WEBVTT - Unearthed! In Spring 2026, Part 2 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:08.719 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:15.200 Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy be Wilson 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:18.880 and I'm Holly Frye. This is part two of our 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.680 latest installment of Unearthed, where we talk about things that 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:27.479 have been literally and figuratively unearthed over the last few months. 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:34.120 In this part two, we have animals, artwork, edibles and potables, shipwrecks, 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.280 and then, as always kicking it off with some random 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:42.520 stuff that I call popery because jeopardy. 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:47.240 A six month long excavation in England, about ten miles 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.879 south of Hadrian's Wall has unearthed at least eight hundred 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:54.040 wet stones dating back about two thousand years to the 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:58.640 Roman era. There are probably hundreds more still to be 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.319 discovered at the site. Before this find, only about two 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.920 hundred and fifty wetstones had been found in the entirety 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:07.479 of Britain and Ireland. 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:11.959 This was probably a whetstone factory in an industrial area, 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:14.759 and the stone to make the whetstones may have been 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.960 quarried from the northern bank of the river near where 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.640 all of this was found. The surviving whetstones at this 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.039 site all seem to have been broken or incorrectly cut, 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.240 which means that these are the cast offs, and it's 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:33.160 likely that many many more intact whetstones were transported out 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:35.839 of this area to the coast and then from there 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.200 to other parts of the Roman Empire. Now I kind 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:44.160 of want other research tracing the origins of the stone 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:50.200 in other whetstones found elsewhere in what had been Roman territory. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.160 Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:58.440 Sciences has looked at the genetic legacy of the Mongol Empire, 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:02.440 especially rulingly from the group known as the Golden Horde 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.680 in Central Eurasia. The Golden Horde was founded by Genghis 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:11.160 Khan's eldest son Joshi and his descendants. Local law in 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.720 Kazakhstan has suggested that one of the four Golden Horde 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.920 tombs that was analyzed in the study was that of 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:23.240 Djoshi and his family. According to this research, these elites 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:29.200 descended primarily from ancient Northeast Asians, with some ancestry from 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:34.560 ancient North Eurasian and Scythian populations. Genetic research on the 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:38.160 remains from the four tombs suggests that the males had 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:43.120 y chromosomes, from a particular ancestral branch that originated on 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:48.400 the Mongolian Plateau. Many people living in Central Eurasia today 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:53.040 have this cluster of DNA as part of their genome. 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:59.520 However, this research also raises some questions about the popularly 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.120 held ie idea that one out of every two hundred 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:07.440 men is related to Ginghis Khan. Researchers also ran comparisons 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.480 to modern DNA and didn't find this why chromosome cluster 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.920 as frequently in modern populations as it is in the 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:19.240 men buried in these tombs. Researchers also noted that we 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:23.680 don't have Ginghis Khan's DNA to go on. While Joshi 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.160 and his father would certainly have had some similarities in 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.440 their genomes, we don't know whether that would include this 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:36.600 specific cluster. And Lastly, researchers in Hungary have been studying 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:40.800 one hundred and twenty five skeletons from two Neolithic cemeteries, 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:45.080 looking at patterns and how these people were buried and 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.760 what that can tell us about gender roles and among 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.840 these people. These remains date back about seven thousand years, 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:57.360 so they examined the bones themselves, looking for evidence of 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.320 wear that could tell us about these peoples, maybe a 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.560 little about what kind of work they might have done, 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.640 and they also looked at the positions the people were 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.640 buried in and what kinds of grave goods they were 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.680 buried with. At one of the cemeteries, there wasn't a 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.680 lot of variation in how people were buried. In general, 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.839 the people buried at this cemetery seemed to have done 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.520 harder physical work, but those patterns didn't vary by sex either. 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:30.360 At the other site, though, things seemed to be structured 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:35.400 along clearer lines of gender roles. Most of the female 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:39.880 skeletons were buried on their left side with shell beads, 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.960 and then most of the male skeletons were buried on 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.640 their right side and they had stone tools. There were 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:52.040 also two male skeletons and five female skeletons that departed 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.320 from this pattern. In one case, there was a female 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.080 skeleton buried with stone tools, and the wear on her 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:03.240 towbone showed that she did a lot of kneeling. That 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.920 was something that was more common among the male skeletons. 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:10.400 There was not anything to suggest that this person had 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.479 some kind of unique social position, but these findings do 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.359 suggest that there were people living in this community thousands 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.240 of years ago who weren't aligned with the typical pattern 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:27.239 of gender and gender roles in their area. This paper 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:31.440 was titled Fixed and Fluid the Two Faces of Gender Roles, 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:35.760 A combined study of activity patterns and burial practices in 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:37.240 the European Neolithic. 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:42.120 Now we are going to move on to some animal finds. 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.919 A bone found at a site in Cordoba, Spain in 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:50.599 twenty twenty may be the first direct evidence of war 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:55.920 elephants from the Punic War period. There are historical depictions 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.360 of elephants being used in the Punic Wars, and there 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.760 are depictions on things like coins. They have most often 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:09.279 been associated with Carthaginian general Hannibal, but until this point 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:14.040 there has not been physical evidence of actual war elephants. 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.320 This small bone was compared to the bones of mammoths 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.000 and modern elephants, and radiocarbon dating placed it in the 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:25.320 fourth or third centuries BCE, which is when the Punic 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:30.039 Wars took place. There were also several military related objects 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.440 found at the site, like artillery projectiles, as well as 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.000 coins and ceramics. 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:39.040 Reading through this research, it does not seem like this 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:44.159 identification is one hundred percent certain they did compare it 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.520 to mammoths and elephant bones, but the bones condition is 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:51.360 too poor for DNA to be extracted from it, and 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.599 it's also possible that it was brought to the area 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:58.320 as a trade good rather than in the body of 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:02.599 a living war elephant moving on. A burial site in 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.920 northern Norway has been found to contain the body of 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.359 a Viking age woman who was buried along with her dog. 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:12.520 This discovery was made by a couple of people who 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.400 were searching the area with metal detectors and contacted authorities 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.520 about what they found. The woman and the dog were 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:23.240 buried together in a boat, along with tools, a weaving sword, 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:27.720 a wetstone, and a sickle. Next, there is a traditional 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.000 Irish breed of goat that is known as the Old 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:35.680 Irish goat, which just delights me such a simple, straightforward name. 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.600 This goat is bred for both meat and milk. According 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:44.320 to research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, today's 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:49.080 Old Irish goats have a continuous lineage stretching back to 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:53.200 at least the Late Bronze Age roughly eleven hundred to 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.800 nine hundred BCE. This conclusion came from analysis of goat 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.920 remains at an iron Age Hill Fort. These are the 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.240 oldest goat remains found in Ireland. 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.280 The old Irish goat is a rare breed today and 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:12.120 there are small faral herds of them in parts of Ireland. 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.760 Wild goats play a part in Irish folklore, so these 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.640 goats have an ongoing connection to Irish culture and history 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:23.240 and animal domestication and husbandry in Ireland. 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.960 According to research published in the journal Nature Communications, there 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:32.840 was a sophisticated long distance trading network for parrots in 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:37.520 the Andes Mountains in coastal Peru that predated the establishment 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:41.240 of the Inca Empire. This conclusion came from analysis on 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:46.240 parrot feathers from Pachacomic, which was a religious center that 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:51.440 was well outside the bird's native range. Researchers used DNA sequencing, 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:56.440 isotope chemistry, and computational landscape modeling to determine where the 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.400 birds came from and where they were taken. In the 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:04.199 words of doctor George Ollah from the Australian National University 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.800 A and You, who is the paper's lead author, quote 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:11.439 our ancient habitat modeling confirmed that the western side of 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:15.160 the Andes was just as inhospitable to these species one 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.320 thousand years ago as it is today. These parrots are 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:23.240 strictly rainforest dwellers, with a natural home range of around 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.680 one hundred and fifty kilometers. The fact that they ended 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.600 up more than five hundred kilometers away on the other 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:34.560 side of South America's highest mountain range proves human intervention. 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.920 They do not naturally fly over the Andes. Researchers from 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:44.119 the University of Liverpool have published work on the development 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:49.360 and spread of early domesticated dogs. This includes work from 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.400 a rock shelter in Anatolia where people and dogs stayed 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:58.560 together roughly fifteen thousand, eight hundred years ago. These people 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:02.240 buried their dead, and they also buried their dogs in 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.239 a way that was very similar to human burials. 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.200 Professor Doug Baird of the University of Liverpool was quoted 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.640 as saying the archaeology makes clear that these dogs were 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:17.280 close companions of humans. Isotope analysis showing the dogs ate fish, 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.840 a major element of the human diet, and like humans, 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.280 were carefully buried in the rock shelter near human burial, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:29.520 thereby receiving ritualized treatment analogous to the humans. These people 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:33.600 hunted animals like wild sheep and dangerous wild cattle, so 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.120 it seems likely that these animals were hunting, but also 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.000 possibly guard dogs, given the presence of large predators like 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:46.720 wolves and leopards in Central Anatolia at that time. And lastly, 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:50.960 we have a depiction of an animal. A hiker on 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.719 the island of Majorca in Spain found a tiny bronze 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.960 bull's head. It is roughly three thousand years old. This 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.600 is one of only four more such skull representations ever 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:05.360 found on the island, and it is little. It's a 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.880 little more than an inch long. This hiker delivered the 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.320 fine two authorities and the plan is for it to 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.959 be placed in a museum. It is time to take 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:16.840 a little sponsor break and then we'll be back to 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:21.720 talk about art. 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:32.160 Okay, now for some art. A professor who specializes in 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.679 rock art research has partnered with traditional owners in Australia 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:43.200 to study fourteen newly documented images of the extinct Tasmanian 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:49.200 tiger or thyloside. These images are from two different locations 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:54.960 in Northern Territory. There are also pictures of Tasmanian devils. Today, 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:59.360 Tasmanian devils live only on Tasmania, but they used to 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.080 live on the Australian mainland as well. 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:04.680 They look nothing like that cartoon. 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.400 They really don't as and Tasmanian tigers don't look that 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.280 much like tigers either. Some of these artworks are believed 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:14.680 to be less than a thousand years old, and the 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.240 Tasmanian devil is believed to have been extinct on the 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.840 mainland three thousand years ago. This has raised some questions 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.360 about whether the paintings were made by someone who had 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:28.800 seen a living Tasmanian devil, meaning that they survived longer 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:32.360 on the mainland than was previously thought. The paper on 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:36.520 this find, which was published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania, 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:41.400 also includes information from Aboriginal oral histories about these animals 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:47.120 and their cultural importance. In other rock art news, researchers 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:51.400 in France have used carbon fourteen dating to directly estimate 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:53.959 the age of several pieces of. 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:55.080 Black line art. 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:58.440 This is the first time carbon fourteen dating has been 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:02.640 used directly off art in this region because it was 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.559 believed that all of the pigments that were used were 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.880 made of metals that didn't contain any carbon, so there 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.720 would have been no carbon fourteen to test. 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:16.560 This team used non invasive methods to test the composition 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:20.560 of the pigments used in two figures. They found traces 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.280 of charcoal, and the distribution of the charcoal was consistent 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:26.760 enough that it seemed like part of the pigment and 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.000 not like contamination from some of their point in history. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:34.920 They extracted extremely small amounts of this pigment for testing 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.920 and concluded that one of the figures dates to about 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.600 thirteen thousand years before the present, while the other had 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.800 pigment that seemed to come from two different time periods, 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.680 the first about eighty five hundred years before the present 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.720 and the other more likely fifteen thousand years before the present. 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:56.400 It is possible that this was an older artwork that 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:00.960 was retouched or altered thousands of years later. A painting 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:05.680 by Italian Renaissance artist sophonisba Anguisola was thought to have 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.920 been lost, but has now resurfaced. It turns out it 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.400 was bought by a private collector in nineteen seventy seven. 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:17.720 The painting's current owners are relatives of the person who 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.960 bought it, and they looked into the painting's history after 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.680 seeing a lecture on the artist, which was presented by 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.880 the National Gallery of Art in twenty twenty four. This 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:31.520 painting was publicly displayed for the first time since then 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:36.520 this past February. This portrait is called Portrait of a 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:40.760 canon Regular and it depicts a clergyman whose identity is unknown. 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.920 Sophonisba Anguisola was one of the few women artists to 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.840 become really recognized during the Renaissance, and fewer than twenty 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:51.960 signed paintings of hers have survived until today. 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:59.680 Speaking of resurfaced Renaissance art, a previously unknown postcard sized 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:05.800 drawing by German Renaissance artist Hans Baldengrin has been found 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:10.800 among the possessions of the descendants of Susannah Fefinger, who 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:15.440 sat for this portrait back in fifteen seventeen. The portrait 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.120 was done in silver point on paper that was treated 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:20.880 with bone powder, and it was part of a collection 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.720 of artwork that the family had taken in for valuation. 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.960 This is the only known silver point work from this 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:32.320 artist that is still in a private collection. Back in 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:36.200 nineteen eighty three, a mold was found at an archaeological 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.400 site at a Slavic hillfort in Spandau, which is one 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:42.680 of the burrows of Berlin today. This mold would have 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:45.640 been used to cast a small devotional object in the 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.640 shape of a wheel cross or a cross that's in 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:52.800 a circle. In January, a find was announced from a 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:57.400 site in Javelan, Germany, roughly seventy kilometers away, which is 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:00.560 a bronze wheel cross that was made with the mold, 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:04.040 which was found by a volunteer using a metal detector. 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.360 These date back to the tenth or eleventh century and 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.360 they're two of the oldest Christian artifacts in the region, 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:15.880 dating back to when it was first being Christianized. Archaeologists 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:20.720 have found fragments of decorated ostrich egg shells at sites 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:25.680 in Namibia and South Africa. These shells were used as 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.040 water vessels more than sixty thousand years ago, and people 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:35.240 decorated them by engraving them. Researchers analyzed the engravings on 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.680 one hundred and twelve fragments and found that eighty of 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:45.160 them had what they described as coherent special regularities. That is, 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:49.080 they had patterns of parallel lines or patterns of the 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:52.720 same angle being used over and over. Some of them 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:57.080 had repeating grids and diamond shaped motifs, which are the 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:02.600 most complex designs patterns are very consistent. They showed an 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:07.080 ability not only to repeat an etching consistently, but also 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.240 to plan it out so that these patterns and lines 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:16.840 would cover the desired space in a regular way over 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:20.919 the curved surface of an ostrich egg So this is 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:25.399 basically more advanced thinking than might have been expected from 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.920 people who were living sixty thousand years ago. I don't 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.560 think I could just plan out in my head a 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.119 bunch of etchings on an ostrich eggshell and have it 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:37.240 come out evenly. 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:38.360 I don't know. 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:40.440 I bet if you did it a bunch you could 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:43.040 maybe eventually with a lot of practice. 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.880 Right, it's mastery. We are going to wrap up our 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:50.320 art talk with some art acquisitions that made headlines over 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.960 the last few months. The Italian government paid almost thirty 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:58.080 five million dollars for a Caravaggio portrait. The portrait of 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.520 Monsignor Maffeo Barbrini, who would later become Pope Urban the 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:05.080 eighth had been on loan to the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:06.720 Now it is. 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:10.800 Part of the permanent collection at the Palazzo. The National 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.720 Gallery of Arts in Washington, d C. Has acquired Mary 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:20.840 Magdalen in Ecstasy by past podcast subject Artemisia Gentileski. This 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:26.520 is the first Gentileeskie painting in the museum's collection and. 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.960 A museum I love desperately. The Dali Museum in Saint Petersburg, 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:35.360 Florida acquired Salvador Dali's largest painting at auction for two 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:40.280 hundred ninety three thousand, two hundred forty dollars. This painting 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:44.119 was a strange landscape created as a stage set for Bacchanal, 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.440 which was a surrealist ballet that premiered at the Metropolitan 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.320 Opera in New York in nineteen thirty nine. It is 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.400 made of thirteen panels and four canvases and measures sixty 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:59.440 five by one hundred feet. Dali also wrote a libretto 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:01.520 and designed costumes for this production. 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.200 Now we will get into the edibles and potables, which 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.920 are always one of my favorites. The four corners potato 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:13.399 is a small, nutritionally very dense potato that people in 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.720 southwestern North America have been growing for millennia. 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:18.160 Today it is. 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.760 Still eaten and used for spiritual and medicinal purposes. Research 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.800 published in the journal plus one has looked at its 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:30.879 history and early domestication by both examining more than four 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:35.840 hundred stone tools and by interviewing indigenous elders. 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:41.040 Those tools came from fourteen archaeological sites beyond the Four 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:46.200 Corners Potatoes natural range. The team looked at large slabs 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:50.480 and handheld stones used for grinding and found microscopic potato 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:54.360 starch granules on tools from nine of the fourteen sites. 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.120 Four of the site showed consistent use of the potato 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.159 stretching as far back as ten t thousand years ago. 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.920 Hope and Denay elders who were interviewed nearly all had 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:11.160 knowledge of this potato and Denay women, in particular, new 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:13.920 techniques on how to process and prepare them to make 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:18.840 them less bitter. Denay doctoral candidate Cynthia Wilson, who's a 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.159 co author of this study, was quoted as saying, quote 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.840 the mobility of indigenous food ways was driven by kinship 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:32.159 based practices across the landscape. Indigenous knowledge holders, especially matrilineal women, 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:37.560 held onto these seedlings and stories across generations to sustain 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:43.160 ties to ancestral land and food ways. This research combines 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:45.960 with other work to suggest the Indigenous people in the 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:52.080 American Southwest domesticated the Four Corners potato. This contradicts earlier 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.760 assumptions that the domesticated crops grown in the Southwest were 0:20:55.800 --> 0:21:01.119 not domesticated there, but were domesticated in America and then 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:06.840 introduced from there. This new information also augments other research 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:11.440 and suggests that now perhaps agave, barley, and amaranths were 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:15.879 all cultivated in North America. Researchers working at sites in 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:20.520 what's now Ukraine have used the preserved proteins and dental 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:25.640 calculus to confirm that Iron age Scythians consumed milk from 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.920 horses as well as from cattle, sheep, and goats. There 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:34.800 are historical accounts describing Scythians as consuming mayre's milk, but 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:39.400 this is the first physical evidence of that. Only one 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.280 of the twenty eight individuals in the study showed evidence 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.399 of consuming horse milk, so it doesn't seem like something 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.679 that was common, at least among this particular group of people. 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:53.280 It is possible that the proteins in horse milk did 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.399 not survive as well in the dental calculus as proteins. 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:00.280 From the milk of other animals. Since the Scythians are 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.480 becoming understood as a culturally and ethnically diverse group rather 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.119 than more of a homogeneous culture. It is possible that 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:12.000 there were also cultural differences involved, or there could have 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.679 been cultural factors involved, and who was caring for the 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:17.720 horses and thus who was consuming horse milk. 0:22:18.560 --> 0:22:22.600 Someone at an estate sale in Minnesota found a silver 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:26.040 pap boat and recognized it as the work of nineteenth 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:30.160 century silversmith Peter Benson, who was born in Saint Croix 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:33.280 and later moved to Philadelphia. He was one of the 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:37.640 first known silversmiths of African descent in the United States. 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.679 Fewer than thirty pieces made by Benson are known to 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:45.119 have survived until today, and they are identifiable through a 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:48.080 hallmark which he used to see their pee Benson or 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:52.080 as his initials. So a pap boat is a little 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:54.760 like a gravy boat, but it was used to feed 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.080 a thin porridge or pap to babies and too sick people. 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.080 This pap boat was purchased at the estate sale for 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:05.399 forty dollars and then it was sold at auction for 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:10.040 twenty four thousand dollars. The buyer was reportedly a prominent 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:14.040 American institution, but that institution has not been named. 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:18.320 Research published in the journal plus one has used a 0:23:18.359 --> 0:23:21.359 combination of techniques to look at the residues left on 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:26.159 pottery dating back to the third through the sixth millennium BCE. 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:32.439 We talk about food residues on pottery fairly often on 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:37.200 unearthed but often the focus is on fatty residues, and 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:41.639 that largely limits the results to residues that came from animals. 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:47.320 This research used a combination of techniques, including microscopic examination 0:23:47.520 --> 0:23:52.040 and chemical analysis to try to instead look for plant residues. 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:57.600 This involved fifty eight pieces of pottery from thirteen archaeological 0:23:57.680 --> 0:24:02.199 sites across northern and eastern US. The team found tissue 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:06.360 samples from an assortment of plants, including grasses, berries, leaves, 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:10.680 and seeds. Often there were animal remains as well, most 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:14.960 often fish or some other kind of seafood. The combination 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:18.800 of ingredients seemed to vary, but suggested that people had 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:22.439 already developed complex culinary traditions by this point. 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:23.240 Yeah. 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:26.720 I think sometimes people imagine people from thousands and thousands 0:24:26.760 --> 0:24:29.479 of years ago just like spearing a fish on a 0:24:29.520 --> 0:24:33.560 stick and charring it over a fire. This was more 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:34.760 nuanced than that. 0:24:35.040 --> 0:24:37.879 They were very picky about their plating. 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:44.080 Grounds keeper working on a golf course in England noticed 0:24:44.119 --> 0:24:47.520 a sinkhole that had turned out to be a brick 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:50.879 wine cellar that was abandoned more than one hundred years ago. 0:24:51.520 --> 0:24:55.119 This wine cellar probably belonged to a manner in the 0:24:55.200 --> 0:24:57.440 area that was torn down at the end of the 0:24:57.520 --> 0:25:01.960 nineteenth century. The cellar so was full of wine and 0:25:02.160 --> 0:25:07.280 port models which were now empty. I was unclear on 0:25:07.359 --> 0:25:10.800 whether they were empty when the wine cellar was abandoned, 0:25:10.920 --> 0:25:16.160 or whether their corks degraded at what was inside evaporated 0:25:16.320 --> 0:25:20.680 or spilled, or what exactly. For now, though, the cellar 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:22.920 has been sealed up while the staff at the golf 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:26.359 course figure out what they should do about it make. 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:30.760 It a gaming room. Speaking of wine, research published in 0:25:30.760 --> 0:25:33.960 the journal Nature has looked at four thousand years of 0:25:34.040 --> 0:25:38.840 viticulture in France. This has involved extracting DNA from forty 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:43.400 nine grape seeds found at various archaeological sites. The oldest 0:25:43.520 --> 0:25:46.679 came from wild grape vines, but what is being described 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:50.840 as essentially identical to pino noir grapes that are grown today. 0:25:51.880 --> 0:25:54.560 That one came from a toilet at a fifteenth century 0:25:54.600 --> 0:25:59.440 hospital at Valenciennes in northern France. This suggests that people 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:02.480 have been propagating grapes through cloning for more than five 0:26:02.560 --> 0:26:08.560 hundred years. Researchers have studied maize or corn samples in 0:26:08.680 --> 0:26:12.520 thirty five tombs from the Chincha Valley and they found 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:17.480 that the samples had exceptionally high levels of nitrogen. There 0:26:17.520 --> 0:26:20.840 was a lot more nitrogen in them than could have 0:26:20.960 --> 0:26:23.720 just come from the soil in the area. So this 0:26:23.800 --> 0:26:27.120 suggests that the Chincha Kingdom, which lived in what's now 0:26:27.240 --> 0:26:32.000 Peru before the development of the Inca Empire, fertilized its crops, 0:26:32.400 --> 0:26:37.440 probably with seabird guatto that was harvested from the Chincha Islands. 0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:41.800 Researchers believe this use of fertilizer was a factor in 0:26:41.960 --> 0:26:45.760 how this kingdom became one of the wealthiest and most 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:50.840 powerful societies in their era. Basically, they had crops that 0:26:50.920 --> 0:26:53.520 had a lot better yield than some of their neighbors 0:26:53.560 --> 0:26:56.880