Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
Speaker 1: It's part two of our year en Unearthed. This time
Speaker 1: we have some of our long time listener favorites. I
Speaker 1: mean we did last time too, but some particular favorites
Speaker 1: this time, including the edibles and potables, some utsy stuff,
Speaker 1: and the exclamations. We have some of the things too,
Speaker 1: and we will kick it off with several different studies
Speaker 1: that we're all looking at exactly what caused the Neanderthals
Speaker 1: to die out. Humans and Neanderthals coexisted on the European
Speaker 1: continent for at least five thousand years before the human
Speaker 1: population started to outstrip the Neanderthals, and after that, of course,
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals eventually became extinct. Over the last few months,
Speaker 1: we have heard about a few different papers trying to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of exactly what happened. So according
Speaker 1: to researchers from Japan and Italy, it might be because
Speaker 1: humans figured out how to use projectile weapons, including spear
Speaker 1: throwers and bows and arrows. They found evidence that humans
Speaker 1: might have used these kinds of weapons between forty and
Speaker 1: forty five thousand years ago, which is twenty thousand years
Speaker 1: earlier than previously thought. So they thought that this could
Speaker 1: have given humans an edge over Neanderthals, who hadn't developed
Speaker 1: that same technology. However, we should note that in a
Speaker 1: previous installment of On Earth, we talked about research that
Speaker 1: suggested that Neanderthal hunting spears could have been used as
Speaker 1: throwing weapons. That particular study included replicas of three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand year old javelins, much older than the forty forty
Speaker 1: five thousand years in this research. And then for a
Speaker 1: completely different idea, maybe the cause was chronic ear infections.
Speaker 1: This hypothesis comes from a team of head and neck
Speaker 1: anatomists who published a paper called Reconstructing the Neanderthal you
Speaker 1: stayction Tube New Insights on Disease, susceptibility, fitness, cost and Extinction.
Speaker 1: They published that in the Journal of the Anatomical Record.
Speaker 1: In the words of Samuel Marquez, PhD. Quote it may
Speaker 1: sound far fetched, but when we for the first time
Speaker 1: reconstructed the Eustachian tubes of Neanderthals, we discovered that they
Speaker 1: are remarkably similar to those of human infants. Middle ear
Speaker 1: infections are nearly ubiquitous among infants because the flat angle
Speaker 1: of an infant's eustation tubes is prone to retain the
Speaker 1: tightest media. Bacteria that caused these infections the same flat
Speaker 1: angle we found in the Andanderthals. So most human children
Speaker 1: literally outgrow with these infections. As they get bigger, there
Speaker 1: ustation tubes get longer and more sharply angled so that
Speaker 1: their ears can drain better. But Neanderthal's eustation tubes remained
Speaker 1: flat insu adulthood, making it more likely that they might
Speaker 1: continue to have recurring or chronic infections, and apart from
Speaker 1: the risk of death from a really acute infection, this
Speaker 1: would have just life harder for Neanderthals, especially as they
Speaker 1: were competing with humans for resources. Just it Gaze, You're
Speaker 1: suddenly now as curious as Tracy was while she was
Speaker 1: doing this research. The US station tube is named after
Speaker 1: sixteenth century anatomist Bartolomeo Eustacy, and we're still not done
Speaker 1: with this whole Neanderthal question. According to a paper by
Speaker 1: scientists from Stanford which was published in the journal Nature Communications,
Speaker 1: the cause might have been infectious diseases, not ear infections.
Speaker 1: Using mathematical models, they concluded that humans and Neanderthals didn't
Speaker 1: interact very much for the first centuries of their mutual
Speaker 1: existence because they each carried and were resistant to different diseases.
Speaker 1: So they suggested that each population was encircled by a
Speaker 1: quote invisible disease barrier. But at some point humans and
Speaker 1: Neanderthals started interbreeding. We know that for sure, and the
Speaker 1: team behind this research suggests that the children of these
Speaker 1: pairings may have had immunity to diseases from both groups,
Speaker 1: tipping precarious balance that had lasted up until then. So
Speaker 1: that led them to the question, why then did humans
Speaker 1: eventually get the upper hand rather than Neanderthals if their
Speaker 1: offspring had immunity to both sets of diseases, And the
Speaker 1: answer might have been that there were more and deadlier
Speaker 1: diseases in tropical areas where humans originated than there were
Speaker 1: farther north into Europe and Asia, so it was a
Speaker 1: lot easier for humans to move north and survive than
Speaker 1: it was for Neanderthals to try to move south into
Speaker 1: tropical Africa. And in our last study that we're talking
Speaker 1: about on this subject, Maybe it was inbreeding. A team
Speaker 1: from Indovin University of Technology the Netherlands used mathematical modeling
Speaker 1: to study the effects of inbreeding on Neanderthal populations. Their
Speaker 1: research suggests that inbreeding alone was not enough to explain
Speaker 1: the extinction of the Neanderthals, but small populations of a
Speaker 1: species are known to experience something called alley effects. Basically,
Speaker 1: a very small population is just not as genetically fit
Speaker 1: as a larger one, and in breeding and Alley effects
Speaker 1: combined could have caused the Neanderthals to go extinct over
Speaker 1: about a ten thousand year period. So the suggestion here
Speaker 1: is that the introduction of humans to an area might
Speaker 1: have influenced the Neanderthal behavior just enough to encourage more
Speaker 1: inbreeding in a population that was already pretty small. But
Speaker 1: they didn't think it was enough to say that human
Speaker 1: activity conclusively caused Neanderthal's extinction, and the words of the
Speaker 1: papers authors quote, did Neanderthals disappear because of us? No?
Speaker 1: This study suggests the species demise might have been due
Speaker 1: merely to a stroke of bad demographic luck. And now
Speaker 1: we're moving on to one of my favorite subjects, clothing
Speaker 1: and accessories. Excavations under tarbot Old Parish Church and the
Speaker 1: Scottish Highlands have unearthed a man's ankle boots, complete with buckles,
Speaker 1: and the thick hose that he wore with them. The
Speaker 1: find is about six hundred years old and, in the
Speaker 1: words of Cecily Spall of field Work Archaeology Services quote
Speaker 1: the man had been put in a coffin wearing these clothes,
Speaker 1: but the coffin at some point collapsed and everything concertinaed.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have this quote in there specifically because
Speaker 1: the description of everything concertina delighted me. It's not a
Speaker 1: description I think we use as often in the US.
Speaker 1: So because this collapse sealed this clothing off from oxygen,
Speaker 1: it's pretty well preserved, with visible wear and tear that
Speaker 1: seems to have come from the garment's use and not
Speaker 1: from the collapse of the coffin or the decomposition of
Speaker 1: the material over time. You can even see some of
Speaker 1: this person's leg hair caught in the hose. A metal
Speaker 1: detectorist in Estonia unearthed a seventeen hundred year old sacrificial
Speaker 1: site that included a gold bracelet, crossbow, brooches, belt plaques
Speaker 1: and silver plates. The bracelet in particular is noteworthy. It
Speaker 1: might actually be a caller and it probably dates back
Speaker 1: to the third century. An archaeological team came to the
Speaker 1: site for further study of this discovery, with archaeologist Marika
Speaker 1: Magid noting that gold is a rare find and sights
Speaker 1: of this age in Estonia and a piece this large
Speaker 1: and heavy is particularly rare. Magic told a news broadcast quote,
Speaker 1: one can say that this is likely the most valuable
Speaker 1: single find in the material sense to be unearthed in Estonia.
Speaker 1: Uh this find has been sent to a museum. A
Speaker 1: Dutch art detective has recovered a ring connected to Oscar
Speaker 1: Wilde that was stolen during a burglary at Maudlin College
Speaker 1: in two thousand two. The ring and two medals had
Speaker 1: been stolen in the same incident, and after the culprit,
Speaker 1: even Andrews, was caught, he said that he had sold
Speaker 1: the ring to a scrap dealer. So after this was found,
Speaker 1: it was returned to the college, which home burser Mark
Speaker 1: Blandford Baker said he had given up hope of ever
Speaker 1: seeing again like once the culprit said that he had
Speaker 1: sold the stuff to a scrap dealer. People were like well,
Speaker 1: that's definitely gone. This ring's history a bit of it.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, Wild and his friend Reginald Harding
Speaker 1: had given the ring to their friend William Ward. All
Speaker 1: three of these men were friends while taking classes at
Speaker 1: the college, and then the ring later became part of
Speaker 1: the college's collection of Wild memorabilia. Archaeologists in China have
Speaker 1: used enzyme linked immunosorb and assay to confirm the fibers
Speaker 1: found in burial urns there are silk fabrics, making them
Speaker 1: the world's oldest known silk They date back to between
Speaker 1: fifty three hundred and fifty five hundred years ago, and
Speaker 1: they suggest that silk making and dying techniques were relatively
Speaker 1: refined by that point, meaning that people had first started
Speaker 1: making silk well before that. Previously, the oldest known silk
Speaker 1: fibers were from between forty two hundred and forty four
Speaker 1: hundred years old. And to be clear, I put this
Speaker 1: under clothing because it was the most related category, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually clothing. The silk was part of the
Speaker 1: material that had been used to wrap the dead, is
Speaker 1: sort of postmortem clothing. You could also not exactly clothing
Speaker 1: or at least not always close thing. Researchers have studied
Speaker 1: twelve hundred beads made from ostrich eggshell to try to
Speaker 1: spot patterns and how they might reflect social changes that
Speaker 1: took place on the African continent thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1: These beads came from thirty different sites, and their styles
Speaker 1: and shapes seemed to shift when a new influence comes
Speaker 1: into an area. In the words of lead author Jennifer Miller, quote,
Speaker 1: these beads are symbols that were made by hunter gatherers
Speaker 1: from both regions for more than forty thousand years, So
Speaker 1: changes or lack thereof in these symbols tells us how
Speaker 1: these communities responded to cultural contact and economic change. So
Speaker 1: to expand on that, people in Africa started making these
Speaker 1: beads at least fifty thousand years ago, and according to
Speaker 1: previous research, the beads tended to get bigger when hurting
Speaker 1: people moved into a region that had been previously inhabited
Speaker 1: just by foragers. This new research suggests that the pattern
Speaker 1: isn't that straightforward. In southern Africa, new styles of beads
Speaker 1: followed evidence of the reduction of hurting, but previous bead
Speaker 1: styles didn't go away, but in Eastern Africa, bead style
Speaker 1: stayed the same even after hurting was introduced to an area.
Speaker 1: This was the first study of bead patterns specifically in
Speaker 1: Eastern Africa, and it's possible that the bead makers there
Speaker 1: just weren't influenced by the newcomers, or it's possible that
Speaker 1: the hurting people who moved into that area already had
Speaker 1: a similar bead making style, so changes weren't as a parent.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists from the University of Copenhagen have published a paper
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports detailing three human
Speaker 1: teeth that appear to have been used as jewelry, and
Speaker 1: those teeth were found in Catali, which also came up
Speaker 1: in our Autumn Unearthed. So the teeth are about eighty
Speaker 1: five hundred years old and they had been drilled with
Speaker 1: the same sorts of micro drills that were used to
Speaker 1: make beads out of stones or animal bones. They were
Speaker 1: also worn in a way that suggests that they had
Speaker 1: been used as jewelry or something similar for quite some time.
Speaker 1: The teeths chewing surfaces suggests did that they had belonged
Speaker 1: to a mature adult, and so The suggestion was that
Speaker 1: they were probably removed either after someone died or from
Speaker 1: a skull of a person who had died quite some
Speaker 1: time before that. After we take a quick sponsor break,
Speaker 1: we're going to move on to another big favorite, edibles
Speaker 1: and potables. Okay for our edibles and potables this time around.
Speaker 1: A team of scientists at the University of Bristol has
Speaker 1: reported the earliest known evidence of baby feeding bottles, or
Speaker 1: at least their basic equivalent. These are small clay vessels
Speaker 1: dating back to about five thousand BC. They're small enough
Speaker 1: for a baby to hold, and they have this little
Speaker 1: spout at the bottom that a baby could suck milk from.
Speaker 1: Some of these vessels are shaped like imaginary animals, which
Speaker 1: suggested to the team that they might be meant for children,
Speaker 1: but they also noted that they could have been used
Speaker 1: to feed adults who were very ill or were otherwise
Speaker 1: unable to eat solid food. The team looked at three
Speaker 1: specific examples that have been found in the graves of
Speaker 1: children and tested them, and they contained residues from the
Speaker 1: milk of domesticated room and animals like cows and the
Speaker 1: words of Dr Julie Dunn from the University of Bristol,
Speaker 1: who was the lead author of the paper published on
Speaker 1: the spine that was published in the journal Nature, quote
Speaker 1: similar vessels, although rare, do appear in other prehistoric cultures,
Speaker 1: such as Rome and ancient Greece across the world. Ideally,
Speaker 1: we'd like to carry out a larger geographic study and
Speaker 1: investigate whether they served the same purpose. Researchers studying a
Speaker 1: cave near Tel Aviv have found evidence that Paleolithic people
Speaker 1: saved animal bones for up to nine weeks so that
Speaker 1: they could have the marrow as a food source later on,
Speaker 1: comparing it to being like opening up a can of soup.
Speaker 1: They had already known that bone marrow was an important
Speaker 1: source of nutrition in Paleolithic diets, but they had thought
Speaker 1: that food was scarce enough that people had to eat
Speaker 1: whatever they had as soon as they had it. The
Speaker 1: team concluded that these bones were preserved rather than immediately
Speaker 1: bro can open for their marrow because of evidence of
Speaker 1: chopping marks that did not match up with butchering methods
Speaker 1: that were known to be used with fresh meat. And
Speaker 1: this is the earliest known evidence of people basically using
Speaker 1: bones for food storage purposes rather than consuming what was inside.
Speaker 1: Them immediately. A team in Puerto Rico has examined twenty
Speaker 1: of fossilized clam shells to try to determine how the
Speaker 1: pre aarrowalk population of the island prepared them for eating.
Speaker 1: Their analysis of these shells suggest that they were cooked
Speaker 1: at more than one hundred degrees celsius, which is the
Speaker 1: boiling point of water, but less than two hundred degrees,
Speaker 1: concluding that they were cooked over a flame rather than boiled.
Speaker 1: The study said barbecued, but we know from our recent
Speaker 1: barbecue live show people have a lot of opinions on
Speaker 1: whether that would be the correct word in this situation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This team also noted that this fine provides some circumstantial
Speaker 1: evidence about whether pottery was widely used on the island,
Speaker 1: because you would need some pottery vessels in order to
Speaker 1: be able to boil claim. A newly published book has
Speaker 1: detailed the finding of an excavation at berry Fields in Buckinghamshire, England.
Speaker 1: The excavation took place between two thousand seven and twenty six.
Speaker 1: One interesting find a bread basket along with the only
Speaker 1: intact chickens egg from Roman Britain. So this egg was
Speaker 1: actually one of four that were found at the site,
Speaker 1: but the other three broke, which was still a very
Speaker 1: stinky experience. According to the archaeologists on the scene, It's
Speaker 1: possible that the bread basket and the bread that it
Speaker 1: presumably contained, as well as the eggs, might have been
Speaker 1: thrown into this pit sometime after the late third century.
Speaker 1: That was something that people did for good luck or
Speaker 1: as part of a religious ritual. All I can think
Speaker 1: of is Templeton the rat now Um. The book is
Speaker 1: called berry Fields Iron Age Settlement and a Roman bridge
Speaker 1: Field System and Settlement along Ackman Street near Fleet Marston, Buckinghamshire,
Speaker 1: and it is published by Oxford Archaeology. So this last
Speaker 1: one isn't exactly edible, but it was the best place
Speaker 1: to put it. Researchers at the University of Copenagen have
Speaker 1: managed to sequence an entire ancient genome from a fifty
Speaker 1: seven hundred year old piece of birch pitch that was
Speaker 1: used as chewing gum. Basically we've talked about chewing gum
Speaker 1: finds before. They described this as the first time that
Speaker 1: an entire ancient genome has been extracted from something that
Speaker 1: was not bone. This piece of pitch was found in
Speaker 1: southern Denmark, and in addition to the human DNA that
Speaker 1: it contained, it also had traces of plant and animal
Speaker 1: DNA that were probably part of that person's diet, as
Speaker 1: well as DNA from the microbes in their mouth. We
Speaker 1: have a few examples of items being returned or repatriated
Speaker 1: to their place or culture of origin. Next, the United
Speaker 1: States Department of Homeland Security returned the head of a
Speaker 1: marble statue to Libya in October. In the US and
Speaker 1: Libya had signed an agreement that imposed restrictions on the
Speaker 1: import of of being cultural property to the United States,
Speaker 1: and then this head had been smuggled into the US
Speaker 1: and violation of that agreement. This was a returned to
Speaker 1: the Libyan embassy in Washington, d C. When living authorities
Speaker 1: said it would be returned to its historical location. Cambridge
Speaker 1: University College is returning a statute that was looted from Nigeria.
Speaker 1: The bronze statue of a Cockerell was removed from Nigeria,
Speaker 1: then the Kingdom of Benin in eighteen ninety seven, and
Speaker 1: then it was given to the college by a student's father.
Speaker 1: This is one of many bronzes that were taken from
Speaker 1: Benin and are now in British museums and universities. There's
Speaker 1: a whole effort that I just saw an article about
Speaker 1: after sending like this outline was done. It was done,
Speaker 1: it was sent finished about a whole effort uh in
Speaker 1: in Britain to try to track down other artifacts that
Speaker 1: should be returned to Nigeria. And then, in similar news,
Speaker 1: France has returned to nineteenth century saber to Senegal. The
Speaker 1: French had seized this sword in eighteen ninety three and
Speaker 1: then placed it in the collection of Paris's Army Museum.
Speaker 1: The saber initially belonged to Omar said Utal and was
Speaker 1: confiscated from his son. This was part of an effort
Speaker 1: announced last year in which France would return items of
Speaker 1: African cultural heritage within five years, with French President Emmanuel
Speaker 1: Macron saying quote, I cannot accept that a large part
Speaker 1: of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France.
Speaker 1: There are historical explanations for that, but there are no
Speaker 1: valid justifications that are durable and unconditional. African heritage can't
Speaker 1: just be in European private collections and museums. But progress
Speaker 1: on actually fulfilling this whole plan has actually been slow
Speaker 1: as French lawmakers have tried to hash out the legal
Speaker 1: and logistical details. What's next bit isn't exactly a repatriation,
Speaker 1: but it has some of the same themes. We have
Speaker 1: talked a lot in our Unearthed episodes and other times
Speaker 1: about discoveries that have come from DNA analysis on ancient
Speaker 1: human remains, and the rise of these kinds of studies
Speaker 1: has brought up some ethical questions. Research that involves the
Speaker 1: DNA of living people is supposed to be conducted following
Speaker 1: ethical rules and guidelines based on the idea that people
Speaker 1: should have a right to privacy when it comes to
Speaker 1: their own health information and their own DNA, but ancient
Speaker 1: DNA can be in kind of a gray area. And
Speaker 1: to be clear, this is not just a theoretical question
Speaker 1: of what rights long dead ancient people should have over
Speaker 1: their own DNA. These results of these studies can have
Speaker 1: huge cultural and political implications for people living today, especially
Speaker 1: indigenous people and other ethnic minorities. So the National Science
Speaker 1: Foundation has awarded a three hundred fifty thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: eighty two dollar collaborative grant to the University of Connecticut,
Speaker 1: the Denver Museum of Nature, and science and partners across
Speaker 1: the United States, Canada, and Europe to study this question.
Speaker 1: This team that's being assembled plans to involve in digital
Speaker 1: this leaders, in these conversations, and to try to establish
Speaker 1: standards for this research that are respectful of indigenous communities
Speaker 1: and that encourage collaboration among the researchers doing the work
Speaker 1: with the people who that work might affect. In July,
Speaker 1: we talked about Greece's demand for the Parthenon marbles to
Speaker 1: be returned from the British Museum, and there has been
Speaker 1: a lot more back and forth about that since then,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned for a future episode of the podcast
Speaker 1: on that one. We hope it's in the works. I
Speaker 1: think at this point it's it's it's moved from we
Speaker 1: hope to pretty likely. Over just the last twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: we have some musy news. As almost always, various researchers
Speaker 1: have been studying the human intestinal microbiome and how that
Speaker 1: microbiome might be connected to various diseases and conditions. So
Speaker 1: several studies have connected things like processed foods at an
Speaker 1: increased use of antibiotics, various hygiene practices, and other behaviors
Speaker 1: all grouped under the da of a Western lifestyle. So
Speaker 1: studies have connected that Western lifestyle to changes in the microbiome,
Speaker 1: and these changes in the microbiome have been correlated with
Speaker 1: a rise in things like autoimmune disorders, allergies, and gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal diseases. A paper published in the journal Cell, Host
Speaker 1: and Microbe examined the gut microbes of people across multiple continents.
Speaker 1: They specifically looked at the provatelecopri complex, which includes four
Speaker 1: different clades and is associated with a number of health concerns.
Speaker 1: The team found that this bacteria was present in about
Speaker 1: thirty of people with more Western lifestyles and about nine
Speaker 1: percent of people described as having non Western lifestyles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the incredibly basic idea is that in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases there seems to be a correlation, not necessarily causation,
Speaker 1: between a lack of these bacteria and various health conditions.
Speaker 1: So then these results were compared to ancient microbiomes include
Speaker 1: both fossilized human poop and Lutsie's microbiome. Leutsy, of course,
Speaker 1: did not have a Western lifestyle at all, and his
Speaker 1: microbiome showed evidence of three of the four clades of
Speaker 1: this bacterium. In other Utsy News, researchers at the University
Speaker 1: of Glasgow and the University of Innsbruck have been trying
Speaker 1: to identify all the mosses and live rewards that were
Speaker 1: found around Utsie's remains. These plants are classified as briaphites,
Speaker 1: and there are thousands of fragments of briaphite in the
Speaker 1: ice that was around Dutsie's body. Although only twenty three
Speaker 1: species of bria Phites live in the area today, there
Speaker 1: are at least seventy five species from immediately around Utsie's
Speaker 1: remains and from his clothing gear and his gut. And
Speaker 1: we are going to take one more quick sponsor break
Speaker 1: before we get to the rest of our unearthed. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've already talked in these two episodes about various findings
Speaker 1: that came from burial sites or the grave goods in
Speaker 1: them in some way. For our next few finds, the
Speaker 1: connection to burials is the thing that they have in common. First,
Speaker 1: a team studying a four thousand year old burial site
Speaker 1: off the coast of the U s State of Georgia
Speaker 1: have said that it shows evidence of really long ranging
Speaker 1: relationships among hunter gatherer people's during North America's Woodland period.
Speaker 1: What they found at the ancient shell pit was a
Speaker 1: burial site that had a lot in common with funerary
Speaker 1: practices of people living in the Great Lakes area at
Speaker 1: about the same time. In the words of Matthew Sanger,
Speaker 1: who led the research team, quote, our excavations revealed remarkable
Speaker 1: parallels between the shell Ring in the coastal Southeast and
Speaker 1: in broadly contemporaneous sites in the Great Lakes, including the
Speaker 1: use of cremation to handle the dead, cremating the dead
Speaker 1: in an area separate from where the bones were eventually buried,
Speaker 1: the use of copper as a burial item, the burial
Speaker 1: of multiple people at the same time, and the use
Speaker 1: of ochre in the burial. Not only are these practices
Speaker 1: very similar, our analyzes clearly showed that the copper found
Speaker 1: at the shell Ring originated in the Great Lakes and
Speaker 1: was therefore traded between the two regions. Notably, all of
Speaker 1: these practices are rare or entirely absent from the regions
Speaker 1: between the Great Lakes and the Southeast, which suggests that
Speaker 1: there was not some sort of general diffusion of traditions,
Speaker 1: but rather a direct transplant. Basically, the suggests that the
Speaker 1: people living in eastern North America four thousand years ago
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily sticking to relatively isolated pockets of territory. They
Speaker 1: may have traveled very long distances and had interactions that
Speaker 1: stretched across much of the eastern half of the continent.
Speaker 1: The paper that they published on this was called Great
Speaker 1: Lakes Copper and Shared Mortuary Practices on the Atlantic Coast
Speaker 1: Implications for long distance exchange during the Late Archaic, and
Speaker 1: it was published in the journal American Antiquity. In other news,
Speaker 1: A Roman Catholic church and settle Check rep Public is
Speaker 1: nicknamed the Bone Church because it houses the bones of
Speaker 1: somewhere between forty thousand and seventy thousand people in an ossuary.
Speaker 1: Some of these bones are stacked and others are arranged
Speaker 1: into formations, and these are the remains of people who
Speaker 1: died of plague in the mid fourteenth century, as well
Speaker 1: as in the Hussite Wars that followed. An ongoing restoration
Speaker 1: project at the church has also involved excavation in the area,
Speaker 1: and during that time researchers have found two mass graves,
Speaker 1: one from a thirteen eighteen famine and one from atty
Speaker 1: eight plague. Together, this represents another twelve hundred skeletons moving on.
Speaker 1: The Aquita Museum in Bordeaux, France, is on the site
Speaker 1: of what was once a convent, and in November they
Speaker 1: announced that a tomb in the museum's basement might contain
Speaker 1: the remains of sixteenth century Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne,
Speaker 1: who died in fifteen ninety two and whose body's location
Speaker 1: hasn't been totally clear because it was moved several times
Speaker 1: after his death, Although there is still work to be done,
Speaker 1: the wooden coffin in the tomb does have Montagna written
Speaker 1: on it in large brown letters. It does seem like
Speaker 1: a clue maybe, I mean, it could be some other Montagna,
Speaker 1: or somebody who loved Montagna, or someone who wanted to
Speaker 1: confuse us all in the future. In October, a team
Speaker 1: in Norway found an unusual boat burial. Now, boat burials
Speaker 1: on their own are not unheard of. There have been
Speaker 1: several of them found over the last couple of years
Speaker 1: that I've heard about. But in this case, the same
Speaker 1: grave site contains the remains of two people who died
Speaker 1: and were buried about a hundred years apart. The grave
Speaker 1: site is at a Viking age farm. The older burial
Speaker 1: is described as a man buried with weapons in a
Speaker 1: boat between nine and ten ms long in the eighth century.
Speaker 1: Then in the ninth century, a woman was buried in
Speaker 1: address fashioned with shell shaped brooches, along with a crucifix
Speaker 1: shaped brooch, a pearl necklace, scissors, a spindle whirl and
Speaker 1: a cow's head. She was also placed in a boat,
Speaker 1: this one seven or eight meters long. For her burial,
Speaker 1: the older grave was excavated and she and her boat
Speaker 1: were placed into the boat that was already there, along
Speaker 1: with the body that was already in it. So this
Speaker 1: is not the only double boat burial that was ever found,
Speaker 1: but it's a rare enough occurrence that archaeologist Raymond Savage,
Speaker 1: who was the project manager for this excavation, said that
Speaker 1: he had never heard of the practice before. He did
Speaker 1: later learn of other examples that had been found in
Speaker 1: another part of Norway. Though, although the team says it's
Speaker 1: unlikely that the two people were related somehow, there is
Speaker 1: still a lot to learn from this fine Now we
Speaker 1: will move on to the exhumations. After a lengthy series
Speaker 1: of proposals and challenges that we have been talking about
Speaker 1: on the show since December. Francisco Franco's remains were exhumed
Speaker 1: and moved on October. They were moved to a cemetery
Speaker 1: near Madrid by helicopter and then re entered next to
Speaker 1: his late wife in Unearthed. In October, we talked about
Speaker 1: plans to exhume the remains of John Dillinger and have
Speaker 1: them tested to confirm whether maybe the FBI and actually
Speaker 1: killed someone else in ninety four and then buried that
Speaker 1: person in Dillinger's place. The whole thing was meant to
Speaker 1: be covered on a TV documentary, but instead everyone wound
Speaker 1: up in court after Crown Hill Cemetery objected to this
Speaker 1: whole plan. History Channel then announced it would not do
Speaker 1: the documentary after all. One of Dillinger's descendants, Michael Thompson,
Speaker 1: wanted to go ahead with this exclamation though, saying he
Speaker 1: wanted some clarity about his ancestors death, But in December,
Speaker 1: a judge in Indiana found in the cemetery's favor, ruling
Speaker 1: that the exhimation could not go ahead without the cemetery's consent.
Speaker 1: This still is not necessarily over though the law gives
Speaker 1: Thompson's attorney ten days to file an amended complaint, in
Speaker 1: thirty days to appeal to a higher court. So that
Speaker 1: could still be ongoing as we are recording this, or
Speaker 1: in that window between when we record it and when
Speaker 1: this episode comes out. It's entirely possible that in ten minutes,
Speaker 1: when we were done this episode, there will be a
Speaker 1: headline with a new update about that. I would even
Speaker 1: say probable. It's this is the law of averages for
Speaker 1: us and other news to Dublin counselors have proposed that
Speaker 1: the remains of James Joyce be exhumed from Zurich and
Speaker 1: reinterred in Dublin sometime before the anniversary of the publication
Speaker 1: of his work. Ulysses that anniversary is happening in twenty two.
Speaker 1: This has led to debate about what Joyce and his
Speaker 1: wife Noura Barnicle wanted for their remains after their deaths,
Speaker 1: as well as to some resistance to that whole idea
Speaker 1: from the James Joyce Foundation in Switzerland. At this point,
Speaker 1: this is a motion filed by two city councilors, and
Speaker 1: it's not a concrete plan for an exhimation to take place,
Speaker 1: So we might very well be coming back to this
Speaker 1: one at some point in the future, also sparking intense
Speaker 1: debate this fall at about the same time it was
Speaker 1: a plan to turn joyce former home in Dublin into
Speaker 1: a hostel. That debate seems to still be ongoing as
Speaker 1: of when we're recording this. For our last item, South
Speaker 1: Australian Attorney General Vicky Chapman granted a conditional approval to
Speaker 1: exhume the unidentified remains of the person known as the
Speaker 1: Somberton Man, something she reportedly started considering last year. This
Speaker 1: is probably Australia's most famous and enduring unsolved mystery. The
Speaker 1: body was found on a beach in the summer of
Speaker 1: nicely dressed, with an unsmoked cigarette on his chest, and
Speaker 1: with a piece of paper reading Tom and should in
Speaker 1: a hidden pocket. I think that Josh and Chuck did
Speaker 1: an episode on it. Oh yeah, did they. I think
Speaker 1: this is a topic that people have asked us to cover.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if either of us have ever kind
Speaker 1: of circled it at some point and then moved away
Speaker 1: from it. I have many times, So maybe that can
Speaker 1: be a whole other thing from this unearth that you
Speaker 1: may hear an episode about later, like, there are two
Speaker 1: things we have mentioned that are actively in the works
Speaker 1: for future episodes. Maybe that will be a third one.
Speaker 1: Uh and stuff you should know did cover it in September. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not that long. So yeah, that's our that's our
Speaker 1: unearthed for the year end of twenty nineteen, which I
Speaker 1: think is actually coming out at the very start of
Speaker 1: So happy New year, everyone, and I do have a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener mail. It takes out fabulous. This
Speaker 1: is from Katie. Katie writes about our Alfred Wegner episode
Speaker 1: and says, firstly, thank you so much for your wonderful show.
Speaker 1: It makes my time spent washing dishes and folding lottery
Speaker 1: so much more enjoyable. I was tickled by the description
Speaker 1: of Alfred Wegener's experiments on the formation of moon craters
Speaker 1: because I essentially recreated them with fourth graders several years ago.
Speaker 1: The experiment was part of a lunar science unit of
Speaker 1: study created by one of the major hands on science
Speaker 1: curriculum companies, so I assume one of their talented educators
Speaker 1: must have known about Beginner's methods. Instead of cement powder,
Speaker 1: we used flower with a light dusting of cocoa powder
Speaker 1: on top, and then we dropped mar bowls and small
Speaker 1: rocks into the flower and measured and observed the resulting creators.
Speaker 1: I'm sure my students would have been thrilled to know
Speaker 1: they were replicating an experiment done by a real scientist.
Speaker 1: And I hope you are thrilled to know that Vegner's
Speaker 1: crafty legacy lives on in elementary classrooms across America. Sincerely, Katie,
Speaker 1: I am actually delighted to know. Yeah, my nieces are
Speaker 1: definitely old enough to be dropping marbles into uh flower
Speaker 1: or cocoa powder or whatever. Um. They are maybe not
Speaker 1: quite old enough to make the connection between that and
Speaker 1: the moon, but I might just save this for some
Speaker 1: kind of future visit with nieces later on. UM. I
Speaker 1: also will mention h a shout out to our listener Cathy,
Speaker 1: who um I ran into while I was in Disney
Speaker 1: World recently, and she introduced me to her grandson who
Speaker 1: specifically loved the Alfred Vegner episode UH, and it came
Speaker 1: up it coincided with the tectonics the and they're shifting
Speaker 1: and all of that information being in produced in his
Speaker 1: course swork at school, so it was kind of perfect
Speaker 1: timing and he had a much broader sense of the
Speaker 1: whole subject um. So that was really really lovely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well again, Happy New Year everyone. I think this is
Speaker 1: our first episode of the New Year, and I hope
Speaker 1: everybody who celebrates holidays and late December early January has
Speaker 1: had great ones. If you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcasts were history podcast
Speaker 1: at I heart radio dot com and then we're all
Speaker 1: over social media at missed in History. That is where
Speaker 1: you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. And
Speaker 1: you can also subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
Speaker 1: the I heart radio app, and anywhere else you get
Speaker 1: your podcast. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.