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Selects: Why Do Great Flood Myths Seem To Be Universal? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh, and I have one word to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: describe this week's select from twenty twenty one on why
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  Speaker 1: there are so many myths about a great flood founding
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  Speaker 1: cultures around the world. That word is fascinating, but I'll
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: had a few more words. I guess this is one
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  Speaker 1: of those good old fashioned Stuff you Should Know episodes
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: where we find out that a thing that everyone just
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: kind of takes for granted actually has a lot more
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  Speaker 1: to it than it seems.
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  Speaker 2: And I love those.
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  Speaker 1: Episodes, and I love this episode, which is why I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: picked it.
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  Speaker 2: I hope you love it too.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Ahoy, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and we're the captains of this here ship called Stuff
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: you Should Know. And that's all there is to it,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: although I do think we need to allow for the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: fact that Jerry is Rear Admirable and by that, of course,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I mean Rear Admiral, and by that, of course, I
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: mean it's gonna be a long episode.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Has there ever been a cut c TV show called
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: The Admirable Admiral?
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  Speaker 2: Uh No?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: That sounds great. I think there was one the Simpsons
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: did one called Admiral Baby.
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  Speaker 3: Oh all right, well that counts.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if the baby was particularly admirable, though,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: it could have been like a terrible person.
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  Speaker 3: So I have a cold, So I just want to
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: apologize up front. Just a head cold. But I'm a
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: little stuffy, So I'm sorry if if it's coming across
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: as untoward.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I'm very proud of you for pushing through, chuck, because
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a lesser podcasters would not. They might they might just
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: be like, I can I have a cold. People don't
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: want to hear that, and you say, the heck with that.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going forward with it.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Remember back in the day, you had like a three
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: month cold that one year.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Every year here for a little while, I used to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: get so sick. Yeah, no, it's terrible. But we've gotten
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: much better, haven't we.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think I don't know, maybe quitting smoking and
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: something to do with.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: That, maybe just a touch.
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  Speaker 3: You don't get colds like that anymore.
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  Speaker 1: No for you, I really don't. So yet another reason
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  Speaker 1: to quit smoking. Everybody who's out there on the fence,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: that's right.
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  Speaker 2: So we're talking today.
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  Speaker 1: The reason I said that we're captains is because I
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: was making a play on a story that it seems
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  Speaker 1: like every single person Chuck knows about. At the very least,
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  Speaker 1: I can say with almost one hundred percent confidence that
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  Speaker 1: everyone that you and I have ever met, seen in passing,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: talked to, or been in the same country with, probably
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: has heard of the story of Noah and the Flood,
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  Speaker 1: where Noah was told to go ahead and build a
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  Speaker 1: boat because the earth was going to flood and everybody
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  Speaker 1: was going to be killed. And by the way, grab
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  Speaker 1: some animals put them on board so that you and
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  Speaker 1: your wife and then the animals can all repopulate your
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  Speaker 1: respective species once the flood's sides. Right, it's a classic story.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody loves it. We we read it out loud just
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  Speaker 1: about every Saturday at dinner time, and it's just a
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  Speaker 1: great story. Right, everybody knows this story. But it turns out, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: that there's this idea that that actually happened. That there,
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  Speaker 1: and it's long been an idea that the what the
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  Speaker 1: Noah's story is talking about happened in actuality, that there
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  Speaker 1: was a point in time where the entire world flooded.
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  Speaker 1: And there's been a lot of scholarly research into this
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  Speaker 1: into how that's even possible.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, I guess if we're talking about
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  Speaker 3: this particular, because you know, we've we've found, after digging
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  Speaker 3: around and getting ed to help us with this research,
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  Speaker 3: that there are flood myths in not every culture but
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  Speaker 3: a lot of cultures over the years. And we'll get
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: into that, you know, in lots of detail, but as
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  Speaker 3: far as actual Noah's actual flood from the Old Testament,
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  Speaker 3: there was a gentleman in eighteen seventy two named George
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  Speaker 3: Smith who is a hobbyist of all things Assyrian and
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  Speaker 3: an amateur sort of historical sleuth, but a well educated
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  Speaker 3: when nonetheless, because he could do things like read quneiform tablets,
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  Speaker 3: and he was doing that one day on I don't
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  Speaker 3: know if it was an actual lunch break or if
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  Speaker 3: that's just apocryphal, but supposedly on a lunch break, went
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  Speaker 3: to a museum, was reading quneiform and came across a
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  Speaker 3: story the Epic of Gilgamesh and read this quote, build
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  Speaker 3: a boat, abandon wealth and seek survival. Spurn poverty, save life.
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  Speaker 3: Take on board all living things, seed animals. The boat
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  Speaker 3: you will build. Her dimension shall be equal her length
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  Speaker 3: and breadths shall be the same. It doesn't sing any
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  Speaker 3: about cubits, but it's inferred. Cover her with cover her
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  Speaker 3: with a roof like the ocean below, and he will
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  Speaker 3: send you a reign of plenty. And George Smith said, hey,
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  Speaker 3: this is strikingly familiar as the Christian slash Jewish Old
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  Speaker 3: Testament Noah's flood story. But this is several hundred years previous.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and instead of God telling Noah or an angel
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  Speaker 1: telling Noah, it's the God in Lel who's telling a
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  Speaker 1: guy named utnapished him to build this boat.
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  Speaker 2: Noah's nowhere to be heard.
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  Speaker 3: And for what reason?
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  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, wasn't this one of the ones where
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: like Earth is being punished? Basically?
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So the reason that U and Lel gave
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  Speaker 1: to Udina pished him was because the humans were too
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  Speaker 1: noisy and the gods were sick of humans, so they
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  Speaker 1: were going to flood the earth and kill off all humans,
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  Speaker 1: whereas in the Bible it was because humans had become
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  Speaker 1: too wicked to live.
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  Speaker 3: I think noisy and wicked are the same thing back then.
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  Speaker 2: I guess so.
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  Speaker 1: And it makes you wonder, like, did somebody misread the
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  Speaker 1: word and they're like noisy, okay, and just barreled on.
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  Speaker 1: They're like, my lunch break is almost over. So George
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Smith's was like noisy, it's they said noisy.
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  Speaker 3: But there was also the idea of saving animals, and
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  Speaker 3: there was also the idea that afterward birds were sent
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  Speaker 3: out to find dry land, just as a no.
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  Speaker 1: Story, right, And so you just kind of say, whoops.
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  Speaker 1: Because the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Old Testament by
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  Speaker 1: at least several hundred years, depending on what part you're
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  Speaker 1: talking about, And so you might say, okay, so the
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  Speaker 1: Noahs story is adapted from this, but that doesn't mean
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  Speaker 1: that it undermines the veracity. They don't undermine the veracity
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  Speaker 1: of one another. In fact, if you stop and think
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  Speaker 1: about it, the fact that one of the first things
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: that was ever written down after the invention of writing,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: qn aiform, was the first written system humans ever devised,
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  Speaker 1: and that the first literary work ever created, the Epic
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  Speaker 1: of Gilgamesh, contained this flood story. It kind of suggests
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  Speaker 1: that something actually may have happened, like it was a
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  Speaker 1: really important story that has stuck around for thousands and
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  Speaker 1: thousands of years. The Epic of gilgrimesh was written thirty
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  Speaker 1: four hundred years ago, that it suggests that there might
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: be some some kernel of truth to it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and over the years, a lot of people have
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: tried to prove, whether scientifically or otherwise, that the the
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  Speaker 3: Noah's Flood really did take place. Bible literalists, is that
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  Speaker 3: is that what we call them? I think so, okay,
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  Speaker 3: Bible literalists Bible historians, because that would, uh, that would
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  Speaker 3: go a long way in Christianity if you could say, hey,
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  Speaker 3: the Bible is an actual historical document, this stuff is
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  Speaker 3: really true. And in the eighteenth and nineteenth century there
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  Speaker 3: was something called deluvialism, deluvial meaning like relating to a
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  Speaker 3: great flood. But that was a big shape of actual geology.
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  Speaker 3: Was basically saying, hey, this physical literally the physical world
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  Speaker 3: that we're living in came about after this flood. What
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  Speaker 3: kind of reset things? And then the real geological record
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  Speaker 3: came along once science got serious and they proved that
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  Speaker 3: was not the case, and that kind of went the
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  Speaker 3: way of the Dodo around you know, the mid eighteen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they kind of did it backwards. They said the
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  Speaker 1: Noah Flood shaped the world as we see it. Go
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  Speaker 1: find proof, and when they found proof, they were like,
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  Speaker 1: it's not really adding up. Yeah, So there's no evidence
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  Speaker 1: that there was a global flood that inundated the world.
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  Speaker 1: And in fact, the geological record that these geologists, the
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  Speaker 1: early Ones and you know, up to modern day ones
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  Speaker 1: have been putting together supports the exact opposite of that
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  Speaker 1: that Earth wasn't created in a deluge. It was created
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  Speaker 1: over incredibly long distances of time, very very slowly, layer
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  Speaker 1: by layer.
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  Speaker 3: Right, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: But people still say, okay, welly number one, why have
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  Speaker 1: we been telling this flood story for so long? And
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  Speaker 1: then also, why is it, like you said, the idea
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  Speaker 1: of flood myths seems almost universal. Doesn't that like still
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  Speaker 1: strongly suggest that there was, even if the Bible doesn't
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  Speaker 1: quite have it right. And by the way, Noah's story
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  Speaker 1: also shows up in the Quran too, so it's in
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  Speaker 1: the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament and the Quran. And
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  Speaker 1: then there's the epic of Gilgemach story, Like, why is
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: this important story still around? Doesn't that still support the
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  Speaker 1: idea that something happened? Why would there be universal flood
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  Speaker 1: myths from cultures that had never even heard of Christianity before,
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  Speaker 1: and there have been some attempts to explain that that
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  Speaker 1: I think are much more satisfying than the idea that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: we're just missing all of the evidence for a great
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  Speaker 1: worldwide deluge that happened back in antiquity.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there were you know that it's more than
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: just those There were Chinese flood myths. There were flood
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  Speaker 3: myths in southern Canada and the British Isles. So there
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: was one study picked out fifty cultures and they all
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: had their own flood myth and that it was related
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: to some kind of punishment. So they started looking, like
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: you said, of like why why is this happening? And
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: there's a bunch of reasons and they all kind of
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  Speaker 3: make sense to me if I'm being honest. One of
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  Speaker 3: them is that there was a flood in these cultures,
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  Speaker 3: but it wasn't a global flood. But if you're you know,
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  Speaker 3: if all you know is a certain area and you
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  Speaker 3: never get to leave that area and it wipes out
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  Speaker 3: everything you know, then the story that you pass along
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  Speaker 3: orally through the years would sound like one that wiped
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: out everything.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like the whole idea is that this flood
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: actually did happen way far back to one group, and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: then that group eventually kind of spread out and carried
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: that flood myth with them, And so to those of
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: us today historians anthropologists, looking at like all of these
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: groups that are spread out all over the world, all
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: sharing basically the same story, it would make it seem
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  Speaker 1: like a flood had impacted all of these groups that
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: were that far spread.
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  Speaker 2: Out, so it must have been a really big flood.
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  Speaker 1: But this explanation says no, the flood was actually really localized.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: It was the group that it happened to that eventually
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  Speaker 1: spread out. That's one explanation. It makes a lot of sense.
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  Speaker 1: And one of the groups that are usually kind of
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: pinpointed as this flood happening to or the proto Indo
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  Speaker 1: Europeans who were known to have been around the I
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  Speaker 1: think the Caucasus Mountains to start, and then just spread
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  Speaker 1: out as far as the British Isles, basically all over
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  Speaker 1: Europe northwest, east, south, and that all of our languages
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  Speaker 1: like English, Germanic, just a whole slew of languages developed
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  Speaker 1: out of this group.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and some more support for this is the fact
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: that there aren't flood myths in Sub Saharan African cultures,
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  Speaker 3: and these were groups that when they left Africa they
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: didn't come back, so they would not have taken back
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  Speaker 3: with them a flood myth from proto Indo Europeans. So
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  Speaker 3: it all kind of makes sense.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. There's another kind of related one too, that
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that says that there were floods, just not a flood.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: That flooding is actually really common, so it happened to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of different groups, So it would make sense
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that all these different cultures would have flood myths.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: Sure. And again, if you live in your riverside village
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: and you don't get to travel very far from there
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  Speaker 3: and everything you know of gets destroyed again, it could be,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: you know, lend support to the idea that it gets
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: translated as a worldwide flood. And if everyone's having these
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: localized floods which happened, you know, there's always been floods then,
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  Speaker 3: not necessarily of the forty days and forty nights variety.
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  Speaker 3: But when things are passed around orally and then they
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: get rewritten, things get kind of mixed up.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's our bad, those of us alive today
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  Speaker 1: who are mistaking or laying our interpretation of the word
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: world onto like these culture's use of the word world.
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  Speaker 1: They're saying their world, which is much smaller than it
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: is to those of us today. When we think the world,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: we think the whole globe, you know.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And speaking of laying your things on other cultures,
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  Speaker 3: the third one is Christian missionaries, and there's evidence of
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  Speaker 3: this happening. They would go and tell the story of
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Noah's Great flood, especially you know, when colonization was happening too,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: and between missionaries and colonization, all these other cultures picked
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: up on that original Biblical flood tale or I don't
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: know if we should call it a flood myth or
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: flood tale at this point, what should we call it?
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I think most people call it flood myths or Deluvian myths.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, Delivian myth that sounds a little more academic. So yeah,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: So Christian myth stiononaries did this, and I think this
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: is also evidence in the fact that the South Pacific
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: didn't really have one until eighteen fourteen when they came
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: into contact with Christian missionaries, and then all of a
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: sudden they had the Maori flood myths.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they actually had a flood myth before, but
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: apparently it was more tsunami based, and then after contact
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: with Christianity, it became much more of like a deluge,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and it just bore some striking resemblances to the Noah
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: flood myth of Christianity, And apparently that happened all over
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the South Pacific as well, where these cultures will have
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: their own kind of flood myth, but it's always based
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: on tsunamis. But then the Christians come and go, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's a day luge where the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: water rose after like forty days and forty nights of
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: rain and stuff. So that creates a lot of headaches
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: for anthropologists, but it also at the same time explains
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: why a universal flood myth or a flood myth would
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: seem universal of those of us around today, and why
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: they seem to bear such a striking resemblance still one another.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Indeed, I think we should take a break and I'm
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: gonna go blow my nose, okay, and then we'll come
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: back and talk about geo mythology right after this.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: So, Chuck, that was a nice view to blow your
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: nose at the break rather than during recording, even though
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I still had to hear it.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: You know what's funny, I was listening to I don't
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: know why I just thought of this, but I was
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: listening to Paula Tompkins Stay at Homepkins podcast he does
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: with his wife Janey the other day, and he was
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: talking about sneezing on stage and that that had happened
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: to him once in his career. And Paula someone who
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: spent lots and lots and lots of time on stages,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: And I wonder if there's something to that of the
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: body withholding things like sneezes, because I've never seen anyone
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: sneeze on stage. I've never sneezed on stage. Yeah, isn't
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: that weird?
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure it's related to adrenaline in fight or flight.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking. I mean, there's got to
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: be something to that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like your body's like I have time to waste
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: all that energy on sneezing. We got to get out
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: of here, We got to put on a great show.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: It would be really weird to think about it if, Like,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I don't know, Barry Manilow in Vegas was talking about
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: setting up Mandy before he sings it and just lets
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: out a big sneeze.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you for setting me up to reminisce
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: yet again about the time that you, me and I
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: saw Barry manilo front Row Center in Vegas.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: You would have been sneezed on with that big snoze.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, we actually would have been covered in his sneeze.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: All right, So we promised talk of geo mythology. Here's
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: the idea. Since science really got attacked together, there have
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: been a couple of different ways to look at things
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: like flood myths as either this is a story about
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: our cultural values and there is a lot of religious
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: metaphor involved, or this was an actual historical event and
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: geomethology came along to kind of say, hey, man, it
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: can kind of be both, like there could have been
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: a real flood and it also took on metaphor and
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: took on cultural values and was used as a story
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: of I can't think of the word I'm trying to
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: think of to teach you a lesson.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: What's it called fable?
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like a fable.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: So this kind of this field has emerged since I
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: believe the sixties, and actually I was reading about this
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: field of geomethology is like still really trying to establish
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: itself in the field of geology. And most geo mythologists
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: are trained geologists. That's where you start out, probably, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: they they also are like, you know, they have to
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: really defend what they're doing against their fellow geologists because
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: they're they're basically saying, all of these myths, all of
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: these legends, all of this historical, these these folk traditions,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: they actually contain eyewitness accounts of natural disasters, of weird
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: events and earth of early finds of fossils, and yeah,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: they've they've cloaked them in the language of mythology and
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the terminology of mythology and monsters and weirdness and all
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: this stuff that makes it just seem completely legendary to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: us today. But that's how these pre scientific and often
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: preliterate cultures passed along really valuable information, and like we've
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: been kind of foolish to just discount them as all
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: nothing but legend, as if there's no fact whatsoever in there.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Water exactly. And so that's what geomithology is doing.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: They're saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, if you
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: just look at this the right way, we are covered
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: up in historical accounts, just waiting for us to unravel
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: if we learn how to read these correctly and then
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: also correlate with actual, like known geological events that we've
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: discovered through science.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like, hey, you see that story that seems completely
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: crazy about a demon god who lives in a mountain
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: and gets angry and spouts fire from its top. Like
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: that's a volcano, bros. And like, just because it sounds
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: crazy doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the fact that
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: an actual volcano eruption might have happened then, and let's
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: kind of marry these two things and let's just all
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: get along.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Right, And so like that legend about the volcano with
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the angry god that sometimes spews like scary stuff forth,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: and if you ever hear the mountains starting to make rumbles,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: it means the god is way up and you should run.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Like that's that is a way for a culture that
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: is aware that this mountain's actually a volcano, and that
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: volcano can sit dormant for generations at a stretch, so
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: those there will be people born in the future who
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: aren't aware that that's a volcano. And this is the
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: way that the culture passes down over deep time. This
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: really important information. If the volcano ever makes a sound
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: run because you don't want the fiery breath of that
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: god that's trapped inside it makes it.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: I've heard. I love this stuff. Like, Yeah, before science
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: came along, all humans did from the moment they could
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: sort of form thoughts was try and explain what was
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: going on around them, from rain and thunder to volcanoes
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: and floods. And I don't know, I think it's super interesting.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: It's almost like these proto early warning systems, right, like
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: nuclears didn't really know how to explain the science of it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Exactly like nuclear semiox Remember we did an episode on
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: that on how to tell people ten thousand years in
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the future about steering clear of nuclear waste. Right, it's
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the same exact principle. It's just chuck. Somewhere along the way,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: we later generations became arrogant and just completely discounted any
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of that those pre scientific traditions because they didn't appear scientific.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: But it is exactly like what you were saying. It
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: was the way that they made sense of actual stuff.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And so there's plenty of stuff to learn from those
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: those accounts and those tales and those myths and legends.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: We just have to basically kind of eat a little
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: bit of crow and go back and be like, well.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: We've been ignoring this to our own detriment.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's like you said earlier, it's a tough
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: road to ho though for scientists these days if they
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: take this on, because you know, you have mixed results
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: when you go back and you look at these tales.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Some of them may just be folk tales and legends,
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: and some may have kernels of truth, some may have
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: a little more truth. So there's a lot to sort
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: of parse through as a geologist these days, if you're
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: if you're working as or with the geo mythologist.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Right, and so when you are laying this out and
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out, okay, what is this myth describing.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: You know, again you're a trained geologist if you're a geomthologist,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: but you're also working with people from other scientific fields
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: as far as trying to uncover the fact the kernel
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: of truth behind these flood myths. You would be working
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: with paleohydrology or paleo bathymetry, which is the study of
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: ancient sea levels like where they were at in the past,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and so you're going to take like the findings from
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: these fields and then say, okay, let me see if
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I can correlate it with a myth. Or you find
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a myth and you say, okay, let me see if
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I can correlate it with paleobathymetry or paleohydrology findings. And
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: they've actually turned up some really interesting stuff so far.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was in twenty sixteen, there was a study
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: that tied together one of the Chinese flood myths from
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: about four thousand years ago, basically that there was a
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: great flood wiped out China. It lasted for a couple
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: of decades, and then this great man came along who
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: had become emperor, Emperor U, and tamed the water. So
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: geologists went back and they said, all right, there's an
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: ancient landslide around that same time that damned up a
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: river and a lake filled up behind it in about
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: six months or so, and then that flooded. That river
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: got flooded, broke through the dam, and there was this
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: huge flood, and they have found sediment that sort of
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: tracks along these lines. Then they found the Emperor U.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Actually it turns out he may not have been you know,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: magically tamed the water. He just had a knack for
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: early engineering, and that he dredged the waters and it
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: cleared up the river's flow. Things returned to normal, and
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: he became emperor. But back then it gets you know,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: told as it take of this, you know, great soon
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: to be emperor that tames the waters when he was
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: just good at what he was doing, right.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: But they, I mean, they found like evidence, geological evidence
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: that backs all of this up, that this whole series
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of events, the earthquake that tragdered, the landslide, the landslide,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the damn, the lake filling up in six months, the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: lake breaking and flooding, that all this happened within a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: single year. That is definitely the kind of thing that
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: your culture is going to make note of and pass
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: down over the years, that this kind of thing can happen.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And then not only that this great person came along
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: in freed us from the burden of these floodwaters that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: apparently stuck around for twenty years. That's right, It's pretty cool.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: There's another one that is just beyond thrilling. If you
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: ask me that a lot of people say this is probably,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: this is possibly and I think That's a big reasons
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of mainstream geologists have problems with geo mythology
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: is we can't really see a course to getting to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the point where we're saying this is the one. This
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: is this flood that we have evidence of is what
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: gave rise to the epic of Gilgamesh and Noah's story.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: But you can say there's a really good chance that
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: this is the one, this fits the bill, and this
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: one does kind of stick out like that.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: That's right, this one. In the nineties, it became fairly
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: popular that basically said there was an oceanographer named William
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Ryan and another guy named Walter Pittman. They were i
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: think in the early two thousands, and they said that
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: rising sea levels at one point caused a Mediterranean to
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: burst through the Bosporus Strait about seven thousand years ago.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: And this was a like a legit serious flood that
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: I'm sure seemed like a flood, like a global type
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: of thing. It created a waterfall a volume two hundred
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: times that of Niagara Falls, and I think enough water
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: in one day that could have flooded Manhattan by three
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: thousand feet. Yeah, that's well, that's a flood.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: It's quite a bit.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: They also determined that the mediterrane and see moved inland.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: The coast moved inland by about a mile a day.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine seeing that happen before your eyes, like
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you're just you'd almost lose your mind again. That would
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: make a really great story that you would pass along
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and explain it in whatever terms you could. But there
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: would have been coastal settlements along the Bosporus Strait on
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: either side, on the Mediterranean side and also on the
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Black Sea side that all this water poured into, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: it would have just completely wiped those settlements out. So
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the people who did survive would have been like, something
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: really bad happened here, and this is how we're going
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: to make sense of it. And the timing of it
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: was just right. It happened probably about seven thousand years ago.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And as we'll see, there's a lot of stuff that
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: happened around seven seventy five hundred years ago around the
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: world because the end of that last glacial period started
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: in the sea levels rose, and all sorts of crazy
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: stuff happened as result. But that's one that people point to,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: is like that maybe the flood that gave rise to
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the Gilgamesh and Noah stories. No pun intended gave rise,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I think, so it really was unintended. Yeah.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Another one about seventy five hundred years ago was the
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: creation of the Persian Gulf. Kind of a similar kind
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: of thing during the last Ice Age that what is
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: now the Persian Gulf used to not be. It used
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: to be a very nice river valley near the Fertile
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Crescent where people lived. And the thing here though, that
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: I don't quite get is that they haven't they haven't
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: found any evidence of things underwater there, right.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: No, they haven't.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: They The reason why they think this happened, Chuck, is
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, on the shores of the
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Gulf as we know it today, some like really well
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: established settlements with decorative pottery and well built stone houses
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of other things. Domesticated animals just sprang
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: up basically overnight.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: So they were relocated essentially.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really the only explanation. I went from hunting settlements,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: hunting camps to all of a sudden, these people are
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: like an advanced society, so that the best explanation is
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: that their original settlement is down there beneath the Persian Gulf,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: we just haven't found it yet.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: What about Doggerland.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: So Doggerland is another similar story. They both share what's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: called aquaterra, by the way, which is a coin or
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a term that was coined in the nineties to describe
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: these lands that were exposed for one hundred and fifty
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: thousand years that humans were kind of developing and forming societies,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: and then were lost just seven seventy five hundred years
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: ago when the sea levels rose again. So Doggerland and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: the idea of the Gulf being an underwater now submerged settlement,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Doggerlands like that, but instead of in the Persian Gulf,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: it's been in the north. It was a patch of
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: land that connected the British Isles to Scandinavia before until
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: about eighty five hundred years ago.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Right, And here they have actually found submerged traces of
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: settlements under the sea, unlike the one in the Persian Gulf.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Right, And they actually think that it's possible. Some people
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: are saying no, it's probably just you know, slow, steady
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: sea level rise that flooded Doggerland. But there was a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: massive landslide in I think Norway called the Storiga event
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: that happened eighty five hundred years ago, and it probably
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: generated a massive tsunami, and it could have been big
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: enough to have submerged dogger Land permanently after that. Apparently
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: that's how big that underwater landslide was.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was about to say underwater. Can you get
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: to point that out out?
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But there's a flood story from Brittany around that
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: area that says that a king's daughter was possessed by
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: a demon and opened like their country's floodgates and that
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: was flooded, you know, catastrophically. So it's like, you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: are they talking about this event that happened eighty five
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: hundred years ago that this has survived as this legend
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: until today.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: That's right. And yet another right here in the well
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: and now the US of A. But in the nineteen
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: eighties and nineties they investigated flood miss of the indigenous
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: peoples in the Pacific Northwest and they found out that
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: their flood miss this was a little more recent. This
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: was around seventeen hundred a d. But the idea is
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: that there was a like magnitude nine earthquake that caused
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: the tsunami, unleashing these big waves from basically sort of
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Vancouver Island all the way down to northern California.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the hoe and the Quilliute people who
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: had this legend of thunderbird and whale getting in a fight.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And it interesting is I mean, there's all sorts of
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: geological evidence. Apparently there's still trees that are just not where,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they're just not growing back they were wipe clean from
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the tsunami. But there's a Japanese temple, a Buddhist temple
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: that marked the date January sixth, seventeen hundred because the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: tsunami wave made it all the way to Japan and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: they noted it. So by basically cross correlating that Japanese
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: noting of the date with the hoe and the quil
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yuk's story about thunderbird and whale, they've said, this story
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: is about this particular event, which is pretty awesome.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: And then sometimes it's just a culture like prescience again
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: making sense out of finding weird things like the Zuni
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: people in the southwest of the United States obviously not
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: back then, they saw these you know, ancient marine animals
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: and seashells in the fossils that they were finding and
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: they said, well, this is part of our creation story.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: There there was a great flood, and that's how this
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: stuff got here.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here in the desert, which is I mean, that's
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: how a pre scientific culture would make sense of that
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. Pretty cool, absolutely, So I say we
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: take one more break, and we're going to talk about
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the other aspect of these myths, the mythology part of it,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: right right after this. Okay, So if you take a
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: myth and you strip the mythology off and you just
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: look at the kernel of historicity and try to figure out,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: you know, what it's actually describing. You don't want to
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: just forget the myth part. You want to go back
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and also look at the myth part too, because that
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: reveals a lot about humans and who we are and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: how we think spread out even across cultures throughout the world.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of similarities that pop up from
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: examining geomithology, especially with flood myths, even when you set
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: aside the idea or I should say, even when you
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: account for the idea of missionaries spreading the Noah flood too.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, you know, one of the things that's interesting
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: to look at is how these things are, how these
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: myths are similar. And one way that a lot of
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: these flood myths are similar is that and we've already
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: seen a little bit, and what we've talked about is
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: oftentimes it's a man and a woman, usually a man
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: and a wife, who are charged with gathering up the animals,
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: with repopulating the earth afterward saving the species essentially, usually
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: a warning, whether it's Noah's flood myth or all the others,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: where you know, someone comes along and says, you know,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: you better get your act together earth, or tell everybody
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: on earth you know you were the messenger to get
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: their act together, or else I will rain down rain
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: upon you.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also sometimes a warning, I guess one of
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the warnings, Chuck, that came through. I think we said
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: earlier that the Chinese have like at least four flood myths,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: And one of the warnings that came through was to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: this brother and sister who freed a thunder god from
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: their father's I guess Chicken Cooper or whatever. Their father
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: had captured him. And so the thunder god said, hey,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: thanks a lot of kids. By the way, the things
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: are about to get serious around here. You might want
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to build a boat. Actually, yeah, I think they build
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: a boat. But they're one of those interesting stories where
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: you said, usually it's a man and wife who end
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: up having to repopulate the earth. That put these two
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: kids in the position of having to repopulate, and that
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: was a taboo. Incests is a basically the universal taboo
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: one of them, and that was the same in ancient
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: China as well. So in different versions of the story,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: either the brother and sister basically got to pass this time.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Another version is that the brother had to go through
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: a huge series of physical challenges and couldn't and that
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: somehow the earth became populated anyway. And the third version
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: is that they just made everybody out of clay, that
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: they made themselves, right, Okay, But if you start really
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: kind of looking at floods, there's like especially the purpose
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: of the flood. That's the thing, Like it's very rare
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: that the flood happens in a flood myth just for fun,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Like there's almost always a reason, Like humans want there
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to be a reason. So we've come up with different
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: reasons over the years, and one of them is basically
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the apocalypse, that humanity is being wiped out, usually as
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: punishment and that we deserve to survive, and we would
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: have to survive or else we wouldn't be around to
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: be passing the story along.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: So somebody had to survive.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: So that's where those people who repopulate the earth come from.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: But the rest of us we got wiped out because
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: we displeased the gods.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: That's right. Another one is that we started out as
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: an ocean and nothing but ocean, So this is just
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: a reset to that, return to our original state here
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: on planet Earth. And there are a lot of cultures
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: around the world that basically thought that we started out
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: as an ocean from ancient Egypt north I think in
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Japan as well, and basically, you know, it's either returns
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: us to a state of water or an island above an.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's I mean, that's so closely related to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: the apocalyptic one too. It's just that's we just happen
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to be returning to how things were before, which is
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: also related to another kind of theme as a reason
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: for the flood, which is purification. Like, yes, you're being punished,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and yes you're returning to this primordial state, but the
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: ultimate reason that say like God or the gods have
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: is to purify things, to get to rid the world
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: of evil and just keep the good and start over
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: with just the good. Basically, that's another big one too,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: and they're all kind of, you know, pretty tightly wound
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: up together.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, then there's just angry gods. And it might not
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: have anything to do with you doing anything wrong as
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: a culture or getting your act together. It's just that
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: the gods were angry, so they they kicked open the
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: top of that mountain and it became a volcano. And
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: sorry ts for you guys.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it just happens.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: But that's still interesting that people this rationalization even in
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: itself though, isn't it. It's just kind of like sometimes
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: that happens even if you didn't do anything wrong.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: I think so.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: So there's another one too, that Emperor U myth is
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: a good example of industriousness, people working together, people controlling things.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Where the Earth has done something crazy, maybe the gods
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: were responsible, but humans managed to overcome it, either in
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the form of a savior like Emperor U. There's one
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: in Bhutan. I believe there's a legend about Guru Reproach
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: and the Zangpo Valley. He shows up and basically drains
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: a lake exposing all this fertile farm land where a
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: village was then settled or the and I apologize for this,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I genuinely could not find a pronunciation for it, Chuck,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I really tried. But the gung ganny g Aboriginal people
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: g u n g g a n y j I,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: they have one where the tsunami keeps coming and coming
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: and the sea levels are rising and rising. So the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: people are organizing, get together and start rolling boulders down
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: into the sea, and it actually prevents the sea levels
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: from rising any further. So I think that's probably my
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: favorite one. The industriousness and control ones.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: It's good stuff. And then people have gotten a little
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: weird over the years with trying to explain these away.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: There was a Hungarian psychoanalyst named Giza Roim in the
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirties. It said, no, the reason why we have
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: with these flood myths is because they're just from people's dreams.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: And people in ancient times drank a lot of water
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: and peed a lot at night, and so they dreamt
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: about floods and told stories about floods. Or maybe it
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: is the gods urinate, urinating on people like literally which
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: and there are myths that literally talk about that that
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: floods a result of God's peeing on earth, But I
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: don't know about expanding that to like all the cultural
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: flood myths all over the world for all time.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Right, And there's others that explain it as like men's
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: jealousy of not being able to give birth and that
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: it's a reference to the bursting of the amniotic sack
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: or something like that. I feel like when psychoanalysis gets involved,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: especially in this day and age, it's kind of like,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: that was a nice try, everybody. Let's just move on
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: to geomethology instead, you know, I think, so That's where
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: I'm putting my money. Chuck geomethology. It's fantastic stuff. And
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: also I should say I want to give a shout
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: out to one of our past episodes, Was there real Atlantis?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: We were doing geomethology without even realizing it.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about geomethology and flood myths,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: then just start searching the internet because there's a lot
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: of interesting stuff out there about it. And since I
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: said that, it's time for a listener, may.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: This is a shout out to the one of the
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: winners of this Stuff you Should Know five k. This
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: is something that the Stuff You Should Know Army puts
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: together every year now in a virtual way right now.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: But our buddy Aaron Mazel is one of the people
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: who works on this. They're looking to do this again
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: next year. Because here's the deal is they sent me
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: this stuff afterward and I was like, well, we need
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: to get this before, so I'm going to go ahead
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: and say it now and then we'll see if you
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: can remind people. But people voted to have this happen
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: in late September early October, so twenty twenty two is
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: when it's hopefully going to happen again. No official registration,
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: no entry fee. There's an event page, I guess at
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: the Stuff you Should Know Army facebook site, and I
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: think people had two weekends to participate this year and
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: they had bike riders this year. So regarding regardless of
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: what your status is an athlete is, they're finding ways
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: for you to get involved, which is really cool.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: So this is from Amanda though, writing in to say
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: that I'm a winner baby. You guys had the best
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: been listening for years and I was happy to participate
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: in the virtual stuff you should Know five K this year.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: It's a cool event that brought some really nice people
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: together at our little corner of the internet. I'm not
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: a particularly good or fast runner, but I get out
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: there and I did the dang thing, and that's what counts.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: The other participants in the five k radiate that spirit
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: and are so encouraging of each other. Don't ask me how,
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: but somehow I achieved fastest five K for a woman
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: in this event. What a cool feeling. So today I
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: listened to Venus fly Traps on the way home and
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: came across a package addressed Stuff you Should Know five
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: K champ Amanda Thompson and just about cried and got
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: a hand crafted by Stuff you should Know Army member
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: metal racked for her efforts. And it's really great.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: That's pretty great. She has to buy her own metal though.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: I don't think so.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: That's fantastic, man. Congratulations Amanda, that's wonderful news. And congratulations
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: to everybody who participated and finished or even just started
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: or even thought.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: About doing it. Maybe you'll do it next year, who knows,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: that's right.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Congratulations to everyone.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, that is a very cool thing. That
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know fans to and it makes us
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: love you guys even more.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: You got anything else, No, just be able to look
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: out next late summer fall for news on the Army
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: Facebook page.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody please remind us ahead of time so we
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: can tell everybody else. And if you want to remind
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: us of something, we would love to be reminded because
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that probably means we forgot. And you can put that
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: reminder in the form of an email, which you can
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: send to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 43:50
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• 43:55
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