Dr. James Fitzsimmons

No, no, no, I'll go there, I'll go there.

I go there with my students all the time.

It's fine.

You know, we talk about this sort of stuff, and you'd think I'd be embarrassed to talk about it, but...

I've talked about it for so long that it's just sort of, okay, fine, whatever.

Usually what happens is there's someone in a... There's usually a... When you see it on ceramics, when people are sort of talking about this on ceramics or showing it on ceramics, it's usually a man.

There's usually a woman behind him with what looks like a bladder of some sort and just...

Well, maybe there are examples of this.

I don't know.

None come to mind.

In part, one of the reasons why this sort of stuff comes up as sort of gendered is that it's oftentimes in connection with other things that are sort of

mind altering, I guess.

So, um, for example, uh, you're talking about sort of technologies again, not exactly a technology, but still, um, they had saunas, uh, in the jungle, they had saunas, um, and like sweat tents, like sweat bath.

Yeah.

Like a sweat bath.

Uh, and it's very much like a sort of, you know, things that you might find in other parts, maybe native North America or something like that.

Right.

But these are buildings that would have, um,

Like, it'd be like a box and you get a bunch of rocks, you heat them up in the box, you stick them in the hot box and you pour water basically over the rocks and it just, it fills up this really sort of small enclosed area and you sort of sweat, right?

Um, and in these sweat baths, the idea was to throw yourself off balance as much as possible.