Stuff You Should Know - How Cave Dwellers Work

Episode Date: February 13, 2014

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there, so it's Stuff You Should Know. Oh, wow. It's a sink.

Energetic edition. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's cold. I'm energized by the cold. Energized and like just a little bit. Yeah, so you're not energized is what we're saying. I'm a little energized. Okay. I feel like I am. I'm fine. All right. Why do you say that? Because he's like you're sleepwalking. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I thought I was just speaking fast. Oh, no, no. No, I thought that's why you were saying that. I was being sarcastic. I'm sorry to everybody who's sitting through this right now. You sound down on the dumps. You all right? Yeah, no, I'm fine. Okay. I'm just, it's the cold. It's a little dreary outside. Yeah. Today's the day it finally started to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes. Emily's ready for spring. I'm like, it's,

you know, it's January. She's sending out, but it's Georgia, so we could have spring in a few weeks. It's true. We kind of had it yesterday. Yeah. You, me, 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. So I incorporate twigs in with these things. They can spend a little time there. Yeah. And there's this little SOB of a squirrel that has my porch all figured out and keeps like getting these whole bird feeder cakes. Yeah. And I realized like I'm spending a lot of time like trying to thwart this squirrel, figure out the physics of bird feed. 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 in like a day. Yeah. This squirrel can eat several cakes. And it makes a mess. Yeah. All right. Cave dwelling. I can't remember. I've asked you before, but I don't know if you've seen it since I asked you because you hadn't. Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Verna Herzog. No, I watched. You still haven't seen it. Well, I watched like 20 minutes of it this morning just to get the gist. You got the gist in 20 minutes. Well, I can't wait to watch the whole thing though. It's pretty much that. Yeah, but I want to watch it. Oh, yeah, you should. It's like the whole thing is 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 cave art. It's phenomenal. Yeah. I know the one in, well, they're both in France, right? Yeah. The one that gets the most press is the Lascaux. Lascaux, which is great. But this one, to me, the art is better. Well, Lascaux gets more press because it was discovered in 1940. This one that Werner Herzog did a documentary on was discovered in 1994. Yeah. And it's twice as old, like 32,000 year old art. It's amazing. Yeah, it is. And it's all spectacularly preserved. And one of the benefits of discovering Lascaux in 1940 was that when Chauvet cave, the one that was discovered in 94, that's even older, was discovered, we'd already figured out a lot of stuff along the way and how to preserve it. Right. Right. So

we could go in there and sort of TCB. Yeah. You need to cut down on the carbon dioxide that people are breathing out. You need to let Werner Herzog in there. Yeah. 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. And it's basically like releasing the sunlight over the course of a few milliseconds. That makes sense. 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 all sorts of stuff we learned from Lascaux cave. It's not being applied to Chauvet cave. Yeah. But yes, it is older. It is more

awesome. And the very evidence of old cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones that are found in caves would suggest that they're 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 Starr. Yeah. I saw the movie caveman. Or was that a documentary? Was it a movie? Yeah. You're thinking of quest for fire. Yeah. Well, those are all great movies. Clan of the cave bear. But well, I was setting you up and you didn't. Well, no. Okay, thanks. Is the answer. They now believe that people through different periods of ancient history have dwelled in caves. Sure. At times. Yeah. They 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. Sure. They wouldn't have been stationary in any kind of dwelling. Yeah. They got to go out and find the meat. Right. So there was no such thing as a species of hominid that you could say are cavemen. Right. Those were the cavemen. All the other ones just lived. However, most of the people who were alive in what we're talking about the Paleolithic era, which went back from about 2 million years ago all the way up to about 10,000 years ago. That's the Paleolithic era. Yeah. They lived in all sorts of different kinds of shelters,

caves being one of them. Sure. Yeah. 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 suite. Cave suite. Yeah. Biospeliology. Yeah. Which is awesome. Spelunking. Yeah. And then this one, cave followers. Who thought that we would do a three-part series on caves ever? Well, and this covers cave art such that this will probably be it. Don't you think? Is there anything else? I can't think of anything. No. Not really. Nick Cave. Maybe we can podcast on him. 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 reason. Yeah. It's raining. Let's go inside that room. Yeah. It's not raining in the

cave. Yeah. To protect yourself from animals, because if you go back and listen to our Biospeliology, only certain animals are in caves. Very few. And not a lot of big nasty man-eaters. Although back then they would have run into cave bears. The clan of the cave bear. I don't know if Sabertooth Tigers were cave dwellers, but I've seen a lot of Flintstone episodes, and from what I understand, they do. 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-foot-long Islus Salamander? I remember. White nightmares, like once a week. Yeah. I don't think it'd 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 Islus monster. Yeah. Yeah. But protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other people wasn't really a big reason, because this is good to know. I think it kind of got along and helped each other in general. Yeah. There's something called Paleolithic warlessness. Yeah. Like the concept of war, organized war, is apparently only maybe 12,000 to 16,000, 18,000 maybe years old. I think probably once people started getting comfy is when they started wanting to fight each other. Back then they were just trying to survive. Yeah. Well, there's a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what led to warfare. I want what that guy's got. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, and it led to surpluses,

so people fought over surpluses. That makes sense. You're starving over here, and they've got all this grain over here, so you go kill all those people and take their grain. We should do a history of war. That'd be good. That would be good. But there were obviously, there were scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean, it wasn't all like wine and roses. Yeah. You tried getting along with Ron Livingston. Now that's not his name. Oh, Ron Livingston. Everybody gets along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right? Yeah. No, the other guy. Ron Perlman. Yeah. That's a pretty good mess up. There were scraps every now and then obviously over territory or food or fire, but it wasn't like, hey,

let's go to war with this tribe because we don't like them or we want what they've got. Because, I mean, the consensus among anthropologists apparently is that war is relatively recent. It's not that ancient. It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the cave art we run into. Yeah. 32,000 years. Yep. So you've got shelter from the elements, protection from animals. Nice steady temperature. That's a big one. Yeah. Because a cave typically is about in the 50s, 50s degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. Year round. Yeah. So if you are in a cave and you're living there and it's summertime, you are sitting pretty. Oh, yeah. If it's wintertime, depending on where you are, say you're in northern Europe, you're still sitting pretty. Sure. All you have to do

is build a little bit of a fire and hope you don't smoke yourself out. True. And you are, you're in some climate controlled luxury, especially for the Stone Age. Yeah. You know. Yeah. 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 this spelunking 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 them, you might walk right past because it's just a hole in the ground. You have no idea. There's an underground cavern. Right. A lot of them are inaccessible. A lot of them have are active. So it means they have water, which isn't super hospitable. No, an active cave. Yeah,

it'll flood. Yeah. You don't want to be in there when it floods. Yeah. They're just not like, generally, they're not like these huge 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 a cave dweller. Lots of different exits and entrances and shafts and things like that. They can be misleading and confuse you and get you lost to your death. Yeah. Apparently, just a couple of dozen feet. I don't remember. There's the light zone, the twilight zone and the dark zone. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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 stalagmites. That's true. Yeah. So it's not the most common thing to find like a great cave for 10 or 12 people to live in. But when they found them and they needed them, they would dwell on them. Right. And again, that's one reason or 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. Yeah. They could stretch animal hides over structures. They built earthen dwellings where they 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. Yeah. And again, they were nomadic. They were following herds of bison and mammoths and, 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 got the run of the place of planet earth and all it has to offer, you know? If there was a hominid that could be considered a cave dwellers, though, it would probably be the Neanderthals. Yeah. As we understand right now, it wasn't too terribly long ago that we discovered a new species of human ancestor. Well, at least they were contemporary with modern humans. The Denisovans. Oh, who is that? They were a type of hominid that lived in the 30 to 50,000 years ago at the latest, I think, maybe. Okay. And

there's a cave in Croatia, I believe, where they discovered a molar and they thought, well, no, they discovered a finger bone and they thought it was Neanderthal or human. Okay. And they ran the DNA test. They're like, this is neither. What is this? So they named it. It's a Denisova cave or Dennis cave, one of the two. And they named this new species of hominid, the Denisovans. And then they looked at the human genome and they're like, oh, we apparently interbred with them. Wow. Because we have a little bit of Denisovan in all of us. Really? Or most of us. Yeah, people who 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. So typically people of European descent, Native American descent, they will have Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But there's this cave in Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals, humans and Denisovans possibly shared these caves at the same time. Isn't that crazy to think about? Yeah, they didn't necessarily sit around a campfire with one another. That's what I pictured. But they may have been using the cave within the same year or something like that, depending on the season. See, I pictured them making s'mores and saying, how do you get your back 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. So yeah, the Neanderthal was 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. Right. And there are a couple of strategies that archaeologists believe were used back then, the circulating mobility and radiating mobility and circulating was and I kind of like this idea is had several temporary camps kind of scattered all over a region. Yeah. And it's kind of like having different homes and you would just go from place to place and live in your little home and hunt and gather 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 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. That was the difference. I see. Is that right? It's possible. I think that's right. And apparently some of these camps were in fact caves at times. Right. So they were using caves for sure. They were doing something else too. They were creating art in these caves. Boy were they which has people 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 you want to take a message break? Yeah. I'm Mangesha Tickler and to be honest,

I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a

skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Paydude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember

getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, cave art. Yeah. And 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. Calvet, Calvet? Chauvet. Chauvet. Yeah, one of the things that Herzog talks about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, yeah, produces movement of these animals. Oh, interesting. And they think they're wondering whether that was like intentional or not. And they think it probably was intentional because they make little movies. Yeah, basically. But it's like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah. When you look at this stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't discovered it yet. So it's all flat, two dimensional. But first of all, they're creating things

in utter dark by torchlight. Yeah, yeah. Using earthen pigments, like ochre for yellows and oranges. Yeah. Charcoal. Charcoal for black. What was the red one? I think for red, they used iron oxide. Okay. And they used charcoal and manganese for black. They're using very, very primitive brushes in the dictionary sense of the word. Yeah. Or they're early airbrush artists, essentially, because they're blowing this pigment through a tube or just out of their mouth onto the walls. Yeah. And then they're also using their hands and their fingers. But you're right, man. There are some, especially when you take all this into consideration, it makes some of the art that was made just staggering. Yeah,

apparently they would use to some of the texture of the cave itself. Like if there was an indentation, or not an indentation, but what's the opposite of an indentation? A bump. 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 3D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah, right. You know, they're like, it's not perspective, but it's going to have to do. They now have evidence in some of these 30,000 year old caves of scaffolding that they would use. Oh, I hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And principles of stenciling, early principles of stenciling. And apparently when Picasso visited Lascaux, he said to his guide, they've invented

everything. And he was just like blown away. Yeah, basically like, I'm just copying these early hominids. Right. It's pretty amazing. It's about right, too. Yeah. And actually, I don't know. Picasso's all right, but some of these cave dwelling, they haven't beat. Maybe. Yeah. They didn't look funny. They didn't have one eye. They didn't wear berets. No. So most of the subjects of cave paintings that have been discovered so far. And there could be tons and tons of undiscovered caves. Yeah. Like the one at Chauvet wasn't discovered until 1996, because at some point in the past, a rock fall happened and closed the cave off to view. And it just happened to be discovered by some hikers. Man, can you imagine being the person that discovered that? Yeah,

it would have been pretty cool. Amazing. So most of the cave art that has been discovered so far depicts herd animals. Yeah. A lot of animals. By and large, they're herd animals. They're bison, they're buffalo, they're mammoths, things like that. There's very few images of vegetation. Yeah. Very few images of humans. Yeah. The images of humans there are, they tend to be things like fertility idols, like female fertility idols. Yeah. And there's a theory out there that those were painted by adolescent boys. Oh, really? Yeah. As like basically early, you know, club magazine or something like that. Wow. And that may or may not be correct, especially when they found that in France and Spain, a lot, possibly the majority of cave art was done by

females they recently discovered. Oh, really? You know, the hand ones, hand prints, they figured out recently that most of those are female hands because of the, they give away of the sixth finger that only females have. There's an article that I can recommend that actually is what inspired Bernard Herzog to make his documentary called First Impressions. It was in The New Yorker in 2008 by Judith Thurman. And it's super awesome. And she basically says there's a couple of camps when it comes to cave art experts, those who can't resist advancing a theory about the art, 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 though. Yeah. And I don't think we should just be like, we'll never understand these. 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 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, 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 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 breeding. Or I'm an eight year old Neanderthal and I was a naked lady. Yeah. Here's a naked buffalo for your pleasure. Yeah. There's also lots of theories that these things were supernatural somehow like they were trying to invoke the animal spirit for a successful hunt or gain some sort of power by creating an image of the animal. Yeah. 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 going to make is this animal that I am thinking about a lot because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah. This is a conversion between this innate desire and the everyday life. Right. And that's bison on cave walls. Yeah. Well some of them are pretty detailed and 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. And they're using these torches too or not like it's not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight also. But they're like stone torches with like a little divot in the top and 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. Sure. But so yeah there was there was a lot of effort put into this. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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 jewelry and other like engraved bone and ivory and they

think they probably engraved wood too but that obviously wouldn't survive that long. Right. But they suggest early religious belief in 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 what's fascinating to me. Well yeah. You know. And their history has been largely lost. It just happens to be preserved in the caves but since they weren't just a strictly cave dwelling society we're only seeing a portion of their culture. Right. Because the rest of it was in animal skin shelters and earthen lean twos that have been totally lost because they're exposed to the elements or caves that were flooded out

and washed away too. Right. Yeah. 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. Oh really. In Spain it's Steely Dan had a song about it. The caves of Altamira. And is it loaded with art. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There's plenty more than that. It's just Lesko is the most famous one and then Chauvet is the most recent most famous one because it hurts. There are others. All right. What about troglodytes. We should mention that. That's a great word to call somebody. Yeah. It always reminds me of trilobite. You remember the little weird kind of insect armor plated fossilized insect. No. I'll show you a trilobite. Okay. It was one of the earliest

like footed animals. Scary looking. Really. But that's why I always get the two confused. Trulobite means cave dweller. Yeah. Literally. Someone who lives in a hole. Or cave. Yeah. Named after there were apparently some West African tribes that the Greeks came in contact with and they lived in cliff caves and they were called trilobite or trilodite. Well it's a nice insult that you can throw around these days and sound sort of intelligent. Yeah. Instead of calling someone like a D-bag you'd say he's a trilobite. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Someone got Jerry too man. You guys are on the same wavelength today. I guess so. 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 Anasazi and the Pueblos. Word. Cliff dwelling peoples. Yeah. From the 12th century-ish of the Southwestern United States who basically showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out caves and lived there. Oh 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 neat. They had like whole cities. Wow. Like carved out into these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders. That sounds really dangerous. It was but it was also very well defended and fortified. 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. Can we talk about Mount Hebron? Are we there yet? Yeah. Okay. 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 but of course because it's in the West Bank there's some disagreement over who should be there of course. It's been claimed by Israeli settlers as well and the army is threatened to remove the people. I don't know what the current state is. I looked it up. I couldn't find it. The last I saw was that they basically designated it a militarized zone. Really? Which meant that the Palestinians living there needed to leave. But are they still in there? I don't know. The most recent thing I could find was from 2005. Oh really? So I don't know. All right. Well, Southern Spain. Was that

what you were talking about? I don't know if Altamira is in Southern Spain but it's definitely in Spain but there are natural cliff or cave dwellings that were carved out into even further cave dwellings in Spain. Gotcha. And have basically been continuously inhabited at one time or another. Yeah. Now there's a large homeless population there apparently. Right. I mean Spain's got like 25% unemployment. Really? I'm sure that cave dwelling populations increase proportionately. Wow. Cappadocia in Turkey has an elaborate cave system and it's not a very friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation. It's been described as lunar. Have you seen pictures of this? Yeah. Amazing. It's really amazing. Just the natural landscape itself is amazing and then

if you look closely you're like oh those pockmarks are caves like homes. Yeah and these were man-made. Yeah. These are carved out for people to live in which is I guess we didn't even say I guess that's the other type of cave. You can either find one or you can make one. Yeah and by making one I think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural cave too. Yeah. That's that would count. I would guess that'd be man-made too. Yeah probably so. But the in Cappadocia and Turkey anchorites which were early Christians who were hermits they inhabited these caves and made the first dwellings and then when the Christians were persecuted they were joined by a lot more people and they actually built underground churches that became an underground city. Have you seen these pictures?

Oh they're amazing. 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 but that was pretty neat to find. Well I got another documentary for you like No Place on Earth have you seen that one? No. There was a guy in 1993 a caver that was exploring this cave in the Ukraine and he found like shoes and medicine bottles and things. Wow. And he was like wait a minute this isn't like Paleolithic at all this looks like it was from the 1940s and it was and it turns out there was 38 members of different Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for 511 days. Wow. They lived underground for

over a year and a half and some of these people are still alive and they found them. Do they still live in the caves? No no no. Okay. No they lived there for a year and a half. I got you in the Holocaust. I got you yeah. But they had never told their story they just like kept it a secret. Wow. Because they were like no one would believe it. Plus also in case they ever needed to go back to the caves. Well they did go back they took them back to the caves. No I'm saying if they ever had to go back to the caves like you want to keep the cave secret because it weren't the first time you know. But it's pretty powerful and they take some of these survivors back to this cave where they haven't been since the Holocaust. Wow. And they all survived

too. Really really great documentary. That's cool. Yeah very cool. Like no place else. Like no place on earth. Okay. Or like no place else. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest I don't believe in astrology but from the moment I was born it's been a part of my life. In India it's like smoking. You might not smoke but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, k-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet

and curious show about astrology my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast Paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's also apparently a trend in parts of Europe to buy old man-made cave homes. Is this a thing? Dress them up. I saw this and I

was like really? I didn't double check but I could see this. Yeah I mean this is a grabster so he's good on his facts. Outfitting them with electricity, installing modern plumbing, getting the ventilation system going and just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah putting on tile floor. And there's always the cave home weirdos. Yeah well I mean if you've seen the shows on HGTV like you know bizarre houses. Right 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. If you can deal with very low natural light and not go crazy yeah then a cave might be suited for you. If you can deal with the damp and moisture cave might be

suited for you. Yeah and I shouldn't have said weirdos. It's okay to eat their own but any time I see those shows of like extreme bizarre homes. You just shoot the TV. This guy made a house out of like Bob Goulet was on it. Yeah pretty much. I've never been in like there was a cave house near us growing up actually. Really? Yeah it was like you know it was when they built into the side of you know earth. Where? In Stone Mountain. Is it still there? I assume so. Is it built into Stone Mountain? No no no. And it was like kind of the people go by there and look at it and stuff and even as a kid I thought it was kind of dumb. Did you ever know Jack McBrayer when you were younger? Kenneth from 30 Rock. He's from Stone Mountain. Conyers. Oh really? Yeah. In the show

he's from Stone Mountain. Oh really? Yeah. One of the other writers for 30 Rock though I can't remember his name is I think what to read in. Is that right? Cool. But uh no I didn't know Jack McBrayer. I wish. You got anything else? Oh yeah the last thing one of the other benefits of a cave home it's very difficult to break into which is sad because that is not the reason why they were initially used in the Paleolithic era but it's a it's a quality point now. That's true. How far we've come. Did you see uh where was it? That guy that built a house underground? No I've seen those before. I've seen like missile silos converted into homes and things like that. This one was for sale recently. I can't remember who sent it to me but he basically built a

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 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 cropland will become so valuable that we will uh we'll all we'll basically be forced to inhabit the opposite of skyscrapers they'll be going down yeah instead of up because we'll need the

land up on top for crops. Didn't we do one on why why don't humans live underground? Oh yeah 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 uh let's see you don't have anything else I got nothing else sir if you want to learn more about cave dwellers you can type cave dwellers into the search bar howstuffworks.com and I said search bars 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 gonna like put us both in time out you'd 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 yeah the acceleration will kill you or the speed will kill you or something going that fast yeah I'm sure it was me we got a lot of emails and this was one of the nicer ones heads up guys on a few things including on the solar sales there's been some misunderstanding between speed and acceleration common belief is that traveling at high speeds 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 very short time results in a large acceleration this is where you get that feeling of being crushed into your seat but once you keep that constant

speed that feeling goes away 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 barely feel a thing yeah you think we'd know this I mean we've done no man all sorts of research on the rocket sled tests and acceleration and yeah it's just misspeaking in the moment we know this oh uh if I may interrupt for a second I ran across this um designer's euthanasia roller coaster what um it was basically this guy design it's all conceptual obviously it's a 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 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 right but it starts with this huge hill I can't remember what it's called I think if you look up euthanasia roller coaster this guy's design will come up it's pretty interesting interesting but it it would be from acceleration not speed yeah 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 right you know right um you wouldn't be a successful designer probably so uh so then he puts it in the context of the solar sail um and says only very small accelerations are involved so human traveling in such a ship would experience

minimal forces so uh hope it clears it up a little bit it's definitely rocking it guys thanks a lot that is from Niraaj from Australia uh slash Mauritius Niraaj thank you we appreciate that we will never make that mistake again I disagree I'm sure we will speed will kill you where's northern Ireland great Britain UK England we've been getting that one wrong forever too yeah you know there's only so much information a human brain can hold everybody and we're trying to fill it with things like cave dwelling bags and stuff like that well yeah and who is the bass player for poison I can't get rid of that you know that yeah Bobby doll so there's CC was the guitarist Brett Michael Brett Michael Bobby doll is the guy he sounds like a 1977

Oreo or something the drummer was you remember him right no Ricky rocket oh wow yeah no I do I didn't even like poison that's what's so funny poison was good yeah I wouldn't offend they were good uh let's see if you want to know more about poison I already did that part didn't I sure if you want to get in touch with us how about that yes you can uh tweet to us at sysk podcast you can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know you can send us an email to stuff podcast at discovery.com you can check out our very fun and entertaining home on the web stuff you should know.com for more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com

pay netflix streams tv shows and movies directly to your tv computer wireless device or game console you can get a 30 day free trial membership go to www.netflix.com slash stuff and sign up now. Hey I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody yeah everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts

I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe you can find in major league baseball international banks k-pop groups even the white house but just when I thought I had a handle on this subject something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed whether you're a skeptic or a believer give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too listen to skyline drive on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts