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The "sheep that grew on trees" or "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary" is a great myth because it's cleary just a game of telephone about the cotton plant through several languages. "plant that grows cloth like wool" very easily becomes "plant which grows like sheep" Becomes a "sheep growing plant". Plus I love the idea of a plant-animal that just eats grass while tethered to the ground by its stem.
3:38 The dolphin story is actually plausible. There are documented instances of dolphins saving humans from drowning in modern times, too. Dolphins are very intelligent and can be quite altruistic at times.
I'm surprised I've not seen anyone make the Myrmex Indikoi into a D&D monster. Lion-sized ants with a hunger for gold and the strength of monsters? That's a dragon's new force of miners to expand its underground domain and increase its hoard.
They're also deadly enemies with Gryphons, since in Herodotus' account, he says that Gryphons also lust after gold, which they mine from the rocks with their powerful beaks and do battle with the giant ants over one another hoards
@@weldonwin "hey, so I gave my players lion-sized gold ants." "That actually sounds kinda cool! Whats wrong with the- You gave them pack tactics didn't you?" "ANTS ACT IN A PACK"
The explanation I heard is that the word "marmot" got confused with "mountain ant" Large furry creatures digging in sand that actually does have trace amounts of hold dust in it would certainly be a good base for the legend.
Herodotus notes often that what he is relating is what he has been told by others, and since he did not visit India, it seems logical that this is one of those stories. If I am not mistaken his travels only covered the Mediterranean areas. If Memory serves he did visit the colonies in Southern France, Sardinia, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, and other areas in North Africa and Spain, though if memory serves he said he did not go as far as the pillars of Hercules.
That was my understanding as well. I think he even said that was told this account of the ants, whereas the things he said about Egypt he specifically mentioned having seen them with his own eyes.
I could have sworn I read somewhere that it was a translation issue - that the local word for "marmot" (or some other furry, burrowing animal) was very close to the Greek word for "ant", and that the gold dust fell from their fur when they surfaced. Of course, the "Herodotus didn't get local slang" version seems more plausible.
From what I've seen, it's not even a question of translation from tibetan to greek, Herodotus never traveled to India, he heard that from persian merchants, to which he spoke with a translator. So, he heard an account translated, from someone who had a lot of interests in overselling his goods, and probably also used translators in Tibet to speak to the locals... That's a lot of intermediaries that may have fudge the term XD
There was an OSP video on Herodot (in the history maker series) which claimed the ants were a mistranslation (I read that somewhere else too, but cant recall where). One of the bigger problems with Herodot is he just wrote everything down he heard stories about and didnt really question the sources of those stories in his works, so some of his stories are somewhat questionable.
Oh I've heard of this one. It was actually a translation error that was likely describing a type of Marmot native to the area that digs up gold dust. The word for Marmot and Ant were just very similar to Herodotus.
Considering that the Imperial Japanese labeled people who didn't worship the emperor as "dirt-spiders" and "woman-spiders" (from whom the Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo legends come) it would not be surprising if people in India referred to a disfavored group as "ants" confusing a hands-off historian like Herodotus.
Well, remember that at one time, India was known to be home to giant gold-digging ants? They’re even notated in several famous historical texts…so…WHERE ARE THEY NOW? One word…ALIENS! 😅😂🤣
Herodotus quite explicitly said that he just recorded what he heard and saw. It is kinda funny how our inability to engage with stories that might or might not be true hasn't changed across the time. He didn't claim that his stories are true he just claimed that's what people told him. By telling the raw story it's left to us how we interpeted the story, and in some sense this is much more useful than herodotus himself interpeting the story, because each time story is interrepted incorrectly it moves futher and futher from the original scenario that spawned it and multiple retellings it becomes completly removed from the circumstances that spawned it. By telling us the raw story as he heard it, it allows as to be that much closer to the actual circumstances that spaned the story. And makes it so that whatever interpetation we do from history is that much closer to the original circumstances. In certain sense he's quite unjustly critisized for his uncritical retelling of theory, because that uncriticality is what allows us to reinterpt and discuss the story so far removed from its original circumstances. There quite few scenarios that might explain why herodotus thought the gold was dug by ants. Maybe he heard about ant gold and ask for what it was and people were joking at his expense. Maybe ants in this case weren't literal ants, but group of people were called ants for whatever lingistic reason. Again if story teller tries to pass a story they've heard as fact its good to be critical of him, but when story is passed as just a story the responsibility is not on the story teller, but on the listener to engage with it critically.
This is the point to bring up with Herodotus, he states he reported what he heard, but often times he himself says that he's skeptical, or when confronted with two differing stories, says the reader should decide for themselves which they think is true.
Maybe I am odd because I grew up with things like the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, but I tend to think that when these things get hard to explain - usually it might be because of someone speaking poetically like they would in the classics and someone down the line decided it was literal. To my mind, it would be easy to describe miners as ants: "And so it was that they crawled upon the earth, huddled in dusty masses as they carved their tunnels and heaped their mounds." Not too far of a stretch, I imagine.
Herodotus mentioned wool growing on trees in northwestern India in 430BC. And then it took the western world 2200 years to "discover" cashmere fiber. The goats shed in the spring and use bushes and fences to rub off the itchy shedding wool. Just like with the ants, it's easy to see how a local natural phenomenon being twisted into fable.
Do you think that legend told as "fact" was insane? There is a story from the beginning of the 20th Century, during the Acre War (1899-1904), between Brazil and Bolivia. The bolivians were impressed by the violence of the brazilians when they fought with machetes and long knives, and they told weird stories about the enemy weapons. Some of those stories said the brazilians always born with a little iron knife by side, and that same knife became longer, as his owner got older, turning into a machete after adulthood.
That was one of my favourite sections of Herodotus's Histories. I always thought he was told that story rather basing it on his own witnessing of it, as much of what he wrote was based on oral traditions he gathered. When seeing something for himself he mentioned it, such as The Pyramids of Egypt and the skeletons of flying snakes. In his book he wrote a detailed account of how Indians gathered the gold dust by using 2 camels, one of which had just recently given birth. During the heat of the day the ants remained underground growing increasingly furious about the theft going on on the surface. The gold dust was loaded onto the camel that had recently given birth, and as The Sun went down and the ground temperature began to cool, the plunderers would set off, just before the ants would emerge to take revenge. The camel with a newborn calf waiting back at camp had extra impetus to run quickly and get back, leaving the other camel behind, which the ants would overtake, thus allowing the collectors to return safely with the gold. This wasn't something he witnessed, but rather what he was told and believed. Whether the person who told him the story believed it as well is something we can't know.
This is one of my favourite Herodotus moments, I think it's quite probable he never actually went there, but just heard poorly translated stories as one theory goes about the similarity of the local word for ant and marmot. My other favourite I roughly remember is how he can't believe the story of a sailor who observed the sun traverse the other side of the sky, when in fact this is very plausibly a man who sailed past the equator!
Yes, I remember that as well. He was talking about claims that people sailed far South along the coast of Africa, and he doubted it was true because of the claim that The Sun was to The North. Where I now live The Sun crossed Zenith and enters the Northern sky at the end of April.
you should do an Episode on the Cynocephali (dog headed people), they also have a bunch of historical records all over the place They are also mentioned in the Indika, among ancient christian sources too, st. bartholomew apparently converted one in the east, a roman general captured one and turned him into a legionnaire and according to the legends st. christopher of lycia, a martyr from the 3rd century wouldve been one as well
Also in Romanian there are the Căpcăun which are described as dog headed people As in Căpcăun seems to literally mean dog headed with " (căp being a form of cap, meaning "head", and căun a derivative of câine, "dog").
Intriguing! I need to dig into it more.... Always loved the Egyptian death God Anubis and recently discovered the druids and their enticing tales leading to wendigos so this could be an interesting tie up
Literally at the start of the video I'm already seeing influence that elden ring took. The giant ants at gnawing on the roots of the erdtree are a great parallel, with themes of gold and such.
Sometimes Herodotus relies on the accounts of others. He doesn't exactly lie about what he heard from others and especially not what he saw himself, but he chooses the most fantastic interpretation he can think of.
Corporate needs you to find the difference between this picture of a Tibetan gold miner, and a giant gold-digging ant. Herodoties: They’re the same picture.
I heard that the story of the Ants was just mistake in translation. Because he heard stories on marmots that live in Tibet. And they look like they dig gold sand out. And because in Persian both words sound similar. Then they thought that he just mistaken in the translation
2:50 - I got to say, that is quite the way to leave a message. Though, now that I think about it, it's not so different from Akuma's message leaving skills.
I could easily see the myth having a lot of elements of truth to it. If there was gold dust mixed in some soil, I could easily see them moving it out of their burrows to more easily shore up their tunnel walls. Most of what follows could be easily seen as exaggerations. Tendency to swarm and painfully sting those that tried to dig up their nest, to the point that they wish they were dead.
Perhaps the most famous animal myth from Herodotus is the Trochilus - crocodile bird. It is a bird that supposedly picks the food between the teeth of the Nile crocodile whenever it basks on land. It is most commonly classified in modern times as the Egyptian plover. Yet despite being believed as factual by many, this supposed symbiotic relationship between bird and croc has zero *solid* documentation of it actually happening in the wild.
@@KS-PNWYep. All depictions of the symbiosis are fictional, from illustrations of centuries past to modern day photo manipulation and CGI animation. If there's anything the research on the actual animal/s has to so say, it's that plovers or any other bird never pick between the teeth of the Nile crocodile.
i mean that's how we got thinking the "Like a dozen" Realms from Norse Myth were actually a real set of Twelve, & not a figure of speech that means "a large quantity of Realms" also, let's be honest even in today's age we still get people thinking that Quoting what someone says is indistinguishable from being the source of said quote
Insects specifically termites may in the future help human find gold deposits. From Wikipedia A 2011 study by Australian scientists found that termites have been found to excrete trace deposits of gold. According to the CSIRO, the termites burrow beneath eroded subterranean material which typically masks human attempts to find gold, and ingest and bring the new deposits to the surface. They believe that studying termite nests may lead to less invasive methods of finding gold deposits.
Then there's the fact that he used intrerpreters and in-betweens and whathaveyous to get the information so the broken telephone line was much longer than one might think. Herodotus is not as bad as people think. You just have to know how to read him: a) whenever he says anything like "I was told" bring at the very least a pound of salt with you. b) remember that he wasn't writing what we today call "history". He didn't intend to. So, while a curious person and one who did try to do at least some due diligence, he honestly didn't see why a fun story could not be included even if in all probability fictional. It's us that expect out of him what he didn't set out to do,
More likely, large ants, not dog size, but still big for ants, half or quarter inch, made their homes in dirt that happened to B gold rich, so the mounds had the gold dust in noticeable amounts.
I think one thing this account is missing is the fact that people from India are often of a much darker complexion. This might just be a case of classical racism.
I like to imagine that calling the miners ants is a big inside joke in India and that the Greek historians agreed it was funny and continued the tradition
the thing is. Cyclops are real as cyclopia is a real medical gene defect. Highpitched shouts and wisles for distance communication where popular both in Africa and Europe. (you can even still find communities in the Basque region who use wisling). And Dophins are know to save humans in need. So while Herodotus misunderstood a lot he wasn't really wrong on those accounts.
This isn't all too unusual. Many modern day names for things are local names misunderstood by colonial powers that and incorrectly label entire groups of people, cultural items and practice, to an entire region of land.
Could be Herodotus knew they were indeed people but was making commentary on their status. Consider the Myrmidons, the tribe of Greeks who followed Achilles in the Trojan War. According to myth, they were originally ants that Zeus transformed into humans who were loyal and industrious. Could be Herodotus simply called them ants thinking that was a good, basic description of the people he saw. Similarly, when Herodotus was naming the rotund mammals that live in the Nile "river horses," he was trying to describe a creature not seen before by Greeks and presumably had no name in his language. So I think Herodotus, while perhaps not the best in descriptive writer, was doing his best with accuracy with both limited knowledge of the world and vocabulary.
Sheep wool growing on trees is may not be a myth or legend. There is a tree Semal scientific name Bombax Ceiba which produced capsules that contain wool like fiber. It is used to weave cloths and as filling in pillows.
The fascinating thing about this is that... well, Ants are actually fascinating creatures. They're numerous enough to wage war with each other and they make up an absurd number of the earth's biomass.
Given the superiority complex of the ancient Greeks, Romans and many other cultures, could it be possible that those ancient people just used the term “ant” as a metaphor for people they considered inferior or beneath them?
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
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Thanks For this guys! Gonna keep it in mind. Love You all!😊😊
4:32 he is not lying technically Greek people used to call Hara Krishna Heracles
Unfortunately Factor doesn't do low FODMAP meals. The video was good though
When a myth starts to fit so neatly into the historical narative that it stops being a myth than it becomes a theory... A GAME THEORY
Now watch the 50's movie "Them." It's about giant ants that don't dig for gold. 😂😂
You know what I think? I think Heroditus discovered hashish on this trip and was tripping balls during most of it.
Probably 😅😂
Sounds legit to me
Watching from a far distance people could look like ants. Maybe a hint of racism as well
Seeing as Herodotus also believed in winged snakes, i think you could be right
There is no evidence to the contrary.
The "sheep that grew on trees" or "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary" is a great myth because it's cleary just a game of telephone about the cotton plant through several languages. "plant that grows cloth like wool" very easily becomes "plant which grows like sheep" Becomes a "sheep growing plant". Plus I love the idea of a plant-animal that just eats grass while tethered to the ground by its stem.
3:38 The dolphin story is actually plausible. There are documented instances of dolphins saving humans from drowning in modern times, too. Dolphins are very intelligent and can be quite altruistic at times.
Plus they have instinctual impulses to raise newborns to the surface to help them breathe.
Dolphins are confusing. They’re simultaneously caring and intelligent, yet brutal and sadistic (don’t look up what they do to fish heads). Odd bunch.
There’s only one fully corroborated documented incident of dolphins saving humans. Everything before was merely anecdotal or folklore.
@@jordinagel1184 How is that odd? Aren't we pretty similar, keeping animals both to care for them and literally farm them without much empathy?
Dolphins are literally us (if we were Ictiossaur-shaped marine mammals)
We aren't a rational species as well, we do contradictory things all the time
I'm surprised I've not seen anyone make the Myrmex Indikoi into a D&D monster. Lion-sized ants with a hunger for gold and the strength of monsters? That's a dragon's new force of miners to expand its underground domain and increase its hoard.
They're also deadly enemies with Gryphons, since in Herodotus' account, he says that Gryphons also lust after gold, which they mine from the rocks with their powerful beaks and do battle with the giant ants over one another hoards
Theyre going to have pack tactics!
@@ianthehuman "Welcome to Dungeon Master Therapy, How Can I Help You Today?"
@@weldonwin "hey, so I gave my players lion-sized gold ants."
"That actually sounds kinda cool! Whats wrong with the- You gave them pack tactics didn't you?"
"ANTS ACT IN A PACK"
Yoink
The explanation I heard is that the word "marmot" got confused with "mountain ant"
Large furry creatures digging in sand that actually does have trace amounts of hold dust in it would certainly be a good base for the legend.
Yay Ted Ed!
Don't forget fools gold mixed in with that real gold. So it looks like there is more gold than there really is.
Does that wordplay work in Ancient Greek?
That’s the story I heard. Or that marmots look like ants from really far away because Herodotus apparently doesn’t have depth perception.
Maybe an injoke of some kind
Herodotus notes often that what he is relating is what he has been told by others, and since he did not visit India, it seems logical that this is one of those stories. If I am not mistaken his travels only covered the Mediterranean areas. If Memory serves he did visit the colonies in Southern France, Sardinia, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, and other areas in North Africa and Spain, though if memory serves he said he did not go as far as the pillars of Hercules.
I was wondering where they heard that Herodotus travelled to India ^^'
True Herodatas did not come to India but Megasthese did he came to India and lived here I do not know why he made this mistake
That was my understanding as well. I think he even said that was told this account of the ants, whereas the things he said about Egypt he specifically mentioned having seen them with his own eyes.
I could have sworn I read somewhere that it was a translation issue - that the local word for "marmot" (or some other furry, burrowing animal) was very close to the Greek word for "ant", and that the gold dust fell from their fur when they surfaced. Of course, the "Herodotus didn't get local slang" version seems more plausible.
From what I've seen, it's not even a question of translation from tibetan to greek, Herodotus never traveled to India, he heard that from persian merchants, to which he spoke with a translator.
So, he heard an account translated, from someone who had a lot of interests in overselling his goods, and probably also used translators in Tibet to speak to the locals... That's a lot of intermediaries that may have fudge the term XD
@@krankarvolund7771 The worst game of Telephone.
The dolphin one is likely true as dolphins have been reporting of saving nearly drowning people.
There was an OSP video on Herodot (in the history maker series) which claimed the ants were a mistranslation (I read that somewhere else too, but cant recall where).
One of the bigger problems with Herodot is he just wrote everything down he heard stories about and didnt really question the sources of those stories in his works, so some of his stories are somewhat questionable.
It's also what Pliny the Elder did, and oh surprise he's the other one adding weird claims to the story :p
This episode is brought to you by the secret ant levels from Command and Conquer: Red Alert
Oh I've heard of this one. It was actually a translation error that was likely describing a type of Marmot native to the area that digs up gold dust. The word for Marmot and Ant were just very similar to Herodotus.
Considering that the Imperial Japanese labeled people who didn't worship the emperor as "dirt-spiders" and "woman-spiders" (from whom the Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo legends come) it would not be surprising if people in India referred to a disfavored group as "ants" confusing a hands-off historian like Herodotus.
I can't wait for the incorporation of giant gold digging ants into the ancient aliens narrative 😂😂😂😂
Oh by the way, you have heard of netflix cleopatra documentary, well one critic called it "WORSE THAN ANCIENT ALIENS" damn 😅
Well, remember that at one time, India was known to be home to giant gold-digging ants? They’re even notated in several famous historical texts…so…WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
One word…ALIENS!
😅😂🤣
@@christopheralthouse6378 🏆👑🤓😎💚
Herodotus quite explicitly said that he just recorded what he heard and saw. It is kinda funny how our inability to engage with stories that might or might not be true hasn't changed across the time.
He didn't claim that his stories are true he just claimed that's what people told him. By telling the raw story it's left to us how we interpeted the story, and in some sense this is much more useful than herodotus himself interpeting the story, because each time story is interrepted incorrectly it moves futher and futher from the original scenario that spawned it and multiple retellings it becomes completly removed from the circumstances that spawned it.
By telling us the raw story as he heard it, it allows as to be that much closer to the actual circumstances that spaned the story. And makes it so that whatever interpetation we do from history is that much closer to the original circumstances. In certain sense he's quite unjustly critisized for his uncritical retelling of theory, because that uncriticality is what allows us to reinterpt and discuss the story so far removed from its original circumstances.
There quite few scenarios that might explain why herodotus thought the gold was dug by ants. Maybe he heard about ant gold and ask for what it was and people were joking at his expense. Maybe ants in this case weren't literal ants, but group of people were called ants for whatever lingistic reason.
Again if story teller tries to pass a story they've heard as fact its good to be critical of him, but when story is passed as just a story the responsibility is not on the story teller, but on the listener to engage with it critically.
People were messing with him and he believed it
This is the point to bring up with Herodotus, he states he reported what he heard, but often times he himself says that he's skeptical, or when confronted with two differing stories, says the reader should decide for themselves which they think is true.
Maybe I am odd because I grew up with things like the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, but I tend to think that when these things get hard to explain - usually it might be because of someone speaking poetically like they would in the classics and someone down the line decided it was literal.
To my mind, it would be easy to describe miners as ants: "And so it was that they crawled upon the earth, huddled in dusty masses as they carved their tunnels and heaped their mounds." Not too far of a stretch, I imagine.
I love these mid week episodes guys! You always make my day!😊😊❤❤
Herodotus mentioned wool growing on trees in northwestern India in 430BC. And then it took the western world 2200 years to "discover" cashmere fiber. The goats shed in the spring and use bushes and fences to rub off the itchy shedding wool.
Just like with the ants, it's easy to see how a local natural phenomenon being twisted into fable.
Dude that's Kashmir not Cashmere
@@rage8673 Cashmere is the fiber we make clothes from.
Kashmir is the region on the border between India and Pakistan.
Do you think that legend told as "fact" was insane?
There is a story from the beginning of the 20th Century, during the Acre War (1899-1904), between Brazil and Bolivia. The bolivians were impressed by the violence of the brazilians when they fought with machetes and long knives, and they told weird stories about the enemy weapons. Some of those stories said the brazilians always born with a little iron knife by side, and that same knife became longer, as his owner got older, turning into a machete after adulthood.
Equipment which levels up with the player in a game.
That was one of my favourite sections of Herodotus's Histories. I always thought he was told that story rather basing it on his own witnessing of it, as much of what he wrote was based on oral traditions he gathered. When seeing something for himself he mentioned it, such as The Pyramids of Egypt and the skeletons of flying snakes. In his book he wrote a detailed account of how Indians gathered the gold dust by using 2 camels, one of which had just recently given birth. During the heat of the day the ants remained underground growing increasingly furious about the theft going on on the surface. The gold dust was loaded onto the camel that had recently given birth, and as The Sun went down and the ground temperature began to cool, the plunderers would set off, just before the ants would emerge to take revenge. The camel with a newborn calf waiting back at camp had extra impetus to run quickly and get back, leaving the other camel behind, which the ants would overtake, thus allowing the collectors to return safely with the gold. This wasn't something he witnessed, but rather what he was told and believed. Whether the person who told him the story believed it as well is something we can't know.
Was... was that a Warcraft II gold mine you drew there at 5:31? That building has lived rent-free in my brain since I was eight.
Zug-Zug
This is one of my favourite Herodotus moments, I think it's quite probable he never actually went there, but just heard poorly translated stories as one theory goes about the similarity of the local word for ant and marmot. My other favourite I roughly remember is how he can't believe the story of a sailor who observed the sun traverse the other side of the sky, when in fact this is very plausibly a man who sailed past the equator!
Yes, I remember that as well. He was talking about claims that people sailed far South along the coast of Africa, and he doubted it was true because of the claim that The Sun was to The North. Where I now live The Sun crossed Zenith and enters the Northern sky at the end of April.
“That is just bad eyesight”
You killed him!
you should do an Episode on the Cynocephali (dog headed people), they also have a bunch of historical records all over the place
They are also mentioned in the Indika, among ancient christian sources too, st. bartholomew apparently converted one in the east, a roman general captured one and turned him into a legionnaire and according to the legends st. christopher of lycia, a martyr from the 3rd century wouldve been one as well
Also in Romanian there are the Căpcăun which are described as dog headed people As in Căpcăun seems to literally mean dog headed with " (căp being a form of cap, meaning "head", and căun a derivative of câine, "dog").
Intriguing! I need to dig into it more.... Always loved the Egyptian death God Anubis and recently discovered the druids and their enticing tales leading to wendigos so this could be an interesting tie up
I have an Aunt that's a gold digger, does that count?
Close enough 🤷♂️
If you know any aunts who are prospectors, that would also count.
Yeah that works to
Cool aunt
I think so.
Ok but I believe the story about a musician being saved by dolphins tho
Oddly appropriate that I got an ad for Raid bug spray right before this video 😂
0:00 it’s Firey lol
I like this new style
Keep it up!
The wool from trees sound like. That stuff from palm trees you can techniecly sow with, or hanging moss, it sounds like it could be either of those
Tangential, but I always thought the “Ethiopians sounding like bats” was a confused reference to African click languages
Ethiopians don't speak those... and i think the ancients used a different word for those further south/west.
@@MDuarte-vp7bm which is why I called it “confused” - as in they were being confused with language groups that do.
Keep up.
@MasterShake9000 Ah, I see. I disagree, but good effort.
Literally at the start of the video I'm already seeing influence that elden ring took. The giant ants at gnawing on the roots of the erdtree are a great parallel, with themes of gold and such.
same
Sometimes Herodotus relies on the accounts of others. He doesn't exactly lie about what he heard from others and especially not what he saw himself, but he chooses the most fantastic interpretation he can think of.
Corporate needs you to find the difference between this picture of a Tibetan gold miner, and a giant gold-digging ant.
Herodoties: They’re the same picture.
Extra Bad Eyesight is my favorite EC spinoff.
Man you’ve gotten better at performing Indian names. The Kashmir and Ladakh pronunciations were not only relatively better but also more well spoken.
It comes with more thorough research and feedback.
I heard that the story of the Ants was just mistake in translation. Because he heard stories on marmots that live in Tibet. And they look like they dig gold sand out. And because in Persian both words sound similar. Then they thought that he just mistaken in the translation
2:50 - I got to say, that is quite the way to leave a message.
Though, now that I think about it, it's not so different from Akuma's message leaving skills.
How dare you say Eric of the Mallow Marsh is not real. His cousin Linguini is more commonly known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I could easily see the myth having a lot of elements of truth to it. If there was gold dust mixed in some soil, I could easily see them moving it out of their burrows to more easily shore up their tunnel walls. Most of what follows could be easily seen as exaggerations. Tendency to swarm and painfully sting those that tried to dig up their nest, to the point that they wish they were dead.
Extra MYTHIC-HISTORY!! *Sick guitar solo*
Perhaps the most famous animal myth from Herodotus is the Trochilus - crocodile bird. It is a bird that supposedly picks the food between the teeth of the Nile crocodile whenever it basks on land. It is most commonly classified in modern times as the Egyptian plover.
Yet despite being believed as factual by many, this supposed symbiotic relationship between bird and croc has zero *solid* documentation of it actually happening in the wild.
Really? I would have sworn that was a real thing but now that I think about it I can't remember where I heard that. Funny how cultural osmosis works.
@@KS-PNWYep. All depictions of the symbiosis are fictional, from illustrations of centuries past to modern day photo manipulation and CGI animation.
If there's anything the research on the actual animal/s has to so say, it's that plovers or any other bird never pick between the teeth of the Nile crocodile.
3:40 I mean... dolphins definitely _do_ sometimes save drowning people
Sounds like a cool leprecon esc movie but with ants
i mean that's how we got thinking the "Like a dozen" Realms from Norse Myth were actually a real set of Twelve, & not a figure of speech that means "a large quantity of Realms"
also, let's be honest even in today's age we still get people thinking that Quoting what someone says is indistinguishable from being the source of said quote
Great video i am from Kashmir first time hearing this story thanks for sharing ❤
I'm disappointed the closing sentence didn't introduce a new sponsorship with a glasses manufacturer instead of the usual, it would have been perfect
3:34 - 3:36 Nice futurama reference!
The plant sheep in The Histories is also a mytg on its own. The Vegetable Sheep of Tartary which as just a way to tell Europeans what Cotton is.
...and now I know why giant ants in BECMI D&D had a chance to drop a ton of gold.
Oh
MY GOSH
I need merch of that >:3 Fire SO BADLY!!!
Now i want my favorite GoldTubers to do an "anthill episode" where they try to find gold by taking the soil from around anthills.
"Ya know those big ants ya keep talking about? Yeah, those are people."
I could totally see this being Heroditus overhearing two locals talking about ant gold, and then they spin a yarn to prank the tourist
I can go along the gold digging but ...giant ants ?? no way
7:40 the “ant” just looks so pissed off that everyone keeps calling them ants!
Insects specifically termites may in the future help human find gold deposits.
From Wikipedia
A 2011 study by Australian scientists found that termites have been found to excrete trace deposits of gold. According to the CSIRO, the termites burrow beneath eroded subterranean material which typically masks human attempts to find gold, and ingest and bring the new deposits to the surface. They believe that studying termite nests may lead to less invasive methods of finding gold deposits.
I always wondered what antlions were in the terms of mythological origin and why the cryptid creature persists so.
0:49
might as well call it...
a mythstery
I thought the sheep wool on trees was a reference to cotton 1:46
Best extra mythology vid
Then there's the fact that he used intrerpreters and in-betweens and whathaveyous to get the information so the broken telephone line was much longer than one might think.
Herodotus is not as bad as people think. You just have to know how to read him: a) whenever he says anything like "I was told" bring at the very least a pound of salt with you. b) remember that he wasn't writing what we today call "history". He didn't intend to. So, while a curious person and one who did try to do at least some due diligence, he honestly didn't see why a fun story could not be included even if in all probability fictional. It's us that expect out of him what he didn't set out to do,
Most probably Herodotus wrote about something and slightly exaggerated it and then others read that and massively exaggerated it .
i believe the story of a dolphin rescuing someone from drowning there's tons of stories of it happening
Another one I love is the references to Dog headed men, which exists across multiple cultures and time frames
7:52
I thought you'd say conspiracy
You gotta do St. Christopher, the Cynocephalos.
“Want a foolproof way of getting rich quick? It’s called stealing!”
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
Can you do a series about Siddhartha Gautama?
Some said that the tale of "ant-gold" can trace back to Indian's tale of "pipilika" (gold digging by ants) in Mahabharata.
There's gold-looking ore that can be scooped up in the Red Alert games. There are giant ants in Red Alert games.
Hm.....
There are some who believe Herodotus just mixed up the word ant for marmot in Persian because he claims for not seeing them but heard about them
I think I've found my next D&D homebrew.
3:35 maybe he's talking about pyramid technology
9:09 - There is a skeleton behind you, Matt, I guess he wants to eat, too.
Now i aint sayin she a gold digger, but shes definitely not an ant
If I ever got to remake Antz I would base it around a gold rush
Perhaps he heard of "gold digging aunts", and it was a busy cafe, and he wasn't really paying attention.
So much for that race of mountain-dwelling ants as the main rivals of my dwarf kingdom being an original idea.
I'm pretty sure a myth with some possible historical interpretation is a legend.
More likely, large ants, not dog size, but still big for ants, half or quarter inch, made their homes in dirt that happened to B gold rich, so the mounds had the gold dust in noticeable amounts.
I think one thing this account is missing is the fact that people from India are often of a much darker complexion. This might just be a case of classical racism.
I’m surprised he mentioned food delivery without going to some else’s house and eating theirs
I like to imagine that calling the miners ants is a big inside joke in India and that the Greek historians agreed it was funny and continued the tradition
Would Love a video on Atilla the Hun
Now I want a colony of giant ant friends, and smoothies
Now I need a video on Lucian of Samasota's 'True History' as a companion piece to this one.😂
the thing is. Cyclops are real as cyclopia is a real medical gene defect. Highpitched shouts and wisles for distance communication where popular both in Africa and Europe. (you can even still find communities in the Basque region who use wisling). And Dophins are know to save humans in need.
So while Herodotus misunderstood a lot he wasn't really wrong on those accounts.
*wheeze* imma make a homebrew D&D monster based on this
This really gives me a mi-go vibe, is it possible for mi-go actually originating from this myth-or-history-or-both?
This isn't all too unusual. Many modern day names for things are local names misunderstood by colonial powers that and incorrectly label entire groups of people, cultural items and practice, to an entire region of land.
If I had a time machine and go back in time and give the people of the ancient world eye glasses.
Herodotus probably needed glasses desperately and just had no clue!
Modern mining companies actually test termite mounds for minerals, so there is a some truth to this myth.
“Do you want giant gold-digging ants? Because that’s how you get giant gold-digging ants!”
What about that land bridge from India to Sri Lanka there is a great myth about that and a supa amount of evendince for it to
Could be Herodotus knew they were indeed people but was making commentary on their status. Consider the Myrmidons, the tribe of Greeks who followed Achilles in the Trojan War. According to myth, they were originally ants that Zeus transformed into humans who were loyal and industrious. Could be Herodotus simply called them ants thinking that was a good, basic description of the people he saw.
Similarly, when Herodotus was naming the rotund mammals that live in the Nile "river horses," he was trying to describe a creature not seen before by Greeks and presumably had no name in his language. So I think Herodotus, while perhaps not the best in descriptive writer, was doing his best with accuracy with both limited knowledge of the world and vocabulary.
Sheep wool growing on trees is may not be a myth or legend. There is a tree Semal scientific name Bombax Ceiba which produced capsules that contain wool like fiber. It is used to weave cloths and as filling in pillows.
The fascinating thing about this is that... well, Ants are actually fascinating creatures. They're numerous enough to wage war with each other and they make up an absurd number of the earth's biomass.
Given the superiority complex of the ancient Greeks, Romans and many other cultures, could it be possible that those ancient people just used the term “ant” as a metaphor for people they considered inferior or beneath them?