# From the Vault: Cats of Cyprus

An episode of [Stuff To Blow Your Mind](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/350359306), 29 Aug 2026, 54 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/6ea152c0-9e3a-45de-8672-ae2f0056b113/9f16a6e3-bd96-43a2-a464-b4b40114bb47/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=d8936746-9e22-4dba-b762-ae2f0056b126

In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the oldest known evidence of domesticated cats on the isle of Cyprus, as well as tales of St. Nicholas of the Cats, also associated with the island. (originally published 8/7/2025) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:06] Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
[0:09] Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have another rerun
[0:12] Speaker 1: for you here today. This is an episode that originally
[0:14] Speaker 1: published 8-7-2025. It is Cats of Cyprus. In this episode,
[0:19] Speaker 1: we discuss the oldest known evidence of domesticated cats on
[0:22] Speaker 1: the Isle of Cyprus, as well as tales of St.
[0:25] Speaker 1: Nicholas of the Cats, also associated with the island. All right,
[0:29] Speaker 1: let's do it.
[0:33] Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:44] Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
[0:46] Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
[0:47] Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.
[0:49] Speaker 1: And we're continuing Cat Week here on Stuff to Blow
[0:52] Speaker 1: Your Mind. If you are not aware, it is Cat Week,
[0:54] Speaker 1: a celebration of cats in our own weird stuff to
[0:58] Speaker 1: blow your mind, and eventually Weird House Cinema Manor. In
[1:03] Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to be talking about, to a
[1:06] Speaker 1: large extent, the domestication of cats. And when we think
[1:09] Speaker 1: about the oldest human civilizations to value the domestic cat,
[1:14] Speaker 1: I think a lot of us tend to, in many ways,
[1:16] Speaker 1: rightfully think about the ancient Egyptians. After all, the ancient
[1:19] Speaker 1: Egyptians held the cat in high esteem, living with them,
[1:23] Speaker 1: depicting them in their art, casting gods in their likeness.
[1:27] Speaker 1: and of course, sometimes mummifying their remains. So you'd be
[1:31] Speaker 1: quite excused, I think, if you came into this episode
[1:35] Speaker 1: assuming that ancient Egypt provided us with the earliest evidence
[1:39] Speaker 1: of domesticated cats. And in fact, up until, I mean,
[1:43] Speaker 1: reasonably recently, like the early 2000s, but certainly recent enough
[1:47] Speaker 1: that it occurred on the the other end of a
[1:51] Speaker 1: lot of our schooling, this was exactly what was assumed
[1:55] Speaker 1: based on evidence from something like 3,600 years ago concerning
[1:59] Speaker 1: the domestication of the Near Eastern and Egyptian populations of
[2:03] Speaker 1: the African wildcat. But then in the early 2000s, as
[2:07] Speaker 1: we'll be discussing, new archaeological findings pointed researchers to a
[2:11] Speaker 1: new possible location for the oldest known evidence of domesticated cats,
[2:16] Speaker 1: and that is on the Isle of Cyprus. For those
[2:18] Speaker 1: of you who trying to pull up the map in
[2:21] Speaker 1: your own head, or perhaps, you know, opening another window
[2:24] Speaker 1: on whatever device you're at, maybe I'll save you a
[2:27] Speaker 1: trip and a little brain power. The Mediterranean island of
[2:30] Speaker 1: Cyprus is the third largest Mediterranean island after Sicily and Sardinia.
[2:35] Speaker 1: And it was first settled by hunter-gatherers approximately 13,000 years ago.
[2:40] Speaker 1: And it's been uniquely situated over the millennia to experience
[2:44] Speaker 1: cultural exchange with Europe, Africa, and Asia, shaping the Cypriot culture.
[2:49] Speaker 1: And so, as we'll discuss, it's possible that evidence of
[2:52] Speaker 1: domesticated cats does indeed go back some 9,500 years. And,
[2:58] Speaker 1: of course, then some, maybe, to ancient humans in Cyprus.
[3:02] Speaker 3: That's right.
[3:03] Speaker 4: But before we get to the archaeological evidence for cats
[3:06] Speaker 4: as human companions on the island of Cyprus, I thought
[3:10] Speaker 4: we should briefly look at the question, how did cats
[3:13] Speaker 4: become domesticated? Where does the cat come from? So my
[3:18] Speaker 4: main source here is a paper by Otoni et al.,
[3:21] Speaker 4: Claudio Otoni and co-authors, published in the journal Nature, Ecology,
[3:26] Speaker 4: and Evolution in 2017, and it's called The Paleogenetics of
[3:30] Speaker 4: Cat Dispersal in the Ancient World. The top line here,
[3:35] Speaker 4: is the discovery, and this wasn't always known, because there
[3:39] Speaker 4: are a number of different wildcat subvarieties you find around
[3:42] Speaker 4: the world. There's a European wildcat, there is a Central
[3:47] Speaker 4: Asian wildcat, different wildcats you find all over the place.
[3:51] Speaker 4: And so it was not always known where the domesticated
[3:55] Speaker 4: cat came from. But now researchers can say with a
[3:58] Speaker 4: pretty high degree of confidence that all domesticated cats were
[4:02] Speaker 4: are thought to descend from an original population of wild
[4:07] Speaker 4: cats native to North Africa and Southwest Asia known as
[4:12] Speaker 4: Felis sylvestris libica or the African wild cat. So the
[4:17] Speaker 4: cats that are domestic cats around the world originally come
[4:21] Speaker 4: from the subgroup of the African wild cats. And there
[4:26] Speaker 4: appear to have been two waves of domestication. So the
[4:30] Speaker 4: authors of this paper, Atoni et al., they studied cat
[4:32] Speaker 4: DNA collected from all around the globe. And they determined
[4:36] Speaker 4: through genetic analysis that cat domestication started first in the
[4:41] Speaker 4: Fertile Crescent. That's the earliest time in the Neolithic period.
[4:44] Speaker 4: That's the last part of the Stone Age. And then
[4:47] Speaker 4: it accelerated in Egypt in the first millennium BCE.
[4:51] Speaker 1: So we can still basically look at our household cats
[4:55] Speaker 1: and think of them as being descendants of the goddess Bastet.
[5:00] Speaker 3: Right, or bast.
[5:01] Speaker 1: So there's a lot of Egyptian heritage to the domestic
[5:05] Speaker 1: cat species.
[5:05] Speaker 4: It does seem like ancient Egyptian civilization does contribute hugely
[5:09] Speaker 4: to the domestic cats of today, but ancient Egypt was
[5:14] Speaker 4: not the first time cats were domesticated. That seems to
[5:17] Speaker 4: be in the Fertile Crescent a little bit earlier in
[5:19] Speaker 4: the Neolithic period.
[5:21] Speaker 1: But maybe the last time they would be domesticated, because
[5:23] Speaker 1: it seems like we're done. It seems like we're at
[5:25] Speaker 1: a good level with the current domestication of the common
[5:29] Speaker 1: house cat.
[5:29] Speaker 3: I think they're here to stay.
[5:31] Speaker 4: But speaking of the idea that a domestication attempt of
[5:36] Speaker 4: an animal could not stick around, I was reading about
[5:40] Speaker 4: an interesting variation in a paper by an author that
[5:42] Speaker 4: we'll come back to several times in this episode. A
[5:46] Speaker 4: paper by Jean-Denis Vignier and a bunch of co-authors from
[5:51] Speaker 4: PLOS One in 2016 called Earliest Domestic Cats in China
[5:57] Speaker 4: Identified as Leopard Cat. So in this paper, the authors
[6:02] Speaker 4: agree that all domestic cats today are descended from the
[6:06] Speaker 4: African wildcat. So it's not a dispute about like the
[6:10] Speaker 4: leopard cat being a part of the genetic heritage of,
[6:14] Speaker 4: you know, any cat that you would find in a
[6:16] Speaker 4: house today. Instead, this paper documents archaeological remains from China
[6:22] Speaker 4: dating from between 5500 to 4900 years before present. showing
[6:29] Speaker 4: what appear to be domesticated cats buried in human contexts,
[6:35] Speaker 4: so found in human storage areas or dwellings. And analysis
[6:40] Speaker 4: of the bones of these animals shows that these are
[6:42] Speaker 4: not African wildcats, but rather from a historically short-lived attempt
[6:48] Speaker 4: to domesticate the Asian leopard cat, now an extant wild animal.
[6:54] Speaker 1: Wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, I mean, you think about
[6:58] Speaker 1: We tend to think about the domestication success stories. And
[7:04] Speaker 1: with the cat, I think we're still figuring out how
[7:06] Speaker 1: successful that was. I know I had my own household
[7:10] Speaker 1: cat just pee all over the place this morning. So
[7:12] Speaker 1: it definitely gave me some time for a few sidebars
[7:17] Speaker 1: as I was finishing the research for this episode. It's like,
[7:20] Speaker 1: have we... Have we reached a good point with this domestication?
[7:22] Speaker 1: I'm not sure. But clearly there are cases where there's
[7:25] Speaker 1: even less of a match and where not enough lines
[7:28] Speaker 1: up in short enough time for the domestication to really
[7:33] Speaker 1: take hold.
[7:34] Speaker 3: Well, yeah.
[7:35] Speaker 4: I mean, I guess you're sort of asking this question now,
[7:37] Speaker 4: but yeah, it raises the question, like, what counts as domesticated? Like,
[7:41] Speaker 4: how sticky does the relationship have to be between the
[7:44] Speaker 4: humans and these animals for it to really be domesticated? Because, yeah,
[7:47] Speaker 4: in the case of these semi-domesticated or proto-domesticated leopard cats,
[7:53] Speaker 4: the practice appears to have died out. There's not like
[7:56] Speaker 4: a widespread, you know, population of domesticated leopard cat descendants.
[8:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine there are a number of different elements
[8:03] Speaker 1: like the cultural attachment, religious significance. And then just, is
[8:08] Speaker 1: it useful? Like, are they serving a purpose in the
[8:11] Speaker 1: household or on, you know, or on the land surrounding
[8:14] Speaker 1: the household? Are they killing the enemies of man and
[8:18] Speaker 1: so forth?
[8:19] Speaker 4: I have to wonder, I don't have direct evidence of this,
[8:21] Speaker 4: but I have to wonder if the spread of the
[8:24] Speaker 4: domesticated African wildcat descendant could have possibly replaced, you know,
[8:29] Speaker 4: previous attempts to domesticate cats or cat-like animals.
[8:33] Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah, because if you're kind of
[8:34] Speaker 1: like putting in a lot of work to try and
[8:36] Speaker 1: domesticate these leopards and then someone shows up with something
[8:40] Speaker 1: maybe a little more closely aligned to what we think
[8:43] Speaker 1: of as a modern house cat, yeah, you might be
[8:44] Speaker 1: inclined to think, well, heck, let's just go with this.
[8:47] Speaker 1: This model seems to work.
[8:59] Speaker 4: So how did domestic cats come to cover the entire globe?
[9:03] Speaker 4: Since the African wildcat is native to North Africa and
[9:06] Speaker 4: the Middle East, how did it spread all over the world?
[9:09] Speaker 4: Atoni et al. determined by looking at DNA from cat remains,
[9:15] Speaker 4: especially in major ancient port cities. that domestic cats spread
[9:19] Speaker 4: around the world on ships. It had to have been
[9:22] Speaker 4: by sea travel that they made it from place to
[9:24] Speaker 4: place and eventually basically to the whole world. And they argued,
[9:29] Speaker 4: I think this makes a lot of sense, that they
[9:31] Speaker 4: were probably kept aboard ships to kill rats and mice
[9:34] Speaker 4: that would otherwise get into food stashes during transport. And
[9:39] Speaker 4: this will be a theme, actually. You know, it's funny
[9:42] Speaker 4: how A lot of people listening probably today do not
[9:45] Speaker 4: think of the cat as a functional or working animal.
[9:49] Speaker 3: It's a companion animal.
[9:50] Speaker 4: You have a cat to be friends with it, to
[9:54] Speaker 4: feel nice when you're petting it and taking care of it,
[9:56] Speaker 4: to feel good just you know, getting that reciprocal relationship
[10:01] Speaker 4: of companionship and mutual enjoyment with another creature. But for
[10:05] Speaker 4: much of history, the cat had a job to do.
[10:08] Speaker 1: Absolutely. And, you know, I don't know, I still think
[10:11] Speaker 1: about this. I think of my cat primarily as a
[10:14] Speaker 1: companion animal. But You know, there are times where, you know,
[10:18] Speaker 1: I live near some railroad tracks. There's always, there are
[10:22] Speaker 1: rodents out there. And so it does cross my mind
[10:26] Speaker 1: from time to time that she is also kind of
[10:28] Speaker 1: like the last line of defense. That if rodents enter
[10:31] Speaker 1: the house, it's her job to take care of it.
[10:35] Speaker 1: And if not, I will satirize her with poetry so hard. Well,
[10:41] Speaker 1: you better be careful you don't summon the king of cats. Well, yeah,
[10:44] Speaker 1: we're not going to drag him into this. I'm going
[10:45] Speaker 1: to just target Mochi, my cat, with that.
[10:49] Speaker 3: Oh, right.
[10:49] Speaker 4: I forgot what Sean Chan did. Did he not satirize
[10:53] Speaker 4: cats hard enough to invite the king of cats just
[10:57] Speaker 4: to protect them? Did he actually have to satirize the
[10:59] Speaker 4: king of cats himself?
[11:00] Speaker 1: He went straight to the king of cats. Cats are
[11:04] Speaker 1: under his jurisdiction, and cats have failed me in not
[11:07] Speaker 1: eating the mice that ate this egg that I was
[11:09] Speaker 1: going to eat.
[11:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Okay. He went straight to the top. Run
[11:13] Speaker 3: in his mouth about the boss. That's a bad idea.
[11:16] Speaker 4: Oh, but this all brings us back to the connection
[11:18] Speaker 4: between cats and the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
[11:21] Speaker 4: Because as you were alluding to earlier, Rob, it seems
[11:24] Speaker 4: that our earliest archaeological evidence of cat-human companionship may be
[11:31] Speaker 4: in an ancient Stone Age grave on the island of Cyprus.
[11:37] Speaker 3: That's right.
[11:38] Speaker 1: And so we're going to We're going to skip over
[11:39] Speaker 1: Egyptian cats here and mostly focus on Cyprus. But I
[11:43] Speaker 1: do want to note that we could easily come back
[11:46] Speaker 1: in another episode, maybe next Cat Week, maybe sooner, and
[11:50] Speaker 1: discuss the ancient Egyptians and their cats. But again, this
[11:54] Speaker 1: was an important find. This really changed the way we
[11:57] Speaker 1: understood humanity's relationships. with domesticated or nearly domesticated felines. And again,
[12:04] Speaker 1: this is the work of French scientist Jean-Denis Vignier of
[12:07] Speaker 1: the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, along
[12:11] Speaker 1: with his co-authors. The big initial paper was Early Taming
[12:16] Speaker 1: of the Cat in Cyprus, published in 2004 in the
[12:19] Speaker 1: journal Science. And it essentially set the clock back, I believe,
[12:23] Speaker 1: like a good 5,000 years on what we've understood about
[12:28] Speaker 1: humanity's relationship with the domesticated cat. So this is essentially
[12:32] Speaker 1: how it went down. And Joe, we were both looking
[12:36] Speaker 1: at the same sources here, so jump in if you
[12:39] Speaker 1: want to expand on anything that I'm mentioning here. But essentially,
[12:42] Speaker 1: the researchers discovered a mostly complete skeleton. And I want
[12:47] Speaker 1: to add the caveat that it seems to have been
[12:50] Speaker 1: buried in complete form. It's just parts of the skeleton
[12:53] Speaker 1: were damaged at some point or another.
[12:56] Speaker 4: And the fact that it's in complete form is important
[12:59] Speaker 4: for reasons we'll get into in a minute.
[13:00] Speaker 1: Exactly, yes. So, mostly complete skeleton of an eight-month-old cat
[13:06] Speaker 1: next to the 9,500-year-old grave of a human being. And
[13:10] Speaker 1: this grave was located in the Chalurukambas archaeological site. This
[13:16] Speaker 1: is a pre-pottery Neolithic bee site. I'm to understand this
[13:21] Speaker 1: was a settlement occupied from the end of the 9th
[13:24] Speaker 1: till the end of the 8th millennium BCE. And this
[13:27] Speaker 1: is in southern Cyprus, a site that had been first
[13:31] Speaker 1: excavated just a decade earlier. And this would have been
[13:34] Speaker 1: one of the Neolithic people that had traveled from the mainland,
[13:38] Speaker 1: bringing knowledge. crops and livestock to Cyprus. Not individually, one
[13:42] Speaker 1: of the people. I mean, more broadly, like the people,
[13:47] Speaker 1: the strain of humanity that came to the island. Right.
[13:50] Speaker 4: So sometime previous, in the previous few thousand years, there
[13:53] Speaker 4: had been settlers from the mainland, originally occupants of somewhere
[13:58] Speaker 4: in the Fertile Crescent, who were Stone Age humans that
[14:02] Speaker 4: got in boats and made their way to the island.
[14:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So This particular human that was buried, again,
[14:10] Speaker 1: alongside this cat, was apparently about 30 when they died.
[14:13] Speaker 1: And they were buried with various items, which is always
[14:16] Speaker 1: interesting to see what kind of items they were buried with,
[14:19] Speaker 1: or at least the ones we know about because they've
[14:21] Speaker 1: survived in one.
[14:22] Speaker 3: Form or another.
[14:22] Speaker 1: And it consisted of a marine shell, a stone pendant,
[14:26] Speaker 1: a flint scraper, two small polished axes, and I think
[14:30] Speaker 1: one of those was damaged, a pumice stone, a fragment
[14:33] Speaker 1: of ochre, a large flint-piercing tool, and then several flint blades.
[14:39] Speaker 1: So a lot of, you know, utilitarian tools on their body.
[14:42] Speaker 1: They'd probably been buried in a bag, placed in a
[14:45] Speaker 1: circular pit that also contained various additional shells and stones.
[14:49] Speaker 1: The cat's grave was oval-shaped and about 15 centimeters deep.
[14:54] Speaker 1: The body was seemingly, again, complete at burial, though parts
[14:57] Speaker 1: of it were destroyed, I believe, by plowing, because it
[15:00] Speaker 1: was like the uppermost bones that had been damaged here.
[15:04] Speaker 1: And the cat was laid out on its side, head
[15:07] Speaker 1: to the west and back to the south. That happens
[15:10] Speaker 1: to be the exact same positioning as the human buried
[15:13] Speaker 1: beside it. The cause of death for the feline could
[15:16] Speaker 1: not be determined, but evidence suggested that it had not
[15:19] Speaker 1: been cut, had not been burned. Its body had not
[15:21] Speaker 1: been opened up. Gender of the cat was unknown due
[15:25] Speaker 1: to missing or destroyed pelvic bone pieces.
[15:28] Speaker 4: So we don't know if the cat died of natural
[15:31] Speaker 4: causes or was killed, but the evidence of its death
[15:34] Speaker 4: was not clear.
[15:35] Speaker 3: Right.
[15:36] Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that it could have been killed as
[15:39] Speaker 1: a sacrifice and buried alongside the human. But there's no
[15:43] Speaker 1: evidence that that happened. There's no evidence that that didn't happen. And,
[15:47] Speaker 1: you know, it's not like either possibility really alters the
[15:52] Speaker 1: argument for this animal being important to the person it's
[15:55] Speaker 1: buried with. I mean, either way. It has a privileged
[15:59] Speaker 1: position alongside the human or vice versa. The human has
[16:02] Speaker 1: a privileged position alongside the cat. Yeah.
[16:04] Speaker 4: Well, and the the really important thing here being that
[16:07] Speaker 4: it's clear to the archaeologists that this cat was intentionally
[16:11] Speaker 4: buried on purpose. This is it's not a situation where like, oh,
[16:15] Speaker 4: a cat was running around and it just happened to
[16:17] Speaker 4: die near the grave and they're mistaking it for me.
[16:20] Speaker 4: And there were several reasons for thinking. that this is
[16:23] Speaker 4: an intentional burial alongside the human, not just the proximity,
[16:27] Speaker 4: it is right beside the other grave, but also you
[16:30] Speaker 4: mentioned the fact that the cat's skeleton was articulated, meaning
[16:34] Speaker 4: like the joints were still connected and intact, basically.
[16:37] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[16:38] Speaker 1: And Meunier also points out that the mere fact that
[16:41] Speaker 1: it was buried like this, articulated, almost entirely intact, if
[16:47] Speaker 1: not entirely intact, means it was likely a tame species.
[16:52] Speaker 1: Because when wild animals were rarely buried during this time,
[16:56] Speaker 1: the skeletons were generally rather incomplete. So just everything about
[16:59] Speaker 1: the way this creature has been buried and the way
[17:02] Speaker 1: it's positioned and so forth, it seems to indicate that
[17:06] Speaker 1: this animal was likely domesticated to some degree. And we
[17:10] Speaker 1: should also note that these findings, Vignier backs up by
[17:13] Speaker 1: pointing to various other cat remains found, at least in
[17:16] Speaker 1: pieces elsewhere on the island. And, uh, and also the idea,
[17:20] Speaker 1: he mentions the idea that cats had special status, um,
[17:23] Speaker 1: among these individuals was also, is also backed up by
[17:26] Speaker 1: the discovery of figurines in neighboring regions from this time,
[17:29] Speaker 1: as well as a one that was found at the
[17:31] Speaker 1: same archeological site in Cyprus though, from a slightly earlier time.
[17:37] Speaker 1: So everything seems in place here to suggest, yeah, a
[17:39] Speaker 1: tame cat, a cat that is, that is considered close
[17:43] Speaker 1: to humans for one reason or another. We'll get into
[17:46] Speaker 1: more about, you know, some of those reasons. and also
[17:51] Speaker 1: by a culture that values the cat enough to create
[17:54] Speaker 1: its likeness. Again, maybe for religious purposes, maybe for some
[17:59] Speaker 1: other purpose, but they certainly held the cat in high esteem.
[18:05] Speaker 4: Now, another thing that would be interesting to know is,
[18:07] Speaker 4: do we know what kind of cat this was?
[18:10] Speaker 1: Yes, yeah. So, Vignier contends that the, quote, the post-cranial
[18:17] Speaker 1: and cranial measurements fall in the upper half of the
[18:20] Speaker 1: range variation of size of the Western Asian Felis sylvestris libica.
[18:25] Speaker 1: So this does seem to be the African wildcat. And
[18:29] Speaker 1: I'm only just now realizing that the cartoon cat Sylvester
[18:32] Speaker 1: gets its name probably from this.
[18:35] Speaker 4: Well, I think the name Sylvester means like from the
[18:38] Speaker 4: forest or of the woods, though I assume that's what
[18:40] Speaker 4: it means in the context of this cat's name as well.
[18:43] Speaker 1: The cartoon cat?
[18:45] Speaker 4: Well, the real species and the cartoon I don't know
[18:48] Speaker 4: about the cartoon cat. That probably just, yeah, maybe that
[18:50] Speaker 4: comes from this.
[18:51] Speaker 1: But anyway, this does seem to be the African wild cat. Uh,
[18:55] Speaker 1: so the ancestor of the domestic cat, um, though this
[18:58] Speaker 1: would of course have been the earlier domestication wave, not the,
[19:02] Speaker 1: the one that really took hold. Uh, and this specimen
[19:05] Speaker 1: was apparently bigger than a modern domestic cat, uh, had
[19:08] Speaker 1: longer limbs. Um, but it is definitely, uh, uh, an
[19:13] Speaker 1: African wild cat. Uh, points out that there's no evidence
[19:17] Speaker 1: of a native field species of cat on Cyprus. So
[19:20] Speaker 1: they would have had to have been introduced by these
[19:23] Speaker 1: Neolithic settlers. Yeah.
[19:24] Speaker 3: And I'll have more on that in just a minute.
[19:26] Speaker 1: So this updated timeline would put the domestication just 3,000
[19:31] Speaker 1: years after the likely domestication point of the dog and
[19:34] Speaker 1: alongside the human domestication of the sheep, mastery of wheat
[19:39] Speaker 1: as well. So I think settlers of Catan fans out
[19:41] Speaker 1: there will recognize that this is just one stone short
[19:44] Speaker 1: of getting to buy a development car. So this is
[19:46] Speaker 1: a big deal when it comes to the advancement of
[19:48] Speaker 1: your civilization.
[19:49] Speaker 4: But does it help you with the longest road?
[19:52] Speaker 2: Nope.
[19:53] Speaker 1: You're going to need, what, bricks and wood for that.
[19:56] Speaker 4: Now, just a note about the timeline of dog domestication,
[20:00] Speaker 4: because I think reading about the timeline of dog domestication
[20:03] Speaker 4: can be confusing sometimes because While the earliest undisputed archaeological
[20:09] Speaker 4: evidence of a dog buried with humans comes from the
[20:14] Speaker 4: 15th millennium before present, so that's from a site in
[20:17] Speaker 4: modern Germany, genetic evidence shows that modern domestic dogs began
[20:22] Speaker 4: to diverge from their wolf ancestors something like 20,000 to
[20:27] Speaker 4: 40,000 years ago. I think there are some different figures
[20:30] Speaker 4: on that, but that's a commonly cited range. So genetic
[20:34] Speaker 4: evidence shows the process beginning much earlier, but the genetic
[20:38] Speaker 4: evidence doesn't tell us exactly how domesticated those proto-dogs or
[20:44] Speaker 4: divergent wolves were in terms of behavior and living arrangements.
[20:48] Speaker 4: So for example, it could be that for thousands of years,
[20:52] Speaker 4: these proto-dogs were only partially domesticated, not necessarily treated as companions,
[20:58] Speaker 4: but genetically and behaviorally adapted to increased.
[21:02] Speaker 3: Interaction with human populations.
[21:04] Speaker 4: One example of this would be following humans around and
[21:07] Speaker 4: scavenging their camps. So yeah, the truth is we don't
[21:11] Speaker 4: know exactly when people started treating dogs like pets or
[21:15] Speaker 4: like working animals, but the first clear archaeological evidence for
[21:19] Speaker 4: that kind of relationship comes from the 15th millennium B.C.
[21:24] Speaker 4: And again, like with the cat example, that's from an
[21:26] Speaker 4: example of humans being buried along with their dog. I
[21:29] Speaker 4: think it's from a couple being buried with their dog.
[21:32] Speaker 1: It's also confusing because sometimes we use BP in measuring
[21:36] Speaker 1: this because we're saying before Pluto, before Pluto, the Disney
[21:40] Speaker 1: cartoon dog. So it's essentially the same, but it's off by.
[21:44] Speaker 3: A few decades.
[21:45] Speaker 4: So apart from the proximity to a human grave, One
[21:50] Speaker 4: clue that the cat skeleton found at Shiluro Kambos might
[21:55] Speaker 4: have been a domesticated cat begins with the observation that,
[22:01] Speaker 4: as you said a minute ago, Rob, the African wildcat
[22:04] Speaker 4: was not native to Cyprus before the arrival of humans.
[22:08] Speaker 3: That's worth stressing.
[22:09] Speaker 4: There were no wildcats on Cyprus at all. And we
[22:14] Speaker 4: know that pretty conclusively from the fossil record.
[22:16] Speaker 3: No cats. In fact.
[22:18] Speaker 4: The fossil record indicates that before humans, there were very
[22:22] Speaker 4: few terrestrial mammals at all on Cyprus. This is probably
[22:27] Speaker 4: because even during glacial maximum periods, when the sea levels
[22:31] Speaker 4: were at their lowest, Cyprus was never connected to the mainland.
[22:36] Speaker 4: So the only pre-human terrestrial mammals on Cyprus appear to
[22:41] Speaker 4: have been the following. One was The dwarf hippopotamus, this
[22:44] Speaker 4: seems to have gone extinct when humans arrived, which was
[22:47] Speaker 4: about 12,500 years before present. So they were very likely
[22:52] Speaker 4: hunted or otherwise driven extinct by humans. The dwarf elephant
[22:56] Speaker 4: also disappeared when we showed up. The Cypriot genet, which
[23:01] Speaker 4: is a small carnivore, sort of a cat-like, weasel-like creature,
[23:05] Speaker 4: a little.
[23:06] Speaker 3: Bit raccoony maybe. It's got a long tail.
[23:09] Speaker 4: May have survived a few thousand years after humans arrived,
[23:13] Speaker 4: but it is now extinct. And then finally, the Cypriot mouse,
[23:17] Speaker 4: which is the only native land mammal from.
[23:20] Speaker 3: Cyprus that still exists today.
[23:22] Speaker 1: And, you know, that's quite a compliment for the Cypriot
[23:25] Speaker 1: mouse to have survived, given what is about to follow.
[23:28] Speaker 4: Well, mice are hardy, but yeah, when humans show up
[23:31] Speaker 4: on an island, we do a lot of damage, especially
[23:33] Speaker 4: us and the things we bring with us.
[23:35] Speaker 1: Oh, do you think humans are the reason that the
[23:38] Speaker 1: hippopotamus and the elephant disappeared? It's just a coincidence, I assume, right?
[23:43] Speaker 4: So since cats were not native to the island and
[23:46] Speaker 4: thus not acquired locally, we know that ancient humans, and
[23:50] Speaker 4: these would have been Stone Age farmers originally from the
[23:53] Speaker 4: Fertile Crescent, must have crossed the sea with cats in
[23:57] Speaker 4: their boats. And given the size of the boats that
[24:01] Speaker 4: would have been used, and given the fact that you
[24:04] Speaker 4: need multiple breeding pairs to establish a stable island population,
[24:10] Speaker 4: it's just not very plausible that we could be dealing
[24:12] Speaker 4: with the case of cat stowaways that establish themselves on
[24:16] Speaker 4: an island. That's not, I don't know, it's not impossible,
[24:20] Speaker 4: but it seems very unlikely.
[24:22] Speaker 3: Right.
[24:22] Speaker 1: Especially because, you know, to be clear, over the course
[24:27] Speaker 1: of time, unlikely introductions do occur. We see that, especially
[24:33] Speaker 1: when you go beyond the span of human civilizations and
[24:37] Speaker 1: you look at just like, you know, more like geologic time.
[24:40] Speaker 3: But this is not millions of years, right? This is
[24:43] Speaker 3: not millions of years.
[24:44] Speaker 1: This is within the range of human domain. And it
[24:47] Speaker 1: suspiciously involves an animal that humans took a liking to.
[24:51] Speaker 3: Yes.
[24:52] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[24:52] Speaker 4: So it seems much more likely that humans brought cats
[24:56] Speaker 4: to Cyprus across the sea on purpose.
[24:59] Speaker 3: But why? Well, one clue is that cats.
[25:03] Speaker 4: Were not the only non-native animal species introduced by humans.
[25:09] Speaker 4: So here I want to reference another paper, again, where
[25:12] Speaker 4: Jean Denis Vignier is the first author. This one is
[25:15] Speaker 4: called Historical Dynamics of the Human-Environment Interactions in Cyprus During
[25:19] Speaker 4: the 12th to 10th Millennium Before or Present, the Last
[25:23] Speaker 4: 30 Years of Contributions of the Amathus Area. This was
[25:29] Speaker 4: published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports in the
[25:32] Speaker 4: year 2023, once again.
[25:33] Speaker 3: By Vignet et al.
[25:36] Speaker 4: So in this paper, the authors are actually looking at
[25:38] Speaker 4: a lot of different stuff. They're tracking what we know
[25:40] Speaker 4: about how the physical environment of Cyprus changed before, during,
[25:46] Speaker 4: and after its early colonization by humans. And they look at, quote,
[26:03] Speaker 4: birth and evolution of the commensal fauna, e.g. mice, cats,
[26:07] Speaker 4: and crows. And commensal fauna means things living alongside. Commensalism
[26:13] Speaker 4: in biology is typically, it's a type of symbiotic relationship
[26:18] Speaker 4: in which one organism gets a benefit and the other
[26:20] Speaker 4: is not really affected one way or another. And then
[26:24] Speaker 4: the list goes on. Local domestication of wild boar and goats,
[26:28] Speaker 4: adaptation and intensification of cultivation and breeding to the local environments.
[26:34] Speaker 4: So to zoom in specifically on the introduction of new
[26:36] Speaker 4: animal species, the authors write that the first introduction we
[26:41] Speaker 4: have evidence of is actually the wild boar, which was
[26:45] Speaker 4: established on the island during the Epipaleolithic, probably as hunting stock.
[26:52] Speaker 4: So the boar remains found on Cyprus show insular dwarfism,
[26:57] Speaker 4: meaning that they're about 15% smaller than the mainland variety.
[27:01] Speaker 4: And they were often wounded with arrowheads. So this would
[27:05] Speaker 4: be an interesting early case of intentional animal management or
[27:10] Speaker 4: game management. Bringing a live stock of a wild species
[27:15] Speaker 4: to an island to release so that it can establish
[27:19] Speaker 4: itself there and so you can hunt it on the island.
[27:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. This is fascinating to think about because I
[27:25] Speaker 1: know for my own part, I often think about this
[27:29] Speaker 1: more when I'm thinking about.
[27:32] Speaker 1: Europeans, you know, setting off during the Age of Discovery
[27:37] Speaker 1: and as well as the expansion, you know, of Polynesia
[27:43] Speaker 1: and Micronesia and so forth, seafaring folks coming to an
[27:48] Speaker 1: island and realizing, hey, nice island here, but there's nothing
[27:52] Speaker 1: to eat here. I better leave some pigs. I better
[27:54] Speaker 1: leave some goats. And then I can come back and
[27:56] Speaker 1: this island will be my larder. But, you know, clearly
[27:59] Speaker 1: this has been in the human playbook for a very
[28:01] Speaker 1: long time.
[28:02] Speaker 3: Right.
[28:02] Speaker 4: I mean, this is like thousands of years before I
[28:05] Speaker 4: imagined there was such a practice.
[28:06] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[28:07] Speaker 4: So seeding, yes, seeding an island with a new game
[28:10] Speaker 4: species that can be hunted for generations to come. But
[28:14] Speaker 4: then well after the introduction of the boar during the
[28:17] Speaker 4: 11th millennium before present, we get other mammals appearing. And
[28:20] Speaker 4: this includes domestic dogs brought from the Levant, the Western
[28:25] Speaker 4: European house mouse. And cats, this would be the African wildcat,
[28:29] Speaker 4: as we've been talking about. Now to clarify, there is
[28:33] Speaker 4: no evidence that the wildcats brought along were initially treated
[28:38] Speaker 4: as companions or had any special significance to humans. That
[28:43] Speaker 4: evidence would start to appear more than a thousand years
[28:45] Speaker 4: later with that human-cat co-burial. So why were cats brought?
[28:51] Speaker 4: The authors here argue that it was likely that African
[28:54] Speaker 4: wildcats were brought to Cyprus in as an already semi-domesticated
[28:59] Speaker 4: commensal species that were valued for pest control. Because if
[29:04] Speaker 4: you are a farming society and you take foods, you
[29:08] Speaker 4: take grain or other food somewhere with you, it is
[29:11] Speaker 4: pretty much a guarantee that rodents are sneaking along for
[29:15] Speaker 4: the ride or that there are already rodents where you're going.
[29:18] Speaker 4: And either way, they're going to get into your food.
[29:21] Speaker 4: Rodent attacks on human food caches are just a perennial
[29:25] Speaker 4: problem for human cultures going back as far as we
[29:28] Speaker 4: have evidence. So if these cute, moody, little carnivorous critters,
[29:33] Speaker 4: these cats, already like to hang out around your villages
[29:36] Speaker 4: and kill the mice, it is definitely worth bringing some
[29:40] Speaker 4: of them along with you when you move to a
[29:42] Speaker 4: new place across the sea. So these early cats were
[29:46] Speaker 4: probably intentionally brought to Cyprus for the purpose of pest control.
[29:50] Speaker 4: And then after this, well, around the same time, maybe
[29:55] Speaker 4: a few hundred years later, we start to see some
[29:56] Speaker 4: other things, goats and cattle being Goats seem to have
[30:00] Speaker 4: been treated not as domestic animals initially, but as wild
[30:03] Speaker 4: game stocks. So kind of like the boars like hunted
[30:06] Speaker 4: for some time, uh, wild on the Island before they
[30:09] Speaker 4: were either domesticated or re domesticated on the Island. They may,
[30:13] Speaker 4: they may have been domesticated earlier on the mainland and
[30:15] Speaker 4: then released wild on the Island. Um, but eventually they
[30:19] Speaker 4: get re domesticated or domesticated for the first time. Then
[30:22] Speaker 4: after this, we start to see more introductions. You get, um,
[30:27] Speaker 4: Fallow deer, again, brought and established as a wild population
[30:30] Speaker 4: and then hunted domestic sheep. And then, curiously, I thought
[30:34] Speaker 4: this was so interesting, foxes.
[30:37] Speaker 3: Foxes. Foxes.
[30:38] Speaker 4: Not native to the island of Cyprus. They were not
[30:41] Speaker 4: there on their own. They had to have been brought
[30:44] Speaker 4: by humans. It is hard to imagine foxes could establish
[30:49] Speaker 4: themselves by accident, like just stowing away in boats, right?
[30:53] Speaker 3: Again, you need... You need.
[30:54] Speaker 4: Multiple breeding pairs to have a stable population there. How
[30:58] Speaker 4: would you get enough foxes to the island? It's harder
[31:03] Speaker 4: for foxes to steal away than it is for mice,
[31:05] Speaker 4: I think.
[31:06] Speaker 1: And why bring them? Like, I don't know, this seems
[31:09] Speaker 1: along the lines of, say, intentionally introducing raccoons to the side.
[31:14] Speaker 3: To get into your trash cans.
[31:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, like, I mean, and I imagine folks living with
[31:18] Speaker 1: urban foxes probably see that as a more direct comparison. Yeah,
[31:22] Speaker 1: but like, why bring the foxes?
[31:25] Speaker 4: The authors say we don't know. We don't know why
[31:27] Speaker 4: they brought the foxes. Maybe this is just a guess.
[31:30] Speaker 4: So there's not a reason to think this. You're just
[31:32] Speaker 4: having to guess. Maybe foxes had some kind of cultural
[31:35] Speaker 4: or religious significance to the settlers, possibly. The physical evidence
[31:40] Speaker 4: indicates that foxes were not hunted and they were tolerated
[31:45] Speaker 4: as commensals in the early Cypriot villages. The authors say, quote,
[31:49] Speaker 4: this also strengthens the idea that early Neolithic people were
[31:53] Speaker 4: experimenting with with a lot of different systems of relationships
[31:57] Speaker 4: with animals. So just try it out.
[32:01] Speaker 3: Why not?
[32:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you think about the idea of
[32:05] Speaker 1: bringing cats with you, and these cats are not necessarily
[32:08] Speaker 1: your friends, they just live in the same area, and
[32:11] Speaker 1: they eat something, they kill something that is useful to
[32:15] Speaker 1: you that they're killing them.
[32:17] Speaker 3: Enemy of my enemy, yeah.
[32:18] Speaker 1: Yeah, so maybe something similar with foxes. They're like, we
[32:20] Speaker 1: have seen the foxes eat mice or something that we
[32:24] Speaker 1: don't want around. They seem to have a meaningful purpose,
[32:27] Speaker 1: so let's just bring them along.
[32:29] Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder, yeah, could foxes have possibly been thought
[32:32] Speaker 4: of as pest control? I don't know how plausible that is.
[32:36] Speaker 4: Somebody who has more experience with foxes, please write in
[32:38] Speaker 4: about that. Is that plausible that they were a complementary
[32:41] Speaker 4: pest control system, possibly? Once again, I want to make clear,
[32:45] Speaker 4: the authors don't say that.
[32:47] Speaker 3: We don't know.
[32:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems to me, anyway, that it, like,
[32:50] Speaker 1: The discovery that any of these introductions could backfire on
[32:54] Speaker 1: us is a pretty recent revelation for human beings. So
[32:59] Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong. Maybe earlier civilizations did realize that they
[33:04] Speaker 1: could blow it, introducing animals intentionally for one purpose, and
[33:08] Speaker 1: then it just doesn't work out. But either way, they
[33:12] Speaker 1: had to have some reason to bring them there. And
[33:15] Speaker 1: it's fascinating to try and guess what that could have been.
[33:17] Speaker 1: They just like the look of them, maybe.
[33:18] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[33:20] Speaker 4: Well, I would not dismiss the idea of people simply
[33:23] Speaker 4: liking the look of cats in the gradual evolution of
[33:26] Speaker 4: the cat from a working animal, you know, a commensal
[33:29] Speaker 4: tolerated because of their pest control capabilities into becoming a
[33:33] Speaker 4: companion animal that you would want to have sit in
[33:35] Speaker 4: your lap and pet and feed and have buried alongside you.
[33:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And I imagine another thing you could factor
[33:42] Speaker 1: in is, as always, how cute do the pups look?
[33:46] Speaker 1: How cute do the kittens look?
[33:47] Speaker 3: And so forth.
[33:48] Speaker 1: I mean, that has been a major factor with dogs
[33:51] Speaker 1: and cats and various other animals. If they kind of
[33:55] Speaker 1: look like human babies, if they get that cute response
[33:58] Speaker 1: out of us, then that has a benefit to us,
[34:02] Speaker 1: but it also really benefits the animal that we're inevitably
[34:06] Speaker 1: trying to domesticate.
[34:07] Speaker 3: That's true.
[34:08] Speaker 1: Baby foxes are quite cute, I imagine. I'm not summoning
[34:12] Speaker 1: an image to my mind right off the bat, but
[34:14] Speaker 1: I'm just going to assume they're very cute to look at.
[34:17] Speaker 1: So maybe that's part of it.
[34:19] Speaker 4: But how this relationship evolved on Stone Age Cyprus, we
[34:23] Speaker 4: don't know.
[34:24] Speaker 3: We can only speculate.
[34:35] Speaker 4: But, Rob, you had some other stuff on Cats in
[34:38] Speaker 4: Cyprus from more recent history, right?
[34:41] Speaker 3: That's right.
[34:42] Speaker 1: There are are still domesticated cats on the Isle of Cyprus,
[34:45] Speaker 1: which should not come as a surprise to anyone because
[34:48] Speaker 1: domesticated cats are everywhere now.
[34:51] Speaker 3: They're hard to shake loose.
[34:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Again, they're here to stay. I think this
[34:55] Speaker 1: is the last domestication of the African wildcat. And there's
[35:00] Speaker 1: apparently no known connection between all the cats you'll find
[35:04] Speaker 1: there on Cyprus today and the so-called ancient Cypriot wildcat
[35:09] Speaker 1: this initial wave of domestication that we see in the
[35:13] Speaker 1: archaeological record there. But the Cypress cat is a designated
[35:19] Speaker 1: domestic cat breed found on the island. Again, just a
[35:22] Speaker 1: breed of domestic cat, sometimes called the St. Helen cat
[35:26] Speaker 1: and sometimes called the St. Nicholas cat.
[35:30] Speaker 4: So if you hear those two things, they're the same animal.
[35:33] Speaker 2: Yes.
[35:34] Speaker 1: But I want to walk through the saintly connections here.
[35:38] Speaker 1: And in this, we're going to be dealing more with
[35:42] Speaker 1: a lot of legends and some fact, but certainly less science.
[35:48] Speaker 1: So let's discuss this St. Helen connection first. This refers
[35:52] Speaker 1: to Helena of Constantinople, who would have lived 246 or
[35:56] Speaker 1: 248 through 330 CE, mother of Constantine I. And she does, again,
[35:58] Speaker 1: an actual historic person here. who does, it does seem
[36:09] Speaker 1: like she may have spent some time in Cyprus, as
[36:12] Speaker 1: it was under her patronage. And the legend here is
[36:16] Speaker 1: that she imported hundreds of cats from Egypt or Persia
[36:20] Speaker 1: or Palestine. The exacts on this seem to vary. I've
[36:23] Speaker 1: seen various sources that point to different places. But somewhere
[36:27] Speaker 1: that had cats, she, according to this legend, shipped them in,
[36:32] Speaker 1: like a thousand or so. And this would have been
[36:34] Speaker 1: in the 4th century CE. And the purpose of was
[36:38] Speaker 1: to rid the monastery there, which she founded, of snakes.
[36:44] Speaker 4: There are a lot of legends about the travels and
[36:47] Speaker 4: pilgrimages of St.
[36:49] Speaker 3: Helen.
[36:49] Speaker 4: I know it said also that didn't she make a
[36:51] Speaker 4: journey to find the true cross?
[36:54] Speaker 3: Well, there was a lot of that going on. Yes.
[36:57] Speaker 3: She was at least one of the people who found
[36:59] Speaker 3: the true cross. Yeah.
[37:00] Speaker 1: So take all of these legends with at least a
[37:03] Speaker 1: grain of salt, you know, especially when we're dealing with
[37:06] Speaker 1: saints from this era, like This is where you can
[37:09] Speaker 1: potentially run into the problem of, like, this person has,
[37:11] Speaker 1: there are too many relics out there. There are more
[37:14] Speaker 1: relics than she had bones. Not specifically in this case,
[37:18] Speaker 1: but that sort of thing can sometimes occur. There's a
[37:20] Speaker 1: lot of legends that build up around these individuals, even
[37:24] Speaker 1: though at the core we're dealing with an actual human
[37:27] Speaker 1: being who existed. So, snakes. Yes, Cyprus is home to
[37:32] Speaker 1: numerous snake species, venomous and non-venomous. There's one that's actually
[37:37] Speaker 1: called the cat snake. And there's a there's one called
[37:40] Speaker 1: the Cyprus whip snake. And this one is endemic to Cyprus.
[37:44] Speaker 1: But this is the legend that the the monastery had
[37:47] Speaker 1: a snake problem. And so St. Helena brings in a
[37:51] Speaker 1: bunch of cats or has cats brought in, according to
[37:55] Speaker 1: the slate.
[37:57] Speaker 4: I was just picturing her trying to bring them all herself.
[37:59] Speaker 3: Oh, God, yes.
[38:00] Speaker 1: I mean, trying to bring one would be a task.
[38:04] Speaker 1: I don't even want to imagine the effort. It's like
[38:06] Speaker 1: load up the ship with a thousand cats. That's going
[38:09] Speaker 1: to be a pretty gross ship by the time you
[38:11] Speaker 1: get over. But according to the Slade article, the Holy
[38:14] Speaker 1: Monastery of St. Nicholas of the Cats solved a snake
[38:17] Speaker 1: problem with felines. This is by Eric Grundhauser. I also
[38:22] Speaker 1: looked at the website of the author, Charlotte Riggle, charloteriggle.com.
[38:26] Speaker 1: She has some materials on this. And basically, legend has
[38:29] Speaker 1: it that Cyprus was in the midst of an epic
[38:32] Speaker 1: drought at the time. I've seen it, given an account
[38:35] Speaker 1: of like 37 years of drought. And it's just driving
[38:38] Speaker 1: the snakes indoors in search of water. And mainly, it's
[38:44] Speaker 1: running them into the monastery. So they're trying to do
[38:47] Speaker 1: the Lord's work in there, but there are just too
[38:49] Speaker 1: many snakes. Somebody's got to do something about these snakes.
[38:52] Speaker 4: Sounds like the sub to a... I don't know, ancient
[38:55] Speaker 4: snakes on a plane prequel? Snakes in a monastery?
[38:58] Speaker 1: Essentially, the legend makes it sound like that level of infestation.
[39:02] Speaker 1: Like it's just completely out of control and it's driving
[39:05] Speaker 1: people off the island. Like people are leaving Cyprus because
[39:08] Speaker 1: there are just too many snakes.
[39:09] Speaker 3: Popping out of the holy water basin. Yeah. Dangling from
[39:14] Speaker 3: the ceiling.
[39:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, so this led me to... to wonder a little bit, like,
[39:18] Speaker 1: is this at all reasonable? Like, is this just purely legendary?
[39:22] Speaker 1: Is it possible that snakes would get this out of control?
[39:26] Speaker 1: I mean, one potentially, one way to think about this
[39:30] Speaker 1: is that we should mention that this is not the
[39:32] Speaker 1: only tidbit from the ancient world about snake infestations getting
[39:36] Speaker 1: out of control or particular problem snakes interfering with the
[39:42] Speaker 1: machinations of various rulers. There are various accounts of plagues
[39:46] Speaker 1: of serpents, of course, descriptions of foreign lands and enemy
[39:51] Speaker 1: battlefields that are infested with snakes and other undesired creatures.
[39:55] Speaker 1: And of course, a lot of that you can think
[39:57] Speaker 1: about from various angles, like how do you want to
[40:02] Speaker 1: insult the land of foreigners? You can just say, oh,
[40:04] Speaker 1: it's just nothing but snakes and scorpions everywhere.
[40:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
[40:08] Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of these, they just sound like obvious exaggeration.
[40:12] Speaker 4: Though then again, I don't want to say it provides
[40:17] Speaker 4: any evidence that this particular story is true, but we
[40:20] Speaker 4: have talked on the show before about great gatherings of snakes,
[40:23] Speaker 4: like at the, uh, the Narcissus, uh, how do we
[40:26] Speaker 4: pronounce it? The Narcissa or Narcissus snake dens in Canada.
[40:30] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[40:30] Speaker 4: Once again, to be clear, I'm not saying like, oh,
[40:32] Speaker 4: that's what's happening here. And therefore the story is true,
[40:35] Speaker 4: but snakes can gather in massive numbers.
[40:38] Speaker 1: I mean, anyone who's ever been around snakes, you know
[40:40] Speaker 1: that yes, snakes do enter into human areas, right? And
[40:45] Speaker 1: when they do, given the place that snakes hold in
[40:51] Speaker 1: our minds, you know, the threat that snakes can pose
[40:54] Speaker 1: to us, the fact that we are often frightened by snakes,
[40:59] Speaker 1: and also all of the layers of meaning that we
[41:01] Speaker 1: attribute to snakes, all of this makes it meaningful when
[41:05] Speaker 1: a snake is where we don't think a snake should be.
[41:07] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. This is magic. This is a curse.
[41:11] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[41:13] Speaker 1: I was looking around for other examples. It honestly gets
[41:17] Speaker 1: a little confusing at times looking for even legendary histories
[41:23] Speaker 1: that are referring to snake infestations. One reason I found
[41:27] Speaker 1: is that there are certain works of Mormon apologetics out
[41:31] Speaker 1: there that talk about some of this. There is apparently
[41:36] Speaker 1: an incident in the Book of Mormon that involves a
[41:39] Speaker 1: serpent infestation, and so Some, at least some of these
[41:43] Speaker 1: works of apologetics, like attempt to back this up with
[41:46] Speaker 1: other examples from ancient history. As with any work of apologetics,
[41:50] Speaker 1: we often have to take that with a grain of
[41:51] Speaker 1: salt because obviously, you know, it's an attempt to back
[41:54] Speaker 1: up certain ideas with an interpretation of reality.
[41:58] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[41:58] Speaker 4: Religious apologetics being one of the most straightforward forms of
[42:01] Speaker 4: motivated reasoning.
[42:02] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[42:03] Speaker 3: But not without value as literature.
[42:05] Speaker 4: I mean, it can still point you to these real examples,
[42:08] Speaker 4: but it doesn't necessarily prove that you know, the story
[42:10] Speaker 4: they're using it as evidence for.
[42:12] Speaker 1: Now, this one doesn't involve a bunch of snakes. It
[42:15] Speaker 1: just involves one giant snake. But it involves the adventures
[42:21] Speaker 1: of Roman General Marcus Attilius Regulus during the First Punic War.
[42:27] Speaker 1: His troops are said to have encountered a giant snake,
[42:31] Speaker 1: and it just became like a whole battle, like essentially
[42:33] Speaker 1: a kaiju battle.
[42:35] Speaker 3: Wait, where are you saying? On Cyprus?
[42:37] Speaker 1: No, no, this is elsewhere in the ancient world.
[42:40] Speaker 3: Oh, okay, sorry, sorry.
[42:40] Speaker 1: This was not on Cyprus, but just an example of
[42:45] Speaker 1: a snake showing up in another legend about, again, another
[42:48] Speaker 1: historic individual. Though in this case, it is not mentioned
[42:52] Speaker 1: in the primary histories. For instance, it's not in the
[42:55] Speaker 1: writings of Polybius about the Punic Wars. It's in sort
[42:59] Speaker 1: of secondary sources, and it's thought to just generally be
[43:01] Speaker 1: a legend, a tall tale about how great this guy was.
[43:05] Speaker 3: I see.
[43:05] Speaker 1: Now, elsewhere in legends and tall tales about holy places
[43:10] Speaker 1: infested by snakes, there are a couple of stories that
[43:13] Speaker 1: popped up. And I realize, yes, we're getting a little
[43:15] Speaker 1: far away from cats here. But these were too fascinating
[43:20] Speaker 1: to not cover on the show. So from the 7th
[43:23] Speaker 1: century CE, there is the story of St. Hilda's Abbey.
[43:27] Speaker 1: This is in Yorkshire, in Britain. This is also the
[43:31] Speaker 1: area where Count Dracula moves to, in Bram Stoker's Dracula,
[43:34] Speaker 1: by the way.
[43:35] Speaker 3: Oh, interesting.
[43:36] Speaker 4: Did I forget about, in the novel, does he not
[43:38] Speaker 4: actually come directly to London? He goes somewhere up in
[43:41] Speaker 4: the north?
[43:42] Speaker 1: I believe so. Now, I haven't actually read Dracula in
[43:46] Speaker 1: a number of years. I've mostly been watching various cinematic
[43:51] Speaker 1: adaptations that drift pretty far from the source at times.
[43:55] Speaker 1: But there does seem to be a Dracula connection here,
[43:56] Speaker 1: very loosely, but I'm going to mention it. So the
[44:00] Speaker 1: idea here is that St. Hilda's Abbey was infested by
[44:03] Speaker 1: snakes until Hilda of Whitby, Turn them to stone with,
[44:07] Speaker 1: I guess, holy magic. And there's actually a science tie-in
[44:11] Speaker 1: to this legend, though, as it seems to be a
[44:15] Speaker 1: strong case for geomythology here. in order to explain the
[44:18] Speaker 1: presence of fossilized ammonites in the area. Now, you can
[44:23] Speaker 1: look up images of ammonites here if you're not instantly
[44:26] Speaker 1: recognizing them. But once you see them, you go like, oh, yes, that.
[44:29] Speaker 1: I've seen that fossil many times. You know, it essentially
[44:32] Speaker 1: has the look. It does look like something curled up.
[44:35] Speaker 1: It can easily be mistaken for a curled up serpent
[44:37] Speaker 1: or a curled up centipede or something that has been fossilized.
[44:41] Speaker 4: Yeah, ammonites were cephalopods that lived in the sea that
[44:43] Speaker 4: went extinct, the KPG extinction, along with the non-avian dinosaurs.
[44:49] Speaker 4: But yeah, the fossils will be basically a spiral shell
[44:52] Speaker 4: because they had a spiral shell shape, kind of like
[44:55] Speaker 4: nautiluses today. But from what I understand, they're more closely
[44:58] Speaker 4: related to some other species than the nautiluses, but look
[45:02] Speaker 4: superficially similar. And yeah, and you can still find lots
[45:05] Speaker 4: of fossils of these shells. I remember coming across... ammonite
[45:10] Speaker 4: fossils and reading about the discovery of a lot of
[45:12] Speaker 4: ammonite fossils on the Jurassic Coast in England when I
[45:15] Speaker 4: was there.
[45:15] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[45:16] Speaker 1: So you can imagine folks running across these and thinking,
[45:19] Speaker 1: these look like snakes that have been turned to stone.
[45:22] Speaker 1: And then to add an extra layer here, and kind
[45:26] Speaker 1: of getting back to apologetics to a certain extent, you
[45:29] Speaker 1: have examples where these ammonites have then been carved, a
[45:34] Speaker 1: little serpent's head. or something that's supposed to be a
[45:37] Speaker 1: serpent's head, has been carved at the very end of
[45:42] Speaker 1: the creature to make it look like it is a snake.
[45:44] Speaker 1: And you can look images up of this online as well.
[45:47] Speaker 1: The one I found here I shared with you, Joe,
[45:49] Speaker 1: looks so much like the sandworms from Beetlejuice. But except friendlier.
[45:54] Speaker 1: It doesn't have sharp teeth. It's going, hi, hello. Yeah,
[45:59] Speaker 1: he doesn't look as fearsome. He looks a little duck-like.
[46:01] Speaker 3: I'm just a little snake.
[46:13] Speaker 1: Now, there's another legend I ran across. This is the
[46:15] Speaker 1: legend of the monastery of Langovarda in Greece, located on
[46:21] Speaker 1: the island of Cephalonia, in which the snakes are said
[46:25] Speaker 1: to have actually defended the monastery against pirates in, I believe, 1705.
[46:30] Speaker 3: That's my kind of story. I like that.
[46:33] Speaker 4: I like a trap for intruders that involves animals, like
[46:37] Speaker 4: a pit, a moat with piranhas in it, a pit
[46:39] Speaker 4: full of snakes, something like that.
[46:41] Speaker 1: Crab pit?
[46:42] Speaker 3: Crab pit. That'd be really good.
[46:45] Speaker 1: Well, in this case, it was snakes protecting nuns that
[46:48] Speaker 1: were living there at the time. And then afterwards, these
[46:52] Speaker 1: snakes find Christ. They become holy snakes. Sometimes said to
[46:57] Speaker 1: have crosses on their heads. And then they show up.
[47:00] Speaker 1: At the monastery, it said in the days leading up
[47:02] Speaker 1: to August 15th, the Feast of the Dormition of the
[47:05] Speaker 1: Virgin Mary. So essentially right now, this place is sometimes
[47:10] Speaker 1: called the Monastery of the Virgin Mary of the Snakes.
[47:15] Speaker 1: You can look up pictures of these snakes, too. I
[47:17] Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not seeing the cross on their foreheads
[47:20] Speaker 1: so much. But, you know, this is more of an
[47:24] Speaker 1: article of faith rather than a matter of herpetology.
[47:28] Speaker 4: Okay, well, I have really enjoyed this snake hunt, but
[47:31] Speaker 4: does this inform our attempt to answer the question, is
[47:35] Speaker 4: there any historical truth to the idea of St. Helena
[47:38] Speaker 4: bringing a bunch of snakes to the monastery in Cyprus? Sorry,
[47:42] Speaker 4: not snakes, bringing cats to the monastery to get rid
[47:45] Speaker 4: of the snakes.
[47:46] Speaker 1: I don't know that it actually provides us with additional answers,
[47:50] Speaker 1: but I guess I'll just come back to it. When
[47:52] Speaker 1: you're dealing with snakes, a snake is just such a
[47:55] Speaker 1: loaded creature. We have so many thoughts about the snakes,
[47:58] Speaker 1: so many layers of meaning with the snake. And so
[48:01] Speaker 1: the legends just pile up. But yeah, there are other
[48:05] Speaker 1: accounts of snake infestations being a thing. And, you know,
[48:09] Speaker 1: we do see examples of, there are places in the
[48:13] Speaker 1: world where snakes do become a problem, especially when you're dealing,
[48:16] Speaker 1: I mean, mainly when you're dealing with venomous snakes. Because
[48:18] Speaker 1: a non-venomous snake is essentially going to do as good,
[48:22] Speaker 1: if not more good, than having a cat around. I mean,
[48:25] Speaker 1: it's not as, maybe not as, to many people's eye,
[48:28] Speaker 1: not as as friendly.
[48:30] Speaker 3: Cuddly.
[48:31] Speaker 1: Maybe not as cuddly, though. Listeners who keep snakes, you
[48:35] Speaker 1: will say, no, this particular snake is cuddly. And you
[48:40] Speaker 1: have a strong case to make there as well.
[48:42] Speaker 4: I want to hear from listeners who have cats and snakes.
[48:45] Speaker 4: Which one is cuddlier?
[48:48] Speaker 3: Well, wait a minute. Hold on.
[48:49] Speaker 4: There's a mystery here. So that explains why the cats
[48:54] Speaker 4: of Cyprus would be called St. Helen's cats or St.
[48:57] Speaker 3: Helena cats. But wasn't there another name for them? St.
[49:00] Speaker 3: Nicholas cats or something?
[49:01] Speaker 1: Right. And you might be thinking, well, this couldn't possibly
[49:05] Speaker 1: be Santa Claus, right? But you'd apparently be wrong, because
[49:09] Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, this is supposed to
[49:12] Speaker 1: be the St. Nicholas who then went on to Mira
[49:15] Speaker 1: and through the accumulation of legend and holiday tradition becomes
[49:18] Speaker 1: the figure of Santa Claus. According to the aforementioned sources,
[49:23] Speaker 1: as well as the Virginia Theological Seminary St. Nicholas Center,
[49:28] Speaker 1: this was supposedly where the future St. Nicholas was at
[49:32] Speaker 1: the time. He was there at this monastery, potentially ringing
[49:36] Speaker 1: the bell for the cats to come and eat the snakes.
[49:39] Speaker 3: Whoa. Yet another crazy St. Nicholas story.
[49:43] Speaker 4: Do you know the one about how he resurrected the
[49:47] Speaker 4: three boys who had been chopped up and pickled and
[49:51] Speaker 4: cooked in a pot or something?
[49:52] Speaker 1: Ooh, I'd forgotten about it. But yeah, I think that
[49:54] Speaker 1: does ring a bell. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the legends of St.
[50:00] Speaker 1: Nicholas get pretty fascinating.
[50:03] Speaker 3: Gets you in the Christmas spirit.
[50:06] Speaker 1: So the monastery here, the monastery of, the Holy Monastery
[50:11] Speaker 1: of St. Nicholas of the Cats is still around. It
[50:14] Speaker 1: became known for taking in stray cats. The local fishermen would,
[50:19] Speaker 1: for a while, reportedly donate their entire catch to the
[50:21] Speaker 1: cats on the feast day of St.
[50:23] Speaker 3: Nicholas.
[50:24] Speaker 1: And, you know, a lot has happened of over the
[50:29] Speaker 1: course of its existence, but apparently it's still around today
[50:33] Speaker 1: as an active monastery and an active cat sanctuary. You
[50:37] Speaker 1: see people visiting it and taking photos, and there indeed
[50:39] Speaker 1: are a lot of cats. Arguably, maybe too many cats,
[50:43] Speaker 1: but this is a place where they're allowed to do
[50:45] Speaker 1: their thing.
[50:46] Speaker 3: Nonsense. It's beautiful. Cat heaven monastery.
[50:50] Speaker 1: So Cyprus. So if you are a cat fancier and
[50:52] Speaker 1: you're trying to plan your next cat-based vacation, maybe Cyprus
[50:56] Speaker 1: is your destination.
[50:58] Speaker 4: By the way, I looked up the Cypress cat breed.
[51:00] Speaker 4: In my opinion, certified cute.
[51:04] Speaker 1: Well, which cats are not cute, really?
[51:06] Speaker 3: I guess that's true.
[51:07] Speaker 1: I mean, I know we'll get some answers from some
[51:10] Speaker 1: of my listeners out there, but it's all subjective.
[51:13] Speaker 3: It's got fur. It's got big ears. What more could
[51:16] Speaker 3: you want?
[51:18] Speaker 4: Well, Rob, should we wrap this up before the King
[51:20] Speaker 4: of Cats comes a-knockin'?
[51:21] Speaker 1: Yes, I think we should. This will be the end
[51:23] Speaker 1: of our second core episode of Stuff to Blow Your
[51:25] Speaker 1: Mind here for Cat Week. But we have one more episode.
[51:28] Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema tomorrow will also be cat based. And,
[51:32] Speaker 1: you know, I didn't expect it to be this way,
[51:35] Speaker 1: but I feel like the movie we're going to be
[51:37] Speaker 1: talking about really lines up with a lot of the
[51:41] Speaker 1: actual serious cat information we've been discussing in the core
[51:45] Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I think the
[51:48] Speaker 1: king of cats would approve.
[51:49] Speaker 2: OK.
[51:50] Speaker 1: So tune in for that if you're interested. It is
[51:52] Speaker 1: a title that has also been suggested over the years
[51:55] Speaker 1: by Weird House Cinema listeners. You are invited.
[51:59] Speaker 3: Tune in if you don't want your Hassan to rip
[52:01] Speaker 3: you to shreds. Exactly. All right.
[52:04] Speaker 1: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
[52:06] Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
[52:09] Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we set aside most
[52:11] Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
[52:13] Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow us online
[52:17] Speaker 1: at We're on several of the main social media platforms.
[52:20] Speaker 1: Whichever one you use, look us up. You'll probably find
[52:23] Speaker 1: us there. You can follow Weird House Cinema on Letterboxd.
[52:26] Speaker 1: We are weirdhouse there. And on Instagram, our newer Instagram
[52:31] Speaker 1: account is sdbympodcast. We had an older one, had more followers.
[52:36] Speaker 1: It met a tragic end. But we have the newer one,
[52:41] Speaker 1: which we actually can log into. And so if you
[52:44] Speaker 1: do still use the Instagrams and you wish to follow us,
[52:47] Speaker 1: do so. It's another way you can keep up with
[52:49] Speaker 1: what sort of content we're covering and what kind of
[52:52] Speaker 1: content we're planning to cover in the future.
[52:54] Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.
[52:58] Speaker 4: If you would like to get in touch with us
[52:59] Speaker 4: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
[53:02] Speaker 4: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
[53:04] Speaker 4: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.
[53:16] Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
[53:19] Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
[53:22] Speaker 2: Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[53:31] Speaker 4: Thank you.

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