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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a classic from the vault. This one originally

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Speaker 1: aired on January one. It was called Funeral for a Bug.

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Speaker 1: I think this was all literally about funerals for bugs?

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Speaker 1: Or will we get into some stuff about the Roman

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Speaker 1: poet Virgil. Yeah, yeah, and even know Virgil's there, It's

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Speaker 1: going to be a party, So so here we go,

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Speaker 1: let's have a listen. Welcome just about to blow your mind,

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Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today I wanted to start off

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Speaker 1: by talking about a weird legend about the Roman poet

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Speaker 1: Virgil and an insect funeral. Uh, Robert, you ready for

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Speaker 1: some Virgil talk? Okay? So, So Virgil was a poet

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Speaker 1: who lived in the first century BC during the Augustine period,

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Speaker 1: so early Imperial Rome. And uh, you might know him

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Speaker 1: best from his most famous work, the epic poem The Aenead,

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Speaker 1: which is about sort of the founding lineage of Rome

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Speaker 1: and the adventures of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who after

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Speaker 1: the Trojan War, travels from Troy and eventually becomes the

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Speaker 1: ancestor of the Roman people. Virgil is often considered one

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Speaker 1: of the greatest Latin poets, and he was wildly popular

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Speaker 1: during his own lifetime. Uh you know, he he received

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Speaker 1: commendations from from kings and the wealthy, and and you know,

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Speaker 1: everybody thought like, wow, this this guy has just got

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Speaker 1: the juice. And I had Virgil on my mind a

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Speaker 1: lot last year because Rachel and I were rereading Dante's

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Speaker 1: Divine Comedy. And if you'll recall, of course, Virgil is

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Speaker 1: Dante the pilgrim's guy through hell and purgatory in the

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Speaker 1: Divine Comedy. So the spirit of Virgil he's been living

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Speaker 1: out the centuries in Limbo because though he was a

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Speaker 1: very virtuous man, he's one of the virtuous Pagans. He

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Speaker 1: was never baptized as a Christian, so he can't go

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Speaker 1: to heaven. He's got to hang out in this sort

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Speaker 1: of anti chamber of hell where everybody sits around sighing

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Speaker 1: because nothing interesting is ever happening to them. I have

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Speaker 1: to admit that I tend to when anybody mentions Virgil

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Speaker 1: that's the first place my mind goes is Dante's Inferno,

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Speaker 1: which is it's probably not fair. It's like if you

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Speaker 1: were to mention the name of Socrates and there was

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Speaker 1: someone were to go, oh, yeah, yeah, he's in Bill

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Speaker 1: and Ted's Excellent Adventure. That's exactly That's exactly where I

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Speaker 1: knew you were going with that. Villa and Ted. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: um yeah, that that is pretty good because well though

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Speaker 1: it's slightly different because it's not a it's he's not

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Speaker 1: at all parodied in the Divine Comedy. In fact, I

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Speaker 1: would say it's exactly the opposite. In the Divine Comedy.

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Speaker 1: He is. He's revered, Yes, he's he's reimagined as this

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Speaker 1: like superhuman wizard. For for Dante, he uh, Virgil is

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Speaker 1: the embodiment of wisdom and reason. So for the intended

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Speaker 1: readers of the Divine Comedy, we're supposed to understand that

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Speaker 1: Virgil is like a ten out of ten platinum level

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Speaker 1: cool beast. He is just like this ultimate wizard of

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Speaker 1: knowledge and about half of the state you do remember

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Speaker 1: how like like basically every other time Dante talks in

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Speaker 1: the first two books of The Divine Comedy, it's just

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Speaker 1: to say like Virgil, you are so right, I would

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Speaker 1: never doubt your wisdom. Tell me more, you know. And

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Speaker 1: and it kind of stinks in because I remember when

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Speaker 1: we got to the end of the Purgatory. Oh, and

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Speaker 1: Virgil does not get to move on to to Heaven

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Speaker 1: with Dante. He has to stay behind and Beatrice takes

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Speaker 1: him on from there. We're really mad that Virgil didn't

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Speaker 1: get to go to heaven. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean

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Speaker 1: so much, so much time is devoted to him, and

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Speaker 1: it also so much is stripped away at that point.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's like if it's hard to follow Dante

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Speaker 1: and into pared Ceo, just because you know that there

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Speaker 1: there aren't gonna be any demons uh playing trumpets with

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Speaker 1: their bombs or anything. There's not going to be yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, and monsters so much, and Virgil is not

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Speaker 1: going to be there. So it's it's you know, it's

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Speaker 1: part three in a series is always tough. Yeah, I agree,

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Speaker 1: you know, the trilogy is a hard sell to to

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Speaker 1: complete with dignity. Uh. And but I think for modern

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Speaker 1: readers that sense of injustice about Virgil that is interpreted, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know by the characters in the Inferno, as you know,

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Speaker 1: perfect divine justice. It's the one person version of the

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Speaker 1: dynamic that plays out throughout the whole thing. Where as

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Speaker 1: they're going through hell, it just seems like, wow, this

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Speaker 1: is really unfair. Yeah. But anyway, long before Virgil was

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Speaker 1: guiding Dante up the Mountain of Purgatory and his postmortem

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Speaker 1: shade form, people were telling lots of legends about his life,

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Speaker 1: and one of those legends is that once at his

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Speaker 1: home in Rome, Virgil built a two womb and held

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Speaker 1: an extravagant funeral for a dead fly, like a fly

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Speaker 1: as in the insect with six legs and wings. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This story is very probably untrue, and we'll get to

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Speaker 1: why that is in a bit, but first I wanted

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Speaker 1: to explore some of the details, and for this I

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Speaker 1: was reading an article by George Pendall in Cabinet Magazine

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Speaker 1: in two thousand seven called Virgil's Fly, and he describes

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Speaker 1: the legend in the following way quote. Held in the

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Speaker 1: grounds of Virgil's home on Rome's Esqualine Hill, the funeral

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Speaker 1: attracted the great and good of the city. Dirges were

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Speaker 1: sung and tributes read. Virgil's patron Mycenas delivered a lengthy

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Speaker 1: and moving eulogy to the departed insect, and Virgil was

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Speaker 1: himself said to have uttered a few of his exquisite

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Speaker 1: verses over the tiny carcass A tomb had been erected

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Speaker 1: and the lifeless body of the fly was placed within it,

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Speaker 1: to the whales and moans of the professional mourners. So

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Speaker 1: lavish were the commemorations that the cost was stimated at

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Speaker 1: over eight hundred thousand sister ss. So that's the gist.

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Speaker 1: According to this story, Virgil and his close friends spend

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Speaker 1: huge amounts of money and effort to celebrate the life

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Speaker 1: and memory of an insect, concluding with the insects burial

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Speaker 1: in a marble tomb. Why on earth would this be? Well?

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Speaker 1: The legend itself also contains an answer to this, So

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Speaker 1: to read from Pendle again quote but the reason for

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Speaker 1: the funeral was not due to extravagance, eccentricity, or even emotion.

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Speaker 1: Having defeated Julius Caesar's assassins at the Battle of Philippi,

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Speaker 1: the second Triumvirate was at that very moment engaged in

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Speaker 1: confiscating the estates of the rich and dividing them among

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Speaker 1: the war veterans. Returning from the battlefield. Only one exception

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Speaker 1: was given. If the estate held a burial plot, it

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Speaker 1: was not to be touched by burying his housefly. Virgil

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Speaker 1: saved his house. So here it has transformed into a

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Speaker 1: classic one of our favorite genres, loophole fiction. Yes, remember

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Speaker 1: when we did the Anthology of Horror segment in October

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Speaker 1: on deals with the Devil, and about how many of

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Speaker 1: these stories, I think, especially later deal with the Devil's

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Speaker 1: stories less so in the earlier ones. They're about somebody

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Speaker 1: saving the day by figuring out a loophole that they

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Speaker 1: can exploit to get out of their end of a

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Speaker 1: pact with Satan. And I wonder, again, what's so appealing

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Speaker 1: about this kind of plot resolution. It seems like maybe

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Speaker 1: this would be the kind of thing that's especially interesting

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Speaker 1: to too people who live in a more litigious kind

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Speaker 1: of culture. Could be. I can also imagine that if you're,

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Speaker 1: if you're, if you've ever taken advantage of a loophole,

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Speaker 1: it probably helps out if you demonize the legal authority

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Speaker 1: to some degree, if you make them into a devil,

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Speaker 1: because in all these stories, it's the loophole that saves

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Speaker 1: your soul. Whereas um, I think there are plenty of

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Speaker 1: cases in in real in real life where the loophole

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Speaker 1: might have the opposite effect. You Right, the loophole is

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Speaker 1: the is the refuge of of less savory individuals at times, right,

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Speaker 1: cheaters and scammers with crafty lawyers to help help them

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Speaker 1: get out of trouble by exploiting some kind of you know,

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Speaker 1: loophole in the wording of something. Is it? Isn't that

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Speaker 1: always like, that's always a really frustrating thing when somebody

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Speaker 1: uh evades the obvious spirit of justice by exploiting the

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Speaker 1: exact wording of something, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: um yeah, So I can't have a wonder if there's

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Speaker 1: there's some connection there. You know, you make your stories

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Speaker 1: about cheating the devil with your loopholes, and then you

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Speaker 1: you feel better about the sort of implied devil that

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Speaker 1: you're cheating through your own loophole usage. Well, it's actually funny,

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Speaker 1: there is uh. In this Pendle article, he also talks

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Speaker 1: about a medieval legend about Virgil. And we'll get into

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Speaker 1: more of these legends about Virgil's life as we go on,

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Speaker 1: but one of these medieval legends about Virgil is that

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Speaker 1: Virgil freeze a d men from there's like a devil

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Speaker 1: trapped in a bottle, and Virgil lets it out so

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Speaker 1: that it will empower him to do something great. I

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Speaker 1: think maybe he uses its powers to to get a

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Speaker 1: long road paved or something like that. But anyway, once

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Speaker 1: he has has used this demon power, now I think

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Speaker 1: the demon is supposed to get his into the bargain

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Speaker 1: is going to do something really bad. But first Virgil's like, wow,

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Speaker 1: you know you're so powerful. Could you show me again

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Speaker 1: how you fit your frame into that bottle? So the

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Speaker 1: devil does, and then he corks it back up, so

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Speaker 1: he gets to have his magic and keep the genie

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Speaker 1: in the bottle as well. Oh that's great. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how to climb into an oven. And I've never

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Speaker 1: sat on a shovel. That's some jack frost. Jack frost,

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Speaker 1: that's from some ivanushka right there. So in that spirit

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Speaker 1: that there's obviously this interesting process by which after Virgil's death,

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Speaker 1: remember he lived in the first century b C. In

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Speaker 1: the centuries after his death, his poetry was greatly admired

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Speaker 1: and revered, but not just his poetry, he himself was

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Speaker 1: greatly admired and revered and took on the aspects of

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Speaker 1: a saint in many ways, even though he had been

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Speaker 1: a pagan. Uh. There's an interesting note in in his

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Speaker 1: Cabinet article where Pendle shares this fact that kind of

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Speaker 1: helps make more sense of the almost absurd reverence shown

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Speaker 1: for Virgil in the Divine Comedy in these in centuries

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Speaker 1: after his death, many Romans and and later Italians in

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages thought of Virgil as possessing a literally

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Speaker 1: supernatural or near supernatural genius, that there was something magical

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Speaker 1: about his poetry, the same way people would feel there

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Speaker 1: is magic in the holy text of their religion. And

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Speaker 1: one one clear illustration of this is that in the

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Speaker 1: second century CE, under the Antonines, Uh, there had arisen

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Speaker 1: this form of divination. And we've we've done episodes on

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Speaker 1: divination in the past. You know, there are various ways

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Speaker 1: of trying to sort of get turned some sort of

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Speaker 1: noise or random input into an interpreted type of information

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Speaker 1: about hidden knowledge you know, what's going to happen the future,

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Speaker 1: or some other thing you want to know but can't uh.

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Speaker 1: And and so the Virgil's poetry was itself used for divination,

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Speaker 1: and so people would randomly select passages from the inneed

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Speaker 1: and then read those passages as some kind of prediction

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Speaker 1: about their future or statement about some other kind of

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Speaker 1: hidden knowledge. Uh Pendle writes, quote, it is said that

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Speaker 1: these sortes Virgiliana or Virgilian lots were consulted by both

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Speaker 1: the emperor's Hadrian and Severus, and with each consultation, Virgil's

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Speaker 1: memory began to take on an increasingly mystical air. But

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Speaker 1: anyway to get back to the story about Virgil and

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Speaker 1: the fly, So again, this story is almost certainly not true.

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Speaker 1: There are elements of it that fit within known history.

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Speaker 1: Apparently Virgil did actually have a house on the esqual

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Speaker 1: Line Hill uh the Second Triumph for it was actually

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Speaker 1: engaged in seizing a states so they could be given

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Speaker 1: to returning veterans from military campaigns. But that's just the

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Speaker 1: the accurate stuff about the setting. The main reason in

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Speaker 1: the story is probably untrue is simply that there is

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Speaker 1: no contemporary evidence or record of it. Uh. Nobody anywhere

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Speaker 1: near Virgil's lifetime mentions anything about it. It only shows

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Speaker 1: up in much much later sources. Rather, it seems to

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Speaker 1: be one of those legends that accumulates on a you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of gloamse onto a revered historical figure due to

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Speaker 1: a chain of associative thinking. So what's the chain, Well,

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Speaker 1: that brings us to a an absurd and absurdly interesting

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Speaker 1: Latin poem called the q Lex, which means I think

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Speaker 1: you can interpret it as like the gnat or the fly.

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Speaker 1: Q Lex is also a genus name for certain types

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Speaker 1: of mosquitoes, so I think it means like a flying insect.

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Speaker 1: And so this is a poem that was published sometime

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Speaker 1: after Virgil's death, and it was attributed to him as

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Speaker 1: part of his juvenile Yad. It was widely said, okay,

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Speaker 1: so this is something that Virgil actually wrote, but he

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Speaker 1: wrote it when it was young, and that's that's why

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Speaker 1: it's maybe not as good as his other poetry. Modern scholars,

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Speaker 1: I think mostly really doubt that Virgil actually wrote this.

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Speaker 1: It would technically be a poem in the pastoral genre.

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Speaker 1: So that's poetry about the supposedly blissful, uncomplicated life of

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Speaker 1: people in the countryside. It's usually about shepherds or herdsmen,

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Speaker 1: often a lot of references to flowers and naps and

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Speaker 1: clouds and cool waters, the idols of pan And it

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Speaker 1: made me think about how you know, So for hundreds

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Speaker 1: of years, the pastoral poem from the Classical period, even

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Speaker 1: into into the Renaissance was and well, actually i'd say

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Speaker 1: even into the Romantic poetry era. There there is this

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Speaker 1: tendency to fall back on this classic genre of stuff

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Speaker 1: about the fields and the simple life of shepherds and

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Speaker 1: all that, uh and and how great it is. And

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Speaker 1: I wonder if this is sort of realized in modern culture,

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Speaker 1: in our desire for like, uh, simple, aesthetically gentle content

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Speaker 1: like the Great British bake Off. Is that the pastoral

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Speaker 1: poetry of the modern era? Yeah, yeah, perhaps you know,

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Speaker 1: um just sort of like soothing and non offensive. Perhaps, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, just just you know, it's not even really escapism.

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Speaker 1: It's just I mean, I guess to a certain extent

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Speaker 1: it is escapism. But yeah, perhaps I can see that connection.

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Speaker 1: I don't know it connected in my brain. But so

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Speaker 1: there's a plot in this poem, the Coolex. It is

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Speaker 1: widely regarded as absolutely ridiculous, but here is how it goes.

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Speaker 1: A shepherd goes out in the morning to take his

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Speaker 1: flocks to pasture, and there's some standard pastoral poetry musing

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Speaker 1: on how the simple life of a shepherd living in

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Speaker 1: the fields is so much better than the fraud life

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Speaker 1: of a rich man, because it's better to throw your

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Speaker 1: body down in the tender grass and lay your head

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Speaker 1: among the flower buds than to be consumed with the

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Speaker 1: grief and the greed that curdles the hearts of the

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Speaker 1: rich and powerful. So the shepherd is living this nice,

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Speaker 1: ide dilick life. He takes his flock to a fountain

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Speaker 1: in the woods, and there he falls asleep, lying in

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Speaker 1: the shade. But while he's asleep, a giant, horrible snake

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Speaker 1: slithers up. It's coming to the fountain where it likes

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Speaker 1: to lie in the mud, and it decides it's going

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Speaker 1: to bite the shepherd in his sleep and kill him.

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Speaker 1: But just before the snake attacks, a gnat buzzes down

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Speaker 1: and stings the shepherd on the eye, and this wakes

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Speaker 1: him up, and the shepherd crushes the gnat, but it

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Speaker 1: also wakes him up just in time to see the

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Speaker 1: snake and to save himself, so he beats the snake

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Speaker 1: to death with a piece of wood, which I would say,

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Speaker 1: in reality, is almost never necessary. Even if a snake

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Speaker 1: is dangerous, you can run away from it right, But

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Speaker 1: this is a storybook snake, and you know how they do.

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Speaker 1: They do things like wrap around you and tie you

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Speaker 1: to a tree or swile you hole. So um, you know,

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Speaker 1: within the context of the story, maybe it's justified, right.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, he gets this. This piece of wood beats

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Speaker 1: the snake into a bloody pulp. And then later the

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Speaker 1: shepherd goes to sleep again and the ghost of the

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Speaker 1: nat appears. It comes to him in a dream, and

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Speaker 1: the gnat choose him out for not being grateful. He's like,

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Speaker 1: why do you crush me? I saved your life. And

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Speaker 1: the shepherd wakes up and he feels remorse for what

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Speaker 1: he's done, and he builds a tomb in honor of

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Speaker 1: the gnat, and then decorates the tomb with flowers and

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Speaker 1: fruit and so to read briefly from the tomb section

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Speaker 1: of the poem, it says for him at length, did

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Speaker 1: heedful care the toil begun completing, gathered up the piled material,

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Speaker 1: and with a plenteous mound of earth, a tomb arose

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Speaker 1: in circle shaped around it, placing stone of marble smooth,

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Speaker 1: he plants it, mindful of his constant care and growing

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Speaker 1: here throughout the brilliant ring a can't this is? And

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Speaker 1: bashful roses too, and every kind of violet. And then

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Speaker 1: there are a bunch of lines about flowers. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: skip towards the end of that flower section. Um the

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Speaker 1: admiranthe is here, and great switch, large do cluster ever

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Speaker 1: flowering piccres to Narcissus isn't absent there in whom his

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Speaker 1: beauty's radiance from cupids fire for limbs, his own begot

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Speaker 1: a hot desire, and all the flowers that blooming seasons.

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Speaker 1: No with these the mound is planted, or then on

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Speaker 1: the front is placed the inscription, which asserts the letters,

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Speaker 1: saying it with silent speech, Oh, tiny gnat, the keeper

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Speaker 1: of the flocks, don't pay to the deserving such a

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Speaker 1: thing the duty of a ceremonial tomb in payment for

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Speaker 1: the gift of life to him. All right, Well, there

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Speaker 1: you have it, a poem about honoring the the gnat

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Speaker 1: that saved him from the snake when he was sleeping

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Speaker 1: on the job. This is something I'm actually confused about.

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Speaker 1: Our shepherds supposed to just sleep while they're watching their flocks,

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Speaker 1: or they're not supposed to be watching. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: but you do see it is part of that pastoral

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Speaker 1: sort of image, you know, like we've all encountered some

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Speaker 1: version of that four which I'm guessing most of that

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Speaker 1: is just, Yeah, it's pining for a this um, this

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Speaker 1: presumed idyllic lifestyle in the country where it's like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you're just looking after sheep. It's just like a nap

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Speaker 1: all day. That's not just all it is, glossing over

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Speaker 1: all the other stuff that comes harding a shepherd. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, once again it seems that modern scholars do

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Speaker 1: not accept that Virgil actually wrote this poem. Virgil did

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Speaker 1: write pastoral poetry. For example, in his ecologues. There's this

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Speaker 1: great part of in the i think the tenth eclogue

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Speaker 1: where he concludes with a wonderful passage decided bedtime uh,

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Speaker 1: where he writes, come let us rise. The shade is

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Speaker 1: wont to be baneful to singers. Baneful is the shade

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Speaker 1: cast by the juniper crops, sickened two in the shade,

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Speaker 1: now homeward, having fed your phil eves, star is rising,

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Speaker 1: go my she goats go. Okay. I guess that's that's

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Speaker 1: pretty good. But but yeah, if you were just going

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Speaker 1: off of this passage. I don't know if you'd you'd

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Speaker 1: really buy Dante's hype for virgil Um. Well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: she part is nice, that is the good part, and

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Speaker 1: it is in translation. I think, you know, there's all

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Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. I mean, for every type of poetry

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Speaker 1: and translation, there's a lot of stuff that's lost. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: so the Coolex, there's a good chance it was written

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Speaker 1: by someone else and then published under Virgil's name, and

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Speaker 1: it may well have had some kind of other meaning,

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Speaker 1: like a veiled meaning as a political allegory, though I

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Speaker 1: didn't follow the threads on that. But despite the doubt

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Speaker 1: about the authorship, the poem seems to have given rise

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Speaker 1: to all kinds of bizarre fly legends associated with virgil Um.

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Speaker 1: So to read a segment from Pendel that I thought

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Speaker 1: this was amazing quote. One of the most popular Neapolitan

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Speaker 1: myths held that Virgil had created a bronze fly the

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Speaker 1: size of a frog and placed it on one of

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Speaker 1: the gates of Naples. The talisman remained there for eight years,

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Speaker 1: during which time no flies could enter the city. In

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Speaker 1: a similar vein, armies attacking Naples were said to have

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Speaker 1: been harassed by swarms of flies sent after them by

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Speaker 1: the poet. The fly would become Virgil's magical familiar over

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Speaker 1: the ensuing years, never far from any tale of his exploits,

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Speaker 1: and that was not all. Possibly due to this control

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Speaker 1: of pestilence, Virgil was said to have created baths that

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Speaker 1: cured all illnesses, and a butcher's block on which meat

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Speaker 1: stayed fresh for six weeks. No longer renowned as the

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Speaker 1: master of grammar and philosophy, Virgil's achievements were put down

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Speaker 1: to his mathematical knowledge. In only a few centuries, Virgil

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Speaker 1: had gone from being the preeminent poet of the Roman

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Speaker 1: Empire to a Neapolitan enchanter with the pensiont for magical insects.

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Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of fabulous stuff about medieval legends

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Speaker 1: about Virgil becoming more of a necromancer type figure, that

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Speaker 1: he's got all these strange magical powers, like that you

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Speaker 1: know that he commands the insects of the air and

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Speaker 1: cast them down upon his enemies or can save you

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Speaker 1: from them, and uh, and I love that that that

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Speaker 1: this was like, I don't know if there was anything

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Speaker 1: in his actual life to associate him with flies. It's

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Speaker 1: only this poem that he probably didn't even actually right

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Speaker 1: and isn't actually very good, that was attributed to him

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Speaker 1: later that gave rise to all these strange stories. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's something. Yeah, I don't I don't recall it, you know,

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Speaker 1: picking up on the the idea of the wizard Virgil.

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Speaker 1: But but now I'm fascinated by it. Well. I think

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Speaker 1: one thing is by the Middle Ages he had these

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Speaker 1: broadly understood wizard associations, but I think Dante was sort

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Speaker 1: of moving back against that and and saying like, no,

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Speaker 1: let's fit him more into the Christian cosmology and say

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Speaker 1: that he's more this beacon of reason and wisdom in

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Speaker 1: the pagan world. But we do see this wizardization taking

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Speaker 1: more hold with other figures like Roger Bacon comes to mind,

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Speaker 1: and we've talked about this on the show before. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I remember in one of our previous episodes we sort

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Speaker 1: of concluded that maybe one of the greatest contributions of

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Speaker 1: Roger Bacon as a as a you know, man of

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Speaker 1: great learning in the Middle Ages and the thirteenth century

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Speaker 1: was that he was very open to sources of knowledge

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Speaker 1: from all over the world. So a lot of what

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Speaker 1: he did was say, like apply things that he learned

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Speaker 1: from texts from the medieval Muslim world, like the texts

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Speaker 1: of Vanel Haytham and other things, or like uh, studying

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Speaker 1: objects brought to him from from countries afar. So he

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Speaker 1: was sort of a good collector of knowledge from many places.

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Speaker 1: But somehow gets this, I don't know, gets this label

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Speaker 1: affixed to him, like he's some kind of wonder worker,

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Speaker 1: which he wasn't really in life, right, I mean, he

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Speaker 1: was it seems like he was a very impressive individual,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, he's begome. He instantly becomes elevated to like

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Speaker 1: arch alchemist status in some of these tellings, you know,

401
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:55,439
Speaker 1: he takes on all the guys of some sort of

402
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Speaker 1: a mad scientist in a in a like a serial adventure.

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Speaker 1: The main reason I think I was originally inspired to

404
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Speaker 1: look into this topic and do this episode about insects

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Speaker 1: and funerals was when I read an interesting article on

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Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura that was also by George Pendel. The same

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Speaker 1: writer is that Cabinet magazine article about Virgil and the Fly,

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Speaker 1: and this article is on the broader topic of insects

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Speaker 1: and funerary rights. Yeah, this was a good, good article

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Speaker 1: by by Pendell the fly Master here um. He touches

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Speaker 1: on numerous associations between insects and death. Particularly, the author

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Speaker 1: points out quote necklaces of stone carved flies to ward

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Speaker 1: off maggots worn by the ancient Egyptian dead. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: idea of being here that the maggots were seen as

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Speaker 1: a threat to one's car or bo you know, the

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Speaker 1: like the vital one of the vital essences and in

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Speaker 1: the body, in the individual. And um. I found this interesting.

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Speaker 1: So the first thing I did was I looked up

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Speaker 1: to see of if Jeane Kritzky had written on this.

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Speaker 1: Jane Kritzky, of course, is a former guest on the show.

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Speaker 1: He wrote a book called The Tears of Ray about uh,

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Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian use of bees and honey and how

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Speaker 1: they treated bees and honey both um, in terms of

424
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:20,600
Speaker 1: just creating products as well as uh, you know, magical uses, etcetera.

425
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:23,360
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that episode and about Jeane Kritzky

426
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,440
Speaker 1: when I was recording a recent episode of the Artifact

427
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: I did, which was about ancient Egyptian head cones. Uh.

428
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:32,119
Speaker 1: These if you haven't listened to that artifact yet, I

429
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:33,359
Speaker 1: thought it was a lot of fun, so maybe you

430
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:35,399
Speaker 1: should check it out. But the short version is, there

431
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:38,440
Speaker 1: are these white cones depicted on top of people's heads

432
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:40,959
Speaker 1: and a lot of ancient Egyptian art, but nobody had

433
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 1: ever found any physical evidence that they existed in reality.

434
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:46,479
Speaker 1: So there's been this debate about what were these cones?

435
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: Did they ever actually exist in the world, or are

436
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 1: they some kind of artistic convention and uh the uh

437
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: and and in recent years there has been an excavation

438
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: that uncovered physical examples of these head cones for the

439
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: first time at a couple of graves in a Marna

440
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 1: in Egypt. But unlike some of the theories in which

441
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:08,320
Speaker 1: these cones were made of like perfumed animal fat, these

442
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 1: cones were made out of biological wax, which I knew

443
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 1: immediately when I read that, Oh, that's gotta be bees

444
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:15,920
Speaker 1: wax because of the role of bees wax in ancient

445
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:18,879
Speaker 1: Egyptian culture, and sure enough that that seems like what

446
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:22,720
Speaker 1: they almost definitely were made of. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, Well,

447
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 1: we've covered already. We've covered a few different Egyptian topics

448
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,800
Speaker 1: in the artifacts, so uh, so definitely checked with out.

449
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:31,160
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll do more, but but in this cause

450
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:34,280
Speaker 1: I turned to Jeane Kritsky's work, and particularly I looked

451
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: at a book that he wrote with an author by

452
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: the name of Ron Cherry titled Insect Mythology. And so

453
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: they get into this event. They point out that in

454
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:45,200
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt the fly, first of all, it was also

455
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: a symbol of valor, because what does a pesky fly do. Well,

456
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: it'll it'll move in, it'll bite you, try to bite you.

457
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:54,879
Speaker 1: You you drive it away by swatting your hand around.

458
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,959
Speaker 1: But then what does it do? It comes back. It's persistent,

459
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: and therefore it is a symbol of valor. Wow, I've

460
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: never thought of that before. But yeah, when the fly

461
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: comes in to sting at you, it's like a human

462
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: going up against a dragon or a giant. Yeah, And

463
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:11,639
Speaker 1: so we have this this one example in particular, or

464
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 1: a queen Ahotep gave her sons, three of her sons

465
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:21,800
Speaker 1: golden flies to honor their fights against an adversary. So

466
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:24,000
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting, and you can actually look

467
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 1: up examples of this because I believe uh the ideas.

468
00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:29,679
Speaker 1: These three flies were then buried with her, and then

469
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: we're part of the the treasures that were on earth

470
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 1: with her body. And yeah, they're these beautiful golden fly ornaments,

471
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 1: but they stand for valor. Now as for the funeral necklace, yes,

472
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 1: this seems accurate as well. So in the Egyptian climate,

473
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 1: um flies would take to the dead rather quickly, and

474
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:52,479
Speaker 1: freshly hatched flies would be seen leaving the body before

475
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: embalming could be completely finished. Um. These flies were seen

476
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: as again the individual's call or bob leaving the body.

477
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:05,960
Speaker 1: So the fly necklaces were away to essentially put flies

478
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: back on the body to return this leaked car to

479
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: the deceased. Oh wow yeah, yeah, so and and this

480
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:17,199
Speaker 1: is really interesting as well. The car or ba is

481
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: sometimes represented as a bird with a human head, but

482
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: you also see versions of it they consist of a

483
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:27,119
Speaker 1: fly with a human head. So the the authors here, um,

484
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: Chriskey and and Cherry, but they point out that uh,

485
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 1: you know, there was there is, at least at the

486
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:33,479
Speaker 1: time this was written, which I want to say it

487
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 1: was uh a couple of decades ago, um at the time,

488
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 1: and I imagine still to this day, there's the surviving

489
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 1: folk belief that certain varieties of flies with a greenish

490
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: or bluish metallic body were not to be killed as

491
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:51,919
Speaker 1: these contained or were likely to contain the spirit of

492
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,719
Speaker 1: someone who had died. So and then they say this

493
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: would just be one of many modern beliefs that are

494
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: seemingly tied to the traditions and beliefs from the age

495
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: of the Pharaohs. But the idea of a fly with

496
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: a human head certainly also makes me think of some

497
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: some twentieth century cinematic literature. Yeah, yeah, and it brings

498
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 1: to mind the movie The Fly, which ends with that

499
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: that scene, well where you help me seeing with the

500
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,639
Speaker 1: fly with the human head, which we we had to

501
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: stand corrected on. That is not Vincent Price whose heads

502
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: on that fly. It's a different actor. He plays like

503
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: his brother or something. Yeah. But but yeah, so it

504
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 1: brings to mind hum a modern monster movie. But it's

505
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:36,880
Speaker 1: also interesting because on a physical level this is correct.

506
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: There is something of the departed body anyway in the

507
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: substance of the emergent fly. There is a connection to

508
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:47,880
Speaker 1: be made. Yeah, the chemical energy from yes, exactly. So

509
00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: again the idea is is not so much to keep

510
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 1: flies away, but it's like to return what is leaked

511
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: out to the body through symbolic flies. Now, as for

512
00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: flies in general, Chrisky and Cherry point out that the

513
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: flies are often associated with death just throughout global myth cycles,

514
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: and they rolled through a number of examples in their book,

515
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 1: you know, like the Greek damon of decomposition uh urinomos

516
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: uh and this was depicted often as either a vulture

517
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:16,600
Speaker 1: or a fly, you know, a consumer of carry on.

518
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: Other fly demons can be found as well, such as

519
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: of course be Elzebub, at least in his demonic interpretations

520
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: later he was originally a Syrian god. You have the

521
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 1: the Yazads and Nassau of Zoroastrianism, and Nassau they describe

522
00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 1: as quote the demon us of dead matter, and flies

523
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: were also a symbol of torment for early European Christians.

524
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,239
Speaker 1: The god Loki was said to have taken on the

525
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: form of a fly in order to pass through a

526
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: key hole, and this transformation the transformation of one in

527
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: one's body into that of a fly. This has also

528
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 1: been associated with which is they write, in Hungarian traditions. However,

529
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 1: in all this they point out to outstanding exceptions to

530
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: the negative roles of mythological fly eyes. And they're pretty

531
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 1: interesting because these kind of take me back to what

532
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: you've shared from that poem that has been attributed to Virgil. Uh.

533
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: So the first example is big Biter. Big Biter is

534
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:16,360
Speaker 1: an overlord of fish in what I believe is currently

535
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: known as the Innu tribe of this is a Canadian

536
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 1: Um First Nations people. And this uh, this spirit would

537
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 1: have taken the form of a fly and chrisky and

538
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: uh and cherry right that he quote hovered over the

539
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 1: fisherman in order to see how his subjects were being treated. Occasionally,

540
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: an overlord would bite the fisherman to remind him that

541
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 1: the fish were in his custody and to warn against wastefulness.

542
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: So so I I like that the idea of I

543
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:47,720
Speaker 1: also it just kind of feels like it's kind of

544
00:30:48,520 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 1: illustrates the the you know, the universal experience of fishing.

545
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: You know, you're perhaps gonna, you know, gaze off into space.

546
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna be bit by insects uh and then

547
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 1: maybe have to confront the possibility of wastefulness. Um. But anyway,

548
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 1: another one is big Fly, and this one is in

549
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 1: the Navajo religion, and it is a mentor or helper

550
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 1: that mediates between humans and the gods. And so it'll

551
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: it'll frequently show up in stories and uh and appear

552
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:20,200
Speaker 1: to a hero and tell them how to proceed. And

553
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 1: so that's the example that reminds me specifically of what

554
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 1: we see in that poem attributed to Virgil. Yes, not

555
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: just as a helper who who intervenes to save his life,

556
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: but one who later appears to teach him a lesson. Yeah. Now,

557
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: one thing, of course, that that they drive home in

558
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: this book is that it's worth remembering that other insects

559
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: had entirely different roles in ancient Egyptian traditions. The scare

560
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 1: a beetle, for instance, symbolizes perpetual life and renewal. Uh

561
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: Kepri is in fact the dawn manifestation of of raw

562
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: or ray, the sun god, and uh derived this is

563
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,960
Speaker 1: derived from kept her, which meant to become or to

564
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: be transformed. And so the reason for this is twofold.

565
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: According to Geraldine Pinch in the book Egyptian Mythology, first

566
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 1: dung beetles rolling spheres of dung were compared to the

567
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: movement of the sun across the sky. Uh. You know,

568
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: something that would be carried by the gods in the

569
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 1: sky barge uh and Secondly, the sight of young beetles

570
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: emerging from buried dung balls. This raised ideas of self generation,

571
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:26,240
Speaker 1: and so these acts of transformation could have applied, would

572
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: have applied rather to more than just birth and death,

573
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: but also to the various rights of passage in one's life,

574
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: so not just being born, not just dying, but also

575
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: you know, growing up, changing who you are, this sort

576
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 1: of perpetual act of emerging and becoming. Oh, I like

577
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: this because uh, I think it's something I've seen from

578
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 1: Egyptologists in recent years, who I think sometimes emphasized that

579
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 1: older schools of Egyptology would would sometimes over emphasize the

580
00:32:55,920 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: the prevalence of thinking about death and the afterlife in

581
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 1: a scient Egyptian culture, and that this might just be

582
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: a result of the bias in what types of artifacts

583
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: are preserved for us to look at to get a

584
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 1: sense of their culture. And so so yeah, I like

585
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: the idea of like seeing how it has a lot

586
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 1: to do with birth and life itself as well. Yeah, yeah,

587
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: this is this is a thing that I actually just

588
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: touched on and one of the Artifact episodes having to

589
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: deal with the kiro To. I'm not sure if this

590
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 1: has come out yet by the time this episode publishes.

591
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: But at any rate, it has to do with an

592
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: element um an artifact that could certainly be interpreted is

593
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 1: something that is just about the dead, but upon closer examination,

594
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: is far more about the living and the experience of

595
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: living people. Yeah. Um, so, I think that's an important

596
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind. Even though it is fascinating

597
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: to know all these things about ancient Egyptian funerary rituals

598
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:50,239
Speaker 1: and their beliefs about death in the afterlife, you can

599
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: easily get this mistake and assumption that, like in ancient Egypt,

600
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: all anyone did was die and be entombed and think

601
00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 1: about death. And obviously that can't be true. I mean,

602
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: they were human beings, and they were they were subject

603
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: to all the other whims and obsessions of human life

604
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 1: now and in terms of their other relationships with with

605
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 1: insects and arachnids uh scorpions, for instance, arachnids were considered

606
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 1: it just enemies of humanity, but they were also associated

607
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: with the goddess circuit who who protected the body of

608
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:25,479
Speaker 1: the deceased, as well as the canopic jars that would

609
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: contain organs um. But to come back to that, Atlas

610
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:34,279
Speaker 1: Obscure article by George Pindall. UH. They write that there's

611
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 1: a particular civilization of northern Peru uh, the the Mochi

612
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 1: or the Mochika. Uh. This would have been a civilization

613
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: pre Columbian, of course, but also pre Incin that ran

614
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: from around one hundred to seven fifty c. And they

615
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: seemingly practiced some manner of sky burial in which the

616
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: flies that that that lighted upon the dead and then

617
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: emerged from the dead were interpreted as an essential part

618
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 1: of the spirit's journey. Um, maybe much like carrying birds

619
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: would be in some other types of sky burial type traditions. Yeah,

620
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: that that was where my mind instantly went to, like

621
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:13,400
Speaker 1: the Tibetan model of where a body is sort of

622
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: processed for carrying birds in a you know, an elevated

623
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 1: rocky area, where other modes of burial or not as

624
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: much of an option, And this would be a way

625
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 1: of like returning the body to the world, to the

626
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: element uh through scavengers, through carrying consumers. So I decided

627
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: to look into this a little bit more because this

628
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: was instantly fascinating as well. You know, I have this

629
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: example that turns things on its head a bit. Uh.

630
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:39,240
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand ten study I was reading published

631
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Archaeological Science by Hutchett and Greenberg,

632
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 1: and a lot of this theory depends on the post

633
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: mortem interval in remains how long the bodies of these

634
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 1: people's were exposed prior to burial and um and, And And

635
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:56,879
Speaker 1: that's one of the keys there. This is that it's

636
00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 1: not simply while I'll get into this here, but it's

637
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: not just like, okay, then they left the bodies out

638
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 1: now that this would have been part of a more protracted, uh,

639
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 1: funeral rite. I see. So the Mochi, they excelled in ceramics,

640
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 1: they practiced human sacrifice um and. And to be clear,

641
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient cultures did um not to sweep

642
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 1: human sacrifice under the rug or anything, but I think,

643
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 1: as we've touched on before, I think we it pays

644
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: to be fair in looking at particular cultures and regions

645
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 1: that are often highlighted for this sort of thing, that

646
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: we have to sort of keep them, uh. Keep in

647
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: mind that that plenty of other ancient cultures also did this,

648
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: did human sacrifice as well, and they were no exception,

649
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: but they apparently had a complex religious system with complex

650
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: mortuary practices supported by evidence of delayed burials, grave reopenings,

651
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: and secondary offerings of human remains. Their ceramic illustrations reveal

652
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: a lot about the role of flies and their beliefs

653
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 1: with their For instance, there these motifs of flies following

654
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 1: prisoners to exit cution in anticipation of of their corpses,

655
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: as well as oval shaped motifs that may represent flies

656
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:12,359
Speaker 1: emerging from the puparia. So, you know, it's it's it's

657
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:14,560
Speaker 1: really interesting to to think about this. This would have

658
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:18,680
Speaker 1: been a society where instead of sort of taking the

659
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 1: Egyptian route and saying, well, the flies are part of

660
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 1: the soul leaving the body, and will we have this

661
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: magical uh symbolism that will will will prevent that or

662
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: reverse the the the leakage. Uh. This is like a

663
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 1: celebration of it. It would seem that's the argument anyway,

664
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,919
Speaker 1: that they seem to have incorporated it into their understanding

665
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,720
Speaker 1: of what our bodies and and or perhaps our souls

666
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: do when we die. You know that it's that the

667
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: flies moving in and then out of our bodies is

668
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 1: just a part of what is supposed to happen it's

669
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 1: part of the sacrament. Though. It's very interesting to see

670
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:02,040
Speaker 1: cultures in which that sort of biological knowledge about what

671
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 1: happens to a human body that's left exposed to the

672
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:10,839
Speaker 1: surface elements. Uh, it gets incorporated into religious beliefs as

673
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: opposed to the idea that a body should be you know,

674
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:17,840
Speaker 1: immediately buried, hidden away to a different place where you

675
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: cannot see nature acting upon it as it decomposes. Yeah. Yeah,

676
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: I mean, especially modern culture, we're so far removed from

677
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: from physical death, you know that. Um. And I think

678
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: some would argue that we're too far removed from it,

679
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,879
Speaker 1: you know that it Uh, it makes it more problematic

680
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: in some cases when it does occur, and it of

681
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,280
Speaker 1: course will occur, and it does impact our lives. Um.

682
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:46,080
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's interesting to try and envision how

683
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:48,919
Speaker 1: how a culture like this would have handled death, because

684
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:51,160
Speaker 1: because again it would have been according to the way

685
00:38:51,160 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: they were discussing it in this article, it would have

686
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: been a situation where like, the body dies, if some

687
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: sort of ritual that is conducted, but the body is

688
00:38:58,160 --> 00:39:01,319
Speaker 1: left out and long enough the flies to begin to

689
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:04,439
Speaker 1: work upon it, and then other funeral customs come into

690
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: play and then it is eventually buried, and then then

691
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 1: it maybe a phase later on where the tomb is reopened.

692
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 1: So it's um. You know, there's a lot more in

693
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: and out compared to what we're more accustomed to with

694
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: our modern funeral rights. Yeah, absolutely, thank thank Okay, So

695
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: we've been talking about um legends of of human funerals

696
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: for insects. We've been talking about associations between insects, especially

697
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: flies and uh and human funerary rituals and different cultures.

698
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:41,839
Speaker 1: But one other thing that I thought would be good

699
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: to talk about would be how insects deal with their

700
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: own dead, the funerals within the insect world. And one

701
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: place I was looking was that there's a there's a

702
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: good short article on that GEO from seventeen by Ali

703
00:39:55,040 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 1: Wilkinson that collects some really interesting examples of scientific study

704
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: and observations about how different types of social insects in

705
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: particular treat their own dead within and around their nest.

706
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 1: And I think if you're looking for the really interesting practices,

707
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 1: I think it would be these are especially going to

708
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: be among social insects. So the article is called queen

709
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: Ants and other Insects bury their dead. Here's why uh,

710
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,080
Speaker 1: And so just to look at a couple of examples

711
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:23,879
Speaker 1: sited here and maybe we can we can come back

712
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:26,399
Speaker 1: and talk more about the general theory on on why

713
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: some of these things happen UH. For example, among ants,

714
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,439
Speaker 1: it is commonly observed that in mature ant colonies there's

715
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 1: a very orderly process for removing dead ants from the nest.

716
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,880
Speaker 1: Worker ants will locate dead individuals from the colony and

717
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:45,400
Speaker 1: then systematically carry their bodies away, either to a place

718
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: away from the nest, like a trash heap that's removed

719
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: from the main nest activity, or to a special chamber

720
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:55,239
Speaker 1: within the nest. And Wilkinson also points out a cool

721
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: study from the journal b MC Evolutionary Biology from ten

722
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:03,040
Speaker 1: By for Pull and Sylvia Kramer, reporting that under some

723
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:08,320
Speaker 1: conditions in some ants, even queens will engage in undertaker duties.

724
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 1: We can come back to why that is a bit

725
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 1: more later on, but just just to explore what happens

726
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 1: in the example of the black Garden aunt. Sometimes in

727
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: a young quality colony where there aren't many workers yet,

728
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:24,760
Speaker 1: if one of the early queens in the colony dies,

729
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 1: the surviving queen will go to the dead queen's body

730
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: bite it up into a bunch of pieces, and then

731
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:36,279
Speaker 1: bury those pieces herself, which kind of goes against the

732
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 1: idea of you know, the the queen aunt or the

733
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 1: queen bee, you know, the the queen in a social

734
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:45,720
Speaker 1: insects species just being like sitting around and and doing

735
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 1: nothing and letting the workers do all the work and

736
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:53,000
Speaker 1: basically only existing to fulfill reproductive duties and never having

737
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: never having any toil to their of their own. Yeah, yeah,

738
00:41:57,200 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: that is it does. Yeah, you did not think about that.

739
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: So there, so you you either go overboard and associate

740
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: all sorts of like human qualities with the with the

741
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 1: ant ruler, or you do just think of them fulfilling

742
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:13,560
Speaker 1: this one key job within the colony. Though to be clear,

743
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 1: I think biologically that is the most important job of theirs,

744
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: and most of the work of the colony is relegated

745
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 1: to these non reproducing workers. Yeah, but it's like, yeah,

746
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 1: it's just just because you're reproducing all the time, doesn't

747
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: mean you can't clean up a little bit, right, right.

748
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: So another example b colonies and bees, there appears to

749
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:35,279
Speaker 1: be a very well organized behavior system for quickly ejecting

750
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: dead bodies from the nest. Looks like they usually just

751
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 1: get dropped on the ground outside the nest. And in

752
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:44,280
Speaker 1: honey bees, this disposal process tends to happen very fast.

753
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,760
Speaker 1: It's carried out by a special class of middle aged

754
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,840
Speaker 1: worker bees representing about one to two of the population

755
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: of the nest. And Wilkinson points to a nineteen eighty

756
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: three study by P. Kirk Vischer in the journal Animal

757
00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: Behavior that found really acute time sensitivity in how the

758
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: bees prioritize body disposal. So, for example, corpses that were

759
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 1: one hour old were removed faster than bees that had

760
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: died just moments before. And I think this probably relies

761
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: on some kind of chemical signal, you know, uh, it's

762
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: something you can smell coming off of the dead bee.

763
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 1: Because Fisher notes also the dead bees that were coded

764
00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: in paraffin, which would probably interfere with the penetration of

765
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:31,359
Speaker 1: smells and stuff, are removed much more slowly. And then

766
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: one last thing in termites, Wilkinson also writes about some

767
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 1: interesting behavior in termites. Whereas bees and ants tend to

768
00:43:38,440 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: remove the dead bodies from the nest or deposit them

769
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,919
Speaker 1: in a special trash chamber, termites often bury they're dead

770
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 1: within the nest. But I guess that gets us to

771
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,359
Speaker 1: the question of why, like, why would insects have these organized,

772
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: efficient funerary practices for the disposal of the dead within

773
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: their colonies. And I think there's a pretty clear answer

774
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:01,719
Speaker 1: to it, at least of pretty clear primary answer, and

775
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: that is a disease control. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Um. I

776
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: was reading reading a very concise article about this by

777
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,720
Speaker 1: uh the author's son and Zoo. This was a Corpse

778
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,560
Speaker 1: Management and Social Insects from in the International Journal of

779
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 1: Biological Sciences, and they summed it up as follows. Undertaking

780
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:24,719
Speaker 1: behavior is an essential adaptation to social life that is

781
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: critical for colony hygiene in enclosed nests. Social insects dispose

782
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: of dead individuals in various fashions to prevent further contact

783
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: between corpses and living members in a colony. And I

784
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:38,600
Speaker 1: think that that kind of puts a nice little type

785
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:42,959
Speaker 1: bow on it right there. That's kind of the concise answer, um.

786
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 1: But of course it gets a lot more complicated than

787
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: than that, and certainly when you get into the various

788
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 1: specific examples. Um. Again, i think it's important to note, uh,

789
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:54,960
Speaker 1: to to note all this because one of one of

790
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 1: the major realities of modern funeral practices is that we

791
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:01,120
Speaker 1: often have an almost extreme separation from physical death. Again,

792
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: someone argue it's even detrimental set separate separation from physical death,

793
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:08,120
Speaker 1: but this is in fact one of the key factors

794
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,320
Speaker 1: in having funeral rights and practices to limit the amount

795
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 1: of contact between the living and the dead, not just

796
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:16,520
Speaker 1: because the dead can be unsightly and troubling for the

797
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: living to behold, not only to prop up some notion

798
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 1: of continuation of the individual after death, but also because

799
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 1: of the dead are unhygienic and can serve as disease vectors. Now,

800
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:31,400
Speaker 1: with solitary animals, that's one thing, right, avoidance is usually

801
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: the best approach if you encounter one of your own dead,

802
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: But social animals are just going to regularly encounter their

803
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: own dead. They are. There are essentially three different ways

804
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: of dealing with your own dead when you encounter them.

805
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:48,760
Speaker 1: There's necrophagi eating the dead, there's corpse removal, and there's

806
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: burial and and necrophagi. As we've discussed in the show before,

807
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:55,279
Speaker 1: it's pretty widespread in various organisms, uh and is also

808
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: found in human traditions. It's it's one solution, though not

809
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:02,759
Speaker 1: though it's fortunately without its own complications. But his son

810
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:05,880
Speaker 1: Enzo will point out while sanitary issues related to corpses

811
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: are widespread, they are particularly sharp and dense populations for

812
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: social organisms, and of course that that category certainly includes

813
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:18,880
Speaker 1: human beings, but it also includes use social insects like bees, ants,

814
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 1: and termites, and so we see complex responses at the

815
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:26,279
Speaker 1: individual and colony level to deal with the dead and

816
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 1: to engage in what humans would call undertaking. So they

817
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,840
Speaker 1: point out that for certain social spiders and social aphids,

818
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,719
Speaker 1: corpse removal is just an indistinguishable part of clearing out

819
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: a nest site. It's quote indistinguishable from dealing with inanimate

820
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: nest waste. So so that's one way of approaching it.

821
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: It's just like if you would get like a twig

822
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:49,839
Speaker 1: or something in your nest area and you'd you'd clean

823
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:53,200
Speaker 1: that out eventually, the same thing happens to the dead afid. Right.

824
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: It would be kind of like if you were, um,

825
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:57,959
Speaker 1: you know, if you you had a human house and

826
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:00,840
Speaker 1: you were to remove a dead body from your house

827
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:06,279
Speaker 1: with about as much precaution and and ceremony as you

828
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: would take out the trash, where you're like, oh well,

829
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 1: they're dead, so I'll take them out and put them

830
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,040
Speaker 1: in the trash can. That's kind of what some of

831
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,480
Speaker 1: these social spiders and social etheids are doing. But they

832
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: point out that ants, bees, wasps, termites, we see much

833
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: more complex modes of behavior in which the treatment of

834
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: the dead is distinct from the treatment of other waste products.

835
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 1: And these methods kind of they kind of pick from

836
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:32,399
Speaker 1: the eat removed Barry toolbox of possibilities, and I think

837
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: we see that in some of these specific UH answers

838
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:38,360
Speaker 1: that you already looked at, you know, the idea of say,

839
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: cutting up the body of the dead and then burying

840
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:44,440
Speaker 1: those pieces of just simply removing the dead and just

841
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 1: throwing them out of the colony, versus removing them and

842
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: burying them or in the case of the term ies,

843
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 1: just burying them within the nest. The one of the

844
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:55,839
Speaker 1: really interesting questions I guess here is um among these

845
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:58,879
Speaker 1: used social insects, how do they know what to do?

846
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: You know, like, how how do how do they know

847
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 1: how to guide and control this behavior? What's the what's

848
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 1: the nervous system flow chart for an aunt or a

849
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:11,359
Speaker 1: b to participate in an undertaking? Yeah, this is where

850
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 1: it gets interesting. You get into a lot of really

851
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: deep research over the years because, um, you know, what

852
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: what is the trigger that causes them to remove the dead.

853
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's a term for this for

854
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: the removal of the dead, and it is um uh necrophoresis,

855
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: and this is from the Greek just basically to remove

856
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: the dead. But it was coined by none other than EO. Wilson, um,

857
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: you know, the the master ant researcher who who Yeah,

858
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: this is one of his research projects for a while

859
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: was like looking at how individual ants within a colony

860
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: pick up on death and then respond accordingly. So you know,

861
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:53,040
Speaker 1: obviously this is the first step. You have to know

862
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: what's dead. Uh is this a live ant or is

863
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,279
Speaker 1: this a dead aunt? Is it getting better? Uh? Just

864
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: a flesh woe whatever? Uh? You know you have to

865
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 1: be able to react accordingly. Uh. You know, it's vital

866
00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: to colony health. And it's based on chemical signals apparently

867
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 1: um as as much of the activity within the ant world.

868
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:14,240
Speaker 1: And you can you can broadly think of the behavior

869
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:19,319
Speaker 1: as entailing death recognition and then behavioral responses and then

870
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:23,279
Speaker 1: task allocation for dealing with the dead. So Wilson and

871
00:49:23,280 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 1: his fellow researchers identified what they called fatty acid death

872
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: cues as being important in here. Those subsequent research seems

873
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:33,800
Speaker 1: to suggest that those are not the only signals involved,

874
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:37,320
Speaker 1: because sometimes the response time seems too short, like they're

875
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 1: the uh the ants and question are reacting before the

876
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 1: fatty acid death cues would generate. Uh. Get it all

877
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:48,480
Speaker 1: gets very you know, complicated in ant world chemical But

878
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:54,280
Speaker 1: basically they seem to lean more into perhaps a chemical

879
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 1: vital sign detection by the ants. So it's it's not

880
00:49:57,400 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 1: just picking up maybe on one chemical that's saying I'm

881
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:03,879
Speaker 1: but it's more of like a a chemical vital sign

882
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 1: array that an ant is able to pick up on

883
00:50:06,600 --> 00:50:09,840
Speaker 1: and read and the the In this uh, this particular

884
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 1: son and our article, they also write that the term

885
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:17,800
Speaker 1: uh necromone is also used. This is like pheromone, except

886
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,240
Speaker 1: related to death, and this has been used to describe

887
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: sort of the sort of the realm of death recognition chemicals. Uh.

888
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:27,440
Speaker 1: I love that that the necromone. It sounds like something

889
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: that would be made up for a riddic film, you know, yes,

890
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: but also fits well within the the ant world. You

891
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,319
Speaker 1: know that they would again the chemical language of them.

892
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:39,839
Speaker 1: I love this idea of these you know, these these

893
00:50:39,840 --> 00:50:42,359
Speaker 1: creatures that we often you know, we think about them

894
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:44,680
Speaker 1: as being very simple, and they are, you know, you know,

895
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 1: in a way like simple but but complex parts of

896
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 1: this greater whole. And there's this whole language that they're

897
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: engaged in, this chemical language that it's kind of a

898
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: stretch for us to truly imagine it, you know, they

899
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,080
Speaker 1: do the imagine the being able to read the chemical

900
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: vital science of other members of our society. That is

901
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 1: really interesting and weirdly, like, it gets even deeper because

902
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: there are some of these behaviors for the use social

903
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 1: insects removing the dead from their nests that incorporate prioritization

904
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:21,400
Speaker 1: of the task based on how much of a disease

905
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: risk the dead body would actually entail. So that that

906
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:28,799
Speaker 1: that raises all these other questions, like how can they

907
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:31,879
Speaker 1: tell what kind of disease risk? This is? Like that

908
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: There's a section in that Wilkinson article that talks about

909
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:41,319
Speaker 1: study in the journal Scientific Reports about about termites that

910
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: found that the termites would react differently to a dead

911
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:47,719
Speaker 1: body within their nest depending on whether it was a

912
00:51:47,719 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: member of their own species or from a very closely

913
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:56,239
Speaker 1: related species. Just to read from Wilkinson quote, regardless of

914
00:51:56,239 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: whether a corpse of the same species came from their

915
00:51:59,640 --> 00:52:02,839
Speaker 1: own colony or another colony, it was pulled back into

916
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: the holding chamber for nutrient recycling and hygienic purposes. But

917
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 1: if the corpse was that of a dark southeastern subterranean

918
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: termite or reticular Termy's virginicus, it was entombed by workers

919
00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 1: on site with a large group of soldiers standing guard.

920
00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:22,920
Speaker 1: Ten times as many termites were involved with the burial

921
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: of this closely related species then the same species, but

922
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:31,360
Speaker 1: the extra time, energy, and labor were warranted. Researchers found

923
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: in the face of external pathogens. So that so there

924
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,480
Speaker 1: there seems to be some kind of like evolutionary mechanism

925
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 1: controlling the behavior here that recognizes certain types of dead

926
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: termites within the nest as an elevated disease risk because

927
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:51,279
Speaker 1: maybe they're bringing in a pathogen that is new to

928
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 1: the nest and and could decimate it if it's not

929
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: disposed of, you know, immediately and totally, even though that

930
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:00,759
Speaker 1: might be a very energy intensive process for the colony. Yeah, yeah,

931
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 1: it's it's it's amazing how these you know, each each

932
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: colony is like this entire immune system, and that that

933
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 1: brings me back to, uh, that other study I was

934
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:14,280
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, the one in BMC Evolutionary Biology about

935
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:17,360
Speaker 1: the Black Garden aunt and how the queens will sometimes

936
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 1: participate in undertaking behaviors if the colony is young and

937
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:23,879
Speaker 1: there are not enough workers to help out with it.

938
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:26,759
Speaker 1: And this is a situation where there can be multiple

939
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:29,960
Speaker 1: co founding queens and a colony. Actually, just to read

940
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:33,320
Speaker 1: from from the abstract of the study, quote, social insects

941
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: formed densely crowded societies and environments with high pathogen loads,

942
00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:41,800
Speaker 1: but have evolved collective defenses that mitigate the impact of disease. However,

943
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: colony founding queens lack this protection and suffer high rates

944
00:53:46,560 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 1: of mortality. The impact of pathogens may be exacerbated in

945
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: species where queens found colonies together, as healthy individuals may

946
00:53:55,560 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: contract pathogens from infectious co founders. Therefore, we tested whether

947
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:06,480
Speaker 1: aunt queens avoid founding colonies with pathogen exposed con specifics

948
00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: and how they might limit disease transmission from infected individuals.

949
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: And what this found is when there were these co founders,

950
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: these co founding queens in a colony. If one of

951
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:20,240
Speaker 1: the original queens died, the surviving queen again would would

952
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 1: do this biting process where they would sort of chomp

953
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:27,120
Speaker 1: up the other queen into pieces and then uh bury

954
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 1: and remove the corpse. And the authors here right quote

955
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:34,880
Speaker 1: these undertaking behaviors were performed prophylactically, i e. Targeted equally

956
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 1: towards non infected and infected corpses, as well as carried

957
00:54:38,680 --> 00:54:43,719
Speaker 1: out before infected corpses became infectious. Biting and burial reduced

958
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:46,960
Speaker 1: the risk of queens contracting and dying from disease from

959
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: an infectious corpse of a dead co foundress. So they

960
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 1: did actually find this had a survival benefit to the

961
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:56,480
Speaker 1: queen that's doing this work, because better to be safe

962
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:59,640
Speaker 1: than sorry and get that corpse buried just in case

963
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,759
Speaker 1: it could become infectious. Well, this has been interesting, I

964
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:06,520
Speaker 1: think by looking at insects in their relationship to death,

965
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,920
Speaker 1: we've kind of gotten to explore both ends of the spectrum,

966
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:13,840
Speaker 1: like the stripped down version of what funeral rights are,

967
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:17,160
Speaker 1: like what does it mean to bury the they departed

968
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:19,360
Speaker 1: and why do we do it on a very basic level,

969
00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 1: But then also seeing how some of these these insects

970
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:27,800
Speaker 1: end up being brought into far more elaborate understandings of

971
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: human death as well. Now, obviously we we could and

972
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: probably should come back in the future and talk more

973
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: about funeral traditions. We talked about funeral traditions on the

974
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:39,560
Speaker 1: show before. Um, but but yeah, we could come back

975
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:41,799
Speaker 1: and discuss sort of like the the early days, like

976
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:44,880
Speaker 1: how what are some of the earliest examples of of

977
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:48,759
Speaker 1: burial among humans and pre humans and what does it mean?

978
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:51,000
Speaker 1: Like what and what aspects of it do we still

979
00:55:51,000 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 1: see in our practices today. Yeah, those types of things

980
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 1: are often interpreted as the earliest signs we have of

981
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 1: the development of religion and human But you know, that's

982
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: a really interesting area with a lot of questions open. Yeah.

983
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,200
Speaker 1: On the the ant front, obviously, we've we've done plenty

984
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:11,320
Speaker 1: of other AUNT episodes that I refer folks back to,

985
00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:14,680
Speaker 1: including our our three parter on Ant Warfare that we

986
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:17,880
Speaker 1: did earlier this year. But I also want to mention

987
00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:21,600
Speaker 1: a really great YouTube channel. Uh this was one called

988
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 1: ants Canada. Are you familiar with this one, Joe, I

989
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:26,680
Speaker 1: don't think so. I was. I was not familiar with

990
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:30,080
Speaker 1: until a friend recommended as something to to show UM

991
00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:33,799
Speaker 1: kids and it's I mean it's also really interesting for

992
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: adults as well. But uh, this uh individual UM has

993
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:44,560
Speaker 1: this entire channel devoted to their various uh ant farms

994
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: and also habitats for other creatures. But ants are the

995
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:50,919
Speaker 1: like the key focus, and it's it's really well done.

996
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:54,160
Speaker 1: Lots of great photography and video work. Uh. Some of

997
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 1: the very topics we've discussed here pop up in the show,

998
00:56:57,239 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 1: as as the chronicle, uh, the INDs and ounce of

999
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:02,839
Speaker 1: the various ant colonies and how they deal with their dad,

1000
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:05,240
Speaker 1: how they deal with invaders and stuff of that nature.

1001
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:07,719
Speaker 1: So my family has really been enjoying it. So if

1002
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:10,840
Speaker 1: you have any AUNT fans out there, I highly recommend it.

1003
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:13,640
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. Oh I just looked this channel up.

1004
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 1: I see one title on a popular video here seems

1005
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:20,040
Speaker 1: to take a page from EO. Wilson says fire ants

1006
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: versus my hand. Yeah, yeah, I think IO Wilson would approve.

1007
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:29,000
Speaker 1: Here's another one cockroach giving birth while being devoured by

1008
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:31,800
Speaker 1: fire ants. Well, yeah, I'll have to give this a shot. Yeah.

1009
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:34,800
Speaker 1: I think some of these popular ones maybe look there,

1010
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 1: they make the channel look a little grizzlier. Than actually is.

1011
00:57:39,920 --> 00:57:42,040
Speaker 1: But but I'm I mean, I'm sure I don't know

1012
00:57:42,040 --> 00:57:44,560
Speaker 1: if I've watched any of these uh these top ones yet.

1013
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: I kind of come in and out of the room

1014
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: home it's on sometimes, but I inevitably end up pausing

1015
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:51,440
Speaker 1: to see what's going on. There'll be some big mystery

1016
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: with the colony, and uh, you know, they explore and

1017
00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: they watch and they figure it out. Of course, whatever

1018
00:57:57,000 --> 00:57:59,480
Speaker 1: is the grossest and most gruesome content on the channel

1019
00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 1: is going to be the most feud Well, yeah, that's

1020
00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:03,520
Speaker 1: that's that's what will be rewarded. But you know, the

1021
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 1: ants don't care. They don't care about clicks and subscribers.

1022
00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna go and close it out there.

1023
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:11,640
Speaker 1: If you would like to listen to other episodes of

1024
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:13,520
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, you should check out the

1025
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast channel. You can find

1026
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:19,840
Speaker 1: that wherever you get your podcasts. Uh Core episodes on

1027
00:58:19,880 --> 00:58:24,600
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday's Weird House Cinema on Fridays. And we've

1028
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:27,120
Speaker 1: got artifact and listener mail in the mix as well.

1029
00:58:27,680 --> 00:58:29,320
Speaker 1: Uh and wherever you listen to the show, we just

1030
00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:32,520
Speaker 1: asked the rate, review and subscribe huge Thanks as always

1031
00:58:32,680 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

1032
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

1033
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:40,680
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

1034
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:42,800
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hi, you can

1035
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:45,600
Speaker 1: email us at contact that Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1036
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 1: dot com Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's production of

1037
00:58:55,640 --> 00:58:58,280
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1038
00:58:58,480 --> 00:59:01,160
Speaker 1: This is at the iHeart Radio app, podcasts or wherever

1039
00:59:01,200 --> 00:59:14,720
Speaker 1: you're listening to your favorite shows.