Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. There's a guest producer, Dylan Again.
Speaker 1: You know, Dylan got a job here because he heard
Speaker 1: of How Stuff Works, because he was a Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know fan. This might be the most thrilling moment
Speaker 1: of Dylan's life, the most thrilling two hours. Either that
Speaker 1: or the most illusion shattering two hours. I think that
Speaker 1: since Dylan started working here, it's just been a slow
Speaker 1: anti climax, down, down, down, leading to this moment of
Speaker 1: rock bottom. We're like that guy, rag him out. Oh
Speaker 1: how's it going. It's going terrifically. How are you Dylan good?
Speaker 1: He said, I see, he knows he's a fan. He
Speaker 1: didn't even try to speak. Noel will be like, well
Speaker 1: let me tell you, yeah, let me see if I
Speaker 1: can find a microphone. It just shows one of us
Speaker 1: out of the way, knows what he's doing. Uh. You
Speaker 1: know what. I couldn't help. But when I was researching this,
Speaker 1: probably because we just did this is think about Genghis
Speaker 1: Khan and if you go on the internet and type
Speaker 1: in Attil of the Hun or Genghis Khan. There are
Speaker 1: so many nerdy websites where people pitt uh fictional battles
Speaker 1: against historic leaders really yeah, like who would have won
Speaker 1: in a cage match until of the Hunter Genghis Khan? Right?
Speaker 1: But there's like actual thought put behind it? Or is
Speaker 1: it just like no genghas cool? There's a range from
Speaker 1: that to like the people who really put too much
Speaker 1: effort into it and um, but those are interesting to read,
Speaker 1: you know, like you've got to remember guys like Genghis
Speaker 1: Khan had a thousand years of weaponry development to his advantage.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to personal fighting tactics as opposed
Speaker 1: to leadership, those are two different things to talk about.
Speaker 1: And then their voice changes until they've become Toby from
Speaker 1: American Splendor. Genghis Khan was what a thousand years after
Speaker 1: at Till of the Hunt? Is that correct? Well? Because
Speaker 1: I thought the opposite. I thought he was BC And again,
Speaker 1: we just did a show on him, and I already
Speaker 1: forgot since here leven sixty two for Chingas and four
Speaker 1: oh six for a Till of the Hunt. That is fascinating,
Speaker 1: So okay, yeah, I mean ching has had a lot
Speaker 1: of advancements in that thousand years for sure. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I couldn't help but compare these guys.
Speaker 1: So I might just sort of pepper that in here
Speaker 1: and there and and comparing these because our own article
Speaker 1: starts out by mentioning Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and
Speaker 1: Chingis khan uh as some of the most brutal conquerors
Speaker 1: and antiquity. I really appreciate you moving to Chingas might
Speaker 1: as well. So until of the Hun, he was around
Speaker 1: between he was in the fifth century CE, right, four
Speaker 1: oh six. You know, they don't know exactly about his
Speaker 1: birth dates, but they're they're putting it around four or six. No,
Speaker 1: we should do this, Um, we should do this chronologically.
Speaker 1: But I think we should say out of the gate
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of um debate in the
Speaker 1: in the historical field of just how much we could
Speaker 1: say about um Attil of the Hun's early life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean over that period between him and Chingas, like,
Speaker 1: there was a lot more record keeping. Two. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a great point. We don't even know what
Speaker 1: language the Huns spoke necessarily, No, we debate on that.
Speaker 1: No idea um. Apparently, one of the things you can
Speaker 1: kind of glean what language people spoke is UM from
Speaker 1: their names, and a lot of the names associated with Attila,
Speaker 1: the Hunt and the Huns in general are Germanic, so
Speaker 1: they say, well, they spoke Germanic. The other people say
Speaker 1: well no. By the time until of the Hun came
Speaker 1: around in the fifth century UM, the Germanic tongue had
Speaker 1: spread far and wide, so that's probably not what their
Speaker 1: native tongue originally was. It's just lost the time. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons it was lost the time is because
Speaker 1: these were, in the parliance of the day, total barbarians.
Speaker 1: They were nomadic horse people who lacked virtually any anything
Speaker 1: resembling a government, um, anything like an economy, anything like
Speaker 1: the trappings of what you would call a civilization. They
Speaker 1: were by definition barbarians, right, But all that aside, it's
Speaker 1: not to say that that that civilization is just everything's perfect.
Speaker 1: Definitely has its own flaws, and barbarianism has its own amazements, right.
Speaker 1: But the thing that made the Huns definitive barbarians is
Speaker 1: because they would come through sack your town, burn it down,
Speaker 1: kill you and your family, and then just move on.
Speaker 1: They would take your gold. They had no desire to
Speaker 1: subjugate you, to to rule you, to extract taxes, to
Speaker 1: maybe make you grow crops for them. Nothing. It was
Speaker 1: basically pillaging, raping, and murdering is what the Huns were
Speaker 1: known for, because that's what they did. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think the main difference that I found, well, plenty of differences,
Speaker 1: but the main one between he and Khan was sort of,
Speaker 1: like you said, like Genghis, Khan wanted to rule the
Speaker 1: world and spread his empire as as ruler of people's
Speaker 1: and Attila the Hun, by all accounts, wanted to collect
Speaker 1: gold right um, but was also for all his ferocity.
Speaker 1: There are also scholars and historians who believe that uh
Speaker 1: Man I might get these names mixed up. Now that
Speaker 1: I'm all in my head about it, I'm I've been
Speaker 1: just hanging on by my fingernail. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of scholars and historians who believe that until of the
Speaker 1: hun Is was also uh sort of a fair person
Speaker 1: and generally a man of his word, and maybe rustled
Speaker 1: up a lot of these stories to drive himself to
Speaker 1: drive fear into his enemies, and was not as brutal
Speaker 1: as maybe history believes in some cases. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: I so. You remember when we did the chinaskon episode, like,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of um, a lot of examples
Speaker 1: and things you could point to and be like they
Speaker 1: improved the world in these ways. There you can count
Speaker 1: the ones about until of the hun like basically on
Speaker 1: your fingers, and when when it was an example of
Speaker 1: him being like uncharacteristically magnanimous by sparing somebody's life, it
Speaker 1: was totally out of character for him, and like, um.
Speaker 1: One of the things about Chengiz Khan as well is
Speaker 1: that if you surrendered without a fight, if you just said,
Speaker 1: we surrender, take our town, you would live. And you
Speaker 1: would live now under the rule of the Mongols the
Speaker 1: till of the Hun he and the Huns would kill you,
Speaker 1: kill your whole town. Offering no resistance whatsoever, did not
Speaker 1: guarantee in any way, shape or form survival when you
Speaker 1: encountered the Hunts. They terrified people for hundreds of years
Speaker 1: in Europe. But at the same time, if you paid
Speaker 1: your your uh what what do you call it, like
Speaker 1: the gangster movies tribute? Yeah, but like you know when
Speaker 1: you pay someone to protect your money, Yeah, sort of
Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, protection from you. Basically, Uh, generally, and
Speaker 1: again there are examples even in this article of ours
Speaker 1: where he he went back on that. But generally if
Speaker 1: you paid that gold, he would also leave you alone. Um,
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to lose. Like I said, he
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to just conquer the world. So he seemed
Speaker 1: like he would only undertake a mission or a or
Speaker 1: a war if he if there was something in it
Speaker 1: for him other than just like expanding his kingdom, which
Speaker 1: on a modern map eventually was it say here large
Speaker 1: portions of eastern and western Roman Empires, from Germany in
Speaker 1: the west, to Romania in the south, to the Netherlands
Speaker 1: and the north, and Russia and Kazakhstan in the east.
Speaker 1: And uh, that was generally a till of the Huns
Speaker 1: area over about a ten year span, well nine I
Speaker 1: think nine years, well nineteen years period. But in that
Speaker 1: ten year span is when he really liked did a
Speaker 1: lot of his damage, which is that's impressive, and put
Speaker 1: a big dent in the Roman Empire. That was another
Speaker 1: thing too, Like you can you can say what you
Speaker 1: want about the guy, and I think it's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out there's all of this is to say, like nobody
Speaker 1: is bad. And when you get this far are away,
Speaker 1: almost two thousand years away, years away from somebody like,
Speaker 1: their character just becomes cartoonish. So there is not a
Speaker 1: lot we can say, especially about the nuances of this
Speaker 1: guy's character, but you can point to what he did
Speaker 1: and say, this man change the course of history, and
Speaker 1: he definitely did, especially by basically hastening the fall of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire. Right, this is pretty impressive stuff. I
Speaker 1: feel like we should almost stick a break. That was
Speaker 1: a nice preamble. All right, we'll get back to his
Speaker 1: birth and start over right after this. Alright, So four
Speaker 1: oh sixes when they think Attila the Hunt was born
Speaker 1: in uh Pannonia, which what you would now say is Hungary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because by this time the Hunts, well they first appear
Speaker 1: in the Western record, and I think ce Tacitus, the
Speaker 1: historian Roman historian says, oh, yeah, by the way, there's
Speaker 1: these people out there called the Hunts. There are barbarian
Speaker 1: tribe who cares watch you're back. Well, he didn't even
Speaker 1: say that. He just basically said there's a barbarian tribe
Speaker 1: out there. But by the time Attila was was born,
Speaker 1: the Hunts had made a name for themselves is being fierce,
Speaker 1: fearsome warriors that just basically could overtake anybody, and they had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not born. His story is very different from
Speaker 1: Chingis Khans, and that he was born already into I
Speaker 1: guess what you would consider royalty, uh and and privilege.
Speaker 1: And that they think the Huns came from Kazakhstan, I
Speaker 1: think you said, or their their empire stretched all the
Speaker 1: way kash Central Asia. They think that's where they probably originated.
Speaker 1: But by the time Untila was born, Um, he was
Speaker 1: born on the Danube in Hungary, which is like became
Speaker 1: the capital of the area they settled. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: mentioned that the Huns were known as fierce warriors. Um,
Speaker 1: much like Khan's army. They really made their hay on horses.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if that counts as a pun,
Speaker 1: It doesn't, all right, It was just delightful though. They
Speaker 1: were excellent horsemen. UM. I don't know if they rode
Speaker 1: those little squatty horses like uh, like Khan's army did.
Speaker 1: But they were great on horseback, apparently so great that
Speaker 1: they kind of didn't get off their horses to do
Speaker 1: much when it when in terms of battle. But even
Speaker 1: beyond battle. I saw that they held negotiations on their horses.
Speaker 1: Um that they were characterized as being one with their horse.
Speaker 1: That was one thing, right, right, in the true sense
Speaker 1: that was I hope not mainly for the horses, say yeah,
Speaker 1: but um they they they were. The fact that they
Speaker 1: were amazing horsemen. That's check one, and why they were
Speaker 1: basically impossible to feat Check two was they had a
Speaker 1: special kind of bow called the hun bow, right, and
Speaker 1: these things are beautiful. It was a recursive bow where
Speaker 1: the bow itself been curve back onto itself, which meant
Speaker 1: you have more torque, which meant you could shoot an
Speaker 1: arrow through armor at a hundred yards. Yeah, they're all
Speaker 1: kinds of recurve bows, but this one was especially squatty
Speaker 1: and kind of short. So it's recurved. It's not recursive,
Speaker 1: yeah recurve. Um. Oh yeah, it was short, which meant
Speaker 1: it was mobile. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So if you picture
Speaker 1: just like a U shaped bow, that's just a bow,
Speaker 1: but a recurve bends back around to face the other
Speaker 1: way at both ends and both points. And this one was,
Speaker 1: like I said, especially squatty, and it just it's cool
Speaker 1: looking like bow enthusiasts collect these things. I can imagine
Speaker 1: hun bows. You say, this is a till of the
Speaker 1: huns areo boat. Everybody says that. So so wait a minute,
Speaker 1: So we've got two things. Now we've got they were
Speaker 1: basically one with their horse. They were so good on
Speaker 1: a horse, they could shoot arrows through your armor a
Speaker 1: hundred yards away, almost a hundred meters away. Um, while
Speaker 1: on these horses. That's check two. And then number three
Speaker 1: is that they didn't fight in any sort of coherent
Speaker 1: battle formation. It was just show up out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: right around, start picking people off, scatter, regroup out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: show up again, pick more people off, scatter, regroup and
Speaker 1: like you just you had no idea that they were
Speaker 1: coming at any point in time, and they would just
Speaker 1: come and basically waste your army. And there was no
Speaker 1: formation that you could form against. It was just chaos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and fast, like before you knew what was going on,
Speaker 1: You're you're getting arrows slung your way. And like you said,
Speaker 1: from any direction, wasn't like here they come from the north,
Speaker 1: Like they were all over the place. Uh. It said
Speaker 1: here in this one article you sent that the soldiers
Speaker 1: they wore these heavy leather greased uh outfits greased with
Speaker 1: animal fat, which is good, which just said made them
Speaker 1: both supple and rain resistant. Maybe that was for the
Speaker 1: horses and steel line helmets chain mail. They're very nimble.
Speaker 1: They also used swords, of course, and their leather boots.
Speaker 1: They rode horses so much they didn't even worry about hiking,
Speaker 1: so they would wear these leather boots. Had very thin
Speaker 1: soles that I guess major feet, more responsive to stirrup action.
Speaker 1: I don't know, they were just more comfortable. They're like,
Speaker 1: isoton boots? Did they make shoes? Oh? No, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the gloves. They make slippers? I think, Oh really,
Speaker 1: I think so. I don't think it was Damn Marina,
Speaker 1: want to hear that isotoneer gloves and uh ace ventura.
Speaker 1: All right, So these are the huns. They're nomadic there
Speaker 1: chaotic and battle, their fierce, Their their stories precede them,
Speaker 1: their legend precedes them. So when you are getting attacked
Speaker 1: like that's got to do a mental number on you,
Speaker 1: especially like when they came upon towns and cities, like
Speaker 1: sometimes entire cities, they would level them, just utterly destroy
Speaker 1: They would take everything they wanted kill everybody that they wanted.
Speaker 1: They would take hostages and slaves and prisoners, um. But
Speaker 1: then they would just destroy the town. And there was
Speaker 1: one town in Italy um called Aquileia. Aquileia, I believe um.
Speaker 1: No one knows where it was, they know it existed,
Speaker 1: but then the Huns got They Huns sacked it and
Speaker 1: now no one has any idea what it was because
Speaker 1: they just utterly destroyed the tip. That was like the
Speaker 1: kind of thing they would do, almost just out of spite,
Speaker 1: just maliciously, you know, because apparently Attila the Hun was
Speaker 1: known for um using his fierce reputation at an advantage
Speaker 1: and he didn't want to fight or thought that fighting
Speaker 1: was unwise. He could use his reputation to get you
Speaker 1: to to surrender and then maybe you would survive, maybe
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. UM. But they didn't necessarily need that because
Speaker 1: they backed up the fierce reputation actually did these things
Speaker 1: that people feared them for. And they had a name
Speaker 1: for the Huns, and apparently specifically Attila the Hun in
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman or the Roman Empires pre Holy Roman,
Speaker 1: they called them the flagellum day the scourge of God.
Speaker 1: And this is what these Christians thought, that that God
Speaker 1: had sent this horrible, almost devil figure to come and
Speaker 1: wipe their towns from the earth because they weren't living
Speaker 1: upright enough. Yeah, and I saw some historians think that
Speaker 1: he might have even made that name up. Oh really,
Speaker 1: it seems like he was a big promoter of his
Speaker 1: of his wicked ways, just to scare people. Well, it's
Speaker 1: still working on me, like he would because I'm passing
Speaker 1: all this stuff off. He was often drawn with like
Speaker 1: goats horns and things like that, And I don't I
Speaker 1: think he encouraged this stuff. Well, he did famously say
Speaker 1: that wherever he's trod or past, grass will never grow again.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he definitely, he definitely would play it up.
Speaker 1: But it didn't hurt his feelings that people said these
Speaker 1: things about him, right, so he I don't think we
Speaker 1: mentioned yet. He uh took over along with his brother
Speaker 1: Blada b L E. D A when they were young
Speaker 1: their uncles actually, um, that's there was a lot of
Speaker 1: biarchy going on at the time with the Huns, which
Speaker 1: is a little bit unusual for a couple of people
Speaker 1: to split ruling duties, and their uncles jointly ruled the
Speaker 1: Hunt empire. Eventually the brothers took over as co rulers
Speaker 1: in four thirty four, and I think they even had
Speaker 1: their own territories that they were in charge of. It's
Speaker 1: not like they were together. Uh. And then eventually Attila
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I think I'd rather just really operate
Speaker 1: this show by myself. And he killed his brother, killed
Speaker 1: his own brother. That's that's harsh. I didn't see. How
Speaker 1: did you see? I didn't. I couldn't find it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't either, as I saw once a story about a
Speaker 1: night I think, who killed his own brother. But his
Speaker 1: brother was a priest saying mass, and the night came
Speaker 1: in and cut his own brother's head off while he
Speaker 1: was saying mass. Like, if there is a god, that
Speaker 1: really upset I'm unsure. So he and his brother uh
Speaker 1: co rule and they settled down a little bit on
Speaker 1: the great what was known as the Great Hungarian Plains,
Speaker 1: a little less nomadic at this point were the Huns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they were weighed down with so much golden plunder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just they couldn't ride around like they did. So
Speaker 1: have we reached the point where he's the single ruler? Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get rid of his brother, so
Speaker 1: we should a. I don't know if this name came
Speaker 1: upon him ascending to um being the co ruler with
Speaker 1: his brother or the single ruler. But Attila means little father.
Speaker 1: They do not think that this is his birth name,
Speaker 1: because that's just no matter what age or period of
Speaker 1: history we're talking about, it'd be weird to name your
Speaker 1: son little father. Um. They think it was a name
Speaker 1: of respect and affection, is how I saw it put
Speaker 1: and that they think that this was basically his His
Speaker 1: king name was Attila. They have no idea what his
Speaker 1: real name was, but they think that Attila was not it. No,
Speaker 1: but by the time he became ruler, like you said,
Speaker 1: he was born into a privileged household. Um, he he
Speaker 1: knew what to do from a very early age. His
Speaker 1: uncle's as rulers brought him and his brother Bleda up
Speaker 1: to speak Latin. So maybe he did come up with
Speaker 1: Flagellum Davey Goth which was another Germanic tribe who figure
Speaker 1: into this picture later on. Um and to to understand diplomacy,
Speaker 1: military strategy, horsemanship obviously, UM all of this stuff. So
Speaker 1: it was brought up to lead, so it was kind
Speaker 1: of natural that he would kill his brother and take
Speaker 1: over the entire hunt empire. Yeah, and the other another
Speaker 1: thing I thought was interesting was even though he was
Speaker 1: sort of on a conquest for gold and riches, he
Speaker 1: lived sort of simply as a ruler. Like all of
Speaker 1: his his upper uh subordinates. Apparently they did live the
Speaker 1: high life, and they drank from silver and gold chalices
Speaker 1: and had fancy clothes and big you know, make mansions,
Speaker 1: platform shoes, platform shoes with goldfish in the heel. And
Speaker 1: Attila lived in a log house with animal skins on
Speaker 1: the walls and drank from a wooden cup. And even
Speaker 1: though he wanted to get all this gold, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like he lived that way, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That really kind of opens up the guy for interpretation.
Speaker 1: You know, like says a couple of things. One, he's
Speaker 1: surrounded by all these material goods, but his tastes are
Speaker 1: extraordinarily simple, and he stuck to it. He didn't try
Speaker 1: to show off at any point. He just was who
Speaker 1: he was as far as his taste point. And then secondly,
Speaker 1: he also didn't demand that the people subordinate to him
Speaker 1: live like he lived. That says an enormous amount you know, like,
Speaker 1: there's so many people at the top who want the
Speaker 1: people below them to act like them, to live like them,
Speaker 1: to behave like them. So for him to to have
Speaker 1: like there was a cult of personality around this guy,
Speaker 1: and for him to allow and maybe even encourage people
Speaker 1: to live their own way totally counter to how he lived.
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's a complex figure for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the Treaty of Marcus. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a big turning point in history. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: was in four thirty four. Uh, and he I believe
Speaker 1: that what we're going back to when Bledah was still alive. Um,
Speaker 1: they worked up a peace treaty called the Treaty of
Speaker 1: Marcus with what is this the Eastern Roman Empire. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they basically said, hey, if you return all these
Speaker 1: hunt refugees, basically people that fled my rule, return these
Speaker 1: people to us. How many were there? At least of fourteen,
Speaker 1: but I think maybe seventeen Yeah, like not seventeen thousand,
Speaker 1: but seventeen people. But that's how much he prized loyalty,
Speaker 1: is how I saw it. Put. Yeah, like I want
Speaker 1: these people back, and he also didn't want them going
Speaker 1: off into the Roman Empire and stirring up rebellion to
Speaker 1: come take over the Hunting Empire. Yeah, exactly. So if
Speaker 1: you return, these people will establish some trading rights that
Speaker 1: are fair. You guys pay us about seven hundred pounds
Speaker 1: of gold every year directly to me and my bro
Speaker 1: and we'll, like, we'll lay off and you can just
Speaker 1: kind of do your thing here in the Eastern Roman Empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's extortion. Yeah, I saw that that Attila was. He
Speaker 1: plundered in war and extorted in peacetime. That's what he did.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he said, we won't invade you if you
Speaker 1: pay a seven hundred pounds of goal of a year,
Speaker 1: and he didn't. But then he said, um, there was
Speaker 1: another part of this too. He said that that he
Speaker 1: wanted not just the traitorous Huns who left or escaped
Speaker 1: his rule to be returned to him. He also wanted um,
Speaker 1: a Roman bishop who he believed had come into the
Speaker 1: Hunting Empire and desecrated some graves and stolen grave goods
Speaker 1: from the graves, to be handed over to him. And
Speaker 1: apparently the Eastern Empire uh Emperor Theodosius the second said, hey,
Speaker 1: man I gave, I gave all of the Huns I
Speaker 1: could find in the empire over to you and this bishop.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is actually true. Um, they didn't give over the bishop.
Speaker 1: And so Attila actually said, um, you guys just broke
Speaker 1: the treaty, were invading, And he did invade, and they
Speaker 1: actually invaded through Marguts. And the guy who opened the
Speaker 1: gates of Marguts too for them to the Huns was
Speaker 1: the bishop who stole the grave goods. So had the
Speaker 1: emperor handed over this guy, the the invasion of Italy
Speaker 1: by the Huns would have never happened. And that's the
Speaker 1: sound that played when he opened the gate. Apparently they
Speaker 1: got within about twenty miles of Constantinople. And Theodosius too said, whoa,
Speaker 1: you're getting a little too close. How about pounds of
Speaker 1: gold per year three times as much cold? And I
Speaker 1: believe that that quelled Attila's desires for temporarily, at least temporarily.
Speaker 1: So that just meant with Attila that he just turned
Speaker 1: his sight somewhere else. Yeah, you want to take a break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, okay, man, we're back. So, um,
Speaker 1: the Eastern Roman Empire has said all right, here here
Speaker 1: take some more gold. Um leave us alone, and he
Speaker 1: did for a little while. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that um Attila the hunt did was he created like
Speaker 1: a domino effect, there were other Germanic tribes of barbarians
Speaker 1: and making air quotes everybody um who were in the
Speaker 1: area that got pushed out of the area and into
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire by the Hunts. So the Hunts pushed
Speaker 1: out the Allan's, the Alan's pushed out the Goths. The
Speaker 1: Goths pushed out some other tribes, and as a result,
Speaker 1: you now had other Germanic tribes living in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: It's a big seed that got planted by the Hunts
Speaker 1: because the Hunts pushed everybody out and took over their empire. Right,
Speaker 1: This actually led to the downfall of the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: later on. It was that the Great migration, yeah, or
Speaker 1: the wandering of the nations. Now is this when people
Speaker 1: split and just fractured the Roman Empire, So hopefully get that.
Speaker 1: So what happened was the um the these different tribes
Speaker 1: got pushed into the Roman Empire started and the Vandals
Speaker 1: that so um, the the Visigoths in particular got pushed
Speaker 1: into there and they were living as Roman subjects under
Speaker 1: Roman rule, but they were not being treated very well
Speaker 1: by the Roman governors of the territories they lived in.
Speaker 1: And they eventually rose up against Rome, against a Roman
Speaker 1: empire in the areas where they lived. And these little
Speaker 1: battles and skirmishes that that that Rome was having, or
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire was having with these groups that would
Speaker 1: have otherwise not been in their borders started to weaken
Speaker 1: the empire enough that it actually felt the the I
Speaker 1: think it was the Goths that actually sacked Rome and
Speaker 1: and crumbled the Roman Empire. And the whole reason they
Speaker 1: could make it to Rome was because they were in
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire already, because the Huns had pushed them
Speaker 1: in their years before and set off this chain of
Speaker 1: events that led to maybe the most powerful empire in
Speaker 1: the history of the world. Tell of the Hun did that?
Speaker 1: It wasn't Susie in her banshees no leading the Goths.
Speaker 1: Did you like them? Oh? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, me too,
Speaker 1: they were great. I generally wasn't into that, though, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what counts. She You didn't like
Speaker 1: the cure or the smiths, or I guess the smiths
Speaker 1: weren't weren't goth, but the cure definitely was. You don't
Speaker 1: like the cure. I love the cure, but chuck your golf. Really,
Speaker 1: my friend, you're GoF all right, I'll get my mass era. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean some of those terms, I don't
Speaker 1: even know, like what the dividing line is. I don't
Speaker 1: you know. You know, people are still hung up on
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Do you like the cure? Yes? Good,
Speaker 1: you're smart for liking the cure. They're great and you're
Speaker 1: a god. Should we talk about his weird marriage situation? Yes,
Speaker 1: so this was odd. He had well, obviously he had
Speaker 1: a bunch of wives, because that's just the way it
Speaker 1: was back then. No one knows how many wives. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's like anything like Chingis Khan, where they
Speaker 1: think he fathered like half the world's uh people or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But he had a share of wives.
Speaker 1: And this was an interesting thing. Here. In the spring
Speaker 1: of fourteen fifty, there was a woman named Honorrhea, and
Speaker 1: she was the sister of uh Valentinian, the third Emperor
Speaker 1: of Western Room. He was trying to marry her off
Speaker 1: to an aristocrat, as you do, like you're my sister here,
Speaker 1: take this husband out of my hair. I'm sorready hearing
Speaker 1: about it. Uh. And she was like, I don't really
Speaker 1: like this guy who you're trying to hook me up with,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna do a weird thing. He's got no
Speaker 1: hair growing out of his nose, and he's like everybody
Speaker 1: has hair growing out of their nose. It's the fifth century. Uh.
Speaker 1: So she sends her engagement ring to Attila, said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't want to marry this guy. Can you help
Speaker 1: me out? This is a very bizarre act. It's a
Speaker 1: bizarre act because Attila basically sees this as, oh, she
Speaker 1: wants to marry me because I've got this little wedding ring.
Speaker 1: Now I put on my pinky toe and uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go. I'm gonna go claim this bride. And I
Speaker 1: also want half of your empire as dowry, half of
Speaker 1: the Western Roman empire. He demanded his dowry, and he
Speaker 1: was coming to get Did you call her Honoria? And
Speaker 1: it seems to me like a Noria was kind of
Speaker 1: like immediately like, what, yeah, I didn't really I didn't
Speaker 1: What I didn't? How is this woman not more famous?
Speaker 1: I don't know like, what a blunder it This is
Speaker 1: a crazy blunder that led to a huge sacking of Rome.
Speaker 1: And why, Like, I feel like there's part of the
Speaker 1: story missing. Why wet out to Antille of the Hunt.
Speaker 1: From what I saw, there was no they'd never met before.
Speaker 1: There was no interaction whatsoever. She just basically said, here, servant,
Speaker 1: take this ring to Attil of the Hunt. I don't
Speaker 1: know where he is, go find him. He wasn't like
Speaker 1: met her years ago and it's like, Hey, if you
Speaker 1: need remember me from high school, give me a call.
Speaker 1: I'll sack whatever needs sacking. None of that happened. From
Speaker 1: what I understand, I guess this dude was just the baddest,
Speaker 1: fiercest guy that a Noria could think of, and she
Speaker 1: said help. She really really made a missed up and
Speaker 1: including the engagement ring or maybe even reaching out at all.
Speaker 1: But the engagement ring was it gave at Till of
Speaker 1: the Hun just enough entree to say, oh, this is
Speaker 1: this is a pretty good reason to to invade the
Speaker 1: Western Roman Empire, which he did. That's right, looking for
Speaker 1: an Aria and that was the pretense. Yeah, but on
Speaker 1: his way he took another wife, uh name Bildico I
Speaker 1: think so, all right, And on their wedding night he
Speaker 1: actually died. He was not known, especially for the time,
Speaker 1: to be like a great like drinker. I mean, he
Speaker 1: wasn't a teetotal or no, but he was very moderate,
Speaker 1: temperate person as far as that stuff goes. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: the most part, he wasn't like the rest of the
Speaker 1: Huns that were just you know, getting wasted everything, or
Speaker 1: the rest of the Western Roman or Eastern Roman Empire like.
Speaker 1: But he was basically the one large area ruler who
Speaker 1: wasn't like just getting wasted and eating like five turkey
Speaker 1: legs at a time. Right, he was different in that
Speaker 1: sense for sure. Yeah, he was the only one that
Speaker 1: didn't have gout. Yeah, I guess as far as I know. Uh,
Speaker 1: so he marries this lady. Apparently he did drink a
Speaker 1: little bit too much on his wedding night and supposedly
Speaker 1: was prone to nose bleeds, and as the story goes,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, had some sort of
Speaker 1: massive nosebleed, also saw something about an artery bursting, uh
Speaker 1: and choked on his blood in his sleep and died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's supposedly how I tell of the Hun died. Weird story,
Speaker 1: but believable, I guess. For yeah, I mean, the alternative
Speaker 1: explanation is that Il Deco murdered him or um abedded
Speaker 1: an assassination um that was carried out by I think
Speaker 1: one of the one either the Eastern or Western Roman emperors.
Speaker 1: Either way, like they think I said, I got the
Speaker 1: impression that that's the generally accepted ideas that he choked
Speaker 1: on his own blood. He basically died out of natural causes,
Speaker 1: which I mean, it's like, Gosh, you overindulge one night
Speaker 1: and you pay for it with your life, you know.
Speaker 1: But throughout throughout his reign we left out a huge
Speaker 1: chunk of of his history. At some point he turned
Speaker 1: his attention to Gaul France modern day France Belgium area,
Speaker 1: and that's where he suffered as one defeat. So out
Speaker 1: of the entire nineteen years, this guy was running around
Speaker 1: Eurasia terrorizing it. Um he suffered one defeat, and even
Speaker 1: then it was really a draw. But he uh, he
Speaker 1: attacked Gaul and I think troops and the Western Roman
Speaker 1: emperor got with the Goths and said, you guys, we
Speaker 1: gotta do something about this, and they managed to basically
Speaker 1: enter into a draw with the Huns, so much so
Speaker 1: that the Huns had to withdraw to their camp and
Speaker 1: eventually left Gaul after this, but it was supposedly one
Speaker 1: of the bloodiest battles in the history of of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they managed to fight him back after and this is
Speaker 1: after the beginning was definitely going in the favor of
Speaker 1: the Huns. Uh, So it looked like the riding was
Speaker 1: on the wall and that was that was a big comeback.
Speaker 1: But imagine basically spending every day of your life engaged
Speaker 1: in conquest, in battle and you got one lost to
Speaker 1: your name. Yeah, you gotta have one. Everybody's got to
Speaker 1: have the ups with the downs, right. Yeah. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about his his his burial after his death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting. After he died, his his horsemen,
Speaker 1: his followers, they cut off their hair, they smeared blood
Speaker 1: all over their face, and they slowly circled him on
Speaker 1: their horses. Um, I guess just I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was a uh sign of respect that normally happens,
Speaker 1: or if they were just reacting instinctively, or if it
Speaker 1: was some old ritual, But at any rate, they just
Speaker 1: slowly rode around his body that was the tent. Eventually
Speaker 1: he went in three coffins. Yeah, which makes me think
Speaker 1: that he could still be found, Yes, because he was
Speaker 1: in a coffin of gold, silver and iron, apparently, like, ah,
Speaker 1: was it a Matrushka nesk? I don't know, Matroishka. What
Speaker 1: is that? You know? The little Russian dolls that nest
Speaker 1: inside one another Russian nesting dolls. Let's just call him that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know they had to. I think it's Maroika. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I love those. And show me a
Speaker 1: child that's not delighted by one of those, yeah, little
Speaker 1: things inside of other things. Show you a dollard. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they put him in three coffins. According to legend,
Speaker 1: they divert a river um like fully damn up a
Speaker 1: river and bury him in the river bed and then
Speaker 1: release the river once again, so that his grave would
Speaker 1: never be found. They also killed the people who buried
Speaker 1: him so that they couldn't tell anybody who were slaves.
Speaker 1: So there's there's actually so that sounds like a total
Speaker 1: like Paul Bunyan esque tall tale. Right, there's actually historical
Speaker 1: evidence that this had been done at least two other times.
Speaker 1: The emperor Gilgamesh, you know, the Epic of Gilgamesh. They
Speaker 1: believed that they found his resting place under the Euphrates,
Speaker 1: and legend has it that they diverted the Euphrates to
Speaker 1: bury him in the river bed for the same exact reason.
Speaker 1: They think they've actually found gilgamesh Is burying place. And
Speaker 1: then um, I think the Doocious the first Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Goth king who was killed in one of those battles
Speaker 1: in Gaul, the one that that repelled Um until of
Speaker 1: the hunt. Um kind of he was buried in a
Speaker 1: diverted river as well. So they're saying like they think
Speaker 1: this actually may have happened, which means that you if
Speaker 1: you search bet it was the Danube that they buried
Speaker 1: him in. But if you search a river, I would
Speaker 1: I would start with the Danube because that's where the
Speaker 1: capital of the Huns was. Could they divert the Danube?
Speaker 1: Though I don't know, maybe a part of it. Who
Speaker 1: knows that that maybe one day a till of the
Speaker 1: huns um grave will be found, especially as archaeological technology advances.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you in fifty years we're going to have
Speaker 1: found Until of the Huns gray Man, and it will
Speaker 1: be under a riverbed in three coffins. Yes, I really
Speaker 1: think that that's for real. I believe it. Believe it.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you said you did? Ah, you go anything else? No,
Speaker 1: I mean that which there's a lot of the till
Speaker 1: of the hun stuff that we did not get to.
Speaker 1: Can I add one more thing? I want to defend
Speaker 1: my use of barbarian one of the I think contemporary
Speaker 1: historians described the Huns as not making no use of fire.
Speaker 1: They even use fire. Supposedly they didn't cook their food.
Speaker 1: They would eat roots from the ground and then raw
Speaker 1: meat that they would put between their thighs in the
Speaker 1: saddle to tenderize it, I guess, and then they would
Speaker 1: eat that. They're barbarians. Okay, I saw that article. It said, uh,
Speaker 1: something like half raw, and they said, we say half
Speaker 1: raw because they would hold it between their thighs to
Speaker 1: cook it. Yeah, you got some beef thighs there. You
Speaker 1: got some red stained thighs. That sounds like, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't need what that sounds like on the menu something
Speaker 1: it's been cooked from the thighs of a hun. Right,
Speaker 1: It's kind of like it's one hipster step above su
Speaker 1: vied cooking. Really, if you think about. Okay, now we're done.
Speaker 1: Nothing like the warm glow of a hunt testicle against
Speaker 1: the stake it man, Oh boy, who's going on the
Speaker 1: rails here? Yeah? So if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about the huns, you can type that word in the
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
Speaker 1: said that, it's time for a listener maw, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this follow up to we got a surprising amount
Speaker 1: of email from that goofy show we did on the Jobs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's like a high, high volume episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was surprised. You never know. Uh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of people right in and say,
Speaker 1: by the way, there is still chariot racing. It's called
Speaker 1: harness racing pin setters, and I take issue with that.
Speaker 1: Harness racing is harness racing. Those are not chariots. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: what if I gets the same thing. There are pin
Speaker 1: setters and lamp lighters too. Basically, it was a fraudulent episode.
Speaker 1: Now I'm with you. Harness racing is not cherry. Like
Speaker 1: standing up in a in a wooden box being pulled
Speaker 1: by eight horses is not the same thing as a
Speaker 1: harness race. I've been to a harness race. I have to.
Speaker 1: My dad used to take us to those, let us
Speaker 1: bet like a dollar on him. I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever won, Yeah, which is probably good for my gambling bug.
Speaker 1: It never took off at a young age. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: the skittles and poker. Yeah. I'm not a big gamper either.
Speaker 1: Uh okay, alright, So anyway, this is about lamp lighters.
Speaker 1: This from Carlos in Mexico. Hey, guys, have found the
Speaker 1: stuff you talk about about lamp lighting fascinating. Like to
Speaker 1: add some extra info, Back in the day, people used
Speaker 1: to tip and or threaten the lamplighters to leave the
Speaker 1: lamp near a park bench or something turned off so
Speaker 1: couples could have more privacy. You know what I'm saying, Like, Hey,
Speaker 1: don't like that lamp. I gotta cure some meat over here,
Speaker 1: you know, the hunway. In fact, there is a Spanish
Speaker 1: folk song by the Cherumbellas suggestion on how to pronounce
Speaker 1: it h jerum bellas. Is it a d J? It's
Speaker 1: a c H pronounced like a ju. He says jerom
Speaker 1: Bellas about a lamp lighter being harassed by couples every
Speaker 1: night to leave the lamp off. The chorus loosely translates
Speaker 1: as follows, lamp lighter, go a little over there and
Speaker 1: leave this lamp off. In love affairs the lamp, the
Speaker 1: light of lamp always gets in the way. And this
Speaker 1: song is from the song Farrelero by the Chambarillas. How
Speaker 1: about that. I think you made it through quite nicely. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is from Carlos from Guadalajara, and he also
Speaker 1: wants to suggest a topic, how capture work? Oh nice?
Speaker 1: Did we not cover that? No, we could do a
Speaker 1: whole one on like caption the Turing test and all
Speaker 1: that would be cool because capture stands for something, right,
Speaker 1: stands for computer automated pap tests PEP, something test to
Speaker 1: tell computers and humans apart. And now that's the end. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe I think we did something about that on our
Speaker 1: dump TV show. That's what it was. You're absolutely right, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us to find out what dumb TV show chucks
Speaker 1: talking about, good luck, because we don't talk about it
Speaker 1: any longer. Um, you can follow us by going onto
Speaker 1: our website stuff you should know dot com looking for
Speaker 1: all of the links to our social media's and then
Speaker 1: meeting us there. You can also send us an email
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast and how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: moralness and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com