Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 538 - Why Did Ancient Vietnamese Warriors Paint Their Teeth BLACK? - Nam C Kim
Transcript
- 0:00[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
- 0:01[SPEAKER_02]: Today my guest is Namsikim.
- 0:03[SPEAKER_02]: Namsikim is an archeology professor at University of Wisconsin.
- 0:07[SPEAKER_02]: Namsikim has been on the podcast many times before.
- 0:11[SPEAKER_02]: And welcome back to the podcast.
- 0:13[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
- 0:14[SPEAKER_01]: It's an honor to be back.
- 0:16[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
- 0:17[SPEAKER_02]: I wish we could do this much, much more often, but here we are.
- 0:21[SPEAKER_02]: Today we are going to talk about some interesting subject that I really, when you pitched it to me, I'm like, this is the one.
- 0:29[SPEAKER_01]: Well, so this is a topic that I find very interesting because of a recent article that I just saw that is archeological.
- 0:37[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a question I've had for a long time, and it relates to the cultural practice of blackening teeth in Vietnam.
- 0:46[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, for me, it started with looking at personal photographs from our family.
- 0:51[SPEAKER_01]: It's seen my grandmother on my mother's side, who hails from northern Vietnam, and having these pictures, and these are black and white pictures, but you can clearly see your teeth are darkened.
- 1:02[SPEAKER_01]: And it always was something I was curious about.
- 1:05[SPEAKER_01]: Didn't really think about it.
- 1:06[SPEAKER_01]: And then recently saw an archeological study that came out talking about the history of it.
- 1:12[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to pitch this idea to see what you know about it and share what I just recently learned.
- 1:18[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm still learning about this.
- 1:19[SPEAKER_01]: So it'd be great to just get into it.
- 1:21[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're like the,
- 1:24[SPEAKER_02]: fourth professor that comes on to do these mini series and so I mean I'm probably going to have to have you leave this but the thing that I know about it is what I've always heard from my mom inside the house is Mayba de la Rangden Matau which means black teeth, cyber knives that come out
- 1:50[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what that means other than the fact that these women come from a specific culture of being very high-pressure environments, they really are people who are hard.
- 2:03[SPEAKER_02]: They're just hard for people.
- 2:05[SPEAKER_01]: So I know very little about the more recent ideas around the practice and perceptions of it and how it gets tied into notions of identity.
- 2:16[SPEAKER_01]: But if we think about the descriptions that come to us from older contexts, pre 20th century context, there are descriptions ethnographically about different communities within parts of northern Vietnam, parts of Central Vietnam, in the Highlands and elsewhere, where the idea of blacking the teeth has to do with community.
- 2:42[SPEAKER_01]: So there are different reasons I think that people do this.
- 2:45[SPEAKER_01]: At least what we see it describe, it's sort of a write-up passage, it might be a way to distinguish your community from others, and maybe your mother's perspective about this, I don't know how much of that is distinctions between different regions of Vietnam today, but there are all kinds of histories we can get into.
- 3:08[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's the protecting the teeth aspect of it.
- 3:12[SPEAKER_02]: There are, I mean, there's some, you've prepared, you have notes for this.
- 3:15[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll let you get into it and yeah.
- 3:18[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 3:18[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, so if we think about why people do this, there's a cultural identity aspect of this that we can get into how it shows, obviously it's different.
- 3:28[SPEAKER_01]: Well, when you see the teeth it's striking, especially if it's polished and it shines, right?
- 3:33[SPEAKER_01]: But there are, if people theorize about when it starts and why people started doing it in the past, some people talk about their hygienic reasons why you even do this to help preserve your teeth, protect it from decay, kinds of things.
- 3:49[SPEAKER_01]: There are people that talk about how it might have originated from different practices.
- 3:54[SPEAKER_01]: So if people chew on leaves, beetle, not for instance, or other kinds of things, your teeth are already getting stained,
- 4:01[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe this is kind of an extension of that.
- 4:04[SPEAKER_01]: It's an evolution of that.
- 4:05[SPEAKER_01]: And so we can get into why, how long in the past, people have started doing that kind of staining.
- 4:12[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the interesting things is the archeological stuff.
- 4:18[SPEAKER_01]: So this paper just came out earlier this year where they were examining human remains from when why don't certain, so the don't
- 4:30[SPEAKER_01]: And this is 2,000 plus years ago, where you have cemeteries from these different contexts.
- 4:37[SPEAKER_01]: And you have human remains.
- 4:38[SPEAKER_01]: And some of the researchers have studied the remains to kind of come at different conclusions about how people lived.
- 4:45[SPEAKER_01]: Part of that was the kinds of things that they ate, the kinds of things that they might have done to their bodies.
- 4:51[SPEAKER_01]: And so like modifications.
- 4:54[SPEAKER_01]: Like tattooing, I don't know if we have
- 4:58[SPEAKER_01]: good preservation from that time period for tattoos, but we have oral traditions and written textual accounts describing tattooing other kinds of body modifications the way people would wear their hair, how they would dress.
- 5:13[SPEAKER_01]: And there's descriptions of black teeth.
- 5:17[SPEAKER_01]: So we've had descriptions for a very long time, the Chinese, when they come into Northern Vietnam, the Han Empire come in, they describe the kinds of communities that they come across.
- 5:28[SPEAKER_01]: And they describe black teeth.
- 5:31[SPEAKER_02]: And so I mean, can you imagine going up battle with the group of people and all you see is black teeth and tattoos and the way they cut their hair?
- 5:39[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, that stuff is pretty frightening and pretty bad out.
- 5:43[SPEAKER_02]: So I think about it.
- 5:45[SPEAKER_01]: So people have been talking about why people would do this.
- 5:49[SPEAKER_01]: So besides the hygienic purposes, maybe to distinguish themselves from other communities around them or from nature.
- 5:57[SPEAKER_01]: So one prevailing theory is the animal world.
- 6:01[SPEAKER_01]: You've got
- 6:02[SPEAKER_01]: different species with white fangs and other kinds of teeth.
- 6:06[SPEAKER_01]: And so one idea is that people were distinguishing themselves and saying, we're human, we're different than animals.
- 6:12[SPEAKER_01]: And so instead of white fangs and teeth, we have black.
- 6:16[SPEAKER_01]: And this is something that we do to ourselves, right?
- 6:20[SPEAKER_01]: It's artificial as opposed to natural.
- 6:23[SPEAKER_01]: And so some people say there might be a spiritual element, like we're distinguishing ourselves.
- 6:27[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, the idea of battles is very interesting because it is different.
- 6:33[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if you're coming for a culture that doesn't do that and you are coming across warriors who have that, it might be a very different kind of visceral reaction.
- 6:44[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's scary.
- 6:46[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can't get it.
- 6:47[SPEAKER_02]: Cause we're born with white teeth.
- 6:49[SPEAKER_02]: And then you know, you see black teeth.
- 6:51[SPEAKER_02]: Did any of this sort of come from an outside place, like you brought up Japan before in our conversation?
- 6:59[SPEAKER_02]: Japan, you know,
- 7:03[SPEAKER_02]: Occupied Vietnam, but that's much later.
- 7:06[SPEAKER_01]: That's much later.
- 7:07[SPEAKER_01]: So this is in terms of origins, I don't have an answer for this.
- 7:11[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe other researchers have talked about this, so I thought about it.
- 7:15[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, what I know about the Japanese culture is there are textual descriptions about this practice, maybe from about a thousand years ago.
- 7:26[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the tail of Genji, for instance, the first, one of the earliest novels in the world.
- 7:33[SPEAKER_01]: There are descriptions about this practice.
- 7:35[SPEAKER_01]: And from what I understand, people in Japan during that time period, nobility, in fact, would stay in their teeth.
- 7:42[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.
- 7:42[SPEAKER_01]: This would be men and women.
- 7:44[SPEAKER_01]: And eventually, it becomes like a kind of right of passage.
- 7:46[SPEAKER_01]: How many years ago was this?
- 7:48[SPEAKER_01]: This is like a thousand years.
- 7:48[SPEAKER_02]: A thousand years ago.
- 7:49[SPEAKER_01]: And then what's the earliest records of Vietnamese having black teeth?
- 7:56[SPEAKER_01]: I should say the Chinese account writing about the Vietnamese or the people in Northern Vietnam, like the Red River area, those accounts date to maybe
- 8:08[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say, the first few centuries common era.
- 8:12[SPEAKER_01]: So just under 2,000 years ago, describing people that lived in those contexts and having those differences.
- 8:19[SPEAKER_01]: They would write about the so-called barbarians in the South, who had short hair, who marked themselves with tattoos, who had black and teeth, like they were distinguishing themselves from the barbarians that lived down there.
- 8:33[SPEAKER_01]: And so they were describing these communities.
- 8:37[SPEAKER_01]: At the time, in northern Vietnam, you don't really have writing, so the people that are living in northern Vietnam, the natives, the indigenous communities, they're not writing anything down, but they have depictions of their lifeways, so the very famous bronzes from don't sound like the drums, other kinds of artifacts, you have depictions of different lifeways.
- 9:00[SPEAKER_01]: kinds of stilt homes that they had, the rice growing practices, all of those sorts of motifs are on there.
- 9:08[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the most evidence we have up until recently they started looking at archaeological remains for people.
- 9:17[SPEAKER_01]: And so the black and teeth, this paper that came out recently is one of the early kind of studies on this.
- 9:24[SPEAKER_01]: But they, I think the numbers are something like one in five individuals from the various domescent sites, all across northern Vietnam, have some kind of standing other teams.
- 9:36[SPEAKER_01]: And they suspect that this might be related to royal or elite folks who have saddest and power that are doing this kind of thing.
- 9:43[SPEAKER_01]: And eventually it gets adopted by more and more the common population.
- 9:49[SPEAKER_01]: and how that transforms over time across centuries into like the medieval, so-called medieval period, with people taking on this practice around the highlands?
- 9:59[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know, I think there are all kinds of theories about this.
- 10:01[SPEAKER_01]: But the archaeology tells us it's as early as maybe first century common era, which is interesting, if you think about it, because if you know your history, that's when the chung sisters
- 10:16[SPEAKER_01]: lead the rebellion.
- 10:17[SPEAKER_01]: So the year 40, they lead a rebellion last for like three years before the Han sent down the so-called great pacifier.
- 10:25[SPEAKER_01]: This is Ma Yuan, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma Ma, Ma Ma, Ma Ma, Ma Ma Ma Ma, Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma
- 10:45[SPEAKER_02]: It really makes me want to get back to you right now, and go see my buddy, and then get tattoos of Hi-va-Jung with Black T. Yeah, I mean, we see it in a modern American culture, right?
- 11:00[SPEAKER_01]: We see people with gold, we see people with grills, I mean, there are different ways that people represent themselves, and there are certain kinds of identity that are conveyed as a result of that.
- 11:09[SPEAKER_01]: So we can imagine 2,000 years ago, the same kinds of things, right?
- 11:13[SPEAKER_01]: Like how you are viewed and how you might differentiate one segment of a community versus another.
- 11:20[SPEAKER_01]: There are cases of tattoos that go back, ancient Egypt, 5,000 years ago, we can see tattoos on human remains.
- 11:28[SPEAKER_01]: We can see cranial deformations.
- 11:30[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're a baby,
- 11:32[SPEAKER_01]: as you're growing your skull, obviously, is very valuable.
- 11:34[SPEAKER_01]: People will shape the skull so that as you become an adult, your head looks totally different than everybody else.
- 11:40[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
- 11:41[SPEAKER_01]: So there are lots of examples throughout human history and what's called prehistory of body modifications.
- 11:48[SPEAKER_01]: And we can imagine even scars, not just tattoos, but scarification too, to distinguish communities of people.
- 11:55[SPEAKER_02]: Where does the actual black stain come from?
- 12:01[SPEAKER_01]: There are, in the paper that I read, they put together a kind of gradation, they had a table, and I said, you know, at its most minimal level, you're just looking at people that are consuming things like beetle mud, and eventually it stains your teeth kind of a reddish color.
- 12:18[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of us that are tea or coffee drinkers, we see this in the modern day.
- 12:22[SPEAKER_01]: But they said, depending on where, which context, you see deeper shades of dark color, right?
- 12:28[SPEAKER_01]: And that can't be done just over normal consumption of these materials.
- 12:34[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to actually do this.
- 12:35[SPEAKER_01]: This is intentional.
- 12:37[SPEAKER_01]: So they did some studies where actually they replicated.
- 12:40[SPEAKER_01]: They tried to use experiments with animal teeth.
- 12:45[SPEAKER_01]: They would prepare the teeth, they would apply different kinds of materials.
- 12:49[SPEAKER_01]: Some of those processes, they've seen in ethnographic accounts.
- 12:53[SPEAKER_01]: So they've studied communities on the modern day, how they do it, and they try to replicate that.
- 12:59[SPEAKER_01]: And they, so the archeologists do this all the time.
- 13:01[SPEAKER_01]: You replicate the process, and then you can see how you might test hypotheses against the material market from the past.
- 13:08[SPEAKER_01]: They think that the Vietnamese case,
- 13:13[SPEAKER_01]: The Japanese case, and maybe cases in ancient India, show the most sophisticated versions where people are come up with recipes.
- 13:22[SPEAKER_01]: They're coming up with materials that they add together.
- 13:27[SPEAKER_01]: They're crushing different kinds of organic materials.
- 13:31[SPEAKER_01]: Like all nuts and other kinds of bark, maybe beetle nut, and they're crushing it, they're making this kind of pace.
- 13:37[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's some reaction with the tenons that come out of that stuff with iron.
- 13:44[SPEAKER_01]: if you have iron implements and iron salt for instance, those materials, when combined, start coming up with these different kinds of colors.
- 13:55[SPEAKER_01]: So what they think they're doing is they're kind of preparing the teeth by shaping them and making them a little bit more rough or porous.
- 14:03[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, porous.
- 14:05[SPEAKER_01]: Then they're applying that paste and they're covering it.
- 14:09[SPEAKER_02]: ethnographically this would be like a weeklong process like you decide you want to do this you're going through the process and once you're done it lasts for lifetime it's kind of like a tattoo I've seen it as a kid okay I remember seeing the old ladies in church there were some people yeah when I was like maybe six or seven years old I remember seeing five or six of them in our church with black teeth oh
- 14:33[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so these would be like what generation how old they would probably be my grand my mother's grandparents generation Okay, I was a kid.
- 14:41[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember seeing ladies would but did you ever see the process itself or you just I just saw the ladies.
- 14:46[SPEAKER_02]: They were all very old ladies and yeah, I'd like to yeah, and do you know when they got them?
- 14:52[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know whenever really you don't
- 14:53[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, had I known to ask this and like what got them to, and you know, the whole foot binding is Chinese, but also something in Vietnam that stopped many years ago, but I think this was early monitoring of for my own eyes to see the black teeth.
- 15:10[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember seeing it in church.
- 15:12[SPEAKER_01]: It's fascinating to think about.
- 15:13[SPEAKER_02]: It really is.
- 15:15[SPEAKER_02]: And my mom always said that those ladies never got cavities, they never got really.
- 15:23[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting to think about when that starts to phase out.
- 15:28[SPEAKER_01]: Why is that?
- 15:29[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 15:31[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not an expert on this.
- 15:32[SPEAKER_01]: But my guess is.
- 15:34[SPEAKER_01]: from what I've seen, the timing of that has to do with more and more contact with the branch, with the branch, with the Western world.
- 15:41[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got these newer standards of quote unquote beauty, right?
- 15:46[SPEAKER_01]: Like the expectation of how you should look, and if black teeth,
- 15:51[SPEAKER_01]: represent something else, it might represent ugliness because it's the opposite of what the the Western expectation might be.
- 15:57[SPEAKER_01]: So all of a sudden now people are trying to conform.
- 15:59[SPEAKER_01]: I think the same thing happens in Japan, because you've got this practice that even the samurai, from what I understand, the samurai would blacken their teeth.
- 16:07[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes this would have to do with expressing their fieldy, their loyalty to their Lord.
- 16:13[SPEAKER_01]: This is a permanent sign that they're undergoing.
- 16:17[SPEAKER_01]: And that practice continues in different parts of
- 16:21[SPEAKER_01]: through the the magi restoration.
- 16:24[SPEAKER_01]: And now after Western ideas start coming in and Japan starts opening up again.
- 16:30[SPEAKER_01]: You've got this influx of different perspectives on beauty.
- 16:34[SPEAKER_01]: And so now the teeth
- 16:36[SPEAKER_01]: the staining of teeth starts to go away.
- 16:39[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of parallel to what we see happening in Vietnam.
- 16:42[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the sadness that I experience all the time when I think about things like this, the black teeth and it going away permanently and it not being a part of our visual history anymore.
- 16:52[SPEAKER_02]: And there are like time-life documentation, photography, with the black teeth, like women are from the north,
- 16:59[SPEAKER_02]: women and women from the north.
- 17:01[SPEAKER_02]: There are, like, if you look it up, you could see black and white pictures of probably old school photographers taking pictures of it.
- 17:08[SPEAKER_02]: It's gone, like, you just don't, where are we gonna see that again?
- 17:12[SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of cool.
- 17:14[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 17:15[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, you can imagine how these sorts of, of practices come and go.
- 17:24[SPEAKER_01]: like even tattooing, right?
- 17:26[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, throughout American society's history, there are different ideas in tattoos coming in and out.
- 17:32[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you look at professional sports, athletes of a certain decade or a certain era, whether they have tattoos or not, and you can see that kind of those trends.
- 17:42[SPEAKER_01]: So it makes me wonder if maybe even the black and teeth might go through some of these sorts of iterations.
- 17:48[SPEAKER_01]: We can't predict that now.
- 17:50[SPEAKER_01]: But maybe a couple of generations, now if there's a sort of revival of the practice and a sort of perspective on its importance.
- 18:00[SPEAKER_02]: Who knows, God, but there are so many other things like the Black Tea that we probably don't even see anymore, right?
- 18:08[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many little details that just because of one reason, another disappear entirely from our reality.
- 18:16[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 18:18[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can think about the possibility of the different kinds of food, different kinds of recipes, different idioms, whole host of things.
- 18:26[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if we're talking about historical change over 2,000 years,
- 18:31[SPEAKER_01]: We're just seeing the remains of things that last in the archaeological record and then some things that last within the cultural generations, right, passed on through time.
- 18:40[SPEAKER_01]: And so those are the things we can see.
- 18:42[SPEAKER_01]: But there's probably a whole ton of things that have disappeared that we have no access to in the months.
- 18:48[SPEAKER_01]: But that most likely existed and defined these communities.
- 18:54[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I wish that, um,
- 18:57[SPEAKER_02]: that these digitization processes were around earlier?
- 19:01[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 19:01[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's a cooking robot that I work with.
- 19:03[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that remembers all of the recipes, the temperature, the speed of the drum that turns, all of it reminds us that this cultural kitchen prep preservation is being transmitted down.
- 19:20[SPEAKER_02]: And
- 19:22[SPEAKER_02]: digital pictures and photos allow us to see the records from before and all the other stuff, you know.
- 19:30[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's really cool because in a way that's part of you, you're doing the same thing that museums do, right?
- 19:36[SPEAKER_01]: You're documenting, right?
- 19:37[SPEAKER_01]: And we're entering there.
- 19:39[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're entering in these cultural practices, you know, we brought in a, you know, Haka is the culture Haka.
- 19:47[SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea that the Haka cooking culture is so different from what
- 19:53[SPEAKER_02]: Chinese food really yeah it's it's own some sort of food right yeah like Sichuan so one of our uh one of the guys that is marketing brought his mother in his mother was in her 70s yeah and and she's from the Haka culture and she brought in three dishes and she sat programed it into the robots
- 20:13[SPEAKER_02]: And she spent an entire day with the company and she punched in the temperature the way it should taste she brought all the ingredients and that recipe is gonna live inside of our company for the rest of yeah
- 20:28[SPEAKER_01]: It's a snap shot, it's a snap shot.
- 20:29[SPEAKER_01]: It's a snap shot.
- 20:30[SPEAKER_01]: It's a snap shot.
- 20:31[SPEAKER_01]: It's a snap shot.
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- 20:46[SPEAKER_02]: It's a snap shot.
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- 20:47[SPEAKER_02]: It
- 20:55[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's really incredible thing about I mean, I I know about so since since the internet right you've got Any time I want to figure out how to make a dish I can just go to YouTube right and I can figure out not only you see the recipe But you watch somebody doing yeah, right, but now you've got robot now you got a robot that actually
- 21:15[SPEAKER_02]: Prenounces and defines what you're going to be tasting.
- 21:18[SPEAKER_02]: How much soy sauce goes in, how much sugar, how much spices, how much pepper?
- 21:22[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
- 21:23[SPEAKER_02]: It's so clearly defined like what we're using for that Hoco recipe.
- 21:27[SPEAKER_01]: That's fast as fast in anything.
- 21:29[SPEAKER_01]: Super fast in any.
- 21:30[SPEAKER_01]: Hey Peter, in the future there'll be robots that blacken your teeth point.
- 21:33[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I would do it in two seconds.
- 21:34[SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, I, I have a lot of teeth issues and I would
- 21:40[SPEAKER_02]: I would not be twice that.
- 21:41[SPEAKER_02]: I think it looks hard like hard to try to be on the planet open.
- 21:45[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you can get dentures, eventually, that are blind.
- 21:48[SPEAKER_01]: You can just, you know, depending on your mood, people will go to it.
- 21:53[SPEAKER_01]: So why did the practice go away?
- 21:56[SPEAKER_01]: I think change, right?
- 21:59[SPEAKER_01]: You have changing standards.
- 22:00[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we think about, you talked about the French here, and you've got, so maybe the introduction of Western values and Western ideas about opportunities and beauty.
- 22:10[SPEAKER_01]: I think all of that could have had a role to play.
- 22:14[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think, I mean, for what I understand, it wasn't pervasive all throughout Vietnam.
- 22:18[SPEAKER_01]: It was just in certain areas.
- 22:20[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think if we talked about this in the South, there wasn't no Pactitana stuff, no.
- 22:25[SPEAKER_02]: You never see Pactitana stuff, yeah.
- 22:27[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a dominant culture thing.
- 22:29[SPEAKER_02]: It's a, it's a thing where, like, my mom said, run, run in Matao, right, which is that, like, overbearing culture is not happening in the South.
- 22:38[SPEAKER_01]: So there might be connotations that people have that associate that practice with this group of people.
- 22:47[SPEAKER_01]: And if we have certain ideas about this group of people, maybe we like that or we don't like that.
- 22:51[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of it gets lumped together.
- 22:54[SPEAKER_01]: And so maybe that's why you start to see it go away.
- 22:56[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe that's why other communities in their next generations have a certain idea about this and don't want to continue it.
- 23:04[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
- 23:05[SPEAKER_01]: But
- 23:06[SPEAKER_01]: I find it interesting to think about the roots and now we have not only these, you know, these textual accounts saying that people did this, but you actually have the material of record supporting those assertions.
- 23:21[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they can do this down to they know what materials specific that we're using the tough.
- 23:27[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you can analyze.
- 23:28[SPEAKER_01]: You can take residues, you can do all kinds of analysis using the sophisticated modern equipment to see what kinds of elements were used.
- 23:38[SPEAKER_01]: what proportions, how it might have been mixed together, and then you compare that, like I said before, about to modern studies of being doing this, and you put all that together, you triangulate, and you have an idea of a pretty good idea of what kinds of recipes how long it took them all that.
- 23:53[SPEAKER_02]: Who carried out this study, if you know?
- 23:56[SPEAKER_01]: So, it is, it is, you know,
- 23:58[SPEAKER_01]: Zhang and colleagues, so we're several individuals, and this just got published earlier this year.
- 24:04[SPEAKER_01]: This is if people are interested, it's in the journal archaeological and archaeological science.
- 24:08[SPEAKER_02]: So is it American guys or Chinese people?
- 24:10[SPEAKER_01]: Or these are, it's a group of folks from I think from the United States, from Japan, from Vietnam, all these scholars that are working together.
- 24:19[SPEAKER_02]: And Vietnam just let's people in.
- 24:21[SPEAKER_02]: How does that look?
- 24:22[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, if you're like, I have this idea for researching black teeth, how do you go about making that happen?
- 24:31[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know how this happened, this particular study, but I know some of the individuals on the study.
- 24:37[SPEAKER_01]: So my answer to you will be a mix of what I guess, but also based on my experience.
- 24:43[SPEAKER_01]: The Vietnamese archaeologists in that community have been partnering with people from all over the world for decades.
- 24:51[SPEAKER_01]: And so if there's a research question that somebody might be interested in, you get, if you know some of the people there, you strike up a kind of working relationship and you might propose ideas.
- 25:02[SPEAKER_01]: The don't-sun culture has been examined for like a century, to beginning with the French, right?
- 25:09[SPEAKER_01]: The French excavated professionally doing professional archaeology within clinical Indo-China for about a century, over a century.
- 25:20[SPEAKER_01]: And that practice has been ongoing.
- 25:22[SPEAKER_01]: It's evolved within the country of Vietnam.
- 25:25[SPEAKER_01]: So more of it started going indigenous, these are local archaeologists doing this kind of work.
- 25:30[SPEAKER_01]: But those communities of folks have been working with the French, the British, Australians, Japanese, everywhere.
- 25:38[SPEAKER_01]: Collaborations with the United States have lagged a little bit behind for obvious reasons.
- 25:43[SPEAKER_01]: But from my experience, going to Vietnam, this is now 20, 20 plus years ago, for the first time to propose work.
- 25:51[SPEAKER_01]: You just find the right people.
- 25:52[SPEAKER_01]: And if they have the same research interests that you do, then it's on you pose it.
- 25:58[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm guessing that's how this happened.
- 26:00[SPEAKER_01]: So these materials are probably in collections for a long time, including the human remains.
- 26:06[SPEAKER_01]: But as there are new advances in analysis,
- 26:10[SPEAKER_01]: people have new ideas, and they might pitch it and say, well, those, those human remains were excavated from these cemeteries, you know, back in the 70s, but maybe there are new ways for us to examine some of the materials, the ceramics, the lithic tools, the residues on stuff, even human remains because we have technology that allows us to see things differently now than people could decades ago.
- 26:36[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you an example.
- 26:37[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the ice man, Otsi.
- 26:39[SPEAKER_01]: This is from Italy, right, from the Alps.
- 26:44[SPEAKER_01]: And he lived something like 5,000 years ago.
- 26:47[SPEAKER_01]: When he was found back in the 90s by hikers, they were in the Alps.
- 26:51[SPEAKER_01]: His body was coming out of the ice.
- 26:53[SPEAKER_01]: They thought it was a recent murder victim.
- 26:55[SPEAKER_01]: So they called the police.
- 26:56[SPEAKER_01]: The police came and investigated.
- 26:57[SPEAKER_01]: And they realized, nope, this is somebody lived 5,000 years ago.
- 27:01[SPEAKER_01]: His body was so well preserved because of the ice, that we know so much about the copper age and communities at that time in that part of the world.
- 27:11[SPEAKER_01]: We know how his body was decorated.
- 27:13[SPEAKER_01]: We can see tattoos on him in different places around his body where he probably had arthritis, so the tattoos probably corresponded as a medical kind of thing to help treat his pain.
- 27:25[SPEAKER_01]: We know how he likely died.
- 27:27[SPEAKER_01]: He had injuries on himself.
- 27:29[SPEAKER_01]: We know what he ate the last two or three meals of his life.
- 27:33[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's, and that's because of all the advances in analysis that we can do today.
- 27:39[SPEAKER_01]: So now with stuff like this, we can go to some of these remains and some of these materials and come up with all kinds of hypotheses that we can test to reconstruct life ways.
- 27:50[SPEAKER_02]: We just had a good friend of mine, Andy Horry Tran.
- 27:52[SPEAKER_02]: He just stepped in, he's a tattoo artist where he studied so much about Domsund.
- 27:56[SPEAKER_02]: And so much about the visual side of the Vietnamese culture.
- 28:00[SPEAKER_02]: And apparently he has a grandmother who has black teeth.
- 28:03[SPEAKER_02]: So can we bring you on to the set?
- 28:05[SPEAKER_02]: Come on in.
- 28:06[SPEAKER_02]: Hey guys.
- 28:09[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
- 28:09[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
- 28:09[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
- 28:09[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so my grandma, on my mom's side, Jennifer set black teeth.
- 28:16[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 28:17[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 28:17[SPEAKER_00]: So I grew up with that my whole life.
- 28:18[SPEAKER_00]: So you saw it.
- 28:19[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 28:20[SPEAKER_00]: It was very normal for me.
- 28:21[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 28:22[SPEAKER_00]: And like same like you as growing up, you see the older women, they had a lot of black teeth.
- 28:28[SPEAKER_00]: And when I went to Vietnam too, when I, I can't want to Vietnam at a young age, they had black teeth still as well, too.
- 28:34[SPEAKER_00]: So, and most of my life, I've always been looking to get my black teeth done.
- 28:39[SPEAKER_00]: And I've asked people, for many, many years, they can never figure it out.
- 28:44[SPEAKER_00]: The best answer I've always gotten is the people who had it were already old and now they're dead.
- 28:48[SPEAKER_00]: And the people who did it for them are already old then.
- 28:51[SPEAKER_00]: And now they're dead, right?
- 28:52[SPEAKER_00]: And it would be, like you said, in the indigenous area,
- 28:56[SPEAKER_00]: And the process was actually very painful.
- 28:58[SPEAKER_00]: It was already painful.
- 28:59[SPEAKER_00]: You'd have to starve for like a week.
- 29:00[SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't eat anything.
- 29:03[SPEAKER_00]: And from my research of reading as well too, sometimes we get touched up.
- 29:08[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess after like say like the prestigious era and when it was more in common practice, it was for beauty standards, right?
- 29:18[SPEAKER_00]: For like women like India with the dots, stuff like that.
- 29:20[SPEAKER_00]: So they would get it like I'm like pretty young like around teenagers.
- 29:24[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then they would get it again like when they become like marital Like like marriage or and they would kind of like Touch it up, you know like do it again maybe like new years or something like that so because it would fade over time So like it wasn't like a deep black
- 29:39[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I was very young it was like a deep black and then as she got older it turned into a lighter like brownish black right versus beetle not beetle not is more like a reddish brown right so and that's more of a stain and then for the materials.
- 29:53[SPEAKER_00]: Very similar like a paste iron metals, but it's like very similar to like a lacquer so lacquer paintings lacquer art so it's kind of like a poison as well That's why it was probably was painful.
- 30:04[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right?
- 30:05[SPEAKER_00]: Like whether it was like a paste or like they had to like Swish and hold like I don't really know Yeah, from there, but that practice is dead because those people are old and the old people who had it were old so and I've been looking pretty much on a like 30 years
- 30:18[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I have a question for both of you, because we're talking about all this stuff.
- 30:23[SPEAKER_02]: Why is a dumb son period so important to art and cranes and the drums?
- 30:30[SPEAKER_02]: Why is that?
- 30:31[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's probably other periods of, but that seems to be the most famous one.
- 30:36[SPEAKER_02]: Did you want to go for a first?
- 30:36[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 30:38[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, I can start from me studying it.
- 30:42[SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the reasons it's so important for Vietnamese identity and history is because the obvious one is, it's before the Han cult.
- 30:52[SPEAKER_01]: This is like the last indigenous pre-synetic cultural period.
- 30:58[SPEAKER_01]: Like after the Chinese come into the picture, they stick around.
- 31:01[SPEAKER_01]: They stick around for a very long time.
- 31:06[SPEAKER_01]: having these stories that come to us, a lot of the legends, talk about these time periods before all that happens.
- 31:12[SPEAKER_01]: The don't-so-unarchological materials correspond to those time periods, to those stories.
- 31:18[SPEAKER_01]: And so the legends about the Hong-wong, unzing-wong, all of those sorts of stories, even the myths, right?
- 31:25[SPEAKER_01]: The dragon lord and the sea goddess, the fairy,
- 31:31[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, I think it's the mountain fairy mountain fairy.
- 31:33[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
- 31:34[SPEAKER_01]: So all of that.
- 31:34[SPEAKER_01]: I think people have been trying to find material proof that some of these kingdoms existed.
- 31:42[SPEAKER_01]: And so that that's one of the reasons I think it's very important.
- 31:44[SPEAKER_00]: But okay.
- 31:46[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, that's that's awesome.
- 31:47[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
- 31:48[SPEAKER_00]: For me, it was very, very similar as well, as an artist, you know, as a young artist in my 20s, like teens and 20s, like 1920s, I was searching for a style, a searching for something that, you know, that I could call kind of like independent, right?
- 32:06[SPEAKER_00]: And then in that research, I was like, well, everyone else is kind of doing their cultural thing, right?
- 32:17[SPEAKER_00]: so like and that's what they were doing.
- 32:18[SPEAKER_00]: They were doing like full body suits, Japanese history, storylines, right?
- 32:22[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 32:23[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would do research and this is like, you know, early 2000s, stuff like that.
- 32:28[SPEAKER_00]: Internet's not that great at the time.
- 32:30[SPEAKER_00]: And then only then you could look up under Vietnam and Vietnamese would be war.
- 32:34[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 32:35[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the only thing you could get.
- 32:36[SPEAKER_00]: And then I saw a beautiful statement that, you know, Vietnam is a country.
- 32:40[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a war.
- 32:41[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 32:41[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 32:42[SPEAKER_00]: And then, but there wasn't that much data out in there.
- 32:45[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 32:45[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 32:45[SPEAKER_00]: And then I met a man named, um,
- 32:48[SPEAKER_00]: Jack Mosher, he's widest snow, but he was very deep understanding of Vietnamese culturally from like dragging this question out a long time for a long time, but he knew everything about that Japanese culture and that samurai era, but he was like, why does snow from like Kalamazoo, you know, and then so it really
- 33:08[SPEAKER_00]: It really influenced me to like, to dig deep, and because I was self-conscious, like, I can't read Vietnamese very well.
- 33:13[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can't speak Vietnamese very well.
- 33:15[SPEAKER_00]: But like, well, this guy's not Japanese either, but he still had that passion to learn everything.
- 33:22[SPEAKER_00]: So I dig, I dug and dig the research, and again, so if the farther I go back, the more influenced something was.
- 33:30[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 33:30[SPEAKER_00]: We go back a little bit out.
- 33:31[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like that's French influence, right?
- 33:34[SPEAKER_00]: You go back to the Chinese occupation, the Chinese influence, right?
- 33:37[SPEAKER_00]: The food, the characters, the congees, the the way the clothing were to, right, our etiquette, everything.
- 33:45[SPEAKER_00]: And then what was before that, then before that occupation, then ended up with dogs on, like you said, it was our purest form, it was it was untouched by by foreign influence.
- 33:56[SPEAKER_00]: So it was our period.
- 33:57[SPEAKER_00]: So then, you know, because of like politics and stuff like that, too, no one can argue with me that this is Vietnamese, right?
- 34:03[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not going to be politically forward for this or politically forward for that in my art and in my industry.
- 34:07[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody can argue that it's not Vietnamese.
- 34:10[SPEAKER_02]: That is not Vietnamese.
- 34:10[SPEAKER_02]: That's the root cradle of it.
- 34:13[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't influenced by something.
- 34:15[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, what about being influenced by Southern China?
- 34:19[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just playing for example.
- 34:20[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah, it's true, right?
- 34:23[SPEAKER_00]: But as as close as we can, as close as we can.
- 34:26[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and technically, we are Southern Chinese in technicality, right?
- 34:30[SPEAKER_00]: Like the 100 UA tribe.
- 34:31[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right.
- 34:32[SPEAKER_00]: Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow.
- 34:33[SPEAKER_00]: You could dig in this.
- 34:34[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll, I'll, I'll tell you with that idea for a second.
- 34:36[SPEAKER_01]: You could say we're all Southern Chinese, or we could say that Southern Chinese are more than Vietnamese.
- 34:43[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
- 34:44[SPEAKER_01]: There was something there, so like 2,000 years ago, or 2,500 years ago, we don't know exactly what language is through being spoken in that part of the world.
- 34:53[SPEAKER_01]: We have ideas.
- 34:54[SPEAKER_01]: We have archeological materials that show us what they were doing, what life was like, and we have depictions.
- 35:00[SPEAKER_01]: But in terms of actual identity, that's really, really difficult to say for sure.
- 35:06[SPEAKER_00]: If I may, yeah.
- 35:07[SPEAKER_00]: So they say like, our tongue is from the Austin Asian Pat, right?
- 35:11[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you were describing earlier of how the Chinese were describing us in from the books.
- 35:15[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 35:16[SPEAKER_00]: It was, you know, the people with black teeth, short hair, and tattoos.
- 35:25[SPEAKER_00]: So the language of ours where we're more tribalistic, right, because we're more totem-based Yeah, and it's like swamp-based, right?
- 35:32[SPEAKER_00]: So then we pray to like the alligator and the river god and the snake god, and that's like, you know, where the the tattoos and the voodoo and cannibalism and stuff like that, right?
- 35:41[SPEAKER_00]: Versus where the Chinese have longness stuff.
- 35:43[SPEAKER_00]: you know, internet, bro and books.
- 35:46[SPEAKER_00]: So the Chinese, they were more Colin, they were more civilized at the time, right?
- 35:51[SPEAKER_00]: So they had infrastructure, right?
- 35:52[SPEAKER_00]: We had small tribes, which we would more against each other, where they lived in bigger cities, in groups, in bigger communities, they have long hair, so close, right?
- 36:00[SPEAKER_00]: And our clothes were made of like grass and fish skin and, you know, things like that, you know, like very organic materials.
- 36:08[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of think of it like more like lay skirts like Hawaiians and stuff like that and I did the cross research with say, like, um, you know, like the stilled cultures like Indonesia and like parallels.
- 36:21[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, with that Austronesian sort of expansion.
- 36:24[SPEAKER_01]: I totally agree, I think the only thing I would say about this is the idea of civilization itself is, for at least for me, subjective because it's one group of people saying, we are the civilized people and we're bringing the practices, the light of civilization to another group of people.
- 36:41[SPEAKER_01]: And that's often the imperial sort of objective is to show, they needed it, that's why it's okay for us to come and do what we're doing.
- 36:50[SPEAKER_01]: So when they come down and they pacify, quote unquote pacify the South, all the 100 UA and everybody else.
- 36:58[SPEAKER_01]: In their minds, it's justified because these are people that I need to learn how to farm.
- 37:02[SPEAKER_01]: They need how to learn how to build their settlements as cities and things like that.
- 37:07[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things that I think a lot of the Vietnamese historians and others talk about, they're very proud of is,
- 37:15[SPEAKER_01]: We actually, we knew how to do a lot of these things.
- 37:18[SPEAKER_01]: There was sophisticated bronze working in this foreign world.
- 37:22[SPEAKER_01]: There were all kinds of things that were happening.
- 37:23[SPEAKER_01]: They knew how to farm.
- 37:25[SPEAKER_01]: They knew how to do all these things.
- 37:26[SPEAKER_01]: It was just not the same as what we see, maybe in the central plains of China.
- 37:30[SPEAKER_01]: but quote unquote forms of civilization and definitely existed before.
- 37:35[SPEAKER_01]: So who calls whom barbarians that's that's a that's a personal subjective call, but all the stuff was already in place and in quite quite sophisticated.
- 37:46[SPEAKER_02]: So is black to barbarian?
- 37:51[SPEAKER_02]: from both of you.
- 37:52[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear your thoughts.
- 37:53[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, personally, when you talk about black teeth in recent context or in the past or the past, so come out of the past was black teeth to people of the past when people on the outside looked inside of our culture, was it about bearing that they were looking at?
- 38:14[SPEAKER_01]: So for people from Han China, we were, that's their perspective, but within the world, let's say the world of like Southern China, the Yunan, Northern Vietnam, in that world, I don't think people saw it as barbaric.
- 38:31[SPEAKER_01]: I think within their communities, a lot of people that were doing this were probably elevated in status.
- 38:39[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's, at least the description is talk about that.
- 38:42[SPEAKER_01]: So it all depends on your field V.
- 38:48[SPEAKER_00]: How do I feel about it?
- 38:50[SPEAKER_00]: I think the story is all this time.
- 38:52[SPEAKER_00]: It's just been done to all and most indigenous people and reading on Vietnam and stuff.
- 39:02[SPEAKER_00]: And then they say that we are supposedly one of the oldest and most rooted indigenous part of Southeast Asia of people and we haven't been
- 39:14[SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, we haven't been like two mixed, two crazy.
- 39:17[SPEAKER_00]: So our language and everything is like the most indigenous part.
- 39:21[SPEAKER_00]: That's why our language is kind of crazy.
- 39:23[SPEAKER_00]: So your question of is black teeth savage, right?
- 39:27[SPEAKER_00]: For us at that time, obviously, that's not right, because that's our own thing, right?
- 39:31[SPEAKER_00]: But say, when the Western people came to conquer the native savage of America, or the people trying to conquer the native savage of the samurai, to push on to modern times, they call the savages
- 39:44[SPEAKER_00]: you know, because we didn't believe in that way, right?
- 39:48[SPEAKER_00]: We still wanted to hunt.
- 39:50[SPEAKER_00]: We still wanted to believe in the things we believed in, right, where they had guns and modern science and stuff like that.
- 39:56[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and we didn't have like literature and education and things like that.
- 39:59[SPEAKER_00]: So we just considered savages.
- 40:01[SPEAKER_00]: So that was just a cultural practice I would say.
- 40:05[SPEAKER_00]: And then on in the eyes of you know, the people who are trying to convert you to whatever
- 40:15[SPEAKER_00]: I'm proud to be savage, don't you?
- 40:18[SPEAKER_01]: I joke about this, because I get public lectures sometimes about ancient Vietnam and how the folks in the Red River Valley, from the point of view of central China, they reviewed as the southernmost barbarians.
- 40:32[SPEAKER_01]: But it is not only there, but everywhere else around the Chinese core area in the Korean peninsula, in areas of Australia, they're all barbarians too.
- 40:41[SPEAKER_01]: So because of my ancestry, my dad is Korean, my mom is Vietnamese, I'm 100% barbarian.
- 40:47[SPEAKER_01]: That's the running joke, right?
- 40:48[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's how they viewed everyone around them.
- 40:52[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, the communities around them didn't view themselves as well as savage, they were the people for themselves.
- 41:03[SPEAKER_02]: think about the loss of like the art of the black tea, Domsen art is not really practice anymore, is it?
- 41:13[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's coming back.
- 41:14[SPEAKER_00]: I think Vietnam, like Vietnam, the country itself, is very leaning into Dung's signature.
- 41:19[SPEAKER_00]: I think it, I think a few years back, someone from Vietnam was talking to me about it, and they said because there was some type of protest against China, and they tried to kind of,
- 41:30[SPEAKER_00]: kind of boycott like Chinese influence stuff so they leaned into don't some stuff yeah I think it was about the the China Sea Island area for sure something like that so they're like oh We're trying to ease in the parasol I am I mean, but you know look I'm not
- 41:43[SPEAKER_02]: knocking on don't sun yes you know you and i have this uh... colored we have this ongoing dialogue uh... about pride in our heritage and i don't constantly going at it and uh... one day you will all see this play out yes you'll see this up there at least around one round one of this play out
- 42:04[SPEAKER_02]: When I think of Domson, the only thing that I think of is the crane and the bronze drum.
- 42:10[SPEAKER_02]: What else?
- 42:11[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, as an artist and as the OG guys that are like really visually.
- 42:17[SPEAKER_02]: And then he's in the dirt with it, right?
- 42:19[SPEAKER_02]: He's an archaeologist that I'm dug up to stuff.
- 42:22[SPEAKER_02]: What else is there?
- 42:23[SPEAKER_02]: And the pattern.
- 42:24[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 42:25[SPEAKER_01]: What?
- 42:25[SPEAKER_01]: I love to ask you.
- 42:26[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
- 42:28[SPEAKER_01]: This sort of, you mentioned this sort of revival, right, of the motifs, I'd like to know more about that because I've been seeing it.
- 42:37[SPEAKER_01]: I've been seeing it in Vietnam.
- 42:39[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I see it in architecture.
- 42:42[SPEAKER_01]: I see it depicted everywhere.
- 42:44[SPEAKER_01]: different kinds of motifs from the don't sun period, where we have not only the crane, but we have all kinds of geometric designs that are now put on everything.
- 42:54[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen on sneakers in Vietnam.
- 42:56[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, no, no.
- 42:58[SPEAKER_01]: So this is all kind of new to me.
- 42:59[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, like, how pervasive is that?
- 43:03[SPEAKER_01]: And do we see it here, state side?
- 43:07[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, yeah, uh, so I can look at the dung sum drum, yeah, and I can actually read the drum.
- 43:15[SPEAKER_01]: You can.
- 43:15[SPEAKER_00]: I can look at each individual motif.
- 43:17[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 43:17[SPEAKER_00]: And I can tell you what those motifs mean and what they are and why it's going in the certain direction.
- 43:21[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 43:21[SPEAKER_00]: I could tell you the symbolism of it.
- 43:23[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you what it was kind of for the kind of figure out what it was for.
- 43:27[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly it was a musical instrument.
- 43:28[SPEAKER_00]: It was also like a trade tool of like, uh,
- 43:31[SPEAKER_00]: you know, of a simple and status, you were probably a chief or someone very important.
- 43:35[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 43:35[SPEAKER_02]: Um, feeding all this stuff into a church of each, you don't count, right?
- 43:40[SPEAKER_00]: I am a church of each.
- 43:41[SPEAKER_01]: You've been studying it for decades, right?
- 43:43[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
- 43:44[SPEAKER_00]: And then any done some picture that you've seen in an archeological book in whatever magazine and whatever thing.
- 43:50[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 43:50[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen in person.
- 43:51[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 43:52[SPEAKER_00]: I've gone to Vietnam and I've gone and searched for these images and the weapons and the armor and the clothing and the, you know, I mean,
- 44:01[SPEAKER_00]: Where, where did you go?
- 44:01[SPEAKER_00]: I was in Hanoi.
- 44:02[SPEAKER_00]: So Hanoi has far more historical and cultural data than a side gone.
- 44:05[SPEAKER_00]: I got to stop you real quick, short.
- 44:06[SPEAKER_00]: Before you think crazy, this is the guy that dug all this stuff up from day one.
- 44:10[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
- 44:18[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
- 44:18[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
- 44:19[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
- 44:20[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
- 44:21[SPEAKER_01]: I dig it.
- 44:22[SPEAKER_01]: I have been for a couple of decades, but I've not been working on across all of them, so in kinds of archeological contexts.
- 44:31[SPEAKER_01]: So this is great to hear.
- 44:32[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you've been to the Dung sum museum in Hanoi, the historic history museum.
- 44:38[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 44:39[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 44:39[SPEAKER_00]: And then they just have its empty.
- 44:40[SPEAKER_00]: No one's there.
- 44:41[SPEAKER_00]: Like looking at stuff.
- 44:42[SPEAKER_00]: But it goes back into like,
- 44:45[SPEAKER_00]: from cave man days into the evolution of Vietnamese man into the weaving the ceramics, the patterns.
- 44:52[SPEAKER_00]: So just like say Polynesian tattoos and stuff like that, each stroke each line has a symbolism.
- 44:57[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 44:57[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is all symbolism, right?
- 44:59[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's just a lot of people maybe have opinions on what each thing means, but say like the sun, right?
- 45:08[SPEAKER_00]: The big, the middle is like a sun.
- 45:09[SPEAKER_00]: And where the people of the sun, if you cross that with Egyptian, right?
- 45:12[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like
- 45:14[SPEAKER_00]: are window to our ancestors, right?
- 45:16[SPEAKER_00]: That's son.
- 45:18[SPEAKER_01]: I have some specific questions for you.
- 45:20[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
- 45:21[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
- 45:21[SPEAKER_01]: So, okay.
- 45:22[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 45:24[SPEAKER_01]: Let's start with the sun.
- 45:25[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
- 45:25[SPEAKER_01]: The motif of that sun burst, right, is something that my impression is that that's very related to the don't sound.
- 45:33[SPEAKER_01]: It's very connected and it's very sort of unique.
- 45:38[SPEAKER_01]: because so echoed law where my colleagues and I have been doing archaeological work for a couple decades now.
- 45:45[SPEAKER_01]: There is a certain class of materials, the roof tiles, ceramic roof tiles, that we find everywhere at the site.
- 45:52[SPEAKER_01]: So buildings were probably using ceramic roof tiles and this is in contrast to the other kinds of architectural features we might see associated with Domestine communities.
- 46:04[SPEAKER_01]: But what's curious about this is the use of roof tiles comes from the north.
- 46:10[SPEAKER_01]: There are traditions of roof tile that go back many, many generations prior to when we see it in Goloa.
- 46:16[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the only place in Northern Vietnam at that time that you have any evidence of roof tiles.
- 46:21[SPEAKER_01]: Everything else comes later.
- 46:22[SPEAKER_01]: So Goloa is sort of unique in that aspect.
- 46:25[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things that's interesting is, even though you see roof tiles in China and in Northern Vietnam, some people make the argument, well, maybe it's because the Chinese came, they built this stuff, they introduced
- 46:37[SPEAKER_01]: but the examples that we have predate the pacification period when the general comes in.
- 46:45[SPEAKER_01]: Not only that, but the rooftiles have different motifs.
- 46:48[SPEAKER_01]: On the Chinese versions, the NCAPs often have other kinds of depictions and they have synthetic writing.
- 46:56[SPEAKER_01]: the ones that called a lot do not have that.
- 46:58[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, the few examples that we have have the sun burst on it.
- 47:02[SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things that we find very interesting is it seems to be they're using this foreign practice of showing nobility or royal capitals, but they are modifying it, they're appropriating it and they're putting their stamp on it.
- 47:16[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm curious, that star motif.
- 47:20[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, this is a very long question.
- 47:23[SPEAKER_01]: How pervasive is that?
- 47:24[SPEAKER_00]: And we're doing by pervasive.
- 47:26[SPEAKER_01]: So, we obviously have it with the bronzes, especially the drums.
- 47:33[SPEAKER_01]: Is that something we see elsewhere as well?
- 47:35[SPEAKER_01]: You know, other parts of Southeast Asia are parts of China?
- 47:37[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yes.
- 47:38[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
- 47:39[SPEAKER_00]: So they had dung sum and bronze ages, um, you know, in our neighboring, um, countries, right?
- 47:46[SPEAKER_00]: Like Cambodia, Laos, China, too.
- 47:48[SPEAKER_00]: China has their own dung sum, like drum, similar, right?
- 47:51[SPEAKER_00]: But they don't call it dung sum.
- 47:52[SPEAKER_00]: They don't call it that, but it's, it's pretty much the same thing.
- 47:54[SPEAKER_01]: It's similar.
- 47:54[SPEAKER_00]: But just like different motifs and a different style.
- 47:57[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, even some of them like kind of look even like Persian and some of them are like very Chinese even if you look at the dung some list Right, there's like 3,400 dung sums.
- 48:06[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right and but everyone just uses the specific one because that was the most fancy looking right in there's 3,400 of some there's 3,400 different versions of it
- 48:16[SPEAKER_00]: the bronzes.
- 48:17[SPEAKER_00]: The bronzstrom.
- 48:17[SPEAKER_00]: The drums.
- 48:18[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 48:18[SPEAKER_00]: There's not one drum.
- 48:19[SPEAKER_00]: You see one drum.
- 48:20[SPEAKER_00]: So like that drum and then the one in the middle of the jewelry thing, the one that people mostly use.
- 48:25[SPEAKER_00]: There's one famous drum that everyone uses.
- 48:27[SPEAKER_00]: But that is historically that was found in the north.
- 48:30[SPEAKER_00]: So that doesn't represent all the drums.
- 48:32[SPEAKER_00]: So all these drums were found in the burial sites, right?
- 48:34[SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of people were buried with it as well.
- 48:36[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't necessarily mean that's where that drum was made, but that is where that drum was buried.
- 48:40[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to end it up.
- 48:41[SPEAKER_01]: So there, my understanding is in northern Vietnam alone, in Macbo.
- 48:45[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, a lot more.
- 48:46[SPEAKER_01]: There have been at least 200 specimens, bronze drums found, of that size.
- 48:52[SPEAKER_01]: But there are miniature bronze drums.
- 48:54[SPEAKER_01]: There are bronze drums that have been found throughout island Southeast Asia.
- 48:57[SPEAKER_01]: Indonesia, Malaysia, elsewhere, Thailand, in the mainland.
- 49:03[SPEAKER_01]: But then the highest concentrations, though, are in backbone, right, where the red river ends, and then up in Yunnan.
- 49:12[SPEAKER_01]: So you were talking about the Chinese.
- 49:14[SPEAKER_01]: So up in Yunnan, where the red river starts, we have the highest concentrations of drums, bronze drums.
- 49:20[SPEAKER_01]: But they're not exactly the same.
- 49:22[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're a lot of
- 49:24[SPEAKER_01]: But this is interesting, so I guess my question about the motif that is, for the ones that are found, for example, in Unon.
- 49:31[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember, or do you know if they also have the star?
- 49:34[SPEAKER_00]: I believe they do.
- 49:35[SPEAKER_00]: I believe they do.
- 49:36[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very similar styles.
- 49:38[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
- 49:40[SPEAKER_00]: And then, some are more complicated.
- 49:41[SPEAKER_00]: Some are even 3D.
- 49:42[SPEAKER_00]: They have like 3D models that stand on top as well.
- 49:45[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
- 49:46[SPEAKER_00]: There are big greens.
- 49:47[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like some of them have like, well, like frogs.
- 49:49[SPEAKER_00]: like all the way around or and then some of them have people so they have like one where it's like people like kind of doing daily life stuff and it's like 3D sculpture right of that right sitting on top of the tip of them yeah but also looks kind of Persian to me or like like almost Middle Eastern as well so it's like so like the dunk some not one say that's like the bronze age practice was obviously practice you know everywhere you know so there's a lot of similarities to that time but ours is specifically ours
- 50:17[SPEAKER_01]: You know, have another question.
- 50:18[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, yes.
- 50:20[SPEAKER_01]: So depicted on many of these drums or many of the bronzes are scenes, like we talked about.
- 50:25[SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes this tilted buildings, people doing various kinds of activities, maybe rituals.
- 50:31[SPEAKER_01]: We also see boats, and we see the boats.
- 50:35[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes with what more boats appear to be rating parties, right?
- 50:38[SPEAKER_01]: These are individuals that are armed, clearly.
- 50:42[SPEAKER_00]: They might have captives.
- 50:42[SPEAKER_00]: They do have captives, yeah.
- 50:44[SPEAKER_01]: And some spears, the spears, bows and arrows, maybe even drums on the boats.
- 50:50[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I've heard is some people suggest that some of the worries might be holding not only spears, but what might be heads?
- 50:59[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
- 51:00[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to ask you about this.
- 51:02[SPEAKER_01]: Is that your interpretation?
- 51:04[SPEAKER_01]: These heads that are being collected and is this indicative of a head hunting project?
- 51:07[SPEAKER_00]: If you see some of my heart, then I will have, I will have skulls for head hunting.
- 51:13[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
- 51:13[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because, you know, indigently, you know, it only makes sense that we were killing each other and chopping heads and collecting heads and then probably eating each other too.
- 51:21[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I mean, like, but who didn't eat each other back then?
- 51:23[SPEAKER_01]: I gotta ask you, what is this based on?
- 51:25[SPEAKER_01]: So, we can see, I know, within Southeast Asia, there are head hunting practices, and they're described by ethnohistoric records.
- 51:35[SPEAKER_01]: There are communities that still practice into recent times, head hunting.
- 51:41[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what I'm curious about is, how do we know that this extends back into that period of time?
- 51:47[SPEAKER_01]: So we're talking about, you know, going back to me in a couple thousand years, right?
- 51:51[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I think, I didn't have any proof.
- 51:54[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can't think of any proof.
- 51:55[SPEAKER_00]: But I was just thinking like, it was best practice.
- 51:59[SPEAKER_00]: It was common practice amongst that time and that type of tribe and indigenous ways, right?
- 52:05[SPEAKER_00]: And then same thing where,
- 52:07[SPEAKER_00]: I deducted like all the stuff you see like in the art for Dung's some culture of warrior women think you know a lot of the stuff I derived is from cross referencing it from other similar cultures okay and then same thing with like the feather dresses and the dancing and then the the music and the the big flutes and the the whole ceremony so yeah you see the Dung's some that's that's a ceremony yeah right people dancing playing music warriors yeah feather dancers very native
- 52:36[SPEAKER_00]: I feathered answers, right?
- 52:38[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just looked at the materials that were there, I provided, and then cross referencing it with all the other stuff.
- 52:44[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
- 52:45[SPEAKER_00]: So I just think the head hunting thing was in best practice.
- 52:48[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I might have read it somewhere.
- 52:51[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.
- 52:52[SPEAKER_01]: I've read about interpretations.
- 52:55[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 52:55[SPEAKER_00]: But actual proof, I don't.
- 52:56[SPEAKER_01]: So, as an archaeologist, we're always looking for the material evidence to support assertions that we might have.
- 53:07[SPEAKER_01]: We might have.
- 53:08[SPEAKER_01]: So, if the theories are related to certain practices like head hunting, we can see it potentially.
- 53:16[SPEAKER_01]: If I don't have the human remains that show that kind of trauma, right, and that kind of practice, the more evidence I have, the stronger the assertion could be or the conclusion.
- 53:26[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why I'm curious if besides the motifs, what else do people rely on to make that that conclusion?
- 53:33[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing I also have an opinion on as an artist right as an artist.
- 53:37[SPEAKER_00]: We want to have creative freedom, right?
- 53:39[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 53:39[SPEAKER_00]: We want to have creative freedom or else we just be doing the same thing as we did once upon a time, right?
- 53:43[SPEAKER_00]: recipes never changed, art never changed, nothing changes, imagery never changes.
- 53:47[SPEAKER_00]: So I also feel that those artisans at that time also had their own creative freedom as well too.
- 53:53[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't even know if it's just imagination or how they felt what was cool.
- 53:58[SPEAKER_00]: Just because they did it then doesn't mean that was true from what it was anyway.
- 54:01[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's, it was their own interpretation through them, through God, through manifest, through whatever it is, through psychedelics, through, you know, I mean, and it could just be depictions.
- 54:10[SPEAKER_00]: It could be depictions of what they felt or what they heard from another tribesmen or another martyred to see or to be a story that are being a story.
- 54:17[SPEAKER_00]: And especially those times myths and everything is in storytelling was everything, right?
- 54:22[SPEAKER_00]: And everything told a story and I feel that, you know,
- 54:26[SPEAKER_00]: As an artist today that I also want to express how I feel how this could be and I could take it and I can manipulate it the way I want you to represent it on how I want to raise a represent Dunk sum culture or Dunk sum art, you know, I didn't want to stay true to the thing and just do one on one because I don't think they did that either I don't think any artist did that at that time period just because it's all doesn't mean it was good or right.
- 54:47[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that's just my opinion.
- 54:48[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so there are different possibilities for why they were capturing whatever imagery and putting it onto these permanent media.
- 54:56[SPEAKER_01]: Was it a form of communication?
- 54:58[SPEAKER_01]: Was it a form of historical recording?
- 55:01[SPEAKER_01]: Was it a ritual itself?
- 55:03[SPEAKER_01]: Did it represent some kind of spiritual reason that you would capture this moment and depict it?
- 55:07[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, all of these are possible.
- 55:09[SPEAKER_01]: And we can't know for sure because we can't talk to them and ask them why they did it.
- 55:13[SPEAKER_00]: Well, most, I mean, for talking about the Dung
- 55:17[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 55:18[SPEAKER_00]: It's a drum and then one of them, I think you can see it from one of my drawings right there.
- 55:22[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
- 55:23[SPEAKER_00]: There's a guy standing in the middle of what looks like to be a house.
- 55:26[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 55:26[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks like there's a bunch of circles around it.
- 55:28[SPEAKER_00]: And those, some people have interpreted that as those are as drums.
- 55:31[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 55:32[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a stage.
- 55:33[SPEAKER_00]: And people are drumming on a stage.
- 55:35[SPEAKER_00]: So, and I think that's the symbology of a lot of it is like the celebration.
- 55:41[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
- 55:43[SPEAKER_00]: The main ones has like that celebration and the people going in the in the circle and dancing and stuff like that.
- 55:47[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, is that as human beings at our core We love dancing around a fire to the beat of a drum while eating a feast, right?
- 55:55[SPEAKER_00]: That's why music festivals do well.
- 55:56[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's why all of it right just going around to the beat of the drum Yeah, and communal with your people eating drinking and doing psychedelics It's in it's very likely that a lot of the oral traditions the legends that's how they got passed on
- 56:09[SPEAKER_01]: like through memory, through song and dance, they were performed.
- 56:13[SPEAKER_01]: So they weren't necessarily written down, but the stories about the ancestors might have been captured that way, and that passed through generations, and eventually they get written down.
- 56:22[SPEAKER_01]: So we have access to them from later sources, but how they are recorded and transmitted over time could be just as reliable because they are memorized in those sorts of forms.
- 56:33[SPEAKER_01]: There's a sort of western bias that histories only true because we write it down, but that's that's not true.
- 56:39[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 56:39[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
- 56:40[SPEAKER_01]: There are other ways to transmit information.
- 56:42[SPEAKER_02]: Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are wrapping up right now and I want to think.
- 56:59[SPEAKER_02]: in the studio here at Littersegon official and having you just drop in and talking about building sun and having you talk about tattooing and you know we come for the black teeth but we stay for the drum.
- 57:11[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you both.
- 57:12[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
- 57:13[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pleasure.
- 57:14[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
- 57:14[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
- 57:15[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
- 57:18[SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
- 57:26[SPEAKER_02]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.