Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Welcome to
Speaker 1: part two of Our Year and Unearthed from the year.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we've got art and music and edibles
Speaker 1: and potables, and some exhumations and some repatriations. And as
Speaker 1: we typically do, we have a collection of fines that
Speaker 1: don't really relate to each other. But I found them
Speaker 1: all to be interesting, and I have grouped them together
Speaker 1: as pot pourri, and that is where we will start.
Speaker 1: So this fall, Jesse Sir Philippe at Skylar Mansion State
Speaker 1: Historic Site in New York, published as Odious and Immoral
Speaker 1: a Thing Alexander Hamilton's Hidden History as an Enslaver. So
Speaker 1: as is clear by that title, this paper up ends
Speaker 1: the popular idea that Hamilton's was at heart and abolitionist,
Speaker 1: or at the very least he did not personally enslave anyone.
Speaker 1: Before this point, it was generally agreed that Hamilton's had
Speaker 1: acted as a middleman arranging transactions for other enslavers, but
Speaker 1: most of the time he was also characterized as participating
Speaker 1: in this only with extreme reluctance. Sir Philippi conducted her
Speaker 1: research through primary source materials, including Hamilton's cash book, where
Speaker 1: she found individual line items that included income from an
Speaker 1: enslaved person being hired out to somebody else, as well
Speaker 1: as the cash value of servants tabulated after Hamilton's death. So,
Speaker 1: particularly in the North, the term servants was often used
Speaker 1: to describe enslaved people, so if you're just doing sort
Speaker 1: of a straight reading of old documents, it's not always
Speaker 1: clear when the word servant means a free servant or
Speaker 1: an enslaved person. How However, free servants would not have
Speaker 1: been included in a property list with a cash value
Speaker 1: as they were in this case. Sir Philippe's full paper
Speaker 1: is available online and it is well worth a read.
Speaker 1: Here is just a brief tidbit quote. A thorough study
Speaker 1: of the depths of Hamilton's involvement in the institution of
Speaker 1: slavery has yet to be done through a close examination
Speaker 1: of Alexander Hamilton's cash books, various letters to and from
Speaker 1: Hamilton's letters to Elizabeth Skyler, Hamilton's from her father Philip Schuyler,
Speaker 1: and other related primary accounts. When those sources are fully
Speaker 1: considered a rarely acknowledged truth becomes inescapably apparent. Not only
Speaker 1: did Alexander Hamilton's enslave people, but his involvement in the
Speaker 1: institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally
Speaker 1: and professionally. The denial and obscuration of these facts in
Speaker 1: nearly every major biography written about him over the past
Speaker 1: two centuries has erased the people he enslaved from history.
Speaker 1: It has also created and perpetuated a false and incomplete
Speaker 1: picture of Hamilton's as a man and founding father. Once again,
Speaker 1: the title of that paper is as odious and immoral
Speaker 1: a thing Alexander Hamilton's hidden history as an enslavor. Moving on,
Speaker 1: this next find was unearthed in September, but it did
Speaker 1: not hit my radar until October. Cruise at the historic
Speaker 1: Detroit Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida found a forgotten elevator,
Speaker 1: still totally intact except for the cables, along with an
Speaker 1: abandoned stairwell, a fireplace, and the hotel's original switchboard. This
Speaker 1: elevator was a particularly serendipitous find because the work that
Speaker 1: was being done when it was unearthed was to turn
Speaker 1: the space into a steampunk themed brew pub and pizzeria.
Speaker 1: So an old cave elevator complete with cranks and gears
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Just it's right into that theme perfection. The
Speaker 1: Detroit Hotel was St. Petersburg's first hotel and when it
Speaker 1: was built, it had forty rooms. That means its capacity
Speaker 1: was more than the entire population of the town at
Speaker 1: the time. In other news, according to research published in
Speaker 1: the journal Scientific Reports, the Maya city of Takal had
Speaker 1: a large scale water filtration system that used some of
Speaker 1: the same materials that are part of water filtration systems today.
Speaker 1: So the two thousand year old filtration system that was
Speaker 1: built at the Coriantal reservoir, and it used course sand,
Speaker 1: crystalline courts, and zeolite which were brought into the area
Speaker 1: from nearly twenty miles away. And at this point this
Speaker 1: is the oldest known zeolite water purification system in the world.
Speaker 1: Since the city was built on top of porous limestone,
Speaker 1: access to a reservoir was critical to its survival. This
Speaker 1: combination of minerals in the filtrations system would have removed
Speaker 1: heavy metals, microbes, and nitrogen rich compounds. Next up, archaeologists
Speaker 1: working at Stoke Mandeville ahead of the High Speed Transportation
Speaker 1: Project HS two have found what they believed to be
Speaker 1: witch marks at the Church of St. Mary there. The
Speaker 1: first structure at the church was built in ten seventy
Speaker 1: and then additions were made to it over the next
Speaker 1: few hundred years. The fines that have been described as
Speaker 1: witch marks feature drilled holes that are surrounded with radiating lines,
Speaker 1: and so the idea with these kinds of marks was
Speaker 1: that witches or malevolent spirits would get trapped in these lines.
Speaker 1: Although the same design could have been used as a sundial,
Speaker 1: the places where these were found to make that unlikely.
Speaker 1: They were not in any right spot or at the
Speaker 1: right angle for the sun to hit them in any way,
Speaker 1: but it is possible that they started out as sundials
Speaker 1: but were then repurposed as part of the building later on.
Speaker 1: Next up, archaeologists with the project at Colonial Williamsburg have
Speaker 1: finished the first phase of their work at the Nassau
Speaker 1: Street location of Williamsburg's first Baptist church. Enslaved In Free
Speaker 1: Black People first formed this congregation all the way back
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy six. Was one of the first black
Speaker 1: churches in the country. They started out meeting at a
Speaker 1: brush arbor and then in a carriage house before the
Speaker 1: church building itself was first dedicated in eighteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: Then the building was expanded over the years, including an
Speaker 1: addition in eighteen ninety three and an annex in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three. The eighteen addition had been home to the
Speaker 1: church's altar and its pulpit, and then the church moved
Speaker 1: into a totally different building in nineteen fifty six. In
Speaker 1: addition to foundations and bricks, the team also found thousands
Speaker 1: of artifacts that are now being analyzed, along with evidence
Speaker 1: of two graves. The second phase of excavation work is
Speaker 1: expected to resume in January and we'll go on for
Speaker 1: about eighteen months. An organization called the First Baptist Church
Speaker 1: Nassau Street Descendants formed during this work, and its members
Speaker 1: include people who worshiped at this historic church or whose
Speaker 1: parents or grandparents or other ancestors did so. In addition
Speaker 1: to analyzing its fines from phase one, the archaeological team
Speaker 1: is also working with the church and this organization on
Speaker 1: how to plan out the second phase, basically finding out
Speaker 1: what are your goals also from this work, and how
Speaker 1: should we approach it from here. This isn't the only
Speaker 1: work going on in Williamsburg. A multi year project at
Speaker 1: property belonging to John Custis, the fourth father in law
Speaker 1: of Martha Washington, is ongoing and has recently unearthed architectural
Speaker 1: features and boundary ditches and other news. Rana Alone of
Speaker 1: the Third, who died in nineteen seventeen, was the last
Speaker 1: sovereign of Madagascar. France annex Madagascar in and exiled the
Speaker 1: royal families two years later. One of the employees of
Speaker 1: the royal family was Clara Herbert, and one of her
Speaker 1: descendants inherited this box of things like postcards, photographs, receipts
Speaker 1: and souvenirs, as well as a pink, satin and burgundy
Speaker 1: cotton velvet gown that belonged to the Queen's aunt. On
Speaker 1: December eighth, Madagascar's government purchased the items at auction for
Speaker 1: forty three thousand pounds British. The government plans to install
Speaker 1: them in the Queen's palace for public display. There are
Speaker 1: some articles online that kind of walk through all the
Speaker 1: dif front postcards sort of how they pieced together. The
Speaker 1: last year's of the of the monarch's life and our
Speaker 1: last kind of random random inclusion in this potpourri Archaeologists
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands have discovered an enormous mass grave from
Speaker 1: the late Middle Ages, and this grave contained the bones
Speaker 1: of at least twenty people who appear to have been
Speaker 1: young men between the ages of fifteen and thirty. And
Speaker 1: they also found a whole lot of nails, suggesting that
Speaker 1: these people were originally buried in wooden boxes or coffins
Speaker 1: that had since disintegrated. It's totally unclear at this point
Speaker 1: how these bodies came to be there or what happened
Speaker 1: to them, in part because they haven't been conclusively dated yet.
Speaker 1: But this area used to be the moat of Bodisteine Castle,
Speaker 1: which was built in the fourteenth century and was largely
Speaker 1: destroyed by fire at the end of the seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: And the most logical conclusion would probably be that it
Speaker 1: was an army of some kind, but I don't really
Speaker 1: know yet. Uh. And now we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break if we move on to some of the things.
Speaker 1: Our next few unearth things are about art and architecture,
Speaker 1: and the first one archaeologists have found tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of rock paintings on cliff faces in Columbia, South America,
Speaker 1: and a find that people have dubbed the Sistine Chapel
Speaker 1: of the Ancients. These paintings are about twelve thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred years old, and their subjects include numerous now extinct animals,
Speaker 1: including masodons and giants lots. There are also handprints, geometric shapes, fish, birds, lizards, turtles,
Speaker 1: and human figures, some of those so high up that
Speaker 1: researchers could only get a look at them by using drones.
Speaker 1: They also found pieces of ochre that may have been
Speaker 1: used to produce the artwork. Next up, we had a
Speaker 1: little historical context setting before we talk about the actual find.
Speaker 1: In ten eighties six, Danish king Commute the fourth and
Speaker 1: his brother Benedict were both murdered in Odenza, Denmark. At
Speaker 1: the time, the monarchy and the church were extremely closely connected,
Speaker 1: and the king had tried to institute Amanda Tory ties.
Speaker 1: Many of the nobility really opposed this plan and they
Speaker 1: rose up against him, so he and his whole retinue
Speaker 1: were murdered in St. Alban's church, and then a few
Speaker 1: years later Canute was sanctified and the church was rededicated
Speaker 1: as St. Canute's Cathedral, and Canute and his brother were
Speaker 1: both enshrined in the cathedral, with silk and linen textiles
Speaker 1: lining both of their shrines, and in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the shrines were
Speaker 1: walled up within the church to hide them, but later
Speaker 1: on it was discovered that the king's textiles were missing.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy four, both shrines were examined in preparation
Speaker 1: for putting them on display, and Benedict's shrine contained far
Speaker 1: more valuable textiles. People were like, why were the most
Speaker 1: beautiful and expensive textiles in the brothers too, So as
Speaker 1: people were preparing these shrines for display, they decided to
Speaker 1: move the best textiles from Benedict's shrine into canutes shrine
Speaker 1: so that the king's shrine would look more properly adorned.
Speaker 1: But that left a lot of really answered questions about
Speaker 1: what had happened to the king's textiles in the first place,
Speaker 1: presumably at some point they were just stolen, and also
Speaker 1: whether his brother's textiles dated back to when they were
Speaker 1: originally enshrined or whether they were replacements. There's just a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that people didn't really know about this
Speaker 1: these textiles. At this point, chemical analysis of the remaining
Speaker 1: textiles has confirmed that they are all the same age,
Speaker 1: and that their age suggests that they really are the
Speaker 1: original textiles. It is likely that they were imported from
Speaker 1: southern Italy. Next, we have a thing that like I
Speaker 1: just inexplicably love, and that's that an interdisciplinary team of
Speaker 1: researchers has been studying the micro biomes of seven drawings
Speaker 1: by Leonardo da Vinci. When they did this, they expected
Speaker 1: to find a lot of fun guy because it's generally
Speaker 1: believed eve that fungi are the dominant microorganism when it
Speaker 1: comes to art on paper, and since fungus can be
Speaker 1: really destructive to works of art, there has been a
Speaker 1: lot of research into these particular organisms. But the researchers
Speaker 1: were surprised that instead they found a whole lot more bacteria,
Speaker 1: with many of the species of bacteria typical for being
Speaker 1: part of the human microbiome. So their conclusion is that
Speaker 1: these bacteria were transferred to the drawings during handling and restoration,
Speaker 1: and they also identified other bacteria that are more commonly
Speaker 1: found in the microbiomes of insects. So these may have
Speaker 1: come from flies and other insects crawling around on or
Speaker 1: maybe defecating on the artworks. Disrespectful insects. There was also
Speaker 1: a lot of human DNA. Whether any of it belongs
Speaker 1: to Leonardo da Vinci is not known, but much of it,
Speaker 1: again most likely came from all those years of hand laying.
Speaker 1: All of this work was completed using a sequencing technology
Speaker 1: known as nanopore. Last time we did a an unearthed episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about a mosaic. We have a different mosaic
Speaker 1: to talk about this time. Archaeologists at Chedworth, Roman Villa
Speaker 1: and Gloucestershire, England, have found the first ever mosaic there
Speaker 1: that can be dated all the way back to the
Speaker 1: fifth century. Because mosaic tiles often aren't made from organic
Speaker 1: material that can be used for carbon fourteen dating, they
Speaker 1: can be kind of hard to conclusively date unless there's
Speaker 1: other stuff in the area to reference. In this case,
Speaker 1: they used pieces of charcoal and bone in one of
Speaker 1: the building's foundation trenches to make that determination. The mosaic
Speaker 1: dates two decades after Britain ceased to be part of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, and it up ends some commonly held
Speaker 1: beliefs about what happened in Britain at that point. It
Speaker 1: has long been assumed that it and faced an enormous
Speaker 1: economic collapse, and that most of the villas and towns
Speaker 1: that had been associated with the empire were immediately abandoned
Speaker 1: and fell into disrepair. While the mosaic itself is of
Speaker 1: somewhat poorer quality than ones created during the Roman era,
Speaker 1: but its existence also suggests that works like this we're
Speaker 1: still being created, so that economic shift was less immediate
Speaker 1: and less linear. And the words of Martin Papworth, the
Speaker 1: National Trust archaeologist, quote it has generally been believed that
Speaker 1: most of the population turned to subsistence farming to sustain themselves,
Speaker 1: and after the break with Rome, Britannia's administrative system broke
Speaker 1: down into a series of local fifedoms. What is so
Speaker 1: exciting about the dating of this mosaic at Chedworth as
Speaker 1: that it is evidence for a more gradual decline. The
Speaker 1: creation of a new room and the laying of a
Speaker 1: new floor suggests wealth and a mosaic industry continuing fifty
Speaker 1: years later than had been expected. Okay, this next one
Speaker 1: is not about art or architecture, but it is connected
Speaker 1: to the same period that we just discussed in two
Speaker 1: metal detectorists, Sue and Mick Washington, found a pair of
Speaker 1: bronze bowls in Buckinghamshire, England, and alerted the Portable Antiquity Scheme,
Speaker 1: which is a project that records archaeological finds made by
Speaker 1: members of the public. An excavation followed that unearthed a
Speaker 1: bronze vessel, iron spearheads and a grave. So this grave
Speaker 1: was excavated in August and the findings were announced in October.
Speaker 1: The person buried there was very tall for the time
Speaker 1: and the items buried with him included a sword, a
Speaker 1: very well preserved scabbard, spears, bronze and glass vessels and fittings,
Speaker 1: and decorative elements. This person has been nicknamed the Marlowe
Speaker 1: Warlord and the remains date back to the sixth century.
Speaker 1: Like the mosaic that we just talked about, this burial
Speaker 1: site has offered up some new information about the agent
Speaker 1: after the Roman Era. In the words of Dr Gibor
Speaker 1: Thomas quote, what we found exceeded all our expectations and
Speaker 1: provides new insights into this stretch of the Thames in
Speaker 1: the decades after the collapse of the Roman administration. In Britain,
Speaker 1: so the nature of the burial suggests that it was
Speaker 1: someone of importance, the first such burial to be found
Speaker 1: in the Mid Thames basin rather than the Upper Thames
Speaker 1: or London. The Mid Thames was believed to be a
Speaker 1: border area resting in between powerful tribal groups, but this
Speaker 1: suggests that it had powerful residents of its own. Now
Speaker 1: we are going to move on to the edibles and
Speaker 1: the potables, and sadly to me, we don't have many
Speaker 1: actual edibles and potables this time around, as in things
Speaker 1: that you could physically eat or drink should you choose
Speaker 1: to which we definitely do not advise doing. There's no
Speaker 1: bog butter. Don't eat the bog letter. We only have
Speaker 1: one thing that you could put in your mouth, which
Speaker 1: again do not These are some one hundred twenty year
Speaker 1: old chocolates that belonged to Australian poet and war correspondent
Speaker 1: Banjo Patterson, which had been commissioned by Queen Victoria to
Speaker 1: provide a morale boost to soldiers during the Boer War.
Speaker 1: The chocolates were in a souvenir tin, packed in straw
Speaker 1: and wrapped in silver foil, and they turned up by
Speaker 1: surprise in a collection of Patterson's newspaper clippings and personal papers.
Speaker 1: It was like, there's there's chocolates in here, here's the
Speaker 1: records and a snack. I thought this was all pictures
Speaker 1: and papers and stuff. So although that was our only
Speaker 1: theoretically actual edible object, we do have some research into
Speaker 1: what various people in the past eight or where they ate.
Speaker 1: A thermopolium or a hot food kiosk has been unearthed
Speaker 1: in Pompey. Work around this kiosk started a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, but as of December of it has now
Speaker 1: been completely unearthed. Oh boy, has this been a hot
Speaker 1: subject at our house? Yeah? I really think this replaced
Speaker 1: the monolith in terms of the things people. This one
Speaker 1: has been so popular, Like periodically, I'll be during the
Speaker 1: holiday break. I would be like in my sewing room
Speaker 1: or something, just puttering around, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: my husband would zoom into the room and tell me
Speaker 1: the latest thing he had read. He's very worried about
Speaker 1: the dogs um. The thermopolium was basically a fast food
Speaker 1: eatery selling hot foods from vessels that rested in holes
Speaker 1: in the top of the counter. It's also decorated, including
Speaker 1: pictures of mallards and a rooster, which may have advertised
Speaker 1: the kind of food served there. In addition to just
Speaker 1: being very pretty, there is also a nim frieding a
Speaker 1: sea horse, which is probably not meant to be a
Speaker 1: menu item, and like many other parts of POMPEII, it
Speaker 1: had been scrawled with graffiti. Holly also just referenced there
Speaker 1: were dog bones. Well, there's a picture of a dog
Speaker 1: there a picture of a dog on a leash. I
Speaker 1: thought there was. Oh, I think there's a there was
Speaker 1: a set there were some sets of remains in the area,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those things like we don't
Speaker 1: actually was the proprietor was it a customer? Was it
Speaker 1: a random passer by? Yeah, there is a picture of
Speaker 1: a dog on a leash. I forgot about that part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, we were discussing, and many people online have
Speaker 1: been discussing. Does that mean that they served dog is
Speaker 1: one of their things? Well, they also have this mermaid situation.
Speaker 1: I think there was I'm completely talking off the top
Speaker 1: of my head at this point, but I think there
Speaker 1: was a similar image of a dog on a leash
Speaker 1: found somewhere else that suggested more that they were um
Speaker 1: like pets than than something that would be on the menu.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's just modern humans trying to
Speaker 1: negotiate with the past in a way that makes it palatable, yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe maybe they have treats for your dog.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's hot food for you and it's scruffy. Yeah uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: other finds that were in this area included a ladle
Speaker 1: and amphora and an oil container and some flasks, lots
Speaker 1: of things that you might expect to find at an
Speaker 1: eatery of some sort. Archaeologists have used the residues in
Speaker 1: dental tartar to study what people in the Lavant were
Speaker 1: eating years ago, and they found evidence that at least
Speaker 1: some people's diets included turmeric, bananas, and soy, suggesting that
Speaker 1: these foods were being treated from South and East Asia
Speaker 1: much earlier than people previously thought. Yeah. Like, the fact
Speaker 1: that people had these residues in their teeth does suggest
Speaker 1: that maybe this trade was already well established. But they
Speaker 1: did also only find evidence of these specific foods and
Speaker 1: some of the remains they studied into all of them,
Speaker 1: so it's possible there were class distinctions evolved very different
Speaker 1: dietary tastes. Also, another possible explanation is that these particular
Speaker 1: people were travelers from Asia who had traveled into the
Speaker 1: area carrying the evidence of what they used to eat
Speaker 1: from their earlier life with them. So that's a little interesting,
Speaker 1: but not totally clear yet. Next up, research published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Archaeological Science has examined the diets of
Speaker 1: people in the Indus Valley civilization through lipid residues on pottery,
Speaker 1: and some of these findings were surprising. They found a
Speaker 1: lot of residues from non ruminant animals like pigs, far
Speaker 1: more than would be suggested by the volume of pig
Speaker 1: remains at Indus Valley settlements. There's also evidence of a
Speaker 1: lot of dairy animals at these sites, but not as
Speaker 1: much evidence of the use of dairy in the lipid residues.
Speaker 1: The reasons for these disparities completely unclear at this time.
Speaker 1: We're still figuring it out. Yeah uh, to move on.
Speaker 1: The paper The Prehistoric Roots of Chinese Cuisines Mapping Staple
Speaker 1: Food Systems of China six thousand BC to which was
Speaker 1: published in November, studied two thousand, four hundred forty eight
Speaker 1: human skeletal samples from a hundred and twenty eight different
Speaker 1: archaeological sites across China. They used isotopic indicators to figure
Speaker 1: out what these people had eaten. The remains covered a
Speaker 1: span of six thousand years, and the team found that
Speaker 1: prior to two thousand BC, food staples in China were
Speaker 1: differentiated between people in the north and the south, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: but then after that point the differences were more between
Speaker 1: the east and the west. In the words of their
Speaker 1: press release quote, they argue that the early North South
Speaker 1: divide was driven by environmental differences that favored different plant
Speaker 1: resources in wetland versus arid regions, while the later East
Speaker 1: West division was driven by differences in cultural practice, with
Speaker 1: eastern cookie habits of boiling and steaming less suited to
Speaker 1: adopting new cereals like wheat and barley. So, according to
Speaker 1: this research, about eight thousand years ago, people in northern
Speaker 1: China ate millet, but people in southern China were more
Speaker 1: likely to eat nuts, tubers, fruits, and rice. That was
Speaker 1: just the sorts of things that grew best there, But
Speaker 1: later on, as other grains were introduced in China, preferences
Speaker 1: started shifting along this more of an East West pattern
Speaker 1: related to how people prepared the food, since the which
Speaker 1: foods grew best was not as much of an issue anymore.
Speaker 1: In Eastern Asia, it became more common to boil and
Speaker 1: steam grains, while in West Asia it was more common
Speaker 1: to grind those greens into flour. So when wheat and
Speaker 1: barley were introduced, they were more readily adapted in places
Speaker 1: where people were already used to grinding greens into flour.
Speaker 1: And our last food find before we take a break,
Speaker 1: Archaeologists in Laden, Netherlands have unearthed the ruins of a
Speaker 1: fort that was used during the Eighty Years War, and
Speaker 1: this fort has a connection to local food lore. As
Speaker 1: the story goes, during the Siege of Leyden in fifty four,
Speaker 1: Spanish troops fled the fort and they left behind a
Speaker 1: pot of simmering stew cornelis Yappin Zoonne found this stew,
Speaker 1: which had been made from parsnips and carrots, and then
Speaker 1: carried it out to the beggars who had been helping
Speaker 1: in the defense against the Spanish. Today, the Dutch stew
Speaker 1: called hut spot, which is made from carrots, onions, and
Speaker 1: potatoes which are boiled and mashed, is traditionally served on
Speaker 1: October three. In reference to all of this, some of
Speaker 1: the fines at the fort include part of a moat,
Speaker 1: as well as pewter utensils, drinking vessels, pottery, and fishing line.
Speaker 1: Now we will take one more quick ad break and
Speaker 1: before we move on to some musical fines. We have
Speaker 1: a couple of fines related to music, and the first
Speaker 1: is a hair of wax cylinders. Suggests that the music
Speaker 1: industry in Los Angeles got its start earlier than previously believed.
Speaker 1: Music collector John Levin bought these cylinders, which were part
Speaker 1: of a box of other assorted items. One of the
Speaker 1: cylinders contains the recording of the song Yankee Doodle, which
Speaker 1: is quote played by Mr Fred Kimball for the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Phonograph Company of Los Angeles, California, that part of
Speaker 1: the recording. Before this point, the first recording label in
Speaker 1: the area was believed to be Nords Gog Records, established
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica, but written references to a Los Angeles
Speaker 1: phonograph Parlors goes back. It was already known that they
Speaker 1: sold and promoted phonographs, but this is the first evidence
Speaker 1: that they may have also made and distributed recordings. This
Speaker 1: is all still a little tenuous though. Wax cylinders are
Speaker 1: easy to fake and these were unmarked. Yahly not accusing
Speaker 1: this collector of faking anything. That really can be very
Speaker 1: difficult to conclusively determine when and where they came from.
Speaker 1: Our other musical fine is a missing song kind of
Speaker 1: from The Muppet Christmas Carol, which has now been rediscovered
Speaker 1: again kind of. This song was called when Love Is Gone,
Speaker 1: and it was cut from the film's cinematic release out
Speaker 1: of concerns that it wouldn't appeal to young viewers. It
Speaker 1: was something that director Brian Henson agreed to only if
Speaker 1: the song would be included for television, broadcast and home
Speaker 1: theater release, So when The Muppet Christmas Carol came out
Speaker 1: on VHS, the song was still in there. But years later,
Speaker 1: when the DVD release of the movie was being prepared,
Speaker 1: the original master that included when Love Is Gone was missing,
Speaker 1: so the DVD version had to go out without the
Speaker 1: song as part of the film itself. But in more
Speaker 1: recent months, when the film was being remastered for four K,
Speaker 1: they found an all copy, so it is back. I
Speaker 1: was intending over the break to get my DVD copy
Speaker 1: of the Muppet Christmas Carol, and because I think it's
Speaker 1: like one of the extras to the audio of the song.
Speaker 1: I did not confirm that stuff that I meant to
Speaker 1: do overbreak and did not do. Now we will move
Speaker 1: on to some exhumations, some of which are also updates.
Speaker 1: Last time on Unearthed, we talked about an effort to
Speaker 1: exhume the body of President Warren G. Harding to confirm
Speaker 1: the ancestry of his grandson James Blessing, something that no
Speaker 1: one was really questioning at this point. In December, a
Speaker 1: Marion County Family Court judge in Ohio denied this request
Speaker 1: for exhamation, deciding earlier letters as evidence that the Harding
Speaker 1: family has already accepted Blessing as their relatives, so not
Speaker 1: needed in another exhamation. A massive exhimation project is underweight
Speaker 1: in England in that old Gem ahead of highway work.
Speaker 1: Remains of an estimated nineteen thousand people need to be
Speaker 1: relocated in Trinity Burial Ground. In whole they would be
Speaker 1: moved to a different part of the same burial ground,
Speaker 1: just out of the way of the construction. So a
Speaker 1: huge tent has been erected over the site for this work.
Speaker 1: And then because of the pandemic, archaeologists who are working
Speaker 1: on the project are observing social distancing while they do
Speaker 1: all this whole thing. At least eighty five different archaeologists
Speaker 1: are expected to be part of this work. It is
Speaker 1: a massive exhumation and reburial project. Next we're talking about
Speaker 1: an exhumation that is not new. But the details on
Speaker 1: Roger Casements exhimation in nineteen sixty five have been released
Speaker 1: as part of an ongoing project to release official documents
Speaker 1: related to Irish foreign policy. This project is a joint
Speaker 1: effort of the Royal Irish Academy, the Department of Foreign
Speaker 1: Affairs and Trade, and the National Archives of Ireland. It's
Speaker 1: twelfth volume of documents covers the year's nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: to and that was released in November of Diplomat Paul
Speaker 1: Keating observed the exhumation and wrote a memo about it,
Speaker 1: which is in this collection. His account begins quote, two
Speaker 1: teams of prison officials, dug steadily and an at about
Speaker 1: seven thirty, were surprised to come across a layer of lime.
Speaker 1: Immediately below it was a very thick mud and water
Speaker 1: floating on top of it. There appeared two small black objects, which,
Speaker 1: on examination by a doctor, turned out to be two
Speaker 1: bones of the thumb. From there, he describes the site
Speaker 1: being so water logged they had to send for a pump,
Speaker 1: but he also expresses some confidence that they were able
Speaker 1: to retrieve all of the bones that could have survived
Speaker 1: both the lime and the decades of being in this
Speaker 1: water logged grave. After this exhumation, Casement's remains were returned
Speaker 1: to Ireland and reburied. Prior hosts of the show did
Speaker 1: an episode on Casement in We also have a few
Speaker 1: repatriations and turns to talk about this time. In two
Speaker 1: thousand two, pat Patterson bought a Korean painting at an
Speaker 1: estate sale. The workers who were arranging the sale had
Speaker 1: found the painting behind a dresser between pieces of cardboard,
Speaker 1: and it was accompanied by a letter saying it had
Speaker 1: been painted by Kim Hong Do with calligraphy done by
Speaker 1: Cong s Huang. Patterson did years of work to figure
Speaker 1: out where the painting had come from, eventually tracing it
Speaker 1: to Eugene Coon, who had bought it in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three while he was serving in the Korean War. In November,
Speaker 1: Patterson returned it to the Don Juan Art Museum in
Speaker 1: South Korea, which is in Kang Huang's hometown. Next up,
Speaker 1: in October, the Dutch Council for Culture announced a recommendation
Speaker 1: that Dutch museums return any items that were taken from
Speaker 1: their countries of origin during the Dutch colonial era if
Speaker 1: there's reasonable certainty that these items were taken by force.
Speaker 1: So this generally spans the whole period between the early
Speaker 1: seven teenth century and nineteen seventy five, and this direction
Speaker 1: could apply to as many as one hundred thousand items
Speaker 1: that are currently in museum collections, although this recommendation specifically
Speaker 1: applied to places where the Netherlands had colonies. The Council
Speaker 1: also recommended that museums take another look at objects that
Speaker 1: came from other parts of the world, especially if those
Speaker 1: objects could have some kind of religious, cultural, or historic importance.
Speaker 1: So the Dutch museum community seems to have been generally
Speaker 1: receptive to these recommendations, at least based on what I've read,
Speaker 1: But when it comes to culturally important items that were
Speaker 1: not stolen, the idea of returning them continues to be
Speaker 1: a much more contentious subject. Next up, a horsehead sculpture
Speaker 1: which was one of twelve animal head sculptures stolen from
Speaker 1: China during the Second Opium War, has now been returned.
Speaker 1: British and French troops looted China's Old Summer Palace in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty. Before that point, the bronze horse head had
Speaker 1: been one of the Chinese zodiac sculptures that topped a
Speaker 1: water clock in the Royal Garden. This piece actually made
Speaker 1: its way to China in twenty nineteen, and at this
Speaker 1: point eight of the twelve sculptures have been found and returned,
Speaker 1: but this horsehead is the only ones who then be
Speaker 1: restored and put on display in its original home in Beijing,
Speaker 1: and that is the part of this that happened. Four toimoko,
Speaker 1: which are preserved tattooed Maori heads, were returned to New
Speaker 1: Zealand in October after their career spent two weeks in
Speaker 1: quarantine because of the COVID nineteen pandemic. They were taken
Speaker 1: to the Tapapa Museum where they were greeted with a
Speaker 1: Maori welcoming ceremony. So these are ancestors, and all four
Speaker 1: of them had been held in collections in Germany, two
Speaker 1: of them at the Berlin Ethnological Museum and two at
Speaker 1: Gutngen University. And these are four of at least eight
Speaker 1: hundred that were removed from New Zealand between seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: and eighteen forty. About six hundred of them have been
Speaker 1: returned through the museum's repatriation program. At this point, it
Speaker 1: is not yet known exactly whose ancestors these four Toemoko are,
Speaker 1: so they are being held at the museum while further
Speaker 1: research is done. And now we're coming to the end
Speaker 1: of our Unearthed for the end, and once again we
Speaker 1: don't have any new utsy news. We're going to end
Speaker 1: on something that's kind of connected. Five thousand year old
Speaker 1: skeletal remains buried in a squatting position were discovered in
Speaker 1: Germany in May. The spine has been nicknamed the Lady
Speaker 1: of Beeta Cow and she lived at about the same
Speaker 1: time as the iceman who's well preserved remains were discovered
Speaker 1: on the border of Austria and Italy. In November. The
Speaker 1: team working with these remains announced some of the findings
Speaker 1: from their work. She was between thirty and forty five
Speaker 1: years old at the time of her death, and her
Speaker 1: teeth show an enormous amount of where some to the
Speaker 1: point of being miss entirely, which may have been caused
Speaker 1: by the presence of a lot of tough grains in
Speaker 1: her diet. Although serious dental problems can be life threatening,
Speaker 1: it's not yet clear whether this contributed to her cause
Speaker 1: of death. So that is our hear end unearthed for
Speaker 1: the year, uh which I don't know. These are fun
Speaker 1: to pull together, but it was. It was weird to
Speaker 1: have a lengthy break between when I put a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff into the document and when I finished. After
Speaker 1: returning to work after the holidays. How do you feel
Speaker 1: about listener mail after returning to work after the holidays? Well,
Speaker 1: as as we said on Monday's episode, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of it to still read. I have one from Daniel.
Speaker 1: Daniel wrote in to say I was recently listening to
Speaker 1: your Oh Henry episode and you mentioned oh Henry bars
Speaker 1: as unclear in origin here while where I live in Kansas,
Speaker 1: there's a small town call Dexter. Dexter lays claim to
Speaker 1: two small pieces of national history. There is a small
Speaker 1: park with an oil well that never struck oil, but
Speaker 1: instead a natural gas that did not burn. It turned
Speaker 1: out to be the first helium well. The second is
Speaker 1: a small metal building called Henry's Candy Company. Henry's handmakes
Speaker 1: candy to this day. They have large glass viewing walls
Speaker 1: where you can watch. They claim the original Oh Henry
Speaker 1: bar was made by them in nineteen nineteen. They sell
Speaker 1: their own Oh Henry, Mama Henry, and Baby Henry bars,
Speaker 1: and hard candies they make themselves, as well as bulk
Speaker 1: packaged candy. Thanks for your work. You are one of
Speaker 1: my go to podcasts, one of the few podcasts I
Speaker 1: found that I don't have to worry about my three
Speaker 1: year old overhearing due to language. And since you seem
Speaker 1: to like animals, I attached a picture of Flynn Writer,
Speaker 1: my daughter's nine month old cat that seems to prefer
Speaker 1: the parent us over the children. Sigh, Daniel, um one.
Speaker 1: I love the name Flynn Ryder for a cat. There
Speaker 1: may not be a better moniker um too. That'll change
Speaker 1: as the kids get older. Cats like to be able
Speaker 1: to control their approach and adults are not as likely
Speaker 1: to be unpredictable and grabby. That's all it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so. Thank you so much for that letter and
Speaker 1: for those great pictures. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us about this or any other podcast. We're in
Speaker 1: History podcast at i heart radio dot com. We're also
Speaker 1: all over social media ad Missed in History. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts and the
Speaker 1: iHeart radio app and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast Asks, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H