WEBVTT - Unearthed! In Spring 2026, Part 1 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:10.960 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:15.000 Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:19.040 and I'm Holly Frye. This is time for the latest 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:22.000 installment of Unearthed. I feel like I said those words 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.040 in a weird order, but it's okay. We're going to 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.560 power through. If you are brand new to the show, 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.080 Unearthed is when we talk about things that have been 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:36.280 literally or figuratively unearthed over the last few months. So 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.040 that's what we're going to talk about all week long, 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.400 and today we are going to talk about medical things, 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:48.600 books and letters, some oldest things, and some smells. I 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.320 did not realize we were going to have a smells category, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:55.440 and we actually wound up with fewer smells and expected, 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:59.680 which is that's a story for Friday. We will start, 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.200 as we usually do with updates to past episodes. We 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:08.840 don't actually have that many this time, comparatively fewer updates 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:13.280 than the last several episodes of Unearthed. Also, I don't 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:17.720 have any new updates regarding things like the President's House site, 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:22.080 oh or the other ongoing issues here in the US 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.640 with like the field of history and education and those 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:27.679 kinds of things that we've been talking about a lot 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:30.880 on or Unearthed over the last year. A lot of 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.800 our updates, though, are frequent flyers on Unearthed. 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.840 And we are kicking off those updates with several finds 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:45.640 from Pompeii. Researchers have used reflectance transformation imaging to identify 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:51.040 seventy nine previously undetected inscriptions on a corridor that connected 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:56.360 Pompey's theaters to the city Central Street via Stabyana. Reflectance 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:01.160 transformation imaging captures images under multiple lighting angles, making it 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:05.200 possible to see very faint scratches that aren't detectable to 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:09.920 the unaided eye. This corridor has been studied before. More 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.040 than two hundred inscriptions had already been found there, including 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.920 various love notes and pleas to the goddess Venus for 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:21.640 her favor in matters of the heart. One of the 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:25.440 newly discovered inscriptions is on that theme. It starts off 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.440 with the words Erato loves uh and then I don't 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.200 know how that person was going to finish that inscription. 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:33.800 Who does Erado love? 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:38.000 We don't great question? Or what there's it could be 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:42.320 kidney pies, we don't know. I was thinking pickles for 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:46.960 some reason. There's also a sketch of two gladiators fighting. 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:52.520 These seventy nine newly discovered inscriptions add to those more 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:54.280 than two hundred that have already been found. This is 0:02:54.840 --> 0:03:00.160 growing body of knowledge. Other researchers have used isotope analysis 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.519 to examine carbonate deposits in parts of Pompey's water infrastructure, 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:08.639 like they're aqueducts, well shafts, and water towers, as well 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:12.000 as the pools of public baths. They found that the 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.120 groundwater in the wells was highly mineralized thanks to the 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.560 volcanic deposits that they were drilled through. 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.440 That wouldn't have been very good as drinking water and 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.720 was mainly used in the baths. But this same research 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.800 concluded that the bathing water wasn't renewed very often, so 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.600 it also would not have been very hygienic. 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:37.320 Yeah. They made comparisons to other Roman Empire cities as 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:41.960 having much cleaner baths. Made it sound like POMPEII was 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.520 just a little behind the times and how clean to 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:45.760 keep that water just. 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:47.600 A new sense to the word community. 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:54.840 Yeah. Yeah. Lastly, in November of last year, archaeologists from 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.720 Herculaneum Archaeological Parks started work at another site that was 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:03.040 also destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. That's Torre 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:08.040 del Greco on the coast northwest of Pompeii. In February, 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.680 they announced that they had excavated a small but very 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.720 highly decorated room there. The walls of this room have 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:18.880 figurative elements and bars of cinnabar red paint against a 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.800 dark background, and these figurative elements include herons and a 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:30.000 golden candelabra. The room also contained three highly decorated cyste 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.880 which are essentially boxes, and architectural elements that were of 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.599 very good quality. There is speculation that this room was 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.080 being used for storage for things that were part of 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:45.760 an ongoing construction project when the volcano erupted. Having recently 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.800 helped a friend who bought a new house paint the 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.720 interior of a bedroom closet, it cracks me up that 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:57.479 this probably a closet storage space had very highly decorated walls. 0:04:57.880 --> 0:04:59.800 We could talk about this on behind the scenes. 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.119 There could be so many behind the scenes conversations this week. 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:09.120 Moving on. Stonehenge got its own entire episode of the 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:12.400 show back in twenty fourteen, when news broke about a 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.479 lot of new findings there and we realized we did 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:20.320 not have an existing Stonehenge episode to update. One of 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.360 the things we talked about in that episode and probably 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.800 other installments of On Earth since then, was debate about 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.520 exactly how the somewhat smaller stones known as bluestones got 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:36.320 to the Stonehenge site. Some of those stones are believed 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:39.720 to have been moved from hundreds of miles away, and 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.479 one hypothesis has been that the stones might have been 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:48.359 carried closer to the Stonehenge site by glaciers. This research 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:53.040 examined microscopic mineral grains found in rivers near Salisbury Plain 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.520 in southern England, that's where Stonehenge is located. They focused 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.680 on more than five hundred zircon crystal to see if 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.520 any of them could have been associated with the presence 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.680 of glaciers. They concluded that they did not, meaning that 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:12.160 the bluestones were moved to Salisbury Plane through intentional human effort. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.919 We also have an update on the natural Mummy, popularly 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:21.080 known as Utsey the Iceman, who lived sometime between thirty 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:25.679 three fifty and thirty one oh five BCE. Previous hosts 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:27.599 of the show did an episode on Utsy back in 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.040 twenty twelve, and it seems like he has been on 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:35.640 almost every episode of Unearthed. According to a pre print 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.400 paper that was published at the end of last year, 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.719 Utsey was probably infected with a cancer causing strain of 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:47.560 the human paploma virus known as HPV sixteen. According to 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.479 this research, the ustashim Man probably was infected with this 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.800 as well. The ustashim Man is the name used for 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:59.680 a forty five thousand year old fossil remains that it's 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.239 not It's not like a whole mummified body like with Utsi. 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:07.160 It's a smaller set of remains that was found in Siberia. 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:11.760 This means that HPV has existed essentially for all of 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:16.280 human history. One hypothesis for how HPV made its way 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.880 into human beings was that it first infected Neanderthals and 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:24.240 was passed to humans through interbreeding. The ostashim Man has 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:30.440 Neanderthal DNA in his lineage. That doesn't conclusively confirm that hypothesis, 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.559 but it means that it is at least possible. Since 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.440 this is a preprint paper, as Tracy mentioned, it has 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:37.480 not yet been. 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:38.800 Through peer review. 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:43.040 Moving on, in our last installment of Unearthed, we talked 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.640 about a gold Tudor era pendant that was in the 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:48.920 shape of a heart that had come up on a 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:51.680 previous episode of On Earth's as well. At that point, 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.560 this Tutor heart was on display at the British Museum 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.440 and the museum was trying to raise three point five 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.040 million pounds or about four point seven million dollars to 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:05.040 purchase it. That fundraising effort was successful and it was 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.480 announced in February that this pendant will be staying in 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:13.400 the museum. And lastly, in March, newspapers started covering a 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:17.240 report from the University of East Anglia about research into 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:21.520 King Harold's journey to the Battle of Hastings that's long 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:25.280 been described as a two hundred mile march, but medieval 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.320 history professor Tom License argues that it's a misunderstanding of 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.520 the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle says that 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:37.719 Harold's ships quote came home, which has been interpreted as 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.319 Harold having dismissed them back to all of their original 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:45.840 home ports, but according to License, the word home meant 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.280 the fleet's home base in London and Harold continued to 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:53.720 use the fleet from there. So this press release just 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.720 came out on March twentieth, just a couple of weeks 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.440 before we are recording this, and he was scut to 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.040 present on this research at a conference four days after that. 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:07.079 He also has a book on Harold that is coming 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.240 out in August, so that's not really available for people 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.880 to read yet. So at this point it's really early 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:18.000 for historians to thoroughly respond to these arguments. But there's 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.560 already been some controversy with other historians noting that this 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:26.359 entire interpretation, at least in terms of what's publicly available 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:28.760 when we were working on this installment of on Earthed, 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.680 it all basically hinges on the interpretation of one word. 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.000 Next, we're going to move on to some medical things. 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.280 Research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has examined 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:44.120 a mass grave associated with the Plague of Justinian that 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.640 started in the sixth century. The burial site was in 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:50.920 the hippodrome of the city of Jiaj in what's now Jordan. 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.679 According to DNA research conducted on the remains that were 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.320 buried there, this burial site did represent the dead from 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.600 a single event. It was not people who died in 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.240 a community over a long period of time. The team 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.600 studied DNA from the teeth of these plague victims and 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.040 found that they were demographically very diverse, suggesting that this 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:17.400 disease struck the whole population. It did not really differentiate 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.040 with people's social status, or age or sex. This is 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:25.760 the first known Mediterranean mass grave associated with the plague 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:26.440 of Justinian. 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.559 Research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports has 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:34.720 examined the contents of a nineteen hundred year old glass 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.320 vial called an unguitarium, which was found in a tomb 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:43.400 in western Turkia. They identified fecal biomarkers as well as 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.880 an organic compound known as carvacrol, which is found in 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:52.040 essential oils from herbs. The conclusion this was feces mixed 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:57.560 with time, probably to disguise the smell. Medical preparations made 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:00.680 from feces are described by the Roman physician in Galen 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:04.160 and in the work of Pliny the Elder. This is 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:07.679 the first direct physical evidence for these kinds of remedies 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:11.360 being used in the Greco Roman era and in our 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:12.960 last medical find. 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:18.280 Neanderthals may have used birch bark tar for medicinal purposes, 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.720 and that tar might have been effective. We do know 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:26.000 that Neanderthals made birch tar. There's archaeological evidence of this 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:30.120 going back almost two hundred thousand years, and there are 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:34.040 also indigenous methods of making birch tar that go back 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.720 thousands of years and have survived until today, so not 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.560 associated with the Neanderthals, but ancient uses of birch tar. 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.880 Researchers used three different techniques to produce tar from two 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:50.679 species of birch, downy birch and silver birch. Then they 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:55.880 tested these batches of tar against two pathogens Staphylococcus arius 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:59.400 and E. Colime, and the birch tar was effective against 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.920 staff ari but not against decline, and one method seemed 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:08.600 less effective than the others. Burning downy birch material and 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:12.679 letting the tar condense onto a fireproof stone didn't produce 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.600 much tar, and what little tar there was was not 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:20.439 effective against anything. So this of course is not definitive 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:25.240 proof that Neanderthals were using birch tar medicinally, but there 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:29.880 is archaeological evidence suggesting that Neanderthals used plants medicinally, so 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.600 we know they used plants for medicine. We know they 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.960 made birch tar. It's at least in the realm of 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:41.040 possibility that they used birch tar as medicine. We'll take 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:43.480 a quick sponsor break and then come back for some 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:55.960 books and letters. We will pick up this installment of 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.480 on Earth with some books and letters. Ostraca are bits 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.480 of potter that were often used sort of like notepaper 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:07.360 in ancient Egypt. An excavation at Athribis in Lower Egypt 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:12.200 has unearthed thirteen thousand ostraca, bringing the total number of 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.200 them found out that site to forty three thousand, so 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.880 many pieces of pottery used like post it notes. Basically, 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:23.840 people lived at this site for more than one thousand years, 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:26.760 and it was also home to a necropolis and a 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:31.559 temple complex. So the ostcra that have been found here 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.320 really range in age. They are from as early as 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:38.079 the third century BCE to as late as the eleventh 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:39.120 century CE. 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:44.559 They also represent a number of languages. The oldest fragments 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.160 are tax receipts written in Demotic script, which was used 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:52.280 for both business and literary purposes. There are also fragments 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:56.319 with writing in Arabic, Greek, hieratic and coptic as well 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:00.360 as hieroglyphics. There are also lots of pottery for fragments 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:03.640 at the site that have nothing written on them. Together, 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:07.560 this group of fragments are helping scholars understand how life 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.440 and Athrobisk changed over the many centuries that it was occupied. 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.679 Moving on, I don't include a ton of like many 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:20.600 years overdue, library books, stories and unearthed because after a 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:25.800 while they start to sound really repetitive. Unless there's something 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.080 really special about the book, it can seem like the 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.480 same exact story over and over. This one, though it 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.480 has another layer. A copy of Harry the Dirty Dog 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:37.840 that had been checked out by a little boy was 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.480 due back at the Chantilly Regional Library in Virginia in 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.320 nineteen eighty nine. It did not get turned back in, 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.960 and now, as an adult, this man found the book 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.040 on a shelf while he was looking for something to 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:56.200 read to his own son while visiting his parents. That 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.840 shelf that he found the book on was not in Virginia, 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:02.280 though it wasn't even the United States. It was in Greece. 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.720 His parents were diplomats, and after leaving the Washington, DC area, 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.240 they went back to Greece. And the des Syria, Japan, 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:13.400 and the Netherlands before going back to Greece once again, 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.640 and that book apparently went with them. Harry the Dirty 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:20.840 Dog has now been turned back into the library and 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.040 it looks like it is in very good condition, especially 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.640 considering that it went through multiple international moves. I feel 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.920 like this book is better traveled than many people I know. 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:35.760 Yeah, they took very good care of it. Also, I 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.840 feel like books that have been sitting quietly on my 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.240 shelves have had more awar than this book seems to. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:44.520 Next. 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:49.280 Back in the nineteen thirties, archaeologists found remnants of Roman 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:54.960 era writing tablets at a site in what's now tongarin Burgloon, Belgium. 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:58.640 Additional tablets were discovered in twenty thirteen. It brought the 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:03.040 total number of tablets to eighty five. When these tablets 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.600 were originally used back in the Roman Era, they had 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.360 a thin coating of wax on them and then people 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.000 used a sharp stylus to write on the wax. They 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.280 were reusable. People could remove that wax layer and put 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.760 down a new layer to write something else. When these 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:23.280 were unearthed, what the wax was gone and it did 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.680 not look like there was any kind of legible writing 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:28.080 left on the wood. 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.920 These tablets were rediscovered in a museum collection in twenty twenty, 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:38.240 and deciphering them was an extremely challenging process. At this point, 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:40.720 the wood is completely dried out, so it could be 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:45.120 hard to distinguish intentionally made marks from just natural variations 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.080 in the wood. The wax layer that was used on 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.120 these tablets was so thin, so it was easy for 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.280 a stylist to go through it and mark the wood underneath. 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.320 Some of the tablets contained legal documents, and this seemed 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.080 to be done intentionally to make the text more permanent. 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.840 But in more informal documents that wasn't necessarily true, so 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:08.480 the marks made through the wax just weren't always consistent, 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.680 and since the tablets were reusable, there were overlapping markings 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:16.239 from different lines of text. Many of the tablets had 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.719 been broken in half and thrown into a well, apparently 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.359 an intentional attempt to make them eligible. I don't know 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:27.080 why I love that detail. This is like tearing up 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:29.440 a paper, but you'd have to break it. 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:34.160 Yeah, those were like the legal contracts that weren't valid anymore, 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:36.960 that would have been put through a shredder but nope, 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.080 they were broken in half and thrown down a well. 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:43.920 Looking at these became kind of an early pandemic era 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:48.080 project for people. They spent a lot of time looking 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:52.640 at all these writing tablets through magnifying glasses and microscopes 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:58.280 lit from multiple directions. The team used high resolution photographs 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.320 and other imaging technologies well, and they were able to 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:06.480 find legible text on about half of these tablets. As 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:08.440 Holly just said, a lot of the ones that had 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:12.040 been intentionally broken and thrown into the well, those had 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:16.400 contained things like legal contracts other official documents. But other 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:20.639 tablets which were found in a heap more like in 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:25.240 a midden place that people just threw their refuse those 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:29.960 included things like student writing exercises and a draft of 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:34.399 an inscription for a statue of Emperor Carcela. 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:36.919 In the words of the abstract of a book that 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.199 was published detailing all of this quote. The tablets not 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:44.959 only provide concrete information about religious, judicial, and administrative practices, 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:49.400 but they also enhance our understanding of the complex processes 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:54.600 of Romanization and Latinization in the northwestern civitates and municipia 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:55.920 of the Roman Empire. 0:18:57.240 --> 0:19:02.679 Moving on, British infant treatman. Shadrack Byfield was the author 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:07.439 of a narrative of a Light Company soldier's service and 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.520 that was published in England in eighteen forty and it 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:14.440 recounted his experiences fighting in the War of eighteen twelve, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.040 including the amputation of his forearm after being hit by 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.160 a musket ball. This book, that's it's long been known, 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:24.919 not a surprise. It has been a source for historians 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:28.520 writing about the British military, or the War of eighteen twelve, 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.239 or the Great Lakes region where he fought. But a 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:37.119 Cambridge University historian has unearthed another book by Byfield in 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:42.840 the Western Reserve Historical Society's library in Cleveland, Ohio. This 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:47.000 one was called History and Conversion of a British Soldier 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:50.560 and it was published in eighteen fifty one. The copy 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:54.680 in the Historical Society library is the only one known 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:59.560 to have survived until today. My understanding is like this 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:03.720 was in the library catalog, Like they knew the book 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:06.000 was in the library, but nobody had made the connection 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.679 to the fact that this was the same person and 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:13.320 that he had written another book. The whole book has 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:16.879 been transcribed and published as an open access document at 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.200 the University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives website, and it's 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:24.080 very different from his earlier memoir. It's focused more on 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.119 information about his life that we did not know before, 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:30.800 including what his life was like after he returned to England. 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:35.399 Researchers working with paleolithic objects dating back to between thirty 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:38.960 four thousand and forty five thousand years ago have concluded 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:43.320 that they contain a precursor to written language. These objects 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:45.960 were mostly found in caves in what is now Germany, 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:51.080 and they're covered in repeating sequences of notches, dots, and crosses. 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.639 The objects are made of materials like mammoth tusk, and 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.720 they date back tens of thousands of years before the 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:02.080 earliest known writing systems of qunea form and hieroglyphics. They 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:06.760 also predate the precursors to either of those systems, so 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:11.760 researchers weren't trying to decode or decipher these markings. They 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.840 were measuring the signs and looking for patterns in them, 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:18.399 and after analyzing more than three thousand signs on two 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.040 hundred and sixty objects, they concluded that the patterns of 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:25.840 markings had a similar level of information density to the 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:30.960 earliest proto Cuneiform tablets found in Mesopotamia. It's also clear 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:34.320 that these markings were not meant to represent the sounds 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:39.080 of a spoken language, since the repetitions involved do not 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:44.280 follow the same patterns that known languages do. The suggests 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.760 that the precursors to written languages may have been developing 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:50.200 a lot earlier than was previously thought. 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:54.480 Alterations made to a thirty three hundred year old papyrus 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:58.000 are being described as having fixed a mistake with white out. 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:01.960 The scroll is a copy of the Book of the 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:05.119 Dead that was made for a scribe named Ramos. It 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:08.840 was being prepared for a museum exhibit when curators realized 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:11.600 that the body of a jackal headed god had been 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.200 made to look thinner by adding a line of white 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:16.639 paint to the sides of its body and parts of 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:20.679 its legs. Researchers used a three D digital microscope to 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.359 figure out what kinds of pigments were used in this 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.280 white paint, and found that it had a different makeup 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:29.200 from the white paint used in other parts of the papyrus. 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:32.680 It also contained some flex of yellow paint, which would 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:35.120 have helped it blend into the color of the papyrus 0:22:35.440 --> 0:22:38.479 at the time it was originally painted. It does not 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:43.679 look that blended today little photo retouching. Yeah, maybe this 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:45.520 jackal headed god was very vain. 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:52.920 Yeah, the way the pigments and the papyrus have each aged, 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:55.720 it does not really look blended today, but it would 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.840 have been a much closer match at the time. Moving on, 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:04.240 a researcher from the French National Center for Scientific Research 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:08.560 or CNRS has found a page from the Archimedes Palimpsest 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.320 that was believed to have been lost. The Palimpsest is 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:17.600 a tenth century Greek manuscript containing multiple treatises by Archimedes, 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:21.159 who lived in the third century BCE, so some of 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:24.840 the texts that are included in this palimpsyst are very rare. 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:29.560 In the thirteenth century, part of the manuscript was erased 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:32.880 so the parchment that it was written on could be reused. 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:37.520 That was a very common practice. The manuscript also changed 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:41.840 hands several times after its leaves were photographed in nineteen 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.600 oh six, and at some point three of the leaves 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:48.840 that were documented in those photographs disappeared. 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.600 The rediscovered page is one of those missing leaves. It 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:57.639 contains part of Archimedes' Treatise on the Sphere and the Cylinder. 0:23:58.520 --> 0:24:01.920 One side is partly led, even with prayers having been 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.399 written over it. The other has been obscured by a 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:09.280 forged illumination of the prophet Daniel that was most likely 0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:12.200 added sometime in the twentieth century when a dealer was 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:17.280 attempting to increase that page's value. Ongoing research is planned 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:20.119 for this leave to try to reveal the text underneath 0:24:20.119 --> 0:24:24.080 this illumination. When I started reading about this, I kept 0:24:24.080 --> 0:24:27.600 reading about how there was this illumination of Daniel added 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:29.520 sometime in the twentieth century, and I was. 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:33.400 Like, why, why would somebody be doing that? And then 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:37.560 I found the additional detail trying to increase its value 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:41.200 to sell it by putting a forgery on there. Yeah, 0:24:41.280 --> 0:24:46.360 our last book find is more book adjacent. In February, 0:24:46.800 --> 0:24:49.560 repair work on the floor of Saint Peter and Paul 0:24:49.680 --> 0:24:53.680 Church in the Netherlands led to the discovery of human remains. 0:24:54.480 --> 0:24:57.400 Work is underway to try to confirm whether these are 0:24:57.480 --> 0:25:01.920 the remains of child di bactic Castle. More account to d'Artagnan. 0:25:02.000 --> 0:25:04.119 Inspiration for the character. 0:25:03.880 --> 0:25:07.879 d'Artagnan in the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Duma. 0:25:08.880 --> 0:25:11.960 We got an email about this from a listener who 0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:14.879 was embarrassed to admit that they did not realize that 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:18.520 d'Artagnan was a real person. Do not feel bad, neither 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:19.120 did I. 0:25:19.200 --> 0:25:19.560 Really. 0:25:20.359 --> 0:25:24.080 Athos, Porthos, and Arabis were all fictionalized versions of real 0:25:24.200 --> 0:25:24.880 people too. 0:25:25.840 --> 0:25:29.159 The historical d'Artagnan died when a musket ball struck him 0:25:29.200 --> 0:25:32.120 in the throat during the Franco Dutch War in sixteen 0:25:32.160 --> 0:25:35.679