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 E. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is
Speaker 1: part two of our Unearthed, covering things that have been
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively unearthed in the last quarter of one.
Speaker 1: So in this installment of Unearthed, we were gonna We're
Speaker 1: gonna have some necropolis is. There were just a lot
Speaker 1: of those for some reason. Uh, some art, and some
Speaker 1: edibles and potables and shipwrecks and of course the potpourri,
Speaker 1: which is where I put the interesting things that I
Speaker 1: thought were all really interesting, but I didn't have a
Speaker 1: good way to categorize them thematically. Before we have the potpourri, though,
Speaker 1: we have another category that's a lot like potpourri, and
Speaker 1: that it's random and it is last minute additions because
Speaker 1: when I planned out when we were doing this, I
Speaker 1: did not realize that January third was a company holiday,
Speaker 1: and that was the day that I was going to
Speaker 1: look through everything that happened over the holidays and like
Speaker 1: carefully weave it in to what was already written for
Speaker 1: the episode. So no, I did not work yesterday and
Speaker 1: instead came up with this new category this morning at
Speaker 1: eight am. I Love It. A fundraising effort by the
Speaker 1: UK Friends of the National Library has successfully prevented a
Speaker 1: collection of manuscripts, documents and some of the Bronte siblings
Speaker 1: tiny books from being split up and sold at auction.
Speaker 1: These items have been collected in the nineteenth century by
Speaker 1: William Law and his brother Alfred. In addition to some
Speaker 1: of the Brontes tiny books, which have been the subject
Speaker 1: of most of the headlines about this the collection also
Speaker 1: includes works by Jane Austin, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.
Speaker 1: Sir Leonard Levatnik matched donations to buy this collection, essentially
Speaker 1: contributing half the money for it. The total purchase price
Speaker 1: was more than fifteen million pounds and items from this
Speaker 1: collection are going to be donated to relevant museums, including
Speaker 1: the Bronte Parsonage Museum, Jane Austen's House and the National
Speaker 1: Library of Scotland, among others. It's a really amazing collection.
Speaker 1: I'm very glad they were able to to buy it
Speaker 1: and put it in museums instead of having it sort
Speaker 1: of dissipate to other collectors. And if this all sounds
Speaker 1: a bit familiar, especially the part about the Bronte's tiny books.
Speaker 1: We covered a similar fundraising effort in our first quarter
Speaker 1: owners for and in my next Last Minute edition. Conservators
Speaker 1: in Virginia have found two different cornerstone boxes in the
Speaker 1: pedestal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. The statue
Speaker 1: part was removed from the site in September. The contents
Speaker 1: of these two boxes are yet to be thoroughly analyzed,
Speaker 1: but they're pretty typical of time capsules, although there was
Speaker 1: no specified date for opening either of these two there
Speaker 1: are things like newspapers and other documents and books and
Speaker 1: coins and memorabilia, including some bullets. At the same time,
Speaker 1: even though these are pretty typical things that we find
Speaker 1: in these sorts of boxes, there are some mysteries. One
Speaker 1: of the boxes was placed on October seven, and news
Speaker 1: accounts from the time referenced some items that have not
Speaker 1: been found in either box, one of them being a
Speaker 1: photo of Abraham Lincoln and his coffin. There is an
Speaker 1: illustration of Abraham Lincoln from one of them, but this
Speaker 1: photo has not been found. And in our last Last
Speaker 1: Minute edition, according to research by the Missing Prince's Project,
Speaker 1: spearheaded by Philippa Langley. Edward the Fifth might not have
Speaker 1: died in the Tower of London. Instead, Richard the Third
Speaker 1: may have sent him to the village of Coldridge and
Speaker 1: Devon in secret, where he lived under the name John Evans,
Speaker 1: and the evidence submitted to back this up sounds a
Speaker 1: little like a conspiracy theory. A lot of articles about
Speaker 1: this have reference to the Da Vinci Code. John Evans
Speaker 1: was new to the area, nobody had ever heard of him,
Speaker 1: but in spite of that, he was given the title
Speaker 1: Lord of the Manor and also oversaw the area's deer park.
Speaker 1: He also commissioned artwork for a local church, including a
Speaker 1: stained glass window depicting Edward the Five. It's one of
Speaker 1: very few such depictions of Edward the Fifth, and it
Speaker 1: was placed over the location where Evans wanted his tomb
Speaker 1: to be placed. That tomb is engraved with the name
Speaker 1: John EVAs rather than Evans, and it's empty. But the
Speaker 1: team has speculated that this misspelling is intentional, with the
Speaker 1: e V standing for Edward the five and the A
Speaker 1: s possibly standing for a Latin term meaning in sanctuary. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it seems like the kind of thing you might
Speaker 1: illustrate with a murder board. So that was our last
Speaker 1: last minute edition and now we'll move on to the
Speaker 1: potpourri stuff that I wrote before taking off for the holidays.
Speaker 1: Four boomerangs were discovered in a creek bed during a
Speaker 1: drought in Australia in ten and eighteen. Theyandrewanda Yawarawaka Traditional
Speaker 1: Landowners and Aboriginal Corporation partnered with Australian Heritage Services, Flinders
Speaker 1: University and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization to
Speaker 1: learn more about them. Radio carbon dating revealed that they
Speaker 1: were made between sixteen fifty and eighteen thirty, before Europeans
Speaker 1: first entered the area. These are non returning boomerangs and
Speaker 1: they were likely used for digging and for fire management
Speaker 1: in addition to hunting and fighting, and they may have
Speaker 1: had a religious use as well. Researchers re examining Soviet
Speaker 1: era archaeological research have determined that a liar found in
Speaker 1: southwest Kazakhstan is incredibly similar to unknown as the Sutton
Speaker 1: Who liar, named after the Sutton Whose ship burial where
Speaker 1: it was found. These two sites are four thousand kilometers apart,
Speaker 1: and before this point, Sutton Whose style liars had not
Speaker 1: been found outside of Western Europe. This suggests that this
Speaker 1: style of liar may have been part of a more
Speaker 1: wide ranging musical tradition in the early medieval period, rather
Speaker 1: than something that was specific to Western Europe. Moving on
Speaker 1: to sixth century graves excavated in Bavaria have included a
Speaker 1: couple of unique finds. One of the graves belonged to
Speaker 1: somebody who was between forty and fifty years old when
Speaker 1: he died, and it included lots of weapons, including a
Speaker 1: battle axe, a sword, a lance, and a shield. There
Speaker 1: was also a bridle and a pair of spurs which
Speaker 1: may have been used with a horse that was also
Speaker 1: buried nearby, and there was a bag buried at the
Speaker 1: man's feet which had mostly decomposed, but it seems to
Speaker 1: have basically been a toiletrees bag egg. Its contents included
Speaker 1: a pair of scissors and a shattered ivory comb. Once
Speaker 1: that comb had been pieced back together, it was shown
Speaker 1: to be decorated on both sides with hunting scenes. Combs
Speaker 1: aren't uncommon as grave goods from this period, but they're
Speaker 1: more likely to be made of something like wood, bone
Speaker 1: or antler than ivory, and then on top of that
Speaker 1: there are antelope like animals shown in these hunting scenes
Speaker 1: that are not native to the region of Europe where
Speaker 1: the grave was found. The other grave seems to have
Speaker 1: belonged to a woman between the ages of thirty and
Speaker 1: forty years old, and the goods buried with her included jewelry, food,
Speaker 1: and a weaving tool. But there was also a bowl, and,
Speaker 1: like the comb and the other grave, a bowl that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have been local to the area. It's
Speaker 1: a style known as African red slipwear. This kind of
Speaker 1: pottery was carried through much of the Roman Empire, but
Speaker 1: was made in Tunisia, and this is the first complete
Speaker 1: bowl found in Germany. Has raised some questions to these
Speaker 1: two people travel and bring these pieces back with them
Speaker 1: where they gifts from far away. It's kind of a mystery.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists in Norway have found a thirteen hundred year old
Speaker 1: ski believed to be the mate of one that was
Speaker 1: found about five ms away. In both of these skis
Speaker 1: or would with bindings made from birch ropes and leather straps,
Speaker 1: if indeed they are a pair and not skis from
Speaker 1: two different pairs that were coincidentally close together, then they
Speaker 1: are the best preserved pair of prehistoric skis found to date.
Speaker 1: All the researchers believed that these two skis were a set,
Speaker 1: they're not actually identical. It's possible that whoever was using
Speaker 1: them made a new pair out of two different skis.
Speaker 1: They also show evidence of a lot of repair, suggesting
Speaker 1: that these skis were just too valuable to try to
Speaker 1: replace if they were damaged. In our next item, it
Speaker 1: has long been established that the Norse arrived in North
Speaker 1: America long before Lumpus voyage, including building a settlement in
Speaker 1: what's now Newfoundland, but it hasn't been clear when exactly
Speaker 1: that happened. According to research published in the journal Nature,
Speaker 1: it was in the year ten twenty one, making the
Speaker 1: earliest known crossing of the Atlantic Ocean something that happened
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago. This research involved three pieces of wood,
Speaker 1: all of which showed evidence of being cut with metal tools,
Speaker 1: and at the time the indigenous population of North America
Speaker 1: did not have these sorts of metal tools. The woods
Speaker 1: still had a rough edge from where it was cut,
Speaker 1: and that's something that would have been worn away if
Speaker 1: it had been brought a long distance across the ocean,
Speaker 1: so that led researchers to conclude that this had been
Speaker 1: cut down in North America. It was not sounding that
Speaker 1: had been cut down elsewhere and then brought to North America.
Speaker 1: The wood came from three different trees, and the dating
Speaker 1: relied on a massive solar storm that happened in the
Speaker 1: year Researchers can see evidence to this solar storm in
Speaker 1: tree rings, and each of the three pieces of wood
Speaker 1: had twenty nine growth rings after that solar storm. So
Speaker 1: the North came to North America with metal tools in
Speaker 1: ten twenty one, cutting down these three trees after they arrived.
Speaker 1: Next up, archaeologists in Utah have been excavating the site
Speaker 1: of a town that housed Chinese workers during the building
Speaker 1: of the Transcontinental Railroad. The town, known as Terrace, was
Speaker 1: a temporary home to about five hundred people as the
Speaker 1: railroad was being built, and then it was abandoned once
Speaker 1: that stretch of the railroad was complete. At least some
Speaker 1: of the buildings later burned down. In addition to finding
Speaker 1: the remains of a building that had housed some of
Speaker 1: the workers, archaeologists have found a medicine bottle, porcelain bowls,
Speaker 1: writing instruments, and a seventeenth century Chinese coin. Next up,
Speaker 1: Researchers in Pompeii have concluded that a recently unearthed room
Speaker 1: was the living quarters for enslaved people, possibly an enslaved family.
Speaker 1: The room is part of a much larger villa, but
Speaker 1: it measures only about sixteen square meters where a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy square feet, and it seems to have functioned
Speaker 1: as a sleeping and living space and as storage. The
Speaker 1: stored items included what appeared to be parts of chariot harnesses,
Speaker 1: and the room adjoins a space where the remains of
Speaker 1: horses and the stable had been unearthed earlier in the year.
Speaker 1: One of the three beds in the room is smaller
Speaker 1: than the other, so it was possibly meant to be
Speaker 1: used by a child. And then our last bit of
Speaker 1: pot pourri. A team excavating a tomb in China's Nixia
Speaker 1: region believe they had found the body of a grave robber,
Speaker 1: since this body was found in a tunnel that had
Speaker 1: been dug by looters, but examination of the remains has
Speaker 1: revealed that he was probably a murder victim, with this
Speaker 1: murder unrelated to the looting, who had been dumped into
Speaker 1: the shaft later and left to die. The shaft was
Speaker 1: dug sometime between the years anti five and two twenty CE,
Speaker 1: but the remains date back only to the year six forty.
Speaker 1: The shaft had also started to fill up with soil
Speaker 1: again by the time this person died. Apart from all
Speaker 1: of that, the skeleton shows signs of having been repeatedly stabbed.
Speaker 1: This research was published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological
Speaker 1: Sciences under the delightful title Hiding a Leaf in the
Speaker 1: Forest Uncovering at hundred year old homicide case in a
Speaker 1: two thousand year old cemetery. Next up, we have a
Speaker 1: few necropolis is in this installment of unearthed first Archaeologists
Speaker 1: have known about a rock cut tomb complex and what's
Speaker 1: now Turkey for more than a hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 1: but it's really been more recently that there has been
Speaker 1: a thorough examination of this area. This site is part
Speaker 1: of an ancient city known as Blondos, which was founded
Speaker 1: during the time of Alexander the Great, and that makes
Speaker 1: these tombs about eighteen hundred years old. This excavation project
Speaker 1: started in and researchers have been stunned at just how
Speaker 1: huge this necropolis is, they have found more than four
Speaker 1: hundred rock cut tombs believed to have been used as
Speaker 1: family burial chambers over multiple generations. Many of these are
Speaker 1: heavily decorated, although these adornments have deteriorated over the years
Speaker 1: and so far only twenty four murals are still visible. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: many of the tombs are easily seen from the surface
Speaker 1: since they're cut into a cliff face, and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: they have been looted or otherwise damaged over the previous centuries.
Speaker 1: In the same complex, they have also found temples, a theater,
Speaker 1: a public bath, and more, and there are believed to
Speaker 1: be hundreds more burial sites that haven't been explored yet,
Speaker 1: and analysis of those sites has of course not been
Speaker 1: done yet. Next up, archaeologists in Pauline near Lake Geneva
Speaker 1: have found new tombs in a necropolis there during monitoring
Speaker 1: work ahead of construction. This site was first excavated in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century and is home to the oldest
Speaker 1: Neolithic burials in Switzerland. These newly discovered burial sites were
Speaker 1: fairly close to the surface and they are in poor condition,
Speaker 1: with many of the slabs that cover the remains already broken.
Speaker 1: Into pieces. The grave sites that were threatened by the
Speaker 1: construction were rescued, but the ones outside of that area
Speaker 1: were covered and preserved. And lastly, a late Roman necropolis
Speaker 1: has been found under the wall of a grocery store
Speaker 1: in Ris, northern France. This was first detected in excavated
Speaker 1: this past fall. Most of the burials in this necropolis
Speaker 1: are individual bodies and wood coffins that have been placed
Speaker 1: in cut graves, really without a lot of grave goods. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now we're gonna take a quick sponsor break before
Speaker 1: we talk about some art. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff related to art. This time around, conservators have found
Speaker 1: a previously unknown painting by Armenian American artist our Shield
Speaker 1: Gorky under his painting The Limit, which he completed in
Speaker 1: Gorky's daughter had long suspected that there was another work
Speaker 1: of art underneath the Limit, but conservators have thought it
Speaker 1: was just too risky to try to reveal it. Swiss
Speaker 1: conservators MICHAELA. Ritter and Olivier Masson finally began working with
Speaker 1: this piece during the pandemic, carefully removing the Limit, which
Speaker 1: is a work on paper, from the canvas underneath, and
Speaker 1: it turned out that yes, that underlying canvas did have
Speaker 1: its own painting, one now known as untitled with the
Speaker 1: parentheses Virginia Summer, which was most likely painted earlier in
Speaker 1: ninety seven. It's possible that the artist meant for this
Speaker 1: layerying of the two artworks to be temporary, sort of
Speaker 1: using that canvas temporarily, and was going to remove the
Speaker 1: paper painting, but he died in in a September fine
Speaker 1: that didn't cross our radar until now. Johannes Vermier's Girl
Speaker 1: reading a letter at an open window has been restored,
Speaker 1: revealing a depiction of Cupid. Scholars have known Cupid was
Speaker 1: there for about forty years, since it was visible in
Speaker 1: an X ray of the piece, but they thought Vermier
Speaker 1: had removed the depiction of Cupid himself while working on
Speaker 1: the painting. But during this paintings restoration, the area where
Speaker 1: Cupid was known to be did not react to solvents
Speaker 1: the same way that the rest of the painting did.
Speaker 1: The suggestive that the paint used to cover up Cupid
Speaker 1: was a different type than had been used when painting
Speaker 1: the rest of the work, possibly put there by someone
Speaker 1: else who tried to make that cover up blend in
Speaker 1: with the original I mean it worked for work. The
Speaker 1: museum can veened a panel of Vermeer experts who decided
Speaker 1: that the best course of action was to collect microscopic
Speaker 1: samples from the painting to study them, confirming that the
Speaker 1: paint covering the cupid had been applied years or even
Speaker 1: decades after the rest of the work was complete. With
Speaker 1: the experts okay, conservators removed the rectangle of painting that
Speaker 1: had been added later. The depiction of Cupid is a
Speaker 1: painting within a painting, and that same cupid is also
Speaker 1: used in other Vermeer artworks, including young Woman standing at
Speaker 1: a virginal and Girl interrupted at her music. This discovery
Speaker 1: has also raised some speculations about other artworks in which
Speaker 1: a subject is in front of a seemingly blank wall,
Speaker 1: and whether that blank wall also has a covered over
Speaker 1: depiction of Cupid. Moving on, curators at Norway's National Museum
Speaker 1: we're using infrared reflectography to examine Edvard Monks Madonna as
Speaker 1: part of a routine conservation checkup. They discus, ever, that
Speaker 1: earlier sketches are still visible using this noninvasive technique, and
Speaker 1: these sketches suggest that earlier drafts of the painting were
Speaker 1: more conservative. In the final painting, a nude woman has
Speaker 1: one of her arms stretched up above her head and
Speaker 1: the other sort of tucked behind her lower back, in
Speaker 1: a pose that definitely looks sensuous. But in the earlier
Speaker 1: sketch that stretched up arms down along her side, and
Speaker 1: it's a position that looks more RESTful than erotic. In
Speaker 1: similar news, Rice Museum has announced the discovery of preparatory
Speaker 1: sketches in Rembrandty two painting The Night Watch, which are
Speaker 1: visible through macro XRF imaging. This discovery came during a
Speaker 1: two year restoration project for that piece. And speaking of Rembrandt,
Speaker 1: scientists in the Netherlands have figured out that they can
Speaker 1: determine exactly when paintings from the Dutch Golden Age were
Speaker 1: created based on the exact composition of their lead white pigments.
Speaker 1: This is because conflicts like the English Civil Wars in
Speaker 1: the eighty years were disrupted lead supplies, forcing artists to
Speaker 1: adjust the amount of lead they were using in their paints.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists working on the High Speed Real Project known as
Speaker 1: HS two have under three Roman era busts while excavating
Speaker 1: a Norman church in Stoke, Mandeville, They had expected to
Speaker 1: find early English artifacts because the excavation site was home
Speaker 1: to a medieval tower, but instead found these three much
Speaker 1: older stone sculptures. Two had essentially been decapitated, with the
Speaker 1: head and the torso both still present, and the third
Speaker 1: was only the head. In addition to these three very
Speaker 1: well preserved statues, they also found a hexagonal glass jug
Speaker 1: with large pieces of the glass still intact. Based on
Speaker 1: all of this, they believed this tower was built directly
Speaker 1: on top of the site of what had been a
Speaker 1: Roman mausoleum and which had other uses prior to that.
Speaker 1: And In similar news, excavations in western Turkey have unearthed
Speaker 1: the head of statues depicting Aphrodite and Dionysus moving on.
Speaker 1: A sculpture spotted outside a home in St. Louis In
Speaker 1: has been confirmed as Martha and Mary by the late
Speaker 1: artist William Edmondson, who died in nineteen fifty one. This
Speaker 1: sculpture had also been displayed at the Museum of Modern
Speaker 1: Art in ninety seven. That was a solo exhibition, making
Speaker 1: Edmondson the first black artist to have a solo show
Speaker 1: at MoMA. It appears that Anthony Ablis, executive director of
Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Opera acquired the statute sometime after that show,
Speaker 1: and then his wife Sally, inherited it after he died.
Speaker 1: Street artist Brian Donnelly, known as Cause, purchased this from
Speaker 1: Bliss as a gift for the American Folk Art Museum.
Speaker 1: The statue has since been cleaned and it will be
Speaker 1: on display at the museum in early next up. Restorers
Speaker 1: working at Calvally Old Hall in Yorkshire, England have found
Speaker 1: floor to ceiling Tutor era paintings under some nineteenth century plaster.
Speaker 1: These paintings basically served the purpose of wallpaper and depict
Speaker 1: exaggerated vines and mythical animals. They seem to be based
Speaker 1: on designs from the Golden House of Roman Emperor Nero.
Speaker 1: It's possible that a nineteenth century owner of this manner
Speaker 1: covered the paintings up with plaster to try to protect them,
Speaker 1: so now conservators are at work figuring out the best
Speaker 1: way to preserve them. Next up, a walk around family
Speaker 1: Land in Rutland has led to the discovery of a
Speaker 1: mosaic depicting scenes from Homer's The Iliad, which was part
Speaker 1: of a Roman era villa complex. The complex seems to
Speaker 1: have been built sometime between the third and fourth century.
Speaker 1: This is the first mosaic in Britain that depicts the
Speaker 1: Iliad and it's being investigated by the University of Leicester
Speaker 1: in partnership with Historic England and Rutland City Council. And
Speaker 1: in another accidental family find, members of the Sitwell family
Speaker 1: have decided to auction off the family's artwork and other
Speaker 1: objects from Weston Hall in Northamptonshire, England, and as all
Speaker 1: these items were being collected in catalog they found a
Speaker 1: forgotten work of art just wrapped up in bubble wrap.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be a drawing by Italian painter
Speaker 1: Giovanni Batista Tiapolo, who worked in the eighteenth century. This
Speaker 1: is called a large group of Puncinelli. Puncinelli, we're buffoonish
Speaker 1: stock characters from seventeenth century Comedia dell Arte and then
Speaker 1: this depiction they are all eating njoki, which I just
Speaker 1: find delightful. Aspert said, well bought this painting in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six and then they just forgot about it. This
Speaker 1: was sold at auction in November with a final bit
Speaker 1: of a hundred thousand pounds. I think more painting should
Speaker 1: feature large groups of people just happily eating, just eating,
Speaker 1: just munching on stuff. Now it's time for swords, glorious swords.
Speaker 1: A die her off the coast of Israel has found
Speaker 1: a nine hundred year old sword on the seafloor, along
Speaker 1: with other artifacts from about the same period. The sword
Speaker 1: itself is believed to be an excellent condition, although it
Speaker 1: is completely encrusted in marine life, so it is not
Speaker 1: entirely clear exactly what's under there. Based on where it
Speaker 1: was found, it may be a crusader sword. It was
Speaker 1: in an area where ships took shelter. The sea floor
Speaker 1: in this area is constantly shifting and revealing new fines,
Speaker 1: so this diver, Shlomi Katson was afraid that the sword
Speaker 1: would be buried again if it was just left there,
Speaker 1: and so took it to the surface and reported it
Speaker 1: to authorities. That is how we have lots of photographs
Speaker 1: of this absolutely marine life encrusted sword. That's actually how
Speaker 1: it's designed. It's not that would be amazing. Another sword,
Speaker 1: a broken bronze age sword, has been found in southwestern Finland.
Speaker 1: This is a rare fine. Only about two hundred bronze
Speaker 1: age items have been found in Finland and swords and
Speaker 1: knives are only a little more than ten percent of those.
Speaker 1: The fragments were found in July by someone who was
Speaker 1: using a newly purchased metal detector to check out his
Speaker 1: childhood home, but to find wasn't announced until October. Although
Speaker 1: this was found under the lawn of a family home,
Speaker 1: it is not clear how the broken sword got there.
Speaker 1: It's possible that it was in soil that was brought
Speaker 1: in for construction years ago. He contacted Finland's National Board
Speaker 1: of Antiquities after finding the first couple of clearly very
Speaker 1: old sword pieces, and a more official excavation uncovered the rest.
Speaker 1: Next up, we have a couple of fines related to animals.
Speaker 1: According to research published in the journal Nature in October,
Speaker 1: an interdisciplinary team of researchers has concluded that today's horses
Speaker 1: were first domesticated and the Pontic Caspian steps in the
Speaker 1: Northern Caucasus. This happened somewhere around b C and then
Speaker 1: over the next few sent trees, these domesticated horses replaced
Speaker 1: genetically distinct wild horses in Anatolia, Europe and Central Asia
Speaker 1: and Siberia. This research involved genetic analysis of two hundred
Speaker 1: seventy three horse specimens that lived from fifty thousand to
Speaker 1: a little more than two thousand years ago. They analyzed
Speaker 1: their genes and then compared the results to modern domesticated
Speaker 1: horses living today. However, these were not the first horses
Speaker 1: ever to be domesticated. That was in Betai, Central Asia
Speaker 1: around thirty d b C. But those earlier horses aren't
Speaker 1: the ancestors of today's domestic horses. Their descendants are a
Speaker 1: feral Mongolian horse known as Zerowski's horse. Our next animal find.
Speaker 1: Researchers in severe have tried to confirm Neanderthal hunting techniques
Speaker 1: for a crow like bird called the chef. It seems
Speaker 1: very likely that the Neanderthals used chefs as a food source.
Speaker 1: They've been various finds of chuf bones that have tooth
Speaker 1: marks and caves that show evidence of Neanderthal use, But
Speaker 1: it also seemed like this would be a tricky animal
Speaker 1: for Neanderthals to hunt. Thinking that Neanderthals might have used
Speaker 1: nets and torches, researchers armed themselves with butterfly nets and
Speaker 1: flashlights and went into caves and other dark spaces where
Speaker 1: modern chuffs are known to roost at night, and they
Speaker 1: found that the chuffs became confused when the researchers shined
Speaker 1: flashlights at them. They wound up just flying into dead
Speaker 1: end spaces where it was easy for people to just
Speaker 1: scoop them right up. Is this how Neanderthals did it?
Speaker 1: Who knows, but it does suggest one possible way. I
Speaker 1: also just, you know, I don't want to be cruel
Speaker 1: to animals, but I find the scenario kind of amusing.
Speaker 1: If this is a Neanderthal technique for hunting, it confirms
Speaker 1: once again has with many many other things we've talked
Speaker 1: about on Earth, that they were pretty good at problem
Speaker 1: solving and stuff. I feel almost every time I'm researching
Speaker 1: these episodes, I find headlines that make it sound like
Speaker 1: this is new information. Moving on. Archaeologists and the Hi
Speaker 1: Duguay Archipelago off the northern coast of British Columbia have
Speaker 1: found the tooth of a domesticated dog. It was confirmed
Speaker 1: to be a dog too through its DNA and radio
Speaker 1: carbon dating suggests that it lived thirteen thousand, one hundred
Speaker 1: years ago. This is the oldest evidence of domestic dogs
Speaker 1: discovered so far in the America's and it also suggests
Speaker 1: that people were living on the archipelago about two thousand
Speaker 1: years earlier than previously thought. The Haida Nation's oral histories
Speaker 1: were also part of this work, and indigenous archaeologists who
Speaker 1: were part of this work have described it as the
Speaker 1: field of archaeology catching up to those oral histories. And lastly,
Speaker 1: archaeologists have studied fish bones at four sites connected to
Speaker 1: the Slawa Tooth First Nations community on what's now the
Speaker 1: West coast of Canada. Researchers have concluded that for about
Speaker 1: a thousand years that Sligh with Tooth we're using large
Speaker 1: weirs to catch salmon, determining the salmon sex and releasing
Speaker 1: most of the females. Bones found at village sites were
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly those of male fish. European colonists ultimately destroyed these
Speaker 1: indigenous fishing tools, and since then the salmon population in
Speaker 1: this area has largely collapsed. Jesse Morin, archaeologists for that
Speaker 1: Sleigh with Tooth nation, and an adjunct professor at the
Speaker 1: University of British Columbia, was quoted in the Canadian Process
Speaker 1: saying quote, people were harvesting the same sort of fish consistently,
Speaker 1: probably from the same places. For one thousand years. Here
Speaker 1: we are one hundred fifty years later, one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: years worth of industrial harvesting, and we've really destroyed these resources.
Speaker 1: After we take a quick sponsor break, we will move
Speaker 1: onto some edibles and potables, some of which, uh, we're
Speaker 1: also animal related. There's a little over app in those
Speaker 1: two categories. Now we are moving on so one of
Speaker 1: our favorite topics, which is the edibles and potables. According
Speaker 1: to research published in the journal Current Biology on oct
Speaker 1: workers that prehistoric salt mines in Austria drank beer and
Speaker 1: ate blue cheese. Researchers came to this conclusion after analyzing
Speaker 1: paleo feces in the mines, which has been preserved for
Speaker 1: about dred years thanks to the conditions in the mind.
Speaker 1: This is the earliest evidence found so far of both
Speaker 1: beer drinking and blue cheese eating in Europe. In the
Speaker 1: words of Kirsten Kaark of the Museum of Natural History, Vienna, quote,
Speaker 1: it is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric
Speaker 1: culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed food stuffs
Speaker 1: as well as the technique of fermentation, have held a
Speaker 1: prominent role in our early food history. Next up. Researchers
Speaker 1: at a site known as Jordan's River Dura Jatte have
Speaker 1: found evidence that people were using complex fishing tools and
Speaker 1: techniques as long as twelve thousand years ago. Excavations have
Speaker 1: unearthed nineteen bone hooks and grooved pebbles that seem to
Speaker 1: have been used as sinkers. They could be tricky to
Speaker 1: study fishing technology because things like lines and nets are
Speaker 1: usually made from fibers that decomposed, but there are fiber
Speaker 1: residues on these hooks that suggests that they were used
Speaker 1: with lines of some sort. There's also some variation in
Speaker 1: the shapes of the hooks, including their barbs and how
Speaker 1: they were connected to a line, suggesting that people were
Speaker 1: using different hooks to catch different types of fish. There's
Speaker 1: also some suggestion that these hooks were used along with
Speaker 1: artificial lures. We already knew that people living in this
Speaker 1: area twelve thousand years ago we're eating fish, but this
Speaker 1: is the earliest evidence of their using things like hooks
Speaker 1: and artificial lures to catch them. Archaeologists in Iraq have
Speaker 1: found a commercial winery including stone cut basins dating back
Speaker 1: to the eighth or seventh century BC, as well as
Speaker 1: fourteen stone cut installations that were used for pressing the juice.
Speaker 1: The winery is near an area where archaeologists have been
Speaker 1: examining stone cut reliefs carved into irrigation canals. The reliefs
Speaker 1: depict sacred animals and kings in prayer, probably commissioned by
Speaker 1: the same kings who paid for the canals to be built,
Speaker 1: as both a symbol of religious devotion and a reminder
Speaker 1: of who had funded the irrigation project. And Archaeologists have
Speaker 1: also found a massive early medieval wine factory in Israel.
Speaker 1: This was another facility that was used to make wine
Speaker 1: on a large commercial scale. This one has five wine presses,
Speaker 1: four large warehouses for storing and aging the wine, and
Speaker 1: facilities for making and firing the and four eights that
Speaker 1: were used to store the wine. There are also large
Speaker 1: vats and a treading floor where the grapes were crushed underfoot.
Speaker 1: A spokesperson from the Israeli Antiquities Authority estimated that this
Speaker 1: winery could have produced two million liters of wine per year.
Speaker 1: A golden amethyst ring has also been found not far
Speaker 1: from this site. It dates back to at least the
Speaker 1: seventh century, and there's some speculation that it may have
Speaker 1: been worn for hangover prevention. The amethyst has traditionally been
Speaker 1: regarded as having anti hangover properties. Moving on, archaeologists in
Speaker 1: Germany have found a seventy nine year old, badly charred
Speaker 1: cake in the town of Lubec. The British Royal Air
Speaker 1: Force bombed this town on March twenty Nino and the
Speaker 1: freshly unwrapped cake was buried and burned as the building's
Speaker 1: upper floors collapsed over it and caught fire. Even though
Speaker 1: this hake is badly burned, its nutty filling was preserved
Speaker 1: pretty well in this fire. This has planned to be
Speaker 1: conserved and eventually put on public display. And lastly, in
Speaker 1: Edibles and Potables, Polish archaeologists have found a unique kitchen
Speaker 1: were set at the site of a Roman legionary camp
Speaker 1: in Bulgaria. These pieces were made of very high quality
Speaker 1: clay and they seem to represent a full array of pots, lids, bowls,
Speaker 1: and cups, as well as glasses that look like today's
Speaker 1: pine glasses. The team plans to conserve and analyze this
Speaker 1: cookwear set to determine what was cooked and stored in
Speaker 1: the vessels. It is likely that at least some of
Speaker 1: it was seafood, since there were also oyster shells found nearby.
Speaker 1: And now we're going to move on to another favorite category,
Speaker 1: which is shipwrecks. Volcanic and tectonic activity near the Ogasawara
Speaker 1: Island chain in Japan has lifted the sea floor around
Speaker 1: the island of eot known in English as Eo Jima,
Speaker 1: revealing a fleet of World War Two era ships. These
Speaker 1: are Japanese ships that American forces sank after the Battle
Speaker 1: of Eo Jima, hoping that the wreckage would form a
Speaker 1: breakwater to help create a harbor. That did not work,
Speaker 1: but in photos of this you can see that there
Speaker 1: the ships are arranged in a way that was purposeful.
Speaker 1: Next up, the US revenue cutter Bear sank during a
Speaker 1: storm in nineteen sixty three. It had been decommissioned and
Speaker 1: tied to a wharf in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and it
Speaker 1: was in the process of being towed to Philadelphia. But
Speaker 1: before that point it had a long history at sea.
Speaker 1: It started out as a vessel for seal hunting in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four. The US government bought it a few
Speaker 1: years later to use for rescue work. Since it had
Speaker 1: been built to be able to navigate icy waters. Its
Speaker 1: work as a relief vessel included being part of the
Speaker 1: rescue fleet of the Greeley Expedition in eighteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: It operated as a relief ship during the nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: flew pandemic, and was finally decommissioned in ninety nine. For
Speaker 1: a time after that it was used as a floating
Speaker 1: museum in Oakland, California, and then as a film set.
Speaker 1: Then the Bear was recommissioned during World War Two and
Speaker 1: sent back to the Arctic to patrol. During that time,
Speaker 1: it helped capture a Norwegian ship that the German military
Speaker 1: was using to gather and report information about weather conditions
Speaker 1: in the North Atlantic. Various people and groups have been
Speaker 1: searching for the wreck of the Bear since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: In sonar mapping of a sixty two square mile it's
Speaker 1: about a hundred and sixty square kilometers area of seafloor
Speaker 1: revealed two sunken ships. In September of this year, investigators
Speaker 1: returned to the area with a remote operated vehicle and
Speaker 1: identified one of those ships as the Bear. We also
Speaker 1: have a couple of canoes, a maritime archaeologist from the
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Historical Society spotted what she thought was a log
Speaker 1: in Lake Mendota and Wisconsin, but it turned out to
Speaker 1: be the oldest intact boat ever found in the state.
Speaker 1: It's believed to be about twelve hundred years old and
Speaker 1: was probably made by the Effigy Mound builders, who are
Speaker 1: the ancestors of today's ho Chunk Nation. It is so
Speaker 1: well preserved that the archaeologists initially thought this was the
Speaker 1: Boy Scout project from the nineteen fifties. Archaeologists decided to
Speaker 1: raise the canoe from the floor of the lake since
Speaker 1: it was likely to be destroyed by micro organisms if
Speaker 1: it was left where it was. It is currently undergoing
Speaker 1: a preservation process with the hope that it can be
Speaker 1: put on public display. Ho Chunk Tribal Historic Preservation Officer
Speaker 1: Bill Quackenbush told reporters that he would collaborate with the
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Historical Society on the canoes preservation. The other canoe
Speaker 1: was found in a sonode or a freshwater sinkhole in
Speaker 1: southern Mexico. It's believed to be about a thousand years old,
Speaker 1: and it's the first complete canoe of its type ever
Speaker 1: found It's possible that the Maya used this canoe to
Speaker 1: gather water or to make offerings in the Sonodi. This
Speaker 1: is one of many many objects that have been unearthed
Speaker 1: during work on a railway that's being built to connect
Speaker 1: multiple sites across the Yucatan Peninsula. This is a controversial project.
Speaker 1: It's meant to bring tourists from the beaches on the
Speaker 1: coast to historic and cultural sites and smaller towns farther inland.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of archaeological sites along the
Speaker 1: path of the train, with more being discovered as work
Speaker 1: goes on. Archaeologists working ahead of the train construction have
Speaker 1: found hundreds of sites encompassing thousands of structures. The potential
Speaker 1: archaeological and environmental impacts of the train project have both
Speaker 1: drawn a lot of criticism. And now we have a
Speaker 1: random final thing for the end of this episode. So
Speaker 1: for our last find of it's actually something that was
Speaker 1: first found in a glacier climber stumbled onto a box
Speaker 1: from an Air India passenger jet that had crashed on
Speaker 1: January nineteen sixty six. This plane was one of two
Speaker 1: planes that crashed into mom Block in the middle of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century and climbers in the area often find
Speaker 1: various things from each of them. In this case, this
Speaker 1: box turned out to contain emeralds and sapphires. This climber
Speaker 1: turned the box into authorities who tried to track down
Speaker 1: the survivors of whoever this box had belonged to. That
Speaker 1: effort was unsuccessful, and in December it was announced that
Speaker 1: the climber would get to keep half of the gemstones.
Speaker 1: The other half is going to the village of Shemony
Speaker 1: near the crash site, where they will become part of
Speaker 1: the collection of the Shemony Crystals Museum. According to news coverage,
Speaker 1: the climber, who has not been named, will be selling
Speaker 1: off his half and using some of the money to
Speaker 1: renovate his apartment. And that's our Unearthed, concluding the year
Speaker 1: of so many things were on Earth, so many and
Speaker 1: then so many things that we didn't even talk about
Speaker 1: in this I have a listener mail from Ava to
Speaker 1: take us out, and Ava wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to the podcast for a while now,
Speaker 1: but have never felt so compelled to write into any
Speaker 1: show as I did when I listened to the Nutcracker episode.
Speaker 1: I hold a Doctor of Musical Arts degree and violin performance.
Speaker 1: And while it is true that each winter we are
Speaker 1: all one more Nutcracker closer to death, the Nutcracker is
Speaker 1: one of the big influences and why I have chosen
Speaker 1: the career path I have and hold the degrees that
Speaker 1: I do. As a child, attending the Houston Ballets production
Speaker 1: of The Nutcracker was a holiday tradition for my family,
Speaker 1: and I even danced as a tiny apricot in the
Speaker 1: background of the sugar plum very sequence in my ballet
Speaker 1: school's production one year when I was young. Although I
Speaker 1: went to school for music, I didn't know until listening
Speaker 1: to the episode why the Nutcracker is such a Christmas
Speaker 1: mainstay in our culture. Disney's Fantasia also played a huge
Speaker 1: part in creating my musical path in life, and just
Speaker 1: partly because of the Nutcracker and Right of Spring sequences
Speaker 1: in that movie that I eventually ended up begging my
Speaker 1: parents for violin lessons. I would even love to hear
Speaker 1: a future episode on Stravinsky's Right of Spring, as it
Speaker 1: has an amazingly interesting dance, musical, and social history behind it,
Speaker 1: much like Kakovsky's Nutcracker. Thank You for providing a well
Speaker 1: researched and insightful approach to topics that we sometimes take
Speaker 1: for granted or overlook completely. As a small thank you,
Speaker 1: I have attached pictures of my kiddies socks, Tuxedo cat, Pip,
Speaker 1: Torty and Coco, great Tabby. Thanks again, Ava, Thank you
Speaker 1: for this email, Ava, it really warmed my heart. No,
Speaker 1: we mentioned people uh really being influenced by the Nutcracker
Speaker 1: and UH and the Disneys Pantasia, but hearing from someone
Speaker 1: directly turned that into a career path really warmed my heart. Also,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time since I listened to this
Speaker 1: episode and I don't remember how much it gets into
Speaker 1: the greater history of the right of Spring, but previous
Speaker 1: hosts Sarah and Bablina did an episode on the Right
Speaker 1: of Spring riot back on June. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: we've ever done a Saturday Classic with that, but if not,
Speaker 1: maybe we will at some point. So thank you again,
Speaker 1: Ava for this email and for the cat pictures. They're adorable.
Speaker 1: If you would like to send us an email, we're
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at I Heart radio dot com and
Speaker 1: we're all over social media at missed in History, So
Speaker 1: we'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio
Speaker 1: app and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.