Original subtitles

[Music]

can this shattered skull explain the

human soul

the changes made him

a worse person he could

no longer control his impulses

this bizarre weapon would have changed the Second

World War the deadly power

of this device does not come from

radioactive material or

explosives it comes from of

bats what makes these

enigmatic antlers so

unique

[music]

chichte fascinating mysterious

objects long hidden in museums

laboratories and

archives now we can use the latest

technology to reveal their secrets

we can recreate them disassemble

enlarge and thus

reveal forgotten hidden and bizarre things these are the strangest

things The

world's anatomical museum at the

University of Har has one of the most

amazing objects in medicine -

the shattered skull of an

American

railway worker from the 19th

century. If you look closely

you can clearly see that something

terrible happened here. Thanks to modern

3D modeling we can

examine this strange relic like never

before [music] phus Gage's skull shows

signs of extremely serious

injury

[music]

from the bone tissue of the skull

two bone areas are missing then there are

also so

fractured there is also damage behind the

left eye socket and in the

cheekbone if we have one like that

Seeing the injury in a normal environment,

emergency medicine, forensic medicine,

criminal biology, we would think that

can hardly be survived.

Finas Gage survives, but he is

a completely different person afterwards,

a revelation for

science. This bizarre case taught

us something fundamental about how

the human

brain works for the first time the

relationship between what we are and

the gray organ in our

skull how this injury occurred

how could the victim survive it

explains the skull a dramatic

personality change and how

its existence changes

[music]

neuroscience it happens on September 13,

1848 in the us federal state

Vermont It was the time of the rapid

expansion of the railways in America. In

Vermont, the construction of the line from

Rotland to Burlington was in

progress. Gage prepared the

explosive charges that cleared

the way for the railway tracks in the rocky landscape.

He used a stuffing iron

to put the gunpowder in

Gage was preparing an

explosive charge when he was distracted by a conversation,

so he made

a mistake. At the same time, his head went

directly over the

hole filled with gunpowder. The stuffing iron struck

a spark on the rock

and caused the explosive charge to explode The

fatal

projectile the iron rod shot straight

through his

skull it was pretty gruesome it

shot up behind his left eye through

the top of his skull

and then fell to the ground

is thrown to the ground with a gaping hole

in his head

it is reported that

his arms and legs For a while he

convulsed but after a few minutes

he was sitting upright and even talking. They put

him in a car and took him

back to his hotel, quite

remarkable for someone whose skull was pierced by a 6K

iron bar.

Later, Gage was examined by the doctor

Edward H. Willams

Gage

vomited because of the exertion,

a piece of brain tissue apparently came loose and

was pushed out of the hole in his head

and landed at the feet of the

[applause]

doctor case is taken over by local doctor

John Harl

the doctor was able to get a finger

through the top of his skull and a Secondly,

through the hole in the cheek they

stick in the middle.

Parts of the brain also have to be removed

because they were just

hanging on a kind of thread. You had to

cut it and then remove this piece of brain,

but at least you could

fold back parts of the bone and

also the skin sew the whole thing together

Gage keeps losing

consciousness

a fungus formed on the exposed brain tissue and the

pus from the wound even dripped into

Gage's

mouth he doesn't give him much

chance of survival

his family prepares a sag for him

but phus Gage was lucky his doctor

gave him silver nitrate to

stop the infection, a substance that had

only recently been approved, which

actually worked after a few

days and he began to recover. By the middle

of the following year,

1849, Gage was able to

work again - the severe head injury

should have killed him can

his skull reveal the secret of his

miraculous survival

[music] In

2012, neuroexperts recreate ge's

brain by combining CTsans of the

injured skull with MRI scans of

typical male brains.

This shows that the

hole in his skull is astonishing considering

the force with which the iron rod

shot through clean

it could be due to the shape of the pole

Gage had a custom made stuffing iron

that a local blacksmith had made for him

it weighed about 6kg and

tapered to a narrow point at one end

this made it resemble a

spear the tip of the pole pushed

its way very hard purposefully through his

skull and brain that made the

hole smaller and the damage

less but the recent analysis of

Gitch's skull reveals something even more

miraculous about his survival - there

are an incredible number of paths that this

stuffing iron could have taken and

created horrific, unsurvivable injuries so

He really was incredibly lucky.

I have

seen perhaps five cases in my entire life where

something like that

was survived, but after his unexpected

survival, friends claim that Gage has

literally become a different person.

The fractures of the skull can provide information

about the reason for this

bizarre transformation

Finus Gage miraculously survived a horrific accident at work,

but his attempt to return to his old job

on the railway

failed. It is reported that the

balance between his

intellectual abilities and his

animalistic tendencies

seemed to be disturbed. He was restlessly disrespectful and

often engaged in obscene behavior

the changes made him

a worse person, he did

n't have himself under control, people

didn't feel comfortable around him,

the pleasant, likeable Gage

disappeared, another person took his place, stubborn, quick-tempered,

impudent, friends and acquaintances said

he was no longer

Gage

touches on the centuries-old question of

whether our body is everything or whether there is

also an immortal soul

that makes up our personality. It

must have been quite a shock for people back then

to realize that something as

difficult to grasp as personality

can be changed by knocks out a piece of

his body

analysis of Gee's

skull shows the exact location where

his brain was damaged the

damaged part of the brain is the

left side of the prefrontal cortex also

known as

the frontal lobe this anterior prefrontal

area of ​​the cerebrum

really makes up our personality it

decides about whether we are more social

or not social, whether we prefer to

be around people or not, whether we

just take something, whether it

belongs to someone else, whether we are even

interested in it. In general, the

prefrontal cortex, which the poor man

unfortunately lost a piece of, is considered to be

the area of the brain that is responsible for our

higher level thinking and our

impulse control

one could say it is the

UN to pleasant civilized and

socially competent beings

conducts a series of questionable and

unethical experiments that were inspired by ge's

accident,

neurologist David ferier supports this assumption conducted some

pretty gruesome experiments on monkeys -

he surgically removed their

prefrontal cortex - the part of the

brain that was injured in Gage -

after which the monkeys were still

able to perform most tasks

that a monkey with a complete brain

is capable of but their personality was theirs

Temperament changed

dramatically an observation that corresponds

to behavior

the loss of the prefrontal

cortex and its connections has a major

impact on a number of important

functions of the brain including

things like decision making social

skills memory and

problem solving but the story of Finius

Gage takes yet another unexpected

twist later, he is doing a number of

jobs, some of which require a high

degree of concentration and patience.

Skills that he

actually lost as a result of his accident.

How strong was his supposedly

radical

personality change, so

[music]

really led to it after the accident The

changes in his personality and

ability to concentrate led to him

losing his job, but a few years

later he earned his money again by

working in Chile and becoming

a long-distance coachman - a pretty

demanding

job. Driving such a carriage

requires a lot of motor and

cognitive

ability - you have to have a pretty

good one Have judgment,

be flexible, have the ability to

care for and understand animals

and also be able to get along well with passengers on journeys that

often last hundreds of miles -

this reads like a list of

skills that the accident claims to have

Ge's personality has been erased How

credible is the story of the

completely changed Gage

So our brain is a machine that is

not only incredibly complex but

also very flexible If parts of it

are damaged or lost,

it reorganizes itself Other areas

can take over functions that were previously used

by them

[Music]

Psychologist Malcolm McMillan has

written extensively about Gage and

explained why his brain must

have regained many of these functions.

Recent research suggests

that Ge's recovery can be explained by this

brain plasticity. The

brain's ability to regenerate is astonishing

even rewired to

take over many of the functions of the missing area. Only

people who have lost a significant amount of

brain mass can

lead a relatively normal life. The 3D imaging also shows that

most of the damage probably affected the white

matter of the brain, not

the gray matter This may be

key to explaining his

miraculous mental recovery because

the gray matter does not grow back well

while the white matter

can regenerate due to his incredible

luck in terms of the trajectory of the

stuffing iron as well as the

brain's incredible regenerative ability which

apparently enabled him not only to

survive but a few years later,

leading a relatively normal life,

having a job and functioning

fairly well despite this near-fatal accident.

It is now believed

that his personality change only

lasted two or three years

and yet the accident ultimately leads to

his death - he dies almost 12 years later

later in 1860 after a series of

severe epileptic seizures which are

probably long-term consequences of the accident

at the age of only 36 years but it

changed the world even 160 years

later the case is still very

interesting in almost every

neuroanatomical textbook you will

find this case mentioned because it

is so impressive fin Gage is part of the

standard material of every

psychology course. It is important for

understanding the relationship between

the brain structures of our

personality and everything that

makes us who we are. This skull and its

unfortunate owner have significantly advanced our

understanding of the soul and

human nature

Kept under military lock and key, today it is

lost. It is one of the strangest

weapons ever made. Its

destructive power should destroy an entire

city.

Its mode of operation is

bizarre. The most modern digital imaging

makes every detail of this

remarkable device

visible. The device with the code name

project xray was created during the Second

World War

Such a weapon has

never been developed before or since, and for

good

reason. The cylindrical body is about

one and a half meters long and has small

air holes for its tiny

passengers.

The deadly power of this

device does not come from radioactive

material or explosives, it

comes from

bats

is the

bat bomb it is probably one of the

craziest inventions of the Second

World War who came up with it

why

bats how is this bizarre

device supposed to work and does it

really work? At the

end of 1941 the USA is at war

with Japan the bat bomb is supposed to

help America in the attack on Pearl

Harbor

repel the casing was similar to that of

other bombs but inside it

there were many small compartments in

each of these compartments there were up to 40

bats in a bomb there were

around 1000 bats and each of them

carried a tiny

incendiary device these incendiary devices are the

secret of the bomb because they do not

contain powerful explosives many tiny explosives that

could be carried by bats do

not cause much damage but the

goal was not to

blow things up but to

start fires the bat bomb targets

a specific weak point in Japanese

cities the traditional Japanese

houses are made of wood and stand close

together if fire were lit in just a few of these

houses entire

cities could go up in flames

the bombs are dropped from a

plane high above the target

they are loaded with sleeping bats

each carrying a tiny

incendiary device opens at a height of 300 m

a parachute and the

outer cover falls off as soon as the

parachute opens the

compartments spread out and hang down in a column

about two and a half meters long

outside in the warmer air

the bats watch on the

safety ft for the bomb was firmly

connected to this yes room the moment the

bat was inside, the moment the

bat flew out, the

safety pin remained in this small

compartment and the bomb had a

time mechanism. The designers

calculated that the bats could cover

an

area with a diameter of 60 km within the 30 minute time window

A

cluster of 6 fire bombs could cause 160 fires

but the same weight of

bat bombs could cause almost 4800 fires. So

the plan was for the

bats to burn down the Japanese cities

and thus land the decisive

blow in the war for the Pacific.

Who comes up with the crazy idea of

bats?

Using weapons One of the strange aspects

of this weapon is that, unlike

others, it was developed in a special

military laboratory but was

invented by a dentist. His name

is s

Adams. In

1941 he visited the Carlsbad Caves in

New Mexico and was fascinated by the

swarms of bats

Sunset came pouring out of the caves

on his way home, Adams heard

the news of the attack on

Pearlbor on the radio. A thought occurred to him. If each of

these bats had a skill set,

they could devastate the enemy cities in

Japan.

It is not Adams

' first unusual invention.

Adams spent a lot Time to

develop strange inventions - one

of them was the Adams Air Express - it was

an airplane from which

a huge hook hung down so that

mail bags could be picked up without having to land. The

project is not an Erol

and yet it gives Adams an advantage when

he makes the acquaintance by

or rosevelt He uses this connection to the First

Lady of the USA for his

bat invention. Shortly after he

had the idea for the bomb, Adams wrote

a letter to Elanor Roswelt and explained

what a brilliant idea it was.

His suggestion was given

favorable consideration by the Ministry of Defense

and presented to the president

the project landed on the desk

of fdr who gives the green light with a well-

known sentence this man

is not a crackpot the idea sounds

pretty crazy but we should take a look at it

under the circumstances of a

war the military are ready for almost

anything to try out what

could give them an advantage, no matter how

absurd. During the Second World War,

countless strange and

strange ideas for weapons were developed.

One of the most unusual ideas comes

from

1943. The British authority for the

development of various weapons

should find a way to the Atlantic Wall,

the defense line

The result is a

self-propelled rat-like bomb

called a

pangendrum. The pendrum bomb looked

strange but its concept was

pretty simple

its

lines but the beach that is chosen as a

test site for the strict home project

turns out to be a

popular

holiday destination these top secret tests

take place in front of an audience of

holidaymakers

they fire the rockets around

and almost from the start everything goes

wrong they break apart and fly into

different places Directions of this while

the device itself criss-crosses the

beach

FT it's not surprising that the penen

rum never sees action but the

military probably thought it was worth a try

the problem is that the military

can't afford to

just ignore such ideas because at first

glance they seem absurd because at some point

one of them will actually

work. One of the

most extraordinary ideas is a weapon

to destroy dams. It is

based on the idea of ​​stones that can be

bounced over the water.

The

rolling bomb. The idea is that the bombers come

with it a certain speed and

at a certain altitude

usually fly quite low when the

bomb is dropped it

immediately begins to rotate in the opposite direction to the direction of flight

it hits the water hops over

the surface and covers a

considerable distance without

sinking you throw it exactly at the

right place and at the right

speed then hops

hops hops

and finally crashes into the

wall of the

dam on May 16,

1933 19 Lencaster bombers take off to bomb three

German dams

it is a costly

operation but it is successful two

of the three dams attacked become

destroyed in

1942 the bat bomb is

realized its code name is project

xray will it be as successful as

the roll bomb or will it fail as disastrously

as the

penrum why does Adams believe that

bats

can do it in World War II it is

safest to bomb at night to avoid

enemy fighters and

anti-aircraft guns Escape

Simply dropping bombs is

a gamble at best, especially at night, which the

US Air Force likes to do because then the

risk of being shot down is lower.

For bomba, it is difficult to

hit targets because people cannot see in the dark,

but bats can.

Bats emit sound waves They

are reflected back and then

picked up by their ears and this creates

the same image that we are used to when there

is light and we perceive our surroundings

with our normal eyes using what we

call daylight.

The bats use

this

sonic hearing system to, on the one hand, of course,

their caves and their Another advantage for finding resting places

but also for catching insects

are the places

where bats like to rest.

The bomb should be dropped shortly before dawn

so that the animals

immediately look for a place to sleep, for example in

the roof trusses,

before anyone notices that there

is a fire a huge amount of damage

was caused so they are a living

breathing agile and almost undetectable

weapon that flies exactly where you

want it to achieve the desired effect

Adam's team selects the tiny

Mexican bulldog feather mouse for his

flying special unit

they are a good choice because in one

These bombs fit many of them.

According to estimates, ten

planes could transport up to two million

bats in these bombs.

These bats have

a practical property when it

gets cold they fall into a

state called torpor, which is an

incomplete hibernation and it was

believed that the Animals therefore have

gout and are therefore

better suited for these missions,

perfect for the sleepy bats

are easy to handle, arm

and load into the bomb casing. They

even provided a refrigerated truck to

keep the bats in this cold sleep until they were used Adams

not only needs his tiny

elite unit, he also needs a

deadly charge for

them. Coincidentally, at

almost exactly the same time, the American chemist Louis Fieer invented

a new,

highly flammable substance called nahpalm.

Nahpalm is

so good as an accelerant, among other things,

because it is a gel-like substance

it burns, it starts to flow,

runs down the surface of buildings

and soaks into all the nooks and

crannies so that the fire spreads

further and further.

Adams and fieser develop

an incendiary device with a timer for the nbalm

that can be attached to the bats with glue

Biology and technology seem to

fit together perfectly but will it really

work? In 1943, bat bomb nests took place in Carlsbert

New Mexico.

They got

a really first-class location, the

newly built Karlsbart Airforce Base

The

bat bomb project is a top secret operation, the whole thing is open to

everyone. The first tests with bomb bombs

are a

success. It runs like clockwork. The

bats are searched for hours.

Most of them have holed up in the

eaves all over the

base. They have done exactly

what They should produce a

training film for the

flight crews who are supposed to

drop the bat bombs. For the

first time, the bats are wearing real

fire seats, so they are cooled so that they remain

frozen until you

can increase the temperature and they

wake up, but the problem is that they are on top of

you Air Force base in

New Mexico where it is very hot

six of the armed bats wake

up and do exactly what they are supposed to do

they fly off and look for a

place to sleep under the

eaves of this brand new

otherwise abandoned

air force base everything is going according to

plan which is a shame They are not

in tok but in New

Mexico in a strange way

everything happened as expected the bats

flew off they disappeared under

eaves the incendiary devices went

off and the base burned to the ground

the experiment was so top

secret that they didn't even know them They

were allowed to call the fire department to put out the fire. They lost

everything. It can be said with certainty that the

experiments did not go according to plan.

This was not the end of the

bat bomb.

In 1943, the Army handed the

project over to the Marines. The concept of the

bat bomb worked.

They only had one brand new

air base they

decided to test the project in full

but a year later it was

unexpectedly

stopped

at this point the project had

already cost $2 million in addition to the air base

but

it is really the costs that cause the

bomb to fail that

is the real reason a concept

that on paper looks even more absurd

than the

bat bomb, the use of the

sun's energy in a small bomb with

devastating effects. We are

of course talking about the Manhattan

Project,

although it worked, the

bat bomb project was

discontinued in 1944, which was a good thing, not least for

the Mexican bulldog bat

Message

is in a small glass case in the

British Museum in London there is

a curious object made of

reindeer antler that was made during the last

great ice age it is

really

ancient this object was made almost 10000

years before the pyramids of the ancient

Egyptians

with the help of modern

technology it can be done

examine it carefully it is 16.5 cm long and a good

5 cm wide on its front you can

see signs of wear and

tear both

outside and inside the

hole we see scratches and

chips they prove that the

object was actively and regularly used

but then the question arises

how was it used what was its

function who made it what

secrets does it keep about its distant

past is it a work of art a

symbol of power or something completely

different

1863

France on the banks of the river Weser

come across the French paleontologist

Eduar L and the Englishman Henry Christi

on a

rock overhang the

found towns known as Abri Lamatlin provide a

unique insight into

Stone Age life in the style of the time.

They hacked around with shovels and

pickaxes and made some

remarkable

discoveries. They came across

flint blades, spearheads and

numerous

bone artifacts as well as this one strange

thing the object is remarkable because of

its unusual shape with the

large hole in the middle but also because of

the very naturalistic-looking

image of a horse that is engraved into the

object.

The finds from lamadlen are different

from all

prehistoric human

artifacts discovered up to that point

a completely new, previously unknown

culture the

magdalenio this culture existed

during the last great ice age

18,000 to 12,000 years ago the strangely

carved antlers are about 14,000 years

old to find out its purpose

we have to understand the people that

created it, who were these

people the world The Stone Age is often

portrayed as crude and simple but in the

case of the Magdalignon nothing could be

further from the truth it was

a highly developed

culture that had a range of special

tools tailored to the

nature of their activities Lock harpoons

they were very good at slinging their

environment set they hunted herd

animals such as meadow ducks horses and

reindeer so it is not surprising that a

tool made from reindeer horn is a perfect

example of the craftsmanship of the

magdalignon

the reindeer

clearly played a central role in their lives it was

a source of food but they

also used its antlers either from hunted

animals or from shedding rods, i.e.

seasonally dropped wine.

The first step in the production of

this strange object is to

bring the antlers to the desired size. An important tool that these

ancient craftsmen used for this purpose is

the

graver. A graver is a

stone tool with very fine edges

Almost like a chisel with which you can

engrave objects but also encase them. Gravers made

of hard stones such as

flint and chert were used to

work on the rod.

With this tool you create a

notch at the point where you

want to make the division then you strike

a blow from it break off the part

you don't

want to have the distinctive hole in the middle

is created in a different way

with stone tools the

antlers were cut on both sides which created a

kind of sand cross section

then it was scraped out and

smoothed until you got an even hole

like we did with this one

See object the most time consuming process is

probably the highlighted engraving

of the

horse the area of ​​the horse's body

was first smoothed to remove the

irregularities of the antlers

then the middle

part of the body was left in relief to

enhance the effect the material around the perd

is carefully removed a

painstaking

work which is unusual as

most of the other Magdalinian animal depictions

that we know of are simply

carved into a surface rather than

using this more three dimensional depiction. Everything about this object suggests

that it is special so

what is it for it is

intended by

the archaeologists who discover it have

thought they

knew when they found the perforated stick they thought it was a

symbol of authority a

kind of scepter because of its decorative nature they called it a

command stick Examples of similar

objects exist in many different

cultures around the globe but there is

a strong counter-argument to these

Explanation

Over time, archaeologists have found more

than 400 such objects.

How can an object be intended for the

leader of a small hunter-

gatherer society if

there are 400 of them, that just does

n't make sense and puts this object more

in the realm of everyday

objects, so it is a

kind of utensil a

tool

we see scratches and chips

they prove that the object was actively and

regularly used

but then the question arises

how was it used what was its

function it is difficult to answer this question

because the frayed end

of the stick points to one

However, with the help of 3D imaging, the damaged part can be

virtually

restored. This is what the object might

have looked like when it was made 14,000 years ago.

Originally it must have been around 30 cm

long. Part of the shaft is

missing, so it could have been lost during use

an earlier thought was that

this object

could be some kind of harness for a farm animal

but there is a real

problem 10,000 years later

domesticated so if it is not

a harness

then what about the analysis of the holes in 135

Such rods have been found to have signs of wear

that lie symmetrically

opposite each other.

Such signs of wear indicate

use as a locking extender.

If you have a curved

locking shaft, you put it through the

hole and can then pull it towards you to

straighten the curvature. This creates this

characteristic

wear pattern that fits to finds

such as the Muray Springs hole stick, a

spear straightening device from the

North American klovis culture which

dates back to around 11000 BC but

that is by no means the only

theory it could also be a type of

spear thrower. Spear throwers

were used in many cultures, the

Azteeks called them atlatel but also

the North American and Australian

natives used

a spear thrower, which

effectively extends the length of the arm, allowing

greater leverage to make the throw

faster and more precise, making the

spear all the more deadly,

a harness, a spear stretcher,

a spear thrower. To date, there have been an

incredible 40 different theories

as to the purpose of this strange thing,

which of them is

correct? It is now generally accepted

that this state had not just one but

several purposes. You could describe it as

the Swiss army knife of

prehistory,

a 14,000-year-old

multi-tool, i.e. a

commodity, but why did

so much effort go to it? Decorating it

magdalenio is not only exceptional because of

its technologies and its tools

and weapons

they created some of the

most beautiful prehistoric works of art

discovered to date in the

form of beautiful carvings and

murals of ducks and woolly

mammoths this type of art shows that

they are in In their environment at the time, they not

only survived but also developed very

well.

Experts today

assume that the finely crafted

horse relief on the surface of the

staff was not the only thing - there

may even have been

a second horse on

this

object originally. Why did the

prehistoric craftsmen do this? a lot of effort

was put into what art has to look for on a

functional tool

and why a

horse was the horse was very important to these people

it was an important

source of food did they worship it for

some religious reason

we don't know a closer

look at the object provides a

tempting one Possible explanation If you

look closely you can see small marks

behind the horse's shoulder,

traces that shouldn't be there. There

is a marking on the

otherwise too lifelike horse

that is not anatomically correct.

You wonder whether it

might be a target marking

which tells the spear

to hit exactly that spot so that the

attack

is fatal. Comparing these indentations

with the anatomy of a horse

shows that they are located directly above the

heart. Other artifacts from

this period have similar markings

that could indicate fatal spear hits

Whatever the

exact purpose of the elaborate

carvings may be, they allow an important

conclusion to be drawn. These people

had enough time to decorate their objects,

so they were not people

who lived on the verge of starvation

but rather people who had the time and means to

be artistically active

all of a sudden About 11000 years ago

the Magdalen disappears from

history that was at the end of the Latvian

Ice Age climate changed drastically and

many of the large animals they hunted

died out there were big changes

that they just couldn't adapt to

and so

they disappeared with the people of the Magdalignon

disappears also their wonderful and

sophisticated art but this

amazing object remains one of the

oldest and most beautiful multi-tools

ever found