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Oldest ritual in the world? - TAS 270
502 Plays2 months ago
First up this week we look at one more reason why Cahokia wasn’t all of a sudden abandoned the way researchers had once assumed. Then, excavations at a site in Lake George, NY may (or may not!) shed some light on a 1700’s era Smallpox hospital. And finally, is it possible that a ritual has been passed down 12,000 years? New evidence in Australia suggests it is!
Links
- Archaeologists dispute theory of largest Native American city's abandonment
- In Lake George, they're sifting through history
- 12,000-year-old ritual passed down 500 generations may be world’s oldest
- Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age
Contact
- Chris Webster
chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com - Rachel Roden
rachel@unraveleddesigns.com
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Archaeology Show, episode 270. On today's show, we talk about Cahokia, Lake George, and ritual. Let's take a little deeper, but it's still going to be ritual. It's always ritual. It's always ritual.
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the, we have no followers on our Instagram account show. Welcome to, I was right. So last week, if you're just joining us. You're so blood-heard over this. I said, if we get to 1,000 followers, I didn't think it'd happen in a week, but I said if we get to 1,000 followers on our Roadster Adventures Instagram account, which is kind of our RVing account, and we don't really have an archeology show account, but we do share archeology-related yeah things on there because we as RVers and archeologists, we like to visit historical things as well as yeah just you know whatever we're doing. So it's kind of like a combo account. But I said if we hit 1,000 followers on that account that we would, you know,
00:01:18
Speaker
start an RVing podcast where we kind of focus on that kind of thing and just our travels rather than polluting this channel with that and this podcast with that. But it seems like you guys don't love us in that way. And we've gained maybe 12 followers, so you guys love us. Thank you very much. But the rest of you just don't want it. Look, please don't anybody take offense to this. I am a podcast listener. I understand that you're driving right now. you are running right now, you're working out, you're doing whatever you're doing, and you just don't have time. So I get it. But it would be cool if like you could come back to it later, but whatever, it's fine. I totally understand. Yeah. Well, we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming and all our RV stuff. Although I do have to say, historically speaking, we did go to Niagara Falls.
00:02:05
Speaker
this last week. Well, because we're here this week now. yeah And we went and did the whole US s side of the thing on 4th of July, yep Independence Day in the United States here, for those of you who are not in the United States. yeah Otherwise known as just the 4th of July. so The fourth day of the month of July. Right. I did see a little Instagram stat today, which so would take that for a grain of salt. I didn't fact check it, but it said it said that like every six days, on average, some country in this world celebrates its independence from Great Britain, and it's the most celebrated holiday on the planet.
00:02:41
Speaker
so there's that yeah Canada had their day you know three days before us. yeah yeah die first i think yeah yeah But anyway, first off, Niagara Falls, that where the Niagara River goes through, that gorge was much narrower than I thought it was. I did not understand the layout yeah of how these waterfalls were doing the thing that they do because there's three of them technically and I was like, how can there be three? But like basically what they're doing is these three waterfalls are dropping that water down from kind of from the American side to to the river, which is the border between America or the US and Canada. So yeah, the only falls that split by the international border is Horseshoe Falls. Yeah. Yeah. The border kind of goes right through the middle. I was looking at the like the way the border goes. Most of it's Canada, just a little smidgey smidge is America. And then American Falls and Bridalveil Falls, right? That one is on... Yeah, they call it Luna Falls, itll but also Bridalveil Falls. oh a little That little one next to American Falls, yeah. That's the one that you can like walk right up basically under, which we did. yeah And that was so cool. Crazy. Which you can see on our Instagram stories.
00:03:50
Speaker
The stories which are gone now. Well, I saved them as a little highlight. So you can still go to them if you follow us. so that Anyway, enough about our travels no I want to say historically speaking, because we did see a little video and I thought this was really cool. and Back in the 1800s, by the mid-1880s, give or take or so, there was a lot of industry and practically all the falls there were completely just like bottled up by factories that were sitting at the edge of the falls there. and like private land ownership that controlled access to the land around the falls. right So well you you couldn't actually really like enjoy it the way we did.
00:04:25
Speaker
No, they were charging admission to go see certain things. And these factories were just taking in the water, using the power of the water and the river coming through there to you know run their factories. And then whatever byproduct was coming out was just being spit over the side. And it was all gross and disgusting. Well, a bunch of notable American and Canadian you know industrial scholars and industrialists and business people got together and were like, this has really kind of got to stop. yeah And they put together this this whole kind of collective, and they they really did some work to get all this just taken care of. They like bought all the land back, basically, from these factories and yeah other places that owned it. Yeah, and they turned it into, on definitely the US side, and I guess on the Canadian side as well, on the US side it became the first US s state park ever. yeah Which led, they said, towards the national park system. yeah It kind of paved the way to the national park system. like that whole
00:05:16
Speaker
The whole idea of doing it, I think. The idea of putting aside this whole thing as a park. So that I thought was kind of cool. Yeah, that was really neat. And I'm really glad about it, because Nashville and state parks are some of my favorite places in this entire country. Well, they've got this whole slogan that says, the world changed here. And there were no national parks in the world before. like the US made a national park. yeah And if that's all started with New York creating a state park, then the world really did change that. And then another thing that changed was they really did start
00:05:47
Speaker
with industrialized power here, too, because Nikola Tesla basically invented AC power. And him and Westinghouse, who was another big powerful person at the time, got together. And at one of the Pan-American fairs, I can't remember which one in Chicago or something like that. I can't remember which one. I think it was Chicago. It wasn't a world's fair. It was a different fair. But anyway, at one of the fairs, they won the contract, essentially. to try this thing out, and they put together all these turbines. They did this whole thing, and they basically lit up Buffalo, which is 20 miles away, Buffalo, New York. and that Essentially, that transmission of electricity across distances is what revolutionized the world, yeah essentially. Nobody had ever done that before, and it really did change the world. so and That was all from the power of water at Niagara Falls. ye so
00:06:33
Speaker
And there's a lot of power there, so it makes sense. And it's still providing power to this day, I believe. Which is interesting, because there isn't actually turbines at Niagara Falls. There's not a dam there. No, it's at the river. But there is dams on the river. And we crossed over them. There's a lot of hydroelectric activity on the Niagara River. It's just not at the falls. Yeah, they're not touching the falls. They're letting them do their thing. Anyway, really, really cool part of the country. We've enjoyed our visit up here, for sure. and Anyway, another city that was real powerful, and but then failed for who knows what reason, yeah was Cahokia. And that was in, well, what's now East St. Louis, Illinois, I guess. But anyway, this article is from Newsweek. We found it on Apple News. You'll see the article in your show notes. But Cahokia is the name given to this Native American city that is across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri in Illinois. And it was the largest Native American city in North America.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, it was occupied from around 1050 CE and it reached this peak about 50 years later. And then it went on from there for another couple hundred years until while we get to what happened to it. Yeah. Yeah. It was the center of what's known as Mississippian culture. And that's just the name given to a certain type of culture. You know, archaeologists come up with these these traits given to a culture, you know, when they invent the bow and arrow, or they have ah they have pottery, or they do a thing, right? Then we give this but give this name to them, you know? And that becomes what the culture is known as. It's just like when you hear of somebody being known as Mississippian culture, you know certain attributes about the culture. Yeah, I mean, it was probably first identified in Mississippi or something like that. Or across the Mississippi River. Or on the river, yeah yeah, something like that. So that's how those things come about. Well, the Mississippian culture was, again, identified probably locally somewhere and then spread out as this idea. So Mississippian culture was spread across the southeastern, eastern, and midwestern United States from the 8th century to the start of European contact. Yeah, i mean big big group of people and all over the Southeast. so We've definitely encountered it in the work that we did in that area. oh yeah yeah For sure sure. It's thought that up to tens of thousands of people lived in Cahokia at the height of its occupation, yeah making it one of the largest settlements in the world at the time of its height.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, and that is one place that we have actually been to. Yeah, we've been to the top of the big mound. Not recently. Not recently. There was a conference there a few years back, and that's when we went, right? It was when I was in grad school. I remember that one. Yeah, that was a long time ago. It was my first Society for American Archaeology Conference. No, it wasn't my first one. It was my first one in grad school. That's right, because I remember I went to one before that. But this is the one I went to in grad school. So that must mean we drove up there from Georgia. It must have been like 2010 then, right? Yeah, somewhere around then. Yeah, 910. think I think it had to have been 10. Yeah. So most of it in 2010, yeah, it's only been 14 years ago at this point. Yeah, but it was it's still like sticks in your brain. You still remember it because there are these giant grassy mounds yeah and there's paths all through and around and on them. Yes, human made. And it's it's really crazy to visit it because the size of it is so gigantic.
00:09:45
Speaker
And then you imagine all the people that would have lived there. And it's just, it's really crazy how big it was, you know? Yeah. And one thing, if you, if you look it up, that you have to remember with all the people that live there is the mounds area. I mean right now, wouldn't have held ten thousand tens of thousands of people. now these are that this would This would have been like this ceremonial area yeah and probably high up people and and honestly like like a town type of area. yeah And people would have lived in the surrounding areas. But it would have supported tens of thousands of people. Yeah, it was their central area for you know yeah ritual and stuff like that. Exactly.
00:10:20
Speaker
yeah And two things that stick out in my mind when I think of visiting there is one is we went up in the St. Louis Arch and you could see the tallest mound from Cahokia from the St. Louis Arch and it was a ways away. I don't yeah i remember seeing the top of it. and I don't remember seeing the arch from the mound. I definitely remember that. yeah And then also in the museum and I have a love hate relationship with museums because museums I feel like are mostly poorly done. like When you just have a bunch of things in display cases with labels, it doesn't teach me anything. it is not interesting I just don't care. like I just don't care. And when you just put no effort into it, but the dioramas and the life size,
00:11:03
Speaker
people and huts and things and people doing real things that they have at the Cahokia Visitor Center was just probably the best one I've still, to this date, ever seen. It was quite interactive, wasn't it? I always think about it when I think of visiting somewhere. It was a really well done museum, for sure. Anyway, by around 1400 CE, the city was nearly completely abandoned, and we still don't really know why. Yeah. Now, potential factors could have included drought, flooding, climate change, over-exploitation of resources, and sociopolitical instability. So basically anything is yeah anything that ever has caused a society to... I'm not going to use the word collapse because we have decided to reject that word, and for good reason, because
00:11:51
Speaker
or abandon, collapse, disappear. All those words say something about a culture that we don't want to say. All we know is that the people left. They weren't out there anymore. I think the word is in my notes somewhere because they used it in the article. They did. they Yeah, they did. But it's we can go into that a little bit more. But basically, you just these were people who didn't necessarily, it's not like they all died, right? There wasn't a catastrophic event that killed everybody. It was kind of what the article says here, too. Yeah, they didn't. Yeah, so yeah so anyway. And one of the popular theories was depopulation driven by massive crop failure brought on by prolonged drought. yeah But the recent research that we're talking about here, which was published in the journal The Holocene, has cast doubt on that. And if you've never heard of The Holocene, that is basically the geological epoch that we're in now that
00:12:40
Speaker
is after the last glacial maximum, basically, or the last glacial time period. So the Pleistocene. Yeah, it's basically affected by humans, right? Like once humans appeared on Earth. That's what they're talking about. Yeah. So Natalie Mueller and Caitlin Rankin published that residents had other other reasons to leave the city. It wasn't necessarily this. Yeah. And obviously, that makes sense, right? Because people are still people. Even 1,000 years ago, people were, yeah, sure, like a drought might have happened and it sucked. But they figured out ways around it, right? Yeah. So, what they were looking at was they took all these different theories that people had, and they just started testing them, and they said, well, let's let let's just take a look at one of these and see if we can't either prove it or disprove it. yeah And they took soil samples from around the site, including from some of the famous earthwork mounds, and they looked at carbon isotopes. And from these samples of carbon isotopes, when you look at those,
00:13:34
Speaker
These carbon isotopes represent plants growing in the area at the time, and this is when they said at the time of collapse, or at the time of abandonment, or supposed abandonment, when nobody was living there anymore. And what they were looking for is, did you see different plants at that time? yeah Because if you see different plants at that time, what they would suggest is, if there was a period of prolonged drought, you no longer see crops, the normal crops you would expect to see, you would see like prairie grasses and things like that that would have taken over in place of the crops. yeah But they just simply don't see that. yeah They still see crops. They still see the the normal stuff. They still see what people were eating. So like obviously, they were figuring out a way to get around the whole drought thing. I mean, they they were probably controlling the water, what little that they did have. like There's probably a lot of ingenious ways that they had to to keep their crops growing. Right. Now, there was there was climate change at this time. It's pretty well documented around the planet. I think it's- Is this the Little Ice Age?
00:14:27
Speaker
i'm not sure don't quote us on that yeah but because it just kind of popped into my head but there is a time around this time it affected yeah choco canyon it affected all kinds of things I thought that was a little ice age i don't know yeah but is it affected europe and everything too like you see it in that's Across the world. During the Dark Ages. Yeah, exactly. Across the world, this was affected, right? yeah But they also say that you know residents here, this is a sophisticated city. They knew what they were doing. They probably could have handled themselves. Not to say that people probably didn't die. It was a drought. There probably was some famine. There probably was some things like that. But it doesn't mean that like the whole city just failed. yeah But it probably does mean that some people probably left yeah for for greener pastures, so to speak. you know They probably took off. yeah And the city probably did decline a little bit. But they said they probably managed their way through it.
00:15:11
Speaker
yeah You know what this reminds me of? like You hear about these like sort of, especially in Asian countries that are that are growing rapidly and their cities are growing rapidly, probably in India too, where there's this like mass exodus from the rural areas into the cities. And the reason is just because people can simply make more money in the cities, right? So that's why they're doing that. But what that effectively does is leaves these like rural villages essentially abandoned and empty. yeah And it's not because anybody died. It's not because there was anything catastrophic. It was just that they're seeking opportunities elsewhere. And you have to look at what's going on here and think, well, maybe something similar was going on. Maybe they, the younger people, the younger generation were looking around and seeing a different opportunity elsewhere and they chose to take it. yeah There's no reason why that couldn't have happened in a native culture too.
00:16:01
Speaker
i mean I'm willing to bet with just a a handful of generations, if even less, of times of instability brought on by climate change and you know this drought and things like that, if you've got a couple of different rulers maybe that just you know maybe one ruler handled it pretty well and you get a couple of different rulers that just like don't handle it well, yeah that's enough to just say just have people just a abandon it. Just lose faith. and they're like we got to we got a Grass is greener, right? We've got to try this somewhere else. Maybe it'll be better. I'm out. Don't know. See you, bro. yeah yeah I mean, not that we're saying that that's exactly what happened, but yeah I just think that the whole catastrophic thing that you can blame is it's just not really where archaeology is is at these days. We're not looking for that that smoking gun thing to blame abandonment of a city like this. It's not it's more nuanced than that. I love these kind of studies to to bring that nuance into the picture.
00:16:55
Speaker
all right Well, next, we're going to Lake George, where we're actually going soon, where're where half of your family's from, yeah and where we hope to not catch smallpox. ah um all right Back in a minute. it got dark
00:17:13
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 270 of The Archaeology Show, where we have 10 more followers than we did last week on Roadster Adventure. You need to give it up, bro. That's enough. i mean I was thinking about starting an Archaeology Show Instagram, but I just don't have the energy to post on two different threads. I know. We can barely keep up with Roadster Adventure. It's terrible. I don't post anything on my personal, or my my yarn knitting one at all anymore. so yeah All right. So anyway. It's a lot. With this riveting content, we'll definitely gain at least seven more followers. All right. Oh, God. OK. So we're going over to Lake George, New York, a place that I am very familiar with because my dad is from the area. And I grew up going there as a kid. And I spent a lot of time, not on Lake George itself, but in in the area. There's a smaller lake nearby that my my dad is actually from. So yeah yeah, I love the area. It's beautiful.
00:18:09
Speaker
Beautiful, beautiful area. And because of algorithms and the fact that your phone is listening to you and all that stuff, I actually saw this article and I was like, well, we have to talk about it. Yeah. Like it's served it right up to you. Like, Oh, are you in New York currently? Are you going to be near this place? Here you go. Article just for you. It's actually kind of a short little, you know, kind of like a little community college dig article san of thing. I don't think it's just a little thing, but I i thought it was kind of interesting. It's cool that we're going to this place and there's some archaeological work that's happening like right in the area. So now we know about it. But so. All right. So Lake George, for those that aren't familiar. It is on the eastern edge of New York state along the border with Vermont. It's this long skinny lake. It's been carved out by glaciers. Like basically all the lakes in that area have been on the south end of the lake is the Lake George battlefield park. And that is one of the longest continually occupied military sites in American history. yeah It has a wonderful history where over 2000 patients suffered from smallpox. So must've been kind of like a quarantining.
00:19:14
Speaker
It was a hospital. has Yeah, it must have been. Yeah, so archaeologists from Skidmore College, which I've heard of before and always thought was like the worst name ever. But anyway, and volunteers. I just don't like it. I don't know. Okay, all right. Volunteers, they resumed excavations this year at the site after the last dig in 2016 by the late David Starbuck from SUNY Adirondack. I guess he died sometime between now and then. I think they said he died of cancer a few years back. and so yeah that There's not been any work at this area since he he passed away because it was sort of his baby, his project or whatever. But they've read they've gone back this this field season to do some more work.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, so the site was of a large military encampment during the French and Indian War, the 1755 Battle of Lake George, and later 1776, the General Hospital at Fort George, and the largest smallpox hospital in North America at the time. So they were literally sending people here with smallpox, yeah because apparently they knew how to handle it, or not. Or and just kept them away from everybody else. i mean yeah you know they They knew at a certain point that it was very contagious. right so yeah And so just this past June, ah students and volunteers excavated at the north end of the park near where the 1750s military barracks were built.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, they actually thought they were digging inside or perhaps just adjacent to one that may have housed smallpox patients. And they thought they were in there and they were digging in this spot because they had done some ground penetrating radar studies first. And the GPR studies showed what they thought were like metallic anomalies. They thought it was metal. They thought it was some other things. So they decided to dig there. What they found was beer caps and pull tabs. Oh my God, when I read that, I absolutely died because that's like 70s era trash, yeah right? Do you know who was running around in the 70s like brothers drinking beers and pulling taps? Yeah, my dad. Definitely him. its Definitely my dad. Sitting down on a military part.
00:21:19
Speaker
We're right. I could totally see him doing that. In fact, i'm goingnna we're going to see him tomorrow. I'm going to ask him about it. But hey, Dad, do you remember like going to this spot with your friends and drinking like sometime in the mid to late 70s? Oh, man. I hope he says yes, because I'm not going to tell him why I'm asking. Yeah, of course not. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Anyway, so obviously they this GPR anomaly was unfortunately not related to the older occupation of the site. It was the modern occupation of the site, I suppose. Right. And ground-predatorading radar is is kind of limited in the sense that it can't see below that kind of stuff. Right. But to their credit, they kept digging. Yeah. And as they dug deeper, they did find possibly butchered cows, sheeps, or pig bones. Yeah. It seemed to be some kind of a trash pit, and they feel like it was about an 18th century one. So you know we're getting down into the the right
00:22:08
Speaker
the right time period. yeah And I think you know they're just maybe assuming it was 18th century because they're saying, was there anything else here between then and you know Rachel's dad like you know drinking. so My dad's partying it up. Right. So we had smallpox patients and then Rachel's dad and his buddies. Yeah, yeah exactly. so Anyway, the goal of this year's dig was to just collect information and help manage, interpret, and better protect the site going forward. and I'll tell you what, the real goal of this was to probably train field school students. and they always yeah They always need some place to go, and you like to have some place that's real. and so having a Having a dig like this on a park, on ah on a place that really could use the research and could use the help probably doesn't have a lot of money.
00:22:49
Speaker
They probably did this for free. There was volunteers helping as well. yeah It's just a good community, public effort, and it also gives students ah a nice, real thing to actually work on. it Yeah, totally. My guess is that's the real reason why they were digging here, but it also has ah an honest community benefit as well. So the excavation was run by Siobhan Hart and it sounds like it's unclear why she ended up even doing this day because she very clearly said that she probably won't come back. So yeah i I wonder if it was like a one-off situation where maybe the park needed the work done and they they found you know through their resources who they could get to come and do it and that kind of thing. um If they want to do more work, they're going to have to fundraise and and get that together in order to make that happen, it sounds like. so
00:23:34
Speaker
it's It's interesting how this came about. but you know um And maybe if they had found stuff that was a little bit more interesting than just you know beer pull tabs from the 70s and some possibly butchered bonus, the end result of this article is actually a little bit of a let down. So it's like, oh, so they kind of found nothing. wow But more work, right? There's always more work to do. There's always somewhere else to look. There's always something else you could do. So yeah, I don't know. Guess we'll see if they end up returning and having more luck next time.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yep. Well, sometimes when you don't find something in archaeology, it just means nothing happened right there. Yeah. And that's actually good information sometimes. Yep. You got got to cross it off your list. Like, OK, they weren't here. Where's the next place to look? Yep. All right. Well, get your drinks out. Go pour yourself a tall one, whether it's glass of wine, glass of water, whatever you want, because about to play the ritual drinking game on the other side. Australia style. Ritual! Back in a minute.
00:24:36
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 270. And I hope you got your drink. Like I said, I didn't have to be alcoholic, but just a drink. You know, stay hydrated. Get some water. Could be coffee. I don't care. Maybe tea. I don't know. Who knows what? I mean, if you drink tea instead of coffee, though, we probably can't be friends. But otherwise. Excuse me. No, we probably can't be. Are you friends with Tilly? I know. Yeah. But still though, seriously Tilly, I've got some coffees that'll change your life. So anyway, so yes, this article is called 12,000 year old ritual passed down 500 generations, maybe the world's oldest. And I got to tell you, I'm standing there looking at amazing waterfalls on fourth of July independence day. And this just starts pinging me on my watch and my phone. I saw it on my phone. I saw my watch and I was like, all right, well, I guess I know what the next article we're going to talk about when we record tomorrow is.
00:25:26
Speaker
But it's a good one. I was really super interested in this. So yeah yeah so so this is based on an actual peer-reviewed study. It was published in the Nature Magazine human behavior like subcategory of nature. yeah And we'll have the link in the show notes. I'm pretty sure it was open source. So you could go check it out. You can at least see the figures, even if it wasn't. so yeah Yeah, the article subtitle is buried deep in an Australian cave. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that an aboriginal ritual may have been passed down 500 generations and survived 12,000 years, making it the oldest known continuous cultural practice in the world, according to a new study. That's a hell of a subtitle. It really is. And I was like, man, those are some extraordinary claims. And as the great Carl Sagan said, they better have some extraordinary evidence to go along with that.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I have to say, I'm actually pretty impressed with it. So yeah we'll get we'll get to it. So this is coming from excavations in Clogg's Cave, which is approximately 217 miles or 350 kilometers east of Melbourne. Australia, that is. We are on the continent of Australia. Yes. Not Melbourne, Ohio. yeah nope Nope. If there is one, I don't know. There might be could be. Who knows? yeah Researchers found a piece of wood protruding from the ground that they dated to 12,000 years using radiocarbon dating. Yes.
00:26:51
Speaker
It's very unusual for a wood artifact to last that long, so they were pretty excited about it. Then they found another piece of wood, a little wooden stick, in the same cave that was very similar to the first and dated that to 11,000 years ago. yeah So, 1,000 years apart. Now that instantly kind of throws up a red flag for me, although it didn't read the peer-reviewed article to find out exactly what the years were and what the error range was, because radiocarbon dating has It's got to have some error bars there that are putting them close to each other. Yeah, definitely. Definitely could, but it is interesting. It's the same cave, right? yeah Thousand years difference between them. So yeah. And get this, both sticks were smeared with animal or human fat. I've got a big WTF around that. Like
00:27:34
Speaker
Where are you getting human fat from? Are you like and dipping under somebody's surface like skin to grab a little scoop of human fat? Like what? Plenty of dead humans around 11,000 years ago. Oh my god, that's terrible. But I guess, you know, ritual. Yep. Anyway, so the sticks that were smeared with this fat were found near what they are calling miniature fireplaces that had been fleetingly burnt. yeah And you really can see what they're talking about when you look at the picture because you can see like a stick and then the end of it has this sort of charred, burned end, you know, just on the end of it. It's not anywhere else and it doesn't seem to be a larger fire pit necessarily. So yeah.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, these were originally found during excavations about 50 years ago. This is kind of important to the story, but they did not consult local Aboriginal groups about their findings. Probably back in a time when nobody consulted local Aboriginal groups about their findings. Nope, didn't happen here in the States. I'm sure it didn't happen in Australia either. So yeah, not so much. Yeah, the wooden sticks weren't analyzed in any detail at that time. And nobody really cared about them too much. Yeah, I don't know what they thought of them. I mean, they didn't even do the carbon dating back then, I don't think. They might not have even known that they were that old. I don't think they had carbon dating back then. Oh, yeah, they probably didn't, not in the 70s. Not 50 years ago. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was invented. It was the beginnings of it, right? They weren't using it for archeology, though. Oh, OK. Not in the 70s. Yeah, in fact, I think carbon dating was technically invented in like
00:28:57
Speaker
the 50s or 60s or something, but it definitely wasn't used for archaeology until maybe even the 90s. Okay, gotcha. Well, that makes sense because they were basically just tucked away. and You know, we've got these great pictures that are in the article, so they knew what it looked like in situ or whatever, and then they had the artifacts, of course. but yeah So, the story doesn't pick up again until 2017 when Bruno David, a professor at the Monash Indigenous Studies Center, was approached by the Gunai-Kranai people to investigate the site and those artifacts, kind of specifically.
00:29:28
Speaker
And in particular, they were interested in how these sticks with burnt ends could be related to a 19th century ritual that was documented by Alfred Howitt, who was a geologist and ethnographer back at the time. Yeah. how it had documented rituals that were performed by powerful Gunai-Kurnai wizards or medicine men and women in Klog's cave in the 1880s. And that was his word, I think. Yeah. Which they had it in quotes in the article. Yeah, he called them wizards and all that stuff. He said they were super powerful.
00:29:59
Speaker
And they did these rituals to either harm an enemy or heal a sick person. They would take something belonging to the target and attach it to a throwing stick along with human or animal fat. Then the stick was stuck slanting into the ground before a fire in a position that over time would fall down. yeah The recent analysis of data also found that the cave had almost exclusively been used for ritual purposes because there's no evidence of vertebrate food remains. So no other use yeah of the cave whatsoever. yeah So the crazy thing about this whole thing is They kind of still do this today.
00:30:32
Speaker
or they have ethnographic evidence that they've done this recently. Yeah, like 150 years ago they were doing it. At least 150 years ago. They're not kind of saying they don't do this now, but at least 150 years ago they were doing this, and 12,000 years ago they were doing this. So I'm like, do you make the leap and connect something that happened 11 or 12,000 years ago with what was happening 150 years ago? Do we really think that that's an unbroken chain of passing down a ritual from one person or group to another or is it just that humans like kind of do similar things in general and it It could have just grown out of a different culture in a different time the same or similar practice what's real interesting to me is that
00:31:17
Speaker
you know You see what we see in movies where something starts out small and then just gets blown way out of proportion. you know it just like It starts really tiny and then you know grows into this huge thing. i mean Let's just take modern religion. It starts out as this this guy in the Middle East just going, hey, be nice to each other. And now we've got, you know, huge, crazy churches and all these ridiculous rituals and robes, right? Like, where did all that come from? yeah That didn't start in the Middle East, right? and So why did this not change in 12,000 years? Yeah. Why did this same exact thing happen?
00:31:53
Speaker
Across that large amount of time. Well, and not only that but like how long was it going on before that? Yeah, you know like was this going on for 12,000 years before this? Yeah, where did this actually start? Yeah, what I mean so it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it is interesting to imagine that that is one reality is that yes, it was just handed down from person to person to person throughout the the millennia right like that is Absolutely possible. It's just I don't think it's the only way that it could have happened. There's definitely other ways, which is it just sprouted up in different could have areas. I don't know. what It's so specific. It is very specific. Yeah, I'd i'd have a hard time believing that. Yeah. um But that that being said,
00:32:38
Speaker
so But you can believe easier that it it it handed down. I could believe that. Over 12,000 years? I could believe that. Really? It's such a specific thing. As long as the people were there and there was not an unbroken chain in the population and that, you know, these these kinds of things, I mean, they are they really are sacred to people. So yeah if you've got a ah way to hand something down and it is sacred enough that and believed enough, as long as people believe it works, They're not going to mess with it. yeah They are going to pass that down and it is not going to be changed. yeah which is Which is kind of why I think other religions change so much. I don't think anybody thinks it works. You know what I mean? well They think they can do it better because they don't think it works. That's why things change, and they they get moved. and they get that But I think some people somebody thinks this works. yeah And therefore, they believe in it. you know That's why you get some of those real, those kind of black arts they call them, you know like voodoo and stuff like that. yeah you know People really believe in that stuff. And it doesn't change very often. Because people don't mess with it, they don't use it very often, because they're afraid of it. Because they really think it works. People are still people and they put their personal spins on things. They make it slightly different. They make, you know, like people are still creative in whatever way they're doing their, they have an outlet and this would be one. Right. So I just find it hard to believe that it would be well, maybe the creativity comes in the size of the fire, the length of the stick or the fat or the things like that. But the general shape and size of the ritual is hard to change.
00:34:09
Speaker
I'm also like, why can't you tell whether it was human or animal fat? Is that because 12,000 years, it's just too degraded? Much is not big enough left. Maybe you can't tell the difference between fat that well. There's not enough DNA that's left. Yeah, I guess that's true. Or maybe they just haven't done that analysis yet. Yeah, yeah, true. Or maybe when it was collected 50 years ago, it wasn't collected in the right way. Oh, it could have been contaminated by humans touching it. Yeah, that's absolutely possible for sure. It may have had animal fat on it, and now it has human fat on it. Right. Because they just picked it up and licked it, because that's what archaeologists do. They just lick artifacts. What is this? Is it bone or wood? Why do we do that? Stop doing that. Don't do it. There's other ways to tell. You don't need to lick it. You know what you should do instead? You should follow us on Instagram. All right. That's it. How many times do we say ritual? Are you even conscious right now?
00:35:03
Speaker
Um, well, I have been drinking wine, but like our listeners. Oh, I'm so I was just like making the argument for me being conscious. Oh, right. Yeah. So I'm talking to you. Well, if our listeners are still conscious, if you're like just hammered drunk right now, you may as well just go to Instagram and follow us. I'm telling you, they're all driving or working out. That's true. Nobody works out to us. Listen to podcasts. Nobody works out to us. Well, I work out to whatever podcast comes on, right? Well, yeah, I guess. It wouldn't be us. Well, if you're driving, here's your exit. All right, we'll see you next week. Bye.
00:35:41
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:36:05
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, 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.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.