Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Our planet is lush with life of all kinds,
Speaker 1: from the smallest single celled organism to the massive blue
Speaker 1: whale gliding beneath the waves. Earth is a rich tapestry.
Speaker 1: Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the varieties of
Speaker 1: cultures across all seven continents. Where the people in one
Speaker 1: part of the world might live in a technological paradise
Speaker 1: of constant digital connection, there might exist in isolated island
Speaker 1: tribe who have never seen electricity before. In the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, though anthropologist Horace Miner had been studying a
Speaker 1: strange group of people living in a massive territory below
Speaker 1: Lake Superior and above the state of Sarona in Mexico.
Speaker 1: He wrote about them in a paper titled Body Ritual
Speaker 1: among the Nacarima. The Nacarima prioritized economic pursuits and their
Speaker 1: appearance above all else, spending their days performing bizarre body
Speaker 1: rituals in front of shrines in their homes. While every
Speaker 1: home had at least one shrine, those who had elevated
Speaker 1: themselves above poorer tribe members often had two or more.
Speaker 1: In fact, the value of one's living quarters hinged on
Speaker 1: how many shrines they could fit inside. Minor discovered through
Speaker 1: extensive study that every shrine possessed a box of elixirs
Speaker 1: and concoctions that the Nacarima would either ingest or smear
Speaker 1: across their faces to improve themselves. Such tinctures could only
Speaker 1: be procured by medicine men, who would hand over the
Speaker 1: elixir along with an incantation, and there were magical potions
Speaker 1: for all sorts of purposes too, for a price. Of course,
Speaker 1: then Acaima couldn't help but hoard these charms, as they
Speaker 1: were called, even once they had served their purpose. The
Speaker 1: vessels they were packed in would be stored in the
Speaker 1: shrine in case their contents ever needed to be used again.
Speaker 1: And right there in the shrine, underneath that collection of
Speaker 1: boxes sat a front with water provided from a central source,
Speaker 1: the water temple of the community. Then Acaima performed daily
Speaker 1: cleansing rituals at this front, including one that was meant
Speaker 1: to prevent them from incurring the wrath of the holy
Speaker 1: mouth men. The holy mouth Men were feared in the
Speaker 1: community as they performed tortuous acts upon the mouth of people,
Speaker 1: and they would examine the teeth of the tribes members
Speaker 1: and carve holes in the ones that had started rotting.
Speaker 1: Once the holes were large enough, they filled them with
Speaker 1: a liquid that hardened to protect the teeth from getting worse.
Speaker 1: Avoiding the holy mouth men involved a daily ritual performed
Speaker 1: by rubbing a magical substance on a bundle of hogs
Speaker 1: hairs and moving them around inside their oral gavities. By
Speaker 1: doing this each day, they were able to prevent untold
Speaker 1: evils from invading their mouths and driving away their friends.
Speaker 1: Folks who needed more help than could be provided by
Speaker 1: the average medicine man or holy mouth man were required
Speaker 1: to pay at the La Tipso. The La Tipso was
Speaker 1: a temple where sacred ceremonies were performed. On the very ill.
Speaker 1: They would have all their clothes removed by a vestal
Speaker 1: maiden who would collect various fluids and excretions from their bodies.
Speaker 1: To give to a diviner. The diviner studied the organic
Speaker 1: substances and determine what it was that was making the
Speaker 1: Nacaraima member sick. The Nacarima were a culture dependent on
Speaker 1: magic and ceremonies, all of which were performed in specialized
Speaker 1: rooms in their homes, far from the prying eyes of others,
Speaker 1: even from the other members of their own tribes. Horace
Speaker 1: Miners paper was first seen in American Anthropologist, a journal
Speaker 1: published by the American Anthropological Association in nineteen fifty six. Today,
Speaker 1: the rituals of the Nacarima are still widely practiced, though
Speaker 1: their tools have become more advanced. The bundles of hogs
Speaker 1: hairs have been changed to nylon, and the Nakarima people
Speaker 1: hoard elixirs with even more magical powers within their shrines.
Speaker 1: In fact, this strange tribe isn't too different from you
Speaker 1: and I. If you look closely, you might even recognize
Speaker 1: some of its members. Just reverse the letters in the
Speaker 1: name and you'll see that Horace Minor was simply exploring
Speaker 1: the large swath of people living between Canada and Mexico
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. Americans. Evolution is a natural process as creatures
Speaker 1: learned to avoid predators. Over time, their species developed defense
Speaker 1: mechanisms over the course of tens, hundreds, or even hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of years. But evolution isn't limited to nature.
Speaker 1: Everything changes over time. Computers get smaller and more powerful,
Speaker 1: homes are built with stronger materials, and even sports undergo
Speaker 1: some alterations. For example, tennis has been played since the
Speaker 1: twelfth century, when it was called jud Palem or game
Speaker 1: of the Poem. In France. Around the sixteenth century, players
Speaker 1: stopped hitting the ball with their hands and started using
Speaker 1: rackets instead. As more people in more countries continued to
Speaker 1: play it, they also began to change it. A British
Speaker 1: army officer named Walter Wingfield spent over a year perfecting
Speaker 1: his own version, which he patented and sold as Spheri
Speaker 1: Styke or ball playing. Included in the box was a net,
Speaker 1: rackets and balls. He tested his new sports on unsuspecting
Speaker 1: guests at a friend's garden party, after which Wingfield's creation
Speaker 1: took on a life of its own. Spherri Styke found
Speaker 1: its way to the United States and all over Europe,
Speaker 1: where it adopted a new and easier to pronounce name,
Speaker 1: lawn tennis for the simple reason that it wasn't played
Speaker 1: on a court but on a grassy lawn and stead
Speaker 1: interest in the sport led to the formation of tennis
Speaker 1: clubs as well as tournaments in places like New York
Speaker 1: City in France. And while some of the first tennis
Speaker 1: balls had been made of leather or wool or strips
Speaker 1: of cloth, the equipment kept changing with the times. Leather
Speaker 1: eventually gave way to rubber, a material used in modern
Speaker 1: tennis ball manufacturing. Of course, there was one problem with
Speaker 1: tennis back then. No matter what the ball was made
Speaker 1: out of, it could only be played outdoors. Wingfield's original
Speaker 1: game design had included illustrations of an hour glass shaped court,
Speaker 1: which was wider at the ends and more tapered near
Speaker 1: the net in the middle. He'd wanted to sport to
Speaker 1: appear beautiful from all angles. Unfortunately, those kind of spaces
Speaker 1: could only be made outdoors, and winters in Victorian England
Speaker 1: got quite cold. Aristocratic elites didn't want to have to
Speaker 1: wait until spring to play tennis again, but they didn't
Speaker 1: want to freeze either. However, rather than construct a court indoors,
Speaker 1: they just changed the game entirely again, you see. Back
Speaker 1: in India during the mid eighteen hundreds, British military officers
Speaker 1: had found a fun way to pass the time. They
Speaker 1: would set up books in a row across the center
Speaker 1: of a table, with one officer on each side. In
Speaker 1: their hands was a single book, which they used as
Speaker 1: a racket to whack a golf ball back and forth
Speaker 1: over the literary wall they'd constructed. Borrowing from both the
Speaker 1: British military officers and Walter Wingfield's lawn tennis idea, a
Speaker 1: new game was invented. It used a net, just like
Speaker 1: in tennis, except it was much smaller. The rackets also
Speaker 1: got a change. They went from having taught strings in
Speaker 1: their empty centers to being solid wood padals. While the
Speaker 1: company Jay Jacques and Son sold a boxed version of
Speaker 1: the game in England and nineteen o one, Parker Brothers
Speaker 1: distributed its own variety in the United States. In fact,
Speaker 1: Parker Brothers bought the name of the game from Jay
Speaker 1: Jacquin's son not long after it went on sale and
Speaker 1: litigated everyone violating its trademark. That same year, two more
Speaker 1: major changes to the game happened. The ball was replaced
Speaker 1: with a new kind made from celluloid the same material
Speaker 1: that was used to make camera film. These new types
Speaker 1: of balls were hollow and filled with air, allowing them
Speaker 1: to bounce quite high. To aid in their delivery across
Speaker 1: the net, stippled rubber was glued to the surfaces of
Speaker 1: the wooden rackets or paddles. Within several years, its popularity
Speaker 1: spawned organizations where players could connect and compete, followed by
Speaker 1: tournaments and championships all over the globe. Today, it has
Speaker 1: become an Olympic sport, chock full of special techniques, strategies,
Speaker 1: and a glossary of specific terms. What had originally begun
Speaker 1: as a way to pass the time in winter in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century gradually turned into a global phenomenon. Officially
Speaker 1: it's called table tennis, but Parker Brothers had branded it
Speaker 1: with a different name, something it had been called since
Speaker 1: its inception, and one we still used to this day.
Speaker 1: Ping Pong, I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the world of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,