Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey,
Speaker 1: we were out for a little bit, but now we're back,
Speaker 1: and you know what, we're back with more cauldrons. Our
Speaker 1: brains are like pots, and those pots are full of pots,
Speaker 1: and the pots have pots in them, and it's it
Speaker 1: never stops. I know, my my wife is still teasing
Speaker 1: me about this. It's like, you guys are still doing
Speaker 1: episodes about cauldrons and soup, and I'm like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like we're probably going to do three or four of
Speaker 1: these total, and we're still not going to cover everything.
Speaker 1: And a lot of it comes down to the fact,
Speaker 1: and certainly go back and listen to those first two
Speaker 1: episodes if you haven't, comes down to the fact that
Speaker 1: we're talking about ancient technology and and since it in
Speaker 1: we inevitably use technology as a way of understanding ourselves,
Speaker 1: understand ending the cosmos, etcetera. It ends up becoming a
Speaker 1: part of our not only a discourse, but of course
Speaker 1: our religions and uh and so forth. And we see
Speaker 1: that with the cauldron for sure. Yes, though I have
Speaker 1: to say one of the big examples we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about in this episode. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: whole episode will end up focusing on it, but it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting historical artifact that is called a cauldron.
Speaker 1: Like it is called the Gunda Stroop cauldron. But I
Speaker 1: was reading a paper on it, and the very first
Speaker 1: sentence of the paper, this author insists that it is
Speaker 1: not a cauldron, it is a ceremonial container. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean this is something that is kind of under the
Speaker 1: surface of many of these discussions, right, and like obviously
Speaker 1: not all of these people would have called this a cauldron,
Speaker 1: And then you get into discussions of Okay, is it
Speaker 1: a cauldron or a pot? Is it a cauldron or
Speaker 1: a bowl? Is it a cauldron or some other kind?
Speaker 1: You know what exactly? Is the ship billed? Daddy? Oh okay,
Speaker 1: this is a call and come on, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a big metal pot. I think we can call
Speaker 1: it a cauldron. Yeah. So you, as we've discussed in
Speaker 1: previous episodes, we wanted to get into European traditions with
Speaker 1: the cauldron, and uh, cauldrons in Europe are sometimes uncovered
Speaker 1: in bogs, places, as we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: that had sacred connotations to the ancient people who visited them.
Speaker 1: They were a place between land and water, and so
Speaker 1: they were also seen as a place between life and death.
Speaker 1: So various funeral rites seem to have been conducted at
Speaker 1: various bogs and peat bogs, and given the low oxygen
Speaker 1: acidic soil of bog environments, we often gain a great
Speaker 1: deal more insight into what occurred there, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to organic materials that would have otherwise decayed. So
Speaker 1: you know, bodies were left in these bogs and teared
Speaker 1: in these bogs, and we also see examples of cauldrons
Speaker 1: and cauldron like artifacts. One notable bog retrieved cauldron is
Speaker 1: the Gunda strap cauldron, an incomplete but very stunning silver
Speaker 1: artifact discovered in a bog in Himmland, Denmark in eight now.
Speaker 1: While dating has been a matter of some discussion here,
Speaker 1: exact dating anyway, is suspected to date back to between
Speaker 1: one fifty b c E And the dawn of the
Speaker 1: Common Era. It was evidently given to the bog and
Speaker 1: an act of sacrifice, perhaps to a god or gods,
Speaker 1: but its origins don't seem to be quite Danish. It
Speaker 1: It bears images that are generally associated with more Southern cultures, lions, deer,
Speaker 1: griffin's um there. There seems to be a hornet or
Speaker 1: antlered god on there, alongside other potential gods and goddesses.
Speaker 1: It contains scenes of warriors falling in battle, and there
Speaker 1: is actually an image of a magic cauldron. Uh is
Speaker 1: on this cauldron with a gigantic figure, perhaps a god
Speaker 1: or a goddess, about to dunk a smaller man into
Speaker 1: its depths. That's right, we got cauldrons on our cauldrons uh.
Speaker 1: And I want to come back to more interpretation of
Speaker 1: this panel later on. Yeah, definitely. As we're talking about
Speaker 1: the gun distract cauldron, look up the images of it.
Speaker 1: That's spelled g U n d E s t r
Speaker 1: U p uh. There are a lot of images online
Speaker 1: that show the various panels here, the various uh, the
Speaker 1: various images that we're going to be discussing here, including
Speaker 1: this one of what is clearly a giant of some
Speaker 1: sort uh taking a man and dunking him head first
Speaker 1: uh into a bucket or cauldron or vessel of some
Speaker 1: sort adjacent to this battle scene. So the exact origins
Speaker 1: of the cauldron here are still a matter of debate,
Speaker 1: with some pointing to the Thracians or what is and
Speaker 1: these would have been people from what is now Bulgaria
Speaker 1: and Romania. Yet there are also Celtic helmets and trumpets
Speaker 1: depicted on the cauldron, suggesting it might have been made
Speaker 1: in a place in the aforementioned region where Thracians and
Speaker 1: Celts coexisted, though it's uncertain how this then wound up
Speaker 1: in Denmark. Could have been a tribute, could have been
Speaker 1: spoils of war. Either way, it may be accurate to
Speaker 1: think of the Goodness Drop cauldron and not a product
Speaker 1: of a single culture, a single place, or even a
Speaker 1: single time, but something that was created by mingling cultures
Speaker 1: on the move, in part due to Roman expansion and
Speaker 1: conquest during this time period, and ultimately constructed by different
Speaker 1: artisans over many years. Oh, I didn't think about the
Speaker 1: Roman connection, but yeah, so if this would have been
Speaker 1: in the first century b c e. And the middle
Speaker 1: of that century was when Julius Caesar himself was waging
Speaker 1: a war of conquest in Gaul against Celtic tribes in
Speaker 1: that region, So yeah, that's an interesting possibility. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Rob you you you dug this thing up, not not physical,
Speaker 1: you had throught it into our outline, but I got
Speaker 1: really obsessed with it, um and I I find this
Speaker 1: artifacts so interesting, specifically because of the different mysteries about
Speaker 1: it's it's provenance, like you were just talking about, but
Speaker 1: also about what it's depicting, because there there are tons
Speaker 1: of what you know, it clearly is showing scenes that
Speaker 1: are part of a rich mythology that we apparently know
Speaker 1: little to nothing about, and so there are a lot
Speaker 1: of attempts to try to understand what the different panels
Speaker 1: are depicting and if and if so, how they connect
Speaker 1: to mythologies that we might know something about. But but
Speaker 1: coming back to that provenance question, Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: so interesting that there are at least three different distinct
Speaker 1: sort of regional inputs. Now, as you already mentioned, based
Speaker 1: on physical characteristics of the cauldron, like the silversmithing techniques
Speaker 1: that were used to create it, it seems to be
Speaker 1: a product of southeastern Europe. Yes, but most scholars pointing
Speaker 1: to uh to the metal working techniques of the Thracians
Speaker 1: who live in As you said, what is today Bulgaria
Speaker 1: or Romania, and I was trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: are some examples of this distinctive style that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: so strongly linked to Thracian culture. Well, I was reading
Speaker 1: about this on the website for the National Museum of Denmark,
Speaker 1: which has a lot of great materials about the Gundistrict Cauldron,
Speaker 1: and they compare the gun District Cauldron to the metal
Speaker 1: working on a gilded silver pitcher from Bulgaria from roughly
Speaker 1: three hundred b C. And looking at it, I would agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the techniques and the artistic style look extremely similar. Like
Speaker 1: the way the animal figures are embossed. Remember that this
Speaker 1: is not just like an illustration or carving, but this
Speaker 1: is like hammered and punched metal. So it has raised
Speaker 1: animal figures with like textures that you could feel with
Speaker 1: your fingers running over them. And those textures are very
Speaker 1: similar between the two works. So like the animal figures
Speaker 1: are embossed and punched with patterns of exture that seemed
Speaker 1: to indicate hair or fur, and it's extremely distinctive. You
Speaker 1: see some of the same patterns on the on the
Speaker 1: apparent herring bone patterns on the clothing of the people
Speaker 1: on the gun district cauldron. So based on the techniques,
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that it was created by an artisan
Speaker 1: who had been trained in the traditions of Southeastern Europe.
Speaker 1: But as you also said, the imagery depicts objects and
Speaker 1: motifs associated with the culture of the Celts who were
Speaker 1: in more kind of western Central Europe at the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And a few examples of this would be a Celtic
Speaker 1: musical instrument known as the car nix, which we can
Speaker 1: discuss in more detail later, certain types of Celtic ceremonial
Speaker 1: jewelry such as an object called a torque, which I
Speaker 1: can also get to in a minute, and things like that.
Speaker 1: So those are your two inputs. It's like Celtic subject
Speaker 1: matter done in the metal working style of the Thracians
Speaker 1: or of Southeastern Europe, and then it's found in the
Speaker 1: territory of neither one. It's found up in Jutland in
Speaker 1: modern day Denmark in a bog So yeah, you really
Speaker 1: have to wonder how all this comes together, Like did
Speaker 1: a Celtic person commission a Southeastern European silversmith to make
Speaker 1: a pot containing images from their culture and mythology, or
Speaker 1: maybe did it somehow arise from a border region where
Speaker 1: these cultures came into contact, and then somehow this item
Speaker 1: ends up in the bogs of Jutland. It would be
Speaker 1: like finding what a Bulgarian band that only does covers
Speaker 1: of Celtic music in modern Denmark and wondering like how
Speaker 1: they came to be there. Ah, yes, the thrash metal
Speaker 1: polka bands of Canada. Now I wanted to mention just
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the state that this cauldron,
Speaker 1: the so called cauldron, was in when it was discovered.
Speaker 1: Uh So, altogether this object weighs about nine kilograms or
Speaker 1: about twenty pounds, and it appears to have been deposited
Speaker 1: in the ball deliberately, especially because it was disassembled when
Speaker 1: it was put into the bog. So this cauldron has
Speaker 1: many detachable features, so the rim can be taken off,
Speaker 1: and the silver image panels which line the sides of
Speaker 1: the pot, those can be taken off, and when it
Speaker 1: was found, they were all removed and placed inside the vessel.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, you see that, And that makes
Speaker 1: it sound like this wasn't just sort of like it
Speaker 1: wasn't like it fell off a wagon or something. That
Speaker 1: sounds like somebody put it in there. There is no
Speaker 1: text anywhere on it, so it's not like a political
Speaker 1: cartoon where everything's labeled so you know what it means.
Speaker 1: It's you just have to infer from the imagery. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so that makes it difficult to identify things. But the imagery,
Speaker 1: as you already said, Rob, is is fascinating. There are
Speaker 1: animals you would not expect to see. There are lions, uh,
Speaker 1: there are images of gods that we know little or
Speaker 1: nothing about. In fact, there are even images of elephants.
Speaker 1: Ah and yeah that that should be surprising, especially like
Speaker 1: where are these images of elephants coming from? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So at this point I just want to pick out
Speaker 1: a few of the individual plates and focus on what's
Speaker 1: going on on them, one at a time. So the
Speaker 1: first one I wanted to look at, I've got a
Speaker 1: picture for you to look at, Rob, but of course
Speaker 1: we will describe it for for you out there, the listener.
Speaker 1: So it shows a god or a mythic figure that's
Speaker 1: mostly human inform, except it has antlers like a stag
Speaker 1: growing from its head. And this figure is sitting cross
Speaker 1: legged right next to an actual stag, and then on
Speaker 1: the other side of it. There are a bunch of
Speaker 1: other animals there, four legged, predatory looking animals that might
Speaker 1: be dogs or maybe lions, I can't tell for sure.
Speaker 1: And then I love this. A tiny dude riding on
Speaker 1: the back of a fish is it is now compared
Speaker 1: to the god with the antlers, the dude is much smaller,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if it's a question of perspective.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's farther away, or maybe maybe this is just
Speaker 1: separate imagery, or maybe the god is supposed to be
Speaker 1: really big, or maybe the dude's supposed to be really small.
Speaker 1: I can't tell what the deal with the size differences.
Speaker 1: But if it is a regular sized man on the
Speaker 1: fish is back, that is a very big fish. It's
Speaker 1: got to be like dolphin or shark sized. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's also a kind of a different flavor to these
Speaker 1: two images. So they the hornet or ant alerd god
Speaker 1: or whatever this being is supposed to be is in
Speaker 1: it has has a kind of a serene pose. His
Speaker 1: legs his or her legs are crossed, uh, holding us
Speaker 1: what a serpent in one hand? Uh? And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what the implement is in the other hand. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's Uh, that is a Celtic object. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: this is an object that is bigger than just Celtic culture,
Speaker 1: but it was big in Celtic culture called a torque,
Speaker 1: which is a type of metal ring worn around the
Speaker 1: neck that seems to have had significance um for multiple
Speaker 1: Iron Age European culture, symbolizing power. It's power status or rank,
Speaker 1: sort of like a crown. So if somebody's wearing a torque,
Speaker 1: that would seem to indicate that they are a leader
Speaker 1: or a high status person. So this figure with the
Speaker 1: antlers has the torque in his right hand, and then
Speaker 1: in the other hand he's grasping, like you said, the
Speaker 1: neck of a giant snake. But I just wanted to
Speaker 1: point out that the snake has features on its head,
Speaker 1: which one scholar I was looking at identified as rams horns.
Speaker 1: So that's a snake with ram horns. Oh wow. So
Speaker 1: that there's clearly a lot going on here, as as
Speaker 1: one often finds with depictions of powerful individuals or deities
Speaker 1: or demigods. Uh. And and it's one of these images
Speaker 1: that I think it speaks across the ages. When you
Speaker 1: look at this, you get a sense of power and
Speaker 1: divinity from it. Meanwhile, the individual writing the fish or dolphin,
Speaker 1: I I it looks more comical to me, and I
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if there is in fact it is
Speaker 1: supposed to be comical on some level, like if even
Speaker 1: if it is a god of some sort, maybe it
Speaker 1: is a trickster god. Maybe it's something that is not
Speaker 1: supposed to be interpreted with the same air of reverence
Speaker 1: as we have with this this central individual. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: fish boy looks very funny, and I think it's partly
Speaker 1: in the way his knees are bent and he's sort
Speaker 1: of reaching forward while riding the fish, almost as if
Speaker 1: you can imagine him kind of uh rocking and kicking
Speaker 1: back and forth and saying like go faster, come on now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: another possible explanation for differences could also be different authors
Speaker 1: over time. But as we alluded to earlier, but an
Speaker 1: interesting thing I wanted to point out again. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot we don't know about what these images are
Speaker 1: supposed to depict. But this antler headed god who is
Speaker 1: holding a torque in one hand, is also wearing a
Speaker 1: torque around his neck, so he appears to be a
Speaker 1: leader or high status figure himself. But maybe by holding
Speaker 1: a torque in one hand. Uh. I don't know, just speculating,
Speaker 1: but maybe it means he can also make a king.
Speaker 1: He can also give the crown to another thank But
Speaker 1: to go on to discuss another panel, Rob, I wanted
Speaker 1: to come back to one you sort of mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the panel that has the cauldron dunking on it, because
Speaker 1: this panel is really interesting and there was some good
Speaker 1: interpretive material on the National Museum of Denmark website about it.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the interior wall panels that
Speaker 1: this would be lining the inner wall of the cauldron,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot going on on it, so let's
Speaker 1: try to break it down piece by piece. So one
Speaker 1: thing is that there is a row of soldiers on
Speaker 1: the bottom and they are on foot, they're holding spears
Speaker 1: and shields, and they are moving towards the left side
Speaker 1: of the panel. And then above them is a straight
Speaker 1: horizontal tree branch with little leaves forking off of it.
Speaker 1: And then above the tree branch are soldiers on horseback
Speaker 1: moving in the opposite direction of the procession. Below they're
Speaker 1: moving to the right side of the panel. And then
Speaker 1: on the lower right side of the panel, there are
Speaker 1: three warriors playing instruments that are known as carnacs. When
Speaker 1: I first looked at these things, I had no idea
Speaker 1: what they were, but I looked them up, and these
Speaker 1: are a well known type of artifact. Rob I've got
Speaker 1: a close up for you to look at here. But
Speaker 1: the car knicks was a wind instrument used by the
Speaker 1: Celts of the Iron Age. It is essentially a giant
Speaker 1: s shaped trumpet, but most of the length of this
Speaker 1: trumpet is a vertical pipe reaching far up above your head.
Speaker 1: So picture a kind of long periscope tube, except it's
Speaker 1: not going to your eye, it's connecting to your mouth,
Speaker 1: and you blow through it, and then the sound comes
Speaker 1: out of this tube that ends maybe a whole other
Speaker 1: person's height above your head. Uh. And so the the
Speaker 1: bell art of this instrument, the part where the sound
Speaker 1: comes out, would often be shaped to look like an
Speaker 1: open jawed head of an animal such as a dragon
Speaker 1: or a serpent, or maybe sometimes a bore. The carnyx
Speaker 1: was identified in ancient literary sources as associated with warfare,
Speaker 1: so you might play it on the battlefield for a
Speaker 1: coordination of tactics or for intimidation of the enemy long
Speaker 1: distance communication. There you go, but what's going on with
Speaker 1: the warriors on the bottom row of the panel, Well,
Speaker 1: they seem to be moving toward the left side, where
Speaker 1: one by one they will face a god of some
Speaker 1: kind depicted as a giant who is you know, at
Speaker 1: least twice as big, a probably three times as big
Speaker 1: as the warriors, and the god or the giant will
Speaker 1: grasp a warrior with both hands, turn him upside down,
Speaker 1: and then dunk him head first into a cauldron. Now,
Speaker 1: I think there's plenty of room to question the the
Speaker 1: interpretation of these panels. Again, they don't come with words
Speaker 1: on them, so they don't explain, and they don't super
Speaker 1: clearly connect to mythology that we know about. Connections that
Speaker 1: would be established have to be kind of inferred. They
Speaker 1: might be kind of tenuous. But the curators of the
Speaker 1: National Museum of Denmark argue that the warriors on foot
Speaker 1: in the bottom of this panel, they are being represented
Speaker 1: as probably in the underworld, meaning that they were just
Speaker 1: killed in battle, and so they're being depicted as I
Speaker 1: don't know, the the dead forms of their former selves.
Speaker 1: And you can tell they're in the underworld because they
Speaker 1: are underneath this horizontal tree branch Apparently the tree branch
Speaker 1: probably denotes the earth itself and the division between world.
Speaker 1: So if the tree branches is the earth, what's below
Speaker 1: it is the underworld, and what's above it is some
Speaker 1: kind of heavenly afterlife, and from here the the The
Speaker 1: interpretation goes on to say that as these figures are
Speaker 1: dunked into the cauldron by the God, their fate is decided,
Speaker 1: and this fate might include being resurrected or reincarnated in
Speaker 1: some exalted state, such as in this heavenly realm up
Speaker 1: above on the top of the panel, and perhaps as
Speaker 1: a person of higher status or rank. I remember that
Speaker 1: the soldiers shown above the branch were on horseback, so
Speaker 1: maybe this means a fallen warrior could be resurrected as
Speaker 1: an officer or as a member of the equestrian classes
Speaker 1: higher socioeconomic class. And I thought it was really interesting
Speaker 1: how this recalls the imagery of cauldrons used in visions
Speaker 1: of Hell and multiple very different Asian cultures that we
Speaker 1: talked about in the previous part of this series, where
Speaker 1: the cauldrons were not only an instrument of torture in
Speaker 1: the realms of Hell, but they were secondarily a symbol
Speaker 1: of transformation into something more honorable and refined, if you
Speaker 1: could be reincarnated as a sort of better being after
Speaker 1: the stint in hell and it it makes me think again,
Speaker 1: Like seeing this motif a rise in multiple different cultures,
Speaker 1: separated rightly in time and geography and language and and
Speaker 1: all these different barriers, makes one wonder if there's not
Speaker 1: a common universal human experience underlying that theme, which would
Speaker 1: seem to me to be very likely the transformation of
Speaker 1: raw food into cooked food, or of dirty clothing into
Speaker 1: clean clothing, as would be just you know, natural things
Speaker 1: where we see transformed by the work of the cauldron. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the basic nature of of cauldron technology and the
Speaker 1: idea that it it enables transformation, It does seem to
Speaker 1: be something you just see in culture after culture after culture,
Speaker 1: just across vast distances on the planet. And the laundry
Speaker 1: note is is important too. I've seen that pop up
Speaker 1: in a few different sources pointing to specific cauldrons of
Speaker 1: note uh, And often discussions regarding that cauldron come back
Speaker 1: to cooking and the preparation of food, the transformation of
Speaker 1: of of of organic matter into some sort of delicious
Speaker 1: or hearty dish, but also sometimes laundry is discussed as
Speaker 1: a possibility as well, And uh, I mean that is
Speaker 1: a transformation we I think we tend to totally take
Speaker 1: for granted that you can have, you know, foul and
Speaker 1: soiled clothing, and yet here is this fabulous specialized cauldron
Speaker 1: in your house or at the local laundry map or
Speaker 1: in the basement of your building that you put these
Speaker 1: items into and you come back later and behold, they
Speaker 1: have been refreshed, they are they are new again. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: who doesn't love clean laundry, especially clean sheets, is a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing. Okay, I got another panel I want to
Speaker 1: focus on. This one's very special and it may be
Speaker 1: the most important of all of them due to its
Speaker 1: placement within the cauldron, and that is the panel that
Speaker 1: is in the bottom of the cauldron bowl. Now I
Speaker 1: might not have even noticed this one just by looking
Speaker 1: at pictures of the plates on the Internet, because a
Speaker 1: lot of the photography that's out there focuses on the
Speaker 1: side plates for good reason. But I actually saw this
Speaker 1: one brought up in a curator's video feature from the
Speaker 1: British Museum that was focused on the District cauldron. I
Speaker 1: think maybe when um, when they had it on loan
Speaker 1: or something. But it was by an archaeologist named Julia Farley,
Speaker 1: and this was really interesting, so that this panel is
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the pot, so if you're looking
Speaker 1: down into the pot, it's what you'd see at the
Speaker 1: very bottom, assuming the pots empty. And because of that feature,
Speaker 1: I started to think about how if the pot had
Speaker 1: something in it, like soup or whatever. I don't know
Speaker 1: if this was ever used to serve sup probably not,
Speaker 1: actually more more of a ceremonial vessel, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess I couldn't rule that out. Um, if it
Speaker 1: had anything in it, this panel would be hidden and
Speaker 1: then it would be revealed as the contents were taken
Speaker 1: out of the bull. Um. So what what do you
Speaker 1: see in this panel? Well, it depicts a gigantic bull reclining.
Speaker 1: When I first saw it, it looked to me like
Speaker 1: it was kind of, I don't know, lazily resting. But
Speaker 1: I've seen it written about as if this bull is
Speaker 1: laying on the ground because it has been wounded, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell that just by looking at it. So
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, it's a bull laying on its side.
Speaker 1: But then with its head propped up, and the head
Speaker 1: of the bull is actually a very prominently vertically raised
Speaker 1: three D feature. Technically, the whole thing, like the other panels,
Speaker 1: is three D. It's all hammered and stamped and embossed
Speaker 1: into three D textures, but the head of the bull
Speaker 1: is sort of more three D than the rest, like
Speaker 1: it really rises into prominence off the base. And then
Speaker 1: behind the back of the bull we see a goddess
Speaker 1: or a female warrior posed with sword raised and her
Speaker 1: legs are bent. They're kind of tucked up under her
Speaker 1: as if she were jumping, like as if she were
Speaker 1: in midair at the peak of a great leap, and
Speaker 1: she's going to come down with the sword and strike
Speaker 1: and slay this giant bull. So it's an action shot.
Speaker 1: There are also three dogs in the image. It seems
Speaker 1: two of them seem to be alive and helping this
Speaker 1: warrior or goddess slay the bull, and the other dog
Speaker 1: appears to be dead. Um. But something I noticed also
Speaker 1: about this bull. So it's got this raised head coming
Speaker 1: up off of the body, turning at an angle, and
Speaker 1: then the bull has what looked like two holes behind
Speaker 1: its eyes exactly where the horns would emerge from. And
Speaker 1: I wondered, does this mean that the bull uh at
Speaker 1: some point had some kind of horns I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe made of a different material coming out of these holes. Uh,
Speaker 1: that may be known. And if so, I just didn't
Speaker 1: find anything about it. So so I don't know. But
Speaker 1: if so, I like, I wonder what those horns were.
Speaker 1: And again I don't know if this is significant, but
Speaker 1: if you had anything opaque in the pot, as the
Speaker 1: pot was emptied, you would first see the bulls raised
Speaker 1: head coming up out of that opaque material. But then
Speaker 1: as more and more was taken out of the pot,
Speaker 1: as the bottom was revealed, it would reveal the goddess
Speaker 1: or the female warrior, this person with the sword and
Speaker 1: her three hounds surrounding the bull, ready to strike. And
Speaker 1: I thought that was a kind of interesting. It's almost
Speaker 1: like by taking the contents out of this bowl, it
Speaker 1: would be pulling back the curtain on the dramatic aspect
Speaker 1: of the scene. Wow. Yeah, that's a lot to unpack
Speaker 1: because on one hand, there's just sort of the I guess,
Speaker 1: the basic pleasure to be had, and this potential scene
Speaker 1: of like the level of super lowering and revealing horns
Speaker 1: and then head and then beast. Uh Not unlike some
Speaker 1: of the novelty mugs you'll find today, where there's some
Speaker 1: sort of uh like I don't know, like a cartoon
Speaker 1: octopus on the bottom of the mug. You drink half
Speaker 1: of your hot cocoa and there's an octopus peering up
Speaker 1: at you. Uh. I mean that alone is fun. That
Speaker 1: they alone transcends time and space. But yeah, on top
Speaker 1: of it, to have this dramatic action scene playing out
Speaker 1: and then the question arise as well, then is this
Speaker 1: a story that I mean? What? What? Did it take
Speaker 1: place beneath a liquid? Did it take place within a caldron?
Speaker 1: You know? What is the exact connection? How does having
Speaker 1: it at the bottom of the cauldron? Um? Well, what
Speaker 1: does that illustrate? What does that do? What is the
Speaker 1: function of that? Yeah? I love this, though I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, I'm not I am not arguing that
Speaker 1: this was used to serve soup. I don't know of
Speaker 1: any evidence of that. So I guess we don't know
Speaker 1: what went into this bowl. If anything, we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how it was used. But another question is what
Speaker 1: does the killing of this bull symbolize? So clearly this
Speaker 1: goddess is is, you know, ready to bring the sword
Speaker 1: down on its neck, but we don't know what that
Speaker 1: act meant. And uh, this is another one of the
Speaker 1: mysteries of the cauldron. The National Museum of Denmark page
Speaker 1: it has an interpretation that the bull may symbolize chaos,
Speaker 1: and the woman who is fighting and killing the bull
Speaker 1: is doing so in order to protect the cosmic order,
Speaker 1: though I'm not sure exactly what supports that speculation, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, personally, I'm just intoxicated by the
Speaker 1: mysteries of of like what are the stories that are
Speaker 1: be being told in these little metal comic strip panels
Speaker 1: with no words on them, Like we don't know what
Speaker 1: the surrounding context is and uh and and I I
Speaker 1: really wish we could. Yeah, yeah, because they I mean,
Speaker 1: the context would have been clear to to to someone
Speaker 1: at least a privileged few within the given culture, if
Speaker 1: not everyone within the given culture. Uh So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's fascinating, fascinating mystery. Thank thank you, thank you. Now
Speaker 1: I was looking up to see if there were any
Speaker 1: good like papers that were using clues in the images
Speaker 1: to try to understand better what stories were being told
Speaker 1: or what the significance of these gods and mythic figures were.
Speaker 1: One paper I found that caught my attention was by
Speaker 1: a scholar named David Alexander Nance, called Plate F on
Speaker 1: the Gun District Cauldron Symbols of Spring and Fertility, publishing
Speaker 1: a journal called and thropo Zoologica in twenty nineteen. And
Speaker 1: thropo Zoologica a journal put out by the French Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History, UH that seems to be focusing on
Speaker 1: the role of non human animals in the history of humankind,
Speaker 1: and I looked up Nance. He is a scholar at
Speaker 1: the University of Aberdeen. Now specifically, this paper adds it
Speaker 1: tries to do a zoological identification of a bird species
Speaker 1: on one of the plates in order to help elucidate
Speaker 1: what the mythic significance may have been. So Nance notes
Speaker 1: that on this plate called Plate F, which broadly I
Speaker 1: mean so, first of all, it shows this huge face
Speaker 1: of like a giant figure with long hair, and then
Speaker 1: other depictions of uh what maybe the same figure in
Speaker 1: like smaller uh scenes around the big head. And then
Speaker 1: the big figure with long hair is holding a bird
Speaker 1: in its hand. And then there are also birds and
Speaker 1: I think cats and dogs flanking it in different places,
Speaker 1: but Nance's specifically looking at the birds and says, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a second. The birds on this plate have a
Speaker 1: very distinctive morphological feature, which is zygo d Actually zygod
Speaker 1: actually is a foot morphology where there are two claws
Speaker 1: facing forward and two facing backward. And given that characteristic,
Speaker 1: there are really only a few types of birds it
Speaker 1: could be. It's obviously not most of them, so so
Speaker 1: the only real candidate for this is the common cuckoo
Speaker 1: or Coculus canoris. And this is interesting because the cuckoo
Speaker 1: connects to a whole other known nexus of of mythological significance,
Speaker 1: so Nance writes quote. This species is also identified on
Speaker 1: a number of other widespread European artifacts where it was
Speaker 1: previously thought to be a bird of prey. The plate
Speaker 1: depicts a goddess in triplicate flanked by two cuckoos releasing
Speaker 1: the first cuckoo of spring. The bird is an obligate
Speaker 1: brood parasite, laying its eggs in other birds nests, leading
Speaker 1: to misconceptions of its life cycle, and the misconceptions about
Speaker 1: cuckoos in antiquity were that there were no female cuckoos,
Speaker 1: that there were only males, and the male birds mated
Speaker 1: with the host females of all the other bird species.
Speaker 1: Now that's not true, but apparently Nance argues that that
Speaker 1: was believed in the ancient world, and for this reason,
Speaker 1: the cuckoo's symbolized male fertility across many different cultures in
Speaker 1: its summer range. So during the summer months in in
Speaker 1: all across Eurasia, this this bird would fly in and
Speaker 1: then it would be associated with fertility and sometimes with
Speaker 1: European fertility goddesses like the bird might sort of be
Speaker 1: it's implied consort. Oh that's fascinating. I mean, that reminds
Speaker 1: me of various misinterpretations regarding spontaneous generation or the idea
Speaker 1: that the scara beetle, you know, the dung beetle, emerges
Speaker 1: from the dong. That it is that it is the
Speaker 1: thing that that is borne out of of of the
Speaker 1: dirt and of the waist, as opposed to enufl life
Speaker 1: form that's making use of this material. Oh yeah, that's interesting. So,
Speaker 1: but to be biologically precise, what is happening with the
Speaker 1: cuckoos is that they are depositing their own So cuckoos
Speaker 1: are mating with cuckoos, and then they're laying cuckoo eggs,
Speaker 1: they're just laying in the nests of other birds and uh,
Speaker 1: and so that's known as brood parasitism. But because of
Speaker 1: the confusion of like not seeing them with their own nests,
Speaker 1: they were just like, yeah, they're only male cuckoos and
Speaker 1: they're just uh, they essentially said that they were cook
Speaker 1: holding the male birds of other species. Yeah, brood parasitism
Speaker 1: is a is a fascinating topic, and of course we
Speaker 1: see this in the insect world as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's not certainly but not confined to just
Speaker 1: these birds. Fascinating topic we could easily come back to
Speaker 1: because they're also even with the cuckoo there. As I recall,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ins and outs regarding m uh,
Speaker 1: the enforcement of of this poll see yes, both with
Speaker 1: actions that if sometimes are sometimes compared to almost mafia
Speaker 1: tactics and uh. And also just like how does the
Speaker 1: egg appear and how is there like a physical deception
Speaker 1: or mimicry going on? Yeah, I think there's widely believed
Speaker 1: to be like just an ongoing evolutionary arms race between
Speaker 1: the host species ability to recognize cuckoo eggs and be like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, no, and then the cuckoo's ability to
Speaker 1: adapt to that and further blend in oh but sorry.
Speaker 1: The other thing about the cuckoo that would make it
Speaker 1: probably associated with fertility would be its seasonal migratory patterns,
Speaker 1: because this is one of the migratory birds that would
Speaker 1: show up in UH in northern stretches of Europe and
Speaker 1: Asia in the summer months, and it was so it
Speaker 1: might show up in spring. You would say like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's the there's the first cuckoo of the of the
Speaker 1: warm season. And so it would thus be associated also
Speaker 1: with the regeneration of plants and things like that, having
Speaker 1: fertility associations for that reason. Anyway, I guess we'll call
Speaker 1: it there for the Gun District cauldron. But I find
Speaker 1: this such an intriguing artifact. I don't know, like, every
Speaker 1: time there's a new paper UH providing some some interpretation
Speaker 1: of of what's going on in these panels, I want
Speaker 1: to know, yeah, yeah, And and by all means, when
Speaker 1: you get a chance, you're not driving a vehicle or something,
Speaker 1: look up images of the Gun District cauldron. And certainly
Speaker 1: if you have access to the Gun District cauldron. If
Speaker 1: you can go see it at a museum uh now
Speaker 1: or in the future, please do so. If you can
Speaker 1: steal it, you know, tuck it into the bridges and
Speaker 1: get it out of there and not steal the Gun
Speaker 1: District cauldron. Um Now. Cauldrons are also found in rivers,
Speaker 1: which which is interesting. Rivers also have, of course have
Speaker 1: divine importance in many cultures and one example is the
Speaker 1: Battersea Cauldron that was found in the river River Thames
Speaker 1: at Battersea in South London. It's a large riveted bronze
Speaker 1: vessel with signs of maintenance over many years. Originally crafted
Speaker 1: an estimated three thousand years ago, so this would have
Speaker 1: been a highly advanced example of metalwork from this time period. Now.
Speaker 1: This cauldron is mentioned in a blog entry on the
Speaker 1: British Museum website by Jennifer Wexler and Neil Wilkins titled
Speaker 1: Cauldrons and flesh Hooks between the Living and the Dead
Speaker 1: in Ancient Britain and Ireland. And yeah they they've also
Speaker 1: point out an example of a three thousand year old
Speaker 1: flesh hook found in a bog in Northern Ireland and
Speaker 1: when complete, when one piece. It would have been a
Speaker 1: long metal and wood rod decorated with bronze birds. The
Speaker 1: hook would have been used in ritual feasting for the
Speaker 1: purpose of pulling cooked meat from a cauldron, and such
Speaker 1: tools were also used when working with with hides and
Speaker 1: tanning pits and so forth. But this particular artifact also
Speaker 1: had birds on it, which is pretty interesting. I'm going
Speaker 1: to read just a quote from that British Museum blog
Speaker 1: post quote. The two sets of birds may have represented
Speaker 1: opposing forces in the world of ancient people. Swans are
Speaker 1: white birds of the water, but also associated with the
Speaker 1: sun and light, and the family group suggests fertility because
Speaker 1: they're depicted in a family group here. The ravens, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, are blackbirds of the air and divine communication,
Speaker 1: connected with wild uplands. Their dark color and gruesome dietary
Speaker 1: habits were connected with war and death. These differences may
Speaker 1: have represented the competing forces of good and evil in
Speaker 1: the world. But both of them will help you get
Speaker 1: your meat out of the pot. Yeah, but again, remember
Speaker 1: the pot is no mere pot. Uh, there's no you know,
Speaker 1: there are no technologies this central to to human existence
Speaker 1: that don't take on all these other meanings and metaphors
Speaker 1: and so forth. So the cauldron is it's where you're
Speaker 1: cooking your meat, it's where you may be doing your laundry.
Speaker 1: But that cauldron is also the universe. That cauldron is
Speaker 1: also life itself. It is the whole experience of humanity. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's some profound fond Yeah, we didn't even get into
Speaker 1: fond There you go, another miniature cauldron. Well yeah we did.
Speaker 1: Come on, flash, this is basically fond talking. You can
Speaker 1: get any kind of I guess with fond I have
Speaker 1: so little experience with it. I just instantly think of
Speaker 1: only cheese and bread, and yeah, it's I I for
Speaker 1: I forget sometimes that there's a richer tradition of of fond.
Speaker 1: I mean there are also other, you know, wonderful traditions
Speaker 1: of you know, communal feasting from heated bowls uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Chinese hot pot traditions and also um uh and uh
Speaker 1: and and certainly that's a that's a fun experience if
Speaker 1: you get a chance to partake of that. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever actually done that. But that's usually with
Speaker 1: a not with like um, like an oil like you
Speaker 1: might use to cook and fondu. But that's like a
Speaker 1: highly flavored broth. Yeah, yeah, broth. And they you can
Speaker 1: find you plenty of modern restaurants. In fact, I went
Speaker 1: to one, I want to say this was in Florida,
Speaker 1: where not only were there was there a hot pot
Speaker 1: at your table, but there was also a conveyor belt
Speaker 1: going through like a little sushi conveyor belt, except instead
Speaker 1: of sushi, it contained various plated ingredients that you could
Speaker 1: add to the hot pot. Oh that sounds awesome. Yeah
Speaker 1: it was. It was quite a parade of meats and vegetables.
Speaker 1: But that's another thing worth worth keeping in mind too
Speaker 1: with these with these cauldrons, you know, it's like, this
Speaker 1: is the pot, is this this this thing at the center,
Speaker 1: It is this thing on the fire. It is the
Speaker 1: thing that is then communally used. So it you can
Speaker 1: you can easily imagine how it just becomes this hyper
Speaker 1: magnet for meaning, especially in the ancient world. You know,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking back to this, uh, this plate on
Speaker 1: the Gun District cauldron, the one where the giant god
Speaker 1: is dunking the warriors in the from the underworld into
Speaker 1: the cauldron. And one thing I can't tell from the
Speaker 1: image is the warrior scared to be dunked, or is
Speaker 1: the warrior excited like he's going in head first. You
Speaker 1: can see he's got one arm sort of raised up.
Speaker 1: But that it could be like oh no, oh no,
Speaker 1: please don't dunk, or it could be like a wee
Speaker 1: arms up thing. It's hard to tell. Well, I think
Speaker 1: if if you're being manhandled by a god like this
Speaker 1: and you're about to be dunked into a cauldron or
Speaker 1: a vat of some sort, like you should be afraid.
Speaker 1: I think a certain amount of fear is is ideal.
Speaker 1: But then again, if the interpretation is right, this warrior
Speaker 1: is about to maybe be transformed into a higher state
Speaker 1: of existence. Yeah maybe so maybe so. Now one thing
Speaker 1: the sort of capping off our serious discussion here, and
Speaker 1: to be clear, we will be back in another episode
Speaker 1: on Cauldron's We have a number of of wonderful cauldron
Speaker 1: mythologies to discuss. Uh. We'll also get into at least
Speaker 1: a little bit of Dante's Inferno. But uh, this also
Speaker 1: brings me back to a recent film we looked at
Speaker 1: on Weird How Cinema, Jason takes Manhattan. There is a
Speaker 1: scene where Jason, who again can be at least loosely
Speaker 1: compared to various divine and semi divine beings and in history. Um,
Speaker 1: he dunked somebody in this vat of like nasty New
Speaker 1: York water. Uh, possible time. I guess it's not actually
Speaker 1: toxic sludge, but it looks gross. Kill somebody by drowning them,
Speaker 1: holding them by the feet, and dunking them. I think
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be toxic waste. And I think that
Speaker 1: is part of the mythology of Jason Takes Manhattan, is
Speaker 1: that New York is full of open steel drums of
Speaker 1: toxic waste. But the street later that is clearly labeled
Speaker 1: toxic waste. That confuses the matter. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the flavors of the soda fountain machines. And and
Speaker 1: you know, you you make you a mix, so you
Speaker 1: get some new grape, and then you get some some
Speaker 1: diet fanta, and then you get some some toxic waste.
Speaker 1: Fair fair enough. Um. Now, to be clear, the individual
Speaker 1: in this movie does not re emerge from the cauldron changed.
Speaker 1: He's just killed in the bad the bend and the
Speaker 1: vat or the bucket or whatever it was, the barrel.
Speaker 1: But well, now hold on a second, I would say
Speaker 1: that the fact that they are in a Friday movie
Speaker 1: and that we will later see another Friday movie with
Speaker 1: an almost exactly the same stock character may in fact
Speaker 1: me and that these characters are reincarnated throughout each film
Speaker 1: and sort of attained new forms. You know, you've always
Speaker 1: got your your jock hunk, you've always got your nerd,
Speaker 1: you've always got your you know, strict older gentleman um.
Speaker 1: You know that they show up again and again. So
Speaker 1: this may in fact be a well I guess it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a transformation. Well, I guess you could argue
Speaker 1: that I don't know. So first of all, I do
Speaker 1: have to ask is this a widely discussed theory or
Speaker 1: is I'm just riffing here? No, I say, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a bad character gets dunked and then in the
Speaker 1: next movie they're reincarnated as a final girl. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're moving up. There is a transformation. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so you get it's that hierarchy of kill order where
Speaker 1: you're going to you either fall down or you ascend upwards. Possibly. Okay, alright, interesting, interesting,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's also interesting if you take this
Speaker 1: just context of of immersion and rebirth, which we'll get
Speaker 1: into some more in our next episode. Like you see
Speaker 1: this in all sorts of films, Like I was just
Speaker 1: thinking of the Star Wars films, like what happens when
Speaker 1: a character is is terribly injured they go into the
Speaker 1: box to tank? Um, And what is the box to
Speaker 1: tank but a kind of magical space cauldron that heals
Speaker 1: your wounds and allows you to re emerge. I thought
Speaker 1: that scene was weird. Loops Lukes all cut up and
Speaker 1: he's in that like weird white diaper. Yeah, that I
Speaker 1: remember as a kid thinking that was funny, and it
Speaker 1: really and it is still funny. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a lot of a lot of this comes
Speaker 1: from also baptismal imagery, and we'll we'll discuss that a
Speaker 1: little bit in a few sure. I'm also and this
Speaker 1: is also reminded of a scene, particularly in the film
Speaker 1: adaptation adaptation of Umberto Echoes The Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: in which I believe the second murder has been committed
Speaker 1: and the body is found immersed in a vat of
Speaker 1: pigs blood. That the blood that is going to be
Speaker 1: processed into sausage. Uh. And of course that's a that's
Speaker 1: a wonderfully terrifying image. I remember, especially from the movie
Speaker 1: trailer that I watched as a child, because here's this
Speaker 1: cauldron of blood and two legs sticking out of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and even that, there's so much, so much going
Speaker 1: on there, because here's the cauldron as a vessel of
Speaker 1: of of life and death, of food and transformation, but
Speaker 1: also just here an instrument of murder for some deranged
Speaker 1: individual who's causing chaos at the abbey. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: we must cease cauldron ing for today. But there will
Speaker 1: be one more cauldron, yes, and like I said, it
Speaker 1: should be a fun one. We'll get into some more mythologies,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss a little bit of Dante and who knows
Speaker 1: what else? All right in the mean time, again, if
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to those first two episodes on the
Speaker 1: cauld and go back and listen to those, a lot
Speaker 1: of good, good content there. Uh, join us for the
Speaker 1: next episode. Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed on Monday's. We usually do listener mail.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays, we usually do a monster fact or artifact episode.
Speaker 1: That's a short form episode. Amount of fridays. We set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a
Speaker 1: strange film. Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at
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