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Speaker 1: Imagine standing entirely alone on this this seemingly endless expanse

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of blinding, unbroken white. You are positioned at the absolute

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edge of the habitable world. The air is so unimaginably

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cold that every single breath you pull into your lungs

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feels like inhaling shattered glass.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it's an aggressive cold.

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Speaker 1: Right, And the silence around you isn't just an absence

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of noise, it's a physical weight. It is a crushing,

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absolute stillness that presses against your ear drums. Beneath your

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heavy winter boots lies a sheet of ice and frozen

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earth that hasn't seen the light of the sun or

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even felt the fleeting warmth of a spring breeze for

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tens of thousands of years.

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Speaker 2: Basically a locked vault, exactly.

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Speaker 1: It feels permanent, like an unbreakable vault carved by the slow,

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indifferent hand of nature herself. You could stomp on it,

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you could take a steel pickaxe to it, and it

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would simply absorb the impact without a scratch. But then,

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as you are standing there in the profound, sensory depriving

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isolation of the Arctic, you hear a sound. It starts

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as a low, deep guttural rumble vibrating up through the

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soles of your boots, and then a sharp, deafening crack

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echoes across the desolate landscape.

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Speaker 3: The scariest sound you could hear out there.

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Speaker 1: It really is. It's a terrifying visceral noise because that crack,

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that is the sound of the world's largest freezer door

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suddenly swinging open. Welcome to thrilling threads. We are taking

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you on a journey to the absolute edge of the world.

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Speaker 2: And the stakes of this journey, I mean, they could

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not be higher. When we talk about the Arctic, we

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aren't just discussing a remote, hostile ecosystem. We're talking about

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an environment that operates as a massive accidental time capsule.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Accidental is the perfect word for it, right, because for millennia,

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the permafrost, that continuously frozen layer of soil, rock and ice,

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has functioned as nature's ultimate preservation system. It locks away biology,

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human history, and these deep time secrets and a flawless

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state of suspended animation.

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Speaker 1: But the vault is cracking.

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Speaker 2: It is the critical context framing our entire discussion today

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is this. The Arctic is currently warming at a rate

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significantly faster than anywhere else on our planet. That unbreakable

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vault you just described, it's losing its structural integrity.

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Speaker 1: The locks are melting, the freezer is aggressively emptying its contents.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, it's surrendering things that have been hidden away for

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centuries or even tens of thousands of years straight into

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the modern world.

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Speaker 1: And the sources we've compiled for this, these archaeological field reports,

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genetic sequencing data, recent scientific transcripts, they paint a picture

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that is both onspiring and honestly deeply unsettling.

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Speaker 2: Unsettling is putting it mildly.

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Speaker 1: Right, because we aren't just talking about glaciers receding to

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reveal some bare rock. We are looking at a thaw

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that is vomiting up ancient predators, perfectly preserved lost human civilizations,

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and perhaps most alarmingly, highly lethal pathogens that haven't interacted

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with a human immune system since the Place to See epoch.

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Speaker 2: It's as if the Earth hit pause thousands of years ago,

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and now due to these unprecedented atmospheric changes, the fast

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forward button has been jammed down, jammed down hard, and

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the magnitude of what is being uncovered requires us to

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completely reevaluate our understanding of history and biology. You have

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to understand that permafrost doesn't just fossilize bone, you know,

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it doesn't just turn it to stone over millions of

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years like traditional paleontological beds.

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Speaker 1: It preserves the soft stuff.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it preserves organic matter, soft tissue, delicate fur, stomach contents,

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and crucially, microscopic DNA. It provides an unprecedented, high definition

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biological window into the past.

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Speaker 1: But opening that window comes with some very real, unquantifiable

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modern day risks. The Arctic is currently handing us a

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masterclass in history, evolutionary biology, and epidemiology all simultaneously. So

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let's start with the biology, because some of these discoveries

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feel like they were pulled straight from a science fiction novel.

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Speaker 2: Oh, totally like something out of a movie.

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Speaker 1: We're heading to northern Siberia, specifically to this incredibly remote

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region near a village called Tumut. The initial discoveries happened

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in twenty eleven, followed by another one in twenty fifteen.

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Researchers are painstakingly excavating the thawing permafrost, working in mud

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and freezing water, and they pull out something that completely

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defies initial comprehension.

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Speaker 2: They weren't just ancient calcified bones scattered in the dirt.

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Speaker 1: No, they found two small pups. And when I say pups,

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I mean they had their fur, their skin, their little snouts,

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their eyelashes.

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Speaker 2: The eyelashes always get me right.

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Speaker 1: Their internal organs were completely intact. The photographs from the

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field reports are uncanny. It looks as though they had

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just curled up in the dirt and fallen asleep a

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few days prior, except carbon dating placed their desks at

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over fourteen thousand years ago.

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Speaker 2: Fourteen thousand years It's staggering, and the immediate mystery these

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two specimens presented to the scientific community was profound. Place

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yourself in the position of those researchers in twenty eleven.

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You extract a perfectly preserved furry canine from fourteen thousand

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year old.

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Speaker 1: Ice, You're going to make some assumptions.

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Speaker 2: Naturally, The first scientific assumption leans heavily toward early domestication.

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The location of the discovery heavily influenced this hypothesis. These

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pups were found in incredibly close proximity to what appeared

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to be ancient human butchering sites.

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Speaker 1: Ah so there were humans nearby.

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Speaker 2: Exactly complete with burn mammoth bones and rudimentary tool fragments

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scattered around the perimeter. So the logical, albeit romantic, leap

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was thrilling. Had we just found definitive physical evidence of

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humans keeping domesticated dogs as companions or hunting partners during

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the ice age.

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Speaker 1: It's an incredibly compelling narrative. I mean, the idea that

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fourteen thousand years ago, an early human hunter was sitting

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by a fire in the freezing Siberian step tossing a

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piece of roasted mammoth meat to a proto dog sitting

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loyally by their side. It paints a relatable, almost comforting

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picture of early humanity finding companionship in the cold.

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Speaker 2: It does. It's a beautiful story. But the genetic analysis

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didn't quite support that domestic narrative, did it.

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Speaker 1: It did not, And this is where the rigorous application

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of modern genomic technology corrects our anthropological assumptions. The researchers

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didn't just rely on visual identification, which is notoriously tricky

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with juvenile canines, nor did they rely solely on geographical

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proximity to human camps. They turned to genetic sequencing.

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Speaker 2: Which is the gold standard.

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Speaker 1: Now exactly, they extracted DNA from the exceptionally preserved tissues

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of these pups. The results were definitive. These were not

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early domesticated dogs. They were ancient, distinctively Pleistocene wolves.

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Speaker 2: They were part of a specific lineage of wolves that

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roamed the icy steps alongside the mammoths and the wooly rhinos.

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The proximity to the human butchering site was likely just

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a matter of opportunistic scavenging.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they were probably lurking around the periphery of human

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encampments hoping to scavenge discarded bones and scraps, much like

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modern urban wildlife interaction with human settlements today.

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Speaker 2: But clarifying their species was really just the beginning of

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the scientific windfall here. Oh.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely. Because the permafrost acted like a flawless subterranean vacuum seal,

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the internal organs of these pups were untouched by decomposition.

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The scientists made the decision to perform an autopsy and

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look inside the stomach of one of these fourteen thousand

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year old wolf pups, and what.

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Speaker 2: They found inside is a marvel of biological preservation. It's

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like a prehistoric Russian nesting.

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Speaker 1: Doll, a nesting doll. Yes, inside the stomach, they found

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a piece of tissue with yellow hair still attached to it.

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They analyzed this half digested chunk of meat and it

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turned out to be the flesh of a wooly rhinoceros.

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Speaker 2: The scientific significance of that specific detail is monumental. Finding

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stomach contents in an ancient specimen is exceedingly rare. It

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provides direct, irrefutable evidence of an animal's diet, its hunting patterns,

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and its direct interaction with its immediate ecosystem.

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Speaker 1: But this discovery went a massive step further than just saying, oh,

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look they ate rhinos.

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Speaker 2: It went so much further. From that partially digested chunk

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of meat suspended inside the wolf pup's stomach, geneticists were

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able to extract a complete wooly rhinoceros genome. Think about

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the chain of preservation required for that sequence of events

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to occur.

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Speaker 1: The logistics of that are just staggering. You have a

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prehistoric predator, a wolf pup that manages to scavenge a

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piece of a prehistoric giant, the wooly rhino. The pup

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swallows the meat, and very shortly after before its digestive

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acids can fully break down the cellular structure of the

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rhino flesh. The pup meets its own demise.

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Speaker 2: It dies in an environment so profoundly cold that its

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internal biological processes halt almost instantly.

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Speaker 1: Right, the permafrost rapidly encases the pup, preserving the animal

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itself and inadvertently perfectly preserving the pup's last meal inside

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its stomach for one hundred and forty centuries, just waiting

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for a human with a modern DNA sequencer to come along.

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We literally acquired the genetic blueprint of a massive extinct

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rainoceros by looking inside the gut of a tiny extinct wolf.

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Speaker 2: It demonstrates the unparalleled power of the permafrost as an

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ecological archive. Under normal circumstances, paleontology relies heavily on assembling fragmented,

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fossilized bones to infer the lives of extinct creatures. We

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measure the circumference of femurs to estimate body.

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Speaker 1: Mass, right, It's a lot of educated guessing.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, We analyze the isotopic composition of jawbones to guess

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at dietary habits. It is a science of educated deduction.

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But the permafrost hands us the unvarnished biological reality. We

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don't have to theorize about the pleisosine wolf's diet. We

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possess the actual meat it consumed. We don't have to

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piece together the rhinos genetics from degraded bone marrow. We

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have the complete high fidelity code.

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Speaker 1: It transforms paleontology from a science of inference into a

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science of direct observation. And those two map puppies are

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just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to

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ice age fauna, Siberia's permafrost has yielded some of the

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most spectaclcular mammoth specimens in human history.

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Speaker 2: The manths are incredible.

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Speaker 1: They really are. The sources highlight too, in particular Luba

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and Yuca. Liuba was discovered in two thousand and seven.

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She's baby mammoth, estimated to be about forty two thousand

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years old. When they pulled her from the mud. She

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wasn't a skeleton, her skin, her trunk, her internal organs.

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They were entirely intact.

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Speaker 2: And then a few years later, in twenty ten, they

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found Yuka, a young adult mammoth.

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Speaker 1: The visceral reality of seeing these creatures rather than just

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looking at their bones. It changes your perspective entirely. You

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can look at high resolution photographs of them and see

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the intricate wrinkles on their trunks. You can see the

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textured pads on the soles of their feet.

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Speaker 2: The discoveries of Luba and Yuka represent a profound paradigm

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shift in our understanding of Pleistocene megafauna. Consider Yuka, for instance,

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because she was a young adult, her body told a

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highly complex lived story.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, she had a whole history exactly.

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Speaker 2: The preservation was so exquisite that researchers could examine healed

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injuries and scars across her body, some possibly inflicted by

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predators like cave lions. They could study the specific microscopic

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wear patterns.

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Speaker 1: On her molars, which gives us something incredibly precious in

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the field of ancient biology a biography.

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Speaker 2: A biography, we aren't just examining a static representative of

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a species. We are analyzing the lived experience of an

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individual animal. We can see how she survived attacks, the

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types of rough vegetation she foraged, and the cumulative toll

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the extreme environment took on her physical form over years

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of existence.

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Speaker 1: It bridges that gap between a museum artifact and a living,

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breathing creature. You start wondering about the specific day Yuka

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sustain those injuries, or what drought forced her to eat

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the abrasive plants that wore her teeth down, and the fur.

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The sources detail how the fur was preserved so immaculately

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that scientists could actually study its physical.

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Speaker 2: Properties, right down to the thickness of the individual strands

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and their exact pigmentation. That specific detail regarding the fur represents.

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It's a monumental leap for evolutionary biology. Well. Prior to

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recovering these perfectly preserved soft tissues, our understanding of how

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these massive animals adapted to the extreme cold was largely theoretical.

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It was based on their skeletal structure and loose comparisons

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to their modern warm climate.

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Speaker 1: Elephant relatives like elephants do this, so mammos probably.

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Speaker 3: Did that exactly.

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Speaker 2: But with Yuca and Luba, scientists could analyze the microscopic

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structure of the hair follicles directly. They could measure the

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density of the fine undercoat versus the longer, coarse guard hairs.

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This empirical data allowed them to calculate the exact thermal

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properties of a mammoths coat, and furthermore, examining the remarkably

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preserved fat layers beneath the skin. The brown fat designed

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for thermogenesis, provided concrete data on how these animals stored

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and utilized energy to survive the brutal extended winters of

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the ice age. Is the difference between reading a theoretical

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description of an engine and actually popping the hood to

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observe the mechanics in action.

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Speaker 1: The ice is essentially handing us the biological instruction manual

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for ice age survival.

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Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.

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Speaker 1: But as captivating as the megafauna are, the permafrost holds

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something even more profound. It holds our own history. The

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ice didn't just trap wolves and mammoths, It trapped human civilization,

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and in doing so, it has forced archaeologists to aggressively

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rewrite the timeline of human endurance.

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Speaker 2: That is a crucial point. For decades, there's a rigid

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consensus in the anthropological community regarding human habitation of the

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extreme North.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the old timeline right.

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Speaker 2: The prevailing theory dictated that the Arctic environment was simply

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too hostile to resource scarce and too relentlessly cold for

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early humans to establish permanent year round settlements north of

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the Arctic Circle until roughly fifteen thousand years ago.

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Speaker 1: They just assumed we couldn't hack it.

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Speaker 2: The academic assumption was that early humans migrating out of

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warmer climates lacked the necessary technological sophistication and social organization

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to survive there permanently.

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Speaker 1: That was the accepted truth until a Russian archaeologist named

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Vladimir Potolko began excavating along the Jana River in northern

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Siberia in two thousand and one. This site is situated

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well above the Arctic Circle in a landscape that is

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unforgiving even by modern standards. His team started digging into

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the permafrost, and what they pulled out of the frozen

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earth completely shattered that fifteen thousand year.

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Speaker 3: Timeline, completely shattered it.

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Speaker 1: The artifacts they uncovered radiocarbon dated back thirty one thousand

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to thirty two thousand years ago. That doesn't just push

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the timeline of human Arctic habitation back, it literally doubles it.

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Speaker 2: It was a seismic shock to anthropological history to find

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definitive evidence of permanent human occupation at that extreme latitude

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during that specific brutal climatic period of the Pleistocene requires

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us to drastically reevaluate the cognitive and adaptive capabilities of

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our ancestors.

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Speaker 1: I try to wrap my head around the logistics of

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that survival, and it's staggering. Put yourself in that Siberian

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environment years ago. The temperature is hovering well below freezing

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for the fast majority of the year. The wind is relentless.

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You don't have gortex, you don't have insulated synthetic boots,

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and you certainly don't have the luxury of imported calories.

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Speaker 2: Not at all.

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Speaker 1: Yet the evidence shows this wasn't just a desperate, freezing

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group of wanderers who took a wrong turn, huddled in

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a cave and died in the snow. Patolko's team excavated

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over two thousand, five hundred distinct artifacts.

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Speaker 2: That volume alone tells a story.

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Speaker 1: They found spear points intricately and deliberately carved from the

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dense ivory of mammoth tusks. They found finely crafted bone needles,

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scrapers for hides, and even decorative beads.

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Speaker 2: The beads are fascinating.

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Speaker 1: The presence of beads is astounding. It means they had

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the surplus time and energy for art and personal adornment

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in a frozen wasteland. They also found a massive accumulation

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of animal bones, mammoths, wooly rhinos, bison, Arctic foxes, and reindeer.

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Speaker 2: The sheer, volume, variety, and craftsmanship of those artifacts paint

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a vivid picture of a highly organized, thriving society. The

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presence of such diverse megafauna remains indicates not just opportunistic

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scavenging of already dead animals, but coordinated strategic hunting.

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Speaker 1: Slaying a mammoth with a hand thrown ivory spear, I mean,

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that's a logistical and physical masterpiece.

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Speaker 2: It requires but profound intergenerational knowledge of animal behavior and

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intimate understanding of the treacherous terrain and sophisticated weapon engineering.

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But beyond the violence of the hunt, the true marvel

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is the mundane daily survival. To endure temperatures that cold

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for most of the year, this community had to have

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mastered several highly complex technologies.

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Speaker 1: The clothing alone is an engineering feat. You have to

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hunt the animals painstakingly, scrape and cure the hide so

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they don't rot. Or freeze solid, and then use those

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tiny bone needles to stitch them together tightly enough to

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create windproof.

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Speaker 3: Waterproof garments and food storage.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, you can't just casually forage or hunt every single

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day the dark depths of a Siberian winter. They had

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to possess advanced knowledge of how to preserve massive amounts

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of meat, likely utilizing the freezing environment itself as a

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natural larder to survive the lean months.

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Speaker 2: The Janna River settlement serves as undeniable proof that these

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early humans possessed a profound, almost symbiotic understanding of their environment.

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They weren't merely clinging to life. The presence of those

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decorative ivree beads suggests a society with enough chloric surplus

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to engage in complex cultural and esthetic practices.

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Speaker 1: They weren't just surviving, they were living.

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Speaker 2: They had developed a robust social structure necessary to divide

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labor efficiently. Some individuals were dedicated to tracking and hunting,

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others to the labor intensive process of preparing hides. Someone

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had to maintain the life saving fires, and crucially, someone

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had to pass this vast repository of survival knowledge to

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the next generation.

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Speaker 1: This single archaeological site really dismantled the Eurocentric notion that

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extreme cold was an instant, fountable barrier to early human

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intellect and settlement. It demonstrated that human ingenuity, foresight, and

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adaptability are incredibly ancient evolutionary traits. Absolutely, but the permafrost

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doesn't just hold the tools of ancient strangers. It holds

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the direct physical ancestors of people living today. Let's trace

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that human endurance from Siberia across the Bearing Strait over

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to southwest Alaska to an archaeological permafrost site known as Nunilek.

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Speaker 2: This is a remarkable site, it really is.

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Speaker 1: This site is much more recent, dating back about six

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thousand years, but the preservation is arguably even more intimate.

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Just like the Pleistocene fauna, the permafrost worked its magic

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on the human history here. Archaeologists have carefully recovered the

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remains of roughly one hundred and forty individuals so far,

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and the cold has preserved them to the point where

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many still have soft tissue clinging to their bones.

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Speaker 2: The Nunilect site is a phenomenal, almost unprecedented example of

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holistic cultural preservation. When archaeologists excavated typical six thousand year

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old site in a temperate European or African climate. They

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usually find resilient materials, stones, perhaps some durable pottery and fragmented.

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Speaker 1: Bone, hard stuff.

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Speaker 2: Right the organic materials, the woods, the leather, the woven

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plant fibers, the clothing, they're entirely absent. They've been consumed

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by bacteria, acetic soil, and time. But at noon Alec

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because of the deep freeze, the mundane, everyday organic items

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of these people were perfectly preserved in the earth alongside them, and.

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Speaker 1: The items are so beautifully ordinary, which makes them incredibly poignant.

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They recovered wooden paddles intricately carved for navigating the icy

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waters and kayaks. They found tightly woven grass baskets, harpoon

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heads engineered for seal hunting, and incredibly clothing meticulously stitched

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together from bird skins. Bird skins, I try to imagine

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the sheer skill and patience required to hunt enough sea birds,

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carefully skin them without tearing the delicate tissue, prepare those

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skins and stitch them together with sinew to create a

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parka that can actually keep a human alive during an

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Alaskan winter. It's a masterclass in utilizing every single resource

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and unforgiving environment offers every piece of their daily lives,

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Their technology, and their art was captured in the ice.

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Speaker 2: And while the physical artifacts are breathtaking, the truly profound

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aspect of the Nuneallic discovery transcends the material culture. It

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lies in the genomic data. Rigorous DNA testing was conducted

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on the human remains recovered from this site. The results

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provided a definitive, undeniable biological link. The ancestors, Yes, the

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individuals buried at Nonelek six thousand years ago are the

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direct genetic ancestors of the modern Yuppik and Inuit populations

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who inhabit that exact region today.

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Speaker 1: The emotional weight of that continuity is staggering. Think about

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what it means to have an unbroken lineage spanning six

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thousand years, through countless generations, through shifting climatic periods, through

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historical upheavals, and through the grueling daily reality of the

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Arctic environment. That specific family line has survived, thrived, attained

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a continuous cultural and biological presence in one of the

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harshest environments on planet Earth. When archaeologists study Nunilec, they

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aren't dissecting a lost, mysterious civilization that vanished into the ether.

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They are documenting the profound, enduring legacy of a civilization

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that is still very much alive, still adapting, and still

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living on that land.

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Speaker 2: It's a six thousand year unbroken chain, mothers teaching daughters

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how to weave those specific baskets, and fathers teaching sons

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how to carve those specific paddles.

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Speaker 1: It severely challenges the traditional historical narrative that often paints

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the Arctic as an empty barren frontier waiting to be

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explored or conquered. The data from Nunilek proves it is

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a long inhabited homeland with deep, continuous and incredibly resilient roots.

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Speaker 2: The techniques for surviving the Arctic, the highly specific thermodynamic

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design of their clothing, the deep understanding of marine mammal

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migration patterns, the architecture of their shelters. These aren't just

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historical curiosities. They represent proven, highly refined survival strategies honed

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over millennia, passed down through an unbroken genetic and cultural continuum.

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Speaker 1: The intimacy of finding those personal items is incredible. But

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there's another frozen civilization story in the sources that takes

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that intimacy and adds an eerie, almost macabre layer to it.

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We need to travel back to western Siberia, near the

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town of Salikart. Here archaeologists uncovered a medieval burial ground

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known as Zeleniar.

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Speaker 2: Zeleniar a fascinating, fascinating site.

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Speaker 1: We are talking about the twelve hundreds, roughly eight hundred

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years ago. They excavated forty seven graves in total. Because

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these graves were dug into the permafrost, the researchers weren't

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just looking at skeletal remains. They were uncovering bodies that

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came out of the earth with their skin, their hair,

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and their soft tissue largely intact.

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Speaker 2: You could literally look at the facial features of people

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who walk the earth during the Middle Ages. You could

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see the exact garments they were buried in.

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Speaker 1: The Zeleni Yar necropolis offers a spectacularly detailed called vistoral

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snapshot of medieval Siberian life. The preservation is so comprehensive

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that archaeologists can observe the intricate layering of their clothing.

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Some individuals were recovered with the thick animal fur still

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perfectly preserved underneath their burial wrappings.

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Speaker 2: They are interred with their worldly possessions iron blades, specialized tools,

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decorative beads, and tailored leather clothing, all sitting right there

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alongside the bodies, practically untouched by the eight centuries that

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had passed above ground.

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Speaker 1: The artifacts are amazing, but the sources point out some

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highly specific, mysterious elements to this burial site that suggest

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complex spiritual rituals. For one, almost all the bodies were

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positioned meticulously with their feet pointing directly toward a nearby river.

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That level of uniformity isn't a coincidence, no, definitely intentional.

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There had to be a deeply ingrained spiritual or cosmological

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reason for that alignment, perhaps a cultural belief that the

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river acted as a physical conduit carrying the soul to

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the act after life. But the detail that really fascinated

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me was what was placed on the bodies. Several of

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these individuals, including a remarkably preserved child, had heavy bronze

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or copper plates placed directly over their faces, chests, or pelvises.

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Speaker 3: The inclusion of.

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Speaker 2: Those copper and bronze plates is a fascinating archaeological detail.

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Because it sits squarely at the intersection of intentional, spiritual,

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ritual and accidental science.

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Speaker 1: Accidental science exactly.

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Speaker 2: From a cultural and anthropological perspective, these metal plates likely

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held immense significance. They might have indicated high social status,

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served as protective talismans to ward off malevolent spirits in

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the afterlife, or functioned a spiritual currency for the journey ahead.

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But from a strict scientific and biological standpoint, the presence

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of these specific metals introduces a highly intriguing variable into

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the preservation process. Copper and its alloys like bronze, are

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well documented for their natural anti microbial properties.

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Speaker 1: Wait, are you suggesting the plates actually helped preserve the bodies?

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Speaker 2: Isn't highly plausible and a theory seriously considered by researchers.

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By placing these copper plates on the deceased for spiritual reasons,

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the community may have inadvertently aided the miraculous physical preservation process.

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That's wild, The copper ions slowly leaching from the plates

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would have actively suppressed the growth of the specific bacteria

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and fungi that normally initiate decomposition. This antimicrobial action would

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have worked in perfect tandem with the freezing temperatures of

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the permafrost, effectively creating an enhanced, localized time capsule around

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these specific individuals.

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Speaker 1: So their spiritual ritual accidentally hacked the biological decay process.

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That is incredible, and just like what the ancient wolves,

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the permafrost allowed scientists to perform autopsies on these medieval humans.

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The analysis of their stomach and intestinal contents gave researchers

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an unprecedented hyperspecific menu of exactly what a Siberian diet

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look like eight hundred years ago.

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Speaker 2: We are just guessing based on animal bones found nearby.

470
00:25:58,119 --> 00:26:00,799
We can see exactly what they ingested. We can see

471
00:26:00,799 --> 00:26:04,480
their overall health, the specific internal parasites they harbored, and

472
00:26:04,559 --> 00:26:07,680
the local flora and fauna they were consuming just hours

473
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:08,359
before they died.

474
00:26:08,519 --> 00:26:11,400
Speaker 1: It's a level of intimate historical detail that you simply

475
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:16,200
cannot extract from reading a heavily biased, generalized medieval manuscript.

476
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,799
Speaker 2: Right we are moving from the abstract macro level of

477
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:23,839
history to the deeply physical micro level. A historical manuscript

478
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,000
might tell you that a distant king decreed attacks on grain,

479
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:30,960
or that a specific war disrupted trade roads, but analyzing

480
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,039
the gut contents from a permafrost burial tells you exactly

481
00:26:34,039 --> 00:26:37,240
what a common person was successfully foraging and digesting on

482
00:26:37,279 --> 00:26:41,400
a random Tuesday in the thirteenth century. It provides an unvarnished,

483
00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,880
indisputable biological truth about human existence, nutrition, and disease burden

484
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:47,200
in that specific era.

485
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 1: I want to shift our focus now, because as much

486
00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:53,519
as the permafrost is a biological time capsule, sometimes the

487
00:26:53,519 --> 00:26:57,079
Earth itself engages in mechanics that seem to completely defy logic.

488
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:00,480
We are leaving the human graves behind and heading to

489
00:27:00,519 --> 00:27:04,880
the small barred archipelago in Norway, specifically to a rugged

490
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:06,440
island called Spitzbergen.

491
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 2: Okay, the geography on this one is mind bending.

492
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,559
Speaker 1: It really is. I want you to visualize this scenario

493
00:27:11,599 --> 00:27:14,960
from the field reports. You are on a geological survey hike.

494
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:19,880
You are hundreds of meters inland, hiking up a steep, dry, rocky,

495
00:27:20,039 --> 00:27:24,720
mountainous terrain. You are at a significant elevation, nowhere near the.

496
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 3: Ocean shoreline, nowhere near it.

497
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:30,319
Speaker 1: And suddenly you stumble over a massive bleached skeletal structure

498
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:33,079
protruding from the rock. You look closer and you realize

499
00:27:33,079 --> 00:27:35,480
you have just tripped over the colossal ribs and jawbone

500
00:27:35,519 --> 00:27:37,119
of a massive marine whale.

501
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:41,279
Speaker 2: It is a profoundly disorienting, almost surreal image to encounter

502
00:27:41,319 --> 00:27:44,039
in the field. To find the massive remains of deep

503
00:27:44,039 --> 00:27:48,880
ocean leviathans stranded in high altitude, rocky environments immediately challenges

504
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:52,160
our basic understanding of geography, and the radiocarbon dating makes

505
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,720
the scenario even more perplexing at first glance. How old

506
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:58,480
are these aren't recent strandings caused by modern navigational confusion.

507
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,839
These massive bones back anywhere from five thousand to seven

508
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:05,960
thousand years, So the immediate logical question any observer would

509
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:09,599
ask is how on Earth did a multi ton marine

510
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,440
mammal end up dying on top of a mountain thousands

511
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:16,000
of years ago the ancient sea levels fall that drastically

512
00:28:16,319 --> 00:28:20,799
did an unprecedented apocalyptic tsunami physically throw them miles inland?

513
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: I know when I first read that in the sources,

514
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:26,519
my mind immediately went to some cataclysmic flood scenario like

515
00:28:26,559 --> 00:28:31,000
a megasunami. But the geological truth is actually much more fascinating,

516
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:32,720
and it has to do with the process called post

517
00:28:32,799 --> 00:28:35,960
glacial rebound. To understand this, we have to stop thinking

518
00:28:36,039 --> 00:28:38,839
of the Earth's crust as a rigid, unmoving shell.

519
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:39,559
Speaker 2: That's the key.

520
00:28:39,799 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: Over geological time. The crust and the mantle beneath it

521
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,640
behave more like a highly viscous fluid, like a memory

522
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:48,759
foam mattress. If you apply an unimaginable amount of weight

523
00:28:48,799 --> 00:28:51,480
to one specific area of the crust, it doesn't just

524
00:28:51,519 --> 00:28:55,160
hold firm, It physically depresses. It sinks down into the mantle.

525
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 2: That is the crucial concept, and the unimaginable weight in

526
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:02,640
this geological scenario was the colossal ice sheets of the

527
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:07,000
Last Ice Age around ten thousand to fifteen thousand years ago.

528
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:11,160
Regions like the sfal Barred Archipelago were buried beneath glaciers

529
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,440
that were staggeringly massive. We are talking ice sheets that

530
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:18,519
were kilometers thick kilometer. The sheer unfathomable weight of billions

531
00:29:18,559 --> 00:29:22,440
of tons of dense ice physically compressed the Earth's lithosphere,

532
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,759
pushing the land mass down deeper into the viscous acidosphere

533
00:29:25,839 --> 00:29:26,240
below it.

534
00:29:26,519 --> 00:29:29,519
Speaker 1: So the physical elevation of land itself was drastically lower

535
00:29:29,519 --> 00:29:32,000
because it was quite literally being squished by the weight

536
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:32,440
of the ice.

537
00:29:32,599 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 2: Correct But then the global climate shifted, the ice age waned,

538
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:40,039
and those colossal glaciers began to rapidly melt and retreat

539
00:29:40,079 --> 00:29:43,240
into the oceans. The massive localized weight was lifted off

540
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:45,920
the land mass, and because the Earth's mantle is elastic

541
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,200
over long periods, the land, finally free from the crushing

542
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:51,960
pressure of the ice, began to slowly bounce back up.

543
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: It began to rise, stepping off the memory foam mattress.

544
00:29:55,640 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 2: Exactly. This process is known geologically as post glacier rebound

545
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:04,599
or isostatic adjustment. And the incredible thing that many people

546
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:07,720
don't realize is that this isn't just ancient geological history.

547
00:30:08,319 --> 00:30:11,200
The mantle is so viscous that the land in these

548
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:14,759
regions is still actively rising today, thousands of years after

549
00:30:14,759 --> 00:30:15,480
the ice melted.

550
00:30:15,799 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: So if we apply this mechanics to our stranded whales,

551
00:30:18,839 --> 00:30:23,000
the mystery solves itself beautifully. Five to seven thousand years ago,

552
00:30:23,119 --> 00:30:26,559
a massive whale dies of natural causes, or perhaps gets

553
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:30,279
disoriented and stranded in shallow coastal waters. It dies and

554
00:30:30,359 --> 00:30:32,920
decomposes on the beach at sea level right But because

555
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:36,480
of this ongoing post glacial rebound, that specific beach didn't

556
00:30:36,519 --> 00:30:39,440
stay at sea level. Over the next several millennia, the

557
00:30:39,519 --> 00:30:42,880
land continued to slowly, relentlessly rise inch by inch. Year

558
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,039
by year. It lifted that ancient shoreline and the massive

559
00:30:46,039 --> 00:30:48,640
whalebone sitting on it, higher and higher into the air.

560
00:30:48,839 --> 00:30:52,119
Speaker 2: The ocean shoreline essentially crept further and further outward and

561
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:56,240
downward relative to the rising land mass. What was once

562
00:30:56,319 --> 00:31:00,359
a shallow coastal bay gradually transitioned into an air inland

563
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:04,519
valley and eventually was pushed up to become elevated mountainous terrain.

564
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:08,720
The whales didn't climb the mountain, The Earth dynamically reshaped

565
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:10,839
itself and move the mountain up beneath them.

566
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: It is a striking physical reminder that the ground we

567
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,680
stand on, which feels so permanent and solid to our

568
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:21,720
fleeting human perspective, is actually incredibly dynamic, fluid, and reactive

569
00:31:21,799 --> 00:31:25,640
on a geological timescale. The earth compresses under burdens, and

570
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:27,240
it rebounds when they are lifted.

571
00:31:27,359 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 3: It's poetic, it is.

572
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:32,319
Speaker 1: It's such a strange, almost melancholic image to picture these

573
00:31:32,359 --> 00:31:35,240
magnificent deep ocean creatures dying at the edge of the water,

574
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,039
only to be slowly carried up into the dry, freezing

575
00:31:38,039 --> 00:31:41,559
mountains over thousands of years by the sheer slow motion

576
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:45,359
mechanics of the planet. But as fascinating as the Earth's

577
00:31:45,359 --> 00:31:49,200
geological breathing is, we need to take a significantly darker turn. Now.

578
00:31:49,359 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where things get serious.

579
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:55,319
Speaker 1: We've discussed ancient predators, frozen human history, and moving mountains.

580
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:57,839
Now we have to examine the things locked in the

581
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,160
ice that have the potential to aggressly fight back.

582
00:32:01,519 --> 00:32:04,359
Speaker 2: This is undoubtedly the most critical and alarming aspect of

583
00:32:04,359 --> 00:32:07,759
our discussion today. The permafrost is not just a passive

584
00:32:07,839 --> 00:32:11,519
museum of dead things. It is a highly effective repository

585
00:32:11,559 --> 00:32:17,240
for dormant biology, and that repository includes microscopes, pathogens, bacteria,

586
00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:20,160
and viruses that have been locked away frozen in a

587
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:23,599
state of metabolic suspension, simply waiting for the right thermal

588
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:25,640
conditions to wake up and resume replication.

589
00:32:26,279 --> 00:32:28,559
Speaker 1: To truly understand the gravity of this threat, we need

590
00:32:28,599 --> 00:32:31,759
to look at two deeply terrifying case studies detailed in

591
00:32:31,759 --> 00:32:35,440
our sources. First, we are going back to November nineteen eighteen.

592
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:39,640
Location is a small, incredibly remote Inuit village in Alaska

593
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:42,640
called Brevig Mission. The year in nineteen eighteen should instantly

594
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:46,039
trigger alarm bells for anyone familiar with modern history Spanish flu.

595
00:32:46,359 --> 00:32:49,799
It was the devastating peak of the global Spanish flu pandemic.

596
00:32:50,119 --> 00:32:54,119
This horrific virus somehow made its way across the Frasen

597
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,359
landscape to this tiny, isolated village. The devastation was absolute

598
00:32:58,359 --> 00:33:02,319
and unimaginably swift. Within a matter of days, seventy two

599
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:04,599
out of the eighty villagers were wiped out.

600
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.

601
00:33:05,799 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: The handful of survivors were left with the unimaginable, grueling

602
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:12,319
task of burying in nearly their entire community in a

603
00:33:12,359 --> 00:33:15,799
mass grave dug deep into the unforgiving permafrost.

604
00:33:16,039 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 2: It was an absolute tragedy, a brutal, isolated microcosm of

605
00:33:20,039 --> 00:33:22,839
the global horror of the nineteen eighteen flu inflicted which

606
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:27,079
killed tens of millions worldwide. For decades, that mass grave

607
00:33:27,119 --> 00:33:30,680
at Brevig Mission lay undisturbed in the frozen earth. Meanwhile,

608
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:32,920
the nineteen eighteen flu strain remained one of the greatest,

609
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:35,319
most frustrating medical mysteries of the twentieth century.

610
00:33:35,319 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 1: Because we didn't have a sample of it.

611
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 2: Exactly, scientists desperately needed to understand its specific genetic makeup

612
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:44,039
to prevent or mitigate future pandemics. But the virus had

613
00:33:44,079 --> 00:33:47,400
seemingly vanished. It had mutated over decades into less lethal

614
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:50,599
seasonal strains. We had no original viable samples of the

615
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:52,759
nineteen eighteen virus to study in a laboratory.

616
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,519
Speaker 1: That remained the case until nineteen ninety seven. Enter a

617
00:33:56,559 --> 00:34:01,119
dedicated pathologist named Johan Holton. He realized that the unique

618
00:34:01,119 --> 00:34:04,319
properties of the permafrost grave that brevig mission might hold

619
00:34:04,359 --> 00:34:08,760
the elusive answer. It's a morbid, deeply unsettling scientific mission.

620
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,320
He travels to Alaska, secures the necessary permissions from the

621
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,519
local community, and opens this eighty year old mass grave.

622
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 2: He wasn't looking for bones or artifacts.

623
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:21,280
Speaker 1: He is looking for one very specific microscopic thing, human

624
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:23,880
lung tissue that might still harbor intact fragments of the

625
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,440
original nineteen eighteen virus RNA. And because the permafrost had

626
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,239
kept the ground completely frozen solid for eight decades, halting

627
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:33,639
all bacterial decomposition, he found it. One of the victims

628
00:34:33,639 --> 00:34:36,760
buried there had soft lung tissue that was remarkably well preserved.

629
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,079
Speaker 2: Holton carefully removed samples of that lung tissue and securely

630
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:43,039
transported them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

631
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:47,159
What followed was a triumph of modern molecular biology, built

632
00:34:47,159 --> 00:34:51,119
directly upon the tragedy of the past. Using those perfectly

633
00:34:51,159 --> 00:34:55,559
preserved kissue samples, scientists at the CDC embarked on the painstaking,

634
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:59,559
highly complex process of genetic extraction and sequencing. By two

635
00:34:59,599 --> 00:35:02,880
thousand five, they achieved a monumental breakthrough.

636
00:35:03,039 --> 00:35:07,039
Speaker 1: They successfully reconstructed the complete exact genetic sequence of the

637
00:35:07,119 --> 00:35:10,760
nineteen eighteen H one N one flu virus. They literally

638
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:14,280
rebuilt the genetic blueprint of the most deadly virus in

639
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,760
modern human history from scratch, using frozen scraps pulled from

640
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:20,559
the Alaskan dirt. It's incredible science, and when they finally

641
00:35:20,599 --> 00:35:22,920
had that genetic map laid out before them, they solved

642
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,320
a mystery that had baffled doctors and epidemiologists for nearly

643
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,760
a century. See Most typical fleu strands are highly lethal,

644
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:33,480
primarily to the most vulnerable populations, the very young, the elderly,

645
00:35:33,519 --> 00:35:36,960
and people with compromised immune systems, But the nineteen eighteen

646
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:41,079
flu was terrifyingly notorious for disproportionately killing healthy young adults

647
00:35:41,079 --> 00:35:43,760
in the absolute prime of their lives. The question was

648
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:44,920
always why.

649
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 2: The reconstructed genome provided the chilling, definitive answer. The nineteen

650
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:53,480
eighteen virus possessed specific, highly aggressive mutations that triggered a

651
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:58,599
catastrophic overreaction in the human immune system, a severe biological

652
00:35:58,599 --> 00:36:01,159
phenomenon known as a sitekine.

653
00:36:00,519 --> 00:36:02,119
Speaker 1: Storm as cytokine storm.

654
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,679
Speaker 2: In healthy young adults, who possess the most robust and

655
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:09,119
reactive immune systems, the virus essentially weaponized their own physiological

656
00:36:09,119 --> 00:36:12,760
defenses against them. The virus replicated rapidly in the lungs,

657
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,519
and the strong immune system responded with an overwhelming, unregulated

658
00:36:16,559 --> 00:36:20,519
flood of inflammatory cytokines. This caused the lungs to rapidly

659
00:36:20,559 --> 00:36:23,559
fill with fluid and immune cells in a desperate, chaotic

660
00:36:23,559 --> 00:36:27,039
attempt to fight the infection, ultimately resulting in the patient

661
00:36:27,119 --> 00:36:30,480
essentially drowning from the inside out and their own bodily fluids.

662
00:36:30,679 --> 00:36:33,159
Speaker 1: The tragedy of it is staggering. The very thing that

663
00:36:33,199 --> 00:36:35,719
is supposed to keep you alive, your own strong immune system,

664
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:38,440
is exactly what the virus uses to kill you. The

665
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,360
stronger you were, the faster you died.

666
00:36:40,639 --> 00:36:44,519
Speaker 2: It is a brutal evolutionary quirk, but understanding that specific

667
00:36:44,599 --> 00:36:51,000
mechanism completely revolutionized modern global pandemic preparation. By knowing exactly

668
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:54,320
what those deadly mutations look like on a genetic molecular level,

669
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:59,000
scientists can now actively monitor new emerging flu strains in

670
00:36:59,079 --> 00:37:00,679
animal population.

671
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:02,320
Speaker 1: So if they see those mutations popping up.

672
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:05,239
Speaker 2: Again, they notice sound the global alarm and begin vaccine

673
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:09,679
production immediately. That single tragic mass grave in the permafrost

674
00:37:10,159 --> 00:37:14,199
and the unique preservation it provided has undoubtedly saved countless

675
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:18,199
lives by handing us the press glueprint of our microscopic enemy.

676
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 1: So in the case of the nineteen eighteen flu, the

677
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:24,000
perfrost preservation resulted in a massive medical triumph. We proactively

678
00:37:24,039 --> 00:37:26,960
went in, retrieved the historical data, and utilized it to

679
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:31,239
protect ourselves. But our next story illustrates the terrifying consequences

680
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:33,360
of what happens when the ice decides to release its

681
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:35,400
contents entirely on its own terms.

682
00:37:35,519 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 2: This is where the warming really hits home.

683
00:37:37,639 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 1: Let's pivot from a hard won medical victory to a

684
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,199
modern horror story. The year is twenty sixteen. We are

685
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:48,320
back in Russia, specifically on the Yema Peninsula. This particular

686
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:51,960
summer was unusually warm. The heat waves were unprecedented for

687
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,480
the region, and this caused the active layer of the

688
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,719
permafrost thaw to penetrate much deeper into the earth than

689
00:37:57,719 --> 00:37:59,920
it normally would during a standard summer cycle.

690
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:05,559
Speaker 2: This specific event is the exact scenario climatologists and epidemiologists

691
00:38:05,599 --> 00:38:09,000
have been anxiously warning us about for decades. The primafrost

692
00:38:09,039 --> 00:38:12,679
is not a static, isolated environment. It is highly reactive

693
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:14,320
to the atmospheric climate above it.

694
00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:17,559
Speaker 1: When that unprecedented heat penetrated deeper than usual, it reached

695
00:38:17,639 --> 00:38:20,159
something that had been buried and frozen solid for over

696
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:22,880
seventy five years, the carcass of a reindeer that had

697
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:26,840
succumbed to a highly infectious brutal disease. And as that

698
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:30,400
seventy five year old carcass slowly thawed out into the mushy,

699
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:35,400
wet tundra, a biological trap was sprung. The anthrax spores

700
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:37,840
that had been dormant inside that dead reindeer for nearly

701
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:42,719
a century woke up. The results were immediate, chaotic, and devastating.

702
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:45,679
A young boy living in the area contracted the disease

703
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:48,719
and tragically died. Dozens of other people in the region

704
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,920
were infected and rushed to hospitals with severe symptoms. Than

705
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:56,039
the wildlife, the local wildlife and livestock were absolutely decimated.

706
00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:59,440
Around two thy three hundred reindeer dropped dead across the

707
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:02,760
peninsula in a matter of weeks. Nobody in that specific

708
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:06,280
region had witnessed an anthrax outbreak in seventy five years.

709
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:08,920
It was considered a ghost of the past, and suddenly

710
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:10,719
it was a lethal present reality.

711
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:15,079
Speaker 2: The underlying biology of the anthrax bacteria Bacillus anthrasis makes

712
00:39:15,079 --> 00:39:18,239
it uniquely and terrifyingly suited for this kind of delayed

713
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:22,920
action devastation. When anthrax bacteria are exposed to harsh, unfavorable

714
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:26,880
environmental conditions like freezing temperatures, extreme heat, or a sudden

715
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:30,079
lack of nutrients, they undergo a process called spoiulation.

716
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,199
Speaker 3: They form spores yes.

717
00:39:32,039 --> 00:39:37,079
Speaker 2: And these spores are essentially impenetrable biological armour. The bacteria

718
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:41,360
enter a state of extreme metabolic dormancy, becoming incredibly resistant

719
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:45,000
to heat, freezing cold, ultra violet radiation, and the passage

720
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,960
of time. They can sit in the freezing dark earth

721
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:52,039
for centuries, completely inactive, just waiting the moment the ambient

722
00:39:52,039 --> 00:39:54,679
temperature rises and the soil becomes saturated with all water.

723
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:57,960
The spores detect the favorable conditions, break out of their

724
00:39:58,039 --> 00:40:01,760
armoured shells and become highly infectious, rapidly reproducing bacteria.

725
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:04,519
Speaker 1: Once again, it's the definition of a biological land mine.

726
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:07,880
A sick animal dies in nineteen forty one, the ground

727
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:10,440
freezes over it, and you step on that exact spot

728
00:40:10,519 --> 00:40:13,360
seventy five years later, and the land mine still goes off.

729
00:40:13,599 --> 00:40:16,679
Speaker 2: Fortunately, the twenty sixteen ye Meal outbreak was identified and

730
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:20,360
contained by emergency health services before it escalated into a massive,

731
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:24,519
uncontrollable regional disaster, but the broader implications of that event

732
00:40:24,599 --> 00:40:28,360
are staggering. This single case got the entire global scientific

733
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,199
community looking at the vast expanse of the Arctic and

734
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:33,039
asking a very dark question.

735
00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:34,039
Speaker 1: What else is hiding down there?

736
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:37,039
Speaker 2: And that is the existential question we must all grapple

737
00:40:37,079 --> 00:40:41,320
with as the climate warms. The historical record is clear

738
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:44,800
there are regions all across Siberia and the global North

739
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,440
where massive die offs of animals and humans from various

740
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:53,840
highly contigious diseases Anthrax foot and mouth disease and even

741
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:55,599
smallpox occurred over the past.

742
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:57,840
Speaker 1: Few centuries, and those bodies weren't incinerated.

743
00:40:58,159 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 2: No, those infected carcasses and bodies were rarely incinerated or

744
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:06,320
properly contained using modern sanitary methods. They were simply buried

745
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:09,519
in shallow graves in the permafrost because digging deep and

746
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:13,039
frozen ground is nearly impossible. As the Arctic warms at

747
00:41:13,039 --> 00:41:16,440
an accelerated rate, those shallow graves are the first things

748
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:16,840
to thaw.

749
00:41:17,159 --> 00:41:19,599
Speaker 1: And it's not just historical bacteria from a few centuries

750
00:41:19,599 --> 00:41:21,599
ago that we need to worry about. The sources outline

751
00:41:21,599 --> 00:41:24,599
how researchers have proactively gone hunting in the deep permafrost

752
00:41:24,639 --> 00:41:27,320
for ancient pathogens, just to see what is possible, and

753
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,800
they found something called a giant virus that is over

754
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:31,119
forty eight thousand years.

755
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 2: Old, a giant virus.

756
00:41:32,679 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 1: And just to unequivocally prove a point about biological resilience,

757
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,199
they took this forty eight thousand year old virus into

758
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:43,920
a highly secure biosafety level laboratory and they successfully revived it.

759
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:46,920
They provided it with host cells, and the virus woke

760
00:41:47,039 --> 00:41:50,639
up completely capable of infecting those cells after being frozen

761
00:41:50,639 --> 00:41:51,840
since the Pleistocene.

762
00:41:52,039 --> 00:41:55,760
Speaker 2: Now it is crucial to clarify that this specific giant virus,

763
00:41:55,760 --> 00:42:00,000
known as a pithovirus, exclusively targets amoebus. It is entirely

764
00:42:00,079 --> 00:42:03,320
harmless to humans and mammals. However, the scientific proof of

765
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:08,320
concept it provides is terrifying. It definitively confirms that complex

766
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:12,079
biological entities can remain viable and infectious and permafrost for

767
00:42:12,159 --> 00:42:13,480
tens of thousands of years.

768
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,559
Speaker 1: It raises a profound, alarming biological question.

769
00:42:16,639 --> 00:42:18,760
Speaker 2: The permafrost is not just a passive museum. It is

770
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:22,119
a dormant biological minefield. What happens when the ice fully

771
00:42:22,159 --> 00:42:25,960
melts our Modern human immune systems are highly adapted to

772
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:29,039
the specific pathogen circulating in the twenty first century. We

773
00:42:29,079 --> 00:42:33,679
have absolutely zero natural evolutionary immunity to viruses or bacteria

774
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:36,960
that circulated fifty thousand years ago. If a novel pathogen

775
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,840
that caused a mass extinction event among place to see

776
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:43,559
megafauna thaws out, washes into the modern water table, and

777
00:42:43,679 --> 00:42:48,559
encounters modern wildlife or human populations, the immunological consequences could

778
00:42:48,559 --> 00:42:49,599
be catastrophic.

779
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,199
Speaker 1: It's a literal Pandora's box made of ice, and every

780
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:55,960
fraction of a degree the global temperature goes up, the

781
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:59,639
lid opens a little wider, letting something unknown out into

782
00:42:59,679 --> 00:43:02,039
the air. We love to think of ourselves as so

783
00:43:02,199 --> 00:43:05,679
technologically advanced, so capable of engineering our way out of

784
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:09,079
whatever nature throws at us. But that brings me perfectly

785
00:43:09,119 --> 00:43:10,559
to our final section.

786
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:14,199
Speaker 2: Because the permafrost doesn't just reveal nature's ancient secrets and threats,

787
00:43:14,559 --> 00:43:18,119
it exposes our own arrogant modern mistakes exactly.

788
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some mid century human hubris, starting with

789
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,199
the Cold War. The year is nineteen fifty nine.

790
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,199
Speaker 2: We are at the absolute height of the geopolitical standoff

791
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,280
between the United States and the Soviet Union. The strategic

792
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:33,760
nuclear maneuvering during this period was intense and often reckless.

793
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:36,679
The Arctic, being the shortest, most direct flight path for

794
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:40,440
intercontinental ballistic missiles between the two superpowers, suddenly became a

795
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:42,800
region of immense paranoid military interest.

796
00:43:43,199 --> 00:43:46,320
Speaker 1: So the US Army decides they need a permanent strategic

797
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,440
foothold in the ice. They deploy to Greenland, and they

798
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:54,360
begin carving a literal, massive secret military base directly into

799
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:55,199
the Greenland Ice.

800
00:43:55,239 --> 00:43:55,519
Speaker 3: Sheet.

801
00:43:56,199 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: They utilize massive rotary snowplows to build miles of trees wrenches,

802
00:44:00,639 --> 00:44:03,079
which they roofed over with steel and snow to create

803
00:44:03,119 --> 00:44:07,360
subterranean tunnels, living quarters, mess halls, and laboratories, all of

804
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,360
it completely submerged and hidden inside.

805
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 3: Solid ice Camp Century.

806
00:44:11,519 --> 00:44:15,599
Speaker 1: They designated this facility Camp century Now to the global

807
00:44:15,639 --> 00:44:18,840
public and the Danish government. They pitched this as a harmless,

808
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:22,960
purely scientific research station dedicated to studying extreme weather patterns

809
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:26,880
and extracting ice core samples. But the declassified sources reveal

810
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:30,239
the real, deeply classified goal behind the curtain with something

811
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:34,440
called Project ice Worm, The ultimate staggering plan was to

812
00:44:34,519 --> 00:44:37,840
hide a vast mobile network of hundreds of nuclear missiles

813
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:38,960
deep under the ice sheet.

814
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:42,639
Speaker 2: The strategic theory was that this frozen subterranean fortress could

815
00:44:42,679 --> 00:44:45,559
survive a preempt of Soviet nuclear strike and launch a

816
00:44:45,599 --> 00:44:48,119
devastating counter attack from an untrackable location.

817
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,559
Speaker 1: From a purely historical and strategic perspective, the sheer engineering

818
00:44:52,559 --> 00:44:56,639
ambition of Project ice Worm is staggering. They essentially attempted

819
00:44:56,639 --> 00:44:59,920
to construct a self sustaining subterranean city within a dynas

820
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:04,360
moving glacier. The tunnel network span nearly two miles, and.

821
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:08,039
Speaker 2: To power this massive, energy hungry underground complex, they didn't

822
00:45:08,079 --> 00:45:11,440
just string up massive extension cords or rely on diesel alone.

823
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:16,280
They transported and installed a fully functional, portable nuclear reactor

824
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:17,960
right there inside the ice sheet.

825
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:21,159
Speaker 1: However, this is precisely where the conflict between arrogant human

826
00:45:21,199 --> 00:45:24,559
engineering and the relentless physical reality of nature comes into

827
00:45:24,559 --> 00:45:27,400
sharp focus, because no matter how much steel you bring,

828
00:45:27,599 --> 00:45:29,239
nature always wins the long game.

829
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:29,840
Speaker 2: Always.

830
00:45:30,039 --> 00:45:33,639
Speaker 1: They built this incredible, high tech, nuclear powered base, but

831
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:39,360
they seemingly underestimated one crucial foundational detail of glaciology. Glaciers

832
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:43,320
are not static rock. Glaciers move, Ice shifts. It flows

833
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:46,639
like an incredibly slow river. It compresses, and it deforms

834
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:49,239
under its own massive weight. And within just a few

835
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,360
years of construction, the incredibly immense shifting pressure of the

836
00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:55,960
ice sheet began to literally crush the tunnels of Camp Century.

837
00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:59,159
Speaker 2: The heavy steel beams were bending and snapping, the walls

838
00:45:59,159 --> 00:46:01,880
were visibly closed in, and the structural integrity of the

839
00:46:02,039 --> 00:46:05,920
entire base was critically compromised. By nineteen sixty seven, the

840
00:46:06,039 --> 00:46:08,760
US Army had to wave the white flag. They couldn't

841
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:12,239
fight the physics of the ice anymore. They evacuated the personnel,

842
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:14,719
they scrapped Project ice Worm, and they walked away.

843
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: And this is where a historical military failure transitions into

844
00:46:19,039 --> 00:46:23,760
a looming modern environmental crisis. When the military abandoned Camp

845
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:27,199
Century in nineteen sixty seven, they operated under the assumption

846
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,639
that the immense frozen mass of the Greenland ice sheet

847
00:46:30,639 --> 00:46:34,360
would remain stable and frozen in perpetuity. They believed it

848
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:37,559
was the ultimate, secure, inescapable garbage dump.

849
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,840
Speaker 2: Consequently, they removed the highly classified nuclear reactor core, but

850
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:44,280
they left nearly everything else behind in the crushing ice.

851
00:46:44,679 --> 00:46:47,440
They abandoned tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel,

852
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:51,719
highly toxic polychlorinated by phenols PCBs, massive amounts of rock,

853
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:55,000
human sewage, and thousands of gallons of radioactive coolant water,

854
00:46:55,519 --> 00:46:57,480
all of it just sitting in the collapsing tunnels and

855
00:46:57,519 --> 00:46:58,320
tombed in the ice.

856
00:46:58,639 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: It was the ultimate out of out of mind philosophy. Well,

857
00:47:02,559 --> 00:47:06,079
fast forward to twenty twenty four. NASA conducts a flyover

858
00:47:06,199 --> 00:47:10,239
of the site using advanced ground penetrating radar imaging and

859
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:13,159
they pick the entire ruined base back up on their screens.

860
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:15,679
It's still there, buried under at least one hundred feet

861
00:47:15,679 --> 00:47:16,679
of solid ice and snow.

862
00:47:17,199 --> 00:47:20,119
Speaker 2: But here is the massive ticking time bomb that the

863
00:47:20,159 --> 00:47:23,960
sources explicitly point out. The Arctic, as we established at

864
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,840
the very beginning of this discussion, is warming faster than

865
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:30,199
anywhere else on the planet. The Greenland ice sheet, which

866
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,840
was supposed to entombe Camp Century's toxic legacy forever, is

867
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:34,880
actively melting.

868
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:38,280
Speaker 1: The environmental concern here is no longer a theoretical exercise.

869
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,599
It is an impending reality. As the surface ice above

870
00:47:41,639 --> 00:47:44,960
and around Camp century melts, the structural integrity of that

871
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:48,880
frasen tomb degrades, the melt water percolates down through the fern.

872
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 2: Researchers are genuinely, profoundly concerned that in the coming decades,

873
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,559
this increasing volume of melt water will reach those abandoned

874
00:47:56,599 --> 00:48:00,679
degrading steel drums of diesel fuel, the toxic PCBs in

875
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:04,719
the radioactive waste. If that containment is breached, those highly

876
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,440
dangerous plutants won't just sit there in the ice. They

877
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:11,320
will be flushed out by the subterranean meltwater rivers directly

878
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:15,519
into the pristine Arctic ocean environment. Bioaccumulating in the marine

879
00:48:15,519 --> 00:48:18,119
food web and poisoning the local ecosystem.

880
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: It is a stark, undeniable lesson in human hubris, the

881
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:25,079
arrogant assumption that we can use the environment as an immutable,

882
00:48:25,159 --> 00:48:29,239
permanent disposal tool without ever considering the long term geological

883
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:31,480
and climatic consequences of our actions.

884
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:34,639
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate consequence of short term thinking. We tried

885
00:48:34,639 --> 00:48:36,599
to weaponize the ice, and now the ice is threatening

886
00:48:36,599 --> 00:48:38,960
to weaponize our own toxic trash against US.

887
00:48:39,039 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 1: Okay, to conclude our historical guys today, I want to

888
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:45,280
pivot from mid century military failures to the ultimate Arctic

889
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:49,800
maritime mystery. This is a story of grand exploration, horrific tragedy,

890
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:53,519
and arguably the most eerie, unsettling preservation we've discussed yet.

891
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,280
We are going back to the year eighteen forty.

892
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:57,639
Speaker 2: Five, the Franklin Expedition.

893
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:01,519
Speaker 1: Sir John Franklin, a highly seasoned and respected British explorer,

894
00:49:01,599 --> 00:49:05,800
takes command of two magnificent, heavily fortified ships, the HMS

895
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:09,440
Arabis in the HMS Terror and sails north from England.

896
00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:13,119
His mission is the holy grail of nineteenth century naval

897
00:49:13,159 --> 00:49:18,199
exploration to finally find and successfully navigate the Northwest Passage,

898
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:22,679
a hypothetical sea route through the treacherous Arctic archipelago connecting

899
00:49:22,719 --> 00:49:24,519
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

900
00:49:24,599 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 2: The Franklin Expedition is one of the most enduring dark

901
00:49:27,559 --> 00:49:30,679
legends of maritime history. They departed with state of the

902
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:34,679
art ships equipped with early steam engines, massive provisions meant

903
00:49:34,679 --> 00:49:38,119
to last over three years, and an experienced, confident crew

904
00:49:38,159 --> 00:49:41,000
of one hundred and twenty nine men, and then they

905
00:49:41,039 --> 00:49:43,480
simply vanished into the unforgiving white expanse.

906
00:49:43,599 --> 00:49:46,119
Speaker 1: For over a century and a half, their precise fate

907
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:50,400
was the subject of endless frantic speculation, numerous failed rescue

908
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,639
missions that cost even more lives, and chilling local Inuit

909
00:49:53,679 --> 00:49:57,000
folklore regarding starving men walking across the ice. They were

910
00:49:57,159 --> 00:49:58,519
entirely swallowed.

911
00:49:58,079 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 2: By the Arctic for one hundred and sixty eight years.

912
00:50:00,079 --> 00:50:02,639
Speaker 1: It was a ghost story until recently, when the ice

913
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:05,880
finally decided to give them back. In twenty fourteen, underwater

914
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:09,880
search teams utilizing advanced sonar and guided by traditional Inuit

915
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:13,559
knowledge found the wreck of the HMS Arabis near King

916
00:50:13,599 --> 00:50:17,880
William Island, and then two years later, in September twenty sixteen,

917
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:21,840
they located the HMS Terror. Now I want you to

918
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:24,239
consider the reality of finding a wooden sailing ship that

919
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:27,480
has been lost, crushed, and submerged in the brutal ice

920
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:29,800
of the Arctic for nearly one hundred and seventy years.

921
00:50:30,039 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 2: You would logically expect to find nothing more than a

922
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:36,000
debris field of rotting splinters scattered across the seafloor.

923
00:50:36,079 --> 00:50:39,559
Speaker 1: Right exactly. That would be the completely logical assumption for

924
00:50:39,559 --> 00:50:42,039
a wooden shipwreck in almost any other body of water

925
00:50:42,119 --> 00:50:45,480
on Earth, A wooden vessel from eighteen forty five sunken

926
00:50:45,519 --> 00:50:48,199
in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, or the Pacific would be

927
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:52,960
heavily deteriorated, if not entirely consumed by wood boring marine organisms,

928
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,400
heavily battered by deep ocean currents, and broken down by

929
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:57,480
oxygenated decay.

930
00:50:57,559 --> 00:51:00,639
Speaker 2: But when the researchers located the HMS Terror in Terror Bay,

931
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:03,760
sitting in about twenty four meters of water, the visual

932
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:07,719
evidence completely defied every standard expectation of marine archaeology.

933
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:10,639
Speaker 1: The ship wasn't smashed to pieces by the shifting pack ice,

934
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:13,400
it wasn't scattered across miles of ocean floor. It was

935
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:16,960
sitting completely upright, proud on the ocean floor, looking almost

936
00:51:17,039 --> 00:51:20,360
ready to sail. We know from historical reconstruction that the

937
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:22,400
crew had gotten hopelessly locked in the sea ice in

938
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:26,719
eighteen forty six, endured two horrific winters, and finally abandoned

939
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:29,480
the ships in a desperate, doomed attempt to walk out

940
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:32,960
to civilization. In eighteen forty eight, every single man died.

941
00:51:33,639 --> 00:51:36,920
So the terror had been sitting alone, slowly sinking into

942
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,400
the dark water for over a century and a half.

943
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 2: The researchers sent these remote operated vehicles RVs down into

944
00:51:43,519 --> 00:51:46,760
the freezing water to swim around and actually navigate inside

945
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:50,159
the ship, and the video footage they recovered the cognitive

946
00:51:50,199 --> 00:51:52,920
distance of seeing it is staggering. It is a literal

947
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:53,519
ghost ship.

948
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:56,800
Speaker 1: The visual data captured by those RVs is astounding and

949
00:51:56,840 --> 00:52:00,800
incredibly haunting. The preservation is so immaculate that the fragile

950
00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:03,719
glass is still fully intact in many of the ship's windows.

951
00:52:04,039 --> 00:52:07,679
Speaker 2: Inside the pantry and storage areas, ceramic plates and glass

952
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:11,280
bottles are still sitting neatly stacked on their shelves, exactly

953
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:13,960
as they were stowed in the eighteen forties when they

954
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:17,440
carefully navigated the rov into the captain's cabin. They found

955
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:20,840
his wooden desk with the drawers completely closed and secure.

956
00:52:21,039 --> 00:52:23,400
Speaker 1: It did not look like a shipwreck that had endured

957
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:27,119
nearly two centuries of a harsh, grinding marine environment. It

958
00:52:27,119 --> 00:52:28,440
looked frozen in time.

959
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:30,840
Speaker 2: It looks like the crew just stepped out onto the

960
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:33,559
ice for a moment and forgot to come back. You

961
00:52:33,599 --> 00:52:36,079
can almost feel the heavy silence and the presence of

962
00:52:36,119 --> 00:52:38,719
the men who lived, suffered, and died there.

963
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 1: But physically, how is that possible? How does a wooden

964
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:44,559
ship survive that flawlessly underwater?

965
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:48,119
Speaker 2: It comes down to the bizarre extreme physical and biological

966
00:52:48,159 --> 00:52:51,639
parameters of Arctic water. That deep water in Terror Bay

967
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:56,719
is profoundly cold, hovering near freezing year round. Furthermore, it

968
00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:00,280
is incredibly deprived of oxygen. The combination of ex stream

969
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:04,480
perpetual cold and an ocqusic or low oxygen environment creates

970
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:07,239
a habitat that is deeply hostile to the normal agents

971
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:07,679
of decay.

972
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:09,480
Speaker 1: The bacteria can't survive.

973
00:53:09,519 --> 00:53:14,360
Speaker 2: Exactly, specifically, the microorganisms the fungui and the specialized wood

974
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:18,159
boring mollusks like shipworms that would rapidly devour the wooden

975
00:53:18,159 --> 00:53:21,440
timbers of a sunken ship in warmer waters simply cannot

976
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:25,159
survive or reproduce in those conditions. The Arctic water acted

977
00:53:25,199 --> 00:53:28,679
as a massive liquid preservative, sealing the HMS terror in

978
00:53:28,679 --> 00:53:32,159
a state of suspended animation, just as effectively, albeit through

979
00:53:32,199 --> 00:53:35,639
different mechanics, as the permafrost preserved the Tuo Mott puppies

980
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:37,119
and the Siberian humans.

981
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:39,639
Speaker 1: It all comes back to that freezer door we talked

982
00:53:39,679 --> 00:53:42,360
about at the beginning. The environment is the ultimate curator.

983
00:53:42,639 --> 00:53:45,760
So let's bring this incredible, sprawling journey to a close.

984
00:53:46,559 --> 00:53:49,320
Today we have unpacked the profound, dual nature of the

985
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:52,760
Arctic ice. It is, without a doubt, the ultimate historian.

986
00:53:53,119 --> 00:53:56,800
It has flawlessly preserved the literal DNA of extinct giants

987
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:58,400
like the wooly rhino in the mammoth.

988
00:53:58,639 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 2: It has protected the intricate tools, the clothing, and the

989
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:05,239
ancestral legacy of ancient humans surviving against all odds. It

990
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,360
has kept a haunting, pristine vigil over lost explorers in

991
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:09,880
perfectly preserved ghost ships.

992
00:54:10,079 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: And terrifyingly, it has locked away the DNA of deadly

993
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:17,920
viruses and the toxic waste of our own geopolitical conflicts.

994
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:22,679
It's a vast, silent vault of miracles, tragedies and nightmares.

995
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:25,360
Speaker 2: And the looming reality that must underscore all of this

996
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:29,519
scientific wonder is that the vault is actively aggressively opening.

997
00:54:30,039 --> 00:54:33,599
The unprecedented warming of our global climate is turning ancient

998
00:54:33,679 --> 00:54:37,960
history into a very present, highly unpredictable reality. The ice

999
00:54:38,039 --> 00:54:40,960
is melting, the ground is literally shifting beneath our feet.

1000
00:54:41,199 --> 00:54:43,159
And as we saw with the Anthrax outbreak and the

1001
00:54:43,199 --> 00:54:46,079
creeping thread of Camp Sentries waste, this is not just

1002
00:54:46,119 --> 00:54:47,360
an academic exercise.

1003
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: The contents of this time capsule have the power to

1004
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,840
profoundly impact our modern world, our ecosystems, and our health,

1005
00:54:54,039 --> 00:54:57,079
for better or for worse. The history isn't just sitting there.

1006
00:54:57,119 --> 00:54:59,639
It's waking up. But before we sign off, I want

1007
00:54:59,679 --> 00:55:01,760
to leave you, you the listener, with a new thought

1008
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:04,320
to chew on, something that builds on everything we've discussed today.

1009
00:55:04,360 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 2: Okay, late on us.

1010
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:08,119
Speaker 1: We talked about extracting the complete genome of the wooly

1011
00:55:08,199 --> 00:55:10,840
rhino from that wolf pup, and we talked about reviving

1012
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:14,000
forty eight thousand year old viruses. This brings up the

1013
00:55:14,039 --> 00:55:16,559
incredibly controversial field of de extinction.

1014
00:55:17,119 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 3: Ah.

1015
00:55:17,519 --> 00:55:21,440
Speaker 2: Yes, as the permafrost hands us the perfect genetic blueprints

1016
00:55:21,480 --> 00:55:24,840
of these lost place to see creatures, we are rapidly

1017
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:28,079
approaching the technological capability to clone them and bring them back.

1018
00:55:28,639 --> 00:55:32,360
So my question to you is do we have the

1019
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:34,559
right to play place to sne gods?

1020
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:35,960
Speaker 1: That is the big question.

1021
00:55:36,239 --> 00:55:38,960
Speaker 2: Just because the ice preserved the blueprint doesn't mean we

1022
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:42,639
should rebuild the animal. If we bring back a mammoth,

1023
00:55:42,679 --> 00:55:44,960
where does it live in a warming world? And who

1024
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:48,239
actually owns the genetic rights to a biological marvel pulled

1025
00:55:48,239 --> 00:55:51,960
from the fawing international ice. We want to know where

1026
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,920
you stand on the ethics of this frozen frontier. Leave

1027
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:56,440
a comment and let us know what you think. It

1028
00:55:56,519 --> 00:55:59,960
is a profound ethical question that requires deep, critical things

1029
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:02,800
from all of us as the line between the past

1030
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:05,800
and the present continues to blur in this warming world.

1031
00:56:06,159 --> 00:56:09,519
Thank you for exploring these complex and fascinating realities with us.

1032
00:56:09,559 --> 00:56:12,039
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this edition of Thrilling Friends.

1033
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:15,880
Keep questioning, keep exploring, and remember sometimes the most important

1034
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:18,320
history isn't written in a book. It's the history that's

1035
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:21,840
currently thawing out right beneath our feet. See you next time.