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Stefan Milo 2: This Time It's Personal #Paleolithic - Ep 43
1.1k Plays5 years ago
On this episode of A Life in Ruins podcast, we have a bonfire chat with YouTuber and Neolithic advocate, Stefan Milo. If you’re not familiar with Stefan, we introduced him in Episode 20. Or you may know him from his popular YouTube channel, “Stefan Milo.” We talk about the recent growth of Stefan’s channel and how he has now become the first full-time anthropology YouTuber!
We then quickly get into the Great Paleolithic-Neolithic War of 2020. This began as a meme and took off. It was fun for both our followers to follow and share along with.
We later have a serious discussion about the differences between the two periods and what it means for human history.
Contact For Stefan Milo
- Email: hello@stefanmilo.com
- Instagram: @historysmilo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/stefanmilo
- Website: https://www.stefanmilo.com/
- Twitter: @Historysmilo
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to episode 43 of a life and ruins podcast to re-investigate the careers of those living life and ruins. I'm your host calcium cover and I'm joined by my co-hosts concrete John and
Stefan Milo's YouTube Journey
00:00:25
Speaker
dog boy. How in this episode, we are chatting with Stefan Milo, the proliferator of slander against the paleolithic. He runs the YouTube channel, Stefan Milo, which is his name.
00:00:36
Speaker
Very original. Stefan, thank you so much for coming back on the show. How are you doing this Sunday afternoon? I mean, I wish I could say I was happy to be here, but it sounds like you guys have prepared an ambush for me, prepared a confrontation, typical Paleolithic style. But no, I'm happy to be here.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, we're always having to have you, man. You're one of the family, I guess. One of the Paleolithic tribe, as it were. I'd rather be part of the village, but carry on. I was waiting for you to say something like that.
00:01:11
Speaker
Oh man, there's going to be a lot of puns on this one. Okay. Stefan, what's going on in your life lately? Not so much, man. I'm preparing to take 2021 by storm on my YouTube channel, trying desperately to increase the quality, try and find a stock footage of historical sites from the corners of the internet.
00:01:38
Speaker
It's very hard. It's very hard. Yeah. Try and learn how to make decent maps in After Effects that'll appear on screen for five seconds and nobody will notice, but I'll feel really proud of.
00:01:49
Speaker
But yeah, that's the big thing. It was also my daughter's birthday two weeks ago. So shout out to her first birthday. That's what's going on in my life, really.
Challenges and Rewards of YouTube
00:02:02
Speaker
That's what I do all day, just try and improve my videos, try and make the best archaeology videos on the internet. That's my number one goal.
00:02:11
Speaker
If you guys haven't followed Stefan since his last time he was on here, I'm sure you do, but Stefan has the fortune to be a full-time YouTuber now. So congrats to him. How's that been?
00:02:26
Speaker
That's been great, really. I mean, it's totally changed my life. I get to not go to work. I mean, I'm still working the same amount of hours. I'm probably working more hours, but it's doing what I love and what I enjoy.
00:02:42
Speaker
I highly encourage anyone with an archaeology degree to put themselves out there into the world. You never know what will happen. We're all aware that once you get your archaeology degree, that is not a guaranteed, well-paid career afterwards. I don't mean to butt in, but according to all the internet trolls, we're all about this for the money, and that's why we shouldn't be listened to.
00:03:10
Speaker
All those billionaire archeologists out there. Yeah. Yeah.
Archaeology and Financial Realities
00:03:14
Speaker
Who knows? It might create some extra income for you, or you might be able to create your own mini version of a national geographic. Who knows? It's crazy, really. Yeah. Well, we're proud of you, man. It's like, it's good stuff. Every time it pops out, it's good.
00:03:29
Speaker
Thanks. Just for the record, I would totally sell out. That is a slanderous allegation towards most archaeologists, but I'm literally waiting to be bought out here. Anyone listening? We have his email address if you need it.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I got to give you props, Stefan, because I think I sent a couple photos to you over the course this last semester, but you, David, Raven, and Tosh, I used a lot of your guys' video material for my class this semester and just like, punted them off for you guys to teach them so I didn't have to
Educational Impact of Stefan's Videos
00:04:01
Speaker
talk. Nice. I mean, that's the highest praise, really, because even though I spend a lot of time focusing
00:04:07
Speaker
now on improving just the physical quality of the video, the footage and the animation and all of this stuff. At the end of the day, if a video about history, about the past, is not talking about it accurately, then it's a terrible video, no matter how fancy your map is. So really, that is the highest praise. I appreciate that.
00:04:28
Speaker
How has the transition been from leaving your house and going to a place of work and then, well, I mean, I don't know if you were working from home during this pandemic or anything like that, but I have had a terrible time working from home and I.
00:04:42
Speaker
I imagine that it might be difficult, but how's your experience been
Productivity Tips and Collaboration Insights
00:04:47
Speaker
with that? It's been good. I mean, I do love it realistically, but there are some things you probably have to do to increase your productivity. Like I've got this thing called a phone tub and it's just a plastic takeaway box. But I put my phone in there and I like set a timer for two or three hours or whatever. And I'm not allowed to take my phone out of that tub until the alarm goes off because
00:05:12
Speaker
Now, there are no deadlines to anything I do. My schedule just depends entirely on my productivity. It can get a little bit unproductive sometimes, a little bit distracted, and that's a work in progress for sure.
00:05:29
Speaker
I absolutely need whatever that phone thing is because it gets bad for me. Yeah, I know. I know. I mean, I used to, I didn't work from home before then, but I did work from home for a couple of weeks, many years ago, about five or six years ago now. And I found the experience of working at home for someone else very different to working at home for myself.
00:05:55
Speaker
There's a lot more incentive for me to be productive when I'm keeping basically 100% of the income. The other side to that is the job that I was working at home from all those years ago, I was writing the blurb for Eastern European porno films.
00:06:13
Speaker
So that was a very different job that I was doing, but how'd you get that one? I was living in Eastern Europe and I was a fluent English speaker and I just sort of fell into it. I met a guy at a bar who was writing a e-cigarette adverts for this same company and they started me off in the porno division. Would you call that the bottom shell for like the dungeon that you eventually emerge out of? Um,
00:06:43
Speaker
I mean, it was an experience. I won't repeat, but... Man, that's the American dream there. There's anywhere you are now. Look at you go. Eastern European dream. Yeah, so if you have an archaeology degree, I highly encourage you to start a YouTube channel because you really don't know what you'll end up doing if you fail to make it in the world of archaeology.
00:07:10
Speaker
So we recently did that collab. That was really fun. I'm just gonna go on the record. Stefan asked me to do this collaboration in 2019. And I was like, yeah, I can do that. And then it took me until like literally last month to get it done finally, but I got it. Turned it in and you put it on his channel and it was pretty fun and the comments were wild. But yeah, it was a good time.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it worked out for you really. I probably had 10,000 subscribers when I asked you and like 80,000 by the time you finished it. And I swear that wasn't intentional. I realized that afterwards. I was like, man, he probably thought I did that on purpose, but honestly, it just worked out that way.
00:07:53
Speaker
David was literally freaking out about getting that submitted. Like every time we talked to him, he was, he said, fuck, I got to get this video done. And that was like, for 80 weeks, that was a, that was a pretty integral part of our conversations for awhile was David saying he needed to get that video done.
00:08:10
Speaker
Well, you did really go to town with that. I mean, there were costume changes. There was CGI. I really wasn't expecting any of that. I was expecting stock footage of dogs and your voice. I appreciate the effort.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, man, no problem. And then I got called out. Archaeology, Zach Galifianakis. I want to I've been called Zach Galifianakis like many times in my life. So archaeology, Zach Galifianakis is my new favorite title of all time. And the. Jumbly. Jumbly from porn stuff. Speaking of porn again.
00:08:52
Speaker
You said that to me or actually that was when I was at work and I've been trying to put my phone away at work when I'm working. So I don't get distracted by it. My coworker, I guess just glanced over it while I was in the back room and he was like, Hey, I want to read this text. It's a good one. Yeah, but yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, man. It was good stuff. Got a couple of subscribers out of it. So it's a good time. Yeah, I actually got called out for my production value.
00:09:21
Speaker
After you had put so much effort into your video, my own viewers were putting me to shame. So I had to run out and buy like a new light and microphone just to compete. Well, the new video looked good. So, but I mean, your, your quality is great.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's like you have a very, like, if I were to turn on discovery, we're like net geo and watch like a documentary on archeology that I didn't have to worry about, you know, like, is this correct? That's kind of like your style, you know? And I think that's what people gravitate towards on YouTube. Yeah. Thanks, man. I do try. I'm really trying to increase the quality of this next video. I'll give your listeners a sneak peek. It's about the.
Upcoming Projects and Ethical Considerations
00:10:07
Speaker
Indus Valley civilization and whether they were a ancient communist utopia. Oh, I know click baity title or what but there is this idea that they were peaceful and egalitarian and I'm just talking through the evidence for that but
00:10:27
Speaker
I'm really trying hard with the scripting and just everything. All I try to do is to be the absolute best archaeology channel. When I see anyone who's made a really good video, I want to be better than them. I'm extremely competitive in that sense. Well, it's good, man. That's what makes good content, you know? Hashtag Tash, hashtag Raven. Yeah, bring it on, my enemies. Do you have a lot of shots of Portland in that video?
00:10:58
Speaker
I might have some shots. This is a shot that I want to make, but I don't know if I will. But I want to make the point that if an archaeologist was to look at the ruins of our civilization in 5,000 years, it would be really obvious that there was a stark divide between the rich and the poor. At the point where I was saying that, I was going to cruise around Portland and film rich people's houses, and then contrast that with a shot of
00:11:26
Speaker
the homeless people here in Portland, which is just huge. I mean, it's really terrible. We have a huge amount of homeless people here. It's very sad. And I just don't feel like I can film these poor people in a way that isn't like exploitative. So I got to think of something else to do to illustrate poverty. And I don't know why yet.
00:11:49
Speaker
That's difficult, especially because they have, don't they have like a whole block or like a corner? I was there a couple of years back and they at least had a series of corners, tent, tent city that was occurring in downtown Portland. Yeah. Especially since COVID.
00:12:05
Speaker
There are a couple of areas around town where they've created cities. I mean, not city, that's a very grand term. Shantytowns, you could say, basically out of sheds. And the homeless people get to live in a shed. And there are probably like 50 sheds in this parking lot that the city has taken over. But dotted around town, there are also lots of homeless people as well. It's really
00:12:35
Speaker
Quite sad. And I thought about maybe I could film this shot and then donate.
00:12:40
Speaker
money from the video to a homeless charity, but that still feels quite exploitative. I'm not asking, you know, it still feels exploitative to film people for a video that I would make profit on. So I don't think I will do it. Maybe I could just film like a can of American cheese or something that probably illustrates poverty. Spam. Spam is the ultimate sign of poverty. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what to do. I've got to think about that.
00:13:06
Speaker
But yeah, this is all part of improving the quality. It's hard to get footage, you know, that's good and meaningful. It's very hard. Yeah. Speaking of poverty, Connor Carlton, you guys want to chime in? What? How I live in it? Are you calling me poor? I don't, I don't understand. Like what does that mean?
00:13:26
Speaker
There was a, you know, a significant revolution in the past that brought on a lot of, you know, abject poverty in the
Meme Battles and Humor in Archaeology
00:13:33
Speaker
heat. Oh, are you saying that we should say the Neolithic? Well, they can't curse anymore, remember? But yes, yes, is what I was going to say.
00:13:41
Speaker
You know, I mean, whilst we're on the subject, can I bring up the article that I was going to use to prove the supremacy of the Neolithic against the Paleolithic? Absolutely. In the next segment, we would be happy to do that. So we'll be right back with Stefan Milow from Life in Ruins, episode 43, right for these messages.
00:14:03
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 43 of A Life in Ruins podcast. We are interviewing Stefan Milow and we kind of teased it at the end of the last section. We wanted to talk about this, this week we had on social media where there might've been a little bit of a war going on.
00:14:28
Speaker
I'm not sure. I don't know if I'd call it a war because it was just such demolition by us against Stefan, but I'm just joking. Yeah, Stefan, do you want to give us kind of the background of how this started? Listen to me, listeners of A Life in Ruins.
00:14:45
Speaker
There's way too many Paleolithic memes out there and I had enough. I had enough. The Neolithic is a fine time period. Many people would say it's the best time period. And I haven't got it written down. This is how passionately I feel about it.
00:15:04
Speaker
And these Paleolithic meme pages exist purely to slander and profit off the good name of the Neolithic, whose many advances we still benefit from today. So I had enough. A major propagator of Paleolithic memes is the Life and Ruins Instagram channel. So, uh, or Instagram page, whatever you call it. So I had to call them out. I had to call them out and I won.
00:15:31
Speaker
So just for clarification, this started because David on ethnocynology posted a Paleolithic meme, and then Stefan came after David for doing so. David comes into our little group chat that we have with The Life and Ruins. He's like, hey, Stefan's trying to slam us. I'm like, no, he's slamming you. This isn't ruins. And then Connor yeeted my concerns and said,
00:15:55
Speaker
The Neolithic and then said, and that's how I got dragged into this. Like I wanted nothing to do with it. David drug us to into it. Carter said, we're on. And that's how this whole life and ruins versus Stefan Mila thing started was him picking on David and David running to us for help.
00:16:13
Speaker
And then it became like a week long of just like memes going back and forth. And I was texting Stefan like, you do realize I studied in Neolithic, right? Like I'm 100% on your side and all this. I'm just outgunned by my two co-hosts. Yeah, I actually think Connor is the worst offender. I think really he is the one driving the Paleolithic memes. It seems to me.
00:16:33
Speaker
I think that's fair to say. That's fair. They're not very good, but they, I certainly try. To give your listeners a taste of the ridiculousness of these memes, they'll be like, you know, Oh man, wasn't Chernobyl a disaster. Thanks Neolithic.
00:16:57
Speaker
I mean absolutely everything on the poor Neolithic when all those guys wanted was a beer and a sandwich.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah. It was like make peace out of Palisades, support the Paleolithic. Just like some of them were just amazing. I had a good time just watching this all on home. Your video where you're like walking your daughter, like pushing your daughter along in a stroller as you're outside, collection routes who funds you. Is it the Trump campaign? Is it ExxonMobil? Who supports these memes? I was just dying. What is going on?
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, because here's the connection. They're abandoning responsibility for the problems of the modern world by blaming it all on the Neolithic. I have it on good authority that every member of a life in ruins drives a lifted Hummer and just pours fuel out of the window as they're driving along and then says, oh man, global warming, isn't that the fault of the Neolithic? Not my responsibility at all.
00:18:03
Speaker
This podcasting gig is pretty money worthy for doing that. Yeah. For the people listening, Stefan made a video on his Instagram story calling us out. And this one was rightful. I loved it. But he's walking his child, his sweet child, in a stroller with his mask on. I think I can't remember. With the Oregon fires in the background, like in the sky was orange, walking down the street, talking about how we're
00:18:32
Speaker
part of the Exxon, whatever, conspiracy about the Neolithic and there's people walking by and just calling us out. It was hilarious. And I called me out saying that I had probably a lifted car or whatever, and I went outside and looked at how much gas mileage I got on my Jeep. I wore my gas mask, obviously, because I had to be dramatic and just to prove that I did have a giant car that exudes gas mileage. So, yeah. There you go.
00:19:01
Speaker
And then I tried to do the same thing except for I showed my license plate to everyone on social media. That ended real quickly. And I want to give our listeners some examples of what Stefan was doing. He started out with a different kind of tact. You know, you see those inspirational kind of posters and pictures of like
00:19:22
Speaker
You can do it. Yeah. You know, don't walk by yourself. I don't even know what they are because I don't I don't believe any of it. But he took that tact and kind of created some of those. And I'm going to read at least a couple for you. These were good. Yeah. So in the background of this one is some sort of Central American temple. And it says people come and go. Corn is forever. Demonstrate.
00:19:52
Speaker
Hashtag Bailey who sucks. Oh, here's another one. Never let fear stop you from growing wheat. Hashtag Neolithic players for life. Hell yeah.
00:20:06
Speaker
It was beautiful. It was beautiful. And I will say I was the purveyor. I am much more interested in the Paleolithic as a time period because the Neolithic is just boring, man. They're just farmers. They're just doing farm things. Like I don't, I literally live in farmland. Going along with that maze comment, Connor made a meme that looks like a prescription, you know, bottle.
00:20:33
Speaker
with like a side effects and says, what other side effects? And it's like a picture of maize, cavities, obesity, malnutrition, population growth, cities slash urban centers, inequality, warfare, monarchy, human sacrifice, get stuck in your teeth. Hashtag me on the big socks. It was just like, it was poor Caleb Welch didn't know who to side with this one. He must've had like internal turmoil trying to figure out whose side he was on. Stephen Miele or Life in Ruins. Here's the thing.
00:21:03
Speaker
I would take all of those happily if I could still eat a taco. I mean, I'm new to the taco game because I grew up in Britain in a small town with absolutely zero
00:21:20
Speaker
Mesoamericans there, zero Hispanic people in my small English town. But they're fantastic, man. Come on, a little bit of monarchy for some tacos. That's a fair trade. Canada's a monarchy and they're for doing fine. Britain's a monarchy, you know, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. Wait, did you say Canada is a monarchy? It's kind of a monarchy. Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's the same thing as Britain, right? Big Liz, big Queen Liz. Yeah, I was about to say, isn't it just a British monarchy? Well,
00:21:52
Speaker
Let's talk about imperialism, shall we? Nothing bad ever happened from imperialism. Nothing. I should say, I should clarify, if anyone's gotten this far, this is all in good taste and I'm not going to die on the colonialism hill, okay?
00:22:12
Speaker
This is just about the memes, but my point is that the tacos are brilliant and a world without them is a poorer place. Point one for you. I'll give you a point for that. I respect that. Tacos are just too much to lose.
00:22:29
Speaker
Speaking of not being able to swear, the article I had prepared is called Human Sound Systems are Shaped by Post-Neolithic Changes in Bite Configuration.
Dietary Changes and Human Evolution
00:22:40
Speaker
They basically argue that the soft neolithic diet that we've all gotten used to has allowed us to pronounce F and V sounds, which are very rare apparently in hunter-gatherer languages. I don't know. I'm not a linguist. I'm just reading the abstract in front of me.
00:22:58
Speaker
You're living in the Paleolithic. It's cold outside, probably. Let's say you're in the Ice Age still. You've hunted your foods. You'd go outside for a pee. You come back in and someone's eaten your favorite deer testicle or whatever it is they eat in the world without tacos. You can't even swear at the person. You can't even say to them, F you, F off, because you don't have an overbite.
00:23:24
Speaker
You'd have to be like, Dave, you bloody banana. What are you doing? So you can't even swear properly in the paleolithic. It's a terrible time. Is that paper like true? I'd seen something like that go around, but I wasn't sure if that was like scientifically sound or not. In the science, yeah. Science, 15th of March, 2019.
00:23:48
Speaker
I'll send you guys the link. I have no way to confirm the validity of it because I don't know anything about dentistry or languages, but that's what they're saying. That's why they're arguing. Sure. Me neither either. I'm not trying to like discredit it. I was just like genuinely curious, but if that is the case, I would be very sad because I do use that word very colorful.
00:24:11
Speaker
just not on this podcast anymore. But sorry for my absence there earlier, my internet cut out, but really I was in the bathroom because in the Neolithic just made so much blooming. Yeah, at least you had a bathroom in the Neolithic. No, Comcast just sucks really. But you get Taco Bell from the Neolithic and I don't know if Taco Bell has ever been good for someone's digestive track.
00:24:36
Speaker
I imagine if we went back in time, 25,000 years and said, Oi, Ice Age Connor, here's a Taco Bell. He would think it was the greatest thing anyone's ever made. And then, you know, proceed to lose all the water he might've saved up. Yeah. It would just come out the other end. But that's a fair point. That's a fair point. Yeah. Crunchwrap Supreme. That's fine. Yeah. I mean, if I could remember the first time I had one, I've been like, whoa,
00:25:07
Speaker
I could get down with the Neolithic. Can I ask, deviating slightly, does becoming a meme page dramatically grow your online presence? That's what I'm curious about. No. We're curious about it, too. No, it did as it. We've been around 3,000 for quite some time now. Fair enough. That's all right. I won't sell out that. I won't sell out my Neolithic beliefs then. I would have done, but I would have done for internet fame. But if it's not going to work out, I'll stick to loving the Neolithic.
00:25:37
Speaker
The memes are mostly therapeutic for Connor. That is accurate. He'll just send us like 40 memes in the morning and like, we'll pick one. We also make them too. Carlton makes a good one here and there as well. And you can tell their mind if they're spelled wrong.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah. But the memes do get
Success in Online Content Creation
00:26:10
Speaker
shares though. They get way more. Here's the thing, Stefan, I can write, I spend two, three hours researching and writing an Instagram post and then I'll do it for ruins as well. And it will get 40 likes, but then Connor makes a meme about,
00:26:27
Speaker
Nothing. And it gets 88 shares. Yeah, I can just get sad one day and be like, oh, I need to express my sadness through memes. If we could get like 3,000, yeah, a recent one was like 3,000 likes for what the Hobbit one or whatever people celebrate in the new year. Yeah. Yeah. That was a funny one.
00:26:49
Speaker
The first one that did well was that researcher from UT Austin cracked the cuneiform code. So it took that tablet with the translations and at the bottom, right? It said like Epstein didn't kill himself because this was back in like 2019. And that, that spread like wildfire. That one took off. And then the one after that where it's like big bird in a wagon, it's like archeologists after drinking until 5am. It's like 6am. Field director comes in, you know, get to work or something like that. I don't know. That's how a big,
00:27:17
Speaker
They kind of started, but like... We write it down. Yeah, we write it down. And that's like David's absolutely right. Like he'll come on or we've tried writing like really science-focused posts, but they just get no engagement. But the memes, the memes, man. Yeah, it's a hard one. There's a similar thing on YouTube. There's no correlation between how much effort you put into a video and how successful it will be.
00:27:43
Speaker
Like the video I made as this Paleolithic meme war was going on, I was actually knee deep researching the Paleolithic for a video I was making on it about the Aurignacian period over in Europe. And I put a lot of evidence into that video. I had, you know, I was interviewing two different people. It took me months to research all the sources.
00:28:09
Speaker
And it's got half as many views as a video I made on just this one archaeology site about Rome that took me two days to make that just used one source. So there really is no, on the internet, there is no correlation between effort and success in a way. But I didn't say that as I spent the first 15 minutes of the show talking about how important it was to improve the quality.
00:28:39
Speaker
I don't know where I'm going with this, but basically the internet is a fickle mistress. Yeah. If you measure it at like one point, I don't think those things correlate. But I think if you look at the larger trend, you know, you obviously put a lot of work in to your YouTube channel and it shows, you know, what the amount of subscribers you get and whatnot. So it's, I think it's a cumulative kind of trend over time thing that shows that, and that's the reason why we aren't getting any followers.
00:29:10
Speaker
You haven't posted quality memes for long enough, is that what you're saying? Or good enough content.
00:29:19
Speaker
Another pressing issue that I've seen in the past year, I guess, 2020 and the great Paleolithic, Neolithic war of 2020 was obviously it was just attrition. But the greatest shade that I saw all of 2020 was a Tori Mazza just absolutely ripping on Italy when he was trying to draw all those Roman paintings for you, Stefan. Like I was surprised to see that. I think.
00:29:49
Speaker
Maybe this is a contrast of opinions between Europeans and Americans sometimes, and I kind of get where Ettore is coming from. Americans would visit Europe and think that history is incredible, and it really is.
00:30:05
Speaker
Fantastic. Of course, I love it. But when you're living there and you have all this history around you, it can be quite restrictive. You see it every day. You hear about it every day. You know, you can't build whatever house you want because it's on archaeological sites. It can almost seem like restrictive in a way. Yeah. It's like growing up at the beach. Like you don't want to go to the beach every day. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But he's got literally Rome, right? He doesn't live in Rome. But yeah, you got all of Italy right there.
00:30:33
Speaker
I mean, imagine what the history curriculum is like in an Italian school. They must talk about Rome every bloody day. Yeah. I don't know if you two guys saw it, but when Steppen did, I think you were doing some Penic War stuff, which is just a fascinating time period that Torre was drawing those like really ornate like battles and like some Roman soldiers and the one with Rome's furthest outpost.
00:30:54
Speaker
and which was in the Middle East somewhere. And Tory was like, I don't like drawing Rome, but here's a picture. It was really funny to me. It just made me laugh at work. I mean, it's probably the same with America. Maybe like your guy's history curriculum is so heavily weighted to the founding fathers, probably. Or the Civil War. It's just the thing that always comes up. Where I went to school, it was called the War of Northern Aggression.
00:31:24
Speaker
No way. Really. Yep. We'll be right back for the segment three of life and ruins podcast. Welcome back to episode 43 of a life and ruins podcast. We're interviewing Stefan Milo and we, we need to tell our guests and kind of giving them more information about the paleolithic and neolithic and European slash American time period. So Carlton, do you mind defining what the paleolithic is?
00:31:53
Speaker
Of course, concrete. Paleolithic stands for old stone age. Paleolithic by and large at a global scale. Paleolithic societies are hunting and gathering communities. Small scale bands, maybe tribes, but mostly bands.
00:32:14
Speaker
And they're using stone tool technology, heavy meat diet, like I said, hunting and gathering. There are instances like at Chateau Huyuk where they're building monuments, but generally talk about mobile hunting and gathering groups that occupy a large space on the landscape in small numbers.
00:32:31
Speaker
Awesome. And that's a period of time that we kind of think covers almost all of human existence, right? 99% of human technology is considered the paleolithic.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, so like I'm trying to think if we'd extend the Paleolithic to cover like Australopithecines. I'm not quite sure when the official start date is, but like if you look at modern anatomically modern humans like 120,000 years ago, it's not really until the first vestiges of like agriculture start developing around like 10,000 years ago. So over 99% of human history has been us as in the Paleolithic as hunting gathering populations.
00:33:15
Speaker
And then around this 10,000 year mark, people just get a wild hair, right? They just like, oh crap.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, something goes on. I mean, like most of the time that we think of these major transitions in technology, more than likely they're kind of by accident.
Transitions in Human Societies
00:33:33
Speaker
So as you are like foraging crops, right, and you're selecting better, like if you look at grains and such, there's a process that went on and I'm really not knowledgeable in like the like Mesopotamian
00:33:47
Speaker
agriculture revolution in terms of what the process was that really started agriculture. But as a byproduct of humans in the Middle East selecting certain crops to harvest, because of that selection, there were just byproducts of genetic change in some of these crops.
00:34:08
Speaker
It's a really fascinating topic and people should definitely look at it. So then we start going from like the paleolithic and what's even more fascinating is the transition from paleolithic old stone age to mesolithic, meaning the middle stone age, is that it happened repeatedly across the globe in isolated events or through processes of diffusion. So it's not like one, you snap your fingers and humans are like, okay, we're in the mesolithic. It was gradual and often occurred at different times and places.
00:34:38
Speaker
And that's just the adoption of or incorporation of domestication of plants and animals into your hunter and gathering life ways. It's kind of a mix of both worlds, you're getting the best of both really. And then there's the full blown Neolithic transformation, which we talked about, which me and Stefan are proponents of, which is full blown use of domesticates such as such as, you know, corn, if you're talking about the new world in the old world, your grains such as barley, wheat, flax.
00:35:08
Speaker
So that's, those are the kind of differences. So the Mesolithic is the Middle Stone Age. Neolithic means New Stone Age. And they're just, people are doing different, it's just different strategies for subsistence and survival. Well, thank you for that beautiful and concise, summing up with that. Yeah. And I think that I would actually say maybe the Mesolithic is kind of the most interesting time period in my opinion, where they're doing kind of both of these things. But, you know, obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about.
00:35:37
Speaker
I mean, these definitions, it's hard to fit all of human history into three categories of economic production. So there are areas like over here in Portland.
00:35:55
Speaker
the Native Americans here, the Chinookan peoples were living at a really high population density, but using like river resources and things like that. So on the one hand, you could say they were leading a very neolithic lifestyle, like they're sedentary communities for the most part, but they didn't have domesticated crops. So you're like the whole of human history can't really fit into these three categories. There's a lot of like gray areas as well.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of gray area. We've had Dr. Shane Miller on, and he researches Paleo-Indian, which is the American equivalent of Paleolithic populations in the Southeast, and he's looking at early domestic use.
00:36:33
Speaker
In North American archeology, we really don't apply terms like paleolithic, mesolithic, or neolithic, but they certainly exist here. We just use other terminology that is depending on your region or even depending by what state institution you were educated in, you have different terms for some of these different processes. It's just convoluted in archeological literature.
00:36:55
Speaker
no matter where you go. And there's always like exceptions to the rule, but like generally speaking, paleolithic, small scale hunting, gathering, Mesolithic, small scale kind of farming, still hunting, gathering, and Neolithic is like large scale farming using domesticated animals. Yeah. Broad strokes. The Neolithic is the only one way you could eat a kebab and drink a beer. Just saying.
00:37:23
Speaker
That's completely accurate. I love how you mentioned, Carlton, that it's not consistent over time. So you have these periods where folks transition earlier to farming or where people stay in this kind of Mesolithic lifestyle. It's really interesting to see from a worldwide perspective that things don't happen exactly the same time throughout the world, throughout human history. It's this kind of beautiful variety of things that happen.
00:37:52
Speaker
Right. And it's like, you know, I, when I went to Ukraine, I think I mentioned this before, I was working on a neolithic analogy or upper mesolithic analogy to what I work on in Nebraska. And it's like a 10,000 year old site. Sorry. It's 6,500 BC. So not 10. Oh, almost. I ate that. And the whole point is like, they, they were like, yeah, that's how old it is. Like how old is the site you work at? I'm like, Oh, you know, it started around 1250. Like, Oh, 1250 BC. That's not too bad. I'm like, no, 1250 AD. Like.
00:38:20
Speaker
800 years ago, and they were just like, what? I'm like, yeah, we really didn't get farming communities in that part of the world until like much later. And they're like, dude, by 1250, we had knights and castles around here and we were like part of the Kiev and Rus. I'm like, yeah, you know, we all go at our own pace. Yeah. It's not a composition Ukraine. All right. Calm down.
00:38:44
Speaker
Oh, we were nights first, cause the nights were so good. Like nothing bad happened in like the sad ages.
00:38:51
Speaker
Just in case anyone is listening who's really unfamiliar with archaeology, the Neolithic didn't start in the Americas at 1250s. Mesoamerican civilizations go back thousands of years. It would just be that where you are, Carlton. I don't want someone to think that stuff just started in 1958 in the Americas. I'm specifically talking about Nebraska.
00:39:15
Speaker
not try to speak for the entirety of the Western hemisphere, just like where I work in Nebraska, 1250. But as Stefan said, you get domesticated crops in specifically the Mexican basin much earlier in
Roles of Animals and Labor Specialization
00:39:30
Speaker
the B.C.s. And it kind of expands through that. I think that's one of the only points that Jared Diamond makes.
00:39:36
Speaker
Is it guns, germs and steel that actually, that I like that kind of dichotomy between domestic it's East and West and North and South. But you know, anyways, it's a green eggs name. Yes, it was. I know, I know I've written a couple of bucks and so I just wanted to make sure I got it correct. I was called a green eggs name because it's just might as well be. Oh gosh. So David, where do dogs fit into this entire debate?
00:40:04
Speaker
between paleo and Neolithic? Yeah, how does their lifestyle change between paleo to Neolithic? Well, there's a paper going around the internet right now and everyone sent it to me like, have you read this? And it's like literally titled, humans couldn't stomach the original paleo diet. What led to dogs? It's, oh my God, rolling my eyes, but. Oh, Angela Perry shared that on Facebook and I saw it and I saw that you were already tagged in it. I was like, okay, I don't need a buck, David, with this.
00:40:30
Speaker
yeah i think she's of the same opinion as me it's just like well one i find the headline just clickbaity because it's like it's just bandwagon hate to just hate on the paleo diet kind of like star wars so and it just gets people to click on it but it's just essentially saying that dogs are eating human scraps so cool new news we knew that but the dog
00:40:51
Speaker
story fits into it because we have dogs in the Paleolithic and then like by the Neolithic you have dogs to help like herd goats and to like you know protect your flocks of other ungulates like sheep and goats and cows and stuff like later on when they get domesticated to you know keep the wolves away and stuff so I mean
00:41:14
Speaker
not highly specialized herding dogs and stuff, but later on. I think if I was to criticize the Neolithic, if I was to go crazy and do that, probably the huge food surplus that allowed people to just lead lazier and lazier lives, like bureaucrats and stuff, led to the creation of lap dogs and stuff like that. And all the crazy, tiny mutated dogs we now have. Like pugs that can't
00:41:41
Speaker
normally respirate because they have squished little faces and stuff like that. But that's the only downside of the Neolithic. You don't think like heroin? Arguably a good thing. We're talking about downsides, not upsides here.
00:42:04
Speaker
I want to go on record because Stefan mentioned something that was, you know, maybe bad about the Neolithic. I feel like I should go back and say something bad about the Paleolithic and in the Paleolithic because of less robust or less consistent food sources. And there's just a bunch of other factors that led to ultimately kind of a shorter lifespan and maybe a more harsher lifespan in the Paleolithic. But that's, that's the only thing that's really, really, really long with the Paleolithic.
00:42:34
Speaker
I mean, if you think of like paleolithic populations, up until the ice age, like every animal we were up against was like three times the size it is now. The climate was cold, like for all the shortcomings of any period of human history that we can look at, our conversation really highlights the robustness and ingenuity of human populations.
00:43:01
Speaker
throughout our entire history, right? At the end of the day, the Paleolithic, you could argue, is a much simpler time. But with that, you're talking about, you don't have expertise in medicines and things like that. But we did it for over 100,000 years through some of the harshest environments that our species has existed in, as we were anatomically modern, right? And then going into the Neolithic, you're talking about huge surpluses in food. You might be only eating three kinds of food, and your teeth might be falling out.
00:43:32
Speaker
You know, but you don't, but you have food security and you have, you know, you have a dedicated city watch. And so like, there's, there's plus and minuses to each of these things. Right. That's it. I mean, if you're in the paleolithic, like deep in the paleolithic, you know, with mammoths are still running around. I don't fancy taking them on, but at the same time, after like a month in the neolithic and you're like, what's for dinner? And they're like bread again for the rest of your life.
00:44:02
Speaker
I'll say some good about the Neolithic. I mean, you get writing, you get like time to hang out. Well, I mean, arguably you get less time, but I mean, you get specialized labor and you get really good at one thing. You get coopers, you get cobblers, and you get someone who's really good at making flutes. And then another guy who flint nappers Tim, you know, and you go hang out in his hut and learn how to flint nap and you can apprentice and stuff or
00:44:25
Speaker
You don't have to spend half your day also knowing how to weave and sew and dig for tubers and, you know, suck leeches off of grandpa's leg. And I mean, you still might have to do that, depending on where in the words we are. But I've never had to suck leeches off my grandfather's leg. That was oddly specific. I'm sorry. Where's your grandpa going? I don't know. Never met him, but just like.
00:44:49
Speaker
David's revealing too much about his childhood here. We're going to have to cut that part. Is Dean your grandpa? Is Dean my grandpa? No, but I'm supposed to say bad about the Paleolithic, right? Yeah. The bad thing about Paleolithic is like, you're constantly foraging and like you're at the whim of your environment. So like there's a drought on the Savannah, like you're out, dude. And like, if you're, I mean,
00:45:13
Speaker
You can somehow get around it sometimes, but I mean, you're, you're screwed. And if you're in the Arctic and then like the reindeer don't show that winner, like you're so well. So, but in the Neolithic, you got some crop surplus to hold you over. So I guess it's all right. There are a lot of paleolithic skeletons with broken bones, man. It was a hard time. It was, it was. Yeah. And you, and if.
00:45:37
Speaker
if your appendix went, you know, it's game over. Well, that's probably true for both time periods. I was going to ask Stefan about the C people's, you know, why haven't you made a video on them? Everyone's made a video on the C people's, man. I meant the North American C people's that went around the world. Oh, right next to America before that's coming out. Don't worry about that. Oh, no way. Yeah. Oh, I'm excited.
00:46:06
Speaker
Yeah. It's going to take the internet by storm. I'm actually worried I'm going to be sued for making this video. This is going to be the video. If any video gets me sued, it might be this one. Oh my God. I'm so excited because I've listened to it on the audio book and like some things I listened to and I'm like, all right, that's cool. And then everything's the next thing he says. I'm like, what are you guys talking about?
00:46:30
Speaker
Graham Hancock. Did you know Carlton in his book America Before He Devotes an Entire Chapter to the Similarities of Poor Knee Religion and Ancient Egyptian Religion? I was actually going to ask you more about that when I'm further into the research part. What are you talking about? I thought you said you read it. No, what are you talking about? Graham Hancock makes similarities between Skeety, Pawnee, Mythology, and the Egyptians.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, he said that you guys have trial at the end of your life and that if you travel along the Milky Way, I'm really paraphrasing here because I'm still reading the book, but and basically he's comparing it to the, you know, Egyptian rituals where, you know, they've got to say the songs in the Book of the Dead and have their heart weighed and all of that and then travel along the Milky Way.
00:47:21
Speaker
It's, it's a funny thing. I was actually reading it the other day. I was going to ask you about whether his take on Pawnee religion is accurate. Well, I don't think he consulted with the Pawnee nation in any way, shape and form. So, uh, my comment will come later. How about, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll comment later when I'm not enraged. Yeah. You should check it out. I'm so mad. I had other things to do today, but now I'm going to get distracted. Well,
00:47:50
Speaker
On that note, we're going to have to end the show. So, Stefan, it's been great having you. We are proud of you. We're glad to see you're doing well on YouTube, making well for yourself. It's always good to see a British person come here and do well for themselves. Isn't that the American dream? It's about to say hashtag America.
00:48:16
Speaker
So that was episode 43 of a life in ruins podcast, where we interviewed Stefan below. Thank you so much. And we will catch you next week. Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com.
00:48:45
Speaker
And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. All right, it is bad joke time. So gents, what's the difference between a well-dressed man on a unicycle and a poorly dressed man on a bicycle? I don't know. A tire. Shout out to Dean Johnan for sending me this link to all the crappy dad jokes.
00:49:15
Speaker
That one hurt. I'm physically in pain.
00:49:31
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. 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 chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.