January 2, 2013 • 20 mins
In the second part of this annual episode, we cover historical discoveries made in 2012, from evidence of vampire burials in Bulgaria to discoveries of ancient temples and more. Tune in to learn more about the exciting archaeological discoveries of 2012.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Fair Dowdy and I'm Delna Chalko reboarding and to Blena
and I are going to continue our annual tradition of
(00:21):
recapping the year in historical and archaeological fine um. We've
already covered a few in our most recent episode on
this I don't know all sorts of things, everything from
terra cotta warriors to a possible lost Da Vinci artwork,
but we're going to be continuing on with the list today.
(00:42):
I don't know that you should probably if she the
warning again that we've got an issue before every one
of these episodes, which one, it's not always stuff that
was dug up this year. It's not always stuff that's
dug up, and sometimes just news about things that were
dug up a while ago, or it's things that were
unearthed maybe from your attic or from although we don't
(01:04):
have any of those on this lie that we don't
have any of those. We we do have some some
interesting entries though, but we should say again that it's
not a comprehensive list. There are many things that we
could not include. Of course, every year is full of discoveries,
and we just included a few that we found the
most interesting. And once we think that you guys will
like to we we always sort of try to tailor
(01:26):
a few of these two topics we know our listeners
are particularly interested in, and I think the first entry
on the list certainly fits that bill. It's about vampires,
and we know that you guys like vampires a lot.
Vampires in general are having a moment right now. They've
been in the news a lot. In part of that
(01:47):
is because of pop culture kind of stuff, but that's
not our angle of course. Um, they've also been in
the news because several vampire burials have been discovered this year.
The first work and discussed was a June discovery of
a vampire pirate double header there in Bulgaria. Yeah, the
(02:10):
seven hundred year old skeleton found in Soza Pole near
the Black Sea in Bulgaria is believed to be that
of the pirate Crivit, which means crooked. The remains have
been staked down with metal rods, which was a traditional
form of penning a suspected vampire after death and burial.
So thanks in part to the vampire pop culture rage,
(02:30):
and you all know which one I'm talking about. The
fine became a tourist attraction almost immediately, with visitors flocking
to the Sozopol churchyard, until the remains were finally removed
to the Natural History Museum in Sofia. Around the same time,
two more steak skeletons were discovered from a similar time frame,
about a hundred years earlier than the famous Vladi and Paler.
(02:51):
By the way, they're the latest additions to the roughly
one hundred vampire graves that have been found in the region.
So we have to ask what is the deal with
staked skeletons and and believing in vampires in the first place.
According to the Natural History Museum director Boza Dar Dmitrov,
who was quoted in the l A Times, if a
(03:12):
community suspected that a deceased person might be terrorizing them
in death, he said quote, a group of brave men
would reopen the graves and pierce the corpses with iron
or wooden rods. Iron rod was used for the richer vampires.
Uh so, just the the logical explanation of that the
(03:35):
pinning was supposed to prevent the vampires from actually exiting
their graves from from rising and terrorizing people. But what
I found so fascinating about this story is that, uh,
not too long after, there was a great Smithsonian article.
And this doesn't really count in our Unearthed in twelve.
It's an article, but it did have a lot of
people talking, a lot of people sharing it with us too.
(03:58):
It was by Abigail Tucker. It was the October issue,
and it was about the Great New England vampire panic,
where the bodies of suspected vampires were similarly descraded after death.
And Michael Bell, who studied the New England vampires for decades,
has documented about eighty exhamations from the late seventeen hundreds
(04:18):
to the eighteen hundreds, mostly in New England, and interestingly,
these panics often happened during tuberculosis outbreaks, so one family
member might get sick and die, then as other sickened,
the first to go was blamed as the vampire. Exhamation
was the only way to stop the cycle, and there
were various solutions for dealing with the corpse, flipping it
(04:39):
upside down, binding the feet, even beheading it. In one
Rhode Island case, the heart of a young woman who
had died of tuberculosis and was suspected of being a vampire,
was burned and the ashes of her heart were fed
to her sick brother. Pretty disturbing. We had to mention
that rash of New England vampire cases though, and the
(05:00):
panic though, because I think what's most fascinating about this
Bulgarian fine is that it's just one of many international
vampire graves. Apparently. In fact, in November of this year,
a skeleton that was originally found in England in nineteen
fifty nine was finally analyzed and researchers uncovered clear signs
(05:20):
of another vampire burial. There were metal state through the
heart and the ankles in the shoulders, so clearly this
has been going on around the world for a very
long time. Um, but is really getting in the news
a lot these days. I think partly because people are
so fascinated by by vampires. So the next time I'm
on our list isn't quite a stylish I guess as
(05:43):
as vampire news as maybe it's it's more old news.
But on March fifteen BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death.
As we know right obviously that murder has been covered
pretty well in literature as well as classical texts, which
provide details not only on the date and the conspirators involved,
(06:03):
but on the location as well. The Curia of Pompey.
Our twenty twelve discovery, though does relate to that site.
Archaeologists have finally found physical evidence to back up the
assertion that Caesar was in fact murdered at the Curia
of Pompey. They discovered a ten foot wide and six
and a half foot tall concrete structure at the curias base,
(06:26):
and according to Discovery News, Antonio monterro So of the
Spanish National Research Council said of the find quote, we
always knew that Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia
of Pompey on March b c. Because the classical texts
passed on so but so far no material evidence of
this fact, so often depicted in historical painting and cinema,
(06:50):
has been discovered. So this is a pretty big deal.
I mean, it's backing up something that was already known,
but it is backing it up and and interestingly to
the discovery also supports another point made by classical texts,
and that's that after Caesar's murder the curia was closed
and turned into a memorial for him, and it suspected
that this concrete uh structure that's been found is part
(07:14):
of that memorial. In two thousand twelve actually saw a
lot of Rome related discoveries, like a horde of gold
Crusades era coins found in Israel, but we thought the
recent analysis of an ancient Roman curse was worth including
here also, so three years ago, a third or fourth
century tablet scroll was found in East Farley, England and
(07:35):
the remains of a building from the same era, and
researchers at first tried to decipher its contents without unrolling
the fragile artifact using neutron computed tomography imaging, according to
Discovering News, and when that didn't work, they carefully unrolled
it to view the writing with an electron microscope. From
there it was passed on to Roger Tohman, a late
(07:56):
Roman history expert, who deciphered the contents as as of
personal names, some in Latin, others Celtic. Some of the
names were written upside down or backwards, indicating that to
the scroll was a curse meant to bring misfortune on
those listed, and it still is unclear what this curse's
purpose was. Um. There's actually some some of the lettering
(08:19):
is yet to be to be read, to be deciphered. UM.
But most cursed tablets found in Great Britain, and there
have been kind of a lot, about two hundred, include
specific instructions or hopes for God's to reign down destruction
on enemies UM, often as a reaction to a ff
So it's believed that this is a list of names
(08:40):
of people who might have wanted to watch their back
in the third or worth century. One example not from
from this particular scroll, but one from Bath, for instance,
where about half of the tablets have been found incidentally
praised that the victim will become quote as liquid as water,
so very colorful sort of curses to appropriately. UM. They
(09:03):
wouldn't just be left out and about though. One reason
why they were scrolls is to protect the writing, so
it wouldn't just be available for anybody to read. UM.
And then they would either be touched somewhere in the ground,
you know, by a well or grave um springs. Maybe
that's why perhaps there's been so many found in Bath
or nailed to a temple wall, and the recent find
(09:24):
fits into that. Later category, since it was found at
the ruins of what was believed to be a temple.
The next entry on our list has to do with
the Maya, for whom it has been a fairly big year,
bigger than say, Yeah, I mean, there's the whole apocalypse thing,
which if you're listening to this podcast right now, I
(09:45):
guess didn't happen, thankfully, But thanks to the doomsday calendar predictions,
there's been a huge up swell in all things my
history and culture, and there was also this major archaeological find,
for instance, something that draws a bit of a tension
away from that calendar obsession and highlights the cultural and
artistic abilities of the Maya. Yeah, certainly points out there's
(10:07):
there's more to the Maya than the calendar, so if
you're gonna indulge that research interest, you might as well
go even further with it. But it is, of course,
the Temple of the Night Sun one of the biggest
archaeological discoveries ofive. I'd say, um. It was a once
brilliant red structure covered in these incredibly detailed stucco masks
(10:31):
that was just recently uncovered from the Guatemalan jungle, where
it had sort of been swallowed up by by greenery
over the years. Stephen Houston, who is a Brown University archaeologist,
an now it's the find in July and hopes that
it's going to shed some more light on the Elvutz
dynasty and the Maya civilization and structure as a whole.
(10:54):
According to National Geographic News, the Maya weren't strongly centralized
like the Inco or the ass Tech. Instead, they were
a collection of loosely aligned city states and els. It's
while one of the smaller kingdoms was clearly angling for
a strong impression here. So Houston uncovered the site in
two thousand and ten, following decades old Looters tunnels, and
(11:16):
at the same time, the Diablo Pyramid was explored, a
structure topped by a tomb and a royal palace. The
temple lies behind the pyramid and had been interred by
the Maya, something that allowed for its remarkable preservation. Yeah,
and and we we kind of hinted at the stucco
masks and all of that. Uh And and that's really
the main thing I mean. And in addition to being
(11:38):
this blood red color originally, which would have meant that
it just glowed in the rising sun in the in
the setting sun. But the masks represent a whole new
angle for for Maya religious studies too, and open a
lot of possibilities there. Houston believes that they represent the
faces of the Maya Sun God, whose face would, according
(12:01):
to their beliefs, change as he crossed the sky. So
it would start as a shark face in the morning
because the sun was rising over the Caribbean. It in
the middle of the day, probably when it was like
really hot and intense in the area that's now Guatemala,
it would turn to this blood drinking mad creature, and
(12:24):
then later in the day at dusk, it would turn
to a jaguar's face, because that was of course when
the jaguars were just waking up and coming out to
hunt after sleeping all day. Um. But these stucco representations
of the Sun God depict all these different figures of
its phases that would go through during the day. It's
(12:44):
also believed that the tomb atop the Diabolo Pyramid was
that of the first Elzet king, who lived sometime between
three fifty and fo so there's still a lot to
learn from the spine. Though it was abandoned in the
fifth century quite suddenly, but it's fairly unique among my
ruins for its completeness. Usually they'd tear down a structure
(13:05):
and build on top of it. Also, only thirty of
the facade has been uncovered so far, so a lot
to come here probably. Yeah. It reminds me a little
bit of the last episode we did on the Terracotta
warriors and and how much there is still to learn
there as well. According to David fried al Though, who's
my archaeologist, he said, quote, the site will certainly advance
(13:27):
our knowledge of early classic Maya religion and ritual practice.
So um, a lot to be learned and pretty pretty neat.
I I certain this is one. I urge everybody to
go check out pictures of it too. It's worth worth
taking a look at. But there has been another pretty
cool Maya discovery in twelve and it's one that had
(13:50):
me thinking back to our episode on historical alcohol, because,
as we learned in that episode, a lot of discoveries
can made be made from the gunk and residue that's
found at the bottom of old cups, old bowls, various
ancient vessels. This year, dmitriy Zagorevski of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(14:12):
and Jennifer low Miller Newman, a doctoral candidate at the
University of Albany, analyzed the residue found in a thirteen
hundred year old vessel from the mirror door basin and
what's today southern Mexico and the vessel read the home
of his or her tobacco, and sure enough, that's what
they found inside traces of nicotine. They found this using
gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.
(14:38):
This find is particularly notable for two reasons. One, it's
the first physical evidence of the Mayans using tobacco, and
to the technological methods used promise even better analysis of
such vessels in the future. And this was why it
reminded me of the Historical Alcohol Episode so much, because
if you remember from that show, there's a whole host
(14:58):
of problems when you're trying to determine what cups and
other vessels actually contained, and not just because the contents
are are long dried up and gone. Um. Many vessels
were of course multi purpose and contain the residues of
all sorts of of items that they once contained. According
to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, vessels can also be contaminated by bacteria.
(15:23):
They can be damaged by water, and no water can
just wash everything away when they're no longer in use,
or they can be contaminated after discovery. And and sometimes
they're even clean too. And I remember again from that
alcohol episode, archaeologists were horrified by this, and this could happen.
But if you scrowb out that gunk gets washing away,
(15:43):
all the all the history of what this could have
been used for. Um. This piece, though, the one that
was analyzed, is actually an older fine. It's been a
long term resident of the Library of Congress's collection, but
fortunately hadn't had all its contents removed. The label on
the vessel to Deplina, you mentioned that it's the home
of his or her tobacco. That's fairly unique as well.
(16:06):
And the only other case of researchers finding a labeled
vessel like this actually containing what it was supposed to
contain came twenty years ago with a cup of cacao.
So I guess it would be tricky to cook in
a Maya kitchen if everything labeled differently. One of the
things that's really fascinating about the story, though, is the
(16:27):
information about how the Mayan's used tobacco. According to low Miller,
Newman and Discovery News, they ruled out the possibility that
the vessel was an ashtray since there were no chemical
calling cards present for nicotine byproducts, but it wasn't likely
that the Maya would have been smoking the tobacco in
the first place. It was empowered form, likely mixed with
(16:49):
lime and mixed in a drink two or maybe used
as snuff. It was strong enough to possibly be hallucinogenic
and serve the handy double purpose of repelling serpent. So
there you go. I think that seems like a fitting
way to conclude our our episode with this hallucinogenic Maya
(17:11):
residue inserpent repellent. Yeah, something to amuse upon. I guess
if you're getting your New Year celebration money, I don't
know what do you think, Sarah? Will your celebration be
that exciting? I don't think it's going to be that exciting,
But it's also maybe a better image to have than
the staked vampires and the Roman curses too. I don't
(17:32):
want to send people off into the New Year thinking
of those sort of things. So, yeah, the Cacao maybe,
you know, think about stuff like that. I think the
interesting thing about all these discoveries though, is just how
they show how I mean, we've pointed this out before,
how history is this living, breathing thing. It's always changing,
instantly changing, and um the discovery of the temple especially
(17:55):
reminded me of that because we're always talking about these
lost sight that are discovered, usually in the nineteenth century
or the twentieth century, UM, and it's hard to imagine,
you know, people not realizing that King Tut's tomb was there,
or or all sorts of of these sites that we've
(18:18):
discussed that just seem like major international attractions now you
just go heritage site. But it's cool to think that
there are plenty of places like that still out there,
that there can still be this beautiful, stunning temple that's
just hidden in the overgrowth in the guatemal And jungle
waiting for somebody to stumble upon it. Pretty cool. Unfortunately,
(18:39):
there are many dedicated researchers and archaeologists and historians out
there who are working on all of this all the time,
so we have lots of stuff to talk about. Fun
it's a lot of fun for us to do this
every year. And if you have any more news items
from twelve or any other time that we missed that
you'd like for us to cover further, maybe do an
(19:02):
update to a previous topic that we've done before. You
can write to us. We are at History Podcast at
Discovery dot com, or you can find us on Facebook
or on Twitter in this history and we love receiving
these kind of stories from you guys throughout the year.
This is always the kind of thing that I like
to re post on Facebook and retweet. And we count
(19:22):
on y'all to recommend these stories to us because, as
you mentioned, it's there's so much happening it's impossible to
keep up with it. Also, thank you guys, Happy New Year,
have a great time celebrating, and we'll see you in
We're more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(19:44):
it how stuff works dot Com? You
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Fair Dowdy and I'm Delna Chalko reboarding and to Blena
and I are going to continue our annual tradition of
(00:21):
recapping the year in historical and archaeological fine um. We've
already covered a few in our most recent episode on
this I don't know all sorts of things, everything from
terra cotta warriors to a possible lost Da Vinci artwork,
but we're going to be continuing on with the list today.
(00:42):
I don't know that you should probably if she the
warning again that we've got an issue before every one
of these episodes, which one, it's not always stuff that
was dug up this year. It's not always stuff that's
dug up, and sometimes just news about things that were
dug up a while ago, or it's things that were
unearthed maybe from your attic or from although we don't
(01:04):
have any of those on this lie that we don't
have any of those. We we do have some some
interesting entries though, but we should say again that it's
not a comprehensive list. There are many things that we
could not include. Of course, every year is full of discoveries,
and we just included a few that we found the
most interesting. And once we think that you guys will
like to we we always sort of try to tailor
(01:26):
a few of these two topics we know our listeners
are particularly interested in, and I think the first entry
on the list certainly fits that bill. It's about vampires,
and we know that you guys like vampires a lot.
Vampires in general are having a moment right now. They've
been in the news a lot. In part of that
(01:47):
is because of pop culture kind of stuff, but that's
not our angle of course. Um, they've also been in
the news because several vampire burials have been discovered this year.
The first work and discussed was a June discovery of
a vampire pirate double header there in Bulgaria. Yeah, the
(02:10):
seven hundred year old skeleton found in Soza Pole near
the Black Sea in Bulgaria is believed to be that
of the pirate Crivit, which means crooked. The remains have
been staked down with metal rods, which was a traditional
form of penning a suspected vampire after death and burial.
So thanks in part to the vampire pop culture rage,
(02:30):
and you all know which one I'm talking about. The
fine became a tourist attraction almost immediately, with visitors flocking
to the Sozopol churchyard, until the remains were finally removed
to the Natural History Museum in Sofia. Around the same time,
two more steak skeletons were discovered from a similar time frame,
about a hundred years earlier than the famous Vladi and Paler.
(02:51):
By the way, they're the latest additions to the roughly
one hundred vampire graves that have been found in the region.
So we have to ask what is the deal with
staked skeletons and and believing in vampires in the first place.
According to the Natural History Museum director Boza Dar Dmitrov,
who was quoted in the l A Times, if a
(03:12):
community suspected that a deceased person might be terrorizing them
in death, he said quote, a group of brave men
would reopen the graves and pierce the corpses with iron
or wooden rods. Iron rod was used for the richer vampires.
Uh so, just the the logical explanation of that the
(03:35):
pinning was supposed to prevent the vampires from actually exiting
their graves from from rising and terrorizing people. But what
I found so fascinating about this story is that, uh,
not too long after, there was a great Smithsonian article.
And this doesn't really count in our Unearthed in twelve.
It's an article, but it did have a lot of
people talking, a lot of people sharing it with us too.
(03:58):
It was by Abigail Tucker. It was the October issue,
and it was about the Great New England vampire panic,
where the bodies of suspected vampires were similarly descraded after death.
And Michael Bell, who studied the New England vampires for decades,
has documented about eighty exhamations from the late seventeen hundreds
(04:18):
to the eighteen hundreds, mostly in New England, and interestingly,
these panics often happened during tuberculosis outbreaks, so one family
member might get sick and die, then as other sickened,
the first to go was blamed as the vampire. Exhamation
was the only way to stop the cycle, and there
were various solutions for dealing with the corpse, flipping it
(04:39):
upside down, binding the feet, even beheading it. In one
Rhode Island case, the heart of a young woman who
had died of tuberculosis and was suspected of being a vampire,
was burned and the ashes of her heart were fed
to her sick brother. Pretty disturbing. We had to mention
that rash of New England vampire cases though, and the
(05:00):
panic though, because I think what's most fascinating about this
Bulgarian fine is that it's just one of many international
vampire graves. Apparently. In fact, in November of this year,
a skeleton that was originally found in England in nineteen
fifty nine was finally analyzed and researchers uncovered clear signs
(05:20):
of another vampire burial. There were metal state through the
heart and the ankles in the shoulders, so clearly this
has been going on around the world for a very
long time. Um, but is really getting in the news
a lot these days. I think partly because people are
so fascinated by by vampires. So the next time I'm
on our list isn't quite a stylish I guess as
(05:43):
as vampire news as maybe it's it's more old news.
But on March fifteen BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death.
As we know right obviously that murder has been covered
pretty well in literature as well as classical texts, which
provide details not only on the date and the conspirators involved,
(06:03):
but on the location as well. The Curia of Pompey.
Our twenty twelve discovery, though does relate to that site.
Archaeologists have finally found physical evidence to back up the
assertion that Caesar was in fact murdered at the Curia
of Pompey. They discovered a ten foot wide and six
and a half foot tall concrete structure at the curias base,
(06:26):
and according to Discovery News, Antonio monterro So of the
Spanish National Research Council said of the find quote, we
always knew that Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia
of Pompey on March b c. Because the classical texts
passed on so but so far no material evidence of
this fact, so often depicted in historical painting and cinema,
(06:50):
has been discovered. So this is a pretty big deal.
I mean, it's backing up something that was already known,
but it is backing it up and and interestingly to
the discovery also supports another point made by classical texts,
and that's that after Caesar's murder the curia was closed
and turned into a memorial for him, and it suspected
that this concrete uh structure that's been found is part
(07:14):
of that memorial. In two thousand twelve actually saw a
lot of Rome related discoveries, like a horde of gold
Crusades era coins found in Israel, but we thought the
recent analysis of an ancient Roman curse was worth including
here also, so three years ago, a third or fourth
century tablet scroll was found in East Farley, England and
(07:35):
the remains of a building from the same era, and
researchers at first tried to decipher its contents without unrolling
the fragile artifact using neutron computed tomography imaging, according to
Discovering News, and when that didn't work, they carefully unrolled
it to view the writing with an electron microscope. From
there it was passed on to Roger Tohman, a late
(07:56):
Roman history expert, who deciphered the contents as as of
personal names, some in Latin, others Celtic. Some of the
names were written upside down or backwards, indicating that to
the scroll was a curse meant to bring misfortune on
those listed, and it still is unclear what this curse's
purpose was. Um. There's actually some some of the lettering
(08:19):
is yet to be to be read, to be deciphered. UM.
But most cursed tablets found in Great Britain, and there
have been kind of a lot, about two hundred, include
specific instructions or hopes for God's to reign down destruction
on enemies UM, often as a reaction to a ff
So it's believed that this is a list of names
(08:40):
of people who might have wanted to watch their back
in the third or worth century. One example not from
from this particular scroll, but one from Bath, for instance,
where about half of the tablets have been found incidentally
praised that the victim will become quote as liquid as water,
so very colorful sort of curses to appropriately. UM. They
(09:03):
wouldn't just be left out and about though. One reason
why they were scrolls is to protect the writing, so
it wouldn't just be available for anybody to read. UM.
And then they would either be touched somewhere in the ground,
you know, by a well or grave um springs. Maybe
that's why perhaps there's been so many found in Bath
or nailed to a temple wall, and the recent find
(09:24):
fits into that. Later category, since it was found at
the ruins of what was believed to be a temple.
The next entry on our list has to do with
the Maya, for whom it has been a fairly big year,
bigger than say, Yeah, I mean, there's the whole apocalypse thing,
which if you're listening to this podcast right now, I
(09:45):
guess didn't happen, thankfully, But thanks to the doomsday calendar predictions,
there's been a huge up swell in all things my
history and culture, and there was also this major archaeological find,
for instance, something that draws a bit of a tension
away from that calendar obsession and highlights the cultural and
artistic abilities of the Maya. Yeah, certainly points out there's
(10:07):
there's more to the Maya than the calendar, so if
you're gonna indulge that research interest, you might as well
go even further with it. But it is, of course,
the Temple of the Night Sun one of the biggest
archaeological discoveries ofive. I'd say, um. It was a once
brilliant red structure covered in these incredibly detailed stucco masks
(10:31):
that was just recently uncovered from the Guatemalan jungle, where
it had sort of been swallowed up by by greenery
over the years. Stephen Houston, who is a Brown University archaeologist,
an now it's the find in July and hopes that
it's going to shed some more light on the Elvutz
dynasty and the Maya civilization and structure as a whole.
(10:54):
According to National Geographic News, the Maya weren't strongly centralized
like the Inco or the ass Tech. Instead, they were
a collection of loosely aligned city states and els. It's
while one of the smaller kingdoms was clearly angling for
a strong impression here. So Houston uncovered the site in
two thousand and ten, following decades old Looters tunnels, and
(11:16):
at the same time, the Diablo Pyramid was explored, a
structure topped by a tomb and a royal palace. The
temple lies behind the pyramid and had been interred by
the Maya, something that allowed for its remarkable preservation. Yeah,
and and we we kind of hinted at the stucco
masks and all of that. Uh And and that's really
the main thing I mean. And in addition to being
(11:38):
this blood red color originally, which would have meant that
it just glowed in the rising sun in the in
the setting sun. But the masks represent a whole new
angle for for Maya religious studies too, and open a
lot of possibilities there. Houston believes that they represent the
faces of the Maya Sun God, whose face would, according
(12:01):
to their beliefs, change as he crossed the sky. So
it would start as a shark face in the morning
because the sun was rising over the Caribbean. It in
the middle of the day, probably when it was like
really hot and intense in the area that's now Guatemala,
it would turn to this blood drinking mad creature, and
(12:24):
then later in the day at dusk, it would turn
to a jaguar's face, because that was of course when
the jaguars were just waking up and coming out to
hunt after sleeping all day. Um. But these stucco representations
of the Sun God depict all these different figures of
its phases that would go through during the day. It's
(12:44):
also believed that the tomb atop the Diabolo Pyramid was
that of the first Elzet king, who lived sometime between
three fifty and fo so there's still a lot to
learn from the spine. Though it was abandoned in the
fifth century quite suddenly, but it's fairly unique among my
ruins for its completeness. Usually they'd tear down a structure
(13:05):
and build on top of it. Also, only thirty of
the facade has been uncovered so far, so a lot
to come here probably. Yeah. It reminds me a little
bit of the last episode we did on the Terracotta
warriors and and how much there is still to learn
there as well. According to David fried al Though, who's
my archaeologist, he said, quote, the site will certainly advance
(13:27):
our knowledge of early classic Maya religion and ritual practice.
So um, a lot to be learned and pretty pretty neat.
I I certain this is one. I urge everybody to
go check out pictures of it too. It's worth worth
taking a look at. But there has been another pretty
cool Maya discovery in twelve and it's one that had
(13:50):
me thinking back to our episode on historical alcohol, because,
as we learned in that episode, a lot of discoveries
can made be made from the gunk and residue that's
found at the bottom of old cups, old bowls, various
ancient vessels. This year, dmitriy Zagorevski of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(14:12):
and Jennifer low Miller Newman, a doctoral candidate at the
University of Albany, analyzed the residue found in a thirteen
hundred year old vessel from the mirror door basin and
what's today southern Mexico and the vessel read the home
of his or her tobacco, and sure enough, that's what
they found inside traces of nicotine. They found this using
gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.
(14:38):
This find is particularly notable for two reasons. One, it's
the first physical evidence of the Mayans using tobacco, and
to the technological methods used promise even better analysis of
such vessels in the future. And this was why it
reminded me of the Historical Alcohol Episode so much, because
if you remember from that show, there's a whole host
(14:58):
of problems when you're trying to determine what cups and
other vessels actually contained, and not just because the contents
are are long dried up and gone. Um. Many vessels
were of course multi purpose and contain the residues of
all sorts of of items that they once contained. According
to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, vessels can also be contaminated by bacteria.
(15:23):
They can be damaged by water, and no water can
just wash everything away when they're no longer in use,
or they can be contaminated after discovery. And and sometimes
they're even clean too. And I remember again from that
alcohol episode, archaeologists were horrified by this, and this could happen.
But if you scrowb out that gunk gets washing away,
(15:43):
all the all the history of what this could have
been used for. Um. This piece, though, the one that
was analyzed, is actually an older fine. It's been a
long term resident of the Library of Congress's collection, but
fortunately hadn't had all its contents removed. The label on
the vessel to Deplina, you mentioned that it's the home
of his or her tobacco. That's fairly unique as well.
(16:06):
And the only other case of researchers finding a labeled
vessel like this actually containing what it was supposed to
contain came twenty years ago with a cup of cacao.
So I guess it would be tricky to cook in
a Maya kitchen if everything labeled differently. One of the
things that's really fascinating about the story, though, is the
(16:27):
information about how the Mayan's used tobacco. According to low Miller,
Newman and Discovery News, they ruled out the possibility that
the vessel was an ashtray since there were no chemical
calling cards present for nicotine byproducts, but it wasn't likely
that the Maya would have been smoking the tobacco in
the first place. It was empowered form, likely mixed with
(16:49):
lime and mixed in a drink two or maybe used
as snuff. It was strong enough to possibly be hallucinogenic
and serve the handy double purpose of repelling serpent. So
there you go. I think that seems like a fitting
way to conclude our our episode with this hallucinogenic Maya
(17:11):
residue inserpent repellent. Yeah, something to amuse upon. I guess
if you're getting your New Year celebration money, I don't
know what do you think, Sarah? Will your celebration be
that exciting? I don't think it's going to be that exciting,
But it's also maybe a better image to have than
the staked vampires and the Roman curses too. I don't
(17:32):
want to send people off into the New Year thinking
of those sort of things. So, yeah, the Cacao maybe,
you know, think about stuff like that. I think the
interesting thing about all these discoveries though, is just how
they show how I mean, we've pointed this out before,
how history is this living, breathing thing. It's always changing,
instantly changing, and um the discovery of the temple especially
(17:55):
reminded me of that because we're always talking about these
lost sight that are discovered, usually in the nineteenth century
or the twentieth century, UM, and it's hard to imagine,
you know, people not realizing that King Tut's tomb was there,
or or all sorts of of these sites that we've
(18:18):
discussed that just seem like major international attractions now you
just go heritage site. But it's cool to think that
there are plenty of places like that still out there,
that there can still be this beautiful, stunning temple that's
just hidden in the overgrowth in the guatemal And jungle
waiting for somebody to stumble upon it. Pretty cool. Unfortunately,
(18:39):
there are many dedicated researchers and archaeologists and historians out
there who are working on all of this all the time,
so we have lots of stuff to talk about. Fun
it's a lot of fun for us to do this
every year. And if you have any more news items
from twelve or any other time that we missed that
you'd like for us to cover further, maybe do an
(19:02):
update to a previous topic that we've done before. You
can write to us. We are at History Podcast at
Discovery dot com, or you can find us on Facebook
or on Twitter in this history and we love receiving
these kind of stories from you guys throughout the year.
This is always the kind of thing that I like
to re post on Facebook and retweet. And we count
(19:22):
on y'all to recommend these stories to us because, as
you mentioned, it's there's so much happening it's impossible to
keep up with it. Also, thank you guys, Happy New Year,
have a great time celebrating, and we'll see you in
We're more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(19:44):
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