December 29, 2010 • 26 mins
Over the past 12 months, experts have been hard at work hunting down hard evidence of times, places and people lost in the course of history. In this episode, Sarah and Deblina recount 5 of the most important historical finds of 2010.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair a Dowdy and I'm debling a truck reboarding.
And for our last episode of the year, here we're
gonna be talking about some historical discoveries that came out
(00:23):
of ten just things that we're weird or fun or
made a lot of news, things that we thought were
worth talking about. Yeah. In our recent podcast we've mentioned
several discoveries, so these are just some different ones that
we didn't get to focus on in those And the
Graveyard of Ships was one um. The Gladiator Graveyard was
(00:44):
another find from this year that was really interesting. Yeah,
and one of my favorites from earlier this year was
the Medici cold case with the dueling medical journals about
how a couple of matchees died. So, you know, we've
covered a lot of interesting historical finds this year. It
these five really stood out at us or just seemed
(01:04):
like so much fun, and some of them were actually
listeners suggestions, So I hope you enjoy it. You can
always submit your own suggestions if you um, if you
feel like we overlooked truly the most exciting or weird
historical discovery of tell Us. But this is our list
of five, and we're going to start with one of
the most recent. It just came out around Thanksgiving this year,
(01:25):
and that was the Picasso trove of paintings and drawings
and sketch books, tons of stuff. Yes, Sarah, you did
a blood post on this, didn't you. I did, and
um it was something that as soon as I saw
the story, I was like, Okay, I need to talk
about this. It's very interesting. So, I mean, Picasso was
a prolific artist. Obviously he left a lot of art behind,
(01:48):
but it's not every day that a huge trove of
art like this that's uncataloged pops up out of nowhere.
And the way it came about, it's kind of a
shady story find it. So what we know is earlier
this fall, the retired electrician Pierre Leguineck contacted Claude Picasso,
the artist's son, seeking to have a stash of works authenticated. Yeah,
(02:11):
and the younger Picasso said, well, I really need to
take a look at them in person to rule to
decide if they're authentic or not, and he encouraged Lagune
to come to Paris and show the works in person,
and Claude later told the French newspaper Liberation. Um. I
found this quote through the New York Times quote. I
felt a great surprise, naturally, lots of emotion at the
(02:35):
discovery of pieces with which we were not familiar, but
also a deep disturbance. Many of these pieces were not dated,
which means they never should have left the studio shady. Yeah,
So that's kind of a bad sign there. And the
thing is, even though Picasso was quite generous with his art.
He'd give it out to family and friends, and he
(02:57):
would even um use it like at the cafe or
something in exchange for his coffee. And I don't know
his meal of that. Dash off a little picture and
sign it and date it and that would replace the bill. Um.
But he was really worried about imposters, and so he
didn't give too much away. He always did sign and dated,
(03:18):
and sometimes he was even quite reluctant to part with
his art. He's known to have bought back pieces that
he missed too much. Right. So, the knowing that the
idea that this formal electrician of Picassas was given two
hundred seventy one sketches, lithographs, paintings, and notebooks seemed a
little bit off to Claude. Yeah, and so to say
(03:40):
the least, Yeah, definitely. The police were brought in and Liquinek,
who was separated from this eighty million dollar stash of
art estimated eighty million dollars, and the Picassa Foundation followed
the whole thing up with a lawsuit. So this electrician
thought he was going to be getting the seal of
approval from Claude ends up being sued for a legal
(04:02):
receipt and leg Nick still maintains that the art was
a gift from either Picasso or Picasso's wife. Um, it's
going to take a while to sort out. It seemed
weirdly though, Lego Nick and his wife are now saying
they're actually heirs to even more Picasso's since they're distant
cousins of a chauffeur of the artists who was also
(04:22):
given some works. Yeah, this is something that came out
after the first major news cycle of the Picassa story,
but wasn't before or after the lawsuit. After the lawsuit,
but it's so weird of like double the Picassa staff
was a very important electrician. It seems he was with
an important connection to an important chauffeur um. So, despite
(04:44):
the legal trouble though, the stash itself is pretty cool
and it's worth a mention um in our list of
important historical finds. It dates from nineteen hundred to nineteen
thirty two, when Picasso was a young and struggling artist,
and it includes portraits of his first wife, the ballerina
Olga Koklova, and a blue period watercolor. Yep. There are
(05:08):
also nine cubus collages, thirty lithographs, and more than two
hundred drawings, so overall sounds like a boon to the
art world at least, if not to Pierre Legunac. We'll
see um. So the next item on our list is
kind of a different, different bird fashion related you could say.
(05:29):
You could say that and uh, it involves shoes, so
I'll give you a little background on it. Up until
this year, the oldest known leather shoe belonged to a
guy named let's see the Iceman, a mummy found nineteen
years ago in the Alps near the Italian Austrian border.
His shoe had bear skin soles, deer skin panels, tree barknetting,
(05:51):
and it was kind of filled with like soft grass
that went around the foot and functioned as a kind
of primitive sock. And the shoes were water proof and
kind of wide looking. I mean to me, they almost
looked like something that would be set in a ski
or like a snowshoe or something. But they look I mean,
pretty advanced for something that was made probably about fifty
(06:12):
years ago. Um. I think that was pretty big fine
at the time. But this year scientists funded in part
by the National Geographic Foundation, published a new finding in
the shoe arena, and that was a fifty five hundred
year old leather lace up moccasin, which they found in
an Armenian cave on the Iranian and Turkish borders. This
(06:35):
discovery has cleverly been referred to by some news outlets.
I love these descriptions as the ultimate vintage shoe or
prehistoric product. Yeah, didn't you want to get your hands
on some? I definitely do. Well, No, not exactly, because
when you hear a little bit more about this, you're
going to be a little bit grossed out by how
it was so well preserved. You want it safely behind glass. Um,
(06:58):
just to put that date in Prespective. The shoe is
older than Stonehengnge. It's even about a thousand years older
than the Great Pyramids of Giza, and it's from the
Cololithic period or Copper Age, which researchers still don't really
know a whole lot about. So it's old. It's an
old old shoe. Yeah, it's old as dirt and was
(07:19):
so well preserved because of the cool, dry environment in
the cave, and also because it was covered in layers
of sheep dong which provided kind of a seal around it.
And if you look at pictures of it online, and
I'm sure just by googling the oldest leather shoe you
can find some photos of it around it looks like
something that was covered and counting. It doesn't look too hot.
(07:40):
But what is so remarkable about it is that the
level of detail that was preserved basically, I mean laces, eyelets,
and even the straw that was inside it was still there.
It's the one case of wind stepping in poop is
a good thing, definitely um And as far as its
style goes, it's said to be some to the pempooties
(08:01):
worn on the Aran Islands in the west of Ireland
up until the nineteen fifties. It's basically like a raw
hide slipper um and in size it's comparable to a
woman's size seven. But they're not positive yet whether it
was worn by a woman or worn by a man. Yeah,
I think it's a right footed shoe. But they said
that even though it's sort of comparable to what a
(08:23):
woman's foot would be now, it could have been a
man's foot back in that time. Well that was notable too,
wasn't it That it was made. Each shoe was made
for a specific foot. They weren't interchangeable as many old
shoes are. Ably, and the actual discovery, and this was
a really interesting story, was made beneath one of several
cave chambers by Armenian doctoral student Diana Zardarian. She noticed
(08:48):
a small pit of weeds as she was exploring, and
so she reached down and touched in that area, and
she found two sheep horns and an upside down broken ole,
and under that she said she felt what she thought
was an ear of a cow, which to me would
be alarming, but apparently she thought that was pretty cool.
But when she took it out, she looked at it
(09:08):
and she thought, Oh my god, And this is a
quote that she gave to The New York Times best
quote ever, best quote of two thousand. Oh my god,
it's a shoe. To find a shoe has always been
my dream. So there you go. I mean, and not
just any shoe, the old issue, the oldest shoe, the
dreams of archaeologists coming coming true in two thousand and ten.
(09:31):
Another interesting thing about this fine though, it seemed to
scientist that the shoe was put in the pit on purpose,
and they can't really figure out why you would put
a shoe in a pit, but they're working on it.
So it's just kind of a quirky, interesting discovery, and
it might have some really important implications because learning where
the skin processing techniques came from might give us an
(09:52):
idea of the complexity of this society. So, I mean,
you learn a lot about a man buy his shoes
definite ling today and back in the day, so our
next find. It's also of the ancient variety, although it
has to do more with that religion and construction projects
than fashion. So archaeologists for a long time have assumed
(10:14):
that the area around Stonehenge was empty, and Professor Vince
Gaffney of Birmingham University, who studies the whole area, said, quote,
people have tended to think that as Stonehenge reached its peak,
it was the paramount monument existing in splendid isolation, and
that's sort of how you look at it today. You
know that screen saver like blue sky behind it in Greenfield,
(10:37):
nothing else. Yeah, you don't think of a bunch of
other stuff being around Stonehenge. But that's not how it was,
apparently not at all. So we know that Woodhenge was
discovered in about two miles away from the Stonehende site,
and there have been multiple discoveries just in the past
few years Ditches Roads burial grounds, there was a stash
of Bronze Age monuments only a few miles off. Even
(11:01):
another wooden hinge found in two thousand nine. The details
of that one really haven't come out yet. Yeah, but
the wooden hinge that was discovered this July in as
it has to have been for our list, tops all
of these other discoveries. A lot of archaeologists are saying
that it's the most impressive find on the site in
(11:21):
the past fifty years. So how did they find this? Well?
Using geophysical imaging technology, which is a machine that looks
a little bit like a riding lawnmower, but it's really
a radar scanning system which lets them scan three yards
deep at twelve miles per hour. And Gaffney's team they
use this technology to find something interesting and it was
(11:43):
almost three thousand feet two thousand ft from Stonehenge. Yeah,
what they found was an eighty foot wide bank and
ditch with entrances aligned with those Stonehenge. Uh. There, of course,
if you are familiar with Stonehenge, that means those entrances
are also aligned with the solstice. So on the salstice,
the sun enters into the circle inside of this bank
(12:07):
and ditch combo where twenty four holes, each three feet across,
which they reckon. A pole of that size could have
supported a pole up to nineteen feet high. And they
assumed that it was a wooden hinge because if there
had been stones there, the holes might have been a
little more beaten up if the stones had been excavated.
(12:29):
Since then, the archaeologists assumed that the wood just rotted
in place. And in the center of this whole thing
is a burial mound about forty ft wide. So there
you go a hinge in the middle of in the
middle of the field. Ye Gaffney calls it a timber
equivalent to Stonehenge and guesses that it's about years old
and is near that was near when Stonehenge was at
(12:52):
its peak. Since Stonehenge was built in phases, and we
of course don't know what this new hinge find was
used for, but theories range from everything from being a
cemetery to being hospital to being a site for funerals.
And since the fine came at the beginning of this
three year long surveying project with this writing lawnmower type machine,
(13:16):
we can expect probably some more fines out here around
Stonehenge in the next few years. And this kind of
site is pretty easy to miss after thousands of years
of plowing. You know, there's a good chance there might
be something else. Yeah, it's almost like you need this
technology to be able to detect the minute traces of
whatever's left. Yeah. But as I thought was interesting, Stonehenge
(13:39):
itself might have likely started out as a ring of
wooden posts like this one found in two thousand ten,
before farmers brought in the blue stones, followed by the
large giant sarcen stones. Yeah, and the legends around where
the stones came from in Stonehenge I've always thought are
really cool. Uh there's like a legend that the stone
(14:00):
were brought to England from Ireland by the wizard Merlin,
and that those stones had originally been brought to Ireland
from Africa by Giant who thought they had um mystical
healing properties. So anything having to do with Stonehenge, it's
probably gonna make our list, I'd say, But this is
(14:20):
just too weird not to mention, and it honestly kind
of confused me when I was researching this wooden Henge.
At almost the exact same time as this news came out,
really within days, another study came out on a similar
ancient wooden hinge in Ohio, and the site itself is
(14:40):
in a new discovery. They've known about this Ohio Henge
for a while, but the revelation was that it was
also a line to match up with the solstice. So
pretty cool double hinge find and sort of a bonus
edition for our list. Cool and freaky. Next, we have
kind of a sweet find. I think Sarah Um archaeologist
(15:01):
began and covering this footprint of the building in James Town, Virginia,
which was of course the first English settlement in the
New World earlier this year, and by August they'd realized
that it was actually the remains of the church in
which Pocahontas married English tobacco farmer John Rolfe. Yeah, and
Pocahontas Katie and I did an episode on her more
(15:22):
than a year ago. But she was, of course the
Powatan Indian woman and daughter of the chief, and she
apparently befriended the settlers of the Jamestown Colony as a
young girl and was a frequent visitor, really helped them
stay alive and survive. And in sixteen fourteen she married
John Rolfe, also the subject of an earlier posodcast um
(15:44):
and that start their marriage was essentially an alliance between
the Native Americans in the English and it started this
period of peace between the Powatan Indians. In sixteen fourteen,
Pocahontas married John Rolfe, who was also the subject of
an earlier podcast, and their marriage was essentially an alliance
that started a period of peace between the Powatan Indians
(16:06):
and the colonists that lasted for about eight years. Yeah,
and just an interesting side fact to that marriage as that,
according to one colonil, she'd actually been married before to
an Indian named Kokum. So it's a fun fact thrown
in there. But back to the chapel. How did they
know that they had actually found it? I mean, what
gave them the evidence? Well, they weren't really sure at first,
(16:27):
but they figured out the building's dimensions, and then they
realized that there were four graves neatly aligned in the
center of the east end of the building, and it's
the spot that would have coincided with where the altar
would have been and also where elite members of the
church would have been buried. Also, the second thing was
that there were eight post holes large enough and deep
(16:49):
enough to have held timbers capable of supporting a large
cathedral type ceiling. And then there was also a footprint
of a pretty chapel and that was in line with
the holes, and this they figured that that would be
there because it was documented by Jamestown colonist William Stracy
in sixteen ten in his account of the chapel. The
(17:10):
fourth thing that kind of clued them into the fact
that this was Pocahon's wedding chapel is that the structure
was located near ware an X or perhaps across, which
is thought to represent a church site on maps of
that era. It's marked on a six O eight Zuniga map,
which is a rare firsthand sketch of James Fort and surroundings. Yeah, so,
(17:32):
so far archaeologists have only excavated about half of the church,
so there's definitely going to be a lot to come
in eleven um and they're hoping to find a few
different things, namely the identities of the four people buried
near the altar area. They have some guesses though, based
on date recorded dates of deaths and the status within
(17:55):
the community. And some of their guests are the Reverend
Robert Hunt, who is jamestown first Chaplain, Sir Ferninando Wenman,
who is the Master of Ordinance for Fort James, Captain
Peter Wynn, a sergeant major of the fort, and Captain
Gabriel Archer, who was a member of the colony's first
governing council. So those are the number four names thrown
(18:17):
out for who's buried in Pocahona's chapel. It'll be interesting
to find out who it really is. And it looks
like maybe we can look forward to learning more about that,
maybe as soon as next summer. So our final entry
for this list of historical discoveries is on the light side.
It's kind of fun and hopefully it'll get you in
the spirit for ringing in the new year. You said spirit. Yeah,
(18:41):
that's the clue to to what this item has to
do with UM. There's long been an argument that Stone
Age farmers grew cereals not just for food, but to
make beer. And I mean that argument has been around
for a while, but just this year the archaeologist Brian
Hayden from Simon Fraser University in Canada has started studying
(19:04):
it more carefully and released a report on it. UM
just trying to figure out what the importance of the
Brew had been for the development of a lot of
world cultures. So here's a little background on that. The
Neolithic Arab people in Southwest Asia pioneered the use of
wild cereals. You would think that they did this to
have something to eat, right, But actually that wasn't so
(19:27):
much the case. Archaeological evidence says that up until the
Neolithic Age, things like barley and rice weren't really a
big part of people's diets. Since you have to gather them,
winnow them, hask them, grind them. It's just a lot
of work in general, process and grains to a point
where you can eat them. Yeah. So people probably didn't
go to that much trouble. Yeah. Um, But Hayden's research
(19:50):
found that people in Syria would travel up to forty
or sixty miles to get access to grain. So it
seemed like there must be some motive for obtaining grains
that had to do with something other than just eating them,
and that's likely to make beer out of them or
some sort of alcohol. Because if you needed something fancy
(20:14):
or ceremonial to serve at your banquet, beer was a
pretty good bet. Yeah. Beer actually became a big staple
at feast, along with meat and something starchy like bread
or porridge. Um, if you're postcapey good beer, you'd probably
be in pretty good standing with them. Yeah, and you
might loosen up a little bit, maybe work out a
deal or something. You can see why it would be useful. Um.
(20:38):
Discovery kind of reminded me of the two thousand seven
discovery of Cash of Mine pottery. Um that I think
I talked about some in the History of Chocolate episode.
Archaeologists had found theobram mine, which is the chemical calling
card of cacao in this pottery. Um. But the weird
thing about it is it didn't have classic mix there's
(21:00):
for the chocolate drink. It had the co cow, but
it didn't have vanilla or honey or spices. It just
had the cacaw chemical And it meant that these vessels
probably held cacao alcohol, which was this fermented beverage made
from fruit pulp instead of the beans. And maybe they
assume that maybe in the process of making this more
(21:21):
ancient beverage, this alcoholic beverage, somebody discovered that you could
make another drink that it's probably a little tastier out
of the fermented beans. Pretty smart. Yeah, it's also kind
of reminiscent of the whiskey rebellion, Yeah, which has been
on my list for a long time. Yeah. And the
idea there is that because grains are easier to keep,
cheaper to transport, and infinitely more valuable when they've been
(21:44):
processed in alcohol, Um, why not do it that way? Yeah,
So maybe people started domesticating grains so that they could
make beer. Who knows, Yes, that would definitely be the
more flavorful alternative I think. But hopefully this has gotten
you in the spirit to go out and have a
good time for New Year's Eve. Put on your dancing shoes. Yes,
(22:08):
let loose a little bit. And now it's time for
a listener mail. So our first email comes from Shane
in Ohio, and he wrote that he teaches advanced placement
US history in northern Ohio and he loves the podcast. Um.
He said that he especially enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes and
the Last podcast, and that's partly because he's really into
(22:31):
finding Easter eggs and shows, which, um, if you're not
familiar with Easter eggs, they're like the little things that
if you watch really carefully and probably if you have
a DVR and can actually pause your TV show, um,
you'll catch just a little inside um easter eggs for
hardcore fans. So regarding House and Sherlock Holmes, he wrote,
(22:54):
there was a little Easter egg whenever they show the
address that Gregory House lives at to twenty one B.
Baker Street. Yep, the same as Mr Sherlock Holmes. And
then um, this was just so sweet. But he wrote,
if you want to make a history teacher. It's happy
if he can be short of a day at the Smithsonian.
Mentioned any of this in some future podcast, and my
(23:16):
quote History Nerds datus will be forever cemented in my classroom,
which is a great thing. So I hope we've like
boosted your reputation in your classroom. And um enjoy watching
your Lost reruns and your House episodes. Yeah, definitely. This
next letter is also Sherlock Holmes related. It's from Chris
(23:37):
and he says this is his first time writing in.
He says, I am a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories,
and since you asked for favorite Sherlock stories, I must
mention a favorite that was also one of the ones
that was never told. Holmes was fond of referring to
adventures that he and Watson had embarked on that weren't
written about, and in the Adventures of the Sussex Vampire,
(23:58):
Holmes says, mattil to Briggs was not the name of
a young woman, Watson. It was a ship which is
associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for
which the world is not yet prepared. How can you
not be intrigued by that giant rats it isn't drinking,
I think definitely. He also adds, as the other letter
did a couple of House Sherlock associations and he says
(24:23):
he's pitt fans of both shows and he mentioned the apartment.
Everybody also mentions that Dr James Wilson and House plays
the part of Dr John Watson. That even give a
nod to it in in universe with House being shot
by a man named Moriarty and a made up love
interest for House named, of course, Irene Adler, which was
also a Home's character. So we have a lot of
(24:44):
homes enthusiast out there. I think we got a lot
of mail about favorite homes stories and just general Sherlock
commentary on the latest show and other favorite theories. Yes,
and we love to get those letters. So if you
have any comments on previous podcasts or today's podcasts, favorite
discoveries of two thousand ten that we didn't mention that
(25:07):
you want to share with us, please write us at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can
also visit us on Facebook or a Twitter at Myston History. Yeah,
and we also have tons of year end wrap up
articles being published right now and as we speak image
galleries of best news stories of and you can search
(25:28):
for them on our home page at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
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(25:50):
on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair a Dowdy and I'm debling a truck reboarding.
And for our last episode of the year, here we're
gonna be talking about some historical discoveries that came out
(00:23):
of ten just things that we're weird or fun or
made a lot of news, things that we thought were
worth talking about. Yeah. In our recent podcast we've mentioned
several discoveries, so these are just some different ones that
we didn't get to focus on in those And the
Graveyard of Ships was one um. The Gladiator Graveyard was
(00:44):
another find from this year that was really interesting. Yeah,
and one of my favorites from earlier this year was
the Medici cold case with the dueling medical journals about
how a couple of matchees died. So, you know, we've
covered a lot of interesting historical finds this year. It
these five really stood out at us or just seemed
(01:04):
like so much fun, and some of them were actually
listeners suggestions, So I hope you enjoy it. You can
always submit your own suggestions if you um, if you
feel like we overlooked truly the most exciting or weird
historical discovery of tell Us. But this is our list
of five, and we're going to start with one of
the most recent. It just came out around Thanksgiving this year,
(01:25):
and that was the Picasso trove of paintings and drawings
and sketch books, tons of stuff. Yes, Sarah, you did
a blood post on this, didn't you. I did, and
um it was something that as soon as I saw
the story, I was like, Okay, I need to talk
about this. It's very interesting. So, I mean, Picasso was
a prolific artist. Obviously he left a lot of art behind,
(01:48):
but it's not every day that a huge trove of
art like this that's uncataloged pops up out of nowhere.
And the way it came about, it's kind of a
shady story find it. So what we know is earlier
this fall, the retired electrician Pierre Leguineck contacted Claude Picasso,
the artist's son, seeking to have a stash of works authenticated. Yeah,
(02:11):
and the younger Picasso said, well, I really need to
take a look at them in person to rule to
decide if they're authentic or not, and he encouraged Lagune
to come to Paris and show the works in person,
and Claude later told the French newspaper Liberation. Um. I
found this quote through the New York Times quote. I
felt a great surprise, naturally, lots of emotion at the
(02:35):
discovery of pieces with which we were not familiar, but
also a deep disturbance. Many of these pieces were not dated,
which means they never should have left the studio shady. Yeah,
So that's kind of a bad sign there. And the
thing is, even though Picasso was quite generous with his art.
He'd give it out to family and friends, and he
(02:57):
would even um use it like at the cafe or
something in exchange for his coffee. And I don't know
his meal of that. Dash off a little picture and
sign it and date it and that would replace the bill. Um.
But he was really worried about imposters, and so he
didn't give too much away. He always did sign and dated,
(03:18):
and sometimes he was even quite reluctant to part with
his art. He's known to have bought back pieces that
he missed too much. Right. So, the knowing that the
idea that this formal electrician of Picassas was given two
hundred seventy one sketches, lithographs, paintings, and notebooks seemed a
little bit off to Claude. Yeah, and so to say
(03:40):
the least, Yeah, definitely. The police were brought in and Liquinek,
who was separated from this eighty million dollar stash of
art estimated eighty million dollars, and the Picassa Foundation followed
the whole thing up with a lawsuit. So this electrician
thought he was going to be getting the seal of
approval from Claude ends up being sued for a legal
(04:02):
receipt and leg Nick still maintains that the art was
a gift from either Picasso or Picasso's wife. Um, it's
going to take a while to sort out. It seemed
weirdly though, Lego Nick and his wife are now saying
they're actually heirs to even more Picasso's since they're distant
cousins of a chauffeur of the artists who was also
(04:22):
given some works. Yeah, this is something that came out
after the first major news cycle of the Picassa story,
but wasn't before or after the lawsuit. After the lawsuit,
but it's so weird of like double the Picassa staff
was a very important electrician. It seems he was with
an important connection to an important chauffeur um. So, despite
(04:44):
the legal trouble though, the stash itself is pretty cool
and it's worth a mention um in our list of
important historical finds. It dates from nineteen hundred to nineteen
thirty two, when Picasso was a young and struggling artist,
and it includes portraits of his first wife, the ballerina
Olga Koklova, and a blue period watercolor. Yep. There are
(05:08):
also nine cubus collages, thirty lithographs, and more than two
hundred drawings, so overall sounds like a boon to the
art world at least, if not to Pierre Legunac. We'll
see um. So the next item on our list is
kind of a different, different bird fashion related you could say.
(05:29):
You could say that and uh, it involves shoes, so
I'll give you a little background on it. Up until
this year, the oldest known leather shoe belonged to a
guy named let's see the Iceman, a mummy found nineteen
years ago in the Alps near the Italian Austrian border.
His shoe had bear skin soles, deer skin panels, tree barknetting,
(05:51):
and it was kind of filled with like soft grass
that went around the foot and functioned as a kind
of primitive sock. And the shoes were water proof and
kind of wide looking. I mean to me, they almost
looked like something that would be set in a ski
or like a snowshoe or something. But they look I mean,
pretty advanced for something that was made probably about fifty
(06:12):
years ago. Um. I think that was pretty big fine
at the time. But this year scientists funded in part
by the National Geographic Foundation, published a new finding in
the shoe arena, and that was a fifty five hundred
year old leather lace up moccasin, which they found in
an Armenian cave on the Iranian and Turkish borders. This
(06:35):
discovery has cleverly been referred to by some news outlets.
I love these descriptions as the ultimate vintage shoe or
prehistoric product. Yeah, didn't you want to get your hands
on some? I definitely do. Well, No, not exactly, because
when you hear a little bit more about this, you're
going to be a little bit grossed out by how
it was so well preserved. You want it safely behind glass. Um,
(06:58):
just to put that date in Prespective. The shoe is
older than Stonehengnge. It's even about a thousand years older
than the Great Pyramids of Giza, and it's from the
Cololithic period or Copper Age, which researchers still don't really
know a whole lot about. So it's old. It's an
old old shoe. Yeah, it's old as dirt and was
(07:19):
so well preserved because of the cool, dry environment in
the cave, and also because it was covered in layers
of sheep dong which provided kind of a seal around it.
And if you look at pictures of it online, and
I'm sure just by googling the oldest leather shoe you
can find some photos of it around it looks like
something that was covered and counting. It doesn't look too hot.
(07:40):
But what is so remarkable about it is that the
level of detail that was preserved basically, I mean laces, eyelets,
and even the straw that was inside it was still there.
It's the one case of wind stepping in poop is
a good thing, definitely um And as far as its
style goes, it's said to be some to the pempooties
(08:01):
worn on the Aran Islands in the west of Ireland
up until the nineteen fifties. It's basically like a raw
hide slipper um and in size it's comparable to a
woman's size seven. But they're not positive yet whether it
was worn by a woman or worn by a man. Yeah,
I think it's a right footed shoe. But they said
that even though it's sort of comparable to what a
(08:23):
woman's foot would be now, it could have been a
man's foot back in that time. Well that was notable too,
wasn't it That it was made. Each shoe was made
for a specific foot. They weren't interchangeable as many old
shoes are. Ably, and the actual discovery, and this was
a really interesting story, was made beneath one of several
cave chambers by Armenian doctoral student Diana Zardarian. She noticed
(08:48):
a small pit of weeds as she was exploring, and
so she reached down and touched in that area, and
she found two sheep horns and an upside down broken ole,
and under that she said she felt what she thought
was an ear of a cow, which to me would
be alarming, but apparently she thought that was pretty cool.
But when she took it out, she looked at it
(09:08):
and she thought, Oh my god, And this is a
quote that she gave to The New York Times best
quote ever, best quote of two thousand. Oh my god,
it's a shoe. To find a shoe has always been
my dream. So there you go. I mean, and not
just any shoe, the old issue, the oldest shoe, the
dreams of archaeologists coming coming true in two thousand and ten.
(09:31):
Another interesting thing about this fine though, it seemed to
scientist that the shoe was put in the pit on purpose,
and they can't really figure out why you would put
a shoe in a pit, but they're working on it.
So it's just kind of a quirky, interesting discovery, and
it might have some really important implications because learning where
the skin processing techniques came from might give us an
(09:52):
idea of the complexity of this society. So, I mean,
you learn a lot about a man buy his shoes
definite ling today and back in the day, so our
next find. It's also of the ancient variety, although it
has to do more with that religion and construction projects
than fashion. So archaeologists for a long time have assumed
(10:14):
that the area around Stonehenge was empty, and Professor Vince
Gaffney of Birmingham University, who studies the whole area, said, quote,
people have tended to think that as Stonehenge reached its peak,
it was the paramount monument existing in splendid isolation, and
that's sort of how you look at it today. You
know that screen saver like blue sky behind it in Greenfield,
(10:37):
nothing else. Yeah, you don't think of a bunch of
other stuff being around Stonehenge. But that's not how it was,
apparently not at all. So we know that Woodhenge was
discovered in about two miles away from the Stonehende site,
and there have been multiple discoveries just in the past
few years Ditches Roads burial grounds, there was a stash
of Bronze Age monuments only a few miles off. Even
(11:01):
another wooden hinge found in two thousand nine. The details
of that one really haven't come out yet. Yeah, but
the wooden hinge that was discovered this July in as
it has to have been for our list, tops all
of these other discoveries. A lot of archaeologists are saying
that it's the most impressive find on the site in
(11:21):
the past fifty years. So how did they find this? Well?
Using geophysical imaging technology, which is a machine that looks
a little bit like a riding lawnmower, but it's really
a radar scanning system which lets them scan three yards
deep at twelve miles per hour. And Gaffney's team they
use this technology to find something interesting and it was
(11:43):
almost three thousand feet two thousand ft from Stonehenge. Yeah,
what they found was an eighty foot wide bank and
ditch with entrances aligned with those Stonehenge. Uh. There, of course,
if you are familiar with Stonehenge, that means those entrances
are also aligned with the solstice. So on the salstice,
the sun enters into the circle inside of this bank
(12:07):
and ditch combo where twenty four holes, each three feet across,
which they reckon. A pole of that size could have
supported a pole up to nineteen feet high. And they
assumed that it was a wooden hinge because if there
had been stones there, the holes might have been a
little more beaten up if the stones had been excavated.
(12:29):
Since then, the archaeologists assumed that the wood just rotted
in place. And in the center of this whole thing
is a burial mound about forty ft wide. So there
you go a hinge in the middle of in the
middle of the field. Ye Gaffney calls it a timber
equivalent to Stonehenge and guesses that it's about years old
and is near that was near when Stonehenge was at
(12:52):
its peak. Since Stonehenge was built in phases, and we
of course don't know what this new hinge find was
used for, but theories range from everything from being a
cemetery to being hospital to being a site for funerals.
And since the fine came at the beginning of this
three year long surveying project with this writing lawnmower type machine,
(13:16):
we can expect probably some more fines out here around
Stonehenge in the next few years. And this kind of
site is pretty easy to miss after thousands of years
of plowing. You know, there's a good chance there might
be something else. Yeah, it's almost like you need this
technology to be able to detect the minute traces of
whatever's left. Yeah. But as I thought was interesting, Stonehenge
(13:39):
itself might have likely started out as a ring of
wooden posts like this one found in two thousand ten,
before farmers brought in the blue stones, followed by the
large giant sarcen stones. Yeah, and the legends around where
the stones came from in Stonehenge I've always thought are
really cool. Uh there's like a legend that the stone
(14:00):
were brought to England from Ireland by the wizard Merlin,
and that those stones had originally been brought to Ireland
from Africa by Giant who thought they had um mystical
healing properties. So anything having to do with Stonehenge, it's
probably gonna make our list, I'd say, But this is
(14:20):
just too weird not to mention, and it honestly kind
of confused me when I was researching this wooden Henge.
At almost the exact same time as this news came out,
really within days, another study came out on a similar
ancient wooden hinge in Ohio, and the site itself is
(14:40):
in a new discovery. They've known about this Ohio Henge
for a while, but the revelation was that it was
also a line to match up with the solstice. So
pretty cool double hinge find and sort of a bonus
edition for our list. Cool and freaky. Next, we have
kind of a sweet find. I think Sarah Um archaeologist
(15:01):
began and covering this footprint of the building in James Town, Virginia,
which was of course the first English settlement in the
New World earlier this year, and by August they'd realized
that it was actually the remains of the church in
which Pocahontas married English tobacco farmer John Rolfe. Yeah, and
Pocahontas Katie and I did an episode on her more
(15:22):
than a year ago. But she was, of course the
Powatan Indian woman and daughter of the chief, and she
apparently befriended the settlers of the Jamestown Colony as a
young girl and was a frequent visitor, really helped them
stay alive and survive. And in sixteen fourteen she married
John Rolfe, also the subject of an earlier posodcast um
(15:44):
and that start their marriage was essentially an alliance between
the Native Americans in the English and it started this
period of peace between the Powatan Indians. In sixteen fourteen,
Pocahontas married John Rolfe, who was also the subject of
an earlier podcast, and their marriage was essentially an alliance
that started a period of peace between the Powatan Indians
(16:06):
and the colonists that lasted for about eight years. Yeah,
and just an interesting side fact to that marriage as that,
according to one colonil, she'd actually been married before to
an Indian named Kokum. So it's a fun fact thrown
in there. But back to the chapel. How did they
know that they had actually found it? I mean, what
gave them the evidence? Well, they weren't really sure at first,
(16:27):
but they figured out the building's dimensions, and then they
realized that there were four graves neatly aligned in the
center of the east end of the building, and it's
the spot that would have coincided with where the altar
would have been and also where elite members of the
church would have been buried. Also, the second thing was
that there were eight post holes large enough and deep
(16:49):
enough to have held timbers capable of supporting a large
cathedral type ceiling. And then there was also a footprint
of a pretty chapel and that was in line with
the holes, and this they figured that that would be
there because it was documented by Jamestown colonist William Stracy
in sixteen ten in his account of the chapel. The
(17:10):
fourth thing that kind of clued them into the fact
that this was Pocahon's wedding chapel is that the structure
was located near ware an X or perhaps across, which
is thought to represent a church site on maps of
that era. It's marked on a six O eight Zuniga map,
which is a rare firsthand sketch of James Fort and surroundings. Yeah, so,
(17:32):
so far archaeologists have only excavated about half of the church,
so there's definitely going to be a lot to come
in eleven um and they're hoping to find a few
different things, namely the identities of the four people buried
near the altar area. They have some guesses though, based
on date recorded dates of deaths and the status within
(17:55):
the community. And some of their guests are the Reverend
Robert Hunt, who is jamestown first Chaplain, Sir Ferninando Wenman,
who is the Master of Ordinance for Fort James, Captain
Peter Wynn, a sergeant major of the fort, and Captain
Gabriel Archer, who was a member of the colony's first
governing council. So those are the number four names thrown
(18:17):
out for who's buried in Pocahona's chapel. It'll be interesting
to find out who it really is. And it looks
like maybe we can look forward to learning more about that,
maybe as soon as next summer. So our final entry
for this list of historical discoveries is on the light side.
It's kind of fun and hopefully it'll get you in
the spirit for ringing in the new year. You said spirit. Yeah,
(18:41):
that's the clue to to what this item has to
do with UM. There's long been an argument that Stone
Age farmers grew cereals not just for food, but to
make beer. And I mean that argument has been around
for a while, but just this year the archaeologist Brian
Hayden from Simon Fraser University in Canada has started studying
(19:04):
it more carefully and released a report on it. UM
just trying to figure out what the importance of the
Brew had been for the development of a lot of
world cultures. So here's a little background on that. The
Neolithic Arab people in Southwest Asia pioneered the use of
wild cereals. You would think that they did this to
have something to eat, right, But actually that wasn't so
(19:27):
much the case. Archaeological evidence says that up until the
Neolithic Age, things like barley and rice weren't really a
big part of people's diets. Since you have to gather them,
winnow them, hask them, grind them. It's just a lot
of work in general, process and grains to a point
where you can eat them. Yeah. So people probably didn't
go to that much trouble. Yeah. Um, But Hayden's research
(19:50):
found that people in Syria would travel up to forty
or sixty miles to get access to grain. So it
seemed like there must be some motive for obtaining grains
that had to do with something other than just eating them,
and that's likely to make beer out of them or
some sort of alcohol. Because if you needed something fancy
(20:14):
or ceremonial to serve at your banquet, beer was a
pretty good bet. Yeah. Beer actually became a big staple
at feast, along with meat and something starchy like bread
or porridge. Um, if you're postcapey good beer, you'd probably
be in pretty good standing with them. Yeah, and you
might loosen up a little bit, maybe work out a
deal or something. You can see why it would be useful. Um.
(20:38):
Discovery kind of reminded me of the two thousand seven
discovery of Cash of Mine pottery. Um that I think
I talked about some in the History of Chocolate episode.
Archaeologists had found theobram mine, which is the chemical calling
card of cacao in this pottery. Um. But the weird
thing about it is it didn't have classic mix there's
(21:00):
for the chocolate drink. It had the co cow, but
it didn't have vanilla or honey or spices. It just
had the cacaw chemical And it meant that these vessels
probably held cacao alcohol, which was this fermented beverage made
from fruit pulp instead of the beans. And maybe they
assume that maybe in the process of making this more
(21:21):
ancient beverage, this alcoholic beverage, somebody discovered that you could
make another drink that it's probably a little tastier out
of the fermented beans. Pretty smart. Yeah, it's also kind
of reminiscent of the whiskey rebellion, Yeah, which has been
on my list for a long time. Yeah. And the
idea there is that because grains are easier to keep,
cheaper to transport, and infinitely more valuable when they've been
(21:44):
processed in alcohol, Um, why not do it that way? Yeah,
So maybe people started domesticating grains so that they could
make beer. Who knows, Yes, that would definitely be the
more flavorful alternative I think. But hopefully this has gotten
you in the spirit to go out and have a
good time for New Year's Eve. Put on your dancing shoes. Yes,
(22:08):
let loose a little bit. And now it's time for
a listener mail. So our first email comes from Shane
in Ohio, and he wrote that he teaches advanced placement
US history in northern Ohio and he loves the podcast. Um.
He said that he especially enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes and
the Last podcast, and that's partly because he's really into
(22:31):
finding Easter eggs and shows, which, um, if you're not
familiar with Easter eggs, they're like the little things that
if you watch really carefully and probably if you have
a DVR and can actually pause your TV show, um,
you'll catch just a little inside um easter eggs for
hardcore fans. So regarding House and Sherlock Holmes, he wrote,
(22:54):
there was a little Easter egg whenever they show the
address that Gregory House lives at to twenty one B.
Baker Street. Yep, the same as Mr Sherlock Holmes. And
then um, this was just so sweet. But he wrote,
if you want to make a history teacher. It's happy
if he can be short of a day at the Smithsonian.
Mentioned any of this in some future podcast, and my
(23:16):
quote History Nerds datus will be forever cemented in my classroom,
which is a great thing. So I hope we've like
boosted your reputation in your classroom. And um enjoy watching
your Lost reruns and your House episodes. Yeah, definitely. This
next letter is also Sherlock Holmes related. It's from Chris
(23:37):
and he says this is his first time writing in.
He says, I am a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories,
and since you asked for favorite Sherlock stories, I must
mention a favorite that was also one of the ones
that was never told. Holmes was fond of referring to
adventures that he and Watson had embarked on that weren't
written about, and in the Adventures of the Sussex Vampire,
(23:58):
Holmes says, mattil to Briggs was not the name of
a young woman, Watson. It was a ship which is
associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for
which the world is not yet prepared. How can you
not be intrigued by that giant rats it isn't drinking,
I think definitely. He also adds, as the other letter
did a couple of House Sherlock associations and he says
(24:23):
he's pitt fans of both shows and he mentioned the apartment.
Everybody also mentions that Dr James Wilson and House plays
the part of Dr John Watson. That even give a
nod to it in in universe with House being shot
by a man named Moriarty and a made up love
interest for House named, of course, Irene Adler, which was
also a Home's character. So we have a lot of
(24:44):
homes enthusiast out there. I think we got a lot
of mail about favorite homes stories and just general Sherlock
commentary on the latest show and other favorite theories. Yes,
and we love to get those letters. So if you
have any comments on previous podcasts or today's podcasts, favorite
discoveries of two thousand ten that we didn't mention that
(25:07):
you want to share with us, please write us at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can
also visit us on Facebook or a Twitter at Myston History. Yeah,
and we also have tons of year end wrap up
articles being published right now and as we speak image
galleries of best news stories of and you can search
(25:28):
for them on our home page at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How
Stuff Works iPhone up has a ride. Download it today
(25:50):
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