WEBVTT - From the Vault: Myth-Fleshed Fossil 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.800 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:10.680 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:13.800 Time to venture down into the darkness of the vault. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.360 This time there are monsters in the vault, and perhaps 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.160 dinosaurs and previous dark creatures as well. This episode originally 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:24.079 aired June two thousand sixteen, and it is our episode 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:28.440 about geo mythology and the relationship between fossils of ancient 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.960 extinct organisms and the best mythical monsters of all time. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:34.919 That's right. This is a perfect rearing of this episode 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:39.120 because we just published our new episode about the idea 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.640 of a Cambodian Steaga saucus. Oh yeah, that was a 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:43.920 lot of fun. Yeah, And and I believe we referenced 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.839 this episode in the Steaga Staris episode. Yes, we do. 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:49.839 So if you were wondering what are they talking about here, 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:51.960 you're about to find out. All right, let's dive in. 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.440 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:09.600 Works dot com. The hunt grows tense. It's been three 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.040 days since you last caught the trail of deer through 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.440 the wilderness, and your hunger, the hunger of the tribe 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.120 mounts toward a breaking point. And so with bow and arrow, 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.560 fire and amulet, you've wandered beyond the limits of the 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:26.600 fall hunt. You've tracked your quarry into the rocky hills beyond, 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.200 and here, amid these strange rocky outcroppings, you happen upon 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:36.000 a cave. You know, animals sometimes venture into these places 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.800 for shelter, perhaps water or salt, so you venture in 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.720 as well. You find nothing in the cave save a 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.959 few dry sticks, but as night falls you build a 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:49.120 small fire against the cold. As the flames illuminate the 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.080 cavern walls, you suddenly make out the shattered form of 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:56.200 bones in the rock, bones as solid as the stone itself. 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.720 In the dancing glow, they describe a form you've never 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.920 seen before, and it instantly makes you wonder where the 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.800 deer have gone, What things beyond the scope of your 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.200 experience thrive here amid the stony hills you've dared to 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:12.639 hunt for. The bones describe a thing twice the height 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.240 of a man, hornet and clawed, a talent toothed, and 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.320 with a rib cage or large enough to swallow you, 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.720 your family, the entire tribe, all of it within the 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:26.600 dark hell of its hunger. Hey, welcome to stuff to 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:28.680 bloil your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:31.120 Joe McCormick. And Robert. What were you getting at in 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:36.320 that little story there, Well, basically about finding some bones, uh, 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.120 not knowing what those bones are from, and having to 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.359 sort of fill in the holes, fill in the details. 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.240 Well maybe with a little myth making. Yeah, I want 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.120 to put you in just a strange frame of mind 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:50.080 you might not be used to. We we all know 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.760 about fossils. We we all know now that there are 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:57.160 things that lived a long time ago that sometimes undergo 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:01.760 a mineralization process where their remains become sort of locked 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.679 in stone and preserved in ways that can keep them, 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.560 keep them holding their holding their shape across the eons. Yea, 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:11.680 and inherently incomplete fossil record of what came before. Yeah, 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.239 but try to imagine. You don't know any of that. 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:16.720 You don't know how old the earth is. You don't 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:22.639 know anything about geology, sediment replacement or permanent mineralization, anything 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.520 about soil chemistry, any of that. You're you're just you know, 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.840 maybe a shepherd or something like that a few thousand 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:34.600 years ago, and you come across gigantic bones in the 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.240 ground that are bigger than any animal you've ever seen, 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.920 and looked nothing like it is for some animal with 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:46.520 a gigantic lizard like head and sharp teeth. What would 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.560 you think you were looking at? Well, as our character 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.760 in in our introductory piece here seemed to think that 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:57.680 perhaps this is an exactly an existing creature that's somewhere 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.880 out there in the world, and I should be afraid 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:04.600 of it. But then also I'm I'm probably gonna know 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.440 enough about bones, enough about actual organisms to realize there's 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:12.760 something fishy about this one. These bones are like like stone. 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.599 There's you know, there's something there's something unnatural going on 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:20.120 here as well. Yeah, I was having this thought recently 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.200 when my wife Rachel and I went to New York 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:24.920 and one of the places we went there was the 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:30.640 American Museum in Natural History, which is just an absolute delight. 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.360 If you've never been, it is wonderful. You should also 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:35.920 commit more than one day of your trip to it, 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:38.599 because there's no way you can see it all in 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:42.720 a day, and it's just absolutely wonderful. I recommended as 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.760 a pure experience just to go see, for example, the 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.920 dinosaur fossils and stuff like that. They're and they're charming 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.640 lye retro dioramas of old animals and all that. But 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.599 it's it's not only just a great visual experience, it's 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:02.560 also wonderful science education. And because the museum exhibits do 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.320 an excellent job of not just telling you what we 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:08.760 know about the things you're looking at, but also helping 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.400 you understand how we came to know what we know 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.320 about the things you're looking at, and what the what 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.560 the method behind and reasoning behind what we know is. 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:23.360 So it's it's a wonderful monument of scientific education for 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.080 for kids and people of all ages. Really. But anyway, 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.120 people wander in not knowing what fossils were, asking what 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.719 what dragons are these? I I don't think they did, 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.719 but only if only you could, because that I was 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:38.320 having that thought. I'm looking at at these bones walking 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.440 around and thinking, Man, if I didn't know anything, I 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.960 would think these were monsters. I would be like, where 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:48.159 are the live ones? I need to get away from them. 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:50.400 And so this is what we want to talk about today, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:55.240 the idea that fossils and uh, not just fossils, but 0:05:55.360 --> 0:06:00.400 remains fossilized or not bones of extinct animals would have 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:06.080 inspired visions of mythological creatures throughout history. We want to 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:11.119 essentially focus on the topic of geo mythology. Yes, now, 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:12.560 if you I just want to have a one quick 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:14.880 note about myths here, if you turned into the previous 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:17.360 episode of The Christian and I did Unraveling the Mythic, 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:20.800 you know that there are various ways to tackle mythology. 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:25.159 The most most agree that it's ultimately poly functional. Uh. 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.320 That that means that, you know, a myth, myth has 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:34.240 several simultaneous purposes Uh within a culture. Yeah, it's not 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.000 just uh you know, it's like it's like the Swiss 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:42.080 Army knife of of like cultural uh energies. I guess yes. 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:46.800 I I think that scientists and science minded people often 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:52.520 have a tendency to overrepresent the role of naturalistic explanation 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.839 when trying to think about the origins of myths. And 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.159 what I mean by that is, uh, if you're you're 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.000 you're a science e kind of person, you're more likely 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.159 to say, Okay, here's a myth about um a god 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:08.160 who throws thunderbolts. The This myth was created in order 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.760 to explain why lightning happens during storms, and I'm not 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.680 saying that's not part of our mythological structures. I think 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.720 it absolutely is. I think mostionally, most of the better arguments, 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.360 the more modern arguments to at least acknowledge that that 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:24.400 is part of it, that is one of the functions 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.880 and the poly functional um explanation. Yeah, that's the point 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.720 I'm making. I think myths are definitely truly meant to 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:35.080 be explanatory for natural phenomenon, but that's not all they are. 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.600 They're also about moralizing to people, and they're also about 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:42.480 representing social norms and all kinds of things that you know, 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:45.960 they're they're as you say, poly functional. Yeah, so you know, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:48.360 it's important for us to to keep in mind that 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:52.400 a mythical monster, beast is all is almost always more 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:56.360 than a mirror, you know, proto scientific explanation in a 0:07:56.400 --> 0:08:03.480 mirror geo mythological explanation. But the geo mythological explanations I 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:07.200 think can be very helpful. Uh at times that they 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:08.800 seem to just hit the nail right on the head. 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.080 Other times they at least raise some interests in questions 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:18.040 about how fossils, which which ancient people undoubtedly came across 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:20.840 as they as they they you know, dug in the earth, 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:23.679 as they farmed, as they explored their world, they would 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:26.119 they found these things. We know they found these things, 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:28.960 but then they had to somehow make sense of them 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:34.280 without a modern understanding of fossils. Yeah, so what is 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.440 the concept of geomethology. We should offer a definition. And 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.760 I'm going to read a quote from the Encyclopedia of 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:45.319 Geology that was an entry written by Adrian Mayer, who 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:47.920 is who is a name who's going to figure very 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.400 big into this episode because she's one of the biggest 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.760 names right now in the in the whole field of geomethology, 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:58.920 but especially in linking ancient mythological creatures to fossil evidence 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.680 and and remains of extinct animals. So she writes, quote, 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:07.559 geo mythology also called legends of the Earth, myths of observation, 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:14.440 natural knowledge, and physical mythology. I like that last is 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:19.600 the study of ideological oral traditions created by pre scientific 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:25.600 cultures to explain, in poetic metaphor and mythological imagery, geological 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:32.319 phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, fossils, and other natural features. 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:34.560 Of the landscape now in this century. She goes on 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:39.280 to relate stuff about all kinds of geology, like explanations 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:42.160 of myths that would explain why a volcano is erupting. 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:44.240 You know, at Mount Etna, there happens to be a 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.560 dragon underneath this volcano who's trying to escape, and that 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.680 might explain why sometimes melted stone comes out the top 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:54.880 of it, or you know, just one example of why 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.320 earthquakes are being caused by God's the way the landscape 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.080 is shaped, the topography of it has sometimes that has 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.680 a mythological explanation, like you know, the great the combat 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.520 creation myths, like the God slays a monster and then 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:12.600 the monster's dead body becomes the earth, and you know, 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.280 the ridges on its spine are the mountains and things 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.040 like that. So there's just a wonderful wealth of great 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:23.240 links between the earth and its geological features and the 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.880 mythology that people come up with. But fossils are a 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.320 big part of this, and so uh Mayor Mayor is 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:34.319 a Stanford folklorist and historian of science who studies ways 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.480 in which knowledge about the natural world, often knowledge that 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.640 we could consider scientific or proto scientific, appears in pre 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.560 scientific myths and traditions, and she's going to come up 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.120 repeatedly in this episode, so we thought we should establish 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.600 her um. She's written a lot on this topic. Yeah, 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.880 two of her key books, there's two thousand seven Fossil 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:56.040 Legends of the First Americans and then her two thousand 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.600 eleven book The First Fossil Hunters, Dinosaurs, Mammoths and myth 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.600 in Greek in Roman Times. So that's a reissue of 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.319 the book the too o Love and version is it's updated, 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:07.240 I think with some stuff. Okay, so that one actually 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:12.880 predates the America's book, but yeah, it tackles antiquity, you know, 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:17.400 looking at, for example, Greek legends. Yeah, and at times 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.960 she she points out that so many of these these 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.160 monsters that we discuss, they often what they break out 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.960 of the ground, they have origins in the earth or 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:28.679 perhaps under the earth. So that's just one of the 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.160 many different and it's gonna vary depending on what the 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.400 particular myth is, because certainly you have you have mythical 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:39.280 creatures that are terrestrial in nature, that are celestial in nature, 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.480 that are tied to the ocean or the rivers, or 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.840 to the caves. Uh, there's a lot of variety here. 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:49.559 Needless to say, there are so many different mythic creatures, 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:51.599 some related to one another, but they're all going to 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.680 have particular ties to their own time and place and 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.640 the people who dreamt about them, and we're not gonna 0:11:57.640 --> 0:11:59.880 have time to cover them all here today, right, But 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.960 we should start looking at some examples of arguments that 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:09.640 certain mythological creatures and monsters are truly inspired by fossil evidence. 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:11.559 And one of the big ones, I think the one 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.800 we really need to start with is the griffin, because 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.080 this is this is something that's been widespread. I think 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.760 this has become sort of well known that there's an 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:27.080 idea that griffins are inspired by dinosaur bones, and so traditionally, 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.760 a griffin is a creature said to have the body 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.760 of a lion with the head, beak, and wings of 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.320 an eagle, and in ancient Greek sources, the griffin is 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.679 often mentioned in association with a tribe called the r 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:45.360 A Mosspi, which were traditionally said to all have only 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:50.920 one eye on their head, so they're kind of cyclopsis. Yeah, 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:53.959 the the r Mospy were like these, uh, these Central 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:58.880 Asian Scythian type people who who harvested gold from the 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.840 fields of the of the Griffins. And this is great, 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.640 the whole thing about them all having one eye on 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:10.120 on their head. Herodotus, the Greek historian Herodotus, expresses some 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.439 skepticism about this that I find really funny. I want 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:18.560 to quote Herodotus now, as translated by George Rawlinson, quote 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:21.560 the northern parts of Europe are very much richer in 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.560 gold than any other region. But how it is procured 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.360 I have no certain knowledge. The story runs that the 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:31.000 one eyed r a mosspy purloin it from the Griffins. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:34.400 But here too I am incredulous and cannot persuade myself 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.520 that there is a race of men born with one eye, 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.719 who in all else resemble the rest of mankind. Nevertheless, 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.120 it seems to be true that the extreme regions of 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.240 the earth, which surround and shut up within themselves all 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.440 other countries, produced the things which are the rarest and 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.880 which men reckon the most beautiful. And so that's Herodotus 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.840 writing in the fifth century b c uh. And I 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:00.760 find it great that he's skeptical about the one eyed humans. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.079 He's like, I don't buy it, but not necessarily about 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.920 the Griffins, And I wonder why could it be that 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:11.560 in ancient times people with a skeptical, fairly evidence based 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:16.599 epistemological framework might have reason to believe in some mythical creatures. 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.600 And if so, what could that reason be? One one 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.120 part of me says that it could just be not knowing. Right, 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:24.000 We've never been to the ends of the Earth. Who 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:27.280 knows what creatures live there. Yeah, the the understanding of 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:33.040 the time of of Earth's diverse um life forms was 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:35.760 was very incomplete. I mean it's still incomplete, but it 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:37.920 was even more incomplete at the time. So the idea 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:40.880 that something like a griffin existed, sure, that's not out 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:44.560 of keeping with our experience of other creatures. Uh. And 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.760 so a couple more ancient sources about the Griffins. The 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:51.120 Roman author Plenty of the Elder summarizes what he's learned 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:53.320 about the Griffins while talking about the R mos b 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.480 So writing in his Natural History in the first centuries CE. 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:00.400 Plenty says, quote many authorities, the most distinct wish being 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.600 Herodotus and r a status of proconnesus. Right that these 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.600 people and he's referring to the r Mosby or arm 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:11.600 posse sorry wage continual war with the griffins, a kind 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.400 of wild beast with wings, as commonly reported that digs 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.880 gold out of minds which the creatures guard, and the 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:23.600 r mosby tried to take from them, both with remarkable covetousness. 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.680 That's a nice sort of like moralizing. They're a little 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:33.080 bit right, adding some kind of motivations. But then here's 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:35.240 one more long one that will give you a pretty 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:37.760 good picture of the ancient view of the griffin. So 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:43.240 this is alien writing on animals, translated by Shoalfield in 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:46.600 his Greek Natural History second century a d. And I've 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.080 made a couple of illusions just for brevity, because this 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:54.360 is a long quote. But Alien writes. I have heard 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:58.040 that the Indian animal the griffin, is a quadruped like 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.480 a lion, that it has claws of enormous strength, and 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.040 that they resemble those of a lion. Men commonly report 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.720 that it is winged, and that the feathers along its 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.360 back are black and those on its front are red, 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.920 while the actual wings are neither but are white. It 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.200 has a beak like an eagle's and a head to 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:20.120 just as artists portrayed in pictures and sculpture. Its eyes 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.680 are like fire. It builds its layer among the mountains, 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:26.280 and although it is not possible to capture the full 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.480 grown animal, they do take the young ones. And the 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.880 people of Bactria, who are neighbors of the Indians, say 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.280 that the Griffins guard gold in those parts, that they 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.800 dig it up and build their nests with it, and 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.880 that the Indians carry off any that falls from them. 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.360 The Indians, however, denied that they guard the aforesaid gold, 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.360 for the Griffins have no need for it. And if 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.040 that is what they say, then I at any rate 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.880 think that they speak the truth, but that they themselves 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.680 come to collect the gold. While the Griffins, fearing for 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.240 their young ones, fight with the invaders, they engage too 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.840 with other beasts and overcome them without difficulty. But they 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.840 will not face the lion or the elephant. Accordingly, the natives, 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:11.720 dreading the strength of these animals, do not set out 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:14.600 in quest of the gold by day, but arrived by night. 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:18.280 For that season they are less likely to be detected. Now, 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:20.840 the region where the Griffins live and where the gold 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.400 is mind is a dreary wilderness, and the seekers after 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:28.200 the aforesaid substance arrive a thousand or two strong armed 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.320 and bringing spades and sacks and watching for a moonless night, 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:35.600 they begin to dig. Now, if they contrive to elude 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.199 the Griffins, they reap a double advantage, for they not 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:41.280 only escape with their lives, but they also take home 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:46.040 they're freight. So this is pretty outline into sounding. But 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.280 I am already seeing a connection here between this creature, 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.080 this fantastic creature, and the Earth with things mind from 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:56.600 the Earth exactly right. And you are not the first 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:01.040 person to notice that this figures in to Adrian Mayer's 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:05.440 theory about the Griffins and the and a specific type 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:07.520 of dinosaur will get into in a minute. So the 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.920 griffin head of an eagle, body of a lion lives 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.119 in a desolate or desert wilderness where gold can be found. 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:19.360 It's got wings, claws, scary as heck, screaming death, diving 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:21.480 at you out of the sky while you are blinded 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:25.880 by desert sun glinting off a mountain of gold. Pretty cool, uh, 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:27.879 And it builds its nests out of gold and just 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:30.840 jealously guards the golden treasures or not, maybe it doesn't 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:33.959 care about gold. But either way they're pilfering humans who 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.200 it does battle with. The Greek and Roman legends often 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:40.639 associate Griffins with the north and the east, so India 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.320 and northern Europe or Central Asia the land of the Scythians. 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.400 In real life, that was a group. The Scythians were 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.679 a large group of horse riding people who occupied Central Asia, 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.639 and the extent of their empire overlapped the desert in 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:56.639 Asia now known as the Gobi. And there's a curious 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.639 thing about the Gobi Desert. It is a place where 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.800 fosse tolls are not nearly as difficult to find as 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.840 they are in many other places. According to the paleontologists 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.800 within the archives of the American Museum in Natural History, 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:15.280 it was not historically uncommon to come across fossils of 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:20.680 the dinosaur proto Serratops peaking naked out of eroding hillsides 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:23.440 in the Gobi Desert. And this, of course one with 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.080 kind of a beaked apparience. So it's a saratopsid. It's 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.119 a four legged dinosaur, and it has so it's a 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.000 quadruped and it has yeah, I frill along the top 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:44.000 of its head and a beaked mouth. But here's one 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.320 account that was from the American Museum and Natural History 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:52.080 exhibit that they did on this comparison between dinosaurs and 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:57.800 griffin's and so it's an account related from when the 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:01.640 m n H paleontologist Michael knew A Check and paleontologists 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:04.399 Mark Noral were on an expedition in the Gobi Desert 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:07.280 in which they came across a skeleton of a dinosaur, 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:11.960 this Protoceratops dinosaur uh so nova. Check described the scene 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:15.080 in these words quote, We stopped at a low saddle 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.080 between the hills. Before I could remove the keys from 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:22.160 the ignition, Mark sang out excitedly. Several feet away, near 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.200 the very apex of the saddle was a stunning skull 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:29.480 and partial skeleton of a Protoceratops, a big fellow whose 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:33.000 beak and crooked fingers pointed west to our small outcrop, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.160 like a griffin pointing the way to a guarded treasure. 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:40.840 We continued to pounce on precious specimens with remarkable consistency. 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.240 Mark would sing out skull, and almost on que I 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:47.240 would find one too. The surface of the gentle slopes 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.879 and shallow gullies was splattered with white patches of fossils, 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.480 as if someone had emptied a paint can in a 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:57.440 random fashion over the ground. So they're just tripping over 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.520 fossils and and it's not you don't to do a 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:04.280 detailed excavation to try to find one. Apparently in this 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:07.320 region they can be seen by the naked eye. Anybody 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:09.760 who had happened to come across them would see these 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:16.520 huge beasts with four legs and beaks. So Adrian may 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.600 Or has over the years developed a fairly strong argument 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:25.199 that these Protoceratops fossils have points of agreement with the 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.399 griffin legend. So their quadrupedal, they've got a beak, the 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.439 griffin has an eagle's beak, but a quadrupedal body like 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.679 a lion. Uh. That's sort of that that goes in 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:38.159 line with the shape of these dinosaurs. It's got the 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:41.800 bony frill uh. And and she argues that the bony 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.320 frill sometimes gets broken and leaves these stumps there, which 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.160 could have been interpreted as the crests you often see 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.480 on griffin heads or the ears you often see on 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:56.080 illustrations of ancient griffins uh. And sometimes the elongated shoulder blades, 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:58.359 the shoulder blades that if you look at a Proto 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:01.080 Serratop skeleton, they have shoulder blades that kind of poke 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:06.440 backward and look strange, and they look kind of like wingbones, honestly, 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.360 So that could explain griffin's being said to have wings. 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.119 And then of course there's the location. So these are 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:16.919 found in the bone beds of Central Asia and Mongolia 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:21.480 and China, near where the Scythians would have been mining gold. 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:25.639 These alluvial gold deposits are are near where Protos Saratops 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:30.040 fossils are found. And these these griffin descriptions seem to 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:33.480 appear in the ancient Greek literature around the time that 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:37.800 the Greeks would have been interacting and trading with the Scythians. 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:41.320 So I think that's a really interesting argument, And essentially 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:46.359 it goes not necessarily that there were no griffin ideas 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:52.119 before the the Scythians interacted with Protoceratops fossils, but that 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:54.720 if they came across these fossils, it could have very 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:57.879 much have shaped and steered the griffin legend to boot 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:00.440 to the strong version that we see of it repeated 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.520 so often in this ancient Greek literature. Yeah, and that's 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:06.040 a motif that we we come back to again and 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.760 again with these examples, And I think it's very important 0:23:08.760 --> 0:23:11.200 to drive them because it's on one hand, you could 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:13.560 very much take the approach that like, oh, a primitive 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.400 person solve this bone, and then a myth was born 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:19.520 on it. But but as we probably not that, probably 0:23:19.560 --> 0:23:22.280 not that simple. Myths are more complicated than that. It's 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:25.439 also not impossible, but not impossible. But it seems like 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:30.000 the the more believable version the of of the encounter 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:33.040 is that you have a pre existing myth that involves 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:36.120 some sort of fantastic beast or another. Then you find 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:40.280 these fossils, and without you know, and without a you know, 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:43.000 an actual understanding of how fossils work, without a without 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:46.479 a better explanation, you turn to that script as an 0:23:46.480 --> 0:23:49.760 explanation for what you see here. So the myth informs 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:54.040