Realms of Myth Playlist, Part 4: Bones of the Plumed Serpent

Venture into the world of Quetzalcoatl.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and
I'm Joe McCormick in today. I think we're bringing kind
of a sequel episode, but a sequel to multiple prequels.

(00:23):
What streams are coming together on this one? All right? Well,
for starters, were following up on a previous episode we
did about quetzal Quadal. This was an episode that dealt
with this, uh, this deity of pre Columbian Mesoamerican traditions,
this plumed serpent being and uh and and in that

(00:43):
episode we we discussed uh, you know, the myths surrounding it,
the tradition surrounding it, as well as its ties into
paleontology with the with with the the prehistoric uh quetzo Katlas,
which is named for this deity, right, you know, just
recently in town at the Fernbank Science Museum, they had

(01:05):
an exhibit on terrasaurs. Of course, kettle 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 um.
But yeah, the kettle coatlas has long at least been
understood to be the largest known of the pterosaurs. Ye

(01:26):
so big that there have at times been competing theories
as to whether it actually flew 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 like full model and full cast of this creature.
They're up in the air where you could, you know,
compare your own puny, delicious body to this powerful predator

(01:48):
that would have sorry to get sidetracked. The thing about
those pterosaurs that's most terrifying is not not what they
look like when they're in flying posture, but how they walk.
You know, this is the thing that we, uh, 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

(02:10):
crawl on vertical surfaces or something. But now we we
have a pretty good idea of how pterosaurs generally walked
around on flat ground, and it just looks awful. It
just looks like, you know, this weird Jumblie membraneous 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

(02:32):
Mesoamerican serpent got But we didn't get into any actual
fossil connections beyond that. In other episodes, though we have
discussed this idea of geo mythology. We've we've we've devoted
the whole episodes to generally looking at some sort of
mythological monster and saying, you know, asking the obvious question,

(02:53):
a question that people have been asking for for quite
a while. Where were these ideas of be a dragons
or or cyclops is whatever? But were they were they?
Were they inspired by fossils that were discovered by ancient people? Yeah?
It was it pure imagination or was it based on
something they had seen? And if it was based on
something they'd seen, was it, you know, an exaggerated account

(03:15):
of a live animal, or maybe a misinterpretation of bones
or or fossils that 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 therapod dinosaur. Imagine coming across that when you

(03:36):
didn't know there was such a thing as dinosaurs. Uh.
And and there are many ways that the geological features
of fossils can make them seem especially mystical and 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

(03:56):
Adrian Mayor, who's going to come up again in today's
episode and will brief you a bit more on who
she is in a in a moment, But we talked
about her book The First Fossil Hunters, Paleontology and Greek
and Roman Times, and one of the examples she talks
about 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

(04:20):
have been connected to tales of gim stones within dragons heads.
So let's talk about Adrian Mayor so uh born in
ninety six, still active in the world today, Stanford University
historian of ancient science and a classical folkloreist who specializes
in geo mythology, and she's written several books of interest,

(04:40):
including a two thousand eighteen book on Gods and Robots
in Mythology all about Talos. Not all about Talos, but
Taalo's features. Yeah. But you also probably remember as discussing
her two thousand book The First Fossil Hunters Paleontology in
Greek and Roman Times, which deals with these very questions,
um in you know, in the ancient Greeks and depicting

(05:03):
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 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

(05:26):
the you know, the wings that creature of the Gobi
Desert could have been inspired by the discovery of Protoceratops fossils.
That we also discussed arguments against this connection, um 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

(05:47):
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
the trunk. But she also turned her attention to the
world of the plume serpent in her two thousand five
book Fossil Legends of the First Americans. So and in
this she points out that pre Columbian Aztec codices and

(06:09):
ink A traditions described the remains or seem in her estimation,
to to describe the remains of mammoths and other creatures
from the past, including giant birds. And of course this
is where we come back to quets A Quaddal, because
Zaddal again is generally depicted as this this great serpent

(06:29):
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 you're you're talking about this,
this this amorphous idea and all, generally, all ideas and
mythology over the landscape of time are a morphous They

(06:50):
shift this way and that. But essentially this sounds like
a good lineup rather well with terra saar remains or
even the remains of of non flying um dinosaurs. You know,
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

(07:10):
the evidence of quetzal codal. Yes, though the link between
fossils and the possible inspiration of the plume serpent being
light cut steal Coadal is not the only uh same
meso American or South American example where we we have
a pretty good idea that bones of large creatures could
have inspired belief in uh supernatural beings. A big example

(07:32):
that comes in with with meso American and South American
mythology is the belief in giants. Yes, and there's a
there's a there's an interesting history there and one that
that mayor spends a lot of time with. So she
points out that after Cortez arrived in the New World,
the tax Calteca people aligned with him against their enemies
the Aztecs, and they they brought the the conisdor gigantic bones,

(07:57):
and they told him the story of how their ancestors
had had found these lands filled with these evil giants,
and that they subsequently vanquished most of them, and the
survivors were 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

(08:18):
firsthand account of what happened at this event. This is
a firsthand account by Bernald Diaz de Castillo, one of
the Spanish conquistadors who was working under Cortez. Now, keep
in mind, anything 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

(08:38):
understanding and reporting correctly. But this, this firsthand account, is
what we have here. So he's speaking to some of
the tlexical Teka people and uh and he's asking them,
uh quote, how it was that they came to inhabit
that land, and from what direction had they come and
how was it that they differed so much from And
we're so hostile to the Mexicans as he's referring to

(08:59):
the Aztecs Uh, 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 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

(09:21):
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. I measured myself against it, and
it was as tall as I am. Although I am
a fair size. I wonder if he's getting a little

(09:42):
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 must have been giants in this country.
And our captain Cortez said to us that it would
be well to send that great bone to Castile, so

(10:04):
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. Mayor writes that she she tried to
to track it down and uh and and couldn't couldn't
quite find it. Um. But she points out that this

(10:24):
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, that is sufficiently
reduced population is doomed. It's just not going to bounce back,
so that they didn't have to kill all of the giants.
If they just reduced the population off, the giants died
out naturally. Yeah and um and she also points out

(10:46):
yeah that those bones presented by the flex Calteco were
sent back to Spain apparently, though there seems no surviving
record of them after that. However, based on later vossils
sent back to Spain and those displayed in Cortes Palace
uh there in um in Mexico, we can judge that
these were probably mammoth bones. Like it seems that it's

(11:07):
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 just the conclusion reached by
the taxical Teka people. This is like a widespread I mean,

(11:29):
the Spanish seemed to think the same thing. Yeah, I mean,
part of it is, you know, by virtue of our
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 in in prehistoric times.
But and then on the other side, it's like all
we all have stories of giants. The Europeans brought with them,

(11:52):
The Spanish brought with them knowledge of stories of giants. Know,
the Spanish like they totally believed in giants. Yeah, it's
kind of crazy that all the things that are not
lining up with Cortez here, like like this is a
doomed scenario and we should really drive remind everyone that
Cortez is a destroyer here in this in this encounter.

(12:13):
But this is like one thing that they instantly both
have in common is the belief in giants. So Mayor
writes that that father Jose de Acosta, who lived hundred,
traveled to Mexico and recorded native oral histories, and it
was when he spoke to the plex Carteca they described
the giants of old as beings that dwelt in caves

(12:36):
and used great clubs and wooden swords. They quote pulled
down trees as if they had been stalks of lettuces. Uh.
And Mayor argues that this brings to mind the behavior
of elephants, and that the the giants again might be
essentially ancestral memories of the Colombian mammoths that definitely lived

(12:57):
in the area that we definitely have the fossil evidence
of that see evidence of in the fossils displayed in
Cortez Palace. That it's kind of through the telephone game
of oral tradition and via the remaining fossil evidence of
their bones. Like this is the the giants and the
giant mythology that remains right, so we know that these
giant extinct mammals did stretch in the range as far south.

(13:20):
Is like Central America, right, yeah, as far south is
a Costa Rica. I think I was reading and uh
and up into the northern United States. So 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
was uh, the species that would have spread that far

(13:41):
south right there. The Willie mammoth was a further north species.
So the Colombian mammoth, this huge being, when extinct probably
like 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 that, in friends, because that's a long time.
A lot can happen, certainly from the human standpoint, and

(14:04):
that did that amount of time. Yeah. It's also worth
pointing out that it wasn't just the tax Carteca. The
Inca also had tales of ancestral victories over giants. In
this case, though the giants were destroyed by fire from heaven.
Oh yeah, So these myths were recorded in One of
the places they were recorded was in a source in

(14:26):
the sixteenth century. One of one of these was by
Sisa de Leone in the Chronicle of Peru, published in
fifteen fifty three. So the people telling this story where
people living in I think it was Peru at the time,
modern Ecuador, who told stories about how their ancestors in
ancient times had had been invaded by these people from

(14:46):
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 Sieza de Leone's record
of the stories that were told to him by the
native people's. He says, quote, they arrived on the coast
in boats made of reeds as big as large ships,

(15:07):
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, Like they're making it clear, um,
their limbs were all in proportion to the deformed size

(15:28):
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 on others
only in the dress which nature gave them. And they
had no women with them. And then so SiZ it
Leone goes on to tell more about the story of

(15:49):
the conflict between the people and these giants. Size It
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
to exaggeration. So I think he's he's got a patronizing attitude,
it seems like here. But he also embellishes their account

(16:12):
by adding Christian theological material to it. So later on
he says, uh uh quote, all the natives declare that God,
our Lord, brought upon them a punishment in proportion to
the enormity 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

(16:32):
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 as a memorial of this punishment. So that's interesting.
There's there's this idea that some bones are left for

(16:53):
us to see, and so what about these bones? Well,
Adrian Mayer writes about this in her account. She says
that in three there was a deputy governor of Trujillo
named Juan day Almost who decided to investigate these stories
about the extinct giants and their bones by conducting a
paleontological excavation. So that's pretty interesting, right, We've got the

(17:15):
sixteenth century here, and they're trying to excavate the bones
of extinct beings. Yeah, essentially engaging in in 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 were and how to
fit into history, even you know, you're even though you're
dealing with, say, you know, a version of history that

(17:35):
is influenced by mythology, uh and perhaps even the mythology
of some you know, local conquerors who have just arrived.
Then you're that you're still engaged in the exercise of
trying to understand fossils. Yeah, and that that's what one
day Almost was apparently doing. So. Mayor writes that Almost
and his workers they went and they dug up pits

(17:57):
in this valley that they've 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've been consumed by the fire put down by this
being from the sky. And then uh so that they
apparently found some things. They found skulls that seemed to
look sort of human. And remember again the comparison between

(18:19):
like the idea of the cyclops and the giant elephant skulls. Yeah,
like it is unlike so many um, you know, large
herbivore skulls. The elephant skull does not look you know,
it's not a long skull. It's not like the skull
of a deer or even like a hippo or something.
It does seem to have like the vertical alignment of
a of a primate skull. Though then again, these these

(18:41):
bones were found to not be exactly human in proportion.
Uh 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 it's almost like an indication
of their monstrous nous, which is sort of a self
fulfilling prophecy. Right, we're looking for human shaped things that
aren't correctly human shaped because they were monsters. Therefore, when

(19:04):
the things aren't correctly human shaped, almost can can conclude, yeah, okay,
we found the bones of giants here, and and apparently
they did so that you know, they dug up these bones.
They said, yep, it looks like there were giants, and
Mayor points out points to other sources as well on this,
such as leading Mexican archaeologist Dr. Leonardo Lopez Lujan, who

(19:25):
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 but I I should probably add, like, there's there's
the there's the oral history of the creatures, but then
there's just the oral history of finding the fossils. And
I think that's that's probably more of what we're talking

(19:45):
about here. Uh, you know, somebody found these bones once
and maybe they kept the bones, maybe they didn't, But
there's the story of the encounter and then the subsequent
interpretation of what the bones mean. Okay, I think maybe
we should take a quick break. We'll be right back
with more than all right, we're back, so you know,
I want to drive home that you know, we're talking

(20:07):
about Quetzal Coodal and some of these other traditions. You know,
there's there's a lot we don't know about these cultures. Again,
Cortez and those who came after him, that they were
a destroying force, they were conquerors. They brought with them, uh,
death and disease and uh and and and in often

(20:28):
cases like a willingness, like a an intent to destroy
the culture of the people. Uh that they subjugated and
did that in many cases through literally destroying written records. Right,
so you know they're luckily something survived, but so much
was destroyed. We're talking about in the meso American world
initially like like seven years ago. And uh and yet

(20:51):
as is, 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 Hibraic traditions of
three thousand years ago than we know about meso America
seven hundred years ago, because mainly of the destruction of
the conqui statore, the destruction that they wrought on the cultures,

(21:14):
the destruction of codices that the Aztecs and the Maya kept, uh.
And on top of this, the hieroglyphic style books of
the Aztecs. Uh. You know that there were were there
to aid in the memorization of oral literature. So you
know that with you know, you're so you're destroying it
on both ends. If you're destroying the culture that that
that retains the the oral tradition, but then you're also

(21:36):
destroying the books that enabled it to begin with. Um.
You know. So it's it's often a taxing exercise to
try and reassemble uh. You know what some of these
stories and traditions actually were. But quetzal codeal um as
we discussed in our previous episode, Uh, they're they're basically
like two major different um uh like Saga's a of

(22:00):
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 Quetzalcodle,
like the creator being, and then there's like the human
version or the human embodiment, right, and and ultimately I
think that's something that that that ended up lining up
a lot with sort of Christian traditions, the idea of
there being sort of a a part one that's very

(22:22):
cosmic and and uh 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 are like
a hero legend. Yeah, exactly, in both of these cases, though,
it's really important to drive home the quetzal Quotal was
was not like a like a bloodthirsty god. I think
sometimes there is this tendency to someone says Aztec God something,

(22:44):
then you're going to instantly think about blood sacrifices or
something like because of cue the Wing Serpent the movie, right,
you're going to think of that. But but quetzal Quotal was,
by all the accounts we were looking at, you know,
this was a benign, benevolent, even um entity. This was
this was a divine being that represented peace and not

(23:06):
bloody warfare or anything of the sort. So I just
want to drive that home before we we continue here.
And you're probably wondering again, Okay, you're talking about giants,
you're talking about elephants, But what about quetzal Kodal. What
does Mayor right about the winged serpent? And she she,
she does mention him. She she writes that in the

(23:27):
Florentine Codex, which is the sixteenth century ethnographic research study
in Mesoamerica conducted by a Spanish friar Um, that the
the human quetzal Kodal 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 Koda
left upon the stone with his hands when he rested there,

(23:49):
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, and the holy
buttock marks, yeah, of of of the winged serpent. And
the place was known as timok Palco the impression of

(24:10):
the hands. So we we ultimately have have no current
knowledge or evidence of this place, no further descriptions or
else illustrations even in this uh this codex. But Mayer
suspects they might have been quote a genuine track site,
track site being where we have the fossilized tracks of
of of of creatures, a genuine track site of some

(24:33):
extinct creature, or else there were carvings that resembled fossilized prints,
perhaps made to illustrate or commemorate an episode in the
Quetzalcodal epic. And I think the implication is in that case,
you know, it could be something if it was artificial,
it was man made, it could have been inspired by
actual fossilized tracks that have been discovered, or she doesn't

(24:53):
mention this, but I mean, I can imagine it could
be a combination of the two, like the actual fossils
that were then embellish by 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,

(25:13):
and the survivors of these ages, monsters and giants were
sometimes encountered uh, you know in subsequent ages, and um
quetzal Kota is 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 bones here,

(25:36):
and Mayor thinks it's suggestive of bone grinding medicinal practices
seen elsewhere among Native American people's, but she she also
stresses as she found nothing in the Spanish accounts of
Mesoamerican people's regarding uh, you know, bone grinding practices. However,
she does point to a twentieth century practice in the
village of Sharkas, on the northern border of the Old

(25:59):
Aztec Empire, famed for its minds. The villagers collected a
large fossil bones known as the uh and Uh. I
apologize for my Spanish here kuisos diaspanto the bones of fear. Uh.
These would have been the bones of the old giant
and the daly old giants Uh that that are now
in the earth. And the ground powder was used in

(26:21):
a potion to calm anxiety and fear. And she points
out that this actually lines up with the use of
ground dragon bones in uh in Chinese traditional medicine and
in the treatment of fossils by European apothecaries. Um, who
you know who would? Of course, I think we've discussed
on stuff to bow your mind before about uh, the

(26:43):
use of of of mummified remains by apothecaries, but also
fossil bones as well. Yeah, mummy paste. Wait a minute,
in in the Chinese traditional medicine, what what are the
ground dragon bones? What bones end up becoming supposedly dragon bones? Oh,
I'm not sure on that at actually, but it does
bring to mind that we were perhaps talking about fossils here. Yeah,

(27:04):
that's the they. 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 off hand, I can't.
I don't know for sure if Mayor has has written
about Chinese traditions um 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

(27:25):
discuss um geo mythology and uh quetzal quaddalan. Alright, we're back.
So last time we talked about ketzl quaddle we obviously
made the connection to terrasaur species because of the giant
terrasaur ketzel Katlas, which gets its name from this magnificent

(27:46):
meso American god Um. So I wonder, could there actually
be any connection between terrasaur 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 pterosaurs are not really They're not really serpentine, are they.

(28:07):
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 dream up these creatures like of course,
as we discussed in the questa 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

(28:30):
the world, the cosmos, and our role in it, in
our relationship with nature. It's already this hybrid being and
therefore a like this this special kind of of metaphor
for human understanding. Yeah, and that's something to keep in
mind with all of these cases where you know, geomethology
is full of sort of interesting inferential hypotheses. It's hard.

(28:50):
It's in most cases, it's gonna 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 inspired by geological facts geo facts 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 Mayor does go

(29:12):
into this, though she does. She does explore the the
idea that you know that the question could actual winged
fossil remains have influenced meso American traditions. Uh, 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 uh, and the first humans were
around in this area. But uh, of course that hasn't

(29:36):
stopped some cryptozoologists, she points out to claiming, uh, you
know otherwise, However, she does argue, oh no, that's well, No,
I was just thinking that the crypto when crypto zoologists
get involved, I mean, I don't want to not all
quote crypto zoologists or of the same caliber, right, But
there's crypto and this is something we I feel like

(29:57):
we should explore. There are there are certain scientific professionals.
They're certain scientists who have given a lot of thought
to stuff like you know, the jetty and and have
done so in a reasonable fashion, and and and put
the scientific exploration first. There are, of course, more less

(30:17):
scientifically based, in more you know, overly enthusiastic um uh
individuals out there who bear the cryptozoologist title. Well, there
are always going to be people who are excited about
stories of you know, any kind of interesting uh unusual
being of any kind because it's somehow feeds into their

(30:39):
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
kind of like theological speculation among European Christians. You know,
they'd read these stories and think, ah, this means something

(30:59):
about the Nephi. Yeah. Yeah, And you can imagine that
too if you were like the spear point of a
bloody you know, religious conquest of a new world, and
then you were you were you were learning about their
traditions of giants and their their belief in it. It
almost is uh. It reminds me of, you know, some

(31:20):
of the ideas we've explored with witchcraft persecution, the idea
that that on some level part of the um the
reason for it was because if you by by sort
of drawing these, uh, these stories out of the victims
of witch persecution, you were creating proof for a supernatural
realm that that backed up your own, uh, failing religious ideas.

(31:44):
But that's kind of a whole discussion onto itself. But
any right, mayor does you know she doesn't explore cryptozoological
ideas in this, but she does argue that the thunderbird
beliefs of North American native people's were likely inspired by
such fossils and uh. And she asked paleontologist James Clark,

(32:04):
who had worked with the Northeastern Mexican terrasaur fossils before, if, if,
if these remains would have been likely to elect strong
responses from ancient people's and he thought probably not. And
there his reasoning was that, Okay, it's one thing to
see a fully a simple terrasaur act your local science
museum or in a you know, in a book, and

(32:25):
certainly if it's illustrated as a living creature. But when
you look at the the actual fossil remains, and again
this is someone who had worked with the actual terrasaur
fossil remains from northeastern Mexico, he says, you you end
up looking at this just jumble of bones. That's a
really good point. When you see the impressions of terrasaur

(32:46):
fossils in uh, in situ as they're found, they're often
you know, in say, uh the former flatbed of a
body of water, and the indentations are just a tangled mess.
And I think a lot of this has to do
with in fact, often bird bones are the same way
when they get fossilized. I think it has to do
with sort of lightweight structure of the bones, uh, the

(33:08):
way they just kind of get all collapsed together that
they don't seem to be as often um articulated and
in full body posture as you might get with a
larger animal with more solid bones. Yeah, I mean we can,
we can. We're easily spoiled sometimes by the really nice
fossil remains that we see with certain certain finds and

(33:28):
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, uh, the the you know,
the the whole discipline of paleontology entails a lot of
reassembly of of of of guesswork and and generally and

(33:49):
often you know times as some of these even terra stars,
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 base everything off
off of that extrapolate based on other fossil remains. Yeah,
and I think it's true of terrasaurs especially, like even
more so than dinosaurs generally, that you have that that

(34:12):
fossils as they're found are very often unimpressive until you
start extrapolating what this living creature would have looked like. However,
Mayor writes that she thinks the giant terrasaur remains in
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 as bland, the Aztec homeland. Now,

(34:33):
what about the so we're not saying though, that we
think um uh terosaurs would have inspired the belief in
ketzel coadle just because these are these are very differently
formed creatures, right, we must be talking about some kind
of other being. Well, yeah, and luckily there are there
are other flying creatures in Mesoamerican traditions. Uh. For instance,
the the Aquai people of Sonara believed in a great

(34:56):
bird that lived on Skeleton mountain or or oh tom
Quai and then and the belief was that it preyed
on humans and uh. And then when a child hero
killed it, its feathers turned into all the birds that
lived today. But the likely suspect in these myths, mayor says,
are reports of living California condors and the fossils of

(35:17):
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 have been a real bird of
prey rather than pterosaur fossil and Ulso that makes more sense,
like just that you know you're dealing with something again,
where there is there is the the actual potential for

(35:40):
an oral tradition to carry some word about it. And
then you also have on top of the fossilized condors,
you have actual condor still in the world today that
can be glimpsed and 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 ketzel Coadle himself. Of what we're probably

(36:01):
talking about is the the alleged reports of the handprints
and the butt prints right right, which certainly feels more
like fossil like basically discovering fossil evidence of the thing
that are 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

(36:24):
not the thing that inspires it outright, Uh, And yeah,
I think that's that's the idea we come back to
time and time again anytime we discussed geo mythology, Like
sometimes it's a fun exercise to look at like could this,
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,

(36:47):
and it's hard to know for sure. I mean, that'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, though you might have a few. Yeah,
you know, interest I was thinking about 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

(37:08):
just have bones on hand that they keep as relics
and say these are the bones. Yeah, like this, the
mammoth example that we discussed here is a is a
I think a wonderful example of of of actual geomethology,
like because that's what they said. There was in a
situation where we're just later saying maybe they could have
inspired by been inspired by these bones. Well, no, they

(37:29):
brought the bones out. The bones were part of their interpretation.
Now it is also possible that the myths actually predated
the bones. Uh, you can't rule that out, but it
seems like it's a very good candidate that since they
have the bones and they have this belief that there
that these are are linked, there's a causation link here.
You know, um, I I can't help but wonder how

(37:51):
Godzilla 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 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 gogahedra, So it's

(38:14):
more kind of an old school god, right, 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. Uh uh. But 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.

(38:35):
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 the version that
we see in Jurassic Park. 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 a you know, a dash of geo mythology and

(38:58):
Godzilla as well. Um, I feel like we we might
need to come back and do an episode on Godzilla
again because there was recently a paper that came out
that looked at Godzilla's increase in size, how every film
version that comes out makes Godzilla bigger, and comparing that
to um to to certain cultural changes, namely like how

(39:20):
much money a given culture invest into its military. Um
So that might be fun to discuss. Anytime we can
discuss Godzilla on the show. Uh, 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.
Is it? Is it out of the question? Well, well,
I mean that could be misunderstanding here. I think something

(39:41):
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 very good. Um 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 movie. You show me a Godzilla movie,

(40:02):
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 the than 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 uh and saying, oh, you should see it. It's

(40:23):
a 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.
All right, Well, there you have it. Um. I follow
up to a couple of past episodes, like two prequels
in one and uh and hey, maybe a glance at
the future. Let us know, do you want to hear

(40:44):
a whole another episode on Godzilla? Uh? You 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, whether it's correcting us on something
we get wrong or just uh, you know, helping helping
us to grow as we are. 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

(41:07):
you know listeners are growing as well and discovering a
new uh facts about the world, new avenues to explore
on in their own time. UM so let us know.
There are number ways to reach out to us. You
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(41:27):
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(41:48):
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(42:13):
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