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Of Koobi Fora and Cathedrals with Ella Beaudoin - Ep02
657 Plays7 years ago
Today's guest is someone who we wanted to snag as early as possible, based on her ability to connect with the public.
Ella Beaudoin got started in anthropology at American University, in Washington DC.
She cut her scientific teeth in Kenya as part of the Koobi Fora field School @koobiforafieldschool. The Koobi Fora region is one of the most prolific fossil bearing regions in the world and possibly home to the oldest instances of the use of fire by our hominid ancestors.
She is currently a contractor at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she works to help engage and teach the public about evolution and archaeology.
As the goal of this podcast is to connect non-archaeologists with our science, we are super excited to talk with her tonight.
Links:
You can follow her twitter at @ella_beaudoin and her instagram @timetravelerinhikingboots.
Contact the Hosts:
Email us at alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com.
Find us at instagram @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: facebook.com/alifeinruinspodcast
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Transcript
Introduction by Ella Botewin
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome back to a Life in Ruins podcast, episode two. We're going to finish off the episode with our guest, Ella. Ella. You're all good. Yeah, hold on. Okay. Give me a sec. Give me a sec. Okay.
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to episode two of A Life in Ruins podcast. I'm your host, Carlton. I'm your host, Connor. And I am David. Tonight's guest is someone who we wanted to snag as early as possible, based on her ability to connect with the public. Ella Botewin got started in anthropology at the American University in Washington, D.C. She cut her scientific teeth in Kenya as part of the Kubi Fora Field School.
00:00:51
Speaker
The Kubifor region is one of the most prolific fossil-bearing regions in the world. She is currently a contractor at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she works to help engage and teach the public about evolution and archaeology. As a goal of this podcast is to connect non-archaeologists with our science, we are super excited to talk with her tonight.
Culturally Sensitive Evolution Education in Alabama
00:01:22
Speaker
All right, Ellis, would you like to tell our guests who you are?
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, so hi, my name is Ella Bodwin and I am an archaeologist. I work at, I'm a contractor at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, specifically in the Human Origins Program. And I'm working on a grant to teach evolution in Alabama in culturally sensitive kind of ways. It's an NSF grant. It's a really cool project that I'm
00:01:52
Speaker
Really lucky to be a part of so that's kind of me and my job in a tiny little nutshell All right, so you know me. I'm David. I currently have a hundred and three degree fever, and I'm hearing colors, but Okay, so we first met in Orlando at the essay is correct yes, yes, I
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah. And I remember this because we immediately thought you were like super cool because you had this Darwin tattoo on your arm. You want to talk about that real quick? Yeah, sure. I have a little band and it is in like around kind of my upper arm and it's just Darwin's handwriting above the first phylogenetic tree. And it just says, I think, and a lot of people definitely are like, Oh, I think therefore I am. And I'm like, Oh God, no. Um,
00:02:42
Speaker
And basically the reason I got it was because like Darwin is really important to me. Obviously I'm obsessed with human evolution. But I think that going, I think is kind of the best description of most of science is like, I don't know and sketch it out. So I really liked it. So that's my tattoo.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah. Well, cool. So like me and Connor met you there. We immediately thought like you were cool. And then, uh, that was that essay is where it was like, we were at the Disney, you know, campus and we had to go to the, the only club we could get your bar. Yeah. That one is not going to lie. That's like my most vivid memory of like the day is just dancing with you guys truly in the weirdest club. It was adult people in many, many mouse ears.
00:03:31
Speaker
Oh, it was strange because they had that like that whole wall of like
00:03:35
Speaker
It was like a TV and they were playing like 90s R&B and just the most ridiculous. And then like take on me for some reason. And then I also remember this, I'm just like, you know, chatting right now. There was a guy dancing in pajamas there every day. Do you remember that? Yes. And he was so good. Yeah. And you like went right over and just started dancing with them. And I was like, whoa, you all right? And you were like, no, this guy can dance.
00:04:03
Speaker
He was killing it. He was absolutely killing it. Yeah, that was I think that was my first essay, I think, actually. Yeah, yeah. So you guys made it infinitely better for sure.
Personal Inspirations and Multicultural Background
00:04:16
Speaker
Awesome. So then you met Carlton in Washington, D.C., right? Carlton, you want to go from there? Yeah, I was hanging with you two because that was the first time I had met Connor. And you guys had said, hey, we're going to hang out with this girl named Ella and her friend. You need to come. And so then I did.
00:04:32
Speaker
And it was Krebo's birthday. And I think we were at a rooftop bar in DC. And I remember you're helping David out with one of his Tinder profiles. And then you gave me advice on my Tinder profile. And so he did that for about like 30 minutes. And Connor the entire time was wearing his backpack to help straighten his back because he had just had back surgery.
00:04:52
Speaker
I remember that. I don't believe such a good time. What was that bar you went to? It was like a rooftop bar and it was super cool. I have never been there since and I don't really know where it was. Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. All right, so like moving on I guess. What I think another thing that's super cool about you is I didn't know this until like you randomly told me like a year ago but your parents are British, is that right?
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, my mom is English and she was born and raised in the UK and then moved over to the U.S. later in life for a job and that's where she met my dad. And my dad was born in Germany but grew up all over the world. So he primarily grew up in Singapore and Sweden and then moved to the United States, I think in his senior year of high school.
00:05:39
Speaker
If he hears this, he's going to correct me. I can't remember, but he moved then back to the U.S. later on. How does that affect your perspective on anthropology? My background definitely makes me feel more of an anthropologist.
00:05:57
Speaker
I honestly was really lucky because going, you know, at least going back to England as often as we could to kind of see my extended family and my grandparents. One thing that's kind of different from England versus Minnesota, which is where I grew up, right, is that the buildings are older, the towns are older, like archaeology is
00:06:17
Speaker
much more kind of close in every day. And I think that probably for a lot of people who live in the South or the Southwest of the United States are much more in contact with archaeology than I think I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where all we had was like fortsnelling.
00:06:35
Speaker
I've never heard of it. Well, there we go. Being able to kind of go and be a part of like, oh yeah, let's go to the cathedral that was built, you know, however many centuries ago. And kind of as a kid and getting to be up close and personal with history in a way, I think definitely influenced my interest in it at an early age.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah. When I was in London in November this past year, I was like walking down the block and I saw this sign that was like, been open for 700 years. And I like looked at it and I like kept walking and then I like double take and I was like, what the fuck? And then I remembered that that's like a thing there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:07:14
Speaker
I definitely, my, I don't have super clear memories of, uh, of this particular instance, but my parents do is like when they took me to the British museum for one of the first times, like as a really little kid, like eight or something. And they said that I spent almost an hour talking to like one of the volunteers who had like a cart out and basically just like, this is what I just need to talk and ask questions as like a very little kid. Yeah, definitely.
00:07:39
Speaker
And so they really remember that. I have no memory, but I think they knew from a pretty early age because my mom sent me a picture of what I did to my Barbies as a child, which was mummify them. I truly wrapped them up in a bunch of gauze and stuff, and she found them in the basement recently.
00:08:02
Speaker
Nice. I used to, uh, bury GI, their GI Joes and like max steel, like the off brand one. Um, and I'd bury them, I'd wrap them in toilet paper and then like bury them underground. And I would dig them up the next year. And I was like, look at this mommy's guys. And tried to like convince my friends that they were like, they're the whole, I didn't put them there. You know? Oh yeah. Of course. Yeah. It's like, don't retelling these stories. You're like, Oh wow, we were weird kids. Yeah.
00:08:28
Speaker
Absolutely. I used to go to the Denver Museum all the time and I would get just lost in the dinosaur section and I wouldn't want to leave. It's so cool how a bunch of museums and stuff get us all and keep us interested in anthropology.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like museums are so obvious. I mean, this is kind of goes without saying, but they are so integral to like a lot of people's first steps into this like STEM fields. You know, whether you become a physicist or whether you study, you know, do paleontology, it seems to be that like a lot of these kind of stories end up originating as a child in a museum. Did you just say integral? Yes. Is that not? I think you win the word for the day.
00:09:17
Speaker
I love that. I mean, I just started it. So kind of building off of that, um, did you have any other childhood experiences in other fields of science or was it kind of this history archeology?
Influence of National Geographic Kids and the Galapagos
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, no. Um, I,
00:09:41
Speaker
at oh god i think i was 11 i turned i had turned 11 or i turned 12 so i applied to be part of the national geographic kids magazine had a contest uh many many years ago now um it was like their first contest and they said you know that i think it was 15 students from all over the u.s you have to submit a
00:10:05
Speaker
like a little short story and a photo of a place in your community that you actively explore. And they pick 15 of us that would then go to the Galapagos Islands and like learn about exploration and Darwin and evolution and ecology. And I applied.
00:10:23
Speaker
and one. So that was kind of like where I first really learned about Darwin was at a very early age in the Galapagos. We were part of like staying on a Lindblad expeditions boat with all of our parents. We got to bring one of our parents, which my mom came with me. Was that a hard choice? I think my mom was the one who showed me the thing was like, you should do this because
00:10:57
Speaker
So for those people who are not like in tune with kind of or haven't heard about the Galapagos Island, could you explain to our viewers, you know, what the Galapagos Islands were and how they kind of influenced Charles Darwin's
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, of course. They are a set of islands, and I really hope either in post-production, you'll help me if I sound dumb here, or if I get something wrong. So the Galapagos Islands are a chain of islands that are off the coast of Ecuador. And they're really important because they were a stop on Darwin's beagle journey. So the beagle was the boat he went on as a young man that traveled all over the world and kind of
00:11:41
Speaker
was where he got to see this broad sweep of biological diversity and start to think, OK, wait a second. How old is the Earth, really? I know that I heard, and I don't know if this is fully true, but I know that he was looking at, in Cape Town, he was looking at
00:12:02
Speaker
um the uh mountains there and say okay what is geologic time in the context of like these must be much older than yeah didn't he bring lyell's like textbooks with him i think so yeah yeah or something you notice that off like argentina too kind of the the cliffs and the depths yeah exactly right a lot of time
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And like, you know, geologic time is so it's kind of the main thing that we have to understand when we start thinking about kind of broad scale, deep time evolution. And he started
00:12:38
Speaker
he on these islands, he kind of started looking at the birds and the animals and he realized that from island to island, there were these like small changes between the different species. And that was really dependent on the food and the environment that changed between these islands. And so this is kind of where he started to
00:12:55
Speaker
think and formulate his concepts of evolution and where he collected a lot of his specimens and a lot of the specimens that are in museums all over the world today. And everyone, hopefully, a lot of people kind of know the image of Darwin's finches with the changes in beaks, that a small population of birds was blown from Ecuador to different islands and then evolved specific to each of those islands.
00:13:25
Speaker
I hope that. First of all, we're not going to add out any of that because that was amazing. Okay. I'd also like to mention, like I just realized like we've so far, both of our guests have been associated with national geographic kids in some way. Cool. You know, Spencer, right? Oh yeah. I didn't know it was an associate with Nat Geo kids. Well, his was with bears, not necessarily anthropology. So, uh, you know, point for you.
00:13:53
Speaker
Nice. So where did you do your undergraduate work at? Or I mean, I guess how did that transition between like high school to college? Did you like, were you interested in anthropology in high school and then decided to do it in college? Yeah. So I, in high school, I went to a performing arts high school, very small one where I did theater and I majored in theater. Um, and I kind of are always known. I wanted to either do
00:14:18
Speaker
archaeology or childcare and not theater. Those were like my two kind of I loved kids and I loved archaeology and history. And so I took a gap year to kind of figure out where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do in in
00:14:36
Speaker
in college. So a little caveat here, I'm incredibly privileged. My family, and that is something that I have to really acknowledge in a lot of this journey, is that I have a lot of opportunities that people probably wouldn't have had because of my race and socioeconomic status. So I just do want to put that out there that
00:14:59
Speaker
A lot of this, I have to be very cognizant, is not necessarily the same path that a lot of other people take. Sure, yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
But I took a gap year and I went and worked at two different archaeological sites, one Vindalanda, which is on the border of Hadrian's Wall in England, and it's a Roman fort site. Really interesting, fascinating research, amazing museum. And then a 13th to 15th century burial site
00:15:30
Speaker
in Romania at the Black Church in Brushov. And that one I did not know it would be skeletons, kind of when I decided to volunteer. And then I traveled around doing backpacking in India and then worked in Tanzania, which again, you know,
00:15:48
Speaker
issues with volunteerism. So there are issues with, so there was some volunteerism there, especially when it comes to working with, I was working in orphanage in Tanzania for three months and there are problematic things I've come to realize as an adult and as someone who's then done anthropological research and taking classes and courses on that later on. That though, when I was in Tanzania, I kind of realized I want to do work on the continent of Africa and
00:16:17
Speaker
from doing the archaeology, I kind of realized, okay, cool. I like this way more than I like kids. So, so that was kind of where I left. Yes. Well, I don't know. That's true. That's true. I cry more. I don't know.
00:16:36
Speaker
So that was kind of where I figured out, OK, definitely want to do archaeology. And then I ended up going to American University in Washington, D.C. And a lot of the reason why I chose American was they had a solid archaeology program at the time and they were in D.C., which is a big city. They had access to the Smithsonian's and they had a really good study abroad program, which I never ended up doing anything with study abroad with you. But the Smithsonian angle really worked out.
00:17:06
Speaker
For me didn't you work at cubi fora yes
The Importance and Experience of Field Schools
00:17:10
Speaker
so the cubi for a field school is an amazing program that i was a student in and that is in kenya on the shores of lake turkana and it's where you take we take undergraduate students and
00:17:21
Speaker
and graduate students and kind of show them the ropes of what it means to do paleoanthropology. Each student has a specific program or like a project that they work on. So it was this really cool way to kind of get my start in, okay, how do you do a research project? How do you dig in this environment? And how do you work with data that you kind of haven't
00:17:44
Speaker
you can't really get or see or understand as well if you haven't been digging it up yourself or kind of understanding all the things that go into it. So I was just there and then came back as an intern and kind of like quasi staff member later on for a previous year. That's cool. Yeah. And that's how we like that's how archaeologists kind of archaeologists and paleo anthropologists get their
00:18:08
Speaker
It's not like a certification, but it's a way to certify that you've done fieldwork because that field school is kind of important to all archaeologists and paleoanthropologists.
00:18:19
Speaker
you know, continue in the field for sure. It kind of weeds out the people that just aren't, you know, cut out for it, you know? Yeah, true. I think there are definitely a lot of people who go in being like, wow, yes. Like I went in thinking I'm going to be bones forever. I loved some bones and truly they're very difficult and I'm very bad at it. And I came out realizing that like lithics and in, you know, in talking to people were the two things that I love the most out of archaeology. So.
00:18:46
Speaker
Well, on that note, we're going to cut to our first break. Hello, and we're back. I'm continuing our conversation with Ella Boudoir. We're going to first talk about your Cooby Fora experience and we're going to get into kind of the work that you've done with the Smithsonian where you work. So could you explain to our viewers what Cooby Fora is and why it's so significant to the field of anthropology as a whole?
00:19:09
Speaker
So Kubiforra is an incredibly important place for paleoanthropology as a whole because it's part of the Rift Valley. And the Rift Valley is this kind of geological formation where the continents are kind of coming apart a little bit. And what that means is that there is a lot more erosion. There are basically ways at which we can get to these kind of deeper, older sediments. So the law... Superposition.
00:19:36
Speaker
Thank you. So that law means that basically everything that's on the bottom is the oldest and then kind of working your way up to the top, which is like what we're standing on now is then the newest. And so with this rift, we're kind of getting this slice backwards in time. And so Kubi Fora is locating this place in a place where we have these sediments that date back hundreds, just like thousands of years. And it's a really cool place that has been worked on for many, many years.
00:20:04
Speaker
It's full of fossils, in essence, and there are lots of stone tools. I need to say something really quick. It actually, I just said good old Lyell and I am really dumb because it was actually Nicholas Steno who came up with the superposition. So I'm just going to take a step back and cry.
00:20:20
Speaker
Don't worry. We're all in it together. That's what we have books for. It's like whenever anyone's like, oh, let me ask you this question. You must know it off the top of your head. No, I don't. I got the Internet. I'll look it up. Like I'll look in a book. But they saw a lot of the a lot of the specimens from like early hominids and a decent amount of them and a decent amount of the stone tools come from Koobi 4, right?
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, tons of don't come from before. And a lot of reason for that is not only are it's a really well studied site because we can figure out the geology of the area has been really, really well done. And so it becomes a more studied site because when you can date a fossil, you then have a lot more kind of
00:21:00
Speaker
you can do a lot more interpretation about that fossil, obviously, if there is really easy or good dating. So it's been worked on for many, many years by from the Leakey's to Jack Harris, to kind of all sorts of paleoanthropologists today. Those are the people who kind of started the paleoanthropology, like the Leakey's are kind of in that. Yeah, they're one of the most well known, I think. Yeah, they're like the kind of
00:21:28
Speaker
I think there's some jokes about them being the first family of paleoanthropology. So yeah. So they've been working in the region for many, many years. But the CUBE4 field school has been working there as well for many, many years as kind of training students, having them cut their teeth, I guess, on all those rocks. It's not a bad place to start at all. Definitely not.
00:21:55
Speaker
It definitely is the hardest field experience that I've ever had, for sure, or one of the hardest, just because it's so hot and so exhausting. And also, you're in a camp of however many people for six weeks and you can't walk away because if you go over an outcrop and you get lost, you'll die.
00:22:17
Speaker
So, but it's definitely kind of makes you realize, yeah, where you want to be when it comes to archaeology. So, fabulous, absolutely fabulous, but we definitely want to talk about your work.
00:22:32
Speaker
in the Smithsonian. So can you go ahead and like just kind of talk about what you do there, what wing you work in and just like how the experience has been?
Role at Smithsonian's Human Origins Program
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So I'm a contractor at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and where I'm specifically kind of placed is in the Human Origins Program. So they're the ones who they do a lot of other research all over the world. Dr. Rick Potts, Dr. Brianna Popiner, Jennifer Clark are kind of the main heads
00:23:02
Speaker
of the program. I am on specifically a contract that is an NSF grant to teach evolution in Alabama. So it's called the Luda Project, which is, oh dear God, learning, unity, and diversity in Alabama. And it's this really cool program that is working with Alabama teachers to provide a curriculum that is sensitive of the things that might be stopping students from coming to
00:23:29
Speaker
Scientific thought as a whole, in my opinion, a lot of this is my view of it, so don't take this as the word of the grant. But in essence, Alabama is a state that doesn't have really high evolution belief.
00:23:45
Speaker
in general. It's a state that used to, and I'm not entirely sure if it still does, have the stickers on textbooks that say, you know, evolution is just a theory. But recently, they just changed some of the requirements that they have for kind of what students need before they go to college or to graduate high school as well. And part of that was this kind of
00:24:10
Speaker
emphasis on diversity and the diversity of life and evolution as a whole. And so Brianna, my boss, saw this opportunity to use the name of the Smithsonian as this neutral political, non-political entity.
00:24:28
Speaker
to create a curriculum that teachers will be looking for with this new standard happening that could help students kind of come to evolution. And there have been a lot of studies that showed that understanding evolution, understanding its mechanisms, allows students to do better in sciences as a whole, no matter kind of what
00:24:43
Speaker
area of STEM you end up in. So what I do as part of that grant is I'm project manager. So I'm in contact with the teachers. I go to Alabama with another colleague to do focus groups and kind of watch how they are teaching different, specifically the beginning part of the curriculum, which is where they get to talk about the religious faith or other cultural things that might be influencing why they might be hesitant to come to evolution to the students themselves. I make memes for the Twitter.
00:25:13
Speaker
So you're a professional meme maker? I'm a professional meme maker. I really want to put that on my office door, which I've been really enjoying, mostly what I did today. And then also helping out with kind of anything really around the office as well that needs doing. So whether that's compiling literature for paper or grabbing more envelopes, it's kind of all sorts of stuff.
00:25:37
Speaker
but primarily it's this grant that we work on. Now answering questions to the website as well, so questions that people have about evolution or just the origin humanity in general, a lot of Sasquatch questions. Just trying my best to answer, yeah.
00:25:54
Speaker
Do you like the aspects of your job that involve not just being in an office all the time, but also interacting with people? Is that something you enjoy about it, dislike it? Oh my God, I love it. Talking to people is the best part of my job and definitely getting a chance to talk about something that you love and that you're passionate about, but also
00:26:18
Speaker
What I've really loved, I think the most, in conjunction with kind of talking to people, is learning how to talk to people, learning how to talk about evolution, learning how to talk about stone tools in a way that other people will understand and allow people to come to it in a different way. Because I think before I was part of this grant, I'd go like, oh my God, here's the bulb of percussion.
00:26:42
Speaker
And while people would kind of stare at me and nod, I didn't know how much information was really happening. So being able to be a part of this grant, being able to shadow some of my mentors, you know, who've been doing science education for years has been really wonderful. And I think that's honestly one of my favorite parts is like just learning more about how to communicate science effectively.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, it can be extremely difficult, especially with like flint knapping and all those topics, because once you understand it, it's good. But actually explaining it to someone or to anyone who has it, because we're so far away from using stone tools anymore. Exactly. Yeah. And even just like harkening back to, you know, we were talking about deep time, you know, a little bit ago, that is so integral to people understanding evolution and
00:27:32
Speaker
It just, that concept is so difficult. I sometimes get really like, you know, at night when you like shut your eyes and you're like, Oh my God, the earth is so old. And then you're like, you know, that is still a process I'm struggling with. And so it's awesome to try and explain that in other ways. I don't know. And real quick, could you just explain just briefly what flint knapping is and what a bulb of percussion is for viewers who might not know?
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, so flint knapping is the process by which you make a stone tool, where you basically, very simple, you take one rock that's harder than another rock, and you smash them together to make flakes, which are kind of sharp slices of rock. There are some more that go into it. You need specific attributes to be able to make a stone tool. And the bulb of percussion, though, is really kind of, is very indicative of a stone tool. So it's basically the force
00:28:22
Speaker
that leaves your hand and enters the rock. It's an engineering thing that I don't fully understand, but some, an engineer explained it to me the other day and I was like, oh, cool. And then forgot, I forgot how to explain it. Is it conchoidal fractures? Is that what you're looking for? Well, yeah, it's like how, why it creates the bolt percussion and then like the force enters the rock. It kind of billows up and then tapers out. So when you have a flake, which is that sharp cutty thing, the kind of top of it is kind of thick. I like to imagine it like a little tummy.
00:28:53
Speaker
And then, and then the end of it kind of tapers out to that thin, sharp edge. So that's a bullpucka thing. Well, and identifying that stuff is huge for anything we do in archaeology, especially for the early paleo stuff.
00:29:07
Speaker
Basically, until you get to the Neolithic when pottery becomes a thing, you really need bones and stone tools are the only things I preserve to study. Yeah, exactly. That's what I always say is that one of the reasons why I love stone tools so much is that they are the only
00:29:24
Speaker
saying that we have, that is any sort of indication really, but like of constant behavior. What are these people doing? How are they thinking? And these are things that they were creating and leaving along the landscape. And like, yes, we have cut marks and we can kind of understand, okay, when were they accessing meat? But at least for me, it's the stone tool is this kind of
00:29:44
Speaker
active part of creation is so essential to us being alive today. Deep. All right. So did we kind of cover your everyday grind or would you want to explain that?
00:29:59
Speaker
Pretty much, like, yeah, my everyday grind is just like, you know, pretty much we explain that. The good thing is, and the amazing part about working for also some of like your idols and your mentors is, so I work, I have the summers to do fieldwork. So last summer I went out with Brianna to a different site in Kenya called Olpejita, which is a
00:30:20
Speaker
It's basically a big animal reserve. It's where the, you know, the rhino that is now, they're all extinct, but there's two left. There are women. Oh, the white rhino. The white rhino? Oh, okay. Yeah. Northern white rhino. I bought the loud. Sure. That one. That's where they are. Oh, very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. My actual project was in Kentucky, so you got that cool. Cool.
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah, that was fun. We got attacked by two buffalo and it was very scary and I cried. You want to talk about it? It was my first up close gunshot. So we work with a, one of the reasons why it's super important, do not ever get out of the car ever. Like when you're doing a safari is because these are wild and dangerous animals.
00:31:10
Speaker
So we're doing a bone survey. So this is a different project that Dr. Pobener does and looking at like, you know, are things dying in the environments they're adapted for? What's preserved, you know, and looking at this and hopefully then using that as a model for the past. But we were in a really close, we have a guard with us. And so we were in a really closed environment. And there was a buffalo hiding behind a bush and they try and hide. And then they like wait for you. And then they want to get you. And he just shot above his head. Exactly.
00:31:39
Speaker
He shot above its head. He didn't, you know, didn't hurt it, but he needed to make it go away really fast. But of course, I, we all panicked. Well, we did what we were supposed to, but also, you know, you're supposed to climb a tree and a lot of it's just like acacias and they're very short and acacias are very, very spiky trees. And so that was my last field season, which was amazing. Definitely, you know, nothing I've ever done before. I'm realizing I'm much more scared of animals than I thought I would be.
00:32:09
Speaker
So that's fun. Your flight, does it, is your flight or your fight instinct that comes in? Oh, wow. I realized if I was on the Titanic, I would be pushing children out of the boat to get in there. That was my first instinct. I'm working on it. I got better. It's your evolutionary instinct though, you know, like it's how it works. Truly like trip my boss. Like she goes down first. I can keep going. No.
00:32:35
Speaker
Right.
Approach to Discussing Evolution with Skeptics
00:32:36
Speaker
Speaking about, you know, your evolutionary response, how do you interact with people who deny evolution that it's taken place? Great. If we descended from wolves while they're still wolves. Yeah, great question. Very wonderful variant on, you know, if we're descended from monkeys, why are there monkeys? So that's a really great question. And I approach it on a personal level. And that's, I think, what I can talk about. There are other ways
00:33:05
Speaker
which you can talk about it that are written about in really awesome science education books, but I'll talk about how I kind of come at it. I really love the phrase, and especially if people are kind of disbelieving in evolution or from a religious standpoint, I really love the phrase, your personal belief explains why. Why are we here? Why are humans important? Evolution just explains how.
00:33:33
Speaker
It's just the little bitty of how bits. And I explain it that way because, and then I kind of go into why I think evolution is one of the most beautiful things on earth, because it's how earth is why it is. And from my perspective, again, on a personal note, why would you take that beauty away from a creator? If you believe in a creator, why would you take that intricacy and that genius and that
00:34:02
Speaker
again, just the beauty of evolution away from a deity that you believe in. And so that's how I address it on a personal note. A lot of the time, especially when it comes to religious people, I don't think if you're not a member of the community, why should you kind of believe someone else? And I also think that we have to look at the roots of why people don't believe in evolution. And a lot of it too is like,
00:34:28
Speaker
especially in very strictly religious communities, the church and those teachings are so integral and important to your way of life. And especially in rural communities in the South, right?
00:34:44
Speaker
It's like a social aspect to it. Exactly. Your home is part of this amazing church community. So if you felt like you had to choose between believing in evolution or
00:35:01
Speaker
the core of your family and social life? God, no, don't believe in evolution. So I think a lot of it is you have to understand, because I used to take it really personally for years. I used to be like, well, if you don't believe in evolution, you don't respect me. And it's like, no, that's not the case at all. Yeah, so I answer questions. When I get asked personally, I use that phrase. Evolution is just the how. Religion is the why.
00:35:31
Speaker
That's a really interesting way to take it. I really like that. Yeah, that's also my company name. That's alright.
00:35:39
Speaker
Well, perfect. On that note, we're going to go ahead and take our next break and we'll be right back here in a bit. So stay tuned. Welcome back to a Life in Ruins podcast, episode two. We're here with our guests for the final segment, Ella Boduin. So we're going to go ahead and for this segment, we're just going to kind of like roundtable talk about questions that we want to discuss with Ella related to her personal work or just kind of what's going on in the greater anthropological realm. So David, you're up.
00:36:08
Speaker
Last week, I don't know if you heard our, or last month, our podcast with Spencer Pelton, but he kind of touched on this thing about, you know, that sense of awe that humans get from, you know, the past and like things that are, came before us. Ella, you kind of touched on this today, like about the beauty of evolution. So I just wanted to kind of say like, I, I was raised in a household where like, that was, you know, the, the weight of like, I raised agnostic, you know? So like my parents were like, oh yeah, evolution. So, so like, I didn't really have the experience that a lot of people do where they like, I grew up in a.
00:36:38
Speaker
like, a household where that's not a thing, you know? But at some day, like, I don't want to say, like, I achieved Nirvana, man. But, like, I got to this point where, like, evolution just clicked with me, like, what it is. And that's kind of why I got so into anthropology. And I love hunter-gatherer theory because it's, like, humans adhere to these evolutionary laws. And, like, I kind of just have a thing. Like, if I
00:37:01
Speaker
can't figure something out or I'm trying to explain something. I just think about it in an evolutionary sense and I'm like, oh, that makes sense. And then I'll look it up and there's evolutionary psychology and it's like, I guess I'm describing what religion is, but like. I have feelings about evolutionary psychology. Do you? Okay, let's fight.
00:37:18
Speaker
It's a bunch of bullshit. You think so? It's a bunch of bullshit that's sexist and stupid and not based on science. Yeah, that's my hard, hard stance on that. Mostly because I read stuff that's like, girl, women hunter, women gather, man hunter. And it just continually also.
00:37:36
Speaker
No, no, I know you don't truly we would not be friends if you did Good
00:37:59
Speaker
So I think it's a bunch of bullshit because I think it often relies on really bad stuff, like bad science, bad studies, because it completely ignores how influential culture is and like how we have created all of these structures around us. And I've just read so many like evolutionary psychology papers that are like, we're like this because like women were looking for mates that had beards and that was, and you're like, no, like think about, okay,
00:38:29
Speaker
Well, that's a phenotype thing, wouldn't it be? Well, but let's get into daddy issues, you know, like that's the thing, right? Like it's there's culture that's in this that is such a bad example. But like there are there's culture that is actively influencing everything we do. And I'm more of the kind of
00:38:47
Speaker
hippy dippy side a cultural amp, even though I do study paleo, that like, even the numbers we have are semi constructed, right? Like, the reality of understanding an archaeological site is all on scale, right? Like you have a
00:39:03
Speaker
Excavation square and that could tell you something you open up 10 that could tell you a completely different pattern What would happen if you opened up the landscape, you know? So we're still controlling a lot of what we're finding by sample size and by scale and I think that Evolution of psychology just honestly and in almost every case I've ever read it's just bad science, huh? at least
00:39:25
Speaker
Fuck me, all right, we'll go to the next question. Mostly just the stuff about like, oh, you feel this way because of your biology.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Especially when I really love slipping in stuff about gender as a construction when I give tours. I love doing that. Being like, oh, we don't know how gender played out in the past because that does not fossilize. We have no idea if there was gender in the way that we understand it now. So you're down with behavioral ecology then? Yes. Okay, cool. Yeah, but evolutionary psychology, hell no.
00:40:07
Speaker
Okay. Interesting. I'm going to go rethink my whole life now. So we can talk about it more later. Well, that's what this is podcast is for. So anyway, I'm going to take a step back and cry. So go. All right. Next.
00:40:21
Speaker
Okay, so I want to talk about the event that happened with Notre Dame the other day in which the cathedral had a horrible fire and burnt the roof and broke a pane glass. Real quick, I know there's like a bunch of stuff going on social media that the gold cross was saved and people are saying it's a sign of God.
00:40:42
Speaker
It could be, that's plausible, but the melting point of gold is much higher than the way wood burns, so fucking science. True, the roof did fall on it, just putting that out there as being a contrarian. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about that because I have to like
00:41:05
Speaker
or at least about the response to note, like I truly watching that in real time, like watching it burn in real time was horrific. And it made me really think about the National Museum of Brazil, which I don't think got enough press. And like us as a museum, we talked about it a lot. We have gone through a lot more. You know, everyone's checking the fire alarms at the Smithsonian. But like some of the most important things like with the loss of a building like that is there were a lot of
00:41:33
Speaker
records of indigenous languages that were recorded before they became extinct. And now those are gone. Back up your stuff digitally, everybody. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's so important. We're kind of coming to realize how how important digital like kind of the internet is.
00:41:52
Speaker
is now to science, just for preservation. But I also felt like I had to really critically engage with my whiteness as well, because I saw an example on Twitter. I can't remember her name. She's a doctor in anthropology, and she is native. And she talked about, oh, cool, a big, sparkly European church fell down. Who gives a shit?
00:42:14
Speaker
And my first reaction was like, oh my God, that's so horrible. And then kind of her next tweet was like, why should I as an indigenous person care about or like be made to care about this, this space that has like, when you know, this space that like is dedicated to Catholicism and Catholicism did so so much bad stuff to my community. And I really had to like think about how
00:42:41
Speaker
how upset I was getting and how I don't feel that kind of straightaway fear and anger when it comes to like a lot of other kind of intangible heritage sites or other sites in general that are like in the Middle East that are getting destroyed. And that kind of made me engage a lot more with, okay, like why am I responding in this way? And how is the world responding in a different way? I don't know if that was kind of
00:43:09
Speaker
No, absolutely. And that's that's what I wanted to put like touch on. Cool. You're absolutely right. And when I saw Notre Dame, I was like, OK. But then I saw the amount of people on social media who were like, oh, my God, what a travesty. And as as a member of the Pawnee Nation and who's like finally like like very closely attuned, like what's going on in Indian country? Like pipelines are being built and just bulldozing
00:43:36
Speaker
ancestral sites and like no one cares. We had the water protesters for the Dakota Access Pipeline shot at with rubber bullets by police hosed in the middle of the night just to stop a pipeline going through their own ancestral territory. No one talked about it and no one cared. And you know it's just absolutely ridiculous that no one cares about the indigenous.
00:43:58
Speaker
Oh my God. That didn't work nearly as well as I had it tuned. I've been playing with that. Was that a real recorder you had there? No, it's actually a Navajo flute. I have one. Oh, I can. I can play color of the wind. I did it the entire time in the field, but I know it's absolutely phenomenal. I love this thing.
00:44:16
Speaker
I'm not native so I can't really speak on that end but like I had someone because everyone on Facebook's like oh man I remember the Notre Dame like you don't care anyway. Everyone swarming to Twitter to post pictures of them in Paris. Somebody pointed out that like
00:44:33
Speaker
You know, the grand that's like one of the symbols of Paris as like a city identity, you know, like the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame. And somebody said, like, it's kind of the equivalent of like losing like the Grand Canyon in America because we don't have things that are like that that old, you know, and maybe it's not the equivalent. But like when he said that, I was like, oh, you know what, like.
00:44:51
Speaker
And like we were saying earlier, things are so much older overseas than they are here. We don't really like think of it that way. So like when he said like that, I was like, I guess I should give more of a shit, you know, like and I was like, but I really like what you guys are bringing up with the, you know, the access pipeline. Like nobody gave a shit.
00:45:07
Speaker
No, but it wasn't even on the news. But it was barely even on the news. And it was just absolutely ridiculous. And like Keystone is coming up. And Keystone has been a freaking nightmare. And that's going through the Pawnees, our ancestral homeland. And we're just like, great. Perfect. Here we go. Round two. Noah's in a care. And yeah, it's fun.
00:45:29
Speaker
Building up on that, there's the amount of money that's been raised in Notre Dame to do these renovations compared to the amount of money that was probably raised for the Brazil Museum or for these folks. That's why it still doesn't have clean water. It's like all these billionaires and millionaires. Did you see Disney pledge $50 million to donate to it because they made a movie about it?
00:45:56
Speaker
Why isn't that money going to those folks who are suffering at the Dakota Access Pipeline or other places? That's what it comes down to. The people that care about it in the United States are mostly of European descent and they see it as part of their heritage. It is such a monument to France and to the world itself. This is why all of their attention is going to it because they see it as part of their heritage.
00:46:19
Speaker
where it's like the Brazil Museum, like people in America are like, okay, great, who cares about a bunch of Amazonian tribes that we've never heard of, or looking at out west to the reservation systems and toying on with American Indians or the people that live in Flint, Michigan, those don't, they don't,
00:46:31
Speaker
I want to go as far to say like they don't care about those people, but it's just not something that they need to, that they're cognitively aware of or feel like, you know, it doesn't connect with them. It's like, okay. It's like not even on the radar. Exactly. Like on the kind of note of connecting with people is like one of the things that I think that we can use, like again, like
00:46:52
Speaker
as a white person, it's my I think, at least for me, like, it's part of my duty, especially when it comes to like, anthropology and archaeology to do the legwork of helping educate other people when I can't other white people when I can so that that onus does not get put upon marginalized communities. Like, I think that we can use Notre Dame to is this way of being like, okay, you're sad about this.
00:47:15
Speaker
Now let's talk about these, like, let's use this as a jumping off point to kind of really get into, you were so upset by this thing burning down. Think about these 800 year old trees, you know, that are important to this community. This is the same thing. Why are you upset about one thing and not about the other? And how can we use Notre Dame to, or Dame or, see, I don't even care. Aren't you French? No. No. No. Wow. You're French. I'm going to be quiet.
00:47:46
Speaker
My last name is, but I think it's French Canadian. My 23andMe says I'm a little bit French, but mostly Ashkenazi, so yay. There we go. I hope that we can use Notre Dame as a point at which we can try and make people more empathetic. As garbage as that is, that we have to use white people things to make white people... I say that as being part of the problem.
00:48:15
Speaker
that we have to use this to make people empathetic, but use it. I don't know. Does that make sense? No, absolutely. It only works to galvanize the public when it affects them. And you have to unfortunately use those lessons to like, hey, you see this thing that you guys are all really upset about? Now let's put that in the context of somebody else and why don't we reevaluate how we think of other things? Yeah.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah. And also, I know whoever listened to podcasts, if I've said something problematic, slide into those DMs, I will change. It's my duty to learn and keep learning. I think we can also agree that it is a tragedy, like a monument burned down. No, 100%. Yeah. But also, it's been renovated.
00:49:02
Speaker
multiple times. That's history. Yeah, bits and pieces burned down. Not all of it. Yeah, exactly. Notre Dame is not in its original context either. It has gone through transformation over time and have been rehabilitated, like wood rots.
00:49:19
Speaker
who would have thought. There's also millions and millions of pictures on Instagram that you can literally use to recreate the exact, and they've recreated it in video games, haven't they? And like, you know, and I think like in Sasson's Creed, they do, I can't remember which one is the one where they do in kind of the France. Is it brotherhood? I think it might be. Yeah, but I think there is a digital representation of it there. Yeah.
00:49:41
Speaker
Well, there we go. And like, thankfully, they do, you know, they were training for fire safety. So like the crown of thorns and other sacred artifacts were saved. So like and paintings and artwork and stuff. Oh, right. Wasn't it like a piece of the cross from Golgotha there? I think so. I don't know. I saw that. I don't know if that's like rumored, like, you know, like a hunchback lives up there, too, but like. Don't worry, he was he was evacuated real fast. Cool.
00:50:09
Speaker
Oh right, probably. I also posted a meme about him like burning the building down and I was like, is this too soon? Dude, I love that meme so bad. But I kind of used all the time and I'm like, I crushed it on there. Within 10 minutes, I had negative 50 likes on that and I was like, oh, much too soon. What, negative 50?
00:50:28
Speaker
Yeah, like I think it was like negative like 10, but I think after 15 and the negatives, like they just take it down because you're just incendiary. And I thought I was clever. Like it was the guy from office space and he's like, I'll put in the building down. And I was like, Oh yeah. So again, I'm going to take a step back and reassess my life next or not. Well, as this podcast is called a life in ruins, we are interviewing you about your life in archeology. If you had to do it again, would you do it?
00:50:57
Speaker
Oh God, of course. Okay. Cool. I take everything. I love, I love this. It's what I'm meant to do. I think I hope, dear God, I hope someone keeps paying me to do it. That's the dream. Yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker
All right, Ella, thank you for telling us about your life in ruins. How can our viewers learn more about you and find out more about what you're talking about nowadays? Yeah, you can please follow me on Twitter. I need the validation. So that is at Ella underscore Bodwin. So that's at E-L-L-A underscore B-E-A-U-D-O-I-N.
00:51:31
Speaker
It's great. Pretty much that's where I am actively myself online. But I also highly recommend following the Human Origins Twitter, the Smithsonian. You'll occasionally see some idiotic meme content that I cannot confirm or deny is me. So I can really have highly recommend that when you can just look for human origins. It's pretty much like the first one that comes on up. All right. Perfect. Thanks, Ella. And we're out.
00:52:01
Speaker
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. Hey, guys. What? What human species is really the naysayer? I don't know, Connor. What is it? Yeah, I don't know. Homo naledi. Get out. Wait, what?
00:52:44
Speaker
This show is produced by the archaeology podcast network Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective.
00:52:49
Speaker
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.