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. It's time
Speaker 1: for Unearthed. Hooray, the favorite time a year for a
Speaker 1: lot of folks. For new listeners, this is when we
Speaker 1: take time about four times a year to talk about
Speaker 1: things that have been literally or figuratively unearthed. Over the
Speaker 1: last few months, we've started doing this once a quarter.
Speaker 1: The number has gradually increased. I think this is probably
Speaker 1: the sweet spot at this point. So this episode today
Speaker 1: is generally covering stuff that happened in April, May and June.
Speaker 1: So today we have a ton of updates to previous episodes,
Speaker 1: along with some fines related to books and letters and
Speaker 1: edibles and potables and art. And then next time you
Speaker 1: will get into some exhamations, some mysteries that have been solved,
Speaker 1: and other stuff. Also, I know there are folks that
Speaker 1: kind of check out of episodes when we get to
Speaker 1: listener mail and they don't listen to that part, So
Speaker 1: just a heads up. Both of these installments of Unearthed
Speaker 1: have special Unearthed specific listener mail. Bump bump um uh
Speaker 1: so we have mentioned before the search for the remains
Speaker 1: of victims of the Tulsa Race massacre that's come up
Speaker 1: several times previously. The search of the Oaklawn Cemetery in
Speaker 1: Tulsa ended on June, having identified thirty five coffins and
Speaker 1: exhumed nineteen sets of remains from unmarked graves. Investigators do
Speaker 1: not believe that the people buried in all thirty five
Speaker 1: coffins were victims of the massacre, so they focused their
Speaker 1: exhimation efforts primarily on the ones who were buried in
Speaker 1: cheaper coffins, which they saw as more likely to be
Speaker 1: massacre victims. About half of their mains had been thoroughly
Speaker 1: examined by the seven and at least one of them
Speaker 1: showed obvious signs of trauma. This work included a section
Speaker 1: of the cemetery known as the Original Eighteen, believed to
Speaker 1: be the burial site of eighteen victims of the Tulsa
Speaker 1: Race massacre who had been listed on a funeral home ledger.
Speaker 1: And although this phase of the excavation at Oakland is
Speaker 1: complete now, work with the remains that were exhumed is
Speaker 1: still ongoing, including trying to identify exactly who these people
Speaker 1: were so Our episode on the Tulsa Race massacre was
Speaker 1: most recently a Saturday Classic on May twenty nine of
Speaker 1: this year. In June, the U S Office of Army
Speaker 1: Cemeteries announced a plan to exhume the bodies of ten
Speaker 1: children buried on the grounds of Carlisle, Indian Industrial School
Speaker 1: and returned them to their families. This is the U.
Speaker 1: S Army's fourth such project at Carlyle Barracks, some of
Speaker 1: which we have discussed on previous episodes of the show.
Speaker 1: This disinterment was affected to start in mid June and
Speaker 1: be completed by July eighteenth, so it is still ongoing
Speaker 1: as of when we're recording this episode. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: US Army's announcement about this disinternment at Carlisle came amid
Speaker 1: several announced discoveries of mass graves and unmarked burial sites
Speaker 1: at former residential schools in Canada. We mentioned these on
Speaker 1: our recent Saturday Classic on the Fort show Indian Schoolgirls
Speaker 1: basketball team, and as of when we recorded this podcast,
Speaker 1: which is happening on July seven, uh this involved two
Speaker 1: different schools in British Columbia and one incests catch one,
Speaker 1: so this is something that's still ongoing as of when
Speaker 1: we're recording this. Based on what's happened so far, I
Speaker 1: would not be surprised, sadly if further discoveries were announced
Speaker 1: between July six, when we were recording and when this
Speaker 1: episode is actually coming out. Yeah, that's I would say,
Speaker 1: list that is more likely than unlikely at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's an ongoing and just truly horrific and and
Speaker 1: traumatizing to the people involved. Series of announced discoveries. So
Speaker 1: way back in previous hosts Sarah and Bablina did an
Speaker 1: episode on the pre Columbian Native American city of Khokia,
Speaker 1: which was home to at least fifteen thousand people at
Speaker 1: its peak in about the year eleven fifty. It's often
Speaker 1: described as being bigger than the city of London was
Speaker 1: at that time. One unanswered question about Kahokia is why
Speaker 1: the people living there ultimately abandoned it. So one proposed explanation,
Speaker 1: and one that was mentioned in that episode, has been
Speaker 1: that the residents of Kahokia used too much wood from
Speaker 1: the surrounding land, deforesting the area and contributing to runoff
Speaker 1: and flooding. But according to research that was published in
Speaker 1: the journal Geoarchaeology. While the reasons behind cohokias abandonment still
Speaker 1: aren't clear, it probably wasn't because of deforestation. In the
Speaker 1: world of Caitlin Rankin, who conducted this research as part
Speaker 1: of her graduate studies, quote, there's a really common narrative
Speaker 1: about land use practices that lead to erosion and sedimentation
Speaker 1: and contribute to all of these environmental consequences. When we
Speaker 1: actually revisit this, we're not seeing evidence of the flooding.
Speaker 1: So there was evidence of lots of wood use, including
Speaker 1: cutting down thousands of trees to build palisades, but there
Speaker 1: was not evidence that catastrophic flooding had followed that, and
Speaker 1: that was the thing that had theoretically led to Cokia's abandonment.
Speaker 1: Last year, we did an episode on beekeeping and its
Speaker 1: origins in honey and bee hunting. Researchers in West Africa
Speaker 1: have been studying the Central Nigerian Knock culture, which existed
Speaker 1: from about five hundred BC to two hundred CE, including
Speaker 1: carrying out chemical analysis on four hundred fifty pieces of pottery.
Speaker 1: The soil in the area is very acidic, so plant
Speaker 1: and animal remains have not survived the intervening two thousand
Speaker 1: years to be analyzed, so this pottery is archaeologist's primary
Speaker 1: tool to learn about how the Knock people ate and
Speaker 1: how it compares two groups living in the area today.
Speaker 1: About a third of the pottery studied in this research
Speaker 1: showed evidence of being used to store and process beeswax, and,
Speaker 1: in the words of co author Peter Britting of god University, quote,
Speaker 1: we originally started the study of chemical residues in pottery
Speaker 1: shirts because of the lack of animal bones at Knock sites,
Speaker 1: hoping to find evidence for meat processing in the pots
Speaker 1: that the Knock people exploited. Honey thirty five hundred years
Speaker 1: ago was completely unexpected and is unique in West African prehistory.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists believed that they have found the home that Harriet
Speaker 1: Tupman lived in when she was a teenager. The team
Speaker 1: had been fruitlessly searching Dorchester County in Maryland's eastern shore
Speaker 1: before a metal detect helped them spot a coin that
Speaker 1: was dated eighteen o eight. That coin led them to
Speaker 1: the likely site of a cabin owned by Tubman's father,
Speaker 1: Ben Ross, about a quarter of a mile away. Archaeologists
Speaker 1: have since found bricks, a drawer pull, a button and
Speaker 1: a pipe stem, among other artifacts. This search started last
Speaker 1: fall based on written records that pointed the team to
Speaker 1: the direction of attractive land that the US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service purchased last year, and our two parter on
Speaker 1: Harriet's Subman was most recently a Saturday Classic Justice. Past June,
Speaker 1: we talked about the Philadelphia Move bombing. In May of
Speaker 1: Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a home members of
Speaker 1: the Move organization We're living in, and officials then allowed
Speaker 1: the resulting fire to burn unchecked through the neighborhood. Eleven
Speaker 1: people died, including five children. In April, news broke that
Speaker 1: the bones of two children killed in the bombing, likely
Speaker 1: belonging to twelve year old Delicia Africa and fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Tree Africa, were being held in the collections of
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, and that they were being
Speaker 1: used as a case study in an online forensic anthropology course.
Speaker 1: The course was originally filmed in twenty nineteen and was
Speaker 1: presented by Princeton University on the Coursera platform under the
Speaker 1: title Real Bones Adventures in Forensic Anthropology, but that has
Speaker 1: since been taken down. Maya Castudo broke this story in
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia publication Billy Penn on April, and from there
Speaker 1: it really became international news. Costudo, who had previously worked
Speaker 1: at the penn Museum, wrote about the careless and in
Speaker 1: different way, that these remains had been handled at the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and that
Speaker 1: they had been transferred to Princeton, but a Princeton spokesperson
Speaker 1: later said the university no longer had them. It was
Speaker 1: really unclear where these bones were. When this story first
Speaker 1: broke in May, city officials announced that Philadelphia's Health Commissioner, Dr.
Speaker 1: Thomas Farley had ordered the remains cremated and disposed of
Speaker 1: in ten rather than returning them to surviving members of
Speaker 1: the Africa family. Farley later resigned, with his resignation announced
Speaker 1: on the thirty sixth anniversary of the bombing, But then
Speaker 1: it was announced that the remains had been found in storage.
Speaker 1: The city announced that, after finishing an internal investigation into
Speaker 1: all of this, the remains would be returned to the
Speaker 1: children's surviving family members. And this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that's also still a developing story and situation as
Speaker 1: we are recording this um it's possible that there will
Speaker 1: be further developments in it over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: We did a special Unearthed edition on Franklin's Lost Expedition
Speaker 1: back in and we've had some other updates on the
Speaker 1: expedition and finds from the rex involved in the expedition
Speaker 1: since then. Now, for the first time a member of
Speaker 1: that expedition has been identified through DNA and genealogical analysis.
Speaker 1: It is Warrant Officer John Gregory, who was an engineer
Speaker 1: aboard the HMS Arabis whose tooth and bone samples were
Speaker 1: recovered in two from King William Island, none of it.
Speaker 1: Last fall we talked about some incredible fines from Oxboroh
Speaker 1: Hall in Norfolk, England, and we also talked in an
Speaker 1: earlier on Earth about the discovery of some chocolate from
Speaker 1: the Boer War that belonged to Australian poet and war
Speaker 1: correspondent Banjo Patterson. Queen Victoria had commissioned this chocolate as
Speaker 1: a morale booster for British troops. Well, now a ten
Speaker 1: of chocolates from the same commission has been found at
Speaker 1: Oxford Hall. This ten belonged to the eighth Baronet, Sir
Speaker 1: Henry Edward Paston Bettingfield, who served in the war, and
Speaker 1: it was among his daughter Francis Greathead's possessions found in
Speaker 1: the Hall's attic. Something we didn't get into when we
Speaker 1: talked about Banjo Patterson's chocolate. The Queen commissioned the chocolate
Speaker 1: from Britain's three top chocolate manufacturers, all of which had
Speaker 1: been started by Quakers. This led to some back and forth,
Speaker 1: as the leadership of each of the three companies was
Speaker 1: pacifist and didn't want to be associated with or to
Speaker 1: make money from the war, but the Queen wanted it
Speaker 1: to be clear to the troops that what they were
Speaker 1: receiving was British chocolate. In the end, the chocolate was
Speaker 1: distributed in unbranded tins, although some of the chocolate itself
Speaker 1: was brandon also. It turns out there were so many
Speaker 1: updates to talk about in this Unearth that we are
Speaker 1: going to continue them after we take a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Last March, we talked about a cranium found near Pompey
Speaker 1: that may have belonged to Plenty the Elder. Now it
Speaker 1: is being speculated that a set of remains near Herculanum
Speaker 1: may belong to a soldier from Plenty's fleet, maybe even
Speaker 1: a high ranking officer. These bones were found among those
Speaker 1: of about three hundred people who had tried to flee
Speaker 1: the volcanic eruption, and they belonged to somebody who was
Speaker 1: probably a man in his early forties, in pretty good health,
Speaker 1: wearing some kind of armor, and carrying tools in his knapsack,
Speaker 1: so all of that suggests that he was some kind
Speaker 1: of a soldier. He was also wearing an ornate leather
Speaker 1: belt that was decorated with silver and gold, and that
Speaker 1: suggests that he was a soldier of some kind of rank.
Speaker 1: It is not clear what kind of soldier he was, though.
Speaker 1: Coins found next to the body total the monthly pay
Speaker 1: of a member of the Praetorian Guard, which were the
Speaker 1: household armies of Roman emperors. But some of his gear
Speaker 1: and tools he was carrying were commonly used by ships
Speaker 1: engineers and carpenters, suggesting that he might have been part
Speaker 1: of Plenty's relief force. So, as was the case with
Speaker 1: that cranium last time, headlines that make it sound like
Speaker 1: these remains have been conclusively identified as belonging to a
Speaker 1: soldier who came with Plenty's fleet to try to help
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the eruption of Pompeii seem a
Speaker 1: bit overstated. Yeah, like that previous cranium, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of headlines that were like Poliny the Elder found
Speaker 1: and it was like maybe same with these remains. We
Speaker 1: talked about Antony von Levin Hook and his animal cule's
Speaker 1: back in March of and one lingering unknown has been
Speaker 1: exactly how he made the lenses for the microscopes that
Speaker 1: he used to make those observations. On leven Hook's microscopes
Speaker 1: were exceptionally good for the time. They delivered a magnification
Speaker 1: of up to two hundred and seventy times using a
Speaker 1: single lens, but he kept his lens making methods and
Speaker 1: recipes a secret. But now researchers at TU Delft in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands have used neutron tomography to try to crack
Speaker 1: that case. They needed a non invasive method to study
Speaker 1: the lenses because von leven Hook riveted his lenses between
Speaker 1: metal plates, so examining those lenses directly would require the
Speaker 1: microscopes to be taken apart. Yes, people are of course
Speaker 1: reluctant to take apart irreplaceable historical microscopes to see what
Speaker 1: the lenses are made of. Let me just tinker with this,
Speaker 1: I'll figure it out. So only eleven of the hundreds
Speaker 1: of microscopes that he made are known to have survived today.
Speaker 1: There could of course be more that we have not
Speaker 1: on earthed yet. This research, though, suggests that he used
Speaker 1: a unique lens for each one, depending on the purpose
Speaker 1: of each microscope. On Leven Hook's highest powered microscope that's
Speaker 1: still in existence today contains a ball shaped lens connected
Speaker 1: to a tiny, tiny last thread, and that would have
Speaker 1: been made by blowing the glass rather than by grinding it.
Speaker 1: And this seems to be a refinement of a recipe
Speaker 1: that was published by Robert Hook in sight. It's really
Speaker 1: not surprising that some of On Leavin Hook's lenses would
Speaker 1: build off of Hook's work, because he was a known
Speaker 1: admirer of Hook's micrographia. The authors of this paper suggests
Speaker 1: that one of the reasons on Leavin Hook was so
Speaker 1: secretive about his work was to conceal this inspiration. He
Speaker 1: kind of maintained this persona of a loan observer working
Speaker 1: in scientific isolation, based almost on a whim. But really
Speaker 1: these lenses suggest that he was pretty up to date
Speaker 1: on the latest developments in optics and he was incorporating
Speaker 1: them into his work. And for our last update this
Speaker 1: time around, we did an episode on the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four Mississippi Freedom Summer in February of this year, and
Speaker 1: one big piece of that episode was the murder of
Speaker 1: civil rights activist James Cheney, Drew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Speaker 1: Records related to that case have now been open to
Speaker 1: the public for the first time. They are being housed
Speaker 1: and available for viewing at the William F. Winter Archives
Speaker 1: and History Building in Jackson, Mississippi. Moving on to a
Speaker 1: couple of fines related to books. Kate McCaffrey, who used
Speaker 1: to work as a steward at Haverdcastle, has researched two
Speaker 1: books that were inscribed by Anne Boleyn, one being the
Speaker 1: prayer book that she's believed to have carried to her execution.
Speaker 1: McCaffrey did this research as part of her master's thesis,
Speaker 1: so the prayer book was previously known to contain only
Speaker 1: one inscription that being written by Anne, and it included
Speaker 1: her signature and a rhyming couplet that said remember me
Speaker 1: when you do pray that hope doth lead from day
Speaker 1: to day. But McCaffrey found other inscriptions, including the family
Speaker 1: names of Gauge, West and Shirley, which centered around the
Speaker 1: name of the Guilfer family of Cranbrook. All of that
Speaker 1: had been erased, and McCaffrey had to use ultra violet
Speaker 1: photography and photo editing software to make it visible and
Speaker 1: to puzzle out what these words said. Through this work,
Speaker 1: McCaffrey traced how this book survived after Bolin's execution in
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty six, after which many of her possessions were destroyed.
Speaker 1: These inscriptions essentially trace a chain of people, mostly women,
Speaker 1: who passed the book from one to another and kept
Speaker 1: it concealed and safe, and in another book, story that
Speaker 1: I find equal parts sad and sweet. Ten extremely overdue
Speaker 1: books have been returned to the Somerville Public Library in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts after being discovered in an attic. They had been
Speaker 1: checked out of the Librari's West branch by Helen Godimus
Speaker 1: when she was a teenager in the nineteen thirties, but
Speaker 1: then she died of the flu in n seven at
Speaker 1: the age of only sixteen, at which point the book
Speaker 1: that she had checked out from the school library and
Speaker 1: the public library wound up in a box in the
Speaker 1: attic and then later in a relative's basement, where they
Speaker 1: were rediscovered in June. The books themselves date back to
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the ones
Speaker 1: from the Summerville Library included a nineteen oh three copy
Speaker 1: of Language Lessons from Literature Book one and a n
Speaker 1: copy of Carpenter's new geographical Reader Asia. So the Summerville
Speaker 1: West Branch Library actually used to be my branch of
Speaker 1: the library before I moved away from Somerville. H It's
Speaker 1: a Carnegie library that was originally built in nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: and it reopens July twelfth after some really extensive renovation work.
Speaker 1: I think this episode will have come out by the
Speaker 1: time it reopens. Uh. There is no fine do for
Speaker 1: the massive lateness of these books, though the Summerville Public
Speaker 1: Library went fine free on July one, and before that
Speaker 1: point the maximum fine would have been ten dollars. So
Speaker 1: I know with some of these headlines about very overdue
Speaker 1: library books, there will be estimated fines do of like
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars, and the summer Hill Library had a
Speaker 1: max of ten I have feelings about those kinds of
Speaker 1: headlines and libraries. I do too, and so does my spouse,
Speaker 1: who I discussed this story with. Now we are moving
Speaker 1: on to uh some of my favorites. A few fines
Speaker 1: related to food and drink. First up, teams in Oxford,
Speaker 1: England have confirmed that two medieval households in Oxford's Jewish
Speaker 1: Quarter were maintaining kosher dietary practices. Although Jewish dietary laws
Speaker 1: are much older than this, this is the first time
Speaker 1: they've been conclusively identified in British archaeology. So this team
Speaker 1: started with the remains of two houses which, based on
Speaker 1: a medieval census, appeared to have housed Jewish families, and
Speaker 1: while excavating those two holmes, they found a latrine that
Speaker 1: dated back to the eleventh or twelfth century, and that
Speaker 1: latrine contained lots of different animal bones, but no pig
Speaker 1: bones at all. They also used chemical and isotopic analysis
Speaker 1: to confirm what kinds of foods had been prepared in
Speaker 1: pottery at the site, and they found evidence that the
Speaker 1: vessels had been used to cook cattle, sheep, and goat,
Speaker 1: but again not pork. Pork residues have been found in
Speaker 1: cooking vessels from other homes dated back to the same
Speaker 1: time period, but those were located outside Oxford's Jewish Quarter.
Speaker 1: In the words of the papers, lead author Dr Julie Dunn, quote,
Speaker 1: this is a remarkable example of how biomolecular information extracted
Speaker 1: from medieval pottery and combined with ancient documents and animal bones,
Speaker 1: has provided a unique insight into eight hundred year old
Speaker 1: Jewish dietary practices. Similarly, archaeologists in Spain have unearthed evidence
Speaker 1: of Muslim dietary practices that persisted after Catholic space A
Speaker 1: finished its conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in fourteen At first,
Speaker 1: Muslims were allowed to continue their religious observances and practices,
Speaker 1: but the Catholic government soon outlawed the practice of Islam
Speaker 1: and began forcing people to convert. Various Spanish kingdoms then
Speaker 1: expelled their remaining Muslim populations in the early sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Some evidence of Muslim customs and dietary practices that have
Speaker 1: been unearthed recently include the presence of atas, which were
Speaker 1: large communal bulls, and these were gradually replaced by small
Speaker 1: bowls for individual portions in the decades after the Catholic conquest.
Speaker 1: Among the Catholic community, the idea of a lot of
Speaker 1: people eating from one communal bowl was not great, and
Speaker 1: so that is what led to this shifting toward individually
Speaker 1: portioned poles. Another is the presence of sheep bones and
Speaker 1: the absence of pig bones around Muslim households, and that
Speaker 1: again persisted after the Catholic government uh started banning Muslim practices.
Speaker 1: As a side note, one thing that Tracy read when
Speaker 1: she was going through this research discussed how this fed
Speaker 1: into the popularity of pork in Spanish cuisine, as Christians
Speaker 1: signaled their religion by publicly displaying and consuming pork products,
Speaker 1: which also reinforced the idea that Muslims and Jews were
Speaker 1: not welcome and moving on. According to research that was
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Neolithic farmers living
Speaker 1: seventy years ago altered the reproductive cycles of sheep, allowing
Speaker 1: these communities to have meat and milk throughout the year.
Speaker 1: The team came to this conclusion through stable isotope and
Speaker 1: dental microware analysis from sheep remains that were found in
Speaker 1: a cave in Spain. This was a really huge cave
Speaker 1: with about three thousand square meters of habitable space, which
Speaker 1: seems to have been home to just thousands of goats, sheep,
Speaker 1: and pigs. Their research suggested that lots of lambs were
Speaker 1: born in the fall in winter, rather than in the spring,
Speaker 1: which was typical in wild sheep in the same area
Speaker 1: and time period. Among other things, this would involve controlling
Speaker 1: when ewes and rams had contact with each other. The
Speaker 1: sheep also seemed to have been fed a pretty consistent
Speaker 1: diet rather than one with a lot of seasonal variability.
Speaker 1: And in our last fine before we take another quick break,
Speaker 1: CRUs working to restore Michigan Central Station found a beer
Speaker 1: bottle wedged into the ceiling containing a message. Once archivists
Speaker 1: worked to remove this and open up the paper, which
Speaker 1: took some doing. Its very old paper that had been
Speaker 1: a beer bottle for a very long time, it was
Speaker 1: found to read quote Dan Hogan and Geo Smith stuck
Speaker 1: this ceiling of Chicago July Michigan Central Station, by the way,
Speaker 1: is in Detroit, not Chicago. Correct. But I feel a
Speaker 1: kinships through time with Dan and Geo because that's the
Speaker 1: kind of garbage I would have done when I was young. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was some speculation in one of the articles that
Speaker 1: I read about this that perhaps that was not their
Speaker 1: first beer of the day, considering that they appear to
Speaker 1: have possibly been confused about what city they were in,
Speaker 1: or maybe they were saying they were from. It's a
Speaker 1: little garbled in the way that it's written. Anyway, We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and then come back with
Speaker 1: some artwork. So we're kicking off the third act of
Speaker 1: this episode with some art. There is ancient cave art
Speaker 1: in just all kinds of places. We've talked about lots
Speaker 1: of cave art on the show before, and some of
Speaker 1: these places are fairly brightly lit places like rocky overhangs
Speaker 1: and near the mouths of caves. But some of this
Speaker 1: cave art is in really deep dark parts of cave system,
Speaker 1: and the artwork itself does not suggest that people were
Speaker 1: making it in the dark. Also doesn't necessarily suggest this
Speaker 1: was a part of the cave that they were like
Speaker 1: living in all of the time. So the question is,
Speaker 1: of course, why make art in a place you have
Speaker 1: to light a fire to see it, especially if it
Speaker 1: wasn't a place you lived in or routinely used for
Speaker 1: some other reason. A newly published paper puts forth one idea.
Speaker 1: That paper is called hypoxia and Paleolithic decorated caves. The
Speaker 1: use of artificial light in deep caves reduces oxygen concentration
Speaker 1: and induces altered states of consciousness. This was published in
Speaker 1: Time and Mind, the journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture.
Speaker 1: So the basic idea here is that ancient artists took
Speaker 1: torches or other fiery light sources into caves and notice
Speaker 1: that after a while they started to get lightheaded thanks
Speaker 1: to the dwindling oxygen supply and the build up of
Speaker 1: byproducts from the flame. And then they moved on to
Speaker 1: recreating this experience intentionally, using the cave art not only
Speaker 1: as a visual representation of something, but also as a
Speaker 1: more mind altering or transcendent experience. The authors of this
Speaker 1: paper argue that the caves were decorated because they were significant,
Speaker 1: rather than the artwork being what made the caves significant.
Speaker 1: I find this to be a very interesting idea. I
Speaker 1: have no idea if that's really what was going on,
Speaker 1: but I did find it fascinating to read about. It's
Speaker 1: like historical whippets in other news. One of the pieces
Speaker 1: of art that has previously been attributed to Leonardo da
Speaker 1: Vinci is the Flora wax bust in the Bodha Museum
Speaker 1: in Berlin. The key piece of evidence for that attribution
Speaker 1: was the fact that the face resembles faces from several
Speaker 1: of Leonardo's portraits. This is not really a lot of evidence,
Speaker 1: so people hotly debated whether Leonardo really made this bust
Speaker 1: after the museum first acquired it in nineteen o nine.
Speaker 1: And when we say hotly debating, there have been more
Speaker 1: than seven articles arguing both four and against this attribution. However,
Speaker 1: according to research published in the journal Scientific Reports, this
Speaker 1: matter is now definitively and absolutely settled. The bust is
Speaker 1: made primarily from sperm st which comes from sperm whales,
Speaker 1: and carbon fourteen dating, which is routinely used to figure
Speaker 1: out the ages of things as long as they're not
Speaker 1: too old or too young. That works a little differently
Speaker 1: when it comes to something made from spermaceti. Radio carbon
Speaker 1: dating works off the idea that there's a consistent amount
Speaker 1: of carbon fourteen in the atmosphere, but that's not true
Speaker 1: when it comes to the ocean. The ocean surface layers
Speaker 1: get carbon fourteen from the atmosphere, but they also get
Speaker 1: it from the deeper regions of the ocean, which are
Speaker 1: basically giant carbon fourteen reservoirs. Generally speaking, if you carbon
Speaker 1: date marine animals, they seem a lot older than they
Speaker 1: really are, as much as four hundred years older because
Speaker 1: of the availability of carbon fourteen from both the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and the deeper ocean. So taking the marine reservoir effect
Speaker 1: into account, this research puts the Flora Busts creation is
Speaker 1: happening in the nineteenth century, almost three hundred years after
Speaker 1: Leonardo's death, and that adds to previously known evidence suggesting
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century creation. Some things that were backing that
Speaker 1: idea up include that spermacetti became a lot more common
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century to do pieces like this than
Speaker 1: it had been during the Renaissance. There's also the fact
Speaker 1: that when the back of the bust was opened up
Speaker 1: at one point, it was found to contain nineteenth century
Speaker 1: would and newspapers. Uh supporters of the attribution that it
Speaker 1: had been created by Leonardo, suggested that this material might
Speaker 1: have been stuck into the bus later on. Sure that
Speaker 1: could happen, Yeah, that's like not that's another thing that's
Speaker 1: not a definitive proof in either direction. It kind of
Speaker 1: goes along with the face idea um. On top of
Speaker 1: all of that, British sculptor Richard Cockle Lucas's son Albert
Speaker 1: submitted an affidavid saying he had a quote perfect and
Speaker 1: vivid recollection of all the steps involved when his father
Speaker 1: made the bust in eighteen forty six. Richard Lucas's source
Speaker 1: for the sculpture was an oil painting then attributed to
Speaker 1: Leonardo which Albert had made. A watercolor copy of Albert
Speaker 1: Lucas's testimony, which was corroborated by another witness, has actually
Speaker 1: been around since nineteen ten. So honestly, it seems like
Speaker 1: this was pretty conclusive way before all of this carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen dating. Yeah to me, like the multiple witness statements
Speaker 1: and also the newspapers and also the prevalence of spermacette
Speaker 1: like that seems like a lot. But now we also
Speaker 1: have this new carbon fourteen analysis. But people wanted to believe,
Speaker 1: and that's very powerful. It is um. Also, apparently that
Speaker 1: oil painting that was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was
Speaker 1: probably really by one of his students. Graduate student Aurelia
Speaker 1: Azama figured out that a bronze toe in the collection
Speaker 1: at the Louver was not a toe, it was a finger,
Speaker 1: and that it belonged to a statue that was at
Speaker 1: least twelve meters tall, and that finger has now been
Speaker 1: reunited with the statue that it came of. This was
Speaker 1: a statue of Constantine the Great and the Capitalina Museums
Speaker 1: of Rome. It's believed that this finger was taken off
Speaker 1: the statue in four and that was when a sphere
Speaker 1: that had also been part of the statue had been removed.
Speaker 1: The finger that everyone thought was a toe wound up
Speaker 1: in the Louver collection all the way back in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. So it's like long time of the mystery
Speaker 1: of which body part we are talking about and what
Speaker 1: other pieces of art it came off of the mystery
Speaker 1: of the toe? Oh uh. Two off duty officers from
Speaker 1: the Italian Arts Squad discovered a first century Roman statue
Speaker 1: in an antique shop in Brussels. The officers were in
Speaker 1: Belgium on assignment when they happened to stroll into the
Speaker 1: shop after work one day. That statue had been stolen
Speaker 1: from the Villa Marini Datina archaeological site in two eleven
Speaker 1: kind of love the idea that they were just kind
Speaker 1: of wandering around town after work and went, oh, this
Speaker 1: shop has a stolen item. I love that art is
Speaker 1: their work, and then in their off time they go
Speaker 1: look at art in weird shop. So to move on.
Speaker 1: Researchers have been trying to figure out the age of
Speaker 1: the Cern Giant, which is a chalk figure on a
Speaker 1: hillside in Dorset, England. This chock figure is very large,
Speaker 1: It's fifty five tall. It's also very distinctive. It depicts
Speaker 1: a naked male figure wielding a very large club. It
Speaker 1: is also just very naked. You've ever seen this thing,
Speaker 1: it's super nude. The first written documentation of the figure
Speaker 1: is an account of it being repaired in sixteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and there's no mention of the figure in a sixteen
Speaker 1: seventeen survey of the area. So there's you know, been
Speaker 1: some people who wondered if it was made in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, but it just seemed like something much older
Speaker 1: than that. Right, it appears, as Tracy said, so much older.
Speaker 1: And after finishing sentiment analysis, the National Trust has announced
Speaker 1: that the deepest oldest chock layers of the figure date
Speaker 1: to between the year seven hundred and eleven hundred, so
Speaker 1: it's possible that the figure was created during the medieval
Speaker 1: period but then forgotten about or neglected and allowed to
Speaker 1: grow over in grass before being rediscovered. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: that the grassing over was intentional though. One thing that
Speaker 1: they found when they were examining these choc layers, though,
Speaker 1: was microscopic stales, which I also love. These snails were
Speaker 1: introduced into Britain in the medieval period. There are still
Speaker 1: some un answered questions like who made this and why
Speaker 1: and who is it supposed to depict. Here's one idea,
Speaker 1: so in ven Certain Abbey was established to try to
Speaker 1: convert the local population to Christianity. They had previously worshiped
Speaker 1: a god known as Hyle or Heleth, so this may
Speaker 1: perhaps be meant to be a depiction of that god.
Speaker 1: And speaking of nudity, a carved piece of soap stone
Speaker 1: has been unearthed at vendor Landa, which is place that
Speaker 1: we've talked about a lot on unearthed before. This piece
Speaker 1: depicts a naked male figure in front of a horse
Speaker 1: or a donkey holding a spear, and this went on
Speaker 1: display at the vendor Landa Museum on July first, after
Speaker 1: having been found. It looks almost as though he has
Speaker 1: a pacifier in his mouth, but that is most likely
Speaker 1: just how it has worn over time, although how funny
Speaker 1: would it be it does yet. Uh, And that is
Speaker 1: where we are going to stop until next time, all right,
Speaker 1: as promised, Tracy Unearthed related email. I do have unearthed
Speaker 1: related email. This is from Katie, and Katie says, dear
Speaker 1: Tracy and Holly, greetings from Cardiff, Wales. I hope you
Speaker 1: and your loved ones are all safe and well at
Speaker 1: this point in the pandemic, and that things are looking
Speaker 1: up in Massachusetts and Georgia. I'll apologize in advance for
Speaker 1: the novel I have written below. I will pause and say,
Speaker 1: do not apologize for the novel is a really good novel.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to read a whole hundred percent of
Speaker 1: it um today, but I saved it for this because
Speaker 1: it is so unearthed specific um. So, Katie talks about
Speaker 1: being a bioarchaeologist and working on a PhD uh, and
Speaker 1: then says, not so recently, I was lucky enough to
Speaker 1: work with my friend and colleague Jess on her project,
Speaker 1: which very recently made headlines for her master's thesis. Jess
Speaker 1: examined die it and mobility of eight crew members of
Speaker 1: the mary Rose ship using isotope analysis. I then contributed
Speaker 1: further osteological analysis on three of them. I know the
Speaker 1: Mary Rose has appeared on the Six Impossible episodes about Shipwrecks,
Speaker 1: so I won't rehap it here, though I say as
Speaker 1: an archaeologist, it was an honor to analyze these men
Speaker 1: and help tell their individuals stories which are often swept
Speaker 1: up in the narrative of the ship and repopular tellings.
Speaker 1: Just discovered that three of the eight analyzed were not
Speaker 1: local to the British Isles, with possible origins in the Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: Spain Slash, the Iberian Peninsula and or North Africa. We
Speaker 1: also identified that three of the eight were people of color,
Speaker 1: one of whom was local to the British Isles. The
Speaker 1: peer reviewed publication attached of this work will come out
Speaker 1: later this month, and because of that it received some
Speaker 1: press on this side of the pond at least uh
Speaker 1: and then Katie linked to the the article all that
Speaker 1: introduction to say, as an Avid stuff you missing history
Speaker 1: class listener, I realized this may pop up on on
Speaker 1: Earth and if it does. I was hoping y'all might
Speaker 1: take the opportunity of highlighting a few things that some
Speaker 1: of the media missed out on and some of the
Speaker 1: public comments we received through that media. Mostly, I think
Speaker 1: some of the summaries in the news made it seem
Speaker 1: like the diverse origins were based on artifacts found near
Speaker 1: the remains alone, and I wanted to highlight that this
Speaker 1: absolutely is not the case. This work is based on
Speaker 1: stable isotope analysis elements extracted directly from the remains that
Speaker 1: are reflective of the food they ate in the environment
Speaker 1: where they grew up. The online comments were interesting to
Speaker 1: read and seemed to be a contrasting mix of people
Speaker 1: saying they already knew all this. The work was featured
Speaker 1: in a documentary in the updated museum exhibit in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and people saying that we were forcing a quote woke
Speaker 1: agenda of diversity onto the past where it didn't belong.
Speaker 1: My favorite comment being a simple tweet the Mary woke
Speaker 1: ha ha ha. I can't believe I have to say it,
Speaker 1: but there was no ulterior agenda in this research to
Speaker 1: just felt passionately about this project because she grew up
Speaker 1: near Portsmouth, where the ship now resides and has had
Speaker 1: a lifelong interest in it, and as the lead researcher
Speaker 1: of this study, just was determined to make the article
Speaker 1: open access, meaning that the methods, results and interpretations are
Speaker 1: available for free to anyone interested. They're very transparent about
Speaker 1: all those steps in there, and our emails are easily searchable.
Speaker 1: Then Katie has a tip about how if there's ever
Speaker 1: a peer reviewed article that you really want to read
Speaker 1: and it's behind a paywall, a lot of the times
Speaker 1: the researchers will email you that PDF because they're not
Speaker 1: really making any money off of the journal publication process
Speaker 1: or the fact that the journal is trying to charge
Speaker 1: you fifty dollars to read one article one time. Then
Speaker 1: also Katie talks about the methods that were used for
Speaker 1: ancestry estimation. Um, there are lots of different conversations about
Speaker 1: how to do these kinds of studies and and whether
Speaker 1: there's methods are ethical, and so Katie says, quote, I
Speaker 1: understand if people have doubts or questions about them. In
Speaker 1: this case, we decided that not sharing the results of
Speaker 1: these methods would only feed white nationalist narratives that we
Speaker 1: have shown with the physical evidence is false. And then
Speaker 1: Katie goes on to say that was not the goal
Speaker 1: of quote forcing diversity into the past. They were not
Speaker 1: about to hide that diversity having actually found it. Um.
Speaker 1: So Katie goes on with a bit more that I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna read through our love because I want to
Speaker 1: kind of wrap up the episode at this point. Um,
Speaker 1: but this was a great email to receive. I don't
Speaker 1: think I had found this particular find when I got
Speaker 1: the email, and when I first looked at it, I
Speaker 1: did have the exact same response that that Katie mentions,
Speaker 1: of sort of saying, well, we already know that a
Speaker 1: lot of nautical crews were a lot more diverse because
Speaker 1: it was there was a more opportunity a lot of
Speaker 1: times for people to be able to rise through the
Speaker 1: ranks on a ship, then they might be able to
Speaker 1: do in a comparable job on land. Um. But having
Speaker 1: gone through and looked at the stable isotope analysis to
Speaker 1: really confirm where all of these people are from, like
Speaker 1: that is actually new research that was done. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much Katie for sending this and for sending
Speaker 1: all these links to the paper, and uh, if other
Speaker 1: folks would like to send us an email, were History
Speaker 1: podcast at i heart radio dot com and all over
Speaker 1: social media at miss in History. That's where you'll find
Speaker 1: our Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram. And you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio
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