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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to venture down into the darkness of the vault.

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Speaker 1: This time there are monsters in the vault, and perhaps

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs and previous dark creatures as well. This episode originally

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Speaker 1: aired June two thousand sixteen, and it is our episode

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Speaker 1: about geo mythology and the relationship between fossils of ancient

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Speaker 1: extinct organisms and the best mythical monsters of all time.

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Speaker 1: That's right. This is a perfect rearing of this episode

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Speaker 1: because we just published our new episode about the idea

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Speaker 1: of a Cambodian Steaga saucus. Oh yeah, that was a

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Speaker 1: lot of fun. Yeah, And and I believe we referenced

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Speaker 1: this episode in the Steaga Staris episode. Yes, we do.

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Speaker 1: So if you were wondering what are they talking about here,

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Speaker 1: you're about to find out. All right, let's dive in.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. The hunt grows tense. It's been three

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Speaker 1: days since you last caught the trail of deer through

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Speaker 1: the wilderness, and your hunger, the hunger of the tribe

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Speaker 1: mounts toward a breaking point. And so with bow and arrow,

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Speaker 1: fire and amulet, you've wandered beyond the limits of the

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Speaker 1: fall hunt. You've tracked your quarry into the rocky hills beyond,

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Speaker 1: and here, amid these strange rocky outcroppings, you happen upon

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Speaker 1: a cave. You know, animals sometimes venture into these places

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Speaker 1: for shelter, perhaps water or salt, so you venture in

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Speaker 1: as well. You find nothing in the cave save a

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Speaker 1: few dry sticks, but as night falls you build a

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Speaker 1: small fire against the cold. As the flames illuminate the

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Speaker 1: cavern walls, you suddenly make out the shattered form of

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Speaker 1: bones in the rock, bones as solid as the stone itself.

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Speaker 1: In the dancing glow, they describe a form you've never

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Speaker 1: seen before, and it instantly makes you wonder where the

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Speaker 1: deer have gone, What things beyond the scope of your

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Speaker 1: experience thrive here amid the stony hills you've dared to

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Speaker 1: hunt for. The bones describe a thing twice the height

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Speaker 1: of a man, hornet and clawed, a talent toothed, and

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Speaker 1: with a rib cage or large enough to swallow you,

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Speaker 1: your family, the entire tribe, all of it within the

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Speaker 1: dark hell of its hunger. Hey, welcome to stuff to

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Speaker 1: bloil your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And Robert. What were you getting at in

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Speaker 1: that little story there, Well, basically about finding some bones, uh,

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Speaker 1: not knowing what those bones are from, and having to

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Speaker 1: sort of fill in the holes, fill in the details.

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Speaker 1: Well maybe with a little myth making. Yeah, I want

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Speaker 1: to put you in just a strange frame of mind

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Speaker 1: you might not be used to. We we all know

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Speaker 1: about fossils. We we all know now that there are

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Speaker 1: things that lived a long time ago that sometimes undergo

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Speaker 1: a mineralization process where their remains become sort of locked

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Speaker 1: in stone and preserved in ways that can keep them,

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Speaker 1: keep them holding their holding their shape across the eons. Yea,

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Speaker 1: and inherently incomplete fossil record of what came before. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but try to imagine. You don't know any of that.

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Speaker 1: You don't know how old the earth is. You don't

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Speaker 1: know anything about geology, sediment replacement or permanent mineralization, anything

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Speaker 1: about soil chemistry, any of that. You're you're just you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe a shepherd or something like that a few thousand

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Speaker 1: years ago, and you come across gigantic bones in the

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Speaker 1: ground that are bigger than any animal you've ever seen,

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Speaker 1: and looked nothing like it is for some animal with

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Speaker 1: a gigantic lizard like head and sharp teeth. What would

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Speaker 1: you think you were looking at? Well, as our character

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Speaker 1: in in our introductory piece here seemed to think that

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Speaker 1: perhaps this is an exactly an existing creature that's somewhere

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Speaker 1: out there in the world, and I should be afraid

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Speaker 1: of it. But then also I'm I'm probably gonna know

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Speaker 1: enough about bones, enough about actual organisms to realize there's

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Speaker 1: something fishy about this one. These bones are like like stone.

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Speaker 1: There's you know, there's something there's something unnatural going on

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Speaker 1: here as well. Yeah, I was having this thought recently

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Speaker 1: when my wife Rachel and I went to New York

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Speaker 1: and one of the places we went there was the

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Speaker 1: American Museum in Natural History, which is just an absolute delight.

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Speaker 1: If you've never been, it is wonderful. You should also

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Speaker 1: commit more than one day of your trip to it,

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Speaker 1: because there's no way you can see it all in

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Speaker 1: a day, and it's just absolutely wonderful. I recommended as

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Speaker 1: a pure experience just to go see, for example, the

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Speaker 1: dinosaur fossils and stuff like that. They're and they're charming

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Speaker 1: lye retro dioramas of old animals and all that. But

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Speaker 1: it's it's not only just a great visual experience, it's

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Speaker 1: also wonderful science education. And because the museum exhibits do

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Speaker 1: an excellent job of not just telling you what we

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Speaker 1: know about the things you're looking at, but also helping

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Speaker 1: you understand how we came to know what we know

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Speaker 1: about the things you're looking at, and what the what

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Speaker 1: the method behind and reasoning behind what we know is.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's a wonderful monument of scientific education for

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Speaker 1: for kids and people of all ages. Really. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: people wander in not knowing what fossils were, asking what

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Speaker 1: what dragons are these? I I don't think they did,

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Speaker 1: but only if only you could, because that I was

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Speaker 1: having that thought. I'm looking at at these bones walking

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Speaker 1: around and thinking, Man, if I didn't know anything, I

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Speaker 1: would think these were monsters. I would be like, where

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Speaker 1: are the live ones? I need to get away from them.

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Speaker 1: And so this is what we want to talk about today,

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Speaker 1: the idea that fossils and uh, not just fossils, but

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Speaker 1: remains fossilized or not bones of extinct animals would have

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Speaker 1: inspired visions of mythological creatures throughout history. We want to

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Speaker 1: essentially focus on the topic of geo mythology. Yes, now,

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Speaker 1: if you I just want to have a one quick

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Speaker 1: note about myths here, if you turned into the previous

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Speaker 1: episode of The Christian and I did Unraveling the Mythic,

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Speaker 1: you know that there are various ways to tackle mythology.

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Speaker 1: The most most agree that it's ultimately poly functional. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That that means that, you know, a myth, myth has

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Speaker 1: several simultaneous purposes Uh within a culture. Yeah, it's not

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Speaker 1: just uh you know, it's like it's like the Swiss

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Speaker 1: Army knife of of like cultural uh energies. I guess yes.

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Speaker 1: I I think that scientists and science minded people often

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Speaker 1: have a tendency to overrepresent the role of naturalistic explanation

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Speaker 1: when trying to think about the origins of myths. And

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Speaker 1: what I mean by that is, uh, if you're you're

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Speaker 1: you're a science e kind of person, you're more likely

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Speaker 1: to say, Okay, here's a myth about um a god

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Speaker 1: who throws thunderbolts. The This myth was created in order

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Speaker 1: to explain why lightning happens during storms, and I'm not

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Speaker 1: saying that's not part of our mythological structures. I think

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Speaker 1: it absolutely is. I think mostionally, most of the better arguments,

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Speaker 1: the more modern arguments to at least acknowledge that that

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Speaker 1: is part of it, that is one of the functions

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Speaker 1: and the poly functional um explanation. Yeah, that's the point

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Speaker 1: I'm making. I think myths are definitely truly meant to

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Speaker 1: be explanatory for natural phenomenon, but that's not all they are.

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Speaker 1: They're also about moralizing to people, and they're also about

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Speaker 1: representing social norms and all kinds of things that you know,

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Speaker 1: they're they're as you say, poly functional. Yeah, so you know,

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Speaker 1: it's important for us to to keep in mind that

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Speaker 1: a mythical monster, beast is all is almost always more

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Speaker 1: than a mirror, you know, proto scientific explanation in a

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Speaker 1: mirror geo mythological explanation. But the geo mythological explanations I

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Speaker 1: think can be very helpful. Uh at times that they

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Speaker 1: seem to just hit the nail right on the head.

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Speaker 1: Other times they at least raise some interests in questions

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Speaker 1: about how fossils, which which ancient people undoubtedly came across

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Speaker 1: as they as they they you know, dug in the earth,

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Speaker 1: as they farmed, as they explored their world, they would

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Speaker 1: they found these things. We know they found these things,

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Speaker 1: but then they had to somehow make sense of them

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Speaker 1: without a modern understanding of fossils. Yeah, so what is

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Speaker 1: the concept of geomethology. We should offer a definition. And

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Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from the Encyclopedia of

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Speaker 1: Geology that was an entry written by Adrian Mayer, who

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Speaker 1: is who is a name who's going to figure very

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Speaker 1: big into this episode because she's one of the biggest

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Speaker 1: names right now in the in the whole field of geomethology,

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Speaker 1: but especially in linking ancient mythological creatures to fossil evidence

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Speaker 1: and and remains of extinct animals. So she writes, quote,

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Speaker 1: geo mythology also called legends of the Earth, myths of observation,

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Speaker 1: natural knowledge, and physical mythology. I like that last is

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Speaker 1: the study of ideological oral traditions created by pre scientific

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Speaker 1: cultures to explain, in poetic metaphor and mythological imagery, geological

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Speaker 1: phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, fossils, and other natural features.

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Speaker 1: Of the landscape now in this century. She goes on

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Speaker 1: to relate stuff about all kinds of geology, like explanations

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Speaker 1: of myths that would explain why a volcano is erupting.

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Speaker 1: You know, at Mount Etna, there happens to be a

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Speaker 1: dragon underneath this volcano who's trying to escape, and that

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Speaker 1: might explain why sometimes melted stone comes out the top

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Speaker 1: of it, or you know, just one example of why

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Speaker 1: earthquakes are being caused by God's the way the landscape

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Speaker 1: is shaped, the topography of it has sometimes that has

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Speaker 1: a mythological explanation, like you know, the great the combat

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Speaker 1: creation myths, like the God slays a monster and then

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Speaker 1: the monster's dead body becomes the earth, and you know,

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Speaker 1: the ridges on its spine are the mountains and things

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Speaker 1: like that. So there's just a wonderful wealth of great

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Speaker 1: links between the earth and its geological features and the

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Speaker 1: mythology that people come up with. But fossils are a

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Speaker 1: big part of this, and so uh Mayor Mayor is

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Speaker 1: a Stanford folklorist and historian of science who studies ways

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Speaker 1: in which knowledge about the natural world, often knowledge that

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Speaker 1: we could consider scientific or proto scientific, appears in pre

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Speaker 1: scientific myths and traditions, and she's going to come up

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Speaker 1: repeatedly in this episode, so we thought we should establish

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Speaker 1: her um. She's written a lot on this topic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: two of her key books, there's two thousand seven Fossil

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Speaker 1: Legends of the First Americans and then her two thousand

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Speaker 1: eleven book The First Fossil Hunters, Dinosaurs, Mammoths and myth

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Speaker 1: in Greek in Roman Times. So that's a reissue of

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Speaker 1: the book the too o Love and version is it's updated,

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Speaker 1: I think with some stuff. Okay, so that one actually

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Speaker 1: predates the America's book, but yeah, it tackles antiquity, you know,

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Speaker 1: looking at, for example, Greek legends. Yeah, and at times

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Speaker 1: she she points out that so many of these these

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Speaker 1: monsters that we discuss, they often what they break out

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Speaker 1: of the ground, they have origins in the earth or

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Speaker 1: perhaps under the earth. So that's just one of the

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Speaker 1: many different and it's gonna vary depending on what the

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Speaker 1: particular myth is, because certainly you have you have mythical

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Speaker 1: creatures that are terrestrial in nature, that are celestial in nature,

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Speaker 1: that are tied to the ocean or the rivers, or

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Speaker 1: to the caves. Uh, there's a lot of variety here.

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Speaker 1: Needless to say, there are so many different mythic creatures,

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Speaker 1: some related to one another, but they're all going to

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Speaker 1: have particular ties to their own time and place and

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Speaker 1: the people who dreamt about them, and we're not gonna

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Speaker 1: have time to cover them all here today, right, But

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Speaker 1: we should start looking at some examples of arguments that

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Speaker 1: certain mythological creatures and monsters are truly inspired by fossil evidence.

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Speaker 1: And one of the big ones, I think the one

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Speaker 1: we really need to start with is the griffin, because

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Speaker 1: this is this is something that's been widespread. I think

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Speaker 1: this has become sort of well known that there's an

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Speaker 1: idea that griffins are inspired by dinosaur bones, and so traditionally,

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Speaker 1: a griffin is a creature said to have the body

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Speaker 1: of a lion with the head, beak, and wings of

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Speaker 1: an eagle, and in ancient Greek sources, the griffin is

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Speaker 1: often mentioned in association with a tribe called the r

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Speaker 1: A Mosspi, which were traditionally said to all have only

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Speaker 1: one eye on their head, so they're kind of cyclopsis. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the the r Mospy were like these, uh, these Central

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Speaker 1: Asian Scythian type people who who harvested gold from the

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Speaker 1: fields of the of the Griffins. And this is great,

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Speaker 1: the whole thing about them all having one eye on

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Speaker 1: on their head. Herodotus, the Greek historian Herodotus, expresses some

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Speaker 1: skepticism about this that I find really funny. I want

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Speaker 1: to quote Herodotus now, as translated by George Rawlinson, quote

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Speaker 1: the northern parts of Europe are very much richer in

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Speaker 1: gold than any other region. But how it is procured

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Speaker 1: I have no certain knowledge. The story runs that the

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Speaker 1: one eyed r a mosspy purloin it from the Griffins.

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Speaker 1: But here too I am incredulous and cannot persuade myself

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Speaker 1: that there is a race of men born with one eye,

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Speaker 1: who in all else resemble the rest of mankind. Nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: it seems to be true that the extreme regions of

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Speaker 1: the earth, which surround and shut up within themselves all

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Speaker 1: other countries, produced the things which are the rarest and

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Speaker 1: which men reckon the most beautiful. And so that's Herodotus

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Speaker 1: writing in the fifth century b c uh. And I

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Speaker 1: find it great that he's skeptical about the one eyed humans.

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Speaker 1: He's like, I don't buy it, but not necessarily about

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Speaker 1: the Griffins, And I wonder why could it be that

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Speaker 1: in ancient times people with a skeptical, fairly evidence based

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Speaker 1: epistemological framework might have reason to believe in some mythical creatures.

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Speaker 1: And if so, what could that reason be? One one

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Speaker 1: part of me says that it could just be not knowing. Right,

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Speaker 1: We've never been to the ends of the Earth. Who

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Speaker 1: knows what creatures live there. Yeah, the the understanding of

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Speaker 1: the time of of Earth's diverse um life forms was

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Speaker 1: was very incomplete. I mean it's still incomplete, but it

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Speaker 1: was even more incomplete at the time. So the idea

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Speaker 1: that something like a griffin existed, sure, that's not out

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Speaker 1: of keeping with our experience of other creatures. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: so a couple more ancient sources about the Griffins. The

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Speaker 1: Roman author Plenty of the Elder summarizes what he's learned

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Speaker 1: about the Griffins while talking about the R mos b

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Speaker 1: So writing in his Natural History in the first centuries CE.

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Speaker 1: Plenty says, quote many authorities, the most distinct wish being

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Speaker 1: Herodotus and r a status of proconnesus. Right that these

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Speaker 1: people and he's referring to the r Mosby or arm

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Speaker 1: posse sorry wage continual war with the griffins, a kind

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Speaker 1: of wild beast with wings, as commonly reported that digs

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Speaker 1: gold out of minds which the creatures guard, and the

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Speaker 1: r mosby tried to take from them, both with remarkable covetousness.

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Speaker 1: That's a nice sort of like moralizing. They're a little

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Speaker 1: bit right, adding some kind of motivations. But then here's

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Speaker 1: one more long one that will give you a pretty

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Speaker 1: good picture of the ancient view of the griffin. So

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Speaker 1: this is alien writing on animals, translated by Shoalfield in

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Speaker 1: his Greek Natural History second century a d. And I've

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Speaker 1: made a couple of illusions just for brevity, because this

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Speaker 1: is a long quote. But Alien writes. I have heard

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Speaker 1: that the Indian animal the griffin, is a quadruped like

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Speaker 1: a lion, that it has claws of enormous strength, and

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Speaker 1: that they resemble those of a lion. Men commonly report

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Speaker 1: that it is winged, and that the feathers along its

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Speaker 1: back are black and those on its front are red,

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Speaker 1: while the actual wings are neither but are white. It

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Speaker 1: has a beak like an eagle's and a head to

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Speaker 1: just as artists portrayed in pictures and sculpture. Its eyes

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Speaker 1: are like fire. It builds its layer among the mountains,

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Speaker 1: and although it is not possible to capture the full

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Speaker 1: grown animal, they do take the young ones. And the

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Speaker 1: people of Bactria, who are neighbors of the Indians, say

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Speaker 1: that the Griffins guard gold in those parts, that they

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Speaker 1: dig it up and build their nests with it, and

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Speaker 1: that the Indians carry off any that falls from them.

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Speaker 1: The Indians, however, denied that they guard the aforesaid gold,

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Speaker 1: for the Griffins have no need for it. And if

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Speaker 1: that is what they say, then I at any rate

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Speaker 1: think that they speak the truth, but that they themselves

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Speaker 1: come to collect the gold. While the Griffins, fearing for

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Speaker 1: their young ones, fight with the invaders, they engage too

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Speaker 1: with other beasts and overcome them without difficulty. But they

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Speaker 1: will not face the lion or the elephant. Accordingly, the natives,

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Speaker 1: dreading the strength of these animals, do not set out

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Speaker 1: in quest of the gold by day, but arrived by night.

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Speaker 1: For that season they are less likely to be detected. Now,

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Speaker 1: the region where the Griffins live and where the gold

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Speaker 1: is mind is a dreary wilderness, and the seekers after

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Speaker 1: the aforesaid substance arrive a thousand or two strong armed

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Speaker 1: and bringing spades and sacks and watching for a moonless night,

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Speaker 1: they begin to dig. Now, if they contrive to elude

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Speaker 1: the Griffins, they reap a double advantage, for they not

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Speaker 1: only escape with their lives, but they also take home

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Speaker 1: they're freight. So this is pretty outline into sounding. But

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Speaker 1: I am already seeing a connection here between this creature,

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Speaker 1: this fantastic creature, and the Earth with things mind from

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Speaker 1: the Earth exactly right. And you are not the first

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Speaker 1: person to notice that this figures in to Adrian Mayer's

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Speaker 1: theory about the Griffins and the and a specific type

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00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:07,520
Speaker 1: of dinosaur will get into in a minute. So the

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Speaker 1: griffin head of an eagle, body of a lion lives

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Speaker 1: in a desolate or desert wilderness where gold can be found.

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Speaker 1: It's got wings, claws, scary as heck, screaming death, diving

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Speaker 1: at you out of the sky while you are blinded

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Speaker 1: by desert sun glinting off a mountain of gold. Pretty cool, uh,

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Speaker 1: And it builds its nests out of gold and just

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Speaker 1: jealously guards the golden treasures or not, maybe it doesn't

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Speaker 1: care about gold. But either way they're pilfering humans who

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Speaker 1: it does battle with. The Greek and Roman legends often

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Speaker 1: associate Griffins with the north and the east, so India

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Speaker 1: and northern Europe or Central Asia the land of the Scythians.

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Speaker 1: In real life, that was a group. The Scythians were

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Speaker 1: a large group of horse riding people who occupied Central Asia,

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Speaker 1: and the extent of their empire overlapped the desert in

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Speaker 1: Asia now known as the Gobi. And there's a curious

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Speaker 1: thing about the Gobi Desert. It is a place where

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Speaker 1: fosse tolls are not nearly as difficult to find as

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Speaker 1: they are in many other places. According to the paleontologists

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Speaker 1: within the archives of the American Museum in Natural History,

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Speaker 1: it was not historically uncommon to come across fossils of

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Speaker 1: the dinosaur proto Serratops peaking naked out of eroding hillsides

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Speaker 1: in the Gobi Desert. And this, of course one with

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Speaker 1: kind of a beaked apparience. So it's a saratopsid. It's

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Speaker 1: a four legged dinosaur, and it has so it's a

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Speaker 1: quadruped and it has yeah, I frill along the top

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Speaker 1: of its head and a beaked mouth. But here's one

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Speaker 1: account that was from the American Museum and Natural History

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Speaker 1: exhibit that they did on this comparison between dinosaurs and

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Speaker 1: griffin's and so it's an account related from when the

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Speaker 1: m n H paleontologist Michael knew A Check and paleontologists

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Speaker 1: Mark Noral were on an expedition in the Gobi Desert

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Speaker 1: in which they came across a skeleton of a dinosaur,

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Speaker 1: this Protoceratops dinosaur uh so nova. Check described the scene

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Speaker 1: in these words quote, We stopped at a low saddle

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Speaker 1: between the hills. Before I could remove the keys from

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Speaker 1: the ignition, Mark sang out excitedly. Several feet away, near

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Speaker 1: the very apex of the saddle was a stunning skull

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Speaker 1: and partial skeleton of a Protoceratops, a big fellow whose

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Speaker 1: beak and crooked fingers pointed west to our small outcrop,

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Speaker 1: like a griffin pointing the way to a guarded treasure.

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Speaker 1: We continued to pounce on precious specimens with remarkable consistency.

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Speaker 1: Mark would sing out skull, and almost on que I

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Speaker 1: would find one too. The surface of the gentle slopes

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Speaker 1: and shallow gullies was splattered with white patches of fossils,

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Speaker 1: as if someone had emptied a paint can in a

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Speaker 1: random fashion over the ground. So they're just tripping over

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Speaker 1: fossils and and it's not you don't to do a

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Speaker 1: detailed excavation to try to find one. Apparently in this

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Speaker 1: region they can be seen by the naked eye. Anybody

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Speaker 1: who had happened to come across them would see these

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Speaker 1: huge beasts with four legs and beaks. So Adrian may

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Speaker 1: Or has over the years developed a fairly strong argument

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Speaker 1: that these Protoceratops fossils have points of agreement with the

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Speaker 1: griffin legend. So their quadrupedal, they've got a beak, the

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00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:32,439
Speaker 1: griffin has an eagle's beak, but a quadrupedal body like

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Speaker 1: a lion. Uh. That's sort of that that goes in

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Speaker 1: line with the shape of these dinosaurs. It's got the

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Speaker 1: bony frill uh. And and she argues that the bony

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Speaker 1: frill sometimes gets broken and leaves these stumps there, which

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Speaker 1: could have been interpreted as the crests you often see

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Speaker 1: on griffin heads or the ears you often see on

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Speaker 1: illustrations of ancient griffins uh. And sometimes the elongated shoulder blades,

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Speaker 1: the shoulder blades that if you look at a Proto

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Speaker 1: Serratop skeleton, they have shoulder blades that kind of poke

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Speaker 1: backward and look strange, and they look kind of like wingbones, honestly,

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Speaker 1: So that could explain griffin's being said to have wings.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there's the location. So these are

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Speaker 1: found in the bone beds of Central Asia and Mongolia

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Speaker 1: and China, near where the Scythians would have been mining gold.

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Speaker 1: These alluvial gold deposits are are near where Protos Saratops

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Speaker 1: fossils are found. And these these griffin descriptions seem to

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Speaker 1: appear in the ancient Greek literature around the time that

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Speaker 1: the Greeks would have been interacting and trading with the Scythians.

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Speaker 1: So I think that's a really interesting argument, And essentially

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Speaker 1: it goes not necessarily that there were no griffin ideas

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Speaker 1: before the the Scythians interacted with Protoceratops fossils, but that

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00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 1: if they came across these fossils, it could have very

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Speaker 1: much have shaped and steered the griffin legend to boot

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Speaker 1: to the strong version that we see of it repeated

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00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 1: so often in this ancient Greek literature. Yeah, and that's

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00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 1: a motif that we we come back to again and

387
00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: again with these examples, And I think it's very important

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00:23:08,760 --> 00:23:11,200
Speaker 1: to drive them because it's on one hand, you could

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00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:13,560
Speaker 1: very much take the approach that like, oh, a primitive

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00:23:13,600 --> 00:23:16,400
Speaker 1: person solve this bone, and then a myth was born

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Speaker 1: on it. But but as we probably not that, probably

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Speaker 1: not that simple. Myths are more complicated than that. It's

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Speaker 1: also not impossible, but not impossible. But it seems like

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Speaker 1: the the more believable version the of of the encounter

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Speaker 1: is that you have a pre existing myth that involves

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Speaker 1: some sort of fantastic beast or another. Then you find

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00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:40,280
Speaker 1: these fossils, and without you know, and without a you know,

398
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:43,000
Speaker 1: an actual understanding of how fossils work, without a without

399
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,479
Speaker 1: a better explanation, you turn to that script as an

400
00:23:46,480 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 1: explanation for what you see here. So the myth informs

401
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: your interpretation of the fossils, and then the fossils may

402
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:58,400
Speaker 1: enforce and and and change your interpretation of the myth itself,

403
00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:01,560
Speaker 1: and then you move into new a new age that's

404
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:04,760
Speaker 1: informed both by the myth and the fossil. Yeah. So,

405
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:07,440
Speaker 1: so I do think we should come back to uh

406
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:11,880
Speaker 1: to exactly that idea later on about how how these

407
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,840
Speaker 1: myths would be formed and what what level of explanation

408
00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 1: we need for them as we encounter them. But for

409
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:23,159
Speaker 1: this one specific example of Protoceratops fossils or other dinosaur

410
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 1: fossils in the Gobi Desert or in Central Asia more

411
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: generally inspiring the Scythian griffins that guard the gold, the

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00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: paleontologist and paleo artist Mark Witten wrote an interesting blog

413
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: post I read that essentially is a pretty well researched

414
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,840
Speaker 1: disagreement with the idea that Protoceratops could have served as

415
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:47,480
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the griffin, and and he makes some

416
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:50,600
Speaker 1: pretty decent arguments against it. For one thing, according to Witten,

417
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 1: the timeline is not very favorable to the proto Protoceratops

418
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: griffin hypothesis because he says it's sort of ignores evidence

419
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: of griffin lore from the for the seventh century b C,

420
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 1: when when the Scythians could have introduced this these Protoceratops

421
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:10,480
Speaker 1: inspired ideas to the Greeks. For example, one one example

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00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: he gives is this fourth millennium b C. Depiction of

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00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: a griffin from the ancient city of Susa and what

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00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,280
Speaker 1: is now iran Um. And so there's this long tradition

425
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:23,679
Speaker 1: of griffin iron iconography predating the supposed Scythian interaction with

426
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:26,960
Speaker 1: the Greeks Um. But then again there there could also

427
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: be a sort of like myth and fossil back and forth,

428
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,399
Speaker 1: like we were just talking about. Whitten also argues that

429
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: Mayer's hypothesis is based on sort of a narrow selection

430
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 1: of griffin representation types, because he says they're actually, you know,

431
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:43,680
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to depict a griffin, And

432
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: he's saying that the proto Saratops griffin hypothesis is based

433
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: on selection bias in griffin imagery sampling, so sort of

434
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:55,399
Speaker 1: cherry picking the Griffins that best fit the protoceratops, whereas

435
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 1: there are other types of Griffins that don't look very

436
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 1: much like that. Yeah, this, and this will come up

437
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 1: again too with some other monsters that we're going to

438
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 1: discuss here, uh huh, and then a few more one uh,

439
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: One thing, he says that the griffin doesn't really need

440
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:14,080
Speaker 1: an explanation in Exotic Anatomy of Extinct Species, because it

441
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: will could well have been imagined simply by combining elements

442
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: of existing animals known to these cultures at the time.

443
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 1: You don't have to have seen a quadruped with a beak.

444
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:27,160
Speaker 1: You can just imagine an eagle's head which you've seen

445
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:31,360
Speaker 1: on the lines body which you've seen. So that argument

446
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:33,120
Speaker 1: that makes some sense to me, and I do want

447
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,520
Speaker 1: to come back to that idea also. Um. He also

448
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 1: argues that the earliest Greek accounts of griffin lore come

449
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:44,440
Speaker 1: from semi mythical stories. Quote why should we consider griffin's

450
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:47,120
Speaker 1: to have any more basis in reality than the gods,

451
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:51,639
Speaker 1: monsters or strange human races also mentioned in these stories? Uh,

452
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: if griffins are based on actual phenomenon, do we need

453
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,960
Speaker 1: to seek rationales for these other creatures too? And I

454
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: you know, one thing that comes to my mind is yeah, okay,

455
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 1: So if we need to seek a rational explanation for

456
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 1: the inspiration of the griffin myth, do we also need

457
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: it for the arm posse with the one eyed people? Um?

458
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: Do we have to figure well, where the people who

459
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 1: all had one eye from some genetic kind of condition?

460
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But also I think this point

461
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,800
Speaker 1: seems a little weak to me because everybody acknowledges that

462
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: Griffins are mythical and the stories about them are not

463
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: historically true. So the question is whether the myths are

464
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: pure imaginative fiction or fictions inspired by real world objects

465
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: and events. And I think either could likely be the case.

466
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: There's no way to automatically favor one or the other.

467
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,120
Speaker 1: I think the fossil link is just an argument for

468
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: the latter. And another point he makes is that Protosterotops

469
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: fossils are you know, have not been found at the

470
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: sites of the Scythian gold mines, but rather within a

471
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: few hundred miles of them, so you know, it's not

472
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:59,159
Speaker 1: like we saw them there at the gold mine. That

473
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: would be a pretty good argument. I think, yes, yes,

474
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: if we actually had seen them there. But yeah, so anyway,

475
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: there there are arguments for their arguments against that the

476
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: Protoceratops or another dinosaur quadrupedal dinosaur with a beak could

477
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:17,240
Speaker 1: have inspired griffin ideas, and uh, I think, I don't know,

478
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,119
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where I come down on it, but

479
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,680
Speaker 1: I think it's still an interesting idea. But he wouldn't

480
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,920
Speaker 1: make some some interesting arguments against it. Yeah, but that

481
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: is by no means the only mythical creature that has

482
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:35,200
Speaker 1: been said to have been inspired possibly by fossils, right right,

483
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:37,879
Speaker 1: I mean we've been talking about one eyed folks. So

484
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 1: that leads us, of course to the cyclops. Man. I

485
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:43,840
Speaker 1: love a good cyclops. Yeah, I do too. And and and

486
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: you know, we see a lot of variety. That's the thing.

487
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: We always see more variety than than you might expect.

488
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:51,719
Speaker 1: So like with the Cyclops, you see some artistic depictions

489
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: where there's just one um one orifice for the eye

490
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: in the head, just one one eyehole. Sometimes they are three,

491
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: and two of them are fleshed over. Uh. So there's

492
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: a lot of variety there as well. And indeed we

493
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: see a number of different explanations for where this might

494
00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: have come from. I've read that this man might have

495
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: been informed by the forehead lanterns of Pellucidian miners, or

496
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: perhaps the protective eye patches that were worn by blacksmiths

497
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 1: was prevented sparks from blinding both eyes at once. You'd

498
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: always have one covered. Uh. But the theory that I

499
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 1: think most people have probably encountered, and you either probably

500
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 1: encountered this in a school textbook or perhaps at the

501
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,600
Speaker 1: zoo um, and that is that the school that the

502
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: skulls of elephants, particularly the skulls of prehistoric Mediterranean dwarf elephants,

503
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: could have informed our idea of the psyclops because you

504
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 1: look at this skull and you see this massive hole

505
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: there in the middle, that of course is a nasal

506
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: opening is for the trunk, right, but you might think, hey,

507
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: that looks like an eye socket and the head looks

508
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: kind of humanoid. Maybe that's what's going on here. And

509
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: indeed Um mayor chi is in on this as well.

510
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: And uh, the argument here is that the myth may

511
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: have originated or at least gathered some some steam via

512
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: the discovery of elephant skull fossils, namely the prehistoric Mediterranean

513
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 1: dwarf elephants. Or another particular one is Dionithrum giagantum, which

514
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: had been a would have been a fifteen foot four

515
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: point six meter high elephant creature, but unlike modern elephants,

516
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: these guys had had a four four point five foot

517
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: one point three meter backward pointing tusks. Yeah so backward. Yeah,

518
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 1: you'll have to look at an image of this because

519
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 1: the tusk that they kind of look like a chin beard,

520
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 1: like some sort of a chin beard that has been

521
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: uh been shaped those braided devil beards. Yeah, like kind

522
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 1: of like a braided devil beard. Yeah, with the forks

523
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: and it's kind of turning backwards towards the individual's chest

524
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 1: chin fangs, chin kind of chin thangs. The elephant would

525
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: have probably used these two strip barks from trees or

526
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: possibly dig up plants. But no, only use them for

527
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: draining the blood out of enemies. But but but you

528
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: look at it, and it does look like a humanoid skull,

529
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: a very monstrous humanoid skull that for some reason has

530
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: a skeletal basis for its goatee. Uh. And it has

531
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: something like a third eyehole or a large central eyehole

532
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: in the middle of its head. Now, a geologist from

533
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: the University of Crets Natural History Museum believe these creatures

534
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:30,959
Speaker 1: probably swam over from Turkey via the islands of Rhodes

535
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: and Carpathos to reach Crete. But yeah, these present one

536
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:39,440
Speaker 1: possible idea of where the cyclops came from. Uh. Again,

537
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: If not an origin story, then perhaps something that informed

538
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: and strengthened existing beliefs along the way. Yeah. Again, that

539
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 1: seems like an interesting explanatory fit, but I guess there's

540
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: no way to know for sure. All Right, we're gonna

541
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we

542
00:31:55,480 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: shall get to the dragons. Hey, everybody, do you like TV? Well,

543
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: I have a feeling the TV likes you, because it's

544
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 1: about to give you the second season of the hit

545
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: show Mr Robot. Mr Robot follows Elliott Alderson played by

546
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: Rommy Malick, a young cybersecurity engineer who becomes involved in

547
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: the underground hacker group F Society after being recruited by

548
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: their mysterious leader played by Christians Later an old favorite

549
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: of mine. Following the events of F Society's five nine

550
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: hack on multinational company Evil Corps. The second season is

551
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: going to explore the consequences of that attack, as well

552
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 1: as the illusion of control. Now, obviously, the show ties

553
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 1: in perfectly with a number of topics we've discussed on

554
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 1: the on the show illusions of perception, uh, some of

555
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: the more technological based episodes we've discussed as well. So

556
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: we think it's a no brainer for listeners out there

557
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:48,880
Speaker 1: to to give it a try. Check it out, and hey,

558
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: if you were already on board with season one, season

559
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: two drops Wednesday, July thirteenth, at ten nine Central on

560
00:32:55,600 --> 00:33:00,479
Speaker 1: USA Network. That's Mr. Robot Season two, Wednesday July thirteen,

561
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 1: ten nine Central, only on USA Network. Alright, we're back.

562
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: So one of the obvious things has got to be dragons, right,

563
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: I mean you think about therapod dinosaurs like, uh, you

564
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: see a spinosaurus or Terrannosaurus rex, alberta Saurus and any

565
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:23,400
Speaker 1: kind of Uh, I mean they just look so dragon like. Yeah. Uh,

566
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 1: as soon as you see them, you're like, that is

567
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: a thing that Yeah, it guards golden treasure, kind of

568
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: like the griffin, I guess, and it will bite you

569
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: in half if you look at it cross side. Yeah,

570
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of hard, like I find with with

571
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: a four year old at times, it's been a little

572
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: challenging to describe and to explain that, Okay, this dragon here,

573
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: this is not real. These were never real. These are

574
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: purely made up. But this dinosaur this is this is real.

575
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 1: This was real, These used to exist. Well, you know,

576
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 1: some people make a kind of very different but in

577
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: a strange way, sort of parallel argument. I didn't really

578
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 1: know this, but if you google dinosaurs and dragons together,

579
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: actually you will get a lot of Young Earth creationist literature.

580
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: It wasn't really a where this, but apparently some people

581
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:14,360
Speaker 1: of that persuasion believe that the dragon myths were created

582
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: not out of a need to explain fossils, but came

583
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:22,240
Speaker 1: out of direct human interactions with dinosaurs. Uh So, leaving

584
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 1: that belief aside, uh, if you walk among the skeletons

585
00:34:26,200 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: of these dinosaurs and you see the fossils, that's really

586
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 1: I think all you would need to definitely want to

587
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 1: come up with some kind of dragon type creature to

588
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 1: explain them, and so that yeah, they may have dreamed

589
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: up something like we see in various mythological depictions. But

590
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: you also, in fact, and I think I agree with

591
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:48,560
Speaker 1: this may Or makes the point that you wouldn't necessarily

592
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: have to see dinosaur fossils to dream up dragons. In fact,

593
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: the fossils or or just skeletal remains of many large

594
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: mammals could easily be taken as dragon like in nature. Yeah,

595
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,360
Speaker 1: especially when you start thinking outside of the box of

596
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:08,319
Speaker 1: about what a dragon is. We discuss this a little

597
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: bit in our Chinese Zodiac episode, because in the in

598
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: the the Asian traditions, you strip away this sort of

599
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: cliche Western idea sort of dungeons and dragon's view of

600
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 1: a dragon. And he's try trying to describe it. It

601
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:26,280
Speaker 1: just becomes this amalgam of different biological influence. They're less

602
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: large lizards and more boundary crossing chimera animals. Yeah, and

603
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 1: so all you need is a large rib cage. All

604
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,440
Speaker 1: you need is, uh, you know, a few bones that

605
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:38,799
Speaker 1: clearly don't match up with anything in the world that

606
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:42,600
Speaker 1: you have seen, or some huge skulls in ancient India,

607
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 1: that's right. So uh so there is a tradition of

608
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 1: dragons in India that is attributed to so a story

609
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 1: about the first century CE Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana

610
00:35:56,440 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: saying when he when he traveled through the foothills of

611
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: the Himalayas and went to northern India. Philostratus's story about

612
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: this is that it was just full of dragon skulls. Right, Yeah,

613
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: we're not dragon skulls. Dragons. Well, he basically reported as

614
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:15,359
Speaker 1: fact that, hey, dragons are everywhere in this area, and

615
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: I've seen the skulls to prove it. Um. And and

616
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:20,839
Speaker 1: indeed there seemed to have been just a number of

617
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 1: different skulls or heads that were laid at the base

618
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: of a mountain in a place that referred to as

619
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: a paraca. They kept his trophies, right, like the predator. Yeah,

620
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: kind of like the predator and the skull and some

621
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 1: of these are like, you know, not only are they skulls,

622
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 1: but they have crystals inside them in some cases, which

623
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: seems to have represented you know, the supernatural powers perhaps

624
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:46,720
Speaker 1: of these these creatures. Yeah. Now, so who knows where

625
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: this was actually supposed to take place or if there's

626
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:51,720
Speaker 1: any truth to the story of this journey at all

627
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: about Apollonius, But either way, it could have been inspired

628
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:59,320
Speaker 1: by accounts of the region independent of Apollonius. Yeah, there's

629
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: some reculation that it might match up with with Peshawar

630
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,399
Speaker 1: and modern Pakistan, uh and In and indeed in later

631
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,320
Speaker 1: times according to Mayor, a famous of Buddhist holy place

632
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 1: near Peshawar was known as quote the Shrine of the

633
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:18,879
Speaker 1: Thousand Heads. So what could these heads have been if

634
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 1: they were not truly dragon heads? Well, as you as

635
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 1: you mentioned, they could have been just about anything. Um

636
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: in this area is just strewn with the impressive Pleo

637
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: Pleistocene era vertebrate fossils. So they would have had their

638
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 1: pick of pretty impressive dragon heads. And and what's more,

639
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:42,239
Speaker 1: calcite and uh selenite crystals are very common in the

640
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:45,319
Speaker 1: fossilized bones in this area, So this would have led

641
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: to perhaps to the tails of the gems that are

642
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,879
Speaker 1: embedded within the dragon's heads. Yeah, that's a crazy myth.

643
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:56,279
Speaker 1: Gym's inside the dragon head? Yeah, the gyms are its

644
00:37:56,400 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: brain or you know, some component, maybe some cybernetic opponent.

645
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's great. That's another one that that sounds

646
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:10,959
Speaker 1: like a very interesting historical explanation. But then again, we're

647
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: just sort of like fitting what we know now onto

648
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: the details of history. So it's it's hard to know

649
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: for sure if if an explanation like that was true.

650
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:25,759
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's interesting, this very same region just

651
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 1: below the Himalayas. UH. It's also been argued that this

652
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: may have informed and molded some understandings of of of

653
00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:39,360
Speaker 1: an of a very important event in in Hindu mythology,

654
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: specifically the dynastic war between the Carabas and the Pandavas

655
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:48,720
Speaker 1: in the epic mahabarata Um and this UH. This idea

656
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:52,799
Speaker 1: comes from the paper Fossil Folklore from India The Sea

657
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 1: Wala Hills and the Mahabarata by Alexander van der Geer, Uh,

658
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: Michael Dermissoats and John DeVos. And this was published in

659
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:04,799
Speaker 1: the journal Folklore in two thousand and eight. But they

660
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:08,760
Speaker 1: basically point out that you have you have a number

661
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: of fossil ammonites, for example, that are worshiped as the

662
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: disc or chakra of the Hindu god Vishnu. Oh I

663
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: didn't know that and that Uh, And then indeed, this

664
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,400
Speaker 1: is an area that's rich invertebrate fossils. And the authors

665
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: argued that this region was seen as perhaps the historical

666
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 1: stage for this legendary battle that's described in the Mahabaratah,

667
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 1: during which hundreds of mighty and sometimes gigantic heroes or

668
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: are engaging in battle with each other. They are elephants

669
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,400
Speaker 1: that are war elephants that are said to have fought

670
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: and died. So that kind of makes sense. How if

671
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:47,239
Speaker 1: you were to find a bunch of fossils all in

672
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,719
Speaker 1: the same place, you you might not having an understanding

673
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 1: of how things get deposited over geological time, you might

674
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 1: very well assume that something big went down here. Yeah,

675
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: surely this was the side of some epic attle and

676
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: look at all the strange things that died here. Some

677
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 1: of these are clearly elephants, because you would have seen

678
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 1: a number of prehistoric elephant type species. But also you'd

679
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:14,800
Speaker 1: have four horn horn giraffe creatures, giant tortoises, sabretooth cats,

680
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: different camels, and on top of this, you would have

681
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 1: also found lots of ancient bronze javelins and spears. So

682
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:27,880
Speaker 1: the archaeological artifacts plus the uh the paleontological remains would

683
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:32,279
Speaker 1: have equaled an influence over the setting and context of

684
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 1: the great battle that occurs in this Indian epic. That

685
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: is really interesting. And I think the the idea of

686
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: the density of fossils leading into the differential mythical interpretations

687
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:44,720
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, that that's something to keep in mind.

688
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 1: But let's go farther east, right, shall we. Okay, let's

689
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: do Yeah, let's talk just a little bit about the

690
00:40:57,120 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 1: the Chinese unicorn, the the the quillan, a creature that

691
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: is often known referred to by Westerners as the Chinese unicorn.

692
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that the that that Western unicorn

693
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:13,080
Speaker 1: depictions vary a lot on their own. So you have

694
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:15,839
Speaker 1: some Western unicorns that look more like a goat, some

695
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: look more like a horse. Sometimes within the same work

696
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: or series of works, such as the Lady in the

697
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: Unicorn Tapestries. Um. But the the Chinese quillon, and it's

698
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: various incarnations that you find throughout East Asia. They vary

699
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:32,880
Speaker 1: even more so. It's it's essentially a mystical sacred forest creature,

700
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: but there are elements of a deer and other herbivores,

701
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 1: and the details vary beyond that. Um there's um you know,

702
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 1: sometimes it's it's sometimes it has one. Sometimes there's two

703
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 1: or three fleshy horns. Sometimes they're more distinctly antlers. Um

704
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: So you can well imagine that in looking at the

705
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: fossil record, you could easily pick and choose what you

706
00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: want this thing to resemble in the fossil record. Um So.

707
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 1: There are a couple of interesting arguments that are made

708
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:05,680
Speaker 1: about it. One is that is that this might that

709
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:09,359
Speaker 1: the origin of this might have been a giraffe. Um So,

710
00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:12,400
Speaker 1: essentially you would have had travelers that and this is

711
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:14,919
Speaker 1: not even fossil related, but the idea that you would

712
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 1: have had travelers who ventured out to the coast of

713
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 1: Africa and returned with not only stories of giraffes, but

714
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:26,839
Speaker 1: in one case UH fourteen fourteen, the unit commander ching

715
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: Ho would have returned with a giraffe as a tribute

716
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 1: to Emperor Yunglow. And the Somali name for giraffe is

717
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: also gearing, which might have sounded like quillen and so um,

718
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 1: which is a word that also is an emblem of

719
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 1: justice to the Chinese. So there's a possibility that that

720
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: the giraffe might have played some role in the formation

721
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:54,359
Speaker 1: or the evolution of the idea of equilling. That's interesting now.

722
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: I know. One thing I think I've heard is that

723
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: different unicorn legends would have to be traceable back to

724
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: the rhinoceros. Is there anything to that, Well, possibly, you know,

725
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: there's no This is one of another one of those

726
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,439
Speaker 1: areas where you can't really say for sure, and I

727
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: tend like, personally, looking at the information, I tend to

728
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 1: doubt some of the connections that are made a lot

729
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:21,399
Speaker 1: of people, both for western and Eastern unicorns. They pull

730
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:26,439
Speaker 1: they point to the elasmotherium um, which were particularly more recent.

731
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,879
Speaker 1: It's been in the news recently because Uh, it's been

732
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:36,280
Speaker 1: discovered that you actually had humans and elasmo theoriums living

733
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: side by side in modern day Kazakhstan, a mere twenty

734
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: nine thousand years ago. This according to a recent study

735
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 1: published in the American Journal of Applied Sciences. Previous estimates

736
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,839
Speaker 1: would have placed it outside the two hundred thousand year

737
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: run of human history. The elasmotherorium did not look like

738
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: at western unicorn. It did not really look like any

739
00:43:57,200 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: of the depictions we see of an Eastern unicorn or quillan.

740
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,279
Speaker 1: It really looks like a large prehistoric rhino with a

741
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:10,640
Speaker 1: really awesome horn. But there is the idea that if

742
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: not direct human observation of this creature, then perhaps memories

743
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 1: and stories in oral tradition of encountering or crew illustrations. Yeah,

744
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: our crewe illustrations informed our knowledge of of of what

745
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:28,800
Speaker 1: it is. Um Now. Of course, there are also arguments

746
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: to be made that the quillan is in what was

747
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: informed by actual rhinos, more modern rhinos, particularly sue Matron

748
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 1: Rhinoceros is that that once lived throughout China and still

749
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:44,320
Speaker 1: live in in parts of of Asia today. Um And

750
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: there's some interesting arguments on both sides here, but you

751
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: definitely see realistic depictions of Sumatran rhinos in Chinese artistic traditions.

752
00:44:55,640 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: So there does seem to be a divide between the

753
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 1: the pure real world rhino uh camp and the Quillen camp.

754
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: So again it remains an open question. Well, Robert, I've

755
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: got another one, and I want you to take a

756
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 1: look at a vase with me. Okay, do you want

757
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 1: to look at a not a vase, a mixing bowl.

758
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:18,240
Speaker 1: Put your eyes on it. Okay, I'm looking at it now. Okay.

759
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:21,120
Speaker 1: So this is a This is an object in the

760
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that is a late

761
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: Corinthian mixing bowl from about five fifty BC, and it

762
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:34,040
Speaker 1: is it is described as Heracles, or also known as Hercules,

763
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: firing arrows while he Sion hurls rocks at a dragon.

764
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: Presumably this dragon is the monster of Troy or the

765
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: cats troyas uh. This this illustration is crazy looking Hercules

766
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 1: and Heracles. He looks like a robot, straight up robot,

767
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 1: right and then uh he Sion of course is kind

768
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 1: of standing there between him and this monster. And I

769
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:04,280
Speaker 1: don't know, I'll get to the monster in a second.

770
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: But if you're able to look this up, do so,

771
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,960
Speaker 1: because it is weird. The monster does not look like

772
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 1: a normal monster as you would expect it to be

773
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,800
Speaker 1: depicted in classical Greek art. It looks like a big

774
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 1: black mass with some sort of white animal skull jutting

775
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 1: out of it. So what's going on in this story? Well,

776
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:28,880
Speaker 1: in the tradition, Poseidon has a beef beef with Lawmadon,

777
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: the king of Troy, and so Poseidon to get back

778
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 1: at Lamadon sends a key TOAs a sea sea beast

779
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 1: to attack the city, and the Trojans keep the sea

780
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:44,360
Speaker 1: monster at bay by sacrificing maidens to it. Keytas is like, okay,

781
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 1: maidens are tasty, I can I can make this work, um.

782
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:51,240
Speaker 1: But at some point Hercules rolls up to Troy around

783
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:54,240
Speaker 1: the same time that the Trojans are about to sacrifice

784
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: Lamadon's daughter Heson to the monster, and then Hercules saves

785
00:46:59,160 --> 00:47:03,399
Speaker 1: Hecon by killing the sea beast. But in two thousand two,

786
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:06,319
Speaker 1: Adrian Mayor authored a paper in the Oxford Journal of

787
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 1: Archaeology about this illustration on this mixing bowl, and the

788
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:15,279
Speaker 1: paper was called the Monster of Troy vase, the the

789
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil discovery, and Mayor

790
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: argues that this illustration of the legend of Hercules rescuing

791
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:28,520
Speaker 1: from the Monster of Troy was likely visually inspired by

792
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,880
Speaker 1: a large fossil skull, so here it's not necessarily the

793
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:35,319
Speaker 1: myth itself, but at least this illustration of it um.

794
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: So the key toss in this illustration does not conform

795
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: to the Greek style of sea monster art, which was

796
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 1: usually created kind of like the griffin tradition by mixing

797
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:49,480
Speaker 1: attributes of various different known animals like the head of

798
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:53,360
Speaker 1: a lion, body of a snake or something like that. Instead,

799
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: features on the illustration caused Mayor to think that the

800
00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 1: image was inspired by quote, a large fossil skull of

801
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 1: a prehistoric mammal, possibly a Samotherium, which was a giant

802
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: Miocene giraffhoid. Back to giraffes again, that they're so terrifying

803
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,840
Speaker 1: in the mythic tradition, and having looked at both myself,

804
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:15,720
Speaker 1: I can definitely see the resemblance that would cause somebody

805
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: to say this, including both the skull the skull monster

806
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 1: in the picture and the sam ethereum have this l

807
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:28,720
Speaker 1: shaped lower jaw that protrudes from beyond the upper jaw

808
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: in the front, and then when it hooks up in

809
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 1: the l shape uh to connect with the rest of

810
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: the skull, it's sort of right behind where the eyes are,

811
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: and it's the same in the picture, so uh Mayor

812
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: also points out that quote. Numerous literary accounts describe exposures

813
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 1: of these and similar large mammal fossils in antiquity along

814
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: the Turkish coast, on the Aegean Islands, and on the

815
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:54,239
Speaker 1: Greek mainland. I conclude that this vase painting is the

816
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:57,520
Speaker 1: earliest artistic record of such a discovery. So the idea

817
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: here is that the image in the painting is inspired

818
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: by a giant samotherium or other large extinct mammal skull

819
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 1: jutting out of a cliff, which you may well have

820
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 1: found at that time in that place. It's it's almost

821
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: as if the the artist here they said, all right,

822
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:18,359
Speaker 1: what does this monster look like? And then someone said, oh,

823
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:20,279
Speaker 1: you see that skull up on the cliff, that that

824
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:21,799
Speaker 1: might have been when its head was like and then

825
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:24,719
Speaker 1: he did like a direct drawing of and they're like,

826
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: your bonehead, that's not what it actually looked like. That's

827
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 1: just the skull. Oh bonehead by accident. But seriously, you

828
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:35,320
Speaker 1: should look up this mixing bowl. It looks it looks

829
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 1: so weird and so great. Yeah. Both the both the

830
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 1: illustration of the monster of the of Troy and the

831
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:45,480
Speaker 1: the actual fossil skull both look very metal, like they

832
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: could either one could be on the cover of a

833
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:50,360
Speaker 1: heavy metal album. You do usually don't think of giraffes

834
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:52,640
Speaker 1: as being very metal, but I guess they are, especially

835
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 1: when you take all their flesh off. Yeah, and they

836
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: have the elongated skull in this case and the bony

837
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: horn lumps on top of the head. All right, we're

838
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:05,320
Speaker 1: gonna return to to China for for I think we

839
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: have our last specific example here. So in many regions

840
00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: of China you will find track bearing fossil slabs that

841
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:17,360
Speaker 1: are used. They're either sometimes they're used as building materials

842
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:21,239
Speaker 1: or at least they're they're integrated into houses, yards, uh

843
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 1: in older traditions, cave dwellings. Uh. And they serve as

844
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:30,440
Speaker 1: auspicious symbols or just mere decorations. But they are essentially

845
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:34,399
Speaker 1: the footsteps of dinosaurs. And there are records of these

846
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:37,800
Speaker 1: going back hundreds and hundreds of years of individuals finding

847
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 1: these uh. People are fascinated with them and they hold

848
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: onto them because when you encounter these footsteps, it's kind

849
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:46,839
Speaker 1: of like encountering the bones. Here are some some footsteps

850
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: in the stone, and you know what footsteps are. You

851
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: can you can look at these and go, oh, that

852
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: kind of looks like the footsteps of a bird. But

853
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,799
Speaker 1: they're set in stone. There's something weird going on here,

854
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:02,720
Speaker 1: there's something supernaturalust have been a magical bird, right, So, uh,

855
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:04,719
Speaker 1: this is where we end up with the idea that

856
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 1: these are the footsteps of the golden pheasant or sometimes

857
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 1: that referred to as the golden chicken, like golden chicken,

858
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:16,840
Speaker 1: the gingi or um the or the golden chickens claw

859
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:22,959
Speaker 1: gingi za, and it's regarded as again an auspicious symbol. Uh. Now,

860
00:51:23,280 --> 00:51:26,239
Speaker 1: the golden pheasant is of course a real bird, but

861
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:29,840
Speaker 1: it's elusive nature, it's beautiful colors make it a prime

862
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:34,959
Speaker 1: candidate for deification, and it's also associated with the feng Hong,

863
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 1: which is a mythological bird similar to the western phoenix.

864
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 1: So without the knowledge of fossil making, the maker of

865
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 1: these tracks clearly had to be divine. So so it's

866
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 1: an interesting tradition I read about this in a paper

867
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: titled Dinosaur Tracks Myths and Buildings Um the Gingi Stones

868
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: from Zizo Area, Northern shawn Zi, China. It's a two

869
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: fifty paper, um, but it's yeah, it's a more interesting

870
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 1: insight into it. And again it doesn't specifically involve bones,

871
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 1: but involves just the the fossil footsteps. Oh, that's still

872
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: be geomethology typically, yeah, totally. But but this one I

873
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,799
Speaker 1: feel like it's more of a direct case because it's

874
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 1: individuals saying and cultures saying, here are the footsteps, and

875
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: this is why they're important to us, this is what

876
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:24,240
Speaker 1: they mean. Well, that would actually be a really good

877
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 1: example than of, um, what it looks like when you

878
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: have a very solid case in geo mythology explanations, because um,

879
00:52:34,960 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: I mean with with this whole subject, it's very fascinating.

880
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: I love reading about this stuff. It's super fun. But

881
00:52:41,920 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 1: very often we're coming up with it's kind of like

882
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology explanations that you encounter that can be very

883
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:54,839
Speaker 1: cleverly devised. Oftentimes there there's some very compelling kind of

884
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 1: it makes sense fitting the evidence together for them, but

885
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: at the same time they can feel less solid than

886
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 1: a lot of other scientific hypotheses, because it's hard for

887
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 1: you to make predictions with them. At the end of

888
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:11,799
Speaker 1: the day, even the best examples of either evolutionary psychology

889
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 1: or a geomethology, I feel like I am shaking, I'm

890
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:17,319
Speaker 1: nodding my head and saying, yeah, I feel like that

891
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: could be part of the explanation. So while I don't

892
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:22,360
Speaker 1: mean to downplay the work people have done on this

893
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:24,279
Speaker 1: at all, like I think that a whole lot of

894
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:27,920
Speaker 1: really really intelligent research has gone into this subject, and

895
00:53:27,960 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 1: I love reading about it, but it definitely does feel

896
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:34,800
Speaker 1: like a softer, squishier science than than much other science.

897
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:37,839
Speaker 1: And one issue that follows from that is this, I've

898
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:41,160
Speaker 1: been thinking about this question, how hard should we be

899
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:46,160
Speaker 1: looking for scientific historical explanations for ancient myths and legends

900
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: before we conclude that they're most likely explained just from

901
00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:55,320
Speaker 1: forces inside the mind of the creator, whether that's conscious

902
00:53:55,400 --> 00:54:01,840
Speaker 1: imaginative fiction writing, or visions or hallucinations, whatever psychogenic origins.

903
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: Um Because if you try to explain every myth by

904
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 1: external facts about the world that we can find evidence

905
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,120
Speaker 1: of now, it's sort of it can end up taking

906
00:54:14,160 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 1: you to crazy extremes. Right. Yeah. One thing that definitely

907
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,120
Speaker 1: comes to my mind is have you ever heard what

908
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:24,839
Speaker 1: the ancient aliens people say about the Bible? Oh? How? How?

909
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:27,320
Speaker 1: How have I not? Oh? Yeah, I mean it's crazy.

910
00:54:27,480 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 1: So in the uh quick one, the Book of Ezekiel,

911
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 1: but the Bible, chapter one, the author says he sees

912
00:54:34,200 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 1: a vision of God. Right. He says, quote, as I looked,

913
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 1: a stormy wind came out of the north, a great

914
00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:42,879
Speaker 1: cloud with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually,

915
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: and in the middle of the fire something like gleaming amber.

916
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 1: In the middle of it was something like four living creatures.

917
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: This was their appearance. They were human, of human form.

918
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 1: Each had four faces, and each of them had four wings.

919
00:54:55,640 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet

920
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:00,359
Speaker 1: were like the soul of a calf's foot, and they

921
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:04,240
Speaker 1: sparkled like burnished bronze. And then later, starting a verse fifteen,

922
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:06,520
Speaker 1: as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a

923
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:09,360
Speaker 1: wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for

924
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:11,840
Speaker 1: each of the four of them. As for the appearance

925
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 1: of the wheels and their construction, their appearance was like

926
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:17,279
Speaker 1: the gleaming of Beryl, and the four of them had

927
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:20,440
Speaker 1: the same form, their construction being something like a wheel

928
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:26,040
Speaker 1: within a wheel. Obviously flying saucer aliens. Right, ask the Internet,

929
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: it will tell you the author of this passage encounter

930
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:32,160
Speaker 1: to flying saucer aliens. Four aliens got out of it there.

931
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: I don't know their shape shifting, uh, nanomaterial suits, whatever

932
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,919
Speaker 1: you want, it's all there. Now. This is a very

933
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:44,759
Speaker 1: different and much more extreme hypothesis than fossils explaining mythical creatures, right,

934
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:48,279
Speaker 1: because whereas we actually know that fossils exist, we do

935
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:51,359
Speaker 1: not know whether aliens or flying saucers exist. And there

936
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:55,399
Speaker 1: are some good arguments concerning interstellar distances, etcetera to make

937
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:57,560
Speaker 1: us think that even if they do exist, that it's

938
00:55:57,640 --> 00:56:02,200
Speaker 1: unlikely they visited Earth. But them or principle is at play. Right,

939
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: when we encounter an ancient account of a vision or

940
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 1: a myth or anything that seems fantastical in any way,

941
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: do we need to find a naturalistic external explanation for it,

942
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:19,319
Speaker 1: apart from psychogenic origins? Is it just the person writing it?

943
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:22,239
Speaker 1: Is that their imagination or a vision they saw in

944
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: their head? Yeah, because otherwise you're limiting an ancient individual

945
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:30,160
Speaker 1: to some to some sort of really really ultimately alien

946
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 1: mindset where they have no creative thought, they have no

947
00:56:34,120 --> 00:56:38,879
Speaker 1: pre existing stories of the fantastic or ideas of the fantastic,

948
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:42,600
Speaker 1: and are not susceptible susceptible to hallucination of any sort,

949
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:45,920
Speaker 1: and they can only they can only make create a

950
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:48,560
Speaker 1: written account or a or an oral tradition based on

951
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 1: something they directly saw as it is written. Yeah. Then again,

952
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: people definitely do take inspiration in the fiction and the

953
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 1: fantasy they create from events and objects in the real world.

954
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:01,719
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's a fool's errand to be

955
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: looking for these kind of explanations. But how hard should

956
00:57:05,200 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 1: we look? I guess as the question like, when should

957
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:11,280
Speaker 1: we just be satisfied that, well, you know, this person

958
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:14,799
Speaker 1: probably just had an active imagination and they came up

959
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: with the with the lion's body and an eagle's head.

960
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:20,440
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be weird? You know? Do they need to

961
00:57:20,480 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 1: have seen something that made them think of a quadruped

962
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: with a beak? Yeah? Because I mean, ultimately, if you

963
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:31,680
Speaker 1: to take a skeptical approach, more even skeptical approach, you

964
00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:35,360
Speaker 1: can basically say that this person is describing a bunch

965
00:57:35,400 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 1: of um, sort of psychedelic craziness, and the religious script

966
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:44,000
Speaker 1: for it that they had to play with says, oh,

967
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: well this is God. Our modern supernatural script is that

968
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: it's aliens, and both are essentially just um, you know,

969
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 1: fictional scripts that we have to describe something that does

970
00:57:55,360 --> 00:57:58,760
Speaker 1: not conform to the world. Yeah, if you're going to

971
00:57:58,840 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: go with a naturalistic nation, yeah, or it's God, I

972
00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: mean just literally, it's just that's the actual God appearing

973
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:09,240
Speaker 1: before well, I mean, of course, for people who believe

974
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:13,040
Speaker 1: in whatever God is figuring into this particular story, that's

975
00:58:13,040 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: obviously an option for them. For people on the outside

976
00:58:15,880 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: of that belief tradition who don't believe in that, that's

977
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: not really an option for them in in explaining where

978
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:24,959
Speaker 1: this comes from. But you don't have to go any

979
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: kind of to any kind of contorted, uh third party

980
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 1: external naturalistic interpretations. You can always just think, well, somebody

981
00:58:33,400 --> 00:58:36,640
Speaker 1: thought something up. Yeah. Of course, we're always at a

982
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 1: disadvantage because we're always looking back in hindsight on these examples.

983
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:44,880
Speaker 1: But what if we what if we dare to look ahead,

984
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: what have we dare to imagine? What future commentators, future historians, uh,

985
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: maybe even visitors from outer space would make of some

986
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 1: of the uh, the mythical constructs that we have today. Yeah,

987
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: I think that is a fascinating question, and it's something

988
00:59:00,560 --> 00:59:04,720
Speaker 1: that Adrian Mayer brings up in her Geomethology entry that

989
00:59:04,840 --> 00:59:08,640
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier in the Encyclopedia of Geology. She

990
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:14,880
Speaker 1: points out the storage of transuranic radioactive waste. Have you

991
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:18,560
Speaker 1: ever heard about the intentional creation of geo myths with

992
00:59:18,680 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 1: relation to this? No? I don't believe I have. Okay,

993
00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 1: So the problem is, once you have high level radioactive waste,

994
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 1: after you know, it comes out of it comes out

995
00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 1: of a nuclear reactor, you've got to store it somewhere,

996
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:35,920
Speaker 1: preferably somewhere underground. And this stuff will remain dangerous for

997
00:59:36,120 --> 00:59:41,080
Speaker 1: thousands of years, far far beyond the lifespan of of

998
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:44,360
Speaker 1: you know, the United States already, I mean, so much

999
00:59:44,520 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: changes on the surface of the Earth in the amount

1000
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:49,960
Speaker 1: of time that this stuff remains dangerous. How do you

1001
00:59:50,080 --> 00:59:53,800
Speaker 1: come up with ways of keeping people away from it

1002
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: that are going to last that long. You can lock

1003
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:59,440
Speaker 1: it up in a building, but what if future people

1004
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:02,160
Speaker 1: come across this building and say, hmm, something's locked in there?

1005
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 1: Might be valuable. Maybe we should get inside and then

1006
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:08,360
Speaker 1: of course they sicken and die. Um. Or you could

1007
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:11,480
Speaker 1: try to put up signs that say warning, this is poisonous,

1008
01:00:11,560 --> 01:00:14,160
Speaker 1: stay away from it. It will hurt you. Will the

1009
01:00:14,200 --> 01:00:16,920
Speaker 1: people of the future remember why those signs were there

1010
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:19,240
Speaker 1: and believe you? Or will they even speak the same

1011
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:22,600
Speaker 1: language as you, will they be able to read them? Uh?

1012
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 1: So this this is a problem, and so one solution,

1013
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: as mentioned by Mayor is uh. Some people have suggested,

1014
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: what if we create geo myths about radioactive storage sites,

1015
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:39,600
Speaker 1: thus creating intentionally mythology that says, don't go near these

1016
01:00:39,600 --> 01:00:44,480
Speaker 1: places because they're full of curses that will destroy you. Well,

1017
01:00:44,520 --> 01:00:46,680
Speaker 1: that's it, like the like one idea that comes to mind,

1018
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 1: as you just go ahead and put out an image

1019
01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:51,000
Speaker 1: of Godzilla there, and then they'll think, oh, well, no

1020
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:53,120
Speaker 1: one will come near because we'll see the image of Godzilla.

1021
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:57,160
Speaker 1: But as a monster, I always go toward images of Godzilla, right.

1022
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 1: But then also they might think, oh, an image of

1023
01:01:00,920 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 1: a large dinosaur here, there must be a bunch of

1024
01:01:02,920 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 1: dinosaur bones in there, which gets into a whole other

1025
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 1: idea like how would you make sense of of Godzilla

1026
01:01:08,960 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: if you if you were taking a geo mythological approach,

1027
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:13,880
Speaker 1: you might say, oh, they are inspired by dinosaurs and

1028
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: their love of dinosaurs, which is partially true. Godzilla is

1029
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 1: is undeniably informed by our love of something like a

1030
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,360
Speaker 1: torontos arts rex. But in the other hand, there's a

1031
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:27,840
Speaker 1: lot more to the fabric of Godzilla's identity as well,

1032
01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: tying in the horrors of atomic war and radioactive anxiety. Yeah, yeah,

1033
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:37,400
Speaker 1: absolutely that That's a great example of the sort of complex,

1034
01:01:37,440 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 1: poly functional nature of myth, and the polygenic nature of myth.

1035
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:43,720
Speaker 1: It comes from all over the place. Godzilla isn't just

1036
01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:45,959
Speaker 1: that somebody saw a t rex skeleton. Yeah. You gotta

1037
01:01:45,960 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 1: be careful when you're playing with myth, because if you

1038
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:51,440
Speaker 1: approach it from a very you know, one dimensional framework,

1039
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:56,400
Speaker 1: you're you're you're playing with a multidimensional object. Uh. I mean,

1040
01:01:56,960 --> 01:01:59,800
Speaker 1: I imagine even the Benny Jessriates have some problems with this.

1041
01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:03,840
Speaker 1: I mean, what else about today, apart from our radioactive

1042
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: waste storage facilities? What else about today? Can you imagine?

1043
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 1: Let's say, you know, mad Max scenario happens, and we

1044
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: lose a lot of the connection with with history and

1045
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 1: culture and future generations. Are just dealing with our remains

1046
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:20,480
Speaker 1: and our artifacts to try and figure out what happened,

1047
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: What geo myths might they have about the present day,

1048
01:02:24,080 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: What what mythological creatures would would they invent when coming

1049
01:02:29,200 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 1: upon a Google server farm? Oh m hmm, Man, I

1050
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean maybe transformers. Yeah, I mean transformers

1051
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 1: are either robots that turn into cars or cars that

1052
01:02:42,040 --> 01:02:45,160
Speaker 1: turn into robots. I mean they're real world technological objects

1053
01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:52,600
Speaker 1: that become unreal sentient robot creatures. So that might be

1054
01:02:52,680 --> 01:02:56,960
Speaker 1: a complex one for for future commentators to figure out

1055
01:02:57,080 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 1: what is the transformer and why? Well? Yeah, I mean

1056
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:01,480
Speaker 1: it's so when I think about a server farm, and

1057
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:05,040
Speaker 1: I imagine, okay, so I have no scientific knowledge, I

1058
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:08,120
Speaker 1: have no technological knowledge. I've just come across this facility.

1059
01:03:09,080 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 1: The one thing that seems to be clear about it

1060
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:14,160
Speaker 1: is it's a gigantic building and nobody lived inside it,

1061
01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 1: and so it must Okay, Yeah, so you're talking specifically

1062
01:03:16,880 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 1: about such like the server farms that show up and say,

1063
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 1: still look on Valley where it's just a massive, massive

1064
01:03:22,200 --> 01:03:26,960
Speaker 1: room with just rows upon rows of these boxes. Right, Sure,

1065
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:30,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, surely you can think of

1066
01:03:30,480 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 1: something strange about that. Oh yeah, I mean instantly, maybe

1067
01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:37,440
Speaker 1: it's amazed for a minuteur and yeah, or you are

1068
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:41,440
Speaker 1: a tomb of some kind. Um, maybe it is a

1069
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:43,760
Speaker 1: tomb because the people of the past have uploaded their

1070
01:03:43,760 --> 01:03:46,840
Speaker 1: consciousness into these servers and that's where they still exist.

1071
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:48,960
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's running in there and they're just having

1072
01:03:49,240 --> 01:03:54,080
Speaker 1: imagine how detached from reality their simulations are at this point.

1073
01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:57,640
Speaker 1: You know, I'm really curious now to hear what y'all

1074
01:03:57,640 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 1: out there, what you listeners are going to have to

1075
01:03:59,840 --> 01:04:02,640
Speaker 1: say about the geo myths of the present. Yeah, yeah,

1076
01:04:02,720 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: because I'm sure we're missing some really key ones because

1077
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:08,400
Speaker 1: there's there's just so much there's so much weird stuff

1078
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:10,440
Speaker 1: that we have in our pop culture these days that

1079
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:13,720
Speaker 1: is much like a myth. It is, it is poly functional.

1080
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:17,160
Speaker 1: It's not just you know, the cartoon image that it portrays.

1081
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:20,720
Speaker 1: It's informed by all these other ideas. And uh uh

1082
01:04:20,800 --> 01:04:22,560
Speaker 1: And certainly when we get into some of the strange

1083
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:27,320
Speaker 1: memes out there, memes that continually evolve, uh, both intentionally

1084
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:33,560
Speaker 1: and just as a byproduct of life online. Absolutely, uh so, Robert.

1085
01:04:33,560 --> 01:04:37,439
Speaker 1: One last question, how convinced are you looking at these

1086
01:04:37,520 --> 01:04:42,720
Speaker 1: arguments for mythological creatures inspired by fossils and and remains

1087
01:04:42,720 --> 01:04:45,720
Speaker 1: of extinct animals. What what do you think do they

1088
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:48,760
Speaker 1: figure in the creation of this, these mythological creatures, and

1089
01:04:48,800 --> 01:04:52,440
Speaker 1: if so, how often I tend to buy more. I'm

1090
01:04:52,480 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 1: not saying that that they never play into the creation

1091
01:04:56,000 --> 01:04:59,720
Speaker 1: of myths, but I tend to favor that midpoint argument,

1092
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:03,840
Speaker 1: where where some version of the myth is pre existing

1093
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:08,880
Speaker 1: and then fossils are observed and the to inform each other.

1094
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,480
Speaker 1: I think that makes a lot of sense. Um. I

1095
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:16,360
Speaker 1: think I'm somewhere in the middle too. I'm not I'm

1096
01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: not wholly on board, but I really love these ideas.

1097
01:05:19,720 --> 01:05:22,160
Speaker 1: I very much want them to be true because I

1098
01:05:22,200 --> 01:05:25,000
Speaker 1: love the idea of people reckoning with the geo facts

1099
01:05:25,040 --> 01:05:29,720
Speaker 1: of their surroundings by using the darkest parts of their imagination. Yeah,

1100
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:31,880
Speaker 1: and you know it ties in nicely with the episode

1101
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:35,400
Speaker 1: we also recorded this week on our desire for complete

1102
01:05:35,440 --> 01:05:39,160
Speaker 1: narratives and complete understandings, Like there's a there's a beautiful

1103
01:05:39,200 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 1: simplicity to geo mythology that that is so attractive and

1104
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:49,720
Speaker 1: that you could just so succinctively explain this fantastic creature. Uh. However,

1105
01:05:49,800 --> 01:05:52,600
Speaker 1: it seems. It seems very rare that such a succinct

1106
01:05:53,240 --> 01:05:58,280
Speaker 1: explanation would be the only explanation for for something that

1107
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 1: that has so many facets to it. I think they

1108
01:06:00,520 --> 01:06:06,200
Speaker 1: convince me on the Golden Chicken. Golden chicken with the chicken. Yeah, um, yeah,

1109
01:06:06,240 --> 01:06:09,720
Speaker 1: that's a good one, all right. So hey, if you

1110
01:06:09,800 --> 01:06:12,160
Speaker 1: want to check out some of the some links to

1111
01:06:12,240 --> 01:06:14,240
Speaker 1: some of the things we're talking about here, maybe an

1112
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:16,320
Speaker 1: image or two, heading over to stuff to Blow your

1113
01:06:16,320 --> 01:06:18,400
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where you'll find

1114
01:06:19,160 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: all the podcast episodes, including the landing page for this

1115
01:06:21,960 --> 01:06:26,000
Speaker 1: episode with those cool, outgoing links. And you'll also find

1116
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:28,480
Speaker 1: links to our social media accounts, which is Facebook as Twitter.

1117
01:06:28,680 --> 01:06:30,920
Speaker 1: We are blow the Mind on both of those. Follow

1118
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 1: us on Instagram, follow us on tumbler. We maintain all

1119
01:06:34,360 --> 01:06:36,680
Speaker 1: those social media accounts. And if you want to get

1120
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:38,720
Speaker 1: in touch with us to let us know your ideas

1121
01:06:38,760 --> 01:06:41,480
Speaker 1: about the future, geo mythology of the present, or any

1122
01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:44,160
Speaker 1: other reactions to this episode, you can email us at

1123
01:06:44,200 --> 01:06:56,480
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuffworks dot com. Well more

1124
01:06:56,520 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: on this and paths of other topics. Is that how

1125
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:15,040
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com? Say the people the first fist

1126
01:07:15,200 --> 01:07:15,760
Speaker 1: first start,