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Selects: How Cave Dwellers Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Are you a cave dweller? I have been caving, and
0:04
Speaker 1: luckily I went caving before I did this podcast on
0:07
Speaker 1: how cave dwellers work from February, because I gotta tell you,
0:12
Speaker 1: if I had done this podcast first, I probably would
0:15
Speaker 1: not have ventured into that cave. Very scary stuff down there.
0:18
Speaker 1: Everyone check it out and be aware. Welcome to stuff
0:27
Speaker 1: you should know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
0:35
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:37
Speaker 1: chills to Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there, so it's
0:40
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Wow, it's the same energetic edition
0:46
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it's cold. I'm energized by
0:49
Speaker 1: the cold, energized and like just a little Yeah, so
0:54
Speaker 1: you're not energized, that is what we're saying. I'm a
0:57
Speaker 1: little innersized. I feel like I'm I'm fine. Right. Why
1:00
Speaker 1: do you say that because he's sound like you're sleepwalking.
1:03
Speaker 1: Oh really? Yeah? Oh I thought I was just speaking fast.
1:06
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I thought that's why you're being sarcastic.
1:10
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to everybody who's sitting through this right now.
1:12
Speaker 1: So I'm down in the dumps. You are right, Yeah, no,
1:14
Speaker 1: I'm fine, okay, I'm just it's the cold. It's a
1:17
Speaker 1: little dreary outside of Today's the day it finally started
1:20
Speaker 1: to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes, Um,
1:24
Speaker 1: Emily is ready for spring. I'm like, it's you know,
1:26
Speaker 1: it's January. She said, no, no, but it's Georgia, so
1:29
Speaker 1: we could have spring in a few weeks. It's true.
1:30
Speaker 1: We kind of had it yesterday. Um. You mean. And
1:33
Speaker 1: I have been making these little bird feeders, like with
1:36
Speaker 1: cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been
1:39
Speaker 1: trying to get the physics of it down to hang
1:41
Speaker 1: them so that the birds can like land on them there,
1:44
Speaker 1: so I incorporate twigs and these things. They can spend
1:48
Speaker 1: a little time there. Yeah. And there's this, um, a
1:50
Speaker 1: little s ob of a squirrel that has my porch
1:53
Speaker 1: all figured out, and it keeps like getting these whole
1:56
Speaker 1: bird feeder cakes. And I realized, like I'm spending a
2:00
Speaker 1: lot of time like trying to thwart this squirrel figure
2:03
Speaker 1: out the physics of bird feed and I'm like, yeah,
2:05
Speaker 1: I'm ready for spreaking. Yeah, we have one of those
2:08
Speaker 1: cake holders for birds, but it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah,
2:12
Speaker 1: and they eat it in like a day. Yeah. This
2:15
Speaker 1: this squirrel can eat several cakes and it makes a mess. Yeah,
2:19
Speaker 1: all right, Cave Dwelling. I can't remember I've I've asked
2:23
Speaker 1: you before, but I don't know if you've seen it,
2:25
Speaker 1: um since I asked you, because you hadn't. A Cave
2:27
Speaker 1: of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzel. No I watched, well,
2:32
Speaker 1: I watched like twenty minutes of it this morning just
2:35
Speaker 1: to get the gist. You got the gist in twenty minutes. Well,
2:38
Speaker 1: I can't wait to watch the whole thing though. It's
2:40
Speaker 1: pretty much that. Yeah, but I don't want to watch it. Well,
2:43
Speaker 1: yeah you should. It's neat. The whole thing's neat from
2:45
Speaker 1: beginning to end. But I mean like it's a I
2:49
Speaker 1: think maybe a two hour long documentary. Yeah, on a cave. Yeah.
2:54
Speaker 1: In the cave art, it's phenomenal. Yeah, I know the
2:57
Speaker 1: one in uh well they're both in France, right, Yeah.
3:01
Speaker 1: The one that gets the most press is the last
3:05
Speaker 1: Last Go, which is great, but this one, to me,
3:07
Speaker 1: the art is better. Well, Alasco gets lord pressed because
3:10
Speaker 1: it was discovered in nineteen forty, this one that weren't
3:13
Speaker 1: Herzog did a documentary only discovered in year old art.
3:19
Speaker 1: It's amazing, Yeah, it is, and it's all spectacularly preserved.
3:22
Speaker 1: One of the benefits of discovering lastco in nineteen forty
3:26
Speaker 1: was that when Chauves Cave, the one that was discovered
3:29
Speaker 1: in ninety four it's even older, was discovered, we'd already
3:33
Speaker 1: figured out a lot of stuff along the way and
3:35
Speaker 1: how to preserve it right, right, so we could go
3:37
Speaker 1: in there and sort of TCB. Yeah, you need to
3:40
Speaker 1: cut down on the carbon dioxide that people are breathing
3:42
Speaker 1: out herzog in there. Yeah. Um, you need to cut
3:45
Speaker 1: down on flashes flash photography, because apparently flashes really do degrade.
3:51
Speaker 1: There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments um,
3:57
Speaker 1: and it's basically like releasing the sub light over the
4:01
Speaker 1: course of a few milliseconds. Makes sense, that's one flash,
4:04
Speaker 1: but if you add up all the tourists over the years,
4:07
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially
4:09
Speaker 1: into this cave and it's degrading the pigment. So there's
4:12
Speaker 1: also sorts of stuff we learned from Lascow Cave that's
4:16
Speaker 1: not being applied to Chouve Cave. Um, but yes, it
4:19
Speaker 1: is older, it is more awesome. And the very evidence
4:22
Speaker 1: of old cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones
4:26
Speaker 1: that are found in caves would suggest that there, in
4:30
Speaker 1: some distant past of prehistory was a race of hominids
4:35
Speaker 1: that were cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of
4:38
Speaker 1: cave dwellers. Yeah, that must be correct, right, ringo star. Yeah,
4:42
Speaker 1: I saw the movie Caveman or was that a documentary?
4:46
Speaker 1: What's in a movie? Yeah, you're thinking of Quest for Fire. Yeah,
4:50
Speaker 1: well those are all great movies. Plan at the Cave Bear,
4:52
Speaker 1: But well I was setting you up and you you
4:54
Speaker 1: didn't Well no, okay, thank is the answer. Um. They
5:00
Speaker 1: now believe that, uh, people through different periods of ancient
5:05
Speaker 1: history have dwelled in caves at times that probably didn't
5:10
Speaker 1: like set up permanent residents in caves. Yeah. And the
5:12
Speaker 1: big pivotal evidence of this is that the people who
5:17
Speaker 1: would have supposedly lived in caves at that time were
5:19
Speaker 1: all nomadic hunter gatherers. They wouldn't have been stationary for
5:23
Speaker 1: in any kind of dwelling. Yeah, they gotta go out
5:26
Speaker 1: and find the meat, right, So there was no such
5:28
Speaker 1: thing as a species of hominid that you could say
5:31
Speaker 1: our caveman. Those were the caveman. All the other ones
5:34
Speaker 1: just lived. However, most of the people who are alive
5:37
Speaker 1: in what we're talking about the Paleolithic era, which went
5:40
Speaker 1: back from about two million years ago all the way
5:42
Speaker 1: up to about ten thousand years ago. That's the Paleolithic
5:45
Speaker 1: era um where they lived in all sorts of different
5:50
Speaker 1: kinds of shelters, caves being one of them. Yeah. Uh.
5:55
Speaker 1: One reason to go into a cave is obviously it's
5:58
Speaker 1: gonna and we've covered this is I think our third Yeah,
6:01
Speaker 1: the cave Sweet Cave Sweet, Yeah, biospeleology, which is awesome sloking. Yeah,
6:07
Speaker 1: and then this one cave cave. Followers who thought that
6:10
Speaker 1: we would do the three part series on caves, ever, well,
6:13
Speaker 1: and this covers cave arts such that this will probably
6:15
Speaker 1: be it. Don't you think? Is there anything else? I
6:18
Speaker 1: can't cave anything? No, not really, Nick Cave. Maybe we
6:21
Speaker 1: can podcast on him. Um. So some reasons to go
6:25
Speaker 1: into a cave to begin with, obviously is to protect
6:27
Speaker 1: yourself from the weather. I think it's probably the leading
6:32
Speaker 1: it's raining, let's go inside that room. It's not raining
6:35
Speaker 1: in the cave. Um to protect yourself from animals, because
6:38
Speaker 1: if you go back and listen to our biospeleology, only
6:41
Speaker 1: certain animals are in caves, very few and not a
6:43
Speaker 1: lot of like you know, big nasty man eaters, although
6:47
Speaker 1: back then they would have run in the cave bears
6:49
Speaker 1: clan at the cave Bear. I don't know if sabretooth
6:51
Speaker 1: tigers were cave dwellers, but I've seen a lot of
6:53
Speaker 1: Flintstone episodes and from what I understand they do, they
6:57
Speaker 1: did go into caves. Of course, you run into the
7:01
Speaker 1: proteus salamander, which you would not want to run into.
7:03
Speaker 1: Remember the three ft long eyelis salamander. Remember white nightmares
7:08
Speaker 1: like once a week. Yeah, I don't think you'd do
7:10
Speaker 1: anything to you, but man alive. Yeah, I wouldn't want
7:13
Speaker 1: to see that thing, Like you wake up looking face
7:15
Speaker 1: to face with that eyelis monster. Yeah. Yeah, but um,
7:19
Speaker 1: protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other
7:24
Speaker 1: people wasn't really a big reason. Because this is good
7:26
Speaker 1: to know. I think I kind of got along and
7:28
Speaker 1: help each other in general. Yeah, there's something called paleolithic warlessness. Yeah,
7:33
Speaker 1: like the concept of war, organized war is apparently only
7:39
Speaker 1: maybe twelve to sixteen thousand, eighteen thousand, maybe years old.
7:44
Speaker 1: I think probably once people started getting comfy as when
7:46
Speaker 1: they started wanting to fight each other. Back then, they
7:48
Speaker 1: were just trying to survive. Yeah, you know, well there's
7:50
Speaker 1: a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what
7:55
Speaker 1: led to warfare. What what that guy's got exactly? Yeah, yeah,
7:58
Speaker 1: it's basically and lead to surpluses. So people fared over surplus.
8:02
Speaker 1: You're starving over here, and they've got all this grain
8:04
Speaker 1: over here, so you go kill all those people and
8:06
Speaker 1: take the grain. We should do a history of war.
8:08
Speaker 1: That'd be good. Well, that would be good. But there
8:11
Speaker 1: were obviously there were scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean,
8:13
Speaker 1: it wasn't all like one in Roses. You tried getting
8:17
Speaker 1: along with Ron Livingston now it's not his name. Oh
8:23
Speaker 1: everybody gets along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right, yeah,
8:27
Speaker 1: you know the other guy. Yeah, Um, that's a pretty
8:32
Speaker 1: good mess up. There were scraps every now and then,
8:35
Speaker 1: like obviously over you know, territory or food or fire.
8:39
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with
8:41
Speaker 1: this tribe. We don't like them, or we want what
8:44
Speaker 1: they've got, because I mean the consensus among anthropologists apparently
8:48
Speaker 1: is that war is relatively recent. It's not that ancient.
8:52
Speaker 1: It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the
8:53
Speaker 1: cave art we run into. Yeah years, so, um, you've
8:59
Speaker 1: got shelter from the elements, protection from animals, um, nice
9:05
Speaker 1: steady temperature as we that's a big one. Yeah, because
9:08
Speaker 1: the cave typically is about in the fifties fifties degrees
9:12
Speaker 1: fahrenheight um round. Yeah. So if you are in a
9:17
Speaker 1: cave and you're living there and it's summertime, you are
9:19
Speaker 1: sitting pretty If it's winter time, depending on where you are,
9:23
Speaker 1: so you're in northern Europe, you're still sitting pretty. Sure.
9:26
Speaker 1: All you have to do is build a little bit
9:27
Speaker 1: of a fire and I hope you don't smoke yourself out,
9:31
Speaker 1: and you are, you're you're in some climate controlled luxury,
9:36
Speaker 1: especially for the Stone Age. You know, Uh. One reason
9:39
Speaker 1: that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something
9:42
Speaker 1: I learned when I went on my caving experience, which
9:44
Speaker 1: is detailed in the Spelunking episode, is that even though
9:48
Speaker 1: there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves are
9:50
Speaker 1: like great to live in. Like a lot of them
9:53
Speaker 1: you might walk right past because it's just a hole
9:55
Speaker 1: in the ground. You have no idea there's an underground cavern.
9:58
Speaker 1: A lot of them are inaccessible. Um, a lot of
10:01
Speaker 1: them have our active so that means they have water,
10:04
Speaker 1: which isn't super hospitable inactive cave. Yeah, it'll flood. Yeah,
10:10
Speaker 1: you don't want to be in there when it floods. Yeah,
10:12
Speaker 1: they're just not like generally, they're not like these huge
10:14
Speaker 1: cavernous like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well. Plus
10:17
Speaker 1: also there's a lot of gravel slopes which if you
10:20
Speaker 1: stand on them you can fall and die. You learn
10:23
Speaker 1: that pretty quick. Yeah, there's a cave dweller, lots of
10:25
Speaker 1: different exits and entrances and shafts and things like that.
10:28
Speaker 1: They can be misleading and confuse you and dark get
10:31
Speaker 1: you lost to your death. Yeah, apparently just a couple
10:34
Speaker 1: of dozen feet. I don't remember. There's the light zone,
10:37
Speaker 1: the twilight zone in the dark zone, and I don't
10:39
Speaker 1: remember where the twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins.
10:43
Speaker 1: But once that dark zone begins, there's no light, like
10:46
Speaker 1: no light and like you said, you can't just start
10:48
Speaker 1: a bunch of fires because you can die from smoking
10:52
Speaker 1: yourself out. Yeah, you can hit your head on stealag tights.
10:55
Speaker 1: That's true. So it's not the most common thing to
10:58
Speaker 1: find like a great cave for ten or twealth people
11:00
Speaker 1: to live in, But when they found them and they
11:03
Speaker 1: needed them, they would dwell in them, right and um. Again,
11:07
Speaker 1: that's one reason, for several reasons why people didn't just
11:10
Speaker 1: live in caves all the time. But another reason is
11:12
Speaker 1: because they knew of other ways to live. They could
11:15
Speaker 1: um stretch animal hides over of structures, they built um
11:19
Speaker 1: earth and dwellings where they would build like a lean
11:22
Speaker 1: to or something and then pack earth over it, which
11:24
Speaker 1: is another way to control the climate or temperature in
11:27
Speaker 1: that little dwelling. And again, they were nomadic. They were
11:30
Speaker 1: following herds of bison and mammoths and um. You know,
11:35
Speaker 1: it's a big, beautiful world too. Let's not forget Yeah, like,
11:38
Speaker 1: why would you want to go live in a cave
11:40
Speaker 1: your entire life when you've got the run of the
11:42
Speaker 1: place of planet Earth and all it has to offer.
11:46
Speaker 1: You know, if there was a hominid uh that could
11:50
Speaker 1: be considered cave dwellers though it would probably be the Neanderthals.
11:56
Speaker 1: As we understand right now, it wasn't too terribly long
11:58
Speaker 1: ago that we discover are the new species of UM
12:03
Speaker 1: human ancestor well, at least they were contemporary with modern humans.
12:08
Speaker 1: The dennis Ovans. Oh who is that? Um? They they
12:13
Speaker 1: were their type of hominid that lived in the thirty
12:19
Speaker 1: fifty thousand years ago at the latest, I think maybe.
12:23
Speaker 1: And um there's a cave in Croatia I believe where
12:28
Speaker 1: they discovered a moler and they thought, well, no, they
12:32
Speaker 1: discovered a finger bone and they thought it was Neanderthal
12:34
Speaker 1: ar human and they ran the DNA tests and they're like, uh,
12:38
Speaker 1: this is neither what is this? So they named it
12:41
Speaker 1: it's a Dennisova cave or dennis Cave, one of the two.
12:45
Speaker 1: And they named this new species of hominid a the
12:50
Speaker 1: dennis Ovans. And then they looked at the human genome
12:53
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, well, you apparently in our bred
12:55
Speaker 1: with them, because we have a little bit of dennis
12:58
Speaker 1: Ovan and all of us most of us. Yeah, people
13:01
Speaker 1: who UM stayed in Africa and didn't disperse like Neanderthals
13:06
Speaker 1: or other modern humans too, apparently didn't have the opportunity
13:11
Speaker 1: to mix with Dennis Ovans or Neanderthals. So typically people
13:15
Speaker 1: of European descent Native American descent, they will have Um
13:18
Speaker 1: Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But there's this cave in
13:22
Speaker 1: Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals, humans and Dennis Ovan's
13:27
Speaker 1: possibly shared these caves at the same time. Isn't that crazy?
13:30
Speaker 1: They Yeah, they didn't necessarily sit around a campfire with
13:33
Speaker 1: one another, but they they may have been using the
13:37
Speaker 1: cave within you know, the same year or something like that,
13:40
Speaker 1: depending on the season. I pictured them making s'mores and say,
13:44
Speaker 1: how do you get your back so straight? But I mean,
13:46
Speaker 1: think about it. If they were breeding, you know, then
13:50
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't those caves. Jerry either laughed at that
13:53
Speaker 1: or she's choking on something food or both. Perhaps. Uh So, Yeah,
13:58
Speaker 1: the Neanderthal was um all over Europe and during a
14:03
Speaker 1: glacial period, so obviously they've got harsh climates, so they
14:07
Speaker 1: might want to poke into a cave every now and
14:09
Speaker 1: then and warm up. Um. And there are a couple
14:12
Speaker 1: of strategies that archaeologists believe we're used back then. The
14:17
Speaker 1: circulating mobility and radiating mobility and circulating was um. And
14:22
Speaker 1: I kind of like this idea is had several temporary
14:25
Speaker 1: camps kind of scattered all over a region, and it's
14:27
Speaker 1: kind of like just having different homes and you would
14:30
Speaker 1: just go from place to place and live in your
14:31
Speaker 1: little home and hunt and gather. Uh. Or it's the
14:35
Speaker 1: same thing the ultra wealthy dude today exactly. Or radiating
14:39
Speaker 1: mobility was when you had one main camp and you
14:42
Speaker 1: would just go out as far as you could to
14:44
Speaker 1: hunt and gather from that camp. Right, so you had
14:46
Speaker 1: other shelters along the way. I don't know. I thought
14:49
Speaker 1: the radiating mobility was just the one camp and you
14:52
Speaker 1: came and went to that camp every day and that
14:55
Speaker 1: was the difference. Is that right, It's possible. I think
14:59
Speaker 1: that's right. Um. And apparently some of these camps were
15:02
Speaker 1: in fact caves at times, right, So they were using
15:06
Speaker 1: caves for sure. They were um doing something else too. Uh.
15:12
Speaker 1: They were creating art in these caves, boy were they?
15:15
Speaker 1: Which has people UM baffled. Alright, cave art and if
15:46
Speaker 1: you have in your mind a cave art is like
15:49
Speaker 1: super primitive, like you know, is that a buffalo or
15:52
Speaker 1: is that a giraffe? You should go just google the
15:56
Speaker 1: cave art in those two caves especially. Oh yeah, Calvette
16:00
Speaker 1: calve chave. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks
16:04
Speaker 1: about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is
16:07
Speaker 1: that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals.
16:14
Speaker 1: And um, they think they're they're wondering whether that was
16:16
Speaker 1: like intentional or not, and they think it probably was
16:19
Speaker 1: intentional before they make a little pounced interestingly. But it's
16:23
Speaker 1: like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah, when you
16:29
Speaker 1: look at the stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't discovered
16:33
Speaker 1: um perspective yet, so it's all flat, two dimensional. But um,
16:40
Speaker 1: first of all, they're creating these things in utter dark
16:42
Speaker 1: by torchlight. Yeah, using earthen pigments like ochre for yellows
16:48
Speaker 1: and oranges, Um, charcoal, charcoal for black was the red one.
16:53
Speaker 1: I think for red they used iron oxide and they
16:57
Speaker 1: used charcoal and manganese for they're using very very primitive
17:03
Speaker 1: brushes in the dictionary sense of the word, yeah, or
17:08
Speaker 1: there early airbrush artists essentially, because they're blowing this pigment
17:13
Speaker 1: through a h a tube, a tube or just out
17:18
Speaker 1: of their mouth right onto the walls. Yeah. Uh, and
17:21
Speaker 1: then they're also using their hands and their fingers. But
17:23
Speaker 1: you're right, man, there are some especially when you take
17:27
Speaker 1: all of this into consideration. Yeah, it makes some of
17:30
Speaker 1: the art that was made just staggering. Yeah. Apparently they
17:33
Speaker 1: would use to some of the uh texture of the
17:36
Speaker 1: cave itself, like if there was a an indentation or
17:39
Speaker 1: not an indentation, but what's hopps has been indentation. Yeah,
17:43
Speaker 1: there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn.
17:46
Speaker 1: They would incorporate that as the rhino horn, and all
17:49
Speaker 1: of a sudden you had I mean, it's not quite
17:52
Speaker 1: three D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah. Right,
17:56
Speaker 1: you know they're like, it's not perspective, but it's gonna
17:58
Speaker 1: have to do. Uh. They now have evidence in some
18:03
Speaker 1: of these thirty thousand year old caves of scaffolding. I
18:07
Speaker 1: hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty cool, and um principles
18:11
Speaker 1: of stenciling, early principles of stenciling. And apparently when uh
18:16
Speaker 1: Picasso visited lescal he said to his guide, they've invented everything,
18:23
Speaker 1: and he was just like blown away. Yeah, basically like
18:26
Speaker 1: I'm just copying these early hominids. It's pretty amazing. It's
18:29
Speaker 1: about right too. Yeah, and actually I don't know Picasso's
18:33
Speaker 1: all right, but some of these caves they haven't beat
18:38
Speaker 1: They didn't look funny, they didn't have one eye, and
18:40
Speaker 1: they didn't wear braiths. Um So, most of the subjects
18:44
Speaker 1: of cave paintings that have been discovered so far, and
18:48
Speaker 1: there could be tons and tons of undiscovered caves, like
18:52
Speaker 1: the one at Chauves wasn't discovered until because at some
18:56
Speaker 1: point in the past a rock fall happened and closed
19:00
Speaker 1: the cave off to view and was just happened to
19:03
Speaker 1: be discovered by some hikers. Man, can you imagine being
19:06
Speaker 1: the person that discovered that. It would have been pretty cool.
19:10
Speaker 1: Um So, most of the cave art that has been
19:14
Speaker 1: discovered so far, it depicts herd animals. Yeah, animals, by
19:20
Speaker 1: and large, there herd animals. They're bison, their buffalo, their um, mammoths,
19:25
Speaker 1: things like that. Um. There's very few images of vegetation,
19:31
Speaker 1: very few images of humans. The images of humans there
19:34
Speaker 1: are tend to be things like fertility idols, like female
19:37
Speaker 1: fertility idols, And there's a theory out there that those
19:41
Speaker 1: were painted by adolescent boys. Yeah, as like basically early
19:46
Speaker 1: you know, club magazine or something. And uh, that may
19:50
Speaker 1: or may not be correct, especially when they found that
19:53
Speaker 1: in France and Spain a lot and possibly the majority
19:57
Speaker 1: of cave art was done by females. They recently discovered
20:01
Speaker 1: you know, the hand ones handprints, they figured out recently
20:04
Speaker 1: that most of those are female hands because of the
20:08
Speaker 1: they they give away of the sixth finger, that only females. That. Um,
20:14
Speaker 1: there's an article that I can recommend that actually is
20:17
Speaker 1: what inspired Berner Hertzog to make his documentary called First Impressions. Uh.
20:22
Speaker 1: It was in the New Yorker in two thousand eight
20:24
Speaker 1: by Judith Thurman and it's super awesome. And uh, she
20:29
Speaker 1: basically says there's a couple of camps when it comes
20:31
Speaker 1: to cave art experts. Ah, those who can't resist advancing
20:35
Speaker 1: a theory about the art, and then those who say
20:39
Speaker 1: there never will be enough evidence to support one, so
20:42
Speaker 1: you're all just sort of making up these theories. Yeah,
20:44
Speaker 1: I think that's healthy. That second camp is much healthier
20:47
Speaker 1: because it is all theories. But I like the theories though, Yeah,
20:50
Speaker 1: And I don't think we should just be like we'll
20:52
Speaker 1: never understand that, so let's not even try. Yeah, I
20:54
Speaker 1: think we should just remember that when we are trying
20:56
Speaker 1: to understand them, they're all just guesses, and not even
20:59
Speaker 1: really educated guesses at that. Yeah. I think my theory
21:04
Speaker 1: of why there are animals mostly is because it was
21:06
Speaker 1: super important to their survival. And maybe it was you know, uh,
21:12
Speaker 1: some communication to leave for another person later or to
21:15
Speaker 1: each other. Maybe. Yeah, it could be, Um, there's lots
21:18
Speaker 1: of buffalo in this area, so get to hunting, or
21:22
Speaker 1: don't hunt these guys, because I just killed a bunch
21:25
Speaker 1: of them by forcing them off a cliff. It was awesome,
21:28
Speaker 1: by the way, to see, but there's not that many
21:30
Speaker 1: left and we need them to keep reading. Or I'm
21:33
Speaker 1: an eight year old the interthal in naked lady. Yeah,
21:37
Speaker 1: here's a naked buffalo for your pleasure. Uh. There's also
21:41
Speaker 1: lots of theories that these things were um supernatural somehow,
21:44
Speaker 1: like they were trying to invoke the animal spirit for
21:48
Speaker 1: a successful hunt or gain some sort of power by
21:51
Speaker 1: creating an image of the animal. Um. And it could
21:55
Speaker 1: have also just been like this is what I see
21:57
Speaker 1: in my everyday life, and I have this desire to
22:01
Speaker 1: create art. So that's that's the subject I'm gonna make
22:05
Speaker 1: is this animal that I am thinking about a lot
22:08
Speaker 1: because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah, that
22:10
Speaker 1: makes a conversion between this innate desire and the everyday life.
22:15
Speaker 1: And that's bison on cave walls. Well, some of them
22:20
Speaker 1: are pretty detailed in uh, some are life size. It's
22:24
Speaker 1: like they really took a lot of time. It wasn't
22:26
Speaker 1: something they just dashed off in a matter of hours.
22:29
Speaker 1: And they're using these torches too, are not like it's
22:31
Speaker 1: not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight also,
22:36
Speaker 1: but um, they're like stone torches with like a little
22:40
Speaker 1: divid in the top and some animal fat put in
22:42
Speaker 1: there and then they light the animal fat, which I'm
22:45
Speaker 1: sure in and of itself is quite a task. Um.
22:49
Speaker 1: But so yeah, there was there was a lot of
22:52
Speaker 1: effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the
22:56
Speaker 1: pigments I'm sure wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're
22:59
Speaker 1: doing like a life side bison. How long did it
23:02
Speaker 1: take to gather all that? Ochre sure it's not a
23:04
Speaker 1: quick thing. And it's not just paintings. They found a
23:09
Speaker 1: jewelry and other like engrave, bone and ivory and they
23:12
Speaker 1: think they probably engraved wood too, but that obviously wouldn't
23:15
Speaker 1: survive that long. But um, they suggest early religious belief
23:20
Speaker 1: and that they think they might have buried people with
23:21
Speaker 1: some of these things. Yeah, so it's like it's amazing stuff.
23:27
Speaker 1: And unfortunately when there's no written history, there's a lot
23:30
Speaker 1: of speculation. But it just I don't know, it's fascinating
23:33
Speaker 1: to me. Well, yeah, you know, and their their history
23:36
Speaker 1: has been largely lost. It just happens to be preserved
23:38
Speaker 1: in the caves. But since they weren't just as strictly
23:41
Speaker 1: cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion of their culture, right,
23:46
Speaker 1: because the rest of it was in animal skin shelters
23:49
Speaker 1: and earthen lean too that have been totally lost because
23:52
Speaker 1: they were exposed to the elements the caves that were
23:54
Speaker 1: flooded out and washed away too. So yeah, well that's
23:58
Speaker 1: why there's only like, well, there's more than that, but
24:00
Speaker 1: the two big daddies, there's only two. No, there's another one.
24:03
Speaker 1: There's one called Altamira in Spain. Yet Steely Dan had
24:07
Speaker 1: a song about it, the Caves of Altamira, and is
24:09
Speaker 1: it loaded with art? Okay, yeah, there's there's plenty more
24:13
Speaker 1: than that. It's just less goes the most famous one,
24:15
Speaker 1: and then chauve is the most recent, most famous one
24:17
Speaker 1: because I heard but there are others. Um, what about rocolodytes.
24:24
Speaker 1: We should mention that that's a great word to call somebody.
24:27
Speaker 1: It always reminds me of trilobite. Remember the little weird
24:32
Speaker 1: kind of insect, armor plated fossilized insect. I'll show you
24:38
Speaker 1: a trilobite. It was one of the earliest, like footed animals.
24:44
Speaker 1: Scary looking really, but that's what I always get the
24:47
Speaker 1: too confused chocolate. It means cave dweller, literally someone who
24:51
Speaker 1: lives in a hole or cave named after There are
24:55
Speaker 1: apparently some West African tribes that the Greeks came in
24:57
Speaker 1: contact with, and they lived in cliff caves, and they
25:01
Speaker 1: were called trogold eye, t r trougled diet. Well, it's
25:05
Speaker 1: a nice insult you can throw around these days and
25:07
Speaker 1: sounds sort of intelligent. Instead of calling someone like a
25:10
Speaker 1: d bag, he'd say he's a trocolodyte. Yeah, you know, yeah,
25:15
Speaker 1: and one got Jerry. Two man, you guys are on
25:17
Speaker 1: the same wave like today, I guess so shot, so
25:45
Speaker 1: I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes,
25:49
Speaker 1: well modern, let's not quite go into present day. I
25:52
Speaker 1: think we need to give a shout out to the
25:53
Speaker 1: Anasazeing and the Pueblos word cliff dwelling people's from the
25:59
Speaker 1: twelfth century ish of the southwestern United States who basically
26:04
Speaker 1: showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out
26:08
Speaker 1: caves and lived there. They built their own caves. Yeah,
26:11
Speaker 1: you should see some of these. Look up, like, just
26:13
Speaker 1: look up cliff dwellers US and you'll see some really
26:17
Speaker 1: neat They had, like whole cities like carved out into
26:20
Speaker 1: these these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders.
26:25
Speaker 1: That sounds really dangerous it was, but it was also
26:28
Speaker 1: very well defended and sertified. Yeah, because people just be like,
26:31
Speaker 1: I'm not going up there. Ify those guys. Yeah, I'm
26:33
Speaker 1: not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Um. Can we talk
26:37
Speaker 1: about Mountain Mountain Hebron Are we there yet? Yeah? Okay, Uh,
26:41
Speaker 1: that's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and
26:44
Speaker 1: a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network
26:47
Speaker 1: of caves that have been around for about a hundred
26:49
Speaker 1: years that their forefathers built and uh, but of course,
26:54
Speaker 1: because it's in the West Bank, there's UH some disagreement
27:00
Speaker 1: over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed
27:02
Speaker 1: by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened
27:06
Speaker 1: to remove the people. I don't know what the current
27:09
Speaker 1: state is. I looked it up, I couldn't find it.
27:11
Speaker 1: Last I saw was that they basically designated it a
27:14
Speaker 1: militarized zone, which meant that the Palestinians living there needed
27:19
Speaker 1: to leave. But are they still in there? I don't
27:21
Speaker 1: know that. The most recent thing I can find from
27:22
Speaker 1: two thousand five, so I don't know alright, Well, southern Spain,
27:27
Speaker 1: was that what you were talking about. I don't know
27:30
Speaker 1: if Faltemyer's in southern Spain, but there's it's definitely in Spain.
27:33
Speaker 1: But there are like a natural cliff or cave dwellings
27:38
Speaker 1: that were carved out into even further cave dwellings in
27:41
Speaker 1: Spain and um have basically been continuously inhabited at one
27:47
Speaker 1: time or another. Now there's a large homeless population there apparently, right.
27:51
Speaker 1: I mean, Spain's got like unemployment. I'm sure that the
27:55
Speaker 1: cave dwelling populations increased proportionately. Uh, Cappaduct. Cappadocia uh in
28:02
Speaker 1: Turkey has an elaborate cave system and it's not a
28:06
Speaker 1: very friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's
28:09
Speaker 1: been described as lunar and yeah, it's amazing, it's really amazing.
28:14
Speaker 1: Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if
28:17
Speaker 1: you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are
28:20
Speaker 1: caves like homes. Yeah, and these were man made. These
28:23
Speaker 1: were carved out for people to live in, which is um.
28:28
Speaker 1: I guess we didn't even say. I guess that's the
28:29
Speaker 1: other type of cave. You neither find one or you
28:32
Speaker 1: can make one. But yeah, and by making one, I
28:34
Speaker 1: think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural
28:37
Speaker 1: cave to that's that was account. I would guess that'd
28:40
Speaker 1: be man made too. Yeah, probably so. But the in
28:43
Speaker 1: Cappadocia in Turkey um anchor rights, which were early Christians
28:47
Speaker 1: who were your hermits. Yeah. Um, they inhabited these caves
28:54
Speaker 1: and and made the first dwellings. And then when the
28:56
Speaker 1: Christians were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people. Yeah,
29:00
Speaker 1: and they actually built um underground churches that became an
29:05
Speaker 1: underground city have you seen these pictures? Oh, they're amazing,
29:09
Speaker 1: just the masonry and the artwork that they made of
29:12
Speaker 1: just hewn from the rock. That's still intact today. And
29:15
Speaker 1: apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while
29:18
Speaker 1: and then rediscovered. Not but that was pretty neat to find. Well,
29:21
Speaker 1: I got another documentary for you, UM, like no place
29:24
Speaker 1: on earth have you seen that one? Uh? There was
29:26
Speaker 1: a guy a caver that UM was exploring this cave
29:30
Speaker 1: in the Ukraine and he found like shoes and medicine
29:34
Speaker 1: bottles and things, and he was like, wait a minute,
29:36
Speaker 1: this isn't like paleolithic at all. This looks like it
29:40
Speaker 1: was from the nineteen forties. And it was. And it
29:43
Speaker 1: turns out there was um thirty eighth members of different
29:48
Speaker 1: Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for
29:54
Speaker 1: h five hundred and eleven days. They lived underground for
29:58
Speaker 1: over a year and a half. And and uh, some
30:01
Speaker 1: of these people are still alive and they found them.
30:03
Speaker 1: They still live in the caves. No, no, no, no,
30:06
Speaker 1: they lived there for a year and a half. I
30:07
Speaker 1: got you in the Holocaust, Um, but there they had
30:10
Speaker 1: never told their story. They just like kept it a secret.
30:13
Speaker 1: Because they were like, no one would believe it. Plus
30:15
Speaker 1: also in case they ever needed to go back to
30:16
Speaker 1: the caves, Well they did go back. They took him
30:18
Speaker 1: back to the caves. No, I'm saying if they ever
30:20
Speaker 1: had to go back to the cave, like you want
30:22
Speaker 1: to keep the cave secret because they weren't the first time,
30:24
Speaker 1: you know, but um, it's pretty powerful. And they take
30:27
Speaker 1: some of these survivors back to this cave or they
30:29
Speaker 1: haven't been since the Holocaust and they all survived to um,
30:34
Speaker 1: really really great documentary. That's cool. Yeah, very cool, like
30:37
Speaker 1: no place selves, like like no place on Earth or
30:41
Speaker 1: like no place selse Um. There's also apparently a trend
30:47
Speaker 1: in parts of Europe to buy old man made cave
30:50
Speaker 1: homes and dress him up. I saw this and I
30:53
Speaker 1: was like, really, I didn't double check, but I could
30:56
Speaker 1: see this. Yeah, I mean this is a grabster. So's
30:58
Speaker 1: he's good on his facts. Outfitting them with electricity, um,
31:03
Speaker 1: installing modern plumbing, uh, getting the ventilation system going, and
31:08
Speaker 1: just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah, putting down
31:12
Speaker 1: tile floor and there's always the cave home weirdos. Yeah. Well,
31:17
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're seen the show TV, like you know,
31:20
Speaker 1: bizarre houses. If you're a green person, yeah, you could
31:24
Speaker 1: do a lot worse than build yourself a cave home
31:26
Speaker 1: because the environmental impact is so much lower. It requires
31:30
Speaker 1: much fewer building materials. Um. If you can deal with
31:34
Speaker 1: very low natural light and not go crazy, then a
31:38
Speaker 1: cave might be suited for you. If you can deal
31:40
Speaker 1: with the damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah.
31:43
Speaker 1: And I shouldn't have said weirdos to eat the throne.
31:46
Speaker 1: But anytime I see those shows of like extreme bizarre homes,
31:50
Speaker 1: you just shoot the TV. This guy made a house
31:52
Speaker 1: out of like Bob Goolay was on it. Yeah, pretty much. Um,
31:57
Speaker 1: I've never been in like there was a cave house
31:59
Speaker 1: near us growing up. Actually that really Yeah. It was
32:02
Speaker 1: like you know, it was when they built into the
32:04
Speaker 1: side of you know Earth where in Stone Mountain is
32:08
Speaker 1: it's still there, I assume, so is it built into
32:11
Speaker 1: Stone Mountain? No? No, no, no, um. And it was
32:14
Speaker 1: like kind of the people would go by there and
32:16
Speaker 1: look at it and stuff. And I, even as a kid,
32:17
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of dumb. Did you ever
32:19
Speaker 1: know Jack McBrier when you were younger Kenneth from UM
32:24
Speaker 1: thirty Rock. He's from Stone Mountain Conyers. Oh really yeah,
32:28
Speaker 1: in the show he's from Stone Mountain. UM. One of
32:32
Speaker 1: the other writers for thirty Rock, though I can't remember
32:34
Speaker 1: his name, is is I think what you read in
32:36
Speaker 1: is that right? But no, Hun didn't? No Jack Prayer?
32:42
Speaker 1: Uh you got anything else? Oh? Yeah? The last thing.
32:47
Speaker 1: One of the other benefits of um cave home it's
32:51
Speaker 1: very difficult to break into, which is sad because that
32:55
Speaker 1: is not the reason why they were initially used in
32:57
Speaker 1: the Paleolithic Carrott. But it's a it's a quality point,
33:01
Speaker 1: now that's true. How far god, where was it that
33:05
Speaker 1: guy that built a house underground? No, I've seen those before.
33:09
Speaker 1: I've seen like missile silos converted into homes and things
33:12
Speaker 1: like that. This one was for sale recently. I can't
33:14
Speaker 1: remember who sent it to me, but he basically built
33:18
Speaker 1: It's not like a weird, you know, silo house. It's
33:21
Speaker 1: like a home. He just built underground. Like when you
33:24
Speaker 1: go down there. He's got paintings of the outside world
33:27
Speaker 1: on all the walls. It was this rich guy who
33:30
Speaker 1: built it. I think as a like a shelter in
33:32
Speaker 1: case something bad. Happened. And so you know there's pictures
33:35
Speaker 1: of like rolling fields and when you're underground, I mean,
33:38
Speaker 1: obviously you can tell it's a painting, but it doesn't
33:40
Speaker 1: feel like some cave. It's like just a regular house
33:42
Speaker 1: built underground. Well, there's a theory that we're going to
33:45
Speaker 1: end up living underground because eventually arable crop lay and
33:49
Speaker 1: will become so valuable that we will, uh, we'll all
33:52
Speaker 1: have will basically be forced to inhabit the opposite of
33:57
Speaker 1: sky scrapers. They will be going downs of up because
34:01
Speaker 1: we'll need the land up on top for crops. Didn't
34:04
Speaker 1: we do one on why why don't humans live underground? Yeah?
34:08
Speaker 1: I guess I could be part four? Then I guess
34:11
Speaker 1: so it's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. You
34:13
Speaker 1: know this is the cave suite. All right, So let's
34:18
Speaker 1: see you don't have anything else. I got nothing else.
34:21
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you
34:24
Speaker 1: can type cave dwellers into the search part how stuff
34:26
Speaker 1: works dot Com. And I said search parts means it's
34:28
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We keep
34:33
Speaker 1: making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh yeah, and I'm
34:37
Speaker 1: tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm
34:39
Speaker 1: gonna like put us both in time out. Do you
34:41
Speaker 1: think Jerry would be paying attention? But I don't know
34:44
Speaker 1: why we keep making this mistake. But in the Solar
34:46
Speaker 1: Sales episode, we talked about the fact I think it
34:49
Speaker 1: was you this time said something about the acceleration will
34:52
Speaker 1: kill you, or the speed will kill you, or something
34:55
Speaker 1: going that fast. Yeah, I'm sure it was me. We
34:57
Speaker 1: got a lot of emails and this was one of
34:59
Speaker 1: the nicer ones. Heads up guys on a few things,
35:01
Speaker 1: including on the Solar sales. There's been some misunderstanding between
35:05
Speaker 1: speed and acceleration. Common belief is it traveling at high
35:07
Speaker 1: speeds is taxing on the body. Not true. It is
35:10
Speaker 1: the acceleration and not the speed, which is dangerous. Take
35:13
Speaker 1: as an example, traveling in a car. Changing your velocity
35:16
Speaker 1: from zero to a hundred kilometers per hour a very
35:19
Speaker 1: short time results in a large acceleration. This is where
35:22
Speaker 1: you get that feeling of being crushed into your seat.
35:24
Speaker 1: But once you keep that constant speed, that feeling goes away.
35:27
Speaker 1: The same thing for a plane. Notice when you accelerate
35:30
Speaker 1: on the tarmac, it's pretty intense, but once you're up
35:32
Speaker 1: in the air, you barely feel a thing. Yeah, you
35:35
Speaker 1: think we'd know this. I mean, we've done sorts of
35:37
Speaker 1: research on the rockets led an acceleration, and it's just
35:41
Speaker 1: misspeaking in the moment. We know this. Oh, if I'm
35:45
Speaker 1: interrupt for a second. I ran across this designer's euthanasia
35:48
Speaker 1: roller coaster. What um? It was basically this guy design
35:53
Speaker 1: It's all conceptual, obviously a slightly tongue in cheek, but
35:56
Speaker 1: it was designed to kill you, like the roller coaster
35:59
Speaker 1: was designed and to go out with a thrill. Yeah,
36:03
Speaker 1: and he he describes like what like at what point
36:06
Speaker 1: you will die and from what Basically it's like you
36:10
Speaker 1: are going upside down so fast. The acceleration is so
36:14
Speaker 1: great that it basically like keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. Um,
36:19
Speaker 1: and just to make sure you're dead. He added like
36:21
Speaker 1: six of those loops. But it starts with this huge hill.
36:25
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it's called. I think if you
36:26
Speaker 1: look up youthan Asia roller coaster, this this guy's design
36:29
Speaker 1: will come up. It's pretty interesting, interesting, but it would
36:32
Speaker 1: be from acceleration, not speed. Wow, that's a lot of
36:36
Speaker 1: work to put into a killing machine. I would just
36:38
Speaker 1: draw a length of rope and a sturdy beam. You know, Um,
36:42
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be a successful designer, probably so. Uh So.
36:46
Speaker 1: Then he puts it in the context of the solar
36:48
Speaker 1: sale um and says only very small accelerations are involved,
36:52
Speaker 1: so human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces.
36:56
Speaker 1: So I hope it clears it up a little bit.
36:59
Speaker 1: Definitely rocking guys, Thanks a lot. That is from knee
37:02
Speaker 1: RAJ from Australia slash Mauritius ni Raj. Thank you if
37:08
Speaker 1: you appreciate that. We will never make that mistake again.
37:10
Speaker 1: I disagree. I'm sure we will. Speed'll kill you. Where's
37:14
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, Great Britain, UK England? We've been getting that
37:20
Speaker 1: one wrong forever too. Yeah. You know, there's only so
37:23
Speaker 1: much information a human brain can hold, everybody, and we're
37:27
Speaker 1: trying to fill it with things like cave dwelling backs
37:30
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Yeah. Who was the bass player
37:32
Speaker 1: for Poison? I can't get rid of that, do you
37:35
Speaker 1: know that? Yeah? Bobby Doll, So there's cc It was
37:39
Speaker 1: the guitarist Brett Michael Frett Michael. Bobby Doll is the guy.
37:44
Speaker 1: He sounds like a seven oriole or something that the
37:47
Speaker 1: drummer was. You remember him, right, No, Ricky Rockett? Oh wow, yeah,
37:52
Speaker 1: no I do. I didn't even like poison. That's what's
37:54
Speaker 1: so funny. Poison was good. I wouldn't have fan they
37:56
Speaker 1: were good. Uh, let's see. If you want to know
38:00
Speaker 1: more about poison, I had to do that part, didn't
38:02
Speaker 1: I sure. If you want to get in touch with us,
38:04
Speaker 1: how about that. You can tweet to us at s
38:07
Speaker 1: y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
38:10
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38:12
Speaker 1: us an email to stuff podcast how Stuff works dot com.
38:19
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