Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Living Fossils

Transcript

Living Fossils · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Time moves differently for everything on the planet. It's all relative.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: A whole lifetime for a fly is a moment for
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a human, and a whole lifetime for a human is
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a brief blink from the perspective of geologic time. These
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: are the sorts of facts that we learn in grade school,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: but only gain weight the longer we live. And what
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of the living beings that fall between human and geologic time.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Tortoises that live for hundreds of years, the greenland shark
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: quietly prowling the ocean for centuries, Towering trees deep within rainforests.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: How do we measure ourselves next to them? To do
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: so is probably a feudal effort, but is one that
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: leads a person to some truly fascinating discoveries about how
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: in sync the natural world is and how various species
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: can fall out of sync throughout the millennia. For example,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: we all understand the evolutionary advantage of fruits, right When
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: an animal eats of fruits, it inadvertently winds up spreading
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the seeds of that tree that produce to the fruit.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: But what does one do with the fruit that no
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: animals eat? Biologists have found many examples of these across
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the globe, from the Kentucky coffee tree to the honeylocust
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: and certain strains of per simon. There are fruits that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: are too large for most animal species to eat practically,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: so why do they exist? A particularly extreme example exists
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: in the osage orange, a sturdy, softball sized fruit that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: produces a strange latex when cut open. These fruit tend
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to just drop to the forest floor and rot there
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: without any animal to come and eat them. So why
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: do they exist? The answer, according to many biologists, lies
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: in the distant past of this planet, the age of
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the megafauna. Now, megafauna are exactly what they sound like,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: huge animals, wooly mammoths, ground sloths, and many ancestors of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: creatures that we can see in nature today. Creatures like
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: these would have been able to eat the osage orange
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and spread its seeds, but the vast majority of megafauna
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: have gone extinct, leaving the trees they used to feed
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: on behind. Take away the mammoths or the giant sloths
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that would have spread them wide. The only way for
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the fruit to travel now is downriver and slopes, which
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: severely limits the spread of these trees throughout the Americas.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: They survive, for sure, but they no longer travel like
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: they once did. The osage orange is an example of
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: what's known as an evolutionary anachronism. It's a relatively new concept,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: with its earliest proposals coming in the nineteen seventies and eighties,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and the best examples happen to be plants with particularly
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: inedible fruits due to what we know about seed dispersal. However,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: there have been several proposals to list certain animals on
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the list too, animals that had to adapt their natural
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: ways of feeding in order to make up for a
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: missing evolutionary partner. Take, for example, the Helactoplurus giganteus, the
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: largest dung beetle in Matagascar. This creature seems to entirely
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: depend on human feces to survive, even though their existence
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: on the island of Madagascar predates animal arrival. It's been
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: proposed that maybe they once use giant lemur feces for
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the same purpose. Also on Madagascar, some smaller lemur species
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: still display weariness toward birds of prey, training their young
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: to hide themselves from the sky, even though no currently
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: living bird in Madagascar is large enough to prey on
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: a lemur. None of these animal examples have been proved definitively.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: After all, how do you measure the behavior of species
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: that no longer exist? The educated guesses of biologists, though,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: continue to try and fill in the blanks of natural history. Nature,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: in its complex web of relationships, can inadvertently preserve memory
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of something, even if it's unclear what that something originally was.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: It seems that we carry our evolutionary anachronisms with us,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: and that's what allows us to study evolution, even though
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: its progress is measured in generations rather than moments. As
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a famous scientist once said, life finds a way. Pompey
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Mansfield surveyed the scene in front of him. Dozens of
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: men and women gathered on his North Boston property that
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: late spring afternoon in celebration of their most anticipated event
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of the year, election Day. It was a time when
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: families and individuals, both enslaved and free, came together on
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the official Massachusetts election day for their own referendum. The
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: group would vote for and crown a king who would
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: provide wisdom and insight to the black community during his reign.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Families and friends relaxed on blankets overlooking the sunlit river.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: But despite the joyful scene, Pompey was anything but relaxed.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: His chest swelled with pride and nerves. This year's picnic
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: was unlike any other. For its host, it was the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: most important one yet. Pompey, like most of the people
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: gathered on his property that day, had been trafficked across
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic and brought to New England as an enslaved person.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Born in West Africa in the early eighteenth century, he
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: had been sold to a wealthy mill owner in Lynn,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts as a young man. In seventeen forty five, he
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: married an enslaved woman named Phyllis from the nearby town
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: of Reading. In seventeen fifty eight, following the death of
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that mill owner, Pompey began working as a clovier. No
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: surviving records document how long it took to purchase his
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: own freedom, but by seventeen sixty two he had earned
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: enough to purchase a small property ten miles outside of Boston.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: There he built a stone house by hand for him
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and his wife, and eventually Pompey and Phyllis joined a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: group of black Americans who had begun celebrating an event
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: called Black Picnic approximately twenty years prior to seventeen forty one.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: This act of unity was a rebellion against their circumstances
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and an assertion of civil rights. More than two hundred
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: years before black Americans secured the right to vote in
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: general elections. Those gathered at Pompey's property knew that their
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: ideas and opinions mattered, even if the colonial government said otherwise.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: For many, pompey story represented an ideal future, a free
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: man who worked hard to provide for himself and his family,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: he owned property, supported nearby black communities by helping others
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: assert their personhood, and after years of attention the Black
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Election Day celebrations in other parts of Massachusetts, he had
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: offered to host the event at his home. Just before sunset,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: a hush fell over the crowd. It was time to
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: announce the new king. Pompey fought to keep his hands
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: at his side, his face impassive. His wife Phyllis, placed
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: a hand over her husband's pounding heart. Pompey squeezed his
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: eyes tight shut, and then they announced his name. After
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: decades of degradation, hard work, and dehumanization, he'd regained the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: dignity and respect that were taken from him by slavery.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: For years, Pompey had told people that he came from
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: a line of West African royalty. Now, in spite of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: his trafficking and enslavement, his peers had recognized him as
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: a leader. Moreover, they chosen him to be theirs. Throughout
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: his year as king, Pompey continued his work empowering black
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: families and individuals. He settled disputes, lent an understanding ear,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and offered whiz to anyone who asked. By all accounts,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Pompey was an esteemed leader and venerated in the years
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: both before and after his reign. Today, Black Election Day
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: is still celebrated in Salem, Massachusetts, every year. Now held
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: on the third Saturday in July, the event still resembles
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: those first gatherings in many ways, with people from all
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: over Massachusetts coming together to assert their civil rights. Nowadays,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the picnic is much bigger and is accompanied by a parade.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Instead of electing a monarch, community awards are given for advocacy, wisdom,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: and outstanding citizenship. We may never know for certain whether
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Pompey came from African royalty, but in Massachusetts there is
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: no question that he was and always will be, a king.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot org.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.