April 18, 2022 • 36 mins
It's time for another two-part edition of things that were unearthed in recent months. Today's episode covers updates, lots of repatriations, some mummy stuff, Viking stuff, animal stuff, and a handful of miscellany.
Research:
- AFP. “Chile's National Museum Of Natural History To Return Easter Island 'Head'.” Archaeology News Network. 2/21/2022. https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2022/02/chiles-national-museum-of-natural.html
- AFP. “Nigeria Returns Two Stolen Benin Bronzes To Traditional Royal Palace.” Archaeology News Network. 2/21/2022. https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2022/02/nigeria-returns-two-stolen-benin.html
- Agence France-Presse. “17 Pre-Columbian Artifacts Returned to Mexico.” VOA News. 2/21/2022. https://www.voanews.com/a/pre-columbian-artifacts-returned-to-mexico/6451918.html
- Alex, Bridget. “Archaeologists uncover oldest ochre workshop in East Asia.” Science. 3/2/2022. https://www.science.org/content/article/archaeologists-uncover-oldest-ochre-workshop-east-asia
- Amaral, Brian. “Australian researchers defend finding of Captain Cook’s ship in R.I.: ‘Right where we said it was’.” Boston Globe. 2/4/2022. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/04/metro/right-where-we-said-it-was-finding-captain-cooks-ship-ri-waters-makes-waves-among-researchers/?event=event12
- Associated Press. “More possible victims of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre found in mass grave.” AL.com. 3/3/2022. https://www.al.com/news/2022/03/more-possible-victims-of-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-found-in-mass-grave.html
- Australian National University. “Mysterious, giant stone jars found in India.” Phys.org. 3/30/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-mysterious-giant-stone-jars-india.html
- Barras, Colin. “Ancient smells reveal secrets of Egyptian tomb.” Nature. 3/31/2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00903-z
- BBC. “Bedfordshire A428 dig: Evidence of Roman beer production found.” 3/30/2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-60932382
- Bower, Bruce. “Ancient seafarers built the Mediterranean’s largest known sacred pool.” Science News. 3/16/2022. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sacred-pool-ancient-seafarers-phoenicians-largest-mediterranean
- Bower, Bruce. “The world’s oldest pants stitched together cultures from across Asia.” Science News. 2/18/2022. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/pants-oldest-ancient-horseman-asia-culture-origin
- Burke, Minyvonne. “Wreckage of 207-year-old whaling ship found on seafloor of Gulf of Mexico.” 3/23/2022. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wreckage-207-year-old-whaling-ship-found-seafloor-gulf-mexico-rcna21189
- Cambridge University Press. “Oldest known drinking straws identified.” Phys.org. 1/19/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-oldest-straws.html
- CBS/AFP. “U.S. returns gold treasure looted from 1746 shipwreck and skull stolen from Parisian catacombs to France.” 3/4/2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-returns-gold-treasure-skull-to-france/
- Cramer, Maria. “Scotland Apologizes for History of Witchcraft Persecution.” New York Times. 3/9/2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/world/europe/scotland-nicola-sturgeon-apologizes-witches.html
- Deutsches Archaologisches Institut. “4000 year old boat salvaged near the ancient city of Uruk.” 3/28/2022. https://www.dainst.org/en/dai/meldungen/-/asset_publisher/nZcCAiLqg1db/content/4000-jahre-altes-boot-bei-der-antiken-stadt-uruk-notgeborgen
- Dijkstra, Mischa. “Ancient art and genetics combine to reveal origin of world's most expensive spice.” EurekAlert. 3/8/2022. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945749
- El-Aref, Nevine. &ld
Mark as Played
Transcript
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 I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. It is
time for Unearthed. If you are new to the show.
A few times a year, we look at things that
(00:21):
have been literally or figuratively unearthed over the last few months.
So today we're looking at January through March. UH, stuff
that crossed my radar. I had have this extensive list
of hundreds of bookmarks that I go through to UH
to prepare these. This time around, we have some updates.
(00:43):
We have a whole bunch of repatriations, some mummy stuff
and some Viking stuff and some animal stuff. There's lots
of like little bits of loosely related things. On Wednesday's
episode we'll have the edibles and potables and the books
and letters and the artwork. And you were thinking, what
about the exclamations. Exclamations are always such a big part
(01:04):
of these episodes. Um, we're in kind of a weird
exclamation dry spell. No exclamations for you. Yeah, that we
have an exclamation we're gonna be talking about this part
of an update. But a lot of the exhumations that
I have. I have Google alerts that are related to exhumations,
and a lot of the ones that I was hearing
(01:25):
about were about things like relatively recent cold cases where
people's families are just trying to get closure, and I'm like,
that's not really what we talked about. We're usually talking
about the exhumations of like notable historical people or things
that have to do with some kind of like major
historical event, not someone who lost a family member twenty
(01:46):
years ago and is still trying to uh find out
what happened. That's a little bit different tone than we
usually have with these. Uh So, if you're waiting for
the exhumations, that's that's where they are. They're nowhere in
the summer. Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe somebody will be proposing
that we exhume some you know, particularly flamboyant historical character.
(02:10):
Those are more fun to talk about anyway. One of
the biggest headlines this time around was definitely the discovery
of the wreckage of Shackleton's ship Endurance and the Wettal
Seat and Antarctica. We did a two parter on Shackleton
and the Endurance just a couple of weeks ago in
case you missed that one and are also listening to
this episode thinking what about Shackleton. That's where he is.
(02:31):
Already had two whole episodes. It was a Shackleton festival,
so we are going to start today with updates. The
one thing that got as much coverage as Shackleton's Endurance
was the Smithsonian Institution's announcement that it would be returning
most of the thirty nine Benin bronzes currently in its collection.
Most of these objects had come to the museum as
(02:53):
donations and were taken from Benin during the eight nine
seven raid that we discussed on the show on January
nineteen of this year. So there are still details that
need to be worked out with this, including confirming which
of the items and the Smithsonian's collections are definitely connected
to the raid. This also still needs to be approved
by the Smithsonian Board of Regents, and when this plan
(03:15):
was announced in March, they were expecting a final agreement
as early as April, so it's totally possible something will
have happened with that between when we have recorded this
and when that episode comes out. Regardless, though the Smithsonian
is one of the biggest cultural institutions in the world,
so they're making this commitment is a big deal. Also
in earlier installments of Unearth, we talked about two different
(03:38):
Benien bronzes that had been returned to Nigeria. One was
a depiction of an Oba returned by the University of
Aberdeen and the other was a Cockrell returned by the
University of Cambridge Jesus College. In February of this year,
the Nigerian government returned both of these objects to the
Bening Royal Palace. Moving on, on March twenty nine, President
(03:59):
Joe Haiden signed the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act into law.
This law makes lynching a federal hate crime. So we
talked about Emmett Till in our August seventeen episode called
The Motherhood of Mamie Till Mobile, and we talked about
the fight for national anti lynching legislation in the US,
which went on for more than a century in our
(04:21):
June four, eighteen episode on Idoby Wells Barnett. At this
signing ceremony, Emmett's cousin, the Reverend Wheeler Parker, was present
as well as Wells Barnett's great granddaughter Michelle duster back in.
According to family lore, and attendee at the Women's National
Air Derby at the Cleveland Municipal Airport found a flying
(04:43):
helmet on the ground, one that appeared to belong to
third place derby winner Amelia Earhart, including having the name
a air Heart written on the inside. Rather than returning
it to its owner, this unnamed person gave it to
his crush, Ellie Brookhart, hope that it would impress her.
The helmet later wound up in a plastic bag in
(05:04):
Brookhart's closet, and eventually it was inherited by her son,
Anthony Twiggs. It apparently did not impress her enough for
her to remember what his name was telling this story later,
at least according to how this was passed down through
the family. So her heart lost her goggles at this
same event, and the goggles later wound up in the Smithsonian.
(05:26):
But when Twigs started to find a museum that might
be interested in the helmet, folks were generally pretty dismissive.
The only information he had for the helmets authenticity was
the story that his mother had told him. Then last
year he heard about objects that had been authenticated by
comparing them to photographs, so he took some pictures himself,
(05:47):
and those pictures appeared to match photos of air Heart
wearing the helmet after her flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
Twigs then contacted an auction house and was told that
he would need professor sational verification, so he contacted a
company called Resolution Photo Match, which matched the helmets, creases, puckers,
(06:07):
and where to photos of air Heart with Resolution Photo
Match vouching for its authenticity. The helmet was auctioned off
in February with an expected price of eighty thousand dollars.
It sold to an anonymous buyer for eight hundred twenty
five thousand dollars. Prior, hosts of the show covered air
hearts disappearance. That was an episode that came out on
(06:28):
June two thousand nine, and that was updated on July
next up. Investigators have recommended that the search for victims
of the race massacre and Tulsa, Oklahoma should continue. As
we've discussed in previous installments of Unearthed, Exhimations for this
took place in and twenty bodies were sent for more
(06:52):
detailed examination. A report that was submitted to the committee
that's been overseeing this work said that one of those
bodies showed evidence of at least three gunshot wounds. The
report also recommended some additional excavations at Oaklawn Cemetery and
scanning of other locations where bodies may have been buried.
(07:12):
According to reports and people's oral histories, our episode on
the Tulsa massacre was most recently a Saturday Classic on
MA and for our last update, according to a report
from Boston News, investigators are looking at a new lead
in the Gardener Museum heist. Jimmy Marks was shot outside
(07:33):
his home in Lynn, Massachusetts, on February in what was
described as a mob style hit, and recently someone sent
in a tip reporting that shortly before his death, Marks
had been bragging about having some of the stolen artwork.
So investigators have been trying to figure out whether there's
a connection between the heist and his unsolved murder. A
(07:57):
few things have emerged, like that Marks met with Bobby
Guaranty on the day of his death, and Guarante's widow
told investigators that he had passed several stolen pieces of
art to another man named Robert Genteel. At that point,
Guarante had been dead for six years and since then,
Gentile has also died. He passed away in It also
(08:20):
seems like those two men met with two other associates
not long after Marx's murder, but it's not totally clear
if there's a connection there. This is kind of a
complicated tangle of people, all of whom have died at
this point. Uh. We put out an update of Past
Hosts episode on the Gardener Museum heist on April, and
(08:41):
it has also come up on Unearthed a number of
times since then. Before we take a quick break, we
have a couple of coin hordes that were unusual enough
to get past our general prohibition on coin hords. It
passed the Tracy V. Wilson coin hord tests. First, a
badger has earth the horde of two thousand plus year
(09:02):
old coins in a cave in northwestern Spain. That's something
that happened in April of last year, but it made
headlines in January after a paper was published on the find.
In December of this badger dug up more than ninety coins,
and when a team investigated further, they found a total
of two hundred nine of them, dating back to between
(09:22):
two hundred and four hundred BC. This happens fairly often.
The first installment of unearthed during our time as hosts
included a twelve century sword and skeletal remains that were
dug up by a badger. And in we shared a
similar find and noted that burrowing animals are a huge
threat to archaeological finds in some parts of the world.
(09:45):
And lastly, before we take a break, a horde of
forty one coins was found in Germany, and these are
in a curved style whose name translates into rainbow cups.
It's a very long German word, and that I not
able to say myself. Um. The shape of these, though,
(10:06):
is almost the shape of a contact lens, but made
of gold and also bigger than a contact lens that
wouldn't really fit into your eye. Uh. Nineteen of them
are known as statters, which are about two centimeters across,
and the rest of them are quarter statters, which are
about one point four centimeters across. Um. These aren't stamped
with any kind of design either. They're just this like smooth,
(10:28):
slightly bull like gold coin. They don't look like what
you would probably think of when the word coin comes
to mind. And while you think of those, we will
pause for a sponsor break. I heard about a lot
(10:52):
of repatriations at the start of this year. First up
in January, US federal agents delivered two object x to
a representative at the Iraq Consulate in Los Angeles, California.
One of these items was a stone tablet covered in cuneiform,
and the other was a prism that was used as
a teaching tool to help children learn uniform, which I
(11:15):
think that sounds really cool. Both of these items are
believed to have been about four thousand years old. Somebody
had tried to buy the tablet online and that had
caught the eye of investigators, and the prism had been
held in a private gallery in l A. In both cases,
it's not totally clear how the objects were removed from Iraq,
(11:35):
but all the available evidence suggests that that was not
done legally. In other repatriations to Iraq, three hundred thirty
seven artifacts were returned from Lebanon to Iraq at a
ceremony at the National Museum of Beirut. These items had
been in a private institution called the Naboo Museum, which
was founded by businessman Jawad Adra and his wife, former
(11:57):
Defense Minister Zina A. Car. The museum's holdings included two
thousand items from the couple's personal collection, although they have
maintained they were not involved in any kind of international
trafficking when they built that collection. They returned items included
cuneiform tablets and other objects that were taken from the
same general area as the artifacts that craft store retailer
(12:20):
Hobby Lobby returned to Iraq. It's a region that became
a frequent target for smugglers after the US invaded Iraq
in two thousand three. Next, the United States has returned
two pieces of artwork to Libya. These are Veiled Head
of a Lady and Bust of a Bearded Man. Both
(12:40):
of them were looted from the ancient city of Cyrene,
and this area as a UNESCO World Heritage Site that
faced heavy looting in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Veiled
Head of a Lady dates back to the fourth century
BC and had been on display at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art since it had been loaned to the met
by someone who at this point remains anonymous. Bust of
(13:03):
a bearded Man dates back to some time between the
second and fourth century BC. It had been passing from
person to person on the art market before it was seized.
Veiled head of a lady is really beautiful, Yes it
is uh. Moving on to Dutch citizens have returned seventeen
pre Columbian artifacts to Mexico. These items were between five
(13:27):
hundred and sixteen hundred years old, and they were returned
at a ceremony at the Mexican embassy in the Netherlands.
Not totally clear how the two acquired the pieces that
they returned. The United States returned an assortment of items
to France at a ceremony at the residence of French
ambassador Philippe et Yenne. This included five gold ingots from
(13:48):
the wreck of the Prince de Conti, which had been
offered up for auction in California in tween The ship
sank in seventeen forty six, and it was badly looted
after a teacher found archai of old documents that mentioned
its location in nineteen seventy five. There was also a
gold coin from a horde known as the Treasure of Lava,
(14:08):
which was found on the island of Corsica in and
was sold off without permission, and a skull taken from
the ossuary in the Paris Catacombs. That one was taken
from an antiquities dealer in This was just the most
to me random assortment that one uh, including the skull.
(14:31):
Here's some stuff you left at all of our houses,
excepting these things that people took from your house. The
Reuben Museum of Art in New York City is a
museum that's largely focused on artwork from Tibets as well
as from surrounding parts of Asia, and in January, the
museum agreed to return a pair of wooden carvings to Nepal.
(14:52):
The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign had informed the museum these
carvings might have been stolen, and then the museum agreed
to return them after confirming that yes, that was the case.
One piece was part of a gateway arch at a
temple complex and it was carved in the seventeenth century,
and the other was a fourteenth century window decoration from
(15:13):
a monastery. The museum had acquired these pieces at two
different private sales, and they're expected to be returned to
Nepal by May of this year. Several pieces of artwork
that were looted by Nazis or forcibly sold under the
Nazi regime have been returned or our plan to be
returned to their rightful owners or their descendants. In January
(15:36):
and February, the French National Assembly and Senate each approved
a plan to return fifteen works of art, twelve of
which had been held in the collection of the Louver.
One of the other pieces, Gustav Clim's rose Bushes under
the Trees, has been in the collection of the muse
d'Orsay and is the only one of Clim's work that
has been in France's national collections. Although the French government
(15:58):
set up a special unit it to try to track
down the rightful owners of such artworks, there is still
a long way to go, and estimated two hundred looted
works are currently being held by the French state, and
an estimated one hundred thousand were seized or forcibly sold
in France under the Vichy government. In February, the Royal
(16:19):
Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels also returned a nineteen
thirteen still life to the great grandchildren of Gustave and
Emma Mayor, which was a German Jewish couple who had
fled from Germany in nineteen thirty eight. This painting is
a still life by Levis Corinth called Flowers, and it
had been given to the museum in nineteen fifty one
(16:39):
because at that point its owners could not be found.
Now that they have been, it's being returned. Next, the
city of Seattle is returning about two hundred seventy stone
objects to the Upper Scatchet Indian tribe. These were on
earth during the renovation of gorge In, which was the
dining hall of a company town called New Halem. The
(17:00):
town had been built on the site of an Upper
Skaduet village to house workers during damn construction in the
early twentieth century. The items being returned are mostly tools
and projectile points. This process has involved a lot of
research to confirm the objects origins, since multiple tribes and
nations all had a presence in this same area during
(17:21):
the period when these objects were used. Chile's National Museum
of Natural History has announced that it will return a
Moi and its collection to Rapa Nui, also known as
Easter Island. The Chilean Navy brought this statue from the
island to Chile in eighteen seventy and it was placed
on display in the museum eight years later. The Rapa
(17:44):
Nui people have been asking for the return of the
moi and other cultural items that are in the museum
for years, as well as for similar items and other
museums to be returned. The plan right now is for
this moi to be displayed at the Father Sebastia, An
England Anthropological Museum once it is back on the island.
And on a slightly different note, before we take another break,
(18:07):
about thirty years ago, a pre Columbian statue was removed
during construction work in the Mexican city of Tacambro. It
became known as the Coyote Man of Tacambaro and wound
up in a private collection in Mexico, but under Mexican
federal law it is an object of national cultural property
and should be protected and preserved. In January, the National
(18:29):
Institute for Anthropology and History or i n a H
recovered the statue and it is currently at an iron
age facility for conservation. Once it has been conserved and repaired,
the plan is to place it in the Tacambaro City
Council's Community Museum. We're gonna take a quick break and
then come back with some astronomical stuff. To close out
(19:00):
today's episode, we have a few finds and each of
a few different categories, and we're going to start with
some astronomical stuff. The island of Mottia or also called Motia,
off the western coast of Sicily, is home to a
year old artificial lake. It's a bit larger than an
Olympic size swimming pool in terms of its length and width.
(19:24):
It has long been believed to have served as maybe
an inner harbor or a dry dock for people who
are working on Phoenician ships, but according to research that
was published in the journal Antiquity in March, it may
have had a completely different purpose, which is that it
may have been a sacred reflecting pool that was used
(19:44):
to make astronomical observations at night. There are three temples
arranged around the pool, which were aligned with specific astronomical
bodies at particular times of the year, like the summer solstice.
A statue of an Egyptian god associate with astronomy has
been found in one corner of the pool, and an
astronomical pointer was found in one of the temples. Both
(20:07):
of those things have been cited as supporting the idea
that this was a sacred reflecting pool. People could have
used polls to measure and chart the positions of different
celestial bodies at night and for our other astronomical tidbit.
According to research published in the journal Scientific Reports, an
air blast caused by debris from a comet may have
(20:29):
contributed to the decline of the Hopewell culture that was
an indigenous North American culture from the eastern part of
the continent. There's evidence of a series of fires that
took place between the years two fifty two and three
eighty three. Those fires aligned with Chinese observations of more
(20:50):
than sixty near earth comets that happened around the same time.
Lead author Kennis tankers Lee is an enrolled member of
the Piqua Tribe and Alabama and the pay Bird notes
that multiple indigenous nations have oral histories that may also
be references to this event. Other evidence for the comets
and the air blast includes a comet shaped earthwork near
(21:12):
what would have been the epicenter of the blast, as
well as meteorite fragments and other debris, and multiple archaeological
sites around the Ohio River Valley. Moving on, we have
a couple of surgical finds in a skull was found
in a funerary chamber in northwestern Spain. An analysis of
that skull has revealed evidence of the earliest known ear surgery.
(21:38):
The skull was dated to about five thousand, three hundred
years ago and it belonged to someone who was between
the ages of thirty five and fifty at the time
of their death, and holes had been bored through both
sides of the skull, possibly to try to treat an
ear problem that involved both of the patient's ears. There's
(21:58):
also evidence of bone regrowth around these board spots, and
that suggests that the person lived for at least a
few months after this surgery was conducted. And our other
surgical find, a thousand year old funeral bundle in Peru
has been discovered to contain a surgical kit, the oldest
one ever found in northern Peru. It contained needles, alls,
(22:22):
and about fifty different knives. The bundle also contained a
ceremonial knife called it to Me, and a metal plan shet.
Two frontal bones found with the kit also show evidence
of having been cut using Trepi nation techniques. Now we
have a couple of things related some mummies and mummification. First,
(22:42):
researchers in Egypt have used X rays and computerized tomography
or CT scanning to digitally unwrapped the mummy of amand Hotel,
the First, who ruled Egypt from f to fIF oh
four BC. Although many royal mummies were physically unwrapped decades ago,
Egypt's director of antiquities at the time left this one
(23:05):
as it was back in the nineteenth century. Part of
the reason for that decision was the wrappings were in
particularly good condition, and the mummy also featured a face
mask that's described as exquisite, so at a time when
there was a lot of unwrapping going on, this one
remained untouched. The team used CT scans to make two
(23:26):
D and three D images of the wrappings, the mask,
and what was underneath. They confirmed that Amen Hotep the
First was about thirty five when he died, but they
weren't really able to determine a cause of death. They
were able to get really clear images of the face,
confirmation that the brain had not been removed, and images
of an amulet overlaying the heart. There are also about
(23:48):
thirty pieces of jewelry as part of the mummy. Although
I'm in Hotep the first ruled during Egypt's eighteenth dynasty.
This mummy was reburied during the dynasty to protect it
from grave robbers. This process included unwrapping and re wrapping
the body to address some damage that had previously been
(24:09):
inflicted by looters. The team found some evidence of multiple
repairs to the body that were made during this process, and,
in the words of the authors, quote this study may
make us gain confidence in the good will of the
reburial project of the royal mummies by the twenty one
dynasty priests. Archaeologists have also nared the largest cache of
(24:32):
embalming supplies ever found in Egypt. This find is from
the Abs Archaeological Site, and it contains three hundred seventy
pottery jars, many of which contained residues from embalming materials
or tools and utensils that were used in the process.
These objects were found in fourteen separate clusters, with between
seven and fifty two vessels in each of those clusters.
(24:55):
The uppermost cluster included four limestone canopic jars which had
been inscribed but not used. Next, we've got some Viking fines.
One of the most gruesome pieces of Viking lore is
a bloody ritual torture method called the blood eagle. The
blood eagle appears in several North sagas, but there's been
(25:17):
a lot of debate about whether this was a real
practice or something that was embellished or distorted or otherwise
not totally representative of something that really happened. A paper
that was published in the journal Speculum in January looks
at a slightly different question, which is whether the blood
eagle as described in these sagas was even possible given
(25:40):
the realities of human anatomy and the types of tools
and knowledge that the people living at the time would
have had access to. Some of the saga descriptions of
this practice are fairly detailed, and those details are violent
and horrifying. Here's the saga of Harold fair Hair, for example,
quote he carved an eagle on his back in such
(26:02):
a way that he put a sword into the chest
cavity at the spine and cut down along all the
ribs to the loins and pulled out the lungs through
the cut. That was the death of have them. This
paper is titled an Anatomy of the Blood Eagle. The
Practicalities of Viking torture, and its authors argue that the
(26:23):
blood eagle would have been difficult for the Vikings to perform,
but still possible. However, there are accounts of this practice
that described the victim still being alive and its final steps,
and this paper argues that victims probably would have died
much earlier in this process. Our other Viking news is
one of the more frustratingly reported finds of this unearthed cycle.
(26:48):
Scientists have used radio carbon dating to analyze some birch
tar that was stuck to a helmet found in Visca, Denmark.
This helmet was one of a pair of nearly identical helmets,
both with dramatically curving horns, which were most likely originally
decorated with feathers and horse hair as well. But although
horned helmets have been used to represent Vikings in popular culture,
(27:10):
these helmets are much older. They date back to about
nine BC, roughly two thousand years before the Viking era.
The helmet style also probably didn't originate in Denmark. It's
very similar to rock art and figurines from Sardinia and
western Siberia, suggesting a trading relationship between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean.
(27:33):
So here's the annoying part. So many articles reported this
as new research shows Vikings did not wear horned helmets.
It is clear from Twitter replies and whatnot that this
was new information to a lot of people. Please do
not feel bad if this was new information to you,
but Vikings didn't wear horned helmets is not new information
(27:57):
within the field of history at all all. The idea
that vikings war horned helmets probably traces back to nineteenth
century costumes for Wagner's opera The Ring, in a general
mythologizing of Vikings that was happening around that time. It's
really not even new information that these specific helmets were
(28:17):
from the Nordic Bronze age that was generally agreed upon
not long after they were first found in nineteen forty two.
So I've found myself very annoyed by the breathless reporting
of new research proves Vikings didn't wear horn helmets when
it was first reported, And then I got to be
annoyed again when I reviewed it all again to do
(28:40):
on Earth. And now I get to be annoyed a
third time. Right now. I don't know why this doesn't
annoy me, but it might be because I was raised
on bugs bunny who always had a horned helmet as
a Viking. It's fine, you know, and there's plenty of
depictions of Vikings that have horn helmets. Now, if, like,
if you, as a lay person not a historian, was
(29:02):
not aware of all this, totally don't feel bad about it.
But the just persistent reporting that it was somehow a
breakthrough historical discovery. I was like, come on now. I
think probably that is more indicative of the knowledge base
of the reporter, which probably reflects lay people, right like, oh, look,
this isn't the thing. They may not have done the
(29:24):
historical research to know that had been found already. It
was also the people who kind of cover the history
beat for various and that was I was like, come
on now, someone in this editorial process raise the red flag. Uh,
We're gonna move on to animals, so Tracy will stop
being quite so irritated about the Viking situation. Researchers have
(29:47):
studied horse remains from one d seventy one different archaeological
sites and concluded that medieval war horses actually tended to
be quite small. This is a little bit tricky since
it's often not possible to tell whether a horse was
specifically a war horse, but the tallest Norman horse they
found would have been about fifteen hands high, which is
(30:09):
about as big as a light riding horse today. It
wasn't until after the medieval period had ended that horses
started to get a lot bigger, closer in size to
today's draft horses. This is a note thing where like
the popular imagination of a war horse as this like
mammoth animal like necessarily line up. It's also clear that
(30:32):
people bred horses specifically for different purposes during the medieval period,
and the words of Professor Allen Outram from the University
of Exeter quote selection and breeding practices, and the royal
studs may have focused as much on temperament and the
correct physical characteristics for warfare as they did on cross size.
(30:53):
Researchers in China have found evidence that geese were domesticated
there at least seven thousand years ago, which may mean
that geese, not chickens, were the first birds to be domesticated.
They used radio carbon dating to confirm the age of
the bones, and they also looked at the bones themselves.
Four of the bones were from goslings, but the rest
(31:13):
suggested that the adults were locally bred and about the
same size, suggesting intentional breeding in captivity. And lastly, repairs
to the city water system in Rome have unsurprisingly unearthed
all kinds of stuff, including multiple tombs, an urn, and
a terra cotta statue of a dog's head. This dog
(31:35):
is very cute. It has just the very upright, very
alert ears and wavy for this little sort of statuette
is similar in shape to decorative elements that were used
on drainage systems, but it doesn't have any holes that
water would have passed through, so it might have just
been a cute dog figure for its own sake, which
(31:57):
I love. So we're to have more unearthed next time.
But in the meantime, Tracy, do you have some listener
mail for us? Do I have a short listener mail
from Margaret? And I answered Margaret, but wanted to answer
uh everyone, since it's a kind of a frequently asked question.
Margaret wrote and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, have you
(32:17):
ever done an episode about the Armenian Jennocide? Normally I
wouldn't suggest such an I'm assuming absolute down of an episode,
but the new Marvel show Moon Night is getting review
bombed by people angry that they dared him to imply
that it really happened. I think most people's knowledge of
the event only extends to knowing that Turkey won't acknowledge it.
Thanks for all you do. Just left a job that
(32:39):
had long stretches of a loane time in my office,
and you helped me stay awake, Margaret. Thanks Margaret for
this question, I answered Margaret, and now everyone, Uh, we
have not done an episode on the Armenian genocide. We did, however,
pretty recently back in March re air our episode on
(33:00):
Raphael Limpken in the Genocide Convention, and there is an
overview of the Armenian genocide in that episode because it
really informed how he thought about genocide and the need
for UH in his mind and international law to try
to prevent genocide and bring the perpetrators to some kind
(33:20):
of justice. Um. Also, holy moly, the idea of people
spending their time review bombing mood night because of literally
two words in one line of dialogue. UM, here's what
I have learned, being very much in various fandoms. People
will spend their time review bombing anything if they get
(33:42):
their nickers. In a tweet well, and this is why
I am not actively participating in any fandom anymore, because
that behavior, I oh, it's it's not cool. Yeah. I
got to the limit of my ability to deal with that,
and I was like, you know what, I'm just never
not not going to be in fandoms anymore, or I
will love the thing and enjoy the thing, But in
(34:03):
terms of participating in some kind of like community where
people are gonna shriek about everything they're furious about, not
really going to do it. I just saw myself always
going when do these people make their clothes? Which I
know is a very weird Holly esque thing, But then
I'm like, when do they mow their lawns? Are there
dishes done? Like? Yeah, there's so much time and effort
(34:25):
that goes into just this pointless expression of weird ire
that I'm like, how are you having a functioning life?
Are you? I'm worried? Please eat and hydrate. I guess
I know, maybe that will make you feel better, unless
like you need to grouse at folks for nothing. Yeah,
we have had the Armenian genocide on the list for
(34:47):
an episode for a really long time. I'm sure at
some point it will happen. I cannot say it would
happen soon, in part just because at this moment we're
working a few weeks ahead on our episodes, which is
nice because that means if we take any time off,
we already have episodes there they're ready to cover it.
(35:08):
But like, that is the topic that I've been kind
of circling around for for ages and ages. Um So, anyway,
thank you so much for that email. Please don't review
bomb things. Uh if you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast or history podcast
(35:28):
that I heart radio dot com and we're all over
social media. Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on
the I heart Radio app wherever else you like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(35:51):
I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. It is
time for Unearthed. If you are new to the show.
A few times a year, we look at things that
(00:21):
have been literally or figuratively unearthed over the last few months.
So today we're looking at January through March. UH, stuff
that crossed my radar. I had have this extensive list
of hundreds of bookmarks that I go through to UH
to prepare these. This time around, we have some updates.
(00:43):
We have a whole bunch of repatriations, some mummy stuff
and some Viking stuff and some animal stuff. There's lots
of like little bits of loosely related things. On Wednesday's
episode we'll have the edibles and potables and the books
and letters and the artwork. And you were thinking, what
about the exclamations. Exclamations are always such a big part
(01:04):
of these episodes. Um, we're in kind of a weird
exclamation dry spell. No exclamations for you. Yeah, that we
have an exclamation we're gonna be talking about this part
of an update. But a lot of the exhumations that
I have. I have Google alerts that are related to exhumations,
and a lot of the ones that I was hearing
(01:25):
about were about things like relatively recent cold cases where
people's families are just trying to get closure, and I'm like,
that's not really what we talked about. We're usually talking
about the exhumations of like notable historical people or things
that have to do with some kind of like major
historical event, not someone who lost a family member twenty
(01:46):
years ago and is still trying to uh find out
what happened. That's a little bit different tone than we
usually have with these. Uh So, if you're waiting for
the exhumations, that's that's where they are. They're nowhere in
the summer. Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe somebody will be proposing
that we exhume some you know, particularly flamboyant historical character.
(02:10):
Those are more fun to talk about anyway. One of
the biggest headlines this time around was definitely the discovery
of the wreckage of Shackleton's ship Endurance and the Wettal
Seat and Antarctica. We did a two parter on Shackleton
and the Endurance just a couple of weeks ago in
case you missed that one and are also listening to
this episode thinking what about Shackleton. That's where he is.
(02:31):
Already had two whole episodes. It was a Shackleton festival,
so we are going to start today with updates. The
one thing that got as much coverage as Shackleton's Endurance
was the Smithsonian Institution's announcement that it would be returning
most of the thirty nine Benin bronzes currently in its collection.
Most of these objects had come to the museum as
(02:53):
donations and were taken from Benin during the eight nine
seven raid that we discussed on the show on January
nineteen of this year. So there are still details that
need to be worked out with this, including confirming which
of the items and the Smithsonian's collections are definitely connected
to the raid. This also still needs to be approved
by the Smithsonian Board of Regents, and when this plan
(03:15):
was announced in March, they were expecting a final agreement
as early as April, so it's totally possible something will
have happened with that between when we have recorded this
and when that episode comes out. Regardless, though the Smithsonian
is one of the biggest cultural institutions in the world,
so they're making this commitment is a big deal. Also
in earlier installments of Unearth, we talked about two different
(03:38):
Benien bronzes that had been returned to Nigeria. One was
a depiction of an Oba returned by the University of
Aberdeen and the other was a Cockrell returned by the
University of Cambridge Jesus College. In February of this year,
the Nigerian government returned both of these objects to the
Bening Royal Palace. Moving on, on March twenty nine, President
(03:59):
Joe Haiden signed the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act into law.
This law makes lynching a federal hate crime. So we
talked about Emmett Till in our August seventeen episode called
The Motherhood of Mamie Till Mobile, and we talked about
the fight for national anti lynching legislation in the US,
which went on for more than a century in our
(04:21):
June four, eighteen episode on Idoby Wells Barnett. At this
signing ceremony, Emmett's cousin, the Reverend Wheeler Parker, was present
as well as Wells Barnett's great granddaughter Michelle duster back in.
According to family lore, and attendee at the Women's National
Air Derby at the Cleveland Municipal Airport found a flying
(04:43):
helmet on the ground, one that appeared to belong to
third place derby winner Amelia Earhart, including having the name
a air Heart written on the inside. Rather than returning
it to its owner, this unnamed person gave it to
his crush, Ellie Brookhart, hope that it would impress her.
The helmet later wound up in a plastic bag in
(05:04):
Brookhart's closet, and eventually it was inherited by her son,
Anthony Twiggs. It apparently did not impress her enough for
her to remember what his name was telling this story later,
at least according to how this was passed down through
the family. So her heart lost her goggles at this
same event, and the goggles later wound up in the Smithsonian.
(05:26):
But when Twigs started to find a museum that might
be interested in the helmet, folks were generally pretty dismissive.
The only information he had for the helmets authenticity was
the story that his mother had told him. Then last
year he heard about objects that had been authenticated by
comparing them to photographs, so he took some pictures himself,
(05:47):
and those pictures appeared to match photos of air Heart
wearing the helmet after her flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
Twigs then contacted an auction house and was told that
he would need professor sational verification, so he contacted a
company called Resolution Photo Match, which matched the helmets, creases, puckers,
(06:07):
and where to photos of air Heart with Resolution Photo
Match vouching for its authenticity. The helmet was auctioned off
in February with an expected price of eighty thousand dollars.
It sold to an anonymous buyer for eight hundred twenty
five thousand dollars. Prior, hosts of the show covered air
hearts disappearance. That was an episode that came out on
(06:28):
June two thousand nine, and that was updated on July
next up. Investigators have recommended that the search for victims
of the race massacre and Tulsa, Oklahoma should continue. As
we've discussed in previous installments of Unearthed, Exhimations for this
took place in and twenty bodies were sent for more
(06:52):
detailed examination. A report that was submitted to the committee
that's been overseeing this work said that one of those
bodies showed evidence of at least three gunshot wounds. The
report also recommended some additional excavations at Oaklawn Cemetery and
scanning of other locations where bodies may have been buried.
(07:12):
According to reports and people's oral histories, our episode on
the Tulsa massacre was most recently a Saturday Classic on
MA and for our last update, according to a report
from Boston News, investigators are looking at a new lead
in the Gardener Museum heist. Jimmy Marks was shot outside
(07:33):
his home in Lynn, Massachusetts, on February in what was
described as a mob style hit, and recently someone sent
in a tip reporting that shortly before his death, Marks
had been bragging about having some of the stolen artwork.
So investigators have been trying to figure out whether there's
a connection between the heist and his unsolved murder. A
(07:57):
few things have emerged, like that Marks met with Bobby
Guaranty on the day of his death, and Guarante's widow
told investigators that he had passed several stolen pieces of
art to another man named Robert Genteel. At that point,
Guarante had been dead for six years and since then,
Gentile has also died. He passed away in It also
(08:20):
seems like those two men met with two other associates
not long after Marx's murder, but it's not totally clear
if there's a connection there. This is kind of a
complicated tangle of people, all of whom have died at
this point. Uh. We put out an update of Past
Hosts episode on the Gardener Museum heist on April, and
(08:41):
it has also come up on Unearthed a number of
times since then. Before we take a quick break, we
have a couple of coin hordes that were unusual enough
to get past our general prohibition on coin hords. It
passed the Tracy V. Wilson coin hord tests. First, a
badger has earth the horde of two thousand plus year
(09:02):
old coins in a cave in northwestern Spain. That's something
that happened in April of last year, but it made
headlines in January after a paper was published on the find.
In December of this badger dug up more than ninety coins,
and when a team investigated further, they found a total
of two hundred nine of them, dating back to between
(09:22):
two hundred and four hundred BC. This happens fairly often.
The first installment of unearthed during our time as hosts
included a twelve century sword and skeletal remains that were
dug up by a badger. And in we shared a
similar find and noted that burrowing animals are a huge
threat to archaeological finds in some parts of the world.
(09:45):
And lastly, before we take a break, a horde of
forty one coins was found in Germany, and these are
in a curved style whose name translates into rainbow cups.
It's a very long German word, and that I not
able to say myself. Um. The shape of these, though,
(10:06):
is almost the shape of a contact lens, but made
of gold and also bigger than a contact lens that
wouldn't really fit into your eye. Uh. Nineteen of them
are known as statters, which are about two centimeters across,
and the rest of them are quarter statters, which are
about one point four centimeters across. Um. These aren't stamped
with any kind of design either. They're just this like smooth,
(10:28):
slightly bull like gold coin. They don't look like what
you would probably think of when the word coin comes
to mind. And while you think of those, we will
pause for a sponsor break. I heard about a lot
(10:52):
of repatriations at the start of this year. First up
in January, US federal agents delivered two object x to
a representative at the Iraq Consulate in Los Angeles, California.
One of these items was a stone tablet covered in cuneiform,
and the other was a prism that was used as
a teaching tool to help children learn uniform, which I
(11:15):
think that sounds really cool. Both of these items are
believed to have been about four thousand years old. Somebody
had tried to buy the tablet online and that had
caught the eye of investigators, and the prism had been
held in a private gallery in l A. In both cases,
it's not totally clear how the objects were removed from Iraq,
(11:35):
but all the available evidence suggests that that was not
done legally. In other repatriations to Iraq, three hundred thirty
seven artifacts were returned from Lebanon to Iraq at a
ceremony at the National Museum of Beirut. These items had
been in a private institution called the Naboo Museum, which
was founded by businessman Jawad Adra and his wife, former
(11:57):
Defense Minister Zina A. Car. The museum's holdings included two
thousand items from the couple's personal collection, although they have
maintained they were not involved in any kind of international
trafficking when they built that collection. They returned items included
cuneiform tablets and other objects that were taken from the
same general area as the artifacts that craft store retailer
(12:20):
Hobby Lobby returned to Iraq. It's a region that became
a frequent target for smugglers after the US invaded Iraq
in two thousand three. Next, the United States has returned
two pieces of artwork to Libya. These are Veiled Head
of a Lady and Bust of a Bearded Man. Both
(12:40):
of them were looted from the ancient city of Cyrene,
and this area as a UNESCO World Heritage Site that
faced heavy looting in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Veiled
Head of a Lady dates back to the fourth century
BC and had been on display at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art since it had been loaned to the met
by someone who at this point remains anonymous. Bust of
(13:03):
a bearded Man dates back to some time between the
second and fourth century BC. It had been passing from
person to person on the art market before it was seized.
Veiled head of a lady is really beautiful, Yes it
is uh. Moving on to Dutch citizens have returned seventeen
pre Columbian artifacts to Mexico. These items were between five
(13:27):
hundred and sixteen hundred years old, and they were returned
at a ceremony at the Mexican embassy in the Netherlands.
Not totally clear how the two acquired the pieces that
they returned. The United States returned an assortment of items
to France at a ceremony at the residence of French
ambassador Philippe et Yenne. This included five gold ingots from
(13:48):
the wreck of the Prince de Conti, which had been
offered up for auction in California in tween The ship
sank in seventeen forty six, and it was badly looted
after a teacher found archai of old documents that mentioned
its location in nineteen seventy five. There was also a
gold coin from a horde known as the Treasure of Lava,
(14:08):
which was found on the island of Corsica in and
was sold off without permission, and a skull taken from
the ossuary in the Paris Catacombs. That one was taken
from an antiquities dealer in This was just the most
to me random assortment that one uh, including the skull.
(14:31):
Here's some stuff you left at all of our houses,
excepting these things that people took from your house. The
Reuben Museum of Art in New York City is a
museum that's largely focused on artwork from Tibets as well
as from surrounding parts of Asia, and in January, the
museum agreed to return a pair of wooden carvings to Nepal.
(14:52):
The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign had informed the museum these
carvings might have been stolen, and then the museum agreed
to return them after confirming that yes, that was the case.
One piece was part of a gateway arch at a
temple complex and it was carved in the seventeenth century,
and the other was a fourteenth century window decoration from
(15:13):
a monastery. The museum had acquired these pieces at two
different private sales, and they're expected to be returned to
Nepal by May of this year. Several pieces of artwork
that were looted by Nazis or forcibly sold under the
Nazi regime have been returned or our plan to be
returned to their rightful owners or their descendants. In January
(15:36):
and February, the French National Assembly and Senate each approved
a plan to return fifteen works of art, twelve of
which had been held in the collection of the Louver.
One of the other pieces, Gustav Clim's rose Bushes under
the Trees, has been in the collection of the muse
d'Orsay and is the only one of Clim's work that
has been in France's national collections. Although the French government
(15:58):
set up a special unit it to try to track
down the rightful owners of such artworks, there is still
a long way to go, and estimated two hundred looted
works are currently being held by the French state, and
an estimated one hundred thousand were seized or forcibly sold
in France under the Vichy government. In February, the Royal
(16:19):
Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels also returned a nineteen
thirteen still life to the great grandchildren of Gustave and
Emma Mayor, which was a German Jewish couple who had
fled from Germany in nineteen thirty eight. This painting is
a still life by Levis Corinth called Flowers, and it
had been given to the museum in nineteen fifty one
(16:39):
because at that point its owners could not be found.
Now that they have been, it's being returned. Next, the
city of Seattle is returning about two hundred seventy stone
objects to the Upper Scatchet Indian tribe. These were on
earth during the renovation of gorge In, which was the
dining hall of a company town called New Halem. The
(17:00):
town had been built on the site of an Upper
Skaduet village to house workers during damn construction in the
early twentieth century. The items being returned are mostly tools
and projectile points. This process has involved a lot of
research to confirm the objects origins, since multiple tribes and
nations all had a presence in this same area during
(17:21):
the period when these objects were used. Chile's National Museum
of Natural History has announced that it will return a
Moi and its collection to Rapa Nui, also known as
Easter Island. The Chilean Navy brought this statue from the
island to Chile in eighteen seventy and it was placed
on display in the museum eight years later. The Rapa
(17:44):
Nui people have been asking for the return of the
moi and other cultural items that are in the museum
for years, as well as for similar items and other
museums to be returned. The plan right now is for
this moi to be displayed at the Father Sebastia, An
England Anthropological Museum once it is back on the island.
And on a slightly different note, before we take another break,
(18:07):
about thirty years ago, a pre Columbian statue was removed
during construction work in the Mexican city of Tacambro. It
became known as the Coyote Man of Tacambaro and wound
up in a private collection in Mexico, but under Mexican
federal law it is an object of national cultural property
and should be protected and preserved. In January, the National
(18:29):
Institute for Anthropology and History or i n a H
recovered the statue and it is currently at an iron
age facility for conservation. Once it has been conserved and repaired,
the plan is to place it in the Tacambaro City
Council's Community Museum. We're gonna take a quick break and
then come back with some astronomical stuff. To close out
(19:00):
today's episode, we have a few finds and each of
a few different categories, and we're going to start with
some astronomical stuff. The island of Mottia or also called Motia,
off the western coast of Sicily, is home to a
year old artificial lake. It's a bit larger than an
Olympic size swimming pool in terms of its length and width.
(19:24):
It has long been believed to have served as maybe
an inner harbor or a dry dock for people who
are working on Phoenician ships, but according to research that
was published in the journal Antiquity in March, it may
have had a completely different purpose, which is that it
may have been a sacred reflecting pool that was used
(19:44):
to make astronomical observations at night. There are three temples
arranged around the pool, which were aligned with specific astronomical
bodies at particular times of the year, like the summer solstice.
A statue of an Egyptian god associate with astronomy has
been found in one corner of the pool, and an
astronomical pointer was found in one of the temples. Both
(20:07):
of those things have been cited as supporting the idea
that this was a sacred reflecting pool. People could have
used polls to measure and chart the positions of different
celestial bodies at night and for our other astronomical tidbit.
According to research published in the journal Scientific Reports, an
air blast caused by debris from a comet may have
(20:29):
contributed to the decline of the Hopewell culture that was
an indigenous North American culture from the eastern part of
the continent. There's evidence of a series of fires that
took place between the years two fifty two and three
eighty three. Those fires aligned with Chinese observations of more
(20:50):
than sixty near earth comets that happened around the same time.
Lead author Kennis tankers Lee is an enrolled member of
the Piqua Tribe and Alabama and the pay Bird notes
that multiple indigenous nations have oral histories that may also
be references to this event. Other evidence for the comets
and the air blast includes a comet shaped earthwork near
(21:12):
what would have been the epicenter of the blast, as
well as meteorite fragments and other debris, and multiple archaeological
sites around the Ohio River Valley. Moving on, we have
a couple of surgical finds in a skull was found
in a funerary chamber in northwestern Spain. An analysis of
that skull has revealed evidence of the earliest known ear surgery.
(21:38):
The skull was dated to about five thousand, three hundred
years ago and it belonged to someone who was between
the ages of thirty five and fifty at the time
of their death, and holes had been bored through both
sides of the skull, possibly to try to treat an
ear problem that involved both of the patient's ears. There's
(21:58):
also evidence of bone regrowth around these board spots, and
that suggests that the person lived for at least a
few months after this surgery was conducted. And our other
surgical find, a thousand year old funeral bundle in Peru
has been discovered to contain a surgical kit, the oldest
one ever found in northern Peru. It contained needles, alls,
(22:22):
and about fifty different knives. The bundle also contained a
ceremonial knife called it to Me, and a metal plan shet.
Two frontal bones found with the kit also show evidence
of having been cut using Trepi nation techniques. Now we
have a couple of things related some mummies and mummification. First,
(22:42):
researchers in Egypt have used X rays and computerized tomography
or CT scanning to digitally unwrapped the mummy of amand Hotel,
the First, who ruled Egypt from f to fIF oh
four BC. Although many royal mummies were physically unwrapped decades ago,
Egypt's director of antiquities at the time left this one
(23:05):
as it was back in the nineteenth century. Part of
the reason for that decision was the wrappings were in
particularly good condition, and the mummy also featured a face
mask that's described as exquisite, so at a time when
there was a lot of unwrapping going on, this one
remained untouched. The team used CT scans to make two
(23:26):
D and three D images of the wrappings, the mask,
and what was underneath. They confirmed that Amen Hotep the
First was about thirty five when he died, but they
weren't really able to determine a cause of death. They
were able to get really clear images of the face,
confirmation that the brain had not been removed, and images
of an amulet overlaying the heart. There are also about
(23:48):
thirty pieces of jewelry as part of the mummy. Although
I'm in Hotep the first ruled during Egypt's eighteenth dynasty.
This mummy was reburied during the dynasty to protect it
from grave robbers. This process included unwrapping and re wrapping
the body to address some damage that had previously been
(24:09):
inflicted by looters. The team found some evidence of multiple
repairs to the body that were made during this process, and,
in the words of the authors, quote this study may
make us gain confidence in the good will of the
reburial project of the royal mummies by the twenty one
dynasty priests. Archaeologists have also nared the largest cache of
(24:32):
embalming supplies ever found in Egypt. This find is from
the Abs Archaeological Site, and it contains three hundred seventy
pottery jars, many of which contained residues from embalming materials
or tools and utensils that were used in the process.
These objects were found in fourteen separate clusters, with between
seven and fifty two vessels in each of those clusters.
(24:55):
The uppermost cluster included four limestone canopic jars which had
been inscribed but not used. Next, we've got some Viking fines.
One of the most gruesome pieces of Viking lore is
a bloody ritual torture method called the blood eagle. The
blood eagle appears in several North sagas, but there's been
(25:17):
a lot of debate about whether this was a real
practice or something that was embellished or distorted or otherwise
not totally representative of something that really happened. A paper
that was published in the journal Speculum in January looks
at a slightly different question, which is whether the blood
eagle as described in these sagas was even possible given
(25:40):
the realities of human anatomy and the types of tools
and knowledge that the people living at the time would
have had access to. Some of the saga descriptions of
this practice are fairly detailed, and those details are violent
and horrifying. Here's the saga of Harold fair Hair, for example,
quote he carved an eagle on his back in such
(26:02):
a way that he put a sword into the chest
cavity at the spine and cut down along all the
ribs to the loins and pulled out the lungs through
the cut. That was the death of have them. This
paper is titled an Anatomy of the Blood Eagle. The
Practicalities of Viking torture, and its authors argue that the
(26:23):
blood eagle would have been difficult for the Vikings to perform,
but still possible. However, there are accounts of this practice
that described the victim still being alive and its final steps,
and this paper argues that victims probably would have died
much earlier in this process. Our other Viking news is
one of the more frustratingly reported finds of this unearthed cycle.
(26:48):
Scientists have used radio carbon dating to analyze some birch
tar that was stuck to a helmet found in Visca, Denmark.
This helmet was one of a pair of nearly identical helmets,
both with dramatically curving horns, which were most likely originally
decorated with feathers and horse hair as well. But although
horned helmets have been used to represent Vikings in popular culture,
(27:10):
these helmets are much older. They date back to about
nine BC, roughly two thousand years before the Viking era.
The helmet style also probably didn't originate in Denmark. It's
very similar to rock art and figurines from Sardinia and
western Siberia, suggesting a trading relationship between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean.
(27:33):
So here's the annoying part. So many articles reported this
as new research shows Vikings did not wear horned helmets.
It is clear from Twitter replies and whatnot that this
was new information to a lot of people. Please do
not feel bad if this was new information to you,
but Vikings didn't wear horned helmets is not new information
(27:57):
within the field of history at all all. The idea
that vikings war horned helmets probably traces back to nineteenth
century costumes for Wagner's opera The Ring, in a general
mythologizing of Vikings that was happening around that time. It's
really not even new information that these specific helmets were
(28:17):
from the Nordic Bronze age that was generally agreed upon
not long after they were first found in nineteen forty two.
So I've found myself very annoyed by the breathless reporting
of new research proves Vikings didn't wear horn helmets when
it was first reported, And then I got to be
annoyed again when I reviewed it all again to do
(28:40):
on Earth. And now I get to be annoyed a
third time. Right now. I don't know why this doesn't
annoy me, but it might be because I was raised
on bugs bunny who always had a horned helmet as
a Viking. It's fine, you know, and there's plenty of
depictions of Vikings that have horn helmets. Now, if, like,
if you, as a lay person not a historian, was
(29:02):
not aware of all this, totally don't feel bad about it.
But the just persistent reporting that it was somehow a
breakthrough historical discovery. I was like, come on now. I
think probably that is more indicative of the knowledge base
of the reporter, which probably reflects lay people, right like, oh, look,
this isn't the thing. They may not have done the
(29:24):
historical research to know that had been found already. It
was also the people who kind of cover the history
beat for various and that was I was like, come
on now, someone in this editorial process raise the red flag. Uh,
We're gonna move on to animals, so Tracy will stop
being quite so irritated about the Viking situation. Researchers have
(29:47):
studied horse remains from one d seventy one different archaeological
sites and concluded that medieval war horses actually tended to
be quite small. This is a little bit tricky since
it's often not possible to tell whether a horse was
specifically a war horse, but the tallest Norman horse they
found would have been about fifteen hands high, which is
(30:09):
about as big as a light riding horse today. It
wasn't until after the medieval period had ended that horses
started to get a lot bigger, closer in size to
today's draft horses. This is a note thing where like
the popular imagination of a war horse as this like
mammoth animal like necessarily line up. It's also clear that
(30:32):
people bred horses specifically for different purposes during the medieval period,
and the words of Professor Allen Outram from the University
of Exeter quote selection and breeding practices, and the royal
studs may have focused as much on temperament and the
correct physical characteristics for warfare as they did on cross size.
(30:53):
Researchers in China have found evidence that geese were domesticated
there at least seven thousand years ago, which may mean
that geese, not chickens, were the first birds to be domesticated.
They used radio carbon dating to confirm the age of
the bones, and they also looked at the bones themselves.
Four of the bones were from goslings, but the rest
(31:13):
suggested that the adults were locally bred and about the
same size, suggesting intentional breeding in captivity. And lastly, repairs
to the city water system in Rome have unsurprisingly unearthed
all kinds of stuff, including multiple tombs, an urn, and
a terra cotta statue of a dog's head. This dog
(31:35):
is very cute. It has just the very upright, very
alert ears and wavy for this little sort of statuette
is similar in shape to decorative elements that were used
on drainage systems, but it doesn't have any holes that
water would have passed through, so it might have just
been a cute dog figure for its own sake, which
(31:57):
I love. So we're to have more unearthed next time.
But in the meantime, Tracy, do you have some listener
mail for us? Do I have a short listener mail
from Margaret? And I answered Margaret, but wanted to answer
uh everyone, since it's a kind of a frequently asked question.
Margaret wrote and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, have you
(32:17):
ever done an episode about the Armenian Jennocide? Normally I
wouldn't suggest such an I'm assuming absolute down of an episode,
but the new Marvel show Moon Night is getting review
bombed by people angry that they dared him to imply
that it really happened. I think most people's knowledge of
the event only extends to knowing that Turkey won't acknowledge it.
Thanks for all you do. Just left a job that
(32:39):
had long stretches of a loane time in my office,
and you helped me stay awake, Margaret. Thanks Margaret for
this question, I answered Margaret, and now everyone, Uh, we
have not done an episode on the Armenian genocide. We did, however,
pretty recently back in March re air our episode on
(33:00):
Raphael Limpken in the Genocide Convention, and there is an
overview of the Armenian genocide in that episode because it
really informed how he thought about genocide and the need
for UH in his mind and international law to try
to prevent genocide and bring the perpetrators to some kind
(33:20):
of justice. Um. Also, holy moly, the idea of people
spending their time review bombing mood night because of literally
two words in one line of dialogue. UM, here's what
I have learned, being very much in various fandoms. People
will spend their time review bombing anything if they get
(33:42):
their nickers. In a tweet well, and this is why
I am not actively participating in any fandom anymore, because
that behavior, I oh, it's it's not cool. Yeah. I
got to the limit of my ability to deal with that,
and I was like, you know what, I'm just never
not not going to be in fandoms anymore, or I
will love the thing and enjoy the thing, But in
(34:03):
terms of participating in some kind of like community where
people are gonna shriek about everything they're furious about, not
really going to do it. I just saw myself always
going when do these people make their clothes? Which I
know is a very weird Holly esque thing, But then
I'm like, when do they mow their lawns? Are there
dishes done? Like? Yeah, there's so much time and effort
(34:25):
that goes into just this pointless expression of weird ire
that I'm like, how are you having a functioning life?
Are you? I'm worried? Please eat and hydrate. I guess
I know, maybe that will make you feel better, unless
like you need to grouse at folks for nothing. Yeah,
we have had the Armenian genocide on the list for
(34:47):
an episode for a really long time. I'm sure at
some point it will happen. I cannot say it would
happen soon, in part just because at this moment we're
working a few weeks ahead on our episodes, which is
nice because that means if we take any time off,
we already have episodes there they're ready to cover it.
(35:08):
But like, that is the topic that I've been kind
of circling around for for ages and ages. Um So, anyway,
thank you so much for that email. Please don't review
bomb things. Uh if you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast or history podcast
(35:28):
that I heart radio dot com and we're all over
social media. Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on
the I heart Radio app wherever else you like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(35:51):
I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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