WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: Vitrified Forts 0:00:00.000 --> 0:00:02.200 I think ex Sideways is not brought to you by 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.920 the new TV reality show Who Gets to be Sterilized? Instead, 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.480 it's brought to you by your local dog and cat shelter. 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:12.000 And not to be exclusive, you're also Commodo dragons and 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:14.960 other stuff. So there's in every town there's lots of 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.200 meta homeless doggies, kiddies and Commodo dragons and they need 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.280 a place to live and that could be your place. Also, 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:23.599 you know, if you can't for some reason take in 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:25.960 a cute little puppy, you're a cute little kid. Well 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:28.280 you can always. Don'tate your time, don'tate your money, but 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:31.120 all those little creators need your help. So get down 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:53.760 there now. It's goods working. Hey there, and welcome to 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:58.800 the podcast. I am Steve, as always joined by and 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:03.240 Joe and this week, as always on Thinking Sideways, We've 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:09.960 got a mystery for you. It's a historical doozyies. Actually no, 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.759 well okay, but you know the mystery isn't the dead bodies, 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.280 but you're strongly implied. Well there, I mean, if we're 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:21.319 going to say that, then yes, there's dead bodies everywhere 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:27.039 all the time around to creep Factor. Hey, high five 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:32.880 for totally steamrolling him. Already, good job. Okay, Okay, well 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:34.960 let's go ahead, and now that you two are done 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:38.319 with that, get into our story because this week we're 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.479 gonna be talking about vitrified forts, which is a historical mystery, 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.640 and the mystery is kind of twofold, because first off, 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:49.000 we need to figure out how the sports were made, 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:51.760 and then the mystery, of course is why were they made. 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.520 So let's start first off, just so we give everybody 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.120 the background of what the heck of vitrified ford is. 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.320 It's not a vitriolic for it. It's a vitrified for it, Yes, exactly. 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:03.760 I don't know what either of those things are, so 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.200 I was pretending vitriolic it is like an angry, hysterical 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:12.880 fort say nasty things about you. Yeah, nobody likes that. 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.280 That's one of those words that I am not realizing. 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.040 I've read like a million times exact definition. No, I 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:21.000 totally do, but I've just never I don't think I 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.080 ever heard anybody ever say it. So for whatever reason, 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.240 it was different in my brain and I understand. Yeah, 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:32.160 there we go. Yeah sweet. Anyway, Okay, for our story today, 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.880 we're talking about vitrified forts. Yeah, vitrified forts or stone walls, 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:42.080 which are built surrounding some kind of defensible position. So 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:43.800 most of them are going to be found on the 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:46.280 tops of high hills. That would be, you know, the 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:50.000 great place to build your village, your castle, and then 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:52.560 keep the enemy from being able to easily invade it 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.079 as defend it. Also safe from floods, Yes, but it's 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:00.400 very true. Insurance salesmen love those places for that reason. 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:06.160 Sometimes the walls themselves are short spans of distance. Sometimes 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:11.520 they're long, sometimes they're pretty tall. Sometimes they're actually kind 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.560 of short. Uh. And sometimes there are a series of 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.400 walls that will circle one another. In other words, it's 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.480 almost as if there's walls that are sandwich between walls, 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:24.720 sandwich between walls. In castles there was an outer an 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.880 inner wall. Yeah, no, it is. It's very traditional in 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.200 that regard. Uh And And sometimes because they were built 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:35.600 on hills, they could have embankments or they could be 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.960 surrounded by ramparts, you know, from the lower slopes of 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.440 the hills. So these things are going to be in 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.000 a whole bunch of different areas and have a lot 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:48.320 of different configurations. But part of that variation in terms 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.520 of the size of them is gonna be because of 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:56.800 the time frame or their age, because vitrified forts, we 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:00.720 don't exactly know when they were made. It's leaved according 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.280 to the current research that they were made somewhere between 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:08.680 seven hundred b C and seven hundred so really just 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:13.040 no time difference at all. And there's lots of them 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:14.840 when we get into the numbers up, but there's there's 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:17.279 more than one, obviously enough. But there's lots of these 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.920 things spread over a pretty big geographic area, and it 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:22.479 seems like actually some of them could actually be older 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.760 than that, So you know, I mean that could be 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:27.640 you know, I don't know, a thousand, fifty hundred years 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.760 before Christ, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's entirely possible. 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.520 We're really not sure in this one. Yeah, it's really uh, 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.479 you know, as far as what man was mankind was 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:39.440 up to back in those days, we don't really know. 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.839 I mean, seriously, it's really Yeah. That's one of my 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:46.279 favorite the big overarching on soft mysteries is like, what 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.520 what did we do before TVO? Yeah, yeah, I mean 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:51.800 it could be that ten thousand years ago when we 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.320 had some you know in places like Europe or even 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:56.839 in America and like North America we had like some 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:00.000 sort of my kind of civilization, you know, and it's 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.160 how they've been, you know, taken over by flooding from 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:04.279 sea level rises because sea level has been going up. 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.760 It's you know, for eleven thousand years. I mean, yeah, 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:08.680 we talked about some of that and who settled the 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.840 New World first? About coastal village is being destroyed by 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.280 rising sea levels? Absolutely so, I mean there's all kinds 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:17.800 of cool stuff out there that's just been obliterated or else. 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:20.000 It's just underneath the whole lot of layers of sentiment 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.560 and we get those weird things like GOLDBACKI Tempe that 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.080 we talked about way way, way, way way back in 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:27.880 the beginning, where it's like these things that are indicative 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.359 of these like larger cultures and more sophistication than we 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.599 give people from that time credit for. And I think, 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.600 you know, that's why mysteries like this are always interesting 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:40.240 to me because it's like, well, in technology, what's what's 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.800 great about a lot of these things? This technology as 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:45.840 it each advance, and technology seems to spill a little 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:49.599 more of the information out force You've seen all of 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:53.560 this stuff now about how they're checking satellite footage and 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.479 they're using the growth patterns of trees and then the 0:05:57.600 --> 0:05:59.880 terrain to be like, oh wait, no, you see that 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.440 there's obviously the foundation of a building there, you just 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.200 can't tell it from being on ground level. Like, there's 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.400 all these algorithms and tricks that they're using that they're 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.600 finding so much so fast now because of that, So 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.720 are never going to know the answer? Maybe will we 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.520 know some of the answers? Probably, So we've just spent 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:21.880 the last ten minutes talking about why this is a 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.960 really cool mystery and haven't talked about the mystery at all. Okay, 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.200 that's why it's intriguing now, the mysteries. Yeah, okay, So 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:37.440 here's the thing about vitrified forts. They whoever built these forts, 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.560 and by forts there, they're a wall around a fort, 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:43.720 is the easiest way to think about it. Whoever did 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:48.080 this expose them to massive amounts of heat and in 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:53.840 doing so melted the rocks that the wall was composed of, 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:58.760 and this would fuse or weld the smaller and larger 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:02.520 rocks together. So instead of having like a nice stacked 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.160 stone wall, which is Joe's favorite kind of wall, they 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:10.240 would have one that was literally glued together. And keep 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.480 in mind, as we've been talking about, this is two 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:16.240 thousand plus years ago, and concrete and mortar were not 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.600 at an available as far as far as we know now. Okay, 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.000 so there, as far as we know, concrete and mortar 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:27.200 was not around. Concrete and mortars seem to have been 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:31.960 used by the Romans starting around I want to say, 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:38.280 five or six hundred CE. But prior to that, oh gosh, 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:40.920 I can't think of what the other civilization was, but 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.520 they were using bitjamin asphalt. The Egyptians, I think he 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:46.080 is concrete. I think a lot of some of the 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.240 blocks of the Great Pyramids were actually formed on the 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.520 spot from one well, they know they used some kind Yeah, 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.080 it was a gypsum base. They were burning materials at 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:57.400 a gypsum and ash and creating mortar with that. And 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.120 then the vice starts with them. I can't think of it. 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:05.560 But Macedonians is that one? Were they before the Romans. 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:08.960 We're gonna get an email somebody's going to correct us 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:13.520 because I can't remember. But the point is this was 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:17.200 this was a technology that wouldn't have been available, so 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.000 to not just stack your rocks there's some some value 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:23.520 in that. So you're just saying it wasn't just like 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:29.280 a giant magnifying glass they held up and just walked. Well, 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.480 maybe maybe we might talk about something like that, but 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:38.560 for most things, we're pretty sure that they weren't doing that. Now, 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:42.920 the catch with making a vitrified ford is depending on 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.960 who the researcher is, it could strengthen the wall or 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:50.840 it could weaken the wall. Some sources will say that 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.719 the process of vitrification will weaken the wall because what 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.960 it does is it melts some of the rocks into 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.360 a glass like state, which can make them it all 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.760 and it can crack the larger stones. But on the 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.080 opposite side of the argument, researchers saying, well, yeah, those 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.760 bigger stones, so they're cracking, they're becoming more porous, and 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.960 then the ones that melt into glass like state actually 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:17.000 melt and go into those pores. So when it hardens 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:21.480 back up, you've got a super super strong bond between 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:25.080 these two two stones. So we're saying that the intentional 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:31.080 difference of stone reaction was intentional, Well, it was. It 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.520 was most likely it was an accidental discovery, like a 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.439 lot of things, but they're like, whoa, this is really 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.880 really strong. And depending on which I'm sure you know, 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.800 as with all things, people experiment, and depending on the 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.200 mix of stones, some are going to inheat, going to 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.200 vitrify in turn to that glass like state, and some 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:54.560 are just going to crack some because they have higher 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.920 melting points. So if you combine them correctly, you can 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:03.439 make a super strong wall. Yeah, the argument for that, yeah, absolutely, 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.000 and actually not having a wallet. It's all solid and 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.520 just rock solid like that that your enemies can't just 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:11.240 run up and like you know, like fling a big 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.640 catapult rock at and sort of knocked the top stones 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:17.440 off the bottom stones and stuff like that. Yeah, you know, absolutely, 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.320 or people you know, there's there's stories of the guy 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.680 who walked by every day and just pulled a stone 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.560 down and nobody realized it was a giant, gaping hole 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:28.120 in the wall because he did it just so slowly 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:32.160 and cautiously, Like you can't do that. They're they're welded together. 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:36.839 So it's got a huge benefit. Um. And there are 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.600 times where it appears that this was very much done 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.760 intentionally or deliberately, because some of these walls are built 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.080 on bedrock, that was would have a really really high 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:53.079 melting point, so high in fact, that you couldn't vitrify 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.400 the stones to it, that it wasn't going to create 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:01.520 that porous condition. So people would actually go get large stones, 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:06.320 sometimes from great distances away, and use them as their foundations, 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:09.920 so that the rocks above when the melting happened, would 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.360 fuse to it. So the bottom of the wall was 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.040 fused to something large and stable. So there does seem 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:20.679 to be some very deliberate action that was taken for this. Yeah, 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:22.199 and then they were smart enough to figure out that 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.439 having a good solid foundation is key. Oh yeah, there's 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.240 the reason you don't build on sand. Uh yeah, not 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:35.160 false apart, but well, the other's that vitrified forts. As 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.920 we said, they've been around for thousands of years, but 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:44.400 officially they weren't noted or discovered until the late seventeen hundreds, 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:47.080 and at that time it was believed that they were 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:52.280 pretty well contained to northern Scotland. Uh. Today we know 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:57.040 that there's about sixty or seventy vitrified forts in Scotland. 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.280 There's a little over two hundred of them total having 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.600 been found, and they're spread across northern and Western Europe. 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.040 So some of the reading has been that probably what 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.600 happened is the folks that knew how to do this 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.280 would then begin to go and share the technology with 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.360 their allies. Oh hey, let me help you out. You know, 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:19.920 we've got this pact between each other. I'm gonna show 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:22.160 you how to do this thing I do. And then 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:26.600 slowly the technology spread, though obviously it didn't go a 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.320 long long time because there's only about two hundred sites 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.000 that we found. I wonder some of it had to 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.720 do with like marriage. Oh, I'm sure that that kind 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:40.720 of that kind Yeah, I mean, yes, I am. It's 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:43.520 you know, that sort of that consolidation of power. But 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:47.200 also because it's like a kind of a small number actually, 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.880 and and kind of an intentional spreading, and either it's 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:55.560 you know, certain people, we're just building their empire out, 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.319 which is also possible because you know, again we don't 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.800 have very great records from that time, or you know, 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.880 it was I don't even know, somebody married somebody's wife 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.720 and or somebody's brother and said, oh, hey, by the way, 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.640 we've been doing this is how we do it. You 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.280 know where we're from, Let's build something like this. So 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:20.080 I'm safe some rication. Man. Yeah, it's like a bachelor party. 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:24.400 But the difficulty is is that we don't we don't 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.079 know exactly which civilization was doing it. And there was 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:31.200 all kinds of Germanic tribes in the area in the 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.360 northern part of Britannia. I think it was called Britannia 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:35.920 is what they referred to it at that time. But 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:39.640 there was the Pics and some other civilizations. But but nobody, 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:42.840 because obviously there's no written record from that time frame 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:46.520 that survived, we don't know, so so it's always hard 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:48.760 to say, well, why did it spread like that? Was 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:52.480 it through you know, through marriages, or was it through 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:58.120 military alliances or conquests. A lot more interesting questions for 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.000 me is why did it go out of style? Well, 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.760 I think I have a pretty easy answer to that. Concrete. 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:09.440 That could be it high Yeah, but actually, um, it 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:11.679 seemed to go out of style prior to the invention 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.960 of concrete, and according to some of the theories out there, 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.640 it had to do not so much with construction is destruction, yeah, 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:20.880 and in which case I'm really curious about why I 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.760 went out of style? Well, and that's a that's a 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.560 great segue into theories, because, believe it or not, once again, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.200 I've done it. We've got a really short story and 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:32.560 the rest of this episode is all theories. Well you 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.040 have two different theories sections. Yeah, well that's that's how 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:37.000 I get away with it this time. You two told 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.840 me last time. Don't do that again. Absolutely, it's too short, 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:46.440 not really okay, So we have two sections of the theories. 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:50.880 Section one is how was this done? In section two 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:53.480 is why was it done? We're going to start with 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.960 how and so, yeah, I'm more curious about why. I know, 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:03.200 that's why. People I so I find the how obscenely 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.920 interesting for some reason interesting. So let's let's get into 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.560 this now. We need to establish a couple of things. First, 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.600 we've talked about the fact that it takes some really 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:19.160 high heat to vitrify stone. To give you a frame 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.640 of reference, the melting point of the stones that are 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:28.040 used for this process at this time was somewhere between 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:32.520 eleven hundred to fifundred degrees celsius, which is two to 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.960 d degrees fahrenheit. What is that in kelvin? You're but 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:40.800 but if you also need to keep in mind, is 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:44.160 that's a lot of heat degenerate, and you've got to 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:47.200 keep it up for a sustained amount of time. It's 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:48.880 not as if you can just get it to that 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.120 temperature and that it's done. No, it's it has to 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.760 have time to act upon the materials. So you've got 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:56.440 to be able to maintain that heat for like what 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:58.560 at least a couple of days, probably right at least 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:01.520 hours at least you know, I'm not I don't want 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:03.080 to give a number of hours, but a lot of 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.360 hours longer that takes your beer bottle to meunt in 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:10.200 the campfire. Absolutely absolutely. You also need to remember, well, 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.920 a lot of people will say, oh, well, humans at 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.680 that time didn't have the technology. And if you think that, 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:21.080 you're actually wrong, because this falls right in the Bronze 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:24.480 and the Iron Ages, when man had learned how to 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.280 melt or to make all those fancy tools for killing 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:36.280 each yes, in a super contained environment, but the technology 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:42.480 had been figured out that stone or it's out there. 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:47.000 So so it is something that is available. And I 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:50.800 was doing some reading and at the time the forges 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:54.080 of blacksmiths around this time frame, you know, somewhere between 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:57.360 seven hundred seven hundred, it was not uncommon for them 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:02.240 to be able to sustain fires of up to so 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.080 they've got the ability again in a small in a 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.400 contained space. I totally understand that, because that's the big 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:11.159 part of that, right. It's like, you can't get a 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.879 fire like a wood fire, camp fire up to heats 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:18.000 like that, really no, because it's got a feed off 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.719 itself and be self containing atuff. Yeah, I get it. 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:25.120 Is it the coke that has to get that? I 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.840 imagine we have a better success using coal and stuff 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.200 like yeah, yeah, I would think you would. Okay, sure 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.080 we start into now that we're now we've given that 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:39.040 little baseline. Let's do theory one, which is this was 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:44.360 done in the initial construction of the wall, and theory 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.960 one subsection A. You're gonna love this episode, Devin. There's 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.320 all kinds of subsections. Yeah, but you didn't use bullet points, 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.160 so that's kind of bumming me out. Well, it's because 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.440 it's too big of areas and it would have taken 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.720 this four page thing into seven. Yeah that's my trick. Oh, 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.080 is that why you do that? Okay, you notice a 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:07.000 really wide margins, really big friends. Okay, the first theory 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:13.560 we're gonna discuss, discuss discuss is the kiln method, and 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:17.640 the idea here is that, yeah, well, the idea here 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.440 is that what the builders would do is they would 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.800 take the larger stones that we're going to be the 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.159 inner and the outer face of the wall, and they 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.119 would lay them out and then they would place smaller 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:32.719 stones in between them, and then they would take almost 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.600 like gravel or really or even finer stone and pour 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.800 them on top of that. Again, and of course, you 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.200 know you think about it, well, the big ones, then 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.560 the gravel is gonna fall and it's gonna fill in 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.359 all those voids. So it's pretty packed. It's relatively a 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.880 densely filled space. It's kind of like packing peanuts. That's 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.440 you know, it's what packing peanuts are for. They fill 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:57.359 up all those air voids. Now, all the while that 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.000 this is being done, wooden beams are going to be 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:04.280 laid across the wall from one face to the next, 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:07.159 or logs. They don't necessarily have to be beams, but 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.240 logs from the inner to the outer face. And wood 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.199 is also going to be scattered amongst all of the 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:18.280 stone debris. So we've got now a bunch of varying 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:21.520 sizes of stone and a whole bunch of fuel that's 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:25.160 all packed in there, and that's to vitrify the internal 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:28.440 core between the two outer solid walls, right correct, because 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:30.719 not all of these walls are super thick. I mean 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.800 some of them are only a couple of feet across sometimes, 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:39.360 like you know, yeah, so it varies from wall to wall. 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.440 So it's probably it would probably. I don't know if 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.280 it would actually be easier to do a small one 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:45.360 versus a large one, because it's easier to get more 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:47.800 fuel in the big one. But the point is there's 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:51.000 there's tons of fuel, and in this idea of the 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:54.600 kiln method, you would then take earth and pack it 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.240 around a couple of the sides of the wall so 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:01.280 that it would then retain what heat is going on. 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.480 You put turf on top to cap the whole thing, 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:07.720 and then you light the whole thing on fire. And 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:11.359 from that point, because there is an earthen walls around it, 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.359 the heat's going to be contained. It's gonna radiate within itself, 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.720 and it's good. You're gonna get the maximum usage out 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:20.880 of that heat from the burning fuel rather than all 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.200 it's like devons and a camp fire, all that heat 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.400 would just go whoosh straight up in the air. Instead, 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:29.840 it's stuck in there, which is why you know your 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:31.879 doors and windows seal so well in your house so 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:35.560 you can retain the heat and get the only problem 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:37.920 being it's just getting air tier to your fire to 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:40.760 make it burn is super hot, and you would absolutely 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.880 definitely have to have some kind of arrables because you've 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:46.760 gotta have you gotta have air flowing through this thing 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:49.680 in one way or another. But it's it's basically it's 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:54.159 it turns into a giant furnace. It's gonna melt everything inside. 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.840 And this doesn't necessarily have to have been done when 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.400 the wall was at its full height, and you could 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.280 build several feet of wall and cap it and cook 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:06.560 it and then dig it out, put the next layer 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.760 of rock and fuel and do it again, and do 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:14.159 it again, which would help prevent stability issues because if 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:16.199 you're filling it with wood, then, of course is that 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:20.680 would burns and turns the carbon and then our charcoal 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:23.560 and then dissipates. The material is going to want to 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:28.520 settle in there, and there is obvious, uh, there's obvious 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:32.640 signs of posts and beams being in these vitrified forts. 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.880 They've actually found the impressions, so we know that they 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:41.639 were sticking wood inside the wall to some degree at least. 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:44.320 So I'm sorry, I'm having a really hard time picturing 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.679 the way that you're describing this. Okay, here's here's an idea. 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:52.080 I mean to use a really dumb analogy. Should what 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.080 I'm having a hard time picture? Yeah, go ahead, having 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:58.639 a hard time picturing where in the wall the wood is. 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:01.560 So you've got your wall like this is the wood 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:06.160 going through horizontally from front to inner, from the outer 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:09.160 to the interface, and then there would be wood inside 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:12.320 of it, so running horizontally, they had them. They had 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:15.720 them like like vertical as far as I not vertical, horizontal, 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:19.880 longitudinally and then latitude. Yeah, there's there's wood laid all 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:22.320 in this thing. So so basically they made like a 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:25.239 Lincoln log frame and then filled stones in. That's an 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:26.960 easy way to think about it. I don't think of 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:28.440 it as a Lincoln log as and they built a 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:32.240 log cabin, but just a framework. Right. But she's she's 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:34.160 got it right in terms of the way the wood 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:36.560 would be laid in so that it would get you know, 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:39.680 would all catch itself on fire, and then you get 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:45.040 the maximum square footage of wood to or ratio, Like, yeah, 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:49.679 you're you're on. Then I don't need a weird, dumb analogy. Okay, 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:52.239 other theories, and you're probably going to talk about this 0:22:52.359 --> 0:22:55.080 how the wood not being deliberately burned but being part 0:22:55.080 --> 0:22:58.600 of a stabilizing structure between the two outer walls, the 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.240 inner and the outer wall, and being a stabilizing structure 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:03.560 that kept that whole pile of rubble in between the 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:06.160 sea walls all kind of I would imagine that would 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:08.399 be in the killed method. I would imagine that was 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:10.760 what the earth piled on the outside was meant to 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:14.520 do rather than wooden structure. The wooden structure would burn up. 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:16.320 But I'm saying it's like, you know, it's not the 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:19.600