Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: This is part two of our Unearthed episodes for the
Speaker 2: first few months of twenty twenty five. This is where
Speaker 2: we talk about things that have been literally and figuratively
Speaker 2: unearthed over the last few months, as we so often do.
Speaker 2: We're starting with things that are just kind of a
Speaker 2: mix of topics, which I call the potpourri because I
Speaker 2: used to watch a lot of Jeopardy. Our Potpourrix this
Speaker 2: time around is going to kick off with a lengthier
Speaker 2: discussion of what seemed like one of the biggest news
Speaker 2: stories of the quarter, at least in unearthed terms, and
Speaker 2: that's the identity of Jack the Ripper. This is kind
Speaker 2: of like the Voyage Manuscript, where it comes up every
Speaker 2: couple of years, where someone has cracked.
Speaker 1: Nats for a long time.
Speaker 2: It felt almost annual Voyage Manuscript. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: lot of chatter about Jack the Ripper on social media
Speaker 2: and people asked if we had seen that Jack the
Speaker 2: Ripper had been identified as Aaron Kaminski, a twenty three
Speaker 2: year old Polish man who worked in Whitechapel where those
Speaker 2: famous murders happened. Police files from the time named Kaminski
Speaker 2: as a suspect, but it's not one hundred percent clear
Speaker 2: whether Aaron Kaminski is the Kaminsky those police files were
Speaker 2: talking about. So this conclusion of him as the perpetrator
Speaker 2: came from DNA research on a shawl that was claimed
Speaker 2: to have been found next to the body of Catherine
Speaker 2: Edo's when she was killed in eighteen eighty eight. There
Speaker 2: are some question marks here too. There is not really
Speaker 2: a clear chain of custody for this shawl, and police
Speaker 2: reports don't mention a shawl among Eto's belongings, So that's
Speaker 2: why a lot of the times when people reference to
Speaker 2: the shawl, they describe it as being quote claimed to
Speaker 2: have been found near the body. Even if this really
Speaker 2: was a shawl that belonged to Catherine Edos, a lot
Speaker 2: of people would have handled it between eighteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: and now, especially in the years prior to the understanding
Speaker 2: of DNA and other things as evidence. It could be
Speaker 2: left on an object that raises a lot of questions
Speaker 2: about who all's DNA might be on there researchers compared
Speaker 2: mitochondrial DNA from this shawl to that of living people
Speaker 2: related to both Catherine Edos and Aaron Kaminski and said
Speaker 2: that the results do suggest a connection. It's also likely
Speaker 2: that some of the DNA came from someone with brown
Speaker 2: hair and brown eyes that matches up with eyewitness statements
Speaker 2: from the time of the murderers. This research was published
Speaker 2: in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which is peer reviewed,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the recent chatter about this has
Speaker 2: made it sound as though it is one hundred percent conclusive. However,
Speaker 2: there are all of those question marks that we already mentioned,
Speaker 2: and to add to that, a number of experts have
Speaker 2: weighed in with questions about the DNA research itself, like
Speaker 2: some have said that mitochondrial DNA can only be used
Speaker 2: to rule someone out as a relative, not to conclusively
Speaker 2: confirm a connection. The researchers who did this work also
Speaker 2: didn't publish their data in detail, so it is impossible
Speaker 2: for others to independently confirm their interpretations of that data.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have brown hair and brown eyes.
Speaker 1: I did it. I somehow have traveled through time, and
Speaker 1: I'm a monster. To add another layer, to this. These
Speaker 1: latest headlines seem to trace back to an appearance by
Speaker 1: Russell Edwards, who acquired that shawl in two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven and gave it to a biochemist for testing, and
Speaker 1: those tests were part of Edwards's book Naming Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 1: which came out in twenty fourteen. One of the criticisms
Speaker 1: of the book at that time was that there was
Speaker 1: very little detail about the actual research. The article later
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences does have more detail,
Speaker 1: but it's still not complete, and the journal published additional
Speaker 1: letters to the editor criticizing it in the following months. Today,
Speaker 1: the journal article is accompanied by an expression of concern
Speaker 1: that references the letters to the editor and the original
Speaker 1: author's responses, and says this quote. During the investigation, the
Speaker 1: publisher and editor in chief made every effort to obtain
Speaker 1: from the authors the original raw data from the mtDNA analysis. However,
Speaker 1: the authors stated that the data were no longer available
Speaker 1: due to instrument data failure and other complications. Through further investigation,
Speaker 1: it was concluded that because it was not possible to
Speaker 1: examine the original data, no determination could be made regarding
Speaker 1: the third party complaints, so this Journal.
Speaker 2: Article came out in twenty nineteen. It does not appear
Speaker 2: that any new research has been done in the years
Speaker 2: since then, so it just seems like this latest round
Speaker 2: of headlines grew out of an interview that Russell Edwards
Speaker 2: did with Today Australia in which he called for a
Speaker 2: new inquest into the murders, and not from any actual
Speaker 2: new developments in the case. There was just a lot
Speaker 2: of headline action about Jack the Ripper case solved, but
Speaker 2: like that, nothing new happened here that I can tell.
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper read the Voyniche manuscript.
Speaker 2: I did done, so I had like gone and I'd
Speaker 2: tracked down the Journal article and I just bookmarked it
Speaker 2: to come back to later.
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize that the Journal.
Speaker 2: Article was from twenty nineteen until I was putting it
Speaker 2: in the source list for the episode and went, wait,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, what is happening.
Speaker 1: Next? Staff at the Barringer Crawford Museum in Kentucky were
Speaker 1: going through their collections in preparations for the museum's seventy
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary celebration, and they found an eighty year old
Speaker 1: Japanese hand grenade. Since they weren't sure whether this was
Speaker 1: live or not. They contacted law enforcement and the bomb
Speaker 1: squad determined that it was inactive and safe. It is
Speaker 1: a type ninety seven grenade, which when live, is filled
Speaker 1: with TNT and it weighs about a pound.
Speaker 2: Next, research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science concludes
Speaker 2: that the ancient peoples of the Philippines and islands Southeast
Speaker 2: Asia may have developed advanced seafaring technologies as far back
Speaker 2: as forty thousand years ago. That's actually prior to the
Speaker 2: development of Polynesian wayfinding. This is involved work at archaeological
Speaker 2: sites that have unearthed tools that were probably used to
Speaker 2: make ropes, nets, and bindings. All of these would have
Speaker 2: been used in both boat building and in making fishing nets.
Speaker 1: But then the.
Speaker 2: Natural materials used to make the boats and the nets
Speaker 2: probably would not have survived those forty thousand years in
Speaker 2: the island's environment. There's also some archaeological evidence of deep
Speaker 2: sea fishing, including hooks and weights, which can only be
Speaker 2: done with a sophisticated enough boat. This kind of up
Speaker 2: ends assumptions that the peoples of the Philippines and these
Speaker 2: parts of Southeast Asia did not have like advanced boating technologies.
Speaker 1: And our last bit of popoury. Archaeologists outside of Gloucester,
Speaker 1: England have found what's been described as a Roman era
Speaker 1: service station, that is, a Roman mutacio or horse changing station,
Speaker 1: where people could rest, refresh themselves, and care for or
Speaker 1: change out their horses. They have found horse bones, bridles,
Speaker 1: and hippo sandals which were essentially Roman horseshoes, along with
Speaker 1: lots of coins, jewelry, and the remains of ovens. It's
Speaker 1: been pointed out that this find is kind of ironic
Speaker 1: since it's a roadside resting point for travelers being unearthed
Speaker 1: in advance of road construction.
Speaker 2: Yes, part of me is like that is ironic, and
Speaker 2: part of me is like a lot of times roads
Speaker 2: are where people needed them to be, so having another
Speaker 2: road later makes a lot of sense. Next, we've got
Speaker 2: a few things that were discovered through some combination of
Speaker 2: drone imaging, radar and lightar. First unmanned aerial vehicle scans
Speaker 2: have revealed what's being described as a mega fortress in
Speaker 2: the Caucasus Mountains. There had been previous physical work at
Speaker 2: the site, including some that was scheduled at a time
Speaker 2: of the year when the grass died back so that
Speaker 2: it would be easier to visualize, but it seemed like
Speaker 2: it was just too big to get a sense of
Speaker 2: it from the ground. So this drone took almost eleven
Speaker 2: thousand pictures, which were then used to create a high
Speaker 2: resolution map of the whole site with software that created
Speaker 2: an elevation map from those different reference points in the pictures.
Speaker 2: It turns out that this site is about forty times
Speaker 2: bigger than within was originally thought when they thought this
Speaker 2: is so big, we need to look at it from
Speaker 2: the air. These kinds of fortress settlements were built are
Speaker 2: in the area around fifteen hundred to five hundred BCE.
Speaker 1: Next, researchers in Mexico have used lightar scans to map
Speaker 1: a fifteenth century city built by the indigenous Zeppotech people
Speaker 1: at a site that was believed to be only a
Speaker 1: soldier's garrison. This city included more than one thousand structures
Speaker 1: and two point five miles of walls. Researcher Pedro Guillermo
Speaker 1: ramon Selie described the city as very well preserved. It's
Speaker 1: believed that the people who were living there relocated to
Speaker 1: another city shortly before the Spanish arrived in the area.
Speaker 2: Next, in Peru, searchers have used acoustic prospecting and ground
Speaker 2: penetrating radar to find secret tunnels known as chinkana under
Speaker 2: the city of Cusco. It's not really known what purpose
Speaker 2: these tunnel networks served, but they were built by the
Speaker 2: Inca and they likely connected two Inca monuments in the city,
Speaker 2: as were a fortress and the Temple of the Sun.
Speaker 1: And lastly, researchers at Svorsa Castle in Milan, Italy have
Speaker 1: used ground penetrating radar to find numerous passages, some of
Speaker 1: which may have been built by the military for secret purposes.
Speaker 1: Some of these passages are referenced in historical documents and
Speaker 1: shown in sketches done by Leonardo da Vinci. But in
Speaker 1: addition to confirming these already documented passageways, these scans reveal
Speaker 1: additional passages that were previously unknown. Let's take a little
Speaker 1: sponsor break and then we'll come back with some books
Speaker 1: and letters. We are picking back up with.
Speaker 2: Some books and letters. First, a man cleaning out his
Speaker 2: father's attic found a ton of papers related to Winnie
Speaker 2: the Pooh. The attic belonged to Leslie Smith, who had
Speaker 2: worked in publishing, and these papers included a lot of
Speaker 2: correspondents about the Winnie the Pooh books, including original manuscripts
Speaker 2: and corrected proofs of Now We Are Six and the
Speaker 2: House at Pooh Corner. There was also some correspondence among
Speaker 2: the papers with other British authors, including Enid Blyton and J. R. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien.
Speaker 2: These materials were ultimately split up to be sold at auction.
Speaker 2: This really overshadows the Winnie the Pooh find we had
Speaker 2: on Unearthed a couple of years back, that was just
Speaker 2: one sketch drapped in a tea towel.
Speaker 1: Right. We have talked on the show about historical bookbinders
Speaker 1: recycling materials from old books when binding new ones, and
Speaker 1: that has led to some interesting historical finds over the years.
Speaker 1: It can be difficult to impossible to study these earlier
Speaker 1: materials without destroying the books that they became part of,
Speaker 1: but researchers at Leiden University have published work on one
Speaker 1: potential way to do it, with an endoscopic camera, adapting
Speaker 1: a technique that was originally developed to examine the insides
Speaker 1: of gun barrels. In particular, they used the camera in
Speaker 1: the spines of sixteenth and seventeenth century books that had
Speaker 1: been reinforced with strips of medieval manuscripts. They've also published
Speaker 1: a brief video on YouTube of what the camera sees
Speaker 1: as it travels down the inside of the book's spine.
Speaker 1: They've titled their paper Fragmendoscopy An Innovative Way to discover
Speaker 1: hidden heritage inside early modern book bindings.
Speaker 2: Next, archaeologists in France have found a line of sixty
Speaker 2: burial twenty one of which were found to contain lead
Speaker 2: cursed tablets. All of these appear to be men's graves
Speaker 2: dating back to the Roman era, but beyond that it
Speaker 2: is not really clear who they were or why why
Speaker 2: these curse tablets were involved. These curses were written on
Speaker 2: very thin sheets of lead, and the one whose inscription
Speaker 2: has been examined so far was written in the extinct
Speaker 2: Celtic language of Gaulish.
Speaker 1: I really like the idea of cursed tablets. I want
Speaker 1: to bring those back. Researchers in Iraq have found clay
Speaker 1: tablets containing Cuneiform writing at the Mesopotamian site of kurd Kaburstan.
Speaker 1: The tablets are the first of their kind in the
Speaker 1: area and they're still being interpreted, but it's hoped that
Speaker 1: they will shed more light on the people who were
Speaker 1: living there, as well as the city's connections to other
Speaker 1: parts of Mesopotamia. Other finds at the site include game
Speaker 1: boards and part of a structure. Researchers have pieced together
Speaker 1: the oldest known runestone in Norway after determining that stones
Speaker 1: that were found in multiple grave sites were all fragments
Speaker 1: that fit together, that breaking and distribution of the stone
Speaker 1: probably being something that was done intentionally. Since these were
Speaker 1: found in burial sites, it was possible to use other
Speaker 1: materials that was buried along with them to more conclusively
Speaker 1: date them. According to radiocarbon dating, this was made sometime
Speaker 1: between fifty BCE and two seventy five CE. While the
Speaker 1: fragments fit together, the engravings on them aren't continuous. There
Speaker 1: are clear sequences of runes, but also other markings that
Speaker 1: are a bit more ambiguous, so it's possible that the
Speaker 1: inscriptions were created by different people. Speaking of oldest, archaeologists
Speaker 1: in Spain have discovered what may be the earliest example
Speaker 1: of alphabetic writing in northern ib dating back to the
Speaker 1: Iron Age. This was found on a spindle whirl that
Speaker 1: was found back in twenty seventeen, but more recent analysis
Speaker 1: was what identified an inscription from the Celtiberian alphabet. This
Speaker 1: may have been a property marker and identity mark. Cel Tiberian,
Speaker 1: as that name suggests, was a continental Celtic language that's
Speaker 1: now extinct, and the inscribed letter resembles a capital letter V.
Speaker 1: We have another message in a bottle, this time around
Speaker 1: on on Earth than This one was found at Edinburgh's
Speaker 1: King's Theater. It was behind molding in the theatre's proscenium.
Speaker 1: A theater patron and donor found it during a tour
Speaker 1: of the building while renovation work is underway. He basically
Speaker 1: just stuck his hand up there and felt around. This
Speaker 1: bottle was sealed with wax, but conservators at Scottish Conservation
Speaker 1: Studio opened it. They found a note from October of
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six listing people involved with the building of
Speaker 1: the theater, including the bid architects, draftsmen, plasterers and foremen.
Speaker 1: The theater has gotten in touch with a genealogy service
Speaker 1: to look for descendants of the people that are listed
Speaker 1: on that note and are hoping that work will be
Speaker 1: done ahead of the theater's reopening next year. A researcher
Speaker 1: from Oxford University found a manuscript copy of Shakespeare's Sonnet
Speaker 1: one sixteen in a collection of seventeenth century poetry belonging
Speaker 1: to Elias Ashmole. Sonnet one sixteen is the one that starts,
Speaker 1: let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments.
Speaker 1: Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds,
Speaker 1: or bends when the remover to remove. It's one of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's more widely known sonnets today, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have been particularly popular closer to his lifetime. There's
Speaker 1: only one other manuscript copy of this sonnet that has
Speaker 1: ever been found before. It's also not.
Speaker 2: Exactly the same as the on at one sixteen that
Speaker 2: people would probably recognize today. It is a song adaptation
Speaker 2: by Henry Laws that includes six additional lines. It was
Speaker 2: included in a miscellany, that is a handwritten manuscript with
Speaker 2: texts by different authors included, and it was included alongside
Speaker 2: political writings, so in that context it's being interpreted as
Speaker 2: about political constancy rather than a constancy of romantic love.
Speaker 2: Ashmole was a Royalist, and this miscellany dates back to
Speaker 2: around the time of the English Civil Wars. Research published
Speaker 2: in the journal Humanities and Social Science Communications has tried
Speaker 2: to quantify how many medieval manuscripts were copied by female scribes.
Speaker 2: The idea that some of the scribes who copied these
Speaker 2: manuscripts were women is not a new one. On our
Speaker 2: last installment of on Earth, for example, we talked about
Speaker 2: illuminated manuscripts created by the poor players of Cologne, which
Speaker 2: they were known four. But this research tries to figure
Speaker 2: out just how many of these medieval texts were created
Speaker 2: by women. This research focused on the colophons, or short
Speaker 2: statements about the author that are included in a lot
Speaker 2: of manuscripts and used as a reference a Benedictine colofon catalog.
Speaker 2: That catalog includes twenty three thousand, seven hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: four colophons, and two hundred and fifty four of them,
Speaker 2: or one point one percent, seem to have been written
Speaker 2: by women. Extrapolated out to the total number of known
Speaker 2: illuminated manuscripts, that means at least one hundred and ten
Speaker 2: thousand of them were created by women, but this research
Speaker 2: suggests that this is likely a low estimate for women's
Speaker 2: contributions to medieval illuminated manuscripts. Not all manuscripts have a
Speaker 2: colophon and women may have been less likely to sign
Speaker 2: their work due to social and religious expects. It's also
Speaker 2: possible that works by women were more intentionally targeted during
Speaker 2: events like the Protestant Reformation, meaning we have few of
Speaker 2: them surviving today. Researchers also noted that the number of
Speaker 2: manuscripts by women escalated after about the year fourteen hundred,
Speaker 2: before dropping off again with advances in printing in Europe.
Speaker 2: And the last thing we're filing under books and letters
Speaker 2: is a map, possibly the world's oldest three dimensional map.
Speaker 2: This was found in a rock shelter in France, carved
Speaker 2: into sandstone about thirteen thousand years ago, and it shows
Speaker 2: the waterways and geomorphological features of the Ekeyle River Valley.
Speaker 2: It seems almost like an instruction manual for how to
Speaker 2: direct rainwater along specific paths in the valley. This is
Speaker 2: about three thousand years older than the previous oldest known
Speaker 2: three dimensional map, and.
Speaker 1: Now were moving on to animal finds. According to research
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, birds living near
Speaker 1: medieval towns like Oxford, Winchester and Northampton relied extensively on
Speaker 1: human food. This lines up with historical accounts that describe
Speaker 1: some birds, including red kites, stealing food from market stalls
Speaker 1: and even from people's hands. This research involved chemical analysis
Speaker 1: of the bones of eleven red kites, eighteen common buzzards,
Speaker 1: and three white tailed eagles, which suggested that some of
Speaker 1: them were living entirely on people's scraps, rather than by
Speaker 1: hunting live prey or scavenging the carcasses of wild animals.
Speaker 1: This means that the birds adapted to coexisting with people
Speaker 1: and that they served a role in the ecosystem of
Speaker 1: these cities.
Speaker 2: Next, researchers have found evidence suggesting that herders on the
Speaker 2: Iberian Peninsula were strategically managing their cattle as far back
Speaker 2: as six thousand years ago. This included seasonally moving them
Speaker 2: between pastures in the mountains and the lowlands, and also
Speaker 2: modifying their reproductive cycles so that calves would only be
Speaker 2: born in the summer when there was plenty of fresh
Speaker 2: pasture land available. This came from research into animal remains
Speaker 2: in Pixerel's Cave, which has been inhabited by people and
Speaker 2: animals going back to Neolithic times. About eighty percent of
Speaker 2: the animal remains there are from domestic cattle, which is
Speaker 2: unique on the Peninsula, and lastly, across eastern Europe. There
Speaker 2: are about seventy known mammoth bone circles that date back
Speaker 2: about twenty five thousand years. We don't really know what
Speaker 2: these bone circles were for, but one of the biggest
Speaker 2: ones is in Russia, about three hundred miles south of Moscow.
Speaker 2: It's called Kostenki eleven. It's about forty feet wide, and
Speaker 2: it includes the bones of at least sixty mammoths, totaling
Speaker 2: nearly three thousand bones. Research published in the journal Quaternary
Speaker 2: Environments and Humans has examined these bones and drawn some conclusions,
Speaker 2: although without really clearing up why our ancient ancestors were
Speaker 2: doing this. Obviously, these didn't all come from the same mammoth,
Speaker 2: but this research suggests that they also came from completely
Speaker 2: different herds that were not related to one another. They
Speaker 2: studied bones from thirty different animals, seventeen females and thirteen males.
Speaker 2: Some of the bones were hundreds of years older than
Speaker 2: the rest, suggesting that people may have used bones from
Speaker 2: freshly hunted mammoths as well as bones scavenged from much
Speaker 2: older kills or from bone beds where people discarded mammoth
Speaker 2: bones after processing the carcasses. Now we're going to take
Speaker 2: another quick sponsor break. Now moving on to edibles and potables.
Speaker 2: Archaeologists in China have been exploring the ways people used
Speaker 2: bone powder in cuisine roughly eight thousand years ago. This
Speaker 2: came from examination of pottery, vessels, and food crust remains
Speaker 2: from an archaeological site that was excavated in twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: and twenty eighteen. The researchers had initially been focused on
Speaker 2: studying alcohol making, but they wound up finding residue in
Speaker 2: the crusts that aligned with the composition of bone. They
Speaker 2: eventually concluded that the bone was ground up and cooked
Speaker 2: together with wild plants like acorns. They speculated that this
Speaker 2: was part of this society's transition from hunting and gathering
Speaker 2: to farming to try to get more nutrients out of
Speaker 2: kind of a limited amount of food available to them.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that people living in this area produced
Speaker 2: bone grease by boiling crushed bones for several hours and
Speaker 2: then skimming the resulting grease off the top. Cooking with
Speaker 2: this grease could then help extract nutrients from hard to
Speaker 2: digest foods. Researchers in Australia have found evidence of dried
Speaker 2: plants under the floors of the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.
Speaker 2: This was built in the nineteenth century and it served
Speaker 2: a number of roles in colonial Australia. It started as
Speaker 2: a barras for people who had been transported to Australia
Speaker 2: after being convicted of a crime. Then it housed the
Speaker 2: Female Immigration Depot for unmarried women who were immigrating to Australia,
Speaker 2: and then the Female Destitute Asylum, which was a home
Speaker 2: for women who were elderly, ill or disabled. They found
Speaker 2: a variety of foods under the floors, including fruits and vegetables, nuts,
Speaker 2: and spices. Some of these plant foods were native to
Speaker 2: Australia and others were imports, and a lot of what
Speaker 2: they found was much too big to have just fallen
Speaker 2: through the floorboards people were eating, so that suggests that
Speaker 2: people were placing their food under the floors intentionally. Some
Speaker 2: of the foods don't appear in inventories of the institution's
Speaker 2: food stores or in other official records, so this suggests
Speaker 2: that people were smuggling in food from outside, especially during
Speaker 2: the barracks time. Housing women. Records detail a diet that
Speaker 2: would have been really monotonous, so mostly bread and a
Speaker 2: soup made of boiled meat and vegetables. So these smuggled
Speaker 2: and hidden foods probably would have been kind of an
Speaker 2: illicit treat. Archaeologists in China have examined a small amount
Speaker 2: of liquid from inside a bronze vessel shaped like an owl,
Speaker 2: and they found a three thousand year old distilled spirit.
Speaker 1: The lid of the vessel had rusted shut, sealing it
Speaker 1: off from the air and preserving what was left inside.
Speaker 1: The vessel had been found in twenty ten, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until last year that the Shundong Provincial Department of
Speaker 1: Culture and Tourism approved to conservation and protection plan for
Speaker 1: the artifacts from this site, which is why it wasn't
Speaker 1: opened and studied before. Now. This spirit and the owl
Speaker 1: vessel it was contained in were probably part of a
Speaker 1: funerary offering, and this discovery fills a gap in the
Speaker 1: timeline of what was known about distilling in ancient China.
Speaker 2: Another early alcohol was found in Brazil based on analysis
Speaker 2: of pottery dating back to between twenty three hundred and
Speaker 2: twelve hundred years ago. That's the oldest known alcohol in
Speaker 2: the region. These were fermented, not distilled, and were made
Speaker 2: from vegetables such as tubers, sweet corn, and palm. Sharing
Speaker 2: these beverages was probably a communal event for the people
Speaker 2: known as the Cerrito's mound builders, who were the ancestors
Speaker 2: of later indigenous groups, including the Charua and Minuano. They
Speaker 2: were probably served alongside fish dishes. Some of the pottery
Speaker 2: fragments had residues connected to fish processing. Last year, officials
Speaker 2: announced the discovery of a food cash at an archaeological
Speaker 2: site at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Alaska. Was about
Speaker 2: three and a half feet deep and lined with birch bark.
Speaker 2: That birch bark lining was intact, which is really rare
Speaker 2: for cashes like these, especially in an area where a
Speaker 2: lot of the landscape was torn up and destroyed while
Speaker 2: the base was being built. The team expected any food
Speaker 2: remains inside the cash to be about two hundred years old,
Speaker 2: but radiocarbon dating suggests that it's much older than that,
Speaker 2: almost one thousand years old. Meat residues in the soil
Speaker 2: samples seem to come from moose and caribou, but it's
Speaker 2: not yet fully clear whether that's because meat was stored
Speaker 2: in the cash or because those animals live in the area.
Speaker 2: Further study is planned to figure that part out. Researchers
Speaker 2: collaborated with elders and knowledge holders from Denina and Otana
Speaker 2: tribes to contextualize this find, and they learned that a
Speaker 2: birch tree in this area had been marked with what
Speaker 2: looks like the letter T, possibly referencing the name of
Speaker 2: a family that later maintained a fish camp in this area.
Speaker 1: And our last food and beverage find, Archaeologists at the
Speaker 1: ancient city of Hadrianopolis in Turkya have found a bronze
Speaker 1: filter that probably would have been used at the end
Speaker 1: of a plant based drinking straw. The filter is about
Speaker 1: three and a half inches long, and it's shaped like
Speaker 1: a cone with holes all along the sides that would
Speaker 1: have allowed people to drink things like beer and fruit
Speaker 1: juice without sucking up the grains or pulp that would
Speaker 1: have been floating in there. This filter is about sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred years old.
Speaker 2: Moving on to shipwrecks, but really comparatively fewer shipwrecks than
Speaker 2: we have had in some of our most recent installments.
Speaker 2: Maritime archaeologists have investigated what maybe the oldest known carvel
Speaker 2: built vessel from the Nordic region.
Speaker 1: These are wooden.
Speaker 2: Boats that are constructed by fixing the planks to a
Speaker 2: frame with the edges of those planks lined up against
Speaker 2: each other. This is sturdier and allows for larger vessels
Speaker 2: than clinker construction, which is when the edges of the
Speaker 2: planks overlap, but it requires more calking to keep the
Speaker 2: vessel watertight. This wreck was found south of Stockholm, and
Speaker 2: preliminary evidence suggests that it was built in the fourteen eighties,
Speaker 2: although it's possible that it was built maybe twenty years
Speaker 2: earlier but then was repaired around fourteen eighty. Either way,
Speaker 2: that would be very early in the shift away from
Speaker 2: clinker construction in the area. Researchers working with this vessel
Speaker 2: are hoping to get funding for a more thorough excavation
Speaker 2: of this wreck next.
Speaker 1: The Brazilian Navy has confirmed the location of the Vitado Olivera,
Speaker 1: which was torpedoed by a German U boat on June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, as it was transporting supplies along the
Speaker 1: coast off Rio di Geneiro. About one hundred of the
Speaker 1: two two hundred and seventy crew on board died when
Speaker 1: the ship sank. Brazil was the only country in South
Speaker 1: America to send troops to fight on the side of
Speaker 1: the Allies, which had led Germany to retaliate against Brazilian ships.
Speaker 1: The sunken World War II ship was the only Brazilian
Speaker 1: ship to sink due to enemy activity during the war.
Speaker 2: And there were ships that sank for other reasons, but
Speaker 2: this was the only one sunk by an enemy. This
Speaker 2: wreck was first reported fourteen years ago when some divers
Speaker 2: spotted it while they were trying to free a stuck
Speaker 2: fishing net, but it wasn't conclusively identified until it was
Speaker 2: studied with various sonar technologies and an interesting coincidence, the
Speaker 2: research vessel used to make this identification was named the
Speaker 2: Vital de Rivera in honor of that sunken ship. Researchers
Speaker 2: in Lake Superior have found the wreck of the Western Reserve,
Speaker 2: which was one of the first all steel cargo ships
Speaker 2: in the Great Lakes. The ship was believed to be
Speaker 2: very safe and it was known for its speed and
Speaker 2: was nicknamed the Inland Greyhound by the local press. It
Speaker 2: sank in a storm in August eighteen ninety two, when
Speaker 2: its owner, Peter Minch had taken his family out for
Speaker 2: a ride on the ship. It wasn't carrying any cargo,
Speaker 2: and that meant that without that weight to hold it down,
Speaker 2: it was really thrown around in the storm. It's possible
Speaker 2: that its steel hull had become brittle in the cold water.
Speaker 2: It broke in half and only one of the twenty
Speaker 2: eight people aboard survived. The Western Reserve was found after
Speaker 2: a two year search and was initially spotted using side
Speaker 2: scanning sonar, then confirmed through photography from a submersible drone.
Speaker 2: Now we've got a few sword fines. First, archaeologists studying
Speaker 2: burial sites in southeastern England have found an intricately decorated
Speaker 2: sword among the grave goods. It has a silver and
Speaker 2: gold plated hilt with a Runic script along its blade.
Speaker 2: These burial sites date back to the fifth and sixth
Speaker 2: century CE, and the sword is exceptionally well preserved. Study
Speaker 2: of this sword in its ruins is still ongoing. Next,
Speaker 2: metal detectorists in Poland who were looking for artifacts from
Speaker 2: World War II wound up finding a three foot long
Speaker 2: Roman era sword dating back to the third or fourth
Speaker 2: century CE. It had been broken in three places, probably intentionally,
Speaker 2: and it also seems to have been burned, meaning that
Speaker 2: it may have been used in some kind of funeral ritual.
Speaker 2: And this suggests some sort of cross cultural influence, since
Speaker 2: the sword was Roman, but this funeral practice is associated
Speaker 2: with the Sarworsk culture.
Speaker 1: Different metal detectorists, apparently also looking for World War II
Speaker 1: era artifacts, found a different sword in Poland, this one
Speaker 1: dating to the Late Middle Ages. This one's also about
Speaker 1: three feet long and its tip is broken off, probably
Speaker 1: not intentionally. It was discovered alongside two axe heads from
Speaker 1: around the same period. Those axe heads were also in
Speaker 1: good condition. It seems like using metal detectors to look
Speaker 1: for World War two era artifacts might be some kind
Speaker 1: of a pastime in Poland. Maybe listeners from Poland can
Speaker 1: write in and fill us in on this, because our
Speaker 1: last find is also from somebody who was doing that,
Speaker 1: and the people involved in these three finds have been
Speaker 1: members of three different organizations, all dedicated to this. This
Speaker 1: last one is not a sword, though it is sort adjacent.
Speaker 1: It is a bronze scabbard fitting dating back about one
Speaker 1: thousand years. That scabbard fitting is called a shoe and
Speaker 1: it goes at the tip of the scabbard to protect
Speaker 1: it from damage. And lastly, for this installment of unearthed
Speaker 1: one discovery of cats, specifically that domesticated cats arrived in
Speaker 1: China about fourteen hundred years ago, probably having been carried
Speaker 1: along the Silk Road. Although it was long believed that
Speaker 1: cats were first domesticated in Egypt, more recent genetic research
Speaker 1: suggests this took place in ancient Anatolia around what's now Turkya,
Speaker 1: roughly ten thousand years ago. Domesticated cats were widespread in
Speaker 1: Europe by about the fourth century CE, so this suggests
Speaker 1: that domesticated cats were introduced in China hundreds of years
Speaker 1: after their introduction in Europe. According to archaeological evidence, the
Speaker 1: first domestic cats in China were seen as highly prized
Speaker 1: exotic animals, and they mostly belonged to the elite.
Speaker 2: And the wealthy. The fourteen domesticated cats whose bones were
Speaker 2: part of this study also all shared some commonalities in
Speaker 2: their mitochondrial DNA that's not common in cats that are
Speaker 2: from Europe or Western Asia. People in more rural areas
Speaker 2: did live alongside other cats, though specific a small wildcat
Speaker 2: called the leopard cat, which is native to China kitties. Yes,
Speaker 2: that is how we're ending off today's Unearthed, aside from
Speaker 2: also having some listener mail. This is from Nancy. Nancy
Speaker 2: wrote in and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just
Speaker 2: listened to the episode in the archives on Scott Joplin
Speaker 2: from April tenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I'm a little.
Speaker 2: Older than the two of you, but as you mentioned
Speaker 2: in the behind the scenes discussion, I also was introduced
Speaker 2: to Scott Joplin's music and ragtime as a musical genre
Speaker 2: via the movie The Sting in the nineteen seventies. I
Speaker 2: believe I played the record album so much that I
Speaker 2: wore out the grooves. I'm gonna pause this email for
Speaker 2: a second and say I don't remember if I said
Speaker 2: it in that episode, but The Sting on vinyl is
Speaker 2: one of the two first records that I ever returning
Speaker 2: to the email. Much to my delight today I saw
Speaker 2: a feed in one of my social media streams that
Speaker 2: brought a smile to my face. The Washington National Opera
Speaker 2: will be staging Scott Joplin's Forgotten opera Tremniesha next year
Speaker 2: at the Kennedy Center on March twelfth through twenty second,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. I am opening the link to this
Speaker 2: to make sure that it's still on the Kennedy Center website,
Speaker 2: and it is. Currently ticket purchase is only open for
Speaker 2: series subscriptions multiple show packages, but I will be following
Speaker 2: and will be purchasing a ticket as soon as individual
Speaker 2: ticket sales open up. I know neither of you are
Speaker 2: based near Washington, d C. But this looks like a
Speaker 2: unique opportunity, especially if you like opera. I know you
Speaker 2: both have very busy schedules and would have a ton
Speaker 2: of things to do and see in this area if
Speaker 2: you visit it. It's hard to say, but these March
Speaker 2: dates next year might even be during cherry blossoms season,
Speaker 2: especially the dates later in the month. I must admit
Speaker 2: I love when the cherry trees are blooming, and it
Speaker 2: is spectacular on the National mall around the Tidle Basin
Speaker 2: when all the trees are in bloom, the smell is
Speaker 2: heavenly instead of pet tax I'm attaching a couple of
Speaker 2: pictures of cherry blossoms from a previous year or two
Speaker 2: entice you to come to DC. Love what you do.
Speaker 2: Keep up the good work. I have learned so much
Speaker 2: from Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast. Thanks Nancy.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Nancy, and thank you for these
Speaker 2: beautiful cherry tree pictures. I do love to look at
Speaker 2: the cherry trees and to smell the cherry trees. Back
Speaker 2: when we were part of Discovery, Discovery's headquarters were in
Speaker 2: Silver Spring, Maryland, and so I was in Washington, d C. Regularly,
Speaker 2: And yet I don't think any of my many work
Speaker 2: trips to Washington, d C. Were during cherry blossom season.
Speaker 2: That was probably purposeful, right, Nobody was scheduling anything then
Speaker 2: because it's such a busy travel to its time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it would have been harder to get cheap reas and
Speaker 2: flights and things, probably, So thank you so much, Nancy.
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens between now and next year regarding
Speaker 2: maybe going to see Treamnation, because that would be really cool.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to send us a note about this
Speaker 2: or any other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
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Speaker 2: favorite shows.