Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Jusie.
Speaker 1: You remember those three episodes that we did on maps
Speaker 1: a while back. Oh, yes, yeah, it's pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: We talked about the way maps form our view of reality,
Speaker 1: how maps exist not only on paper but in our minds.
Speaker 1: We talked about the some of the history of cartography,
Speaker 1: some of the problems entailed within right, and just exploration
Speaker 1: in general, how matt making was this way to, you know,
Speaker 1: make a concrete idea of the abstract notions of the
Speaker 1: world around us. But one area that we didn't really
Speaker 1: get into they were going to explore today is the
Speaker 1: world of monstrosity, particularly the world of sea monster. Because
Speaker 1: if you look back on old enough maps, you inevitably
Speaker 1: encounter fantastic things. You you would, of course encounter fantastic
Speaker 1: land forms that deviate to varying degrees from what we
Speaker 1: know or believe to be the shape of our continents.
Speaker 1: And then if you go out in the water, you
Speaker 1: see these strange creatures that don't match up particularly well
Speaker 1: with anything that actually exists, and yet like these creatures
Speaker 1: that are represented on these maps, they are really powerful symbols.
Speaker 1: And we just talked about the power of symbols in
Speaker 1: the previous episode. So there's stand ins both for dangerous,
Speaker 1: real and imagined. Yeah, and Uh, it turns out the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole area of sea monsters is a largely understudied topic,
Speaker 1: particularly we're talking about sea monsters on maps. I recently
Speaker 1: attended a lecture by author Chet van Douser, who has
Speaker 1: put together fabulous book called Sea Monsters on Menieval and
Speaker 1: Renaissance Maps, and he thoroughly explored this topic. True and Uh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to read a little bit from Ben Shattuck's
Speaker 1: article from Salon. He talks about why, uh, the ocean
Speaker 1: provide such a rich grounds for imagination. He says, there's
Speaker 1: something about the ocean that keeps on giving to cryptozoology,
Speaker 1: mostly because it's a great dark room whose door only
Speaker 1: opens when animals rise to breathe or eat or some themselves,
Speaker 1: or when they flash through a cone of light shot
Speaker 1: from a deep water submersible. There's a bet of sunlight
Speaker 1: caught in the first ten feet or so of water,
Speaker 1: and then total and huge blackness. Still, though the unsettling
Speaker 1: sea generates a productive fear to stoke our imaginations. That
Speaker 1: Ben shattic, he's good. He's also, of course the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote that the excellent article about being swallowed alive
Speaker 1: by whale. That's right. So we're talking about monsters, which
Speaker 1: we've we've touched on monsters before. I frequently blog about monsters,
Speaker 1: and as I like to point out, the word monstrosity
Speaker 1: originates from the Latin monster aary, which means to show
Speaker 1: or illustrate a point. And in this as a Van
Speaker 1: Deuser points out, it falls in line with the St.
Speaker 1: Augustine's view of a monster as something that's part of
Speaker 1: God's plan, an adornment of the universe that can also
Speaker 1: teach us about the dangers of sin. But then there
Speaker 1: are other medieval commentators that define a monster is a
Speaker 1: thing against nature. So we have to sort of clarify
Speaker 1: what are we talking about when we talk about a monster,
Speaker 1: Because on one hand, a monster is, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a fantastic creature that is against the natural order and
Speaker 1: doesn't actually exist in reality. But then we have things
Speaker 1: like river monsters the Animal Planet show, where these are
Speaker 1: actually real world animals, but we refer to them as
Speaker 1: monsters because they are on some level monstrous. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they defy our expectations, right, because we have knowledge
Speaker 1: of our land animals, we have knowledge of ourselves. But
Speaker 1: when we see these creatures that come from the depths
Speaker 1: and they are so odd and like est but not
Speaker 1: like us, well they become abominations. Yeah. The popular theory
Speaker 1: in the medieval ages and on up into the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century was this idea that anything that exists on land,
Speaker 1: there's a version of it that exists in the water.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to planting the elder statements in
Speaker 1: natural history. So the idea here is that the have
Speaker 1: a stag that lives in the land. Well, then there's
Speaker 1: a sea stag somewhere. There's a lion lives on the land.
Speaker 1: Well there's a sea lion. There are men, there are merment,
Speaker 1: and literally it really gets ridiculous when you start looking
Speaker 1: at the sheer number, because you make it go always
Speaker 1: just making some of these up. But just to to
Speaker 1: look in the index of Van Deuser's book, there's a
Speaker 1: reference to a sea bear, sea bish of a sea bowl,
Speaker 1: a sea chicken, a sea cow, sea dogs, sea dragon,
Speaker 1: au see elephant, sea, frogs, goats, hairs, horses, lions, monks, panthers, pigs, pig, dogs,
Speaker 1: pig lions, rabbits, rams, rooster, serpent, stags, tigers, unicorns, and wolves.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh you know. Just so, so you have
Speaker 1: that idea, that existing sort of philosophic idea of how
Speaker 1: the world works, and you bring that with you into
Speaker 1: an actual observation and second and third hand accounts of
Speaker 1: what is actually going on in the ocean, and you
Speaker 1: can see where various uh bits of false data emerge. Well,
Speaker 1: and just to confuse things about you have some animals
Speaker 1: from mythology like you have. You've got you of corns.
Speaker 1: But then you've got normals which actually exists. So what
Speaker 1: do you get. Of course, you get some sort of
Speaker 1: creature that is a unicorn fish like creature flilling out
Speaker 1: there in the ocean. Exactly. Now, when we talk about
Speaker 1: these maps, talking about these old maps, particularly medieval maps,
Speaker 1: we're basically talking about two kinds of maps. First of all,
Speaker 1: there is the mapa mundi, a map of the world.
Speaker 1: And it's really cool when you look at the simplest
Speaker 1: and oldest of these, you have what we call a
Speaker 1: t O map, and I'll include a picture of one
Speaker 1: of these in the gallery that accompanies this episode. But
Speaker 1: a t O map. If you'll picture a big circle,
Speaker 1: all right, that's the world, Okay. Imagine a central land
Speaker 1: mass surrounded by a circular ocean. Now imagine a horizontal
Speaker 1: line running across it. Cutting it into that line is
Speaker 1: the Aegean and Black Sea on the left, and then
Speaker 1: Nile on the Red Sea on the right. And then
Speaker 1: a dividing line down the center of that line, forming
Speaker 1: the stalk of the t that's the Mediterranean Sea. So
Speaker 1: this is a vision of the world sort of on
Speaker 1: its side, where the center of it, the very center
Speaker 1: of the circle is Jerusalem, because that's the center of
Speaker 1: the world, you know, Western Christian tradition, and so the
Speaker 1: whole northern half of the circle is Asia. Then the
Speaker 1: lower left hand quarter is Europe, in the lower right
Speaker 1: hand quarter is Africa. Okay. So this is really a
Speaker 1: map that is not used to navigate. It's rather a
Speaker 1: map that's used to record our ideas about the world
Speaker 1: and how it's configured. Yeah, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: when we did our map episodes. We talked about, say
Speaker 1: something like the map of the tube system in London
Speaker 1: about how important important it is uh, certainly to to
Speaker 1: get around London, but also to form an idea in
Speaker 1: the londoner's mind of what their city looks like, in
Speaker 1: what their city is. This was a map to make
Speaker 1: sense of the stories you were hearing about. All right,
Speaker 1: Jerusalem so important? Where is it compared to me? Where?
Speaker 1: Where's where is Africa compared to me? Where? How do
Speaker 1: I fit into the world? And what is the shape
Speaker 1: of the world. And what's interesting about that is it's
Speaker 1: got that configuration, the t configuration, which is directly um
Speaker 1: feeding into this idea that we we know we have
Speaker 1: many more neurons that are dead a hitted to up
Speaker 1: and down and right and left in terms of our
Speaker 1: visual visual field and not diagonal, which is this need
Speaker 1: to try to put everything into a neat little package.
Speaker 1: So that's your earliest world map, and they certainly evolve
Speaker 1: from there up until you know, modern times, as we
Speaker 1: learn more and more about the the what the world
Speaker 1: looks like, and how we get from one place to another.
Speaker 1: So on these maps, on the t O maps, most
Speaker 1: of the real estate here is concerned with the land uh.
Speaker 1: And you'll have some cities marked and some important bits
Speaker 1: of geography. But as in the Girona be at this map,
Speaker 1: sea monsters do appear in the outer ocean that you know,
Speaker 1: the outer the outer edge of the circle, the edge
Speaker 1: of the world. Um. In this particular map from you'll
Speaker 1: find a marine chicken and perhaps Jonah being swallowed by
Speaker 1: whale or having been swallowed by a whale. You see
Speaker 1: like this big fish and you see Jonah in the
Speaker 1: belly um though most of the depictions of Jonah and
Speaker 1: the whale, it's either Jonah being spit up, were swallowed
Speaker 1: like they tend not to dwell on the whole, living
Speaker 1: inside the belly bit. So that's one type of map.
Speaker 1: And then you also have nautical charts because obviously people
Speaker 1: are sailing from one point in the other and they
Speaker 1: need a functional map to tell them how to do that.
Speaker 1: A t O map is not going to help you
Speaker 1: really navigate the world. Again, it's all about where you
Speaker 1: are in your head, where you are actually on a
Speaker 1: ship at sea. You need a nautical map. And so
Speaker 1: these were generally these would generally have an outline of
Speaker 1: the land uh and they were really only concerned with
Speaker 1: coastal cities and ports. And they would connect to each
Speaker 1: other by criss crossing rum lines. So you could look
Speaker 1: at this and you'd be like, all right, this is
Speaker 1: the line you need to follow if you need to
Speaker 1: get from this port to this port, in this city
Speaker 1: to this city. Okay. And the more common variety of
Speaker 1: these maps was purely utilitarian. There were no frills, and
Speaker 1: there were certainly no sea monsters, but clients could and
Speaker 1: did opt for specially add on so you could pay
Speaker 1: extra for painted cities, for flax and ultimately sea monster
Speaker 1: and and the especially maps. These were generally not the
Speaker 1: ones that you would have on the ship. These would
Speaker 1: be the ones, uh, you know, you might give to
Speaker 1: a king or or or you know, have you know,
Speaker 1: hanging in your your office or whatnot. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: for the most part, medieval maps just didn't have steam
Speaker 1: monsters to pick on them because what I mean essentially
Speaker 1: why because that's going to cost you more money, right,
Speaker 1: And it was much more pragmatic at that time, be
Speaker 1: as you say, from going from a point A to
Speaker 1: point B. But then you see later in the fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: as you say, they became a thing. In fact, you
Speaker 1: mentioned kings. There's a chart maker by the name of
Speaker 1: Francis Picarti in four hundred, who commissioned four really extraordinarily
Speaker 1: resplendent maps to give to four European kings in exchange
Speaker 1: for the right to trade in their countries. So that's
Speaker 1: how valuable these pieces of paper became, because again it
Speaker 1: represented exploration and also as as well as people could
Speaker 1: at that time. Compendium of beasts, you know of this
Speaker 1: sort of like a learned man's way of trying to
Speaker 1: learn about the world via the armchair. Yeah, it becomes
Speaker 1: a kind of a zoological text as well. Now one,
Speaker 1: I really like the idea of the sea monsters as
Speaker 1: an add on, Like imagine way, like, we don't really
Speaker 1: draw maps for one another anymore, but can you imagine
Speaker 1: you know, you're asking a friend how to get to
Speaker 1: some way that and you're like, can you draw me
Speaker 1: a map? Oh, and make sure to put a seed
Speaker 1: monster on there. I want to have some monsters on
Speaker 1: that map. Or imagine if when you use Google Maps,
Speaker 1: you could in the same way that you have the
Speaker 1: options to click click on the button and have traffic represented,
Speaker 1: click on the button and have satellite information represented. Why
Speaker 1: is there no monster button? So I can see where
Speaker 1: sea monsters and land monsters might potentially be represented. There
Speaker 1: should be a monster overlay for sure. Um, but let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of these some more of these reasons
Speaker 1: for monsters being depicted. Um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting is we've already touched on,
Speaker 1: is that you know, the truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 1: So you have people who have been out in the
Speaker 1: ocean's fishing for cent ease, and they talk about what
Speaker 1: they have seen. Perhaps they well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: they'd see it at a certain depths that it exists,
Speaker 1: But vampire squid are an amazing that's an amazing creature.
Speaker 1: To behold sea snakes that seems insane, and yet they
Speaker 1: are in the ocean. If you've ever seen a bunch
Speaker 1: of sea snakes congregating on the ocean floor and floating
Speaker 1: there like shafts of wheat, just passively feeding on whatever
Speaker 1: passes by, it is an amazing, incredible image and you
Speaker 1: could not believe it. So it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: if you have this collective of ocean life, that of
Speaker 1: course these these beasts would emerge from from all this
Speaker 1: sort of mythology. Yeah, and as we've still happens today.
Speaker 1: When you encounter you know, you encounter a whale in
Speaker 1: the ocean, it's pretty phenomenal. You encounter a half rotten whale,
Speaker 1: or any kind of partially decayed but of sea lie,
Speaker 1: you're liable to to interpret the original form in a
Speaker 1: different light. We're you know, like, even to this day,
Speaker 1: you'll find pictures of some sort of weird thing washed
Speaker 1: up on a beach and people are like, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: this looks like nothing on earth. Clearly it's a sea monster. No,
Speaker 1: it's just a whale. That is a grosser and in
Speaker 1: a little decayed you're seeing more of it's a skeleton
Speaker 1: and less of it's a flesh, and therefore it looks
Speaker 1: like a sleeker, different creature. That's true. And even now
Speaker 1: things are getting reclassified, right because every once in a
Speaker 1: while we find the bones of something. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we think that this is a new something, and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is actually a brachiosaurs. Yeah. Now, um, Now again,
Speaker 1: as we we mentioned sea monsters, of a lot of
Speaker 1: them are going to originate in myth and religious tradition.
Speaker 1: You have Jonah's whale, you have the primordial Leviathan. One
Speaker 1: of the stories that that keeps coming up again and
Speaker 1: again in Van Duser's book is the idea of the
Speaker 1: whale or fish that's so enormous that a ship lands
Speaker 1: at it, and then the sailors get off. They on
Speaker 1: what they think is land. They can't. They set a fire,
Speaker 1: and then when they set the fire, that disturbs the fish,
Speaker 1: and the fish descends back into the ocean and they
Speaker 1: have to scramble to get back on the ship before
Speaker 1: they drown. Now, clearly this never happened um or it's
Speaker 1: it's at least it's at least very difficult to imagine
Speaker 1: a scenario in which this could happen. But it becomes
Speaker 1: such a tale like it captures the imagination, and so
Speaker 1: it comes up again and again on these maps. It's true,
Speaker 1: And you know, their representation on the maps is not
Speaker 1: just a symbolic standing for for man versus nature, but
Speaker 1: is also a way to depict actual geographical points of
Speaker 1: interest or even dangerous straits on a map. So there
Speaker 1: is a there's actual pragmatic reason for them to be
Speaker 1: on there. But a lot of these cartographers, though, what
Speaker 1: they were trying to do is they were trying to
Speaker 1: utilize the best information of the time to create a
Speaker 1: map that it's either going to stand out its own
Speaker 1: or it's accompanying some other texts. And so most of
Speaker 1: the time they've never seen these creatures before, but they
Speaker 1: were laboring to create accurate depictions. Uh. In many cases
Speaker 1: they continued existing motifs such as the island fish, and
Speaker 1: presume factual depictions of actual life in the oceans. They
Speaker 1: are the hybrids that they ended up drawing. Well, those
Speaker 1: were backed up in the theory of this land water
Speaker 1: duality that we mentioned earlier, and they were able to
Speaker 1: repeat the true aspects of their depictions. Whales are big spouts,
Speaker 1: you know, they spout water and sometimes they damage boats. Um,
Speaker 1: as well as the inaccuracies. Whales have two blowholes, they
Speaker 1: have wolfish faces, and they attack boats. Yeah, it's cool
Speaker 1: because I think about these maps is sort of the
Speaker 1: graphic novel at the time. There again, Yeah, trying to
Speaker 1: record as much scientific information is thought scientific at that time,
Speaker 1: and trying to explain the creatures. Um. But the problem
Speaker 1: is is that you don't get a lot of clear
Speaker 1: perception of these creatures that you see without context. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of times these are These are again
Speaker 1: people who are several times removed from any actual observation
Speaker 1: of the creature. Uh, you have in the same way
Speaker 1: that you know. Burno Eccho said, books speak to other books,
Speaker 1: and there's those endless kind versation, particularly among between older manuscripts,
Speaker 1: where this idea flows to this one and picked up
Speaker 1: by this one. It's like that game we all play
Speaker 1: as a kid where you whisper in a circle and telephone. Yeah, telephone.
Speaker 1: It's like a game of telephone with with with texts
Speaker 1: and then with visual representations of the world. You're right,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the telephone conversation you get
Speaker 1: the vakham Marina the sea cow right, because everything gets
Speaker 1: so distorted. Um. I was thinking about the perception and
Speaker 1: context problem in terms of ben Shadduck's article for Salon
Speaker 1: and when she was trying to pin down a nineteenth
Speaker 1: century account of a massive sea serpent, and the fisherman
Speaker 1: had described it as a hundred feet long with an
Speaker 1: interlocking barrel like body and a serpent like face. And
Speaker 1: he kind of kept scratching at this, saying, what I mean,
Speaker 1: these are like hardened fishermen, They're they're all like, you know,
Speaker 1: they've been out there, their experience, and yet there's so
Speaker 1: many of these fishermen who said, we saw something, and
Speaker 1: he wonders what could it be. So he talks to
Speaker 1: um someone who is an expert in leather back turtles.
Speaker 1: Her name is Kara Dodge, and she says that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably just that perception problem, because she says that
Speaker 1: even when trying to track leatherback turtles, now they have
Speaker 1: to train fishermen to look for the hump and not
Speaker 1: the fin. And so now they're getting a ton more
Speaker 1: accounts of leatherback turtles as they try to pin their whereabouts.
Speaker 1: But until you give people the context for it or
Speaker 1: the imagery, then it's hard to pin down. By the way,
Speaker 1: the whole leatherback turtle things, he serpent turns out, Ben
Speaker 1: Shottic thinks from his research that it could have just
Speaker 1: been essentially a bunch of leatherback turtles that were bumped
Speaker 1: up against each other and it makes the appearance of
Speaker 1: these humps of serpent. Yeah, because you're saying, if you
Speaker 1: look at videos of leather backs, it's kind of the slimy,
Speaker 1: black uh image that emerges from just under the water.
Speaker 1: And then if you look at their faces, their serpent
Speaker 1: light and they have fangs. So if you solve that
Speaker 1: from a you know, a good distance away, you might
Speaker 1: think that it's this hundred foots he serpent coming at you. Now,
Speaker 1: the other thing about that is that narrative might serve
Speaker 1: you well if you decide to make a map to
Speaker 1: dissuade other fishermen from coming to your country and fishing
Speaker 1: your waters. And that's where I think it's fascinating that
Speaker 1: a map from the sixteenth century could have an economic
Speaker 1: function built into it. Yeah, the map in question is
Speaker 1: Alas Magnus is amazing nine map, the Card of Marina,
Speaker 1: which I'll make sure to include this one in the
Speaker 1: gallery that goes with this episode as well, because it's
Speaker 1: it's really the granddaddy of these. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: marvelous map from a number of different perspectives. He brings
Speaker 1: whimsy to his creations of the monsters, he brings an
Speaker 1: artistry and and just a sheer number of monsters on
Speaker 1: this map is incredible. It's just it's just the world
Speaker 1: is just completely monster haunted and it's beautiful. But there
Speaker 1: is this theory that that he used a lot of
Speaker 1: these monsters to scare away foreign fisherman from Scandinavian waters. Right,
Speaker 1: because if you were to look at this map, you're like, ho,
Speaker 1: get it, there's this dragon sea serpent thing at every turn,
Speaker 1: or this other lobster slash octopus thing that might take
Speaker 1: me down. Yeah, And in the full map included like
Speaker 1: a zoological m sidebar that explained like what some of
Speaker 1: these creatures were supposed to be. And yeah, you look
Speaker 1: at it, and they're they're just all sorts of fantastic
Speaker 1: um whales and whale like creatures spouting up their attacking ships.
Speaker 1: They're pulling ships down, they're flooding them with their with
Speaker 1: their they're spouted water. It's marvelous. Well, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite ones on there is that lobster looking like creature
Speaker 1: that's said to be an octopus, and it's depicted with
Speaker 1: eight legs and it's holding a man in one of
Speaker 1: its claws. Um and and and scale. You can see
Speaker 1: that it's monstrous in in comparison to this man. And
Speaker 1: according to its scientific information, it lives in underwater caves
Speaker 1: and can change its color to match surrounding. Now that's amazing, right,
Speaker 1: because what we're hearing there is that there's some seppal
Speaker 1: pod information, right, Yeah, at the core of this we
Speaker 1: have some some good information. Eight limbs can change its color,
Speaker 1: lives in the rocks underwater. Yeah, we're talking about that
Speaker 1: this perception of chromatoforce right, well at the time they
Speaker 1: weren't called chromatoforce, but this idea that seppal pods can
Speaker 1: change their skin color through pigment cells. So think about
Speaker 1: being on a ship at night and gazing over the
Speaker 1: prow and seeing by a luminescent light then emanating from
Speaker 1: a squid and that's from the bacteria that's being housed
Speaker 1: in the organ lights and just what a sight that
Speaker 1: would be that there's this monstrous creature below that has
Speaker 1: a beacon of light coming from it. Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: throw in the narrative of monstrous creatures in the ocean,
Speaker 1: and that makes the thing ginormous. And then if then
Speaker 1: you have somebody attempting to create it on a map,
Speaker 1: and you know, how would you come up with the
Speaker 1: idea of the occupus if you've never seen one? You know,
Speaker 1: like clearly this the artist had had some experience with
Speaker 1: crustaceans and so that is the form that the artistic
Speaker 1: representation of the creature took. Yeah, it's it's amazing because
Speaker 1: you do you see the good bits of science and
Speaker 1: they're mixed in with fantastical. It's in a way, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like all of our depictions or a lot
Speaker 1: of our depictions of alien life. There's something humanoid or
Speaker 1: vaguely humanoid about them, you know. That is the form
Speaker 1: that we understand is intelligent life. So that's the form
Speaker 1: we tend to to project in trying to understand, uh,
Speaker 1: mythical or imagine creatures. And it's similar here. The form
Speaker 1: that they understood was the crustaceans, so that's the one
Speaker 1: that was projected. Are you saying that we just need
Speaker 1: to be retrained to look for humps instead of fins
Speaker 1: out there? Uh No, I mean in the intergalactic space.
Speaker 1: I think it just comes down to the fact that
Speaker 1: you have data in your mind that using to understand
Speaker 1: the outer world, and we're never gonna haven't have enough
Speaker 1: data to understand some of the mysteries out there. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to sort of partially construct them, which
Speaker 1: has implications for how we perceive our universe. Right, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to run through some more specific examples of
Speaker 1: of how we have interpreted real things as fantastic sea
Speaker 1: monsters and the sort of journey from puremid to truth
Speaker 1: in uh, the walrus and in the whale. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and first of all, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the walrus. Now, the walrus is a great
Speaker 1: example of a creature that that does not exist worldwide.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you would have, It's not a
Speaker 1: form you would have common knowledge off. You know, like
Speaker 1: a fish. You know, fish vary a lot, but there's
Speaker 1: sort of a prototypical fish and uh, and you can
Speaker 1: you know, one culture knows what a fish is, an
Speaker 1: other culture knows of the fishes. A walrus is a
Speaker 1: little more exotic, it's a little more uh monstrous. So
Speaker 1: when we when we look to the various interpretations of
Speaker 1: the walrus on these maps, again often depicted by someone
Speaker 1: several times removed from actual observation of the thing itself,
Speaker 1: you see a curious evolution of form. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: a there's an excellent bit in Van Deser's book where
Speaker 1: he lays out eight different images and you get to
Speaker 1: see how it changes. Um. For instance, you look at
Speaker 1: the fifteen sixteen Carter Marina by Martin Walt Simuler, and
Speaker 1: you'll see what looks like a deformed elephant. Then you
Speaker 1: look at a fifty two copy of Tommy's Geography, and
Speaker 1: this time the same artist, Walt Simuler, depicts a straight
Speaker 1: up elephant. Like the first time it was kind of
Speaker 1: a monstrous elephant. Then he's just like, oh, it's it's
Speaker 1: an elephant, like it has feet, has it's just a
Speaker 1: brown elephant that apparently lives in the water and is
Speaker 1: a walrus. Okay uh. Fast forward to fifteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Ish are may on oleg Magnus depicts something that looks
Speaker 1: more like a fishy alligator with tusks. It has kind
Speaker 1: of that wolfish face common to many sea monster depictions,
Speaker 1: and this design pops up in other photographers work as well.
Speaker 1: But then we look at fifteen fifty five and we
Speaker 1: see depictions of the walrus continue to grow more and
Speaker 1: more accurate around her head, flippers instead of feet, tusk
Speaker 1: like a walrus instead of an elephant, and then you're
Speaker 1: going to take on a more appropriate color. So in
Speaker 1: this we see what begins as just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: an attempt to understand an exotic form by using what
Speaker 1: you knew. You knew what an elephant looked like from
Speaker 1: existing you know, well maintained and and and well backed
Speaker 1: up illustrations, and so you apply that form to imagining
Speaker 1: this tusk fat creature that lives in an arctic waters.
Speaker 1: You know. The weird thing about that is um when
Speaker 1: you consider extreme mammals that have gone extinct and you
Speaker 1: turn back the clock, you start to see some of
Speaker 1: these weird the attribute showing up. And I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: the whale with legs that was in the exhibit extreme
Speaker 1: animals here at from Bank, and how that sort of
Speaker 1: plays into this idea of this walrus that's depicted here
Speaker 1: in the book. Now should be noted, even though a
Speaker 1: lot of these photographers were again trying to use the
Speaker 1: best information of the time to depict an accurate vision
Speaker 1: of the world, there was still a lot of uncritical
Speaker 1: copying of sea monsters. For instance, a fifteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: edition of Cornelius enthuses Carta van Us a map of
Speaker 1: northern Europe. It included a fabulous flying turtle. Uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a gammera creature in a way.
Speaker 1: It's got like it's kind of beaked, uh nose, It's
Speaker 1: got mostly a turtle body around the rest of it,
Speaker 1: except its front legs are like eagle wings. So it's
Speaker 1: a really fabulous looking creature. But here's the thing. It
Speaker 1: turns out it was probably at the logo of the publisher.
Speaker 1: Then that's the only reason it was on the map.
Speaker 1: The publisher's logo was this flying turtle, and then when
Speaker 1: people copied that, they included it as if it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be there, as if it was a depiction
Speaker 1: of the natural world. It would be like if you
Speaker 1: copied a Rand McNally map and you included that Rand
Speaker 1: McNally diamond logo and said it was a continent. You know, right,
Speaker 1: You know, I can't help it thinking. I'm sorry, a
Speaker 1: little bit distracted by the legos chimera sets that have
Speaker 1: come out. Have you seen those of a chimera the
Speaker 1: chimera lego sets where they've got different animals depicted. No, No,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that. They should take a page from
Speaker 1: these maps, I'm telling you. But that's not to say
Speaker 1: that again that everybody was just copying monsters willing knowing
Speaker 1: there were some very there were some definitely some skeptics
Speaker 1: of the time, and that's always important when you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Middle Ages or Renaissance times, that not everybody
Speaker 1: was just blindly believing everything that came across their play.
Speaker 1: One great example of this, as explained in the Van
Speaker 1: Deuser's book, you had this guy Fromorrow from Morrow lived
Speaker 1: in a fourteen fifty thereabouts when he was doing his thing,
Speaker 1: and he wrote, because there are many cosmographers and most
Speaker 1: learned men who right that in this Africa there are
Speaker 1: human animal monsters, I think it is necessary to give
Speaker 1: my opinion. In all these kingdoms of the Negroes, I
Speaker 1: have never found anyone who could give me information on
Speaker 1: what those men have written. Thus, not knowing anything, I
Speaker 1: cannot bear witness to anything, and I leave research in
Speaker 1: the matter to those who are curious about such things.
Speaker 1: So basically saying, I'm not buying this information that you're
Speaker 1: telling me about what's going on in Africa in terms
Speaker 1: of the strange creatures and the weird people that live there,
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to comment on it, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna draw it, etcetera. May Yeah, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a weak sauce statement because it's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, yeah, I suppose that was bold for back
Speaker 1: then though. Yeah. So let's talk about whales, because these
Speaker 1: guys are amazing in terms of the sort of stories
Speaker 1: that were circulated around about them and then how it
Speaker 1: was depicted and the images of them. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this because last night I was looking at
Speaker 1: pictures of humpback whales and um, I was looking other
Speaker 1: blue holes as you do, as I do, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't help but just be really sort of um taken back,
Speaker 1: because as I looked at those pictures, it started to
Speaker 1: look like a giant human snout stuck on the back
Speaker 1: of a whale. And if you look at pictures close
Speaker 1: up of a blowhole, you'll see that there's like a
Speaker 1: little bridge between what looks like nostrils. Um. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: if that were to be swimming, you know, parallel to
Speaker 1: your ship, and you happen to look at that, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you sort of misunderstand that as a distortion or um,
Speaker 1: you know, as as a sort of monstrosity of a
Speaker 1: human form in a way that it looked like, oh,
Speaker 1: this must be a monster because there's their giant snout,
Speaker 1: And how then would that be depicted? How would how
Speaker 1: would you would you describe that to somebody and they
Speaker 1: had to draw it having not seen it, and you
Speaker 1: weren't there to say no, a little more little a
Speaker 1: little closer to the animals back now, a little more
Speaker 1: like a human nose, you know, if you weren't there
Speaker 1: to actually get that kind of feedback, how would they
Speaker 1: draw it? So? And if yeah, water is is just
Speaker 1: spouting out of it right then then sort of like
Speaker 1: what do you mean water spouts out of it? Then
Speaker 1: clearly there must be some sort of tube system here. So,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned previously, the whale is a pretty classic
Speaker 1: sea monster if people have been seeing them for ages,
Speaker 1: even before we knew what to call it. We had
Speaker 1: the Leviathan, we had the giant fish that swallowed Jonah.
Speaker 1: You had the island fish that we talked about with
Speaker 1: the people land on it, and many of the older
Speaker 1: whales of there especially, they were these wolf faced beasts
Speaker 1: with long fish tails. They were spouters. But it took
Speaker 1: a while to work out exactly what all that spouting
Speaker 1: was about. Pristance. You look at one one map free
Speaker 1: you see this very wolfish actually furry sea monster known
Speaker 1: as a spouter, attacking a ship by vomiting water upon
Speaker 1: its deck out of its mouth. So here's a great
Speaker 1: example of someone probably said, oh, there are these whales,
Speaker 1: and they spout water, they spit up water, and so
Speaker 1: then the artist depiction of that is a whale rolling
Speaker 1: up to this ship, opening its mouth and just vomiting
Speaker 1: water on it and like and just completely drowning the ship. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's there's that. Uh. And then if you look
Speaker 1: at Ole Magnus's carda Marna again, you see that the
Speaker 1: whales here spout water from two blow holes to Shrek
Speaker 1: like tube like horns that emerge from the top of
Speaker 1: the creature. And this is uh. This is a classic
Speaker 1: attribute of of of Magnus Magnus's maps and his depictions
Speaker 1: of sea monsters. And the crazy thing is that it
Speaker 1: matches up so well with what you were just saying
Speaker 1: about the huntback whales real blow holes. If someone were
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, they have these two holes on
Speaker 1: their back, and there's the water, and then if if
Speaker 1: it's passing through you know, down the telephone game of
Speaker 1: illustration and manuscript and matt making and that comes to
Speaker 1: somebody and they're like, Okay, well, what does an animal
Speaker 1: like that look like if it has two holes on
Speaker 1: its back to split water out up? And then it
Speaker 1: becomes this idea of these two tubes sticking out of
Speaker 1: the creature's back, right, and you can kind of see
Speaker 1: again like how this m this weirdness occurs and the depictions,
Speaker 1: in fact, it's very steampunk looking. These a lot of these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a certain you can't help but interpret them as
Speaker 1: kind of smoke stacks, so they have this kind of
Speaker 1: biomechanical vibe to them. Yeah. Now I can't help but
Speaker 1: be reminded of this class that I took in college,
Speaker 1: and it was a psychology class having to do with sexuality,
Speaker 1: and one of the things we had to do is
Speaker 1: we had to pair up and one of us had
Speaker 1: to look at a depiction of a sexual act and
Speaker 1: the other person had to draw it as described by
Speaker 1: the person looking at it. So one of one of
Speaker 1: the things I remember is there was a Victorian woman
Speaker 1: on a bike that was a bike that was made
Speaker 1: of a penis. Let's just say that penis parts, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a difficult thing to try to Nobody
Speaker 1: knows what a bike is, But then you have to
Speaker 1: describe a bike that's made out of a penis. It
Speaker 1: might be difficult to make them out of penises. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, this was some out of someone's imagination, and
Speaker 1: so the other person had to try to describe what
Speaker 1: they are looking at. Well, you could go across the
Speaker 1: class and you could see all sorts of variations of
Speaker 1: what this penis bike look like. It made me think, well,
Speaker 1: this is very much the same thing that's going on
Speaker 1: in these depictions of maps, minus the penis. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: great example of this comes from Pierre des Selaer's World
Speaker 1: Map of fifty six, which has a fairly realistic depiction
Speaker 1: of whaler's harpooning a whale. But it's it's a little serpentine.
Speaker 1: It's flippers are a bit like wings, and most remarkably
Speaker 1: of all, it has a gigantic mustache. It looks kind
Speaker 1: of like the luck dragons from the Never New Story.
Speaker 1: It's a gentleman whale. Yeah, so so why does the
Speaker 1: whale have the mustache? Why is there suddenly? You know,
Speaker 1: because they're trying to clearly, it's an attempted depiction of
Speaker 1: an actual cultural tradition. Of whaling, of hunting the whales,
Speaker 1: catching the whales, harvesting the whales, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these accounts included, you know, some some very specific accounts
Speaker 1: of what then the whale parts are used for and
Speaker 1: how it's used, you know, culturally and economically. But it
Speaker 1: has this mustache. Well, according to Van Duser, the mustache
Speaker 1: is probably the artist's attempt to portray bailen, which the
Speaker 1: whaling basques commonly referred to as barbaus dave balina, or
Speaker 1: the beards of the whale. So again you have to
Speaker 1: set you're trying to make the best use of the
Speaker 1: information that's provided to you, and then someone talks about
Speaker 1: the beard of the whale. Are you talking about the
Speaker 1: filtering system, which of course is very internal and it's
Speaker 1: certainly not a mustache. But if you describe it as
Speaker 1: the beards of the whale, and then someone down the
Speaker 1: chain has to draw the beards of the whale, this
Speaker 1: is what you get, a whale with a giant must
Speaker 1: I love it. I was just like to imagine I'm
Speaker 1: sitting around, you know, at some pubs saying it's like
Speaker 1: when you get you know, that crumbs in your mustache.
Speaker 1: It silts it out, you know, and it's easy for
Speaker 1: us as modern commentators to to have a lot of
Speaker 1: fun with this. But but just think about how to day,
Speaker 1: like all the information in the world is instantly at
Speaker 1: your fingertips. If you if you've even halfway know what
Speaker 1: you're doing on the Internet, you can fact check something
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. But still, think of the emails you get
Speaker 1: in your inbox just spouting complete nonsense that no one
Speaker 1: or the questions that come up one book where you're
Speaker 1: you're like, really, why are you asking all of us
Speaker 1: when you could have just googled that and found out
Speaker 1: immediately if you knew what sources to look for. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll take that that same mindset, or even some variation
Speaker 1: of it, and put it in an age without Internet,
Speaker 1: where you only have books speaking to books over the
Speaker 1: course of decades and centuries, and this is the kind
Speaker 1: of closed system of information that you get exactly. Now.
Speaker 1: That's not to say we didn't have accurate depictions of whales.
Speaker 1: So as early as fourteen thirteen we see a realistic
Speaker 1: illustration of a whale hunted by whalers on Mercedes Valestis
Speaker 1: nautical chart. And finally, in an interesting closure of these
Speaker 1: two trends of the fantastic and the realistic. We see
Speaker 1: the Nova Frontier map, which features an old fashioned sea
Speaker 1: monster with double spouts and wolfish heads, you know, very
Speaker 1: much in Magnus's style. But then you also see an
Speaker 1: incredibly realistic portrayal of way whalers harvesting a whale. So
Speaker 1: you see the incorporation of the older idea of the
Speaker 1: sea monster as a as just a fantastic decorative note,
Speaker 1: while you also see this this very accurate depiction of
Speaker 1: whales and whaling. So you see the two coming together,
Speaker 1: and you see the idea of the old sea monster
Speaker 1: becoming more and more just a relic, more and more
Speaker 1: just a decoration that eventually fades away. Well or it
Speaker 1: becomes a tattoo, right because it still has power as
Speaker 1: a symbol, because you found that awesome tattoo with someone
Speaker 1: had one of old magnus h shrek Horn sea monsters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know even some of the more classical tattoos
Speaker 1: that show all sorts of sea creatures, um, you know,
Speaker 1: taking out a boat or just being ferocious. It kind
Speaker 1: of this sort of um talisman against your trade. If
Speaker 1: you are someone who is you know a marine merchant
Speaker 1: or just who works in the industry, industry being in
Speaker 1: of the ocean, the oceans. So in a sense, you
Speaker 1: can look at sea monsters on maps as a story
Speaker 1: of man versus ocean over the course of centuries. We
Speaker 1: see the gradual journey from the ocean as a place
Speaker 1: of chaos and certain death to a thing conquered by man.
Speaker 1: Think back to those early depictions in the o t
Speaker 1: world maps. So over again, the outer ocean is teaming
Speaker 1: with monsters or as in a map of Moundy from
Speaker 1: eleven eighty, most of the map is outer ocean as
Speaker 1: a tail eating serpent or or a boris. And then
Speaker 1: you also see various titan sized sea monsters out there
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. And then we but we gradually learned
Speaker 1: to combat the ocean, and we gradually learned to combat
Speaker 1: these uh, these monsters of the mind um in the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Cattle in Atlas of thirteen seventy five, we
Speaker 1: see a depiction of pearl divers utilizing spells to keep
Speaker 1: sea monsters at bay. Fifteen forty five, there's a map
Speaker 1: where we see men aboard a ship driving spears into
Speaker 1: an attacking beaked tentacle horror, and in the Carton Marina
Speaker 1: we see men blowing trumpets stared off one of these
Speaker 1: spouting whales. And then most remarkably fifteen sixteen, on Martin
Speaker 1: Walt Sigmueller's Carton Marina, we see King man Ale of
Speaker 1: Portual writing a sea monster off the tip of Africa
Speaker 1: to symbolize Portugal's mastery of the oceans. And from there,
Speaker 1: you know, again, sea monsters become more and more decoration
Speaker 1: and we start adding more and more ships into our
Speaker 1: artistic representation of the ocean and more technology technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they kind of go by the wayside because by
Speaker 1: the time that the camera has been invented is starting
Speaker 1: to document nature, then you you know, have a moving
Speaker 1: away of this idea of these really monstrous creatures, and
Speaker 1: then the maps begin to rot. We only retain the
Speaker 1: you know, a very slim number of them, and they
Speaker 1: just become creatures of fantasy, and then we tend to
Speaker 1: forget that at times they were wrapped up in symbolism,
Speaker 1: that they had economic purpose, that they that they were
Speaker 1: attempts to understand the zoology of the ocean. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of lead out of this episode
Speaker 1: with a passage that Shaddick actually brings up in his article.
Speaker 1: It's from Moby Dick, and it's when Ishmael climbs up
Speaker 1: the rigging to take his watch, and he's sitting on
Speaker 1: the top sailed yard and is hanging his leg, is
Speaker 1: kind of hanging lazily over by the sail, and he's
Speaker 1: reflecting on all the other young men who have taken
Speaker 1: watch from those heights. And here it is, says luld In,
Speaker 1: such an opium like listlessness, of vacant, unconscious reverie. Is
Speaker 1: this absent minded youth, by the blending cadence of waves
Speaker 1: and thoughts, that at last he loses his identity, takes
Speaker 1: the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image
Speaker 1: of that deep blue, bottomless soul pervading mankind in nature,
Speaker 1: And every strange, half seeing, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him,
Speaker 1: every dimly discovered uprising fin of some indiscernible form, seems
Speaker 1: to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only
Speaker 1: people the soul by continually flitting through it. Here you go,
Speaker 1: there you go, man in nature as one awesome well,
Speaker 1: you know. On that note, let's call the robot over
Speaker 1: and let's see if we have any listener. Maybe. All right,
Speaker 1: we have one for you today. This one is from
Speaker 1: Erin Erin Wright sentences, Hi, Robert and Julie. I was
Speaker 1: just listening to the Circus Freaks episode and it brought
Speaker 1: me back to my college days. My nursing school was
Speaker 1: part of a university with a music theater school. It's
Speaker 1: a great combination. You bring those two energies together. Uh.
Speaker 1: One day those worlds collided. A visiting pyrotechnic stage professional
Speaker 1: came to a small gathering my friends were having. We
Speaker 1: learned to swallow fire. The trick was using kerosene, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the fire blowing. It's not toxic and
Speaker 1: it burns just warmer than the human mouth. I won't
Speaker 1: give the particulars, but it was an amazing trick I
Speaker 1: haven't done since. My husband shakes his head in shame
Speaker 1: and I tell people I can do this, and my
Speaker 1: father in law wants me to do this at his
Speaker 1: Viking funeral. We're thinking cremated ashes in a small wooden
Speaker 1: boat in a small pond, casting the whole thing into
Speaker 1: a ball of fury with flaming eros. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for your mind blowing podcast. I'm I am embarking
Speaker 1: on a new career. I listened to your podcast while
Speaker 1: baking tasty muffins for a farmer's market here in town
Speaker 1: with the hopes of expanding to a small cafe. Your podcast,
Speaker 1: as well as your siblings on the Stuff Network, gives
Speaker 1: me hours of entertainment while baking and boxing my goods.
Speaker 1: I've also started having a quiz from my Facebook followers
Speaker 1: using the knowledge I've gained. Again, thanks sincerely, uh Aaron
Speaker 1: the Main Street Muffin Factory. All right, well that was
Speaker 1: very entertaining a Viking funeral. Yeah, I mean that's a
Speaker 1: way to go out. That's a good way to go
Speaker 1: out on an episode about sea monsters too. So hey,
Speaker 1: would you like to learn more? Would you like to
Speaker 1: see more? Again? Head by stuff to Blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com After you listen to this. While you're listening whichever,
Speaker 1: find the gallery that we've put together with pictures of
Speaker 1: some of these monsters we're talking about. I'll definitely be
Speaker 1: including a lot of stuff from Oliga. Magnus is fantastic
Speaker 1: map and you can look at those all you want
Speaker 1: and pull up a big screen version of the map
Speaker 1: as well. So if you want to just really pour
Speaker 1: over it, and you can also let us know what
Speaker 1: you think about all this. You can find us on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Tumbler. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter. On Twitter, we are Below the Mind and
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from from you about your thoughts
Speaker 1: on sea monsters if you've if you've looked at them
Speaker 1: a lot, what are some of your favorites are? What
Speaker 1: are some of your favorite real life monsters in the ocean.
Speaker 1: We have a seamonster tattoo. Yes, if you have a
Speaker 1: seamonster tattoo, we would love to see it if it
Speaker 1: is appropriate for us to see it. Um. You can
Speaker 1: also check us out on stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: on YouTube, where we look at the camera and commit
Speaker 1: acts of word salad. Yeah, Mind Stuff Show, Mind Stuff Show.
Speaker 1: And you can also drop us a line at Below
Speaker 1: the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com