July 28, 2020 • 51 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe continue their exploration of helmets -- both the horned and the non-horned variety. Learn about the beautiful complexity of Japanese samurai helmets, perhaps the weirdest helm ever donned by a king and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back for part two of talking about helmets. Last time,
we had a lot of fun. We we talked about
caterpillars piling up their old exoskeleton heads on top of
(00:26):
their current heads. We talked about helmets from the ancient
Greek world. We talked about horned helmets and where those
motifs came from, the association with vikings, and and we
had so much more. And we're back today. Yeah, this
episode is going to be more of a um a
selection of various helmets and helmet traditions, uh from different
(00:48):
parts of the world. Um, we are going to get
into samurai armor a bit more. We toil. We very
briefly mentioned it in the first episode, and I've figured
it was deserving of a deeper dive. But before we
get into that, we're going to touch on just a
really bizarre helmet from European tradition. Yeah, this is one
that we were sort of planning on talking about last time,
(01:10):
but I guess we ran out of time. But if
if you're if you're talking about horned helmets and you're
just looking around for historical examples worth mentioning, you are
bound to come across one that is I would say
literally unbelievable, and I mean literally unbelievable in the correct
use of the word literally, because when you see it,
(01:30):
you will be inclined to think, there is no way
this is actually an early sixteenth century artifacts this is
a prop from a Terry Gilliam movie. Oh. Absolutely had
the exact same response when I first came across because
if you if you start researching helmets, and if you
start looking on using image searches to find examples, you
find a lot of of creative energy that has gone
(01:51):
into the creation of fictional helmets and sort of artistic
um twists on fictional helmets and sci fi helmets. Everything.
You have to do a fair amount of of digging
around to make sure that what you're looking at is
something from the real world. And when I looked at this,
this is just this is just too weird. I figured
this is some bizarre art experiment here. There's no way
(02:16):
that this was an actual helm from European history. Well
it is, I think a bizarre art experiment. But it's like,
you know, five years old. Uh so, No, it's not
from Terry Illium movie. It's not from the set of Legend.
This is a helmet that is known as the horned
helmet of the English King Henry the Eighth. It is
astonishingly bizarre. It is definitely worth actually looking up an
(02:40):
image of if you have a chance, but I am
going to describe it if you're not in a place
where you can look it up right now. So you
can read about this artifact and see close up photos
at the website for the British Royal Armories Collection and leads.
This helmet was commissioned as part of an armor set
in fifteen eleven by then Holy Roman Emperor maximil In
(03:00):
the First and it was given as a gift to
King Henry. So Henry the eighth when he's a young man,
he's given this, this helmet and this suit of armor
as a gift. But I'm wondering what a gift like
this was supposed to signify, given its visual features. So
first of all, it's a helmet that's made of steel.
It's very close fitting, it's got features and a couple
(03:21):
of other metals. It's got a pair of corkscrew rams
horns made of sheet iron. And if you're trying to
picture this, they're not the tightly curled like Princess Leiah
rams horns. They're not the sticky bun rams horns. They're
like the curling out like a corkscrew that you would
use to open a bottle of wine. Then on the
(03:41):
face it has spectacles like glasses. Spectacles made of copper alloy,
so they shine in a kind of different color than
the rest of the face, and the spectacles may once
have been gilded. So this is a helmet that fully
encloses the head with front facing flats that hinge open
(04:02):
like a flower spreading its petals in the sunlight, you know,
or like the face of the demag organ in uh
in stranger things. You know, it's got the petals that
open up. So it's got two side plates that hinge
out to the right and the left. So imagine these
would fold over sort of the the the jaw area.
The side burns and they flap out, and then the
face plate hinges up over the forehead. And so you
(04:26):
can open the flaps up like this and put the
helmet on by sliding it over the back of your
head and then you close the plates around the sides
in front of your head, which I have to admit it,
it's kind of hard for me to picture just looking
at an image of the helmet. I think most of
the images, if not all, the images you run across,
are of the closed helmet, as if it's being worn
and it's sealed up. Yeah. Actually, though, you can look
(04:48):
it up on the Royal Armory's website. They've got a
video with a curator at the museum. They're unfolding the
flaps and showing you how it works, So you can
check that out on their website if you're interested. But so,
the front of the front plate on this helmet, the
face plate is carved with a level of intricacy that's
almost kind of awkward, you know how when somebody like
(05:10):
makes a parody of something but they put way too
much effort into it. If you look close at this
face plate, you will see these delicate wrinkles etched in
around the eyes, and stubble all around the mouth and lips,
and a texture that looks almost like pours across the
cheeks and the nose. The expression on the face is
(05:33):
really hard to describe. It's something I guess the way
I could come closest just to say it is a
demonic rictus. Uh. It suggests I must scream, but my
lips are stapled together, loosely stapled together, but stapled together. Yeah,
I mean it's yeah, it is really hard to describe um. Certainly,
you know, the stubble is very interesting, especially in light
(05:54):
of mustaches on helms that we mentioned in the last
episode and and well up again in this episode later. Uh.
But yeah, this this expression, it's it is hard to
categorize because it it is intimidating. There's this there is
a sense of that when I look at this helmet,
I cannot imagine thinking that anyone who would wear this
(06:17):
um has good intentions. Like there's a there's a vileness
to it, you know. There there's the mouth is making
you get the impression it's making a sound kind of
like a you know, it's a there's a goblin esque
aspect to it. I will say that the the the
expression on the mouth of this face reminds me of
(06:40):
some of the faces that Willem Dafoe polls in some
of his various villainous roles. You know, this kind of
intense um grim lenoid kind of a smile, but but
not necessarily a happy smile or not a happiness that
is shared by other people in the room. Yeah, it's
it's like part Memlin or Goblin, part mad scientist, and
(07:03):
part Willem Dafoe in Streets of Fire. But so apparently
after the English Civil War, so this would be about
a hundred years after Henry the Eighth to death. After
the English Civil War, most of the rest of Henry's
armor was discarded. It was you know, used for scrap metal.
But for some reason, this helmet, this this grotesque, bizarre
(07:24):
horned helmet was preserved. And it's quite possibly just because
it looked so weird. You know, you can almost kind
of imagine Oliver Cromwell finding this and thinking like, yes, okay,
this is an accurate representation of the monarchy. But another
thing is something that we talked about in the last episode,
which is the dual use of helmets. Helmets that you know,
(07:46):
you might wonder like, would this actually be very useful
in battle or you know, if it was actually designed
to protect the head in battle, wouldn't it wouldn't it
be kind of different than it is. And this is
another one of those helmets where it's just hard to
imagine it being very practical for a fighting scenario. It's
got the curling horns which just scream, you know, grab me,
(08:07):
knock me, use me as a lever. Uh and uh. This,
this intuition that we get from looking at this thing,
is in fact historically correct, because this wasn't fighting armor.
This was party armor. Um. I actually found a similar looking,
though less elaborate helmet in the online collection of the
Swedish Royal Armory Museum because I was trying to find
(08:29):
other examples of helmets kind of like this that we're
used as party armor, ceremonial armor instead of armor for battle.
And there so there's this helmet in the Swedish Royal
Armories collection that belonged to the Swedish King Gustav Vasa,
who lived from four to fifteen sixty. And this helmet
has everything. It's got a dorsal fin, it's got a
(08:51):
carved mustache, it's got splayed eye holes, it's got a
grimace straight from hell. It does not have horns or spectacles, though,
and it is it is a beauty I do want
to come back to the idea of of dress armor
versus battle armor for a king because I know some
you know, if you're not, you know, super familiar with
the history of British royalty and battle, you might think, well,
(09:15):
you know, why would Henry have any armor but uh,
fancy armor for non combat events? Would a would a
king have battle armor? So Henry lived through fifteen forty seven. Uh,
And it's worth to put that in context of King
Richard the Third uh died of his wounds on August
(09:37):
eighty five, and he was the last English king to
die in battle. Um. So the idea of a king
having battle armor not entirely out of the question for
that time period. No, not at all. And uh and
you know, Richard the Third is not even thought of
as an especially like you know, he's not thought of
as a warrior king usually. But no, he rode straight
(09:59):
into battle. He was trying to kill Henry Tutor, who
was attacking him to usurp the throne, and he was
like literally in there in the fight himself. But just
to reference what the Swedish Royal Armories Museum says about
the helmets with face plates like this, you know. They
say that around the sixteenth century it was popular for
wealthy elites like kings and other nobility in Europe to
(10:23):
wear armor, including close helmets, to wear these things too celebrations, parades,
big parties, and in the early sixteenth century, they say
that it was common to where these with quote grotesque
visors in the form of animal or human faces like
this one, the one we were talking about a minute ago,
(10:44):
to enhance the festive atmosphere and heighten the sense of theatricality.
So I guess it's possible to some extent that the
weirdness of these face plate grotesques, like King Henry's horned
helm or King Gustav's weird looking face mat s here.
It's not just that something is being lost in translation
(11:04):
across time, language, and culture. It's possible that some of
them were supposed to look weird. They were supposed to
look funny. Yeah, it's like a masked ball, only a
lot more clinky. But when you really look into the
significance of the visual features, Henry the Eighth's horn helmet
gets even weirder. So I just want to mention a
couple more facts that are brought up by the Royal
(11:25):
Armories collection. One is that I mentioned the face plate
has spectacles, right, These cover the eyeholes, so their eye
holes in the face plate, and then these spectacles descend
down from a hinge at the bridge of the nose,
And that might look kind of weird to us today,
but this actually was a common format for spectacles at
the time. They would kind of have a rivet in
(11:47):
between these two separate arms that each went to one lens,
and it would fold down over the bridge of the nose,
so you can kind of clip it on your nose,
but on the mask. There's no indication that these spectacles
ever held lenses, so it appears they were decorative rather
than functional. But why would you have decorative spectacles without lenses,
(12:10):
I mean, the the the immediate answer that would come
to mind as well, if you if you had spectacles
on a lot, or you use them and they were
part of your identity, then you might want them replicated.
In the same way that people who have, like for instance,
warned glass eyeglasses for a long time and then have
lasic surgery might still keep some glasses with just plain
(12:32):
glass as lenses just because that's part of their look.
That's possible. I don't think spectacles were really considered part
of Henry's look, especially when he was young. Uh, there's
another thing they point out that that might be the
answer here. Apparently spectacles were an accessory that in the
sixteenth century often appeared in renderings of the stock character
(12:56):
from from culture at the time known as the food owl.
So I guess something kind of like the Shakespearean fool, right,
like touchstone and as you like it? Okay, so well.
On one hand, this is of course disappointing because it
sounds a bit like it's it's essentially like a nerd joke, right,
it's like making making fun of the very important individuals
(13:18):
at the time who at the time where we're using
them to get a lot of work done for the crown,
And here you're just gonna turn it around and use
it as a goofy trope because glasses look funny. So
it's possible that this is just a costume of the fool,
in the sense that a lot of times these fest
there would be festivals in which the fool is made king. Uh.
This is kind of perhaps a play on that. That's possible.
(13:40):
Here's another thing in that column. If Henry's helmet was
supposed to make him look like a fool. That would
also possibly explain the horns. Now, we mentioned in the
last episode that horns had appeared on European decorative helmets
and times gone by, but by the sixteenth century a
human depicted with horns had negative kind of stations, often
(14:00):
either demonic connotations or connotations specifically of cuckoldry. And this
gets really interesting for a for a brief diversion that
really does come back to the helmet. So I was
reading an article by a scholar named Una mckilvina, who
is a historian at the University of Melbourne, and she
argues that there was something of a popular obsession in
(14:24):
the early modern period with cuckoldry, this bizarre paranoia pulsing
through European culture during the Renaissance about wives cheating on
their husbands. And it shouldn't come as any surprise given
the sexual politics of the time, right, Yeah, So obviously
there's a lot of paternalism and misogyny rolled up into this.
(14:45):
There was this idea that women were more lustful than
men and less rational, less in control of their actions,
and that they could lose control of their behavior and
commit scandalous acts of infidelity, and as a res old,
a married man, by a virtue of being married to
a woman, was constantly at risk of being humiliated by
(15:07):
her cheating on him. Uh and this state of humiliation
was expressed through the imagery of invisible horns on the head.
This imagery shows up in Shakespeare in several different ways.
For example, in Much Ado about Nothing, there's a character
named Benedict who's being cynical about marriage, and Benedict says, basically, hey,
(15:27):
if I ever get married, I might as well quote
pluck off the bulls horns and set them in my forehead.
The ideas that he's like, what's the point. As soon
as you get married, a woman will cheat on you,
and then you'll have these horns. Now, it's not known
exactly where this link between horn imagery and sexual humiliation
comes from, but there are several theories. She mentions a few.
(15:49):
Some have to do with various types of castrated domestic animals,
such as the ox, which has horns, of course, or
the capon, which is a castrated male chicken. It was
once common, apparently to ingraft the spurs from the legs
of a capon into its comb so that it could
be told apart from the other roosters. And maybe this
(16:10):
had something to do with it. But we don't know
for sure where this imagery comes from. But here we
tie it back in with the spectacles because apparently during
the early modern period there were also popular associations between
cuckoldry imagery and the stock character of the fool. So
sometimes the fool might have been depicted with spectacles. Other
(16:30):
times the fool might have been depicted with horns. Okay,
so so it all again could be part of just
sort of the the trope cartoon character of the day
for the fool possibly. So, I mean, it just makes
me wonder, like, Maximilian, what are you trying to say
with this gift? Man? Yeah, it's it sounds like either
(16:51):
just h it really depends on to what extent you
get Henry's sense of humor, because this is this would
be kind of a dangerous gift to give a key
unless you knew he was really into this, right, Yeah,
And I want to be clear that I don't mean
to suggest that the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First
was insinuating anything about Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon
(17:11):
at the time or anything like that. But it is
interesting that this elaborate gift helmet includes elements that exist
in this nexus of association with the character of the fool.
So yeah, it must suggest either I don't know, he's
that he thinks maybe Henry is going to have a
good sense of humor and will dress up in Fool's
armor for ceremonial occasions. I don't know. There is also
(17:34):
it really stinks of luxury to to have a helmet
like this, and helmets, says we've discussed in the previous episode.
You know, these are they're well crafted, um implements of
of battle like these are expensive items and to have
one that, for many reasons is is nonfunctional and could
even be something that would never be worn because it's
(17:56):
something of a but you know, perhaps like a white
elephant gift, you know. So maybe that that's part of
the the appeal of this helmet as well. I'm wondering
if it was kind of the horsehead mask of the
early undreds, oh man. So yeah, if they if they
could do selfies like this would be a helmet you'd
wear for your selfie. Now, speaking of Goofy helmets from
(18:18):
the medieval period. Specifically um one that I think a
lot of us have seen many times and it's always
kind of puzzles you on some reason is the hound
skull helmet, which comes from the German uns google or
or a hound's hood or sometimes translated as pig faced helmet.
(18:38):
So it's not quite a horn, but this helmet has
something that looks like a snout on the front of it, um,
you know, like the snout of say a indeed, a
hound or a pig. It has a very be steel
look to it. Uh and it even so it has
a very transformative nature to it. You see these nights
uh uh in depictions of nights dressed in this armor,
(18:58):
and they look kind of like Eastman, right. And this
is a common theme that we talked about in the
last episode, the zoom morphic mask or the theory anthropic mask,
the one that suggests transformation into an animal or having
some kind of animal characteristics, right. And and so this
style of armor also looks very goofy. It gets it
has kind of a spy versus spy feel, you know,
(19:19):
with like the pointed nose, very cartoony. So it raises
the question why do we see this design? Indeed, why
was this an extremely popular um form of the design?
This is not something where you just saw a few
examples of you know, relegated to the the you know,
the fancy affairs of a king. No, this was this
was a legit battle armor, and it was it was
(19:41):
a pretty widespread um uh throughout medieval Europe. Um. Let
me guess it was a beak for pecking the enemy.
It does kind of look like it looks kind of
you know, offensive in that regard, but it turns out
it did have two key purposes. So, first of all,
breathing is always uh an issue in a helmet like this.
(20:02):
You know, you put some sort of big metal contraption
over your head, Well, you still need to see out
of it, and you still need to breathe. Well, if
you just have a like a flat face mask in
front of you, there are only so many holes, so
many um events you can put in that thing to
allow you to breathe. But if it is elongated like this, uh,
(20:22):
then that allows for even more breathing holes. So it
depends on what example you pull up. Sometimes you pull
put you find an example of of this helmet and
it doesn't look like they're really that many they're not
really taking advantage of this feature, but others have a
lot of holes in the miss Essentially it's almost like
a whiffleball. But perhaps the more important aspect of this
(20:43):
design was that its shape would deflect blows to the face.
So if your face is shaped like a cone, it
is going to be harder for the enemy to land
a spear or a sword in such a way that
it's going to, you know, just through and cut your
face in half. Yeah, I see that. It's gotta it's
got a natural perrying formation. Yeah, so it and I
(21:07):
have to say it does also look kind of creepy
into humanizing and while also being kind of goofy uh.
You know. You also see lower slits in some of
these helmets, so they'll be like the upper is slip
like clearly for for for viewing, and then there's a
lower slit that kind of looks like a mouth. And
I was reading about this in History of Armor eleven
hundred through seventeen hundred by PAULA. F. Walker, and the
(21:28):
author points out that most of these lower slits were
probably intended to allow the night to look down, which
makes us again, think of the the movement limitations and
the vision limitations in a helmet like this, How are
you going to see what's going on below, you say,
in your lap on the horse or whatnot. Um you
know you're you gonna do a full body movement to
(21:49):
look down or do you need essentially lower windows in
your head cage so that you can see what's going
on down there? I see. Now, we talked about this
in the last episode. To the idea that and you're
designing armor and especially helmets, you're often that, uh, you're
working with trade offs, right, you know, you've got the
level of protection versus what kind of limitations come along
(22:10):
with that protection. Sometimes it might be limitations and mobility,
especially for types of armor on the body, but with
helmets and armor on the head, you're gonna have limitations
to the senses. That's right. So apparently this is a
pretty successful design though. Um Walker writes that the style
here became universally used across Europe during the fourteenth century
(22:31):
and a lot of those were lost. But if you
survive today, so if you do a little bit of
image searching around online for a hound skulls or or huns,
google helmets, you'll find some really interesting examples. All right, well,
I guess we need to take a quick break, but
we'll be right back with more. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
(22:52):
So in the previous episode, we we mentioned the helm
of the samurai in passing, but there's just way too
much beauty and complexity in the Samurai tradition to leave
it at that. So I want I wanted to go
into it a bit more and a bit more detail
on what we're really looking at. When we behold examples
of Samurai armor, especially Samurai helms, which have to rank
(23:13):
among the most elegant military helmets ever created. Some of
them are so beautiful and looks so delicate I would
be afraid to touch them. Yes, yeah, that, and and
really they they're an art unto themselves. That also makes
searching up examples of it kind of difficult because people
continue to create riffs on Samurai armor and Samurai helmets,
(23:36):
and at times it it becomes a challenge to figure out, Okay,
am I looking at an actual military helmet? Am I
looking at this kind of showy military helmet. There's more
or less in line with the sort of fancy dress
helmets you know, a status symbol or am I looking
at something more recent, something that is a uh, you know,
a purely modern artistic flourish that is playing on samurai identity. Um,
(23:58):
it's there's a there's a whole world of design here.
But to go back to sort of the beginning, you
know what, what is a samurai? Just to refresh everybody,
This was the Japanese warrior class, which originally denoted the
bushy or aristocratic warriors, but eventually referred to all members
of the warrior class. They came to power in the
(24:18):
twelfth century and they held power till the Meiji restoration
in eighteen sixty eight. They grew out of the Kamakura period,
which would have been eleven ninety two through UH thirteen
thirty three, taking the pre existing refinement of the Imperial
court and transforming it through a unique mix of military skill,
(24:39):
warrior ethos, and stoicism. So you have elements of Zen, Buddhism,
Confucian thought, fill the old Pity and Shinto mixed together
into this uh, this code of the Bushido, which by
the nineteenth century also became just an ethical blueprint for
Japanese society itself. Now that's not to say that the
details of bushido were set in stone, as it did
(25:00):
drift depending on external influences such as the influence of
the aforementioned uh um, you know, outside philosophies. So the
samurai were loyal to specific feudal lords to an all
consuming degree. The warriors honor purpose in life, we're all
bound to these individuals. So, of course there's this long
(25:20):
history of Samurai armor, and its story is one of
just design evolution, continual tinkering, artistic embellishments, and at times
archaic revival. Uh when you basically see all of these
and other armor armor traditions as well. But some of
the earliest examples can be examined in terra coda figurines
and grave goods from the Tumulus period from CE two
(25:42):
fifty through five two, which shows us this uh uh,
the scaled armor that is we've just touched on this
briefly in the previous episode that is predominantly Chinese in
its design, but with few purely Japanese flourishes those would
follow uh. This was this is according to Samurai and
Illustrated History UH by Mitsuo Curi. Now, Curry points out
(26:05):
that this armor style resembles Chinese tongue and song style
lamelar armors. And that whether the Japanese ruling class of
the day, you know, originally migrated from Northern Asia, or
if native Japanese borrowed or imported foreign fighting techniques and technologies,
whichever it may be, it's still a controversial question. But
(26:26):
the films would have been either peaked or beaked, according
to Curry, now explain to me the difference there. So
basically there's gonna be either it's gonna gonna be kind
of almost like a cone at the top, you know,
or it's going to come out almost like the bill
of a cap. Okay that makes sense, Yeah, which you know,
not just I guess it would also protect your eyes
(26:46):
from the sun, but also it would help shield your
face from blows. But this is just essentially the beginning. Uh.
Curry's book is an excellent read if you want an
in depth history of the various styles of Samurai armor.
And indeed there are so many fascinating addition and add
ons that end up making up this armor. Again, there's
just continuous evolution. Uh. And and also given the modular
(27:08):
aspects of a lot of armor, traditions, but especially Samurai armor.
It gets even more intricate because you'll see like the
addition of a of a of a net guard here,
the refinement of cheek guards over here and then, and
also the evolution of just like the purely artistic aspects
of it. But as far as the helmet itself goes, uh,
here are a few interesting facts that that curry gets into.
(27:31):
So first of all, the top of the helmet bowl
features a small four centimeter hole called a hotchi manza
that apparently had a dual purpose. So first of all,
it provided provided ventilation, helping you breathe a little better
in the in the helmet um, but it also allowed
the warriors top knot hairstyle to be drawn up through it.
(27:52):
And what's interesting here is that this helps steady the helmet.
Uhar helmets had no inside liner and they were only
fixed to the head by the chin cord and the
top knot. I have never heard before of your actual
organic hair being used to secure a helmet in place,
but that is a brilliant idea. Yeah, as long as
(28:14):
the hairstyle matches up with that, Because apparently during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, hairstyles change toward a looser style,
and there was growing concern as well that the holes
now only benefit of ventilation was overshadowed by the fact
that it provided a weak point for arrows when the
warrior charged head down at adversaries. So by the fifteenth
(28:34):
century it goes away as an actual whole, but you
still retain an exterior decorative flourish that it tests to
its previous existence. Uh, kind of a decorative groment um.
Because also it had other ideas. Other ideas were bound
up in it as well. There's this notion that the
whole allowed the ninety eight thousand gods of war to
(28:55):
enter into the warrior, and in fact, the fact that
the name Hatchi Manza apparently comes from the name hat Chiman,
which was a patron god of war, a Shinto god
who embraced Buddhism. I was reading about this um, or
actually I was listening to Anthony Cummins, an author and
translator on Samurai arms, armor and the tactics of warfare,
(29:15):
who also host a series of informative videos on YouTube
about the topic. So by designing the helmet this way,
the idea was that the gods of war could sort
of enter into the warrior and inhabit them and give
them strength and battle or guide their actions. Yeah, or
at least that was sort of the the philosophical ideas
(29:35):
that were attached to this whole, though it seems like
it was mostly for the hair, and certainly when you
begome become concerned that that it's going to be a
hole through which arrows will enter the warrior. It seems
like everyone's was it was pretty much on board with
the idea of sealing it up with something that's interesting.
I mean it makes you think about all these different
aspects of inventions that dwell for a long time in culture,
(29:58):
where they might have a rich and only had a
functional purpose, but then over time is the functional purpose
goes away. I wonder if people are more inclined to
read religious or cultural significance into that that element of
the invention. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things
people do is we brood over our objects. We attached
an assign meaning to the things that we create and
(30:20):
the details of it, and sometimes those those are the
things that live on well past the functionality of a
particular element of the design. It makes me think of
like church bells, for instance, that were once functional and
signaling times of day for for worship or just for
time keeping in a locality, and then over time just
came to mean more. It is just something that is
(30:42):
part of what a church is, even though it's not.
Everybody's got a clock now. Yeah, shutters on houses another example.
You know, how often do you see shutters actually closed
on windows unless you're dealing with say like a beach
house or something. A lot of times you'll see examples
of this where the shutters either are never used or
even be incapable of being used. It could be a
purely decorative flourish. Yeah, it's interesting. So the main bowl
(31:06):
of the helmet or kabuto here was was the hatchie,
and you have the plated neck guard with this was
the shikorro, which is made of overlapping plates, and then
you have a brim or a visor as well, which
I kind of mentioned already. But then if you ever
look at a samurai helmet, you often see these wing
like or ear like backwards folding flaps, and these were
(31:29):
these were known as the fuka gaishi, and these were
the front parts of the neck guard. But they became
folded back like this to enhance visibility and to prevent
getting in the way of drawing a bow. So another
example of the evolution of the helmet being to a
certain extent aesthetic but also purely functional. And then you
(31:50):
have the sunamoto and this is the This is in
the front. It's a mounting point on the front of
the helmet and where you might have horns or antlers
or a flower motif or something like that. That added. Now,
something else that you see with a lot of these
helmets is that they don't just cover the top and
sides of the head, but they, like a lot of
the other helmets we've been talking about today, have a
(32:11):
face mask. Yeah. And this is often one of the
most you know, arresting aspects of the samurai helmet and
one that clearly resonates, uh in our fiction around the world.
I mean, you look at, say, the Darth Vader's helmet,
and there is a strong samurai element in its design.
Oh was it? Do you know if it was directly
inspired by samurai helmets? Uh? Well, I was. I looked
(32:32):
this up the other day and it seems like that
has been cited as one of the influences, though there
are a couple others, like there's some old sci fi
cereal with a helmeted bad guy that may have played
a role. Uh you know. Some others have pointed to
Dr Doom as another likely influenced, but it seems like
the samurai aesthetic was part of the influence for sure.
I do think George Lucas was was a fan of
(32:55):
Japanese cinema, wasn't he Like, Oh yeah, definitely, He's definitely
cited Curasawa is an influence for sure. So so yeah,
I think when you see Darth Vader, you're you're definitely
seeing some samurai influence there. Now on the samurai helmets,
of course, they these these masks often take on the
likeness of a human face, though often with very aggressive flourishes. Also,
(33:17):
you'll frequently find mustaches that have been added a lot
of times. They're kind of like you know, brush base.
They're they're they're were made with horse hair or something,
so there they actually have a brustlely aspect to them.
Oh man, that's so much better than the metal mustache
of Sutton Who and all these others. Yeah. Now, one
one thing to note about the face mask of the
(33:38):
samurai is there are actually several different varieties. So there's
the the hapuri, which Cury writes date back to the
Hayon period of seven to eleven eighty five, and they
covered the foreheads and the cheeks and a kind of
upside down you shape. You don't see that as much
when you just get you know, look for sort of
stereotypical uh samurai armor. Far more prevalent in just standard
(34:03):
samurai iconography is the partial face mask or menpo, which
emerged in the fourteenth or fifteen centuries to provide protective
coverage for the lower face that was apparently lost by
some of the design trends that were affecting other aspects
of the helmet. So this would have covered like basically
from the eyes uh down to the chin, and sometimes
there's a scaled net guard hanging below this. Another variety
(34:26):
was the the hen bow, which covered the nose to
chin area as well, but not the cheeks. Now, you
also see examples of the sulman, which covered the entire face,
and some of the examples of this are very uh
beautiful as well, But apparently this was not a popular
choice as it was said to be uncomfortable to wear. Uh,
So I guess, you know, just more constricting of your
(34:47):
face and perhaps limiting your your your senses a bit. Now,
the overall look and feel of the helmet was was
sometimes crafted to represent something about the warrior's character, such
as through an animal motif, and samurai tended to like
to stand out from the crowd. Um. In the book Samurai,
(35:08):
author Anthony J. Bryant points out that for early samurai,
crests were a privilege of rank. Uh. These date mono
were mounted on the front, sometimes on the sides, taking
the form of dragonflies, butterflies, crescent moons, disks, horns, various emblems, etcetera. Uh.
And they were mostly made of wood or paper mache,
(35:29):
even that had been painted and affixed to the helmets,
which I think is interesting because you're getting into this
area where okay, there's the purely functional aspects of the
helmet that are going to be made of more durable material.
But indeed, if you're gonna have some sort of uh,
you know, flourish affixed to the top of your helmet,
it makes more sense really that you would have it
constructed of paper mache or wood or something and not
(35:51):
be a physical part of the helmet that would again,
you know, send your your helmet flying or twist your
neck around if it were to catch a stray sword blow.
I yeah, that's extremely smart. Actually, paper mache adornments could
be They can still be seen, they can convey the
same symbolism, but they can't become a lever. Yeah, just
rip right off. Yeah, So it seems like that that
(36:13):
would be a key advantage here now in terms of
this sort of tug of war between aesthetics and uh
and and just utilitarian purpose. Uh, you certainly see things
perhaps going more in the direction of of just aesthetics.
When you consider the kawari kabuto or the changed helmets
or in usual helmets, and these are the more elaborate
(36:36):
examples of samurai helmets you'll you'll come across, and some
of the most beautiful, uh they were. They were expensive,
so only the wealthy were able to have them unless
they claimed them on the battlefield from a falling samurai.
But these would have been highly decorative helmets with unique
shapes or even the overall likenesses of an animal. So
instead of there being just this you know, this wooden
(36:59):
paper mission a flourish added to the front of the helmet,
like the helmet itself would be transformed like a parade
float into uh an animal or with any enormous animal
motif affixed to the top of it. So like the
entire thing is the body of a of a fish
or some kind of yokai or something. Yeah, there's a
pretty great fish based one that I've seen images of,
(37:20):
and there's also a really beautiful one from the seventeenth
century that apparently is in the Mets collection. I don't
think it's currently on display or hasn't been recently, but uh,
it's beautiful because it looks like this black cresting wave. Uh,
it's it's just elegant to behold and also kind of
shiny black. It looks a lot like like the material
(37:42):
of Darth Vader's helmet. Yes it does. Yeah, this one's
very Darth vadery and it's almost it's almost got like
a scorpion's tail aspect curling up at the top. Yeah.
So there's a there's tons more we could talk about
with some Samurai helmets and Samurai armor. We've only really
touched the you know, the tip of the iceberg here
for an example of just how many very designs you
(38:05):
come across. I was I was reading Samurai Armor though
one Tabby Art Museum Samurai Armor Collection Volume one by
Trevor Absalon and David Thatcher, and they the authors here,
point out that the kawari kabudah encompasses so many different
variations that like, for instance, there's this one that they
pull out. It's a design from the mid late Edo
(38:25):
period that has this horned helmet, horned samurai helmet. But
then over it is this hood. So this is hood
in place, and then the horns are sticking out through
the fabric of the hood. So that's just another example
of the rich variety you'll find with these helms. Joke,
and you pull up an image of this side. I'm
looking at it right now. This is cult movie material.
(38:48):
This is so good. So the hood, yes, the hood
has holes. The horns come through the holes. It's like
little sleeves for your horns. Uh. So creepy looking. And
then the face mask it has not just a bristly mustache,
but a whole briskly beard. Uh. And this is great
because like if you if you were to try to
(39:09):
kiss somebody wearing this mask, you would feel the bristles,
but legitimately creepy and beautiful to sign. Yeah, this is awesome. Alright, Well,
on that note, we're gonna take one more break. When
we come back, we're gonna discuss just a few more
examples of philut design from around the world and throughout history.
Thank thank thank all Right, we're back now, Robert, I
(39:31):
know you wanted to mention a bit about pre Columbian
cultures in meso America and South America. Yeah. I mean,
we've discussed um the Inca civilization on the show before,
as well as aspects of Aztec civilization, and especially when
we're talking about the Inca, we talked about their amazing
fiber based technologies. Um I believe we talked a lot
(39:52):
about their use of knots, as well as the use
of things like elaborate rope bridges. But it also played
into how they can truct did their body armor and
their helmets. So the Inca depended on quilted and padded
cotton tunics for body armor, with wooden plates added in places,
especially the back, I understand, and likewise their helmets were
(40:14):
mostly wooden. Apparently, generals or other prestigious individuals might have
theirs decorated with a little bit of copper as well.
Now you might wonder like, wait a minute, why would
wool be all that useful for armor, But I mean
think about helmets and pads of today that say a
football player would wear, or that you might wear if
you're riding a bicycle. These often involve a lot of
(40:34):
kind of soft padding elements which are quite useful if
you suddenly get hit on the head or hit somewhere
in the body. As that you know, they might not
stop a sword from stabbing you, but they can't slow
the acceleration or deceleration of impacts, which makes a big
difference in in protecting your body from injury. Right, so,
even if you are going to have some sort of
robust plating on your body, you also want some sort
(40:57):
of uh, some some sort of material there to help
absorb the blow as well, because otherwise, yeah, that the
sword might not break the skin, but the impact of
the sword might break several bones. So, uh, that's just
the inca in brief. But also I was looking around
at the the Aztec. According to Handbook to Life in
the Aztec World by Manuel uh Aguilar Marino, the Aztecs
(41:21):
also utilize similar cotton tunic body armor, and war leaders
would wear feathered tunics over these. So as far as
their helmets go, the helmets varied. Some were made from
wood and bone and decorated with feathers. Others were far
more animalistic, made in the likeness of a wild animal
of divine significance and associated with different warrior groups such
(41:43):
as wolves, coyotes, jaguars, and pumas and the And in
these mass the warrior would gaze out of the animal's
open mouth, and these were generally supported over a frame
of wood or quilted cotton. Yeah, and it's worth looking
up examples of these. A couple of the ones that
come to my mind are the jaguar warriors and the
eagle warriors. The jaguars and the eagles were like different
(42:05):
classes of military combatants in the in the ancient Aztec
or Mexico culture. Yeah, with a lot of sacred associations
with these animals. So it wasn't just like, hey, wouldn't
it be cool if I looked like a jaguar, wouldn't
I be intimidating like it? It went deeper to that
and was more entrenched in a in in a sacred
battle um ethos. But I wanted to to also talk
(42:29):
about another far flung example of helmet technology, and that
is the helmet that you would find um uh used
by the Hawaiian people. Interesting. Yeah, so, you know, I
do want to stress there's so many different variations in
warrior helms throughout human history, and there's there's a lot
of sameness to a certain degree. You see fabric, fiber, leather,
and hide helms across all cultures. Bone and wood are
(42:51):
frequently taken up as our metals, as metallurgical advancements and
um you know, and and also the local environment allow
but but these are a couple of reasons why it's
really neat to look at Polynesian technology, and specifically Hawaiian helmets.
So I would love to come back at some point
(43:13):
and do a proper look at Polynesian technology, because the
various cultures at this far flung tip of human expansion
are and we're really amazing and advanced in ways utterly
the fitting of their challenges. So here's one of the
interesting things about about Hawaiian warriors. So, given the complete
absence of iron on the volcanic islands, the ancient warriors
(43:34):
of Hawaii were instead masters of wooden spears, slings, wooden forks,
and daggers. Sometimes they had these two pronged eye daggers
as well as these unique shark tooth weapons for close
quarters combat. They kind of looked like in some cases
they look kind of like paddles or or kind of
like wooden daggers, but they're lined around the edges with
(43:55):
the saw blades made of sharks teeth. Uh So they
if you getting close enough, you know, you can essentially
you know, gut your enemy or or you know, slice
a vital part of their anatomy. They also had strangling
chords that sometimes featured shark teeth as well, and all
of this would would have been additionally incorporated into specialized
(44:16):
tactics and specialized martial arts as far as protection goes.
According to Warrior Arts and Weapons of Ancient Hawaii by
Sid Campbell, the warrior chieftains of old would wear a
brightly colored cape into battle, often slung on one arm
to deflect or snag spears. He writes, uh quote, so
these decorative capes looked more ceremonial than martial to foreigners
(44:39):
unaccustomed to the Kia's battle accouterments. They proved very effective
in instances of close range combat, which were frequent where
clubs and sharp toothed daggers were commonplace. The cape used
as a shield could also be a protective barrier to enshroud, deflect, perry,
or confine the enemy's weapon. The This reminds me of
(45:01):
some of the earliest examples of body armor that we
talked about it in the last episode which depicted on
the Royal Standard of Or. I think it was where
these ancient Mesopotamian warriors are shown wearing heavy leather capes
as armor and battle. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think in
the last episode two we we had a brief tangent
where we talked about the capes worn by Darth Vader
(45:22):
and Count Dooku and General Grievous in the Star Wars films. Uh.
And then so certainly there's historical presidents for the use
of capes as armor in close combat and in the
Star Wars universe. On top of that, they have this
idea that you have these garments made out of armor
weave which would be capable of dissipating blaster bolts or
at really and at least providing limited resistance to lightsabers.
(45:45):
And I do want to stress again that there there
would have been an entire martial arts at play here
in the use of these various weapons and this protective cape.
Now they also had helmets that would they would use,
and there at least two example polls of of it.
So first of all, there's this gourd mask helmet design
that it was traditionally known as macacay or makini I believe,
(46:11):
and they're also they've also been commonly referred to as
uh okay okay I believe. It's a it's actually a
popular cultural motif today. So if you if you do
some image searches for this or um you know, or
or do any amount of driving around the Hawaiian islands,
you will you will see examples of this where it
is like to describe it, it's kind of like a
(46:33):
gorge shape with kind of a big hourglass shape cut
into the front, allowing uh one to to to look
out and also exposing cheeps and nose region. There's often
kind of a feather based um um kind of a
mohawk or crest on the back of it. And then
you'll also have some material hanging down from the edges
(46:54):
covering the neck. Yeah, a lot of the examples I've
seen involved not a single space in the front of
the face, but with two whole separate eye holes. So
I guess you could do it multiple ways, but the
a lot of the ones I've seen, they end up
making you look kind of like Jack Skellington. Yeah, there
is kind of. I think that's one of the reasons
that it's such an interesting image and one that uh
(47:15):
that that that people keep coming back to. I mean,
aside from it's it's it's cultural relevance, it also has
this kind of skull like quality. It feels, you know,
if you're coming at it from a sci fi direction,
it almost feels like a space helmet. And also being
gourd based. It it's a little it's a little different.
It it um you know, it's it's uh, it's a
(47:36):
different tradition, a different way of of covering the head
and protecting the head. And apparently this would have been
a design that the very first European explorers to arrive
in a y you would have observed various warriors wearing.
Now there's also another variety of helmet and these would
have been more um artistic and more just purely for
(47:56):
for show, But there would have been a crested helmet
known as majol, and these would have been um uh
made of aerial vine roots that were woven into kind
of a basketry frame, so kind of a wicker helmet
that was then decorated with feathers. Again with this kind
of crested appearance to them, that reminds I think we
(48:18):
we easily remind a uh, you know, a Westerner of
various Greek helmets or some of the uh, the the
head gear that is associated with Tibetan monks. Yeah, it
certainly looks very elaborate and regal. I mean, you see
somebody wearing this, and it does suggest that they are
in charge. But there's something also about the images I've
seen of this type of helmet. The texture on the outside.
(48:40):
I'm not sure if that's original. It might be a
sign of of where weathering over time. It looks kind
of like coral. I know it's not made of coral,
but it's got that fuzzy pink kind of texture on
the outside. Yeah. Well, like the the use of feathers
in this helmet helmet, for example, um, if you're not,
if you haven't seen a picture of you may be
thinking of something that is very feather like, enormous feathers,
(49:02):
but a lot of these look to be very small feathers,
which creates a oh almost kind of a furry appearance
that it looks like it's something made from the fur
or some sort of fabulous multicolored mammal that that we
just don't know about, kind of sponge like almost like
you might imagine that if you were to touch the helm,
(49:22):
it would sting you. Yeah. So anyway, just another example
of the various materials and designs that have been used
to to cover the human skull, to enhance protection for
the human skull, but also transform the human body to
create some different idea of who we are and what
(49:42):
our status is in a given culture. Robert, I have
enjoyed this helmet journey. Yeah, there's been a lot of fun.
And of course we we only got to touch base
on on so few examples. I mean, there there's so
many other traditions and and again you people have whole
books about samurai arm or about you know, the martial
arts and uh an armory and uh and weaponry of say,
(50:05):
the Hawaiian people. So I hopefully this episode will be
more as a more of a starting point for folks
out there that one of these examples really perks your interest,
then look into it more because there's a lot of
a lot of cool material out there, a lot of
photography reconstructions, uh that that really make it rewarding. Absolutely. Now,
obviously we'd love to hear from everybody about this. Uh.
(50:28):
You know, if we've touched on a particular helmet that
is important to you culturally, we'd love to hear from you.
Or if it's we've just touched on a topic that
you have some additional insight regarding. Perhaps you've worn some
of these helmets, tried them on, or tried on reconstructions
of them. We would love to hear from you about
all of that. In the meantime, if you want to
check out other episodes of the show, you can find
(50:49):
us wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens
to be if you have the ability to do so. Uh,
just rate, review, and subscribe, because those are just some
small acts that help us out all in the long run.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi,
(51:11):
you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back for part two of talking about helmets. Last time,
we had a lot of fun. We we talked about
caterpillars piling up their old exoskeleton heads on top of
(00:26):
their current heads. We talked about helmets from the ancient
Greek world. We talked about horned helmets and where those
motifs came from, the association with vikings, and and we
had so much more. And we're back today. Yeah, this
episode is going to be more of a um a
selection of various helmets and helmet traditions, uh from different
(00:48):
parts of the world. Um, we are going to get
into samurai armor a bit more. We toil. We very
briefly mentioned it in the first episode, and I've figured
it was deserving of a deeper dive. But before we
get into that, we're going to touch on just a
really bizarre helmet from European tradition. Yeah, this is one
that we were sort of planning on talking about last time,
(01:10):
but I guess we ran out of time. But if
if you're if you're talking about horned helmets and you're
just looking around for historical examples worth mentioning, you are
bound to come across one that is I would say
literally unbelievable, and I mean literally unbelievable in the correct
use of the word literally, because when you see it,
(01:30):
you will be inclined to think, there is no way
this is actually an early sixteenth century artifacts this is
a prop from a Terry Gilliam movie. Oh. Absolutely had
the exact same response when I first came across because
if you if you start researching helmets, and if you
start looking on using image searches to find examples, you
find a lot of of creative energy that has gone
(01:51):
into the creation of fictional helmets and sort of artistic
um twists on fictional helmets and sci fi helmets. Everything.
You have to do a fair amount of of digging
around to make sure that what you're looking at is
something from the real world. And when I looked at this,
this is just this is just too weird. I figured
this is some bizarre art experiment here. There's no way
(02:16):
that this was an actual helm from European history. Well
it is, I think a bizarre art experiment. But it's like,
you know, five years old. Uh so, No, it's not
from Terry Illium movie. It's not from the set of Legend.
This is a helmet that is known as the horned
helmet of the English King Henry the Eighth. It is
astonishingly bizarre. It is definitely worth actually looking up an
(02:40):
image of if you have a chance, but I am
going to describe it if you're not in a place
where you can look it up right now. So you
can read about this artifact and see close up photos
at the website for the British Royal Armories Collection and leads.
This helmet was commissioned as part of an armor set
in fifteen eleven by then Holy Roman Emperor maximil In
(03:00):
the First and it was given as a gift to
King Henry. So Henry the eighth when he's a young man,
he's given this, this helmet and this suit of armor
as a gift. But I'm wondering what a gift like
this was supposed to signify, given its visual features. So
first of all, it's a helmet that's made of steel.
It's very close fitting, it's got features and a couple
(03:21):
of other metals. It's got a pair of corkscrew rams
horns made of sheet iron. And if you're trying to
picture this, they're not the tightly curled like Princess Leiah
rams horns. They're not the sticky bun rams horns. They're
like the curling out like a corkscrew that you would
use to open a bottle of wine. Then on the
(03:41):
face it has spectacles like glasses. Spectacles made of copper alloy,
so they shine in a kind of different color than
the rest of the face, and the spectacles may once
have been gilded. So this is a helmet that fully
encloses the head with front facing flats that hinge open
(04:02):
like a flower spreading its petals in the sunlight, you know,
or like the face of the demag organ in uh
in stranger things. You know, it's got the petals that
open up. So it's got two side plates that hinge
out to the right and the left. So imagine these
would fold over sort of the the the jaw area.
The side burns and they flap out, and then the
face plate hinges up over the forehead. And so you
(04:26):
can open the flaps up like this and put the
helmet on by sliding it over the back of your
head and then you close the plates around the sides
in front of your head, which I have to admit it,
it's kind of hard for me to picture just looking
at an image of the helmet. I think most of
the images, if not all, the images you run across,
are of the closed helmet, as if it's being worn
and it's sealed up. Yeah. Actually, though, you can look
(04:48):
it up on the Royal Armory's website. They've got a
video with a curator at the museum. They're unfolding the
flaps and showing you how it works, So you can
check that out on their website if you're interested. But so,
the front of the front plate on this helmet, the
face plate is carved with a level of intricacy that's
almost kind of awkward, you know how when somebody like
(05:10):
makes a parody of something but they put way too
much effort into it. If you look close at this
face plate, you will see these delicate wrinkles etched in
around the eyes, and stubble all around the mouth and lips,
and a texture that looks almost like pours across the
cheeks and the nose. The expression on the face is
(05:33):
really hard to describe. It's something I guess the way
I could come closest just to say it is a
demonic rictus. Uh. It suggests I must scream, but my
lips are stapled together, loosely stapled together, but stapled together. Yeah,
I mean it's yeah, it is really hard to describe um. Certainly,
you know, the stubble is very interesting, especially in light
(05:54):
of mustaches on helms that we mentioned in the last
episode and and well up again in this episode later. Uh.
But yeah, this this expression, it's it is hard to
categorize because it it is intimidating. There's this there is
a sense of that when I look at this helmet,
I cannot imagine thinking that anyone who would wear this
(06:17):
um has good intentions. Like there's a there's a vileness
to it, you know. There there's the mouth is making
you get the impression it's making a sound kind of
like a you know, it's a there's a goblin esque
aspect to it. I will say that the the the
expression on the mouth of this face reminds me of
(06:40):
some of the faces that Willem Dafoe polls in some
of his various villainous roles. You know, this kind of
intense um grim lenoid kind of a smile, but but
not necessarily a happy smile or not a happiness that
is shared by other people in the room. Yeah, it's
it's like part Memlin or Goblin, part mad scientist, and
(07:03):
part Willem Dafoe in Streets of Fire. But so apparently
after the English Civil War, so this would be about
a hundred years after Henry the Eighth to death. After
the English Civil War, most of the rest of Henry's
armor was discarded. It was you know, used for scrap metal.
But for some reason, this helmet, this this grotesque, bizarre
(07:24):
horned helmet was preserved. And it's quite possibly just because
it looked so weird. You know, you can almost kind
of imagine Oliver Cromwell finding this and thinking like, yes, okay,
this is an accurate representation of the monarchy. But another
thing is something that we talked about in the last episode,
which is the dual use of helmets. Helmets that you know,
(07:46):
you might wonder like, would this actually be very useful
in battle or you know, if it was actually designed
to protect the head in battle, wouldn't it wouldn't it
be kind of different than it is. And this is
another one of those helmets where it's just hard to
imagine it being very practical for a fighting scenario. It's
got the curling horns which just scream, you know, grab me,
(08:07):
knock me, use me as a lever. Uh and uh. This,
this intuition that we get from looking at this thing,
is in fact historically correct, because this wasn't fighting armor.
This was party armor. Um. I actually found a similar looking,
though less elaborate helmet in the online collection of the
Swedish Royal Armory Museum because I was trying to find
(08:29):
other examples of helmets kind of like this that we're
used as party armor, ceremonial armor instead of armor for battle.
And there so there's this helmet in the Swedish Royal
Armories collection that belonged to the Swedish King Gustav Vasa,
who lived from four to fifteen sixty. And this helmet
has everything. It's got a dorsal fin, it's got a
(08:51):
carved mustache, it's got splayed eye holes, it's got a
grimace straight from hell. It does not have horns or spectacles, though,
and it is it is a beauty I do want
to come back to the idea of of dress armor
versus battle armor for a king because I know some
you know, if you're not, you know, super familiar with
the history of British royalty and battle, you might think, well,
(09:15):
you know, why would Henry have any armor but uh,
fancy armor for non combat events? Would a would a
king have battle armor? So Henry lived through fifteen forty seven. Uh,
And it's worth to put that in context of King
Richard the Third uh died of his wounds on August
(09:37):
eighty five, and he was the last English king to
die in battle. Um. So the idea of a king
having battle armor not entirely out of the question for
that time period. No, not at all. And uh and
you know, Richard the Third is not even thought of
as an especially like you know, he's not thought of
as a warrior king usually. But no, he rode straight
(09:59):
into battle. He was trying to kill Henry Tutor, who
was attacking him to usurp the throne, and he was
like literally in there in the fight himself. But just
to reference what the Swedish Royal Armories Museum says about
the helmets with face plates like this, you know. They
say that around the sixteenth century it was popular for
wealthy elites like kings and other nobility in Europe to
(10:23):
wear armor, including close helmets, to wear these things too celebrations, parades,
big parties, and in the early sixteenth century, they say
that it was common to where these with quote grotesque
visors in the form of animal or human faces like
this one, the one we were talking about a minute ago,
(10:44):
to enhance the festive atmosphere and heighten the sense of theatricality.
So I guess it's possible to some extent that the
weirdness of these face plate grotesques, like King Henry's horned
helm or King Gustav's weird looking face mat s here.
It's not just that something is being lost in translation
(11:04):
across time, language, and culture. It's possible that some of
them were supposed to look weird. They were supposed to
look funny. Yeah, it's like a masked ball, only a
lot more clinky. But when you really look into the
significance of the visual features, Henry the Eighth's horn helmet
gets even weirder. So I just want to mention a
couple more facts that are brought up by the Royal
(11:25):
Armories collection. One is that I mentioned the face plate
has spectacles, right, These cover the eyeholes, so their eye
holes in the face plate, and then these spectacles descend
down from a hinge at the bridge of the nose,
And that might look kind of weird to us today,
but this actually was a common format for spectacles at
the time. They would kind of have a rivet in
(11:47):
between these two separate arms that each went to one lens,
and it would fold down over the bridge of the nose,
so you can kind of clip it on your nose,
but on the mask. There's no indication that these spectacles
ever held lenses, so it appears they were decorative rather
than functional. But why would you have decorative spectacles without lenses,
(12:10):
I mean, the the the immediate answer that would come
to mind as well, if you if you had spectacles
on a lot, or you use them and they were
part of your identity, then you might want them replicated.
In the same way that people who have, like for instance,
warned glass eyeglasses for a long time and then have
lasic surgery might still keep some glasses with just plain
(12:32):
glass as lenses just because that's part of their look.
That's possible. I don't think spectacles were really considered part
of Henry's look, especially when he was young. Uh, there's
another thing they point out that that might be the
answer here. Apparently spectacles were an accessory that in the
sixteenth century often appeared in renderings of the stock character
(12:56):
from from culture at the time known as the food owl.
So I guess something kind of like the Shakespearean fool, right,
like touchstone and as you like it? Okay, so well.
On one hand, this is of course disappointing because it
sounds a bit like it's it's essentially like a nerd joke, right,
it's like making making fun of the very important individuals
(13:18):
at the time who at the time where we're using
them to get a lot of work done for the crown,
And here you're just gonna turn it around and use
it as a goofy trope because glasses look funny. So
it's possible that this is just a costume of the fool,
in the sense that a lot of times these fest
there would be festivals in which the fool is made king. Uh.
This is kind of perhaps a play on that. That's possible.
(13:40):
Here's another thing in that column. If Henry's helmet was
supposed to make him look like a fool. That would
also possibly explain the horns. Now, we mentioned in the
last episode that horns had appeared on European decorative helmets
and times gone by, but by the sixteenth century a
human depicted with horns had negative kind of stations, often
(14:00):
either demonic connotations or connotations specifically of cuckoldry. And this
gets really interesting for a for a brief diversion that
really does come back to the helmet. So I was
reading an article by a scholar named Una mckilvina, who
is a historian at the University of Melbourne, and she
argues that there was something of a popular obsession in
(14:24):
the early modern period with cuckoldry, this bizarre paranoia pulsing
through European culture during the Renaissance about wives cheating on
their husbands. And it shouldn't come as any surprise given
the sexual politics of the time, right, Yeah, So obviously
there's a lot of paternalism and misogyny rolled up into this.
(14:45):
There was this idea that women were more lustful than
men and less rational, less in control of their actions,
and that they could lose control of their behavior and
commit scandalous acts of infidelity, and as a res old,
a married man, by a virtue of being married to
a woman, was constantly at risk of being humiliated by
(15:07):
her cheating on him. Uh and this state of humiliation
was expressed through the imagery of invisible horns on the head.
This imagery shows up in Shakespeare in several different ways.
For example, in Much Ado about Nothing, there's a character
named Benedict who's being cynical about marriage, and Benedict says, basically, hey,
(15:27):
if I ever get married, I might as well quote
pluck off the bulls horns and set them in my forehead.
The ideas that he's like, what's the point. As soon
as you get married, a woman will cheat on you,
and then you'll have these horns. Now, it's not known
exactly where this link between horn imagery and sexual humiliation
comes from, but there are several theories. She mentions a few.
(15:49):
Some have to do with various types of castrated domestic animals,
such as the ox, which has horns, of course, or
the capon, which is a castrated male chicken. It was
once common, apparently to ingraft the spurs from the legs
of a capon into its comb so that it could
be told apart from the other roosters. And maybe this
(16:10):
had something to do with it. But we don't know
for sure where this imagery comes from. But here we
tie it back in with the spectacles because apparently during
the early modern period there were also popular associations between
cuckoldry imagery and the stock character of the fool. So
sometimes the fool might have been depicted with spectacles. Other
(16:30):
times the fool might have been depicted with horns. Okay,
so so it all again could be part of just
sort of the the trope cartoon character of the day
for the fool possibly. So, I mean, it just makes
me wonder, like, Maximilian, what are you trying to say
with this gift? Man? Yeah, it's it sounds like either
(16:51):
just h it really depends on to what extent you
get Henry's sense of humor, because this is this would
be kind of a dangerous gift to give a key
unless you knew he was really into this, right, Yeah,
And I want to be clear that I don't mean
to suggest that the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First
was insinuating anything about Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon
(17:11):
at the time or anything like that. But it is
interesting that this elaborate gift helmet includes elements that exist
in this nexus of association with the character of the fool.
So yeah, it must suggest either I don't know, he's
that he thinks maybe Henry is going to have a
good sense of humor and will dress up in Fool's
armor for ceremonial occasions. I don't know. There is also
(17:34):
it really stinks of luxury to to have a helmet
like this, and helmets, says we've discussed in the previous episode.
You know, these are they're well crafted, um implements of
of battle like these are expensive items and to have
one that, for many reasons is is nonfunctional and could
even be something that would never be worn because it's
(17:56):
something of a but you know, perhaps like a white
elephant gift, you know. So maybe that that's part of
the the appeal of this helmet as well. I'm wondering
if it was kind of the horsehead mask of the
early undreds, oh man. So yeah, if they if they
could do selfies like this would be a helmet you'd
wear for your selfie. Now, speaking of Goofy helmets from
(18:18):
the medieval period. Specifically um one that I think a
lot of us have seen many times and it's always
kind of puzzles you on some reason is the hound
skull helmet, which comes from the German uns google or
or a hound's hood or sometimes translated as pig faced helmet.
(18:38):
So it's not quite a horn, but this helmet has
something that looks like a snout on the front of it, um,
you know, like the snout of say a indeed, a
hound or a pig. It has a very be steel
look to it. Uh and it even so it has
a very transformative nature to it. You see these nights
uh uh in depictions of nights dressed in this armor,
(18:58):
and they look kind of like Eastman, right. And this
is a common theme that we talked about in the
last episode, the zoom morphic mask or the theory anthropic mask,
the one that suggests transformation into an animal or having
some kind of animal characteristics, right. And and so this
style of armor also looks very goofy. It gets it
has kind of a spy versus spy feel, you know,
(19:19):
with like the pointed nose, very cartoony. So it raises
the question why do we see this design? Indeed, why
was this an extremely popular um form of the design?
This is not something where you just saw a few
examples of you know, relegated to the the you know,
the fancy affairs of a king. No, this was this
was a legit battle armor, and it was it was
(19:41):
a pretty widespread um uh throughout medieval Europe. Um. Let
me guess it was a beak for pecking the enemy.
It does kind of look like it looks kind of
you know, offensive in that regard, but it turns out
it did have two key purposes. So, first of all,
breathing is always uh an issue in a helmet like this.
(20:02):
You know, you put some sort of big metal contraption
over your head, Well, you still need to see out
of it, and you still need to breathe. Well, if
you just have a like a flat face mask in
front of you, there are only so many holes, so
many um events you can put in that thing to
allow you to breathe. But if it is elongated like this, uh,
(20:22):
then that allows for even more breathing holes. So it
depends on what example you pull up. Sometimes you pull
put you find an example of of this helmet and
it doesn't look like they're really that many they're not
really taking advantage of this feature, but others have a
lot of holes in the miss Essentially it's almost like
a whiffleball. But perhaps the more important aspect of this
(20:43):
design was that its shape would deflect blows to the face.
So if your face is shaped like a cone, it
is going to be harder for the enemy to land
a spear or a sword in such a way that
it's going to, you know, just through and cut your
face in half. Yeah, I see that. It's gotta it's
got a natural perrying formation. Yeah, so it and I
(21:07):
have to say it does also look kind of creepy
into humanizing and while also being kind of goofy uh.
You know. You also see lower slits in some of
these helmets, so they'll be like the upper is slip
like clearly for for for viewing, and then there's a
lower slit that kind of looks like a mouth. And
I was reading about this in History of Armor eleven
hundred through seventeen hundred by PAULA. F. Walker, and the
(21:28):
author points out that most of these lower slits were
probably intended to allow the night to look down, which
makes us again, think of the the movement limitations and
the vision limitations in a helmet like this, How are
you going to see what's going on below, you say,
in your lap on the horse or whatnot. Um you
know you're you gonna do a full body movement to
(21:49):
look down or do you need essentially lower windows in
your head cage so that you can see what's going
on down there? I see. Now, we talked about this
in the last episode. To the idea that and you're
designing armor and especially helmets, you're often that, uh, you're
working with trade offs, right, you know, you've got the
level of protection versus what kind of limitations come along
(22:10):
with that protection. Sometimes it might be limitations and mobility,
especially for types of armor on the body, but with
helmets and armor on the head, you're gonna have limitations
to the senses. That's right. So apparently this is a
pretty successful design though. Um Walker writes that the style
here became universally used across Europe during the fourteenth century
(22:31):
and a lot of those were lost. But if you
survive today, so if you do a little bit of
image searching around online for a hound skulls or or huns,
google helmets, you'll find some really interesting examples. All right, well,
I guess we need to take a quick break, but
we'll be right back with more. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
(22:52):
So in the previous episode, we we mentioned the helm
of the samurai in passing, but there's just way too
much beauty and complexity in the Samurai tradition to leave
it at that. So I want I wanted to go
into it a bit more and a bit more detail
on what we're really looking at. When we behold examples
of Samurai armor, especially Samurai helms, which have to rank
(23:13):
among the most elegant military helmets ever created. Some of
them are so beautiful and looks so delicate I would
be afraid to touch them. Yes, yeah, that, and and
really they they're an art unto themselves. That also makes
searching up examples of it kind of difficult because people
continue to create riffs on Samurai armor and Samurai helmets,
(23:36):
and at times it it becomes a challenge to figure out, Okay,
am I looking at an actual military helmet? Am I
looking at this kind of showy military helmet. There's more
or less in line with the sort of fancy dress
helmets you know, a status symbol or am I looking
at something more recent, something that is a uh, you know,
a purely modern artistic flourish that is playing on samurai identity. Um,
(23:58):
it's there's a there's a whole world of design here.
But to go back to sort of the beginning, you
know what, what is a samurai? Just to refresh everybody,
This was the Japanese warrior class, which originally denoted the
bushy or aristocratic warriors, but eventually referred to all members
of the warrior class. They came to power in the
(24:18):
twelfth century and they held power till the Meiji restoration
in eighteen sixty eight. They grew out of the Kamakura period,
which would have been eleven ninety two through UH thirteen
thirty three, taking the pre existing refinement of the Imperial
court and transforming it through a unique mix of military skill,
(24:39):
warrior ethos, and stoicism. So you have elements of Zen, Buddhism,
Confucian thought, fill the old Pity and Shinto mixed together
into this uh, this code of the Bushido, which by
the nineteenth century also became just an ethical blueprint for
Japanese society itself. Now that's not to say that the
details of bushido were set in stone, as it did
(25:00):
drift depending on external influences such as the influence of
the aforementioned uh um, you know, outside philosophies. So the
samurai were loyal to specific feudal lords to an all
consuming degree. The warriors honor purpose in life, we're all
bound to these individuals. So, of course there's this long
(25:20):
history of Samurai armor, and its story is one of
just design evolution, continual tinkering, artistic embellishments, and at times
archaic revival. Uh when you basically see all of these
and other armor armor traditions as well. But some of
the earliest examples can be examined in terra coda figurines
and grave goods from the Tumulus period from CE two
(25:42):
fifty through five two, which shows us this uh uh,
the scaled armor that is we've just touched on this
briefly in the previous episode that is predominantly Chinese in
its design, but with few purely Japanese flourishes those would
follow uh. This was this is according to Samurai and
Illustrated History UH by Mitsuo Curi. Now, Curry points out
(26:05):
that this armor style resembles Chinese tongue and song style
lamelar armors. And that whether the Japanese ruling class of
the day, you know, originally migrated from Northern Asia, or
if native Japanese borrowed or imported foreign fighting techniques and technologies,
whichever it may be, it's still a controversial question. But
(26:26):
the films would have been either peaked or beaked, according
to Curry, now explain to me the difference there. So
basically there's gonna be either it's gonna gonna be kind
of almost like a cone at the top, you know,
or it's going to come out almost like the bill
of a cap. Okay that makes sense, Yeah, which you know,
not just I guess it would also protect your eyes
(26:46):
from the sun, but also it would help shield your
face from blows. But this is just essentially the beginning. Uh.
Curry's book is an excellent read if you want an
in depth history of the various styles of Samurai armor.
And indeed there are so many fascinating addition and add
ons that end up making up this armor. Again, there's
just continuous evolution. Uh. And and also given the modular
(27:08):
aspects of a lot of armor, traditions, but especially Samurai armor.
It gets even more intricate because you'll see like the
addition of a of a of a net guard here,
the refinement of cheek guards over here and then, and
also the evolution of just like the purely artistic aspects
of it. But as far as the helmet itself goes, uh,
here are a few interesting facts that that curry gets into.
(27:31):
So first of all, the top of the helmet bowl
features a small four centimeter hole called a hotchi manza
that apparently had a dual purpose. So first of all,
it provided provided ventilation, helping you breathe a little better
in the in the helmet um, but it also allowed
the warriors top knot hairstyle to be drawn up through it.
(27:52):
And what's interesting here is that this helps steady the helmet.
Uhar helmets had no inside liner and they were only
fixed to the head by the chin cord and the
top knot. I have never heard before of your actual
organic hair being used to secure a helmet in place,
but that is a brilliant idea. Yeah, as long as
(28:14):
the hairstyle matches up with that, Because apparently during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, hairstyles change toward a looser style,
and there was growing concern as well that the holes
now only benefit of ventilation was overshadowed by the fact
that it provided a weak point for arrows when the
warrior charged head down at adversaries. So by the fifteenth
(28:34):
century it goes away as an actual whole, but you
still retain an exterior decorative flourish that it tests to
its previous existence. Uh, kind of a decorative groment um.
Because also it had other ideas. Other ideas were bound
up in it as well. There's this notion that the
whole allowed the ninety eight thousand gods of war to
(28:55):
enter into the warrior, and in fact, the fact that
the name Hatchi Manza apparently comes from the name hat Chiman,
which was a patron god of war, a Shinto god
who embraced Buddhism. I was reading about this um, or
actually I was listening to Anthony Cummins, an author and
translator on Samurai arms, armor and the tactics of warfare,
(29:15):
who also host a series of informative videos on YouTube
about the topic. So by designing the helmet this way,
the idea was that the gods of war could sort
of enter into the warrior and inhabit them and give
them strength and battle or guide their actions. Yeah, or
at least that was sort of the the philosophical ideas
(29:35):
that were attached to this whole, though it seems like
it was mostly for the hair, and certainly when you
begome become concerned that that it's going to be a
hole through which arrows will enter the warrior. It seems
like everyone's was it was pretty much on board with
the idea of sealing it up with something that's interesting.
I mean it makes you think about all these different
aspects of inventions that dwell for a long time in culture,
(29:58):
where they might have a rich and only had a
functional purpose, but then over time is the functional purpose
goes away. I wonder if people are more inclined to
read religious or cultural significance into that that element of
the invention. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things
people do is we brood over our objects. We attached
an assign meaning to the things that we create and
(30:20):
the details of it, and sometimes those those are the
things that live on well past the functionality of a
particular element of the design. It makes me think of
like church bells, for instance, that were once functional and
signaling times of day for for worship or just for
time keeping in a locality, and then over time just
came to mean more. It is just something that is
(30:42):
part of what a church is, even though it's not.
Everybody's got a clock now. Yeah, shutters on houses another example.
You know, how often do you see shutters actually closed
on windows unless you're dealing with say like a beach
house or something. A lot of times you'll see examples
of this where the shutters either are never used or
even be incapable of being used. It could be a
purely decorative flourish. Yeah, it's interesting. So the main bowl
(31:06):
of the helmet or kabuto here was was the hatchie,
and you have the plated neck guard with this was
the shikorro, which is made of overlapping plates, and then
you have a brim or a visor as well, which
I kind of mentioned already. But then if you ever
look at a samurai helmet, you often see these wing
like or ear like backwards folding flaps, and these were
(31:29):
these were known as the fuka gaishi, and these were
the front parts of the neck guard. But they became
folded back like this to enhance visibility and to prevent
getting in the way of drawing a bow. So another
example of the evolution of the helmet being to a
certain extent aesthetic but also purely functional. And then you
(31:50):
have the sunamoto and this is the This is in
the front. It's a mounting point on the front of
the helmet and where you might have horns or antlers
or a flower motif or something like that. That added. Now,
something else that you see with a lot of these
helmets is that they don't just cover the top and
sides of the head, but they, like a lot of
the other helmets we've been talking about today, have a
(32:11):
face mask. Yeah. And this is often one of the
most you know, arresting aspects of the samurai helmet and
one that clearly resonates, uh in our fiction around the world.
I mean, you look at, say, the Darth Vader's helmet,
and there is a strong samurai element in its design.
Oh was it? Do you know if it was directly
inspired by samurai helmets? Uh? Well, I was. I looked
(32:32):
this up the other day and it seems like that
has been cited as one of the influences, though there
are a couple others, like there's some old sci fi
cereal with a helmeted bad guy that may have played
a role. Uh you know. Some others have pointed to
Dr Doom as another likely influenced, but it seems like
the samurai aesthetic was part of the influence for sure.
I do think George Lucas was was a fan of
(32:55):
Japanese cinema, wasn't he Like, Oh yeah, definitely, He's definitely
cited Curasawa is an influence for sure. So so yeah,
I think when you see Darth Vader, you're you're definitely
seeing some samurai influence there. Now on the samurai helmets,
of course, they these these masks often take on the
likeness of a human face, though often with very aggressive flourishes. Also,
(33:17):
you'll frequently find mustaches that have been added a lot
of times. They're kind of like you know, brush base.
They're they're they're were made with horse hair or something,
so there they actually have a brustlely aspect to them.
Oh man, that's so much better than the metal mustache
of Sutton Who and all these others. Yeah. Now, one
one thing to note about the face mask of the
(33:38):
samurai is there are actually several different varieties. So there's
the the hapuri, which Cury writes date back to the
Hayon period of seven to eleven eighty five, and they
covered the foreheads and the cheeks and a kind of
upside down you shape. You don't see that as much
when you just get you know, look for sort of
stereotypical uh samurai armor. Far more prevalent in just standard
(34:03):
samurai iconography is the partial face mask or menpo, which
emerged in the fourteenth or fifteen centuries to provide protective
coverage for the lower face that was apparently lost by
some of the design trends that were affecting other aspects
of the helmet. So this would have covered like basically
from the eyes uh down to the chin, and sometimes
there's a scaled net guard hanging below this. Another variety
(34:26):
was the the hen bow, which covered the nose to
chin area as well, but not the cheeks. Now, you
also see examples of the sulman, which covered the entire face,
and some of the examples of this are very uh
beautiful as well, But apparently this was not a popular
choice as it was said to be uncomfortable to wear. Uh,
So I guess, you know, just more constricting of your
(34:47):
face and perhaps limiting your your your senses a bit. Now,
the overall look and feel of the helmet was was
sometimes crafted to represent something about the warrior's character, such
as through an animal motif, and samurai tended to like
to stand out from the crowd. Um. In the book Samurai,
(35:08):
author Anthony J. Bryant points out that for early samurai,
crests were a privilege of rank. Uh. These date mono
were mounted on the front, sometimes on the sides, taking
the form of dragonflies, butterflies, crescent moons, disks, horns, various emblems, etcetera. Uh.
And they were mostly made of wood or paper mache,
(35:29):
even that had been painted and affixed to the helmets,
which I think is interesting because you're getting into this
area where okay, there's the purely functional aspects of the
helmet that are going to be made of more durable material.
But indeed, if you're gonna have some sort of uh,
you know, flourish affixed to the top of your helmet,
it makes more sense really that you would have it
constructed of paper mache or wood or something and not
(35:51):
be a physical part of the helmet that would again,
you know, send your your helmet flying or twist your
neck around if it were to catch a stray sword blow.
I yeah, that's extremely smart. Actually, paper mache adornments could
be They can still be seen, they can convey the
same symbolism, but they can't become a lever. Yeah, just
rip right off. Yeah, So it seems like that that
(36:13):
would be a key advantage here now in terms of
this sort of tug of war between aesthetics and uh
and and just utilitarian purpose. Uh, you certainly see things
perhaps going more in the direction of of just aesthetics.
When you consider the kawari kabuto or the changed helmets
or in usual helmets, and these are the more elaborate
(36:36):
examples of samurai helmets you'll you'll come across, and some
of the most beautiful, uh they were. They were expensive,
so only the wealthy were able to have them unless
they claimed them on the battlefield from a falling samurai.
But these would have been highly decorative helmets with unique
shapes or even the overall likenesses of an animal. So
instead of there being just this you know, this wooden
(36:59):
paper mission a flourish added to the front of the helmet,
like the helmet itself would be transformed like a parade
float into uh an animal or with any enormous animal
motif affixed to the top of it. So like the
entire thing is the body of a of a fish
or some kind of yokai or something. Yeah, there's a
pretty great fish based one that I've seen images of,
(37:20):
and there's also a really beautiful one from the seventeenth
century that apparently is in the Mets collection. I don't
think it's currently on display or hasn't been recently, but uh,
it's beautiful because it looks like this black cresting wave. Uh,
it's it's just elegant to behold and also kind of
shiny black. It looks a lot like like the material
(37:42):
of Darth Vader's helmet. Yes it does. Yeah, this one's
very Darth vadery and it's almost it's almost got like
a scorpion's tail aspect curling up at the top. Yeah.
So there's a there's tons more we could talk about
with some Samurai helmets and Samurai armor. We've only really
touched the you know, the tip of the iceberg here
for an example of just how many very designs you
(38:05):
come across. I was I was reading Samurai Armor though
one Tabby Art Museum Samurai Armor Collection Volume one by
Trevor Absalon and David Thatcher, and they the authors here,
point out that the kawari kabudah encompasses so many different
variations that like, for instance, there's this one that they
pull out. It's a design from the mid late Edo
(38:25):
period that has this horned helmet, horned samurai helmet. But
then over it is this hood. So this is hood
in place, and then the horns are sticking out through
the fabric of the hood. So that's just another example
of the rich variety you'll find with these helms. Joke,
and you pull up an image of this side. I'm
looking at it right now. This is cult movie material.
(38:48):
This is so good. So the hood, yes, the hood
has holes. The horns come through the holes. It's like
little sleeves for your horns. Uh. So creepy looking. And
then the face mask it has not just a bristly mustache,
but a whole briskly beard. Uh. And this is great
because like if you if you were to try to
(39:09):
kiss somebody wearing this mask, you would feel the bristles,
but legitimately creepy and beautiful to sign. Yeah, this is awesome. Alright, Well,
on that note, we're gonna take one more break. When
we come back, we're gonna discuss just a few more
examples of philut design from around the world and throughout history.
Thank thank thank all Right, we're back now, Robert, I
(39:31):
know you wanted to mention a bit about pre Columbian
cultures in meso America and South America. Yeah. I mean,
we've discussed um the Inca civilization on the show before,
as well as aspects of Aztec civilization, and especially when
we're talking about the Inca, we talked about their amazing
fiber based technologies. Um I believe we talked a lot
(39:52):
about their use of knots, as well as the use
of things like elaborate rope bridges. But it also played
into how they can truct did their body armor and
their helmets. So the Inca depended on quilted and padded
cotton tunics for body armor, with wooden plates added in places,
especially the back, I understand, and likewise their helmets were
(40:14):
mostly wooden. Apparently, generals or other prestigious individuals might have
theirs decorated with a little bit of copper as well.
Now you might wonder like, wait a minute, why would
wool be all that useful for armor, But I mean
think about helmets and pads of today that say a
football player would wear, or that you might wear if
you're riding a bicycle. These often involve a lot of
(40:34):
kind of soft padding elements which are quite useful if
you suddenly get hit on the head or hit somewhere
in the body. As that you know, they might not
stop a sword from stabbing you, but they can't slow
the acceleration or deceleration of impacts, which makes a big
difference in in protecting your body from injury. Right, so,
even if you are going to have some sort of
robust plating on your body, you also want some sort
(40:57):
of uh, some some sort of material there to help
absorb the blow as well, because otherwise, yeah, that the
sword might not break the skin, but the impact of
the sword might break several bones. So, uh, that's just
the inca in brief. But also I was looking around
at the the Aztec. According to Handbook to Life in
the Aztec World by Manuel uh Aguilar Marino, the Aztecs
(41:21):
also utilize similar cotton tunic body armor, and war leaders
would wear feathered tunics over these. So as far as
their helmets go, the helmets varied. Some were made from
wood and bone and decorated with feathers. Others were far
more animalistic, made in the likeness of a wild animal
of divine significance and associated with different warrior groups such
(41:43):
as wolves, coyotes, jaguars, and pumas and the And in
these mass the warrior would gaze out of the animal's
open mouth, and these were generally supported over a frame
of wood or quilted cotton. Yeah, and it's worth looking
up examples of these. A couple of the ones that
come to my mind are the jaguar warriors and the
eagle warriors. The jaguars and the eagles were like different
(42:05):
classes of military combatants in the in the ancient Aztec
or Mexico culture. Yeah, with a lot of sacred associations
with these animals. So it wasn't just like, hey, wouldn't
it be cool if I looked like a jaguar, wouldn't
I be intimidating like it? It went deeper to that
and was more entrenched in a in in a sacred
battle um ethos. But I wanted to to also talk
(42:29):
about another far flung example of helmet technology, and that
is the helmet that you would find um uh used
by the Hawaiian people. Interesting. Yeah, so, you know, I
do want to stress there's so many different variations in
warrior helms throughout human history, and there's there's a lot
of sameness to a certain degree. You see fabric, fiber, leather,
and hide helms across all cultures. Bone and wood are
(42:51):
frequently taken up as our metals, as metallurgical advancements and
um you know, and and also the local environment allow
but but these are a couple of reasons why it's
really neat to look at Polynesian technology, and specifically Hawaiian helmets.
So I would love to come back at some point
(43:13):
and do a proper look at Polynesian technology, because the
various cultures at this far flung tip of human expansion
are and we're really amazing and advanced in ways utterly
the fitting of their challenges. So here's one of the
interesting things about about Hawaiian warriors. So, given the complete
absence of iron on the volcanic islands, the ancient warriors
(43:34):
of Hawaii were instead masters of wooden spears, slings, wooden forks,
and daggers. Sometimes they had these two pronged eye daggers
as well as these unique shark tooth weapons for close
quarters combat. They kind of looked like in some cases
they look kind of like paddles or or kind of
like wooden daggers, but they're lined around the edges with
(43:55):
the saw blades made of sharks teeth. Uh So they
if you getting close enough, you know, you can essentially
you know, gut your enemy or or you know, slice
a vital part of their anatomy. They also had strangling
chords that sometimes featured shark teeth as well, and all
of this would would have been additionally incorporated into specialized
(44:16):
tactics and specialized martial arts as far as protection goes.
According to Warrior Arts and Weapons of Ancient Hawaii by
Sid Campbell, the warrior chieftains of old would wear a
brightly colored cape into battle, often slung on one arm
to deflect or snag spears. He writes, uh quote, so
these decorative capes looked more ceremonial than martial to foreigners
(44:39):
unaccustomed to the Kia's battle accouterments. They proved very effective
in instances of close range combat, which were frequent where
clubs and sharp toothed daggers were commonplace. The cape used
as a shield could also be a protective barrier to enshroud, deflect, perry,
or confine the enemy's weapon. The This reminds me of
(45:01):
some of the earliest examples of body armor that we
talked about it in the last episode which depicted on
the Royal Standard of Or. I think it was where
these ancient Mesopotamian warriors are shown wearing heavy leather capes
as armor and battle. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think in
the last episode two we we had a brief tangent
where we talked about the capes worn by Darth Vader
(45:22):
and Count Dooku and General Grievous in the Star Wars films. Uh.
And then so certainly there's historical presidents for the use
of capes as armor in close combat and in the
Star Wars universe. On top of that, they have this
idea that you have these garments made out of armor
weave which would be capable of dissipating blaster bolts or
at really and at least providing limited resistance to lightsabers.
(45:45):
And I do want to stress again that there there
would have been an entire martial arts at play here
in the use of these various weapons and this protective cape.
Now they also had helmets that would they would use,
and there at least two example polls of of it.
So first of all, there's this gourd mask helmet design
that it was traditionally known as macacay or makini I believe,
(46:11):
and they're also they've also been commonly referred to as
uh okay okay I believe. It's a it's actually a
popular cultural motif today. So if you if you do
some image searches for this or um you know, or
or do any amount of driving around the Hawaiian islands,
you will you will see examples of this where it
is like to describe it, it's kind of like a
(46:33):
gorge shape with kind of a big hourglass shape cut
into the front, allowing uh one to to to look
out and also exposing cheeps and nose region. There's often
kind of a feather based um um kind of a
mohawk or crest on the back of it. And then
you'll also have some material hanging down from the edges
(46:54):
covering the neck. Yeah, a lot of the examples I've
seen involved not a single space in the front of
the face, but with two whole separate eye holes. So
I guess you could do it multiple ways, but the
a lot of the ones I've seen, they end up
making you look kind of like Jack Skellington. Yeah, there
is kind of. I think that's one of the reasons
that it's such an interesting image and one that uh
(47:15):
that that that people keep coming back to. I mean,
aside from it's it's it's cultural relevance, it also has
this kind of skull like quality. It feels, you know,
if you're coming at it from a sci fi direction,
it almost feels like a space helmet. And also being
gourd based. It it's a little it's a little different.
It it um you know, it's it's uh, it's a
(47:36):
different tradition, a different way of of covering the head
and protecting the head. And apparently this would have been
a design that the very first European explorers to arrive
in a y you would have observed various warriors wearing.
Now there's also another variety of helmet and these would
have been more um artistic and more just purely for
(47:56):
for show, But there would have been a crested helmet
known as majol, and these would have been um uh
made of aerial vine roots that were woven into kind
of a basketry frame, so kind of a wicker helmet
that was then decorated with feathers. Again with this kind
of crested appearance to them, that reminds I think we
(48:18):
we easily remind a uh, you know, a Westerner of
various Greek helmets or some of the uh, the the
head gear that is associated with Tibetan monks. Yeah, it
certainly looks very elaborate and regal. I mean, you see
somebody wearing this, and it does suggest that they are
in charge. But there's something also about the images I've
seen of this type of helmet. The texture on the outside.
(48:40):
I'm not sure if that's original. It might be a
sign of of where weathering over time. It looks kind
of like coral. I know it's not made of coral,
but it's got that fuzzy pink kind of texture on
the outside. Yeah. Well, like the the use of feathers
in this helmet helmet, for example, um, if you're not,
if you haven't seen a picture of you may be
thinking of something that is very feather like, enormous feathers,
(49:02):
but a lot of these look to be very small feathers,
which creates a oh almost kind of a furry appearance
that it looks like it's something made from the fur
or some sort of fabulous multicolored mammal that that we
just don't know about, kind of sponge like almost like
you might imagine that if you were to touch the helm,
(49:22):
it would sting you. Yeah. So anyway, just another example
of the various materials and designs that have been used
to to cover the human skull, to enhance protection for
the human skull, but also transform the human body to
create some different idea of who we are and what
(49:42):
our status is in a given culture. Robert, I have
enjoyed this helmet journey. Yeah, there's been a lot of fun.
And of course we we only got to touch base
on on so few examples. I mean, there there's so
many other traditions and and again you people have whole
books about samurai arm or about you know, the martial
arts and uh an armory and uh and weaponry of say,
(50:05):
the Hawaiian people. So I hopefully this episode will be
more as a more of a starting point for folks
out there that one of these examples really perks your interest,
then look into it more because there's a lot of
a lot of cool material out there, a lot of
photography reconstructions, uh that that really make it rewarding. Absolutely. Now,
obviously we'd love to hear from everybody about this. Uh.
(50:28):
You know, if we've touched on a particular helmet that
is important to you culturally, we'd love to hear from you.
Or if it's we've just touched on a topic that
you have some additional insight regarding. Perhaps you've worn some
of these helmets, tried them on, or tried on reconstructions
of them. We would love to hear from you about
all of that. In the meantime, if you want to
check out other episodes of the show, you can find
(50:49):
us wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens
to be if you have the ability to do so. Uh,
just rate, review, and subscribe, because those are just some
small acts that help us out all in the long run.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi,
(51:11):
you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Robert Lamb
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