WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Vegetable Lamb, Part 1 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.000 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:08.880 name is Robert. 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:12.119 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. You know 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.640 where we're going. We're going to the vault for an 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:18.239 elder episode of the show. This one from last year 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.720 aired on April nineteenth, that's twenty twenty two, and it 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:26.640 is the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, Part one, where we 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.760 explore the strange tale of a sort of vegetable mammal 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:33.160 hybrid from far away. 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:35.840 Yeah. These were a lot of fun, so I hope 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.479 you enjoy. 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:43.720 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:51.839 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:52.600 is Robert. 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:54.280 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.080 Last week's episodes discussed contemplations of plant and memory and 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:02.640 other topics that can blur our understanding of the animal 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:06.120 plant divide. And while we were talking about all of this, 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:11.120 I mentioned very briefly that hybrid creatures of myth and 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.800 legend often serve, among other purposes, as a kind of 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:17.520 reflection on the similarities and differences between animals and plants, 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:22.160 and at times maybe a contemplation of places where the 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:26.280 distinction becomes a little confusing for one reason or another. 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:30.240 So I thought we might discuss one of them this 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:34.520 week in greater detail, and that is the vegetable Lamb 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.720 of Tartary. This is one of those creatures I thought 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.240 I might do like a short form monster fact on. 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.560 But the more I looked into it, the more it 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:43.880 seemed to have legs. 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.440 Oh, very nice. So you were drawn to this? Was 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.440 this a nominative determinism thing? I? 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.600 Well, this is one I had been vaguely familiar with, 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:59.120 in part because it does pop up in various bestiaries 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:03.800 and monster books. Jorge Lewis Borges wrote about it and 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:07.880 was enticed by it. But yeah, when you start looking 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.520 into it, there's a lot more to it than just 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:16.000 a simple definition and explanation of what it was or wasn't. 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.760 Well, this was clearly one of the most popular fantastic 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:23.680 creatures of medieval bestiaries. It's all over the place, and 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:28.600 it's treated with varying degrees of credulity, more credulity early 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:29.800 on and less later on. 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.880 That's right, so it's It was referred to as the 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.560 vegetable Lamb of Chartary by Sir Thomas Brown and his 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:42.520 sixteen forty six work Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and it was known 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.440 by many other names as well. Two of the first 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:48.959 sources I looked at concerning this where, of course, the 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.919 Carol Rose's books The Book of Monsters, and also the 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.480 writings of Jorge Lewis Borges. They point out in their 0:02:57.520 --> 0:02:59.880 works that the creature is also known as the boor 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.960 Mets or the Barromets. That's a prime, that's an important 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:08.960 name that comes up a lot. There's also the polypodium boromets, 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:16.360 the Chinese polypodium, the lycopodium or Chinese lycopodium, the jadua, 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.880 the Scythian lamb, and I've also seen it referred to 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.440 as the Tartar lamb, and we'll get into the differences. 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.639 But the basic description of the Boromets or the baro Mets, 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:33.320 as Borges and Rose catalog respectfully, is that it's a 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.200 plant shaped like a sheep that grows out of the ground, 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.240 and if you cut it open, you'll find the insides 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.320 are exactly what you would find if you cut open 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:45.520 an actual lamb or sheep, blood, flesh, bones, et cetera. 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.480 People allegedly encountered this strange thing in parts of Asia 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:54.360 and then brought back stories about it which were elaborated upon. 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.040 Yes, and there's a great principle at play here, which 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:01.040 is the same as a friend of my cousin's principle. 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.120 You know that you place the origin of your really 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.920 cool story sort of several links or geographically far away, 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.880 so that it's harder to check up on. Because again, 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.160 this is something that was said to exist in the 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.880 land of Tartary, and a European chronicler in the Middle 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.960 Ages saying that a wondrous life form is found in 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.480 Tartary is not especially helpful to a reader who might 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:26.960 want to look for evidence of this thing beyond the 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:28.960 text they're reading, or especially if they want to go 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:31.880 try to find it in the real world. Since the 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:36.479 European medieval concept of Tartary was a huge and vaguely 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.280 defined area of land, it's not like saying it's in Chicago. 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.240 Right, And it's a large area of land that not 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:48.200 much was known about to Europeans prior to the eighteenth century. 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.320 Right. A lot of it was these fantastical travel books, 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:53.080 like some of the ones we're going to talk about today. 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:55.840 So this was, Yes, the European name for the vast 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.960 stretch of Asia that was north of the then borders 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.360 of China, India, and Persia as understood by the west. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.359 Right, you can think of it broadly as the central 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:09.440 and northern area of the Asian mainland, including parts of 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.359 what today would be Central Asia and Siberia, but running 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.640 all the way down to the Himalayas, including Kazakhstan and Mongolia, 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:21.360 what is today part of China, and the whole eastern 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.679 part of Russia. So this is a huge stretch of land. 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.400 This is not being very specific at all to say 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.599 that something is in Tartary, which is actually great because 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:32.680 if you want to get away with weaving a tall 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.840 tail for a European audience, this is an excellent place 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:37.680 to set it. It's a vast much of it is 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:42.000 sparsely populated, very little is known or understood by the reader, 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:44.680 so it's going to be very difficult to check up 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.840 on your story at that time. Now, one more thing 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:49.840 before we get started looking at some of these great 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.799 old sources is there's a really great more recent source 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:58.560 tracing the history of the vegetable lamb of Tartari legend 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:01.840 and offering what I think is a very convincing argument 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:04.920 about its natural origins. And we'll get more into the 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.040 explanation of the natural origins in part two of this series. 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:10.280 I think today we're going to focus more on the 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.320 legend itself and its development. But this source was by 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:18.560 a nineteenth century English naturalist named Henry Lee, and it's 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.479 called The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, published in eighteen eighty seven. 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.320 I'm going to be referring to that work repeatedly throughout 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.159 these episodes. But a little bit about Henry Lee. He 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.120 was apparently an aquarium a naturalist and an aquarium manager, 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.760 and he published books in the eighteen seventies and eighties 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:41.400 investigating claims of various sea monsters and offering natural explanations 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.120 for these sightings and stories. He seems to me to 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:48.039 be a very early model of the skeptical cryptozoologist. 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.359 All right, But before we get into the realm of 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.560 skeptical cryptozoologists, let's back it way up. Let's deal with 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:59.640 some less reputable sources by authors that may not have 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.559 been actual people, at least in one case. 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:05.920 Interstage left, Sir John Mandeville. 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:11.400 That's right, the book The Sir John Mandeville's Travels from 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.400 thirteen fifty C. Now, the first thing you're probably asking is, Okay, 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:17.360 who's this John Mandevil guy that's going to tell me 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.640 about his travels? Well, Mandevell is the supposed author of 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:24.080 the Travels of Sir John Mandevil, a travel memoir that 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:28.440 circulated during the mid fourteenth century, and this individual was 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:31.320 said to have been an English knight. But it's widely 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.440 thought that this individual did not actually exist, and that 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.080 the true author may have been a Flemish monk, perhaps 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:42.800 one Gen DeLonge, who was himself a prolific writer and 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:46.960 a collector of various travel logs. But I think it's 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:49.760 still it's not something we're one hundred percent certain on, 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.640 but I've seen some sources that indicate that this guy 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:54.720 is a possible bet, just because he was sort of 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:59.520 all the interests and resources lined up well. 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.040 One of the wonderful things about reading Sir John Mandeville 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.720 is if you find one of the archaic original texts, 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:09.640 the spellings of all the English words like, you can 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.080 sort of make sense of it as a modern English 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:14.560 reader if you labor through it. But the spellings are 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.440 just tremendous. He calls himself a Night of Ingel One 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:22.360 Night with a y, and England is spelled I N 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.640 G E l O N D Oh my heart. 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.200 That's great. I should also point out that there's there's 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.440 been a lot of work over the years just analyzing 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.000 how much of this book is Again, the author was 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:38.560 not a real person, but how much of this may 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.360 have been based on somebody's actual travels versus how much 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.680 of it is just pure invention or generated off of 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:46.840 the backs of other works. 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:50.520 Yeah, it's difficult to tell that. I think it's pretty 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.480 clear that his story of the vegetable lamb of Tartary 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:57.319 is a fabrication because number one, he claims to have 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.280 seen it himself, and as we'll get to it, we're 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:04.400 pretty sure nothing of this description ever actually existed, and 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.880 it may be a garbled version of sightings of something 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:10.760 that did really exist, but it wouldn't look anything like 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.480 what John Mandevil describes, right, So the fact that he 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:16.840 claims to see it and his description does not match 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.880 anything in nature, including real plants that could have inspired it, 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.880 That seems to point to this just being made up, 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.160 But it could but it's also likely that he based 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.880 this story on something else. That he read from maybe 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.240 one hundred years before him or even earlier. His encounter 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.000 with the alleged Lamb of Tartari comes in the twenty 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.280 sixth chapter of this travel book, where he is describing 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.800 the curiosities he came across in the dominion of the 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:43.319 cham of Tartari. 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:46.040 All right, here's the bet. I'm gonna read it here, 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:49.160 and my copy has the original spellings in it, so 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:51.800 I'm going to try and lean into those spellings. Okay. 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:55.480 Quote and there grow with a manner of fruit as 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:59.079 though it were Gored's, and when they been ripe men 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.920 cutting him at and then find in within a little 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.440 beast in flesh, in bond and blood as though it 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:08.920 were a little lamb without in wool. 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:16.120 Fruit is f r u y t y and and 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.160 Gord's's gowerdies. 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:24.760 G O w r d E s yea love it. Yeah, 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.400 So it's it's worth looking up just to to take 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:31.560 in these spellings. And I have to say, I when 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:33.920 I read this, in my mind, I'm reading it in 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.120 the voice of Mary from the British comedy Ghosts, who's 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:42.679 like this medieval peasant ghost who I can easily imagine 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:44.960 going through this this this statement here. 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:47.679 You know who I really want to get a reading 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:49.520 of the I want to get Matt Barry to do it. 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.240 Yeah, that would be good too. I could do a 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.280 whole audiobook of the travels of John Mandifal. 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:03.040 It were a little lomb without in wool. Wait wait 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.559 a minute, So you cut it off there, and that's 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:07.200 that's a great part of the quote. But the quote 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:08.840 does go on. Do you mind if I feature the 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:09.520 next sentence? 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:10.120 Go for it? 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.640 Okay? After that it's uh no, I'm not going to 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:16.480 do a Matt Berry voice. It's and men eaten both 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:19.559 the fruit and the beast, and that is a great 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:24.319 marvel of that fruit I have eaten, although it were wonderful. 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.400 But that I know well that God is marvelous in 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:31.880 his workies W. E. R. K Ees. So let's review 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.320 what we know from Mandeville now, right. So in Tartary, 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.760 there is a plant that grows a fruit that resembles 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.959 a gourd. And when these gourds are ripe, you can 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:44.959 cut them open and inside you will find a tiny 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.360 beast that is exactly like a lamb. Like a real 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.320 lamb doesn't just look like one. It has meat and bone, 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.600 and blood, and men in Tartary will eat these little lambs. 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:58.679 John Mandeville says, I myself ate one too, and it 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.320 was delicious. And the existence of the lamb of Tartary 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.360 is so marvelous that it proves the greatness of God. 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.160 Wow, this is a great source. I saw the baby, 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:10.200 and the baby looked at me. 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:18.360 Yes, yes, the baby looked at you. Oh no, Yeah, 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.360 Chief Wygum is all the subsequent chroniclers who report on 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:22.080 this passage. 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:24.800 Yeah. So I just love every part. I mean, just 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:26.800 the idea that you it looks like a lamb and 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:28.560 you cut it open and it's got it's not on 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:30.440 the online. Does it bleed and have flesh but it 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.480 has bones? Yeah, it's it's and this is not. There 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:36.600 is even more. There are more layers of the absurd 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:38.080 that will come in later tellings. 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.800 Yeah. Mandeville seems to be one of the earliest widespread 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:45.079 accounts of the lamb in medieval European sources, but the 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:48.560 legend is repeated with many variations in books of the 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:52.360 following centuries up until people start getting skeptical, I think, 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.120 basically during the Enlightenment. But another one we should look 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.959 at before we try to trace any farther forward or backward. 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.680 Is the one by Thomas Brown in the mid seventeenth century. 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:08.960 Right in the book Pseudodoxia Epidemica. This is sixteen forty six. 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:13.120 Now Thomas Brown, this was certainly a real historic person 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.360 who lives sixteen oh five through sixteen eighty two. An 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.360 English author, physician, and polymath. He wrote on numerous topics, 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:25.640 but was best known for Religio Medici, a very popular 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:28.920 work of the day on the connections between science and religion. 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:33.800 And the Borometz becomes even more extraordinary by the time 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:38.520 of Brown, who writes the following quote. Much wonder is 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.520 made of the boramez, that strange plant, animal or vegetable 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.680 lamb of tartary, which wolve's delight to feed on, which 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.200 hath the shape of a lamb, affordeth a bloody juice 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.559 upon breaking and liveth while the plants be consumed about it. 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.840 And that much is typically quoted. You'll find that quoted 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:03.200 on various discuss of the Bormetz. But there's more which 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:07.679 is insightful, because he continues, And yet, if all this 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.360 be no more than the shape of a lamb in 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.200 the flower or seed upon the top of the stalk, 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.440 as we meet with the forms of bees, flies, and 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.920 dogs in some others, he has seen nothing that shall 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:25.200 much wonder at all. So in other words, however, if 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:27.560 this is just something on the plant that is shaped 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.040 more or less like an animal, we've seen that before 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:32.680 and it's nothing really to write home about. 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.720 But I'm wondering I can't quite tell from the text. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.520 Is he's saying that he thinks it's more likely just 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.480 that it's like a flower that's shaped like a lamb. 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:43.840 Or is he saying, well, it could be one or 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:44.200 the other. 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:47.200 You know, it's hard to say, right. I mean, it's 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.200 easy to a lot of people seem to lean into 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:52.680 the idea that he's saying, hey, this is real, because 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.240 they leave off the skeptical part of the quote. But 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.720 I'm not sure exactly which way the author is leaning 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:03.680 him self here. But certainly there's a note of skepticism 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.520 here that is sometimes lacking in the discussion of fantastic 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:08.480 creatures even today. 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:10.960 I actually looked up the context of this to see 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.800 what else he's talking about in the other paragraphs around this, 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.120 and in the paragraph right above his passage on the 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.680 boramets or the lamb of Tartary. He's talking about, quote, 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:27.240 the tarantula or poisonous spider of Collabria, and that magical 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:31.200 cure of the bite thereof by music. So this is 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:33.680 a spider whose bite is cured by music. I think. 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.040 He also says that tarantulas will dance to music. I 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:39.520 was trying to figure out what this meant, he says, 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.560 quote some also affirm that the tarantula itself will dance 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:45.080 upon certain strokes. 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:50.800 The more you know, yeah, So I mentioned Carol Rose 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.480 earlier a source i'phant turned too, and in her book Giants, 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.280 Monsters and Dragons, she summarizes many the oral the overall 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.080 traditions of the bora met as follows quote. 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.240 In general, the Borometz was believed to be a creature 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.920 with roots that held it fast. In one place, it 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.760 resembled a lamb sheep with golden colored fleece. The stalk 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.200 allowed it to browse the surrounding pasture, but as soon 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.440 as this was consumed, the creature died of starvation. Humans 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:20.280 or wolves then came and harvested the body, which was 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:23.040 said to taste like crab meat. Its hooves were made 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:26.840 of hair, which like its fleece was used by humans 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:27.880 for weaving clothes. 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.560 Yeah, so this seems to be a pretty good description 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:34.160 of that other version. We have the two main models, 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.800 which are very different. The one of Mandeville, which is like, 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:39.440 there are lambs in the fruits. The fruits are like 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:42.440 these gourds. You cut them open inside their little tiny 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:44.720 lambs and you can eat them. And then there's this 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.119 other version sighted in a bunch of sources and summarized 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:50.840 by Rose here, where it's a full sized lamb or 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:54.160 sheep and it is attached to the plant stem by 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.080 its navel which acts like a tether, and it eats 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.840 all of the vegetation around it, which I love this detail. 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:03.600 Can only survive until it has grazed all of the 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:07.560 plant life within the radius of its umbilical stem, and 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:10.080 then when it can't reach any more vegetation to graze on, 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.000 it starves to death and dies unless a wolf or 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:15.760 a human gets to it first and kills it for meat. 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:17.560 Right, And I think we'll have more on the wolf. 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:21.760 The wolf side of the part of this changes. I 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:25.040 love that it tastes like crab, and it's just it's 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:26.639 just such a thing. You can also just see like 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.240 this is what happens when an already fabulous account is 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:35.760 given time to sort of fester or ripen, and also 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:38.000 with the help of you know, books talking to other books, 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.800 and translations and mistranslations taking place. 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.000 Now, based on all these medieval sources I found cataloged 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:55.359 in Lee's book, Rose's summary seems to me very correct, 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.840 with one exception, which is the characterization. She says that 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:02.679 the flea of the vegetable lamb is golden in color. 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.879 But based on everything I've read, that's something that you 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.120 find more in the later sources. The earlier sources, if 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.840 they mentioned the color of the fleece, they describe it 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.120 as pale white, and later it's only in later sources 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:19.760 like Erasmus Darwin that changed this to golden. And Lee 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:22.280 will will end up arguing that there's a very specific 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.399 reason for this change that has to do with the 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:29.399 rationalist explanation of the lamb given in later centuries. And 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:31.240 in fact, since I mentioned it, maybe I should go 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.040 ahead and read a passage from Erasmus Darwin. This is 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:38.679 written much later, but in Darwin's work The Botanic Garden, 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:42.200 which is a grand poem about the natural world, about 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:46.760 The Plant World, written in seventeen eighty one, Darwin writes, quote, 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.520 even round the poll, the flames of love aspire, and 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.560 icy bosoms feel. The secret fire, cradled in snow and 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:59.119 fanned by Arctic air, shines gentle boramets like golden hair 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.560 in the earth. Each cloven foot descends and round and 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.760 round her flexile necks. She bends crops the gray coral 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.240 moss in hoary time, or laps with rosy tongue, the 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:15.879 melting rhyme, eyes with mute tenderness, her distant dam and 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.720 seems to bleat a vegetable lamb. 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:24.480 Oh that's wonderful. Yeah, well, I can't top that. One 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.120 of the sources I was looking at is the work 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.520 Ingelbert Comfort and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb by 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.520 Robert W. Caruba, and this was published in the Classical 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.480 World in nineteen ninety three. In this the author points 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:41.600 out that while the lamb is largely a product of 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.800 the Middle Ages, some passages by classical authors such as 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:50.679 Herodotus and Theophrastus quote played an innocent role in its development. 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.680 And we'll have more on those two authors in a pit. Yeah. 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.160 I think we'll have to revisit the links to Herodotus 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:58.600 and the other Greek authors in Part two, because that 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:02.399 ties directly into what I think is probably the best 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.119 theory for explaining the lamb legend. But it is I 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:09.000 think worth noting in this part some other works preceding 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.160 the story as told by John Mandeville, and I guess 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:12.880 we'll come back to those in just a little bit. 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:18.160 Yeah. Now, Karupa also describes the lamb as a zoophyte, 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:23.600 which is an actual classification or was actual classification for 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.399 plant like animals, And this kind of comes back to 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.480 our larger discussion that we were having having last week 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.879 on the show. So the sessile nature of plants is 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.520 a big part of their identity, but we do have 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:40.520 non plants and even animals that have taken on similar 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.840 modes of existence. However, I do wonder if it's correct 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:47.359 to think of the lamb here fantastic as it may be, 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.320 as a plant like animal or an animal like plant. 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:52.520 In my notes, I kept wanting to refer to it 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:57.320 as the creature, but then felt weird about calling it 0:20:57.359 --> 0:20:59.840 a creature when it really seems more like a creature 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:00.399 like plant. 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:04.160 Yeah, I don't know exactly what takes taxonomic precedence there. 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:07.240 I mean, obviously, in the real world, there are plants 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.600 that have interesting characteristics of animals, like the ones we 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.680 talked about in the episodes from last week, the sensitive 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.520 plant Mimosa putico, which shows rapid movement. Of course, the 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.760 venus flytrap is another example. These seis monastic movements that 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:24.040 allow a plant to have movement on the timescale you 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:26.919 would normally only associate with an animal. And then of 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.040 course you can have animals that have characteristics we would 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:33.520 associate with plants that might animals that might look like 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.080 plants in some way. They have some kind of camouflage 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.919 that looks like vegetation. I think of the you know, 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:41.560 like the sloths that look like they're covered in some 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:44.640 kind of plant life. Or there are even some animals 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:47.320 that have the power to absorb energy from the sunlight 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:50.800 like plants do, like I believe there are there are 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:54.199 certain salamanders that have evolved ways to do this, and 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:58.560 there might be a seak cucumber example. So you can 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:02.399 find characteristics normally associated with one in the other. But 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:05.399 then again, there are no such things as animal plant 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:10.440 combinations like animals and plants are too far removed, too 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:12.880 far removed in the tree of life to like inter 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:17.119 breed or anything like that, right, right, But nevertheless, we 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:21.200 do get this concept in the Middle Ages of the zoophyte. 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:24.840 One I was reading about in the same context as 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:27.960 the vegetable lamb of Tartary was the so called barnacle 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:31.919 goose myth. I think there are different ways this has 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:34.880 been conceptualized, but there's like a type of goose that 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:38.760 at various times in history has been thought to bud 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:41.919 off of barnacles, like in the water. So it's not 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:45.800 actually a land animal or a bird, it's actually some 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:49.160 kind of fish or water animal. Or they even say 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:52.200 that this goose maybe came out of trees. So it's 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:54.639 okay to eat this goose on Fridays, even if you're 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:57.480 supposed to fast from meat on Fridays, because it's not 0:22:57.720 --> 0:22:59.639 actually a bird, it is a plant. 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:03.679 That reminds me of our episode The Furry Fish, in 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:07.080 which we were discussing otters a bit. Uh, And if 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:09.080 you didn't listen to it, why would we discuss otters 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:11.159 in an episode about the furry fish. Well, that was 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:14.240 because in some places there were discussions, Well, what do 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:16.720 we call the otter like? Is it lives in the water, 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:20.080 It does things that seem very fish like. Therefore, is 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:24.639 it okay for us to to to eat the flesh 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:26.840 of the otter as if it were a fish? Is 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:30.560 it going to be is it going to be subject 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:34.360 to the same rules concerning dietary rules concerning the consumption 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:38.280 of non fish meat that sort of thing. 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:40.879 That kind of thing just doesn't really fly anymore, does it. Like, 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:43.959 you can't you can't bring a goose to a vegan 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:46.760 pot luck and say no, this goose came off of 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:49.639 a tree. It was it's actually a fruit. 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:52.600 Well, we can't say it yet, but something we might 0:23:52.600 --> 0:23:55.040 get into in a later episode or even in the 0:23:55.040 --> 0:23:58.000 next episode a little bit is will we reach the 0:23:58.080 --> 0:24:00.600 day when you can do that? When you can't say no, 0:24:00.680 --> 0:24:03.040 this goose meat is all right because it was not 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:06.600 harvested from the wild. It was grown off of something 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:11.760 I picked it this morning. Another example that sometimes mentioned 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:15.479 in terms of zoophytes from Chinese traditions. It frequently comes up, 0:24:15.520 --> 0:24:18.120 is that of court aceps. This is, of course, when 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:21.000 you have court aceps, you have these parasitic funguses that 0:24:21.119 --> 0:24:24.680 will overtake an insect, resulting in something They would certainly 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:27.080 be confusing and difficult to classify if you didn't know 0:24:27.119 --> 0:24:29.520 what was going on. These have long been a part 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:34.680 of Chinese traditional medicine, quite popular, and I remember when 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:37.560 I was last in China about I think nine years ago, 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:40.240 I remember seeing an entire storefront filled with these, and 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:42.919 you can still you can find court aceps for sale 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:50.080 anywhere Chinese traditional medicine and Chinese traditional medical products are sold. 0:24:50.720 --> 0:24:53.879 But yeah, it's quite If you just look at one 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:55.560 of these specimens, it's quote you can see where the 0:24:55.560 --> 0:24:58.679 confusion might might occur, and you might think, well, this 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:01.520 is clearly neither not quite an animal, but it's not 0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:02.680 quite something else either. 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:03.560 Yeah. 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:05.560 So if things like this exist, I mean, why not 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:06.960 a vegetable lamb? Right? 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:09.280 Well, we can talk about why not later on, but yeah, 0:25:09.320 --> 0:25:12.040 I mean one wants to have some you know, give 0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:16.560 some leeway to medieval thinkers, because if you don't have 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:21.320 a theory that helps you organize claims about the natural 0:25:21.359 --> 0:25:25.320 world indeplausible and implausible, you do at least know, well, 0:25:25.359 --> 0:25:28.200 the natural world is full of surprising things, So why 0:25:28.240 --> 0:25:31.400 not a vegetable lamb, Why not a plant that grows 0:25:31.400 --> 0:25:32.399 a mammal out of it? 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.960 Yeah, So, going back to that work by Karuba, the 0:25:37.000 --> 0:25:41.000 author points to ways that the idea was popularized later 0:25:41.080 --> 0:25:44.080 on by such writers as doctor Rasmus Darwin, who we 0:25:44.160 --> 0:25:48.760 quoted earlier with the bleeding quote. There we also have 0:25:49.280 --> 0:25:56.080 Guero Lama Cardano and Julius Caesar Scalager. But Karuba here 0:25:56.160 --> 0:25:59.840 is chiefly dealing with the work of Ingelbert Comfort on 0:25:59.880 --> 0:26:03.200 the subject. Kamfor was a German naturalist who lived sixteen 0:26:03.280 --> 0:26:07.440 fifty one through seventeen sixteen, and who was actually himself 0:26:07.520 --> 0:26:13.480 widely traveled, having toured Russia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia and Japan. 0:26:14.200 --> 0:26:17.840 His book History of Japan was the main Western source 0:26:17.880 --> 0:26:20.960 on Japan for nearly two centuries. So he's kind of 0:26:20.960 --> 0:26:25.320 the ideal individual to weigh in on the lamb of Tartary, 0:26:26.960 --> 0:26:33.600 and so he does. He Now, as far as the 0:26:33.680 --> 0:26:37.040 Karuba here goes, he begins by citing yet another description 0:26:37.160 --> 0:26:39.919 of this marvel, this time from the writings of French 0:26:39.960 --> 0:26:44.000 botanist Claude Duay, and this one was apparently highly influential 0:26:44.080 --> 0:26:48.000 during the eighteenth century. Quote in Tartary there are seeds 0:26:48.000 --> 0:26:51.000 which are like the seeds of gourds, only shorter in size, 0:26:51.040 --> 0:26:54.159 which grow and blossom like a stem to the navel 0:26:54.280 --> 0:26:57.560 of an animal, which is called aboromets in their language, 0:26:57.960 --> 0:27:00.720 I e. Lamb, because it resembles a and all its 0:27:00.760 --> 0:27:04.000 limbs from head to foot. Its hooves are clothing. Its 0:27:04.000 --> 0:27:07.199 skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing. But 0:27:07.280 --> 0:27:10.359 it has no horns, only hairs on its head, which 0:27:10.440 --> 0:27:14.359 grow and are intertwined like horns. Its height is half 0:27:14.359 --> 0:27:17.480 a cubit and more according to those who speak of 0:27:17.560 --> 0:27:21.359 this wondrous thing. Its taste is like the flesh of fish. 0:27:21.800 --> 0:27:24.680 It's blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as 0:27:24.720 --> 0:27:27.800 long as there is herbage within range of the stem 0:27:27.880 --> 0:27:30.920 from which it derives its life. If the herbage is 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:35.480 destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has 0:27:36.200 --> 0:27:39.959 rest from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf, 0:27:40.359 --> 0:27:41.800 which seeks to destroy it. 0:27:43.400 --> 0:27:45.119 Wonder why only the wolf? 0:27:45.640 --> 0:27:47.679 I don't know, only the wolf, and I guess in 0:27:47.720 --> 0:27:48.639 some tellings people. 0:27:48.880 --> 0:27:51.879 But okay, so this time, it's flesh tastes like fish, 0:27:51.960 --> 0:27:54.879 its blood is as sweet as honey, and it lives 0:27:54.960 --> 0:27:57.400 until the wolf gets it or again it eats all 0:27:57.440 --> 0:27:59.840 of the herbage within reach of the stem. 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:04.600 Right. So Comfer was interested in this, and in Comfort's 0:28:04.600 --> 0:28:09.520 writing he discusses the origin of the word as he 0:28:09.560 --> 0:28:14.280 derived at the boromets or boramets to the Slavac baran 0:28:14.680 --> 0:28:19.159 and the Persian baret, both meaning sheep apparently, but he 0:28:19.200 --> 0:28:24.080 also points out that the actual Scythian sheep is rather 0:28:24.160 --> 0:28:27.200 different from the common variety of sheep in Germany. He says, 0:28:27.240 --> 0:28:30.800 it's bigger, it has different I believe it is later 0:28:30.840 --> 0:28:33.879 described as a massive tail, and it has a massive 0:28:33.920 --> 0:28:37.200 fat that drags around behind it. It's fat and meat 0:28:37.680 --> 0:28:40.640 and are both delicious, and it's hide is prized as well. 0:28:41.080 --> 0:28:44.320 I don't know quite what to make of this description 0:28:44.400 --> 0:28:48.800 of a massive fat tail, and Karuba doesn't really go 0:28:48.920 --> 0:28:55.640 into it. But having related this, Comfort is basically saying, okay, look, granted, 0:28:56.560 --> 0:28:58.960 the sheep over there don't look quite like the sheep 0:28:59.000 --> 0:29:03.080 we have here. But when I was traveling in regions 0:29:03.360 --> 0:29:05.800 you know that would have been familiar with this. Surely 0:29:06.160 --> 0:29:08.200 no one knew what I was talking about. No one 0:29:08.240 --> 0:29:11.520 had ever heard of a borometz as described in these traditions, 0:29:11.760 --> 0:29:14.320 and so he ruled that it is quote pure fiction 0:29:14.520 --> 0:29:15.120 and fable. 0:29:15.480 --> 0:29:17.520 Yeah, it seems to me that while the story was 0:29:17.560 --> 0:29:21.560 taken as generally true by authors in the Middle Ages, 0:29:21.680 --> 0:29:25.440 by like the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, authors who wrote 0:29:25.440 --> 0:29:28.080 about it seemed to be more often skeptical. Like. Another 0:29:28.120 --> 0:29:31.600 one who is skeptical not so much of the initial 0:29:31.640 --> 0:29:35.840 reports but of their interpretation was the seventeenth century German 0:29:35.880 --> 0:29:39.240 polymath athanacious Kircher, who's come up on the podcast several 0:29:39.320 --> 0:29:43.240 times before. Apparently, Kercher wrote quote. Some authors have regarded 0:29:43.280 --> 0:29:46.160 it as an animal, some as a plant, whilst others 0:29:46.160 --> 0:29:49.240 have classified it as a true zoophyte. In order not 0:29:49.400 --> 0:29:52.520 to multiply miracles, we assert that it is a plant, 0:29:52.920 --> 0:29:55.360 though its form be that of a quadruped and the 0:29:55.440 --> 0:29:58.440 juice beneath its willy covering bee blood which flows. If 0:29:58.480 --> 0:30:01.640 an incision be made in its these things will not 0:30:01.800 --> 0:30:04.800 move us. It will be found to be a plant. 0:30:04.960 --> 0:30:07.320 And I was like, WHOA tell it like it is? 0:30:07.360 --> 0:30:10.840 I mean, I think once this series is over, Kircher 0:30:10.880 --> 0:30:15.400 will be vindicated. But it's interesting how certain he is 0:30:15.440 --> 0:30:18.320 in this writing of this thing he's never seen for himself. 0:30:18.760 --> 0:30:20.560 Well, you know, the thing is if you have even 0:30:21.600 --> 0:30:26.560 even a halfway broad familiarity with plants of many of 0:30:26.600 --> 0:30:28.920 any given region, you know, there's a good chance you'll 0:30:28.920 --> 0:30:32.720 be familiar with things that do resemble, say blood, like 0:30:32.720 --> 0:30:35.440 if you know anything about beats, then the idea that 0:30:35.680 --> 0:30:39.560 some sort of plant has blood in it or something 0:30:39.560 --> 0:30:41.400 that looks like blood shouldn't be that shocking. 0:30:41.720 --> 0:30:44.080 In fact, this brings to mind something we talked about 0:30:44.120 --> 0:30:48.280 in our episode on beans. You remember that strange observation 0:30:48.360 --> 0:30:53.800 from the ancient world that the Pythagoreans did not eat beans, 0:30:53.840 --> 0:30:55.800 And in fact, there's even a story. I mean, it's 0:30:55.800 --> 0:30:57.480 hard to know if it's true, but there's a claim 0:30:57.520 --> 0:31:01.600 that Pythagoras died being pursued by a violent mob because 0:31:01.640 --> 0:31:04.000 he was running away from them, but he wouldn't run 0:31:04.040 --> 0:31:07.200 through a bean field, because I don't know. That's a 0:31:07.240 --> 0:31:09.360 strange thing to wonder why, And so people want to 0:31:09.400 --> 0:31:13.120 know what's the secret of the beans. Why does Pythagoras 0:31:13.160 --> 0:31:15.960 have this bean problem? And there were a lot of 0:31:16.000 --> 0:31:19.040 different explanations we talked about in that episode, but one 0:31:19.120 --> 0:31:24.440 of the possibilities was the modern observation that bean plants 0:31:24.520 --> 0:31:28.320 sometimes appear to bleed like bean plants have these little 0:31:28.800 --> 0:31:32.000 nodes in their roots that can become infected with a 0:31:32.040 --> 0:31:36.520 bacterium known as rhizobium. And I think if you cut 0:31:36.560 --> 0:31:43.040 these open, these bacterial nodes actually produce a hemoglobin like 0:31:43.240 --> 0:31:45.920 molecule that works pretty much the same way as the 0:31:46.200 --> 0:31:51.000 hemoglobin in our blood, binding with oxygen. And the result 0:31:51.080 --> 0:31:53.240 is that if you cut these things open, you get 0:31:53.240 --> 0:31:55.720 this red juice coming out of them that looks almost 0:31:55.800 --> 0:31:58.560 exactly like human blood. So somebody might have cut a 0:31:58.600 --> 0:32:00.800 bean plant open and been like, WHOA, this thing is 0:32:00.840 --> 0:32:03.600 bleeding like a human, or at least like an animal. 0:32:04.080 --> 0:32:07.560 So so I don't know, maybe we shouldn't need these things. 0:32:07.560 --> 0:32:09.479 Maybe they have the souls of our ancestors in them 0:32:09.560 --> 0:32:12.200 or something. You can imagine a similar thing going on 0:32:12.280 --> 0:32:14.680 with some other plant, right, you know, you could observe 0:32:14.760 --> 0:32:18.000 that it might produce a juice that looks shockingly like 0:32:18.080 --> 0:32:18.800 animal blood. 0:32:19.320 --> 0:32:23.680 Yeah, Like, I don't really I don't cook with with, 0:32:23.800 --> 0:32:26.800 you know, meats that have blood in them anymore. But 0:32:27.960 --> 0:32:30.440 on the when I do cook with beats, and I'm 0:32:30.520 --> 0:32:34.400 like cutting beats, I'm always just taken by how horrific 0:32:34.440 --> 0:32:37.440 everything looks. You know, yes, it's you know, I feel 0:32:37.440 --> 0:32:39.240 like I'm in a horror movie because I'm covered with 0:32:39.280 --> 0:32:42.040 this red juice and I'm holding a butcher knife and 0:32:42.080 --> 0:32:42.600 so forth. 0:32:42.840 --> 0:32:45.080 Yeah, I'll save you. If you're eating beats for the 0:32:45.080 --> 0:32:47.200 first time, let me save you some googling. If you 0:32:47.240 --> 0:32:50.080 go to the bathroom later, you're not dying, that's normal. 0:32:50.920 --> 0:32:53.400 Yeah, just remember that you had beats earlier. 0:32:53.640 --> 0:32:59.880 Yeah. 0:33:00.520 --> 0:33:04.680 Anyway, back to Karuba and his writing's on Comfort here 0:33:06.400 --> 0:33:10.160 from from here. In his work, Comfort goes on to 0:33:10.200 --> 0:33:13.480 discuss the possible origins of the myth, and this is 0:33:13.480 --> 0:33:15.240 what Karuba has to say about it is how he 0:33:15.240 --> 0:33:18.200 summarizes it. Quote. As to the origin of the myth, 0:33:18.520 --> 0:33:22.680 Comfort can only speculate that the museum specimens of delicate 0:33:22.800 --> 0:33:27.720 fetal fur can easily be confused with vegetable substance, and 0:33:27.760 --> 0:33:33.360 that geological distance, linguistic misunderstanding, and the inclination to believe 0:33:33.520 --> 0:33:38.520 in wonders or prodigies provide the explanation. Comfort's account is 0:33:38.560 --> 0:33:43.320 noteworthy because it debunked the myth by eyewitness investigation, provided 0:33:43.360 --> 0:33:47.760 a first detailed description of the real Scythian lamb. You 0:33:47.800 --> 0:33:52.000 know that's the one with the supposed fat tale and 0:33:52.160 --> 0:33:54.760 practice is associated with it. You know what people do 0:33:54.840 --> 0:33:57.240 with it that they like to eat, eat it, and 0:33:57.600 --> 0:34:00.520 you know they use the hide and attempted to explain 0:34:00.800 --> 0:34:02.760 rationally the origin of the myth. 0:34:04.200 --> 0:34:06.880 This is similar to what Lee says actually about Camphor. 0:34:07.160 --> 0:34:11.000 He says that he thinks that Camphor got the rational 0:34:11.040 --> 0:34:13.760 explanation of the myth wrong, like he thinks for many 0:34:13.840 --> 0:34:17.719 reasons it is not actually it was not actually inspired 0:34:17.800 --> 0:34:22.160 by this practices of harvesting the hides of fetal Scythian lambs. 0:34:22.600 --> 0:34:25.000 But at least that Camphor was like, no, let's look 0:34:25.040 --> 0:34:29.960 for an explanation that's more biologically plausible than a plant 0:34:30.040 --> 0:34:31.440 that grows into a mammal. 0:34:31.920 --> 0:34:34.680 Yeah, you know, one of the things. And maybe this 0:34:34.719 --> 0:34:36.319 is one of the things that's so attracted me about 0:34:36.320 --> 0:34:39.319 the weirdness of the vegetable lamb of Chartari is that, 0:34:39.400 --> 0:34:43.200 in its most elaborate form, it seems like such a 0:34:43.520 --> 0:34:47.000 contradiction to our other tales of the fantastics. So many 0:34:47.040 --> 0:34:50.080 creatures you encounter in a medieval bestiaria or any kind 0:34:50.120 --> 0:34:54.920 of folklore mythology. The wilder the form, the more dangerous, 0:34:54.960 --> 0:34:58.120 the more mysterious, the further away from human culture. And 0:34:58.160 --> 0:35:00.640 this is a thing that is like the domes lamb 0:35:01.400 --> 0:35:05.560 made even more harmless. You know. It's just the fantastic 0:35:05.600 --> 0:35:09.120 but mundane qualities of the of the vegetable lamb. 0:35:09.520 --> 0:35:12.839 Right, It's not something that is fearsome and free and 0:35:12.960 --> 0:35:17.360 uncontrollable and all that. It's it's something that's like a 0:35:17.760 --> 0:35:21.480 standard part of animal agriculture, except it's just like mixing 0:35:21.520 --> 0:35:24.960 these different categories together. It's an utterly mundane part of life. 0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:28.280 It's like a story about a psychic TV dinner. 0:35:28.440 --> 0:35:33.040 It's just you know, yeah, it's so it really seems 0:35:33.080 --> 0:35:36.120 to buck the trend in so many ways. And and 0:35:36.400 --> 0:35:38.960 I'm I'm guessing maybe that's why people were fascinated back 0:35:39.000 --> 0:35:41.080 then as well. You know, like, you know, everybody was 0:35:41.080 --> 0:35:43.200 into the You're always into the idea of dragons and 0:35:43.239 --> 0:35:46.040 strange snakes and yeah, all the monsters of the sea. 0:35:46.600 --> 0:35:52.319 But here's something that just sounds crazy and and uh 0:35:52.400 --> 0:35:54.680 and and it's helpless out there, you know. I mean 0:35:54.719 --> 0:35:57.000 the wolves are just coming up and chopping these things. 0:35:57.320 --> 0:36:00.319 Yeah, you feel sad for it when you hear the myth. Yeah, 0:36:01.160 --> 0:36:03.840 like if the wolves don't get it, it's it's doomed. 0:36:03.960 --> 0:36:07.120 To starve to death pretty quick, because you know it's 0:36:07.120 --> 0:36:10.480 only got that short radius of stem length to eat 0:36:10.480 --> 0:36:13.839 the vegetation from right. Well, okay, there's one more thing 0:36:13.880 --> 0:36:15.759 I wanted to get to from the Henry Lee book, 0:36:15.760 --> 0:36:20.640 which is that Lee actually includes analysis of similar legends 0:36:20.680 --> 0:36:23.040 that are traced back to a little bit before the 0:36:23.120 --> 0:36:26.040 time of Sir John Mandevil. Okay, so this is about 0:36:26.040 --> 0:36:28.120 to turn into a chain of citations for a minute, 0:36:28.120 --> 0:36:30.319 but it gets pretty interesting, so stick with me. So 0:36:30.920 --> 0:36:34.000 Henry Lee notices first that Claude Durray, when you were 0:36:34.000 --> 0:36:37.400 talking about earlier in a work called the Istoire Admirab, 0:36:38.600 --> 0:36:40.400 I don't know how you say that in French. Admirable 0:36:40.640 --> 0:36:45.400 Admirab des plant in sixteen oh five writes that he 0:36:45.520 --> 0:36:49.640 once read in a Latin version of the of the 0:36:49.719 --> 0:36:53.640 Jewish commentary work the Jerusalem Talmud, a claim attributed to 0:36:53.680 --> 0:36:58.800 an Ethiopian scholar named Moses Chusensus quote that there was 0:36:58.840 --> 0:37:02.400 a certain country the earth which bore a zoophyte or 0:37:02.480 --> 0:37:07.200 plant animal called in Hebrew Jedua. It was in form 0:37:07.360 --> 0:37:09.600 like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem 0:37:09.760 --> 0:37:12.560 or root by which this zoophyte or plant animal was 0:37:12.640 --> 0:37:16.200 fixed attached like a gored to the soil below the 0:37:16.239 --> 0:37:19.160 surface of the ground, and according to the length of 0:37:19.200 --> 0:37:22.000 its stem or root, it devoured all the herbage which 0:37:22.040 --> 0:37:24.560 it was able to reach within the circle of its tether. 0:37:25.239 --> 0:37:28.600 The hunters who went in search of this creature were 0:37:28.760 --> 0:37:32.080 unable to capture or remove it until they had succeeded 0:37:32.400 --> 0:37:35.640 in cutting the stem by well aimed arrows or darts. 0:37:35.960 --> 0:37:39.680 When the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth and died, 0:37:40.360 --> 0:37:45.520 its bones being placed with certain ceremonies and incantations in 0:37:45.719 --> 0:37:50.040 the mouth of one desiring to foretell the future, he 0:37:50.120 --> 0:37:54.040 was instantly seized with a spirit of divination and endowed 0:37:54.120 --> 0:37:55.480 with the gift of prophecy. 0:37:55.920 --> 0:37:57.000 Oh wow, so. 0:37:56.960 --> 0:37:59.680 That's a new wrinkle. Okay, So this lamb is not 0:37:59.719 --> 0:38:02.839 only a vegetable that's tethered to the ground by stem. 0:38:03.120 --> 0:38:05.080 You have to kill it by severing the stem with 0:38:05.280 --> 0:38:07.840 arrows or darts. They don't say why in this source, 0:38:07.880 --> 0:38:09.960 but we'll get to another one in a minute. And 0:38:10.000 --> 0:38:12.480 then it falls down, and then you take this lamb's 0:38:12.640 --> 0:38:15.400 bones and you put the bones in your mouth with 0:38:15.920 --> 0:38:19.080 special magic spells that allow you to tell the future. 0:38:19.480 --> 0:38:21.760 That's interesting because yeah, so many of these other accounts 0:38:21.760 --> 0:38:23.279 we are looking at they just say, oh, well, it 0:38:23.320 --> 0:38:25.400 tastes great, it tastes like fish, it tastes like crab. 0:38:25.760 --> 0:38:27.640 It's just really good to eat and you can use 0:38:27.680 --> 0:38:31.080 the hide, and you know, generally that's in most traditions, 0:38:31.120 --> 0:38:33.319 like that's what you're concerned with with the body of 0:38:33.360 --> 0:38:36.200 an animal. But then of course when you're dealing with 0:38:36.239 --> 0:38:38.520 the with the body of a plant and the parts 0:38:38.560 --> 0:38:41.319 of a plant. You know, as we've got into a 0:38:41.360 --> 0:38:44.360 bit in last week's episodes, I mean, you know, history 0:38:44.560 --> 0:38:48.239 is a tale of humans figuring out how to use 0:38:48.239 --> 0:38:50.960 different parts of the plant, what it will do, what 0:38:51.040 --> 0:38:52.960 it seems to do, you know, and figuring out all 0:38:53.000 --> 0:38:55.840 the ways that the natural chemical properties and chemical weapons 0:38:55.840 --> 0:38:58.520 and defenses off the plant can be used for for 0:38:58.640 --> 0:39:02.399 curative reasons or preventative reasons. And so in this yeah, 0:39:02.440 --> 0:39:05.000 we're kind of leaning more into the plantiness of it 0:39:05.080 --> 0:39:07.520 that it's going to have. They're going to be effects 0:39:07.520 --> 0:39:10.400 to eating it, and you know, certainly these are magical effects, 0:39:10.480 --> 0:39:12.480 but there are effects. Nonetheless. 0:39:12.960 --> 0:39:14.400 Oh, I thought you were going to go in the 0:39:14.440 --> 0:39:17.600 direction of wondering about psychopharmacology. So if this is a play. 0:39:18.880 --> 0:39:20.680 You put it in your mouth and then you can 0:39:20.680 --> 0:39:21.480 see the future. 0:39:21.600 --> 0:39:24.359 Okay, well no, I mean that's that's part of it too. 0:39:24.480 --> 0:39:28.320 Yeah. So anyway, this is Deray referring back to what 0:39:28.480 --> 0:39:31.800 he calls the Jerusalem Talmud. Technically, there are two major 0:39:31.840 --> 0:39:35.400 Talmud traditions. I think that the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud. 0:39:35.719 --> 0:39:39.560 And the Talmud is the text of Jewish rabbinical law, 0:39:39.640 --> 0:39:42.640 so it includes records of oral teaching and Judaism and 0:39:43.120 --> 0:39:46.879 commentary on the Torah and things like that. So Lee 0:39:46.960 --> 0:39:49.960 says that he went searching for this story in the 0:39:49.960 --> 0:39:51.920 Talmud and he couldn't find it, so he had to 0:39:51.920 --> 0:39:56.040 consult a scholar named Reverend Doctor Hermann Adler, who was 0:39:56.160 --> 0:39:59.440 Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United Congregations of the British Empire. 0:39:59.480 --> 0:40:00.920 So this would have been at the time that Lee 0:40:01.080 --> 0:40:03.279 was writing in the eighteen eighties. And he says that 0:40:03.360 --> 0:40:06.279 Adler was actually able to find the real source. So 0:40:06.320 --> 0:40:09.879 this goes back to from before John Mandeville. So it's 0:40:09.920 --> 0:40:14.120 in a section of the Jerusalem Talmud called the Mishna Kilaim, 0:40:14.880 --> 0:40:17.760 and there is a section here that reads as quote. 0:40:17.800 --> 0:40:22.320 Creatures called abne hasada or literally lords of the field 0:40:22.800 --> 0:40:26.120 are regarded as beasts. And there is a variant reading 0:40:26.440 --> 0:40:30.640 of abne hasada meaning stones of the field, not lords 0:40:30.680 --> 0:40:33.279 of the field. And so Adler was writing about this, 0:40:33.320 --> 0:40:36.440 and he found that there was a medieval commentary on 0:40:36.719 --> 0:40:41.040 this passage written by a Rabbi Simon of Sins, which 0:40:41.080 --> 0:40:44.239 is a place in France. And Rabbi Simon lived in 0:40:44.280 --> 0:40:48.680 the twelfth and early thirteenth century, and he writes quote, 0:40:49.040 --> 0:40:51.719 it is stated in the Jerusalem Talmud that this is 0:40:51.719 --> 0:40:55.560 a human being of the mountains. It lives by means 0:40:55.600 --> 0:40:59.120 of its navel. If its naveal be cut, it cannot live. 0:40:59.600 --> 0:41:02.279 I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meyer, the 0:41:02.320 --> 0:41:06.320 son of Calanaimus of Spire, that this is the animal 0:41:06.440 --> 0:41:11.000 called Jedua. This is the Jedui mentioned in scripture literally 0:41:11.239 --> 0:41:17.920 wizard from Leviticus nineteen. With its bones. Witchcraft is practiced. 0:41:18.280 --> 0:41:21.279 A kind of large stem issues from a root in 0:41:21.320 --> 0:41:25.120 the earth on which this animal called jadua grows, just 0:41:25.160 --> 0:41:28.520 as gourds and melons, Only the jadua has in all 0:41:28.600 --> 0:41:32.840 respects a human shape in face, body, hands, and feet. 0:41:33.400 --> 0:41:35.960 By its navel. It is joined to the stem that 0:41:36.120 --> 0:41:39.600 issues from the root. No creature can approach within the 0:41:39.680 --> 0:41:43.200 tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them. 0:41:43.560 --> 0:41:46.160 Within the tether of the stem, it devours the herbage 0:41:46.200 --> 0:41:48.680 all around. When they want to capture it, no man 0:41:48.760 --> 0:41:51.239 dares approach, but they tear it the stem until it 0:41:51.320 --> 0:41:55.160 is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies. And then there's another 0:41:55.200 --> 0:42:00.440 commentator named Rabbi Obadia Obadia of Bourbon Ooro that adds 0:42:00.480 --> 0:42:03.120 that you have to use arrows to sever the stem, 0:42:03.160 --> 0:42:06.160 presumably because you can't get close enough to hack at 0:42:06.200 --> 0:42:08.239 it with the sword or the jeduo will kill you. 0:42:08.920 --> 0:42:10.840 And I think this is really interesting. So if you 0:42:10.880 --> 0:42:14.360 go back even earlier than Mandevill, of course Mandeville wasn't 0:42:14.400 --> 0:42:17.439 telling the story about it being this beast on the tether. 0:42:17.600 --> 0:42:20.160 Mandeville's version was the gourd fruits that had the little 0:42:20.200 --> 0:42:23.160 lambs inside. But if you go back earlier than these 0:42:23.160 --> 0:42:26.440 other stories, you have this version that's similar in pretty 0:42:26.520 --> 0:42:28.759 much every way, except it's not a lamb. It's like 0:42:28.800 --> 0:42:29.920 a human shape. 0:42:30.320 --> 0:42:32.960 Yeah, this is fascinating. First of all, I love how 0:42:33.000 --> 0:42:35.520 all these later accounts were looking at They're all about 0:42:35.520 --> 0:42:39.279 that herbage. It's all about eatting up that herbage. But yeah, 0:42:39.520 --> 0:42:43.040 here with this, we have this, we have this, this 0:42:43.120 --> 0:42:45.600 ferocious version of it, something that's more in keeping with 0:42:46.080 --> 0:42:48.160 what we were saying, what you tend to want to 0:42:48.200 --> 0:42:52.520 expect from the wild world of myth and monsters, something 0:42:52.760 --> 0:42:55.439 you dare not approach, and if you do, you better 0:42:55.520 --> 0:42:59.440 know exactly where its weak spot is. And yeah, so 0:42:59.520 --> 0:43:03.279 it's I mean, I guess this is kind of a 0:43:03.560 --> 0:43:10.480 you have shades of umbilical cords and mammals here being 0:43:10.520 --> 0:43:15.759 compared two plants being rooted to the soil. And of 0:43:15.800 --> 0:43:17.720 course not only plants, but this would have been observed 0:43:17.719 --> 0:43:20.520 with things like mushrooms as well, with stems emerging from 0:43:20.520 --> 0:43:24.600 the soil and so forth. Yeah, and then I guess 0:43:24.600 --> 0:43:29.560 one would imagine then that essentially you have converging mythologies 0:43:29.600 --> 0:43:32.840 about things that are not plants rooted to the ground. 0:43:33.280 --> 0:43:37.279 Yeah. Yeah, it's so strange and interesting. And anyway, I 0:43:37.520 --> 0:43:40.200 think in the next episode is when we'll have to 0:43:40.239 --> 0:43:43.800 come back to discuss some of the rational theories about 0:43:43.880 --> 0:43:47.040 the origin of the myth, and I think there's some 0:43:47.040 --> 0:43:50.160 pretty good explanations on offer, especially the one by Henry Lee, 0:43:50.440 --> 0:43:52.719 but there are multiple ones that have been put forward 0:43:52.719 --> 0:43:55.960 over the years. One last thing before we wrap up 0:43:55.960 --> 0:43:59.919 this episode is I wanted to mention how reading about 0:44:00.080 --> 0:44:03.520 the history of this mythological creature really makes me think 0:44:03.560 --> 0:44:08.480 about the benefits of having an evolutionary perspective on biology, because, 0:44:08.520 --> 0:44:11.759 of course, in nature is full of surprises, shocking surprises, 0:44:12.400 --> 0:44:16.320 but it also obeys deterministic physical laws, the most important 0:44:16.320 --> 0:44:19.640 of which are probably common descent and evolution by natural selection. 0:44:20.520 --> 0:44:24.160 And I think having an evolutionary perspective on life can 0:44:24.200 --> 0:44:28.240 help you sort out which types of surprising claims about 0:44:28.320 --> 0:44:32.120 nature are actually plausible in which are not so. The 0:44:32.200 --> 0:44:36.319 idea of a lamb that grows from a plant is 0:44:36.400 --> 0:44:40.440 not really remotely plausible if you understand that complex multicellular 0:44:40.480 --> 0:44:44.239 life forms arise only by varying and building upon the 0:44:44.239 --> 0:44:47.840 morphology of direct ancestors. You know, plants and animals arise 0:44:47.880 --> 0:44:51.640 from different chains of ancestors that diverged more than one 0:44:51.680 --> 0:44:54.719 point five billion years ago. So given what we know 0:44:54.880 --> 0:44:58.799 about plants and animals today, you're not going to get 0:44:58.800 --> 0:45:03.920 a plant that grows quadrupedal mammalians with bones and blood 0:45:03.960 --> 0:45:05.960 and fur out of it. Like, you know, there are 0:45:05.960 --> 0:45:09.560 tons of shocking, amazing things about the natural world, but 0:45:09.640 --> 0:45:13.480 they're shocking and amazing within something that makes sense, cladistically, 0:45:13.560 --> 0:45:17.279 within something that makes sense from the ancestors they emerge from. 0:45:17.600 --> 0:45:21.360 There's no physically plausible scenario in which a plant like 0:45:21.440 --> 0:45:23.680 that exists, given what we know about the history of 0:45:23.719 --> 0:45:26.720 life on Earth. But the authors of the Middle Ages, 0:45:27.360 --> 0:45:30.439 even if they were intelligent and well informed people, were 0:45:30.480 --> 0:45:33.440 not armed with a theory of biology that would allow 0:45:33.520 --> 0:45:37.800 them to tell the difference between an extraordinary but physically 0:45:37.840 --> 0:45:40.319 plausible claim about nature, and there are tons of those 0:45:40.360 --> 0:45:42.640 that turn out to be true, and a claim that 0:45:42.880 --> 0:45:46.759 just simply wouldn't happen because it doesn't make sense. Though, 0:45:47.000 --> 0:45:49.800 I think it's also interesting that even without a theory, 0:45:49.840 --> 0:45:53.480 even without a formal scientific theory explaining why this organism 0:45:53.960 --> 0:45:57.280 is pretty much impossible within the context of known Earth life, 0:45:57.800 --> 0:46:01.319 some people of the pre evil, the pre Darwin past 0:46:01.920 --> 0:46:05.240 had some kind of intuition that caused them to reject 0:46:05.320 --> 0:46:08.279 this story. Like Kercher, for example, he wasn't the only one, 0:46:08.320 --> 0:46:11.160 but you know, affamacious Kircher looks at these stories, he says, no, 0:46:11.600 --> 0:46:13.600 this is people are just getting confused. This is a 0:46:13.640 --> 0:46:18.120 planned and so even without a theory of evolution, some 0:46:18.200 --> 0:46:20.759 people were able to look at that story and think, Nah, 0:46:20.840 --> 0:46:23.200 nature is full of wonders, but that's not one of them, 0:46:23.640 --> 0:46:26.680 And I wonder, like, what are those intuitions? That's an 0:46:26.719 --> 0:46:28.120 interesting question on its own. 0:46:28.560 --> 0:46:31.920 Yeah, yeah, because it's likewise, it's hard for us to 0:46:32.000 --> 0:46:36.040 divorce ourselves from our basic understanding of the differences between 0:46:36.040 --> 0:46:39.680 plant and animals, you know. Yeah, Like my mind instantly 0:46:39.719 --> 0:46:42.279 goes to some of the just really amazing examples of 0:46:42.320 --> 0:46:46.480 mimicry in the world, you know, and a lot of 0:46:46.480 --> 0:46:49.000 times they are just really really amazing, but there are 0:46:49.040 --> 0:46:50.799 sort of limits to them. You know. It's like this, 0:46:51.000 --> 0:46:54.960 here's an organism that has evolved over time to have 0:46:55.040 --> 0:46:58.160 part of its anatomy or some function of its anatomy 0:46:58.480 --> 0:47:00.600 resembling that of another world organism. 0:47:01.000 --> 0:47:02.279 Yeah, you know, well there. 0:47:02.160 --> 0:47:04.359 Are various examples of this, but like one simple one 0:47:04.400 --> 0:47:09.840 is a non toxic organism resembling the coloration of a 0:47:09.920 --> 0:47:14.120 toxic organism organism, right, but that's but there's a limit 0:47:14.160 --> 0:47:16.440 to it, right. It's not like where the act of 0:47:16.440 --> 0:47:20.440 mimicry also involves having the toxin you know, right, and 0:47:20.480 --> 0:47:21.319 so forth. 0:47:21.160 --> 0:47:24.120 Not without a long intervening period of having to develop 0:47:24.160 --> 0:47:25.280 that yeah. 0:47:24.920 --> 0:47:28.480 Right, right, or likewise, you know, part of an animal 0:47:28.600 --> 0:47:31.719 resembling a false head, it doesn't actually that head doesn't 0:47:31.760 --> 0:47:36.759 have functional eyeballs inside it, and so forth. Right, But 0:47:36.760 --> 0:47:38.360 but but yeah, it's hard to put yourself in the 0:47:38.360 --> 0:47:40.960 mindset where you don't have some of these basic laws 0:47:40.960 --> 0:47:43.359 in place and these basic differences in place in your mind. 0:47:43.760 --> 0:47:46.920 Yeah, you just don't know what goes and what doesn't. Yeah, 0:47:47.080 --> 0:47:49.320 I mean it is actually interesting reading some of the 0:47:49.719 --> 0:47:53.320 reasons given by these by these late medieval authors or 0:47:53.360 --> 0:47:57.160 Renaissance authors that came before they had a theory of evolution, 0:47:57.280 --> 0:47:59.920 but they had other reasons, some of which are spurio 0:48:00.239 --> 0:48:05.200 but interesting to read through. Like you mentioned earlier, a 0:48:05.239 --> 0:48:12.239 guy named Girolamo Cardano. This was an author of Pavia, 0:48:12.400 --> 0:48:16.279 and he was writing in the mid sixteenth century, and 0:48:16.320 --> 0:48:20.680 I remember he argued that this plant animal thing couldn't 0:48:20.680 --> 0:48:26.279 really exist because in order to have blood, it has 0:48:26.360 --> 0:48:29.400 to have a heart, and the soil that the plant 0:48:29.480 --> 0:48:33.000 was growing in did not have enough heat to create 0:48:33.040 --> 0:48:33.399 a heart. 0:48:33.840 --> 0:48:35.879 That's what he said, All right, Well, I mean it's 0:48:35.880 --> 0:48:37.120 his reason it's irrationale. 0:48:38.800 --> 0:48:40.800 I mean, I think he's sort of on the right track, 0:48:40.880 --> 0:48:43.319 but it also sounds kind of ad hoc. It's like 0:48:43.320 --> 0:48:44.680 he's just sort of making this up. 0:48:46.560 --> 0:48:48.640 Well, you know, to take it in another direction here, 0:48:48.760 --> 0:48:50.600 Like I was thinking back to some of the things 0:48:50.640 --> 0:48:53.040 we discussed last week, and Okay, so the idea that 0:48:53.080 --> 0:48:55.000 you would have a plant that would grow and it 0:48:55.040 --> 0:48:58.200 would essentially grow itself a sheep, and that sheep would 0:48:58.280 --> 0:49:02.000 eat the plants growing around, you know, feast on the herbage, 0:49:03.120 --> 0:49:08.600 and like the basic relationship there between this plan and 0:49:08.600 --> 0:49:11.560 the plant surrounding it is not that crazy. I mean, 0:49:11.600 --> 0:49:13.880 one of the things we discussed is that sometimes the 0:49:13.960 --> 0:49:16.560 places where you see the most dynamic interactions in the 0:49:16.560 --> 0:49:21.600 plant world are between one plant and another. Remind competition, yeah, competition, 0:49:22.239 --> 0:49:24.360 even if it's just you know, like two beam plants 0:49:24.920 --> 0:49:27.000 looking at the same pole, not looking at it, you know, 0:49:27.080 --> 0:49:30.279 sensing the same pole, sensing each other, and there's a 0:49:30.320 --> 0:49:34.400 competition for that resource. And then in some cases, you know, 0:49:35.239 --> 0:49:38.160 the competition that's taking place, it's not being you know, 0:49:38.200 --> 0:49:42.360 there's no need for some sort of fabulous sheep morph 0:49:42.520 --> 0:49:44.960 that grows out of the plant because the battle is 0:49:45.000 --> 0:49:48.239 taking place at the chemical level, you know, it's a 0:49:48.239 --> 0:49:51.360 more subtle battle. It's not, and it's not a battle 0:49:51.400 --> 0:49:54.160 that's taking place within the human realm and with the 0:49:54.239 --> 0:49:57.560 human time. It's taking place on the level of plant time. 0:49:57.600 --> 0:49:59.799 And therefore, for the most part, we do not. 0:49:59.719 --> 0:50:02.200 See Yeah, and I see what you're getting at there, 0:50:02.239 --> 0:50:05.839 because some attempts to explain the origin of this myth 0:50:05.840 --> 0:50:08.920 have looked into, well, what are some plants that essentially 0:50:09.080 --> 0:50:12.240 rob all of the area surrounding the plant of nutrition 0:50:12.480 --> 0:50:16.439 or poison its neighbors or something that plants that keep 0:50:16.520 --> 0:50:18.759 other plants from getting anywhere near them to make it 0:50:18.800 --> 0:50:21.640 look like they're surrounded by these patches of barren earth. 0:50:22.040 --> 0:50:24.440 Oh yeah, But anyway, I think we'll have to wait 0:50:24.520 --> 0:50:27.480 until part two to come back and explore those explanations. 0:50:27.920 --> 0:50:31.239 That's right. But in the meantime, we would love to 0:50:31.280 --> 0:50:33.000 hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on 0:50:33.040 --> 0:50:36.240 the vegetable lamb of Tartary and just you know, basically 0:50:36.280 --> 0:50:39.680 plants in general, the weirdness of plants, the weirdness of 0:50:40.480 --> 0:50:45.000 mythic and legendary plants as well. I'm also kind of 0:50:45.000 --> 0:50:48.359 surprised there's not a Pokemon of this thing, because I was, 0:50:48.680 --> 0:50:50.680 I was, I've been. My son has been showing me 0:50:50.719 --> 0:50:54.359 a lot of Pokemon creatures in his book that he has, 0:50:54.480 --> 0:50:58.200 his big compendium. It's it's a besty area of Pokemon, 0:50:58.280 --> 0:51:02.080 which I applaud and often have fantastic forms, and sometimes 0:51:02.960 --> 0:51:05.560 they have forms that remind me a little bit of 0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:09.200 vegetable lamb. Here, Like there's a creature that has like 0:51:09.280 --> 0:51:13.400 the legs of a turtle, but then it's instead of 0:51:13.400 --> 0:51:15.359 a shell, it has like an apple pie. And then 0:51:15.680 --> 0:51:17.800 you know, so there are a number of different creatures 0:51:17.800 --> 0:51:20.799 in there that have kind of animal and vegetable properties, 0:51:22.239 --> 0:51:24.879 you know, intertwined, and I feel like the vegetable Lamb 0:51:24.880 --> 0:51:27.759 of Tartary should have been in there. So I guess, 0:51:27.760 --> 0:51:31.000 Pokemon masters, if you are out there, the people who 0:51:31.040 --> 0:51:35.480 make these things, when you create some more Pokemon monsters, 0:51:36.160 --> 0:51:38.200 consider making the Lamb of Tartary. I don't know what 0:51:38.239 --> 0:51:40.560 the three different evolutions would be, but I'm sure you'll 0:51:40.560 --> 0:51:41.160 figure it out. 0:51:41.280 --> 0:51:41.839 Tell them right. 0:51:42.920 --> 0:51:46.960 I know you're listening Pokemon designers. In the meantime, if 0:51:46.960 --> 0:51:48.680 you would like to listen to other episodes and stuff 0:51:48.680 --> 0:51:50.920 to blow your mind, you can find Core episodes on 0:51:51.000 --> 0:51:53.319 Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind 0:51:53.360 --> 0:51:56.560 podcast feed We have listener mail on Monday, short form 0:51:56.719 --> 0:52:00.279 monster fact or Artifact on Wednesday, and on Fridays we 0:52:00.320 --> 0:52:03.120 set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a 0:52:03.160 --> 0:52:05.120 weird film on Weird House Cinema. 0:52:05.360 --> 0:52:08.319 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth 0:52:08.400 --> 0:52:11.120 Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch 0:52:11.120 --> 0:52:13.480 with us with feedback on this episode or any other, 0:52:13.560 --> 0:52:15.360 to suggest a topic for the future, or just to 0:52:15.400 --> 0:52:18.080 say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff 0:52:18.120 --> 0:52:27.080 to Blow your Mind dot com. 0:52:27.239 --> 0:52:30.160 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 0:52:30.280 --> 0:52:33.040 more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:52:33.200 --> 0:52:50.759 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.