, goats are 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.920 kind of cool. They just seemed like chill like, kind friendly, 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:55.160 maybe more more of a sense of awareness from the 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:57.920 goats than I've gotten when I've been around like cows, 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.640 So there's a kind of curiosity or implied intelligence, but 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:04.079 also that they were just cool. It's like they wanted 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:04.559 to hang out. 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:06.960 Yeah, they have a lot of personality I've found. I mean, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.040 you also find some that are totally zoned out in 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:14.960 petting Zero's I've been touched and combed and brushed by 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.720 children so much that I don't even register it anymore, 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.319 that sort of thing. But a lot of times, yeah, 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:23.559 they have a lot of love of character, and the 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:27.520 babies are quite cute. So so yeah, in real life 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:30.520 I find goats to be rather harmless. 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:33.000 So I think it's probably good to put some very 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:36.520 basic goat biology up front, and then maybe we can 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.400 come back to more specific goat science questions after we 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:42.080 explore more of the goat lore. 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.760 So the goat for starters here, the goat is one 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:49.760 of humanity's oldest domesticated animals. Tracing back at least to 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:53.920 the fifth millennium BCE, perhaps to the region of Turkestan. 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:58.280 Goats have spread around the globe with their humans since then, 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:03.679 thriving everywhere except Antarctica. We domesticated the goat. We take 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:05.599 the goat with us, and the goat tends to do 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.079 really well in various environments. 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:11.719 Yeah, the goat is kind of rough and ready, the 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.600 goat is hardy. So the scientific name of the domestic 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:21.560 goat species is Capra Hercus hircus, with the genus Capra 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:26.040 belonging to the bovid subfamily Caproni, also known as the 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.000 goat antelopes. So the taxonomy from top down goes like this. 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.319 You got the bovids, and the bovids are all cloven, 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:39.320 hoofed ruminant mammals. This includes antelopes, cows, bison, buffalo, things 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:44.199 like that. And then the bovid subfamily Caprini includes an 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:49.440 assortment of genera such as muskox and sheep, various kinds 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.400 of four legged mountain critters that you would probably look 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:54.960 at and say that's some type of goat. And then 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.240 of course the genus Capra, which contains the true goats, 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.199 with Capra Hercus the domestic goat. There are hundreds of 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.920 breeds selected for different traits, but broadly, most domestic goats 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:10.160 are raised for one of three things, either milk or meat, 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:15.360 or skins and fiber for the coat. So when it 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:18.840 comes to fiber, you can think about cashmere. Cashmere wool 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.000 that comes from goat breeds such as the Kashmere goat, 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:26.719 and mohair as in electric boots and mohair suits, is 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:31.160 made from the wool of the angora goat. Confusingly, the 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:34.760 wool known as angora does not come from the angora goat, 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:35.880 but from rabbits. 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:39.880 Goat milk, especially when made into goat cheese, can be 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:40.920 quite amazing. 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:43.920 Yeah, it tends to have a friskier flavor than cow milk. 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:47.199 You get more that grass tanng in there, I think. 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:51.240 But so okay. Humans have been hurting domestic goats for 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.640 thousands of years, probably going back ten thousand years or so, 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.280 longer than most other domestic animal species. So how did 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.800 that happen? Well, domestic goats are mostly from an original 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:08.679 wild species known as the beezor goat or capra igagras, 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.480 though there are a few breeds that are descended from 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.200 another wild species known as the markre or Capra falconeri. 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.920 The markre is awesome, by the way, and worth returning 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.959 to later. But I was reading one highly cited paper 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.120 investigating the evolutionary history of the goat how we got 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.640 from these wild ancestors to the domestic goat, And this 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.280 was a paper by Sayed naderi at All published in 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.240 Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences in two thousand 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:40.079 and eight, called the goat domestication process inferred from large 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:44.959 scale mitochondrial DNA analysis of wild and domestic individuals. So 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:47.720 as we know, one of the most important turning points 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:50.280 in the history of the human species, probably the single 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:54.360 most important, was the emergence of farming, which includes both 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:58.880 plant agriculture and domestication of livestock, and goats were one 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.839 of these early domestics. Hated farm animals, likely through a 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.959 process where the wild ancestor of the goat was a 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:09.120 prey species tracked and hunted by humans, and then at 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:15.000 some point that hunting relationship transitioned into a herding relationship, which, 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.400 by the way, fascinating to try to imagine the step 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:21.440 by step process of how exactly that happens. Yeah, but 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:25.280 these wild goats, the ancestors of domestic goats, were typically 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:29.800 a mountain dwelling species that lived in relatively harsh and 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.440 rocky environments and in the woods rather than in just flat, 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:37.600 fertile plains full of delicious grass. And this raises an 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:42.120 important distinction for goat biology, which is the grazing versus 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:46.360 browsing distinction. So you can think of ruminant mammals like 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:51.000 sheep and cattle as grazers. They usually prefer to eat 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:56.240 low lying vegetations such as grass, whereas goats typically prefer 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.800 to browse. So goats don't just put their heads down 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.960 eat nice grass. They browse on trees and shrubs, so 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.600 they prefer to keep their heads raised up instead of 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.440 down to the earth, and they'll pick it leaves and 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:14.240 fruits and buds and twigs from higher up food sources. 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:18.160 Though at the same time, you have a particular environment 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:22.400 invites them to graze more or to to to eat 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.080 more from lower down, they will do that too. They're 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:27.320 very versatile and that's one of the reasons they've been 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:28.119 so successful. 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.720 Oh yeah, they will definitely eat whatever they can get. 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.840 It's but I think the distinction is that you're not 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.320 gonna typically find like cows and sheep trying to browse 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:43.120 up on variegated, higher, higher up food sources, and goats 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.280 absolutely will. That's part of their natural repertoire. 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.360 Right, and it's also always amusing, you know, given their 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:54.760 their their mountainous ancestry that anywhere you find goats, you'll 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.000 often find them a top whatever they can get a 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:03.560 top off, be it a rock or a shed, occasionally 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.720 the roof of a building, whatever they have access to. 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.200 Its goats like to get a little height so they 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.480 can see what's going on around them exactly. 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:15.160 Yeah, you often see the goats up on top of 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:18.840 the chicken coop there go. But anyway, in the study 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:24.400 I mentioned by comparing DNA from modern domestic goats with 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:29.200 the modern relatives of their wild ancestors, this study zeroed 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:33.360 in on the idea that the earliest version of this 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:38.000 herding and domestication relationship and the emergence of the domestic 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:43.320 goat probably took place in eastern Anatolia and possibly the 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:47.560 northern and central Zagros Mountains, which are a mountain range 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:53.040 extending from eastern Turkey down through Iraq and Iran. And 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:55.400 I think it's interesting that some of the traits still 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.640 visible in domestic goats today can be traced to this 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:02.240 evolutionary history. Talking about especially if you think about you know, 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.720 goat bodies, goat brains, and goat behavior as adapted to 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.480 more difficult environments like woods and mountains as opposed to 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.080 plains full of green grass. And you can see this 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:18.359 represented in some misconceptions about goats that contain a grain 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:22.280 of truth. For example, if you watch old cartoons and stuff, 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:24.320 and you see a goat in the old cartoon, what's 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.880 it going to do. It's gonna eat a tin can, right, right, 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.400 No problem, goats just eat tin cans. Well, that's not true. 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:33.000 Obviously this is not real, and you should not feed 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:37.639 metal or any other kind of potentially dangerous garbage to 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.800 a goat. But there is a grain of truth there. 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.160 It is reflective of the fact that humans have long 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:49.840 noticed goat feeding behavior is more curious and adventurous and 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:54.960 promiscuous than the typical feeding behavior of some other familiar 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:57.080 domestic ungulates like sheep and cows. 0:17:57.440 --> 0:17:59.440 Yeah, and it's why many of the places you'll find 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:01.879 goats in the world, you'll you'll find them often living 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:09.000 in otherwise very urban environments in not concrete jungles, perhaps, 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:13.480 but places where, yeah, there's vegetation around there in between 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:15.520 this building and that, and the goats can get to 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.360 it in ways where you probably wouldn't have a cow 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:19.120 grazing there. 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:24.160 Yeah. So, being natural browsers who eat leaves of plants 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.320 that would be poisonous to other animals, we eat fruits 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:30.960 and buds and twigs and shoots and sometimes even tree bark. 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.600 Goats will search high up in their environment for potential 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:37.840 food sources and will try out all kinds of things. 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:41.919 Like other ruminant mammals, goats break down their high fiber 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.040 diet with the help of a multi chamber digestive system 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:49.680 where the foregut actually uses bacterial fermentation to break down 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:54.639 the rough vegetation and extract the maximum usable energy. So 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:56.960 the goats in their foregut, they got a chamber in 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.600 there where they're making sauer kraut out of the leaves 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:08.399 and the grass and the twigs. Now we can come 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.159 back to more discussion of goat biology later, but I 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.600 was thinking, if we're looking for cultural links between goats 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.840 and the devil, it might be good to look at 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.760 the sort of mythic processing of other biological features of 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.200 the goat and see what other products those features get 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:30.439 baked into. So one thing that that screams for attention 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.480 to me, if you're certainly to anyone who's familiar with 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:37.240 Greek and Roman mythology, is going to be the creature 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.480 known as the satyr or the fawn. 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:43.159 Absolutely, and this is this is tremendously important to the 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:48.600 discussion of goat iconography and Western traditions and the classical 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:52.400 use of course, the idea of these these goat men 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:58.000 that are generally human from from the waist up with 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:00.920 some goatish features of the head and then goat like 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:05.240 from the waist down. And yeah, there are a number 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.320 of wonderful works of art that have depicted these beings, 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:12.720 and they kind of run the gamut, like sometimes a 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.840 satyr seems kind of serene, you know, playing music in 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.000 the woods or frolicking in the woods. Other times they 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.840 have a very sinister edge to them. Other times they're 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.320 just you know, being flayed alive, that sort of thing, 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:28.320 depending on the artwork in question. 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:32.560 There are numerous specific myths and tales about satyrs where 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:38.080 in the end the sator suffers a humiliation or punishment 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:40.879 or defeat of some kind. They often just like that 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:42.640 it doesn't turn out great for them. 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:46.040 Yeah, and the flaying in particular, that's the reference to 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:50.560 the flaying of Marsias, in which the god Apollo flays 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:55.480 this particular satar. And yeah, it's a grotesque sequence that 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.840 you'll often see depicted in statues and paintings. So at 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:01.920 any rate, yes, when we're talking about the classical Greek 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:04.719 goat man, we're talking about the satar. And this carries 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:09.160 over as well into Roman traditions of the fawn. Carol Rose, 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:11.560 the folklorus that I often refer to, points out that 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.520 the original satyrs were depicted as human males with goat 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.760 legs and horns that represented quote, the fruitfulness of the land. 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:22.080 So I guess it's one of those things where if 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.280 you have satyrs frolicking about, if your environment can support satyrs, 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:30.000 then everything's going all right. Clearly this is an indicator 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:34.720 of a very robust environment. But the form shifts over time, 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.400 as mythic bodies tend to do. And at one point 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:39.840 she writes, there's a type of satyr that is described 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:43.600 as having no nose, on its face and breathing instead 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:48.520 through a big hole in its chest. Later satyrs take 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.960 on the form we're more familiar with human faces, pointed ears, horns, 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:56.440 and the lower body of a shaggy goat the upper 0:21:56.480 --> 0:21:59.400 body of a human male. They attend their drunken leader 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.280 s and serve the god of wine, Dionysus or Bacchus. 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:06.399 They live in the woods, They chase nymphs around, and 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:12.240 they are known for their quote aggressive drunken sexuality, lechery, rudeness, 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:16.800 and love of playing pranks. So you know, to humans, 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:22.000 there's an unpredictability about the Satar. There's possibly a danger 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:27.080 to the Satar. They and in this they're also the 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:31.560 origin of the word satire. But also in all of this, 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:34.080 I think they nicely sum up a lot of attitudes 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:37.960 towards the wild. Like, the wilderness can be fun, the 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:41.320 wilderness can be amusing and serene. But the wilderness can 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:45.840 be dangerous and it may care nothing for you at all. 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:48.800 It may take interest in you, the interest that you 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:52.360 do not want. Yeah. Now, by the medieval period, Rose 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:55.960 writes that they become more of a grotesque hybrid and 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.720 are often used to represent just pure debauchery and lust, 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:04.359 often depicted with erect fallacies to drive home this point. 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:06.920 But at the same time it was also said that, 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.760 and of course we've discussed this sort of thing before, 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:14.080 where there are accounts of the monsters and strange creatures 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:18.040 that live in distant lands. So it was also written that, oh, 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:21.280 if you go to Ethiopia, you will actually find satyrs. 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:23.720 They're difficult to catch, but they live there. 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:26.280 The travel guides of the ancient world were so bad, 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:31.680 zero stars. But anyway, so yeah, I was reading about 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:34.159 satyrs and one thing I noticed is that they were 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:38.200 being described in conflicting ways, like it seemed. Sometimes they're 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:41.760 described as having these goat like features and other times 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:44.680 I read them as having horse like features. So I 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:47.400 was trying to make sense of that, and I found 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:52.000 a good reference an Oxford University Press book called Classical Mythology, 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:54.320 A Guide to the mythical world the Greeks and Romans, 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:58.240 by a scholar named William Hanson. This was published in 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:02.760 two thousand and five, and according to Hanson, the overriding 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:07.440 feature of satyrs is that they're associated with the countryside, 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:10.280 of course, so you know, the wilderness as opposed to settlements, 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:15.000 and that they are hybrid beasts. They are exclusively male, 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:18.040 they tend to be hairy, they walk upright on two legs, 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:22.040 they've got, as you said, off an exaggeratedly large genitalia, 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:26.440 and they incorporate some type of bestial features, though early 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.159 on these features are the legs and tail of a 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:33.320