Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: This is the.
Speaker 1: Second part of our Unearthed for the end of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and today we are going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the shipwrecks and the art and just so many
Speaker 1: things that are about animals. As is often the case,
Speaker 1: we will be starting off with some things that didn't
Speaker 1: really fit into categories, which I always call the potpourri.
Speaker 1: And if you are a regular listener to Unearthed, you
Speaker 1: might be thinking normally there's repatriations somewhere on the list.
Speaker 1: We aren't talking about them this time, and we will
Speaker 1: talk about why that is in the behind the scenes
Speaker 1: on Friday. So on to Pope Pourri renovations work at
Speaker 1: Saint George's Guildhall in kings Lynn unearthed floorboards dating back
Speaker 1: to the fifteenth century, meaning that they likely would have
Speaker 1: been in place when William Shakespeare is believed to have
Speaker 1: performed there in fifteen ninety two or fifteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: This is based on an account book from those years,
Speaker 1: which shows the Earl of Pembroke's Men being paid to
Speaker 1: perform in King's Lynn while the London theaters were closed
Speaker 1: because of plague. The Earl of Pembroke's Men performed some
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's plays, but it's not conclusively established whether he
Speaker 1: was with them at that time. So these boards were
Speaker 1: dated using tree ring analysis, and if that dating is correct,
Speaker 1: this may be the only surviving fifteenth century timber floor
Speaker 1: in all of England. A replacement floor had been installed
Speaker 1: over those original floorboards about seventy five years ago. Saint
Speaker 1: George's Guildhall is the oldest working theater in England, so
Speaker 1: even if Shakespeare himself did not actually perform on that
Speaker 1: original floor or the theater still has its own historic importance.
Speaker 1: Also in one of the funniest quotes in the research
Speaker 1: for this installment of Unearthed, Michael Dobson, director of the
Speaker 1: Shakespeare Institute in Stretford upon Avon, told The Times quote,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's hugely important unless you're a kind
Speaker 1: of fetishist who really thinks that having a piece of
Speaker 1: wood that has probably been touched by Shakespeare's foot is
Speaker 1: going to make an enormous difference to your understanding of
Speaker 1: the place, which.
Speaker 2: I rather doubt. I read that and I laughed out loud.
Speaker 1: I love him for this because it was my almost
Speaker 1: exact reaction when I heard this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like why though, why?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like kind of a cool little bit of
Speaker 1: trivia if Shakespeare did perform on this exact floor, but
Speaker 1: we don't actually know for sure, and also does it
Speaker 1: matter anyway. Next, archaeologists in northern Spain have found a
Speaker 1: Roman era sandal in a well, presumably lost by somebody
Speaker 1: who was cleaning that well about two thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: I can think of some other scenarios that would wind
Speaker 1: up with the sandal in the well, but like every
Speaker 1: article about this says somebody was cleaning it. This is
Speaker 1: one of only about twenty sandals that have been found
Speaker 1: from what was Roman Hispania. And in addition to that,
Speaker 1: it's really heavily decorated with this pattern of circles and
Speaker 1: ovals and other shapes. Like when I first saw a
Speaker 1: picture of it, I was like, I'm not, is this
Speaker 1: the sole of a modern shoe? Like I had a
Speaker 1: moment where I doubted what I was looking at because
Speaker 1: there was no oxygen at the bottom of the well.
Speaker 1: This sandal is very well preserved, and it was frozen
Speaker 1: so it could be you know, preserved in that state
Speaker 1: until it could go for actual cleaning and preservation. Once
Speaker 1: all of that's done, it is planned to be exhibited
Speaker 1: at the Archaeological Museum of Asturius. H potpourri is brief
Speaker 1: this time, and this is our last bit. Researchers have
Speaker 1: determined that a piece of iron found in a gravesite
Speaker 1: in Bavaria in twenty seventeen was a prosthetic hand. Archaeologists
Speaker 1: concluded that the person buried at this site was a
Speaker 1: man between the ages of thirty and fifty, and based
Speaker 1: on radiocarbon dating, he died sometime between fourteen fifty and
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty. X rays of his arm and hand suggest
Speaker 1: that his fingers may have been amputated and the bones
Speaker 1: of his thumb were still present. So this prosthesis had
Speaker 1: four slightly curved, immobile fingers. They were each made from
Speaker 1: sheet metal, and there were remnants of a gauze like
Speaker 1: fabric that suggested there was cushioning on the inside of it.
Speaker 1: This prosthesis was probably secured to his arm using straps,
Speaker 1: although the straps haven't survived.
Speaker 2: This is one of.
Speaker 1: About fifty prostheses that have been found in Central Europe
Speaker 1: dating back to the medieval and early modern period, and
Speaker 1: some of them, like this one, were sort of an
Speaker 1: immobile peace, but others were articulated and had various mechanical
Speaker 1: elements that could let a person do things like move
Speaker 1: the prosthetic fingers and hold objects with them. It's time
Speaker 1: for art, my favorite. A room that has recently opened
Speaker 1: to the public at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence,
Speaker 1: Italy is believed to be where Michelangelo hid after being
Speaker 1: sentenced to death by Pope Clement the seventh. The pope
Speaker 1: was part of the Medici family, which had been in
Speaker 1: control of Florence until being overthrown in a populist revolt
Speaker 1: in fifteen thirty seven. After the Medici's return to power,
Speaker 1: the Pope sentence Michelangelo to death because he had worked
Speaker 1: for the Republican government that had briefly displaced the Medicis.
Speaker 1: Michelangelo was in hiding for about two months until the
Speaker 1: pope lifted that death sentence. So this basilica is part
Speaker 1: of the Museum of the Medici Chapels and the space
Speaker 1: known as the Steanza Cigretta or the Secret Room, was
Speaker 1: discovered there in nineteen seventy five. Are Horror had been
Speaker 1: assigned to clean part of the walls with the hope
Speaker 1: that the space could be used to make a new
Speaker 1: visitor's entrance to Basilica, but it turned out that under
Speaker 1: the layers of plaster, the walls were just covered in sketches,
Speaker 1: and those sketches are believed to have been drawn by Michelangelo,
Speaker 1: although it is not conclusively proven that he is the
Speaker 1: person who drew them. This is a very small, narrow room,
Speaker 1: mostly built below street level, with only one small window.
Speaker 1: While it is open to the public, access is very limited.
Speaker 1: Only four visitors are allowed in at a time, can
Speaker 1: only stay for fifteen minutes, and then there's a forty
Speaker 1: five minute break to reduce how much the space is
Speaker 1: exposed to light, so that means that only about one
Speaker 1: hundred visitors can see this space each week next. According
Speaker 1: to research published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, an object
Speaker 1: shown in the painting at Tianchevelle Saint Stephen by Jean
Speaker 1: Fouquet maybe a prehistoric hand axe. This painting is part
Speaker 1: of the malundiptych that was commissioned by Ettien Chevalier, and
Speaker 1: it depicts him with his hands folded in prayer next
Speaker 1: to his patron saint. His patron saint is holding a
Speaker 1: copy of the New Testament with this object resting on the.
Speaker 2: Top of it.
Speaker 1: This object has usually before now been described as just
Speaker 1: something like a jagged stone, but Stephen Kangis, lecturer in
Speaker 1: the Department of Art History at Dartmouth, had for a
Speaker 1: long time thought it resembled a hand axe. He eventually
Speaker 1: discussed this with other professors and they collaborated with colleagues
Speaker 1: at the University of Cambridge to analyze the object shape, color,
Speaker 1: and flake scars, comparing that to stone tools known as
Speaker 1: Eshulian hand axes those were common about five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. They found that its shape and flake scars
Speaker 1: were similar to hand axes used in the region where
Speaker 1: the image was painted. Color was a little harder to determine,
Speaker 1: since pigments and varnishes used on the painting may not
Speaker 1: reflect the real object, but the amount of color variation
Speaker 1: in the image suggests that the artist was recreating the
Speaker 1: details of a real stone object. So for centuries hand
Speaker 1: axes and other flaked or ground prehistoric objects have been
Speaker 1: a source of fascination and study, although centuries ago people
Speaker 1: did not really have a sense of exactly what these were.
Speaker 2: Or how old they were.
Speaker 1: In Europe, this included folklore around the idea that these
Speaker 1: were thunder stones created in the sky by lightning strikes.
Speaker 1: The first written record of the term thunderstones, describing what
Speaker 1: was probably a prehistoric hand axe, dates back to the
Speaker 1: mid fifteen hundreds. This painting, though, was made in about
Speaker 1: fourteen fifty five, so if it really does depict a
Speaker 1: hand axe, this kind of pushes back the social history
Speaker 1: of these hand axes in Europe by about one hundred years.
Speaker 1: I want to develop a whole thor theory around this,
Speaker 1: but that's just sure. In our last art find, the
Speaker 1: UK National Trust restored four paintings by Joshua Reynolds in
Speaker 1: commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of his birth, and
Speaker 1: in his painting The Death of Cardinal Beaufort, painted in
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine, they uncovered a demon lake figure that
Speaker 1: had at some point been painted over. So this painting
Speaker 1: depicts a scene from Shakespeare's Henry the sixth part two,
Speaker 1: in which the King at the cardinal's deathbed says, quote
Speaker 1: all beat away the busy meddling fiend that lays strong
Speaker 1: siege onto this wretch's soul, and from his bosom purge
Speaker 1: this black despair. So this is read as something that
Speaker 1: was going on within the cardinal inner world, but Reynolds
Speaker 1: painted an actual fiend peering out from behind a curtain.
Speaker 1: This was incredibly controversial when the painting was first shown
Speaker 1: at the Shakespeare Gallery, which had also commissioned it. Basically,
Speaker 1: a lot of people thought Shakespeare's words had been figurative
Speaker 1: or metaphorical, and that Reynolds should have stuck with that,
Speaker 1: having you know, the maybe metaphorical anguish on his face,
Speaker 1: rather than depicting an actual devil in the painting. I
Speaker 1: love this literalist reading of so much drama about this
Speaker 1: fiend in the painting. So the fiend was ultimately painted over,
Speaker 1: and there was also an attempt to remove it from
Speaker 1: the printing plate for a second run of prints in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety two, after Reynolds had died. Removing the layers
Speaker 1: of paint and varnish obscuring the Fiend took restorers about
Speaker 1: six months yeah. I'm not sure whether Reynolds was pressured
Speaker 1: into painting it over or if somebody else did it
Speaker 1: after he died. That was not clear to me from
Speaker 1: the reporting on this. But anyway, that's the last of
Speaker 1: the art, and we will take a quick break and
Speaker 1: come back for animals. Now we have some animals, in fact,
Speaker 1: many animals. This whole section of the episode is just
Speaker 1: going to be animals. According to research published in the
Speaker 1: journal Environmental Archaeology, ancient Egypt may have had more types
Speaker 1: of venomous snakes than it does today. This came from
Speaker 1: an analysis of a medical treatise known as the Brooklyn Papyrus,
Speaker 1: which dates back to some time between six sixty and
Speaker 1: three thirty BCE. It is called the Brooklyn Papyrus because
Speaker 1: it was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: It lists thirty seven different species of venomous snakes, although
Speaker 1: the descriptions of thirteen of those have been lost, but
Speaker 1: modern Egypt has fewer venomous snake species than that. There
Speaker 1: are eight species that are capable of causing significant envenoming
Speaker 1: if they bite something, and then a few others can
Speaker 1: cause minor envenoming. One of the snakes was described as
Speaker 1: the great snake of a Pofis, Apofos being a deity
Speaker 1: that took the form of a serpent. This snake is
Speaker 1: described as having four fangs, which is not the case
Speaker 1: for any snake currently living in Egypt. The snake living
Speaker 1: closest to modern Egypt that does have four fangs is
Speaker 1: the Boomslang, which lives farther south in Africa. Its range
Speaker 1: starts about four hundred miles or six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: kilometers south of modern Egypt. So the basic idea here
Speaker 1: is that snakes that currently live in tropical Africa, including
Speaker 1: the Boomslang, may have been able to live in ancient Egypt,
Speaker 1: which was wetter and more humid than Egypt is to say.
Speaker 1: The team identified snakes that could plausibly have lived in
Speaker 1: this environment from thousands of years ago, and then they
Speaker 1: used niche modeling, which is also known as species distribution modeling,
Speaker 1: to try to predict where ten identified snake species might
Speaker 1: have lived around four thousand years ago, and then they
Speaker 1: also tested proposed identifications for some of the species that
Speaker 1: were described in the papyrus. According to their modeling, nine
Speaker 1: of the ten snakes that they examined could have lived
Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago. This was likeliest
Speaker 1: in the more southern and southeastern parts of the region
Speaker 1: and along the Nile Valley and the Red Sea coast.
Speaker 1: This included the boom slang and the puff adder, both
Speaker 1: of which aligned with descriptions of snakes from the Brooklyn Papyrus.
Speaker 1: And speaking of snakes in Egypt, archaeologists in Egypts have
Speaker 1: also found a burial chamber belonging to a scribe that
Speaker 1: was adorned with spell that were meant to ward off
Speaker 1: snake bites. So this chamber is roughly twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: years old. It belonged to a royal scribe who died
Speaker 1: at the age of about twenty five and these inscriptions,
Speaker 1: which are on the north wall, both described the snakes
Speaker 1: as protectors of the deceased and served to protect his
Speaker 1: mummy from bites. So I don't know if these were
Speaker 1: literal or figurative snakes, but they were there to protect him.
Speaker 1: But also they wanted to make sure that the snakes
Speaker 1: did not bite his mummy. This is they wanted to
Speaker 1: keep Indiana Jones out.
Speaker 2: That's what it was.
Speaker 1: Now we've got some studies about beavers. Beavers became extinct
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century and then were
Speaker 1: reintroduced in nineteen eighty eight, and their population has been
Speaker 1: growing there in recent years. And according to research published
Speaker 1: in the Holocene, beavers were a key part of the
Speaker 1: diets of prehistoric people in the Netherlands as well as
Speaker 1: other parts of northern Europe. They also played a major
Speaker 1: role in the ecosystems where they lived. According to this research,
Speaker 1: beavers were one of the most common mammals found at
Speaker 1: archaeological sites of hunter gatherer communities in the Netherlands. So
Speaker 1: in addition to using beavers for their meats and their
Speaker 1: pelts and teeth and bones, and for the glandular substance
Speaker 1: known as castorium, Mesolithic hunter gatherer peoples also benefited from
Speaker 1: the landscapes that beavers created with their lodges and dams.
Speaker 1: When the beavers daml water source, the resulting landscape is
Speaker 1: often home to other animals, including an abundance of fish
Speaker 1: and otters and waterfowl. It is possible, according to this research,
Speaker 1: that people specifically sought out places where beavers were living
Speaker 1: when they were deciding where to make their homes and
Speaker 1: we have another beaver find. Research in eastern Germany also
Speaker 1: shows that people were hunting beavers much earlier than previously thought,
Speaker 1: as long as four hundred thousand years ago. This comes
Speaker 1: from the careful examination of the remains of ninety four
Speaker 1: beavers using magnifying glasses and digital microscopes to look for
Speaker 1: evidence that they had been cut with stone tools. They
Speaker 1: found that most of the ones that showed evidence of
Speaker 1: cut marks were young adults, suggesting that they were fully
Speaker 1: grown but not particularly experienced animals. The paper didn't say this,
Speaker 1: but I read it as being that they were not
Speaker 1: as adept at staying out of people's way, right, They
Speaker 1: had not developed their savvy yet.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We have talked on previous installments of Unearthed about the
Speaker 1: assumption that ancient hunter gatherers mostly hunted really large animals,
Speaker 1: the idea being that smaller animals like beaver just would
Speaker 1: not provide enough resources to be worth the effort of
Speaker 1: hunting them. But the researchers involved with this project suggested
Speaker 1: a different possibility, which is that the bones of larger
Speaker 1: animals from this far back in history are usually better
Speaker 1: preserved than those of smaller animals, making it easier to
Speaker 1: find them and study them and see evidence of their
Speaker 1: being cut or processed by humans. Next, according to research
Speaker 1: published in the journal Antiquity, researchers have found the oldest
Speaker 1: known use of shark teeth in composite weapons. These are
Speaker 1: two weapons with blades made from the teeth of tiger
Speaker 1: sharks found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. They're about
Speaker 1: seven thousand years old, which is two thousand years older
Speaker 1: than the previous oldest known shark tooth knives. These teeth
Speaker 1: were affixed to a handle using a glue like substance
Speaker 1: and plant fibers, which is still a technique used by
Speaker 1: people living in parts of the Pacific. These teeth showed
Speaker 1: evidence of having been used to pierce and cut flesh
Speaker 1: and bone, but according to the researchers, it was unlikely
Speaker 1: that these knives were for everyday purposes. Shark teeth get
Speaker 1: dull very quickly. Living sharks are just continually growing new teeth,
Speaker 1: so it is more likely that these knives were used
Speaker 1: maybe for ritual purposes or in some kind of combat,
Speaker 1: not something that you would have just cut your food
Speaker 1: with every day. I'm literally picturing like a teenager of
Speaker 1: this era making it and going doesn't this look cool?
Speaker 1: Like there's no real use Next, A couple of different
Speaker 1: teams have looked at baboons in ancient Egypt. While baboons
Speaker 1: do not live in Egypt today and there's no evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that they did so in the past, baboons
Speaker 1: were brought to Egypt from elsewhere, kept in captivity, and
Speaker 1: mummified after their debts. Research published in the journal eLife
Speaker 1: tried to pin down exactly where these baboons came from.
Speaker 1: They compared the mitochondrial DNA of mummified baboons to the
Speaker 1: DNA of modern baboons, as well as the DNA from
Speaker 1: one hundred to one hundred and fifty year old baboons
Speaker 1: specimens in museum collections. One of the collaborators on this
Speaker 1: paper had previously identified the general region of the Horn
Speaker 1: of Africa as where most of these animals had been
Speaker 1: born and had lived during their early years. We talked
Speaker 1: about this on an episode of Unearthed in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: This year's research narrowed the area further to a specific
Speaker 1: part of Eritrea and neighboring regions. This area was home
Speaker 1: to the ancient port of Adulis. As we mentioned in
Speaker 1: that twenty twenty installment of Unearthed, this overlaps with research
Speaker 1: into the exact location of the Kingdom of Punt, something
Speaker 1: that we also talked about in our episode on Hat
Speaker 1: Sheepsit's expeditions to Punt, which came out in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: The baboons were described as having come from Punt, so
Speaker 1: it is possible that Punt was an earlier name for
Speaker 1: that same ancient port. The other baboon research published late
Speaker 1: last year looked at the living conditions of these animals
Speaker 1: while they were kept in captivity in Egypt. Egyptians held
Speaker 1: these animals in very high regard and they were believed
Speaker 1: to be representations of the god TOAs, but they weren't
Speaker 1: actually treated very well, or at least given the kind
Speaker 1: of treatment they needed to be healthy. This research looked
Speaker 1: at the mummies of thirty six baboons, which lived between
Speaker 1: eight hundred and five hundred BCE, and found that many
Speaker 1: of them had signs of rickets or a deficiency of
Speaker 1: vitamin D, probably because of being kept indoors and away
Speaker 1: from natural sunlight. Otherwise, they didn't show evidence of being
Speaker 1: abused or mistreated. But only four of the mummies they
Speaker 1: studied were those of animals who seemed to be in
Speaker 1: actual good health. Researchers who were interviewed about this work
Speaker 1: stressed that they didn't think the people who cared for
Speaker 1: these animals met them any harm. But since baboons are
Speaker 1: very good climbers, if you wanted to keep them in captivity,
Speaker 1: they had to be in enclosures that had very high walls,
Speaker 1: and these would have blocked out most of the sunlight.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists in China have found evidence of a chariot in
Speaker 1: Shanxi Province, one that would have been drawn by sheep
Speaker 1: rather than the more commonly used horses or oxen. The
Speaker 1: body of the chariot has not survived until today, but
Speaker 1: the rigging used to pull it was still evident on
Speaker 1: the bones of the sheep. This chariot was found in
Speaker 1: the mausoleum of an emperor who ruled between two twenty
Speaker 1: one to two ten BCE, which was hundreds of years
Speaker 1: before the first written mention of a sheep drawn chariot
Speaker 1: that appears in an account of Emperor sima Yan of
Speaker 1: the Western Jin dynasty, who lived from two sixty five
Speaker 1: to three sixteen and is said to have ridden a
Speaker 1: sheep drawn chariot to the palace every night before going
Speaker 1: to sleep. Moving on, archaeologists also believe they have found
Speaker 1: the oldest true saddle in East Asia, one that involved
Speaker 1: a wooden frame covered in horse hide with a pommel,
Speaker 1: a cantle, and stirrups, as well as various straps, states
Speaker 1: back to around the fourth century, meaning it's also one
Speaker 1: of the earliest known frame saddles in the world. This
Speaker 1: suggests that cultures living on the steps of western and
Speaker 1: northern Mongolia, where the saddle was found, were early adopters
Speaker 1: of both frame saddles and stirrups, and helped spread these
Speaker 1: technologies to other parts of the world and in our
Speaker 1: last animal snd Coast Salish people and researchers from the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have worked to study
Speaker 1: the pelt of a dog named Mutton, who was donated
Speaker 1: to the Smithsonian by naturalist and ethnographer George Gibbs after
Speaker 1: the dog died in eighteen fifty nine. Mutton was a
Speaker 1: wooly dog, which was a type of dog that Coast
Speaker 1: Salish nations bred and cared for for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: but which had died out by the turn of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Wooly dogs had a very thick pelt and
Speaker 1: they were sheared like sheep, and Mutton's pelt is the
Speaker 1: only known wooly dog's flot left in the world. This
Speaker 1: wool was used to make things like blankets and other
Speaker 1: woven items, some of which were used for ceremonial and
Speaker 1: spiritual purposes. This project included the work of anthropologists, an
Speaker 1: evolutionary molecular biologist, and elders, knowledge keepers, and master weavers
Speaker 1: from Coast Salish nations who provided the context for how
Speaker 1: these dogs lived in Coast Salish societies. And the words
Speaker 1: of anthropologist Logan Kissler, the museum's curator of Archaeobotany and Archaeogenomics, quote,
Speaker 1: Coast Salish traditional perspective was the entire context for understanding
Speaker 1: the study's findings. Michael Povel, an elder from the Skacomish
Speaker 1: Tauana Coast Salish community in Washington, said, quote, we were
Speaker 1: very excited to participate in a study that embraces the
Speaker 1: most sophisticated Western science with the most established traditional knowledge.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly rewarding to contribute to this effort to
Speaker 1: race and celebrate our understanding of the wooly dog. Many
Speaker 1: of the Coast Salish people who were part of this
Speaker 1: work were cited in the paper as co authors, and
Speaker 1: the text of the interviews conducted with Coast Salish people
Speaker 1: is included in the paper's supplemental materials. Researchers also compared
Speaker 1: Mutton's DNA to that of other dogs to try to
Speaker 1: determine what made the wooly dog's coat so different and
Speaker 1: when this breed split off from other dogs. They found
Speaker 1: that this likely happened at least five thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and Coast Salish people continued to carefully breed these dogs
Speaker 1: long after other dogs were introduced to the area. At
Speaker 1: least eighty five percent of Mutton's genetic ancestry came from
Speaker 1: precolonial dogs. The researchers work with Coast Salish people also
Speaker 1: contradicted earlier assumptions about what caused the populations of these
Speaker 1: dogs to decline. Scholars had generally concluded that the introduction
Speaker 1: of machine made blankets into the region in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century meant that the dogs were no longer seen as
Speaker 1: a priority, but indigenous experts cited other factors, including the
Speaker 1: introduction of diseases, forced assimilation and genocide that caused indigenous
Speaker 1: populations to decline, along with other external factors that made
Speaker 1: it increasingly difficult for coast Salish people to care for
Speaker 1: these dogs. Essentially, the indigenous people who were interviewed as
Speaker 1: part of this research made it clear that the dogs
Speaker 1: were too important to their communities to have just been
Speaker 1: forgotten about because of machine made blankets. And that is
Speaker 1: the last if our animal finds this time, and we
Speaker 1: will take a quick sponsor break before we move on
Speaker 1: to shipwrecks. It is time for a number of shipwrecks.
Speaker 1: A fourth century shipwreck discovered off the coast of Sales
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty was named the MARIUSA two because of
Speaker 1: its similarity to another shipwreck by the same name that
Speaker 1: had been found not far away in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Last year, this second ship was raised up from the
Speaker 1: seabed intact, something that was possible because it was both
Speaker 1: very well preserved and was only in about six feet
Speaker 1: or one point eight meters of water. After underwater archaeologists
Speaker 1: documented this site, the wreck was basically surrounded in a
Speaker 1: cage and then secured with nets lifted from the seafloor
Speaker 1: with floatation devices and towed to shore. From there, it
Speaker 1: was transported by road to an archaeological museum for desalination
Speaker 1: and study. So the research on this one is ongoing.
Speaker 1: I just find making a big cage to lift a
Speaker 1: shipwreck up off the ocean floor. I found the whole
Speaker 1: process of that fascinating. I know it's not the only
Speaker 1: time we've raised a ship off the ocean floor.
Speaker 2: It is interesting, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: For one dating back to the fourth century, Like, what
Speaker 1: a delicate thing to need to try to raise up. Yes,
Speaker 1: this past summer, a team conducting sonar scans in Lake
Speaker 1: Superior found the wreck of a freighter called the Hourantum,
Speaker 1: announcing the find in October for the one hundredth anniversary
Speaker 1: of its sinking. The Herontin collided with the Cetus on
Speaker 1: October eleventh, nineteen twenty three, when Lake Superior was under
Speaker 1: a heavy fog and visibility was obscured even further because
Speaker 1: of smoke from wildfires. The SETAs hit the Heurnton on
Speaker 1: its port side, and the captain of the Seatus basically
Speaker 1: used the ship to plug the hole to give the
Speaker 1: Hourntan's crew time to escape, including a bulldog who was
Speaker 1: serving as the ship's mascot, who at first was accidentally
Speaker 1: left behind. But no worries about the dog, the first
Speaker 1: mate went back for him before the ship sank. This
Speaker 1: wreck is one of so many in Lake Superior, and
Speaker 1: it was found during a systemic search of the lake
Speaker 1: bed undiscovered wrecks. Thousands of vessels sank in the lake,
Speaker 1: especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are now being threatened by muscles,
Speaker 1: especially zebra muscles and quaga muscles. There is ongoing work
Speaker 1: to just try to find and document as many of
Speaker 1: these as possible before they are lost to these and
Speaker 1: other factors. Speaking of the Great Lakes, a father and
Speaker 1: daughter fishing in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Lake Michigan spotted
Speaker 1: a shipwreck on their sonar and that may be the
Speaker 1: remains of the George L.
Speaker 2: Newman. The George L.
Speaker 1: Newman sank during the Great Peshtigo Fire, which prior hosts
Speaker 1: of the show talked about in a twenty eleven episode
Speaker 1: called History's Unforgettable Fires. The ship ran aground because visibility
Speaker 1: was so poor due to the smoke that they could
Speaker 1: not see where they were going. The crew were rescued
Speaker 1: by a nearby lighthouse keeper. The Wisconsin Department of Natural
Speaker 1: Resources used a remote operated vehicle to take pictures of
Speaker 1: the wreck, and further research is expected in the spring
Speaker 1: next A crew with the Florida Department of Transportation found
Speaker 1: a shipwreck while working on a drainage improvement project in
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine. This was found more than eight feet underground
Speaker 1: and probably dates back to the mid to late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: The ship's stern had been exposed at some point and
Speaker 1: was probably consumed by marine life, but the rest of
Speaker 1: the boat, which is believed to have been a single
Speaker 1: masted fishing vessel, is mostly intact. It's possible that the
Speaker 1: boat was abandoned along the edge of a waterway that
Speaker 1: has since been covered up by landfill. This wreck was
Speaker 1: taken to wet storage for preservation and further study.
Speaker 2: Moving on.
Speaker 1: The Santase has come up on a few installments of
Speaker 1: an Earth. This is a galleon that the British sunk
Speaker 1: off the coast of Carnagena in seventeen oh eight. Its
Speaker 1: discovery was announced in twenty fifteen, which led to a
Speaker 1: dispute about who owned the enormous amount of gold and
Speaker 1: other valuable goods that it was carrying. It was a
Speaker 1: Spanish ship found off the coast of Columbia, and many
Speaker 1: of the precious metals aboard were mined by indigenous peoples.
Speaker 1: On top of all of that, a US salvage company
Speaker 1: claims to have originally found the wreck back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, and the latest update on this, President Gustavo
Speaker 1: Petro has ordered his administration to begin recovering the Rere's
Speaker 1: cargo in April or May, depending on sea conditions, intending
Speaker 1: to remove as much of it as possible from the
Speaker 1: wreck before his term in office ends in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: So this has of course added another layer of controversy
Speaker 1: to the ship, with some archaeologists arguing that it should
Speaker 1: be treated as an archaeological site, not as cargo to
Speaker 1: be retrieved. This past spring, we talked about the discovery
Speaker 1: of a shipwreck in Newport, Wales. This was found in
Speaker 1: the River Usk back in two thousand and two, and
Speaker 1: when we talked about it last year, it was being
Speaker 1: conserved with plans to eventually reassemble it and make it
Speaker 1: a public attraction. Now, study of the ship's timbers have
Speaker 1: pinpointed that it was built from trees that were cut
Speaker 1: down over the winter of fourteen fifty seven to fourteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight. Yes, this is sort of narrowing down exactly
Speaker 1: when it was built and hopefully eventually learning more about
Speaker 1: the exact.
Speaker 2: Ship that it was.
Speaker 1: Next, the wreck of the SS Dix has been found
Speaker 1: in Puget Sound in Washington. The dis was working as
Speaker 1: a ferry, part of a collection of privately owned vessels
Speaker 1: known as the Mosquito Fleet that operated in the area
Speaker 1: for about a century. Obviously, there are still lots of
Speaker 1: ferries in the Seattle area, but this was before a
Speaker 1: lot of the roads and bridges that connect Farrious Islands
Speaker 1: were there. There were a lot more ferries operating. The
Speaker 1: Dix was taking passengers from Seattle to Bainbridge Island when
Speaker 1: it sank in nineteen oh six after colliding with the
Speaker 1: SS Genie. At least forty two passengers died, making one
Speaker 1: of Seattle's worst maritime disasters. This wreck was apparently found
Speaker 1: all the way back in twenty fifteen, but not announced
Speaker 1: until now. Experts working with the seventeenth century Swedish warship
Speaker 1: Vasa have said it urgently needs a new structural support system.
Speaker 1: The wreck was raised from the Baltic Sea in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one and it's been displayed at the Vasa Museum
Speaker 1: in Stockholm since nineteen ninety. But the existing steel cradle
Speaker 1: is putting uneven pressure on parts of the ship, and
Speaker 1: the ship itself is deteriorating due to the effects of
Speaker 1: pollution it absorbed from the water while it was still submerged.
Speaker 1: This is something the museum has been studying and working
Speaker 1: on for years, and now it has reached the point
Speaker 1: that it has to raise the funds to pay for it.
Speaker 1: The Vasa Museum is self funded and the estimated cost
Speaker 1: of a new support structure is one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million kroner. And we will close out our shipwrecks with
Speaker 1: a few items that came from Rex, not the themselves.
Speaker 1: A steamship called the Saint Lucy sank off the coast
Speaker 1: of Miami on October eighteenth, nineteen oh six, during a hurricane.
Speaker 1: That ship was eventually raised from the seafloor, repaired, and
Speaker 1: put back into use, but researchers announced the discovery of
Speaker 1: its anchor in November. Maritime archaeologist Joshua Morto had been
Speaker 1: showing two summer interns around Biscayne National Park when he
Speaker 1: noticed a sea turtle behaving strangely and then saw it
Speaker 1: sitting underneath this anchor. This is an anchor, so of
Speaker 1: course it is extremely heavy. The cost of removing and
Speaker 1: restoring it would be significant, so the current plan is
Speaker 1: to leave it in place, but hopefully to eventually make
Speaker 1: a three D rendering of it next. Archaeologists working off
Speaker 1: the coast of Capri, Italy, have found several pieces of
Speaker 1: worked obsidian that were probably used as trade materials. They
Speaker 1: are believed to have come from a lost Neolithic cargo vessel.
Speaker 1: They're incredibly old. There's no evidence of the wreck itself
Speaker 1: found so far, and honestly, at this point probably would
Speaker 1: not be. It is also possible that this may have
Speaker 1: come not from a cargo vessel, but from a Neolithic
Speaker 1: coastal settlement that was eventually submerged. Of course, no evidence
Speaker 1: of that settlement has been found either. And lastly, one
Speaker 1: of the artifacts that was recovered from the wreck of
Speaker 1: a cog in Estonian twenty twenty two has turned out
Speaker 1: to be the oldest functioning dry compass in Europe. We
Speaker 1: talked about the discovery of the cog On unearthed and
Speaker 1: at the time it wasn't clear what the reck's fate
Speaker 1: would be. It was excavated and the wreck was moved
Speaker 1: to the Estonian Maritime Museum. The compass is one of
Speaker 1: the items to have been found during the cleaning and
Speaker 1: conservation process. They have also found things like tools, weapons
Speaker 1: and shoes, and to finish up are unearthed. From twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, we have two baths, both of them found
Speaker 1: under or something else. First, archaeologists in Bath, England have
Speaker 1: unearthed a cold bath, one that was documented in the
Speaker 1: historical record but had not been located yet. This was
Speaker 1: in a suite of three rooms under one end of
Speaker 1: the ballroom at Bath Assembly Rooms. Those rooms were completed
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy one and then at some point after
Speaker 1: that the bath was covered over with a floor, so
Speaker 1: excavating this bath involved removing that floor and just a
Speaker 1: huge amount of rubble underneath it. When Bath came up
Speaker 1: on the show earlier in twenty twenty three, in our
Speaker 1: episodes on Dean Muhammet, we were talking mostly about steam
Speaker 1: baths and warm water baths, but cold baths and cold
Speaker 1: plunges were recommended. For people's health as well. Most of
Speaker 1: them were built at people's private homes or in public
Speaker 1: facilities devoted to bathing and wellness. This is the first
Speaker 1: cold bath known to have been built at an assembly room,
Speaker 1: and the other bath is a Roman bath found under
Speaker 1: the Split City Museum in Split, Croatia. The museum is
Speaker 1: housed in what was once a palace, and centuries before
Speaker 1: it had been the site of Diocletian's Palace, built for
Speaker 1: the Roman emperor Diocletian in the third century. Diocletian's Palace
Speaker 1: is still part of much of Split's old city core today.
Speaker 1: This bath featured mosaic floors with an underfloor heating system
Speaker 1: and a furnace, and there was also an oil and
Speaker 1: grape press. These baths were discovered during repairs that were
Speaker 1: part of a project called Palace of Life, City of Change,
Speaker 1: which is a development and restoration project for the central
Speaker 1: city and the site of Diocletian's Palace. The hope is
Speaker 1: to open at least part of the bath to the
Speaker 1: public once it's clear that the building structural integrity will
Speaker 1: make it safe to do so, and that is the
Speaker 1: end of our twenty twenty three I was going to
Speaker 1: say twenty twenty four, but that's where we are now,
Speaker 1: three on Earth, and I have just one little bit
Speaker 1: of listener mail. It is from Katie, and Katie said, Hi,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. I have a lot of thoughts about
Speaker 1: your discussion of math in this week's Behind the Scenes,
Speaker 1: but none of them are about Tracy perpetuating gendered math stereotypes.
Speaker 1: I was an elementary school teacher for several years, and
Speaker 1: now I'm a mom, so I see what my kids
Speaker 1: are learning math wise. In college, I had to take
Speaker 1: a class about how math works meant for educators. Part
Speaker 1: of the class involved relearning basic operations in a base
Speaker 1: other than ten, so we were adding subtracting, multiplying, and
Speaker 1: dividing in base seven. The idea was that it would
Speaker 1: help us remember how difficult it can be for young
Speaker 1: kids to learn math. The math programs I used to
Speaker 1: teach and the ones my kids have been using all
Speaker 1: teach both customary and metric measures, but then it seems
Speaker 1: after the introduction they mostly stick with customary measures moving forward. Finally,
Speaker 1: the complaints of parents about the new math annoyed me
Speaker 1: as a tea and a parent, but over the years
Speaker 1: I've seen schools address it more. Some schools hold seminars
Speaker 1: for parents to teach them the methods their kids are learning.
Speaker 1: Some homework has examples at the top, and many math
Speaker 1: programs have an online video component that shows you how
Speaker 1: to do it. Of course, the easiest way to keep
Speaker 1: parents from complaining is just to get rid of homework,
Speaker 1: especially in elementary school where there isn't much evidence for
Speaker 1: its usefulness. Thanks for all your hard work on the podcast, Katie.
Speaker 2: Ps.
Speaker 1: Here's our cat Stella in a moment where she wasn't
Speaker 1: knocking over our Christmas tree and our dog. Are you
Speaker 1: confused about the shirt he had to wear post lumpectomy?
Speaker 1: I love both of these pictures. What adorable dog and
Speaker 1: cat boy do? I love not having homework in elementary school.
Speaker 1: That was the age I got in the most trouble
Speaker 1: for not doing my homework because I thought it was
Speaker 1: a waste of my time. It is as as Katie
Speaker 1: said in this email, there's just an increasing body of
Speaker 1: evidence that like homework in elementary school does not help
Speaker 1: children learn more, and if anything, the only homework that
Speaker 1: should be happening is like class work that wasn't finished
Speaker 1: in class. Yeah, I mean I don't know. It's I'm
Speaker 1: not a teacher and I'm not a parent, but it
Speaker 1: seems like kids should get to be kids. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like great about my homework because I whipped that
Speaker 1: stuff out on the bus.
Speaker 2: It never got opened in the house. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I got to high school, I was big on
Speaker 1: the doing homework on the bus, which was only possible
Speaker 1: because I found a just a weird seating position where
Speaker 1: I was wedged into the bus seat that allowed me
Speaker 1: to do my homework on the bus without getting motion
Speaker 1: sick because if I try to read in the car,
Speaker 1: stint motion sickness. Bus doesn't move quite the same as
Speaker 1: a car. And I also just I found this really
Speaker 1: weird way to sit that's like supported my head on
Speaker 1: the back of the bus seat, and that is where
Speaker 1: I did overwhelmingly, especially math homework, always on the bus.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, thank you so much for that email.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to send us a note about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcasts, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: We're all over social media.
Speaker 1: Missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show
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