The Rando Who Translated Gilgamesh, Why Horses Lost Their Toes, and a Sperm-Swimming Discovery
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about how the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest texts in the world, was first translated not by a scientist, but by an engraver’s apprentice named George Smith; how horses lost their toes; and why sperm swim differently than scientists previously thought.
Some Random Guy Stumbled Upon and Translated a Legendary Ancient Text by Reuben Westmaas
- Damrosch, D. (2007, May). Epic Hero. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/epic-hero-153362976/
- Rym Ghazal. (2011, April 13). World’s oldest writing not poetry but a shopping receipt. The National. https://www.thenational.ae/uae/world-s-oldest-writing-not-poetry-but-a-shopping-receipt-1.568456
Here’s Why Horses Lost Their Toes by Ashley Hamer
- Hyracotherium. (2011). www.prehistoric-wildlife.com. http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/h/hyracotherium.html
- Biewener, A. A. (1998). Muscle-tendon stresses and elastic energy storage during locomotion in the horse. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 120(1), 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0305-0491(98)00024-8
- About Chestnuts and Ergots On Horses. (2013). CowboyWay.com. http://www.cowboyway.com/What/WhatAreChestnuts.htm
We were wrong about the way sperm swim by Cameron Duke
- Gadêlha, H., Hernández-Herrera, P., Montoya, F., Darszon, A., & Corkidi, G. (2020). Human sperm uses asymmetric and anisotropic flagellar controls to regulate swimming symmetry and cell steering. Science Advances, 6(31), eaba5168. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aba5168
- Wilson, C. (n.d.). Sperm have a weird way of swimming and we only noticed after 300 years. New Scientist. Retrieved August 13, 2020, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2250415-sperm-have-a-weird-way-of-swimming-and-we-only-noticed-after-300-years/
- Spinning otter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1bl_V_nMxQ
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about how a kind of random guy translated one of the oldest texts in the world, how horses lost their toes, and why |
| 0:15.8 | sperm swim differently than scientists previously thought. |
| 0:19.2 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:21.8 | The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest piece of literature in the world. |
| 0:26.0 | But when it was finally translated in 1872, its plot turned out to be surprisingly familiar. |
| 0:33.7 | What's even more surprising was who did the translating. |
| 0:36.8 | Not an archaeologist or a linguist, but an engraver's apprentice |
| 0:41.6 | visiting the museum on his lunch break. |
| 0:45.0 | Get ready to hear the epic of George Smith. |
| 0:50.0 | In 1860, Smith was 20 years old and working at a printing firm, engraving bank notes. |
| 0:57.3 | The job wasn't glamorous, but it gave him a knack for recognizing visual patterns. The shop happens to be within walking distance of the famous British Museum, |
| 1:06.0 | so he would frequently spend his lunch hour in the museum's near eastern collection. |
| 1:11.0 | He was especially taken with the Cuneiform tablets. |
| 1:15.0 | Even though they were in dozens of fragments dispersed among the exhibits, |
| 1:20.0 | he could figure out which fragments belonged together and could even translate a few lines. |
| 1:25.1 | Museum Scholars took notice of the young man and soon realized |
| 1:29.9 | that he could read the tablets better than they could. |
| 1:32.4 | Within a year Smith was hired. he could. |
| 1:33.0 | Within a year, Smith was hired to organize the rest of the museum's broken collection. |
| 1:38.0 | Eventually, his attention focused on two 2,500-year-old shattered clay tablets. |
... |
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