Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. And Rob and I are out
Speaker 2: this week, so we are bringing you some episodes from
Speaker 2: the vault. This is part two of our series Fire
Speaker 2: from the Rocks. This episode originally aired April twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. Let's jump into the fire.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 2: two of our series on naturally fueled flames. Now, in
Speaker 2: the last episode, Rob, you opened with a question that
Speaker 2: we never fully got to the bottom of. The question
Speaker 2: was what is the oldest continuously burning fire on Earth?
Speaker 2: And or you may have phrased it a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: That was one question. I guess another one would be like,
Speaker 2: what's the longest a single fire with a single common
Speaker 2: origin has ever burned?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, but essentially getting down to the same question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess the last one is really unknowable.
Speaker 2: The first, what is the oldest continuous fire still burning today?
Speaker 2: Is I don't know maybe still difficult to know, but
Speaker 2: easier than the other one. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: this question can be answered definitively, but we did at
Speaker 2: least establish that all of the oldest eternal flames maintained
Speaker 2: by humans at various temples and memorials and so forth
Speaker 2: around the world are minuscule in longevity compared to some
Speaker 2: sites of naturally fueled burning, places where some chunk of
Speaker 2: the earth itself is continuously on fire or smoldering at
Speaker 2: the place where it meets oxygen. And one example we
Speaker 2: looked at in the last episode is a very strange
Speaker 2: and beautiful place in the Northwest Territories of Canada called
Speaker 2: the Smoking Hills, where eroding coastal hills and cliff sides
Speaker 2: burn by themselves as a result of an exothermic chemical
Speaker 2: reaction that happens when pyrite rich mudstones exposed to the air,
Speaker 2: so erosion happens, part of the cliff comes away, and
Speaker 2: some of this mudstone that has fine grain pyrite in
Speaker 2: it oxidizes, It heats up, and then some combustible elements
Speaker 2: that are within the mudstone sort of smolder or catch fire,
Speaker 2: and that just creates a self sustaining, self igniting burn
Speaker 2: that can go on for a long long time. All
Speaker 2: evidence points to the conclusion that the Smoking Hills have
Speaker 2: been burning for hundreds or even thousands of years. So
Speaker 2: there might be a question about whether you'd want to
Speaker 2: call this technically an example of fire or not. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is smoldering rather, You're not usually seeing like big
Speaker 2: sort of dancing flames coming off of it. But it's
Speaker 2: smoking and burning for hundreds or thousands of years. It
Speaker 2: certainly is a very long burn. But is it the
Speaker 2: longest Well, I think the answer is probably not. Again,
Speaker 2: this question is hard to answer conclusively, but one site
Speaker 2: I have seen proposed as the holder of the title
Speaker 2: of the longest burning fire on Earth is a place
Speaker 2: in Australia known as the Burning Mountain. The Burning Mountain
Speaker 2: is technically known as Mount Wingin spelled Wingin like wing
Speaker 2: in its WinGen, which is a name allegedly derived from
Speaker 2: a word used by the native Wannerua people meaning fire.
Speaker 2: The Burning Mountain is located in the Upper Hunter Valley
Speaker 2: of New South Wales what's today about three hundred kilometers
Speaker 2: north of Sydney, and the earliest written records of the
Speaker 2: mountain trace back to stories published in the Sydney newspapers
Speaker 2: in eighteen twenty eight, though the site had been used
Speaker 2: and known by the Wannerua going back much longer. To
Speaker 2: get a feel for the stint of this site, I
Speaker 2: was looking around for photos and videos and I found
Speaker 2: a really cool video somebody uploaded to YouTube of aerial
Speaker 2: drone footage, So you can look that up if you want.
Speaker 2: But if you are peering down at the mountain from
Speaker 2: the air, what you will see is a sort of
Speaker 2: smooth crest of a mountain peak where a section that
Speaker 2: looks to me to be about I'm not so good
Speaker 2: at estimating area by site, but it looks like maybe
Speaker 2: half the size of a soccer field something like that.
Speaker 2: It's been scorched clean, so all of the ground around it.
Speaker 2: This is not a bare rock mountaintop. This is a
Speaker 2: fully forested and grass covered mountain. So all of the
Speaker 2: ground around this burned area is populated with trees and grasses.
Speaker 2: But within the burned zone there is only bare earth,
Speaker 2: soil and gravel, either bleached white like ash or burned
Speaker 2: red like brick. And near the edges of the burn
Speaker 2: field there are these pale skeletons of dead trees, some
Speaker 2: laying flat. I guess maybe those are the older ones
Speaker 2: that have fallen down and some still standing. The ones
Speaker 2: that are still upright seem to be the ones that
Speaker 2: are a little bit farther away from the center of
Speaker 2: the burned region, and all around the area, even in
Speaker 2: sections that are now covered in grass and vegetation, presumably
Speaker 2: covered in it once again, there are noticeable cracks and
Speaker 2: fissures in the earth, like you might see opening up
Speaker 2: during an earthquake scene in a disaster movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say this, this footage is definitely worth
Speaker 1: seeking out because when you hear burning mountain, and even
Speaker 1: with that description, you still might be imagining some sort
Speaker 1: of mor door esque, very volcanic vision of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, and the reality is in many ways
Speaker 1: more subtle than that extreme vision, but also inherently, you know,
Speaker 1: weird when compared to most other environments you're going to encounter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And I think think there are indications there
Speaker 2: may have been times, even in fairly recent history, where
Speaker 2: it looked scarier than it does now, though it certainly
Speaker 2: does look very strange. One of the earliest written accounts
Speaker 2: that's been widely cited and republished. Was an investigation and
Speaker 2: field report called Burning Mountain of Australia by the Reverend
Speaker 2: Charles Wilton, published in eighteen twenty nine. I dug up
Speaker 2: this article and I wanted to read and mention a
Speaker 2: few sections from it because it was interesting. Wilton begins
Speaker 2: by acknowledging that he's waiting into a kind of ongoing
Speaker 2: controversy and would have to contradict previous reports, including the
Speaker 2: earlier reports that Mount WinGen was a volcano with a
Speaker 2: crater or caldera. Now Wilton's investigation revealed that the mountain
Speaker 2: was probably not a volcano and certainly did not have
Speaker 2: a mouth or crater. And he writes as follows, that
Speaker 2: portion of the mountain Wingin where the fire is now burning,
Speaker 2: and which is a comp packed sandstone rock, comprehends parts
Speaker 2: of two declivities of one and the same mountain. The
Speaker 2: progress of the fire has of late been down the
Speaker 2: northern and highest elevation, and it is now ascending with
Speaker 2: great fury the opposite and southern imminence from the situation
Speaker 2: of the fire having been in a hollow between two
Speaker 2: ridges of the same mountain. Mister Mackie, referring to somebody
Speaker 2: who gave an earlier report, was probably induced to give
Speaker 2: to the clefts in the mountain the appellation of a crater.
Speaker 2: The fact is, the rock, as the subterraneous fire increases,
Speaker 2: is rent into several concave chasms of various widths. I
Speaker 2: particularly examined the widest of these. The rock, a solid
Speaker 2: mass of sandstone, was torn asunder about two feet in width,
Speaker 2: leaving its upper and southerly side exposed to view the
Speaker 2: parts so torn asunder, having slipped as it were, down
Speaker 2: and sunk into a hollow, the forming the convex surface
Speaker 2: of the heated rock. I looked down this chasm to
Speaker 2: the depth of about fifteen feet. The sides of the
Speaker 2: rock were of a white heat, like that of a
Speaker 2: lime kiln, while sulfurous and steamy vapors arose from a
Speaker 2: depth below, like blasts from the forge of Vulcan himself.
Speaker 2: I stood on that portion of the rock which had
Speaker 2: been cleft from the part above, and on hurling stones
Speaker 2: down into the chasm. The noise they made in their
Speaker 2: fall seemed to die away in a vast abyss beneath
Speaker 2: my feet. Oh wow, so I love the part where
Speaker 2: he starts chucking rocks into the chasms in the earth. So, okay,
Speaker 2: he has established this is probably not a volcano. There
Speaker 2: is no crater, no caldera. Instead, there is a burned
Speaker 2: area on the surface of the mountain producing sulfurous fumes.
Speaker 2: And then there are these cracks or chasms in the earth,
Speaker 2: and the fire seems to be burning down in the
Speaker 2: deep of these cracks.
Speaker 1: Now in comparing it to the Forge of Vulcan though,
Speaker 1: this comes back to something we touched on in the
Speaker 1: last episode that when people encounter these they have no
Speaker 1: choice in many cases but to compare them to human
Speaker 1: fire technology on one level or another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially industry, right, Like both of the earliest written
Speaker 2: accounts of the smoking hills in the Northwest Territories compared
Speaker 2: them to compared them to human industry, one to a
Speaker 2: chemical factory, the other to a brick manufacturing location. And
Speaker 2: that many of the oral traditions of the inuvialuate people
Speaker 2: who said that these were the fires coming off of
Speaker 2: the hills were the cooking fires or smoke from the
Speaker 2: fires of the little people or the invisible people who
Speaker 2: lived inside the mountains. There after they'd been driven away
Speaker 2: from human companionship. So coming back to Reverend Wilton's account,
Speaker 2: he goes on to write that there are a bunch
Speaker 2: of these chasms. They're of varying width, and they're constantly
Speaker 2: belching out smoke and sulfurous vapor. And the chasms are
Speaker 2: also quote beautified with efflorescent crystal of sulfur, varying in
Speaker 2: color from the deepest red orange occasioned by a ferruginous mixture.
Speaker 2: I think that means containing iron or iron oxide to
Speaker 2: the palest straw color where alum predominated. And he said
Speaker 2: he could not spend much time near these clefts because
Speaker 2: the ground was too hot to stand on, and the
Speaker 2: vapors were not quote most grateful to the lungs.
Speaker 1: Very polite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he makes a bunch more descriptive observations. He
Speaker 2: says that he did not observe any lava or trachite there,
Speaker 2: and these would be rocks that would be signs of
Speaker 2: volcanic activity, so he seems to be accumulating evidence against
Speaker 2: the interpretation of this mountain as any kind of volcano.
Speaker 2: He also says that he didn't see any coal at
Speaker 2: the Burning Mountain, though he notes that he found coal
Speaker 2: in many places nearby, So this region of the country
Speaker 2: seems to be coal rich, which is important. We'll come
Speaker 2: back to it. And as one weird aside, he's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, right on the other side of the
Speaker 2: burning mountain, there's a spring that's great to drink from,
Speaker 2: nice cool water, especially after you've been breathing smoke from
Speaker 2: the fumes from the chasms. You go and get yourself
Speaker 2: some of the water from the spring. It will quinch
Speaker 2: thee folks. It is not a good idea to drink
Speaker 2: untested or untreated spring water. I can have stuff in it.
Speaker 2: It's not good for you, though. I honestly, I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's more or less likely if you're getting
Speaker 2: your spring water from a mountain that's on fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I can imagine the water potentially tasting strongly
Speaker 1: of sulfur or something. But I don't know. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a wonderful spring that was quite refreshing.
Speaker 2: Now. As a general comment on his observations, Wilton writes, quote,
Speaker 2: I have compared the phenomenon presented by this mountain with
Speaker 2: written descriptions of volcanic action and subterraneous fire in other
Speaker 2: portions of the globe and discover no exact similarity between them.
Speaker 2: The Burning Mountain of Australia may I think be pronounced
Speaker 2: as unique one other example of nature sports of her
Speaker 2: total disregard in this country of those laws which the
Speaker 2: philosophers of the old world have since assigned her. I
Speaker 2: don't know about that, Wilton. This is certainly not a
Speaker 2: unique phenomenon. We can come back to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But Betty is correct, you know, it depends on what
Speaker 1: he's looking to, I guess in history books and other accounts,
Speaker 1: because there can be, you know, obviously big differences between
Speaker 1: what one could roughly classify as fire erupting from the
Speaker 1: ground or burning earth in one part of the world
Speaker 1: and something that fits the same description elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to some examples of that in a bit, right.
Speaker 2: So, in the year since, study on the Burning Mountain
Speaker 2: is continued, and it is clear that it is in
Speaker 2: fact a coal seam fire. So you can imagine there
Speaker 2: are masses of coal inside the mountains, sometimes you know,
Speaker 2: ribbons of coal running through the rocks, and at some
Speaker 2: point in history that coal must have been exposed to
Speaker 2: the air to some extent and set on fire and
Speaker 2: it has been slowly burning or smoldering ever since. Now,
Speaker 2: how is it first ignited? Ultimately, we have no way
Speaker 2: of knowing that, but hypotheses include lightning strikes that would
Speaker 2: make sense. So lightning strikes exposed coal seam that sets
Speaker 2: it ablaze and it just continues throughout the years after that.
Speaker 2: It could have been a natural brush fire. Brush fire
Speaker 2: gets close and does the same thing. There are some
Speaker 2: theories that it could be a kind of spontaneous spontaneous
Speaker 2: ignition of exposed coal, because when coal is exposed to
Speaker 2: air and gets really hot, maybe baking under the sun,
Speaker 2: it can start burning on its own. Or there could
Speaker 2: be some kind of chemical reaction, maybe involving sulfur like
Speaker 2: we like we observed in the Smoking Hills the oxidation
Speaker 2: that kicks off that burning process in Canada.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, obviously there's the other possibility, which
Speaker 1: I think Smoky Bear would definitely point out to us,
Speaker 1: that there's always the chance that human beings have a
Speaker 1: hand in setting such things ablaze. Possible, yes, either by
Speaker 1: accident or intentionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so one of the articles I was reading
Speaker 2: mentioned the possibility because I think there are some early
Speaker 2: reports that make it, that make the burning Mountain sound
Speaker 2: more hellish and stupendous than it is even today. I
Speaker 2: mean today, you don't see flames anywhere. You just see
Speaker 2: and smell the smoke, and you see the scorched earth
Speaker 2: on the surface and these chasms leading down below. So
Speaker 2: something's happening deep down in there, fires in the deep,
Speaker 2: but you're not seeing tongues of flame erupt from the earth.
Speaker 2: I think some early reports did say that they observed
Speaker 2: like lights and stuff like that, which may have led
Speaker 2: to the initial reports that this was some kind of
Speaker 2: volcano if they were seeing actual like glowing flames or
Speaker 2: something like that coming out of the mountain, which could
Speaker 2: have been caused by if there was a section of
Speaker 2: the coal seam, it was just closer to the surface, right,
Speaker 2: It's closer to the surface, so more oxygen's getting to it.
Speaker 2: It's getting really hot, it's producing these flames, and they're
Speaker 2: within you know, a distance from the surface that can
Speaker 2: be seen with the naked eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we are dealing with the situation where you know,
Speaker 1: geologic processes need to be considered, and also where a
Speaker 1: situation where fuel is being consumed and so a certain
Speaker 1: amount of change is going to take place there. Like
Speaker 1: even in the Wilton quote that you read here, like
Speaker 1: he talks about the great fury that is observable here,
Speaker 1: and perhaps this is just you know, his his description
Speaker 1: being you know, colorful and enthusiastic. But you know that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily match up with say, you know, these modern
Speaker 1: drone images in the modern Tren footage that we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier.
Speaker 2: Right, So the surface appearance of a coal seam fire
Speaker 2: like this could vary a lot over the ages as
Speaker 2: it continues to burn. I think one of the biggest
Speaker 2: variables just being like how close is the coal to
Speaker 2: the surface. Now, coming back to the question of how
Speaker 2: long the fire has been burning and how we could
Speaker 2: estimate this as the oldest continuous fire on Earth. It
Speaker 2: appears to be burning underground at a depth of roughly
Speaker 2: thirty meters below the surface. So while it has an
Speaker 2: enormous quantity of fuel that it can access in the
Speaker 2: coal seam that feeds it, it's actually burning incredibly slowly.
Speaker 2: And I'm pretty sure that the main reason for this
Speaker 2: is that it's so deep that it has very little
Speaker 2: access to oxygen. So, for a mundane analogy, if you
Speaker 2: ever have experience working a grill, Think about getting a
Speaker 2: fire going, and maybe you want this fire and the
Speaker 2: grill to burn low and slow instead of hot and fast.
Speaker 2: What would you do there? You manipulate the vents, right.
Speaker 2: You squeeze them down to only the barest crack of
Speaker 2: an opening, so that the fire has very little access
Speaker 2: to oxygen. You can't close the vents completely, of course,
Speaker 2: because then the fire will just go out there's no oxygen.
Speaker 2: But if you keep just a little trickle of oxygen
Speaker 2: going in, the fire will burn slowly at a lower
Speaker 2: temperature and last for a longer time without extinguishing its
Speaker 2: fuel source. So I think that's probably what's going on
Speaker 2: in this case as well. There's a bunch of coal
Speaker 2: down there, but it's burning through the coal very slowly.
Speaker 2: It's smoldering over the years because it's deep and the
Speaker 2: oxygen not a whole lot of oxygen gets to it
Speaker 2: at once. So scientists have actually been able to estimate
Speaker 2: the average rate at which the fire spreads within the
Speaker 2: burning mountain, and a common estimate I've seen is that
Speaker 2: it appears to be going roughly one meter per year.
Speaker 2: And because we can track the historical movement of the
Speaker 2: burned area through geological markers, we can actually estimate the
Speaker 2: age of the fire, as the authors mention in a
Speaker 2: paper called Thermal Infrared Imagery of the Burning Mountain coal
Speaker 2: Fire published in Remote Sensing Equipment by CD Elliott and
Speaker 2: Adrian W. Fleming in nineteen seventy four. And so the
Speaker 2: authors of this paper right quote, baked sediments and slag
Speaker 2: produced by the burning mountain coal fire have been traced
Speaker 2: over a distance of six kilometers to the northeast of
Speaker 2: the present chimney. The burning mountain coal fire itself is
Speaker 2: of considerable antiquity. If it's assumed that the fire is
Speaker 2: burnt continuously and migrated steadily south at the present mean
Speaker 2: rate of movement, and again this is estimated to be
Speaker 2: roughly one meter per year, it would have taken approximately
Speaker 2: six thousand years to cover the distance indicated at the
Speaker 2: surface by its effects, though they acknowledge the fire may
Speaker 2: in fact have been burning for a much longer period.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of nice that that's some nice even
Speaker 2: math to round it out, right. So if it's gone
Speaker 2: about six kilometers and it's going about one meter per year,
Speaker 2: it seems to have been traveling for at least around
Speaker 2: six thousand years. And I don't know how credible these
Speaker 2: next claims are because I don't know the methodology behind them,
Speaker 2: but I've at least seen it stated in some other
Speaker 2: articles that the fire could be much older, maybe more
Speaker 2: than one hundred thousand years old, but I don't know
Speaker 2: why anybody would say that. So, as far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, even if only the low end estimate of
Speaker 2: six thousand years is true, that would make the Burning
Speaker 2: Mountain the longest burning fire on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that dwarfs anything we've discussed thus far,
Speaker 1: or we'll discuss after this.
Speaker 2: I was reading about the site on the National Parks
Speaker 2: Australia page and they actually summarized a Wannaroua story about
Speaker 2: the origin of the mountain, which was that there was
Speaker 2: a woman who was waiting for her husband to return
Speaker 2: from battle, and she was sitting upon the mountain and
Speaker 2: her husband did not return. I guess he was killed
Speaker 2: in battle, and when he didn't come back, she was
Speaker 2: so distraught that she cried out to the sky god
Speaker 2: beyond me, to kill her. And the god did not
Speaker 2: kill her. Instead, he turned her into stone, and so
Speaker 2: the tears she wept, became fire and set the mountain
Speaker 2: itself on fire.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Now this is a site that the people
Speaker 1: can go and see. You can be looking it up
Speaker 1: on the website here, but you can go to Burning
Speaker 1: Mountain Nature Reserve and there's a what a one to
Speaker 1: two hour hike you can take and you can go
Speaker 1: to this observation platform that's also visible in the drone
Speaker 1: footage that we were looking at. So I know we
Speaker 1: have a number of listeners out there in Australia. So
Speaker 1: if anyone out there has been to this site and
Speaker 1: has some first hand experience they would like to share,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. If you've been there right in, let us
Speaker 2: know what it's like.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The website also points out please note remember to
Speaker 1: take her by no if you want to birdwatch, because
Speaker 1: serious bird watchers are like spurning mountain. No no, no,
Speaker 1: are those birds?
Speaker 2: Okay? But so this is one type of naturally fueled fire, right.
Speaker 2: This is a coal seam fire, and there are other
Speaker 2: fires like it, though none that we know of that
Speaker 2: are as old as this one. Some of the other
Speaker 2: major ones actually have clear human origins, like there are
Speaker 2: some famous ones in the coal mining regions of the
Speaker 2: United States, like the famous Centralia fire in Pennsylvania. There
Speaker 2: are also, I know, a lot of coal seam fires
Speaker 2: throughout China where places that have where coal has been mined,
Speaker 2: have accidentally been set alight.
Speaker 1: How long has the Springfield tire fire supposed to have
Speaker 1: been going on?
Speaker 3: On?
Speaker 2: The simp sells, we wouldn't have our tire fire, hm,
Speaker 2: I don't know how long is How many years is
Speaker 2: the sim since been on? Oh wow, seventy four years
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Coal seam fires have all kinds of interesting characteristics and
Speaker 2: also that they can be incredibly troublesome because of course
Speaker 2: they're just sitting there belching smoke into the atmosphere without
Speaker 2: even being of use. I mean, it's not even like
Speaker 2: a coal power plant that is belching this carbon into
Speaker 2: the atmosphere and polluting the air, but at least you're
Speaker 2: getting power out of it. This is just doing that
Speaker 2: and nothing's coming from it. It's just burning, and it's
Speaker 2: in many cases hard or even impossible to put these out.
Speaker 2: I know there have been various schemes involving dumping like
Speaker 2: liquid nitrogen and stuff in and some of these have
Speaker 2: just proven pretty much impossible for people to extinguish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though it is interesting how it is kind of
Speaker 1: the naturally occurring equivalent of human coal industry. You know,
Speaker 1: I like it because of it's coal. It's burning. It's
Speaker 1: just not doing anything for humans. So a coal, of course,
Speaker 1: is a fossil fuel formed from ancient organic matter converted
Speaker 1: through heat and pressure. And like we've been saying, coal
Speaker 1: seams are just blanket like coal deposits in the rock,
Speaker 1: and when exposed in an outcrop or even in an
Speaker 1: underground environment, these seams can and will burn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if oxygen can get to the coal, that's dangerous, right,
Speaker 2: But of course this is not the only natural fossil
Speaker 2: fuel that can be set alight and lead to a
Speaker 2: sort of persistent, ongoing fire that stretches beyond human control.
Speaker 1: That's right. One of the big ones here is a
Speaker 1: natural gas fueled fire, and this is exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. Natural gas is, of course, also a fossil
Speaker 1: fuel formed underground due to high temperatures and high compression
Speaker 1: of ancient organic matter into flammable thermogenic methane as opposed
Speaker 1: to biogenic methane, which is produced by organisms, deposits of
Speaker 1: natural gas occurrent smaller amounts at shallower depths near oil deposits,
Speaker 1: and in deeper deposits of mostly just natural gas. There
Speaker 1: are several different classifications that we can work with here,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to go into detail on these,
Speaker 1: but there's conventional gas, there's biogas, deep natural gas, shale
Speaker 1: tight gas, coalbad methane, submarine methane, hydrate gas, and geopressurized
Speaker 1: zone gas. So the basics though, are that if conditions
Speaker 1: are right, natural gas forms within the Earth over geologic time,
Speaker 1: and if conditions are also right, that gas can leak
Speaker 1: to the surface without human industry playing a hand in
Speaker 1: any of it. And if that natural leakage of gas
Speaker 1: should encounter a spark a flame, well then you have
Speaker 1: yourself potentially a jet of fire emerging from the earth.
Speaker 2: Right the earth itself can sort of have a pilot
Speaker 2: light going. It's just there is a continuous release of
Speaker 2: natural gas, which is flammable, and if the flame gets going,
Speaker 2: the heat is there, the fuel is continuously supplied as
Speaker 2: it leaks out of the ground, and the oxygen is
Speaker 2: there in the atmosphere because it's meeting the surface so
Speaker 2: you can just have a flame that comes out of
Speaker 2: the ground and just burns and burns and burns and
Speaker 2: burns as long as the as long as the gas
Speaker 2: is continually escaping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and very shortly here we'll have I think a
Speaker 1: great example of this. But another possibility worth mentioning here
Speaker 1: is that of peat fires. So PETE is found in
Speaker 1: shallow wetlands such as swamps and bogs, large deposits of
Speaker 1: plant matter have decomposed under anaerobic conditions. PETE has a
Speaker 1: number of different uses for in human technology, including gardening, filtration,
Speaker 1: chemical absorption techniques. But it's high in carbon, so if
Speaker 1: it drives out enough, it can catch fire.
Speaker 2: And I've read stories about these peat fires that get
Speaker 2: out of hand can also be incredibly difficult to deal with.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting because you don't necessarily think of
Speaker 1: something in the bog being flammable like this.
Speaker 2: You don't. I don't know why don't you.
Speaker 1: I mean you do think of things like swamp gas.
Speaker 1: And you know, we've talked in the past till the wisp,
Speaker 1: will of the wisp. Yeah, but you can also imagine
Speaker 1: yourself in this environment being like it is so damp here,
Speaker 1: it is so wet. How could anything possibly burn on
Speaker 1: its own without humans playing a direct hand in it? Right?
Speaker 1: All right? So coming back to natural gas powered naturally
Speaker 1: fueled flames, I want to come to some what I
Speaker 1: thought were just fascinating examples that I don't think I
Speaker 1: was really familiar with any of these, because they concern
Speaker 1: what is now Azerbaijan on the Abseron Peninsula. This was
Speaker 1: a region that was under the domain of Shivan in
Speaker 1: ancient times, but came under the domain of Imperial Russia,
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Soviet Russia during the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And this is an area where there is a lot
Speaker 1: of petroleum and also various examples of natural gas emerging
Speaker 1: from the ground that I thought we might discuss here, Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, So it takes us to what is now
Speaker 1: the capital city of Azerbaijan, Baku. It's a host to
Speaker 1: numerous sites of interest, including the Maiden Tower, a twelfth
Speaker 1: century construction with a very intriguing design. Its origins are
Speaker 1: often explained in a tail concerning fire. In particular, there
Speaker 1: are a few different Zoroastrian legends about this structure, and
Speaker 1: I included a picture here for you, Joe, and I
Speaker 1: encourage listeners to look up images of this structure because
Speaker 1: it's it's quite picturesque. I don't think I've seen anything
Speaker 1: quite like it's it's rather different from other twelfth century
Speaker 1: constructions and certainly from other archaeological traditions in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And this is also interesting because, of course
Speaker 2: fire has very important religious significance within Zoroastrianism. I've sometimes
Speaker 2: heard Zoroastrianism, I think incorrectly described as a fire worshiping religion,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that's quite right, because fire is
Speaker 2: not like a god or the god of Zoroastrianism, like
Speaker 2: the god of Zoroastrianism is the Ahura Mazda, you know,
Speaker 2: the god of good and light. But fire is an
Speaker 2: important religious symbol within their rightship.
Speaker 1: You do see these ancient accounts by foreigners, generally who
Speaker 1: come into this region and they're like, oh, yeah, they
Speaker 1: worship fire here. But yeah, I think you could very
Speaker 1: easily compare that to accounts of say Europeans going into
Speaker 1: many other parts of the world and saying, hey, they
Speaker 1: worship demons here, they worship devils, they're not Christian at all.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's ultimately I think more complicated
Speaker 1: than that, But there is this element of fire that
Speaker 1: does pop up in some of the religious traditions in
Speaker 1: this area.
Speaker 2: I think maybe this might be a very rough analogy,
Speaker 2: but it would be kind of like mistakenly saying that
Speaker 2: Christians worship a cross made of wood.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I think I think that that gets
Speaker 1: at it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, but but I I'm I want to know this legend.
Speaker 2: You mentioned a Zoroastrian legend concerning the Maiden Tower, this
Speaker 2: intriguing and beautiful building and its origins concerning fire.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I was I was reading. Central was essentially
Speaker 1: a post that was put together by Professor Mahir Khalifa
Speaker 1: Zade and Layla Khalifa Zade, and they point out that
Speaker 1: there are several different legends tie that concern fire and
Speaker 1: concern this to this tower, the Maiden Tower. But the
Speaker 1: basic story that really captivated my attention was this idea that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you have this very brutal siege that's taking place at
Speaker 1: the city of Baku, and the people there they pray
Speaker 1: before the holy fires of the Fire Temple to Ahura
Speaker 1: Mazda to save them. Again. This is the creator deity
Speaker 1: of Zoroastrianism. And I'm going to quote this this bit,
Speaker 1: just a bit from the paper here or the post
Speaker 1: by Khalifa Zade here. Quote Finally he heard their prayers.
Speaker 1: On the next day, the people saw that a large
Speaker 1: piece of the Holy Fire was fell down to the
Speaker 1: earth from the top of the fire temple tower. A
Speaker 1: beautiful girl came up from the fire. She had long
Speaker 1: and fire colored hairs. The crowd went down on their
Speaker 1: knees and started to pray to her. And so from
Speaker 1: here basically what happens. The fire maiden says, Hey, i
Speaker 1: am sent here to protect you, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: need a sword, and I'm going to need a helmet
Speaker 1: to hide my long, beautiful hair from the enemy. The
Speaker 1: enemy cannot see my hair, so they outfit her with
Speaker 1: these items. She orders the gates thrown open, and then
Speaker 1: a great battle ensues and she engages. She winds up
Speaker 1: engaging in single combat with the enemy commander, who just
Speaker 1: assumes she's just another one of the male soldiers of
Speaker 1: the city, dressed in the helmet wielding a sword. So
Speaker 1: she ends up knocking the commander down, and then she
Speaker 1: pulls a knife and holds it to his throat, and
Speaker 1: he asked to see the face of the warrior who
Speaker 1: has bested him, so she shows him. She takes the
Speaker 1: helm off, and he's shocked to see the face of
Speaker 1: a girl and the long, beautiful, flame colored hair of
Speaker 1: a girl. And first he realizes, okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: if this is what the girls of Baku are capable of,
Speaker 1: are you know, if they're this tough, then we don't
Speaker 1: have a chance against the rest of the army. But
Speaker 1: then he also falls in love with her instantly, and
Speaker 1: then she falls in love with him, and then peace
Speaker 1: is declared.
Speaker 2: Oh didn't see that coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it kind of has goes in a direction
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't expect there, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows stories like this? You can have
Speaker 1: multiple stories, I guess, kind of merging together, and it
Speaker 1: twisting over time, and at some point someone decides what
Speaker 1: if it had a what if it had a romantic ending?
Speaker 1: And ultimately Khalifazade shares a few other versions where you know,
Speaker 1: various other things occur, and also mentions the tower might
Speaker 1: just be called the Maiden Tower because it was never
Speaker 1: conquered by the enemy. It's the ideas like this, this
Speaker 1: tower is it's a virgin tower. The enemy has never
Speaker 1: defiled it.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 1: So you have this history in Baku, you know, concerning
Speaker 1: fire and uh and and you know, it's it's the
Speaker 1: character of the city seems very much associated with it.
Speaker 1: And you see that even in the city's modern wonders.
Speaker 1: There's a there there's a trio of skyscrapers. They are
Speaker 1: known as the Flame Towers, and they they're they're very
Speaker 1: beautiful in the pictures I looked at. They have this
Speaker 1: kind of curling flame shape to them, and so you know,
Speaker 1: during the day they're you know, reflective glass and steel,
Speaker 1: very much like like any other modern skyscrapers. But I've
Speaker 1: also seen images where they lighted it like the light
Speaker 1: these towers up at night with you know, swirling orange
Speaker 1: and yellow and red and and also some blue thrown
Speaker 1: in there as well that really make them look like,
Speaker 1: you know, strong depictions of flames curling up from the air.
Speaker 1: And this comes back to the idea that this is
Speaker 1: a region rich in petroleum and natural gas, and you
Speaker 1: have various sites of interest here that are associated with that,
Speaker 1: including jan Ardagh also known as the Burning Mountain, and
Speaker 1: this is where natural gas constantly seeps up through the
Speaker 1: ground and has been a flame since at least the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, when it may have been ignited by shepherds.
Speaker 1: So this is an example where ultimately who knows, but
Speaker 1: at least one of the stories out there is that, okay,
Speaker 1: there's gas leaking up and then some shepherds set it
Speaker 1: on fire in the fifties, and by some accounts it
Speaker 1: has been burning ever since. Flames reportedly jet about three
Speaker 1: meters or nine point eight feet into the air from
Speaker 1: this site. And I looked up images of this site,
Speaker 1: and this is another one where if you're going into
Speaker 1: this expecting something out of Mordor, you're probably going to
Speaker 1: be disappointed. It's basically this hillside and there's a there's
Speaker 1: an area where there's not any vegetation, and then there's
Speaker 1: an area that's really dark, and then here are the
Speaker 1: fires springing out of the earth. Now, this area is
Speaker 1: also known for its mud volcanoes, which are not true
Speaker 1: volcanoes as they don't produce lava instead, And I have
Speaker 1: to throw in this wonderful description that I found for
Speaker 1: mud volcanoes in general from Brewster at All in a
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen article in Geo Echo Marina. They say that
Speaker 1: these are geo exuded slurries, usually including water and gases.
Speaker 1: So they look like a like a bit like bubbling mud,
Speaker 1: like gas rising up through the mud, you know, forming
Speaker 1: these big bump bubbles. It has kind of a bog
Speaker 1: of eternal stench kind of a look to it. And
Speaker 1: you know, some of these also looks very much like
Speaker 1: an alien world, like you have this this kind of
Speaker 1: barren landscape and here's like the bubbling pool of mud
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 2: I think I flagged mud volcanoes as a is a
Speaker 2: potential episode topic for us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we could easily come back to it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, weird sort of gray clay puke coming up
Speaker 2: from these cracked blisters in the earth. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, this region of Surakzani has long been associated
Speaker 1: again often with fire worship or religious practices that concern fire,
Speaker 1: and their accounts going back apparently to the tenth century
Speaker 1: at least, But as luck would have it, we also
Speaker 1: have accounts of this region from German traveler Ingolbert Khompher,
Speaker 1: who visited here in sixteen eighty three and has some
Speaker 1: wonderful descriptions of what he saw Ingolbert Komper, of course,
Speaker 1: popped up in our Vegetable Lamb episode.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right, as one of the early voices
Speaker 2: of skepticism about this story, saying that I don't know.
Speaker 2: I traveled all over and people don't really seem to
Speaker 2: know what these stories are talking about. I do not
Speaker 2: think there is a plant that makes lamb.
Speaker 1: Yes. So the book in question is Exotic Attractions in
Speaker 1: Persia sixteen eighty four through sixteen eighty eight, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at a translation of this by Villain Floor,
Speaker 1: which you can find on an ebook or physical book
Speaker 1: out there. So I'm just going to read just a
Speaker 1: brief bit from it here where he's talking about these fires.
Speaker 1: From there, we continued our march, and after midday we
Speaker 1: came to the burning field, covered with white sand and
Speaker 1: sprinkled with ashy dust. From numerous fissures, sulfurous spouts burst
Speaker 1: from the soil, a varied and pleasant spectacle. Some fissures
Speaker 1: made a lot of noise, and with their fires and
Speaker 1: their violence, aroused a holy fear among some rare spectators.
Speaker 1: Others again emitted less strong flames, allowing everybody to come
Speaker 1: quite close. Others exhaled fumes or rather hardly visible vapors,
Speaker 1: but which reeked strongly of the spirit of naphtha. This
Speaker 1: phenomena appeared in the area of eighty eight paces in
Speaker 1: length twenty six wide. The fissures were amazingly narrow, not
Speaker 1: wider than one foot or one palm, some shorter and
Speaker 1: drawn into a semicircle, and others crooked with a long,
Speaker 1: insinuous bend, which I have shown accurately and conform to
Speaker 1: reality in the appended illustration to complete this description. The
Speaker 1: edges of these cracks and the soil itself, when you
Speaker 1: remove the dust, showed a pox marked light stone, almost
Speaker 1: like pumice stone. The matter seemed to be a conglomerate
Speaker 1: of seashells and minuscule snail shells. We came upon about
Speaker 1: a dozen people who stayed there, who, around a fire,
Speaker 1: were engaged in all kinds of activities. In fact, some
Speaker 1: having placed copper or earthenware pots on a not too
Speaker 1: blazing crack, prepared the meals for the inhabitants of the
Speaker 1: neighboring village of Sorgani at Swaga, thus named because of
Speaker 1: the fire. Others having brought stones from all aroun, and
Speaker 1: having heaped them together, were burning a lime and once,
Speaker 1: when ready, they made a pile to transport it in
Speaker 1: small vessels. Two foreigners, Indian fire worshippers descended from the
Speaker 1: ancient Persians, were quietly seated around it enclosure they had constructed.
Speaker 1: They watched and venerated the spouting flame, offering prayers to
Speaker 1: the eternal God. One of the lime burners had approached us,
Speaker 1: proposing to show us something particularly extraordinary. If for this surface,
Speaker 1: we offered him some money. When we had counted it,
Speaker 1: he placed small cotton balls that he tore from his
Speaker 1: dress on a fire shovel and set fire to them.
Speaker 1: Then he very quickly took the flame obtained in that
Speaker 1: fashion above a fissure at some distance which had neither
Speaker 1: fire nor flame. Its vapor was everywhere invisible until it
Speaker 1: produced a very high flame. This was a beautiful and
Speaker 1: unexpected moment. But the flame disappeared again after a while.
Speaker 1: Such is the first appearance of the wonders of nature,
Speaker 1: well known in this part of the peninsula, but not
Speaker 1: in the same place, and eternally remained in people memory. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I love everything about that. Account.
Speaker 2: That's oh yeah, yeah, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: I have to notice Camphor mentions cotton, thinking back to
Speaker 2: the vegetable lamb thing, So he knew about he knew
Speaker 2: about cotton at least I'm assuming this translation is accurate
Speaker 2: and that is what he meant instead of using the
Speaker 2: word for wool or something.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. That's a good point. So again,
Speaker 1: that is from Exotic Attractions in Persia by Engelbert Komf
Speaker 1: and you can pick up a copy of that that
Speaker 1: comes out from that's out from Mage Publishers, and there
Speaker 1: is a kindle edition. But there's another side of interest
Speaker 1: related to all of this, and that is the Atashka
Speaker 1: Fire Temple or the Fire Temple of Baku. This is
Speaker 1: a square building with pentagonal walls and a domed roof
Speaker 1: constructed atop a natural gas leak that provides fuel for
Speaker 1: a large flame in the center of the temple, as
Speaker 1: well as for four smaller flames on each of the
Speaker 1: buildings on the roof. Basically, they're four small, almost like
Speaker 1: little towers, one at each corner of the of the roof,
Speaker 1: and those are flaming as well.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So this is a temple a religious building
Speaker 2: built around a natural gas leak.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I love this because in that comfort account
Speaker 1: we had an example of people cooking over one of
Speaker 1: these naturally occurring spouts of gas and spouts of flame.
Speaker 1: And now we have an actual structure that is not
Speaker 1: only like built around this, but seems to be manipulating
Speaker 1: the flow of gas so that you can have additional
Speaker 1: fires control fires burning at the top of the temple.
Speaker 2: Very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And you know there's some old woodcuts of this,
Speaker 1: and also you know you can find modern photos of
Speaker 1: it as well. It's been a place for Hindu, Sikh,
Speaker 1: and so Astrian worship, and it seems to be some
Speaker 1: debate on who originally worshiped here. And part of this
Speaker 1: may be due to what Mary Boyce described in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five's on the Zoroastrian Temple Cult of Fire, published
Speaker 1: in the Journal of the American Oriental Society as quote
Speaker 1: the dearth of records of Zoroastrianism at any period before
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century Ce. But Boyce points out a few
Speaker 1: different ideas about the history of these fire temples. Again
Speaker 1: in the particular mainly we're talking about in the Baku region.
Speaker 2: First of all, I see okay. Yeah, I was like, sure,
Speaker 2: we know it's older than that. Okay, I see in
Speaker 2: this region.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, the history is complex due to
Speaker 1: the existence of both Zoroastrian image cults and fire cults,
Speaker 1: and there seemed to be an offer a lot of
Speaker 1: overlap between the two. So she says that the image
Speaker 1: cults seem to have lasted from the fourth century BC
Speaker 1: until they were suppressed by an iconoclastic movement under the
Speaker 1: Sasanians or the Neo Persian Empire. And so in this
Speaker 1: we're getting back into this idea that we explored in
Speaker 1: a previous episode about the role of images in worship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so basically, and so the cult of the fire temples
Speaker 1: may have been instituted in opposition to quote, this alien
Speaker 1: form of worship. And so I believe what she's saying
Speaker 1: here is that as the use of images were suppressed
Speaker 1: in their worship, they turned to the flame itself as
Speaker 1: a focal point of worship. And we can see that
Speaker 1: reflected in that story we were discussing earlier, praying to
Speaker 1: Aramazda by using the flame as like the focal point
Speaker 1: of the worship, right, and Boyce also points out that
Speaker 1: this would you could also link this to older traditions
Speaker 1: of the veneration of hearth fires, and it goes without
Speaker 1: saying I guess as well that this is a region
Speaker 1: with natural gas easily linked to natural flames, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So there's a local aspect of this going on. But
Speaker 1: then in general we also have these traditions of keeping
Speaker 1: the fire and to a certain extent, venerating that fire
Speaker 1: and protecting it and looking after it. She also points
Speaker 1: out that quote, no actual ruins of a fire temple
Speaker 1: have been convincingly identified from before the Parthian period, that's
Speaker 1: from two forty seven BCE to two twenty four CE.
Speaker 1: Now this is another bit that I found quite interesting.
Speaker 1: So this is a still I believe, a candidate to
Speaker 1: become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the temple of the
Speaker 1: Flame temple here. But the temple flame, reportedly according to UNESCO,
Speaker 1: went out in eighteen eighty three due to petroleum activity
Speaker 1: in the region. So now it's lit via an artificial
Speaker 1: gas line instead of natural gas emerging from the earth.
Speaker 1: So it's in I seem to think of this, this
Speaker 1: site and this date in eighteen eighty three is kind
Speaker 1: of a key boundary point between the oil age, the
Speaker 1: age of fossil fuel, and the period preceding it, a
Speaker 1: time during which the divine fire is extinguished and that
Speaker 1: is replaced by technological mastery over fossil fuels and fire.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1: So I found all this just just ritually interesting. I
Speaker 1: have to admit I had not read much about Agerbrajan.
Speaker 1: I've never been to Arebajon, but this this is all wonderful.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love it, and I would love to hear
Speaker 1: from anyone out there listening to the show who is
Speaker 1: in Agerbrajan, or as of Agrebrajan, a heritage that, or
Speaker 1: is just traveled there and seeing these sits right in,
Speaker 1: let us know. I'd love to have you know, some
Speaker 1: more insight on all of this. All right, we're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and close it out here, but we're
Speaker 1: going to be back, and hey, we might keep talking
Speaker 1: on this topic. The is in motion, and there's there's
Speaker 1: certainly more we could discuss here.
Speaker 2: The burning continues, the fuel has not been extinguished yet,
Speaker 2: so this may go on next week.
Speaker 1: All right. In the meantime, again, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there has additional inside firsthand or otherwise
Speaker 1: on the topics we've discussed here, you know, and also
Speaker 1: anything about the previous episode or there are other episodes
Speaker 1: that have come before, potential episodes we could record in
Speaker 1: the future as a reminder. Core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the
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Speaker 1: that wherever you get your podcast these days. On Mondays
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Speaker 1: concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
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