June 6, 2019 • 42 mins
In the Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode “Quetzalcoatl: The Winged Serpent,” Robert and Joe discussed the feathered snake god of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica -- as well as the giant pterosaur named after it. In this episode, fossils and myth come together in a discussion of Adrienne Mayor’s geomythology take on the plumed serpent.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Iheartradios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick.
And today I think we're bringing kind of a sequel episode,
but a sequel to multiple prequels. What streams are coming
(00:24):
together on this one? All right? Well, for starters, we're
following up on a previous episode we did about quetzal Quadal.
This was an episode that dealt with this, this deity
of pre Columbian Mesoamerican traditions, this plumed serpent being and
and and in that episode we discussed, uh, you know,
(00:46):
the the myths surrounding it, the tradition surrounding it, as
well as its ties into paleontology, with the with the
the prehistoric quote so Koatlas which is named for this deity, right,
you know, just recently in town at the fern Bank
Science Museum they had an exhibit on pterosaurs. Of course,
(01:08):
kettl Coatlas is you know the greatest. Yeah, well, I
think there may actually have been there was some dispute
about this while I was there. There may be indications
of a larger one, but Yeah, the Ketzl Coatless has
long at least been understood to be the largest known
of the pterosaurs. Yeah, so big that there have at
times been competing theories as to whether it actually flew
(01:31):
or if it just shambled around like, you know, this
big walking winged creature and just scavenge from the you know,
the seaside. But they had a like full model and
full cast of this creature there up in the air,
where you could, you know, compare your own puny, delicious
body to this powerful predator that would have sorry to
get sidetracked. The thing about those pterosaurs that's most terrifying
(01:55):
is not what they look like when they're in flying posture,
but how they walk. You know, this is a thing
that we we've come to understand more over time, because
there used to be this debate about what exactly their
their locomotion would look like when they weren't in flight.
Would they just crawl on vertical surfaces or something. But
now we have a pretty good idea of how Pterosaurus
(02:16):
generally walked around on flat ground, and it just looks awful.
It just looks like, you know, this weird, jumbly membranous
robot it's it's amazing. You should look it up. So
that was a case where we had, you know, a
later fossil find and then they named the species after
this Mesoamerican serpent got But we didn't get into any
(02:37):
actual fossil connections beyond that. In other episodes, though, we
have discussed this idea of geo mythology. We've we've we've
devoted whole episodes to generally looking at some sort of
mythological monster and saying, you know, asking the obvious question,
a question that people have been asking for it for
quite a while. Were these ideas of be it dragons
(02:59):
or or cyclops is, whatever, But were they Were they
inspired by fossils that were discovered by ancient people? Yeah?
Was it pure imagination or was it based on something
they'd seen? And if it was based on something they'd seen,
was it, you know, an exaggerated account of a live
animal or maybe a misinterpretation of bones or fossils that
(03:21):
had been made from the bones of long dead creatures.
And it's not hard at all to see how, say
a dragon might be inspired by the skull of a dinosaur,
you know, especially like maybe a large theropod dinosaur imagine
coming across that when you didn't know there was such
a thing as dinosaurs. And there are many ways that
the geological features of fossils can make them seem especially
(03:46):
mystical and like they're some kind of monster with supernatural properties.
A great example of this is given that this was
in our last discussion where we talked about the work
of Adrian Mayer, who's going to come up again in
today's episode, and we'll brief you a bit more on
who she is in a moment, but we talked about
her book The First Fossil Hunters, Paleontology in Greek and
Roman Times, and one of the examples she talks about
(04:09):
in that book that I remember standing out of my
head was this interesting example that in some regions calcite
and selenite crystals form inside fossilized bones, which could have
been connected to tales of jim stones within dragon's heads.
So let's talk about Adrian Mayer. So born in nineteen
forty six, still active in the world today, Stanford University
(04:32):
historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist who specializes
in geo mythology, and she's written several books of interest,
including a twenty eighteen book on Gods and Robots in
Mythology all about Taylos, not all about Tailos, but Tailo's future. Yeah.
But you also probably remember us discussing her two thousand
(04:53):
book The First Fossil Hunter's Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times,
which deals with these very questions, you know, in the
ancient Greeks and depicting and imagining these various creatures. Were
they commenting on fossil finds? Yeah, And in that episode
we talked about a bunch of examples put forth by
Mayor where discovery of fossils by ancient people's could have
(05:13):
given rise to legends of mythical beasts. We just talked
about the dragon example, but a few others, like the
idea that legends of the fearsome griffin, you know, the
jealous gold hoarding creature with a lion's body and the
you know, the wings that creature of the Gobi Desert
could have been inspired by the discovery of Protoceratops fossils,
(05:33):
though we also discussed arguments against this connection, and another
one that was very popular was the idea that tales
of the Cyclops could have been inspired by elephant skulls,
which of course have this large single hollow or socket
in the center that could easily be mistaken for a
giant single eye socket in the middle of the face,
though it actually is the nasal cavity that connects to
(05:55):
the trunk. But she also turned her attention to the
world of the plume serpent in her two thousand and
five book Fossil Legends of the First Americans. So in
this she points out that pre Columbian Aztec codeses and
Inca traditions describe the remains or seam in her estimation
to describe the remains of mammoths and other creatures from
(06:19):
the past, including giant birds. And of course this is
where we come back to Quetzalquadal, because Quetzequadal again is
generally depicted as this great serpent with feathers, this reptilian
being that is also bird like. And it's really kind
of surprising looking back on it that we didn't actually
explore this avenue because it makes so much sense, right, Like,
(06:41):
you're talking about this amorphous idea, and all generally, all
ideas in mythology over the landscape of time are amorphous.
They shift this way and that but essentially this sounds
like a good lineup rather well with terosaar remains or
even the remains of non flying u dinosaurs. You know,
(07:01):
any kind of a sauropod, you could you could you
could latch onto any of these, any evidence of some
sort of great creature, and low and behold here is
the evidence of quetzel Cotal. Yes, though, the the link
between fossils and the possible inspiration of the plume serpent
being like kutzel Caudal is not the only, UH, say,
meso American or South American example where we have a
(07:24):
pretty good idea that bones of large creatures could have
inspired belief in supernatural beings. A big example that comes
in with UH with meso American and South American mythology
is the belief in giants. Yes, and there's a yeah,
there's there's an interesting history there and one that that
Mayer spends a lot of time with. So she points
(07:45):
out that after Cortes arrived in the New World, the
tlexical Teca people aligned with him against their enemies, the Aztecs,
and they they brought the conquistodo or gigantic bones, and
they told him the story of how their ancestors had
found these lands filled with these evil giants, and that
they subsequently vanquished most of them, and the survivors were
(08:08):
eventually just too few to continue and died out. And look,
here are the bones that are proof of this story. Yeah,
I actually wanted to read from a first hand account
of what happened at this event. This is a first
hand account by Bernal Diaz de Castillo, one of the
Spanish conquistadors who was working under Cortes. Now, keep in
(08:29):
mind anything what we read here is just Castillo's version
of the story, written many years after the fact, and
it's very possible he's not remembering everything accurately or not
understanding or reporting correctly. But this first hand account is
what we have here. So he's speaking to some of
the tlexical take up people and he's asking them, quote,
how it was that they came to inhabit that land,
(08:51):
and from what direction had they come? And how was
it that they differed so much from and were so
hostile to the Mexicans, as he's referring to the Aztecs,
seeing that their countries were so close to one another. Quote,
they said that their ancestors had told them that in
times past there had lived among them men and women
of giant size, with huge bones. And because they were
(09:13):
very bad people of evil manners, that they had fought
with them and killed them, and those of them who
had remained died off. So that we could see how
huge and tall these people had been, they brought us
a leg bone of one of them, which was very
thick and the height of a man of ordinary stature.
And that was the bone from the hip to the knee.
(09:35):
I measured myself against it, and it was as tall
as I am, although I am of fair size. I
wonder if he's getting a little defensive there. I'm not
that short. They brought other bones, or they brought other
pieces of bones like the first, but they were already
eaten away and destroyed by the soil. We were all
amazed at seeing those bones, and felt sure that there
(09:57):
must have been giants in this country. And our captain
Cortes said to us that it would be well to
send that great bone to Castile, so that his Majesty
might see it. So we sent it with the first
of our agents who went there. So I'd love to
know what happened with that bone. But apparently that's a
that's a sad mystery that doesn't turn out well. Yeah.
(10:17):
Mayor writes that she tried to track it down and
and couldn't couldn't quite find it. But she points out
that this this myth, and this was account of the myth.
You know, it does reveal, you know, an understanding of
several things, reveals an understanding of extinction. For example, right
that is, sufficiently reduced population is doomed. It's just not
going to bounce back. So they didn't have to kill
(10:39):
all of the giants. If they just reduced the population enough,
the giants died out naturally. Yeah. And she also points out, yeah,
that those bones presented by the flax Callteca were sent
back to Spain apparently, though there seems no surviving record
of them after that. However, based on later fossils sent
back to Spain and those displayed in Cortes Palace there
(11:02):
in Mexico, we can judge that these were probably mammoth bones.
Like it seems, it's not even a you know, it's
a very safe guess. I'm interested by this phenomenon of
people seeing bones of large extinct megafauna and not just
not knowing what they were, but concluding that there's some
form of human you know, and obviously this is not
(11:24):
just the conclusion reached by the talexical Teca people. This
is like a widespread I mean, the Spanish seemed to
think the same thing. Yeah, I mean, part of it
is by virtue of our modern understanding of fossils and
the ascent of man and knowing exactly what sort of
humanoid and primate creatures lived that we know lived in
(11:45):
prehistoric times. But and then on the other side, it's like,
all we all have stories of giants. The Europeans brought
with them, the Spanish brought with them knowledge of stories
of giants. No, the Spanish they totally believed in giants. Yeah,
it's kind of it's crazy that all the things that
are not lining up with Cortes here. This is a
doomed scenario, and we should really drive remind everyone that
(12:09):
Cortes is a destroyer here in this encounter. But this
is like one thing that they instantly both have in
common is the belief in giants. So Mayor writes that
Father Jose de Acosta, who lived fifteen thirty nine through
sixteen hundred, traveled to Mexico and recorded native oral histories,
(12:29):
and when he spoke to the pleax Cauteca, they described
the giants of old as beings that dwelt in caves
and used great clubs and wooden swords. They quote pulled
down trees as if they had been stalks of lettuces,
and Mayer argues that this brings to mind the behavior
of elephants and that the giants again might be essentially
(12:53):
ancestral memories of the Colombian mammoths that definitely lived in
the area that we definitely have the fossil evidence of
see evidence of in the fossils displayed in Cortez Palace.
That it's kind of through the telephone game of oral
tradition and the remaining fossil evidence of their bones. Like
this is the giants, the giant mythology that remains, right,
(13:16):
so we know that these giant extinct mammals did stretch
in the range as far south as like Central America, right, yeah,
as far south as Costa Rica. I think I was
reading and up into the northern United States, though then again,
I do think, I mean I wonder about that. I mean,
that is a long time for a legend like that
to persist even in altered form. The Colombian mammoth, which
(13:39):
was the species that would have spread that far south right,
the willy mammoth was a further north species. So the
Colombian mammoth, this huge being, went extinct probably like ten
to eleven thousand years ago. We think, certainly not impossible
for you know, elements of myth to exist across that
time span. But I wouldn't let too much hinge on
(13:59):
that in friends, because that's a long time. A lot
can happen, certainly from the human standpoint, and that did
that amount of time. Yeah. It's also worth pointing out
that it wasn't just the tlexical Teca. The Inca also
had tales of ancestral victories over giants. In this case,
though the giants were destroyed by fire from heaven. Oh yeah.
(14:20):
So these myths were recorded in One of the places
they were recorded was in a source in the sixteenth century.
One of these was by Sieza de Leone in the
Chronicle of Peru, published in fifteen fifty three. So the
people telling this story were people living in I think
it was Peru at the time modern Ecuador, who told
(14:40):
stories about how their ancestors in ancient times had been
invaded by these people from the sea, who were evil
and destructive giants, who landed at a point called Point
Santa Elena in what's now Ecuador. And I want to
read from Siza de Leone's record of the stories that
were told to him by the native peoples. He says, quote,
(15:02):
they arrived on the coast in boats made of reeds
as big as large ships, a party of men of
such size that from the knee downwards, their height was
as great as the entire height of an ordinary man,
though he might be of good stature. So this yet again,
it's like part of the leg is as tall as
a guy, even though he's pretty tall. Right, they're making
(15:23):
it clear. Yeah, Their limbs were all in proportion to
the deformed size of their bodies, and it was a
monstrous thing to see their heads with hair reaching to
the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates.
They had no beards, and were dressed in the skins
of animals others, only in the dress which nature gave them.
(15:44):
And they had no women with them. And then so
SiZ Leone goes on to tell more about the story
of the conflict between the people and these giants. SiZ
Leone does not strike me as a great narrator. He
kind of disparages the people who were telling him the story.
He refers to their vulgarity and says that they're prone
(16:04):
to exaggeration. So I think he's got a patronizing attitude,
it seems like here. But he also embellishes their account
by adding Christian theological material to it. So later on
he says, quote, all the natives declare that God, our Lord,
brought upon them a punishment in proportion to the enormity
(16:25):
of their offense. And he's talking about the giants. Here,
A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven with
a great noise, out of the midst of which there
issued a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which,
at one blow they were all killed, and the fire
consumed them. There only remained a few bones and skulls,
which God allowed to remain without being consumed by the fire,
(16:47):
as a memorial of this punishment. So that's interesting. There's
this idea that some bones are left for us to see,
and so what about these bones? Well, Adrian Mayer writes
about this in her account. She says that in fifteen
four three there was a deputy governor of Trujillo named
Juan day Almost who decided to investigate these stories about
(17:08):
the extinct giants and their bones by conducting a paleontological excavation.
So that's pretty interesting, right, we got the sixteenth century
here and they're trying to excavate the bones of extinct beings. Yeah,
essentially engaging in paleontology. Which is one of Mayor's frequent
points is that is that when when you're engaging with
these fossils and you're trying to figure out what they
(17:29):
were and how to fit into history, even you know,
even though you're dealing with, say, you know, a version
of history that is influenced by mythology and perhaps even
the mythology of some you know, conquerors who have just arrived,
then that you're still engaged in the exercise of trying
to understand fossils. Yeah, and that's what one day Almost
(17:52):
was apparently doing. So. Mayor writes that Almost and as workers,
they went and they dug up pits in this valley
that they'd been directed to by the name of People's
where the giants had been reportedly destroyed or put down
by this angel from heaven or where they'd been consumed
by the fire, put down by this being from the sky.
And then so they apparently found some things. They found
(18:14):
skulls that seemed to look sort of human. And remember
again the comparison between like the idea of the cyclops
and the giant elephant skulls. Yeah, yeah, like it is
unlike so many you know, large herbivore skulls, the elephant's
sull does not look you know, it's not a long skull.
It is not like the skull of a deer or
even like a hippo or something. It does seem to
(18:36):
have like the vertical alignment of a primate skull. So
then again, these these bones were found to not be
exactly human in proportion, and this was explained away by
the fact that, well, in the story, these giants, you know,
they've got all these deformities. You know, that's almost like
an indication of their monstrousness, which is sort of a
(18:56):
self fulfilling prophecy. Right, we're looking for human shaped thing
that aren't correctly human shaped because they were monsters. Therefore,
when the things aren't correctly human shaped, almost can can conclude, yeah, okay,
we found the bones of giants here, and apparently they
did so that you know, they dug up these bones.
They said, yep, looks like there were giants, and Mayor
(19:17):
points out it points to other sources as well on this,
such as leading Mexican archaeologist doctor Leonardo Lopez Lujon, who
backs up the notion that Mesoamerican myths of giants and
ogres originated in at least the discovery of fossil remains
without getting into the sort of oral history the thing.
But I should probably add like, there's there's the there's
(19:37):
the oral history of the creatures, but then there's just
the oral history of finding the fossils, right, And I
think that's that's probably more what we're talking about here.
You know, somebody found these bones once and maybe they
kept the bones, maybe they didn't, But there is the
story of the encounter and then the subsequent interpretation of
what the bones mean. Okay, I think maybe we should
(19:58):
take a quick break. We'll be right back with more.
All right, we're back, so you know, I want to
drive home that and we're talking about Quetzalcotal and some
of these other traditions. You know that there's there's a
lot we don't know about these cultures. Again, Cortes and
those who came after him, they were a destroying force.
(20:21):
They were conquerors. They brought with them death and disease
and uh and and and and often cases like a willingness,
like a a an intent to destroy the culture of
the people that they subjugated. Yeah, and did that in
many cases through literally destroying written records. Right, So you know,
there're luckily some things survived, but so much was destroyed.
(20:45):
We're talking about the in the meso American world initially
like like seven hundred years ago. And and yet, as
is often pointed out in case was pointed out by
a University of New Mexico's professor David M. Johnson, that
we know more about Athens, Greece of two thousand years ago,
or we know more about Hebraic traditions of three thousand
years ago, than we know about meso America seven hundred
(21:08):
years ago, because mainly of the destruction of the conquistatory. Yeah,
the destruction that they wrought on the cultures, the destruction
of codeses that the Aztecs and the Maya kept, and
on top of this, the hieroglyphic style books of the Aztecs.
You know that they were there to aid in the
memorization of oral literature. So you know that with you know,
(21:28):
you're so you're destroying it on both ends. If you're
destroying the culture that that that retains the oral tradition,
but then you're also destroying the books that enabled it
to begin with. You know. So it's it's often a
taxing exercise to try and reassemble you know what some
of these stories and traditions actually were. But Quetzelkotal, as
(21:51):
we discussed in our previous episode, there they're basically like
two major different like Sagas off of It or him,
they're sort of the more primal myths and then the
more humanoid myths. Yeah, that was the distinction. I remember,
sort of like the celestial Quetzalcaudal, like the creator being,
and then there's like the human version or the human embodiment, right,
(22:14):
and and ultimately I think that's something that that ended
up lining up a lot with sort of Christian traditions,
the idea of there being sort of a part one
that's very cosmic and and a little harder to grasp
and then a second part that's a little more human
and it's telling. But in both of these were like
a hero legend. Yeah, exactly. In both of these cases, though,
it's really important to drive home the quetzal Cotal was
(22:37):
was not like a like a bloodthirsty god. I think
sometimes there is this tendency to someone says as tag
god something, then you're going to instantly think about blood
sacrifices or something like because of Q the Winged Serpent
the movie, right, you're going to think of that. But
quetzal Cotal was, by all the accounts we were looking at,
you know, this was a benign, benevolent, even entity. This
(23:01):
was a divine being that represented peace and not bloody
warfare or anything of the sort. So I just want
to drive that home before we continue here. And you're
probably wondering again, Okay, you're talking about giants, you're talking
about elephants, but what about quetzal Cootal. What does Mayor
write about the winged serpent? And she does mention him. Shoot,
(23:26):
she writes that in the Florentine Codex, which is the
sixteenth century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica conducted by a
Spanish friar that the human quetzal Cootal was said to
stop to rest with his followers on a journey at
a place that was considered holy because quote the marks
which quetzal Cootal left upon the stone with his hands
(23:48):
when he rested there. When he sat down and he
supported himself on the rock by his hands, they sank deeply,
as if in mud. Did the palms of his hands
seek down. Likewise, his buttocks as they touched the rock
sank deeply. Wow, And the holy buttock marks, Yeah, of
the winged serpent. And the place was known as timk
(24:09):
Palco the impression of the hands. So we ultimately have
no current knowledge or evidence of this place, no further
descriptions or illustrations even in this codex. But Mayer suspects
they might have been quote a genuine track site, track
site being where we have the fossilized tracks of creatures,
(24:31):
a genuine track site of some extinct creature, or else.
There were carvings that resembled fossilized prints, perhaps made to
illustrate or commemorate an episode in the quetzel Cootal epic.
And I think the implication is in that case, you know,
it could be something if it was artificial, if it
was man made, it could have been inspired by actual
fossilized tracks that had been discovered, or she doesn't mention this,
(24:54):
but I mean, I can imagine it could be a
combination of the two, like the actual fossils that were
then embellish by humans that are interpreting it as being
part of a divine story. She also points out that
in terms of extinction, the Aztecs believed that there were
four previous ages that were destroyed by cataclysm, and the
(25:14):
survivors of these ages, monsters and giants were sometimes encountered
in subsequent ages, and Quetzelkota was said to have been created,
said to have created the bones of fifth age humans
by mixing blood with the ground bones of our fourth
age ancestors. So you know, there's already an emphasis on
(25:35):
bones here, and Mayor thinks it's suggestive of bone grinding
medicinal practices seen elsewhere among Native American peoples, but she
also stresses that she found nothing in the Spanish accounts
of Mesoamerican peoples regarding bone grinding practices. However, she does
point to a twentieth century practice in the village of Charcas,
(25:57):
on the northern border of the old Aztec Empire, famed
for its minds, The villagers collected large fossil bones known
as the and I apologize for my Spanish here koisos
diaspanto the bones of fear. Uh. These would have been
the bones of the old giant and the dell the
old giants that are now on the earth, and the
(26:20):
ground powder was used in a potion to calm anxiety
and fear. Wow. And she points out that this actually
lines up with the use of ground dragon bones in
Chinese traditional medicine and in the treatment of fossils by
European apothecaries. You know who would maybe of course, I
think we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind before
(26:42):
about the use of mummified remains by apothecaries, but also
fossil bones as well. Yeah, mummy paste. Wait a minute,
in the Chinese traditional medicine, what are the ground dragon bones?
What bones end up becoming supposedly dragon bones. I'm not
sure on that actually, but it does bring to mind
that we're perhaps talking about fossils here. Yeah, that's that.
(27:05):
We'll have to do a part three where we talk
about the use of fossils in Chinese traditional medicine and
Chinese folklore. I'm I'm offhand, I can't. I don't know
for sure if Mayor has has written about Chinese traditions
exclusively in any book, or perhaps that's an upcoming book.
All right, well, let's take one more break and we
come back. We will continue to discuss geo mythology and
(27:30):
quetzo quadal sor right, we're back. So last time we
talked about ketzl Quaddal, we obviously made the connection to
terosaur species because of the giant pterosaur ketzel Kowatlas, which
gets its name from this magnificent meso American god. So
I wonder, could there actually be any connection between terosaur
(27:53):
fossils and UH and the belief in a giant plumed
serpent god. On one hand, I would tend to assume
I don't know about that, because terosaurs are not really
They're not really serpentine, are they. That's true. And then,
of course another and this is a key thing that
we're always arguing, is that fossils are not necessary to
(28:15):
dream up these creatures like of course, as we discussed
in the questl cotal episode previously, like the God embodies
the snake and the bird. I mean, it's already embodying
natural creatures that inspire various ideas about the world, the cosmos,
and our role in it and our relationship with nature.
It's already this hybrid being and therefore like this special
(28:38):
kind of metaphor and human understanding. Yeah, and that's something
to keep in mind with all of these cases. You know,
geomethology is full of sort of interesting inferential hypotheses. In
most cases can be really hard to make a solid
case that yes, a you know, a mythical beast or
a legend or something from an ancient religion is definitely
(29:00):
inspired by geological facts geofacts like fossils, But you can
often kind of infer there's a good chance that something
like that could have happened, you just it's hard to
know for sure. Luckily Mayer does go into this, though
she does, she does explore the idea that, you know,
the question could actual winged fossil remains have influenced meso
(29:21):
American traditions and you know, of course there would there
would be no room for oral traditions of encountering these
creatures here. They would have been long extinct before the
first humans were around in this area. But of course
that hasn't stopped some cryptozoologists, She points out to the claiming, uh,
you know otherwise. However, she does argue, oh no, that's well, no,
(29:45):
I was just thinking that crypto when cryptozoologists get involved.
Oh yeah, I mean I don't want to not all
quote cryptozoologists are of the same caliber, right, But there's crypto.
This is something we I feel like we should explore.
There are there are certain scientific professionals. There are certain
scientists who have given a lot of thought to stuff
(30:06):
like you know, the yetti, and have done so in
a reasonable fashion and put the scientific exploration first. There are,
of course, more less scientifically based and more you know,
overly enthusiastic individuals out there who bear the cryptozoologists title. Well,
there are always going to be people who are excited
(30:29):
about stories of you know, any kind of interesting, unusual
being of any kind because it somehow feeds into their
fantastical worldview. I mean, I remember reading stories about how
these native traditions of extinct races of giants in ancient
meso America and in South America fed a lot of
(30:52):
kind of like theological speculation among European Christians. You know,
they'd read these stories and think, ah, this means something
about the nephilth. Yeah. Yeah, And you can imagine that
too if you were like the spear point of a
bloody uh you know, religious conquest of a new world,
and then you were you were you were learning about
(31:13):
their traditions of giants and there their belief in it.
It almost is uh. It reminds me of you know,
some of the ideas we've explored with witchcraft persecution, the
idea that that on some level part of the the
reason for it was because if you by by sort
of drawing these these stories out of the victims of
(31:34):
witchcraft persecution, you were creating proof for a supernatural realm
that that backed up your own, uh, failing religious ideas.
But that's kind of a whole discussion onto itself. But
any rate Mayor does and you know, she doesn't explore
cryptozoological ideas in this, but she does argue that the
(31:54):
thunderbird beliefs of North American native people's were likely inspired
by such fossils, and and she asked paleontologist James Clark,
who had worked with the northeastern Mexican terosaar fossils before
if if these remains would have been likely to elect
strong responses from ancient peoples, and he thought probably not.
(32:16):
And his reasoning was that, Okay, it's one thing to
see a fully as simple terrasaar at your local science
museum or in a you know, in a book, and
certainly if it's illustrated as a living creature. But when
you look at the actual fossil remains, and again this
is someone who'd worked with the actual terosaur fossil remains
(32:37):
from northeastern Mexico, he says, you end up looking at
this just jumble of bones. That's a really good point.
When you see the impressions of terosaur fossils in situ
as they're found, they're often you know, in say, the
former flat bed of a body of water, and the
indentations are just a tangled mess, right, And I think
(32:59):
a lot of this has to do in fact, often
bird bones are the same way when they get fossilized.
I think it has to do with the sort of
lightweight structure of the bones, the way they just kind
of get all collapsed together that they don't seem to
be as often articulated and in full body posture as
you might get with a larger animal with more solid bones. Yeah,
(33:20):
I mean can we can. We're easily spoiled sometimes by
the really nice fossil remains that we see with certain
certain fines and certain species where we see just a
like a like a complete or near complete vision of
what the creature looked like and how the bones were arranged.
But that is that is not all fossils. Yeah. The
(33:40):
the you know, the whole discipline of paleontology entails a
lot of reassembly of of of guesswork, and and generally
and often you know times as some of these even terosaurs,
we're dealing with creatures where we we have, you know,
far short of a complete fossil, sometimes even just a
single bone, and you're just having to to base everything
(34:00):
off off of that, extrapolate based on other fossil remains. Yeah.
And I think it's true of pterosaurs, especially like even
more so than dinosaurs generally, that you have that fossils
as they're found are very often unimpressive until you start
extrapolating what this living creature would have looked like. However,
Mayra Wris as she thinks the giant terrasa remains in
(34:22):
southern Mexico might have been harder to miss and might
have led to some of these tales of giant winged creatures.
And this would have included Asdland, the Aztec homeland. Now
what about these So we're not saying, though, that we
think terosaurs would have inspired the belief in ketzel Coadal
just because these are these are very differently formed creatures, right,
(34:44):
we must be talking about some kind of other being. Well, yeah,
and luckily there are other flying creatures in meso American traditions.
For instance, the Yaqui people of Sonara believed in a
great bird that lived on Skeleton mountain or or O
tom Qui, and the belief was that it preyed on
humans and then when a child hero killed it, its
(35:07):
feathers turned into all the birds that live today. But
the likely suspect in these myths, Mayor says, are reports
of living California condors and the fossils of older condor species,
so you know, namely the giant raptors of the Ice age.
So these would have been more likely if inspired by
the bones of a creature or a living creature would
(35:28):
have been a real bird of prey rather than pterosaur fossil,
right and holding that makes more sense, like just think,
you know, you're dealing with something again where there is
there is the actual potential for an oral tradition to
carry some word about it. And then you also have
on top of the fossilized condors, you have actual condors
still in the world today that can be glimpsed and
(35:49):
would have been glimpsed by some of these people were
discussing here. So if we're talking about direct fossil inspirations
that could have possibly had something to do with Ketzelcoadle himself,
what we're probably talking about is the alleged reports of
the hand prints and the butt prints right right, which
certainly feels more like fossil like basically discovering fossil evidence
(36:13):
of the thing that you already believe in and maybe
serving as a way to you know, physically connect with
the with with your religion and with this this deity,
but but not the thing that inspires it outright, And yeah,
I think that's that's the idea we come back to
time and time again anytime we discuss geo mythology. Like
sometimes it's a fun exercise to look at like could this,
(36:36):
could this fossil remain have entirely inspired this entity? But
in most cases it feels like there's there's a number
of factors, and fossils are maybe just one of those factors. Yeah,
and it's hard to know for sure. Yeah, I mean,
it's one of those things where you're almost never gonna
have a case where it's clear that it was inspired
by a fossil legend. You might have a few, yeah,
(36:56):
you know, interest I was thinking about that, actually I was, well, actually,
you know, I'd say one of the best cases of
the pretty clear inspirations are the ones where they bring
out the bones, where people wherever they are on Earth
just have bones on hand that they keep as relics
and say these are the bones like these myths. Yeah,
like this. The mammoth example that we discussed here is
(37:17):
is a I think a wonderful example of of actual
geo mythology, because that's what they said. There wasn't a
situation where we're just later saying maybe they could have
inspired by been inspired by these bones. Well, no, they
brought the bones out. The bones were part of their interpretation. Now,
it is also possible that the myths actually predated the bones.
You can't rule that out, but it seems like it's
(37:39):
a very good candidate that since they have the bones
and they have this belief that they're that these are linked,
there's a causation link here. You know, I can't help
but wonder how God'zilla fits into all of this, because
because think about it, like Godzilla is ultimately, you know,
certainly a fictional creature of the modern era, but in
(38:01):
some cases when you consider like the secular world of
popular culture, it's he's kind of a god. I mean,
we said Godzilla in the you know, the English name
for for golhedra, So it's more kind of an old
school god, right, Yeah, maybe one of those gods like
Poseidon that most of the time isn't nice. Yeah, that
rises up out of the sea to destroy us. But
(38:25):
also there's a fossil connection, because Godzilla in his in
his form is base is basically based on the older
interpretation of Tyrannosaurus rex fossils. You know, we know today
that Tyrannosaurus rex likely you know, walked with its tail
out in a vertical position, you know, in a balanced position,
you know, the version that we see in Jurassic Park,
(38:47):
but the older interpretation was that it kind of stood
more upright with its tail on the ground like Godzilla does.
So there's a there's maybe you know, a dash of
geo mythology in Godzilla as well. I feel like we
might need to come back and do an episode on
Godzilla again because there was recently a paper that came
(39:07):
out that looked at Godzilla's increase in size, how every
film version that comes out makes Godzilla bigger, and comparing
that to certain cultural changes, namely like how much money
a given culture invest into its military. So that might
be fun to discuss. Anytime we can discuss Godzilla on
(39:28):
the show, it's always a win. The saddest thing is
that they wouldn't make a direct sequel to shin Godzilla,
even after they set one up. Oh is it? Is
it out of the question? Well, well, I mean that
could be misunderstanding here. I think something happened where they
couldn't make a sequel to shin Godzilla because they were
making this American movie that just came out, King of
the Monsters, which I haven't seen but I've heard isn't
(39:50):
very good. And I just want another more in the
spirit of Shin Godzilla, please, And that's like the best
modern Godzilla movie. Yeah, I mean, I love probably all Godzilla.
MAYF you show me a Godzilla movie, I'm probably gonna
watch it and enjoy it. But Shin Godzilla was a real,
real treat, a Godzilla movie that made you think. I
think I tend to like the Japanese ones better than
(40:12):
the recent American ones. Yeah, I would agree. Shin Godzilla
has the best bureaucratic meetings. It does. It's I'm always
describing it to my wife and saying, oh, you should
see it. It's like a Godzilla movie, but it's full
of meetings and politicians talking to each other. And she's like, oh,
that sounds awful, and I know, no, it's really good.
It's just so you can't turn your head away from it.
(40:34):
All right, Well, there you have it. I follow up
to a couple of past episodes, like two prequels in
one and and hey, maybe a Glance of the future.
Let us know, do you want to hear a whole
other episode on Godzilla? Do you want to hear more
episodes on Geo Mythology? Let us know. We'd love to
hear from you. Your your input is important to us,
(40:54):
whether it's correcting us on something we get wrong or
just you know, helping helping us to grow as were
You know, that's part of the whole purpose of the
show is that we feel like through exploring these topics,
we're growing and hopefully you know listeners that are growing
as well and discovering a new facts about the world,
new avenues to explore in their own time. So let
(41:16):
us know. There are number of ways to reach out
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(41:37):
techno history. It's a tremendous amount of fun. Each episode
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thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Tary Harrison.
If you would like to get in touch with us
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(41:58):
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(42:19):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Iheartradios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick.
And today I think we're bringing kind of a sequel episode,
but a sequel to multiple prequels. What streams are coming
(00:24):
together on this one? All right? Well, for starters, we're
following up on a previous episode we did about quetzal Quadal.
This was an episode that dealt with this, this deity
of pre Columbian Mesoamerican traditions, this plumed serpent being and
and and in that episode we discussed, uh, you know,
(00:46):
the the myths surrounding it, the tradition surrounding it, as
well as its ties into paleontology, with the with the
the prehistoric quote so Koatlas which is named for this deity, right,
you know, just recently in town at the fern Bank
Science Museum they had an exhibit on pterosaurs. Of course,
(01:08):
kettl Coatlas is you know the greatest. Yeah, well, I
think there may actually have been there was some dispute
about this while I was there. There may be indications
of a larger one, but Yeah, the Ketzl Coatless has
long at least been understood to be the largest known
of the pterosaurs. Yeah, so big that there have at
times been competing theories as to whether it actually flew
(01:31):
or if it just shambled around like, you know, this
big walking winged creature and just scavenge from the you know,
the seaside. But they had a like full model and
full cast of this creature there up in the air,
where you could, you know, compare your own puny, delicious
body to this powerful predator that would have sorry to
get sidetracked. The thing about those pterosaurs that's most terrifying
(01:55):
is not what they look like when they're in flying posture,
but how they walk. You know, this is a thing
that we we've come to understand more over time, because
there used to be this debate about what exactly their
their locomotion would look like when they weren't in flight.
Would they just crawl on vertical surfaces or something. But
now we have a pretty good idea of how Pterosaurus
(02:16):
generally walked around on flat ground, and it just looks awful.
It just looks like, you know, this weird, jumbly membranous
robot it's it's amazing. You should look it up. So
that was a case where we had, you know, a
later fossil find and then they named the species after
this Mesoamerican serpent got But we didn't get into any
(02:37):
actual fossil connections beyond that. In other episodes, though, we
have discussed this idea of geo mythology. We've we've we've
devoted whole episodes to generally looking at some sort of
mythological monster and saying, you know, asking the obvious question,
a question that people have been asking for it for
quite a while. Were these ideas of be it dragons
(02:59):
or or cyclops is, whatever, But were they Were they
inspired by fossils that were discovered by ancient people? Yeah?
Was it pure imagination or was it based on something
they'd seen? And if it was based on something they'd seen,
was it, you know, an exaggerated account of a live
animal or maybe a misinterpretation of bones or fossils that
(03:21):
had been made from the bones of long dead creatures.
And it's not hard at all to see how, say
a dragon might be inspired by the skull of a dinosaur,
you know, especially like maybe a large theropod dinosaur imagine
coming across that when you didn't know there was such
a thing as dinosaurs. And there are many ways that
the geological features of fossils can make them seem especially
(03:46):
mystical and like they're some kind of monster with supernatural properties.
A great example of this is given that this was
in our last discussion where we talked about the work
of Adrian Mayer, who's going to come up again in
today's episode, and we'll brief you a bit more on
who she is in a moment, but we talked about
her book The First Fossil Hunters, Paleontology in Greek and
Roman Times, and one of the examples she talks about
(04:09):
in that book that I remember standing out of my
head was this interesting example that in some regions calcite
and selenite crystals form inside fossilized bones, which could have
been connected to tales of jim stones within dragon's heads.
So let's talk about Adrian Mayer. So born in nineteen
forty six, still active in the world today, Stanford University
(04:32):
historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist who specializes
in geo mythology, and she's written several books of interest,
including a twenty eighteen book on Gods and Robots in
Mythology all about Taylos, not all about Tailos, but Tailo's future. Yeah.
But you also probably remember us discussing her two thousand
(04:53):
book The First Fossil Hunter's Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times,
which deals with these very questions, you know, in the
ancient Greeks and depicting and imagining these various creatures. Were
they commenting on fossil finds? Yeah, And in that episode
we talked about a bunch of examples put forth by
Mayor where discovery of fossils by ancient people's could have
(05:13):
given rise to legends of mythical beasts. We just talked
about the dragon example, but a few others, like the
idea that legends of the fearsome griffin, you know, the
jealous gold hoarding creature with a lion's body and the
you know, the wings that creature of the Gobi Desert
could have been inspired by the discovery of Protoceratops fossils,
(05:33):
though we also discussed arguments against this connection, and another
one that was very popular was the idea that tales
of the Cyclops could have been inspired by elephant skulls,
which of course have this large single hollow or socket
in the center that could easily be mistaken for a
giant single eye socket in the middle of the face,
though it actually is the nasal cavity that connects to
(05:55):
the trunk. But she also turned her attention to the
world of the plume serpent in her two thousand and
five book Fossil Legends of the First Americans. So in
this she points out that pre Columbian Aztec codeses and
Inca traditions describe the remains or seam in her estimation
to describe the remains of mammoths and other creatures from
(06:19):
the past, including giant birds. And of course this is
where we come back to Quetzalquadal, because Quetzequadal again is
generally depicted as this great serpent with feathers, this reptilian
being that is also bird like. And it's really kind
of surprising looking back on it that we didn't actually
explore this avenue because it makes so much sense, right, Like,
(06:41):
you're talking about this amorphous idea, and all generally, all
ideas in mythology over the landscape of time are amorphous.
They shift this way and that but essentially this sounds
like a good lineup rather well with terosaar remains or
even the remains of non flying u dinosaurs. You know,
(07:01):
any kind of a sauropod, you could you could you
could latch onto any of these, any evidence of some
sort of great creature, and low and behold here is
the evidence of quetzel Cotal. Yes, though, the the link
between fossils and the possible inspiration of the plume serpent
being like kutzel Caudal is not the only, UH, say,
meso American or South American example where we have a
(07:24):
pretty good idea that bones of large creatures could have
inspired belief in supernatural beings. A big example that comes
in with UH with meso American and South American mythology
is the belief in giants. Yes, and there's a yeah,
there's there's an interesting history there and one that that
Mayer spends a lot of time with. So she points
(07:45):
out that after Cortes arrived in the New World, the
tlexical Teca people aligned with him against their enemies, the Aztecs,
and they they brought the conquistodo or gigantic bones, and
they told him the story of how their ancestors had
found these lands filled with these evil giants, and that
they subsequently vanquished most of them, and the survivors were
(08:08):
eventually just too few to continue and died out. And look,
here are the bones that are proof of this story. Yeah,
I actually wanted to read from a first hand account
of what happened at this event. This is a first
hand account by Bernal Diaz de Castillo, one of the
Spanish conquistadors who was working under Cortes. Now, keep in
(08:29):
mind anything what we read here is just Castillo's version
of the story, written many years after the fact, and
it's very possible he's not remembering everything accurately or not
understanding or reporting correctly. But this first hand account is
what we have here. So he's speaking to some of
the tlexical take up people and he's asking them, quote,
how it was that they came to inhabit that land,
(08:51):
and from what direction had they come? And how was
it that they differed so much from and were so
hostile to the Mexicans, as he's referring to the Aztecs,
seeing that their countries were so close to one another. Quote,
they said that their ancestors had told them that in
times past there had lived among them men and women
of giant size, with huge bones. And because they were
(09:13):
very bad people of evil manners, that they had fought
with them and killed them, and those of them who
had remained died off. So that we could see how
huge and tall these people had been, they brought us
a leg bone of one of them, which was very
thick and the height of a man of ordinary stature.
And that was the bone from the hip to the knee.
(09:35):
I measured myself against it, and it was as tall
as I am, although I am of fair size. I
wonder if he's getting a little defensive there. I'm not
that short. They brought other bones, or they brought other
pieces of bones like the first, but they were already
eaten away and destroyed by the soil. We were all
amazed at seeing those bones, and felt sure that there
(09:57):
must have been giants in this country. And our captain
Cortes said to us that it would be well to
send that great bone to Castile, so that his Majesty
might see it. So we sent it with the first
of our agents who went there. So I'd love to
know what happened with that bone. But apparently that's a
that's a sad mystery that doesn't turn out well. Yeah.
(10:17):
Mayor writes that she tried to track it down and
and couldn't couldn't quite find it. But she points out
that this this myth, and this was account of the myth.
You know, it does reveal, you know, an understanding of
several things, reveals an understanding of extinction. For example, right
that is, sufficiently reduced population is doomed. It's just not
going to bounce back. So they didn't have to kill
(10:39):
all of the giants. If they just reduced the population enough,
the giants died out naturally. Yeah. And she also points out, yeah,
that those bones presented by the flax Callteca were sent
back to Spain apparently, though there seems no surviving record
of them after that. However, based on later fossils sent
back to Spain and those displayed in Cortes Palace there
(11:02):
in Mexico, we can judge that these were probably mammoth bones.
Like it seems, it's not even a you know, it's
a very safe guess. I'm interested by this phenomenon of
people seeing bones of large extinct megafauna and not just
not knowing what they were, but concluding that there's some
form of human you know, and obviously this is not
(11:24):
just the conclusion reached by the talexical Teca people. This
is like a widespread I mean, the Spanish seemed to
think the same thing. Yeah, I mean, part of it
is by virtue of our modern understanding of fossils and
the ascent of man and knowing exactly what sort of
humanoid and primate creatures lived that we know lived in
(11:45):
prehistoric times. But and then on the other side, it's like,
all we all have stories of giants. The Europeans brought
with them, the Spanish brought with them knowledge of stories
of giants. No, the Spanish they totally believed in giants. Yeah,
it's kind of it's crazy that all the things that
are not lining up with Cortes here. This is a
doomed scenario, and we should really drive remind everyone that
(12:09):
Cortes is a destroyer here in this encounter. But this
is like one thing that they instantly both have in
common is the belief in giants. So Mayor writes that
Father Jose de Acosta, who lived fifteen thirty nine through
sixteen hundred, traveled to Mexico and recorded native oral histories,
(12:29):
and when he spoke to the pleax Cauteca, they described
the giants of old as beings that dwelt in caves
and used great clubs and wooden swords. They quote pulled
down trees as if they had been stalks of lettuces,
and Mayer argues that this brings to mind the behavior
of elephants and that the giants again might be essentially
(12:53):
ancestral memories of the Colombian mammoths that definitely lived in
the area that we definitely have the fossil evidence of
see evidence of in the fossils displayed in Cortez Palace.
That it's kind of through the telephone game of oral
tradition and the remaining fossil evidence of their bones. Like
this is the giants, the giant mythology that remains, right,
(13:16):
so we know that these giant extinct mammals did stretch
in the range as far south as like Central America, right, yeah,
as far south as Costa Rica. I think I was
reading and up into the northern United States, though then again,
I do think, I mean I wonder about that. I mean,
that is a long time for a legend like that
to persist even in altered form. The Colombian mammoth, which
(13:39):
was the species that would have spread that far south right,
the willy mammoth was a further north species. So the
Colombian mammoth, this huge being, went extinct probably like ten
to eleven thousand years ago. We think, certainly not impossible
for you know, elements of myth to exist across that
time span. But I wouldn't let too much hinge on
(13:59):
that in friends, because that's a long time. A lot
can happen, certainly from the human standpoint, and that did
that amount of time. Yeah. It's also worth pointing out
that it wasn't just the tlexical Teca. The Inca also
had tales of ancestral victories over giants. In this case,
though the giants were destroyed by fire from heaven. Oh yeah.
(14:20):
So these myths were recorded in One of the places
they were recorded was in a source in the sixteenth century.
One of these was by Sieza de Leone in the
Chronicle of Peru, published in fifteen fifty three. So the
people telling this story were people living in I think
it was Peru at the time modern Ecuador, who told
(14:40):
stories about how their ancestors in ancient times had been
invaded by these people from the sea, who were evil
and destructive giants, who landed at a point called Point
Santa Elena in what's now Ecuador. And I want to
read from Siza de Leone's record of the stories that
were told to him by the native peoples. He says, quote,
(15:02):
they arrived on the coast in boats made of reeds
as big as large ships, a party of men of
such size that from the knee downwards, their height was
as great as the entire height of an ordinary man,
though he might be of good stature. So this yet again,
it's like part of the leg is as tall as
a guy, even though he's pretty tall. Right, they're making
(15:23):
it clear. Yeah, Their limbs were all in proportion to
the deformed size of their bodies, and it was a
monstrous thing to see their heads with hair reaching to
the shoulders. Their eyes were as large as small plates.
They had no beards, and were dressed in the skins
of animals others, only in the dress which nature gave them.
(15:44):
And they had no women with them. And then so
SiZ Leone goes on to tell more about the story
of the conflict between the people and these giants. SiZ
Leone does not strike me as a great narrator. He
kind of disparages the people who were telling him the story.
He refers to their vulgarity and says that they're prone
(16:04):
to exaggeration. So I think he's got a patronizing attitude,
it seems like here. But he also embellishes their account
by adding Christian theological material to it. So later on
he says, quote, all the natives declare that God, our Lord,
brought upon them a punishment in proportion to the enormity
(16:25):
of their offense. And he's talking about the giants. Here,
A fearful and terrible fire came down from heaven with
a great noise, out of the midst of which there
issued a shining angel with a glittering sword, with which,
at one blow they were all killed, and the fire
consumed them. There only remained a few bones and skulls,
which God allowed to remain without being consumed by the fire,
(16:47):
as a memorial of this punishment. So that's interesting. There's
this idea that some bones are left for us to see,
and so what about these bones? Well, Adrian Mayer writes
about this in her account. She says that in fifteen
four three there was a deputy governor of Trujillo named
Juan day Almost who decided to investigate these stories about
(17:08):
the extinct giants and their bones by conducting a paleontological excavation.
So that's pretty interesting, right, we got the sixteenth century
here and they're trying to excavate the bones of extinct beings. Yeah,
essentially engaging in paleontology. Which is one of Mayor's frequent
points is that is that when when you're engaging with
these fossils and you're trying to figure out what they
(17:29):
were and how to fit into history, even you know,
even though you're dealing with, say, you know, a version
of history that is influenced by mythology and perhaps even
the mythology of some you know, conquerors who have just arrived,
then that you're still engaged in the exercise of trying
to understand fossils. Yeah, and that's what one day Almost
(17:52):
was apparently doing. So. Mayor writes that Almost and as workers,
they went and they dug up pits in this valley
that they'd been directed to by the name of People's
where the giants had been reportedly destroyed or put down
by this angel from heaven or where they'd been consumed
by the fire, put down by this being from the sky.
And then so they apparently found some things. They found
(18:14):
skulls that seemed to look sort of human. And remember
again the comparison between like the idea of the cyclops
and the giant elephant skulls. Yeah, yeah, like it is
unlike so many you know, large herbivore skulls, the elephant's
sull does not look you know, it's not a long skull.
It is not like the skull of a deer or
even like a hippo or something. It does seem to
(18:36):
have like the vertical alignment of a primate skull. So
then again, these these bones were found to not be
exactly human in proportion, and this was explained away by
the fact that, well, in the story, these giants, you know,
they've got all these deformities. You know, that's almost like
an indication of their monstrousness, which is sort of a
(18:56):
self fulfilling prophecy. Right, we're looking for human shaped thing
that aren't correctly human shaped because they were monsters. Therefore,
when the things aren't correctly human shaped, almost can can conclude, yeah, okay,
we found the bones of giants here, and apparently they
did so that you know, they dug up these bones.
They said, yep, looks like there were giants, and Mayor
(19:17):
points out it points to other sources as well on this,
such as leading Mexican archaeologist doctor Leonardo Lopez Lujon, who
backs up the notion that Mesoamerican myths of giants and
ogres originated in at least the discovery of fossil remains
without getting into the sort of oral history the thing.
But I should probably add like, there's there's the there's
(19:37):
the oral history of the creatures, but then there's just
the oral history of finding the fossils, right, And I
think that's that's probably more what we're talking about here.
You know, somebody found these bones once and maybe they
kept the bones, maybe they didn't, But there is the
story of the encounter and then the subsequent interpretation of
what the bones mean. Okay, I think maybe we should
(19:58):
take a quick break. We'll be right back with more.
All right, we're back, so you know, I want to
drive home that and we're talking about Quetzalcotal and some
of these other traditions. You know that there's there's a
lot we don't know about these cultures. Again, Cortes and
those who came after him, they were a destroying force.
(20:21):
They were conquerors. They brought with them death and disease
and uh and and and and often cases like a willingness,
like a a an intent to destroy the culture of
the people that they subjugated. Yeah, and did that in
many cases through literally destroying written records. Right, So you know,
there're luckily some things survived, but so much was destroyed.
(20:45):
We're talking about the in the meso American world initially
like like seven hundred years ago. And and yet, as
is often pointed out in case was pointed out by
a University of New Mexico's professor David M. Johnson, that
we know more about Athens, Greece of two thousand years ago,
or we know more about Hebraic traditions of three thousand
years ago, than we know about meso America seven hundred
(21:08):
years ago, because mainly of the destruction of the conquistatory. Yeah,
the destruction that they wrought on the cultures, the destruction
of codeses that the Aztecs and the Maya kept, and
on top of this, the hieroglyphic style books of the Aztecs.
You know that they were there to aid in the
memorization of oral literature. So you know that with you know,
(21:28):
you're so you're destroying it on both ends. If you're
destroying the culture that that that retains the oral tradition,
but then you're also destroying the books that enabled it
to begin with. You know. So it's it's often a
taxing exercise to try and reassemble you know what some
of these stories and traditions actually were. But Quetzelkotal, as
(21:51):
we discussed in our previous episode, there they're basically like
two major different like Sagas off of It or him,
they're sort of the more primal myths and then the
more humanoid myths. Yeah, that was the distinction. I remember,
sort of like the celestial Quetzalcaudal, like the creator being,
and then there's like the human version or the human embodiment, right,
(22:14):
and and ultimately I think that's something that that ended
up lining up a lot with sort of Christian traditions,
the idea of there being sort of a part one
that's very cosmic and and a little harder to grasp
and then a second part that's a little more human
and it's telling. But in both of these were like
a hero legend. Yeah, exactly. In both of these cases, though,
it's really important to drive home the quetzal Cotal was
(22:37):
was not like a like a bloodthirsty god. I think
sometimes there is this tendency to someone says as tag
god something, then you're going to instantly think about blood
sacrifices or something like because of Q the Winged Serpent
the movie, right, you're going to think of that. But
quetzal Cotal was, by all the accounts we were looking at,
you know, this was a benign, benevolent, even entity. This
(23:01):
was a divine being that represented peace and not bloody
warfare or anything of the sort. So I just want
to drive that home before we continue here. And you're
probably wondering again, Okay, you're talking about giants, you're talking
about elephants, but what about quetzal Cootal. What does Mayor
write about the winged serpent? And she does mention him. Shoot,
(23:26):
she writes that in the Florentine Codex, which is the
sixteenth century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica conducted by a
Spanish friar that the human quetzal Cootal was said to
stop to rest with his followers on a journey at
a place that was considered holy because quote the marks
which quetzal Cootal left upon the stone with his hands
(23:48):
when he rested there. When he sat down and he
supported himself on the rock by his hands, they sank deeply,
as if in mud. Did the palms of his hands
seek down. Likewise, his buttocks as they touched the rock
sank deeply. Wow, And the holy buttock marks, Yeah, of
the winged serpent. And the place was known as timk
(24:09):
Palco the impression of the hands. So we ultimately have
no current knowledge or evidence of this place, no further
descriptions or illustrations even in this codex. But Mayer suspects
they might have been quote a genuine track site, track
site being where we have the fossilized tracks of creatures,
(24:31):
a genuine track site of some extinct creature, or else.
There were carvings that resembled fossilized prints, perhaps made to
illustrate or commemorate an episode in the quetzel Cootal epic.
And I think the implication is in that case, you know,
it could be something if it was artificial, if it
was man made, it could have been inspired by actual
fossilized tracks that had been discovered, or she doesn't mention this,
(24:54):
but I mean, I can imagine it could be a
combination of the two, like the actual fossils that were
then embellish by humans that are interpreting it as being
part of a divine story. She also points out that
in terms of extinction, the Aztecs believed that there were
four previous ages that were destroyed by cataclysm, and the
(25:14):
survivors of these ages, monsters and giants were sometimes encountered
in subsequent ages, and Quetzelkota was said to have been created,
said to have created the bones of fifth age humans
by mixing blood with the ground bones of our fourth
age ancestors. So you know, there's already an emphasis on
(25:35):
bones here, and Mayor thinks it's suggestive of bone grinding
medicinal practices seen elsewhere among Native American peoples, but she
also stresses that she found nothing in the Spanish accounts
of Mesoamerican peoples regarding bone grinding practices. However, she does
point to a twentieth century practice in the village of Charcas,
(25:57):
on the northern border of the old Aztec Empire, famed
for its minds, The villagers collected large fossil bones known
as the and I apologize for my Spanish here koisos
diaspanto the bones of fear. Uh. These would have been
the bones of the old giant and the dell the
old giants that are now on the earth, and the
(26:20):
ground powder was used in a potion to calm anxiety
and fear. Wow. And she points out that this actually
lines up with the use of ground dragon bones in
Chinese traditional medicine and in the treatment of fossils by
European apothecaries. You know who would maybe of course, I
think we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind before
(26:42):
about the use of mummified remains by apothecaries, but also
fossil bones as well. Yeah, mummy paste. Wait a minute,
in the Chinese traditional medicine, what are the ground dragon bones?
What bones end up becoming supposedly dragon bones. I'm not
sure on that actually, but it does bring to mind
that we're perhaps talking about fossils here. Yeah, that's that.
(27:05):
We'll have to do a part three where we talk
about the use of fossils in Chinese traditional medicine and
Chinese folklore. I'm I'm offhand, I can't. I don't know
for sure if Mayor has has written about Chinese traditions
exclusively in any book, or perhaps that's an upcoming book.
All right, well, let's take one more break and we
come back. We will continue to discuss geo mythology and
(27:30):
quetzo quadal sor right, we're back. So last time we
talked about ketzl Quaddal, we obviously made the connection to
terosaur species because of the giant pterosaur ketzel Kowatlas, which
gets its name from this magnificent meso American god. So
I wonder, could there actually be any connection between terosaur
(27:53):
fossils and UH and the belief in a giant plumed
serpent god. On one hand, I would tend to assume
I don't know about that, because terosaurs are not really
They're not really serpentine, are they. That's true. And then,
of course another and this is a key thing that
we're always arguing, is that fossils are not necessary to
(28:15):
dream up these creatures like of course, as we discussed
in the questl cotal episode previously, like the God embodies
the snake and the bird. I mean, it's already embodying
natural creatures that inspire various ideas about the world, the cosmos,
and our role in it and our relationship with nature.
It's already this hybrid being and therefore like this special
(28:38):
kind of metaphor and human understanding. Yeah, and that's something
to keep in mind with all of these cases. You know,
geomethology is full of sort of interesting inferential hypotheses. In
most cases can be really hard to make a solid
case that yes, a you know, a mythical beast or
a legend or something from an ancient religion is definitely
(29:00):
inspired by geological facts geofacts like fossils, But you can
often kind of infer there's a good chance that something
like that could have happened, you just it's hard to
know for sure. Luckily Mayer does go into this, though
she does, she does explore the idea that, you know,
the question could actual winged fossil remains have influenced meso
(29:21):
American traditions and you know, of course there would there
would be no room for oral traditions of encountering these
creatures here. They would have been long extinct before the
first humans were around in this area. But of course
that hasn't stopped some cryptozoologists, She points out to the claiming, uh,
you know otherwise. However, she does argue, oh no, that's well, no,
(29:45):
I was just thinking that crypto when cryptozoologists get involved.
Oh yeah, I mean I don't want to not all
quote cryptozoologists are of the same caliber, right, But there's crypto.
This is something we I feel like we should explore.
There are there are certain scientific professionals. There are certain
scientists who have given a lot of thought to stuff
(30:06):
like you know, the yetti, and have done so in
a reasonable fashion and put the scientific exploration first. There are,
of course, more less scientifically based and more you know,
overly enthusiastic individuals out there who bear the cryptozoologists title. Well,
there are always going to be people who are excited
(30:29):
about stories of you know, any kind of interesting, unusual
being of any kind because it somehow feeds into their
fantastical worldview. I mean, I remember reading stories about how
these native traditions of extinct races of giants in ancient
meso America and in South America fed a lot of
(30:52):
kind of like theological speculation among European Christians. You know,
they'd read these stories and think, ah, this means something
about the nephilth. Yeah. Yeah, And you can imagine that
too if you were like the spear point of a
bloody uh you know, religious conquest of a new world,
and then you were you were you were learning about
(31:13):
their traditions of giants and there their belief in it.
It almost is uh. It reminds me of you know,
some of the ideas we've explored with witchcraft persecution, the
idea that that on some level part of the the
reason for it was because if you by by sort
of drawing these these stories out of the victims of
(31:34):
witchcraft persecution, you were creating proof for a supernatural realm
that that backed up your own, uh, failing religious ideas.
But that's kind of a whole discussion onto itself. But
any rate Mayor does and you know, she doesn't explore
cryptozoological ideas in this, but she does argue that the
(31:54):
thunderbird beliefs of North American native people's were likely inspired
by such fossils, and and she asked paleontologist James Clark,
who had worked with the northeastern Mexican terosaar fossils before
if if these remains would have been likely to elect
strong responses from ancient peoples, and he thought probably not.
(32:16):
And his reasoning was that, Okay, it's one thing to
see a fully as simple terrasaar at your local science
museum or in a you know, in a book, and
certainly if it's illustrated as a living creature. But when
you look at the actual fossil remains, and again this
is someone who'd worked with the actual terosaur fossil remains
(32:37):
from northeastern Mexico, he says, you end up looking at
this just jumble of bones. That's a really good point.
When you see the impressions of terosaur fossils in situ
as they're found, they're often you know, in say, the
former flat bed of a body of water, and the
indentations are just a tangled mess, right, And I think
(32:59):
a lot of this has to do in fact, often
bird bones are the same way when they get fossilized.
I think it has to do with the sort of
lightweight structure of the bones, the way they just kind
of get all collapsed together that they don't seem to
be as often articulated and in full body posture as
you might get with a larger animal with more solid bones. Yeah,
(33:20):
I mean can we can. We're easily spoiled sometimes by
the really nice fossil remains that we see with certain
certain fines and certain species where we see just a
like a like a complete or near complete vision of
what the creature looked like and how the bones were arranged.
But that is that is not all fossils. Yeah. The
(33:40):
the you know, the whole discipline of paleontology entails a
lot of reassembly of of of guesswork, and and generally
and often you know times as some of these even terosaurs,
we're dealing with creatures where we we have, you know,
far short of a complete fossil, sometimes even just a
single bone, and you're just having to to base everything
(34:00):
off off of that, extrapolate based on other fossil remains. Yeah.
And I think it's true of pterosaurs, especially like even
more so than dinosaurs generally, that you have that fossils
as they're found are very often unimpressive until you start
extrapolating what this living creature would have looked like. However,
Mayra Wris as she thinks the giant terrasa remains in
(34:22):
southern Mexico might have been harder to miss and might
have led to some of these tales of giant winged creatures.
And this would have included Asdland, the Aztec homeland. Now
what about these So we're not saying, though, that we
think terosaurs would have inspired the belief in ketzel Coadal
just because these are these are very differently formed creatures, right,
(34:44):
we must be talking about some kind of other being. Well, yeah,
and luckily there are other flying creatures in meso American traditions.
For instance, the Yaqui people of Sonara believed in a
great bird that lived on Skeleton mountain or or O
tom Qui, and the belief was that it preyed on
humans and then when a child hero killed it, its
(35:07):
feathers turned into all the birds that live today. But
the likely suspect in these myths, Mayor says, are reports
of living California condors and the fossils of older condor species,
so you know, namely the giant raptors of the Ice age.
So these would have been more likely if inspired by
the bones of a creature or a living creature would
(35:28):
have been a real bird of prey rather than pterosaur fossil,
right and holding that makes more sense, like just think,
you know, you're dealing with something again where there is
there is the actual potential for an oral tradition to
carry some word about it. And then you also have
on top of the fossilized condors, you have actual condors
still in the world today that can be glimpsed and
(35:49):
would have been glimpsed by some of these people were
discussing here. So if we're talking about direct fossil inspirations
that could have possibly had something to do with Ketzelcoadle himself,
what we're probably talking about is the alleged reports of
the hand prints and the butt prints right right, which
certainly feels more like fossil like basically discovering fossil evidence
(36:13):
of the thing that you already believe in and maybe
serving as a way to you know, physically connect with
the with with your religion and with this this deity,
but but not the thing that inspires it outright, And yeah,
I think that's that's the idea we come back to
time and time again anytime we discuss geo mythology. Like
sometimes it's a fun exercise to look at like could this,
(36:36):
could this fossil remain have entirely inspired this entity? But
in most cases it feels like there's there's a number
of factors, and fossils are maybe just one of those factors. Yeah,
and it's hard to know for sure. Yeah, I mean,
it's one of those things where you're almost never gonna
have a case where it's clear that it was inspired
by a fossil legend. You might have a few, yeah,
(36:56):
you know, interest I was thinking about that, actually I was, well, actually,
you know, I'd say one of the best cases of
the pretty clear inspirations are the ones where they bring
out the bones, where people wherever they are on Earth
just have bones on hand that they keep as relics
and say these are the bones like these myths. Yeah,
like this. The mammoth example that we discussed here is
(37:17):
is a I think a wonderful example of of actual
geo mythology, because that's what they said. There wasn't a
situation where we're just later saying maybe they could have
inspired by been inspired by these bones. Well, no, they
brought the bones out. The bones were part of their interpretation. Now,
it is also possible that the myths actually predated the bones.
You can't rule that out, but it seems like it's
(37:39):
a very good candidate that since they have the bones
and they have this belief that they're that these are linked,
there's a causation link here. You know, I can't help
but wonder how God'zilla fits into all of this, because
because think about it, like Godzilla is ultimately, you know,
certainly a fictional creature of the modern era, but in
(38:01):
some cases when you consider like the secular world of
popular culture, it's he's kind of a god. I mean,
we said Godzilla in the you know, the English name
for for golhedra, So it's more kind of an old
school god, right, Yeah, maybe one of those gods like
Poseidon that most of the time isn't nice. Yeah, that
rises up out of the sea to destroy us. But
(38:25):
also there's a fossil connection, because Godzilla in his in
his form is base is basically based on the older
interpretation of Tyrannosaurus rex fossils. You know, we know today
that Tyrannosaurus rex likely you know, walked with its tail
out in a vertical position, you know, in a balanced position,
you know, the version that we see in Jurassic Park,
(38:47):
but the older interpretation was that it kind of stood
more upright with its tail on the ground like Godzilla does.
So there's a there's maybe you know, a dash of
geo mythology in Godzilla as well. I feel like we
might need to come back and do an episode on
Godzilla again because there was recently a paper that came
(39:07):
out that looked at Godzilla's increase in size, how every
film version that comes out makes Godzilla bigger, and comparing
that to certain cultural changes, namely like how much money
a given culture invest into its military. So that might
be fun to discuss. Anytime we can discuss Godzilla on
(39:28):
the show, it's always a win. The saddest thing is
that they wouldn't make a direct sequel to shin Godzilla,
even after they set one up. Oh is it? Is
it out of the question? Well, well, I mean that
could be misunderstanding here. I think something happened where they
couldn't make a sequel to shin Godzilla because they were
making this American movie that just came out, King of
the Monsters, which I haven't seen but I've heard isn't
(39:50):
very good. And I just want another more in the
spirit of Shin Godzilla, please, And that's like the best
modern Godzilla movie. Yeah, I mean, I love probably all Godzilla.
MAYF you show me a Godzilla movie, I'm probably gonna
watch it and enjoy it. But Shin Godzilla was a real,
real treat, a Godzilla movie that made you think. I
think I tend to like the Japanese ones better than
(40:12):
the recent American ones. Yeah, I would agree. Shin Godzilla
has the best bureaucratic meetings. It does. It's I'm always
describing it to my wife and saying, oh, you should
see it. It's like a Godzilla movie, but it's full
of meetings and politicians talking to each other. And she's like, oh,
that sounds awful, and I know, no, it's really good.
It's just so you can't turn your head away from it.
(40:34):
All right, Well, there you have it. I follow up
to a couple of past episodes, like two prequels in
one and and hey, maybe a Glance of the future.
Let us know, do you want to hear a whole
other episode on Godzilla? Do you want to hear more
episodes on Geo Mythology? Let us know. We'd love to
hear from you. Your your input is important to us,
(40:54):
whether it's correcting us on something we get wrong or
just you know, helping helping us to grow as were
You know, that's part of the whole purpose of the
show is that we feel like through exploring these topics,
we're growing and hopefully you know listeners that are growing
as well and discovering a new facts about the world,
new avenues to explore in their own time. So let
(41:16):
us know. There are number of ways to reach out
to us. You can find us online at stuff to
Blow Yourmind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we'll
find all the episodes, links out of some social media accounts,
a t shirt store, and as always, if you want
to support the show, one of the best things you
can do is to rate and review us wherever you
have the power to do so. Make sure you have subscribed,
and make sure you've subscribed to Invention, our show about
(41:37):
techno history. It's a tremendous amount of fun. Each episode
a different invention, a discussion of what came before, how
this invention changed things, and what came after it huge
thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Tary Harrison.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
(41:58):
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
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