Vsauce, I’m Jake and mazes...are amazing.
Literally.
Amaze came from the word maze which back in the day meant to stupefy or bewilder.
Now we use the term amazing as a way to show great surprise or wonder, but mazes have stayed
bewildering and an active part of our lives.
They’re in movies, books, toys like these little plastic maze puzzles and especially
in video games.
What is thought to be one of the first references to a Maze comes from Greek mythology with
the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.
The skilled craftsman Daedalus (who also built the wings for Icarus) created an elaborate
labyrinth to contain the minotaur.
In the tale Theseus, the hero, slays the beast and in Alison Gazzard’s book ‘Mazes in
Video Games’ she relates that myth to video games, where we wander through mazes, these
labyrinths, defeating monsters and rising victorious.
Think about games like Wolfenstein 3D, Pac-Man, Bomberman, Castlevania, the Dungeon Crawler
genre or in God of War 3 they actually use Daedalus’s Labyrinth to house the key to
Pandora’s Box.
The Legend of Zelda series uses mazes all the time like The Lost Woods in Ocarina of
Time where the volume of the music leads you to the exit.
There is a part of us that yearns for that feeling of being lost, of having to find our
own way out - of succeeding against all odds.
It’s being lost and refusing to ask for directions.
Because we love solving puzzles, it gives us this sense of agency - that urge to take
meaningful action and see the immediate results of our decisions.
So let’s go explore some of the amazing mazes that people have made in real life starting
with the Largest Corn Maze in the world.
When this maze took the Guinness Book of World Records title it was only 40 acres.
Now this 60 acre corn maze at Coolpatch Pumpkins in California takes up as much area as half
of Vatican City.
Or you can go to Hawaii for the largest hedge maze.
The Pineapple Garden Maze at the Dole Pineapple Plantation is about the size of 2.5 American
Football Fields and the length of the path is almost 2.5 miles.
And hedge mazes have been around for awhile.
They started popping up in the 16th century across Europe.
In W.H. Matthews book ‘Mazes & Labyrinths” he mentions how hedge mazes were built for
the rich and used for amusement.
In particular he describes one made for King Louis XIV that contained 39 fountain sculptures
which required 14 water wheels to pump the water.
In 1778 it was destroyed because it cost too much to maintain.
At over 325 years old, the Hampton Court Maze is thought to be the oldest surviving hedge
maze and you can still explore its paths if you find yourself in London.
But not all mazes need to be corn or hedges: there are ones made out of ice, cellophane,
mirrors, 250,000 books, ones that are pitch black, windows screen savers or they can be
drawn.
A janitor in Japan spent 7 years making one of the most intricate hand drawn mazes.
His daughter found it 30 years later in the attic and you can purchase a print of it if
you want to solve it.
Or you can solve the largest maze ever right now.
Walter Pullen, who we featured before in a DONG, has a website dedicated entirely to
mazes.
He includes resources and links so you can start constructing your own.
He also has the world’s largest maze, a 127mb image that has over 27 million dead
ends.
But none of these mazes will keep you trapped forever….
Underneath Odessa, Ukraine is a massive network of catacombs that were originally limestone
mines.
Nobody knows the exact total size but it is estimated to be at least 1,500 miles, is multilevel
and has over 1000 entrances.
Many people have gone into that labyrinth and never come out.
One of the most well known was a girl on New Years who got lost and it took two years to
find her body.
The reason Theseus was able to escape Daedalus’s labyrinth was because he used a ball of thread
to mark his path and find his way back.
Mazes are there to confuse us, to frustrate us, and to amaze us.
But Mazes are also used to help navigate our mind.
For over a hundred years scientists have been putting mice and rats in mazes in an effort
to understand spatial learning and memory formation in the brain.
Richard Morris, a cognitive neuroscientist, created the Morris Water Maze, one of the
most widely used.
Researchers put mice into cloudy water that has a platform hidden somewhere under the
surface.
The maze tests the different effects on brain damage, functions of particular genes and
on the effectiveness of new types of alzheimers medication.
Molecular biologist David Tank made a Virtual Reality maze that clamps the mouse’s head
in place and has it run on an air supported styrofoam sphere.
With an implanted cranial window in it’s head, Tank can see the neuron’s activity
during the Virtual maze run - allowing us to potentially understand how our brains function
when it comes to making cognitive maps and how our memory degrades.
Mazes and labyrinths have continued for millennia across multiple cultures and are one of the
most fundamental games we have, so it’s only natural that they would be the basis
for the video games we play today.
They push us to try new paths, take a new direction, and continue until we succeed.
And, as always, thanks for watching.