 Okay. Well, welcome everyone. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here in front of Science Circle and talk a little bit about anthropology, ethnography, and my research today. We're going to talk about Hennepoto Wara, the supernatural anti-hero of the mythical past. And I hope you find it a interesting slice of alternative culture from the Darien of Eastern Panama. So the way I have this talk organized is I'm going to talk a little bit about this story of Hennepoto. And then I would like to give you some background information and show you some ethnographic slides of Imbanak culture at the same time. And then I would like to tell the story of Hennepoto. So I'm going to give you some background information about the nature of the story and how I see it fitting into culture. And then I'm going to actually tell the story. So I'll be paying pretty much attention to my slides so I don't watch a nearby chat very well. So if someone will pay attention to chat and make sure I don't miss anything important. And then we'll have some comments and questions at the very end. So here we go. So, first of all, thank you for coming and hanging out and thanks to Science Circle for making an opportunity in this time of crisis and COVID where we can get together and perhaps transport ourselves to. Well, we've been transporting ourselves to quantum mechanics and messenger RNA and black holes and cosmology and quarks and subatomic particles. Well, today we're going to take a journey to an indigenous culture. It's a little different than the things that we've been doing in Science Circle. But I hope you enjoy the opportunity to explore a slice of this very interesting culture in Eastern Panama and preliterate cultures. Heavily depended upon narratives, myths and storytelling as a way of transmitting information from generation to generation. And of course storytelling in almost every society is considered an art form and in our culture is not an exception. Although the personal storytelling of stories is maybe somewhat diminished in our culture. We have an incredible storytelling heritage in TV and in movies. So we are doing nothing more than exploring the tradition that has existed for many thousands of years and is very much alive and well in our culture. Although it has been transformed in so many interesting ways. So all the material for this talk are located at my website trail to.com Hennepoto. And this includes the stories themselves in English and Spanish and in the Mbana version, along with this talk and along with the graphics that I'll be using in the talk. So if you do get interested in exploring this in more detail, feel free to go there and pick up the materials. It's also available at the exhibit, the ethnographic exhibit of 2 cultures that we have hosted in the community virtual library. So this talk comes from the indigenous group of the Mbana and they live reside in the Pacific coastal lowlands of Columbia and Eastern Panama. And they have of course a long tradition of telling stories. And this is one of several dozen stories that I've collected. And it and it is about a supernatural creature Hennepoto and would like to chronicle his story, but give you some background. So Hennepoto actually means leg-born child or leg-born son. And it's one of the more famous Mbana stories. And he is given a number of incredible Herculean tasks that he has to execute. And it involves engaging with the supernatural ecologies and demonic denzians of Mbana cosmology. Yes, leg-born says we'll get into that. There's actually a reason for this and we'll explore the details. So this paper presents the story and discusses some of the concepts associated with the story. But before I get into that, I'd just like to say that this paper was originally presented and this is the only the second time that I presented this paper in public. The first time was in a double session at the Applied Anthropology meetings in memoriam of Philip Young, who was my mentor and academic advisor. And Philip and I were very close. He visited me in Panama regularly and all of his students got together and we held a special session commemorating his mentorship of our anthropological work. And of course there are many acknowledgments and you can go to the website and read about them in detail. But I'd just like to highlight just a few of the folks that I acknowledge in my research. And the narrator is Elipio Flaco and his family adopted me. And I spent many, many months with them and became integrated into their family. And the translators of the Mbana are Daniel and Nilsa Castaneda who are brother and sister. And they happen to be the grandson and granddaughter of a very powerful shaman that I had the privilege to work with. And Nilsa Castaneda is very interesting. She worked with me as an administrative assistant for a long time. And then she became a GIS technician, geospatial information system technician. And she's one of the foremost GIS technicians in the Republic of Panama. And this single mother put her daughter through med school with a little help from her friends. And her daughter became the first Mbana physician ever in the history of their culture. I had some help with the Spanish translations as well. Fiona and Kristi Smythe who were the college age daughters of a Smithsonian Tropical Research Scientist. So they were very knowledgeable not only in the nuances of English Spanish translation, but of the ecological concepts in supernatural. The villages of Pilasal in Maninay, very, very small settlements in eastern Panama. And I'll point them out on a map in just a second where I spent most of my time. And there were two amens in those settlements that took me under their wing and shared with me the knowledge that helped me to understand indigenous cosmology. And the visual aspect of this presentation is due to the excellent work of Shafil. Shafil is the artist of the drawings that I use in my presentations and he faithfully reproduces the ethnographic detail that we discussed before he starts the work. And he brings the concepts of the ethnographic detail to life in his incredible artwork. Okay, so here's where we're going. We're going to the nexus of the Americas. This is where the continents of South America and Central America are joined. It is the very wild area of the Darien that is on the border between Panama and Columbia. And as you can see in the red circle, the comarcus of the indigenous people, the Mbanon, while none while none are very similar culture to the Mbanon. And also the Darien biosphere reserve is here is the largest reserve in Central America 550,000 hectares of pretty much all growth rainforest. So this is where we're headed. So if God took North America and South America in his hands and twisted, they would break right in this red circle. So I would like to just give a little bit of ethnographic background about the about the Mbanon. So the Mbanon traditionally live along the rivers and mostly the upper rivers of the Pacific Coastal Lowlands of the Department of Chilcot and Columbia and the Darien province in eastern Panama. They're subsistence horticulturalists who depend on fishing, gathering and hunting from the tropical rainforest traditionally. Socially and historically they are egalitarian and egalitarian means that there is no political hierarchy. And there was little craft specialization or political hierarchy. The craft specialization that exists were mostly shamans who became ritual specialists. And they believe in spirits who live in and co reside with the natural world. They also have a belief in the mythical past that is in the early times when animals and their animal spirit masters talked and socialized with Mbanon and the spirit world was considered more visible and accessible to the average person. It is in this mythical past that the story of a new photo takes place. The Mbanon have a sophisticated cosmology or if you will religion in which the many actors, spirits, demons, people, animals and natural forces interact in a complex and dynamic spiritual equilibrium. It is the role of the shaman to maintain this equilibrium by creating harmony among all of these competing forces and to ensure that the spirits from time to time can be bound to human intention through carefully executed rituals that seduce the often ambivalent spirits into cooperation. And I discussed the ecological implications of this cosmological perspective in a previous paper and perhaps sometime a science circle will permit me to do that presentation. But I do have a quote from that paper. The Mbanon have a strong narrative tradition that communicates ecological principles. The Mbanon tell many stories that chronicle the acts of the Indians, animals and spirits. The stories contain strong evocative images and symbols and form a type of encapsulated language coding metaphorically the actions of the human and the spirit world. This language with this ecological imagery shows what happens when the cultural rules are broken and they delineate the fine line between the cultural and spiritual domain. So these are a few of the ethnographic plates that show aspects of the indigenous culture and this is a picture of hunting the white lip peckery. The context of this story is one of the most well known stories of the pantheon of Mbanon stories, miss legends and narratives. It is the story of a man who is born of the union between a spirit and a woman. His mother dies in childbirth and he grows up in a troubled but powerful orphan constantly trying to locate the being that killed his mother. As a part supernatural being, he executes a series of herculean tasks that require his special skills. Like many characters and stories among the Mbanon, he is not precisely a hero, but rather a supernaturally strong antihero that makes embarrassing demands upon society that results in the elders always trying to figure out a way to get rid of him. However, no matter how difficult the task they assign or how unlikely he is to succeed at his task, he comes out victorious. That is, until the dramatic end. His efforts, it can be interpreted profoundly protect society from potential ravages of the supernatural world of demons. The Hinupoto is constantly upsetting and resetting the balance between the human, the natural and the supernatural worlds. Although Hinupoto is universally admired among the Mbanon, for his strength, cunning skill and determination is also an outcast and a cosmic misfit. He also chronically naive as he attempts to track down the being that killed his mother when it was he himself when he was born who caused the death of his mother in childbirth. So the narrator of this story is Alipio Flaco from Piyuasal Darien. He is currently a forest guard in the Darien biosphere reserve. And at the time of the, he told this narrative, Alipio was about 18 years old. He was surrounded by family, his two younger brothers, two younger sisters and mother, and a few close friends. And it is the evening after supper, which is the traditional time to tell stories like Hinupoto. I was very pleased that Alipio told with strong oratory skill, such a detailed, well executed and comprehensive version of the story. Even so, in all of its details, it does vary from other versions of the story told at other locations by other narratives. So it is traditional among the Mbanon to have someone offer comments and make jokes and make little noises like people are doing in chat right now. As the person tells the story. And so it is his sister that is operating as the as as the challenger to his story as he tells it. And in the text of the story, you can see her, her, her sharp, her sharp comments as she comments on his telling of the story. And you can see the type of residents in the lower right. And here you see a couple of women doing ritual preparations. But in the lower right is the house similar to where the story was, was told. And so, I would like to just mention a little bit about the delicate balance in mythical time. So, in many ways, Mbanon culture is about maintaining balance in order to ensure that the forces of supernatural forces do not spiral out of control. And here you see a ritual preparation of calling the spirits in order to make a petition. This delicate balance represents the forces of the natural world, the world of spirits, and, and the human social reality is clearly a major theme of the story of Hennepoteau. He acts in so many inappropriate ways, yet he is clearly assisting the Mbanon to defeat their traditional enemies in the mythical past and liberate the gifts jealously guarded by the spirit demons and we'll see that in the story. The concept of mythical time is also difficult to appreciate. I had a very difficult time trying to get people to explain to me what this concept was. It is as if Hennepoteau was here yesterday, but the elders say it was a time before their grandparents. On the other hand, it would not seem impossible to some Mbanon that Hennepoteau walked the earth in recent years in some little known river in the department of Choco, Colombia. So, as I mentioned, is up to the shaman to help maintain this balance. And I would like to just say a couple words about the value of narratives and understanding cosmology. And cosmology is a little different than we've been using it in science circle. Cosmology is just an anthropological fancy word for religion or religious beliefs. The value of the narrative to Western participant observers is that all of the many coding systems for cosmological knowledge narratives are perhaps one of the most transparent and easy to access systems. Rituals, shamanic practices, music, even ethnobotanical procedures are so much more opaque and subject to more slippery interpretation. At least the stories can be translated into English or Spanish and their metaphors and relationships analyzed. Now, I would just like to talk a little bit about assumed knowledge. So in the story, there's all kinds of assumed knowledge. And I would like to make a few comments about this. So here you can see the ritual chicha that is prepared to seduce the spirits through its intoxicating smell. The people get to drink this at the end of the day, of course, after the ritual, after the ritual ceremony. And this chicha is considered as a supernatural force. And this is an important concept for understanding the story about Hennepo Toe, and we're going to get into that. Notwithstanding their parent transparency, that is narratives, narratives and but not narratives are crammed full of assumed knowledge on the part of the listener. The stories articulate within a system of belief, a method of thinking about and encoding the nature of mind, spirit, your social roles, nature of culture, ecological relationships and the cosmos. For example, when Elipio says our father in the story, this is really Angkoré, a powerful creator spirit, and is really most likely that the missionaries have insisted that Angkoré be interpreted as our father. And when Elipio states that the father spirit made love to the beautiful young woman between her toes, and we'll see that in just a few moments. It is likely that many ebony listeners are actually visualizing something like a crystalline pale white beam of moonlight that pierces through the thatched roof and that strikes her in her toe and fertilizes her with the spirit's cosmic sperm so that she becomes pregnant in the calf of her leg. The Western assumption is most likely that the image of male, female, physical, sexual intercourse between her toes. This is, of course, unsaid in this version of the story, but almost every line is full of similar complex assumed knowledge in order to communicate its pregnant message. And it took me a long time to figure this stuff out. The people can't just easily explain this to you. You have to listen to the story, translate it, ask questions, and it is a complex process of interpretation to try to figure out what's really going on. It is also interesting that the elders later on in the story tell Hennepoto that the moon killed his mother by sending a beam that consumed her heart. And the irony is that, in part, this is true if the creator spirit fertilized his mother with a moon beam that ultimately resulted in her death when he was born. So as you can see, the people in these diagrams are painted. These are not tattoos. So this is ethnobotanical body paint that has a two to three week duration and provides a very important ritual process. So in back to the sumo, I don't know the corn beer. I hate to drink it because it ran through my system like water and it was actually quite painful. And it's very low in alcohol. So you have to drink a lot of it to get a buzz. So we mentioned about the pregnancy in the calf of the leg and let me talk about the assumed knowledge there. The woman becomes pregnant in the calf of her leg is symbolic. The calf of the leg is thought to be an indicator of strength. Traditional Mbana life requires great strength and endurance, work in the fields, trips to the forest, carrying burden baskets of crops. I asked a middle-aged man what makes a good wife once upon a time. He told me, look at the calf. If it is strong and powerful, that is a good wife. It is skinny and not muscular, not a good wife. So the woman becomes pregnant in her calf, the symbolic source of her strength and a major of her power and prowess. Therefore, Western listeners can only approximate the true semantic and symbolic significance of the narrative's dramatic scenes because of the nature of all this collective assumed knowledge. It is similar in concept to the image of a Western visitor on an Mbana hunting trip. The visitor sees a rainforest within a geographic and ecological context. The Mbana hunter sees oh so much more, a complex interaction of natural, supernatural and animal spirit actors all conspiring to ensure or negate the opportunity for a successful hunt. The weather alone provides the Mbana hunter with a host of knowledge through which the hunter engages a complex playbook of where to go, what to hunt, how long to travel and how many other relevant variables such as the likelihood for an encounter with a poisonous snake. Clearly, the spirits will let us know if we only listen to them correctly. A small, significantly insignificant bird call may have dramatic effect on the hunter, even to the point of causing him to abandon the hunt and return home without delay and to hunt on another more propitious day. Of course, in our society specialized knowledge is highly heterogeneously distributed too. The professional farmer sees far more detail in a country landscape than a city visitor because his vision is so tightly woven into the specialized knowledge of crops, weather, ecology, soil, micro geographic conditions and the site and crop suitability. Any farmer worth his salt could discuss for hours the implications of a single pastoral view. And of course it is the shaman that is helping maintain the equilibrium with the supernatural forces. So I would like to say in conclusion to the discussion about the meaning and some of the ideas behind the story, and so it is with Hinupoto that there are many layers of meaning. Quite frankly, I don't know what it all means. I just have some insights after spending many years with the Mbana of attempting to understand the cultural details associated with the narratives and some of the cosmological concepts that keep appearing over and over in their stories. And I also have some Mbana language skills and I've had many years to think about what this story and others like it mean. I do feel that the story transports the observer, both Western and non-Western, into another world deceptively hidden behind everyday life. We can peek behind the curtain of Western physical reality into the indigenous view of the universe. Certainly there is not one or even a correct meaning to the story. I suggest it is more like a code that provides a vehicle for delivering Mbana cosmology and its attendant lessons in an easy to consume and reproducible package with potentially many layers of meaning and interpretation. The element of the code resonates with the constant level of knowledge of the listener. Each listener, of course, with its own ability to understand the details. And this was especially true for me. In my first year, I understood certain stuff. And then in second year, oh, I threw out a lot of the things I believed and replaced it with new beliefs. And the third year and fourth year and fifth year, there were massive transformations for my understanding of Mbana culture and appreciation for the detail and profound nature of their cosmological beliefs and their subsistence technologies. So it is more like a code than that provides a vehicle for delivering Mbana cosmology and its attendant lessons in an easy to consume and reproducible package with the potentially many layers of meaning interpretation. The elements of the code resonate then with the constant level of knowledge of its listeners. Like all good stories, each layer of meaning envelopes and articulates with the personal experience, social and cultural matrix of the listener. Certainly the story is entertaining to the assembled listeners that is the family that are listening. The importance of telling it well is evident as the comments of the audience indicate. There are also those elements that are difficult to capture in text. That is the nature of the delivery, the onomatopoeia that they continuously use, the nocturnal context in which the night sounds of the old that are so close on that rainy evening in the Darian when Elipio told the story. All do not translate well into the written word. The story contains all of the introductory conversations from the listeners and the narrator that was on the tape to give a sense of how the listeners themselves approach the telling of the story, not withstanding that some of the comments are quite embarrassing to the ethnographer. It is interesting that throughout the entire story, the Imbanar trying to get rid of Hennupoto by providing him with impossible supernatural tasks that should have resulted in his death. But unlike many Western stories where there is generally a resolution or positive resolution in the end, there lies a great ambivalence. And Hennupoto's ironic role as he consistently executes the impossible task to avenge his mother and never seems to tire as the elders redirect him to his next mission, even though he realized that they have previously tricked him. All the while as he rid the world of the most dangerous demons, he himself is treated as a nuisance by the Imbanar. So there we go. Those are my words about the nature of the story. Are you ready for me to tell the story now? Let's see. A nuisance hero. Yes. Okay. So now you know a little bit about the story, the nature of assumed knowledge, the mythical past, some images of Imbanar culture, the ritual supernatural processes and so forth, correct? So the subsistence technologies are hunting, which of course it is said that a good indigenous hunter spends more time training to be a good hunter than any engineer in our society. It takes that long to learn to be a good hunter. And then the fishing technologies, they have many, many ways of harvesting riverine resources, which are numerous in the Darien. The tropical rainforest rivers have a great diversity of fish species. And it might be worth mentioning that the Darien is and the Choco of the of the department of Choco is the most biological diverse terrestrial systems on the earth. And they have the highest rainfall differential of any place on earth as well. And you can find things on Google that refute that, but if you really do a close investigation, I think that you will come to this conclusion. So this is a very, very complex ecosystem. And so gathering plants from the forest from this very diverse ecosystem, you can imagine the ethnobotanical and medicinal knowledge of the Imbanar is huge. And it includes the use of a theogenic plants like ayahuasca that is used in their in their shamanic rituals. Let's see now if I have my up to date here. Okay, so let's tell the story. So I'm going to try and tell the story in a way that an Imbana person might tell it. But if you want to see what their language looks like, this is what the alphabet that we use. And let me just say a few words. So the language, of course, has nothing to do with romance languages. It is related to an isolated tree of Native American languages. And it's not going to be in Google translate that is for sure. This is an unwritten language when I first started doing my research and I was involved in helping design the alphabet that is used now to buy some folks to record the Imbana language. And of course, this is what they're saying. The very next day very early in the morning, he sit out with all of his lunch at once he began to kill the snakes with his arrow, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so the stories themselves are numbered. So there's sections and lines so you can compare each line of the English version of the Imbana version and of the Spanish version for those people who are interested in the original. Okay, here we go. Am I up to date with chat anything? I'm glancing at chat glancing. I guess I'm okay. No one's pinging me and saying that I'm crazy. Where did this stuff come from? Okay. So a beautiful Imbana woman becomes pregnant as a result of a union with a creator spirit. And it is conceived that her calf actually she was fertilized between her toes by a beam of moonlight that came through the thatched roof and caused her to become pregnant as a result of the cosmic sperm from the supernatural being. And as the child grows in her leg, her friends and family become very concerned because they feel that her welfare is in jeopardy. And of course, they're right. She gives birth to a part human and part supernatural creature and new photo and a new photo causes the death of his mother. And because new photo is part spirit, he has some strange habits. And one of the things that he needs in order to thrive is chicha, but not the corn chicha that is used in the ritual context that we discussed previously. But he requires blood chicha and he needs the menstrual blood and the afterbirth of women in order to thrive. It is his supernatural sustenance. And when he can't get it, he goes out and kills snakes and snakes are large snakes are thought to have a lot of blood and he drinks that blood as a second hand replacement for his blood chicha. And of course the women all consider him a nuisance and they're always trying to figure out ways to get rid of him. And of course the elders are you can imagine the women lobby with the elders to get rid of this of this creature who is continuously demanding blood. And of course blood is such an incredibly powerful metaphor in every society and this is certainly true in indigenous society. So Hennepoto is always asking who killed his mother. And so the elders said the moon killed your mother. And as we've already commented the moon is a powerful ecological metaphor associated with femininity, waters, rain, menstruation and pregnancy. And of course it is the moon being that fertilized his mother in the calf that ultimately resulted in his death. So the elder said it was the moon that killed your mother. And so he builds a bamboo ladder and he goes up to grab off the face of the moon and to pull off the face of the moon because he wants revenge for the person that killed his mother. And of course the elders get all excited and upset by this and they send the squirrel to gnaw on the ladder so that it will tumble to the ground. But the squirrel doesn't do a very good job. So they send the woodpecker Zoray to peck the bamboo ladder and the woodpecker is able to pick through the bamboo ladder right before Hennepoto is reaching the face of the moon. Of course this is going to cause a huge upset to the natural order of things. But the woodpecker saves the day and Hennepoto falls from the sky. And as he's falling he calls out mohopono, mohopono, mohopono, which is the flower of the balsam tree. And this converts him into a flower so he's able to float around on the air currents. But eventually he tires of floating around and then he cries out again, mongara, mongara, mongara, which means rock. And he converts to stone and he falls back to the earth. In fact he falls with such force and with such gravity that he falls into the underworld beneath the earth. And so Hennepoto discovers in the underworld the amurukos. And the amurukos are spirit beings that kind of look like people, but they're truly spirits because they can't eat food. They derive their sustenance from the smell of food just as the way the spirits derive intoxication from the smell of ritual chicha. And they defecate out their ear. And so they're watching Hennepoto and they see him eating food and they're amazed that he can eat. And they realize that Hennepoto eats and he's able to defecate through his anus. And they tell Hennepoto, we want to eat like you, we want to eat like you. So can you help us? And so Hennepoto reluctantly grabs a sharp stick and he pokes a few amurukos with the stick and pure sand comes out and they die. But eventually he figures out how to do it correctly and he's able to poke them with the stick so they can eat food and defecate. So the amurukos, these supernatural beings are indebted to Hennepoto. But the amurukos are attacked by a variety of different animals and they kill the amurukos. And Hennepoto says, don't let these animals kill you. These are not killer animals. These are game animals. We are going to capture them and I'm going to show you how to cook them and eat them. So Hennepoto goes out and he starts to kill these attacking animals and he teaches the amurukos how to eat them. And they're so grateful because their population was being decimated by these game animals. So he taught the amurukos to hunt and he taught them how to cook a game. And so eventually Hennepoto gets bored with the world of the amurukos and he returns to his regular world. And then he goes to the elders. He had many adventures and this story is long but I'm only just going to tell you the highlights. And one of the adventures is that the Yembana tell him that the hay killed his mother. And the hay is this giant aquatic snake-like creature. It looks like an anaconda or a boa constrictor but it has antlers like a deer so it has a terrestrial component. It has an aquatic component and so he goes and he builds a balsa raft and he says I will go and I will kill the hay. And he gets swallowed up by the hay who is this huge monster and he is in the belly of the hay. And he sees all kinds of ambana and they're dying of hunger. But there's all of these food plants as well. There's all of the seed and these food plants like the plantin and the banana and the sweet potato and squash and yams. And beans. So he sees all of this inside the hay and he says to the people that are dying of hunger. Don't worry I'm going to help you. I will feed you. And so he goes and takes out his knife, cuts out the monster heart of the hay and he drinks the blood. Of course remember that the blood is his special supernatural chicha and he builds a fire and roasts the heart and feeds the people. I will get you out of here. So once he builds the fire he propped open the hay's anus with logs. It's so big. And then the hay expels all of the contents of his stomach and the people that were dying of hunger are freed along with all the many different food plants and other animal creatures that form the bulk of the subsistence technology. Agricultural horticultural technology of the Mbana. So he's freed up all of these very important plants that form the basis of Mbana subsistence to this very day. And of course he has many adventures with many different creatures. But in the end the elders say to him, the hambuima killed his mother. And the hambuima is this rather vampire like terrible demon that is extremely powerful. And he says I will go and I will kill the hambuima because it is the hambuima that killed my mother. And he goes and he raises his spear and in some stories it is a bow and arrow to kill the hambuima. And as he holds his spear ready to strike the hambuima dead he says well even if I die tell everyone that I'm going to die but I'm not going to die. And he drops his spear instead of throwing it and killing the hambuima as he's done with a pantheon of demons previously. He just drops his spear and he permits himself to be attacked by the hambuima. And the hambuima attacks fiercely and rips his throat out and tears his body into parts. Because it is a vicious and terrible demon. And so Hinupoto meets his ultimate fate. And he says in the story according to Elipio, I will turn into different types. In an instant I will turn into blood suckers. So Hinupoto lies dying bleeding on the ground and his blood as it comes out of his body it transforms into all of the different creatures that suck blood. And in the rainforest there's actually quite a few of these things. The many species of ticks, vampire bats, the different leeches, they're biting flies, there are chiggers which are arachnids, mosquitoes, sand fleas, assassin bugs. And so all of the different creatures that suck blood come from the transformed blood of Hinupoto. So every time you're in the forest and a little creature bites you, it is a remnant of Hinupoto that is affecting you. And this has a very interesting epidemiological concept of course from our point of view in the scientific world. Because it is of course the blood that carries disease and it is the mosquitoes and other blood sucking creatures that carry viruses. Like vampire bats, rabies and of course yellow fever and malaria and so forth from mosquitoes. So there we go. That's the story of Hinupoto. So if you want to see more details about this you can actually go to the website. And it is worth mentioning again that Shafil has done an excellent job of reading the stories and we had long discussions about what details should be in the diagrams. And he faithfully represented in acute ethnographic detail the information that we both thought was appropriate to include in the different plates. So there is the story of Hinupoto. Questions? Questions in chat? I wasn't watching chat very well so if anyone had a question previously that I didn't get to take a look at. Umuntu says, Nexus, the notion of mythical time for the Ambanon. I wonder if that is a relation to the past or does it also resonate with notions of an imagined future? For instance in Swahili time is measured by seasons but backwards numerically and in many Bantu languages there are very little notions of the future, no future tense linguistically. I wonder if it's similar or could be completely different, not sure. Well that is an excellent comment and an excellent question. It was really difficult for me to kind of get a handle on this mythical time. As I mentioned it is considered something in the past but there are some folks that I talked to. I said, could Hinupoto be in Columbia right now in some river? And they said yes it's possible and so these supernatural creatures are not just relegated to the past. They are enduring principles that get renovated throughout time. And Hinupoto is not a very good example of this but there is another concept. Behind every major animal is a spirit master. And this spirit master represents the sum total of awareness and capability and spirit nature of the animal. So the deer has a spirit master and the jaguar has a spirit master. And this spirit master endears forever no matter how many jaguars are killed or how many jaguars are born. Into each jaguar is born and imbued content from this spirit master. So this is an enduring relationship from mythical time when jaguars could actually talk to people. But it exists in the current day and in the future as well. So the concept of past, now and future is not so precisely identified as you wisely recommended in certain traditional cultures. There is a more cyclical concept of time where the renewal of natural resources takes place on different cycles. And the lunar cycle is one of the most important cycles of that particular process. So I think that traditional societies throughout the world have very different concepts of the nature of temporal, of time passing and temporal stuff. So it's a great comment. Okay, anything else? Let's see here. Okay. Life never, yeah, but only transforming. Yes, tagline. From one form comes others. Yes. Yes, and that's certainly the transformation that occurs from Hinoopoto. He built all of this cosmological energy from all of the blood chiecha that he drank from all of the different creatures. And then he serves as the transformative being that is able to convert that blood energy into the blood sucking animals of the world. Very weird concept. Something else on your mind? In Norse mythology, the story of the end of the gods was told in detail at the same time as they were worshiped as living beings. What does the story of Hinoopoto tell us about the Ambanac culture and does it tell something about us? Well, I don't know, sis. I think that storytelling is a way of encapsulating such a broad range of knowledge and our stories do the same. If you go to any movie, you can write a dissertation on almost any movie. Even a bad movie about the complex communications that occur, the nature of assumed knowledge, the glances, the difference between the wink and the blink, so to speak. So in our society, if you wink at someone, that is imbued with all kinds of cultural meaning and it depends upon the context in which it occurs. But if you just happen to blink, which is nothing more than a physiological reaction, you don't want to confuse the two. So the context of how things occur is so important. And one of the problems about appreciating traditional cultures is it just takes so much work to be able to understand and appreciate the complexity of what the traditional people are trying to say. Okay. Now I'm curious what the Ambanac make of Western science fiction and what they think of Western obsession with the future. Well, there are now Ambanac that have gone to college and have studied to be hydrologic technicians and forestry technicians. As I mentioned, Nilsa's daughter is now a medical doctor. And so I think that the conversations that I've had with educated Ambanac, there's actually two kinds of branches of thinking. A one branch converts to Christianity and accepts some of the religious concepts of some of the more organized religions and others embrace the nature of the traditional beliefs. And it's not incompatible with Ambanac thinking to be able to embrace aspects of Christianity while at the same time maintaining traditional cosmology and traditional beliefs. So that's a very complex issue and it would be something that would be interesting as Ambanac become more acculturated. Of course, they have cell phones today. They now have political structure. They are now integrated into aspects of the Panamanian technology economics and they have suffered severely under the crisis of COVID because of their, because of the nature of their isolation. So there's a lot of things going on in the modern aspects of of Ambanac life that we don't get into, of course, in this talk, but it's certainly something that we could talk about it some future. Okay. No more questions. Okay. Well, thank you very much for coming and thank you for your great comments. And of course, thank you for taking time out of your lives in this terrible crisis to come escape into the rainforest of Eastern Panama. Okay, here we go. Here's the, here's the exhibit of two cultures ethnographic cultures and and the story of a new poto is in there, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff including the information about the mola technology which we discussed at a previous science circle presentation. Okay. Oh, yes. Thank you. Shantel that that's the the all of the documents associated with the new poto, including all the graphics in this presentation. Does he wink or blink. Yes, Shafil is a great artist. Okay.