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. It's time for the latest installment
Speaker 2: in our series we call Unearthed, which is where we
Speaker 2: talk about all the things that have been literally and
Speaker 2: figuratively unearthed over the last few months. If you've been
Speaker 2: listening to the show for a while, you're super familiar
Speaker 2: with these and if you're brand new to the show.
Speaker 2: We do this approximately four times a year. In Part one,
Speaker 2: today's episode, we are going to talk about some updates
Speaker 2: to previous episodes, some burial sites, walls which I think
Speaker 2: is a new one, edibles and potables, and art and architecture.
Speaker 2: And then we'll be back on Wednesday with Part two
Speaker 2: that'll have some other stuff, including a lot of medical
Speaker 2: finds and a lot of shipwrecks. So, as Tracy said,
Speaker 2: we'll start with some updates to past episodes. Possibly the
Speaker 2: biggest news story this quarter has been about Amelia Earhart's
Speaker 2: plane maybe in January. Late January, specifically, private exploration company
Speaker 2: Deep Sea Vision announced the possible discovery of the wreckage
Speaker 2: of Earhart's plane on the floor of the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 2: sitting roughly between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea. So this
Speaker 2: might be the first time that we have talked about
Speaker 2: an Amelia Earhart announcement on Unearthed, and that announcement did
Speaker 2: not come from an organization called the International Group for
Speaker 2: Historic Aircraft Recovery. That organization has faced a number of
Speaker 2: criticisms about its work on the Airheart mystery, So anytime
Speaker 2: I see a new story, I'm just a little skeptical
Speaker 2: to start with. It was nice to be sort of
Speaker 2: starting from scratch, fresh clean slate with this one. In
Speaker 2: terms of this specific discovery, though it is a little
Speaker 2: too early to say whether it will hold up. Deep
Speaker 2: Sea Vision released a sonar image of a blob on
Speaker 2: the ocean floor that is kind of shaped like an airplane,
Speaker 2: specifically a Lockheed Electra, which is what Earhart and navigator
Speaker 2: Fred Noonan were flying in when they disappeared.
Speaker 1: At the same time. Most people's minds are wired for
Speaker 1: spotting patterns and shape, so while yes, the sonar image
Speaker 1: contains something that's kind of airplane shaped, it's also hard
Speaker 1: not to see it as an airplane after being told
Speaker 1: that's what it might be. In media coverage of this discovery,
Speaker 1: Deep Sea Vision CEO Tony Romeo has also acknowledged that
Speaker 1: it could just be some rocks in the shape of
Speaker 1: a plane. So this announcement followed an underwater drone survey
Speaker 1: that covered about six thousand square miles of seafloor in
Speaker 1: the general area where most researchers believe this plane could
Speaker 1: have gone down. The next step is to try to
Speaker 1: get a closer look at it by sending a remotely
Speaker 1: eye operated vehicle down there to try to get actual
Speaker 1: photographs of the site that is currently shown as a
Speaker 1: kind of orange blob on this sonar image. Past hosts
Speaker 1: covered Amelia Earhart, including an update that came out on
Speaker 1: July sixteenth, twenty twelve. Next, we haven't done a full
Speaker 1: episode on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,
Speaker 1: or NAGPRA, which was signed into law in the United
Speaker 1: States in nineteen ninety, but it has come up in
Speaker 1: a number of past episodes of the show, including several
Speaker 1: episodes of Unearthed and our three part episode on Olympic
Speaker 1: athlete Jim Thorpe. This is a law that applies to
Speaker 1: agencies that receive federal funds, including museums, and it provides
Speaker 1: a process for these agencies and institutions to transfer items
Speaker 1: from their collections to Indigenous nations, Alaska Native Corporations, and
Speaker 1: Native Hawaiian organizations. The law applies to funerary objects, sacred objects,
Speaker 1: and human remains. Museums and agencies are required to identify
Speaker 1: these items in their collections and collaborate with the appropriate
Speaker 1: nations and peoples to repatriate them. So this law is
Speaker 1: more than thirty years old at this point, but in
Speaker 1: December of twenty twenty three, the US Department of the
Speaker 1: Interior announced a final rule in the implementation of this law.
Speaker 1: These changes followed a period of public comments and the
Speaker 1: federal regulators tried to incorporate as many comments as possible
Speaker 1: as came from tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. Basically, they
Speaker 1: were trying to close a lot of loopholes that were
Speaker 1: keeping items from actually being returned to the appropriate people
Speaker 1: decades now after this law went into effect. To quote
Speaker 1: from the press release from the Department of the Interior,
Speaker 1: these changes included, quote strengthening the authority and role of
Speaker 1: tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations in the repatriation process by
Speaker 1: requiring deference to the indigenous knowledge of life, lineal descendants, tribes,
Speaker 1: and nhos, requiring museums and federal agencies to obtain free,
Speaker 1: prior and informed consent from lineal descendants, tribes, or nhos
Speaker 1: before allowing any exhibition of access to or research on
Speaker 1: human remains and cultural items, eliminating the category culturally unidentifiable
Speaker 1: human remains, and resetting the requirements for cultural affiliation to
Speaker 1: better align the regulations with congressional intent, increasing transparency and
Speaker 1: reporting of holdings or collections, and shedding light on collections
Speaker 1: currently unreported under the existing regulation, requiring museums and federal
Speaker 1: agencies to consult and update inventories of human remains and
Speaker 1: associated funerary objects within five years of this final rule.
Speaker 1: In the words of the introduction of a three part
Speaker 1: series on these changes published by Indian Country Today, quote,
Speaker 1: the new rules are the first get tough regulations to
Speaker 1: address collections of human remains and cultural artifacts since NAGRO
Speaker 1: was passed more than thirty years ago, and museums and
Speaker 1: universities are struggling to comply. Tribal leaders say it's about
Speaker 1: time when these rules went into effect. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: a number of museums acknowledged that they did not have free,
Speaker 1: prior and informed consents to display items from their collections.
Speaker 1: Some high profile museums, including the Pevity Museum of Archaeology
Speaker 1: and Ethnology at Harvard University and the Field Museum in Chicago,
Speaker 1: have elected to close or cover exhibits that did not
Speaker 1: meet this standard while they figure out what the next
Speaker 1: steps are. In general, major museums receiving federal funding whose
Speaker 1: exhibits are still viewable at this point have already worked
Speaker 1: with indigenous communities to either revise existing exhibits or create
Speaker 1: entirely new ones in a more collaborative way. Next, Archaeologists
Speaker 1: in Boccoli in southern Italy have found the site of
Speaker 1: a two thousand year old villa, and their speculation that
Speaker 1: it may have belonged to Pliny the Elder, and that
Speaker 1: he may have even been able to see the eruption
Speaker 1: of Mount Vesuvius from there, since it offered a three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degree view of the Gulf of Naples.
Speaker 1: While we do know that Plenty was living in this
Speaker 1: general area, his connection to this exact villa is not
Speaker 1: definite at this point. This villa was found during construction
Speaker 1: on a playground, and previous hosts talked about the city
Speaker 1: of Pompeii and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius all the
Speaker 1: way back on October nineteenth, two thousand and nine. Next,
Speaker 1: we have a few updates to prior installments of Unearthed.
Speaker 1: We've talked about discoveries at the Roman fort of Vindolanda
Speaker 1: south of Hadrian's Wall in at least seven previous Unearthed episodes,
Speaker 1: and the latest fine there is bed bugs. Katie Weiss Jackson,
Speaker 1: a student at University College Dublin two insect thorises believed
Speaker 1: to belong to the common bedbug in a layer dating
Speaker 1: to about the year one hundred CE. If they're correctly identified,
Speaker 1: these are the oldest bedbug parts found in Britain so far.
Speaker 2: This kind of feels like it combines with a previous
Speaker 2: find that we talked about on Unearthed years ago, which
Speaker 2: was evidence that areas that had a lot of Roman
Speaker 2: influence also had a higher prevalence of intestinal parasites than
Speaker 2: other places did. That discovery seemed to contradict the perception
Speaker 2: that Romans were focused on cleanliness and introduced more hygienic
Speaker 2: practices to the places that they invaded and occupied. This
Speaker 2: same sort of irony applies with the bedbugs, although to
Speaker 2: be clear, bedbugs are a very pernicious critter that can
Speaker 2: infest somebody's living space really regardless of how fastidious they are.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were fastidious because they just had problems with
Speaker 2: bugs and parasitists. Remember last fall when we talked about
Speaker 2: that stolen van goh painting that had been returned in
Speaker 2: an Ikia bag. That painting was the parsonage garden at
Speaker 2: Nuenen in spring, and it has now been restored and
Speaker 2: is on display at the Groninger Museum as part of
Speaker 2: a behind the scenes exhibition that's planned to run until
Speaker 2: the spring of twenty twenty five. Moving on, we've also
Speaker 2: recently talked a couple of times about a massive theft
Speaker 2: or series of thefts of artwork and objects from the
Speaker 2: British Museum. I think that's come up at least twice
Speaker 2: on on Earth. Although some of these objects are believed
Speaker 2: to be permanently lost at this point, some of the
Speaker 2: ones that the museum has managed to recover are now
Speaker 2: on display in an exhibition called Rediscovering Gems and the
Speaker 2: plan is for that to run until June second, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. Next.
Speaker 1: The human remains known as Utsey the Iceman have made
Speaker 1: frequent appearances on on Earth, as well as being the
Speaker 1: subject of a full episode. New research has been published
Speaker 1: in the European journe of Archaeology in March under the
Speaker 1: title Chalcolithic Tattooing Historical and Experimental Evaluation of the Terulean
Speaker 1: Iceman's Body Markings. This paper pulls together a lot of
Speaker 1: different information about Utsy's sixty one tattoos. It walks through
Speaker 1: those sixty one tattoos in detail, and it covers all
Speaker 1: of the existing ideas about what their purpose may have been.
Speaker 1: This includes more recent interviews with Inuit culture members in
Speaker 1: Canada and Greenland about the role that tattoos played in
Speaker 1: their society prior to force to culturation. This paper, in
Speaker 1: addition to sort of a survey of all of this knowledge,
Speaker 1: also examines how the tattoos may have been made, and
Speaker 1: that includes another lengthy overview of tattooing methods through history,
Speaker 1: and it incorporates some experimental data as well from work
Speaker 1: that was carried out by four tattoo experts in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty twenty one, Machine free tattoo artist Danny
Speaker 1: Riddet of New Zealand tattooed himself and also worked with
Speaker 1: three other tattoo experts to create multiple versions of the
Speaker 1: same motif on his body. This motif looks.
Speaker 2: Kind of like a stylized fir tree or some other evergreen.
Speaker 2: The other tattoo experts included Inuit tattoo artist mayas Ulik
Speaker 2: Yakobsen of Greenland, and archaeologists Aurelian Brelau and Benoit Robodai.
Speaker 1: The paper's authors compared Utsi's tattoos to the various tattoos
Speaker 1: that were done as part of this project, concluding that
Speaker 1: Utsi's tattoos were probably made with a single pointed hand
Speaker 1: poke tool made of something like bone or metal, rather
Speaker 1: than through incisions. Yeah, as I understand it, incisions had
Speaker 1: been the going hypothesis before this comparison to this tattoo project.
Speaker 1: To close out these updates, we've also got one from
Speaker 1: the archaeological site known as must Farm, which has come
Speaker 1: up on a couple of installments of Unearthed. This was
Speaker 1: a stilt village dating to about eight fifty BCE. Roughly
Speaker 1: eighty five miles or one hundred and thirty six kilometers
Speaker 1: north of modern London, as the crow flies. It was
Speaker 1: destroyed by a fire only about a year after it
Speaker 1: was built, and because the burned remains of the buildings
Speaker 1: and all of their contents sank down into the riverbed,
Speaker 1: a lot of what was there is still very well preserved.
Speaker 1: Two books were published on must Farm in March. One
Speaker 1: is must Farm Pile Dwelling Settlement Volume one Landscape, Architecture
Speaker 1: and Occupation. Volume two is Specialist Reports. These were published
Speaker 1: as open access so anyone can read them, and you
Speaker 1: can get to them from mustfarm dot com. Living in
Speaker 1: a stilt village built over a river in Britain more
Speaker 1: than twenty eight hundred years ago might conjure up ideas
Speaker 1: of kind of a meager existence, but in a news
Speaker 1: release about these books, researchers describe life at must Farm
Speaker 1: is one of quote cozy domesticity. These homes had similar
Speaker 1: layouts to modern homes, with different spaces used for different purposes.
Speaker 1: The sixty or so people who lived in them dined
Speaker 1: on foods like honey glazed venison, and those foods were
Speaker 1: prepared in kitchens that were well appointed with bowls, cups,
Speaker 1: storage jars and cooking pots that were made to stack
Speaker 1: inside of each other to save space. The textiles made
Speaker 1: in Wornut must Farm are described as the finest in
Speaker 1: Britain during this period, including well made linen clothing. Several
Speaker 1: of the structures contained items like spindle whirls and bobbins,
Speaker 1: and one had a loom situated near a likely entryway,
Speaker 1: which would have allowed for more light to work by,
Speaker 1: and the building's construction meant that they were simultaneously well
Speaker 1: insulated and well ventilated. The publication of these books followed
Speaker 1: extensive research and archaeological work that took place in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen and twenty sixteen, and currently no for their excavations
Speaker 1: are planned for this site. Archaeological material was removed from
Speaker 1: the site and preserved, and then after these excavations were over,
Speaker 1: the site was recovered and sealed. Objects from the site
Speaker 1: are now in the collection of the Peterborough Museum and
Speaker 1: Art Gallery, which is not far away, and an exhibition
Speaker 1: called Introducing must Farm, a Bronze Age settlement is running
Speaker 1: there through September twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. Hey, Tracy,
Speaker 1: I know we have burial sites coming up, which thrills
Speaker 1: me to the bone. But do you want to take
Speaker 1: a break. First, let's do take a break. A lot
Speaker 1: of what we've talked about on Unearthed, for you know,
Speaker 1: beforehand today really has been things that were discovered at
Speaker 1: a burial site. But this time we also have some
Speaker 1: discoveries in which the burial sites themselves are what attracted attention. First,
Speaker 1: archaeologists have found a burial site on the grounds of
Speaker 1: Fawnman Castle near Bury, South Wales. This is one that
Speaker 1: seems to have been used not just for burying the dead,
Speaker 1: but also for feasts and other gatherings. There's evidence of
Speaker 1: at least eighty graves there, along with pieces of imported glass,
Speaker 1: drinking vessels and things that you would associate with things
Speaker 1: like butchery and cooking. It doesn't seem like people were
Speaker 1: living nearby, though, so they probably came together to bury
Speaker 1: the dead and hold some kind of commemorative feast. This
Speaker 1: site dates back to the early medieval period, and there
Speaker 1: aren't many archaeological sites in Wales from this time, especially
Speaker 1: not ones that have preserved bone. The burial sites also
Speaker 1: include different types of burials, including some with stones lining
Speaker 1: the graves, and some with the person buried in a
Speaker 1: crouching position. In another discovery in Wales, some of our
Speaker 1: listeners are probably familiar with ten Tern Abbey because of
Speaker 1: having to read a poem by William Wordsworth in high
Speaker 1: school or college.
Speaker 2: I know I did. Today. This is a ruin, but
Speaker 2: it's still considered a national treasure and a Gothic masterpiece.
Speaker 2: When it was functioning, it was a place where wealthy
Speaker 2: and powerful people were buried. The abbey was shut down
Speaker 2: during the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 2: and it seems like after that point there were some
Speaker 2: people who had much less affluent lives who chose to
Speaker 2: bury their loved ones on the abbey's grounds. This included
Speaker 2: a woman who appears to have been disabled and probably
Speaker 2: died in her thirties or forties, and two children who
Speaker 2: seem to have signs of long term malnutrition and chronic
Speaker 2: health conditions. It is possible that at least some of
Speaker 2: these burials happened in secret. This discovery is part of
Speaker 2: ongoing restoration work on the abbey. The stone work at
Speaker 2: the abbey is very soft and its roof is completely gone,
Speaker 2: so there has been a lot of erosion. One of
Speaker 2: the goals of this restoration project is to protect that stonework.
Speaker 2: Moving on, archaeologists from the University of Barcelona and the
Speaker 2: Institute of Ancient Near East have discovered some previously unknown
Speaker 2: rock hewn tombs. They date back to the Ptolemaic and
Speaker 2: Roman eras, so that stretches from about three h five
Speaker 2: BCE to six forty one CE. This site is in
Speaker 2: the Menya Governorate in Upper Egypt, on the banks of
Speaker 2: the Nile River. There are spaces carved into the rock
Speaker 2: that hold Roman era mummies, and two of them have
Speaker 2: golden tongues in their mouths. There are also terra cotta
Speaker 2: statues depicting Deity isis Aphrodite, and there aren't similar statues
Speaker 2: in the historical record. Next, an early English cemetery was
Speaker 2: unearthed during work on a project called Vikinglink, which I
Speaker 2: find a delightful name if you're not local.
Speaker 1: To that area.
Speaker 2: This is an electricity line connecting the UK to Denmark.
Speaker 2: The cemetery includes the remains of twenty three people, as
Speaker 2: well as jewelry, pottery, and other items. They all date
Speaker 2: back to the sixth and seventh centuries CE. This find
Speaker 2: was also featured on BBC two's Digging for Britain. In January.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists have been excavating a Roman cemetery near Holborn Viaduct
Speaker 1: in central London and have found five oak coffins there
Speaker 1: along with a well preserved funeral bed. All of this
Speaker 1: is very rare. Most wooden objects from the Roman era
Speaker 1: in Britain have decayed at this point and there have
Speaker 1: only been three timber coffins from that period found in
Speaker 1: London before now. But the bed was a reticular surprise.
Speaker 1: It was known that funeral observances could involve carrying someone
Speaker 1: to their burial site on a bed, but not that
Speaker 1: the bed might also be buried with them. These likely
Speaker 1: date to between the years forty and eighty CE. Thousand
Speaker 1: year old tomb has been rediscovered in Ireland. This tomb
Speaker 1: is known as the alturna Granny and back in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two antiquarian Richard Hitchcock visited the site and reported
Speaker 1: that it was no longer there. At that point, most
Speaker 1: people believed that all of its above ground elements must
Speaker 1: have been taken apart, and that the stones that had
Speaker 1: been used for that had been taken somewhere else and reused.
Speaker 1: Irish folklorist and archaeologist Billy mcfloin was curious about whether
Speaker 1: anything related to the tomb was still there. He eventually
Speaker 1: spotted a stone that resembled one in a nineteenth century
Speaker 1: sketch of the site by Georgiana Chatterton. He contacted Ireland's
Speaker 1: National Monument Service and he went to the site with
Speaker 1: archaeologist kaim And O'Brien. They eventually confirmed that they had
Speaker 1: found the site of the tomb.
Speaker 2: So this was built as a wedge tomb with upright
Speaker 2: stones and capstones across the top. And while only one
Speaker 2: of these stones is still standing, others do appear to
Speaker 2: still be there at the site, but now they are
Speaker 2: buried or partially buried in the soil. So it seems
Speaker 2: like rather than these being taken away and repurposed somewhere else,
Speaker 2: someone may have knocked them over. Weather may have knocked
Speaker 2: them over. A lot of it's still there. Last year,
Speaker 2: some metal detectorists in Poland found some jewelry in a
Speaker 2: dry lake bed. After further study, it turns out this
Speaker 2: may be a site that was used for water burials.
Speaker 2: Excavations have unearthed human remains from at least thirty three people,
Speaker 2: along with more than five hundred and fifty bronze objects.
Speaker 2: These are likely connected to the Lusatian culture, who lived
Speaker 2: in what's now Poland from about thirteen hundred to five
Speaker 2: hundred BCE. Most of the bronze objects are more recent
Speaker 2: than the body, so ritual practices here may have shifted
Speaker 2: over time and our next burial site. According to research
Speaker 2: that was published in December but then picked up in
Speaker 2: the media after the first of the year, archaeologists believe
Speaker 2: they have found three tombs belonging to family members of
Speaker 2: Alexander the Great, including his father, son, and half brother.
Speaker 2: So these tombs themselves are not a new discovery. People
Speaker 2: already knew about them. They also were already connected to
Speaker 2: some of Alexander the Great's family, But this paper argues
Speaker 2: that the previous work to identify the people in these
Speaker 2: tombs was incorrect. Okay, so all of the writing about
Speaker 2: this sounds extremely definite, including some portions of the actual paper,
Speaker 2: but this still seems more like an argument than a
Speaker 2: definitive conclusion. For example, toom Ie includes a skeleton with
Speaker 2: a fused knee join and King Philip the Second of
Speaker 2: Macedon Alexander the Great's father was known to have been
Speaker 2: injured in the knee by a lance. Two other people
Speaker 2: buried there are believed to be Philip's wife, Queen Cleopatra Eurydice,
Speaker 2: and their newborn child based on the likely age of
Speaker 2: the older skeleton. The second tomb is believed to contain
Speaker 2: King Aridaeus and his wife Ada Eurydice, and the third
Speaker 2: belongs to Alexander the Fourth. Again, this is based on
Speaker 2: conclusions about things like the ages and sexes of the
Speaker 2: people in the tombs and particular details about the bones.
Speaker 2: So this is definitely a paper that adds to the
Speaker 2: ongoing body of work about these tombs, not really one
Speaker 2: that answers all possible questions about who these remains belong to,
Speaker 2: which is what some of the coverage suggests. And honestly,
Speaker 2: the highlights section of the paper makes it sound like
Speaker 2: a like that we've closed the deal on Uryah, and
Speaker 2: I did not find it that certain reading the paper.
Speaker 2: So moving on, Intel is planning to build semiconductor plants
Speaker 2: near Magdenburg, Germany, and archaeological work ahead of that construction
Speaker 2: has unearthed two Neolithic burial mounds covering wooden grave chambers
Speaker 2: that each held multiple burials. These were built during the
Speaker 2: Ballberg culture, which is forty one hundred to thirty six
Speaker 2: hundred BCE, and while they're much smaller today because of erosion,
Speaker 2: they would have been a dramatic part of the landscape
Speaker 2: when they were first built. There's also an area where
Speaker 2: two cattle were sacrificed and buried some time later between
Speaker 2: thirty three hundred and twenty eight hundred BCE. A different
Speaker 2: team also discovered a Neolithic burial site in France. This
Speaker 2: one included multiple types of burials, including several mounds. This
Speaker 2: site appears to have been used for about four thousand years,
Speaker 2: or basically the whole Neolithic period. And lastly, archaeologists have
Speaker 2: found a tomb in central China dating back to the
Speaker 2: Warring States period from four seventy five to twenty one BCE.
Speaker 2: There are one hundred.
Speaker 1: Seventy six tombs at the site, mostly small pits. The
Speaker 1: larger tombs at the site also include metalwares such as
Speaker 1: horse bits, spoons, swords, and pots. They also found a
Speaker 1: chariot burial at this site, with the partial skeletons of
Speaker 1: two horses and a wooden chariot that has almost completely decayed.
Speaker 1: We'll have some more after another sponsor break. In my memory,
Speaker 1: we have never had a section of unearthed just called walls.
Speaker 1: We might have if we did, it didn't stick in
Speaker 1: my memory. But we've got a whole section of walls
Speaker 1: this time. First, a team of researchers discovered a massive
Speaker 1: fortification in northern Arabia that's about four thousand years old
Speaker 1: and entirely encircles the Kabar Oasis. Only about half of
Speaker 1: this wall still exists today, but originally that whole length
Speaker 1: would have been about fourteen point five kilometers long, and
Speaker 1: the the pleated wall was about five meters high with
Speaker 1: a thickness of roughly two meters, So I feel like
Speaker 1: meters to yards is a pretty easy conversion. But that's
Speaker 1: about eight point seven miles long. Tracing the path of
Speaker 1: where this wall was involved both surveys and remote sensing data.
Speaker 1: This is one of the largest such fortifications ever found
Speaker 1: on the the Arabian Peninsula. It most likely protected the
Speaker 1: land and community within from a variety of threats, including
Speaker 1: severe weather and raiders. Next, a sonar survey off the
Speaker 1: coast of Germany has revealed a half mile long stretch
Speaker 1: of wall made from boulders. This one is believed to
Speaker 1: have been about ten thousand years old, and when it
Speaker 1: was built, rather than being underwater, it was probably next
Speaker 1: to a lake or a marsh. One of the researchers
Speaker 1: connected to this work also suggested that it might have
Speaker 1: been used for hunting purposes, basically creating kind of a
Speaker 1: bottleneck or a barrier to keep reindeer running in a
Speaker 1: specific direction. This wall has been named the Blinker Wall,
Speaker 1: and it may be the oldest known megastructure in Europe.
Speaker 1: We have another wall in Germany, this one found during
Speaker 1: an excavation at Achm. This wall dates to the third
Speaker 1: century and was likely built by Romans. The section that
Speaker 1: was unearthed measures twenty three feet long and three feet thick,
Speaker 1: and it is not known how long it originally was.
Speaker 2: Our fourth and final wall is a massive system of
Speaker 2: walls in Mongolia, stretching four hundred and five total kilometers
Speaker 2: or more than two hundred and fifty one miles. This
Speaker 2: is actually a wall system that was known about before,
Speaker 2: but this is the first time it's been really more
Speaker 2: thoroughly studied and documented. This wall system was built between
Speaker 2: the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and in addition to the walls,
Speaker 2: there's a trench and at least thirty four other structures
Speaker 2: all right. Now, moving on to edibles and potables, archaeologists
Speaker 2: found what may be one of the oldest surviving royal
Speaker 2: kitchens in Poland in the basement of a museum. The
Speaker 2: museum is the Museum of Applied Arts in Post Nania,
Speaker 2: and it's on the site of a royal castle that
Speaker 2: went through various fires, restorations, and rebuilding over the course
Speaker 2: of centuries. The kitchen area had a huge pillar that
Speaker 2: would have supported a stove and a ventilation hood, along
Speaker 2: with a well in one corner. According to the photos,
Speaker 2: getting down to this space involves climbing ladders that are
Speaker 2: perched on ledges and leaning across this giant shaft underneath,
Speaker 2: and they frankly look utterly terrifying. Yeah, imagine looking down
Speaker 2: a giant, big chimney kind of nope, and there's ladders
Speaker 2: that are like perched on a ledge on one side
Speaker 2: of the chimney interior and leaning against the wall of
Speaker 2: the other side. And I was like, oh, I I'm
Speaker 2: nervous just looking at the ladders there, not even thinking
Speaker 2: about getting up and down them. Archaeologists in Germany have
Speaker 2: identified the charred remains inside of a Neolithic cooking pot,
Speaker 2: concluding that it was porridge. We've definitely had some Neolithic
Speaker 2: porridge on unearthed before, but this analysis revealed some pretty
Speaker 2: specific ingredients, including emmer wheat, barley, and white goosefoot. The
Speaker 2: barley and the wheat were probably grown by farmers, while
Speaker 2: the white goosefoot would have been a wild plant, so
Speaker 2: this is an example of both cultivated and wild grains
Speaker 2: in the same dish. These grains had sprouted, which the
Speaker 2: researcher said suggested this had been a meal that was
Speaker 2: made in the early summer. Speaking of stuff made of wheat,
Speaker 2: archaeologists working at the Neolithic city of Catajuk have identified
Speaker 2: an item from the site as an unbaked loaf of bread.
Speaker 2: Its ingredients included wheat, barley, and pea seeds, and it
Speaker 2: was in a corner of a clay oven that dated
Speaker 2: back to eight thousand, six hundred years ago. Next, some
Speaker 2: research into Roman clay jars suggests that some Roman wines
Speaker 2: may have had what was described as a spicy character.
Speaker 2: These were porous egg shaped vessels called Dohlia, which would
Speaker 2: have been partially buried and sealed up while the wine
Speaker 2: fermented and aged. According to the researchers, this finished product
Speaker 2: would have had notes of quote, toasted bread, apples, roasted walnuts,
Speaker 2: and curry, but this could have been just a sample
Speaker 2: of all the different flavors that could have been found
Speaker 2: in wines in the area. Also, curry is not just
Speaker 2: one flavor. It's not clear what this note was meant
Speaker 2: to have tasted like, unless they were meaning curry as
Speaker 2: in like store bought curry powder from a major national brand,
Speaker 2: which I would say like that might have a relatively
Speaker 2: standard flavor, but like curry is a whole style of cuisine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Archaeologists in Barcelona have found the remains of a
Speaker 1: nineteenth century chocolate factory. This site was discovered during a
Speaker 1: building renovation in the Old City, which was then paused
Speaker 1: so that the site could be investigated. It turned out
Speaker 1: elements of this structure were roughly six hundred years old,
Speaker 1: and like that royal kitchen that we mentioned earlier, there
Speaker 1: had been various buildings and expansions over the centuries. The
Speaker 1: nineteenth century factory was for Catalonian chocolateier Clemente Guerria findings
Speaker 1: included tongs and lead plates that would have been used
Speaker 1: to label the chocolate, and this last one is more
Speaker 1: potable adjacent. Guinness has digitized its archival records, which are
Speaker 1: now searchable at ancestry dot com. And this might seem
Speaker 1: like kind of a weird connection, but there is a
Speaker 1: gap in genealogical research that's available in Ireland because of
Speaker 1: fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties destroyed a lot a lot of official records
Speaker 1: from things like the census. This Guinness archive spans from
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety nine to nineteen thirty nine and it includes
Speaker 1: mostly employee records and trade ledgers, so those employee records
Speaker 1: might include things like the birth dates of people whose
Speaker 1: census files and other documents are no longer accessible through
Speaker 1: the Public Records Office. Ancestry dot com is a paid service,
Speaker 1: but these records were available free of charge for the
Speaker 1: first two weeks after.
Speaker 2: They were announced. Moving right along to art and architecture,
Speaker 2: builders working in a roof space at Christ's College, Cambridge
Speaker 2: have found medieval wall paintings celebrating the college's royal patron
Speaker 2: Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry the seventh. These paintings
Speaker 2: are thought to have been created in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 2: and they have been covered up for at least three
Speaker 2: hundred years. They depict a red Lancastrian rose a portcullis,
Speaker 2: which was the emblem of the Beaufort family and what
Speaker 2: may be of to Lee. Next, it's possible that ancient
Speaker 2: artists who created petroglyphs in Brazil were inspired by fossilized
Speaker 2: footprints of dinosaurs. This conclusion comes from the work of
Speaker 2: archaeologists and paleontologists who found petroglyphs and preserved dinosaur footprints
Speaker 2: in close proximity to one another, and this was described
Speaker 2: in a paper in the journal Scientific Reports in what
Speaker 2: to me is a delightfully titled composition. It is called
Speaker 2: quote a remarkable assemblage of petroglyphs and dinosaur footprints in
Speaker 2: Northeast Brazil. The petroglyphs are primarily circular motifs that are
Speaker 2: similar to ones found at other sites in the region,
Speaker 2: but until now there haven't been examples of petroglyphs and
Speaker 2: fossilized footprints in the same place. In this way, it
Speaker 2: suggests that ancient artists saw these footprints as important enough
Speaker 2: to incorporate them into their art. Other researchers elsewhere in
Speaker 2: Brazil also found sixteen previously unknown rock art sites which
Speaker 2: featured both paintings and engravings. These sites shared some features
Speaker 2: and motifs with other rock art sites in the area
Speaker 2: that were already known about, so researchers believe all of
Speaker 2: these sites might have been created by people who all
Speaker 2: shared a similar culture and belief system. We have talked
Speaker 2: about the Paleolithic art in Covadonus in Spain before. These
Speaker 2: caves are home to at least one hundred ten paintings,
Speaker 2: many of them made by scooping clay from the floor
Speaker 2: and using it to create images on the walls. Clay
Speaker 2: paintings like this are fairly uncommon, and they've only survived
Speaker 2: until today because the walls and water in the caves
Speaker 2: are full of calcium carbonate, which acts as a preservative.
Speaker 2: Attempts to use radiocarbon dating to determine the age of
Speaker 2: the paintings has been ongoing, but there are also a
Speaker 2: couple of other clues. One is that some of the
Speaker 2: artwork in these caves uses motifs that are also present
Speaker 2: at other sites, with those sites dating back to between
Speaker 2: twenty one thousand and forty thousand years ago. And another
Speaker 2: is that one of these paintings in the cave, it
Speaker 2: turns out, has been damaged by a scratch from a
Speaker 2: cave bear, and cave bears became extinct about twenty four
Speaker 2: thousand years ago, so this would have been made before
Speaker 2: that point. Next, archaeologists at POMPEII have found a fresco
Speaker 2: depicting Greek mythological siblings Phrixus and Hale. In this story,
Speaker 2: Phrixus and Hale were fleeing their stepmother by sea and
Speaker 2: hele fell into the water and drowned. The fresco depicts
Speaker 2: Phrixus reaching for his sister as she reaches out from
Speaker 2: the water. The colors of this fresco are still really vibrant,
Speaker 2: and authorities at POMPEII hope the home it is part
Speaker 2: of will be accessible to visitors at some point in
Speaker 2: the future. And we're going to end this installment of
Speaker 2: unearthed and this art and architecture with a call for
Speaker 2: help from a museum. National Museum's Liverpool is trying to
Speaker 2: determine the identity of the subject of a painting by
Speaker 2: William Lindsay Windiss. This was painted around eighteen eighty four
Speaker 2: and is known just as the Black Boy. This painting
Speaker 2: is currently in the collection of Liverpool's International Slavery Museum,
Speaker 2: and it is the only painting in the collection that
Speaker 2: depicts a single black child. This painting depicts a black
Speaker 2: boy looking directly at the viewer. His feet are bare
Speaker 2: and his clothing is torn. We don't know who he is,
Speaker 2: and there's also not a ton of information about the
Speaker 2: painter aside from the fact that William Lindsay Windiss was
Speaker 2: born in Liverpool and was seen as a respected artist.
Speaker 2: It is possible that more information about the artist could
Speaker 2: eventually lead to information about the people who modeled for him.
Speaker 2: The URL for more information about this is at www
Speaker 2: dot Liverpool Museums dot org dot UK. Slash call out
Speaker 2: information about Black Boy with each of those words separated
Speaker 2: by dashes. It seems like trying to read all of
Speaker 2: those dashes would just be confusing, so folks can also
Speaker 2: get to that page from the Liverpool Museums dot org
Speaker 2: dot UK homepage. Do you have some listener mail to
Speaker 2: wrap this one up? I do have some listener mail
Speaker 2: to wrap this one up. This this email is from Wren,
Speaker 2: who sent us a message after our episode where we
Speaker 2: talked about historical etiquette manuals and I really loved this story.
Speaker 2: Wren wrote to say, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I can't
Speaker 2: believe it was your etiquette episode that finally got my
Speaker 2: button gear to email you. I often think of etiquette
Speaker 2: as a classist endeavor, but your words about simply not
Speaker 2: being a jerk really spoke to me. I grew up
Speaker 2: with a single mom who was a former hippie and
Speaker 2: an outspoken leftist, so I never really had house rules
Speaker 2: as a kid, except for two don't hit and hold
Speaker 2: hands in the parking lot. I'm sure she meant that literally,
Speaker 2: since I was a very exuberant kid and prone to
Speaker 2: excitability and skipping or dancing away from her. However, as
Speaker 2: I've grown into an adult with no religion or faith
Speaker 2: and thus no formal commandments to live by, I've often
Speaker 2: thought about her rules more abstractly. Be kind to others
Speaker 2: even if you yourself are hurting, and stick together with
Speaker 2: the people you loved. Thank you for the thoughtful, nuanced,
Speaker 2: interesting research you do in stories you tell as an
Speaker 2: editor with a history degree. I cannot tell you how
Speaker 2: much I admire you both and how much your work
Speaker 2: and your career journeys have inspired me. All the best
Speaker 2: reren ps and lieu of a pet tax. Please see
Speaker 2: a selection of memes you may enjoy. I did, for
Speaker 2: sure enjoy these memes. On one of them is I'm
Speaker 2: just going to have one of an example, because there
Speaker 2: were several. One is it looks like a medieval illuminating
Speaker 2: sort of and there is someone sitting with a book
Speaker 2: and that's labeled writers doing their thing. And then there's
Speaker 2: some devils over in the corner of the room and
Speaker 2: they are labeled devils putting typos in and then up
Speaker 2: in the heavens editors being busy. I did find that
Speaker 2: very funny. I liked all of these memes. I want
Speaker 2: them to write an autobiography called Hold Hands in the
Speaker 2: parking Lot. That's my input on all this. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love this whole story, I really did. I loved it
Speaker 2: when I read it, I loved it when I reread
Speaker 2: it just now. It got me a little bit choked up.
Speaker 2: And thank you also for the memes. I do love
Speaker 2: to be delighted by humorous or insightful memes. So thank
Speaker 2: you again Wren for this email. If you would like
Speaker 2: to send us a note about this or any other podcast,
Speaker 2: we are at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and
Speaker 2: we're all over social media that miss in History and
Speaker 2: that is where you can find our Facebook, Bok and
Speaker 2: Pinterest and Instagram and the X thing. And you can
Speaker 2: subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever
Speaker 2: you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
Speaker 2: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows.