Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: The road to the central highland plateau of Siang Kwang
Speaker 1: in northern Laos is a rough one. It climbs and twists,
Speaker 1: revealing to the travelers sweeping vistas at every turn, terraced
Speaker 1: fields where cattle graze, and dramatic limestone cliffs. The road
Speaker 1: itself is frequently broken, with deep ruts and occasional washouts,
Speaker 1: slow traffic to a crawl. They're in the remote misty
Speaker 1: heighth giants dominate the landscape, massive stone vessels that give
Speaker 1: the plateau its name, the plane of jars. These vessels
Speaker 1: are not modest, some rising up to three meters in height,
Speaker 1: but some weighing up to thirty tons. Their shapes vary
Speaker 1: nearly as much as their sizes. Some cylinders, some with
Speaker 1: their large stone lids resembling mushrooms. Many are cracked and worn.
Speaker 1: Their surfaces, ground down over time by the wind and
Speaker 1: the weather. The jars are spread out over a massive territory.
Speaker 1: Some stand alone as watchful sentinels, while others are densely
Speaker 1: clustered together as strange stone forests. In the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: French geologist and archaeologist Madeline Kolani traveled to Laos to
Speaker 1: conduct the first comprehensive study of these jars. She spent
Speaker 1: months on sites, mapping each jar with meticulous care, sketching configurations,
Speaker 1: and conducting excavations. She also spent time listening to the
Speaker 1: storytelling of locals, taking into account their understanding of the place.
Speaker 1: While earlier scholars assumed the vessels were mere storage for
Speaker 1: grain or water, she came to believe that they held
Speaker 1: a deeper ritual purpose. The discovery of charred human remains
Speaker 1: in nearby caves suggested that the jars played a role
Speaker 1: in the funerary rituals rather than the mundane storage of
Speaker 1: these peoples. The caves, she suggested, were used to cremate bodies,
Speaker 1: which would then be interred in the jars. She used
Speaker 1: these discoveries to publish a two volume study of the area,
Speaker 1: which laid the foundation for scholarship on the subject. Kolani
Speaker 1: continued to conduct field studies of the jars until her
Speaker 1: death in nineteen forty three, but it would be many
Speaker 1: decades before new researchers brought modern technology to the mystery.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, for example, researchers used modern GPS
Speaker 1: enabled mapping of site I, documenting the exact location of
Speaker 1: each jar and the surrounding burial pits. This helped establish
Speaker 1: a more clear relationship between the two since advances, including
Speaker 1: the technique called optically stimulated luminescence or OSL, have further
Speaker 1: clarified the chronology of the vessels, showing them to be
Speaker 1: relics of the Iron Age, with some of the jars
Speaker 1: dating back three thousand years. Carbon dating of the remains, however,
Speaker 1: have shown that their period of usage extended to around
Speaker 1: seven hundred years ago, suggesting and enduring ritual significance to
Speaker 1: the sites leading well into the medieval era. All put together,
Speaker 1: it seems that while scholars may disagree on the finer details,
Speaker 1: the modern consensus now is that Kolani was correct. Now,
Speaker 1: the extensive travel required to witness the plane of jars
Speaker 1: makes it an unlikely tourist destination. But there's another reason
Speaker 1: that the sites are sparsely visited. A single wrong step
Speaker 1: could be fatal. You see, when northern Laos was heavily
Speaker 1: bombed during the Vietnam War, tens of millions of unexploded
Speaker 1: cluster munitions were left hidden in the soil. It's estimated
Speaker 1: that it will take nearly a century to remove all
Speaker 1: the unexploded bombs. Today, hey, the Jara Plains is a
Speaker 1: UNESCO World Heritage Site recognized for its archaeological and cultural significance.
Speaker 1: Local authorities have created walking paths, signage, and small visitor
Speaker 1: centers to educate travelers while also protecting the ancient stones.
Speaker 1: Guided tours, as you'd imagine, are very limited, but a
Speaker 1: slow stream of international travelers do make their journey each year,
Speaker 1: drawn by both the mystery and the majesty of the landscape.
Speaker 1: Visiting the Plane of Jars is indeed a journey through
Speaker 1: time where the ancient rituals of past civilizations is on
Speaker 1: full display. These stone vessels stand as silent witnesses to
Speaker 1: centuries of life, death and resilience, a reminder that history
Speaker 1: can be both unusual and very curious. Doug was worried,
Speaker 1: worried about something most of us probably would never even
Speaker 1: think about. He was worried about elk, more specifically, too
Speaker 1: many elk, because Yellowstone National Park, home to nearly four
Speaker 1: hundred species of animals and spanning three mountain states, was
Speaker 1: in danger of ecological collapse. You see, Yellowstone was missing
Speaker 1: one very important creature that brought balance to the whole ecosystem,
Speaker 1: what is often called a keystone species, the North American
Speaker 1: gray wolf, which had been completely absent from the park
Speaker 1: for fifty years. But why. The story begins all the
Speaker 1: way back in eighteen seventy four, when President Ulyssess Grant
Speaker 1: designated Yellowstone as protected land and made it the very
Speaker 1: first national park. Grant was moved after seeing photographs taken
Speaker 1: by Ferdinand Hayden. One look at the roaming bison, swimming bears,
Speaker 1: wide canyons, alpine rivers, and enormous blue sky was enough
Speaker 1: to convince him this place was special. But just because
Speaker 1: the land was protected didn't mean the wildlife were. In fact,
Speaker 1: many visitors came to the park for the purpose of
Speaker 1: hunting bison, antelope, and even predator species. Gray Wolves were
Speaker 1: especially sought after for their pelts and because they frightened
Speaker 1: the tourists, occasionally the wolves even attacked local cattle herds
Speaker 1: on nearby farms. All this meant that by nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: there were no wolves left in Yellowstone, and this was
Speaker 1: the problem that had Doug Smith so worried to fully
Speaker 1: understand it, though, you have to think about this as
Speaker 1: dominoes all lined up in a neat row ready to fall,
Speaker 1: with the first hitting the second, and the third and
Speaker 1: so on. The absence of wolves in the park was
Speaker 1: a problem because without wolves, the elk population had grown
Speaker 1: out of control. The plants that they ate, especially aspen
Speaker 1: and cottonwood trees, were now in danger of being overgrazed.
Speaker 1: And since the elk had no predators to fear, they
Speaker 1: also spent longer and longer way out in the open
Speaker 1: grazing beside the river bank. And because there were too
Speaker 1: many elk, the plants along the river that cleaned the
Speaker 1: river died off and the river became cloudy. And because
Speaker 1: the river was cloudy, many fish didn't survive well in
Speaker 1: that cloudy water, which meant fewer food for bears, otters,
Speaker 1: and birds of prey, And with a vegetation gone from
Speaker 1: the riverbank beavers also had nothing to build their dams with,
Speaker 1: and the creatures dependent on a wetland environment that was
Speaker 1: created by those dams had nowhere to go. You can
Speaker 1: see how one problem trickled down to all the other systems.
Speaker 1: The solution here might seem obvious. It certainly did to
Speaker 1: Doug Smith and the conservationists who were working with him.
Speaker 1: If wolves were reintroduced into the park, this time with
Speaker 1: protections in place to keep them from being hunted, the
Speaker 1: rest might fall into place. As it turns out, that
Speaker 1: was easier said than done. One big issue, well, that
Speaker 1: would be the nearby ranchers. Yellowstone is situated between three states, Idaho, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: and Montana, and in all three states there were farmers
Speaker 1: and ranchers who felt worried about the plan to reintroduce
Speaker 1: the wolves. Make sure the wolves would be in the
Speaker 1: park and not on the ranchers land, But what was
Speaker 1: to stop them from hunting down helpless livestock on nearby farms.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as if the wolves could read or understand
Speaker 1: a you are leaving Yellowstone sign. Then even fences weren't
Speaker 1: enough to deter them. And this wasn't the first time
Speaker 1: that the park's conservation efforts had actually impacted these farmers'
Speaker 1: ways of life. Bison ate up all the grass that
Speaker 1: the farmers wanted to graze their own cowson, and then
Speaker 1: as more and more visitors came to Yellowstone, the National
Speaker 1: Park Service needed to expand They paid the farmers well
Speaker 1: for their land, but many were sorry to leave their homes. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the conservationists and the ranchers settled on a compromise. Wolves
Speaker 1: that wandered out of the park and onto private land
Speaker 1: were fair game for farmers and ranchers to kill. As
Speaker 1: long as wolves stayed in the park, however, they would
Speaker 1: be safe and protected by the law. In January of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, wildlife officials captured fourteen Canadian wolves in
Speaker 1: northern Alberta. These wolves, while not the same species as
Speaker 1: the original Yellowstone wolves, were similar enough that they would
Speaker 1: take the same role in the ecosystem. The conservationists even
Speaker 1: made sure to pull wolves from different packs so that
Speaker 1: they'd be able to breed and continue growing the population.
Speaker 1: Once they were inside Yellowstone, and for months, the wolves
Speaker 1: stayed in small acclamation pens within the park to get
Speaker 1: comfortable with their new environment. Doug Smith was among the
Speaker 1: researchers stationed to care for and observe the wolves to
Speaker 1: see if they be ready for release. In March of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, the gates were opened and the fourteen
Speaker 1: Canadian wolves stepped hesitantly into the snow to investigate their
Speaker 1: new homes. Less than a year later, seventeen more joined
Speaker 1: Yellowstone's wolf population. As for the predictions of Doug Smith
Speaker 1: and other conservationists, they all came true. Within months of
Speaker 1: the wolves being reintroduced, Yellowstone went from an ecosystem teetering
Speaker 1: on the edge of collapse to a thriving, flourishing environment,
Speaker 1: receiving more than four million visitors every year, most of
Speaker 1: them probably I have no idea that the lush forests,
Speaker 1: the clean rivers, and the huge range of species that
Speaker 1: they see are all thanks to one heroic creature, the
Speaker 1: Big Bad Wolf. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and
Speaker 1: written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by
Speaker 1: Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people
Speaker 1: who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
Speaker 1: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an
Speaker 1: ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the
Speaker 1: same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee.
Speaker 1: Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious, m