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Oh hey, it's that tattered Halloween wig. You know he's going to come in handy someday. Alli ward back with another episode of Alergies. Okay, this one's big. If you have come to rely on ologies for very detailed, very weird information about stuff that you never knew existed and some historical gossip and strangers unbridled passions making you feel okay about being alive. Hot diggity damn, this is an episode that you may just cherish forever. So hop of the jeep.
Heg tight.
This is about to be a journey. Okay, but first, a few thanks thank you to everyone in the Patreon club for supporting it like a dollar a month or more that gets you in. You can summit questions to the Ologists before we record. Bonus. If your questions didn't get answered here in this episode, our guest this week went back and answered them all personally, which was just magical of him. Thank you to everyone who tells friends about the show, and who subscribes and rates and of
course reviews the show. It matters more than you know. It keeps us up in the charts, and I read them all and then, like a crisp chilli pickle, I select a fresh one to save each week, such as this week. Natty Daddy Light says, I live and work at a state park, what with little to no internet access, So every week I drive thirty minutes to the nearest town and very creepily sit outside a coffee shop in
my car, poaching the Wi Fi. The owner and I have an understanding so I can download the latest episode of Ologies, and says, firstly and foremostly Alli Ward has been my father all along. Yes that's true, and b there's so much I don't know, but the best way to overcome all of the not knowing is to ask stupid questions. So Natty Daddy light my child, and to everyone who left a review, I read it with my heart. Thank you for letting me Internet Dad, you all with
weird facts and advice. Okay, experimental archaeology. Experiment comes from the root, meaning to try or to risk, and archaeology comes from the root for ancient things. So experimental archaeology is to risk ancient things, which sounds dicey, but that's not really what it means. So you'll see. Now, this ologist and I have been Twitter friends for a while.
He tweeted at me a few years back about wanting to be on the show and fun fact, I almost showed up at his house unannounced, like a year ago and just shoved a mic in his face to surprise him. But I figured that's probably technically illegal. And we have had to reschedule this interview probably five times in the last month just because of traveling to be up here with my folks. I had my own weird er trip involving an infected spider bite that turned out probably just
to be an infected scratch from carrying firewood. We don't need to talk about it. Also, my laptop screen shattered this week, so I have rescheduled this person over and over. But he was so understanding and such a joy, and we just chatted about everything from the first tools to bows and arrows to spear throwers aka at lattels. And if you don't know what an at lottle is or how to say it, that's fine. That means this is
going to f you up even better. So in the history of ologies, I have never met anyone so passionate about a thing. And it just goes to show you that though this person is an undergrad his level of knowledge and engagement in the field makes him likely one of the top experts in the world on this one
particular item. It's astounding. So get ready to stand and to learn about early human axes, indigenous populations of North and Central and South America, tales of fieldwork, some new archaeology heroes, tools versus weapons, what to do if you find artifacts on a hike, and the physics of how far you can lob ancient weaponry with member of the board of Directors of the World at Lattle Association, which you'll understand and know how to pronounce by the end
of this episode, experimental archaeologist Angelo Robletto.
I am very honored to even be on your radar, and even more honored to be on this podcast. It has been probably the number one professional goal of mine for two year. Really, I distinctly remember I tweeted, I wish I could just get my PhD tomorrow for the sole purpose of being a guest on Ologies. Oh, I'm shookth that's what I shook.
I'm so excited to have you on because it's as soon as you told me what you were into a I was like a wattle wattle. I had no idea, and then I put you on a list like immediately, and can you tell me a little bit, like where are you studying right now? What is your research about?
Okay, so right now I am an undergraduate student. I'm going into my senior year. I'm a double major in anthropology and philosophy at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Within anthropology, which is especially in American universities, a broad category the study of humanity. Basically, there's four subfields. One of those subfields is archaeology. My specialization or my focus within anthropology is archaeology, and then my focus within philosophy
is political theory, but that's completely different. I bounced around a few labs at U and LV. What's great about that university is that they have a designated building for archaeology laboratories. And most people think, like, well, why does
an archaeologist need a laboratory. They're digging in the field they you know, it's not something that most people associate with Archaeology is in lab work, but UNLV invested heavily in I think there are I want to say twelve or fifteen separate designated archaeology laboratories for different fields of archaeology, different material specialties, different regional specialties. So one of those labs is an experimental archaeology lab, and I've been working
with that lab since I was in high school. Actually, my sophomore year of high school, I was talking to my school counselor and she goes, Angela, what do you want to do with life? And I said, well, you know, since i've been since first or second grade, I have written down that I've wanted to be an experimental archaeologist when I grew up.
And how did you earn words?
Oh, it's crazy. I mean I've wanted to be an archaeologist since kindergarten. That was the first I mean, I fell in love started with Egyptology. You know. Shout out to missus Drake, who's my elementary school librarian, who noticed that I I really liked a fiction book about Egypt. So she said, well, there's these nonfiction books about Egypt. And I had no clue what nonfiction was. And there are picture books filled with, you know, pictures of daily
life in Egypt, and I just fell in love. And I quickly moved on to other cultures and civilizations around the world. But by first or second grade, I knew that ancient tools and weapons were you know, what I was most interested in and wanted to study the most. But anyway, in high school, I told my counselor, and I want to do experimental archaeology, and she goes, well, did you know that one of the students here is the daughter of the experimental archaeology professor at UNLV. No. Way,
I mean, one of the odds of this happening. You know, there's way My high school had three thousand, three hundred students and it is in the fifth largest school district in the country, with you know, there's like sixty high schools in Las Vegas, and I was at the one with the daughter from the experinal archaeology professor at U and LV, so she put me in contact with her. The professor's name was doctor Karen Harry, and she specializes
in experimental pottery work. However, she has a graduate students who are doing experimental you know, leather tanning work and architectural work and stuff like that. But she's a ceramicist and she specializes in ancestral Puebloan sites in northern Arizona, in the shipwoodz Plateau area part of Paraschant National Monument in northern Arizona, kind of the north room of the
Grand Canyon. And I emailed her and I said, I've been obsessed with experimental archaeology and archaeology since I was little. You know, I'll come clean test tubes for you, I'll do whatever. I just want to be in the environment. And she said, well, me and three grad students are going off into the desert for a month this summer. Would you like to come with us?
Oh?
And my god, of course my parents were like, I don't know about that, but they eventually said yes. After meeting her, and it was myself, doctor Harry, and three of her PhD students, our master's and PhD students, And we stayed out in a National Park Service cabin out in the ship's plateau. And then every day we had to get into a pickup truck and barrel over boulders. It would take us maybe and like maybe forty five minutes to drive like three miles, because that's how slow
we were going it was. We probably could have walked faster, we had so much equipment we didn't want to do that. Once we would park, we then have to hike another like hour and fifteen minutes. Now this is in June in Arizona. It's one hundred and fifteen degrees. We've got, you know, between thirty and fifty pound packs on us with the gear and stuff like that.
Ooh, I've a little grimy and sweaty here.
But once we got to the site, it was magnificent. I mean it was The site itself was just kind of you couldn't really tell it. It was a sit unless New York you're looking for, because this was at a time when people they weren't living in one place necessarily the whole time. They weren't investing a lot into their architecture kind of the beginnings of the pueblo and culture in that area that built those kind of big like mesa Verne type places.
Okay, quick aside. I was not sure what mesa Verde type places were, but I looked it up, and in mesa Verde National Park near the Four Corners, there's a series of cliff dwellings like Cliff Palace, and that's in almost a thousand year old, gorgeous complex, ancient pueblo in structure built into this jaggy, rocky cliff side. And if you look up pictures of Cliff Palace and don't gasp, you should call a doctor.
So we get to this area and I'm like, oh, this is interesting because it's not exactly what I was picturing. But they're like, oh yeah, here's a house here, and here's another pit house over here. And I'm like, sure if you tell it, if you say so, because it just looks like pile of rocks to me. At that time,
I didn't know what I was looking at. But the site was situated basically at the rim of the Grand Canyon, in a place inaccessible unless you're an archaeologist working on the site basically, so we are able to have our lunch kind of just perch there in the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It was just beautiful. And she says she's brought out one other like younger student out to that trip and they after the first two or three days, they're like, you know, what archaeology is not
for me. I had the exact opposite reaction. I was completely, you know, fully invested after the first day, and at night at camp we would do experimental archaeology stuff. We'd throw out laddles, we'd throw slings, we made aur own rope out of yucca, stuff like that, and it was just an incredible experience Noice. So that kind of led me into working in that experimental archaeology lab. But then the last two years or last year and a half, I moved over to the lab next Doore, which is
the paleo Ethnobotany, an ancient agriculture lab. It's run by doctor Alan Farahani. So paleo ethnobotany just means old cultural plants, so it's any plant remains that were used by humans at some point, so it's mostly seeds. They study kind of the beginnings of agriculture and the domestication of grains in Southwest Asia, specifically in Jordan, and then also separately in Armenia as well.
So Angelo's lab work right now focuses on stone tools found in the Jordan area and investigating why they were made and used in the period that they date from, rather than the more contemporary materials of the time like iron and copper. So it's kind of like trying to figure out people who love to listen to vinyl it's cool, it's intriguing, or people who have a CD collection like is that sad? Why are they doing it? Myself included so many questions And now when you say experimental archaeology,
what exactly does that mean? Does that mean how new methods are created, how new tools are created? What how do you define that?
So experimental archaeology is the process of recreating ancient technology and attempting to use the tools and weapons in order to better understand how ancient peoples would have used them and how that might have impacted their data life. That's kind of one aspect of it, is like the actual recreation of the tools and like, okay, well, how hard is it to collect we using a psyche made out
of flint or whatever. The other side of experiment archaeology is purposely recreating the tools and then breaking them while using them in order to see what that looks like in the archaeological record. So, to give an example, we find, you know, arrowheads or projectile points. An experimental archaeologist will recreate some of those weapons, fire them at let's say a pig carcass or a blistic gelatine or something like that. And notice how you know, okay, well, what happens when
you miss. Well, if it hits a rock, it breaks this way. If it hits bone, it breaks this way. If it hits wood, it breaks this way. And once you collect enough data points, you can say, okay, well I know for a fact that this arrowhead broke when it hit a rock, because I was the one that broke it by hitting it against a rock. So then you look in the archaeological record to go, hey, well
here are these two thousand year old arrowheads. Well they if they present similar fracture patterns as the ones that I found by throwing it against a rock or whatever, I know that that's how it was broken by.
So another thing, an experimental archaeologist might do is build old tools like a sickle and then go harvest a bunch of wheat with it, and then look at the sickle microscopically to see how the blade is worn down by the plants or what sheen the plants left on the edge. It's literally called sickle sheen to try to
match markings found microscopically on found ancient blades. So like, imagine someone finding your kitchen knife thousands of years from now and they're like, bleeplorp, this person loved to use a dull butter knife to cut cold pizza. Wow, what a queen she must have been royalty. I wish I could have hung with her. And then they just use traces of my DNA to simulate a hologram of me and we'd party. Oh okay, now walk me through a little bit of a time line of materials. Because you're
talking about flint. I know that you have to do your own napping of obsidian and things like that, like when did humans use different materials where? And how do you even wrap your brain around that?
Oh? I still can't wrap my brain. I probably will go to my grave not fully understanding how ancient humans figured this out because flintnapping is possibly the hardest thing I've ever taught myself to do.
Napping side note is with a K like canapping, and it means to chip away at a rock, which is very difficult as opposed to the napping most of us have mastered the last few months.
Yeah, I have taught myself a lot of weird skills over the years, both related to archaology and not related to archaeology, and I've never had to put more effort, both mentally and physically into understanding flint napping. And for years I could give you a lecture on the fracture mechanics and the physics and the geometry behind flintnapping. I under stood it on a conceptual level, but when I had rock on my hand, I was never able to
complete an arrowhead. So it kind of just took just a lot of practice, but generally to go over the timeline. So the oldest stone tools we know about date to about three point three million years ago, which was way before the human species even existed. Yeah, yeah, crazy crazy. These were super rudimentary flakes and choppers. They were not sophisticated arrowheads. They were like a rock that had one or two flakes broken off of it to then be used to chop some wood or chop a bone or
something like that. Then there's the Homohobilis, which is the one of the committed ancestors to Homo sapiens and literally means the handyman. Basically, they date to about two point three million years ago, and they were the first ones to kind of have cohesive stone tool technology called aldowan
tools is at least that's what we call them. They were still pretty simple choppers, but they are similar to each other to the point where or we can kind of make it a determination that like, okay, this group of hominids all created their stone tools in the same process, So that shows a little bit of standardization and a little bit more complexity to be able to repeat the same thing over and over and over. It just they
stopped being random and it started being planned. And that's kind of when we see a little bit of a of a mental shift in the hominid species and the ability to work out problems like that, and a lot of a lot of experiment archaeologists, especially ones that work with you know, stone tools that are millions of years old kind of point to this complexity as a way to analyze how complex the complexity of the tools as a way to analyze how complex hominid brains were becoming.
Oh then, yeah, so it's kind of really cool because it takes so much brain power to understand how to make these stone tools that it kind of shows that they must have had better brain capacity, or at least better abstract thinking conceptualization to be able to repeat these
process to make similar looking tools over and over. Homo Erectus is the first homaid species to leave Africa, and they do that about two million years ago, and they kind of spread all over your rate, mostly Asi actually, but they kind of go up southwest Asia and then and then east. They make Ashulian hand axes.
What is an Ashulian axe? You want to ask Google? It's okay, I already did that for us babes. It's a doozy to spell. So Ashulian is trey Francais. It's named after a site in France where some of these were found. And if you're thinking hand axe, you're probably thinking like a cute hatchet, but a hand axe is actually a rock that's been chipped away at one end to come to a point and helps cut things. So it's like a sharp rock, that's what that is.
Okay, these are really kind of standardized. So we find a lot of these big hand axes that were all flaked the same way, that all look the same way. So it's you know, at that point, it's a parent that these hominids were teaching each other how to replicate this tool, and it was part of the same material culture where this shape of tool and this kind of way of making it was you know, prioritized in some way for some reason, and it was important for everyone
in the community to make them the same way. So we find a lot of these Australian hand axes made the same way. And what's also important about Australian hand axe is that it's flaked on both sides, so it's one of the first by face tools. So by face, if you look at like a knife edge, it's beveled on both edges, so that's by face. And then if it's just like a chisel is flat on one end and then it's beveled on the other end like a
wood chisel, that's called a uniface. So most choppers were kind of unifacial, they would just have like one striking edge, but these Australian hand axes were specifically flaked on both sides to give it a byface. By faces are sharper because they come out at a steeper angle to the edge so that they can be sharper. They can even be a lit more durable as well, So byfaces takes a lot more skill to make a byface and to be able to replicate that same shape over and over and over.
What type of stone were they making these these axes out.
Of, So the earlier Oldowan tools were kind of river pebbles or cobbles. As you get into byfaces, you need a stone that's going to be more predictable in its flaking pattern. So silicate based crystalline stones like flint or obsidian or shirt are really good for that because they act almost like glass. They have a uniform, homogeneous crystalline structure that allows you to be able to predict how the shock waves will interact with the ridges on the
rock to create tools in a better way. If you have a really coarsely grained rock, it's going to break an unpredictable pattern and it's not going to lend itself to a good tool.
Okay, how is this person so young and so knowledgeable? And also we haven't even go into add lattels. Okay, already I'm learning so much.
Anyway, So then around five hundred thousand years ago, which is still before the Homo sapiens species in Africa, as kind of the evolutionary lines were branching to what would eventually become Homo sapiens, we find the earliest, potentially the earliest evidence of hafting. Halfting is when you take a stone tool and you affix it to some sort of handle or other implement, like a wooden handle or a wooden spear, or even like an antler handle. So we
find the first evidence of hafting. And the way we know that is because you look at the mastic, which is the glue used on the tool, because obviously the wood is rotten away after five hundred thousand years, but there's residue of glue on the back of some of these tools that were found in Africa, and that indicates that they may have been glued into a handle of some kind.
What is the glue? Where are they getting the glue? They can't get that on Amazon.
Yeah, you can't get on Amazon, for sure, they would make it. It's also called pine pitch, so it's kind of a mixture of tree sap, beeswax, wood, ash, and fat that would kind of make this really this kind
of black tar glue. And usually you would glue it into a stick or a handle by carving a notch into the piece of wood or the bone, slotting the byface into that notch, putting the glue around, and then usually you tie it with some sort of cordage, whether it's made out of animal sinew, which is really strong and useful because when it's wet, it's really easy to work with. But when it dries it actually has its
own glue. It shrinks and hardens like a rock. You're able to tie something really tight, and then as it dries, it literally constricts around that piece and hardens rock solid to make it a really really tough you know, tough point or tough haft. So they usually tie it as well,
but sometimes they would just glue it. But the Neanderthals came around like four hundred thousand years ago and they started making smaller, more specialized tools, and they had the malcatarian tool tradition, and the Levolois tools, which I'm probably mispronouncing. It's a French term and I'm not great with my French.
Let's ask a computer la the Venoa tools. Okay, So, by the bye, these are like the Ashulian axes aka sharpened rocks, but they're more refined, and they're smaller, they're more knife like. They look much closer to arrowheads and stone points, and I guess they're evidence that our hairy ancestors were against some real skills. So think like going from a flip phone to an iPhone. It's like, ooh.
The cool thing about these is that they're able to get really really precise sharp flakes. They could repeat over and over, and instead of making these big hand axes, which were kind of unruly, they got better at making by faces on a smaller scale that would work better in hand tools. Then we have the earliest. The earliest spears we've ever found are the Shehrnangen spears. Now it's a German word that I'm sure i'm mispronouncing as well.
The Shunningen spears I can't remember. You might have to look up pronunciation on that.
It's going and spears it's not helpful.
But the Shonningen spears, they were a collection of like six to seven foot long wooden sticks basically that were excavated with a bunch of horse bones from and that are dated to about three hundred and eighty thousand years ago, so still before Homo sapiens. Yeah, so it's theorized that these spears were used as thrusty weapons, but they there's a debate about whether or not they could have been throwing weapons as well.
Throwing spears, by the bye are for overhand chucking and thrusting is like underhand stabby times. So look at us. We're archaeologists now, and the difference between a throwing and thrusting is that the crux of what an add a little is.
Yes, I like to use in anemonic that at lattels are for throwing and spears are for thrusting. When we're talking archaeology, we're talking weapons study. If it is a spear that's being thrown without the aid of another tool like in a lattle, if it's just being thrown, that's a javelin. Okay, spear by itself, just the word spear
indicates that they thrusting weapon. Oh, if it's being thrown by another tool, like in that laddle, then it's called a dart, specifically if it has fletchings, which are the feathers in the back.
Okay, so sticky mcpointerson a spear is used to stab a javelin is tossed forward, and a dart is tossed forward but has fletchings or those featherlike little wings on the back. And a twenty nineteen University College London study had some collegiate javelin competitors try to throw replicas of those heavy German spears to see could these even be tossed how far?
Here's the thing with the extreme t archaeology research. It tells you whether things could be possible, but doesn't necessarily prove that that's what happened. So the result of their research was, Okay, it is possible to throw these spears, but that doesn't mean that Neanderthals were throwing the spears. Does that make sense?
Yes?
Yes, So they found that even with these collegiate train javelin throwers that anything beyond fifteen meters they weren't able to hit the target at all, and after twenty meters the spear wouldn't even land point first. It kind of fishtail in the air. And this is for a couple of reasons. One, the body mechanics of throwing a spear like a javelin with a flat trajectory aiming for a
target isn't really conducive for the human body. Javelin throwers, like Olympic javelin throwers, they're throwing at an extremely high art to throw for distance, and it works okay for that. But even those javelin throwers, if you asked them to try to hit a standing target twenty meters in front of them, they would have a lot of difficulty even reaching the target, even though they can throw one hundred
meters when they're throwing for distance. It's just the mechanics of throwing at that flat trajectory versus throwing it at an extremely steep trajectory are just completely different.
Angelo says it's pretty hard to toss a heavy spear on its own, both far and accurately. So how are they getting from A to B?
And we know that Neanderthals would use hunting tactics where they would either like drive animals off a cliff or corner animals in like canyons or something like that, to where they could be easily accessed with thrusting spears to kind of finish off the animal. These spears are the oldest complete weapons that we have ever found, and they date to about three hundred and eighty thousand years ago.
But I can't even almost it's crazy. It's crazy how that's a time scale that's hard to process because if you think about the entire history, of the entirety of recorded human history, so you know, history that we have like written accounts of by people who had developed written language, really only go back a couple thousand years in the grand scheme of humanity. But we're talking almost four hundred
thousand years old. And like I said, these spears were found in Germany and they were used by Neanderthals at that time. And that's another thing with archaeology. Just because you have excravated the oldest example of something doesn't mean that's when that thing started, right, That's just the oldest one we've found.
Okay, So for hundreds of thousands of years, these bad boys were too heavy to hurl very far. But as time marched on, weapons got faster and lighter. In about forty five thousand years ago. Anthropologists think that spears emerged with a little extra help, which is a spear thrower you use in conjunction with it, so it works to fling the shafted weapon a lot like the dog toy, the chuck it, which hurls spitty tennis balls at the dog park. In fact, Angelo says that the chucket is
a modern at laddle. What is it called an at laddle? At a laddle? It's an at laddle, not an adult.
An at laddle. Well, I say at laddle. The reason I don't say at a laddle is because in my mind you're pronouncing the middle l twice at laddle. What it's actually just spelled atl atl. Now, the word at laddle is a Nawatch word, which is the language spoken by the group of people in central Mexico that we now call the Aztecs, even though that's not what they
called themselves. The Nahwua people were a collection of people from northern Mexico about two thousand years ago who slowly, tribe by tribe, immigrated south towards the Valley of Mexico, where other civilizations like Tao, ti Wakan and had been
flourishing in that time period. Now, one of the first groups to come down was the Tolltec group, So they were a Nahwachi speaking group that came after the fall of Tao tu Wakan and kind of established a small kingdom or empire in a city called Tula in central Mexico. One of the last Nawak speaking tribes to immigrate from
northern Mexico to Central Mexico was the Meshka tribe. They came in and probably were using bows and arrows at the time, but at latto's were really popular in that central Mexican valley, so they adopted the use of an at laddo. They started conquering kind of these other city states at the time, and they created a triple alliance between two other city states. So it was the Meshica tribe and their city state of Tlan and then two other tribes with two other states, you know, their own
city states. They created the Aztec triple alliance. So that's who we when we say Aztec, we're actually referring to this triple alliance between these three cities, the main group of which was the Meshica tribe in the city of Street Lane, which is what we now call Mexico City.
And how long ago is this?
So that was in the thirteen and fourteen hundreds, so so not not too long ago. Then the Spaniards came conquered the Aztec and then enslaved and killed them all with smallpox and one of the worst genocides in history that the Meshica themselves actually had. It was part of their culture to not call themselves the Aztec. The word Aztec means somebody from Atslan. Atslan is what they called their northern Mexico homeland. Okay, so they were the people
from Utslan. The Spaniards were like, oh, we'll just call you Aztec, but they called themselves that the Meshica. And that's me e Xica, which is where we get the word Mexico or Mexico from. So it all comes from comes from that.
So folks in these regions for years and years and years have been amazing hunters. And why a tool called an at lattle at a lattle, so.
The in the original Nawak pronunciation at lattle would probably sound something like a A. That DL is called a voiceless lateral fricative in linguistics, which means that the sound is not made from your vocal cords. So if you made the TL sound, your vocal cords wouldn't vibrate. You can put your finger to your vocal cord and you kind of see what sounds make a vibration or what sounds don't. So a sound like a T or like an S doesn't vibrate your your vocal cords, but something
like an M definitely does vibrate your vocal cords. So that's the difference between voiceless and not voiceless. Lateral means that the air causing the sound is moving sideways around your tongue instead of coming straight out, it's coming out sideways in the back of your tongue, kind of around your tongue. And then fricative means that the air is kind of turbulating inside your mouth to make the noise. So it's this very strange sound. I don't know how
well it's coming up on the mic, but okay. So the TL it's the hallmark of the Nahwaq language. You can see TL in all sorts of Nawak's words, like that salamander, the the axe, lottel ps.
Personal side note, Once I got called out of second grade class by this nice lady who asked me to answer a few really stupid questions like what goes on a pizza? Duh cheese? Okay, what travels down the railroad? Huh? You see a cutue train? Then for several months I had to report to a trailer near the playground to relearn these frictive lateral lisps. And yes, I know that we need a speech pathology episode asap. I know I'm
on it. Anyway, I feel better about my phs now that I know that they're kind of like a sexy flourish in other languages. Also, buckle the frick up for a tale that is like drunk history, only minus the hot tubs and barfing. Who damn, this is a journey. I love it. Boy howdy.
I want to give credit to one of my idols in the archaeology world, Zelia Natal. She is one of the most badass archaeologist of all time. Uh. I think she's amazing. She was an Mexican Irish American born in San Francisco to a Mexican American mom and an Irish dad. She went to school in Europe met an anthropology student. I think he was like a Dutch. I think he was Dutch. A Dutch anthropology student. She would read his textbooks at night, taught herself anthropology. As a family trip
they went to Mexico. She was so knowledgeable, especially about Mexican archaeology, because of her mom, who taught her some Nahwach. She was able to do some of these early translations and have a better understanding of the linguistic history of the Meshicu people in Mexico. She became one of the first, if not the first, honorary professor at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, and that was in like eighteen eighty four, so like way before any college was
admitting women. She was the pioneer. She did so well with her post at the National Museum of Anthropology that in eighteen eighty six she got hired by the Harvard University Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology as a contributor
for meso American archaeology. And while she was working with them, she moved to Europe again, where she spent like ten years in archives in libraries and she found previously lost Aztec and Zeppotech codeses or manuscripts or books that were shipped by the Spaniards back to Europe, thrown into a crate in the bottom of the library and forgotten about for five hundred years.
Oh my god, and she found two of them.
H There are only like a handful of these at all for any of the mental American cultures, and like a large proportion of them were found by her alone. So while she was studying all of these manuscripts in Europe, the godfather of cultural anthropology, Edward Burnett Tyler, he wrote
this book Primitive Culture. It established cultural anthropology. Now, it definitely was not great because it assumed that Western culture was the pinnacle of human society and everyone else was behind to some degree, which obviously is something that modern anthropologists archaologist completely reject as a model for human civilization. But he has this quote, the Aztec civilization is the highest known to have used the spear thrower, in reality
a weapon of savagery. And we do not hear of the at lattle being in practical use at the conquest, when it had apparently fallen out of disuse end quote.
Spear throwers, remember, are at lattles. So what this crusty old man was doing was shittuking at littles and the people who use them, like, how dare now? Zelia and Tall was like, excuse me.
So she read that quote and he's basically saying because the Aztecs used the at laddle, they were like stupid savages because the rest of the world moved on to the bone arrow and they're the only ones left in the world that little which isn't true, but you know, at the time, that's what he thought. So she said, you know what, I'm going to write the first book all about at lattles, and I went to prove him wrong.
So in the opening paragraph she calls him out directly and says, like this will be a response to anybody who thinks that the Mexican people are stupid because we use a lattles. I'm going to show you how awesome they are. She wrote this crazy, amazing book in eighteen ninety one and it's basically the first ever academic study
on the at lattles. And she looks at it not from like an experimental archaeology perspective, so she didn't make it a little She's never thrown in that lattle, but she looked at artistic depictions in those books that she found in other books that were published, literary descriptions and archaeological examples that were found, and she realized that at laddles were actually really well adapted for aquatic hunting, and
she connected the word at laddle to fishermen. Fishermen is atlakatl, which literally means watermen and tlaca means to aim or throw, So if you put those together, it's ak which is literally water thrower. So that was her theory for where the word autlatto comes from. It's because it was used as a fishing weapon. It has this name associated with
with water. And she also found descriptions of now Wa people and people in the Aztec religion explained that in their tradition there was a demigod named Oputli who invented the atlattle for fishing and taught it to the Meshica people.
So Angelo says that according to indigenous culture, this weapon was considered to be handed down directly by the Meshika's god of war for some deity approved ass kicking, and that no other weapon in the Aztec armory is described with as much reverence as the atlattle. It's thought that only the upper tier of the military and noblemen and generals and the elite essentially royalty were even allowed to use at Laddles, and they let the commoners use the
peasant weapon, which was the bow and arrow. Oh it's petty and I love it. Also history, y'all, it's just gossip that matters, and all it takes is someone who is willing to dish. Now, specifically about Zeli Anatol.
The story gets crazier. I think somebody should make a movie about her, and they should consult me. Hint, hint, win quink. But so I just wanted to throw this out because I think it's important to highlight especially like women of color in archaeology, especially this long ago, and so few people know about her, even archaeology students, that I just can't pass an opportunity to tell her full story.
After she wrote this thing about that at Laddle, which became very popular because it made so much sense, and she published a lot of pictures about it, she moved back to Mexico and she ran an excavation at the
Isla Desacrafios or the Island of Sacrifices. L colleague tried to steal credit from her for the excavation, of course, so she quit her post with the National Museum of Anthropology, published all of her notes and findings in an academic journal, which were so detailed it was so painfully obvious that she was the actual person who had figured out the site and excavated it that the other guy was fired
in disgrace. No, she was like, oh, you're not going to respect me, and I'm going to I'm just going to quit and then disgrace you in an academic journal and show that you are a hack. And she did it. So then she got the attention of Phoebe Hurst, who was the mother of William Randolph Hurst, who runs the newspaper in New York, you know, one of the richest
richest people in that time period. She becomes zealand Natal's patron, buying a house for her in Mexico City and funding all of her studies and excavations, with the agreement that some of the material that Zelean and Taal would excavate would go back to the newly formed Phoebe Hurst Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, UC Berkeley. So it all comes like full circle back to San Francisco, whereas le natal
was born. She ends up advocating for indigenous rights in Mexico until she dies, and she convinces Mexico City to recognize March twelfth as as Tech New Year, Indigenous New Year, where it is still celebrated to this day by the Nahua people who still live in central and northern Mexico to this day. I think there's like one point two
million now Off speakers still in Mexico. And she got it formally recognized by the government and it was celebrated in Mexico City the former site of North Street Line on March twelfth, nineteen twenty eight, for the first time since fifteen twenty when the conquest happened. I'm going it's going to crazy. And to this day, Mexico is known, out of all the meso American countries as a country
that protects from a government perspective, they're archaeological sites. Really strictly, they're really good about protecting the sites and doing good research and having tourism. But a lot of people credit her specifically for that because at the time, in the nineteen twenties in Mexico, there was a big push to ignore indigenous rights, but specifically ignore indigenous history of Mexico
in favor of the Spanish history. So a lot of people were rejecting that they were, you know, had any roots to indigenous Mexico at this time because a lot of people in Mexico thought that the key to their acceptance on the global stage, as Mexico kind of has independence, is becoming you know, a country in a globalized world in the nineteen twenties, that they felt that they would get further with Western countries if they rejected the indigenous
background and just were like, yeah, we're Spandard European like you guys, where we can play in the global stage, because I mean, who do they have to look examples to the United States, which also ignored indigenous rights and culture and other places you know, around the world that have done terrible things to indigenous people. So they were just following the lead of the world superpowers at the time. And she said, no, we should embrace our indigenous heritage.
We should cut indigenous voices. We should know, let indigenous people celebrate the holidays and recognize those holidays because that's what makes us unique. And if anyone tells you that a laddles are what make indigenous Mexicans stupid. Just refer them to me because I want to set them straight. Yeah, she's my hero as I'm Mexican American, as a Mexican American archaeology student, she is like just such an idol to me. Plus she's the first person to study at Lattle's.
She's like, she's my hero.
Okay, I'm gonna cry. Are you gonna cry? Because I'm gonna cry. Also, by the way, if anyone needs to honor a badass with the great name for say their daughter, may I suggest Celia? I mean, come on. Also, let's finally talk to details about this tool or is it a weapon? Okay, I look this up. All weapons are tools, but not all tools are weapons. So in this case and at Lattle is a tool of attack or defense, i e. It's weapon. Also, now that we have the rich be backstory, what is this thing in.
Terms of what is in that laddle? Okay? And that laddle is actually a Okay, it is a stick with a handle on one end and a hook on the other end that engages with the rear end of a dart, which is a long, thin, flexible wooden spear type thing that has a little dimple at the end behind the feathers. The spur of the at laddle or the hook engages with that knock and it propels the dart further and harder than you could throwing it by hand. So the
out ladder refers to just the throwing stick part itself. Oh, dart is the separate implement, So it's the atladdle in dart. Colloquially we just call the entire system in at laddle. Okay. The cool thing about at laddles is that they were used all over the world. And if we kind of go back to the earlier question of like the progression of human technology, the earliest at laddle's we have date
to about twenty thousand years ago. In fact, it's seventeen thousand, five hundred years is like the radiocarbon date that was found in France. It was a lattle made out of antler, and that's kind of after Neanderthals, that was all Homo sapiens. Now, the thing is that at lattle use is theorized to go back as far as forty five thousand BCE, so quite a long time before that. And the way we
know this is because when you throw at laddle's. It puts a lot of strain on your elbow and you develop in our threatus condition that bio archaeologists call at lattle elbow.
Oh my god.
So there is actually a skeleton from Australia that dates to forty two thousand years ago called the Mungo Man.
Mungo Man side note is also referred to as LM three and was found laid out in a somewhat extravagant ceremonial burial. And he was thought to have been about fifty years old, which is like middle aged for us now, but heca old for back then and he stood around six foot five, which is unusually tall. So what else is interesting about this amazing man's remains?
And he has extreme at lattle elbow in his right elbow, and it's theorized that that's because he was throwing an out laddle and that puts the at laddle to be about forty five thousand BCE.
Wow.
They at laddle is the first two part weapon system potentially two part tool system as well. Got a complex tool system ever invented by comminides So and to break that down, a compound tool is something that has two or more materials. So remember when I talked earlier about the hafting where you take the stone and you blew it onto the stick. So that's a compound tool. But then a complex tool is a tool that uses two
separate implements that are not like permanently attacked. So a bow and arrow or an at laddle in dart, those are complex tools. Okay, So the at laddle is or you know, the spear thrower of the at laddle is the oldest, potentially the oldest complex two part weaponar tool
system ever invented. It's also the potentially the first weaponar tool system that was unique to the Homo sapien species because Neanderthals were using thrusting spears and potentially throwing spears, and the bow and arrow wouldn't be really invented for like another twenty thousand, thirty thousand years. So this was what kind of Homo sapien the human species brought to the stage.
Angelou said also that using tools allowed us to access more nutrition while expending fewer calories, and hunting with an at lattel uses way fewer calories than like chasing a
deer for ten miles until it's just like fine. Now, those extra calories and possibly the fatty stuff from brains and bone marrow have enabled our ancestors to grow bigger brains, which allowed us to invent weapons and reality TV and finally global warming and nuclear existential risk, but also puppy calendars and coffee creamer, which is good.
Potentially, it's the Homo sapiens ability to develop these complex tools that allowed them to kind of outlast and survive, and the Lattle is the first indication of this. So it is this really old universal weapon. Everybody in humanity is connected by their use of a outlattles because it was used by everybody. And we have found at lattle remains or at little evidence on every continant except for Africa and Antarctica. Now again that doesn't mean that they
weren't used in Africa. It just means we haven't found evidence of their use in Africa, but we have lots of evidence of the use, you know, in Asia and Europe and Australia and North America and South America.
And do you think that they developed all from the kind of same source or do you think a lot of people on different continents thought, hey, what if I put a do hookie on the end of the sticky stick, and then I'm able to kill more stuff more efficiently from farther away.
That's the big question that's really hard to tell. I'm not sure. There's no clear answer. It does seem like the use in North and South America is associated with a human migration across the Bearing Land Bridge around fifteen thousand BCE, So it seems like at lattle use wasn't developed independently in North and South America, but it was brought by the people who migrated over the Bearing Land Bridge. In terms of the rest of Europe and Asia, I am and Australia, I am not sure, and I don't
think that's really been answered. Is how it spread. And let's say it was started in one area and then spread to other areas. There's two ways that could have happened. Either the people who developed it taught it to other people, and then those people took it to their areas and taught it to other people. Or the original group who developed the at laddle broke off and they migrated to other areas, bringing out little use with them. So it's
the difference between teaching and migrating. We're not entirely sure how it's spread. And that kind of goes for the bone arrow as well, which most estimates put the bone arrow as being invented around fifteen thousand BCE, so that's a full twenty thousand years after the at laddle was invented.
Yeah, that's surprising to me that there's such a gap, such a huge gap.
Now there is there is conflicting evidence that bows and arrows go back to forty thousand BCE as well, but that's fairly inconclusive evidence, so that's kind of a little bit questionable as well. We're not entirely sure, but it seems like bows came significantly after at laddles. Now, the thing about at laddles is that they are it's not just a stick that throws another stick. There's a lot
of engineering that goes into it. So because you're extending your arm by having this handle, you're increasing your leverage and you're also increasing your angular momentum at the tip of the tool.
Y'all have been asking me for a physics episode, So here you go.
And that transfers a lot more energy into the dart. The other thing is that you're propelling the dart from behind the center of gravity as opposed to throwing a javelin, where you're holding the javelin at the center of gravity. That means that you're able to with that laddle, you're able to put more energy into the entire dart system, which propels it further. So there's something about propelling something from behind a certain of gravity that works a lot better.
If you think about a bone arrow, the bow string engages the rear of the arrow, propelling it from behind, just like in that laddle. Also, the most this is the number one thing that people get wrong when they try to make that laddle or they try to understand that the laddels.
This is the flint plan.
The most kind of flim flam. Yeah, the most important part of the at lattle and dart system is the flexibility of the dart.
Really, so it's got.
It's gotta go boil you annoying. And if you look at slow motion video, not even slow motion you just look at in person, you know, real speed video. Because the darts are so long, you can see the flex happen in real time. We're talking six to eight inches of flex while it's flying, which is a lot.
I've seen footage and it really wobbles, and you're like, shit, is that okay? And it is by design.
And without the flex. If you try to throw up a stiff spear with an at laddle, the spear would fishtail in the air because all the energy going into the rear of the dart needs to go somewhere, and the tip of the dart kind of resists motion because of Newton's laws, So all that energy used to go somewhere, and eventually the tip starts raising. And what happens is you flick the rear of the dart underneath the spear,
which causes it to fish tail in the air. And that laddle dart, on the other hand, flexes while you're throwing, so right as you're about to throw, the dart flexes, storing the energy, keeping the point straight on target. And then that flex releases as you finish flicking the laddle, which causes it to flex in the air but stay
on target the whole way. At laddle darts are thicker in the front than they are in the rear, which means there's a taper, a very smooth taper, usually from about half inch at the tip half inch in diameter to the tip to three eighths inch diameter at the feathers, at the fletchings, there's more flex happening on the feather end than there is at the tip end, which means the tip stays on target and the rest of the dart flexes around the tip.
Oh my gosh, that is you can imagine physics.
Yeah, it's sold physics. And you can imagine if the dart is an even diameter across the whole thing, as you know, if there's not a taper, that means that the majority of the flex is going to be at the middle of the dart. It's going to flex up and down. But that means that both the tip and the feathers are going to flex six to eight inches around the target, which that could be the difference between it a hit and a miss if you're trying to hunt.
And then what is the arrow point? What like, what are what types of materials or the tip?
So definitely to get to this specialized you need to use one of those good stones that I talked about earlier, so flint hirt or obsidian. That's basically it.
Obsidian he told me cand get sharp. But how thin is this razor's edge.
Obsidian does get to a sharpness level on a molecular level that's unknown to any other technology that humans have created. It's it's like ten times sharper than surgical steel, which is crazy to even think about. Yeah, the problem is obsidian is very brittle, so it's good for it's very sharp, but it breaks very quickly. Flint and chirt are not as sharp, but that are much more durable, So there's
a trade off between the two. And when you're using an obsidian point on a tool like an arrow or a spearhead or that Lottle point, that tool isn't necessarily that molecular sharp because you would purposely effectively dull the edge to make it more durable. It's still very sharp, but it's not that like molecular level sharp. They would use molecular level sharpness obsidian tools for other purposes, but not necessarily for projectile points because they're too weak those tools.
It's a process called flint napping, and it's the process of making small chips or flakes out of a crystalline silica rock like flint, chirt, or obsidian, in order to make tools in a specific shape or pattern. Personally with flint napping, I always have issue. I can either get the tool really sharp or I can get the tool in the right shape, but it's really hard to get both sharp and in the right shape. So that's kind
of what I'm working on right now. I practice fortnapping a lot, but that's generally what the tips would be made out of. Out of those three materials, and even sometimes like one group would use you know, two or three different types of materials to make their points, depending on what they had access to. Oh, I think it's important to note that, you know, at lattels were called different things with different people, So specifically in Australia they
call them wamras. Instead of being like a six five or six foot at lattle dark, they would use seven or nine foot at little darts. They're really really long and heavy, and they would use really long womras, which is what they called their at laddles. And the cool thing about Australian wumras is that they're like a Swiss army knife. They would actually attached with glue a knife like an obsidian or a flint knife into the handle to use like as a knife. The at lattel itself
is very differently shaped. Instead of being a stick, it's more of like this cup or bowl shape that's really really big and rounded. They could use that to collect berries. They would paint maps on the inside of their of their womeras, and they would even put notches in the womeras to make friction fires. So with one womera and one at little or one dart, you're basically set to go to survive the Australian out back. It had everything you needed.
Oh my gosh, that is so genius. Ten out of ten would buy on impulse at Arii.
So genius at lattos are are pretty terrifying. They because you're thinking, like, okay, well handthlon sphere compared to a bone arrow, what's the damage difference here? Well, a bone arrow an arrow is lighter and it travels faster, and a little dart is heavier, still travels fast, but doesn't
travel as fast, so there's a trade off. But the impact force of an outlattle dart is big enough to take down a wooly mammoth because that's what they were used for North America, specifically the Clovis people, where that kind of Clovis culture was in Canada and in northeastern the United States about thirteen thousand years ago, and they
used at lottles to hunt mammoth. Modern tests with at laddles have found that they can reach speeds at little darts can reach speeds around eighty miles per hour and the world record, yeah, crazy fast. The world record for not lattle throw in terms of distance is two hundred and I think it's two hundred and sixty meters, which is eight hundred and fifty feet, So you're talking almost three full football fields.
Oh my gosh.
But modern at lattle users part of the world at Little Association, which I'm on the board of directors of, we host competitions and there are people who can nail a six inch a six to eight inch target at twenty meters, which is you know, it's almost almost seventy feet. Yeah, with like ninety five percent accuracy.
Unbelievable. How much practice does that take, as someone who throws at ales at lottles, pardon how much practice does that take to get that kind of precision.
I've been throwing at laddles for almost I'm trying to think I've been throwing at lottles for like seven or eight years. But I've been studying at Lattles for ten or eleven years, and I'm still not at that accuracy level. I'm decent. When I've competed in the youth division, I did pretty well, but now that I'm in the adult division, I do pretty terribly. But some of these guys have been throwing for twenty thirty forty years and they are
they're like they're like ancient sniper's. It's pretty incredible. They will literally nail the smallest of targets from impossible distances. Most people with a bone arrow aren't able to have that level of accuracy. Spaniards wrote that at Lattle darts could go through chain mail, and modern tests have proven that at Lattle darts will go through chain mail. Even even these European conquisisors who had never seen that laddle before because Europe stopped using that laddle like fifteen thousand
years prior. They're seeing tens of thousands of Mexican and Aztec soldiers throwing a rain cloud of darts that are flying at eighty miles an hour with giant obsidian razor sharp broadheads on them, coming from one hundred to two hundred feet away. It's terrifying. They were terrified of the laddle more than almost any other weapon because they had
I mean, even their archers weren't that powerful. So that I think that's really interesting that they just wrote about how terrified they were of about Lotte's and I would be terrified as well if I was on a receiving end one of these things.
Why do you think any type of culture stopped using them?
Okay, great question. I totally forgot to bring that out, But yeah, a couple things. So, laddles were developed during the Pleistocene, which is the Ice Age, and they, like I mentioned, they were really used to hunt big Ice Age megafauna, so like giant ground sloths, wooly mammoth, stuff like that. Also, during the plisis scene, because it was so cold, a lot of the world, especially in a lot of the Northern Hemisphere, was like more of a
tundra than it was a forest. So the aladdo kind of works well in this open environment because the throwing motion is what I like to call visually loud. It's not you know, it doesn't make a noise, but it's a big motion, whereas with a bone arrow you can the motion to release an arrow is just releasing your
fingers and it makes almost no movement at all. So as the Ice age ended, animals got smaller and more skittish like deer, and humans were hunting in more densely wooded areas, which makes swinging a big atladdle really difficult. And also the throwing, the swinging motion of the at lattle potentially could scare the deer before the atlatto could reach it.
Right.
That kind of begs the question, Okay, well, then why did at lattle use stay in North and South America as long as it did. For the Aztecs. It might be because of that religious reason. They just they stuck with it because they felt that a strong religious connection to it. But other areas, you know, didn't really develop the boat arrow until a lot later, and they were still using specifically in the American Southwest, which is where
I am. We're using at Laddle's you know, up until well up until about like fifty BCE because kind of when the boat starts being developed maybe a little bit earlier than that, but at Lattle's dominated in these desert environments because they were a little bit more open kind of like how the tundra was open, and they would use them to hunt bighorn sheep. Right where I near where I lived in Las Vegas is a place called Valley of Fire State Park. And there's a place called
at Lattle Rock. And it's called at Laddle Rock because at the top of the cliff there are pictographs and Petrick I'm sorry, Petrick cliffs of at Laddles that are about like two thousand year old Petrick Cliffs now. And the colding is that the at Laddles are so perfect. It's almost like they held up in that lattle and traced it into the rock. Like they even show the darts with the feathers and everything.
So this might even be up to four thousand years old. And I looked up photos and in this red rocked Southern Nevada landscape, up a steep, winding steel staircase to the top of a deep ochre desert boulder formation is what looks to be graffiti etched in rock. But it's this beautiful line art of antelopes and targets and a long dart and boom and at Laddle with two little
finger holes. More on that in a minute. Also, some absolute dick hole with the initials BBC added to this art, and I hope they burn their tongue on hot soup. I'm just I'm sorry. I'm really mad. Also, at this point in making the episode, I wanted to just bail and last Bonjobi through the warm August air until I arrived in this desert in the valley of Nevada fire to stare at this rock, which is just proof positive that an ologist can make you fall in love with
an obscure tool that you just never knew existed. Now in the Southwest and into Mexico, at lettles had some special features.
They actually switched up the grip. Instead of holding that a laddle like a hammer, they would create these fingerholes to put their fingers through and kind of hold it with this upturned hand. Turns out that reduces the elbow strain that causes because you can imagine if you got if you got atlattle elbow and you can't hunt anymore. Yeah, that's it. That's game over. Yeah, So they developed different throwing style in order to prevent that at Lattle elbow.
They also developed compound darts that had detachable foreshafts. So the idea behind these were you have like a five foot main shaft with the feathers, and then you have like a one foot fore shaft at actually has the obsidian point in it. The fore shaft goes into the
main shaft. You throw that at a bighorn sheep. When it hits the bighorn sheep, the hope is that the main shaft pops out, leaving the fore shaft in, because if the bighorn sheep ran with that big six or long shaft still attached, it would hit a tree and break and then there goes all your hard work.
Oh man.
Yeah, that allowed humans to go collect the main shaft, put on a new point, and throw it again. So hunters only needed to carry one or two main shafts and then carry a small pouch of like five or six foreshafts.
Genius. That is genius. So think of a fancy quill pen with a bunch of different nibs. Also, some anthropologists postulate that this was the first ever complex use of the phrase just the tip. That's not true.
Yeah, And we call that a basket maker style. At Lattle. It was very very common about fifteen hundred BCE in central and southern Nevada, northern Arizona, southern Colorado and kind of that Four Corners area. The basketmaker people would eventually become the ancestral Pabloan people who eventually became what we now know is like the Hopie and the Zuni Publo
Publo indigenous people of the Four Corners area. So it has this rich, long history in this area, and this basket maker style actually shows up all over the Southwest, and because of the aridity of the desert here, we find more intact at lattles in the American Southwest than we do anywhere else in the world. In fact, the most intact at lattle ever found is the broken Roof Cave at Laddle, who's found in the nineteen twenties or thirties in Arizona.
Ps I look this up and it's right near the Utah border, and it's got this kicky name because rocks just literally would rain down on researchers as they excavated things like burial sites and human remains. But also in at Laddle with some darts, and despite being thousands of years old, it's beautifully preserved. It's made out of oak with hide finger loops and a nice dainty little curve to it.
And you can find pictures of it online. Broken roof Cave at Laddle. It is absolutely gorgeous. It still has the leather finger loops intact, it has all the weights intact, the spurns carved beautifully. It's incredible. And we just find artifacts like that in the Southwest because it's so dry, things preserve a lot longer. And the cool thing is that that throwing style with the finger loops and stuff we find as far south as the Yuka Ten Peninsula
in Mexico. Whether it was spread by people or whether it was developed independently. Either way, the longest users of at Laddle's developed this throwing style that prevented that at Little Elbow. And the last thing I want to mention before you too Patreon questions. I know, I'm so sorry.
Obsession is contagious, so lay it on me. I'm ready.
This is a crazy thing. It was an experiment archaeology project that I got to be a part of involving at Lattles and it involves the multi civilization of Peru. So the multi civilization were around between like one hundred and seven hundred CE before the Incan Empire, like well before the Incan Empire and they used at lattels a lot.
And there's this guy, Christopher Donnan. He's an archaeology professor at UCLA and he has been the expert on the Multra civilization for like thirty years, like he studied it more than anyone else. And he found a bunch of these pots that have paintings on the pot of people throwing at laddles at some aerial target. And he didn't really understand what it was. And the atlattles look weird. They have these weird wooden cross pegs. Didn't understand it.
So he took it to the world at lott of Association and he said, hey, what do you guys think this is? And we spent the next year redeveloping the Mulchitas game. And basically what it is is there's a giant turkey feather shuttleclock that's attached for lattle dart. Throw that into the air and it flies like fifty, you know, fifty feet in the air. Because it's a big turkey
feather shuttlecock, it kind of floats in the air. Everyone else have that laddle darts that have these wooden cross pegs on it that we throw at the shuttlecock as it's falling, and the cross pegs engage with a string that's on the shuttlecock tangles the string and pulls it down. So it's like it's like two thousand year old trap shooting with that laddle. It's incredible.
My gosh, how do you make sure you don't bone each other in the face with them?
Oh? Oh yeah, well, we have all these safety protocols. Everyone lines up and throws in the same direction, so there's nobody down range. But if you look up Mochitas on YouTube, there's actually a video of the World Little Association doing the Multitas experiment side by side with the paintings from the multi Civilization. It's a really cool video because it's like expremental archaeology in action. We have this picture of this ritual we don't understand. Well, let's try
to figure it out. And we try to figure it out, and it seems to have worked.
Okay. I looked at video of this and it involves one at lattle dart with a bouquet of stripey brown feathers on the end and a long string wound around the shaft, and then once it's launched, a row of like ten other at Little Darts, go Boy Young after it to see who can snag the string and how bananas that this was all the rage and then was just buried under millennia waiting to be re enacted.
And now the Mulchitoss is a at Lattel competition that's part of almost every Atlattle tournament, every major out Littel tournament was one of the four main events of out Little tournaments when the WAA hosts host them.
Oh my god, it's like and it's like the closest thing to having a time machine pretty much.
Yeah, basically, I mean it felt so cool to be able to be part of this process of figuring out how this worked out. And again I didn't even when I was doing the experiment. I didn't really fully appreciate it until I saw the video after and it had those side by side comparisons and it was like, oh my gosh, we nailed it. We totally nailed it, nailed it.
Okay, So now it's time for Angelo, your favorite experimental archaeologist, to nail a few Patreon questions that you' all threw and thrust it at him. But before we get to them, a word from word approved sponsors at the show who make it possible for us to donate to a cause
of the ologists choosing. And this week it's an incredible mutual aid fund called the Black Trowel, which is a collective of archaeologists from PhD students to faculty members committed to the active support of archaeology students from working class and historically looted communities who require economic support. So Black Trial provides hookups to mentors and journal articles, as well
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Let's get to a few Patreon questions in this whirlwind exploration of ancient tools. First question, this was asked by Ryley mckinnis, Joshua Read Britney Panos Sarah Kulig. Essentially, one want to know, they need to know. Do you play Dungeons and Dragons and what class wouldn't at Little play as and what would be its cost in gold pieces? Do you play D and D? Yeah, your nay?
I don't play D. I don't play D and D. However, I stocked Patreon questions ahead of time and I prepared an answer for this question. Because I knew it's the only one I wouldn't be able to answer off the top.
Of Oh my goshold I pay, I'm such a dick.
I don't I don't know. I don't know all the classes and stuff, but I will give what I think the stats for an atlatto would be in comparison to a sphere of javelin in a bow, because there are scientific studies comparing the four weapons. If we refer to a nineteen eighty six study by a non raiment about the effect of at loattle weights and force comparisons between bows and at laddle's and sphears and javelins, he found that the range for aut lattle would be in between
a hand thrown spear slash, javelin and a bow. He also found that at lattle darks are are slower than bows and arrows, but have double the kinetic energy of self bows and longbows. Oh okay, bows aren't better across the board, but they're faster and wireless body movement, so
they wouldn't scare pray as much. So basically, whatever you know, I'm sure bows and javelins are used in D and D. I'm not sure, but if they are you're going to look for something that has the range between a javelin and a bow, but double the impact force and damage potential of a bone arrow.
Nice? Okay, D and d ers now have an answer for that. Perfect How many gold pieces? Let's just say five? I don't play d sure, fine, fine, five okay, Jen Woods first time question asker asked if I wanted to make one of these, how would I go about it? And is that a good idea or a terrible one? And side note Jen has done throwing knives and ax as in archery, so maybe those skills would overlap. And
then Viddie pong to know. If I was marooned on an island that had game, animals and trees, how reasonable would it be for me to attempt to fashion myself and at lattle and hunt with it before starving to death?
Great questions. At Laddles are way easier to make than bows and arrows. Okay, I was traded on deserted island, I would make myself in that lattle. Bows You have to make bowstring, you have to find the right wood, you have to shape the wood correctly. There's so much Bose are way more complicated and if you're in a survival situation, you don't have the time to make a
bow at Laddles are a lot easier to make. Now doesn't mean that lattles are easy to make, they're just drastically easier to make and more reliable to make, you know what I mean, in that situation, So making that little great idea. Regardless of survival situation, everyone should make that little It's a lot of fun. They're pretty easy to make, especially if you're not going to do like a traditional method or make it out of stone tools. Just buy stuff at home depot, no big deal. The
at laddle itself is the easy part. You can, you know, effectively, just a wood in two by four that you can hold comfortably with a nail in it or some sort of wooden peg as the hook. That's all you need for the laddle. The dart is the hard part. You
need to have a dart that's flexible enough. When I made my first out laddle, I was maybe like eleven years old or something like that, eleven or twelve, so I was a lot smaller, and what I would use was four foot wooden dowels that were quarter inch diameter. I would make my own duct tape fletchings for the feathers, and I would tie a bunch of duct tape to the tip to make it front heavy, to give it enough weight, because I wasn't gonna put an actual, like
metal tip on there. My parents were crazy enough to let an eleven year old make ancient weapons lgorad, were not crazy enough for me to actually to let me actually put real tips on them, which is good on their part, to be honest. So yeah, so that's what I did. And those quarter inch dowels are definitely like flexible enough, they would work pretty well. If you're going to make them just sound like out of a stick, you're gonna want to dry the stick out, peel away
all the bark, heat the stick over a fire. When you heat something wood over fire, you can actually bend it. It's really pliable. You'd be surprised how pliable wood is when it gets hot. And so that's how you would straighten it. And both ancient times and now you straightened with the same way. So you heat your stick over a dowel and just press, you know, slowly press and bend it against the whatever bend or you know, bend it has in it, straighten it out, and you just
want to make sure that it's thin and flexible. Now there's kind of a hack. It doesn't have to be as thin. Is if it's really long. For example, if I have like a quarter inch steel bar, yeah that's not going to be flexible. But if that quarter of steel bar was a mile long, it's definitely going to be flexible. So any material at a certain length becomes
flexible no matter the thickness. So if you're like, well, I don't really have any thin sticks or thin branches or whatever, we'll just make a really thick dart, or make a thick dart that's maybe like an ancient diameter, but make it seven or nine feet long instead of five or six feet long.
Okay, gosh, that's smart. PS, if you are right now plotting to make ancient weapons in your driveway, feel free to do just a tiny imperceptible butt dance in solidarity and in celebration. Also just little dad word advice and a legal disclaimer. Please do not accidentally kill each other with these things, thank you. But with some of Angelo's advice, you're just gonna be a chip off the old black
Oh I mean speaking of that. Clara Law is a first time question asker and a future archaeologist who had great questions. One of them was what is the best type of rock or your favorite rock to make weapons or tools out of?
So my favorite type is obsidian because because it's so brittle, it's easier to flake and flint n app Also, obsidian comes in a wide variety of colors and shades that makes it really pretty. So there's like mahogany of cidian, which is brown, black and red speckle. There's snowflake of citian which has white speckles. There's rainbow of city, and there's green up city in even like translucent bandit of city in all of which I've made stone tools out
of at some point. And yeah, so that's something my favorite because I think it looks the nicest. It's also one of the easier stones to make tools out of because it's so brittle it breaks pretty easy. That also means, however, that it potentially could break in half while you're working on it, which isn't great. And I'm not sure there's there's an answer to the best type of rock, because they each have their drawbacks. Like I mentioned, Obcitian is
really sharp, but it's fragile and brittle. Shirt and flint are not as sharp, but they're much more durable. So it's just a trade off. It's whatever you're looking for, you know, whatever works best for your situation.
Related Kimberly McCall had asked, what's the best stone for edged weapons? And why is it obsidian? So I believe that you've just answered answered that too at point to point.
It's not necessarily it's not necessarily obsidian. While obsidian is very good for edged weapons, it's not necessarily the best for edge weapons. You'll notice a lot of archaeologists don't and anthropolgists don't like to make determinations of you know, best or quality, because then you get into those issues where you're calling some other culture or people's not less than or primitive or not as advanced, when that's not
necessarily true. Like Zeleia Latall proved with the at Lattles, just because something is older doesn't necessarily mean it's a lesson or inferior weapon. There's no such thing as the best weapon. It's it's our best tool. It's whatever is works for that environment. And you know, bos aren't automatically better than at lattles. At lattels are automatically better than bos, they're both better than each other at specific tasks.
And actually, on the topic of zilia, Nikki de Marco and Jena Mace wanted to know if there were weapons made for women and if there's anything you've discovered on the history of female hunting or weapon use.
Really good question that it's been theorized that at laddles are the most egalitarian weapon, which means that because it you, this is a mechanical advantage over your arm. It doesn't matter how strong you are. It's more of a finesse weapon than a strength weapon, which means that children and women potentially could have used them and use them to hunt as well. However, there's not necessarily evidence of that.
It's just again something that's possible. So I'm not sure you know whether there's evidence of a female hunters, but definitely with that laddle compared to most other weapons, it's possible that that women hunted.
Ladies carve those at lattles. Now, on that note, Patron Richard asked, have archaeologists found any kid size weapons, either doll sized or training like mini at laddles or bows. So if this is more of a finesse weapon rather than a strength weapon, could little kiddos be having little baby at laddles and trying to get little tiny baby targets.
Yes. In fact, recently we found child sized at laddles in Oregon and this was excavated by the University of Alberta, and they found that the biggest at laddle was one hundred and sixty six percent larger than the smallest at laddle, which is greater than the range of hand sizes for adult humans. So they figured like, okay, well it might
have been children that have used at lattles. I have personally taught children as young as second grade, which I'm not sure how what was that six or seven years old?
I think. So.
There's an elementary school here in Las Vegas and every year for like three years they've had me come doing at Lattle throwing workshop with their second graders. You can find pictures of this on my Instagram. It's adorable. What I did was we made at lattle darts with nerf foam tips. I built a giant ten by ten mammoth target for them to throw at, and we built tiny little child sized at laddles out of paint stisticks from
home depot, Oh my god. And the class part of their social studies unit is learning about ice age humans. So I come in. I do like a little like maybe like a forty five minute lecture where I passed around some arrowheads, some you know, some atlatte points. I pass around some vegetable cordage that I made. It's a rope made out of yucca fibers. I kind of talk to them about what ancient life specifically around hunting was
like for I say, humans, and we go outside. I teach them how to process their own plant fibers to make rope, and then I teach them how to twist throw a rope, and usually parents have to help because seven year olds don't have the greatest dexterity, tiny little lambs and feet. And then we walk over to the atlattle target and I let them all throw. They have like an hour to throw at lattles, and it's like some of them, it's crazy how instinctive at lottle throwing
can be. Some of them have a really hard time with it. But then there's every single year there's like three or four of these seven year olds who start throwing throwing like they've been throwing for a decade. They start throwing as good as I am, and I've been throwing for a deck. So sometimes like it just clicks with some people and it's completely like it doesn't matter
whether it's like a boy or a girl. I've had girls throw amazingly well and boys threw amazing well, Like it has literally nothing to do with that, which is another point towards it being in a galitarian weapon. It's a finesse weapon. But yeah, these kids can sometimes throw incredibly well and incredible distances, even though they're using small
at lattles. And the cool thing about that the child at laddles that were found in Oregon is that they were made out of whalebones, so that the children's sized ones were made out of whalebone, but the adult sized ones were made out of wood. So not really entirely sure what that's about, but it seems like we have a lot of the child sized ones because the bone doesn't deteriorate as much or as fast as the wood does, so we find more of these these, you know, children sized at laddles.
Yeah, I wonder if they were also passed down, you know, from child to child as they outgrew them or something perhaps.
And the cool thing is the ones in an organ. They were that split finger style that reduces the strain of the elbow that we more typically associate with groups that used at laddles further south, like in Arizona or in you know, Texas or northern Mexico, but it's the style that we actually see as far north as Oregon as well. At the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Boston, Massachusetts, there is a display of artifacts
from the Northwest coast. And these artifacts are both like you know, prehistoric artifacts that were excavated and historic artifacts that were probably stolen from natives in that area or indigenous people in that area, as depressing as that is. And one of these artifacts is a canoe action figure with two or three people sitting in it. And one of the little action figure people sitting in the canoe is holding in that laddle and using it to hunt like a seal or a whale. That adorable thing.
But is that hard to do sitting down?
It's so hard to do sitting down actually, so one of my closest friends in the Atlatto community is named doctor I think he has I'm pretty sure he has PhD. Doctor Richard vander Hook.
He does, indeed, I checked.
He is the state archaeologist of Alaska. He specializes in Arctic Circle at Lattle's. He's studied Arctic Circle at Lottels more than anybody else. So all these different throwing board styles that are only found in the Arctic Circle. And he has this public demonstration he does where he has this like kind of fake canoe frame and then he uses a python it's very painted brown to be like a sealhead, and he has participants try to sit and
throw in a Lattle sitting. And the other thing is when you're aiming at like something like a sealhead instead of throwing at a standing target like a mammoth, where you're standing and the target standing, So you're kind of able to conceptualize that frame of reference when you're when you're throwing at something that's swimming, it's you know, you're above the water and you're throwing. You're trying to arc
something to hit effectively the quote unquote ground. Right, The water's not the ground, but it's that plane of the ground. It's a completely different aiming system because you're not trying to hit a standing target. You're trying to arc something to hit a seal that's like in under the water that's out in front of you. Crazy different, really difficult.
So he brought that setup to the value of Fire at Laddle tournament that is hosted here in Las Vegas every year for the past thirty years, and he brought that set up last year for people to try to throw sitting down and we're talking here. We have world champion at loaddle throwers who have ninety five plus percent accuracy at any distance under twenty five meters, and they were having so much difficulty throwing sitting it's like you just change that and something people who've been throwing for
decades have trouble. But yeah, child at Laddel's child at Lattle action figures somehow, you know, more prevalent in the Northwest coast. We haven't really found evidence of that elsewhere, but we found evidence of that in the Northwest coast.
And a Valerie wants to know if I find an arrowhead on a walk, am I required to leave it or turn it into a museum? And Anna says, I collected a bunch of our property as I can. And now I'm wondering if that was super illegal, what are the ethics, what's the protocol there?
Okay, so definitely leave it unless you are very specific circumstances. So in general, all archaeological remains are protected in the United States. If it is on public land and you disturb it, it is I think it's a felony. There's a fine associated with it, and there's different amounts of fines for different types of artifacts. If you are in
private property, it is technically not illegal. And also there are some states that allow arrowhead or artifact collecting on public property if it's part of like an erosion, so like on a riverbank, where the remains probably aren't the original context anyway, They were probably removed by the river, so you can pick them up, but that's a state
by state basis. In general, leave them alone. The reason is because in archaeology we get data not from the artifact itself, but from what's around the artifact where it was found. Oh, and that's called the archaeological context. And the context gives you vastly more data than the tool itself. For example, Let's say you find an arrowhead, you pick it up, and you bring it to a museum. Well, you probably didn't take GPS coordinates of exactly where you
picked it up. And if I look at the arrowhead, I'm like, okay, well it's an arrowhead. But if that arrowhead was still left where it was and I was able to, you know, I or another archaeologist was able to go see it in its context, we might be able to look at the site and say, Okay, this arrowhead was found next to bones of this type of animal. It was found next to a fire hearth, so maybe this was where a hunt happened. They process the animal here and there, built a fire, cooked it and ate
it and left, and they left the arrowhead behind. So now I have way more information about what that arrowhead was used for based on what was found around the arrowhead and very little information from the arrowhead itself besides the fact that it's an arrowhead.
Okay.
That's why places like rivers where artifacts have already been moved out of their context are legal to pick up in some states, because they recognize that leaving it be doesn't really do anything anyway, because it's already been disturbed by the river. Some might as well just pick it up, but again that's a state by state basis, and I would rather just leave them behind.
Yeah, is it helpful a little to take a picture and drop a pin at all?
Or no? You could let notify your local anthropology department or your local natural history museum or every single state, required by law, has to have a state Historic Preservation Office with a state Historic Preservation Officer who is in charge of all historic and archaeological remains and sites for that state. So you could always let that. That's literally it's their job to keep track of which archaeological sites
are which and where in your state. There's a chance they probably already know about that site, especially if you're on like, oh, well trodden path or hiking trail. But there's a chance if you're like out in the back country somewhere and you find something, leave it be, try to drop a GPS pan if you can, and let somebody at the state Historic Preservation office know, and they can send out an archaeologist to see if it's a
you know, if it's a sight or not. But that's definitely something you can do.
You can notify cool Asia wants to know how much do you love Forged in Fire? And Christine Hottinger wants to know, relatedly, what do you hate about forged in Fire? Also my question what is forged in Fire?
So forgu and Fire is a TV show?
Okay?
Or blacksmiths have competitions who can make the best slash, strongest sword or knife or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. M I'm going to make a seven layer bar.
I always make a seven layer bar for the center of my swords because I'm.
A war here. They're not necessarily making historical recreations. I don't watch the show. I just know what the show is. I think I've seen maybe one episode, but I have no thoughts about it. Blacksmithing and metallurgy or metalwork is definitely not my specialty. I know, you know cursory information about Bronze Age, Iron Age or even medieval weaponry, and you know stuff like that, but it's not my specialty. It's not what I've studied on an academic level. It's kind of just a hobby.
Have you ever seen an at lattle in a movie or TV show? Have there been any movies about them?
Like?
What's the deal.
Okay, so I'm so excited. There is a movie about at Lattle's that comes out August fourteenth. I don't know when this episode's going to air, so it's probably yeah, August fourteenth. It's called The Silencing. It stars Nikolaike coster Waldou, who is the actor from Game of Thrones who played one of the Lanisters. In real life. Nicolai coster Waldo is in at lattel user. He pulled most videos of him using at ladders on his property on Instagram. You
can go on Instagram you can find his outladdle posts. No, I don't know whether he started using at laddle after filming this movie or somebody decided to write this movie for him because he uses lottels. I don't know. But the movie is about a guy who kidnaps people and sets them loose into forest and hunts them with an aut laddle. Nikolai Costa Wallo plays the good guy who's trying to hunt the hunter.
Oh my gosh, Okay, of course I look this up and the trailer already has well over a million views, and one of the top comments reads, producers, how many times can you cut the word at little into the trailer trailer guy.
Yes, seriously, if you watch the trailer, they say the word at Laddle like ten times. It's insane. At Laddle is a main character of the movie. Even I was showing my parents this and then they're like, Okay, we thought when you said there's a movie about it Laddle's we thought you were over exaggerating. We thought that there's
a movie that had one scene within that laddle. We didn't think like the trailer depicts this whole scene where the police have to go to an experimental archaeologist to ask what that lattle is?
What do you think he used? Called ain no toy designed to kill me?
And the experimental archaeologists explain this is in the trailer, he's explaining and demonstrating that battle use and how powerful he throws it against like a pig carcass or something, and like just shows how powerful it is. And half the movie is then figuring out like what in that lattle is because they find these these wounds on these bodies and they're like, what the hell? What kind of
tool made this wound? Like nobody knows what it is, And it turns out it's a guy in a full gilly suit, hiding camouflage in the woods, hunting people, that lattles. The whole movie's about it, Lettle. It's crazy. It's crazy. So it comes out August fourteenth on all streaming platforms. No, I believe it's already out. If you have direct TV?
How are you gonna celebrate wrong?
How are you?
Are you gonna wear a gilly suit? What are you gonna do?
I'm I'm gonna have a watch party at my house, And like, I am so excited because this is the out lott of representation in media that I've been waiting for, and the fact that they seem to be pronouncing it correctly. The representation of the lattle seems accurate. I actually know the guy who made the at laddles for the movie.
Oh my god.
That's another thing. If anyone wants to buy out Laddles, there's a few pretty good vendors. The only thing you have to look out for is making sure that the dart is flexible enough. I usually whenever I buy somebody else's atladdle darts, I will usually like taper them myselves make them a little bit better. But anyway, this company named at Laddle Madness is the ones who supplied the laddles for the movie, and they look great. The movie
looks great. It looks accurate, like it's it's great. It's phenomenal.
Dude, I'm so pumped for you. I am so pumped for you. I'm also excited to watch this.
Yeah. Yeah, the trailer alone is wild, Like I can't even imagine how crazy the movie's gonna because the trailer like gave me goosebumps from an auttle perspective already, I'm so excited.
Okay, this is gonna be a hard question. What sucks does anything? What is or what is obviously irksome about your job?
I think it goes back to like flim flam whenever I see in a movie a you know, quote unquote caveman throwing a spear that's like would have been a thrusting spear and they throw it and because of the movie special effects, it goes like seventy feet at like sixty miles an hour, perfectly straight and zips through the air and kills a mammoth or something like that. Uh huh, I cringe. Spears are for thrusting out. Laddles are for
throwing you Like it's not post. You know, there's no no experiment that shows that you can throw a hand thrown spear, especially like the ones that show in movies, any more than twenty meters. And even at twenty meters, achestrae is low, impact, velocity is low, the damage is not that bad, is not that great. And if you're hunting a mammoth, you're not throwing a spear like that. You're definitely using that laddle. So whenever I see flim flam, I you know, that kind of stuff kind of irks me.
And the other thing is, uh, I mean at laddles are because at lattle is a Nawak word in academia, it's not really used to describe the tool itself because it was used by so many different cultures. So it's called a spear thrower in academia. And because at lattles throw darks, not spears, I kind of cringe at that time as well.
So spears can be used for stabbing, which at little darts are kind of too flexy for and darts have fletching or feathers on the ass end, so so fancy, although it's a pretty broad term a dart.
Because if I told people that I throw darts, they think that I am then a pub somewhere in the UK, and.
Yeah, yeah.
So the reason the darts that we throw at dart boards are even called darks is because it comes from a Roman thing called a plumbata, which is basically a giant that they would throw underhand. It would go up into the air with a big lead weight and feathers in the back, and then like a lawn dart, it kind of like just drops straight now over shield walls. And if you look at a plumbata, if you like look at it looks exactly like just a big version
of a of a throwing dart. But the dart part comes from the fact that it has fletchings, because a spear or a javelin doesn't have fletchings, but but darts do have fletchings. So anyway that I kind of cringe at those two things calling it a spear thrower, even though I have to because that's the correct academic term for it. And whenever I see a movie where somebody throws a spear a bajillion miles an hour, I'm like, Nope, that's not how that works at all.
Uh, difficult question you know what it is? It's your favorite thing about at els? How are you? How are you gonna pick?
How do you? Yeah? The last the last two hours of this interview is my favorite part. There's nothing, there's no bad like. It's the craziest, coolest thing that no one, the very few people are aware of or have heard of.
That's correct. We recorded a two hour interview and then we chatted another forty five minutes afterward. And yes, this was very hard to cut down because this dude has so much knowledge in his brain bowl.
And you know what, I have an answer. My favorite thing not about aut Lattels, but about what I do with at Lattels and what my role is as a board member for the World at Lottel Association. The education outreach that I get to do is my favorite part about archaeology. I am most comfortable teaching people about things that I'm passionate about, and there's nothing I'm more passionate
about than at lattles. And I love teaching people about little so I have done at lattle throwing workshops for elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, university groups, museums, the Bureau Land Management, the State Park Service the State Historic
Preservation Office. Anytime I can tell a group of people about at lottles and teach them how to throw it, especially when it's little kids whose eyes just light up when they learn about a weapon they've never heard about and they have the ability to throw a small little spear, small little dart like fifty, you know, fifty sixty seventy feet with this little tool, and their eyes just light up.
And that's the best part teaching people. Having the public interaction is the best part, because I think that, you know, science without communication, science without education is pointless. The reason we do science is in order to create a better society, in order to educate the public, and science communication is my favorite part of what I do.
I'm sure it's also great when you're going out there, you're in the desert, you're just getting out of the car, you got a bunch of darts, and you're just ready to like kind of practice. That's got to be so fun.
It's so much fun. I always get so many weird looks when when I roll out to places like there's like a public twelve month period where I had an at lettl and like three darts in my car perpetually just stretched over the entirety of my sedan, and anywhere I would go people were like, what is in your car? I was like, oh, there are thirty thousand year old throwing spears, but don't worry about it.
Let's hear a little bit more about this sedan. The at little the hickeel.
So my license plate says at Laddle is a gift from my sister. Love it. So you can catch me driving around Las Vegas with the Outlattle car wearing my lattele t shirts. The funny thing is I actually had a friend who called me once and said, you wouldn't believe I was just at the mall and I saw a car without lott of license plates. That means that there's somebody else in Las Vegas besides you who throws out laddles. And I said, why would that be your
first conclusion? Why would you not just assume that that was my car? I was like, you, you went to like the extremely unlikely scenario that there's somebody else as at Laddle obsessed as me who got a lot of license plates, instead of just assuming that it was me who was driving that car and it and it was me that's the best.
So if you're ever in southern Nevada and you see an at lettle Sedanda's BBEPI hi.
Yep, yep, I've gotten uh, definitely weird looks. A lot of people think that I'm like in Atlanta Falcons or Atlanta Braves fan because at l a tl but.
Right, Nope, nope, it's out ladders.
It's ancient, ancient throwing weapons.
Well, you won't be alone. I think after this episode there's a lot of people who are gonna be pumped about at lettles, myself include so.
I hope so. And if anybody is making or throwing it out lattles, they have questions, they want to talk to me about it attles more. There's nothing more I loved than talkout lettles. So I am available. My dms are open for any allatt related questions.
Uh, that's great. You're gonna watch out. You're gonna get a uh yep barage. Yeah.
I also, Hey, I also do ax throwing and knife throwing, and I throw slings and I make my own slings as well, So I, you know, do a little bit of everything.
I think one thing that's really admirable about you too is that you really do put yourself out there in a way that lets these opportunities kind of open up to you. That's really infectious. I think that's such a good lesson.
Well, thank you. I like to pride myself about like my passion for things is my favorite part about myself. I just dive, I dive deep, and I just want to share that with as many people as possible.
You do a very good job. I'm so excited to watch this ad a lot. Now, this a little movie is gonna be so good. So ask smart people's stupid questions about their obsessions and before you know your carbon stuff in the backyard and watching horror Flix involving a man in a moss covered wan. Say now for more napped, obsidian and elegantly chucked weaponry, follow Angela on Twitter and Instagram. He's that I dig it first with a one for the first. You can check out the World at Lettle
Association at world at little dot org. You can also check out Angelo's podcast, which is not at all about at Lottles, but rather about his other passion, which is samples and pop music, and it's called Sample Excavator's at sample Excavator on Twitter, and Instagram. It's wonderful and that movie is The Silencing and it's out August fourteenth. We make zero dollars off of talking about it. Just a
thought it. It was interesting And for more links to all of this, you can see aliward dot com slash Ologies slash Experimental Archaeology and there's going to be a link to that in the show notes, as well as to the Black Trial Collective. And we are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali Ward with one L on both ologies. Merch is at Ologiesmarch dot com and we have all manner of ways to show your
ologies love. Thank you to Shannon Feldsabonni Dutch, two sisters who hosts the comedy podcast To You are That for managing our merch. Thank you Eron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White and all the Ologies podcast transcribers and Caleb Patten who bleeps the episodes. Transcripts and kids Safe Bleeped episodes are up for free at aliward dot com slash Ologies Dash Extras. There's a link to that in the show notes too.
Thank you Noel Dilworth, who gets all the interviews scheduled and more, and to assistant editor mister Jared Sleeper, who hosts the mental health podcast in a Good Bad Brain and who absolutely wants to go to the desert and fling these things, and to the fletchings on our darts, Stephen Ray Morris, who is a lead editor. He also hosts the podcast The per Cast about kiddies and see Jurassic Write about Dinosaurs and Nick Thorburn wrote and performed theme music. And if you stick around the end of
the episode, you know I tell you a secret. And this week's secret is that if you can hear any bumping upstairs, that's my parents. We're getting ready to go to the doctor to take my dad get the staples out and they are waiting for me and I have about two minutes to get up there and out into the car. Okay, next week see then, yeah, how gamer.
Bye ooh, I'm gonna grib you sweaty here.
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