May 1, 2021 • 38 mins
You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn’t exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but they lived in other places too. Luckily the time they spent in caves has given us a glance at their culture thanks to the protective environments of caves. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you a cave dweller? I have been caving, and
luckily I went caving before I did this podcast on
how cave dwellers work from February, because I gotta tell you,
if I had done this podcast first, I probably would
not have ventured into that cave. Very scary stuff down there.
Everyone check it out and be aware. Welcome to stuff
(00:27):
you should know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
chills to Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there, so it's
stuff you should know. Wow, it's the same energetic edition
a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it's cold. I'm energized by
(00:49):
the cold, energized and like just a little Yeah, so
you're not energized, that is what we're saying. I'm a
little innersized. I feel like I'm I'm fine. Right. Why
do you say that because he's sound like you're sleepwalking.
Oh really? Yeah? Oh I thought I was just speaking fast.
Oh no, no, I thought that's why you're being sarcastic.
(01:10):
I'm sorry to everybody who's sitting through this right now.
So I'm down in the dumps. You are right, Yeah, no,
I'm fine, okay, I'm just it's the cold. It's a
little dreary outside of Today's the day it finally started
to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes, Um,
Emily is ready for spring. I'm like, it's you know,
it's January. She said, no, no, but it's Georgia, so
we could have spring in a few weeks. It's true.
(01:30):
We kind of had it yesterday. Um. You mean. And
I have been making these little bird feeders, like with
cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been
trying to get the physics of it down to hang
them so that the birds can like land on them there,
so I incorporate twigs and these things. They can spend
a little time there. Yeah. And there's this, um, a
little s ob of a squirrel that has my porch
(01:53):
all figured out, and it keeps like getting these whole
bird feeder cakes. And I realized, like I'm spending a
lot of time like trying to thwart this squirrel figure
out the physics of bird feed and I'm like, yeah,
I'm ready for spreaking. Yeah, we have one of those
cake holders for birds, but it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah,
and they eat it in like a day. Yeah. This
(02:15):
this squirrel can eat several cakes and it makes a mess. Yeah,
all right, Cave Dwelling. I can't remember I've I've asked
you before, but I don't know if you've seen it,
um since I asked you, because you hadn't. A Cave
of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzel. No I watched, well,
I watched like twenty minutes of it this morning just
(02:35):
to get the gist. You got the gist in twenty minutes. Well,
I can't wait to watch the whole thing though. It's
pretty much that. Yeah, but I don't want to watch it. Well,
yeah you should. It's neat. The whole thing's neat from
beginning to end. But I mean like it's a I
think maybe a two hour long documentary. Yeah, on a cave. Yeah.
In the cave art, it's phenomenal. Yeah, I know the
(02:57):
one in uh well they're both in France, right, Yeah.
The one that gets the most press is the last
Last Go, which is great, but this one, to me,
the art is better. Well, Alasco gets lord pressed because
it was discovered in nineteen forty, this one that weren't
Herzog did a documentary only discovered in year old art.
(03:19):
It's amazing, Yeah, it is, and it's all spectacularly preserved.
One of the benefits of discovering lastco in nineteen forty
was that when Chauves Cave, the one that was discovered
in ninety four it's even older, was discovered, we'd already
figured out a lot of stuff along the way and
how to preserve it right, right, so we could go
in there and sort of TCB. Yeah, you need to
(03:40):
cut down on the carbon dioxide that people are breathing
out herzog in there. Yeah. Um, you need to cut
down on flashes flash photography, because apparently flashes really do degrade.
There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments um,
and it's basically like releasing the sub light over the
(04:01):
course of a few milliseconds. Makes sense, that's one flash,
but if you add up all the tourists over the years,
all of a sudden, you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially
into this cave and it's degrading the pigment. So there's
also sorts of stuff we learned from Lascow Cave that's
not being applied to Chouve Cave. Um, but yes, it
is older, it is more awesome. And the very evidence
(04:22):
of old cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones
that are found in caves would suggest that there, in
some distant past of prehistory was a race of hominids
that were cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of
cave dwellers. Yeah, that must be correct, right, ringo star. Yeah,
(04:42):
I saw the movie Caveman or was that a documentary?
What's in a movie? Yeah, you're thinking of Quest for Fire. Yeah,
well those are all great movies. Plan at the Cave Bear,
But well I was setting you up and you you
didn't Well no, okay, thank is the answer. Um. They
now believe that, uh, people through different periods of ancient
(05:05):
history have dwelled in caves at times that probably didn't
like set up permanent residents in caves. Yeah. And the
big pivotal evidence of this is that the people who
would have supposedly lived in caves at that time were
all nomadic hunter gatherers. They wouldn't have been stationary for
in any kind of dwelling. Yeah, they gotta go out
(05:26):
and find the meat, right, So there was no such
thing as a species of hominid that you could say
our caveman. Those were the caveman. All the other ones
just lived. However, most of the people who are alive
in what we're talking about the Paleolithic era, which went
back from about two million years ago all the way
up to about ten thousand years ago. That's the Paleolithic
era um where they lived in all sorts of different
(05:50):
kinds of shelters, caves being one of them. Yeah. Uh.
One reason to go into a cave is obviously it's
gonna and we've covered this is I think our third Yeah,
the cave Sweet Cave Sweet, Yeah, biospeleology, which is awesome sloking. Yeah,
and then this one cave cave. Followers who thought that
(06:10):
we would do the three part series on caves, ever, well,
and this covers cave arts such that this will probably
be it. Don't you think? Is there anything else? I
can't cave anything? No, not really, Nick Cave. Maybe we
can podcast on him. Um. So some reasons to go
into a cave to begin with, obviously is to protect
yourself from the weather. I think it's probably the leading
(06:32):
it's raining, let's go inside that room. It's not raining
in the cave. Um to protect yourself from animals, because
if you go back and listen to our biospeleology, only
certain animals are in caves, very few and not a
lot of like you know, big nasty man eaters, although
back then they would have run in the cave bears
clan at the cave Bear. I don't know if sabretooth
tigers were cave dwellers, but I've seen a lot of
(06:53):
Flintstone episodes and from what I understand they do, they
did go into caves. Of course, you run into the
proteus salamander, which you would not want to run into.
Remember the three ft long eyelis salamander. Remember white nightmares
like once a week. Yeah, I don't think you'd do
anything to you, but man alive. Yeah, I wouldn't want
to see that thing, Like you wake up looking face
(07:15):
to face with that eyelis monster. Yeah. Yeah, but um,
protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other
people wasn't really a big reason. Because this is good
to know. I think I kind of got along and
help each other in general. Yeah, there's something called paleolithic warlessness. Yeah,
like the concept of war, organized war is apparently only
(07:39):
maybe twelve to sixteen thousand, eighteen thousand, maybe years old.
I think probably once people started getting comfy as when
they started wanting to fight each other. Back then, they
were just trying to survive. Yeah, you know, well there's
a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what
led to warfare. What what that guy's got exactly? Yeah, yeah,
it's basically and lead to surpluses. So people fared over surplus.
(08:02):
You're starving over here, and they've got all this grain
over here, so you go kill all those people and
take the grain. We should do a history of war.
That'd be good. Well, that would be good. But there
were obviously there were scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean,
it wasn't all like one in Roses. You tried getting
along with Ron Livingston now it's not his name. Oh
(08:23):
everybody gets along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right, yeah,
you know the other guy. Yeah, Um, that's a pretty
good mess up. There were scraps every now and then,
like obviously over you know, territory or food or fire.
But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with
this tribe. We don't like them, or we want what
(08:44):
they've got, because I mean the consensus among anthropologists apparently
is that war is relatively recent. It's not that ancient.
It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the
cave art we run into. Yeah years, so, um, you've
got shelter from the elements, protection from animals, um, nice
(09:05):
steady temperature as we that's a big one. Yeah, because
the cave typically is about in the fifties fifties degrees
fahrenheight um round. Yeah. So if you are in a
cave and you're living there and it's summertime, you are
sitting pretty If it's winter time, depending on where you are,
so you're in northern Europe, you're still sitting pretty. Sure.
(09:26):
All you have to do is build a little bit
of a fire and I hope you don't smoke yourself out,
and you are, you're you're in some climate controlled luxury,
especially for the Stone Age. You know, Uh. One reason
that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something
I learned when I went on my caving experience, which
is detailed in the Spelunking episode, is that even though
(09:48):
there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves are
like great to live in. Like a lot of them
you might walk right past because it's just a hole
in the ground. You have no idea there's an underground cavern.
A lot of them are inaccessible. Um, a lot of
them have our active so that means they have water,
which isn't super hospitable inactive cave. Yeah, it'll flood. Yeah,
(10:10):
you don't want to be in there when it floods. Yeah,
they're just not like generally, they're not like these huge
cavernous like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well. Plus
also there's a lot of gravel slopes which if you
stand on them you can fall and die. You learn
that pretty quick. Yeah, there's a cave dweller, lots of
different exits and entrances and shafts and things like that.
They can be misleading and confuse you and dark get
(10:31):
you lost to your death. Yeah, apparently just a couple
of dozen feet. I don't remember. There's the light zone,
the twilight zone in the dark zone, and I don't
remember where the twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins.
But once that dark zone begins, there's no light, like
no light and like you said, you can't just start
a bunch of fires because you can die from smoking
(10:52):
yourself out. Yeah, you can hit your head on stealag tights.
That's true. So it's not the most common thing to
find like a great cave for ten or twealth people
to live in, But when they found them and they
needed them, they would dwell in them, right and um. Again,
that's one reason, for several reasons why people didn't just
live in caves all the time. But another reason is
(11:12):
because they knew of other ways to live. They could
um stretch animal hides over of structures, they built um
earth and dwellings where they would build like a lean
to or something and then pack earth over it, which
is another way to control the climate or temperature in
that little dwelling. And again, they were nomadic. They were
following herds of bison and mammoths and um. You know,
(11:35):
it's a big, beautiful world too. Let's not forget Yeah, like,
why would you want to go live in a cave
your entire life when you've got the run of the
place of planet Earth and all it has to offer.
You know, if there was a hominid uh that could
be considered cave dwellers though it would probably be the Neanderthals.
(11:56):
As we understand right now, it wasn't too terribly long
ago that we discover are the new species of UM
human ancestor well, at least they were contemporary with modern humans.
The dennis Ovans. Oh who is that? Um? They they
were their type of hominid that lived in the thirty
(12:19):
fifty thousand years ago at the latest, I think maybe.
And um there's a cave in Croatia I believe where
they discovered a moler and they thought, well, no, they
discovered a finger bone and they thought it was Neanderthal
ar human and they ran the DNA tests and they're like, uh,
this is neither what is this? So they named it
(12:41):
it's a Dennisova cave or dennis Cave, one of the two.
And they named this new species of hominid a the
dennis Ovans. And then they looked at the human genome
and they're like, oh, well, you apparently in our bred
with them, because we have a little bit of dennis
Ovan and all of us most of us. Yeah, people
(13:01):
who UM stayed in Africa and didn't disperse like Neanderthals
or other modern humans too, apparently didn't have the opportunity
to mix with Dennis Ovans or Neanderthals. So typically people
of European descent Native American descent, they will have Um
Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But there's this cave in
(13:22):
Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals, humans and Dennis Ovan's
possibly shared these caves at the same time. Isn't that crazy?
They Yeah, they didn't necessarily sit around a campfire with
one another, but they they may have been using the
cave within you know, the same year or something like that,
depending on the season. I pictured them making s'mores and say,
(13:44):
how do you get your back so straight? But I mean,
think about it. If they were breeding, you know, then
maybe it wasn't those caves. Jerry either laughed at that
or she's choking on something food or both. Perhaps. Uh So, Yeah,
the Neanderthal was um all over Europe and during a
glacial period, so obviously they've got harsh climates, so they
(14:07):
might want to poke into a cave every now and
then and warm up. Um. And there are a couple
of strategies that archaeologists believe we're used back then. The
circulating mobility and radiating mobility and circulating was um. And
I kind of like this idea is had several temporary
camps kind of scattered all over a region, and it's
(14:27):
kind of like just having different homes and you would
just go from place to place and live in your
little home and hunt and gather. Uh. Or it's the
same thing the ultra wealthy dude today exactly. Or radiating
mobility was when you had one main camp and you
would just go out as far as you could to
hunt and gather from that camp. Right, so you had
other shelters along the way. I don't know. I thought
(14:49):
the radiating mobility was just the one camp and you
came and went to that camp every day and that
was the difference. Is that right, It's possible. I think
that's right. Um. And apparently some of these camps were
in fact caves at times, right, So they were using
caves for sure. They were um doing something else too. Uh.
(15:12):
They were creating art in these caves, boy were they?
Which has people UM baffled. Alright, cave art and if
(15:46):
you have in your mind a cave art is like
super primitive, like you know, is that a buffalo or
is that a giraffe? You should go just google the
cave art in those two caves especially. Oh yeah, Calvette
calve chave. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks
about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is
(16:07):
that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals.
And um, they think they're they're wondering whether that was
like intentional or not, and they think it probably was
intentional before they make a little pounced interestingly. But it's
like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah, when you
(16:29):
look at the stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't discovered
um perspective yet, so it's all flat, two dimensional. But um,
first of all, they're creating these things in utter dark
by torchlight. Yeah, using earthen pigments like ochre for yellows
and oranges, Um, charcoal, charcoal for black was the red one.
(16:53):
I think for red they used iron oxide and they
used charcoal and manganese for they're using very very primitive
brushes in the dictionary sense of the word, yeah, or
there early airbrush artists essentially, because they're blowing this pigment
through a h a tube, a tube or just out
(17:18):
of their mouth right onto the walls. Yeah. Uh, and
then they're also using their hands and their fingers. But
you're right, man, there are some especially when you take
all of this into consideration. Yeah, it makes some of
the art that was made just staggering. Yeah. Apparently they
would use to some of the uh texture of the
cave itself, like if there was a an indentation or
(17:39):
not an indentation, but what's hopps has been indentation. Yeah,
there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn.
They would incorporate that as the rhino horn, and all
of a sudden you had I mean, it's not quite
three D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah. Right,
you know they're like, it's not perspective, but it's gonna
have to do. Uh. They now have evidence in some
(18:03):
of these thirty thousand year old caves of scaffolding. I
hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty cool, and um principles
of stenciling, early principles of stenciling. And apparently when uh
Picasso visited lescal he said to his guide, they've invented everything,
and he was just like blown away. Yeah, basically like
(18:26):
I'm just copying these early hominids. It's pretty amazing. It's
about right too. Yeah, and actually I don't know Picasso's
all right, but some of these caves they haven't beat
They didn't look funny, they didn't have one eye, and
they didn't wear braiths. Um So, most of the subjects
of cave paintings that have been discovered so far, and
(18:48):
there could be tons and tons of undiscovered caves, like
the one at Chauves wasn't discovered until because at some
point in the past a rock fall happened and closed
the cave off to view and was just happened to
be discovered by some hikers. Man, can you imagine being
the person that discovered that. It would have been pretty cool.
(19:10):
Um So, most of the cave art that has been
discovered so far, it depicts herd animals. Yeah, animals, by
and large, there herd animals. They're bison, their buffalo, their um, mammoths,
things like that. Um. There's very few images of vegetation,
(19:31):
very few images of humans. The images of humans there
are tend to be things like fertility idols, like female
fertility idols, And there's a theory out there that those
were painted by adolescent boys. Yeah, as like basically early
you know, club magazine or something. And uh, that may
or may not be correct, especially when they found that
(19:53):
in France and Spain a lot and possibly the majority
of cave art was done by females. They recently discovered
you know, the hand ones handprints, they figured out recently
that most of those are female hands because of the
they they give away of the sixth finger, that only females. That. Um,
(20:14):
there's an article that I can recommend that actually is
what inspired Berner Hertzog to make his documentary called First Impressions. Uh.
It was in the New Yorker in two thousand eight
by Judith Thurman and it's super awesome. And uh, she
basically says there's a couple of camps when it comes
to cave art experts. Ah, those who can't resist advancing
(20:35):
a theory about the art, and then those who say
there never will be enough evidence to support one, so
you're all just sort of making up these theories. Yeah,
I think that's healthy. That second camp is much healthier
because it is all theories. But I like the theories though, Yeah,
And I don't think we should just be like we'll
never understand that, so let's not even try. Yeah, I
think we should just remember that when we are trying
(20:56):
to understand them, they're all just guesses, and not even
really educated guesses at that. Yeah. I think my theory
of why there are animals mostly is because it was
super important to their survival. And maybe it was you know, uh,
some communication to leave for another person later or to
each other. Maybe. Yeah, it could be, Um, there's lots
(21:18):
of buffalo in this area, so get to hunting, or
don't hunt these guys, because I just killed a bunch
of them by forcing them off a cliff. It was awesome,
by the way, to see, but there's not that many
left and we need them to keep reading. Or I'm
an eight year old the interthal in naked lady. Yeah,
here's a naked buffalo for your pleasure. Uh. There's also
(21:41):
lots of theories that these things were um supernatural somehow,
like they were trying to invoke the animal spirit for
a successful hunt or gain some sort of power by
creating an image of the animal. Um. And it could
have also just been like this is what I see
in my everyday life, and I have this desire to
(22:01):
create art. So that's that's the subject I'm gonna make
is this animal that I am thinking about a lot
because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah, that
makes a conversion between this innate desire and the everyday life.
And that's bison on cave walls. Well, some of them
are pretty detailed in uh, some are life size. It's
(22:24):
like they really took a lot of time. It wasn't
something they just dashed off in a matter of hours.
And they're using these torches too, are not like it's
not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight also,
but um, they're like stone torches with like a little
divid in the top and some animal fat put in
there and then they light the animal fat, which I'm
(22:45):
sure in and of itself is quite a task. Um.
But so yeah, there was there was a lot of
effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the
pigments I'm sure wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're
doing like a life side bison. How long did it
take to gather all that? Ochre sure it's not a
quick thing. And it's not just paintings. They found a
(23:09):
jewelry and other like engrave, bone and ivory and they
think they probably engraved wood too, but that obviously wouldn't
survive that long. But um, they suggest early religious belief
and that they think they might have buried people with
some of these things. Yeah, so it's like it's amazing stuff.
And unfortunately when there's no written history, there's a lot
(23:30):
of speculation. But it just I don't know, it's fascinating
to me. Well, yeah, you know, and their their history
has been largely lost. It just happens to be preserved
in the caves. But since they weren't just as strictly
cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion of their culture, right,
because the rest of it was in animal skin shelters
and earthen lean too that have been totally lost because
(23:52):
they were exposed to the elements the caves that were
flooded out and washed away too. So yeah, well that's
why there's only like, well, there's more than that, but
the two big daddies, there's only two. No, there's another one.
There's one called Altamira in Spain. Yet Steely Dan had
a song about it, the Caves of Altamira, and is
it loaded with art? Okay, yeah, there's there's plenty more
(24:13):
than that. It's just less goes the most famous one,
and then chauve is the most recent, most famous one
because I heard but there are others. Um, what about rocolodytes.
We should mention that that's a great word to call somebody.
It always reminds me of trilobite. Remember the little weird
kind of insect, armor plated fossilized insect. I'll show you
(24:38):
a trilobite. It was one of the earliest, like footed animals.
Scary looking really, but that's what I always get the
too confused chocolate. It means cave dweller, literally someone who
lives in a hole or cave named after There are
apparently some West African tribes that the Greeks came in
contact with, and they lived in cliff caves, and they
(25:01):
were called trogold eye, t r trougled diet. Well, it's
a nice insult you can throw around these days and
sounds sort of intelligent. Instead of calling someone like a
d bag, he'd say he's a trocolodyte. Yeah, you know, yeah,
and one got Jerry. Two man, you guys are on
the same wave like today, I guess so shot, so
(25:45):
I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes,
well modern, let's not quite go into present day. I
think we need to give a shout out to the
Anasazeing and the Pueblos word cliff dwelling people's from the
twelfth century ish of the southwestern United States who basically
showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out
(26:08):
caves and lived there. They built their own caves. Yeah,
you should see some of these. Look up, like, just
look up cliff dwellers US and you'll see some really
neat They had, like whole cities like carved out into
these these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders.
That sounds really dangerous it was, but it was also
very well defended and sertified. Yeah, because people just be like,
(26:31):
I'm not going up there. Ify those guys. Yeah, I'm
not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Um. Can we talk
about Mountain Mountain Hebron Are we there yet? Yeah? Okay, Uh,
that's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and
a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network
of caves that have been around for about a hundred
years that their forefathers built and uh, but of course,
(26:54):
because it's in the West Bank, there's UH some disagreement
over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed
by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened
to remove the people. I don't know what the current
state is. I looked it up, I couldn't find it.
Last I saw was that they basically designated it a
militarized zone, which meant that the Palestinians living there needed
(27:19):
to leave. But are they still in there? I don't
know that. The most recent thing I can find from
two thousand five, so I don't know alright, Well, southern Spain,
was that what you were talking about. I don't know
if Faltemyer's in southern Spain, but there's it's definitely in Spain.
But there are like a natural cliff or cave dwellings
that were carved out into even further cave dwellings in
(27:41):
Spain and um have basically been continuously inhabited at one
time or another. Now there's a large homeless population there apparently, right.
I mean, Spain's got like unemployment. I'm sure that the
cave dwelling populations increased proportionately. Uh, Cappaduct. Cappadocia uh in
(28:02):
Turkey has an elaborate cave system and it's not a
very friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's
been described as lunar and yeah, it's amazing, it's really amazing.
Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if
you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are
caves like homes. Yeah, and these were man made. These
(28:23):
were carved out for people to live in, which is um.
I guess we didn't even say. I guess that's the
other type of cave. You neither find one or you
can make one. But yeah, and by making one, I
think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural
cave to that's that was account. I would guess that'd
be man made too. Yeah, probably so. But the in
Cappadocia in Turkey um anchor rights, which were early Christians
(28:47):
who were your hermits. Yeah. Um, they inhabited these caves
and and made the first dwellings. And then when the
Christians were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people. Yeah,
and they actually built um underground churches that became an
underground city have you seen these pictures? Oh, they're amazing,
(29:09):
just the masonry and the artwork that they made of
just hewn from the rock. That's still intact today. And
apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while
and then rediscovered. Not but that was pretty neat to find. Well,
I got another documentary for you, UM, like no place
on earth have you seen that one? Uh? There was
a guy a caver that UM was exploring this cave
(29:30):
in the Ukraine and he found like shoes and medicine
bottles and things, and he was like, wait a minute,
this isn't like paleolithic at all. This looks like it
was from the nineteen forties. And it was. And it
turns out there was um thirty eighth members of different
Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for
(29:54):
h five hundred and eleven days. They lived underground for
over a year and a half. And and uh, some
of these people are still alive and they found them.
They still live in the caves. No, no, no, no,
they lived there for a year and a half. I
got you in the Holocaust, Um, but there they had
never told their story. They just like kept it a secret.
Because they were like, no one would believe it. Plus
(30:15):
also in case they ever needed to go back to
the caves, Well they did go back. They took him
back to the caves. No, I'm saying if they ever
had to go back to the cave, like you want
to keep the cave secret because they weren't the first time,
you know, but um, it's pretty powerful. And they take
some of these survivors back to this cave or they
haven't been since the Holocaust and they all survived to um,
really really great documentary. That's cool. Yeah, very cool, like
(30:37):
no place selves, like like no place on Earth or
like no place selse Um. There's also apparently a trend
in parts of Europe to buy old man made cave
homes and dress him up. I saw this and I
was like, really, I didn't double check, but I could
see this. Yeah, I mean this is a grabster. So's
(30:58):
he's good on his facts. Outfitting them with electricity, um,
installing modern plumbing, uh, getting the ventilation system going, and
just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah, putting down
tile floor and there's always the cave home weirdos. Yeah. Well,
I mean, if you're seen the show TV, like you know,
(31:20):
bizarre houses. If you're a green person, yeah, you could
do a lot worse than build yourself a cave home
because the environmental impact is so much lower. It requires
much fewer building materials. Um. If you can deal with
very low natural light and not go crazy, then a
cave might be suited for you. If you can deal
with the damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah.
(31:43):
And I shouldn't have said weirdos to eat the throne.
But anytime I see those shows of like extreme bizarre homes,
you just shoot the TV. This guy made a house
out of like Bob Goolay was on it. Yeah, pretty much. Um,
I've never been in like there was a cave house
near us growing up. Actually that really Yeah. It was
like you know, it was when they built into the
(32:04):
side of you know Earth where in Stone Mountain is
it's still there, I assume, so is it built into
Stone Mountain? No? No, no, no, um. And it was
like kind of the people would go by there and
look at it and stuff. And I, even as a kid,
I thought it was kind of dumb. Did you ever
know Jack McBrier when you were younger Kenneth from UM
thirty Rock. He's from Stone Mountain Conyers. Oh really yeah,
(32:28):
in the show he's from Stone Mountain. UM. One of
the other writers for thirty Rock, though I can't remember
his name, is is I think what you read in
is that right? But no, Hun didn't? No Jack Prayer?
Uh you got anything else? Oh? Yeah? The last thing.
One of the other benefits of um cave home it's
(32:51):
very difficult to break into, which is sad because that
is not the reason why they were initially used in
the Paleolithic Carrott. But it's a it's a quality point,
now that's true. How far god, where was it that
guy that built a house underground? No, I've seen those before.
I've seen like missile silos converted into homes and things
(33:12):
like that. This one was for sale recently. I can't
remember who sent it to me, but he basically built
It's not like a weird, you know, silo house. It's
like a home. He just built underground. Like when you
go down there. He's got paintings of the outside world
on all the walls. It was this rich guy who
built it. I think as a like a shelter in
(33:32):
case something bad. Happened. And so you know there's pictures
of like rolling fields and when you're underground, I mean,
obviously you can tell it's a painting, but it doesn't
feel like some cave. It's like just a regular house
built underground. Well, there's a theory that we're going to
end up living underground because eventually arable crop lay and
will become so valuable that we will, uh, we'll all
(33:52):
have will basically be forced to inhabit the opposite of
sky scrapers. They will be going downs of up because
we'll need the land up on top for crops. Didn't
we do one on why why don't humans live underground? Yeah?
I guess I could be part four? Then I guess
so it's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. You
(34:13):
know this is the cave suite. All right, So let's
see you don't have anything else. I got nothing else.
If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you
can type cave dwellers into the search part how stuff
works dot Com. And I said search parts means it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We keep
making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh yeah, and I'm
(34:37):
tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm
gonna like put us both in time out. Do you
think Jerry would be paying attention? But I don't know
why we keep making this mistake. But in the Solar
Sales episode, we talked about the fact I think it
was you this time said something about the acceleration will
kill you, or the speed will kill you, or something
going that fast. Yeah, I'm sure it was me. We
got a lot of emails and this was one of
(34:59):
the nicer ones. Heads up guys on a few things,
including on the Solar sales. There's been some misunderstanding between
speed and acceleration. Common belief is it traveling at high
speeds is taxing on the body. Not true. It is
the acceleration and not the speed, which is dangerous. Take
as an example, traveling in a car. Changing your velocity
from zero to a hundred kilometers per hour a very
(35:19):
short time results in a large acceleration. This is where
you get that feeling of being crushed into your seat.
But once you keep that constant speed, that feeling goes away.
The same thing for a plane. Notice when you accelerate
on the tarmac, it's pretty intense, but once you're up
in the air, you barely feel a thing. Yeah, you
think we'd know this. I mean, we've done sorts of
research on the rockets led an acceleration, and it's just
(35:41):
misspeaking in the moment. We know this. Oh, if I'm
interrupt for a second. I ran across this designer's euthanasia
roller coaster. What um? It was basically this guy design
It's all conceptual, obviously a slightly tongue in cheek, but
it was designed to kill you, like the roller coaster
was designed and to go out with a thrill. Yeah,
(36:03):
and he he describes like what like at what point
you will die and from what Basically it's like you
are going upside down so fast. The acceleration is so
great that it basically like keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. Um,
and just to make sure you're dead. He added like
six of those loops. But it starts with this huge hill.
(36:25):
I can't remember what it's called. I think if you
look up youthan Asia roller coaster, this this guy's design
will come up. It's pretty interesting, interesting, but it would
be from acceleration, not speed. Wow, that's a lot of
work to put into a killing machine. I would just
draw a length of rope and a sturdy beam. You know, Um,
you wouldn't be a successful designer, probably so. Uh So.
(36:46):
Then he puts it in the context of the solar
sale um and says only very small accelerations are involved,
so human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces.
So I hope it clears it up a little bit.
Definitely rocking guys, Thanks a lot. That is from knee
RAJ from Australia slash Mauritius ni Raj. Thank you if
(37:08):
you appreciate that. We will never make that mistake again.
I disagree. I'm sure we will. Speed'll kill you. Where's
Northern Ireland, Great Britain, UK England? We've been getting that
one wrong forever too. Yeah. You know, there's only so
much information a human brain can hold, everybody, and we're
trying to fill it with things like cave dwelling backs
(37:30):
and stuff like that. Yeah. Who was the bass player
for Poison? I can't get rid of that, do you
know that? Yeah? Bobby Doll, So there's cc It was
the guitarist Brett Michael Frett Michael. Bobby Doll is the guy.
He sounds like a seven oriole or something that the
drummer was. You remember him, right, No, Ricky Rockett? Oh wow, yeah,
(37:52):
no I do. I didn't even like poison. That's what's
so funny. Poison was good. I wouldn't have fan they
were good. Uh, let's see. If you want to know
more about poison, I had to do that part, didn't
I sure. If you want to get in touch with us,
how about that. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff podcast how Stuff works dot com.
(38:19):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Are you a cave dweller? I have been caving, and
luckily I went caving before I did this podcast on
how cave dwellers work from February, because I gotta tell you,
if I had done this podcast first, I probably would
not have ventured into that cave. Very scary stuff down there.
Everyone check it out and be aware. Welcome to stuff
(00:27):
you should know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
chills to Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there, so it's
stuff you should know. Wow, it's the same energetic edition
a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it's cold. I'm energized by
(00:49):
the cold, energized and like just a little Yeah, so
you're not energized, that is what we're saying. I'm a
little innersized. I feel like I'm I'm fine. Right. Why
do you say that because he's sound like you're sleepwalking.
Oh really? Yeah? Oh I thought I was just speaking fast.
Oh no, no, I thought that's why you're being sarcastic.
(01:10):
I'm sorry to everybody who's sitting through this right now.
So I'm down in the dumps. You are right, Yeah, no,
I'm fine, okay, I'm just it's the cold. It's a
little dreary outside of Today's the day it finally started
to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes, Um,
Emily is ready for spring. I'm like, it's you know,
it's January. She said, no, no, but it's Georgia, so
we could have spring in a few weeks. It's true.
(01:30):
We kind of had it yesterday. Um. You mean. And
I have been making these little bird feeders, like with
cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been
trying to get the physics of it down to hang
them so that the birds can like land on them there,
so I incorporate twigs and these things. They can spend
a little time there. Yeah. And there's this, um, a
little s ob of a squirrel that has my porch
(01:53):
all figured out, and it keeps like getting these whole
bird feeder cakes. And I realized, like I'm spending a
lot of time like trying to thwart this squirrel figure
out the physics of bird feed and I'm like, yeah,
I'm ready for spreaking. Yeah, we have one of those
cake holders for birds, but it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah,
and they eat it in like a day. Yeah. This
(02:15):
this squirrel can eat several cakes and it makes a mess. Yeah,
all right, Cave Dwelling. I can't remember I've I've asked
you before, but I don't know if you've seen it,
um since I asked you, because you hadn't. A Cave
of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzel. No I watched, well,
I watched like twenty minutes of it this morning just
(02:35):
to get the gist. You got the gist in twenty minutes. Well,
I can't wait to watch the whole thing though. It's
pretty much that. Yeah, but I don't want to watch it. Well,
yeah you should. It's neat. The whole thing's neat from
beginning to end. But I mean like it's a I
think maybe a two hour long documentary. Yeah, on a cave. Yeah.
In the cave art, it's phenomenal. Yeah, I know the
(02:57):
one in uh well they're both in France, right, Yeah.
The one that gets the most press is the last
Last Go, which is great, but this one, to me,
the art is better. Well, Alasco gets lord pressed because
it was discovered in nineteen forty, this one that weren't
Herzog did a documentary only discovered in year old art.
(03:19):
It's amazing, Yeah, it is, and it's all spectacularly preserved.
One of the benefits of discovering lastco in nineteen forty
was that when Chauves Cave, the one that was discovered
in ninety four it's even older, was discovered, we'd already
figured out a lot of stuff along the way and
how to preserve it right, right, so we could go
in there and sort of TCB. Yeah, you need to
(03:40):
cut down on the carbon dioxide that people are breathing
out herzog in there. Yeah. Um, you need to cut
down on flashes flash photography, because apparently flashes really do degrade.
There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments um,
and it's basically like releasing the sub light over the
(04:01):
course of a few milliseconds. Makes sense, that's one flash,
but if you add up all the tourists over the years,
all of a sudden, you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially
into this cave and it's degrading the pigment. So there's
also sorts of stuff we learned from Lascow Cave that's
not being applied to Chouve Cave. Um, but yes, it
is older, it is more awesome. And the very evidence
(04:22):
of old cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones
that are found in caves would suggest that there, in
some distant past of prehistory was a race of hominids
that were cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of
cave dwellers. Yeah, that must be correct, right, ringo star. Yeah,
(04:42):
I saw the movie Caveman or was that a documentary?
What's in a movie? Yeah, you're thinking of Quest for Fire. Yeah,
well those are all great movies. Plan at the Cave Bear,
But well I was setting you up and you you
didn't Well no, okay, thank is the answer. Um. They
now believe that, uh, people through different periods of ancient
(05:05):
history have dwelled in caves at times that probably didn't
like set up permanent residents in caves. Yeah. And the
big pivotal evidence of this is that the people who
would have supposedly lived in caves at that time were
all nomadic hunter gatherers. They wouldn't have been stationary for
in any kind of dwelling. Yeah, they gotta go out
(05:26):
and find the meat, right, So there was no such
thing as a species of hominid that you could say
our caveman. Those were the caveman. All the other ones
just lived. However, most of the people who are alive
in what we're talking about the Paleolithic era, which went
back from about two million years ago all the way
up to about ten thousand years ago. That's the Paleolithic
era um where they lived in all sorts of different
(05:50):
kinds of shelters, caves being one of them. Yeah. Uh.
One reason to go into a cave is obviously it's
gonna and we've covered this is I think our third Yeah,
the cave Sweet Cave Sweet, Yeah, biospeleology, which is awesome sloking. Yeah,
and then this one cave cave. Followers who thought that
(06:10):
we would do the three part series on caves, ever, well,
and this covers cave arts such that this will probably
be it. Don't you think? Is there anything else? I
can't cave anything? No, not really, Nick Cave. Maybe we
can podcast on him. Um. So some reasons to go
into a cave to begin with, obviously is to protect
yourself from the weather. I think it's probably the leading
(06:32):
it's raining, let's go inside that room. It's not raining
in the cave. Um to protect yourself from animals, because
if you go back and listen to our biospeleology, only
certain animals are in caves, very few and not a
lot of like you know, big nasty man eaters, although
back then they would have run in the cave bears
clan at the cave Bear. I don't know if sabretooth
tigers were cave dwellers, but I've seen a lot of
(06:53):
Flintstone episodes and from what I understand they do, they
did go into caves. Of course, you run into the
proteus salamander, which you would not want to run into.
Remember the three ft long eyelis salamander. Remember white nightmares
like once a week. Yeah, I don't think you'd do
anything to you, but man alive. Yeah, I wouldn't want
to see that thing, Like you wake up looking face
(07:15):
to face with that eyelis monster. Yeah. Yeah, but um,
protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other
people wasn't really a big reason. Because this is good
to know. I think I kind of got along and
help each other in general. Yeah, there's something called paleolithic warlessness. Yeah,
like the concept of war, organized war is apparently only
(07:39):
maybe twelve to sixteen thousand, eighteen thousand, maybe years old.
I think probably once people started getting comfy as when
they started wanting to fight each other. Back then, they
were just trying to survive. Yeah, you know, well there's
a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what
led to warfare. What what that guy's got exactly? Yeah, yeah,
it's basically and lead to surpluses. So people fared over surplus.
(08:02):
You're starving over here, and they've got all this grain
over here, so you go kill all those people and
take the grain. We should do a history of war.
That'd be good. Well, that would be good. But there
were obviously there were scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean,
it wasn't all like one in Roses. You tried getting
along with Ron Livingston now it's not his name. Oh
(08:23):
everybody gets along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right, yeah,
you know the other guy. Yeah, Um, that's a pretty
good mess up. There were scraps every now and then,
like obviously over you know, territory or food or fire.
But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with
this tribe. We don't like them, or we want what
(08:44):
they've got, because I mean the consensus among anthropologists apparently
is that war is relatively recent. It's not that ancient.
It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the
cave art we run into. Yeah years, so, um, you've
got shelter from the elements, protection from animals, um, nice
(09:05):
steady temperature as we that's a big one. Yeah, because
the cave typically is about in the fifties fifties degrees
fahrenheight um round. Yeah. So if you are in a
cave and you're living there and it's summertime, you are
sitting pretty If it's winter time, depending on where you are,
so you're in northern Europe, you're still sitting pretty. Sure.
(09:26):
All you have to do is build a little bit
of a fire and I hope you don't smoke yourself out,
and you are, you're you're in some climate controlled luxury,
especially for the Stone Age. You know, Uh. One reason
that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something
I learned when I went on my caving experience, which
is detailed in the Spelunking episode, is that even though
(09:48):
there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves are
like great to live in. Like a lot of them
you might walk right past because it's just a hole
in the ground. You have no idea there's an underground cavern.
A lot of them are inaccessible. Um, a lot of
them have our active so that means they have water,
which isn't super hospitable inactive cave. Yeah, it'll flood. Yeah,
(10:10):
you don't want to be in there when it floods. Yeah,
they're just not like generally, they're not like these huge
cavernous like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well. Plus
also there's a lot of gravel slopes which if you
stand on them you can fall and die. You learn
that pretty quick. Yeah, there's a cave dweller, lots of
different exits and entrances and shafts and things like that.
They can be misleading and confuse you and dark get
(10:31):
you lost to your death. Yeah, apparently just a couple
of dozen feet. I don't remember. There's the light zone,
the twilight zone in the dark zone, and I don't
remember where the twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins.
But once that dark zone begins, there's no light, like
no light and like you said, you can't just start
a bunch of fires because you can die from smoking
(10:52):
yourself out. Yeah, you can hit your head on stealag tights.
That's true. So it's not the most common thing to
find like a great cave for ten or twealth people
to live in, But when they found them and they
needed them, they would dwell in them, right and um. Again,
that's one reason, for several reasons why people didn't just
live in caves all the time. But another reason is
(11:12):
because they knew of other ways to live. They could
um stretch animal hides over of structures, they built um
earth and dwellings where they would build like a lean
to or something and then pack earth over it, which
is another way to control the climate or temperature in
that little dwelling. And again, they were nomadic. They were
following herds of bison and mammoths and um. You know,
(11:35):
it's a big, beautiful world too. Let's not forget Yeah, like,
why would you want to go live in a cave
your entire life when you've got the run of the
place of planet Earth and all it has to offer.
You know, if there was a hominid uh that could
be considered cave dwellers though it would probably be the Neanderthals.
(11:56):
As we understand right now, it wasn't too terribly long
ago that we discover are the new species of UM
human ancestor well, at least they were contemporary with modern humans.
The dennis Ovans. Oh who is that? Um? They they
were their type of hominid that lived in the thirty
(12:19):
fifty thousand years ago at the latest, I think maybe.
And um there's a cave in Croatia I believe where
they discovered a moler and they thought, well, no, they
discovered a finger bone and they thought it was Neanderthal
ar human and they ran the DNA tests and they're like, uh,
this is neither what is this? So they named it
(12:41):
it's a Dennisova cave or dennis Cave, one of the two.
And they named this new species of hominid a the
dennis Ovans. And then they looked at the human genome
and they're like, oh, well, you apparently in our bred
with them, because we have a little bit of dennis
Ovan and all of us most of us. Yeah, people
(13:01):
who UM stayed in Africa and didn't disperse like Neanderthals
or other modern humans too, apparently didn't have the opportunity
to mix with Dennis Ovans or Neanderthals. So typically people
of European descent Native American descent, they will have Um
Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But there's this cave in
(13:22):
Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals, humans and Dennis Ovan's
possibly shared these caves at the same time. Isn't that crazy?
They Yeah, they didn't necessarily sit around a campfire with
one another, but they they may have been using the
cave within you know, the same year or something like that,
depending on the season. I pictured them making s'mores and say,
(13:44):
how do you get your back so straight? But I mean,
think about it. If they were breeding, you know, then
maybe it wasn't those caves. Jerry either laughed at that
or she's choking on something food or both. Perhaps. Uh So, Yeah,
the Neanderthal was um all over Europe and during a
glacial period, so obviously they've got harsh climates, so they
(14:07):
might want to poke into a cave every now and
then and warm up. Um. And there are a couple
of strategies that archaeologists believe we're used back then. The
circulating mobility and radiating mobility and circulating was um. And
I kind of like this idea is had several temporary
camps kind of scattered all over a region, and it's
(14:27):
kind of like just having different homes and you would
just go from place to place and live in your
little home and hunt and gather. Uh. Or it's the
same thing the ultra wealthy dude today exactly. Or radiating
mobility was when you had one main camp and you
would just go out as far as you could to
hunt and gather from that camp. Right, so you had
other shelters along the way. I don't know. I thought
(14:49):
the radiating mobility was just the one camp and you
came and went to that camp every day and that
was the difference. Is that right, It's possible. I think
that's right. Um. And apparently some of these camps were
in fact caves at times, right, So they were using
caves for sure. They were um doing something else too. Uh.
(15:12):
They were creating art in these caves, boy were they?
Which has people UM baffled. Alright, cave art and if
(15:46):
you have in your mind a cave art is like
super primitive, like you know, is that a buffalo or
is that a giraffe? You should go just google the
cave art in those two caves especially. Oh yeah, Calvette
calve chave. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks
about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is
(16:07):
that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals.
And um, they think they're they're wondering whether that was
like intentional or not, and they think it probably was
intentional before they make a little pounced interestingly. But it's
like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah, when you
(16:29):
look at the stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't discovered
um perspective yet, so it's all flat, two dimensional. But um,
first of all, they're creating these things in utter dark
by torchlight. Yeah, using earthen pigments like ochre for yellows
and oranges, Um, charcoal, charcoal for black was the red one.
(16:53):
I think for red they used iron oxide and they
used charcoal and manganese for they're using very very primitive
brushes in the dictionary sense of the word, yeah, or
there early airbrush artists essentially, because they're blowing this pigment
through a h a tube, a tube or just out
(17:18):
of their mouth right onto the walls. Yeah. Uh, and
then they're also using their hands and their fingers. But
you're right, man, there are some especially when you take
all of this into consideration. Yeah, it makes some of
the art that was made just staggering. Yeah. Apparently they
would use to some of the uh texture of the
cave itself, like if there was a an indentation or
(17:39):
not an indentation, but what's hopps has been indentation. Yeah,
there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn.
They would incorporate that as the rhino horn, and all
of a sudden you had I mean, it's not quite
three D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah. Right,
you know they're like, it's not perspective, but it's gonna
have to do. Uh. They now have evidence in some
(18:03):
of these thirty thousand year old caves of scaffolding. I
hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty cool, and um principles
of stenciling, early principles of stenciling. And apparently when uh
Picasso visited lescal he said to his guide, they've invented everything,
and he was just like blown away. Yeah, basically like
(18:26):
I'm just copying these early hominids. It's pretty amazing. It's
about right too. Yeah, and actually I don't know Picasso's
all right, but some of these caves they haven't beat
They didn't look funny, they didn't have one eye, and
they didn't wear braiths. Um So, most of the subjects
of cave paintings that have been discovered so far, and
(18:48):
there could be tons and tons of undiscovered caves, like
the one at Chauves wasn't discovered until because at some
point in the past a rock fall happened and closed
the cave off to view and was just happened to
be discovered by some hikers. Man, can you imagine being
the person that discovered that. It would have been pretty cool.
(19:10):
Um So, most of the cave art that has been
discovered so far, it depicts herd animals. Yeah, animals, by
and large, there herd animals. They're bison, their buffalo, their um, mammoths,
things like that. Um. There's very few images of vegetation,
(19:31):
very few images of humans. The images of humans there
are tend to be things like fertility idols, like female
fertility idols, And there's a theory out there that those
were painted by adolescent boys. Yeah, as like basically early
you know, club magazine or something. And uh, that may
or may not be correct, especially when they found that
(19:53):
in France and Spain a lot and possibly the majority
of cave art was done by females. They recently discovered
you know, the hand ones handprints, they figured out recently
that most of those are female hands because of the
they they give away of the sixth finger, that only females. That. Um,
(20:14):
there's an article that I can recommend that actually is
what inspired Berner Hertzog to make his documentary called First Impressions. Uh.
It was in the New Yorker in two thousand eight
by Judith Thurman and it's super awesome. And uh, she
basically says there's a couple of camps when it comes
to cave art experts. Ah, those who can't resist advancing
(20:35):
a theory about the art, and then those who say
there never will be enough evidence to support one, so
you're all just sort of making up these theories. Yeah,
I think that's healthy. That second camp is much healthier
because it is all theories. But I like the theories though, Yeah,
And I don't think we should just be like we'll
never understand that, so let's not even try. Yeah, I
think we should just remember that when we are trying
(20:56):
to understand them, they're all just guesses, and not even
really educated guesses at that. Yeah. I think my theory
of why there are animals mostly is because it was
super important to their survival. And maybe it was you know, uh,
some communication to leave for another person later or to
each other. Maybe. Yeah, it could be, Um, there's lots
(21:18):
of buffalo in this area, so get to hunting, or
don't hunt these guys, because I just killed a bunch
of them by forcing them off a cliff. It was awesome,
by the way, to see, but there's not that many
left and we need them to keep reading. Or I'm
an eight year old the interthal in naked lady. Yeah,
here's a naked buffalo for your pleasure. Uh. There's also
(21:41):
lots of theories that these things were um supernatural somehow,
like they were trying to invoke the animal spirit for
a successful hunt or gain some sort of power by
creating an image of the animal. Um. And it could
have also just been like this is what I see
in my everyday life, and I have this desire to
(22:01):
create art. So that's that's the subject I'm gonna make
is this animal that I am thinking about a lot
because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah, that
makes a conversion between this innate desire and the everyday life.
And that's bison on cave walls. Well, some of them
are pretty detailed in uh, some are life size. It's
(22:24):
like they really took a lot of time. It wasn't
something they just dashed off in a matter of hours.
And they're using these torches too, are not like it's
not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight also,
but um, they're like stone torches with like a little
divid in the top and some animal fat put in
there and then they light the animal fat, which I'm
(22:45):
sure in and of itself is quite a task. Um.
But so yeah, there was there was a lot of
effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the
pigments I'm sure wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're
doing like a life side bison. How long did it
take to gather all that? Ochre sure it's not a
quick thing. And it's not just paintings. They found a
(23:09):
jewelry and other like engrave, bone and ivory and they
think they probably engraved wood too, but that obviously wouldn't
survive that long. But um, they suggest early religious belief
and that they think they might have buried people with
some of these things. Yeah, so it's like it's amazing stuff.
And unfortunately when there's no written history, there's a lot
(23:30):
of speculation. But it just I don't know, it's fascinating
to me. Well, yeah, you know, and their their history
has been largely lost. It just happens to be preserved
in the caves. But since they weren't just as strictly
cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion of their culture, right,
because the rest of it was in animal skin shelters
and earthen lean too that have been totally lost because
(23:52):
they were exposed to the elements the caves that were
flooded out and washed away too. So yeah, well that's
why there's only like, well, there's more than that, but
the two big daddies, there's only two. No, there's another one.
There's one called Altamira in Spain. Yet Steely Dan had
a song about it, the Caves of Altamira, and is
it loaded with art? Okay, yeah, there's there's plenty more
(24:13):
than that. It's just less goes the most famous one,
and then chauve is the most recent, most famous one
because I heard but there are others. Um, what about rocolodytes.
We should mention that that's a great word to call somebody.
It always reminds me of trilobite. Remember the little weird
kind of insect, armor plated fossilized insect. I'll show you
(24:38):
a trilobite. It was one of the earliest, like footed animals.
Scary looking really, but that's what I always get the
too confused chocolate. It means cave dweller, literally someone who
lives in a hole or cave named after There are
apparently some West African tribes that the Greeks came in
contact with, and they lived in cliff caves, and they
(25:01):
were called trogold eye, t r trougled diet. Well, it's
a nice insult you can throw around these days and
sounds sort of intelligent. Instead of calling someone like a
d bag, he'd say he's a trocolodyte. Yeah, you know, yeah,
and one got Jerry. Two man, you guys are on
the same wave like today, I guess so shot, so
(25:45):
I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes,
well modern, let's not quite go into present day. I
think we need to give a shout out to the
Anasazeing and the Pueblos word cliff dwelling people's from the
twelfth century ish of the southwestern United States who basically
showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out
(26:08):
caves and lived there. They built their own caves. Yeah,
you should see some of these. Look up, like, just
look up cliff dwellers US and you'll see some really
neat They had, like whole cities like carved out into
these these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders.
That sounds really dangerous it was, but it was also
very well defended and sertified. Yeah, because people just be like,
(26:31):
I'm not going up there. Ify those guys. Yeah, I'm
not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Um. Can we talk
about Mountain Mountain Hebron Are we there yet? Yeah? Okay, Uh,
that's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and
a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network
of caves that have been around for about a hundred
years that their forefathers built and uh, but of course,
(26:54):
because it's in the West Bank, there's UH some disagreement
over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed
by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened
to remove the people. I don't know what the current
state is. I looked it up, I couldn't find it.
Last I saw was that they basically designated it a
militarized zone, which meant that the Palestinians living there needed
(27:19):
to leave. But are they still in there? I don't
know that. The most recent thing I can find from
two thousand five, so I don't know alright, Well, southern Spain,
was that what you were talking about. I don't know
if Faltemyer's in southern Spain, but there's it's definitely in Spain.
But there are like a natural cliff or cave dwellings
that were carved out into even further cave dwellings in
(27:41):
Spain and um have basically been continuously inhabited at one
time or another. Now there's a large homeless population there apparently, right.
I mean, Spain's got like unemployment. I'm sure that the
cave dwelling populations increased proportionately. Uh, Cappaduct. Cappadocia uh in
(28:02):
Turkey has an elaborate cave system and it's not a
very friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's
been described as lunar and yeah, it's amazing, it's really amazing.
Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if
you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are
caves like homes. Yeah, and these were man made. These
(28:23):
were carved out for people to live in, which is um.
I guess we didn't even say. I guess that's the
other type of cave. You neither find one or you
can make one. But yeah, and by making one, I
think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural
cave to that's that was account. I would guess that'd
be man made too. Yeah, probably so. But the in
Cappadocia in Turkey um anchor rights, which were early Christians
(28:47):
who were your hermits. Yeah. Um, they inhabited these caves
and and made the first dwellings. And then when the
Christians were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people. Yeah,
and they actually built um underground churches that became an
underground city have you seen these pictures? Oh, they're amazing,
(29:09):
just the masonry and the artwork that they made of
just hewn from the rock. That's still intact today. And
apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while
and then rediscovered. Not but that was pretty neat to find. Well,
I got another documentary for you, UM, like no place
on earth have you seen that one? Uh? There was
a guy a caver that UM was exploring this cave
(29:30):
in the Ukraine and he found like shoes and medicine
bottles and things, and he was like, wait a minute,
this isn't like paleolithic at all. This looks like it
was from the nineteen forties. And it was. And it
turns out there was um thirty eighth members of different
Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for
(29:54):
h five hundred and eleven days. They lived underground for
over a year and a half. And and uh, some
of these people are still alive and they found them.
They still live in the caves. No, no, no, no,
they lived there for a year and a half. I
got you in the Holocaust, Um, but there they had
never told their story. They just like kept it a secret.
Because they were like, no one would believe it. Plus
(30:15):
also in case they ever needed to go back to
the caves, Well they did go back. They took him
back to the caves. No, I'm saying if they ever
had to go back to the cave, like you want
to keep the cave secret because they weren't the first time,
you know, but um, it's pretty powerful. And they take
some of these survivors back to this cave or they
haven't been since the Holocaust and they all survived to um,
really really great documentary. That's cool. Yeah, very cool, like
(30:37):
no place selves, like like no place on Earth or
like no place selse Um. There's also apparently a trend
in parts of Europe to buy old man made cave
homes and dress him up. I saw this and I
was like, really, I didn't double check, but I could
see this. Yeah, I mean this is a grabster. So's
(30:58):
he's good on his facts. Outfitting them with electricity, um,
installing modern plumbing, uh, getting the ventilation system going, and
just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah, putting down
tile floor and there's always the cave home weirdos. Yeah. Well,
I mean, if you're seen the show TV, like you know,
(31:20):
bizarre houses. If you're a green person, yeah, you could
do a lot worse than build yourself a cave home
because the environmental impact is so much lower. It requires
much fewer building materials. Um. If you can deal with
very low natural light and not go crazy, then a
cave might be suited for you. If you can deal
with the damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah.
(31:43):
And I shouldn't have said weirdos to eat the throne.
But anytime I see those shows of like extreme bizarre homes,
you just shoot the TV. This guy made a house
out of like Bob Goolay was on it. Yeah, pretty much. Um,
I've never been in like there was a cave house
near us growing up. Actually that really Yeah. It was
like you know, it was when they built into the
(32:04):
side of you know Earth where in Stone Mountain is
it's still there, I assume, so is it built into
Stone Mountain? No? No, no, no, um. And it was
like kind of the people would go by there and
look at it and stuff. And I, even as a kid,
I thought it was kind of dumb. Did you ever
know Jack McBrier when you were younger Kenneth from UM
thirty Rock. He's from Stone Mountain Conyers. Oh really yeah,
(32:28):
in the show he's from Stone Mountain. UM. One of
the other writers for thirty Rock, though I can't remember
his name, is is I think what you read in
is that right? But no, Hun didn't? No Jack Prayer?
Uh you got anything else? Oh? Yeah? The last thing.
One of the other benefits of um cave home it's
(32:51):
very difficult to break into, which is sad because that
is not the reason why they were initially used in
the Paleolithic Carrott. But it's a it's a quality point,
now that's true. How far god, where was it that
guy that built a house underground? No, I've seen those before.
I've seen like missile silos converted into homes and things
(33:12):
like that. This one was for sale recently. I can't
remember who sent it to me, but he basically built
It's not like a weird, you know, silo house. It's
like a home. He just built underground. Like when you
go down there. He's got paintings of the outside world
on all the walls. It was this rich guy who
built it. I think as a like a shelter in
(33:32):
case something bad. Happened. And so you know there's pictures
of like rolling fields and when you're underground, I mean,
obviously you can tell it's a painting, but it doesn't
feel like some cave. It's like just a regular house
built underground. Well, there's a theory that we're going to
end up living underground because eventually arable crop lay and
will become so valuable that we will, uh, we'll all
(33:52):
have will basically be forced to inhabit the opposite of
sky scrapers. They will be going downs of up because
we'll need the land up on top for crops. Didn't
we do one on why why don't humans live underground? Yeah?
I guess I could be part four? Then I guess
so it's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. You
(34:13):
know this is the cave suite. All right, So let's
see you don't have anything else. I got nothing else.
If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you
can type cave dwellers into the search part how stuff
works dot Com. And I said search parts means it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We keep
making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh yeah, and I'm
(34:37):
tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm
gonna like put us both in time out. Do you
think Jerry would be paying attention? But I don't know
why we keep making this mistake. But in the Solar
Sales episode, we talked about the fact I think it
was you this time said something about the acceleration will
kill you, or the speed will kill you, or something
going that fast. Yeah, I'm sure it was me. We
got a lot of emails and this was one of
(34:59):
the nicer ones. Heads up guys on a few things,
including on the Solar sales. There's been some misunderstanding between
speed and acceleration. Common belief is it traveling at high
speeds is taxing on the body. Not true. It is
the acceleration and not the speed, which is dangerous. Take
as an example, traveling in a car. Changing your velocity
from zero to a hundred kilometers per hour a very
(35:19):
short time results in a large acceleration. This is where
you get that feeling of being crushed into your seat.
But once you keep that constant speed, that feeling goes away.
The same thing for a plane. Notice when you accelerate
on the tarmac, it's pretty intense, but once you're up
in the air, you barely feel a thing. Yeah, you
think we'd know this. I mean, we've done sorts of
research on the rockets led an acceleration, and it's just
(35:41):
misspeaking in the moment. We know this. Oh, if I'm
interrupt for a second. I ran across this designer's euthanasia
roller coaster. What um? It was basically this guy design
It's all conceptual, obviously a slightly tongue in cheek, but
it was designed to kill you, like the roller coaster
was designed and to go out with a thrill. Yeah,
(36:03):
and he he describes like what like at what point
you will die and from what Basically it's like you
are going upside down so fast. The acceleration is so
great that it basically like keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. Um,
and just to make sure you're dead. He added like
six of those loops. But it starts with this huge hill.
(36:25):
I can't remember what it's called. I think if you
look up youthan Asia roller coaster, this this guy's design
will come up. It's pretty interesting, interesting, but it would
be from acceleration, not speed. Wow, that's a lot of
work to put into a killing machine. I would just
draw a length of rope and a sturdy beam. You know, Um,
you wouldn't be a successful designer, probably so. Uh So.
(36:46):
Then he puts it in the context of the solar
sale um and says only very small accelerations are involved,
so human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces.
So I hope it clears it up a little bit.
Definitely rocking guys, Thanks a lot. That is from knee
RAJ from Australia slash Mauritius ni Raj. Thank you if
(37:08):
you appreciate that. We will never make that mistake again.
I disagree. I'm sure we will. Speed'll kill you. Where's
Northern Ireland, Great Britain, UK England? We've been getting that
one wrong forever too. Yeah. You know, there's only so
much information a human brain can hold, everybody, and we're
trying to fill it with things like cave dwelling backs
(37:30):
and stuff like that. Yeah. Who was the bass player
for Poison? I can't get rid of that, do you
know that? Yeah? Bobby Doll, So there's cc It was
the guitarist Brett Michael Frett Michael. Bobby Doll is the guy.
He sounds like a seven oriole or something that the
drummer was. You remember him, right, No, Ricky Rockett? Oh wow, yeah,
(37:52):
no I do. I didn't even like poison. That's what's
so funny. Poison was good. I wouldn't have fan they
were good. Uh, let's see. If you want to know
more about poison, I had to do that part, didn't
I sure. If you want to get in touch with us,
how about that. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff podcast how Stuff works dot com.
(38:19):
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