Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our series on naturally
Speaker 1: fueled flames. Now, in the last episode, Rob you you
Speaker 1: opened with a question that we never fully got to
Speaker 1: the to the bottom of the question was what is
Speaker 1: the oldest continuously burning fire on Earth? And uh, or
Speaker 1: you may have phrased it a little bit differently. That
Speaker 1: was one question. I guess another one would be like,
Speaker 1: what's the longest a single fire with the with the
Speaker 1: single common origin has ever burned? Right? Yeah, but essentially
Speaker 1: getting down to the same question. Yeah, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: the last one is really unknowable. The first the first
Speaker 1: what is the oldest continuous fire still burning today? Is
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe still difficult to know, but easier
Speaker 1: than the other one. So I don't know if this
Speaker 1: question can be answered definitively. But we did at least
Speaker 1: establish that all of the oldest eternal flames maintained by
Speaker 1: humans at various temples and memorials and so forth around
Speaker 1: the world are minuscule in longevity. Compared to some sites
Speaker 1: of naturally fueled burning, places where some chunk of the
Speaker 1: earth itself is continuously on fire or smoldering at the
Speaker 1: place where it meets oxygen. And one example we looked
Speaker 1: at in the last episode is a very strange and
Speaker 1: beautiful place in the Northwest Territories of Canada called the
Speaker 1: Smoking Hills, where eroding coastal hills and cliff sides burned
Speaker 1: by themselves as a result of an exothermic chemical reaction
Speaker 1: that happens when pyrite rich mudstone is exposed to the air,
Speaker 1: so erosion happens, part of the cliff comes away, and
Speaker 1: some of this mudstone that has you know, fine grain
Speaker 1: pyrite in it, oxidizes it he eats up, and then
Speaker 1: some combustible elements that are within the mudstone sort of
Speaker 1: smolder or catch fire, and that just creates a self sustaining,
Speaker 1: self igniting burn that can go on for a long
Speaker 1: long time. All evidence points to the conclusion that the
Speaker 1: Smoking Hills have been burning for hundreds or even thousands
Speaker 1: of years. So there might be a question about whether
Speaker 1: you'd want to call this technically an example of fire
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, it is smoldering rather than you're
Speaker 1: not usually seeing like big sort of dancing flames coming
Speaker 1: off of it. But it's smoking and burning four hundreds
Speaker 1: or thousands of years. It certainly is a very long burn.
Speaker 1: But is it the longest? Well, I think the answer
Speaker 1: is probably not. Again this this question is hard to
Speaker 1: answer conclusively. But one site I have seen proposed as
Speaker 1: the holder of the title of the longest burning fire
Speaker 1: on Earth is a place in Australia known as the
Speaker 1: Burning Mountain. The Burning Mountain is technically known as Mount
Speaker 1: Wingin spelled like winging like w i n g, and
Speaker 1: it's Windin, which is a name allegedly derived from a
Speaker 1: word used by the native Wannerooa people meaning fire. The
Speaker 1: Burning Mountain is located in the Upper Hunter Valley of
Speaker 1: New South Wales what's today about three kilometers north of Sydney,
Speaker 1: and the earliest written records of the mountain trace back
Speaker 1: to stories published in the Sydney newspapers in eighty eight,
Speaker 1: though the site had been used and known by the
Speaker 1: Wannerooa going back much longer. To get a feel for
Speaker 1: the extent of this site, I was looking around for
Speaker 1: photos and videos and I found a really cool video
Speaker 1: somebody uploaded to YouTube of aerial drone footage, so you
Speaker 1: can look that up if you want. But if you
Speaker 1: are peering down at the the mountain from the air,
Speaker 1: what you will see is a sort of smooth crest
Speaker 1: of a mountain peak where a section that looks to
Speaker 1: me to be about I'm not so good at estimating
Speaker 1: area by by sight, but it looks like maybe half
Speaker 1: the size of a soccer field something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's been scorched clean, so all of the ground around it.
Speaker 1: This is not a bare rock mountaintop. This is a
Speaker 1: fully forested uh and and grass covered mountains So all
Speaker 1: of the ground around this burned area is populated with
Speaker 1: with trees and grasses, But within the burned zone there
Speaker 1: is only bare earth, soil and gravel, either bleached white
Speaker 1: like ash or burned red like brick. And near the
Speaker 1: edges of the burned field there are these pale skeletons
Speaker 1: of dead trees, some laying flat. I guess maybe those
Speaker 1: are the older ones that have fallen down and some
Speaker 1: still standing. The ones that are still upright seem to
Speaker 1: be the ones that are a little bit farther away
Speaker 1: from the center of the burned region and all around
Speaker 1: the area, even in sections that are now covered in
Speaker 1: grass and vegetation presumably covered in it once again. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are no usable cracks and fissures in the earth
Speaker 1: like you might see opening up during an earthquake scene
Speaker 1: in a disaster movie. Yeah. I would say this, this
Speaker 1: footage is definitely worth seeking out because when you hear
Speaker 1: burning Mountain, and even with that description, you still might
Speaker 1: be imagining some sort of more door esque, very you know,
Speaker 1: volcanic vision of what we're talking about here, and and
Speaker 1: the reality is in many ways more subtle than that
Speaker 1: extreme vision, but but also inherently, uh, you know, weird
Speaker 1: when compared to most other environments you're gonna encounter. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And I think there are indications there may have been times,
Speaker 1: even in fairly recent history, where it it looked scarier
Speaker 1: than it does now, though it certainly does look very strange.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest written accounts that's been widely cited
Speaker 1: and republished was an investigation and field report called Burning
Speaker 1: Mountain of Australia by the Reverend Charles Wilton UH, published
Speaker 1: in eight nine. I dug up this article and I
Speaker 1: wanted to read and mention a few sections from it
Speaker 1: because it was interesting. Wilton begins by acknowledging that he's
Speaker 1: waiting into a kind of ongoing controversy and would have
Speaker 1: to contradict previous reports, including the earlier reports that Mount
Speaker 1: win Gin was a volcano with a crater or called
Speaker 1: ea uh. Now Wilton's investigation revealed that the mountain was
Speaker 1: probably not a volcano and certainly did not have a
Speaker 1: mouth or crater, And he writes as follows, that portion
Speaker 1: of the mountain wingin where the fire is now burning,
Speaker 1: and which is a compact sandstone rock, comprehends parts of
Speaker 1: two declivities of one and the same mountain. The progress
Speaker 1: of the fire has of late been down the northern
Speaker 1: and highest elevation, and it is now ascending with great
Speaker 1: fury the opposite and southern imminence, from the situation of
Speaker 1: the fire having been in a hollow between two ridges
Speaker 1: of the same mountain. Mr Mackie, referring to somebody who
Speaker 1: gave an earlier report, was probably induced to give to
Speaker 1: the clefts in the mountain the appellation of a crater.
Speaker 1: The fact is the rock, as the subterraneous fire increases,
Speaker 1: is rent into several concave chasms of various widths. I
Speaker 1: particularly examined the widest of these. The rock, a solid
Speaker 1: mass of sandstone, was torn asunder about two feet in width,
Speaker 1: leaving its upper and southerly side exposed to view the
Speaker 1: parts so torn asunder, having slipped as it were, down
Speaker 1: and sunk into a hollow, thus forming the convex surface
Speaker 1: of the heated rock. I looked down this chasm to
Speaker 1: the depth of about fifteen feet. The sides of the
Speaker 1: rock were of a white heat, like that of a
Speaker 1: lime kiln, while sulfurous and steamy vapors arose from a
Speaker 1: depth below, like blasts from the forge of Vulcan himself.
Speaker 1: I stood on that portion of the rock which had
Speaker 1: been cleft from the part above, and on hurling stones
Speaker 1: down into the chasm. The noise they made in their
Speaker 1: falls seemed to die away in a vast abyss beneath
Speaker 1: my feet. So I love the part where he starts
Speaker 1: chucking rocks into the chasms in the earth. So okay,
Speaker 1: he has established this is probably not a volcano. There
Speaker 1: there is no crater, no caldera. Instead, there is a
Speaker 1: burned area on the surface of the mountain, producing sulfurous fumes.
Speaker 1: And then there are these cracks or chasms in the earth,
Speaker 1: and the fire seems to be burning down in the
Speaker 1: deep of these cracks now in comparing it to the
Speaker 1: Forge of Vulcan. Though, this comes back to something we
Speaker 1: touched on in the last episode that when people encounter
Speaker 1: these they have no choice but in many cases too
Speaker 1: but to compare them to human fire technology on one
Speaker 1: level or another. Yeah, especially industry, right, like both of
Speaker 1: the earliest written accounts of the smoking Hills in the
Speaker 1: Northwest Territories compared them to h compared them to human industry,
Speaker 1: one to a chemical fact to read, the other to
Speaker 1: a brick manufacturing location. And that many of the oral
Speaker 1: traditions of the New Valuate people said that these were
Speaker 1: the fires coming off of the hills, were the cooking
Speaker 1: fires or smoke from the fires of the little people
Speaker 1: or the invisible people who lived inside the mountains there
Speaker 1: after they've been driven away from human companionship. So coming
Speaker 1: back to Reverend Wilton's account, he he goes on to
Speaker 1: write that there are a bunch of these chasms there,
Speaker 1: of varying width, and they're constantly belching out smoke and
Speaker 1: sulfurous vapor, and the chasms are also quote beautified with
Speaker 1: efflorescent crystal of sulfur, varying in color from the deepest
Speaker 1: red orange occasioned by Ferruginists mixture. I think that means
Speaker 1: containing iron or iron oxide to the palest straw color
Speaker 1: where alum predominated. And he said he could not spend
Speaker 1: much time near these clefts because the ground was too
Speaker 1: hot to stand on and the vapors were not quote
Speaker 1: most grateful to the lungs. Yeah, and he he makes
Speaker 1: a bunch more descriptive observations. He says that he did
Speaker 1: not observe any lava or trachite there, and these would
Speaker 1: be rocks that would be signs of volcanic activity, so
Speaker 1: he seems to be accumulating evidence against the interpretation of
Speaker 1: this mountain as any kind of volcano. He also says
Speaker 1: that he didn't see any coal at the Burning Mountain,
Speaker 1: though he notes that he found coal in many places nearby.
Speaker 1: So this, this region of the country seems to be
Speaker 1: coal rich, which is important. We'll come back to it.
Speaker 1: And as one weird acide, he's like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: right on the other side of the Burning Mountain, there's
Speaker 1: a spring that's great to drink from, nice cool water,
Speaker 1: especially after you've been breathing smoke from the fumes from
Speaker 1: the chasms. You go and get yourself some of the
Speaker 1: water from the spring. It will quench the folks. It
Speaker 1: is not a good idea to drink untested or untreated
Speaker 1: spring water. I can can have stuff and it's not
Speaker 1: good for you, though, I honestly I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's more or less likely if you're getting your spring
Speaker 1: water from a from a mountain that's on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I can imagine the water potentially tasting strongly of
Speaker 1: sulfur or something. But I don't know. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: a wonderful spring that was quite refreshing. Now. As a
Speaker 1: general comment on his observations, Wilton writes, quote, I have
Speaker 1: compared the phenomenon presented by this mountain with written descriptions
Speaker 1: of volcanic action and subterraneous fire in other portions of
Speaker 1: the globe, but can discover no exact similarity between them.
Speaker 1: The burning Mountain of Australia may, I think be pronounced
Speaker 1: as unique one other example of nature sports of her
Speaker 1: total disregard in this country of those laws which the
Speaker 1: philosophers of the old world have since assigned her. I
Speaker 1: don't know about that, Wilton. This is certainly not a
Speaker 1: unique phenomenon. We can come back to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But but he is correct, you know, it depends on
Speaker 1: what he's looking to, I guess in in history books
Speaker 1: and other accounts, because uh there can be obviously large,
Speaker 1: big differences between what one could roughly classify as a
Speaker 1: as fire erupting from the ground or burning earth in
Speaker 1: one part of the world and m in something that
Speaker 1: fits the same description elsewhere in the world. And we'll
Speaker 1: we'll get to some examples of that in a bit, right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, in the years since, study on the Burning
Speaker 1: Mountain is continued, and it is clear that it is
Speaker 1: in fact a coal seam fire. So you can imagine
Speaker 1: there are masses of coal inside the mountains, sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: ribbons of coal running through the rocks, and at some
Speaker 1: point in history that coal must have been exposed to
Speaker 1: the air to some extent and set on fire, and
Speaker 1: it has been slowly burning or smoldering ever since. Now
Speaker 1: how is it first ignited? Ultimately, we have no way
Speaker 1: of knowing that. But hypotheses include lightning strikes, that would
Speaker 1: make sense. So lightning strikes exposed coal seam that that
Speaker 1: sets it ablaze and it just continues throughout the years
Speaker 1: after that. It could have been a natural brush fire.
Speaker 1: Brush fire gets close and does the same thing. There
Speaker 1: are some theories that it could be a kind of
Speaker 1: spontaneous spontaneous ignition of exposed coal, because when coal is
Speaker 1: exposed to air and gets really hot, maybe baking under
Speaker 1: the sun, it can start burning on its own. Or
Speaker 1: there could be some kind of chemical reaction, maybe involving
Speaker 1: you know, sulfur like we like we observed in the
Speaker 1: Smoking Hills the oxidation that kicks off that burning process
Speaker 1: in Canada. And then of course, obviously there's there's the
Speaker 1: other possibility which I think Smoky Bear would definitely point
Speaker 1: out to us, that there's always the chance that that
Speaker 1: human beings have a hand in setting such things ablaze. Possible, yes,
Speaker 1: either by accident or intentionally. Yeah, And so one of
Speaker 1: the articles I was reading mentioned the possibility because I
Speaker 1: think there are some early reports that make it that
Speaker 1: make the Burning Mountain sound more hellish and and uh
Speaker 1: stupendous than it is even today. I mean, today you
Speaker 1: don't see flames anywhere. You just see and smell the smoke,
Speaker 1: and you see the scorched earth on the on the
Speaker 1: surface and in these chasms leading down below. So something's
Speaker 1: happening deep down in their fires in the deep, but
Speaker 1: you're not seeing tongues of flame or up from the earth.
Speaker 1: I think some early reports did say that that they
Speaker 1: observed like lights and stuff like that, which may have
Speaker 1: led to the initial reports that this was some kind
Speaker 1: of volcano if they were seeing actual like glowing flames
Speaker 1: or or something like that coming out of the mountain,
Speaker 1: which could have been caused by if there was a
Speaker 1: section of the coal seam that was just closer to
Speaker 1: the surface. Right, it's closer to the surface, so more
Speaker 1: oxygen's getting to it, it's getting really hot, it's producing
Speaker 1: these flames and there within you know, a distance from
Speaker 1: the surface that can be seen the naked eye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we are dealing with the situation where you know,
Speaker 1: geologic processes are need to be considered, and and also
Speaker 1: where a situation where fuel is being consumed and so
Speaker 1: a certain amount of change is going to take place there.
Speaker 1: Like even in the Wilton quote that you you read here,
Speaker 1: like he talks about the great fury. Uh, that is
Speaker 1: observable here and perhaps this is just you know, his
Speaker 1: his description being you know, colorful and enthusiastic. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that doesn't necessarily match up with say,
Speaker 1: you know, these modern drone images in the modern drone
Speaker 1: footage that we were talking about earlier, Right, So, the
Speaker 1: surface appearance of a coal seam fire like this could
Speaker 1: could vary a lot over the ages as it continues
Speaker 1: to burn. I think one of one of the biggest
Speaker 1: variables just being like how close is the coal to
Speaker 1: the surface. Now, coming back to the question of how
Speaker 1: long the fire has been burning and how we could
Speaker 1: estimate this as the oldest continuous fire on Earth, it
Speaker 1: appears to be burning underground at a depth of roughly
Speaker 1: thirty meters below the surface. So while it has an
Speaker 1: enormous quantity of fuel that it can access in the
Speaker 1: coal seam that feeds it, it's actually burning incredibly slowly.
Speaker 1: And um, I'm pretty sure that the main reason for
Speaker 1: this is that it's so deep that it has very
Speaker 1: little access to oxygen. So for a mundane analogy, if
Speaker 1: you ever have experience working a grill, think about getting
Speaker 1: a fire going. Uh, and maybe you want this fire
Speaker 1: in the grill to burn low and slow instead of
Speaker 1: hot and fast. What would you do there, Well, you
Speaker 1: manipulate the vents, right. You squeeze them down to only
Speaker 1: the barest crack of an opening, so that the fire
Speaker 1: has very little access to oxygen. You can't close the
Speaker 1: vents completely, of course, because then the fire will just
Speaker 1: go out there's no oxygen. But if you keep just
Speaker 1: a little trickle of oxygen going in, the fire will
Speaker 1: burn slowly at a lower temperature and last for a
Speaker 1: longer time without extinguishing its few aal source. So I
Speaker 1: think that's probably what's going on in this case as well.
Speaker 1: There's you know, a bunch of coal down there, but
Speaker 1: it's burning through the coal very slowly. It's smoldering over
Speaker 1: the years because it's deep and the oxygen not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of oxygen gets to it at once. So
Speaker 1: scientists have actually been able to estimate the the average
Speaker 1: rate at which the fire spreads within the burning mountain,
Speaker 1: and a common estimate I've seen is that it appears
Speaker 1: to be going roughly one meter per year. And because
Speaker 1: we can track the historical movement of the burned area
Speaker 1: through geological markers, we can actually estimate the age of
Speaker 1: the fire, as the authors mentioned in a in a
Speaker 1: paper called Thermal Infrared Imagery of the Burning Mountain coal
Speaker 1: Fire published in Remote Sensing Equipment Buy C. D. Elliott
Speaker 1: and Adrian W. Fleming in nineteen seventy four. And so
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper right quote, baked sediments and
Speaker 1: slag produced by the urning Mountain coal fire have been
Speaker 1: traced over a distance of six kilometers to the northeast
Speaker 1: of the present chimney. The burning mountain coal fire itself
Speaker 1: is of considerable antiquity. If it's assumed that the fire
Speaker 1: is burnt continuously and migrated steadily south at the present
Speaker 1: main rate of movement, and again this is estimated to
Speaker 1: be roughly one meter per year, it would have taken
Speaker 1: approximately six thousand years to cover the distance indicated at
Speaker 1: the surface by its effects, though they acknowledged the fire
Speaker 1: may in fact have been burning for a much longer period.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of nice that that's some nice even
Speaker 1: math to round it out, right. So if it's gone
Speaker 1: about six kilometers and it's going about one meter per year,
Speaker 1: it seems to have been traveling for at least around
Speaker 1: six thousand years. And I don't know how credible these
Speaker 1: next claims are because I don't know the methodology behind them,
Speaker 1: but I've at least seen it stated in some other
Speaker 1: articles that the fire could be much older, maybe more
Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand years old, but I don't know
Speaker 1: why anybody would say that. So, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, even if only the low end estimate of
Speaker 1: six thousand years is true, that would make the Burning
Speaker 1: Mountain the longest burning fire on planet Earth. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that that dwarfs anything we've discussed thus far or
Speaker 1: will discuss. After this, I was reading about the site
Speaker 1: on the National Parks Australia page and they actually summarized
Speaker 1: a Wannaroua story about the origin of the mountain, which
Speaker 1: was that there was a woman who was waiting for
Speaker 1: her husband to return from battle, and she was sitting
Speaker 1: upon the mountain and her husband did not return, so
Speaker 1: I guess he was killed in battle. And when when
Speaker 1: he didn't come back, she was so distraught that she
Speaker 1: cried out to the sky god beyalm Me to to
Speaker 1: kill her. And the god did not kill her. Instead
Speaker 1: he turned her into stone, and so the tears she
Speaker 1: wept became fire and set the mountain itself on fire. Now,
Speaker 1: this is this is a site that that that the
Speaker 1: people can go and see. Uh. You can be looking
Speaker 1: it up on the website here. Uh, you can go
Speaker 1: to Burning Mountain Nature Reserve and there's a one a
Speaker 1: one to two hour hike you can take and you
Speaker 1: can go to this observation platform that's also visible in
Speaker 1: the drone footage that we were looking at. So I
Speaker 1: know we have a number of listeners out there in Australia.
Speaker 1: So if anyone out there has has been to this
Speaker 1: site and has some firsthand experience they would like to share,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about it. Yeah, totally. If you've
Speaker 1: been there right in, let us know what it's like. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The website also points out please note remember to take
Speaker 1: your binoculars if you want to bird watch, because serious
Speaker 1: bird watchers are like Burning Mountain. No, no, those birds Okay.
Speaker 1: But so this is one type of naturally fueled fire, right.
Speaker 1: This is a coal seam fire, and there are other
Speaker 1: fires like it, though none that we know of that
Speaker 1: are as old as this one. Some of the other
Speaker 1: major ones actually have clear human origins, like there were
Speaker 1: some famous ones in uh in the coal mining regions
Speaker 1: the United States, like the famous Centralia fire in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: There also I know a lot of coal seam fires
Speaker 1: throughout China where places that have where coal has been
Speaker 1: mined have accidentally been set a light. How long has
Speaker 1: the Springfield tire uh fire supposed to have been going
Speaker 1: on on the SIMP cells, we wouldn't have our tire fire,
Speaker 1: and um, I don't know how long is how many
Speaker 1: years has Simpson's been on? Seventy four years at this point. Now.
Speaker 1: Coal seam fires have all kinds of interesting characteristics and
Speaker 1: also that they can be incredibly troublesome because of course
Speaker 1: they're just sitting there belching smoke into the atmosphere without
Speaker 1: even being of use. I mean, it's not even like
Speaker 1: a coal power plant that is belching the you know,
Speaker 1: this carbon into the atmosphere and polluting the air, but
Speaker 1: at least you're getting power out of it. This is
Speaker 1: just doing that and nothing's coming from it. It's just burning,
Speaker 1: and it's in many cases hard or even impossible to
Speaker 1: put these out. I know there have been various schemes
Speaker 1: involving dumping like liquid nitrogen and stuff in and and
Speaker 1: some of these have just proven pretty much impossible for
Speaker 1: people to extinguish. Yeah, though it is interesting how it
Speaker 1: is kind of the naturally occurring equivalent of of human
Speaker 1: coal industry, you know, like it because of uh, because
Speaker 1: it's it's coal, it's burning, it's just not doing anything
Speaker 1: for humans. Uh So, coal, of course, is is a
Speaker 1: fossil fuel formed from ancient organic matter converted through heat
Speaker 1: and pressure. And like we've been saying, coal seams are
Speaker 1: just blanket like coal deposits in the rock, and when
Speaker 1: exposed in an outcrop or even in an underground environment,
Speaker 1: these seams can and will burn. Yeah, if oxygen can
Speaker 1: get to the coal, that's that's dangerous, right, But of
Speaker 1: course this is not the only natural fossil fuel that
Speaker 1: can be set alight and lead to a sort of
Speaker 1: assistant ongoing fire that that stretches beyond human control. That's right.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones here is um is a
Speaker 1: is a natural gas fueled fire, And this is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. Natural gas is of course, also
Speaker 1: a fossil fuel formed underground due to high temperatures and
Speaker 1: high compression of ancient organic matter into flammable thermogenic methane.
Speaker 1: As opposed to biogenic methane, which is produced by organisms.
Speaker 1: Deposits of natural gas occurrent smaller amounts at at shallower
Speaker 1: depths near oil deposits, and in deeper deposits of mostly
Speaker 1: just natural gas. There are several different classifications that we
Speaker 1: can work with here UM and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into detail on on these, but there's conventional gas,
Speaker 1: there's biogas, deep natural gas, shale tight gas, coal bed methane,
Speaker 1: submarine methane, hydrate gas, and geo pressurized zone gas. UM.
Speaker 1: So the basics though, are that if conditions are right,
Speaker 1: natural gas forms within the Earth over geologic time, and
Speaker 1: if conditions are also right, that gas can leak to
Speaker 1: the surface without human industry playing a hand in any
Speaker 1: of it. And if that that natural leakage of gas
Speaker 1: should encounter a spark a flame, well then you have
Speaker 1: yourself potentially a jet of fire uh emerging from the earth.
Speaker 1: Right the earth itself can sort of have a pilot
Speaker 1: light going. It's just there is a continuous release of
Speaker 1: natural gas, which is flammable, and if the flame gets going,
Speaker 1: the heat is there. The fuel is continuously supplies as
Speaker 1: it leaks out of the ground, and the oxygen is
Speaker 1: there in the atmosphere because it's meeting the surface. So
Speaker 1: you can just have a flame that comes out of
Speaker 1: the ground and just burns and burns and burns and
Speaker 1: burns as long as the as long as the gas
Speaker 1: is continually escaping. Yeah, and uh, and very very shortly
Speaker 1: here we'll have a I think a great example of this.
Speaker 1: But another possibility worth mentionment mentioning here is that of
Speaker 1: pete fires. So pete is found in shallow wetlands such
Speaker 1: as swamps and bogs, large deposits of plant matter have
Speaker 1: decomposed under anaerobic conditions. Pete has a number of different
Speaker 1: uses for in human technology, including gardening, filtration, chemical absorption techniques.
Speaker 1: But it's high in carbon, so if it drives out enough,
Speaker 1: it can catch fire. And I've read stories about the these. Uh.
Speaker 1: Pete fires that get out of hand can also be
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult to deal with. But it is interesting because
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily think of something in the bog being
Speaker 1: flammable like this. You don't. I don't know why don't you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you do think of things like swamp gas
Speaker 1: and um and you know we've talked in the past
Speaker 1: the whisp will of the whisp. Yeah, but you can
Speaker 1: also imagine yourself in this environment, being like it is
Speaker 1: so damp here it is, it is so wet. How
Speaker 1: could anything possibly burn on its own without humans playing
Speaker 1: a direct hand in it? Right? All right? So coming
Speaker 1: back to natural gas powered uh, naturally fueled flames, I
Speaker 1: want to come to some what I thought were just
Speaker 1: fascinating examples that I don't think I was really familiar
Speaker 1: with any of these because they concern what is now
Speaker 1: Agebajan on the the Absorm Peninsula. This was a region
Speaker 1: that was under the domain of Schirvan in ancient times,
Speaker 1: but came under the domain of Imperial Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Iran,
Speaker 1: and Soviet Russia during the twentieth century. UM. And this
Speaker 1: is an area where there is a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of petroleum and also various examples of natural gas
Speaker 1: emerging from the ground that that I thought we might
Speaker 1: discuss here, Okay, alright, So it takes us to what
Speaker 1: is now the capital city of Azerba jean Baku. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a hosted numerous sites of interest, including the Maiden Tower,
Speaker 1: a twelfth century construction with a very intriguing design. Its
Speaker 1: origins are often explained in a tale concerning fire Um.
Speaker 1: In particular, there are a few different Zoroastrian legends about
Speaker 1: this structure, and I included a picture here for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: and I encourage listeners to look up images of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this structure because it's it's it's quite picturesque. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've seen anything quite like it. It's it's
Speaker 1: rather different from from from other twelfth century constructions and
Speaker 1: certainly from other archaeological traditions in other parts of the world. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is also interesting because, of course fire has
Speaker 1: very important religious significance within Zoroastrianism. I've sometimes heard Zoroastrianism,
Speaker 1: I think incorrectly described as a fire worshiping religion, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that's quite right, because fire is not
Speaker 1: like a god or the god of zoro Asternism, like
Speaker 1: the the god of Zoroastrianism is the is Hura Mazda,
Speaker 1: you know that, the god of good and light um.
Speaker 1: But but fire is an important religious symbol within You
Speaker 1: do see these ancient accounts by foreigners generally who come
Speaker 1: into this region and they're like, oh, yeah, they worshiped
Speaker 1: fire here. But I think you could very easily compare
Speaker 1: that to accounts of say Europeans going into many other
Speaker 1: parts of the world and saying, hey, they worshiped demons, here,
Speaker 1: they worship devils. They're not Christian at all. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's ultimately, I think more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: But there is this element of fire that does pop
Speaker 1: up in some of the religious traditions in this area.
Speaker 1: I think maybe this might be a very rough analogy,
Speaker 1: but it would be kind of like mistakenly saying that
Speaker 1: Christians worship a cross made of wood, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think that that that gets at it. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: but but so I want to know this legend. You
Speaker 1: mentioned a Zoroastrian legend concerning the Maiden Tower, this intriguing
Speaker 1: and beautiful building, uh, and its origins concerning fire. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I was I was reading. Center was essentially a
Speaker 1: post that was put together by Professor Mahir Khalifa Zade
Speaker 1: and Laila Khalifa Zade, and uh. They point out that
Speaker 1: there there are several different legends tie that concerned fire
Speaker 1: and concern this to this tower, the maid In Tower. Um.
Speaker 1: But the basic story that really captivated my attention was
Speaker 1: this idea that Okay, you have this very brutal siege
Speaker 1: that's taking place at the city of Baku, and the
Speaker 1: people there they pray before the holy fires of the
Speaker 1: Fire Temple to Ahura Mazda to save them again. This
Speaker 1: is the creator deity of Zoroastrianism. And I'm gonna quote this, uh,
Speaker 1: this bit, uh, just a bit from the paper here
Speaker 1: or the post by Khalifa Zade here. Quote. Finally he
Speaker 1: heard their prayers. On the next day, the people saw
Speaker 1: that a large piece of the holy fire was fell
Speaker 1: down to the earth from the top of the fire
Speaker 1: temple tower. A beautiful girl came up from the fire.
Speaker 1: She had long and fire colored hairs. The crowd went
Speaker 1: down on their knees and started to pray to her.
Speaker 1: And so from here basically what happens. The fire maiden says, hey,
Speaker 1: I am sent here to protect you, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: need a sword and I'm gonna need a helmet to
Speaker 1: hide my long, beautiful hair from the enemy. The enemy
Speaker 1: cannot see my hair. Um, so they outfit her with
Speaker 1: these items. She orders the gates thrown open, and then
Speaker 1: a great battle ensues and she engages. He winds up
Speaker 1: engaging in single combat with the enemy commander, who just
Speaker 1: assumes she's just another one of the male soldiers of
Speaker 1: the city, you know, dressed in the helmet, wielding a sword. Uh.
Speaker 1: So she ends up knocking the commander down, and then
Speaker 1: she pulls a knife and holds it to his throat,
Speaker 1: and he asked to see the face of the warrior
Speaker 1: who has bested him, so she shows him. She takes
Speaker 1: the helm off, and he's shocked to see the face
Speaker 1: of a girl in the long, beautiful, flame colored hair
Speaker 1: of a girl. And first he realizes, Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: if this is what the girls of Baku are capable of,
Speaker 1: you know, if they're this tough, then we don't have
Speaker 1: a chance against the rest of the army. But then
Speaker 1: he also falls in love with her instantly, and then
Speaker 1: she falls in love with him, and then peace is declared.
Speaker 1: Oh didn't see that coming. Yeah, yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: has goes in a direction I didn't. I didn't expect there. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I mean, who knows you with
Speaker 1: stories like this, you can't have multiple stories, I guess,
Speaker 1: kind of merging together and twisting over time. And at
Speaker 1: some point someone decides, what if it had a what
Speaker 1: if it had a romantic ending? Um and ultimately um
Speaker 1: Khalifa Zade shares a few other versions where you know,
Speaker 1: various other things occur, and also mentions that the tower
Speaker 1: might just be called the maid In Tower because it
Speaker 1: was never conquered by the enemy. It's the ideas like this,
Speaker 1: this tower is it's it's a virgin tower. The enemy
Speaker 1: has never defiled it. I see. So you have this
Speaker 1: history in Baku, you know, concerning fire and uh and
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's the character the city seems
Speaker 1: very much associated with it. And you see that even
Speaker 1: in the city's modern wonders. There's a there there's a
Speaker 1: trio of skyscrapers. They are known as the Flame Towers,
Speaker 1: and they're they're they're very beautiful. In the pictures I
Speaker 1: looked at, they have this kind of curling flame shape
Speaker 1: to them, and so you know, during the day they're
Speaker 1: reflective glass and steel, very much like like any other
Speaker 1: modern skyscrapers. But I've also seen images where they lighted
Speaker 1: a light, the light these towers up at night with
Speaker 1: you know, swirling orange and yellow and red and and
Speaker 1: also some blue thrown in there as well. That really
Speaker 1: make them look like strong depictions of flames curling up
Speaker 1: from the earth. And this comes back to the idea
Speaker 1: that this is a region rich in petroleum and natural gas,
Speaker 1: and you have various sites of interest here that are
Speaker 1: associated with that, including uh Jan a Dog also known
Speaker 1: as the Burning Mountain uh and this is where natural
Speaker 1: gas constantly seeps up through the ground and has been
Speaker 1: a flame since at least the nineteen fifties, when um
Speaker 1: it may have been ignited by shepherds. So this is
Speaker 1: an example where uh you know, ultimately who knows, but
Speaker 1: at least one of the other stories out there is that, okay,
Speaker 1: there's gas leaking up and then some shepherds set it
Speaker 1: on fire in the fifties, um, and by some accounts
Speaker 1: it has been burning ever since. Flames reportedly jet about
Speaker 1: three meters or nine point eight feet into the air
Speaker 1: from from this site. And I looked up images of
Speaker 1: this site, and this is another one where if you're
Speaker 1: going into this expecting something out of mortor you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna be disappointed. It's basically this this hillside, and there's
Speaker 1: a there's an area where there's not any vegetation, and
Speaker 1: there's an area that's really dark, and then here are
Speaker 1: the fires springing out of the earth. Now, this area
Speaker 1: is also known for its mud volcanoes, which are not
Speaker 1: true volcanoes as they don't produce lava instead. Uh uh.
Speaker 1: And I have to throw in this wonderful description that
Speaker 1: I found for mud volcanoes in general from Brewster at
Speaker 1: All in article in geo Echo Marina. They say that
Speaker 1: these are geo exuded slurries including usually including water and gases.
Speaker 1: So they look like a like a bit like um
Speaker 1: like bubbling mud like gas rising up through the mud. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, forming these big bub bubbles. It has kind
Speaker 1: of a bog of eternal stinch kind of a look
Speaker 1: to it. And you know, some of these also looks
Speaker 1: very much like an alien world, like you have this
Speaker 1: this kind of barren landscape and here's like the bubbling
Speaker 1: pool of mud. Years ago, I think I flagged mud
Speaker 1: volcanoes as a is a potential episode topic for us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we could easily come back to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: weird sort of gray clay puke coming up from these
Speaker 1: these cracked blisters in the earth. It's it's pretty cool. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this this region of of of of Sasani has long
Speaker 1: been associated again, often with fire worship or religious practices
Speaker 1: that concern fire, and their accounts going back apparently to
Speaker 1: the tenth century at least, but as luck would have it,
Speaker 1: we also have accounts of this region from German traveler
Speaker 1: Ingelbert Comfort, who visited here in sixteen eighty three and
Speaker 1: just and and uh and has some wonderful descriptions of
Speaker 1: what he saw. Inglebert Comfort, of course, popped up in
Speaker 1: our Vegetable Lamb episode, Oh yeah, that's right, as one
Speaker 1: of the early voices of skepticism about this story, saying
Speaker 1: that I don't know. I traveled all over and people
Speaker 1: don't really seem to know what what these stories are
Speaker 1: talking about. I do not think there is a there
Speaker 1: is a plant that makes lambs. Yes. So the book
Speaker 1: in question is Exotic Attractions in Persia eighty four through
Speaker 1: six eight, And I was looking at a translation of
Speaker 1: this by Villiam Floor, which you can find on the
Speaker 1: book or physical book out there. So I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read just a brief bit from it here where he's
Speaker 1: talking about these fires. From there, we continued our march,
Speaker 1: and after midday we came to the burning field covered
Speaker 1: with white sand and sprinkled with ashy dust. From numerous fissures.
Speaker 1: Sulfurous spouts burst from the soil, a varied and pleasant spectacle.
Speaker 1: Some fissures made a lot of noise, and with their
Speaker 1: fires and their violence, aroused a holy fear among some
Speaker 1: rare spectators. Others again emitted less strong flames, allowing everybody
Speaker 1: to come quite close. Others exhaled fumes or rather hardly
Speaker 1: visible vapors, but which reeked strongly of the spirit of Nafta.
Speaker 1: These phenomena appeared in the area of eighty eight paces
Speaker 1: in length wide. The fissures were amazingly narrow, not wider
Speaker 1: than one foot or one palm, some shorter and drawn
Speaker 1: into a semicircle, and others crooked with a long and
Speaker 1: sinuous bend, which I have shown accurately and conform to
Speaker 1: reality in the appended illustration to complete this description. The
Speaker 1: edges of these cracks and the soil itself, when you
Speaker 1: remove the dust, showed a pox marked light stone, almost
Speaker 1: like pumice stone. The matter seemed to be a conglomerate
Speaker 1: of seashells and minuscule snail shells. We came upon about
Speaker 1: a dozen people who stayed there who around a fire,
Speaker 1: were engaged in all kinds of activities. In fact, some,
Speaker 1: having placed copper or earthenware pots on a not too
Speaker 1: blazing crack, prepared the meals for the inhabitants of the
Speaker 1: neighboring village of Sorgani at Swaga, thus named because of
Speaker 1: the fire. Others, having brought stones from all around, and
Speaker 1: having heaped them together, were burning lime, and once, when ready,
Speaker 1: they made a pile to transport it in small vessels.
Speaker 1: Two foreigners, Indian fire worshippers descended from the ancient Persians,
Speaker 1: were quietly seated around an enclosure they had constructed. They
Speaker 1: watched and venerated the spouting flame, offering prayers to the
Speaker 1: eternal God. One of the lime burners had approached us,
Speaker 1: proposing to show us something particularly extraordinary. If for this surface,
Speaker 1: we offered him some money. When we had counted it,
Speaker 1: he placed small cotton balls that he tore from his
Speaker 1: dress on a fire shovel and set fire to them.
Speaker 1: Then he very quickly took the flame obtained in that
Speaker 1: fashion above a fissure at some distance which had neither
Speaker 1: fire nor flame. Its vapor was everywhere invisible until it
Speaker 1: produced a very high flame. This was a beautiful and
Speaker 1: unexpected moment, but the flame disappeared again after a while.
Speaker 1: Such is the first appearance of the wonders of nature,
Speaker 1: well known in this part of the peninsula, but not
Speaker 1: in the same place, and eternally remain in people's memory. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I love everything about that account. That's oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. Though. I have to notice Camphor mentions cotton,
Speaker 1: thinking back to the vegetable lamb thing, So he knew
Speaker 1: about he knew about cotton, at least I'm assuming this
Speaker 1: translation is accurate and that is what he meant instead
Speaker 1: of using the word for wool or something. That's a
Speaker 1: good point. That's a good point. So again, that is
Speaker 1: from Exotic Attractions in Persia by by Ingolbert Comfort And
Speaker 1: you can pick up a copy of that that comes
Speaker 1: out from this out from major publishers. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: is a kindle addition. But there's another side of interest
Speaker 1: related to all of this, and that is the Atashka
Speaker 1: Fire Temple or the Fire Temple of Baku. This is
Speaker 1: a square building with pentagonal walls and a domed roof
Speaker 1: constructed atop a natural gas leak that provides fuel for
Speaker 1: a large flame in the center of the temple, as
Speaker 1: well as for four smaller flames on each of the
Speaker 1: buildings on the roof. Basically there are four small almost
Speaker 1: like little towers, one at each corner of the of
Speaker 1: the roof, and those are flaming as well. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: So this is a temple, a religious building built around
Speaker 1: a natural gas leak. Yeah. So I love this because
Speaker 1: in that comfort account we had an example of people
Speaker 1: cooking over one of these naturally occurring bouts of gas
Speaker 1: and spouts of flame. Uh and uh. And now we
Speaker 1: have an actual structure that is not not only like
Speaker 1: built around this, but but seems to be manipulating the
Speaker 1: flow of gas so that you can have additional fires
Speaker 1: control fires burning at the top of the temple. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know there's some old woodcuts of this and
Speaker 1: uh and and also you know you can find modern
Speaker 1: photos of it as well. Um. It's been a place
Speaker 1: for Hindu seek and Zoroastrian worship, um and uh. It
Speaker 1: seems to be some debate on who originally worshiped here,
Speaker 1: and part of this may be due to what Mary
Speaker 1: Boyce described in the on the Zoroastrian temple cult of
Speaker 1: Fire published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society
Speaker 1: as quote the dearth of records of Zoroastrianism at any
Speaker 1: period before the seventeenth sent Tree ce. But Boys points
Speaker 1: out a few different ideas about the history of these
Speaker 1: fire temples again in the in the particularly mainly and
Speaker 1: we were talking about in the Baku region. First of all,
Speaker 1: okay I was like, surely we know it's older than that.
Speaker 1: Okay I see in this region. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: the history is complex due to the existence of both
Speaker 1: Zoroastrian image cults and fire cults, and uh and there
Speaker 1: seemed to be an offer a lot of overlap between
Speaker 1: the two. So she says that the image cults seems
Speaker 1: seemed to have lasted from the fourth century b c e.
Speaker 1: Until they were suppressed by an iconoclastic movement under the
Speaker 1: Sasanians or the Neo Persian Empire. And so in this
Speaker 1: we're getting back into this idea that we have explored
Speaker 1: in a previous episode about the role of images in worship.
Speaker 1: So basically, uh and so the cult of the fire
Speaker 1: temples may have been instituted in oppose adition to quote
Speaker 1: this alien form of worship, and so I believe what
Speaker 1: she's saying here is that as the use of images
Speaker 1: were suppressed in their worship UH, they turned to the
Speaker 1: flame itself as a focal point of worship. And we
Speaker 1: can we can we see that reflected in that story
Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier, praying to a hura mazda, but
Speaker 1: using the flame is like the focal point of the worship.
Speaker 1: And Boys also points out that this would you could
Speaker 1: also link this to older traditions of the veneration of
Speaker 1: hearth fires. And it goes without saying I guess as
Speaker 1: well that this is a region with natural gas h
Speaker 1: easily linked to natural flames, et cetera. So there's a
Speaker 1: there's a there's a local aspect of this going on.
Speaker 1: But then in general we also have these traditions of
Speaker 1: keeping the fire and UH, into a certain extent, venerating
Speaker 1: that fire and protecting it and looking after it. She
Speaker 1: also points out that quote no actual ruins of a
Speaker 1: fire temple have been convincingly identified from A four the
Speaker 1: Parthian period. That's from b C. E C. Now, this
Speaker 1: is another bit that I found quite interesting. Um So
Speaker 1: this is a still I believe a candidate to become
Speaker 1: a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Temple the Flame temple here,
Speaker 1: but the temple flame, reportedly according to UNESCO, went out
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty three due to petroleum activity in the region.
Speaker 1: So now it's lit via an artificial gas line U
Speaker 1: instead of natural gas emerging from the earth. So it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think of this, this site and this date
Speaker 1: in eight three is kind of a key boundary point
Speaker 1: between the oil age and the age of fossil fuel
Speaker 1: and the period preceding it, a time during which the
Speaker 1: divine fire is extinguished and then is replaced by technological
Speaker 1: mastery over fossil fuels and fire. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So
Speaker 1: I found all the just just richly um interesting. I
Speaker 1: have I have to admit I had not read much
Speaker 1: about age Bajan. I've never been to a Bajan. But this,
Speaker 1: this is, this is all wonderful. I absolutely love it.
Speaker 1: And I would love to hear from anyone out there
Speaker 1: listening to the show who is in a Bajan or
Speaker 1: as of of are Bajan the heritage that or is
Speaker 1: just traveled there and seeing these sites right in let
Speaker 1: us know. I'd love to have some you know, some
Speaker 1: more insight on all of this. Alright, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close it out here, but we're gonna be back
Speaker 1: and and hey, we might keep talking on this this
Speaker 1: topic that the train is in motion and there's there's
Speaker 1: certainly more we could discuss here. The burning continues, the
Speaker 1: fuel has not been extinguished yet so so so this
Speaker 1: may go on next week, all right, in the in
Speaker 1: the meantime, again, we'd love to hear from everyone out
Speaker 1: there has additional inside firsthand or otherwise on the topics
Speaker 1: we've discussed here, um, you know, and h and also
Speaker 1: anything about the previous episode or there are other episodes
Speaker 1: that have come before, or potential episodes we could record
Speaker 1: in the future. Um. As a reminder, Core episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind air on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed and
Speaker 1: can get that wherever you get your podcasts these days.
Speaker 1: On Monday's we do listener Mail. On Wednesday's we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact were Monster Fact. On Fridays we
Speaker 1: do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always, to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to say hello or to suggest it for the future,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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