Unearthed! in Autumn 2024, Part 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey V.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is part two of our latest installment of Unearthed,
talking about things that have been literally and figuratively unearthed
in July, August and September of twenty twenty four. This
time we have a lot of shipwrecks and some animals,
some artwork, few edibles and potables. As so often happens,

(00:39):
we're starting off with the potpoury things that don't really
fit into a single category, but I thought all of
them were cool and interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Our first two studies relate to the Aboriginal peoples of
Australia and surrounding islands. First, the Gunni Kernai aboriginal elders
invited archaeologists to exec a cave in the foothills of
the Australian Alps, and their work has found evidence of
a ritual that was passed down orally within the Guennaiknai
community for at least twelve thousand years. The cave wasn't

(01:12):
used as a permanent settlement, but as a site of
retreats and religious practices.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
The physical evidence of this is two sticks made of
casarina wood which were smeared with fat and partially burned.
That combines with aboriginal knowledge about rituals involving preparing and
shaping sticks like these, covering them in fat, and then
steeking them into the ground near a fire. Although one

(01:39):
of these sticks is eleven thousand years old and the
other is about twelve thousand years old, archaeologists who were
involved in this work estimate that the cave has been
used for ritual purposes as for as many as twenty
five thousand years. Researchers estimate that these rituals were passed
down through about five one hundred generations of people living

(02:02):
in this area.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Together, this provides evidence of one of the oldest known
cultural rituals in the world that's still being practiced and
some of the oldest wooden objects founded in archaeological site
in Australia, and this work has been described as recontextualizing
older research, including archaeological work that was carried out in
the same area without the permission of the Gunaikronye people

(02:26):
in the nineteen seventies and in the other.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Study, researchers from the University of Melbourne with the consent
and support of the Lutruitan Aboriginal community, have studied ancient
people's land stewardship techniques in the traditional territories located on Tasmania.
This research looked at evidence of vegetation both before and
after humans arrived on Tasmania. After arriving in Lutuita, people

(02:55):
used various techniques to manage the landscape and vegetation, including
the application of fire. This provides physical evidence for the
fact that what Europeans described as terra nulius or land
belonging to no one, had really been intentionally managed by
Aboriginal peoples who created a more open landscape there and

(03:19):
curbed the expansion of the rainforests. This land management also
happened alongside changes in the climate, so researchers have pointed
out that these findings have some applications to today's world
as well. In twenty twenty two, two lead coffins were
on earthed at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. One was

(03:40):
identified as belonging to Antoine de la Porte, which we
talked about on Earth at the end of twenty twenty two.
The other's identity was still unknown, although he had been
nicknamed the Horseman because the condition of his body suggested
that he had spent a lot of time writing. Now,
researchers believe he may be poet Joaquim do Ballet, who

(04:01):
died in fifteen sixteen, and that's based on the way
the remains match up to descriptions of Ballet, including the
fact that he was known for being an equestrian. Next,
a collector bought a framed scrap of material from Goodwill's
online thrift store, bidding seventeen hundred dollars on it because
it was described as a piece of George Washington's tent.

(04:24):
It also had a note that this piece had been
displayed at the three hundredth anniversary celebration of the founding
of Jamestown. This collector told CNN that he did not
tell his wife about this purchase for a while because
he was afraid that it was not genuine. But it
was genuine. It has now been confirmed to really be

(04:45):
a piece of George Washington's dining tent, so it has
a value much higher than what he actually paid for it.
This is currently being displayed at the Museum of the
American Revolution along with Washington's war tent, which served as
both a sleeping space and an office quarters. This scrap,
since it came from George Washington's dining tent, is a

(05:06):
different tent. That tent is also in the Smithsonian's collection,
but it's not on public view.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Moving on, an amateur archaeology group in Poland believes they
have found a compass belonging to astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. This
is a compass like a person might use to draw
circles or arcs, not a compass like a person might
use to tell which way is north.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's currently unclear whether this compass really did belong to Copernicus.
It was found under the gardens of the arch Cathedral
of Fromburg, which is where Copernicus both worked and lived nearby.
It was also not far from where Copernicus's remains were
found in two thousand and five. This discovery followed some

(05:50):
ground penetrating radar studies that had revealed the presence of
an underground room and three tunnels, and according to legend,
Particus used these secret tunnels to move between the cathedral
and a nearby castle. Even if this compass is not
Copernicus's compass. It is one of only three such instruments

(06:13):
that have been found in Poland, so it is still
a very rare find. And in our last random find,
a collection of Viking era objects known as the Galloway
Horde was discovered in twenty fourteen and it's one of
the largest Viking hords ever to be found in Scotland.
One particular object drew attention in September, a one thy

(06:35):
one hundred year old silver vessel which was found wrapped
in textiles. There were other silver objects in the Galloway Horde,
but this one seemed different from the others, with silver
that came from a different place. It was believed to
have been made in the Carolingian dynasty, but once it
had been cleaned it was clear that it was covered
in Zoroastrian iconography. According to new research, it came from Iran,

(06:59):
specifically a mine in central Iran called Knaclach in what
was then the Sasanian Empire. That means that it had
traveled thousands of miles sometime before the year nine hundred
or so, when the Horde was originally buried. Now we
will move on to a few animal finds. Research conducted

(07:19):
at the University of Sydney suggests that Australian dingoes may
have originated in East Asia via Melanesia, rather than previously
proposed origins in either India or Thailand. Researchers studied ancient
dingo remains from western New South Wales using both traditional

(07:40):
and three D geometric morphometric analysis. In addition to suggesting
a different origin for these animals, this research also suggested
that dingoes have gotten larger over time, and that this
increase in size predates they're becoming hybridized with domestic dogs.
Aboriginal communities in New South Wales endorsed this research, and

(08:03):
the Willander Lakes Region World Heritage Aboriginal Advisory Group collaborated
on the use of carbon dating to determine the age
of the ancient dingoes.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Tangentially related to dogs. A pre Roman cremation burial in
northern Italy has been found to contain for wolf teeth.
These had holes drilled into them, so they're believed to
have been strong onto something for use as pendants. They
may have had some kind of symbolic or spiritual purpose.
Not much is known about this person, though she was

(08:37):
believed to have been a woman based on the grave goods,
which included an all, a needle, and a short knife
that would have been used for something like textile work.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
And lastly, we have talked a lot on the show
about repatriations of objects from museum collections and other institutions
to indigenous nations in North America or to nations elsewhere
in the world. And these conversations have usually been about
ancestral remains and cultural items, and that's in part because

(09:09):
that's what the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
here in the United States is focused on. But a
comment published in the journal Nature in June has focused
on something else, which is dinosaur fossils.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
This piece is by Craig Howe and Lucas Repel, entitled
why Museums should Repatriate Fossils. It puts nineteenth century fossil
hunting into the context of the ancestral homelands it took
place on. Lucas Repel is the author of Assembling the
Dinosaur Fossil Hunters, Tycoons and the Making of a Spectacle,
which was published in twenty nineteen and doesn't really explore

(09:47):
how indigenous people approached fossils because at the time, Repel
did not think he could do that justice. Craig Howe
is founder and director of the Center for American Indian
Research and Native Studies, and as a citizen of the
Igualais Sioux tribe and also a citizen of the United States.
This comment in Nature is a result of their collaboration,

(10:08):
as Repelled tried to fill the holes in his knowledge
and collaborate with Indigenous people on the subject.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
This is publicly available on the Nature website, and I
really think it is worth reading in full. A lot
of the discussion of the field of paleontology, including on
our show, has really been focused on European scientific perspectives
without really considering how the indigenous people who live and

(10:35):
lived on the same land as these fossils think and
thought about them or interpreted them. This piece encourages earth
scientists and earth science institutions to think about how their
disciplines are connected to colonialism and to take on more
interdisciplinary research that allows true collaboration with the indigenous peoples

(10:56):
whose homes many of these fossils came from. Some places,
these excavations literally dug up fossils out of land that
was protected by treaties with these indigenous nations. So it
is all spelled out in that publicly available article. And
with that we're going to take a sponsor break, and

(11:16):
then when we come back, we're going to talk about
so much art, a lot of art. Next, we have
a few finds that are related to artwork. First, a
marble statue of the Greek god Hermes has been found

(11:38):
in the sewer in the ancient city of Heraclea Sintica
in Bulgaria. This is a big statue. It measures six
point eight feet tall and aside from a missing arm,
it's pretty much intact, probably because it was hidden down
in the sewer. Exactly how it came to be there
isn't totally clear, but there's some speculation that this happened

(12:01):
sometime after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman
Empire and pagan imagery was outlawed. After an earthquake in
the year three eighty eight, the sewer became disused, and
it's possible that after that point somebody took this statue
down there and hid it for safe keeping. The bronze

(12:23):
lie in a venice sculpture that sits atop one of
the two large columns in Venice's Piazza San Marco is
now believed to have come from China, based on lead
isotope studies that show it's made from copper that came
from the Lower Yansee River. Earlier research had suggested that
it had come from somewhere in Anatolia in what's now Turkya.

(12:44):
It's believed that the statue was mounted atop the sculpture
sometime in the thirteenth century, sometime before Marco Polo returned
to Venice from his journeys in Asia. Next cave painting
on Indonesia's Siluezi Island. It has been determined to be
fifty one thousand years old, making it now the oldest

(13:07):
known narrative artwork made by humans. It is older than
other oldest narrative artwork that we have talked about before.
This is a reddish painting depicting three people around a
wild pig. Its age was determined using some newly developed
laser techniques, and this work also concluded that a previous

(13:28):
holder of the oldest known narrative artwork title was actually
forty eight thousand years old, not forty four thousand as
previously believed to be clear this is not the oldest
artwork of any sort. It is just the oldest in
terms of artwork that seems to be using pictures to
tell some kind of story. We've also got a couple

(13:49):
of figurine fines. First, some clay figurines that were made
roughly thirty thousand years ago seem to have been made
by children in the area that is today part of
the Czech Republic. These were possibly made by kids who
were basically shaping it as though it were plato or
modeling clay, but they weren't necessarily just playing with it.
Some of these figurines were then fired in a hearth,

(14:12):
and it's possible that these children were essentially novices learning
to work in ceramics. Some of the unfired objects may
have been made for practice or just for fun. Our
other figurine find might really have been a toy. It
was found on a farm in eastern Iceland. Was found
on the floor of what was a ninth century long house,

(14:34):
and this figurine was clearly meant to be an animal,
but it's not clear whether it is supposed to be
a dog, a boar, or a bear. There have been
some very heated conversations in the comments of some articles
about which animal it probably was. This was carved from
volcanic stone and one of its ears is broken off.

(14:55):
It's very cute in my opinion. Maybe if it had
the extra ear it would be a little clearer what
it is.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Moving on. A conservator has found a self portrait of
twentieth century English artist Norman Cornish. It's on the back
of another painting. The painting is a work called bar Scene, which,
as the name suggests, is a depiction of a crowded,
dimly lit pub with a group of patrons in their
beers in the foreground. The brushwork and color layering give

(15:23):
it an almost hazy appearance. A conservator found and removed
a backboard, and then the self portrait was underneath. The
self portrait has a similarly gritty visual tone, but it's
oriented in the opposite way of the bar scene.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
This work is being exhibited at the Bow's Museum in
Barnard Castle, County Durham until January of twenty twenty five,
and according to news reports, museum staff will be rotating
the painting throughout the day so that people can see
what's on each side of it. Although because of the
way things work. One of the sides will always be

(15:59):
upside down.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
I love it. We have a couple of discoveries related
to the colors used in paintings. One today, Vince Avengo's
irises look very blue, but X ray fluorescent spectroscopy studies
have confirmed that they were originally much more purple. This
research was undertaken by conservators at the Getty Center in

(16:20):
Los Angeles while the center was closed at the beginning
of the COVID nineteen pandemic. This study suggests that he
made the paint for these irises by mixing reds and blues.
One of the red pigments was geranium lake, which is
an organic pigment that fades really quickly through exposure. There's
been previous research into geranium lake and how it fades,

(16:42):
and it was known to be one of the pigments
that Vincenvengo and his contemporaries used in their work. This
research is part of an exhibition called Ultraviolet New Light
on Vango's Irises, which is ongoing at the Center until
January of twenty twenty five. Research published in the journal
Heritage Science has pinpointed what was used to give Rembrandts

(17:06):
The Night Watch a golden glow and that it was
pigments containing arsenic sulfide. This was part of ongoing study
carried out by Reich's Museum in Amsterdam. Conservators had thought
that an arsenic containing mineral was involved in this golden pigmentation,
but they had expected to find traces of something called orpament,

(17:30):
which Rembrandt was known to have used in later paintings. Instead,
they found one called pararelgar, which is a naturally occurring
arsenic sulfide. Conservators working at the National Gallery in London
have found evidence of a number of alterations made to
Peter Paul Rubens's The Judgment of Paris. Those alterations were

(17:52):
made in the years after the artist's death. This work
depicts a moment from Greek mythology, in which Eiris, the
goddess of discord, has offered a golden apple to the
fairest goddess, with Juno, Minerva, and Venus fighting over who
should get it. The painting depicts the moment that Paris,
who has been called on to determine the winner, offers
the apple to Venus. Rubens died in sixteen forty and

(18:17):
between sixteen seventy six and seventeen twenty one, someone possibly
a French artist, toned down some of the eroticism in
this artwork, although without actually obscuring the nude figures. This
included removing a depiction of a cherub that was tugging
on Minerva's shift, and adjusting the clothing and positioning of

(18:40):
both Paris and Mercury, who is standing behind Paris. This
work also examined alterations that Rubens actually did make himself
while he was still alive. Eventually, conservators decided to restore
parts of the painting back to Rubens's own work, but
they left some of the alterations there as sort of

(19:00):
part of the history of the piece. An art historian
who consults for Sathabes was browsing social media and spoted
a picture that had been posted from a reception in
a room in shire Hall and Warwick in July, and
that conservator realized that a painting in the background of
the photo was a missing portrait of King Henry the eighth.

(19:21):
Tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon commissioned this painting in the fifteen
nineties and it originally hung in his home, but it
later disappeared. Shire Hall is less than fifteen miles from
where Sheldon's home stood. Yeah, it went away from the record,
but it did not go far. This painting was part
of a set of twenty two, all of them in

(19:43):
frames that were arched at the top because they were
meant to be part of an architectural freeze. This portrait
matches the composition of the other surviving paintings from the
set that we know where they are. The frames are
a match as well, and there are some other details
that are just stala. An assessor working for an auction
house in London found ten signed prints by Salvador Dali

(20:07):
and five lithographs by Tayot Tobias. They had been in
the client's garage, basically forgotten about for roughly five decades.
These were scheduled to be auctioned off on September thirtieth,
which is just the day before we record this, so
we don't have an update on that sale.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
I do kind of wish my life were such that
I should I could just forget that I had ten
signed Salvador Dali, right, Not that I think that's great
to just forget about, but I don't know. Similarly, an
auction assessor discovered portrait of a girl which is attributed
to Rembrandts at an estate in Camden, Maine. This painting

(20:50):
was tucked away in an attic, also apparently forgotten, along
with various family heirlooms and other assorted works of art.
There is a late on the back of this one
noting that it was loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of
Art in nineteen seventy. This painting has been put up
for auction and it sold to a European collector for

(21:11):
one point four one million dollars. Archaeologists in Turkia have
unearthed Milifiori glass panels during excavations at the ancient Lycean
city of Myra. This find is part of ongoing work
at what was the site of the city's port, and
while there have been discoveries of Milifiori vessels, these are
the first Millifiori panels to be found in Turkia. These

(21:35):
panels were part of the customs area, and archaeologists have
also found glass rosettes that were probably made to complement them,
suggesting that this is a very opulent and really impressive building. Currently,
though many of these panels are in very small pieces.
One of the Archaeologists working on the project said that
dozens of people have been working to reassemble them like

(21:58):
a giant puzzle, with a only twenty or thirty percent
of them close to one hundred percent complete by early September. Next,
painting by pasted podcast subject Artemisia Gentileski that has not
been seen publicly since the seventeenth century is now on
display at the Kemble Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

(22:20):
This painting is called Penitent Mary Magdalen, and it was
probably commissioned by a duke who was serving as the
Spanish ambassador in Rome. This painting remained in the duke's
home after his death. It was passed down through his family,
but at some point it just kind of disappeared from
the record before showing up at an auction in two

(22:40):
thousand and one.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
More than a decade ago. Matt Winter, at the time
eleven years old, was looking for interesting fines at a
local dump when he saw an interesting painting in someone's car.
He asked if he could have it, got permission, took
it home, and put it away with all of his
other discoveries. Now that painting is confirmed to be a

(23:02):
print of Outbrecht Durer's woodcut engraving Night Death and the Devil,
which dates back to fifteen thirteen and is one of
Durer's three master engravings. There are other prints of this work,
but there's a scratch visible in this one that means
it was made from the original woodcut. This one sold
at auction for more than twenty six thousand pounds.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
A lot of the headlines about this are like painting
found by eleven year old discovered to be sixteenth century masterpiece,
and it's like, yes, while that is technically correct, the
eleven year old is now a grown up. They sort
of seem like you're gonna hear interviews with a small
child and not a small child anymore. In twenty twenty two,

(23:49):
staff at Fairmont's Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa, Canada realized
their photo of Winston Churchill had been swapped for a copy.
If you've seen a picture of Winston Churchill, you've probably
seen this one. It's known as the Roaring Lion, and
it features Churchill staring directly into the camera. The photographer,

(24:10):
use of Karsh, lived at the hotel with his wife
for many years, and that's why they had the photo
in their collection. According to Karsh's account, Churchill's extremely stern
expression in this photograph is because he had given Karsh
one shot to take the photo, but he would not
put down his cigar, and the photo is from the
moment just after Karsh physically took it out of his mouth.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
The photo has now been recovered. It turned out the
original photo had been sold by Sathaby's in twenty twenty two,
but before the hotel knew the original had been stolen
and swapped with a copy. Charges have been filed against
the person believed to have made the swap and sold
the painting. Yeah, they eventually spotted the swap after seeing

(24:55):
other pictures that people had taken. There was like, that
does not look great. We will do another sponsor break
and then we will come back for a bunch of shipwrecks.
Time for a number of shipwrecks. First, divers off the

(25:17):
coast of the island of Antikythera have found another shipwreck
about two hundred meters away from the one that was
carrying the ancient device now known as the Antikythera mechanism.
It is not yet.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Clear whether there is any connection between this newly discovered
shipwreck and the other one dives at the quote original
Antikythera shipwreck have also included part of a marble sculpture
that was brought up. This head may depict Hercules, and
it might be a match for a headless statue that
was found at the site in nineteen hundred. Research all

(25:54):
around here is really ongoing, as is research into the
antikytherra mechanism, with the latest studies on that related to
figuring out details of missing and broken parts to figure
out what they should have looked like.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
We will never be done with the device. A shipwreck
found off the coast of Sweden dates back to the
nineteenth century and it was full of bottles of sparkling wine,
some of which look from the outside like they still
have their bubbles. There were also clay bottles of mineral water,
which were probably considered to be more valuable than the wine. Currently,

(26:29):
none of this has been brought to the surface. There's
an administrative process that has to take place now that
the find has been reported to Swedish authorities. There is
some speculation that this ship was on the way to
deliver goods to Tsar Alexander the Second. The wreck of
the Margaret A. Muir has been found in Lake Michigan
using a homemade side scan sonar device and then cross

(26:53):
referencing those findings with historical records and a three D
bottle that was made of the wreck. This is a
vessel that sank in a storm in eighteen ninety three
while carrying salts from Bay City, Michigan to South Chicago, Illinois.
Although the seven crew who were aboard survived this wreck,
the captain's dog sadly did not. Also, we've talked a

(27:17):
lot about shipwrecks in Lake Michigan over the years, and
efforts have been underway to make the wreck sites in
Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary safer and easier to navigate.
Boys and mooring lines have been installed near nineteen of
the most popular reck sites, helping divers find them more
quickly and giving boats a place to tie up without

(27:39):
damaging the wrecks with their anchors. Although some of these
wrecks are as much as three hundred feet deep. Four
of the boys were installed at rex that are in
shallow water to include people who are exploring with kayaks
and snorkeling gear.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Next, a robotic survey has taken place at the wreck
of the San Jose off the coast of Columbia. The
San Jose has come up on several installments of Unearthed.
It was a Spanish ship that was sunk by the
British Navy in seventeen oh eight, and there's been ongoing
debate about exactly who should claim the wreck and anything

(28:13):
it contains, with contenders including Columbia where the ship sank,
Spain which owned the ship, Indigenous nations who mined and
produced a lot of the goods that were aboard the ship,
and a US based salvage company that says to have
been the first to find the ship decades before its
discovery was announced. This time, a robot was used to

(28:35):
survey the wreck. That was the first time there has
been a robotic survey, and finds there include the ship's
anchor and various cargo. A rostrum or battering ram has
been found on the seafloor west of Sicily and brought
to a facility for further study. It's believed to have
been attached to a ship that was involved in the

(28:56):
final battle of the First Punic War, which ended in
two forty one one BCE, along with twenty five others
that have been found in the same area. A shipwreck
off the coast of Scotland is believed to have been
the HMS Hawk, a Royal Navy warship that was torpedoed
during World War One on October fifteenth, nineteen fourteen. Divers

(29:18):
who reached this wreck described it as virtually intact, although
as of August they were awaiting confirmation of whether this
really is the Hawk or not. The Hawk was one
of the first Royal Navy vessels to be destroyed by
a U boat in World War One. At that point,
the use of submarines in warfare was still a pretty

(29:40):
new innovation and the British were still trying to figure
out how to deal with it.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Three World War Two shipwrecks have been found off the
coast of the Aleutian Islands, which were involved in Japan's
attempt to invade Alaska in nineteen forty two. Two of
the ships were Japanese freighters that were sunk by American bombers.
The third it was an American cable ship, the SS Dellwood,
which was involved in efforts to reinforce defenses around Alaska

(30:07):
after that invasion had been repelled and lastly for the shipwrecks.
Lilione was a French ship that was designed for both
passenger and mail service. It made its first voyage from
La Have to New York successfully in eighteen fifty six,
but then it sank off the coast of Massachusetts on
its return voyage after colliding with another ship called the

(30:30):
Adriatic in the fog. According to reports from the time,
this wreck was caused by confusion over lights, as has
been the case with multiple other shipwrecks we have talked
about on the show. The Adriatic had accidentally extinguished one
of its lights, and when that light was ReLit, the
crew realized that Lillionee was on a collision course with it.

(30:54):
More than one hundred passengers and crew died aboard Lilionee,
while the Adriatic was able to get to Gloucester, Massachusetts
for repairs. Lelionae did not stop after the collision, so
some accounts described this as a hit and run incident,
although the crew of the Adriatic apparently thought the French
ship was still seaworthy and three days passed before it

(31:15):
actually sank.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
The wreck of Lelone was discovered off the coast of
Massachusetts after sonar scans followed by dives to investigate possible wreckage.
Much of this wreck has deteriorated at this point, so
the identification came after trying to piece together clues from
various parts of this wreckage, including a steam engine cylinder

(31:39):
and rigging from the sales that it was also equipped with.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
And now let's move on to edibles and potables. Archaeologists
from Washington University in Saint Louis and the University of
Pittsburgh have worked in collaboration with the National Museums of
Kenya to find the earliest evidence of plant farming discovered
in interior East Africa. So far, this region has long
been believed to be important to the early development of farming,

(32:07):
but finding actual evidence of that has been difficult, in
part because ancient plant remains often aren't preserved very well
in the archaeobotanical record. This time, though, they found a
variety of crop remains representing an array of plants that
were introduced from different parts of Africa over a period
of time. This included remnants of cowpee, which is the

(32:30):
earliest known arrival of a domestic crop in the area.
These likely arrived with Bantu speaking peoples who migrated into
the area from Central Africa.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
A giant slab of bog butter was found during excavation
work out a farm in County Donegal and Ireland. This
bog butter weighs somewhere between twenty two kilograms and twenty
five kilograms, making it one of the biggest blumps of
bog butter in Ireland. Sent to the National Museum of

(33:01):
Ireland and there are hopes that after some study it
will eventually be returned and displayed at the Kilcluney Dolman Center.
We haven't talked about bog butter in a while, but
it is a dairy product placed in the bog, either
to preserve it or possibly for ceremonial or religious reasons.
Archaeologist Paula Harvey visited the site and was quoted as

(33:24):
saying that she tried a sliver of it and that
it tasted like unsalted butter. Paula doing what I would not.
I still stand by my don't eat bog butter stance.
I think we used to have that on a shirt
and may still. I don't know, but one of our
very sweet listeners brought me a shirt that he had
made when we did a show in New York that said,

(33:45):
don't eat bog butter. That's what I'm thinking about. So yes,
that is what I'm thinking about. Research published in the
journal Antiquity suggests that kumara or sweet potato, was present
in Altaroa, New Zealand sometime between twelve ninety and thirteen
eighty five, which is about the same time as these
islands were first settled. This is the first time evidence

(34:08):
has been found of sweet potato cultivation in New Zealand
prior to about the year fourteen hundred, and it also
aligns with the earliest evidence of sweet potato cultivation elsewhere
in Polynesia. It was already known that the sweet potato
was an important food source throughout Polynesia, but it hasn't
been as clear exactly how it spread through this part

(34:31):
of the Pacific and how much intentional human cultivation and
management were involved. But it does suggest that sweet potato
was introduced and grown in New Zealand soon after it
was settled, challenging earlier assumptions that the first people to
settle New Zealand mainly foraged and fished, and in other
potato news researchers in Utah have been studying the four

(34:55):
Corners potato tracing where it was grown, cultivated, carried, and introduced,
and their research suggests that these potatoes were basically carried
in multiple directions and introduced in multiple places as it
was being domesticated into a food crop. This potato is
really high in protein, calcium, magnesium, and iron, and one

(35:18):
tuber can be used to grow six hundred more tubers
over a period of about four months, so this was
already known to be a nutrition staple and a valuable
trade good. Some accounts described this potato as a lost sister,
joining the three sisters of maize, beans and squash in
indigenous food cultivation. And lastly, researchers have analyzed DNA from

(35:43):
ancient cheese samples that were found on some of the
Tarum Basin mummies in China which date back to about
thirty six hundred years, and they found evidence of bacteria
and fungi that are often found in kaffir today. Kaffir,
in case you didn't know, is a ermented dairy product
and kaffir cultures contain multiple species of probiotic bacteria and yeast. Previously,

(36:08):
it was believed that kafir were originated in the Northern
Caucasus mountains, but one of the Lactobacillis strains that was
found in this research has more in common with Tibetan
strains of the bacterium, so it's possible that Kafir had
multiple origin points. This is also one of the oldest
examples of cheese to be found, suggesting that kafir has

(36:31):
a history going back more than thirty five hundred years.
And before we close this installment of Unearthed, we have
for the first time in quite a while, a historically
relevant exhumation. Between nineteen thirty five and nineteen thirty eight,
twelve people were killed and dismembered in Cleveland, most of
them in the same general area. They're believed to be

(36:52):
the victims of one serial killer who has come to
be known as the Cleveland Torso Killer.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Many of these people were living on the fringes of society,
and only two of their bodies were conclusively identified. Yeah,
these killings have long been on my list for like
a possible maybe in October episode and it just has
not happened. In July, the local Medical Examiner's office started
work to examine some of these unknown victims who were

(37:21):
buried in unmarked graves in a potter's field. They hope
to work with the DNA Doe Project, which is an
organization that tries to confirm the identities of unknown persons.
Got to end with a little scary something at the end, right,
it's Halloween season.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
It is Halloween season, and it's also been a really
long time since we have had like a historically relevant
exhumation to talk about. Do you have a little bit
of listener mail? I do have a little bit of
listener mail. So this is from Samantha. Samantha wrote, Hi,
Holly and Tracy. Just a funny note. In the Charlotte
Cooper sterary episode, you all mentioned another player named Lottie Dodd.

(38:02):
For whatever reason, my brain kept hearing her name as
Lotti da and it made me chuckle every time, but
not too loudly as my three year old was sleeping
in the backseat. Anyway, not much else to add to
this one, but thought you might get a kick out
of that. Hope you're well, Samantha, Samantha, You're in good company.
I also thought as I was writing that that trying
to say the name Lottie Dodd was going to sound

(38:24):
like we were saying Lotti da. And then when we
were doing we listened to each episode before we publish it.
So when we were doing that, like QA listen, I
was like, sure, does sound like we said Lottie Dah.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
I was too busy thinking about lot Dodd, the namoidian
character from The Phantom Menace.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I think that's one of those names that like to
really really enunciate. It probably also would have sounded odd
and awkward, So thank you so much. It gave me
a chance to giggle over that again. Uh. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast, we're at History Podcasts iHeartRadio dot com and
you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app

(39:07):
and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff
you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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