August 11, 2026 • 37 mins
If you grew up in the United States, you've doubtlessly learned all sorts of stuff about Thomas Jefferson -- but did you know about his bizarre fascination with mastodons? It's a winding tale of nationalism, naturalism, and good old American rivalry with the French. And the guys aren't diving into this one alone: they're joined by returning guest and veteran podcaster, the legendary Lauren Vogelbaum, to learn more about the story in part one of this special two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
the Myth, the Legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes,
not to be confused with the Atlanta band. They call
me Ben Bolan. You were Noel Brown and sure and
(00:49):
Hi the government says.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So we were having an improv chat off air and
I was saying, like no butt and Ben was talking
about how he saw an anti improv group and that.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Was kind of their whole philosophy. So that fascinated me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yes, and we've been going through a bit of an
elephant phase both on this and our sister show, The
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. And we way
back when we started this show in twenty seventeen, Noel,
as you recall, we thought it would last for like
six weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Right we did, And we had this idea that we
would have like quirky guests that were like a recurring
guest that kind of came on as characters like the
Quister who.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Still pops on from time to time.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
But Lauren initially was one of those and was this
thing called the fact Genie and I think we did
that all of once.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, yes, our very first guest, there's a bit of
ridiculous history lore. Our very first guest was none other
than the legendary Lauren Vogelbaum. You know her from Brain Stuff,
American Shadows, Savor, Sorrow Bread. That's a deep cut in
pretty much any video series back in the day. This
(02:02):
is a big one for us, folks, because we finally
convinced Laura to come back on the show. It only
took us a decade or so, so.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I was gonna say an email. Yeah, I mean, it's more, more,
more and more. Timing wise, You're right, it just the
email took a long time to write.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
So Born, thank you so much for joining us. Dude,
you reached out to us not too long ago with
a pretty fascinating idea.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Yeah. Yeah, well thanks for having me back. I'm glad
to do this about once every nine years, so yeah,
any anytime nine years from now. Reached back out. But yeah, no,
I reached out to y'all because so for brain Stuff,
I do various like little short form science and history things,
and one thing that I ran across was this stuff
(02:54):
about the discovery of mastodons in America in like the
seventeen hundreds, and it actually touches on some really weird things,
including some stuff that I didn't feel comfortable talking about
on brain Stuff because it is like a very polite,
buttoned up like all ages show. And I was like, hey,
I know who wants to get weird?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh good, that's where we are in your rolex, right
rollo ox, we're your rolex. We don't know what kind
of watches you owed neither. This definitely stood out to
us because I believe it's a story none of us
were familiar with until we heard from you. And we know,
(03:37):
like for all of us in the crowd tonight, we
all kind of know what a mammoth is or a mastodon,
But right, they are elephants, Right, they're elephants kissing cousins.
Could you tell us a little bit more about the
mammoth and the mastodon and how they're different.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Yeah, yeah, so okay, So we know today that like
millions of years ago, lots of megafauna roamed the earth
more than what we have now. You know, we still
have some impressive ones. But right, uh, mammoths were they
were mammoth right, like the species could reach fourteen feet
at the shoulder. These are upsettingly large herbivores.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Think maybe where the word came from, right, which is it?
It's like, was it the mammoth or the word mammoth
is something very large?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
He came first, the animal came first, and then it
got extrapolated.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Thought it might have been yeah, yeah, probably.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Of course, probably influenced by the word behemoth to jump
in you real quick?
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Can we just go ahead and get a Louren with
the facts right there?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Who guess hosting the show.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
She's on this podcast?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Lawrence got, yeah, you have to sure.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
I'm mostly called that because I actually have created that
sound Q years ago, So I was gonna use it.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
No, Joe, Well think, okay, thank you. Uh yeah, we
know it. It came from we know the word for
all our etymology nerds out there, we know it comes
from uh, Siberia, right, from a Russian word out in
out in that neck of the woods that ultimately means earthhorn.
And then later it becomes something where people just say,
(05:20):
look at that mammoth pizza or caesadiya, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah, mammoth. Yeah, people got so excited about these elephant
like fossils. Uh it is, I mean, and they're still
pretty exciting. I mean, I've been to the Libria Tarpit
Museum out in La and it's it's awesome. It's so
bones are great. Uh, you can just go ahead and
keep the audio for that one. But yeah, so so submit.
(05:46):
So the difference between mamoson mastodons is a their range.
Mammos spread across Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. North
America further had mastodons, and mastodons were usually a little
smaller merely this of today's elephants, so up to like
ten feet at the shoulder. And yeah, they also weren't
(06:07):
as shaggy as mammoths and their teeth. Masted on teeth
had these like knobby cusps for chewing, like shrubby, woody
kind of plants, whereas mammoths were more like planes animals
that were dealing with grasses.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Quick question and clarification.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Is the wooly implied in mammoth or is there also
another type of mammoth that is the wooly mammoth?
Speaker 4 (06:29):
The wooly is a species of mammoth. Mammoths are a
general genus of buddies.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
All of which are little shaggy though.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
The wooly ones are just woolier shaggier.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah. This is not to disparage modern day extance elephants.
They have haired, they just they don't have as much
hair perhaps, and they are not as big as the
They're not as big as the mammoth itself, but still
can't take one one on one in a fight. We
(07:02):
we talked about this pretty extensively on stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I love that you guys are having like an elephant
month like that's yeah, that's terrific.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
That's why I thought you're also going to say I
love that y'all are like, you know, speculating us if
you could take what large animals and fight. Yeah, Now
there are other ones to to come up. Kangaroo comes
up quite often.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
I earnestly. I wouldn't mess with one, definitely.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Well, it's not that you choose to be in that situation.
That's if you get in a situation, what happens next.
We don't have time to get into that, but we
do have to. We do have to point out that
for a lot of people. Maybe you're in grade school,
you're growing up, you're learning about the ancient past, and
(07:49):
you may a lot of kids associate mammoths with dinosaurs
other long gone creatures, but that's not entirely.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Oh sure, Well, so mammoths and mastadons were both around,
probably starting like kneeling like six million years ago or so, so,
you know, after the big event, whatever the dinosaur event
was that occurred, they were around for a long time,
like they still existed when humans started running around, you know,
(08:21):
like the mammoths were still here while the ancient Egyptians
were building their pyramids.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Right, and they were also helping Fred Flintstone run.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
The you know, of course whatever the of course, yeah, yeah,
but yeah, due to like climate and human pressures, masterdons
died off some like eleven thousand years ago, mammoths about
four thousand.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
But we didn't know about any of this until like
the eighteen hundred 's CE and we didn't believe that
extinction was possible until like right around that time. And
we didn't believe it was possible until specifically we started
looking at mammoth and master masterodon.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Fossils extinction as a concept as a concept which I
find somehow just endearing.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It makes my grin charge. I know a couple sizes
that until to know that, until the eighteen hundreds, everybody,
despite all their differences in human society, just said no,
well thaks can't die, go away.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
And then they go away. And they're like, we have
to figure out who did this? You Jon, who was
responsible for this?
Speaker 4 (09:32):
It was? It was that death was coming from inside
the house, right right?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And this is this leads us to something interesting too,
because there's a ton of context here, as as you
would point it out to us in your research, people
had been finding mysterious bones or tusk in particular in
this case, all the livelong day, and nobody knew what
(09:58):
to make of them. You know what it reminded me of, guys,
was the infamous case of the Cyclops. Shout out to
Nolan's the Odyssey, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is where.
This is where people in Mediterranean areas like Sicily and
Crete they would find fossilized skulls of prehistoric dwarf elephants,
(10:23):
So nowhere near the size of your mammoth, your masted on,
but big enough that if you didn't know what you
were looking at, you would think this was some huge
guy's skull and he had weird teeth and one eye.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Yeah. Yeah, people jumped to giant humanoids to me weirdly
often because for some reason, I'm way more comfortable with
the concept of an elephant than I am with a
dude who just happened to be I don't know, seventy
feet tall like that seems I'm not sure I want
(11:00):
that one.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It turns out people have pretty great imaginations and have
for a very long time. We talked about this briefly
on stuff that I want you to know strange news
the other day. But a study just came out or
some results of some excavations in deep sea areas that
have uncovered megafauna underwater deep sea creature bones in these
(11:24):
like submerged graveyards in South Australia.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So though, as above, so below.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And we also have to remember obviously that people back
in the day of your they were no more intelligent
nor any less intelligent than people are today, for better
or worse. So a lot of times when folks were
finding these bones, these relics, these fossils, they were attempting
(11:51):
to explain their discovery through whatever their cultural framework. Was
at the time. So we're we're in Sicily, we've a
dwarf elephant's skull, and we go, hey, I remember this
other's story. It's that's that's it, right, Like we're done
for the day.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Yeah, gotta be that one. It's the Cyclops. We've already
read about it. So we're just putting the pieces of
the puzzle right together. And that's kind of what was
going on. So like, like Europeans kept finding or being
presented with these big old bones and tusks from places
(12:30):
like Siberia and Italy, the British Isles and North America.
So like in the in the Hudson River Valley out
near Albany seventeen oh five, this Dutch tenant farmer is
hanging out and a tooth the size of a guy's
fist rolls down the hill and falls at his feet
(12:50):
and terrifying the same little little weird I'd be startled.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, yeah, nobody starts off their day thinking this is
the random giant tooth day.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
No, No, maybe.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Wife one weird dentist, sure, sure.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
But so he does what any of us would do,
and he trades it to a local politician for some
rum and uh, obviously, and this and some other bones
from the area wind up really capturing the public's imagination
insofar as they were really sure that these were the
remains of biblical giants. Again, like humanoid giants, which everyone
(13:29):
knew totally existed before the Great Flood. But here's proof,
because we've read about it. Because we've read about it. Yeah,
this one Massachusetts minister by the name of Edward Taylor
wrote a one hundred and ninety verse poem about this
seventy foot tall giant with ribs like rafters and limbs
(13:51):
like the limbs of a tree. Cotton Mather. Oh man,
the guy who like previously helped murder a bunch of
people at the Salem witch Trials.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Oh yeah, that Cotton Mather.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Yeah, who would later help save Boston from a smallpox
outbreak with an early vaccination campaign.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Well that's cool. He's been of a mixed bag, but
I'm good with that one.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So my history is yeah, yeah, Cotton Mother. He went
on this whole bent about how the New world is
super cool because it was once home to giants that
would make Goliath look puny.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Okay, So I'm Cotton Mother and I'm saying kill the witches,
birds them, drown them, nobody gets smallpox. We're the home
of the.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Giants, Biblical giants.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Well, I mean, you know, it's not like completely unique
for religious folks to interpret the historical record.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
In ways that validate their.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Views, right of course, of course. I mean and again,
you know.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
What revolution problematic for him just.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Saying oh yeah, that wouldn't happen for another century and
a half, so we some catching up to do, but.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Kind of going through that today we're recording in twenty
twenty six. Woo woo. This is uh, this is something.
First off, I just want to be clear, Lauren, I'm
pretty sure Cotton Mather didn't say all three of those
points in the same sermon, but it would.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
It would have been amazing it has been now.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
That would have been Alex Shones level amazing. And like
we were saying, people discover these things, they put them
in their existent cultural framework. So it does make sense,
did we when do we as a civilization start saying
maybe these aren't the remains of giant dead people?
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Relatively quickly actually, which is which gives me a little
bit of hope for the species. I suppose, like the
by the seventeen twenties, some European naturalists started putting together
that fossils like these were probably from some kind of
elephant like animal. But you know, they they understood that
these animals couldn't possibly be living in the place where
(16:12):
the bones were dug up, because like elephants are from
hot climates right like India, Africa. There's no way that
elephants live in Siberia. So their best guess was that
these were bones of normal everyday elephants that washed north
during the Great.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Flood, because the Great Flood is still.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
It definitely happened, That definitely is a thing that historically occurred.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
There's a being sarcastic.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
I'm not well, I'm being sarcastic. They were being quite serious, That's.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
What I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Like, even like their best kind of most enlightened attempts
to set the record straight, they still got hung up
on some fairy tale type.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Look, I'm sorry, that's me.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The Bible is great, so much too much of it
is based on things that really happen, But there are
a lot of it that you know clearly are kind
of more pale than you know, historical reck.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
It's the great game of telephone, and we know that
big floods did occur, the idea is kind of wrapping
them all up and calling it one big, great flood.
It's it's really interesting. It's kind of inspiring to that
humanity seems for so long to be in this cosmic
escape room, right and slowly, slowly figuring out clues about
(17:26):
the nature of biology and reality, but still kind of
just like a rock climber, kind of keeping hold of
the one the thing that feels secure until it is
proven false.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Well, and also, Ben, I would just double back on
what you said about people were not more or less intelligent.
It's just they didn't have access to all the information
yet it took you know, we literally are standing on
the shoulders of giants and a long, long, long amount
of time spent putting these pieces together. So I hope
it doesn't sound like we're insulting to the intelligence of
(17:57):
these folks. A lot of these things, know, followed practical
wisdom of the time, right, and then you know, these
folks these naturalists were talking about definitely pushed the narrative further,
even if getting hung up on some of the details.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah, Yeah, it was like the best scientific minds of
the time. This was their opinion about the whole thing.
In seventeen twenty eight, the then president of the Royal
College of Physicians, one Sir Hans Sloane, wrote this this
terrific piece about how those goofy native Siberians thought that
because these bones were found in the ground, they had
(18:34):
to belong to a species of elephants that live deep
in the earth.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Like the like the Morlocks, yeah right.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
And right under fans goods, and that this is like
the cause of earthquakes and stuff like that, and.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
They're just stomping around down there, yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah. And Sloane furthermore wrote that, like, you know, we, yes,
we educated Europeans, we understand that obviously the bones washed
there during the Great Flood.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
And everybody clapped, yes, okay, So this is this is
the prevailing sentiment from the most learned minds, the ted
talkers of their day. And we also have to I
think it's I think it's worth pointing out that some
(19:27):
of these folks, depending on where they lived at the time,
may have gone back to religious reasoning because it could
be considered heretical if they said it was bs.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Oh sure, you know, like choice between inquisition and sure,
those are great flood related elephant bones. Great into that?
I am ill?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Are we good?
Speaker 3 (19:54):
What's the terrific?
Speaker 4 (19:56):
So like opinion was developing as more and more of
these bones we're coming to light and back in North America,
colonists ran. Colonists ran across another fossil deposit. In seventeen
thirty nine, this French military expedition was on its way
south stopped through the Ohio River valley around what's now
northern Kentucky, and the Native Abnaki guides who were hunting
(20:20):
for them found some like fossilized tusks and a few teeth,
a femur as big as a person, and were like, hey,
look at these cool things we found. The French sent
the bones to Paris to King Louis the fifteenth, who
had a collection of curiosities, and naturalists there identified these
as right more pre flood elephants. This Ohio River site
(20:42):
also had salt deposits or salt licks, so it became
known as Big Bone Lick, and this would be a
major site for the budding field of what would be paleontology.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Fascin it's fascinating too, you know, Louis is a story
all his own, talk about we're an audio podcast, so everybody,
I want you to know the expression that Lauren had
in response to that, which was like, yeah, are we
going there? Maybe maybe we'll have to have you back
(21:15):
for another episode on Louis Shenanigans.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
What do you think his collection would have put Nicholas
Cage to share.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
And Nick still getting in there, the Nicholas Cage of
his day. Yeah, yeah, I think that's apt.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Kind of love that actually. So could you tell us
a little bit about the mysterious incognitum?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Oh yeah, okay. So so at Big Bone Lick, through
the seventeen fifties and sixties, traders and land surveyors collected
a lot more fossils. In addition to what we now
know our mask John remains, they found the remains of
like elk and giant ground sloths, which had like, you know,
big old claws, and so naturalists little hooky boys, right, yeah, yeahah, yeah,
(22:00):
exactly like that. That's the actual sound.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
That's the only way to do it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Typically, Yeah, we checked.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
So naturalists started like looked at all of these things
and started putting together this concept of a single animal
with these tusks that they thought probably curved downward like
saber teeth, and these big claws.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
They're doing a bit of a chimera situation here.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
And these giant knobby molars that could weigh like over
six pounds each, like you know, big things. When Benjamin
Franklin received a box of master Don fossils, he wrote,
the tusks agree with those of the African and Asiatic elephant,
but the grinders differ, being full knobs like the grinders
of a carnivorous animal.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Can you imagine the weird stuff Ben Franklin got, I
think on the regular constantly.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean, like unhinged stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Box of mastodontica for him, one can only imagine the grinders.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
He's referring to the mold, right.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And he's the guy where this would not be super
Dupe's unusual for me.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
But he got some off yet he got some even
more on the.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Post office guys like then, man, you know I dropped
the mail off at eleven am. Can you not take
your naked air baths just like during that specific time?
And Ben says it's science. I hear you got some
teeth for me.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I need my evening constitutional.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Oh also we should say Ben Franklin not a serial killer.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
We we verified he buried bodies in his basement, but
it was for science, not.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
In a serial killer way. The resurrection Matt not for funsies.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Well, you know, a little bit for funsie.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So this this is the interesting It was a little
bit for funsies. So this is interesting because we what
we see in this quotation Lauren, is that his take,
(24:12):
Ben Franklin's take on the tusk and the grinders make
this argument against what they knew about elephants of the
modern day.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Right, they assumed that they were dealing with some kind
of flesh eating monster, sick and right, and they called
it incognitum, which is essentially Latin for lack. I don't
know what it is.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I love that it's like unobtaining, it's mcguffinish.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And it's also funny. How would you look at species
names in Latin even today if you trace the etymology,
So many of them are so silly. Oh yeah, they're
like butt face red. Oh well, now I'm getting into
bird names. But we have to remember that even though
(25:06):
it sounds super fancy to say something like incognitum, here
in the modern day, or even in the seventeen hundreds.
It's exactly what you're describing. It is a shrug with
the hands up and going I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
Yeah, it could be something.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
It's probably big though, big something.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Speaking about a big something we have to talk about
Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
So that's one of my favorite segues so far. Thomas,
big guy again, Thomas always popping up big something something.
Jefferson novie called himself that.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Oh I think he did. All right, So this dude
became obsessed with these big bone lick fossils, like partially
because he was just a nerd like Ben Franklin. This
is just sort of what he was up to in
his free time, but partially because he realized that he
could use the incognitum to refute this widely circulated argument
(26:07):
that was going around about the inherent inferiority of the Americas,
including the people who lived there.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Okay, so this is now a he sees in these
fossils a potential political tool.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Yeah, yeah, political and or this was a passion project,
I strongly believe. But but all right, So in seventeen
sixty six, this famous French naturalist and my French is terrible,
so it's buffon. But Jeorges Louis la Cleric de Beauffon
he published this theory of American degeneracy, and basically he
(26:46):
was like wondering, like why the creatures of the Americas
tended to be like cute little buddies compared to the
majestic beasts of the old world of Africa and Asia
and Europe, you know, like next to an Indian tiger,
to be fair, like the Mexican jaguar is a cute
little guy. Yeah, But so Befoone's theory was that the
(27:09):
America's climate was to blame. And he was, yeah, like
like just just just lumping all what like two point
seven continents of the Americas together into a single climate,
which is interesting in its own right, but well, the.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Argument being that more tropical climates would yield the bigger,
crazier creatures, that more or more extreme, more.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
A sture climates would would give you grander creatures and
swamp ass places like the Americas were going to lead
to degenerates.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Ah yeah, because despite the fact that we we know
now that the American continents have a vast and varied
collection of biomes and ecosystems. He thought he was basing
it on what he knew at the time, just like
people in the Mediterranean finding warf elephant skulls. And he said,
(28:06):
this whole thing is a swamp and that's the reason. Uh,
these upstart colonists got stuck with the first stage pokemon.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
He didn't know about the bigfoots yet.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
More more humanoid giants. Yeah, so yeah, see we're not
immune today. We love these stories. But but okay, yeah,
you know.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Stories my bad.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Could they poop though?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Like if we okay in their show, take it with them.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
That's what they do because they respect nature.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Leave no leave, no trades.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
All right, Well, we solved that one, I think pretty handily.
So our guy, who is, by the way, to be fair,
a incredible French naturalist and off air, I said, French nationalists.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
So we think that different issue.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, different issues. So this guy, this guy is legitimate.
He's not some fringe, mad cap lunatic and what he
argues therefore becomes pretty convincing, I guess to readers in France.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
In everywhere essentially in Europe and the rest of the
European influenced world. So okay, so His belief system here
was that all life on Earth spontaneously generated and then
migrated around, adapting to different environments as it went, and
that America was a swamp that only recently rose up
(29:35):
out of the sea. You know, that explains why the
Appalachians are so small compared to It.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Sank back into the swamp. It sank back into the swamp.
They built it back up, it sank back into the
swamp again, and then finally.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
It stayed at a little bit of a bounce action there.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Sure, it's so it's so weird too, because we know
now that the Appalachians appear small because they're so gosh darn.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Old right, they've worn down. But he had the opposite concept,
and so he extrapolated that this environment had caused the
plants and animals that had come here to literally degenerate,
to become smaller and weaker and less reproductively successful. And
he claimed, really racistly, that the same thing had happened
(30:19):
to the human beings who had come to the Americas.
He also claimed that the same thing would continue to
happen to the offspring of European immigrants, and that therefore
the Americas would never be home to a great civilization.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Wow, his calves must be in awesome shape from those
leaps of logic. Man bit of a hater, Oh yeah, no,
bit about it. This guy, this guy clearly had an
axe to grind. Uh huh right, and again a dominant
cultural framework he was working within. He is, as he said,
(30:56):
he's kind of the literati of his day, leading scientific
mind and so our nerds across the pond who are
also super into esoteric things. They get winded this.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
Yeah, Thomas Jefferson was pissed.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Oh boy, Thomas Big Something.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Thomas Big Something Jefferson was big something about this that
I picture him just like sputtering, just going like my
sperm is great, thank you, right, Like I feel like
this was personal for him at a certain level, and
he wound up because he wound up spending a lot
(31:36):
of time and energy on refuting this in the seventeen
seventies and eighties, which you may recall was a busy time, right.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I've guys have pictured it now where someone comes in
at another would be founding father is like, Tommy Big Something,
we gotta go. The British are come in, Well, you
gotta give up this weird bone thing.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Man, and he's like no, no, no, no. And he
actually got a bunch of his compatriots involved in this,
like so he was one of the things that he
was trying to do was collect and publish these really
precise measurements of various American animals compared with their European counterparts.
(32:21):
This was a passion project for him to help refute
the faon's argument. And so he got like like Ben
Franklin and James Madison, who for some reason I thought
was above all of this. Like, he got these guys
to go out and measure local wildlife. Madison sent in
a description of a Virginian weasel down to the length
(32:44):
of the taint.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
He's not talking about a member of Congress there boo.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Also, if I could jump in, he real quick, Laurence said,
James Madison above all this. James Madison is considered to
be the shortest president in American history at five foot four,
so he was not above anything.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Maxic the facts.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
There we go.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Seeing in the phone and he's fallen knowledge. It's just
for you right now, the.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Guys, you didn't you didn't get my Virginian weasel joke
about Come on, that's good It's only a good joke
if you have to remind people that it was a
joke and explain what she meant. He Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
He also sets up this just perfect scenario for sketch comedy.
This is so, this is so rife with sketch comedy
because we know Ben Franklin and James Battison were probably
talking as well, and they.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Also invented sketch comedy and.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Invented sketch comedy. Yes, and they were probably they were
probably chatting with each other. I'm just imagining like Big
Something leaves the room for a bathroom break and Ben
and James are looking at each other, and one of
them is like, do you think do you think he's
gonna ask us to look at Taints again?
Speaker 2 (34:09):
This guy was a bit of an RFK type figure.
He was very interested in animal taking all the smoke.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
For Big Something here.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, okay, we know that he's enlisted Thomas Tommy's enlisting
a bunch of people to do his uh, to help
him in this passion project, possibly because he took it personally.
Uh does he respond to uh?
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Yeah, well, okay, hey.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I think Knowles r FK Junior thing is gonna is
gonna pay off with this.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, yeah, because we have to talk about a moose skirt.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Skirt, hold the hold the big moose, Hold the bone,
hold the bone. We are we are going to make
this a two chapter series, Lauren, through the magic of editing.
We're not exactly sure where we'll break in this story,
but this is already such a wild ride.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Dense, glad to do it like a mastodon bone.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Yeah, weird times.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
So folks, please joined us later in the week this
Thursday for part two of Mastadons in America with Lauren Vogelbaum.
In the meantime, so you.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Got to say it again? That was was that you've
been Mastadons in America? That is that your title? Or
is that Lawrence?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I think it's just a weorrid title.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Well, it's good.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I just wanted to make sure that you enunciated it,
because I think it would have been blanked and you
would have missed him Masterdon's America.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So Lord, in the interim, as we're all waiting for Thursday,
where can people go to learn more about your work?
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Oh gosh, Well, the show that I'm currently doing is
called brain Stuff. That's one word. It's just a short
form little Science and History show. You can find it
wherever podcasts are found, or if you like social media,
if that's like your thing. Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky
and Instagram under the name Vogel Bomb v O g
(36:06):
E l b o MB. It's a it's a pun.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
You're not on X the Everything app?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
No, yeah, that's coming back.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I really miss live journle.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Oh my gosh. Oh no, someone's gonna find our live journals.
I have one where I would I would start in
trees with Dear Universe, Comma.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Adorable, Were you writing them under your blanket with a
flashlight and stuff?
Speaker 1 (36:36):
And it was a different time. It was a different time.
But we've had a great time this week. Big big
thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Big thanks
to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs, doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance
and uh several other people.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
M christophrasciotis name is Jeff got Here in Spira, Jonathan
Strickland the quiz or A. J.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Mohamed Jacobs the Buzzer.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
And thanks to you for tuning in. We'll see you Thursday, and.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
We'll see next time folks as well, which is gonna
be Thursday
Speaker 2 (37:09):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
the Myth, the Legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes,
not to be confused with the Atlanta band. They call
me Ben Bolan. You were Noel Brown and sure and
(00:49):
Hi the government says.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So we were having an improv chat off air and
I was saying, like no butt and Ben was talking
about how he saw an anti improv group and that.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Was kind of their whole philosophy. So that fascinated me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yes, and we've been going through a bit of an
elephant phase both on this and our sister show, The
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. And we way
back when we started this show in twenty seventeen, Noel,
as you recall, we thought it would last for like
six weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Right we did, And we had this idea that we
would have like quirky guests that were like a recurring
guest that kind of came on as characters like the
Quister who.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Still pops on from time to time.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
But Lauren initially was one of those and was this
thing called the fact Genie and I think we did
that all of once.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, yes, our very first guest, there's a bit of
ridiculous history lore. Our very first guest was none other
than the legendary Lauren Vogelbaum. You know her from Brain Stuff,
American Shadows, Savor, Sorrow Bread. That's a deep cut in
pretty much any video series back in the day. This
(02:02):
is a big one for us, folks, because we finally
convinced Laura to come back on the show. It only
took us a decade or so, so.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I was gonna say an email. Yeah, I mean, it's more, more,
more and more. Timing wise, You're right, it just the
email took a long time to write.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
So Born, thank you so much for joining us. Dude,
you reached out to us not too long ago with
a pretty fascinating idea.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Yeah. Yeah, well thanks for having me back. I'm glad
to do this about once every nine years, so yeah,
any anytime nine years from now. Reached back out. But yeah, no,
I reached out to y'all because so for brain Stuff,
I do various like little short form science and history things,
and one thing that I ran across was this stuff
(02:54):
about the discovery of mastodons in America in like the
seventeen hundreds, and it actually touches on some really weird things,
including some stuff that I didn't feel comfortable talking about
on brain Stuff because it is like a very polite,
buttoned up like all ages show. And I was like, hey,
I know who wants to get weird?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh good, that's where we are in your rolex, right
rollo ox, we're your rolex. We don't know what kind
of watches you owed neither. This definitely stood out to
us because I believe it's a story none of us
were familiar with until we heard from you. And we know,
(03:37):
like for all of us in the crowd tonight, we
all kind of know what a mammoth is or a mastodon,
But right, they are elephants, Right, they're elephants kissing cousins.
Could you tell us a little bit more about the
mammoth and the mastodon and how they're different.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Yeah, yeah, so okay, So we know today that like
millions of years ago, lots of megafauna roamed the earth
more than what we have now. You know, we still
have some impressive ones. But right, uh, mammoths were they
were mammoth right, like the species could reach fourteen feet
at the shoulder. These are upsettingly large herbivores.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Think maybe where the word came from, right, which is it?
It's like, was it the mammoth or the word mammoth
is something very large?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
He came first, the animal came first, and then it
got extrapolated.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Thought it might have been yeah, yeah, probably.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Of course, probably influenced by the word behemoth to jump
in you real quick?
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Can we just go ahead and get a Louren with
the facts right there?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Who guess hosting the show.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
She's on this podcast?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Lawrence got, yeah, you have to sure.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
I'm mostly called that because I actually have created that
sound Q years ago, So I was gonna use it.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
No, Joe, Well think, okay, thank you. Uh yeah, we
know it. It came from we know the word for
all our etymology nerds out there, we know it comes
from uh, Siberia, right, from a Russian word out in
out in that neck of the woods that ultimately means earthhorn.
And then later it becomes something where people just say,
(05:20):
look at that mammoth pizza or caesadiya, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah, mammoth. Yeah, people got so excited about these elephant
like fossils. Uh it is, I mean, and they're still
pretty exciting. I mean, I've been to the Libria Tarpit
Museum out in La and it's it's awesome. It's so
bones are great. Uh, you can just go ahead and
keep the audio for that one. But yeah, so so submit.
(05:46):
So the difference between mamoson mastodons is a their range.
Mammos spread across Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. North
America further had mastodons, and mastodons were usually a little
smaller merely this of today's elephants, so up to like
ten feet at the shoulder. And yeah, they also weren't
(06:07):
as shaggy as mammoths and their teeth. Masted on teeth
had these like knobby cusps for chewing, like shrubby, woody
kind of plants, whereas mammoths were more like planes animals
that were dealing with grasses.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Quick question and clarification.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Is the wooly implied in mammoth or is there also
another type of mammoth that is the wooly mammoth?
Speaker 4 (06:29):
The wooly is a species of mammoth. Mammoths are a
general genus of buddies.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
All of which are little shaggy though.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
The wooly ones are just woolier shaggier.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah. This is not to disparage modern day extance elephants.
They have haired, they just they don't have as much
hair perhaps, and they are not as big as the
They're not as big as the mammoth itself, but still
can't take one one on one in a fight. We
(07:02):
we talked about this pretty extensively on stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I love that you guys are having like an elephant
month like that's yeah, that's terrific.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
That's why I thought you're also going to say I
love that y'all are like, you know, speculating us if
you could take what large animals and fight. Yeah, Now
there are other ones to to come up. Kangaroo comes
up quite often.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
I earnestly. I wouldn't mess with one, definitely.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Well, it's not that you choose to be in that situation.
That's if you get in a situation, what happens next.
We don't have time to get into that, but we
do have to. We do have to point out that
for a lot of people. Maybe you're in grade school,
you're growing up, you're learning about the ancient past, and
(07:49):
you may a lot of kids associate mammoths with dinosaurs
other long gone creatures, but that's not entirely.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Oh sure, Well, so mammoths and mastadons were both around,
probably starting like kneeling like six million years ago or so, so,
you know, after the big event, whatever the dinosaur event
was that occurred, they were around for a long time,
like they still existed when humans started running around, you know,
(08:21):
like the mammoths were still here while the ancient Egyptians
were building their pyramids.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Right, and they were also helping Fred Flintstone run.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
The you know, of course whatever the of course, yeah, yeah,
but yeah, due to like climate and human pressures, masterdons
died off some like eleven thousand years ago, mammoths about
four thousand.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
But we didn't know about any of this until like
the eighteen hundred 's CE and we didn't believe that
extinction was possible until like right around that time. And
we didn't believe it was possible until specifically we started
looking at mammoth and master masterodon.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Fossils extinction as a concept as a concept which I
find somehow just endearing.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It makes my grin charge. I know a couple sizes
that until to know that, until the eighteen hundreds, everybody,
despite all their differences in human society, just said no,
well thaks can't die, go away.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
And then they go away. And they're like, we have
to figure out who did this? You Jon, who was
responsible for this?
Speaker 4 (09:32):
It was? It was that death was coming from inside
the house, right right?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And this is this leads us to something interesting too,
because there's a ton of context here, as as you
would point it out to us in your research, people
had been finding mysterious bones or tusk in particular in
this case, all the livelong day, and nobody knew what
(09:58):
to make of them. You know what it reminded me of, guys,
was the infamous case of the Cyclops. Shout out to
Nolan's the Odyssey, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is where.
This is where people in Mediterranean areas like Sicily and
Crete they would find fossilized skulls of prehistoric dwarf elephants,
(10:23):
So nowhere near the size of your mammoth, your masted on,
but big enough that if you didn't know what you
were looking at, you would think this was some huge
guy's skull and he had weird teeth and one eye.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Yeah. Yeah, people jumped to giant humanoids to me weirdly
often because for some reason, I'm way more comfortable with
the concept of an elephant than I am with a
dude who just happened to be I don't know, seventy
feet tall like that seems I'm not sure I want
(11:00):
that one.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It turns out people have pretty great imaginations and have
for a very long time. We talked about this briefly
on stuff that I want you to know strange news
the other day. But a study just came out or
some results of some excavations in deep sea areas that
have uncovered megafauna underwater deep sea creature bones in these
(11:24):
like submerged graveyards in South Australia.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So though, as above, so below.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And we also have to remember obviously that people back
in the day of your they were no more intelligent
nor any less intelligent than people are today, for better
or worse. So a lot of times when folks were
finding these bones, these relics, these fossils, they were attempting
(11:51):
to explain their discovery through whatever their cultural framework. Was
at the time. So we're we're in Sicily, we've a
dwarf elephant's skull, and we go, hey, I remember this
other's story. It's that's that's it, right, Like we're done
for the day.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Yeah, gotta be that one. It's the Cyclops. We've already
read about it. So we're just putting the pieces of
the puzzle right together. And that's kind of what was
going on. So like, like Europeans kept finding or being
presented with these big old bones and tusks from places
(12:30):
like Siberia and Italy, the British Isles and North America.
So like in the in the Hudson River Valley out
near Albany seventeen oh five, this Dutch tenant farmer is
hanging out and a tooth the size of a guy's
fist rolls down the hill and falls at his feet
(12:50):
and terrifying the same little little weird I'd be startled.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, yeah, nobody starts off their day thinking this is
the random giant tooth day.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
No, No, maybe.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Wife one weird dentist, sure, sure.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
But so he does what any of us would do,
and he trades it to a local politician for some
rum and uh, obviously, and this and some other bones
from the area wind up really capturing the public's imagination
insofar as they were really sure that these were the
remains of biblical giants. Again, like humanoid giants, which everyone
(13:29):
knew totally existed before the Great Flood. But here's proof,
because we've read about it. Because we've read about it. Yeah,
this one Massachusetts minister by the name of Edward Taylor
wrote a one hundred and ninety verse poem about this
seventy foot tall giant with ribs like rafters and limbs
(13:51):
like the limbs of a tree. Cotton Mather. Oh man,
the guy who like previously helped murder a bunch of
people at the Salem witch Trials.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Oh yeah, that Cotton Mather.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Yeah, who would later help save Boston from a smallpox
outbreak with an early vaccination campaign.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Well that's cool. He's been of a mixed bag, but
I'm good with that one.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So my history is yeah, yeah, Cotton Mother. He went
on this whole bent about how the New world is
super cool because it was once home to giants that
would make Goliath look puny.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Okay, So I'm Cotton Mother and I'm saying kill the witches,
birds them, drown them, nobody gets smallpox. We're the home
of the.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Giants, Biblical giants.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Well, I mean, you know, it's not like completely unique
for religious folks to interpret the historical record.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
In ways that validate their.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Views, right of course, of course. I mean and again,
you know.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
What revolution problematic for him just.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Saying oh yeah, that wouldn't happen for another century and
a half, so we some catching up to do, but.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Kind of going through that today we're recording in twenty
twenty six. Woo woo. This is uh, this is something.
First off, I just want to be clear, Lauren, I'm
pretty sure Cotton Mather didn't say all three of those
points in the same sermon, but it would.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
It would have been amazing it has been now.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
That would have been Alex Shones level amazing. And like
we were saying, people discover these things, they put them
in their existent cultural framework. So it does make sense,
did we when do we as a civilization start saying
maybe these aren't the remains of giant dead people?
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Relatively quickly actually, which is which gives me a little
bit of hope for the species. I suppose, like the
by the seventeen twenties, some European naturalists started putting together
that fossils like these were probably from some kind of
elephant like animal. But you know, they they understood that
these animals couldn't possibly be living in the place where
(16:12):
the bones were dug up, because like elephants are from
hot climates right like India, Africa. There's no way that
elephants live in Siberia. So their best guess was that
these were bones of normal everyday elephants that washed north
during the Great.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Flood, because the Great Flood is still.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
It definitely happened, That definitely is a thing that historically occurred.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
There's a being sarcastic.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
I'm not well, I'm being sarcastic. They were being quite serious, That's.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
What I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Like, even like their best kind of most enlightened attempts
to set the record straight, they still got hung up
on some fairy tale type.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Look, I'm sorry, that's me.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The Bible is great, so much too much of it
is based on things that really happen, But there are
a lot of it that you know clearly are kind
of more pale than you know, historical reck.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
It's the great game of telephone, and we know that
big floods did occur, the idea is kind of wrapping
them all up and calling it one big, great flood.
It's it's really interesting. It's kind of inspiring to that
humanity seems for so long to be in this cosmic
escape room, right and slowly, slowly figuring out clues about
(17:26):
the nature of biology and reality, but still kind of
just like a rock climber, kind of keeping hold of
the one the thing that feels secure until it is
proven false.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Well, and also, Ben, I would just double back on
what you said about people were not more or less intelligent.
It's just they didn't have access to all the information
yet it took you know, we literally are standing on
the shoulders of giants and a long, long, long amount
of time spent putting these pieces together. So I hope
it doesn't sound like we're insulting to the intelligence of
(17:57):
these folks. A lot of these things, know, followed practical
wisdom of the time, right, and then you know, these
folks these naturalists were talking about definitely pushed the narrative further,
even if getting hung up on some of the details.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah, Yeah, it was like the best scientific minds of
the time. This was their opinion about the whole thing.
In seventeen twenty eight, the then president of the Royal
College of Physicians, one Sir Hans Sloane, wrote this this
terrific piece about how those goofy native Siberians thought that
because these bones were found in the ground, they had
(18:34):
to belong to a species of elephants that live deep
in the earth.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Like the like the Morlocks, yeah right.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
And right under fans goods, and that this is like
the cause of earthquakes and stuff like that, and.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
They're just stomping around down there, yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah. And Sloane furthermore wrote that, like, you know, we, yes,
we educated Europeans, we understand that obviously the bones washed
there during the Great Flood.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
And everybody clapped, yes, okay, So this is this is
the prevailing sentiment from the most learned minds, the ted
talkers of their day. And we also have to I
think it's I think it's worth pointing out that some
(19:27):
of these folks, depending on where they lived at the time,
may have gone back to religious reasoning because it could
be considered heretical if they said it was bs.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Oh sure, you know, like choice between inquisition and sure,
those are great flood related elephant bones. Great into that?
I am ill?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Are we good?
Speaker 3 (19:54):
What's the terrific?
Speaker 4 (19:56):
So like opinion was developing as more and more of
these bones we're coming to light and back in North America,
colonists ran. Colonists ran across another fossil deposit. In seventeen
thirty nine, this French military expedition was on its way
south stopped through the Ohio River valley around what's now
northern Kentucky, and the Native Abnaki guides who were hunting
(20:20):
for them found some like fossilized tusks and a few teeth,
a femur as big as a person, and were like, hey,
look at these cool things we found. The French sent
the bones to Paris to King Louis the fifteenth, who
had a collection of curiosities, and naturalists there identified these
as right more pre flood elephants. This Ohio River site
(20:42):
also had salt deposits or salt licks, so it became
known as Big Bone Lick, and this would be a
major site for the budding field of what would be paleontology.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Fascin it's fascinating too, you know, Louis is a story
all his own, talk about we're an audio podcast, so everybody,
I want you to know the expression that Lauren had
in response to that, which was like, yeah, are we
going there? Maybe maybe we'll have to have you back
(21:15):
for another episode on Louis Shenanigans.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
What do you think his collection would have put Nicholas
Cage to share.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
And Nick still getting in there, the Nicholas Cage of
his day. Yeah, yeah, I think that's apt.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Kind of love that actually. So could you tell us
a little bit about the mysterious incognitum?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Oh yeah, okay. So so at Big Bone Lick, through
the seventeen fifties and sixties, traders and land surveyors collected
a lot more fossils. In addition to what we now
know our mask John remains, they found the remains of
like elk and giant ground sloths, which had like, you know,
big old claws, and so naturalists little hooky boys, right, yeah, yeahah, yeah,
(22:00):
exactly like that. That's the actual sound.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
That's the only way to do it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Typically, Yeah, we checked.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
So naturalists started like looked at all of these things
and started putting together this concept of a single animal
with these tusks that they thought probably curved downward like
saber teeth, and these big claws.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
They're doing a bit of a chimera situation here.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
And these giant knobby molars that could weigh like over
six pounds each, like you know, big things. When Benjamin
Franklin received a box of master Don fossils, he wrote,
the tusks agree with those of the African and Asiatic elephant,
but the grinders differ, being full knobs like the grinders
of a carnivorous animal.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Can you imagine the weird stuff Ben Franklin got, I
think on the regular constantly.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean, like unhinged stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Box of mastodontica for him, one can only imagine the grinders.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
He's referring to the mold, right.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And he's the guy where this would not be super
Dupe's unusual for me.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
But he got some off yet he got some even
more on the.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Post office guys like then, man, you know I dropped
the mail off at eleven am. Can you not take
your naked air baths just like during that specific time?
And Ben says it's science. I hear you got some
teeth for me.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I need my evening constitutional.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Oh also we should say Ben Franklin not a serial killer.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
We we verified he buried bodies in his basement, but
it was for science, not.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
In a serial killer way. The resurrection Matt not for funsies.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Well, you know, a little bit for funsie.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So this this is the interesting It was a little
bit for funsies. So this is interesting because we what
we see in this quotation Lauren, is that his take,
(24:12):
Ben Franklin's take on the tusk and the grinders make
this argument against what they knew about elephants of the
modern day.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Right, they assumed that they were dealing with some kind
of flesh eating monster, sick and right, and they called
it incognitum, which is essentially Latin for lack. I don't
know what it is.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I love that it's like unobtaining, it's mcguffinish.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And it's also funny. How would you look at species
names in Latin even today if you trace the etymology,
So many of them are so silly. Oh yeah, they're
like butt face red. Oh well, now I'm getting into
bird names. But we have to remember that even though
(25:06):
it sounds super fancy to say something like incognitum, here
in the modern day, or even in the seventeen hundreds.
It's exactly what you're describing. It is a shrug with
the hands up and going I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
Yeah, it could be something.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
It's probably big though, big something.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Speaking about a big something we have to talk about
Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
So that's one of my favorite segues so far. Thomas,
big guy again, Thomas always popping up big something something.
Jefferson novie called himself that.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Oh I think he did. All right, So this dude
became obsessed with these big bone lick fossils, like partially
because he was just a nerd like Ben Franklin. This
is just sort of what he was up to in
his free time, but partially because he realized that he
could use the incognitum to refute this widely circulated argument
(26:07):
that was going around about the inherent inferiority of the Americas,
including the people who lived there.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Okay, so this is now a he sees in these
fossils a potential political tool.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Yeah, yeah, political and or this was a passion project,
I strongly believe. But but all right, So in seventeen
sixty six, this famous French naturalist and my French is terrible,
so it's buffon. But Jeorges Louis la Cleric de Beauffon
he published this theory of American degeneracy, and basically he
(26:46):
was like wondering, like why the creatures of the Americas
tended to be like cute little buddies compared to the
majestic beasts of the old world of Africa and Asia
and Europe, you know, like next to an Indian tiger,
to be fair, like the Mexican jaguar is a cute
little guy. Yeah, But so Befoone's theory was that the
(27:09):
America's climate was to blame. And he was, yeah, like
like just just just lumping all what like two point
seven continents of the Americas together into a single climate,
which is interesting in its own right, but well, the.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Argument being that more tropical climates would yield the bigger,
crazier creatures, that more or more extreme, more.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
A sture climates would would give you grander creatures and
swamp ass places like the Americas were going to lead
to degenerates.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Ah yeah, because despite the fact that we we know
now that the American continents have a vast and varied
collection of biomes and ecosystems. He thought he was basing
it on what he knew at the time, just like
people in the Mediterranean finding warf elephant skulls. And he said,
(28:06):
this whole thing is a swamp and that's the reason. Uh,
these upstart colonists got stuck with the first stage pokemon.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
He didn't know about the bigfoots yet.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
More more humanoid giants. Yeah, so yeah, see we're not
immune today. We love these stories. But but okay, yeah,
you know.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Stories my bad.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Could they poop though?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Like if we okay in their show, take it with them.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
That's what they do because they respect nature.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Leave no leave, no trades.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
All right, Well, we solved that one, I think pretty handily.
So our guy, who is, by the way, to be fair,
a incredible French naturalist and off air, I said, French nationalists.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
So we think that different issue.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, different issues. So this guy, this guy is legitimate.
He's not some fringe, mad cap lunatic and what he
argues therefore becomes pretty convincing, I guess to readers in France.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
In everywhere essentially in Europe and the rest of the
European influenced world. So okay, so His belief system here
was that all life on Earth spontaneously generated and then
migrated around, adapting to different environments as it went, and
that America was a swamp that only recently rose up
(29:35):
out of the sea. You know, that explains why the
Appalachians are so small compared to It.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Sank back into the swamp. It sank back into the swamp.
They built it back up, it sank back into the
swamp again, and then finally.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
It stayed at a little bit of a bounce action there.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Sure, it's so it's so weird too, because we know
now that the Appalachians appear small because they're so gosh darn.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Old right, they've worn down. But he had the opposite concept,
and so he extrapolated that this environment had caused the
plants and animals that had come here to literally degenerate,
to become smaller and weaker and less reproductively successful. And
he claimed, really racistly, that the same thing had happened
(30:19):
to the human beings who had come to the Americas.
He also claimed that the same thing would continue to
happen to the offspring of European immigrants, and that therefore
the Americas would never be home to a great civilization.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Wow, his calves must be in awesome shape from those
leaps of logic. Man bit of a hater, Oh yeah, no,
bit about it. This guy, this guy clearly had an
axe to grind. Uh huh right, and again a dominant
cultural framework he was working within. He is, as he said,
(30:56):
he's kind of the literati of his day, leading scientific
mind and so our nerds across the pond who are
also super into esoteric things. They get winded this.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
Yeah, Thomas Jefferson was pissed.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Oh boy, Thomas Big Something.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Thomas Big Something Jefferson was big something about this that
I picture him just like sputtering, just going like my
sperm is great, thank you, right, Like I feel like
this was personal for him at a certain level, and
he wound up because he wound up spending a lot
(31:36):
of time and energy on refuting this in the seventeen
seventies and eighties, which you may recall was a busy time, right.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I've guys have pictured it now where someone comes in
at another would be founding father is like, Tommy Big Something,
we gotta go. The British are come in, Well, you
gotta give up this weird bone thing.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Man, and he's like no, no, no, no. And he
actually got a bunch of his compatriots involved in this,
like so he was one of the things that he
was trying to do was collect and publish these really
precise measurements of various American animals compared with their European counterparts.
(32:21):
This was a passion project for him to help refute
the faon's argument. And so he got like like Ben
Franklin and James Madison, who for some reason I thought
was above all of this. Like, he got these guys
to go out and measure local wildlife. Madison sent in
a description of a Virginian weasel down to the length
(32:44):
of the taint.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
He's not talking about a member of Congress there boo.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Also, if I could jump in, he real quick, Laurence said,
James Madison above all this. James Madison is considered to
be the shortest president in American history at five foot four,
so he was not above anything.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Maxic the facts.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
There we go.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Seeing in the phone and he's fallen knowledge. It's just
for you right now, the.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Guys, you didn't you didn't get my Virginian weasel joke
about Come on, that's good It's only a good joke
if you have to remind people that it was a
joke and explain what she meant. He Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
He also sets up this just perfect scenario for sketch comedy.
This is so, this is so rife with sketch comedy
because we know Ben Franklin and James Battison were probably
talking as well, and they.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Also invented sketch comedy and.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Invented sketch comedy. Yes, and they were probably they were
probably chatting with each other. I'm just imagining like Big
Something leaves the room for a bathroom break and Ben
and James are looking at each other, and one of
them is like, do you think do you think he's
gonna ask us to look at Taints again?
Speaker 2 (34:09):
This guy was a bit of an RFK type figure.
He was very interested in animal taking all the smoke.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
For Big Something here.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, okay, we know that he's enlisted Thomas Tommy's enlisting
a bunch of people to do his uh, to help
him in this passion project, possibly because he took it personally.
Uh does he respond to uh?
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Yeah, well, okay, hey.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I think Knowles r FK Junior thing is gonna is
gonna pay off with this.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, yeah, because we have to talk about a moose skirt.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Skirt, hold the hold the big moose, Hold the bone,
hold the bone. We are we are going to make
this a two chapter series, Lauren, through the magic of editing.
We're not exactly sure where we'll break in this story,
but this is already such a wild ride.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Dense, glad to do it like a mastodon bone.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Yeah, weird times.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
So folks, please joined us later in the week this
Thursday for part two of Mastadons in America with Lauren Vogelbaum.
In the meantime, so you.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Got to say it again? That was was that you've
been Mastadons in America? That is that your title? Or
is that Lawrence?
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I think it's just a weorrid title.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Well, it's good.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I just wanted to make sure that you enunciated it,
because I think it would have been blanked and you
would have missed him Masterdon's America.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So Lord, in the interim, as we're all waiting for Thursday,
where can people go to learn more about your work?
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Oh gosh, Well, the show that I'm currently doing is
called brain Stuff. That's one word. It's just a short
form little Science and History show. You can find it
wherever podcasts are found, or if you like social media,
if that's like your thing. Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky
and Instagram under the name Vogel Bomb v O g
(36:06):
E l b o MB. It's a it's a pun.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
You're not on X the Everything app?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
No, yeah, that's coming back.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I really miss live journle.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Oh my gosh. Oh no, someone's gonna find our live journals.
I have one where I would I would start in
trees with Dear Universe, Comma.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Adorable, Were you writing them under your blanket with a
flashlight and stuff?
Speaker 1 (36:36):
And it was a different time. It was a different time.
But we've had a great time this week. Big big
thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Big thanks
to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs, doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance
and uh several other people.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
M christophrasciotis name is Jeff got Here in Spira, Jonathan
Strickland the quiz or A. J.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Mohamed Jacobs the Buzzer.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
And thanks to you for tuning in. We'll see you Thursday, and.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
We'll see next time folks as well, which is gonna
be Thursday
Speaker 2 (37:09):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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