From the Vault: The Dog with the Burning Brand

Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we got an art question to start off with. Uh,

have you out there? Have you ever been wandering through a museum and looking at old paintings, especially maybe paintings from the medieval Europe or from the Renaissance period, and you happen to come across a dog holding in its mouth maybe what looks like a big, old rolled up newspaper that's on fire, or, as as many people on the Internet have characterized it, smoking a joint or smoking

a hand rolled cigarette. You know, I have to admit that I had I had never noticed this before, and I'm I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel like I've I've walked through a number of really good art museums. I I've enjoyed in the past diving into sort of detail oriented topics that involve paintings, and yet I have never witnessed the joint smoking dog or the firebrand bearing dog before until it was brought to my attention by an an art net dot com

blog post or article that we were talking about. Right, So, I don't know how you came across the but you were the one who sent it to me. And this was a blog post by an American art critic named Ben Davis. Uh. That's very funny, and it is addressing the question of why are there so many medieval and Renaissance paintings that depict a do what looks like a dog smoking a joint. That is the way the author

phrases it. And it's it's quite amusing because it includes images examples of this and when you start looking at them, yeah, it looks like these dogs that they're doing something they're either they're holding some sort of a joint like object or at the very least, they have fire. They have fire in a way that seems totally out of keeping with what dogs actually want and do in reality. So

a few examples. There is one painting from the sixteen sixties by an artist named Jande Pereha that features a very cute dog laid out on the ground with stubby little four legs tucked up under his pawnchy chest, and there is a bouquet of white flowers tossed to the round in front of him, and then between his jaws, he is clutching a foot long white cylinder that is

on fire on the end opposite of his mouth. And yes, it does look like some kind of giant cigarette or something of that kind, but it could also be maybe a candle. I don't know. It's just a white thing that's on fire. Yeah, And the dog has a very relaxed vibe doing this, and it's just kind of a chalky, relaxed dog. It doesn't look like like I'm going to burn your city down or anything like that. He's just

hanging out. This is a smooth chalk. All these that I'm mentioning are featured in that that article by Ben Davis, by the way. But so there's another painting from the sixteen eighties by Claudio Coello, and it is a portrait of a certain religious figure, but excluding the central figure

for a second. In the bottom left of the frame, there's a black and white dog with a kind of skunk coloration pattern, and he is biting what looks like a fence post that's on fire, and you can see his little under fang's in the lower canins holding fast to that burning steak. Yeah, now this one looks a little more fierce, a little more mischievous even uh. There

he's also next to a spherical object. I forget what you call these um in religious iconography of Catholicism, but it reminds me of a globe, and so I get kind of this feeling of the dog threatening to torch the earth. Well, and that also seems to be a theme, because here's yet another one that was in Davis's post. So this is by jose guild Castro from eighteen seventeens. This is a later painting, but once again there is a person at the center of this painting, but in

the lower right corner, there is a bizarre scene. There's this big old blue sphere like a big azure beach ball, and then on top of the ball there is a dog. Except this dog looks ferocious. He is showing all his sharp little teeth and he's digging into the ball with his claws, and once again he's holding a burning stick in his mouth, except this time he's holding the stick so that the business end, the end that's on fire, is stabbing into the blue ball like he's trying to

burn a hole in it. So what's up here? Well, Davis explains, actually, uh, this is religious iconography. These are animals that mean something. Uh. So I mentioned that in most of these artworks the central subject is a person rather than a dog. And then there's a dog with a with a burning stick or a cigarette or whatever down in the corner. The person in the middle of

the painting is almost always one of two people. It is either St. Jayne Santa Juana of of Aza or her son St. Dominic Santo Domingo, who was a very important figure in the history of the Catholic Church lived from the twelfth to the thirteenth century, and he was a Catholic priest who founded the Dominican Order in twelve sixteen. Uh to read from Davis quote, thereby setting the world

on fire metaphorically in terms of spreading the faith. As a matter of fact, two Dominican preachers were sometimes called Domini Khans or the dogs of the lords. It's a very good medieval pun for you. But so according to legend St. Dominic's mother St. Jane, was granted a premonition in the form of a vision from God. And in her vision she saw that she was pregnant, but with a dog, and the dog carried a flaming torch in its mouth. And then when she, in the vision, gave

birth to the dog, it was running around. It darted all over the place with the torch and set fire to everything. And this was interpreted to me and that her son would metaphorically set the world on fire, meaning he would preach a message that would reach the ends of the earth. And so by establishing the Dominican Order, I think you know, they were largely well. They had a number of concerns, but one of them was like

preaching against heresies of the Middle Ages. So if you're a heretic, you need to watch out for the dog with the flaming brand because it is coming to set the world on fire. Now, I have to say, in some of these images I totally get this vibe, you know, particularly that one that where he's not he's not actually making contact with the globe like object, but he seems to be threatening to do so. I can see it. This is a vision dog. This is a dog that

is bringing prophecy from divine realms. But that first guy that that that that chunky one we were talking about, he I don't know. He He doesn't look like he's wandered out of any vision. He looks like the painter had a much beloved dog in his life and decided, well, if I'm going to put in this dog of prophecy, I'm gonna put my dog Schnkers in there. And uh, and that's who I want to paint. You know, this is something I often wonder looking at old paintings and

sculptures of religious figures. So if there's a a painting of of John the Baptist where he looks really hunky, is it because this person, you know, the painter was filled with religious fervor for this scene involving John the Baptist and really wanted to depict that or is it because he like had a friend or a model or something that he really wanted to paint And he's like, who can I I'll say this guy is John the Baptist. Yeah. Yeah, And ultimately I think in some cases that is the reality.

You have painters who want to paint, say the human form and it are you know, obsessed with the with anatomy and the and how to properly relate that in the painting. But how are you going to do that and get paid? You know? Uh, well this could be this could be the dog version, right, yeah. So this is like you're saying, this is his dog that he loves and he was just wants to paint the dog. He's like, how can I? Oh, I know this is the dog of the vision of St. Jayne. Yeah yeah,

and he's looking right at you. It's a beautiful painting. It's a very lifelike rendering of this dog. Yeah. Wanda parade ha two thumbs up. I love your chunk. Now, all this talk of of holy dogs and uh, you know Catholic tradition, you know this, this is all well and good, but uh, one one question that it certainly arises, is do we find anything like this anywhere else in the world, Because on one hand, like I said, this is not something dogs do, This is not something around yeah,

carry fire around it. In fact, I was looking around to find any account of this happening, certainly any like videos of like, oh, here's our dog, he likes to carry a flaming brand around the house, and I found virtually nothing. The closest I came was a video that allegedly is of a dog swooping in to grab a lit firework before it can blast off. Yeah, exactly the same Here I was. I was thinking, is this a natural phenomenon or their observed conditions where a dog will

commonly pick up a flaming stick? And I was looking all over the place and found nothing really except I found a couple of instances of people talking about dogs that had specifically been trained to carry a flaming torch or something, but it was just in the context of dogs being trained to do all kinds of tricks like

jump through a flaming hoop or anything like that. So I think carrying a flaming torch is something you could train a dog to do in the s that you can train a dog to do just about anything, So it would stand a reason. It would seem possible that

maybe this is just a one off. You know, it's certainly if we believe this, uh, this story, that this is a dog of vision and prophecy, you know, just sort of random dream imagery that comes together, uh, you know, or some sort of a vision, some sort of hallucination whatever the you know, the the real world. Uh. Situation might be that maybe this is just something that occurs once in human traditions and we're not likely to expect to see it pop up anywhere else. And yet I

found one. I found another dog with a with a flaming stick. Uh, And I'm not I'm still not sure exactly what to make of it. How much of it we can sort of chalk up to, uh, you know, cultural convergent evolution or if if if, ultimately we can get down to certain realities about dogs and humans, humanities, relationship with the dog. Um. You know, I think maybe it's a little bit of both of those. So you might so wondering where is this Where do we have

to go to find this other dog with the flaming brand? Well, we have to travel once more to pre Columbian um Mesoamerica. We have to travel to the Aztec world and and also the Mayan world, and look to the fire carrying dog in these cultures as well. Okay, I'm ready to go. All right, Well, let's start with Aztecs and I'll come back to some of the Mayan examples. But uh, just to refresh the Aztec world. This flourished in the central

Mexico from around thirteen hundred to fifteen twenty one. They rose out of obscurity among various indigenous peoples of the region and became a dominant power. Now, civilizations are, of course a human affair, but of course they always entail other species, including domesticated plants and animals. So we've discussed the importance of maize to the Aztecs as well as

other crops, but they also had some domesticated animals. The Their domestic animals included turkeys, which I believe we discussed Aztecs and their turkeys in the past. Also bees. I think there are some cases for ducks and geese and maybe quail, but I see that in some sources but on others, So I'm I'm not entirely certain that that is a definite or or maybe even a universal reality

of of of Aztecs. Maybe there were certain regions where they may have had some domestic ducks and geese, but for the most part, when you talk about the domesticated animals of the Aztecs, you're talking about the turkey, you're talking about bees, and you're talking about the dog, the old, reliable, the dogs always there, Yes, yeah, and and and I really think it's important to keep in mind through all this that I think that's that seems to be a

universal thing. I think that ultimately the way that like the medieval Europeans viewed the dog is largely in keeping with the way Aztecs and Miyan's viewed the dog as well. They're gonna be some differences, uh as well discuss, but I think ultimately there's a lot about the dog being man's best friend in all of this. You know, the dog is the creature that sticks by you. And and maybe ultimately, like that is where we get this idea of the dog carrying the flame, because who else is

going to carry the flame for humanity? Is it going to be the cat? Now, So I was reading about all of this in the Use and Significance of Animals in Aztec Rituals by Maria Konvalineri from twenty from two thousand and nine, and she points out a few important things here. First of all, she points out that the Aztecs were relatively poor in domesticated animals compared to various other cultures we might look to. Common people would only eat meat on special occasions. They had no draft animals.

The turkey was ultimately their greatest domestic meat source, and their eggs also provided protein. But they also had dogs, and not merely one variety of dogs or just dogs in the generic sense. They had several varieties of dog, and one of these was apparently used almost to exclusively for food. And this was true if the Mayans as well, as Alan Jay Christensen points out in pople Vou The Sacred Book of the Maya, Volume one, the Mayans also depended on the dog, the turkey, and the honey bee.

And these dogs were quote small, fat, nearly hairless. Uh. And they didn't bark. But that But here's the important thing to drive home is that they weren't just it wasn't just a food species. They were both food and pet this was a creature that would that was a companion, that was a pet, but then also under certain circumstances, again not every day, but but but when necessary, it was also a food species. Now some of the details of the Aztec dog they were apparently I'm reading three

different rough varieties. There's the medium sized furred dog. The it's quintly and this was also a hunting dog. So that's an important thing to keep in mind too, like the dog also has this purpose and cultures around the world where it's helping us acquire food. Then there is the medium sized hairless dog, and this is the showlitz quently and this is um this this would have been a dog that would have been used as one of

these these pets slash food dogs. And then there's also a short legged fur dog and this is the clou cheche and I'm reading that this one might have also been a meat dog at times as well. Now, according to UH Confelinary, it seems that the hairless variety was primarily the food dog, at least in some regions, but

again only for special occasions. UH And there are Aztec depictions of their wrinkled hairless faces and these are worth looking up like it's it's undeniable, Like this is not a um um, you know, a loupine or type of a dog face. This is not the face of a coyote. Coyotes were of course also around in the wild. No,

this is the face of the domestic dog. And I do think we need to be careful, of course, not to equate the consumption of dog meat with cruelty to animals in this context, at least no more than we might equate any traditional historic meat consumption to cruelty. Because as confelinary stresses, these dogs were also pets. Uh certainly with the furred varieties, but even the hairless ones, they would have been well treated, and they fulfilled the role

of both pet and food. And there was a religious reason to treat dogs well, be they you know, hunting dog or a dog that would be used for for for food. At some point, dogs were seen as psychopomps by the Aztecs, which is to say, it was the role of the dog to shepherd the human soul across the ninefold stream to reach the center of the underworld. The afterlife of Midland. Interesting. Yeah, and in some accounts you have to be very particular about the color of

the dog. I found this interesting. Uh. The idea was that white dogs have just bathed, and therefore they're not going to enter the waters. They're not gonna get you across the ninefold Stream to the center of the afterlif um. Black dogs, on the other hand, they will cross, but they can only carry their own souls. What you need is like a yellow dog. That it's the dog that's gonna get you across the ninefold stream. Uh, that's gonna

carry its own soul, but also yours. Interesting now, Confolinari shares a great quote from twentieth century pre Columbian art expert Elizabeth P. Benson on all of this. It kind of sums up and extrapolates on why the dog. Why is the dog the psychopomp uh? Benson wrote, Dogs are appropriate escorts for the dead. They walk with their noses to the ground. They dig in the earth, barry bones and hunt in burrows. They eat carrion and make themselves

smell of it. They have night vision. They howl at night. They know what is there in the darkness relating to the earth, the dead, things to sounds and smells that are imperceptible to humans. Dogs have esoteric knowledge and special connections with the underworld. Oh that's a wonderful observation about the the inferred supernatural power of a dog, just because of the different kind of sense realms a dog can occupy. That the dog detects something in the darkness before you do.

They hear it before you do. They might be able to see or smell things that you can't see, or smell or certainly smell things you can't smell. So you would you would agree with this as a dog owner, Oh yeah, pretty much. Any dog owner, I think, would have the experience of the dog knows something around the

house is going on before you do. They know that somebody is approaching the front door before you do, or you take maybe you go out back in the darkness and in the nighttime, and the dog knows something is there that you don't detect in any way, and maybe it's a possum on top of the fence or something um but but yeah, yeah, the the dog is aware of things before you're aware of them, and sometimes things

that you never become aware of. Maybe it um it it's attention perks up and it barks at something in the darkness that comes and goes, and then it's gone and you never see what it is that could given the right mindset, leads someone to believe that the dog is maybe interacting with spirits or interacting with with with something beyond the human sense realm. Yeah. Yeah, And of course, even if you're not going to the spiritual uh extreme

of that interpretation, undoubtedly the dog is a protector. The dog is raising an alarm. Even if it can't bark, it'll raise some sort of an alarm that's something is perhaps there that shouldn't be. Uh. It's gonna play a role in protecting, uh, the domicile, perhaps also helping to protect the crops to some degree. Yeah, So that's important to keep in mind here as well. But there's another thing mentioned in Benson's quote that is also interesting about

the association with with say death and carrion. I mean, so as as beautiful and sweet and pure as as dogs are, at least in my mind, they're also they're interested in disgusting dead things that humans that will make the human senses revolt and that will make you want to stay away. But the dog wants to approach. So it makes sense. This is this is a world they understand we may be repelled by and therefore, who's going to guide you through the realms of death? You're good,

old dog. Now. One of the issues here is that the dog, if this dog is gonna guide you through the afterlife, it also needs to cross over with you as well. It needs to be buried with you. And thus dogs were also used in ritual sacrifice by the Aztecs. But where does fire come into all this, you're probably wondering. So far this dog has not been running around with fire. Well,

we're gonna We're gonna get to that here. Um, those certainly the idea of the dog guiding you through a dark underworld that that already leans itself to interpretations of a dog carrying some sort of fire, a dog lighting the way and being your guide through the darkness. So the next fact worth mentioning in all this current concerns the Aztec god Scholatte, described guy by Confallinari as skeletal,

dog faced or dog bodied. Now, Sholatl is the twin of quetzal Codal, also described as the god of monsters and the patron deity of twins, both human twins and also just sort of general twinning in nature anytime something seems to have a dual existence or nature, and the connection here does seem to be to the domestic dog too. When we're talking about this this god being dog faced

or dog bodied, it's not the coyotes face. It's a you know, which was a wild scavenger and is also sometimes associated with the god of the smoking mirror uh ts catl Polca. Depictions of Scholatto, including one discovered during the construction of the Mexico City subway system, includes details clearly associated with the hairless, wrinkle faced domestic dog. So to be clear, food pet dog reflected in the divine image here, not a wild dog or even a hunting dog.

This is uh this is the the hairless, wrinkly dog that is the face or even the body of the divine. So you've got a picture here of this, this carving of the dog face. Yeah, and it is unmistakably doggy because you see the wrinkles in the skin, and you see the kind of relatively stubby snout compared to what you'd see with like a wolf for a coyote. Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. So there doesn't seem to be any mystery here concerning this god's connection to the domestic dog. So

to the Aztecs, dogs were important. They were valued for their companionship, their loyalty, their food value, their protective nature to both the family and the crops. They were important enough to be the likeness of a major deity, a god of twins and monsters, but also a god of lightning and fire. So this raises the question, right, why is the dog also associated with fire and Aztec traditions. Well, here we come at last yet to the idea of

the Aztec dog as firebringer. Herman Buyer explored this in the Symbolic Meaning of the Dog in Ancient Mexico, published in the in the American Anthropologists back in nine eight. Now referring back to the different dog varieties again, there's that medium sized furred dog, or it's quintly, but it's quintly also just means dog more generally. And then the

dog also played a role in the Aztec zodiac. So the day of this dog it occurs at the end and is therefore associated with the god miclant Culti, lord of the Realm of the dead, who rules over Micklin with his bride. And we see this in my traditions as well as Buyer points out where the symbol for dog is mainly a thorax and a skeleton. A thorax yeahora like an insect thorax. Yeah. I was looking at examples of it, and UM, I don't know. The comparison is maybe a little lost on me because I'm just

not used to looking at these characters. But I mean, I take I take the researchers word for it. I mean, I guess mammals would have a thorax too, so it

would be like the dog's chest sort of. Now to come back to Chilato here, Uh, Buyer writes that Schilato's job is also to carry the sun through the underworld and is associated with a particular constellation in the night sky that was known as the fire Sticks, and so the association here, Buyer rights, is that the fire drill method of fire production is is linked to the dog and to this deity. The constellation here is possibly the

Belt of Orion. Um. I've seen some some back and forth on that, but I think the Belt of Orion is the popular UH interpretation of discussions of this particular constellation. And he's also associated with the Polades star cluster and the fire drill method of fire production. This would be a friction based method for forgetting a fire going right for it would involve a setup for rapidly rotating one piece of wood on another to generate heat through friction

that would help spark some kindling. Yeah, we we discussed this a bit in our Fire Technology series of invention episodes. This would have been a very early way to produce fire. And you also see Prometheus type characters and other religions and traditions that that are closely associated with the fire drill. I've seen the Chinese version of this as being referred to in translation as the fire driller. So it makes sense that the primordial connection with fire production would be

tied in with this technology. Now there's also there also does seem to be a connection as well between Scholatl and Venus appearing in Then in the Night Sky as a morning star. Again, we're getting into this idea that that this deity and or the dog carry the fire through the underworld, carry the sun through the underworld. And so this gets into the idea of like where does Venus go? Where does the sun go when it is not in the sky. Well, it is of course traveling

beneath the earth, it is traveling through the underworld. So um, in all of this, I have to stress that I'm I'm not giving full justice to the complexity and richness of Aztec astrology here. Whole books have been written about Aztec astrology, uh and and it. But it seems that that there are complex astrological associations between dogs and death and fire, and that these worked in unison with less abstract aspects of the dog's nature and role in society.

And it's just overall value to humanity. Now in in my in traditions, as reflected in the Mind codices, the dog is also the firebringer. I was reading about this in The Dragon and the Dog, Two Symbols of Time in Non All Religion by Frank J. Newman. Newman writes, quote, the dog is often depicted in the Maya codices carrying a torch, perhaps a reference to the Maya tradition that the dog brought fire to mankind, and the head of a dog is sometimes part of the compound glyph which

represents the fire drill. Okay, so, if I'm understanding everything I've been looking at here, it sounds as if we have a few things going on sort of feeding into each other. First of all, astrological associations between dogs and fire uh. Secondly mythological connotations of the dog or dog headed deities as firebringers. And then connections some mythological and some astrological connecting dogs to the dead and to the

realm of the dead. And on top of that, though, I think perhaps some manner of bleed over between control of fire as a major factor in human civilization and the importance of the domestic dog, which again, in this context, would have served pretty much all of the values placed on the domestic dog in the modern context you know, companion, guardian, etcetera, with the added context of being the their only domestic

cated mammalian protein source. You know, again, they did not have the domesticated cow, with the domesticated pig, all of these these other creatures to to help provide the nutrition they needed. The dog was the only domestic mammal that could fulfill that that need. I've also read that at least in some Mesoamerican traditions and accounts, the dog is credited with discovering corn, which would would also be a

huge achievement on par with fire in some regards. Uh. So, so again we see these multiple connections here that that speak to the dog's role in civilization, like the fact that humans have mastery over things that enable them to to build civilizations and to keep going year after year. Uh, and to pass on something to to their children. Uh. It's the fire, it's the crops that are key, but

also the dog. Yeah, this is a fascinating triangle that sort of says something about about the human species, of the triangle of humans, dogs and fire and uh. And so I wanted to transition from here to look at a little bit of the scientific evidence and and current leading hypotheses about the history of the relationship between humans and these two elements of nature and of technology, in fact, of fire and of dogs. Um. So, one of the things I wanted to start off with here is remembering

an interesting fact from some of our past episodes. We did a couple of episodes about um about the history of fire on planet Earth, and and the observation is this Earth is sometimes thought of as the water planet, which is a good descriptor there's a lot of liquid water on our surface. But I think it's also quite

reasonable to think of Earth as the fire planet. Earth is really the only place in the Solar System that allows for fire, certainly in significant amounts, because in order to burn, fire needs heat, fuel, and oxygen, and there are plenty of places in the Solar System where you can find lots of heat, but fuel and free oxygen are much more scarce. The Earth is absolutely packed with

these two things. It is packed with fuel in the form of concentrated carbon molecules produced by the biosphere, and it is packed with free oxygen in the atmosphere, which is also produced by the biosphere. So so the conditions giving rise to the the potential for free burning fires actually are very much a product of Earth's biology, the

presence of life on Earth. Beyond that, another interesting thing that makes Earth the fire planet is that, like humans don't have to be there to start fires, Earth's weather systems naturally provide the flint that continually strikes natural fires in the form of lightning. So Earth is a place where where fire is not only possible, but fire occurs.

Right now, to come back to what we were talking about earlier, Yes, Earth has fire, Earth has dogs, but you really don't see a lot of crossover between the two um. In addition to what I mentioned earlier, mean the most I really came across was the idea that, yes, dogs will warm themselves by fires, be at a camp

fire or even some other form of fire. There are situations where dogs have been observed to take advantage of that heat, but other than that, there they don't seem to really interact with fire much, which makes sense most you know, most species, even those that have a life cycle that depends on periodic burns. It doesn't mean that their anatomy is has has evolved to actually deal with

the reality of fire. Right now, there are some examples we've discussed before on the show of animals appearing to, at least according to some reports, make direct use of fire. For example, the fire hawks of of Australia, which have been alleged to uh say, use burning sticks to start fires to drive out prey animals that they can then

swoop down an attack. UM. I could not find any evidence of any species of Canada, or any carnivore mammal for that matter, doing anything like this, So so this does not appear to be some thing that happens at nature. In nature, at least on a regular basis, but this did get me thinking about the history of human domestication of fire and of human domestication of dogs, both of which are fascinating and contentious subjects deep in our past.

Um So a few facts. First of all, while there's a lot we don't know about both of these subjects, I do think it's very clear that our human ancestors

domesticated fire long before they domesticated dogs. So for a few facts about the general timeline of fire development among ancient humans and human ancestors, I was looking at a paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences from twenty sixteen by a professor of archaeology at the University of Liverpool named John Gault, and it's called the discovery of fire by humans a long and

convoluted process. So in summarizing the existing evidence, Galllet writes that finding evidence of fire use by really ancient humans and human ancestors is sometimes difficult, right because fire is not like it's not like a stone artifact, though it does leave physical traces that you can uncover. And he writes that by about one point five million years ago, there are a number of sites occupied by our hominan ancestors that show signs of burned material consistent with deliberate

fire use. Now, one point five million years ago is a long time ago, but but this far back the evidence is somewhat inconsistent, and it's worth noting that the presence of fire at a human or or hominin campsite is not necessarily evidence of the ability to strike fire from nothing, say, by using a fire drill or flint and tinder box or anything like that. Human humans and human ancestors probably captured and preserved fires from nature long

before we had reliable fire striking methods. But Gallant writes that by the time of the Middle Place a scene, so that would be between about three quarters of a million years ago and about a hundred and twenty five thousand years ago. Quote recognizable hearths demonstrate a social and economic focus on many sites, so the Middle plis too. Scene seems to be pretty widely accepted as a time

by which fire use became widespread and common among humans. Now, as wonderful as dogs are, fire is probably more pivotal to human history and evolution. It's it's necessary for the development of almost all post Stone Age technology so all technologies based on metal involved the use of fire and their creation. Basically, all technologies after the Neolithic period would

need fire in order to be made. And this reminds me of the quote that outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend, but inside of a dog it's too dark to read. You need the fire. Yeah, Mark's brother said, yeah, you need the fire. But even past the role of fire in creating a lot of lady or stages of human technology, it's even been hypothesized that fire has played major roles in in changes to

human biology. And this is not something that's known for sure, but there are a number of theories that involve the intersection of fire and changes to humans are our ourselves our own biology. So one major example is the cooking hypothesis, which I think we've alluded to on the show before. Maybe someday we should devote a full episode to that

talk about some of the evidence for and against. But this is a hypothesis put forward by a British anthropologist and primatologist named Richard Wrangham, which argues that there is a link between the invention of cooking, which necessitates fire, and the shape of modern human bodies, guts, and brains, and in Rangam's own words from a paper dealing with some of the more recent evidence for and against this hypothesis, quote, the cooking hypothesis posits that control of fire leads to

such a large increase in energy acquisition, and that means through eating and reduces the physical challenges of eating food so greatly that the evolution of an obligation to incorporate cooked food into the diet should be recognizable by evidence of novel digestive adaptations and increased energy use. Yeah, we have to remember that with cooking, we're talking about to

a very large degree, the externalization of human digestion. Things that that previously, if we were going to digest it, it was all going to have to happen inside of us. Now we could, we could take steps towards the acquisition of those nutrients, sometimes nutrients that would not be available to us if we did not cook them. We're able

to do that outside the human body, right. I mean, as sort of central to what Rangum is saying here is that subsisting entirely on a raw food diet versus subsisting on a cooked food diet, that is such a huge difference that you would expect basically different kinds of animals. That is a gigantic adaptation that would change change. It would change the way your mouth needs to work. You would need to devote way less energy to having a strong jaw for chewing and crushing. It would change the

way your gut needs to work. And of course the body could maybe spin that energy on other things. And like I said, maybe we should come back and do a whole episode on that someday, because yeah, I was looking at some of the arguments for and against this, and it seems like an interesting debate. But so not to say that the cooking hypothesis is necessarily correct, but I do think it's inarguable that fire is a major part of the development of all human culture and shapes

our lives tremendously. So some use of fire by human ancestors probably goes back more than a million years uh, the use of fire was common among human ancestors at least a few hundred thousand years ago by most estimates. The domestication of dogs seems to be roughly in order of magnitude more recent. So if common use of fire goes back at least a few hundred thousand years. Domestication of dog seems to go back in the past few tens of thousands of years than now on the scientific

evidence for the history of the domestication of dogs. There's also a lot of disagreement here. But there was one recent development I've actually been wanting to talk about on the show for a bit, and this gives us a good chance to do it today. So there was a paper that was published just earlier this year by Angela our period all published in p n a S called Dog Domestication and the Dual Dispersal of People and Dogs

into the Americas. And this was a paper that was trying to settle some some ongoing debates and outstanding questions about the history of dog domestication and how that relates

to the history of human migration over the continents. And so this study tried to use DNA evidence from both dogs and humans to try to trace the history of the relationship between the two and uh according to the authors here, they're findings suggests quote that dogs were domesticated in Siberia by about twenty three thousand years ago, possibly while both people and wolves were isolated during the harsh

climate of the Last Glacial maximum. Dogs then accompanied the first people into the Americas and traveled with them as humans rapidly dispersed into the continent beginning about fifteen thousand years ago. So I was reading a really good write up of this new paper by David Grimm in Science that fills in some more context on this and give

some texture to it. So um, according to the model put forward by the study, Grim rights that the people who domesticated dogs probably lived in the area of northeastern Siberia during the later part of the last Glacial period the Last Ice Age, and these would have been human hunter is using stone tipped weapons who probably subsisted on megafauna like bison and wooly ma'am myths and the wolf like ancestors of modern dogs may have actually been helping

these humans in their hunting. And then from here, from this ancestral population in northeastern Siberia, the descendants of these proto dogs went both east and west with their human companions, so east into the Americas and then west into Eurasia. So the team behind the study, they relied on physical evidence in the form of mitochondrial DNA from a human and dog remains. Mitochondrial DNA is more readily preserved over time and say fossil remains and animal remains than DNA

from the nucleus of cells. And they concluded that all lineages of dogs that accompanied the first human settlers into North America shared a common ancestor that was indicated by a genetic marker called A to B. And the researchers believe these dogs who have descended from this common ancestor population that were these domestic did or semi domesticated dogs born in the company of humans in North Siberia about

twenty three thousand years ago. Now imagining the sort of setting of this ancestral population of of wolves turning into dogs and the humans that we're creating them. Uh, the setting here is is something like twenty three to thirty one thousand years ago in this area of northeastern Siberia that Grim rights was apparently relatively temperate compared to the areas all around it, and it was that way for

thousands of years. So you have to imagine a place that during a an ice age is surrounded on the east and the west by regions that are probably too cold and barren to sustain the lifestyle of of these human hunter gatherers, and so basically they would have been isolated in these hunting grounds in northeastern Siberia that it was kind of an oasis in which they could live. And there were also populations of wolves occupying this relative oasis in in the last glacial period along with these

human hunters. Now we'll come back to that oasis concept in a minute, but first I wanted to mention that we're not sure how exactly the domestication of dogs happened. You know, you want to be careful not to put too much confidence in people trying to tell a plausible story that could explain things, because we don't know for sure. But there's a common hypothesis on the domestication process leading from the wolf to the domestic dog that seems pretty plausible,

and it goes like this. So you have humans who are hunting and gathering food and maybe making these large mega fauna kills. You know, they're killing a wooly mammoth, row a bison or something and roasting meat over the fire at camp sites, and wild wolves are obviously drawn to the smell of the food that humans have harvested, and then from here, it's possible that a selection process

kicks in and it would go something like this. Wolves that are too skittish around humans, they just don't you know, they keep their distance. They don't want anything to do with humans. Humans are too scary, uh, they stay back. Obviously, any wolves that were too aggressive or violent about approaching humans would react with with violence, and probably those wolves

would be killed. But wolves that happen to have behavioral predispositions causing them to approach humans but not approach aggressively, would probably get to share in some of the scraps at the human campsite. They would somehow get by their proximity to human encampments, get to maybe I don't know, scavenge the remains or maybe non the bones that the humans tossed away, or maybe even humans would deliberately share

with them, you know, who knows. And sort of imagine how that there could be a crossover between the two, like from toleration to perhaps active feeding over time. You know, it is clear that these dogs are not a threat, and hey, maybe they're actually amusing. Maybe they're interesting to look at, uh, And and everything can build up from there. Sure, and so again, if this hypothesis is in any way correct. These brave but docile scavengers, the dogs, the wolves who

would approach but wouldn't be aggressive. They would benefit from the extra food rewards they would get from proximity to these human campsites, and from that extra food they would have a survival advantage, and over generations there would be these populations of of wolf like creatures or proto dogs, these canids who would essentially have bred themselves to become

friendly companions to humans. At some point, the humans would probably have found out that these proto dogs were useful for hunting and maybe even for friendship and so forth. So again, uh, you know, we don't know that this is how it happened, but this is a commonly entertained, plausible history of what could have happened here. And it's interesting that if there's anything to this hypothesis, the process that led to the creation of dogs was in part

their ancestors willingness to walk toward the fire. Yeah. Yeah, the dog that tolerates the heat, the light, the dog that that steps into the glow of the fire. Yeah. That article by David Graham and Science actually quotes one of the collaborators on the study and archaeologist named David Meltzer, who I believe is on faculty at Southern Methodist University uh And, and his quote is great. He says, these people were probably sleeping on the ground in furs, roasting

fresh kills on the fire. If you're a hungry carnivore and you smell a mammoth barbecue, you're going to check it out. And so, yeah, I like the idea that, you know, maybe in the same way that cooking changed humans, something cooking could have possibly played a role in the attraction of these wolf like ancestors of modern dogs. Yeah, and I find it interesting to think about this and then think about, you know, the end result with with

mine and as tech situation civilization. To imagine these Eurasian people's moving across the world uh over into North America and then downward towards Meso American and South America. If what did they bring with them? You know, obviously they brought their cultures and their traditions and their knowledge, but they but they brought with them the fire, and they brought with them the dog. You know, a lot of

the other things they may have brought with them. In the short term would have given way to new crops, the new plants they might discover, new animals they might discover, but the fire and the dog were certainly constants. Now, one last thing I wanted to come back to with this study from earlier this year. There's one possible catch in this, this hypothetical process by which the earliest ancestors

of dogs were created. It might be kind of problematic to imagine that nomadic humans who are moving all over the place to to follow, say, their prey animals, you know, they're the nomadic human hunters, could have created these dogs because they would be moving and so encountering probably new population of wolves wherever they went, so that there might not be enough repeated exposure to the same populations of

wolves to create the dogs. But one of the things put forward in this study is that it would have had this sort of oasis place in in northeastern Siberia that was surrounded on all sides by more harsh environments. So you would have the humans staying in a relatively stable location and wolf populations staying in the same uh place with them, So you'd have them just interacting in close quarters for thousands of years at a time, and this could have given the opportunity to actually kick off

and sustain this breeding process turning wolves into dogs. Huh. Interesting. You know, all of this reminds me of another little piece that came up, because in in a weird way, it has a little bit of the of the Catholic traditions, certainly has some of the Mayan traditions, but also some of these ideas we've been discussing dealing with the hypothesis

of of of dog domestication. I was reading in E. J. Silawowski's The Inside Flopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Volume six, and and I just want to read this

little quote from it here. Morris Siegel, to demonstrate the fusion of Spanish, Catholic, and Mayan Indian traits in the religions of Indians and modern Western Guatemala, recounts a cultured creation story he recorded there in nineteen forty one in which the child God, which the author says that equals Jesus in this scenario, son of our virgin mother, gathered together the meat bones from his uncle's feast, planted them,

and built a corral around the place. In three days, all the animals in the world had grown from the buried bones, and the uncle's jealous opened the corral and released the animals. Yet the dog was one of the few that remained, whether willingly or simply out of a failure to escape to live with human beings. WHOA, I like that because it again, it kind of gets into an idea about the dog, like the does the dog stick with us because it is clever or because it

is dumb? Because the dog is and I think it's ultimately neither of those. But you know that the idea that like, why is the dog the animal that seems closest to us, that is, that is man's best friend. But then also this account involves slaughter at a camp site, you know, it involves the bones of the dead, So we get that connection to this idea of the dog as the a is having an innate connection to the realms beyond death, but also this connection to human cooking. Yeah, totally.

I also like the way that this I don't know this something about this vision of the dog makes it both the most and least mysterious of creatures. You know, it's like the most familiar but also has one of the most intriguing histories that we, you know, is somewhat obscure to us. Yeah. Yeah, the idea that like the dog has just the dog is there. The dog has remained there. Uh. Even if you don't want the dog anymore, the dog will will stay, uh, which is kind of

reflected in this story. To the jealous uncles are like, get these animals, Get these animals out of here hanging out around our bones. The dog didn't go. The dog is here to stay. But I have to say, I do really like this idea of the dog is the firebringer and the dog and dog is the dog carrying the fire for humanity, lighting the way for us into the dark, because this does seem to just it's kind of lines up with a lot of the the attributes that we we recognize in our relationships with our pets,

you know, I mean, particularly with the dog. You know, this this is our buddy, This is he's a guide. He is a guardian and and perhaps has esoteric knowledge of the great beyond. All dogs are wizards. Yeah yeah, And so the next time you're you're making eye contact with your dog, just remember this animal knows the way to Micklin. Now, obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there, especially dog owners. I'm sure you have some

thoughts on all of this. I do want to drive home the Please do not try and give your dog anything on fire because of anything you heard in this episode. We're certain your dog doesn't want any part of the fire, and only disaster can occur if you try to recreate these artistic and mythic images um using an actual knine. Yes, children, do not try to recreate an active dog py romancy you heard about on this podcast. However, I will just

throw this out there. If you want to get a dog toy that looks like a torch or a flaming brand, they do exist, you can, but you can find them. I'm looking at a couple of varieties of these right now. So if you are inspired by this podcast and you want pictures of your dog holding a flaming brand, uh, you know, bringing some sort of vision to humanity. Uh yeah, just go spend nine to seventeen dollars and get yourself a a chew toy torch. Are these are these two

toys merch created by the Dominicans? Um, I know the Vatican gift shop. Let's see. I see one that is labeled as Frisco Mythical Mates of Viking Torch plus Squeaking Dog toy. Uh. It sounds lovely and it's available for like Okay, I don't know why it's a Viking thing. Like Vikings didn't come up in this podcast at all. It needs to be connected to the Mayans or to ut To Catholics, needs to be a Frisco Mythical Mates Catholic Torch plus Squeaking Dog toy or something. All right,

we're gonna go and close this one out. But yeah, certainly right in let us know. Tell us about your dog and if you have a dog that has one of these, uh, these two toys, yes, I would like to see a picture of the two together. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, just check out the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You can find that wherever you get your podcasts. We have core episodes publishing Tuesdays

and Thursdays. We have listener mail on Monday, we have an artifact on Wednesday, and we have a Weird House Cineam on Friday. That's our time to just talk about a weird movie and set the science most we aside for the time date hell and then we have a rerun on the weekends. Huge thanks as always to our

excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact that Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart radio, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.