Unearthed! in Autumn 2025, Part 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
It is time for part two of our latest installment
of Unearthed. This one has some animals and some swords,
and some art, and some shoes and so many shipwrecks.
It is another just bumper crop of shipwrecks. And to
kick things off as usual, we're starting with the fines
that I liked but didn't have a category four, which

(00:39):
I call the potpoury uh.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
So here we go. Archaeologists in Turkia have found an
iron scale and a set of weights that are about
sixteen hundred years old. The scale is a balance style scale,
so it has hooks on one side for the weights
and hooks on the other side to hold a pan
to contain the items to be weighed. The weights are
also made of iron, and they're in the shape of

(01:03):
five Greek letters. The area where the weights were found
is full of shops that date back to the Hellenistic period,
and most items sold there would have been sold by weight.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah. According to the article that I read about this,
things were sold by weight that you might not expect
to be sold by weight, like M for a kittens,
So these weights were in multiples of a standard unit
of weight, that being the letra. They ranged from half
a letra up to five letras. Other scales have been

(01:35):
found in the area that are also labeled with their
weights using some kind of Greek letters, so it's possible
that these letters represented some kind of mnemonic system to
remember which weight was which if they know what it
stands for. I did not find what they stand for.
This is the first time that a scale has been

(01:56):
found in the area that still had what appears to
be a complete set of weights.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Next, a knife made from the tibia of a cave
lion has been found in Scladina Cave in Belgium. It's
roughly one hundred and thirty thousand years old and it
was probably used by Neanderthals. Although it does not have
parts that fold open and shut, it is being described
as a Swiss army knife. Since it's one utensil that's

(02:22):
believed to have had multiple distinct functions, I wonder why
they didn't just call it a multitool. It shows evidence
of being reshaped and repurposed after being broken, and it's
also the earliest known multifunctional tool to be made from
a cave lion bone.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I think why not call it a multitool traces back
to some of what we talked about in Part one
of like trying to write things in a way that's
the most accessible to a general audience. I imagine a multi
toool is also having things that fold in it out
you do.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
That's just me. Yeah, Oh, I think of the flat
like sometimes they come in the shape of like a
credit card and they have all of the edges that
you need to do all the stuff, or sometimes like
they're unique ones that are like pop culturey and they're
shaped like an X wing or what. Sure.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, I think I'm thinking that because I always when
I used to have a leatherman in my Oh yeah,
they marketed as multitools. Yeah, it was markets. It's a
multitude and multitool. I can't say words anyway. Back to
the fines next, a team of researchers led by the
Gunaikrini land in Waters Aboriginal Corporation has documented impressions from

(03:36):
fingers that were left in the walls and ceilings of
caves in the Mountains of Australia. The Gunaikrini elders refer
to this cave as Warri Brook. The cave is made
of limestone and it's been shaped and weathered by water
over millions of years, and its surfaces have a really malleable,
spongy texture. It's deeper parts do not receive any natural light,

(04:02):
and it is also home to bacteria that produce luminescent crystals.
So if somebody brings in a light source like a
fire or a torch or something like that, these crystals
sparkle and glitter.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
That sounds dreamy. Archaeologists haven't found evidence of fires built
on the floor of this cave, but they have found
fragments of charcoal and ash that suggest people navigating their
way through with firesticks. The finger impressions on the walls
likely would have been made as people walked. There are
multiple sets of grooves, including sets that seem to have

(04:38):
been made by a small child and sets that, based
on their size and how high up they are, were
probably made by adults.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, they look sort of like if you were sitting
at the beach and kind of dragging your fingers through
the sand, sort of like that there are nine hundred
and fifty sets of finger grooves and the cave, and
they are only in the areas of the cave where
the walls glitter because of these luminescent crystals. Based on
this research and Gunnai Kernai accounts recorded by ethnographer Alfred

(05:11):
Howitt in the nineteenth century, as well as conversations with
Gurnai Kurnai knowledge keepers today, this is connected to powerful
healers within their community. The cave's crystals were part of
healing rituals, and knowledge of those rituals was passed down
from parent to child. There's no evidence of like daily

(05:33):
life going on at the cave, so this was probably
a place that had a ceremonial use by healers rather
than being a place that people lived in or visited
day to day. So these finger grooves that are left
in the surface of the cave are a record both
of a physical act of leaving marks in the cave

(05:54):
and also this spiritual and cultural knowledge that stretches back
for centuries. And now we're going to move on to
a couple of things about animals. According to research published
in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Ancient Romans may
have used fossils of extinct arthropods as adornments. The trilobite

(06:15):
fossil in question dates back to the Paleozoic era, but
it was found in an archaeological site dating back to
between the first and third century CE. It has clear
signs of having been modified to be worn as something
like a pendant or a bracelet. This is only the
eleventh trilobite ever found in an archaeological context, and the

(06:36):
first known to have been intentionally collected and used during
Roman times. And next, research published in the journal Ecology
in September has looked at bearded vultures as accumulators of
historical remains. This was based on bearded vulture nests in
southern Spain that were analyzed between twenty eight and twenty four,

(07:00):
and since these vultures are cliff nesting, doing this research
required people to repel down the cliffs to see what
was in these nests. This vulture species is extinct in
Spain today, so the nests were not actively being used
and had not been for probably roughly a century. Researchers
found lots of stuff that you would expect a bird

(07:23):
to use to build a nest, including pieces of cloth
and string, and also lots of stuff that you would
expect to be in a bird nest, like eggshells and
bone and other debris from the animals that the birds eat.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
They also found two hundred and twenty six anthropogenic remains.
Those are remains related to human activity, many of which
were also probably part of the nest building process. This
included pieces of baskets and leather, including pieces of sheep
leather decorated with ochre. There was also a sandal made

(07:58):
of grasses and twigs, but it's probably about six hundred
and fifty years old, along with multiple other similar pieces
of footwear that have not yet been dated.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Researchers also found an as yet undated crossbow bolt, and
it's not really clear whether the vultures picked that up
somewhere like it was a stick and used it to
build the nest, or whether it was in an animal
that they brought to the nest to scavenge on, like
someone else shot it and then the vultures were like,

(08:28):
this is ours, and now we've got.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
A couple of swords up next. First, a metal detectorist
in Gloucestershire found two Roman cavalry swords in a field.
The swords had been damaged by farming equipment, and it's
likely that they would have been destroyed within the next
few years if no one had found them before then.
This find led to a larger archaeological excavation, which has

(08:51):
unearthed signs of an entire Roman villa built on what
had previously been an Iron Age settlement. Other discoveries at
the site include Roman roof tiles and other building materials,
as well as the remains of a person who died
as long as three thousand years ago and was buried
wearing an iron band around their upper arm.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
And In other sword news, a fisherman was walking along
the banks of the Vistula River in Warsaw, Poland and
spotted something rusty sticking out of the bank. This turned
out to be an almost entirely intact medieval sword, missing
only the tip. The process of finding and retrieving this

(09:31):
sword sounds like something out of a comedy. Fresh from
the bank, it had leeches, snails, and freshwater shrimp on it.
The man who found it recognized that it could be
important and hid it so that he could go call
a metal detectorist friend to ask for advice. The friend
told him that since the sword had been in the river,
it should be kept wet, which the fishermen did by

(09:53):
wrapping the sword in wet t shirts and then leaving
it in his car overnight before taking it to the
Warsaw Conservator Monuments in the morning. We are absolutely not
advising people to do this with random archaeological finds. This
is just how it played out in this particular case.
The sword is now in the Metal Conservation Workshop of
the State Archaeological Museum for cleaning in conservation.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, I don't think.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Taking it there right away, like taking it to a
conservator immediately. I don't think that was an option. They
need to do something with it overnight, but the fact
that it was wrapped in wet t shirts cracked me up.
We are going to take a quick sponsor break and
then move on to some art. Okay, time for art.

(10:46):
First pieces found at two different charity thrift shops in
the UK have turned out to be valuable pieces of
Chinese porcelain. The first was found at a charity shop
in Dorset and it is a blue ou plate depicting
dragons that are chasing pearls. Based on some identifying marks
that dates back to between eighteen twenty one and eighteen fifty.

(11:10):
The other was found in Surrey. It is a blue
and white bottle or maybe a vase. It is similarly
decorated with dragons, this time clouds rather than pearls, and
it also dates back to sometime in the nineteenth century.
Both of these were recognized as potentially valuable and they
were both taken to the same auction house, which is
Willy and Wallace and that plans to auction them off

(11:33):
in November.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Researchers working in the Arabian Desert have concluded monumental rock
engravings there served a practical purpose, using detailed, life sized
depictions of animals like camels, gazelles and aurex to mark
locations of seasonal water sources and access routes to get
to them. These engravings were made roughly twelve thousand years

(11:56):
ago and they're highly weathered and eroded, so many of
them are barely perceptible today. Researchers also found evidence of
other human activity at the site, including projectile points and
beads made from stone and shells.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
And lastly, archaeologists have found a mural that is between
three thousand and four thousand years old in Peru. This
is a three dimensional mural depicting fish and plants that
are painted blue, yellow, and black, and it's also double sided,
so designs are visible on both sides of the mural.

(12:32):
It's also very large, measuring about sixteen feet wide and
six and a half feet tall. There is speculation that
this mural had some kind of ritual purpose and that
it might have marked a sacred space that could have
been used for observances and practices that were related to
water or fertility.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
We really didn't have a whole lot of art finds
to talk about this time, so now we're going to
move on to some clothing. Specifically one of the best
articles of clothing shoes, and that means those vulture nests
that we talked about a little while ago actually could
have gone here as well. The Vendalanda Trust has been
excavating Magna Roman Fort and during that five year project

(13:13):
they've unearthed thirty two shoes, and some of those shoes
are unexpectedly large. One of the first big shoes to
be unearthed was the equivalent to about a thirteen or
fourteen men's shoe in UK sizes that correlates to about
a fourteen or fifteen in the US and a forty
eight or forty nine in the EU. More big shoes followed,

(13:37):
with a total so far of eight shoes that measure
thirty centimeters or more and one shoe that measures thirty
two point six centimeters and is the largest shoe the
Trust has found. The vast majority of shoes found at
Vindalanda are not nearly this big.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
There are, of course, unanswered questions about these shoes, like
were they worn by soldiers whose feet were comparatively a
lot bigger, meaning they also probably would have been a
lot taller than most of the people in the area.
Or were these shoes that were meant to be worn
with a lot of socks or padding in the wintertime
to try to stay warm. Or were they shoes that

(14:17):
were worn while people were recovering from injuries and their
feet were swollen or bandaged. We don't really know.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Maybe one day next. Archaeologists in Oslo have found more
than two hundred leather shoes dating back to the Middle Ages.
These shoes are made from handstitched leather, and while some
of them are very simple and practical, others are intricately decorated.
They include shoes for adults and children, as well as
some boots.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
When I first started reading about all these shoes, I thought,
did a shoemaker live here? Like was this a shoe shop?
But these are shoes that were very worn. Some of
them have holes or they've been repeatedly patched and repaired.
These shoes are really scattered across a whole area that's
being excavated in advance of construction of a new school.

(15:07):
And it's possible that this large deposit of shoes and
other everyday items came from a rubbish heap whose contents
were carried into the area during flooding. Archaeologists have also
found a lot of other goods in the area, like
bags and scabbards. Rubbish heaps can be an amazing source
of archaeological knowledge. The idea that this is like the

(15:29):
remnants of a rubbish heap that got washed away in
floodwaters is very interesting to me.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
And the last one is just sort of shoe adjacent.
Archaeologists in Germany have found a workshop that was dedicated
to producing the iron nails that were used to make
shoes for the Roman military. These hob nails were used
in the soles of the shoes to provide traction and durability.
Since the nails would fall off through normal wear and tear,

(15:56):
the nails were used to both make new shoes and
to repair old ones. This find included a cash of
more than one hundred nails in new condition, suggesting that
they had been freshly made. There.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Moving on, we have some historically relevant exhumations this time around. First,
the governing council of Saint Dunstan's Church in Canterbury, England,
has announced a proposal to exhume the skull of Sir
Thomas Moore, who was beheaded in fifteen thirty five after
being accused of treason for refusing to accept King Henry

(16:32):
the Eighth as head of the Church of England. The
Catholic Church used Moore as a martyr, and he was
venerated as a saint in nineteen thirty five. After Moore's execution,
his body was buried in an unmarked grave in a
chapel at the Tower of London, but his head was
boiled and tarred and placed on a spike on London

(16:52):
Bridge as a warning to others. Moore's daughter later convinced
a guard to release the skull to her, and it
was eventually entombed in the family vault at Saint Dunstan's.
The church has said that it would like to conserve
and preserve the skull ahead of the five hundredth anniversary
of mors beheading, which is in twenty thirty five, and

(17:15):
we don't know yet for sure whether this will happen.
There's an ecclesiastical court that has to give its permission
before an exhumation can go ahead, so we might have
an update on this at some point in the future.
Last time, we talked about cooperation between Ukraine and Poland
to allow the exhumation and relocation of Polish victims of

(17:37):
the nineteen forty five Volan massacre, which was perpetrated by
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army while the area was occupied by
Nazi Germany. In July, Poland declared July eleventh to be
a national Day of Remembrance for victims of the massacre,
and during an address on that day, Polish President elect
Carol Nuroki urged Ukrainian President Voladimir Zilenzai to allow these

(18:01):
exhumations to continue and ask Ukraine to authorize exhumations at
additional sites. Naraki has since taken office as President of Poland,
and a number of commentators have remarked that his background
as a historian plays a part on how he will
lead Poland's interactions with Ukraine. And lastly, we have two

(18:21):
exhumations that are related to attempts to solve two different
cold cases. Authorities in Oregon have exhumed the remains of
someone known as Oak Grove Jane Doe, whose dismembered body
was found in the Willamette River south of Portland over
a period of months in nineteen forty six. Her remains

(18:43):
disappeared from law enforcement custody in the nineteen fifties, and
the case was eventually closed without identifying.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Her or her murderer.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
The case was reopened in two thousand and four, but
officials didn't have much to go on until they learned
that she may have been buried at Oregon City's Mountain
View Cemetery. In addition to the unsolved crime, this is
Oregon's oldest unidentified person case. This exhumation just happened in
late September, so the results of it are still to come.

(19:16):
And the other was another homicide victim whose body was
found near railroad tracks outside Page, North Dakota, in October
of nineteen seventy. Authorities believed that he had been assaulted
and robbed, and then had either been thrown from or
fallen from the train, and had been dead for about
six weeks when his body was found. No suspect was

(19:37):
ever named in the killing, and the body was buried
at Saint James Cemetery with a marker that simply said
unknown male. A lot of these types of cases in
recent years have involved DNA research and investigative genetic genealogy,
but in this case, the skeletal remains included a denture

(19:58):
plate that read take w H along with the number.
Investigators were able to trace that to a World War
II enlistment record for a William Howard Tait, and they
ultimately declared this identity to be conclusively confirmed. Authorities announced
that they would be working with Cass County Veteran Services

(20:19):
to have a new headstone made with the man's real name.
It is not clear from news reporting whether he has
living next of kin. Yeah, that was my first thought, right,
what does his family think?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:33):
And I was not able to figure out for sure.
Weather they know or whether he does or does not.
We will take one more sponsor break, and then we
will have so many shipwrecks. Okay, we have so many shipwrecks.

(20:55):
It's pretty much the whole rest of the episode. First
conservation has been completed on a canoe that was unearthed
in Florida during Hurricane Ian in twenty twenty two. I
thought this was a canoe that we had talked about
in a twenty twenty two installment of Unearthed, but it
looks like not. This canoe had probably been in a

(21:17):
riverbed before being dislodged by the hurricane, and it wound
up in somebody's yard.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Ancient canoes are fairly frequent fines in Florida. Canoes and
log boats were a primary means of transport going back
to prehistory. There are more than four hundred and fifty
of them that have been preserved by the Florida Division
of Historical Resources. But this one is unusual because it's
made of mahogany. Some types of mahogany do grow in

(21:45):
southern Florida, but this is the first mahogany canoe to
be found there. It also maybe the first canoe found
in Florida to originate from somewhere else, possibly the Caribbean.
The canoe has not been conclusively dated yet, but it
looks like it was worked with iron tools, meaning it
may have been crafted by the Spanish sometime in the

(22:05):
sixteenth century.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Next, researchers from the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation say
that a shipwreck they've been studying off the coast of
Madagascar dates back to the Golden Age of piracy. It's
believed to be the Nasa Sonora Dicabo or Our Lady
of the Cape, which is a Portuguese ship that was
attacked by pirate Olivier Levasseur in seventeen twenty one. Levasseur,

(22:32):
also called the Buzzard, captured the ship near the island
of La Reugnon and then took it toward Madagascar, where
the pirates unloaded a lot of what was aboard before
scuttling the ship.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
There was still a lot of cargo though. When the
Nasa Sonara de Cabo sank, it was traveling from India
and carrying goods that had been made there, as well
as gold ingots, pearls, and other valuable objects. Thousands of
objens have been brought up from the wreck and include
religious objects that are believed to have been made in Goa,
which was a Portuguese colony on the western coast of India.

(23:09):
There are also coins with Arabic writing and pieces of porcelain. Underwater.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Archaeologists in Wisconsin were looking for the wreck of a
steamer called the Berlin City, which sank in eighteen seventy,
and they were hoping to resurvey another wreck that had
been mapped back in twenty sixteen. Unlike a lot of
the Wisconsin shipwrecks we have talked about on the show,
this project did not take place in the Great Lakes.

(23:35):
It was in the Fox River near Oshkosh.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Instead, they found something different, what they believed to be
the wreck of the lw Ukraine, which caught fire, burned
to the water level, and sank in eighteen eighty. This
was a side wheel steamer that had carried cargo. In
addition to the physical resemblance between the wreckage and historical
documents about the lw Ukraine, the wreck is directly opposite

(23:59):
to where historic accounts described the ship sinking.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
So while that was not in the Great Lakes, we
do also have a Lake Michigan shipwreck to talk about
the FJ King, which searchers had been looking for for
so long that people had started calling it a ghost ship.
The FJ King was a three masted cargo schooner that
was carrying or to Chicago when it sank in a
gale in eighteen eighty six. The crew tried to pump

(24:26):
water out of the struggling ship for several hours until
the order was given for them to evacuate. The crew
did evacuate, they survived, and then they were picked up
by another schooner. Like a lot of our sank in
a storm in the dark shipwreck stories. Efforts to find
the Fjking were hampered by unclear descriptions and contradictory information

(24:48):
about exactly where the sinking happened. The captain, William Griffin
reported that they were about five miles off shore, while
a lighthouse keeper later reported seeing the masts extending above
the water much closer to land. It was finally found
through side scan sonar, just a couple of hours into
an effort that sounds like it was undertaken without much

(25:10):
hope of success. Yeah, quotes from people that were on
it were sort of like, yeah, we didn't think we'd
find anything, but we thought why not, and then two
hours later, there it is.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Let's give it a whirl. Hey uh.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
This summer was the final season of a five year
international project at the site of the Antikytheris shipwreck in Greece.
We have an episode of the show about the Antikythera device,
which is an analog computer dating back to about the
first century BCE, and other finds from the wreck have
come up in prior installments of Unearthed. This summer's work

(25:46):
at the wreck included excavation of a part of the
ship's hull for the first time. This was carried out
with specially designed machinery and a support structure. Bringing up
that piece of the hull has helped to confirm the
way the researchers believed this ship was originally built, which
was by building the exterior first, followed by the interior structures.

(26:09):
Other finds in this last season of the project include
a clay mortar that was probably used for preparing food
or medicines for the crew, as well as part of
a statue and just an assortment of m fora moving on.
Last year, a schoolboy in Scotland found the wreckage of
a ship on the island of Sanday, Orkney after a storm,

(26:31):
and that wreck has now been identified as a five
hundred ton whaling ship known as the Earl of Chatham,
which was wrecked in March of seventeen eighty eight. The
Earl of Chatham had previously operated as the Royal Navy
ship HMS Hind during the American Revolutionary War before being
decommissioned and sold. This conclusion came from examination of the

(26:54):
tree rings and the timbers used to build a ship,
which suggested that they had been cut down in southern
or southwestern England in the mid eighteenth century. This ship
was en route from the River Thames to the Arctic
on a whaling voyage when it was wrecked. This island
is basically on the way. All of the crew survived
the wrecking. Underwater archaeologists working near the Solomon Islands have

(27:18):
found the wreck of a Japanese destroyer from World War
II called the Terrazuki. The wreckage was first spotted using
a remotely operated vehicle, and at first they didn't know
what it was, so two other remote vehicles were deployed
from the Ocean Exploration Trusts Nautilus to get a better look.
They captured images of the ship, including its upward pointing

(27:40):
gun turrets. The Terazuki was built specifically for anti aircraft work.
American torpedoes sank the Tarazuki on December twelfth, nineteen forty two,
and although most of the crew were successfully evacuated, nine
people died when it sank. This expedition went well beyond
the Terrazuki, surveying thirteen vessels that sank in the area

(28:03):
during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The Tarazuki was one of four
wrecks that were photographed for the first time during this work,
another of them being the bow of the USS New Orleans.
Other ships included the USS Vincennes, the USS Astoria, the
USS Quincy, the USS Northampton, the USS Laffey, the USS

(28:25):
de Haven, the USS Preston, the HMAS Camera, the USS Walkie,
and another Japanese destroyer called the Yudachi. A sunken landing
barge was surveyed as well. This sounds like a lot.
So many ships went down in this area during World
War Two that it's known as Iron Bottom Sound, and

(28:47):
research has been going on there for decades. It was
sort of a continuing research bringing in new and more
advanced equipment than has been used before.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Underwater archaeologists are working off the coast of Kent in
England to study the wreck of the HMS Northumberland, which
was built in sixteen seventy nine at a time when
past podcast subject Samuel Peeps was reforming and expanding the
English Navy. It later sank in a massive weather disaster
known as the Great Storm of seventeen oh three. This

(29:18):
ship has been buried in the sand for centuries and
its hull is very well preserved, so efforts are underway
to thoroughly survey and study it before it is damaged
or reburied. We will very likely have fines from this
work at some point in the future.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Archaeologists and students from East Carolina University's Maritime Studies program
have been working at Brunswick Town Fort Anderson State Historic
Site and have found waterfront features dating back to colonial times,
as well as four different shipwrecks. One is believed to
be La Fortuna, which was a Spanish privateer that was

(29:55):
destroyed near the end of King George's War in September
of seventeen forty eight eight. This id still needs to
be confirmed, but the wreckage is not far from where
a diver found a cannon believed to be from La
Fortuna back in the nineteen eighties. All of these finds
are at risk due to erosion from nearby dredging operations,

(30:17):
sea level rise, and larger and more frequent storms due
to climate change. And lastly, artifacts have been recovered from
the wreckage of the HMHS Britannic for the first time.
The Britannic was, of course a sister ship to the
RMS Titanic and was serving as a hospital ship during
World War One when it struck a mine and sank

(30:39):
in the aeg and c In nineteen sixteen, an eleven
member dive team brought up a number of objects, including
the ship's bell and a navigation light. These objects are
undergoing conservation in Athens, Greece. Since it's October, I looked
for something creepy or ghostly is a final thing for
this episode. Sometimes we look out on you have like

(31:00):
a whole collection of ghosts or witch bottles or something
seasonally fun. Didn't really have that this time, so I
went with something more ghost adjacent. Archaeologists that ealing Dunin
Castle in Scotland have found a hair styling tool called
a gravoire, dating back to the thirteenth century. This is

(31:20):
made from red deer antler and it shaped to a
point at one end and carved with the likeness of
a hooded figure holding a book.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
On the other end.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
It's not clear who this depicts, but it could be
Celtic missionary Saint Donnan. This tool was used to part
the hair and to help in creating elaborate hairstyles. Elin
Dunin Castle is on a tiny island where three locks
come together, and it's reported to be haunted. One of

(31:51):
the reported ghosts is of a Spanish soldier who was
stationed at the castle during the Jacobite Rising of seventeen nineteen,
and he died when English forces tacked the castle. This
ghost is nicknamed Carlos and he's often reported in the
gift shop carrying his head. Another is known as Lady Mary,
and she is described as haunting the bedrooms. Tried to

(32:13):
get more information about who Lady Mary is and I
was even like googling Mary along with the names of
people who have lived in this castle. I don't know,
but Lady Mary haunts the bedroom apparently. That is the
end of Part two. Of our unearthed. I'm sure we'll
talk about things related to it on Friday, and in
the meantime, I do have listener mail. The listener mail

(32:35):
is from Julia. Julia said, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
was driving home late one night and listening to the
Anna Maria von Sherman Star of U Treckt episode and
it was mentioned a few times that her letters were
shared and published. In my experience of writing letters as
a child pre Internet, once the letter was in the envelope,

(32:56):
you never saw it again. Was it standard to make
copies of letters before you sent them and or of
the letters you received? Can you please explain how personal
correspondence became public documentation. My poor brain can't comprehend how
this happened in an age before carbon paper, photocopiers, or
sent folders attached as my pet tax of our cat

(33:19):
and Ayah. She technically belongs to my daughter, but has
picked me as her favorite person. She loves to sleep
in her beanbag and loudly ask retreats every morning as
soon as I wake up, sometimes even before I'm awake.
Thanks for bringing so much history information into our lives
in such an interesting way, Julia. Thank you so much,
Julia for this email. So yes, people did, a lot

(33:44):
of people kept some kind of copy of their correspondence,
and in the age of handwritten letters, a lot of
times people would like write out their draft letter and
kind of perfect what they wanted to say, and so
that copy would have like crossouts or rewritten bits or
little notations of things to add, and then they would

(34:08):
write out the neat copy to actually be sent, and
a lot of people kept that note copy for their
own records, and it might not be completely identical to
the final copy that was sent out, but it was
pretty close. People who wrote a lot for business often
had a copying clerk whose job was to copy the correspondence,

(34:32):
and like they sort of would keep the copy of
all of the outgoing mail for the business that they.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Were working for.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Eventually, different methods were made to create what was basically
a carbon copy using some kind of carbon paper. There
were various innovations around this, some of them fairly like
earlier than a person might think. Unfortunately, when I was
thinking about this, I did not go the up specific dates.
But there were various ways like inks that could be

(35:03):
used that you lay a piece of paper down and
it lifted up. A copy sort of might not be
a very great copy, but eventually sheets of carbon paper
that could go between the pages that you could keep
a copy of, or like a book that had carbon
paper in it. That was sort of its purpose was
to capture your copy of your outgoing mail. Some people

(35:27):
who were historically notable the recipients of their mail would
also keep it because they knew that it might be
valuable one day, and so when later on it became
there was a want or need to publish somebody's letters,
there would be an effort to like bring these copies together.

(35:48):
Some of the collections of letters that we have today
are that have sort of come from like multiple different
people donating the letters that they have come into possession
of to the same academic institution or library or archive
or something like that, and then an editor goes through
and like pairs up all of the different ones. So

(36:10):
there were lots of different ways that a person could
be keeping a copy of their correspondence. Before there was
just a scent item folder in your email that kept
all of it. I sent more, you know, handwritten letters
and things when I was a younger person, before the
development of email. That was something I never personally did either,

(36:32):
and I don't if I had been living in you know,
the nineteenth or eighteenth or seventeenth century, I might have
been raised differently to keep a copy of all of
my stuff. So, yeah, there were lots of ways. Not
necessarily everyone did this, but there were a lot of
different ways that people kept a copy of their outgoing correspondence.

(36:54):
We have more black cat pictures. I did not, on
purpose pick two different lists. Her mails with black cats
lies in deception. Tracy has a black cat agenda I love,
which I suppose much. Yes, you have talked about how
my black cats are the sweetest things. One of them

(37:15):
has figured out how to press a button. After not
caring about buttons for a very long time, we gave
them a button that says treat ONYX loves the treat button.
What treat has come to actually mean because we cannot
give her nearly as many treats as she demands. She

(37:36):
really just wants to chase a piece of her regular
kibble that has been thrown across the room and pounce
on it and eat it.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
My black cat is just a barfly. Yeah, she just
cries outside the door to our little home. Bar and
until somebody lets her in there and goes and sits
in there and pets her. Yeah, that's her favorite room
in the house.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
For a good couple of years after getting these cats,
you and I were able to record podcasts without really
special measures needing to be taken to contain them. But
at some point Onyx decided she really hated closed doors
that have people on the other side of them, and
so she would sit outside of the door to this

(38:19):
office and she would reach up and pound on the
doorknob with her paw and yell so loud. Anyway, I
love these pictures that Julia sent, and I love all
kitty cats. They're all great. They mind bring me so
much joy. Hope everyone's cats are bringing them joy. If

(38:42):
you would like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, where at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com. You can subscribe to our show on the
iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

(39:04):
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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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