Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we got a
Speaker 1: vault episode for you here. This is going to be
Speaker 1: my interview from seven three, twenty twenty five with author
Speaker 1: Sam Keen about the book Dinner with King Tut full
Speaker 1: title Dinner with King Tut How rogue archaeologist are recreating
Speaker 1: the site sound, smells and Tastes of Lost Civilizations. Really
Speaker 1: cool book. I keep seeing this one at bookstores and
Speaker 1: I always have to point out to my family. I'm like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: I chatted with that person. I do this with any
Speaker 1: book that I see in bookstores where I've interviewed the author.
Speaker 1: It probably gets a little annoying, but I still I
Speaker 1: love these conversations that I get to have with folks,
Speaker 1: and this one was a lot of fun. So let's
Speaker 1: jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb, and on today's episode, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be talking with author Sam King whose new book Dinner
Speaker 1: with King Tut, How rogue archaeologist are recreating the site sounds, smells,
Speaker 1: and tastes of Lost Civilizations is going to be out
Speaker 1: July eighth. This is a terrific book and I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed chatting with Sam here about it. So let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and jump right into the interview. Hi, Sam, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So the new book is Dinner with King Tut How
Speaker 1: rogue archaeologist are recreating the site, sounds, smells, and tastes
Speaker 1: of Lost Civilizations. This deals with the topic that I've
Speaker 1: found quite exciting for a while now, but I didn't
Speaker 1: realize we had a specific name for it, experimental archaeology.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about experimental archaeology, how and
Speaker 1: to what extent it is different compared to traditional archaeology,
Speaker 1: and how the to get along.
Speaker 2: So I always had kind of a I guess a
Speaker 2: gripe with regular archaeology in that, on some level it
Speaker 2: was the most fascinating subject I could imagine, deals with
Speaker 2: the deep history of humankind, where we came from, how
Speaker 2: we spread across the globe, the rise of great civilizations,
Speaker 2: all these big meaty questions about history. But whenever I
Speaker 2: would go to an actual archaeological site, I always found
Speaker 2: it extremely dull. It was just people sitting around in
Speaker 2: the dirt, brushing off pot shards or whatever with toothbrushes
Speaker 2: dental picks. And it looked the same everywhere around the
Speaker 2: world too, no matter what different cultures you were talking about.
Speaker 2: So it was always a big disappointment to go to
Speaker 2: these sites. And I contrast it in my mind with
Speaker 2: experimental archaeology, which when I heard about it, I thought, ooh,
Speaker 2: now this is the type of archaeology I like. Essentially,
Speaker 2: experimental archaeologist make and do things, so instead of just
Speaker 2: digging something up and theorizing it, they actually try to
Speaker 2: recreate the past in different ways, and that manifests itself
Speaker 2: in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes they're creating ancient
Speaker 2: foods and lost recipes. Sometimes they're making ancient tools or weapons,
Speaker 2: or recreating medicines, things like that. At different points in
Speaker 2: the book, I got to attend an authentic Roman banquet.
Speaker 2: I got to spend a day out in Utah with
Speaker 2: a guy who had built a giant medieval catapult, and
Speaker 2: we spent an afternoon throwing these huge garden stones around.
Speaker 2: I got to talk to people who made a human
Speaker 2: mummy and Egyptian style mummy of a human in modern times.
Speaker 2: They're just all of these different projects that people are doing.
Speaker 2: And what really excites me about it is that it's
Speaker 2: a very sensory rich version of archaeology in that you
Speaker 2: can actually hear what it sounds like when a big
Speaker 2: catapult ball slams home into a wall, so you can
Speaker 2: taste the food, the sour dough bread, or the beer
Speaker 2: that King Tutt would have been. So it really brings
Speaker 2: the past alive in a way that to me, traditional
Speaker 2: archaeology just could not do.
Speaker 1: It kind of gets this halfway at least to Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones territory, I guess.
Speaker 2: Just halfway there. Yes, much more than setting around in
Speaker 2: the dirt, for sure.
Speaker 1: Now, I found it interesting you pointed out that some
Speaker 1: traditional archaeologists have been opposed to this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and I guess I was a little surprised by this
Speaker 1: as well, because I know that and we'll get to
Speaker 1: some of these examples have encountered some of this work before,
Speaker 1: and in some cases it's by very respected archaeologists of
Speaker 1: you know, reconstructing tools from ancient times or you know,
Speaker 1: creating you know, recreating Greek trirems, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you outline some of the pushback that experimental
Speaker 1: archaeologists have encountered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a bit of a conflict in the
Speaker 2: field with sort of you know, traditional scholarly academic archaeologists
Speaker 2: and the people trying to do this new method bit
Speaker 2: of archaeology, experimental archaeology. Some of that, I think is
Speaker 2: just sort of traditional inertia where people are used to
Speaker 2: doing things a certain way. Might be a bit of
Speaker 2: a generational gap as well in there too, But some
Speaker 2: of it I think is a little bit of resentment
Speaker 2: of Sometimes the people I talked to do in the
Speaker 2: book weren't traditional archaeologists. They were maybe a brewer or
Speaker 2: a chef, or even a hairdresser in one case who
Speaker 2: had an interest in history and came in and sort
Speaker 2: of proved traditional archaeologists wrong, And I think there was
Speaker 2: a bit of resentment about that. They didn't like being
Speaker 2: told they were wrong by essentially what they considered an amateur.
Speaker 2: So there is a little bit of tension within the
Speaker 2: field still, And to be fair, there are examples out
Speaker 2: there of bad experimental archaeology where people just didn't take
Speaker 2: the time to do it properly the first time. One
Speaker 2: good example of that was the person I talked to
Speaker 2: who recreated Egyptian bread. His name was Seamus Blackley. He's
Speaker 2: best known. Actually he worked at Microsoft and he created
Speaker 2: the Xbox. That's sort of his claim to fame. But
Speaker 2: after that he went and founded his own company, and
Speaker 2: as a hobby, he decided he wanted to make heirloom bread.
Speaker 2: So he started with medieval bread and eventually transitioned into
Speaker 2: making Egyptian style bread. And his first attempt, you know,
Speaker 2: he just got some yeast, got some basic grain, put
Speaker 2: something up there on Twitter, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: wrote to him and said, you're full of crap. This
Speaker 2: is a terrible, terrible job you did recreating this bread.
Speaker 2: And he thought about it, probably got a little mad
Speaker 2: at first, but he said, you know what, they're right.
Speaker 2: I did a poor job of this. I am going
Speaker 2: to now do a proper job of it. So he
Speaker 2: flew over to Egypt with a microbiology kit. He started
Speaker 2: swabbing the inside of pots to get the actual yeast
Speaker 2: from the pots and the molds that they used to
Speaker 2: make the bread. He sourced some heirloom grain, he sourced
Speaker 2: the kind of wood that they would have used. He
Speaker 2: had some one make him an authentic bread mold. He
Speaker 2: built a fire pit in his backyard. He kind of
Speaker 2: went all out on this, and he got let me
Speaker 2: try some of the bread eventually after he had sort
Speaker 2: of perfected it, and it was probably the best thing
Speaker 2: I ate in the entire book, one of the best
Speaker 2: loads of bread I've ever had in my life. So
Speaker 2: you do have people kind of doing poor jobs of
Speaker 2: this work at the beginning, but in some cases they
Speaker 2: learned from that and did much better jobs by the end.
Speaker 1: One quick question about the bread, what did you expect
Speaker 1: it to taste liked? Were you sort of expecting it
Speaker 1: to taste like archaeology to some degree.
Speaker 2: Or dusty, like really hard and great? Yeah? I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I guess I expected it to be very bland and
Speaker 2: very flat. Yeah. I pictured something just very flat, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty bland, not much taste to it. I was surprised,
Speaker 2: first of all how big it was. It was about
Speaker 2: a foot wide, maybe a little bigger even, and it
Speaker 2: was conical shaped. It reminded me of if you've seen
Speaker 2: those old pictures of the Mercury astronauts from NASA would
Speaker 2: re enter the Earth in this sort of conical shaped
Speaker 2: space capsule, and it looked a lot like that. That
Speaker 2: was the shape. It had a nice springy crust on it,
Speaker 2: and it had a really nice sour dough taste to it.
Speaker 2: There were only a few ingredients in it, emergrain, coriander, salt, yeast,
Speaker 2: and water was basically it. And the sour dough combined
Speaker 2: with sort of the whole wheat from the emmer and
Speaker 2: the coriander coming in it was delicious. It was far
Speaker 2: far better than I expected it was going to be.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned bad experimental archaeology. I was wondering, this
Speaker 1: isn't really something that is the focus of the book
Speaker 1: or anything, But at least in your preliminary research, did
Speaker 1: you find examples of experimental archaeology either veering into the
Speaker 1: realm of or originating within the realms of alternative archaeology
Speaker 1: or pseudo archaeology.
Speaker 2: I definitely came across those kind of things, but most
Speaker 2: of that stuff sort of falls in the realm of
Speaker 2: maybe not traditional archaeology, but at least sort of the
Speaker 2: methods they used, where it's a little bit more armchair
Speaker 2: and removed. You're looking at documents, artifacts, things like that.
Speaker 2: So certainly not good archaeology and poorly reasoned in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases, but it is a little bit more
Speaker 2: on the I guess, traditional side, so to speak, as
Speaker 2: opposed to the people who are actually making and doing
Speaker 2: things that you can hear and taste and touch.
Speaker 1: Now getting back into the positives here, something you write
Speaker 1: about numerous examples of this in the book. How important
Speaker 1: is experimental archaeology for the exploration and even revitalization of
Speaker 1: traditions that have been lost or eroded via s a
Speaker 1: Western colonialism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually a really important theme in the book
Speaker 2: is that there are a lot of different people doing it.
Speaker 2: Some are traditional scholarly archaeologists who just wanted to do
Speaker 2: something a little different. But the other thread on the
Speaker 2: other groups of people doing this are you know, indigenous
Speaker 2: peopleeople from native cultures who to them this isn't archaeology
Speaker 2: as much as it's their ancestry, it's their history. And
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases they are either reviving the
Speaker 2: traditions themselves, you know, going back to look at songs, poems,
Speaker 2: traditions that they had and reviving them, or in some
Speaker 2: cases they have actually kept their traditions alive despite the
Speaker 2: struggles of you know, colonialism and things like that. Kind
Speaker 2: of decimating their culture. So in a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: they are the ones going to the archaeologists teaching them,
Speaker 2: correcting them, showing them how their ancestors lived. That's another
Speaker 2: really important element of the book is talking to those
Speaker 2: people about the wonderful job they've done preserving and reviving
Speaker 2: their cultures.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One example of this, I was excited to read
Speaker 1: about traditional Native American acorn processing practices in the book.
Speaker 1: This is something I myself had just learned about fairly
Speaker 1: recently on a trip to Yosemite National Park, where they have,
Speaker 1: you know, various places where you can learn about this.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about the labor
Speaker 1: that went into cultivating and processing these nuts and what
Speaker 1: the final culinary results tasted like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this was one of the cases in the book,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of going through the different projects that
Speaker 2: I did. In a lot of cases, I was essentially
Speaker 2: just floundering around and that I was trying something out.
Speaker 2: I was very poor at it, and it sort of
Speaker 2: reinforced how difficult it was in some cases to do
Speaker 2: something even basically get a meal for yourself. So essentially
Speaker 2: what I did is I gathered a bunch of acorns
Speaker 2: from different trees around my neighborhood, maybe a few hundred
Speaker 2: of them, five hundred something like that. Then I had
Speaker 2: to look around for a hammerstone and an anvil and
Speaker 2: essentially just brought them home and started cracking them open,
Speaker 2: digging the meat out, and processing them. I learned pretty
Speaker 2: quickly that maybe a third or so of them were
Speaker 2: rotten on the inside. Some actually had weavils inside them,
Speaker 2: so no, I had bugs crawling around in my homes.
Speaker 2: I'd brought them in and the other and so I
Speaker 2: had to discard a lot of them. And then I
Speaker 2: had to just essentially grind them up into flour as
Speaker 2: finally as I could. And that was a step especially
Speaker 2: that got discouraging because I had, you know, a big
Speaker 2: bucket full of acorns and that eventually ground down to
Speaker 2: much less than a cup of accnable flour. And it
Speaker 2: was very very frustrating thinking about all the work I
Speaker 2: had done to gather them to grind them up. Oh,
Speaker 2: and actually skip a step because I had to leach
Speaker 2: them then to try to get the tannins the bitter
Speaker 2: flavor out of them. And I ended up with basically
Speaker 2: just a cup of flour and could make a few
Speaker 2: muffins out of them, and then apparently I did a
Speaker 2: bad job with the leeching as well, because they tasted
Speaker 2: like the most bitter thing I've ever eaten in my life.
Speaker 2: It was like a colaxon of bitterness raging inside my mouth.
Speaker 2: They were not very good the way I made them.
Speaker 2: Actually got to travel to a school that does some
Speaker 2: experimental archaeology work in Maine. They do teach survivalist skills
Speaker 2: things like that, and they showed me a little bit
Speaker 2: more about how to process them, and they ended up
Speaker 2: being absolutely delicious. We made acorn pancakes fresh on a
Speaker 2: hot stone griddle. We had a little bit of butter
Speaker 2: on them. They were absolutely scrumgious, wonderful stuff. So it
Speaker 2: was a good learning experience and humbling in sort of
Speaker 2: a nice way to, yeah, to just show how difficult
Speaker 2: it was to do something basic like get a meal.
Speaker 1: Now, you chat with a number of researchers in this
Speaker 1: book whose work I was familiar with to some degree
Speaker 1: or another, like they'd come up on previous episodes of
Speaker 1: this show. One in particular is Lynn Wadley on the
Speaker 1: topic of ancient bedding. I was familiar with her work,
Speaker 1: but not the hurdles she faced over her own use
Speaker 1: of experimental archaeology. Can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So she's an archaeologist in South Africa and she
Speaker 2: does a lot of traditional archaeology, digging things out of
Speaker 2: the dirt, stuff like that. But she had an idea
Speaker 2: she wanted to try an experiment with the bedding that
Speaker 2: she found in one cave. There she found what we
Speaker 2: think is probably the oldest bed on Earth, from about
Speaker 2: seventy five thousand or so years ago. And essentially it's
Speaker 2: a two part bed that's pretty ingenious in a way.
Speaker 2: There's a layer of ash on the ground, so you
Speaker 2: just burn a bunch of debris, get a nice layer
Speaker 2: of ash there, and then you put what she called
Speaker 2: a top sheet on there of aromatic leaves that you
Speaker 2: can pick from trees around the cave. And basically what
Speaker 2: that does is it provides a nice soft place to
Speaker 2: lie down, which is kind of the main function of
Speaker 2: a bed. But in combination, the ash and the leaves
Speaker 2: keep insects away, they keep mosquitoes away. The aromatic leaves
Speaker 2: keep the mosquitoes away, and the ash is important for
Speaker 2: keeping ticks away. And she showed this by gathering a
Speaker 2: bunch of ticks on the farm that she lives in
Speaker 2: in South Africa, and she essentially put them down on
Speaker 2: I think they were in a bucket, and she put
Speaker 2: a ring of ash around these ticks that she had gathered,
Speaker 2: and she just saw what would happen. She let them
Speaker 2: try to escape, so they had to burrow through this
Speaker 2: ring of ash to try to get out of there,
Speaker 2: and she found that most of the ticks did not
Speaker 2: even make it through the ring of ash. They died
Speaker 2: halfway through. The ones that did make it out, their
Speaker 2: mouth parts were so gummed up with ash that they
Speaker 2: couldn't effectively bite anyone. So this ash layer provided a
Speaker 2: really nice barrier against ticks biting you, spreading diseases, things
Speaker 2: like that. So I thought it was a really ingenious experiment.
Speaker 2: And then she actually had some people spend a night
Speaker 2: on one of the a recreation of one of these
Speaker 2: beds in the cave, which I thought would have been
Speaker 2: really cool. I wish I had gotten a chance to
Speaker 2: do that. They said it was a little nerve wracking,
Speaker 2: you know, they were kind of out there. They'd know,
Speaker 2: animals prowling around or whatever. But apparently the beds themselves
Speaker 2: were fairly comfortable. So she was telling me about all this.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a really cool little experiment, and
Speaker 2: I was surprised to hear that she had a lot
Speaker 2: of trouble publishing anything about it. And in fact, the
Speaker 2: editor of the paper said, you know, I love all
Speaker 2: the traditional archaeology. I am not mentioning this little informal
Speaker 2: experiment you did, either with the ticks or having people
Speaker 2: spend a night on them. And the editor would not
Speaker 2: budge on this and cut that section from the paper.
Speaker 2: And it kind of highlights the tensions that you see
Speaker 2: between traditional archaeology and even someone running sort of an
Speaker 2: informal experiment. And I told her, and I'd write about
Speaker 2: this in the book, that it's even more disappointing because
Speaker 2: I was thinking about Charles Darwin especially, He ran tons
Speaker 2: of informal experiments like this, and they helped him generate
Speaker 2: new ideas to test, They helped inform the biology of
Speaker 2: the time. So she was really working in the spirit
Speaker 2: of Charles Darwin and was just disappointing an editor put
Speaker 2: his foot down like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then that's the kind of stuff too that
Speaker 1: helps make it real for people like most of most
Speaker 1: of the listeners here, certainly like myself outside of the
Speaker 1: academic world. Do you hear about these informal experiments and yeah,
Speaker 1: it fleshes it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and captures your imagination. You can imagine yourself lying
Speaker 2: on this bed, what it would feel like. It's much
Speaker 2: more close to your heart then you're just reading about
Speaker 2: digging something up out of the dirt.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of digging things out of the dirt, can
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about your experiences eating
Speaker 1: toxic potatoes in Peru?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was another case where I was a bit
Speaker 2: surprised at the outcomes of what happened. So potatoes are
Speaker 2: native to the Andian Highlands in Peru, and I didn't
Speaker 2: realize when I started doing this project the sheer variety
Speaker 2: you see of potatoes up there, just the colors, the shapes,
Speaker 2: they're really really beautiful, all the different tubers you get
Speaker 2: in the Indian Highlands where they're they're native to. One
Speaker 2: thing I didn't realize also though, was that they're toxic.
Speaker 2: So native potatoes you who cannot eat because they have
Speaker 2: certain chemicals in them that will poison you. So you
Speaker 2: have to process them in different ways. You can make
Speaker 2: a couple of different dishes out of them, depending on
Speaker 2: how you process them. One way is essentially that you
Speaker 2: freeze dry them, so you leave them out overnight soaking
Speaker 2: in water, and the chemical reactions take place and it
Speaker 2: essentially disables breaks down these chemicals and they leech out
Speaker 2: and then they're safe to eat after that. And another
Speaker 2: way is you can process them a little bit but
Speaker 2: also mix in a clay sauce. So you take dirt
Speaker 2: clay from riverbank, mix it up with water, and you
Speaker 2: eat the potatoes with that sauce, and the clay actually
Speaker 2: binds to the poison chemicals and it goes through your
Speaker 2: digestive system. It doesn't end up poisoning you. And when
Speaker 2: I got started with this, the first dish, the freeze
Speaker 2: dried one, was the one I was excited about. So
Speaker 2: I thought it was like sort of a you know,
Speaker 2: an ancient astronaut food almost. I was like, this is
Speaker 2: so cool, you know, the freeze drying this food in
Speaker 2: this way. And I tried it and it just didn't
Speaker 2: taste good to me. And I recognized I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up eating it, so people there probably have a different opinion.
Speaker 2: But it just tasted sort of like the desiccated husk
Speaker 2: of a potato. There's a bit of flavor there, not much.
Speaker 2: It was very mealy and dry and just did not
Speaker 2: really impressed me. I just didn't enjoy the taste. So
Speaker 2: then I moved on to the other one, which I
Speaker 2: was not excited about, which was the one you mixed
Speaker 2: with clay, and to my delight, that actually tasted really good.
Speaker 2: It had a very nice earthy flavor to it. The
Speaker 2: sauce was sort of brown. It had kind of a
Speaker 2: nice almost a texture like a ti peanut sauce to it.
Speaker 2: So a nice earthy flavor, a good texture, and I
Speaker 2: really really enjoyed that dish. So it surprised me a
Speaker 2: bit that, you know, eating clay essentially would really improve
Speaker 2: this dish and make it good.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, that that runs counter to what I
Speaker 1: think my expectations would have been as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we have a predisposition to judge the use
Speaker 1: of clay and other related substances in our food. But
Speaker 1: that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's normally something we would brush off the food.
Speaker 2: I think, like this is integral to be able to
Speaker 2: eat the food. But it wasn't.
Speaker 1: This case. Now another I have to ask you about
Speaker 1: another topic that had come up previously on stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. You talk about the at Lotto spear thrower.
Speaker 1: Tell us what it was like getting to try out
Speaker 1: or reconstruction of this weapon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the laddle is probably the most widespread hunting
Speaker 2: tool in history. I was surprised at how widespread it is,
Speaker 2: much more so than bows and arrows, much more so
Speaker 2: than spears. And if anyone has not heard of a
Speaker 2: net laddle, it's essentially a long, flexible spear, but instead
Speaker 2: of throwing it with your hand, you use a throwing stick.
Speaker 2: So it's just a long straight stick with a bit
Speaker 2: of a notch on the end, and you put that
Speaker 2: in your hand. You hold that in your hand and
Speaker 2: you use that to throw the spear. And essentially what
Speaker 2: it does is it extends the length of your arm,
Speaker 2: gives you more leverage and power in throwing it. And
Speaker 2: I spent a great afternoon at an experimental archaeology lab
Speaker 2: at Kent State University. They have a wonderful little program there,
Speaker 2: and the guy there and the who was in charge
Speaker 2: of this program, he had a bunch of at laddles
Speaker 2: and spears. I mean, just so he spent an afternoon
Speaker 2: throwing them at these little foam dummies that he had.
Speaker 2: They had one that was sort of a beloved mascot
Speaker 2: that they called Bambo. It was much loved, much abused.
Speaker 2: After years of throwing at laddles at it, it actually
Speaker 2: didn't have any legs anymore because it's been hit so
Speaker 2: many times. So they propped that up in the field.
Speaker 2: Then they had another one that was like a third
Speaker 2: size replic of a cariboo. I think it was I
Speaker 2: got it from target or whatever. So we set those
Speaker 2: up in the field and we just spent an afternoon
Speaker 2: throwing these at laddle darts at them. And I was
Speaker 2: surprised at how easy it was to get distance with
Speaker 2: an at laddle dart. I don't remember off the top
Speaker 2: of my head, but the world record for throwing one
Speaker 2: is something like two hundred and fifty yards, whereas the
Speaker 2: world record for throwing a javelin is much closer to
Speaker 2: one hundred yards, maybe one hundred and ten something like that.
Speaker 2: So you can really get a lot of distance on
Speaker 2: these things. And even I, who had never picked one
Speaker 2: up before, could throw it. You know, most of a
Speaker 2: football field pretty easily, but accuracy was another matter. I
Speaker 2: tickled the chin of that cariboo, I swear like four
Speaker 2: or five times. It just kept going just left, just right,
Speaker 2: just over it. I just could not quite hit it.
Speaker 2: There was a pretty common experience. The archaeologist I mentioned
Speaker 2: actually brought his class in there. So there were maybe
Speaker 2: thirty of us students and me the fling these around,
Speaker 2: and we probably hit it, you know, maybe a dozen
Speaker 2: times over the course of a couple of hours. And
Speaker 2: the students were motivated. They got extra credit if they
Speaker 2: hit it, so they were really motivated to try to
Speaker 2: hit this thing. But it proved difficult to aim for
Speaker 2: us amateurs. But it's a really fun way to spend
Speaker 2: an afternoon.
Speaker 1: Now I want to come back to the title of
Speaker 1: the book is, of course, Dinner with King Tutt. We
Speaker 1: already talked a little bit about Egyptian bread, but how
Speaker 1: about Egyptian beer. Now, this is one, this is another
Speaker 1: one where you attempted to brew this yourself right at home.
Speaker 2: I did. Yeah, So I didn't go all out getting
Speaker 2: the grain source from Egypt and you know, getting the
Speaker 2: right type of ye stuff like that. I just wanted
Speaker 2: a basic flavor of what it might have tasted like.
Speaker 2: So I got some emmer grain, which is the grain
Speaker 2: that they would have used, and barley, a mix of
Speaker 2: those two things, and I essentially just fermented them in
Speaker 2: my home with a basic beer fermenting kit. So you
Speaker 2: make the mash, you know, you heat it up, you
Speaker 2: had the yeast, all those kind of things through in
Speaker 2: some different plausible ingredients that they might have used in beer, cinnamon,
Speaker 2: things like that. And one important difference was that they
Speaker 2: did not use hops in Egyptian beer. That's a later
Speaker 2: invention from medieval times, and that really makes a big
Speaker 2: difference with beer because hops is a fairly strong bitter flavor.
Speaker 2: So the Egyptian beer did not have the bitter flavor
Speaker 2: that were used to with modern beers, and that actually
Speaker 2: allowed other flavors to come forward, sour flavors especially, and
Speaker 2: to my taste, it tasted less like a beer than
Speaker 2: it did like a cambucha essentially, so it was a
Speaker 2: nice sour flavor to it, and I could imagine it
Speaker 2: being really delicious and thirst quenching after a long hot
Speaker 2: day in the sun, you know, shoving pyramid blocks into
Speaker 2: place or whatever. So that was one interesting thing was
Speaker 2: the taste was sour. And the other thing that I noticed,
Speaker 2: and you know, you hear about this from archaeologists or
Speaker 2: people have re created the beer in other ways, is
Speaker 2: that they didn't have filters back then modern filters to
Speaker 2: get the chaff and the little bits of grain out
Speaker 2: of the beer. They spent grain, So the beer was
Speaker 2: a little maybe chunkier, you might say, and that there
Speaker 2: was stuff floating on the top. And in some places,
Speaker 2: maybe not Egypt necessarily as much, but in some places
Speaker 2: in the Caucuses and other areas they were making this beer,
Speaker 2: they actually traditionally drank the beer with a straw in
Speaker 2: order to get below the chaffline and just get at
Speaker 2: the beer, as opposed to, you know, getting a big
Speaker 2: mouthful of the stuff you don't want.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So any of us that are inclined to
Speaker 1: use a straw the next time we are having a
Speaker 1: pint out se.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, there were, actually it was this was in
Speaker 2: a different area, not in Egypt, but there was one
Speaker 2: case where archaeologists found a straw that they think it
Speaker 2: was you know, maybe a king would have given it
Speaker 2: as a gift to a visiting monarch or something like that.
Speaker 2: But it was about two or three feet long, so
Speaker 2: very big, and it was so ornately decorated that they
Speaker 2: mistook it for a scepter at first. That's how elaborate
Speaker 2: this straw was. But you know, these were valuable items
Speaker 2: to people back then.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's awesome. Now, on the subject of Egyptian bread
Speaker 1: and beer, you also get into how these would not
Speaker 1: just be valued for their role as sustenance and refreshment,
Speaker 1: but these were also spiritually important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beer and bread were. They basically permeated every aspect
Speaker 2: of Egyptian life. The workers on the pyramids, for instance,
Speaker 2: were paid wages in bread and beer, and then they
Speaker 2: ate them with every meal, both of those things with
Speaker 2: every meal, And when they were preparing people for the
Speaker 2: afterlife their tombs, they would always include bread and beer
Speaker 2: to get them to the afterlife and for sustenance in
Speaker 2: the afterlife. It was so ingrained in their culture they
Speaker 2: could not imagine life or the afterlife without these two things.
Speaker 1: Now, this is obviously the point to ask to come
Speaker 1: back to some thing you mentioned earlier, The Maryland Mummy,
Speaker 1: the work of Bob Bryer and Ron Wade. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about this, how it went down and
Speaker 1: how has this project aged like tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how it was received at the time and
Speaker 1: have archaeologists warmed up to it.
Speaker 2: So this project I started in Baltimore, Maryland in the
Speaker 2: mid nineties. There was an egyptologist and the head of
Speaker 2: the State Anatomy Board. There an anatomist and the egyptologist
Speaker 2: I think he was sort of the prime mover behind this.
Speaker 2: He realized that, you know, we have a lot of
Speaker 2: Egyptian mummies, but there's not a lot written down about
Speaker 2: how they actually made the mummies. It's kind of a
Speaker 2: mysterious process and we don't know if you know, the
Speaker 2: information got lost. We don't know if they were keeping
Speaker 2: it a secret, they just passed down to brissions orally
Speaker 2: whatever the case was. But there's not a lot written
Speaker 2: about how they actually made the mummies. So he decided
Speaker 2: he wanted to recreate a human mummy. He approached this
Speaker 2: anatomist who was head of the State Anatomy Board, and
Speaker 2: he said, here's a proposal for a project. You know,
Speaker 2: people donate their bodies to science. What do you think
Speaker 2: The anatomist was gung how about it, And so they
Speaker 2: decided they were gonna mummify a human being, and the
Speaker 2: Egyptologist especially got pretty excited about this idea in that
Speaker 2: he tried to be as authentic as possible, to the
Speaker 2: point that he flew over to Egypt and he actually
Speaker 2: dug out the mineral that they used to dehydrate the body.
Speaker 2: It's a mineral called natron, and chemically it's essentially a
Speaker 2: mix of baking soda and table salt, so pretty simple chemically,
Speaker 2: but it forms naturally in dry gullies and waddies over
Speaker 2: in Egypt. So he flew all the way over there,
Speaker 2: got a shovel, dug out hundreds of pounds of this stuff,
Speaker 2: and actually, he said, one of the more ticklish aspects
Speaker 2: of the project was smuggling it back into the US,
Speaker 2: all this unidentified white powder that he had in his luggage,
Speaker 2: but got it into the US, got it down to Maryland,
Speaker 2: and they essentially just mummified the body. They opened it up,
Speaker 2: got the organs out, dried them out with the natron,
Speaker 2: you know, washed the body out the way that they
Speaker 2: would have back then, used oils on it, got the
Speaker 2: brain out of the head in the way that they
Speaker 2: would have back then, and then just piled it under
Speaker 2: hundreds of pounds of this natron mineral to dry it out.
Speaker 2: And when word got out there about this experiment, it
Speaker 2: proved pretty controversial within the archaeological community and sort of
Speaker 2: the wider biology community. There were some bioethicists who came
Speaker 2: out against it. Some archaeologists also came out against it.
Speaker 2: They said it was sort of tasteless, macabre. They didn't
Speaker 2: see much value in it. And I do see their
Speaker 2: point that, you know, when you're donating your body to science,
Speaker 2: you're probably assuming it's going to go to a medical
Speaker 2: school or something like that. You're not necessarily signing up
Speaker 2: to become a mummy. But you know, legally they had
Speaker 2: backing for it. It said, you know, you're going to
Speaker 2: end up in a medical school, or we have other
Speaker 2: projects sometimes we use. And they defended the project by
Speaker 2: saying that they actually learned a lot about how we
Speaker 2: mummified the body. So they learned how long it took
Speaker 2: roughly to mummify the body. They learned how to get
Speaker 2: the organs out of the body, which is something they
Speaker 2: did not know. One really cool thing I think they
Speaker 2: learned is the Egyptologists had always wanted to know. You know,
Speaker 2: you see a classic mummy its skin is very dry,
Speaker 2: it's pulled back from the face, the teeth are probably protruding.
Speaker 2: It sort of has a classic mummy look to it,
Speaker 2: and he wanted to know is that due to the
Speaker 2: mummification process or is that because this body has been
Speaker 2: in a very dry environment in Egypt for three or
Speaker 2: four thousand years? What causes these changes to the body
Speaker 2: and about I think it was like five weeks into
Speaker 2: the project. They had to change the mineral out and
Speaker 2: put fresh mineral on, but they decided to take a
Speaker 2: peek at the body, and even by that point five
Speaker 2: weeks in, the Egyptology was sort of startled and he said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this looks exactly like Ramses the Great.
Speaker 2: It was incredible. So it was the mummification process they
Speaker 2: learned that caused the changes in sort of give mummies
Speaker 2: their iconic look. So they defended it by saying, you know,
Speaker 2: they first of all learned a lot about it, and
Speaker 2: second of all, they said they treated this body much
Speaker 2: better than most bodies get treated. And the body is
Speaker 2: still around today. It's in an office building in Maryland.
Speaker 2: It is perfectly well preserved. It's probably going to look
Speaker 2: a lot better than any of us will in one
Speaker 2: hundred years, so he got treated, as they put it,
Speaker 2: sort of like the king.
Speaker 1: It's been many years since I read Mary Roach's book Stiff,
Speaker 1: but if memory serves, it's like the mummification process is
Speaker 1: probably a step above some of the other legitimate uses
Speaker 1: that are employees donated body.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a good point. Yeah, And actually I got to,
Speaker 2: you know again, sort of doing a secondary version of this.
Speaker 2: I actually made a fish mummy in my apartment in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's kind of sweltering hot right now,
Speaker 2: and it was when I made that fish mummy. But
Speaker 2: that fish, I bought it whole from the store. It
Speaker 2: never saw the inside of refrigerator. And fish are sort
Speaker 2: of a classic animal that you think is gonna smell bad,
Speaker 2: it's not gonna last very long. But I just mixed
Speaker 2: some baking soda and salt together, put it in a
Speaker 2: casserole dish, and mummified this fish and it went perfectly well.
Speaker 2: The fish never smelled, never got rotten. I still have
Speaker 2: it on my counter today. It's perfectly preserved. So it's
Speaker 2: pretty easy to do this project on your own, and
Speaker 2: in some ways it sort of fulfills the Egyptian traditions
Speaker 2: and that they mummified a lot of animals as well
Speaker 2: as human beings.
Speaker 1: Now, I want to make it clear for listeners out
Speaker 1: there that I'm not asking you about even I think
Speaker 1: half of the wonderful examples and topics you get into here.
Speaker 1: There's a whole chapter dealing with with various Chinese traditions
Speaker 1: and inventions. You deal with the multiple different time periods
Speaker 1: and places. There's the Viking chapter. So I'm only scratching
Speaker 1: the surface here with my questions, but I am going
Speaker 1: to ask you about the Meso American ballgame. This is
Speaker 1: one that I think anyone who's ever even like casually
Speaker 1: studied anything to do with az Tech history and as
Speaker 1: tech culture has come across examples of this, tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about this and did you get to
Speaker 1: play it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, if you're not familiar with it, the Aztec
Speaker 2: ballgame is a it's sort of a weird mashup of
Speaker 2: maybe tennis and soccer, I guess is the way you
Speaker 2: would describe it. You have two teams and you're knocking
Speaker 2: a ball back and forth from one team to the other,
Speaker 2: but you're also moving down the field trying to knock
Speaker 2: get past your opponent's end line. And what makes this
Speaker 2: game unusual is that you can't kick the ball. You
Speaker 2: can't use your arms at all. You can only use
Speaker 2: your hips. You have to turn and you have to
Speaker 2: hit the ball with your hip. And when I was
Speaker 2: learning how to so it spoiler a bit. I guess
Speaker 2: I did learn how to play the game. And when
Speaker 2: I was learning how to do it, the instructor said,
Speaker 2: just do a shakira, So you take your hip and
Speaker 2: you twist it hit the ball with your hip like shakira.
Speaker 2: So that kind of puts you in the mindset of
Speaker 2: what it's like to play this game. And it was
Speaker 2: surprised about a few things, especially the size of the ball,
Speaker 2: in that it was roughly the size of a bowling ball,
Speaker 2: and it was also as heavy as a bowling bar.
Speaker 2: Was it was softer than a bowling ball because it
Speaker 2: was made out of rubber, but it was solid rubber
Speaker 2: all the way through. There was no inflatable bladder or
Speaker 2: anything inside it, so it was a really heavy, dense ball.
Speaker 2: And this is the ball that you're knocking with your hips,
Speaker 2: hitting it back and forth, So imagine basically sending a
Speaker 2: padded bowling ball bouncing back and forth with your hip.
Speaker 2: So despite that, when I did get to play this game,
Speaker 2: it was fun at first because you serve the ball
Speaker 2: you tossed to the other team, and when the ball's
Speaker 2: bouncing back and forth, you know, you kind of get
Speaker 2: the hang of it. You hit it with your hips.
Speaker 2: Sort of a fun little game. The problem is, because
Speaker 2: the ball is so heavy, it eventually loses momentum and
Speaker 2: starts rolling along the ground, and again you can only
Speaker 2: hit it with your hip. So you have to do
Speaker 2: is when the ball comes your way, you have to
Speaker 2: drop to the ground. We were playing on hard pavement here,
Speaker 2: not grass or anything. You have to drop to the
Speaker 2: pavement and use your hip like a pinball paddle essentially,
Speaker 2: and sort of swing it and knock the ball back
Speaker 2: with your hip, and then you have to pop back
Speaker 2: up because it's a penalty if you're still on the
Speaker 2: ground before the ball gets back to the other team.
Speaker 2: You have to pop back up, and then they'll hit
Speaker 2: it right back to you. You have to drop to
Speaker 2: the ground again, hit it back, pop up, and just
Speaker 2: keep doing this over and over and over. It was
Speaker 2: like doing essentially a hundred burpies in a row, except
Speaker 2: then you had to knock a bowling ball back each
Speaker 2: time you did it, and before long, maybe half an
Speaker 2: hour in, my legs were just quaking with fatigue and cramping.
Speaker 2: I was really really hurting after doing all of these
Speaker 2: calisthenics for a while, and eventually I feel a bit
Speaker 2: craven about this, but eventually I was hiding behind one
Speaker 2: of my teammates who happened to be an eleven year
Speaker 2: old child, because I just couldn't take this anymore going
Speaker 2: up and down, and the child was very good. They
Speaker 2: were popping right up and down. She was just knocking
Speaker 2: the ball back and forth. So I let her have
Speaker 2: her fun after a while and sort of effectively quit
Speaker 2: playing this, and then spent the next day limping around
Speaker 2: Mexico City, where I ended up going to play it,
Speaker 2: just limping around, wincing every time I had to use
Speaker 2: the stairs. But it really did drive home what an
Speaker 2: unusual game this was. I played a lot of sports
Speaker 2: going up, but never anything like this, And just how
Speaker 2: tough the people were who played this game, because these
Speaker 2: games could go on for you know, days at a
Speaker 2: time sometimes and they actually used it as training for
Speaker 2: war to toughen their warriors up, and I can really
Speaker 2: see how it would be effective as training for so
Speaker 2: because again, even after half an hour or so, I
Speaker 2: was I was a hurting unit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, absolutely sounds brutal, and yeah, you can
Speaker 1: see how it is, certainly based on your experiences here.
Speaker 1: It's it's how it conditions the warrior. And yet that
Speaker 1: it does feel weirdly foreign compared to like modern so
Speaker 1: many modern popular sports, but in a weird way, like,
Speaker 1: how is it really that different from soccer? We're kicking
Speaker 1: the ball around? Is that? You know, it's it's not
Speaker 1: like people kick each other in war. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's I guess it's just a difficult
Speaker 1: one to try and contemplate as like a modern somewhat
Speaker 1: familiar with modern sports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess I didn't even think about sports
Speaker 2: as something you could really investigate with archaeology. We think
Speaker 2: about them as much more of a modern phenomenon. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this was just kind of an unusual chance to do
Speaker 2: something outside of the normal realm of recreating recipes, recreating tools,
Speaker 2: things like that, to try out a sport that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can definitely see affinities with modern sports, but it
Speaker 2: is its own distinct thing.
Speaker 1: Now, on the subject of like recreating recreating history certainly
Speaker 1: a huge part of experimental archaeology, tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you utilized fiction writing in this book,
Speaker 1: using fiction alongside the nonfiction to recreate possible chapters from
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the book structure is a bit unusual. Each
Speaker 2: chapter puts you in a specific time and a specific place.
Speaker 2: So one chapter is Africa seventy five thousand years ago,
Speaker 2: another chapter is medieval China. You're in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome,
Speaker 2: Viking times, Arctic a thousand years ago, a bunch of
Speaker 2: different places. And the premise of each chapter was to
Speaker 2: really immerse you and just spend a day in the
Speaker 2: life of a person from that time and that place,
Speaker 2: and each of the things that I do and describe
Speaker 2: the archaeological experiments are related to that time and place.
Speaker 2: But overall, I thought, you know, fiction can do some
Speaker 2: things that nonfiction cannot. It's a bit more immersive being
Speaker 2: in that character's point of view. So for each chapter
Speaker 2: there is a fictional sort of a short story where
Speaker 2: you are in the character's mind going through a day
Speaker 2: in their life, usually a pretty bad day, some dramatic
Speaker 2: things happen to them, but you're going through a day
Speaker 2: in their life, experiencing what they would have experienced. And
Speaker 2: then the story, the fiction story sort of stops at
Speaker 2: a dramatic moment, jumps to the nonfiction, and then I
Speaker 2: come in, explain what they were doing, Explain how the
Speaker 2: experimental archaeology works, stuff like that, who it fit in
Speaker 2: with our culture. Then you jump back to the fiction
Speaker 2: and it sort of alternates like that. But basically, the
Speaker 2: fiction seemed like a better way to really imm yourself
Speaker 2: in that time place, and it was a lot of
Speaker 2: fun to write. All my books so far have been
Speaker 2: strictly nonfiction. There's definitely a narrative component to it, but
Speaker 2: this was explicitly fiction, and so it was a kind
Speaker 2: of a fun experiment.
Speaker 1: It's made for a fun reading experience as well.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you.
Speaker 1: But I do have to wonder, though, is this because
Speaker 1: ultimately I can imagine thinking about this and planning this
Speaker 1: out at the planning stage of the book, and then
Speaker 1: it sounds like you kind of set yourself up with
Speaker 1: a kind of a sizeable challenge to write. In addition
Speaker 1: to the nonfiction, portions of the book what ten or
Speaker 1: eleven short stories, each set in a different time, in place,
Speaker 1: and perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took a lot of reading to make sure
Speaker 2: I got all the details right of all of these places,
Speaker 2: and you know, not only what places looked like, but
Speaker 2: also people's worldviews, how they thought about religion, how they
Speaker 2: thought about family, all these different things. So it did
Speaker 2: take a lot of reading. But I'd always been interested
Speaker 2: in these topics, and I'd been kind of gathering for
Speaker 2: this book for a while, so I had done some
Speaker 2: of the reading ahead of time and could draw on
Speaker 2: those kind of things. And I've been working on this
Speaker 2: book since actually I think before the pandemic, So I've
Speaker 2: been put a lot of time and effort into this one.
Speaker 2: So I think it paid off. I think the richness
Speaker 2: of detail in each chapter really does bring a.
Speaker 1: Live Yeah, the proof is in the pudding. So the
Speaker 1: book again is Dinner with King tut how rogue archaeologists
Speaker 1: are recreating the site, sound, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. Highly recommend it to listeners of this show,
Speaker 1: and as far as podcast listeners go, you also host
Speaker 1: a podcast, tell Us a Little bit about this I do.
Speaker 2: It's called Disappearing Spoon, which happens to be the name
Speaker 2: of my first book, and if you're familiar with that book,
Speaker 2: the podcast is actually on a different topic. The book
Speaker 2: was about the periodic table. This is more. I come
Speaker 2: across a lot of stories when I'm doing research, really good,
Speaker 2: interesting stories about science and history that just don't fit
Speaker 2: in the books that I'm writing. And it always killed
Speaker 2: me to have no place for these stories. I had
Speaker 2: this big file of orphan stories that I had, but
Speaker 2: having the podcast gives me a chance to put them
Speaker 2: out there. So I've done series on things like, you know,
Speaker 2: the dumbest mistake Einstein ever made, or you know, how
Speaker 2: climate change could change the shape of the human body,
Speaker 2: and things like that. So just little snippets I've come across.
Speaker 2: Each one's pretty bite sized, maybe twenty minutes or so,
Speaker 2: and yeah, they're out there, little fun sized bits of
Speaker 2: science and history.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, Sam, thanks again for coming on the show
Speaker 1: and chatting with me again. The book Dinner with King
Speaker 1: tut fabulous read, highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks once again to Sam Keen for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. And chatting with me again. His website
Speaker 1: is sam Keen dot com and the book is Dinner
Speaker 1: with King Tut how rogue archaeologists are recreating the site
Speaker 1: Sound Smells and Case of Lost Civilizations. It is out
Speaker 1: in hardcover July eighth, twenty twenty five. Thanks as always
Speaker 1: to the excellent JJ Possway for producing the show here
Speaker 1: and if you would like to ride in with any feedback,
Speaker 1: If you would like to just touch base with Joe
Speaker 1: or myself, well, you can email us at contact at
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2: Dot Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.
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