December 26, 2012 • 21 mins
In this episode, we look back on some of the biggest historical news of 2012s. Tune in to learn how researchers revealed new theories regarding mercury's involvement in Tycho Brahe's death, and startling insights into the Great Wall of China.
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Episode Transcript
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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 to blame a truck reporting and I'm fair, and
it's time for our annual look at the year in history,
something that's become kind of a little tradition for us.
(00:22):
And we've mentioned before how the news, the news of
historical discoveries or new research on older discoveries often influences
what we cover. So it just seems natural to do
a little roundup of all those little bits of history
news that piqued our interests but haven't made their way
into a full episode or an episode update just yet.
But as always we should point out that even though
(00:44):
our title for for this episode, in the continuation of
this episode is called Unearthed in it's not going to
be all about stuff that came out of the ground
by way of archaeological work and and so forth. The
fines that we're discussing would be from almost anywhere, the
depth of the ocean, or the depths of someone's forgotten basement,
(01:06):
storage of things that have been sitting around for decades,
even in some cases h and are only finally being
analyzed and new discoveries are being made, and it's by
no means a comprehensive list this thing we're offering up here.
The only thing that really ties all these fines together
is the fact that there was news about them this
year that we found really interesting and we hope that
(01:28):
you will too. So the first item on our list
is an update to a mystery presented in a previous
podcast on sixteenth century Danish astronomer Tico Brahy. One of
my favorite podcasts that we've done. He is one of
your favorites, and we have a um. We even have
a Christmas ornament of him that listener sent us in
last year. We do and Brahy, of course, if you
(01:50):
didn't hear that podcast, was the first astronomer to describe
a supernova or the explosion of a dying star. He
also discovered a new star in the constellation Cassiopia, which
was a pretty big deal at the time because people
thought that everything in the universe, including the stars, was fixed,
that nothing changed. So there's this crazy story about Tico
(02:11):
bra his death in sixteen o one, which suggests that
he died because he refused to excuse himself to use
the bathroom while he was at a banquet at the
Emperorce Court in Prague. He thought it would be rude
to get up in the middle of a meal. So,
as the story goes, by the time he got home,
he wasn't able to urinate for eleven days until he
finally passed away on October one. So that's kind of
(02:34):
the old fashioned story about Tico, and a lot of
people believed this for many years until in the nineteen nineties.
Some tests were done by researchers in Denmark on some
hair samples from his mustache which had been obtained when
his body was exhumed in nineteen o one, and these
researchers found what they determined to be very high levels
(02:56):
of mercury in these hairs, and they said that the
the levels were one hundred times greater than normal mercury levels.
So suddenly mercury poisoning seemed to be entertained as a
very likely cause of Brah's death, and some people began
to suspect foul play. If you start going down that path,
(03:16):
you start wondering, well, if he was murdered, who did
it was it? A German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler,
whose work benefited a lot from Brahe's death. A lot
of people thought that could be the case. Or was
it Danish King Christian the Fourth who hated Brahy for
supposedly having an affair with the king's mother. So there
are several theories here, and we explored some of them
(03:39):
in the episode that we did. Some people also thought
that brought Him might have accidentally poisoned himself, since he
was a bit of an alchemist. Maybe he made a
medicine that contained mercury and just put too much in it.
But around the time that we did this episode on
Brahy in two thousand and ten, the astronomer's remains had
just been exhumed from his grave and prague once again,
so that Reesa just could explore some of these theories
(04:01):
a little more so. In November of this year, a
Danish check team of researchers revealed what they had found
when they analyzed bone and beard samples from this exhimation. Basically,
they determined that Brahe's mercury levels were not high enough
for this to have caused his death, so exactly the opposite. Yeah,
and there they are still waiting for analysis of teeth
(04:22):
samples to come back, but from what they found so far,
he did not get an unusually large dose of mercury
in the last five to ten years of his life,
and in fact his levels weren't that much different from
just the average person alive today. According to a BBC article,
Dr Yen's Velav one of the researchers in this in
(04:45):
this project, said quote, it is impossible that Tico Brahe
could have been murdered. If there were other poisons in
the beard, we would have been able to see it
in the analysis, So pretty definitive statement there. They also
solved another mystery we speculated about a bit in the
Brahe podcast, the mystery of the composition of his metallic nose.
(05:07):
So just a little background here. He lost his nose
in a duel that he fought with another student while
he was studying astronomy. They had fought over some mathematical point.
Bray had lost a chunk of his nose, and the
story was that he replaced it with an artificial nose
made of either gold or silver. Unfortunately, that artificial nose
was missing when Brahe was exhumed in one but the
(05:29):
test done by this research team shows that the traces
of copper and zinc that were found on the remains
suggest that his pros thesis was actually made of brass.
And I've been thinking about this, probably more than I
should have. Really, I've been thinking, maybe Brath complimented his
skin tone better and silver or gold. It might be
(05:49):
kind of difficult if that was like the middle of
your face, it wouldn't really blend. Yeah, I guess Brath.
I don't know, Little Rosier. Maybe it's a theory, Sarah.
It's not going along with that. But the next item
on our list involves someone else who is really well known,
another favorite of ours. I guess to talk about Leonardo
da Vinci. And admittedly da Vinci is a lot like
(06:11):
Amelia Earhardt, and so much as you can't really seem
to go one year without hearing some kind of news
or new theory about him or one of his works,
it's easy to get them confused. Almost you know that
there's some new da Vinci find out there, and you
don't realize that it's actually a different one from the
one announced a month before. But usually the news items
involve what's often called the world's most famous painting, the
(06:35):
Mona Lisa, of course, and over the past couple of
years there's been a lot of news that has had
to do with determining the identity of the portrait subject,
the lady with the mysterious smile, and the generally agreed
upon theory is that it's a painting of Lisa Garardini,
a Florentine merchant's wife, and this year there was more
(06:55):
news about that as Italian researcher Silvano Vincenti has been
digging up human remains in an old bandoned convent in
Florence that's believed to be Garardini's final resting place, and
he's hoping to find her remains and confirm that their hers,
and do a facial reconstruction and then compare that facial
reconstruction to the painting. And he's received a bit of
(07:18):
criticism about this from other researchers for his methods. They
don't really First of all, they think it's tough too,
it's going to be tough to identify her remains positively,
just because of the speed in which this is being done.
And also, I mean we've discussed this before, I think
on previous podcasts, how facial reconstructions aren't necessarily accurate by
(07:39):
any means, so I think that's come up before with
uts it has, uh so, just a little news in
that in that area. But perhaps the more interesting Da
Vinci related news from this year, at least to me,
involves a very different work of his, a mural called
the Battle of on Yari, And this work has sort
of a strange mystery surroundings history too. There really is
(08:00):
a mystery, and it all started back in fifteen o three,
when Da Vinci and his rival artist Michelangelo got commissions
at the same time to paint murals on opposite walls
of the Palazzo Vecchio, which is now Florence's City Hall,
and the murals were supposed to represent Florentine victories, but
(08:21):
according to a Discovery News article by Rosella Lorenzi, Michelangelo's
Battle of Kashina never made it past the sketching stage.
Da Vinci, however, did start on his Battle of Ai,
which featured the Florentines fourteen forty victory over Milanese troops
on June six, fift oh five. UM. There's some debate
(08:43):
about whether Da Vinci actually finish this depiction, though According
to the sixteenth century painter, architect and writer Georgio Vasari,
who wrote The Lives of Artists in fifteen fifty, da
Vinci only painted art of his work before abandoning it
due to technical problems, and that's kind of where the
(09:04):
mystery kicks off. Yeah. Lorenzi writes that some historians think
of Assari made up the story and that Da Vinci
actually completed his work. It's hard to say for sure, though,
because at some point the Battle of a Giari disappeared,
and this happened when around fifteen sixty, Vizari was hired
to work on a citywide renovation to celebrate the Medici family,
(09:26):
and in the course of this renovation he was tapped
to redo the Hall of five hundred, and after that,
Da Vinci's mural wasn't seen again, and it only survives
now in preparatory drawings and in sketches and a Reuben's
drawing that was inspired by an anonymous copy of the mural.
A lot of da Vinci's contemporaries, though, considered this his
finest work, so naturally, a lot of people, including art
(09:49):
diagnostic expert Maurizio Seracini, have been really interested in finding it.
Saracini is the director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science
for Art, Architecture and Archaeology at the University of California,
San Diego, and he's been searching for the Battle of
ai Ai since the nineteen seventies. So this year was
clearly a major break for him because finally Sarasini and
(10:12):
his team of researchers announced that they think that they
might have found some solid clues as to the masterpieces whereabouts.
And they found the clues by drilling into a wall
in the Plazzo Vecchio Uh. Incidentally, it's a wall covered
by another fresco called the Battle of Marciano, this one
(10:34):
painted by none other than Azari himself, following the renovation
that he was involved in. So they drilled these six
tiny little poles into Zaris fresco and inserted a point
fifteen inch wide probe and micro cameras in order to
bring back samples of red, white, orange, and black pigment
(10:58):
material the in they analyzed it, and this is where
this gets so cool. They analyzed this this pigment and
the chemical makeup of it, and it turned out that
the chemical makeup of the black pigment is the same
as the black pigment in the brown glazes used on
da Vinci's other works, including The Mona Lisa and St.
(11:20):
John the Baptist. The other material appeared to have been
applied by a paintbrush, the one that they that they retrieved.
So really cool here, and especially I guess it's worth
mentioning too that artists did have highly personalized pigment, so
that's a big deal. That's true. So essentially, this team's
theory is that the Battle of a Giari is located
(11:42):
on a wall that's obscured by the wall that features
fazaries work, And you're probably wondering what makes them think
that this could even be possible, And they have reason
to believe this because apparently Fazzari had done this and
at least one other location during his renovations. In the
Church of sam To Maria Novella, he had to get
rid of Massacho's trinity, but instead of just destroying it,
(12:05):
he bricked over it and added his own mural over
the new wall. So Missacho's fresco was found in eighteen
sixty one when Passaris wall was removed, and Saracena even
thinks He's found kind of a da Vinci code like
clue that this happened on the wall featuring the Battle
of Marciano, which proves that da Vinci's work might be
behind it. Apparently, Vasari wrote to the words cherka trova
(12:30):
seek and you shall find on a little green flag
that exists on that wall. It's pretty awesome, isn't it.
It is pretty cool. There was also a radar survey,
though you know this is not all little green flags
written by uh sorry. There was a radar survey that
was carried out in even that showed a hollow space
(12:51):
between Vasari's mural and the original stone wall, which was
the only gap of its kind that existed in the room.
So naturally, Saraceni wanted to do some more drilling, do
some more research here and see if he could get
some additional evidence to prove the theory that there is
a lost da Vinci behind this mural, and initially the
(13:12):
mayor of Florence was on board with it. According to
Laurenzi's article, Saraceni felt that it could be quote one
of the biggest discoveries in the history of art. But
unfortunately for Saraceni, according to a New York Times article
by Elizabetta Povleto. The project was ultimately suspended when art
(13:33):
authorities in Florence turned down the request to drill more
holes into Sari's work. I mean, you've got it. It's
not like they're just drilling through some planned stuff. Well
does have a sorry mural on it. From an art
conservation standpoint, people were very opposed to the idea of
it doing something like that just in the hope of
(13:54):
finding something amazing beneath it. Uh Saraceni that was very
disappointed it, he told the New York Times quote, now
we have lost an opportunity. So we'll find out. I mean,
maybe this is the case where technology can give us
a peak without having to destroy the saries work on
top of it. And maybe there will be a way
(14:14):
to to do it someday. Would be interesting to find
out if it's actually back there. It's kind of a
cool story. Nonetheless, so that Da Vinci story, though we
have to admit it is cheating a little bit. It's
kind of like an almost unearthed item rather than a
true unearthed item. But there are a couple of findings
out of China that occurred this year that we're much
(14:37):
more concrete that we want to share truly unearthed. One
has to do with the world's largest human made structure,
a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is, of course, the
Great Wall of China, and major construction on the Great
Wall began around two under the orders of Emperor chiann
Xi Huang, who used the wall to protect to the
(15:00):
Chinese Empire from northern tribes. And of course that it
wasn't just one big project all done in the same style.
It's been renovated many times by several different dynasties, even
though the majority of the existing structure reflects construction and
renovations that were done during the Ming dynasty. Yeah, that's
(15:20):
what you've probably toured if you visited the Great Wall
the Ming portions. Previously, the length of the Wall was
estimated to be around five thousand, five hundred miles or
eight thousand, eight hundred fifty kilometers. But the Great Wall,
turns out isn't just one continuous wall. It's a series
of sometimes overlapping fortifications made of stone, bricks, or in
(15:41):
some spots packed earth, and the construction of which began
as early as the seventh century BC. According to an
article by Malcolm Moore and the Telegraph, and attempt to
survey all of these fortifications began in two thousand seven.
The survey encompassed fifteen Chinese provinces with the goal of
measuring every little piece of wall that they could find.
(16:01):
So the findings from that survey, which were revealed this summer,
or that the wall is actually more than twice as
long as previously thought. It's thirteen thousand, one hundred and
seventy miles or twenty one thousand, one kilometers. But there
were a few other results of the survey, to a
(16:22):
total of forty three thousand, seven d twenty one heritage
sites were identified nationwide, and there's a new initiative to
map out all of the wall to as part of
an effort to to preserve it. You can't really protect
something necessarily if you don't know that it's there. There
was also another Chinese fine announced over the summer. Chinese
archaeologists discovered one hundred and ten more terracotta warriors. And
(16:46):
if you don't know about this, the terracotta warriors are
of course part of the ancient terra Cotta Army, a
collection of life size terracotta sculptures that were built to
guard the tomb of China's first emperor, Chian Chi Huong.
I think there might be a an old episode on
them too, may be done by Candice in Jane. We'll
have to check that out. The terra cotta army was
first discovered in nineteen seventy four by someone who's digging
(17:09):
a well, and it's a World Heritage site also according
to an AFP article, though the most significant aspect of
this new discovery is that the new figures were found
really well preserved, so much so that they're still colorfully painted.
I mean, I don't know, did you visit the High
Museum exhibit when there were then? You know it was
(17:32):
it was very cool, But one of the most impressive
aspects of it to me were the pictures of the
before and it's just totally smashed little pieces of terra cotta,
and and those are what they ultimately pieced together into
these complete statues. So this is so cool to me
to hear that they're they're finding figures that are better
(17:53):
preserved and and still even have pigment on them. Um
to this is meat to The paint doesn't seem to
have faded as much as the researchers would have expected,
so it is still bright and almost trude out to
what it would have been originally. In addition to the warriors,
some pottery horses, parts of chariots, weapons and tools were
also found. I have a hunch to that that this
(18:16):
is the story the terra cotta warriors and more fines.
There could be something that would be in an Unearthed
episode year after year, because yeah, it's a huge complex
and one of the things I remember from visiting that
exhibit at the museum, I think maybe last year or
two years ago, we're pictures of the complex as a whole,
(18:37):
and how little of it had really been excavated pretty
neat is well, that is our episode Unearthed in two
thousand twelve Part one. We have more fines to come
in part two. Just for a little teaser too. We're
gonna be talking about the vampires. We're gonna talk about
crazy Roman stuff and some Maya history. I mean, that's
(19:02):
why we had to divide into two episodes. There's just
too much good stuff and I didn't even get we
didn't even get to include everything we wanted to in
two episodes. Debilina worked up an enormous list of possible topics.
Some of them I don't know. Maybe they'll inspire full
length episodes their own. I think there are a couple
of ideas on there that could make good full length episodes,
So we may see them later on down the line.
(19:24):
But for now, just get ready for Part two. Before
we move on to that, though, we want to share
a little bit of listener mail. We wanted to share
a postcard that we received from Shannon. It's of Saudi Arabia,
and and she was saying that she figured, of all
the postcards that we received, we've never received one from
(19:44):
Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure. I tried to think of it.
I can't remember. One might be a first. I hope.
I don't offend anybody if you have sent me one
Saudi Arabia. But it's a really cool postcard. It's it
was just sitting on my desk when I came in
one day. But it the two men greeting each other
in front of a huge array of knives. So it's
(20:08):
kind of an intimidating postcard, but you know they're at
a market. It's not a it's not a threatening messages
friendly yeah, but She wrote to to send a few
suggestions to and one of them was an episode on
Robert Louis Stevenson and suggested that he might make a
cool podcast, and I thought that kind of fits into
our historical authors sort of series we do. So thank
(20:32):
you very much for that suggestion, Shannon, and for the postcard.
If you'd like to share some stories with us of
your travels or just some ideas for future podcast, maybe
some bits of history news that you've noticed that we
haven't talked about, please right to us. We're at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook and
we're on Twitter at this in History. And I think
we actually have an article on the terra Cotta warriors,
(20:54):
don't we. I think we do, so that would be
a fun one for people to check out, although we
might need to go update it now. Oh, if there's
been this new discovery, maybe it's already been taken care
of fingers crossed, So if you're interested in doing that,
go check out the article on the Terracotta Army on
our homepage. It's at www dot how stuff works dot
com h for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(21:23):
Is it how Stuff Works? Dot com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a truck reporting and I'm fair, and
it's time for our annual look at the year in history,
something that's become kind of a little tradition for us.
(00:22):
And we've mentioned before how the news, the news of
historical discoveries or new research on older discoveries often influences
what we cover. So it just seems natural to do
a little roundup of all those little bits of history
news that piqued our interests but haven't made their way
into a full episode or an episode update just yet.
But as always we should point out that even though
(00:44):
our title for for this episode, in the continuation of
this episode is called Unearthed in it's not going to
be all about stuff that came out of the ground
by way of archaeological work and and so forth. The
fines that we're discussing would be from almost anywhere, the
depth of the ocean, or the depths of someone's forgotten basement,
(01:06):
storage of things that have been sitting around for decades,
even in some cases h and are only finally being
analyzed and new discoveries are being made, and it's by
no means a comprehensive list this thing we're offering up here.
The only thing that really ties all these fines together
is the fact that there was news about them this
year that we found really interesting and we hope that
(01:28):
you will too. So the first item on our list
is an update to a mystery presented in a previous
podcast on sixteenth century Danish astronomer Tico Brahy. One of
my favorite podcasts that we've done. He is one of
your favorites, and we have a um. We even have
a Christmas ornament of him that listener sent us in
last year. We do and Brahy, of course, if you
(01:50):
didn't hear that podcast, was the first astronomer to describe
a supernova or the explosion of a dying star. He
also discovered a new star in the constellation Cassiopia, which
was a pretty big deal at the time because people
thought that everything in the universe, including the stars, was fixed,
that nothing changed. So there's this crazy story about Tico
(02:11):
bra his death in sixteen o one, which suggests that
he died because he refused to excuse himself to use
the bathroom while he was at a banquet at the
Emperorce Court in Prague. He thought it would be rude
to get up in the middle of a meal. So,
as the story goes, by the time he got home,
he wasn't able to urinate for eleven days until he
finally passed away on October one. So that's kind of
(02:34):
the old fashioned story about Tico, and a lot of
people believed this for many years until in the nineteen nineties.
Some tests were done by researchers in Denmark on some
hair samples from his mustache which had been obtained when
his body was exhumed in nineteen o one, and these
researchers found what they determined to be very high levels
(02:56):
of mercury in these hairs, and they said that the
the levels were one hundred times greater than normal mercury levels.
So suddenly mercury poisoning seemed to be entertained as a
very likely cause of Brah's death, and some people began
to suspect foul play. If you start going down that path,
(03:16):
you start wondering, well, if he was murdered, who did
it was it? A German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler,
whose work benefited a lot from Brahe's death. A lot
of people thought that could be the case. Or was
it Danish King Christian the Fourth who hated Brahy for
supposedly having an affair with the king's mother. So there
are several theories here, and we explored some of them
(03:39):
in the episode that we did. Some people also thought
that brought Him might have accidentally poisoned himself, since he
was a bit of an alchemist. Maybe he made a
medicine that contained mercury and just put too much in it.
But around the time that we did this episode on
Brahy in two thousand and ten, the astronomer's remains had
just been exhumed from his grave and prague once again,
so that Reesa just could explore some of these theories
(04:01):
a little more so. In November of this year, a
Danish check team of researchers revealed what they had found
when they analyzed bone and beard samples from this exhimation. Basically,
they determined that Brahe's mercury levels were not high enough
for this to have caused his death, so exactly the opposite. Yeah,
and there they are still waiting for analysis of teeth
(04:22):
samples to come back, but from what they found so far,
he did not get an unusually large dose of mercury
in the last five to ten years of his life,
and in fact his levels weren't that much different from
just the average person alive today. According to a BBC article,
Dr Yen's Velav one of the researchers in this in
(04:45):
this project, said quote, it is impossible that Tico Brahe
could have been murdered. If there were other poisons in
the beard, we would have been able to see it
in the analysis, So pretty definitive statement there. They also
solved another mystery we speculated about a bit in the
Brahe podcast, the mystery of the composition of his metallic nose.
(05:07):
So just a little background here. He lost his nose
in a duel that he fought with another student while
he was studying astronomy. They had fought over some mathematical point.
Bray had lost a chunk of his nose, and the
story was that he replaced it with an artificial nose
made of either gold or silver. Unfortunately, that artificial nose
was missing when Brahe was exhumed in one but the
(05:29):
test done by this research team shows that the traces
of copper and zinc that were found on the remains
suggest that his pros thesis was actually made of brass.
And I've been thinking about this, probably more than I
should have. Really, I've been thinking, maybe Brath complimented his
skin tone better and silver or gold. It might be
(05:49):
kind of difficult if that was like the middle of
your face, it wouldn't really blend. Yeah, I guess Brath.
I don't know, Little Rosier. Maybe it's a theory, Sarah.
It's not going along with that. But the next item
on our list involves someone else who is really well known,
another favorite of ours. I guess to talk about Leonardo
da Vinci. And admittedly da Vinci is a lot like
(06:11):
Amelia Earhardt, and so much as you can't really seem
to go one year without hearing some kind of news
or new theory about him or one of his works,
it's easy to get them confused. Almost you know that
there's some new da Vinci find out there, and you
don't realize that it's actually a different one from the
one announced a month before. But usually the news items
involve what's often called the world's most famous painting, the
(06:35):
Mona Lisa, of course, and over the past couple of
years there's been a lot of news that has had
to do with determining the identity of the portrait subject,
the lady with the mysterious smile, and the generally agreed
upon theory is that it's a painting of Lisa Garardini,
a Florentine merchant's wife, and this year there was more
(06:55):
news about that as Italian researcher Silvano Vincenti has been
digging up human remains in an old bandoned convent in
Florence that's believed to be Garardini's final resting place, and
he's hoping to find her remains and confirm that their hers,
and do a facial reconstruction and then compare that facial
reconstruction to the painting. And he's received a bit of
(07:18):
criticism about this from other researchers for his methods. They
don't really First of all, they think it's tough too,
it's going to be tough to identify her remains positively,
just because of the speed in which this is being done.
And also, I mean we've discussed this before, I think
on previous podcasts, how facial reconstructions aren't necessarily accurate by
(07:39):
any means, so I think that's come up before with
uts it has, uh so, just a little news in
that in that area. But perhaps the more interesting Da
Vinci related news from this year, at least to me,
involves a very different work of his, a mural called
the Battle of on Yari, And this work has sort
of a strange mystery surroundings history too. There really is
(08:00):
a mystery, and it all started back in fifteen o three,
when Da Vinci and his rival artist Michelangelo got commissions
at the same time to paint murals on opposite walls
of the Palazzo Vecchio, which is now Florence's City Hall,
and the murals were supposed to represent Florentine victories, but
(08:21):
according to a Discovery News article by Rosella Lorenzi, Michelangelo's
Battle of Kashina never made it past the sketching stage.
Da Vinci, however, did start on his Battle of Ai,
which featured the Florentines fourteen forty victory over Milanese troops
on June six, fift oh five. UM. There's some debate
(08:43):
about whether Da Vinci actually finish this depiction, though According
to the sixteenth century painter, architect and writer Georgio Vasari,
who wrote The Lives of Artists in fifteen fifty, da
Vinci only painted art of his work before abandoning it
due to technical problems, and that's kind of where the
(09:04):
mystery kicks off. Yeah. Lorenzi writes that some historians think
of Assari made up the story and that Da Vinci
actually completed his work. It's hard to say for sure, though,
because at some point the Battle of a Giari disappeared,
and this happened when around fifteen sixty, Vizari was hired
to work on a citywide renovation to celebrate the Medici family,
(09:26):
and in the course of this renovation he was tapped
to redo the Hall of five hundred, and after that,
Da Vinci's mural wasn't seen again, and it only survives
now in preparatory drawings and in sketches and a Reuben's
drawing that was inspired by an anonymous copy of the mural.
A lot of da Vinci's contemporaries, though, considered this his
finest work, so naturally, a lot of people, including art
(09:49):
diagnostic expert Maurizio Seracini, have been really interested in finding it.
Saracini is the director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science
for Art, Architecture and Archaeology at the University of California,
San Diego, and he's been searching for the Battle of
ai Ai since the nineteen seventies. So this year was
clearly a major break for him because finally Sarasini and
(10:12):
his team of researchers announced that they think that they
might have found some solid clues as to the masterpieces whereabouts.
And they found the clues by drilling into a wall
in the Plazzo Vecchio Uh. Incidentally, it's a wall covered
by another fresco called the Battle of Marciano, this one
(10:34):
painted by none other than Azari himself, following the renovation
that he was involved in. So they drilled these six
tiny little poles into Zaris fresco and inserted a point
fifteen inch wide probe and micro cameras in order to
bring back samples of red, white, orange, and black pigment
(10:58):
material the in they analyzed it, and this is where
this gets so cool. They analyzed this this pigment and
the chemical makeup of it, and it turned out that
the chemical makeup of the black pigment is the same
as the black pigment in the brown glazes used on
da Vinci's other works, including The Mona Lisa and St.
(11:20):
John the Baptist. The other material appeared to have been
applied by a paintbrush, the one that they that they retrieved.
So really cool here, and especially I guess it's worth
mentioning too that artists did have highly personalized pigment, so
that's a big deal. That's true. So essentially, this team's
theory is that the Battle of a Giari is located
(11:42):
on a wall that's obscured by the wall that features
fazaries work, And you're probably wondering what makes them think
that this could even be possible, And they have reason
to believe this because apparently Fazzari had done this and
at least one other location during his renovations. In the
Church of sam To Maria Novella, he had to get
rid of Massacho's trinity, but instead of just destroying it,
(12:05):
he bricked over it and added his own mural over
the new wall. So Missacho's fresco was found in eighteen
sixty one when Passaris wall was removed, and Saracena even
thinks He's found kind of a da Vinci code like
clue that this happened on the wall featuring the Battle
of Marciano, which proves that da Vinci's work might be
behind it. Apparently, Vasari wrote to the words cherka trova
(12:30):
seek and you shall find on a little green flag
that exists on that wall. It's pretty awesome, isn't it.
It is pretty cool. There was also a radar survey,
though you know this is not all little green flags
written by uh sorry. There was a radar survey that
was carried out in even that showed a hollow space
(12:51):
between Vasari's mural and the original stone wall, which was
the only gap of its kind that existed in the room.
So naturally, Saraceni wanted to do some more drilling, do
some more research here and see if he could get
some additional evidence to prove the theory that there is
a lost da Vinci behind this mural, and initially the
(13:12):
mayor of Florence was on board with it. According to
Laurenzi's article, Saraceni felt that it could be quote one
of the biggest discoveries in the history of art. But
unfortunately for Saraceni, according to a New York Times article
by Elizabetta Povleto. The project was ultimately suspended when art
(13:33):
authorities in Florence turned down the request to drill more
holes into Sari's work. I mean, you've got it. It's
not like they're just drilling through some planned stuff. Well
does have a sorry mural on it. From an art
conservation standpoint, people were very opposed to the idea of
it doing something like that just in the hope of
(13:54):
finding something amazing beneath it. Uh Saraceni that was very
disappointed it, he told the New York Times quote, now
we have lost an opportunity. So we'll find out. I mean,
maybe this is the case where technology can give us
a peak without having to destroy the saries work on
top of it. And maybe there will be a way
(14:14):
to to do it someday. Would be interesting to find
out if it's actually back there. It's kind of a
cool story. Nonetheless, so that Da Vinci story, though we
have to admit it is cheating a little bit. It's
kind of like an almost unearthed item rather than a
true unearthed item. But there are a couple of findings
out of China that occurred this year that we're much
(14:37):
more concrete that we want to share truly unearthed. One
has to do with the world's largest human made structure,
a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is, of course, the
Great Wall of China, and major construction on the Great
Wall began around two under the orders of Emperor chiann
Xi Huang, who used the wall to protect to the
(15:00):
Chinese Empire from northern tribes. And of course that it
wasn't just one big project all done in the same style.
It's been renovated many times by several different dynasties, even
though the majority of the existing structure reflects construction and
renovations that were done during the Ming dynasty. Yeah, that's
(15:20):
what you've probably toured if you visited the Great Wall
the Ming portions. Previously, the length of the Wall was
estimated to be around five thousand, five hundred miles or
eight thousand, eight hundred fifty kilometers. But the Great Wall,
turns out isn't just one continuous wall. It's a series
of sometimes overlapping fortifications made of stone, bricks, or in
(15:41):
some spots packed earth, and the construction of which began
as early as the seventh century BC. According to an
article by Malcolm Moore and the Telegraph, and attempt to
survey all of these fortifications began in two thousand seven.
The survey encompassed fifteen Chinese provinces with the goal of
measuring every little piece of wall that they could find.
(16:01):
So the findings from that survey, which were revealed this summer,
or that the wall is actually more than twice as
long as previously thought. It's thirteen thousand, one hundred and
seventy miles or twenty one thousand, one kilometers. But there
were a few other results of the survey, to a
(16:22):
total of forty three thousand, seven d twenty one heritage
sites were identified nationwide, and there's a new initiative to
map out all of the wall to as part of
an effort to to preserve it. You can't really protect
something necessarily if you don't know that it's there. There
was also another Chinese fine announced over the summer. Chinese
archaeologists discovered one hundred and ten more terracotta warriors. And
(16:46):
if you don't know about this, the terracotta warriors are
of course part of the ancient terra Cotta Army, a
collection of life size terracotta sculptures that were built to
guard the tomb of China's first emperor, Chian Chi Huong.
I think there might be a an old episode on
them too, may be done by Candice in Jane. We'll
have to check that out. The terra cotta army was
first discovered in nineteen seventy four by someone who's digging
(17:09):
a well, and it's a World Heritage site also according
to an AFP article, though the most significant aspect of
this new discovery is that the new figures were found
really well preserved, so much so that they're still colorfully painted.
I mean, I don't know, did you visit the High
Museum exhibit when there were then? You know it was
(17:32):
it was very cool, But one of the most impressive
aspects of it to me were the pictures of the
before and it's just totally smashed little pieces of terra cotta,
and and those are what they ultimately pieced together into
these complete statues. So this is so cool to me
to hear that they're they're finding figures that are better
(17:53):
preserved and and still even have pigment on them. Um
to this is meat to The paint doesn't seem to
have faded as much as the researchers would have expected,
so it is still bright and almost trude out to
what it would have been originally. In addition to the warriors,
some pottery horses, parts of chariots, weapons and tools were
also found. I have a hunch to that that this
(18:16):
is the story the terra cotta warriors and more fines.
There could be something that would be in an Unearthed
episode year after year, because yeah, it's a huge complex
and one of the things I remember from visiting that
exhibit at the museum, I think maybe last year or
two years ago, we're pictures of the complex as a whole,
(18:37):
and how little of it had really been excavated pretty
neat is well, that is our episode Unearthed in two
thousand twelve Part one. We have more fines to come
in part two. Just for a little teaser too. We're
gonna be talking about the vampires. We're gonna talk about
crazy Roman stuff and some Maya history. I mean, that's
(19:02):
why we had to divide into two episodes. There's just
too much good stuff and I didn't even get we
didn't even get to include everything we wanted to in
two episodes. Debilina worked up an enormous list of possible topics.
Some of them I don't know. Maybe they'll inspire full
length episodes their own. I think there are a couple
of ideas on there that could make good full length episodes,
So we may see them later on down the line.
(19:24):
But for now, just get ready for Part two. Before
we move on to that, though, we want to share
a little bit of listener mail. We wanted to share
a postcard that we received from Shannon. It's of Saudi Arabia,
and and she was saying that she figured, of all
the postcards that we received, we've never received one from
(19:44):
Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure. I tried to think of it.
I can't remember. One might be a first. I hope.
I don't offend anybody if you have sent me one
Saudi Arabia. But it's a really cool postcard. It's it
was just sitting on my desk when I came in
one day. But it the two men greeting each other
in front of a huge array of knives. So it's
(20:08):
kind of an intimidating postcard, but you know they're at
a market. It's not a it's not a threatening messages
friendly yeah, but She wrote to to send a few
suggestions to and one of them was an episode on
Robert Louis Stevenson and suggested that he might make a
cool podcast, and I thought that kind of fits into
our historical authors sort of series we do. So thank
(20:32):
you very much for that suggestion, Shannon, and for the postcard.
If you'd like to share some stories with us of
your travels or just some ideas for future podcast, maybe
some bits of history news that you've noticed that we
haven't talked about, please right to us. We're at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook and
we're on Twitter at this in History. And I think
we actually have an article on the terra Cotta warriors,
(20:54):
don't we. I think we do, so that would be
a fun one for people to check out, although we
might need to go update it now. Oh, if there's
been this new discovery, maybe it's already been taken care
of fingers crossed, So if you're interested in doing that,
go check out the article on the Terracotta Army on
our homepage. It's at www dot how stuff works dot
com h for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(21:23):
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