Vampires: Folklore, fantasy and fact - Michael Molina

3,782,555 views ・ 2013-10-29

TED-Ed


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:13
Good evening!
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What's the matter?
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Are you afraid of vampires?
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He he, no need to worry,
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I'm not staying for dinner.
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00:23
(Laughter)
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I'm here to guide you through a brief history of vampires,
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illustrating how our image has changed
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from a shambling corpse
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to the dapper gentleman you see before you.
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Vampires are nearly as old as you humans.
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Stories about us, revenants,
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appear in cultures extending as far back as prehistoric times.
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But we weren't called vampires back then
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and most of us did not look the way we imagine vampires today.
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Ha, far from it!
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For example, the Mesopotamian Lamashtu
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was a creature with the head of a lion and the body of the donkey,
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01:03
and the ancient Greek striges
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were simply described as bloodthirsty birds.
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01:09
Others were even stranger.
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The Philippine manananggal would sever her upper torso
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and sprout huge, bat-like wings to fly.
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The Malaysian penanggalan was a flying female head
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with dangling entrails.
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01:25
(Laughter)
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And the Australian Yara-ma-yha-who
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was a little red guy with a big head,
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a large mouth,
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and bloodsuckers on his hands and feet.
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Oh, and let's not forget the Caribbean's soucouyant,
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the West African obayifo,
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and the Mexican Tlahuelpuchi.
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01:44
(Laughter)
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Charming, aren't they?
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Though they may look vastly different,
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all of these beings have one common characteristic:
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They sustain themselves by consuming the life force of a living creature.
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This shared trait is what defines a vampire --
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all the other attributes change with the tides.
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So, how do we arrive
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at the reanimated fellow you see before you?
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Our modern ideal emerges in 18th-century Eastern Europe.
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With the dramatic increase of vampire superstitions,
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stories of bloodsucking, shadowy creatures
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become nightly bedside terrors.
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And popular folklore,
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like the moroi among the Romani people
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and the lugat in Albania,
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provide the most common vampire traits known today,
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such as vampires being undead
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and nocturnal and shape-shifting.
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You see, Eastern Europe in the 18th century
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was a pretty grim place
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with many deaths occurring from unknown diseases and plagues.
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Without medical explanations, people searched for supernatural causes
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and found what looked like evidence in the corpses of the victims.
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When villagers dug up bodies
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to discern the cause of the mysterious deaths,
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they would often find the cadavers
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looking very much alive --
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longer hair and fingernails,
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bloated bellies,
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and blood at the corners of mouths.
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(Laughter)
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Clearly, these people were not really dead.
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Heh, they were vampires!
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And they had been leaving their graves
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to feast on the living.
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(Grunt)
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The terrified villagers would quickly enact
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a ritual to kill the undead.
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The practices varied across the region,
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but usually included beheadings,
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burnings, and staking the body to the coffin
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to prevent it from getting up.
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(Laughter)
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Grizzly stuff!
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But what the villagers interpreted as unholy reanimation
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were actually normal symptoms of death.
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When a body decomposes, the skin dehydrates,
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causing the hair and fingernails to extend.
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Bacteria in the stomach creates gases
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that fill the belly,
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which force out blood and matter through the mouth.
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Unfortunately, this science was not yet known,
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so the villagers kept digging.
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In fact, so many bodies were dug up
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that the Empress of Austria
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sent her physician around to disprove the vampire stories,
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and she even established a law prohibiting grave tampering.
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Still, even after the vampire hunts had died down,
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the stories of legends survived in local superstition.
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This led to works of literature, such as Polidori's "The Vampyre,"
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the Gothic novel "Carmilla,"
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and, most famously, Bram Stoker's "Dracula."
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Although Stoker incorporated historical material,
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like Elizabeth Báthory's virgin blood baths
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and the brutal executions of Vlad Dracul,
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it was these local myths
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that inspired the main elements of his story:
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the Transylvanian setting,
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using garlic to defend oneself,
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and the staking of the heart.
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While these attributes are certainly familiar to us,
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elements he invented himself have also lasted over the years:
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fear of crucifixes,
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weakness in sunlight,
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and the vampire's inability to see their reflection.
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By inventing new traits,
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Stoker perfectly enacted the age-old tradition
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of elaborating upon and expanding the myth of vampires.
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As we saw, maybe you met my relatives,
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a huge of variety of creatures stalked the night before Dracula,
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and many more will continue to creep through our nightmares.
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Yet, so long as they subsist off a living being's life force,
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they are part of my tribe.
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Even sparkling vampires can be included.
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After all, it's the continued storytelling and reimagining of the vampire legend
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that allows us to truly live
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forever.
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(Ominous laughter)
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