Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Frae Wilson, and today is part two of our
Speaker 1: now traditional year end, although this is happening on the
Speaker 1: beginning of a new year. Yeah, uh, you're and look
Speaker 1: back at what has been unearthed in the world of
Speaker 1: history and history knowledge in the in the last twelve
Speaker 1: months or so. We mentioned previously that some of the
Speaker 1: biggest farms this year have already had their whole own
Speaker 1: entire episodes of the show back in the archive. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to look at some of the other
Speaker 1: lesser known things. We've grouped them together into themes. Themes
Speaker 1: seems to emerge. Yeah, anytime we're doing podcast research, kind
Speaker 1: of the groupings will reveal themselves a little bit. There
Speaker 1: are some trends here, So we we have these groups
Speaker 1: together into like themes. We also have some exhimations this
Speaker 1: year which are perennial favorites. Um and at the end
Speaker 1: of this episode, we've got some pretty extreme science responsible
Speaker 1: for unearthing some pretty cool stuff. So yes, let's start
Speaker 1: off with the maybe I don't want to say the
Speaker 1: opposite of science because that's not true. But things that
Speaker 1: nature unearthed for us, And I love this first one
Speaker 1: so much so. Uh, in Germany, a badger unearthed. I
Speaker 1: just I love that Germany of badger unearthed for us
Speaker 1: a twelfth century burial ground. The badger found a sword,
Speaker 1: bronze bowls, and ornate belt buckle, and skeletal remains. And
Speaker 1: all of this happened in Stolpe in Brandenburg. It helps
Speaker 1: that two people who lived on the farm are also
Speaker 1: amateur archaeologists innew a human pelvic bone when they saw it,
Speaker 1: So it's not as though the badger went waving it
Speaker 1: around and saying, hey, you guys, I found this stuff.
Speaker 1: The people recognized that they were They did not mistake
Speaker 1: it for maybe an animal or one of the bodies
Speaker 1: has been determined to be that of a warrior with
Speaker 1: several healed injuries that looked like battle wounds. It's estimated
Speaker 1: that he probably died at around age forty. And Uh.
Speaker 1: This was found last autumn, so inelve but it wasn't
Speaker 1: announced until August. So thank you badger for that great fine. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love everything about that story. Now we're gonna thank
Speaker 1: some dolphins, some dolphins working for the U. S. Navy
Speaker 1: found a late nineteenth century Howld torpedo off the coast
Speaker 1: of Coronado. So it doesn't really sound all that exciting
Speaker 1: that a torpedo was found in the ocean, except that
Speaker 1: only fifty of these torpedoes were ever made before they
Speaker 1: were supplanted by other technologically superior torpedoes, and this is
Speaker 1: only the second surviving one known to still exist. So
Speaker 1: significant fine on the part of those dolphins who were
Speaker 1: working for the navy. Uh, this one not so much
Speaker 1: an animal helping us. Uh. In Norway, some melting snow
Speaker 1: in the wake of global warming has actually unearthed a
Speaker 1: number of artifacts that prior to that had been frozen.
Speaker 1: They had been trapped in frozen ground. And this included
Speaker 1: a bow and arrow that we're used to hunt reindeer
Speaker 1: that are estimated to be about thirty hundred years old. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again, this melting actually happened in eleven, but the
Speaker 1: announcement was made. Yeah, there are lots and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of artifacts that are being sort of brought up
Speaker 1: to the surface as glaciers recede and snow's melt and
Speaker 1: things like that. As the temperature of the Earth rises,
Speaker 1: so Uh, it's cool that we're getting Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate that that what's bringing a lot of this
Speaker 1: up is is the the loss of otherwise frozen animal
Speaker 1: have dad in climate. In addition to animals who have
Speaker 1: healthily discovered things by accident, sometimes on purpose and sometimes
Speaker 1: by accident, a number of amateurs found cool stuff this year.
Speaker 1: People stumble across things in their day to day doings, yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes in their hobbies. This first, uh, this first unearthing.
Speaker 1: Metal detector enthusiasts in Leicestershire, England found a seventeen hundred
Speaker 1: year old coffin containing a child's body in October, and
Speaker 1: it was about four ft underground, but because it was
Speaker 1: made of lead, they found it very easily with their
Speaker 1: metal detectors. So, but there's sort of an ongoing uh,
Speaker 1: combativeness sometimes between like academic archaeologists and anthropologists and metal
Speaker 1: detector enthusiasts with sort of ongoing questions of is this
Speaker 1: a help or a hindrance In this case, what the
Speaker 1: what the metal detector folks did was they immediately contacted
Speaker 1: professional archaeologists as soon as they realized that they had
Speaker 1: a potentially important find in front of them and then
Speaker 1: they organized a volunteer guard so that it would remain
Speaker 1: undisturbed until the pros got there. Perfect. This is sort
Speaker 1: of the ideal situation of what when people who want
Speaker 1: to get out with their metal detectors um uncover something
Speaker 1: that maybe have importance. Also in October, a high school
Speaker 1: student unearthed a baby duckbill dinosaur which would be known
Speaker 1: as paras rolfus uh this fossil and he was on
Speaker 1: a school sponsored fossil hunting trips so success at Utah's
Speaker 1: Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and he basically turned over
Speaker 1: a stone and there it was so an easier fine
Speaker 1: than many other people have had. It took hours of
Speaker 1: work to excavate it from the rock, and the baby
Speaker 1: was more than six ft long, so quite large. Yes,
Speaker 1: I I had originally characterized it in my notes as tiny,
Speaker 1: but it is only tiny compared to an adult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is not tiny compared to actual small things. So
Speaker 1: in shajan Pur, India, a farmer named Naraj Kumar found
Speaker 1: fifteen ancient arrows and hunting tools while plowing one of
Speaker 1: his fields. And this fine came after his plow got
Speaker 1: stuck and the animals that were pulling it couldn't move
Speaker 1: it any farther. He found arrows and a number of
Speaker 1: metal hunting tools. He's actually made their way kind of
Speaker 1: out into the community before people realized that they were
Speaker 1: potentially important, and then they were gathered back up again
Speaker 1: uh and and handed over to authorities afterward. Our next
Speaker 1: one involves an amateur who's a very very young one
Speaker 1: uh So cone Ergel, who was only aged seven, found
Speaker 1: a twenty ft long dugout canoe while taking a scuba
Speaker 1: lesson near Oclawaha, Florida, and it's planned to be displayed
Speaker 1: at the Marion County Museum of History and Archaeology. But
Speaker 1: as of now, we haven't found out a lot of
Speaker 1: detail about how old the canoe is or which tribe
Speaker 1: may have made it. And it actually may take up
Speaker 1: to two years for to dry out uh in a
Speaker 1: way that won't harm it. Yeah, they have to very
Speaker 1: very very slowly get the because it's been you know,
Speaker 1: underwater and waterlogged for a really long time. You have
Speaker 1: to extremely slowly get the water out to try to
Speaker 1: do it without damaging it, without causing it to crack
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So we may not know much
Speaker 1: about that for a little while. Yes, this exciting, Yes,
Speaker 1: and then he'll be you know, nine or ten. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of ten year olds, in May, ten year old
Speaker 1: Jack Sinclair dug up a cannon ball from a four
Speaker 1: board cannon in his home garden in South England. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that this cannonball dates to the English
Speaker 1: Civil War. And I love this quote from him. He said,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a stone or a ball of
Speaker 1: some kind. It was really dirty, but when we got
Speaker 1: the dirt and mud off, it was a cannonball. I
Speaker 1: was like wow, because I had no idea. Jack Sinclair,
Speaker 1: aged ten, is charming. Another ten year old found a
Speaker 1: mummy in his grandmother's attict in August. As you can imagine,
Speaker 1: this caused all inner of excitement, but it was determined
Speaker 1: to be a fake by the time September rolled around.
Speaker 1: It had a real skull, but the bones were all plastic. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the skull looks like it had been a cadaverish
Speaker 1: skull that was prepared for medical use or research. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was not like a dug up human remain skull.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't like his grandmother had a creepy
Speaker 1: situation going on in the attic. She had probably acquired
Speaker 1: it through some yeah fairly boring means well, and then
Speaker 1: it dates back to a time when when sort of
Speaker 1: egypt stuff was extremely popular for people to own. That's
Speaker 1: one that. Uh. The The initial story of the ten
Speaker 1: year old finding mummy and grandma's attic made the rounds
Speaker 1: on social and lots and lots of people were saying, hey,
Speaker 1: have y'all seen this? Have y'all seen this? And we did,
Speaker 1: and sadly, I mean, it is not a real mummy
Speaker 1: of historical importance. Uh. Next up, we have several discovered graves,
Speaker 1: mass graves and otherwise, starting with in September, archaeologists announced
Speaker 1: that they had unearthed a completely sealed tomb in Italy
Speaker 1: and the Etruscan necropolis of Tarkinia, and this contained a
Speaker 1: prince holding a spear and the charred skeleton of his wife,
Speaker 1: which had some jewelry in a box, a bronze plated
Speaker 1: box nearby. The thing is this is actually the opposite
Speaker 1: of what was really going on. The body holding the
Speaker 1: spear was female and the charge skeleton next to it
Speaker 1: was male, which led to lots and lots of discussion
Speaker 1: about gender assumptions in the world of archaeology. All of
Speaker 1: this was about twenty six hundred years old, and the
Speaker 1: determination of which sex belonged to which body came after
Speaker 1: bone analysis. Uh. It's sort of tangentially related. Italy's art
Speaker 1: theft police also announced that they had recovered a troupe
Speaker 1: of second and third century BC a trust Etruscan artifacts
Speaker 1: in June of this year, so it was kind of
Speaker 1: a big year for Etruscan stuff. Researchers at the University
Speaker 1: of Bond discovered a fourteen hundred year old mass grave
Speaker 1: in Mexico, and this provides evidence that the Maya actually
Speaker 1: dismembered their captives. So the team found the skeletons of
Speaker 1: twenty four people in what was an artificial cave, and
Speaker 1: the skulls were all separated from the bodies, with the
Speaker 1: lower jaws also separated from the rest of the head. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're still very little known about who these people were,
Speaker 1: or their social status or why they may have been killed,
Speaker 1: but some of them had jade tooth inserts, which suggests
Speaker 1: that they were nobles. It's a big mystery. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: This year, archaeologists in Poland reported finding four skeletons from
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, while excavating for a new road. And
Speaker 1: the interesting part here was that they appear to have
Speaker 1: undergone an anti vampire ritual before being buried. Their heads
Speaker 1: were all removed and placed between their legs. This is
Speaker 1: another example of ones. We got one. We got lots
Speaker 1: and lots of emails about when it happened. Uh, we
Speaker 1: just could not find enough primary source information to make
Speaker 1: a whole episode about it. Yeah, it was the description
Speaker 1: as of the situation, We're pretty brief. We kind of
Speaker 1: gave you everything we know just now. In October, a
Speaker 1: team that was working in a suburb of Lima, Peru
Speaker 1: found an undisturbed wary tomb that contained two mummified corpses
Speaker 1: and the bodies were those of an adult in an infant,
Speaker 1: with more details to come once those bodies are unwrapped.
Speaker 1: The theory though, is that the adult was a master
Speaker 1: weaver and the child was killed and buried in the tomb.
Speaker 1: The coolest bit of this finding the bodies are at
Speaker 1: least a thousand years old, and the find is intact,
Speaker 1: even though the dig site is right in a residential neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So this thousand year old, perfectly preserved thing was happening
Speaker 1: just down the street from people's houses. So these people
Speaker 1: are from the Wary civilization, which was around for about
Speaker 1: five years before the Inca Empire emerged. So before we
Speaker 1: move on to a frequently requested thing of exhumations, let's
Speaker 1: take a moment and have a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: That sounds delightful. Now we will get back to a
Speaker 1: frequent subject of listener request, and that is exhumations. So
Speaker 1: this year, Chilean poet Pablo Naruta was exhumed in April
Speaker 1: in an attempt to discover whether he was poisoned. His
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three death certificate lists his cause of death
Speaker 1: as prostate cancer. Naruta was a member of the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: and his death came not long after a military coup
Speaker 1: brought General Augusto Pinochet into power. Naruta had criticized both
Speaker 1: the coup and Pinochet, and he had planned to go
Speaker 1: into exile the day after he died. So naturally, this
Speaker 1: led to lots and lots of questions about whether his
Speaker 1: death was from natural causes. It was also further compounded
Speaker 1: because he had told his driver that an unknown doctor
Speaker 1: had given him an injection that had made his condition worse.
Speaker 1: So six months after this exhamation. So this November, Patricio Bustos,
Speaker 1: who's the director of Chilean Forensic Service, announced that a
Speaker 1: news conference that no trace of chemical was found. So
Speaker 1: it seems unlikely at this point that Pablo Naruta was poisoned. Also,
Speaker 1: in the realm of discovering whether or not someone had
Speaker 1: been poisoned, Brazilian President Joel Gular was exhumed to determine
Speaker 1: whether he had been poisoned or died of a heart
Speaker 1: attack as was officially reported he had died in ninety six.
Speaker 1: Uh and the tests are ongoing on that one. We
Speaker 1: don't have the results yet. Our last exhumation today is yes,
Speaker 1: they're ara fat. If you do not recall, he was
Speaker 1: the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or the PLO,
Speaker 1: and he was exhumed by French authorities last year to
Speaker 1: confirm whether his two thousand and four death was the
Speaker 1: result of poisoning. So preliminary tests that came out in
Speaker 1: November suggests that yes, he was poisoned with the radioactive
Speaker 1: substance polonium to ten. The levels of the substance in
Speaker 1: his body were eighteen times higher than normal. They had
Speaker 1: taken tissue samples both from him and from the soil
Speaker 1: that he was very it in. So, according to the
Speaker 1: Swiss report that came out at that point, the results
Speaker 1: quote moderately support the proposition that the death was the
Speaker 1: consequence of poisoning with polonium to tent But then on
Speaker 1: December three, a French report was leaked that claimed that
Speaker 1: this elevated level was really from naturally occurring rate on
Speaker 1: gas where Arafat was buried, and that he was not
Speaker 1: actually poisoned. The Swiss team came back at this point
Speaker 1: and called the French findings debatable, saying that they had
Speaker 1: actually measured the rate on levels in the tomb before
Speaker 1: they opened it, and they had ruled out rate on
Speaker 1: as a cause of the elevated levels. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that this story will continue to develop and that by
Speaker 1: the time you were listening to this something else will
Speaker 1: have happened. This is the second time we have actually
Speaker 1: recorded the piece about about yes or Ara Fat, so
Speaker 1: that story is continuing to evolve. And now we're moving
Speaker 1: on to I mean, I already think like digging people
Speaker 1: up to determine if they were poisoned. It's pretty extreme,
Speaker 1: but this is extreme science, super extreme science. Uh. In June,
Speaker 1: researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Croatian Natural
Speaker 1: History Museum published a paper in Plos One detatling their
Speaker 1: discovery of the world's oldest evidence of a bone tumor.
Speaker 1: It came from the left rib of a Neanderthal who
Speaker 1: lived about a hundred and twenty thousand years ago, and
Speaker 1: this tumor probably came from a disease called fibrous dysplasia,
Speaker 1: and before this point, the earliest bone tumors that we
Speaker 1: knew about or between one thousand and four thousand years old.
Speaker 1: The bone came from an excavation site which contained the
Speaker 1: bones of at least eight hundred and seventy six Neanderthals,
Speaker 1: and it has has not been matched with any of
Speaker 1: the other bones or fragments there. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: the remains from the site were the victims of cannibalism
Speaker 1: or pre natural predation by carnivorous animals. So we don't know,
Speaker 1: but this tumor is so much older than anything we
Speaker 1: have ever seen or studied before, and to have had
Speaker 1: to be looking through the bones of eight seventy different
Speaker 1: Neanderthals and before finding it, I think that one has
Speaker 1: a tumor. Yeah. Well, And one of the things about
Speaker 1: this particular find is that a lot of times this
Speaker 1: disease causes tumors like they're not it's not a malignancy,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times it does cause tumors elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the body. And unless they find other bones belonging
Speaker 1: to the same body, they won't be able to sort
Speaker 1: of tell uh just how present the disease was, or
Speaker 1: how it was affecting the body physically or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So cool, but also it almost leaves more questions answer
Speaker 1: raising more questions. In October, a lot of our findings
Speaker 1: are from October this year. In October, a team of
Speaker 1: researchers published a paper in Science that examines d n
Speaker 1: A from three hundred and sixty four prehistoric skeletons, and
Speaker 1: these skeletons spanned four thousand years of early human history.
Speaker 1: What they were looking at was tiny changes in mitochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA from humans who lived between seventy and thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: So what they found was that there were huge waves
Speaker 1: of prehistoric UH migration among early humans. Previously, the accepted
Speaker 1: belief has been pretty much that humans migrated from the
Speaker 1: Near East into the rest of Europe. But these findings
Speaker 1: suggest that there were actually really big migrations from western
Speaker 1: and Eastern Europe as well, that it wasn't just this
Speaker 1: one unidirectional spreading of people, that there was a lot
Speaker 1: more movement going on between early human groups. UH. The
Speaker 1: next one involves airborne leisure technology. So using this UH,
Speaker 1: archaeologists found the Cambodian city of Maundra Pravada. They've known
Speaker 1: this city existed before, but they could never pinpoint exactly
Speaker 1: where because the city's location was unknown until this year
Speaker 1: to the scientific community. Researchers were hoping as of the
Speaker 1: announcement that they located it, that it had not been looted.
Speaker 1: They were just kind of praying that there was nothing
Speaker 1: going on there and that they would actually have this
Speaker 1: bounty of research to be conducted, and that research is
Speaker 1: going to go on for quite sometimes. So they have
Speaker 1: located it and the work is sort of just beginning. Now.
Speaker 1: We have a robot, a robot called flac to TC
Speaker 1: used an infrared camera and a laser scanner to help
Speaker 1: archaeologists explore the temple of the Feathered Serpent near Mexico
Speaker 1: City this year. The team wound up finding these strange
Speaker 1: yellow spears and they don't currently know what they are
Speaker 1: about or what they mean. These speares are a yellow
Speaker 1: clay that's covered with jarow site and they had to
Speaker 1: use the robot to explore because there's just three ft
Speaker 1: long tunnel running under the temple that was full of debris,
Speaker 1: So a robot helped with that particular unearthing. So cool. Uh,
Speaker 1: this one's interesting. An airport security full body scanner, which
Speaker 1: are a little bit controversial still for some people, revealed
Speaker 1: that an authentic Roman fresco is under a newer nineteenth
Speaker 1: century edition which is in the louver. So they used
Speaker 1: that same technology to examine art instead of people and
Speaker 1: found whole magical thing. The way that this whole discovery
Speaker 1: was building, some of the headlines was sort of like, uh,
Speaker 1: actual Roman art found under fake nineteenth century art, And
Speaker 1: I was like, that's a little harsh on the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century art that we're talking about, but yeah, they were
Speaker 1: able to prove that definitively that there is and much
Speaker 1: older piece underneath this newer piece. That's so cool. That
Speaker 1: reminds me of I don't know, if you ever read
Speaker 1: the t s A blog, I highly recommend it to anybody. Um,
Speaker 1: it's also a little disturbing because you find out how
Speaker 1: many people are getting on airplanes, are trying to get
Speaker 1: on airplanes and loaded weapons. But they often will be
Speaker 1: like we found seventeen cannonballs this week from the Civil War.
Speaker 1: We found they often find these little odd artifacts of
Speaker 1: history and this kind of makes me think of it.
Speaker 1: They used similar technology to find art under art. So
Speaker 1: so that concludes our retrospective this year. Well, a lot
Speaker 1: of what all has been unearthed. I'm sure that there
Speaker 1: are many many other things. Oh yeah, that that we
Speaker 1: could have talked about. I was I was telling Holly
Speaker 1: this morning that when I sat down to actually wrangle
Speaker 1: all of my collected stuff into notes for this episode,
Speaker 1: normally what I do is I open all of my
Speaker 1: stuff in tabs and and I like scrolled and scrolled
Speaker 1: and scrolled down the bookmarks until I got to the bottom.
Speaker 1: And then Firefox said, you were about to open nine tabs.
Speaker 1: Are you sure you want to do that? So even
Speaker 1: with yeah, we did not with exclusions, Yes, we did
Speaker 1: not talk about all ninety nine things. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are many other things besides those nine. So you
Speaker 1: were welcome to right in if there are something that
Speaker 1: you would like us to either have a whole episode
Speaker 1: on or mentioned at some point in the future. And
Speaker 1: listener mail, and I again, do you want to thank
Speaker 1: the History Blog, which is where I getting up of
Speaker 1: a lot of these stories first. Well, in a lot
Speaker 1: of times, news sites will eventually pick up a history
Speaker 1: story kind of almost the same way they would a
Speaker 1: human interest story. They're like, this is a neat thing
Speaker 1: that happened, whereas history the History blog is focused on
Speaker 1: the historical events that are coming up. Yes, so they
Speaker 1: kind of aggregate them more quickly. Well, and also a
Speaker 1: lot of times there's much better context and more important
Speaker 1: context than what's going around with the headline. So cool resources.
Speaker 1: You do not already read that? Um, I have some
Speaker 1: listener mail before we sign off from this today. I
Speaker 1: hope you will read it. I will do that. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is from Brian, and Brian says, I enjoyed your
Speaker 1: podcast on smallpox. I'd like to clear up a small detail.
Speaker 1: You acted surprised that the cows then are used had horns.
Speaker 1: In fact, all cows and bulls have horns. Some beef
Speaker 1: breeds don't have horns because of selective breeding. Very cows
Speaker 1: typically don't have horns, but this is because they are
Speaker 1: removed when they are calves for the safety of other
Speaker 1: cows and people that were with them. When we'd be
Speaker 1: hord cows on our dairy farm. We administer sedatives and
Speaker 1: pay medication to reduce the trauma. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: set a little light on a part of your podcast
Speaker 1: that I knew something about. Thank you for producing an
Speaker 1: enjoyable show. So thank you, Brian. Yeah, that's cool information.
Speaker 1: It is cool, and I think I am. I am
Speaker 1: more familiar with the with beef cow breads that have
Speaker 1: been bred not to have farns, just because they were
Speaker 1: more prevalent where I grew up, So it was surprising
Speaker 1: to me to see a cow skin still had horns
Speaker 1: on it. So thank you so much Brian for writing
Speaker 1: in with that clarification. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us about this or any other episode, you can.
Speaker 1: We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash History class
Speaker 1: Stuff and on Twitter at Miston History. Are tumbler is
Speaker 1: at Miston History dot tumbler dot com. And we are
Speaker 1: on Pinterest. If you would like to learn more about
Speaker 1: what we've talked about today, come to our website. Put
Speaker 1: the word archaeology in the search bar, and you will
Speaker 1: find an article called what's the biggest archaeological find in History.
Speaker 1: You can do all that and a whole lot more
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