The Horned Helm, Part 1

start with armor is really the helmet. I think the helmet is is one of these wonderful things to consider because on the one hand, there is the more sort of combat centric and you know, medieval uh, and even fantasy idea of a helmet or sci fi helmets, like you can get very fantastic with the concept. But at a very basic level, I feel like we all have some experience wearing a helmet, taking this bit of artificial exoskeleton, slipping it over our own skull, and then enjoying its protection.

Do you remember the scene in cone Heads where it is revealed that Dan Ackroyd's cone Head Belder enjoys driving a motorcycle, but he's not a fan of helmet laws. No, I don't remember this. Does he have a weird helmet or he just he can't wear human helmets. I would imagine that's the source of his frustration, because it seems like Belder is actually normally pretty much a rule follower. But but yeah, he doesn't like the helmets, and I think it's probably because he has to get one custom made.

Oh man, I haven't seen that forever, but I do remember it had a really fun stop motion monster towards the end. Yes, yeah, yeah, Beldar has gotta fight one with his golf skills. It also has a great line that, for some reason is is just used for all occasions around our house, which is your cone is too young. Well, you know, I I don't remember if they wore helmets in that at all, like the more like space centric cone heads, but I feel like there was some sort

of a hornyed crown that one of them war. Yeah, I think that's right. So one of the we're gonna be discussing helmets in general. But but one thing that we're also going to discuss here is the idea of the hornett helm a helmet with horns on it. It's it's an ancient motif in human civilization, and it ties into some of our earliest ceremonial practices and models of

imaginative thinking. There's also just something so elegant about the idea thing that may be worn upon the head and in doing so, transforms the individual from a mere human into something symbolically different, a hybrid of human and beasts, channeling the archaic, chaotic gods of the hunt. Oh yeah, I mean it's it's theory anthropy. It's what you see in those ancient cave paintings that's so exciting, when you start to see the human and the animal forms joined together,

suggesting fantastical thinking. It's clearly there in the horned helmet as well. Um, and and and so when you see these ancient motifs. Like one example that I was looking at before we came in here today was Roberty familiar with the sutton who helmet. Oh yes, yes, the sudden who helmet. I had to pull up a picture of it. But this is one of these that I remember from an early age seeing perhaps on the cover of a national geographic but it was certainly featured in some sort

of historical book that I had access to as a kid. Yeah, it's just spectacularly creepy. With these hollow eyes, the way the mustache is rendered on the plate of the face covering. I think it also had a leather component when it was actually worn. But it's this decorated Anglo saxon helmet from I think it was from the seventh century. It was buried in this in this ship burial somewhere in

East Anglia. And I've actually seen this up close and and they're there are replicas of it that are really cool because they reproduced the artwork that would have been originally visible on the sides and all the it's got all these panels over it. Basically it's a helmet covered with like comic strips, and in all the little panels there are scenes depicted. In one of them shows these figures, like human shaped figures with horns, apparently wearing some kind

of horned helmet. Oh wow, So evidence of hornet helmets on a helmet. That's wonderful, Yes, but it doesn't necessarily show the characters wearing horned helmets, say, going into battle. It appears to have more kind of a ritual or religious significance surrounding the horns. Yeah, and this seems to be basically underlying the earliest versions of of this, you know, hornet helmets go back thousands of years, as far back as twelfth century BC. We see this in Cyprus, Bronze

Age Europe, uh and uh. Generally, the idea is that, yeah, this probably has its origins and in against symbolic thinking and thinking and ritual and the idea that you're transforming, you're becoming something else, which of course has a role in combat as well, and a role in intimidation, a sort of role in the basic um uh behavior of making yourself look larger than you are sure. But but

then there's also this uh, imaginative side to it. There is this ritual aspect of melding man and beast, the symbolic or meaningful aspects of the horns as opposed to

having some kind of like combat purpose. That really comes through in some of the Japanese traditions you see where like they're they're the kabuto, the Japanese warrior helmets, where I believe a number of these helmets do actually have horns on them, sometimes deer antlers or cattle horns, but these would be linked to like a like a leadership class that they would be sort of a sign that you were a commander. Yeah, and we we definitely see this in in the early history of helmets as well,

which we'll get into. But in terms of just the idea of a horned helm, obviously we have a modern connotation with Vikings. Uh. This is my understanding. I know you're gonna get into this more. It's I think it's largely a nineteenth century association, but uh, there are plenty of other warriors, uh, and in symbolic warriors uh that actually wore horneted helms in Europe. And this included Bronze Age Danes, Medieval Germanic warriors, and then of course, so

we already mentioned Japanese samurai uh, armored warriors of Japan. Uh. And what one also sees horns and horn like crenulations as a common feature of crowns, which of course are not really about protecting the head. It's more like, let's take the thing, the symbolic thing a helmet can do, and just not worry about any of the protective aspects

to a certain extent, Yeah, totally. So to come back to the fact that the Vikings didn't actually wear horns, I think this at this point that's sort of one of those false facts that everybody knows that everybody knows at this point, you know, like most people have heard, Yeah, the Vikings didn't actually wear horned helmets. But the fact about where this Viking horn association comes from is pretty interesting and it's kind of surprising. There's a great paper

about this by a Yale linguistics professor named ROBERTA. Fry Inc. Published in the year two thousand and it's called The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet. And according to Frank, the origin of this misunderstanding that Viking warriors would wear horned helmets into battle that lies primarily with a late nineteenth century artist and costume designer named Carl Amile Dippler.

So Dirpler was a German artist and and was in charge of designing costumes for an eighteen seventy six Byroid production of Wagner's musical epic Der Ring des Nibelungen The Ring of Nibelung, which is a is a series of works. Uh. I think there's four different sort of phases in this cycle by Wagner, and it takes a lot of classic Norse mythology, but it sort of smashes it together with ideas about German national history and all these Germanic flavors.

And one of these conflations was in Dirpler's costumes. Dippler gave the gave several characters horned helmets, and this sparked the popular association between Vikings, who would have been roving Scandinavian warriors between something like the eighth and the eleventh century. And then this idea of horned helms, which would have actually been worn by some people, maybe some some ancient

Germanic people's, but not by the Vikings. But anyway, the spark of this association caught on, and there were other instances here and there, but within about twenty years it had become much more pervasive. ROBERTA. Frank writes quote. During the eighteen nineties, the horned helmeted Viking changed from a series of widely scattered occurrences into a kind of weather mass produced. Children's books were an ideal medium for imprinting the image on the popular imagination. So it becomes a

staple of children's books. And once it's in children's media, you know it's just going to be everywhere. Right, You're just in indicted at such a young age that even when you inevitably reach that point where you learn again the idea that everybody knows the Vikings didn't have horns, it's almost too late because that motif is just burned into your brain. Uh so you you end up carrying like both at the same time, contradictorily. Yeah, that's right.

And another thing that I thought was interesting that this section was actually highlighted in a vox piece I was reading. But this is also from ROBERTA. Frank's article. Uh. She notes that the idea of the Viking Age as a distinct period in European history is also actually a late nineteenth century invention. Frank writes, quote, until the Viking Age was invented, there was no horned, helmeted Viking, and vice versa.

The two go together like Easter and bonnet. A Viking Age is first mentioned in eighteen seventy three in two independent Danish and Swedish articles. The period gets its first monumental right up in Johanna steen Strips four volume Norman Ern, published between eighteens seventy six and eighteen eighty two. Perhaps only an expansionist empire building era could have thought up an age that began with naval attacks on foreign shores

and ended when these attacks ceased. So yes, to clarify, there have been decorative horned helms in history, but the Scandinavian warriors of the roughly eighth to eleventh century generally did not wear helmets like this. Uh And and this idea mostly comes from the late nineteenth century. Another thing that I thought was kind of funny. What associations do you get from the idea of a horned helmet? What does that suggest about the person wearing it well and instantly?

And part of this I think has to do with the Viking motif becoming such a central part of a fantasy imagery as well, you know, sort of friends of Frazetta, um Art and so forth. Is the idea that this is what a barbarian wears on their head. This is it's it symbolizes a barbaric or primal state of being,

exactly right. I mean that's the same way I feel like horned helmets at a gut level signify a kind of uncivilized brutality, like a theory anthropy mindset, where you know, in battle, I am no longer a human, I am a charging bull. I am a beast without reason. And in light of that, I wanted to read a passage that ROBERTA. Frank quotes from a novel by the historian Alfred Dugan. This is from the King of Athelney. It's about Alfred the Great, who was king of the Anglo

Saxons in the ninth century. And I think this part is from Alfred's perspective. Quote on his head was one of those impractical but imposing helmets embellished with spreading ox horns, which among the heathen were a badge of grandeur. That was a comforting site, implying that the pirates expected fair play and no bloodshed. No sensible warrior would risk his life under a helmet which could be knocked flying by

a single stroke. That isn't a full very good point, and it really underlines too some of the forces we're going to be discussing in in in this episode about you know, early and important um helmet designs is that you know you have you have the the need to protect the head. You have this other aesthetic principle coming into play where you want to to look cool in the helmet or look imposing or signal something about your status. But at the same time, you need to be able

to fight in this thing you need. You don't need horns that can as as the author states here, that will allow your helmet to be just taken off or just spun around violently on your head due to essentially a miss by the opponent. You know, you need something that is going to have a certain level of comfort, uh, as well as durability. Yeah, you don't want to attach levers to your armor where it can just easily be

wrenched off of you. Right. Ideally your armor would be really tough and would be as like flat then close to your body as possible so that it stays put and doesn't get dislodged. Yeah. Um. And certainly when you start start looking at different helmets, even those that do have some sort of a horn or spike motif the ones that see more use to one that can certainly be ornate, you often see something that's a little smaller

in stature. Uh. For instance, for for single horns and spikes, we see plenty of examples of this where the top of the helmet tapers into a spike of some sort. There are the the the kulakud helms of Persia and then you also have the famous pickle haba helms that are typically associated with the Prussian and German militaries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and you of course

occasionally see them in biker movies as well. Oh yeah, if you look at a lot of Allied propaganda during the World War One era, it would often depict the German enemy with a with a pickle helba like a you know, a spear on the top of its helmet. Yeah. Now, one of the interesting things, of course, is the spear has no real offensive purpose. You know that you're not gonna like, uh, you know, bend over and then run into combat and try and stab people with the top

of your head. But there is a fun scene I don't know if it has any even remotely you know,

historic counterpart. But there was a film written and directed by James Clavell of Showgun and uh the Fly Fame, and it is titled The Last Valley, and there's a scene in which Michael Kine's character, who wears one of these helmets, has casually taken it off for some sort of conversation and then use it to murder the other individual by stabbing them in the chest with it, and then is it like the purloined letter, like they never know to look for the murder weapon on top of

his head. Oh. I mean he does it in front of numerous people, so it's it's not so much a murder mystery as more of a uh you know, I don't think it's completely governed by the rules of war. It's kind of a shady act. But essentially, like he and his bunch, if I remember correctly there, they're essentially defecting. They find this this valley that's untouched by the wars ravaging the countrysides around them, and they're like, well, hell, we're just gonna stay here, but I need to kill

this guy first with my helmet. You never trust to Michael Caine. Uh. You know, we already touched on some of the fantasy elements here, but I know that I grew up with a lot of Warhammer and Warhammer forty thousand imagery in my head, and they always had these really horned up chaos warriors where they had really almost

like this exaggerated Viking heilm motif. Uh. Sometimes the horns met in the middle and kind of formed a ring, but other times they were just straight up horns um elsewhere, and I like current popular culture, you see a lot of cool horns. For instance, Marvel's version of Loki often dresses up with a helm that has some just ridiculous horns spiraling out of the top of it. Uh. If you watch The Mandalorian, there's actually a horned Mandalorian that

pops up in that show, character called the Armor. And then um and then I was also thinking, as long as we're talking about Disney, there's a sleeping beauty have Maleficent two has these horns that are either I'm not I was never entirely clear if those were part of

her body or just part of her fantastic wardrobe. You know, I gotta say I've always been partial to Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python on the Holy Grail, of course, with his rams horns, which I don't recall exactly, but it looks almost like they're more attached to like a hood than a helmet. I guess that's the thing when you get into a magic user, right, like, what where does the the magical individual end in the magical costume begin?

You're not entirely certain. Yeah, and this would bring us back to the idea of somebody with a kind of shamonic stature, right he's supposed to have. It suggests a hybrid nature animal human power, that kind of thing. Now, in terms of just sort of the transformative aspects of the helmet itself, we of course see plenty of examples of this in in our media. Uh Um, you know it goes everything from Darth Vader's helmet being such an

iconic example of this too. So many different slasher villains in horror, you know, they have some sort of signature mask or masks that they wear. And I was thinking, as cool as all those various masks are, I can't think of a hornet example of that, you know, an idea of like some sort of a slasher murderer character who has a helmet or a mask that incorporates horns. Yeah, I couldn't think of one either, though I do think a good horned monster it would be wonderful. And it's

underused in cinema. I've long maintained I think we've actually talked about this before, that the minotaur is one of the most under realized monsters in modern cinema. The minotaur should be so terrifying if rendered with the proper care the carrot deserves. But you know, I strained to think of good minotaurs in modern movies. Yeah, I mean there there have been some. There have been some good ones

in the past few decades, but yeah, nothing recently. We'll have to get into this when we inevitably come back into an episode on the minotaur. Um. You know, I was looking. I was trying to think though about horror film masks, and there is a very minotaur esque looking mask that shows up, apparently one of the Purge films, so it's a Purge mask with horns. But having not actually seen any of these movies, I don't know if this is a major perjurer or a marginal perjur. It's

just a background perjured. I'm not really sure how this thing works, but it's it's a cool looking, essentially a minotar mask. I'm thinking one of these days in the in the Purge movies, they're just gonna get down to like the Marie Hondo kind of level, where it's more about like possessions, things you don't need than than humans. Yeah. I have no idea how how detailed they get in their world building in the show I think he did a TV series which I hope gets into like white collar,

purge crimes and so forth. I mean, there's so many dimensions to that, like what are the full rules here? And is it just murders legal or like other crimes as well. I know the movies must address this, but but I don't think I'm going to find out. Yeah, well, listeners will have to let us know you watch it so we don't have to. But you know, when you think about the helmet not as a decoration, I mean most of what we've been talking about is idea decoration

and trying to create visual significance. When you think about the helmet as a practical invention, I love that it's pretty much just creating a second skull. You've already got a skull. It's a hard casing that covers the brain. And then some people got the idea of what if

I just did another one on top. Yeah, I guess you could basically think of it this way in terms of human on human violence, Like the skull does a pretty good job protecting against um, you know, fists and kicks, and I'll not to say that it can't be fractured in those encounters as well. But once you start involving tools um offensive tools like it is the it is

such an elegant um defensive tool to develop as well. Like, Okay, if you're going to upgrade your strikes with pieces of bone and uh and and you know, stones and so forth, then I want to have something around my head that at least cushions the blow if if if not shields me from from some of the more direct violence that is inherent your attack. Yeah, that actually highlights that there are a couple of different physics issues going on when

you're creating a helmet, right. One of them is you want to prevent like just direct injury to the outer tissues, like to the skin and the bone of your skull, because obviously you don't want fractures in your skull. But another thing is, even if nothing would break through, you also want to provide a certain amount of padding that will slow the rate of acceleration caused by jostling of

the head and different directions. You know, when you get hit in the head, A lot of what can hurt you is if your brain suddenly slashes too fast against the inside of your skull from the acceleration of the blow. So like a football, helmet works because it pads that out, it slows it down. Yeah, So hopefully this provides a good a good initial overview of what helmets are and some of the different roles they play. But this leads to the most obvious question, is this just a human thing?

Is this pure human technology? Or do we because essentially it is tool used, do we see this sort of tool use in other animals out there? Well, we're going to answer that question after we come back. Thank thank thank Alright, we're back, So we're asking the question, Hey, do any animals wear helmets? Okay, so essentially no, um, I mean, there's some caveats. I guess it. It basically comes down to how far are you willing to stretch

the idea of a helmet. So, for instance, hermit crabs, obviously they're they're acquiring a shell from another organism and using them as additional armor over their own exoskelets, and and uh, you know, they're not wearing it on their head. But then that didn't make sense. Why would they wear just something over their head. They're going to cover their whole body. It's more like a mineral diaper, I guess yeah,

a mineral diaper. Uh. You Also there are examples of of octopi using you know, coconut husts that sort of thing. But again, I don't know if i'd really qualify that as a helmet as like as specifically the shielding of one's skull, of one hit one's head, of one's brain

with some sort of additional layering. I think a thing we're also going to run into with with this question about animals is, um, how external is the head covering originally because they're there are lots lots of animals obviously that have natural shielding of the head that's just part of their body. And then you have the hermit crab, which of course it's not on the head, but it like picks up something from the environment and uses that as armor. And then you've got some stuff that's going

to be kind of in between those two extremes. Yeah. Yeah, And and so certainly again you have plenty of creatures that have some fabulous armor around the head, but it's not something that they have acquired or created. Um. Yeah, And you also have these um activities that seem cantalizingly close to, if not helmet wearing that at least hat technology. Guerillas certainly have been observed to put straw on their bodies and on their head. Uh. I mean, I've seen

this before at the zoo multiple times. It's always amusing. It's you know, oh, the gorilla put put some straw in its head. Now it's walking around. But this seems at best aligned with keeping sun or rain off. But I've also seen it discussed in terms of a quote straw wave, which I take to mean that it's more about gesticulating and play versus doing anything with the straw that is actually functional. Um. At any rate, I'm not

sure how qualified as as hat wearing. Yeah, if you qualified that, then you might also want to qualify well as So let's say elephants often would cover the tops of their heads or backs with mud in order to to shield themselves in various ways. Would that count as a hat? I don't really think so. Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you walk from a human standpoint, like if a human walked into a fine restaurant with their their bald head covered in mud, no one would say, I'm sorry,

you have to take your hat off the side. So, uh, where we're getting into silly territory here, because I do have at least one example of an animal, actually a few different species that do wear something like a helmet or a hat, and we ultimately have to to cheat a little bit to to to count this as well. But we actually end up hitting on another favorite trend of mine in fictional helmets, and that is skeletal helms.

Uh so like rattle shirt in a Song of Ice and Fire or the what is a general kale or kale from the movie Willow? Yeah, a bone helmet? Sure, so obviously that's cool wearing a larger skull over your own skull as some sort of a helmet. But what if you uh and then likewise, if you wore a skull as a hat, that would be kind of goth in weird, right, But what if you simply didn't simply wear a skull on your head? Uh? What if you

wore your own skull as a helmet? And heck, what if you wore a stack of skulls on top of your head as this sort of weird tapering hat. Then I'd say you are a fashion innovator. I mean I have never seen someone with a stack of their own skulls as a hat. But now now I must see it, but you would, you'd be a Johnny come Lately because the fashion world is far behind the natural world on this one. Because this is roughly what we see with

the caterpillar of the moth. Rabba Lugan's a k a. The mad hat a pillar a k a. The gum leaf skeletonizer. That that last nickname is due to the way it ravages Eucalyptus leaves um and nothing to do with its its hat. As we're going to just guys, But Luraba luggans is native to Australia in New Zealand, and the key here is it's molding, which which Luggans does thirteen times during its catapult propillar stage, regularly shedding

its exoskeleton as it grows. Now, well, I think we're all familiar with this sort of molding, uh, the idea of leaving behind, you know, this shell of your former exoskeleton. You see this in a numerous species. But what Uraba does is something a little bit interesting. It keeps the exoskeleton head that it just sized out of and it remains atop its current head and then when it molts again.

Why it does the same thing, so that it's wearing an exoskeleton of its head like a hat that in turn has a smaller exoskeleton helm on top of it. And this keeps going and going in a very Susian fashion, so that the heads taper off in a stack atop the creature's own head. Yeah. So to picture this, I mean, you should look it up if you can. But if you can't, remember again, the purpose of molting is to allow an animal with an exo skeleton to grow bigger.

So each previous exoskeleton was smaller than the current animal, So the heads just keep getting smaller as they go up. It's like a stack of beads of diminishing size with this tiny original head perched on top. It's like if you made a snowman out of exoskeleton heads of a caterpillar and they're on top of the head of a caterpillar. It's really weird. You. I highly recommend people look up a picture of this. It is uh, you are a B A l U G E N s well worth

the price of a Google search. Yeah and uh. And scientists generally refer to this as head capsule stacking. And the interesting thing is that you might look at anythink well, this is weird. Is the weird quirk, But it's it's not a quirk. It it seems to play a role

in the caterpillars survival. Now. One of our favorite science writers, Ed Young, wrote about the species back in two thousands sixteen for National Geographic and he pointed out that back in nineteen Australian entomologist Noel McFarland merely speculated that it might serve these already large bristly caterpillars by serving as

a head tail decoy for hungry birds. So a bird swoops in SE's, oh there's something tasty, I'm gonna try and snatch it away, But instead of snatching onto its head or tail, it just takes off some crunchy exoskeleton debts. So in a way, this would be a form of autotomy.

So it would be like when a lizard that is being attacked by a predator can detach its own tail, sort of as a as a consolation prize to the predator, allowing the rest of the lizard to escape, Except in this case it doesn't even have to be living tissue.

If this interpretation was correct, it would be an example of autotomy, or what you're giving away is like dead former exoskeleton material that you is not even a living part of your body anymore, right, But it's it's a perfect replica of your own anatomy because it used to be part of your own anatomy. So there is this weird genius to it. However, um, one of the our counter arguments here is that this is already a pretty

well armored little caterpillar. I mean, it's a caterpillar, so you know it's not going to you know, stand up against the Sherman tank or anything. But it's very briskly, it does not look like it does not invite you to touch it or stroke it with your finger, and likewise it would potentially be a problematic meal for you know, for just a casual predator. But but the the other question is, well, okay, what about other enemies? Uh. You know, clearly an insect in this world does not have to

worry just about the birds. It also has to worry about other invertebrate predators and also things like parasitic wasps. So Pedalow from the University of Sydney investigated to just see how these uh, these caterpillars with or without hats would stack up against some sort of an adversary, essentially by conducting Petrie dish death matches, removing the head hats on some specimens, leaving them on with others. So we've

got bug fights for science here exactly. So Young writes about this and says, quote the bugs readily attacked, trying to drive their stabbing mouth parts into the caterpillar's heads. In response, the caterpillars thrashed, curled up, reared up, and vomited. Those with hats use their stacks to deflect or absorb the bugs attacks, leading to more protracted struggles. Okay, that's pretty good, and I love the imagery there of this, just because I feel like it just really escalated there,

especially with the rearing up and vomiting. Yeah, I would say that's good fighting advice for anybody. If you get into a scrap, curl up, rear up, thrash, and vomit, and then use your own skulls from previous moltens to deflect your attacker. Now, the interesting thing, though, is that this sounds good, and one would be tempted to stop reading there right and say, like, all right, well, that's it,

that's what they're for. But in the lab experiments, they found that the head hats didn't actually make a difference on survival rates. The predatory bug gladiators they were up against still tended to win. So PETA checked in the field and found the same thing, except that except that when they battled in groups, that seemed to make the difference. In groups, the hats double their chances of survival. And this was mainly by providing a false target for attackers.

And in these cases, it seems like these this this skull hats give the caterpillars a slide advantage. But it's uh, you know, it's not gonna work against all predators, especially highly motivated predators, but it will give them an advantage if they're fighting in groups. I think something that's often true about evolution is every little bit helps. Even if

something only provides a small advantage, it's often retained. Yeah, and the really wonderful part about this, like ultimately the evolutionary genius of it is that they're not producing they're not expending reese hources to produce some sort of crazy shell or a toxic secretion or some sort of weird organic battle horn. They're simply making use of their own bodily leavings. They're they're they're hanging on to an already necessary byproduct of they're molting. They're just keeping it on

top of their head. This is recycling. Yeah, it's essentially recycling. Uh. And and they're they're not alone. There apparently several other species of caterpillar that do the same thing, and you'll find them in India, Japan, in Europe. So if you're in those areas and you ever find one of these caterpillars that seems to have this bizarre head formation or have some sort of weird hat, that's what you're looking at. Now.

In terms of human analogs for this, if we turn it back on humans, uh, we don't really see anything like this at all. I don't think we've ever seen a human build, say, a suit of armor out of their own nail clippings. Yeah. I was trying to find another good example of an animal wearing a helmet that's not generated by its own body, and I couldn't find anything exactly like that, but there are some interesting comparisons. So, of course you already mentioned the hermit crab um, but

that's not a helmet. There is another thing that's not quite a helmet, but I did think was interesting. I was reading about the catius fly, which is a widely distributed order of freshwater flies. If you've ever seen a somebody go fly fishing, Robert, have you ever been fly fishing? No, but I've I've I've watched it and it's really cool looking. Yeah,

it is the hopping motion. I think. Apparently a lot of fly fishing lures are designed on the basis of catous flies because these are widespread freshwater flies and in its larval stage, many species of catous fly will create what are known as cases that they carry around with them. These are rigid, protective structures that they wear sort of like clothes. Most examples I've seen are roughly tube shaped.

They're made out of silk weaving that comes from the from the larva itself, but then it's rein four with external material like sand rocks, plant matter like wood or bark. Though it's not really a helmet, it seems like usually the head protrudes and the four limbs are used to kind of drag the case around over the body while

the larva is searching for food. So imagine like a tube made out of rocks or plant matter or something held together by silk, with part of a little fly larva sticking out the front of it and crawling around. It's pretty grim looking. I don't know, it's uh, I don't know it's it's it's not an elegant design. It

looks a little bit trashy. Well, speaking of trashy, we're about to get even trash here, because there are also a number of lacewing species that are known to decorate their bodies with various substances for defense against various predators like ants and other things. For example, the larva of the green lacewing, where the scientific name is Malata des ardenz.

This one has an interesting adaptation. It covers its back with stuff mostly I think dead aphids and debris and uh, and then also secretions from its own body, and this forms in a way a type of defensive helmet which protects it from attacks by one of its competitors and predators, the Asian lady beetle or Harmonia exyritus. So I think that the lady beetle and the lacewing or actually competing for some of the same prey that they might both be preying on aphids, but then also the lady beetle

can prey on the lacewing larva. Yeah. I'm looking at a picture of this and it's it's like some sort of weird insect necro armor. It's great. Yeah, I mean this is the Lord of bones here. Uh so, so this is a helmet in a way. Again, it's not exactly covering the head, but I don't know if you stretch the definition. It's a top down covering as the animal would be crawling along on a leaf, say, and you look down from above of its top part is

covered by this mound of stuff. It's sort of a body helmet made out of dead a fits and other junk, and it's referred to, at least by some researchers as a trash package. I was looking at one paper. It was published in Applied Entomology and Zoology in two thousand six by Kingo Nakahira and Rio Arakawa, and this paper was experimenting on what are what are the differences in survival when these these larva are attacked by ladybugs with

trash and without trash. These were the experimental conditions, or actually I think it was naked and with trash. And it turns out if you are a l a swing larva and your options are naked or with trash, it's better to be with trash because the attacks on the ones with trash were fewer in number, and also they

were not as successful as quickly. I think there was a similar thing going on where the the wind they were attacked, they would survive longer if they had a trash package, sort of like what you were talking about with the caterpillars. But it looks like there's a double function here. So the trash package on this larva, it not only physically defends the body to some extent, it

also discourages recognition of the lacewing larva as prey. And this mirror is the duality of some human helmets, doesn't it like, Because some helmets, of course have a practical purpose of shielding the head from physical blows, and then other helmets are largely about signaling. They're trying to create an idea or an impression in the in the mind

of the enemy or the subject. Yeah, to create the idea of the fearsome warrior or the the warriors statue is larger than that of a normal human right or the warrior who has the attributes of some non human animal. So another interesting candidate for animal helmets. Again, this isn't quite a helmet. It doesn't fully work, but it gets

kind of close. Is the idea of decorator crabs. And Robert, I think you and Christian actually did an episode a long time ago where you talked about decorator crabs if I'm not mistaken, but these are crabs that will mask their bodies by adding foreign material from their environment to their exoskeletons for various defensive and camouflage reasons. And one of the interesting things is often what they put on their bodies is not just like dead foreign materials, not

just like rocks or whatever. But they will sometimes put sessile stinging organisms on their backs that will will play an active role in defense, because if something comes down toward them, perhaps to prey on the crab, these things can actually sting it much in the way that if you were to run at an animal with horns, the

horns could poke you. Yeah, I'd forgotten all about these these critters, but yeah, there's some fabulous photographs of them because it's it's not you know, it depends on what's available to them. Uh, Like no one set of Decorator crab bio armor is the same, and it really ultimately is like, oh you know, it ups the game, right, I mean, humans don't uh don't build armor that has some sort of living component that then attacks people for you, like this is this is something entirely from the world

of decapod wonder. That's a great idea, though, what if you were to make a suit of armor that included just your body was covered with king cobras, somebody gets too close, you know, they're out of luck. Yeah, well, you know, it might make functioning as a cohesive combat unit difficult as well, though, I don't know. But that's that's that's something to consider in the history of helmets,

and we'll get into that in our next section. All right, well, maybe we should take another break and then when we come back we can talk about helmets as an invention in human history. Than all right, we're back. So the origins of body armor in general are lost to prehistory, like because ultimately they're tied up in the same movements. That's all humans clothe themselves to begin with, because ultimately, the line between body armor and clothing is very thin.

For instance, if you're going bicycling and you're thinking, oh, well, you know, I might I might fall off this bicycle. What are you gonna wear? You're gonna wear um, a tiny pair of shorts. Are you're gonna wear blue jeans? Well, I'd say in the shorts you have more mobility, But in the blue jeans, if you get into a wreck, you're less likely to scrape yourself up really bad. Yeah, there's certainly a trade off there. But but and I don't know, maybe you're not supposed to wear blue jeans

when you're riding bicycles. I don't know the rules about bicycles, but you don't want your cuffs getting caught in the right, there's the cuff thing. But blue jeans in and of themselves are a kind of body armor and function that way. From time to time. I think we've all had situations where you know, you dropped something, or it's you know,

it's I don't know, dinner knife, I don't know. But you know, sometimes we we can catch our clothing behaving as body armor, and uh, and so that's something to keep in mind when considering the history of people just taking up the hides of animals, taking up parts of part you know, what is a thick hide, but also bodily protection, taking the bodily protection of another organism and making it our own, protecting ourselves not only from uh,

from the elements, but then ultimately from potential attacks. Yeah. And this comes through and the fact that a lot of things that I think are reasonably thought of his armor aren't made out of rigid hard material like plate metal or stone or bone or anything like that. I mean a lot of things that I think could reasonably be thought of his armor are just made of leather. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of the the examples we're gonna get to

in a second comes down to essentially leather capes. And it's easy to just to just dismiss a cape because these days, because we think of a cape is doing just purely something decorative, you know, uh something. Batman has a cape, and yeah, he can do some weird things with it, but it's all we ultimately don't think about

it being an important part of his body armor. What is the utility of Darth Vader's cape in a lightsaber fight used to think about that, like, wouldn't that get caught on stuff while you're running around swinging your arms at things. Well, I don't know specifically about Vader, but I think in general, I know from the Clone Wars um era stuff the cloaks that are worn by Count Dooku in general grievous are described to have like this kind of meta material armor inside, so they actually do

function as as additional armor against blaster attacks. And I don't know if they're actually functional against lightsabers. I haven't gotten that deep into into the material, but I don't know. Potentially at any rate they do. Some of the material regarding the Clone Wars does get into the idea that that one of these high tech capes is actually protective in nature. So unresolved question for you Wikipedia editors out there, Philip, Oh, Yeah, We've been spent a lot of time on Wikipedia in

this household. But before we had high tech um separatist um capes to wear, you know, the first bits of high it or vegetation that ended up serving as some form of a cap or hat, these would have provided at least some protection from animal attack, human weapons, or just a general injury. Sooner or later, however, you would have certainly had the emergence of a cap or a

heilm that was designed primarily for body armor. UH. Ultimately, though, one of the things about this is that since these were all inevitably made out of organic materials, items like these are just lost to history are only real knowledge

of them comes from ancient depictions and ancient texts. Okay, So I was reading about this in UH in a text that I frequently turned to, UH the seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World, And in this one Brian and Vagan UH collaborates with Thomas Hoolett, who's an expert on on these matters, and points out that some of the earliest illustrations of body armor and of helmets dates back to the middle and third millennium b c E.

On the standard of ER, a Sumerian war pan. Also, this would include illustrations from the ancient world of what the warriors of the time looked like. Yeah, and and interestingly enough, heavy cape seemed to be the body armor of choice, as depicted in in this standard, and they also appeared to be wearing helmets. In fact, well made metal helmets appear as early as twenty d b c in or six of these were actually found on the

heads of guards interred with their ruler. And these were very much like the ones depicted in the standard and according to who It and Fagan, were likely a metal upgrade of the same design traditionally used UM composed entirely out of leather. Now the metal caps here they would have made they were made out of copper. And interestingly enough,

no metal body armor was found. Uh. And again this is a burial pit, providing a plenty of examples of metal artifacts, you know, things that were like chariots and other artifacts of war. We're going to go with the ruler into the afterlife. So if there, if they're been metal body armor in use, uh, the argument is that we would see it here, but apparently, uh, the body armor technology had not reached that point yet. Like the first place we see metal uh augmenting the body is

with the skull. That's really interesting. And I'm also just thinking about the fact that they were made of copper. I might be conceiving of this wrong, but okay, so I'm thinking you're you're out in the desert marching with an army, and you're wearing a copper helmet. Copper is a great conductor of heat and heats up really fast. It seems like under a desert sun that would get

amazingly hot. Yeah. Well, you know, this gets into the idea again, into the idea of when when is the helmet purely practical, and when is it all about the look of the helmet, and when is it all about

the thing you become when you wear it. There's actually umh one of the tombs in this time period, the tomb of m mess A Lumdug, gives us an example of a golden helmet that is of the same style we're discussing here, and it's it's pretty interesting to me because it certainly it has the shape of a helmet, and we can see how this would go over an

individual's head and provide some degree of protection. You also see that it they're a little um regular um um perforated holes around the edge of it, as if there were additional like leather tastles or some other kind of aspect to it that you know that that involved organic material. But also this helmet has ears. Yeah. It almost reminds me of the Sutton Who helmet, which has like a mustache on it. Yeah. Yeah, when we were discussing the

Sudden Who helmet, just it reminded me of this. So with Sutton Who, there's a mustache and here we have ears and also, um uh it looks like hair. So it's it's really weird to imagine, like the conversation that goes into the design of this helmet, where a general or king is putting in their request for the helmet, he gets the prototype back and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, where are the ears? Where is the mustache? I can't go out there looking like I don't have ears or

a mustache? Are you crazy? This is war? That's very good. I I am. I'm thinking about like what would call I mean, so obviously this had to be difficult to produce at the time, right, I mean, it can't have been. It can't have been easy or cheap or a trivial investment of resources to make ears on these helmets. Why aren't these just the most basic utilitarian kind of domes you could imagine? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, obviously this is um the Golden helmet was not for everybody here,

but uh, and certainly it's about status. But we we see also a status playing a key role in some of the earliest examples in the Greek traditions, tradition of helmets. So the history of Greek helmets is it is a fascinating area to look at because, uh, for one, on one hand, there's just there's a lot of a lot of research and scholarship that has gone into into looking at them, and we have some, you know, wonderful examples of them that have survived either physically or in depictions.

And if we go back to the late Bronze Age of my Siny in Greece roughly uh, this would have been roughly twelve fifty b C. We encounter these um, these bore tusk helmets, and these were leather caps reinforced with slices of boor tusk. I recommend everyone look up a picture of this as well, because whatever you're picturing in your head is probably not quite what the reality was.

Like I was initially imagining some like weird tusk based skeletal system, but it's really you you really get the idea more of like I'm someone made an entire helmet out of these these tusks and these slices of tusks, and it creates this really an impressive looking helmet, and

apparently impressive aspect of it would have been key. Uh. Tim Everson in Warfare and Ancient Greece points out that these tut slices would have easily shattered on impact, So the dot design didn't actually afford much more protection, but it was better than nothing, and an improvement over just

mere leather or felt. And we also see the early advancement of adding cheek guards as well, so that the history of of helmet design is is is rife with examples of of add ons and additions and and and the designers realizing, well, okay, we can protect the head, but we also need to protect the cheek, or maybe we need something down the bridge of the nose to better protect the face. And then how about the exposed neck. Yeah, it looks like this helmet with the boar tusks. It's

got sideburns basically, I mean just dangling down on the sides. Yeah,

big protective side sideburns made out of boar tusk. And they say that horse hair crests were likely added as a motif to this as well, but again it probably wasn't entirely about protection, but more about signaling hunting excellence, because apparently you need to you need about forty to fifty bores uh to make one of these things, and so it in it of itself, it's signals that you are a mighty hunter, or perhaps that you know you are powerful enough that you command the resources that emerge

from these hunts. Either way, a certain signal is being put forth when you donne this helmet on your head. It's kind of it's like the deer head mounted on the wall or the you know, it's a it's a trophy as much as a practical protection. Right and his bronze technology improved. Bronze sheeting was used in these helmets as well, generally in spots. At first, you know, you add a little bit of bronze plating here or there to make it fancier, but eventually this led to full

bronze plated helmets around the eighth century BC. I was reading about all this in an article by classical archaeologist and military historian Jesse Obert, and he points out that they're there are really too. He wants of note that immediately come out of this. In the eighth century BC, So there's the the Illyrian helmet, which covered the entire head, cheeks, and even part of the throat, and it was foraged in two pieces. You can look up pictures of this.

I find that it looks a lot like Magneto's helmet, at at least the version that we see in some of the recent movie movies. So the face remains open, but it does cover a lot of the rest of the head. And then the other one is the Corinthian helmet, which was foraged from a single piece of bronze, covering the face with a long nose guard and two cheek guards. However, it leaves the neck vulnerable and it was apparently known

to be quite uncomfortable. It was heavy. It was you know, this big chunk of metal that goes on top of your head and weighs you down and then also impacts

vision and hearing. Yeah, this has been knocking around in my mind while we've been talking about this, the in helmet design, and I guess this is true throughout the body, that you've got a trade off between the level of protection offered and then what costs come associated with that full of protection, and throughout the body, I imagine it would be things like like weight, heat, uh, you know, ease of movement, but around the head. I especially think

of the limitation of the senses. Yeah. Absolutely, this is a major concern in helmet design. Uh as far as the Corinthian helmet goes Obert Wrights quote the wear was partially blinded and practically deaf when he wore the helmet. This has led some authors to speculate whether the popularity of the Corinthian helmet effectively postponed the invention of battlefield tactics, as communication on the battlefield was almost certainly impossible. That's

an interesting idea. Yeah, like you want it's like go out there and kill boys, but but no discussion while you're out there, because nobody can hear a damn thing. Um you know that would that would impact the way you carry out your battles and and how and to what extent you could even have a flexible battle plan. And and you know there's that that famous saying that like all what all battle lands fail when the enemy is actually encountered, So you know that would that would

really limit what you could do? I would think, yeah, And it also makes me think back to the ears. The ears on the Mesopotamian helmet. Yes, if you look at pictures of that, not only is there a motif of the ear, there appears to be an ear hole. So in that tradition they had realized, Okay, this looks great, but I can't hear a damn thing out of this. Somebody cut some ear holes in my fake ears on

my golden helmet. Yeah, I wonder about both of those. Actually, So the holes possibly for hearing, but also the rendering of the you know, the external part of the ear. I wonder if that could almost be like painting eye spots on yourself. Yeah, letting letting your fellow soldiers know that you can hear, or even enemies like this, this is a dangerous opponent because they can actually hear what's

being said by others. They have enhanced sensor. They can hear me coming if I'm trying to sneak up behind them. So so I found that super interesting. I I, for one, had never really thought that much of out the the impact of the senses of when wearing these helmets. I mean to a certain extent, I guess thinking about like full plate male military nights. You know, it becomes obvious when you look at something like that that this is. It's like wearing a diving suit and riding a horse

into battle. You're gonna have you're gonna you're gonna be more powerful in some respects, but they're gonna be some severer constraints on what you can do and how you can take in the battlefield. Now, another aspect to to this design was that they were also expensive. Eventually, cheat guards and uh in a rear were extended to rest on the shoulders, and this was allowed the helmet to cover the neck and throat a bit more, but also

dissipate the helmets weight um. Also of note, larger ear holes were added eventually to allow battlefield communication, which is sensible, right, Like, if you can add the up some holes there for the ears, you know, I guess you could look at them as stabbing holes if someone's really good at what they're doing. But uh, but like what's the trade off? Do you your ears absolutely protected and useless or do you want some holes there and actually be able to

hear what other people are saying? Yeah, I guess it depends on what kind of combat you're thinking about. I mean, I imagine I'm not a combat historian or anything. But I imagine in a lot of archaic battle there's a there's a huge amount of sort of like gross motions, the thrusting of large spears into groups of people, the swinging of swords and axes, and a little hole on the ear might be less of a problem. You're not really imagining somebody's gonna come at you with a needle

right now. Beginning in the sixth century b c e. The chell city and helmet pops up, and this brings improve visibility and comfort while also providing protection. And we subsequently see the evolution of of various forms of helmets in the Greek tradition, uh the idea, Ionian helmet, the attic helmet, and others. And these were all about tweaking

defensive and or tactical aspects of the previous models. So just you know, continuous tinkering with the design to figure out what offers the best hection, what is the most comfortable, what allows the individual to to utilize their senses on the battlefield, all of these concerns, and then also they

all have variant they all look cool. I'll say that as well, Like there's a certain coolness to the design, So that's also inevitably part of the design evolution of these, Like you still want your warriors to look fearsome on the battlefield, so I will say none of these examples we're getting to look as cool as the leather helmets and Planet of the Vampires. Yes, those are pretty good. Um they they they essentially what they could. They cover

everything but the face there their minimalists. They extend up from the dracula collar of the space suit, but they do get a lot of coverage there, and from from just a pure padding standpoint, they seem to like they would probably do a good job. And I don't know we I don't know in that film if we actually get any kind of glimpse inside them or a field for their structure. They have some sort of internal skeleton applied as well, I don't recall. I think at some

point some of the characters take the hoods off. But that's about it now. Of course, this is just the Greek tradition that we've alluded to here. There are other um lineages of helmets and body armor that we see in other parts of the world. Um for instance, so we see scaled armor helms in China during the Warring States period of four five through to one b C.

And and these are quite interesting. It keeps it's very much in keeping with the predominant body armor of the time as well the idea of having depending on this sort of scale male approach to armoring the body and less dependence on single large plates. And then um, the Manoan civilization of Creed used a basic helmet style as early as um Fo dred BC that would later, among other European designs such as those of the Celts, influence the iconic shape of the Roman Monte Farina style helmet.

And generally these are are conical with a raised central knob with net guards and cheek plates. Oh okay, now with with this style of helmet, this is actually getting more into what you're going to see coming through into the modern age. Yeah, yeah, it's um, you know, it's pretty pretty straightforward helmet with a bit of a bit of a cap bill at the front which would have i guess you know, shaded the eyes a bit but also protected the eyes, and then you have some cheek

plates as well. But this is this is generally when you see depictions of the Roman republic Um. You know, centurions and whatnot. This is generally what you see on their head, but not like the big horse hair adornments and stuff with all the fluff on top. Right. But but like you know, I guess the thing about any of these helmets is you can always add fluff to them if you want. You can always doll it up

a little bit. So thus far wrapping it up here for this episode, anyway, we've discussed you know, the basic idea of what a helmet is, where that idea comes from, and to the extent to which we can really consider it a human phenomenon. And uh, you know, there's a lot more to explore here. So I think we're gonna come back in a second episode. We we'll discuss some more unique helmets from history. Uh, perhaps some findings on

just how effective some helmets have been. Uh So just strap in, strap your helmet on, and stick with us. I can't wait. In the meantime, if you like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. Just make sure you leave a review, rate us with some stars, and make sure you have subscribed huge thanks as always to our excellent

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