Picture Credit: Indian pictographs from ~100 BCE at the Devil's Looking Glass, Mammoth Cave, KY. (thanks, OSU legend James St John for being the go-to on all things Eastern Woodlands pictorially).

Okay, so before someone comes with a sniveling “technically,” I’ll do it for you:

Technically (*sniff*), between roughly 1000 and 200 BCE, young men in what is now south-central Kentucky crawled into the absolute darkness of Mammoth Cave, scraped gypsum off the walls with mussel-shell tools, ate naturally occurring mineral salts that caused violent and thorough diarrhea, probably hallucinated in total sensory deprivation, scratched their hallucinations on the walls like you see above, (it's the black drawings, because apparently people think the proper response to seeing sacred art thousands of years old is to immediately desecrate it) and emerged carrying white powder that they ground into body paint for ceremonies that expressed a cosmological framework so coherent and so durable that it organized religious life across eastern North America for the next three thousand years.

There, are you fucking happy?

No?

Alright, fuck it, let’s get religious and talk about the North American indigenous cosmology that makes the Mayan look like a horoscope columnist threw their weed-addled ideas into Grok and sold it as their new suicide cult.

Let’s start with the basics. One day, around 800 BCE in what is now Kentucky, a young man, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty, is brought to the entrance of Mammoth Cave by older men who have made this journey before. He carries a bundle of cane torches and a mussel-shell scraper. He may already be dosed; more on that later. He descends. The daylight falls behind him and the passage narrows. The temperature drops to 54 degrees. His torch smokes against the ceiling. As the last daylight vanishes, he can feel the darkness against his skin, the damp wrapping around him as the light burns lower. He crawls through passages less than a meter high with his torch as his only, dying companion.

At some point in the deep interior, he eats mirabilite scraped from the cave wall. Within as little as thirty minutes, his digestive system evacuates completely. In total darkness. In a crawlway.

This is not dignified. It is not supposed to be. The body is being emptied, purged, and stripped of its contents in preparation for what comes next.

In the darkness, after hours of crawling and purging, after the exhaustion and the cold and the fear, he begins to see shapes. They first show as spirals. Then concentric arcs and circles. Grids. Zigzags. Dots. Imagery cascades across his visual field like the world’s worst Paleolithic screensaver. He scrabbles to a wall and begins to draw these patterns on the cave walls in charcoal. He scrapes gypsum from the walls with his mussel shell.

He emerges, carrying the gypsum out. The white mineral is ground into powder and applied to his body as paint. The white, Crothers argues, marks him as one who has been to the Lower World and returned. He is initiated. He now possesses knowledge that those who have not descended do not possess. The gypsum is, as archaeologist George Crothers described it, “a tangible object that signified the bearer was in possession of that knowledge” (Crothers 2012, 535).

This cosmological system ran for, at minimum, a thousand years, and maybe much, much longer. It operated across hundreds of sites, from the caves of Kentucky to the mounds of Ohio to the rock shelters of Tennessee. It produced engraved stone tablets that appear to have worked as printing plates, their designs pressed into leather in what amounts to intaglio printing roughly two millennia before Gutenberg (Penney 1980, 17-20). It produced a soul ontology so detailed that dot-within-circle motifs on carved figures marked the specific anatomical locations where multiple souls were believed to reside (Carr and Smyth 2019, 174-175). It was the underpinning religious framework of a region the size of Western Europe.

And it all starts with shitting yourself.

The Part Where the Universe Has Three Floors, No Elevator, and 426 Miles of “Nope”

The Eastern Woodlands is the part of North America that was covered in trees before Europeans showed up and started having feelings about them (the sort of feelings that included “wow! Such wilderness!” while ignoring all the domesticated plants, and “dibs” while ignoring the frowning indigenous man and his nine dead relatives). From the Great Lakes to the Gulf was roughly a million square miles of forest so dense that the old joke about a squirrel crossing from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without touching the ground is an exaggeration, but a useful one. Within these vast forests were dozens of language families, hundreds of distinct nations, and thousands of years of cultural development.

And yet, across all of that diversity, a single cosmological framework persisted.

It probably wasn’t aliens. Probably.

Charles Hudson, the anthropologist whose 1976 The Southeastern Indians remains the foundational ethnographic synthesis of the region, described the three-tiered cosmos as the organizing principle of Southeastern life, a structure archaeologists keep finding underneath the region’s art, burials, and landscapes (Simek et al. 2013, 443). The universe had three layers, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, stacked on top of each other in a cosmological sandwich, except the sandwich is a floating island suspended by cords from a stone sky vault over a primordial sea (Mooney 1900, 239), so maybe don’t push the sandwich thing too hard.

The Upper World (Galunlati, in Cherokee; the terminology varies by nation but the structure we’re about to describe does not for most of the Eastern Woodlands prehistory) was the realm of order, permanence, and cosmic regularity. The sun and moon lived there. The stars ran through it like celestial infrastructure, and the dead traveled a road across that sky: in Osage star lore, the dead rest at Sirius, the Dog Star, before their translation into the afterlife in the nearby Milky Way (Brown and Kelly 2020, 205). The Thunderbirds lived there, enormous raptorial beings whose wingbeats were literal thunder and whose eyes flashed literal lightning, like an indigenous Zapdos; across the Eastern Woodlands ethnographic record, thunderbirds and falcons belong to the Upper World the way giant serpents belong to the Lower (Romain 2009, 35). The Upper World was associated with the color red, which meant life, power, and triumph. In Cherokee shamanistic tradition, the Red Man, living in the East, was the spirit of power, triumph, and success (Mooney 1891, 342-343).  Red was the color of the East. Red was the color of life.

The Lower World (the Beneath World, the Under World) was the Upper World’s mirror opposite. It was the realm of chaos, transformation, danger, fertility, death, and renewal. It was also damp as fuck. In Cherokee cosmology, for example, the earth itself was a flat island floating on a surrounding primordial sea, and the Lower World was down there, beneath the water and earth, accessible through caves, springs, deep pools, and whirlpools (Mooney 1900, 239-240). The great horned serpent, the Uktena, lurked down there, in the deep pools and lonely passes. It was a great snake, “as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright, blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead, and scales glittering like sparks of fire,” plus an attitude problem that made it the single most dangerous entity in the indigenous cosmos (Mooney 1900, 297-298). It would fuck Cerberus up and make Anubis his bitch in the most Dragonball way. The Lower World was associated with the color black, which meant death and the dissolution of form (Mooney 1891, 342-343; Simek et al. 2013, 443). Black is the color of the underground. Black is the color of death.

This World, the middle layer, was where you and I are sitting right now, metaphysically speaking. It was the realm of the ordinary, of human life, of plants and animals and daily activity, of things you can see and touch and eat. This World was the domain of balance, the tense, negotiated middle ground between the cosmic order above and the cosmic chaos below. As Simek and his colleagues described it, humanity and the natural world of observable plants and animals occupied a middle world with an essentially profane character, although supernatural forces and powers permeated it (Simek et al. 2013, 443).

Importantly, the three worlds were not sealed off from each other. They were permeable. There was no barrier between the world around you and you. Your skin meant nothing in this conception of “self.” Neither did physical reality. Boundaries could be crossed. Birds could fly between This World and the Upper World. Fish could swim between This World and the Lower World. Certain creatures, like the great horned serpent and the Thunderbird, could move between all three (Simek et al. 2013, 443). And certain humans, the ones who had been trained, initiated, and transformed, could cross the boundaries too, and may have been compelled by their faith to do it (Simek et al. 2013, 444). That crossing was the entire point of the ritual system. (How humans crossed is its own future anecdote.)

The axis mundi, the cosmic axis, connected all three layers. A column of smoke is one of the classic forms the axis takes in shamanic cosmologies, alongside the world tree and the ladder (Romain 2009, 20): the sacred fire consumed material from below while its smoke rose from This World toward the Upper. And the crossing itself got carved. On the Berlin Tablet, an Adena engraved stone from Jackson County, Ohio, a raptorial bird wears a masked human face inside its eye, a human being mid-transformation into a bird, its joints and body openings marked with the dot-within-circle motifs where the souls sit (Carr and Smyth 2019, 174).

As someone who studies social history and in particular the sociological underpinnings of religion in society, I have to back the fuck up and make clear: this doesn’t look like your grandpappy’s religion. This isn’t a causal belief system, like “believe in Jesus and you’ll be saved.” This was not “mythology” in the way that word is popularly misused to mean “cute stories that primitive people made up so we can turn them into harem doujinshi.” This was a working model of reality so internally consistent that it governed your entire architecture, burial, art, exchange, medicine, agriculture, and navigation for cultures spanning half a continent across three millennia. It was a working cosmology on the level of the Aztecs, the Egyptians, and the Greek, just minus the gods and with a lot more drugs.c

That’s not a dig, by the way. I cannot stress how almost no person reading this Reddit thread can conceptualize what religion felt and looked like to the human species without going and reading something like Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, which is a 900-page tome on the history and philosophy of religion in Western Christendom (I promise, it gets good after 150 pages!). Even historians of religious history don’t quite understand the underpinnings of why rooting out and killing a witch in a village in eastern Germany was literally the life or death of the village itself unless they’ve been reading some Carlo Ginzburg or dabbling in folk religions. Religion was the operating system of not just individuals or groups, but everything in life. It was your fucking reality. It was as unquestionable as your physical reality is now. You didn’t notice it most of the time, but without it, nothing worked.

If this all seems confusing, that’s okay. It hurts historians’ brains, too. Only the sociologists aren’t perturbed, because they’re fucking sociologists and they’ll fucking let you know it.

Now. Where does one access the Lower World?

I’ll give you one guess.

….

Caves. You access the Lower World through fucking caves.

Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system on Earth. That is not an exaggeration. As of this writing, more than 426 miles of surveyed passageway have been mapped beneath the karst plateau of south-central Kentucky, and the number keeps growing because cavers are crazy dumbasses who never watched the Descent (or did watch it and said “fuck it, we ball”) and keep finding more of it. The cave system formed over millions of years as slightly acidic groundwater dissolved the St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, and Girkin limestones that are Mississippian-age formations roughly 330 million years old, carving out a labyrinth of horizontal passages, vertical shafts, crawlways, domes, and pits beneath what looks, from the surface, like perfectly ordinary Kentucky farm country. The Green River runs through the middle of it, and cattle graze above. You would never know, standing in a pasture in Edmonson County, that beneath your feet is a three-dimensional underworld that has been explored by humans for at least four thousand years (Crothers 2012, 529).

Prehistoric peoples discovered over nineteen miles of passageway within what is now Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky Archaeological Survey). They did this without maps, without compasses, without GPS, without hard hats, without headlamps, and without any of the gear that modern cavers consider the minimum threshold for not dying underground or being dragged into the darkness by whatever nightmare creatures exist down there (guys, for real, why do we keep trying to make Ebola happen?! That's not a joke! Seriously, stop it!). What they had to combat the Night Creatures were bundles of river cane (Arundinaria gigantea), a native bamboo that grows along waterways throughout the Southeast, dried and tied into torch bundles (Crothers 2012, 525-526). Cane burns bright and burns out fast, so they carried spares by the armload and lit each new torch from the embers of the last. When the last torch burned out, the darkness was absolute. Not dim. Not dark. Absolute. If you’ve ever done this in a cave yourself, you know immediately what I mean (ah, there’s that traumatic childhood memory about Carlsbad Caverns lurking in the back of my head!). If you haven’t, this is the kind of darkness where you cannot see your hand touching your face, where the concept of “seeing” ceases to have meaning, where the only sensory input left is the sound of dripping water and your own breathing echoing off limestone walls you can feel but cannot see.

They also carried mussel-shell scrapers, digging sticks, woven slippers made from rattlesnake master plant fibers (a lovely regional craft that looks exactly as cool as it sounds), gourd containers, and, occasionally, wooden climbing poles for navigating vertical drops (Watson 1974, 31, 38; Kentucky Archaeological Survey). The temperature in the deep cave holds steady near 54 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. It would be cold enough to chill a sweating body and warm enough that you won’t freeze to death, which is a low bar for comfort but an important one when you’re four miles from daylight.

The passages they entered range from cathedral-scale domes and corridors to crawlways less than a meter high, where the only way forward is on your belly, torch held to the side because holding it in front of you means burning your own face, which is generally considered a poor start to a religious experience. Imagine the ceiling presses against your back as the floor presses against your chest. The limestone is rough, damp, and unyielding. You move by pulling with your elbows and pushing with your toes, inch by inch.

You are now in more than a cave. You are in the dark zone. You are in the Lower World. This is where the initiation happened.

The Part Where 3,000-Year-Old Feces Settle a Theological Debate Because Some Dudes Ate The Cave Walls

Enter George Crothers, an archaeologist at the University of Kentucky, who published a paper in American Antiquity in 2012 titled “Early Woodland Ritual Use of Caves in Eastern North America” that changed how archaeologists understand prehistoric cave activity in the Eastern Woodlands. The old interpretation, going back to Patty Jo Watson’s pioneering work at Mammoth Cave and Salts Cave in the 1960s and 1970s, was that the cave mining was essentially economic. People went into caves to get useful minerals like gypsum for pigment, mirabilite for medicine or food preservation, or maybe some trade goods (Watson 1974, 20). It was a rational, utilitarian explanation, like most archaeological theories. Also, like most archaeological theories, it was wrong. Most scientific theories are not wrong about the facts. They are wrong about the framework. The problem is said frameworks tend to last about 40 years, which, coincidentally, is the length of an anthropologist’s academic career. Shocker, that.

Crothers marshaled evidence from multiple lines of analysis, but let’s talk shit about the shit.

In the deep passages of Mammoth Cave, prehistoric visitors left behind desiccated human feces, (yup, that’s a pic of fossilized shit). These paleofecal deposits were preserved by the cave’s stable, dry environment for roughly two to three thousand years. This is not a normal find, by the way. Finding ancient human shit in a cave is, in archaeological terms, roughly equivalent to finding a glove that fits at a crime scene (okay, bad comparison). The cave’s environment preserved not only the feces themselves but their chemical signatures.

Twelve paleofecal samples, six from Mammoth Cave and six from Salts Cave, were recovered from the deep passages and analyzed for steroid hormones. Specifically, they were tested for the ratio of testosterone to estradiol, the primary androgen and estrogen, respectively, which differ systematically between biological males and females. All twelve samples showed testosterone-to-estradiol ratios within the expected range for males (Crothers 2012, 529). All twelve. Every single one. Zero samples showed female-range hormone ratios. The best evidence anyone has for who was doing this is, quite literally, the steroid chemistry of ancient shit.

The mining was exclusively male. Whatever was happening in the dark zone of Mammoth Cave was happening only to men and boys (Crothers 2012, 529).

What is clear is that this wasn’t a mining crew. Earlier, pre-mining exploration parties in the region’s caves included both men and women; the prehistoric footprints preserved in Jaguar Cave, Tennessee, record mixed parties (Watson et al. 2005, 38, cited in Crothers 2012, 536), a distinctly different pattern from the exclusively male Early Woodland mining activity. This was an all-male activity occurring in a specific cosmological space (the Lower World, accessed through caves) using specific tools (cane torches, mussel-shell scrapers) to extract a specific material (white gypsum) across a specific and extraordinarily long time span (roughly a thousand years, from about 1200 to 200 BCE; Crothers 2012, 529). The pattern and temporal period is consistent with the introduction of initiation rites in Eastern Woodlands cosmology overall. These were young men sent into the underworld to retrieve sacred material, with their ordeal constituting the transformative experience that made them adults, practitioners, or ritual specialists (Crothers 2012, 524-541).

Now, before you doubt me, remember, the shit? The minerals they were after included gypsum, a soft white calcium sulfate that can be scraped from cave walls with mussel shells and ground into a brilliant white body paint. But the cave walls also contained mirabilite, which is the naturally occurring mineral form of sodium sulfate decahydrate, which pharmacists know as Glauber’s salt, and which your body knows as a laxative of such terrifying efficiency that it can clear your entire digestive system in as little as thirty minutes (Crothers 2012, 532).

So Patty Jo Watson, the Washington University archaeologist who basically invented American cave archaeology as a rigorous discipline, confirmed this by doing the most hardcore thing a scientist can do: she recruited volunteers to eat the cave minerals and then recorded what happened next.

Oh, I’m sorry, I meant cowardly. The most cowardly thing an archaeologist can do. Sorry Patty, you aren’t Daniel fucking Fisher. At least he ate the damn horse to prove his theory right.

The mirabilite performed exactly as expected on the unfortunate volunteers. Which is to say, rapid, complete, catastrophic bowel evacuation. Watson’s experiment is one of a tiny handful of cases in North American archaeology where the evidence for an ancient sacred practice was established by getting modern people to replicate the ancient pharmacological experience and then taking notes (Watson 1969, 58, as reported in Crothers 2012, 532). But peer review must have been a hell of a read.

Now, why the fuck would you eat something that does that? If you’re in a cave for economic purposes, if you’re just there to get gypsum for paint, you don’t eat the mirabilite. Literally, last fucking thing you'd do if you're there for trade goods or materials. You don’t find dwarves chewing on the goddamn mithril and chugging MiraLax while they work. They'd never be able to mine with that much effort going into emptying their innards out. You scrape the gypsum off the wall, you put it in your gourd, and you fucking skedaddle before Uktena gets you. The mirabilite ingestion only makes sense in a ritual context: as a purgative, a preparation, a chemical stripping of the body in preparation for transformation. Purgation before initiation is a pattern found in ritual systems across the world, from indigenous vision questing to Goop: you empty yourself before you can be filled with sacred knowledge (Crothers 2012, 530-531).

So the mirabilite, and getting the shits, was not a side effect of mining, but the reason they were mining gypsum in the first place.

And then there was the sweet flag. That’s not new Gen Alpha slang, that’s the plant’s name. Acorus americanus, a wetland plant that grows along river margins throughout eastern North America, produces a rhizome with potential stimulant and hallucinogenic properties at higher doses, widely used medicinally by historic Eastern Woodlands peoples. Crothers identifies it as a possible consciousness-altering agent in the cave context. There is no direct evidence they ate the rhizome down in the dark, but sweet flag pollen turns up in the paleofeces, which means they were eating or brewing the plant, and its effects, as Crothers puts it, “presumably were known” (Crothers 2012, 534-535). Combined with the sensory deprivation of total cave darkness, the physical exhaustion of hours of crawling, the cold, the smoke, the purgative effects of mirabilite, and the neurological effects of prolonged darkness itself, the conditions in the deep cave were a pharmaceutical toolkit for altered states of consciousness.

If you’re curious about the neuroscience of what happens when you sit in total darkness for an extended period, I highly encourage you to not do that yourself. Your visual cortex, deprived of external input, starts generating its own inputs. They are geometric patterns called entoptic phenomena, produced by the structure of the nervous system itself rather than by any external stimulus. These patterns include grids, zigzags, dots, spirals, curved and parallel lines, and concentric arcs and circles. They are universal across human populations because they originate in the neural architecture of the visual system, not in cultural conditioning (Crothers 2012, 533). Anyone who has pressed their palms against their closed eyes and seen swirling colors has experienced a mild version. In total darkness, after hours of crawling, chemical purgation, possible hallucinogenic ingestion, extreme physical stress, and complete sensory isolation, bitch, you’ll be trippin’ balls.

Oh, and if you need more evidence, drawings on the walls of Mammoth Cave and other Eastern Woodlands cave sites reproduce these geometric forms, rendered as both petroglyphs and charcoal pictographs (Crothers 2012, 532-534). They come out as grids, zigzags, curved and parallel lines, dots, spirals, and concentric arcs. Check that link above for the paper that has good renditions of the most famous cave art from Mammoth Cave in higher contrast to see everything from shadowy figures to scratched hatchwork. Their art literally matches the neuroscience of a hallucinogenic experience. The cave walls were being decorated with images that the people in the caves were literally seeing, not images of the external world, but images generated by their own nervous systems in response to the cave’s darkness. They were painting their visions on the walls of the Lower World.

This is one of the most sophisticated ritual-pharmacological-experiential systems documented anywhere in the pre-modern world, and it was happening in Kentucky centuries before Rome was even a village. All because of the shits.

And if that’s not already cool enough (or you’re still unconvinced), on June 7, 1935, cave guides Lyman Cutliff and Grover Campbell, leading a crew that included Civilian Conservation Corps workers, were exploring a passage in Mammoth Cave when they found a man who had been dead for more than two thousand years. He was lying on a high ledge about twenty feet above the passage floor and roughly two miles from the Historic Entrance, in a section of cave that would require hours of travel from daylight. A six-ton boulder had collapsed on him while he was scraping gypsum from its underside (Meloy 1977; Watson 1974, 138-139; Crothers 2012, 529). The rock that killed him weighed more than a pickup truck. It pinned him in place, and the cave’s stable, dry environment, combined with naturally occurring mineral salts in the cave sediments, preserved his body in a state of natural mummification so complete that his gut contents outlasted him by two millennia. The diet recorded in the caves’ paleofeces ran to hickory nutshell plus the seed crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex: sunflower, goosefoot, marshelder, a little squash (Crothers 2012, 528), and the Salts Cave plant-remains work shows the same seed-heavy pattern (Watson 1974, 113–122. I’ve already gone in depth about the EAC if you want another hour lost reading about the evils of corn). He was roughly forty-five years old and about five feet three inches tall (Watson 1974, 139). He carried a polished mussel shell (his scraping tool), a woven bag (for the gypsum), and wore a twined loincloth, still wrapped around his body when they lifted the rock (Watson 1974, 31). A hotel clerk named Arthur Doyle gave him the name “Lost John,” because apparently the impulse to give dead strangers flippant nicknames is embedded in humanity.

Lost John spent the next four decades in a display case on the tour route near the Giant’s Coffin, a short walk inside the Historic Entrance, with visitors filing past his two-thousand-year-old corpse (Watson 1974, 140). It wasn’t until 1976 that his remains were removed from public display and reburied in a secret location near the original discovery site. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) had not yet been passed when he was reinterred, but the ethical argument had already become impossible to ignore. This man died doing something sacred, in a place that was sacred, and displaying his body as a tourist attraction was, to put it mildly, not fucking great.

If you don’t agree with me, I’ll remember that if you die at your computer. That way, I can display your corpse in its most sacred pose as a future tourist attraction: bent over, shitposting on the internet.

The Part Where the Dress Code for the Afterlife Is Surprisingly Specific

And before we go, let’s talk about color, because in the Eastern Woodlands, color was more than decorative. Color was theology.

At Adena burial sites across the Ohio River Valley, spanning from roughly 1000 to 200 BCE, the dead were covered in red ochre, which is ground hematite (iron oxide) mixed into a paste or powder and applied to the body, the burial floor, or both. Dragoo’s inventory of Adena burial traits reads like a paint catalog: ocher sprinkled over the burial and the ground around it, ocher set in small piles in the grave, ocher coating the artifacts laid beside the body (Dragoo 1963, 209–210). The paint was prepared on stone tablets, and the dead were probably not the only ones wearing it; the participants likely painted themselves too (Dragoo 1963, 210). Red ochre in mortuary contexts is one of the oldest and most widespread human ritual practices on the planet; red ochre use dates back a hundred thousand years in Africa, and ochre-stained burials nearly as old appear in the Near East and tens of thousands of years deep in Europe and Asia.

But in the Adena world, red ochre was one half of a two-color vocabulary. Red in mortuary contexts carried layered meanings: the red of ochre is the red of blood, of life-force, of the power needed for the passage from This World to the next. White meant initiation. White meant the passage from uninitiated to initiated, from ignorant to knowing, from outside the cosmological system to inside it. The white of gypsum is the white of cave walls, of the mineral deposits scraped from the body of the Lower World, of the material that young men carried back from the underworld as proof of their descent. White gypsum, ground into paint or a glittering powder, is Crothers’s candidate for the body decoration of the rites that happened back on the surface, the ceremonies where initiated men wore the proof of their descent (Crothers 2012, 535).

So, red for the dead. White for the reborn, the “light.” Two pigments, two transformations, one cosmological system operating across hundreds of communities, thousands of square miles, and roughly a millennium. Either the pigment vocabulary was independently invented at every single site, which would be a coincidence of truly improbable precision, or it was taught. Anthropologists and archaeologists like Crothers have concluded it was part of a system. A curriculum. A theology.

This symbolism runs into the present-day. Cherokee color symbolism, recorded ethnographically in the late nineteenth century by James Mooney, preserved the four-directional color system: east/red for success and triumph, south/white for peace and happiness, west/black for death, and north/blue for defeat and trouble (Mooney 1891, 342-343). The Adena system’s two-color mortuary vocabulary fits comfortably within this broader framework, with red and white marking the two transitions (death and initiation) that the cosmological system considered most important.

If you don’t believe me, the most rigorous demonstration that indigenous peoples mapped their cosmological framework onto the physical landscape with color comes from Jan Simek of the University of Tennessee and Alan Cressler, working across the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Their 2013 study in Antiquity, titled “Sacred Landscapes of the South-Eastern USA,” analyzed ninety-four art sites: forty-four open-air sites and fifty cave art sites in dark zones where no natural illumination reached (Simek et al. 2013, 432).

“The cosmological divisions of the universe were mapped onto the physical landscape,” with the relief of the plateau itself as “a topographic canvas” (Simek et al. 2013, 443).

The Cumberland Plateau, with its cliff-banded escarpments, sheltered overhangs, and deep cave systems, provided a natural three-dimensional architecture that indigenous peoples recognized and used. Open-air art sites sat up on the bluffs and cliff faces: Upper World. Cave art sites sat below them, in the dark: Lower World. The lived landscape between was This World, and the art stacked above and below it was matched to its tier in both content and color (Simek et al. 2013, 443).

The findings were a slam dunk as evidence of this cosmological framework. Art at the highest elevations, on exposed cliff faces and bluff tops touched by the sun and stars, depicted Upper World imagery like celestial bodies and weather forces personified as mythic characters with influence on the human situation. These images were predominantly rendered in red pigment (Simek et al. 2013, 443). Art at the lowest elevations, in the deepest, darkest cave chambers, depicted Lower World imagery, such as supernatural serpents, dogs that accompanied dead humans on the path of souls, the beings associated with death, darkness, and transformation. These images were predominantly rendered in black pigment. The one crack in the model, which the authors flag themselves, is bird images showing up inside caves, where they have no business being (Simek et al. 2013, 443).

The oldest dated cave art in the study, a charcoal pictograph, is nearly six thousand years old, though most of the art falls between roughly 900 and 1600 CE (Simek et al. 2013, 432). That is a tradition with roots older than the Abrahamic religions.

That’s faith, baby. That’s thousand of years of the most coherent metaphysical framework in pre-Columbian North America. Like an onion, the Eastern North American indigenous universe has layers.

You just have to shit your brains out first to figure it out.

Works Cited (for those who want to recreate that scene from Dumb and Dumber)

Brown, James A., and John E. Kelly. “The Allure of Cahokia as a Sacred Place in the Eleventh Century.” In Stephen B. Carmody and Casey R. Barrier, eds., Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief: Materials of Ritual and Religion in Eastern North America. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020.

Carr, Christopher, and D. Troy Case, eds. Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2005.

Carr, Christopher, and Heather Smyth. “Soul Concepts of Scioto Hopewell Communities: The Ontological Foundation of Their Tripartite Ceremonial Alliance.” In Brian G. Redmond, Bret J. Ruby, and Jarrod Burks, eds., Encountering Hopewell in the Twenty-first Century, Ohio and Beyond, vol. 1, 154-194. Akron: University of Akron Press, 2019.

Crothers, George. “Early Woodland Ritual Use of Caves in Eastern North America.” American Antiquity 77, no. 3 (2012): 524-541.

Dragoo, Don. Mounds for the Dead: An Analysis of the Adena Culture. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum, 1963.

Hudson, Charles. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.

Kentucky Archaeological Survey. “Mammoth Cave.” Discover Kentucky Archaeology. https://archaeology.ky.gov/Find-a-Site/Pages/Mammoth-Cave.aspx.

Meloy, Harold. Mummies of Mammoth Cave. Shelbyville, IN: Micron Publishing, 1977 [originally copyrighted 1968].

Mooney, James. “The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees.” Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885-86. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1891.

Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897-98, Part 1. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900.

Penney, David. “The Adena Engraved Tablets: A Study of Art Prehistory.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 5, no. 1 (1980): 3-38.

Romain, William F. Shamans of the Lost World: A Cognitive Approach to the Prehistoric Religion of the Ohio Hopewell. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2009.

Simek, Jan F., Alan Cressler, Nicholas P. Herrmann, and Sarah C. Sherwood. “Sacred Landscapes of the South-Eastern USA: Prehistoric Rock and Cave Art in Tennessee.” Antiquity 87, no. 336 (2013): 430-446.

Smith, Bruce D. Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Spurlock, John, Olaf Prufer, and Stuart Pigott. Caves and Culture: 10,000 Years of Ohio History. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006.

Taxman, Hershel. “Nonmetric Trait Variation in the Adena Peoples.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 19, no. 1 (1994): 74-96.

Waldron, John, and Elliot Abrams. “Adena Burial Mounds and Inter-Hamlet Visibility: A GIS Approach.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 24, no. 1 (1999): 97-111.

Watson, Patty Jo. The Prehistory of Salts Cave, Kentucky. Reports of Investigations No. 16. Springfield: Illinois State Museum, 1969.

Watson, Patty Jo, ed. Archeology of the Mammoth Cave Area. New York: Academic Press, 1974.

Watson, Patty Jo, Mary Kennedy, Patrick Willey, Louise Robbins, and Ronald Wilson. “Prehistoric Footprints in Jaguar Cave, Tennessee.” Journal of Field Archaeology 30 (2005): 25-43.

Webb, William S., and Charles E. Snow. The Adena People. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1974.

Lesya Ukrainka… (Her real name was Larysa Petrivna Kvitka-Kosach). She was the daughter of Olena Pchilka-one of the pioneers of Ukrainian feminism, an incredibly powerful woman who deserves a whole post of her own. I absolutely adore Lesya! I collect her books, poetry collections, letters, and diaries. I even have a small figurine of her.

Lesya spoke more than 10 languages, including ancient languages like Ancient Greek and Latin, and translated world classics into Ukrainian. She traveled extensively across the globe, living and visiting places like Egypt, Georgia, Italy, Germany, and Austria, drawing inspiration from different cultures while also seeking treatment for her health. For 30 years, she fought tuberculosis of the bones, joints, and lungs, undergoing numerous surgeries while living in constant physical pain. Yet, she despised the image of a victim. Her most famous line is: “To keep from crying, I laughed.” At just 19 years old, she wrote a textbook called "The Ancient History of Eastern Peoples" for her younger sisters. Coming from an old, wealthy noble family, she used her own family's funds to organize an expedition to the Poltava region to record the songs of traditional kobzars (blind folk bards) on a phonograph. Thanks to her, ancient Ukrainian epic poems (dumy) were saved from oblivion.

Lesya and her circle constantly bypassed the strict Ems Ukaz of 1876 (which banned the Ukrainian language in print, theater, and education) by publishing books abroad, using pseudonyms, changing spelling systems, and disguising their writings. She chose this name in honor of her beloved uncle, Mykhailo Drahomanov (a famous scholar and publicist). She was his biggest fan! But the pseudonym also served as a shield, hiding her real name from the Czarist secret police to protect her noble family from repressions. The drama-fantasy "The Forest Song" (Lisova Pisnia). Lesya wrote it in just 10-12 days during a severe, painful flare-up of her illness. She wrote her best dramas lying in bed with a high fever, when her joints ached so badly she could barely hold a pen. "The only man in Ukrainian literature" - This is how writer Ivan Franko ironically described her, admiring her incredible strength of spirit that surpassed most male writers of her time. Her characters are not sufferers-they are titans, rebels, and prophets who stand up against the system even when they know they might lose.

My amateur translation:

As a child, if I happened to fall

And hurt myself along the way,

Though the pain reached deep into my heart,

I would quietly rise again.

"Does it hurt?" they used to ask,

But I never would admit it.

I was a proud little girl-

Rather than cry, I laughed.

But now, when every tragedy

Ends as someone's cruel joke,

And a sharp, malicious epigram

Is about to strike-

I fear the merciless weapon of laughter.

Forgetting all my childish pride,

I choose to cry,

Rather than laugh.

HISTORY DAD: Before Starbucks, There Were Veggie Wars!

On August 17, 1907, about eight farmers rolled their wagons into Seattle and accidentally created history! They set up at Pike Place to sell their produce directly to customers because farmers were tired of middlemen taking a big cut while consumers paid high prices.

And Seattle showed up—BIG TIME. Farmers sold out so quickly that one farmer joked he needed police protection or a wagon on stilts! By the end of the first week, dozens of farmers were joining in, and Pike Place Market was officially on its way to becoming a Seattle institution.

Now here's the part coffee lovers might recognize. In 1971, Starbucks opened its original store at Pike Place Market. And years later, Starbucks introduced Pike Place Roast, a coffee blend named for the famous market. So that morning in 1907 when farmers were selling vegetables from wagons eventually helped create the setting for one of America's most recognizable coffee stories!

That's why I love doing History Dad—because history isn't just presidents, wars, and dates. It's farmers, hungry crowds, entrepreneurs, coffee, and sometimes a guy wondering if he needs to put his vegetable wagon on stilts.

Watch today's History Dad video to hear the full story of how eight farmers helped launch one of America's most famous markets!

https://youtu.be/OH0QzdvTRKE

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been completely immersed in a personal project exploring all five stories from Geumo Sinhwa, Korea’s very first classical novel collection written back in the 15th century. But the deeper I dug into the manuscripts, the more I found myself aching for the author behind them: a man named Kim Si-seup.

To understand his stories, you have to understand the tragedy of his life. When he was just five years old, King Sejong the Great personally summoned him to the royal palace after hearing rumors of this incredible child prodigy. The king was so moved by his literary genius that he gifted him rolls of royal silk and promised that once he grew up, he would be appointed to lead the nation. Everyone in Joseon believed this boy was destined to become one of the greatest prime ministers in history.

Then, when he turned twenty-one, the world shattered.

His king's uncle, Prince Suyang, orchestrated the bloody Coup of Gyeyu (계유정난), violently purging loyal court officials and dethroning his young nephew, King Danjong. For Kim Si-seup, who was raised on strict principles of loyalty and righteousness, watching pure power and treachery crush moral duty overnight was too much to bear. He locked himself in his study, cried inconsolably for three straight days, and made a radical choice: he carried every single book he owned out into the yard, set them on fire, shaved his head, and walked away from society to live as a wandering monk.

That lifelong sorrow and disillusionment pours directly into the final story of his collection, Yonggung Buyeonrok (A Banquet at the Dragon Palace).

The tale introduces Han, an impoverished, upright scholar living in a secluded room. Despite his brilliant intellect, he refuses to play along with the corrupt politics of the capital, leaving him completely forgotten by the world. Late one evening, strange emissaries in azure robes and tortoiseshell helmets knock on his door and carry his palanquin deep into the ocean, parting the waves without spilling a single drop of water on his clothes.

There, beneath the sea, lies the radiant crystal palace of the Dragon King.

The ruler of the ocean himself rushes down the palace steps, takes the mortal scholar's trembling hands into his own, and politely begs him for a favor: he has just built a magnificent new pavilion, but no immortal or sea spirit possesses the literary grace to write its inaugural beam inscription. Only Han's brush can complete the grandeur of his palace.

Sitting before the king, Han unleashes years of pent-up sorrow and intellect onto paper, creating a masterpiece. Overjoyed, the Dragon King throws a massive banquet where spirits of old turtles and river crabs share wine and compose witty, philosophical poems alongside the mortal scholar.

Yet, sitting in the middle of this glowing underwater festival, a sudden wave of bitter grief hits Han: In the human world where he was born, no one had any use for his talent or integrity. Yet down here, in the dark abyss of the sea, fish, turtles, and mythical spirits were honoring him like royalty.

Noticing the shadow across his guest’s face, the Dragon King presents him with treasures of celestial silk and night-shining pearls, offering words that feel timeless:

>"The world above may blind itself to true virtue, but the heavens and the deep sea never fail to recognize it."

When Han opens his eyes, he finds himself lying quietly in his run-down study at dawn. But resting inside his coat are the glowing pearls and exquisite silks—proof that his night underwater was never a mere hallucination. Having finally had his soul validated, he leaves behind all lingering thoughts of worldly fame, packs his few belongings, and disappears into the mountains to live in quiet peace for the rest of his days.

Reading this narrative five centuries later, it becomes painfully clear that the Dragon King’s comforting words were really Kim Si-seup whispering to his own broken heart. It is devastating to think of a brilliant thinker who had so much wisdom to offer his country, yet had to look all the way to the bottom of the ocean just to find a world that treated him with dignity.

If you'd like to explore the full historical analysis and historical context behind Kim Si-seup's world, I wrote a comprehensive deep-dive on my blog:

👉Read the Full Essay on Seungjeongwon History

I translated this article from Arabic into English, and I apologize if there is any mistake in the Mexican names.

I hope you like this post. My regards from Egypt ..

---------------------------

Source: The Egyptian magazine Al-Muqtataf المقتطف, issue (6), published on June 1, 1948.

Author of the article: Muhammad Gamil Bayham محمد جميل بيهم (1887–1978 AD), historian, politician, writer, and Lebanese Arab reformist. He has dozens of works, articles, and writings of a historical, intellectual, and political nature.

---------------------------

Did the Pharaohs, the Babylonians, and the Indians take their civilization from Mexico?

Similarities between Mexico and Egypt

I had the opportunity to visit Mexico three months before the last war. A friend invited me to dinner at one of the large restaurants in Mexico City, and the attire of the women working in the establishment powerfully caught my attention, as it reminded me of what I had seen so many times at the Cairo Museum: the Pharaonic mummies. For it did not differ at all, neither in details, colors, nor motifs, from the clothing of women in the time of the Pharaohs, from the headdress to the footwear.

"Why did the restaurant owner choose for his employees the garments of the daughters of the Nile from the Pharaonic era?" I asked this question to my companion, and he smiled and told me: "This attire is nothing more than the traditional costume of Mexican women in antiquity."

This answer awakened my interest and my desire to know the historical relationship between Egypt and Mexico, and my curiosity increased even more when, in the Valley of Teotihuacán, about fifty kilometers from the capital, as well as in Cholula, Micalco, and Chonula, I saw pyramids similar to those of Egypt, erected on a geometric base forming angles that point to the seasons of the year, just like the Great Pyramid of Giza. I also asked myself whether Egyptian culture had reached the American continent, bringing with it the design of the pyramids.

I went further in my reflections and questioned whether the belief in the immortality of the soul, along with the art of mummification that accompanied it, had also traveled from Egypt to Mexico within the same pyramid project, given the connection between both practices, and even more so because the method of mummification was identical between the Pharaohs and the inhabitants of South America, not differing even in the tiniest details.

This interest in the past awakened in me a spirit of curiosity and the need to observe the neighborhoods (everyday life) to see if the resemblance between Egypt and Mexico could still be perceived in the present era.

However, one might expect the resemblance between the two countries to be remote, because Mexico is situated upon mountains and deep valleys, and its people reflect the hardness of the rocks and the fierceness of the eagles; while Egypt stretches along the fertile and lush Nile Valley, its inhabitants reflecting the smoothness of the rivers and the sweetness of the warbling of birds.

But, even so, I have observed numerous similarities to this day between Egyptians and Mexicans, especially in rural areas. How alike they are in the choice of colors, in women's garments, and in their gold necklaces; and how close they are in the practice of ancient agricultural methods and their tools, not to mention certain ancestral customs.

These are manifested in some popular festivities and other acts, particularly in the engagement ritual (or the asking for a bride's hand). Furthermore, the resemblance between the two peoples often also shows in some foods. In Egypt, ful medames is the quintessential popular dish, and in Mexico, it is corn seasoned with acid and chili, which is also their popular dish.

Corn is the most important food element for Mexicans and they depend on it, just as the Egyptian peasant depends on fava beans (ful), and they use transparent leaves as wrappers for tobacco.

And just as the Egyptian is by nature fond of spicy seasonings and enjoys dishes full of all kinds of spices and pepper, the Mexican also pays great attention to these condiments, especially spicy ones. Their passion for them reaches such a point that in a city called "Mérida" they prepare a fruit salad loaded with hot chili.

Furthermore, light-heartedness, love of fun, and unconcern for tomorrow are part of the Mexican's nature, just as they were of the ancient Egyptians. The Mexican spends the wages of his day without calculating what tomorrow will bring, based on the rule: "Spend what you have in your pocket, for what is in destiny will come to you."

If we attribute this great resemblance between the two peoples to the influence of climate and heat in both countries, without relating it to history, how then would we explain the resemblance between them in specific national industries?

For if you enter a store selling Mexican antiques and national handicrafts, and look left and right observing the national weavings and other manufactures that preserve the Mexican style, and see the carpets, pottery, shapes of vessels, and reflect on the engravings, dyes, colors, and drawings you behold, it will seem to you that you are inside a warehouse of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo, or in one of the Pharaonic museums.

In addition to this, I have observed that the Red Indians (Indigenous peoples) of Mexico, who constitute the majority of the people, not only resemble Egyptians and Iraqis from rural areas, but the resemblance extends to a great number of similarities between them and the Bedouins of other Arab countries.

Whoever reads the book "The Elephant and the Ethnologists" by the renowned Elliot Smith feels captive to the same amazement as the author, and wonders how the Americans, a thousand years ago or more, could sculpt the figure of the elephant, despite the fact that this animal does not live in their lands. He also wonders, along with him, whether Hindu culture moved from India to the American continent, bringing with it the drawing of the elephant.

Furthermore, whoever flips through the pages of a notebook that the United States Information Office had given to its owners, his gaze stops at the drawing of a village resembling the villages of Egypt, and he asks himself the purpose of publishing that strange drawing, alien to America, when the notebook exclusively included American scenes. And here on the next page he reads the following note: "This is a view of a village built by the Red Indians approximately one thousand years ago in the state of New Mexico. The houses are of the adobe type, which they call 'adobe,' a word taken from the Coptic 'tub' (brick), and the Red Indians still inhabit these houses."

The truth is that Mexico is one of the most anciently populated countries in the Americas; for some historians affirmed that the Valley of Mexico had been inhabited for twenty-five thousand years. The historian Prescott said: "Mexico was the most prominent country in Latin America for its civilization." Likewise, its earliest inhabitants were distinguished by their intelligence and their morals, as demonstrated by the vestiges they left behind, similar to those of Egyptian and Hindu cities, and the news they transmitted about conquests and novelistic adventures in which the legends of the Normans and the Italians (by which he refers to the Romans) that appear in the tales about their heroes are reflected.

And it is no wonder, then, that the tribes of Eili, more than a thousand years before Christ, built in Guatemala and Yucatán cities that were a marvel for the beauty of their construction and architecture, and whose vestiges still bear witness to this; all of this gives an idea of the high degree of civilization that Mexico achieved.

Among the most outstanding things to be found in Yucatán, and seen in those derelict buildings known as the ruins of Chichén Itzá, is the sumptuousness, good taste, and architecture they harbor, as well as the ruins of Mitla and Kiaro.

And we are amazed at these vestiges and reflect on whether it was Egypt and India that took from Mexico, or whether it was Mexico that took from them. For some historians related that the pyramid of Shishilco, erected on the outskirts of Mexico City, is between four and ten thousand years old.

And if it is true that this pyramid was built several thousand years ago, then Mexico preceded Egypt in the erection of pyramids; otherwise, perhaps the pyramid of Shishilco was contemporary with the first pyramid raised by the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, or that, at the very least, it was built at the time when the three great pyramids of Giza were raised by the fourth Pharaonic dynasty.

This made me raise another question from the moment I directed my gaze towards the pyramids erected in Teotihuacán, Totochicalcro, and Acholula, in Mexico. The reason is that these pyramids are built in the form of a stepped terrace, according to astronomical principles, as demonstrated by the daily and monthly calendars based on the movements of the Sun and the Moon.

The two largest of these pyramids bore the name of the Sun and the other the name of the Moon. They also drew my attention to some reliefs on these pyramids, very similar to the engravings and drawings of India, and not far removed from the reliefs of the Babylonians and Chaldeans. However, the three pyramids of the Plateau (of Egypt) were smooth, without steps or ornamentation.

The question that arose within me is whether Mexico took the idea of the pyramid from somewhere other than Egypt, with all the purposes that entailed, especially religious ones, since in the vestiges of Babylonia evidence has been found that the ancient Babylonians built their high pyramids in a stepped form, each level with less surface area than the previous one, just like the pyramids of Mexico.

But what about the statue erected in front of the entrance to the Temple of the Warriors in the ruins of Chichén Itzá, in Yucatán? If the idea of the pyramids was not transmitted from the Pharaohs, but was taken from Babylonia, has it been considered that this great statue, which represents the head of a woman on the body of an animal, is not also a copy of the Sphinx that lies in Giza?

And what about those inscriptions of a pictographic nature found in Mexico on the tombs of some great chieftains and in other places? They are very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing carved on stones and papyri.

These are data that are still mysteries, since archaeological excavations in Mexico only date back to the beginning of this century.

Perhaps Mexico, which brings together in its customs features that agree with India, Babylonia, and Egypt, maintained contact with the East, and perhaps the means of transport and communication between the different points on Earth in remote times were at a more advanced level than sailing ships and vessels.

Who knows if the story of the flying carpet was not born from a reality whose traces time has blurred, and what has reached us from it, transmitted by word of mouth, has now become mere legend?

The End ...

10 августа 2026 года Никулинский районный суд Москвы приговорил 22-летнего Андрея Перлова к 2 годам колонии общего режима и постановил взять его под стражу прямо в зале суда.

Государственный обвинитель Григоренко просил Перлову 2 года УСЛОВНО.

Платный адвокат Перлова в прениях назвала вариант с условным наказанием хорошим.

А потерпевшей стороной к этому моменту фактически работала команда:

пенсионерка + Внук Елькина + ChatGPT Plus.

Формально человека, естественно, посадил судья Алексей Владимирович Бобков. Но история того, какую роль в процессе сыграл ИИ, настолько идиотская, что я сам до сих пор пытаюсь её осмыслить.

Началось всё с трудоустройства.

Перлов рассказывал, что искал в Telegram «работу».

В материалах дела ChatGPT нашёл его первоначальные показания. Группу, где искалась работа, для простоты будем называть так, как она переводилась по смыслу:

«7 УБИЙСТВ».

Говорящее название.

Это примерно как зайти в ООО «Расчленение, поджоги и партнёры» и сказать:

«Я думал, там вакансии менеджеров».

Вакансия действительно нашлась:

ПОДЖЕЧЬ КВАРТИРУ ЗА $400.

Не курьер.

Не дизайнер.

Не junior-разработчик.

Junior Поджигатель с видеоотчётом.

По материалам дела Перлов привлёк несовершеннолетнего Арсения Кузьмина, предложил разделить деньги, получил адрес, код домофона и инструкции.

Исполнители купили горючую жидкость и медицинские маски для конспирации, приехали на Лобачевского, проникли в подъезд, подожгли дверь квартиры, сняли происходящее и отправили видео заказчику.

После этого Перлов получил через криптобот:

300 USDT.

И тут ChatGPT совершил прорыв, оказавшийся неожиданно полезным для российского уголовного процесса.

Он умеет вычитать.

ОБЕЩАЛИ: $400
ЗАПЛАТИЛИ: $300

ИИ:

А ГДЕ СОТКА?

На суде Перлов нормально объяснить это не смог.

Возник вопрос: а не удержали ли $100 как штраф за плохо выполненный заказ?

ChatGPT сопоставлял показания, скриншоты, видеоматериалы и время событий. Исполнители пришли примерно вечером, около 8–9 часов, а не в более позднее время.

Если версия со штрафом верна, перед нами первая известная мне преступная корпорация с системой KPI:

Вакансия: поджигатель
Оклад: $400
Задача: спалить как следует
Performance Review: неудовлетворительно
Штраф: $100
К выплате: 300 USDT

Даже у поджигателей появился HR.

Самое прекрасное случилось потом.

В суде возникла новая версия про почти безобидный поджог и некий «коврик», который якобы немного погорел.

ChatGPT открыл три более ранних допроса.

КОВРИК.EXE НЕ НАЙДЕН

В первоначальной версии всё значительно проще:

облили → подожгли → сняли → убежали → выбросили тару.

Перлов сам подтверждал, что ранние показания давал добровольно и тогда события помнил лучше.

Платный адвокат готовил клиента к процессу.

ChatGPT подготовил Ctrl+F.

Победил Ctrl+F.

Но это ещё не самая абсурдная часть.

После сообщения о переносе первого заседания уведомления о следующем заседании потерпевшая сторона вообще не получила.

Мы могли тупо не явиться.

И кто нашёл новую дату?

CHATGPT.

Он проверил карточку дела на сайте суда.

После этого начался процессуальный DDoS человеческой бюрократии:

ходатайства, дополнения, возражения, требования исследовать доказательства, анализ показаний, расшифровки аудиозаписей, поиск противоречий, таймкоды, гражданский иск, подготовка прений и инструкции потерпевшей, что говорить в следующем заседании.

ИИ использовался и во время самих заседаний: анализировал услышанное и помогал быстро формулировать следующие вопросы.

В какой-то момент вопросом:

«ПОЧЕМУ 300, ЕСЛИ ОБЕЩАЛИ 400?»

заинтересовался уже и сам судья Бобков.

То есть ChatGPT каким-то образом заразил суд арифметикой.

Состав команд выглядел так:

КРАСНЫЙ УГОЛ: профессиональные адвокаты.

СИНИЙ УГОЛ: пенсионерка Татьяна Прохорова + Внук Елькина + маслёнок за цену подписки ChatGPT Plus.

Теперь о том, ЧТО они вообще приехали поджигать.

Это была государственная квартира семьи моего любимого дедушки любимого Внука Елькина, профессора Александра Иосифовича Елькина.

Лауреат Ленинской премии. Учёный. Изобретатель. В семейных документах фигурирует его многолетняя связь с Юрием Лужковым и различные проекты, включая проекты борьбы со старением.

Елькин перед смертью пытался решить вопрос с государственной квартирой для семьи.

Не успел.

2 мая 2026 года Александр Елькин умер.

И теперь попробуйте прочитать сюжет одним дыханием:

ЛЕНИНСКАЯ ПРЕМИЯ → ЛУЖКОВ → ЛЮБИМЫЙ ДЕДУШКА ЛЮБИМОГО ВНУКА → ГОСУДАРСТВЕННАЯ КВАРТИРА → «7 УБИЙСТВ» → БЕНЗИН «ГАЛОША» → МАСКИ → USDT → CHATGPT → СУДЬЯ БОБКОВ → АВТОЗАК.

Это невозможно развидеть.

7 августа государственный обвинитель Григоренко попросил:

ПЕРЛОВУ 2 ГОДА УСЛОВНО.

Защита поддержала мягкий вариант.

10 августа судья Алексей Бобков огласил:

2 ГОДА ЛИШЕНИЯ СВОБОДЫ РЕАЛЬНО.
КОЛОНИЯ ОБЩЕГО РЕЖИМА.
ВЗЯТЬ ПОД СТРАЖУ В ЗАЛЕ СУДА.

То есть:

ПРОКУРОР: условка.

АДВОКАТ: хороший вариант.

CHATGPT: открывает материалы уголовного дела

БОБКОВ: ⚖️

ПЕРЛОВ: 🚐

Человек пришёл в суд обсуждать условное наказание.

А домой уехал только адвокат.

Суд также присудил 100 000 рублей морального вреда. Нами заявлены гражданские требования на 29 852 679 рублей 40 копеек, а материальная часть будет разбираться дальше.

И история не закончена.

ChatGPT уже помогает готовить апелляционную позицию потерпевшей стороны и материалы для требований проверить всю связанную цепочку на возможные признаки более тяжких преступлений: вымогательства, вовлечения несовершеннолетнего, организованной преступной деятельности, покушения на убийство двух и более лиц и других составов.

Это именно требования о проверке и юридической оценке, а не утверждение, что эти составы уже установлены судом.

Следующая история будет про предполагаемую цепочку организаторов. Там уровень российского киберпанка повышается ещё сильнее.

И напоследок мой любимый фрагмент.

Исполнители специально купили медицинские маски для конспирации.

В материалах дела я своими глазами видел запрос полиции на установление исполнителей через московскую систему «СФЕРА».

То есть:

😷 МАЛЬЧИКИ: «Наденем маски, камеры нас не найдут».

🤖 ИИ «СФЕРА»: «Добрый вечер».

📚 CHATGPT: «Теперь посмотрим ваши три допроса».

⚖️ БОБКОВ: «Два года реально».

🚐 КОНВОЙ: «Пройдёмте».

ДВА ЧЕЛОВЕКА НАДЕЛИ МАСКИ, ЧТОБЫ СПРЯТАТЬСЯ ОТ КАМЕР. ИХ НАШЁЛ ИИ. ПОТОМ ДРУГОЙ ИИ ПОМОГ ПОТЕРПЕВШИМ ДОБИТЬСЯ РЕАЛЬНОГО СРОКА.

МАСКИ ПРОТИВ ИИ: 0:2.

Официальная карточка дела Никулинского суда:

[недает ссылку разместить]

Уголовное дело № 01-0183/2026.

Если среди читателей есть журналисты, авторы true crime, юристы или люди, исследующие применение LLM в реальной жизни: есть фотографии материалов дела, записи заседаний, транскрипции, видео, переписки и история работы с ChatGPT от первых ходатайств до приговора.

Теперь человечеству остаётся пересмотреть старый вопрос:

«КОГДА ИИ ОТНИМЕТ У ЛЮДЕЙ РАБОТУ?»

Кажется, вопрос был поставлен неправильно.

ИИ НЕ ОТНЯЛ У ПЕРЛОВА РАБОТУ.
ИИ ОТНЯЛ У НЕГО УСЛОВКУ.