The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 311: Clovis Hunters and Fluting Nipples

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Metin Eren, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Spencer Neuharth, Chester Floyd, Hayden Sammak, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.Topics discussed: The meaning of the name, Metin; putting the "spear" back into "experimental"; how Clovis points aren't the bazooka we want them to be; knocking out channel flakes; Hayden's burbot liver smoked trout pate; how Seth and Chester are getting closer to securing a walleye boat and sponsor; Steve's irritation with folks standing on escalators; the "wear it dry program" and child raising; Brody's tagged cow elk and Cal's tagged perch; frozen poop knives and how shit don't cut it; Spencer's article debunking the myth of the poop chisel; being heartbroken over how Clovis points likely didn't slay mammoths all that handily; hucking atlatls; only one Clovis burial site; the crazy ass giant ground sloth; the 1.5 million year old Acheulean Handaxe; the conchoidal fracture; sharp to the molecule; knap ins; the Folsom point bolo tie; a Solutrean Laurel Leaf; mistakes can make valuable flakes; Primal Points; and more.Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light, go farther, stay longer. Holy shit, man. We got so much to like... People don't even appreciate the level of work that goes into this because we're right now getting rid of all the stupid stuff we're going to talk about to make more room for the main thing we're going to talk about, which is like Clovis points

and Folsom points. The hell name's Metin? Metin is a Turkish name. It's Turkish. It's Turkish. My dad is Turkish. He was a immigrant over here. My mom was Irish.

This is shaping up as an American story. Yeah. I was born in Cleveland. Oh, okay. Hence your, hence your, but you, and you wound up there. Yeah. And I teach there. I'm a professor at Kent State and I speak only one language,

which is American. Really? They didn't teach you Turkish? No Turkish, no Irish. But your father was born in Turkey? He was born in Turkey. Yep. Was he, so he was not interested in Clovis points as a child? No, he wanted me to be a doctor. In fact, I was the first one in several generations of my family not to go into medicine.

Yeah, but you are a doctor. Well, medical doctor. Yeah, I don't really count that several generations of my family not to go into medicine. Yeah, but you are a doctor. Well, medical doctor. Yeah, I don't really count that. Yeah, okay, that's cool. I actually Googled Metten before the show because I'd never met anybody with that name. Do you know what it means? Yeah, it means to be, well, there's lots of different iterations, depending if it's Arabic or Turkish, but strong in character. Wow.

I dig it. Now, you probably picked the best one, though. What would be not as interesting? Yeah, I don't know. Strong in character. Strong in character. But there's other negative meanings? Well, I don't know.

Did you find some on Google? Strong was the only thing that I saw. Okay. Oh, nice. Didn't dig too deep, apparently. I like it, though. That was good enough for me. That's all right.

That sounds good. And tell everybody what your PhD is in. It is in archaeology, but I also have degrees in experimental archaeology and anthropology. My specialty is where I recreate ancient weapons and tools, and engineering equipment and footnapping area and forge and pottery studio. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm going to come down there. Yeah. We can make any artifact.

Can you guys give me like an honorary degree? Yeah. I can start working on that. I'd like to rack up a couple of honorary degrees. I like how Spear is right in the title there too. Oh, yeah. Like I'm experimental. Oh, he puts spear back into experimental.

Come back to my ballistics lab. So if you just type that into Google, you'll, you'll find our website and we have a master's that you can apply for and, and get your master's in experimental archeology if you're interested and we can do. You guys do like ceramics. We do everything. Whatever. Whatever. We've had musicians.

We've had tattoo artists. Oh, no shit, really? Yeah. I mean, look, good grades are important. So stay in school, kids. But what we are really interested in are skills that take years to develop. Right? And outside of the box thinking that comes with those skills. We can teach you the science and what a hypothesis is and how to design a test. But what we can't

teach you is, you know, the 20 years it took for you to learn the viola or the 15 years to become a tattoo artist or a hunter or a craftsman or whatever. So we welcome all sorts of people with sort of out-of-the-box skills to apply for our program. Because we can use those skills in experimental archaeological tests. Because people in the past made stuff out of all sorts of materials. And so we want to learn all of it. We do got to talk about a couple things. We're going to get into this right away.

Because, you know, I teased this episode the other day where I saw an article, you were probably involved in it saying basically the headline was like Clovis ain't all that. And it said they couldn't actually get anything because their point sucked. Pretty much. Yeah. You think that's true? Well, okay. If that's the case, let's cancel the, let's cancel this and we're going to put all the

other stuff back in and not going to talk about it. So I think the issue is not that the Clovis points suck. It's just that they're not like a stone age AK-47. They're not a paleolithic bazooka where basically you can wake up one day and just decide, you know what, I'm going to get me a mammoth. I haven't had mammoth in a while. Were you involved in that paper? I was the first author of that paper. See, I wasn't up to speed at the year of that. I knew it was showing around.

Why did they suck? I said what they were trying to do is emasculate Clovis. Do you feel that you're trying to emasculate Clovis? Oh, no, not at all, because Clovis, folks that use Clovis technology are awesome. You think they're badass? Oh, yeah, definitely. So it's possible to stop worrying and love Clovis? Definitely. i just think mammoths in some ways were more badass that's a good way of looking

at it yeah um we're gonna solve are you prepared to do this too and this is something that that uh you know clay and i have uh clay newcomb there's a one of the guys we work with he has a very wonderful podcast um called bear grease and he and I are often on like little parallel paths of discovery. And he was recently doing a piece about the Folsom type site. Okay. And invited a guest of his to knock the channel

flake out of a Folsom point. Okay. Are you prepared to knock a channel flake out of something? Oh, definitely. Right here in front of my very eyes. Yeah. I brought.

Did you notice I got these brand new glasses on? Well, I brought goggles as well. so nothing will get in anyone's eyes. Brody alerted me to the fact that you could buy five pairs for like 10 bucks. Oh, yeah. Which I feel like is probably not good for your eyeballs, but that's what I did. Because I'm sick of it. I had one pair and lost them. Now I'm going to have sons of bitches everywhere.

I don't think they're bad for your eyes. I think the other thing is bad for your wallet. It's a racket. Yeah, but two bucks man looking through something that costs two bucks seems like not a good idea to me mine even had a sticker that said two dollars on them well no i was wrong i thought it was then i realized it meant 2x oh you're up to two man yeah yeah getting bad uh quick question for hayden uh how come so many days have gone by and you haven't fixed the artwork? I was actually going to get

in touch with you, but you were in Mexico and I was going to ask if you wanted to have that buffalo print more professionally framed before I went and hung it up. Easy now, man. Why are you hiding it in the back? The bottom one. Jamie Wild Art sent,

that's a custom, that's from a dream vision of mine of wolves eating a buffalo alive and pulling its intestines out and eating it while it stands. Yeah, I think it captures the reality. And she sent that framed. The gentleman that did that buffalo skull sent it in a nice frame and the frame broke. Yeah. And so Kylie went and got it. So it's more of an issue between you and Kylie.

Oh. I was expecting you to lower the one's more of an issue between you and Kylie. Oh. I was expecting you to lower the one and raise the other one like you had said. I mean, I didn't ask you to do it. You just offered it up. I didn't want to rank them. It's just weird. That's all.

Good to be here. But Hayden, I'm going to compliment Sandwich You. No, it's too late, isn't it? No, but you can tack one on to the end, man. it well let me go back be like you look great today thanks and then the top compliment is um tell everybody what you just made because it was the best thing i ever ate oh well thanks man uh it was a uh a burbot liver and smoked trout pate and uh yeah what was the grease on top uh that was just bacon fat just strained bacon keep it nice yeah oh it's good fat cap yep thanks really good yeah first burbot too so six pounder

yeah uh their liver is like what 20 or something like that yeah it's some outrageous percentage of their body weight yeah yeah it was huge man i just saw it i was like oh there's no way you could chuck that thing. It just looked good to eat. It doesn't taste livery. No, my friends in Alaska turned me on to just taking it. They just cut it thin. And you don't want to sit there and eat it for an hour, but it's kind of fun.

It's like drink a beer or whatever, crackers. They cut the liver thin and don't put oil in the pan because there's so much oil in it anyways. Yeah. And just give it a little psh, psh on a hot dry skillet. And that's burbot liver too. Burbot liver. Yep.

Chester, you should eat some of that and see if it screws you up. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun.

Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun.

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Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun.

Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun.

Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun.

Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun.

Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Just for fun. Burbot liver, see if you have a reaction to burbot liver. Oh, burbot liver, yeah. Just smear some on your eye and see if it gets itchy. Or however they do it down there, I don't know. Yeah.

Chester, can you super quick give us an update on the walleye situation? Yeah. Seth and I are growing. Our excitement is just going through the roof because we have a few. I can hear it in your voice. Listen, man. We're very excited about this we have quite a few uh people reaching out to us and wanting to have a further conversation of what getting us a boat for the summer would would look like in terms of maybe partnerships and whatnot

and uh news yeah it's some great companies um you can name that boat the steve arena would look like in terms of maybe partnerships and whatnot. That's great news. Yeah. It's some great companies. You can name that boat the Steve Reno if it comes through this, the fact that I'm always trying to promote it. That's a decent name, but man, there's just so many other boat names out there. Yeah, there really are. There really are. That we could pick.

The biggest thing here is there's going to be two boats sitting idle. No. for the summer if they do get a walleye boat sponsorship which means oh yeah you guys get like a real boat that boat those other two boats are going to spend their summer as like company boats really oh yeah well that's that's fair anybody if we get this one boat, anybody is welcome to use my boat anytime. And also, I want to- Not during tournament season, because what if you got to have it ready to go? Well, yeah, I'm saying just in general, like with all of the boats, my boat, I'm sure I can speak for Seth too.

My boat, Seth's boat, this company boat, like I want to get out fishing as much as I can. So anybody that wants to go fishing, um, you know, let's go fishing. Yeah. I mean, you got to share the wealth. So if a, if a, if a prominent boat manufacturer, and this is a race, a prominent boat manufacturer comes and says, I want in, I want Chester and Seth to do this walleye tournament series for Meat Eater in our boat because it would give us more marketing impressions than perhaps any other thing we've ever engaged in.

You're saying that when that happens, this boat will be, other people will be allowed to fish this boat. Of course. And what does the ideal walleye boat look like for in Montana? Well, there's a bunch of different things. The ideal walleye boat in general is a bigger boat because a lot of, no, no, like, I mean, like an 18, 19, 20 foot glass boat, fiberglass boat is ideal. You want something that's a little heavier. Reason being is because a lot of great walleye fishing in this area is on bigger reservoirs.

And once the wind picks up and starts ripping, if you're in a little 16 foot boat, like the one I have currently, it can actually be dangerous. So meaning like you could be trapped out there, swamp your boat because of the waves. Is it fair to say that these major boat manufacturers are toying with your life, Chester? No. Because they could, by their lack of a response, their inactivity could actually lead to your drowning.

Is that fair to say? Well, just think of the jump. I'm a pretty careful dude. The jump a boat manufacturer who wants to get into the bigs is going to have by picking these guys up. Oh, yeah. There's a design out there that's just been waiting for its opportunity to be big. Chet and Seth are going gonna take it to the top mega impressions do you have to do anything official to become a pro this is gonna do for

walleye boats what over the top did for arm wrestling that's right people are gonna be switching their hats around backwards saying turn it on yeah brody i don't, I mean, yeah, to become a pro, I think you got to, one, be entered into like a pro circuit. And it depends on the series, like bass tournaments. I know like there's, to be considered a pro, you have to have a certain amount of winnings. There's like sponsorships involved. There's like pro tournaments that you. So you guys got to work your way up to that. Yeah. But my goal to this

whole thing is like i don't need to be a pro i want to become the best angler that i can be and catching walleye and figuring walleye out is a very good way to become a good angler in multi like if you can figure out how to catch walleye you can be a pretty dang good bass angler um things like that. It's tugging at my heartstrings, man. I'm so excited, especially now that Seth doesn't have to, that he can do all the tournaments. Oh, did we get the wedding adjusted? Yeah, because did you hear what we found out?

That in Montana, it's one of very few states, one of a couple states where you can have a proxy. Yeah, you don't need to be at your own wedding. Problem solved. It's one of very few states, one of a couple of states where you can have a proxy. Yeah, you don't need to be at your own wedding. Problem solved. Some people see problems, we see solutions. We're going to get back to this Stone Point stuff hardcore in a second. Oh, you know what? I flew today and I was, you know, Salt Lake City has those huge, I had to fly home this morning.

Salt Lake City has those enormous escalators. Like the amount of people that don't walk on there and just stand there. Oh yeah. It's like, you're, you're in such good shape. You're in such good shape that you don't even need to get this little bit of exercise. That's how good a shape you're in. That's what you're telling me.

Sounds like you were about to miss your flight, huh? I was. But I was like, oh, so everybody's so well exercised, they can afford to just stand here. Well, I don't even think it's that. It's like very rarely in an airport for me, am I not needing to get to another place? And so when the escalator is there i'm not like oh

this is doing it for me you walk if i just keep walking i'm there faster it's meant to like yeah it's meant to make your efforts pay off even better yeah like the moving walkways like standing on one of those would drive me insane oh my god me nuts. Uh, to go positive for a minute. Um, Brody and I are going to talk about something for the, until people can't stand hearing about it anymore, but we're going to start talking about it right now. So, uh, when I had children, when I began having children in 2010, 2010 was when my boy was born um the uh it really hit me like um how do you sort of like as a person that grew up um outdoors hunting and fishing and had like what i regard to be like a very sort of productive educational relationship to um nature and outdoors and i had kids and right away, I'm like, God,

like I want to like do that for them. And it's hard. Um, and even back then I thought someday I want to like do a book about kids in the outdoors, which is largely about, it has a lot to do with just the anxieties that come from having kids and wanting to engage them around nature and just how fucking hard it is. Yeah, it's hard. It's so hard to get everyone out the door. That's the hardest part by far. I mean, you know.

The mittens. Cleaning up dirty kits and stuff along the way and dealing with cold kits is difficult, but getting them out there is the hard part. I remember one of the things I remember when my kids were really little, taking them up to our fish shack and I was trying to, I was imploring my wife, I'm like, we're not going to bring a ton of clothes. They got to learn to wear them dry. They got to learn to wear them dry. You get it wet, you just keep it on. I'll be like, I wear the same clothes seven days in a row. It gets wet, you wear it, it dries, and you don't need all these clothes.

So I finally get her convinced to go on this wear it dry program. And we get there, and my little boy, my littlest boy at the time, wades out to his belly button out in the salt water and shits his pants. And so I'm being like,'s like yeah my wife's like where this dry it's like everything is so hard yeah the amount of times i've seen your youngest kid get wet is unbelievable yeah it's about every time you can't go near the water you know what my goal is i'm gonna going to go get wet. Whether it's jumping in an ice hole, taking his shoes off with his socks in the mud when we're salmon fishing.

Yeah, we've laughed a hundred times about last year ice fishing. I can't remember if it was my birthday. Ice fishing last year and my daughter skating up. Her and her brother are in the shanty and her riding up on ice skates saying, I got bad news and there isn't any good news. Matthew fell in the hole. Both feet. Both feet into one hole, which is like, seems impossible. Fish shack when your oldest broke his arm right immediately before the trip and so you have a kid he was young kid in a cast

with the very serious warning of do not get this wet and i mean it was like maybe six it was less than a professional bull ride for sure like maybe maybe six seconds right and it's like we're unloading stuff at the fish shack and you turn around and he's just like elbow deep like you're like huh that'll wear that dry in the in the book i'm about to plug i actually talk about that because um my wife not coming from a outdoors background always thinks that everything um that i take the kids through is like dangerous or used to like oh guns are dangerous hunting's dangerous wild animals every time my kids wind up in a um emergency room it's because of something she did

got him a swing set broken arm got him a le. Stitches in his head from falling on a Lego. Got him a scooter. Stitches in his head from the scooter. Every time, it was like, that was your thing. All my super dangerous shit, no one's ever had any problem. Just getting wet. No, they get wet. She does something for them and they break a bone.

Didn't you guys get a little visit from Child Protective Services at one point too right like they're like so yeah we got one of them he got hurt and we weren't looking and and they kept keeping us there and dragging it on and eventually they come in and this guy comes in and the first thing out of his mouth is like um what are the strengths and weaknesses of your marriage i'm like are you kidding me, man? Yeah. Like he got a, he hurt his leg. Uh, jumping off the couch. So anyways,

uh, available for pre-order now. Brody and I have worked on this book a bunch. Um, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. It was,

it was a, it was a project, man. Yeah. It's available for pre-order all over the place. Yep. Yeah. Get it now. Uh, it was a project, man. It's available pre-order all over the place. Yep. Get it now. It was a release date, May 2nd or something like that.

It's an argument for and insights into getting your kids, as we put it, radically engaged with nature. That's awesome. I have a six-year-old. Oh, great. nature. That's awesome. I have a six-year-old. Oh, great. And I've been worrying about this quite a lot, just getting him outside because he's on TV and video games and all this sort of stuff. I got him a dog. And now he's outside with the dog all the time, walking him, all this sort of stuff.

A little victory. A little victory. But it's, you know, you got to keep at it. It's a battle. It is a battle. But it's one of the most important things I think as parents we can do today is get kids outside. I think so. I think for both in terms of engagement with, like just engagement with ecology and engagement with environmental issues and also just having like a little grit and grr, man.

Like, I don't know. I see value in it. I'm not saying it's the only way. There's like many paths to, like many paths to, you know, I know I have great friends who raised kids in Manhattan and their kids are brilliant, compassionate, wonderful, right?

Like it, they don't do really anything outside. I'm not saying that that's the only way to get somewhere, but especially a situation like me is where that's the stuff that I value. And I want to like take my bag of tricks and apply it to parenting. Definitely. You know, because like I want them to see people doing things that they're passionate about.

So it's like, and I see people all the time, like everybody names their kid Hunter. There you go. That's what they're hoping for. Yeah. But you know. They need this book. We've been outside for 6 million years. I mean, so why stop now?

Exactly. Available for pre why stop now? Exactly. Available for pre-order now. That was a spirited pitch. Oh, Brody and Cal both got something with a tag in it. Can you guys explain? Cal? Did you know that he got something with a tag in it? Yeah.

Yeah, I caught a tagged yellow perch the other day through the ice down on Lake uh, uh, Lake Cascade in Idaho. Um, which is a marketing term, right? It's a reservoir, but nevertheless. What do you, what do you think they should have called it? Cascade Reservoir? Yeah. Oh, okay.

They should call it a jumbo perch. Yeah, I know. I mean, 31,000, well, put it this way. There's one tagged fish for every 37 acres of that lake. Which is just. And Cal got one. Yeah. I mean, I was so excited.

So excited. It was just, I mean, I love that stuff. And it's, you know, it's like getting a tag or a banded duck or banded goose or something like that. Did it have a, like a phone number on it where you call? Yeah. Yep. So it's a coded wire tag. You know, it's not like a tracking tag or transmitter tag or anything like that.

But yeah, so you can call in. Did you just call and act like. I called on, on the, unfortunately it's like automated, you know? Oh. And they're, you know, and then they're doing like the normal biologist thing of like, while we got you on the line, we're going to try to extract even more information from you. You know, like how far did you drive?

Did you enjoy your experience? How would you rate your experience? Did you like the fish? How would you rate your fish? How far did you drive? Oh, I mean, it's. Because they want to know like what your level of commitment was.

Right. It was a long, I mean, a long haul. Tell them I'd rather not get into that. Bozeman to, uh, Cascade Reservoir. Um. Did you save the tag? Do you have to keep it? Yeah.

I mean, I had every intention of keeping the tag and I put it in the front pocket of my bibs. And I must've, you know, I had other fish and stuff in there and I must've been rummaging around. You're keeping your fish in the front pocket of my bibs and I must have, you know, I had other fish and stuff in there and I must've been rummaging around. You're keeping your fish in the front pocket of your bibs? I was keeping just the tag in the front pocket of the bibs. Okay.

Cause it was very obvious to remember which fish it was. Cause it was a 15 and a half inch, two plus pound perch. Hold on a minute. So you put the tagged fish in the pocket or you pulled the tag out and pulled the tag out as if to, at that point, I was like, I'm going to call this in. I understand now. I thought you had a bunch of fish in your pocket.

I'm going to keep it. Yeah. Yeah. Take an earring out of it. But I have, I have all the data. Oh, because you did get it. You did get it. You lost it after getting everything you needed. Right. Don't you think it'll turn up though?

I hope so. I looked, looked all over. Um, but yeah, that, I mean, that was super cool. Like what, what, what are the odds and the fact that it was a huge fish, um, and really just, you know, like looking on the map, looking for old river channels and stuff and poking holes through the ice, there wasn't anything like super crazy about it. You know, it was just a serious luck of the draw thing.

I don't win anything. So that was fun. Yeah. Yeah, that's great, man. Did you get any information on that fish? Oh, yeah. Like as far as like how old it was? Not age.

Because it was tagged as a grownup, right? Right. Yeah. But it was tagged a year prior, basically a year prior at 14.6 inches in length. And we measured it at 15 and a half inches in length. So the odd anomaly there is that it grew really, really fast in comparison to all their other fish. Like their rates of growth are real slow. Which I pointed out to Cal is actually a negative commentary on his angling skills. Right.

It's like that fish would eat anything. Because he caught the weird fish that ate everything. Yes. Um, the, what, one of the most amazing things that I learned down there was that, um, they, they've taken a lot of pictures of the growth, the growth rings on their gill plates. Oh, that is interesting. And they're, they're gorgeous. Um, and on, so the otolith, that ear bone that you typically read about folks aging fish off of, well on yellow perch, the, perch, the big gill plate with the little spike on the back, actually, you can age as well. And you just boil that thing out, scrape the meat off of it, put it underneath the, I think, backlight it. And you should be able to see some rings.

If you can get a microscope, you can see all the rings. And that's cool. We should mess around with that a little bit get like get it set up for that yeah be real fun you're gonna get it stuffed or you're gonna eat it what is oh i already ate it oh you know that might have been a good idea to get it stuffed with a tag in it so here's the funny but getting fish stuffed is all a lie they don't stuff the fish they don't stuff the fish which is fine because then you can release it if you want to you can get the measurements and pictures

and release it, right? Listen, man, I see what you're getting at. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a big fish tale. But so here's the funny thing. Like I sent that picture to Chester and Seth and like, oh, that'd be something to consider

actually mounting. And I was like, ah, it kind of would be neat. And what would that be like? Well, I'm talking with the biologist at fishing game, uh, Jordan Messner. And he's like, yeah, hey. This is the Idaho fishing game. Yeah.

And he's like, hey, swing in to the office. We have a reproduction of the world record catch and release perch. And I was like, all right, sweet. So going to the office i'm looking at all the mounts on the wall all right can you back up yes okay why were you on the phone with him uh i had to return his hockey skates i borrowed his hockey skates and while okay and while arranging this hockey skate drop off he says you ought to

yep i got you yeah because i Cause I was skating during the day. I didn't know if you were conversing with him about the tagged perch. No, I actually called him. He was on the ice about a quarter mile away from us and he zipped over and checked it out. It was awesome. Um, and, uh, and we got into a bunch of

arguments on stuff and, you know, it was very educational, but, um um in the office looking at all the mounts and stuff right and uh he comes in and he's like yeah there it is and i've been looking at this fish and it didn't strike me as abnormally large or anything he climbs up on the wall pulls the mount down he's like yeah, yeah, here, check it out. And, you know, at the end of the day, it's just a 15 and a half inch fish, you know? Yeah. It's not.

You're like, I got one of those in my pocket. Out of context. Out of context. It's just like, not that impressive. But when you're out there perch fishing and pulling perch up through the ice. I mean, I was on cloud nine. I was incredibly excited, stoked. Oh my God. The mouth comes up and you're like, I can put my whole thumb in that thing.

Yeah. No, it is. It's hard. It's like a little bit hard to talk about big perch because a big perch is still a small fish. Yeah. And so people are thinking they're going to see a big fish, but they see what to them is a small

fish and then you have to go into this whole thing about how it's actually a big perch. Right. It's like, like the, the Keys whitetail. Right. Well, actually that's not like. Yeah, exactly. This is, no, this is a very big version of a

very small thing. And the thing you get all the time is, uh, is that your first deer? Yeah. Right. Um, but it was cool. All right, Brody, you got a tag cow elk. I did. Yeah. Didn't notice it was cool all right brody you got a tag cow elk i did yeah didn't notice it was tagged until i was cutting her ivories out because it was it was pretty small um oh yeah

oh here's the tag yep it's like an earring i'm gonna put my spectacles back on metal ear tag um so that was that was pretty interesting they you, they leave you a phone number on there to call. Hold on, you're in violation of the law right now. No, I'm not. It says return. I talked to the biologist. Oh, cause it says return to MFWP. I'm going to call Brody and report him right now

on the show. Yeah, go for it. Um. Are they letting you keep this? He didn't ask for it back. What, uh, what's the stats on the cow? How old was she when she got this? She was tagged on February 1st, 2014.

So that was eight years ago. Tagged three miles from where I shot her. So not all that far for an elk. Um, and, uh, she was, I think he said she was two and a half years old when she was tagged. So she's going on 11 years old. Did you feel bad hearing that? No, she was a big ass cow i'll tell you that um her eye look how look at how worn down her eye oh yeah man she's knocking on heaven's door there yep but uh she was in great shape she was huge wow look at that she the lead cow because he bolt like no. No. She's like, there's about 100 of them, and she was like, it's a long story.

I've never seen an ivory look like that. I know. Could you pretty much pull those things out with your fingers? No way. Hand that down to Callahan. Has he seen that yet? Wow. No, they were anchored in there fine.

No, she wasn't a lead cow, Chester. She was just one of 100. There was an albino in the herd, which was real, real cool to see. The biologist. How come you didn't shoot that one? Cause it was surrounded by a hundred other elk. This one was off to the side, you know?

Yeah. These ivories are not. Like ivories. That much different than their actual like milk teeth that, that you'd pull out of a, out of calves. Yeah. Those milk teeth on calves are real narrow and pointy though.

Right. Um, the, uh. That's awesome. Oh, you were asking about the albino. Yeah. No interest in shooting it. The biologist knew about that elk. No kidding.

Oh yeah. He said he knew, he knew that, that herd. Yeah. That demystifies it. Yep. Yep. Um. Remember we we covered this remember there was like a famous uh moose in new hampshire or something it was it was kind of piebalder albino and a guy got it and everybody got pissed yeah because they'd been seeing it around i mean they see all of them around they because you remember that one if i'd only seen

one and it was albino i don't know what i'd do but um yeah i learned some interesting stuff uh that heard that i shot her out of the biologist said there it it's triple what he would like to see the numbers in population yes too many animals i'm just telling you what an actual scientist told me i got it but but but but i know a few of those fellas and that's great, but it's, I always ask like, according to who? Okay. I'm going to give you an example. Like, cause like he said, the next herd to the South, which you cannot hunt, it's in the same unit, but there's a boundary that you can't cross. That herd you can't hunt because they're much

lower than what he'd like to see. Have they considered just driving something, scurrying something over that way? Well, maybe, airdropping them in there. But, you know, I thought it was an interesting example. Is it like a carrying capacity thing or is it a social issue?

I'm sure it's a combination of both. This herd, he said said spends the majority of its time on private land so that social part might be part of it yeah yeah listen i'm not down on the social thing i'm just saying like when i hear like you know you're i this kid never called me i can't figure it out there's this kid that reached out and uh he's he wanted to interview me like he his state doesn't, he's a high schooler. His state doesn't have a black bear hunt. Maybe he's from Connecticut. I can't remember.

And he wrote a really nice letter that Corey forwarded along to me. State doesn't have a black bear hunt. He's making like a class. He has to do it. He has to make a documentary for his class in high school. And he wants to make a documentary about how they should have a black bear hunt.

And he wanted to interview me and like his documentary focus is going to be that if we don't have a black bear hunt, there'll be too many black bears and it'll cause all these problems. And I said, call me, you're barking up the wrong tree. And he hasn't called me. Like, that's not going to convince, like, no one's going to be like, we're just overrun with, you know what I mean? How old was he? High school. I was going to say, no high schooler wants to go rewrite their thesis. Or maybe you just.

I'm just saying like, you're not like, like that's not a convincing argument to people. Like people aren't going to picture. Yeah. They're not. It's like, there's a hundred other ways to approach it, but approaching like that all the time is like, oh, if we don't, we're going to be overrun by bears. It's like, probably not. I thought it was interesting that it was a case of like herd by herd management.

Yeah, I got you. I'm just like, it's just people I think jump a little bit. I used to just accept it at face value, like over-objective, over-populated. But once you get into it, you realize there's just a million factors that go in. Like, according to who? Is it like automobile insurers have a perspective on deer numbers, right? Uh, AAA has a perspective on deer numbers. Agriculture has a perspective on deer numbers.

Um, subdivisions with a lot of expensive, uh, what do you call it? Landscaping have a perspective on deer hunter, deer numbers, and it doesn't always mirror the perspective of a deer hunter. I'm saying deer. Deer numbers. That's all. You know all this. I got one hot fact I forgot to throw in there on the perch. How old is perch?

How old is the oldest perch? Yeah. 21 years old. Oh, that's high. I hate when people do that to me. I know. Can I redo it? Yeah. Seven years old. Oh, that's high. I hate when people do that to me. I know. Can I redo it? Yeah.

Seven. Sure. Anybody else? 11. 12. Nine. 16. So prior to Lake Cascade, which now has, I

think, two world records and all the Idaho state records, there's a perch aged,, I think in Wyoming at nine years old. Okay. Now Lake Cascade is just like in this crazy zone of like, they're positive. These fish are dying of old age. Not sure at what rate, but, uh, their oldest recorded perch is 14 oh just a special perch place yeah are they worried about that fishery crashing you know how perch populations can so it's gone through several down down periods um but it's like what's considered a crash type of thing

and and a perch crash is typically like that missing age class and and how strong the next age class is or the the previous age class was to where anglers will notice it yeah so sometimes it'll change like you'll have a fishery with like big fish like they have there and then something happens and it's just a lot of little fish. Yeah. You boys might have to take this offline. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good one. Sorry. Speaking of records, that was good, Corinne. Speaking of records, a guy wrote in about, he's curious, like he was disappointed to see that in Boone and Crockett, you can't enter a squirrel. There's no- Do it just like a bear? Yeah, but he's like, well, how would you measure it anyways?

And I was going to explain to him that anything that doesn't have antlers is just skull size. So like black bears, there's nothing to do with- Yeah, but I think that that's a- I don't mean to be Debbie Downer today, but the way they do turkeys I think is a real stretch. Because? What do you dislike about it? Because it has

multiple beards. You get to keep measuring all the beards. If you had multiple antlers, you'd keep measuring the antlers. Alright. Okay. Explain the turkey. Well, let me do this first. With the exception of turkeys, everything I'm aware of in the

mammal, okay, let me put it this way. Everything I'm aware of in the mammal. Okay. Let me put it this way. Everything I'm worried of in the mammal kingdom, in the mammal world, it's not a kingdom, is it? What is it? In mammals, uh,

if it doesn't have antlers, you just measure its length and width of skull. I don't think I can argue with that. So to be consistent, I don't think he's wondering, can he, should they measure the tail, the weight?

I think it's just, it would just wind up needing to be like, if you're going to do a fox squirrel world record, I think you'd have to keep it clean. And you do length of skull plus width of skull. And it's just like, that's how mountain lions, bears, javelinas, it's like all that stuff's done that way. So I don't think you could break from that. But Spencer brings up the very good point that they came up with what he's after for squirrels in the turkey world. So he'd be like, he'd be like weight of squirrel

plus inches of tail, yada, yada, yada. You've got a personal stake in this, right? No. I thought you did. I thought you had some kind of record. I have the South Dakota archery Rio Grande record. Okay. You do?

Yeah. It was a triple bearded bird I shot in. So that's a non-typical record, right? So you've done what I'm talking about, where you keep measuring the beards. Yeah, I like scoring them. It's just like fun math. Okay, explain how to score a turkey. So off the top of my head, I think you figure out the spur length on both legs,

and then you take that times 10. So if you have one spur is one inch, the other spur is... Okay, okay. So you got two inches where the spur is times 10. Because that makes a lot of sense. You got 20. I think you take all your beard lengths times two. Sure.

And then you have your weight, which there's no modifier on. Why not be like, and times that by three? Well, I think my guess, which there's no modifier on. Why not be like N times F by 3? Well, I think my guess, I didn't invent the scoring, it's to make the numbers fairly even. Oh, I see. Yeah, because you have a 22-pound turkey who has two-inch spurs.

Now you have 20 plus 22. And then say you have a nine-inch beard times 218. So they're fairly like, they're trying to give equal weight to all these things because some guy could shoot. I get it because you shoot a turkey is a little light on weight. He's been rutting hard,

has been eating, but he's got like big limb hangers, right? Big hooks. Yep. And that guy's going to get screwed. I like this guy's idea. Um,

I think one issue would be overall weight. There's not a lot of critters you shoot where they may lose weight because of like where your.22 bullet passed through or something like that.

Did you ever hear my turkey competition story? No. So I was enrolled in some town by Doug Dern and Doug Dern doesn't like people from this town. It's Elroy?

Yeah. It's Elroy? Yeah. This is a whole funny story. I feel like I've told this story a thousand times. Yeah, you've told it. Okay. The drunkards of Elroy had a turkey derby. And I mostly joke about Doug's distaste for Elroy. Doug talks about Elroy like it's the other side of the planet, but it's like about a five-minute driveway. It's so funny about it because he talks like, oh my God distaste for Elroy. Doug talks about Elroy like it's the other side of the planet,

but it's like about a five minute driveway. It's so funny about it because he's like, talks like, Oh my God, over in Elroy. I'm like, Doug, it's right there.

It's a Wisconsin thing. So anyways, and I was signed up for the Elroy Turkey Derby and it just goes by weight of bird, but I gutted my turkey. So I bring it, but it was a huge turkey and I bring it down and I was like leading. And then I got beat by some other guy,

but not like a gut's worth of lead. He beat me by like not a gut, like a full gut amount. Days later, we stop in that bar because this guy we're hunting with had to go find his old man who's always down there. And we go in, and they're still sitting there. He gutted the turkey! They're still sitting at the bar talking about it days later. What an idiot!

Yeah, I go snoot to tail. That's a big thing now yeah the hunting public guy started that you lay your turkey flat and it's the long bird measurement you you stretch the snoot out as far as possible then you go from the tip of that all the way to the furthest tail feather that's a hard measurement man i don't like any of this stuff i think it should be this it's just, it's like spur length. It's spur, it should be subspecies, but it's not actually subspecies, but subspecies. Mm-hmm.

Spur length. Because rios have big fricking hooks, right? And so you got to like break it down like that. And you draw a line, like you're measuring the tine on a deer. You draw a line down the leg as though the spur were not there and then take a micrometer and Mary measure the spur and stop all this multiplying everything.

But why aren't there non-typicals, right? So shouldn't your beard, your triple beard bird be a non-typical? Yeah. And then you guys would do your thing where you deduct things. Yeah, especially with, deduct with deductions people like net or gross

um all right lastly we're gonna talk about before we get into the the the the you know the main thing stolen tool technology ind Indian arrowheads. Um, you guys, you guys probably don't say that, do you? No, usually we say projectile points or, you know, it depends on time period too.

So when you were a little kid, did you say Indian arrowheads? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, we just got this book.

I sent it to, so hang tight, Spencer. We had a, we had a great guest on, uh, a guy named Taylor Keene. Um, he's a native American activist and we had, I don't want to on uh a guy named taylor keen um he's a native american activist

and we had i don't want to call it a debate but but we kind of debated the two perspectives of the perspective of someone who sees a indian arrowhead laying on the ground and puts in his pocket and wants to go put in his desk drawer for his own enjoyment and personal you know yeah aggrandizement whatever uh versus the perspective of it being like, that's a thing of someone else that has value being there. It could tell a story that needs to be left in place. And so leave it put out of respect for the people who made it and out of respect, you know, we had this whole debate, someone, Yanni recently,

someone sent Yanni this book. I sent it to Taylor Kelor keen just has a joke a text message about the books it was like um the i'd how do i identify and value indian arrowheads it was like it was like a trading it was like a trading book oh yeah about arrowheads like oh worth about you know artifacts around the world are sold and all over the place. I think after guns and drugs, antiquities is the third most profitable trade, illegal trade. Is that right? Yeah. It sounds way cooler than the other two. Oh, sure.

I mean, antiquities. So talk about what you're going to talk about. We have an Instagram message. Someone says, Dear Spencer, my name is Declan and I'm a freshman in high school. I was wondering if you had any ideas for a science fair project related to meat eaters for verticals. I was just looking for an idea that is out of the box

and not basic like which plant grows taller. So what do we got for him? That's a basic science idea? To Declan. Yes. What Declan are we dealing with? Declan Harrington? Declan Murphy? Since he's a minor I don't know that I should say his last name No you're probably not

Just wanted to get an origin And you're bringing this up because of what? This seems like a room That could ideate some good Science fair projects Maybe related to stone tools Or poop knives The poop knives would be great

I think if he wants to The poop knives would be great. Yeah. Yep. I think if he wants to. You know what? The poop knives thing would be really good. Mm-hmm. But that debate's already been settled. Science needs to be replicated. Yeah. So.

Well, yeah, just something around poop knives. There you go. As we get into this, can we, let's come back to it. I got a handful of ideas. Uh-huh. He could do it. Here's one. How about he does this? Where he live don't know hmm let's say he lives in a squirrel area go out start weighing squirrels

measuring their tails and then measure their skull and see if it's like inverse or not see if it's like a good correlation if he's like like, hey, man, it turns out big ass squirrels, big long tails have big ass skulls. So that's it. You're barking up the right tree, so to speak. If he turns out that like huge squirrel, huge tail, little teeny skull, then we might know that that's not. That'd be a good project for him. There you go. What were you thinking?

I think there's a lot of stealth around cooking for opportunities. Like one thing you hear all the time, especially with your Louisiana crawfish pond friends, is that like if you cook a crawfish and it comes out with a straight tail, it's a bad crawfish. It went in the pot dead. But I don't think that's true. That's something you could easily test and solve a mystery for a lot of folks. That's a great idea. I think there's also something with like eggs that if you have a chicken egg

and if it sinks, I think it's old, right? Or if it floats, it's fresh. I don't know the exact. Yeah, but here's the thing, man. People already have done all that stuff, but they haven't done the squirrel head thing. Okay. I bet people have solved all the mysteries that this science fair freshman class goes after

anyway. Oh, so you're saying that they're all going to take a cheap shot. Probably. A lot of paper mache volcanoes. You got any ideas, Cal? You know, back in my science fair days, there was literally like a book of science fair

projects. Right. So science does need to be repeated. I would just from bird hunting this year, I think it would be great to get some new definitive data on penetration on different makeups of shotgun shells. Like he's like all ounce or two and three quarter inch, one ounce loads. This is not a good word for this kid, man.

Why not? Shooting into what? Oh, he can come up with anything. Phone books. Oh, I see. Right. And just look at like penetration of That is a good idea.

Bismuth versus tungsten versus lead. You know. So on parents day, he's out in the parking lot. Kaboom. Go ahead. Step on up. Take a shot.

You know something that non-hunters are easily fascinated by is trail cameras. If you're ever watching a show on like Animal Planet or like something on Discovery where they're looking for Bigfoot and they're using is trail cameras. If you're ever watching a show on like animal planet or, uh, like something on discovery where they're looking for Bigfoot and they're using a trail camera, they don't call it a trail camera. They're like a remote.

Camera trap. Yeah. Camera trap. Um, that's motion activated with night vision or whatever. You could just like this dude wanted an easy way out. He could just go throw out some trail cameras

and be like, I took a survey of the mammals on this piece of public land in central Ohio or whatever. Unless he lives in a state where trail cameras are now illegal. We got to find out where this guy lives. Yeah, but trail cameras aren't illegal in any states for not hunting purposes. Yeah.

Good point. Touche. But if you're hunting Bigfoot. That's true. All right, you boys have to take it offline. By way of introduction, by way of introduction to your work, do you mind addressing the poop knife quickly? No, definitely. The reason why I went into archaeology and anthropology was because when I was a teenager, I heard on NPR, the Diane Rehm show. The... Diane Rehm.

She has a... a throat. She does. Is it cancer? No, I don't think it is. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? I had a friend refer to her always as Dying Rehm.

Which is horrible. Horrible! That's why i bring it up i was listen man imagine that being that imagine being in the situation that she's that she's toughed it out like she has to be in the situation of being that you're like you are your voice america recognizes your voice they know who you are your voice of authority and then you're stricken with a health issue that impacts your voice it's like almost like shakespearean you can imagine how cool i was as a teenager listening to diane rehm um you know oh yeah did you tell all the guys on the school bus about that oh definitely definitely it was

you know um but way davis who's a ethnobotanist and anthropologist was on the show promoting his new book and what was the book it was called uh shadows in the sun okay um really great book and about uh ecotourism and uh he told the story that uh one of his uh inuit informants told him um that allegedly his grandfather in the 1950s and his family was being moved off of their ancestral homeland in the canadian. And he didn't want to go because it was his land. So his family was trying to convince him to come in the igloo and they would leave the next day for the new reservation or area to go. And he stood outside the igloo in protest and said, I'm not coming in. And day turned to night and it got pretty cold in the Arctic.

And they took away all of his tools and all of his utilities to convince him, like, come inside. What are you going to do? You have got nothing. You can't survive out there. So allegedly, so the story goes, this guy defecated into his own hands. And as his feces froze, he honed them into the shape of a knife. And he sharpened that knife with a spray of saliva. And he called over a dog and murdered it with this knife, butchered it, turned the dog's rib cage into a sled, used the dog's hide to harness another dog, and he sped off into the night. So I heard this story as a teenager, and I was like, oh my God, that's amazing. I want to study

anthropology and learn about technologies of indigenous people. And well, little did I know, 20 years later, I found the Kent State Experimental Archaeology Lab and where that story. And I remember texting my co-director, Dr. Michelle Beber, and I said, hey, I've got a great idea for our next experiment. She's like, oh, really, what? And I'm like, do you remember that story that Wade Davis told about the Inuit? And I just left it at that. No comment back, no comment back. Then I see the little text dots. Oh, my God, is what you texted back.

So we decided to test this idea that you can make a functional knife out of your own frozen feces. Do you guys have to use your own feces? So I went on an Arctic diet for two weeks. Nice, that's great. I'm way more interested. that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

And, uh, and what was that high in protein and fat? Yeah. Protein, lots of salmon, uh, lots of other fish, fatty meats. Um, I do have a kid. So occasionally there was a couple missteps. It took, I had to finish his applesauce once and his macaron cheese, but we actually in the paper, the published paper, we detailed the whole diet for the two weeks. I saw that. Yeah. Cool. And then I started to produce the raw materials. And it was amazing. And it was a process because-

Did you find that the change in diet had changed the BM? Oh, yeah, definitely. Also, just like my overall- That's bowel movement. Yeah. Well, my whole attitude too too, like I just became real depressed. And I think it was because, you know, we've got this awesome lab at Kent State where we can shoot stuff and create any artifact out of metal or ceramic or stone, whatever. But instead of being in my awesome lab, I'm at home pooping in a bag, which I then store in my freezer because we needed statistically valid sample sizes. And so I produced a lot of raw materials. You're saving them all.

Oh, saving them all up. And so we then got dry ice, negative 50 degree centigrade. So really cold temperatures to make sure we're replicating the Arctic and, uh, started making this stuff. And, um, we got some, uh, pork and, uh, tried to, to butcher the pork with these knives. And we gave ourselves some advantages too, cause I really wanted to be able to say like that shit cut it. Yeah, that's great. But, uh, so the, there was no hair on the, the pork, right? Cause that could mess up your blade like the dog would have.

Also, the pork was refrigerated. It wasn't warm like a freshly killed dog would be, you know, because that would melt your knife. And I had a file in some cases to sharpen my shit as much as I could. Did other people have to mess with it too? Well, we actually replicated our own experiment. Dr. Beber repeated the entire experiment with a Western diet. That's a good idea. Where it was funny because she didn't know she was going to repeat it.

And she had just happened to have Wendy's twice that day. So in the published paper, we had to detail the fact that she had Wendy's twice. Down in history. Frosty. Yeah. You got to fact that she had Wendy's twice. Down in history. So. Frosty. Yeah. You got to get that. You know, I think spaghetti too.

But the point is, when we went to cut this stuff, we could not cut anything. Couldn't make it work. Just streaks, right? Just a different sort of streak, but this time on the meat. And just the friction from trying to do the butchery melted the blade edge got it so this so what do you think actually happened that day well so there's a couple hypotheses right um what i actually think happened is and we this has been documented time and time again when you have anthropologists and ethnographers studying indigenous people sometimes indigenous folk

just get sick of getting studied. And, you know, they sometimes will just make up stuff to entertain themselves or to- Just to have a laugh. Just have a laugh. And yeah, and that's been documented. And so it's possible that that person told Wade Davis just a story and sort of went into the literature. Who knows?

Maybe it did happen because the conditions of reality are different than the conditions in the lab, and we've got to balance those two things. So the evidence, laboratory-wise, does not support the idea that you can make a knife out of your own frozen crap. And my favorite quote from that paper was, it was like a brown crayon.

It was like a brown crayon. It was like a brown crayon. Also, too, we managed to slip in there that I regularly produced the materials for several weeks. Oh, no, there's a bunch of jokes. We won an Ig Nobel Prize. Oh, you did? What does that mean? So the Ig Nobels are. Ig Noble, yeah.

Yeah. He doesn't get it. No. So the Nobel Prize and then Ig Nobel is like shame. Go into your computer and type in Ig Nobel. Okay. But it's for science that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. So it's the funniest science.

And so in 2020, we won the Ig Nobel for that study. So it was cool because they're presented at Harvard and you get to go there. Did your university get mad at you about it? So it's funny because we did all the ethics and stuff before we did the study. And I remember sitting down with the director of research and they were like, you know, we've got mixed feelings about this study that you want to do because, you know, when you type into Google Kent State, one of the first things that comes up is the May 4th shootings. Sure. Tim Soldiers and Nixon. Yeah, that's right.

You're a good singer. Four dead in Ohio. Yeah. Play that shit, Phil. And so they were like, this study might change that, but it's a shame that it's going to be Kent State poop knife. Yeah, man, I can see like, yeah, that's a real question. Which of those you want? Yeah.

And well, we did it. Now, how I found the paper, I was researching for an article on Peter Fruken, who claimed to have been stuck in a blizzard in the Arctic, and he crawled underneath his sled to survive. And he was there for 30 hours, and the blizzard was so bad that a wall of ice formed around him. And he said, in a moment of genius, he defecated, turned that shit into a chisel,

and then broke his way out. That was the only way he could escape this little coffin that had formed around. That was the only way he could escape this little coffin that had formed around him. And the only information online available to help solve whether or not this could have really happened was your paper. Well, and so that's real interesting because in peer review and then afterward, colleagues and stuff said, well, you know, Peter Frickin allegedly, you know, made his chisel. So your knife paper has to be wrong. And we said, well, knives and chisels

are different. And also to the substrates cut meat versus snow. Those are different variables. So the Peter Froikin story could be true and the Inuit story could be false. They're just, this is variables in science. Now, I think something else to consider with Peter's story is that he was the only witness to it. He talked about, I think, for the first time in his autobiography, The Vagrant Viking, he had a personality that wanted to attract fame. He was like sort of a low key Hollywood socialite. He was in movies. He directed movies. He would go to Hollywood parties and throw actresses over his head like he really liked the attention. He went on the game show, the $64,000 question. So the question though is like, if you've got all these options to make up how you broke out of an ice drift, right? Why would you go with poop chisel? Right. So bizarre it might be true.

Because maybe he heard that story that you had heard. Yeah. Well, Peter Freuchen, that happened. It's in the 30s. In the 30s. In 1935. So. It's in the 30s. In the 30s. Like 1935. So this story happened in the 1950s. It would be, he would also, in your list there, Spencer, have to be wearing garments that lacked any sort of pockets or carrying capacity whatsoever.

I mean, there's just not, from the second I get dressed out of the shower, there's not a situation that I'm in where I don't have something in my pocket that would be better than a poop chisel. Yeah. So based on your paper and Peter's personality, I don't think he did it. I'm not buying it. Well, the high schooler needs a project. There you go. Yeah. That could be it.

Poop chisel. Out of a snow thing. Yeah, that's great. He just needs to replicate that. You replicated the other thing. He needs to replicate that thing. Yeah. If's great. He just needs to replicate that. You replicated the other thing, he needs to replicate that thing. Yeah. If we knew where this dude lived,

it'd be real helpful. It's like Florida where it's really hot. Yeah, if he's in Florida, it's not covered. That'd be the worst poop knife of all time. So if you want to read the article that I had reference his paper, it's fact checker,

did explorer Peter Fruecken save his life with a poop chisel. You can find that on theMeteor.com. I wrote it in 2021. Excellent. Great plug. Yeah, the Declan name, I'm still thinking he's like Irish, but he can't be in the sun too long.

He's probably in northern climates. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Okay. I'm trying to think. There's a million ways to get into this. I'm trying to think of how best to get into it. Let's get into it like this.

We just talked about the poop knife. Yeah. Explain why. get into it like this we just talked about the poop knife yeah explain um why explain the question about clovis and go as broad as you want meaning um you can cut because there's a thing we've talked about extensively is like the blitzkrieg hypothesis yes okay yeah so however you want to set it up walk us into the the paper you recently did about did these boys really go out and make stone projectile points and take down how big were mammoths real big you know like two tons oh yeah easily were they chiseling little stone points and knocking mammoths down all right so why is So why is that?

Why is that a question that sort of goes beyond just simple curiosity? So megafauna, right? 35 genera of megafauna went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene. So about 10,000 years ago. And the big question is whether or not humans in North America had any role in those extinctions. And that speaks to larger philosophical issues about our nature and our balance with ecosystems and all this sort of stuff. So people that use Clovis technology were some of the very first people on the continent. And we know Clovis folks date to around 13,600 years ago. Now, back in the 50s

and the 60s, when archaeologists were really getting into the study of Clovis, they noticed that, wow, just as Clovis people seem to be traveling across the continent, all these megafauna really seem to be dying. And so there must be a connection there. There's covariance. But not just around the continent around the world man well uh look at the islands that wound up having mammoths till 4 000 years ago what happened 4 000 years ago dude showed up wrangle wrangle island that's true now there's there's two issues with that uh one is that island extinctions are different than continental extinction yeah they happen when dudes show up. The other issue is that a paper just recently came out that showed that mammoths were surviving in northern regions until very recently. Like 4,000 or 5,000 years ago.

Like 4,000 or 5,000 years ago. So we did not cause their extinction. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so. All right, go on. Yeah. But it's a good point.

Island extinction. We are terrible on islands. The wrangle is not that big, too., too, so there's all these other factors. I'll let you go on, but you got a lot of inbreeding, shrinking, malformed mammoths on that island. To where it could be possible that the people who do show up and kill them, maybe they weren't so great. Maybe their timing was great. I don't want to get into it.

Steve's like, I descended from these people who killed mammoths. And I'm very proud of that. Well, there's an issue, too, as to whether or not we hunted mammoths versus hunted them to extinction. Okay. And so I don't think anyone doubts that on occasion people that use Clovis technology hunted mammoths. You know, there's, there's archeological evidence that on some occasions that seemed to have occurred. The, the big question is whether we hunted them so much with the Clovis fluted point, um, that we wipe them out. Yeah.

Cause a guy like me grew up seeing a Clovis point and saying that was made for killing mammoths. Oh, and Clovis points are awesome. Um. You're grabbing one off the table right now. I am grabbing one. Yeah. You got to describe a, for a layman.

Clovis points are 10 to 12 centimeters, um, five or six inches. Um, they're beautifully flaked. It took me years to learn how to make an accurate Clovis point. We can pass them around. I brought several. They're huge. Yeah.

Almost like you wanted to kill a mammoth with it. Well, you can get real small ones too. There's some small ones over. Tiny mammoths. Over here. Little tiny ones. Oh, that's beautiful. And they've got these channels.

I want to hold one of the big ones. Yeah, here you go. Point you another one. Let's see another good one. Well, this one's hafted. Let's see. Here's a good one. Okay, sweet.

Go on. I just want to hold it while you talk. Yeah, yeah. No, it's cool. So they've got these channels that come from the base. And these channels are really difficult to master. It took me a long time to learn how to flake these channels are really difficult to to master um it it took me a long time to learn how to flake these channels off the base because when you you hit the point from the base it causes

all sorts of bending and the point will break and we know from studies of the archaeological record that when you flute these things they break one out of four times one out of five times can you explain what looting so fluting are these these channels that you see at the base, and so they extend from that flat or concave base up. Is that concave or convex? I can never get those things right. Concave is the one where it goes into the, like a cave. Yeah, you're holding the point and running along the length of the point.

They get it all done, and then they thin the base by knocking a con. A channel. Knocking a concave. Channel. Channel up each side of the thing. Each side. So you risk breaking it twice. And that's where it's anchored on a shaft, right?

Yeah. And so the big question is, you know, it takes years to learn how to make a Clovis point. And even after you've mastered it, you risk breaking it one out of four or one out of five times. Why would Clovis people take those risks when you've got to feed your family and protect your band from predators and all this sort of stuff? These are really important weapons for them. And actually what we discovered was that fluting technology is not for better halting it or attaching it to a spear shaft. It's the world's first shock absorber. You think so?

Well, we showed so. I've been following this a little bit. So what we were able to find when we teamed up with a bunch of engineers and computer scientists was that when you flute both sides of a Clovis point, the base becomes super thin and brittle, really thin and brittle. And I started to think to myself, man, it's so thin and brittle, like it would just crunch. And then I was like, oh man, maybe that crunching is actually the advantage they were going for. So when a car crashes into something, the front end crumples protecting the people inside. So when you've got a Clovis point, and I've got one attached to a foreshaft here, is going 70 or 80 miles at prey, right? You're going to get a lot of compression

stress between that animal and the eight foot spear shaft behind it. Now, oftentimes the point will snap in half, but if you've got that little shock absorber where it crumples a little bit and absorbs some of that impact stress, it actually will crunch at the base and not break the point in half. So if you're Clovis people and you're traveling across a continent and exploring new lands that you've never been to before. Killing mammoths left and right. Well, you know, you don't want to. Faster than you can eat them.

Well, you don't want to spend a lot of time remaking your weapons all the time. So by integrating these little shock absorbers, they figured out a way to basically extend the life of the tool that kept them alive. But speak about the halfting question. Yeah. Because that was long. It was like long held. Well, you'd read where people

would say oh it had a spiritual perhaps the spiritual significance which means we don't know what it meant well archaeologists always say that when they don't know what's going on and then you had people talk about the halting but the halting thing is kind of legit because imagine that i'm trying to explain this listeners that like take your middle finger and your index finger and like put them together, right? So they're running parallel together. And then you slip that point between them. And then that little groove gives your fingers somewhere to rest. And then you lash that down with string.

I mean, it's plausible that that was like, it's plausible, right, that that was helpful. Because if it was a rounded surface, your fingers wouldn't have anywhere to really grab. So that's one really interesting thing about the way archeology is done today is that we study it in basically a way that you just described in terms of evolution. And usually when evolutionary, uh, features get adopted, it's cause they've got multiple benefits so shock absorption could be one of benefit hafting could be an additional benefit yeah um and so and there could be other benefits to fluting that we have not yet discovered yet so uh yeah there's a lot of work to do i want

to make i want to get back to what we're on but i want to talk i want to talk about hafting for a second yeah yeah if you think of your class like think of a Boy Scout badge and it has an Indian arrowhead on it. What do you call those little lobes at the bottom? Something like there? Yeah. Okay. Like your classic arrowhead shape where you have a, how do you describe that shape? Sort of like a dovetail almost.

Yeah. And you have a little, and there's grooves knocked out. We call those notches. Okay. Yeah. And you have a little, and there's grooves knocked out. We call those notches. Okay. Yeah. Do you, does it seem as though that is helpful for hafting? It gives a place for the string to bite, right?

It does give a string, a place for the string to bite. One hypothesis that we're testing now though, is that the notches are not meant to keep the arrowhead or the projectile point on the shaft. What it actually does is it prevents the point from being pushed into the shaft upon impact, which would break the shaft. And to be honest, even though it takes years to learn how to make any sort of stone point, um, the shafts

would probably be a lot more valuable to ancient people because it takes so much more time and effort to get it straight, find the right wood, carve it out. Whereas once you know how to flint nap a Clovis point, you can do it in 25 or 45 minutes real quick. Got it. But the shaft is a pain in the ass. But the shaft is a pain. So I think- And they would make them with different stuff, right? Is there something made out of like camel bone and mammoth ivory? We get four shafts and shafts made out of wood and all kinds of wood and bone and yeah, everything.

So it depends on where you are in the world. So bamboo in some cases in East Asia. Do they have any kind of like ancient adhesive that they would use on them? Yeah. So pine pitch is a really good one. Hide glue. They would make glue from hide. Now in our lab.

Is this all natural materials right here? No. In fact, it's mostly synthetic. Okay. Now, one reason why we try to not use animal products when we do experiments is because the ethics in terms of doing experiments with animal products can just get a little dicey.

Oh, come on. Really? Oh, yeah. But how are you supposed to do the work? So what we do, we experiments with animal products, can just get a little dicey. Oh, come on. Really? Oh, yeah. But how are you supposed to do the work? So what we do, we sometimes use animal products. I'm not saying we cut them out entirely, but there are some experiments where we don't need to use animal products.

So we'll use like a wax twine or a plant-based product. If that's not the part you're looking at. If not the part, yeah, exactly. I'm with you. And then also too, you know, pine pitch can be really difficult to produce and there can be variability from one experiment to the next. And if we want consistency, we've got to use like a thermoplastic that allows us to control that variable when we're focused on some other variable. But if you're studying adhesives and you're looking at that. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah. That's fair. I'll give you that one. That's fair. I'll give you that one. That's fair. So what all kind of weapons were these points used on? Spears, bows, atlatls? So the atlatl. Now, let me just preface that by saying we've never found a Clovis atlatl. Are you into atlatl or atlatl?

I say atlatl. See, man. Okay. What do you say? I used to say that, and then I got corrected so damn much, I started saying atlatl see man okay what do you say i used to say that and then i got corrected so damn much i started saying atlatl really yeah i think atlatl dude i had a dude tell me he's like listen man it's wrong and i switched because i trusted him really yeah oh man trusted him i think some of them and then he was like let me tell you about this poop knife. All right. So yeah, you never found a. We've never found Clovis atlatl.

So we assume that they used atlatls with their projectiles because these projectiles, you see they're big. If you tried to put that on an arrow, it might mess up a lot of the ballistics and it'd be hard to haft that onto an arrow shaft. And you don't see evidence of bows and arrows on this continent until like four or five thousand years ago of any sort, right? Yeah. Even later in some cases. Okay. So the other issue too is we don't know that they were used with an atlatl.

It could be hand like thrown spears or thrusting spears, handheld thrusting spears. Got it. So it's just an assumption that they use the atlatl, but they may not be projectiles at all. I want to get a couple of things. We're going to get back to this whole mystery of whether they killed man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I want to just explain to folks what I'm holding. Yeah.

So we have, and you correct me where I go wrong here. The very tip, the tip of the spear, so to speak, we have the stone Clovis point and the specimen is made out of. That is actually a English chert. Okay. So it's made out of chert. Um, and it's hafted to with, with string. It's lashed to a 15 inch.

Yeah. That's ash. Ash foreshaft. Foreshaft. So it's like, uh, So it's like at the thickest part, it's about the thickness of a Sharpie, and comes to a point reminiscent of like a drumstick. Yeah, that's a good description. And then you didn't just fling this at something. There's like another part.

So there's a, what's the next part? Do you have one here? I couldn't fit the seven foot dart into my suitcase. So this sockets into a handle or what do you call that part? We call it a dart. And so it would be like a seven foot, very thin and flexible spear. And so, and that way what happens is you throw the entire sort of dart and foreshaft at the animal. The foreshaft sticks, the dart falls out, and then you can retrieve your dart and put in another foreshaft.

So this would just socket into that. Exactly. Like just held by friction. Yes. Into, you know, we're in South America, they still use. Oh yeah. Socketed, shooting out of arrows. They still use socketed points that fall away.

That's amazing. And then they would tie for their bird points. They would leave a tied connection wrapped around because they want the arrow to fall away. And then it's, the bird tries to fly away and he gets hung up in the bushes because he's dragging the shaft around on the end of a chunk of string.

Yeah. That's almost reminiscent. I read an ethnographic account of they tie, uh, like skin balloons when they're doing whale hunting. Um, so that when the projectile hits, you know, the underwater creature that you're going after, you can follow it with that balloon. Um, so it's not being dragged, but. And it absorbs a little bit. It's like a little bit of a shock absorber when something pulls on it. So, and then that would be the, if the at, at a ladle thing, explain what that is.

I'm holding it right now, but explain what the hell we're talking about when we say in an atlatl. So an atlatl is basically a stick with a little nub at the end of it. And that little nub. Very similar when you're playing fetch with your dog and you got one of those tennis ball huckers. And in fact. That's exactly it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a tennis ball hucker with a little turkey spur sticking out the end of it. Huck it. That's what it is. The physics are the same, right? It basically increases the leverage of your arm. It's a lever.

And when you've got just a stick with a little nub, you put your spear, sort of, right, insert it into that nub. You can launch a dart, you know, 70 miles an hour, 75 miles an hour. Are you pretty good with one? No, I suck. What's the best person? Okay. The best person you've seen with one, how good are they at? Just give me like some distance and group size.

So, well, there's a couple of ways to use an atlatl. So you can do it for accuracy. And, you know, I've seen and heard cases where people can hit a cantaloupe from, you know, 30 or 40 yards. Okay. So that's pretty good. Yeah. The other thing though that you can do with a dart and atlatl is if there's a large herd, 150, 200 meters away, you can just launch your dart into the herd and it will go that 200 meters. You can huck one that far?

Oh yeah. Really? Yeah. Have you done it? How far can you huck one that far oh yeah really yeah have you done how far can you huck one probably 100 meters or so but people that are really you might have just hail married it out there into a group of stuff just to see what happened yeah definitely like in that never cry wolf movie there's probably remember he takes his uh he takes a jackknife ties it to the end of a stick hawks it into a herd of caribou, walks over and there's one laying there dead. Never met Never Cry Wolf. Great movie.

Phenomenal movie. Is there different size, like projectiles and stuff that you'd throw out of an atlatl? Because obviously one you could throw farther than another. Or are they all pretty similar? So you can throw any size stone projectile with an atlatl. So it can be a really teeny tiny arrowhead or a really large Clovis point. Because what happens is that the dart is so much more massive than the point that it sort of balances out. I see.

Where you can't sort of go is take a really large point and put it on a very thin arrow shaft. So there you need to have small arrow points made out of stone. Yeah. So. Um, so go back to the different styles of like the different possible styles of hunting with one of these things. So there's like accuracy. You can go for, you know, 30, 40 yards, try to get a long shot or hard shot and people can do it.

Um, actually if you type in atlatl hunting onto youtube there's lots of videos of people doing it um but you can watch let me let me throw one at you because it's kind of what i mean let's say it's big ass mammoth standing there oh no no no bear with me yeah okay like they're not accustomed to people let's just let's just go down the the the fantasy thing here You're early people on a new continent. You're dealing with animals that have no idea what the hell you are. They're just like, I don't know, what's this little annoying thing walking up to me? And you get up five yards away and you're like, right?

Yeah. You're not really relying on accuracy. No. It's not a Hail Mary. No. You're just like, can I bury this thing in there enough to. To kill it. Yeah.

And I'm sure you guys have messed around with that. Like, can you drive the point? Like nothing to do with it being far away, nothing to do with being really good at it, but just can you take it and flap? Like, could I take it and right through Phil? Oh, through Phil? Oh yeah. Definitely through Phil.

Yeah. That's no problem. Pin him right to his chair. Yeah. But when it comes to a mammoth, the answer is no. Just flat out. Yeah, just... Hold on a minute.

Know that I'm going to pin him to his chair or know that I'm going to get it in there enough to do something to him? You wouldn't be able to do anything to him, probably. Really? Really? Yeah. And I can explain why. All right?

I don't buy it for one second. I haven't even heard the explanation. Even me? All right. Tell me me? All right. Tell me why. All right. So, we did ballistics experiments

in our lab at Kent State where instead of hucking at a mammoth because we couldn't. Because the ethics issue. Well, yeah. It's hard to find mammoths, right?

You got to grow them. Yeah. Which is a pain in the ass enough. They're trying though. They're trying though. I know. right? You got to grow them. Yeah. Which is a pain in the ass enough. They're trying though. They're trying. I know. It'll be helpful to you guys. Yeah.

You should order the first couple. Well, I do have a proposal for you when we're done talking about mammoths. So what we've been doing in our ballistics lab is we end up shooting into blocks of clay. And we've done lots of engineering experiments looking at how clay compares to meat and flesh. And it's not just us. There's been knife makers and all sorts of other people who have looked to see how does clay compare. Yeah, what's that other shit they use? The ballistic gel? Ballistics gel.

Oh, yeah. We've also done experiments with that. It's terrible. Ballistics gel is... You don't like it? What about what they always do on TV shows when they're testing out swords and shit? Oh yeah. Um, we've also done experiments with that. It's terrible. Ballistic gel is. You don't like it. What about what they always do on like TV shows? Like when they're testing out swords and shit, like using, using pigs. Um.

Oh, like a pig carcass? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you can use carcasses. Uh, the issue though then is how does that sort of compare to the animal? Related to it. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so we were shooting into blocks of clay now these blocks of clay while they compare to to meat when they are different than meat they are less resistant so less resistant they also don't understand what that means so that means if you were to fire into meat into clay the projectile going into clay usually would be similar to meat in terms of penetration depth, but on occasion it would be less. So, or no, no, it would be more. I'm sorry. On occasion it'll penetrate clay better. It'll penetrate clay better than meat.

Okay. All right. So we're firing into a less resistant substrate. Like you're giving it the benefit of the doubt. We're giving it the benefit of the doubt. We're giving it the benefit of the doubt. And also our clay, even though it compares to meat, doesn't have hair and it doesn't have hide. And so when you look at mammoths, mammoths can have 10 to 12 centimeters of hair that would slow down your projectile and their hides can be, you know, two or three centimeters

thick. So that's on top of any meat that you'd have to get through. Right. And we're firing with our spot hog hooter shooter from a meter away into these blocks of clay. So kind of like what you described, just going up and hawking it into the animal. There's no wind, there's no rain that could sort of cause the projectile to skew and hit it at an angle, which would reduce penetration more. So we're given these Clovis points that we're firing into the clay the best possible chance to penetrate as deep as they can. On average, Clovis points penetrate the clay blocks 18 centimeters. So that much. That is not deep at all and when we compare what 18 centimeters

is yeah not only to mammoths but to modern elephants you are not reaching lungs you are not reaching the heart you're not reaching the liver and this also assumes that you're making it between that cage of ribs which for mammoths is just like a fortress so are you familiar with the claim that the blackwater draw site they found a mammoth skull with a clovis point in its eye socket i am not aware of that claim people think it's like was someone put it there because i thought it'd be funny oh but, people think it's like, someone put it there because I thought it'd be funny. Oh. But some people think it's legit. Is it funny? Well, not funny. I mean, that there was like,

okay, let me put it a different way. Some people think that, I guess there's some people that made that claim. Yeah. And other people pointed out that there's probably some human, some modern human manipulation

of the stuff where some huckster, right? There are hucksters in archaeology. Yeah. It was like, come to my special, see my, you know what I mean? And he like, wouldn't it be cool if, you know,

I stuck it in there and showed tourists. Yeah. Or it was like legitimately in there. I think, I think it was, it was described as being like evidence of, and then later was widely discredited as being no one knows how that thing got in that head, but there's no, like no one was ever able to analyze it. It might just be like a guy was screwing around. I'm not familiar with that claim. Okay.

Which makes me think it's probably not true. Yeah, it's probably not true. Sorry. true. Yeah, it's probably not true. That's all right. But so, you know, when it comes to the fact that we also know that Clovis points from analysis called microware, which is where you can take a scanning electron microscope and we look at the polishes and striations that are left on the artifacts themselves to see how they were used. We know Clovis points were used as knives. So they weren't just projectile weapons. They were multi-use tools for processing animals as well.

So when we find Clovis points in association with mammoth skeletons, and that's very rare, it's only been done, you know, 14 times in the history of archaeology. Can you walk me through a couple of the notable ones? Yeah, so...

Like what was the relationship, right? Yeah, so we'll find there's eight Clovis points found in the Naco mammoth down in the Southwest. There was only three Clovis points kind of around the area of the Colby mammoth in Wyoming. Let's see some of the other ones. And these are not like the Folsom point laying in the ribs. These are like just in association. In association with. But not like the Folsom point laying in the ribs. These are like just in association. In association with.

But not like wedged into something. And we've never found a Clovis point tip in the bone of a mammoth. Whereas we found Folsom points embedded in bison bone before and all other types of stone. So no, just to make sure everybody's clear. Yeah. No one has ever recovered a mammoth bone. With a clove. That had like healed around

or had like when it was fresh bone been impaled by, struck by, embedded in. That is correct. Never. Never. So these Clovis points that we find in association with mammoths could very plausibly be

just people scavenging already dead ones. Have you found humans with Clovis points in the bones? No, because, um, we only have, uh, one Clovis burial that's ever been found. And it's right near here. Yeah. Anzick.

Anzick one. Anzick one. That's right. I mean like 30. I forgot I was in Montana. You could, you could be at the Anzick. Anzick 1. Anzick 1, that's right. I mean like I forgot I was in Montana. You could be at the Anzick 1 site. It's a great name for a boy. I think it sounds like a Steven Spielberg movie.

Anzick 1. But he was a little boy buried over by Wilsall with a bunch of Clovis points. Yeah. You can just picture how cute he looked all wrapped up in those mammoth hides that his daddy killed. Yeah. You just picture how cute he looked all wrapped up in those mammoth hides.

That his daddy killed. Can we talk about the Blitzkrieg hypothesis real quick? Yeah, definitely. Right. And like, so where that name comes from, right? It's like attacking very, very fast. Overwhelming larger odds by moving really fast faster than your opponents are gonna roll the whole place up in a thousand years yeah um how did people get to a new continent steven did they get there really, really fast? Did they get to new places really fast?

In the book, Sapiens, he talks about if. I also want to say, uh, Spothog. I'm going to shift over here real quick. Well, no. Okay. Go ahead. And I'm going to give you an example from Sapiens. Uh.

A thing he says in Sapiens. The, the Oregon company Spothog makes, you know hog makes you know like uh fancy tough archery sites is their is their big deal but they came out with that hooter shooter forever ago and it's it's a highly technical piece of equipment designed around um doing what every archery hunter probably for thousands of years has always wanted to do, which is know that the bow is screwing up and it's not you. Yeah. Right.

Um, and, uh, I've known those folks at Spothog for a really long time. Everybody's super nice, great people. Uh, but had they led with the fact they had a hooter shooter at Kent state and a projectile lab. We have two. It would have been. Yeah. I'd be lead with that are you ready for this hunting stuff is cool but

that's way cool i want to first hardly uh recommend the book sapiens it's got some sloppy mistakes in it like what um they misspelled sapien seems like a big one no no just like he'll like make some examples like for instance if a if a blank animal were to like do this to a blank animal and it'd be like animals that don't coexist on the same continent just like kind of like a little lazy comparisons that are annoying if you catch them but i mean it's you know it's a highly regarded book. He gets into like the human diaspora out of Africa 70,000 years ago. And for a long time, he talks about, which is kind of cool. Like if you go to an area and you'd be like, oh, there's some mule deer. Oh, there's some white-tailed deer.

That at various times around the world, you had different humans coexisting. It'd be like, oh, there's one kind of them. Oh, there's another kind of them. They seem seem really similar but they're kind of a little bit different right um but he focuses in on homo sapiens and he says if a forager band split once every 40 years uh prior to this he gets into like what probably hunter-gatherer bands, how big was a hunter-gatherer band? Like just based on various pieces of evidence is like roughly how many people lived in these hunter-gatherer bands that roamed around. And then how did they, like what were their group interactions and group dynamics? It's all a huge question mark, but he just kind of offers some like perspectives on how to understand this.

There's kind of this funny thing that happens too. And he looks at all these examples from, from human societies, a hundred people becomes a very different, if you imagine a group of people as like an organism, say the organism changes dramatically at a hundred people. And he gets into a lot of stuff, even at like organizations,

professional organizations, military units, all these kinds of examples like like sub 100 people every individual is able to know like at sub 100 people every individual is able to know pretty much the history of everyone else you can know their name you'll be able to put together their family tree you like remember grievances and gripes you get over 100 people and you start to enter into sort of like a different territory. And it seems that a lot of these early groups, he like, he has this spirited argument that probably around a hundred people or less, probably not more would survive as these roaming bands of hunter gatherers that just stayed on the move all the time.

Which leads to this quote, which I highlighted. If a forager band split once every 40 years and its splinter group migrated to a new territory 60 miles to the east, the distance from East Africa to China would have been covered in about 10,000 years. So that's slow, but it's like, it depends on your perspective. Sure. It's, it's like, it's slow, but fast. I mean, East Africa to China, just as like people filling up the landscape without a thought, without being propelled by the idea that you're supposed to fill up the landscape.

Uh, I mean, obviously you're familiar with fill up the landscape uh i mean obviously you're familiar with this which is why i asked the question right it's like but in order for there to be new there there brings to mind like this this picture of like uh i fell out of a balloon and landed in this landscape where nothing had seen me before or my kind before. Yeah, I'm with you. Whereas that 60 miles, um, certainly around here, you know, we have a bunch of snow on the ground right here. You move 60 miles in three different directions, you're going to be, there's some stuff that

looks green around here already, uh, and it's snow free, right? You can really change your landscape and what's around and abundant there. Yep. But we know that all these animals have these big overlapping territories. They have migration routes. They do a lot of moving too. So this idea of there being like a new encounter.

Like constantly unannounced. It's sort of a constantly unannounced presence. Surprise, we're humans. Right? It's very hard for me. new encounter like constantly unannounced is sort of a constantly unannounced presence surprise we're humans right is is very hard for me like the knowledge of humans may well have just traveled sort of at the outer edge of humans right yeah right and i think like the hunted animals are like oh man those slow bipedal things or they we move a little bit a few days later they show no that's a great point man that it wasn't like some dude is like i'm gonna sneak over a thousand miles past where anybody's ever been for the honey and get past any awareness of who i am yeah it's just it's hard

but you read it and you're like yeah that makes sense and then you're like wait a minute do you think you could publish that in a paper? Well, I think. Called the Callahan principle. Yeah. Well, it's, I think what you're getting at, right, with Blitzkrieg is it assumes animals are also real dumb and that animals don't learn. And, you know, you might get away with walking up to a species that's never seen you before once. But his buddies are watching and they're going to see what you did

and they're going to learn. And so this idea that just because we were new, we could just walk up and sort of club animals on the head and take them out. Blitz Creek style doesn't make any sense. Or even the atlatl, when you compare it to like close range hunting tactics that we have now, right. Um, especially to huck something 200 meters, that's a big body movement, right? I imagine there's a couple of big steps in there. You're really arcing your arm. You're doing a run. Like Happy Gilmore style.

Yeah. Happy Gilmore style, right? Versus like, you're not, um, crouched down, semi sneak, drawing your bow back, locking it in, you know, there's just like some, some big movements. It's a, it's a more, uh, probably less, uh,

a little more brutal versus finesse. Yeah. Uh, you know, another thing I read that, uh, like another anti-Blitzkrieg hypothesis thing I've read is that, um, there's no remains of, I don't think there's even a butcher site of like a, uh, giant ground sloth. Every time you're reading about the Pleistocene extinctions, they always love to talk about the giant ground sloth because what a crazy ass animal. Yeah. Right.

How tall are they? Like, I don't know, 14 feet tall or, you know, people love to bring up like mammoths and right. It's like when a, when a writer, when some journalist is going to do a list of animals and they know they're going to start with mammoth, the second one's probably the giant ground sloth.

Nine feet long, 550 pounds. Yeah. They're like, you know, like a mammoth and a giant ground sloth. Every journalist does it. I was reading that there's no butcher site. Not only no, like, not only no bone, stone tools stuck in his bone. Oh, yeah.

Not even a butcher site from a giant ground sloth. So the only animals that we've got Clovis artifacts in association with are mammoths, Macedon, one camel. One camel. One camel, one horse, and I believe that's it. But we have human bones associated with more animals, but it could be like overlaps for like burial sites, right? Like, cause I know that we have like some cave bears and some human skulls in close proximity.

Not in North America. South America. I've never heard of that. I think it was two years ago. There was something that came out. That was pretty neat. Underwater cave. Oh.

Oh, so in Mexico. The cenote. Yeah. There is a human skull, yes And so maybe there was a There was a woman that had been hit over the head, right? Yeah, yeah So yeah, I believe that was in Mexico

But it was a very confused Stratigraphy Like that thing had been collecting shit For a long time Right, yeah Imagine swimming down there and there's a lady's skull there Oh man But that's an insane, I mean, we're basing a

lot off of very few sites that we know for sure humans actually carved on just a handful of critters, right? If we were regularly hunting these mega mammals, you know, hundreds of millions of these specimens, right? We'd be finding Clovis points in association with these things all over the place. But there are only-

But you're not finding Clovis. Like, okay, look at this. If you're going by that piece of evidence, then we'd have to say there weren't any Clovis hunters because we've only found one. Well- You had the Anzick one boy. So if you're going to go by what you found, then we'd have to say like there weren't any people then because we haven't found them.

Well, but we've got their artifacts. Yeah. And we've got like 20... But stone lasts a long time. Aliens. Stone lasts a long time. Bones don't. No, mega mammal bones do. I see what you're saying, but you see what I'm saying? But Anzig 1, Anzig 1, you could easily make

the jump and just say, oh, these are ceremonial points that weren't actually used for anything. The other issue too with Clovis burials is it is a mystery as to why we only have one. Like we don't, like, where are these Clovis bones? Like maybe they buried them on, they didn't bury them, but they did like the plains tribes and put them on scaffolding. That's possible. So there's something behavioral with Clovis that we just don't know what's going on. Why? Because we have hundreds of Neanderthal skeletons from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago. Clovis is only 13,000 years ago and we only have one and it's an infant. So what Clovis people are doing with their burials or with their deceased relatives, we have no idea. That's interesting, man. Like they weren't interring them in caves. No.

And what's really strange about Clovis too is that they do not seem to utilize rock shelters or caves at all. Every other hunter-gatherer group around the world, past and present, going back 2 million years to, you know, modern hunter-gatherers use caves and rock shelters. There are no Clovis rock shelter sites or cave sites what's the speculation like hide shelters big spiders i don't know maybe it could be some sort of taboo some cultural thing again ritual maybe ritual yeah because like the the the people uh the europeans that use the similar tech tool technology and associated with a similar suite of animals. They even call them like cavemen.

Oh yeah. I'm always correct to my kids. Cause they want to call like, they know about me being real interested in ice age hunters and they're always calling them cavemen. And I'm like, on the contrary, anthropologists think that they weren't real big into caves.

They didn't hang out in caves. No, they did in Europe and Africa. No, I'm saying here. Oh, here they did. Yeah,

exactly. Well, I've only just read that, that they didn't like going. And now they didn't hang out in caves. No, they did in Europe and Africa. No, I'm saying here they didn't. Oh, here they didn't. Yeah, exactly. I've only just read that, that they didn't like going. Not that they didn't like, we don't know what they thought of them, but that you don't find their bones and tools and stuff in rock-led shelters. Not Pleistocene. Now, once we get into the Holocene after 10,000 years ago, we see people in North America using caves and rock shelters all the time. So it's just for whatever reason that blip of Clovis for about five to 600 to 700 years, caves were just sort of off the real estate market. Don't know why. Uh, you said that someone could make one of the, well, let me ask another question first. So you think of what I'm at, what I should be

holding right now is a knife. Yes. That's just it. No, I think. It's a souped up knife. So they could be used for, uh, hunting weaponry and projectile technology as well, but for smaller things like deer or elk, um, they just don't, they wouldn't penetrate deep enough to do anything to mammoths. So I think they could be used as, as hunting weapons. And look, it's possible that Clovis folks did occasionally take down a mammoth. I'm not saying

they never hunted mammoths ever, but the question is, did they hunt these things to extinction? And is the Clovis point some sort of stone age bazooka that allowed them to do that with ease? And the answer is, is no, the Clovis Point just isn't this AK-47 where you could just mow down mammoths. But that's the impression that archaeologists have published for decades. If they couldn't kill them with Clovis Points, do they have any other creative solutions to kill a mammoth? Well, so this is it. This is where the faults of the archaeological record really come into play. Like maybe they use some sort of poison that has not preserved on Clovis points, you know, today.

So maybe they use some sort of poison to take down mammoths. But derived from what? I don't know. Anthrax. Well, and the issue too with poison is because Clovis people were relatively new to the landscape,

they would have needed to learn which plants to utilize to make those poisons and what quantities. So I find the idea that they use poison not very convincing, but that's possible and that's something we can't falsify at this point. What about just like driving them off cliffs and then going to the bottom of that cliff and then dispatching them with like the Clovis points?

So we do have bison jumps in later time periods, um, where people would drive bison off of cliffs and then, you know, they, they butcher the top layer and then there's like two or three bison deep where they just couldn't get to them. Cause they killed somebody. Yeah. Um, we've never found a mammoth jump. Um, and I feel like we'd find that if that existed at this point. Um, so.

God, there's all those great dioramas, aren't there? Dioramas of people with like sticks pushing by. Yeah. And when we were kids, we had a book. We used to always, there's a great picture in one of our books and they had gotten one in a pit trap. And we're hurling giant rocks down on it. Well. And they all had fur skirts.

They're all wearing fur skirts they're all wearing first so that that's a possibility right you drive a mammoth into an arroyo and and it gets stuck like or maybe it's already sick or dying so clovis people you can just whittle away at it or whatever you had but like this idea that clovis folks that is what they did and that's who they were they were mammoth hunters just isn't supported um so that would just be like saying, you know, well, actually I can't come up with an analogy so you can cut this part. Oh, no.

Let me tell you about, have you ever heard of the book, The Oregon Trail? I played the DOS game in the 1980s. There's a historian, there's a guy that wrote at the time the definitive history of the French and Indian War and his name was francis parkman okay and he had a lung problem i can't remember what it was and his doctor said you needed you know they used to send everybody what the hell do you have when they send you

consumption right wasn't that it tv consumption was called it consumption was tv right yeah yeah yeah they're like you got to go out to the dry climates you know to survive it was like a big thing uh doc holiday a woman would cough blood into a handkerchief yeah the dry climates you know to survive it was like a big thing uh a woman would cough blood into a handkerchief yeah the doctor be like you gotta get out of town exactly right exactly uh so this fellow francis francis parkman he went out in 1846 and wound up traveling with the iguala sioux and likely was in Crazy Horse's camp when Crazy Horse would have been about 13 years old. They go into the Black Hills to collect, he goes with the Aguala Sioux into the Black Hills to collect teepee poles. And describes there how one day they get on a ledge up above a herd of bighorns and start rolling, trundling rocks down through the herd and kill some.

That's amazing. And he explains it very explicitly. Yeah. And it's like, that doesn't get, that's preserved because he saw it. And this is the thing we've talked about when we talk about these things, like archaeological sites. Were they 10 years later? Do you remember that weird-ass time when we got on that hill

and freakishly there was 100 bighorns and freakishly there was these big, huge rocks? And they were like, holy shit, it works. And Bob's like, roll one down! And how weird that was, right? Despite having all these other technologies. Right.

Instead of using the guns that we had. Yeah. Instead of using the spears, instead of using the bows. Yeah. Or was it like, you know what we like to do? Come May, we get on a big cliff every year and trundle big horns to death of big rocks. Right. Because there's like a certain amount of just like freakish shit happens.

Yeah, definitely. You know? And so the fact that like you come across a mammoth stuck in the mud and some guy manages to, you know, take an hour or so of his time and jab some holes into it. Over and over. The same hole just getting deeper and deeper. Yeah, like jab its eye out until it dies with a Clovis point.

It's like, I don't know, sure. Yeah. No, Clovis people could have occasionally taken one out. But you bring up like these historic accounts and we can get into the ethnographic record of elephant hunting. And that's where we can start to look at, well, okay, let's look at folks who have metal spears, right? Got it. There are documented cases of the Mabuti in Africa of spear hunting elephants or trying to spear hunt elephants. Really?

And their metal spears bend and bounce off. Bisa hunters with muzzle loaders only have a 20% success rate of taking out mammoths. When they attack it. When, yeah. Elephants. Elephants. Yeah. Yeah. And so like this idea that with modern metals

and even firearms, it's hard to take out an elephant, which is smaller than a mammoth. The idea that. And you don't have that hair, which is an extra layer. Yeah, exactly. And hair can really slow down projectiles. Yeah, dirty.

Oh, yeah. Sand, mud filled hair. Yeah. You ever try to. No. Yeah. Skin a critter with a knife, right? You're like. I've never tried to. Yeah. You ever try to. No. Yeah. Skin a critter with a knife, right? You're like.

I've never tried to jab a mammoth under those conditions. So it's, it would have been a challenge. And so this idea that they just did it all the time, I just isn't supportive. You want to know where I caught you in a contradiction? Yeah, go ahead. That could wreck your career. You know what? It's, I made knives out of my own frozen poop. So I don't know if I'd call it a career. Earlier you were, we were talking about fluting. Yeah, go ahead. That could wreck your career. You know what? I made knives out of my own frozen poop,

so I don't know if I'd call it a career. Earlier, we were talking about fluting. Yeah. And you pointed out that it could act as a shock absorber. Yeah. But, but, it was a knife. No, no, it was a multifunctional tool

that could also be used to take out deer. He just saved his career. Oh, yeah. It could be used for deer or moose or elk or whatever. So yeah. Um, a colleague tried to do that to me too. He tried to ruin your career and catch it.

Same thing. No, the exact same thing. Oh, the exact same one. Oh yeah. But now that I think about it, you already said like it probably was, and they might have used it for fighting each other. Or self-defense. Um, this is the other thing about clovis points they are so big

um that i am starting to suspect that they're probably used primarily on handheld spears um because think about it right you are new to this continent there's all sorts of critters that want to eat you short face bear saber-toothed tigers you're and your population densities are really low because you're peopling this new continent, you want to do everything you can to survive when you're out in the wild. You need some form of self-defense. And so more and more I'm starting to think to my mind that maybe Clovis points would have served that purpose as well.

You'd have had a monitor on a stick and it was just like a do-all. Yeah. Again, I want to say new to this continent by like what's your context, right? Are you fifth generation new to this continent by like, what's your context, right? Are you fifth generation new to this continent? Right? Like what, what's the deal? Well, so this gets into the whole issue of when North America's was peopled, right?

Okay. So there are pre-Clovis peoples in North America. Now, uh, there, they seem to be limited to the West Coast, Pacific Northwest, and the Southwest. There are areas of North America where it looks like people who use Clovis technology were first. So that would be the Great Lakes, New England, probably the Southeast parts. So Clovis was first in some regions, but they had predecessors in other regions. Because the fluted point was invented here. We don't find the Clovis fluted point anywhere else in Asia or anything like that. So if it was invented in North America, there had to have been pre-Clovis people here to invent it.

Yeah. I've heard people in trying to describe the Clovis culture as sort of like it was the first widespread American born culture. That's a good description. How long did the Clovis culture last? Only about anywhere from 500 to probably 800 years. Oh, wow. Yeah. It did not last long.

Now, the reason why. Well, yeah. But how, I mean, like think about how long has America been here? Well, that's true. But when you. I mean, they're like five Americas. That's true. But not, I mean, America, the country.

Yeah. You're like, oh, that's not very long. And you're like, well, that is pretty long. Well, but I was way off on my math. Stone technology. Be good. I'm saying it's a long time. Yeah.

But Clovis points compared to something like this. Yeah, what the hell is that? So this is the Acheulean hand axe made by Homo erectus. So it is a large teardrop shaped object that is much larger than my face. I don't know what else to say. That's gorgeous, man. But this lasted for 1.5 million years, this particular object. Really?

You'll find them in the human record for that long. Yeah. Really long time. So. It's an idea that's stuck. Yeah. So you, like the idea of Clovis points last for 800 years is, is not long at all. 1.5 million years, this thing.

Homo erectus was just using this over and over again to chop up tubers and disarticulate skeletons. So. See, when you came in, this is a good transition into like how stuff was produced. Yeah. Um, I. Oh, real quick too, just as we pass this around, obsidian does get sharp to the molecule.

So just when you're passing it around, don't like touch the edge. Yeah. Walk me through based on what we found what we found like let's say on this continent yeah a you're a hunter gatherer and you use stone tools so you use stone spear points don't arrow points stone knives right all your hard shit's made out of stone um leave out trade networks and just walk me through sort of like the process of one minute you have nothing and then you have these like finally wrought pieces yeah so

all right so this is a i'm holding a raw piece of chert that I just almost destroyed your microphone with. Now this is called Georgetown chert from Texas. Man, I would see that and think you're holding a hunk of bone. Yeah, no. And that weird like the outside of it. This is raw, and it's got this chalky substance on the outside, which is a cortex. Almost like a limestone. So that's like, you'd find that laying on the ground.

You'd find that laying on the ground. You can quarry it as well, dig it out at like a chert outcrop. Now, something like that, I would start chipping with the hammer stones and stuff, which I brought. I can do some chipping for you guys in a little bit. No, no, no. Walk me through it, man. Do you want to bust that one up or you like that one too much? No, no.

I brought that to break for you guys. Dude, that's a beauty piece. Oh, no. I mean. Which is like you try and break it and it's like called a conchoidal fracture. Yeah, conchoidal fracture. And so what it means is chert, basalt, obsidian, these are all rocks that break like glass. Okay.

And conchoidal means shell-like. The fracture looks like a shell. Oh, is that what that means? Yeah. I've heard that word, but I never put together what it means. Yeah, it means shell-like. It looks like a little scallop shell. Exactly.

That's exactly right. When you flake it, it leaves like a little scallop shell shape. That's exactly right. And because that shape is predictable and if you understand the angles and where to hit it, uh, the fracture becomes really predictable and you can basically make whatever you want. Um, so a piece like that, you would sort of thin down into a larger nap. So this is the same stone. Is that called a biface? This is called a biface because I've,

I've take flakes off of both sides. Um, and it's got a nice sharp edge. So I could use this as a, a processing tool. Yeah. So now the, the hunk of,

uh, what's that? What's that again? That's Georgetown shirt. So we've got a huge ass hunk of Georgetown shirt. I don't know. What's the way? Six pounds. Yeah. I mean, it huge ass hunk of Georgetown shirt on, what's it weigh? Six pounds?

Yeah. I mean, it basically looks like a big rock. Yeah. With a, what's that on the outside? Cortex, white cortex. Like a doe colored cortex on the outside, but the inside is like classic, smooth, kind of flint looking, flinty looking rock. And this, like I said, you pick this up off the ground like right where god laid

it like there it is you picked it up that's exactly right okay and then someone's not gonna like walk away with 50 pounds of this shit in his bag they might oh you think so yeah yeah you would see these just you'd see these move from source we see people transport rock all sorts of distances yeah like in this form yeah oh yeah in raw form also in processed form because i was picturing You'd see these move from source? We see people transport rock all sorts of distances. Yeah. Like in this form? Yeah. Oh, yeah. In raw form. Also in processed form.

Because I was picturing them getting it like down to what I'm holding in my other hand, which is this, how thick is that? It's like thick as a slice of bread. Yeah. All cleaned up on all sides. It's almost kind of like in a workable knife shape right now. That's right. And then of this, you could further.

And what's the advantage of that biface that you're holding is that it's not sort of the knife itself or the biface itself. It's the fact that all the flakes that come off are really useful and razor sharp. So this biface is like a little container of stone flakes from every time I take one off, I'm like removing a flake from this container to make all sorts of other tools or arrowheads or scrapers or whatever. What's the furthest you've ever seen like origin tool stone travel from like where you expected to find it to where like you recovered like an artifact? Yeah. So there's a site in northeastern Ohio called Paleo Crossing that I've been working on since I was a teenager. And the rock was transported by Clovis people over 600 kilometers. And so they picked up what's called Wyandotte Chirp from southern Indiana and Western Kentucky. And probably because they didn't know if there was going to be resupply rock in Northern Ohio where they were going to because they were sort of moving into that region for the first time.

They geared up and they prepared. And they took a ton of this wine dot chert and transported it northward to Northeastern Ohio. Like how much is a ton? I mean, like I know how much a ton is. So we're talking about 40 Clovis points, something like 800 scrapers. You got a site that put off 40 Clovis points? Oh, yeah.

Oh, man. Oh, yeah. If you want to see them too, you guys are all welcome to come to the lab. Over how big of an area? Probably, I'm just trying to think in terms of 50 square meters. No shit, really. Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

Was it a good decision for them to move all that chert, or did they have some good source material to where they took it? So Wyandotte chert is awesome. So they knew what they were doing when they picked up a bunch of it and sort of geared up. Like, is that good rock? Oh, it's good rock. Yeah. It's like good rock. Oh, it's good rock. Yeah. It's really good. I'm real dumb.

But again, there is rock in Ohio, but since they had never been there before, they didn't know. So they prepared and they took a bunch up with them. Yeah. It's like you go somewhere for vacation, you bring a bunch of sunscreen, then you realize there's a bunch of sunscreen in the Airbnb. That's right. That's right. We were in Nebraska on a deer hunt and on this, this place where we went, there was barely any

rock and most, it was just all sand. In the sand hills. And if you found a rock, it was most likely brought there. Yeah. Yeah, the rancher we were talking to was saying that. He goes, well, in this area, just the fact that it is rock is probably worth looking at because there's nothing, there's no rock here, man. No.

If it's rock here, someone came in, someone carried it. No, definitely. And I think, God, we used flint and basalt and conchoidally fractured rocks for 3 million years. I mean, this stuff is the most valuable stuff I think our species ever used. I mean, it got us to where we are today. I mean, and then it's the origin of the firearms industry in a lot of ways, gun flints, right? So, and then there are hunter-gatherer groups today that still use conchoidally fractured rock for various tools and stuff.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Okay, bust one out. Yeah, yeah all right or bust one up putting his safety glasses on i have to and hopefully i won't lose a finger which i almost did once i see you tap and what do you tap and just listen to the harmonics yeah so um for a couple reasons one if there's a dull thud that'd mean there'd be some sort of crack in it so if i mess up here then it's my fault. It's not the rock's fault. So you're testing the sound.

Testing the sound. You want that nice sort of like. How do you choose your pounding stone there? So this is a sandstone. And depending, there's a lot that goes into it in terms of the type of rock that you're flintknapping. Also the size of your rock you want to adjust your hammer stone to match it such that you can initiate a fracture but not actually push the rock out of your hand or out of your lap yeah viewed that way your hammer stone probably weighs a third or a quarter what your piece of yeah probably something like that that's a so i am just one little hit one little

hit oh dude that's beautiful This nice flake And you can see So he did one hit And knocked off Like a Chocolate chip cookie Off there

So Now the first flakes That come off Any nodule Damn Generally aren't that great Because they've got that cortex So they're not that sharp

Yeah what's the other word For that stuff It's called like Like in general How they describe it A patina A patina Yeah Like a in general how they describe it, patina. A patina? Yeah. Is that not the right word? Well, patina is when it changes

color. Well, we'll get even sharper. Patination. So that just means a coloration. Yeah, that's the coloration. I see. So, no, we'll get some sharper ones. I mean, that comes off sharp though. Alright. Now, these first ones, like I said, aren't so sharp because of that cortex, but we're going to get some real sharp ones here in a second.

And what do you call in these pieces? If you're just going to say. Primary flakes. Yeah. And let me ask another question. You boys can look at this and you can look at this and say that was broke off. That was broke off by a blow. Yes.

That wasn't broke off by erosion. Correct. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So conchoidal fracture in stone tools, especially when you start making more complex things, there's no mistaking them with, with nature.

Yeah. It's not like a frost, like, like water got in there and expanded. No, nothing like that. It's a way different kind of crack. Yes. That is correct. Yeah.

All right. So we're getting a, that's a nice sharp edge. An interesting thing about this, if you're trying to visualize this at home, is when he lays the rock down and hits it, the piece he's blowing off isn't on top. He's blowing off a piece that is then left. He's doing this on his knee with a bunch of leather on his knee for padding. And he hits the top of the rock and it doesn't knock off the top. He hits the top of the rock and it blows a hunk off the bottom.

And that's what. Which is then left like laying on his lap, right? And that's why flint knapping can be so difficult is because you don't actually see the product that you're making. And it just takes years of experience to know that this product that you're not seeing is only created with certain variables that you do see. So, all right. All right, now we've got- Oh, that's pretty cool, man. Now, this is a really sharp flick.

We've got a couple of sharp ones. Let's use this one, though, actually. Let's cut some leather. I brought some extra pieces. So- Fresh off the rock. Fresh off the rock. So this edge right here, go ahead and grab that.

And, you know, this is some decent leather here. Holy shit, man. So just go ahead and slice that. Oh, yeah. There it goes. Slices leather. Look at that, man. So you can easily disarticulate an entire deal with just one.

I mean, it's like when you run your thumb across it, it's, I mean, it's like, when you run your thumb across it, it's, I mean, if you just did it blind to someone, you said, what's that? They'd be like, oh, it's like a kitchen knife. Yeah. Well, let's,

should we knock one off the obsidian? Yeah. Let's see. Man, I don't think you should mess that thing up, man. Do you got more of those? I've got more. Yeah, I can knock off a couple here. That one's too kind of nice.

It's always funny when I travel with a bunch of rock, because they always go through my suitcase and they're just like what the hell is this yeah um weapons yeah antiquities stone weapons like um so what i'll do is i'm just going to prepare a small striking platform on this what's that mean so the striking platform in flint knapping is the spot that you're going to hit. So you're knocking the sharp. He's like dulling it.

I'm dulling it. So basically I get a bigger bite when I strike the flake and I'm grinding it as well, which adjusts the angle slightly. There's all sorts of variables that go into flint knapping. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to. Dude, I got to tell you real quick that there's

two things I've avoided in life is chess and flint knapping now what i'm going to do is i'm going to do i got to tell you real quick that there's two things i've avoided in life is uh chess and flint knapping because i got a glimpse into each of them and realized that i was never going to really figure it out and so why mess around you know what if you were able to and this goes for all you guys if you want to come to the lab i'll get you guys flint knapping in a day a day yeah it just seemed like a deep dark hole you could go into, man. Yeah. I mean, it, it becomes like, so just from my experience, right. So I've been flint knapping for over 20 years.

Um, two of those years I apprenticed, uh, one of the best flint knappers in the world. Um, a guy named Bruce Bradley. And during that two years I flintint-napped 10 hours a day. Seriously? Every day, yeah. And then I apprenticed another flint-napper named Bob Patton, who's also one of the best in the world. And for, again, just, it's an apprenticeship.

It's like anything. It just takes a long time. Will you explain your tool change here? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So this is just antler. And antler allows you to strike different angles. Can I get a feel on that? Yeah, definitely. I got some bigger ones too.

Here's a moose. For larger flakes. Oh yeah, look at that, man. Yeah, so like imagine a... How the hell do you describe that, Callahan? An ice cream cone. Yeah, an ice cream cone. It almost looks like the pedicle end of a moose antler. Yep.

That's cool, Just like that. Okay. So, well, let me get a slightly bigger one here just because if you're going to be holding it, I don't want you to lose a finger like I almost did. Now there's great quote here already where he's like, be careful with that.

It gets sharp to the microbial level. Well, you know, it's funny. There's, uh, it does, it gets sharp to the molecule level. Molecule level. And I'm going to explain my knives to like, to people like that from now on. know it's funny there's uh it does it gets uh sharp to the molecule molecule molecule i'm gonna explain my knives to like to people have like that from now on well if we zoomed in yeah we would see a molecule on the end now um they're so sharp you might be like well why how come surgeons don't use them surgeons don't like obsidian because it's so sharp that they can't feel the different layers

of skin it's because it just goes right through oh you're shitting me there's no resistance whereas with steel they have just that slight little bit of resistance um that allows them to sort of feel where they are now here now is that a true story didn't someone in the flint knapping community actually i could see brody through it have a surgeon perform a surgery with obsidian tools on themselves. So Don Crabtree was a flint knapper in the 1950s and 60s.

That seems like the name of a guy who'd be a flint driver. Yeah. And he made his own knives. Whiskey, and he made his own knives. Okay, we're taking the piece of obsidian, which like I said, you can look through it. Cut at your buddy, not your body.

Yep. Oh, yeah. Look at that, man. Like a razor. So just right through. Wow. So this stuff works. Holy shit, that's sharp.

Check that out. But like I said. That won't go through a mammoth. I don't know what will. Well, it went through my pinky finger. I don't know what will. Well, it went through my pinky finger and they had to restitch everything back together. I saw my own bone. You never,

if you can get through life and not see your own bone, that's a win. Yeah. So I've lost that one. Oh yeah. Certain things just don't want to sign yourself. No, I got obsidian.

You trusted it there. Yeah. He jumped back to Don Crabtree. Oh yeah. So he, he made obsidian blades for his own surgery that the doctor used um so that's that's pretty cool just as an experiment well no well he had to have the surgery he didn't it wasn't like an optional surgery but i mean like he wanted to

do that to see how it would work yes yeah and it worked huh Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So when you can get edges this sharp, just from nature, like you can see why this is such a useful thing for, for ancient people to. But how, like you take that, like that rock is, looks like black glass. Yes. Okay. It's beautiful. And obviously real sharp. Um, there has to be huge chunks of the continent where you're not gonna

have anything like that i mean you could walk around for months and not see anything laying around like that what's amazing is there's chert and flint outcrops across north america so now you'll only get certain types of rock in certain areas so like you'll get obsidian in the pacific northwest but you know we'll get cherts in oh and Kentucky and New England and the Southeast. And when you can't use chert or obsidian, you can use quartz sites. Um, there's, there's nappable rock all across the continent. Okay. So, so you don't find areas where they had to use something totally different because they just had nothing that would work.

Correct. On this continent. Yeah. They all had some version. Yeah. Yeah. And we get nappable rock around the world. I mean, every Paleolithic culture for the last three million years was able to make stuff. Find some kind of something. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So you got, you knock off, what do you call that piece though? Any of those pieces you got in front of you that you took off of the big one? Just flakes. I mean, I can turn these into little arrowheads. Show me a flake that you'd be like, okay, now I'm going to make me a Clovis point from it. So I'd probably get a slightly larger one.

Let me do that real quick. So I'm going to get a platform here and I'm going to strike off a really large flake. So you're going to dull the face. Yep. Yep. Okay. Then you get your giant Boston rock ready. Actually, I'm probably- Well, you're actually braiding it now to dull it up. Yes, yeah.

So you're smoothing it out. It's also slightly adjusting the angle of the platform I'm about to hit. Oh, really? And then I'm also going to probably strike this with the moose antler. So you feel like right now you kind of know what's going to happen. I know exactly what's going to happen. Tell me what's going to happen. Let's prove it.

Yeah. So I'm going to turn this rock over. I'm going to support it. So you took the edge off, kind of sanded it down at the angle you want, and now you're going to hit it with a giant hunk of moose antler. Yep.

And what is going to happen? There should be a flake that comes off that will be a nice, decent-sized flake. You going to put money on it, Chester? Five bucks. Okay, Chester says five bucks, you can't do it. So, not as big.

Hold on one second. Let me just... How many chances is it going to be? That's right, that's right. No, no, that one was my fault. There's nothing wrong with this rock. It's okay, I don't have five bucks. No, no, sometimes the platform crumbles.

That happens. That was the platform crumbles that happens that's all right that was the platform crumbling that was the platform crumbling because i did not strengthen it enough so here we go so how much of this is like prescriptive versus like interpretive like does somebody take a piece of rock and go i'm going to make this now or do they go oh this happened i could make this or i could make this or i might make this no like i i could sit here and make a Clovis point from this rock. Like, so I, that's what I would. Yeah, but I'm saying, like, when somebody knocks off little, like, shards, they go, oh, I'll make some arrowheads too.

Oh, no, no. Everything is intentional. Okay, gotcha. So it's not just you bust it all to pieces and see what you got. No, no, no, not at all. You have to do something specific to get something specific. Exactly, exactly. Hold on, sorry.

There we go. Oh. So. Now that was what he said was going to happen. Yeah, that's what should have happened the first time. Now this flake broke,

but that's okay. You still got enough, right? Yeah, we still got enough. If you don't like it, hit another one. I believe you now. Oh yeah, no, no, that's all. If you don't like it, hit another one. I believe you now. Oh, yeah. No, no.

That's all right. I can keep going. You like this one? I brought ones that I could sort of finish. But you like this one? That one's pretty good, but hold on. Like a fella could make a Clovis point. Yes.

Yeah, definitely. Because Clovis points can get small, too. That's for baby mammoths. That's for baby mammoths. Do you think they did any kind of- We're just going to stab a little one through the heart. That's what we mean. Do you think they did any kind of... You're just going to stab a little one through the heart. That must be mean. Do you think they did any kind of maintenance on a point?

Like, would they apply some mineral oil to it or wash them or put some dust on them? Why? Just to keep their edge. Because they were big into ochre. So, ochre, when we get ochre found on Clovis artifacts, what I suspect is happening is that they're not, like, doing a ritual where they sprinkle the ochre, when we get ochre found on Clovis artifacts, what I suspect is happening is that they're not like doing a ritual where they sprinkle the ochre on the artifact. I actually think what they've done is they've waterproofed the leather bag that the Clovis Point was in, in ochre. Oh.

10,000. Because wasn't there like some ochre involved with that Anzac One site? Yeah. And we have what looks like to be a Clovis cache in Ohio that we just published. And there was ochre on those pieces too. You think it was their sack? I think there was a sack that they were all put in when they were buried. Now that disintegrated over the last 13,000 years and the ochres left on the stone tools that were in the bag. Huh? So that's what I think was happening, but I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.

Now what are you doing? So right now I'm isolating this platform to get a much bigger bite on this flake that I'm about to take off. And what I'm going to do too is just adjust the angle slightly. Dude, what would you have given to sit around and nap some flint with the Clovis dudes, man? Do you think you'd be better than they were? Or do you think they'd smoke you? There is no modern flint napper that would ever approach what a prehistoric napper could have done with their skill. Because they weren't brought up with it.

Not brought up with it. And also, too, when your life depends on a tool or a weapon, you just understand it at an inherent, intimate level that someone who isn't dependent on it just can't. So there's lots of flintknappers today. Like the compound interest of it. Every, like literally every ancestor you've ever had, had always done it. Yeah. And from the time you were a day old, it was happening around you. And so there's modern flintknappers today because there's quite a few hobby flintknappers.

I think there's probably, I don't know, anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 in North America. They think sometimes that they're better than ancient folks. Better than Clovis. Yeah. They're not, right? They're not. Because? Because they'll make a really pretty point and they'll compare it to Clovis ones.

And they'll be like, oh, look, my flaking is better than this Clovis point. Well, look, the Clovis person did not give a crap about how their point looked. They wanted it to function. Yeah. If they had wanted to make a pretty point, they would smoke any modern napper. So, anyway. All right, so let's take another really large flake off here.

Got his moose antler. Got my moose. Sorry, the table's in the way. He's cocking back. Are there speed napping? He's tangled up in his microphone wire. Go ahead. Are there speed napping competitions?

Like, sit down, make a close point as fast as you can. Yeah, there are speed competitions. There are these things called nap-ins, where foot nappers... Yeah. No, no, No, no. Yeah. Nappers get together across the continent and they sell and make stuff. They're like little craft

sort of things. Nap-ins are fun. Take away the K and I'd be down for that one. Are there examples of ornamental points being found? Ornamental? Yeah. How do you know so there are well because they'd be of like a quality that wouldn't be utilitarian oh i got you um so we get clovis

points may have quartz crystal god this one all these ones are flake they're big but they're snapping um we get quartz crystal clovis points um which as far as i know know don't seem to have been used so that could be some sort of ornamental or symbolic thing hmm some people think that the the flute themselves were symbolic because it's so hard to do without breaking the point that it was some good omen for the hunt to come that if you successfully flew your point yeah I you know I'm just saying this is the the ideas out there gets a little rich after yeah while. Yeah, yeah. That's what happens.

You know what? So. Who knows, but we'll never know. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's fun to have ideas. So you could take these flakes, right?

So we've got a nice size one. Oh, let me compare this. Compare it to, you know, something that's midway. So you think this could potentially be living in here? Yes. Yeah. I got a question for you. So you're using a rock to knock off a piece of that rock.

You're using an antler to knock it off. Why wouldn't you use, like, a modern metal hammer or some tool like that? Well, because he's trying to figure out how dudes used to do it. No, I'm saying, like, I'm asking what would happen basically. Like what are the reasons for not doing that? You could use like a copper bopper, which is what they're called. Copper boppers.

That's what you guys call them. That's what we call them. Nap ins boppers. Yeah. Nap ins boppers. That's a good title for the show. Nap ins boppers. Remember that.

It's going to be, yeah, that's going to be my podcast. Yeah. I'll have my lawyer send over later. That's cool. But sometimes you do want to use modern tools if the question that you're testing isn't involved in the production of those tools. But if we're interested in sort of how quickly or how economic you can make a close point, you wouldn't want to use modern tools to answer that question.

So you could use modern tools to flake and people do. Let me hit you with this one. The data to Brody's question. If I said to you, make me a, the Clovis point as fast as you could possibly do it and you can use whatever you want. Would you be like, Oh sweet. I'm going to use my,

uh, baseball bat. No, I would still use antler because I rarely ever use modern tools. So I would probably suck with modern tools. I got you. I got you. But you're never sitting around being like,

you know what would be great for this is aluminum or. We got some aluminum points right there. Oh, okay. So, oh, cause aluminum weirdly has the same density as chert. That's just some. I wouldn't even know that that is aluminum. Yeah. So, oh. Yeah. Because aluminum, weirdly, has the same density as chert. That's just some.

I wouldn't even know that that is aluminum. Yeah. That's aluminum? Yeah, it's aluminum. I mean, I would, I thought you had painted, I thought you had painted some chert. No. So this is a Clovis point I did out of chert. This is that same Clovis point made out of aluminum or cast in aluminum.

Oh. And it breaks the same way? No. I mean, it'll bust like on an impact. Or is it better on impact? Oh, much better on impact. Aluminum is much better. Yeah, much better.

But the advantage of aluminum for certain experimental tests is it doesn't break. So because it has the same density, like it has the same ballistics once it's in the air. I'm with you. And so. So you can test other stuff and eliminate the same ballistics once it's in the air. I'm with you. And so. So you can test other stuff and eliminate the breakage. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. It's a pain in the butt to keep making stuff.

So is that cast off that? You took the stone and made a cast and cast the aluminum? Yeah. All right. My wife does a lot of thrifting. Yeah. What's that mean? She'll go to like an estate sale and then come home with stuff that I don't want.

And it feels like every single estate sale has arrowheads for sale. Is there any way for the layman to look at something like that and identify if it was created by someone like you or someone 5,000 years ago? Yes. Really?

Yeah, definitely. So if there are little chips, you can see that this chip is still on there. It's just a flake that didn't come off all the way. That's from modern napping. Those little chips, while they occurred in the past, come off after 10,000 years or so. So if you see those little chips, you know that's modern. Around the edge.

Around the edge. Okay. Now, there are ways to get rid of those chips. And cause there's been some cases of people, you know, being less than honest with what they make. There's a famous, there's a guy that duped everybody on a bunch of Clovis points. Yeah. His name was Woody something. Woody Blackwell. Yeah.

Duped a bunch of, duped some museums and shit on Clovis points. Right. Yeah. And duped a bunch of, duped some museums and shit on Clovis Points, right? Well, he sold a group of Clovis tools that he said was a Clovis cache. And this is all published in the New Yorker magazine. To a collector named Forrest Fenn. Oh, I didn't know that Fenn was involved in it. Yeah. We've covered him to an extent. That's like Spencer's best friend. Fenn treasure. Did you find the treasure? No. Oh, I didn't know that Fenn was involved in it. Yeah. We've covered him to an extent. That's like Spencer's best friend.

Fenn treasure. Did you find the treasure? No. Oh, okay. But it was like 60 miles from here. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So Woody tried to sell artifacts that he made as genuine Clovis artifacts to Forrest Fenn.

I think it was like $95,000. And the transaction went through and it was then discovered that these were modern replicas. How'd they figure it out? Well, you know how he got around the loose flake thing? A rock tumbler. Really? And you know how he got duped? Do you know the story better than me well he used brazilian stone um as sorry not how he got duped how he got

uncovered yeah so one of the clovis points or maybe two of them were made from stone from brazil and uh that stone i guess only shines a certain way when you have a uv light over it and so that like clovis folks in north North America weren't using stone from Brazil. Oh, but I heard another part of the story. Yeah, there could be other. One of the parts of the story is someone had a chemical analysis done on the point and they found some crazy coating material on it. Yeah. And they were able to find out what the coating material was, went to the manufacturer.

Who does he sell the coating material to? One of his clients are the people that make rock tumblers. Yeah. And then it led to the saying that he was, because he's trying to create this like 10,000 years of laying around look. Huh. And do you know the collector, Tony Baker? You ever hear of him? Tony, I stayed at his house.

He's one of my really good friends. I stayed at his house. Yeah. We probably stayed in the same room. We probably did. In Simone. Yeah. No shit. I slept over at his house. Yeah, Tony, it was a huge loss when he passed. You were in the house. I guarantee we slept in the same guest room. Many times. Yeah.

He told me a story where he was at an estate sale and saw a Folsom Point bolo tie. Did you hear this story? No, I have not heard this story. And he said, that's real. Bought the bolo tie for a couple bucks, took the stone off, and on the back of the stone was, you know how they put like white out and then a label?

Yeah. It was a museum like. It was missing from your museum. And he found the museum. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

It was a museum collection piece that had gone missing and someone put it on a bolo tie. Well, you know, someone probably saw that number and. Hiding in plain sight. He's like, he said. Seth likes bolo ties. Yeah. He said one look and he just knew he's like,

there's something about it. He's like, because that's a real point. Yeah. No, that's it. And one other way to get those little chips off, not that I'm condoning fraud in any way, is you can put the, uh, the nap point in, in water and then put it in the freezer.

And then when the ice gets under that little chip, it pops it off. Oh, really? And then, you know, so. And those chips are going to be around the outer edge, you're saying? Um, well, if the flake gets driven across the face of your tool, you might get them in the middle too, but either way you can get them off if you know what you're doing. Got it. But it has, it'll look fresh. It'll look fresh. And I have never found anything of significance in the field. I would just like to say that. So, cause that's a danger for me because I, well, cause I can make this stuff,

right? And so I always have to be careful that, you know, anything I make doesn't end up in the archaeological record. Oh, I gotcha. And so when I make pieces, I always sign them with a diamond scribe. So if anyone ever does microscopic analysis on it, you'll see my initials in the year on the piece. Got it. So they never get mixed up. Yeah.

So. Okay. Speaking of which, you know, before I came, I did a little research. I saw you have a birthday coming up. Oh, yeah. So I thought I would make you a little birthday gift. Really? So you can just unroll it a little careful.

Oh, man. Wow. Explain what we're looking at here. So this is a type of knife called a salutary and laurel leaf. Really? And this is probably one of the most difficult things to do in three million years of flintknapping. They're super thin. The flaking is really described as very bold.

You see all the flakes are really large. Oh, yeah. And, uh, this was a style of, of knife or point that was made about 18 to 21,000 years ago. In Europe, right? In Europe. Yep. And, uh, it's thought to be the pinnacle of, of stone tool working.

And so. Even cooler than Clovis. Even cooler than Clovis. Well, it depends. It's, you know, just who you ask, but they're pretty cool. So I thought, uh, happy birthday. Oh, that's beautiful, man.

Thank you. Yeah. Not at all. Dude, that is gorgeous. So are you going to like call gonna like call the what point uh salutary and laurel leaf and it's signed so if i see on sotheby's yeah i'll be like genuine that's right where's it where's it signed so it's signed you have to look at it just right. But, um, on this flake scar, there's MIE in 2022 around this one. Could Steve like cut a Christmas ham with that thing?

Oh yeah. Skin a beaver? Yeah. Or a mammoth. I might skin a beaver with it. Yeah. No, I don't want to mess it up. I'm going to drop it.

I still don't see it. We may need a direct light, but. Oh, so you do it really fine. Yes, I do it fine. So it doesn't sort of detract from. But it's in there. It's in there. Okay.

Thank you, man. It's gorgeous. Tell me again, slew tree and what leaf? Laurel leaf. Laurel leaf. Because it's the shape of a laurel leaf. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, I just stabbed that into Brody. It would work. It looks like it would work. Well, so that In the brody It'd work It looks like It'd work Well so that's the thing I was so nervous Bringing Cause I made one

For Corinne too Cause she's done So much work Like getting Everything set And she has A Clovis one And so

I'm gonna ask this For Steve Yeah Is Corinne's nicer Well they're Different cultures They're just They're just

Do you know Plus this is this is hafted onto a antler yeah with like a split fork um you can imagine like you stab brody between the ribs turn around give him a larry cohen murley larry moe and curly with those fork you get the guy behind you with the antler guy in front of you with the blade. He'd be like, he bleed to death blind. Yeah. Just him? He's close. Yeah, that's good.

I mean, I already pinned Phil to his chair with my Adelaide. All right, let's progress along. Let's get to the magic part. Yeah, all right. I want to see you do the thing that has baffled anthropologists about why did they knock the thing when there's a 25% chance it's just going to ruin the whole damn thing. And you've already done all the work. Yes, I brought several. Because the other thing, too, about flintknapping is you want to bring backups because if you break it, you can quick just, like, pull out another one. Sure.

You'll be good to go. So we've got, you know, different stages, and I've got one that's basically ready to flute. So I do need to do a little bit of preparation on this thing to get what's called the fluting nipple. That's a good title for the show, the fluting nipple. That's going to be my second podcast. But so it'll just take a second to get this going. But what's this thing they talk about? Clay had some guy talking about that they maybe used a lever.

They don't buy that? There's no evidence for that. But it's just reverse engineered or whatever you call it. They're like, it would work. So there is a flint knapper, Bob Patton, who I mentioned earlier, who you can, he could make Clovis points and Folsom points and sort of do them the way I do and just hit them directly. You don't need a lever.

So you're not buying it? No, I'm not buying it. Okay. So you got your Clovis point and it's pretty well like a Clovis point, except for it's missing the diagnostic channel flukes. That's correct. That run the length, the con, the concave channels that will run the length of the point and give it its signature look, its significance. That is correct.

Now. And then not only that, but diagnostic, right? Like no one else made them like that. That's also untrue. So. Who else is making them? So amazingly in the Saudi Arabian Neolithic. Okay.

Local folks. Oh no. But go on. But no. In the Saudi Arabian Neolithic. They are making and fluting points. Really? So just in the same way that like birds and bats and insects all can fly.

Yeah. But that doesn't mean they're all cousins. They're not. There's convergent evolution. Same thing in stone tool technology. You can get convergent evolution. Really? Like they arrive at the same ideas?

The same solution. All right, so what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to start to pressure flake this a little bit. Now, before you do this, I want to ask you a couple things. Yeah. How long were you at this

before you tried this? Probably seven or eight years. Before you tried knocking out a, before you tried this? Uh, probably seven or eight years. Before you tried knocking out a, a, a, before you tried fluting a point. Yes. Yeah. And is it easier to flute a Clovis point than a Folsom point or is it the same hard?

There, it's different. Cause the Folsom point runs all the way to the end. It does run all the way to the end. So you presumably got to do some more work on it afterward, right? Well, so there's a so there's two issues there. With Folsom, you in some ways have a better chance of success because you're doing a lot more preparation ahead of time to get that long flute.

The other issue is because Folsom points are shorter, you don't have as much bending in the point, which could break it. Now, Folsom points are really hard to flute. So just like Clovis points. Can you make one of those? I've got one here where you can see the flutes. Oh, and you knock those out. I knock those out. Man, that's beautiful, man.

The problem with Folsom though is it takes more time, like a lot more time. That's a beautiful point. The Folsom are like. Folsom take more time. Way more time. Yeah, because it's, you're doing so much preparation to basically create a morphology on the point.

So you can get those long channels. It just takes a much longer time. And you know how you shit talk Clovis about how they weren't mammoth hunters? Yeah. These guys are bison hunters. They are definitely bison hunters. And Clovis were bison hunters too. Oh.

Yeah. So, and that's the thing we just going back to the clovis hunting we get statistically more impact scars with clovis points associated with bison than we do with mammoth and the reason for that is because they are hunting bison and not hunting mammoth yeah so got it all right so let me just uh that's a beautiful point, man. Oh, okay. You're back at the. Now there you got it.

You got like not an early man tool. So, well, it depends. Okay. So not Clovis. It's made out of copper. Yep. We actually get the earliest metal tools anywhere in the world in North America. From the Great Lakes tribe? From the Great Lakes.

Yeah, exactly. It's called the old copper culture and earlier. Now, I could use an antler tine to do this, but you have to constantly resharpen antler tines when you're pressure flaking. I see. It's just easier. So it wears the tine down.

It'll wear the antler tine down. Yes, yeah. And so you just got to keep getting it the right shape. So you're shaping the stone and the tool. Yeah. And it's just a pain in the butt. Yeah, I'm with you. You have to get this fluting nipple just the right shape fluting nipple because when it's

all prepared you'll look at it i don't know if it looks like a nipple but that's what they call it just that motion alone is just really interesting i mean you're just kind of like pressing down on the edges well pressure flaking unlike percussion which is what I was doing earlier, does take a little bit of strength, especially if you're driving flakes across the face of whatever piece you're flintknapping. So I'm going to drive a few pieces off right now. You're going to not do pressure, but you're going to do some striking. No, no, I am going to do pressure. Pressure.

Where I'm going to really just push these things far across the face. So really, it's all in the legs now. Oh! Like, you're getting your hand power by, like, basically, you're like Suzanne Somers in that Thighmaster right now. I don't know if I should be... That's an old-ass reference. All of these references come from the 80s or earlier.

So you're, like, pressing on the top side of that. Some of us were born with great legs. It's breaking off the bottom side. Say that one more time. Sorry, I was too busy thinking about Suzanne Summer's thighs. I don't know. So you're just basically pressing on, like, the top top side and it's busting off the bottom side.

Yeah. So what I'm doing, yeah, I'm pushing on the edge and basically I'm pulling the flake and then. But your strength's coming. You're like pinching it between your legs just to drive your hands together. That's exactly right. Huh. So. So a lot of pressure.

A lot of pressure. so let's see here we've do any of those nap bins end in bloodshed always always they get the drinking at those oh yeah i mean like there are some terrible we actually just uh finished a survey where we surveyed uh flintnapper injuries from around the world. And they're real bad. I mean, people are getting cuts on every part of their body. People are using, hitting moose billets in their nuts. Like, it's, yeah. Did you get any femoral artery?

I can see you messing around. Some, yeah. Between your legs with sharp things. Oh, people getting flakes in their eyes. That's a great survey. Yeah. So we're doing the statistical analysis now to look at patterns and where people are hurting themselves the most. So, all right, hold on.

Yeah, you might be able to come up with something that relates back to early man. Yeah. Be like, you know, the reason that they were like this was. I read this thing. I can't remember what book it was. The guy was talking about the injury suites that they would see on Neanderthal bones.

This guy became curious about the suites of injuries they would see on them. All the fractures. That was Eric Trinkhaus. He got to talk to a physician who works on bull riders and they found this like uh like a direct correlation between the the types of bone

fractures on neanderthals and the types of bone fractures on bull riders and he came up with this idea that they had what he had described as a confrontational style of hunting like that they're in there mixing it up you know like maybe they took one shot with something and then jumped and then jumped right in okay i'm gonna jab a little bit with this stone point and everybody's gonna pile on yeah i'm gonna get them pissed with this stone point. It's game on. Remember, we don't want them to move too much. Lots of hemorrhoids too, because bull riders got those. Do they?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all that hemorrhoidal tissue decays over the years, man. All right. So we're almost there to flute this thing. And what's that nipple called again? The fluting nipple. Oh, that's right. I should be able to remember that.

All right. So now this flute to remember that. All right. So now this flute probably will go to about there. But hold on, because you got to knock out two flutes. Yes. So that you just prepared the first flute or you've prepared both flutes? No, no. This is the first one. Okay.

So then you're going to go back to the drawing board and prepare and do another nipple. Exactly. And is your nipple specific to the face you're working on? Yes. Okay. So you've nippled it for the, I don't know, what right now is the top or bottom when it's laying on your leg? It will be for... Like the flute's going to be left laying on your leg or it's going to blast off into the air? The flute will come off my leg or be against my leg. Left on your leg. Okay. I got you.

All right. So tell me before you do it. Yes, I will. And just because it's a bit always risky, I just want to make sure it's right now. What, um, there's a high likelihood this will fail. Um, it could be, it's like 25%, but I mean, my, I haven't messed up in a while, so I probably just screwed myself by saying that. Um, but, which is why I always bring extras. 25% failure or 25% success? 25% failure. And by failure, you mean that whole thing just breaks?

Yes, the whole thing will just shatter. If it breaks, I have it. If it doesn't break, you can have it. Oh, sweet. Either way. Are you doing it right now? No, no, no. You always strike off the uh the flute here i'm just trying to get the angle a little bit there we go that's much better i could

definitely see how you'd cut yourself pretty good messing around with this stuff oh yeah no it can be real bad so could you i'm sure you've thought about this many many times could you describe like what do you think the situation this is happening in and back in like clovis times when you got a man stuck in the mud right and i found a chunk of shirt he's getting out are you in a relaxed situation like sitting on a knob looking over her bison we well you wouldn't i don't think you'd be making these nearby. In the moment.

Well, the Mesa site, we had some people on top of the Mesa site, and the Mesa site they think is a flint knap and hangout. Hundreds. Like a little Mesa top, no sign of campgrounds, like no signs of tent rings. It was a little lookout perch. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of points, thousands of flakes. Were you there with

I was at that site with Kahn. Oh, okay. Now with Mike Kahn. Because Boss Melcher I think was up there too. But their theory there is it was you could sit up there and double dip because it's a lookout, but they're like, it just seems like people sat up there and napped Flint. It was like but they're like it just seems like people sat up

there and nap flint it was like too far from water or something for a good yeah you had to walk up on this high little lookout and they think it was like the boys up there shooting the shit and napping waiting to see if something comes through it was a nap in yeah that's right the first one well no early nap early napping yeah Early napping, yeah. All right. Now, here I am. You're getting ready to go for it. I'm going to get ready to go for it. I've never done it with wires and stuff. Phil, can you do a drum roll?

Yeah, there you go. You can take that off. Oh, yeah. Yeah, take that thing off, yeah. You're really getting hung up in there, man. It looks so un-Clovis-like to have that headphone on, that headset on. All right, so let's see. Hold on, hold on.

Tell me what you're going to do before you do it. So what I'm going to do is you have to, when you flute it, you have to hold it a different way because you want to basically drive

the flute off but cause as little bending as possible. So if I was to hit the flute off just straight down with the point flat, that would basically

cause this thing to snap. Now, by holding the point vertically, I'm hitting straight down along the length of the point, which doesn't cause as much sort of bending microscopically. And you got it wrapped in there, obviously, so you don't just gas your hand to bits. Yeah. Because that, yeah. It's just a, it's like grip and protection.

If that happens though, it's a shame that this is a podcast. Like, because when I do demos for my classes and stuff, that's they're waiting for me to hurt myself um and so see i'm just i'm cheering for you right now man i want this will be the first time i've ever seen a a flute as much as i've talked about oh god now i feel like there's pressure there's a lot of pressure i don't want to let you down all positive vibes you want one okay he's getting ready to hit his fluting nipple with a moose ant elk antlerk antler or moose? You know what? I don't know what the hell this is.

It's some sort of... Big old hunk antler. Oh, that's how you're going to do it. Yeah, and I do a few practice runs. He's swinging that like he's got a blackjack. And... And... Got it.

Oh, shit. Really? Yep. Perfect. Look, shit. Really? Yep. Perfect. Look at that. That was badass, man. So you do all those practice runs, basically align everything up. And then you just tap it.

So I can do the other one now, the other side, and risk breaking it again. You can just picture up on the Mesa site dudes being like son of a bitch well you know it's funny Dave Meltzer right who's been on this August show he worked at a site as a teenager called Thunderbird in Virginia and at Thunderbird it was next to a river and they were making Clovis points. Now, the river gently flooded and basically covered and buried everything perfectly at this Thunderbird site. So much so that you can like kind of see where people were sitting with the rocks around them. Yeah.

Now, at one of the spots where someone was sitting, you find the base of a Clovis point and the tip is 30 meters away. I read about that. Yeah. And basically someone 11,000 years ago got pissed. They broke their Clovis point and chucked it. Weren't they able to somewhere, like at Lindenmeyer or something, they were able to match

some of the channel flakes? Oh, yeah. It's so wild, man. I guess I'll do the other one now. Another nipple. All right. Okay. The second one's got to be harder because it's thinner now.

It is, yeah. So more pressure. It needs to be a different kind of, like a better drum roll. Did they ever do a double drum roll? Two people doing it? Now, one thing too is... Stop it, too.

I'm going to have to do a little bit more work. It builds, right? Like one guy starts, another drummer comes in. I'll have to do just a little bit more work. It builds, right? Like one guy starts, another drummer comes in. I'll have to do just a little bit more work because this is a little flat. And when it's flat, the flakes don't go as far. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drive flakes off and basically try to create a little convexity. A little hump.

A little hump. Oh, this is a deep, dark well, flint knap, man. Well, I think this is the thing, right, is all this making the technology is really great. But where the big breakthroughs have come since we founded the lab at Kent State is figuring out how this stuff was used. And more and more, we need to start, like, getting this stuff out into situations where hunters are using it. And so we can understand the science behind how this works because it's different in reality versus the laboratory like have people use stuff you've made to kill deer for example no no so everything we've done has been in the lab

so what we really need now is to balance those very controlled lab experiments with the reality of actual hunting. So, and this goes back to the mammoth as well. So what we would love to do, and if you guys are game and we can somehow get access to it, is when an elephant dies, either at a zoo or if there's some cull somewhere, I will make all the Clovis weapons and tools and we could hurl them into that dead elephant to see how well they penetrate. Oh, you'll get someone to volunteer that up. Yeah, I call dibs on being on the crew. And so, but if we could potentially, we would learn scientifically so much

because we don't even really understand the intercostal distance between the ribs of things like elephant. How much space is there on average between ribs and stuff? Like how deep is it to the heart? We could find no evidence or data on the distance from the outside of an elephant to its lungs or its heart or its liver. All that stuff needs to be measured. So if you guys were game at some point, we would love to do that. We would create be measured so if you guys were game at some point we would love to to do that we would create all the tools and you guys could spend all day hurling at an elephant well we just gotta find a zookeeper with a dead elephant yeah it takes a long time

here in north america you know uh you know you gotta listen to we did a podcast episode with a guy named dr ed asby who's not a doctor like he's like a medical doctor yeah but anyways he he um to test a lot of his stuff and he was looking for that same thing like how can you get a bunch of stuff he would go to where they're doing game farm culling yeah yeah and at game farm culling sites he was able to like launch projectiles into stuff that was going to die anyways whether he was there or not kind of thing. Well, there was a situation, George Frizen, who was a Wyoming rancher. Also a scientist. I don't know about, yeah, he published.

But he was an archeologist in the National Academy of Sciences as well. And he, he went over to Africa and through Clovis points at mammoths, but for whatever reason did not record elephant. Yeah. Mammoths are dead. You're right. Yeah. He did not record how deep they penetrated or Mammoths are dead. You're right. Yeah. He did not record

how deep they penetrated or anything like that. Well, did he write? He basically just said like they can puncture the hide a little bit. The paper's kind of strange, but...

Like you're like, but what about... Yeah. But it was 1989. And so maybe just it wasn't as rigorous, but... So anyway,

the point is we need to hurl clovis points at dead elephants to better understand seems like a very solvable problem yeah and it does yeah um all right so i'm just gonna do some pressure flaking here we had a great uh uh professor at the university of montana we were taking uh early peoples of montana or native peoples of montana oh that sounds like a good one. It was a good, good one. But one of the first examples to just kind of get people's heads thinking about the past and how they relate to present day was, um, he had a site up on the,

back in the overhead projector desk, had a site up on the overhead projector and it was a little triangle of um flakes and he's like okay what is this and you're looking at it and there's like a circle of flakes but there's um like a center point with no flakes there's um two points running off from the center point with no flakes on it and he's like what is this what is this what is this and what it is the shadow of a man sitting it's the shadow of a man sitting there napping yeah right it's like his legs you're like brushing a little off your legs you're brushing you know and so there's like this core area with a bunch of flakes and it was no shit really it was such a good thing like you could hear the whole class be like, ah, ha, ha.

No. I got to tell you, this is refreshing to my normal sort of, like, popular napping, because I've napped on History Channel and Discover Channel. They always have me, like, sitting in the middle of the woods by myself, like, on a log. Not in a studio. Yeah, but also, too, it's so weird, because, like, anyone who thinks of me napping, and they just think that that's what I do. I just go by myself into the woods and, make stone tools that hippie that goes to those nap in yeah just by himself and um so this is uh this is refreshing so you're getting your other i'm working the other nipple i'm preparing other floating. I shouldn't say working the other nipple.

That doesn't sound right. No, I like it. That'd be a good name for the show, working the other nipple. We'll probably call it, I don't know. What was the other one we had? Boppers and nappers. Boppers and nappins. Drum roll, Phil.

Oh, man. No way. Don't do the drum roll until he starts doing the practice swings. All right. What are the chances now? he starts doing the practice swings. All right. What are the chances now? 25% failure rate on the first flake. It's got to go up for the second flake. I would think so because it's thinner, but, I mean, to be honest,

I don't think we've ever tried to estimate that. Are you feeling good about it? I never feel good about it just because. A lot of pressure. Well, also, too, like, you want to sort of have your eye on the ball. No time for feeling. Yeah, that's right. When you're doing those practice swings, are you imagining yourself inching ever, like not inching, millimetering ever closer to the strike?

Is that what you're doing? That's what you want to do. You want to basically, the first couple of ones I'm lining up and then I'm getting closer and closer and you just want to catch that platform. So you're like, like, okay, get warmed up closer, closer, closer, closer, closer, closer, closer. And it's going to hit and it's going to barely hit. Yes. Yeah. So, all right. Got the antler. Got it.

It's practice swinging. Oh, a little more dressing. Practice swing, practice swing, practice. I'll stop. I like the challenge so no I don't need to do that I don't think it's adding anything to show Oh, man. Oh! Broke, son of a bitch. Second one broke. Oh, man.

So what do you think went wrong on that swing? Steve went wrong on that one. No, no, no. Dude, it's a 25% chance per face. There's a one and two odds that who's going to bust a thing. That's like when Steve's like, shoot, shoot now. I mean, to be honest. What exactly is the problem? What I've just created here, we find in the archaeological record all the time.

So, you know. One flute knocked off. This was my fault. I think what I did was. What was your fault? Oh, because I basically, I hit sort of two at the wrong angle. I should have

hit directly down rather than more to the side. Now you're Monday morning quarterbacking. Yeah. Now, like, if someone was doing that and you've got that front piece there, is that still usable for anything? Oh, yeah. We could easily turn that into Clovis Point or whatever. And I've done that before. It anything? Oh, yeah. We could easily turn that into Clovis Point or whatever.

And I've done that before. It's not a total loss. Oh, no. No, they'd be like, well, screw it. No, he got out of the mud anyway. The mammoth walked off. You're napping as fast as you can. But yeah, so what you just saw was an actual archaeological fuck-up.

Yeah, actual occurrence. Yeah. fuck up you know actual occurrence yeah so besides you um needing dead elephants they've already died they already died anyways yeah and people want to contribute to research yeah and like not just like a pertinent question about contribute to research of a thing that's like a pertinent question about history, humanity, what our capabilities of. Kind of like one of the great historical mysteries. Yeah. Like what happened to all those big ass animals?

Climate change. But the climate changed all the time, dude. So that is an assumption though. No, it's not an assumption. No, no, no, no, no. It's an assumption that the end of the Pleistocene climate change is similar to climate changes of the past. Sure. And there seems to have been, and again, I'm not an expert on climate change, but the change that occurred at the end of the last 10,000 years may have been much more dramatic than what occurred in other interglacials.

Sure. There were interglacial periods that got so warm that the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty today would have been underwater. It was that warm during some of the interglacial periods. And the shit lived through that. But whether or not that caused some sort of detriment to population sizes or that would have then when they get to the next one.

So it becomes almost like a degradation over a long time. Because we know from, you know, other time periods that extinctions occur all the time. Everything goes extinct eventually. Yeah. So it could just be a whittling away over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Allow me to hit with another zinger. Bring it on. Okay.

I got a zinger. It's going to leave you crawling. All right. For mercy. Begging for mercy. Humans. Okay. Had been in Africa.

Millions of years. Yeah. Their shit didn't go extinct. That's true. Why is that? Because they co-evolved with human hunters. Their elephants didn't go extinct. That's true. Why is that? Because they co-evolved with human hunters. Their elephants didn't go extinct. Their big old rhinos didn't go extinct.

Or they didn't hunt elephants. But you're saying they didn't hunt them here. Yeah. Uh-huh. Clovis is real. I'm so confused. I don't understand my own point either. No, no, that's all right.

But it's a thing that Blitzkrieg people like to bring up. Yes. That's like the whole basis of the Blitzkrieg deal. They're like, look what happens all over the world, right? Humans show up, and then there's a contemporaneous die-off. Yeah. Okay? And you're like, the more...

What's that big-ass bird in New Zealand? The moa? The moa. The moa and the Maori people, yeah right once you shit in australia okay big birds go away islands get hit hard yeah and then you go and be like but in africa they kept their camel their hippo their rhinos their elephants how else do you explain that well they didn't hunt them there's as far as i know there are no hunting sites and yeah there's no hunting sites and why okay why did the global climate change not kill those elephants well because i mean climate change in north america is a different

thing in like a northern hemisphere than it would be in the equator like climate change in North America is a different thing in like a Northern hemisphere than it would be in the equator. Like climate change hits different parts of the globe differently. And so if climate change in Africa was not as dramatic, um, animals can survive there in a way that they wouldn't in North America. Well, maybe another zinger. I love zingers. But the, but the megafauna in the equatorial west western hemisphere went away the equatorial western hemisphere that's yeah that's true so it's not an equator issue i should write a paper about well but the issue but it's also not an africa issue either i mean no south america is different than africa so the point was just that there's different areas

that could be affected differently. But you do admit that it's an interesting wrinkle. Oh, 100%. Oh, and I'm not saying too that we have answers to any of this stuff. Yeah.

And to be honest, I think this Clovis Point issue penetration thing, how deep they penetrate, like at the end of the day, it is an engineering and physics question. Is it possible in some way to get a point this size going at 31 meters per second?

Is there some trick that Clovis people had to maybe have these things penetrate deeper than what we can do today? And to kill thousands and thousands of mammoths. Is that possible? So there aren't any more left to kill. And so like this issue is not closed and no one should think it is closed. It's an interesting question that we need like lots of different scientists. And we need lots of dead elephants. We need lots of dead elephants. But I think the cool thing about experimental archaeology is that, look, there's lots of flintknappers out there.

People can learn to flintknapp. These are experiments you could potentially do in your backyard, right? So if you doubt my results or anyone else's, like there's no reason why you can't buy some Clovis points and halve them and see how deeply they penetrate, you know, various media that you've got in your back, carcasses, whatever. That's a good point. Someone could be like, you boys got it all wrong. That's right. And they halve the thing up and then he can write you a letter and be like, hey, man, here's what I think was going on. Well, and the thing, too, is at the end of the day, I don't give a flying rat's ass if I'm right or wrong. I want to know what happened.

And I think that's the difference between a scientist that is committed to evidence and one that's not. Because even if you're wrong, your hypothesis is incorrect. Being incorrect is a contribution because you've shown that other scientists shouldn't go down that avenue of inquiry. So, um, no, I, I encourage others to, to test what we found and what others have found. And, and this issue definitely is not settled. It could even be your freshman high school science fair project. Yeah. Or a kid named what?

Just say. Declan. There you go. I got one last question before you tell people how to find you and how to apply for your, do you take on students? Yeah, definitely. We've got- Do you got too many applicants already?

We have quite a few. So you're not looking for more applicants? Well, we always welcome applicants. Yeah, why not? Yeah, that's right. Here's my question for you. And this gets into your heart and soul and integrity as a, as a scientist.

Uh, I remember saying to a researcher one time, they're talking about a project. And I said, well, what do you hope happens? And he told me the reasons why that that's not really a thing that you're supposed to do.

You know, I'm like, that makes sense. Yeah. Cause it'll cause a bias. Yeah. Right. But when you were doing it with the, uh, when you're doing the work with the stone points,

there has to be some little part of you. And maybe you can successfully put it aside. Yeah. There has to be some part of you that's like rooting for the points. Oh, look, I went on. You know what I mean? Like you gotta be kind of like. I went on a PBS national documentary on the people in the Americas.

And I said on national television, the Clovis point could take down any ice age beast. Like I thought for a really long time that that's what Clovis points could do. And I said it on national TV. Um, the evidence at the moment does not support that hypothesis. So I changed my mind based on the evidence. Um, but some little party was kind of the kid in you is rooting for the point. Yeah. And there may be, again, like I said, at the end of the day, this is a physics question and an engineering question. Maybe there's some physics or engineering trick that Clovis folks understood about their weaponry that we have not unlocked yet that will make their points more deadly and lethal than they currently are in the lab. Got it. All right. Tell people what, how to kind of find you, remind everybody where you're at

and what sorts of things you're working on that might be of interest to our audience. Yeah. So we're at the Kent State Experimental Archaeology Laboratory, and we're working on understanding ancient technologies made out of any material, ceramics, stone, metals, leather, whatever. And we just want to understand how this stuff was made and how it worked. And once we can understand how this stuff was made and how it worked, we can understand why it appears the way it does in the archaeological record. And we can understand the evolution of technology over the last three million years. Tell me about the Primal Points project you're involved in. So as any scientific field matures, it starts to contribute to society.

So physics is a very old field. And now we have all sorts of societal benefits from physics and same with biology and medicine. Well, experimental archaeology is relatively young, but we feel that it should be starting to contribute to society in different ways. And so we start to think, how could that be? And so what we decided to do was design a new type of broadhead that performs similarly to modern broadheads, but looks like ancient chip stone ones. So this way you can go hunting, bow hunting now and hunt a buck or whatever with a Clovis point or a notched archaic point. And so we've actually got examples of the technology where essentially what we do is we've got aluminum casts of actual stone chipped

artifacts or arrowheads. And then what we do is through a special pouring technique, we can put a steel blade on the inside of it. So it's got the same razor sharp edge and the durability of a modern broadhead. So, you know, you can, and it screws into modern arrow shafts, you know, just the way any other broadhead would. And so, but it would look like a chip stone one. Can you make, are you going to make a fulsome one? We can make any time period. So you can actually tailor your bow hunt to the area you're going to. So if you're going to Europe, you can take a European style of ancient arrowhead.

Or if you're going to Australia or Africa, take an African style or anywhere, right? So you can tailor, you can use it. And it's got the, the weight, it's got the weight aerodynamics. Of stone, but it's got the sharp and durability of steel and modern broadheads. Hmm. So. When are you going to make a Folsom one? We can make those right now.

Well, not here in the studio, but. You could make one? We could make one. Send us a couple over. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'll fling it at someone. That's no problem.

Are you on social media? I hate social media. That's totally fine. Yeah. So I'm just, it's, one of my roommates was involved in. You're not like at napping or? No, no, no. That'd be a good social network.

Listen, man, there's all kinds of bad shit you can say about social media. But if you had a social media site and it was like, hey, check this point out. Here's what we think is going on with this and blah, blah, blah. I'd subscribe to that. And I'm kind of a liar. Like our lab does have a Twitter account. But I don't, I personally, I try to avoid social media when I can. Dude, Wild Turkey Doc, man.

There's a guy, Wild Turkey, like Mike Chamberlain, Wild Turkey Doc. He has a social media channel. He shares his research. It's fascinating. I think that they shouldn't be allowed to have any social media accounts besides his social media account. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

He shares his research. Academic Twitter is pretty cool. And then he's got like, they'll put a tracking device on a turkey and he'll public, and just on social media, he'll have like what all the turkey was up to. That's cool. Yeah. It doesn't need to be like, it's not like, it doesn't need to be you talking about, I don't know, remodeling your kitchen. It could be like, uh, about stone stuff.

Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't know why. Just social media makes me nervous. Yeah. Well, for good reason. Yeah. But there's, there's power in it as well.

That's true. For now, people can email us questions that we forward to men. Yeah. For now though, if you will have a question for you, I have an email address. You want all these emails? I mean,

I can find you anyway. Well, let them go through the hassle of finding you. Yeah, that's fine. If not, send it to us in the esteemed Corey Calkins. We'll,

no, that's cool. Somebody should be like, I once put a Clovis point through a car door. You're telling me a car door is tough? All right, man. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for my beautiful knife. Yeah, no. My salutrean... Laurel leaf. Laurel leaf. And thank you for having me. This has been awesome. Super fun.

Appreciate all the stuff you brought, man. Yeah, it's going to be fun going back. Baggage claim. I was like like what the hell is in here yeah for sure just like just my weapons just my weapons out of stone all right man thank you very much hey thank you Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this.

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