February 13, 2014 • 37 mins
You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn't exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but they lived in other places too. Luckily the time they spent in caves has given us a glance at their culture thanks to the protective environments of caves.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Child's to w Chuck Bryant and
Jerry's over there, so it's stuff you should know. Wow,
it's the same energetic edition a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
(00:23):
it's cold. I'm energized by the cold, energized and like
just a little. So you're not energized, that's what we're saying.
I'm a little energized. I feel like I'm fine. All right.
Why do you say that because he's I'm like, you're sleepwalking.
Oh really yeah? Oh I thought I was just speaking fast.
Oh no, no, I thought that's why you're that's being sarcastic.
(00:45):
I'm sorry to everybody who's sitting through this right now.
I'm down in the dumps. You are right, Yeah, No,
I'm fine, Okay, I'm just it's the cold. It's a
little dreary outside of Today's the day it finally started
to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes, um,
Emily is ready for spring. I'm like, it's you know,
it's January. She s no, No, but it's Georgia. So
we could have spring in a few weeks, so it's true.
(01:06):
We kind of had it yesterday. Um you mean. And
I have been making these little bird feeders like with
cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been
trying to get the physics of it down to hang
them so that the birds can like land on them there,
so I incorporate twigs and these things can spend a
little time there. Yeah, And there's this, um, a little
(01:26):
s ob of a squirrel that has my porch all
figured out and keeps like getting these whole bird feeder cakes.
And I realized, like I'm spending a lot of time
like trying to thwart this squirrel figure out the physics
of bird feed and I'm like, yeah, I'm ready for spring. Yeah.
We have one of those cake holders for birds, but
it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah, and they eat it
(01:48):
in like a day. Yeah. This this squirrel can eat
several cakes and a mess. Yeah, all right. Cave Dwelling,
I can't remember I've I've asked you before, but I
don't know if you seen it. Um since I asked you,
because you hadn't. Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzel, No,
I watched, well, I watched like twenty minutes of it
(02:09):
this morning just to get the gist. You got the
gist in twenty minutes. Well, I can't wait to watch
the whole thing though. It's pretty much that. Yeah, but
I want to watch it. We Oh, yeah, you should.
It's neat. The whole thing's neat from beginning to end.
But I mean, like it's a I think maybe a
two hour long documentary on a cave. Yeah, and the
(02:29):
cave art it's a phenomenal yeah, I know, the one
in uh well, they're both in France, right, Yeah. The
one that gets the most press is the Lasco, which
is great, but this one, to me, the art is better. Well,
Alasco gets more pressed because it was discovered in nineteen forty.
This one that weren't Herzog did a documentary, was discovered
(02:50):
in old year old art. It's amazing, yeah it is,
and it's all spectacularly preserved. One of the benefits of
discovering Lasco in ninety was that when Chauves Cave, the
one that was discovered in ninety four, it's even older,
was discovered, we'd already figured out a lot of stuff
along the way and how to preserve it, so we
(03:12):
could go in there and sort of, Yeah, you need
to cut down in the carbon dioxide that people are
breathing out herzog in there. Um, you need to cut
down on flashes flash photography, because apparently flashes really do degrade.
There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments, um,
and it's basically like releasing the sunlight over the course
(03:36):
of a few milliseconds. That's one flash. But if you
add up all the tourists over the years, all of
a sudden, you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially into this
cave and it's degrading the pigment. So there's also sorts
of stuff we learned from Lascu cave. It's not being
applied to Chouvet cave. Um. But yes, it is older,
it is more awesome, and the very evidence of old
(03:59):
cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones that are
found in case would suggest that there, in some distant
past of prehistory was a race of hominids that were
cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of cave dwellers. Yeah,
that must be correct, right, Ringo Star. Yeah, I saw
the movie Caveman or was that a documentary? It's in
(04:22):
a movie. Yeah, you're thinking of quests for fire. Yeah,
well those are all great movies. Plan at the Cave Bear.
But well I was setting you up and you you didn't. Well,
no is the answer. Um. They now believe that uh,
people through different periods of ancient history have dwelled in
(04:42):
caves at times that probably didn't like set up permanent
residents in caves. Yeah. And the big pivotal evidence of
this is that the people who would have supposedly lived
in caves at that time were all nomadic hunter gatherers.
They wouldn't have been stationary for in any kind of
dwell Yeah. They gotta go out and find the meat, right,
(05:03):
So there was no such thing as a species of
hominid that you could say our cavemen. Those were the caveman.
All the other ones just lived. However, most of the
people who are alive in what we're talking about the
Paleolithic era, which went back from about two million years
ago all the way up to about ten thousand years ago,
that's the Paleolithic era, um were they lived in all
(05:25):
sorts of different kinds of shelters, caves, being one of them. Sure. Yeah. Uh.
One reason to go into a cave is obviously it's
gonna and we've covered this is I think our third
Yeah the cave Sweet Cave Sweet Yeah. Bio speleology, which
is awesome, spelunking, yeah uh. And then this one cave
cave followers who thought that we would do the three
(05:46):
part series on caves ever well, and this covers cave
arts such that this will probably be it, don't you
think is there anything else? I can't think anything. No,
not really, Nick Cave. Maybe we can find test on him. Um.
So some reasons to go into a cave to begin with, obviously,
is to protect yourself from the weather. I think it's
probably the leading. It's raining, let's go inside that room,
(06:09):
it's not raining in the cave. Um to protect yourself
from animals, because if you go back and listen to
our biospeleology, only certain animals are in caves, and not
a lot of like you know, big nasty man eaters,
although back then they would have run in the cave
bears the plane at the cave bear. I don't know
sabretooth tigers were cave dwellers, but I've seen a lot
of Flintstone episodes, and from what I understand they do,
(06:32):
they did go into caves. Of course, you would run
into the proteus salamander, which you would not want to
run into. Remember the three ft long eyelis salamander. White
nightmares like once a week. Yeah, I don't think you
do anything to you but man alive. Yeah, I wouldn't
want to see that thing, Like you wake up looking
face to face with that eels monster. Yeah. Yeah, but um,
(06:55):
protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other
peepe wasn't really a big reason. Because this is good
to know. I think I kind of got along and
help each other in general. Yeah, there's something called paleolithic warlessness,
like the concept of war organized war is apparently only
maybe twelve to sixteen thousand, eighteen thousand maybe years old.
(07:19):
I think probably once people started getting comfy as when
they started wanting to fight each other. Back then they
were just trying to survive. Yeah. You know, well, there's
a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what
led to warfare. What that exactly? Yeah, yeah, basically, and
it led to surpluses, so people fared over surplus you're
starving over here, and they've got all this green over here,
(07:40):
so you go kill all those people and take the green.
We should do a history of war. That'd be good. Well,
that would be good. But there were obviously there were
scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean, it wasn't all like
one in Roses. You tried getting along with Ron Livingston.
Now it's not his name. Oh let me, everybody gets
along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right, Yeah,
(08:02):
you know the other guy. Yeah, Um, that's a pretty
good mess up. There were scraps every now and then,
like obviously over you know, territory or food or fire.
But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with
this tribe, but we don't like them or we want
what they've got, because I mean, the consensus among anthropologists
(08:23):
apparently is that wars relatively recent. It's not that ancient.
It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the
cave are we run into. Yeah years, so, um, you've
got shelter from the elements, protection from animals, um n,
steady temperature. That's a big one. Yeah, Because the cave
(08:44):
typically is about in the fifties fifties degrees fahrenheight. Um. Yeah,
So if you are in a cave and you're living
there in its summertime, you are sitting pretty If it's
winter time, depending on where you are, So you're in
northern you're up, You're still sitting pretty sure. All you
have to do is build a little bit of a
fire and I hope you don't smoke yourself out, and
(09:06):
you are you're you're in some climate controlled luxury, especially
for the Stone Age. Yeah, you know. Uh, one reason
that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something
I learned when I went on my caving experience, which
is detailed in the speed Lunking episode, is that even
though there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves
are like great to live in. Like a lot of
(09:28):
them you might walk right past because it's just a
hole in the ground. You have no idea there's an
underground cavern. A lot of them are inaccessible. Um, a
lot of them have our active so that means they
have water, which isn't super hospitable inactive cave. Yeah, it'll flood. Yeah,
you don't want to be in there when it flood. Yeah,
they're just not like generally they're not like these huge
(09:50):
cavernous like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well. Plus,
also there's a lot of gravel slopes, which if you
stand on them you can fall and die. You learn
that pretty quick. Yeah, there's lots of different exits and
entrances and shafts and things like that. They can be
misleading and confuse you and from dark get you lost
to your death. Yeah, apparently just a couple of dozen feet.
(10:11):
I don't remember. There's the light zone, the twilight zone
in the dark zone, and I don't remember where the
twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins. But once
that dark zone begins, there's no light, like no light.
And like you said, you can't just start a bunch
of fires because you can die from smoking yourself out. Yeah,
you can hit your head on stalag tights. That's true.
(10:32):
So it's not the most common thing to find like
a great cave for ten or twelve people to live in,
but when they found them and they needed them, they
would dwell in them, right and um. Again, that's one reason,
for several reasons why people didn't just live in caves
all the time. But another reason is because they knew
of other ways to live. They could um stretch animal
hides over structures. They built earth and dwellings where they
(10:56):
would build like a lean to or something and then
pack earth over it, which is another way to control
the climate or temperature in that little dwelling. And again
they were nomadic. They were following herds of bison and
mammoths and um, you know, it's a big, beautiful world too,
Let's not forget. Yeah, like, why would you want to
go live in a cave your entire life when you've
(11:17):
got the run of the place of planet Earth and
all it has to offer. You know, if there was
a hominid uh that could be considered cave dwellers, though
it would probably be the Neanderthals. As we understand right now,
it wasn't too terribly long ago that we discovered a
new species of um human ancestor well, at least they
(11:41):
were contemporary with modern humans. Uh, the dennis Ovans. Oh
who is that? Um? They they were there type of
Hamainid that lived in the thirty fifty thousand years ago
at the latest, I think maybe. And um, there's a
cave in Croatia I believe where they discovered a moler
(12:05):
and they thought, well, no, they discovered a fingerbone and
they thought it was Neanderthal or human, and they ran
the DNA tests and they're like, uh, this is neither.
What is this? So they named it it's a Dennisova
cave or dennis cave, one of the two. And they
named this new species of hominid A the dennis Ovans.
(12:26):
And then they looked at the human genome and they're like, oh, well,
apparently in are bred with them because we have a
little bit of Dennis Ovan and all of us for
most of us. Yeah, people who um stayed in Africa
and didn't disperse like Neanderthals or other modern humans too,
apparently didn't have the opportunity to mix with Denisovans or Neanderthals.
(12:48):
So typically people of European descent Native American descent, they
will have um Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But there's
this cave in Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals, humans
and dennis Ovans possibly shared these caves at the same time.
Isn't that crazy they did. Yeah, they didn't necessarily sit
around a camp fire with one another, but they they
(13:11):
may have been using the cave within you know, the
same year or something like that, depending on the season.
Pictured them making s'mores and say, how do you get
your backs so straight? But I mean think about it.
If they were breeding, you know, then maybe it wasn't
those caves. Jerry either laughed at that or she's choking
on something food or both perhaps. Uh So, Yeah, the
(13:34):
Neanderthal was um all over Europe and during a glacial period,
so obviously they got harsh climates, so they might want
to poke into a cave every now and then and
warm up. Um. And there are a couple of strategies
that archaeologists believe we're used back then, the circulating mobility
and radiating mobility, and circulating was um. And I kind
(13:58):
of like this idea is had several temporary camps kind
of scattered all over a region, and it's kind of
like just having different homes and you would just go
from place to place and live in your little home
and hunt and gather. Uh or it's the same thing
the ultra wealthy dude today exactly. Or radiating mobility is
when you had one main camp and you would just
go out as far as you could to hunt and gather.
(14:21):
From that camp, right, so you had other shelters along
the way. I don't know. I thought the radiating mobility
was just the one camp and you came and went
to that camp every day and that was the difference.
Is that right? It's possible. I think that's right. Um.
And apparently some of these camps were in fact caves
at times, so they were using caves for sure. They
(14:43):
were um doing something else too. Uh they were creating,
aren't in these caves? Boy were they? Which has people
um baffled as to exactly what was going on? What's
the deal, what the heck is all this for? But
before we get into that, you want to, um, you
want to take a message break alright, cave art and
(15:08):
if you have in your mind a cave art is
like super primitive, like you know, is that a buffalo
or is that a giraffe? You should go just google
the cave art in those two caves especially oh yeah,
Calvett Calvet. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks
about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is
(15:30):
that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals.
And um, they think they're they're wondering whether that was
like intentional or not, and they think it probably was
intentional before they make a little movie. Interesting, but it's
like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah, when you
(15:52):
look at this this stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't
discovered um perspective yet, so it's all flat two dimensions
but um. First of all, they're creating these things in
utter dark by torchlight. Yeah, using earthen pigments like ochre
for yellows and oranges, um, charcoal, charcoal for black was
(16:14):
the red one. I think for red they used iron
oxide and they use charcoal and manganese for black. They're
using very very primitive brushes in the dictionary sense of
the word. Yeah, or there early airbrush artists essentially, because
they're blowing this pigment through a h a tube tube
(16:40):
or just out of their mouth right onto the walls. Yeah.
And then they're also using their hands in their fingers.
But you're right, man, there are some especially when you
take all of this in to consideration, Yeah, it makes
some of the art that was made just staggering. Apparently
they would use to some of the uh texture of
the cave itself, if there was an indentation or not
(17:02):
an indentation, but what stops have been indentation. Yeah, if
there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn,
they would incorporate that as the rhino horn. And all
of a sudden you had I mean it's not quite
three D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah. Right,
you know they're like, it's not perspective, but it's gonna
have to do. Uh. They now have evidence in some
(17:26):
of these thirty thousand year old caves of scaffolding that
they would use. I hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty
cool and um principles of stenciling, early principles of stinciling.
And apparently when uh Picasso visited lescal he said to
his guide, they've invented everything, and he was just like
(17:46):
blown away, like I'm just copying these early hominids. It's
pretty amazing. It's about right too. Yeah, and actually I
don't know Picasso's all right, but some of these cavell
they haven't beat maybe. Yeah, they didn't look funny, they
didn't have one eye, and they didn't wear burraiths. Um.
So most of the subjects of cave paintings that have
(18:08):
been discovered so far, and there could be tons and
tons of undiscovered caves like the one at Chauve wasn't
discovered until because at some point in the past a
rock fall happened and closed the cave off to view
and was just happened to be discovered by some hikers. Man,
can you imagine being the person that discovered that. It
(18:30):
would have been pretty cool. Um. So, most of the
cave art that has been discovered so far, it depicts
hert animals. Yeah, animals by and large. There herd animals
are bison, their buffalo there, um, mammoths, things like that. Um,
there's very few images of vegetation, very few images of humans.
(18:55):
The images of humans there are tend to be things
like fertility idols like Yeah, and there's a theory out
there that those were painted by adolescent boys. Yeah, as
like basically early you know, club magazine or something. And uh,
that may or may not be correct, especially when they
(19:15):
found that in France and Spain a lot and possibly
the majority of cave art was done by females. They
recently discovered you know, the hand ones, handprints. They figured
out recently that most of those are female hands because
of the they they give away of the sixth finger
that only females that. Um, there's an article that I
(19:38):
can recommend that actually is what inspired Berner Hertzog to
make his documentary called First Impressions. Uh. It was in
The New Yorker in two thousand eight by Judith Thurman,
and it's super awesome and uh, she basically says there's
a couple of camps when it comes to cave art experts. Ah,
those who can't resist advancing a theory about the art,
(20:00):
and then those who say there never will be enough
evidence to support one, so you're all just sort of
making up these theories. Yeah. I think that's healthy. That
second camp is much healthier because it is all theories.
But I like the theories, so yeah, And I don't
think we should just be like, we'll never understand that,
so let's not even try. Yeah. I think we should
just remember that when we are trying to understand them,
they're all just guesses, and not even really educated guesses
(20:23):
at that. Yeah. I think my theory of why there
are animals mostly is because it was super important to
their survival and maybe it was you know, uh, some
communication to leave for another person later or to each other. Maybe. Yeah,
it could be there's lots of buffalo in this area,
so get to hunting, or don't hunt these guys because
(20:47):
I just killed a bunch of them by forcing them
off a cliff. It was awesome, by the way, to see,
but there's not that many left and we need them
to keep reading. Or I'm an eight year old the
interthal and yeah, here's an make a buffalo for your pleasure. Uh.
There's also lots of theories that these things were um
supernatural somehow, like they were trying to invoke the animal
(21:09):
spirit for a successful hunt or gain some sort of
power by creating an image of the animal um. And
it could have also just been like, this is what
I see in my everyday life, and I have this
desire to create art. So that's that's the subject I'm
gonna make. Is this animal that I am thinking about
(21:30):
a lot because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah,
that makes a conversion between this innate desire and the
everyday life. And that's bison on cave walls. Well, some
of them are pretty detailed, and uh, some are life size.
It's like they really took a lot of time. It
wasn't something they just dashed off in a matter of hours.
(21:51):
And they're using these torches too, are not like it's
not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight also,
but um, they're like stone torches with like a little
divid in the top. It's some animal fat put in
there and then they light the animal fat, which I'm
sure in and of itself is quite a task. Um.
But so yeah, there was there was a lot of
(22:15):
effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the pigments,
I'm sure wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're doing
like a life size bison. How long did it take
to gather all that? Ochre Sure it's not a quick thing.
And it's not just paintings. They found a jewelry and
other like engrave bone and ivory, and they think they
(22:35):
probably engraved wood too, but that obviously wouldn't survive that long.
But um, they suggest early religious belief and that they
think they might have buried people with some of these things. Yeah, so,
like it's amazing stuff. And unfortunately when there's no written history,
there's a lot of speculation. But it just I don't know,
it's fascinating to me. Well, yeah, you know, and their
(22:58):
their history has been largely lost. It just happens to
be preserved in the caves. But since they weren't just
as strictly cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion
of their culture because the rest of it was in
animal skin shelters and earthen lean twos that have been
totally lost because they were exposed to the elements the
caves that were flooded out and washed away too. So yeah,
(23:20):
well that's why there's only like, well, there's more than that,
but the two big daddies, there's only two. No, there's
another one. There's one called Altamira in Spain. It's steely.
Dan had a song about it, the Caves of Altamira,
And is it loaded with art? Okay, yeah, there's there's
plenty more than that, it's just less Go is the
most famous one, and then Chauve is the most recent,
most famous one because I heard but there are others. Um,
(23:44):
what about chocolodytes. We should mention that that's a great
word to call somebody. It always reminds me of trilobite.
Remember the little weird kind of insect armor plated fossilized insect.
I'll show you a trilobite. Okay. It was one of
the earliest like footed animals. Scary looking really, but that's
(24:09):
what I always get the too confused chocolate. It means
cave dweller, literally someone who lives in a hole or
cave named after There are apparently some West African tribes
that the Greeks came in contact with, and they lived
in cliff caves, and they were called trocolate, eye t
or trogoled. Well, it's a nice insult you can throw
around these days and sounds sort of intelligent. Instead of
(24:32):
calling someone like a d bag, he'd say he's a trocolodyte,
you know. Yeah, and one got Jerry too. Man, you
guys are on the same way today. I guess, uh so,
I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes,
well modern, let's not quite go into present day. I
think we need to give a shout out to the
(24:52):
Anasazi and the Pueblos word cliff dwelling people's from the
twelfth century Ish of the outhwestern United States, who basically
showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out
caves and lived there they built their own caves. Yeah,
you should see some of these. Look up, like just
look up cliff dwellers US and you'll see some really
(25:15):
neat They had, like whole cities like carved out into
these these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders.
That sounds really dangerous it was, but it was also
very well defended and stified. Yeah, because people just be like,
I'm not going up there to fight those guys. Yeah,
I'm not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Um, can we
(25:36):
talk about Mountain Mountain Hebron? Are we there yet? Yeah? Okay. Uh,
that's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and
a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network
of caves that have been around for about a hundred
years that their forefathers built. And uh, but of course,
because it's in the West Bank, there's uh, some disagreement
(25:58):
over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed
by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened
to remove the people. I don't know what the current
state is. I looked it up, I couldn't find it.
Last I saw is that they basically designated it a
militarized zone, which meant that the Palestinians living there needed
to leave. But are they still in there? I don't know.
(26:19):
The most recent thing I can find from two thousand five,
so I don't know. Al right, Well, southern Spain, was
that what you were talking about. I don't know if
Faltemyer's in southern Spain, but there's it's definitely in Spain.
But there are like a natural cliff or cave dwellings
that were carved out into even further Cave dwellings in
(26:40):
Spain and um have basically been continuously inhabited at one
time or another. Now there's a large homeless population there apparently,
I mean, Spain's got unemployment. I'm sure that the cave
dwelling populations increased proportionately. Uh Cappadocia. Cappadocia uh in Turkey
(27:01):
has an elaborate cave system and it's not a very
friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's been
described as lunar and this. Yeah, it's amazing, it's really amazing.
Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if
you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are
caves like homes. Yeah, and these were man made. These
(27:22):
are carved out for people to live in, which is um,
I guess we didn't even say. I guess that's the
other type of cave. You neither find one or you
can make one. But yeah, and by making one, I
think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural
cave to that's that would account. I would guess that'd
be man made too. Yeah, probably so. But the en
Cappadocia and Turkey um anchor Rights, which were early Christians
(27:46):
who were hermits. Yeah, um, they inhabited these caves and
and made the first dwellings. And then when the Christians
were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people
and they actually built um underground churches that became an
underground city. Have you seen these pictures? Oh, they're amazing,
(28:07):
just the masonry and the artwork that they made of
just hewn from the rock. That's still intact today. And
apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while
and then rediscovered. Not but that was pretty neat to find. Well,
I got another documentary for you, um, like no place
on earth have you seen that one? Uh? There was
a guy a caver that UM was exploring this cave
(28:28):
in the Ukraine and he found like shoes and medicine
bottles and things, and he was like, wait a minute,
this isn't like paleolithic at all. This looks like it
was from the nineteen forties. And it was. And it
turns out there was. Um thirty eight members of different
Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for
(28:52):
uh five hundred and eleven days. They lived underground for
over a year and a half. And uh some of
these people still alive and they found them. They still
live in the caves. No, no, no, no, they lived
there for a year and a half. I got in
the Holocaust, Um, but there they had never told their story.
They just like kept it a secret because they were like,
no one would believe it. Plus also in case they
(29:14):
ever needed to go back to the cave, Well they
did go back. They took him back to the caves. No,
I'm saying if they ever had to go back to
the cave, like you want to keep the cave secret,
because they weren't the first time, you know, but um,
it's pretty powerful and they take some of these survivors
back to this cave or they haven't been since the
Holocaust and they all survived to um really really great documentary. Yeah,
(29:35):
pretty cool, like no place self like like no place
on Earth, well, like no place selves. Um. There's also
apparently a trend in parts of Europe to buy old
man made cave homes and dress him up. I saw
this and I was like, I didn't double check, but
I could see this. Yeah, I mean this is a grabster,
(29:56):
so's he's good on his facts. Outfitting them with electric city, um,
installing modern plumbing, uh, getting the ventilation system going, and
just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah, putting down
tile floor. And there's always the cave home weirdos. Yeah. Well,
I mean if you're TV like, you know bizarre houses.
(30:20):
If you're a green person, yeah, you could do a
lot worse than build yourself a cave home because the
environmental impact is so much lower. It requires much fewer
building materials. Um. If you can deal with very low
natural light and not go crazy, then a cave might
be suited for you. If you can deal with the
damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah.
(30:41):
And I shouldn't have said weirdos. It's ok to eat
the room. But anytime I see those shows of like
extreme bizarre homes, you just shoot the TV. I made
a house out of like Bob Goolay was on it. Yeah,
pretty much. Um, I've never been in like there was
a cave house near us growing up. Actually that really? Yeah.
It was like you know, it was when they built
(31:02):
into the side of you know Earth where in Stone
Mountain is it's still there? I assume, so is it
built into Stone Mountain? No? No, no, no, Um. And
it was like kind of the people go by there
and look at it and stuff, and I, even as
a kid, I thought it was kind of dumb. Did
you ever know Jack mcbreer when you were younger? Kenneth
from UM thirty Rock, he's from Stone Mountain Conyers? Oh
(31:26):
really yeah in the show he's from Stone Mountain. UM.
One of the other writers for thirty Rock, though I
can't remember his name is I think what you read
in is that right? But no, Hun didn't know jackne Prayer, which, uh,
you got anything else? Oh? Yeah? The last thing. One
of the other benefits of UM cave home it's very
(31:49):
difficult to break into, which is sad because that is
not the reason why they were initially used in Paleolithic Carrott.
But it's a it's a quality point. Now this true.
How far God, where was it that guy that built
a house underground? No, I've seen those before. I've seemed
like missile silos converted into homes and things like that.
(32:11):
This one was for sale recently. I can't remember who
sent it to me, but he basically built It's not
like a weird, you know, silo house. It's like a home.
He just built underground. Like when you go down there,
he's got paintings of the outside world on all the walls.
It was this rich guy who built it. I think
as a like a shelter in case something bad happened,
(32:32):
and so you know, there's pictures of like rolling fields
and when you're underground, I mean, obviously you can tell
it's a painting, but it doesn't feel like some cave.
It's like just a regular house built underground. Well, there's
a theory that we're going to end up living underground
because eventually arable crop lay and will become so valuable
that we will, uh we'll all have we will basically
be forced to inhabit, the opposite of sky scrapers. They
(32:56):
will be going down instead of up because we'll need
the land end up on top for crops. Didn't we
do one on why why don't humans live underground? Yeah?
I guess that could be part four? Then I guess
so it's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. You
know this is the cave suite. All right, So let's
(33:17):
see you don't have anything else. I got nothing else.
If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you
can type cave dwellers into the search part how stuff
works dot Com. And I said search parts means it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We keep
making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh yeah, and I'm
tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm
(33:37):
gonna like put us both in time out. Do you
think Jerry would be paying attention? But I don't know
why we keep making this mistake. But in the Solar
Sales episode we talked about In fact, I think it
was you this time said something about acceleration will kill you,
or the speed will kill you, or something going that fast. Yeah,
I'm sure it was. We got a lot of emails,
and this was one of the nicer ones. Heads up
(33:59):
guys on a few things, including on the solar sales.
There's been some misunderstanding between speed and acceleration. Common belief
is it traveling at high speed is taxing on the body.
Not true. It is the acceleration and not the speed
which is dangerous. Take as an example, traveling in a car.
Changing your velocity from zero to a hundred kilometers per
hour a very short time results in a large acceleration.
(34:20):
This is where you get that feeling of being crushed
into your seat. But once you keep that constant speed,
that feeling goes away. The same thing for a plane.
Notice when you accelerate on the tarmac, it's pretty intense,
but once you're up in the air, you'd barely feel
a thing. Yeah you think we'd know this. I mean
we've done sort of research on the rockets led an acceleration,
and it's just misspeaking in the moment we know this. Oh,
(34:42):
if I'm in a rupt for a second, I ran
across this designer's euthanasia roller coaster. What um it was
basically this guy design It's all conceptual. Obviously, it's slightly
tongue in cheek. But it was designed to kill you,
like the roller coaster was designed to kill you and
to go out with a thrill. Yeah, and he he
describes like what like at what point you will die
(35:06):
and from what Basically it's like you are going upside
down so fast. The acceleration is so great that it
basically like keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. Um, and
just to make sure you're dead, he added, like six
of those loops, but it starts with this huge hill.
I can't remember what it's called. I think if you
look up uthan Asia roller coaster, this this guy's design
(35:28):
will come up. It's pretty interesting. Interesting, but it would
be from acceleration, not speed. Wow, that's a lot of
work to put into a killing machine. I would just
draw a length of rope and a sturdy beam, you know. Um,
you wouldn't be a successful designer probably so. Uh So.
Then he puts it in the context of the solar
sale um and says only very small accelerations are involved,
(35:50):
so human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces.
So I hope it clears it up a little bit.
Definitely rocking at guys, and that from knee Raj from
Australia slash Mauritius ni Raj. Thank you you appreciate that
we will never make that mistake again. I disagree. I'm
sure we will speed ull kill you. Where's Northern Ireland,
(36:14):
Great Britain, k England. We've been getting that one wrong
forever too. Yeah. You know, there's only so much information
that human brain can hold, everybody, and we're trying to
fill it with things like cave dwelling facts and stuff
like that. Yeah, and who was the bass player for Poison?
I can't get rid of that? Do you know that? Yeah,
(36:35):
Bobby Doll, So there's cc It was a guitarist, Brett Michael,
Brett Michael. Bobby Doll is the guy. He sounds like
a V seven oriole or something to the drummer. Was
you remember him right? No? Ricky Rockett? Oh wow? Yeah.
I I didn't even like poison. That's what's so funny.
Poison was good. I wouldn't have they were good. Uh,
(36:56):
let's see if you want to know more about poison already,
that part didn't I sure. If you want to get
in touch with us, how about that. You can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash that We Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
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and entertaining home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
(37:17):
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(37:40):
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Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Child's to w Chuck Bryant and
Jerry's over there, so it's stuff you should know. Wow,
it's the same energetic edition a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
(00:23):
it's cold. I'm energized by the cold, energized and like
just a little. So you're not energized, that's what we're saying.
I'm a little energized. I feel like I'm fine. All right.
Why do you say that because he's I'm like, you're sleepwalking.
Oh really yeah? Oh I thought I was just speaking fast.
Oh no, no, I thought that's why you're that's being sarcastic.
(00:45):
I'm sorry to everybody who's sitting through this right now.
I'm down in the dumps. You are right, Yeah, No,
I'm fine, Okay, I'm just it's the cold. It's a
little dreary outside of Today's the day it finally started
to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes, um,
Emily is ready for spring. I'm like, it's you know,
it's January. She s no, No, but it's Georgia. So
we could have spring in a few weeks, so it's true.
(01:06):
We kind of had it yesterday. Um you mean. And
I have been making these little bird feeders like with
cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been
trying to get the physics of it down to hang
them so that the birds can like land on them there,
so I incorporate twigs and these things can spend a
little time there. Yeah, And there's this, um, a little
(01:26):
s ob of a squirrel that has my porch all
figured out and keeps like getting these whole bird feeder cakes.
And I realized, like I'm spending a lot of time
like trying to thwart this squirrel figure out the physics
of bird feed and I'm like, yeah, I'm ready for spring. Yeah.
We have one of those cake holders for birds, but
it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah, and they eat it
(01:48):
in like a day. Yeah. This this squirrel can eat
several cakes and a mess. Yeah, all right. Cave Dwelling,
I can't remember I've I've asked you before, but I
don't know if you seen it. Um since I asked you,
because you hadn't. Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzel, No,
I watched, well, I watched like twenty minutes of it
(02:09):
this morning just to get the gist. You got the
gist in twenty minutes. Well, I can't wait to watch
the whole thing though. It's pretty much that. Yeah, but
I want to watch it. We Oh, yeah, you should.
It's neat. The whole thing's neat from beginning to end.
But I mean, like it's a I think maybe a
two hour long documentary on a cave. Yeah, and the
(02:29):
cave art it's a phenomenal yeah, I know, the one
in uh well, they're both in France, right, Yeah. The
one that gets the most press is the Lasco, which
is great, but this one, to me, the art is better. Well,
Alasco gets more pressed because it was discovered in nineteen forty.
This one that weren't Herzog did a documentary, was discovered
(02:50):
in old year old art. It's amazing, yeah it is,
and it's all spectacularly preserved. One of the benefits of
discovering Lasco in ninety was that when Chauves Cave, the
one that was discovered in ninety four, it's even older,
was discovered, we'd already figured out a lot of stuff
along the way and how to preserve it, so we
(03:12):
could go in there and sort of, Yeah, you need
to cut down in the carbon dioxide that people are
breathing out herzog in there. Um, you need to cut
down on flashes flash photography, because apparently flashes really do degrade.
There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments, um,
and it's basically like releasing the sunlight over the course
(03:36):
of a few milliseconds. That's one flash. But if you
add up all the tourists over the years, all of
a sudden, you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially into this
cave and it's degrading the pigment. So there's also sorts
of stuff we learned from Lascu cave. It's not being
applied to Chouvet cave. Um. But yes, it is older,
it is more awesome, and the very evidence of old
(03:59):
cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones that are
found in case would suggest that there, in some distant
past of prehistory was a race of hominids that were
cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of cave dwellers. Yeah,
that must be correct, right, Ringo Star. Yeah, I saw
the movie Caveman or was that a documentary? It's in
(04:22):
a movie. Yeah, you're thinking of quests for fire. Yeah,
well those are all great movies. Plan at the Cave Bear.
But well I was setting you up and you you didn't. Well,
no is the answer. Um. They now believe that uh,
people through different periods of ancient history have dwelled in
(04:42):
caves at times that probably didn't like set up permanent
residents in caves. Yeah. And the big pivotal evidence of
this is that the people who would have supposedly lived
in caves at that time were all nomadic hunter gatherers.
They wouldn't have been stationary for in any kind of
dwell Yeah. They gotta go out and find the meat, right,
(05:03):
So there was no such thing as a species of
hominid that you could say our cavemen. Those were the caveman.
All the other ones just lived. However, most of the
people who are alive in what we're talking about the
Paleolithic era, which went back from about two million years
ago all the way up to about ten thousand years ago,
that's the Paleolithic era, um were they lived in all
(05:25):
sorts of different kinds of shelters, caves, being one of them. Sure. Yeah. Uh.
One reason to go into a cave is obviously it's
gonna and we've covered this is I think our third
Yeah the cave Sweet Cave Sweet Yeah. Bio speleology, which
is awesome, spelunking, yeah uh. And then this one cave
cave followers who thought that we would do the three
(05:46):
part series on caves ever well, and this covers cave
arts such that this will probably be it, don't you
think is there anything else? I can't think anything. No,
not really, Nick Cave. Maybe we can find test on him. Um.
So some reasons to go into a cave to begin with, obviously,
is to protect yourself from the weather. I think it's
probably the leading. It's raining, let's go inside that room,
(06:09):
it's not raining in the cave. Um to protect yourself
from animals, because if you go back and listen to
our biospeleology, only certain animals are in caves, and not
a lot of like you know, big nasty man eaters,
although back then they would have run in the cave
bears the plane at the cave bear. I don't know
sabretooth tigers were cave dwellers, but I've seen a lot
of Flintstone episodes, and from what I understand they do,
(06:32):
they did go into caves. Of course, you would run
into the proteus salamander, which you would not want to
run into. Remember the three ft long eyelis salamander. White
nightmares like once a week. Yeah, I don't think you
do anything to you but man alive. Yeah, I wouldn't
want to see that thing, Like you wake up looking
face to face with that eels monster. Yeah. Yeah, but um,
(06:55):
protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other
peepe wasn't really a big reason. Because this is good
to know. I think I kind of got along and
help each other in general. Yeah, there's something called paleolithic warlessness,
like the concept of war organized war is apparently only
maybe twelve to sixteen thousand, eighteen thousand maybe years old.
(07:19):
I think probably once people started getting comfy as when
they started wanting to fight each other. Back then they
were just trying to survive. Yeah. You know, well, there's
a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what
led to warfare. What that exactly? Yeah, yeah, basically, and
it led to surpluses, so people fared over surplus you're
starving over here, and they've got all this green over here,
(07:40):
so you go kill all those people and take the green.
We should do a history of war. That'd be good. Well,
that would be good. But there were obviously there were
scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean, it wasn't all like
one in Roses. You tried getting along with Ron Livingston.
Now it's not his name. Oh let me, everybody gets
along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right, Yeah,
(08:02):
you know the other guy. Yeah, Um, that's a pretty
good mess up. There were scraps every now and then,
like obviously over you know, territory or food or fire.
But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with
this tribe, but we don't like them or we want
what they've got, because I mean, the consensus among anthropologists
(08:23):
apparently is that wars relatively recent. It's not that ancient.
It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the
cave are we run into. Yeah years, so, um, you've
got shelter from the elements, protection from animals, um n,
steady temperature. That's a big one. Yeah, Because the cave
(08:44):
typically is about in the fifties fifties degrees fahrenheight. Um. Yeah,
So if you are in a cave and you're living
there in its summertime, you are sitting pretty If it's
winter time, depending on where you are, So you're in
northern you're up, You're still sitting pretty sure. All you
have to do is build a little bit of a
fire and I hope you don't smoke yourself out, and
(09:06):
you are you're you're in some climate controlled luxury, especially
for the Stone Age. Yeah, you know. Uh, one reason
that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something
I learned when I went on my caving experience, which
is detailed in the speed Lunking episode, is that even
though there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves
are like great to live in. Like a lot of
(09:28):
them you might walk right past because it's just a
hole in the ground. You have no idea there's an
underground cavern. A lot of them are inaccessible. Um, a
lot of them have our active so that means they
have water, which isn't super hospitable inactive cave. Yeah, it'll flood. Yeah,
you don't want to be in there when it flood. Yeah,
they're just not like generally they're not like these huge
(09:50):
cavernous like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well. Plus,
also there's a lot of gravel slopes, which if you
stand on them you can fall and die. You learn
that pretty quick. Yeah, there's lots of different exits and
entrances and shafts and things like that. They can be
misleading and confuse you and from dark get you lost
to your death. Yeah, apparently just a couple of dozen feet.
(10:11):
I don't remember. There's the light zone, the twilight zone
in the dark zone, and I don't remember where the
twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins. But once
that dark zone begins, there's no light, like no light.
And like you said, you can't just start a bunch
of fires because you can die from smoking yourself out. Yeah,
you can hit your head on stalag tights. That's true.
(10:32):
So it's not the most common thing to find like
a great cave for ten or twelve people to live in,
but when they found them and they needed them, they
would dwell in them, right and um. Again, that's one reason,
for several reasons why people didn't just live in caves
all the time. But another reason is because they knew
of other ways to live. They could um stretch animal
hides over structures. They built earth and dwellings where they
(10:56):
would build like a lean to or something and then
pack earth over it, which is another way to control
the climate or temperature in that little dwelling. And again
they were nomadic. They were following herds of bison and
mammoths and um, you know, it's a big, beautiful world too,
Let's not forget. Yeah, like, why would you want to
go live in a cave your entire life when you've
(11:17):
got the run of the place of planet Earth and
all it has to offer. You know, if there was
a hominid uh that could be considered cave dwellers, though
it would probably be the Neanderthals. As we understand right now,
it wasn't too terribly long ago that we discovered a
new species of um human ancestor well, at least they
(11:41):
were contemporary with modern humans. Uh, the dennis Ovans. Oh
who is that? Um? They they were there type of
Hamainid that lived in the thirty fifty thousand years ago
at the latest, I think maybe. And um, there's a
cave in Croatia I believe where they discovered a moler
(12:05):
and they thought, well, no, they discovered a fingerbone and
they thought it was Neanderthal or human, and they ran
the DNA tests and they're like, uh, this is neither.
What is this? So they named it it's a Dennisova
cave or dennis cave, one of the two. And they
named this new species of hominid A the dennis Ovans.
(12:26):
And then they looked at the human genome and they're like, oh, well,
apparently in are bred with them because we have a
little bit of Dennis Ovan and all of us for
most of us. Yeah, people who um stayed in Africa
and didn't disperse like Neanderthals or other modern humans too,
apparently didn't have the opportunity to mix with Denisovans or Neanderthals.
(12:48):
So typically people of European descent Native American descent, they
will have um Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But there's
this cave in Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals, humans
and dennis Ovans possibly shared these caves at the same time.
Isn't that crazy they did. Yeah, they didn't necessarily sit
around a camp fire with one another, but they they
(13:11):
may have been using the cave within you know, the
same year or something like that, depending on the season.
Pictured them making s'mores and say, how do you get
your backs so straight? But I mean think about it.
If they were breeding, you know, then maybe it wasn't
those caves. Jerry either laughed at that or she's choking
on something food or both perhaps. Uh So, Yeah, the
(13:34):
Neanderthal was um all over Europe and during a glacial period,
so obviously they got harsh climates, so they might want
to poke into a cave every now and then and
warm up. Um. And there are a couple of strategies
that archaeologists believe we're used back then, the circulating mobility
and radiating mobility, and circulating was um. And I kind
(13:58):
of like this idea is had several temporary camps kind
of scattered all over a region, and it's kind of
like just having different homes and you would just go
from place to place and live in your little home
and hunt and gather. Uh or it's the same thing
the ultra wealthy dude today exactly. Or radiating mobility is
when you had one main camp and you would just
go out as far as you could to hunt and gather.
(14:21):
From that camp, right, so you had other shelters along
the way. I don't know. I thought the radiating mobility
was just the one camp and you came and went
to that camp every day and that was the difference.
Is that right? It's possible. I think that's right. Um.
And apparently some of these camps were in fact caves
at times, so they were using caves for sure. They
(14:43):
were um doing something else too. Uh they were creating,
aren't in these caves? Boy were they? Which has people
um baffled as to exactly what was going on? What's
the deal, what the heck is all this for? But
before we get into that, you want to, um, you
want to take a message break alright, cave art and
(15:08):
if you have in your mind a cave art is
like super primitive, like you know, is that a buffalo
or is that a giraffe? You should go just google
the cave art in those two caves especially oh yeah,
Calvett Calvet. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks
about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is
(15:30):
that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals.
And um, they think they're they're wondering whether that was
like intentional or not, and they think it probably was
intentional before they make a little movie. Interesting, but it's
like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah, when you
(15:52):
look at this this stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't
discovered um perspective yet, so it's all flat two dimensions
but um. First of all, they're creating these things in
utter dark by torchlight. Yeah, using earthen pigments like ochre
for yellows and oranges, um, charcoal, charcoal for black was
(16:14):
the red one. I think for red they used iron
oxide and they use charcoal and manganese for black. They're
using very very primitive brushes in the dictionary sense of
the word. Yeah, or there early airbrush artists essentially, because
they're blowing this pigment through a h a tube tube
(16:40):
or just out of their mouth right onto the walls. Yeah.
And then they're also using their hands in their fingers.
But you're right, man, there are some especially when you
take all of this in to consideration, Yeah, it makes
some of the art that was made just staggering. Apparently
they would use to some of the uh texture of
the cave itself, if there was an indentation or not
(17:02):
an indentation, but what stops have been indentation. Yeah, if
there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn,
they would incorporate that as the rhino horn. And all
of a sudden you had I mean it's not quite
three D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah. Right,
you know they're like, it's not perspective, but it's gonna
have to do. Uh. They now have evidence in some
(17:26):
of these thirty thousand year old caves of scaffolding that
they would use. I hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty
cool and um principles of stenciling, early principles of stinciling.
And apparently when uh Picasso visited lescal he said to
his guide, they've invented everything, and he was just like
(17:46):
blown away, like I'm just copying these early hominids. It's
pretty amazing. It's about right too. Yeah, and actually I
don't know Picasso's all right, but some of these cavell
they haven't beat maybe. Yeah, they didn't look funny, they
didn't have one eye, and they didn't wear burraiths. Um.
So most of the subjects of cave paintings that have
(18:08):
been discovered so far, and there could be tons and
tons of undiscovered caves like the one at Chauve wasn't
discovered until because at some point in the past a
rock fall happened and closed the cave off to view
and was just happened to be discovered by some hikers. Man,
can you imagine being the person that discovered that. It
(18:30):
would have been pretty cool. Um. So, most of the
cave art that has been discovered so far, it depicts
hert animals. Yeah, animals by and large. There herd animals
are bison, their buffalo there, um, mammoths, things like that. Um,
there's very few images of vegetation, very few images of humans.
(18:55):
The images of humans there are tend to be things
like fertility idols like Yeah, and there's a theory out
there that those were painted by adolescent boys. Yeah, as
like basically early you know, club magazine or something. And uh,
that may or may not be correct, especially when they
(19:15):
found that in France and Spain a lot and possibly
the majority of cave art was done by females. They
recently discovered you know, the hand ones, handprints. They figured
out recently that most of those are female hands because
of the they they give away of the sixth finger
that only females that. Um, there's an article that I
(19:38):
can recommend that actually is what inspired Berner Hertzog to
make his documentary called First Impressions. Uh. It was in
The New Yorker in two thousand eight by Judith Thurman,
and it's super awesome and uh, she basically says there's
a couple of camps when it comes to cave art experts. Ah,
those who can't resist advancing a theory about the art,
(20:00):
and then those who say there never will be enough
evidence to support one, so you're all just sort of
making up these theories. Yeah. I think that's healthy. That
second camp is much healthier because it is all theories.
But I like the theories, so yeah, And I don't
think we should just be like, we'll never understand that,
so let's not even try. Yeah. I think we should
just remember that when we are trying to understand them,
they're all just guesses, and not even really educated guesses
(20:23):
at that. Yeah. I think my theory of why there
are animals mostly is because it was super important to
their survival and maybe it was you know, uh, some
communication to leave for another person later or to each other. Maybe. Yeah,
it could be there's lots of buffalo in this area,
so get to hunting, or don't hunt these guys because
(20:47):
I just killed a bunch of them by forcing them
off a cliff. It was awesome, by the way, to see,
but there's not that many left and we need them
to keep reading. Or I'm an eight year old the
interthal and yeah, here's an make a buffalo for your pleasure. Uh.
There's also lots of theories that these things were um
supernatural somehow, like they were trying to invoke the animal
(21:09):
spirit for a successful hunt or gain some sort of
power by creating an image of the animal um. And
it could have also just been like, this is what
I see in my everyday life, and I have this
desire to create art. So that's that's the subject I'm
gonna make. Is this animal that I am thinking about
(21:30):
a lot because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah,
that makes a conversion between this innate desire and the
everyday life. And that's bison on cave walls. Well, some
of them are pretty detailed, and uh, some are life size.
It's like they really took a lot of time. It
wasn't something they just dashed off in a matter of hours.
(21:51):
And they're using these torches too, are not like it's
not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight also,
but um, they're like stone torches with like a little
divid in the top. It's some animal fat put in
there and then they light the animal fat, which I'm
sure in and of itself is quite a task. Um.
But so yeah, there was there was a lot of
(22:15):
effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the pigments,
I'm sure wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're doing
like a life size bison. How long did it take
to gather all that? Ochre Sure it's not a quick thing.
And it's not just paintings. They found a jewelry and
other like engrave bone and ivory, and they think they
(22:35):
probably engraved wood too, but that obviously wouldn't survive that long.
But um, they suggest early religious belief and that they
think they might have buried people with some of these things. Yeah, so,
like it's amazing stuff. And unfortunately when there's no written history,
there's a lot of speculation. But it just I don't know,
it's fascinating to me. Well, yeah, you know, and their
(22:58):
their history has been largely lost. It just happens to
be preserved in the caves. But since they weren't just
as strictly cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion
of their culture because the rest of it was in
animal skin shelters and earthen lean twos that have been
totally lost because they were exposed to the elements the
caves that were flooded out and washed away too. So yeah,
(23:20):
well that's why there's only like, well, there's more than that,
but the two big daddies, there's only two. No, there's
another one. There's one called Altamira in Spain. It's steely.
Dan had a song about it, the Caves of Altamira,
And is it loaded with art? Okay, yeah, there's there's
plenty more than that, it's just less Go is the
most famous one, and then Chauve is the most recent,
most famous one because I heard but there are others. Um,
(23:44):
what about chocolodytes. We should mention that that's a great
word to call somebody. It always reminds me of trilobite.
Remember the little weird kind of insect armor plated fossilized insect.
I'll show you a trilobite. Okay. It was one of
the earliest like footed animals. Scary looking really, but that's
(24:09):
what I always get the too confused chocolate. It means
cave dweller, literally someone who lives in a hole or
cave named after There are apparently some West African tribes
that the Greeks came in contact with, and they lived
in cliff caves, and they were called trocolate, eye t
or trogoled. Well, it's a nice insult you can throw
around these days and sounds sort of intelligent. Instead of
(24:32):
calling someone like a d bag, he'd say he's a trocolodyte,
you know. Yeah, and one got Jerry too. Man, you
guys are on the same way today. I guess, uh so,
I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes,
well modern, let's not quite go into present day. I
think we need to give a shout out to the
(24:52):
Anasazi and the Pueblos word cliff dwelling people's from the
twelfth century Ish of the outhwestern United States, who basically
showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out
caves and lived there they built their own caves. Yeah,
you should see some of these. Look up, like just
look up cliff dwellers US and you'll see some really
(25:15):
neat They had, like whole cities like carved out into
these these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders.
That sounds really dangerous it was, but it was also
very well defended and stified. Yeah, because people just be like,
I'm not going up there to fight those guys. Yeah,
I'm not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Um, can we
(25:36):
talk about Mountain Mountain Hebron? Are we there yet? Yeah? Okay. Uh,
that's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and
a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network
of caves that have been around for about a hundred
years that their forefathers built. And uh, but of course,
because it's in the West Bank, there's uh, some disagreement
(25:58):
over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed
by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened
to remove the people. I don't know what the current
state is. I looked it up, I couldn't find it.
Last I saw is that they basically designated it a
militarized zone, which meant that the Palestinians living there needed
to leave. But are they still in there? I don't know.
(26:19):
The most recent thing I can find from two thousand five,
so I don't know. Al right, Well, southern Spain, was
that what you were talking about. I don't know if
Faltemyer's in southern Spain, but there's it's definitely in Spain.
But there are like a natural cliff or cave dwellings
that were carved out into even further Cave dwellings in
(26:40):
Spain and um have basically been continuously inhabited at one
time or another. Now there's a large homeless population there apparently,
I mean, Spain's got unemployment. I'm sure that the cave
dwelling populations increased proportionately. Uh Cappadocia. Cappadocia uh in Turkey
(27:01):
has an elaborate cave system and it's not a very
friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's been
described as lunar and this. Yeah, it's amazing, it's really amazing.
Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if
you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are
caves like homes. Yeah, and these were man made. These
(27:22):
are carved out for people to live in, which is um,
I guess we didn't even say. I guess that's the
other type of cave. You neither find one or you
can make one. But yeah, and by making one, I
think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural
cave to that's that would account. I would guess that'd
be man made too. Yeah, probably so. But the en
Cappadocia and Turkey um anchor Rights, which were early Christians
(27:46):
who were hermits. Yeah, um, they inhabited these caves and
and made the first dwellings. And then when the Christians
were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people
and they actually built um underground churches that became an
underground city. Have you seen these pictures? Oh, they're amazing,
(28:07):
just the masonry and the artwork that they made of
just hewn from the rock. That's still intact today. And
apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while
and then rediscovered. Not but that was pretty neat to find. Well,
I got another documentary for you, um, like no place
on earth have you seen that one? Uh? There was
a guy a caver that UM was exploring this cave
(28:28):
in the Ukraine and he found like shoes and medicine
bottles and things, and he was like, wait a minute,
this isn't like paleolithic at all. This looks like it
was from the nineteen forties. And it was. And it
turns out there was. Um thirty eight members of different
Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for
(28:52):
uh five hundred and eleven days. They lived underground for
over a year and a half. And uh some of
these people still alive and they found them. They still
live in the caves. No, no, no, no, they lived
there for a year and a half. I got in
the Holocaust, Um, but there they had never told their story.
They just like kept it a secret because they were like,
no one would believe it. Plus also in case they
(29:14):
ever needed to go back to the cave, Well they
did go back. They took him back to the caves. No,
I'm saying if they ever had to go back to
the cave, like you want to keep the cave secret,
because they weren't the first time, you know, but um,
it's pretty powerful and they take some of these survivors
back to this cave or they haven't been since the
Holocaust and they all survived to um really really great documentary. Yeah,
(29:35):
pretty cool, like no place self like like no place
on Earth, well, like no place selves. Um. There's also
apparently a trend in parts of Europe to buy old
man made cave homes and dress him up. I saw
this and I was like, I didn't double check, but
I could see this. Yeah, I mean this is a grabster,
(29:56):
so's he's good on his facts. Outfitting them with electric city, um,
installing modern plumbing, uh, getting the ventilation system going, and
just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah, putting down
tile floor. And there's always the cave home weirdos. Yeah. Well,
I mean if you're TV like, you know bizarre houses.
(30:20):
If you're a green person, yeah, you could do a
lot worse than build yourself a cave home because the
environmental impact is so much lower. It requires much fewer
building materials. Um. If you can deal with very low
natural light and not go crazy, then a cave might
be suited for you. If you can deal with the
damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah.
(30:41):
And I shouldn't have said weirdos. It's ok to eat
the room. But anytime I see those shows of like
extreme bizarre homes, you just shoot the TV. I made
a house out of like Bob Goolay was on it. Yeah,
pretty much. Um, I've never been in like there was
a cave house near us growing up. Actually that really? Yeah.
It was like you know, it was when they built
(31:02):
into the side of you know Earth where in Stone
Mountain is it's still there? I assume, so is it
built into Stone Mountain? No? No, no, no, Um. And
it was like kind of the people go by there
and look at it and stuff, and I, even as
a kid, I thought it was kind of dumb. Did
you ever know Jack mcbreer when you were younger? Kenneth
from UM thirty Rock, he's from Stone Mountain Conyers? Oh
(31:26):
really yeah in the show he's from Stone Mountain. UM.
One of the other writers for thirty Rock, though I
can't remember his name is I think what you read
in is that right? But no, Hun didn't know jackne Prayer, which, uh,
you got anything else? Oh? Yeah? The last thing. One
of the other benefits of UM cave home it's very
(31:49):
difficult to break into, which is sad because that is
not the reason why they were initially used in Paleolithic Carrott.
But it's a it's a quality point. Now this true.
How far God, where was it that guy that built
a house underground? No, I've seen those before. I've seemed
like missile silos converted into homes and things like that.
(32:11):
This one was for sale recently. I can't remember who
sent it to me, but he basically built It's not
like a weird, you know, silo house. It's like a home.
He just built underground. Like when you go down there,
he's got paintings of the outside world on all the walls.
It was this rich guy who built it. I think
as a like a shelter in case something bad happened,
(32:32):
and so you know, there's pictures of like rolling fields
and when you're underground, I mean, obviously you can tell
it's a painting, but it doesn't feel like some cave.
It's like just a regular house built underground. Well, there's
a theory that we're going to end up living underground
because eventually arable crop lay and will become so valuable
that we will, uh we'll all have we will basically
be forced to inhabit, the opposite of sky scrapers. They
(32:56):
will be going down instead of up because we'll need
the land end up on top for crops. Didn't we
do one on why why don't humans live underground? Yeah?
I guess that could be part four? Then I guess
so it's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. You
know this is the cave suite. All right, So let's
(33:17):
see you don't have anything else. I got nothing else.
If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you
can type cave dwellers into the search part how stuff
works dot Com. And I said search parts means it's
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. We keep
making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh yeah, and I'm
tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm
(33:37):
gonna like put us both in time out. Do you
think Jerry would be paying attention? But I don't know
why we keep making this mistake. But in the Solar
Sales episode we talked about In fact, I think it
was you this time said something about acceleration will kill you,
or the speed will kill you, or something going that fast. Yeah,
I'm sure it was. We got a lot of emails,
and this was one of the nicer ones. Heads up
(33:59):
guys on a few things, including on the solar sales.
There's been some misunderstanding between speed and acceleration. Common belief
is it traveling at high speed is taxing on the body.
Not true. It is the acceleration and not the speed
which is dangerous. Take as an example, traveling in a car.
Changing your velocity from zero to a hundred kilometers per
hour a very short time results in a large acceleration.
(34:20):
This is where you get that feeling of being crushed
into your seat. But once you keep that constant speed,
that feeling goes away. The same thing for a plane.
Notice when you accelerate on the tarmac, it's pretty intense,
but once you're up in the air, you'd barely feel
a thing. Yeah you think we'd know this. I mean
we've done sort of research on the rockets led an acceleration,
and it's just misspeaking in the moment we know this. Oh,
(34:42):
if I'm in a rupt for a second, I ran
across this designer's euthanasia roller coaster. What um it was
basically this guy design It's all conceptual. Obviously, it's slightly
tongue in cheek. But it was designed to kill you,
like the roller coaster was designed to kill you and
to go out with a thrill. Yeah, and he he
describes like what like at what point you will die
(35:06):
and from what Basically it's like you are going upside
down so fast. The acceleration is so great that it
basically like keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. Um, and
just to make sure you're dead, he added, like six
of those loops, but it starts with this huge hill.
I can't remember what it's called. I think if you
look up uthan Asia roller coaster, this this guy's design
(35:28):
will come up. It's pretty interesting. Interesting, but it would
be from acceleration, not speed. Wow, that's a lot of
work to put into a killing machine. I would just
draw a length of rope and a sturdy beam, you know. Um,
you wouldn't be a successful designer probably so. Uh So.
Then he puts it in the context of the solar
sale um and says only very small accelerations are involved,
(35:50):
so human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces.
So I hope it clears it up a little bit.
Definitely rocking at guys, and that from knee Raj from
Australia slash Mauritius ni Raj. Thank you you appreciate that
we will never make that mistake again. I disagree. I'm
sure we will speed ull kill you. Where's Northern Ireland,
(36:14):
Great Britain, k England. We've been getting that one wrong
forever too. Yeah. You know, there's only so much information
that human brain can hold, everybody, and we're trying to
fill it with things like cave dwelling facts and stuff
like that. Yeah, and who was the bass player for Poison?
I can't get rid of that? Do you know that? Yeah,
(36:35):
Bobby Doll, So there's cc It was a guitarist, Brett Michael,
Brett Michael. Bobby Doll is the guy. He sounds like
a V seven oriole or something to the drummer. Was
you remember him right? No? Ricky Rockett? Oh wow? Yeah.
I I didn't even like poison. That's what's so funny.
Poison was good. I wouldn't have they were good. Uh,
(36:56):
let's see if you want to know more about poison already,
that part didn't I sure. If you want to get
in touch with us, how about that. You can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash that We Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com. You can check out our very fun
and entertaining home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
(37:17):
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it how stuff works dot com? Hey. Netflix streams
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(37:40):
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