The science of making you laugh and then think —
Mayan ritual enemas, constipation scorpions, and moose crash test dummies function.
Jennifer Owlett –
enlarge/ The Ig Nobel Prize is designed to recognize “achievements that make people laugh first, then think.”
- The Omniscient Club
- , where each member “made it clear that they thought there was only one person in the Know-It-All club who knew everything”— — This is in keeping with the knowledge theme of the evening. Winners will also give free public presentations in the weeks following the awards ceremony, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.
Here are the 2022 Ig Nobel Prize winners.
Art History Award
Quote
: “Peter de Smet and Nicholas Hellmuth, their study ‘Ancient A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Mayan Pottery Ritual Enema Scenario’” Honestly, I could write an entire article on this fascinating 1986 dissertation, adapted from de Smet’s PhD thesis. The study focuses on polychrome pottery from the Late Classic Mayan period (600-900 AD), which often depicts palace scenes, ball games, hunting parties, and dances (through beheadings) associated with human sacrifice. But in 1977, scholars discovered a Mayan jar depicting the administration of an enema, followed by several others. Nicholas Helmus Next→Apparently the Mayans were known for using medicinal enemas, but the pottery scene suggests they may have used intoxicating enemas in a ritual setting too . De Smet and Hellmuth analyzed several images on pottery depicting enemas, as well as the language glyphs that appear in these scenes. They also compiled a list of possible “ethnopharmacological” substances that the Mayans might have ingested.
A long tradition of self-experimentation in science In, de Smet (a self-proclaimed “non-smoker” and “a regular coffee and beer drinker”) tested several of the substances suspected to have been administered by giving themselves enemas. Before taking the enema alone, he drank an oral alcohol mix for comparison. The alcohol content of both mixtures is about 5%, “because enemas with 20% alcohol are very irritating to the rectal tissue”, so a lot of the mixture needs to be consumed. Intoxication levels were measured with a breathalyzer. “The results certainly support the theoretical suggestion that alcohol is well absorbed from enemas,” the authors concluded. Given the evidence of toxic side effects, De Smet wisely refuses to self-administer tobacco enemas. He has also not personally tested psilocybin mushrooms, fungus, water lily (a possible hallucinogen), Tsitse ( Erythina alkaloids) or Toh-ku – these are Unlikely to be used in rituals depicted on pottery. He also chose to skip toad poison toad
