Latest / Ridiculous History / Mastodons and 'Murica, with Lauren Vogelbaum, Part One: American Degeneracy

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Mastodons and 'Murica, with Lauren Vogelbaum, Part One: American Degeneracy · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
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Speaker 1: the Myth, the Legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes,
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Speaker 1: not to be confused with the Atlanta band. They call
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Speaker 1: me Ben Bolan. You were Noel Brown and sure and
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Speaker 1: Hi the government says.
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Speaker 2: So we were having an improv chat off air and
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Speaker 2: I was saying, like no butt and Ben was talking
0:55
Speaker 2: about how he saw an anti improv group and that.
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Speaker 3: Was kind of their whole philosophy. So that fascinated me.
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Speaker 1: Yes, and we've been going through a bit of an
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Speaker 1: elephant phase both on this and our sister show, The
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Speaker 1: Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. And we way
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Speaker 1: back when we started this show in twenty seventeen, Noel,
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Speaker 1: as you recall, we thought it would last for like
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Speaker 1: six weeks.
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Speaker 2: Right we did, And we had this idea that we
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Speaker 2: would have like quirky guests that were like a recurring
1:26
Speaker 2: guest that kind of came on as characters like the
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Speaker 2: Quister who.
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Speaker 3: Still pops on from time to time.
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Speaker 2: But Lauren initially was one of those and was this
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Speaker 2: thing called the fact Genie and I think we did
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Speaker 2: that all of once.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, our very first guest, there's a bit of
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Speaker 1: ridiculous history lore. Our very first guest was none other
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Speaker 1: than the legendary Lauren Vogelbaum. You know her from Brain Stuff,
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Speaker 1: American Shadows, Savor, Sorrow Bread. That's a deep cut in
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Speaker 1: pretty much any video series back in the day. This
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Speaker 1: is a big one for us, folks, because we finally
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Speaker 1: convinced Laura to come back on the show. It only
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Speaker 1: took us a decade or so, so.
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Speaker 2: I was gonna say an email. Yeah, I mean, it's more, more,
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Speaker 2: more and more. Timing wise, You're right, it just the
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Speaker 2: email took a long time to write.
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Speaker 1: So Born, thank you so much for joining us. Dude,
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Speaker 1: you reached out to us not too long ago with
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Speaker 1: a pretty fascinating idea.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, well thanks for having me back. I'm glad
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Speaker 4: to do this about once every nine years, so yeah,
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Speaker 4: any anytime nine years from now. Reached back out. But yeah, no,
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Speaker 4: I reached out to y'all because so for brain Stuff,
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Speaker 4: I do various like little short form science and history things,
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Speaker 4: and one thing that I ran across was this stuff
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Speaker 4: about the discovery of mastodons in America in like the
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Speaker 4: seventeen hundreds, and it actually touches on some really weird things,
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Speaker 4: including some stuff that I didn't feel comfortable talking about
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Speaker 4: on brain Stuff because it is like a very polite,
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Speaker 4: buttoned up like all ages show. And I was like, hey,
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Speaker 4: I know who wants to get weird?
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Speaker 1: Oh good, that's where we are in your rolex, right
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Speaker 1: rollo ox, we're your rolex. We don't know what kind
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Speaker 1: of watches you owed neither. This definitely stood out to
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Speaker 1: us because I believe it's a story none of us
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Speaker 1: were familiar with until we heard from you. And we know,
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Speaker 1: like for all of us in the crowd tonight, we
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Speaker 1: all kind of know what a mammoth is or a mastodon,
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Speaker 1: But right, they are elephants, Right, they're elephants kissing cousins.
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Speaker 1: Could you tell us a little bit more about the
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Speaker 1: mammoth and the mastodon and how they're different.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so okay, So we know today that like
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Speaker 4: millions of years ago, lots of megafauna roamed the earth
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Speaker 4: more than what we have now. You know, we still
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Speaker 4: have some impressive ones. But right, uh, mammoths were they
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Speaker 4: were mammoth right, like the species could reach fourteen feet
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Speaker 4: at the shoulder. These are upsettingly large herbivores.
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Speaker 2: Think maybe where the word came from, right, which is it?
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Speaker 2: It's like, was it the mammoth or the word mammoth
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Speaker 2: is something very large?
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Speaker 4: He came first, the animal came first, and then it
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Speaker 4: got extrapolated.
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Speaker 3: Thought it might have been yeah, yeah, probably.
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Speaker 4: Of course, probably influenced by the word behemoth to jump
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Speaker 4: in you real quick?
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Speaker 5: Can we just go ahead and get a Louren with
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Speaker 5: the facts right there?
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Speaker 3: Who guess hosting the show.
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Speaker 1: She's on this podcast?
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Speaker 2: Lawrence got, yeah, you have to sure.
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Speaker 5: I'm mostly called that because I actually have created that
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Speaker 5: sound Q years ago, So I was gonna use it.
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Speaker 1: No, Joe, Well think, okay, thank you. Uh yeah, we
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Speaker 1: know it. It came from we know the word for
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Speaker 1: all our etymology nerds out there, we know it comes
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Speaker 1: from uh, Siberia, right, from a Russian word out in
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Speaker 1: out in that neck of the woods that ultimately means earthhorn.
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Speaker 1: And then later it becomes something where people just say,
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Speaker 1: look at that mammoth pizza or caesadiya, et cetera.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, mammoth. Yeah, people got so excited about these elephant
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Speaker 4: like fossils. Uh it is, I mean, and they're still
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Speaker 4: pretty exciting. I mean, I've been to the Libria Tarpit
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Speaker 4: Museum out in La and it's it's awesome. It's so
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Speaker 4: bones are great. Uh, you can just go ahead and
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Speaker 4: keep the audio for that one. But yeah, so so submit.
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Speaker 4: So the difference between mamoson mastodons is a their range.
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Speaker 4: Mammos spread across Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. North
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Speaker 4: America further had mastodons, and mastodons were usually a little
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Speaker 4: smaller merely this of today's elephants, so up to like
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Speaker 4: ten feet at the shoulder. And yeah, they also weren't
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Speaker 4: as shaggy as mammoths and their teeth. Masted on teeth
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Speaker 4: had these like knobby cusps for chewing, like shrubby, woody
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Speaker 4: kind of plants, whereas mammoths were more like planes animals
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Speaker 4: that were dealing with grasses.
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Speaker 3: Quick question and clarification.
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Speaker 2: Is the wooly implied in mammoth or is there also
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Speaker 2: another type of mammoth that is the wooly mammoth?
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Speaker 4: The wooly is a species of mammoth. Mammoths are a
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Speaker 4: general genus of buddies.
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Speaker 3: All of which are little shaggy though.
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Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
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Speaker 3: The wooly ones are just woolier shaggier.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. This is not to disparage modern day extance elephants.
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Speaker 1: They have haired, they just they don't have as much
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Speaker 1: hair perhaps, and they are not as big as the
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Speaker 1: They're not as big as the mammoth itself, but still
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Speaker 1: can't take one one on one in a fight. We
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Speaker 1: we talked about this pretty extensively on stuff they don't
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Speaker 1: want you to know.
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Speaker 4: I love that you guys are having like an elephant
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Speaker 4: month like that's yeah, that's terrific.
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Speaker 2: That's why I thought you're also going to say I
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Speaker 2: love that y'all are like, you know, speculating us if
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Speaker 2: you could take what large animals and fight. Yeah, Now
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Speaker 2: there are other ones to to come up. Kangaroo comes
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Speaker 2: up quite often.
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Speaker 4: I earnestly. I wouldn't mess with one, definitely.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's not that you choose to be in that situation.
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Speaker 1: That's if you get in a situation, what happens next.
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Speaker 1: We don't have time to get into that, but we
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Speaker 1: do have to. We do have to point out that
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Speaker 1: for a lot of people. Maybe you're in grade school,
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Speaker 1: you're growing up, you're learning about the ancient past, and
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Speaker 1: you may a lot of kids associate mammoths with dinosaurs
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Speaker 1: other long gone creatures, but that's not entirely.
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Speaker 4: Oh sure, Well, so mammoths and mastadons were both around,
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Speaker 4: probably starting like kneeling like six million years ago or so, so,
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Speaker 4: you know, after the big event, whatever the dinosaur event
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Speaker 4: was that occurred, they were around for a long time,
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Speaker 4: like they still existed when humans started running around, you know,
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Speaker 4: like the mammoths were still here while the ancient Egyptians
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Speaker 4: were building their pyramids.
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Speaker 3: Right, and they were also helping Fred Flintstone run.
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Speaker 6: The you know, of course whatever the of course, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 6: but yeah, due to like climate and human pressures, masterdons
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Speaker 6: died off some like eleven thousand years ago, mammoths about
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Speaker 6: four thousand.
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Speaker 4: But we didn't know about any of this until like
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Speaker 4: the eighteen hundred 's CE and we didn't believe that
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Speaker 4: extinction was possible until like right around that time. And
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Speaker 4: we didn't believe it was possible until specifically we started
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Speaker 4: looking at mammoth and master masterodon.
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Speaker 2: Fossils extinction as a concept as a concept which I
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Speaker 2: find somehow just endearing.
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Speaker 1: It makes my grin charge. I know a couple sizes
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Speaker 1: that until to know that, until the eighteen hundreds, everybody,
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Speaker 1: despite all their differences in human society, just said no,
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Speaker 1: well thaks can't die, go away.
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Speaker 3: And then they go away. And they're like, we have
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Speaker 3: to figure out who did this? You Jon, who was
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Speaker 3: responsible for this?
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Speaker 4: It was? It was that death was coming from inside
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Speaker 4: the house, right right?
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Speaker 1: And this is this leads us to something interesting too,
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Speaker 1: because there's a ton of context here, as as you
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Speaker 1: would point it out to us in your research, people
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Speaker 1: had been finding mysterious bones or tusk in particular in
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Speaker 1: this case, all the livelong day, and nobody knew what
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Speaker 1: to make of them. You know what it reminded me of, guys,
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Speaker 1: was the infamous case of the Cyclops. Shout out to
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Speaker 1: Nolan's the Odyssey, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is where.
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Speaker 1: This is where people in Mediterranean areas like Sicily and
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Speaker 1: Crete they would find fossilized skulls of prehistoric dwarf elephants,
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Speaker 1: So nowhere near the size of your mammoth, your masted on,
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Speaker 1: but big enough that if you didn't know what you
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Speaker 1: were looking at, you would think this was some huge
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Speaker 1: guy's skull and he had weird teeth and one eye.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, people jumped to giant humanoids to me weirdly
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Speaker 4: often because for some reason, I'm way more comfortable with
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Speaker 4: the concept of an elephant than I am with a
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Speaker 4: dude who just happened to be I don't know, seventy
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Speaker 4: feet tall like that seems I'm not sure I want
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Speaker 4: that one.
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Speaker 2: It turns out people have pretty great imaginations and have
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Speaker 2: for a very long time. We talked about this briefly
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Speaker 2: on stuff that I want you to know strange news
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Speaker 2: the other day. But a study just came out or
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Speaker 2: some results of some excavations in deep sea areas that
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Speaker 2: have uncovered megafauna underwater deep sea creature bones in these
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Speaker 2: like submerged graveyards in South Australia.
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Speaker 3: So though, as above, so below.
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Speaker 1: And we also have to remember obviously that people back
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Speaker 1: in the day of your they were no more intelligent
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Speaker 1: nor any less intelligent than people are today, for better
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Speaker 1: or worse. So a lot of times when folks were
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Speaker 1: finding these bones, these relics, these fossils, they were attempting
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Speaker 1: to explain their discovery through whatever their cultural framework. Was
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Speaker 1: at the time. So we're we're in Sicily, we've a
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Speaker 1: dwarf elephant's skull, and we go, hey, I remember this
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Speaker 1: other's story. It's that's that's it, right, Like we're done
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Speaker 1: for the day.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, gotta be that one. It's the Cyclops. We've already
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Speaker 4: read about it. So we're just putting the pieces of
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Speaker 4: the puzzle right together. And that's kind of what was
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Speaker 4: going on. So like, like Europeans kept finding or being
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Speaker 4: presented with these big old bones and tusks from places
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Speaker 4: like Siberia and Italy, the British Isles and North America.
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Speaker 4: So like in the in the Hudson River Valley out
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Speaker 4: near Albany seventeen oh five, this Dutch tenant farmer is
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Speaker 4: hanging out and a tooth the size of a guy's
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Speaker 4: fist rolls down the hill and falls at his feet
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Speaker 4: and terrifying the same little little weird I'd be startled.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nobody starts off their day thinking this is
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Speaker 1: the random giant tooth day.
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Speaker 4: No, No, maybe.
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Speaker 1: Wife one weird dentist, sure, sure.
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Speaker 4: But so he does what any of us would do,
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Speaker 4: and he trades it to a local politician for some
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Speaker 4: rum and uh, obviously, and this and some other bones
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Speaker 4: from the area wind up really capturing the public's imagination
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Speaker 4: insofar as they were really sure that these were the
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Speaker 4: remains of biblical giants. Again, like humanoid giants, which everyone
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Speaker 4: knew totally existed before the Great Flood. But here's proof,
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Speaker 4: because we've read about it. Because we've read about it. Yeah,
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Speaker 4: this one Massachusetts minister by the name of Edward Taylor
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Speaker 4: wrote a one hundred and ninety verse poem about this
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Speaker 4: seventy foot tall giant with ribs like rafters and limbs
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Speaker 4: like the limbs of a tree. Cotton Mather. Oh man,
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Speaker 4: the guy who like previously helped murder a bunch of
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Speaker 4: people at the Salem witch Trials.
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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that Cotton Mather.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, who would later help save Boston from a smallpox
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Speaker 4: outbreak with an early vaccination campaign.
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Speaker 2: Well that's cool. He's been of a mixed bag, but
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Speaker 2: I'm good with that one.
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Speaker 4: So my history is yeah, yeah, Cotton Mother. He went
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Speaker 4: on this whole bent about how the New world is
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Speaker 4: super cool because it was once home to giants that
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Speaker 4: would make Goliath look puny.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm Cotton Mother and I'm saying kill the witches,
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Speaker 1: birds them, drown them, nobody gets smallpox. We're the home
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Speaker 1: of the.
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Speaker 3: Giants, Biblical giants.
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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, it's not like completely unique
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Speaker 2: for religious folks to interpret the historical record.
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Speaker 3: In ways that validate their.
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Speaker 4: Views, right of course, of course. I mean and again,
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Speaker 4: you know.
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Speaker 3: What revolution problematic for him just.
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Speaker 4: Saying oh yeah, that wouldn't happen for another century and
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Speaker 4: a half, so we some catching up to do, but.
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Speaker 1: Kind of going through that today we're recording in twenty
15:04
Speaker 1: twenty six. Woo woo. This is uh, this is something.
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Speaker 1: First off, I just want to be clear, Lauren, I'm
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Speaker 1: pretty sure Cotton Mather didn't say all three of those
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Speaker 1: points in the same sermon, but it would.
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Speaker 3: It would have been amazing it has been now.
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Speaker 1: That would have been Alex Shones level amazing. And like
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Speaker 1: we were saying, people discover these things, they put them
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Speaker 1: in their existent cultural framework. So it does make sense,
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Speaker 1: did we when do we as a civilization start saying
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Speaker 1: maybe these aren't the remains of giant dead people?
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Speaker 4: Relatively quickly actually, which is which gives me a little
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Speaker 4: bit of hope for the species. I suppose, like the
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Speaker 4: by the seventeen twenties, some European naturalists started putting together
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Speaker 4: that fossils like these were probably from some kind of
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Speaker 4: elephant like animal. But you know, they they understood that
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Speaker 4: these animals couldn't possibly be living in the place where
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Speaker 4: the bones were dug up, because like elephants are from
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Speaker 4: hot climates right like India, Africa. There's no way that
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Speaker 4: elephants live in Siberia. So their best guess was that
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Speaker 4: these were bones of normal everyday elephants that washed north
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Speaker 4: during the Great.
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Speaker 1: Flood, because the Great Flood is still.
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Speaker 4: It definitely happened, That definitely is a thing that historically occurred.
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Speaker 3: There's a being sarcastic.
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Speaker 4: I'm not well, I'm being sarcastic. They were being quite serious, That's.
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Speaker 3: What I'm saying.
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Speaker 2: Like, even like their best kind of most enlightened attempts
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Speaker 2: to set the record straight, they still got hung up
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Speaker 2: on some fairy tale type.
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Speaker 3: Look, I'm sorry, that's me.
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Speaker 2: The Bible is great, so much too much of it
16:54
Speaker 2: is based on things that really happen, But there are
16:57
Speaker 2: a lot of it that you know clearly are kind
16:59
Speaker 2: of more pale than you know, historical reck.
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Speaker 1: It's the great game of telephone, and we know that
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Speaker 1: big floods did occur, the idea is kind of wrapping
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Speaker 1: them all up and calling it one big, great flood.
17:13
Speaker 1: It's it's really interesting. It's kind of inspiring to that
17:17
Speaker 1: humanity seems for so long to be in this cosmic
17:21
Speaker 1: escape room, right and slowly, slowly figuring out clues about
17:26
Speaker 1: the nature of biology and reality, but still kind of
17:30
Speaker 1: just like a rock climber, kind of keeping hold of
17:33
Speaker 1: the one the thing that feels secure until it is
17:36
Speaker 1: proven false.
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Speaker 2: Well, and also, Ben, I would just double back on
17:39
Speaker 2: what you said about people were not more or less intelligent.
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Speaker 2: It's just they didn't have access to all the information
17:45
Speaker 2: yet it took you know, we literally are standing on
17:48
Speaker 2: the shoulders of giants and a long, long, long amount
17:51
Speaker 2: of time spent putting these pieces together. So I hope
17:54
Speaker 2: it doesn't sound like we're insulting to the intelligence of
17:57
Speaker 2: these folks. A lot of these things, know, followed practical
18:02
Speaker 2: wisdom of the time, right, and then you know, these
18:04
Speaker 2: folks these naturalists were talking about definitely pushed the narrative further,
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Speaker 2: even if getting hung up on some of the details.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, it was like the best scientific minds of
18:14
Speaker 4: the time. This was their opinion about the whole thing.
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Speaker 4: In seventeen twenty eight, the then president of the Royal
18:19
Speaker 4: College of Physicians, one Sir Hans Sloane, wrote this this
18:25
Speaker 4: terrific piece about how those goofy native Siberians thought that
18:30
Speaker 4: because these bones were found in the ground, they had
18:34
Speaker 4: to belong to a species of elephants that live deep
18:37
Speaker 4: in the earth.
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Speaker 1: Like the like the Morlocks, yeah right.
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Speaker 4: And right under fans goods, and that this is like
18:45
Speaker 4: the cause of earthquakes and stuff like that, and.
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Speaker 3: They're just stomping around down there, yeah.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. And Sloane furthermore wrote that, like, you know, we, yes,
18:56
Speaker 4: we educated Europeans, we understand that obviously the bones washed
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Speaker 4: there during the Great Flood.
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Speaker 1: And everybody clapped, yes, okay, So this is this is
19:11
Speaker 1: the prevailing sentiment from the most learned minds, the ted
19:16
Speaker 1: talkers of their day. And we also have to I
19:22
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's worth pointing out that some
19:27
Speaker 1: of these folks, depending on where they lived at the time,
19:30
Speaker 1: may have gone back to religious reasoning because it could
19:34
Speaker 1: be considered heretical if they said it was bs.
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Speaker 4: Oh sure, you know, like choice between inquisition and sure,
19:44
Speaker 4: those are great flood related elephant bones. Great into that?
19:49
Speaker 4: I am ill?
19:53
Speaker 1: Are we good?
19:54
Speaker 3: What's the terrific?
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Speaker 4: So like opinion was developing as more and more of
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Speaker 4: these bones we're coming to light and back in North America,
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Speaker 4: colonists ran. Colonists ran across another fossil deposit. In seventeen
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Speaker 4: thirty nine, this French military expedition was on its way
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Speaker 4: south stopped through the Ohio River valley around what's now
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Speaker 4: northern Kentucky, and the Native Abnaki guides who were hunting
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Speaker 4: for them found some like fossilized tusks and a few teeth,
20:24
Speaker 4: a femur as big as a person, and were like, hey,
20:27
Speaker 4: look at these cool things we found. The French sent
20:30
Speaker 4: the bones to Paris to King Louis the fifteenth, who
20:32
Speaker 4: had a collection of curiosities, and naturalists there identified these
20:36
Speaker 4: as right more pre flood elephants. This Ohio River site
20:42
Speaker 4: also had salt deposits or salt licks, so it became
20:45
Speaker 4: known as Big Bone Lick, and this would be a
20:49
Speaker 4: major site for the budding field of what would be paleontology.
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Speaker 1: Fascin it's fascinating too, you know, Louis is a story
20:59
Speaker 1: all his own, talk about we're an audio podcast, so everybody,
21:05
Speaker 1: I want you to know the expression that Lauren had
21:08
Speaker 1: in response to that, which was like, yeah, are we
21:11
Speaker 1: going there? Maybe maybe we'll have to have you back
21:15
Speaker 1: for another episode on Louis Shenanigans.
21:18
Speaker 2: What do you think his collection would have put Nicholas
21:20
Speaker 2: Cage to share.
21:22
Speaker 4: And Nick still getting in there, the Nicholas Cage of
21:25
Speaker 4: his day. Yeah, yeah, I think that's apt.
21:28
Speaker 1: Kind of love that actually. So could you tell us
21:32
Speaker 1: a little bit about the mysterious incognitum?
21:36
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay. So so at Big Bone Lick, through
21:41
Speaker 4: the seventeen fifties and sixties, traders and land surveyors collected
21:45
Speaker 4: a lot more fossils. In addition to what we now
21:48
Speaker 4: know our mask John remains, they found the remains of
21:51
Speaker 4: like elk and giant ground sloths, which had like, you know,
21:55
Speaker 4: big old claws, and so naturalists little hooky boys, right, yeah, yeahah, yeah,
22:00
Speaker 4: exactly like that. That's the actual sound.
22:03
Speaker 3: That's the only way to do it.
22:05
Speaker 1: Typically, Yeah, we checked.
22:09
Speaker 4: So naturalists started like looked at all of these things
22:12
Speaker 4: and started putting together this concept of a single animal
22:16
Speaker 4: with these tusks that they thought probably curved downward like
22:20
Speaker 4: saber teeth, and these big claws.
22:23
Speaker 2: They're doing a bit of a chimera situation here.
22:27
Speaker 4: And these giant knobby molars that could weigh like over
22:30
Speaker 4: six pounds each, like you know, big things. When Benjamin
22:34
Speaker 4: Franklin received a box of master Don fossils, he wrote,
22:38
Speaker 4: the tusks agree with those of the African and Asiatic elephant,
22:42
Speaker 4: but the grinders differ, being full knobs like the grinders
22:46
Speaker 4: of a carnivorous animal.
22:48
Speaker 2: Can you imagine the weird stuff Ben Franklin got, I
22:51
Speaker 2: think on the regular constantly.
22:54
Speaker 3: I mean, like unhinged stuff.
22:57
Speaker 2: Box of mastodontica for him, one can only imagine the grinders.
23:02
Speaker 3: He's referring to the mold, right.
23:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 1: And he's the guy where this would not be super
23:09
Speaker 1: Dupe's unusual for me.
23:13
Speaker 3: But he got some off yet he got some even
23:15
Speaker 3: more on the.
23:16
Speaker 1: Post office guys like then, man, you know I dropped
23:20
Speaker 1: the mail off at eleven am. Can you not take
23:24
Speaker 1: your naked air baths just like during that specific time?
23:28
Speaker 1: And Ben says it's science. I hear you got some
23:31
Speaker 1: teeth for me.
23:32
Speaker 3: I need my evening constitutional.
23:35
Speaker 1: Oh also we should say Ben Franklin not a serial killer.
23:38
Speaker 2: We we verified he buried bodies in his basement, but
23:41
Speaker 2: it was for science, not.
23:42
Speaker 4: In a serial killer way. The resurrection Matt not for funsies.
23:48
Speaker 3: Well, you know, a little bit for funsie.
23:51
Speaker 1: So this this is the interesting It was a little
23:54
Speaker 1: bit for funsies. So this is interesting because we what
24:06
Speaker 1: we see in this quotation Lauren, is that his take,
24:12
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin's take on the tusk and the grinders make
24:19
Speaker 1: this argument against what they knew about elephants of the
24:22
Speaker 1: modern day.
24:23
Speaker 4: Right, they assumed that they were dealing with some kind
24:27
Speaker 4: of flesh eating monster, sick and right, and they called
24:34
Speaker 4: it incognitum, which is essentially Latin for lack. I don't
24:38
Speaker 4: know what it is.
24:39
Speaker 2: I love that it's like unobtaining, it's mcguffinish.
24:44
Speaker 1: And it's also funny. How would you look at species
24:48
Speaker 1: names in Latin even today if you trace the etymology,
24:52
Speaker 1: So many of them are so silly. Oh yeah, they're
24:56
Speaker 1: like butt face red. Oh well, now I'm getting into
25:01
Speaker 1: bird names. But we have to remember that even though
25:06
Speaker 1: it sounds super fancy to say something like incognitum, here
25:10
Speaker 1: in the modern day, or even in the seventeen hundreds.
25:15
Speaker 1: It's exactly what you're describing. It is a shrug with
25:18
Speaker 1: the hands up and going I don't know, maybe.
25:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, it could be something.
25:22
Speaker 3: It's probably big though, big something.
25:26
Speaker 4: Speaking about a big something we have to talk about
25:30
Speaker 4: Thomas Jefferson.
25:32
Speaker 1: So that's one of my favorite segues so far. Thomas,
25:35
Speaker 1: big guy again, Thomas always popping up big something something.
25:40
Speaker 1: Jefferson novie called himself that.
25:43
Speaker 4: Oh I think he did. All right, So this dude
25:47
Speaker 4: became obsessed with these big bone lick fossils, like partially
25:52
Speaker 4: because he was just a nerd like Ben Franklin. This
25:55
Speaker 4: is just sort of what he was up to in
25:57
Speaker 4: his free time, but partially because he realized that he
26:01
Speaker 4: could use the incognitum to refute this widely circulated argument
26:07
Speaker 4: that was going around about the inherent inferiority of the Americas,
26:12
Speaker 4: including the people who lived there.
26:14
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is now a he sees in these
26:18
Speaker 1: fossils a potential political tool.
26:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, political and or this was a passion project,
26:27
Speaker 4: I strongly believe. But but all right, So in seventeen
26:31
Speaker 4: sixty six, this famous French naturalist and my French is terrible,
26:35
Speaker 4: so it's buffon. But Jeorges Louis la Cleric de Beauffon
26:40
Speaker 4: he published this theory of American degeneracy, and basically he
26:46
Speaker 4: was like wondering, like why the creatures of the Americas
26:50
Speaker 4: tended to be like cute little buddies compared to the
26:53
Speaker 4: majestic beasts of the old world of Africa and Asia
26:57
Speaker 4: and Europe, you know, like next to an Indian tiger,
27:01
Speaker 4: to be fair, like the Mexican jaguar is a cute
27:03
Speaker 4: little guy. Yeah, But so Befoone's theory was that the
27:09
Speaker 4: America's climate was to blame. And he was, yeah, like
27:16
Speaker 4: like just just just lumping all what like two point
27:20
Speaker 4: seven continents of the Americas together into a single climate,
27:23
Speaker 4: which is interesting in its own right, but well, the.
27:26
Speaker 2: Argument being that more tropical climates would yield the bigger,
27:30
Speaker 2: crazier creatures, that more or more extreme, more.
27:34
Speaker 4: A sture climates would would give you grander creatures and
27:39
Speaker 4: swamp ass places like the Americas were going to lead
27:43
Speaker 4: to degenerates.
27:44
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, because despite the fact that we we know
27:49
Speaker 1: now that the American continents have a vast and varied
27:55
Speaker 1: collection of biomes and ecosystems. He thought he was basing
28:00
Speaker 1: it on what he knew at the time, just like
28:02
Speaker 1: people in the Mediterranean finding warf elephant skulls. And he said,
28:06
Speaker 1: this whole thing is a swamp and that's the reason. Uh,
28:10
Speaker 1: these upstart colonists got stuck with the first stage pokemon.
28:16
Speaker 2: He didn't know about the bigfoots yet.
28:21
Speaker 4: More more humanoid giants. Yeah, so yeah, see we're not
28:25
Speaker 4: immune today. We love these stories. But but okay, yeah,
28:29
Speaker 4: you know.
28:29
Speaker 3: Stories my bad.
28:32
Speaker 1: Could they poop though?
28:33
Speaker 3: Like if we okay in their show, take it with them.
28:38
Speaker 1: That's what they do because they respect nature.
28:41
Speaker 3: Leave no leave, no trades.
28:44
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we solved that one, I think pretty handily.
28:48
Speaker 1: So our guy, who is, by the way, to be fair,
28:50
Speaker 1: a incredible French naturalist and off air, I said, French nationalists.
28:56
Speaker 4: So we think that different issue.
28:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, different issues. So this guy, this guy is legitimate.
29:02
Speaker 1: He's not some fringe, mad cap lunatic and what he
29:07
Speaker 1: argues therefore becomes pretty convincing, I guess to readers in France.
29:12
Speaker 4: In everywhere essentially in Europe and the rest of the
29:18
Speaker 4: European influenced world. So okay, so His belief system here
29:22
Speaker 4: was that all life on Earth spontaneously generated and then
29:26
Speaker 4: migrated around, adapting to different environments as it went, and
29:31
Speaker 4: that America was a swamp that only recently rose up
29:35
Speaker 4: out of the sea. You know, that explains why the
29:37
Speaker 4: Appalachians are so small compared to It.
29:40
Speaker 2: Sank back into the swamp. It sank back into the swamp.
29:43
Speaker 2: They built it back up, it sank back into the
29:45
Speaker 2: swamp again, and then finally.
29:46
Speaker 4: It stayed at a little bit of a bounce action there.
29:49
Speaker 1: Sure, it's so it's so weird too, because we know
29:53
Speaker 1: now that the Appalachians appear small because they're so gosh darn.
29:57
Speaker 4: Old right, they've worn down. But he had the opposite concept,
30:02
Speaker 4: and so he extrapolated that this environment had caused the
30:06
Speaker 4: plants and animals that had come here to literally degenerate,
30:11
Speaker 4: to become smaller and weaker and less reproductively successful. And
30:16
Speaker 4: he claimed, really racistly, that the same thing had happened
30:19
Speaker 4: to the human beings who had come to the Americas.
30:22
Speaker 4: He also claimed that the same thing would continue to
30:24
Speaker 4: happen to the offspring of European immigrants, and that therefore
30:30
Speaker 4: the Americas would never be home to a great civilization.
30:34
Speaker 1: Wow, his calves must be in awesome shape from those
30:38
Speaker 1: leaps of logic. Man bit of a hater, Oh yeah, no,
30:42
Speaker 1: bit about it. This guy, this guy clearly had an
30:46
Speaker 1: axe to grind. Uh huh right, and again a dominant
30:49
Speaker 1: cultural framework he was working within. He is, as he said,
30:56
Speaker 1: he's kind of the literati of his day, leading scientific
30:59
Speaker 1: mind and so our nerds across the pond who are
31:03
Speaker 1: also super into esoteric things. They get winded this.
31:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, Thomas Jefferson was pissed.
31:12
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Thomas Big Something.
31:14
Speaker 4: Thomas Big Something Jefferson was big something about this that
31:20
Speaker 4: I picture him just like sputtering, just going like my
31:24
Speaker 4: sperm is great, thank you, right, Like I feel like
31:28
Speaker 4: this was personal for him at a certain level, and
31:32
Speaker 4: he wound up because he wound up spending a lot
31:36
Speaker 4: of time and energy on refuting this in the seventeen
31:39
Speaker 4: seventies and eighties, which you may recall was a busy time, right.
31:45
Speaker 1: I've guys have pictured it now where someone comes in
31:48
Speaker 1: at another would be founding father is like, Tommy Big Something,
31:54
Speaker 1: we gotta go. The British are come in, Well, you
31:57
Speaker 1: gotta give up this weird bone thing.
32:00
Speaker 4: Man, and he's like no, no, no, no. And he
32:06
Speaker 4: actually got a bunch of his compatriots involved in this,
32:09
Speaker 4: like so he was one of the things that he
32:11
Speaker 4: was trying to do was collect and publish these really
32:15
Speaker 4: precise measurements of various American animals compared with their European counterparts.
32:21
Speaker 4: This was a passion project for him to help refute
32:25
Speaker 4: the faon's argument. And so he got like like Ben
32:29
Speaker 4: Franklin and James Madison, who for some reason I thought
32:31
Speaker 4: was above all of this. Like, he got these guys
32:35
Speaker 4: to go out and measure local wildlife. Madison sent in
32:41
Speaker 4: a description of a Virginian weasel down to the length
32:44
Speaker 4: of the taint.
32:45
Speaker 3: He's not talking about a member of Congress there boo.
32:48
Speaker 5: Also, if I could jump in, he real quick, Laurence said,
32:50
Speaker 5: James Madison above all this. James Madison is considered to
32:54
Speaker 5: be the shortest president in American history at five foot four,
32:56
Speaker 5: so he was not above anything.
33:00
Speaker 4: Maxic the facts.
33:01
Speaker 1: There we go.
33:04
Speaker 3: Seeing in the phone and he's fallen knowledge. It's just
33:10
Speaker 3: for you right now, the.
33:15
Speaker 2: Guys, you didn't you didn't get my Virginian weasel joke
33:18
Speaker 2: about Come on, that's good It's only a good joke
33:25
Speaker 2: if you have to remind people that it was a
33:27
Speaker 2: joke and explain what she meant. He Uh.
33:30
Speaker 1: He also sets up this just perfect scenario for sketch comedy.
33:35
Speaker 1: This is so, this is so rife with sketch comedy
33:38
Speaker 1: because we know Ben Franklin and James Battison were probably
33:42
Speaker 1: talking as well, and they.
33:45
Speaker 3: Also invented sketch comedy and.
33:47
Speaker 1: Invented sketch comedy. Yes, and they were probably they were
33:51
Speaker 1: probably chatting with each other. I'm just imagining like Big
33:54
Speaker 1: Something leaves the room for a bathroom break and Ben
33:58
Speaker 1: and James are looking at each other, and one of
34:00
Speaker 1: them is like, do you think do you think he's
34:04
Speaker 1: gonna ask us to look at Taints again?
34:09
Speaker 2: This guy was a bit of an RFK type figure.
34:13
Speaker 2: He was very interested in animal taking all the smoke.
34:16
Speaker 3: For Big Something here.
34:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, we know that he's enlisted Thomas Tommy's enlisting
34:22
Speaker 1: a bunch of people to do his uh, to help
34:26
Speaker 1: him in this passion project, possibly because he took it personally.
34:32
Speaker 1: Uh does he respond to uh?
34:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, okay, hey.
34:41
Speaker 1: I think Knowles r FK Junior thing is gonna is
34:44
Speaker 1: gonna pay off with this.
34:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because we have to talk about a moose skirt.
34:49
Speaker 1: Skirt, hold the hold the big moose, Hold the bone,
34:52
Speaker 1: hold the bone. We are we are going to make
34:56
Speaker 1: this a two chapter series, Lauren, through the magic of editing.
35:02
Speaker 1: We're not exactly sure where we'll break in this story,
35:05
Speaker 1: but this is already such a wild ride.
35:08
Speaker 3: Dense, glad to do it like a mastodon bone.
35:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, weird times.
35:13
Speaker 1: So folks, please joined us later in the week this
35:18
Speaker 1: Thursday for part two of Mastadons in America with Lauren Vogelbaum.
35:23
Speaker 1: In the meantime, so you.
35:24
Speaker 2: Got to say it again? That was was that you've
35:25
Speaker 2: been Mastadons in America? That is that your title? Or
35:28
Speaker 2: is that Lawrence?
35:29
Speaker 1: I think it's just a weorrid title.
35:31
Speaker 3: Well, it's good.
35:32
Speaker 2: I just wanted to make sure that you enunciated it,
35:34
Speaker 2: because I think it would have been blanked and you
35:36
Speaker 2: would have missed him Masterdon's America.
35:38
Speaker 1: So Lord, in the interim, as we're all waiting for Thursday,
35:42
Speaker 1: where can people go to learn more about your work?
35:44
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, Well, the show that I'm currently doing is
35:47
Speaker 4: called brain Stuff. That's one word. It's just a short
35:50
Speaker 4: form little Science and History show. You can find it
35:52
Speaker 4: wherever podcasts are found, or if you like social media,
35:58
Speaker 4: if that's like your thing. Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky
36:02
Speaker 4: and Instagram under the name Vogel Bomb v O g
36:06
Speaker 4: E l b o MB. It's a it's a pun.
36:12
Speaker 3: You're not on X the Everything app?
36:13
Speaker 1: No, yeah, that's coming back.
36:18
Speaker 4: I really miss live journle.
36:20
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Oh no, someone's gonna find our live journals.
36:26
Speaker 1: I have one where I would I would start in
36:28
Speaker 1: trees with Dear Universe, Comma.
36:32
Speaker 2: Adorable, Were you writing them under your blanket with a
36:35
Speaker 2: flashlight and stuff?
36:36
Speaker 1: And it was a different time. It was a different time.
36:38
Speaker 1: But we've had a great time this week. Big big
36:41
Speaker 1: thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Big thanks
36:44
Speaker 1: to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs, doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance
36:48
Speaker 1: and uh several other people.
36:50
Speaker 2: M christophrasciotis name is Jeff got Here in Spira, Jonathan
36:53
Speaker 2: Strickland the quiz or A. J.
36:55
Speaker 3: Mohamed Jacobs the Buzzer.
36:56
Speaker 1: And thanks to you for tuning in. We'll see you Thursday, and.
36:59
Speaker 3: We'll see next time folks as well, which is gonna
37:02
Speaker 3: be Thursday
37:09
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
37:13
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.