WEBVTT - From the Vault: Elfshot, Part 2 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:07.920 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.119 My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:14.240 and it's Saturday, so we are bringing you a vault episode. 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.640 This one originally aired on October fourth, twenty twenty two. 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.760 It's part two of our series on elf Shot. 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:22.079 I hope you enjoy. 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:33.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:37.040 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:39.879 This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:44.800 we're back with part two of our series on elf Shot. Now, 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:47.720 this is an idea we introduced in part one. If 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:49.440 you haven't listened to that yet, you should go back 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:52.600 check that one out first. But basically, elf Shot is 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.920 a what would you say, Rob, Look, it's a complex 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:00.520 of interlocking folk beliefs, not a single belief, but it's 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.800 found especially in the British Isles and essentially centering on 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:09.320 the idea of fairies or elves attacking mortal humans and 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.600 especially their livestock with supernatural weapons. Would you say that's 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:14.559 fair Yeah? 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:16.520 Yeah, There's a lot going on in it, as we 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.120 discussed in the first episode. I mean, on one hand, 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:25.080 there's the interpretation of artifacts, of artifacts that from various 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:30.520 time periods, both ancient and relatively recent. There's also the 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:37.000 attempt to understand mysterious ailments, mostly in livestock, but sometimes 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:41.040 in human beings as well, and then various folk traditions 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.080 getting wrapped up into these scripts. And it's also it 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:49.520 seems to be highly regional too, so there's not just 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:53.520 one elf erroscript. We have multiple scripts and it ends 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:56.080 up tying into folk medicine and so forth as well. 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:59.600 Yeah, and that folk medicine aspect is very interesting. I 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:01.280 want to come back to that in just a minute. 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.120 So in the last episode we did talk about some 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:09.079 direct accounts of folk beliefs about elf shot, especially in Scotland, 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:11.320 I think is where a lot of these accounts came from, 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.200 and they included things like, okay, you'd have a story 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.200 where a calf suddenly falls ill and dies with no 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.840 apparent explanation, and then the farmer confirms that elf shot 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.280 was the cause because he and his neighbor open up 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.000 the cow's body and they find a hole in its heart, 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.920 even though there was no hole in the hide, So 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.360 it must have been some kind of supernatural fairy weapon 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.760 that can pierce through the hide without actually breaking it 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.799 and strike only the internal organs. And then, of course, 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.800 when it was believed that there was an injury of 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.160 this kind caused by an elf for a fairy weapon, 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.960 there were plenty of magical remedies, and rob, can you 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.200 characterize what some of the main themes and these remedies were. 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.600 Yeah, some of the main themes included, of course, being 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.560 able to fetch either the elf arrow or have an 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.400 elf arrow that you found, or elf arrows that were 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:09.200 in the possession of the town or local community, and 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.520 using those in the treatment. Oftentimes this would take the 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.160 form of immersing them in water and then using that 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:21.040 water either as a drink for the afflicted or as 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.720 something that is rubbed on the afflicted or poured on 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.480 the site of the wounding, that sort of thing. But again, 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:29.120 there are a number of different versions of this, and 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.080 so various wrinkles get added depending on which tradition you're 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:34.200 looking at, which account. 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:36.880 Yeah, other things were just like, hey, mix up some 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.480 gunpowder with some eggs and stuff like that and then 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.680 feed that to the cow. Right delicious. But anyway, I 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.840 wanted to address a question that came up while we 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.000 were talking talking last time. I didn't have the answer 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:52.960 to it at the time, so I decided to look 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.160 it up before we recorded this episode. And the question 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.960 is is there such a thing as the placebo effect 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.160 for non human animals? Of course, the placebo effect in 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.320 humans is something that often comes up when we're talking 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:11.240 about well, talking about medicine in any context, but it's 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.000 especially important when you're talking about like the history of 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:19.159 pre scientific medicine, Like why did people think that soaking 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.080 a stone arrowhead in water and then pressing it to 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.640 their skin had actually healed them of a disease? Like 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.440 if you have any a tumor or a bacterial infection 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.400 or something, we can be relatively confident that this intervention 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.880 does not actually shrink the tumor or kill the bacteria. 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.840 And yet people often thought interventions like this had healed them. 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.400 So what made them think that? I think some of 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.280 that can be chalked up to a concept that we 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.000 did an episode about, I think last year. It was 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.920 a statistical phenomenon called regression toward the mean or regression 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:57.359 to the mean. But you can also think of this 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:02.320 concept as returning to the baseline. So as a quick explainer, 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:04.640 for that. Imagine you suddenly get a pain in your 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.720 foot and you've never had that pain before, and you're like, ah, 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:10.760 it really hurts. I don't know what to do, but 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.479 your friend says, well, I know what to do. You 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:15.880 have to sing a Gregorian chant and then you have 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.680 to lick the morning dew from a spider's web. So 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:22.440 you try that out. You want your foot to stop hurting, 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:24.720 and then what do you know, sometime after that, your 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.720 foot does stop hurting. Now, in a situation like this, 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.120 we really all have a tendency to think something has 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.360 been proved here, like, ah, the spider doo did work, 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.719 But actually, how do you know that your foot wouldn't 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:42.880 have stopped hurting on its own just as soon if 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:45.880 you didn't do any of that stuff. In fact, the 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.800 whole point is that your foot doesn't usually hurt. The 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.760 state of pain is an outlier. That's an anomalous condition, 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:58.000 So things going back to normal on a certain timescale 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:02.120 is a totally expected outcome, all things being equal, and 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:05.239 regression to the mean is especially important in medicine because 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:09.719 it tends to be specifically when we're in an anomalous condition, 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.640 a condition that is not normal. For us that we 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.520 seek medical interventions. So if you want to know if 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.520 a medical intervention actually works or not, you have to 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:24.880 compare its efficacy against a say, placebo control group, instead 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:27.520 of just giving somebody a treatment and saying did you 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.240 get better? If you do that, you don't know if 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.719 they would have gotten better anyway, Having the comparison between 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:36.320 the two groups gives you confidence in the efficacy. But 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:39.120 on top of just the regression to the mean as 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:43.080 a baseline effect, you've also got psychological effects where if 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.400 you actually compare people who receive an intervention like a 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:50.960 medicine or a ritual or a doctor's visit versus people 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.640 who don't receive any intervention, sometimes people who receive an 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:58.159 intervention have better outcomes on average, even if there's no 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:01.240 way that intervention is actually doing anything. If it's like 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.839 you know, pressing the arrowhead deer skin, this might be 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.320 considered the pure placebo effect, improved outcomes associated with an 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:13.840 intervention even though it's not doing anything mechanistically or chemically 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:17.160 to solve the problem. And though the placebo effect shows 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.760 up for a range of conditions and treatments, it seems 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.200 to be especially powerful for conditions that are modulated by 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.440 the brain, such as the perception of pain and other 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:29.160 types of discomfort. So, to bring it back to the 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:33.360 question of elfshot cattle, could it be possible that a 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.800 non human animal benefits from the placebo effect of a 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:42.360 magical cure in some way, even though they can't understand 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.840 the concept of medicine or develop expectations that the magical 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:49.920 cure would heal them. And you know, the thing I 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.920 was wondering about with this is there's evidence that some 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:55.720 placebo effects and humans are created not so much by 0:07:55.760 --> 0:08:00.920 the expectation that the treatment is efficacious, but by the 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:03.600 reassurance felt in the presence of a doctor or a 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.560 nurse who has a good bedside manner. And I thought, well, 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:10.760 maybe it's possible that animals could be calmed or soothed 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:13.560 by certain kinds of human attention, even if they're not 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.920 able to understand that it is for the intended purpose 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:19.800 of healing. So anyway, I went looking this up and 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.320 I found an interesting article by Emily Anthis who is 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.320 also the author of a book we've talked about on 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.680 the show before called The Great Indoors. It's all about 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.960 the effects of living and spending time indoors. But this 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:33.880 was an article published in the Atlantic in twenty nineteen 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:39.240 called a Crucial blind Spot in Veterinary Medicine. So the 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.840 top line answer here is a clear yes, there is 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.880 such a thing as the placebo effect in non human 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:50.480 animals in veterinary medicine, but it probably works by different 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.800 means than the human version of the placebo effect. So 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.760 here's an example. Anthis begins by talking about a particular 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:02.960 study of treatments for canine epilepsy, epilepsy and dogs. This 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.600 research was being carried out in the early two thousands. 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:07.960 I think this was in the year two thousand and three, 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:12.640 and the citation here is the Journal of Veterinary Medicine. 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.200 The article was called Placebo Effect in Canine Epilepsy Trials 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:21.240 and the authors were Munyana, Jong and Patterson, eventually published 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:25.000 in twenty ten, and the story is that the researchers 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:31.360 were testing an anti convulsant drug called levetaracetam and it 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:36.080 was intended to curtail epileptic seizures in dogs. So in 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:38.520 the test group, the group that was actually getting the drug, 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:43.400 eighty six percent of dogs of their owners reported a 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:47.760 reduction in seizure frequency, which bodes very well for the drug. 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.360 But then the study also happened to have a placebo 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.480 control group, which we're receiving a dummy treatment that was 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:58.400 supposed to do nothing, and in that group, seventy nine 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.840 percent also saw it reduction in reported. 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.320 Seizures seventy nine compared to eighty six. 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.760 That's that's impressive, right, Well, it would tend to make 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.360 you doubt that the test group is that it's actually 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.320 the drug that is making the difference. So at the 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.280 time of this study, anthis notes that the double blind, 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:21.280 placebo controlled trials were not all that common in veterinary medicine, 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.160 which makes sense on one hand because again, like non human, 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.880 animals are not thought to be able to develop expectations 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:32.960 about a drug treatment or the efficacy of medicine, So 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.199 how could you expect a placebo effect to exist in dogs. 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.200 But it's a good thing the study did use such 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.920 a controlled design, because otherwise the medicine would have looked 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.920 really good until you realize that fake medicine leads to 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.960 results that look about the same or almost as good. 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.600 I guess it's just the healing power of pill pockets, right. 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:57.520 My god, you can never doubt though. Man, those things 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.760 stink so much and dogs love them. What do they 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:02.560 put in those things? Do do you work in a 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.280 pill pocket factory? Tell oh, maybe we don't want to 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:06.960 know what goes in a pill pocket. That would be 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:08.920 that's Halloween content. 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.520 I have not had a good run with with feline 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:13.280 pill pockets. 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:14.920 Oh, I'm sorry, And. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:16.520 Not to say they don't. You know, they work in 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.360 some some cats, and some cats are not crazy about them. 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.240 My cat will spit it out and then like dissect it. 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.600 And some brands of pill pockets you just didn't want 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:28.440 to want a piece off anyway, She's like, no, not 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:28.839 eating that. 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.120 So do you ever use the trick this? This worked 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:35.320 for us in the past. Or if if the animal 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.280 is skeptical of the pill pocket with the pill in it, 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.960 you first have to give them an empty pill pocket 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.240 that has no pill in it, so they get used 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.160 to like, oh, yeah, I can just eat this straight up. 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.480 And then the second one or the third one you 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:49.680 give them. I mean, that's a lot of pill pockets 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.440 if you're stacking it out. But if you're desperate, you 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.959 can try the empty pill pocket first to lower their defenses. 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:58.800 Well, you'd think that would work, but we ended up 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.480 using the waters ringe to just blast it into the 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.199 back of her throat, and that seems to work well. Again, 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:06.680 and that's a method that's not going to work for 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.000 every cat either, So it's it's tough getting the meds 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:11.240 in these animals sometimes. 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:13.640 Oh and I should also note that so the main 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.920 study anthis is talking about here in this article is 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:19.960 in dogs, but she also cites studies that have reported 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:24.480 placebo effects in cats and in horses. So, anyway, how 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.680 on earth could this be? Like, Again, we're assuming that 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:31.880 dogs themselves are not developing expectations that a drug will 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.200 be effective. I think that's a very fair assumption. They 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.480 don't understand what's going on. How on earth could such 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:41.280 a strong placebo effect manifest? And a number of ideas 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.040 are discussed in this article. One is one we already 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.840 talked about, regression to the mean, Right, People are more 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.240 likely to enroll in a clinical trial for their dogs 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:55.120 epilepsy if seizures have been especially bad lately, and conditions 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.680 like epilepsy tend to sort of wax and weigan on 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.520 their own anyway, So you could enroll the dog at 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.000 a time when their seizures are bad, and then that 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.560 would just tend to, by the law of averages, give 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.000 way to a period where they return to the baseline 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.360 and have fewer seizures. So again, a good reason to 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.719 have a placebo control group to compare your test group to. 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:20.800 Second thing that I thought was interesting and this site's 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:24.120 something called the Hawthorn effect, which is the idea that 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:28.360 people often behave differently when they know they're being studied 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.120 or observed. I think the name of this effect comes 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:37.679 from some anecdote about industrial productivity research, which found all 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:40.800 kinds of spurious effects for things like, oh, what would 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.559 happen if we change the lighting in this room? Are 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:47.640 workers more productive? Oh, it turns out they are. But 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.040 then one ex post facto explanation for all these spurious 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.120 results is just that when employees know that they're part 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.080 of an experiment, they are more productive because they know 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:01.240 they're being closely scrutinized. This would not apply so much 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.800 to the dogs themselves, but probably to the owners. So 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.760 in the case of the epilepsy study in dogs, Anti 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.320 writes that all of the dogs in the study were 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:15.600 already on at least one other anti seizure medication, and 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:21.280 levetteractam was being studied as a supplemental drug, So one 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:25.680 possibility is that once enrolled in a study, pet owners 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:29.120 may have been more consistent about making sure their dogs 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:33.560 got all doses of their pre existing, pre tested epilepsy 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:38.480 medication on time. Other possible explanations what about more attentive 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.960 veterinary care. It's possible that while enrolled in the study, 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:47.800 the animals were getting special attention from vets, and this 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.160 would be partially in line with the explanation I was 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:54.680 guessing about beforehand, something roughly parallel to the effect of 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.000 a reassuring doctor or nurse. And I think it is 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:02.160 a pre existing finding that some gentle affectionate attention from 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:06.080 humans can help animals like dogs and horses show fewer 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:10.280 symptoms of discomfort or anxiety and things like that. In 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:14.760 some cases you could actually have classical conditioning. Probably it's 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:16.360 hard to see how it would apply to this case, 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:20.080 but anthis writes quote. For example, rats that have regularly 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:24.160 been getting insulin injections will still experience blood sugar changes 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:29.680 if they suddenly start receiving saline injections instead. Again, I 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.320 don't think this would apply directly to the epilepsy study, 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.080 but you could imagine it applying to other studies. But 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.280 then the primary explanation favored by anthis in this article 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:42.240 is something called the caregiver placebo effect or the placebo 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:47.280 effect by proxy. And this one's pretty straightforward when you 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:51.680 think about it. Animals can't report or explain their own symptoms. 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.560 Understanding the symptoms experienced by an animal, whether that's something 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.080 like a seizure or whether it's something even more elusive 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:03.920 like discomfort or pain, that requires human observation of some kind, 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:08.720 usually reports by the pet owners, and the pet owner 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:14.480 absolutely can form expectations about improvement based on believing that 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.840 their pet is getting a treatment of some kind, even 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.760 though their pet might actually be in the placebo arm 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:22.240 of the study. They don't know that if it's a 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.200 good if it's a well designed study, so they think 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:28.840 their pet might be receiving the actual drug. They form 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.040 expectations that the pet will be getting better, and thus 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.440 they interpret everything they see in light of those expectations. 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.880 Because again, seizure frequency in the study in question was 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:45.160 measured by owner reports, and you might imagine, well, okay, 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.600 you know, it's pretty clear whether a dog is having 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:49.840 a seizure or not. Well, you might assume that, but 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.280 in fact, pet owners are not always there to see 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:58.200 a seizure take place. Sometimes you have to interpret ambiguous evidence. 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:02.240 So the example given in the article is if there's 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.239 a spot of saliva on the floor, is that a 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.399 sign that the dog had a seizure unobserved and drooled 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:10.679 on the floor or is that just nothing? Did the 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:14.320 dog just drip rool because they just dripped rule. If 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.359 the owners believe their dogs are receiving a drug that 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.679 will help reduce the seizures, does that actually make the 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:24.879 owner less likely to interpret that evidence as evidence of 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:25.440 a seizure. 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:29.280 Yeah? OK, see what you're talking about here. Okay, well 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.080 he's on the medicine, so I guess that's not a 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:33.600 seizure drool, that's just druel. 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:37.359 Yeah. The article also cites a veterinary surgeon at the 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:41.640 University of Minnesota named Michael Conzimius, who gives a really 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.320 interesting example from a different study. This was a study 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:49.600 on anti inflammatory treatments for arthritis in dogs, and they 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:54.000 did a trial that involved both subjective and objective measurements 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:59.720 of how well this anti inflammatory was doing to reduce 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.040 our th that's pain in the limbs. And so the 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.199 subjective measure was you would ask both pet owners and 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.040 veterinarians to observe the dog and rate how much pain 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:12.480 they seemed to be in. And then there were also 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:16.440 objective measures, and this would be having the dog walk 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:20.600 a on a complicated setup of digital scales to determine 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:23.320 how much weight the dogs were putting on each limb 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.080 while walking, because if the dog, if one of the 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:27.520 dog's limbs is in pain, they will tend to put 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:31.080 less weight on that limb. And this study found conflicts 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.159 between the subjective measures and the objective measures. So in 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.280 the placebo group, owners and vets who thought the dog 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.040 might be receiving the drug but actually they were just 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:45.720 getting a placebo, reported improvements, but the objective measure, the 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:50.200 scales did not show improvement. So in the placebo group, 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:53.520 they're getting a fake treatment. The owners and the veterinarians 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:55.560 are like, yeah, we think the dog is doing better, 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.160 but when you put them on the scales, they're still 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:01.680 not putting weight on that limb. So the dog itself 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:05.000 is not affected by receiving the placebo, but the human 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.400 observers are interestingly even the veterinarians. 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:11.600 This is interesting because when we first raised the question 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.840 about bolicebo effected animals, and then when you brought up 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.920 dogs here, my first thought was, while dogs are highly 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:22.040 social animals, so perhaps there is some sort of social 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:26.640 dynamic between the way that their human is treating them, 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:29.040 like maybe it has to do and maybe it has 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:31.320 to do with pill pockets, like oh, I'm getting more 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.040 snacks or I'm getting more attention or something like that. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:35.880 And then that of course would be something that would 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:40.520 not seem to readily translate into the livestock world. But 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.120 what we're looking at here these are examples that, if 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:48.040 I'm not mistaken, would translate rather readily into the world 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:49.120 of caring for livestock. 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.760 Yeah, because it's about the human observers, like the cow 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:54.840 whatever is making it into these reports that are in 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.960 like anthropological texts or you know, folklore journals or whatever. 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.320 The cow doesn't actually get to write that report that's 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:04.800 made by humans, and it's usually going to be like 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.879 the farmer saying, yeah, my cow got better or something 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:11.120 like that. And they could well be affected by caregiver 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.760 placebo effect. They form expectations of efficacy and they interpret 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:19.680 what they see through that lens. Another thing is that 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.840 this article reports how sometimes animal pain is observable to 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.399 one human onlooker but not to another. Again, just based 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.080 on expectations, Like our emotional biases are very strong in 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.080 this area. And one example given would be, you know, 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.520 a pet owner brings an animal into the vet and 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.560 it was in pain before, and the vet observes that 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.560 the animal does still appear to be in pain, but 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.360 the owner says, no, no, no, he's not he's he's 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.879 much better now. I've been giving him these homeopathic treatments 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.119 I found. And you know, that's a mix of things. 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.000 Like the pet owner, they love their pet, so they 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.520 desire to believe that the beloved animal is doing better. 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:00.679 And then on top of that, you could have like 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.000 a choice supportive bias bias to you know, where you 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:08.359 interpret reality in a way that supports the idea that 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.120 what you have decided to do was the right decision. 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:16.200 So the choice supportive bias says your selected intervention is working. 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:19.760 And that may be a magical treatment or a non 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:24.040 science based intervention like homeopathy or something, and that can 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:28.399 blind you to signs of distress that other unbiased onlookers 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:29.360 could see. 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:32.000 Yeah, yeah, because at least you feel like you're doing 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.639 something in those cases, and or you're a consultant. You 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.840 may be consulting experts in the local community that are 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:39.800 also assuring you like, yeah, this is the way to go, 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:41.920 this is what will we'll get results. 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.760 Yeah. And I think the important thing to stress here 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:46.639 is that this occurs. You don't have to be like 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:50.840 an uncaring you know, companion to your non human animal 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.760 of whatever type. It is like you can care very 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.760 much about their well being and have this kind of bias. 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.520 It's not like a result of being cold and unfeeling cruel. 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.240 So just a couple final notes on this article. One 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:05.560 is just that a big takeaway is you should be 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:08.679 careful when observing the symptoms of a non human animal, 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.000 of a pet or whatever, not to let these kinds 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.520 of biases prevent you from finding the most effective treatment 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.680 or solution. You know, whenever possible, try to look for 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:25.200 objective pieces of behavioral evidence that remove your subjective evaluation 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:28.120 from things. And then the other thing is about these 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:32.680 standards of evidence within veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, the history of 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:37.880 veterinary studies has included fewer double blind placebo controlled trials 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.040 than human medicine, because again, for a long time, nobody 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:43.960 really thought placebo effect would come into play in a 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:46.679 major way in veterinary medicine. But it looks like, at 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:49.520 least in some cases, it really does, especially when that 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:53.960 reported outcomes are based on owner's perceptions. And so this 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.000 is changing and more evidentiary standards like this are being 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:01.480 introduced into veterinary medicine. But it may mean that the 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:05.600 evaluation of the true efficacy of veterinary medicine has in 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.560 some cases, especially when the basis is older, maybe on 0:23:09.640 --> 0:23:12.320 a lower standard of evidence than in human drug trials. 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:16.160 But fortunately that that is changing. But anyway, so I'm 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:18.720 bringing all this back to thoughts about how this could 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.000 relate to like a Scottish farmer in the seventeenth century 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:25.600 who believes that his cow is sick or his horse 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:28.520 is sick because it has been elf shot, it has 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.840 been hit by a fairy arrow and summon someone to 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:36.399 provide a magical cure that maybe involves neolithic flints or 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:40.440 egg mixed with gunpowder and healing their cow. I wonder 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:42.639 how it relates to that. I mean, I would guess 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:46.760 that the specifically that last one, the caregiver placebo effect 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:48.640 would be a major factor here. 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:51.560 Yeah, yeah, I think so. That seems to be. That 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:52.600 would seem to be the key. 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:55.680 Though it also makes me wonder about the idea of 0:23:55.760 --> 0:23:58.920 an inverse thing. This is not addressed in the article 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:03.120 at all, but a a caregiver no cebo effect. I mean, 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:07.760 it makes me wonder how you could have anxieties or 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:11.679 beliefs about danger, other kinds of things taking place purely 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:15.520 within the mind of the animal caregiver that give rise 0:24:15.600 --> 0:24:20.679 to spurious diagnoses of illness or symptoms in the animal. 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:23.920 Like what if, actually the cow is fine. The farmer 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:27.240 just gets freaked out about the idea that, oh, no, 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:30.119 something bad is happening to my cow for some reason, 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:34.960 and that brings on the illusion of distress, which could 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:37.960 then be treated by some kind of magical intervention, and 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:40.159 then what do you know, the cow's fine afterwards. 0:24:40.400 --> 0:24:44.400 Yeah. This is especially possible given some of the linked 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:48.520 or perceived to be linked activities to elfshot. The case 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:52.480 is where humans did something they shouldn't have to attract 0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:55.399 the attention of the elves, be it, you know, tramping 0:24:55.480 --> 0:24:59.720 on sacred ground cutting down of a sacred tree or 0:25:00.359 --> 0:25:04.960 or something of this nature, or even just the finding 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:08.359 of the elf era like this was curious. I was 0:25:08.400 --> 0:25:12.280 out with my cattle and I found this artifact on 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:15.600 the ground. It's clearly an artifact of the elves. I 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:18.200 better check on my cattle and see how they're doing. Uh, oh, 0:25:18.280 --> 0:25:19.480 this one's not doing too well. 0:25:19.720 --> 0:25:22.159 Oh yeah, I didn't make that connection with the picking 0:25:22.240 --> 0:25:24.240 up of the flint, but yeah, that makes sense. 0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:31.040 Now. 0:25:31.080 --> 0:25:33.080 There was a paper we talked about a little bit 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:35.600 in the previous episode that I wanted to come back 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:39.320 to and just mention a couple of more interesting little 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:42.960 stories from it. Was that paper called Elfshot Cattle by 0:25:43.000 --> 0:25:46.159 Thomas Davidson that was published in the journal Antiquity in 0:25:46.240 --> 0:25:49.000 nineteen fifty six. Remember, this is the one that was 0:25:49.000 --> 0:25:52.960 collecting a lot of those reports about elfshot. One of 0:25:53.000 --> 0:25:57.520 the things that caught my attention was the claim that 0:25:57.600 --> 0:26:01.119 a lot of times these injuries from elfshot are not 0:26:01.400 --> 0:26:06.800 inflicted directly by fairies or elves themselves. Davidson cites an 0:26:06.800 --> 0:26:09.919 author named Luied writing that there's a belief among some 0:26:10.119 --> 0:26:14.280 that fairies have to use humans as intermediaries in order 0:26:14.320 --> 0:26:18.719 to inflict these injuries, since the fairies have little power 0:26:18.800 --> 0:26:23.040 to cause direct physical injury to animal bodies themselves. So 0:26:23.920 --> 0:26:27.520 sometimes these stories say humans are like sucked up into 0:26:27.520 --> 0:26:31.199 the air by fairies and then given fairy weapons and 0:26:31.240 --> 0:26:33.920 then forced to shoot at men or cattle. 0:26:34.920 --> 0:26:38.440 So yeah, okay, so sort of possession going on here. 0:26:38.640 --> 0:26:41.560 Yeah. One example of this is a story called the 0:26:41.600 --> 0:26:46.760 Tale of Black Donald of the Fairy Throng, And this 0:26:46.960 --> 0:26:49.520 is a story where there's this guy named Donald and 0:26:49.600 --> 0:26:52.000 he's out plowing. He's plowing the land, he's working in 0:26:52.040 --> 0:26:55.440 the furrows, and this is on the Isle of Tyree, 0:26:55.640 --> 0:26:59.560 which is off the coast of Scotland. And Donald he's 0:26:59.600 --> 0:27:03.399 plowing and he gets sucked up by a fairy convoy 0:27:04.200 --> 0:27:08.520 and then they force him to drop an arrow from 0:27:08.560 --> 0:27:11.919 the sky that kills a speckled cow. And this actually 0:27:11.920 --> 0:27:15.320 connects with some of the critical stuff I was reading 0:27:15.920 --> 0:27:18.879 about the elfshot tradition, which says that actually, in a 0:27:18.920 --> 0:27:22.080 lot of these stories, it is being alleged that it's 0:27:22.160 --> 0:27:26.040 humans who are doing the inflicting, like witches or something 0:27:26.480 --> 0:27:31.000 who are inflicting damage with these weapons rather than elves directly. 0:27:31.520 --> 0:27:34.520 Interesting and in yeah, it gets into a common trope 0:27:34.520 --> 0:27:37.080 in many cultures of the sort of the like the 0:27:37.119 --> 0:27:40.800 outsider within somebody within the community, either somebody from outside 0:27:40.800 --> 0:27:43.000 the community or somebody within the community that has been 0:27:43.320 --> 0:27:45.880 corrupted somehow. Yeah. 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:48.280 Yeah, one thing I had to mention just because it 0:27:48.359 --> 0:27:51.879 was funny. There's a long section of this paper that 0:27:51.960 --> 0:27:55.199 talks about alleged cures for elfshot, and one is a 0:27:55.240 --> 0:27:58.760 recorded anecdote of a wise woman curing a cow in 0:27:58.880 --> 0:28:04.080 the Shetlands by asking the crofter the farmer to bring 0:28:04.240 --> 0:28:07.359 her a Bible, and he brings the Bible, and she 0:28:07.560 --> 0:28:10.280 rips pages out of the Bible and balls them up 0:28:10.320 --> 0:28:13.680 into a pellet, and then crams the Bible page pellet 0:28:13.720 --> 0:28:16.960 into a dimple in the cow's skin. Then there's another 0:28:16.960 --> 0:28:20.040 one I have to share because it involves crabs and 0:28:21.280 --> 0:28:24.120 raises a mystery for me that I cannot solve. So 0:28:24.280 --> 0:28:27.119 maybe the listeners have some input on this. So this 0:28:27.200 --> 0:28:30.480 is from a source Davidson sites called Shetland Folklore. This 0:28:30.600 --> 0:28:33.720 is a book by Spence, and I'm going to read 0:28:33.760 --> 0:28:36.840 directly from Davidson's summary here. Oh sorry, this is still 0:28:36.840 --> 0:28:41.880 about traditions in the Shetlands. Quote a variant prescription from 0:28:41.880 --> 0:28:45.280 the same area directs the wise woman to take tar, 0:28:45.840 --> 0:28:51.440 a needle, a bible, a firebrand, and some fairy crabs. 0:28:52.200 --> 0:28:56.640 Waving the burning brand, she walked three times wittershens round 0:28:56.720 --> 0:29:01.080 the cow. That means counterclockwise, three times around the cow, 0:29:01.560 --> 0:29:04.959 jabbing the animal with the needle, waving a leaf of 0:29:05.000 --> 0:29:09.800 the Bible over its back, and muttering an incantation. The 0:29:09.840 --> 0:29:13.280 firebrand was placed in a pot of tar and set 0:29:13.320 --> 0:29:16.440 at the cow's head so the fumes would make her cough. 0:29:17.120 --> 0:29:20.240 She was then given the fairy crabs to eat alive. 0:29:21.040 --> 0:29:23.680 The ashes of the fire brand were later mixed with 0:29:23.720 --> 0:29:27.080 the tar into three pills, which were administered to the 0:29:27.120 --> 0:29:33.440 animal on three successive mornings. WHOA, what so involves eating 0:29:33.600 --> 0:29:36.560 the fairy crabs alive? It says she, And I'm sorry, 0:29:36.880 --> 0:29:40.239 I'm not sure if that means the cow or the 0:29:40.280 --> 0:29:42.440 wise woman. I think that means the cow. 0:29:42.840 --> 0:29:46.360 Yeah. I remember reading this in the source during the 0:29:46.400 --> 0:29:49.280 initial research phase, and I could not figure out what 0:29:49.320 --> 0:29:53.640 fairy crabs were. I was like, A, yeah, it was trying. 0:29:53.760 --> 0:29:56.040 My mind was struggling to form. I was just imagining 0:29:56.080 --> 0:29:57.200 like a glowing blue crab. 0:29:57.480 --> 0:30:00.240 I was confused too, and I tried to look this up. 0:30:00.280 --> 0:30:03.800 There is an animal called a faery crab. You can 0:30:03.840 --> 0:30:06.920 see it if you google that phrase. But it's clearly 0:30:06.960 --> 0:30:09.480 not what this is referring to, because it's a species 0:30:09.560 --> 0:30:16.520 of squat lobster called the scientific name is Lauria siagianni, 0:30:17.200 --> 0:30:19.360 and it's native to the Pacific. It's found like off 0:30:19.360 --> 0:30:23.280 the coast of Australia and Indonesia. I think, so this 0:30:23.360 --> 0:30:26.640 is clearly not what they're talking about in the Shetlands, 0:30:27.280 --> 0:30:29.600 and I was trying to find more information and I 0:30:29.640 --> 0:30:32.080 just could not, So I wonder if this refers to 0:30:32.760 --> 0:30:36.240 I don't know, if this is a local Shetland name 0:30:36.440 --> 0:30:39.200 for a certain type of animal, like an actual crab 0:30:39.360 --> 0:30:42.600 or some type of insect or something. I really have 0:30:42.680 --> 0:30:43.240 no idea. 0:30:43.640 --> 0:30:45.840 Yeah, I can imagine it going in different directions, some 0:30:45.840 --> 0:30:48.600 sort of novel crab that's found on the shore or 0:30:49.680 --> 0:30:53.000 turned up in nets, or indeed something that is found 0:30:54.800 --> 0:30:57.480 in streams, or is not a crab at all, but 0:30:57.640 --> 0:30:59.880 some sort of an insect with some sort of folk 0:31:00.120 --> 0:31:03.520 edison properties to it. Or I mean, certainly we have 0:31:03.600 --> 0:31:06.720 examples in plenty of cultures where if something is named 0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:09.200 after an animal but is not itself an animal. It 0:31:09.240 --> 0:31:11.560 could be you know, you can imagine a situation where 0:31:11.760 --> 0:31:13.840 the fairy crab is actually some sort of a root 0:31:14.760 --> 0:31:17.240 something into that effect. So there's so many different directions 0:31:17.240 --> 0:31:20.120 that could go in not knowing exactly what this is 0:31:20.120 --> 0:31:20.640 referring to. 0:31:20.920 --> 0:31:23.240 Well, hey listeners, if you've got insight on this, you 0:31:23.280 --> 0:31:26.760 know what the faery crabs are right in. One last 0:31:26.800 --> 0:31:31.480 subject that Davidson brings up with respect to elfshot is 0:31:31.600 --> 0:31:37.960 the idea of curved plow furrows and ridges in order 0:31:38.040 --> 0:31:42.920 to quote Wander the Ferry, which I found so interesting. 0:31:42.960 --> 0:31:45.480 It's the idea that if you go throughout Scotland and 0:31:45.520 --> 0:31:48.480 you look at some old cultivated fields, you'll find that, 0:31:48.480 --> 0:31:52.120 you know, these places that are there, they're dug with 0:31:52.240 --> 0:31:55.880 a what's known as like a ridge and furrow system. 0:31:55.920 --> 0:31:58.880 So you'll see a series of basically you know, lines 0:31:58.920 --> 0:32:01.280 where like you have a plot area and then like 0:32:01.360 --> 0:32:04.040 a sort of ridge of moved earth piled up in 0:32:04.120 --> 0:32:07.520 between them. And an interesting thing about a lot of 0:32:07.520 --> 0:32:11.480 these is they are created with so that the ridges 0:32:11.520 --> 0:32:15.240 and the furrows are not straight lines, but are curved 0:32:15.400 --> 0:32:20.240 or crooked or s shaped even and it is believed 0:32:20.720 --> 0:32:24.480 by some that the purpose of this is to confuse 0:32:24.680 --> 0:32:29.760 or quote wander the fairy, to maybe lead the ferry 0:32:29.800 --> 0:32:32.600 off course or lead the elf off course. This is 0:32:32.600 --> 0:32:34.400 not the only system, by the way, that would use this. 0:32:34.680 --> 0:32:38.560 Like Davidson notes that a lot of amulets that are 0:32:38.560 --> 0:32:43.520 designed for protection against fairies have a rays of kind 0:32:43.520 --> 0:32:48.040 of spiral patterns or can you know, complex whirls within them, 0:32:48.560 --> 0:32:52.880 or labyrinths or something, and this is designed to confuse 0:32:53.360 --> 0:32:55.600 the evil spirits, to kind of send them on a 0:32:56.360 --> 0:32:59.680 maze like journey that will lead them astray and keep 0:32:59.680 --> 0:33:00.680 them from harming you. 0:33:01.040 --> 0:33:03.680 These If you haven't seen these ridge and furrow features, 0:33:04.160 --> 0:33:06.280 definitely look them up and do an image search, because 0:33:06.320 --> 0:33:10.040 you can see lots of wonderful aerial photographs of this 0:33:10.200 --> 0:33:11.880 sort of thing, and you know, you can sort of 0:33:11.880 --> 0:33:16.400 imagine the trail of the of the elf going astray. Here. 0:33:16.960 --> 0:33:18.440 Oh, some of the ones you're looking at are the 0:33:18.480 --> 0:33:20.920 curved ones, because some are just straight, but others some 0:33:21.000 --> 0:33:21.640 are just straight. 0:33:21.680 --> 0:33:24.200 But I was looking at one in particular here where 0:33:24.240 --> 0:33:26.160 you do see you kind of see a mix in 0:33:26.200 --> 0:33:28.720 this particular one. You see the different areas of land 0:33:28.800 --> 0:33:32.320 and definite curves in some areas where and one kind 0:33:32.320 --> 0:33:34.360 of has like almost like a fern look because you 0:33:34.360 --> 0:33:36.840 have the line going down the middle and you have 0:33:36.920 --> 0:33:39.520 some like like different wavings on each side. 0:33:39.880 --> 0:33:43.400 So the magical understanding here again is that this, well, 0:33:43.440 --> 0:33:45.920 it could throw fairies off, just generally because you know, 0:33:46.000 --> 0:33:49.200 you make twisting paths in order to confuse evil spirits. 0:33:49.240 --> 0:33:51.720 But the other thing would be it doesn't allow them 0:33:51.760 --> 0:33:54.880 to get a clear straight line shot at the cattle, 0:33:55.040 --> 0:33:57.280 like at the oxen that you're using to plow the field. 0:33:57.720 --> 0:34:00.080 Yeah, this is strange, Like this idea of the l 0:34:00.280 --> 0:34:03.320 is kind of like this. You know, I guess you 0:34:03.360 --> 0:34:06.320 look at different folklore systems. It's like you want to 0:34:06.400 --> 0:34:10.319 avoid doing things that draw attention to yourself. You know. 0:34:10.480 --> 0:34:12.759 We definitely see that with the elf and fairy folk 0:34:12.800 --> 0:34:15.760 traditions in this part of the world, with the wearing 0:34:15.760 --> 0:34:17.919 of green, which we've discussed before. Don't wear the green 0:34:17.960 --> 0:34:20.200 that's the color of the elves or the fairies. They'll 0:34:20.200 --> 0:34:22.920 come at you. You also see that with traditions of 0:34:22.960 --> 0:34:25.759 the evil eye in the Middle East, where there are 0:34:25.840 --> 0:34:29.440 various things like you should not do because this invisible 0:34:29.520 --> 0:34:32.200 ne faariaus force is out there in the world, and 0:34:32.239 --> 0:34:34.719 you do not want it aware of your presence or 0:34:34.719 --> 0:34:38.680 your fortune, so you don't get on its radar, don't 0:34:38.680 --> 0:34:42.080 have direct lines leading to you. Be that line something 0:34:42.200 --> 0:34:44.759 like you know, you shouting about how beautiful your child is. 0:34:45.640 --> 0:34:47.160 You know. In the case of some of the evil 0:34:47.160 --> 0:34:50.759 eye traditions, and particularly in Judaism, I remember hearing about 0:34:51.000 --> 0:34:55.160 reading about or in this case, like a physical line 0:34:55.239 --> 0:34:56.960 through the altered landscape. 0:34:57.480 --> 0:35:00.160 I think this type of belief is still present and 0:35:00.200 --> 0:35:03.960 in like modern day Christianity. Like I remember when I 0:35:04.000 --> 0:35:06.480 was a kid hearing about the dangers of playing with 0:35:06.480 --> 0:35:10.480 a wija board, and the idea was it attracts demonic attention. 0:35:11.200 --> 0:35:13.719 I mean that's literally like the it's it's like when 0:35:13.760 --> 0:35:16.279 you play with a wija board. It's not so much 0:35:16.320 --> 0:35:18.920 something about the board as evil, but it it sort 0:35:18.960 --> 0:35:21.879 of like puts up a beacon to demons that says, hey, 0:35:22.000 --> 0:35:25.799 I'm available, you know, pay attention to me, and they 0:35:25.840 --> 0:35:28.200 will hone in on you because you have done that. 0:35:28.840 --> 0:35:31.759 Yeah. Oh. In quick note, I mentioned Judaism and the 0:35:32.040 --> 0:35:34.319 evil eye and so forth. The evil eye is not 0:35:34.360 --> 0:35:36.560 necessarily like a part of Judaism. I don't want to 0:35:36.600 --> 0:35:38.840 imply that but it is something that is sort of 0:35:38.840 --> 0:35:41.560 in the folkloric traditions of various peoples in the Middle East, 0:35:41.600 --> 0:35:45.160 including you'll see that in Judic culture. Yeah, and certainly 0:35:45.160 --> 0:35:47.279 we see similar site case with this here because we 0:35:47.320 --> 0:35:49.560 have people who are discussing that have taken you know, 0:35:49.560 --> 0:35:52.719 head that have converted to Christianity, and but there's still 0:35:53.000 --> 0:35:57.000 there's still practicing beliefs. They're still engaging in belief of 0:35:57.160 --> 0:36:00.000 the elves, but they're also incorporating in some of these 0:36:00.040 --> 0:36:03.080 Christian traditions like well, maybe we're you know, lought up 0:36:03.120 --> 0:36:06.200 a Bible page and stick it into that furrow in 0:36:06.239 --> 0:36:07.759 the cow. That'll help too. 0:36:08.200 --> 0:36:11.040 This is this next thing is not really addressed in Davidson, 0:36:11.080 --> 0:36:14.440 But I was wondering about this because I was reading 0:36:14.440 --> 0:36:18.880 about the ridge and furrow system elsewhere after reading this 0:36:18.880 --> 0:36:22.399 passage from Davidson, and it seems to me that sometimes 0:36:22.920 --> 0:36:27.080 the strips that are plowed in this system are curved 0:36:27.280 --> 0:36:31.319 for totally mundane reasons that have nothing to do with 0:36:31.440 --> 0:36:34.400 magical beliefs. So I think that they're often curved just 0:36:34.440 --> 0:36:38.680 because of it was a sort of necessary consequence of 0:36:38.719 --> 0:36:42.120 the types of plow rigging and oxen pulling teams that 0:36:42.120 --> 0:36:44.360 they used at the time. They would lead to a 0:36:44.400 --> 0:36:46.920 furrow or a ridge being kind of like curved off 0:36:46.960 --> 0:36:49.840 at each end every time the team turned around to 0:36:49.880 --> 0:36:53.879 make a new line. And that makes me wonder if 0:36:54.239 --> 0:36:59.759 something like twisting twisting in these rows could have originally 0:36:59.800 --> 0:37:03.839 been a totally mundane thing that somebody saw and then 0:37:04.120 --> 0:37:06.760 in trying to explain why it was like that without 0:37:06.840 --> 0:37:11.200 understanding it, they came up with this explanation about confusing 0:37:11.239 --> 0:37:15.360 the fairies, and then afterwards did it like that on purpose. 0:37:15.760 --> 0:37:19.040 So it's like somebody like the landowner whoever, comes out 0:37:19.080 --> 0:37:21.399 to check on the work. It's like, Dale, what's going 0:37:21.440 --> 0:37:23.480 on with these ridges and furrows? Look look at it. 0:37:23.520 --> 0:37:26.799 It's just like I can tell it's crooked. And Dale's like, well, 0:37:26.840 --> 0:37:29.080 do you want the fairies coming straight at you? I 0:37:29.120 --> 0:37:32.200 didn't think, so you're welcome. This, of course, also reminds 0:37:32.239 --> 0:37:34.600 me of on one hand, and this may well be 0:37:34.680 --> 0:37:41.320 connected the idea that vampires might be deterred by hanging 0:37:41.360 --> 0:37:44.160 some sort of a nodded item or or carefully woven 0:37:44.239 --> 0:37:47.000 item out for them like a complex pattern, then will 0:37:47.080 --> 0:37:48.960 draw their attention and they have to deal with and 0:37:49.040 --> 0:37:51.359 maybe get they'll either spend all their time doing that 0:37:51.640 --> 0:37:53.719 and leave you alone, or perhaps even get caught in 0:37:53.760 --> 0:37:56.640 the sunlight the loose track of time. And then of 0:37:56.680 --> 0:37:59.320 course I can't help but think of crop circles as well, 0:37:59.719 --> 0:38:02.000 which again, as we've discussed I think we've discussed this 0:38:02.040 --> 0:38:04.120 in the show before. I mean crop crop circles a 0:38:04.239 --> 0:38:07.719 pretty much put to bed as a you know, is 0:38:08.040 --> 0:38:13.040 the work of human actors. But thinking about like sort 0:38:13.080 --> 0:38:15.759 of the draw to do this to a field, like 0:38:15.800 --> 0:38:20.240 the human intention to do this, and there are several 0:38:20.239 --> 0:38:22.320 factors that can play into that someone which may actually 0:38:22.360 --> 0:38:24.200 come up in our next episode of so to blow 0:38:24.239 --> 0:38:29.800 your mind, But the idea of like just seeing that field, 0:38:29.880 --> 0:38:31.800 like I wonder if there's some sort of draw that like, no, 0:38:32.360 --> 0:38:35.200 the lines are too too perfect, everything is just too 0:38:35.239 --> 0:38:38.600 pristine like this this this, this land has been too 0:38:38.760 --> 0:38:42.040 finely transformed. We got to get some swirls in there. 0:38:42.040 --> 0:38:43.719 We got to get some circles, you know. 0:38:44.400 --> 0:38:46.680 Yeah, that is a good comparison. I didn't think you 0:38:46.719 --> 0:38:47.799 were going to crop circles though. 0:38:47.840 --> 0:38:48.520 I thought you were. 0:38:48.360 --> 0:38:52.680 Gonna mention the jung she being being warded off by 0:38:52.680 --> 0:38:55.120 spilling glutinous rice on the floor because they'll I think 0:38:55.120 --> 0:38:56.640 they'll be counting the grains, right. 0:38:56.920 --> 0:38:59.480 Oh yeah, that that also, that's a good point as well. 0:38:59.520 --> 0:39:03.040 I forgot about that one, something about yeah, the inhuman 0:39:03.120 --> 0:39:08.520 analytical mind of non human beings in folklore, and that 0:39:08.760 --> 0:39:13.920 they can be led astray by either randomized patterns or 0:39:14.400 --> 0:39:17.280 things of human creation that have some sort of eloquence 0:39:17.360 --> 0:39:19.480 to them, which is kind of ironic given that we're 0:39:19.480 --> 0:39:22.240 talking about situations where human beings may in some cases 0:39:22.239 --> 0:39:25.719 have just like completely flipped their wig over finding an 0:39:25.760 --> 0:39:29.239 old flint arrow in the dirt. So I guess it 0:39:29.280 --> 0:39:30.080 cuts both ways. 0:39:36.680 --> 0:39:38.879 Now, there's one more paper I wanted to briefly mention 0:39:39.040 --> 0:39:41.919 that gets way more into the weeds about a particular 0:39:42.160 --> 0:39:46.360 text that is believed or has been believed to reference Elfshot. 0:39:46.800 --> 0:39:48.920 But I thought this was interesting too. So this was 0:39:48.960 --> 0:39:52.759 a paper by a professor of English at the University 0:39:52.760 --> 0:39:56.960 of Leeds named Alaric Hall called Calling the Shots the 0:39:57.080 --> 0:40:01.839 Old English Remedy Gift Horror off Scott and Sea and 0:40:01.960 --> 0:40:05.160 Anglo Saxon elf Shot, published in two thousand and five. 0:40:05.840 --> 0:40:09.200 So this paper is mainly an attempt to critically re 0:40:09.280 --> 0:40:14.000 examine an Anglo Saxon text called Gift Horse of Scott 0:40:14.000 --> 0:40:17.520 and Sea, which is a passage from a medieval Anglo 0:40:17.560 --> 0:40:20.920 Saxon medical text that has been widely interpreted as being 0:40:20.960 --> 0:40:24.200 about elf shot. The title Gift Horse of Scott and 0:40:24.239 --> 0:40:27.560 Sea translates to if a horse be and then the 0:40:27.600 --> 0:40:31.120 word is off scotten. And the question is what does 0:40:31.160 --> 0:40:35.280 off scotton mean. It's been traditionally translated as elf shot 0:40:35.320 --> 0:40:38.360 if a horse be elf shot. Hall argues that it 0:40:38.440 --> 0:40:41.080 should not be understood that way, and yet there are 0:40:41.239 --> 0:40:45.520 still references to elf attacks within the passage. So this 0:40:45.560 --> 0:40:49.440 is Hall's translation of this text, which is interesting in itself. 0:40:50.040 --> 0:40:53.600 If a horse be off scotten, take then a dagger 0:40:53.640 --> 0:40:57.399 whose halft is of fallow Ox's horn, and in which 0:40:57.440 --> 0:41:00.919 there are three brass nails. And then there's a term 0:41:00.960 --> 0:41:04.520 that every time is rendered as right slash. Inscribe. I'm 0:41:04.520 --> 0:41:08.160 just going to say, inscribe, inscribe on the horse on 0:41:08.239 --> 0:41:13.600 the forehead, Christ's mark, so it bleeds. Inscribe then Christ's 0:41:13.640 --> 0:41:16.800 mark on the spine, and on each of the limbs 0:41:16.880 --> 0:41:20.560 which you can grasp. This, shall you do take a 0:41:20.600 --> 0:41:24.160 staff strike on the back. Then the horse will be 0:41:24.280 --> 0:41:30.239 well and inscribe on the dagger's handle. These words been 0:41:30.280 --> 0:41:35.759 a decetae omnia opera domini dominum, which means bless all 0:41:35.760 --> 0:41:39.440 the works of the Lord of Lords. Should it be 0:41:39.680 --> 0:41:42.880 alps which is on it, this will do as a 0:41:42.920 --> 0:41:46.719 remedy for it. And so Hall makes the argument in 0:41:46.760 --> 0:41:50.000 this paper that the primary condition being described in this 0:41:50.080 --> 0:41:54.160 text under the word oafscotten should not be translated as 0:41:54.320 --> 0:41:57.279 elf shot as it traditionally has been, but it is 0:41:57.360 --> 0:42:02.200 something like badly pained. It's more more mundane condition that 0:42:02.400 --> 0:42:06.400 is prompting this entire remedy. However, even if that's correct, 0:42:06.480 --> 0:42:09.560 the last line of the remedy does mention the idea 0:42:10.040 --> 0:42:14.279 of this word alf the ae combined vowel and then 0:42:14.560 --> 0:42:18.720 l fe, though this sentence is also kind of difficult 0:42:18.760 --> 0:42:20.520 to translate the one that's got the alph in it. 0:42:20.600 --> 0:42:23.279 I think the understanding that makes the most sense is 0:42:23.400 --> 0:42:27.080 this whole remedy is for regular bad pain in horses, 0:42:27.520 --> 0:42:31.240 and then there's an additional remedy, the one that's riding 0:42:31.280 --> 0:42:34.000 on the dagger's handle, the words bless all the works 0:42:34.000 --> 0:42:38.040 of the Lord of Lords. That additional remedy is like 0:42:38.080 --> 0:42:41.920 a special extra dose of holiness that should be applied 0:42:42.239 --> 0:42:46.120 if the cause of the horse's pain is injury by 0:42:46.160 --> 0:42:48.880 an elf, though it doesn't explain how you tell the 0:42:48.880 --> 0:42:52.680 difference between normal bad pain and bad pain caused by 0:42:52.680 --> 0:42:55.479 an elf. You know, of course, the elf injury being 0:42:55.880 --> 0:42:59.600 even more unholy and requiring more holiness or or more 0:42:59.640 --> 0:43:01.400 piet in order to undo. 0:43:01.680 --> 0:43:03.759 Either way you shake it. From a modern perspective, it's 0:43:03.800 --> 0:43:08.000 a lot of cutting and striking of a pained horse. 0:43:08.440 --> 0:43:11.040 Yeah, jeez, you feel bad for the horse. 0:43:11.239 --> 0:43:14.440 You know. Now, as we as we go to close 0:43:14.480 --> 0:43:16.920 out this look at Elfshot, I did want to come 0:43:16.960 --> 0:43:20.479 back to some basic questions, some of which we've already 0:43:20.520 --> 0:43:24.319 got into, concerning the archaeology of elf Shot. Who were 0:43:24.360 --> 0:43:26.879 the people who made these artifacts, and how did they 0:43:26.960 --> 0:43:29.480 get to the regions where the artifacts were found, and 0:43:29.520 --> 0:43:32.640 then of course, you know, interpreted and reinterpreted within these 0:43:32.640 --> 0:43:36.000 folkloric traditions. This, of course, is a broad question because 0:43:36.000 --> 0:43:39.640 as we've mentioned already, we're talking about multiple areas. We're 0:43:39.640 --> 0:43:42.600 talking about locations throughout the British Isles and even outside 0:43:42.640 --> 0:43:45.360 of the British Isles. But just limiting the question of 0:43:45.360 --> 0:43:47.520 the British Isles, we're still looking at close to a 0:43:47.600 --> 0:43:52.280 million years of occupation by various human species, including Neanderthals. 0:43:52.800 --> 0:43:55.480 And as for the how they got there, the predominant 0:43:55.520 --> 0:43:58.839 theories involved land bridges between Europe and Britain that were 0:43:58.880 --> 0:44:03.360 president at the time. And regarding Ireland, I've seen hypotheses 0:44:03.520 --> 0:44:08.359 that involve boats, land bridges and also ice bridges. But 0:44:08.680 --> 0:44:10.400 just to give a few examples that really sort of 0:44:10.480 --> 0:44:14.319 drive home the times we're talking about here, there are 0:44:14.400 --> 0:44:18.080 stone tool and footprints in Norfolk that date back and 0:44:18.200 --> 0:44:21.759 estimated nine hundred thousand years and these would be the 0:44:21.800 --> 0:44:27.319 work and or the footprints of Homo antecessor. Notable here 0:44:27.320 --> 0:44:30.800 are the Happisburg footprints in Norfolk, and also a black 0:44:30.840 --> 0:44:34.040 flint hand axe was also found in this area. So 0:44:34.960 --> 0:44:38.680 Homo antecessor they were makers of simple stone tools, and 0:44:38.760 --> 0:44:41.560 it looks like many experts think that they might not 0:44:41.680 --> 0:44:46.960 have had mastery of fire. By four thousand BCE, Neolithic 0:44:47.000 --> 0:44:50.040 culture was firmly established on the British Isles and lasted 0:44:50.080 --> 0:44:53.560 till roughly it's just you know, the rough time period 0:44:53.600 --> 0:44:57.640 of our histories two thousand, five hundred BCE and of 0:44:57.680 --> 0:45:01.799 course between three thousand BCE in two thousand BCE, we 0:45:01.920 --> 0:45:05.600 see the construction of Stonehinge, one of course the most famous, 0:45:05.640 --> 0:45:08.839 if not the most famous testament to prehistoric Britain. And 0:45:08.880 --> 0:45:12.040 of course even Stone Hinge gets wrapped up into various folklore, 0:45:12.239 --> 0:45:17.680 traditions and folkloric interpretations and reinterpretations that involve at times 0:45:17.880 --> 0:45:23.080 the wizard Merlin, but also the Christian devil, and even 0:45:23.160 --> 0:45:25.920 during the Roman period which would have been roughly forty 0:45:25.960 --> 0:45:30.400 three CE to four ten CE, the Roman sky god Kalus. 0:45:31.120 --> 0:45:34.719 More realistically, or more on the sort of realistic interpretation 0:45:34.800 --> 0:45:38.440 and reinterpretation standpoint, it was at one point thought to 0:45:38.480 --> 0:45:42.400 be credited to the work of Druidic culture, but this 0:45:42.440 --> 0:45:45.840 culture didn't exist till three hundred BCE, which would have 0:45:45.880 --> 0:45:48.560 been too late, so the stones were already ancient history 0:45:48.560 --> 0:45:52.600 to the Druids. Now, another example that I found really 0:45:52.640 --> 0:45:57.839 interesting talking about found arrowheads in the British Isles. In 0:45:58.040 --> 0:46:01.680 twenty sixteen, archaeologists from the University of Reading discovered a 0:46:01.840 --> 0:46:05.200 four thy five hundred year old flint arrowhead a few 0:46:05.239 --> 0:46:08.880 miles from Stonehenge, and according to David Dawson, director of 0:46:08.920 --> 0:46:14.080 the Wiltshire Museum, this particular arrowhead is not only finally preserved, 0:46:14.600 --> 0:46:19.280 but incredibly fragile, suggesting that it was never actually intended 0:46:19.320 --> 0:46:22.280 for use in war or hunting, but it was rather 0:46:22.640 --> 0:46:27.719 ceremonial or decorative and or decorative this was. You can 0:46:27.800 --> 0:46:29.960 look up images of this. There were some news articles 0:46:29.960 --> 0:46:32.760 of the time. The arrowhead was unearthed in two parts, 0:46:32.960 --> 0:46:36.839 two different digs, five years apart. And it is quite 0:46:36.920 --> 0:46:40.239 eloguant looking. It has like one it has barbs, but 0:46:40.440 --> 0:46:44.240 one really long barb and elongated barb on one side. 0:46:44.480 --> 0:46:45.759 So I don't know about you, but I find that 0:46:45.800 --> 0:46:48.120 really interesting because I think it's easy to think of 0:46:48.200 --> 0:46:52.360 folkloric interpretation of found objects to be a luxury of 0:46:52.440 --> 0:46:56.480 later civilizations on the British Isles, to think supernaturally about 0:46:56.800 --> 0:46:59.319 about these about these items. But certainly, and certainly there 0:46:59.360 --> 0:47:01.560 was a lot we don't know about concerning pre Roman 0:47:01.600 --> 0:47:05.760 and prehistoric Britain. But even forty five hundred years ago, 0:47:06.360 --> 0:47:10.160 this find would suggest that people here were already capable 0:47:10.200 --> 0:47:14.839 of sublime interpretations and perhaps mystical meanings for their own 0:47:14.920 --> 0:47:19.600 created artifacts. That you could have this sacred arrow that 0:47:19.760 --> 0:47:22.839 wasn't found, that was made, but some of the same 0:47:23.040 --> 0:47:27.960 energy that goes into the interpretation of these artifacts, you know, 0:47:28.160 --> 0:47:31.200 thousands of years later, was already present in the cultures 0:47:31.640 --> 0:47:32.960 that made their home here. 0:47:33.160 --> 0:47:34.799 Right, And so we don't know what it would have 0:47:34.840 --> 0:47:37.080 been used for, but it's clear that it would not 0:47:37.280 --> 0:47:40.799 have been useful for actual shooting of an arrow. So 0:47:41.880 --> 0:47:45.680 you know, it could be decorative, it could be medicinal, 0:47:45.800 --> 0:47:48.799 some kind of amulet. It could be magical or ceremonial. 0:47:48.880 --> 0:47:50.520 We don't know, but in any case, it would be 0:47:50.520 --> 0:47:55.040 a symbolic arrowhead rather than one used for the literal, 0:47:55.160 --> 0:47:56.520 direct mundane purpose. 0:47:57.120 --> 0:48:00.239 Yeah, and so you can imagine at some point in 0:48:00.760 --> 0:48:05.600 history after this point if someone were to find an 0:48:05.719 --> 0:48:08.399 arrow had like this, especially, I mean any arrow had 0:48:08.480 --> 0:48:12.920 obviously any kind of novel lump of stone could find 0:48:12.960 --> 0:48:17.200 itself interpreted as an elf arrow and incorporated into elf 0:48:17.640 --> 0:48:21.200 shot folklore. But imagine if you found this, you know, 0:48:21.320 --> 0:48:25.200 clearly an arrow that looks too fine to be shot. 0:48:25.280 --> 0:48:28.839 You know, that's almost ephemeral in its construction, Like who 0:48:28.880 --> 0:48:31.719 would make this? Why would they make this? Clearly this 0:48:31.760 --> 0:48:34.640 is the work of the elves. But also I think 0:48:34.640 --> 0:48:38.520 it's just yeah, it's just worth remembering the deep history 0:48:39.040 --> 0:48:42.120 of people on the British Isles. You know, it might 0:48:42.120 --> 0:48:45.080 not be as deep as some other areas, Like you know, 0:48:45.080 --> 0:48:46.960 you're looking at what in France. I think it's what 0:48:47.080 --> 0:48:49.080 one point fifty seven million years ago. We have some 0:48:49.120 --> 0:48:52.320 of the earliest known evidence of human beings. But still 0:48:52.760 --> 0:48:58.920 you have human species on the British Isles as early 0:48:58.920 --> 0:49:02.400 as almost a million years ago, different species, different cultures, 0:49:02.440 --> 0:49:06.840 different waves of technology and arrivals in the subsequent centuries 0:49:06.880 --> 0:49:11.319 and millennium millennia, and of course different waves of interpretation 0:49:11.520 --> 0:49:16.080 and reinterpretation of what came before. All right, we're going 0:49:16.120 --> 0:49:17.680 to go ahead and close it out there, but obviously 0:49:17.719 --> 0:49:19.840 we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We'd especially 0:49:19.840 --> 0:49:23.400 love to hear from folks listening to the show on 0:49:23.480 --> 0:49:26.000 the British Isles, or folks who have spent time on 0:49:26.040 --> 0:49:29.120 the British Isles. Perhaps you have some tidbits some local 0:49:29.200 --> 0:49:31.239 lore to share with us. If so, we'd love to 0:49:31.280 --> 0:49:34.000 hear from you. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your 0:49:34.040 --> 0:49:37.640 Mind is a primarily a science podcast that publishes on 0:49:37.680 --> 0:49:39.919 Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind 0:49:39.920 --> 0:49:43.160 podcast feed, but on Mondays we do a listener mail 0:49:43.280 --> 0:49:48.000 episode where we read various missives from our listeners. On 0:49:48.040 --> 0:49:50.760 Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact. 0:49:51.239 --> 0:49:53.839 On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time 0:49:54.239 --> 0:49:56.960 to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about 0:49:56.960 --> 0:49:57.800 a weird film. 0:49:58.200 --> 0:50:01.200 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth 0:50:01.280 --> 0:50:03.799 Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch 0:50:03.840 --> 0:50:06.200 with us with feedback on this episode or any other, 0:50:06.280 --> 0:50:08.480 to suggest a topic for the future, or just to 0:50:08.480 --> 0:50:11.440 say hello, you can email us at contact stuff to 0:50:11.480 --> 0:50:19.239 Blow your Mind dot com. 0:50:20.480 --> 0:50:23.400 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 0:50:23.520 --> 0:50:26.279 more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:50:26.440 --> 0:50:42.320 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.