4.15.26

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic Magazine aided twenty six March,
which is donated by the publisher as a reminder Radio
I as a reading service intended for people who are
blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
read printed material. Please join me now for the continuation

(00:21):
of the article I began last time, entitled The Vikings
Who Vanished by Neil Shay. It meant that while early
colonists depended heavily on their own livestock, later generations consumed
far more seals. Her finding indicated not just a growing
dependence on the sea, but also a discernible shift in

(00:42):
which Nors farmers turned more toward hunting and fishing. Christian E. K. Madsen,
an archaeologist and researcher at the National Museum of Denmark,
said that Arniborg and her colleagues had helped reverse long
held assumptions about the Norse. They are essentially hunters at
farm a bit, he said, as opposed to farmers who

(01:03):
hunt a little. The shift and diet also loosely paralleled
the change in climate as the la began. Taken together,
these threads of evidence effectively scuttled old notions that the
Norse committed some kind of ecological suicide or that they
simply couldn't handle the cold. Instead, scientists now believe the
Norse were very resilient and flexible, handling every new problem

(01:27):
the changing world could throw at them for a while.
I think the development over the last decade is how
complex that transition from MCA to Little Ice Age is.
Madsen told me. Generally speaking, we can see now that
the brunt of the Little Ice Age didn't occur until
after the Norse were gone. What seems to be fairly

(01:47):
certain is this change to a more unstable environment, kind
of like we have now. When I arrived in Nuook
in September to meet Michael Nielsen at the National Museum,
worships could be seen cruising up the Fiord to the north,
a Danish led military exercise that international media described as
a show of force aimed partly at Russia and partly

(02:09):
at the United States after President Donald Trump's remarks about
buying Greenland or somehow pulling it further under American influence.
Greenland is a self governing part of the Kingdom of
Denmark with a population composed mostly of Inuit descendants of
the people who survived here after the Norse vanished. Nielsen,

(02:30):
of Greenlander, of mixed Inuit and Danish heritage, told me
he wasn't too bothered by Trump's talk or Mark's nervous response.
It's serious for us, he said, but it's actually good
because it forced the Danes to pay attention. In an
attic at the back of the museum, Nielsen moved slowly
as we poured over the artifacts we'd gathered from the

(02:52):
display cases. He'd broken his left arm several weeks earlier
while searching for old grave sights in Boulder Field. Down south,
among wooden horses that might have been children's toys, run
sticks with apocryphal inscriptions and a soft block of braided hair,
was a piece of a walrus skull. Most of it

(03:13):
was missing, no eye sockets, no jaws, just a wedge
like chunk of the face. A large hole showed where
the animal's airway had once been, and to the right
of this was a cavity where one of the enormous
tusks had grown. Looking closely, we could see chisel marks
in the bone, evidence that the tusk had been painstakingly
removed by a Norse hunter. Nielsen pressed a finger into

(03:35):
the socket and said white gold. Recent research into the
Norse enigma now focuses on Walruses and the importance of
their tusks, the white gold. In this latest theory, the
Norse migrated to Greenland not to farm the Fiords so
much as to monopolize the North Atlantic trade in ivory.
At the time, tusks were used for making ornate chess pieces, crucifixes,

(03:59):
knife handles, and other luxury objects coveted by rich Europeans.
Walwurst's populations around Iceland had by the time of Eirik
the Red's voyage been nearly hunted out, and so Greenland's
animals became highly prized. Tusks were shipped east towards the
continent in exchange for European lumber, iron, and other goods.

(04:20):
For a while it seems to have made some Greenlanders
relatively wealthy. According to James Barrett and archaeologists at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Greenlanders were even able
to use tusks to pay tithes that would eventually reach
the Church in Rome. We see the walwrist tusk as crucial,
Madsen said, otherwise no one would care about this outback

(04:43):
population at the end of the world. Walrus as, though,
did not live near the eastern settlement or even the
much smaller western settlement vest Bridie, which existed in the
area around present day Nuuk. To find the animals, the
Norse needed to who travel farther north beyond the Arctic Circle.
The journeys were dangerous, made in open boats into waters

(05:06):
clotted with packeyes. The walruses themselves were dangerous too, three
thousand pounds of bone cracking boat crushing beast. But the dangerous,
the distance, and even the onset of the Little Ice
Age did not deter the Norse. A study published in
twenty twenty four used DNA to trace walrusk artifacts back

(05:26):
to the areas where the animals had originally lived. It
showed that the Norse probably traveled deeper into the north
than previously thought, perhaps all the way into the High
Arctic and even into parts of Arctic Canada, journeys of
hundreds or even thousands of miles. Such trips, the paper noted,
would have put many lives at stake. They also would

(05:47):
have consumed precious resources and possibly threatened the stability of
the entire society. And yet the haunts went on because
tusks were the greenlanders cash crop, their lifeline to Europe,
the commodity that kept ships coming. Sometime in the twelve hundreds,
the greenlanders white gold monopoly began to crumble. Elephant tusks

(06:08):
imported from Africa were entering Europe's luxury market, putting pressure
on the Norse economy. But Arneborg told me that the
world had also moved on, leaving the Norse adrift at
the Fringes. When they settled. It was in the last
part of the Viking Age, when trade systems depended on
valuable objects, Arneburg said. But by the Medieval period the

(06:29):
whole economic system of Europe had changed. Suddenly you have
another system where you trade food stuff, so all of
your valuables aren't that valuable any more. Still, the Norse
kept pushing into the Arctic, even as the cooling climate
made travel riskier and the sea less predictable. In the
later phase of the Norse period, walrus tusks were getting

(06:50):
smaller and smaller and were being taken from animals that
lived even farther away. According to a study, by researchers
in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway. While the Norse
surely recognized what was happening, they likely felt trapped if
they couldn't trade tusks, what else did they have? No forests,
no iron, no wheat or vegetables. Their resources seemed to

(07:13):
have been limited to seal skins and seal oil, as
well as the hives of other animals. When the tusk
trade bottomed out, Arnebourg said European ships probably visited Greenland
less and less often, just as as the changing climate
made the voyage more dangerous. By the middle of the
fourteenth century, things looked pretty grim for the Greenlanders and

(07:34):
they almost certainly saw the riding on the wall. Archaeologists
believed that the Western settlement had collapsed by the late
thirteen hundreds. At about the same time, the Bubonic plague
burned through Europe, killing tens of millions, and in Norway,
the main trading partner for the Greenland colonies, Estimists suggest
that more than half the population died. There is no

(07:56):
evidence yet that plague came to Greenland, but large scal epidemics,
possibly of plague, did ravage Iceland in the fourteen hundreds.
There is one more historical detail that archaeologists aren't quite
sure how to square. By the end of the colonial period,
the Innuit had moved into southern Greenland. In some areas,

(08:17):
they were living very near to Norse settlements, virtually becoming
their neighbors. No one knows how the two groups interacted.
Some old European records, as well as some Inuit oral traditions,
tell of fighting, though no archaeological evidence of conflict has
ever been found. Still, researchers I spoke to said it
was difficult to imagine relations weren't tense. Medieval records tell

(08:40):
how the Norse called the Inuit screelings, which may have
meant something like barbarians or weaklings. In other words, it
probably wasn't said kindly. What's perhaps most interesting about their
relations is that the Innuit offered a model for how
to survive in a changing, unpredictable world. Researchers believe that

(09:02):
thule Into Inuits crossed over from what is now Canada
into northern Greenland sometime around the year a d. Twelve hundred,
several generations after the Norse arrived on the southwestern shore.
The Inuits were nomads, following seals, Walrus's cariboo, whales, and
other creatures through the seasons and across the land and sea.

(09:23):
They were descended from cultural traditions developed over several thousand
years and some of the coldest harshest terrain on Earth. Yet,
while the Norse made some similar adaptations eating more seals,
for example, there was apparently a cultural point past which
they would not go. In other words, the Norse refused
to become more like the Inuit or adopt a more

(09:45):
nomadic lifestyle, even if it meant it might have saved them.
Many experts I interviewed believed the Norse probably never considered
such a cultural transformation. They were too conservative, too tethered
to their own sense of European identity. Perhaps their reluctance
was rooted in racism or religion. It is also possible
that most of them simply escaped Greenland before such radical

(10:08):
choices became necessary. The last recorded voyage between Norway and
Greenland occurred in fourteen ten. Some of the last news
out of the colonies described a witch burning around fourteen
o six and a wedding in fourteen o eight. What
these mundane despatches don't mention is any kind of world
ending calamity, no plague, no slaughter, no starvation. After this,

(10:33):
the Norse Greenlanders disappear from the historical record. Archaeologists believe
that by fourteen fifty fifty Astragio was empty, every one
dead or gone. How the Vikings may have gotten off
the island is still an open question, like so much
else about their story. Madsen told me that in the
waning days of the colonies, young people probably jumped on

(10:55):
to any ship they could and begged passage to somewhere
anywhere else. But Arniboorg noted, we don't have any clues
at all. What we know is that their world was
growing darker, colder, and more chaotic. The Anuits were pressing
in at the edges of the colonies. The Viking population
was almost certainly in decline. Perhaps you have some old

(11:16):
people surviving on few farms, Arneberg said, but what about
everyone else. Imagine you're sitting in Greenland and you don't
have a ship yourself. You're just waiting for the ships
to come from Norway, and then in the end they don't. Next.
A souvenir from Shangri La, Tibetan saddles can be high
art covered with ornate metalwork and inlaid jewels. This one,

(11:38):
given to National Geographic explorer Joseph Rock about a century
ago by a Lama warlord named Joan chiten Zaba, is
on the humbler side, but it was no less a
treasure to Rock, an ethnographer and botanist with a taste
for finery. In nineteen twenty four, he became the first
American to visit movie Shanng's isolated kingdom. Jang was a

(12:01):
despotic ruler with a dungeon full of peasants, but he
plied his visitor with tributes, among them a golden bowl
and a leopard skin. Rock, perhaps not above flattery, praised
ULI's bucolic splendor. In doing so, he likely inspired the
fictional setting of the nineteen thirty three novel Lost Horizon,
which captured Western imaginations with its depiction of a Tibetan

(12:25):
utopia called Shangri La. This by Brian Kevin. The next
article is from National Geographic History magazine. The Magnificent Roman
Mosaics of Karanka. In eight nineteen eighty three, a teenager
in a rural Spanish town unearthed a treasure trove of
Roman mosaics crafted during the Imperial era in Iberia. On

(12:49):
a hot July day in nineteen eighty three, eighteen year
old herder Samuel Lopez made the find that changed his
life and put the central Spanish town of Karanka on
the world World's archaeological map. My heart was pounding, he said.
I started rummaging through the straw and found another tile,
and then another. With the stick I used to herd
the cows, I scraped the ground and realized I'd found

(13:12):
a mosaic. Lopez's family had worked the land around Karanka
for centuries. A tall stone ruin, said to be of
ancient origin, dominated this parcel of land. Helping his father
as a boy, Lopez was no stranger to finding objects
left behind long ago on the farm. He had accrued
a collection of ceramic fragments and metal items near the stones,

(13:35):
but the young man's discovery in nineteen eighty three exceeded
all these other finds. Calling on several of his brothers
to help, Lopez was stunned to see areas of elaborate
mosaics emerging. Lopez alerted the Museum of Santa Cruz in
the nearby city of Toledo. After initial examinations, archaeologists confirmed
that the remains of an opulent Roman estate lay under

(13:57):
the family's farm land. The stone ruins were part of
a wall from a fourth century Roman palatial structure. To
the south of it stood a villa, named Villa Maternus
by the archeologists for the name found inscribed on a threshold.
Excavations revealed much larger works of art depicting mythological scenes.
Large sections were intact, including the stunning mosaic of Oceanus

(14:21):
with a long flowing beard flourishing in a last burst
of glory before Roman Spain was overrun by invaders in
the fifth century. The Villa Maternos was clearly the product
of great power and wealth. The mosaics provide rich insight
into this time and place, but the identity of the
villa's owner is still a mystery. After defeating the Carthaginians

(14:44):
in the second century BC, the Romans seized the Iberian
Peninsula in a significant victory. They now controlled the western
Mediterranean and the silver mines of southern Spain, whose riches
financed the Roman Republic's ongoing transformation into a huge regional
power and later an empire. Among its other important agricultural products,

(15:06):
Iberia's apprized olive oil would become a Roman stable, later
distributed to every corner of the Roman world. The excavations
that began at Karanka Inn nineteen eighty five confirmed that
the Villa Lopez discovered had a complex history. Ceramic remains
and other structures led archaeologists to date the settlement to
the first to second centuries AD. Later, in the final

(15:30):
decades of the fourth century, the complex underwent a series
of major renovations, giving the villa the impressive structures and
floor plan seen today. This last phase took place during
the fourth century reign of Emperor Theodosius the First, whose
Spanish origins boosted the importance of the Hispano Roman elite.

(15:51):
Archaeological studies established that the principal villa structure consisted of
a central garden surrounded by a columned veranda or peristoe.
Around the garden were dining and reception rooms, many with
rounded apses on their exterior walls. Costly imported stone work,
including porphyry and marble, adorned the walls. Most stunning of

(16:13):
all are the mosaic floors some of the most complex
and best preserved of all Hispano Roman mosaic art. They
were produced evidently at great expense by three workshops, each
with its own style. The masterpieces they created include narratives
depicting scenes from mythology, as well as animal and vegetable details,
including partridges of boar, dogs, baskets of flour, and fruit

(16:37):
and fishes. On the eastern corner of the villa is
a domestic space known as a cubiculum. On the threshold
mosaic appears the name Maternus and its generally belief that
this was the master of the house's name. The central
mosaic dominating the room features the encircled likeness of a
woman richly dressed. Her head is surrounded by a halo

(17:02):
denoting greatness and virtue, echoing other mosaic figures and themes
at Karanke. She would be an allegory of a classical virtue,
or of the lady of the house, or both. The
panels that surround her are unmistakably classical references mythological figures
including Athena and Hercules, and scenes described in metamorphosies by

(17:23):
first century poet ovid In one, the goddess Diana is
bathing while a nymph combs her hair. The furtive male
figure watching is actaeon whom Diana will punish for his
voyeurism by turning him into a stag to be hunted
down and killed. The fusion of hunting and eroticism continues

(17:44):
in the mosaic of the triclinium or dining room, a
more public space evidently designed to impress and delight guests.
This mosaic likely depicts Adonis, the beautiful youth loved by Venus.
He fights a boar that is about to kill him
to the horror of the watching goddess. Below are two
wounded dogs, perhaps injured by the boar. They may be

(18:06):
portraits of the estate's actual hunting dogs. Another impressive carpet
mosaic adorns the principal oicus, or reception area, depicting the
gifting of the enslaved girl Brysaeus to Achilles during the
Trojan War, central to the plot of Homer's Iliad. The
unhappy story of Brysius echoes the fusion of eroticism and

(18:30):
violence across the mosaics. Opposite the entrance to the oicus
is an alcove that once contained a fountain in the
recess above It is a magnificent portrait of the god Oceanus,
comprising tiny pieces that create the effect of wavelets or ripples.
His flowing beard and somber expression have become the emblematic

(18:50):
image of Caroncas Mosaic Treasures. Now in his late fifties
and still a resident of Karanka, Lopez has spent his
life studying the excavations at the site he unearthed. The
ruins are now known to be one of the most
significant Hispano Roman villas yet found, sited on a key
Roman road and would have dominated the countryside around it

(19:12):
in an ostentatious declaration of wealth. Historians have spent many
years trying to identify who its powerful owner was. Some
argue that the Materranus named in the Mosaic inscription was
Matyrnus Signius, an Iberian born adviser to Emperor Theodosius. Maternus
Signius would certainly have had the wealth and confidence to

(19:35):
build such a lavish villa, but there is a catch.
As a pious Christian, Maternus Signius facilitated Theodosius's attacks on
Pagans across the Empire. It is unlikely that a Christian
of such zeal would have commissioned so many mosaics depicting
the gods, goddesses and myths of ancient Rome. Rome's long

(19:56):
rule of Iberia ended in the decades shortly after Maternus,
whoever he was, renovated his villa and commissioned his mosaics,
Vandals and Visigoths invaded the peninsula in the fifth century
p c. The palace structure to the north of the
villa survived and was adapted as a Christian building until
it was abandoned. Much of its stone was removed for

(20:18):
use in local buildings, until only a portion of the
wall remained. The mosaics were buried and laid hidden in
the farm land of Castile until that hot day in
nineteen eighty three, when a young herder with an interest
in history bent down to peer closer at the past.
This article by Ruben Montoya. Next Portia, Heroine of the Republic,

(20:41):
a woman of firm political convictions. Portia was the steadfast
wife and staunch ally of Brutus, and a key supporter
of its murderous plot against Julius Caesar. When Julius Caesar
seemed increasingly likely to embrace authoritarian rule. Two men emerged
as the Roman Republic's fiercest defenders, Cato the younger, who
led resistance to Caesar in the Senate, and his nephew

(21:04):
Marcus Junius Brutus, who led the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.
But there was another key player at the tumultus events
surrounding Caesar's end, a woman who would come to embody
strength under pressure and unwavering loyalty. Her name was Porsia,
daughter of Cato and wife of Brutus. Portia Patonis Cyirca

(21:25):
seventy three to forty three Bci was the only woman
who had who was privy to the plot, as the
Roman historian Cassius Dio described her. Portia's courage, logical mind,
and willingness to sacrifice were celebrated by Roman historians and
centuries later immortalized in William Shakespeare's fifteen ninety nine tragedy
Julius Caesar. Many factors shaped this extraordinary person, but to

(21:48):
stand out the volatile political climate and the teachings of
her father. Much of what is known about Porsia comes
largely from Greek historian Plutarch in his books about Brutus
and Cato and from Cassius Deos Roman History, along with
mentions and other works. In all ancient references, she is
remembered as the member of younger Cato's family who is

(22:10):
most committed to her father's cause. According to Judith P. Hallett,
Professor Emerita of Classics at the University of Maryland and
author of Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society, Women and
the Elite Family, Porsia's father, Cato the Younger, so named
to distinguish him from his great grandfather Cato the Elder,

(22:30):
was an old guard aristocrat and Republican. A devotee of
Stoic philosophy, Cato put virtue and civic responsibility above all else,
an uncompromising idealism that deeply influenced his daughter. Early in
the second century a d. Plutarch wrote that Portia was
addicted to philosophy and praised her sober living and greatness

(22:51):
of spirit in keeping with the Stoic rejection of luxury
and commitment to justice. Based on his depiction depiction, Portsia
is often regarded as the first female Stoic. As a
very young woman, Portia was wed to a political ally
of her father. She and Marcus Culpurnius Bibulus would have

(23:11):
two children together before their relationship became complicated by a
distinctive Roman practice. In addition to arranged marriages, elite Romans
also practiced arranged divorces, ending one match in favor of
another that was more advantageous. Portia was about twenty when
one such proposal came her way. Another of her father's allies,

(23:32):
Quintus Hortensius Hortalis, asked to marry her. The aging childless
widower wanted Portia as his wife in order to have
an heir with her. After she gave birth, he promised
to return to her to Bibulous. Bibulus was not a
fan of this proposal and refused it. Cato also disliked
the idea of breaking his contract with Bibulus. To avoid

(23:53):
alienating Hortensius, Cato agreed to divorce his own wife, Marcia
and offered her instead. Hortensius agreed, and the plan went ahead.
After Hortensius's death, Cato would remarry Marcia. Portia's high profile
family was deeply involved with the Roman Civil War that
began in forty nine b c. When Caesar refused to

(24:15):
yield his armies and territories to the Republic, Rome was
split into two factions, one led by Caesar and the
other led by Pompey. The conservative Cato and Bibulus both
aligned with pompe and found themselves on the losing side
of the war. Bibulus, leader of Pompey's fleet on the Adriatic,
died of illness around forty eight b C. Cato took

(24:38):
his own life in Utica modern day Tunisia when Caesar's
troops won the nearby Battle of Thapsus in forty six
b C. In Rome, Portia watched as Caesar a masked power.
Rather than resign herself to a dictatorship, she continued to
believe in the Old Republic. In forty five BC, she
married Marcus Junius Brutus, but one time ali of Caesar,

(25:01):
who would famously turn against him during the war. Brudus
sided with Pompey, but in the aftermath of the war,
Caesar pardoned him and even made him governor of Cisalpine
Gaul northern Italy. Brudus's sympathies for the Old Republic, however,
had not waned marrying Cato's daughter and divorcing his wife Claudia.
To do so was a way to reaffirm his commitment.

(25:26):
In the months that followed, Brudus, along with other senators,
alarmed by Caesar's ambition, embarked on a plot to assassinate him.
Although politics was primarily a male domain in Roman culture,
Horsha pledged to aid her husband because of her family's beliefs.
According to Plutarch, she noticed the change in her husband
and questioned him. When Brutus wouldn't answer, she wounded her

(25:47):
own thigh with a knife. The act was a plead
that her husband showed her trust and respect. Brutus, I
am Cato's daughter, and I was brought into thy house,
not like a mere concubine to share thy bed and
board merely, but to be a partner in thy joys
and a partner in thy troubles. Her resolve prompted Brudas

(26:07):
to reveal his plan to assassinate Caesar. Moreover, rode Plutarch.
She inspired him to see his plot to the end.
When he saw the wound, Brudus, amazed and lifting his
hands to heaven, prayed that he might succeed in his
undertaking and thus show himself a worthy husband of Portia.
After Caesar's death on March fifteenth, forty four BC, Brudus

(26:28):
fled Rome to avoid the wrath of caesar loyalists, while
Porscha remained in the capital. She followed her husband's fortunes
as he fought to defend the republic against Octavian, Caesar's
heir in alliance with Mark Antony. Finally, Porscha received the
news that Brudus had been defeated in the Battle of
Philippi forty two BC, and, like her father, Cato, had

(26:50):
taken his own life. What happened next is not known
for certain. The more dramatic ending has a devastated Porsia
killing herself, either by swallowing hot coals or or inheraling
carbon monoxide. In one version, the poet Marshal wrote that Porsche,
seeking a weapon to enter her life they had been
hidden by attendants, exclaimed, you know not yet that death

(27:12):
cannot be denied. I had supposed that my father had
taught you this lesson by his fate. She spoke, and
with eager mouth, swallowed the blazing coals. Plutarch tells a
similar story William Shakespeare in particular, found great inspiration in
the character of Portia through his reading of Plutarch. In
addition to the historical character of Portia in Julius Caesar,

(27:33):
her name also appears in The Merchant of Venice fifteen
ninety six to ninety eight, in which it is given
to the brilliant woman determined to assert herself in a
male world by impersonating a lawyer. This concludes readings from
National Geographic Magazine to Day and your waider husband, Marcia.
Thank you for listening, Keep on listening, have a great day.

(27:56):
US Vice President signed letters to him as Porsia in
recognition of the patriartic patriarch