A Paleontology Of The Future: What We Will Leave Behind

What will humanity leave behind? In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry and VSauce's Michael Stevens explore the traces humans leave behind and what those traces reveal about how we think. From Tranquility Base, where humanity's first footprints on another world still sit undisturbed in lunar dust, to a three million year old pebble that may represent one of the earliest signs of symbolic thought, they uncover how ordinary objects can become extraordinary windows into our past. Why would one of our ancestors carry a rock that looked like a face? Who owns the artefacts we leave beyond Earth? And what might future generations learn from our footprints, tools, jokes, habits, and settlements scattered across the Solar System? ------------------ For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit ⁠⁠https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience⁠⁠ Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Attribution for images used, no chanages have been made. W. Bulach - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 Jerzy Strzelecki - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Rakot13 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 Museum of Human Evolution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 Robert G. Bednarik - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek Animator: Sam Benson Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe Producer: Simona Rata Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter Head Of Digital: Samuel Oakley Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Hannah Fry?

  Welcome to The Rest of Science. I'm Hannah Fry.

• 0:02Michael Stevens?

  And I'm Michael Stevens. I got a question for you, Hannah.

• 0:05Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 0:05Michael Stevens?

  Tranquility Base.

• 0:06Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 0:07Michael Stevens?

  Familiar with the place?

• 0:08Hannah Fry?

  Where they landed.

• 0:09Michael Stevens?

  It's where they landed. They being Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. When they landed on the moon and they became the first humans to walk on a celestial body that's not the Earth, they did it at what we call Tranquility Base. And a lot of crap is still there, like hundreds of things, bags of their poop, as well as the more obvious ones, like the flag they planted, the lower half of the lander.

• 0:32Hannah Fry?

  Any bags of beard hair, Michael?

• 0:34Michael Stevens?

  They have not confessed to leaving any beard hair on the moon.

• 0:36Hannah Fry?

  I like the idea there's a pegboard that's just, uh, just all their offshoots. Bags of poop, though. Footprints as well?

• 0:43Michael Stevens?

  The footprints? Now, when they left the moon, they had to use this big propulsive blast to escape its gravity. And that blast probably knocked the American flag over. And we know it did because one of them, I forget who, one of them witnessed the flag being knocked over by their ascent. In subsequent missions to the moon, they planted the flag much further from the lander.

• 1:05Hannah Fry?

  Sure.

• 1:05Michael Stevens?

  And those are still standing.

• 1:06Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 1:07Michael Stevens?

  But the flag is still there. It's just on the ground. It's also been probably bleached white because there's no atmosphere at all. So solar radiation on the moon is so much stronger than here.

• 1:17Hannah Fry?

  I mean, even if it was on Earth and you left it outdoors, you would have, it would be bleached white by now.

• 1:21Michael Stevens?

  Yeah. So there are like white flags of surrender now that America has on the moon, one of which has fallen over. It's a historical place.

• 1:30Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 1:31Michael Stevens?

  And no one's been back. We barely know its status. We've had some satellite photos of it, but they're, they're from high up, above the moon. And the, the stuff on the moon is so small.

• 1:42Hannah Fry?

  You can't really make it out.

• 1:43Michael Stevens?

  Can't even make it out. How close do you think NASA will allow someone to get to it?

• 1:50Hannah Fry?

  Well, I mean, surely they can't, they can't stop other people going.

• 1:55Michael Stevens?

  They can't.

• 1:56Hannah Fry?

  Right. What if like the Chinese are like, well, you know what? I don't want there to be a bleached white American flag on the ground. I'm gonna change it for a Chinese flag.

• 2:04Michael Stevens?

  Yep. And I'm gonna, and I'm gonna dance around on Armstrong's footprints and erase them forever.

• 2:10Hannah Fry?

  He's so rude.

• 2:11Michael Stevens?

  Now, here's the thing, and this is, this is the, the rub of today's episode. They can't stop you. No international law can stop you. That is what this episode is about.

• 2:27Michael Stevens?

  This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

• 2:30Hannah Fry?

  Scientists have found that cancer risks usually increase with age and size, but some species defy the odds.

• 2:36Michael Stevens?

  For example, deep sea Greenland sharks. They can grow over six metres long, weigh more than a small car, and yet live for up to 400 years.

• 2:47Hannah Fry?

  Now, understanding how Greenland sharks' cellular repair and immune systems seem to have managed to keep them cancer-free for centuries, that could open up exciting research pathways.

• 2:58Michael Stevens?

  Essentially, over millions of years, evolution has been running the world's most successful cancer prevention trial. And sometimes breakthroughs can be found in unusual places.

• 3:08Hannah Fry?

  So by exploring the unexpected, Cancer Research UK scientists are uncovering new ways to tackle over 200 types of cancer. Their work has helped to double survival in the UK over the last 50 years and continues to save and improve lives around the world.

• 3:24Michael Stevens?

  For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org/the rest is science.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers, The Rest Is Football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, Ts and Cs apply. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

• 4:41Hannah Fry?

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• 5:25Hannah Fry?

  Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more, or visit tremfyradio.com.

• 5:40Michael Stevens?

  Okay, so Hannah, the strongest rule is that NASA has requested that please no one get within 75 meters of the landing site?

• 5:49Hannah Fry?

  Oh.

• 5:50Michael Stevens?

  That's it.

• 5:51Hannah Fry?

  Because of the historical significance.

• 5:52Michael Stevens?

  Because of the historical significance.

• 5:54Hannah Fry?

  Because they don't own it.

• 5:55Michael Stevens?

  The United States of America agreed in the Outer Space Treaty of the 70s that, yep, no one owns outer space. It's part of the common heritage of mankind. However, I should clarify, that treaty that they agreed to says that outer space belongs to no nation. But technically, it's not illegal to go there, right? It's illegal for a country to say they own Tranquility Base, but it's not illegal for Hannah Fry to hitch a ride on a private rocket, go up there, and vandalize the whole historical location.

• 6:26Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, prove that it wasn't there after all, and it was just filmed in a studio.

• 6:29Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, exactly. When it comes to the future of space travel and humans in space, I always find myself going, yeah, yeah, yeah, colonizing exoplanets, whatever.

• 6:42Hannah Fry?

  Blah, blah.

• 6:43Michael Stevens?

  What about building a park on Mars that preserves its surface and atmosphere as it was before we changed it? Like, I want the preservation of these places. The moon can become this big metropolis, but there should be large...

• 6:58Michael Stevens?

  Interstellar or interplanetary parks.

• 7:01Hannah Fry?

  Right, so instead of a national park, it's like an interplanetary park.

• 7:05Michael Stevens?

  Exactly, that should be agreed upon and set aside so people can enjoy the way the moon was before it got its human makeover, right?

• 7:14Hannah Fry?

  I have a question, though. I feel quite certain that you can, as like a sort of quite joke Christmas present for somebody, buy like a square foot of the moon.

• 7:25Michael Stevens?

  You can give someone money in exchange for a piece of paper that says you own a piece of the moon, is what you can do.

• 7:32Hannah Fry?

  But you do not own the moon.

• 7:33Michael Stevens?

  You don't own that piece of the moon. There's no authority.

• 7:37Hannah Fry?

  You're saying all those certificates I have on my wall are worthless?

• 7:40Michael Stevens?

  They're probably worthless, unless you could get a country, preferably one with a strong military, to accept them.

• 7:48Hannah Fry?

  I've got enough of them that I'm technically a lord on the moon.

• 7:51Michael Stevens?

  Do you actually have some? Oh, shoot. That would be cool. I mean, especially if you got them as gifts and it wasn't like you wasted your own money on it.

• 7:58Hannah Fry?

  I do think I have a star.

• 7:59Michael Stevens?

  A star, like named after you or something? Right, okay.

• 8:02Hannah Fry?

  Which is better in a lot of ways, but just feels feels worse because it's further away.

• 8:06Michael Stevens?

  Well, my dream is to have a extraterrestrial park named after me. I don't really care where, but I would love for it to be like, hey, this is the like, Michael Stevens Lunar Park, you know, be sure to pick up your trash, you know, that kind of thing.

• 8:23Hannah Fry?

  A lot of people just want a bench, you know?

• 8:26Michael Stevens?

  A bench, I would just, I just want a park on the moon, okay? I'm a simple guy.

• 8:29Hannah Fry?

  If that's too much to ask. Michael enjoyed looking at this moon.

• 8:34Michael Stevens?

  No tombstone. You know what? Give up on my like memorial toilet idea on Earth? A memorial toilet on the moon, however, is still in the running. I still want that. Yeah, my dream is that there will be a day where people are on, can can visit the moon, and there's like boardwalks they walk on to to walk around Tranquility Base. And they can see the first human footprint on the moon. Now, we're not sure what its state is. Was it damaged by the propulsion from the the lander lifting off? We don't know. We haven't gotten close enough, but the mementos that that they left, the little plaque that says, you know, hey, humans came here in peace and whatever, that's that's all still there.

• 9:16Michael Stevens?

  I guess I just really love the the historicalness of it. In fact, there are only four archaeological sites.

• 9:27Michael Stevens?

  That do not lie within the boundaries of a nation.

• 9:30Hannah Fry?

  Of a nation. Okay, so Tranquility Bay being one.

• 9:33Michael Stevens?

  That's one.

• 9:34Hannah Fry?

  Are there others on the moon?

• 9:35Michael Stevens?

  How you define an archaeological site is pretty vague. But there hasn't been a lot of official action taken for the other Apollo landing sites or other lunar probe landing sites. But the state of California and the state of New Mexico have declared Tranquility Base to be of historical importance to the state.

• 9:56Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 9:57Michael Stevens?

  And the only reason Texas hasn't, which they should have a claim too, because Mission Control was in Houston. They actually have in their constitution that they cannot claim a historical section of land unless it's within the boundaries of Texas on Earth.

• 10:11Hannah Fry?

  Oh.

• 10:12Michael Stevens?

  So anyway, the point is Tranquility Base is a significant archaeological site that's not inside a nation. There are three others and they're all the, well, no, two of them are the same kind of thing and one of them is not.

• 10:27Hannah Fry?

  Oh, okay. I reckon surely the ocean has got to be the source of some of this. I reckon Titanic?

• 10:35Michael Stevens?

  The Titanic wreck.

• 10:36Hannah Fry?

  Okay, there's going to be another wreck then. Something li, oh, oh, what about where the meteor hit?

• 10:43Michael Stevens?

  Ah, the Chickalube Crater. No, that's within the boundaries of a nation.

• 10:47Hannah Fry?

  Oh, is it?

• 10:47Michael Stevens?

  At least part of it, I'm sure.

• 10:49Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Michael Stevens?

  But also, that cannot be an archaeological site because, let's define archaeology.

• 10:54Hannah Fry?

  Has to be human made.

• 10:56Michael Stevens?

  That's right. Archaeology is the study of the material culture of humans.

• 11:00Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 11:01Michael Stevens?

  Now, often, we think of archaeology as being prehistoric stuff, like the oldest of the old stuff, a little clay pot or something. But archaeology just means material culture. So there can be an archaeology of the 1970s.

• 11:15Hannah Fry?

  Sure, last week.

• 11:16Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, of last week.

• 11:17Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Michael Stevens?

  There can be an archaeology of what the heck did I have for breakfast? And you're looking at the fork and the stain on the fork and you're going, ah, yeah, I had the omelet that turned into scrambled eggs.

• 11:27Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:27Michael Stevens?

  See, and you've just done archaeology.

• 11:29Hannah Fry?

  Eggs Royale.

• 11:30Michael Stevens?

  And this isn't, this isn't me joking. This is really what it is. There's, there's contemporary archaeology where people are Studying the material culture and what we can learn of the past from it, of things that aren't even that old, of things that are like happening now even.

• 11:45Hannah Fry?

  Okay, all right. So there's, so I've got two to get, yeah?

• 11:47Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, so you've got the Titanic and Tranquility Base.

• 11:50Hannah Fry?

  Right, one of, one of them, another, I think another one has got to be a sort of sunken something.

• 11:54Michael Stevens?

  There's another sunken ship that happens to be sunk outside of the boundaries of a nation.

• 11:58Hannah Fry?

  Mary Rose?

• 11:59Michael Stevens?

  I don't think, I didn't know it.

• 12:00Hannah Fry?

  Go on.

• 12:01Michael Stevens?

  It's the SS Republic, about 100 kilometers off the coast of the US state of Georgia.

• 12:05Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 12:07Michael Stevens?

  It was full of gold.

• 12:08Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 12:10Michael Stevens?

  And I think in the 90s, a company, a private company managed to get like a third of its gold, which was worth millions. I don't even think it's been resolved yet, but there's some.

• 12:21Hannah Fry?

  Is there still some down there?

• 12:22Michael Stevens?

  There's, two thirds of its gold is still down there.

• 12:24Hannah Fry?

  You know what? Forget going to Tranquility Base, I'm going down there.

• 12:27Michael Stevens?

  To the SS Republic. I can't believe more people aren't trying to go there.

• 12:31Hannah Fry?

  Hello.

• 12:31Michael Stevens?

  The problem is, I think that there's a lot of disputes around it, as you would imagine. It's treasure.

• 12:35Hannah Fry?

  They're not going to be looking the whole time, though.

• 12:37Michael Stevens?

  The last one, you're also not going to guess.

• 12:39Hannah Fry?

  Okay, well, wait, wait, wait. Let me try, let me try, let me try. So is it not in the ocean?

• 12:43Michael Stevens?

  It's not in the ocean.

• 12:44Hannah Fry?

  And it's not on another planet?

• 12:46Michael Stevens?

  Nope.

• 12:46Hannah Fry?

  Including the moon. So it must be, and it's not part of a nation, so it must be Antarctic.

• 12:53Michael Stevens?

  Dang, that's good, yeah.

• 12:55Hannah Fry?

  I reckon maybe Shackleton's ship?

• 12:58Michael Stevens?

  No.

• 12:59Hannah Fry?

  So it must have been some sort of polar explorer.

• 13:02Michael Stevens?

  Not, not, not so much explorer, actually.

• 13:04Hannah Fry?

  Not so much explorer. Go on, tell me.

• 13:07Michael Stevens?

  Hector Station. Does that ring a bell?

• 13:09Hannah Fry?

  No.

• 13:10Michael Stevens?

  Hector Station was a very old whale oil factory.

• 13:14Hannah Fry?

  Wow.

• 13:15Michael Stevens?

  Back before petroleum products like completely crushed the market for whale oil, you would catch whales and then you'd have to like squeeze out their juice. And that was great for lamplights and all kinds of things.

• 13:27Hannah Fry?

  And sea shanties.

• 13:29Michael Stevens?

  And, and, yeah. But you, you, you can only squeeze out so much. Like, if you really want to get your money's worth out of a whale, you gotta boil the whole whale. But transporting a whale back from Antarctica to where you can boil it, very cost prohibitive. So at Hector Station on Desolation Island, that's really the name of it. Desolation Island, Antarctica, they built a big whale boiling factory.

• 13:54Hannah Fry?

  Oh my god.

• 13:54Michael Stevens?

  And the tanks are still there.

• 13:56Hannah Fry?

  Wow.

• 13:57Michael Stevens?

  And they look so cool.

• 13:58Hannah Fry?

  Wait, can I see photos of these?

• 13:59Michael Stevens?

  Look it up. It's like steampunk style, right? It's that era of metal boilers. And they've been abandoned for more than a hundred years and they're all rusted. And it's so, it's so middle of nowhere.

• 14:13Hannah Fry?

  Okay, let's look. Whoa, that looks so sci fi.

• 14:16Michael Stevens?

  It's sci fi. That's the right word for it. Yeah.

• 14:19Hannah Fry?

  Okay, so it looks like, for those of you who are listening, it looks like the diving suits that people used to wear in the very earliest days of exploring the bottom of the ocean. So you have these gigantic rusted domes. You, what, you would just pop a whale in one of those domes and then boil it up?

• 14:37Michael Stevens?

  I think they stored the whale oil in those. I don't know a lot about the whale oil business.

• 14:43Hannah Fry?

  No, no, me neither. Wow, this is absolutely incredible. Okay, and then there's like sheds that are all falling apart. And inside, it looks very much how you would expect a kind of Victorian era whaling station to look incredibly weathered, but also just, I don't know, archaic, basically.

• 15:04Michael Stevens?

  Exactly.

• 15:05Hannah Fry?

  In the design.

• 15:06Michael Stevens?

  And unlike a lot of other Victorian era artifacts, this one is really untouched because no one goes there. No one's built a, you know, a Pizza Hut and a McDonald's next to it. It was just abandoned and it's just been there, frozen. So it's not being affected by the same kinds of erosion and weather events. I mean, obviously, the weather in Antarctica on Desolation Island is not great.

• 15:29Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Michael Stevens?

  But it's

• 15:30Hannah Fry?

  It's called Desolation Island, for goodness sake.

• 15:31Michael Stevens?

  It's free from human intervention.

• 15:33Hannah Fry?

  So no one owns that? No one owns the land of Antarctica?

• 15:36Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, it doesn't belong to any particular nation.

• 15:40Hannah Fry?

  Because no one, no one lives there permanently? You know, I think that there have only ever been, let me see, the number of people born in Antarctica.

• 15:49Michael Stevens?

  Is zero.

• 15:50Hannah Fry?

  No.

• 15:50Michael Stevens?

  Is it not?

• 15:51Hannah Fry?

  It's not zero.

• 15:52Michael Stevens?

  Some pregnant person went to Antarctica?

• 15:55Hannah Fry?

  By that logic, if you take the, the American rule of if you're born in this land, you're a citizen of it, it's a country of four people.

• 16:03Michael Stevens?

  But Antarctica doesn't have birthright citizenship. It has no citizenship.

• 16:08Michael Stevens?

  It's not a nation.

• 16:09Hannah Fry?

  No.

• 16:09Michael Stevens?

  It is, it is like by treaty, a, like a heritage site for all mankind for scientific research.

• 16:16Hannah Fry?

  It's 11, by the way.

• 16:18Michael Stevens?

  11 people have been born?

• 16:20Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, and it's not by accident. They were, they were planned geopolitical maneuvers by Argentina and Chile.

• 16:28Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, to strengthen their territorial claims over the island.

• 16:31Michael Stevens?

  Sure. I was gonna say, it's, that's a, that's a political move. You don't just go there and you're like, oh, I'm kinda pregnant, but like,

• 16:38Hannah Fry?

  Where did this come from?

• 16:39Michael Stevens?

  Oh, whoops, I missed the boat back. Guess I'll have to deliver it here and become famous. Yeah, I get it. I get it. So,

• 16:45Hannah Fry?

  No, this is true.

• 16:46Michael Stevens?

  So in fact, if, if you'll indulge me, I've got some cool things about archaeology that I wanna share, and it's

• 16:52Hannah Fry?

  Always.

• 16:52Michael Stevens?

  It's forming a bedrock of where, where we're going, probably, in this episode. So, when it comes to archaeology, not only is it kinda cool to, to realize that you can have an archaeology of any time period, but also, the definition of an artifact is really neat. Do you, how, how would you define an artifact?

• 17:11Hannah Fry?

  Hmm, let me see. I would say it's an object that holds some interest or value.

• 17:17Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, basically. I mean, technically, an artifact is just an object, a physical object, that was made or altered by a human.

• 17:27Hannah Fry?

  But then that means everything is an artifact, including the rubbish that you've chucked out.

• 17:30Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, that's an artifact, for sure. Garbageology? Garbology? It's like a whole, like, emerging field of how to study the behaviors, the diets, and the mindsets of people, even just last year as opposed to 20 years ago. You can look through their garbage.

• 17:46Hannah Fry?

  I mean, if you, we had a field notes, uh, a little while ago, or maybe coming up, depending on when they release it in the schedule, where we had some garbage of Ice Age humans.

• 17:56Michael Stevens?

  Exactly, exactly. And so, here's what's actually pretty cool about it. That fossil that you showed, or will show in a future episode.

• 18:06Michael Stevens?

  Isn't an artifact. It's an eco fact.

• 18:09Hannah Fry?

  Go on.

• 18:10Michael Stevens?

  Because a human didn't make it. It was grown by the reindeer. And the human, the human maybe altered it, but it was all um, just uh, evidence of maybe a meal that they had.

• 18:22Hannah Fry?

  So like the bones that you chuck in the bin after your KFC.

• 18:25Michael Stevens?

  Exactly.

• 18:26Hannah Fry?

  Are eco facts.

• 18:27Michael Stevens?

  Yes, they're called eco facts or bio facts. And those are things that used to be alive that have some kind of uh, significance to human culture.

• 18:38Hannah Fry?

  Have interacted with the human at some point.

• 18:40Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, and the, and the human may not have technologically done anything to them. But the fact that we find a bunch of bones in that location means that this is where they slaughtered the animals or where they ate, or it's where they dumped their trash. Seeds and pollen, those all show us as well, things about the lives of humans. But the humans weren't like actively meaning to, to change these things. But here's where it gets really, really neat. There's also a thing called a geofact.

• 19:08Hannah Fry?

  Go on.

• 19:09Michael Stevens?

  A geofact is a natural rock formation that looks like a human made it, but didn't.

• 19:18Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 19:19Michael Stevens?

  Yes.

• 19:20Hannah Fry?

  So this is not something that is geological, that has interacted with humans in some way. This is something that you think might be human linked, but isn't.

• 19:30Michael Stevens?

  Yes.

• 19:31Hannah Fry?

  Are we talking here about like, for example, the hexagonal rocks that you get? Like Giant's Causeway, for instance? Where it's like, they, they look so perfectly sculpted that, that it's really difficult to believe that they occurred by nature.

• 19:43Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, yeah, you could call that a geofact. In general, it helps if someone, or if there's even still a continuing debate over whether or not its shape is natural, coincidental, or human made.

• 19:56Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 19:56Michael Stevens?

  So for example, the Venus of Tantan. Look it up.

• 20:00Hannah Fry?

  Okay, hang on.

• 20:01Michael Stevens?

  Now, we've all seen these Venus sculptures. These are some of the oldest. Artistic creations of representing the human form. Are you looking at it?

• 20:10Hannah Fry?

  This is like Jesus in the toast, isn't it?

• 20:12Michael Stevens?

  Exactly.

• 20:14Hannah Fry?

  Like Jesus in the toast.

• 20:15Michael Stevens?

  So for those of you who are listening, Venus of Tantan is a rock and it could be an artifact or it might be a geofact. There's actually a lot of debate around this, but it's a rock that is shaped somewhat like a person.

• 20:31Hannah Fry?

  Can I give a description of it?

• 20:33Michael Stevens?

  Please.

• 20:33Hannah Fry?

  You've seen those fertility objects that people have crafted tens of thousands of years ago, in particular where they really accentuate like a woman's bust or a woman's hips or a woman's thighs. And there's something of that about this. It's essentially a rock. It's about six centimeters tall. It's quite blob shaped, but it looks like it could be just a bad plasticine model of a human. And the things that kind of give away that it's been interacted with is that it, when held upright, it almost looks like it's got split into two legs.

• 21:12Hannah Fry?

  And then there's sort of like a quite flabby butt that hangs over the edge. But I can completely see how turn this another way and it's just actually a normal rock with a crack in it.

• 21:25Michael Stevens?

  Exactly. It's really hard to tell and no experts fully agree on whether or not the anthropomorphic shape of that rock is a coincidence or if it's actually a piece of art made that way by an early human. And by early, I mean early. So the Venus of Tantan was a rock found in 1999 in Morocco. And based on the sediments it was found and it's been dated around 300 to 500,000 years before present.

• 21:54Hannah Fry?

  Wow.

• 21:55Michael Stevens?

  So if it was created by a very early Homo sapiens or some other hominid, then that means that it is the oldest by far known representation of a human form or a hominid form. But experts don't know. And, and I think it almost feels like they might both be right. It could be both. It could be a geofact and an artifact. Meaning, a, a, an intelligent creature may have found that and gone, this kind of looks like a person. I'm gonna cut these grooves a bit deeper and add to it so it even looks more like a person.

• 22:34Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 22:34Michael Stevens?

  But it already did to begin with, and that's why we don't see as many signs of human action as we do. But maybe we see some. So it may have been Earth and humans working together to make a little statue of a, of a person.

• 22:47Hannah Fry?

  Cause remind me where, where we are at this point. So, so 300,000 years ago, I mean, there's tool use at this point, right?

• 22:54Michael Stevens?

  There's fire, all that kind of stuff.

• 22:55Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Michael Stevens?

  But the, the actual species Homo sapiens is just beginning.

• 23:00Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 23:00Michael Stevens?

  So it could have been Homo erectus that found that.

• 23:04Hannah Fry?

  But it's not like they have knives, cause they haven't got metal.

• 23:07Michael Stevens?

  No, but they would have had other rocks.

• 23:09Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 23:09Michael Stevens?

  It could have, yeah, scraped on it or whatever.

• 23:12Hannah Fry?

  When it was found, the rock that it was found among, did it belong there or did it look as though it, it was in a, a natural environment as it were?

• 23:21Michael Stevens?

  That is a beautiful question because it brings me to the very next kind, the last kind of artifact I want to talk about.

• 23:27Hannah Fry?

  I'll tell you what, I think we should probably go for a little break.

• 23:29Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:30Hannah Fry?

  And we'll, we'll be back in a moment with more.

• 23:39Speaker 03

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• 24:44Michael Stevens?

  Okay, we're back and there's more. The Venus of Tantan did not look like it just kind of naturally wound up there. And so here's a great word: manaport.

• 24:53Hannah Fry?

  Oh, I love it.

• 24:56Michael Stevens?

  Manaport is like the word manuscript.

• 25:00Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 25:00Michael Stevens?

  Manuscript means handwritten. Manaport means hand-carried.

• 25:04Hannah Fry?

  Love it.

• 25:05Michael Stevens?

  And so a manaport is something that we find that has not been technologically altered or made by humans.

• 25:12Hannah Fry?

  But it's in the wrong place.

• 25:13Michael Stevens?

  But it's in the wrong place.

• 25:14Hannah Fry?

  Oh, I love these.

• 25:15Michael Stevens?

  Same with the Venus of Tantan. It might have been that an early hominid, could have been Homo sapiens, saw it, said, "That's a cool rock." Picked it up, carried it with them, showed it to their friends. Maybe they did some extra scraping to like really accentuate the human form that they saw in it. And then they lost it. And then we found it later. It's out of place, so it's a manaport. But whether or not it's just a manaport, or if it's actually an artifact because it was made, is an unknown question. But let me bring up an even cooler

• 25:49Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Michael Stevens?

  manaport.

• 25:51Hannah Fry?

  I'm absolutely here for this. This is, you're talking my language.

• 25:54Michael Stevens?

  Okay, so this is cooler.

• 25:56Hannah Fry?

  Sorry, did you say rocks, Michael? Yes, I will have a long conversation about rocks. Thank you.

• 26:00Michael Stevens?

  This is my favorite. It's called the Macapanscot Pebble. And it was discovered in the 1920s. But based on where it was found, it's been dated to nearly 3 million years ago.

• 26:14Hannah Fry?

  What?

• 26:15Michael Stevens?

  Yes.

• 26:15Hannah Fry?

  Wait, is that when it's for, when it was formed?

• 26:18Michael Stevens?

  No, that's when it was laid on the ground.

• 26:20Hannah Fry?

  Right, because it's found amongst other sediments.

• 26:22Michael Stevens?

  That's right. It's been found amongst other sediments and other layers have piled up on top of it for almost three million years. To be precise, I don't know how they've dated this to this degree, but it's 2.95 million years ago, it was left on the ground and lost.

• 26:38Hannah Fry?

  Where is this again?

• 26:39Michael Stevens?

  This was, this was discovered in South Africa.

• 26:42Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 26:42Michael Stevens?

  In the 1920s.

• 26:43Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 26:44Michael Stevens?

  And for those of you who are watching, this is what it looks like. For those of you listening, it looks like a pebble that happens to have three little divots cut in it, like the holes in a bowling ball.

• 26:56Hannah Fry?

  Looks like a face.

• 26:57Michael Stevens?

  It looks like a face.

• 26:59Hannah Fry?

  It looks like a face. It looks like a really accrued skeleton.

• 27:03Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, it does look like a bit of a skull, doesn't it?

• 27:05Hannah Fry?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:06Michael Stevens?

  But it's been, it's been studied really intensively and there's just no evidence at all that this was carved by a creature. And I say creature because there were no Homo sapiens three million years ago. This would have been, in fact, in the same sediment, like nearby, they found skeletons of Australopithecus specimens. That's like an early hominid before humans as Homo sapiens evolved. Okay, this becomes almost certainly a manaport, almost certainly an instance of, oh, let me also clarify, that it's made of jasperite. And the nearest jasperite that you could even find is at least 32 kilometers away from where it was found.

• 27:48Hannah Fry?

  I love this so much.

• 27:49Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Hannah Fry?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 27:50Michael Stevens?

  So it's hard to believe anything but the story that three million years ago, an Australopithecus, an early hominid animal that no longer exists, that, that probably walked upright, we don't even, all we know is that a creature of that age, of that era, found that rock. And for some reason, carried it for dozens of kilometers, probably because they fought. Guys, this kind of looks like a face, right?

• 28:21Hannah Fry?

  Gosh, that is the coolest, coolest thing.

• 28:24Michael Stevens?

  It's really cool and it's because it is so old. It also gives us a peek at what might be at least a bridge into the first abstract symbolic thought. That hominids ever had.

• 28:39Hannah Fry?

  Because maybe this creature thought it was worth holding on to because it had the the the face inside it. Because basically the creature did the Jesus in the toast thing. It was like, that's pretty cool.

• 28:49Michael Stevens?

  Exactly. The Jesus in the toast thing, the pareidolia thing. Now, animals fall for this all the time. I mean, you can put a cucumber behind a cat. And if it turns and looks, it'll think it's a snake at first, often and jump, right? This is, this is like not new. But to look at a rock and go, hey, that's kind of like our faces. And then to pick it up and carry it with you is a different sort of behavior. Raccoons and birds, they love interesting things. They like shiny things.

• 29:18Hannah Fry?

  I mean, look, I've got a dog who has, who has had a branch that they were obsessed with, you know? That they really particularly wanted to keep and take home.

• 29:27Michael Stevens?

  That's right. And I think there's a lot of things they love about that stick. But I don't think that it abstractly resembles a prototypical geometric shape that they're used to, like their own face.

• 29:36Hannah Fry?

  And maybe, maybe it's, this is just a coincidence. Maybe just the fact that these marks on it that have this face like structure is just a total fluke. But it does seem extremely unusual that you would have this artifact that have been carried so far in an era where so few creatures could do it.

• 29:56Michael Stevens?

  Exactly.

• 29:57Hannah Fry?

  And it not be because of what it looked like.

• 30:00Michael Stevens?

  Yeah. And I want to tell, I want to be careful. Your dog might actually look at that stick that he loves, or she?

• 30:06Hannah Fry?

  She.

• 30:06Michael Stevens?

  That she loves and go, you remind me of my mother, but probably not. But I'm, I'm, I'm open to that possibility. But there are a lot of other reasons why a dog would carry a stick around. They love chewing on sticks. But there aren't a lot of other reasons to carry this stone around for so long. So it could be evidence that as early as three million years ago, hominids were starting to think and see and categorize in these like ever increasingly abstract ways.

• 30:34Hannah Fry?

  Do you know what? I think that's my favorite story you've ever told me.

• 30:36Michael Stevens?

  Oh, really?

• 30:37Hannah Fry?

  Really, really, really love that. I really love that.

• 30:40Michael Stevens?

  Makapans got pebble. I, I, it blew my mind when I read about it.

• 30:44Hannah Fry?

  It's geology and anthropology and like the wonder of humanity and our existence.

• 30:51Hannah Fry?

  And where we came from and our ancestors and but there's something also that just like really connects us. But that we're all sort of the same, right? All creatures like, hey, look at this cool thing. Isn't it awesome? And then the idea that there's this one physical object that has had this journey that then has been found. And now all of us are like, wow, what is this? There's something so alien and yet so comforting about it.

• 31:13Michael Stevens?

  I want to eventually get into talking about space archaeology.

• 31:18Hannah Fry?

  Just be, oh, go on, sorry.

• 31:19Michael Stevens?

  No, go ahead.

• 31:20Hannah Fry?

  Well, I don't know. I think.

• 31:24Michael Stevens?

  This better be important. This better be good.

• 31:27Hannah Fry?

  The thing I often think about is that um this idea that we are so locked into. That every single parcel of land within a nation has titles, deeds, ownership. I mean, this really wasn't always the case.

• 31:45Michael Stevens?

  No, no, and it doesn't have to be.

• 31:46Hannah Fry?

  And it doesn't have to be. And it's sort of, if you think about in nature. It doesn't make any sense for, it doesn't make any sense that you would have hard. Distinct boundaries between landscapes that say this is mine and this is yours.

• 32:01Michael Stevens?

  Animals are certainly territorial.

• 32:03Hannah Fry?

  Sure.

• 32:04Michael Stevens?

  But humans have constructed a giant edifice of ritual. And law and enforcement around this concept of ownership. And it's incredibly intricate. And unlike other animals, humans also do things pretty differently because like. A wolf pack might claim their territory, right, and defend it or whatever. But they don't ask questions that we can like, well, wait a second, if this is our territory, how far down does it go? And how far up? Are those birds in our territory? They don't. They don't ask that. But people ask us all the time. I think we've actually been emailed this question quite a few times.

• 32:43Hannah Fry?

  Okay.

• 32:44Michael Stevens?

  Like, okay, so I own my land, but like, how far up into the sky does my claim go and how far down?

• 32:50Hannah Fry?

  When a plane goes over my house, do I own it?

• 32:53Michael Stevens?

  That's right.

• 32:54Hannah Fry?

  Does it need to pay me? Rent.

• 32:55Michael Stevens?

  Does it? Yeah. Can I, can I charge them for the, the few seconds that they were over my property? Or the, or the fraction of a second? And you can't. There was an ancient, like Latin phrase, and I'm not going to even try to pronounce it. But the phrase meant whoever owns the soil owns everything up to heaven and down to hell. And that just made sense to them. But of course, they had that saying before the invention of airplanes. Before the discovery of oil. Before, before it was recognized that, that deposits of certain metal ores would be valuable as a separate right to sell or give to others.

• 33:37Michael Stevens?

  And so today, how high above your land and how down below it you own is either very legislated based on where you live, or not at all, because it just doesn't come up, right? People will say things like, well, do I own like three miles below me? Sure. Why not? It's never, it's never gonna come up. Yeah. Like, what, because what are you gonna do with land three miles below your house? With like the, the rocks down there? How are you gonna get at them? You have the right to them, perhaps, but you don't have the right to bring in the heavy machinery required to do a super deep bore hole down below your ground because of all kinds of regulations and ordinances.

• 34:19Hannah Fry?

  So you just can't ever get to it?

• 34:21Michael Stevens?

  You just can't get to it.

• 34:21Hannah Fry?

  Okay, but then the oil one is a really interesting example because what if there's an oil field that goes underneath your house? Do you have a right? Do you have a claim over that, that portion?

• 34:30Michael Stevens?

  Again, it depends on where you live. In, in most places in Texas, you don't. They make it very clear that you own the surface rights to your property. And that's because there's a lot of oil there and they thought about this and they've already sold all the rights to any oil found in this area to certain companies or individuals. So if you find oil, you probably found someone else's oil. And that can be very annoying. And then when it comes to the airspace above your land, the Supreme Court in the United States actually had to say something about this because people were complaining about airplanes. And by people, I mean, at, at first it was farmers, that airplanes were flying too low over their land. And the, the Supreme Court was like, here's the problem.

• 35:14Michael Stevens?

  Like, I know it's been this thing for a long time that you own everything up to heaven above your land.

• 35:19Hannah Fry?

  I mean, it's in Latin for gonna say.

• 35:21Michael Stevens?

  It's in Latin. You know, it's very persuasive. But it's just not reasonable anymore. Like, we cannot allow all landowners to constantly be leasing out their airspace to every single airplane that might have to fly over. And so the answer in most jurisdictions is that you own the area above your land up to a height of reasonable use.

• 35:44Hannah Fry?

  What is that, though? What is reasonable use?

• 35:46Michael Stevens?

  It depends on what you're doing. Like, you cannot build a structure of a certain height because of different zoning restrictions.

• 35:53Hannah Fry?

  Here's what I'm thinking, though. Let's say I've got a neighbor that I really intensely dislike, okay?

• 35:57Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Hannah Fry?

  I'm talking about this in my sort of, you know, London townhouse, okay? Can I build a really, really, really, really, really tall ladder, okay?

• 36:06Michael Stevens?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:06Hannah Fry?

  On my land, above my house? And then a platform that goes over the top of their house that just blocks out the sun, so they don't get any sun?

• 36:16Michael Stevens?

  No. You probably can't. I'm sure there are regulations on what sorts of structures you can build on your land.

• 36:23Hannah Fry?

  Okay, new idea. Can I get a hot air balloon?

• 36:26Michael Stevens?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:26Hannah Fry?

  And permanently hover above their house?

• 36:29Michael Stevens?

  Well, you've got to have a license to operate a hot air balloon, because other people could be harmed by mistakes that you made or accidents caused by your operation of a hot air balloon. So what I'm getting at is that if you say you own the airspace above your home, but also airplanes can fly over it, then what does it really mean to say you own it?

• 36:48Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 36:48Michael Stevens?

  Because there are already laws against all the different ways we can imagine using that space. Same with the space down below. Now, that does bring up some pretty fun questions, like, all right, all right, but who owns the center of the Earth?

• 37:01Hannah Fry?

  Right. Because also, actually, if you think about the surface and going down to the center, if you peel it off in shells, they get smaller and smaller as you go down.

• 37:10Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Hannah Fry?

  So there's more and more claims on, on...

• 37:13Michael Stevens?

  That's right. So the wedges of, of land on the surface, they just come to a point at the center.

• 37:18Hannah Fry?

  It's teeny, teeny tiny in the center.

• 37:19Michael Stevens?

  So someone made a joke once that, like, near the center of the Earth, like, everyone's your neighbor.

• 37:24Hannah Fry?

  That's true.

• 37:25Michael Stevens?

  And so, again, um, there hasn't been a lot of official judicial rulings on this because it never comes up.

• 37:33Hannah Fry?

  Right, but there's... There's good stuff down there.

• 37:35Michael Stevens?

  There's good stuff down there.

• 37:36Hannah Fry?

  Really good stuff down there.

• 37:38Michael Stevens?

  I mean, to put this into perspective, the earth is, what's the radius of the earth?

• 37:44Hannah Fry?

  It's, it's 6,371 kilometers on average.

• 37:47Michael Stevens?

  On average, okay, I was gonna say, there's definitely.

• 37:50Hannah Fry?

  Let's be precise here.

• 37:51Michael Stevens?

  Oh, um, excuse me, which axis are we measuring here? But that, all that matters is 6,000 is a really big number. And that's the distance from the surface of the earth to the center. The deepest anyone has ever dug is not 6,000, not 1,000, but 12.

• 38:11Hannah Fry?

  12?

• 38:12Michael Stevens?

  12 kilometers is the depth of the Kola Super Deep borehole.

• 38:16Hannah Fry?

  What?

• 38:17Michael Stevens?

  Which the Russians dug.

• 38:18Hannah Fry?

  That's nothing.

• 38:19Michael Stevens?

  It's nothing. It's, it's only a third of the way through the crust. It's like not even close to the next part, the mantle, that we all learn about in school and like, we haven't even gotten halfway there.

• 38:30Hannah Fry?

  This, this is really destroying my plans to dig all the way through and have a, a bungee jump system.

• 38:36Michael Stevens?

  Yes.

• 38:37Hannah Fry?

  That you just bounce back and forth forever.

• 38:38Michael Stevens?

  The borehole that they dug, uh, I think a lot of the reason they did it was it was a sort of inverse space race.

• 38:46Hannah Fry?

  See how far you can go.

• 38:47Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, and can we beat the Americans at it? Because America had tried something like this and they gave up. And so the Russians were like, well, we, we didn't beat them to the moon, but we can beat them to the mantle.

• 38:59Hannah Fry?

  How hard could it be?

• 39:00Michael Stevens?

  How hard could it be? Turns out terribly hard and surprisingly hard and frighteningly hard.

• 39:07Hannah Fry?

  Go on.

• 39:08Michael Stevens?

  Here's what they did. So they start digging, right? And they just are gonna dig and they get deeper and deeper. And they, they don't really know what to expect. Like, one hypothesis was that there's not gonna be any water after a certain depth because the ground will become too densely packed for even water to permeate.

• 39:23Hannah Fry?

  Too much pressure.

• 39:24Michael Stevens?

  But they kept finding water, like liquid water, way deeper than any scientist at the time thought was possible.

• 39:30Hannah Fry?

  Like pools of water or are we talking about just sort of soaked into the porousness of the rock?

• 39:36Michael Stevens?

  I actually don't know. I don't think they found underwater ponds, but it was wet. Also, they figured that down there, uh, you know, beyond 10 kilometers down, the temperature could be above boiling, like 100 Celsius, 212 Fahrenheit.

• 39:54Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, they expected it to be hot, but it was hotter than they'd expected. Instead of being about a hundred, it was like a hundred and eighty Celsius, like three sixty-five, like hot, roasting potato temperature.

• 40:07Hannah Fry?

  Whoa.

• 40:07Michael Stevens?

  Down twelve kilometers below the earth.

• 40:10Hannah Fry?

  Gosh.

• 40:10Michael Stevens?

  And we still don't know why it was so much hotter than in expected.

• 40:14Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 40:15Michael Stevens?

  Obviously, the first thing you go to is hell is real. And they were getting close.

• 40:20Hannah Fry?

  I feel like that's the only sensible explanation.

• 40:22Michael Stevens?

  So they stopped, like they just, they just stopped and not because they were scared because at that pressure and heat, the stone, the rock that they were drilling through stopped acting like stone and acts like plastic. And the drag, like the grip that the material had on the drill bit just made it not, it didn't work.

• 40:40Hannah Fry?

  I also wanna know, hmm, for twelve kilometers down, did they have like stages where it's like you start off with a really big bore hole? And then you have a slightly smaller one and then a slightly smaller one? Or you're just like, is it just a one twelve kilometer long drill bit?

• 40:55Michael Stevens?

  It's, it's just, oh no, they don't have a twelve kilometer long drill bit, but they, I don't know how you drill a hole that deep.

• 41:01Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 41:01Michael Stevens?

  I don't know, actually.

• 41:04Michael Stevens?

  But I have always wondered, like, where are these twelve kilometer long drill bits? I think they, they have shafts.

• 41:10Hannah Fry?

  Coming through.

• 41:11Michael Stevens?

  They've got shafts that I'm sure are like segmented and they'll, they'll drill until it's at the bottom and they have to like pull it up. And, and they'll only pull up to like a joint and then they'll separate at the joint, add in another section and then go down. So you're not having to pull the whole thing out every time?

• 41:27Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 41:28Michael Stevens?

  I actually, I actually went on Jimmy Kimmel to talk about this bore hole.

• 41:33Hannah Fry?

  This exact bore hole.

• 41:33Michael Stevens?

  I mentioned it in a video and then someone from his team called up and they were like, Jimmy wants you to talk about big holes.

• 41:42Hannah Fry?

  I can do that, Jimmy.

• 41:43Michael Stevens?

  And I played, I played up the heat thing a bunch on the, on the show. I was like, it was hotter than they expected and they stopped. But I didn't, I didn't explain that it was because of the material properties of the stone. It wasn't because like a demon came out or anything.

• 41:55Hannah Fry?

  What, what you're saying is we get the extended, we get the director's cut version that you did not give.

• 42:00Michael Stevens?

  That's right. This is the extended director's cut of my Jimmy Kimmel appearance. Okay. So I wanted to say some.

• 42:07Hannah Fry?

  When was this, by the way?

• 42:08Michael Stevens?

  The, the bore hole, the cola, super deep bore hole was completed in nineteen eighty-nine, reaching just a little over twelve kilometers in depth.

• 42:16Hannah Fry?

  I mean, if you, if you turn that into a super seller, you know, you could have. Swimming pools down there, you could have cinema rooms down there, ballrooms down there.

• 42:25Michael Stevens?

  It's, it's really narrow. It's like this. It's like you couldn't really even fit your head down it.

• 42:31Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, okay. Swimming pool for ants.

• 42:34Michael Stevens?

  A swimming pool for ants, that's right. But it's, it's a swimming pool for no one right now, because you know what they did?

• 42:39Hannah Fry?

  Tell me.

• 42:40Michael Stevens?

  They just welded a lid over it.

• 42:41Hannah Fry?

  What?

• 42:42Michael Stevens?

  Yep. So there's like a little, like, smaller than a manhole, because this is, this is a thin borehole. And they've just welded it over and you can't, you can't even like drop things down it.

• 42:54Hannah Fry?

  Okay, but if you did, if you did open it up and just like drop something down it and be like, listen for 12 kilometers before it hits the bottom.

• 43:01Michael Stevens?

  How long would that take, I wonder? It's a very simple calculation.

• 43:05Hannah Fry?

  You know, I think people falling down wells, by the way, it used to be a quite common occurrence.

• 43:11Michael Stevens?

  And it doesn't happen like it should anymore. Times are just getting worse.

• 43:16Hannah Fry?

  Sometimes I think we forget to be grateful about the, the society that we live in now, but falling down a well is not something that we continually have to contend with.

• 43:23Michael Stevens?

  Like, like, kids today are all on their phones. Back in my day, they were falling down wells like God intended. Yeah, I mean, look, wells, just, they're great, but I think that, like, even when I was a kid, there was baby Jessica, who fell down a well and was rescued.

• 43:39Hannah Fry?

  Who's baby Jessica?

• 43:40Michael Stevens?

  Oh my gosh, you're so not American.

• 43:42Hannah Fry?

  I know. What gave it away?

• 43:45Michael Stevens?

  Look it up, guys. It's a, it's a heroic story. Since then, I think just municipal water supply to rural areas has made wells a lot less prevalent and a lot less therefore dangerous.

• 43:57Hannah Fry?

  All the same, though, that cola borehole.

• 44:00Michael Stevens?

  Super deep borehole. Give it credit.

• 44:03Hannah Fry?

  Is almost certainly full of water now.

• 44:05Michael Stevens?

  Probably, right?

• 44:06Hannah Fry?

  Boiling at the bottom. Ooh, maybe it's a bit of a geezer.

• 44:09Michael Stevens?

  A bit of, you mean a geyser?

• 44:12Michael Stevens?

  Is that, is that how you guys pronounce geyser?

• 44:14Hannah Fry?

  A geezer.

• 44:15Michael Stevens?

  A geyser.

• 44:16Hannah Fry?

  It's, it's, it's a word with double meaning. A bit of a geezer.

• 44:20Michael Stevens?

  Right, but geezer also means like an old person.

• 44:23Hannah Fry?

  A geezer, it's definitely male. It's somebody who would enjoy football and drinking pints of beer.

• 44:29Michael Stevens?

  That's so different. In America, a geezer is a really old person.

• 44:33Hannah Fry?

  Is it?

• 44:34Michael Stevens?

  Oh, look at those geezers. And it's like some people who can barely walk.

• 44:37Hannah Fry?

  Oh.

• 44:38Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Hannah Fry?

  It's sort of like a bit of a wine boy, you know?

• 44:41Michael Stevens?

  No, I don't.

• 44:41Hannah Fry?

  Someone, someone who probably enjoys betting, that kind of thing.

• 44:44Michael Stevens?

  That's what a geezer is to you.

• 44:45Hannah Fry?

  Bit of a geezer.

• 44:46Michael Stevens?

  Or it's a spout of water from geothermal heat.

• 44:50Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, because that's what happens there, right? Is that you have, you have a really long crack that runs down or a hole that runs down, uh, I mean, nowhere near as far as the super deep bore hole. But if you get like a, a crack that appears, uh, so not just vertically, but horizontally, where you get superheated water.

• 45:09Michael Stevens?

  Ah, like a kettle, like a natural kettle, right?

• 45:12Hannah Fry?

  And then the pressure difference can mean that that will sort of, uh, need to release as it builds up, the pressure builds up and it releases. And then you end up these like, you know, spouts of water. You get them in Iceland a lot, for example.

• 45:22Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, and you call it a geezer and I call it a geyser.

• 45:26Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, I actually have a feeling it might be an Icelandic word.

• 45:30Michael Stevens?

  Because I don't live that far away from Yellowstone National Park.

• 45:33Hannah Fry?

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 45:33Michael Stevens?

  Where you've got Old Faithful. I think they're called geysers because the first English speakers to see one were like, hey, what's that? And some dude was like, ah, that's just the Old Faithful guy. And then he realized it was his superior and goes, sir.

• 45:49Michael Stevens?

  That's called a belabored pun.

• 45:51Hannah Fry?

  I, I, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that. Geyser is, it is a, an Icelandic word. And you do say geezer in British English. I didn't just make it up.

• 45:58Michael Stevens?

  I'm sure you didn't, yeah.

• 45:59Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, it's a, it is a hot spring in southwestern Iceland called Gysa, Gysa. Old Norse, means to gush.

• 46:07Michael Stevens?

  So the word geyser for the natural phenomenon comes from the Icelandic geezer.

• 46:14Hannah Fry?

  Can I tell you, can I tell you the American? Americanism, the American word that annoys me the absolute most.

• 46:19Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Hannah Fry?

  Entrees to mean main course.

• 46:23Michael Stevens?

  I know.

• 46:23Hannah Fry?

  That is so annoying.

• 46:26Michael Stevens?

  I know. That has been a huge point of confusion for my daughter because she sees on a menu, entree.

• 46:33Hannah Fry?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:33Michael Stevens?

  And my wife considers that the appetizer.

• 46:37Hannah Fry?

  Which is, in France, it's the starter, it's the beginning.

• 46:41Michael Stevens?

  Should be, because the word is like the introduction, the entrance, the entree. But then in America, I don't know why, but I'm sure there's a good reason why, now it means your main course. And so my daughter hears from my wife that it means appetizer, and then from me, doing the etymology, that it means the beginning. And then we're like, but disregard what we've said, because actually it means the main course.

• 47:03Hannah Fry?

  There was once when I was filming in Northern California with the Uroc tribe, with some indigenous Americans, talking about ownership of land. I mean, the whole idea of land being kind of cut up into parcels that are owned by individual people is something that just didn't make any sense at all.

• 47:18Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Hannah Fry?

  The indigenous Americans, and it's still ongoing fights about exactly that. And I was there filming with them about a story around a river and the ownership of the river. Anyway, I got on really well with this chief, he was really amazing. And as we were chatting, I mentioned to him how annoying I found the entree thing. And I sort of said to him, you know what, I think the worst thing about Americans, the worst thing about Americans is that they do this, right? Is that this is what they do. And his response was, okay, oh, really, okay. The worst thing, the worst thing that Americans, the worst thing of all. That's the thing that annoys you the absolute most. Everything else they've done to the tribe that you're here to see.

• 48:04Michael Stevens?

  Pales in comparison to this entree business.

• 48:07Hannah Fry?

  Right, but hear me out though, because here's my argument, because I think what's clearly happened there is that they've sort of taken a bit of French culture, yeah? Taken it for their own and not paid any respect for the origin of where it came from.

• 48:20Michael Stevens?

  It's the same thing.

• 48:21Hannah Fry?

  Thin end of the wedge, Michael.

• 48:22Michael Stevens?

  Yeah. My goodness.

• 48:25Hannah Fry?

  I found another menu for.

• 48:26Michael Stevens?

  You got a show to me.

• 48:29Hannah Fry?

  Because it's really good. Okay, 300,000 years ago.

• 48:31Michael Stevens?

  Okay.

• 48:32Hannah Fry?

  Also Morocco.

• 48:33Michael Stevens?

  Oh, oh, I know what it is. I know what it is.

• 48:36Hannah Fry?

  Good.

• 48:36Michael Stevens?

  It's, it's the.

• 48:37Hannah Fry?

  Cuttlefish.

• 48:38Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, the air food cuttlefish.

• 48:40Hannah Fry?

  Yes.

• 48:41Michael Stevens?

  Did you, were you just looking them up?

• 48:42Hannah Fry?

  I'm just looking them up.

• 48:43Michael Stevens?

  Or did you already know about it?

• 48:44Hannah Fry?

  No, I'm just looking it up.

• 48:44Michael Stevens?

  Okay, so I didn't know this would be appropriate for the, the podcast, but yes. Do, do you want to tell us about it?

• 48:51Hannah Fry?

  Sure, I can tell you. So this is, um, it's a cuttlefish fossil and.

• 48:56Michael Stevens?

  Well, it's part of a cuttlefish fossil.

• 48:59Hannah Fry?

  Okay, but it was found at a site near the towns of Eifford and Brissani in eastern Morocco. Found among a dense cluster of stone tools, right? So really early humans, no evidence of carving or shaping have been detected. Cuttlefish fossils are not native to this region at all.

• 49:19Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 49:19Hannah Fry?

  So it has been moved. It has definitely been manually ported. And the reason why this one is quite famous is because it looks very phallic, shall we say.

• 49:31Michael Stevens?

  Like so much so that Wikipedia doesn't even have an image of it on it.

• 49:35Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 49:36Michael Stevens?

  So I had to Google it and as soon as I Googled it, everyone eating breakfast around me was like, this guy.

• 49:41Hannah Fry?

  Honestly.

• 49:42Michael Stevens?

  I couldn't believe it.

• 49:43Hannah Fry?

  You could not have this up on your screen at work, put it that way.

• 49:45Michael Stevens?

  And so you can, you can clearly see why a prehistoric, like earliest Homo sapien possible. Because 300,000 years ago is about when our species emerged, saw that and was like,

• 49:59Michael Stevens?

  guys, oh my gosh, you gotta show this to Sarah. And they like carry it around forever. It's a big joke. And it, it's a cuttlefish fossil.

• 50:07Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 50:08Michael Stevens?

  That suddenly appears in Morocco, very far from where it originated.

• 50:13Hannah Fry?

  This makes me, I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

• 50:15Michael Stevens?

  Isn't it? It's like something that we share that hasn't changed in us.

• 50:19Hannah Fry?

  300,000 year old dick jokes.

• 50:21Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Hannah Fry?

  Absolutely amazing.

• 50:23Michael Stevens?

  And so what would you, what would you say is going on here? Because I don't think there's an experience that non-human animals have that's like this. We know that birds and raccoons, and they all love curious shiny things.

• 50:35Hannah Fry?

  Sure.

• 50:35Michael Stevens?

  But they don't hold them on, pass them around as far as we. Know, especially for reasons that are so abstracted away. They might think it's curious because it's shiny, but they don't go, this looks like. Remember that one time Ted, when your pants fell down? And then, and then it's like a whole running gag their whole lives and through generations. But that's what these manu ports represent.

• 50:56Hannah Fry?

  That's what they are. That's what they are. Absolutely amazing. Tell you what this makes me wonder, though, is like in 300,000 years time. What are the things that are going to be left? What are the things that people are going to see where, where they infer? How we are and how, you know, our own character and the things that we find funny and the things that we find amusing.

• 51:20Michael Stevens?

  Exactly. And that's why I started with tranquility base because we are still living in constantly what will be archaeological sites for the future. And increasingly, these significant, like super significant human archaeological sites will not even be on earth. And so being mindful of how we preserve them is a great gift that we can give to people in the future. When, when Hector Station was being used in Antarctica, they didn't think like, hey, this is a great way for us to preserve Victorian industry. They just abandoned it and it's kind of falling apart and rusted. But we can say, no one touch tranquility base.

• 52:02Michael Stevens?

  No one touch the perseverance, um, uh, rovers and we can leave the curiosity, leave it there. We're going to eventually make it an exhibit right in situ, right where it is. And this isn't just like a, a little like poetic dream of mine. It's happening now and it makes me so happy. There's a group out of Chapman University and USC out of Southern California. And they're running a program or they ran a program for, for many years, very recently, just in the last three or four years. And the program was called the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment.

• 52:35Hannah Fry?

  Catchy.

• 52:36Michael Stevens?

  Or square.

• 52:37Hannah Fry?

  Ah.

• 52:38Michael Stevens?

  It's right.

• 52:39Hannah Fry?

  You academics.

• 52:40Michael Stevens?

  I know, I know. But here's what they did. They said, guys, the International Space Station is this whole new kind of human settlement.

• 52:47Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Michael Stevens?

  Where there are people who live there and they have to work with completely different variables. There is gravity.

• 52:53Hannah Fry?

  There's no G.

• 52:54Michael Stevens?

  There's no G, there's no weight. And we're just kind of like updating it all the time and new people come in and leave. And like, we need to remember how early space livers lived. So they made little taped squares, quadrangles, all over the ISS. And like every few minutes or every few hours, the astronauts would take a picture of that square. Everything that was in that taped square. They didn't pose it. These weren't posed photos. This was just like, oh, I gotta take that photo of the table and they would do it. And so you learn by looking at these like, oh, that's how often they use frosting. And hey, what was that? Oh, that's a thing that they were doing as this joke one day.

• 53:39Michael Stevens?

  And you tell the story very candidly, very fly on the wall about human culture in the 2020s in outer space. And it's preserved better than what probably would be left to people in the future if we didn't take photos like that.

• 53:54Hannah Fry?

  Absolutely. Otherwise, it just ends up being erased by what comes immediately after it.

• 53:58Michael Stevens?

  That's right.

• 53:59Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, that's it. I guess we're looking back in the past at these tiny little fragments, these like whispers of what went before. And it's only by actively and proactively making the choice to try and preserve what we have that we're leaving anything for the future.

• 54:16Michael Stevens?

  I know. And just like these Australopithecuses left us a funny face-shaped rock. And it shows us their transition from, from like ape thinking to hominid thinking. Who knows what we're doing that in 3 million years will give evidence, important evidence of how we were, you know, changing from, say, a meat consciousness to an expanded or shrunk digital consciousness, right? And these are things that we take for granted. But preserving them, whether they be here on Earth or elsewhere, is, I think, not just a responsibility we have, but a really fun thing to do.

• 54:57Hannah Fry?

  Well, one way for you guys to preserve your love for this podcast. Is to like and subscribe, basically.

• 55:04Michael Stevens?

  That's a very good point.

• 55:06Hannah Fry?

  This is the archaeology.

• 55:07Michael Stevens?

  Do you want people in the future to not know whether you were subscribed to The Rest Is Science? Could your legacy live with that kind of embarrassment?

• 55:15Hannah Fry?

  Look, you need to do your part for humanity, okay? And it's very simple. Do your bit. Or, as ever, you can send us an email to therestis science at gohanger.com.

• 55:25Michael Stevens?

  And we will see you next time.

• 55:26Hannah Fry?

  We certainly will. Thank you.

• 55:41Speaker 05

  Here we are getting a statement from Number 10. On that flight, with 350 passengers on board. The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  We assess, Prime Minister,

• 56:00Speaker 06

  with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 56:09Speaker 05

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 56:22Speaker 05

  We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 56:33Hannah Fry?

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 56:37Speaker 05

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