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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Fair Dowdy and I'm Delna Chalko reboarding and to Blena

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Speaker 1: and I are going to continue our annual tradition of

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Speaker 1: recapping the year in historical and archaeological fine um. We've

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Speaker 1: already covered a few in our most recent episode on

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Speaker 1: this I don't know all sorts of things, everything from

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Speaker 1: terra cotta warriors to a possible lost Da Vinci artwork,

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Speaker 1: but we're going to be continuing on with the list today.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that you should probably if she the

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Speaker 1: warning again that we've got an issue before every one

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Speaker 1: of these episodes, which one, it's not always stuff that

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Speaker 1: was dug up this year. It's not always stuff that's

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Speaker 1: dug up, and sometimes just news about things that were

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Speaker 1: dug up a while ago, or it's things that were

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Speaker 1: unearthed maybe from your attic or from although we don't

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Speaker 1: have any of those on this lie that we don't

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Speaker 1: have any of those. We we do have some some

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Speaker 1: interesting entries though, but we should say again that it's

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Speaker 1: not a comprehensive list. There are many things that we

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Speaker 1: could not include. Of course, every year is full of discoveries,

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Speaker 1: and we just included a few that we found the

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Speaker 1: most interesting. And once we think that you guys will

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Speaker 1: like to we we always sort of try to tailor

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Speaker 1: a few of these two topics we know our listeners

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Speaker 1: are particularly interested in, and I think the first entry

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Speaker 1: on the list certainly fits that bill. It's about vampires,

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Speaker 1: and we know that you guys like vampires a lot.

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Speaker 1: Vampires in general are having a moment right now. They've

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Speaker 1: been in the news a lot. In part of that

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Speaker 1: is because of pop culture kind of stuff, but that's

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Speaker 1: not our angle of course. Um, they've also been in

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Speaker 1: the news because several vampire burials have been discovered this year.

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Speaker 1: The first work and discussed was a June discovery of

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Speaker 1: a vampire pirate double header there in Bulgaria. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: seven hundred year old skeleton found in Soza Pole near

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Speaker 1: the Black Sea in Bulgaria is believed to be that

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Speaker 1: of the pirate Crivit, which means crooked. The remains have

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Speaker 1: been staked down with metal rods, which was a traditional

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Speaker 1: form of penning a suspected vampire after death and burial.

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Speaker 1: So thanks in part to the vampire pop culture rage,

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Speaker 1: and you all know which one I'm talking about. The

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Speaker 1: fine became a tourist attraction almost immediately, with visitors flocking

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Speaker 1: to the Sozopol churchyard, until the remains were finally removed

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Speaker 1: to the Natural History Museum in Sofia. Around the same time,

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Speaker 1: two more steak skeletons were discovered from a similar time frame,

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Speaker 1: about a hundred years earlier than the famous Vladi and Paler.

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Speaker 1: By the way, they're the latest additions to the roughly

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Speaker 1: one hundred vampire graves that have been found in the region.

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Speaker 1: So we have to ask what is the deal with

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Speaker 1: staked skeletons and and believing in vampires in the first place.

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Speaker 1: According to the Natural History Museum director Boza Dar Dmitrov,

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Speaker 1: who was quoted in the l A Times, if a

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Speaker 1: community suspected that a deceased person might be terrorizing them

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Speaker 1: in death, he said quote, a group of brave men

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Speaker 1: would reopen the graves and pierce the corpses with iron

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Speaker 1: or wooden rods. Iron rod was used for the richer vampires.

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Speaker 1: Uh so, just the the logical explanation of that the

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Speaker 1: pinning was supposed to prevent the vampires from actually exiting

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Speaker 1: their graves from from rising and terrorizing people. But what

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Speaker 1: I found so fascinating about this story is that, uh,

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Speaker 1: not too long after, there was a great Smithsonian article.

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Speaker 1: And this doesn't really count in our Unearthed in twelve.

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Speaker 1: It's an article, but it did have a lot of

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Speaker 1: people talking, a lot of people sharing it with us too.

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Speaker 1: It was by Abigail Tucker. It was the October issue,

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Speaker 1: and it was about the Great New England vampire panic,

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Speaker 1: where the bodies of suspected vampires were similarly descraded after death.

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Speaker 1: And Michael Bell, who studied the New England vampires for decades,

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Speaker 1: has documented about eighty exhamations from the late seventeen hundreds

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Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds, mostly in New England, and interestingly,

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Speaker 1: these panics often happened during tuberculosis outbreaks, so one family

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Speaker 1: member might get sick and die, then as other sickened,

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Speaker 1: the first to go was blamed as the vampire. Exhamation

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Speaker 1: was the only way to stop the cycle, and there

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Speaker 1: were various solutions for dealing with the corpse, flipping it

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Speaker 1: upside down, binding the feet, even beheading it. In one

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Speaker 1: Rhode Island case, the heart of a young woman who

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Speaker 1: had died of tuberculosis and was suspected of being a vampire,

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Speaker 1: was burned and the ashes of her heart were fed

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Speaker 1: to her sick brother. Pretty disturbing. We had to mention

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Speaker 1: that rash of New England vampire cases though, and the

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Speaker 1: panic though, because I think what's most fascinating about this

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Speaker 1: Bulgarian fine is that it's just one of many international

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Speaker 1: vampire graves. Apparently. In fact, in November of this year,

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Speaker 1: a skeleton that was originally found in England in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty nine was finally analyzed and researchers uncovered clear signs

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Speaker 1: of another vampire burial. There were metal state through the

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Speaker 1: heart and the ankles in the shoulders, so clearly this

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Speaker 1: has been going on around the world for a very

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Speaker 1: long time. Um, but is really getting in the news

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Speaker 1: a lot these days. I think partly because people are

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Speaker 1: so fascinated by by vampires. So the next time I'm

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Speaker 1: on our list isn't quite a stylish I guess as

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Speaker 1: as vampire news as maybe it's it's more old news.

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Speaker 1: But on March fifteen BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death.

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Speaker 1: As we know right obviously that murder has been covered

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Speaker 1: pretty well in literature as well as classical texts, which

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Speaker 1: provide details not only on the date and the conspirators involved,

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Speaker 1: but on the location as well. The Curia of Pompey.

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Speaker 1: Our twenty twelve discovery, though does relate to that site.

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Speaker 1: Archaeologists have finally found physical evidence to back up the

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Speaker 1: assertion that Caesar was in fact murdered at the Curia

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Speaker 1: of Pompey. They discovered a ten foot wide and six

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Speaker 1: and a half foot tall concrete structure at the curias base,

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Speaker 1: and according to Discovery News, Antonio monterro So of the

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Speaker 1: Spanish National Research Council said of the find quote, we

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Speaker 1: always knew that Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia

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Speaker 1: of Pompey on March b c. Because the classical texts

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Speaker 1: passed on so but so far no material evidence of

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Speaker 1: this fact, so often depicted in historical painting and cinema,

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Speaker 1: has been discovered. So this is a pretty big deal.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's backing up something that was already known,

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Speaker 1: but it is backing it up and and interestingly to

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Speaker 1: the discovery also supports another point made by classical texts,

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Speaker 1: and that's that after Caesar's murder the curia was closed

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Speaker 1: and turned into a memorial for him, and it suspected

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Speaker 1: that this concrete uh structure that's been found is part

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Speaker 1: of that memorial. In two thousand twelve actually saw a

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Speaker 1: lot of Rome related discoveries, like a horde of gold

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Speaker 1: Crusades era coins found in Israel, but we thought the

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Speaker 1: recent analysis of an ancient Roman curse was worth including

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Speaker 1: here also, so three years ago, a third or fourth

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Speaker 1: century tablet scroll was found in East Farley, England and

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Speaker 1: the remains of a building from the same era, and

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Speaker 1: researchers at first tried to decipher its contents without unrolling

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Speaker 1: the fragile artifact using neutron computed tomography imaging, according to

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Speaker 1: Discovering News, and when that didn't work, they carefully unrolled

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Speaker 1: it to view the writing with an electron microscope. From

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Speaker 1: there it was passed on to Roger Tohman, a late

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Speaker 1: Roman history expert, who deciphered the contents as as of

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Speaker 1: personal names, some in Latin, others Celtic. Some of the

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Speaker 1: names were written upside down or backwards, indicating that to

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Speaker 1: the scroll was a curse meant to bring misfortune on

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Speaker 1: those listed, and it still is unclear what this curse's

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Speaker 1: purpose was. Um. There's actually some some of the lettering

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Speaker 1: is yet to be to be read, to be deciphered. UM.

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Speaker 1: But most cursed tablets found in Great Britain, and there

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Speaker 1: have been kind of a lot, about two hundred, include

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Speaker 1: specific instructions or hopes for God's to reign down destruction

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Speaker 1: on enemies UM, often as a reaction to a ff

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Speaker 1: So it's believed that this is a list of names

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Speaker 1: of people who might have wanted to watch their back

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Speaker 1: in the third or worth century. One example not from

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Speaker 1: from this particular scroll, but one from Bath, for instance,

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Speaker 1: where about half of the tablets have been found incidentally

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Speaker 1: praised that the victim will become quote as liquid as water,

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Speaker 1: so very colorful sort of curses to appropriately. UM. They

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Speaker 1: wouldn't just be left out and about though. One reason

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Speaker 1: why they were scrolls is to protect the writing, so

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't just be available for anybody to read. UM.

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Speaker 1: And then they would either be touched somewhere in the ground,

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Speaker 1: you know, by a well or grave um springs. Maybe

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Speaker 1: that's why perhaps there's been so many found in Bath

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Speaker 1: or nailed to a temple wall, and the recent find

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Speaker 1: fits into that. Later category, since it was found at

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Speaker 1: the ruins of what was believed to be a temple.

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Speaker 1: The next entry on our list has to do with

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Speaker 1: the Maya, for whom it has been a fairly big year,

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Speaker 1: bigger than say, Yeah, I mean, there's the whole apocalypse thing,

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Speaker 1: which if you're listening to this podcast right now, I

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Speaker 1: guess didn't happen, thankfully, But thanks to the doomsday calendar predictions,

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Speaker 1: there's been a huge up swell in all things my

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Speaker 1: history and culture, and there was also this major archaeological find,

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Speaker 1: for instance, something that draws a bit of a tension

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Speaker 1: away from that calendar obsession and highlights the cultural and

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Speaker 1: artistic abilities of the Maya. Yeah, certainly points out there's

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Speaker 1: there's more to the Maya than the calendar, so if

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Speaker 1: you're gonna indulge that research interest, you might as well

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Speaker 1: go even further with it. But it is, of course,

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Speaker 1: the Temple of the Night Sun one of the biggest

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Speaker 1: archaeological discoveries ofive. I'd say, um. It was a once

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Speaker 1: brilliant red structure covered in these incredibly detailed stucco masks

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Speaker 1: that was just recently uncovered from the Guatemalan jungle, where

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Speaker 1: it had sort of been swallowed up by by greenery

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Speaker 1: over the years. Stephen Houston, who is a Brown University archaeologist,

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Speaker 1: an now it's the find in July and hopes that

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Speaker 1: it's going to shed some more light on the Elvutz

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Speaker 1: dynasty and the Maya civilization and structure as a whole.

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Speaker 1: According to National Geographic News, the Maya weren't strongly centralized

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Speaker 1: like the Inco or the ass Tech. Instead, they were

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Speaker 1: a collection of loosely aligned city states and els. It's

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Speaker 1: while one of the smaller kingdoms was clearly angling for

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Speaker 1: a strong impression here. So Houston uncovered the site in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, following decades old Looters tunnels, and

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Speaker 1: at the same time, the Diablo Pyramid was explored, a

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Speaker 1: structure topped by a tomb and a royal palace. The

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Speaker 1: temple lies behind the pyramid and had been interred by

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Speaker 1: the Maya, something that allowed for its remarkable preservation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and we we kind of hinted at the stucco

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Speaker 1: masks and all of that. Uh And and that's really

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Speaker 1: the main thing I mean. And in addition to being

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Speaker 1: this blood red color originally, which would have meant that

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Speaker 1: it just glowed in the rising sun in the in

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Speaker 1: the setting sun. But the masks represent a whole new

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Speaker 1: angle for for Maya religious studies too, and open a

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Speaker 1: lot of possibilities there. Houston believes that they represent the

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Speaker 1: faces of the Maya Sun God, whose face would, according

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Speaker 1: to their beliefs, change as he crossed the sky. So

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Speaker 1: it would start as a shark face in the morning

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Speaker 1: because the sun was rising over the Caribbean. It in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the day, probably when it was like

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Speaker 1: really hot and intense in the area that's now Guatemala,

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Speaker 1: it would turn to this blood drinking mad creature, and

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Speaker 1: then later in the day at dusk, it would turn

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Speaker 1: to a jaguar's face, because that was of course when

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Speaker 1: the jaguars were just waking up and coming out to

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Speaker 1: hunt after sleeping all day. Um. But these stucco representations

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Speaker 1: of the Sun God depict all these different figures of

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Speaker 1: its phases that would go through during the day. It's

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Speaker 1: also believed that the tomb atop the Diabolo Pyramid was

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Speaker 1: that of the first Elzet king, who lived sometime between

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Speaker 1: three fifty and fo so there's still a lot to

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Speaker 1: learn from the spine. Though it was abandoned in the

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Speaker 1: fifth century quite suddenly, but it's fairly unique among my

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Speaker 1: ruins for its completeness. Usually they'd tear down a structure

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Speaker 1: and build on top of it. Also, only thirty of

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Speaker 1: the facade has been uncovered so far, so a lot

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Speaker 1: to come here probably. Yeah. It reminds me a little

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Speaker 1: bit of the last episode we did on the Terracotta

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Speaker 1: warriors and and how much there is still to learn

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Speaker 1: there as well. According to David fried al Though, who's

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Speaker 1: my archaeologist, he said, quote, the site will certainly advance

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Speaker 1: our knowledge of early classic Maya religion and ritual practice.

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Speaker 1: So um, a lot to be learned and pretty pretty neat.

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Speaker 1: I I certain this is one. I urge everybody to

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Speaker 1: go check out pictures of it too. It's worth worth

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Speaker 1: taking a look at. But there has been another pretty

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Speaker 1: cool Maya discovery in twelve and it's one that had

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Speaker 1: me thinking back to our episode on historical alcohol, because,

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Speaker 1: as we learned in that episode, a lot of discoveries

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Speaker 1: can made be made from the gunk and residue that's

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Speaker 1: found at the bottom of old cups, old bowls, various

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Speaker 1: ancient vessels. This year, dmitriy Zagorevski of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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Speaker 1: and Jennifer low Miller Newman, a doctoral candidate at the

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Speaker 1: University of Albany, analyzed the residue found in a thirteen

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Speaker 1: hundred year old vessel from the mirror door basin and

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Speaker 1: what's today southern Mexico and the vessel read the home

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Speaker 1: of his or her tobacco, and sure enough, that's what

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Speaker 1: they found inside traces of nicotine. They found this using

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Speaker 1: gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.

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Speaker 1: This find is particularly notable for two reasons. One, it's

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Speaker 1: the first physical evidence of the Mayans using tobacco, and

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Speaker 1: to the technological methods used promise even better analysis of

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Speaker 1: such vessels in the future. And this was why it

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Speaker 1: reminded me of the Historical Alcohol Episode so much, because

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Speaker 1: if you remember from that show, there's a whole host

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Speaker 1: of problems when you're trying to determine what cups and

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Speaker 1: other vessels actually contained, and not just because the contents

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Speaker 1: are are long dried up and gone. Um. Many vessels

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Speaker 1: were of course multi purpose and contain the residues of

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Speaker 1: all sorts of of items that they once contained. According

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Speaker 1: to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, vessels can also be contaminated by bacteria.

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Speaker 1: They can be damaged by water, and no water can

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Speaker 1: just wash everything away when they're no longer in use,

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Speaker 1: or they can be contaminated after discovery. And and sometimes

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Speaker 1: they're even clean too. And I remember again from that

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Speaker 1: alcohol episode, archaeologists were horrified by this, and this could happen.

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Speaker 1: But if you scrowb out that gunk gets washing away,

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Speaker 1: all the all the history of what this could have

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Speaker 1: been used for. Um. This piece, though, the one that

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Speaker 1: was analyzed, is actually an older fine. It's been a

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Speaker 1: long term resident of the Library of Congress's collection, but

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Speaker 1: fortunately hadn't had all its contents removed. The label on

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Speaker 1: the vessel to Deplina, you mentioned that it's the home

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Speaker 1: of his or her tobacco. That's fairly unique as well.

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Speaker 1: And the only other case of researchers finding a labeled

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Speaker 1: vessel like this actually containing what it was supposed to

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Speaker 1: contain came twenty years ago with a cup of cacao.

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Speaker 1: So I guess it would be tricky to cook in

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Speaker 1: a Maya kitchen if everything labeled differently. One of the

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Speaker 1: things that's really fascinating about the story, though, is the

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Speaker 1: information about how the Mayan's used tobacco. According to low Miller,

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Speaker 1: Newman and Discovery News, they ruled out the possibility that

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Speaker 1: the vessel was an ashtray since there were no chemical

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Speaker 1: calling cards present for nicotine byproducts, but it wasn't likely

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Speaker 1: that the Maya would have been smoking the tobacco in

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Speaker 1: the first place. It was empowered form, likely mixed with

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Speaker 1: lime and mixed in a drink two or maybe used

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Speaker 1: as snuff. It was strong enough to possibly be hallucinogenic

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Speaker 1: and serve the handy double purpose of repelling serpent. So

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Speaker 1: there you go. I think that seems like a fitting

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Speaker 1: way to conclude our our episode with this hallucinogenic Maya

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Speaker 1: residue inserpent repellent. Yeah, something to amuse upon. I guess

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Speaker 1: if you're getting your New Year celebration money, I don't

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Speaker 1: know what do you think, Sarah? Will your celebration be

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Speaker 1: that exciting? I don't think it's going to be that exciting,

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Speaker 1: But it's also maybe a better image to have than

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Speaker 1: the staked vampires and the Roman curses too. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to send people off into the New Year thinking

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Speaker 1: of those sort of things. So, yeah, the Cacao maybe,

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Speaker 1: you know, think about stuff like that. I think the

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Speaker 1: interesting thing about all these discoveries though, is just how

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Speaker 1: they show how I mean, we've pointed this out before,

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Speaker 1: how history is this living, breathing thing. It's always changing,

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Speaker 1: instantly changing, and um the discovery of the temple especially

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Speaker 1: reminded me of that because we're always talking about these

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Speaker 1: lost sight that are discovered, usually in the nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: or the twentieth century, UM, and it's hard to imagine,

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Speaker 1: you know, people not realizing that King Tut's tomb was there,

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Speaker 1: or or all sorts of of these sites that we've

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Speaker 1: discussed that just seem like major international attractions now you

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Speaker 1: just go heritage site. But it's cool to think that

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Speaker 1: there are plenty of places like that still out there,

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Speaker 1: that there can still be this beautiful, stunning temple that's

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Speaker 1: just hidden in the overgrowth in the guatemal And jungle

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Speaker 1: waiting for somebody to stumble upon it. Pretty cool. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: there are many dedicated researchers and archaeologists and historians out

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Speaker 1: there who are working on all of this all the time,

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Speaker 1: so we have lots of stuff to talk about. Fun

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Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun for us to do this

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Speaker 1: every year. And if you have any more news items

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Speaker 1: from twelve or any other time that we missed that

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Speaker 1: you'd like for us to cover further, maybe do an

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Speaker 1: update to a previous topic that we've done before. You

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Speaker 1: can write to us. We are at History Podcast at

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Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, or you can find us on Facebook

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Speaker 1: or on Twitter in this history and we love receiving

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Speaker 1: these kind of stories from you guys throughout the year.

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Speaker 1: This is always the kind of thing that I like

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Speaker 1: to re post on Facebook and retweet. And we count

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Speaker 1: on y'all to recommend these stories to us because, as

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Speaker 1: you mentioned, it's there's so much happening it's impossible to

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Speaker 1: keep up with it. Also, thank you guys, Happy New Year,

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Speaker 1: have a great time celebrating, and we'll see you in

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Speaker 1: We're more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

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Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot Com? You