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 treasure trove was enormous. It's a recent
Speaker 1: discovery in northwest Saudi Arabia. In fact, just this summer,
Speaker 1: archaeologists published their findings after years of work. What they
Speaker 1: found stunned them. A massive stockpile deep underground in the
Speaker 1: natural tunnel, formed by a hollow lava tube, and the
Speaker 1: horde inside hundreds of thousands of treasures. It's a find
Speaker 1: that overshadows the usual hordes that are turned up these
Speaker 1: days by folks with metal detectors and a keen sense
Speaker 1: of ancient burial sites. For instance, someone recently set the
Speaker 1: new record for finding the largest Old English treasure hoard.
Speaker 1: As important as their discovery is, it was just one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one gold coins and four more odd
Speaker 1: gold objects. That discovery outshines the famous Sutton Who burial ship,
Speaker 1: which had only offered up thirty seven coins to archaeologists.
Speaker 1: By comparison, the massive scale of the lava tube treasure
Speaker 1: surpasses it all by far. We can start to make
Speaker 1: sense of that, though, when we realized just how long
Speaker 1: it took the hoarders to work their stockpile. It was
Speaker 1: the work of generations, you see. Once archaeologists started dating
Speaker 1: the objects the unearthed from the horde, they found that
Speaker 1: the oldest was placed there nearly seven thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: In other places they might not have survived. It was
Speaker 1: the extremely dry conditions of the lava tube that preserved them.
Speaker 1: But they're not just old. The most recent items date
Speaker 1: to about the middle sixteen hundreds. That means that to
Speaker 1: create this underground collection in the darkness of the lava tube,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the work of generations, but the work
Speaker 1: of millennia. Not that it's a treasure that would attract
Speaker 1: anyone though, because this is slightly unusual for a horde.
Speaker 1: It wasn't gold or coins, or even an ancient ship.
Speaker 1: It was a burial mound though. That's right. The collection
Speaker 1: was a horde of bones. They were densely packed into
Speaker 1: the lava tube, stretching away into the darkness, and as
Speaker 1: the researchers started to pull them out, test their ages,
Speaker 1: catalog them, and take notes, they began to see that
Speaker 1: this bone horde contained pieces from over fourteen different species
Speaker 1: and included the bones of cows, camels, horses, rodents, and
Speaker 1: a lot more. The study got really serious though, when
Speaker 1: they checked the bones from markings. Sure they found cuts,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's what you'd expect, but they also found
Speaker 1: the marks of teeth. These bones had been chewed, some
Speaker 1: were even partially digect trusted. That tells us that these
Speaker 1: bones weren't just a burial mound for the dead. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing, it wasn't like these were just the
Speaker 1: bones of cows and goats. Know what the researchers found
Speaker 1: gave them a chill because some of the bones were human.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's human skull fragments that were found among
Speaker 1: the other nod bones. But what archaeologists guess about these
Speaker 1: skulls is even more gruesome than that. If we go
Speaker 1: by their best guests, they think these skulls were scavenged
Speaker 1: from graves after the bodies of the dead were buried.
Speaker 1: Someone from the clan of hoarders came through sniff them
Speaker 1: out and dug them up. Then they lugged them back
Speaker 1: to the lava tunnel, where they added them to a
Speaker 1: treasure trove. After they gave those skulls a good chew,
Speaker 1: of course, and one of the archaeologists even suggested that
Speaker 1: these skull caps with tooth marks are the only thing
Speaker 1: to survive because the hoarders chewed the rest to splinters.
Speaker 1: The pieces of skull candy only survived because they didn't
Speaker 1: taste quite as good. All of that would be truly
Speaker 1: horrifying if the family packing the lava two with bones
Speaker 1: for seven thousand years was human, But as you may
Speaker 1: have guessed by now, this family was something else. No,
Speaker 1: the builders of this massive treasure trove weren't people, but hyenas.
Speaker 1: Striped hyenas. That is, these days they're a threatened species,
Speaker 1: but they used to be a mainstay of the region.
Speaker 1: So breathe a sigh of relief. But to me, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's a family of hyenas passing on the
Speaker 1: work of a major treasure trove from parent to child,
Speaker 1: that makes seven thousand years of stockpiling skeletons all the
Speaker 1: more impressive. By all accounts, he was a nice man.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of history to unpack around Henry the
Speaker 1: First of England, so much that it reads like an
Speaker 1: early draft of Game of Thrones. Henry and his older
Speaker 1: brother's Roberts and William, were born to William the Conqueror.
Speaker 1: Upon their father's death, the older sons were given land
Speaker 1: and power, but Henry was not. He spent much of
Speaker 1: his time conspiring with William against Robert in an attempt
Speaker 1: to rise to power. The brothers fought often Joscelyn for
Speaker 1: land and control. None trusted the other, but both seemed
Speaker 1: to have trusted Henry the least honestly. After reading through
Speaker 1: the events, it's a wonder the brothers didn't kill each other,
Speaker 1: although for a while some historians wondered if one of
Speaker 1: them had succeeded. In early August of eleven hundred, an
Speaker 1: arrow ended King William's life with no male heir. Robert
Speaker 1: and Henry fought bitterly over the kingdom, and in the
Speaker 1: end Henry was hastily crowned king. He settled into the kingdom,
Speaker 1: marrying and having two children with Queen Matilda and countless
Speaker 1: other children with various mistresses. He enjoyed all the riches
Speaker 1: the life of a king offered, including power, women, and food.
Speaker 1: The royals had an appetite for the unusual, including swans
Speaker 1: and peacocks. The king had a fetish for fish. Often
Speaker 1: he overindulged in his favorite lamp rays, a type of
Speaker 1: eel found in Brooks rivers and the sea. Henry was
Speaker 1: so fond of the dish he ate them cooked in
Speaker 1: wine and even in a pie. Unfortunately for him, his
Speaker 1: favorite dish caused considerable digestive upset, despite his doctor's warnings
Speaker 1: to stop eating them. Though the new king believed that
Speaker 1: as the king he was free to do as he wished.
Speaker 1: That mentality went far beyond the dinner table. Though He
Speaker 1: had a man thrown from the top of the castle,
Speaker 1: and he imprisoned his brother. After his second brother, Robert, invaded,
Speaker 1: Henry had him locked away for the remainder of his life.
Speaker 1: His quest for land and power had a king traveling
Speaker 1: extensively to the queen. However, never trusted ships or anything
Speaker 1: from the sea, and stayed behind. Henry ruled harshly. It
Speaker 1: was often quite brutal, which, as you might imagine, didn't
Speaker 1: endear him to the people of England. Neighboring kingdoms weren't
Speaker 1: exactly fond of him either, and though they tried to
Speaker 1: challenge his authority, Henry stayed in pound Her After his
Speaker 1: son drowned in eleven twenty, leaving his succession in peril.
Speaker 1: Henry took a second wife, although they remained childless after that,
Speaker 1: forcing the king to declare his daughter with his first
Speaker 1: wife his heir. He quickly married her off to Geoffrey
Speaker 1: of Anjou. Henry's relationship with his daughter, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: was rather strained, causing fighting to break out along the
Speaker 1: new couple's borders and her father's, but at least he
Speaker 1: had his health right one late November, when King Henry
Speaker 1: was in his sixties, he arrived in Normandy for some hunting.
Speaker 1: By the end of the trip though he'd fallen ill.
Speaker 1: Days later, it became clear that he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: make it, so he summoned the archbishop along with members
Speaker 1: of the court. They settled his estate and wishes, and
Speaker 1: then he died on December one of eleven thirty five.
Speaker 1: Parts of Henry's internal organs were buried in Normandy and
Speaker 1: his body lay in state for an extended period. Finally,
Speaker 1: he was returned to England and buried on his birthday
Speaker 1: in a ceremony attended by the church and nobles. News
Speaker 1: of the king's death spread quickly, and despite Henry's last
Speaker 1: wishes that his daughter become queen, a civil war known
Speaker 1: as the Anarchy began, lasting eighteen years. The official cause
Speaker 1: of King Henry the first death. It hadn't been a
Speaker 1: hunting accident like William's demise decades before. No, Henry's death
Speaker 1: took a more bizarre twist. You see, during his stay
Speaker 1: in Normandy, a host serve the king his favorite food
Speaker 1: and all you can eat buffet of eel, as the
Speaker 1: British like to say, Henry couldn't resist, and tucked in.
Speaker 1: Within a week he was dead. It's not clear if
Speaker 1: the meal had caused acute gastritis or if the king's
Speaker 1: death had been a case of food poisoning. Either way,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder what they ate at the funeral feast.
Speaker 1: Was it lamp ray pie or did the thought of
Speaker 1: that simply make them feel a little eel. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,