WEBVTT - From the Vault: The First Monster 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.400 Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.080 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:10.160 --> 0:00:13.560 it's Saturday. It's October. It's time to go into the vault, 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.800 and this time we were going in for our exploration 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.880 of the First Monster. This was originally published on October. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.360 I remember really enjoying this episode. Yeah, this one, This 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.640 one really gets into some fun territory and is I 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.800 think legitimately creepy at times when we try we look 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.240 back and we just try and consider these what maybe 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:37.920 the first monsters that humans ever dreamed up? And where 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:42.640 this combination of bestial and human body parts comes together 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:44.919 and what it means. So let's get right to it. 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:47.760 We hope you enjoyed this episode of Stuff to Blow 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:53.800 your Mind on the First Monster. Welcome to Stuff to 0:00:53.880 --> 0:01:02.800 Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks dot com. Hey you 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:04.600 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.760 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And of course it's October, 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.959 so we are still doing some of our favorite stuff 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:14.120 of the year. Monster content. That's right, God, did I 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:18.840 just say content. I'm the monster. I'm the content creating monster. 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.280 Let's think of it as is monster cargo, monsters cargo. 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.360 I think that we're delivering to the listeners years, yeah, 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.920 to create a cargo cult of our listeners. So I 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:34.759 was wondering, just recently, you know what is the oldest monster, 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.240 Because as you go back in time, monsters become in 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.479 a way, they become less uniquely scary, and they become 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:47.319 more elementally scary. They become less like I don't know, 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:49.440 the Girl in the Ring and all that kind of 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.920 recent popular monster fad stuff, and they become more like 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:57.400 a dragon or a beast with a bull's head or something. 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:00.640 And so I was wondering, like, you know what, what's 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.480 the earliest thing in recorded history? There there are some 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.840 things in ancient Sumerian, Assyrian Babylonian texts. I just wanted 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.000 to read one sort of monster passage I came across 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:14.040 from an ancient Assyrian text called the Seven Evil Spirits. 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.560 This is translated into English by R. C. Thompson in 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:22.120 nineteen o three, and it's this ancient Assyrian poem. It 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:27.480 goes raging storms evil gods. Are they ruthless demons who 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.320 in Heaven's vault were created? Are they workers of evil 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.919 are they? They lift up the head to evil every day, 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:39.000 to evil destruction, to work of the seven. The first 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.320 is the south Wind. The second is a dragon whose 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.920 mouth is opened that none can measure. The third is 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.560 a grim leopard, which carries off the young. The fourth 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:54.080 is a terrible shibou. The fifth is a furious wolf 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.800 who knoweth not to flee. The sixth is a rampant 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:02.519 thing is ill and which marches against God and King. 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:08.359 The seventh is a storm, an evil wind, which takes vengeance. Well, 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.560 that those that al sounds remarkable, But I'm instantly thinking 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:14.120 some of those are just animals. Like the wolf is 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:16.800 just like a dumb wolf, Like it's just not smart 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.799 enough to run away. Right. I wonder about the grim leopard. 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.120 The grim leopard sounds kind of monstrous because it carries 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.560 off the young. Grim seems to that that implies some 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:29.399 kind of human affect. Yeah, well, you know, I guess 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.680 you get into definitions of monster. Right. Is a monster 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:35.240 something that is a combination of things? Is it something 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:38.040 that is entirely unreal or is it just something real 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.120 that is exaggerated in size? Yeah, well, I mean if 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.920 it's an evil creature that works destruction upon the earth 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.720 and marches against God and King. I'd say that's probably 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.800 a monster or people, you know, But I feel like 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:54.760 we're we're actually already too late, because we're muddling around 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:59.720 in recorded history, and you can go much deeper. So 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:03.360 in August of nineteen thirty nine, a group of archaeologists 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.000 were doing field work at a Stone Age cave site 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.560 in southern Germany. And the cave was called Stottlehol which 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.440 means stable cave, and it was at Hollenstein near vogel Herd. 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.880 At this cave site, the researchers uncovered this massive collection 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:24.240 of ivory fragments, broken pieces made from the tusks tusks 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.359 of a Pleistocene mammoth and now it's Ice Age mammoth 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:32.520 of Europe, wooly mammoth. Unfortunately, something happened. Just a matter 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.080 of days after this initial discovery. World War two broke out, 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.039 not a great time to be digging in southern Germany, 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.880 and so the dig had to be quickly abandoned and 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.279 the dig was filled in and the broken pieces of 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:48.440 the mammoth ivory were laid in storage for decades, and 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.840 then about thirty years later, a German archaeologist named Joachim 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:56.200 Han started trying to fit the ivory shards together playing this. 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:58.760 You know, if you've ever seen these games, the three 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.680 D jig saw puzzle game him of artifactor reconstruction. It 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.800 looks like a nightmare of trying to see how all 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.520 these things because obviously some pieces are missing. It's like 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.160 trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with half half the puzzle. Uh. 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:13.680 And so we had more than two fragments, and he 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.160 discovered that the pieces of ivory were originally part of 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:22.960 the same Paleolithic figurine. It was a statuette about thirty 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.080 one cimeters long, which is just over a foot, and 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.599 it was carbon fourteen dated to somewhere between thirty five 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:33.760 and forty thousand years old. And once the pieces were 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.120 put together, it became clear that you could still make 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.720 out representative features, features that appeared to be both human 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:46.280 and non human. And this is the central image I 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.240 want to talk about in today's episode. This is the 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.080 figure that would come to be known as the loan Minch, 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:54.040 which is German for the lion man. And if you 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.200 want to see an image of the Loan Ninch, we 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.280 will have a picture of it on the landing page 0:05:58.320 --> 0:05:59.920 of this episode it's stuff to blow your behind dot 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.600 com it Uh, it's it's rather regal looking. Yeah, well 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.039 I would say it's regal like it's it's got this 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.479 upright posture, and it does look very stately, but also 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:11.960 in the spirit of the grim leopard of Assyria. It's 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.080 kind of grim. It's got this kind of like there 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.479 is no pity in the lionman's face. No, no pity. 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.520 I just looked in closer at it, and I don't 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.160 see I don't see a shred of pity, like it 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:27.360 would pass your sentence and and not not heed your tears. So, 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.320 after this original reconstruction and the following decades, there was 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:34.600 this long, multi stage process that led to the final 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:37.840 reconstruction of the artifact in fuller and fuller detail. So 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:40.560 in the nineteen eighties there was a paleontologist named Elizabeth 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:44.880 Schmidt who added more pieces from additional re excavations of 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.760 the site, and she corrected some errors and previous reconstructions, 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.280 and the clear impression of this feline head began to emerge. 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:54.840 And then in the two thousands and other archaeologists named 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.680 Klaus Joachim kind returned to the Stytle Cave to uncover 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:02.800 more original piece is and it led to this amazing 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:05.239 version of the artifact that you can go see today. 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:07.880 I think it's usually at the Oom Museum in Germany, 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:10.080 but I believe it is currently on loan at the 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.320 British Museum. In fact, I believe it was the British 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:18.520 Museum tweeting about the acquisition that acquisition the loan that 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.240 made me think about doing this episode. So the lionman, 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:26.280 he stands like a human in this two footed bipedal posture, 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.320 back straight with human arms straped down to the side, 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.200 human torso maybe lion ish kinds of legs, but this 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:38.320 proud menacing head of a big cat. And you've got 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:40.520 to wonder. So this is thirty five to forty thousand 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:44.239 years ago there, long before recorded history. Nobody was writing 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:47.560 down what they were thinking. There apparently was no written language. 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.120 So what did this figure mean to the Stone Age 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.840 people who made it? Yeah, I mean, for the most part, 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.640 we can only we can only guess. We can certainly 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.320 look to more increasingly more complex ideals that came afterwards. 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:02.680 But you look at it and you think, was this 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.840 is this a deity. Is this a punishing creature? Is 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:11.200 this I've seen the term master of animals thrown around 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:17.120 in interpreting similar alleged figures from cave paintings and another 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.640 ancient remains. Yeah, there is a sort of intuitive sense 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.200 in which you could see an ancient person seeing an 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:25.960 apex predator like a lion or any any kind of 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.720 big cat as some sort of god of the wilderness 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.319 that would have power over other animals because it is 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:35.280 at the top of the food chain. But it's a 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.040 serious question to imagine why people wouldn't make this artifact, 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.120 because making an artifact like this would have been an 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.520 extreme sacrifice. Uh. These would have been people, I think 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.720 very likely living not always very far from the edge 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.400 of starvation. Uh. And an artifact like this took resources, 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:54.840 It took time, it took energy, It wore down your 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:58.160 sharp flint tools and the carving process. In fact, there 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:00.320 was a in recent years there was an ex peerman 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.199 by a guy named Wolf Heine that I watched a 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.600 video of online. And this guy specializes in replicating ancient 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.280 artifacts using the methods and tools that would have been 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.720 available to the people who made them. And his reconstruction 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.400 of the low and minch using these flint carving tools. 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.520 He says it took more than three hundred and seventy hours. 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:21.960 And in this video, if you sit and watch it, 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:27.240 like the unbelievable laborious nous of the project begins to 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.880 sink in. You just watch him going over and over 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.719 this ivory tusk with this piece of flint. And when 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:35.679 you look at the guy's hands, I started to feel 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.000 how working this flint rock over the ivory for hours 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.160 and hours would just turn your fingers into hot ground beef. 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:44.960 Just terrible. Yeah. And and to your point, these were 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.559 people that lived on the edge. They were they were wanderers. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:52.080 They had not reached the point in the ascension of 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.560 human civilization where you had specialists who could set aside 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.840 time to create something like this. Uh. And if they 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:00.920 created something like this at obviously wasn't going to be 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.200 just a toy for a child to play with. It 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:05.760 was something important, right, And there are signs in the 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:10.040 artifact itself that seemed to signify that it had cultural importance, right. Yeah. 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.559 The surface of the original artifacts seems to have been 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.960 smoothed from excessive handling, as if it were passed around 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.640 in a ritual for instance, Right, he said, yeah, so 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.040 it looks like this is something that was handled a lot. 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.600 It's got that worn down feeling to it um And 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.079 this is one reason that the Lowan bench is often 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:32.280 cited is perhaps the earliest evidence that exists of religious beliefs. Now, 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.800 who would the people that made this artifact have been, Well, 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:41.040 it was almost certainly modern humans living in the area 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:43.360 at the time. But but it's also worth noting that 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.480 modern humans and the under dolls um lived in this 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.800 area at this at the same time they coexisted. And uh. 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:54.520 I did find a quote from a Jeffrey Brantingham, an 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.520 archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and he 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.160 says that he doesn't think it's far fetched to think 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.720 that Neanderthal's uh, you know, could have made similar items. 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.520 But for the most part, everyone seems to be on 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.520 board with the idea that these were modern Homo sapiens 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:15.320 that created these artifacts, anatomically modern except not quite so 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:19.080 hunched over from watching YouTube, although right, uh yeah, but 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:23.120 there may be reasons to think that other members of 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.760 this this ancient culture or this you know, ancient what 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.360 would you call it, sort of a loose idea of 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.000 a culture if it was mostly small bands of people 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.840 rather than cities or nations, but that whatever, the people 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.880 of this time period were made artifacts like this in general, 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:40.880 because this isn't the only one, right, Yeah, that's right. 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.439 In two thousand three, another line was discovered in southwestern 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:47.040 Germany or what is now southwestern Germany, and this one 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:49.160 has carbon day to do around the same time period. 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:53.120 So by by some estimates, it kind of depends who's 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.640 doing the math and who's you know, doing the figure 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.880 in But by some estimates, these are the oldest statues 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:03.240 and the oldest examples figurative art. However, we do have 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:08.080 the Venus of the Whole Fells and uh, and by 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.719 some estimates this takes the title. But the estimates here 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:13.559 like thirty five thousand and forty thousand years ago, so 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.600 we're kind of placing it in basically the same time period. 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:19.920 They were just discoveries, key discoveries made in two thousand 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:22.559 and two thousand and sixteen. If you've if you've looked 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:26.960 at a lot of like really ancient human artifacts, you've 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:31.240 probably seen images of these. Uh. The venous images are 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.920 essentially a feminine figure like you know, kind of kind 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.720 of a round feminine figure with without a head or 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:45.360 or very little detail provided outside of like breasts and belly. Yeah. Yeah, 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.640 It's often seen as having the what we're perceived as 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:52.360 the feminine figures exaggerated, so it would be in large 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.360 breasts and large tips and stuff like that. And for 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:57.240 that reason people often look at this and say that 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:01.000 they think it had some kind of fertility significance. Right now, 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:03.320 you know where in depending you can go back and 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.240 forth over which one could be older than the other. 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:08.520 It seems like they likely existed at the same time. 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:10.600 But the key difference here is that while the venus 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.560 is a depiction essentially of the feminine form of something 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.120 that exists of a human being right uh, that exists 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.960 in the real world, the loan mench is the human 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.959 fused with the beast. And in the words of Clive Gamble, 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:27.280 and archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK, as quoted 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.560 in Nature quote, they depict the animal world in a 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:34.280 semi realistic way. It shows early man moving from his 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.599 immediate world to an imaginative world. Now this is interesting 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:42.800 because yeah, you have to imagine that I don't know, 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.720 there's no way to get inside, say a chimpanzees head 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.000 or a dog's head to some other mammal. But if 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:54.400 these animals have any kind of imaginative capacity, and there's 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:56.360 no proof, really, I guess that they have any kind 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.000 of ability to picture objects that are not in front 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.280 of them. If they do, you kind of have to 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.400 assume that they're sort of literal right that they'd be, 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:07.640 that they would be putting together ideas of images that 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:12.840 are from their direct experience. Yeah, I mean so in 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.160 this case, I mean, one example that comes to mind, 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:20.000 one possible and perhaps nitpicking idea, is that what if, 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.800 say thag, the member of your tribe, what a fag 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.760 likes to take a deer head or or a big 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:28.920 cat head, and he likes to just kind of hollow 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:31.440 that sucker out or get the skin, and they just 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:34.240 put it over his own head, and he's famous for this, 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.120 and he's so famous for this that one decides to 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.479 create a statue of it. Like, that's the only scenario 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.280 I think in which you could you could make the argument. 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.480 I don't see anybody making that argument, but I feel 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:47.360 like that's the only example you can make an argument 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:49.840 for this being an image of a thing that was 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:52.880 as opposed to an image of a thing that was not. 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.440 Let me throw a twist on your example, though, So 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:58.760 maybe Fag does put on the head dress or you know, 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.760 the remains of some of the predator, and to simulate 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:06.240 that in that sense, would that not be becoming another 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.040 kind of creature at least in symbol? That's true? Yeah, 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:10.920 I mean, I mean you can certainly make the argument 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.200 that that if that did that and bothered to put 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:17.640 the beast's skin over his head, that you know, he 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:21.080 is pretending to be something else or or participating in 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:23.720 an experience that makes him feel as if he's something else. 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.120 So yeah, it all kind of amounts to the same thing, 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:29.160 doesn't it. Right. So, whether it's Thag inspiring this this 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.320 lionman carving, or whoever carved it depicting some kind of 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.680 being that they had never seen in nature, what's going 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:40.760 on is a kind of fusion into unreal creatures. And 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:43.920 according to Jill Cook, a curator at the British Museum 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:46.680 who has a good blog post about the Loan Minch 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.560 for the British Museum's acquisition, the Loan Mench is the 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:52.800 oldest known representation of a creature that does not exist 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:55.680 in nature, not necessarily the oldest piece of art, but 0:15:55.760 --> 0:16:01.600 the oldest evidence of fantasy, quite literally, the world's oldest monster. 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.480 Now by monster, of course, we've got to clarify the 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.680 way we use the term, I mean an imaginary creature 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:11.120 that does not occur in nature, not necessarily a bad 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.560 or evil creature. So this isn't to say that the 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.200 people who imagine the loewen men should necessarily would have 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:19.640 thought of it as antagonistic. Though I feel pretty strongly 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.239 that even if whatever this being was was treated with reverence, 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:26.520 I suspect it would have been the kind of awe 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.360 in the classic sense of awe, not like oh, here's 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.960 my friend the lionman, but like a solemn blend of 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:35.760 wonder and fear. Well, if you try and imagine what 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.160 life was like at the time, I mean, every every 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.640 day would have a certain amount of uncertainty. You're you're 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.520 depending upon your ability to find the food, to follow 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.520 the patterns that lead to food, to to hunt prey 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:52.400 that will feed and clothe you through the harsh winter 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:55.240 months especially, so there's a certain amount uncertainty. There's a 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.120 certain amount of chaos and therefore we you know, you 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:02.000 might expect to find those elements in imagine beings. Yeah, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.280 I can see that. So let's look at the ingredients 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:07.000 of this imagine being. Obviously it is one part human. 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:10.720 We know about the the upright bipedal human pretty well. 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.680 But what is the head of this creature and possibly 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.840 the inspiration for the muscly legs. Yeah, this is this 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:18.600 is a great question because I imagine a lot of 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.320 people are thinking, Okay, southern Germany lions. Lions are in 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.399 Africa and and or India, so what are they doing 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.320 in Europe. Well, given the time frame in the location, 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.119 experts believe that we're seeing a human or humanoid body 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.320 with the with the head of a now extinct cave lion. 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.440 Cave lion. Yeah, now, I think that's that's interesting, isn't 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.000 it though, because you have a partial likeness of one 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.520 extinct animal in the very tusk of another ivory. Yeah, 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:49.840 and it's created by a species that probably played a 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.520 role in the extinction of both species. Oh, I hadn't 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:57.199 thought about that. Yeah, there's there's actually there's not a 0:17:57.240 --> 0:17:59.800 lot of evidence for lion hunting, but a two thousand 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.200 extin Spanish study published in p. Los One. They looked 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:08.080 at fossilized cave lion toe bones and they found human modifications, 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.840 possibly made with stone tools that were made for skinning. 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.000 So they think that the ancient peoples might have hunted 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.400 them for their pelts. But of course we know even 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.080 if they didn't directually hunt these lions, they could have 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.600 contributed to their extinction by encroaching on their habitat, by 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:27.320 competition for large fauna and food sources. Now, there were 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:31.200 different varieties of cave lion. One was found in America 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.760 and there were two in Eurasia. There was a Panthera 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.560 leo of Fossilus, and this was first. This one first 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.160 appeared in Europe seven hundred thousand years ago and evolved 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:46.159 into Panthera leo Spellia. And this cave lion is the 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:48.560 one that continued on. That's the one we're seeing here. 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:50.240 And this is the one that they went on to 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:55.199 go extinct, probably by fourteen thousand years ago. But so 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.840 thirty five to forty thousand years ago when this thing 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.840 was made, they were still around. Yes. Now I've also 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:02.360 read I don't know how much stock we can put 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.680 in this, but I've also read in the past that 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.359 some people think it may have survived in the Balkans 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.520 up to two thousand years ago, But again I don't 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:13.760 know to what extent we should buy into that. Then 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:18.000 they get into cryptic territory, the grim leopard of the Balkan. Yeah, 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:23.000 but to be clear, Panthera leo Spellia was probably the 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.480 largest cat that ever lived. It was probably twenty five 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.760 larger than modern lions and also bigger than today's largest tigers. 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.679 So we're talking up to eleven feet six inches or 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.400 three point five meters in length. That is a crazy thing, 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.400 because something you might not have experienced if you haven't 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.320 been to a zoo recently. I noticed that I don't 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.480 really have a correct vision in my head of how 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.719 large the big cats are, like a lion or a tiger. 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.480 I think of them as I don't know, like maybe 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.080 large the size of a great Dane or a little 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:57.800 bit larger. I really but if if you go to 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.280 a to a zoo and you get like it up 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.359 against the glass where these things are, you realize like, oh, 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:05.800 oh man, this is like as big as a horse. 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.320 These things are gigantic. Well they're they're I mean, they're 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.240 smaller than a horse, but but it seems like a horse, 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:15.320 but it does seem that big if you're in the 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.480 right position to observe them. For instance, here at Zoo Atlanta. 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.400 I go to the zoo a lot with my son, 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.840 and sometimes we get there early. And when you get 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.800 there early, sometimes you're the only person close to the 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.760 lion enclosure and they're still kind of active because it's 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:33.680 the morning. And I've had some really creepy experiences walking 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:37.280 up there with my you know, small snack size child 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:40.200 next to me. Delicious, Yeah, And the way the lion 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:42.800 looks at you, you just feel this this primal feeling, 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.840 and you get a sense of what this this beast 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.879 is and how I'm supposed to view this beast outside 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.359 of the artificial confines of the zoo environment. Isn't it 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.040 funny that we've got spider fear but we don't have 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:58.000 lion fear. Well, it might be very different if you 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:00.760 live in proximity to lions, But I feel no natural 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:02.960 fear about lions in the same way I do when 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.320 I see the image of like a spider crawling towards 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.399 my face. Well, I usually don't, but I feel like 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:10.000 in these moments, I'm willing to buy that there's something 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:14.160 they're like, like there's something situationally and environmentally that has 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.320 to be in place and such. It's so standing, you know, 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.919 beside a small child in in a situation where the 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:25.040 lions attention is on me. It's very creepy, and I 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.200 can I can buy into an idea that there's something 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:31.200 ingrained in me to to to fear them. It is 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.919 terrifying itself to fear the predatory gaze, like when you 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.160 when you just see the eyes of the creature that's 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:40.359 large enough to eat you and maybe wants to. That 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:42.480 comes through a lot in one of our favorite books 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.119 to talk about in here in Blind Site by Peter Watts, 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.040 where he talks about the vampires gaze. Uh, you know, 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:51.840 they usually keep their eyes covered because people like they 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:54.119 wear the sunglasses because if they don't, people can just 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.640 constantly feel themselves being looked at as prey. So it's 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.600 it's easy for I mean, it's it's relatively easy for 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.120 us to lock eyes with a predator like the lion 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:07.280 if you go to zoos and whatnot. But but try 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.920 to imagine living in this ancient time like the rare 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:14.399 situations where you would make eye contact with this creature 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:16.760