Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. The camera doesn't hide a thing. It's an
Speaker 1: unblinking eye until the second it's shutter closes, and then
Speaker 1: time is frozen in an instant. The camera doesn't editorialize,
Speaker 1: It doesn't care what's in front of it or what
Speaker 1: the subject's beliefs are. The camera simply captures a moment.
Speaker 1: Whatever happens to cross its path is then preserved forever.
Speaker 1: One set of photographs, though, are important not because of
Speaker 1: what they captured, but because of what they lost. The
Speaker 1: incident occurred in October of n seven on the island
Speaker 1: of celon what is known today as Sri Lanka. That's
Speaker 1: when four men had made their way through the jungle
Speaker 1: to the Cataraguma Temple. An artist Mr Brooke Farrar was
Speaker 1: accompanied by three others. There was the photographer G. A. Smith,
Speaker 1: his assistant Mr Di Zoa and a Sri Lankan government
Speaker 1: official who oversaw the expedition. The group had come to
Speaker 1: photograph and film what was going on at the temple
Speaker 1: as part of a detailed account they were writing of
Speaker 1: their travels. The temple stood behind a massive stone gateway
Speaker 1: boasting three tall arches, and it was surrounded by ancient
Speaker 1: ruins dating back as far as the first century b c. E. However,
Speaker 1: while it may have been the architecture that originally brought
Speaker 1: the men there that day, it was something else that
Speaker 1: shifted their focus. As they stepped inside, Brooke farr spotted
Speaker 1: a woman participating in a solitary yet animated prayer. He
Speaker 1: described her movements as complete religious ecstasy. Music filled the room,
Speaker 1: and as it played, the woman used her whole body
Speaker 1: to express herself. Brook Farrar moved out of the way
Speaker 1: to a staircase nearby and set up his camera. He
Speaker 1: filmed her as she danced throughout the temple. Smith and
Speaker 1: the government official wandered off to photograph the rest of
Speaker 1: the area, but de Zilwa stayed behind with brook Farrar
Speaker 1: to capture pictures of the woman as she danced. After
Speaker 1: taking almost a dozen photographs and shooting several feet of film.
Speaker 1: The woman disappeared. Because Desilwa knew how to speak the language,
Speaker 1: brook Farrar told him to ask around about the woman's identity,
Speaker 1: Who was she, where had she gone? It was as
Speaker 1: if she had evaporated into thin air, but nobody would answer.
Speaker 1: They kept silent, refusing to speak about her at all.
Speaker 1: Whenever brook Farrar or de Zilwah got close to someone,
Speaker 1: they would run away. But one man finally spoke up
Speaker 1: in private, telling them that the dancer was known as
Speaker 1: the death Woman and she only came to the temple
Speaker 1: once a year, and anyone who looked at her was cursed.
Speaker 1: Brook Farrar and his team weren't too worried about the
Speaker 1: hecks brought on by their fascination, but the group of
Speaker 1: worshippers had them spooked. They watched the men with fear
Speaker 1: and anger boiling in their eyes, forcing the explorers to
Speaker 1: leave the temple before things escalated. Almost immediately after their
Speaker 1: return home, a party was thrown in their honor. Brooke Farrar, Smith,
Speaker 1: and the others talked about their travels with the other guests,
Speaker 1: especially about the woman they saw dancing at the temple.
Speaker 1: Upon mention of the photographs they took. It was suggested
Speaker 1: that the men develop everything right away to share with
Speaker 1: the other partygoers, so they obliged, assembling a makeshift dark
Speaker 1: room in a coat closet. But as they developed each
Speaker 1: of the photographs, they noticed something peculiar. The temple was there,
Speaker 1: as was the group of worshippers, but something was missing. Well, someone,
Speaker 1: The woman who had danced with such unbridled joy, was
Speaker 1: not present in a single photograph, nor on any of
Speaker 1: the film they had shut Brook, Farrar, and Smith chucked
Speaker 1: the equipment again, but everything appeared to be working properly.
Speaker 1: I have the young man they'd spoken to been hiding
Speaker 1: the truth about the woman. Perhaps it wasn't that she
Speaker 1: came from another village to visit the temple once a year.
Speaker 1: Maybe she appeared out of nowhere to dance and pray
Speaker 1: before vanishing once more. Whatever her true story was, the
Speaker 1: team vowed to go back the same time the following
Speaker 1: year to try and catch her on camera again. It's
Speaker 1: unclear if they ever made it, though let alone succeeded.
Speaker 1: Some moments in time are impossible to capture, even if
Speaker 1: they are a little curious. We find the most surprising
Speaker 1: things when we're not looking for them. George Demestrel, for example,
Speaker 1: had returned home from a hike in nineteen forty one
Speaker 1: when he noticed strange things attached to his clothes. They
Speaker 1: were little balls with pointy spines all around them, seeds
Speaker 1: from the burdock plant. George was inspired by how the
Speaker 1: hooks on the ends of those spines dug into the fabric,
Speaker 1: making them hard to remove. His discovery led to the
Speaker 1: creation of a popular, fascinating system that we still used today,
Speaker 1: Bill grow for two brothers in nineteen seventy two in Greenland. However,
Speaker 1: their discovery was less lucrative, yet what they found was
Speaker 1: a breakthrough for archaeologists and scientists all over the world.
Speaker 1: Hants and Yakum were on a grouse hunt when they
Speaker 1: came upon two strange piles of stones. The stones had
Speaker 1: been arranged to cover two deep holes. Their curiosity peaked,
Speaker 1: the men started moving some of the rocks out of
Speaker 1: the way. Within minutes, they realized what they had on
Speaker 1: earthed a grave site. They put the stones back the
Speaker 1: way they had found them and called the police, assuming
Speaker 1: that they had stumbled into a crime scene. The authorities,
Speaker 1: though took one look at the bodies and knew that
Speaker 1: they were not the final resting places of recent murder victims.
Speaker 1: These bodies in each grave were old, very old. Director
Speaker 1: of the Greenland National Museum, Against Rossing, eventually saw pictures
Speaker 1: of the graves and put together a team to exhume
Speaker 1: the bodies several years later. The area had at one
Speaker 1: time been home to an Inuit population that left hundreds
Speaker 1: of years earlier. Rossing dated the remains to be around
Speaker 1: five hundred years old. In one grave, his team found
Speaker 1: three women buried on top of each other. In the other,
Speaker 1: they uncovered six women arranged in a similar fashion on
Speaker 1: top of the women. They also found the body of
Speaker 1: a young boy and the remains of a six month
Speaker 1: old baby. The clothes the corpses had been buried in
Speaker 1: were made of animal skins, like those of reindeer and seal.
Speaker 1: In total, seventy eight items of clothing were removed from
Speaker 1: the graves, but there was something unique about them as
Speaker 1: well as the people wearing them. Due to the frigid
Speaker 1: Arctic climate and the frozen ground, everything had been in
Speaker 1: peccably well preserved. There was fur on the coats and
Speaker 1: skin on the people's bones. They had hair on the
Speaker 1: tops of their heads as well as on their eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Even their tattoos were still visible. Inside, their organs were
Speaker 1: still intact, and scientists were able to determine the last
Speaker 1: thing they had eaten. In short, the bodies had been
Speaker 1: freeze dried, turning them into mummies. As for their clothing,
Speaker 1: the bodies had been bundled up as though they were
Speaker 1: being prepared for a wilderness expedition to their people. Even
Speaker 1: after someone had died, it was expected that they would
Speaker 1: continue to hunt. On the other side, it was believed
Speaker 1: that the baby had been buried alive with its mother
Speaker 1: in order to spare it a troubled life of starvation.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to know the social situation this took place in,
Speaker 1: but knowing how difficult life was so long ago, perhaps
Speaker 1: there simply was no one else to bear the burden
Speaker 1: of one more mouth to feed. Instead, the Inuit of
Speaker 1: the Kilicate Socks Settlement chose to send their child into
Speaker 1: the afterlife with its mother. Near the first grave site,
Speaker 1: archaeologist unearthed more bodies, as well as remnants of the
Speaker 1: homes they lived in. It was a discovery that shed
Speaker 1: new light on the ancient native population that used to
Speaker 1: live there. Sadly, the mummies were not placed back in
Speaker 1: their original tombs after the examination, but in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven a d n A test proved that the six
Speaker 1: women and two young children were all directly related. Today
Speaker 1: they can be seen at the National Museum in Greenland,
Speaker 1: where they continue to draw quite a crowd. Now that's
Speaker 1: what i'd call a family reunion. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.