Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of curiosities. It's not always reasonable, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you just need someone else to blame for your misfortune.
Speaker 1: Those in power almost never claim responsibility for what happens
Speaker 1: to them, and instead lay that responsibility at the feet
Speaker 1: of others. That was the route taken by Boris Godunov.
Speaker 1: Boris was a regent, someone appointed to govern in the
Speaker 1: event the next monarch in line was a miner or
Speaker 1: unable to reign. He had been appointed to watch over
Speaker 1: Dmitri Vassilyevik, the son of Ivan Vassilievik, also known to
Speaker 1: us as Ivan the Terrible. Dmitri would have been destined
Speaker 1: to take over for his father, but he was an
Speaker 1: infant and he had an older brother, Payador. Boris had
Speaker 1: been a member of Ivan's counsel in the years leading
Speaker 1: up to his death, and had been tasked with helping
Speaker 1: guide phayedor in leading Russia after his father was gone.
Speaker 1: But the young man was unfit to rule, both mentally
Speaker 1: and physically. He was weak and Dmitri was too young.
Speaker 1: That left Boris to rule as acting csar until Dmitri
Speaker 1: came of age. But Boris noticed something unsettling about the
Speaker 1: young Dmitri. He was smart. It wouldn't be long before
Speaker 1: he was old enough to sit on the throne of
Speaker 1: his late father, thus taking all of Boris's power with him.
Speaker 1: The ambitious regents couldn't let that happen, and so he
Speaker 1: had the boy and his mother exiled to a small
Speaker 1: town in western Russia, out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker 1: The two Vassilievik's lived there for several years, waiting until
Speaker 1: the boy was old enough to return to the palace,
Speaker 1: where he would follow in his father's footsteps. It's just
Speaker 1: too bad he'd never see the throne. In Fife, while
Speaker 1: Dmitri was only eight years old, he was found dead
Speaker 1: with a knife wound in his throat. This being Russia
Speaker 1: in the late sixteenth century, the initial thought was foul
Speaker 1: play had been involved. As such, Dmitri's mother had the
Speaker 1: town church bells rung, alerting the town to what had
Speaker 1: happened and gathering them together. A rebellion had been started.
Speaker 1: The target of their anger Boris Dmitri's mother knew who
Speaker 1: was behind the killing and why he'd done it. It
Speaker 1: was a preemptive measure to ensure his place at the
Speaker 1: top of the Russian royalty, but the Czar was ready.
Speaker 1: He first denied responsibility for Dimitri's death, claiming the boy
Speaker 1: had been playing with knives before suffering from a mysterious seizure.
Speaker 1: The boy had simply impaled himself on one of them
Speaker 1: in a tragic accident, and yeah, that didn't sound right
Speaker 1: to the residents of the town either. Second, Boris had
Speaker 1: a whole army at his disposal, and the little village
Speaker 1: did not, so he sent a small group of troops
Speaker 1: to take care of the rebellion before it could even
Speaker 1: get going. The soldiers moved swiftly, successfully taking back the
Speaker 1: town and killing most of the townsfolk. Those who weren't killed,
Speaker 1: including Dmitri's mother, were all exiled to Siberia, but Boris
Speaker 1: still wasn't satisfied. There was one other party that had
Speaker 1: been involved in organizing the rebellion, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: punish them too. To make an example of them, first,
Speaker 1: he had their tongue cut out, and then he exiled
Speaker 1: them to Siberia with the surviving townsfolk. Except this wasn't
Speaker 1: a person. It was the church bell that had riled
Speaker 1: everyone up in the first place. It hadn't been enough
Speaker 1: for Boris to wipe out the town. He wanted every
Speaker 1: last shred of evidence of rebellion removed, and that included
Speaker 1: the accursed bell. In the years following his death, Dmitri
Speaker 1: was sainted, and roughly one hundred years after that, a
Speaker 1: new church was erected on the site where he was killed.
Speaker 1: The bell, however, would remain in exile for almost three
Speaker 1: hundred years before finally returning home. Today, the bell is
Speaker 1: on display at the Church of Prince Dmitri on Blood,
Speaker 1: where it's rung regularly. It's bright, loud tone, singing out
Speaker 1: for everyone to hear, and thankfully it hasn't started any
Speaker 1: new rebellions since its return. Despite the collections we have
Speaker 1: of artifacts and fossils spanning millions of years, we still
Speaker 1: don't know a whole lot about early civilizations. We deduce
Speaker 1: and make inferences based on what we find, such as
Speaker 1: pottery and grave sites, but we still have much to
Speaker 1: learn about how ancient culture has truly lived, especially when
Speaker 1: they leave behind things that aren't so easily explained. Russian
Speaker 1: archaeologists found such an object in while working in the
Speaker 1: Ural mountains. It was a slab of stone nearly five
Speaker 1: feet tall and three and a half feet wide. It
Speaker 1: also weighed a ton literally. It's called the Doshka stone
Speaker 1: or the map of the Creator, and one scientist believes
Speaker 1: it could be over one twenty million years old. That
Speaker 1: in and of itself isn't so odd. We have fossils
Speaker 1: dating back billions of years. What sets the Doshka stone
Speaker 1: apart from other artifacts are its structure and what it represents.
Speaker 1: The slab is made up of three layers. The first
Speaker 1: is a seven inch layer of a compound with a
Speaker 1: dolomite base. The middle layer is an inch thick and
Speaker 1: made above a dioxide glass and silicone, and the top
Speaker 1: is only a few millimeters of calcium mixed with porcelain.
Speaker 1: This kind of layering doesn't happen in nature. Someone they
Speaker 1: think had to make it. On its surface is a
Speaker 1: series of lines intersecting at various points. These lines were
Speaker 1: etched with some kind of primitive tool. Cartog refers from
Speaker 1: Russia and China looked more closely at the lines and
Speaker 1: noticed how similar they looked to a particular area in
Speaker 1: the Ural mountains known as Bashkira. The accuracy was uncanny.
Speaker 1: What archaeologists had found wasn't just a slab with pictures
Speaker 1: on it. It was a topographical map, one drawn with
Speaker 1: a bird's eye view of the mountains. There were also
Speaker 1: lines representing waterways and dams. Undecipherable inscriptions adorn the sides
Speaker 1: of the stone as well. Now, naturally, they didn't have
Speaker 1: drones back then, or even airplanes, so how could an
Speaker 1: ancient civilization depict such a precise image of the mountains
Speaker 1: without help? That's what has baffled scientists since the stones discovery. However,
Speaker 1: the claim that it's one twenty million years old doesn't
Speaker 1: sit well with everyone. Some scientists get hung up on
Speaker 1: the fossils that were found within the slab. One was
Speaker 1: dated to one million years ago, while the other is
Speaker 1: about five hundred million years old. That makes dating the
Speaker 1: map were difficult. That's because Homo habilists, who lived roughly
Speaker 1: two point eight million years ago, is one of the
Speaker 1: earliest species that has left us evidence that they use
Speaker 1: stone tools. To say that this map was created one
Speaker 1: million years earlier, well before humans evolved enough to fashion
Speaker 1: rocks and sticks into makeshift hammers and chisels does seem
Speaker 1: a bit far fetched. What the map does illustrate, aside
Speaker 1: from the ural mountains, is that the area was home
Speaker 1: to an advanced civilization that had figured out how to
Speaker 1: see the world from high above, something no one else
Speaker 1: could do at the time. They didn't draw any roads
Speaker 1: on the map, since none existed, but they did learn
Speaker 1: how to navigate the nearby rivers and streams to get
Speaker 1: to different places. There's also the possibility that there might
Speaker 1: be more than one map. According to some reports, there
Speaker 1: may be as many as two hundred similar stones in existence.
Speaker 1: None of the other slabs have been found yet, though
Speaker 1: for now, scientists, cartographers and archaeologists only have that one
Speaker 1: stone to perform their re Sir John, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot that single stone can teach us. It also opens
Speaker 1: up the possibility that what we think we know about
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations could all be wrong. We can only move
Speaker 1: forward based on the information and artifacts that we already have.
Speaker 1: There's more out there waiting to be found. We just
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to use one map to
Speaker 1: find another, and then another and then another. Curious, isn't it? I?
Speaker 1: Hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.