WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Bone Palace, Part 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.600 Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:10.000 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Time to go 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:12.080 into the vault for a classic episode of the show. 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:16.079 This one originally aired on April seven, and it's the 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.160 first of our two part series on the Bone Palace, 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.560 the the huts and houses built of bones. All right, well, 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:25.800 let's go ahead, Yeah, throw those vault doors open and 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.560 see what comes assailant out. I cannot wait to begin 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.640 our exodus from this gray country, said Osma. Yes, my matamor. 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.120 The people of Teneraff take death too seriously. There's no 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.280 room for the bailful arts here, and truth be told, 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.720 they do not deserve our necromatic skills. I concur and 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.360 agree wholeheartedly. If the people here insist on taking such 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.360 a sacred stance on expiration, then fine. Good luck talking 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:54.600 to the dead and raising skeletons from the grave without 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:57.760 us around. Indeed, I wish them luck too in the 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:01.840 completion of the canal project, with our splendid bone columns 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:05.039 to do the heavy lifting. Yes, they lack vision, I 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:09.400 shall not miss them. Yes, good bones, though strong dairy 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.400 industry here, I will miss the calcium well, yes, but 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:16.280 but but our destination will first of all be free 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.320 of their hyper religious nonsense, and it is filled with 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:23.560 the remains as well, for sinsor is populated exclusively by 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:27.240 the bones and mummies of a people ten centuries dead. No, 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.399 Matte Moore, we shall build such an empire of necromancy. 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:36.520 Oh yes, Flying buttresses made from actual ixia and coxyges, 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:41.720 a vast amphitheater of gladiators, reanimated mummies serving us delicacies 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.480 on silver trays, skull goblets of wine and all to 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:50.000 the music of piping bone flutes. Or a public bathwork 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:56.200 made entirely of Maxillayan mandibles, twin thrones crafted of coiling vertebrae. 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:11.560 Hell to our powers of bones. Welcome to Stuff to 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:20.840 Blow your Mind? Production of My Heart Radio. Hey, are 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:22.680 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind? My name 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.360 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I. 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:30.120 I know today's episode got you in a necromantic adventure mood. 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.360 So you dove into the old Clark Ashton Smith, didn't you. Yeah. 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:35.960 When I saw that we were going to be doing 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:40.280 an episode titled The Bone Palace about novel uses, for 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.840 bones throughout human and to a certain extent, animal history. 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.560 My mind instantly went to necromancers, and so I instantly 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.240 thought of Clark Ashton Smith's excellent little short story, The 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.920 Empire of the Necromancers, and so the cold Open we 0:02:55.960 --> 0:03:01.040 began with that little skit. It was basically a on 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.720 on that particular tale and the characters in it, in 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.760 which we find a couple of necromancer's packing up shop, 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:10.760 leaving the city in the world of the living in 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.840 order to set up like a decadent necromantic playground in 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.200 the desert. You know, you think that they would need 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.360 to stay at least around some of the living to 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.320 do business, right, Like you can't just like be a 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:25.799 necromancer inside a pyramid, Like there's a lot to work with, 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.000 but nobody to work for, right I mean? And yeah, 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.360 and then when you actually get into necromancy as it's 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.760 treated in a lot of fantasy, you know, it's about 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.560 not only death but life. It's about the cross between 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:41.240 the two. And so I don't know, it's it's one 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.200 of these tales. A lot of Clark Ashton Smith's tales 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:48.280 are at once very you know, very deep and exotic feeling. 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:50.920 You know they have this this dark other worldliness to them, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:53.880 and yet there's often a little cheekiness as well. There's 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.839 a sort of strange humor to them. And I think 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:00.000 that's that's evident in his original story, which, by the way, 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.000 if you want to read it out there, you can 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.480 find it online for free at Eldric Dark dot com. 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.520 I believe they have all of Clark Ashton Smith's writings 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:14.920 assembled there well. So obviously a a palace made out 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.800 of bones, a bone building, would be a necromancer's dream. 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:22.280 But it's hard to imagine such a place existing in reality, 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.200 or at least it would have been for me a 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:27.760 few days ago. But now maybe, um, and maybe that 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.800 should not be so hard to imagine, because I want 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.039 to start off today by going on a voyage of 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:35.960 the mind's eye to to venture into the prehistoric past. 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.680 Will you come with me, Robert, I shall let us 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.840 go to a place that is almost a necromantic kingdom. Uh. 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.800 It's a place that is today in southwestern Russia. This 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.960 would be about five hundred kilometers south of Moscow, UH, 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.600 close to the banks of the Don River, near the 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:57.560 modern day city of Vornesh And today this area is 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.760 is basically kind of a fertile region, prairie type ecosystems, 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.560 relatively moderate continental climate. It's a major center of agriculture 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.200 in modern Russia. Actually, I think they grow staple crops 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.560 like sugar beets and potatoes, and they do animal agriculture 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:16.440 as well there. But twenty thousand years ago there was 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.440 still an ice age ruling the planet, and especially these 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.919 northern realms of the planet. The most recent ice age 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.600 known scientifically is the Last Glacial Period or l g P, 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.680 lasted from more than a hundred thousand years ago. I 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:33.880 think maybe roughly like a hundred and twenty thousand years 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.400 ago or so to roughly twelve thousand years ago. And 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:44.000 this was the last great glaciation of the broader Pleistocene Age, 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:46.640 which began more like two and a half million years ago. 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:50.960 So the Pleistocene Age has featured this back and forth 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.719 pattern over over geological time, this pattern of repeated glaciation 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.640 events where for thousands of years at a time, the 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:02.279 world will grow old and the polar ice caps will 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.440 creep down over the map towards the equator, like this 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:09.440 sort of slow paint drip of frozen death, and then 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.960 these glacial periods will be followed by warmer interglacial periods, 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:15.599 sort of like with the one we think we're in 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.760 right now, where the ice sheets retreat back toward the 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:22.880 polls and complex life pours back into these ice paved 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.239 landscapes that are left behind. Now, of course this sounds 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.599 very apocalyptic, but again, remember that these changes happen over 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:33.480 like many thousands of years, so you know, generally humans 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.080 and animals have have time to sort of adapt in 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.080 migrate back and forth to adjust their lives to the 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.920 changing climates. The interglacial period that we're in right now 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.360 is known as the Holocene epoch, and since it began 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:50.600 more than ten thousand years ago, this relatively warm Holocene 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.640 includes all of recorded human history. I think about that. 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.919 We have no surviving literature at all with firsthand account 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:03.640 of what these little ice ages were like, but there 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:07.719 absolutely were humans around at the time. There were humans, 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:12.160 humans like us crawling the earth during these frozen periods. 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.280 Homo sapiens actually came to exist during the place to 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:19.280 see I'll be at first in warmer equatorial regions, but 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:21.840 they soon began to spread all over the planet. We've 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:24.360 we've talked about the spread of humans in recent episodes, 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.960 even too far reaches in the north, where the wind 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:32.240 would be ever howling. In this this menace of ice loomed. Yeah. 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:34.880 I believe we've also talked about how the Neanderthal is 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:39.080 u is perhaps more ideally suited for this sort of 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:43.480 cold weather environment. Yeah, and the Neanderthal will will come 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:46.080 up a bit in this episode. But so Homo sapiens 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:51.200 and Neanderthals both actually eventually spread to this general region, 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:55.960 the Russian Plain, this area in like southwest Russia and Ukraine, uh, 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.680 and more specifically this area I mentioned earlier that's you know, 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.679 a few hundred kilometers south of modern day Moscow, along 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:07.640 the banks of the Dawn. So the last glacial period 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.360 would have reached its most bitter cold in this place 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.560 between about twenty three thousand and eighteen thousand years ago. 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:20.160 The summers then would have been very short and very cool. 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.880 Winters would be long and freezing. And at that time, 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.120 winter in this place would have averaged about negative twenty 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.120 degrees celsius or about negative four degrees fahrenheit. And that's 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.120 before wind chill is taken into account, and it would 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.600 have been windy. So if you try to picture it. 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.320 This region of the Russian plane at the time would 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:45.079 have been a freezing step landscape, just a bit south 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:48.320 of the ice sheets that reached down from the polar 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:52.320 regions and covered much of North America, Europe and Asia 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.880 at times. These glaciers, it's kind of hard to imagine this, 0:08:55.960 --> 0:09:00.160 but they were sometimes between three and four kilometers sick, 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.640 or more than two miles. So just imagine a mountain 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:08.440 sheet of ice reaching down from the top of the 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:13.080 world down into the continents, into totally inhabited regions today, 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.240 and there were people who lived here at this time. 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:21.439 The archaeological record indicates that most humans left this region 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:25.520 of southwest Russia during the harshest climate period of this 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.160 ice Age, you know, the like between twenty three thousand 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.080 and eighteen thousand years ago, And of course that's probably 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.240 because first of all, it's so cold, but as a 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:36.079 response to the cold, it's also because you know, most 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.640 food and fuel sources would have disappeared. Uh. In the 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:41.240 words of a study that we're going to cite in 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.839 a minute, this was quote a period of intense cold 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:50.120 when similar latitudes in Europe were already abandoned, but here 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:55.120 some people stayed and survived. I find myself wanting to 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.920 hear a Bruce Springsteen song about living in this environment, 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.240 you know, after after other folks have have gone on 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.640 and left for warmer climates, and you're you're just digging 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.280 in and trying to make life work in this harsh 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:12.640 environment on the winds hellan in this cold town, and 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:15.680 I can hear you uh. And in fact it will 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.480 it'll get even more really relevant because this town also 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.360 rips the bones from your back. Um. So I'm trying 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.280 to imagine the people who lived in the shadow of 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.600 this gigantic glacier. And I'm reminded, of course of that 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:30.920 great line from literature that we come back to on 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.679 the show from time to time. It's John Gardner's description 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.760 of the monster Grendel in his reimagining of the Beowulf legend, 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:41.760 when he calls him, uh, a shadow shooter, an earth 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:46.840 rim roamer, walker of the world's weird wall uh. And 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:50.360 that's so lovely because it's it's first of all, just 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.760 great imagery, but it also actually uses poetic devices that 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:57.440 appear in the original Beowulf epic. Uh, the devices of 0:10:57.440 --> 0:10:59.959 a literation, which is there in Beowulf. You know, repeating 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.800 sounds of the beginning of words, and this weird way 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.320 of forming metaphors known as kinning, where you you sort 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:11.000 of like combine words into into a new compound. One example, 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.240 often in translation in Beowulf would be calling the seas 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:19.439 the whale roads. But for me, the Beowulf comparison doesn't 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:22.480 stop there, because when I think of people trying to 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.600 survive in this world, I get this kind of similar 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.920 feeling of horror and mystery that's invoked by the story 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:32.640 of Beowulf. More generally, like this small band of humans 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:36.760 gathering around a fire set against the backdrop of this vast, 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:41.720 frosty wilderness full of darkness and monsters. Uh. And in reality, 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.200 of course, this wouldn't have been monster monsters, but maybe 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.560 desperate predators and scavengers that are also trying to eke 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.920 out a survival alongside you at the edge of the world. 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:55.520 And this in these utterly unforgiving elements, I mean truly 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.480 a time when you would you wouldn't have to create Grendel, 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:05.000 because Grindel like organisms uh still roamed this region. I mean, 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.840 of course, one of the most astonishing creatures to roam 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.520 this region at the time would have been the great, 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.679 the powerful, the wooly mammoth. But also to compare it 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.680 to Beowolf again, uh, the wooly mammoth is interesting. But 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.280 because as great, as powerful, as terrifying an animal as 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.079 this is, if you were to you know, come in 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:27.000 come into combat with one, it ultimately did form the 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.680 prey diet of many of the humans who or maybe 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.360 all of the humans who lived in this place at 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.040 the time. So you know, they became the Baowolf. They 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:38.559 went out to kill the monster. Yeah, I mean, when 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:42.720 you had the tools and the skills, uh to actually 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.120 bring these creatures down. They were such such such a 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.480 wealth of resources exactly. And that's really getting us to 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.680 the heart of the issue here. So there's another way 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:56.319 this historical situation gives these real life flashes of grin 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.000 daily and horror. And this is the real reason I 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:03.240 brought up these Ice Age hunter gatherers. Archaeologists have uncovered 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:07.960 evidence in about seventy different places so far that the 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.760 prehistoric peoples of this region of Ice Age Russia and 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:17.559 Ukraine and the Russian Plane, they built buildings out of bones, 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:23.600 especially out of the skulls, skeletons, and tusks of the 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:28.800 wooly mammoth. Now, most often these structures take the form 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:33.400 of large bone circles, and if you're trying to picture this, 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:35.160 you can look it up with some terms I'll give 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:37.800 you in a minute. Um. But it's as if the 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:44.160 builders were stacking up ring shaped walls around a central chamber, 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:49.400 except the walls are made out of wooly mammoth skeletons. 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.040 There are no detectable roofs left or you know that 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.439 would cover up these walls if there were ever any roofs. 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:00.840 There are just the circular or oval shaped wall of bone. 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.640 Dating methods reveal that humans were building these bone rings 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:08.960 maybe from like twenty five thousand years ago up until 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:12.680 about twelve thousand years ago in the region and uh 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.360 and the wooly mammoth went extinct in this region about 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:17.520 ten thousand years ago, so the numbers could have been 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.840 dwindling at the time that these buildings went out of fashion. 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:24.880 And the amazing mystery is that so these ancient hunter 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:29.800 gatherer humans were building these ring shaped structures out of 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:33.920 mammoth bones, and archaeologists are not in agreement about what 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.880 these bones circles were for. Yeah, because if you try 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:39.840 and picture one in your mind, I mean, for for 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:43.320 me anyway, it sounds it sounds regal, it sounds a 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:45.640 bit sacred, right, I mean, it's made from the bones 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.600 of this uh, this this organism that you've grown to 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:51.400 depend on. But but then again, you could also wonder, 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.200 is it just is it just a material resources issue? 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.440 Is it like if I started building uh like like 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.080 little houses and forts out of the leftover Amazon on 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:04.520 boxes that I have accumulating in my house. Well, I mean, 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.560 I think you might have more options overall than we're 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.320 available to the people of the Russian Plane at this time. 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.120 But I think you are absolutely on the right track there, Robert, 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.120 I mean, as best we can guess. So maybe we 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.120 should take a break, and then when we come back 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:20.560 we can talk about a new study just from the 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.520 past month about the oldest and largest of these structures 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:31.200 built by modern humans. Thank thank thank Alright, we're back, Okay, 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:34.280 So we've been talking about the idea that all throughout 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:36.600 this place known as the Russian Plane, in this area 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.720 of eastern Europe, in like Southwest Russia and Ukraine, there 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:44.640 are at least like seventy locations that archaeologists have found 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:50.800 where Ice Age hunter gatherers built buildings out of bones. Now, 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.080 I want to be fair, we called this episode the 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:57.760 bone Palace. These are not gigantic, elaborate buildings, they're not castles, 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.560 But it is pretty amazing to see people, especially people 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.640 who we did not believe had any kind of settled existence, 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:11.160 building structures out of wooly mammoth bones. Yeah. I mean 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.440 for the time period, I think this is like a cathedral. 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.920 I mean, you know, in terms of like what else 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.160 could we possibly compare it to that that humans, especially 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:23.560 in that region were constructing. Uh, that we're building in 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.640 one place, Yeah, exactly. Um, So I want to go 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.480 back to a more specific place within this region. I 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.840 mentioned it earlier on remember that specific place about five 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:37.040 hundred kilometers south of Moscow, near the modern day city 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:42.440 of Voronesh. This site is known to archaeologists as Kostenky eleven, 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:46.960 and since the mid twentieth century, archaeologists have known about 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.080 a couple of smaller structures built out of mammoth bones 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:54.920 at this location. But just a few years back, around fourteen, 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:59.000 I've seen both years sited excavation began on a newly 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:03.040 discovered owned circle there, and this new bone circle at 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:07.040 Costinky eleven dates back more than twenty thousand years. Radio 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.439 carbon dating of some of the elements here it pushes 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:13.119 its construction possibly back to about twenty five thousand years 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.119 before the present. Uh So twenty five thousand years is 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:18.280 the number that a lot of news reports have cited. 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:22.840 This bone circle is more than twelve point five meters 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.840 in diameter, which is about forty one feet wide. Uh 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.200 And in the present. The structure when it was found 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.840 was buried about a foot beneath the surface before being unearthed. 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:35.920 But the researchers think that this ring wall of bones 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:39.560 was probably about twenty inches or about fifty centimeters high 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.320 before it collapsed many thousands of years ago, so the 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:45.479 bone wall would have come up, you know, more than 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.520 a foot and a half off the ground or so. 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.240 Now here's where things start getting really weird. How many 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.400 mammoths do you think went into the construction of this building? 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:57.200 You might think, oh, well, you know, a mammoth's big. 0:17:57.600 --> 0:17:59.720 You could probably build a building with one or two 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:04.080 man mouths, right, Well, I mean it is a big, 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.520 big animal. But then when then you start thinking about okay, 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:09.159 which of the bones are actually useful. Uh you know, 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:11.680 which ones are going to be actually large enough for 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.639 long enough to be supportive? Like, there's still the creature 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.280 is only going to have so many ribs, right, Or 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.400 which bones have you not used for other purposes? Another possibility? 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.600 That's right, because this is going to be a very 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:27.119 utilitarian culture, Right, You're gonna have to if that bone 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.159 is better used for scraping hides or you know, aiding 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:35.560 in the the actual mission of acquiring and processing other 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.920 mammoths for your survival. Uh, it doesn't make as much 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:43.600 sense at least without like really significant religious uh um 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:48.080 underpinnings to use it in the construction of this mysterious structure. 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.320 Or I mean so well, actually I'm not gonna spoil it. 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:55.159 There's another possible use for the bones here that that 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:56.760 I want to get to in just a little bit. 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.440 I'll leave that tantalizing mystery for now. But so, how 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.280 many wooly mammoth's here? This structure was built out of 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.520 the bones of more than sixty wooly mammoths, and this 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.720 is indicated by the by the fact that there were 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:14.680 sixty four individual mammoth skulls used in construction, as well 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:19.600 as many other types of bones, including lower jaws, longbones, vertebrae, 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:22.600 and tusks uh And while mammoth bones made up the 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.399 bulk of the building materials, there were also a small 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:29.679 number of bones from reindeer, horses, bears, and foxes like 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.480 the red fox and the Arctic fox uh and the 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:36.720 circle today it sits on an east facing slope, sort 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:41.200 of an incline, a slight incline about six degrees, and curiously, 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.480 the bones make up a continuous wall with no apparent 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:49.679 door or entry way. Well, that indemics me think that 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:52.160 it's either it's either less of a building and more 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.439 of just a sheer structure, almost like a piece of 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:59.240 public art, or it's it's something that you're not supposed 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.119 to come out of. In that case, it makes me 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:03.080 think it might be a tomb. Well, we find no 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.280 evidence that it's a human tomb because there are no 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.439 human remains inside it, so so we could mark that 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:12.000 one off, though that might not be totally off the mark. 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:15.320 In terms of the possibilities for ritual significance, we we 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:18.600 don't know, and but we'll discuss those possibilities as we 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.639 go on. Um So This find was described in a 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:24.879 paper published in the journal Antiquity. It was out just 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.920 this past month by Alexander J. E. Prior, David G. 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:34.320 Barrasford Jones, Alexander E. Doodon, E. Katerina M. Kona Cova, 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.000 John F. Hoffiker, and Clive Gamble, and it was called 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.119 the Chronology and Function of a new circular mammoth bone 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:45.280 structure at Kostenky eleven. And so this new circle they found, 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:47.399 the one we've been talking about, is now believed to 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.760 be both the oldest and the largest bone structure yet 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:55.359 discovered that was built by Homo sapiens. It's at least 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.399 a thousand years older than the other mammoth bone structures 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.080 of Eastern Europe. Uh does a side note when I 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.040 had to qualify built by Homo sapiens, that's because I 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:08.080 was actually reading reports of a single possibly older bones structure, 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.159 uh maybe more than forty thousand years old at a 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.879 site called Malativa one in Ukraine. But this one is 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:17.840 believed to have been built by Neanderthals and not Homo sapiens, 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:20.840 which either way is very interesting. Interesting to see Homo 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:26.120 sapiens and Neanderthals participating in extremely similar cultures of proto 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:31.440 construction out of bones, like before long before a settled 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.840 agricultural life evolved, which is when we normally think of people, 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:39.159 you know, building buildings and stuff like that. So it 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:44.040 makes me wonder where the Homo sapiens copying the Neanderthals? Yeah? Yeah, 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:48.800 or or are we just talking about two intelligent species, uh, 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:52.440 coming to the same conclusions based on the materials available. Yeah, 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.040 and that that could be something there too, because we 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.240 might not be when we're trying to understand what the 0:21:57.280 --> 0:21:59.280 heck was going on here? Why would you build a 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:02.560 little these circular buildings out of bones. Maybe we're just 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:06.840 not imagining how what their material limitations in life were. 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:10.359 So the excavation of this new site, it took about 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:15.000 three years. It included experts from University of Exeter, from Cambridge, 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:20.120 from the Costinky State Museum Preserve, and from the University 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.320 of Colorado Boulder in the University of Southampton. And it 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.280 was done using a technique called flotation, And that's where 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:29.200 you apply water to the dig site in order to 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:33.760 kind of sieve out archaeologically significant material to remove it 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:36.520 from the sediment. So as we go on to discuss 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:38.600 a little bit more about this finding and what makes 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:40.359 it so interesting. I want to keep a couple of 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:44.880 main questions in mind. First of all, again, remember the 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:49.199 utterly harsh, you know, reality of of surviving in this 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:53.400 place during the last glacial maximum, especially the worst part 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:55.800 of it, from like you know, twenty three thousand years 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.359 ago or so to about eighteen thousand years ago. Uh, 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.440 you know, would have been so cold, old and so unforgiving, 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.000 and resources would have been pretty scarce. Why would people 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:07.919 come to or stay in this place at all? And 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:10.240 then yeah, like if it's a place of seasonal return, 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:12.760 then like it would there would have to be some 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:15.879 some advantage there. Like he's often been brought up before 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.240 that the nomadic people's would have regularly returned to say 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:22.480 a hot spring at geothermal spring, which has an obvious 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:26.399 advantage for your survival. But in this case, we can 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:30.000 we find anything that obvious? Yeah? And then the other thing, 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:33.200 of course, would be Okay, we know people were coming here, 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:36.840 what on earth was this little bone palace for? Why 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:40.439 would you go to the trouble of making this thing? Uh? So, 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:42.880 first I want to focus on what the research on 0:23:42.920 --> 0:23:45.760 this this new bone circle found, and then we can 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:48.560 move to the what was it for? Question? Okay, so 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:50.919 first of all, what do the research find? So usually 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:54.159 these mammoth bone buildings made by these Stone Age humans 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:56.919 are surrounded by a number of big pits, and this 0:23:57.000 --> 0:24:00.240