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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to blow your Mind from housetop works

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Speaker 1: dot com. The god Ray wept, and the tears from

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Speaker 1: his eyes fell on the ground and turned into a bee.

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Speaker 1: The bee made his honeycomb and busied himself with the

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Speaker 1: flowers of every plant, and so wax was made, and

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Speaker 1: also honey out of the tears of Ray. Hey, welcome

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Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was a beautiful

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Speaker 1: little reading. Robert, what was that? That quote comes to

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Speaker 1: us from a nineteen translation of a three hundred BC

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Speaker 1: bit of writing. It's it's essentially cursive hieroglyphs, which is

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Speaker 1: called the hieratic writing. And more specifically, this wonderful uh

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Speaker 1: little excerpt comes from a book titled The Tears of

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Speaker 1: Ray be Keeping an Ancient Egypt by Jean Kritzky. And

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Speaker 1: at the end of this episode we're going to chat

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Speaker 1: with the author just a little bit about some of

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Speaker 1: the material we're discussing here and about the book The

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Speaker 1: Tears of Ray. This was a very interesting book. Robert

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Speaker 1: and I both read it for this episode, and it

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Speaker 1: essentially it covers the relationship between the ancient Egyptians and

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Speaker 1: the honeybee, the complex economic, religious, and scientific relationship you

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Speaker 1: might say, going back and forth between them. But we

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Speaker 1: should start, I guess with Ray, because that's the focus

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Speaker 1: of this little poems segment. You read at the beginning.

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Speaker 1: Who is Ray? Right, you may be more familiar with

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Speaker 1: the name raw are a Uh, the sun god, the

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Speaker 1: creator god of the ancient Egyptians, as often depicted as

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Speaker 1: sort of like a bird's head, the head of a falcon,

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Speaker 1: but also a sun disc that travels across the sky

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Speaker 1: and then of course dusk it gets eaten and then

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Speaker 1: goes into the underworld. Well, actually I think those are

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Speaker 1: two different myths. Right, it goes into the underworld and

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Speaker 1: then comes back out. But there's another version where Ray

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Speaker 1: gets eaten and then gets re birthed. Yeah, and there's

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Speaker 1: a there's a lot of material about the like he

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Speaker 1: travels across the sky and a solar barge, and then

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Speaker 1: there's a different barge that travels through the underworld at night,

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Speaker 1: and and sometimes the additional gods on those barges. It's uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's very complex. One of the things I definitely

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Speaker 1: did find out from this book is that these days,

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Speaker 1: if you want to be in line with the academic

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Speaker 1: egyptology community, you say Ray, not Raw. Now, I I

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Speaker 1: got Raw from the movie Stargate, where Raw is the

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Speaker 1: bad guy who is essentially an alien version of an

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Speaker 1: Egyptian god. But but that that's not anymore, it's y Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Plus most most Egyptologists dismissed uh Stargate as a reputable

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Speaker 1: source of data these days. Yeah, I don't know why,

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Speaker 1: but but yeah, this this episode, hopefully what we're gonna

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Speaker 1: do here is is we will will allow you to

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Speaker 1: leave the podcast with maybe a little more understanding and

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Speaker 1: respect for the kingdom of the bees and a little

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Speaker 1: more respect and understanding for the kingdom of ancient Egypt,

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Speaker 1: because there's a there's so much complexity in both and uh,

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Speaker 1: and it's fascinating to sort of look here at this,

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Speaker 1: this kingdom within a kingdom, and how they how they

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Speaker 1: were related to each other. Oh, the b kingdom within

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Speaker 1: the Egyptian because because yeah, we have a monarch, uh,

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Speaker 1: monarchy within the honey bee hive. And then workers, we

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Speaker 1: have a lot of workers toiling away involved in this industry.

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Speaker 1: And then uh, we have this, we have ancient Egypt.

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Speaker 1: We have another monarchy with a very complex system of order. Uh,

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Speaker 1: a lot of industry going on, a lot of workers, uh,

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Speaker 1: toiling to make it all possible. And also sort of

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Speaker 1: a two way cyberbiotics symbiotic relationship. Yeah, indeed, But I

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Speaker 1: guess we should start with the bee first, because obviously

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Speaker 1: the b pre dates ancient Egypt as a civilization, probably

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Speaker 1: not the land mass. So Robert, where do bees come from? Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, Joe. Let me tell you about

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Speaker 1: the bees. Uh. You'd have to travel back about a

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Speaker 1: hundred million, maybe a hundred thirty million years, depending on

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Speaker 1: who you're talking to, all the way back to the

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Speaker 1: Cretaceous period. Okay, you'd find dinosaurs roam to the earth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're going away back here, and you'd find a world

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Speaker 1: rather different than the one we're we encountered today. Uh,

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Speaker 1: devoid of flowering plants and occupied mostly by conifers, which

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Speaker 1: depend on the wind to spread their seats. Wow. Can

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Speaker 1: you imagine that? I mean a world where where reproduction

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Speaker 1: depends entirely on the whims of the weather. Like can

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Speaker 1: you imagine if animals Because trees can't walk around and

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Speaker 1: find each other to mate, they're stuck in place, trees

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Speaker 1: and bushes, you know, whatever you want. Plants are not

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Speaker 1: very mobile, so they essentially have to spray their reproductive

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Speaker 1: material into the air, just hoping it gets somewhere worthwhile

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Speaker 1: by chance. Yeah, indeed, this is just an earlier state,

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Speaker 1: and it's just the the the evolution of seed transfer.

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Speaker 1: So there are no flowers and there's certainly no pollination.

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Speaker 1: Now there were There were no bees at this point,

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Speaker 1: but there were wasps. And these wasps were also kind

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Speaker 1: of different from the wasps that we encounter today. They

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Speaker 1: were hymenoptera, the order that wasts some bees are. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: indeed they were, now they were, but they were carnivorous.

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Speaker 1: They preyed on spiders and other insects, and many of

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Speaker 1: which in turn fed on vegetation. Uh so along, So,

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Speaker 1: so we have a traffic going on here, all right.

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Speaker 1: Seeds are going into the air, the wasps are eating

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Speaker 1: the insects that live on the plants. But plant of

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Speaker 1: evolution eventually begins to make the most stat of this

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Speaker 1: constant insect traffic, using it like the wind, to carry

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Speaker 1: a genetic material from plant to plant, and this results

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Speaker 1: in the rise of angiosperms. These are plants that depend

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Speaker 1: on insects to spread genetic material and pollen from male

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Speaker 1: plant parts called anthers to female parts called stigmas. This

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Speaker 1: is one of those moments I often want to say, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: how smart that is, which it's like as if somebody

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Speaker 1: planned it. Now, of course it wasn't. These are just

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Speaker 1: the wonderful ingenuities of evolution acting upon the environment. But uh,

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Speaker 1: it's fascinating how things like this come about. So you

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Speaker 1: have to imagine a system where these plants are pollinating

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Speaker 1: by wind, but they have this this sperm the pollination

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Speaker 1: material I guess you would say pollen. Uh, And somehow

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Speaker 1: insects start getting this stuff on their bodies. Right, Essentially,

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Speaker 1: a new wind emerges and that wind is the movement

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Speaker 1: of these insects. And then, of course it once that

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Speaker 1: works out for long enough, plants sort of evolved traits

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Speaker 1: to specialize in that mode of transmission. It's no longer

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Speaker 1: an accident. It's how they work now. In indeed, you

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Speaker 1: see the the emergence of delicious nectar to sweeten the

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Speaker 1: deal for the pollen carrying insects, saying hey, come here,

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Speaker 1: get all nice and covered in polony and I'm totally

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Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing the entire process here. My apologies, but but yeah,

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Speaker 1: essentially bribing the insects with the with the the delicious

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Speaker 1: nectar to give them to carry the pollen, giving them

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Speaker 1: a specific reason to traffic the parts of the plant

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Speaker 1: where pollen is produced. So I can imagine if you're

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Speaker 1: some wasp DT thirty million years ago and you've been

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Speaker 1: hunting insects. That's that's tough work, you know, it's it's

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Speaker 1: really tough. Now, if you could just start getting all

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Speaker 1: of your meals from a passive plant that will sit

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Speaker 1: there and let you just lap up delicious sweet things

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Speaker 1: from its open maw, that I mean, what a nice deal. Yeah, yes,

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Speaker 1: suddenly there's this, there's this wonderful new way to get

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Speaker 1: the food you need. Now. Granted, they're still they're still

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Speaker 1: sort of tied to their predatory past, and indeed, today,

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Speaker 1: um you'll you have you can look at most common

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Speaker 1: wasps and they're depending upon upon nectar as their primary food.

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Speaker 1: But they still have to turn to their carnivorous ways

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Speaker 1: when it comes to rearing their young, implanting their young

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Speaker 1: in the belly half another creature that wasps. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is just a wonderful area that we have explored

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Speaker 1: in past podcast and I'm sure will return in the future.

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Speaker 1: Christian and I talked about it in our X Files episode. Yes,

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Speaker 1: of course, yeah, that parasitoid wasps are not only is

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Speaker 1: it just an endlessly fascinating area, but we just get

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Speaker 1: new studies each year with either a new type of

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Speaker 1: parasitoid wasps or some new details about a species we

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Speaker 1: are already familiar with. Yeah, so the wasps evolved to

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Speaker 1: to live off of what is provided by the plants,

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Speaker 1: and in an interesting way, I think we could think

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Speaker 1: about this as the plants domestic aiding livestock. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: plants have domesticated the live stock of insects in order

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Speaker 1: to do their bidding. And of course the wasps are

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Speaker 1: one thing, but it's the bees where we really see

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Speaker 1: this takeoff, because of course bees evolve from wasps, they're

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Speaker 1: all related. But the bees are actually they're getting the nectar,

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Speaker 1: they're bringing it back for their young. They're they're they're

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Speaker 1: they're they're creating honey, they're creating these uh, these these

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Speaker 1: waxy nests. They are completely beholden to the nectar. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they're no longer going out and the and and specifically

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Speaker 1: killing other creatures to rear their young. Okay, so when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about honey bees, true honey bees, that this

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Speaker 1: is the genus APIs, right, yes, and that's why we

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Speaker 1: also refer to it as uh is apriculture. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: bee keepingture, not the keeping of apes. A fun fact

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Speaker 1: to remember, by the way, next time you're adding a

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Speaker 1: dab of honey to your earl gray tea, is that

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Speaker 1: honey is bee bar right? Yes? Is how honey is produced.

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Speaker 1: It's produced by bees grabbing some sweet nectar, which is

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Speaker 1: pretty much sugar water from plants and then going through

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Speaker 1: a complex process of regurgitation and evaporation. Yeah, so they're

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Speaker 1: kind of uh distilling it, refining it through their their

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Speaker 1: just regigitation of the material, you know, And I should

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Speaker 1: I should also mentioned that, uh, when it comes to

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Speaker 1: two bees, we have bumble bees, we have stainless bees,

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Speaker 1: and we even have a few other non bee species

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Speaker 1: that produce honey and small amounts. But for the most part,

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Speaker 1: we're you know, we're dealing with those uh, those APIs

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Speaker 1: honey bees, which are the superstars, the generators of like

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Speaker 1: a true bounty and excess of honey, uh, in the

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Speaker 1: amount that it makes sense for humans to raise them

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Speaker 1: and pillage their stores. Now, when I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: I used to wonder how we eat honey? But I

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Speaker 1: know bees make honey. I did not know that they

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Speaker 1: barfed honey up for us. I didn't know that they

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Speaker 1: made honey, but I didn't know what they did with it.

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Speaker 1: I was why do they make it? Is it just?

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Speaker 1: What is it? What's it for? Did the bees themselves

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Speaker 1: eat the honey? Yeah, they stored as a primary food source.

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Speaker 1: They also eat what is called bee bread, which is

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Speaker 1: a semary cute name. Yeah. Yeah, it's essentially like a

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Speaker 1: pollen cake, you know. But yeah, the the honey is

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Speaker 1: a food source for the bee people, if you will. Um.

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Speaker 1: And they stored away in those waxy cells in the honeycomb.

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Speaker 1: But you mentioned wax. Of course, wax is another important

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Speaker 1: byproduct of bee culture. It's it's their second great technology. Yes, indeed,

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Speaker 1: and uh and the wax that the workers actually secrete

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Speaker 1: from specialized glands on the underside of their abdomens. Wait

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Speaker 1: what they secrete it? Yeah? Essentially, you know, you can

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Speaker 1: think of them as like wax nipples. I guess, um,

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Speaker 1: the bee. The bees have wax nipples and they put

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Speaker 1: out the wax. What it's a little flaky lipids for us. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they get the raw materials for this metabolized product

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Speaker 1: through the consumption of that honey and that be bread,

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Speaker 1: which we already mentioned and the bee bread. I should

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Speaker 1: also have have pointed out that it's essentially a collected

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Speaker 1: fermented pollen. So um, so these service there. So it

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Speaker 1: kind of goes around in a circle, right, the nectar,

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Speaker 1: the honey, the wax, this whole um, this whole little

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Speaker 1: little city for the insects built from the bounty of

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Speaker 1: the flowers. Yeah. Now, long before humans started formalized apriculture,

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Speaker 1: before they started making bee hives to keep bees in

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Speaker 1: to sort of have an agriculture of insects, they hunted honey. Right,

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Speaker 1: there was wild honey hunting. The same way you would

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Speaker 1: hunt game in the forest or on the savannah. You

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Speaker 1: could hunt honey just as it occurred in a bee

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Speaker 1: hive that might be hanging from a tree. And there

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Speaker 1: are actually ancient works of cave art that depict this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's still also honey hunting traditions that survived this day

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Speaker 1: and it's essentially the same thing a bear does. Right

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Speaker 1: of a bear breaks into a honey hive or a

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Speaker 1: honey badger, it goes after some some bees as well.

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Speaker 1: You just you find out where the hive is, you

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Speaker 1: locate it, and then you use the best skills at

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Speaker 1: your disposal to break in there and get as much

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Speaker 1: dripping honeycomb as possible and run off with it. Now,

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Speaker 1: Krisky's book has an illustration, or not an illustration. It

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Speaker 1: does have an illustration, but also a photo of this

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Speaker 1: great cave painting from Spain that seems to depict honey

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Speaker 1: hunting from How how old is this thing? Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: dates back seven thousand to eight thousand years, so that

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Speaker 1: gives us a rough estimate not not where it began,

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Speaker 1: but at least how far it probably goes. And so

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Speaker 1: what what's depicted in the painting is this great setup.

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Speaker 1: It looks like a scene from a movie where you've

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Speaker 1: got somebody hanging from a rope, apparently off a cliff,

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Speaker 1: being lowered down to an area where there's a tree

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Speaker 1: with a bees nest hanging off of it and reaching

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Speaker 1: in to grab the honey, and you can see bees

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Speaker 1: swarming around the person I mean that's a lot of

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Speaker 1: trust and whoever's holding the rope, right, yeah, and uh

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Speaker 1: and and and you know you're just getting just the

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Speaker 1: Jesus stung out of you the whole time. But it's

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Speaker 1: just such I mean, especially in the energy density and

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Speaker 1: connicity of that of that that score. I mean, this

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Speaker 1: stuff is just is pure gold, uh, nutritionally speaking, So

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Speaker 1: you're going to occasionally do what it takes to get

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Speaker 1: it and bring it back, not to mention the value

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Speaker 1: you're going to have bringing that stuff back to your community.

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Speaker 1: But I guess we should now look at when when

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Speaker 1: true apriculture started. When did we start having bee hives

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Speaker 1: where we sort of set up an enclosure and said

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Speaker 1: bees go live in there, here's where you should make

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Speaker 1: your homes. And they obeyed alright, So it's best we

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Speaker 1: can tell bee keeping probably emerged by accident, probably in

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Speaker 1: the fertile crescent um. And probably what you had happened

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Speaker 1: was you have human industries is creating all of these

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Speaker 1: different pots and containers, uh, for your various agricultural efforts,

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Speaker 1: and one might leave a pot hanging around some where unused.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly some bees come in, they take up a residence

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Speaker 1: in the pot, and this could theoretically serve as is

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Speaker 1: like the first accidental bee hive that's actually kept by

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Speaker 1: beekeepers and they realize, oh, bees will will will actually

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Speaker 1: build their nest in this, uh the spot if I

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Speaker 1: leave it out for them, there's a chance I'll have

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Speaker 1: my own captive honey. I've yeah, I mean talk about

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Speaker 1: turning a loss into a wind. So imagine you know,

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Speaker 1: you've got this jar that you were planning on keeping

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Speaker 1: full of urgad infested drye uh, and you go back

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Speaker 1: to get it and suddenly it's full of bees and

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Speaker 1: you're like, oh man, my plans are spoiled. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: get stung cleaning this thing out. But then you realize

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Speaker 1: you have access to all this sweet sweet honey. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And and not only the honey, but the wax. The

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Speaker 1: wax is key because uh, there is evidence of lost

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Speaker 1: wax castings uh dating back to thirty BC. Now, a

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Speaker 1: lost wax casting for anyone not familiar, this has to

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Speaker 1: do with, uh with a cast used to make uh

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Speaker 1: like a metal objects in which it's uh you build

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Speaker 1: like the clay or what have you around a wax

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Speaker 1: model of the thing you're going to build and then

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Speaker 1: you melt the wax out of there, and while you

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Speaker 1: have this mold which you can use to make metals.

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Speaker 1: It's a way of turning easily multiple wax into metal,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. Yeah. So the only thing here

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Speaker 1: is that you don't have to be a beekeeper to

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Speaker 1: get that wax. That wax could have been obtained through

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Speaker 1: honey hunting. We just don't know. Um. But when when

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Speaker 1: it comes to actually finding the the earliest evidence of

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Speaker 1: bee raising, of bee keeping, then you really have to

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Speaker 1: go to the Egyptians, to the ancient Egyptians. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: this would put us around three thousand b C. That's

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Speaker 1: five thousand years ago. Yeah. I mean it's amazing just

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Speaker 1: to consider, completely separate from the topic of beekeeping, how

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Speaker 1: enormously long ancient Egypt went on. Yeah, we're talking roughly.

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Speaker 1: You have five thousand years of of human history wound

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Speaker 1: up in the ancient Egyptians. U A a civilization that

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Speaker 1: after you know, even when it was going it was

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Speaker 1: it was an ancient civilization. Um. And of course it's

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Speaker 1: gonna it's impossible for us to summarize, you know, thousands

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Speaker 1: of years of ancient history. The EBB and flow of

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Speaker 1: political and social change here. Uh you know, in the

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Speaker 1: In the same way that Egyptian history is tied closely

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Speaker 1: to the Nile, so too is the region's history a long, twisting, swelling,

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Speaker 1: shrinking movement across the landscape of human history. But to summarize,

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Speaker 1: we're talking the civilization of ancient North Africa, generally attributed

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Speaker 1: to lasting from roughly thirty one hundred BC to three

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Speaker 1: twenty two uh. See, So that's talking about the transition

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Speaker 1: out of the Stone Age, out of the Nearithic period,

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Speaker 1: the beginning of large scale civilization in ancient Egypt until

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Speaker 1: the time I think they mark the end of it

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Speaker 1: with the time that the last hieroglyphic carvings were made

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Speaker 1: in Egypt. Yes, and made the one in three hundred

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Speaker 1: some things. He correct. Now. You can also some historians

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Speaker 1: um and and authors including gene Kritsky also go ahead

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Speaker 1: and include that Neolithic period, and that would put the

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Speaker 1: beginning around fifty BC. So that's where you would get

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Speaker 1: a total time period of around uh five thousand, one

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty three years of culture. Yeah. So for

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Speaker 1: those of you who think it's been forever since the

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Speaker 1: American Revolution or something, like that it is such a

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Speaker 1: tiny blip. Modern history is such a tiny blip in

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Speaker 1: humans who really dwarfs the modern age. So you know,

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Speaker 1: that's essentially at the time period we're talking about, and

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Speaker 1: during that time, the ancient Egyptians demonstrated their expertise of

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Speaker 1: a number of general and highly specialized categories and skills.

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Speaker 1: They were accomplished farmers and engineers. They were artists and linguists,

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Speaker 1: they were soldiers, they were astrologers, they were doctors, uh,

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Speaker 1: and and much more. I mean, everyone knows about the

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Speaker 1: Pyramids and various architectural marvel marvels that survived this day.

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Speaker 1: Everyone knows about the rich history of mummification, which we've

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Speaker 1: talked about here on this show before. But there's other

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Speaker 1: stuff just continues continually fascinates me when I read about it.

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Speaker 1: For instance, to find out that ancient Egyptians perform surgical

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Speaker 1: skin graphs as early as eight hundred BC UM and uh, indeed,

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Speaker 1: as we're discussing in this episode, that they practice uh

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Speaker 1: the earliest known examples of apriculture. Okay, well, once Egyptian

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Speaker 1: civilization is underway, once we've got our our dynasties and

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Speaker 1: our organized hierarchical civilization and culture. We we should look

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Speaker 1: at the role bees and honey played in that. And

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Speaker 1: one of the first things I think we can observe

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Speaker 1: is that there is a glyph in the ancient Egyptian

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Speaker 1: hieroglyphic language. It's one of their symbols. That's a honey bee.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, it's um. It chose up in some

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Speaker 1: of the earliest examples of ancient Egyptian writing. Um. In fact,

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Speaker 1: we we see it in use by the Old Kingdom

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Speaker 1: that's uh seven through And we probably shouldn't try to

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Speaker 1: get too much into talking about the different ages in Egypt,

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Speaker 1: but essentially there's an Old Kingdom that goes on for

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Speaker 1: a long time with many Pharaonic dynasties, and then there's

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Speaker 1: an intermediate period that's sort of like a Dark Age,

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Speaker 1: and then there is a Middle Kingdom, and then there's

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Speaker 1: another break in that there's another intermediate period, and then

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Speaker 1: there's a new Kingdom, and then of course there's the

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Speaker 1: Greco Roman period. But but essentially coming into the Middle Age. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but but essentially at this point, just think of this

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Speaker 1: that the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx are there, they're

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Speaker 1: relatively newly constructed, and there's evidence already that the Egyptians

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Speaker 1: had at that point, uh, mastered to some degree beekeeping

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Speaker 1: and we're producing honey. Okay. Yeah. According to u Kritsky

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Speaker 1: here there's evidence from around this point that you actually

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Speaker 1: had a role in the in the governmental structure known

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Speaker 1: as the seiler of honey. There's an individual who was

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Speaker 1: the seiler of honey, and this at least suggests either

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Speaker 1: very organized honey hunting or quite possibly the beginnings of

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Speaker 1: industrialized um beekeeping. You know, I love this title that

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Speaker 1: you see throughout ancient Egypt, the seiler, Yeah, the person

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Speaker 1: who seals and that that abuse an authority. Yeah. It

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Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of our recent episode on the

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Speaker 1: INCA and we talked about the importance within a government,

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Speaker 1: with importance with an empire, of of having a way

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Speaker 1: to of course record uh you know, amounts when it

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Speaker 1: comes to goods, the the price of goods, the exchange

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Speaker 1: of goods, and then also being able to to seal

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Speaker 1: it and say this is what is contained within and

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Speaker 1: uh and someone is accountable for it. Yeah. It's a

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Speaker 1: very wonderful physical metaphor for having the fine a word

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Speaker 1: on something. But so we do see in ancient Egypt

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Speaker 1: the evidence of the first organized beekeeping, right. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: the current earliest known evidence takes us uh to uh

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Speaker 1: around uh hundred and thirteen b C. And specifically it

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Speaker 1: takes us to the solar Temple chasup Be brit So

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Speaker 1: what we have here within the ruins of this solar temple,

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Speaker 1: that's again it's it's devoted to to ray. We see

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Speaker 1: decorative color reliefs that show off scenes of desert wildlife, boating,

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Speaker 1: and bee keeping. Yeah, and it's got these different vignettes

385
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Speaker 1: that actually showed the stage. I mean, it's not just

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Speaker 1: sort of like a cartoon like, oh, here are some

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Speaker 1: people beekeeping it. It's sort of uh comprehensive. It shows

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Speaker 1: the different steps you take in order to do the

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Speaker 1: main jobs of a beekeeper. Yeah, and uh, there's a

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Speaker 1: certain amount of interpretation that has to take place in

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Speaker 1: figuring out exactly what they're showing and exactly what those

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Speaker 1: of vignettes are showing. They especially because some parts of

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Speaker 1: it are missing. Yeah, some parts are missing and row

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Speaker 1: damage and uh and depending on what's going on there,

395
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:13,399
Speaker 1: you know that that ends up impacting our understanding of

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Speaker 1: exactly how advanced they were, so for instance, that there's

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Speaker 1: one of the vignettes in particular, represents a man either

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Speaker 1: using a smoker to control the bees or he's calling

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Speaker 1: a queen to enter a jug. Now, either one of

400
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:32,440
Speaker 1: those options is very interesting, and we should talk about

401
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Speaker 1: what that actually means, to to smoke the bees or

402
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Speaker 1: to call the queen. Yeah, the smoking thing. I think

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Speaker 1: most people are familiar with this because if you've seen

404
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Speaker 1: any footage or just or even just in the course

405
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Speaker 1: of your life, if you've seen beekeeping, you've probably seen

406
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Speaker 1: people using a smoker because the smoke, uh, calms the bees.

407
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:51,920
Speaker 1: That's a nice way. That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah,

408
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:54,399
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's a weapon you get to use

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Speaker 1: against the bees so you can pillage their goods. It's

410
00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: like saying tear gas calms the crowd. Yeah, yeah, but

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Speaker 1: it works. And when you try and figure out exactly

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Speaker 1: how this came about, you know, who knows. Somebody was

413
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Speaker 1: getting stung by bees and they leveled their torch at

414
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 1: them and they noticed the smoke helped, or perhaps one

415
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 1: was making a burnt offering, and they found that the

416
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 1: instanse uh, the smoke from the incense calmed the bees. Uh,

417
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:22,880
Speaker 1: you know, they're a couple of different ins there. Now

418
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Speaker 1: the calling is also a fascinating possibility whichever one he's

419
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Speaker 1: doing here. If he's calling, it seems to be that

420
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Speaker 1: he's got to bee hive up to his face and

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Speaker 1: he's making sounds with his mouth into the beehive to

422
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Speaker 1: get the bees to do something, which which is just amazing. Now,

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Speaker 1: how exactly would this work? What would he be doing? Well,

424
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 1: it's known as is piping, and uh, it's it's a

425
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: very real thing, and it's also still practiced in some

426
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:53,440
Speaker 1: beekeeping traditions, especially in Egypt to this day. Like even

427
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 1: despite all that has fallen away from ancient Egypt and

428
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 1: modern Egyptian culture, you still see some of these traditional

429
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 1: beekeeping practices that are utilized there. So essentially what's happening

430
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 1: here is a bee keeper mimics the queen's audible communication,

431
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,399
Speaker 1: so that the queen is pushing her thorax against the

432
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 1: honeycomb and vibrating her wing muscles without moving her wings. Uh,

433
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,880
Speaker 1: and it creates this um. It's a it's a a

434
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: a long tone followed by a series of short bursts.

435
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 1: And I've heard it described as zeep zeep, zeep. There's

436
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: also a cack cack, yeah right, yeah, yeah, so they're

437
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: there are different tones that the bees make to one

438
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 1: another to communicate, to signal essentially what they need to

439
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: do in the next stage of a reproductive process, like

440
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: if a if a young queen is within the nest right,

441
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:47,680
Speaker 1: and specifically here, my understanding is that what the bee

442
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: caller is doing is creating the sound of an emergent

443
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: virgin queen, and then that would cause the existing monarch

444
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: or another emergent queen to come forward and fight hor

445
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: her and try to kill her. Uh calling her out? Yeah,

446
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: calling her out. So you're you're manipulating the bees speaking

447
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 1: their language in order to draw the queen away so

448
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 1: that you can put her in a bottle, move her

449
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:17,000
Speaker 1: to another hive, and use her presence to manipulate the

450
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: uh your creation of new hives or just moving the

451
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 1: existing hive. Yeah. So, just the idea of of a

452
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:27,159
Speaker 1: human being able to make bee sounds to talk to

453
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,159
Speaker 1: the bees is fascinating on its own. Also that they

454
00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 1: figured this out in ancient Egypt. But there are other

455
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:38,640
Speaker 1: techniques displayed at newer sarah Any's Solar temple as well. Right, Yeah,

456
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: there's another vignette that seems like it shows a man

457
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: pouring something from a spout. So this might be honey

458
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: taken from the hive. It might be honey that's just

459
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: separated from the wax. They might be deluding it. Um,

460
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:55,159
Speaker 1: we're deluding the honey honey with water. And I remember

461
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 1: reading in Krinsky's book that that that some have commented

462
00:26:57,960 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 1: on this and thought, well, maybe they were making meat

463
00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 1: or or something. Um, you know, because you can of

464
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: course take honey and create an alcoholic beverage from it,

465
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: but there's apparently no real evidence that that's what was

466
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:11,159
Speaker 1: actually taking place here. Though they apparently did add honey,

467
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: perhaps in deluded form, to their alcohol. Yeah, so they

468
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 1: sweetened wine or beer with it, but they didn't make

469
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,880
Speaker 1: meat as far as we know. As far as we know. Yeah, now,

470
00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: looking at these vignettes, I wanted to observe something that

471
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:28,240
Speaker 1: struck me as quite strange. Throughout this book and so

472
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: meaning throughout ancient Egypt, there are lots of pictures of bees.

473
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,639
Speaker 1: I mean, this makes sense because we have this b glyph,

474
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: this standard be illustrations, part of the hieroglyphic language. You

475
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 1: know the written language system, but there are also all

476
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: these illustrations of bees that appear in vignettes and carvings

477
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 1: throughout ancient Egypt, depicting a swarm of bees, or a

478
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 1: bee next to a jar showing that the jar has

479
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: honey in it, or in these beekeeping scenes. And I

480
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: noticed very often it looks to me like these bees

481
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:03,399
Speaker 1: do not have correct number of legs. Indeed, yeah, and

482
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:05,160
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't want to be pedantic here,

483
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: but often you see the bees with four legs, or

484
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 1: you see them with three legs. I can understand the

485
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: three legs, because we know insects have six legs. The

486
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 1: three legs maybe you're just seeing one side of the bee,

487
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 1: so each leg stands for a pair. But the ones

488
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:23,679
Speaker 1: where it shows four legs or maybe five legs, like

489
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: four forward legs and one back legs sticking out, those

490
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:30,800
Speaker 1: are strange to me, especially since there's like no animal

491
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: on Earth that has an odd number of legs. But anyway,

492
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,959
Speaker 1: this four legged ancient be sort of it rang a

493
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: bell vaguely in the back of my mind, and I

494
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: was like, where do I know that concept from before?

495
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: And it was it was it was saying to me

496
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: go back to Sunday school. So I did. I checked

497
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,719
Speaker 1: it out. I looked in the Bible and bingo in

498
00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: the Bible. In in the the Hebrew Bible, in Leviticus

499
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 1: eleven twenty to twenty three, we read about four legged

500
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: insects in a part of the ancient Hebrew dietary restrictions.

501
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: So I just want to read the selection of Leviticus

502
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: from the New American Standard translation. This is referring to

503
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: which insects that are koshure, yeah, which you can and

504
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: can't eat? And so the translation reads like this, all

505
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: the winged insects that walk on all fours are detestable

506
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: to you. Yet these you may eat. Among the winged

507
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: insects which walk on all fours, those which have above

508
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: their feet jointed legs with which to jump on the earth.

509
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 1: These of them you may eat. The locust and its kinds,

510
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 1: and the devastating locusts and its kinds, and the cricket

511
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: in its kinds, and the grasshopper in its kinds. But

512
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:44,360
Speaker 1: all other winged insects which are four footed, are detestable

513
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: to you. Now, obviously I'm not trying to like hammer

514
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 1: these ancient people, like what a bunch of dummies. I mean,

515
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:54,880
Speaker 1: they weren't dummies. You wouldn't expect either the ancient Egyptian

516
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: artists who created the Solar Temple carving or any of

517
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: these other carvings and illustrations. Uh, Nor would you expect

518
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: the Jewish author who wrote this part of Leviticus to

519
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: be some kind of entomologists studying bees up close and

520
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: locusts to see how many legs they have. Right, there's

521
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: a division in Egyptian society, and the individuals who are

522
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: who of keeping the bees are probably separate from those

523
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: that are actually carving the hieroglyphics. Yeah. So I'm certainly

524
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: not saying that they're stupid they should have known better,

525
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: But but it just did seem like an interesting coincidence

526
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: that multiple ancient people's would get this wrong. And also,

527
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: as I kept reading in the book, I came across

528
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: more art that depicted bees this way is on this

529
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: Old Kingdom seal amulet, on a Middle Kingdom Scarab carving,

530
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: And so it just made me wonder, is there a

531
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 1: widespread belief in the ancient Near East that insects had

532
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: four legs? Well, you know, after you brought this to

533
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 1: my attention. I was looking around a little about it,

534
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: and certainly there's there's a lot of just pointless information

535
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,239
Speaker 1: out there, with people either using this as as an

536
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: argument against UH religion and against the Bible, saying, hey,

537
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: they got the number of legs on a on a

538
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:06,080
Speaker 1: on a grasshopp or long, how wrong? How can you

539
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: trust anything? Yeah? I read in Food and Culture a

540
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: Reader by Carol Counahan and Penny than Estric that that

541
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: possibly the I mean, the biblical distinction here is more

542
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: about insects that walk versus those that that fly or

543
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: at least kind of have that live in that area

544
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 1: between true flight and UH and walking. So in that

545
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 1: case he would be saying something like the saying having

546
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,880
Speaker 1: four legs or going on all fours, which the Bible

547
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 1: passage says, in which these b images indicate, it's not

548
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: really about counting the number of legs. It's more just

549
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: kind of like this is in the category of things

550
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: that crawl, right, that it's a land animal and that

551
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 1: but bees fly, bees fly, so they're okay. So it's

552
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: more like saying, don't eat that the insect land animals.

553
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:59,239
Speaker 1: But then another thing that comes to mind here is

554
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 1: just the law of conservation of detail, which is the

555
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: reason that everybody and the Simpsons would only have four

556
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 1: digits on each hand. And why you do see a

557
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: number of bees and other insects and cartoons that have

558
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 1: the wrong number of limbs, because ultimately, when you're recreating

559
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: these things that are on a smaller, unreal scale, you

560
00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 1: are forced to to use an inaccurate number of limbs

561
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: or digits. Oh well, that seems like a very logical

562
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: explanation to me, especially for the the illustrations of the bees. Yeah,

563
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 1: and certainly worth remembering for future alien civilizations that come

564
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: to our plan and try and figure out the Simpsons

565
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: what is what are they trying to tell us? What?

566
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: What is with the fingers? So um, it's first of all,

567
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to just discuss the importance of of

568
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: honey as a trade good. I was really fascinated by this,

569
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: uh because it's it's Critsky points out Egyptian societies didn't

570
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: a society didn't really have a currency. I mean they

571
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: sort of did. They didn't have a physical currency. They

572
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: had like they had an ideal currency which they would

573
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: use to Essentially, the way it worked is you had

574
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:15,080
Speaker 1: a measure of a certain metal like copper, and then

575
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: you would have certain quantities of that copper, but you

576
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually hold the copper in your hand. So if

577
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 1: you were owed, for example, five debans of copper, you

578
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: would be paid five debans of copper worth of grain

579
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, And there would be there

580
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: would also be cases where if you were supposed to

581
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 1: pay or be paid in grain and they could not

582
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 1: have the grain, you might pay in honey. So honey

583
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:43,760
Speaker 1: in a in a sense was the currency. Yeah. But

584
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: and it was valuable when I understand, and that value

585
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:48,239
Speaker 1: would go up and down, but it was it was

586
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: a valuable commodity. It wasn't something that everybody beating all

587
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: the time. It was sort of a luxury food item. Yeah,

588
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: a luxury food item as well as will discuss an

589
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: item that is that is utilized in medicine and magic.

590
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: So you're saying honey was money, Yeah, honey was money.

591
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: And since honey was money, honey was of course also

592
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:11,920
Speaker 1: an industry, a state run industry. Um that they were

593
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,399
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians were a civil organization, and that's how

594
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:17,319
Speaker 1: they that's how they built their wonders, that's how they

595
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: made their honey. They had a system of beekeepers, overseers,

596
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: overseers to to look over those overseers. They're just a

597
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:28,320
Speaker 1: whole um, you know, system, uh, to regulate the production

598
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: of honey and then ultimately the trade of honey with

599
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,879
Speaker 1: other with other cultures. But of course the honey also

600
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: had a great spiritual significance within Egyptian religion and their

601
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: their their priesthood and their mythology. Right. Yeah, I mean

602
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: we we already talked about the tears of ray. The

603
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: bee is the tear of ray, and the sun god

604
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:49,879
Speaker 1: cries and his his tears become a gift to us

605
00:34:49,920 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: that gives us this sweet, sweet food. Yeah, it is uh.

606
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:56,800
Speaker 1: It is the the product of a of a holy

607
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:00,279
Speaker 1: animal to the ancient Egyptians and certainly to I mean,

608
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:03,280
Speaker 1: it's gold, and it glistens when the sunlight hits it.

609
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: It appears to clothe you. Can you can easily imagine

610
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,799
Speaker 1: just carrying a little of your your symbolic, magical understanding

611
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 1: of the world into your your contemplation of honey. It's

612
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:17,959
Speaker 1: just it's this this potent perfect thing. Now. Of course,

613
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, we often see an association between

614
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:25,839
Speaker 1: healing and religious ritual that it's very likely in an

615
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 1: ancient culture that you might find the medicines and the

616
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: doctor is sort of overlapping with the priesthood and the

617
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: sacred rights. There wasn't always so much of a distinction

618
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 1: between science based medicine and magic based medicine, and you

619
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:43,320
Speaker 1: certainly see that come through with honey because honey actually

620
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 1: does have known medical uses that are truly effective. Uh.

621
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 1: It was also used as a you know, a sort

622
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: of functional medicine, but also as a magical medicine in

623
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt. That's right. Yeah, I mean we're in a

624
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:00,760
Speaker 1: we're in a situation where the best mind, they're using

625
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: the materials at hand to try and treat injuries and disease.

626
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:06,799
Speaker 1: Some of it is working, some of it is sort

627
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: of working, some of it's not working, but maybe it

628
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: seems to work, and some of it just feels right

629
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:14,600
Speaker 1: within the uh, you know, the framework of their worldview.

630
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:19,200
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that Egyptian physicians who were at the

631
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:21,320
Speaker 1: time were considered some of the best in the world.

632
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:24,839
Speaker 1: Like this was again in ancient Egypt. You found skin

633
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: drafts taking place. Um, so an Egyptian physician would treat

634
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 1: a wound. But they would also give you a wax

635
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: amulet to burn. Uh. And and this is key because

636
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 1: because because you take the wax, all right, you make

637
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: a candle from the wax or just this amulet, and

638
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: when it burns, it burns up brightly, and it burns

639
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: up completely, So symbolically and by extension magically, it consumes

640
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 1: the illness, burning completely. Mean there's no ash left, no

641
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: ash at all. I mean, so there's this almost a

642
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: magical quality to that. You'd expect ash from all of

643
00:36:57,719 --> 00:36:59,839
Speaker 1: the other burning you do in your normal life. I mean,

644
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:02,800
Speaker 1: we all burn a lot of things, but there's always

645
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: some evidence left behind. If you can burn this wax

646
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: figuring up completely, something does seem very otherworldly about that. Yeah,

647
00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: and you burn it. You burn this thing that is

648
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: made from the substance that comes from the creature that

649
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 1: in turn came from the God of the sun. Now,

650
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,800
Speaker 1: speaking of the sacred or religious aspects, I couldn't pardon

651
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 1: me this indulgence, but I could not help but notice

652
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: that sort of understanding. The science behind the emergence of

653
00:37:28,719 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 1: beekeeping is to see the biological evolution of a trinity

654
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: between three organisms. So you've got your auto trophes, your pollinators,

655
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 1: and your domesticators. The auto trophes are the plants, you know,

656
00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 1: these are the creators of the energy in this chain,

657
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: and they create nectar from sunlight, so they turned the

658
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: sunlight photo energy into sugar. Then the pollinators, the bees

659
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,279
Speaker 1: in a way or sort of the redeemers, they convert this, uh,

660
00:37:56,320 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: this scant nectar that the plants produce through a process

661
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 1: of sacred barfing, into very highly concentrated and prized, valuable honey.

662
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:09,479
Speaker 1: And then of course the domesticators, which are the human

663
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 1: beekeepers are I would think of them sort of as

664
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:15,280
Speaker 1: like the order, the logos that holds this whole system

665
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: in place. And in biological terms, it's a three way symbiosis.

666
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: It's three ways that organisms are all interacting and all

667
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: benefiting from the system. And in terms of the religious context,

668
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,560
Speaker 1: you've got this trinity. And I was just trying to

669
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 1: think of other cases in the natural world where we

670
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: see domestication taking this form of a three way symbiosis.

671
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, like grass converts sunlight into chemical energy

672
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 1: and then our cattle eat that. But I don't know

673
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 1: if you'd say that symbiotic for the grass, like does

674
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 1: the grass benefit from being eaten by cattle in the

675
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: same way that the plants benefit from being pollinated by

676
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: the bees. Yeah, I was, I was trying to think

677
00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: of any other examples earlier, and you know, I think

678
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: you can sort of stretch it and apply it to

679
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: to to other organisms, but it's it's hard to think

680
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: of an example where it applies so perfectly and so,

681
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:15,399
Speaker 1: you know, just so you know, symbolically. But anyway, let's

682
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: get back to bees wax and some some ancient apicultural voodoo. Okay, yeah,

683
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: so um yeah, So they're using bees wax for a

684
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 1: number of things, not just magical. They're using it as

685
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:28,839
Speaker 1: an adhesive, they're using it as an embalming agent, light

686
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: source in the form of candles, and artistic medium. Um.

687
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 1: But but magic is where it really shines. So it's

688
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: it's malleable, it doesn't break down in water, it doesn't

689
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 1: discolor unless you put it out in the sun. And

690
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: that actually makes perfect and it makes it work perfectly

691
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 1: within their magical thinking, right because the rays of ray

692
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: will actually change the color of the sacred sculpture. Uh.

693
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: And it also doesn't lose its shape after being molded

694
00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:59,799
Speaker 1: into its desired form, So you know, wax figures that

695
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: last for centuries when they are actually stored away. One

696
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: of the problems here is that since so many of

697
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:10,400
Speaker 1: these wax figures from from the Egyptians, they were made

698
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: to burn. So a lot of them were burned. So

699
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: you know, you you find some in tombs here and there,

700
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: but but you know, but but certainly the vast majority

701
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,360
Speaker 1: of of the the amulets and statuettes that were created

702
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:26,799
Speaker 1: were consumed by fire. It's it's the same reason that

703
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: the future generations of archaeologists aren't going to find all

704
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: that many intact pin yatas to study from our culture exactly.

705
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: So there are a few different different accounts that that

706
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: that Kritsky rolls through that that that help help us

707
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: understand the use of these wax uh magical icons. So

708
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: the Salt Papyrus, that's the one that that original quote

709
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 1: was from, about the tears of Ray. It describes how

710
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 1: wax quote could be used to ensure the destruction of Seth,

711
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: the god of confusion, to order in violence and the

712
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: murderer of Osiris unquote. So simply you'd make a bees

713
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 1: wax likeness of your enemy and you burn them to

714
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:13,759
Speaker 1: quote kill the name of Seth. That is too cool. Yeah,

715
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: I mean it's like I want to do that right now. Yeah,

716
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: this principle is just too good. And it doesn't just

717
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: work for destruction. It can work multiple ways. You might say,

718
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 1: the wax magic go. It's a two way street. Because

719
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: there's one great story in the Tears of Ray also

720
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: that that recounts the Twelfth Dynasty myth of a priest

721
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:38,879
Speaker 1: and named web Owner, not Webinar, but web Owner. Yeah.

722
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:42,720
Speaker 1: I kept reading in my head it's Webinar to who

723
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:47,480
Speaker 1: and like, like webinars, this guy has some nefarious intentions.

724
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: He makes a wax crocodile and then he throws it

725
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: into a pond where his wife's lover is having a

726
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: nice bath. And then the wax crocodile comes to life,

727
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: eats the person, and then vanishes. And then the priest

728
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: comes back and can summon the crocodile from the pond

729
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:09,439
Speaker 1: and turn it back into wax. Yeah, and he does

730
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: so in the presence of the Pharaoh. And then the

731
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:15,960
Speaker 1: Pharaoh observes this and says uh. And after after observing

732
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 1: this magic, says, oh, well, you're right, there's the lover

733
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: right there. Um oh wait, yeah, so he turned the

734
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: sentence him too death. Sorry we should have said, he

735
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 1: turns it back into wax, and that what it It

736
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:29,319
Speaker 1: vomits up the lover. Yeah. And and then the pharaoh says, well,

737
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:32,359
Speaker 1: there's the lover. Your story checks out. I sentenced him

738
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: to death. And so then, uh, the priest here turns

739
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 1: the wax crocodile back into a real crocodile. It eats

740
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:43,760
Speaker 1: the lover and this time vanishes for good into the water.

741
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: So that that is a great myth. That is awesome. Yeah,

742
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean, you have statues becoming real

743
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 1: creatures and then turning back into statues and it's a

744
00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 1: it's it's a fun one. In addition to these stories,

745
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:03,360
Speaker 1: though again he we do find wax amulets, including as

746
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 1: offering tables, winged sun discs, uh tiets which your iis,

747
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 1: symbols and collars. Also animals, such as one of the hippo,

748
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 1: which it said can can be destroyed in order to

749
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 1: slaughter an actual hippo. What you can burn the wax

750
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: hippo to kill the real hip. Yeah. Some more of this,

751
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 1: the symbolic magic of burning the uh, the likeness in

752
00:43:26,640 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: order to harm or destroy the actual thing. You wonder

753
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 1: how ideas like that persisted if they if they have

754
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 1: a guarantee. I feel like some some ambiguity had to

755
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,120
Speaker 1: be built into it, because otherwise people would kind of

756
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: observe that they were burning wax hippos and not killing

757
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:46,840
Speaker 1: their hippo every time. Yeah, I'm thinking it had to.

758
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 1: You would probably something you would do in addition to

759
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: taking direct physical action against the hippo. Oh, I can

760
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: see that. Yeah, like it increases your chances of defeating

761
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 1: the hippo with a spear. Yeah. Because there's also a

762
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: thirteenth Dynasty myth that alleges that the pharaoh neck and

763
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:09,240
Speaker 1: Ebo used rituals and tailing little wax ships to secure

764
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 1: victories against the Persians. And there's not a lot of

765
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: additional data there, but I can either imagine it a

766
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: as a as a ritual that's carried out in addition

767
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:21,800
Speaker 1: to military action as a way to sort of bless

768
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: your military action, or I couldn't in the back of

769
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: my mind, I couldn't help but think, well, maybe this

770
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:29,360
Speaker 1: guy just had like wax models of his units and

771
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 1: it was like war gaming it out on the table

772
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:36,439
Speaker 1: before him. And perhaps maybe an onlooker thought, hey, he's

773
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,480
Speaker 1: practicing magic here. Clearly he's using little likenesses of the

774
00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:43,719
Speaker 1: ships in order to magically secure victory. Well, there there

775
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,400
Speaker 1: is a lot of ambiguity, as we've been saying, between

776
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,959
Speaker 1: functional uses and magical uses. And this definitely comes through

777
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:54,359
Speaker 1: as as we mentioned earlier, in medicine, because like we said,

778
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:57,280
Speaker 1: they do use honey for a lot of medical practices,

779
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: honey and bees wax both. Yeah, apparently they're they're over

780
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: five hundred documented uh prescriptions that use honey and um.

781
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's just about making the thing

782
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,240
Speaker 1: that you're eating more palatable. You know, it's a spoonful

783
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: of sugar to make the medicine go down. That's not

784
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 1: to be discounted. I mean, that is legitimate medical technology

785
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: if it eases the if it eases the application of

786
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: a medicine, and in other times it is you know,

787
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:27,400
Speaker 1: an active ingredient in the medication. Yeah, there is one

788
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:29,439
Speaker 1: thing I had to relate from the book that talks

789
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,040
Speaker 1: about how the the Evers Papyrus. You know, this famous

790
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: papyrus from ancient Egypt described several ways of treating constipation,

791
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: which it calls quote to open the belly, which I

792
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:42,279
Speaker 1: don't know. When I pictured that, I see, uh what

793
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 1: it is described in Jurassic Park that the velociraptor does

794
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:48,840
Speaker 1: with its claw, you know, split spills your intestines out everywhere.

795
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 1: But no, this this is the cure constipation. So one

796
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 1: of the cures it offers for constipation is this. You

797
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 1: get some milk, you get some honey, and you get

798
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: notched sycamore figs. Then you boil all that mix you're down,

799
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: and then you run it through a strainer and then

800
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:07,720
Speaker 1: you drink this for four days. And apparently it worked

801
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: pretty well at caring constipation. But it worked a little

802
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: too well because some patients had their constipation so decisively

803
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 1: cured that they ended up with a pro lapsed anus. Uh.

804
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: And so what do you do to help this poor

805
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 1: patient that now has a pro lapsed anus. Well, you

806
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 1: mix up a bomb of salt, oil and honey and

807
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:30,280
Speaker 1: then you apply directly to the anus for another four days.

808
00:46:30,680 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 1: So again the use of honey. The honey makes the

809
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:35,359
Speaker 1: anus go out. The honey makes the anus come back in,

810
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:38,040
Speaker 1: or maybe it doesn't make it come back in, but

811
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 1: maybe it just eases some of the discomfort us and

812
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 1: it it's certainly it's even modern studies have documented the

813
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 1: use of of honey as a way to to treat

814
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 1: cuts and burns, to alleviate the symptoms and the pain

815
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: they're in. Yeah, it has legitimate medical potential. Yeah, as

816
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 1: um As Kritsky points out in his book, it has

817
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:05,840
Speaker 1: osmotic potential. So it's you know, it's this this viscous

818
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: um substance. There's not a lot of liquid in there,

819
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: so it can actually suck the fluid out of bacteria

820
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: and in doing so less than bacterial infections. I mean,

821
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: honey has natural antimicrobial properties. Yeah. Um. I think part

822
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: of this is just due to its pH right as

823
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 1: low pH, meaning it's acidic, but it also has other

824
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 1: chemical properties that's right, um, anti microbial activity, and most

825
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: honeyes is due to the enzymatic production of hydrogen peroxi. Okay,

826
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 1: so the fizzy stuff. Yeah. And I mean additionally to

827
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 1: you're you're putting honey on a wound, it it can

828
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:44,319
Speaker 1: it can maintain it maintains a moist wound condition. That

829
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: high viscosity helps to provide a protective barrier to prevent infection.

830
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 1: If your wound is caked in honey. Uh, nothing's necessarily

831
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:55,919
Speaker 1: going to get through that that honey layer on top,

832
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 1: as delicious as it may seem. And uh, you know

833
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: in many warts, um many reports out there of of

834
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:05,840
Speaker 1: of honey being used very effectively as addressing for wounds, burns,

835
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 1: skin ulcers, and inflammations. Uh, with the the antibacterial properties

836
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: of honey speeding up the growth of new tissue to

837
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: heal the wound. Studies have actually found that the honey

838
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:20,840
Speaker 1: can reduce healing times in patients suffering mild to moderate

839
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:23,759
Speaker 1: burn wounds. That's cool, yeah, But of course, getting back

840
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 1: to the ancient world, the Ebbers papyrus also has some

841
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: other recommendations because it does prescribe honey for treating urinary

842
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 1: problems if you p too much or if it hurts

843
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 1: when you do. Mixtures containing honey were recommended. I don't

844
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:38,440
Speaker 1: know to what extent that actually would have been effective,

845
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: or if it was, if the honey was what was

846
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: responsible for it. But the honey also was used in

847
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: a mixture of some genuinely gross sounding prophylactic devices for contraception.

848
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 1: Other ingredients were things like crocodile feces and sour milk

849
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: and essentially it's a female condom made out of this

850
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 1: the grossest combination of substances you can find, but included honey.

851
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And I know, Kritsky points out that

852
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:09,279
Speaker 1: it's possible some studies have suggested that the sour milk

853
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: could have actually had spermocidal properties to it, so this

854
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:16,719
Speaker 1: may have been partially effective. But this is not a

855
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:20,120
Speaker 1: recommendation that you try any of these mixtures at home. Yeah,

856
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:22,760
Speaker 1: don't do not, do not try this at home. Um.

857
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 1: You know. Of course, in talking about all of this too,

858
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,080
Speaker 1: the placebo effect has to be huge too, because we've

859
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: discussed how that this sort of Uh. I think you've

860
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: brought it up that the something happened scenario, right, you

861
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: felt something, right, Uh. In this case, you could just

862
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:40,879
Speaker 1: be that the sweet sensation of of tasting honey. Yeah.

863
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: I've actually mentioned before. This is something that comes up

864
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: a lot on another podcast I listened to sometimes called Sawbones, Yeah,

865
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: where they talk about weird applications of medicine throughout history.

866
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: In fact, my wife Rachel told me that they have

867
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: an episode on Honey. I haven't had a chance to

868
00:49:56,680 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 1: listen to it, but we should. We should check that out.

869
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:01,320
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I would love to hear because I I

870
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 1: know of of a few other uses of honey uh

871
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:07,239
Speaker 1: in in medicine that are kind of strange. But I

872
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:12,320
Speaker 1: would love to hear a complete overall examination of different

873
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: cultures in their use of honey. Yeah, and and those

874
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 1: guys are always pretty funny, so that should be a

875
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: good one, alright. So we have talked about the healing

876
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:25,319
Speaker 1: power of honey, the magical use of honey, the bee

877
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:28,880
Speaker 1: keeping techniques that the ancient Egyptians seemed to utilize to

878
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 1: get the honey and the wax from the bees, and

879
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,240
Speaker 1: before that, we talked about the way the bees produce

880
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: honey to begin with, and why they evolved into this

881
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: curious state. I really am fascinated by the emergence of

882
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: apriculture as as just one incarnation of agriculture and the

883
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:49,800
Speaker 1: domestication of animals as a technology in human history, because

884
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 1: I think this is often overlooked when thinking about what

885
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 1: technology is. I think of technology these days, and I

886
00:50:56,080 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: just think of electronics, and I always have to remember

887
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:01,919
Speaker 1: to on in my mind, and and if I try

888
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: to broaden my mind, I go from electronics to other

889
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: mechanical inanimate objects that we use as tools to accomplish

890
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:12,880
Speaker 1: goals in smart ways, but it really shouldn't even just

891
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:16,880
Speaker 1: be inanimate objects, because really the control of other living

892
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:21,319
Speaker 1: organisms to accomplish goals should be thought of as a technology.

893
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 1: And I think this is one of the most complex

894
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 1: and fascinating ones that we have. That we've created a

895
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 1: relationship with a symbiotic relationship in nature that already exists

896
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: between flowers and bees and made it work to our advantage.

897
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: There's something very beautiful and very weird about that. If

898
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: you can just step back for a moment and look

899
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: at this as an alien, would uh that we keep

900
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 1: insects in containers that fertilize the plants that grow all

901
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: over the earth and make sweet food and medicine for us. Yeah,

902
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: it's crazy and it's uh and and indeed it is

903
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: a true technology, and it's one that, like like the Pyramids,

904
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:04,839
Speaker 1: has stood the test of times. As the Kritzky points out,

905
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: you can you can find traditional Egyptian beekeepers to this

906
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 1: day that are using some of the same techniques that

907
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:14,399
Speaker 1: that that would have been used in ancient times. Yeah,

908
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: and I think this is just one more example of

909
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: something that I think is sort of a recent theme

910
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: on this show. Something we like to talk about that

911
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: um that that ancient cultures or cultures that are pre

912
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: modern technology, before electronics, before uh, you know, steam powered

913
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: industry or anything like that. We're not stupid. I think

914
00:52:34,040 --> 00:52:36,200
Speaker 1: it's easy for people to think, oh, that they didn't

915
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:38,160
Speaker 1: have any of the technology we have, they must have

916
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:41,440
Speaker 1: been dumb. They weren't at all. They were amazingly clever.

917
00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 1: I think, in many ways, probably more clever than us

918
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: because they didn't have as much easy uh, they didn't

919
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 1: have an easy foothold like we did to make new advances,

920
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 1: so that they were working with what they had and

921
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,120
Speaker 1: and when you see the innovations they came up with,

922
00:52:57,400 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 1: it's astounding. Indeed. So hey, let's go ahead and get

923
00:53:02,000 --> 00:53:05,640
Speaker 1: uh Mr Chritsky on the phone here and we will

924
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,839
Speaker 1: ask him just a few follow up questions about his book,

925
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 1: The Tears of Ray. Al Right, Professor Chritsky, thank you

926
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: for joining us here on the podcast to discuss your

927
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:22,879
Speaker 1: excellent book, The Tears of Ray be Keeping an Ancient Egypt. Yeah,

928
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: I think Robert and I both really enjoyed this book,

929
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: so thank you for writing it. In addition to thank

930
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 1: you for joining us. Well, thank you very much. It's

931
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 1: a it's great to be here. So just to kick

932
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:34,200
Speaker 1: things off of how did you first become interested in

933
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:39,839
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian beekeeping? Oh, I've been a frustrated historian for many,

934
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:43,480
Speaker 1: many years. Uh and uh, my my interest in egyptology

935
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 1: and and insectsalt sort of happened about the same time

936
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:51,239
Speaker 1: in my early teen years living in Miami, Florida. And Uh,

937
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: I remember walking home, uh and seeing a wild nest

938
00:53:55,560 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: of honeycomb that had fallen on the ground, and I

939
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:01,000
Speaker 1: collected out all the ease and put him into I

940
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 1: was a nerd. I put him in test tubes and

941
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: took him up into my room and watched them develop,

942
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 1: and ended taking him to the school and they had

943
00:54:05,760 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: him on display for several days. And that got my

944
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:12,719
Speaker 1: interest in honeybees. My interest in knegy apology happened a

945
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,960
Speaker 1: few weeks later. I was going to a parochial institution

946
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:20,400
Speaker 1: that was a very creationist at his orientation, and they

947
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:23,319
Speaker 1: started talking about Noah's flood and Usher's chronology and said

948
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 1: that the flood occurred in b C. And that seemed

949
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me because I've seen dates that

950
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 1: pertained to each college, it seemed older. So I looked,

951
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,200
Speaker 1: went and started reading books on on Ancient East, but

952
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 1: found that the pyramids built five years before the flood.

953
00:54:42,120 --> 00:54:46,120
Speaker 1: And it was a real, uh, real enlightening experience. Like,

954
00:54:46,120 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 1: am I the only one that seen this? Must have

955
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 1: built them very sturdy? Oh? You know that's right that

956
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: you know the flood that created that, that that carved

957
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: out the Grand Canyon didn't destroy the Pyramids. So anyway,

958
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:59,360
Speaker 1: that that that really got me going. And but I

959
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:02,960
Speaker 1: also got fascinated with Egyptology at that time, and even

960
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 1: even while I was working at my PhD in entomology.

961
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: I remember that was when the King Tut exhibit was

962
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:11,919
Speaker 1: touring for the first time in the late seventies, and

963
00:55:12,040 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 1: going to the Egyptology section at the University of Illinois

964
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:17,040
Speaker 1: Library and just sitting on the floor and pulling off

965
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:19,719
Speaker 1: every volume one after the other, looking for any kind

966
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 1: of insect association and insect reference. And that's how it

967
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:27,720
Speaker 1: started wanting to sort of annoy my high school teachers

968
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 1: and then getting caught up in the King Tut craze.

969
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: That was when Steve Martin did that wonderful song on

970
00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:36,600
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live so it was a way to get

971
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:39,239
Speaker 1: caught up in that as well. So, Dr Krisky, what

972
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 1: would you say about how the ancient Egyptian treatment of

973
00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 1: bee keeping the apriculture technology. What does that reveal about

974
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian culture? What does their technology say about

975
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:57,399
Speaker 1: who these people were and what they believed? Well, the

976
00:55:57,400 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: the aspect, of course, the title of the book is

977
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:02,520
Speaker 1: the Tears of Ray, and there is a papyrus from

978
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:08,080
Speaker 1: three UH b c. Which gives the whole story about

979
00:56:08,120 --> 00:56:11,319
Speaker 1: what the Egyptians thought bees were about. And that that

980
00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:14,880
Speaker 1: the the statement that's in this papyrus UH that wrote

981
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:17,839
Speaker 1: UH that the god Ray wept and the tears from

982
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 1: his eyes fell on the ground and turned into a bee.

983
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:24,040
Speaker 1: And the bee made his honeycomb and busied himself with

984
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:26,479
Speaker 1: the flowers of every plant. And so wax was made

985
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:29,799
Speaker 1: and also honey out of the tears of Ray. And

986
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: so for the Egyptians, honey was a gift of the

987
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:37,839
Speaker 1: Sun God, and that made it very very important to them.

988
00:56:37,880 --> 00:56:40,080
Speaker 1: Not only was an important commodity as a sweetener, it

989
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 1: was used in medicine, it was used in uh and UH.

990
00:56:43,600 --> 00:56:46,480
Speaker 1: The wax was very important and as in medicine as

991
00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:49,919
Speaker 1: well along with honey, but also as a as a

992
00:56:49,960 --> 00:56:55,319
Speaker 1: magical substance. All this came from these these insects that

993
00:56:55,320 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 1: were essentially the manifestation of the God's tears, and so

994
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:02,200
Speaker 1: that that made honey quite valuable from a theological perspective,

995
00:57:02,200 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: but also from a biological perspective as well. And they're

996
00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 1: even in their their temples, the Sun Temple, for example,

997
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:14,280
Speaker 1: from the fifth dynoce of no Ausraani, there's this wonderful

998
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 1: relief that shows beekeeping. And so here's something that I

999
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,600
Speaker 1: don't I've been to a lot of cathedrals and temples

1000
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 1: and churches around the world, and I've not seen displays

1001
00:57:24,520 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 1: about beekeeping in there. So that puts in a whole

1002
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 1: different perspective. Now in in your research, am I correct

1003
00:57:32,240 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: and reading that you at one point became locked inside

1004
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:39,760
Speaker 1: of a tomb? Yes, that happened though. That was I

1005
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 1: was a Fulbright scholar to Egypt in the early eighties,

1006
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:46,400
Speaker 1: and uh it was. I was teaching in Many at

1007
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:48,880
Speaker 1: many A University, about a hundred fifty miles south of Cairo,

1008
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 1: and as part of my research, I was I was

1009
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: just visiting archaeological sites to find any kind of insect

1010
00:57:55,320 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: carving and references to insects and what have you? Visited

1011
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:03,600
Speaker 1: ninety four archaeological sites, and Uh, I was getting so

1012
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:05,280
Speaker 1: well known in the area that I was even asked

1013
00:58:05,320 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: by members of the Forebay Commission if I would meet

1014
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 1: guests and take them on tours. And one instance was

1015
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:14,440
Speaker 1: the American ambassador to Egypt. He Uh, he and his

1016
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:16,800
Speaker 1: wife and their son came down to Minia for a

1017
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 1: tour of the antiquities, and of course his excellency was

1018
00:58:20,920 --> 00:58:23,800
Speaker 1: received a government to escort everywhere he was going, and

1019
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 1: and the ambassador's son and I went off on our own.

1020
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:30,240
Speaker 1: And while we were down in an underground acropolis, UH,

1021
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: sandstorm blew up, and uh they grabbed the ambassador and

1022
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:36,560
Speaker 1: his wife and escorted them to the rest house, and

1023
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:40,600
Speaker 1: UH we weren't there. And I was told later that

1024
00:58:40,640 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: he looked around and said, where's my son, And this

1025
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:48,920
Speaker 1: military official responded, he is safe, your excellency. He has

1026
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:54,880
Speaker 1: locked in the tomb. And so of course we had

1027
00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 1: we had two guards. We were in any real danger,

1028
00:58:56,840 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like it was like air TI We're

1029
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:00,680
Speaker 1: gonna suffocate, because you actually see through cracks from the door,

1030
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:03,160
Speaker 1: so his son and I started exploring on our own

1031
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: while we were waiting. We were there about forty five

1032
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: minutes and went down one UH shaft and found a

1033
00:59:08,560 --> 00:59:12,479
Speaker 1: small UH coffin that would have held up mummified ibis bird.

1034
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:15,160
Speaker 1: We found a crocodile skull. There was there was mummy

1035
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 1: linen everywhere because this was such a it was an

1036
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 1: important underground, the animal necropolis, So it was quite an

1037
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:23,480
Speaker 1: exciting time. It's one of those few things that Uh,

1038
00:59:23,520 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 1: I never expected to do, and it's something that doesn't

1039
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:28,440
Speaker 1: happen to a lot of people. You know, the mummified

1040
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:31,320
Speaker 1: animals you mentioned that relates back to something I knew

1041
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:33,600
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the book, but I didn't have a

1042
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:35,840
Speaker 1: time to look up on the side as you mentioned

1043
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:39,480
Speaker 1: the Crocodilopolis, which sounded fascinating to me. What's the deal

1044
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 1: with that crocodile Opolis? Uh. That was a city that

1045
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:47,160
Speaker 1: was prominent during the toll Make period later in an

1046
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:52,920
Speaker 1: ancient uh Egypt UH and UH they were the crocodile

1047
00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 1: god was the god so back, and so crocodile Opolis

1048
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:58,160
Speaker 1: was associated with that deity. And the reference in the

1049
00:59:58,160 --> 01:00:01,680
Speaker 1: book talked about feeding crocodile, a food that was also

1050
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:04,640
Speaker 1: laced with with honey. Oh yeah. So one of the

1051
01:00:04,680 --> 01:00:06,680
Speaker 1: things that you point out in the book, and I

1052
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:09,480
Speaker 1: noticed even before you pointed it out, in several of

1053
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:12,400
Speaker 1: the different artworks and carvings, is the variable number of

1054
01:00:12,560 --> 01:00:16,600
Speaker 1: legs in the depictions of bees. Like sometimes you would

1055
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 1: see with apparently three legs, which sort of makes sense

1056
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:21,919
Speaker 1: because it seems like maybe if you're looking from one side,

1057
01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:24,080
Speaker 1: each leg could represent a pair. But then other times

1058
01:00:24,080 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 1: you'd see what looked to me like four legs or

1059
01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:31,080
Speaker 1: maybe five legs, depending on how you interpreted, one little

1060
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:34,240
Speaker 1: uh strand coming out the back of the bee. And

1061
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:36,400
Speaker 1: this this rang a bell in my mind. And I

1062
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:38,800
Speaker 1: remember that there is a passage in the Book of

1063
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:43,480
Speaker 1: Leviticus and Leviticus eleven that talks about winged insects with

1064
01:00:43,600 --> 01:00:46,560
Speaker 1: four legs, and I just thought that was a kind

1065
01:00:46,600 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 1: of strange coincidence. Now, there are obviously a lot of

1066
01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:53,360
Speaker 1: ways you might explain a glyph of a bee or

1067
01:00:53,400 --> 01:00:55,480
Speaker 1: an illustration of a bee in the ancient world having

1068
01:00:55,520 --> 01:00:57,680
Speaker 1: a different number of legs, But do you think this

1069
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:00,520
Speaker 1: was a widespread belief in the ancient Near East that

1070
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 1: there were insects with four legs or is this just

1071
01:01:03,160 --> 01:01:06,840
Speaker 1: conservation of detail? Well, and in the case of the

1072
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:12,280
Speaker 1: Egyptian honeybee, the most uh exact carvings show the be

1073
01:01:12,400 --> 01:01:15,720
Speaker 1: having uh four legs oriented forward and then the hind

1074
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 1: legs actually superimposed on the abdomen, and some instances that

1075
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:23,760
Speaker 1: wasn't drawn in or was very lightly carved in, so

1076
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:26,480
Speaker 1: it doesn't stand out because it's actually almost superimposed on

1077
01:01:26,520 --> 01:01:31,240
Speaker 1: the abdomen itself. And uh So on almost all cases

1078
01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:33,400
Speaker 1: you're gonna find evidence that they probably had all the

1079
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:36,240
Speaker 1: six legs, but they might not have carved the hind

1080
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:40,560
Speaker 1: leg as detailed enough because of the abdominal structure. Carving

1081
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:44,560
Speaker 1: that that honeybe hieroglyph was quite variable. I have a

1082
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:47,920
Speaker 1: chapter in the book about about how they would go

1083
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,520
Speaker 1: about doing this, and it's all for me. It was

1084
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:53,480
Speaker 1: like doing handwriting analysis if you're gonna do forensic handwriting

1085
01:01:53,480 --> 01:01:56,480
Speaker 1: analysis for forgery or what have you. And I found

1086
01:01:56,520 --> 01:02:00,520
Speaker 1: there were certain certain patterns that were consistent uh certain

1087
01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: certain bees in certain places of temples, for example. But

1088
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 1: in general, unless if it's a very careful carving, it

1089
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:12,480
Speaker 1: always has evidence of the four legs forward and then

1090
01:02:12,520 --> 01:02:14,919
Speaker 1: the hind legs superposed on it, but you wouldn't see

1091
01:02:14,920 --> 01:02:17,320
Speaker 1: the other leg on the other side of the ave

1092
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:20,320
Speaker 1: been that case. But so I think you're looking at

1093
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:24,760
Speaker 1: mostly UH not not necessarily being careful for the eye

1094
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: of detail. But in some cases these uh, these details

1095
01:02:29,200 --> 01:02:34,320
Speaker 1: might have slowly given away during time through time. Interesting,

1096
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:38,640
Speaker 1: So a question this this is something that that maybe

1097
01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 1: didn't come up as much in the book, but it

1098
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:43,680
Speaker 1: kind of relates to some previous episodes that we've we've

1099
01:02:43,720 --> 01:02:46,880
Speaker 1: done to the podcast the deal with with with Egyptology

1100
01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:51,000
Speaker 1: and animals. Did the ancient Egyptians ever use bees as

1101
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: a as a weapon in any sense? I didn't didn't

1102
01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:57,920
Speaker 1: run across any example of honey bees being used as

1103
01:02:57,920 --> 01:02:59,800
Speaker 1: a weapon like you would see, for example, some of

1104
01:02:59,840 --> 01:03:05,240
Speaker 1: the UH medieval UH elimited manage strips, some of the

1105
01:03:05,280 --> 01:03:09,280
Speaker 1: references to talk about UH skep straw bee hives being

1106
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:11,680
Speaker 1: thrown over castle walls for example, to break up a

1107
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:14,120
Speaker 1: siege and things like that. So I did not find

1108
01:03:14,120 --> 01:03:16,560
Speaker 1: any evidence of of bees being used as a weapon

1109
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:21,560
Speaker 1: per se. UH. The difference was in the type of

1110
01:03:21,640 --> 01:03:25,320
Speaker 1: hivesriptions were using. They were clay tubes. They would not

1111
01:03:25,440 --> 01:03:29,320
Speaker 1: stand to a lot of UH trauma, if you will. Uh.

1112
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:31,760
Speaker 1: They we had fewer bees in each one than than

1113
01:03:31,840 --> 01:03:33,960
Speaker 1: we would have an our typical modern box. I probably

1114
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:37,960
Speaker 1: five seven thousand bees as opposed to you know, thirty

1115
01:03:38,360 --> 01:03:42,160
Speaker 1: bees in a tall, multi store, multi boxed lank straw.

1116
01:03:42,240 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 1: Five cool. Uh. And so I've got a couple of

1117
01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 1: other ideas. I want to see what you think about

1118
01:03:47,280 --> 01:03:50,880
Speaker 1: about the relationship between humans and bees and uh and

1119
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:54,040
Speaker 1: be evolution. So one of the first things I started

1120
01:03:54,040 --> 01:03:57,520
Speaker 1: thinking about in this book is that bee keeping seems

1121
01:03:57,600 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 1: interesting to me and that it might be unique. And

1122
01:03:59,840 --> 01:04:01,880
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can think of any other examples

1123
01:04:02,440 --> 01:04:06,160
Speaker 1: in that it seems like a truly three way symbiotic

1124
01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:11,040
Speaker 1: relationship between the plants that are pollinated, the bees that

1125
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:13,920
Speaker 1: produced the honey, and then the human beekeepers. And I

1126
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:18,160
Speaker 1: was trying to think of another relationship that's equally symbiotic

1127
01:04:18,360 --> 01:04:21,160
Speaker 1: three ways, and I couldn't quite but I wondered if

1128
01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:25,240
Speaker 1: you had any insight on that. Uh. Well, with regard

1129
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:29,600
Speaker 1: to the bees, uh, I think humans are probably interacting

1130
01:04:29,640 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 1: with honey bees long before we became Homo sapiens. We

1131
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 1: know now that, for example, chimpanzees will will take sticks

1132
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: and fashion them in different thicknesses, for example, to tear

1133
01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:44,000
Speaker 1: into a wild honey bee dest and I'll even carry

1134
01:04:44,040 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: these these sticks around with them so they uh, you know,

1135
01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:50,280
Speaker 1: if if the chimpanzees are doing that, it's quite likely

1136
01:04:50,360 --> 01:04:54,600
Speaker 1: that the hominins, our ancestors are probably doing this as well, uh,

1137
01:04:54,840 --> 01:05:00,560
Speaker 1: going back several million years. So this is asociation with

1138
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:04,080
Speaker 1: bees is very ancient in uh, in our species and

1139
01:05:04,120 --> 01:05:08,240
Speaker 1: probably definitely predates some modern modern humans. So in that

1140
01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 1: case that since honey bees, they're not truly be keeping

1141
01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 1: their robbing, but there is the relationship that they're actually

1142
01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:18,400
Speaker 1: gonna be taking advantage of of the golden sweet windfall

1143
01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:21,400
Speaker 1: of of a bees nest um. And that was probably

1144
01:05:21,440 --> 01:05:25,440
Speaker 1: how are our bee keeping originated. There are symbiotic relationships

1145
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:27,920
Speaker 1: that that that might involve with the three organisms, but

1146
01:05:28,000 --> 01:05:31,360
Speaker 1: don't necessarily involve humans. I'm trying to think some I'm

1147
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:36,000
Speaker 1: thinking of things like the fig wasps and things like

1148
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:39,720
Speaker 1: that that you you'd see a very specialized relationship between

1149
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:44,440
Speaker 1: the figs humans and and uh the wasps. And in

1150
01:05:44,520 --> 01:05:46,880
Speaker 1: those cases, now, in the case of Egypt today, they

1151
01:05:46,920 --> 01:05:49,040
Speaker 1: didn't have the fig wasps, so they were actually scarifying

1152
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:52,920
Speaker 1: the fruit to make it ripen. But and and of

1153
01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:57,800
Speaker 1: course that would be a three way example as well. Excellent. Yeah,

1154
01:05:57,800 --> 01:05:59,520
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about the fig wasps. But that

1155
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:02,160
Speaker 1: that's it's a tremendous example. That is a great question.

1156
01:06:02,200 --> 01:06:04,480
Speaker 1: I like, that's that's that that's coming from the side

1157
01:06:04,520 --> 01:06:06,440
Speaker 1: that time we thought about for my mind is really

1158
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:08,960
Speaker 1: clicking on that one. Well, well, that leads into the

1159
01:06:09,040 --> 01:06:11,920
Speaker 1: next question I wanted to ask, which is about the

1160
01:06:12,120 --> 01:06:16,160
Speaker 1: evolutionary relationship we see with other domesticated animals that that

1161
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 1: humans use for their agricultural agriculture for companionships. So we've

1162
01:06:21,800 --> 01:06:24,160
Speaker 1: got dogs, we've got cattle, we've got all kinds of

1163
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:27,000
Speaker 1: you know, draft animals, farm animals that in many ways

1164
01:06:27,080 --> 01:06:33,280
Speaker 1: have very much diverged evolutionarily from their wild ancestors. And

1165
01:06:33,520 --> 01:06:37,480
Speaker 1: I wonder if we see anything like that with domesticated bees,

1166
01:06:37,720 --> 01:06:40,200
Speaker 1: or if we ever will in the future. Um, is

1167
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:44,240
Speaker 1: it because we've had a domestication relationship with bees for

1168
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:48,680
Speaker 1: less time if we don't see that, I think there's

1169
01:06:48,720 --> 01:06:52,880
Speaker 1: no question that we've had an impact on on honeybee evolution.

1170
01:06:53,160 --> 01:06:58,320
Speaker 1: Case in point, in Europe during the last fifteen hundred years,

1171
01:06:58,840 --> 01:07:03,120
Speaker 1: when we kept bees so in straw and wicker skep hives,

1172
01:07:03,160 --> 01:07:07,080
Speaker 1: the basket hives. It was very common uh in the

1173
01:07:07,160 --> 01:07:12,480
Speaker 1: early earlier centuries when you harvested the honey, the beekeeper

1174
01:07:12,520 --> 01:07:14,600
Speaker 1: and walk around, pick up the lift the skep, and

1175
01:07:14,640 --> 01:07:16,200
Speaker 1: it was really heavy. That would be the one that

1176
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:19,880
Speaker 1: they would harvest. And the how they would harvest it.

1177
01:07:19,880 --> 01:07:21,480
Speaker 1: They would dig a pit in the ground filled with

1178
01:07:21,840 --> 01:07:24,600
Speaker 1: sulfur and brimstone heavy and start a fire and literally

1179
01:07:24,680 --> 01:07:28,680
Speaker 1: knock all the bees into the fire. Now they're what

1180
01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:34,920
Speaker 1: they're doing is taking their best producing bees and killing them. Uh.

1181
01:07:35,160 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 1: Darwin has something to say about that. And and what

1182
01:07:39,440 --> 01:07:43,080
Speaker 1: we're seeing is this, we have four centuries slowly been

1183
01:07:43,160 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: killing large numbers of a very good producing colonies. And

1184
01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:49,560
Speaker 1: then we tried to some of the be Eventually we

1185
01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:51,560
Speaker 1: got the point where they could drive the bees out

1186
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:55,320
Speaker 1: of these wicker basket hives. They would they would take

1187
01:07:55,400 --> 01:08:00,240
Speaker 1: the skep hive, put in in the full skep, put

1188
01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:02,720
Speaker 1: it upside down and a pail, and then have an

1189
01:08:02,840 --> 01:08:07,000
Speaker 1: empty scap next to it, and using pieces of board

1190
01:08:07,480 --> 01:08:09,920
Speaker 1: nail sort of hold that empty scap in place. And

1191
01:08:09,960 --> 01:08:11,800
Speaker 1: then they banged the daylights out of the side of

1192
01:08:11,880 --> 01:08:13,360
Speaker 1: that pail and the bees and walk out of the

1193
01:08:13,400 --> 01:08:15,920
Speaker 1: full step up into the empty, empty scap In the

1194
01:08:15,960 --> 01:08:18,120
Speaker 1: second they could drive the bees from one hive to

1195
01:08:18,160 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 1: the next, So that stopped that. We started seeing that

1196
01:08:21,520 --> 01:08:25,000
Speaker 1: in good numbers in the late eighteen hundreds and quite

1197
01:08:25,040 --> 01:08:29,360
Speaker 1: common during the UH the nineteenth century. But we for

1198
01:08:29,560 --> 01:08:32,880
Speaker 1: many many years had been you know, going out and

1199
01:08:33,439 --> 01:08:38,360
Speaker 1: and selectively killing good producing bees. And UH a colleague

1200
01:08:38,400 --> 01:08:42,240
Speaker 1: of mine, UH Steve Shepard up at the Washington State University,

1201
01:08:42,920 --> 01:08:45,800
Speaker 1: has been looking at the diversity of honey bees and

1202
01:08:45,840 --> 01:08:48,200
Speaker 1: it's found that all the bees in the United States

1203
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:51,200
Speaker 1: are all of our queens are related to a small

1204
01:08:51,400 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 1: number of queens. It's a fewer than a thousand. So

1205
01:08:54,439 --> 01:08:59,559
Speaker 1: we've we have dramatically reduced the genetic diversity of bees

1206
01:08:59,640 --> 01:09:02,919
Speaker 1: over over the years as beekeepers. That may be contributing

1207
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:05,000
Speaker 1: to some of the problems that we we are having.

1208
01:09:05,040 --> 01:09:07,240
Speaker 1: And there's a concerned effort now Steve is doing this

1209
01:09:07,760 --> 01:09:10,120
Speaker 1: and others to go out all over the world and

1210
01:09:10,280 --> 01:09:16,160
Speaker 1: try to improve the genetic diversity by getting hum collecting

1211
01:09:16,240 --> 01:09:19,640
Speaker 1: drones and getting semen UH samples to bring back for

1212
01:09:20,000 --> 01:09:23,960
Speaker 1: for crosses well, that's really fascinating. So that makes me

1213
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:26,280
Speaker 1: wonder do we already have or do you ever think

1214
01:09:26,360 --> 01:09:30,000
Speaker 1: we will have, uh, domesticated bees that are as different

1215
01:09:30,160 --> 01:09:34,680
Speaker 1: from the wild original honeybee as say a chihuahua is

1216
01:09:34,840 --> 01:09:38,560
Speaker 1: from the gray wolf. Well, we have several, we have

1217
01:09:38,680 --> 01:09:41,639
Speaker 1: several strains are are varieties. Now there's the and they're

1218
01:09:41,640 --> 01:09:45,000
Speaker 1: all APIs maliferu. But their their subspecies. They all and

1219
01:09:45,600 --> 01:09:47,400
Speaker 1: from what we can tell is they all evolved on

1220
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 1: their own. And you know, for example, Italian strain came

1221
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,599
Speaker 1: from the the Alps area north and Olian what have you? Uh,

1222
01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 1: we are there. It has been attempts. Brother Adam was

1223
01:09:57,960 --> 01:10:04,000
Speaker 1: a beekeeper who was trying who uh, selectively breed bees

1224
01:10:04,040 --> 01:10:06,680
Speaker 1: that would mature a little faster to help produce it's

1225
01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:09,599
Speaker 1: it's a parasite load, for example. So there are efforts

1226
01:10:09,640 --> 01:10:13,679
Speaker 1: to do things like that. Uh, I've not seen any

1227
01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:16,840
Speaker 1: real overall success that let's say that it's that's uh,

1228
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:19,080
Speaker 1: that it's come to fruition, but that it is quite

1229
01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:24,800
Speaker 1: conceivable that we could modify bees through selective breading to

1230
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:30,360
Speaker 1: be something different. M interesting. Well, Robert, did you have

1231
01:10:30,520 --> 01:10:33,439
Speaker 1: something else? No, I believe that that's that's a great

1232
01:10:33,520 --> 01:10:36,680
Speaker 1: place to leave off. I just wanna I want to

1233
01:10:36,760 --> 01:10:39,280
Speaker 1: thank thank you again Professor Chritsky for taking the time

1234
01:10:39,320 --> 01:10:42,240
Speaker 1: to chat with us and encourage all of our listeners.

1235
01:10:42,320 --> 01:10:45,280
Speaker 1: If you're if you're whether you're interested in history or

1236
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:48,840
Speaker 1: or insects, um, if it's the the ancient Egyptian angle

1237
01:10:49,040 --> 01:10:52,200
Speaker 1: or the bee keeping angle that that brings you in

1238
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:55,000
Speaker 1: like this is just a tremendous and accessible read on

1239
01:10:55,160 --> 01:10:59,080
Speaker 1: both topics. My if if I can, the shameless plug

1240
01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:02,639
Speaker 1: you spoke with Oxford was the quest for the Perfect hive,

1241
01:11:02,720 --> 01:11:05,320
Speaker 1: which is the history of the modern beehive and how

1242
01:11:05,400 --> 01:11:07,360
Speaker 1: we how we got from these two pies, from the

1243
01:11:07,400 --> 01:11:10,320
Speaker 1: Egyptians up to the through basket hives into the those

1244
01:11:10,400 --> 01:11:14,160
Speaker 1: white boxes that we see uh out in fields. Now,

1245
01:11:14,280 --> 01:11:15,960
Speaker 1: can you tell us what will the hives of the

1246
01:11:16,040 --> 01:11:19,920
Speaker 1: future look like? Oh? Well, that's one of the themes

1247
01:11:20,040 --> 01:11:23,280
Speaker 1: behind my the book. The question of the perfect hive

1248
01:11:23,400 --> 01:11:25,559
Speaker 1: is one of the things that's happened is we've stopped,

1249
01:11:25,640 --> 01:11:29,000
Speaker 1: we've stopped inventing. It's beginning to come back a little bit.

1250
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:33,679
Speaker 1: But um, when the during the late nineteenth century into

1251
01:11:33,680 --> 01:11:36,280
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, beekeepers were spending a lot of money,

1252
01:11:36,400 --> 01:11:38,760
Speaker 1: but to buy equipment that was interchangeable, and they were

1253
01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:42,160
Speaker 1: buying extractors and uh uh it was rather it's rather

1254
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:46,200
Speaker 1: expensive to actually retool an entire b operation, honeybe operation.

1255
01:11:46,800 --> 01:11:50,719
Speaker 1: And so uh if you went and found a beekeeping

1256
01:11:50,720 --> 01:11:53,560
Speaker 1: supply catalog from the nineteen twenties, it would look just

1257
01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:55,800
Speaker 1: like our catalogs to day in some cases, except they

1258
01:11:55,800 --> 01:11:58,240
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a styro from hives. So here we have

1259
01:11:58,439 --> 01:12:03,840
Speaker 1: these we have pre depression Arab bees uh living in

1260
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:05,760
Speaker 1: hives that were invented back that eight twenties, and we

1261
01:12:06,000 --> 01:12:07,840
Speaker 1: we've got we have their honey bee geno. And so

1262
01:12:08,280 --> 01:12:12,120
Speaker 1: you know, my question always have we found the perfect hive?

1263
01:12:13,200 --> 01:12:15,200
Speaker 1: And since the books come out, we're now seeing a

1264
01:12:15,240 --> 01:12:19,720
Speaker 1: lot of people invest uh exploring new hives. There's a

1265
01:12:19,760 --> 01:12:21,840
Speaker 1: couple that are really quite intriguing. The Omelet Hive out

1266
01:12:21,880 --> 01:12:24,839
Speaker 1: of England, which is a wonderful hive for it's it's expensive,

1267
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:27,960
Speaker 1: but it's a wonderful hive for the backyard bee keeper.

1268
01:12:28,600 --> 01:12:30,439
Speaker 1: We of course you might have recently heard about the

1269
01:12:30,520 --> 01:12:34,400
Speaker 1: flow hive. That's this hive that uh economically extract the

1270
01:12:34,439 --> 01:12:39,000
Speaker 1: honey from the hive through hoses and that's that's something

1271
01:12:39,040 --> 01:12:41,439
Speaker 1: that's I believe there's a kick Starter campaign to help

1272
01:12:41,520 --> 01:12:44,760
Speaker 1: fund UH fund that. Uh. There there's a lot of

1273
01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:50,000
Speaker 1: interest in trying to improve UH bee keeping operations to

1274
01:12:50,160 --> 01:12:52,080
Speaker 1: encourage more people to keep bees even if they don't

1275
01:12:52,080 --> 01:12:54,479
Speaker 1: want to collect the honey, but just keep pollinators around.

1276
01:12:54,800 --> 01:12:56,880
Speaker 1: Oh man, the bee hive with the hoses, that sounds

1277
01:12:56,920 --> 01:13:00,920
Speaker 1: like an hr geer kind of cold. You should take

1278
01:13:00,960 --> 01:13:03,320
Speaker 1: a look at it all. They are actually able to

1279
01:13:03,400 --> 01:13:07,000
Speaker 1: split the honey comb and then they they the honey

1280
01:13:07,040 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 1: then flows out through through UH hoses into containers so

1281
01:13:11,320 --> 01:13:13,000
Speaker 1: they don't have to take the high the frames out

1282
01:13:13,040 --> 01:13:17,639
Speaker 1: for extracting. Wow. Well that's fascinating. Well, uh, I guess

1283
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:19,439
Speaker 1: we should wrap it up unless there's anything else you

1284
01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:21,640
Speaker 1: feel like you would like to say. But but I

1285
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:25,040
Speaker 1: really appreciate you talking to us. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

1286
01:13:25,080 --> 01:13:35,800
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. All right, So there you

1287
01:13:35,840 --> 01:13:37,960
Speaker 1: have it. That book again is The Tears of Ray

1288
01:13:38,160 --> 01:13:41,320
Speaker 1: be Keeping an Ancient Egypt by Gene Kritzky, and that

1289
01:13:41,520 --> 01:13:44,800
Speaker 1: is Ray spelled r E. You can find that it

1290
01:13:44,840 --> 01:13:47,720
Speaker 1: is available in both physical and digital copies right now

1291
01:13:47,800 --> 01:13:49,639
Speaker 1: and will include a link to it on the landing

1292
01:13:49,640 --> 01:13:52,200
Speaker 1: page for this uh wet for this episode at stuff

1293
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:53,960
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. And if you want

1294
01:13:54,000 --> 01:13:56,080
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us about this episode or

1295
01:13:56,080 --> 01:13:58,280
Speaker 1: any recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you

1296
01:13:58,320 --> 01:14:00,800
Speaker 1: can always email us at of the mind at how

1297
01:14:00,840 --> 01:14:13,040
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands

1298
01:14:13,080 --> 01:14:15,439
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.

1299
01:14:26,880 --> 01:14:27,000
Speaker 1: Big