Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Frye. This is part two of our
Speaker 2: latest installment of Unearthed, talking about things literally and figuratively
Speaker 2: discovered or unearthed over the last few months. As always,
Speaker 2: there's a little hodgepodge of stuff at the beginning that
Speaker 2: didn't quite fit into a category. I like to try
Speaker 2: to categorize things so that it's more understandable for all
Speaker 2: of you listening at home. But there's always a few things,
Speaker 2: so I'm like, this is cool and it doesn't fit
Speaker 2: in a group.
Speaker 1: So starting with the hodgepodge, A jar found in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty three at West Lodge, England, has long been believed
Speaker 1: to be a cremation vessel. It contained cremated remains, so
Speaker 1: that did not seem like much of a stretch. Its
Speaker 1: exterior is decorated with scenes of a gladiatorial battle, including
Speaker 1: an inscription saying that depicted were Memnon and Valentinis. According
Speaker 1: to the inscription, it commemorated Memnon's ninth victory and Valentinus
Speaker 1: was from the Roman army, so.
Speaker 2: For a long time, people thought that the base piece
Speaker 2: with its depiction of these gladiators, was a mass produced piece,
Speaker 2: and that that inscription was added later on. So somebody
Speaker 2: had taken like a mass produced piece of jar work
Speaker 2: and had inscribed it to be more specific later. But
Speaker 2: more recent study has revealed that the inscription was actually
Speaker 2: put on there before the vessel was fired, so when
Speaker 2: it was made, the names were an intentional part of
Speaker 2: the design, not something that somebody else added on afterward.
Speaker 2: It's also a pretty high quality piece, so it's possible
Speaker 2: that somebody intentionally commissioned it and that it wasn't sort
Speaker 2: of like a mass produced almost souvenir. Researchers also believe
Speaker 2: that this piece might depict an actual gladiatorial match that
Speaker 2: happened in Britain, which if so, would make it an
Speaker 2: extremely rare piece of evidence that there were gladiatorial bouts
Speaker 2: taking place in Britain during that time. The connection between
Speaker 2: the vessel and the remains of the person inside is
Speaker 2: not entirely clear. There's some speculation that it was someone
Speaker 2: who was connected to one or both of the gladiators
Speaker 2: in some way, or maybe just somebody who really liked
Speaker 2: gladiator fights. I mean, I can imagine so many scenarios. Yeah,
Speaker 2: even down to just we needed something to put the
Speaker 2: remains in.
Speaker 1: I mean I have the thing of like that would
Speaker 1: be a great peturn, right, just suing them after gladiators.
Speaker 2: But and I don't know offhand whether they conclusively know
Speaker 2: that these are human cremated remains. I didn't look into that,
Speaker 2: But now we will move on nextsts the Max Plank
Speaker 2: Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have figured out how to extract
Speaker 2: DNA from objects, not from the object themselves, but from
Speaker 2: evidence that was left behind by people who used or
Speaker 2: wore the objects, so kind of like in modern forensic
Speaker 2: science getting contact DNA off of surfaces during a criminal investigation.
Speaker 2: In this case, though, this is a twenty thousand year
Speaker 2: old pendant made from an elk's tooth that was found
Speaker 2: in Siberia's Denisova Cave. Based on this DNA analysis, the
Speaker 2: last person to handle this pendant was a woman who
Speaker 2: was closely related to a group of hunter gatherers who
Speaker 2: lived near Lake by Kal, more than a thousand miles
Speaker 2: to the east of the cave. So if all that
Speaker 2: is correct, we don't really know how or whether the
Speaker 2: pendant or the person who handled it last traveled that
Speaker 2: whole distance. And we also really don't know if this
Speaker 2: is the DNA of the person who made the pendant
Speaker 2: or someone who wore it, or both. This research was
Speaker 2: only possible because of how this pendant had been collected
Speaker 2: and handled. Archaeologists who first excavated it had been wearing coveralls, masks,
Speaker 2: and gloves, and then the research was carried out in
Speaker 2: a clean room environment so researchers would not contaminate the
Speaker 2: piece with their own DNA. The DNA extraction also involves
Speaker 2: submerging the object in a sodium phosphate solution and then
Speaker 2: slowly heating it to about one hundred and ninety four
Speaker 2: degrees fahrenheit, So this can only be done on objects
Speaker 2: that would not be harmed by this kind of intense process. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it sounded to me as though the solution is pretty mild,
Speaker 2: but it's still like the heat part is different. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And lastly, we have a couple of fines that are
Speaker 2: being described as the stone hinge of whatever place. First,
Speaker 2: a four thousand year old religious site in the Netherlands
Speaker 2: includes multiple burial mounds, and one of those mounds incorporated
Speaker 2: passages that the sun would shine through on the longest
Speaker 2: and shortest days of the year. Work at that site,
Speaker 2: nicknamed the Stonehenge of the Netherlands, started in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: And then there is the Arabian Stonehenge being studied in Oman.
Speaker 2: This site dates back to about two thousand years ago
Speaker 2: and it includes clusters of triliths that are made each
Speaker 2: of three standing stones. Stonehenge is really not the most
Speaker 2: apt comparison for either of these, though. While both Stonehenge
Speaker 2: and the burial mounds in the Netherlands have elements that
Speaker 2: line up with astronomical events, there's no mention of standing
Speaker 2: stones at the site in the Netherlands. The only structures
Speaker 2: known to have been there were made of wood and
Speaker 2: those no longer survive. And while the triliths in Oman
Speaker 2: are standing, the stones are described as being fifty to
Speaker 2: eighty centimeters tall, or between one point six and two
Speaker 2: point six feet. That is much smaller than the stones
Speaker 2: used as Stonehenge. Yeah. I get that people want to
Speaker 2: make discoveries sort of approachable to people, but as I
Speaker 2: was reading this, I was like, neither of these are
Speaker 2: really they're their own thing. They we don't need to
Speaker 2: compare them to Stonehenge. I feel like stone Hinge becomes
Speaker 2: the shorthand for a lot of folks of like it's
Speaker 2: a big structured layout of some stuff that may have
Speaker 2: meaning and is very old, which is pretty vague in
Speaker 2: general in terms of like a thing to compare stuff to.
Speaker 2: So moving on to more concrete categories next, we have
Speaker 2: some things that are related to medicine. Research published in
Speaker 2: the journal Antiquity in April details the results of archaeological
Speaker 2: work out of sixteenth century medical waste jump. Most of
Speaker 2: the reporting is describing this dump as being in the
Speaker 2: Forum of Caesar in the Roman Forum. Okay, that's all true,
Speaker 2: but it is not from ancient Rome. It is from
Speaker 2: much later, when the Baker's Guild was operating a hospital
Speaker 2: in this same space. This excavation took place in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one and the team found a lot of ordinary
Speaker 2: items that would have been used in medical care and
Speaker 2: for patients dated day needs at the hospital. Like it
Speaker 2: appears that each patient was given their own jug, drinking
Speaker 2: glass and bowl when they were admitted, so that people
Speaker 2: were not eating and drinking after one another. That makes
Speaker 2: all the sense on earth. Yeah, More than half of
Speaker 2: the glass vessels that were recovered from this dump, though,
Speaker 2: were urine flasks, not just for patients to relieve their bladders,
Speaker 2: but for doctors to study their urine as a diagnostic
Speaker 2: tool in other contacts. These flasks can actually be pretty
Speaker 2: difficult to identify because they are shaped very similarly to
Speaker 2: oil lamps, but their purpose becomes a lot clearer when
Speaker 2: there are this many of them and a place that
Speaker 2: we know was a hospital. Other items that were found
Speaker 2: in the dump also included clamped cisterns that would have
Speaker 2: been used to burn items from homes where somebody had
Speaker 2: contracted plague. Moving on, archaeologists in central Hungary have found
Speaker 2: the gravesite of a man who was buried along with
Speaker 2: a set of high quality surgical tools that date back
Speaker 2: to the first century. These were Roman surgical instruments, including
Speaker 2: things like forceps, needles, tweezers, and scalpels, which were packed
Speaker 2: together in two wooden chests and buried at the man's feet.
Speaker 2: There was also a grinding stone, possibly used for preparing medicines,
Speaker 2: and that was placed at the man's knees, so this
Speaker 2: appears to be a complete surgical kit. Very finely made
Speaker 2: with silver inlay on some of the handles. It's rare
Speaker 2: to find a full kit like this at all, but
Speaker 2: this one's particularly unusual because of how far this was from.
Speaker 2: Like the central areas of the Roman Empire, it's actually
Speaker 2: not totally clear whether this area was under Roman control
Speaker 2: by the first century. It's possible that this belonged to
Speaker 2: somebody who had traveled from a more central part of
Speaker 2: the empire to treat a prominent person, or maybe had
Speaker 2: been accompanying a military unit. There are some plans for
Speaker 2: future research into this grave site and the person's remains
Speaker 2: that might reveal more about this person, where they were from.
Speaker 2: And In our last medical find, divers in Dry Tortuga's
Speaker 2: National Park, which is about seventy miles off the coast
Speaker 2: of Key West, Florida, have found a nineteenth century quarantine
Speaker 2: hospital on a now submerged island. This hospital was used
Speaker 2: to house and treat people who contracted yellow fever. The
Speaker 2: team also found one grave marker from Fort Jefferson Post Cemetery,
Speaker 2: which was mainly used for soldiers and prisoners at Fort Jefferson,
Speaker 2: but was also home to sums civilian burials. Although only
Speaker 2: one marker was found in this survey. Dozens of people
Speaker 2: are known to have been interred there. So this quarantine
Speaker 2: hospital was established by the US Marine Hospital Service in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety and it operated until nineteen hundred. Before that point,
Speaker 2: there had been a lot of other smaller, sometimes temporary
Speaker 2: quarantine facilities for yellow fever patients as well as people
Speaker 2: who contracted other diseases on islands all around the Keys.
Speaker 2: That Island in Key West is one of several in
Speaker 2: the area that are now submerged due to sea level rise, erosion,
Speaker 2: and the effects of major storms. So we're following that
Speaker 2: with a few.
Speaker 1: Other finds that are related to climate and climate change. First,
Speaker 1: we've covered research involving tree rings on various episodes, including
Speaker 1: studies of trees themselves and of items made from wood,
Speaker 1: including timber frames and shipholes. This time the research is
Speaker 1: on wooden labels that were affixed to mummies when Egypt
Speaker 1: was under the control of the Roman Empire. So these
Speaker 1: wooden labels were a way to prevent mix ups with
Speaker 1: people's remains, since the remains were no longer identifiable by
Speaker 1: things like what a person looked like once they had
Speaker 1: been embalmed and wrapped. The labels would include a person's name,
Speaker 1: the names of their parents, sometimes some other writing, like
Speaker 1: maybe a religious message. There are thousands of these labels
Speaker 1: and museums around the world, made from the wood of
Speaker 1: different types of trees, and taken together, they can provide
Speaker 1: an account of how the climate fluctuated during the period
Speaker 1: that they were used. This study looked at three hundred labels,
Speaker 1: finding places where the tree rings overlapped on two different labels.
Speaker 1: The trees used to make these labels were from the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean modern day Lebanon and the region around the mouth
Speaker 1: of the Nile River, and there is so much information
Speaker 1: that can be gleaned from them, including about long distance
Speaker 1: trading networks, shifts in the climate, and the people whose
Speaker 1: remains bore these labels. For example, in some cases two
Speaker 1: labels were made from the same piece of wood, and
Speaker 1: in some cases both of them seem to have been
Speaker 1: made at the same time for people who were part
Speaker 1: of the same family. This suggests that multiple people from
Speaker 1: that family died at the same time. The Three Starts
Speaker 1: was actually published in the International Journal of Wood Culture
Speaker 1: in January, but more general publications didn't really start reporting
Speaker 1: on it until the spring. Next, research on a thousand
Speaker 1: year old earthen wall in northwestern Peru suggests that it
Speaker 1: was built as protection from flooding due to the recurring
Speaker 1: climate pattern known as El Nino. This wall is about
Speaker 1: six miles or ten kilometers long and eight feet or
Speaker 1: two point five meters high. It's known as Maria la Cumbre,
Speaker 1: and before this point many researchers had concluded that it
Speaker 1: was built by the Chimu people as a defense against
Speaker 1: invasions by the Inca, But new research has found that
Speaker 1: there are layers and layers of flood sediment only on
Speaker 1: one side of the wall, leaving the canals and farmlands
Speaker 1: on the other side unaffected by flooding. This wall also
Speaker 1: crosses two dry riverbeds that regularly flood during that Alnino cycle.
Speaker 1: And lastly, archaeologists and other researchers in Iraq are reporting
Speaker 1: that archaeological sites there are being buried and otherwise damaged
Speaker 1: by sandstorms, which are becoming larger, more frequent, and more
Speaker 1: destructive due to global warming. This includes the reburial of
Speaker 1: sites that had previously been excavated, including Sumerian ruins of
Speaker 1: um Al al Karibe. In addition, to the reburial of
Speaker 1: archaeological sites. Sandstorms are essentially sand blasting exposed surfaces. The
Speaker 1: effects of climate change in a rack are also compounded
Speaker 1: by a number of other factors, including the dam of
Speaker 1: rivers both within and outside of a rock, and the
Speaker 1: abandonment of farms as irrigation becomes unsustainable. This is all,
Speaker 1: of course, very complicated. The irrigation practices themselves are often wasteful,
Speaker 1: but without the crops being grown, there isn't enough plant
Speaker 1: life to help keep the soil in place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the roots help stabilize the soil, and when they're
Speaker 2: not there anymore, even though keeping them watered was often
Speaker 2: like not efficient in terms of water use. Like without
Speaker 2: their roots, the soils starts to erode and turn into sandstorms.
Speaker 2: Of course, the Rock is not the only nation to
Speaker 2: be facing these kinds of issues. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of other, you know, global issues at play, but according
Speaker 2: to the United Nations, it's one of the five countries
Speaker 2: most impacted by some of the effects of climate change,
Speaker 2: including drought. We are going to cover repatriations in just
Speaker 2: a moment, but first we will hear from the sponsors
Speaker 2: that keep stuff you missed in history class going as
Speaker 2: Holly mentioned, now we are going to talk about some repatriations.
Speaker 2: In July of twenty twenty two, we talked about an
Speaker 2: ancient Roman bust that Laura Young, proprietor of Temple of Vintage,
Speaker 2: founded a goodwill in Austin, Texas. This bust has been
Speaker 2: on display at the San Antonio Museum of Art for
Speaker 2: about a year, but now it is being returned not
Speaker 2: to Italy but to the replica Pompeiian Villa, built by
Speaker 2: King Lidvig, the First of Bavaria in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 2: That replica is known as the Pompianum. I think I'm
Speaker 2: saying that right. The Pompianum was the last known home
Speaker 2: of this bust. It was part of the collection of
Speaker 2: King Lidvig the First. The plan is to either have
Speaker 2: it displayed there or to place it in the collection
Speaker 2: of the Glyptotech, which is the museum in Munich that
Speaker 2: holds the rest of King Ledwig's the First's collection.
Speaker 1: The Manhattan Antiquities Trafficking Unit is returning an Olmec sculpture
Speaker 1: to Mexico. This piece represents an earth monster with a
Speaker 1: very large open mouth to grant access to the Underworld.
Speaker 1: It likely dates back to some time between eight hundred
Speaker 1: and four hundred BCE. It is not clear when or
Speaker 1: how this piece was removed from Mexico, but it was
Speaker 1: documented as being in the United States by nineteen sixty eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if monster is absolutely the best word
Speaker 1: for what this being was, but that is how it
Speaker 1: has been translated from every Spanish language source that I found. Next,
Speaker 1: a number of repatriation announcements that came out this spring
Speaker 1: were all connected to the collection of Shelby White, who's
Speaker 1: the trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. White and
Speaker 1: her late husband, Leon Levy amassed a just huge collection
Speaker 1: of art and antiquity and then donated some of that
Speaker 1: collection or loaned it to museums. But this collection has
Speaker 1: come under a lot of scrutiny in more recent years
Speaker 1: because of a lot of the items in it didn't
Speaker 1: have a clear providence, and investigators have concluded that a
Speaker 1: number of them had been looted or stolen. The Manhattan
Speaker 1: District Attorney's Office issued search warrants in this matter in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and then over the course of an investigation,
Speaker 1: authorities seized eighty nine items from ten different countries, estimated
Speaker 1: to be worth roughly sixty nine million dollars. Several items
Speaker 1: were returned to their countries of origin this spring, including
Speaker 1: two alabaster figures and a silver vessel that were returned
Speaker 1: to Yemen, two seven century stone carvings that were returned
Speaker 1: to China, a Sumerian alabaster bull that was returned to
Speaker 1: a rock and other items that were included along with
Speaker 1: others not connected to white that were returned to Turkya.
Speaker 2: The Kunstastoris Museum in Austria has announced plans to return
Speaker 2: two small pieces that are part of the Parthenon marbles
Speaker 2: to Greece. I have some questions about this particular announcement
Speaker 2: because reports quote Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Shallenberg is saying
Speaker 2: that the museum was in discussion for quote mutual loans
Speaker 2: with the Acropolis Museum in Greece. But Greek authorities have
Speaker 2: reportedly rejected previously proposed loans from other institutions because in
Speaker 2: their view, these items already belonged to Greece, so whoever
Speaker 2: outside of Greece is proposing to loan them back to
Speaker 2: Greece like doesn't actually have the authority to do so.
Speaker 2: These pieces are two pretty small fragments. They're the only
Speaker 2: items from the Parthenon that are currently in this museum's collection.
Speaker 2: Authorities in Italy have returned a second century Feuderary stelay
Speaker 2: known as Bride of the Desert to Turkya. The stele
Speaker 2: had illegally excavated and it was sold in France before
Speaker 2: making its way to a private home in Italy. Next,
Speaker 2: the painting Madonna and Child by Italian Baroque painter Alessandro
Speaker 2: Turci was slated to be sold at auction in Tokyo,
Speaker 2: but the auction was canceled when Polish officials reported that
Speaker 2: this piece had been looted by the Nazis during World
Speaker 2: War II. The painting seller, who remained anonymous, agreed to
Speaker 2: return it to Poland at no cost.
Speaker 1: This painting was handed over to Polish officials at the
Speaker 1: Polish Embassy in Tokyo in May. This is the first
Speaker 1: work to have been looted by the Nazis during World
Speaker 1: War II that was returned to Poland from Japan. It's
Speaker 1: planned for the painting to be placed in a public
Speaker 1: museum next.
Speaker 2: Authorities in Germany have returned two sacred masks to the
Speaker 2: indigenous Kogi people in Colombia. These masks had been part
Speaker 2: of a collection in the Berlin Ethnologi Museum. While these
Speaker 2: have been returned, the museum also routinely treated the masks
Speaker 2: with insecticides while they were in their collection to try
Speaker 2: to prevent insect infestation, and these insecticides could be toxic
Speaker 2: to people as well. There are concerns about whether they
Speaker 2: can actually be handled safely or used for the religious
Speaker 2: purposes that they were made for back in the fifteenth century.
Speaker 2: And it was the intent of the people being returned
Speaker 2: to that they would be restored to their original ceremonial use.
Speaker 1: And lastly, the National Museum of Denmark is donating a
Speaker 1: truly beautiful feather cape to the National Museum of Brazil.
Speaker 1: You might recall that the National Museum of Brazil burned
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen and lost almost its entire collection. The
Speaker 1: museum is currently working to rebuild that collection and collaboration
Speaker 1: with the indigenous peoples of Brazil as well as foreign museums.
Speaker 2: So this cape is at least three hundred years old
Speaker 2: and it was made by that Tupanaba people. It's one
Speaker 2: of only eleven known pieces like this to still exist,
Speaker 2: and before this donation, all of them were in European museums,
Speaker 2: nearly half of them in museums in Denmark. This specific cape,
Speaker 2: which again it's just it's gorgeous, it has generally agreed
Speaker 2: to be the best preserved of all of these. It
Speaker 2: was originally used for religious and ceremonial purposes, and in
Speaker 2: a statement Tupanaba Babao, who is the tribe's chief, described
Speaker 2: the return as the returning of an ancestor.
Speaker 1: Moving on to some books and letters. While working on
Speaker 1: a new biography of Martin Luther King, Junior, Jonathan Eig
Speaker 1: found evidence that a widely repeated quote from King about
Speaker 1: Malcolm X may have been partially fabricated. The quote came
Speaker 1: from an interview conducted by Alex Haley for the January
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five edition of Playboy magazine as print. When
Speaker 1: asked to comment on Malcolm X, King said, in part
Speaker 1: quote and in his litany of articulating the despair of
Speaker 1: the Negro without offering any positive creative alternative, I feel
Speaker 1: that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery,
Speaker 1: demagogic oratory in the black ghettos. Urging negroes to arm
Speaker 1: themselves and prepare to engage in violence as he has done,
Speaker 1: can reap nothing but grief. But there is a typed
Speaker 1: transcript of the recording of this interview, which was prepared
Speaker 1: by a secretariat, appears at the recording itself doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: In that type transcript, King's response is nothing like that
Speaker 1: printed quote. He does still criticize Malcolm X, but the criticisms.
Speaker 2: Are a lot more moderate. The quote from the transcript
Speaker 2: ends quote, but I know that I have so often
Speaker 2: felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence,
Speaker 2: because I don't think that violence can solve our problem.
Speaker 2: And in his life litany of expressing the despair of
Speaker 2: the negro without offering a positive creative approach, I think
Speaker 2: that he falls into a rut.
Speaker 1: Sometimes some of that printed interview seems like a mish
Speaker 1: mash of things King did say, But in other parts
Speaker 1: of the interview, in response to other questions that didn't
Speaker 1: directly reference Malcolm X, other parts of that published quote
Speaker 1: don't align with anything that appears in the transcript at all. So,
Speaker 1: of course, Alex Haley is best known for his books
Speaker 1: Roots and the Autobiography of Malcolm X, as Told to
Speaker 1: Alex Haley. Roots was a best seller, and it won
Speaker 1: the Pulitzer Prize was adapted into a widely known mini series.
Speaker 1: But then Haley also faced allegations of both plagiarism and
Speaker 1: historical inaccuracy. He settled a plagiarism lawsuit in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: And so this discovery has led to calls for like
Speaker 1: a closer examination of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and
Speaker 1: questions about whether everything that's in it was reported accurately.
Speaker 1: Moving On. A manuscript known as the Codex Sassoon is
Speaker 1: one of the oldest most complete copies of the Hebrew
Speaker 1: Bible in existence, dating back to some time between the
Speaker 1: years eight eighty and nine sixty. It was named for
Speaker 1: David Solomon Sassoon, who purchased it in nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: In May, this manuscript was sold at auction at Sotheby's
Speaker 1: for thirty eight million dollars. The buyer was Alfred H.
Speaker 1: Moses On, behalf of the American Friends of Anu, who
Speaker 1: then donated the codex to the A and U Museum
Speaker 1: of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. It had been
Speaker 1: on exhibit there prior to this auction.
Speaker 2: Next, research into a fifteenth century manuscript suggests that it
Speaker 2: was the work of a traveling menstrul basically writing out
Speaker 2: his songs and his jokes for an act, probably a
Speaker 2: man don't actually really know, though. This work is a copy.
Speaker 2: According to a note that is written inside of it,
Speaker 2: this copy of made by Richard Heey because he was
Speaker 2: at a feast that he didn't have a drink, which
Speaker 2: I find hilarious. He was a tutor, not a performer,
Speaker 2: so this was definitely not his own work. This manuscript
Speaker 2: has been studied previously, but most of that earlier research
Speaker 2: was looking at how the booklet was made, not at
Speaker 2: the actual contents of it. It includes a lot of nonsense. First,
Speaker 2: there's a mock sermon. There's also a burlesque romance called
Speaker 2: the Hunting of the Hair, in which there is a
Speaker 2: bloodthirsty rabbit, which is actually kind of a common theme
Speaker 2: in literature of this era, but a lot of people
Speaker 2: have compared it to Monty Python.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, bugs Bunny, that sure certainly top
Speaker 1: of mind. The scholar who looked at all of this,
Speaker 1: doctor James Wade, thinks that the original work was something
Speaker 1: a performer wrote out because they were creating their own
Speaker 1: original material but not really using a lot of the tricks.
Speaker 1: It would make it easier to remember during a live performance,
Speaker 1: like repeated lines or verses. As far as we know,
Speaker 1: that original work is lost, but this copy provides a
Speaker 1: glimpse of what comedy was like in the time and
Speaker 1: on our last books and letters find. A team of
Speaker 1: experts has confirmed that a book of hours or a
Speaker 1: prayer book in the collection of Wren Library at Trinity College,
Speaker 1: Cambridge belonged to Henry the Eights minister Thomas Cromwell, not
Speaker 1: just that it's specifically a prayer book shown in a
Speaker 1: portrait of Cromwell that was made by court painter Hans Holbein.
Speaker 1: Alison Palmer, curator at Heaver Castle, and Kate McCaffrey, assistant curator,
Speaker 1: were both involved in this find. Heaver Castle was Anne
Speaker 1: Boleyn's childhood home and its collection included a book of
Speaker 1: Hours that belonged to her, which was probably printed in
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty seven by French printer Germain Hadua. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, McCaffrey had realized that there was another copy
Speaker 1: of this fifteen twenty seven book in the collection of
Speaker 1: the Morgan Library, that one belonging to Throne of Aragon.
Speaker 1: An inscription in the book names it as Catherine, so
Speaker 1: that part was already known. What McCaffrey realized was that
Speaker 1: it and Anne Boleyn's book were two different copies of
Speaker 1: the same book of ours. So after realizing that there
Speaker 1: was a third possible copy of this same book in
Speaker 1: the collection at Trinity College, McCaffrey arranged a visit and
Speaker 1: Palmer recognized the books ornate binding as the same that
Speaker 1: was as what's shown in this portrait of Thomas Cromwell.
Speaker 1: The team then traced the book's provenance, which at that
Speaker 1: point wasn't that well documented, and they traced it back
Speaker 1: to Cromwell. The book is temporarily on display at Heaver Castle,
Speaker 1: which is believed to be the first time that it's
Speaker 1: been loaned from the Trinity College library since it was
Speaker 1: donated to the college in sixteen sixty.
Speaker 2: I love that little detail. We'll take a little sponsor break,
Speaker 2: and then we have a few more things before we
Speaker 2: close out. Next we have a few works of religious artwork.
Speaker 2: Archaeologists in Mexico doing rescue work ahead of a new
Speaker 2: train route have found a stone statue of the Maya
Speaker 2: god Kuwil. This is the first known sculpture representing this
Speaker 2: deity found in Mexico, although there are three other sculptures
Speaker 2: in Guatemala. There are more like two dimensional representations, but
Speaker 2: sculptures are actually pretty rare. This train route has come
Speaker 2: up on unearthed previously. It's become known as the Maya Train,
Speaker 2: and it's going to connect multiple sites on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Speaker 2: This is a controversial project, one that may bring tourists
Speaker 2: and researchers from coastal areas to historic and cultural sites
Speaker 2: farther inland, but which also has serious environmental and archaeological impacts.
Speaker 2: There are plans to establish a museum to house artifacts
Speaker 2: that have been unearth during its construction, but there are
Speaker 2: also concerns that the construction is just too destructive for
Speaker 2: any museum to possibly offset. Currently, the train is scheduled
Speaker 2: to begin running in September next Archaeologists in Sudan found
Speaker 2: an opening in the floor of a home of Old Dongola,
Speaker 2: which is a town that was built starting in the
Speaker 2: fourth century. It was known as Tungul in old Nubian.
Speaker 2: This is town is abandoned now. It was largely abandoned
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century after its population moved to what's
Speaker 2: now known as just Dongola. This opening led to a
Speaker 2: small chamber, and in that chamber, the walls were covered
Speaker 2: in Nubian art, including one artwork depicting a Nubian king
Speaker 2: in the company of Jesus Christ and the archangel Michael.
Speaker 1: There is a lot that's not yet known about this discovery.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists working on the project have described this painting as
Speaker 1: not typical of how Nubian rulers were normally depicted, and
Speaker 1: there are also questions about the chamber where this artwork
Speaker 1: was found, part of a complex of very small spaces
Speaker 1: that are almost like crypt but would have been at
Speaker 1: ground level.
Speaker 2: Next, an elephant statue unearthed in India is being described
Speaker 2: as one of the oldest of its kind. It is
Speaker 2: a Buddhist statue. It probably dates back to the third
Speaker 2: century BCE. At that point, the population of the area
Speaker 2: where it was found was predominantly Buddhist. It's about three
Speaker 2: feet or a meter tall, and other finds in the
Speaker 2: area also include parts of a Buddhist temple Elephants are
Speaker 2: a common motif in Buddhist art, linked to a story
Speaker 2: that the Buddhists mother had a dream of a white
Speaker 2: elephant that entered her side when she conceived him. And
Speaker 2: our last find of religious artwork shows how globally connected
Speaker 2: the ancient world could be. Thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists have found a statue of the Buddha that dates
Speaker 1: back to between the years ninety and one. It was
Speaker 1: found in the ancient Egyptian port city of Baroniki on
Speaker 1: the Red Sea. Archaeologists believed that it belonged to someone
Speaker 1: from South Asia, but that it may have been made
Speaker 1: locally in Baroniki rather than brought with that person. An
Speaker 1: inscription in Sanskrit has been found in Baroniki as well.
Speaker 2: At this point when this was likely made, Egypt was
Speaker 2: under control of the Roman Empire, and we already knew
Speaker 2: that Egypt was trading with the Indian subcontinent. But these
Speaker 2: finds suggest that there may have been an established community
Speaker 2: of people from South Asia, possibly merchants, living in Egypt
Speaker 2: during this period, in addition to the merchants who were
Speaker 2: passing through the area. Now we're going to move on
Speaker 2: to some weapons and tool finds. Archaeologists in Germany have
Speaker 2: unearthed an incredibly well preserved Bronze age sword, one described
Speaker 2: as being in such exceptional condition that it almost shines.
Speaker 2: The sword was balanced in a way that would have
Speaker 2: made it usable as a weapon, but it doesn't show
Speaker 2: any evidence of having been used that way. There is
Speaker 2: some disagreement about whether bronze swords in general would have
Speaker 2: been used as weapons, since bronze is a pretty soft material.
Speaker 2: This sword was found alongside the remains of three people
Speaker 2: who seem to have been buried at about the same time,
Speaker 2: but it isn't clear how they're connected to one another,
Speaker 2: or how any of them might be connected to the sword. Next,
Speaker 2: an eight year old student in Norway found a neolithic
Speaker 2: dagger tucked in between some stones on a playground. She
Speaker 2: took this to her teacher. Teacher recognized it as something
Speaker 2: that had been maybe intentionally made it wasn't just a
Speaker 2: random cool rock, and contacted authorities to report a possible
Speaker 2: prehistoric find. The dagger is about three thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 2: years old, and it's made from flint, which is not
Speaker 2: a material that's naturally present in Norway, so it was
Speaker 2: likely imported from somewhere else, possibly Denmark. It's now being
Speaker 2: studied at the University Museum of Bergen. This is a
Speaker 2: really rare find and further archaeological work at the playground
Speaker 2: didn't find anything significant. Yeah, I'm not sure how it
Speaker 2: came to be there. Speaking of flint though, we've talked
Speaker 2: about flint tools on several installments of Unearthed, but something
Speaker 2: we've never really touched on, is that the process of
Speaker 2: making these tools, known as flint napping, could lead to
Speaker 2: serious injuries. Flint napping involves striking pieces of flint with
Speaker 2: tools to flake off pieces of it until it gets
Speaker 2: to the desired shape and sharpness. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of opportunities in this process for people to injure themselves.
Speaker 2: Research published in the journal American Antiquity surveyed one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy three modern flint nappers about their injuries and
Speaker 2: found that a lot of those injuries could be quite serious.
Speaker 2: Those one hundred seventy three flint nappers reported almost six
Speaker 2: high hundred and ninety injuries among them, with about sixty
Speaker 2: percent of those injuries happening to their fingers or hands,
Speaker 2: but respondents also described eye injuries and injuries to just
Speaker 2: about every other part of their bodies, including cuts that
Speaker 2: went all the way to the bone. So if ancient
Speaker 2: flint knappers saw similar rates of injury, that meant that
Speaker 2: making these tools came with the significant risk not just
Speaker 2: through the injuries themselves, but through the risk of infection.
Speaker 2: We're talking about a time when antibiotics were not as
Speaker 2: they are today in terms of treating and preventing infections.
Speaker 2: A paper in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology has offered
Speaker 2: a possible explanation for the use of some unusual prehistoric
Speaker 2: objects that were unearthed in France. They're shaped roughly like
Speaker 2: the Greek letter omega, They're made of antler or bone,
Speaker 2: and they're about the size that a person's finger could
Speaker 2: fit through the center. The hypothesis is that these are
Speaker 2: finger loops meant for use with spear throwers or dart throwers.
Speaker 2: To test this hypothesis, anthropologist Justin Garnett made replica loops
Speaker 2: from antler, bone and three D printed plastic, and then
Speaker 2: fitted these loops to reconstructed throwers, using them to launch darts.
Speaker 2: This is not the first time on the show that
Speaker 2: we have talked about testing hypothesis about these kinds of
Speaker 2: things by just making one and trying it out. This
Speaker 2: did seem to work, which may mean that this is correct,
Speaker 2: that these were for you somethings like spear throwers, and
Speaker 2: then that would mean that people have been using those
Speaker 2: kinds of items in Europe starting way earlier than was
Speaker 2: previously thought.
Speaker 1: And lastly for this section, archaeologists in eastern China have
Speaker 1: unearthed the four thousand year old ritual axe head, decorated
Speaker 1: on both sides with engravings of clouds, birds and tigers.
Speaker 1: Although other similar axes have previously been found with bird
Speaker 1: and cloud decorations, this is the first who have been
Speaker 1: found that was decorated with tigers. Speaking of birds, we
Speaker 1: will close out this installment of an Earth with a
Speaker 1: couple of fines just about birds. Researchers at an archaeological
Speaker 1: site on the eastern Mediterranean coast of the Levant found
Speaker 1: a collection of seven flutes that are roughly twelve thousand
Speaker 1: years old. The site where these were found had already
Speaker 1: been studied pretty extensively, but these flutes were made from
Speaker 1: bird bones and they were mixed in with a lot
Speaker 1: of other bird bones that had not been carved into anything.
Speaker 1: And these flutes are very small. The only one that's
Speaker 1: totally intact is only about two point six inches or
Speaker 1: sixty five millimeters long. Replicas of some of the flutes
Speaker 1: produced very high pitched sounds, and the researchers concluded that
Speaker 1: the Natufians who lived in the region at the time
Speaker 1: may have made these flutes to imitate bird calls. It's
Speaker 1: not no why, though ideas span from hunting to try
Speaker 1: to communicate with the birds for religious reasons.
Speaker 2: These are the oldest instruments known to have been made
Speaker 2: to imitate bird calls, if indeed that's what they were for,
Speaker 2: and the oldest known sound instruments from the Near East specifically,
Speaker 2: and in our last find for this unearthed archaeologists in
Speaker 2: Japan have found evidence that domesticated chickens.
Speaker 1: Were being bred there as early as the fourth century BCE.
Speaker 1: One challenge with this research is that the bones of
Speaker 1: juvenile chickens really resemble the bones of other related animals,
Speaker 1: including wild pheasants, that were known to live in Japan
Speaker 1: at the time. The team used a technique called zoo
Speaker 1: archaeology by mass spectrometry or zooms to conclusively determine whether
Speaker 1: some bones of juvenile birds were from a pheasant or
Speaker 1: a chicken, and they were chicken bones. So before this point,
Speaker 1: the only bones from this peer period that were conclusively
Speaker 1: shown to be chicken bones were from adult male birds,
Speaker 1: and that does not really answer the question of whether
Speaker 1: they were being intentionally bred. Professor Masaki Ada of Hokkaido
Speaker 1: University Museum describes this discovery as clear evidence of breeding
Speaker 1: at the earliest time that chickens could have been introduced
Speaker 1: into the Japanese archipelago. Pump pump bum unearthed for this quarter.
Speaker 2: Uh huh uh. I have a little listener mailbore we
Speaker 2: wrap up today. This is from Anna, and Anna's email
Speaker 2: is titled maps and Rabies, so of course that caught
Speaker 2: my attention. Hello, Holly and Tracy. My name is Anna
Speaker 2: and I'm a longtime listener of the podcast an occasional
Speaker 2: live show attender. I still chuckle at the small child
Speaker 2: during the Q and A session on emergency coffins, who asked,
Speaker 2: but why were the bodies moving around after they were
Speaker 2: dead in regards to corpse bloating. Anyways, I was inspired
Speaker 2: to write in after listening to some of the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two episodes I missed Rabi's and Mercader like like y'all.
Speaker 2: I also grew up with the mercader projection on the
Speaker 2: pull down map in school, and this podcast episode brought
Speaker 2: back such a distinct memory of the year we added
Speaker 2: a new map to the geography class. I must have
Speaker 2: been about second grade at the time, and for some
Speaker 2: reason I understood the concept behind a different map projection
Speaker 2: having to sacrifice accuracy on certain things. But I cannot,
Speaker 2: for the life of me figure out why North wasn't
Speaker 2: always up ah kid logic. At my pop Pop's house
Speaker 2: growing up, we also had one of those maps with
Speaker 2: both the USSR and China all in red. By the
Speaker 2: time the Soviet Union dissolved, I was still a baby,
Speaker 2: but I have fond memories of staring that at that
Speaker 2: map with him as a young kid and asking questions
Speaker 2: about all the countries. Incidentally, this this was the same
Speaker 2: pop Pop who put the fear of gotten to me
Speaker 2: about rabies when once I remarked on a squirrel I
Speaker 2: saw eating a nut in the park. Thanks for bringing
Speaker 2: back those memories, uh, And I'm enclosing some pictures of
Speaker 2: Gemma White and Meg Brown, my two lovely dogs who
Speaker 2: I'm usually walking when I'm listening to your podcast. I
Speaker 2: guess that could also be Gemma. I don't actually know
Speaker 2: that's from Anna with such cute dogs poppers goodness, oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, I love it. There's there's recently been another
Speaker 2: round of people on social media suddenly becoming aware that
Speaker 2: rabies is uh, almost all the time fatal whoops. So
Speaker 2: it was a weird coincidence that this this email, this
Speaker 2: emails actually from a couple of weeks ago, but suddenly,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, my various social feeds were people
Speaker 2: talking about rabies. Yes, rabies. If you are bitten by
Speaker 2: an animal that may have rabies, incredibly good idea to
Speaker 2: immediately seek some maybe not immediately like that exact, very
Speaker 2: promptly seek medical attention because once Raby's symptoms, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I would say immediately, yeah, I would do it immediately.
Speaker 2: But we talked about in the episode about rabies about
Speaker 2: how sometimes like the the emergency facility might not have
Speaker 2: the raby shots on hand, and if it's not that
Speaker 2: exact minute that it's probably still going to be okay.
Speaker 2: But yeah, once symptoms of rabies develop, the fatality rate
Speaker 2: is effectively one hundred percent the tiny number of people
Speaker 2: who have developed symptoms and survived. It's a tiny, tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny number, and the protocol that seems to have achieved
Speaker 2: that definitely does not work for everyone. So that's the rabies.
Speaker 2: PSA again, thank you so so much for sending this,
Speaker 2: this email and these great, great pictures.
Speaker 1: Anna.
Speaker 2: If you would like to send us a note about
Speaker 2: this or any other podcasts, we're at History Podcast at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com. We're all over social media. Ad missed
Speaker 2: in History. That's there. You'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
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Speaker 2: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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