#309 - Ancient Medical Examiner Uncovers Remains of Hitler, Napoleon & Jesus | Philippe Charlier

Summary

Podcast Summary: Danny Jones Podcast | Episode #309 - Ancient Medical Examiner Uncovers Remains of Hitler, Napoleon & Jesus | Philippe Charlier

Introduction

In Episode #309 of the Danny Jones Podcast, host Danny Jones engages in an insightful conversation with Philippe Charlier, a distinguished medical examiner with an impressive academic background. Philippe holds three Ph.D. degrees in Medicine, Forensic Archaeology, and Ethics, and is currently pursuing a fourth. His multidisciplinary expertise positions him uniquely to explore historical mysteries through scientific analysis.

Credentials and Discovery

[00:25] Philippe: "I'm a doctor. I'm doctor. I've got three PhDs. Three PhDs and I'm reading the fourth."

Philippe’s extensive academic credentials serve as the foundation for his pioneering work in uncovering historical remains using forensic science. Danny Jones discovered Philippe’s work through his peer review of Dr. Amin Hillman's book, The Chemical Muse, which delves into the intersection of anthropology and forensic studies.

Hitler’s Remains

One of the episode’s focal points is Philippe’s examination of Adolf Hitler’s mandible, which Philippe asserts conclusively belongs to Hitler.

[01:08] Philippe: "Between my fingers I've got the remains of Hitler's mandible."

This discovery was made in Moscow, where Philippe compared the mandible’s dental morphology with Hitler’s unique dental records, including X-rays taken shortly before Hitler’s death.

Methodology and Confirmation

Philippe detailed the forensic methods used to authenticate Hitler’s remains:

• Dental Analysis: Comparing dental records and X-rays confirmed the mandible’s identity.
• Toxicological Evidence: Traces of blue powder suggested potential cyanide use, although Philippe noted uncertainties regarding the exact cause of death.
• Archaeological Context: The remains were found in pits outside the Chancellery, aligning with historical accounts of Hitler’s suicide and subsequent partial cremation attempts.

[12:10] Danny: "Right. Because when you..."

[14:50] Philippe: "... analysis of dentures, etc."

Other Historical Cases

Beyond Hitler, Philippe has extensively studied other historical figures:

• Napoleon Bonaparte: Examined remains and artifacts from Napoleon’s exile on St. Helena to understand his cause of death, revealing insights into his dermatological issues and eventual hemorrhage.

  [33:37] Philippe: "He died of hemorrhage. Hemorrhage... internal hemorrhage."

• Pablo Picasso: Analyzed fragments of Picasso’s nails and hairs, uncovering his heavy nicotine use and minimal caffeine consumption. This analysis also found traces of goat hairs, linking to Picasso’s personal life.

  [66:07] Philippe: "Nicotine we found a lot... fragments of goat hairs."

Relic Analysis and Facial Reconstruction

Philippe’s work extends to relics and facial reconstructions:

• Mary Magdalene’s Relics: Studied fragments believed to be from Mary Magdalene, involving skin and hair residues. Using these remains, Philippe and his team employed advanced imaging and reconstruction techniques to visualize her possible appearance.

  [84:35] Philippe: "This is the face from the skull presented as the one of Maria Magdalene."

• Cro-Magnon and Ancient Human Remains: Conducted detailed examinations of Cro-Magnon skulls, identifying pathological conditions such as neurofibromatosis, and comparing them with ancient artistic depictions for iconodiagnostic purposes.

  [57:19] Philippe: "... diagnosis was Recklinghausen disease."

Paleopathology and Historical Medicine

Philippe emphasizes the significance of understanding ancient diseases and medical practices:

• Iconodiagnosis: Analyzing historical artworks to identify medical conditions depicted in subjects, enhancing the understanding of historical figures’ health.

  [35:31] Philippe: "Iconodiagnosis... depicted all the morphological signs of breast cancer."

• Use of Ancient Drugs: Highlighted discussions on whether ancient civilizations like the Greeks and Romans used drugs recreationally or solely for medicinal purposes, advocating for scientific evidence to support historical claims.

  [98:01] Philippe: "I think drugs were present... may be partially used recreationally."

Peer Review of "The Chemical Muse"

Philippe shared his thoughts on Dr. Amin Hillman’s The Chemical Muse, pointing out the necessity of multidisciplinary approaches in classical scholarship.

[94:11] Danny: "Going too far."

[94:41] Philippe: "...missing the paleotoxicology aspect."

He critiqued the book for lacking scientific proofs, such as paleotoxicological analyses, to support its claims about drug use in antiquity.

Future Projects and Collaborations

Looking ahead, Philippe outlined his upcoming projects:

• Mass Graves of French Kings: Planning to study the mixed remains of French royalty from the French Revolution housed in the Basilica of St. Denis.

  [148:02] Philippe: "... bones of Louis XIV... reconstructing the voice of Henry IV."

• Museum Initiatives: Establishing a museum by 2028 in an ancient castle near Paris, showcasing his findings and reconstructions, including reconstructed voices of historical figures like Henry IV.

  [153:58] Philippe: "We are creating a museum... presenting all cases."

Religious and Ethical Considerations

Philippe touched upon the ethical dimensions of his work, particularly when dealing with revered figures like Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He expressed a desire to scientifically verify relic authenticity while respecting religious sentiments.

[88:32] Philippe: "We can say if the relics are the true ones or not."

Conclusion

Episode #309 of the Danny Jones Podcast offers a captivating exploration into the life and work of Philippe Charlier, whose forensic expertise brings historical mysteries to life. Through meticulous scientific analysis, Philippe bridges the past and present, providing tangible insights into figures whose lives have long been shrouded in legend and conjecture.

Notable Quotes

• On Hitler’s Death:

  [02:24] Philippe: "...we do not know exactly the exact cause of death..."

• On Iconodiagnosis:

  [35:31] Philippe: "...depicted all the morphological signs of breast cancer."

• On Reconstructing Faces:

  [84:27] Danny: "So we don't know for sure if that skull was the Mary Magdalene."

• On Ethical Practices:

  [115:34] Danny: "It's the most horrible of all human history."

Resources and Further Information

Listeners interested in Philippe Charlier’s work can follow him on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, and stay updated on his upcoming museum projects slated for 2028 near Paris.

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Transcript

[Danny]

At Chipotle, we also have a playlist. Guacamole as it's being hand mashed. The sizzle of adobo chicken on the grill, the chopping of onions and cilantro. We call our playlist Real Order now. Chipotle for real. Is it you? A doctor is a doctor.

[Philippe]

I'm a doctor. I'm doctor. I've got three PhD. Three PhDs and I'm reading the fourth.

[Danny]

No. No way. So what are your PhDs in?

[Philippe]

Medicine, forensic archaeology and ethics. And I'm reading a last one, the fourth in Low.

[Danny]

Okay, we have a lot to talk about today. The reason that the way I discovered you was I read your. Your peer review on Dr. Amin Hillman's book the Chemical Muse. And then I got introduced to all of your other work, the anthropology, the forensic stuff. So I want to cover all of this today. But first of all, I want to know, what is this picture? Are those really Hitler's teeth?

[Philippe]

Yes, this picture has been taken in Moscow, Russia. You can see my hands wearing some white gloves. Between my fingers I've got the remains of Hitler's mandible, in fact. So you can see these tiny remains made of bone, of teeth, and also some prosthetic element. All of this comes from Hitler.

[Danny]

So Hitler really did kill himself in the bunker in April. He didn't escape to Argentina.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes, he died, really died in Berlin in 49. In 45. 45. And you know, there were a lot of theories about escaping to Argentina, Brazil. Yeah. Antarctic. Some others spoke also about the moon. But we can read so much theories. So it's absolutely. It's a fake. Of course it died. It really died. But we do not know. Know exactly what. What was the exact cause of death, because we found tiny remains of powder blue powder between the teeth that may be related to poison. And we found also a big hole at the level of the scud. Of. Of each layer that may be related to the exit of bullet from. From. From his.

[Danny]

From a bullet.

[Philippe]

Exactly. So we don't know, maybe one. You know, maybe the. The poison did not work very well or very quick, so he asked to. To kill himself.

[Danny]

So what was the smoking gun evidence for you? And how did you. How were you able to figure out beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was Hitler's mandible? Because, I mean, from my. I have a. There's. I don't understand all the nuances in the history of Hitler's escape, the theory of his escape, but from what I understand, there is like out of the top 15 people under Hitler, two through 10 were able to escape to Argentina or to South America. And Hitler was the one who ended up staying in the bunker and committing suicide. And some people speculate that that didn't fit his character. He wasn't the kind of guy to maybe go down, to go down with the ship the way he did. And, you know, it is documented that they did have. They did have escape routes. And with all of those top generals and commanders being able to escape, it's. And the lack of evidence of Hitler, actually the lack of evidence of his body and other stories that he was buried in multiple places throughout history. So first of all, where did you find this piece and this piece of his jawbone? And what was, what was the. The best evidence that this belonged to Hitler?

[Philippe]

First of all, you have to imagine the period. We are exactly at the end of the Second World War, okay? We are in Berlin, Germany. You've got three different armies that are arriving on the east front. You've got the Sovietics, okay? Now Russia, if you prefer, on the other part of the front, you've got the French, you've got the American, you've got the Canadian and the English, okay? So Hitler knows that he will be defeated within the next few hours or days, no more, Right? So he's in the chancellery, in the bunker below the chancellery, to be exact. And on the morning, we are in the last days of April 1945, and in the morning he will get married with Eva Braun, okay? Which is much younger than him. So they make the short ceremony, they drink some alcohol, maybe porto, okay? And it's important. And just after the midday, they will all commit suicide, not only the couple. Hitler, Eva Hitler, now on Adolf Hitler, but also all the Goebbels, Marta Goebbels, Joseph Goebbels, which is a kind of Minister of Propaganda.

[Danny]

Goebbels.

[Philippe]

Exactly, Goebbels. Exactly. And all the daughters, six daughters. And also the dog, if you want to know the most precise type. Exactly. So they all commit suicide using cyanide or using poison or using also firearms.

[Danny]

Cyanide.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes, exactly.

[Danny]

The problem is that the poor dog didn't commit suicide. They killed the dog.

[Philippe]

Of course. Yes. You have to know that the poison did not work very well. Probably because they have eaten many things before, like fest for the wedding, maybe because of the porto also. So we can find some fragments of the tiny glass that it's. I'm trying to.

[Danny]

To find shards of glass.

[Philippe]

No, you know, when you, you break it and you drink it. It's a small part of glass. When you break it, you. You don't know the English word. Like. Like a fjord or gourd or something?

[Danny]

What. What does he think? What, like a. Not shards, just like a sediment?

[Philippe]

No, no, no. It's a very. It's. It contains some medics and it's very, very, very little, very small, you know, and you break it and then you've got the liquid inside.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

What name for this in English? You don't remember? Oh, a capsule. A capsule, yes.

[Danny]

Oh, Oh, a capsule. Okay. Okay, got it.

[Philippe]

Sorry.

[Danny]

That's okay.

[Philippe]

That's just like. Okay. The problem is that the capsule of poison did not work very well. We found tiny fragments of this capsule made of glass with. Between the teeth of Hitler Joe. But probably the poison did not work very well because of all the things that they have eaten or drink just before. So just after Hitler and Everbronn asked to be killed directly, or maybe did they kill themselves? We do not know exactly, but we've got many, many testimony. We know, for example, that all the people that were next to Hitler and Eva and also the Goebbels put all the cadavers outside of the Chancellerie in the ground, just outside, in two pits made by bombs. Okay. One pit for Hitler on his new wife, and the second for all the Goebbels family. Over these cadavers, they put some kerosene. Okay. Some petrol over it. Some oil.

[Danny]

Some. Some oil, exactly. Over the dead bodies.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Just to burn them. But it was not very efficient. You have to use a lot of oil, a lot of petrol.

[Danny]

Right.

[Philippe]

To burn the body. It was a few l. Few liters, not enough. Okay, so when the Soviets arrived, maybe five or six days later, immediately they entered into the chancellery and they tried to find the cadavers because it was very important for them, from a pure political point of view, to discover the remains of Italy and to know if the chief has abandoned all the army on the territory. So they found some blood. They found also some fragments of tissues, of cloth, etc. On outside of the Champs Elis, they found the pits. But when they did something like archaeological excavations or forensic excavations, they did not find all the body of it layer. They found just the lower part of the skull and the remainder of all the bodies, not the upper part. So they were able to confirm the identity of it layer. Based upon the dentistry analysis, the exact examination of all the teeth, all the medical treatments, all the morphology of the body, they were able at that precise moment to say, okay, this is the true cadaver of Hitler.

[Danny]

At what moment was that?

[Philippe]

45 and 45.

[Danny]

So that was right afterwards.

[Philippe]

Yes, just five or six days after the death of Hitler while making some excavations in the pit outside of the chancellery. So they were able to make something like a forensic autopsy. Okay.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

On the ground. But the most important part of the case was missing. They did not know what was the exact cause of death because they did not had the upper part of the skull.

[Danny]

Interesting. Why don't you think they would have had the upper part of the skull?

[Philippe]

Probably because the skull had exploded. For two reasons. The first one was the firearm wound, of course, and the second one was because of an explosion that we know. When you put a fire on a body, when you make a cremation of the body, the skull may explode.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Philippe]

Yes, yes, it's very, very current.

[Danny]

Very, very common.

[Philippe]

Yes, very common. So these two reasons may explain why the upper part of the skull of Hitler was missing when the first team of the Soviets were excavating the. The pit.

[Danny]

So, so, so he took the sign. So the idea is he took the cyanide. It didn't work because he had a big fat steak beforehand or something like this.

[Philippe]

Yes. Sugar, mainly. Sugar.

[Danny]

Mainly because of sugar. Okay, okay.

[Philippe]

This is why the porto is important.

[Danny]

He probably was drinking, Right. Probably drinking a lot of liquor. And then he shot himself in the head.

[Philippe]

Or maybe he has kitted one to shot him in the.

[Danny]

Or ask somebody to shoot him in.

[Philippe]

The head because he had Parkinson disease or Parkinson leg disease.

[Danny]

Right. And then he had some. One of his bodyguards or something cremate the bodies afterwards.

[Philippe]

Exactly, yes. Making two pits, two different pits. One for the family Hitler and one for the others. Meaning the Goebbels.

[Danny]

Got it. Okay. And then. So after they. He instructed the guards to cremate the bodies, I'm assuming the guards tried to escape or probably got captured. Exactly.

[Philippe]

Okay, yes. We don't, we don't know a lot about the guard.

[Danny]

We never, we never had any interviews with guards who admitted to doing this or anybody.

[Philippe]

Unfortunately, no.

[Danny]

No. Okay.

[Philippe]

No. But we've got some indirect testimony and we've got all the reports by the Soviets when they entered into the Chancellor. They took many pictures that I saw describing all the scene, all the crime scene, if I can say, of this. Suicide. So some weeks later. Weeks, another team from Moscow came to Berlin to find the missing part of Hitler's body. And they found a skull. Oh, just a small piece of skull, maybe 15 centimeter of maximum length. Okay. With a hole inside. It's the left parietal, the right parietal and part of the occipital. So it's really the upper and posterior part of the skull. And this part is really important because here you've got an exit wound of a firearm, of the bullet. Okay. So we do not know where exactly the bullet was entered, in fact, into. Into the. Into the skull, but we know exactly where it came out of the skull.

[Danny]

Right. Because when you. Sometimes the bullet trajectory will change when it goes inside the skull. It will come out at a random spot. Right.

[Philippe]

Exact. Exact.

[Danny]

It's not necessarily like in and directly out the other side.

[Philippe]

No, it's not always linear, of course, it may. It may move a lot inside. Inside the body, especially inside the skull. So if you want me to answer precisely to your question, we are 100% sure that the teeth are really the teeth of Hitler, because we've got many testimonies. We've got the testimony of the dentist, of the assistant of the dentist. One part is in Moscow, one other part is in America. We've got also other testimonies such as radiographs, X rays made.

[Danny]

X rays?

[Philippe]

X rays, yes. Made on ERs, not body, but when, While he was living, just at the moment of the. What's the name of this operation? X rays made just after the Valkyrie operation.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Philippe]

Exactly. Because you remember this story, the bomb that.

[Danny]

The bomb exploded.

[Philippe]

Yes, yes. Just near his body, maybe less than 2 meters. Normally should have died. Unfortunately, no. And he said just after that he had headaches or things like this, of course, so he sustained some X rays. So we know precisely nine months before his death what was exactly the morphology of the teeth on the skull.

[Danny]

And you were able to examine those original X rays?

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes, exactly. Yes. And we compared the morphology of the teeth and all the prosthesis between the X rays and what I had in my hands in Moscow. So I was able to see that it's exactly the same aspect, the same morphology. And this is really important because you may imagine that if Hitler had been taken by the Soviets in Berlin in 1945, okay. Then transported, I don't know where, in Siberia somewhere for 10 years or 20 years of detention. Of course, the teeth would have changed. He would have some more treatments at the level of the teeth, the mandible, the maxilla, etc. So it will not be the same aspect. So we can say that it's exactly the same. So it died really few months after the X rays. So it really confirms this aspect and it's not finished. I was able to take some samples of the dental calculus, which is between the teeth, and to export it to my lab in Paris.

[Danny]

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[Philippe]

Don'T, you know the deposits that. You don't have such deposits. That's good for you. Okay, but you know when you've got some deposits between the teeth, which is calcified.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

We call it dental calculus. It's a medical term. So I was able to take some samples of them some millimeters, to take them back away to my lab in Paris and to examine it under microscope. And we were able to see some fragments of Argyl, meaning that it took some medics because he had pain at the level of the gut. Okay. And stomach pain. Okay. Because of ulcer, maybe because of gastritis. Okay. Inflammation. So he took Argyl, which was a painkiller at the level of the gut on the. On the gastric system.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

We knew from many files that he had such a treatment. So it was again an argument saying that these Remains were the true one. And one last thing. When we did examine at the microscope all the samples of dental calculus, we did not find any meat fragment. No one meat fragment. So no animal fragment.

[Danny]

He was vegetarian.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes, exactly.

[Danny]

So his teeth look perfect here.

[Philippe]

Not so perfect. He had a very poor state of.

[Danny]

But like those, those teeth look perfectly shiny white. And then he has one metal golden tooth. Looks like a.

[Philippe]

Yes, it's an. It's an amalgam. It's made of many, many metal in fact. But you can see also the blackish coloration due to the partial cremation of the body. You can see between the two teeth on the left side some fragments of mucosa that are still present. It's the gingiva, of course.

[Danny]

Right? Right.

[Philippe]

Yes, yes. So it's, it's really a good. For us, it's really a good sample. We can do a lot of things on such a. Such a sample.

[Danny]

And you weren't allowed to take this out of Moscow, right?

[Philippe]

Not the teeth, not the themselves.

[Danny]

What is this?

[Philippe]

Is this, this is another fragment. This is from the upper maxilla. Upper maxilla. And you can see how complex it is. It's really a very complex piece.

[Danny]

Is this, is this pin polished and like.

[Philippe]

And it has not been polished. It's been cleaned by the Russians, but just cleaned and thanks. The, the. The let some fragments of. Don't add calculus which were very important for us.

[Danny]

What was it like going into those, the archives where they kept all this stuff? Like how tight was it and what was it like? What were the guards like and what was the process like for you getting, getting your hands on the stuff?

[Philippe]

The teeth were in the fsb, which is the continuation of the kjb. Okay. So it's in a very big building in the center of Moscow which is the Lubianka, not a very well renowned building as you may imagine.

[Danny]

Right.

[Philippe]

But the, the ambiance was really amazingly friendly. Amazingly friendly. Okay. Because they were really open minded because they wanted to get you a water or anything.

[Danny]

Coffee or you good.

[Philippe]

Okay. They wanted something like international and objective expert to do the job. And previously I worked on some ancient artifacts such as Richard the Lion hurt King of England, the relics of Joan of Ark, etc. So they knew me on my lab and probably because I was not, sorry, American. Right.

[Danny]

Why didn't they want any Americans?

[Philippe]

Maybe because of historical opposition.

[Danny]

Maybe, maybe you don't say.

[Philippe]

Well, I was French and at this. And I'm still French and at this period they wanted something which was almost independent. Okay. Not between this historical opposition. Sure.

[Danny]

They did not want. Unbiased. Yeah.

[Philippe]

And they did not want also someone from Russia because they didn't want people to say, okay, you, you ask a Russian to study relics which are in Russia, so it's not objective. So we did the job, and honestly, we did it well. But to answer your question, again, when I had these remains in my hands, I really had no feeling, no particular feeling, because, you know, when you do such a job, you are really focused on your analysis. Okay, you, you don't have time for feelings, for really sentimental feeling or something like this. After, when the job is finished, when you get out of the Lubyanka, when you are in the street of Moscow, okay, Then at this moment, you say, wow, such. Such a moment. It was the, the most critical part was between the asking of the. Of the study on my study itself, because I took a long time of reflection before doing it. Do I go to Moscow? Do I do such a study? Maybe it's better not to do it because it's not. It's not nothing, you know, studying Richard the Lionheart or the relics of St. Louis, as I did also, or other historical remains. Okay, no problem. Teeth on hairs from Picasso. Okay, no problem. But itlay, it's really another category, as you may imagine, right? So before doing it, I had a long time of reflection, but finally I found that it was really. It's part of my job to do was really a huge historical interrogation because we had, as you said before, we had so many theories about an escape to Argentina, Brazil, everywhere else. So we wanted to know if this was true or. Or false. Okay? So this was the only way to know the, the truth. So finally I accepted the job.

[Danny]

Now, Russia and the KGB and the regime there, they're. They have a. A stance on. Before you came in there, they had already stated that they know for a fact this is actually Hitler's remains, Right?

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Would there have been any sort of backlash or repercussions for you if you would have said, no, this is not Hitler's remains?

[Philippe]

They told us, and it was absolutely honest from their part. They told us, okay, do the analysis and we will not ask you to do. To go in one direction or another direction. Do it clearly without any orientation. So we were absolutely free of our conclusions. Absolutely free. When I was doing it, and here's.

[Danny]

A bag of cash.

[Philippe]

No, seriously. No, but no, no. When we did the examination, I had my microscope with me, which is that you can see in the right. I had my gloves, my. Everything So I said minute after minute, all my conclusions to, to them. And it's true that one minute after one minute, all the aspects were gathering into the authenticity of such remains.

[Danny]

Wow, that's pretty bizarre, man.

[Philippe]

Bizarre. But you know, it's, it's, it's history, of course. This is the most horrible, one of the most horrible of all human history. Of course.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

But from a pure historical point of view, it was really interesting. Really interesting. And you know, when I do forensic autopsies daily in Paris, it's. It's the same work. It's the same.

[Danny]

Yeah. What originally got you in to decide? Like when did you say, hey, I want to start doing. I wanted to start doing autopsies on, on ancient dead people, mummies and people from ancient Greece and these, just these historical figures, religious figures, all this stuff. How did this happen for you?

[Philippe]

I was 6 years old, 6 year old with my parents. We were in Pompeii, Italy, you know, the ancient Roman city which has been destroyed by the eruption of volcano Vesuvius. There I saw many skeletons, but you know, there the skeletons are covered by plaster and it looks like white ghost. Okay, White ghost. And this days I said to them, okay, this is really the job that I want to do. I want to make this dead speaking, but not using spiritism or magical beliefs, but using science, so using medicine and also archaeology. This is the reason why I made some PhDs, one in medicine, one in archaeology, anthropology and others too. Because I wanted to. To know how to use such specialties from traveling into. Into time. In fact, when my, when my children ask me, daddy, what did you do today? I answer them, oh, I traveled into past because I was studying the pooh of King Louis XIV in Versailles, because I was studying the relics of Saint Laurent Hautoul, which is an ancient saint from Ireland. Because each time I. I work with and I, I touch such relics, in fact, I. I travel into time.

[Danny]

Why were you studying the poop of that? Who was he again?

[Philippe]

The king? Louis XIV. The leader of Louis XIV? Yes. We're the 14th and you were.

[Danny]

I think I. One day we were messaging each other and you said you were in his bathroom.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. Yes.

[Danny]

So what was the. What were you guys looking for?

[Philippe]

You have to imagine something like this room, but fulfilled with poop. Yes. From 80 cm 8. Just the poop of the king.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

Yes. And this is really interesting because you can investigate all the alimentation process, all the disease, also the parasites, for example, the exposure to toxics on elements such as mercury, lead, arsenium, etc.

[Danny]

When did he die?

[Philippe]

1715.

[Danny]

So there was a big room of poop under his toilet. Yes, because there was no plumbing. So it was like a. It was like a royal porta potty.

[Philippe]

Exactly, exactly. So you have all the history, the intimate history of the. Of the king. This is really interesting. This I love. You see latrines, it's one of my best part of the. Of the job. I remember having excavated some latrines in an isolated island in. In Greece, which is Delos. The island of Delos.

[Danny]

Delos.

[Philippe]

Delos, yes. It's next to Mykonos, if you know the island. Okay. It's an isolated island in the Aegean Sea. It's in Mediterranean Sea. And here there were. There was poop from the second century ad. Okay. But a cascade, A cascade of poop. It was one of my dreams.

[Danny]

And what did you find in that poop?

[Philippe]

In poop? You find a lot of things in ancient poop. Not speaking about Versailles.

[Danny]

Ancient poop?

[Philippe]

Yes. Ancient poop. Yes. Paleo poop, if you want.

[Danny]

That's a great keyword. Ancient poop.

[Philippe]

Ancient poop in Versailles. I can't tell you yet because the study did not begin. We are just collecting samples. But for example, in ancient poop from Greco Roman antiquity, we can find some parts of alimentation. And we can find. Find also fragments of sponge. Do you know why we find sponge?

[Danny]

Sponge.

[Philippe]

Sponge, yes.

[Danny]

In poop.

[Philippe]

In poop.

[Danny]

I have no idea.

[Philippe]

When you go to the toilets now, you use something like a stick, you know, to clean the bathroom. To clean the toilets.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

But at this period, such stick were used not for cleaning the.

[Danny]

Oh, for wiping their butts.

[Philippe]

Exactly, exactly. So you can find some fragments and you have to imagine that they were put in a bowl at the feet of all the people and then all the parasites were going from. So it would be rude from one ass to another ass, etc. Right. So that's why. And we can find also another thing. In latrines, you see the halls where the people were gathering and people were speaking one next to the other. If we had done such an interview but two millinery before, we would have done in the latrines, okay? Totally naked you. And not totally, but half part of the body and like we were peeing or pooping. And you would have asked me some questions and I would have answered this way. Okay. But in such latrines we can find also some babies.

[Danny]

Hey guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below. And hit the like button on the video. Back to the show.

[Philippe]

When you. When you don't want baby, you don't put baby anywhere, okay? And you put them in latrines. And I remember the case of latrines in Israel, which have been blocked. The evacuation pipes have been blocked by babies because people did not want. It was in a brothel. In a brothel, you see? Oh, God, all the babies.

[Danny]

So these were like abortions?

[Philippe]

Exactly, yes. All the babies that were not conserved by the prostitutes were put in the latrines and it blocked the pipe. But my colleague, the archaeologist, made some genetic analysis of the skeletons of the babies. All the babies were male because all the female babies were conserved and educated to be the next generation of prostitutes.

[Danny]

That is dark, man. Oh, my God.

[Philippe]

This is archaeology too.

[Danny]

That's crazy. And what time period are we talking about with these brothels?

[Philippe]

We are speaking about late antiquity, beginning of Byzantine time. So Byzantine, Something like.

[Danny]

I need a number.

[Philippe]

Three to fifth century A.D. three to fifth.

[Danny]

Oh, my gosh. So what kind of what, what else can you tell about these people? Like specifically, like what kind of foods, what kind of drugs? Or can you tell like anything else, like the age of the person or anything that. Like that with. By analyzing their poop?

[Philippe]

No, no, with the poop, you cannot speak about the age of the individual. No, absolutely not. Because it's just organic material.

[Danny]

I had a guy in here recently who was he, he wrote a book about Hitler and Hitler said he was. They were constantly analyzed. They were sending his poop off to a laboratory and they were having doctors anal poop to see, like, what was what. What was wrong with him, if he needed to change anything with his diet or his drug regimen. So, so it's super interesting. Why? Why, you know what, what other kind of things you can find about people even like that late, like centuries afterwards?

[Philippe]

For us analyzing poop on latrines, it's. It's really interesting because we can recreate the elementation of this individual, but also all the medics that he. That he took. Medics, not the organic one, because it destro. Yeah, but all the elements. Yes, the medicine, yes, but if someone takes some mercury, for example, for dermatological purposes, or some exposure to lead, for example, or arsenium, then we can see it on the poop. But we can also see it with the nails. You see, with the nails or with the hairs. Also. Another specialty that we've got is the analysis of deposits in a bathtub. I remember having studied the deposits of. In the bathtub. Of the emperor Napoleon. The French emperor Napoleon.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah.

[Philippe]

Because I've been excavated in St Helena island, which is in the south of Atlantic between Brazil and South Africa. You know, he was deported there, Napoleon, and he, like.

[Danny]

What was the name of the island?

[Philippe]

St. Helena.

[Danny]

St. Helena. Pull the map of that, Steve. Sorry, you can continue.

[Philippe]

Yes, no problem.

[Danny]

He's just doing the visuals.

[Philippe]

Oh, this is the Rudic of Santa Elena.

[Danny]

That's the saint. This is an island.

[Philippe]

He was deported in St. Helena island for six years.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Philippe]

There he lived in a property that you can find, which is Longwood House. And maybe you can find a picture of the bathtub of Napoleon in Longwood House. We studied it because we knew that he had a dermatological disease. And he was obliged to spend a long time each day in the bathtub. So we crushed a little bit the inner part of the bathtub, and we analysis, and we found fragments of the treatment that he had, but also fragments of all the bacteria, parasites, and viruses that were at the level of his skin that were conserved, like using a mineralization process at the level of such deposits. So you see, even if we don't have the body, we can study the disease from this individual. This is really cool.

[Danny]

How old was Napoleon when he died?

[Philippe]

He died in 1821.

[Danny]

Okay, so he would have been.

[Philippe]

He arrived there 30s.

[Danny]

How old was he, do you know? Roughly?

[Philippe]

He was 70. In the. Oh, no, no, no, in the 50s. Sorry, 50s. It was in the 50s. The 50s.

[Danny]

Okay, Steve. I meant like a. Like a Google map, so you could zoom out.

[Philippe]

Napoleon House on Santa. Look at that. This is the house, and inside you've got the bathtub. Okay, but if you tap. If you. I published on it, so maybe you. You can find the. The image.

[Danny]

And is this what he died of? Is this this disease?

[Philippe]

No, no, no. He died of. He died of hemorrhage. I had access to the autopsy of Napoleon, the autopsy report, and we can see that he died of a huge hemorrhage. Internal hemorrhage.

[Danny]

Hemorrhage.

[Philippe]

Hemorrhage. How do you say hemorrhage? Hemorrhage.

[Danny]

Hemorrhage.

[Philippe]

Hemorrhage.

[Danny]

So it was like an intestinal hemorrhage?

[Philippe]

Yes, yes. He had something like an ulcer, maybe a cancer at the level of the stomach. Wow.

[Danny]

That's in the middle of nowhere. Way in the middle of the Atlantic.

[Philippe]

Exactly, yes. It's right in the middle of nowhere. You can imagine the travel to go there.

[Danny]

I know, right? Wow, that's fascinating. So correct me If I'm wrong. But when you're studying antiquity, the ancient world, there's only so many ways that we can. So many lenses we can look at it through. We have the literature and we have this kind of stuff, the forensics. Is there any other way that we can determine, we can figure out what was going on back then?

[Philippe]

Yes, we've got paintings, Paintings you can search if you want a painting, famous painting made by Rafaelo, which is La Fornarina. You can try Fornarina.

[Danny]

Fornarina, yes.

[Philippe]

For Narina Fornarina by Rafaelo. And I will explain you what is Icono diagnosis?

[Danny]

Okay.

[Philippe]

Icono diagnosis. Yes. Here she. Yes, you can see the breast. Especially the breast.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

I don't know if we can show.

[Danny]

Yeah, we can show it.

[Philippe]

Yeah. Okay. So the Fonarina was the mistress of the painter Rafaelo. Okay.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Philippe]

We are in the 15th.

[Danny]

Okay, 15th.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. So he was really in love with her. Okay. She was not very beautiful, but he was in love. And he did the painting of his mistress some months before his death, and her death, too. And look at the painting. You can see that at the level of the left breast, you've got two different archives, you've got two different waves. And you can see also next to the. I don't know the name of this. How do we say it?

[Danny]

The nipple. The nipple areola.

[Philippe]

This is a word that I do not often use in English. So next to the nipple, okay, you've got a picture something like blue or dark patch. Okay, you can see it. I. I show it to you.

[Danny]

Oh, around the arm here.

[Philippe]

Exactly here.

[Danny]

Oh, it's like a. Well, that seems like a shadow, right?

[Philippe]

It's not a shadow because for the shadow is not here.

[Danny]

Okay, okay.

[Philippe]

The. The shadow.

[Danny]

I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying.

[Philippe]

So you've got two different dark patch. One is a shadow and the other is not a normal part of the breast. In fact, Raphael was so precise that he depicted in the painting the breast cancer of the Phonarina, of his mistress. But he did not know that this was a cancer. And the cancer was much more important within the next few months than the Phonarina died of the cancer. So this is iconodiagnosis. You know, he was so precise, it was so, so exact in the anatomy, but also in the pathology that without knowing it exactly, he depicted in the painting all the morphologic, all the clinical signs of breast cancer.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

This is icono diagnosis.

[Danny]

Icono genesis.

[Philippe]

Exact.

[Danny]

That's fascinating. So this was in the 15th, you said.

[Philippe]

Exactly what.

[Danny]

How far back do you these sort of paintings go that we can actually look at them and corroborate other things that you find pathologically or in literature?

[Philippe]

In fact, each time I go to a museum, I look at the paintings, I look at the sculptures, I look at the engravings and drawings. They are searching for such pathological sign. You have to consider that I look at you, I'm not searching for disease and you don't have. Thanks God. But when I look at such paintings, you don't have to consider them as paintings, you have to consider them as patients, patients from the past. When we see something like this, then we have to cross such data with historical knowledge, with archives, with autopsy reports, embalming reports, when we've got them. And maybe we can also exhume bodies or skeletons to see if it corresponds to the painting, to the description, etc. So the best is really to cross all the data one with the other.

[Danny]

Have you worked with a lot of like classicists or, or, or other folks who study in ancient, the ancient world and antiquity and collaborate with them on this each time?

[Philippe]

Yes, because, you know, I'm a forensic practitioner, an archaeologist, but not, I'm not a historian and I'm not a historian of art. So each time we have to collaborate with them because they have to tell us, okay, this source, this archive is good. This painting is not realistic, it's much more symbolist. So each time we have to follow the good path, you see. So each time we work with such specialists, historians, historian of arts, sometimes parallelographs, meaning the, the one that study the ancient written, written parts of archives.

[Danny]

That's so interesting because most. So when you, how do you determine which historian to work with? Because most history books are based on what you're doing, right? Yes, because that, that's where it starts. It starts with the science stuff, the, the. The hands in the mud, looking under the microscopes, translating original source texts. But in history, typically history books basically get written based on other history books. So it's like history is this game of telephone.

[Philippe]

We try to find historians that did not write upon previously published books. So I always prefer historians that did themselves their research. Okay. And I'm very lucky because in France we've got many of such researchers with original source, with unpublished one yet. Okay, so we've got La Sorbonne, we've got many important universities in Paris and in Europe. I may absolutely collaborate also with researchers from America, from the States, for example. I'm thinking about E.V. loewenstein, which is a famous dermatologist in America. America. And we can also work with other specialists in Italy, in Greece, in Germany, in England, in Spain, etc. So it's. My team is really international team. My laboratory is made of 33 researchers. Okay. From almost 15 countries. So it's really big team.

[Danny]

Wow. And they. And their expertises range from.

[Philippe]

Our most ancient patient is Lucy the Australopithecus.

[Danny]

Really?

[Philippe]

Yes. On our most recent. I will tell you the story after. It's really. Yeah.

[Danny]

Amazing. Yes.

[Philippe]

On our most recent one is Pablo Picasso, died 1973.

[Danny]

What about Jesus? Is he's one of your patients?

[Philippe]

Not yet. Not yet. I would like. I would like. So, yes, the Holy Shrude may be really interesting to study.

[Danny]

Have you had any people. Have you talked to anyone who may. Who claim to have any sort of evidence of remains or any hypothesis of where remains could be?

[Philippe]

No, no, no. With just. No, not yet. But, you know, within two days, when I will be back to France, I will go to Argenteuil, because there is an ostension, so official presentation of the. I can't say the T shirt, but the tunic of the Christ, you know, the shroud. Not the shroud. The shroud is the piece of textile where the body was put in after the death. Okay. But the tun. Something like a shirt. Okay. That he was wearing at the moment of the patient. And this piece is conserved next to Paris in a city which is Argenteuil. And there. This is it. I will be.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Philippe]

Yes. In two days I will be there looking at it. This is it.

[Danny]

This would be something that would be, I would imagine, almost impossible to corroborate with anything else. Like, how would we.

[Philippe]

This is exactly the kind of study that we can do.

[Danny]

Yeah, but how would you. By. By studying this. What would you be looking for?

[Philippe]

It's not a clean robe. Okay. It's. It's really made of many spots, many in tash. How do you say? Yes, maybe stains, stains.

[Danny]

Okay, okay.

[Philippe]

It's fulfilled with many stains. Okay. Yes. Stains for us are really interesting because we can make many examination, many analysis on them. We will not study the textile itself. We know what it is. Of course, it's not my specialty, but my specialty is all the biological deposits on the surface of the textile. This is our specialty. So I will be looking at it externally from the outside. But it may be a very interesting file for us.

[Danny]

Will you be examining this under a microscope? Will you be taking samples of it and testing it?

[Philippe]

This is possible for yet it's not a study for us.

[Danny]

It's not a study.

[Philippe]

We did not ask any permission. Any permit for it. Okay, not yet, but this could be a study within the next few years.

[Danny]

If it were a study, what would you want to do? Specifically, what would you want to look for on this? A hypothetical study on this? Yeah. What. What would be your. Your goals?

[Philippe]

What would be interesting would be to study the pollens. Okay.

[Danny]

The pollens.

[Philippe]

Pollens, yes. Is it from European. Is it from Mediterranean Europe? You. Is it from. From Far east or Middle East?

[Danny]

This stuff would still be preserved for 2000 years?

[Philippe]

Of course. Yes, of course. Yes. Is it. Is there any blood? Also, what kind of immunoglobulin can. Can we see inside? Meaning the exposure to different kind of disease during the life of this individual? Yes, we can do. We can do a lot of. A lot of analysis.

[Danny]

So was he wearing this the day he was crucified?

[Philippe]

It was supposed. Yes. And, you know, in the patient, there is a moment where the Roman soldiers captured him. Captured him. But also they take the shirt of the Christ and they ask Monet, one with the other, to keep it. This is this shirt when they catch.

[Danny]

Him in the public park.

[Philippe]

Exact. Yes.

[Danny]

Really?

[Philippe]

Yes. Tradition says that this is this shirt.

[Danny]

So they took the shirt off of.

[Philippe]

Them and then they sold it? Yes, exactly. Yes. You've got two different.

[Danny]

The Roman cops did.

[Philippe]

Exactly. You've got two different robes or shirts. One is conserved in Germany. This is the one that you can see here in Trier. And there is another one which is in Argenteuil. You can. This is the one from Germany and the one from Argenteuil. You can find it. Would this be.

[Danny]

Would this be a conflict of interest with the Church?

[Philippe]

It's supposed. Oh, I don't know if we can speak about a conflict of interest, maybe conflict of authenticity.

[Danny]

Would the Vatican send their intelligence spies to come?

[Philippe]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is for.

[Danny]

You never know.

[Philippe]

This is for a novel. No, no, no. But this one is for Germany. Maybe you can try to find the one from Argenteuil. How do you spell that? You.

[Danny]

Argentina.

[Philippe]

Argento.

[Danny]

Argentoy.

[Philippe]

Yes. You did it well.

[Danny]

Argentoy.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

So what's the difference between these two?

[Philippe]

It's. They look like the same, but the one of Argenteuil has not.

[Danny]

Blow that up, Steve.

[Philippe]

Yes, it's more. It's darker. It's darker.

[Danny]

Ah.

[Philippe]

This is where I will be in two days. On Sunday, I will be there.

[Danny]

That looks like a normal T shirt.

[Philippe]

Yes, looks like yours.

[Danny]

It looks like my T shirt without the printing on it?

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

That's amazing.

[Philippe]

But it's 2,000 years old.

[Danny]

I had a guy in here who said he had the bones of Christ in his possession. He was. What was he, a Knights Templar? Have you ever talked to any of the Templars? They claim to have some of this stuff.

[Philippe]

No. So we were speaking also about Lucy.

[Danny]

Lucy, yes.

[Philippe]

Do you want to know the story?

[Danny]

I do want to know the story, yes. The true story.

[Philippe]

Maybe you can find some. Yes, the bones, maybe. Focus on the bones. Okay, so you know Lucy is 3.2 millions years old.

[Danny]

Right.

[Philippe]

And the remains were found something like 50 years ago. Okay. By an international team, including one famous man in France, which is Yves Copinh. We wanted to study it because rheumatologists from America said that all the fractures, all the bone trauma at the level of the long bones. So humeral bone, the tight. Also the femur. So the tibia.

[Danny]

Also the tibia, the femur, Exactly.

[Philippe]

All these bones have got a trauma. And he said, this rheumatologist from America, that probably Lucy was sleeping in a high tree just to prevent any attack from hyenas or lions or animals like this. Okay. Which may be true. And did she had a nightmare? Did she move? I don't know. When she fell and she broke the legs, the arms, et cetera, and she died. This was the hypothesis of my colleague from Mamir.

[Danny]

And what year did they make this hypothesis? How long ago was this hypothesis formed?

[Philippe]

Oh, maybe 10 years ago.

[Danny]

10 years?

[Philippe]

10 years ago. So we wanted to restudy the skeleton with one of his discoverer, which was Yves Copinhas. He was professor at Paris. So we took the bones and we looked at them again and again. And we found that at the level of the left coxal bone. You see what it is, the coxal bone.

[Danny]

The pelvic bone, Exactly.

[Philippe]

Okay, yes, the pelvic bone. We found that there were some traces of animal attack. Animal attack. What we can see is the negative aspect of the teeth from an animal attack. Like if you were bitten by an animal. Okay, sure. At the level of the buttocks. At this period, I was working at the forensic laboratory on pelvis from surfers from the island of the Reunion island in the Indian Ocean.

[Danny]

Reunion island, exactly.

[Philippe]

Yes. Some surfers have been attacked by.

[Danny]

Oh yes, I've heard stories. Amazing waves in Reunion Island. But there's some of the most deadly shark attacks happen there. I think there's. Like there was. Anyways. I know there was. I know that's a Big political thing with the sharks there, like the overpopulation of sharks and people being bitten there. So you think that this had something to do with sharks?

[Philippe]

No. Okay, no, no, no, no. No shark in this. But the attack was exactly, not exactly the same, but it was something like. Something like this. Anyway. It made me think about an animal attack because I was working on such a pelvic bones from the Surfers, but I had the pelvic bone of an Australopithecus, so I made the point between animal attack and animal attack sign on the pelvic bone. But it was not shark. Of course, the environment was not the one of shark. Then I look on the medical literature in Forensic Science International and other kind of specialized journals like this one, and we saw that in the Everglades, but also in Tasmanian island there are some attacks by.

[Danny]

Alligators.

[Philippe]

Exactly. And do you know how the alligators do attack the humans?

[Danny]

They grab onto a limb and then they spin.

[Philippe]

Exactly. And while spinning, it breaks many long bones of the victim.

[Danny]

Legs or arms.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Like the one of Lucy. Exactly. So our hypothesis is that maybe she was attacked by. I don't know if it's alligator, crocodile maybe. Exactly. A crocodile, big crocodile, maybe a paleo crocodile, that she was killed this way. This is maybe the reason why some parts of the body are still missing. Maybe we have to find these missing parts in the fossilized part of some such paleocrocodiles. Because in the same layer in which Lucy was found, the paleontologists have found also skeletons of crocodiles. Maybe the one that killed Lucy at the Paleo.

[Danny]

3 million year old crocodiles.

[Philippe]

So, you know, it's a case, it's a cold case. Very, very, very cold case. But we were able to resolve it thanks to mixing forensic anthropology and paleontology.

[Danny]

Oh, that's fascinating. Where, where is, are Lucy's remains now?

[Philippe]

They are in Ethiopia, In Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Exactly. Yes.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Philippe]

In a museum. But we've got precise cast, very precise cast. In the Musee de l' Homme in Paris, for example.

[Danny]

That's incredible. So, okay, so the dark is the dark part, the stuff that we don't necessarily have.

[Philippe]

Exactly. And the white, the white one is lost.

[Danny]

The white is what we do have. Oh, the white is what's lost.

[Philippe]

Exactly. And the dark one is what is conserved.

[Danny]

How tall roughly is this? Oh, she's the size of a small child.

[Philippe]

Yes, yes. No more than 1,1 meter. A little bit over 1 meter. But she was already a mother.

[Danny]

Oh wow. Really? Yes, that's so cool. That's amazing.

[Philippe]

3.2 millions.

[Danny]

3.2 million years ago.

[Philippe]

Exactly.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

It's another humanity. It's. You cannot imagine. It's. It's another humanity.

[Danny]

It really is. It's hard to imagine what the world looked like 3.2 million years ago, let alone 2,000, 3,000 years ago. What? So, so Lucy is the oldest hominid that we have found?

[Philippe]

No, we've got older now.

[Danny]

Oh, we have older than.

[Philippe]

Yes, we've got Toumai, for example, which is older. Yes, yes, we've got. I did not study them, so I can speak about it. But we've got older humanid. So pre. Human.

[Danny]

Proto human. What. What is the. How old is the oldest?

[Philippe]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Philippe]

I don't know. Sorry.

[Danny]

Is it, Is it around the same time frame? Three. Around three.

[Philippe]

No, no, it's maybe. Maybe five millions. Maybe.

[Danny]

Maybe five million years ago. Wow.

[Philippe]

Now, Tumaya, hold.

[Danny]

Have you ever, have you ever done any studies on any Stone Age humans?

[Philippe]

Yes, I've been studying. Oh, maybe you can show the picture. Chromanon. 1. Chromanon. You know what chromanon is?

[Danny]

CRO Magnon. Yes, CRO Magnon.

[Philippe]

CRO Magnon. Chromagnin. Okay. In French we say chromanin. Yes. You have to say CRO Magnon like a French. When it comes to the French word, it's a French word. Okay. CRO Magnon. So CRO Magnon or CRO Magnon for you is one of the. Yes. This skull especially I studied. This is the oldest.

[Danny]

This is the exact skull that you studied.

[Philippe]

Exactly. This is my patient. You are looking.

[Danny]

That's your patient.

[Philippe]

You're looking at my patient.

[Danny]

Incredible.

[Philippe]

This case is really interesting because when it was discovered in 1860, people found it in not a cave, but something like a cave. And you can see a hole at the level of the forehead.

[Danny]

Go up.

[Philippe]

Go up, Steve. You can see the hole. It's 5cm length. And people originally thought that it was the water filling from the upper part of the cave that made something like dripping on something. Yes, like an erosion. You see, after people thought that it was tuberculosis, after they thought that it was syphilis.

[Danny]

Okay, so venereal disease, Stone Age syphilis.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes. So in fact, everyone thought that it was the disease of its time. Okay. And in the 90s, people thought that it was Kaposi syndrome. So the cancer induced by aids. Okay.

[Danny]

Ah, okay, got it.

[Philippe]

Yes, but please. What? It's absolutely unrealistic okay?

[Danny]

So because they didn't have the same diseases that we have now, they don't have.

[Philippe]

It's. It's okay. It's the normal and it's a. It's a kind of modern man. We are almost CRO Magnon, okay? You, me, we are CRO Magnon. This is the same species.

[Danny]

We are like an alien species compared to these things.

[Philippe]

No, no, no, no, no. We are alien compared with. With Lucy, but compared with chromanon.

[Danny]

Similar.

[Philippe]

This is really similar.

[Danny]

Okay?

[Philippe]

This is us. This is us, okay? But all the disease, we are not the same, okay? Because not exactly the same. Alimentation, not the same environment, not the same microbiome or microbiots. It's microbiome, absolutely different. So we. We don't have to think the disease the same way as now, okay? So we did a full medical examination of this head, this skull. So we did a CT scan, but a very precise one. And we saw that we were able to put a diagnosis for this individual. The diagnosis was Recklinghausen disease. Recklinghausen disease. Recklinghausen, yes. It's a kind of neurofibromatosis. Okay?

[Danny]

It's a disease, a neurodisease.

[Philippe]

Don't be afraid. No, it's.

[Danny]

I'm scared.

[Philippe]

No, no, don't be scared. It's a disease where you've got many benign tumor all around the body and the surface, but also in the inner part of your body.

[Danny]

Benign tumors everywhere.

[Philippe]

Yes, but growing, growing, growing. So if you type Steve, facial reconstruction, cromagnon, then you will find our reconstruction of the face of this individual.

[Danny]

Oh, wow. Magnum, CRO Magnon, chromanon.

[Philippe]

Here, here. Yes.

[Danny]

And images.

[Philippe]

Yes. Okay, this is it. The first one.

[Danny]

The first one.

[Philippe]

This is our study.

[Danny]

Oh, so the tumor was eating away at the bone.

[Philippe]

Exactly. This is exactly what it looked like. You see. Wow.

[Danny]

It looks so. So modern.

[Philippe]

So modern. But we did not want to make a strong difference between Neon d', Erthal, which is always represented as kind of archaic form of humans, and CRO Magnon, which is a very well dressed, very modern one. So we did this way with something like a dark skin, but also with hairs which have not been cut since a very long time, etc. And you can see all the aspect of the disease with this tumor at the level of the forehead, at the level of the eyelids, also next to the nose, etc. This is exactly what CRO magnon1 looked like.

[Danny]

And for people that aren't familiar with the timeline, the Stone Age was how.

[Philippe]

Many Years ago, this was approximately maybe 60,000 BC.

[Danny]

60,000 BC yes, approximately before. Before language.

[Philippe]

Yes. You see, the, it's 40, 45 till 10. We don't, we don't have an exact.

[Danny]

Sure.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Wow. Is it true that human beings nowadays have the same exact lifespan with natural lifespan that they did back in the Stone age without. If you, if you want to take out the diseases and dying from hand to hand combat or plague or whatever it is, but if you.

[Philippe]

Depending, depending when you, when you speak. At the birth. No, we don't have the, the same time expectation. Okay. At, at the birth. At birth. Am I clear?

[Danny]

Are you saying, are you saying that. That more babies died during birth?

[Philippe]

Yes, in fact many baby or died within the first three years of life. Okay, if from what main fever, the, the heat rotation because of diarrhea of viruses, something. Okay, now you can take just. You make a perfusion and you will survive without any problem, or you take some paracetamol or aspirin and then it, it goes. Okay, but at this period, you did not had this so far, any very slight virus infection. You were dying when you were a child.

[Danny]

So that would still be the same today if it wasn't for all the medicine and technology that we developed.

[Philippe]

Right, exactly. So the time expectation, the life expectation at birth, it was really, really short. Okay? But as soon as you are at least three or four years old, then including in prehistoric time, you can expect living 50, 60, maybe 70 years old. Okay. Because the most important part of the, of the, of the, of the death was during infancy. Yes, of course. When you've got plague, when you've got war, when you've got any epidemics, yeah, you die, it's gonna show up.

[Danny]

But in a vacuum, if you took a human being from 40000 years ago, in a human being born today, each in individual vacuums, take out all external influences, all external ways they can be murdered or killed or die. And you project their life expectancy. Would it be the same or would.

[Philippe]

It be similar without or with medics?

[Danny]

Zero medicine, zero intervention at all?

[Philippe]

The same.

[Danny]

The same.

[Philippe]

The same.

[Danny]

That's so interesting. That is so bizarre and this is.

[Philippe]

Something that we can say. You know, I'm studying the skeletons from the Parisian catacombs. Maybe you can find some pictures of the Persian catacombs. Yeah, the catacombs of Paris.

[Danny]

Oh, the Paris catacombs.

[Philippe]

The Paris, yes. So we've got almost between 6 and 12 millions of dead below the, the level of.

[Danny]

Are they. Baby, I've heard about this.

[Philippe]

Yes, it's really fulfilled with skeletons. Okay.

[Danny]

I heard they were baby skeletons.

[Philippe]

No, not only. No, no, no, no, no. Not a lot of baby skeletons. Mainly adult skeletons. This is it. And we are studying them. Okay? One zone after one zone. So it's really. It's many skeletons. It's 1000 of life in Paris between the 10th and the 18th century.

[Danny]

Between the. Between the 10th and the 18th, yes.

[Philippe]

Ad Exactly. So you've got almost 800 life of. Of Parisians inside. So you've got skulls, you've got long bones, and you may make a lot of diagnosis.

[Danny]

Okay, why did they do this?

[Philippe]

Initially, everything took place in the 18th century. Imagine you wear, eating in a taverna, okay? And suddenly, next to a huge cemetery, which was the Sinterre des Innocents in the center of Paris, the wall crashed and all the skeletons, all the cadavers fall on the table where people were dining and drinking wine, et cetera. So at this moment, the Parisian people understood that it was really complicated and maybe dangerous from a pure health point of view, to have such proximity between the dead and the living ones. Okay. So they asked to take all the cadavers from the inner part of Paris to clean the cemeteries and to displace all the skeletons outside of Paris in ancient quarries. Okay, so these were not originally catacombs like in Roma, for example. These were quarries for the extraction of stone for the building of Paris. Okay, so it was fulfilled with the skeletons of all the cemeteries which were initially in the center of Paris.

[Danny]

Ah, that makes sense.

[Philippe]

For health reasons.

[Danny]

For health reasons. That makes. That makes a lot of sense. Quick, I gotta take a bathroom break real quick. And we'll get right back. We'll be right back. Okay, so Lucy was the earliest patient you had, and the latest one that you had was Pablo Picasso.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

And how did you get your hands on Picasso's remains?

[Philippe]

Thanks to his great daughter, which is Diana Vidmeyer Ruiz Picasso. And she was preparing an exhibition in Paris at the museum Picasso about all the testimonies about her grandfather. And she discovered in her private collections fragments of nails and fragments of hairs from Pablo Picasso. Because Pablo was really him. He had strong magical beliefs, and he thought that.

[Danny]

Magical beliefs.

[Philippe]

Magical beliefs.

[Danny]

Interesting.

[Philippe]

Yes, yes, yes. And he thought that people were able to make some black magic using his nails and using his hairs. So he sent them to Marie Therese Walter, which was one of her lover, and she conserved them in envelopes with the date, exact date of sampling by Picasso. Because Picasso thought that if someone took them, for example, in the Garden or in the shop where you can cut your hairs. Okay. This person could make some bad evil to him because it's a part of him. You see what I mean?

[Danny]

They could make some sort of a potion or. Witchcraft.

[Philippe]

Yes, witchcraft. We say a bad evil. Bad evil. Something which is like black magic. You see? Black magic against him. It's like Vodou, something like this. So he did not trust all the people around him. And when he cut his nails, he put them very delicately into some envelopes, sending them to Marie Therese Welter. And this is amazing for us because it's the possibility for us to analyze the alimentation, but also all the toxics that he eventually could have taken for his artistic creation. And we discovered that he didn't have any kind of toxic. The only one that we couldn't find is some coffee. A lot of. So very few. Caffeine. Because he didn't drink a lot of caffeine.

[Danny]

He did not drink a lot of caffeine.

[Philippe]

Not a lot of caffeine. No, no, no. But he was smoking a lot. So nicotine we found a lot. And that's all. And what we found also below the nails were all the food that he was preparing. For example, we found some proteins of watermelon. Okay. That really. Yes, yes. So we were. And also fragments of goat hairs. Goat.

[Danny]

Under his fingernails.

[Philippe]

Yes. Because at this period he had a goat. And this goat. Goat had all the rights. The goats were. Was able to come in the atelier to eat some canvas and to the goat had all the rights.

[Danny]

Yes. It was like a house. It was like a house cat, but a goat.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes. So we found some fragments of these goats below the. The nails of Picasso.

[Danny]

Oh, my God.

[Philippe]

It's really a trap. It's travel into such artist intimations.

[Danny]

See. Yeah. It's interesting how you can, you know, discover the. The toxicology and the chemicals that were in their bodies or the drugs that they were using. But like, it's so like, it gets really interesting when you want to examine the psychology of these ancient people. Like, is. Is there. Are there any. Any theories of. Of how you could use the matrix of the chemicals and the toxins that exist in their bodies and in the remains of their bodies to sort of draw an analogy to any kind of psychological illnesses or psychological complexes that these people might have had?

[Philippe]

It's really difficult to do. So for the moment, we are studying the hairs of Victor Hugo. Hugo. You know Victor Hugo? Victor Hugo, the famous French writer.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

And we found a lot of lead. It didn't interact with his creativity. Okay. But it may represent the cause of death of Victor Hugo because you don't do it because it's an electronic pen or pencil. But give it to me just one second. Yeah. Victor Hugo, when he was writing, he was using the lancre, how do you.

[Danny]

Say, a pen or a pencil.

[Philippe]

What is inside the lead? Ink. Ink. He was using ink, which was rich in lead. So he was writing then putting his pencil in his mouth. In his mouth, exactly. So lead was coming from the ink to the tongue or the inner part of the mouth. Then he was intoxicating himself day after day while writing. Okay. On this, we can see it on the hairs. In fact, it's not hair from the head, it's hair from the barb. Hair of maybe five.

[Danny]

From his face.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. So we can see that, you know, hair is growing 1cm each month. So we've got hair from the barb of Victor Hugo of almost five centimeters, which represents five months of his life. So we can see that the exposure to lead is growing day after day. And this may have been a cause of not death, but facilitating death for him.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

It's called saturnism. We call it saturnism when it's chronic exposure to lead, which is toxic level.

[Danny]

So out of all of the patients that you've examined, what would you say the predominant time period it is that you've studied, or is it just all over the place?

[Philippe]

It's really all over. Is it all over? Yes, yes. I can study skeletons from the Paleo Christian period, from the Greco Roman, from the. I've been studying the two. Two children of King Tut in Egypt.

[Danny]

Children of King Tut?

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. Yes. Which were dead in the womb of his wife and sister, Aung Sen Am. And we were able to say that they died, they were twins inside the womb of Aunt Cenamon. But the twins did not die at the same moment. One twin died. The first then shrink inside the womb, and the second died some weeks or months later. Then they were extracted out of the body of Aung Saint Amant, but with two different kinds of development. You see what I mean? And this was really a forensic. On what we say, photo, pathological examination of the. Of the bodies.

[Danny]

What is it like to examine a Egyptian mummy?

[Philippe]

It's very fragile. It's very. It's very little. Because these were embryos. Oh, not embryos. Fetuses.

[Danny]

Fetuses, yeah, yeah.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. So it's really. And it smells very good. It smells very good.

[Danny]

It smells good, yes.

[Philippe]

Mummies Smell very, very good.

[Danny]

What would you compare it to?

[Philippe]

Because. No, not you. You smell good, too. Thank you. No, no, no. But I compare it to a cadaver, that's all. But because when you make a mummy. Did you already smell an Egyptian mummy? Not yet.

[Danny]

Not yet. It's on my list.

[Philippe]

You should, because it's. You've got bitumen, but you've got also many aromats. Maybe a lot of aromas. Yes, aromas, yes. Like you've got salt and you've got botanical samples that are here to conserve the body for a very long time. And all of this smells very good.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

And, you know, I've got another story to tell you.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

Painters at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century currently used fragments of Egyptian mummies to make a kind of pigment which is red turning into dark. It's red with some metallic reflections. Okay. This pigment was called mumia. Like mummies mummy. Yes, mumia. It's a word for mummy. Okay. So some famous painters used such pigments in the end of the. Of 18th, beginning of 19th century in Europe. Okay. But also in America. So they paid a lot to use such fragments of Egyptian mummy. In fact, you take a fragment of Egyptian mummy, you crush it, you put some oil with it, you crush it again, then you use it like a pigment for paintings. Okay.

[Danny]

I wonder who the first person to come up with that idea was.

[Philippe]

I don't know.

[Danny]

How do you even do. How do you. Who thinks of that?

[Philippe]

In fact, it's very. The color is really unique, but it's also symbolic because you think that, you know, an Egyptian mummy does not destroy through time. It's really. It was conceived, it's preserved. It's preserved for not only centuries, but millenaries. Okay, so you. Millennia. So you consider that your painting too will be conserved the same way. You see, but during the French Revolution, so we are at the end of the 18th century in Paris, mainly, some painters had the opportunity of buying fragments of the mummified heart of the French kings, which were not Egyptian mummies, but they were hearts that have been mummified and unbound almost the same way.

[Danny]

The hearts.

[Philippe]

The hearts, yes. So they bought the hearts of Louis xiv, for example. And my lab has been able to track the path of this sample. And we were able to find in the Louvre museum in Paris, but also in another museum next to Paris, in Portoise, two paintings that have been made with the mummified heart of Louis XIV and Louis xiii, but the heart transformed into pigments. So now, if you Want to see the heart of such kings, Such French kings? You have to go to the Louvre Museum and to the Pontoise Museum. And when you see in these two paintings, dark and red, parts of the canvas of the painting. These are the fragments of the hurts. If you want the name of the paintings, I can give them to you.

[Danny]

So I was going to ask you. So you followed the chain of transmission of the mummified heart of this king, and it went to a painter.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes, yes. It was sold during the French Revolution. It was bought by the painters, and the painters used them to make two paintings. The first one is Interior de Cuisine, and the second one is Vieux de Queen. I can type them and I.

[Danny]

So did you have to go and, like, look up all the paintings that those painters ever created and then. And then analyze all of them to find out?

[Philippe]

No, because we've got archives and we know that he did such paintings just after buying the.

[Danny]

Oh, wow, that's fascinating.

[Philippe]

If you want to see them.

[Danny]

Yes. Let's see him. Let Steve pull them up. Oh, we'll type it. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so punch. Yeah, zoom that in. So. So all the red is. All the red pigments and the darker pigments are. Are. Are the heart of Louis XIV.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes. The. The 13 for this one and for the V, which is the other painting. It's Louis XIV. This one is the father of Louis XIV. So Louis the 13. And on the other one, V. This is it.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

No, no, no, the second. The second on the. Yes, this one. Yes. Here you can see the red. The red people. You see.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Philippe]

This is reset 14.

[Danny]

That's incredible.

[Philippe]

And when we did the microscope examination of these pigments, we saw very clearly fragments of muscles from the hub.

[Danny]

Really?

[Philippe]

Yes, yes, it's really. It's really clear. Yes.

[Danny]

So you took this and put it under a microscope and you could see this.

[Philippe]

Exact. Yes. Then we did the. Then we did proteomic analysis, and we confirmed that this hurt is where the human hurt. And we were even able to find some proteins related to diabetes. Because Louis XIV.

[Danny]

Diabetes.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. Because Louis the 14 was involved by diabetes. And we found such proteins in. Into the. Into the samples.

[Danny]

Wow, man, that is freaking insane. And he. He was. He was from. You said the 18th century?

[Philippe]

Yes, he died in 70. He died in 17. 15.

[Danny]

17.

[Philippe]

That's more than 80 years old.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

Maybe you can show us Louis XIV.

[Danny]

Yeah, show us a photo of him.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Oh, my God, look at that wig.

[Philippe]

Yeah. The second one. Yes, this one is perfect.

[Danny]

That's Amazing. So. So was diabetes prevalent back then?

[Philippe]

We. We suspected it. We suspected it and we had the confirmation by our analysis, yes.

[Danny]

And what would be the cause of diabetes? My understanding was that that's a recent phenomenon.

[Philippe]

It's difficult to know. It may be related to a limitation. It may be also of age. It may be due also to familiar predisposition. We don't know exactly. But if you want to know, we are still working on such samples because. Course, sorry. Because we know that Louis the 14th died of an infection at the level of the leg. Okay. It supposed to be a complication of diabetes. When you've got diabetes, you make strong infection, especially at the level. At the level of the lower legs. Okay. And especially at the level of the two on T for him. We are still working on the samples and we are finding some bacteria and some fungi also that may be the cause of death of Louis xiv. But understand me well, we are not working on the cadaver in itself.

[Danny]

Not the cadaver, no, no, no.

[Philippe]

We are working on the remains of the heart that the painter did not use and gave back to the church because he wanted to do it well. So he just used. He's just used half of the heart for painting. And the second half, the pigment is intact. And it's now back in the Basilica of St. Denis, which is at the north of Paris.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

So we are still working on such samples.

[Danny]

Have you ever been into the catacombs under the Vatican?

[Philippe]

Yes, of course. Yes.

[Danny]

Really? What kind of things did you find under there?

[Philippe]

I've been there for tourist purposes. But not for studying.

[Danny]

Not for studying?

[Philippe]

Yes, but there you've got study. Anyway, one down there. Oh, yes, there's a skeleton that is really interesting there. It's the. The remains of St. Peter. This, the. The bones of Sandpet. This one would be really, really interesting. But you know, everything, almost everything has been made on it by my colleagues from Italy. Okay. We know that it's the skeleton of man of almost 50 years old, then died at the first century A.D. so it fits with all the characteristics of St. Peter. So honestly, I would not add a lot of things more to the fights already written by my colleagues from Italy.

[Danny]

Wow, that's fascinating.

[Philippe]

But the study of relics is really interesting. You know, I've been studying also on the relics. Relics? Yes, you can type. Another patient that I had is Saint Madeleine. Holy Magdalena. Holy Magdalena. You see What?

[Danny]

Holy Magdalene?

[Philippe]

Yes. Holy Magdalene? Yes.

[Danny]

Not Mary Magdalene?

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Oh, Mary Magdalene. Oh, really?

[Philippe]

Yes, yes, Mary Magdalene. She's one of my patients there Is a story in France. We say that at the beginning of the attack of Christians, a boat started from Palestine at this period. And on this boat there was Marie Marie Magdalene, Marie Salome, Marie Jacob, Marie, Sarah, Lazarus and others. I don't remember all of them, but there were many. Then the boat came to Cyprus to create a to Malta, to many islands, then arrived in Provence in the south of France, in a small city which is called now Les Sainte Marie de la Mer. Anyway, everyone escaped and Marie Magdalene went to a cave. She spent 33 years in the cave. Then after this period, she get out of the cave and she died. And she was buried in a place which is now a basilica. Basilica in what the name in France, It's Saint Maximin la Sainte. Boom. Anyway, it's a huge basilica from the Middle Ages. And inside the basilica you've got the bones on the skull of Maria Magdalena. So we did the examination of these relics. Maybe you can see, you can find them also.

[Danny]

And where are the bones and the remains of Mary Magdalene? Right now.

[Philippe]

Now. Still there.

[Danny]

They're still there, yes.

[Philippe]

Ah, this is it. The first picture is now.

[Danny]

That's for real?

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

How have I never seen this?

[Philippe]

I look so badass. Because you have to come to France, that's all. So this is my patient, this is my picture.

[Danny]

It looks like a. A golden astronaut helmet with hair with Mary Magdalene's skull in the middle of it.

[Philippe]

It's a relicure, in fact. And you can see that the most important part of it, which is the face, is still missing.

[Danny]

It looks like the COVID of a death metal album.

[Philippe]

It may. It may, yes. So we did the examination of it and we were able to reconstruct the face based upon the surface of the skull. And if you type facial reconstruction Marie Magdalene, you will see the face that we reconstructed. Because this skull is the skull of a woman of almost 50 years years old. And you know, there is now a methodology very well practiced in forensic anthropology. It's the reconstruction of face. We saw it with CRO Magnon skull.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

On the surface of the skull you put sticks using your computer, which represents the common thickness at the level of the face, which, with muscles, with fatty tissue and skin. Okay. So it gives you really the, the, the surface of the, of the skull, which is the face. And here we had also fragments of the hairs, fragments also of the skin. So we were able to be much more precise than CRO magnion that you saw before. And you, you will see the, the reconstruction. Did you find it, Steve? Oh, reconstruction, facial Reconstruction.

[Danny]

Look at the bigger one, the bigger image. And look, it's like little angels or cherubs or something like holding her up.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Philippe]

Wait a minute here. The skin fragment. The skin fragments.

[Danny]

Zoom in, zoom in on the skin fragment. Dude, this is gnarly.

[Philippe]

I've never seen this, dude, the skin fragments. Because when the.

[Danny]

That's, that's. That's almost like. It's pretty terrifying.

[Philippe]

No, not at all. Oh, because you're not forensic practitioner, maybe?

[Danny]

No, for me, it's terrifying, right? Yeah, I've never. I haven't.

[Philippe]

No, it's zoom out. And these fragments of skin come from.

[Danny]

The forehead because the symbolism of it and the fact that they have this ancient human skull in inside of a trophy, a golden trophy with angels. It's like.

[Philippe]

I have to tell you the story of the skin fragments.

[Danny]

Yes, please.

[Philippe]

Initially, they were put here at the level of the left forehead, the right forehead. The story is that one, during the patient, Jesus escaped from the grave, as you know, because he was resuscitated. Okay. And Maria Magdalena was here and she was trying to catch Jesus. And Jesus stopped her. May do it this way.

[Danny]

Way.

[Philippe]

So stopping her with two fingers.

[Danny]

Two fingers on her forehead.

[Philippe]

On the forehead, saying in Aramaan. But I translate into English for.

[Danny]

In Aramaic.

[Philippe]

Yeah. Yes. This was his speaking Aramaic.

[Danny]

Jesus spoke Aramaic.

[Philippe]

Aramean. Yes. And I translated into Latin for you, if you want. Noli me tangere, which means don't touch me. So it's really. It's a very important part of the. Of the New Testament. Okay. And these are the two fragments of the skin which has been touched by the Christ on the forehead of Mar Magdalena. And we also have a stick of hairs from Maria Magdalena because later still, after the patient, she cleaned the foot of Jesus using her long hairs.

[Danny]

She did what? She.

[Philippe]

She cleaned. She cleaned the feet.

[Danny]

The feet. She cleaned his feet?

[Philippe]

Yes, the feet of Jesus using her long hairs.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

Okay.

[Danny]

While they were still on her head.

[Philippe]

Exactly, exactly.

[Danny]

So that would be awkward.

[Philippe]

So they were conserved in another reliquary. So I studied the skin, the hairs and the skull too, and we were able to produce facial reconstruction of the face of this individual. This is it. The second one. That one.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[Philippe]

This is her. This is the face from the skull. I cannot tell you that this face is the true face of Maria Magdalena because we are still missing carbon dating on genetic. But this is the face of the skull presented as the one of Maya Magdalena.

[Danny]

So we don't know for sure if that skull was the Mary Magdalene. That's talked about in the Bible.

[Philippe]

Exactly.

[Danny]

But we do know that that skull was from the first century ad.

[Philippe]

No, we know that this skull is the one conserved and presented since the medieval period, the Middle Ages, as the one of Maria Magdalena in this tradition.

[Danny]

But we. So you.

[Philippe]

I don't have carbon dating.

[Danny]

So you don't have carbon dating of the skull. Got it?

[Philippe]

Unfortunately, no.

[Danny]

Well, go back, Steve. Go back to that where they were showing the 3D renderings. Oh, wow. Wow.

[Philippe]

That's how they built it.

[Danny]

Is there, what is the difference in the skulls of males versus females?

[Philippe]

There is not a huge difference, in fact, because if you want to make sex determination using a skull, it's really not the perfect bone. The, the most accurate bone is the pelvis. Pelvis. You've got 98% of giving the, of chance of giving the. The correct sex for this individual. If you use the skull, for example, my skull is a female skull. Okay. But if you look at my pelvis, you will be sure that I'm really a male. Okay. Because looking at the skull, it gives you maybe 55 to 65% of chance of giving the true sex. So it's not, it's really not perfect.

[Danny]

Like wider, like birth bearing hips.

[Philippe]

Yes, it's in fact the, the pelvis is much more induced by. In its morphology by hormones. Much more than, than the skull. You see what I mean? I say it again.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

Sex hormones.

[Danny]

Hormones, yes.

[Philippe]

Sex hormones are much more involved in the morphology of the pelvic bodies bones than the skull. So if you look at the, if you look at the skull, it's not the perfect one to be sure. Sometimes you've got a very male one, sometimes a very female one, then you can be almost sure. But in most of the case you've got a. Almost male, almost female. So making a sex diagnosis based only on the skull, it's not the best way to do it. Okay. That's why we always prefer to do it on genetic samples. So DNA.

[Danny]

And why won't they. So they're not letting you take a carbon date of that skull.

[Philippe]

The authorization of opening of the. Of the require was on the office of Pope Francis. So as you know, he passed away. No, he passed away. He passed away. So we have to, to wait for the new Pope, which is American.

[Danny]

Leo. Pope Leo. He's American?

[Philippe]

Yes, he's. He's from your country.

[Danny]

Really? I didn't even know that. That.

[Philippe]

Please. Pope Leo.

[Danny]

Pope Leo's American.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

So are you going to ask if you guys can pop Open that astronaut helmet and see if that she, if that's actually Mary Magdalene.

[Philippe]

We, we will write to him and then we will see.

[Danny]

Wow. Are you, are you religious?

[Philippe]

I'm Catholic, yes.

[Danny]

You're Catholic?

[Philippe]

Catholic, yes. I'm Papist, as you say, Papist.

[Danny]

Wow. So. So I want to ask you, you. So we talked about this briefly. You, you were the only person, the only academic person to do a, a peer reviewed Bryn Mawr peer review on the Chemical Muse book by Amin Hillman. First of all, how did you come across this and how did you get chosen to do the peer review? How does that, how do. I don't know how this process works.

[Philippe]

I made some peer review for Bryn Moore University, which is a, which is a kind of research center. And also it's like the newspaper.

[Danny]

It is like the Holy Grail of academ, of classical scholarship. Peer review on classics.

[Philippe]

Classics, yes. Okay. So sometimes I make some peer review when the, the book is between paleopathology, which is my specialty, forensics, and antiquity or other periods. So I found the title very interesting on the topic also. So I wanted to, to, to read it first and then to make a very objective analysis of the, of the book.

[Danny]

Yes. So. So my understanding of what a classical philologist is, and correct me if I'm wrong, is it's someone who studies the ancient texts, the ancient Greek specifically, because I believe there's way more Greek than any other language. And they try to use all of the sources that are all the sources they can to corroborate what specific words mean based on that time period. Exactly. So words can have semantic drift. So if you're looking at a one word that was used in 100 A.D. it might have a very different meaning. 500 B.C.

[Philippe]

And at the same period, the same word may have different meaning between two different authors. This is also a specialty of antique.

[Danny]

Period between multiple authors.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly.

[Danny]

And there's different, also different types of authors. Right. You have people who are writing medical texts. You have people who are doing philosophy, poetry, theater, theater, comedy.

[Philippe]

So it's very dangerous. Yes, it's dangerous because the meaning is different and the conclusion may be different too. So this is why you need to make a very precise scholarship, analysis and studies before writing such a book. The book was not bad anyway. Not bad at all. But my opinion was that maybe it was a little bit going too far. Going too far.

[Danny]

Going too far.

[Philippe]

Yes, going too far. And it was also missing a very important part, which was paleotoxicology. I mean, analysis of Ancient bone sample of what was inside antique vases, for example. All this part, which is present already in many studies, paleo, toxicological studies, it was not included in, into this book. And this was, for me, the book was.

[Danny]

So the book is in the, the. What is the word I'm trying to think of right now. The, the premise of the book, his background is specifically in reading texts. He doesn't. He. It's not a multidisciplinary book. That's what I'm. That's what I was trying to get across.

[Philippe]

Yes, yes. This was for me a limitation of the book.

[Danny]

Right.

[Philippe]

And the second is that the author, which is absolutely respectable, had his own previous ID before doing the book, only used all the arguments for confirming his previous id. Normally when you do such a book, you have to remain and to stay objective and you have to make your own criticism of your theory, you see, and in such a book there was only one way of thinking. Everyone was using drugs in past period. This is what he said.

[Danny]

He said drugs were ubiquitous in antiquity.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly, and sincerely. It needs to be to reach strength a little bit more because we've got so much skeletons, we've got so much ceramics. So he had the opportunity of proving his theory using paleopathology, paleotoxicology. And please do it, please do it because it's a very interesting theory, but you may prove it from, from a pure, independent way. So this was really something which was missing for me.

[Danny]

So my understanding of it is he wrote his PhD dissertation on drugs in antiquity and the ph. The, the PhD. The panel that was reviewing his dissertation said, we'll, we will approve your PhD as long as you remove the chapter on recreational drugs. So he removed that chapter because they said that the Romans wouldn't do such a thing. The Romans, they would never engage in recreational drug use. So he decided to take that chapter after he received his PhD and basically turn it into that book. And that book was like, based on that chapter. So for whatever reason, he felt slighted by the academic institution that the fact that, like, why would you try to take this out of there? Just because you have an idea that they wouldn't do such a thing. Now let me ask you this. Do you believe that the Greeks and the Romans would not do such a thing as engage in recreational drug use?

[Philippe]

I have nothing against recreational use of drugs like alcohol or anything else during the past period, but I'm not historian and I'm not. But I do believe that drugs were used in past period on opium, for example, on Other kinds of drugs. And we can see it with very good examples in that book, for example, in sanctuaries like the Piti in Delphus or the Sibylus in Cuma in Italy now know. So I think drugs were present. Yes, drugs were really present, present.

[Danny]

But do you believe, do you believe it's possible that they were used recreationally, not just medicinally?

[Philippe]

Maybe partially, yes. May, yeah. From a pure conventional point of view, practical point of view, I don't have any argument against it, but. But I would really like to have a scientific proof of it. And we've got so many skeletons. You will tell me, okay, skeletons in bones, you cannot find everything. Remember, you've got dental calculus, okay. And you've got sometimes fragments of blood inside the skull which has been conserved. In that blood you can find many organic material, etc. So it's really possible to find, find signs and fragments of such drugs in dental calculus, in remains of blood, etc. And also in all the ceramics that have been conserved from antiquity. So it's really possible to do it. So maybe he has to create a research group about this to go further.

[Danny]

In your studies of classical antiquity and Athenian cultures, do you find in your studies any evidence of psychotropic drugs or anything like this?

[Philippe]

I really don't know. I really don't know. I did not search for it, so I don't know.

[Danny]

You did not search for it?

[Philippe]

No, no, no.

[Danny]

When you're doing your work, you, you work with people who, and, you know, not saying that this would be necessary, but it would, it would be very interesting to see a forensic pathologist and a, a classical scholar, a classical philologist team up and try to corroborate things in some sort of presentation.

[Philippe]

This is the best, the best is to mix all the sources, texts, iconography, skeletons, and also everything that comes from archaeological excavations. From houses, for example, but also from latrines, from trashes also. So when you mix all of this, then you've got strong data to analyze all the past populations.

[Danny]

And is it true during this time period that plague and, and famine and hand to hand combat and were very, very prevalent and just a part of life in that time in that, in those cultures. Was that, was that something that was just constantly like. I think in that book he mentions that There was a, a, there was plagues almost on average like every 50 years. I think it was, I don't know.

[Philippe]

If it was true. Plague or epidemics.

[Danny]

Epidemics or plagues.

[Philippe]

Yeah, but you had many, often epidemics, then war, then lack of alimentation. And you had many crisis. We prefer to speak about crisis. Okay, Alimentary demographic crisis. Problem of alimentation. Of. Of food supplementation. Yes, this was really common in the ancient period, but not only in antiquity, also in medieval period or modern period too. We were speaking about Louis xiv. There were a lot of crisis during his reign also. So it was really common. But we were speaking about the use of drugs. I remember working in Venice. Yeah, Italy. And in Venice. In Venice, yes, Venice. And I studied some pipes from Venice at this period. People pipes?

[Danny]

Oh, smoking pipes.

[Philippe]

Smoking pipes? Yes, smoking pipes. And people were smoking tobacco mixed with cannabis.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Philippe]

Yes, but not for recreative purposes normally, rather against malaria.

[Danny]

Bad malaria?

[Philippe]

Yes, malaria. Not the sense you use it for. Paludism. Okay, but malaria means in ancient Latin or French or Italian, bad air. Bad air, you see, the miasma. People were considering that in this period plague on. Other diseases were spread by bad air. Malaria and. And it was a way of cleaning the air, the air that was coming into your mouth as you were smoking pipes mixed with tobacco. Tobacco, cannabis. It was cleaning the air all around you, you see.

[Danny]

So how would you discern whether it was only being used for this purpose rather than being used just for fun?

[Philippe]

Texts. Only texts? Yes, texts. So testimonies, archives, you have to use such things, but you have also to prove the use by the analysis of deposits inside the ceramics, for example. And if you find also remains of such drugs in dental calculus, in fragments of blood still present inside the skull or elsewhere, then you can see that in I don't know how many percent of the population you find it. So you need a kind of statistics, you need a kind of demographical representation of such, the presence of drugs in past populations. This is really a key point. You need numbers, you need the statistics.

[Danny]

How much have you looked into Galen? Ar. Marcus Aurelius's physician.

[Philippe]

Say it again.

[Danny]

Galen, the physician of Marcus Aurelius.

[Philippe]

Yes, yes, yes, Galen.

[Danny]

I think his. His literature, his medical literature makes up, I think, what is it like 10% of all classical literature is from him.

[Philippe]

We've got many, many. We've got many physicians from antiquity. Galen is one of them. But we've got also Soranus of Ephesus. We've got also the Hippocratic Library, etc. Which is not all from Hippocrates himself, but maybe of a lot of people from the same school. So we've got many, many. We've got also Celsius, which is another Celsius.

[Danny]

Yes, exactly.

[Philippe]

So we've got many texts by ancient physicians, but Galenus, in fact, Galen for you is one of the most important one. But he made errors, he made mistakes. For example, he described some anatomical structures that do not exist in men because he did autopsies on animals. And he said that as it was present on animals, it was also present for humans. So it's not. You don't have to take the, the, the, the words of Galen as 100 true.

[Danny]

And I don't know if you've heard, but Almond Hillman also talks about the use of essentially like ancient vaccines. You know, how we use vaccines to create. The way that we create vaccines is by growing cultures on organisms. Right. Or on, on organic tissue. And one of the things that he talks about is the use of inducing viper venoms into people by impregnating the bandages with the venoms and then putting a cut on the human body and then wrapping that cut in this bandage with viper venom just enough to create the antibodies or the anti venoms. And they were using that to, according to Amin, to extract the bodily foods from his people and use them to treat snake bites and things like this and other ailments.

[Philippe]

I don't know that at all. I don't know that at all. Sorry.

[Danny]

No, yeah, so, yeah, it's, it's one of the things he talks about along with, with Galen's theriac, which apparently had like 66 different ingredients, if you're familiar with it. I don't know, but I know it had a lot of different viper venoms, a handful of North African viper venoms, viper flesh, various bodily fluids. Have you, have you looked into that at all?

[Philippe]

No, no.

[Danny]

Have you ever heard of anything like that?

[Philippe]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Danny]

Because. Yeah, when he was reading, you know, there's so much, there's so much literature from Galen, it's impossible to read it all in a lifetime.

[Philippe]

But oh, no, you can, you can do it. You can. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, you can.

[Danny]

I think there's like 11 volumes or something like that, this. And they're all like 800 to a thousand pages.

[Philippe]

It's so in one year, you do.

[Danny]

It in one year?

[Philippe]

Oh, yes, yes.

[Danny]

Can you translate Greek?

[Philippe]

No, no, no, no. Okay, Latin, yes, but Greek, So only, only some words. No, no, Latin, yes, no problem. But Galen wrote in Greek, so.

[Danny]

No, Right, right. It's, it's just fascinating. And you know, he talks about how, you know, according to Galen, that Marcus Aurelius was taking a lot of opium and he was constantly having to up the dose of his opium and. And all these things.

[Philippe]

But we do not know if it was for medical purposes reasonably. Yes. Rather than for, how do you say, pleasure.

[Danny]

And they were also doing vivisections on prisoners where they were basically doing live autopsies on. On people.

[Philippe]

No, get in. Did autopsy of. How do you say it, Les, Sorry. Galen did autopsies of gladiators. Gladiators and soldiers too. So he was able to take all the fresh bodies of such individuals and finish to open them and to see what was exactly inside, but while the cadaver was still hot. This was really interesting. Interesting. Vivisection was performed in Alexandria, Egypt.

[Danny]

Yeah. Because it was not allowed in, in Rome.

[Philippe]

And there it was possible to. To open the bodies of living individuals which were not living for a very long time, as you may imagine, which were prisoners.

[Danny]

Yes. And what was the purpose of doing that? What kind of stuff were they looking for it?

[Philippe]

Was it. Their interest was to see the physiology of organization, organs? Because when you do an autopsy, as I do, I always see dead people, so the organs do not move anymore. Okay. But when you do VV section, you can see the bowels moving. You can see the heart beating not a very long time, but you can see it left, right, left, right, left, right. Okay. But when you do autopsy, the heart is absolutely flat, so you don't need. You don't see him moving. This is the reason why they, they did such analysis.

[Danny]

Right? Yeah. Such a brutal, brutal thing to do to human beings.

[Philippe]

You have to imagine, of course, it's brutal for us, and of course we don't have to do it, but you have, you have to judge it from another point of view, which is the one of this period. Normally a historian does not judge. It just describes, describe it does not judge because.

[Danny]

Yes, correct.

[Philippe]

Another period, another context, another kind of knowledge and thinking. So let's do as historians do, don't judge, just describe it.

[Danny]

Right. So one of the. One of the recent analysis that Hillman makes, which I don't believe was in the Chemical Muse book, was that in March 14, I believe, is the description where we were talking about the. The shirt that he was wearing when he was arrested by the Roman cops in the park, that he was with a young boy who ran away. And when he ran away, he was. His cloth, his linen cloth that was covering his. His privates basically fell off. And, and the first thing Jesus said to the cops was, I'm not a lad. One of the. There's many terms for. Or. There's many meanings for the Word lay stace. One of them was pirate, I think robber, bandit. And another thing that it was used for was human trafficker. And according to Hillman that human trafficking was a very popular thing during those days. Humans were being trafficked all the time. And in fact according to him, Marcus, or according to many people, people, Julius Caesar was kidnapped when he was younger by some human traffickers. And he eventually, when he escaped and when they traded him, he crucified them. So he is claiming that these lay stays or human traffickers, one of the common ways of prosecuting them or condemning them to death was by crucifixion. And Jesus was arrested, said I'm not a lay stace. And then, and a few hours later he was crucified in between two lace days. So his, I don't know if he's, he doesn't actually say this, but I mean he's, he says it looks like what, you know, he, the fact that he was caught in this public park, that he was using this kid's bodily fluids as an antidote to some psychedelic drug or some, some viper venom concoction that he was using before that when he was in the upper room. And he needed the antidote to the viper venom that he ingested from the kid. Because the theory is if you give this to young people, young people have the most robust immune system so they can produce the strongest antibodies to relieve you of whatever this death inducing venoms that you're on. And when he was on the cross, it's written, written by multiple authors. What was the one? I can't, the, the, the one who specifically wrote about the sponge. I can't remember his name, but it's described as, you know, he's dying of thirst when he's crucified. He's, he's very thirsty. And that was one of the side effects of ingesting these venoms. And he, when, when he was offered the sponge, there was one specific author who said that that sponge was the antidote to the viper venom. He denied the sponge, he didn't want the sponge. So you know, his, his theory is that, you know, he was tripping when he was crucified and he didn't want the antidote so he would survive. So that would be really interesting to have somebody like you try to look into that and see if there's any sort of pathological evidence or anything like that to corroborate this.

[Philippe]

As you know, Jesus is not yet one of my patients.

[Danny]

Yes, exactly.

[Philippe]

But who knows?

[Danny]

The problem with it is it's so provocative sounding, you know, it's, it goes against, so it goes against every, you know, the religious people are going to.

[Philippe]

I will be honest with you, when we read the gospel and when we read all the texts describing the crucifixion, the process of natural death, if I can say from a crucifixion is honestly very well described.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[Philippe]

Yes, really. I already studied two bodies of women which were crucified from the island of Delos also. And so I know the process.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Philippe]

And I've got also more than 10 years of forensic practice of. On contemporary cases. So I really know it. When you look at the description, what the cause of death of a true crucifixion. Vertical crucifixion.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

It's dehydration. It's.

[Danny]

What is that word?

[Philippe]

Dehydration? Dehydration. Dehydration, yes, dehydration. It's the blood that precipitates inside the blood vessels, also at the level of the veins, but also at the level of the lungs. And it's also one last thing which is tiredness of respiration. It's at the end of this position. It's really difficult, difficult to breathe.

[Danny]

When you're like this, you can't breathe, so you sort of suffocate.

[Philippe]

This or this or this. Yes, yes. After hours, it's really, really hard to breathe. Death. Okay, so when we read he did not die in 20 minutes or one hour, he died after hours of such a process. So honestly, when we read the text, we don't need any other explanation for his death. Toxics, venom.

[Danny]

But he did die early though, Right? According to the text, he died far earlier than everyone else.

[Philippe]

Yes, but remember that during all the patients, when he was walking inside the streets of Jerusalem, he did not have a lot of water, he did not drink a lot, and he was suffering, he was losing some blood also. So sorry, but he has enough reasons of dying without imagining something else. From a pure forensic point of view.

[Danny]

Sure.

[Philippe]

In forensic, we always, always prefer the simplest way of dying. And very often this simplest way is the correct and the true one.

[Danny]

Right. That makes a lot of sense. It's just the, when you're, when you're relying on the, the, the biblical canon for, to describe the things that were going on back then and ignoring all of the, the vast amounts of classical literature that surround the Bible, it's like, are you getting the truth? Because, you know, it's, it's a, it almost goes against it to like. It's like it's you're not looking for the truth when you're only looking at the religious texts and not trying to corroborate the, the religious text and the meanings of the words with all of the other literature.

[Philippe]

This is the problem. If it's a problem. These are religious texts. These are not historical chronicles or strong archives made by lawyers, etc. So this is one problem if it's a problem. But I want to tell you, if you want to know the truth, give me the sponge, find me the relic of the sponge, find me some fragments of blood or, I don't know, from the body of the Christ. Then we will see maybe the Holy Shrewd or something else. Maybe if we've got some traces of the body, maybe we can find some answers on it. I can't say, give me the skeleton of the Christ because normally there is no. But who knows? Who knows? Honestly, this is one of the most important reason of the study of Ruth Relics. When you study relics, first of all, you can say relics, you can say if the relics are the true ones or not. Sometimes they are not true.

[Danny]

That's a problem.

[Philippe]

Yeah, that's a problem.

[Danny]

Same thing with texts, text, fragments.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Yes. Some are apocryphic, so written many years after or changed a lot. But if the relics are the true one, then we can work on them and maybe we can have some, some strong on good informations.

[Danny]

Yeah. And, and like the. I. The idea of using, using biological things like, like humans or animals to, to process new drugs is not that, that's not exclusive to any certain part of the world. I believe you wrote a whole book on, on the, the voodoo religions of Haiti. Right, right. And using these, these, this pufferfish venom.

[Philippe]

Tet.

[Danny]

Yes, yes, and, and toads and venoms from pufferfish. And these people would like bury themselves up to their necks and believe they were zombies.

[Philippe]

I've been working on this for years. I made an exhibition in Paris about this. This is absolutely true.

[Danny]

True.

[Philippe]

This is absolutely true. You put some zombie powder inside your shoes, inside your shirt. Yeah. And. But I can put something like all of this of powder on your skin. Nothing will happen because the tetrodotoxin powder does not come through the skin. So you have to put something that you scratch your skin and the poison goes inside the scratch and goes inside your body. Then between four or six hours later you are considered as a living dead, if I can say, meaning that you really look like a dead one, but your heart is still beating, you are still breathing, but very slowly. Your temperature is really down. Okay? So you look like dead, but you are still living. Okay? Then you are put into a grave the same day. And during the night you are extracted from your coffin by the priest, which is called a bokor. And this one takes you out and gives you the antidote. Then you are transformed into a zombie during days, months, years working in rise, production in anyway, but far away from civilization. And you will be giving some, I don't know, barbiturate or benzodiazepine, any drug. And also you will be giving alimentation without any salt. So something like brain oedema will develop and you will be really like a zombie. So a body without any spirit, it. A body without any consciousness. Okay? And it will lack for years before one day your bokeh, the prayers will be dead because of, I don't know, an act, traffic accident or maybe a traumatic event, earthquake. Earthquake or tornado. And so you will not have your each day drug barbiturate or benzodiazepine. Or you will be able to eat something and you will eat what you will found and there will be some salt in. So the edema will go down slowly and you will take back some part of your consciousness. And this will be the end of the zombie state. And you will recover a human state day after day. This is true. And this is still happening in Haiti. But it's not for anyone. It's not for you. It's not for me. It's for people which are.

[Danny]

It's for people that believe. Right? You have to believe in zombies.

[Philippe]

You have to believe, yes, you have to be initiated to voodoo initially, but also it's for people that do something bad to society. This is made by secret society which is called bizango. And it's made for people doing something bad. People that are selling territories or plantations that they do not really have are people which are raping girls. Okay, so it's a kind of parallel justice. Justice, you see?

[Danny]

Justice.

[Philippe]

Justice. It's a parallel justice.

[Danny]

Yeah, no, it's. It's really interesting. Like would. Would these. These rituals and like burying somebody up to their neck while they're staring at the stars all night under the intoxication of these venoms have the same effect on an individual who didn't entertain the belief system. Right. Like how much does the psychology and the symbolism of the whole ritual play into it?

[Philippe]

The psychology is really essential and this is really a key point. And you're absolutely right because you have to believe and you are prepared to this before getting intoxicated you have a judgment in seven steps. So seven times you are taken at your office, you are put in a car, and then you are obliged to be facing the bizango secret society. And you are kneeling just in front of them and they are judging you. And seven times you have the possibility of saying, I'm absolutely innocent or no, I'm really guilty. Again, there are also some signs that are placed just in front of your house. For example, chicken legs. Okay. Or some voodoo doll also, that is, which is made with fragments of your hairs. So inside the zombie powder you've got. Got also other fragments. You've got human bones fragments. You've got also a scratching from the grave of previous zombies. Like if you were transferring death or zombie state using this powder. Okay. So it's really a mix. And as you said, and it's really true. You have to believe this is why also. So only people which are Vodou practitioners in Haiti may be converted into zombies. If you are not a voodoo practitioner. If you're not a voodoo practitioner. Yes, I don't have any other world. Then you cannot do. You cannot be turned into a zombie.

[Danny]

Right. Do you believe in. Do you believe humans have souls?

[Philippe]

I do think so. But I think the soul is not in. Only in the brain, but in all the parts of the body. We say it in French. L' esprit toutier etant le corre toutantier. The spirit together is in the whole body together.

[Danny]

So it's a. It's a part of. It's a part of everything. It's a part of. It's in every fiber of your being.

[Philippe]

Yes. It's not just in your brain. There's no. Only. There is no reason for the spirit to be only in your brain.

[Danny]

Right? Yeah, that makes sense. And what, what do you think happens to the soul when somebody dies?

[Philippe]

I have no idea. I have no idea. You know, I've got some colleagues in my forensic department that are speaking to the cadavers. There is one which opens the window in the morning. Are you speaking to the cadavers? Yes, yes, speak. I don't speak to my. To. To my patient. They don't speak.

[Danny]

But some people do.

[Philippe]

Some people, some forensic practitioner do speak to their cadavers. That they are students supposed to speak today. I know one which opens the. The. The window to let the soul getting out of the autopsy room also. So. But I don't do that. For me, I. Before doing the autopsy, you know, like the piano player, I make a turn all around the The. The cadaver. So my patient, because I want to see all the aspects of the skin, all the scars, all the tattoos, all the deformations, etc. So when I arrive in the autopsy room, I don't begin immediately the autopsy. I take some time, you see, just to make a turn all around. But it's an observation. It's also a kind of philosophical meditation. But it's not religious, not at all. It's just taking into account the fact that me, the living one, I will be studying a patient, which is different. It's still a patient, like you, like me. For me, it's still a patient. It's not a cadaver, fresh cadaver or not fresh cadaver, it's a patient, meaning that I have full respect to him. Okay? So I make a turn, I look at it, her or him, then the autopsy can begin.

[Danny]

How many autopsies are you still doing nowadays? And how do you determine? Like. Like, how do you pick who. Who to. Who you want to study or. Or who you can collaborate with? And how does that whole process work? And who are you? What are you most interested in studying?

[Philippe]

I'm making autopsies for justice. Okay, so for the. For the Ministry of Justice. Oh, are you really France? Yes. And I maybe did 2,500 autopsies already. The most important one for me, the most interesting one, are exhumations. Exhumations, meaning that the body was put in a coffin for one, two or three years. Then there is a justice action and people want to know finally, if the death is natural on. So we make an exhumation of the coffin and the coffin arrives in the laboratory. Then we open the coffin and we make the autopsy. I tell you why this is really interesting for us, because it's during the process between a fresh body, a fresh cadaver and archeology, we can see the transformation process of the cadaver inside the core, the moving of some parts, the deterioration of some, the conservation of other parts, et cetera. How do the clothes move or conserve the body? It's really interesting. So you see, it's a kind of. It's an analysis of the degradation process of the corpse between forensic finishing in archaeology. This is for me, the most interesting part of the study. One week ago I worked on the body of a woman that probably died seven years ago, but she was only found some days ago because she didn't have any more relationship with her son. So she was discovered only because of bad smell from all the neighbors.

[Danny]

Else.

[Philippe]

Okay.

[Danny]

Even seven years later it still smells.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

And what did you?

[Philippe]

Because there was a electric stop and there was no more ventilation, so the.

[Danny]

Body electricity went out.

[Philippe]

Exactly.

[Danny]

Oh, wow. Have you ever gotten anybody, like, say somebody was accused of murdering somebody, right, and they, like, went to prison, maybe they were on death row and then you. You had to go do more forensics to confirm or deny this?

[Philippe]

No. This, no. Or maybe I. But I don't know the. The issue. But what I did is I did autopsies. And then I was a medical practitioner in jail and I cured. I was the healer of patients that were prisoners, but they were the killers of the bodies that I autopsied. And this was really interesting because during the examination of these living individuals, they told me, oh, I already saw you. When was it? At my trial at the Justice Department. And they said, okay, now I will tell you exactly what's really happened. I will tell you exactly how I really killed this individual. And sometimes they told me, you really did it. Well, sir, speaking about me, you saw exactly what I did, etc. And sometimes some of them told me, I did this also before killing her. This is exactly how I killed her or him, et cetera. But sometimes it's really impossible to find it in the autopsy. So it's really interesting for me. And from a pure humanistic point of view, it was really interesting also to manage this.

[Danny]

Yeah, that must have been terrifying to be in the same room with these people.

[Philippe]

There are people like you and me. I didn't kill anyone you can. You can trust, and I hope you didn't either. But these are people really like you and me. Really murder. Oh, yes, jail. 99% of people in jail. People that for one reason, one day, day do something. Of course, extremely bad. Of course. Yeah, of course.

[Danny]

Right.

[Philippe]

But.

[Danny]

But there's got to be a certain percentage of them that are just completely nobody's home, just psychopaths.

[Philippe]

This is maybe 1%. No more. No more. In French jail. I don't know. In America. Yes.

[Danny]

That's wild. So, so why were you. So what kind of things were you doing to help these people?

[Philippe]

I was just their doctor. Doctor. Because in jail in France, you have. When you enter into jail, you have to see the doctor. And for three years I stopped doing autopsies and I was a doctor for living people. That's all. When you are a doctor in France, you are a doctor for all kind of patients. Okay, the living one, but also the dead one. When you are Franz. Strict practitioner. So for three years I was dealing with living individuals. And this was my. My specialty.

[Danny]

And wow. What. What kind of, like, ailments and things were you treating? What kind of diseases were you treating?

[Philippe]

Infection, trauma, cancer, hemorrhage. How do you say hemorrhage? All kind of disease. In fact, in. In jail, you've got all kind of disease, but it's a place which is very. It's dangerous, not for the doctor in itself, but you've got a lot of violence. A lot of violence.

[Danny]

What do you think there's, like, going to the. Looking at the evolution of medicine and. And modern medicine versus ancient medicine, what do you think the biggest differences are? And do you think there's. There can be anything that could be gleaned from ancient medical practices that would improve medicine today?

[Philippe]

I think the. The most accurate medicine is the one that has been described by Hippocrates in a treatise, which is very ancient one for probably 4th BC which is. I say it in French, meaning wind, water, places. Okay.

[Danny]

Wind, water and places.

[Philippe]

In this very short treatise, no more than 12 pages, Hippocrates says that you do not treat the same person living, for example, in Tampa, Florida and Cleveland, and you don't treat the same person coming from. Originating from. From South America and Northern America, because we are not made physically, physiologically the same. Okay? He does not take this kind of examples. He speaks about the slaves and the masters. He speaks about the island on the continent. He speaks about northern Greece and southern Greece. Okay?

[Danny]

You can't. Broad brush matters.

[Philippe]

And this is. It looks like personal medicine. And this is really accurate. This is what we only now rediscover. We will not treat the same disease between you, Danny and me, Philippe, because we are not born in the same country. We don't have the same physiology. We don't have the same alimentation.

[Danny]

So we don't have. We don't eat the same things.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Our microbiome is absolutely different. So this is really important, and this is, for me, a rediscovery. Hippocrates already knew it, and we are now rediscovering what Hippocrates said to us.

[Danny]

Wow. Yeah, I think about that all the time. You know, one of the things I think about often is the ancient world and the. The foods they were eating and the. The animals and the plants, like I imagine. Imagine and correct if I'm wrong, but I imagine there wasn't foods that were exported from the opposite side of the world and shuttled into one part where they're eating things or had diets that were based on things that were not from their native environment. On Top of that, they probably weren't eating ultra processed stuff like that we're eating now. So it makes me wonder that, you know, what the future mortality rate or what the future of diseases look like and how that's gonna, how that kind of stuff is going to evolve into the future as we develop more technology and more convenient ways of consuming foods and you know, being exposed to the natural elements of the world, far less, you know, now we're inside more often, we're sitting in front of screens all the time. We don't, we're not getting sunlight, light, we're not eating foods from our native environments. We're not catching the fish that are right, you know, coming out of the ocean, that are right, right next to us. We're eating fish that are grown on farms in the middle of the continent.

[Philippe]

The problem is that we are getting sick of what we are eating. We are getting sick of conservative, we are getting sick of antibiotics and of all the exposure also to lead to mercury, to antimod on arsenium, etc. Everything is already present in our alimentation and we are really getting sick of all of this. But you have to imagine that during the ancient period, everything, everyone was involved by parasites. Parasites. Parasites, exactly. So health status was absolutely different from now. Now you and me, we don't have any parasites. Because of antibiotics. Because of antibiotics, conservative, etc. But in ancient period you were so much fulfilled with parasites that when you had a small fever, when you had a small diarrhea, your health was so.

[Danny]

Fragile.

[Philippe]

Fragile that you died very frequently and very easily. Okay, now it's different now and we can see it with the forensic process, you do not die of just one cause of death. You die of maybe two, sometimes three cause of death.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

I don't speak about decapitation, bullets. I speak about natural process of death. For example, when you've got a cancer, you don't die of your cancer, you die of cancer plus dehydration, plus infection.

[Danny]

It's an accumulation of things, the accumulation. And usually there's one thing that will be the straw that'll break the camel's back. Like I think during the pand, the recent pandemic, a lot of the people that died were people that caught this, this Covid and they had already like a lot of things wrong with them, a lot of comorbidities, hypertension. Yeah, all these things combined, which, you know, which explains.

[Philippe]

It's like a plane crash. You know, we, we say in France that when a plane crash arrives, you don't have one cause of plane crash. You've got two or three causes for which the plane crash. Right, okay. It's the same. Your health, human death and plane crash is the same.

[Danny]

Yeah. And, and you know, going like to the technology, the technological advancement of humans and you know, coming to the point where now we are, we are using these parasites and, and viruses as weapons for and, and tools of war that could, if they got out, they could wipe out vast amounts of the population. Like.

[Philippe]

But, you know, we have examples of this during antiquity.

[Danny]

Right. I've learned about that recently. Yes.

[Philippe]

With projection of cadavers, of people died of an infection. And these calavers were projected on the opposite army just to provoke an epidemics on the opposite army. So this existed in ancient period and also during the opposition between Americans and Indians.

[Danny]

Like they were launching infected. Infected corpses.

[Philippe]

Yes. Human one, sometimes animal ones, but really human ones too. This is biological war.

[Danny]

Biological war. Ancient biological warfare. Yeah. Yeah. There were so, and there were so many examples of, of the things that they were doing back then and chemical warfare as well. I was, I just started reading the book by this woman called. It was called. I forget her name, but the book was called like Greek Fire Scorpions. It talks about all the different ways how they would fill bags with scorpions and throw them on people. They would light pigs on fire and try to get the pigs to run towards the elephants and just all kinds of, of just bizarre, wacky things that you would never like. Just, you know, it's, it's amazing how they came up with some of these fantastical ideas.

[Philippe]

Reality is much more fantastic than in imagination.

[Danny]

It really is. And a lot of it doesn't make any sense. That's it. Greek fire pours and arrows and scorpion bombs.

[Philippe]

Oh, she's, she's one of the best. Yes. She wrote an amazing book about fossils. Fossils. Fossils, yes, yes, yes.

[Danny]

Interesting.

[Philippe]

Yes. Which were considered by the ancient Greeks as skeletons from mythological animals.

[Danny]

Really?

[Philippe]

Yes, yes, yes. If you. The first fossil hunters.

[Danny]

So this is about fossils?

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Of mythological animals.

[Philippe]

This is an amazing book. I loved it and I love Adrian Meyer. She describes the fossil hunters in Greek antiquity. People were considering such paleontological bones as bones from all the mythological animals. Yes. Not dragons, but something like it. Like Cyclops for example, or Syrans. Etc. It's really an amazing book.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

And Adrian Mayor is really a good one. Didn't you do, didn't you, didn't you.

[Danny]

Do some work on like some mythological theories like I did.

[Philippe]

You can type if you want Les monstre huma with my name. And I think, good luck, Steve. I can do it if you want. In French.

[Danny]

Yeah. There was. I remember one specifically that I read there was a myth about a woman who was pregnant for five years.

[Philippe]

Yes. And this is possible. You may be pregnant for more than this. It's called lithopedion. Lithopedion is when you are pregnant, then the baby dies inside the womb and stays it, but petrified. Then you can find it maybe 20, 30, 40 years later, but it's really petrified. It's a lithopedion.

[Danny]

I have failed.

[Philippe]

Okay, I'm back. I'm back.

[Danny]

Okay, okay, okay. It's all in French.

[Philippe]

Yes.

[Danny]

Is that like monstrous, humane?

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. This is. This was my medicine PhD. It was my medical PhD. And I was studying. I. I took one year making a kind of tour of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc. And I visited many archaeological excavations and I did a lot of bone analysis, and I saw that all the creatures from the Greek and Roman mythology did exist in teratological cases. Meaning that in what.

[Danny]

What was that word?

[Philippe]

Malformations. Human malformations. Teratology. Teratology.

[Danny]

Okay, got it.

[Philippe]

So, for example, sirens, Cyclops, also Sontaur, all the kind of animals or monsters that you can see in the Greek and Roman mythology. You can find them in skeletons. I saw some of these skeletons, and some of them were also described by scholars, by doctors, by philosophers in classical antiquity. For example, here on the COVID you've got an ex vote. It's a piece of stone where one asks to be healed, to be cured for a disease. So you've got the face of a young man, you've got two eyes, and you've got a foot which is not well formed because you just have three thumbs.

[Danny]

Three. Three toes.

[Philippe]

Toes. Toes. Yes, toes. Because you just have three toes. Okay? So this corresponds to a malformation process. Okay. And two, this corresponds to a medical syndrome where you've got disease at the level of the face because the eyes are absolutely. The individual is blind, he's a young man. But the hairs are absolutely white. And you've got malformation at the level of the foot. All of these corresponding to one syndrome, which is the syndrome of Shidiak Higashi. Don't not eat. But it's almost rare, but it exists. So this is a kind of rebus. Okay. And you have to read it like a patient presentation so we can work on. This is iconodiagnosis again, like the Fonarina of Rafaelo in the Same way. It's the same way. Shide Akigashi. Great. You type it right.

[Danny]

Look at that.

[Philippe]

Steve. Yes.

[Danny]

Great job. Auto correct and crave. So it's a. A rare inherited immune disorder characterized by oculocutaneous albinism, im immunodeficiency and a tendency to bruise and bleed easily. Autosom somal recessive condition. Meaning both parents must carry the gene for the child to be affected. Often diagnosed in childhood. There's no cure. Treatments can so. So children that were born with these physical abnormalities, people just thought they were like mythical monsters.

[Philippe]

Yes, exactly. And they ask the gods for a special healing of them. Because medical doctors were not able at this period to do it. And still now it's absolutely impossible to cure such a disease. So they were asking the gods to heal them. This is the kind of malformation that we can find find either on plastic figurations of human beings or in skeletons and sometimes mummies too.

[Danny]

What about like descriptions of. Of like giants or things like these?

[Philippe]

This is much more the case of the animals described by Adrian Mayor in her book Giants. Giants are much more paleontological case. But if you type, maybe you can type elephant skull. I will show you something on elephant skull.

[Danny]

Okay. Steve, you can figure that one out, right?

[Philippe]

Yes. Great. The fifth on the. This one. Perfect. Okay. When you look at this, this is an elephant skull.

[Danny]

Okay.

[Philippe]

When people from antiquity found something like this, what did they think? They think that this was a skull of cyclope. Because the hole.

[Danny]

You're right.

[Philippe]

Because the. The hole in the center which is normally for the trump. Is it the trunk? Trunk, yes. Sorry.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Philippe]

I made a mistake with. You know what?

[Danny]

That's fair.

[Philippe]

Sorry. The trunk. Yes. They thought it was the eye. The globe, the central eye of the cyclone. So this is really a misunderstanding between anatomy, animal anatomy and something like a fantasma fantasy of. Of mythological.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Philippe]

Individual.

[Danny]

Oh, that's fascinating. But no evidence of like giant human skeletons.

[Philippe]

No. This. No. This. No. This is much more paleontological cases described by the excellent Adrian Man. Yo.

[Danny]

Right, right, right. Wow, man. That's fascinating work. What else do you have? What else do you plan on doing in the near future? Anything, Anything exciting? Any. Any. Any fascinating historical individuals that you hope to excavate and examine?

[Philippe]

What we would like to study within the next few years are the mass graves of French kings during the French Revolution. All the graves of the French kings from the medieval ages to the end of the 18th century have been opened, desecrated by the revolutionists and put into mass Graves outside of the Basilic of St. Denis, which is the royal basilic. And 20 years later, almost all these skeletons were taken out of the mass grave and put into two crypts inside the basilica. We really would like to study all of these bones which are mixed one with the other and give them back to their grave. These are the bones of Louis xiv. These are the bones of Henry iv. These are the bones of Louis. I don't know which number. And this will really be very interesting. We are also studying on another thing, which are the. The cloth of Marie Antoinette, you know, Marie Antoinette, of course, yeah. And we are studying now on the corset of Marie Antoinette, on the shoes also of Marie Antoinette. And we are able, and we are trying to be the most accurate as possible. We are trying to recreate a double of the body of Marie Antoinette.

[Danny]

That's fine, that's fine.

[Philippe]

Because we are. The corset is really next to the body and we can see how thin. So we already have a three dimensional reconstruction of her trunk, a three dimensional reconstruction of her feet because of the shoes that are conserved of Marie Antoinette. So part of the body, after part of the body, we are reconstructing the whole body of Marie Antoinette. And the last thing that we are doing, maybe Steve, you can find it if you type Henry IV or Henry iv larynx. Larynx or mummified head. Maybe it's better. Mummified head.

[Danny]

Henry iv, mummified head.

[Philippe]

Exactly. Please. This is the great father of Louis xiv.

[Danny]

Oh my God.

[Philippe]

This is one of my best preserved patient.

[Danny]

Wow.

[Philippe]

This is the herd, the head, the mummified head of this king, the French king. He died assassinated by a man, Ravaya in 1610.

[Danny]

He was decapitated.

[Philippe]

He was decapitated during the French Revolution. The mummy of the king was decapitated during the revolution. Okay, so later, later, after his death, during the desecration of all the bodies and all the coffins during the French Revolution, the head is so well preserved that it's not just a head. You still have the vocal cords, you still have the trachea, the tongue, everything inside. So now we are recreating the voice of this king. And we can always. And we can already we are able to say A, E, O, U. Because at that period we did not say you, you say oo. And next step is making his speaking. Absolutely. So speaking as you, as me. And this is what we are working on normally in separate.

[Danny]

Would you use AI to do this?

[Philippe]

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. But we do. We have Recreated the whole larynx and the whole vocal tract of Henry iv. And we are using IA for putting some, some air inside of it artificially and making noise. This is what we are doing now.

[Danny]

That's bizarre.

[Philippe]

So give me six more months and you will be hearing the king speaking. So you see, remember our first sentence when we met? I told you that my work is to make the dead speaking. But very scientifically, this is exactly what.

[Danny]

We are doing, doing to bring them back.

[Philippe]

Bring them back. But also they have so many things to tell us. They tell us many things using skeletons, hairs, nails, etc, but also they can speak to us directly.

[Danny]

Imagine if they could speak their thoughts.

[Philippe]

This is dream. This is a dream. Unfortunately, this is a dream. Dream. Yes. No, no.

[Danny]

Well, Philippe, thank you so much for coming here and talking to me, man. This is. This has been totally, absolutely mindblowing some of the stuff that you're doing. Where can people do find out more of what you're working on or get in touch with you or find any of your work.

[Philippe]

You can type, you can follow me on Twitter if you want X on Instagram. Also I will give you everything.

[Danny]

I'll link. I'll link everything below as well.

[Philippe]

And we are creating a museum about all of this that will open normally in 2028 in an ancient castle next to Paris, just over Paris in Saint Cloud Royal Castle in 10,000 square meters. We will be presenting all the cases we spoke together and many others too. So we will be able to go there to see all the. These artifacts, the original one, of course. And there you will be able to hear the voice of Henry iv. And we will recreate also an anatomical on theater. You will have a restaurant one star at the Mishla. It's important. It's important. And no, it's. It will be a. A new museum. And if you are interested in joining us for, for this, then you can contact us.

[Danny]

I would love to.

[Philippe]

Pleasure.

[Danny]

Well, thank you again for making the trip down here. This has been. This has been totally mind blowing. I have to watch this podcast back like three times and I'll link all your stuff below and that's all. I appreciate your time.

[Philippe]

Thanks so much.

[Danny]

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[Philippe]

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[Danny]

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[Philippe]

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