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Our Ruined Lives with Stefan Milo - Ep 20
1.1k Plays6 years ago
Description: Our guest on this episode of Our Ruined Lives is Stefan Milo, the creator and producer of the popular YouTube Channel of the same name. We have a conversation about the limits of experimental archaeology, producing YouTube content and why the heck he uses a spoon as a microphone holder.
Links
- Stefan Milo Email: hello@stefanmilo.com
- Stefan Milo Instagram: @historysmilo
- Stefan Milo Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/stefanmilo
- Stefan Milo Website: https://www.stefanmilo.com/
- Stefan Milo Twitter: @Historysmilo
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Introduction of Stefan Milo
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to episode 20 of a life in ruins podcast, where we investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. Here we are again with another edition of our ruin lives. I'm your host, Carlton Gover. And I'm joined by my co-hosts COVID, John and David Howe.
00:00:33
Speaker
Our guest tonight is our friend, Stefan Milo, the popular YouTuber with a channel by the same name, Stefan Milo. Stefan, it is awesome to have you on the podcast. We're a huge fan of your YouTube channel and the content that you produce. So, dude, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah, no worries. Longtime listener, first time caller. I've prepared that line. I've been waiting on that line for weeks. Oh, I'm so excited for it.
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, every episode, that's it. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I'm so sorry. And you deal without any sort of payment, too. That's amazing. I know, yeah. You don't even get stickers. You don't even get stickers either. Yeah, we got to get you something. I'm making those Go Grow Your Spinach t-shirts and you'll be sure to get a signed copy of that. Can't wait. Living in Portland, Oregon, you know, we grow a lot of spinach out here. Spinach friendly people.
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, good stuff, man. Oh, yeah. Carlton, you want to go? No, dude, absolutely.
Life in America and Marriage
00:01:37
Speaker
I was going to say, now that you mentioned Portland, how does a fine British gent like yourself find himself in the Pacific Northwest? Or a limey. Yeah, a limey. Well, I married a yank. That's all there is to it, really.
00:01:54
Speaker
I had no, uh, driving ambition to move to America. You know, it's fine. I give you guys like a 6.7 out of 10, but, uh, yeah, my wife's American. So, uh, we met in Europe and decided we would move to Oregon. And here I am. Wow. Yeah, it's great. I'm a big hipster. So big hipster, occasional weed smoker. So Portland, Oregon is fine by me.
00:02:22
Speaker
Well, I wish I could comment. Wait. You did your undergraduate degree at the University of Sheffield, is that correct?
Education and Career Beginnings
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I did my degree in archaeology at the University of Sheffield. I graduated in 2010. And that that is really the limit of my archaeology career, a very short span. As as you guys know, it's not always the easiest profession to find a job in after I graduated university.
00:03:00
Speaker
It was sort of in the height of the recession, the last recession. And archaeology jobs were few and far between. And I was probably a bit optimistic in applying for them as I only had a bachelor's. It's probably more realistic to get a job if you have a master's, it seems. But yeah, I ended up being a teacher and traveled around Europe for a bit. And that's where I met my wife.
YouTube Journey and Misinformation
00:03:21
Speaker
Nice. Oh, and in the meantime, I'd sort of developed the hobby of making videos. And I thought, well, I'll make videos about
00:03:27
Speaker
Archaeology, because I don't know if you guys are aware, there is some questionable content on YouTube in the world of archaeology. And I thought, that's a load of bollocks. I can do, I don't know. Hashtag Gebecli Tepe. Dude, I am a huge fan of your YouTube. It is one of the only shows that I know when there's an episode like it's going to be good. And I love how you always say, is that a Tori's art that you use for these covers?
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah. Ettore. Yeah. We've been working on the art for my video since November, I think was the first one. Yeah. He introduced me to you actually. Yeah. He introduced you to me.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, I had messaged him saying like, hey, can you draw this dog burial thing? Because we've been chatting. And then he was like, hey, do you know Stefan Milo? Because he actually makes really good stuff. And I've been like painting stuff for him too. And I was like, what? And then I saw your page and I was like, oh, this guy's doing it. I feel like I discovered a tour from following you.
00:04:32
Speaker
Really? Yeah. I'm not sure. Look at this small, small niche world we live in. We're just circling a Tory. But you have over 10,000 views for all of your videos. And some of these, you have close to 100,000 views. I mean, how bad The Younger Dryas was, over 100,000. And I love them. The only thing I hate about them, it's not even you. It's the fucking comments of people just putting dumb shit
00:04:56
Speaker
of, I don't know, they're aggravating. Like, I have a hard time not looking at your videos without going at the top comments. And you have a pinned comment on your younger, driest one. Just in case I was not clear in the video, this is not an attack on impact hypothesis. It may well be true and serious scientists are investigating the idea. However, I do strongly object to the accusation that archaeologists and scientists are hiding the truth from the public.
00:05:22
Speaker
like the fact you had to put that there for people to read is just fucking gold and like all these other dumbass replies are just just insane like yeah yeah they get pretty crazy like uh and i didn't even
00:05:37
Speaker
anticipate this response. This only sort of came about or like I realized that there was this whole other side to the world of archaeology when I made a video and I had the audacity to say that the Egyptians built the pyramids
00:05:55
Speaker
And the comments underneath were like, I can't believe this fucking moron. He thinks the Egyptians built the pyramid. But you've got to respect his bravery for being so stupid.
00:06:10
Speaker
Dude, I use your criticism of the Salutrian hypothesis video for my class, by the way. Oh, no way. That's the ultimate compliment
Public Misconceptions and Academic Use
00:06:19
Speaker
to me. Because we talk about it and I'm like, I make them watch it in class and I can watch it with them because I'm like, this is it. This is all you idiots need to know. And yeah, that I make test questions based on your video. So
00:06:31
Speaker
They're at least aware of you. When I first found you, I was like, oh no, is he like going to be one of these crazy dudes or is he going to be doing a good job? And I immediately went down and I saw you had the sorority mastodon site on there and I was like, all right, here it is. I'm going to find out about this guy. And I clicked it and you were like, ah, yeah, it sucks. And I was like, yes, one of us.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny, all the comments. I really love it when someone leaps to my defense. I have this long time viewer called Full Swing. Shout out to that guy. And he always leaps to my defense. And there's a lot of people in the comments you can read that think that I am this guy, Full Swing. And this is like my alter ego, where I can just like swear at everybody and tell them to get lost. Give your own medic conspiracies. That's awesome. Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
But yeah, it's fun. I've got a lot of videos in the works that will attract some interesting comments. I'm interviewing Jens Nottroff tomorrow, who is an archaeologist at the German Institute of Archaeology, who's worked at Göbekli Tepe. And we're going to set the record straight. I feel like going crazy and making a video on Neolithic Egypt, just to really antagonize people.
00:07:52
Speaker
Oh, stir the fucking pot, dude, please. I know. Yeah. Stir the mocha pot. Yeah. So you mentioned that you got your degree at Sheffield. Where does this like love of making videos come from? Were you doing that when you were younger or is this something that you just figured out you're really good at and that you have thirty five thousand subscribers or? Yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't say that I'm a.
00:08:21
Speaker
really good at it. I started making videos when I lived in Serbia and I was teaching English. And again, I felt that growing up in the West, a lot of people, all they know about Serbia is the collapse of Yugoslavia. Of course, all of that's important to know, but it's a whole country and people with a lot more going on than it's modern history.
00:08:43
Speaker
And it's near to my heart because my granddad was from Serbia and I have a lot of family there. And I was like, I'm going to make some videos about life in Serbia. And I only made two because this girl I was dating at the time basically told me, like, why does anyone care what you have to say about anything? And totally burst my idea. And also, I forgot the password to that YouTube account. So they're still on the internet.
00:09:11
Speaker
And I have no way to take them down, but they're terrible. But yeah, it just kind of developed from there. I wasn't really successful in any way doing it. And I sort of came to the conclusion that I probably wasn't successful because I wasn't talking about what I'm interested in, which is archaeology and particularly prehistory. So I was like, sod it. I'll talk about that.
00:09:39
Speaker
The Egyptians built the pyramids and the rest is history. Fair enough. That's dope. Yeah. And, you know, I can, I think you're a pretty successful YouTuber. I mean, based on the conversation we had yesterday, when you're at work and you got to compliment, would you like to retell that story for our audience?
00:10:00
Speaker
Yes,
Recognition and Ambitions
00:10:01
Speaker
so being a YouTuber isn't my full-time job. It may well be by the end of this year. That's one of my goals this year, but it isn't currently. And I was at my job. I work in an IT department at a local bank and someone came in. I was fixing a printer and someone said that they're a fan of mine and I didn't really understand what they meant.
00:10:24
Speaker
So I just kind of responded with like, yeah, everyone loves the IT department. We're the best. And then I got home and she had written me an email saying that she was a fan of the show and blah, blah, blah.
00:10:41
Speaker
I wish I'd have known at the time, because I've taken a selfie with her in front of everyone. And the rest of the day at work, I was like, I'm a famous YouTuber, and you guys need to get my autograph or something. I'm heading for the big time, clearly. Well, it's well earned, man. You do good stuff.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, I try. I really try. I have like a laser focus on improving the quality of my videos. Like I watch PBS eons and I say to myself, I'm going to be better than them. I'm going to destroy PBS eons. They're fantastic. They do great work and they're more than welcome to give me a highly paid job. But also I'm going to destroy them and be the best archaeology channel on the internet.
00:11:29
Speaker
right there with you. I'm in those DMs every day. We're going to add that to the list of our ongoing feuds. Jane Goodall, PBS Eons. Yeah. What did you call her Jenny D or Jenny G? Janey D? Janey D.
00:11:51
Speaker
When you when you do these videos, are you writing like kind of like a paper, like a research paper into a script or do you kind of just like have some points and then talk to the camera? Because they're like very well researched. Thanks.
Research Process and Content Quality
00:12:05
Speaker
I appreciate it. I really try. I have three golden rules.
00:12:09
Speaker
on my channel because I'm aware that I'm not an expert far from it. So I always use reputable sources, academic sources. I always post those sources in the description. And I always try to very clearly say when I'm giving my personal opinion. And I feel like having those three rules is helping me maintain the quality of the videos.
00:12:35
Speaker
But yeah, I basically research a lot. You know, it's one of those things, research kind of snowballs. The more you read, it's almost like the more you don't understand and you have to keep reading and reading. And yeah, some videos, you know, get put on the back burner because I realize I don't know enough and it's going to take me a long time to get to that point. So, but most of the time I really
00:13:02
Speaker
I basically write them like an essay. I've got the script all laid out and you know with footnotes and everything so I can quickly add them into the video because as well in the video I put like a little number to indicate which source I got that specific piece of information from. So I make it as easy as possible for someone to critique my work. That's the system basically.
00:13:27
Speaker
Dude, I have to, I have to say like, I mean, that's what you do for YouTube is really good academia.
00:13:36
Speaker
I mean, as David mentioned, it's well written. You have your sources, you talk about them, and just hearing you talk about the more you read, the more you realize you don't know, and that's all about what higher education is and all about being a good academic is, because you ask any of those pseudo-archaeologist idiots to like, oh, read this one person, and that's all you need. There's your go-to information, and it's like, that's not how it works.
00:14:01
Speaker
as you said, you just read one thing and you go down rabbit holes at different sources following their citations to read their full paper. Like anytime I read an article, I look at, I run it through Adobe and see who they cite the most and then read those papers and see who they cite the most. And then, you know, I'm 10 levels later with a hundred articles to answer the questions I had about one article. And I still don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean that video on the younger Dreyus and how bad was it, I think I had over 30 sources in it, you know, which is basically, you know, a full piece of academic writing, at least at undergraduate level. Yeah.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I know people are going to come at me with questions and I do it for my own peace of mind because I don't want to put a video out there with some absolutely glaring error in. I mean, everyone makes mistakes. I just really try and avoid that as much as possible just for my own peace of mind.
00:15:05
Speaker
I mean, just for our audience to know, like if you go to his younger drives impact video, you put 19 sources there and you say, I couldn't fit all the sources. I ran out of room, click this link. And then you did full fucking citations for 39 sources. So dude, that's, that's amazing. Like that is just amazing. Scholastic work.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah. I would say that like some, some master's students don't end up having that much, you know, or that good of research skills. And that's, and those things are, it's huge. It's huge to have that on YouTube and, and, and produce this content for the public. It's just amazing, man. Yeah. Thanks.
00:15:52
Speaker
I try really hard. I mean, that video, excuse my French, that took fucking ages to research. And I wanted to do the same thing for Gebecli Tepe. And thank God Jens Notroff agreed to be interviewed because otherwise I was going to have to go to the same level of research because when you touch on a subject that is really
00:16:16
Speaker
to call a spade a spade that's really captured the attention of Graham Hancock. Like you've got to have all your ducks in a row because you're literally going to have thousands of people calling you an idiot as soon as you publish that video. Yeah, his little army. Yeah.
00:16:33
Speaker
I fucking hate the Graham Hancock goons and the stuff that they produce. Like any time I see a video where I'm like, this might be skeptical, they always quote his dumb ass. And I'm like, I'm already, I already know I'm not going to enjoy this fucking thing. I mean, like the video David sent us yesterday in our group chat, I immediately was like, great, David just ruined my fucking evening. Yeah. Yeah. To be clear, I totally understand their enthusiasm and passion for
00:17:03
Speaker
ancient history and prehistory because that's something I share but the the level of evidence that you see in a lot of these videos is a is so poor it's a it's really terrible to be honest yeah speaking of terrible let's wrap this session up and let's go to the next one I'm kidding this is great I just had no better segue
00:17:27
Speaker
All right, welcome back to segment two of the episode 20 of Life in the Roots podcast. What I meant by terrible in the last one was the podcast, not actually what Stefan was saying. But, uh, Stefan, I have two questions for you.
Signature Style and Humor
00:17:39
Speaker
The first being, or actually wait the second, but answer the first one first. That's confusing. I'm going to ask you two questions. Sorry.
00:17:46
Speaker
What's up with the spoon? I need to know the origin of that and the second is what did you want to talk about today? What fucking spoon? Well, you must not watch his videos then. Oh, yeah caught you out there. Oh Staring at it right now. You have a spoon in your fucking hand at the younger drive. I never really noticed that
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, so the spoon mic, my viewers, they go crazy if I'm not plugging my microphone into a spoon now, it's become a bit of a thing. It just basically started because I was making a video one day in an anorak, a raincoat, as you Americans would call it. And I basically had to delete the whole video because all you could hear was just like of me moving around in this anorak.
00:18:30
Speaker
I also have no idea what to do with my hands when I appear on camera. So it's sort of almost like a prop too, so I just thought... That is always weird.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So I just thought bollocks to it. I'll clip this microphone to a spoon and just use it like a regular microphone. And the internet went wild. It was a sensation. So it's just kind of stuck around. And I use the same spoon every time. I'm not, you know, we got to care for the environment here. I'm not throwing plastic spoons all over the place. That's your Portland coming off. Yeah.
00:19:05
Speaker
I was just going to ask that, is it, you got to like, uh, throw your viewers off and throw in like a gold spoon or something, or put like a chip spoon just to see if people are paying attention. Like something subtle, like a spork. You could auction off your spoons. Like you could be like, this is the original spoon and I'm going to sell it for $300 and someone would buy it. Maybe, maybe, but then I'd be, I'd be spoonless.
00:19:35
Speaker
I did a film, a video in New York and I forgot to bring the spoon. So I use that little wooden, starry thing that you get at coffee shops. Yeah. My viewers were not impressed. They really thought I'd let the whole side down by forgetting the spoon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Which is a crazy place. And one of my viewers got me in for free and gave me and my friends a guided tour. So that was great.
00:20:04
Speaker
Nice. You, uh, you hear that killed bulge. We need you to watch all of Stefan's, uh, videos and tell us which one he's spoonless in, uh, from now until eternity. Yeah. Well, I was thinking for merch, I could put like draw the spoon mic on a shirt and have like audio file written underneath it or something. I don't know. Did I buy it? I think you need to invent the spoon mic, which is a mic that is exactly shaped as a spoon. Hmm.
00:20:33
Speaker
Well, yeah, I don't know. I feel like the microphone shapes are pretty scientifically like solid. Get out of here with your science. All right. I'm good. I'm good. I used to work at the emanation. But anyway, the second question, uh, second one was, what did you want to talk about today?
Understanding Ancient Peoples
00:20:54
Speaker
We had an interesting topic last night, right?
00:20:56
Speaker
Yeah, so whilst I've got three esteemed archaeologists on the phone, I wanted to... Esteemed? Esteemed, yeah. Sorry. So I had this idea for a video. I was like, what can I do to get into the mindset of these
00:21:17
Speaker
Paleolithic people that used to roam the earth and I thought, I know, I'll go and stay in a cave for three days or five days or something like that. And then I thought, well, that's kind of dangerous. There's bears and mountain lions. Maybe I should take a gun because this is a murica after all.
00:21:38
Speaker
So I thought I'll take a gun. And then, you know, obviously guns, unless you read like Graham Hancock books, they didn't exist in the Paleolithic. So what would I gain from, would it ruin the experience taking a gun? And then I thought, well, I'm also not wearing the same clothes as them. I'm also not eating the same food as them.
00:22:03
Speaker
And at any moment I get too uncomfortable, I can just go home. So...
00:22:11
Speaker
you know, how could I have really ever gotten into the mindset of people that lived deep in prehistory? And so that got me thinking about the limits of experimental archaeology, basically, like how far can we understand the people that lived in the past on a sort of personal level, if you get what I'm saying?
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I guess Donnie Dux is kind of doing kind of like that, but he's not doing it like an archaeological. Oh, dude, I'm texting him right now this question, like asking him, like, yo, how do you get into the mindset? So stay tuned. Yeah. Because I'm sure, as you guys know, and a lot of your listeners know, experimental archaeology is maybe great for finding like patterns of wear and tools and stuff like that.
00:23:04
Speaker
But how does it, I don't know, maybe I'm just spending like too much time in Portland, Oregon, but like, how can I get into the mindset of these people? Do you know what I mean? I have a suggestion, I guess. I don't want to take time away from the other guys, but my cultural anthropology professor in grad school, when I was writing a paper, kept suggesting like, and then imploring and then like demanding. And then it was required for me to read this book and I was like,
00:23:30
Speaker
Okay, I guess I will. And it was called How Forests Think, and it is by Eduardo Kohn, I believe, K-O-H-N. And it was called – I just said it. How Forests Think, and it's called like about the ontological turn, and that's a like kind of like a paradigm in archaeology now or in anthropology. And what it is is like…
00:23:53
Speaker
in order to fully understand the people that like if you're an ethnographer hanging out with a bunch of like aboriginal Australians or I think in the book they use people in Brazil like in the jungles and you have to understand like how they think about the world and like
00:24:09
Speaker
this tribe they were with like believe like the trees communicate with you know dogs and the dogs can communicate with like the sand and weird stuff like that or it's not weird but weird to us and like by understanding that then you can therefore have a better understanding of like their culture and it was like
00:24:26
Speaker
kind of a mind blow for me. I was like, what? And then some of it went way over my head. But like in the thing, like the people would like blow ayahuasca into the dogs, like snout and then like speak in a mother tongue to it and be like, you will not pee in the shed and like weird stuff. But because of that, like they've had something to do with like the plants could communicate and like in that state they could anyway, but to get yourself into the mindset, I'm not suggesting we do ayahuasca, but it might be a thing. Yeah, but
00:24:56
Speaker
That book, I would check it out. That's interesting. But I imagine those things are very culturally specific. And it's probably too subtle for any of that to appear in the archaeological record, especially if we were talking about the Paleolithic Europe. Yeah. So I think it brings us back to what you said. It might be there's a limit. I don't know what you guys think.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, like people today and prehistoric people, peoples of the past, like they have more than just a physical toolkit, but like a mental toolkit. So, I mean, to like get yourself in the mindset of like a prehistoric person, you kind of have to like erase knowledge that you have already acquired, right? Because it's knowledge isn't singular, it's stacked.
00:25:44
Speaker
if that makes any sense, like it's built upon. So like we've, you know, our knowledge is based on over 8,000 years of, well, more than that, like hundreds of thousands of years of data that our ancestors have been collecting and passing down. So I don't know. It's like, it's tough, right? And as you said, Stefan, like these things don't last in the archaeological record. What we get are tools.
00:26:11
Speaker
And then maybe what their, you know, how their houses were laid out, you know, sometimes you don't even know what their houses were made of. We just see the post holes and we just kind of have to guess, you know, what the shelter was. So dude, I don't know. It's a tough, it's a tough question, right? Cause it's,
00:26:29
Speaker
I don't know, even using like modern day hunter gatherers as kind of these proxies is still filled with those kind of similar problems where we are assuming that these, or in some cases at least like early folks getting into the field are assuming that these are like exactly how hunter gatherers lived like 10,000 years ago or whatnot. Yeah, it's super difficult. We can't just erase these
00:26:58
Speaker
hundreds of thousands of years of knowledge that's been selected upon that literally made us humans, you know? Yeah, I agree, Carlton. Yeah. Because again, to go back to the cave analogy, I was thinking, for example, Folsom Cave here in Oregon has some radiocarbon dated finds that were probably sort of 14,000, maybe a little bit older.
00:27:26
Speaker
years old, like very early in the human occupation of the Americas. To them, sleeping in a cave might have been fantastic compared to the alternative. But to me, straight from the get-go, I'm looking at it almost kind of horrified. Like I'm almost just doing this because it's going to make like a good
00:27:48
Speaker
YouTube video. And so like from the very outset, our perspectives are polar opposites. Yeah, I mean, I haven't slept in a cave. So I haven't found a way to get over this hurdle. And maybe, like you said, maybe it's not even possible. Well, I mean, it's also like these people were also in groups. So you wouldn't they wouldn't have been sleeping in caves by themselves most of their time anyways, like, you know, there's there's comfort and
00:28:16
Speaker
and being with other people, right? So like in order to really try to do this experiment of like how like living like a prehistoric person, you need like a group of people. And I guess like archeologists and ancient tech people would probably be the best to quit because even though we have modern knowledge, we also know of some of the skillsets that Aboriginal people use and prehistoric people use as like kind of a baseline for
00:28:43
Speaker
you know, how to maybe get it done. But like, as you said earlier, you know, if it gets too hard, you could always just go home and stop by McDonald's on the way. And that's just not a fucking, that just wasn't an option back then. Yeah. Yeah. So what you're saying is all four of us should do it. I'm thinking that you, Stephen Milo and a life in ruins and ethnocyanology do a team up with Donnie dust where he just takes us into the woods and we just cry the whole time. I would be so down for that. And we can,
00:29:12
Speaker
Figure out what it was like to live back then, while he just eats meat in the corner, laughing. The only thing I would ask for is booze, otherwise I wouldn't make it. We'll ferment some berries, dude. Or you're on pass. We should get Kato Belch on board and he can be our stick-gathering boy.
00:29:34
Speaker
This is all getting very Lord of the Flies very quick. Who has the conch? Who has the conch? Here's one, though. I don't know if I told you guys this. I told people at work and they're like, OK, weird. So I just I built a cave wall and I was painting the cave art on it and I have the lights flickering and I put didgeridoo music on. This is going to sound real weird. I'm weird. And then I like I'm doing it in there and we're not doing it. I'm painting the wall.
00:30:04
Speaker
And I was blowing the like the paint or the pigment from like a bowl and a straw to blow like the ochre handspray on my hand under the wall. And as I did that, it makes this really weird like whistling sound. If you were to blow into like a straw in a soda cup, it would do that. It made that sound and then like you're getting lightheaded and then the stuff is like moving on the walls because it's like flickering, you know.
00:30:27
Speaker
And I was thinking like, man, if I was in Paleolithic France or Spain and this was happening, this would be the trippiest thing ever, or this would be like the coolest experience ever. So I didn't even go into that making an experimental archaeology thought. I just went into it because I was like, I'm going to paint this Tokyo wall. But I ended up doing experimental archaeology and I was like, whoa. So I learned something from it.
00:30:49
Speaker
And that's why they probably had all those like instruments in there. And they probably thought they were doing trances and whatnot. And I don't know. What do you guys think of that? I would say that's more expiry, expiry, experiential, post-percessional bullshit. Yeah.
00:31:05
Speaker
Get out of here. I feel like now we can say that we do experiential archaeology, where we try to replicate these kind of moments in time to say, hey, which is totally on that professionalist bullshit sort of thing. I love bullshit.
00:31:29
Speaker
No, I'm just kidding. Well, I mean, it's one of those things that, you know, you could do it and just be like, this is what happened to me and it's possible to happen to people of the past. And that is a perfectly fine conclusion. Yeah. Now just do that and be like, this is exactly how people experience it. It's like, no, that's that's not okay. But I would trust you when it do that, David. Yeah. Uh, Stefan, what's like a question you have that you would like to answer like by doing experimental archaeology?
Research Fascination and Insights
00:31:57
Speaker
I don't know, really. I, uh,
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm just sort of fascinated really by people's
00:32:10
Speaker
I just wish I could sort of chat to them really. I just really would love to understand them. This is why I'm really keen on my sources in my videos and I really try and do the research. I'm not so interested in speculating because we could say anything about any time period. Like I really want to try and understand
00:32:33
Speaker
these people. And I really care about what we can definitively can or can't say, you know. This is why I don't like all the speculation that's in pseudo-archaeology and stuff like that.
00:32:48
Speaker
I don't know, I'm just fascinated by these people. For example, my next video, or one I'm researching at the minute, is on a Neolithic cave in the south of Italy called Grotta Scalloria. And the cave is basically two chambers connected by this long narrow chamber that you would have to crawl through.
00:33:09
Speaker
And in the first huge chamber, there are 120 people buried there and their bones are pretty much smashed to bits. And then you would have to crawl through this very narrow chamber in the dark with no with maybe like a small lamp or something. That would be your only source of light. And then in this huge second chamber, there's a lake and they cut the top off stalagmites.
00:33:37
Speaker
and put pottery on there to collect water dripping from the top of the cave and then it was like one skull placed in the wall.
00:33:46
Speaker
That's just mental. I just want to understand what these guys were thinking. I just really want to understand them. And anything I can do to to do that, whether it's like with research or sleeping in a cave with 50 rifles and 10 hamburgers just to keep me safe. I just want to do it. You know, it's it's the thing I'm most interested in. So.
00:34:10
Speaker
All right. On, uh, that note, what did we learn? This, uh, the section, the younger was dry as fuck, or maybe not. So am I reading that right? Yep. Perfect. And then we'll be back with second.
00:34:27
Speaker
All right. Welcome back to episode 20 of a life in ruins podcast, also known as the show where Connor makes shitty jokes that he's going to have to explain on the next section. It was a joke about the younger dryas, the younger dry as fuck. Okay. Settled. Can I, can I define these terms real quick?
00:34:50
Speaker
Okay, sweet. Just so, because we got so excited talking with our friend Stefan, just for our audience real quick, experimental archaeology is a field of study which attempts to generate and test archaeological hypotheses usually by replicating or approximating the feasibility of ancient cultures performing various tasks or feats. It employs a number of methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches based upon archaeological source materials such as ancient structures or artifacts. So that is experimental archaeology.
00:35:19
Speaker
And for a little archaeology theory inside joke, post-percessional archaeology is sometimes or alternatively referred to as interpretive archaeology by its adherents. It's a movement and archaeological theory that emphasizes the subjectivity of archaeological interpretations. Despite having a vague series of similarities, post-percessionalism consists of very diverse strands of thought coalesced into loose cluster of traditions.
00:35:45
Speaker
Within the post-processualist movement, a wide variety of theoretical viewpoints have been embraced, including structuralism and neo-Marxism, as have a variety of different archaeological techniques, such as phenomenology.
00:36:01
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. And I want to clarify, yeah, I want to clarify my statement on the, uh, post-percessionalism. It's not bullshit, but there is some theories and methods that can be questionable as part of that, but everyone has their own opinions about perceptualism, post-percessionalism, um, you know, theories, theories, theory, but yeah, thanks for those definitions.
00:36:28
Speaker
Oh shit, Donnie just got back to me. So I asked Donnie, uh, when he started to go out into the bush, did you try and get yourself into the mindset of prehistoric person? His response was I did. My goal is to totally rely on nature. I accepted everything I could and when need will come from nature, I really focused on priorities of living, safety, shelter, fire, food, and water. Once those are solved or not a necessity, other abilities develop. It's a journey for sure. And now he's asking me if I want to live a little bit more wild. So I'm going to take him up on that offer. Continue, Connor.
00:36:56
Speaker
I was just going to ask if, uh, Stefan, you've participated in any sort of, uh, experimental archeology besides, uh, the cave venture and what would you want to do? Uh, yeah. So when I was at Sheffield university, we did build an iron age, a replica of an iron age roundhouse using only, uh, hand tools that they would have had available. Um, so that was pretty fun.
00:37:24
Speaker
I'm not sure what I learned from it, but it was definitely an enjoyable couple of weeks. Building stuff is hard. Yeah, exactly.
00:37:37
Speaker
sure would be easier with a power drill sort of perspective. I don't know, I was just sort of the reason that I thought about sleeping in a cave is that it's something that was accessible to
00:37:54
Speaker
anyone with a cave. I was just sort of thinking of video ideas that anyone could do at home. Someone watching my video could try and do it themselves to help understand the people of the past a little bit better. So I don't know if you guys have any other ideas.
00:38:15
Speaker
about easy things you could do. I did read on the Twitter this guy I follow, whose name I can't remember, baked bread using Egyptian yeast, Egyptian wheat, and baked it how they would do it. So that was really interesting. But that's the whole philosophy behind that cave video, something that ordinary people could do at home to try and understand the people in the past.
00:38:44
Speaker
One thing I try to do, especially if I get like an Amazon box or something that I have to cut, I'll like go right to like my stone tools that are sitting on the counter and I'll like cut with stone tools. But I've thought about like, what if I could, well, now I'm thinking about it. Like, could I just go a whole week? And anytime I had to cut something, just use a stone tool. Like don't use a knife, don't you? Like for meat, for vegetables, they'd probably change your perceptions a little bit of like how it works.
00:39:08
Speaker
Dude, could you imagine getting a piece of obsidian like broken off into your meat and swallowing that thing? Yeah, I would use like quartzite. I'm not going to go right for the big stuff. Yeah, I did actually think of trying to find like a friendly local butcher and giving them stone tools to butcher an animal to get their perspective from it because somebody in the past would have done it extremely often. So my
00:39:37
Speaker
I've never butchered an animal in my life, so it's going to be hard for me, whether I'm using a chainsaw or a hand axe. But a butcher who is very comfortable doing it, their insight on how to use those stone tools might be interesting. Yeah. No, dude, that makes a lot of sense. This little known fact about me, I was actually an apprentice meat cutter.
00:39:58
Speaker
when I was in community college before I did the whole insurance gig. So like when I'm butchering an animal with like stone tools and stuff, like I kind of have that background knowledge of how to slice meat in, in ways, if that makes any sense. And I definitely rely on that to when I'm doing things. So it's not like I've never butchered an animal before have that background where I'm just like with the stone tool and a dead, dead animal. Like I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah.
00:40:23
Speaker
I'd just be there like trying to cut its ankle off or something with a narrow head. Like it's not working. You can just snap those off, dude. That's what Devin does. You just take those ankles and just break them in half and toss them aside.
00:40:35
Speaker
Wow. Did I ever tell you guys a story of the Taphonomy project I had to do in undergrad with a deer? No. I'll be quick about it. But it was experimental class and experimental zoarchaeology. And what I was trying to do was cook half of a deer and boil half of a deer. And I wanted to see which ones scavengers preferred more. They're like what they got to first. But to do that, I had to cut up a roadkill deer that was in the zoarch freezer.
00:41:02
Speaker
And Dr. Clipple, a UT who was an old southern man, was like, here's a knife, here's the deer, here's the sink, don't make a mess. And I was like, okay. And I did not know a thing about butchering an animal. So I was like, ah, and I had this giant deer that was frozen.
00:41:18
Speaker
So I had like saws and I had some knives and I was like, okay, well I've watched Dexter. So what would I do? And then I was like, well, I guess you have to drain the blood out. So then I like slit the deer's like throat, trying to like drain the blood over the sink. And then Dr. Clipple came back in and I was just kind of like aimlessly like pacing around like what nothing's happening. And then he just comes in and he's like, how's it going? And then he just looks at me.
00:41:42
Speaker
looked at the deer and then looks back at me and i tried to step in front of where i just slit the deer's throat and he was like yeah that's not what you do i just ended up sawing it in half because it was basically just ice but
00:42:04
Speaker
But that was a funny thing. It was in an old like frat house type building, like on the old part of campus. And I stood outside like getting like some air cause it just sinks in there. There was a rotting baboon like next to me. So it was like, uh, and I was outside on the porch and these like frat guys are like walking by, going to their place and I'm out there like covered in blood.
00:42:23
Speaker
with like Dexter COVID-19 looking clothes on. And I was just like, uh, Hey guys, it's like standing out there. It's good stuff. Anyway, so that was experimental. I learned not what to do. The blood from a frozen animal.
00:42:48
Speaker
Now, at CSU, they had a whole I did where I did my undergraduate. They had a whole class, just an experimental archaeology talk by Dr. Richard Adams. And I wasn't able to take it. But some of the experiments they did were super interesting. A girl like ground corn to see on. Oh, my God, it was insane. She had like grind corn in one direction.
00:43:16
Speaker
It was just absolutely crazy. I don't remember exactly what it is. But yeah, grinding corn would be awful. They did all kinds of stuff like that. And it's super interesting. And David, you did part of your thesis is on that, right? Or is on experimental archaeology.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, like, I guess the whole thing kind of, yeah. Yeah. I got the point sitting right behind me on the wall and the ballistics gels now got a bunch of dead ants glued to it in the garage. So because it like melts and the ants want to eat it, I guess. I don't know. What were you shooting?
00:43:55
Speaker
I had these 30 obsidian projectile points that were like really small and really big, like in varying size. And I was just shooting them from a bow into the ballistics jail, like testing penetration and whatnot and velocity. Yeah. And you had to get like a frigging, uh, Riggle.
00:44:14
Speaker
welded together. It's pretty intense. Yeah. It's like a cool like mechanical machine that like I can click the button and it would shoot the arrow into it. So I like eliminated the human error. It was really fun. And I was trying to basically prove that Clovis people could have been using bows and arrows. Like was it feasible to shoot a big Clovis sized point with a bow? And the thesis says, yeah, it is, but I still don't know if they were.
00:44:39
Speaker
And did it give you that inside look on how they killed the Surruti Mastodon 150,000 years ago? Apparently with a bulldozer. Yeah. I've held those things, man. It's old, but those ain't tools. It's my official stance. Oh, Surruti.
00:45:01
Speaker
Oh, and for the, I guess for our listeners who don't, might not know what that is. That's the super hyped up, a hundred thousand year old, uh, 120,000 year old, supposedly modified Macedon bone, uh, on, on earth in, in California, which has questionable, very questionable marks on it.
00:45:25
Speaker
Yeah. It was unearthed during the construction of a freeway, or at least a road. Yeah. Road expansion, I think. Yeah, road expansion. A possible scenario. Yes. Yes. Yes, again, that more than likely these crushed up mastodon bones were the result of
00:45:45
Speaker
Definitely the results of human activity, but not 120,000 years ago, but of two years ago or what? No, 20 years ago now, I guess from a bulldozer. So yeah, Steve Holland, he was the archeologist. He has a knack for finding old sites, interestingly enough. So I don't know, dude, I honestly.
00:46:06
Speaker
read the goddamn article and then read what everyone else says about it because it's it's just not it's just not possible do you guys uh here's another question and it's totally unconnected to experimental archaeology so i hope the listeners enjoyed that conversation but what are some other like a fringe theories that would make a good youtube video oh and there's tons man i've been looking into the cocaine mummies but what
00:46:35
Speaker
The 10 Egyptian mummies that tested positive for cocaine. Well, we know what the lab manager was doing. Case closed. Someone sneezed while doing a line, man.
00:46:51
Speaker
Exactly. Well, they were in the royal German palace for like most of the 19th century, at least a fair portion of it. Oh, that's definitely. You know, in the 19th century. Yeah, you could just go into a shop and just buy cocaine. And yeah, so yeah, could it have happened then? I wonder. I mean, yeah, I mean, because like Egyptian mommy is God knows how old.
00:47:16
Speaker
It comes from the cacao plant or the, what does cocaine come from? Is it cocoa or the cacao or is that the same thing? Cacao is chocolate. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Cocoa plant in South America.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah, but here's the thing in my research, plants in both Africa and India contain cocaine just at much smaller levels. So it's not very good if you were to start a drug cartel. But if an Egyptian mummy did test positive for cocaine, it is still not necessarily proof that they sailed to America and got it. Case closed. Another one, you could look up like the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter to a video on that.
00:48:04
Speaker
That was excavated by Adivazio, who has a rather interesting reputation in our field. It was dug up in the 70s or the 60s, and he's never published on it, although it's supposedly one of the oldest sites in the Americas, and it's in Pennsylvania. Yeah, it's supposed to be a 50,000-year-old pre-clovis site, and I believe it's right in the middle of an anthracite coal mine.
00:48:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually visited it. The guy that got me into archaeology back in the community college was his grad student. Yeah, it's an interesting site that there's nothing published on it, although, you know, Audavasio claims it's, you know, a 15,000 year old site or 17,000. I think it's 17,000 years old to 1500 BCE.
00:48:54
Speaker
Oh, the, the bog mummies that that stupid frigging huge guy, uh, messaged me on my account. Then he, he sent me like archeology stuff.net as his source. And I was like, cool. And like those, the window for bog bodies, but it was, and he was trying to say that they're like descendants of Adam and stuff. And I was like, you can get right out of here, man. They're giants, but like, I've never seen anything about giants there. They're just,
00:49:22
Speaker
bog bodies that were buried there. Like, I don't know. There's that one. Giants. I always get people asking about giants, especially in Nashville, I guess, because it's like the.
00:49:33
Speaker
Bible bill. I don't know like what the deal with that is, but isn't there something in the Bible? I might be getting my religious books wrong, but there's like, is it like the Anunnaki or something like that, which are the giants? That's in the, you know, that's the pseudo-archaeologist Bible, charity of the gods, I think it's mentioned.
00:49:55
Speaker
The Philistines are supposed to be too, I think, right? Yeah. The Giants, they just punched the Surruti Mastodon to death. They didn't need bow and arrows.
00:50:06
Speaker
They just sucker punched it. Awkward. Cause they'll be like, Oh, you're an archeologist. And I'm like, yeah. And then like, what do you think about those giants? And it just ends the conversation. Cause I'm like, I don't, I don't think about the giants cause they're not real. Dude. Ever since we did that Instagram post, read that guy at the leather store, tried to tell me about giants. And I tagged my cousin who runs the American Indian museum in DC. He's always sending me giant shit to tease me.
00:50:33
Speaker
Well, he's part of the cover-up, isn't he? Yeah, he's part of the cabal. He's the head guy. He knows all about him. He's seen him. Yeah. We can openly say that here because only archaeologists listen to this. So we're all in on the scam. All tens of thousands of archaeologists getting paid dirt are all in on this underground, super secret, doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
00:50:55
Speaker
Yeah. You've had some interesting comments on there. Is there one particularly that you like want to share that was funny? I remember one of them I ever had to comment on. I can't remember what it was on my videos. Yeah. Someone was calling you something and I went in and I was like, Oh, actually he's like, he knows what he's talking about.
00:51:17
Speaker
I had compiled this bunch of comments and I was going to read them out at the end of the year, but it just became too many. Just too many people calling me a moron and an idiot and a shill.
00:51:32
Speaker
A shill, that was what it was. Actually, in the Younger Dryas video, someone was calling me like a dangerous psychopath or something like that. I'm corrupting the youth of America by presenting this information. It was pretty odd. Jesus. But someone came to my defense and was like, obviously, he's not a dangerous psychopath. So it's more about you than it does him.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah. So shout out to that guy. Well, good stuff, dude. Stefan, it was awesome having you on the podcast. We're a huge fan of yours. Where can our listeners find you? You can go to youtube.com slash Stefan Milow. S-T-E-F-A-N-M-I-L-O. Yeah. Just go watch a video and don't skip the advert. And you also have an Instagram.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah. His on Instagram and Twitter at history Smilo, because apparently there's another Stefan Milo somewhere. Oh, fuck that guy. We'll definitely put those in the show notes for our listeners to find you at, follow you on Instagram and Twitter and check out, dude, you're honestly, you're awesome videos. Connor, take it away. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, thanks for joining us and given the chance again.
00:52:48
Speaker
And because this is a life in ruins, would you still choose to film a life in ruins? Yeah, sure. That wasn't even a sentence. That was not even a sentence. Thank you.
00:53:04
Speaker
All right. Well, everyone, we just interviewed Stefan Milow, an archaeologist and YouTuber. And that is it for episode 20. The big two. Oh, boys, we got the 20 episodes that have been shut down. All right. In the month of April. Oh, gosh. Yeah, dude. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode. Peace.
00:53:31
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life and ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. This is not a joke I wrote myself. So direct your hate towards the internet. Gentlemen, what do you get in a five star pyramid? What?
00:54:19
Speaker
a tomb with a view.
00:54:25
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada, at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Christ, that was painful. I'm so sorry.