Unearthed! In July 2026, Part 1

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Before we start today, we have an update
to the updates that are in this episode. We talk
about the President's House site and the ongoing legal action
around it, and we reference a court case that seemed
like it would pave the way for those exhibits to
be taken down when we recorded. That was true after
we recorded, but before this is coming out today, those

(00:24):
exhibits at the President's House site were replaced. That happened
in the middle of the night on Tuesday, July fourteenth,
So that is the latest we have on that news
as of now. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

(00:51):
I'm tra c V Wilson, but I'm Holly Frye. It
is time for the latest installment in our ongoing series Unearthed.
If you are new to the show, I feel like
I say almost this exact thing every time. Just copy
and paste it, baby, if you're new to the show.
This is when we periodically talk about things that have
been literally and figuratively unearthed over the last few months,

(01:15):
as well as updates of things we've talked about before.
Those come up pretty much every time we have so
many of those this time that they are a big,
big chunk of today's episode. We'll also today have some
things about animals, some edibles and potables, and some things
that were found by accident. The best, the best, all right.

(01:38):
In February of twenty twenty three, we did an episode
on scarlet fever, and in it we said that there
were strains of Streptococcus bacteria present in most of the
world before the fifteenth century, but that the strain that
typically causes scarlet fever was introduced to some areas through colonization.
Those areas included the America's Australia and New Zealand. However,

(02:03):
researchers working with a tooth from the collection of the
National Museum of Archaeology and Lapauz, Bolivia, have found DNA
fragments that have allowed them to reconstruct a nearly complete
ancient genome of Streptococcus pyogenes, which is one of the
species of strap bacteria that's part of Group A Streptococcus

(02:26):
and causes various diseases. This ancient genome has similarities to
Streptococcus pyogenies that exist today, and today it causes things
like strep throat scarlet fever and toxic shock syndrome. This
tooth came from someone who lived in South America between
the years twelve eighty three and thirteen eighty three. That

(02:50):
was before Europeans arrived on the continent, so this suggests
that a pathogenic form of Strep. Bacteria was circulating in
South America before European colonization began. Moving on, on July fourth,
twenty sixteen, we did an episode on the Jacobite Rising
of seventeen forty five, which culminated in the Battle of Calowden.

(03:11):
Archaeologists and volunteers working with the National Trust for Scotland
and the University of Glasgow have unearthed an unexploded mortar
shell at the Battlefield of Claiden. It's believed to have
been fired by Government troops who were fighting for the
Duke of Cumberland. This is the first intact piece of

(03:33):
government ordnance found at the battlefield, and it was packed
with gunpowder when it was discovered, so most likely it
landed in boggy wet ground, so its fuse was extinguished
before the gunpowder could ignite. Other weapons and ammunition have
been found at the battlefield before, some of those have
actually made appearances on on Earth, but this is the

(03:55):
first discovery of undetonated ordinance. It has been cleaned, it
is safe to handle, and it has planned to be
put on permanent display at the Coladen Battlefield Visitor Center.
In May of twenty twenty three, we did an episode
on the Chicken of Tomorrow contest, which was an effort
to breed chickens that would grow really quickly and also

(04:16):
produce a lot of meat. In that episode, we talked
about the domestication of chickens from red jungle fowl in Asia.
Over the years, this domestication of chickens has come up
on Unearthed as new research has provided some more detail
about where chickens were domesticated and how domesticated chickens spread

(04:38):
from Asia to other parts of the world. New research
on that part of it has come from Korea. It's
been generally believed that chickens were domesticated in Eastern or
Southeast Asia and that domesticated chickens moved from there to
Japan via Korea, but there hasn't been a lot of
research that confirms that IDEA research published in the Journal

(05:01):
of Archaeological Science Reports has found evidence of domesticated chickens
going back to about two thousand years ago in Korea.
The results suggests that people were managing chickens in Korea
during the proto three Kingdom's period. The next step in
this research is to try to pinpoint the root by
which domesticated chickens moved through Korea on their way to

(05:25):
being introduced in Japan. I read several articles about this,
and all of them referenced how important chicken is to
Korean cuisine, and it made me really hungry. It's like
I want to go out for Korean food. In twenty fifteen,
we did an episode on the history of carousels. One

(05:47):
of the carousels we talked about was at Gwen oak
Amusement Park outside of Baltimore, Maryland. This particular carousel had
a connection to the history of racial segregation and integration
in the United States. The first black child allowed to
ride the carousel was Sharon Langley, who was less than
a year old when that happened. That was on August

(06:09):
twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, which was the same day
as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The
carousel was later moved to the National Mall in Washington,
d C. In twenty twenty three, it made an appearance
on Earth because it had been disassembled for a major
conservation project, which was anticipated to be complete in twenty

(06:29):
twenty five. The carousel reopened to the public on April
twenty third in front of the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building,
and Langley rode again that week. An earlier refurbishment transformed
the horse that she originally rode on into one that's
decorated with the words freedom Riders and the date of
August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, along with the names

(06:52):
of a number of people with a connection to black
history and civil rights in the United States, and words
like vote equality and strength. Earlier this year, we did
an episode on the Carrington event, and we talked about
how there's not a ton of information on historical geomagnetic
storms because the technology to measure the Earth's magnetic field

(07:14):
is relatively recent compared to the whole scope of human history,
and before that, Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science
and Technology have been working on a method to detect
evidence of historical solar proton events which can be connected
to these kinds of geomagnetic disruptions and the visible aurora

(07:37):
that can occur along with them. They are using very
precise carbon fourteen measurements to analyze buried Ascherano trees in
northern Japan, and they're using written medieval records to help
determine where to focus their search for these trees and
the information within them. A lot of previous research has

(07:58):
focused on the most power geomagnetic storms, like the ones
known as Miyaki events, which we also talked about in
that episode. These researchers have focused on finding evidence of
events that were not so extreme and also occur more
frequently than those major events. They've identified a period between
the winter of twelve hundred and the spring of twelve

(08:20):
hundred and one when based on this carbon fourteen research,
solar activity in northern Japan was extremely high. There were
sun spots and red auroral events documented during that period.
In December of twenty fourteen, we dedicated an entire Unearthed
episode to Franklin's Lost expedition after the announcement of the

(08:44):
discovery of the HMS Arabus, which was one of Franklin's ships.
Recent DNA analysis has identified four of the men who
were part of this expedition and who died in the
loss of it. This includes confirming that one of the
men was Henry Pegler, who was the captain of the Foretop.

(09:05):
Some personal items had been found near this man's remains,
and that included Peglar's seamen's certificate, but the clothing that
he was wearing was that of somebody of a much
lower rank, So there had been some speculation that this
might have been somebody else who was given Peglar's belongings

(09:25):
after he died, maybe Thomas Armitage, who had served with
Peglar on an earlier expedition. So this cleared up that
question about his identity. This is part of ongoing research
and it has involved comparing the DNA to DNA that
has been donated by possible living descendants. So this research

(09:46):
has provided those descendants with new information about their ancestors.
At this point, six people from the expedition have been identified.
In December of twenty fourteen, we also did full installment
of Unearthed dedicated to Stonehenge after a lot of news
about findings at the Stonehenge site that came out earlier

(10:08):
that year. Research at Stonehenge is of course ongoing and
we've recently talked about some research that has concluded that
the Altar Stone was not moved to the area by
glacier activity. New research has tried to determine what route
people might have followed while moving the stone the roughly

(10:29):
seven hundred kilometers that it traveled from northeast Scotland to
the Salisbury Plain in England, where Stonehenge is. This recent
research has combined ice sheet modeling and mineral grain dating
to try to determine where the stone might have originated
and whether glaciers could have moved it part of the way.

(10:50):
They determined that there are no viable glacial pathways that
could have carried the Altarstone the whole distance, confirming research
we've talked about previously that said there do us no
evidence that glaciers got it all the way to the
Salisbury Plane. Yeah, so the question was sort of could
the glaciers have gone heartway? Though, in the words of

(11:11):
doctor Anthony Clark from the Timescales of Minerals Systems group
within Curtain's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences quote, rather
than being carried naturally by ice, the evidence points to
a deliberate, carefully planned movement across a challenging and varied landscape.
Clark continued that this probably took place in stages, using

(11:34):
a number of different methods, including overland hauling and water
transport down rivers or along the coast. In related news,
archaeologists have also found a five thousand year old monument
that aligned with the summer and winter solstice. That's roughly
five hundred years before Stonehenge was built, and it's being

(11:54):
described as a prototype for Stonehenge. This was found in Bulford,
which is also Salisbury, not far away from the Stonehenge
World Heritage Site. Unlike Stonehenge, this was made of wood.
Those two wooden posts are gone today, but the post
holes and various middens have survived. We are going to

(12:15):
take a quick sponsor break and then we will be
back with some more updates. Coming back to updates. Our
episode on the Bunker Hill monument came out very recently
on June twenty ninth, twenty twenty sixth. One thing we

(12:37):
did not mention was that there was an active archaeological
dig going on when I went there ahead of that episode.
The talk about that archaeological dig just did not really
seem to fit within the story that the episode was telling.
The team has used a map that was drawn not
long after the battle and ground penetrating Rate our work

(13:00):
as a starting point to try to find the exact
site of the redoubts that was made before this battle.
Some of the findings from that dig were announced, of course,
just after we recorded that episode. They included signs of
the ditch that was part of the redoubt, as well
as musket balls and weapon parts, including gun flints that
were used to ignite the gunpowder. They've also found objects

(13:24):
that were probably connected to the British troops that occupied
the hill after the battle, including teacups, tobacco pipes, and
my favorite awake curler. That's my favorite too. There are
also objects that were not connected to the battle and
date back to well before or after the Revolutionary War.

(13:45):
This includes part of a child's doll made from Victorian
porcelain and the pieces of stone flake that were probably
created when members of the Mattapan tribe were making stone
tools in this area long before the revolution started. It's time.
The Glacier mummy known as Utsey the Iceman, has made
so many appearances on Unearthed, and the latest Utsy research

(14:08):
involves efforts to identify the yeasts that have been found
on his remains and to distinguish between the ones that
were present when he died and the ones that colonized
his remains after death. For this research, the team didn't
just look at Utsy's remains, but they also looked at
soil samples from when they were found, glacial ice, and

(14:30):
melt water from the surrounding area. They also incorporated data
from earlier research into Utsy's stomach contents and intestinal tissue.
The team found and identified yeasts that had not been
detected in earlier studies of these remains. Some of the
strains that they found were highly adapted to cold climates,

(14:51):
and they had genetic similarities to strains from extremely cold
parts of the world today, including Antarctica. This research, which
also suggests that the conservation process may have unintentionally favored
some species of yeast. Phenol was used to remove fungal
growth from the surface of the remains after it was found,

(15:13):
and three of the four species of yeast identified have
the ability to break down phenol and use it as fuel. Also,
after several months of efforts, some researchers have managed to
make sour dough bread with some of the yeast from
Utsy's microbiome. I remember when this news story broke, huh,

(15:37):
and my first thought was, if they can start making
this yeast reproduce and actually like produce at scale, so
many people would buy Utsy breast, that's for sure, which
is just indicative of how I see this whole situation.
Moving on. We did a two part episode on architect

(15:59):
antony Go in January of twenty fifteen, and a big
part of that episode was about the enormous Sagatta Familia
Basilica in Barcelona, which we have been lucky enough to visit.
Construction on that basilica started in eighteen eighty two, and
its central tower of Jesus Christ was completed in February
of this year, with a crosswighing approximately one hundred tons

(16:22):
installed on top. The basilica was inaugurated on June tenth,
twenty twenty six, which is the one hundredth anniversary of
Gudi's death. Poplio the fourteenth led an inaugural mass and
blessing of the basilica. A lot of headlines are calling
the basilica complete after this inaugural mass, but there is

(16:45):
still some work to do, including decorative work and work
on the interior that's expected to be finished in twenty
twenty eight. There is also a highly controversial proposed staircase
which would require the demolishing of apartments adjacent to the site.
About three thousand people live in these apartments, and some

(17:06):
of the people living there have lived there for decades.
Opponents of this idea of demolishing the apartments to build
the staircase argue that the staircase was never part of
Goudy's original plan. That is an argument that was apparently
made back in the nineteen seventies and led to the
approval of the building of these apartments. Goudy's original plans

(17:31):
were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, so we don't
have those to refer back to know for sure what
the original intent was. We also saw people with protest
signs in their windows when we were lucky enough to
visit Sigratta Familia. Yeah, years ago. I think you were
in a different group from me, you know, when we

(17:52):
do those trips groups and I remember our guide mentioning
specifically like, oh, this contentious argument about the apartments and
whether or not they're going to be allowed to stay.
There has been going on, and it's gonna get a
lot worse in the next couple of years. The boy
was he right. I don't want to see anybody displaced,

(18:13):
is what I think about the whole thing. But I don't.
I will not feign to understand all of the nuance
of the situation. But boys, Sigmata familia is mind bogglingly beautiful.
It's incredibly I was unprepared for what it would look
like inside. Holy Mosis, that's a I think about it
just randomly. Yeah, same, going about my day, I'll suddenly

(18:34):
go remember those windows. Yeah, even having seen pictures, it
just did not prepare me for the experience of being
inside of it. It's incredible. In March of this year,
we did an episode on Hercules Posey, who was enslaved
at the President's House in Philadelphia, and how the President's
House became a monument and part of a National park.

(18:56):
Listener Jessica sent us a link to an article in
the Philadelphi a Tribune that reported on an appeals court
ruling that cleared the way for the displays at the
site to be removed. We talked about all the legal
back and forth surrounding those displays. In that earlier episode,
the President's House site was also mentioned in a different ruling,

(19:17):
that being the one we discussed in the Bunker Hill
Monument episode, and that ruling, the National Park Service was
ordered to stop removing material from the parks and restore
all the interpretive materials that had been taken down since
May twentieth, twenty twenty five. I do not have the

(19:37):
legal knowledge to know which of those rulings has taken
precedent at this point. And now for our last update,
something that people who follow the news probably already know already,
but just for the sake of completion, two of our
episodes over the last year have been connected to the
idea of birthright citizenship in the United States. Those were

(20:01):
United States versus wonkim Arc in February of twenty twenty
five and United States versus Bagatsingh then in May of
twenty twenty six. On June thirtieth, the Supreme Court issued
its ruling in Trump de Barbara, maintaining that children born
to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily in the United
States are subject to US jurisdiction and our citizens from birth. Next,

(20:27):
we have some animal fines. In two thousand, roadwork in
New South Wales exposed the burial site of a dingo.
A Barkinji elder and an archaeologist from Australia's National Parks
and Wildlife Service examined this burial site and then it
was excavated in twenty twenty three at the request of

(20:47):
the Menindi Aboriginal Elders Council after flooding and erosion led
to the dingoes skull being dislodged from the face of
this sort of road cut. Dingo was found to be
a male who lived to the age of between four
and seven years old, and who had signs of having
had a broken leg and broken ribs. Those are injuries

(21:11):
that often come from fighting with kangaroos. These injuries had
signs of healing, meaning that the dingo had been cared
for and allowed to recover from those injuries. Radiocarbon dating
suggests that the dingo was buried sometime between nine sixteen
and nine sixty three. The site also showed evidence of
what's been described as a feeding ritual. There's a midden

(21:35):
that was created around the same time as the dingo
was buried and first Nations people returned to it to
bury river musselshells. They kept doing this over generations for
about five hundred years. There are other dingo burials at
archaeological sites around Australia, but this feeding midden is being

(21:56):
described as unique. A barking custodian and with the excavation
described this practice as a way to maintain a connection
and respect for the ancestors. Along with knowledge from First
Nations elders in Australia. This research shows how dingos have
been really important to First Nations communities, including people in

(22:18):
those communities taming them somewhat. Similar research has looked at
the role of dogs in Tuanaku society. Tuanaku was a
state in the Andes Mountains between the years six hundred
and one thousand in what is now Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.
We know that dogs played an important role in many
ancient Andean cultures, including being buried in elite tombs in

(22:42):
later cultures, but there hasn't been as much information about
Tuanaku because there aren't many examples of dogs in the
archaeological record at Tuanoku sites. Some of the canine bones
that have been found at Tuinaku sites are fox bones,
which can be hard to distinguish from the bones of
domesticated dogs. This research involved two canine mummies, one from

(23:07):
the village of Rio Muerto and the other from a
ceremonial center called Omo, and both of these mummies have
scraps of fur that confirm that they are the bones
of dogs, not foxes. Isotope analysis suggests that both of
these dogs lived in the places that they were buried,
and they ate the same foods that local humans ate.

(23:30):
One of the two dogs, which is a puppy and
may have been fed table scraps, and it's possible that
the other either scavenged for or was intentionally fed leftovers
as well. Both of these dogs were buried near ordinary homes,
suggesting that they had a status that was a little
more humble than in later cultures when they're more associated

(23:51):
with elites in the andes. Next, researchers in Brandenburg, Germany
found four goose skulls in a former toilet shaft. The
four skulls date back to the seventeenth century, and all
four of them had unusual holes. According to their research
published in the journal International Journal of Paleopathology, these geese

(24:14):
had crests. The holes were in the same locations and
patterns as are found in crested ducks. There are also
paintings by Dutch artists Melchior de Hondakot, who lived in
the seventeenth century, showing crested geese. The paintings and these
skulls are the earliest known examples of crested geese in Europe.

(24:35):
It's likely that these geese were kept because of their
unique appearance because of these crests, but they probably also
had relatively short lives. These crests come about because of
mutations that cause cushions of fat to develop on top
of the bird's skull, and then the bone underneath that
fat doesn't close correctly. In addition to shortening the animal's

(24:59):
life lifespan, this can cause issues like poor coordination, blindness,
and deafness in the affected animals. It also doesn't appear
that these geese were particularly revered for their appearance, at
least if they were, they were not treated as such
after their death. The shaft where these bones were found
also included lots of bones from chickens, from other geese,

(25:22):
and from ducks, so this was probably all kitchen waste.
We are about to get to the much beloved edibles
and potables, but first we are going to pause for
a sponsor break. Now it's time for edibles and potables,

(25:45):
which is one of my favorite parts of Unearthed. Archaeologists
in Hadrianopolis have found a set of kitchen knives dating
back to the fifth or sixth century. These were broken
into very small fragments and they had to be reassembled,
but once they were they bore a really striking resemblance
to a modern kitchen knife set. They had very similarly

(26:06):
shaped blades and handles in a graduated series of sizes.
I could imagine them going into the knife block in
my own kitchen. Sharpening stone was also found alongside the knives. Next,
archaeologists from the National Trust for Scotland, along with volunteers,
have found a piece of copper alloy that may have

(26:28):
been part of a nineteenth century still. The team also
found other evidence of an illicit whisky operation, including a
heart that showed evidence of burning and a stone capped drain.
There was also a roof support timber that was buried
when the walls of the structure this discovery was in collapsed. Yeah,

(26:49):
they said this was likely someone who was distilling their
own whiskey to evade a relatively newly implemented tax Archaeologists
working with fragments of forty five hundred year old vessels
connected to the Bell Beaker culture and what's now Poland
have found various residues from plants and animals, including a

(27:13):
metabolic process, waste from bacteria and yeasts, and this suggests
that some of these vessels were used for fermenting, specifically
for fermenting a beverage like beer or grog. Some of
these vessels show signs of being used with wheat and barley,
meaning that this might be evidence of the oldest known

(27:34):
cultivation of these cereals in this region, although it is
also possible that these grains were imported into the area
from somewhere else that it's known to have been established
at this point. We have talked about one of the
best foods on Earth, potatoes, being domesticated and cultivated by
indigenous peoples in the Andes Mountains on prior installments of

(27:56):
unearthed Recent research suggests that high levels of potato consumption
in the Andes Mountains between six thousand and ten thousand
years ago contributed to genetic changes in the people who
were eating them, specifically genes that carried an improved ability
to digest starch. This study involved genomic data of thirty

(28:18):
seven hundred people from across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia,
and that included eighty one people of indigenous and Dyan
ancestry who are native speakers of the indigenous language Quechua.
The Native Quetchea speaking volunteers had more copies of this
start digestion gene than any of the other people who

(28:42):
were part of the study, meaning that they are better
able to digest and use the nutrients in starch, and
that's speculated to trace back to that thousands of years
ago eating a lot of potatoes. In other delicious potato news,
archaeologists in southern Peru site associated with the Inca, have

(29:02):
found freeze dried potatoes that date back roughly five hundred years.
These potatoes were grown in the Andes Mountains and then
exposed to heavy frosts overnight and thawed in the sun
during the day, over and over until they became lightweight
and spoilage resistant. These freeze dried potatoes are called juno,

(29:23):
and although they were apparently abundant there are not many
of them in the archaeological record. I love that idea
so much. Yeah, the whole ingenuity of it. Put it
in your ramen and let it become a delicious Come next.
A charred lump that was found in Switzerland is most

(29:44):
likely Roman bread, dating back about two thousand years. It
was preserved until now thanks to the carbonized outer layer,
and it was found during archaeological work ahead of some
construction near what was known to have been a legionary camp.
Like we just put some baker on blast, on historical bass.
Here's your charge up. Why did you burn that bread

(30:07):
so bad, so bad that it lasted two thousand years? Huhh?
And now it is time for our last potable find.
Researchers in Italy's Kianti wine region have studied eighty seeds
that were dropped in a well between three hundred BCE
and three hundred CE, and they have found that the
majority of the seeds are genetically identical, meaning that this

(30:29):
grape lineage was maintained from the Etruscan era through to
the Romans. According to genetic testing, these grapes were white
grapes rather than the purple Sanjovis grapes that are used
to make kianti today. The modern grape that is closest
to this one is a variety found in Hungary. We
are guessing at the pronunciation as barashua Zorka. Moving on

(30:52):
from the foods and drinks to some things that were
discovered by accident by people who were just doubt doing
their thing. First, a thirteen year old boy found a
coin in an agricultural field in the Spandaut district of Berlin,
and then while he was on a visit to Berlin's

(31:13):
Archaeology Lab Petrie, he showed the coin to researchers. Archaeology
Lab Petree sounds really cool to me. It is both
an archaeology lab actively working on things and a museum.
It is built over the foundations of a medieval Latin
school and its laboratories that workshops are behind glass so
visitors can see the work that's being done. That does

(31:35):
sound incredibly cool. Uh. It was immediately obvious that this
piece of metal that this boy brought was very old,
but it was also so small that it wasn't clear
what it was at first. Further study revealed that it
was a trojan coin dating back to between two hundred
and eighty one and two hundred and sixty one BCE.
It features depictions of the goddess Athena on both sides.

(31:59):
This is the first ancient Greek artifact to be unearthed
in Berlin, and at first it was not clear whether
it had been in the area since sometime not long
after it was minted, or if maybe it was just
the lost property of a more modern coin collector in Berlin.
There are still various unanswered questions about it, but the

(32:21):
area where the boy found the coin is near known
archaeological sites, including a burial site that was established in
the early Iron Age and continued to be used for
centuries after that, so it is possible that this coin
was buried with someone more than a thousand years ago. Next,

(32:42):
John Smith, who was out for a walk with his
dog in the Forest of Dean in England, discovered a
Bronze Age axehead. His dog was rooting around in the
forest as dogs do, and when Smith went to get him,
he saw the axe head wedged in a hole among
some rooms roots. He turned this axehead over to Forestry England,

(33:04):
which handed it over to Cotswold Archaeology, and it ultimately
made its way to the Dean Heritage Center. It's believed
to date back to some time between fourteen hundred and
twelve seventy five BCE. This head was from a pulstave ax,
which was used with a wooden handle. Paul stave axe
heads have a bar that keeps the axe head from

(33:24):
being driven back into the handle when it's used, and
then it also, at least most of them have a
loop that is used to tie the axe head onto
the handle of the axe so that it does not
fly off while being used. A hiker in Norway found
a golden scabbard fitting in debris from where a tree
had previously fallen down. This decorative element likely dates back

(33:48):
to the sixth century and it looks like it was
made by skilled goldsmiths. It's covered in serpentine markings and
beaded golden threads. Fewer than twenty fittings like this have
been found in Northern Europe, and compared to the others,
this one is particularly worn, suggesting that it was used
for a long time. This is the first such scabbard

(34:10):
fitting found in this part of Norway. In other accidental
finds from Norway, a first grader who was on a
field trip picked up a piece of metal on the
ground and it turned out to be an iron sword,
so the teachers contacted county archaeologists. This is a single
edged sword, meaning that it most likely dates back to

(34:32):
the Merevingian period between the years five fifty and eight hundred,
or it is also possible that it is an early
Viking Age weapon from before double edged blades became more
common among the Vikings. This sword was sent to the
Museum of Cultural History in Oslo for conservation. A man

(34:54):
who was fishing in the Varda River in Poland also
discovered a sword, this one dating back to the Elee
teventh century, similarly to the find in Norway. He saw
a piece of metal on one of the earth and
stone fortifications in the river and picked it up to
see what it was. These fortifications are usually submerged, and

(35:14):
this find was only visible thanks to a drop in
water level. The sword was taken to a museum where
an archaeologist determined its probable age, and then it was
sent to Nicolaus Copernicus University for conservation and for our
last accidental find. So this has maybe a little bit
more deliberate, but still a surprise, some high school students

(35:38):
who occupied their school in Rome found an ancient villa
under it. This happened in twenty twenty one, and the
students were protesting plans to extend the school's period of
remote learning due to the COVID nineteen pandemic. While they
were occupying the school, they explored the building, including finding

(35:58):
an opening in an old boiler room, and that opening
led them to the villa. Excavations of the villa began
in twenty twenty five, and the findings were announced earlier
this year. This villa was a private dwelling dating back
to the second century. It had been partially unearthed back
in eighteen ninety five during road construction, but it wasn't

(36:21):
fully examined at the time and it was ultimately forgotten
about until these teens found it. It has been described
as very well preserved, including having an intact mosaic. I
am fascinated by this whole story. I love it. It's
kind of like when we did our Catacombs episode, and
it's like, yeah, I just walked through this weird door

(36:43):
and suddenly there it all was there. It was Yeah,
there was an opening in the boiler room and the
villa underneath. We will have more things unearthed next time,
but for now I have a little listener mail. Yay.
This listener mail is from Rebecca and wrote hello, I've
written a couple of times and was so gratified that

(37:03):
you chose to share my email on Nigrony's and Shirley Temple's.
I'm behind still so I just finished October twenty twenty four.
In the episode on Horace Walpole and the Rise of
the Gothic Esthetic, you commented on his preparing a guide
to the house. You seem to think it unusual. I'm
writing to recommend a book, The Polite Tourist by Adrian Tenniswood.

(37:27):
He chronicles the history of house tours with extensive references
to Walpole and Strawberry Hill. He notes the significant rise
in the popularity of house tours in the later part
of the eighteenth century and the growing commercialization of it.
Many homeowners were being so swamped with visitors that they
had to begin devising rules and mechanisms to deal with

(37:50):
the throngs. A major step was establishing specific days and
hours the house would be open, as well as the
development of guides. The thirst for esthetic appreciation of art
and architecture led to the demand for more information than
a housekeeper could reasonably provide, as well as the desire
for a souvenir to boast of one's visit. While Pole's

(38:13):
house guide may have been less about him showing off
his home than trying to manage the influx of visitors.
In the listener mail section of one of the British
Ghost episodes, you talked about orange cats and their legendary
goofy behavior. You questioned if non goofy oranges exist that
I'm writing to say they do. I have two orange boys,
and Jack is the archetype orange goofy and only occasionally

(38:35):
getting a turn with the brain cell. Charlie is not.
He is crazy, smart, generally dignified, and sadly very high anxiety.
He is, however, the epitome of the sweet loving orange.
Maybe his different since he's an orange tabby but also
has tuxedo markings atached to pictures of Jack being a
pest was a remote work day and he insisted it

(38:57):
was petting time, and Charlie showing off his white bib
and spats also an episode suggestion. I was recently at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in
the decorative art section, looking at reconstructions of two hotel
rooms from seventeen sixties France, it occurred to me that
I don't really know how the concept of hotels developed

(39:18):
or when it became a standard, so a history on
hotels would be very interesting. Thank you so much for
this email, Rebecca. It's been long enough since October of
twenty twenty four that I don't really remember whether I
knew this about house tours and whether I intended to
make it sound that Horace Walpole making this guide to

(39:39):
the house was unusual. I don't remember, but this is
all super interesting, so thank you very much for writing
about it. And then we have some super cute kitty
cat pictures orange babyes. So we have one orange kitty
cat on a keyboard and then other orange kitty cat
who that's just it's the sweetest tiger face. And then

(40:03):
the white bib and white feet, which is so cute,
so cute. So yeah, thank you so much, Rebecca for
this email. I might need to check out this book
because that sounds really interesting. I don't know whether we
will have an episode on the history of hotels, but
that's an interesting idea too. I mean I kind of
love that idea. Yeah, but I'm still occluded by thinking

(40:26):
about people just stopping by my house. Yeah, and how
that would make me not happy. I'd love to entertain,
but like just Randos popping by, Yeah, I see your stuff. No,
definitely not not. Do not be a super rich person
with a huge, huge house in the eighteenth century. That's
my advice. Oh, I think I can manage that. Yeah,

(40:49):
don't use the time machine to set yourself up in
that way. So thank you again, Rebecca for this email.
If you would like to send us a note where
at history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and if you
want to see the notes about our episode, Boy is
the source list for Unearthed Incredibly Long. That is at
our website, which is Missed Inhistory dot com. And you

(41:12):
can subscribe to the 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. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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