April 16, 2025 • 38 mins
Part two of the spring 2025 installment of Unearthed! features the potpourri category, plus drones/radar/lidar, books and letters, animals, edibles and potables, shipwrecks, swords (sort of) and cats.
Research:
- Roque, Nika. “Maria Orosa, fellow World War II heroes laid to rest at San Agustin Church.” GMA Integrated News. 2/14/2025. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/936107/maria-orosa-fellow-world-war-ii-heroes-laid-to-rest-at-san-agustin-church/story/
- Adam, David. “Does a new genetic analysis finally reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper?” Science. 3/15/2019. https://www.science.org/content/article/does-new-genetic-analysis-finally-reveal-identity-jack-ripper
- Jeffries, Ella. “These Everyday Artifacts Tell the Story of Harriet Tubman’s Father’s Home as Climate Change Threatens the Historic Site.” Smithsonian Magazine. 3/14/2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-everyday-artifacts-tell-the-story-of-harriet-tubmans-fathers-home-as-climate-change-threatens-historic-site-as-climate-change-180986204/
- The History Blog. “Lavish private baths found in Pompeii villa.” 1/18/2025. https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/72199
- Balmer, Crispian. “Rare frescoes unearthed in Pompeii shed light on ancient rituals.” Reuters. 2/26/2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/rare-frescoes-unearthed-pompeii-shed-light-ancient-rituals-2025-02-26/
- Lawler, Daniel. “How did this man's brain turn to glass? Scientists have a theory.” Phys.org. 2/27/2025. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-brain-glass-scientists-theory.html
- The History Blog. “Footprints fleeing Bronze Age eruption of Vesuvius found.” 1/31/2025. https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/72318
- net. “Archaeologists Identify ‘Lost’ Anglo-Saxon Site Depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.” 1/2025. https://www.medievalists.net/2025/01/archaeologists-identify-lost-anglo-saxon-site-depicted-in-the-bayeux-tapestry/
- Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Fragment of Epic Medieval Bayeux Tapestry Rediscovered in Germany.” Artnet. 3/5/2025. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bayeux-tapestry-fragment-rediscovered-in-germany-2615620
- Schrader, Adam. “Is There Graffiti of a Legendary Film Star Under the Lincoln Memorial?.” Artnet. 2/23/2025. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/graffiti-of-a-legendary-film-star-under-the-lincoln-memorial-2611242
- National Museums Northern Ireland. “Further research Suggests Remains Found in Bellaghy Likely to be Female.” https://www.nationalmuseumsni.org/news/ballymacombs-more-woman
- Boucher, Brian. “Who Owned This Fabulous Hoard of Viking Treasure? A New Translation Offers a Clue.” ArtNet. 2/21/2025. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/galloway-hoard-communal-wealth-translated-inscription-2611850
- Randall, Kayla. “Josephine Baker’s Memoir Is Now Being Published for the First Time in English.” Smithsonian. 3/2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/josephine-baker-memoir-now-published-first-time-english-180985963/
- Anderson, Sonja. “Archaeologists Discover Intricately Decorated Tomb Belonging to a Doctor Who Treated Egyptian Pharaohs 4,100 Years Ago.” Smithsonian. 1/10/2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-discover-intricately-decorated-tomb-belonging-to-a-doctor-who-treated-egyptian-pharaohs-4100-years-ago-180985788/
- University of Vienna. “Analysis of skull from Ephesos confirms it is not Cleopatra's sister.” 1/10/2025. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-analysis-skull-ephesos-cleopatra-sister.html
- Weber, G.W., Šimková, P.G., Fernandes, D. et al. The cranium from the Octagon in Ephesos. Sci Rep 15, 943 (2025). https://d
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Transcript
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 Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is part two of our Unearthed episodes for the
first few months of twenty twenty five. This is where
we talk about things that have been literally and figuratively
unearthed over the last few months, as we so often do.
We're starting with things that are just kind of a
mix of topics, which I call the potpourri because I
(00:37):
used to watch a lot of Jeopardy. Our Potpourrix this
time around is going to kick off with a lengthier
discussion of what seemed like one of the biggest news
stories of the quarter, at least in unearthed terms, and
that's the identity of Jack the Ripper. This is kind
of like the Voyage Manuscript, where it comes up every
(00:58):
couple of years, where someone has cracked.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Nats for a long time.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It felt almost annual Voyage Manuscript. Yeah, there was a
lot of chatter about Jack the Ripper on social media
and people asked if we had seen that Jack the
Ripper had been identified as Aaron Kaminski, a twenty three
year old Polish man who worked in Whitechapel where those
famous murders happened. Police files from the time named Kaminski
(01:24):
as a suspect, but it's not one hundred percent clear
whether Aaron Kaminski is the Kaminsky those police files were
talking about. So this conclusion of him as the perpetrator
came from DNA research on a shawl that was claimed
to have been found next to the body of Catherine
Edo's when she was killed in eighteen eighty eight. There
(01:46):
are some question marks here too. There is not really
a clear chain of custody for this shawl, and police
reports don't mention a shawl among Eto's belongings, So that's
why a lot of the times when people reference to
the shawl, they describe it as being quote claimed to
have been found near the body. Even if this really
(02:07):
was a shawl that belonged to Catherine Edos, a lot
of people would have handled it between eighteen eighty eight
and now, especially in the years prior to the understanding
of DNA and other things as evidence. It could be
left on an object that raises a lot of questions
about who all's DNA might be on there researchers compared
(02:28):
mitochondrial DNA from this shawl to that of living people
related to both Catherine Edos and Aaron Kaminski and said
that the results do suggest a connection. It's also likely
that some of the DNA came from someone with brown
hair and brown eyes that matches up with eyewitness statements
from the time of the murderers. This research was published
(02:52):
in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which is peer reviewed,
and a lot of the recent chatter about this has
made it sound as though it is one hundred percent conclusive. However,
there are all of those question marks that we already mentioned,
and to add to that, a number of experts have
weighed in with questions about the DNA research itself, like
(03:15):
some have said that mitochondrial DNA can only be used
to rule someone out as a relative, not to conclusively
confirm a connection. The researchers who did this work also
didn't publish their data in detail, so it is impossible
for others to independently confirm their interpretations of that data.
(03:36):
A lot of people have brown hair and brown eyes.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I did it. I somehow have traveled through time, and
I'm a monster. To add another layer, to this. These
latest headlines seem to trace back to an appearance by
Russell Edwards, who acquired that shawl in two thousand and
seven and gave it to a biochemist for testing, and
those tests were part of Edwards's book Naming Jack the Ripper,
(04:02):
which came out in twenty fourteen. One of the criticisms
of the book at that time was that there was
very little detail about the actual research. The article later
published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences does have more detail,
but it's still not complete, and the journal published additional
letters to the editor criticizing it in the following months. Today,
(04:25):
the journal article is accompanied by an expression of concern
that references the letters to the editor and the original
author's responses, and says this quote. During the investigation, the
publisher and editor in chief made every effort to obtain
from the authors the original raw data from the mtDNA analysis. However,
(04:46):
the authors stated that the data were no longer available
due to instrument data failure and other complications. Through further investigation,
it was concluded that because it was not possible to
examine the original data, no determination could be made regarding
the third party complaints, so this Journal.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Article came out in twenty nineteen. It does not appear
that any new research has been done in the years
since then, so it just seems like this latest round
of headlines grew out of an interview that Russell Edwards
did with Today Australia in which he called for a
new inquest into the murders, and not from any actual
(05:26):
new developments in the case. There was just a lot
of headline action about Jack the Ripper case solved, but
like that, nothing new happened here that I can tell.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Jack the Ripper read the Voyniche manuscript.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I did done, so I had like gone and I'd
tracked down the Journal article and I just bookmarked it
to come back to later.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And I didn't realize that the Journal.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Article was from twenty nineteen until I was putting it
in the source list for the episode and went, wait,
twenty nineteen, what is happening.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Next? Staff at the Barringer Crawford Museum in Kentucky were
going through their collections in preparations for the museum's seventy
fifth anniversary celebration, and they found an eighty year old
Japanese hand grenade. Since they weren't sure whether this was
live or not. They contacted law enforcement and the bomb
squad determined that it was inactive and safe. It is
(06:26):
a type ninety seven grenade, which when live, is filled
with TNT and it weighs about a pound.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Next, research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science concludes
that the ancient peoples of the Philippines and islands Southeast
Asia may have developed advanced seafaring technologies as far back
as forty thousand years ago. That's actually prior to the
development of Polynesian wayfinding. This is involved work at archaeological
(06:55):
sites that have unearthed tools that were probably used to
make ropes, nets, and bindings. All of these would have
been used in both boat building and in making fishing nets.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
But then the.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Natural materials used to make the boats and the nets
probably would not have survived those forty thousand years in
the island's environment. There's also some archaeological evidence of deep
sea fishing, including hooks and weights, which can only be
done with a sophisticated enough boat. This kind of up
ends assumptions that the peoples of the Philippines and these
(07:30):
parts of Southeast Asia did not have like advanced boating technologies.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And our last bit of popoury. Archaeologists outside of Gloucester,
England have found what's been described as a Roman era
service station, that is, a Roman mutacio or horse changing station,
where people could rest, refresh themselves, and care for or
change out their horses. They have found horse bones, bridles,
(07:56):
and hippo sandals which were essentially Roman horseshoes, along with
lots of coins, jewelry, and the remains of ovens. It's
been pointed out that this find is kind of ironic
since it's a roadside resting point for travelers being unearthed
in advance of road construction.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yes, part of me is like that is ironic, and
part of me is like a lot of times roads
are where people needed them to be, so having another
road later makes a lot of sense. Next, we've got
a few things that were discovered through some combination of
drone imaging, radar and lightar. First unmanned aerial vehicle scans
have revealed what's being described as a mega fortress in
(08:37):
the Caucasus Mountains. There had been previous physical work at
the site, including some that was scheduled at a time
of the year when the grass died back so that
it would be easier to visualize, but it seemed like
it was just too big to get a sense of
it from the ground. So this drone took almost eleven
thousand pictures, which were then used to create a high
(08:59):
resolution map of the whole site with software that created
an elevation map from those different reference points in the pictures.
It turns out that this site is about forty times
bigger than within was originally thought when they thought this
is so big, we need to look at it from
the air. These kinds of fortress settlements were built are
(09:20):
in the area around fifteen hundred to five hundred BCE.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Next, researchers in Mexico have used lightar scans to map
a fifteenth century city built by the indigenous Zeppotech people
at a site that was believed to be only a
soldier's garrison. This city included more than one thousand structures
and two point five miles of walls. Researcher Pedro Guillermo
(09:46):
ramon Selie described the city as very well preserved. It's
believed that the people who were living there relocated to
another city shortly before the Spanish arrived in the area.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Next, in Peru, searchers have used acoustic prospecting and ground
penetrating radar to find secret tunnels known as chinkana under
the city of Cusco. It's not really known what purpose
these tunnel networks served, but they were built by the
Inca and they likely connected two Inca monuments in the city,
(10:19):
as were a fortress and the Temple of the Sun.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And lastly, researchers at Svorsa Castle in Milan, Italy have
used ground penetrating radar to find numerous passages, some of
which may have been built by the military for secret purposes.
Some of these passages are referenced in historical documents and
shown in sketches done by Leonardo da Vinci. But in
(10:43):
addition to confirming these already documented passageways, these scans reveal
additional passages that were previously unknown. Let's take a little
sponsor break and then we'll come back with some books
and letters. We are picking back up with.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Some books and letters. First, a man cleaning out his
father's attic found a ton of papers related to Winnie
the Pooh. The attic belonged to Leslie Smith, who had
worked in publishing, and these papers included a lot of
correspondents about the Winnie the Pooh books, including original manuscripts
(11:27):
and corrected proofs of Now We Are Six and the
House at Pooh Corner. There was also some correspondence among
the papers with other British authors, including Enid Blyton and J. R. R.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Tolkien.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
These materials were ultimately split up to be sold at auction.
This really overshadows the Winnie the Pooh find we had
on Unearthed a couple of years back, that was just
one sketch drapped in a tea towel.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Right. We have talked on the show about historical bookbinders
recycling materials from old books when binding new ones, and
that has led to some interesting historical finds over the years.
It can be difficult to impossible to study these earlier
materials without destroying the books that they became part of,
(12:14):
but researchers at Leiden University have published work on one
potential way to do it, with an endoscopic camera, adapting
a technique that was originally developed to examine the insides
of gun barrels. In particular, they used the camera in
the spines of sixteenth and seventeenth century books that had
been reinforced with strips of medieval manuscripts. They've also published
(12:39):
a brief video on YouTube of what the camera sees
as it travels down the inside of the book's spine.
They've titled their paper Fragmendoscopy An Innovative Way to discover
hidden heritage inside early modern book bindings.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Next, archaeologists in France have found a line of sixty
burial twenty one of which were found to contain lead
cursed tablets. All of these appear to be men's graves
dating back to the Roman era, but beyond that it
is not really clear who they were or why why
(13:16):
these curse tablets were involved. These curses were written on
very thin sheets of lead, and the one whose inscription
has been examined so far was written in the extinct
Celtic language of Gaulish.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I really like the idea of cursed tablets. I want
to bring those back. Researchers in Iraq have found clay
tablets containing Cuneiform writing at the Mesopotamian site of kurd Kaburstan.
The tablets are the first of their kind in the
area and they're still being interpreted, but it's hoped that
they will shed more light on the people who were
living there, as well as the city's connections to other
(13:52):
parts of Mesopotamia. Other finds at the site include game
boards and part of a structure. Researchers have pieced together
the oldest known runestone in Norway after determining that stones
that were found in multiple grave sites were all fragments
that fit together, that breaking and distribution of the stone
(14:15):
probably being something that was done intentionally. Since these were
found in burial sites, it was possible to use other
materials that was buried along with them to more conclusively
date them. According to radiocarbon dating, this was made sometime
between fifty BCE and two seventy five CE. While the
(14:35):
fragments fit together, the engravings on them aren't continuous. There
are clear sequences of runes, but also other markings that
are a bit more ambiguous, so it's possible that the
inscriptions were created by different people. Speaking of oldest, archaeologists
in Spain have discovered what may be the earliest example
(14:57):
of alphabetic writing in northern ib dating back to the
Iron Age. This was found on a spindle whirl that
was found back in twenty seventeen, but more recent analysis
was what identified an inscription from the Celtiberian alphabet. This
may have been a property marker and identity mark. Cel Tiberian,
(15:17):
as that name suggests, was a continental Celtic language that's
now extinct, and the inscribed letter resembles a capital letter V.
We have another message in a bottle, this time around
on on Earth than This one was found at Edinburgh's
King's Theater. It was behind molding in the theatre's proscenium.
(15:38):
A theater patron and donor found it during a tour
of the building while renovation work is underway. He basically
just stuck his hand up there and felt around. This
bottle was sealed with wax, but conservators at Scottish Conservation
Studio opened it. They found a note from October of
nineteen oh six listing people involved with the building of
(15:58):
the theater, including the bid architects, draftsmen, plasterers and foremen.
The theater has gotten in touch with a genealogy service
to look for descendants of the people that are listed
on that note and are hoping that work will be
done ahead of the theater's reopening next year. A researcher
(16:18):
from Oxford University found a manuscript copy of Shakespeare's Sonnet
one sixteen in a collection of seventeenth century poetry belonging
to Elias Ashmole. Sonnet one sixteen is the one that starts,
let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments.
Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds,
(16:40):
or bends when the remover to remove. It's one of
Shakespeare's more widely known sonnets today, but it doesn't seem
to have been particularly popular closer to his lifetime. There's
only one other manuscript copy of this sonnet that has
ever been found before. It's also not.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Exactly the same as the on at one sixteen that
people would probably recognize today. It is a song adaptation
by Henry Laws that includes six additional lines. It was
included in a miscellany, that is a handwritten manuscript with
texts by different authors included, and it was included alongside
(17:18):
political writings, so in that context it's being interpreted as
about political constancy rather than a constancy of romantic love.
Ashmole was a Royalist, and this miscellany dates back to
around the time of the English Civil Wars. Research published
in the journal Humanities and Social Science Communications has tried
(17:41):
to quantify how many medieval manuscripts were copied by female scribes.
The idea that some of the scribes who copied these
manuscripts were women is not a new one. On our
last installment of on Earth, for example, we talked about
illuminated manuscripts created by the poor players of Cologne, which
they were known four. But this research tries to figure
(18:02):
out just how many of these medieval texts were created
by women. This research focused on the colophons, or short
statements about the author that are included in a lot
of manuscripts and used as a reference a Benedictine colofon catalog.
That catalog includes twenty three thousand, seven hundred and seventy
(18:23):
four colophons, and two hundred and fifty four of them,
or one point one percent, seem to have been written
by women. Extrapolated out to the total number of known
illuminated manuscripts, that means at least one hundred and ten
thousand of them were created by women, but this research
(18:45):
suggests that this is likely a low estimate for women's
contributions to medieval illuminated manuscripts. Not all manuscripts have a
colophon and women may have been less likely to sign
their work due to social and religious expects. It's also
possible that works by women were more intentionally targeted during
(19:05):
events like the Protestant Reformation, meaning we have few of
them surviving today. Researchers also noted that the number of
manuscripts by women escalated after about the year fourteen hundred,
before dropping off again with advances in printing in Europe.
And the last thing we're filing under books and letters
(19:26):
is a map, possibly the world's oldest three dimensional map.
This was found in a rock shelter in France, carved
into sandstone about thirteen thousand years ago, and it shows
the waterways and geomorphological features of the Ekeyle River Valley.
It seems almost like an instruction manual for how to
(19:47):
direct rainwater along specific paths in the valley. This is
about three thousand years older than the previous oldest known
three dimensional map, and.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Now were moving on to animal finds. According to research
published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, birds living near
medieval towns like Oxford, Winchester and Northampton relied extensively on
human food. This lines up with historical accounts that describe
some birds, including red kites, stealing food from market stalls
(20:21):
and even from people's hands. This research involved chemical analysis
of the bones of eleven red kites, eighteen common buzzards,
and three white tailed eagles, which suggested that some of
them were living entirely on people's scraps, rather than by
hunting live prey or scavenging the carcasses of wild animals.
(20:41):
This means that the birds adapted to coexisting with people
and that they served a role in the ecosystem of
these cities.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Next, researchers have found evidence suggesting that herders on the
Iberian Peninsula were strategically managing their cattle as far back
as six thousand years ago. This included seasonally moving them
between pastures in the mountains and the lowlands, and also
modifying their reproductive cycles so that calves would only be
(21:12):
born in the summer when there was plenty of fresh
pasture land available. This came from research into animal remains
in Pixerel's Cave, which has been inhabited by people and
animals going back to Neolithic times. About eighty percent of
the animal remains there are from domestic cattle, which is
unique on the Peninsula, and lastly, across eastern Europe. There
(21:36):
are about seventy known mammoth bone circles that date back
about twenty five thousand years. We don't really know what
these bone circles were for, but one of the biggest
ones is in Russia, about three hundred miles south of Moscow.
It's called Kostenki eleven. It's about forty feet wide, and
(21:57):
it includes the bones of at least sixty mammoths, totaling
nearly three thousand bones. Research published in the journal Quaternary
Environments and Humans has examined these bones and drawn some conclusions,
although without really clearing up why our ancient ancestors were
doing this. Obviously, these didn't all come from the same mammoth,
(22:19):
but this research suggests that they also came from completely
different herds that were not related to one another. They
studied bones from thirty different animals, seventeen females and thirteen males.
Some of the bones were hundreds of years older than
the rest, suggesting that people may have used bones from
freshly hunted mammoths as well as bones scavenged from much
(22:42):
older kills or from bone beds where people discarded mammoth
bones after processing the carcasses. Now we're going to take
another quick sponsor break. Now moving on to edibles and potables.
(23:06):
Archaeologists in China have been exploring the ways people used
bone powder in cuisine roughly eight thousand years ago. This
came from examination of pottery, vessels, and food crust remains
from an archaeological site that was excavated in twenty seventeen
and twenty eighteen. The researchers had initially been focused on
(23:26):
studying alcohol making, but they wound up finding residue in
the crusts that aligned with the composition of bone. They
eventually concluded that the bone was ground up and cooked
together with wild plants like acorns. They speculated that this
was part of this society's transition from hunting and gathering
(23:46):
to farming to try to get more nutrients out of
kind of a limited amount of food available to them.
It's also possible that people living in this area produced
bone grease by boiling crushed bones for several hours and
then skimming the resulting grease off the top. Cooking with
this grease could then help extract nutrients from hard to
(24:07):
digest foods. Researchers in Australia have found evidence of dried
plants under the floors of the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.
This was built in the nineteenth century and it served
a number of roles in colonial Australia. It started as
a barras for people who had been transported to Australia
after being convicted of a crime. Then it housed the
(24:31):
Female Immigration Depot for unmarried women who were immigrating to Australia,
and then the Female Destitute Asylum, which was a home
for women who were elderly, ill or disabled. They found
a variety of foods under the floors, including fruits and vegetables, nuts,
and spices. Some of these plant foods were native to
(24:52):
Australia and others were imports, and a lot of what
they found was much too big to have just fallen
through the floorboards people were eating, so that suggests that
people were placing their food under the floors intentionally. Some
of the foods don't appear in inventories of the institution's
food stores or in other official records, so this suggests
(25:13):
that people were smuggling in food from outside, especially during
the barracks time. Housing women. Records detail a diet that
would have been really monotonous, so mostly bread and a
soup made of boiled meat and vegetables. So these smuggled
and hidden foods probably would have been kind of an
illicit treat. Archaeologists in China have examined a small amount
(25:36):
of liquid from inside a bronze vessel shaped like an owl,
and they found a three thousand year old distilled spirit.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
The lid of the vessel had rusted shut, sealing it
off from the air and preserving what was left inside.
The vessel had been found in twenty ten, but it
wasn't until last year that the Shundong Provincial Department of
Culture and Tourism approved to conservation and protection plan for
the artifacts from this site, which is why it wasn't
(26:05):
opened and studied before. Now. This spirit and the owl
vessel it was contained in were probably part of a
funerary offering, and this discovery fills a gap in the
timeline of what was known about distilling in ancient China.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Another early alcohol was found in Brazil based on analysis
of pottery dating back to between twenty three hundred and
twelve hundred years ago. That's the oldest known alcohol in
the region. These were fermented, not distilled, and were made
from vegetables such as tubers, sweet corn, and palm. Sharing
(26:40):
these beverages was probably a communal event for the people
known as the Cerrito's mound builders, who were the ancestors
of later indigenous groups, including the Charua and Minuano. They
were probably served alongside fish dishes. Some of the pottery
fragments had residues connected to fish processing. Last year, officials
(27:01):
announced the discovery of a food cash at an archaeological
site at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Alaska. Was about
three and a half feet deep and lined with birch bark.
That birch bark lining was intact, which is really rare
for cashes like these, especially in an area where a
lot of the landscape was torn up and destroyed while
(27:22):
the base was being built. The team expected any food
remains inside the cash to be about two hundred years old,
but radiocarbon dating suggests that it's much older than that,
almost one thousand years old. Meat residues in the soil
samples seem to come from moose and caribou, but it's
not yet fully clear whether that's because meat was stored
(27:43):
in the cash or because those animals live in the area.
Further study is planned to figure that part out. Researchers
collaborated with elders and knowledge holders from Denina and Otana
tribes to contextualize this find, and they learned that a
birch tree in this area had been marked with what
looks like the letter T, possibly referencing the name of
(28:05):
a family that later maintained a fish camp in this area.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
And our last food and beverage find, Archaeologists at the
ancient city of Hadrianopolis in Turkya have found a bronze
filter that probably would have been used at the end
of a plant based drinking straw. The filter is about
three and a half inches long, and it's shaped like
a cone with holes all along the sides that would
have allowed people to drink things like beer and fruit
(28:33):
juice without sucking up the grains or pulp that would
have been floating in there. This filter is about sixteen
hundred years old.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Moving on to shipwrecks, but really comparatively fewer shipwrecks than
we have had in some of our most recent installments.
Maritime archaeologists have investigated what maybe the oldest known carvel
built vessel from the Nordic region.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
These are wooden.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Boats that are constructed by fixing the planks to a
frame with the edges of those planks lined up against
each other. This is sturdier and allows for larger vessels
than clinker construction, which is when the edges of the
planks overlap, but it requires more calking to keep the
vessel watertight. This wreck was found south of Stockholm, and
(29:20):
preliminary evidence suggests that it was built in the fourteen eighties,
although it's possible that it was built maybe twenty years
earlier but then was repaired around fourteen eighty. Either way,
that would be very early in the shift away from
clinker construction in the area. Researchers working with this vessel
are hoping to get funding for a more thorough excavation
(29:42):
of this wreck next.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
The Brazilian Navy has confirmed the location of the Vitado Olivera,
which was torpedoed by a German U boat on June nineteenth,
nineteen forty four, as it was transporting supplies along the
coast off Rio di Geneiro. About one hundred of the
two two hundred and seventy crew on board died when
the ship sank. Brazil was the only country in South
(30:05):
America to send troops to fight on the side of
the Allies, which had led Germany to retaliate against Brazilian ships.
The sunken World War II ship was the only Brazilian
ship to sink due to enemy activity during the war.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
And there were ships that sank for other reasons, but
this was the only one sunk by an enemy. This
wreck was first reported fourteen years ago when some divers
spotted it while they were trying to free a stuck
fishing net, but it wasn't conclusively identified until it was
studied with various sonar technologies and an interesting coincidence, the
(30:41):
research vessel used to make this identification was named the
Vital de Rivera in honor of that sunken ship. Researchers
in Lake Superior have found the wreck of the Western Reserve,
which was one of the first all steel cargo ships
in the Great Lakes. The ship was believed to be
very safe and it was known for its speed and
was nicknamed the Inland Greyhound by the local press. It
(31:05):
sank in a storm in August eighteen ninety two, when
its owner, Peter Minch had taken his family out for
a ride on the ship. It wasn't carrying any cargo,
and that meant that without that weight to hold it down,
it was really thrown around in the storm. It's possible
that its steel hull had become brittle in the cold water.
(31:25):
It broke in half and only one of the twenty
eight people aboard survived. The Western Reserve was found after
a two year search and was initially spotted using side
scanning sonar, then confirmed through photography from a submersible drone.
Now we've got a few sword fines. First, archaeologists studying
(31:47):
burial sites in southeastern England have found an intricately decorated
sword among the grave goods. It has a silver and
gold plated hilt with a Runic script along its blade.
These burial sites date back to the fifth and sixth
century CE, and the sword is exceptionally well preserved. Study
(32:07):
of this sword in its ruins is still ongoing. Next,
metal detectorists in Poland who were looking for artifacts from
World War II wound up finding a three foot long
Roman era sword dating back to the third or fourth
century CE. It had been broken in three places, probably intentionally,
(32:27):
and it also seems to have been burned, meaning that
it may have been used in some kind of funeral ritual.
And this suggests some sort of cross cultural influence, since
the sword was Roman, but this funeral practice is associated
with the Sarworsk culture.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Different metal detectorists, apparently also looking for World War II
era artifacts, found a different sword in Poland, this one
dating to the Late Middle Ages. This one's also about
three feet long and its tip is broken off, probably
not intentionally. It was discovered alongside two axe heads from
(33:04):
around the same period. Those axe heads were also in
good condition. It seems like using metal detectors to look
for World War two era artifacts might be some kind
of a pastime in Poland. Maybe listeners from Poland can
write in and fill us in on this, because our
last find is also from somebody who was doing that,
(33:24):
and the people involved in these three finds have been
members of three different organizations, all dedicated to this. This
last one is not a sword, though it is sort adjacent.
It is a bronze scabbard fitting dating back about one
thousand years. That scabbard fitting is called a shoe and
it goes at the tip of the scabbard to protect
(33:46):
it from damage. And lastly, for this installment of unearthed
one discovery of cats, specifically that domesticated cats arrived in
China about fourteen hundred years ago, probably having been carried
along the Silk Road. Although it was long believed that
cats were first domesticated in Egypt, more recent genetic research
(34:08):
suggests this took place in ancient Anatolia around what's now Turkya,
roughly ten thousand years ago. Domesticated cats were widespread in
Europe by about the fourth century CE, so this suggests
that domesticated cats were introduced in China hundreds of years
after their introduction in Europe. According to archaeological evidence, the
(34:30):
first domestic cats in China were seen as highly prized
exotic animals, and they mostly belonged to the elite.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
And the wealthy. The fourteen domesticated cats whose bones were
part of this study also all shared some commonalities in
their mitochondrial DNA that's not common in cats that are
from Europe or Western Asia. People in more rural areas
did live alongside other cats, though specific a small wildcat
(35:01):
called the leopard cat, which is native to China kitties. Yes,
that is how we're ending off today's Unearthed, aside from
also having some listener mail. This is from Nancy. Nancy
wrote in and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just
(35:23):
listened to the episode in the archives on Scott Joplin
from April tenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I'm a little.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Older than the two of you, but as you mentioned
in the behind the scenes discussion, I also was introduced
to Scott Joplin's music and ragtime as a musical genre
via the movie The Sting in the nineteen seventies. I
believe I played the record album so much that I
wore out the grooves. I'm gonna pause this email for
a second and say I don't remember if I said
(35:51):
it in that episode, but The Sting on vinyl is
one of the two first records that I ever returning
to the email. Much to my delight today I saw
a feed in one of my social media streams that
brought a smile to my face. The Washington National Opera
will be staging Scott Joplin's Forgotten opera Tremniesha next year
(36:16):
at the Kennedy Center on March twelfth through twenty second,
twenty twenty six. I am opening the link to this
to make sure that it's still on the Kennedy Center website,
and it is. Currently ticket purchase is only open for
series subscriptions multiple show packages, but I will be following
(36:36):
and will be purchasing a ticket as soon as individual
ticket sales open up. I know neither of you are
based near Washington, d C. But this looks like a
unique opportunity, especially if you like opera. I know you
both have very busy schedules and would have a ton
of things to do and see in this area if
you visit it. It's hard to say, but these March
dates next year might even be during cherry blossoms season,
(37:00):
especially the dates later in the month. I must admit
I love when the cherry trees are blooming, and it
is spectacular on the National mall around the Tidle Basin
when all the trees are in bloom, the smell is
heavenly instead of pet tax I'm attaching a couple of
pictures of cherry blossoms from a previous year or two
entice you to come to DC. Love what you do.
Keep up the good work. I have learned so much
(37:21):
from Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast. Thanks Nancy.
Thank you so much, Nancy, and thank you for these
beautiful cherry tree pictures. I do love to look at
the cherry trees and to smell the cherry trees. Back
when we were part of Discovery, Discovery's headquarters were in
Silver Spring, Maryland, and so I was in Washington, d C. Regularly,
(37:46):
And yet I don't think any of my many work
trips to Washington, d C. Were during cherry blossom season.
That was probably purposeful, right, Nobody was scheduling anything then
because it's such a busy travel to its time. Yeah,
it would have been harder to get cheap reas and
flights and things, probably, So thank you so much, Nancy.
(38:10):
We'll see what happens between now and next year regarding
maybe going to see Treamnation, because that would be really cool.
If you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on
the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
(38:37):
production of iHeartRadio For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is part two of our Unearthed episodes for the
first few months of twenty twenty five. This is where
we talk about things that have been literally and figuratively
unearthed over the last few months, as we so often do.
We're starting with things that are just kind of a
mix of topics, which I call the potpourri because I
(00:37):
used to watch a lot of Jeopardy. Our Potpourrix this
time around is going to kick off with a lengthier
discussion of what seemed like one of the biggest news
stories of the quarter, at least in unearthed terms, and
that's the identity of Jack the Ripper. This is kind
of like the Voyage Manuscript, where it comes up every
(00:58):
couple of years, where someone has cracked.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Nats for a long time.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It felt almost annual Voyage Manuscript. Yeah, there was a
lot of chatter about Jack the Ripper on social media
and people asked if we had seen that Jack the
Ripper had been identified as Aaron Kaminski, a twenty three
year old Polish man who worked in Whitechapel where those
famous murders happened. Police files from the time named Kaminski
(01:24):
as a suspect, but it's not one hundred percent clear
whether Aaron Kaminski is the Kaminsky those police files were
talking about. So this conclusion of him as the perpetrator
came from DNA research on a shawl that was claimed
to have been found next to the body of Catherine
Edo's when she was killed in eighteen eighty eight. There
(01:46):
are some question marks here too. There is not really
a clear chain of custody for this shawl, and police
reports don't mention a shawl among Eto's belongings, So that's
why a lot of the times when people reference to
the shawl, they describe it as being quote claimed to
have been found near the body. Even if this really
(02:07):
was a shawl that belonged to Catherine Edos, a lot
of people would have handled it between eighteen eighty eight
and now, especially in the years prior to the understanding
of DNA and other things as evidence. It could be
left on an object that raises a lot of questions
about who all's DNA might be on there researchers compared
(02:28):
mitochondrial DNA from this shawl to that of living people
related to both Catherine Edos and Aaron Kaminski and said
that the results do suggest a connection. It's also likely
that some of the DNA came from someone with brown
hair and brown eyes that matches up with eyewitness statements
from the time of the murderers. This research was published
(02:52):
in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which is peer reviewed,
and a lot of the recent chatter about this has
made it sound as though it is one hundred percent conclusive. However,
there are all of those question marks that we already mentioned,
and to add to that, a number of experts have
weighed in with questions about the DNA research itself, like
(03:15):
some have said that mitochondrial DNA can only be used
to rule someone out as a relative, not to conclusively
confirm a connection. The researchers who did this work also
didn't publish their data in detail, so it is impossible
for others to independently confirm their interpretations of that data.
(03:36):
A lot of people have brown hair and brown eyes.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I did it. I somehow have traveled through time, and
I'm a monster. To add another layer, to this. These
latest headlines seem to trace back to an appearance by
Russell Edwards, who acquired that shawl in two thousand and
seven and gave it to a biochemist for testing, and
those tests were part of Edwards's book Naming Jack the Ripper,
(04:02):
which came out in twenty fourteen. One of the criticisms
of the book at that time was that there was
very little detail about the actual research. The article later
published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences does have more detail,
but it's still not complete, and the journal published additional
letters to the editor criticizing it in the following months. Today,
(04:25):
the journal article is accompanied by an expression of concern
that references the letters to the editor and the original
author's responses, and says this quote. During the investigation, the
publisher and editor in chief made every effort to obtain
from the authors the original raw data from the mtDNA analysis. However,
(04:46):
the authors stated that the data were no longer available
due to instrument data failure and other complications. Through further investigation,
it was concluded that because it was not possible to
examine the original data, no determination could be made regarding
the third party complaints, so this Journal.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Article came out in twenty nineteen. It does not appear
that any new research has been done in the years
since then, so it just seems like this latest round
of headlines grew out of an interview that Russell Edwards
did with Today Australia in which he called for a
new inquest into the murders, and not from any actual
(05:26):
new developments in the case. There was just a lot
of headline action about Jack the Ripper case solved, but
like that, nothing new happened here that I can tell.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Jack the Ripper read the Voyniche manuscript.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I did done, so I had like gone and I'd
tracked down the Journal article and I just bookmarked it
to come back to later.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And I didn't realize that the Journal.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Article was from twenty nineteen until I was putting it
in the source list for the episode and went, wait,
twenty nineteen, what is happening.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Next? Staff at the Barringer Crawford Museum in Kentucky were
going through their collections in preparations for the museum's seventy
fifth anniversary celebration, and they found an eighty year old
Japanese hand grenade. Since they weren't sure whether this was
live or not. They contacted law enforcement and the bomb
squad determined that it was inactive and safe. It is
(06:26):
a type ninety seven grenade, which when live, is filled
with TNT and it weighs about a pound.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Next, research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science concludes
that the ancient peoples of the Philippines and islands Southeast
Asia may have developed advanced seafaring technologies as far back
as forty thousand years ago. That's actually prior to the
development of Polynesian wayfinding. This is involved work at archaeological
(06:55):
sites that have unearthed tools that were probably used to
make ropes, nets, and bindings. All of these would have
been used in both boat building and in making fishing nets.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
But then the.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Natural materials used to make the boats and the nets
probably would not have survived those forty thousand years in
the island's environment. There's also some archaeological evidence of deep
sea fishing, including hooks and weights, which can only be
done with a sophisticated enough boat. This kind of up
ends assumptions that the peoples of the Philippines and these
(07:30):
parts of Southeast Asia did not have like advanced boating technologies.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And our last bit of popoury. Archaeologists outside of Gloucester,
England have found what's been described as a Roman era
service station, that is, a Roman mutacio or horse changing station,
where people could rest, refresh themselves, and care for or
change out their horses. They have found horse bones, bridles,
(07:56):
and hippo sandals which were essentially Roman horseshoes, along with
lots of coins, jewelry, and the remains of ovens. It's
been pointed out that this find is kind of ironic
since it's a roadside resting point for travelers being unearthed
in advance of road construction.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yes, part of me is like that is ironic, and
part of me is like a lot of times roads
are where people needed them to be, so having another
road later makes a lot of sense. Next, we've got
a few things that were discovered through some combination of
drone imaging, radar and lightar. First unmanned aerial vehicle scans
have revealed what's being described as a mega fortress in
(08:37):
the Caucasus Mountains. There had been previous physical work at
the site, including some that was scheduled at a time
of the year when the grass died back so that
it would be easier to visualize, but it seemed like
it was just too big to get a sense of
it from the ground. So this drone took almost eleven
thousand pictures, which were then used to create a high
(08:59):
resolution map of the whole site with software that created
an elevation map from those different reference points in the pictures.
It turns out that this site is about forty times
bigger than within was originally thought when they thought this
is so big, we need to look at it from
the air. These kinds of fortress settlements were built are
(09:20):
in the area around fifteen hundred to five hundred BCE.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Next, researchers in Mexico have used lightar scans to map
a fifteenth century city built by the indigenous Zeppotech people
at a site that was believed to be only a
soldier's garrison. This city included more than one thousand structures
and two point five miles of walls. Researcher Pedro Guillermo
(09:46):
ramon Selie described the city as very well preserved. It's
believed that the people who were living there relocated to
another city shortly before the Spanish arrived in the area.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Next, in Peru, searchers have used acoustic prospecting and ground
penetrating radar to find secret tunnels known as chinkana under
the city of Cusco. It's not really known what purpose
these tunnel networks served, but they were built by the
Inca and they likely connected two Inca monuments in the city,
(10:19):
as were a fortress and the Temple of the Sun.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And lastly, researchers at Svorsa Castle in Milan, Italy have
used ground penetrating radar to find numerous passages, some of
which may have been built by the military for secret purposes.
Some of these passages are referenced in historical documents and
shown in sketches done by Leonardo da Vinci. But in
(10:43):
addition to confirming these already documented passageways, these scans reveal
additional passages that were previously unknown. Let's take a little
sponsor break and then we'll come back with some books
and letters. We are picking back up with.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Some books and letters. First, a man cleaning out his
father's attic found a ton of papers related to Winnie
the Pooh. The attic belonged to Leslie Smith, who had
worked in publishing, and these papers included a lot of
correspondents about the Winnie the Pooh books, including original manuscripts
(11:27):
and corrected proofs of Now We Are Six and the
House at Pooh Corner. There was also some correspondence among
the papers with other British authors, including Enid Blyton and J. R. R.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Tolkien.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
These materials were ultimately split up to be sold at auction.
This really overshadows the Winnie the Pooh find we had
on Unearthed a couple of years back, that was just
one sketch drapped in a tea towel.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Right. We have talked on the show about historical bookbinders
recycling materials from old books when binding new ones, and
that has led to some interesting historical finds over the years.
It can be difficult to impossible to study these earlier
materials without destroying the books that they became part of,
(12:14):
but researchers at Leiden University have published work on one
potential way to do it, with an endoscopic camera, adapting
a technique that was originally developed to examine the insides
of gun barrels. In particular, they used the camera in
the spines of sixteenth and seventeenth century books that had
been reinforced with strips of medieval manuscripts. They've also published
(12:39):
a brief video on YouTube of what the camera sees
as it travels down the inside of the book's spine.
They've titled their paper Fragmendoscopy An Innovative Way to discover
hidden heritage inside early modern book bindings.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Next, archaeologists in France have found a line of sixty
burial twenty one of which were found to contain lead
cursed tablets. All of these appear to be men's graves
dating back to the Roman era, but beyond that it
is not really clear who they were or why why
(13:16):
these curse tablets were involved. These curses were written on
very thin sheets of lead, and the one whose inscription
has been examined so far was written in the extinct
Celtic language of Gaulish.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I really like the idea of cursed tablets. I want
to bring those back. Researchers in Iraq have found clay
tablets containing Cuneiform writing at the Mesopotamian site of kurd Kaburstan.
The tablets are the first of their kind in the
area and they're still being interpreted, but it's hoped that
they will shed more light on the people who were
living there, as well as the city's connections to other
(13:52):
parts of Mesopotamia. Other finds at the site include game
boards and part of a structure. Researchers have pieced together
the oldest known runestone in Norway after determining that stones
that were found in multiple grave sites were all fragments
that fit together, that breaking and distribution of the stone
(14:15):
probably being something that was done intentionally. Since these were
found in burial sites, it was possible to use other
materials that was buried along with them to more conclusively
date them. According to radiocarbon dating, this was made sometime
between fifty BCE and two seventy five CE. While the
(14:35):
fragments fit together, the engravings on them aren't continuous. There
are clear sequences of runes, but also other markings that
are a bit more ambiguous, so it's possible that the
inscriptions were created by different people. Speaking of oldest, archaeologists
in Spain have discovered what may be the earliest example
(14:57):
of alphabetic writing in northern ib dating back to the
Iron Age. This was found on a spindle whirl that
was found back in twenty seventeen, but more recent analysis
was what identified an inscription from the Celtiberian alphabet. This
may have been a property marker and identity mark. Cel Tiberian,
(15:17):
as that name suggests, was a continental Celtic language that's
now extinct, and the inscribed letter resembles a capital letter V.
We have another message in a bottle, this time around
on on Earth than This one was found at Edinburgh's
King's Theater. It was behind molding in the theatre's proscenium.
(15:38):
A theater patron and donor found it during a tour
of the building while renovation work is underway. He basically
just stuck his hand up there and felt around. This
bottle was sealed with wax, but conservators at Scottish Conservation
Studio opened it. They found a note from October of
nineteen oh six listing people involved with the building of
(15:58):
the theater, including the bid architects, draftsmen, plasterers and foremen.
The theater has gotten in touch with a genealogy service
to look for descendants of the people that are listed
on that note and are hoping that work will be
done ahead of the theater's reopening next year. A researcher
(16:18):
from Oxford University found a manuscript copy of Shakespeare's Sonnet
one sixteen in a collection of seventeenth century poetry belonging
to Elias Ashmole. Sonnet one sixteen is the one that starts,
let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments.
Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds,
(16:40):
or bends when the remover to remove. It's one of
Shakespeare's more widely known sonnets today, but it doesn't seem
to have been particularly popular closer to his lifetime. There's
only one other manuscript copy of this sonnet that has
ever been found before. It's also not.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Exactly the same as the on at one sixteen that
people would probably recognize today. It is a song adaptation
by Henry Laws that includes six additional lines. It was
included in a miscellany, that is a handwritten manuscript with
texts by different authors included, and it was included alongside
(17:18):
political writings, so in that context it's being interpreted as
about political constancy rather than a constancy of romantic love.
Ashmole was a Royalist, and this miscellany dates back to
around the time of the English Civil Wars. Research published
in the journal Humanities and Social Science Communications has tried
(17:41):
to quantify how many medieval manuscripts were copied by female scribes.
The idea that some of the scribes who copied these
manuscripts were women is not a new one. On our
last installment of on Earth, for example, we talked about
illuminated manuscripts created by the poor players of Cologne, which
they were known four. But this research tries to figure
(18:02):
out just how many of these medieval texts were created
by women. This research focused on the colophons, or short
statements about the author that are included in a lot
of manuscripts and used as a reference a Benedictine colofon catalog.
That catalog includes twenty three thousand, seven hundred and seventy
(18:23):
four colophons, and two hundred and fifty four of them,
or one point one percent, seem to have been written
by women. Extrapolated out to the total number of known
illuminated manuscripts, that means at least one hundred and ten
thousand of them were created by women, but this research
(18:45):
suggests that this is likely a low estimate for women's
contributions to medieval illuminated manuscripts. Not all manuscripts have a
colophon and women may have been less likely to sign
their work due to social and religious expects. It's also
possible that works by women were more intentionally targeted during
(19:05):
events like the Protestant Reformation, meaning we have few of
them surviving today. Researchers also noted that the number of
manuscripts by women escalated after about the year fourteen hundred,
before dropping off again with advances in printing in Europe.
And the last thing we're filing under books and letters
(19:26):
is a map, possibly the world's oldest three dimensional map.
This was found in a rock shelter in France, carved
into sandstone about thirteen thousand years ago, and it shows
the waterways and geomorphological features of the Ekeyle River Valley.
It seems almost like an instruction manual for how to
(19:47):
direct rainwater along specific paths in the valley. This is
about three thousand years older than the previous oldest known
three dimensional map, and.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Now were moving on to animal finds. According to research
published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, birds living near
medieval towns like Oxford, Winchester and Northampton relied extensively on
human food. This lines up with historical accounts that describe
some birds, including red kites, stealing food from market stalls
(20:21):
and even from people's hands. This research involved chemical analysis
of the bones of eleven red kites, eighteen common buzzards,
and three white tailed eagles, which suggested that some of
them were living entirely on people's scraps, rather than by
hunting live prey or scavenging the carcasses of wild animals.
(20:41):
This means that the birds adapted to coexisting with people
and that they served a role in the ecosystem of
these cities.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Next, researchers have found evidence suggesting that herders on the
Iberian Peninsula were strategically managing their cattle as far back
as six thousand years ago. This included seasonally moving them
between pastures in the mountains and the lowlands, and also
modifying their reproductive cycles so that calves would only be
(21:12):
born in the summer when there was plenty of fresh
pasture land available. This came from research into animal remains
in Pixerel's Cave, which has been inhabited by people and
animals going back to Neolithic times. About eighty percent of
the animal remains there are from domestic cattle, which is
unique on the Peninsula, and lastly, across eastern Europe. There
(21:36):
are about seventy known mammoth bone circles that date back
about twenty five thousand years. We don't really know what
these bone circles were for, but one of the biggest
ones is in Russia, about three hundred miles south of Moscow.
It's called Kostenki eleven. It's about forty feet wide, and
(21:57):
it includes the bones of at least sixty mammoths, totaling
nearly three thousand bones. Research published in the journal Quaternary
Environments and Humans has examined these bones and drawn some conclusions,
although without really clearing up why our ancient ancestors were
doing this. Obviously, these didn't all come from the same mammoth,
(22:19):
but this research suggests that they also came from completely
different herds that were not related to one another. They
studied bones from thirty different animals, seventeen females and thirteen males.
Some of the bones were hundreds of years older than
the rest, suggesting that people may have used bones from
freshly hunted mammoths as well as bones scavenged from much
(22:42):
older kills or from bone beds where people discarded mammoth
bones after processing the carcasses. Now we're going to take
another quick sponsor break. Now moving on to edibles and potables.
(23:06):
Archaeologists in China have been exploring the ways people used
bone powder in cuisine roughly eight thousand years ago. This
came from examination of pottery, vessels, and food crust remains
from an archaeological site that was excavated in twenty seventeen
and twenty eighteen. The researchers had initially been focused on
(23:26):
studying alcohol making, but they wound up finding residue in
the crusts that aligned with the composition of bone. They
eventually concluded that the bone was ground up and cooked
together with wild plants like acorns. They speculated that this
was part of this society's transition from hunting and gathering
(23:46):
to farming to try to get more nutrients out of
kind of a limited amount of food available to them.
It's also possible that people living in this area produced
bone grease by boiling crushed bones for several hours and
then skimming the resulting grease off the top. Cooking with
this grease could then help extract nutrients from hard to
(24:07):
digest foods. Researchers in Australia have found evidence of dried
plants under the floors of the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.
This was built in the nineteenth century and it served
a number of roles in colonial Australia. It started as
a barras for people who had been transported to Australia
after being convicted of a crime. Then it housed the
(24:31):
Female Immigration Depot for unmarried women who were immigrating to Australia,
and then the Female Destitute Asylum, which was a home
for women who were elderly, ill or disabled. They found
a variety of foods under the floors, including fruits and vegetables, nuts,
and spices. Some of these plant foods were native to
(24:52):
Australia and others were imports, and a lot of what
they found was much too big to have just fallen
through the floorboards people were eating, so that suggests that
people were placing their food under the floors intentionally. Some
of the foods don't appear in inventories of the institution's
food stores or in other official records, so this suggests
(25:13):
that people were smuggling in food from outside, especially during
the barracks time. Housing women. Records detail a diet that
would have been really monotonous, so mostly bread and a
soup made of boiled meat and vegetables. So these smuggled
and hidden foods probably would have been kind of an
illicit treat. Archaeologists in China have examined a small amount
(25:36):
of liquid from inside a bronze vessel shaped like an owl,
and they found a three thousand year old distilled spirit.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
The lid of the vessel had rusted shut, sealing it
off from the air and preserving what was left inside.
The vessel had been found in twenty ten, but it
wasn't until last year that the Shundong Provincial Department of
Culture and Tourism approved to conservation and protection plan for
the artifacts from this site, which is why it wasn't
(26:05):
opened and studied before. Now. This spirit and the owl
vessel it was contained in were probably part of a
funerary offering, and this discovery fills a gap in the
timeline of what was known about distilling in ancient China.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Another early alcohol was found in Brazil based on analysis
of pottery dating back to between twenty three hundred and
twelve hundred years ago. That's the oldest known alcohol in
the region. These were fermented, not distilled, and were made
from vegetables such as tubers, sweet corn, and palm. Sharing
(26:40):
these beverages was probably a communal event for the people
known as the Cerrito's mound builders, who were the ancestors
of later indigenous groups, including the Charua and Minuano. They
were probably served alongside fish dishes. Some of the pottery
fragments had residues connected to fish processing. Last year, officials
(27:01):
announced the discovery of a food cash at an archaeological
site at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Alaska. Was about
three and a half feet deep and lined with birch bark.
That birch bark lining was intact, which is really rare
for cashes like these, especially in an area where a
lot of the landscape was torn up and destroyed while
(27:22):
the base was being built. The team expected any food
remains inside the cash to be about two hundred years old,
but radiocarbon dating suggests that it's much older than that,
almost one thousand years old. Meat residues in the soil
samples seem to come from moose and caribou, but it's
not yet fully clear whether that's because meat was stored
(27:43):
in the cash or because those animals live in the area.
Further study is planned to figure that part out. Researchers
collaborated with elders and knowledge holders from Denina and Otana
tribes to contextualize this find, and they learned that a
birch tree in this area had been marked with what
looks like the letter T, possibly referencing the name of
(28:05):
a family that later maintained a fish camp in this area.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
And our last food and beverage find, Archaeologists at the
ancient city of Hadrianopolis in Turkya have found a bronze
filter that probably would have been used at the end
of a plant based drinking straw. The filter is about
three and a half inches long, and it's shaped like
a cone with holes all along the sides that would
have allowed people to drink things like beer and fruit
(28:33):
juice without sucking up the grains or pulp that would
have been floating in there. This filter is about sixteen
hundred years old.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Moving on to shipwrecks, but really comparatively fewer shipwrecks than
we have had in some of our most recent installments.
Maritime archaeologists have investigated what maybe the oldest known carvel
built vessel from the Nordic region.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
These are wooden.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Boats that are constructed by fixing the planks to a
frame with the edges of those planks lined up against
each other. This is sturdier and allows for larger vessels
than clinker construction, which is when the edges of the
planks overlap, but it requires more calking to keep the
vessel watertight. This wreck was found south of Stockholm, and
(29:20):
preliminary evidence suggests that it was built in the fourteen eighties,
although it's possible that it was built maybe twenty years
earlier but then was repaired around fourteen eighty. Either way,
that would be very early in the shift away from
clinker construction in the area. Researchers working with this vessel
are hoping to get funding for a more thorough excavation
(29:42):
of this wreck next.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
The Brazilian Navy has confirmed the location of the Vitado Olivera,
which was torpedoed by a German U boat on June nineteenth,
nineteen forty four, as it was transporting supplies along the
coast off Rio di Geneiro. About one hundred of the
two two hundred and seventy crew on board died when
the ship sank. Brazil was the only country in South
(30:05):
America to send troops to fight on the side of
the Allies, which had led Germany to retaliate against Brazilian ships.
The sunken World War II ship was the only Brazilian
ship to sink due to enemy activity during the war.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
And there were ships that sank for other reasons, but
this was the only one sunk by an enemy. This
wreck was first reported fourteen years ago when some divers
spotted it while they were trying to free a stuck
fishing net, but it wasn't conclusively identified until it was
studied with various sonar technologies and an interesting coincidence, the
(30:41):
research vessel used to make this identification was named the
Vital de Rivera in honor of that sunken ship. Researchers
in Lake Superior have found the wreck of the Western Reserve,
which was one of the first all steel cargo ships
in the Great Lakes. The ship was believed to be
very safe and it was known for its speed and
was nicknamed the Inland Greyhound by the local press. It
(31:05):
sank in a storm in August eighteen ninety two, when
its owner, Peter Minch had taken his family out for
a ride on the ship. It wasn't carrying any cargo,
and that meant that without that weight to hold it down,
it was really thrown around in the storm. It's possible
that its steel hull had become brittle in the cold water.
(31:25):
It broke in half and only one of the twenty
eight people aboard survived. The Western Reserve was found after
a two year search and was initially spotted using side
scanning sonar, then confirmed through photography from a submersible drone.
Now we've got a few sword fines. First, archaeologists studying
(31:47):
burial sites in southeastern England have found an intricately decorated
sword among the grave goods. It has a silver and
gold plated hilt with a Runic script along its blade.
These burial sites date back to the fifth and sixth
century CE, and the sword is exceptionally well preserved. Study
(32:07):
of this sword in its ruins is still ongoing. Next,
metal detectorists in Poland who were looking for artifacts from
World War II wound up finding a three foot long
Roman era sword dating back to the third or fourth
century CE. It had been broken in three places, probably intentionally,
(32:27):
and it also seems to have been burned, meaning that
it may have been used in some kind of funeral ritual.
And this suggests some sort of cross cultural influence, since
the sword was Roman, but this funeral practice is associated
with the Sarworsk culture.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Different metal detectorists, apparently also looking for World War II
era artifacts, found a different sword in Poland, this one
dating to the Late Middle Ages. This one's also about
three feet long and its tip is broken off, probably
not intentionally. It was discovered alongside two axe heads from
(33:04):
around the same period. Those axe heads were also in
good condition. It seems like using metal detectors to look
for World War two era artifacts might be some kind
of a pastime in Poland. Maybe listeners from Poland can
write in and fill us in on this, because our
last find is also from somebody who was doing that,
(33:24):
and the people involved in these three finds have been
members of three different organizations, all dedicated to this. This
last one is not a sword, though it is sort adjacent.
It is a bronze scabbard fitting dating back about one
thousand years. That scabbard fitting is called a shoe and
it goes at the tip of the scabbard to protect
(33:46):
it from damage. And lastly, for this installment of unearthed
one discovery of cats, specifically that domesticated cats arrived in
China about fourteen hundred years ago, probably having been carried
along the Silk Road. Although it was long believed that
cats were first domesticated in Egypt, more recent genetic research
(34:08):
suggests this took place in ancient Anatolia around what's now Turkya,
roughly ten thousand years ago. Domesticated cats were widespread in
Europe by about the fourth century CE, so this suggests
that domesticated cats were introduced in China hundreds of years
after their introduction in Europe. According to archaeological evidence, the
(34:30):
first domestic cats in China were seen as highly prized
exotic animals, and they mostly belonged to the elite.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
And the wealthy. The fourteen domesticated cats whose bones were
part of this study also all shared some commonalities in
their mitochondrial DNA that's not common in cats that are
from Europe or Western Asia. People in more rural areas
did live alongside other cats, though specific a small wildcat
(35:01):
called the leopard cat, which is native to China kitties. Yes,
that is how we're ending off today's Unearthed, aside from
also having some listener mail. This is from Nancy. Nancy
wrote in and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just
(35:23):
listened to the episode in the archives on Scott Joplin
from April tenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I'm a little.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Older than the two of you, but as you mentioned
in the behind the scenes discussion, I also was introduced
to Scott Joplin's music and ragtime as a musical genre
via the movie The Sting in the nineteen seventies. I
believe I played the record album so much that I
wore out the grooves. I'm gonna pause this email for
a second and say I don't remember if I said
(35:51):
it in that episode, but The Sting on vinyl is
one of the two first records that I ever returning
to the email. Much to my delight today I saw
a feed in one of my social media streams that
brought a smile to my face. The Washington National Opera
will be staging Scott Joplin's Forgotten opera Tremniesha next year
(36:16):
at the Kennedy Center on March twelfth through twenty second,
twenty twenty six. I am opening the link to this
to make sure that it's still on the Kennedy Center website,
and it is. Currently ticket purchase is only open for
series subscriptions multiple show packages, but I will be following
(36:36):
and will be purchasing a ticket as soon as individual
ticket sales open up. I know neither of you are
based near Washington, d C. But this looks like a
unique opportunity, especially if you like opera. I know you
both have very busy schedules and would have a ton
of things to do and see in this area if
you visit it. It's hard to say, but these March
dates next year might even be during cherry blossoms season,
(37:00):
especially the dates later in the month. I must admit
I love when the cherry trees are blooming, and it
is spectacular on the National mall around the Tidle Basin
when all the trees are in bloom, the smell is
heavenly instead of pet tax I'm attaching a couple of
pictures of cherry blossoms from a previous year or two
entice you to come to DC. Love what you do.
Keep up the good work. I have learned so much
(37:21):
from Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast. Thanks Nancy.
Thank you so much, Nancy, and thank you for these
beautiful cherry tree pictures. I do love to look at
the cherry trees and to smell the cherry trees. Back
when we were part of Discovery, Discovery's headquarters were in
Silver Spring, Maryland, and so I was in Washington, d C. Regularly,
(37:46):
And yet I don't think any of my many work
trips to Washington, d C. Were during cherry blossom season.
That was probably purposeful, right, Nobody was scheduling anything then
because it's such a busy travel to its time. Yeah,
it would have been harder to get cheap reas and
flights and things, probably, So thank you so much, Nancy.
(38:10):
We'll see what happens between now and next year regarding
maybe going to see Treamnation, because that would be really cool.
If you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on
the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
(38:37):
production of iHeartRadio For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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