WEBVTT - How Bioarchaeology Works 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.600 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:14.080 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.120 and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.159 it's Stuff you Should Know and we're doing one of 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:24.480 my favorite things, Chuck archaeology. Yeah. We've done a few 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.240 of these over the years, guests, specifically one called Archaeology 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:33.840 and a Nutshell, which was mostly about archaeology. Yeah. And boy, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.440 it's hard to find an archaeology article on the Internet 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:41.360 that doesn't mention Indiana Jones say that, including this one 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:43.840 from Stuff you Should Know or from How Stuff Works. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:46.680 It was the one to third and fourth word in 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:52.640 this article. Forget the Indiana Jones fedora. Yeah, but you 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:57.480 know what, like no pun intended, hats off to that character, 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.360 for I mean, he he's that's that that character has 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.920 done so much for the field of archaeology just by existing, 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.399 you know. Yeah, for sure, he definitely opened my eyes. 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:12.959 Archaeology was one of the first complicated words I could 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:16.800 spell as a youngster. Yeah, thanks thanks to Indiana Jones. 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:22.800 I bet of archaeologists between the ages of UH thirty 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.720 and fifty five are there because of Indiana Jones, and 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:28.600 you can usually pick him out because they tend to 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.680 dress like him as well, Like you really don't need 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:38.959 a whip enough, I don't need it, I want it. Yeah, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:44.240 but yeah, he he represents though this kind of um, well, 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:47.240 he represents a type of archaeologists that never actually existed, 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.600 you know, pulp pulp fiction kind of archaeologists from the 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.880 like the nineteen thirties adventures, right, so that that didn't 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:58.440 actually Indiana Jones and his ilk didn't never really exist. 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:03.840 But he also kind of represents this type of archaeology that, 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:09.120 um that has become old school for sure, and it's 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.000 starting to be replaced. I was gonna say slowly being replaced, 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:14.239 but I get the impression that is fairly quickly being 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.840 replaced by this kind of new method These new techniques 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:23.639 that put together all fall under the name of bioarchaeology, right, 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:32.400 which is a sub genre, not genre, but sub field, 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.079 sub field. There's a word I'm looking for. I can't 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:39.480 find it. I think subspecialty works or a specialty. Yeah, 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.840 it is a specialty, but I can't. I can't A 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:47.639 sub umbrella of the umbrellas term, a subbrella. Man, it's 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.800 gonna bug me. I'll think of it later. Uh So anyway, UM, 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.040 we're we're talking about the combining of a lot of 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.679 different disciplines in archaeology, and they all have great long 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:03.280 names like paleo DeMar graphy, just studying ancient populations, the 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:07.240 demographics of those, paleogenetics, which is a big deal, as 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:11.960 you will see with DNA scraping some old teeth, you know, 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.440 finding out what's going on there. Yeah, mortuary studies, which 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:18.160 that's the best way to get a date in college, 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.960 right if you say her, you're minoring and mortuary studies. 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:28.360 But else well, UM, basically anything where you can apply 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:35.000 new scientific techniques to um, the study of of bones 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:38.960 in particular, um bones coop that that kind of yeah, 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:43.160 that kind of um lends itself to being called bioarchaeology. 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.840 But the the field, this little thing that started out, 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:47.800 I think is kind of a kind of a fairly 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.720 specialized subdiscipline of archaeology. It's the word subdiscipline. I think 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:58.520 I suggested that, didn't I. Um it it's starting to 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.640 replace archaeology as a whole. From what I can see 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.320 and just from the outside looking in, it's becoming archaeology exactly. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.160 It's replacing some of these old techniques with these new techniques. 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:12.560 It's kind of a technocratic approach to archaeology, and the practices, 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.479 the best practices they're coming up with are so good 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:21.359 that they're kind of undoing old archaeology. And so this 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.240 specialized field is kind of taking over the field as 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:25.600 a whole, and it seems to be the way that 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:30.000 archaeology is going. And one of the reasons. Just initially 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.440 it was just like dig up the bones and try 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.479 to read them in even better ways than the old 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.000 style of archaeology did. But as it's growing as a 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.640 field or as a subdiscipline, it's it's starting to try 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:48.200 to answer bigger and bigger questions about the people that 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:52.040 are being dug up and the populations that they belong to. Yeah, 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.480 kind of putting it in a historic context and not 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.720 just um, let me look at this one set of 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:01.719 bone owns and what this says about this person. But 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:07.080 like you said, they're trying to almost reconstruct societies as 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:12.159 a whole, uh, and social strata and what they ate 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.560 and what kind of things killed them and whether or 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.039 not they accepted outsiders. Like it's really kind of neat. 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.360 It really is. I like it. And plus I mean, 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.200 this is stuff that archaeology, UM, I guess you could 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.240 call it old school archaeology concerned itself with as well. 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:33.240 But I get the impression that, um, the old school 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:39.839 archaeology was not rooted enough in science, so they were 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:43.160 at risk of making grand pronouncements that were not necessarily 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:48.400 UM correct. So you just have limited evidence like this 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:53.000 one skeleton or maybe one burial area, and just from 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:58.240 a few things that we're basically based on observation. UM. 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.919 Just like visual observation, you would make these extrapolating you 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.359 would extrapolate onto the population as a whole, and you 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.160 could get that wrong really easily. So what bioarchaeology does 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:12.520 is the same thing still bury up dead bodies. You 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:16.040 you surmise things from the way that they were situated, 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.359 the stuff they were buried with, and all that. But 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:23.960 then you also apply scientific investigation like genetics and like UM, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:29.360 like using mass spectrometers to to isolate isotopes and in bones, 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:32.400 and then you take that evidence and you apply it 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:36.520 to the visual observations you've made, and you get a 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.680 clearer picture and you're at less risk of getting it wrong. 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:44.359 I think that's why it's becoming archaeology. Yeah, and um, 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:46.520 we'll probably talk about this a little more later on, 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:48.240 but one of the things I thought was really neat 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:51.000 about this is they make the point in our article 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.320 here that you know, history is written by historians, so 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:58.039 you often just get stories or the history of the 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:02.159 more important people, right and uh, they even quoted a 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.479 bioarchaeologist in here that says that their goal is to 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.279 kind of work from the bottom up and to find 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.560 out what was going on with some of these marginalized 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:14.880 people in society or the very least society as a whole, 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.240 and not just you know, let's dig up King Tut's tomb, 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.840 which is great, but who who worked on King Tut's tomb? 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.320 Like that's interesting exactly. Yeah, And so the that's basically 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:30.760 what's called diplomatic or great Man historiography, which is the 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.600 study of well, that's the that's just digging up King 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.160 Tutt and focusing on him and leaders and rulers, and 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.000 that's based on the idea that they're the ones who 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:45.000 really push society forward or in whatever direction. It won't 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:47.040 love it. It was on the rulers and that's the 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:49.960 way that it's been. Like, that's like kind of the western, 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:56.320 white patriarchical approach to studying history. What what you love 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.960 and what bioarchaeology has test itself with is called history 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.800 from below, which is, like you said, it's it's sussing 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.960 out that the common people's lives and and figuring out 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.840 society from there. And one of the neat things about that, Chuck, 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.080 is it like imagine if you're just part of a 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:18.040 marginalized group today and you find out from some archaeologists 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.160 down the road or some historians down the road that 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:22.640 actually the group that you're a part of did some 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.920 really amazing things in this one civilization, at this one 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.680 period in time, that that's inspiring. That can inspire people 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.559 alive today to do great things with their own lives 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.640 based on, you know, finding out some neat stuff about 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:38.199 their ancestry that would have otherwise been overlooked if their 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:42.440 ancestry had never been part of the leadership of a society. 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.520 There's a lot of value to it. Yeah, and the 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.360 term itself, you're more likely at least at this point, 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.200 and I think you're right, it is changing um to 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:53.559 hear it in America, even though it was first used 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.679 by a British archaeologist name Sir John Graham Douglas Clark, 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:02.000 great British name, and then ninteen seventies, but an American 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:08.360 anthropologist named Jane Ellen. Uh, Bookstra, that's as good as 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:10.719 I could have done. Bookstra b U I K S 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:12.920 t r a UM. She's the one who kind of 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:16.199 popularized it and Americans kind of picked up on the 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:18.760 term a little more, at least at this point. You're 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.719 not as likely to hear it uh in Europe right now? Right, Well, 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.679 we're just gonna call her Jane Ellen. Okay, So Jane Ellen. 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.559 She was an anthropologist and she basically took that term 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:34.640 bioarchaeology and basically said it was the integration of archaeology 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.160 and human osteology, which is the study of human bones 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.080 and what they can tell us, um put together to 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:45.960 investigate biocultural change. That was her definition of bioarchaeology, and 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.320 she came up with it in in nineteen seventy seven, and 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.880 that really kind of is the uh, the definition for 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.240 the field today. Yeah, she was awesome. Actually I looked 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:55.839 into her a little bit. So does she wear a 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.800 pith helmet too. She's probably she's probably been a pith 0:09:59.880 --> 0:10:02.480 or at some point. I had a dude right in. 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.959 Actually that was a fellow pither. Nice. I saw a 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:07.559 couple of people on Twitter saying like, I had to 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:09.480 go look this up, but this is what you're wearing 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.040 in the pool? Well, I mean there, to be fair, 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:19.240 there are the like the British soldier uh type, tall 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.240 pith helmets with the red feather. Yeah, that's not what 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.520 I'm talking about. I'm talking about the low safari type 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:28.480 that provides the coverage. That's precisely what I assumed you 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:30.880 were talking about. Yeah, that it would be just weird 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:36.680 to wear the tall one in a swimming pool. But yeah, 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.600 this guy was a mail carrier, so oh yeah, it 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.960 seems like that might be standard issue for um, for 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.240 the post office, now that you mentioned it. I've seen 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.600 him before. I have to for the walkers, at least 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.319 the undead ones. All right, well, I think I think 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:55.280 we should already take a break since we provided such 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:59.600 a nice broad overview. Gosh, that's all right, and we'll 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.880 come back, can talk more and more about bones and poop. Hi, 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.560 all right, so we promised talk of bones and poop. Uh, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:31.520 we'll deal with bones first and um bones most times, 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.760 and less like recently when they found did you hear, 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:37.480 like just a couple of days ago they found this 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.320 couple from World War Two frozen in the Swiss Alps. Yes, 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:45.320 and okay, so this couple, it's so tragic, right, This 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.040 is they had tons of kids that were at home. 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.040 The mom finally the dad used to go hiking in 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.800 the mountains all the time. The mom finally went with 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.199 them for the first time and they get lost and 0:11:57.600 --> 0:11:59.640 felt they fall into a crevass and or lost for 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:03.880 seven a year again. Yeah. And the reason why she 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:06.840 never went with them before with her husband before because 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.120 she's pregnant all the time. Yeah. So she reared a 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:12.600 bunch of kids, fell into crovoss, died, was lost for 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:14.720 seventy years, and then was found again by a ski 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.520 lift company. Could you imagine coming across something like that 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:21.480 and be grizzly in World War two outfits? I mean 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:29.120 uniform obviously, but period era clothing. Yeah. So anyway, barring 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.520 something like that, generally, what you're gonna be left with 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.400 when people die, that flesh goes away very quickly, and 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:40.000 you know, as far as in a relative sense, and 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.280 you're gonna be left with bones. These skeletons, Uh, they're 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:48.520 very durable, they're very hard, uh, and they last a 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.560 very long time. So, um, the best evidence that that 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:58.000 bioarchaeologists work with, for the most part, like bones and teeth, right, 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:00.679 because those, like you said, they lasted very very long time. 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:02.600 And there's actually quite a bit you can tell from 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:07.000 those things. In fact, I saw um an explanation of 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.320 bioarchaeology because it's such an evolving field. Still check that 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:15.440 the definition. Even though Jane Ellen's definition holds pretty well, 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.400 there's it's it's just not set in stone, know and 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.840 says this is the definition. Right. So one explanation for 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.360 bioarchaeology I saw so that it as a discipline, it 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:29.640 views the skeleton as a form of material culture crafted 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:35.160 through lived experience. Right. So the skeleton itself has the 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.520 markers of all these different things that this person did 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.319 in their lifetime, had done to them in their lifetime, 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.560 like say an infliction of violence, um, suffered from in 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:50.040 their lifetime, like a disease eight in their lifetime. Um, yeah, 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:52.760 all of this stuff is left behind in your bones, 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.440 and we've just recently really figured out how to read 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.719 this beyond looking at it and visually inspecting it. We've 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:04.000 learned how to apply scientific tools like DNA analysis to 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:08.080 to to glean more information from them. Yeah, it's really neat, 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:12.480 like did these people like it really puts a human 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:18.560 a more broad human aspect to it all. I think, uh, like, 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.880 did these people suffer as a society? Did they thrive? 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.760 Were they healthy? Were they sick? What did they overcome? 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.040 What was there? What was their environment? Like? Like did 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.240 they was it social upheaval that brought them down? Or 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.280 was it, uh, you know, a large wave or was 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.560 it a disease from eating the wrong thing? Uh? It's 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:41.480 really interesting. I know a couple of I think it 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.800 was in two thousand fourteen. I believe we talked about 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.600 this on some show, but it might have even been 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:51.520 an Internet round up. But they discovered the oldest human poop, uh, 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:56.680 fifty thousand year old Neanderthal poop, and they found out 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:59.040 that it was a bit of surprise that they ate 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.720 a lot of vegetable. Yeah. I saw this um documentary 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.480 recently called What the Health I think is what it 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:11.280 was called or whatever? Right, um, But there's an ongoing 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:16.640 discussion in it about whether humans are actually herbivores or omnivores. Yeah, 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:18.600 which was it was a bit of surprise because they 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:23.320 thought that Neander talls. I think it's talls, right us, 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:26.080 But I think I think it is supposed to be talls. 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:30.200 I don't know. Well that they ate largely only meat. Uh, 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.440 And then they found that no, that in the it's 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:36.320 called copper light, this these fossil feces. Um they did 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:38.080 eat a lot of meat obviously, but they were eating 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:40.600 and they couldn't tell from the chemistry analysis of the 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.440 poop itself, but they did pollen analysis of the area 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:47.400 and found that they were eating like berries and nuts 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.800 and tubers, and uh. It just you know, overall, just 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.520 gives kind of a more complete picture of something like 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:56.200 you were talking about earlier. They previously were like, no, 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.920 all they did was eating meat. Well yeah, plus also, 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.160 I mean, think about it. So there's this whole idea 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:05.880 that all of the megafauna in North America collapsed like 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.480 around twelve thousand years ago, and humans get blamed for it, 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:13.000 like we overhunted the megafauna. Well, if we find evidence 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.400 down the road through bioarchaeology, that. No. Actually, most of 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.240 the ancestors who made it to North America UM and 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:22.440 we're living here twelve thousand years ago were vegetarians for 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:27.200 the most part. They probably didn't overhunt and drive to 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.600 extinction these the mega fauna. It was probably something else 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.840 that did it. And so, you know, laying it at 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:36.080 the feet of these early humans has been kind of 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.320 a cautionary tale, like, look, what happened. You can lead 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.960 to environmental collapse if you don't manage the wildlife correctly. 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:46.080 But if that's not actually true, and we find out 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.320 what did lead to the collapse of the mega fauna, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.440 then maybe we can protect against that instead, you know 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.160 what I mean, and just forget the rest of wildlife. Yeah, 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.800 you can overhunt all you want. Well, it's definitely calling 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.200 into question a lot of things that we took for 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:05.960 granted because of oh, just sort of limited science, I guess, 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:07.680 is the best way to say it. Yeah, And there's 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.600 this Atlas Obscure article we both read about um human feces, 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:14.600 about copper light the study of it. I think it 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:17.399 was something like to know ancient civilization, you have to 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:19.879 study its feces or something something along tho it's a 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:23.120 truly known ancient society, one must analyze its species, right. 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.640 And it gives an example of this one archaeologist who 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.840 was working back in the sixties and is working today, 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.240 and back in the sixties, when they would find copper light, 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:33.959 they would be like, oh, this is interesting, and then 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:38.000 they'd use it for like flying disc contests at lunch. 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.639 This is like, this is not that long ago that 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.639 the archaeologists were doing this, and today it's like, you 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.720 find copper light, you bag it separately from the other 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:51.240 copper light found. You're it's going back for genetic analysis. 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.280 You take half of the sample and preserve it so 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.359 that you can use it for later analysis when our 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.720 tools become even more advanced. Like it's it's just been. 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:03.600 It's just such a great example of old school archaeology 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:07.440 and the new um archaeology that's coming up today. Like 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.320 they're looking at it as which is as it is, 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.159 which is a legitimate, important fine that can tell you 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:17.400 a lot about a society, instead of playing frisbee baseball 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.680 with it. I guess it's frisbee football, right, frisbee frollf 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:27.040 playing frollf with the poop. Did you ever play that 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:31.160 frisbee golf. No, they have courses for that stuff. I know, yeah, 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:33.920 I know, they definitely do. I'm sure they did in Athens. 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.720 If they don't still well, in true Chuck form, I 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.679 went so far as to buy a couple of different 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:46.000 frisbee golf frisbees and never went Oh you never did hunt. Nope, nope. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:48.800 That's kind of my thing. Nothing beats sitting around when 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:53.119 you're in college. Yeah, pretty much. Uh so. Yeah, So 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.160 copper Light, I mean it took. I mean it took 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.160 from the nineteen sixties until just recently, like even through 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.480 the eighties and nineties. It said that it was a 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:04.879 pretty small field of people that took it seriously, and 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.600 other people were still even in the nineties, like what 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:11.080 are you studying poop for um? And to be fair 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:13.639 at the time, especially like back in the sixties as 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.440 recently as like the eighties or nineties, I guess like 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:19.840 you're saying, we didn't have anything that we could do 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:24.439 with the human poop. Besides all, yeah, there wasn't anything 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:25.920 you could do. I mean, you could break it open 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:28.760 and be like, oh, look a corn corn seed. They 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:30.880 were eating corn. That's about the best you could hope 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.760 for right, So there there wasn't much you could do. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.400 But even still, if you look at what we're doing 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.760 with it today, which is preserving half of the sample 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.280 for future analysis with better tools that haven't been adventagure, 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:49.240 that definitely um underscores a mentality that wasn't present before either, 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.879 which is this is not the apex yet, where we 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.000 haven't reached the apex of science. Yeah, I mean now 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.400 nowadays they can rehydrate it. Uh, they can say, hey, 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.159 they were recites in this poop and in fact, in 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:03.920 all the poop of all these people that lived here, 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:07.160 so perhaps that's what killed them. Yeah, And they don't 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:10.040 even have to have the stool sample. They can find 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.600 in like an set an ancient latrine and learn a 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:15.720 lot from that. And you know it sounds kind of funny, 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:17.960 but it's you can learn a lot from this stuff. Well. 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:22.000 I remember when I was writing the cannibalism article years back, 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:25.480 finding like right around that time, they had found evidence 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.320 of cannibalism from copper light and they had done it 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:33.840 really round about. Um, they found some protein that is 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.639 only found in human muscle, and they found it in 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:44.200 the poop of some South Southwestern Uh, indigenous groups poop 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:46.640 and they think that it was the result of climate 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.360 change because the climate had changed and people were starving 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.800 and they engaged in cannibalism as a result. But um, 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:56.720 that's a pretty sterling example of bioarchaeology and action. Yeah. 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:01.359 This one guy, Pierce Mitchell from University of Cambridge, go, 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:07.480 I don't know, go fighting chaplains, fighting chaplains. Uh. He 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:11.400 learned through studying fecal matter that King Richard the Third 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:15.560 had round worm. Yeah, so you know that's great man. 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:21.479 His storiography though, who cares? All right, so what man? 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:23.400 I didn't expect to go right into poop, but there 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:25.239 we did it. Well, let's talk teeth. Let's go from 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:29.920 poop to teeth, you know the standard. Yeah, teeth are 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:34.000 a big marker. Um, Like, if they dug me up 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:37.560 one day, they would say, well, this gentleman had at 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:42.440 least two bad teeth, because the only thing left. And 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.360 and I had a brief conversation with the very famous 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:50.960 Microw for just kind of weirdly had a conversation with 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.760 him one day about my implants and he said, oh, 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:56.359 you have those implants and he went, well, just know, 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:58.119 in a thousand years that will be the only thing 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.359 left of you. Right, So that's kind of good to know. Sure, yeah, 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.240 they'll they'll be like obviously this person was of higher 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:09.160 social status, he had implants, Yeah, or at least into 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:13.199 intern he was probably venerated. Uh and bury me with 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:16.320 my flippers is all I'm gonna say to So what 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:20.760 they could find out from teeth or can find out maybe, um, 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.920 if the children suffered from malnutrition, Well there's a whole 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:29.280 there's a whole thing where when you are malnourished as 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:34.400 a child, your teeth formed these little lines in them 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.760 as the development is kind of stunted, and they stay 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:41.440 there for life, even if you managed to become nourished 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.679 and survive. Right, So they can tell what your diet 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:47.720 was like as a child from just looking at your teeth. Well, 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:49.879 and can also tell I guess when I was talking 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:54.399 about how society may have overcome something. Uh maybe they 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:57.879 you know, we're close to death and overcame disease to 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:00.560 end up thriving, but they still had those lines and 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:04.800 the right exactly. Um, they can also tell from teeth 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:07.920 if you crush teeth up and powder them and run 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:11.800 them through a mass spect spectrometer. There's some pretty neat 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:15.119 stuff you can do with that. Actually, Um, when you're 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.600 a little kid and you start eating and drinking the 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:23.359 local water, there's something um called strontium and it's a 0:23:23.400 --> 0:23:27.359 it's a stable isotope that's found in the bedrock of 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:30.679 your area, and it's specific to your area, your region. 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:35.160 It's pretty localized, right, the type of strontium isotope that's 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:37.720 going to be where you live and when you when 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:40.919 the when rain water filters through the bedrock into groundwater 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:42.840 and then comes back out, and it's taken up by 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:45.560 plants and enters the water supply, and then your mom 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:49.240 eats that plant and then breastfeeds you. Those strontium isotopes 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:52.080 get transferred to you and they get locked into your 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:56.040 teeth for life. Right, So where you're born can be 0:23:56.160 --> 0:24:01.560 isolated by using a mass spectrometer to find what strownium 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:04.520 isotopes are in your teeth. That can be done whether 0:24:04.600 --> 0:24:07.840 you were whether you live fifty thousand years ago or 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:11.240 we're born yesterday, either way, and that amazing. Yeah, I 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:13.800 feel like we talked about that before. There's no way 0:24:13.840 --> 0:24:16.639 we haven't, right, Yeah, Like something about the water that 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:19.199 you drank as a child. Yeah, that would be it 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:22.720 totally right. So you're taking in stronium isotopes and you've 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:25.960