1
00:00:03,760 --> 00:00:07,840
Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history

2
00:00:08,039 --> 00:00:11,200
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are

3
00:00:11,320 --> 00:00:14,680
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

4
00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:31,120
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. War changes everything, the economy,

5
00:00:31,440 --> 00:00:35,280
Speaker 1: the landscape, the people in and around it. War is

6
00:00:35,440 --> 00:00:38,960
Speaker 1: uh stampede of wild elephants, leaving nothing but rubble in

7
00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,479
Speaker 1: their wake. The costs are unfathomable. Some countries never recover,

8
00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:46,240
Speaker 1: while others take years to get back even a piece

9
00:00:46,280 --> 00:00:49,600
Speaker 1: of what they lost, and the soldiers who fight often

10
00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:53,159
Speaker 1: lose a piece of themselves as well. But then there

11
00:00:53,159 --> 00:00:56,080
Speaker 1: are the wars that don't change much. It's true, it

12
00:00:56,160 --> 00:00:59,640
Speaker 1: does happen. In eighteen fifty nine, for example, a British

13
00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:02,800
Speaker 1: owned black boar was shot by an American farmer on

14
00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:06,160
Speaker 1: an island off the coast of Washington State. The dispute

15
00:01:06,160 --> 00:01:08,560
Speaker 1: that ensued resulted in a war lasting a matter of

16
00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:11,840
Speaker 1: weeks between the United States and Great Britain. Eventually, a

17
00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:14,840
Speaker 1: deal was worked out and the conflict, known today as

18
00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:18,560
Speaker 1: the Pig War, ended without a single lost life, well

19
00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:23,279
Speaker 1: except the boars, that is. The Napoleonic Wars, however, changed

20
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:26,240
Speaker 1: a whole lot. Millions were killed over a span of

21
00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:29,800
Speaker 1: twelve years as Napoleon worked his way across Europe. The

22
00:01:29,880 --> 00:01:34,040
Speaker 1: United Kingdom, Austria, Sweden, and other countries worked to fight

23
00:01:34,120 --> 00:01:38,400
Speaker 1: off the invading French Empire, eventually defeating Napoleon in eighteen

24
00:01:38,480 --> 00:01:43,720
Speaker 1: fifteen at Waterloo. Spain was also heavily involved in the conflict.

25
00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:46,800
Speaker 1: Its leaders had lost control of the country around eighteen

26
00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:49,600
Speaker 1: o eight, and for six years they fought alongside the

27
00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:52,600
Speaker 1: British and we're finally able to push the French forces

28
00:01:52,640 --> 00:01:56,000
Speaker 1: out by eighteen fourteen. But one town had been ready

29
00:01:56,040 --> 00:01:58,800
Speaker 1: to get its hands dirty from day one. The small

30
00:01:58,840 --> 00:02:01,720
Speaker 1: town of west Car, the province of Granada didn't have

31
00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:04,720
Speaker 1: much They didn't even have an army, only about eight

32
00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:07,320
Speaker 1: guards to protect the town. But they wanted to help

33
00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:10,520
Speaker 1: Spain put Ferdinand the Seventh back on the throne, so

34
00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:13,520
Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine they declared war on Napoleon and

35
00:02:13,639 --> 00:02:18,880
Speaker 1: his allies, specifically Denmark. Napoleon eventually lost no thanks to

36
00:02:18,919 --> 00:02:22,280
Speaker 1: west Car and his brother, the acting king was banished

37
00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:26,160
Speaker 1: from the Spanish throne. Spain and Denmark went on to

38
00:02:26,240 --> 00:02:29,440
Speaker 1: sign the Treaty of Paris in eighteen fourteen. Which established

39
00:02:29,440 --> 00:02:33,000
Speaker 1: France's borders and gave other countries their land back, thus

40
00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:37,240
Speaker 1: ending Spain's fraught battle with the Emperor. West Car, however,

41
00:02:37,320 --> 00:02:40,840
Speaker 1: never backed down. Even though Spain had found peace with France,

42
00:02:41,040 --> 00:02:43,679
Speaker 1: the people of the small Spanish town remained at war

43
00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:47,440
Speaker 1: with the Danes for years on seventy two in fact,

44
00:02:47,840 --> 00:02:50,760
Speaker 1: and yet no shots were fired and neither side suffered

45
00:02:50,800 --> 00:02:54,800
Speaker 1: a single casualty. So how could an entire country and

46
00:02:54,880 --> 00:02:57,880
Speaker 1: a small Spanish town be at war with each other

47
00:02:57,960 --> 00:03:00,800
Speaker 1: for that long without anyone dying or hearing about it?

48
00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:04,799
Speaker 1: For that we can thank for Sente Gonzalez. Vicente was

49
00:03:04,840 --> 00:03:07,959
Speaker 1: an official from west Car who found the original declaration

50
00:03:08,560 --> 00:03:11,960
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one. As it turned out, after the

51
00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:15,520
Speaker 1: treaty had been signed, the town simply forgot about the war.

52
00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:19,520
Speaker 1: For one seventy two years, the two sides were engaged

53
00:03:19,520 --> 00:03:24,120
Speaker 1: in a conflict neither was aware of. Once the declaration

54
00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:27,640
Speaker 1: was discovered and made public, a Danish ambassador traveled to

55
00:03:27,680 --> 00:03:31,520
Speaker 1: the small town on Armistice Day in nineteen one and

56
00:03:31,720 --> 00:03:34,720
Speaker 1: signed a treaty, officially bringing an end to their war.

57
00:03:35,320 --> 00:03:38,320
Speaker 1: Gifts were exchanged, with a mayor of west Car receiving

58
00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:40,760
Speaker 1: a photo of the Danish queen, as well as books

59
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:45,400
Speaker 1: by the famous Danish children's author Hans Christian Anderson. In return,

60
00:03:45,560 --> 00:03:49,080
Speaker 1: West Car renamed one of its streets Kaye Dina Marca

61
00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:52,920
Speaker 1: or Denmark Street. Townspeople got the day off from work

62
00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:56,360
Speaker 1: to celebrate and drink free wine while thousands of tourists

63
00:03:56,360 --> 00:03:59,280
Speaker 1: flooded into town. Word has it a bus full of

64
00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:03,800
Speaker 1: scandinavi and women even showed up dressed as Vikings. Two

65
00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:07,360
Speaker 1: years later, the village of Lehar, about seventy miles away

66
00:04:07,400 --> 00:04:10,560
Speaker 1: from West Car, also declared peace with France, and it

67
00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:13,560
Speaker 1: only took them one d years. The king of Lehar

68
00:04:13,720 --> 00:04:16,960
Speaker 1: had been offended during the visit to Paris in three

69
00:04:17,279 --> 00:04:21,159
Speaker 1: and retaliated with a formal declaration of war, but neither

70
00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:24,080
Speaker 1: side made a move and sold the declaration, just like

71
00:04:24,160 --> 00:04:29,160
Speaker 1: West Cars, was lost to time. We're often reminded after

72
00:04:29,240 --> 00:04:32,760
Speaker 1: major conflicts to never forget so that we don't repeat

73
00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:36,920
Speaker 1: the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, for West Car and Lehar,

74
00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:56,200
Speaker 1: somebody did forget and the conflict almost never stopped. Imagine

75
00:04:56,240 --> 00:05:00,440
Speaker 1: going to work and while shuffling papers and updating spread sheets,

76
00:05:00,480 --> 00:05:04,160
Speaker 1: you uncover a conspiracy or a scandal or some earth

77
00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:08,080
Speaker 1: shattering information that sheds light on the customs and capabilities

78
00:05:08,120 --> 00:05:11,760
Speaker 1: of past cultures. And when I say earth shattering, I

79
00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:16,040
Speaker 1: mean it literally. In nineteen o two, construction workers had

80
00:05:16,040 --> 00:05:19,360
Speaker 1: been building cisterns for an upcoming housing development when they

81
00:05:19,400 --> 00:05:22,760
Speaker 1: accidentally stumbled upon a piece of history. It had remained

82
00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:26,920
Speaker 1: hidden beneath the island of Malta undisturbed. They originally tried

83
00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:30,280
Speaker 1: to hide their discovery, but doing so proved futile. The

84
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:34,400
Speaker 1: Mediterranean site was too big to conceal, and eventually one father,

85
00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:37,479
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Margery, took on the task of digging a little

86
00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:41,960
Speaker 1: deeper to see what exactly the workers had found. Margery

87
00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:45,359
Speaker 1: began excavating in November of nineteen o three and worked

88
00:05:45,400 --> 00:05:48,240
Speaker 1: for four years, slowly peeling back the layers of a

89
00:05:48,279 --> 00:05:52,360
Speaker 1: place that had not been seen for over six thousand years. Bodies,

90
00:05:52,720 --> 00:05:56,000
Speaker 1: hundreds of them, were hauled out along with other artifacts

91
00:05:56,640 --> 00:05:59,760
Speaker 1: and tossed away because workers had no idea of the

92
00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:03,560
Speaker 1: importance of the location, nor did they inventory anything that

93
00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:08,160
Speaker 1: they found. Sadly, Father Maggrey had to stop the excavation

94
00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:11,679
Speaker 1: to attend to submissionary work in Tunisia, where he ultimately died,

95
00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:15,359
Speaker 1: but his excavation had not been forgotten. The dig was

96
00:06:15,400 --> 00:06:19,360
Speaker 1: restarted a few years later by a Maltese archaeologist named

97
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:22,600
Speaker 1: Sir Domestically Zammitt, who did his best to pick up

98
00:06:22,640 --> 00:06:26,400
Speaker 1: where Magrey left off. If only Magarey had taken better notes,

99
00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:29,760
Speaker 1: he left behind a mess, lacking any kind of catalog

100
00:06:29,839 --> 00:06:33,359
Speaker 1: of what had been discovered. Zammitt worked hard to continue

101
00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,600
Speaker 1: the dig while also keeping detailed records for both himself

102
00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:41,160
Speaker 1: and future historians who came after him. Excavation was completed

103
00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:44,560
Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven, though visitors had been allowed inside during

104
00:06:44,560 --> 00:06:48,920
Speaker 1: the process. Today it's called the hell sof ly Any Hypogeum,

105
00:06:48,960 --> 00:06:52,960
Speaker 1: and it's home to pottery, jewelry, carvings, and almost seven

106
00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:58,400
Speaker 1: thousand bodies dating back to about b C. It's a necropolis,

107
00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:01,960
Speaker 1: part crypt, parts of mattery designed for large cities of

108
00:07:02,040 --> 00:07:06,559
Speaker 1: the time. The hypogem itself consists of three levels, each

109
00:07:06,600 --> 00:07:10,520
Speaker 1: bearing numerous chambers carved out of limestone. Holes were cut

110
00:07:10,520 --> 00:07:12,760
Speaker 1: in the ceilings to allow light in as low as

111
00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:16,120
Speaker 1: the middle level, and certain openings were designed for sunlight

112
00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:18,720
Speaker 1: to pour in at specific times of the year, like

113
00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:23,480
Speaker 1: the winter solstice. The chambers themselves had also been styled

114
00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:26,920
Speaker 1: after the temples on the surface. Builders had included stone

115
00:07:26,960 --> 00:07:30,360
Speaker 1: features on the ceilings, as well as spiral designs painted

116
00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:33,680
Speaker 1: in red ochre. Since many of the temples above ground

117
00:07:33,720 --> 00:07:37,080
Speaker 1: have degraded over time and lost their roofs, the preservation

118
00:07:37,160 --> 00:07:40,240
Speaker 1: of the hypo gem has given historians a greater glimpse

119
00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:45,320
Speaker 1: into the architectural prowess of the ancient Maltese. One room,

120
00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:49,080
Speaker 1: known as the Oracle Room, is small and rectangular, and

121
00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:52,680
Speaker 1: yet when someone speaks inside it, the acoustics amplify the

122
00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:55,239
Speaker 1: sounds so it can be heard throughout much of the level.

123
00:07:56,080 --> 00:07:59,640
Speaker 1: The Hypogeum also helps researchers understand how the islands and

124
00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:02,960
Speaker 1: set Ster has handled death. It's believed that the burial

125
00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:06,560
Speaker 1: process occurred in stages. Bodies were left out to decay

126
00:08:06,640 --> 00:08:10,040
Speaker 1: until they were nothing more than bones. Those bones, along

127
00:08:10,040 --> 00:08:13,080
Speaker 1: with their belongings, were then stacked with other remains and

128
00:08:13,160 --> 00:08:16,360
Speaker 1: painted with red ochre to symbolize the blood in life

129
00:08:16,400 --> 00:08:21,600
Speaker 1: that once ran through their veins. Unfortunately, the hypo gems

130
00:08:21,600 --> 00:08:25,200
Speaker 1: preservation is the exact thing that's killing it. The presence

131
00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:28,600
Speaker 1: of visitors to the site has altered carbon dioxide levels,

132
00:08:28,640 --> 00:08:32,760
Speaker 1: temperature and humidity, as well as introduced micro organisms that

133
00:08:32,760 --> 00:08:36,800
Speaker 1: are slowly devouring the temple from the inside out. Measures

134
00:08:36,800 --> 00:08:39,720
Speaker 1: have been taken to restrict access to only eighty tourists

135
00:08:39,720 --> 00:08:43,000
Speaker 1: per day, and designated pathways have been installed so that

136
00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:47,080
Speaker 1: wandering feet don't trample the hypo gem's history out of existence.

137
00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:50,920
Speaker 1: It's not certain how long the structure will last given

138
00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:53,640
Speaker 1: its exposure to the rest of the world, but there's

139
00:08:53,679 --> 00:08:57,240
Speaker 1: no telling what other secrets Malta has living just beneath

140
00:08:57,240 --> 00:09:01,480
Speaker 1: the surface. There could be another crypt, or a secret city,

141
00:09:01,840 --> 00:09:05,439
Speaker 1: or a vast treasurer waiting to be found. All it

142
00:09:05,480 --> 00:09:08,240
Speaker 1: would take is a shovel and a bit of luck.

143
00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:17,040
Speaker 1: Of that, I'm certain, make no bones about it. I

144
00:09:17,080 --> 00:09:20,599
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

145
00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:24,040
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

146
00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:28,600
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show

147
00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:32,120
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how

148
00:09:32,200 --> 00:09:35,760
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,

149
00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:39,640
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and

150
00:09:39,679 --> 00:09:41,920
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World

151
00:09:41,920 --> 00:09:46,319
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious,