Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This is part two of
Speaker 1: our regular installment of our Unearthed series, where we talk
Speaker 1: about things that have been literally and figuratively unearthed over
Speaker 1: the last few months. Today's episode is going to have
Speaker 1: the books and letters, a lot of fashion and cosmetics
Speaker 1: related stuff, whole out of medical finds, some shipwrecks, and
Speaker 1: of course we are going to start where we often
Speaker 1: start in part two, which is stuff that doesn't really
Speaker 1: go into a good category, which I call potpoury. So
Speaker 1: back in October, police in northern Ireland were notified of
Speaker 1: a body that appeared to be that of a teenage boy.
Speaker 1: This has turned out to be not a recent murder victim,
Speaker 1: but a bog body. It's roughly two thousand to two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred years old, now nicknamed the Balachi Boy. His
Speaker 1: cause of death is unknown, but officials were reportedly astonished
Speaker 1: that this wasn't the victim of a recent crime. Some
Speaker 1: of the skin was intact and described as pink, not
Speaker 1: as the leathery brown look that folks often associate with
Speaker 1: bog bodies. This body was found on land owned by
Speaker 1: the Department of Agriculture and it was sent to National
Speaker 1: Museums Northern Ireland for further study. The whole area was
Speaker 1: treated as a crime scene and then they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's this is not a crime though at least not
Speaker 1: a crime that happens the statute of limitation and this
Speaker 1: is over for bog bodies. If it was a crime,
Speaker 1: the person that did this crime is long gone. Yes.
Speaker 1: So next in January, a crew dredging the Vistilla River
Speaker 1: in Poland pulled up a medieval era sword. This has
Speaker 1: a very long blade and a pommel that shaped sort
Speaker 1: of like an and there's an inscription along the blade
Speaker 1: that looks like the name Albert. There have been at
Speaker 1: least one hundred and seventy other swords discovered that have
Speaker 1: this inscription, so you know, it's believed to maybe be
Speaker 1: the name of the sword maker or some other identifying mark.
Speaker 1: This is a Frankish name, and these swords were made
Speaker 1: in Western Europe in what's now northern France, but most
Speaker 1: of them have been found in Scandinavia, so a lot
Speaker 1: of sources are describing this as a Viking sword. A
Speaker 1: tsunami may have struck part of northern Europe eight thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. Based on research done through the University of York,
Speaker 1: this tsunami would have followed an underwater landslide known as
Speaker 1: the Stroga, which happened near Norway, with the resulting tsunami
Speaker 1: striking the coast of what's now Northumberland. There was already
Speaker 1: archaeological evidence suggesting that the population of this region declined
Speaker 1: sharply around this time, and this could provide an explanation
Speaker 1: of why the population of the island of Great Britain
Speaker 1: was very small, and most people in this area were
Speaker 1: living along the coast, so the death toll and impact
Speaker 1: on settlements would have been severe. Moving on, a metal
Speaker 1: detectorist found a three hundred year old thimble under a
Speaker 1: tree in Pembrokeshire, Wales, back in November of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and that thimble has now been declared a treasure. The
Speaker 1: thimble is highly decorated, It was made in two pieces
Speaker 1: and it's covered in a zigzag pattern with an inscription
Speaker 1: that reads like still and Love Ever around the bottom.
Speaker 1: I love that sentiment and I also love how it
Speaker 1: is spelled because like is lyke and still only has
Speaker 1: one L on it. I love it. The UK's Treasure
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen ninety six requires items declared to be
Speaker 1: treasures to be offered for sale to museums. The fate
Speaker 1: of this thimble was not certain when we recorded this,
Speaker 1: but the Tenbee Museum and Art Gallery, which is not
Speaker 1: far from where the thimble was found, has expressed interest
Speaker 1: in it. And lastly, a Roman dodecahedron has been found
Speaker 1: in England during a dig at the Lincolnshire village of
Speaker 1: Norton Disney. About one hundred of these twelve sided objects,
Speaker 1: most of them with little knobs on the corners, have
Speaker 1: been found across Europe, with more than thirty of those
Speaker 1: in Britain. These Roman dodecahedrons have been the subject of
Speaker 1: a number of viral videos claiming that they were used
Speaker 1: to knit gloves and that dummy dumbhead historians would know
Speaker 1: that if they just talked to some knitters. Uh. However,
Speaker 1: only some of these have the holes that are involved
Speaker 1: in using them to knit gloves, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them just aren't the right size for that purpose. Plus,
Speaker 1: these dodecahedrons date back to between the first and third
Speaker 1: century CE, and the oldest knitted objects found so far
Speaker 1: come from Egypt around the eleventh century CE. This is
Speaker 1: a bit tricky since items made from natural fibers decay
Speaker 1: and they aren't often preserved in the archaeological record. But
Speaker 1: we're talking about as long as one thousand years between
Speaker 1: when these dotecahedrons were made and when knitting is believed
Speaker 1: to have developed. We do, by the way, have a
Speaker 1: whole episode on the history of knitting for folks who
Speaker 1: would like to know more. That was a Saturday Classic
Speaker 1: in January twenty twenty one. Anyway, this one is about
Speaker 1: the size of a grapefruit, and like the others, it's
Speaker 1: not conclusively known exactly what it was for. There aren't
Speaker 1: any references to these objects in surviving Roman texts, and
Speaker 1: some of the possibilities that have been proposed include that
Speaker 1: they were toys or were used for some kind of
Speaker 1: a game, or that they had a religious purpose, or
Speaker 1: that they were ammunition for weapons like slings, basically anything
Speaker 1: you can think of that something shaped like this could
Speaker 1: be used for. Someone has suggested that could have been
Speaker 1: the use a giant game. They are really cool looking.
Speaker 1: I understand why people are fascinated with them, but the
Speaker 1: videos implying that historians are stupid for not knowing they
Speaker 1: were used for knitting glove they irritate me. We're going
Speaker 1: to move on to books and letters, and this first
Speaker 1: one came from a tip from a listener, and our
Speaker 1: apologies because we didn't note which listener. Fragments of an
Speaker 1: eleventh century Latin psalter have been found within the bindings
Speaker 1: of other books. This psalter also contained old English glosses
Speaker 1: or word for word translations. Pieces of this salter were
Speaker 1: used as reinforcing materials sometime around sixteen hundred, and a
Speaker 1: number of other pieces of it have been found before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the materials needed to bind books were very expensive, so
Speaker 1: repurposing books and the materials from the books into other
Speaker 1: books super common. A newly published paper on this looks
Speaker 1: that multiple pieces of this psalter that have been found,
Speaker 1: including eight and leaf guards and thirteen strips that were
Speaker 1: used to line the spines of other books, so twenty
Speaker 1: one total fragments of this psalter. It's possible, but not definite,
Speaker 1: that this was assalter that belonged to an English princess
Speaker 1: named Gunhild who fled to Bruges after the Norman conquest
Speaker 1: of ten sixty six. She is known to have had
Speaker 1: a psalter which she donated to a church, and it
Speaker 1: would have made sense for this psalter to have been
Speaker 1: in Latin with old English glosses. Next, a group of
Speaker 1: students has used AI to try to translate scrolls that
Speaker 1: were carbonized during the eruption of Vesuvius in the year
Speaker 1: seventy nine CE, scrolls that are much too fragile to
Speaker 1: try to unroll and read by any other means. This
Speaker 1: was part of a competition called the Vesuvius Challenge at
Speaker 1: the University of Kentucky, and these students won the competition's
Speaker 1: grand prize after deciphering several passages from a three dimensional
Speaker 1: CT scan that had recently been made of one scroll.
Speaker 1: This added up to about five percent of the total
Speaker 1: text in that scroll, which maybe doesn't sound like much,
Speaker 1: but this was meant to be more of a proof
Speaker 1: of concept than an attempt to decipher the whole thing. Also,
Speaker 1: that's more than we had before. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: students was also part of another similar project last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before we knew zero because if we tried to unroll it,
Speaker 1: it would fall apart. So this kind of work might
Speaker 1: be able to allow researchers to read scrolls that really
Speaker 1: could not be read otherwise and thus preserve knowledge that
Speaker 1: would otherwise be lost. But there are some concerns about
Speaker 1: this kind of work, aside from debates about AI, which,
Speaker 1: as I understand that, AI was more about like recognizing
Speaker 1: what's text and what's not not on coming up with
Speaker 1: what the words were like. It wasn't a predictive model
Speaker 1: of the text as I understand it. Anyway, many of
Speaker 1: these scrolls were found under the remains of Herculaneum, which
Speaker 1: is surrounded by populated neighborhoods today, So if additional excavations
Speaker 1: were done to look for more scrolls like these, they
Speaker 1: would probably go underneath houses that are currently occupied, and
Speaker 1: some of the residents of these homes worry about whether
Speaker 1: that kind of work could destabilize the foundations of the neighborhood. Next,
Speaker 1: it's possible that researchers have found the oldest known runs
Speaker 1: in Denmark on the blade of a two thousand year
Speaker 1: old iron knife, which were only visible after the blade
Speaker 1: was cleaned and conserved. Engraved into the blade is the
Speaker 1: word hirilla, which means small world. These runes are about
Speaker 1: eight hundred years older than the Yelling runestones which we
Speaker 1: have covered on the show before next. New radiocarbon dating
Speaker 1: suggests that the rongorongo script used on the island of
Speaker 1: Rapanui was developed before the arrival of Europeans on the island.
Speaker 1: This came from a tablet currently held in a collection
Speaker 1: in Rome that was dated to between fourteen ninety three
Speaker 1: and fifteen oh nine, which was more than two hundred
Speaker 1: years before the first European arrivals on the island. While
Speaker 1: it is possible that this script could have been engraved
Speaker 1: into a very old piece of wood later, it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily seem likely that there would have just been an
Speaker 1: ancient piece of wood to have this engraved on it.
Speaker 1: Even though Rango rongo doesn't resemble European written languages at all,
Speaker 1: there has been an argument that it was developed because
Speaker 1: of the influence of Europeans, partly because Europeans didn't notice
Speaker 1: it was being used there until eighteen sixty four. Also,
Speaker 1: as a note, there aren't many examples of this script today,
Speaker 1: and none of them are on Rapanui. They're all in
Speaker 1: collections elsewhere. Moving on, A thirty three hundred year old
Speaker 1: tablet was found in central Turkey last year, and it
Speaker 1: has now been deciphered. This tablet is about the size
Speaker 1: of a person's palm, and the writing on it is
Speaker 1: in Cuneiform. This seems to describe an invasion during a
Speaker 1: Hittite civil war, with the invaders being one of the
Speaker 1: warring factions of Hittites. Next, back in the late eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: bricklayers working at the Shakespeare House in Stratford upon Avon
Speaker 1: found a religious tract hidden in the rafters. It contained
Speaker 1: the name J. Shakespeare and has long been believed to
Speaker 1: have belonged to William Shakespeare's father John. It's a translation
Speaker 1: of an Italian text called The Last Will and Testament
Speaker 1: of the Soul. It's sort of a religious pledge that
Speaker 1: a person could sign their name to. Research into lots
Speaker 1: of different surviving copies and translations of this text has
Speaker 1: led to the conclusion that it was actually written after
Speaker 1: John Shakespeare died. The only other J. Shakespeare it could
Speaker 1: have belonged to is William Shakespeare's younger sister Joan, about
Speaker 1: whom we know very little. This document contains references to
Speaker 1: dying a good Catholic death, which is notable since at
Speaker 1: that point England had become a Protestant nation where Catholics
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to openly practice their faith. And lastly, researchers
Speaker 1: have found a potential solution to preserving ancient papyrie that
Speaker 1: are contaminated with fungus, and that is exposing them to
Speaker 1: wassabi vapors. Researchers created mock copies of painted and unpainted
Speaker 1: papyrus and then expose them to fungi. Exposure to wasabi
Speaker 1: vapor completely eliminated the fungus in the painted and unpainted
Speaker 1: copies without damaging the papyrus. So you're preserving all of
Speaker 1: your stuff and clearing out things when you eat a
Speaker 1: lot of wasabi. Is my uh, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: did not look far enough into it to know what
Speaker 1: led them to say maybe if we expose this to
Speaker 1: wasabi vapors, but I love it. We are going to
Speaker 1: take a quick sponsor break and then we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some stuff related to fashion and cosmetics. Okay,
Speaker 1: Next we have a bunch of fines that are related
Speaker 1: to the overalled ideas of beauty, fashion and cosmetics. First
Speaker 1: in Wales, one discovery is a Roman ligula. This is
Speaker 1: a silver spoon with a tiny, tiny bowl and a long,
Speaker 1: thin handle that was used to remove things like perfume, makeup,
Speaker 1: or other similar substances from long necked bottles. Most sources
Speaker 1: describe this as a toilet spoon, with toilet meaning the
Speaker 1: act of grooming, not the thing in the bathroom where
Speaker 1: someone empties their bladder or bowels. The first article I
Speaker 1: read about this fine did not explain that about the
Speaker 1: name until very far down in the text, and I
Speaker 1: was very confused. Normally, these little spoons had straight handles,
Speaker 1: but this one has become bent at so point it
Speaker 1: measures about two point five inches or six point three
Speaker 1: centimeters long, with the bowl having a diameter of only
Speaker 1: point two inches or five millimeters. These spoons were more
Speaker 1: commonly made out of copper alloy, and it's possible that
Speaker 1: the ones made from silver were used for medical purposes
Speaker 1: because of silver's natural antimicrobial property, so removing medical preparations
Speaker 1: from jars rather than cosmetics. A vial of what was
Speaker 1: most likely lip pigment was found in southeastern Iran back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one after flooding unearthed a number
Speaker 1: of objects from ancient burial sites, and this has now
Speaker 1: been described in a paper that was in the journal
Speaker 1: Scientific Reports. This vial was about four thousand years old
Speaker 1: and the pigment in it is a very deep red
Speaker 1: and it was made primarily from metererals like haematite, manganite
Speaker 1: and braunite, along with some traces of other materials, all
Speaker 1: in a base of wax and other organic substances. This
Speaker 1: is one of the oldest discoveries of its kind, but
Speaker 1: it has a pretty similar formulation to modern mineral based makeup.
Speaker 1: The container holding the pigment is also very finely crafted,
Speaker 1: made from a greenish chlorite and decorated with patterned incisions. Next,
Speaker 1: a three thousand year old dress fastener was found by
Speaker 1: a metal detectorist in Staffordshire, England, one of only seven
Speaker 1: such fasteners ever found in England and Wales. It's shaped
Speaker 1: almost like a set of finger symbols connected by a string,
Speaker 1: although the whole thing is made of gold, so you
Speaker 1: couldn't clap those two ends together without bending or breaking it.
Speaker 1: It would have been used to hold a person's cloak,
Speaker 1: skirt or dressed together. This item was probably made in Ireland.
Speaker 1: Irish metalsmiths of this era were known for their gold work.
Speaker 1: Another fastener that made news in recent months was a
Speaker 1: medieval belt loop found in Poland. This would have been
Speaker 1: used to hang someone's keys or a pouch from their belts,
Speaker 1: and it was found by a metal detectorist, and it
Speaker 1: depicts a stylized human figure attached to a rectangular mount,
Speaker 1: and that mount is what would have been used to
Speaker 1: slide the loop onto a person's belt. Next, we have
Speaker 1: a couple of garments that were just sort of found
Speaker 1: in boxes. One is a ceremonial robe that would have
Speaker 1: been used by the Emperor of China in the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. It was in a cardboard box tucked in
Speaker 1: the back of a drawer after being purchased by Eric
Speaker 1: Hyde Villiers as a gift for his father in nineteen thirteen.
Speaker 1: The Villiers family is an aristocratic family with roots that
Speaker 1: stretch back to Barbara Villiers, who had five children with
Speaker 1: King Charles the first. Because this robe was in a
Speaker 1: box that was protected and unopened for so long, it's
Speaker 1: very well preserved. It's made from gold and blue silk,
Speaker 1: decorated with twelve astronomical symbols and dragon imagery. This is
Speaker 1: the type of robe that would have been worn for
Speaker 1: twice yearly festivals at the Temple of Heaven, and it
Speaker 1: is planned to be auctioned off in May. The other
Speaker 1: item is a sweater that was found in a parcel
Speaker 1: that was shipped from Tourjon in the Faroe Islands to
Speaker 1: a recipient in Copenhagen, but it was seized by the
Speaker 1: British Navy during the Second Battle of Copenhagen and never
Speaker 1: made its way to its destination. The ship's captain was
Speaker 1: unaware that a war had started when setting sail from port.
Speaker 1: The sweater was made from very bright red wool. It
Speaker 1: is still very bright and it has a black and
Speaker 1: red floral pattern. This was accompanied by a letter in
Speaker 1: Danish which read, in part quote, my wife sends her regards,
Speaker 1: thank you for the pudding rice. She sends your fiance
Speaker 1: this sweater in the hopes that it is not displeasing
Speaker 1: to her. This charming discovery was part of the Prize
Speaker 1: Papers project, which is an effort to catalog and study
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of mail that was seized by the
Speaker 1: British Royal Navy over a period of almost two hundred years.
Speaker 1: There's so much unopened mail, just that as part of
Speaker 1: this project. All the rest of our fashion findes are
Speaker 1: about some kind of jewelry. First, a medieval love badge
Speaker 1: has been found in Dankst, Poland during restoration work at
Speaker 1: a fifteenth century port. This restoration work involved foundation work
Speaker 1: at the port's crane, and that crane is the oldest
Speaker 1: surviving port crane in Europe. This badge is shaped like
Speaker 1: a turtle dove and it's carrying a banner that reads
Speaker 1: emmor vincit omnia or love conquers All. Back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: a fifteen hundred year old ring was found in Emerly
Speaker 1: in southern Denmark, but the find wasn't announced until now
Speaker 1: to allow for additional metal detecting work to take place
Speaker 1: at the site where it was discovered. This ring is
Speaker 1: made from gold with an oval garnet with four spirals
Speaker 1: underneath the mount. Like the sword that we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: this was probably Frankish in origin and worn by someone
Speaker 1: high up in the Maravingian dynasty. This find seemed to
Speaker 1: surprise researchers because this kind of ring typically would have
Speaker 1: belonged to somebody of very high rank, and gold was
Speaker 1: often used as a diplomatic gift, but nobody of the
Speaker 1: rank who would be likely to have this ring is
Speaker 1: known to have lived in the area at the right time.
Speaker 1: An easy explanation would be that some important person lost
Speaker 1: it while they were traveling, but there are other objects
Speaker 1: found in the area that suggest that somebody very powerful
Speaker 1: might have actually been living there, we just don't currently
Speaker 1: know who. And Lastly, archaeologists in Turkia have found more
Speaker 1: than one hundred ornamental objects dating back to about eleven
Speaker 1: thousand years ago that were likely worn as jewelry in
Speaker 1: body piercings. These were made of a range of materials
Speaker 1: including limestone, obsidian, and river pedals, and about eighty five
Speaker 1: of the objects are complete. Based on their designs, it's
Speaker 1: likely that they were worn in ear or lower lip piercings.
Speaker 1: There have also been human remains found in the area
Speaker 1: with wear on their lower teeth that would likely have
Speaker 1: happened while wearing lip jewelry. These offer the earliest documentation
Speaker 1: of this kind of body modification in Southwest Asia. Next,
Speaker 1: we are moving on to another subject, which is medicine,
Speaker 1: and there are so many medical finds. First, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of coverage of studies documenting ancient people with
Speaker 1: a number of different genetic differences. The first of these
Speaker 1: came through work with the thousand Ancient British Genomes Project.
Speaker 1: Researchers in the UK found evidence of someone with Mosaic
Speaker 1: Turner syndrome who lived about twenty five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: as well as someone with Jacob syndrome who lived in
Speaker 1: the early medieval period, and three people with Kleinfelter syndrome
Speaker 1: who each lived in different years. So in Mosaic Turner syndrome,
Speaker 1: someone has one X chromosome without a second X or
Speaker 1: Y chromosome. Jacob's syndrome involves having an additional Y chromosome
Speaker 1: or x y Y, and Kleinfelter syndrome involves having an
Speaker 1: additional X chromosome or xx Y. This work followed development
Speaker 1: of new computational methods meant to pick up more variation
Speaker 1: in the X and Y chromosomes in ancient DNA. We
Speaker 1: don't really know much about the lives of the five
Speaker 1: total people discussed in this research, who lived over a
Speaker 1: span of time about twenty five hundred to two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, but it does seem as though they
Speaker 1: were buried according to the typical customs of the society
Speaker 1: they were living in. Rick Schulton, Professor of Scientific and
Speaker 1: Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Oxford, also noted this
Speaker 1: in a press release quote, the results of this study
Speaker 1: open up exciting new possibilities for the study of sex
Speaker 1: in the past, moving beyond binary categories in a way
Speaker 1: that would be impossible without the advances being made an
Speaker 1: ancient DNA analysis. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute have
Speaker 1: also been working with ancient DNA and have identified six
Speaker 1: people who likely had Down syndrome. Five of them lived
Speaker 1: between five thousand and two thousand, five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: and the six lived in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: This conclusion is based on the fact that these six
Speaker 1: people had an unusually large number of genetic sequences connected
Speaker 1: to chromosome twenty one, which could really only be explained
Speaker 1: by their having an additional copy of that chromosome. One
Speaker 1: type of Down syndrome is called trisomy twenty one and
Speaker 1: occurs when someone has three of that chromosome rather than two.
Speaker 1: These researchers also found evidence of one person with Edward
Speaker 1: syndrome or trisomy eighteen. Similarly to the previous study, we
Speaker 1: don't really know much about the lives of these people,
Speaker 1: and in the case of these they were sadly very brief.
Speaker 1: One of the people with DOWNCAE lived to be about
Speaker 1: a year old, and the rest died before that point.
Speaker 1: Down syndrome is connected to some heart problems and other
Speaker 1: issues that typically would have been fatal without access to
Speaker 1: modern medicine and surgery, but in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: are very treatable today. But all of these people were
Speaker 1: also buried with care in accordance with their people's traditions
Speaker 1: and burial practices, sometimes with some special items with their graves,
Speaker 1: such as bead necklaces or seashells. Another ancient DNA study
Speaker 1: has suggested an origin point for the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 1: According to research published in the journal Nature, herders who
Speaker 1: migrated to Europe from Western Eurasia carried a genetic variant
Speaker 1: that is connected to MS. This migration happened roughly five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and according to this research, these variants
Speaker 1: became more prevalent over time, leading to an increased disease
Speaker 1: risk today. Three other papers published in Nature took a
Speaker 1: similar look at evidence for diabetes and Alzheimer's in ancient
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer populations. If you're thinking, wasn't there also researched
Speaker 1: about the Black Death increasing the prevalence of MS. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was different work a couple of years ago, which
Speaker 1: we covered on Unearthed back when it happened in yet
Speaker 1: more DNA research, because there was a lot this time.
Speaker 1: It seems as though a genetic resistance to malaria developed
Speaker 1: in eastern Arabia around the same time that agriculture developed there,
Speaker 1: and agriculture would have helped create an environment that would
Speaker 1: have been home to a lot of mosquitoes, which of
Speaker 1: course spread malaria. This research involved the remains of four
Speaker 1: people who lived in what's now Bahrain somewhere between three
Speaker 1: hundred BCE and six hundred CE. Analysis of prehistoric bone
Speaker 1: has revealed what may be the oldest known incidence of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: which in this case was in Neanderthals. This is also
Speaker 1: the first time tuberculosis has been discovered in Neanderthals. This
Speaker 1: discovery came from bones dating back to about thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago in Central Europe. In addition to what
Speaker 1: this adds to the body of knowledge, about tuberculosis. It
Speaker 1: has also raised speculation about whether tuberculosis infections might have
Speaker 1: contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals. Next, research on
Speaker 1: a skeleton dating to about two thousand years ago has
Speaker 1: added a piece of data to the ongoing questions about
Speaker 1: the origins of syphilis. One widely held belief has been
Speaker 1: that sexually transmitted syphilis was introduced to Europe after Columbus'
Speaker 1: voyages to the Americas and other journeys to the Americas
Speaker 1: by Europeans, but there's also some data to suggest that
Speaker 1: a similar illness was already circulating in Europe before that point.
Speaker 1: This research involved a skeleton that had been found in
Speaker 1: Brazil two thousand years old. It did show evidence of
Speaker 1: a syphilis infection. This is the oldest conclusive evidence of
Speaker 1: syphilis so far, but it is not a strain of
Speaker 1: syphilis that would have been transmissible through sexual contact. Researchers
Speaker 1: in Canada have developed a method to test for anemia
Speaker 1: in ancient remains, something that hasn't really been possible before
Speaker 1: since there's typically no blood to analyze. This work came
Speaker 1: from anthropologists at McMaster University in the University of Montreal,
Speaker 1: working with a hematologist. They found that living anemia patients
Speaker 1: had microscopic gaps in their sternum and that those could
Speaker 1: be detected in bones from archaeological sites. This discovery should
Speaker 1: allow researchers to determine how prevalent anemia was in the past,
Speaker 1: which could contribute to the understanding of anemia today. And lastly,
Speaker 1: archaeologists have found a hollow piece of bone in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands that dates back to the Roman era about two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, which was used as a container for seeds,
Speaker 1: specifically black henmane seeds, which are poisonous but were also
Speaker 1: used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. Seeds like these have
Speaker 1: been found at archaeological sites before, but this is the
Speaker 1: earliest example of a time that they've been found in
Speaker 1: a container, suggesting that they were being kept for some
Speaker 1: kind of medical or ceremonial use. Everybody loves shipwrecks. Coming back,
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick sponsor break and then
Speaker 1: we will get into shipwrecks. Time for some shipwrecks. We
Speaker 1: have talked about the shipwrecks from the Franklin Expedition a
Speaker 1: few times on the show, and there is a whole
Speaker 1: episode on Franklin's Lost Expedition. The most recent dives to
Speaker 1: the Rex of the Arabis and this Terror took place
Speaker 1: in September of twenty twenty three, and then reports on
Speaker 1: those latest dives were released earlier this year. The team
Speaker 1: was able to make sixty eight dives while wearing heated
Speaker 1: diving suits. During these dives, the team was able to
Speaker 1: access a seaman's chest that they had been hoping to
Speaker 1: be able to get to for years. They also brought
Speaker 1: up a lot of tools, coins, and personal items. But
Speaker 1: crews also noted that the condition of the Rex is
Speaker 1: changing dramatically because of climate change. The Arabis in particular
Speaker 1: is in much shallower water and faces greater threats from
Speaker 1: changes in the currents and stronger storms that are connected
Speaker 1: to the shifting climate. Also in Canada, a shipwreck washed
Speaker 1: up on the shore of JT. Cheeseman Provincial Park in
Speaker 1: Newfoundland in February, possibly after being dislodged from the ocean
Speaker 1: floor by Hurricane Fiona. This was a thirty meter or
Speaker 1: one hundred foot long ship believed to date back to
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. This wreck was really not in a
Speaker 1: spot that was suitable for research the sea can really
Speaker 1: just pound on that area, and this led to a
Speaker 1: scramble to document as much as possible before the wreck
Speaker 1: was damaged or pulled back out to sea by the tides.
Speaker 1: A team was able to retrieve some pieces of this
Speaker 1: treck to be analyzed in a lab so we may
Speaker 1: know more about it later. We've got a couple of
Speaker 1: World War One shipwreck discoveries. Divers have recovered the bell
Speaker 1: from the USS Jacob Jones, which was sunk off of
Speaker 1: Sicily after being torpedoed by a U boat on December sixth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. It was brought to the surface due to
Speaker 1: the threat of looting at the site. Also, a team
Speaker 1: with the Unpathed Waters Project has identified the location of
Speaker 1: the SS Heartdale, which was torpedoed on March thirteenth, nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: The Heartdale had been carrying cargo from Scotland to Egypt.
Speaker 1: There was some information available about the possible lane location
Speaker 1: of this wreck from both surviving crew members and the
Speaker 1: log of the U boat that had sunk it. Making
Speaker 1: the id required sonar work combined with documentary evidence. A
Speaker 1: wreck discovered in twenty twenty two has been identified as
Speaker 1: the SS Nemesis, an iron hulled steamship that was lost
Speaker 1: at sea off the coast of New South Wales, Australia
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh four while carrying a load of coal.
Speaker 1: There were thirty two people on board who lost their
Speaker 1: lives when the ship went down in a storm. Marine
Speaker 1: Survey Company subse professional had originally spotted this wreck, and
Speaker 1: the identification came after an inspection with a remotely operated
Speaker 1: vehicle and some detailed mapping of the seafloor there. The
Speaker 1: whole length of this wreck has also now been surveyed
Speaker 1: with a drop camera. Last year, the Michigan Shipwreck Research
Speaker 1: Association discovered the wreckage of a steamship in Lake Michigan,
Speaker 1: and earlier this year they announced that it was the
Speaker 1: wreck of the Milwaukee. The Milwaukee collided with another ship,
Speaker 1: the Hiccocks, on July ninth, eighteen eighty six, due to
Speaker 1: poor visibility from dense fog and smoke. The only person
Speaker 1: killed in this wreck was the Hiccock's lookout, who was
Speaker 1: thrown overboard. The team used a combination of written records
Speaker 1: from the time, historical weather data, and remote sensing to
Speaker 1: find the wreckage and then followed up with a remote
Speaker 1: operated vehicle to document the site, and then another listener
Speaker 1: tip which I again forgot to put down. Who sent it?
Speaker 1: Part of the schooner eight A Kade Damon was uncovered
Speaker 1: on steep Hill Beach at the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: possibly by a dramatic high tide that's colloquially known as
Speaker 1: a King tide. This wreck is one hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: years old, and it sank in the Great Christmas Snowstorm
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh nine. The Crane Estate is managed by
Speaker 1: an organization called the Trustees of Reservations, which invited the
Speaker 1: public to a Shipwrecked Scholars program in March and April,
Speaker 1: something I would have gone to had I realized it
Speaker 1: was happening before recording this, at which point it was
Speaker 1: too late. Moving on, research published in the journal plus
Speaker 1: one has documented five dugout canoes built between fifty seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty one hundred BCE, found northwest of Rome
Speaker 1: at a site called La Marmata. These represent some of
Speaker 1: the oldest boats in the Mediterranean and provide evidence of
Speaker 1: trade over water this far back in history. The five
Speaker 1: canoes were built from four different types of wood and
Speaker 1: some of their features are described as advanced, such as
Speaker 1: transverse reinforcements and possibly the ability to be outfitted with
Speaker 1: sales or support floats. And lastly, a wreck off the
Speaker 1: Florida Keys has been identified as the HMS Tiger, which
Speaker 1: was a British warship that had to be abandoned after
Speaker 1: it ran aground in seventeen forty two, leaving its crew
Speaker 1: temporarily stranded. Was found in nineteen ninety three and dry
Speaker 1: Trotugus National Park, and the identification comes from an old
Speaker 1: log book one that described how the sailors aboard had
Speaker 1: tried to lighten the ship's load after it ran aground.
Speaker 1: Britain and Spain were at war when this ship ran aground.
Speaker 1: The ship had been stationed in the Keys during the
Speaker 1: War of Jenkins's Ear, something that Tracy swears we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before but that she could not
Speaker 1: find in her outlines. Doesn't ring any bells for me,
Speaker 1: so I'm like shrug. This war was interconnected with the
Speaker 1: War of the Austrian Succession. And now we are going
Speaker 1: to end this installment of uneartheds with three stories that
Speaker 1: I have looped together in a category that I'm just
Speaker 1: calling that's wild because they're not really related to each other,
Speaker 1: but they sure are in my opinion. Off the Wall first.
Speaker 1: A paper was published in the journal Archaeological Prospection last
Speaker 1: year in which an Indonesian geologist and several co authors
Speaker 1: concluded that the site known as Gunong Padang had been
Speaker 1: built as a pyramid as long as twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. That would make it older than the Pyramid
Speaker 1: of Joser. We've talked about the Pyramid of Joser on
Speaker 1: the show before, and it is believed to be the
Speaker 1: oldest pyramid in the world. So if correct, we would
Speaker 1: have a new oldest pyramid. This paper was immediately controversial,
Speaker 1: with critics arguing that its completely groundbreaking conclusions were flatly incorrect,
Speaker 1: and that instead the site was built on natural rock
Speaker 1: formations that have an appearance similar to a step pyramid.
Speaker 1: One rebuttal posted at the website Southeast Asian Archaeology read,
Speaker 1: in part quote, a good analogy is saying scientists have
Speaker 1: dated the soil underneath the Eiffel Tower and concluded that
Speaker 1: the tower is twenty thousand years old. This led to
Speaker 1: a whole lot of back and forth and a lot
Speaker 1: of doubling down by the lead author until this paper
Speaker 1: was finally retracted in March, with the journal saying quote.
Speaker 1: Following publication of this article, concerns were raised by third
Speaker 1: parties with expertise in geophysics, archaeology and radiocarbon dating about
Speaker 1: the conclusions drawn by the authors based on the evidence reported.
Speaker 1: This whole thing was messy and public enough that it
Speaker 1: wound up on TikTok in a series by TikTok user
Speaker 1: Erith Girl in her series Niche Tea, in which she
Speaker 1: talks about drama happening in communities that you may not
Speaker 1: be a part of. Next. Last year, the Vang Museum
Speaker 1: in Amsterdam and the Pokemon Company launched a collaborative exhibit
Speaker 1: bringing together Van Go and Pokemon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this descended
Speaker 1: into chaos, with tickets selling out instantly and visitors mobbing
Speaker 1: the gift shop. In particular demand was a limited edition
Speaker 1: Pokemon card called Pikachu with Gray Felt Hat, showing Pikachu
Speaker 1: in the style of a Van Go painting wearing a
Speaker 1: gray felt hat. It surprises me not at all that
Speaker 1: people were relentlessly aggressive about getting this card. The exhibition
Speaker 1: launched in September and by October the museum had stopped
Speaker 1: offering the limited edition card because things had become so unmanageable.
Speaker 1: It's called underestimating the impact of your collaboration. In January,
Speaker 1: it was announced that four museum employees who had previously
Speaker 1: been placed on leave had lost their jobs due to
Speaker 1: their conduct during the exhibition. This included someone who had
Speaker 1: worked for the museum for twenty five years, who, according
Speaker 1: to reports, told visitors where they could get the cards,
Speaker 1: which was against the rules of the event and the
Speaker 1: museum's code of conduct. Another employee allegedly stole a box
Speaker 1: of these limited edition cards. Yeah, it was, as I understand,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be like a scavenger hunt, and so
Speaker 1: having an employee tell people where to go, people thought
Speaker 1: was running a foul of the rules. I have so
Speaker 1: many questions. I bet I have some of the same
Speaker 1: ques talk about and behind the scenes. Finally, back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, one of the original pairs of
Speaker 1: ruby slippers from the nineteen thirty nine movie The Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in
Speaker 1: Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a smash and grab robbery. There
Speaker 1: was a huge search for the ruby slippers and an
Speaker 1: offer of a million dollar reward, and the Grand Rapids
Speaker 1: Police Department recovered them in twenty eighteen. None of that
Speaker 1: seemed all that weird at the time. We've talked a
Speaker 1: lot on Unearthed about various stuff being stolen and later recovered,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people steal movie memorabilia, but then things got weird.
Speaker 1: In the court proceedings of seventy six year old Terry
Speaker 1: John Martin, who pleaded guilty to stealing the slippers, news
Speaker 1: coverage has described him as a reformed mobster with a
Speaker 1: difficult pass, doing one last score after ten years away
Speaker 1: from his former life of crime. In January, his defense
Speaker 1: attorney filed a statement contending that Martin had stolen the
Speaker 1: slippers because he thought the rubies were real. He had
Speaker 1: planned to remove the rubies and sell them off individually
Speaker 1: so no one would be the wiser about where they
Speaker 1: had come from. He abandoned this plan when a fence
Speaker 1: brought him up to speed on the fact that the
Speaker 1: ruby slippers were decorated with sequins and glass. Uh. I
Speaker 1: have questions about this so many. It does not appear
Speaker 1: that anyone tried to make any argument that he was
Speaker 1: not able to comprehend the crime, but it seems like
Speaker 1: a person should be able to see that those are
Speaker 1: sequins on the shoes. Yeah. Martin, who was in hospice
Speaker 1: at the time, was ultimately sentenced to time served and
Speaker 1: a year of super release. And there's a plan to
Speaker 1: take these shoes on kind of a world tour before
Speaker 1: eventually auctioning them off at the end of this year.
Speaker 1: Ha ha. That is not the end of the weirdness.
Speaker 1: In March, Martin's alleged accomplice, Jerry Hall Saliterman, was charged
Speaker 1: in conjunction with the crime. It is alleged that he
Speaker 1: received the slippers and took possession of them, knowing that
Speaker 1: they were stolen. He has also been charged with witness
Speaker 1: tampering after threatening to release a sex tape of a
Speaker 1: woman who had knowledge of the case if she did
Speaker 1: not keep quiet. This just happened in mid March. It
Speaker 1: is a wild ride and it is still ongoing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like having just seen this sort of revenge
Speaker 1: porn aspect of it a couple of days ago means
Speaker 1: probably something else is going to happen between today when
Speaker 1: we're recording this and when the episode comes out. To
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, so that's unearthed for the first three
Speaker 1: months of twenty twenty four. I have so many thoughts.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about them Friday. Do you have a listener mail. Yes.
Speaker 1: We've gotten some extremely delightful emails about a number of
Speaker 1: different subjects. This particular one is going to be about
Speaker 1: Robert rules of Order. It is from Lisa. Lisa wrote
Speaker 1: and said, I listened to your episode about Henry Martin
Speaker 1: Roberts rules of Order. I also learned about these rules
Speaker 1: in a horse four h club. I've also been on fairboards,
Speaker 1: horse club board, and church councils and all used these rules,
Speaker 1: some loosely and some formally. One of these clubs have
Speaker 1: a story you might find amusing. This club had in
Speaker 1: its rule book that all club meetings will follow Robert's
Speaker 1: rules of order. Some members had their own agenda and
Speaker 1: started to bend these rules to manage this. My friend
Speaker 1: on this board and I did not agree with what
Speaker 1: they were trying to accomplish, and used Robert's rules to
Speaker 1: write this ship. She worked as a court clerk and
Speaker 1: let me know that hanging out with lawyers had taught
Speaker 1: her a few things. She went to the library and
Speaker 1: checked out the biggest Robert's Rules books she could find.
Speaker 1: Then she used two colored and marked pages. One color
Speaker 1: was for the rules they were breaking, and the other
Speaker 1: just made the book researched. When we went to the
Speaker 1: next meeting, after checking to make sure we knew for
Speaker 1: sure wording and the rules we understood were correct, we
Speaker 1: attended well armed. As the meeting started incorrectly, she made
Speaker 1: a point of order and let them know that according
Speaker 1: to Robert's rules while tapping the book. Let everybody know
Speaker 1: the error. When it came to the topic we had
Speaker 1: issue with, and once again she tapped the book and
Speaker 1: let them know the problem. When she was told it
Speaker 1: was not a problem. I read from the club rules
Speaker 1: how we were to follow Robert's rules, and she read
Speaker 1: the rule they were breaking. I'm sure by the time
Speaker 1: the meeting was over everyone was tired of her tapping
Speaker 1: that very important book. Eventually they got the changes made,
Speaker 1: but they were made correctly. Attached for pet tax I
Speaker 1: have a pick of my black barn cat who showed
Speaker 1: up one day six years ago and has not left.
Speaker 1: She just moved in my house. Cat is black and
Speaker 1: white with a big personality. My husband and I are
Speaker 1: both Ham radio ops and one day when I was
Speaker 1: using the mic for one radio, I looked over and
Speaker 1: saw my cat with a different mic and captured this
Speaker 1: cute pick. I thought you both might enjoy. Thanks for
Speaker 1: doing what you do. Your podcast is one of the
Speaker 1: few my husband enjoys listening to with me. Lisa, thank
Speaker 1: you Lisa for this email. I did enjoy the Roberts
Speaker 1: Rules story. We may also have other Roberts Rules stories
Speaker 1: later because some of them are quite fun. And I
Speaker 1: also love the picture of this little it looks like
Speaker 1: a textedo cat looking at the microphone. I have some
Speaker 1: similar pictures of my cats sitting in the little podcast studio. Also,
Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned before Opal likes to pull the
Speaker 1: noise dampening foam off of the wall and make a
Speaker 1: little bed out of it, so I have cute pictures
Speaker 1: of her next to the microphone as though she is
Speaker 1: a podcast host. But I also have pictures of her
Speaker 1: in a bed made of work for me to have
Speaker 1: to do later putting it back together. And this is
Speaker 1: why I record in a closet with a door that
Speaker 1: shuts yep, yep uh. She does it while I'm sitting
Speaker 1: right next to her. She has no respect, So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for that email. If you would like
Speaker 1: to send us a note about this or any other
Speaker 1: podcast or a history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. We're
Speaker 1: on some social media with the username miss in History,
Speaker 1: like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Twitter is called x
Speaker 1: now I guess I keep saying Twitter. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our show on iHeartRadio app or wherever else you
Speaker 1: like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.