Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and today we got an art question to start off with. Uh,
Speaker 1: have you out there? Have you ever been wandering through
Speaker 1: a museum and looking at old paintings, especially maybe paintings
Speaker 1: from the medieval Europe or from the Renaissance period, and
Speaker 1: you happen to come across a dog holding in its
Speaker 1: mouth maybe what looks like a big, old rolled up
Speaker 1: newspaper that's on fire, or as as many people on
Speaker 1: the Internet have characterized it, smoking a joint or smoking
Speaker 1: a hand rolled cigarette. You know, I have to admit
Speaker 1: that I had I had never noticed this before, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not an our expert by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination, but I feel like I've I've walked through
Speaker 1: a number of really good art museums. I I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: in the past diving into sort of detail oriented topics
Speaker 1: that involve paintings, and yet I have never witnessed the
Speaker 1: joint smoking dog or the firebrand bearing dog before until
Speaker 1: it was brought to my attention by an an art
Speaker 1: net dot com blog post or article that we were
Speaker 1: talking about, right, So, I don't know how you came
Speaker 1: across this, but you were the one who sent it
Speaker 1: to me. And this was a blog post by an
Speaker 1: American art critic named Ben Davis. Uh. That's very funny,
Speaker 1: and it is addressing the question of why are there
Speaker 1: so many medieval and Renaissance paintings that depict what looks
Speaker 1: like a dog smoking a joint. That is the way
Speaker 1: the author phrases it, and it's it's quite amusing because
Speaker 1: it includes images examples of this and when you start
Speaker 1: looking at them, yeah, it looks like these dogs that
Speaker 1: they're doing something. They're either holding some sort of a
Speaker 1: a joint like object, or at the very least, they
Speaker 1: have fire. They have fire in a way that seems
Speaker 1: totally out of keeping with what dogs actually want and
Speaker 1: do in reality. So a few examples. There is one
Speaker 1: painting from the sixteen sixties by an artist named Wanda
Speaker 1: Pereha that features a very cute dog laid out on
Speaker 1: the ground with stubby little four legs tucked up under
Speaker 1: his pawnchy chest, and there is a bouquet of white
Speaker 1: flowers tossed to the ground in front of him, and
Speaker 1: then between his jaws he is clutching a foot long
Speaker 1: white cylinder that is on fire on the end opposite
Speaker 1: of his mouth. And yes, it does look like some
Speaker 1: kind of giant cigarette or something of that kind, but
Speaker 1: it could also be maybe a candle. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just a white thing that's on fire. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the dog has a very relaxed vibe doing this, and
Speaker 1: it's just kind of a chalky, relaxed dog that doesn't
Speaker 1: look like like I'm going to burn your city down
Speaker 1: or anything like that. He's just hanging out. This is
Speaker 1: a smooth chalk. All these that I'm mentioning are featured
Speaker 1: in that that article by Ben Davis, by the way.
Speaker 1: But so there's another painting from the sixteen eighties by
Speaker 1: Claudio Coello, and it is a portrait of a certain
Speaker 1: religious figure, but excluding the central figure for a second.
Speaker 1: In the bottom left of the frame, there's a black
Speaker 1: and white dog with a kind of skunk coloration pattern,
Speaker 1: and he is biting what looks like a fence post
Speaker 1: that's on fire, and you can see his little under
Speaker 1: fangs in the lower canines holding fast to that burning steak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now this one looks a little more fierce, a little
Speaker 1: more mischievous even uh. There he's also next to a
Speaker 1: spherical object. I forget what you call these um in
Speaker 1: religious iconography of Catholicism, but it reminds me of a globe,
Speaker 1: and so I get kind of this feeling of the
Speaker 1: dog threatening to torch the earth. Well, and that also
Speaker 1: seems to be a theme, because here's yet another one
Speaker 1: that was in Davis's post. So this is by jose
Speaker 1: guild Castro from eighteen seventeens, a later painting, but once
Speaker 1: again there is a person at the center of this painting.
Speaker 1: But in the lower right corner there is a bizarre scene.
Speaker 1: There's this big old blue sphere like a big azure
Speaker 1: beach ball, and then on top of the ball there
Speaker 1: is a dog. Except this dog looks ferocious. He is
Speaker 1: showing all his sharp little teeth and he's digging into
Speaker 1: the ball with his claws, and once again he's holding
Speaker 1: a burning stick in his mouth, except this time he's
Speaker 1: holding the stick so that the business end, the end
Speaker 1: that's on fire, is stabbing into the blue ball like
Speaker 1: he's trying to burn a hole in it. So, so
Speaker 1: what's up here well, Davis explains, actually, uh, this is
Speaker 1: religious iconography. These are animals that mean something. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I mentioned that in most of these artworks the central
Speaker 1: subject is a person rather than a dog. And then
Speaker 1: there's a dog with a with a burning stick or
Speaker 1: a cigarette or whatever down in the corner. The person
Speaker 1: in the middle of the painting is almost always one
Speaker 1: of two people. It is either St. Jayne Santa Juana
Speaker 1: of of Aza or her son St. Dominic Santo Domingo,
Speaker 1: who was a very important figure in the history of
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church lived from the twelfth to the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: and he was a Catholic priest who founded the Dominican
Speaker 1: Order in twelve sixteen. Uh to read from davis quote,
Speaker 1: thereby setting the world on fire metaphorically in terms of
Speaker 1: spreading the faith. As a matter of fact, Dominican preachers
Speaker 1: were sometimes called Dominique khans or the dogs of the
Speaker 1: Lord Goodness. It's a very good medieval pun for you.
Speaker 1: But so, according to legend, St. Dominic's mother St. Jane
Speaker 1: was granted a premonition in the form of a vision
Speaker 1: from God, and in her vision she saw that she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, but with a dog, and the dog carried
Speaker 1: a flaming tortun in its mouth, and then when she
Speaker 1: in the vision gave birth to the dog, it was
Speaker 1: run and around. It darted all over the place with
Speaker 1: the torch and set fire to everything. And this was
Speaker 1: interpreted to me and that her son would metaphorically set
Speaker 1: the world on fire, meaning he would preach a message
Speaker 1: that would reach the ends of the earth. And so
Speaker 1: by establishing the Dominican Order, I think, you know, they
Speaker 1: were largely well. They had a number of concerns, but
Speaker 1: one of them was like preaching against heresies of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. So if you're a heretic, you need to
Speaker 1: watch out for the dog with the flaming brand because
Speaker 1: it is coming to set the world on fire. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to say, in some of these images I
Speaker 1: totally get this vibe, you know, particularly that one that
Speaker 1: where he's not he's not actually making contact with the
Speaker 1: globe like object that he seems to be threatening to do.
Speaker 1: So I can see it. This is a vision dog.
Speaker 1: This is a dog that is bringing prophecy from divine realms.
Speaker 1: But that first guy that that that that chunky one
Speaker 1: we were talking about, I don't know he he doesn't
Speaker 1: look like he's wandered out of any vision. He looks
Speaker 1: like the painter had a much beloved dog his life
Speaker 1: and decided, well, if I'm going to put in this
Speaker 1: dog of prophecy, I'm gonna put my dog Schakers in there.
Speaker 1: And uh, and that's who I want to paint. You know,
Speaker 1: this is something I often wonder looking at old paintings
Speaker 1: and sculptures of religious figures. So if there's a a
Speaker 1: painting of of John the Baptist where he looks really hunky,
Speaker 1: is it because this person, you know, the painter was
Speaker 1: filled with religious fervor for this scene involving John the
Speaker 1: Baptist and really wanted to depict that. Or is it
Speaker 1: because he like had a friend or a model or
Speaker 1: something that he really wanted to paint and he's like,
Speaker 1: who can I I'll say, this guy is John the Baptist. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And ultimately I think in some cases that is the reality.
Speaker 1: You have painters who want to paint, say the human
Speaker 1: form and it are you know, obsessed with the with
Speaker 1: anatomy and the and how to properly relate that in
Speaker 1: the painting. But how are you going to do that
Speaker 1: and get paid? You know, Uh, but well this could
Speaker 1: be this could be the dog version, right. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is like you're saying, this is his dog that
Speaker 1: he loves, and he was just wants to paint the dog.
Speaker 1: He's like, how can I? Oh, I know this is
Speaker 1: the dog of the vision of St. Jayne. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's looking right at you. It's a beautiful painting. It's
Speaker 1: a very lifelike rendering of this dog. Yeah, Wanda Parade,
Speaker 1: two thumbs up. I love your chalk. Now, all of
Speaker 1: this talk of holy dogs and uh Catholic tradition, you
Speaker 1: know this. This is all well and good, but uh,
Speaker 1: one one question that that certainly arises is do we
Speaker 1: find anything like this anywhere else in the world, Because
Speaker 1: on one hand, like I said, this is not something
Speaker 1: dogs do. This is not something around yeah, carry fire
Speaker 1: around it. In fact, I was looking around to find
Speaker 1: any account of this happening, certainly any like videos of like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's our dog. He likes to carry a flaming brand
Speaker 1: around the house, and I found virtually nothing. The closest
Speaker 1: I came was a video that allegedly is of a
Speaker 1: dog swooping in to grab a lit firework before it
Speaker 1: can blast off. Yeah, exactly the same here I was.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, is this a natural phenomenon or their
Speaker 1: observed conditions where a dog will commonly pick up a
Speaker 1: flaming stick? And I was looking all over the place
Speaker 1: and found nothing really except I found a couple of
Speaker 1: instances of people talking about dogs that had specifically been
Speaker 1: trained to carry a flaming torch or something. But it
Speaker 1: was just in the context of dogs being trained to
Speaker 1: do all kinds of tricks like jump through a flaming
Speaker 1: hoop or anything like that. So I think carrying a
Speaker 1: flaming torch is something you could train a dog to do,
Speaker 1: in the sense that you can train a dog to
Speaker 1: do just about anything. So it would stand a reason
Speaker 1: it would seem possible that maybe this is just a
Speaker 1: one off, you know, it's certainly if we believe this, uh,
Speaker 1: this story, that this is a dog of vision and prophecy,
Speaker 1: you know, just sort of random dream imagery that comes together, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, or some sort of a vision, some sort
Speaker 1: of hallucination, whatever, the you know, the the real world
Speaker 1: situation might be that maybe this is just something that
Speaker 1: occurs once in human traditions and we're not likely to
Speaker 1: expect to see it pop up anywhere else, and yet
Speaker 1: I found one. I found another dog with a with
Speaker 1: a flaming stick. Uh, And I'm not I'm still not
Speaker 1: sure exactly what to make of it. How much of
Speaker 1: it we can sort of chalk up to, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: cultural convergent evolution or if if if Ultimately we can
Speaker 1: get down to certain realities about dogs and humans, humanities,
Speaker 1: relationship with the dog. Um. You know, I think maybe
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of both of those, so you
Speaker 1: might So you're wondering, where is this? Where do we
Speaker 1: have to go to find this other dog with the
Speaker 1: flaming brand? Well, we have to travel once more to
Speaker 1: pre Columbian um Mesoamerica. We have to travel to the
Speaker 1: Aztec world and also the Mayan world and look to
Speaker 1: the fire carrying dog in these cultures as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go. All right, Well, let's start with
Speaker 1: the Aztecs and I'll come back to some of the
Speaker 1: Mayan examples, but uh, just to refresh the Aztec world.
Speaker 1: This flourished in the central Mexico from around thirteen hundred
Speaker 1: to fifteen twenty one. They rose out of obscurity among
Speaker 1: various indigenous peoples of the region and became a dominant power. Now,
Speaker 1: civilizations are of course a human affair, but of course
Speaker 1: they always entail other species, including domesticated plants and animals.
Speaker 1: So we've discussed the importance of maize to the Aztecs
Speaker 1: as well as other crops, but they also had some
Speaker 1: domesticated animals. The their domestic animals included turkeys, which I
Speaker 1: believe we discussed Aztecs and their turkeys in the past.
Speaker 1: Also bees. I think there are some cases for ducks
Speaker 1: and geese and maybe quail, but I see that in
Speaker 1: some sources. But on the other so, I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely certain that that is a definite or or maybe
Speaker 1: even a universal reality of of of Aztecs. Maybe there
Speaker 1: were certain regions where they may have had some domestic
Speaker 1: ducks and geese, but for the most part, when you
Speaker 1: talk about the domesticated animals of the Aztecs, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the turkey, you're talking about bees, and you're talking
Speaker 1: about the dog, the old reliable, the dogs always there. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and I really think it's important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind through all this that I think that's that
Speaker 1: seems to be a universal thing. I think that Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the way that like medieval Europeans viewed the dog is
Speaker 1: largely in keeping with the way Aztecs and minds viewed
Speaker 1: the dog as well. They're gonna be some differences as
Speaker 1: well discuss, but I think ultimately there's a lot about
Speaker 1: the dog being man's best friend in all of this.
Speaker 1: You know, the dog is the creature that sticks by you,
Speaker 1: and and maybe ultimately like that is where we get
Speaker 1: this idea of the dog carrying the flame, because who
Speaker 1: else is going to carry the flame for humanity? Is
Speaker 1: it going to be the cat? Now? So I was
Speaker 1: reading about all of this in The Use and Significance
Speaker 1: of Animals in Aztec Rituals by Maria Convalineri from twenty
Speaker 1: from two thousand and nine, and she points out a
Speaker 1: few important things here. First of all, she points out
Speaker 1: that the Aztecs were really latively poor in domesticated animals
Speaker 1: compared to various other cultures we might look to. Common
Speaker 1: people would only eat meat on special occasions. They had
Speaker 1: no draft animals. The turkey was ultimately their greatest domestic
Speaker 1: meat source, and their eggs also provided protein. But they
Speaker 1: also had dogs, and not merely one variety of dogs
Speaker 1: or just dogs in the generic sense. They had several
Speaker 1: varieties of dog, and one of these was apparently used
Speaker 1: almost exclusively for food. And this was true of the
Speaker 1: Mayans as well, as Alan Jay Christensen points out in
Speaker 1: pople Vou, the Sacred Book of the Maya Volume one,
Speaker 1: the Mayans also depended on the dog, the turkey, and
Speaker 1: the honey bee. And these dogs were quote small, fat,
Speaker 1: nearly hairless. Uh, and they didn't bark. But that but
Speaker 1: here's the important thing to drive home is that they
Speaker 1: weren't just it wasn't just a food species. They were
Speaker 1: both food and pet. This was a creature that would
Speaker 1: that was a companion that was a pet. But then
Speaker 1: also under certain circumstances, again not every day, but but
Speaker 1: but when necessary, it was also a food species. Now
Speaker 1: some of the details of the Aztec dog, they were
Speaker 1: apparently I'm reading three different rough varieties. There's the medium
Speaker 1: sized furred dog. The it's quintly and this was also
Speaker 1: a hunting dog. So that's an important thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind too, like the dog also has this purpose
Speaker 1: and cultures around the world where it's helping us a
Speaker 1: choir food. Then there is the medium sized hairless dog.
Speaker 1: And this is the Showlitz quintly And this is um
Speaker 1: this this would have been a dog that would have
Speaker 1: been used as one of these these pets slash food dogs.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a short legged, furred dog and
Speaker 1: this is the cloud chee chee. And I'm reading that
Speaker 1: this one might have also been a meat dog at
Speaker 1: times as well. Now, according to UH Confelinary, it seems
Speaker 1: that the hairless variety was primarily the food dog, at
Speaker 1: least in some read but again only for special occasions. UH.
Speaker 1: And there are Aztec depictions of their wrinkled hairless faces,
Speaker 1: and these are worth looking up like it's it's undeniable,
Speaker 1: Like this is not a um um, you know, a
Speaker 1: loupine or type of a dog face. This is not
Speaker 1: the face of a coyote. Coyotes were of course also
Speaker 1: around in the wild. No, this is the face of
Speaker 1: the domestic dog. And I do think we need to
Speaker 1: be careful, of course, not to equate the consumption of
Speaker 1: dog meat with cruelty to animals in this context, at
Speaker 1: least no more than we might equate any traditional historic
Speaker 1: meat consumption to cruelty, Because, as Confelinary stresses, these dogs
Speaker 1: were also pets. Uh, certainly with the furred varieties, but
Speaker 1: even the hairless ones, they would have been well treated,
Speaker 1: and they fulfilled the role of both pet and food.
Speaker 1: And there was a religious reason to treat dogs well,
Speaker 1: be they you know, hunting dog or a dog that
Speaker 1: would be used for for for food. At some point,
Speaker 1: dogs were seen as psychopomps by the as text, which
Speaker 1: is to say, it was the role of the dog
Speaker 1: to shepherd the human soul across the ninefold stream to
Speaker 1: reach the center of the underworld, the afterlife of Midland. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in some accounts, you have to be very particular
Speaker 1: about the color of the dog. I found this interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea was that white dogs have just bathed, and
Speaker 1: therefore they're not gonna enter the waters. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: get you across the ninefold stream to the center of
Speaker 1: the afterlife. Um. Black dogs, on the other hand, they
Speaker 1: will cross, but they can only carry their own souls.
Speaker 1: What you need is like a yellow dog. That's the
Speaker 1: dog that's gonna get you across the ninefold stream. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's gonna carry its own soul, but also yours. Interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: Confolinari shares a great quote from twentieth century pre Columbian
Speaker 1: art expert Elizabeth P. Benson on all of this, it
Speaker 1: kind of sums up and extrapolates on why the dog.
Speaker 1: Why is the dog the psychopomph? Benson wrote, dogs are
Speaker 1: appropriate escorts for the dead. They walk with their noses
Speaker 1: to the ground. They dig in the earth, barry bones
Speaker 1: and hunt in burrows. They eat carrion and make themselves
Speaker 1: smell of it. They have night vision. They howl at night.
Speaker 1: They know what is there in the darkness relating to
Speaker 1: the earth, the dead, things to sounds and smells that
Speaker 1: are imperceptible to humans. Dogs have esoteric knowledge and special
Speaker 1: connections with the underworld. Oh that's a wonderful observation about
Speaker 1: the the inferred supernatural power of a dog, just because
Speaker 1: of the different kind of sense realms a dog can
Speaker 1: occupy that the dog detects something in the darkness before
Speaker 1: you do. They hear it before you do. They might
Speaker 1: be able to see or smell things that you can't see,
Speaker 1: or smell, or certainly smell things you can't smell. So
Speaker 1: you would you would agree with this as a dog owner?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, pretty much. Any dog owner, I think would
Speaker 1: have the experience of the dog knows something around the
Speaker 1: house is going on before you do. They know that
Speaker 1: somebody is approaching the front door before you do, or
Speaker 1: you take maybe you go out back in the darkness
Speaker 1: and in the nighttime, and the dog knows something is
Speaker 1: there that you don't detect in any way, and maybe
Speaker 1: it's a possum on top of the offense or something. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, yeah, the the dog is aware of
Speaker 1: things before you're aware of them, and sometimes things that
Speaker 1: you never become aware of. Maybe it um it. It's
Speaker 1: attention perks up and it barks at something in the
Speaker 1: darkness that comes and goes and then it's gone and
Speaker 1: you never see what it is. That could, given the
Speaker 1: right mindset, leads someone to believe that the dog is
Speaker 1: maybe interacting with spirits or interacting with with with something
Speaker 1: beyond the human sense realm. Yeah, yeah, And of course
Speaker 1: even if you're not going to the spiritual uh extreme
Speaker 1: of that interpretation, undoubtedly the dog is a protector. The
Speaker 1: dog is raising an alarm. Even if it can't bark,
Speaker 1: it'll raise some sort of an alarm that's something is
Speaker 1: perhaps there that shouldn't be Uh, it's gonna play a
Speaker 1: role in protecting, uh, the domicile, perhaps also helping to
Speaker 1: protect the crops to some degree. Yeah, so that's important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind here as well. But there's another
Speaker 1: thing mentioned in Benson's quote that is also interesting about
Speaker 1: the association with with say death and carrion. I mean,
Speaker 1: so as as beautiful and sweet and pure as as
Speaker 1: dogs are, at least in my mind, they're also they're
Speaker 1: interested in disgusting dead things that humans, that will make
Speaker 1: the human senses revolt and that will make you want
Speaker 1: to stay away. But the dog wants to approach. So
Speaker 1: it makes sense. This is this is a world they
Speaker 1: understand we may be repelled by. And therefore, who's going
Speaker 1: to guide you through the realms of death? You're good,
Speaker 1: old dog. Now. One of the issues here is that
Speaker 1: the dog, if this dog is gonna guide you through
Speaker 1: the afterlife, it also needs to cross over with you
Speaker 1: as well. It needs to be buried with you. And
Speaker 1: thus dogs were also used in ritual sacrifice by the Aztects.
Speaker 1: But where does fire come into all this, you're probably wondering.
Speaker 1: So far this dog has not been running around with fire. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna We're gonna get to that here um those
Speaker 1: certainly the idea of the dog guiding you through a
Speaker 1: dark underworld like that that already leans itself to interpretations
Speaker 1: of a dog carrying some sort of fire, a dog
Speaker 1: lighting the way and being your guide through the darkness.
Speaker 1: So the next fact worth mentioning in all this current
Speaker 1: concerns the Aztec god Sholatl, described guy by confolin Ary
Speaker 1: as skeletal, dog faced, or dog bodied. Now Sholatl is
Speaker 1: the twin of quetzal Codal, also described as the god
Speaker 1: of monsters and the patron deity of twins, both human
Speaker 1: twins and also just sort of general twinning in nature
Speaker 1: anytime something seems to have a dual existence or nature,
Speaker 1: and the connection here does seem to be to the
Speaker 1: domestic dog too. When we're talking about this this god
Speaker 1: being dog faced or dog bodied, it's not the coyotes face.
Speaker 1: It's you know, which was a wild scavenger, and it
Speaker 1: is also sometimes associated with the god of the smoking
Speaker 1: near uh ts Catl Polka. Depictions of Cholatto, including one
Speaker 1: discovered during the construction of the Mexico City subway system,
Speaker 1: includes details clearly associated with the hairless, wrinkle face domestic dog.
Speaker 1: So to be clear, food pet dog reflected in the
Speaker 1: divine image here, not a wild dog or even a
Speaker 1: hunting dog. This is uh, this is the the hairless,
Speaker 1: wrinkly dog that is the face or even the body
Speaker 1: of the divine So you've got a picture here of this,
Speaker 1: this carving of the dog face. Yeah, and it is
Speaker 1: unmistakably doggy because you see the wrinkles in the skin,
Speaker 1: and you see the kind of relatively stubby snout compared
Speaker 1: to what you'd see with like a wool for a coyote. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. So there doesn't seem to be any mystery
Speaker 1: here concern earning this god's connection to the domestic dog.
Speaker 1: So to the Aztecs, dogs were important. They were valued
Speaker 1: for their companionship, their loyalty, their food value, their protective
Speaker 1: nature to both the family and the crops. They were
Speaker 1: important enough to be the likeness of a major deity,
Speaker 1: a god of twins and monsters, but also a god
Speaker 1: of lightning and fire. So this raises the question, right,
Speaker 1: why is the dog also associated with fire and Aztec traditions. Well,
Speaker 1: here we come at last yet to the idea of
Speaker 1: the Aztec dog as firebringer. Herman Buyer explored this in
Speaker 1: the Symbolic Meaning of the Dog in Ancient Mexico, published
Speaker 1: in the in the American Anthropologists back in nineteen o eight.
Speaker 1: Now referring back to the different dog varieties again, there's
Speaker 1: that medium sized furred dog, or it's quintly, but it's
Speaker 1: quintly also just means dog more generally. And then the
Speaker 1: dog also played a role in the Aztec zodiac, so
Speaker 1: the day of this dog it occurs at the end
Speaker 1: and is therefore associated with the god mic lant Culti,
Speaker 1: lord of the realm of the dead, who rules over
Speaker 1: Micklin with his bride. And we see this in my
Speaker 1: traditions as well, as Buyer points out where the symbol
Speaker 1: for dog is mainly a thorax and a skeleton. A thorax, yeah,
Speaker 1: thora like an insect thorax. Yeah, I was looking at
Speaker 1: examples of it, and um, I don't know. The comparison
Speaker 1: is maybe a little lost on me because I'm just
Speaker 1: not used to looking at these characters. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I take I take the researcher's word for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess mammals would have a thorax too, so it
Speaker 1: would be like the dog's chest sort of now to
Speaker 1: come back to Chilato here, uh Buyer writes that Cholato's
Speaker 1: job is also to carry the sun through the underworld
Speaker 1: and is associated with a particular constellation in the night
Speaker 1: sky that was known as the fire Sticks. And so
Speaker 1: the association here, Buyer writes is that the fire drill
Speaker 1: method of fire production is linked to the dog into
Speaker 1: this deity. The constellation here is possibly the Belt of
Speaker 1: Orion Um. I've seen some some back and forth on that,
Speaker 1: but I think the Belt of Orion is the popular
Speaker 1: UH interpretation of discussions of this particular constellation, and he's
Speaker 1: a sauce also associated with the Polades star cluster and
Speaker 1: the fire drill method of fire production. This would be
Speaker 1: a friction based method for forgetting a fire going right
Speaker 1: for Yeah, it would involve a setup for rapidly rotating
Speaker 1: one piece of wood on another to generate heat through
Speaker 1: friction that would help spark some kindling. Yeah. We we
Speaker 1: discussed this a bit in our fire Technology series of
Speaker 1: invention episodes. This would have been a very early way
Speaker 1: to produce fire. And you also see Prometheus type characters
Speaker 1: and other religions and traditions that that are closely associated
Speaker 1: with the fire drill. I've seen the Chinese version of
Speaker 1: this as being referred to in translation as the fire driller.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that that the primordial connection with
Speaker 1: fire production would be tied in with this technology. Now
Speaker 1: there's also there also does seem to be a connection
Speaker 1: as well between Scholatl and Venus appearing in the in
Speaker 1: the night sky as a morning star. Again, we're getting
Speaker 1: into this idea that that this deity and or the
Speaker 1: dog carry the fire through the underworld, carry the sun
Speaker 1: through the underworld. And so this gets into the idea
Speaker 1: of like where does Venus go? Where does the sun
Speaker 1: go when it is not in the sky? Well, it
Speaker 1: is of course traveling beneath the earth, it is traveling
Speaker 1: through the underworld. So um, in all of this, I
Speaker 1: have to stress that I'm I'm not giving full justice
Speaker 1: to the complexity and richness of Aztec astrology here. Whole
Speaker 1: books have been written about Aztec astrology, uh and and it.
Speaker 1: But it seems that that there are complex astrological associations
Speaker 1: between dogs and death and fire, and that the has
Speaker 1: worked in unison with less abstract aspects of the dog's
Speaker 1: nature and role in society and it's just overall value
Speaker 1: to humanity. Now in in my In traditions, as reflected
Speaker 1: in the Mayan codices, the dog is also the firebringer.
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in The Dragon and the Dog,
Speaker 1: Two Symbols of Time in Non All Religion by Frank J. Newman.
Speaker 1: Newman writes, quote, the dog is often depicted in the
Speaker 1: Maya codices carrying a torch, perhaps a reference to the
Speaker 1: Maya tradition that the dog brought fire to mankind, and
Speaker 1: the head of a dog is sometimes part of the
Speaker 1: compound glyph which represents the fire drill. Okay, so, if
Speaker 1: I'm understanding everything I've been looking at here, it sounds
Speaker 1: as if we have a few things going on sort
Speaker 1: of feeding into each other. First of all, astrological associations
Speaker 1: between dogs and fire. Uh. Secondly mythological connotations of the
Speaker 1: dog or dog headed deities as firebringers. And then connections
Speaker 1: some mythological and some astrological connecting dogs to the dead
Speaker 1: and to the realm of the dead. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, though, I think perhaps some manner of bleed
Speaker 1: over between control of fire as a major factor in
Speaker 1: human civilization and the importance of the domestic dog which
Speaker 1: again in this context, would have served pretty much all
Speaker 1: of the values placed on the domestic dog in the
Speaker 1: modern context you know, companion, guardian, etcetera, with the added
Speaker 1: context of being the their only domesticated mammalian protein source.
Speaker 1: You know, again, they did not have the domesticated cow,
Speaker 1: the domesticated pig, all of these these other creatures to
Speaker 1: help provide the nutrition they needed. The dog was the
Speaker 1: only domestic mammal that could fulfill that that need. I've
Speaker 1: also read that at least in some Mesoamerican traditions and accounts,
Speaker 1: the dog is credited with discovering corn, which would would
Speaker 1: also be a huge achievement on par with fire in
Speaker 1: some regards. Uh. So, so again we see these multiple
Speaker 1: connections here that that's speak to the dog's role in civilization,
Speaker 1: like the fact that humans have mastery over things that
Speaker 1: enable them to to build civilizations and to keep going
Speaker 1: year after year. Uh, and to pass on something to
Speaker 1: to their children. Uh, it's the fire, it's the crops
Speaker 1: that are key, but also the dog. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a fascinating triangle that sort of says something about about
Speaker 1: the human species. Of the triangle of humans, dogs and
Speaker 1: fire and uh, and so I wanted to transition from
Speaker 1: here to look at a little bit of the scientific
Speaker 1: evidence and and current leading hypotheses about the history of
Speaker 1: the relationship between humans and these two elements of nature
Speaker 1: and of of technology, in fact of fire, end of
Speaker 1: dogs UM. So one of the things I wanted to
Speaker 1: start off with here is remembering an interesting fact from
Speaker 1: some of our past episodes. We did a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes about UM about the history of fire on planet Earth,
Speaker 1: and and the observation is this Earth is sometimes thought
Speaker 1: of as the water planet, which is a good descriptor
Speaker 1: there's a lot of liquid water on our surface, but
Speaker 1: I think it's also quite reasonable to think of Earth
Speaker 1: as the fire planet. Earth is really the only place
Speaker 1: in the Solar System that allows for fire, certainly in
Speaker 1: significant amounts, because in order to burn fire needs heat,
Speaker 1: fuel and oxygen. And there are plenty of places in
Speaker 1: the Solar System where you can find lots of heat,
Speaker 1: but fuel and free oxygen are much more scarce. The
Speaker 1: Earth is absolutely packed with these two things. It is
Speaker 1: packed with fuel in the form of concentrated carbon molecules
Speaker 1: produced by the biosphere, and it is packed with free oxygen.
Speaker 1: And the atmosphere, which is also produced by the biosphere.
Speaker 1: So so the conditions giving rise to the potential for
Speaker 1: free burning fires actually are very much a product of
Speaker 1: Earth's biology, the presence of life on Earth. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing that makes it Earth the fire planet
Speaker 1: is that, like humans don't have to be there to
Speaker 1: start fires, Earth's weather systems naturally provide the flint that
Speaker 1: continually strikes natural fires in the form of lightning. So
Speaker 1: Earth is a place where where fire is not only possible,
Speaker 1: but fire occurs. Right now, to come back to what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, Yes, Earth has fire, Earth
Speaker 1: has dogs, but you really don't see a lot of
Speaker 1: crossover between the two. Um In addition to what I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, I mean, the most I really came across
Speaker 1: was the idea that, yes, dogs will warm themselves by fires,
Speaker 1: be at a camp fire or even some other form
Speaker 1: of fire. There are situations where dogs have been observed
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that heat, but other than that
Speaker 1: there they don't seem to really interact with fire much,
Speaker 1: which makes sense most you know, most species, even those
Speaker 1: that have a life cycle that depends on periodic burns.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that their anatomy is has has evolved
Speaker 1: to actually deal with the reality of fire. Right then. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some examples we've discussed before on the show
Speaker 1: of animals appearing to, at least according to some reports,
Speaker 1: make direct use of fire. For example, the fire hawks
Speaker 1: of of Australia, which have been alleged to uh say,
Speaker 1: use burning sticks to start fires to drive out prey
Speaker 1: animals that they can then swoop down an attack. Um
Speaker 1: I could not find any evidence of any species of Canada,
Speaker 1: or any carnivore mammal for that matter, doing anything like this,
Speaker 1: So so this does not appear to be something that
Speaker 1: happens at nature in nature, at least on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: But this did get me thinking about the history of
Speaker 1: human domestication of fire and of human domestication of dogs,
Speaker 1: both of which are fascinating and contentious subjects deep in
Speaker 1: our past. Um So a few facts. First of all,
Speaker 1: while there's a lot we don't know about both of
Speaker 1: these subjects, I do think it's very clear that our
Speaker 1: human ancestors domesticated fire long before they domesticated dogs. So
Speaker 1: for a few facts about the general timeline of fire
Speaker 1: development among ancient humans and human ancestors. I was looking
Speaker 1: at a paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Speaker 1: Society b Biological Sciences from twenty sixteen by a professor
Speaker 1: of archaeology at the University of Liverpool named John Gaulet,
Speaker 1: and it's called the discovery of fire by humans a
Speaker 1: long and convoluted process. So in summarizing the existing evidence,
Speaker 1: Galllet writes that finding evidence of fire use by really
Speaker 1: ancient humans and human ancestors is sometimes difficult, right because
Speaker 1: fire is not like it's not like a stone artifact,
Speaker 1: though it does leave physical traces that you can on cover.
Speaker 1: And he writes that by about one point five million
Speaker 1: years ago, there are a number of sites occupied by
Speaker 1: our hominan ancestors that show signs of burned material consistent
Speaker 1: with deliberate fire use. Now, one point five million years
Speaker 1: ago is a long time ago, but but this far
Speaker 1: back the evidence is somewhat inconsistent. And it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that the presence of fire at a human or or
Speaker 1: hominin camp site is not necessarily evidence of the ability
Speaker 1: to strike fire from nothing, say, by using a fire
Speaker 1: drill or flint and tinder box or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Human humans and human ancestors probably captured and preserved fires
Speaker 1: from nature long before we had reliable fire striking methods.
Speaker 1: But Galllet writes that by the time of the Middle Pleistocene,
Speaker 1: so that would be between about three quarters of a
Speaker 1: million years ago and about a hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. H quote recognizable hearths demonstrate a social
Speaker 1: and economic focus on many sites, so the Middle Pleistocene
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty widely accepted as a time by
Speaker 1: which fire use became widespread and common among humans. Now.
Speaker 1: As wonderful as dogs are, fire is probably more pivotal
Speaker 1: to human history and evolution. It's it's necessary for the
Speaker 1: development of almost all post Stone Age technology, So all
Speaker 1: technologies based on metal involve the use of fire and
Speaker 1: their creation. Basically, all technologies after the Neolithic period would
Speaker 1: need fire in order to be made. That this reminds
Speaker 1: me of the quote that outside of a dog, a
Speaker 1: book is man's best friend, but inside of a dog
Speaker 1: it's too dark to read. You need to fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mark's brother, so yeah, you need the fire. But even
Speaker 1: past the role of fire in creating a lot of
Speaker 1: later stages of human technology, it's even been hypothesized that
Speaker 1: fire has played major roles in in changes to human biology,
Speaker 1: and this is not something that's known for sure, but
Speaker 1: there are a number of theories that involve the intersection
Speaker 1: of fire and changes to humans are our ourselves our
Speaker 1: own biology. So one major example is the cooking hypothesis,
Speaker 1: which I think we've alluded to on the show before.
Speaker 1: Maybe someday we should devote a full episode to that
Speaker 1: talk about some of the evidence for and against. But
Speaker 1: this is a hypothesis put forward by a British anth
Speaker 1: apologist and primatologists named Richard Wrangham, which argues that there
Speaker 1: is a link between the invention of cooking, which necessitates fire,
Speaker 1: and the shape of modern human bodies guts and brains
Speaker 1: and in rangum zone. Words from a paper dealing with
Speaker 1: some of the more recent evidence foreign against this hypothesis quote.
Speaker 1: The cooking hypothesis posits that control of fire leads to
Speaker 1: such a large increase in energy acquisition and that means
Speaker 1: through eating and reduces the physical challenges of eating food
Speaker 1: so greatly that the evolution of an obligation to incorporate
Speaker 1: cooked food into the diet should be recognizable by evidence
Speaker 1: of novel digestive adaptations and increased energy use. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have to remember that with cooking, we're talking about to
Speaker 1: a very large degree, the externalization of human digestion. Things
Speaker 1: that previously, if we were going to digest it, it
Speaker 1: was all going to have to happen inside of us.
Speaker 1: Now we could, we could take steps towards the acquisition
Speaker 1: of those nutrients, sometimes nutrients that would not be available
Speaker 1: to us if we did not cook them. We're able
Speaker 1: to do that outside the human body, right, I mean
Speaker 1: as sort of central to what Rangum is saying here
Speaker 1: is that subsisting entirely on a raw food diet versus
Speaker 1: subsisting on a cooked food diet, that is such a
Speaker 1: huge difference that you would expect basically different kinds of animals.
Speaker 1: That is a gigantic adaptation that would change. It would
Speaker 1: change the way your mouth needs to work. You would
Speaker 1: need to devote way less energy to having a strong
Speaker 1: jaw for chewing and crushing. It would change the way
Speaker 1: your gut needs to work. And of course the body
Speaker 1: could maybe spend that energy on other things. And like
Speaker 1: I said, maybe we should come back and do a
Speaker 1: whole episode on that someday, because yeah, I was looking
Speaker 1: at some of the arguments foreign against this, and it
Speaker 1: seems like an interesting debate. But so not to say
Speaker 1: that the cooking hypothesis is necessarily correct, But I do
Speaker 1: think it's inarguable that fire is a major part of
Speaker 1: the development of all human and culture and shapes our
Speaker 1: lives tremendously. So some use of fire by human ancestors
Speaker 1: probably goes back more than a million years. Uh, the
Speaker 1: use of fire was common among human ancestors at least
Speaker 1: a few hundred thousand years ago by most estimates. The
Speaker 1: domestication of dogs seems to be roughly in order of
Speaker 1: magnitude more recent. So if common use of fire goes
Speaker 1: back at least a few hundred thousand years, domestication of
Speaker 1: dogs seems to go back in the past few tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of years than now. On the scientific evidence
Speaker 1: for the history of the domestication of dogs. There's also
Speaker 1: a lot of disagreement here. But there was one recent
Speaker 1: development I've actually been wanting to talk about on the
Speaker 1: show for a bit, and this gives us a good
Speaker 1: chance to do it today. So there was a paper
Speaker 1: that was published just earlier this year by Angela our
Speaker 1: period all published in p N a se called dog
Speaker 1: domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into
Speaker 1: the Americas. And this was a paper that was trying
Speaker 1: to settle some some ongoing debates and outstanding questions about
Speaker 1: the history of dog domestication and how that relates to
Speaker 1: the history of human migration over the continents. And so
Speaker 1: this study tried to use DNA evidence from both dogs
Speaker 1: and humans to try to trace the history of the
Speaker 1: relationship between the two and uh according to the authors here,
Speaker 1: their findings suggests quote that dogs were domesticated in Siberia
Speaker 1: by about twenty three thousand years ago, possibly while both
Speaker 1: people and wolves were isolated during the harsh climate of
Speaker 1: the last Glacial Maximum. Dogs then accompanied the first people
Speaker 1: into the Americas and traveled with them as humans rapidly
Speaker 1: dispersed into the continent beginning about fifteen thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So I was reading a really good write up of
Speaker 1: this new paper by David Grimm in Science that fills
Speaker 1: in some more context on this and give some texture
Speaker 1: to it. So um, according to the model put forward
Speaker 1: by the study, Grim rights that the people who domesticated
Speaker 1: dogs probably lived in the area of northeastern Siberia, during
Speaker 1: the later part of the last glacial period the Last
Speaker 1: Ice Age, and these would have been human hunter is
Speaker 1: using stone tipped weapons who probably subsisted on megafauna like
Speaker 1: bison and wooly mammoths, and the wolf like ancestors of
Speaker 1: modern dogs may have actually been helping these humans in
Speaker 1: their hunting. And then from here from this ancestral population
Speaker 1: in northeastern Siberia, the descendants of these proto dogs went
Speaker 1: both east and west with their human companions, so east
Speaker 1: into the Americas and then west into Eurasia. So the
Speaker 1: team behind the study, they relied on physical evidence in
Speaker 1: the form of mitochondrial DNA from a human and dog remains.
Speaker 1: Mitochondrial DNA is more readily preserved over time and say
Speaker 1: fossil remains and animal remains than DNA from the nucleus
Speaker 1: of cells, and they concluded that all lineages of dogs
Speaker 1: that accompanied the first human settlers into North America shared
Speaker 1: a common ancestor that was indicated by a genetic marker
Speaker 1: called A to B, and the researchers believe these dogs
Speaker 1: to have descended from this common ancestor population that were
Speaker 1: these domesticated or semi domesticated dogs born in the company
Speaker 1: of humans in North Siberia about twenty three thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Now imagining the sort of setting of this ancestral population
Speaker 1: of of wolves turning into dogs and the humans that
Speaker 1: we're creating them. Uh, the setting here is is something
Speaker 1: like twenty three to thirty one thousand years ago in
Speaker 1: this area of northeastern Siberia that Grim Rights was apparently
Speaker 1: relatively temperate compared to the areas all around it, and
Speaker 1: it was that way for thousands of years. So you
Speaker 1: have to imagine a place that during a an ice
Speaker 1: age is surrounded on the east and the west by
Speaker 1: regions that are probably too cold and barren to sustain
Speaker 1: the lifestyle of of these human hunter gatherers, and so
Speaker 1: basically they would have been isolated in these hunting grounds
Speaker 1: in northeastern Siberia that it was kind of an oasis
Speaker 1: in which they could live. And there were also populations
Speaker 1: of wolves occupying this relative oasis in in the last
Speaker 1: glacial period along with these human hunters. Now we'll come
Speaker 1: back to that oasis concept in a minute, but first
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that we're not sure how exactly
Speaker 1: the domestication of dogs happened. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: be careful not to put too much confidence in people
Speaker 1: trying to tell a plausible story that could explain things,
Speaker 1: because we don't know for sure. But there's a common
Speaker 1: hypothesis on the domestication process leading from the wolf to
Speaker 1: the domestic dog that seems pretty plausible, and it goes
Speaker 1: like this. So you have humans who are hunting and
Speaker 1: gathering food and maybe making these large mega fauna kills.
Speaker 1: You know, they're killing a wooly mammoth or a bison
Speaker 1: or something and roasting meat over the fire at campsites,
Speaker 1: and wild wolves are obviously drawn to the smell of
Speaker 1: the food that humans have harvested. And then from here
Speaker 1: it's possible that a selection process kicks in and it
Speaker 1: would go something like this. Wolves that are too skittish
Speaker 1: around humans, they just don't you know, they keep their distance.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't want anything to do with humans.
Speaker 1: Humans are too scary, uh, they stay back. Obviously, any
Speaker 1: wolves that were too aggressive or violent about approaching humans
Speaker 1: would react with with violence, and probably those wolves would
Speaker 1: be killed. But wolves that happen to have behavioral predispositions
Speaker 1: causing them to approach humans but not approach aggressively would
Speaker 1: probably get to share in some of the scraps at
Speaker 1: the human campsite. They would somehow get by their proximity
Speaker 1: to human encampments, get to maybe I don't know, gavenge
Speaker 1: the remains or maybe non the bones that the humans
Speaker 1: tossed away, or maybe even humans would deliberately share with them,
Speaker 1: you know, who knows. And sort of imagine how that
Speaker 1: there could be a crossover between the two, like from
Speaker 1: toleration to perhaps active feeding over time. You know, it
Speaker 1: is conclar that these dogs are not a threat, and hey,
Speaker 1: maybe they're actually amusing. Maybe they're interesting to look at, uh,
Speaker 1: and and everything can build up from there. Sure, and
Speaker 1: so again, if this hypothesis is in any way correct,
Speaker 1: these brave but docile scavengers, the dogs, the wolves who
Speaker 1: would approach but wouldn't be aggressive, they would benefit from
Speaker 1: the extra food rewards they would get from proximity to
Speaker 1: these human campsites, and from that extra food they would
Speaker 1: have a survival advantage, and over generations there would be
Speaker 1: these populations of wolf like creatures or proto dogs, these
Speaker 1: canids who would essentially have bred themselves to become friendly
Speaker 1: companions to humans. At some point, the human would probably
Speaker 1: have found out that these proto dogs were useful for
Speaker 1: hunting and maybe even for friendship and so forth. So again, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know that this is how it happened,
Speaker 1: but this is a commonly entertained, plausible history of what
Speaker 1: could have happened here. And it's interesting that if there's
Speaker 1: anything to this hypothesis, the process that led to the
Speaker 1: creation of dogs was in part their ancestors willingness to
Speaker 1: walk towards the fire. Yeah. Yeah, the dog that tolerates
Speaker 1: the heat, the light, the dog that that steps into
Speaker 1: the glow of the fire. Yeah. That article by David
Speaker 1: Graham and Science actually quotes one of the collaborators on
Speaker 1: the study, and archaeologist named David Meltzer, who I believe
Speaker 1: is on on faculty at Southern Methodist University. Uh And
Speaker 1: and his quote is great. He says, these people were
Speaker 1: probably sleeping on the ground in furs, roasting fresh kills
Speaker 1: on the fire. If you're a hungry carnivore and you
Speaker 1: smell a mammoth barbecue, you're going to check it out.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I like the idea that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe in the same way that cooking changed humans, something
Speaker 1: cooking could have possibly played a role in the attraction
Speaker 1: of these wolf like ancestors of modern dogs. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I find it interesting to think about this and then
Speaker 1: think about, you know, the end result with with mine
Speaker 1: and Aztec situation civilization. To imagine these Eurasian people's moving
Speaker 1: across the world, uh over into North America and then
Speaker 1: downward towards mes of American South America, and what did
Speaker 1: they bring with them? You know, obviously they brought their
Speaker 1: cultures and their traditions and their knowledge, but they but
Speaker 1: they brought with them the fire, and they brought with
Speaker 1: them the dog. You know, a lot of the other
Speaker 1: things they may have brought with them in the short
Speaker 1: term would have given way to new crops that the
Speaker 1: new plants they might discover, new animals they might discover.
Speaker 1: But the fire and the dog were certainly constants. Now,
Speaker 1: one last thing I wanted to come back to with
Speaker 1: this study from earlier this year. There's one possible catch
Speaker 1: in this, this hypothetical process by which the earliest ancestors
Speaker 1: of dogs were created. It might be kind of problematic
Speaker 1: to imagine that nomadic humans who are moving all over
Speaker 1: the place to to follow, say their prey animals, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the nomadic human hunters could have created these dogs
Speaker 1: because they would be moving and so encountering probably new
Speaker 1: population of wolves wherever they went, so that there might
Speaker 1: not be enough repeated exposure to the same populations of
Speaker 1: wolves to create the dogs. But one of the things
Speaker 1: put forward in this study is that it would have
Speaker 1: had this sort of oasis place in in northeastern Siberia
Speaker 1: that was surrounded on all sides by more harsh environments.
Speaker 1: So you would have the humans staying in a relatively
Speaker 1: stable location and wolf populations staying in the same uh
Speaker 1: place with them, So you'd have them just interacting in
Speaker 1: close quarters for thousands of years at a time, and
Speaker 1: this could have given the opportunity to actually kick off
Speaker 1: and sustain this breeding process turning wolves into dogs. Huh. Interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, all of this reminds me of of another
Speaker 1: little piece that came up because in a weird way,
Speaker 1: it has a little bit of the of the Catholic traditions,
Speaker 1: certainly has some of the Mayan traditions, but also some
Speaker 1: of these ideas we've been discussing dealing with the hypothesis
Speaker 1: of of of dog domestication I was reading in E. J.
Speaker 1: Silawowski's The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Volume
Speaker 1: six and M and I just want to read this
Speaker 1: little quote from it. Here. Morris Siegel, to demonstrate the
Speaker 1: fusion of Spanish, Catholic, and Mayan Indian traits in the
Speaker 1: religions of Indians and modern Western Guatemala, recounts a cultured
Speaker 1: creation story he recorded there in nineteen forty one in
Speaker 1: which the child God, which the author says equals Jesus
Speaker 1: in this scenario, son of our virgin mother, gathered together
Speaker 1: the meat bones from his uncle's feast, planted them, and
Speaker 1: built a corral around the place. In three days, all
Speaker 1: the animals in the world had grown from the buried bones,
Speaker 1: and the uncle's jealous opened the corral and released the animals.
Speaker 1: Yet the dog was one of the few that remained,
Speaker 1: whether willingly or simply out of a failure to escape
Speaker 1: to live with human beings. WHOA I like that because
Speaker 1: it again it kind of gets into an idea about
Speaker 1: the dog, like the does the dog stick with us
Speaker 1: because it is clever or because it is dumb? Because
Speaker 1: the dog is and I think it's ultimately neither of those.
Speaker 1: But you know that the idea that, like, why is
Speaker 1: the dog the animal that seems closest to us, that is,
Speaker 1: that is man's best friend. But then also this account
Speaker 1: involves slaughter at a campsite, you know, it involves the
Speaker 1: bones of the dead, So we get that connection to
Speaker 1: this idea of the dog as the as having an
Speaker 1: innate connection to the realms beyond death, but also this
Speaker 1: connection to human cooking. Yeah, totally. I also like the
Speaker 1: way that this I don't know this, something about this
Speaker 1: vision of the dog makes it both the most and
Speaker 1: least mysterious of creatures. You know, It's like the most
Speaker 1: familiar but also has one of the most intriguing histories
Speaker 1: that we you know, is somewhat obscure to us. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that like the dog has just the dog
Speaker 1: is there. The dog has remained there. Uh, even if
Speaker 1: you don't want the dog anymore, the dog will will stay,
Speaker 1: which is kind of reflected in this story. To the
Speaker 1: jealous uncles are like, get these animals, Get these animals
Speaker 1: out of here hanging out around our bones. The dog
Speaker 1: doesn't go. The dog is here to stay. But I
Speaker 1: have to say, I do really like this idea of
Speaker 1: the dog is the firebringer and the dog and dog
Speaker 1: is the dog carrying the fire for humanity, lighting the
Speaker 1: way for us into the dark. Because this does seem
Speaker 1: to just it, it's kind of lines up with a
Speaker 1: lot of the the attributes that we we recognize in
Speaker 1: our relationships with our pets. Know, I mean, particularly with
Speaker 1: the dog. You know this, this is our buddy, This
Speaker 1: is he's a guide, He's a guardian and and perhaps
Speaker 1: has esoteric knowledge of the great beyond. All dogs are wizards. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the next time you're you're making eye contact
Speaker 1: with your dog, just remember this animal knows the way
Speaker 1: to Micklin. Now, obviously we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there, especially dog owners. I'm sure you have some
Speaker 1: thoughts on all of this. I do want to drive
Speaker 1: home the Please do not try and give your dog
Speaker 1: anything on fire because of anything you heard in this episode.
Speaker 1: We're certain your dog doesn't want any part of the fire,
Speaker 1: and only disaster can occur if you try to recreate
Speaker 1: these artistic and mythic images um using an actual canine. Yes, children,
Speaker 1: do not try to recreate an active dog py romancy
Speaker 1: you heard about on this podcast. However, I will just
Speaker 1: throw this out there. If you want to get a
Speaker 1: dog toy that looks like a torch or a flame brand,
Speaker 1: they do exist, you can, but you can find them.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a couple of varieties of these right now.
Speaker 1: So if you are inspired by this podcast and you
Speaker 1: want pictures of your dog holding a flaming brand, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing some sort of vision to humanity. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: just go spend nine to seventeen dollars and get yourself
Speaker 1: a chew toy torch. Are these are these two toys
Speaker 1: merch created by the Dominicans. Um, I know van gift shop.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I see one that is labeled as Frisco
Speaker 1: Mythical Mates of Viking torch plus Squeaking dog toy. It
Speaker 1: sounds lovely and it's available for like Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: know why it's a Viking thing. Like the Vikings didn't
Speaker 1: come up in this podcast at all. It needs to
Speaker 1: be connected to the Mayans or to uh to to Catholics.
Speaker 1: Needs to be a Frisco Mythical Mates Catholic torch plus
Speaker 1: squeaking dog toy or something. All right, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close this one. Out, but yeah, certainly right in
Speaker 1: let us know. Tell us about your dog and if
Speaker 1: you have a dog that has one of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these two toys, yes, I would like to see a
Speaker 1: picture of the two together. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, just check out the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. You can find that wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. We have core episodes publishing Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: We have a listener mail on Monday, we have an
Speaker 1: artifact on Wednesday, and we have a Weird House CINAM
Speaker 1: on Friday. That's our time to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird movie and set the science mostly aside for the
Speaker 1: time being now and then we have a rerun on
Speaker 1: the weekends. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producers Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
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